Claims and 
 Counterclaims, 
 
 'By Jslaud 

 
 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS
 
 Claims and Counterclaims 
 
 BY 
 MAUD WILDER GOODWIN 
 
 Author of "Four Roads to Paradise," etc. 
 
 New York 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 1905
 
 Copyright, 1905, by 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 
 Published, August, 1905 
 
 All rifhti rtiirved, 
 
 including that of translation into foreign language*, 
 including tht Stan4inviau.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Claims 3 
 
 II. An Embarrassment of Riches . . 17 
 
 III. That Not Impossible She . . . 38 
 
 IV. A Debtor to His Profession . . 55 
 V. The Point of View .... 79 
 
 VI. Pieria Once More . . . .100 
 
 VII. Fresh Woods and Pastures New . 119 
 
 VIII. The Holder of the Claim . . .142 
 
 IX. The Pasteboard Helmet . . .163 
 
 X. Woman's Mission . . . .179 
 
 XI. Strangers and Friends . . .195 
 
 XII. Homeward Bound . . . .204 
 
 XIII. A Game of Chess .... 225 
 
 XIV. Men and Women . . . .249 
 XV. Counterclaims 269 
 
 XVI. Dilke Meets an Old Acquaintance . 285 
 
 XVII. A Divided Duty . . . .311 
 
 XVIII. Port After Stormy Seas . . .324 
 
 XiX. After All 345 
 
 2228356
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS 
 
 JOYCE ELDRIDGE, daughter of a New York banker. 
 MRS. FENWICK, her aunt. 
 MME. DU PONT, her cousin. 
 MR. ELDRIDGE, her father. 
 ANTHONY DILKE, a young physician. 
 BRACKETT NEWBOLD, an artist. 
 EUSTACE BRANDYCE, correspondent of a London 
 paper. 
 
 JACOB SECOR, founder of the Secor Library. 
 
 MINOR CHARACTERS 
 
 HENRY ELDRIDGE, brother of Joyce. 
 
 MRS. DILKE, mother of Anthony Dilke. 
 
 REV. JAMES MACASSAR. 
 
 MR. JOHN CANTOR. 
 
 MR. THOMAS TOWNS. 
 
 MRS. TOWNS. 
 
 MRS. CANTOR.
 
 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CLAIMS 
 
 WHAT is your idea of gratitude, New- 
 bold?" 
 "Gratitude, my dear Dilke, is a 
 sentiment reluctantly entertained for a benefit 
 grudgingly conferred." 
 
 " I am not likely to get much help from you in 
 your present mood ; but I shall ask you one more 
 question: If a man had saved your life at the 
 risk of his own, what would you feel that you 
 owed him?" 
 
 "My life, evidently." 
 
 " I happen to be in earnest, Newbold." 
 
 "Really! That is a pity. But does it follow 
 that because you are in earnest I must be? " 
 
 " It would be more civil to answer a serious 
 question seriously." 
 
 Newbold threw back his head, and thrust out 
 his chin till his pointed Van Dyck beard was 
 almost horizontal. He switched at a head of 
 goldenrod with his cane for an instant before he 
 replied : 
 
 " Let us be serious, then, by all means." 
 
 3
 
 4 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 " Not at all. It is an affair of necessity. Two 
 are needed for the making of a jest, but one can 
 inflict seriousness. May I trouble you to repeat 
 your serious question in simple words adapted to 
 a light and trifling mind?" 
 
 " I could not make it simpler," Dilke answered 
 with some irritation. "What I say is this: Is 
 a man, whose life has been saved by another, 
 never to be free from a sense of obligation? " 
 
 Newbold put a question in his turn: " Is this 
 a problem in casuistry or does it refer to some 
 event which actually happened?" 
 
 " It actually happened. It is my own case," 
 blurted out Dilke, thrusting his hands into his 
 pockets, and restlessly changing his position 
 from the turf where he had been sitting to a rock 
 opposite Newbold. 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed his friend, "that interests 
 me directly, centres my attention where it 
 belongs. I confess that as you first put it my 
 thoughts wandered off to the fellow who saved 
 the life. I was wondering if he would feel a sense 
 of responsibility for reinflicting a man upon a 
 world possibly better off without him. But of 
 course if the case was yours 
 
 "It is mine," Dilke reiterated doggedly. 
 "That is why I do not care to jest about 
 it."
 
 CLAIMS 5 
 
 " I see. Nothing is more difficult than taking 
 our own affairs jovially." 
 
 "Apparently," Dilke rejoined, "it is more 
 difficult to take our friends' affairs in any other 
 way. It is astonishing to me that you should 
 have so much comprehension and so little sym- 
 pathy." 
 
 Newbold received his companion's remark with 
 equanimity. 
 
 "Go on," he said; "that is, if you mean 
 to tell me about it. A man saved your 
 life ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "When and where?" 
 
 "Some months ago, when I was camping in 
 the Rockies with two other men. One of them 
 was Brandyce Eustace Brandyce did you 
 ever hear of him?" 
 
 " Yes, I knew him rather well in Paris a very 
 agreeable companion But " Newbold raised 
 his eyebrows as he spoke. 
 
 "So you have felt it, too!" exclaimed Dilke 
 with a certain tragic intensity. " Then you will 
 understand my state of mind, and I can explain 
 it without a sense of disloyalty. Brandyce was, 
 as you say, a charming companion ; but in camp- 
 ing one learns to know a man so well, and 
 intimacy is a dangerous experiment. Of course 
 the fault may lie only in the combination of
 
 6 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 temperaments. Matches are good, and gun- 
 powder has its uses, but propinquity brings out 
 the worst qualities of both." 
 
 "Tell me the story first and leave your 
 reflections till the end," Newbold urged. 
 
 "We had been camping for a fortnight," 
 Dilke continued, " and I had been trying in vain 
 to induce those men to get up in time to see the 
 sunrise from the top of the mountain. They said 
 that no sight on earth was worth the loss of a 
 morning's sleep. I suggested that they make up 
 their .sleep at the other end of the night; but 
 Brandyce asked why he should go to bed before 
 he was ready, in order to rise before he wished." 
 
 Newbold turned aside that he might smile 
 unobserved. 
 
 "So you went alone?" he queried. 
 
 " I went alone, and was well repaid for my 
 trouble. The sun stood a red ball of fire on the 
 horizon, and a row of black-pointed firs stretched 
 like a stockade along the range of the mountain 
 spur. I wish that you could have painted it, 
 Newbold." 
 
 The artist shrugged his shoulders. "I have 
 no taste for panoramic chromos of sunrise," he 
 said; "I should as soon undertake to paint a 
 rainbow, that section of aerial watermelon; 
 but go on. Was it on the mountain top that 
 you came to grief?"
 
 CLAIMS 7 
 
 "It was on the way down," said Dilke, with 
 some trace of lingering resentment in his tone. 
 "I slipped on the edge of a cliff and fell thirty 
 feet. It might have been three hundred but for 
 a tree which caught me as I fell." 
 
 " Otherwise I fancy you would not be talking 
 here to-day." 1 
 
 "Assuredly not. The fall nearly killed me as 
 it was, and I hung unconscious in the branches. 
 It was there that B randy ce found me, and with 
 his usual cleverness whatever you think of 
 Brandyce you cannot deny his cleverness 
 
 " I never attempted to deny his cleverness. 
 Don't drag me in." 
 
 Dilke declined to notice the interpolation. 
 With the prodigality of detail which we are all 
 prone to bestow on accounts of our own experi- 
 ences, he went on: "Brandyce had brought a 
 rope. He had always said that a lariat was of 
 use in any situation, from a roundup to a lynch- 
 ing. When he reached the edge of the cliff he 
 leaned over, and, seeing me caught there in the 
 boughs, he determined at once to take all risks 
 to rescue me. Think of that, with a cliff falling 
 sheer three hundred feet beneath! A brave 
 man might have been excused for flinching. 
 But Brandyce never hesitated. He tied one 
 end of his rope around a sturdy tree, and then, 
 dropping over the cliff, went down hand over
 
 8 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 hand to the branches where I lay. He knew 
 that if I became conscious and made the slightest 
 motion I should fall the whole distance, so he 
 tied the rope round my body and then climbed 
 the cliff to call for aid. He imperilled his own 
 life at every step." 
 
 "And you were ungrateful enough not to like 
 Brandy ce after that?" 
 
 " I was. I put in no plea, no disclaimer, no 
 excuse. But I assure you that, as I lay in my 
 tent on the night after the accident, with a 
 broken arm, a bruised body and a bruised mind, 
 my thoughts were not to be envied." 
 
 "I know all about that," answered Newbold 
 with more sympathy than he had yet shown. 
 "It is an unequal fight when a man struggles 
 with his thoughts. There are so many of them 
 and only one of him, and when he lies down 
 they have him at a double disadvantage. Then 
 they perch on his chest and whisper in his ear 
 and dance a can-can in his brain." 
 
 "Precisely. Turn and twist as I would, I 
 could not escape recognition of the fact that I 
 owed the greatest obligation which it was pos- 
 sible to incur to a man whom I neither wholly 
 liked nor entirely trusted. The thing which I 
 resented in my inmost soul was being compelled 
 to stand by consequences not of my own making. 
 A benefaction had been thrust upon me. I had
 
 CLAIMS 9 
 
 neither the grace to accept the gift gaily, nor 
 the dishonesty to refuse to acknowledge it. The 
 most depressing experience in life is the sense of 
 inability to summon an emotion demanded by 
 the situation." 
 
 Dilke paused for an instant, and then went on : 
 " Life surely is not such a precious boon that a 
 man must be glad to accept it from uncongenial 
 hands. I owe my life to Brandyce, and the 
 debt is one which can be paid only on the instal- 
 ment plan. That's the worst of it. I have 
 sworn to him that if I could ever render him any 
 service I would do it if it cost my heart's blood, 
 but such opportunities do not offer in our shel- 
 tered commonplace world. If I could save his 
 life at the expense of my own and be quits, I 
 should be only too glad; but to go about forever 
 with this load of gratitude hung like a millstone 
 around my neck, disliking my benefactor and 
 cursing myself for not being able to like him 
 you will admit that it is a hard case." 
 
 Dilke paused and sat looking with bent brows 
 at the weatherbeaten grasses around him. The 
 autumn air stirred them gently, the clouds 
 floated calmly in the sky above, crickets chirped 
 at his feet. Newbold waited for some time, 
 hoping that the quietness of nature would 
 communicate itself to his friend's feverish 
 mood; but he soon saw that it was having
 
 10 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 no effect, and he determined to try vigorous 
 measures. 
 
 "Dilke," he said deliberately, "You are a 
 good fellow with a real gift for friendship; but 
 you have a streak of surly obstinacy in you 
 and you are too omniscient by half. For the 
 omniscience I do not hold you to blame. It is 
 practically thrust upon you by your profession. 
 If you once admitted that you did not know 
 very much, that your practice was largely a 
 matter of guesswork and your cures largely a 
 matter of luck, away would go your patients to 
 the quack in the next street. People demand 
 omniscience in their physician, and of course 
 you could not afford to offer less; but the surli- 
 ness is another matter. You really ought to 
 take that in hand." 
 
 "Have I no other amiable weaknesses with 
 which you can taunt me ? " 
 
 "Yes, now you speak of it, I should add a 
 morbid sensitiveness and a pride which makes 
 an obligation cut like a whiplash. For in- 
 stance, in this very case in point, I dare say you 
 liked Brandyce well enough until he saved 
 your life." 
 
 Dilke flipped a pebble between his thumb 
 and forefinger and watched it as it jumped 
 along down the hill. " I did not dislike him," 
 he answered, "but I distrusted him."
 
 CLAIMS 11 
 
 "What made you suspicious? Perhaps we 
 are both too ready to believe evil of B randy ce. 
 Remember, old Fuller used to say that the 
 man who proceeds on half evidence will not do 
 quarter justice." 
 
 "Suspicion," Dilke answered, setting his lips 
 obstinately, "is an instinct, and I have never 
 neglected its warnings without regretting it 
 afterward." 
 
 Newbold saw that Dilke was growing more and 
 more bitter as he talked. Thinking to add a 
 consoling word, he said: "Why do you not 
 dismiss the whole thing from your mind? You 
 may never see Brandyce again. He is scarcely 
 likely to appear in Pieria." 
 
 Dilke turned and looked full at Newbold. 
 "You may call it superstition if you like," he 
 answered, " but I have a feeling that something 
 will happen to bring Brandyce and me together 
 and to make me regret that we ever met." 
 
 The two men sat looking down at the little 
 town of Pieria which lay in the bowl of the valley 
 below them. It was not a beautiful town 
 except to eyes which could find pleasure in out- 
 ward evidences of progress and prosperity. Here 
 and there a white spire or stone-capped tower 
 rose above the flatness of the low-roofed houses. 
 On the bank of the river which flowed through 
 the town towered huge brick chimneys, their
 
 12 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 tops blackened by the smoke which poured out 
 of their dragon throats in eddying columns, 
 by day and by night. Scattered in among them, 
 square-shouldered mills, unabashed by their 
 ugliness, thrust themselves insistently upon the 
 eye with a certain grim pride, as if sturdily 
 conscious of the fact that spire and tower and 
 rooftree were all dependent upon them for sup- 
 port, and that education and religion must in 
 the end come a-begging, cap in hand, to in- 
 dustry and commerce. 
 
 Dilke was so familiar with the scene that it made 
 little impression upon him; but to Newbold its 
 ugliness was ever new, consciously annoying and 
 constantly suggestive of a generation which had 
 sacrificed grace to power, and had sold its birth- 
 right of beauty for a mess of manufacture. 
 
 Newbold and Dilke had been friends in col- 
 lege, where they acquired in common a taste 
 for tobacco and a lenient attitude toward learn- 
 ing; but afterward their paths diverged. New- 
 bold went to Paris to study painting and Dilke 
 betook himself to the medical schools. Their 
 first meeting had come recently, when Newbold 
 received a commission to paint a portrait of the 
 Reverend James Macassar, a leading clergy- 
 man of Pieria, and' formerly president of a 
 theological seminary, which desired to preserve 
 a copy of his features to decorate its walls.
 
 CLAIMS 13 
 
 Dilke had settled in Pieria to practise medicine. 
 So it came to pass that the two men had met on that 
 curious basis of mingled intimacy and strange- 
 ness which comes of interrupted friendship. 
 
 Newbold wondered that the years had not 
 changed Dilke more, and in greater degree sub- 
 dued his youthful strenuousness. He did not en- 
 joy playing anvil to this young Siegfried's sword. 
 
 Dilke's nature was one which saw life neither 
 steadily nor whole, but in the distorted focus 
 of large enthusiasms and unreasoning depres- 
 sions, a nature prone to rush, on small provo- 
 cation, into useless sacrifices, and to do many 
 foolish things from headlong impulse. 
 
 Newbold, weary of watching the smoking 
 chimneys of the town, turned his gaze down- 
 ward on the brook which ran its madcap race 
 through the gully at his feet. A three days' 
 rain, had brimmed it to the edge of its channel 
 and sent the foam flying in a delicate coquetry 
 of spray over the ferns that fringed the banks. 
 At length he leaned back and betook himself 
 to humming softly: 
 
 "Too much care will turn a young man gray, 
 Too much care will turn an old man to clay. 
 My wife shall dance and I will sing, 
 So merrily pass the day, 
 For I count it one of the wisest things 
 To drive dull care away."
 
 14 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Dilke looked at the singer. "Clever scheme 
 that of yours, to drive care away by singing to 
 it, "he said. Then he laughed. People generally 
 did laugh when they looked at Newbold. His 
 cheerfulness was so out of proportion to his 
 circumstances that that fact alone created an 
 atmosphere of exhilarating incongruity. 
 
 "Yes," he answered to Dilke's comment, 
 " singing is at least better than talking, since it 
 is generally cheerful and it saves the hearer the 
 trouble of a reply, or even of listening if he is 
 not in the mood." 
 
 "No one ever need listen," Dilke replied, and 
 added qualify ingly, "unless he is a married 
 man." 
 
 Newbold laughed. " It is certainly one of the 
 alleviations of bachelorhood," he said, "that a 
 man is not obliged to listen when he is not in the 
 mood." 
 
 " One of the alleviations ! " echoed Dilke. " Say 
 rather one of the innumerable privileges of that 
 exalted condition." 
 
 "Yes," assented Newbold, striving to con- 
 vince himself, " a bachelor is a man who would 
 rather be lonely than bored." 
 
 Dilke drew out his pipe, filled and lighted it, 
 and then threw away the match, as he added: 
 
 "A bachelor is a man clever enough to learn 
 from the experience of his friends." 

 
 CLAIMS 15 
 
 "What a bluff we are both putting up!" 
 Newbold exclaimed. "We know well enough 
 that a bachelor is a man who spends half the 
 night in trying to figure out how an income 
 which has proved too small for one may be 
 made adequate for two. About midnight he 
 gives up the problem and goes to the club." 
 
 "I, for one, do no such figuring," Dilke main- 
 tained stoutly. " I have never seen a woman 
 whom I wished to marry." 
 
 " Ah, you have not the artistic temperament. 
 When beauty appeals to every instinct you must 
 wish to make it your own. The trouble is that 
 other beauties appeal also, and fickleness results. 
 Fickleness is a tribute to the universal at the 
 expense of the individual. But if you are not 
 in love and anxious to earn enough money to 
 enable you to marry, may I ask why have you 
 planted yourself in this little hole ? The crude- 
 ness, the monotony, the unloveliness " 
 
 " I can readily understand," Dilke interrupted, 
 "how Pieria would strike an artist; but for a 
 physician it is different. Broken bones and 
 fevers are the same the world over." 
 
 "It is quite true," Newbold assented, "that 
 interest in your work may reconcile you to 
 lack of beauty. When I am painting a portrait 
 I never ask myself whether the face is beautiful; 
 I am studying the features, the colouring, the
 
 16 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 essential qualities which make the personality. 
 I fancy it is the same with the place which you 
 call your home. You are at work. You are 
 absorbed. You are oblivious of its short- 
 comings." 
 
 The men rose and strolled slowly homeward. 
 There was little speech between them, each 
 man being occupied with his own reflections. 
 
 Dilke's thoughts turned obstinately backward 
 to the old corroding theme. 
 
 "I wish that it had been Newbold to whom 
 I owed my life," he murmured under his breath. 
 " I trust Newbold but Brandyce ? "
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 
 
 THE art of portrait painting lies in gratifying 
 the subject, without incurring the scorn of the 
 critics; so that when they say, " How striking the 
 resemblance is!" the original will not frown, 
 and when he says it they will not smile. 
 
 Fortunately, perhaps, for Newbold, there were 
 no critics in Pieria, and Doctor Macassar pro- 
 fessed himself well satisfied with his "counter- 
 feit presentment," though he suggested that 
 the hand thrust into the front of the coat was 
 a little larger than life, and the expression of 
 the face somewhat less spiritual than his 
 parishioners had expected. 
 
 Newbold's only regret in finishing the por- 
 trait was that it gave him no excuse for tarrying 
 longer with Anthony Dilke. The two men 
 parted better friends for their weeks together, 
 and promised each other that the time should 
 not be long before they met again. 
 
 A few weeks after Newbold had taken his leave 
 Dilke found himself involved in a situation 
 which was destined to affect his whole future 
 
 17
 
 18 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 career, though at first it seemed to have only 
 a surface relation to him. 
 
 The trustees of the free library of Pieria 
 gathered in the directors' room to discuss a 
 financial crisis in the affairs of that institution. 
 The building was not yet completed, though 
 its tower of stone rose ambitiously in the air. 
 It had been begun in a time of prosperity and 
 encumbered with a mortgage. Now the day 
 of reckoning was at hand. Hard times had fol- 
 lowed on the heels of plenty. Subscriptions had 
 failed. There was not enough money in the 
 treasury to pay the interest on the mortgage, 
 and the trustees had personally guaranteed the 
 debt. 
 
 "Where is the money to come from?" asked 
 the president of the Board, more to relieve his 
 mind than in the expectation of any reply. 
 
 Dilke, who was secretary of the Board and 
 its youngest member, sat at the opposite end of 
 the long directors' table.. He put his hands 
 in his pockets and smiled a little, as he tilted his 
 chair on two legs ; but he said nothing. 
 
 "Things look black, I admit," volunteered 
 the Reverend James Macassar, stroking his 
 smooth, distinguished chin; "but we must re- 
 member that it is always darkest just before 
 dawn." 
 
 "Yes," returned Mr. Towns, the lawyer; "but
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 19 
 
 who is to say when it is as dark as it is going 
 to be?" 
 
 At length Dilke rose. " I have something of 
 importance to communicate to the Board," he 
 remarked. "What view you will take of it I 
 don't know. Of course we are in an awkward 
 situation. We were fools to make ourselves 
 liable. For my part, I am sorry that we ever 
 embarked on the enterprise, though I do not 
 deny that the library promises to be a great 
 help to the town." 
 
 " All very true, Doctor Dilke," interrupted the 
 president dryly, "but scarcely news to the 
 members of the Board." 
 
 " No, that part of it is no news to any of us," 
 Dilke went on. "It is what I am coming to 
 that is new. I have in my pocket an offer of 
 two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the 
 benefit of this library." 
 
 A stunned silence fell upon the group of men. 
 
 "Just before dawn!" repeated Doctor Ma- 
 cassar at length, smiling gently but triumph- 
 antly across the table at Mr. Towns. 
 
 " What did you mean, Doctor Dilke," the law- 
 yer cross-questioned, "by saying that you did 
 Slot know what view we would take of this 
 offer? What view is there to take of it except 
 as the luckiest thing that ever happened to 
 save a sinking ship? "
 
 20 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Let us say rather a direct interposition of 
 Providence to assist a noble cause!" corrected 
 Doctor Macassar. 
 
 "Well," Dilke answered, fingering his watch 
 chain, " if that is so, all I can say is that Provi- 
 dence uses queer instruments sometimes. The 
 man who offers this money is Jacob Secor." 
 
 Jacob Secor! The silence fell again deeper 
 than ever. Each man looked at his neighbour. 
 No one wished to be the first to speak. 
 
 " The money was made in the liquor business," 
 said Mr. Cantor, the president of the Board, 
 who was also president of the Pieria Temperance 
 Union. 
 
 "I don't care about that," Dilke protested. 
 "The liquor business is as good as any other 
 if it is honestly conducted." 
 
 "Yes, if" commented Mr. Towns. "The 
 trouble is that nothing Jake Secor had a hand 
 in was ever run honestly. He cheated me out 
 of my fee when I defended him on a charge of 
 abetting an illicit whiskey still in Kentucky." 
 
 ' Rare sport to see an engineer hoist with his 
 own petard!' murmured Dilke, and added 
 aloud: "That is what I meant by saying that 
 I did not know what you would think of it. Secor 
 writes to me as secretary that he knows he has 
 some enemies in town, and that hard things have 
 been said of him; but he bears no malice."
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 21 
 
 " Oh, doesn't he! " growled Mr. Towns. 
 
 "No. He says that he always felt kindly 
 toward Pieria, and hearing that the library 
 was in trouble, he would like to lend a helping 
 hand. He attaches a condition, however. The 
 library must be named for him, 'The Jacob 
 Penhallow Secor Library.' ' 
 
 At the last suggestion the tide of indignation 
 swelled so high as almost to overwhelm the 
 Board a confused volley of wrathful exclama- 
 tions poured out. 
 
 " The impudent scoundrel! " 
 
 " It is not to be thought of! " 
 
 " Nothing less than insulting! " 
 
 The president sat back and said nothing. 
 
 "Of course," Dilke explained, "we are in- 
 dividually liable, and if we do not accept this 
 money we must pay it out of our own pockets." 
 
 Doctor Macassar buttoned his clerical coat 
 more closely, as if with a certain satisfaction 
 that it had no pockets available. 
 
 "After all," asked the president smoothly, 
 " are we not assuming too hastily that the matter 
 cannot be satisfactorily arranged? It has diffi- 
 culties I admit it has difficulties; but is it not 
 possible to separate the gift from the giver? 
 Secor will die some day ; but his money will live 
 on. Is it not better that it should be doing 
 good than harm perhaps engaged in carrying
 
 22 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 on this very liquor traffic which is sapping the 
 moral and physical strength of the country?" 
 
 " I don't understand, Mr. President, that this 
 is a temperance meeting," opposed Dilke with 
 rising temper. 
 
 " Every meeting should be a temperance meet- 
 ing," answered Mr. Cantor, now fairly mounted 
 on his favourite hobby. " Intemperance is the 
 crying evil of our time. There is an old legend 
 that Jehovah planted the vine and watered it, 
 first with the blood of the lamb, afterward, 
 when it was grown, with the blood of the ape, 
 then with that of the lion, and finally with that 
 of the swine, symbolising the progressive effect 
 of drinking upon man." 
 
 "Apparently," suggested Dilke, "there is no 
 objection then to the first drink." 
 
 "A dangerous doctrine, young man a very 
 dangerous doctrine." 
 
 "This is no place," interrupted Dilke, "for 
 discussion of that question. Some of us believe 
 in the liquor business, some of us do not; but 
 I suppose we are all agreed on liking an honest 
 man and money honestly come by." 
 
 " The next generation will not know anything 
 about Secor," observed the practical Mr. Towns. 
 "He has not been in Pieria for ten years, and 
 probably will not be here for ten years to 
 come. He will never trouble us, and the
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 23 
 
 children who are growing up have never heard 
 his name." 
 
 "I think," said Doctor Macassar, who was 
 an apostle of compromise, "that our president 
 has put this case very happily in saying that we 
 may in some sense separate the gift from the 
 giver. If we take the money we may hope to 
 obliterate its stain by a consecration to new 
 and higher ends. We must not forget, gentle- 
 men, the history of the foundation of the great 
 English universities, how they drew their sup- 
 port from plunder and injustice, yet have risen 
 to be held the chief glory of the most enlightened 
 nation of the earth." 
 
 A low murmur of applause greeted this burst 
 of eloquence. But Dilke rose with an obstinate 
 flush on his cheek. " This is all fine talk, gentle- 
 men," he blurted out, "and I wanted to see 
 what you would say. For my part, I cannot 
 see my way beyond the fact that Secor is an 
 infernal scoundrel." 
 
 " Do you wish to pay the money? " 
 
 "No, Mr. Cantor; but I will pay my share 
 rather than take this man's money. You may 
 salve over the matter as you like. The fact 
 remains that accepting Secor's money is equiva- 
 lent to indorsing him. That is the plain English 
 of the situation. I care as much about this 
 library as any of you, but I would rather see
 
 24 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 the work stopped than to have it proceed on 
 this basis." 
 
 Dilke sat down. An uncomfortable pause 
 followed. Then the apostle of compromise rose 
 and began concilia tingly : " I see Doctor Dilke's 
 point of view, and it does him great credit, 
 great credit; but it is not alone a question of 
 discharging our present liabilities. A quarter of 
 a million dollars under the control of this library 
 would supply an intellectual awakening to the 
 town. It would build a lecture hall, supply 
 lecturers and concerts, make a nucleus for the 
 higher spiritual activities. There is no end to 
 its possible benefits. Are we lightly to throw 
 all this away?" 
 
 " We might call a town meeting and put it to 
 vote," suggested Mr. Towns. 
 
 "That I fear is impracticable," the president 
 remarked, "for to make the people understand 
 the issue, too many unpleasant explanations 
 must be made." 
 
 "Very true, Mr. President, very true," as- 
 sented the apostle. " If I might make a sug- 
 gestion, I would propose writing to Mr. Secor 
 that we appreciate his offer and will accept it 
 in the name of the people of this town ; but that 
 his suggestion of naming the institution the 
 Jacob Penhallow Secor Library is not, in our 
 judgment, advisable. That, however, we are
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 25 
 
 willing to compromise on calling it the Secor 
 Library; the Secors being, as you all know, an 
 old and respected family in this vicinity." 
 
 This solution met with approval. Smiles 
 reigned all about the table. The motion was 
 put to vote and carried with only one dissenting 
 voice. 
 
 When the result was announced Dilke rose 
 and took his hat. His face was very red and he 
 seemed with difficulty to be suppressing a 
 passionate outburst. "I wish," he said, con- 
 trolling his voice as well as he could, "to offer 
 my resignation both as secretary and trustee. 
 To-morrow I will put it in writing." Then 
 he went out. Mr. Towns was appointed secre- 
 tary in his place and the meeting adjourned. 
 
 Dilke went directly home and found his 
 mother sewing in the little green sitting room. 
 He went in and walked up and down, with head 
 bent and hands in his pockets. Mrs. Dilke, 
 a gentle little woman whose purple eyes shone 
 from under her white hair like violets under a 
 snow-bank, watched him and wondered at his 
 restlessness; but he did not feel inclined to talk. 
 He wished to arrange his statement of the case 
 and settle matters with himself first. The truth 
 is that with Dilke, as with most men, a mother 
 had a dual identity, the practical half of which 
 was concerned with the mending of his clothes,
 
 26 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 the superintendence of his meals and the general 
 charge of his bodily welfare; while the other 
 and spiritual half was enshrined with the family 
 Bible, to be held in immense tenderness and 
 reverence, but not too often consulted for 
 advice. 
 
 Mothers, however, do not always accept this 
 reverential shelving as they should, but manifest 
 an untoward desire to mingle in their sons' mun- 
 dane and masculine affairs. It is then that they 
 become irritating, and their worshipful sons 
 mutter the ominous word "Meddling." 
 
 Mrs. Dilke watched Anthony wandering about 
 the room till her nerves and her curiosity were 
 strained to the breaking point. 
 
 "What is the matter, Tony?" she asked. 
 " Did anything go wrong at the meeting of the 
 Library Board this afternoon?" 
 
 "Yes," her son answered abruptly, "the 
 whole Board went wrong. I told them so, but 
 they would not believe me. So I resigned." 
 
 "Tony!" 
 
 "I did. It was the only thing that I could 
 do." 
 
 Mrs. Dilke sat looking with misgiving in her 
 heart, at the determined face opposite her. 
 
 ; ' You must not forget, Tony, that you are the 
 youngest member of the Board, and a great 
 compliment it was, your being elected. If all
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 27 
 
 the others were against you, perhaps it was you 
 who were wrong." 
 
 " You don't know anything about it, Mother." 
 
 "No. How can I, when I have not been 
 told?" 
 
 " It was the Board's business, not mine. I 
 did not think it right to tell anyone till I had 
 submitted the case officially. Jake Secor has 
 offered a quarter of a million dollars to the 
 library." 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad ! What a load that must take 
 off your mind! " 
 
 " I voted not to accept it." 
 
 "But Tony " 
 
 " There are no buts in the case, Mother. He 
 is a scoundrel and the library has no right to 
 take his money." 
 
 "Surely you needn't have resigned?" 
 
 "There is no use in discussing the matter, 
 Mother. If you don't see it you never would." 
 
 " I am afraid it will set the town against you." 
 
 This voicing of a feeling which had been 
 rankling in Dilke's own mind gave bitterness to 
 his tone as he answered : 
 
 " I suppose if a man sees what is right he is 
 bound to do it and take the consequences, is he 
 not?" 
 
 "Of course," faltered Mrs. Dilke. 
 
 "Then that ends the question," her son
 
 28 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 replied, and turning on his heel, was leaving 
 the room when his mother followed him quickly, 
 and put her arm softly about his neck. 
 
 " Even if it was a mistake, I am glad, Tony, 
 that you did what you thought right and 
 remember, whatever comes, I am on your side 
 against the world." 
 
 Dilke lifted his head. He went out feeling 
 that, come what would, there was a love which 
 nothing could chill or weaken, a pride in him 
 which nothing could shake, and a confident 
 conviction of his ultimate justification. 
 
 Much rejoicing was in Pieria when the good 
 fortune which had befallen the town became 
 known. Little thought was given to the source 
 of the contribution. If a few shook their heads 
 it was in secret, and with the alleviating thought 
 that a man lost to sight for ten years was prac- 
 tically dead, and to the dead, especially the rich 
 and lavish dead, much might be pardoned. 
 
 The library and the new hall went on to a 
 glorious completion, and everyone but Anthony 
 Dilke was content. 
 
 The trustees congratulated themselves on 
 their wisdom. They were prudent souls, how- 
 ever, and wishing to avoid complications, they 
 decided to place the dedication ceremonies in 
 May, when they learned that it was Mr. Secor's 
 intention to go abroad on a business trip.
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 29 
 
 The day for the dedication of the new library- 
 dawned, fair as spring and sunshine could make 
 it. Great were the preparations for the cele- 
 bration. The brass band had new uniforms; 
 the mayor and the president of the library 
 association were to head the procession start- 
 ing from the town hall. They were to be fol- 
 lowed by the library trustees, and they in turn 
 by prominent citizens, the Temperance Union, 
 and a band of young women in white represent- 
 ing the Christian Endeavor Society. The self- 
 conscious little houses along the route smirked 
 in flags and flowers, the townsfolk crowded 
 the sidewalks or hurried to secure their places 
 in the hall. 
 
 Among them was Anthony Dilke, who had 
 felt that he could not refuse his mother's 
 earnest request that he would accompany her. 
 Moreover, he was moved by a cynical curiosity 
 to see how the chief actors in this little drama 
 would conduct themselves in what he regarded 
 as a trying situation. He was conscious that 
 he stood alone in this view of it. Everyone 
 else was in holiday spirits as well as in holiday 
 attire. The bells rang gaily from the steeple, 
 the banners waved, the sun shone. 
 
 Could anything darken the glory of such a 
 halcyon occasion? 
 
 Yes, one thing had the power; and that one
 
 30 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 thing happened. The unexpected arrived, and 
 the unexpected was Mr. Jacob Penhallow Secor* 
 who presented himself unannounced, explaining 
 to the president that he had decided at the last 
 moment to postpone his European trip in favour 
 of a visit to Pieria. 
 
 After all, what more natural than that the 
 prime mover in all this festivity, the man whose 
 generosity had been the cause of all these 
 rejoicings, should wish to witness the fair fruits 
 of his bounty! Why had no one foreseen 
 the probability, and why were mayor and alder- 
 men, and, above all, the trustees of the Secor 
 Library, thrown into such consternation by the 
 appearance of their benefactor? 
 
 At any rate, here he was, and the question, 
 the pressing question, was, what to do with 
 him? 
 
 Clearly, he must walk in the procession and in 
 the front rank. Accordingly it was decreed 
 that the mayor should head the procession, 
 walking alone, while following him should walk 
 Mr. Cantor, president of the board of trustees 
 of the Secor Library, president of the Pieria 
 Temperance Union and secretary of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association, arm in arm with 
 Mr. Jacob Penhallow Secor, president of the 
 State and Territory Whiskey Trust. 
 
 Mr. Cantor made a wry face; but it could not
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 31 
 
 be avoided. When we have started on a dubious 
 journey we cannot choose our own companions. 
 
 Even more awkwardly placed was Doctor 
 Macassar. To him had fallen the honour of 
 making the opening address. He was to give an 
 account of the founding of the library, describing 
 the benefaction and omitting all praise of the 
 benefactor. Now that benefactor was to be 
 present, to be listening. 
 
 Really it was awkward for the apostle of com- 
 promise. 
 
 Meanwhile no one could be more unconcerned 
 than the cause of all this perplexity. Satisfac- 
 tion with himself and the world shone forth from 
 his face as he stalked along, the observed of all 
 observers. He had always said that money 
 could . do anything. Now he knew it. The 
 good opinion of his fellow-townsmen had been 
 long withheld, but it was his at last, bought with 
 hard cash. As he glanced up at the large, deep- 
 cut name of the Secor Library, he reflected with 
 cynical satisfaction that critical mouths were 
 shut at last, though it had taken a quarter of a 
 million dollars to do it. 
 
 He saw the little boys climbing the electric- 
 light poles to catch a glimpse of the hero of the 
 day. 
 
 "That's him, that's Secor!" he heard one 
 urchin say to another, and the other replied-
 
 32 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " He owns the town to-day, sure enough." One 
 of the boys was Ned Cantor and the other 
 Tommy Towns. 
 
 On the whole, Secor felt that he had made a 
 good investment. As he passed into the hall 
 he nodded patronisingly at Mr. Towns, who 
 returned the nod sourly. The lawyer would 
 have liked to administer the cut direct ; but had 
 he not taken this man's money? 
 
 Mr. Towns had been assigned to speak second 
 on the programme, and he had prepared a talk 
 addressed principally to the young men, showing 
 them for what a library stood, what high ideals 
 literature inculcated, and how the bulwarks of 
 the state were "not high-raised battlements, 
 but men." This opening was to be followed by 
 a discourse on the ideal citizen, on honesty and 
 civic righteousness, which were to be painted 
 in glowing colours and the corresponding vices 
 to be set forth in lurid opposition. Now Jacob 
 Secor had appeared to spoil it all. Every word 
 would be an insult to the guest of honour. Speak 
 of civic virtue before a man who had bribed 
 legislatures! Talk of business uprightness in 
 the face of one whom every person in that audi- 
 ence knew for a fraud and a trickster ! 
 
 Even a lawyer could not face that situation. 
 He thought with relief that the brunt of allusion 
 to Secor must fall on Doctor Macassar, and he
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 33 
 
 might have time at least to rearrange his ideas. 
 Fancy then his dismay when the apostle of com- 
 promise ended his somewhat wandering and 
 ineffective address with these words: 
 
 " I leave to the speaker who follows me, " indi- 
 cating Mr. Towns with a wave of his hand, " the 
 pleasing task of saying a word of welcome to the 
 guest of honour, the son so long absent from his 
 native town, the giver of this noble, this mag- 
 nificent monument." 
 
 Amid wild applause Mr. Towns rose. He 
 began lamely with a bow toward the chair 
 occupied by Mr. Jacob Secor. 
 
 " The debt we owe The debt we owe." Twice 
 he essayed and twice turned back in dread. 
 "The fact is," he said at length, "that I must 
 beg the indulgence of the audience if my words 
 are halting and few. This library has meant so 
 much to me that now, as I look around upon its 
 completion, I find my heart too full for utter- 
 ance and I must leave it to His Honour, the 
 Mayor, who accepts the library' in the name of 
 Pieria, to speak of our feelings toward the 
 founder." 
 
 With wrath in his heart, but smiles on his lips, 
 His Honour, the Mayor of Pieria, took up the 
 word. "I, too," he said, "find it hard to ex- 
 press in adequate language our thanks for the 
 great gift which we have received. It will be a
 
 34 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 source of benefit to hundreds yet unborn yet 
 unborn and thousands yes, thousands will 
 look back to the Secor Library as the influence 
 which helped to mould their lives. The giver 
 of this splendid benefaction is with us to-day. 
 It is needless to introduce him to this audience. 
 Himself a son of Pieria, he is already known to 
 many among you." 
 
 " Too well by half! " muttered Mr. Towns. 
 
 "His character " here the Mayor seemed to 
 suffer from some obstruction in his throat, but 
 went on bravely "his character speaks for 
 itself." 
 
 "I should say it did!" Doctor Dilke whis- 
 pered to his mother. 
 
 " His generosity will be proclaimed as long as 
 this library stands!" Then turning, with relief 
 at a successfully accomplished and difficult 
 task, he added impressively, "In the name of 
 Pieria, I thank you, Mr. Secor!" 
 
 Jacob Secor rose and seemed to be trembling 
 on the verge of a speech. 
 
 The trustees moved uneasily in their seats. 
 One or two youths in a front seat gave a ribald 
 chuckle, as if they enjoyed the discomfiture of 
 the dignitaries. 
 
 But the presiding officer met the situation 
 effectively. Appearing not to observe Mr. Secor 's 
 intention, he hastily announced the singing of
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 35 
 
 the anthem by the Temperance Union and the 
 Christian Endeavor young ladies assisted by 
 the church choir. 
 
 The anthem, though it was sung to the tune 
 of "Integer Vitse," relieved the tension some- 
 what, and everyone breathed more freely when 
 the white-haired pastor emeritus of the First 
 Church rose to deliver the benediction. 
 
 "O Lord," he prayed, "dismiss us with Thy 
 blessing! Bless to us our successes and our 
 failures, our virtues and our sins ! May we learn 
 from them all and may we in the final account 
 be judged by the best things we have done! " 
 
 "The old man saved the day," remarked 
 Dilke to his mother, as they went out from the 
 hall. " But I am glad that I was not obliged to 
 walk in that procession. I have not altered my 
 opinion that Pieria has paid too high a price for 
 her library." 
 
 Dilke, however, was soon made to realise 
 that the affair did not end with his failure to 
 walk in the procession. He had given offence 
 to the most prominent men in town, and they 
 made their resentment felt. 
 
 Personal popularity is a great factor in a phy- 
 sician's success, and Dilke speedily began to 
 perceive that his was waning. The Reverend 
 James Macassar urged the members of his con- 
 gregation to employ a rival doctor. Mr. Cantor
 
 36 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 failed to call in Dilke when his wife was ill. 
 Rumour began to say that Dilke's treatment 
 was unsound, a report as fatal in medicine as 
 in theology. 
 
 Before the year was out Dilke realised that 
 there was no future for him in Pieria. His 
 mother perceived his growing discouragement, 
 and one day she said to him softly: "Never 
 mind, Tony ; Pieria is not the world. Go away 
 and try somewhere else." 
 
 "Why, Mother, you have been counting the 
 years while I was away, and you know that your 
 dearest wish has been that I should succeed to 
 my father's practice here." 
 
 " My dearest wish is that you should succeed 
 somewhere." 
 
 "Would you go, too?" 
 
 His mother shook her head. 
 
 " No," she said, " I will stay here and wait for 
 you." 
 
 Dilke was quite ashamed at the thrill of pleas- 
 urable excitement which shook his frame. 
 
 " I believe that you have hit upon the right 
 scheme, Mother. You always do." (It is won- 
 derful what intelligence we see in advice which 
 chimes with our own wishes.) " I will go to 
 New York the greater the place the greater the 
 chance." 
 
 A month later Dilke set off with a heart much
 
 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 37 
 
 lighter than that of the mother who watched him 
 from her window. The non-combatants of life 
 bear the heaviest burden. 
 
 With all his anxiety for the future, there lay in 
 Dilke's mind a cheerful confidence in ultimate 
 success, combined with a subtle satisfaction in 
 the thought that he was a martyr to principle. 
 No hero, this Anthony Dilke! Only a self- 
 confident and masterful young fellow starting 
 out into the world with a buoyant determination 
 to smite the devil wherever he might meet him, 
 little suspecting that the battlefield would be his 
 own soul, and that the devil would sometimes 
 get the better of the encounter.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 
 
 LIVES approach each other so subtly and so 
 suddenly that the stranger of to-day may become 
 the soul-compelling force of to-morrow. Fate 
 had decreed that Joyce Eldridge should be a 
 coming power in Anthony Dilke's life, though as 
 yet he had never heard her name nor dreamed of 
 her existence. She was a daughter of a New 
 York banker living in one of the old wide- 
 windowed houses on Washington Square. 
 
 Many times in the course of Dilke's first 
 months in New York his way led him past her 
 door, yet nothing moved him to note the num- 
 ber or glance at the window as he passed. None 
 the less, destiny was weaving its web about him 
 and leading his unconscious feet. 
 
 One winter afternoon, when the snowflakes 
 were falling thickly outside and spreading a 
 magic carpet over the little square in front of the 
 house, Miss Eldridge stood before her long mir- 
 ror while her maid arranged the folds of her 
 sable-trimmed white gown, and adjusted the 
 drooping plumes of her large hat. 
 
 38
 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 39 
 
 As the clock on the mantel struck five, she 
 glanced out of the window at the waiting car- 
 riage below. 
 
 Joyce Eldridge was the youngest child of an 
 ill-assorted marriage. Her mother had been a 
 descendant of the old Huguenots who settled 
 here and there along the banks of the Hudson, 
 while the Dutch were bartering for furs and 
 diking swamps in Manhattan. It was an 
 aristocratic blood, a blood with traditions, a 
 blood which had preferred poverty to trade, 
 and had achieved its preferences. 
 
 A daughter of the fifth generation found the 
 achievement of aristocratic poverty distasteful, 
 and wedded a prosperous New York banker, 
 himself a descendant of the British middle class, 
 with the prejudices and the integrity of his 
 ancestors. She was a creature of whims and 
 moods, of delicate fancy and a tendency to treat 
 life lightly, turning it in her hands like a vase of 
 Venetian glass to enjoy the colours. 
 
 Yet to her natural gaiety she united a tem- 
 peramental timidity. "A large discourse of 
 imaginative fears " made her tremble before her 
 husband's blunt speech and irascible temper. 
 Her inheritance was one of courtesy, of regard 
 for the little amenities of life, and she found it 
 difficult to adapt herself to an atmosphere where 
 they were ignored.
 
 40 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Mr. Eldridge, all unconsciously to himself, 
 was constantly wounding this " pleasing, anxious 
 being," and while he would have made any 
 sacrifice for her, he could not or would not con- 
 trol the temper, which, like all uncurbed faults, 
 grew steadily in its mastery over him. 
 
 Naturally friction resulted, a friction which 
 left his stalwart love for her unharmed, but 
 which lessened hers for him till it became a thing 
 of shadowy forms and regrets for what might 
 have been, while all her caressing affection was 
 reserved for her children. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge had died when Joyce was only 
 twelve years old; but she still survived in her 
 daughter, who to a natural inheritance of char- 
 acter had added the conscious imitation of those 
 they love, which children early learn. 
 
 Joyce's strict sense of duty was the only 
 inheritance of character which she owed to her 
 father, and she employed it strictly in his behalf, 
 though this was not always easy. The same 
 irascibility which had estranged his wife threat- 
 ened the loyalty of his daughter. He had always 
 a gift for making wretched the people whom he 
 loved best. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge's ideal of a daughter was a 
 mediaeval chatelaine who went about with keys 
 at her belt, distributing supplies and making 
 herself personally responsible for every detail
 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 41 
 
 of the household, while Joyce would have 
 dined on lentils and slept on a board, if only she 
 might have had gaiety of heart and a circle of 
 agreeable people about her. 
 
 "Joyce!" 
 
 The sound of her father's tones calling from 
 the landing below startled the girl from a train 
 of thought which had left her gazing into the 
 mirror for several minutes with unseeing eyes. 
 
 "Yes, Papa," she responded, picking up her 
 gloves and card case, and running quickly down 
 the stairs. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge was standing by the window in 
 the library, and as Joyce entered she perceived 
 that she was drawing near a storm centre. 
 
 " I am going to a reception. Do you want 
 me?" she asked, buttoning her left glove nerv- 
 ously. 
 
 " I want someone; I have rung twice, but no 
 one answers." 
 
 " I am sorry I'm afraid it is my fault. I sent 
 James on an errand ; Caroline was with me, and 
 Sarah I don't know where Sarah is." 
 
 "And yet you call yourself the mistress of this 
 house." 
 
 Joyce tightened her lips, but her voice was 
 steady as she asked, ignoring the challenge in her 
 father's tone: "Is there anything that you 
 need?"
 
 42 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Ink!" exclaimed Mr. Eldridge with resent- 
 ful brevity. 
 
 " I will find it for you," Joyce responded, with 
 more assurance in her voice than in her heart. 
 
 She searched the table and the mantel and the 
 desk. There was no ink visible. 
 
 " Perhaps Sarah put it into the closet," Joyce 
 ventured at last, conscious of an ominous pater- 
 nal silence. 
 
 "Does Sarah expect people to write in the 
 closet?" Mr. Eldridge inquired, as incisively as 
 if his tongue had been coated with barbed wire. 
 Clearly this was one of those rhetorical questions 
 which call for no direct reply. His daughter 
 wisely attempted none; but burrowed in the 
 closet under various piles of paper until she 
 found what she sought and finally emerged 
 somewhat flushed, but holding aloft in triumph 
 a heavy bronze inkstand. 
 
 The triumph was short lived, however, for her 
 father's next demand was for pens, and Joyce 
 was obliged to confess that they had all been 
 swept into the waste basket and not replaced. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge strode up and down in silent 
 fury. 
 
 " It does seem," he observed at length, appar- 
 ently to the bookcases, since he never looked at 
 Joyce " it does seem as if a man might expect 
 to find writing materials on his desk. One
 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 43 
 
 would think that a girl with nothing else to do 
 all day might see that the maids keep one room 
 in habitable order." 
 
 He went to the bell and rang it violently. 
 
 "Here, James!" he exclaimed, holding out a 
 bill as the belated butler entered, "go to the 
 stationer's and buy me a hundred pens a 
 hundred, mind! Then perhaps I may find one 
 when I want it." 
 
 Joyce crept silently out of the room, anxious to 
 escape before another thundercloud burst. At 
 the head of the stairs she met her brother coming 
 in from his office, and bounding lightly up the 
 stairs, taking two steps at a time. Henry 
 Eldridge was a youthful repetition of the 
 paternal type. His resemblance to his father 
 was so strong that men sometimes stopped him 
 on the street to ask if he were not the son of Mr. 
 Eldridge, the banker; but the younger face was 
 as much pleasanter than the older one as smiles 
 are more attractive than frowns and a smooth 
 skin than a wrinkled one. 
 
 Yet the nature underneath was not unlike. 
 In both there was the same obtuseness, the same 
 obstinacy, only masked in Henry's case by a 
 good humour, born of youth and animal spirits. 
 He was well, he was strong, he was happy. Why 
 should anyone go about complaining? Smile 
 at the world and the world will smile at you.
 
 44 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 That was his motto, as he frequently announced 
 with a certain finality, as if the fact that it was 
 his were equivalent to saying that it was the 
 best imaginable. 
 
 The thing which tried his amiability most was 
 the constant jarring between Joyce and his 
 father. He was on good terms with both. Why 
 could they not agree with each other? Of 
 course his father scolded and domineered on all 
 occasions, but, on the other hand, Joyce pampered 
 her nerves too much, and made a mountain out 
 of a mole hill. A little tact on her part would 
 keep everything running smoothly. 
 
 Nothing is easier than the judicial attitude of 
 mind which condemns equally both parties to a 
 quarrel, without taking the trouble to investi- 
 gate the rights of either. Besides, it must in 
 justice be said that Mr. Eldridge's outbursts 
 of temper were mere pin pricks to Henry's 
 healthy nerves, and he could not, in his obtuse- 
 ness, conceive them as rankling like barbed 
 arrows in his sister's sensitive soul. 
 
 When he saw her standing at the head of the 
 stairs he knew by her drooping attitude that 
 something was wrong, and he was not disposed 
 to be sympathetic. He was tired. He wanted 
 his bath and his cigar. If women must indulge 
 their feelings, why could they not do it in the 
 morning, when men were at work ?
 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 45 
 
 However, he greeted Joyce kindly enough. 
 "What's the matter now?" he asked. 
 
 "The same old story !" exclaimed his sister 
 despondently, throwing out both hands. " Every- 
 thing is wrong and I am responsible." 
 
 "Why do you care? You know that father 
 doesn't mean what he says. You make too 
 much of every little thing." 
 
 "Now, Henry!" expostulated his sister, thor- 
 oughly aroused, "it is very easy for you to look 
 on and say 'don't mind'; but suppose that 
 father came down to your office and found fault 
 with you 
 
 " I should take the next train to San Fran- 
 cisco." 
 
 "That is what it is to be a man." 
 
 "It has its advantages," Henry said, in the 
 tone of indulgent superiority with which a 
 capitalist might address a labourer, or a white 
 man a Negro; "but I thought that women 
 liked being lectured and ordered about. They 
 do in books." 
 
 " I don't know anything about women in 
 books," Joyce answered, "but I know one girl 
 in real life who does not like it in the least." 
 
 The easy expression of sympathy is a feminine 
 gift. A man especially a young man feels 
 as inadequate before it as if he were set to mend 
 gloves or darn stockings.
 
 46 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Henry looked at Joyce with the clumsy 
 sympathy of a dumb animal. As they stood 
 thus facing each other they were a curious 
 illustration of the possibilities of opposite in- 
 heritance from the same blood. Henry was a 
 type of boisterous burliness. His good looks 
 were due to his ruddy colouring and the frank 
 outlook of honest eyes; his sister's every line 
 and delicate curve told of controlled sensitive- 
 ness. Her beauty came and went like the colour 
 in her cheeks. Her chestnut hair fell softly 
 over the pencilled aristocracy of her eyebrows, 
 and her features were cut with precision, as if 
 worked in a cameo. Some people called the 
 face cold; but they were not those who knew 
 it best. 
 
 Strangers found it hard to believe that there 
 could be both warmth and tenderness in the 
 eyes which seemed to look out on the world 
 around with a cool aloofness as of a traveller 
 and an alien. There was a light mockery in the 
 eyes, as they turned now upon the figure of the 
 man standing awkwardly before her. 
 
 " Do not try to be sympathetic, Henry. You 
 really cannot achieve it. Only tell me if my 
 hat is straight, and if my gloves have suffered 
 from groping for an inkstand on the closet floor." 
 
 "You are all right. You do look lovely, 
 Joyce, and that's a fact," her brother answered
 
 47 
 
 with enthusiasm, much relieved to be able to 
 return to a lighter vein, wherein he felt himself 
 more at home. 
 
 "Thank you, Henry. Flattery is very sus- 
 taining." 
 
 " By the way, where are you going? " 
 
 " I have half a dozen teas on my list; but I 
 have given them up on account of the storm. 
 I shall go only to a reception at Mrs. Adrian 
 Gregory's. I wish that you would go with me." 
 
 "Don't ask me, Joyce I couldn't. I might 
 form the habit of teas 
 
 " It would do you good 
 
 " By no means. After business hours I intend 
 to be amused, and I don't find teas amusing. 
 With a woman it is different. You go to show 
 your fine clothes and to see other people's." 
 
 "Partly," Joyce answered, "and partly to 
 get new outlooks ' to touch and go, and sip the 
 foam of many lives'; but I could not make you 
 understand. Good-bye." 
 
 With a smile curving like an inverted rainbow 
 behind the half-dried tears in her eyes, Joyce 
 went down the stairs, leaving her brother looking 
 after her from above. 
 
 " It is hard on Joyce," Henry said to himself. 
 " I think I must have it out with father, myself, 
 some day " ; a resolution which to Henry's mind 
 was as serious as if he had determined to enter
 
 48 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 the cage of a lion and hold a personal interview 
 behind the bars. He pondered long on the risks 
 involved. 
 
 Meanwhile the Eldridge carriage wheeled into 
 the avenue, and joined the procession of vehicles 
 which moved so slowly as to suggest a festive 
 funeral march. The girl looked out through 
 the window at the passers-by, the pedestrians 
 beating their way against the snow-laden wind, 
 and the women in carriages wrapped in furs. 
 She strove to occupy her attention with the 
 passing show; but all the while her thoughts 
 were going over the interview with her father 
 which had fallen into her cheerful day like a 
 thunderbolt, and left electricity still charging 
 the air. 
 
 It is not the first family difference, but the 
 hundredth, which tells on the nerves, and pro- 
 duces the effect with which a repeated discord 
 exasperates the ear. 
 
 Joyce's sense of irritation grew stronger in- 
 stead of diminishing, and her nervous tension 
 showed itself in the tightening grasp of her card 
 case, which was bent nearly double in her un- 
 conscious clasp. It was perhaps natural that her 
 father's petulance rather than her own careless- 
 ness should have been most insistent in the 
 girl's mind. 
 
 Responsibility, thrust too early on youthful
 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 49 
 
 shoulders, produces either premature gravity 
 or rebellion of spirit. With Joyce it was the 
 latter, and the flush on her cheeks bespoke many 
 things which her lips left unuttered. 
 
 When she reached Mrs. Gregory's house she 
 found the rooms crowded and the scent of roses 
 heavy in the air, while talkers and musicians 
 were apparently engaged in a strenuous com- 
 petition of noise making. 
 
 After greeting her hostess, Joyce drifted with 
 the throng which was streaming with naive 
 eagerness toward the refreshment room and 
 away from the person whom the visitors were 
 supposed to have come to meet. Before she 
 had traversed half the distance her voice was 
 weary and her brain exhausted from the ex- 
 change of shouted commonplaces. She smiled 
 to herself at the emphasis with which people 
 put questions without taking time to listen 
 to her replies without even fixing their eyes 
 upon her as they spoke and at the cordiality 
 of greeting from several, who turned while she 
 was still within hearing to ask her name. 
 
 Wherever she moved glances turned toward 
 the slender figure in white, and comments fol- 
 lowed her like foam in the wake of a yacht. 
 
 "Is she not beautiful?" a man exclaimed to 
 a woman near him. His companion shrugged 
 her shoulders.
 
 50 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Not what / call beautiful," she answered; 
 " and her hair looks as if she had done it herself." 
 
 "Oh!" the man responded, not daring to 
 commit himself by asking what was so fatal to 
 beauty in domestic hairdressing ; but turning 
 for another look at the person whom he was not 
 to admire. 
 
 Meanwhile Joyce was uncomfortably conscious 
 that the effect of high-pitched conversation 
 had developed a distinct ache in her throat. 
 vShe disentangled herself from a group which had 
 gathered about her, and withdrew to a curtained 
 corner of the drawing room, near enough to 
 the hostess to insure seclusion. 
 
 For some time she stood looking with only 
 half-seeing eyes at the swaying crowd around 
 her. Then suddenly she began to feel as if she 
 were swaying, too. The interview with her 
 father had been more of a strain than she 
 realised, and, as usual with nervous tempera- 
 ments, the reaction was the more complete 
 for being delayed by an exertion of the will. 
 The electric lights seemed to grow to moons 
 before her eyes, the scent of the flowers became 
 sickeningly strong she looked about her for 
 a chair .or lounge, but the room had been 
 cleared to leave as much space as possible. 
 There might have been a label over the door, 
 "Standing room only."
 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 51 
 
 While Joyce was looking around in dazed 
 indecision, her eyes met those of a man who 
 stood near her, surveying the people about 
 with the detached air of a stranger. He was 
 a strikingly handsome man his figure was well 
 knit, his head finely formed. The features were 
 inharmonious, the broad forehead and narrow 
 chin contrasting as oddly as the proud eyes 
 and sensitive mouth. The whole face was 
 marked by many contradictions, but bore the 
 impress of dynamic power. As his glance fell 
 upon Joyce he moved toward her and said: 
 "You are faint; you need to get out into the 
 fresh air. I will make a way through the 
 crowd, if you are able to follow." 
 
 Joyce nodded. She remembered afterward her 
 sense of gratitude that he did not put anything 
 as a question, for she felt her complete inability 
 to speak. She could only move uncertainly in 
 the wake of the broad-shouldered figure before 
 her. As she reached the hall door the cold air 
 revived her at once; but her companion stood 
 by her side for a minute in silence before he 
 said: 
 
 "Do you wish to go home? May I call your 
 carriage ? " 
 
 "Thank you," Joyce answered; "you are 
 very kind. Yes, I wish to go home. Will you 
 please speak to my footman the one in brown
 
 52 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 holding a fur cape and tell him that I am 
 ready?" 
 
 Joyce's mind was still confused, and she was 
 compelled to force her lips to consecutive speech. 
 It did not occur to her to give her name, nor to 
 Dilke (for it was Dilke) to ask it. As she spoke 
 he ran down the steps to the row of liveried 
 figures, who stood immovable as an avenue of 
 sphinxes before an Egyptian temple. When he 
 found the man in brown with the fur cape, he 
 realised for the first time the awkwardness of 
 not knowing the name of the lady whom he was 
 trying to assist. His first instinct was to seize 
 the cape, for he knew that its owner should not 
 stand in the wind without it; but he was aware 
 that his action might rouse not unreasonable 
 suspicions, so he said: "Your mistress wishes 
 her carriage at once. She is waiting at the door. 
 Take her the wrap and call the carriage directly." 
 
 As Dilke rejoined her at the head of the steps 
 Miss Eldridge noticed that he was without hat 
 or coat, and that the wind was cold. His face 
 and figure were still a blur before her bewildered 
 sight; but she realised that he might be suffering 
 some risk from this exposure. 
 
 "Please don't wait for me!" she exclaimed 
 " There is nothing more that you can do. I am 
 immensely obliged." 
 
 Dilke made no immediate response to her
 
 THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 53 
 
 words. He stood looking at her with a glance 
 too steadily scrutinising to be admiring, too 
 professional for any suggestion of imperti- 
 nence. 
 
 " Are you sure that you feel well enough to go 
 home alone? " Dilke questioned. 
 
 "Oh, quite! I should not even fear going 
 back into the drawing room." 
 
 " I advise you not to try the experiment, and 
 your carriage is here." 
 
 Dilke followed her down the steps and handed 
 her into the carriage. He lingered an instant, 
 half unconsciously hoping to hear the address ; 
 but she said only " Home! " and straightway was 
 whirled from his vision and as completely lost 
 as if they had been on separating ships. 
 
 Dilke returned to the house, and, after secur- 
 ing his hat and coat and extricating himself from 
 the crush on the stairway, came out into the 
 street again. As he bent his head to meet the 
 snowy blasts a new exhilaration took the place 
 of the discouragement which had beset him 
 during the past weeks of loneliness and lack of 
 success. 
 
 This chance encounter with a passing stranger 
 had wrought a change in him. The world 
 seemed more real to him because this girl was in 
 it. The touch of her fingers on his, as he handed 
 her into the carraige, still lingered like an
 
 54 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 imminent 'presence with a warm and human 
 significance. 
 
 Even strangers, it seemed, might be something 
 to each other. It was not so much the passing 
 vision of a charming woman which had warmed 
 Dilke's heart, though he was of an age when that 
 alone might have raised his drooping spirits; 
 it was rather that she typified to his mind a pos- 
 sible friendliness, a possible need for him in a 
 world which had seemed till now oblivious of his 
 existence and impermeable to his influence. 
 
 There are moments in our lives when trivial 
 happenings are charged with an importance out 
 of proportion to their superficial value, as if they 
 were straws trembling before the coming wind 
 of destiny.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 A DEBTOR TO His PROFESSION 
 
 "THE greater the place the greater the suc- 
 cess " yes, and the greater the failure also. 
 
 Anthony Dilke walked up and down in his 
 office in New York. His head was bent, and 
 from time to time he twisted the ends of his 
 moustache into his mouth. 
 
 " Hard luck ! " he muttered. 
 
 And hard luck indeed it was. Here was a 
 man of promise, educated in the best medical 
 schools, who now, at thirty, almost the term of 
 average mortal life, found himself without a 
 patient. He tried to keep up his mother's 
 courage, but his own was ebbing fast. He found 
 a certain grim amusement in his mother's warn- 
 ings against overwork. 
 
 Moreover, other troubles than those of pov- 
 erty harassed Dilke's soul. To draw upon his 
 mother's slender income would be impossible. 
 To disappoint her assurance of his success, to 
 have Pieria know that he had failed, would be 
 gall and wormwood to his pride. 
 
 In a great city one is merged in a crowd in- 
 
 55
 
 56 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 different to individual success or failure ; but not 
 so in a town where everyone knows the affairs of 
 everyone else, and where an ever-open eye and 
 ear glean every detail of a fellow- townsman's 
 career. 
 
 To fail, Dilke felt, was to disappoint his friends 
 and gratify his enemies. Failure was the one 
 thing which he had never contemplated when he 
 left Pieria, and he would not admit for an instant 
 that he had shaken the dust of that town off 
 his feet only to wear it on his head, with an 
 admixture of ashes as a sign of penitence for 
 his boldness. Should he bow the knee to 
 Secor, ask aid of Cantor, confess to Towns that 
 New York would have none of him and that 
 he must come back to Pieria to subsist on 
 humble pie? No! Anything was better than 
 that anything; but precisely what? That was 
 the question which was preying upon him like a 
 vampire. 
 
 He had invested his last thousand dollars in 
 an office on a busy New York thoroughfare, 
 hoping that some lucky accident might throw 
 practice in his way; but all in vain. Automo- 
 biles whirled by in safety. Horses picked their 
 way down the slippery asphalt hill without a 
 fall. Pedestrians skated along on icy days, 
 when one might look at any instant for a broken 
 limb, and still nothing happened. It was an
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 57 
 
 outrageously well-conditioned world in which 
 Dilke's lot was cast. 
 
 His office boy strove to encourage him by 
 reports of visitors who called while he was out 
 and refused to leave their names. Richard had 
 a precocious eye and a backward forehead. He 
 was an expert at the long bow and capable of 
 enormous fabrications. 
 
 For some time, in spite of making requisite 
 deductions, Dilke had been cheered by the 
 shadowy procession of hypothetical visitors, but 
 at last he was driven to admit that neither office 
 nor office boy was advancing him an inch toward 
 the desired goal of a lucrative practice. 
 
 Evidently there was no career open to talent 
 in this great city, without clues, and Dilke had 
 none unless one counted as such the cards to a 
 reception like the one of yesterday. 
 
 Dilke remembered with a certain bitterness 
 the loneliness which had fallen upon him like a 
 leaden weight as he looked about on the un- 
 familiar faces, so animated, so full of eagerness 
 for each other, so blankly unseeing when turned 
 toward himself; and then that swaying white 
 figure it haunted him still. He had been con- 
 scious of a sense of attraction as if like had drawn 
 near like. Here was someone who might have 
 come into his life, and instead she had disap- 
 peared like a summer mist. It was the old story
 
 58 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 of "no clues." Even Theseus could not 
 find his way through the labyrinth without 
 them. 
 
 Clues, substantial clues, had indeed been 
 offered; but they had come from such a source 
 that Dilke's pride forbade his acceptance of 
 them. They were proffered by Eustace Bran- 
 dy ce. Only a week ago Dilke had received a 
 letter from that wanderer, saying that he had 
 heard through Newbold of Dilke's change of 
 base, and knowing from experience how hard it 
 was to get on in a new place, it would give him 
 pleasure to send a note of introduction to rela- 
 tives of his own, people rather influential in New 
 York, if Dilke cared to know them. The letter 
 went on to say that he, Brandy ce, happened to 
 be in funds just now, and that if Dilke found 
 himself straitened he had only to ask for some 
 money, which he could repay whenever it was 
 convenient. 
 
 The letter was lying open upon the desk, which 
 stood in one corner of the long and narrow office. 
 Each time that Dilke passed the desk his eye 
 fell upon it. Each time, however, he shook his 
 head. No, whatever happened, there should be 
 no further indebtedness there. In all his dreams 
 it had been he who did some great service to 
 Brandyce, and it seemed the irony of fate that 
 the case should be reversed. It was kind in
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 59 
 
 Brandyce. He admitted that it was kind; but 
 acceptance was not to be thought of. 
 
 As he strode up and down his barren office this 
 afternoon, the future looked very black and the 
 present even blacker. Something must be done 
 to make both ends meet. Alas! there was no 
 surgical operation which would accomplish that 
 feat. He must attract the attention of the 
 public. But how? 
 
 The question found no answer in his mind, 
 and he seated himself wearily at his desk. 
 Thrusting Brandy ce's letter hastily into a 
 drawer, he drew toward him a pile of manuscript 
 which represented an article that he was pre- 
 paring for a radical magazine. It was entitled 
 "The Development of the Human Conscience." 
 
 Dilke had begun it in bitterness of spirit, and 
 had taken a savage satisfaction in showing con- 
 science as the most cunning device of fate for 
 the torture of humanity. He had made a study 
 of the history of the early Church, its martyrs 
 and its self-tormentors, its hair shirts, its fast- 
 ings and scourgings. The supreme inutility of 
 these sacrifices weighed upon him as he wrote. 
 It seemed like a breath of fresh air to turn back 
 to the Greek view of life, to the pursuit of hap- 
 piness as a rational end, and to the glorification 
 of the human body. What would the world be 
 to-day if its minds were cased in perfectly
 
 60 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 developed bodies tingling with the joy of exist- 
 ence! What a liberator would he be who could 
 set free the morbid conscience and the afflicted 
 soul, by sending the blood in a red flow of health 
 through the anaemic brain! There, in the re- 
 newal of the physical basis of life, lay the founda- 
 tion of the new morality, the new philosophy, 
 the new religion. 
 
 The theory of the mind's control over the 
 body had been pushed to a grotesque absurdity. 
 It was time the world recognised that it was not 
 only a fallacy, but a direct reversal of the true 
 principle. Who should say that there was not 
 an immense field open to science in studying sin 
 from a purely materialistic standpoint? Not 
 only mental but spiritual disorders might be 
 directly benefited by creating the sound body, 
 which alone the sound mind and soul would 
 deign to inhabit. 
 
 As Dilke pondered on all this he began to 
 think of himself as a pioneer in a new revival. 
 Unformed theories, half humorous, half serious, 
 floated through his mind as he dwelt upon the 
 possibility that each spiritual defect had its 
 bodily correlative, that lying was an astigma- 
 tism of the soul, that the homicidal tendency 
 might be cured by relieving a pressure on some 
 diseased point in the brain. 
 
 Subconsciously, too, he was thinking what
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 61 
 
 effect the promulgation of such a doctrine might 
 have upon his own professional advancement. 
 That was the weak point. The confusing of 
 aims is the seed of sin. 
 
 Anthony Dilke was passing through an inward 
 crisis full of danger. He had allowed himself to 
 forget the oath of Hippocrates by which the 
 ancient practitioner bound himself to enter his 
 patient's house only to do him good, and to 
 avoid the appearance of evil. 
 
 "After all," Dilke told himself of the scheme 
 which his mind was rapidly revolving, " it would 
 be only a breach of professional etiquette." 
 
 "Yes," whispered conscience, "but profes- 
 sional etiquette is the outer line of defenses, the 
 citadel of which is professional ethics." 
 
 " It can do no harm. It may do good. It 
 may do me good," Dilke persisted. 
 
 With this he pulled down a large square of 
 pasteboard from the top of his desk and began 
 to print on it. When the work was done he held 
 it at arm's length and studied the result: 
 
 ANTHONY DILKE. M. D. 
 
 PAGAN HEALER. 
 
 Then without giving himself time to reflect, 
 he opened the inner blinds and propped the
 
 62 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 sign against the window. Hardly had he taken 
 his seat at the desk again before the bell rang. 
 Dilke started as if he had touched an electric 
 battery. Here for days and weeks he had been 
 listening with nerves in a state of ever-growing 
 tension for that sound, and now that it had 
 come his legs trembled so that he could scarcely 
 cross the floor, and his hand fumbled for a full 
 minute at the latch. He wished that the office 
 boy were not out, 
 
 The door opened and a young man entered. 
 
 "Is Doctor Dilke at home?" he asked. 
 
 The question was as manna to Dilke 's hungry 
 soul. 
 
 " I am Doctor Dilke. Will you not walk in? " 
 he answered, and pushed a chair forward. Then 
 he turned to close the door, glad of a chance to 
 calm the working of his face. 
 
 " I saw your sign in the window," the visitor 
 began. 
 
 " Put up in the nick of time ! " thought Dilke. 
 " You have come to consult me about yourself? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " No, oh no ! " the young man replied. " I have 
 no need for a physician." 
 
 "Then," exclaimed Dilke, his spirits sinking 
 to zero, "perhaps you will be good enough to 
 tell me why you have come to a doctor's office." 
 
 "Certainly I was coming to that. I am a
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 63 
 
 reporter on The Morning Glory, and my busi- 
 ness to-day was a column of 'Along the Way ' 
 all the queer things which one sees or should 
 see as one goes about. It has been an uncom- 
 monly dull day on the street, and I assure you 
 it was a windfall for me when I saw your sign. 
 So I looked in to inquire whether you would 
 give me an interview." 
 
 Dilke hesitated. He realised that his con- 
 duct had been too impetuous. He should have 
 waited to mature his scheme before putting up 
 that sign ; but it was too late to turn back now, 
 and after all, here was the chance for publicity 
 for which he had vainly longed. 
 
 "I should not care," he began hesitatingly, 
 "to say much for publication at present, cer- 
 tainly not to go into details; but I have no 
 objection to explaining briefly the fundamental 
 principles of my practice." 
 
 " Fundamental principles " ; the words sounded 
 well and gave him courage to proceed as the 
 reporter drew out his notebook. 
 
 "Have you been long engaged in the work?" 
 his visitor asked. 
 
 "H'm! Not long, considering its extent and 
 intricacy," Dilke answered. 
 
 "What is the work?" 
 
 " Keeping soul and body together! " exclaimed 
 Dilke, then added hastily: "Reuniting the
 
 64 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 physical and spiritual world on the only sound 
 and sane basis the basis of the perfect body. 
 Not since the days of the Greeks has there been 
 any adequate appreciation of the beauty of 
 the sound body and that physical perfection 
 from which alone mental perfection can take its 
 rise. I do not refer to genius, which is a freak 
 of nature, but to a rounded and complete men- 
 tality. I am a materialist, and I aim to study 
 mental defects in the light of physical conditions. 
 I regard mind as a function of matter." 
 
 The visitor wrote rapidly for a few moments. 
 Then he said, " Couldn't you explain a little 
 more clearly?" 
 
 Dilke looked out of the window meditatively, 
 as if striving to simplify and popularise a 
 profound subject. 
 
 " It was one of the mistakes of the early 
 Church," he said, " to teach abuse and mortifica- 
 tion of the body as a religious duty and a sure 
 road to everlasting reward. From this all 
 Christendom has come to regard the body as 
 a slave to be scourged and chastised and 
 overworked by its master, the mind. If so, 
 the slave has learned to make vast reprisals, 
 as our nerve-racked generation shows. The 
 help lies in the promotion of the body to its real 
 dignity in viewing it as the Greeks did, and 
 honouring it as they did."
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 65 
 
 " You mean by a return to a life like theirs? " 
 
 "History never moves backward, and repro- 
 ductions are generally bad in life or art. No, 
 my idea is the application of all modern science 
 and medical knowledge to their basic theories. 
 When we do this we shall have beautiful bodies 
 and symmetrical souls, calm minds unruffled by 
 nervous disorders." 
 
 The man stopped taking notes. Looking up 
 at Dilke with curious eyes, he asked anxiously, 
 " Is there any treatment for bad temper com- 
 bined with melancholia?" 
 
 "Bad temper and melancholia? That, I con- 
 fess, is complicated, if the case has become 
 chronic." 
 
 "It has;" 
 
 "Ah, you have some particular case in your 
 mind perhaps?" 
 
 "Yes, I have," the young man admitted; "I 
 came here for an interview ; but if you could help 
 me I'd like to turn it into a professional call." 
 
 For the first time Dilke began to feel uncom- 
 fortable. 
 
 " If you will state your case " he began. 
 
 "It is not my case," the caller interrupted; 
 "it's my father's." 
 
 "Upon my word," said Dilke to himself. 
 "Here is food for thought. Apparently our 
 own physical ills and our friends' moral ones,
 
 66 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 weigh upon us with equal heaviness." Aloud, 
 he questioned: " What are his symptoms ? He 
 is suffering from depression of spirits, you say. 
 Is there any cause for it?" 
 
 "None that I know of." 
 
 " Has he always been as he is now? " 
 
 " It has grown upon him, and of late it seems 
 to hang over him like a cloud all the time." 
 
 "What does he enjoy most?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 " In what is he most interested? " 
 
 "Himself," the young man answered without 
 sarcastic intent. " He says that if we were 
 not all exaggeratedly interested in ourselves 
 life would be unendurable." 
 
 "Ah! Schopenhauer," Dilke commented in- 
 wardly, and went on : " And about his temper ? " 
 
 " Difficult, to say the least." 
 
 " Is your father conscious of this defect? " 
 
 'Yes, except when he is angry. Then he is 
 always sure that it is the other person who is 
 wrong. Do you think you could help him?" 
 
 fc Would he be willing to see me? " 
 
 " I think he would. I am quite sure he 
 would. Could you come this evening at eight ? " 
 
 Dilke answered gravely that he should be 
 
 free at that time, and pleased to call upon ? 
 
 He paused after an upward inflection, waiting 
 for the name.
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 67 
 
 "Mr. Eldridge," the caller responded; "my 
 name is Henry Eldridge." 
 
 Dilke bowed. There was something about the 
 directness of this young man's manner which 
 made him ashamed. He inwardly cursed the 
 sign in the window and himself for putting it 
 there. As Mr. Eldridge rose to go he drew 
 out his purse. 
 
 "No, no," said Dilke; "do not speak of pay- 
 ment ! . I prefer to make fees dependent on cure. 
 If I can help your father it will be time to dis- 
 cuss the reward." 
 
 "Thank you!" responded Mr. Eldridge 
 warmly. "There is something in your manner 
 which inspires confidence, though I confess I 
 came here in a spirit of scepticism." 
 
 Dilke blushed. 
 
 "But now I am quite convinced." 
 
 Dilke blushed redder still, and bowed low as 
 he opened the door for his visitor's departure. 
 
 "Oh," said Eldridge, stopping suddenly, "I 
 haven't given you the address." 
 
 "To be sure stupid of me not to have 
 asked." 
 
 "Stupid of me not to have given it. By 
 the way, is there a drug on your list for 
 stupidity?" 
 
 " Several," said Dilke, "but the effect is some- 
 what evanescent."
 
 68 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Eldridge laughed and closed the door, leaving 
 Dilke plunged in perplexity. 
 
 That evening found the young physician 
 at the door of a wide brick house on North 
 Washington Square. He was shown into the 
 library. 
 
 A thoroughly satisfactory library it was in 
 proportion and furnishings. Books lined the 
 walls in solid phalanxes: Milton richly dight 
 in tree calf, Horace Walpole braving it in scarlet, 
 Jowett's Plato in the Oxford blue, and Izaak 
 Walton clad in willow green. Easy chairs held 
 out broad arms of invitation and latticed win- 
 dows were softly curtained within. It should 
 make a man well satisfied with himself and the 
 world, Dilke thought, to live in such a place. 
 
 Yet the owner, at the present moment, 
 looked anything but content. He was sitting 
 pen in hand before a table littered with papers. 
 His shaggy eyebrows were drawn together in 
 a frown and he did not look up at the visitor's 
 entrance. 
 
 Henry Eldridge came forward to greet 
 Dilke. 
 
 "Father, this is the doctor," he said, turning 
 toward a large armchair pushed close to the 
 study table. 
 
 "Let the doctor go to the devil!" came the 
 answer from the unseen occupant of the arm-
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 69 
 
 chair. " I tell you I won't see your infernal 
 charlatan." 
 
 Dilke made a motion as if to withdraw; but a 
 girl stepped from behind the curtain. 
 
 "My sister," said Eldridge. Dilke bowed. 
 He was about to speak ; but the girl laid a warn- 
 ing finger on her lips. "Let me talk to my 
 father," she whispered, and going forward she 
 knelt in the firelight beside the armchair. 
 
 Certainly she was a beautiful girl. Dilke had 
 time to take in the fact while she was speaking 
 in a low, clear tone. But that was not the 
 thought which was uppermost in his mind, for 
 he perceived with an excited interest that she 
 was the person who had been constantly in his 
 thoughts since yesterday's reception. 
 
 "It is your last chance, Papa. Don't throw 
 it away. Think how much happier you would 
 be how much happier we all should be if you 
 could be cured." 
 
 Either Joyce did not recognise Dilke, or she 
 thought it wise not to complicate the situation 
 with her father by explanations. 
 
 " It isn't I who need curing, it's the rest of 
 you." 
 
 " You think so, but suppose Doctor Dilke here 
 could make you see it differently, would you not 
 be glad?" 
 
 "He couldn't."
 
 70 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Try him." 
 
 " I should be ashamed to be the dupe of such a 
 fraud." 
 
 "Try him," was all the girl answered; but the 
 appeal in her tone seemed to make some im- 
 pression on the occupant of the chair. 
 
 "I'll talk to him for five minutes," the voice 
 said; "five minutes, no more. Then send him 
 packing." 
 
 'Yes, Papa," Miss Eldridge answered with 
 submission in her tone, but triumph in her eyes. 
 "Doctor Dilke, will you please come forward? 
 This is my father, Mr. Eldridge." 
 
 Dilke, passing around the angle of the arm- 
 chair, caught sight of a red face surmounted 
 by a shock of white hair. 
 
 "Well, what do you want?" 
 
 "I want to cure you," Dilke answered. 
 
 "I don't need curing." 
 
 " Pardon me, but you do." 
 
 Mr. Eldridge gave one questioning look up- 
 ward. 
 
 ;< Yes," Dilke answered to the glance, "I 
 should like to try. If I do not succeed you need 
 pay me nothing." 
 
 "That sounds fair enough," assented Mr. 
 Eldridge, who, though a rich man, was not a 
 reckless one. 
 
 " You inflict much useless suffering on yourself. "
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 71 
 
 Mr. Eldridge started at the doctor's words. 
 Then he wheeled around in his chair and as- 
 sumed a combative expression. "You are 
 labouring under a misunderstanding there," he 
 said. " I do not inflict suffering on myself, but 
 I refuse to shut my eyes to the suffering on 
 every hand. I prefer sight to blindness, though 
 it involves seeing unpleasant truths." 
 
 " The trouble is that you see only half truths, 
 and you shut your eyes to the other half. We 
 cannot see the whole truth we could not take 
 it in if we saw it. We are like soldiers hidden 
 from each other by the smoke of battle. All 
 that we can do is to stand to our guns or lend 
 a hand at a stretcher." 
 
 Dilke was a fool to argue with him, and he 
 knew it, for Mr. Eldridge had what the French 
 call " folie raisonnante" when a man can give 
 plausible reasons for his delusions. Yet Dilke 
 could not resist firing one more shot. 
 
 " For my part," he said, " I call a soldier who 
 leaves his gun, a coward and a deserter. If we 
 do our duty by our fellow-men we shall have 
 little time left for speculating on the meaning 
 of life. 
 
 "I thought," said Mr. Eldridge, "that you 
 proposed to treat my mental state through the 
 body. I did not expect to listen to a sermon." 
 
 Dilke coloured. He had quite forgotten his
 
 72 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 theories, and he now perceived that he had a 
 shrewd as well as a hot-tempered adversary. 
 
 " I was about to open the subject of bodily 
 treatment," he answered, drawing out his tablet. 
 " I shall leave a prescription if Miss Eldridge 
 will kindly have it filled. I shall leave also a 
 guide to your daily habits of living; if you do not 
 choose to follow it that is your own affair. I 
 can see that you are suffering from a nervous 
 condition which renders you temporarily irre- 
 sponsible. It will be my aim to treat this with 
 mild sedatives, removing such excitants as 
 coffee and the various forms of alcohol, also 
 limiting the supply of tobacco." 
 
 " I'll take what I damn please! " the old man 
 burst out. 
 
 "Very good," Dilke replied; "it is the obstin- 
 acy of patients which supplies the income of 
 doctors. Good-night ; good-night, Miss Eldridge. ' 
 
 Joyce Eldridge followed him to the door, and 
 stood a white vision framed in the velvet 
 curtains. 
 
 "Your father, in my judgment, is suffering 
 from suppressed gout," Dilke said; "but I 
 should not be willing to make that diagnosis 
 with any positiveness without further investi- 
 gation, which I thought unwise this evening." 
 
 " You will see him again? " 
 
 " Yes, if you wish, and if he consents."
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 73 
 
 "To-morrow night?" 
 
 "To-morrow night." 
 
 As Dilke descended the steps he began to have 
 uneasy twinges inflicted by his professional 
 conscience. "A charlatan," the old man had 
 called him, and in spite of the moment's instinc- 
 tive resentment, the feeling grew that he had 
 justified the epithet; and yet and yet he was 
 doing no harm; indeed, the treatment which he 
 had prescribed was what was needed. He felt 
 sure of it. Why quibble about the name under 
 which it was administered? The thing that 
 haunted him most was a look in Miss Eldridge's 
 eyes. What did it signify? Appeal or reproach? 
 Or was there underneath a glimmer of irony? 
 Really, there should be no room for such a 
 complication of expressions in a single pair of 
 eyes. 
 
 And it was thus that destiny had decreed that 
 he was to meet again the face of which he had 
 dreamed last night. He turned away from the 
 thought with a regret too poignant to dwell upon. 
 "His luck," he called it, as if there were any 
 room for luck in a world ruled by the iron rod 
 of cause and effect, of character and results. 
 
 All the way home those eyes followed him. 
 How could he meet them again? The more 
 he thought of it the more impossible it seemed, 
 till at length the impossibility mastered him.
 
 74 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 He could fail. He could starve. Many a better 
 man had done both before him. But go on 
 with this fraud he could not and would not. He 
 would never go near the house again. He 
 would write a letter. No, he would go back 
 and tell the truth. Nothing less than that he 
 felt would set his troubled conscience at rest, 
 would take the sting out of that veiled ironical 
 glance. 
 
 Late into the night he sat before the graying 
 embers of his fire, reviewing the experiences of 
 the day. He spared himself nothing. His 
 worst enemy could not have put the case in 
 stronger language than he did. 
 
 When he could no longer endure the torment 
 of humiliation which he was undergoing he 
 went to his bookshelves and took down an old 
 leather-covered volume which he had included 
 in the few that he had brought with him from 
 Pieria. He could not sleep, but he hoped that he 
 could find distraction from the prick of thought in 
 reading. To his discomfiture the first words which 
 greeted his eyes were these: 
 
 " I hold every man a debtor to his profession, 
 from the which, as men of course do seek to 
 receive countenance and profit, so ought they 
 of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of 
 amends, to be a help and ornament thereto." 
 
 Dilke closed the book roughly and threw it
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 75 
 
 down on the table. He felt as if conscience 
 had printed the letters on that yellow page, 
 as if it were at himself that the words were 
 pointed. 
 
 " If I emerge from this tangle with any shreds 
 of self-respect left," he exclaimed at length, 
 " I register an oath in Heaven that never again, 
 under any circumstances, for any cause will 
 I shadow my soul with a lie." 
 
 Before daylight the placard was removed from 
 the window. With a sigh of relief Dilke tore 
 it from top to bottom and thrust it into the 
 waste basket, where he sat watching it with 
 savage satisfaction while the dawn broke in the 
 east. A few hours later he turned the key 
 in his office door and went out into the street. 
 His first errand took him to the newspaper 
 stand, where he bought a copy of The Morning 
 Glory and stood still eagerly scanning its pages 
 up and down. 
 
 The malefactors of old could not have dreaded 
 the stocks and pillory more than Anthony 
 Dilke feared these columns of black-and-white 
 print. It was being forced home upon him that 
 he had been not only wrong but ridiculous, and 
 the sense of absurdity was more full of shame 
 than the sense of moral turpitude. He felt the 
 hot colour surge over his face as he searched 
 the columns. At last he folded the paper with a
 
 76 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 sigh of relief. " Pagan Healing " did not appear 
 in any headlines, and there was no mention of 
 him in the column, "Along the Way." Fate 
 had spared him that. 
 
 So far, good. The next problem was how 
 to kill time. He walked the streets till he was 
 faint and weary. The wearier the better, he 
 told himself, since it left him less energy for 
 reflection. 
 
 Evening came at last, and again he stood in 
 the hallway of Mr. Eldridge's house. 
 
 "Ask Miss Eldridge," he said to the butler, 
 " if I may speak with her here." 
 
 When he caught sight of the girl's white dress 
 sweeping down the stairway he found it hard to 
 resist the temptation to turn and fly; but he 
 held the impulse in check and lost no time in 
 grappling with the situation. 
 
 "Miss Eldridge," he said, "I cannot see your 
 father to-night I shall never see him again." 
 
 " I don't wonder that you resented his words." 
 
 " It is not that. I did resent them ; I resented 
 them because they were true I am a charlatan. 
 It is too true that I, a trained physician, took up 
 this humbug because I could not see my way to 
 an honest practice and I was tired of waiting. 
 Thank Heaven, I have not soiled my hands with 
 any ill-gotten money yet! I came because I 
 must. I wanted to explain it to you. I want
 
 A DEBTOR TO HIS PROFESSION 77 
 
 you to tell me that you believe I am trying to be 
 an honest man." 
 
 The girl hesitated. " I do believe it," she said 
 after a moment. " Will you prove your honesty 
 of intention by waiting here and letting me tell 
 my father what you have told me? " 
 
 Dilke took a deep breath. " Have I not been 
 humiliated enough?" he asked. 
 
 "If you are in earnest you will be willing," 
 Miss Eldridge answered. 
 
 "Go, then!" exclaimed Dilke, and added 
 under his breath: "After all, what is the differ- 
 ence, since she knows it?" 
 
 One minute two three elapsed and then 
 Joyce Eldridge swept radiant into the hall. 
 " Come up.' " she called. " My father says his eyes 
 are aching for the sight of an honest man. He 
 has had the best day that he has known in years." 
 
 "I cannot come," Dilke answered with deep 
 depression in his tones. " I cannot I should 
 stand in his presence a self-convicted fraud." 
 
 "Listen!" whispered Joyce, "if you are a 
 fraud, so is Henry. He is not a reporter on 
 The Morning Glory. He never was. He went 
 into your office because he thought it would be 
 amusing ; but before he had talked with you five 
 minutes he began to believe in you. When he 
 came home I scoffed at him. I told him that 
 he was under hypnotic influence; but he said,
 
 78 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 'Wait and see for yourself.' I did wait I did 
 see, and I found myself feeling as he did. Only 
 I could not escape the conviction that there was 
 something underneath it all, I don't know why, 
 and last night I studied you while you were 
 talking with my father. To-day I have been 
 haunted by the impression of having seen 
 you before and recently. Did I? Were 
 you ?" 
 
 "Yes," answered Dilke with a smile, "you 
 did, and I was." He had determined with a 
 certain fine instinct not to presume upon the 
 social situation unless Miss Eldridge chose to 
 recognise it; but it pleased him to find himself 
 remembered. 
 
 " I am very glad," Joyce said; " I was afraid 
 that I should never have a chance to tell you 
 how much I appreciated what you did for me 
 the other day I must not stop to do it now, 
 for papa will be growing impatient." 
 
 "But " 
 
 "No 'buts.' Come!" 
 
 And still smiling, she led the way to the 
 library.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 
 
 THE unreasonable rule the world. A violent 
 temper confers social importance upon its pos- 
 sessor. Those around him are so well pleased to 
 escape the scorpion whip which they see wielded 
 on others that they fly to do his bidding and 
 accord a deference withheld from men of greater 
 powers and milder manners. 
 
 To be singled out by Mr. Eldridge was gen- 
 erally recognised as a badge of distinction. To 
 be his trusted adviser was equivalent to a blue 
 ribbon, and Dilke had won it. The choleric 
 banker proved a valiant trumpet blower. He 
 took pride in his physical improvement, and 
 ascribed it all to the unknown doctor whom he 
 had discovered. In a sense he regarded it as a 
 tribute to his own shrewdness, as if stocks which 
 he had bought at a low price had suddenly risen 
 in value. 
 
 Dilke's practice throve apace. Within a 
 month he had on his list of patients two excellent 
 families, one including four children and the 
 other a pair of twins. Dilke carried the twins 
 
 79
 
 80 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 successfully through a siege of diphtheria and 
 the fame of him went abroad. 
 
 His next patient was an old lady, who was 
 willing to pay a high price for the privilege of 
 talking of her symptoms, but refused to take 
 any medicine. She improved steadily and spoke 
 in high terms of her physician to all her acquaint- 
 ances. 
 
 This lady was Mrs. Fenwick, a sister-in-law 
 of Mr. Eldridge, and much loved by his daugh- 
 ter, to whom she had almost taken the place of a 
 mother. 
 
 Everything about Mrs. Fenwick was subdued 
 and mellow. The laces which clung about her 
 throat and fell over her blue-veined hands 
 owned in their yellow tint to the effect of age, 
 and she saw no reason why she should be more 
 reluctant than they to grow old. She felt no 
 sympathy with that pitiful pseudo-youth which 
 strives, by gilding Time's hour glass, to stop the 
 running of its sands. 
 
 She had been a widow for thirty years, and in 
 all those three decades she had never altered the 
 fashion of her hairdressing. The locks which 
 had once waved brownly now waved grayly 
 from either side of a widening part, and shadowed 
 the wrinkles which age had engraved in delicate 
 copperplate lines across her forehead. 
 
 Her bearing was marked by a deliberation, a
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 81 
 
 distinction which claimed nothing and assumed 
 everything. When she entered a room the 
 gathering which had been an agglomeration of 
 individuals became society. 
 
 Her one passion was for Joyce. For Henry 
 she entertained a quiet contempt as a scion of 
 the Eldridge stock; but Joyce showed her old 
 Huguenot blood, and to her Mrs. Fenwick de- 
 lighted to repeat the family traditions of her 
 youth. 
 
 At one time, soon after the death of his wife, 
 Mr. Eldridge had asked Mrs. Fenwick to take 
 charge of his household ; but the experiment had 
 been a failure. Mr. Eldridge discovered that 
 her companionship imposed irksome limitations 
 on his speech and conduct. Mrs. Fenwick had 
 associated all her life with men who made man- 
 ner the vehicle of respect, and she was accus- 
 tomed to a certain homage which was like the 
 dried rose leaves of sentiment. Naturally she 
 showed surprise and disapproval at the treat- 
 ment which she received at the hands of her 
 brother-in-law. 
 
 "Martin," she said on one occasion, "I will 
 leave the room till you recover yourself," and 
 she swept up the stairs to be seen no more that 
 day. 
 
 A year later she had moved to the house in 
 Tenth Street which had been her home since
 
 82 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 then. There Dilke visited her, prescribed for 
 her symptoms, and listened to her talk of men 
 and things. She liked the young physician, and 
 from the beginning showed him every mark of 
 her favour. She criticised him to his face and 
 praised him behind his back. She also instilled 
 many maxims of worldly wisdom, which Dilke 
 ignored at the time and acted upon later. In a 
 friendship between a young man and an older 
 woman the former receives more than he gives. 
 A wide experience of life is at his service, and he 
 learns much of the peculiarities of younger 
 women, which he might never discover for him- 
 self. 
 
 Mrs. Fenwick's good will played an important 
 part in Dilke's professional advancement. In 
 six months his practice was beginning to rest on 
 a solid basis, when to his vexation Mr. Eldridge 
 decided to go abroad with his daughter, and 
 requested Dilke to accompany him as his phy- 
 sician. This trip was exactly what Dilke him- 
 self had recommended as the best cure for Mr. 
 Eldridge 's morbid habit of mind and the best 
 preparation for a return to active business life, 
 which he was prepared to urge upon his patient 
 later ; but he was far from pleased to be involved 
 in the plan himself. In the first place, he 
 realised that a medical practice is easily lost ; in 
 the second place, he disliked the attitude of
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 83 
 
 semi-dependence; and in the third place, he 
 feared the months of close association with 
 Joyce Eldridge which would be forced upon 
 him. 
 
 He had never recovered from a certain em- 
 barrassment in their relations, due to a con- 
 sciousness that she had been a witness to a phase 
 of his career on which he looked back with hor- 
 ror. A man of sensitive conscience regards a 
 lapse from professional ethics as more heinous 
 than any other, and Dilke felt that all the for- 
 giveness which could be meted out to him from 
 outside sources would never enable him to for- 
 give himself. Moreover, he could not rid him- 
 self of a feeling that forgiveness did not imply 
 respect, and that in Joyce Eldridge 's mind there 
 must always be a lurking sense that he had been 
 tried in the balance and found wanting. 
 
 He therefore strove in every way to dissuade 
 Mr. Eldridge from the plan, to recommend 
 another physician, to urge him to go without 
 any, and throw himself on his own moral 
 strength, to test the power of his newly made 
 good resolutions. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge, however, would take no denial. 
 His dependence on his new-found physician was 
 almost pathetic, and gratitude demanded that 
 Dilke should accede to his request. In the end 
 Dilke accepted, and sat down to write a dutiful
 
 84 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 letter to his mother informing her of his plans. 
 It is wonderful how much truth can be sup- 
 pressed in an affectionate letter from a devoted 
 son. Many interesting episodes are to be looked 
 for between the lines rather than on them, and, 
 indeed, all letters are written in sympathetic 
 ink, only to be made legible by exposure to the 
 candle of comprehension. 
 
 Dilke found it exceedingly difficult to write 
 naturally to his mother. He recognised that 
 to her he was still a boy, and that her feelings 
 were a little hurt by- any development of inde- 
 pendent manhood. He could have asked no 
 sacrifice to which she would not joyfully have 
 assented ; but the fact that he had outgrown the 
 need of her sacrifices was hard for her to bear, 
 and her son endeavoured to suppress it. 
 
 The field of their common interests, narrow at 
 the beginning, was steadily growing narrower, 
 and the subject matter of their correspondence 
 was "made ground." Intellectual congeniality 
 preserves affection between mother and son in 
 spite of the lack of temperamental likeness ; but 
 without one of these bonds the son's affection 
 comes to be no more than the tenderness re- 
 flected from days gone by, when love was an 
 instinct and not an emotion capable of analysis. 
 
 If Anthony had any feeling of this kind he 
 never admitted it to himself. There are certain
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 85 
 
 emotions which it would be impiety to inspect 
 too closely. He simply felt that he understood 
 his mother and that she did not understand him. 
 In this he was not wholly right, since affection, 
 as well as intellect, has its insight. 
 
 As Anthony seated himself to compose his 
 letter, he felt that it would be impossible to 
 make Mrs. Dilke comprehend his perplexities, so 
 he took refuge in assurances of devotion and 
 of regret that he was not to spend his summer 
 at home. He wrote like a schoolboy: 
 
 "Dearest Mother: 
 
 "I had hoped to run out to Pieria for a little visit 
 with you this summer. My winter has not been so very 
 hard worked as you have been thinking, and I am 
 feeling well and not at all exhausted by my labours. 
 Still I should like a vacation, and especially a vacation 
 spent with you in the little green sitting room at home. 
 But I fear it is not to be. One of my first patients and 
 patrons here was Mr. Eldridge, a rich banker, who has 
 decided to go abroad for six months, and has insisted so 
 strongly upon my accompanying him that it seemed 
 ungrateful to refuse, and accordingly our passage is 
 booked for next week. It is a disappointment to me in 
 many ways; but after all, it will be an opportunity to 
 see the world, such as does not often come in a man's 
 way, so I am sure you will agree with me that I was 
 right in accepting. 
 
 "I hope that you will write to me often and tell me 
 how life in Pieria is coming on; whether Doctor Macas- 
 sar's sermons are as tedious as ever ; whether Mr. Cantor
 
 86 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 still strides up and down Main Street as if he owned it, 
 and whether the turmoil over the library has come to 
 an end. I suppose but for that imbroglio I should be 
 administering pills and potions to the Macassars and 
 Cantors to-day, instead of tugging and striving to make 
 myself known here in New York. I feel that you were 
 right, however, as you generally are, in pushing me out 
 into the world, and I shall hope to give a good account 
 of myself later. I ought to do so if only to justify all 
 your sacrifices for me. 
 
 " Your affectionate son, 
 
 "ANTHONY DILKE. 
 
 "P. S. I forgot to mention that Mr. Eldridge's 
 daughter is to make one of the party. In some respects 
 this will be pleasanter, in others not so pleasant. But 
 it will not make much difference to me, as I shall see 
 little of her, my attention being devoted to her father." 
 
 The jaunty view of the case which Dilke set 
 forth for his mother's benefit, however it may 
 have impressed her, did not for a moment deceive 
 the writer. He knew that danger lurked in his 
 acceptance of Mr. Eldridge's proposition the 
 greatest of dangers in the sentimental world, the 
 danger of propinquity. 
 
 Joyce Eldridge was the type of girl most to 
 be feared. Her face was like that "intimate 
 country " which the French artists love to paint. 
 Without regular features or striking colouring, 
 it had a trick of smiling its way into the hearts 
 of those who saw it often, while the appeal of
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 87 
 
 the eyes from under drooping lids was something 
 that one learned to look for, and then to forget 
 to turn away. 
 
 Her manner was tinged with pride, and a cer- 
 tain aloofness which melted now and then into 
 an entrancing moment of intimacy only to be 
 swiftly glazed again with a film of reserve. 
 Dilke was puzzled to know how much of this 
 was to be attributed to shyness. It had long 
 been his business to study the curious symptoms 
 of shyness, which he regarded as almost a dis- 
 ease with a pathology of its own he had seen 
 it where it was least suspected, masquerading in 
 the guise of assurance or hiding behind elabo- 
 rately raised barriers of pride. 
 
 He had come to recognise it in all its forms, 
 from the bashfulness associated with dimpling 
 blushes to that convulsion of the soul which 
 sends the colour in hot waves flooding up to the 
 hair, which tumbles out incoherent half-finished 
 sentences, which drives its victim on to say those 
 things which he ought not to have said, and 
 grips him by the throat to choke the utterance 
 of things which he would give his soul to say. 
 
 In Dilke's study of shyness he had learned 
 something of its treatment also. He had learned 
 that the best way of meeting it was by a stolid 
 repose of manner, which gave time for recovery 
 and a sense that nothing was expected.
 
 88 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 On one thing he resolved in connection with 
 this European expedition, to arm himself with a 
 manner of cast-iron and never to drop the role 
 of professional adviser. To do so would be fatal. 
 Mr. Eldridge's physician he was, and such he 
 would remain ; but he found his part a difficult one. 
 
 Already Dilke felt the spell of Joyce's person- 
 ality upon him ; already he found his eyes invol- 
 untarily seeking her when she entered a room. 
 His nerves would quiver, his cheeks flush. Then 
 he would grasp at his self-control and, forbidding 
 himself speech with her, would gloom apart like 
 an owl. 
 
 This glooming habit of Dilke 's had a distinct 
 charm for some people. At college a Dilke cult 
 had arisen, composed of men who had discovered 
 that he was deep. It is a fortunate thing for a 
 man to be called "deep." If he be proclaimed 
 witty or charming he may be called upon to 
 justify the claim by producing wit or charm; 
 but to be deep he need only look out at the 
 world from a pair of pensive eyes. Speech 
 might spoil the effect; but silence is a loyal 
 keeper of reputation. 
 
 How well Dilke succeeded in the concealment 
 of his sentiments we may infer from certain 
 comments in a letter which Joyce Eldridge 
 wrote from London to her aunt, Mrs. Fen- 
 wick.
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 89 
 
 "'How do you like your doctor on further acquaint- 
 ance ? ' you ask. My dear aunt, there is not any further 
 acquaintance on which to like him. We meet two or 
 three times a day at meals, spend our evenings together, 
 either at home or at the theatre, and I give you my 
 word that I know no more about him than on the first 
 evening on which I saw him. He is as impersonal as 
 an editorial in the Times. He has views, but no senti- 
 ments. 
 
 "My mind finds him extremely useful, and I expect 
 to surprise you by the extent and variety of my misin- 
 formation, for though the information which Mr. Dilke 
 imparts is quite correct when it issues from his lips, it 
 gains a queer twist in passing through the medium of my 
 mentality, and nothing annoys him more than to have 
 me quote him. He says that it is bad enough to be 
 responsible for the things which he does say, and too 
 much to be charged with the things which I say that he 
 said. 
 
 " As for papa, he does not know whether it is a pleasant 
 day until he has asked the doctor and received his per- 
 mission to have an opinion. This simplifies my diffi- 
 culties wonderfully, since by going to Doctor Dilke 
 first I can almost always carry any point with papa. 
 Doctor Dilke's influence is really wonderful, the 
 result, I fancy, of the power of a strong will and an 
 equable temper over a capricious will, and well, I 
 need not describe papa's temper to you." 
 
 From this it will be seen that Dilke's self- 
 control was as yet to be trusted, and while the 
 Eldridges were in the great cities his problem 
 was comparatively simple. In London their
 
 90 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 days were filled with sightseeing, their evenings 
 with objective amusements. In Paris there 
 was even less time and opportunity for intimate 
 association, for Madame du Pont was there, 
 and Joyce found her both demanding and 
 absorbing. 
 
 Madame Emilie du Pont, who before her 
 marriage with a Frenchman had spelled her 
 name with a y, was a cousin of Joyce Eldridge 
 and several years older than she. There were 
 people who prided themselves on finding her 
 beautiful, and who enjoyed the surprise which 
 the announcement caused in others. She had 
 red hair and green eyes, a delicate nose, a fault- 
 less complexion, a mouth with liberal curves 
 and a wide range of emotional expression. 
 
 She was the widow of M. Caravel du Pont, at 
 one time one of the Secretaries of Legation in 
 Washington. In the opinion of Madame du 
 Pont's friends, nothing in her husband's life be- 
 came him so well as his leaving of it; but to 
 the world his widow remained suitably regretful, 
 unconsoled if not inconsolable. 
 
 Her income was small, but expended with a 
 judgment which made it adequate. She had 
 taken a tiny apartment in Paris, and furnished 
 it with a smartness which put mansions to shame. 
 The frills on her muslin curtains were as fresh as 
 the caps of her maids, and the choice bits of old
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 91 
 
 French furniture gave an air of importance to 
 the simplicity around them. 
 
 She had lately learned of the death of her 
 husband's brother and was preparing a suitable 
 wardrobe of mourning-in-law the black alle- 
 viated with white, which fitly symbolises the 
 subdued grief which some women feel for the 
 death of their husbands' relatives. 
 
 This afternoon she was seated in a low chair 
 before her mirror, inspecting the reflected effect 
 of a small black toque, perched upon the waves 
 of her red hair. 
 
 Her thoughts, if they could have been regis- 
 tered, would have run in parentheses, and have 
 distributed themselves somewhat in this fashion. 
 
 "Poor Jacques!" 
 
 ("A wide hat would have been more becom- 
 ing.") 
 
 " Cut off so in the prime of life." 
 
 ("That bow is at least an inch too high.") 
 
 " I wonder how he left his family provided 
 for." 
 
 (" Perhaps if I pinch it in over the ear it will 
 look better.") 
 
 "What a mystery death is!" 
 
 ("Pshaw! The best way will be to rip the 
 whole thing to pieces and make it over.") 
 
 Madame du Pont drew out her work basket, 
 and taking up her scissors, began to snip vigor-
 
 92 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 ously at the trimming of the toque, when a 
 knock at the door startled her. Half guiltily 
 she thrust bonnet and scissors into the 
 drawer before giving the maid permission to 
 enter. 
 
 "Ask Miss Eldridge to come in here," she 
 said after reading the card on the tray. A 
 moment later Joyce stood in the doorway. 
 
 " You don't mind my coming, dear, do you? " 
 Joyce began rather timidly. 
 
 " No, indeed ! It is a relief to see someone. I 
 never did believe in shutting one's self up after 
 a trouble of any kind. It is then that one has 
 most need of distraction, and there is no dis- 
 traction like the society of friends. Lay aside 
 your wraps and sit down in this corner by the 
 window. I will have tea served here." 
 
 "Thank you. I wish I had your gift for 
 making a place attractive. Papa likes every- 
 thing heavy furniture, dinners, conversation 
 everything." 
 
 Madame du Pont drew out a cigarette case 
 and held it out to Joyce, who declined. 
 
 " Bien, mon enfant! Reserve some pleasures 
 for the years to come. Besides, it is a habit that 
 grows on one. ' Qui a bu boira.' ' 
 
 Joyce disapproved of cigarettes and shuddered 
 to think what Mrs. Fenwick would say of them; 
 but she knew that Emilie would regard her
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 93 
 
 scruples as provincial, so she suppressed them 
 and made no comment. 
 
 Emilie du Pont sat looking at her cousin for 
 some time in silence, through a thin, curling 
 line of smoke. Then she said suddenly: 
 
 "Why don't you marry someone, Joyce?" 
 
 The easy chairs were placed in a contiguity 
 admirably adapted for confidences; but Joyce 
 had none to offer. 
 
 She only repeated: 
 
 "Marry? I am not in love with anyone, 
 Emilie." 
 
 " Oh, that is a minor consideration. My dear 
 Joyce, love is glamour, atmosphere. It has 
 nothing to do with the man himself. If it had, 
 all girls would be in love with the same man and 
 the results would be disastrous." 
 
 Joyce leaned back in her chair and drew a 
 long breath. 
 
 "What a gambler's life a girl's is!" she ex- 
 claimed. " She is told that the only happiness for 
 a woman lies in marriage ; but that she must not 
 marry without meeting her ideal, and that if 
 she does meet him she must not make a single 
 forward step, but must remain entirely passive 
 on the chance that he may rush to claim 
 her. Really, the outlook seems decidedly pre- 
 carious." 
 
 " Some girls demand so much that they make
 
 94 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 the outlook precarious," Madame du Pont 
 observed with intentional emphasis. 
 
 " Don't you know any interesting men really 
 interesting interesting in themselves, I mean?" 
 
 " Yes, dozens; but they are not men to marry, 
 especially not men for you to marry. You 
 never could love or at least continue to love a 
 man whom you did not respect. The very 
 qualities like irresponsibility and a sort of 
 vagabond experience of many phases of life 
 would be anything but attractive in marriage." 
 
 "I think," said Joyce, "that I should like to 
 marry a vagabond. I am so tired of stationary 
 respectability." 
 
 "There are two requisites in a husband," 
 said Madame du Pont. " He must be ambitious, 
 and he must be placed." 
 
 "Placed?" 
 
 "Yes. It is not agreeable to go about ex- 
 plaining one's husband. It is convenient to 
 have his name carry his genealogy." 
 
 "Do you consider me 'placed,' Emelie?" 
 Joyce asked, with mingled amusement and 
 anxiety in her tone. 
 
 " If not placed, at least placeable," Madame du 
 Pont replied. " Everything will depend upon 
 your marriage. You would easily degenerate 
 into domesticity." 
 
 Joyce laughed.
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 95 
 
 "How is your father now?" Madame du 
 Pont asked, thinking perhaps that Joyce was 
 treating a serious subject too lightly. 
 
 " Better, thank you. Much better. He can 
 even discuss the tariff without excitement. His 
 new physician has done wonders for him." 
 
 "And you see this doctor every day, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "Is he good looking? " 
 
 " Decidedly, I should say." 
 
 "Clever?" 
 
 "His success with papa shows that." 
 
 "What about his manners?" 
 
 "I never noticed anything about them." 
 
 "Then they are excellent, depend upon it. 
 Joyce 
 
 "What is it, Emilie?" 
 
 " You are not in danger of falling in love with 
 this young doctor?" 
 
 "He came from Pieria." 
 
 Madame du Pont smiled. 
 
 "Pieria?" she questioned, with arched eye- 
 brows. " And pray, where is Pieria? Your doc- 
 tor is not a naturalised Greek, I suppose." 
 
 " No, no, of course not. Pieria is a small 
 Western town in America. It is a manufactur- 
 ing town at the junction of two railroads. I 
 was there once with papa. He liked it."
 
 96 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "And you did not?" 
 
 "Like it? I should say not. It was like an 
 overgrown boy with nothing but its size to boast 
 of, all factories and smart, upstart houses. We 
 have plenty of places like it ; but I dare say you 
 have had time to forget them over here." 
 
 "Ah! in a foreign land one remembers only 
 the pleasant things of home." 
 
 Madame du Pont uttered this highly creditable 
 little sentiment with an appropriate sigh; but 
 in the next breath she questioned: 
 
 " Can no possible good come out of Pieria? " 
 
 "Not for one who knows Pieria as well as I 
 do. I assure you, Emilie, if I ever do fall in 
 love, it will be with a man from the steppes of 
 Asia, or Borneo or ' some far-off bright Azore ' 
 a man with a mysterious past." 
 
 "Then," said Madame du Pont, "I devoutly 
 hope that you will never fall in love. But about 
 this doctor. What is his name? You have 
 mentioned it, but I forget." 
 
 " Dilke Anthony Dilke." 
 
 "Dilke?" repeated Madame du Pont medita- 
 tively. " I do not know the name. If he were 
 connected with the English Dilkes but one 
 must not go too fast. I shall invite him to 
 dinner with you and Mr. Newbold. I mean, 
 by the way, to ask your father to let Mr. New- 
 bold paint your portrait. There will be plenty
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 97 
 
 of time while you are here and he is an excellent 
 artist. I have been to his studio with friends, 
 and I like his pictures exceedingly." 
 
 "Oh, thank you, Emilie! Not for speaking 
 to papa about the portrait, but for asking Doctor 
 Dilke." 
 
 "Why should she thank me if she feels no 
 interest in the man?" queried Madame du Pont 
 as she watched the girl. She liked Joyce, but 
 she was irritated by her lack of initiative. She 
 felt that her cousin was drifting through life in 
 a way which would be impossible to her energetic 
 temperament. She had lived long enough in 
 France to believe in arranged marriages, and 
 Mr. Eldridge's attitude toward his daughter 
 seemed to her to savour of criminal negligence. 
 Joyce's beauty properly heralded might secure 
 anybody, and she could not see her drift into 
 an alliance with a nobody without an effort to 
 save her. 
 
 It was an odd coincidence that at the very 
 time when these thoughts were burrowing in 
 Madame du Font's mind, Dilke was reading a 
 letter from his mother, hinting at the same 
 problem from a widely different point of view. 
 
 "I have just had a call from whom do you think? 
 from Mrs. Cantor, who has taken no notice of me since 
 you left and had apparently forgotten my existence. 
 This morning she came, and the object of her call will
 
 98 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 surprise you more than the fact of her coming. It was 
 to suggest your return to Pieria. You are to be re- 
 habilitated, reinstated and presented with a petition 
 for your return from all the leading citizens. There! 
 Isn't that a surprise? 
 
 "I told the lady that I was very doubtful whether 
 you would be persuaded to come back; but of course I 
 did not presume to decide for you. You will probably 
 receive the testimonial in due form, and then can decide 
 for yourself. I will not even attempt to describe the 
 events which have brought about this amazing change. 
 I would rather that the petition should speak for itself. 
 
 "As for your European trip, I am very glad that this 
 opportunity has come to you after your hard-worked 
 winter." 
 
 (Dilke grinned.) 
 
 "It will give you sightseeing without expense, and I 
 am sure it is a great opportunity for Mr. Eldridge to 
 secure such a doctor as you. I hope he pays you well 
 for it. There is only one factor in the case which 
 troubles me, and that is the daughter. Mrs. Cantor, it 
 seems, has heard of her and spoke of her to me. Of 
 course you will be thrown with her a great deal, and I 
 know how easy it is for a young man to be entrapped." 
 
 (Dilke frowned, and made a motion as if to 
 tear the paper. Then he thought better of the 
 matter and read on.) 
 
 "Perhaps I am partial; but I am sure that any girl 
 whom you asked would marry you, and I am so anxious 
 that she should be the right one, sweet tempered and
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 99 
 
 yielding and domestic, and one who will make you 
 happy! 
 
 "You may think that I don't know the world because 
 I have lived all my life in Pieria; but I have seen many 
 wives, and I have seen how they can make or mar their 
 husbands' careers. No matter how attractive this 
 Miss Eldridge may be, don't commit yourself!" 
 
 At this point Dilke's exasperation overcame 
 his filial affection. He rose, lighted the lamp 
 and held the letter over the flame till it was 
 consumed to the last word. As his eye caught 
 the mirror he saw his face reflected there blush- 
 ing like a girl's. Half consciously he had been 
 asking himself all the while he was reading 
 what Joyce Eldridge would say if her glance 
 should happen to fall on that letter. 
 
 "Heavens!" exclaimed Dilke, "what a race 
 of cads men would become if they took their 
 mothers too seriously!"
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 
 
 IN spite of the proverbial assertion of the con- 
 trary, the absent are sometimes right, and as 
 they are not present to triumph over the admis- 
 sion, the fact is the more readily granted, espe- 
 cially when it involves the refutation of those 
 near at hand, whose visible humiliation atones 
 for the exaltation of people at a distance. 
 
 The history of the letter which caused An- 
 thony Dilke such vexation and sorely strained 
 his filial affection, involved causes curiously re- 
 mote from any that he could divine. 
 
 Shortly after his departure Pieria experienced 
 a change of heart. As time went on the advan- 
 tages of the new library grew familiar and there- 
 fore less striking, while the disadvantages of 
 association with Jacob Secor became more and 
 more evident. Ugly rumours which had peeped 
 uncertainly from the background at first, now 
 thrust themselves impudently and insistently 
 forward, and by their very ugliness gained a 
 hearing if not a credence. Gradually the library 
 trustees were placed on the defensive, forced to 
 
 100
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 101 
 
 explanations, while their fellow- townsmen who 
 "would not play false and yet would wrongly 
 win," satisfied their consciences by using the 
 library and abusing the trustees. 
 
 Presently it began to be roundly asserted 
 that Anthony Dilke had voiced the moral senti- 
 ment of the community when he insisted upon 
 a direct refusal of Secor's beneficence. Many 
 business men were sure that if they had chanced 
 to be on the Board they would have taken their 
 stand with Dilke ; though of course now that the 
 matter was decided, it would be mere folly to 
 refuse to make use of the library's advantages. 
 At gratitude to the giver they drew the line. To 
 acknowledge the debt would be to bow the knee 
 to Baal. 
 
 Even Doctor Macassar and Mr. Cantor refused 
 to feel grateful, while Mr. Towns never passed 
 the building without a muttered imprecation. 
 A face seemed to smile at him with malevolent 
 irony from the stones, and the name of Secor 
 glared odiously above the door. 
 
 For some time these gentlemen flattered them- 
 selves that the humiliation of the dedication 
 ceremonies was the climax of their discomfiture ; 
 but they were soon undeceived. They had taken 
 the old man of the sea on their shoulders and he 
 was not to be shaken off so easily. 
 
 It soon transpired that Secor had bought the
 
 102 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 largest mills in Pieria, intended to extend their 
 industries, and had ordered a number of new 
 cottages for workmen erected in their vicinity. 
 A little later it appeared that he had purchased 
 a dwelling, a large brick house with white pillars, 
 commanding the finest avenue in the town. 
 Then, to the dismay of the better element of 
 Pierians, it was announced that Mr. Secor in- 
 tended to take up his residence in his native 
 town preparatory to seeking political honours. 
 Here indeed was a dilemma. 
 
 Resentment against this benefactor of the 
 town filled the air. It seemed to belch in smoke 
 from the factory chimneys, to ring from the 
 church bells, above all, to mutter in the whisper 
 which followed the loosely knit figure, with its 
 head held unduly erect and the face with its 
 half -insolent, half -patronising smile. This smile 
 said as plainly as words, "I have bought my 
 place and I mean to have it." 
 
 There are a multitude of men who, if they 
 recognise that they cannot serve God and Mam- 
 mon at the same time, believe that they can do it 
 by turns; that having accumulated a com- 
 fortable quantity of this world's goods in the ser- 
 vice of Mammon, they may return to the safer 
 and more respectable task of serving the Lord, 
 welcomed back, if not by Him, at least 
 by His deputies, on the payment of tribute
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 103 
 
 money and the promise of activity in the 
 Church. 
 
 Many such were now found to apologise for 
 Secor, and to hold that his beneficence should 
 wipe out past offences. A man who wishes 
 to secure the good opinion of the world will 
 be far more particular about his way of spending 
 money than about his way of making it. Benevo- 
 lence in wealth excuses previous crookedness of 
 dealing and blinds the public to the obvious 
 truth that honesty is the only foundation for 
 generosity. 
 
 So it came about that there was a Secor party 
 and an anti-Secor party. With Secor or against 
 him his fellow-townsmen must range themselves. 
 The Reverend James Macassar and Mr. Cantor 
 would be asked to address meetings, Mr. Towns 
 would be asked to act as treasurer of a campaign 
 fund. Would they accept or refuse? 
 
 In this perplexing tangle many minds turned 
 toward Anthony Dilke, and many were the 
 wishes expressed that he were present to lead the 
 opposition. He, at least, was free to act as his 
 conscience dictated, to oppose a candidate whom 
 he thought unfit to represent the citizens of his 
 town and state. 
 
 Time went on, and Secor won his election to 
 Congress. His fellow-townsmen rejoiced with 
 their lips; but in their hearts they were struck
 
 104 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 with wrath and shame. At this juncture still 
 another factor unexpectedly asserted itself to 
 help the popular reaction in favour of Dilke. 
 Winter wore away, and as spring came on 
 typhoid fever broke out, and the local authori- 
 ties and physicians showed themselves inade- 
 quate to cope with it. The water supply was 
 investigated, the milk tested, and still the fever 
 gained ground. 
 
 New victims were added daily to the list of 
 sufferers. The bank president was ill. Doctor 
 Macassar's daughter died and was buried in the 
 trim cemetery with heavy iron gates gates 
 calculated to inspire a certain grim mirth in 
 the beholder, since the only enemy whom they 
 could be supposed to shut out was Death, and 
 he drove his black-plumed chariots through 
 them without even stopping to pay toll. 
 
 One day, when the epidemic was still growing, 
 Mrs. Towns, a withered little woman, slave of 
 her husband and children, came hastily into 
 the house of her sister, Mrs. Cantor. According 
 to her custom, she ran upstairs unannounced, 
 to find Mrs. Cantor sitting in a small rocking 
 chair in her bedroom, busily at work drawing 
 red worsted through coffee sacking, with fell 
 intent to make a domestic rug. 
 
 It was generally Mrs. Towns who visited and 
 Mrs. Cantor who was visited. This was partly
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 105 
 
 because Mrs. Cantor, being a large body, moved 
 slowly, and partly because as the wife of Pieria's 
 leading citizen, she clung to certain dignities 
 which must be respected in spite of family ties. 
 
 As Mrs. Towns entered the room out of 
 breath from the haste of her walk, her sister 
 looked up anxiously. 
 
 "Goodness me, Julia, how you startled me!" 
 she exclaimed. " I wish you would make more 
 noise coming up the stairs. I declare, you 
 look queer. Is anything the matter? " 
 
 "Yes, there is. Tommy is sick." 
 
 "I am not at all surprised," interrupted Mrs. 
 Cantor, drawing out a long thread of worsted 
 and doubling it through the eye of her darning 
 needle. She perceived in this conversational 
 opening an excellent opportunity for a long- 
 deferred lecture on hygiene, and would not 
 allow the talk to drift away till it had been 
 delivered. 
 
 " I must tell you, Julia," she said, taking off 
 her gold-bowed spectacles and rubbing them 
 reflectively with the coffee sacking, " that every- 
 one has been talking about the way you feed 
 that child griddle cakes and coffee for break- 
 fast, and Tommy only twelve years old ! Edward 
 has one chop and a potato with a glass of milk, 
 and he is always well." 
 
 Mrs. Towns flushed. "My cakes never hurt
 
 106 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 anybody," she answered. ' 'They're as light as 
 light, and as for the coffee, perhaps that is what 
 makes Tommy stand at the head of his class." 
 
 This was touching a sore subject, for Ned 
 Cantor and Tommy Towns were rivals for scho- 
 lastic honours in the Pieria high school. 
 
 " Oh, very well! " said Mrs. Cantor, putting on 
 her spectacles again and resuming her work, 
 as if the subject under discussion had lost all 
 interest. "If you're satisfied, I don't know 
 why anyone should interfere. I thought you 
 said that Tommy was sick, and I was trying 
 to show you where the trouble lay." 
 
 Mrs. Towns rose, though she had scarcely 
 seated herself. Her under lip trembled like a 
 squirrel's as she said: 
 
 " I guess I'll go right back to Tommy. He is 
 very poorly. I think myself he has the fever, 
 and I did expect my own sister 
 
 This serious view of the matter thawed the 
 ice of Mrs. Cantor's resentment, and family 
 affection flowed freely. 
 
 "You sit down, Julia, and I'll put on my 
 things and go right back with you. I'll take 
 poultices and rhubarb and soda. If it's his liver 
 that's upset, these will soon bring him round, 
 and even if it's the the other thing, why 
 he's a fine tough boy, and he'll pull through and 
 be a credit to us all yet."
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 107 
 
 The identification of interests comforted Mrs. 
 Towns; but the praise of Tommy made her 
 anxious. She suspected that her sister was 
 speaking of him as she would wish to have 
 spoken in case the worst happened. Mrs. 
 Cantor had never been loud in commendations 
 of her nephew before, and her present encomium 
 seemed a bad omen. 
 
 "No, thank you, Emma," Mrs. Towns an- 
 swered, " I wouldn't dare give Tommy any 
 medicine till Doctor Patchen comes. He said 
 he'd be in this afternoon. The trouble is, I 
 don't have much confidence in him." 
 
 " He's the best there is, now Doctor Dilke 
 is gone." 
 
 "That's just it. Half my trouble would be 
 over, if only Doctor Dilke were here." 
 
 "Well, he isn't," Mrs. Cantor answered, 
 shortly. 
 
 Mrs. Towns had no courage for a further com- 
 bat; but she ventured timidly: "Don't you 
 think perhaps he would come back if he were 
 asked?" 
 
 "Who's going to ask him?" 
 
 "Why, Thomas was talking about it last 
 night, and he said Doctor Dilke had been made 
 a scapegoat when really he was right." 
 
 "Thomas may speak for himself. I have 
 not heard my husband say anything of the kind,
 
 108 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 though he thinks things turned out unfor- 
 tunately. But, as he says, nobody can tell how 
 things will turn out. A man can only follow 
 his lights." 
 
 " Thomas says they had lights enough; but the 
 only one they followed shone on a pile of money." 
 
 "Well, well, what of it?" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Cantor, tired of hearing the exposition of her 
 brother-in-law's views, which she regarded as 
 superfluous if not impertinent, when offered to 
 one living in daily contact with a greater 
 luminary. 
 
 "This of it!" replied her sister, drying the 
 flood of tears which had threatened to submerge 
 her power of speech. " We want to get Doctor 
 Dilke to come back, and we think if we sent a 
 petition signed by everyone and headed by 
 Doctor Macassar, he would come." 
 
 "Would he!" observed Mrs. Cantor grimly. 
 
 " I believe he would, and I want you to go 
 and see his mother and ask her about it." 
 
 " I am the last person 
 
 "No, you're not, You're the best person. 
 You have so much influence- 
 Mrs. Cantor softened perceptibly. 
 
 "If you went, Mrs. Dilke would feel that it 
 was important." 
 
 Mrs. Cantor softened still more, and her sister 
 pressed the advantage. " Yes, Mrs. Dilke would
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 109 
 
 feel so complimented that she would urge it on 
 her son, and he cares so much for her that he 
 would come just to please her." 
 
 "Well, I'll speak to John " 
 
 " Don't stop to speak to John. Go this morn- 
 ing. We need Doctor Dilke right away, and it 
 all rests with you." 
 
 The sense of importance was dear to Mrs. 
 Cantor's soul, and the suggestion of responsi- 
 bility distinctly gratified her. 
 
 "Well, then," she said, "you go back to 
 Tommy and I will come round after I've been to 
 call on Mrs. Dilke. 
 
 Mrs. Towns brightened at once. "Well, 
 I must say, sister, your actions are real 
 kind." 
 
 This Parthian arrow dipped in poisoned balm, 
 Mrs. Towns shot backward as she ran down 
 stairs with the softness to which Mrs. Cantor 
 objected. As soon as her visitor had departed, 
 Mrs. Cantor proceeded to array herself in her 
 best attire, a trailing black grenadine gown, and 
 a black hat with a long white feather which was 
 the admiration of the feminine half of Doctor 
 Macassar's congregation on Sundays. She de- 
 cided not to wait for her carriage, but to walk 
 the few blocks which separated her house from 
 Mrs. Dilke's. No sooner had she set out than 
 she regretted her decision, for the asphalt pave-
 
 110 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 ment was hot to her feet and the sun made her 
 face very red and uncomfortable. 
 
 Mrs. Dilke's sitting room was gratefully cool 
 after the heat outside. The drawn blinds pro- 
 tected the room from the bright May sunshine; 
 but bars of light entered through the slats and 
 lay across the green and white matting on the 
 floor, making it like a daisy-pied meadow. 
 
 As soon as Mrs. Cantor's near-sighted eyes 
 could discern anything in the dim light, she per- 
 ceived Mrs. Dilke sitting near the window, some 
 white knitting work in her hand, and on her lap 
 an open volume. 
 
 As Mrs. Cantor surveyed Mrs. Dilke sitting 
 there in her white gown with lilac ribbons, small 
 and pale and cool, she was uncomfortably con- 
 scious of disadvantage. She wished that she 
 had waited for the carriage; she wished that 
 she had delayed to consult her husband; she 
 wished that she had not come at all ; she wished 
 that Julia were not always hurrying her into 
 things. 
 
 " I thought I'd drop in to talk over the fever," 
 Mrs. Cantor began, in answer to the slight look 
 of surprise on Mrs. Dilke's face, as she rose to 
 greet her visitor. 
 
 "The fever? Is it spreading ?" 
 
 "Yes," Mrs. Cantor answered, sinking into a 
 wicker chair which creaked apprehensively under
 
 PIARIA ONCE MORE 111 
 
 her weight. "It began around the mills; but 
 now it's in every section of the town." 
 
 "I am sorry," Mrs. Dilke answered, pro- 
 vokingly at her ease. "Can't they find out 
 where the trouble lies what is causing 
 it all?" 
 
 "They don't seem to," Mrs. Cantor answered, 
 pressing the fingers of her white chamois gloves 
 together and observing with mortification that 
 the odour of cleaning fluid still lingered upon 
 them. "The fact is," she went on, "we don't 
 feel satisfied with the way the doctors are going 
 to work." 
 
 " No doubt they have done as well as they 
 knew how," Mrs. Dilke answered, with secret 
 triumph in her heart. 
 
 "That's just it. They don't know enough 
 their methods are too old-fashioned. Some of 
 us have been thinking that if your son had stayed 
 in Pieria, things might have been different." 
 
 The olive branch was extended now; but the 
 dove was wary and would not peck at it too soon. 
 
 " Oh," Mrs. Dilke responded coolly, " one never 
 can tell. Perhaps Tony could not have done 
 any more than the rest. Of course, his training 
 in Vienna taught him a great deal, and he has 
 had excellent results with all his typhoid pa- 
 tients; but those things are often matters of 
 luck."
 
 112 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 As Mrs. Dilke withdrew, Mrs. Cantor ad- 
 vanced. 
 
 "A lucky doctor means a skilful doctor," she 
 observed with emphasis. " Don't you suppose 
 if Doctor Dilke knew that he was wanted and 
 needed in Pieria, he would come back?" 
 
 Instead of answering immediately, Mrs. Dilke 
 began counting her stitches. The pause gave 
 Mrs. Cantor an opportunity to look about the 
 room. The simplicity of its furnishings 
 went far to restore her sense of superiority. 
 The matting, the plain green walls hung 
 with photographs of Anthony's choosing, the 
 wicker chairs, could but seem humble to one 
 accustomed to plush and piano lamps and 
 oil paintings. The consciousness of superi- 
 ority at home inevitably tinges one's manner 
 abroad. 
 
 Undismayed by Mrs. Dilke's silence, her guest 
 resumed with a faint hint of patronage in her 
 voice : 
 
 " There is talk of getting up a petition signed 
 by the leading men of Pieria, Doctor Macassar 
 and all, asking your son to come back, and I 
 have called to say that we hope you will urge 
 him to consider it favourably." 
 
 Mrs. Dilke smiled. "It will certainly give 
 my son pleasure to receive such a petition," 
 she said, looking up at her visitor. "I know
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 113 
 
 how much he values the esteem of his old 
 neighbours." 
 
 " Then you think he would come? " 
 
 "Of course, I couldn't tell anything about 
 that," Mrs. Dilke answered, bending her head 
 to conceal the triumph in her eyes. "Tony is 
 doing very well in New York." For herself 
 Mrs. Dilke was as humble as an apostle ; for her 
 boy she was as proud as Lucifer. 
 
 "No doubt," Mrs. Cantor assented with flat- 
 tering readiness, "his talents would meet with 
 recognition anywhere, and as he grows older he 
 of course understands better how to adapt him- 
 self- 
 
 "That is certainly a great element in success 
 if one knows where to stop," said Mrs. Dilke, 
 casting off stitches as she spoke. If she had 
 suffered, if her son's absence had left her lonely 
 and sore at heart, these moments were yielding 
 her a sweet revenge. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Cantor felt that she was mak- 
 ing slow progress; in fact, that the longer the 
 talk went on the further she seemed to be from 
 securing Mrs. Dilke's intercession with her son. 
 Though no student of the philosophers, she had 
 a shrewd perception of one of their cardinal 
 principles, that where you fail to appeal to the 
 mind by reason you may successfully attack 
 the will through self-interest.
 
 114 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Of course it would be pleasant for you to 
 have him back," she observed. 
 
 This was a false move. 
 
 " My son and I are quite of one mind in the 
 matter of his profession," Mrs. Dilke responded, 
 with more reserve in her tone than she had yet 
 shown. "I am glad that he has found a field 
 large enough for his talents, and I should never 
 urge his returning to Pieria on my account." 
 
 Mrs. Cantor rose thoroughly discomfited, 
 angry with Julia, discontented with her own 
 diplomacy, furious with the pale little lady who 
 had shown herself indifferent to the public sen- 
 timent of Pieria. But, brimming over as her 
 mind was with mixed emotions, she could not 
 take her leave without an attempt to satisfy an 
 inquisitiveness which had been stirred to life by 
 the idle whispers of village gossips. 
 
 Curiosity is like one of the old hags who claw 
 over a whole ash barrel full of clinkers for the 
 possible sound coal at the bottom. Mrs. Cantor 
 felt herself covered with the ashes of humiliation ; 
 but she was loath to depart without securing 
 her coal of compensation. 
 
 "I hear," she said, smoothing her gloves as 
 she looked at Mrs. Dilke, " that there are attrac- 
 tions in New York which would naturally make 
 Pieria seem dull to your son." 
 
 "Indeed!"
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 115 
 
 " Yes, they say that he is interested in a young 
 lady." 
 
 If Mrs. Cantor had known what a poisoned 
 dagger she was planting in Mrs. Dilke's bosom 
 she would have felt a certain satisfaction; but 
 the quiet face above the knitting gave no sign. 
 
 "May I ask the lady's name?" Mrs. Dilke 
 inquired, a note of sarcasm in her voice. 
 
 " Who should know it, if not Doctor Dilke's 
 mother?" Mrs. Cantor answered, with a mean- 
 ing smile. " I hope you will give him our con- 
 gratulations when you write." 
 
 "Thank you. When I hear that he needs 
 them, I will. You won't stay?" 
 
 " Not this morning. It's very kind ; but I am 
 going to see my sister's little boy who is ill." 
 
 " Not with the fever, I trust." 
 
 " Oh, I think not. In any case we have the 
 greatest confidence in Doctor Patchen. We 
 feel quite safe in his hands." 
 
 Mrs. Cantor swept out of the door, behind 
 which Mrs. Dilke stood with tightly interlaced 
 fingers and a spot of red, bright as youth, in her 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Tony shall not come back he shall not he 
 shall not!" Mrs. Dilke was saying this over 
 and over to herself as she watched the portly 
 figure in black grenadine swaying down the 
 gravel walk,
 
 116 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 As Mrs. Cantor reached the gate the letter 
 carrier passed her on his rounds and dropped a 
 letter in the Dilke box. Mrs. Dilke snatched it 
 out eagerly and saw Anthony's writing on the 
 envelope. Mrs. Cantor's words were still sound- 
 ing in her ears, their poison still working in her 
 mind as she tore it open. 
 
 The letter was the one telling of Anthony's 
 plans, of Mr. Eldridge's offer and of his accept- 
 ance, while finally at the very end, and almost 
 in parenthesis, came the mention of Mr. El- 
 dridge's daughter, who was to be a member of 
 the party on the coming European trip. 
 
 In this Mrs. Dilke seemed to read confirmation 
 of Mrs. Cantor's hints. Could it be that Tony 
 had fallen in love with this Miss Eldridge, and 
 that his mother was the only person in ignorance 
 of the situation? 
 
 Mrs. Dilke was a fairly cultivated woman and 
 sufficiently liberal minded up to the point where 
 her husband had left her when he died. With 
 his death all intellectual impulse stopped. Her 
 reading, having been wholly a matter of sym- 
 pathy, she had no object in continuing, and in 
 religious matters it seemed to her a kind of 
 impiety to stir an inch from the spot where he 
 had planted her feet. 
 
 Of her son's inner life and convictions she 
 knew nothing, being quite satisfied to bask in
 
 PIERIA ONCE MORE 117 
 
 the atmosphere of excluding tenderness with 
 which he surrounded her. To love without 
 comprehending, and to be loved without com- 
 radeship, was all that her nature demanded; 
 but when it came to so personal a matter as 
 marriage she felt that a mother had claims not 
 to be ignored. 
 
 She had borne patiently the trials of separa- 
 tion; but to be shut out from his confidence in 
 such a vital affair was too much for her endur- 
 ance. It was not like Tony. There was only 
 one explanation. He was under the malign 
 influence of some girl unworthy of him, a girl 
 who was already teaching him to neglect and 
 ignore his mother. 
 
 Mrs. Dilke walked slowly back to the sitting 
 room, and seated herself in the little green willow 
 rocking chair. Then she spread out the letter 
 and read it through again from beginning to 
 end. A thousand winged terrors seemed to 
 fly out of it to harass her soul. Before she had 
 finished, she had wrought herself up to the point 
 where men take to drink and women to ink. 
 She persuaded herself that it was her duty to 
 lose no time in warning Tony against this 
 designing young woman who rose before her 
 imagination in blacker and blacker colours as 
 she thought of her. 
 
 Under this impulse she seized her writing
 
 118 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 pad and wrote the ill-fated screed which followed 
 her son from New York to London, from Lon- 
 don to Paris, and found its way to charred frag- 
 ments in his hands. 
 
 The wisdom of refraining from advice in situa- 
 tions not fully comprehended is given to few, 
 and these few are not mothers.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 
 
 WITH inward pride and outward reluctance, 
 Mr. Eldridge consented to the painting of his 
 daughter's portrait, and Newbold was eager for 
 the task. Here was a picture which he felt 
 would tax the utmost subtlety of his brush. At 
 first he found the work easy ; but soon he learned 
 the difficulties of painting a face which was never 
 twice alike, in which the varying mood seemed 
 to change, not the expression alone, but the 
 very cast of the features. 
 
 Dilke was not present at the sittings. He 
 was glad that no one suggested it, and yet, with 
 a curiously contradictory emotion, he resented 
 the high spirits in which Madame du Pont and 
 Joyce returned from the artist's studio, and the 
 constant allusions to bits of talk which had gone 
 on there. Joyce frequently quoted Newbold's 
 views, not only on art, where they might be 
 supposed to be of value, but on literature, 
 philosophy, the conduct of life. Dilke found 
 this absurd, and made a point of combating 
 them, quite regardless of his real opinion. 
 
 119
 
 120 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Intellectual quarrels are the subtlest form of 
 love making. Yet Dilke was quite sure that 
 he was only striving to'counteract the erroneous 
 point of view which Joyce Eldridge was adopting 
 from Newbold, and that his eagerness to con- 
 vince her was a tribute to his devotion to truth. 
 Joyce's manner throughout was so cool and 
 impersonal that Dilke was tempted to smile 
 with bitter humour over his mother's fears. 
 The words of her letter had burned themselves 
 into his memory, and he sometimes repeated 
 them to himself "entrapped," "don't commit 
 y ourself ! " and here before him sat a young 
 Diana, unapproachable as a smiling deity who 
 looks down from her cold heights on the passions 
 of men. 
 
 From Paris Mr. Eldridge, by Dilke 's advice, 
 went directly to a health resort on the borders 
 of Switzerland, a place looking southward over 
 mountain peaks and smiling down on sheltered 
 farms and peaceful valleys. Hygiene is a science 
 which makes disease a disgrace and health an 
 achievement. Consequently it tends to conceit 
 and censoriousness. If there is one spot on 
 earth duller than another it is a health resort 
 for those who are not out of health. The 
 routine of baths end diet is a weariness to 
 the flesh, and ever an invalid sometimes 
 wonders if health is worth the price at which
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 121 
 
 it is acquired, while the perpetual reiteration 
 of the charms of the view is in itself a con- 
 fession of the dulness which presides over every- 
 thing else. A view is one word of Nature, and 
 constantly repeated to the eyes, becomes as 
 tedious as a single word of man everlastingly 
 impressed upon the ear. On the other hand, 
 it affords conversation to the commonplace and 
 enjoyment to the inert. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge found mental employment in 
 committing the names of surrounding mountains 
 to memory, and physical occupation in the round 
 of hygienic exercises. Dilke was not sorry 
 to resign his responsibilities temporarily to the 
 doctor in charge of "the hydro- therapeutic 
 establishment." But there were drawbacks. 
 It left him time to reflect, and it threw him more 
 and more constantly with Joyce. Together 
 they wandered about the grounds; together 
 they read under the trees; together they made 
 expeditions to the famous chateaux close at 
 hand. 
 
 " What a hero Voltaire was! " Dilke exclaimed, 
 as he sat one day with Joyce under the shadow 
 of Ferney, looking off over the wide-stretching 
 leagues of landscape. 
 
 Joyce shook her head in a quick sidewise man- 
 ner, which set the sunlight dancing on the ripples 
 of her hair. Dilke was seized with an irresistible
 
 122 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 desire to see it dance again, so he persisted in 
 repeating his assertion: "Yes, one of the great 
 heroes of the world." 
 
 "'Quel drble de gout!' as Emilie says. You 
 have a strange taste in hero worship if you select 
 that shallow sceptic to admire." 
 
 "Voltaire a sceptic! I should as soon call 
 Washington a Tory. Voltaire was a believer if 
 ever there was one. He believed in truth as he 
 saw it, and he launched blows in its defense, 
 which sent his enemies howling to their tents. 
 That is why he has been so well abused that to 
 have hated him was held a liberal education." 
 
 "I have never read much of his books," said 
 Joyce, with raised eyebrows, " but I have tasted 
 them as one tastes wine, and I found the vintage 
 thin and bitter." 
 
 Dilke smiled. "You do not like wine at all," 
 he answered; "your taste is for sugar candy. 
 Your Mecca is Coppet and your ideal a Madame 
 Re"camier, that nonentity whose qualities would 
 have been a cipher but for the numeral of her 
 beauty before them." 
 
 "'The numeral of her beauty!'" Joyce re- 
 peated scornfully. "And is it in that way 
 that you would dismiss the force that has 
 moved the world?" 
 
 "That," Dilke observed, "is because through 
 all time men's minds and judgments have been
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 123 
 
 ruled by their eyes and their senses. It is the 
 privilege of posterity to escape from this despotic 
 sway and judge through their reason, to estimate 
 Madame Recamier, for instance, not by her curls 
 or her complexion, but by the weight of her 
 influence on great questions, by the words which 
 tradition has left us, and which are rather 
 inadequate when compared with those of her 
 contemporaries and intimates 
 
 "Very well," Joyce responded, with a little 
 shrug; "you may set the portrait of Mme. de 
 Stael on your mantel and the death mask of 
 Voltaire on your desk, and then sit down with 
 their books in your hands to glean what dry wis- 
 dom you can. As for me, I will take David's 
 Madame Recamier and spend happy hours in 
 simply looking at her and rejoicing that such a 
 beautiful woman once lived." 
 
 "For the matter of that," said Dilke, smiling, 
 "beauty did not die with Madame Recamier. 
 There are beautiful women living to turn the 
 heads of men to-day." 
 
 " Oh, but not like her ! You don't understand. 
 It is the perfection, the flawlessness, the fact that 
 her beauty needs no explanations, no allowances." 
 
 " Perhaps that is why I find it less interest- 
 ing," Dilke commented, watching with amuse- 
 ment the eagerness with which Joyce was throw- 
 ing herself into the argument.
 
 124 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " If you find perfection unsatisfactory, that is 
 your misfortune." 
 
 " I find perfection of form less satisfactory 
 than the thing expressed," Dilke answered. 
 " I wish to see something going on in the face 
 to make the beauty worth while." 
 
 "We shall never agree," Joyce declared. 
 
 "I am ready to be convinced." 
 
 ;< You say so; but you are not." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 " I am not ready to be convinced at all. I 
 should hate to think as you do. Life would 
 not be worth having on your terms. I wish to 
 live in a beautiful world, even if it is all of my 
 own imagining; and to you an illusion, however 
 beautiful, is a foe to be slain offhand and its 
 place supplied by a cold abstraction which you 
 call truth. You must be forever prying and 
 testing." 
 
 "If you call an illusion by its true name I 
 do not object to it. If you call it a belief, that is 
 another matter." 
 
 "You could not like and admire a person 
 whom you did not trust, could you?" Joyce 
 asked meditatively. 
 
 The question stung Dilke. It brought to his 
 mind a subject which he was forever striving 
 to forget. 
 
 " I don't know," he said shortly.
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 125 
 
 With the quick perception which was like a 
 sixth sense, Joyce noted the sudden change in 
 his tone, the depression in his face, and she 
 threw a warm friendliness into her voice as she 
 said: " I think that you are the most loyal per- 
 son I have ever known." 
 
 Dilke's face lighted. " I would rather have 
 that said of me than anything in the world," 
 he answered. "I wish that I deserved it; but 
 what put it into your mind now? " 
 
 " The way in which you were speaking of Vol- 
 taire. He is a real person to you still, and you 
 defend his memory as hotly as you would have 
 defended his character if he were living to-day." 
 
 Dilke smiled. " I am afraid that is no test," 
 he said. "The dead have left their record 
 signed and sealed, so you know what you have 
 to stand by; but the living are liable at any 
 moment to do something which strains your 
 loyalty to the breaking point " 
 
 Again Dilke came to a sudden halt in his 
 speech, and this time Joyce did not strive to 
 break the silence. Instead, she rose and they 
 walked slowly toward the waiting carriage, 
 wherein Mr. Eldridge was seated bolt upright, 
 with his back to the view and his watch in his 
 hand. 
 
 "I am glad that we are leaving to-morrow," 
 he said shortly. "Perhaps when Doctor Dilke
 
 126 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 becomes my physician again he will give me 
 some of his time." 
 
 An angry light rose in Dilke's eyes, but Joyce 
 broke in hastily: " It was my fault, papa." 
 
 "I dare say." 
 
 " We sat down to rest, and we did not realise 
 how long we were loitering." 
 
 " Well, well, get into the carriage now so that 
 I may at least be in time for my afternoon zwie- 
 back and milk." 
 
 Joyce gave Dilke one quick glance, half amused, 
 half deprecating, and then with his help climbed 
 to the seat beside her father and was silent dur- 
 ing the whole of the return drive. 
 
 Joyce went to her room early that evening. 
 She lighted the candles in the tall candelabra 
 on either side of her mirror. In the centre of 
 the dressing table, propped from beneath by a 
 prayer book, and supported against the mirror, 
 stood a photograph of Mrs. Fenwick. Thus, 
 doubly reinforced by devotion and vanity, it 
 constantly attracted Joyce's eyes. Indeed, the 
 girl had fallen into the habit of holding conversa- 
 tions with it in which she played the parts of two 
 speakers herself and her aunt. This was not 
 difficult, for her aunt's words represented the 
 composite memories of many talks in the past. 
 After fifty, people's opinions are no longer in 
 galley proof, to be changed at a moment's notice.
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 127 
 
 They are stereotyped plates, which one who 
 knows the mental processes may draw out at 
 any time, and be quite sure of finding unchanged 
 after the lapse of years. 
 
 To-night, when Joyce had exchanged her 
 dress for a loose, flowing wrapper and had let 
 down the masses of her heavy hair, she drew an 
 easy chair before the dressing table, and, seating 
 herself, leaned her elbows on the table's top. 
 One hand was bent backward and the other laid 
 over it palm to palm with outstretched finger 
 tips. On these Joyce leaned her head, inclining 
 sidewise with the right cheek upward. 
 
 The shadow in the glass contrasted sharply 
 with the photograph beside it. The one all 
 curves and colour, the other of a delicate greyish 
 whiteness with pinched nostrils and dark, 
 shrewd eyes punctuating the hollows below the 
 brows. 
 
 "Aunt Sylvia, were you in love with Uncle 
 Francis?" Joyce asked, questioning the picture 
 with a whimsical glance; and then answered 
 herself in the familiar tones of her aunt. Mimicry 
 was a gift which nature had bestowed on the 
 girl, and which reason had wisely suppressed in 
 the interest of popularity, so that it was only 
 when she was alone that she gave it vent. 
 
 "My dear niece," the familiar gentle tones 
 replied, " I respected your uncle more than any
 
 128 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 man I ever met. Intellectually we were very 
 congenial and he never failed in consideration." 
 
 " Do you call that being in love? " 
 
 "I call it cherishing a tender affection." 
 
 "No doubt. Your affections were your hus- 
 band's; but I suspect there was a region of 
 separate interests like the allee defendue in 
 Villette, where the foot of man never trod. 
 Tell me honestly, did you never grow mortally 
 weary of good Uncle Francis and long to run 
 away, not with anyone else, but just to a bliss- 
 ful aloneness where you could expand as far as 
 you chose without striking the limits of another 
 mind?" 
 
 The eyes in the photograph seemed to smile. 
 
 "I had no time," said the voice, "to think 
 much of developing myself. There seemed 
 enough to do in developing other people. The 
 insistence on the interests of self is peculiarly 
 modern and not particularly needed by human 
 nature." 
 
 " One more question : Did it not annoy you 
 to have a dominant individuality come striding 
 in among your whims and fancies ? Did it never 
 seem like a pair of heavy boots trampling over 
 your sprigged muslins? But I forgot Uncle 
 Francis was not a dominant individuality like 
 like some people." 
 
 With this inconclusive conclusion, Joyce rose
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 129 
 
 and questioned the shadowy presence no further 
 that night. 
 
 The next day Mr. Eldridge left the "hydro- 
 therapeutic establishment " f or a large hotel on 
 the shore of the Lake of Geneva not far from 
 Montreux, a hotel with a famous cuisine which 
 began at once to undo, as rapidly as possible, 
 the benefit accruing from the previous treat- 
 ment. 
 
 Dilke argued, persuaded, threatened, but all 
 in vain. Mr. Eldridge would eat and drink, but 
 as to being merry that did not follow, and 
 though he demanded the constant companion- 
 ship of Dilke and his daughter, he by no means 
 contributed to the gaiety of either nations or 
 individuals. 
 
 One evening soon after their arrival, he went 
 to his room for a nap before dinner, leaving 
 Joyce to her own devices. Dilke found her 
 standing on the steps looking off over the lake. 
 The discouragement of her attitude touched 
 him to the quick. The resemblance to a certain 
 Da Vinci drawing came out strongly in the 
 droop of her head and the doubtful smile about 
 the corners of her lips as she looked up at his 
 approach. The sunset was playing temptingly 
 across the ripples of the lake, and Dilke, taking 
 out his watch, suggested that they might have 
 a short row before dinner.
 
 130 
 
 "You do not think that it would be against 
 the conventions?" Joyce queried, looking long- 
 ingly at the stretch of illuminated water. 
 
 "Conventions," Dilke answered, "are only 
 innovations to which we have grown accustomed. 
 Let us make our own." 
 
 "Very well, then," said Joyce. "Let us go. 
 I was thinking how pleasant it would be." As 
 she spoke, she threw a long white wool cloak over 
 her dress of blue muslin. 
 
 At the water's edge the boats lay tossing 
 lightly. Earlier in the day there had been a 
 high wind which had driven the spray over the 
 boats, and pools of water still stood under the 
 seats. 
 
 Joyce raised her slippered foot and lifted the 
 soft frills of her skirt to step into the boat. Dilke 
 looked down with marked disapproval in his 
 eyes. 
 
 "You cannot wear those things in the boat," 
 he said. 
 
 "'Those things' are thicker than you think." 
 
 " Not unless my eyes deceive me. Don't you 
 see that pool of water where your feet must rest ? 
 Let us go back!" 
 
 "Oh, no!" 
 
 " Oh, yes! " Dilke rejoined with emphasis. 
 
 "Why should we?" 
 
 "You will take cold."
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 131 
 
 "You overrate your responsibilities," ex- 
 claimed Joyce, with her smile of doubtful inter- 
 pretation. "You are papa's medical adviser 
 not mine. If I am ever ill I shall resort to 
 homoeopathy." 
 
 Physicians of the old school see as much 
 humour in the subject of homoeopathy as a bull 
 is able to discern in the red flag of the Spanish 
 arena. 
 
 " I make no claim to be your medical adviser," 
 Dilke answered stiffly; "and when you are ill 
 you may play with any little white sugarplums 
 that you choose; but I am responsible to your 
 father for your not taking cold when you are 
 under my charge." 
 
 "I shall not take cold," Joyce observed with 
 airy assurance, preparing to step into the 
 boat. 
 
 Dilke made no response, but pulling off his coat 
 threw it into the pool of water under the seat. 
 It was a more heroic action than Sir Walter's, for 
 Raleigh probably had several dozen cloaks at 
 home, and this was Dilke's best. 
 
 Joyce looked at him, a quick little frown con- 
 tracting her slender eyebrows. 
 
 "Was it worth all that," she asked, "to put 
 me in the wrong? " 
 
 "It is worth considerably more than that to 
 me that you should not wet your feet," Dilke
 
 132 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 answered, and added, "My professional repu- 
 tation is at stake." 
 
 "Wait a minute, please," Joyce exclaimed, 
 and sped across the lawn of the hotel. When 
 she reappeared a few moments later her feet 
 were shod in calfskin. Dilke helped her into 
 the boat without comment. She picked up 
 his coat, shook it and laid it across the bow to 
 dry, then she took her seat in the stern. Dilke 
 jumped in and took the oars. 
 
 "I behaved like a child," said Joyce; "but 
 let us consider the episode ended. I dare say 
 my conscience will have its revenge later, how- 
 ever. Emilie says that the modern conscience 
 avails only to make us uncomfortable in doing 
 the things which nevertheless we continue to 
 do." 
 
 Dilke pulled a few strokes in silence till they 
 were under the shadow of a wooded point which 
 screened Joyce from the sunset light. Then he 
 rested on his oars, and looked at her, looked and 
 looked with throbbing pulses, till, feeling the 
 necessity of breaking the silence, he said ab- 
 ruptly : 
 
 " Your cousin is strangely different from you." 
 
 "Yes," Joyce assented thoughtfully, and 
 added, " She is very interesting." 
 
 Dilke smiled. " That is not exactly the point 
 of difference which I had in mind," he said.
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 133 
 
 " I was thinking how much surer of being happy 
 she was than you." 
 
 "I know that." Joyce shook her head rue- 
 fully as she spoke. " But you how could you 
 know how could you guess?" 
 
 "From what I have seen of you and of her. 
 She is a woman of objective ambitions. She 
 eagerly desires certain things and strains every 
 nerve to attain them. If she fails, she will turn 
 her back decisively on those things and grasp 
 at others more within her reach. You, on the 
 other hand, whose ambition is to be rather than 
 to do, or to have, are doomed to disappointment. 
 You are constantly tampering with your tem- 
 perament." 
 
 "Tampering with my temperament? Does 
 that really mean anything at all? " 
 
 Joyce showed a mocking dimple in either 
 cheek as she put the question. Dilke noted 
 the dimples ; but he would not heed the mockery. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "it does mean something. It 
 is quite simple. It is that you are striving to 
 be what you are not. Nature meant you to be 
 an idealist and you wish to be a woman of the 
 world. Nature decreed that you should be 
 whimsical and you are determined to be logical. 
 Altogether, you are like a watch striving to 
 regulate its own mainspring." 
 
 " What you call tampering with my tempera-
 
 134 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 ment," Joyce answered, still smiling, "I call 
 mending my faults, and I must work at it my- 
 self, since there is no outside power capable of 
 changing me." 
 
 "There might be." Dilke spoke the words 
 half to himself, and looking over Joyce's head 
 at the towers of Chillon rising like white ghosts 
 in the gathering twilight. Their contrasted 
 calmness cooled the hot blood rushing to his 
 face. Joyce looked at him with raised ques- 
 tioning eyes. 
 
 " There might be? " she repeated. 
 
 Dilke drew in his oars, and leaning over them, 
 returned Joyce's glance squarely. "Yes," he 
 answered, " there might be love. There is such 
 a power. To ignore it is to reduce life to a 
 meaningless game between puppets. It is the 
 primal ordinance, the first commandment. Some 
 day you will learn it, and then you will not say 
 so confidently that no outside power can change 
 you." 
 
 The defiance in Dilke 's eyes met no answer, for 
 Joyce's glance had fallen. 
 
 "And what," she asked, "if this love which 
 you invoke in my behalf proved no delicate- 
 fingered jeweller but a clumsy blacksmith shat- 
 tering with his heavy hand the wheels and 
 springs of the watch, to. which you are pleased 
 to compare my character?"
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 135 
 
 Dilke drew a long breath. "Why, then, 
 heaven help you! But at least you would have 
 lived." 
 
 Dilke closed his lips, then opened them again 
 as if to continue the subject, but evidently 
 thought better of the matter, for he said abruptly : 
 
 "Look at the reflection of the sunset on the 
 water dripping from my oars." 
 
 He raised the blades as he spoke and the 
 bright drops fell like a shower of translucent 
 opals into the lake. Joyce trailed her hand in 
 the water, and bent her head to watch the 
 ripples which floated in their wake. 
 
 Dilke felt himself drifting whither he would 
 not, and yet was powerless to stem the tide. 
 It had become so much a habit to speak his 
 thoughts to Joyce that he found it necessary to 
 put a ban upon thought itself lest it find its 
 way into speech for speech is epoch making. 
 
 Yet silence too has its dangers, and as they 
 floated on and on in the gathering grey ness, 
 an atmosphere well nigh as significant as speech 
 seemed to harig about them. A touch, a word, 
 a breath, might have brought a crisis. Dilke's 
 nerves were tense. It was almost a relief when 
 he heard Joyce say: 
 
 "I think we'd better go in. Papa does not 
 like to be kept waiting for his dinner." 
 
 " I have observed it," her companion assented
 
 136 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 drily, and pulled with swift, strong strokes for 
 the shore. He helped Joyce out of the boat 
 without a word and lingered for several minutes 
 alone. Then he went in. 
 
 When Dilke had dressed for dinner he went 
 down to the reading room, where, as he had 
 expected, he found Joyce and her father. To 
 his surprise he perceived at once that Mr. 
 Eldridge was in a towering passion such a pas- 
 sion as he had not observed since that first 
 evening of their acquaintance in New York. 
 
 On Mr. Eldridge 's knee lay an open letter, 
 which he struck now and then with his open 
 hand, as if returning blow for blow. As Dilke 
 came up to join the group, he heard Mr. Eldridge 
 muttering something about " damned uncivil 
 Dutchmen." 
 
 Dilke smiled. "You forget," he said, "that 
 even Mr. Burke did not know how to draw an 
 indictment against a whole nation." 
 
 "I'd have taught him how if he had come to 
 me. I'd have taught him, by Jupiter! They 
 are all alike from the Kaiser down." 
 
 "What is the matter? Has the Chancellor 
 slighted you?" 
 
 " It is that boor of a Baron von Steinitz whom 
 we saw in New York Madame du Font's 
 friend, you remember, Joyce." 
 
 "Yes, I remember."
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 137 
 
 "Well, he writes asking you and me to come 
 to his country house on the Rhine for ten 
 days." 
 
 " I can imagine more deadly insults than that," 
 Dilke observed. 
 
 "But he says nothing of you, and I asked 
 Madame du Pont to write him that you were 
 to be of our party." 
 
 "Is that all?" Dilke inquired, commenting 
 to himself: "Madame du Pont probably never 
 said a word about it. It would not have suited 
 her plans to have me invited." 
 
 " It does not affect us, papa," Joyce answered, 
 with quiet pride in her voice. " It is only them- 
 selves whom people injure when they are rude, 
 and it is not as if we were compelled to go." 
 
 " But I am compelled to go. In a way I am 
 compelled. I promised when he was in New 
 York that I would go." 
 
 " Of course you should go. There is not a 
 doubt of it," Dilke said. "There would not be 
 the faintest reason for considering me in the 
 matter under any circumstances; and as it 
 happens, all this fits admirably with certain 
 tentative plans of my own. Newbold has asked 
 me to spend a fortnight with him Bohemianising 
 in Paris, and I thought I should like to go if it 
 met your convenience." 
 
 " It does not meet my convenience ; but who
 
 138 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 ever thinks of my convenience? I shall catch 
 pneumonia in this damp Rhenish hole, and get 
 an attack of gout from their infernal black bread 
 and sauerkraut." 
 
 Dilke laughed. "If I thought that you 
 would confine yourself to black bread and sauer- 
 kraut," he said, " I should not worry about you; 
 but I am afraid that you will wash them down 
 with more deleterious stuff. Miss Eldridge, I 
 shall expect you to take my place as mentor, 
 and to see that your father does not ' apply hot 
 and rebellious liquors in his blood.' ' 
 
 Joyce smiled. "A difficult task," she an- 
 swered; "responsibility without authority, as 
 someone complained of in an engagement, and 
 I cannot hope to be as terrible a mentor as you 
 were this evening about my going out in slip- 
 pers." 
 
 "Now, Joyce," exploded her father, turning 
 the vials of his wrath upon his daughter, " how 
 often have I told you that I would not have 
 you going about like that! Have you no 
 sense?" 
 
 " I have a capital scheme for making myself 
 missed," Dilke interposed, striving to avert the 
 storm which threatened to overwhelm Joyce. 
 "Every time that Miss Eldridge goes out shod 
 in slippers you shall drink a quart of Burgundy. 
 Then, when I rejoin you in Paris, my occupation
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 139 
 
 will not be so much of a sinecure as it has been 
 up to this time." 
 
 " I tell you I cannot spare you! " Mr. Eldridge 
 exclaimed violently. Joyce laid her hand on his 
 shoulder, and spoke very low and quietly: 
 " Yes, Papa, you can spare him. Don't you see 
 he really wants to go, and I will do everything 
 for you, as he says." 
 
 So the plan was made. 
 
 That night, when Joyce went up to her room, 
 leaving her father reading the Spectator, Dilke 
 followed her to the foot of the stairs to say 
 good night. Joyce stopped, and stood with her 
 hands behind her looking up at him shyly, like a 
 child who hesitates to reopen the subject of his 
 misdemeanors, yet cannot quite let it alone. 
 
 "Is your coat dry?" 
 
 " I don't know. I threw it down somewhere 
 when I came in. The fact is, I had forgotten 
 all about it." 
 
 " Then it will be full of wrinkles, and you will 
 have no chance to have it pressed. When you 
 reach Paris Mr. Newbold will laugh at it, and 
 then you will say : ' I will tell you how it 
 happened. I spoiled that coat in trying to 
 save an obstinate young woman from wetting 
 her feet, and she had not the grace even to say 
 thank you.' ' 
 
 "On the contrary, I shall say: 'That coat
 
 140 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 accumulated those wrinkles in shrinking into 
 its natural condition after being unduly puffed 
 up by the attention which it received from a 
 young woman, who had the thoughtfulness to 
 hang it up to dry, and the magnanimity not to 
 resent intrusive advice.' What nonsense! I 
 shall say nothing of the kind. I shall not speak 
 of you in any connection whatsoever. I do 
 not approve of mixing friendships. It is like 
 mixing wines." 
 
 Joyce broke into a smile which showed the 
 dimple in her left cheek. Dilke had learned 
 to look for that dimple as a harbinger of peace 
 and good will. 
 
 "Good bye," she said, "till we meet in 
 Paris." 
 
 " Can I take any message from you to Madame 
 du Pont?" Dilke asked. "I shall probably see 
 her soon, as I had no time to make my dinner 
 call before we left." 
 
 A shade fell on Joyce's manner, a hint of 
 withdrawal, a suggestion of the stranger, which 
 was always latent in her friendliest moments. 
 The dimple disappeared. The eyes grew less 
 bright, as if the candles behind them had been 
 extinguished. 
 
 "No, thank you," she said, "I have written 
 to Emilie to-day. Good night." And without 
 another word she turned and left him.
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW 141 
 
 Dilke stood watching her until she reached 
 the turn of the stairs. Then he went hastily to 
 the office and sent a telegram to Newbold. 
 Afterward he bade farewell to Mr. Eldridge and 
 finished his packing. The next morning he 
 was off before either of the other members of 
 the party was astir.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 
 
 STRANGE surroundings give perspective and 
 enable a man to sink private griefs in a general 
 sense of a world which knows not Joseph or his 
 troubles. 
 
 Dilke determined not to go directly to Paris, 
 but to stop at several of the French towns which 
 lay on his road. He wished to be alone, to fight 
 a feeling over which he had determined to win 
 the mastery, and to strive to lose himself for 
 a while in unfamiliar sights and the practise of 
 an unfamiliar language. 
 
 He wandered about the old streets of Orleans 
 and Bourges, and spent hours in the cathedral 
 of Chartres. Still, at every street corner, he 
 found himself confronted by the image of Joyce 
 Eldridge. Clearly there was no gain in running 
 away from the thought of her. Instead he re- 
 solved to accustom himself to it. He would enjoy 
 his memory of her as an entity, and make that 
 shadowy companionship a source of happiness, 
 and still to himself he talked of his feeling for 
 Joyce as friendship. 
 
 142
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 143 
 
 After three or four days of wandering, Dilke 
 began to feel a craving for a human companion, 
 a companion who spoke his native tongue, with 
 whom it was possible to talk without so much 
 thought given to vocabulary that there was noth- 
 ing left to communicate. 
 
 He took the train for Paris, and with the 
 expectation of seeing Newbold his spirits rose, 
 not to boiling point, but from zero to ten above. 
 
 Newbold's studio was at the top of many 
 weary flights of stone stairs, and Dilke was out 
 of breath and out of patience before he reached 
 it. In the darkness of the hall he was peering 
 about for the name on the door, when he heard 
 a well-known voice shouting from within : 
 
 "Too much care will turn a young man grey. 
 Too much care will turn an old man to clay." 
 
 "Much he knows about it!" muttered Dilke, 
 as he banged on the door. 
 
 There is an irritation in having private 
 experiences, which to us are distinctly individual, 
 brushed away into the dust heap of the ex- 
 periences of the race. For the first time in his 
 life Dilke was learning the pressure of an over- 
 mastering care, and he did not enjoy this lyrical 
 and jovial treatment of it. But the most 
 churlish soul could not cherish resentment 
 against Newbold. Dilke's irritation vanished
 
 144 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 as he caught sight of him standing at the open 
 door, pallette in hand and a brush in his mouth. 
 
 Newbold was a man with a chivalrous soul 
 and a romantic disposition which, if cased in a 
 tall form and classic face, would have wrought 
 itself out naturally and harmoniously; but how 
 can a short and squat figure associate itself with 
 romance, or a broad, flat Dutch countenance 
 express chivalry without making itself ridicu- 
 lous? Nature had imposed upon Newbold a 
 comic part and he had accepted it as inevitable, 
 only adding a touch of irony to the humour and 
 a latent pungency to his jests. 
 
 If he had his periods of depression and 
 despair, his exaltations and his lofty aspirations, 
 he reserved them for periods of solitude and 
 rooms where there were no mirrors. 
 
 "Oh, Tony, glad to see you!" Newbold 
 exclaimed, getting rid of his brush somehow. 
 " I want to show you the portrait of Miss Eldridge. 
 Here, give me your valise. I have arranged 
 a sofa bed for you in the little room; but first 
 tell me what you think of the picture." 
 
 While Newbold was speaking, he led the way 
 into the studio and cleared away a pile of green 
 corduroy from an arm chair. " Sit down here," 
 he added, " and let me turn the portrait to the 
 light. There, is it like her ? " 
 
 Dilke studied the picture with a delight which
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 145 
 
 made it difficult to speak. Yes, this was Joyce 
 at her best. There was something in her carriage 
 so free, so buoyant, that it suggested a flight of 
 song birds. Her figure indeed was almost too 
 slender, yet it held the head above it lightly like 
 a flower. Her face suggested Shelley's in the 
 delicacy of its contour, and the incorrigible un- 
 worldliness in the eyes which looked out from 
 under the broad, low brow. 
 
 "Very like, I should say," Dilke answered; 
 "that is her way of leaning forward as if she 
 were eager for the next remark, yours or hers, 
 she never cared which. I like it exceedingly; 
 but after all, what do you care for the opinion 
 of a layman?" 
 
 " That is precisely what I want. It is laymen 
 who are to see the picture and to judge it. 
 Naturally I wish it to please them. I should not 
 be satisfied to have my work caviare to the 
 general even to have it terrapin to the elect. 
 There is something about the eyes," he added, 
 looking at the picture with his eyes half shut, 
 "which I have not succeeded in catching. That 
 'light that never was on sea or land,' that 
 something too fleeting to be caught on canvas 
 which is, after all, the essence of life. We 
 painters can never give up trying to fix the un- 
 fixable, the sun on water, for instance, or the 
 light in a woman's eyes."
 
 146 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "As a rule," said Dilke, " I prefer that things 
 should not be too permanent. After a short time 
 I can dispense with even the light in a woman's 
 eyes, and the only permanent emotion is ennui." 
 
 "Ennui!" exclaimed Newbold scornfully. 
 " Ennui, with all the enjoyment to be had out of 
 life in general!" 
 
 "There is no such thing as life in general," 
 retorted Dilke. "What is life as a generality? 
 What is art as a generality? " 
 
 "Art?" answered Newbold, trapped by the 
 catchword of his craft, " Someone has said that 
 art is a corner of the world seen through a tem- 
 perament." 
 
 " Exactly! " returned Dilke triumphantly. " So 
 is life a corner of the world seen through a tem- 
 perament. There is no such thing as a clear 
 white light on humanity." 
 
 While Dilke was speaking, he was studying 
 the picture. The face, with its characteristic 
 enigmatical smile, the slightly lifted eyebrows, 
 the half -parted lips. It was Joyce herself, 
 and Dilke felt that he had done himself little 
 good in fleeing from the original only to be 
 thrown into daily companionship with its double 
 on the canvas here. 
 
 "The dress is charming," he said at length, 
 recognising it as the gown in which he had first 
 seen Joyce in her father's library.
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 147 
 
 "Do you think so? I don't," Newbold an- 
 swered. " I should have liked something with 
 more colour and heavier folds ; but Miss Eldridge 
 had some sentiment about this white gown. 
 Confound sentiment! It has no place in art." 
 
 "Indeed! I supposed there was quite an inti- 
 mate connection." 
 
 "Oh, I mean family sentiment sentimental 
 sentiment. It happens that when a man offered 
 himself to his future wife she wore a scarlet 
 gown, and he presented her with a bunch of 
 magenta roses. When her portrait is painted 
 ten years later, gown and roses must both go in. 
 Never mind what becomes of the poor artist! 
 
 " The architect fares even worse. He puts up 
 a pure Colonial house and the owner insists 
 on having a loggia on the second story because 
 his daughter has associations with Italy." 
 
 Dilke laughed. " I am afraid that my sym- 
 pathies are with the owners of the pictures and 
 the houses," he said. "After all, it is they 
 who must live with them." 
 
 "Yes; but it is the artists and architects who 
 must be responsible for them. Don't you sup- 
 pose that our reputation is as much to us as 
 their comfort is to them?" 
 
 While Newbold spoke he was touching in a 
 high light. Dilke's eyes wandered about the 
 studio, and fell upon a sketch of Brandyce
 
 148 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 seated in front of a campfire, his pith helmet 
 pushed back from his face, which showed ruddier 
 than life in the firelight. 
 
 Instead of answering Newbold's aesthetic 
 plaint, he said suddenly: "You have been 
 making a sketch of B randy ce, I see. How much 
 do you know about him, Newbold? " 
 
 " Do you wish to be told what I know or 
 what I surmise?" 
 
 "Both." 
 
 " I know, then, that he is the correspondent 
 of a London paper war correspondent, when 
 there is a war omnium- gatherum in times of 
 peace. I know that he is accepted in the best 
 society in Vienna, that his connections are 
 excellent, that he has an uncle in the Cabinet, 
 and that he is an entertaining companion." 
 
 " What do you surmise? " 
 
 "Are there not enough disagreeable facts in 
 the world, without adding nasty surmises?" 
 
 "You surmise ?" 
 
 " If you will have it, I have a suspicion that 
 there was some irregularity about his resignation 
 from the army. One fellow hinted as much 
 to me. In fact, he suggested that there was 
 some affair which, if Brandyce's uncle had not 
 been a high official, would have been investigated. 
 There may be nothing whatever in it. I am sure 
 I hope there is not."
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 149 
 
 Newbold hesitated a minute, and then turning 
 away from the portrait, he said: "I have 
 thought a great many times, Dilke, of our 
 talk there on the hillside at Pieria and of the 
 things which you said about Brandyce. I did 
 not understand them then. They seemed to 
 me overstrained ; but I have met him twice since 
 then, and naturally I looked at him more closely 
 in the light of your suspicions. The more I 
 studied him the more I felt that you were right. 
 He is attractive, his manners are excellent, he 
 is a capital comrade, but in spite of it all, is he 
 a gentleman?" 
 
 It is curious how, if one carries a sore spot in 
 his heart, all conversation has an irresistible 
 tendency to alight and dance on it. This was 
 a question which Dilke had blamed himself 
 for being able neither to choke off nor to 
 answer. 
 
 His part and Newbold 's seemed strangely 
 reversed since their conversation in Pieria. It 
 was now Dilke who was inclined to be discreet 
 and conservative. 
 
 He would not answer directly. Instead, he 
 parried. " I am naturally prejudiced in his 
 favour by his having saved my life. But, New- 
 bold, what do you mean by a gentleman? It 
 is difficult, isn't it, to say exactly what it is 
 that constitutes a gentleman as distinguished
 
 150 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 from a fine man. What is the essential the 
 quintessential quality?" 
 
 "I should say sensitiveness," Newbold ob- 
 served, stepping backward to get a longer 
 perspective on his picture " sensitiveness and 
 simplicity 
 
 " Might a man lie and still be a gentleman? " 
 
 "He could not be in the habit of lying, be- 
 cause then he would be neither sensitive nor 
 simple; but to lie once I don't know the ideal 
 is the bull's-eye of a target which we cannot 
 hope to hit every time." 
 
 "Similes are misleading," Dilke answered, 
 "but I should say that the ideal is the first 
 meridian from which we may measure our 
 deviations. When I remember the deviations 
 of which I have been guilty myself, I do not 
 propose to play the Pharisee with any poor 
 devil who has been overcome by sudden tem- 
 tation. 
 
 "I did an idiotic thing once worse than 
 idiotic let me call it by its true name a dis- 
 honourable, a dishonest thing, and the story 
 would not point a Sunday-school moral, for in 
 a way all my material success has seemed to 
 flow from it; but for all that it has carried its 
 punishment. I wake at night and feel hot 
 when I think of it. I would give years of my 
 life to blot it out perhaps Brandyce feels in
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 151 
 
 the same way that is, if he really ever did 
 anything " 
 
 "You evidently do not care to express an 
 opinion about Brandy ce." 
 
 "No, frankly, I do not. I find that putting 
 a thing into words makes it much more definite 
 in my own mind. I forgot myself once in that 
 talk with you, and I have been sorry for it ever 
 since. I am trying to think well of Brandyce. 
 Of course, you see, you wish to think well of a 
 man who has saved your life. I am sure that if 
 there were ever anything that I could do for 
 him, I would do it with all my heart. I would 
 make great sacrifices. I wish," he added after 
 a moment's pause, "that liking were a matter 
 more under one's own control." 
 
 " I do not, " said Newbold. " I am glad to 
 have one thing removed from the market place 
 of obligation and left spontaneous." 
 
 "Would you say the same of love?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 " Not I, then. Half the troubles in the world 
 come from people's loving when they ought 
 not to, and the other half from their not being 
 loved when they ought to be." 
 
 Dilke rose as he spoke and walked to the 
 corner of the studio to study the portrait of 
 Joyce Eldridge from a different angle. " If 
 you really want me to criticise," he said, "I
 
 152 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 should say that there was a shade too much of 
 coldness in the expression. You have overdone 
 the look of indifference. There is intellectual 
 perception but very little sympathy, and sym- 
 pathy is a marked characteristic. 
 
 Dilke's mind was fixed on a picture of a girl 
 standing at the foot of a flight of stairs, her 
 hands clasped behind her and her eyes looking 
 up with a soft and timid appeal. Naturally 
 Newbold had no such picture before him, and 
 like most artists, he recognised the layman's abil- 
 ity to appreciate more than his right to criticise. 
 
 "Your comment is at once vague and icono- 
 clastic," Newbold answered with a touch of 
 stiffness; "one of those easy suggestions that 
 the work is fundamentally wrong but otherwise 
 charming. The soul of the painter is often 
 cheered by such assurances. We grow accus- 
 tomed to them; but as to Miss Eldridge, perhaps 
 our conceptions of her character differ. I 
 found her rather frosty." 
 
 " Frosty! Perhaps you would like to assume 
 a glaze of frost yourself if you were compelled 
 to live by the side of a volcano Mr. Eldridge 's 
 temper 
 
 Dilke ended his sentence with an expressive 
 shrug. 
 
 " You seem to take a great interest in the ice 
 maiden," said Newbold.
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 153 
 
 "More or less," Dilke answered in a tone 
 meant to be offhand, and unconscious of the 
 offence which his comment on the picture had 
 given. " Miss Eldridge is a personality, and 
 personalities are rare on my horizon. Most 
 people are as like as the bottles in a drug store. 
 By the way, Newbold, if you are going home 
 soon, why can .you not arrange to come with 
 us?" 
 
 "And play chess with the volcano while you 
 attempt to thaw the ice maiden? The prospect 
 does not sound attractive." 
 
 " You are out in your calculations there, old 
 Truepenny. I am more afraid of the ice maiden 
 than of the volcano. Ice can burn as well as 
 fire- 
 
 "Whew!" Newbold whistled. "You are in 
 for a serious case. Do you mean to tell her 
 about it?" 
 
 " Not for the whole round world! " 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean asking her to marry you. 
 No poor and honourable young man does that. 
 He simply tells the girl how he feels and finds out 
 how she feels, and when she assures him that it 
 will be only a pleasure to wait ten years for him, 
 he calls himself a brute and her an angel, and 
 so it is all arranged with no disparagement of 
 his nice sense of propriety." 
 
 "Ouch! Newbold, you hurt," said Dilke,
 
 154 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 with a grimace. " On the whole, I am very glad 
 you are not to cross with us." 
 
 "So am I," Newbold interrupted. 
 
 "Too much care for others will never turn 
 your hair grey," Dilke went on ; " but I wish that 
 I could learn your secret of perennial cheerful- 
 ness." 
 
 "And suppose," said Newbold, turning sud- 
 denly serious, " suppose you found that I had no 
 secret to teach any man. Suppose the whole 
 thing were a bluff. Suppose I found life a 
 burden which on the whole it was easier to carry 
 jauntily than solemnly that the galled jade 
 winced less if her withers were padded with a 
 jest what then?" 
 
 "Then," said Dilke, "I should think you the 
 wisest man I ever knew. I have made a prac- 
 tice of going about like one in the wilderness 
 crying ' Woe ! Woe ! ' as if that ever helped any- 
 body, as if on the contrary it did not infinitely 
 and fundamentally hinder. I will take a leaf 
 out of your book of wisdom. But, New- 
 bold " 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Have you ever had any special experiences 
 anything like mine?" 
 
 Newbold was silent. 
 
 "Come, make a clean breast of it as I have 
 done. Is there a woman ?"
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 155 
 
 For answer to the unfinished question, New- 
 bold took up a canvas which had been standing 
 with its face to the wall and set it on the easel. 
 Dilke recognised it instantly as a sketch in pastel 
 of Madame du Pont. 
 
 "I did it from memory," said Newbold. 
 " Each day when they had gone I painted as 
 long as I could see her face. Then I stopped 
 and waited till next time." 
 
 Dilke walked closer to the picture. The 
 figure was drawn full length, with one jewelled 
 hand lifting slightly the trailing dress and one 
 foot raised and resting on a cushion. Under- 
 neath it Newbold had scrawled in red chalk: 
 
 " Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps 
 Not on the earth, but on the hearts of men." 
 
 " Now you know," the artist said, and without 
 another word he returned the sketch to the cor- 
 ner from which he had taken it. 
 
 " Of course you never told her," said Dilke. 
 
 " Of course nothing of the kind. Am I such 
 a cad that I am unwilling to have a woman know 
 that I admire her, simply because there is no 
 chance of her returning the admiration? A 
 man who is afraid to tell his love is not suffering 
 from love at all, but from vanity. Certainly I 
 told her. I told her that if, in all the time to 
 come, I ever thought a fine thought, or if my
 
 156 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 brush laid a good colour on canvas, it would be 
 her influence working through me." 
 
 "And she what did she say? Did she laugh 
 at you?" 
 
 "Not at all. She put out both hands and 
 said : ' It is a great thing to come into a man's 
 life like that.' And then a wonderful smile came 
 into her eyes." 
 
 "They are as green as emeralds," said 
 Dilke. 
 
 " That is a very stupid comparison, my friend, 
 and shows that you are not an artist." 
 
 "Or a lover." 
 
 "Or an observer. Emeralds are hard and 
 bright. Her eyes are neither. They are green 
 like the sea which changes colour when the 
 cloud or the sun hangs over it." 
 
 "Your devotion to green eyes," Dilke an- 
 swered, "is only temporary. As you told me 
 long ago in Pieria, fickleness is the artist's birth- 
 right, and your love of the beautiful will soon 
 transfer itself to other eyes of an equally tran- 
 scendental shade." 
 
 "When I said that," Newbold replied, scrap- 
 ing his pallette, " I was talking of fancies, such 
 as mark a boy's progress, like so many mile- 
 stones, all pointing the way to the passion which, 
 however it eventuates and whether it bring him 
 good or ill, is to hold him forever in its grip. He
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 157 
 
 can no more escape it than he could escape from 
 the clutches of a 
 
 Newbold was going on to say more when 
 a banging knock sounded at the door, 
 and in another instant Eustace Brandyce 
 whirled in like a gale of wind from the outer 
 world. 
 
 "Enter third conspirator!" he exclaimed. 
 "How did you turn up over here, Dilke?" 
 
 "Oh, there is no turning up in Paris," Dilke 
 answered. " It is only an accident that every- 
 one isn't here all the time. Where are you 
 flying to or from?" 
 
 "I've been on a walking trip in the Balkans 
 and turned in five columns of copy to my paper 
 as a result. I'm going to do the Paris studios 
 now, and thought I might give Newbold here a 
 puff in the way of business. Next month I'm 
 off for the States again. When do you go back 
 to the States?" 
 
 " I am travelling with friends, and we expect 
 to sail from Hamburg on October i5th." 
 
 " Perhaps I can make the same steamer if you 
 don't object." 
 
 "By all means make the same steamer," 
 Dilke responded, reproaching himself that he 
 could not force his mind to echo the cordiality 
 of his tone. 
 
 "I almost envy you fellows going home,"
 
 158 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Newbold said; "but I forgot It is not home to 
 you, Brandy ce, is it?" 
 
 "No; but you need not waste any sympathy 
 on me on that account. My country is Bo- 
 hemia, and wandering is second nature. I 
 should feel 'cabined, cribbed, confined,' if I were 
 compelled to settle down in one place. Did 
 you ever think what an infernally dull time the 
 Prodigal Son must have had in that well- 
 conducted household of his father's when the 
 fuss was all over? Depend upon it, if a sequel 
 had been written it would have told how he 
 endured it as long as he could and then went off 
 husking again 
 
 "I suppose that I am rather a soft chap," 
 Newbold answered; "but I confess that 'Home, 
 Sweet Home' always brings the tears." 
 
 " Precisely, because you are in Paris and your 
 home at a pleasing and picturesque distance. 
 It is a significant fact that the author of those 
 touching words was a Bohemian like myself. 
 By the way, what have you on your easel now, 
 Newbold?" Brandy ce turned as he spoke to 
 the portrait of Joyce Eldridge and took out his 
 notebook. "By Jove! That's a beautiful girl! 
 May I have a photograph of the picture for the 
 papers?" 
 
 Newbold hesitated, while Dilke bit his lip 
 and walked away to the other end of the studio.
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 159 
 
 "I don't know," Newbold said. "Of course 
 it would be an excellent advertisement for me. 
 Do you think that Mr. Eldridge would object, 
 Dilke?" 
 
 " I should think that he would," Dilke an- 
 swered without turning round; " but it will be a 
 very simple matter to ask him." 
 
 Newbold detected the irritation in Dilke 's 
 voice, and turning briskly to Brandyce, he 
 said: " I hope that you two have not forgotten 
 the appetites which you accumulated in your 
 camp. Dilke, pull out that packing box. You 
 will find glass and china in the closet 
 broken most of it, but able to serve its turn 
 still, if carefully handled. Brandyce, light the 
 charcoal fire, will you? I will be back in a 
 minute." 
 
 When Newbold reappeared, he carried a long 
 roll of bread and a chicken with yellow legs 
 protruding from one end of a brown-paper 
 parcel and a blue head hanging limp from the 
 other. A flask of red wine was under his arm, 
 and from his pocket he drew out a package of 
 fresh butter. 
 
 "Now," he exclaimed, "for our breakfast 
 with the fork! It is lucky that there are only 
 three of us, for that is just the number of my 
 implements. Put on the frying pan, Brandyce! 
 This biped must be split for broiling. Here, you
 
 160 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 cut off his head, will you? I have an aesthetic 
 repulsion to decapitation." 
 
 It was a gay little party which gathered round 
 the packing-box table, and Brandyce was the 
 life of it. No man told a better story, no man 
 had had more interesting experiences, no man 
 had a keener relish for another man's jest. 
 
 " You are certainly a man of talent, Newbold," 
 Brandyce observed at the end of the meal. 
 " Who would expect an artist to be a cook, and 
 a good cook at that? Have you any other 
 accomplishments? " 
 
 " My forte," said Newbold, " is making a camp 
 bed. I can lay the boughs so that they are 
 softer than most spring mattresses. What do 
 you do best, Dilke?" 
 
 " Nothing, unless it is to bandage a burn, and 
 unfortunately I cannot do that for myself with 
 my left hand." Dilke looked ruefully at his 
 right thumb, on which stood out a large blister 
 the result of his attempt to assist Newbold. 
 
 "What do you do best, Brandyce? I don't 
 mean foolish things like those about which we 
 have been talking, but real things 
 
 Brandyce pondered for a moment. Then he 
 said: " I think that I tell a lie better than I do 
 anything else. In fact, the beautiful and 
 rounded completeness of my falsehoods casts 
 all my other accomplishments into the shade."
 
 THE HOLDER OF THE CLAIM 161 
 
 "Now I," interrupted Newbold, embarrassed 
 by a recollection of his talk with Dilke on this 
 subject, and anxious to change the impression 
 left by Brandyce's words, " I cannot tell a lie. 
 My eyes betray me and my tongue trips at the 
 critical moment; but give me a pen and a sheet 
 of paper, with the eyes of the liee far off, and I 
 can rise to great heights. I have hopes of my 
 future, for though the profession of lying is over- 
 crowded, there is always room at the top." 
 
 "Perhaps," said Dilke, "brushes may lie as 
 well as pens." 
 
 " They may," Newbold answered unperturbed, 
 "or they may tell a more beautiful truth than 
 any that Nature ever had the wit to devise." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Brandyce, "that accounts 
 for the portrait on the easel, that Miss Miss 
 what is her name?" 
 
 "Eldridge," replied Newbold, while Dilke 
 sat stonily silent. 
 
 "I suspected from the beginning," Brandyce 
 went on, "that you were idealising. Now tell 
 me truthfully ; is she as lovely as that in real life ? " 
 
 "You must ask Dilke," the artist answered 
 with some mischief in his heart. " Dilke sees 
 her every day and in morning dress, which after 
 all is the severest test of beauty." 
 
 "You see this vision every day? Lucky dogl 
 How does it come about?"
 
 162 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Dilke shot a wrathful glance at Newbold, but 
 saw no way out of the situation except through 
 frankness. 
 
 " I am travelling with her father as his phy- 
 sician," he answered, turning to Brandy ce. 
 " Naturally I see his daughter often " 
 
 "And you are going back to America with 
 them, I suppose." 
 
 " I expect to do so." 
 
 "That decides me. I shall sail from Ham- 
 burg on the 1 5th. Au revo-ir, then," he added, 
 rising, "and to you, Newbold, I suppose it is 
 good bye, till we stumble over each other in 
 unexpected fashion in some corner of the 
 world. People are so sure to meet nowadays 
 that parting loses all its melancholy I might 
 almost say all its interest." 
 
 "Now you have done it!" exclaimed Dilke 
 resentfully as Newbold returned after escorting 
 his visitor to the door. 
 
 Newbold only laughed. "Don't blame me, 
 my dear fellow, blame destiny! You know 
 you said long ago that you felt sure that fate 
 would throw you together again." 
 
 "It has," said Dilke, and relapsed into 
 silence.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE PASTEBOARD HELMET 
 
 DON QUIXOTE made a pasteboard helmet 
 which he believed strong enough to withstand 
 the stroke of a giant. To prove his theory he 
 struck it a blow which smashed the thing to bits. 
 Undismayed by the result, he put it together 
 again, and assured himself that this time it was 
 strong enough; but he did not give it another 
 blow to prove it. 
 
 So it was with Dilke. He felt confident that 
 he was master of himself. He was sure that his 
 calmness would bear any strain that could be 
 put upon it. Only he regretted that he must 
 meet Joyce Eldridge again. He would have liked 
 to embark on a sailing vessel for a journey around 
 the world, to join an Arctic expedition, or inves- 
 tigate the interior of Patagonia rather than 
 rejoin the Eldridges as he had promised to do 
 on this, the second evening after their arrival 
 in Paris. 
 
 The visit to the German castle had evidently 
 not been a success, for Mr. Eldridge 's last letter 
 had been full of complaints, written in ill 
 
 163
 
 164 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 humour, and with a suggestion of reproach of 
 Dilke, to be traced in the accounts of his need of 
 medical attendance. 
 
 As Dilke read it he smiled to himself at its 
 unreason. Then a quick wave of seriousness fol- 
 lowed, as he reflected on the amount of im- 
 patience which must have been vented by Mr. 
 Eldridge upon his daughter, and he felt really 
 like a deserter in leaving her to bear the brunt 
 of it alone. 
 
 A tumult of conflicting thoughts swept 
 through his mind at the prospect of the meeting 
 to-night. He was full of misgivings. He was 
 glad. He was sorry. He did not know how 
 he felt. The pasteboard helmet creaked in his 
 hands. The seams gaped, and still he assured 
 himself that it was safe and serviceable. 
 
 The Eldridges were staying at a small hotel on 
 the rue de Rivoli, a hotel where privacy was 
 esteemed worth paying for at an exorbitant rate. 
 
 It was nine o'clock in the evening when Dilke 
 said good bye to Newbold and hailed a fiacre. 
 The night was wet and the buildings reflected 
 themselves in the slippery pavement as in a 
 polished floor. A mist hung over the garden 
 of the Tuilleries and the blackness was stabbed 
 here and there by stiletto points of electric light. 
 
 The Eldridges' private sitting room showed 
 doubly cheerful after the chill darkness outside.
 
 THE PASTEBOARD HELMET 165 
 
 Dilke was almost dazzled by its brightness and 
 experienced a sudden rise of spirits from the 
 mere surroundings. 
 
 Madame du Pont and Joyce were seated in one 
 corner before a large mirror which duplicated 
 their figures and gave the effect of a party, 
 though the only visitors were an Englishman 
 and a young Frenchman who had been dining 
 with them. Dilke was secretly disappointed. 
 His thoughts had been so full of Joyce that he 
 had dwelt upon this meeting, had counted on 
 finding her alone with her father and watching 
 her expression as she greeted him. Now every- 
 thing was conventional and commonplace. 
 "Well," he told himself, "it is best so; con- 
 ventions are a great help to self-command." 
 
 As Dilke entered, the room seemed only a 
 setting for Joyce in her gown of pale green 
 crepe embroidered with lilies and cut low so that 
 her rounded throat looked like another lily 
 rising from its greenness. Her head turned 
 slowly at the sound of his entrance, and the colour 
 rose in her cheeks and flushed the tips of her 
 delicate ears as she came forward to greet him. 
 She stretched out a cold little hand in welcome ; 
 but her eyes drooped so that their meaning 
 was hidden as Dilke looked down upon them 
 from his greater height. 
 
 The visitors rose, and Madame du Pont
 
 166 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 brushed aside the folds of her lace robe to make 
 room for the newcomer near her ; but he declined 
 to avail himself of the suggested opportunity, 
 as he perceived that she was carrying on an 
 animated conversation in French with the man 
 next her. 
 
 Dilke's command of French was limited to 
 monosyllables, with a few variants for business 
 purposes. He could buy tickets and inquire 
 the names of streets, but he realised that he 
 had no equipment for drawing-room conver- 
 sation. 
 
 Joyce, on the contrary, talked with an 
 astonishing freedom, and an inaccuracy so 
 glaring that it did not suggest any attempt to 
 speak the language, but rather a desire to 
 establish a friendly medium of communication 
 with fellow human beings, between whom and 
 herself an unfortunate barrier had been raised. 
 The manner which accompanied it was so 
 winning, that verbs and genders fell into their 
 place of due subordination, and the Frenchman 
 found an additional piquancy in her American 
 accent. 
 
 With Madame du Pont the case was quite 
 different. Her French could be detected as 
 that of a foreigner only by a slightly conscious 
 and academic quality, which marked it as 
 acquired after childhood; but she found it
 
 THE PASTEBOARD HELMET 167 
 
 easier to convey the shadings of what she wished 
 to say in French than in her native tongue. 
 Now, as she talked, her spirits were at their 
 highest, her laugh at its lightest. Nevertheless 
 Dilke did not find himself attracted. He chose 
 from preference the seat next Joyce, and dropped 
 into it with a curious sense of finding himself 
 at home. 
 
 "And the German visit?" he began. 
 
 Joyce's mouth drooped and her eyebrows 
 rose. 
 
 "Ah!" Dilke exclaimed, "the visit, I see, was 
 not a success. I expected as much from the 
 beginning." 
 
 Joyce studied him with her little puckering 
 frown. 
 
 "Are you one of those objectionable psychic 
 people who know in advance the things which 
 the rest of us discover too soon?" 
 
 " Objectionable, doubtless," Dilke answered, 
 " but a soothsayer only under very obvious con- 
 ditions. I know a German household; I know 
 your father; I know you there was no miracle 
 in foreseeing the result of the combination. In 
 fact, I fancy that I could describe your visit 
 to you as well as if I had been on the spot." 
 
 "You don't need to go into a trance, do 
 you?" 
 
 " Not in the least. It fell out in this way.
 
 168 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 You arrived at the castle in a state bordering 
 on nervous prostration. You had no fear of 
 the Baron, but you dreaded the servants. You 
 did not know what fees you should give them, 
 nor what services you should expect from the 
 different ones." 
 
 " You are a mind reader! " 
 
 " Next, you were uncertain about your father. 
 Oh, there is no need of keeping up pretences 
 between you and me. Frankness is essential. 
 He makes you apprehensive on all social occa- 
 sions. He is a man of precarious speech and 
 impossible silences. He has never learned the 
 conversational value of the question mark, and 
 he issues his opinions as if they were papal bulls, 
 to be met only by assent or defiance." 
 
 "Really, you ought not to be saying this to 
 me," Joyce objected faintly. 
 
 " But it is true. Assume for the moment that 
 I am Henry, and grant me a brother's privilege 
 of speaking the truth." 
 
 " It is in his truthful moods that I like Henry 
 least, and I am afraid that I shall like you still 
 less if you adopt his role." 
 
 "Nevertheless, and in spite of incurring that 
 awful risk, I shall do it. You have been grow- 
 ing thin and white since I have been away. 
 Soon you will repress yourself into a ghost, a 
 restrained shadow. You must speak freely to
 
 THE PASTEBOARD HELMET 169 
 
 someone, and you must let someone speak 
 freely to you. Is it a bargain ? " 
 
 Joyce nodded, brightening. 
 
 " Then let me tell you more about your visit. 
 There was the Baron, a gentleman with a waist 
 as broad as his accent, and he had a son in the 
 army." 
 
 " Somebody told you that! " 
 
 "Not at all. There always is a son in the 
 army, and he is generally visiting at the ancestral 
 castle on furlough. This particular son had 
 fierce military mustachios which he twirled 
 while he was talking, as if he would eat an 
 enemy at short notice; but he had a soft heart 
 nevertheless in times of peace, and he promptly 
 fell in love with you." 
 
 Here Dilke paused and looked inquiringly 
 at Joyce. Like most mind readers, he was 
 very dependent on such data as expression and 
 involuntary movements of assent or dissent for 
 his divination; but Joyce's features were under 
 good control, and he was obliged to proceed 
 slowly and tentatively. 
 
 " You would have found his attentions rather 
 diverting than otherwise, except that you were 
 in constant apprehension of strained relations 
 between your father and the Baron. This kept 
 your nerves somewhat tense, and when, near the 
 end of the visit, the devotion of the Baron's son
 
 170 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 found its way to direct and somewhat violent 
 speech- 
 Joyce looked up in amazement. Then, per- 
 ceiving the smile in Dilke's eyes, she burst into 
 unrestrained laughter. 
 
 "You are a wizard," she said, "but like most 
 of your craft you are half a fraud, and you 
 frequently miss your guess. Let us go over 
 to papa. I see by his expression that he thinks 
 you are neglecting him." 
 
 Rising, she led the way to the table beside 
 which Mr. Eldridge sat studying a map of 
 Paris and its environs, under the light pulled close 
 to his elbow. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge growled out a welcome, the surli- 
 ness of which was explained by his foot out- 
 stretched on a chair before him. 
 
 "Ah!" observed Dilke, studying his patient, 
 " I see that you have been taking literally the 
 advice which I gave you before we parted 
 in Switzerland. I intended it humorously, but 
 my efforts in that line are seldom successful. 
 How many bottles of old wine did you consume 
 at the Schloss to bring you to this pass? " 
 
 "You ought to have stayed with us," Mr. 
 Eldridge asserted, with the air of one who has 
 found a grievance, and does not intend to be 
 robbed of it. 
 
 " You forget, Papa," said his daughter, " it was
 
 THE PASTEBOARD HELMET 171 
 
 we who left Doctor Dilke, not he who deserted 
 us." 
 
 "Go on, Joyce. Of course it was my fault. 
 Whatever happens, you always try to put me 
 in the wrong." 
 
 Joyce waited, with the gentle weariness 
 familiar in the mother of a fractious child, for 
 the querulousness to blow by. She had grown 
 accustomed to her father's manner, and vaguely 
 appreciated that it covered a genuine affection; 
 but in the presence of strangers it wounded her 
 to the quick, and for some reason the sympathy 
 which she read in Dilke 's eyes was harder to bear 
 than the harshness which caused it. 
 
 " Newbold is hoping that you will bring Miss 
 Eldridge soon to see the portrait," said Dilke, 
 thinking to change the current of Mr. Eldridge 's 
 thought. 
 
 "A portrait of Miss Eldridge?" inquired the 
 young Englishman, who had followed Joyce to 
 the table. 
 
 "Yes," said Dilke, "an excellent likeness, and 
 therefore, it is needless to say, a charming 
 picture, which has just been painted by Mr. 
 Brackett Newbold." 
 
 " Newbold! " echoed young Cholmondeley, " I 
 have heard that name somewhere. Was he a 
 friend of a man named Brandyce at one time 
 captain in the service ? "
 
 172 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " He is, I believe," Dilke answered. " Do you 
 know Brandyce?" 
 
 14 Yes, that is I did. Is he a friend of yours? " 
 
 Dilke hesitated a moment. If he ignored any 
 special relation to Brandyce, he might learn 
 certain things concerning which his curiosity 
 was much aroused ; but loyalty conquered. 
 
 "I don't know that I can claim him as a 
 friend," he replied, "but he saved my life." 
 
 "Oh, but that is very interesting!" Cholmon- 
 deley exclaimed, and Joyce raised her eyes 
 expectantly; then, reading a visible reluctance 
 in Dilke's face, she said quickly: "We will 
 not ask you about it. Probably the subject 
 is a painful one. For myself I hate to dwell 
 upon past dangers. It makes the future seem 
 more full of risks." 
 
 "Tell on, tell on!" burst out Mr. Eldridge, 
 who had no idea of being balked of news by his 
 daughter's hesitant scruples. 
 
 Dilke shut his lips and squared his chin. He 
 did not like the tone of command, nor allow 
 for the fact that peremptoriness and profanity 
 are only the outward and visible signs of an 
 inward and unspiritual condition. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge treated his ailments as if they 
 were an insult from Nature, a distinct grievance 
 which constituted a sufficient reason for ill 
 temper to be vented somewhere, and since it
 
 THE PASTEBOARD HELMET 173 
 
 could not very well be inflicted upon Nature, 
 who showed herself singularly indifferent, he 
 deflected his wrath to his daughter. 
 
 " Papa has suffered a great deal with his 
 gout," she said with timid appeal in her eyes, 
 striving to avert an impending conflict by pro- 
 pitiating the stronger power. 
 
 Instantly the physician in Dilke asserted itself, 
 and the physician cannot be offended; the 
 manifestation of ill temper being to him only 
 one more pathological phenomenon. 
 
 "Your foot is rather painful, I am afraid, 
 Mr. Eldridge," he said, "but perhaps you will 
 feel better afterward. Whatever the trouble 
 is, it is better at the surface than suppressed." 
 
 " I prefer it suppressed entirely," Mr. Eldridge 
 observed drily. 
 
 His good humour was awakening already under 
 the influence of the doctor's return. 
 
 "That's right," said Dilke; "I agree with 
 you, and we will proceed to try to suppress it, 
 not by driving it in, but by driving it out. First 
 we will put on a hot fomentation, then we 
 will bind up the foot in cotton wool and 
 cover it with oiled silk. After that I will find 
 some wine of colchicum that I have in my trunk. 
 I suppose the trunk has come 
 
 Joyce nodded. 
 
 "Then we will let him have some of that,
 
 174 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 and I think we shall soon see a change for the 
 better." 
 
 "I wish you would tell us about that man's 
 saving your life," Mr. Eldridge petitioned quite 
 humbly. " I haven't heard an interesting re- 
 mark since you left." 
 
 "Of course," Dilke answered, "I will tell 
 you if you really care to hear about it; but 
 I remember an old tutor of mine who said 
 to me once: 'Stop talking about yourself one 
 minute before the listeners are bored.' 'How 
 can I tell?' I asked him. 'Precisely; how can 
 you?' he observed. 'Therein lies the gist of 
 my advice.' I have tried to remember and 
 act upon it ever since." 
 
 "You know that we are interested," said 
 Joyce. " Please tell us all about it." 
 
 She sank into a deep arm chair as she spoke and 
 young Cholmondeley leaned against the mantel. 
 
 "There is not much to tell," Dilke began. 
 " So far as I am concerned, it is a story of stupid- 
 ity, pure and simple. Once, when I was camp- 
 ing, I fell over a precipice." 
 
 " It is a wonder you were not killed out- 
 right," said Mr. Eldridge. "You are always 
 doing foolhardy things." 
 
 "Yes," answered Dilke, "but you make that 
 observation in regard to so many things, that 
 if I heeded you I should take to knitting in
 
 THE PASTEBOAKD HELMET 175 
 
 a rocking chair as the only prudent occupation. 
 For myself, I agree with Thoreau that a man 
 sits as many risks as he runs. However, I 
 started to tell you about Brandy ce." 
 
 Joyce leaned forward eagerly with tightly 
 clasped hands and eyes fixed full on the 
 speaker. 
 
 Dilke was conscious of a mean wish that he 
 had never begun the story. Never before had 
 those eyes been fixed so intently upon him. No 
 exploit of his, he thought, could have had power 
 to draw forth that eager, questioning glance. 
 Still he went on with a tolerably steady tone, 
 and told the story from beginning to end, giving 
 Brandyce full credit at every step. 
 
 "He always was a ready-witted chap," ex- 
 claimed Cholmondeley, when Dilke had finished. 
 
 "You owe your life to him, don't you?" said 
 Joyce, musingly. 
 
 "Undoubtedly." 
 
 " Are you glad to owe it to him? " 
 
 Dilke started. Was there a wireless teleg- 
 raphy between him and this girl that she should 
 divine his inmost thoughts? 
 
 Joyce Eldridge had a quality of perpetual 
 surprise. Her manner was cool and soft as 
 snow. Her grey eyes were generally held rather 
 down as if she had been convent bred. Then 
 suddenly the lids would lift, and with a round,
 
 176 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 direct gaze she would shoot an arrow straight 
 to the bull's-eye. It was so now. 
 
 "I don't know," said Dilke, evasively. "I 
 should be obliged first to settle the question 
 whether life is a boon or an obligation." 
 
 "An opportunity, perhaps," Joyce suggested, 
 withdrawing a little as she observed Dilke's 
 withdrawal. It was characteristic of her that 
 for every step forward in an approach to in- 
 timacy, she took two backward. She might 
 have a heart somewhere; but it was not to be 
 looked for on her sleeve. 
 
 "I should call it rather a prize package," 
 said Dilke. " A man puts his hand into the bag 
 and grasps he knows not what an opportunity 
 it may be, or a disappointment, as chance 
 wills." 
 
 " Do you believe in his right to throw it away, 
 as he would a prize package, if it does not please 
 him? " asked the Englishman. 
 
 " I don't say that. There are others to be 
 considered. It may be his duty to accept the 
 disappointment and make the best of it. At 
 the worst, it is soon over. If immortality were 
 an established fact I should regard it as the 
 crowning injustice of life." 
 
 "Oh, come, come, Dilke!" protested Mr. Eld- 
 ridge, who was quite orthodox in the intervals 
 of his profanities.
 
 THE PASTEBOARD HELMET 177 
 
 " You would enjoy an immortality of gout, 
 perhaps," said Dilke, watching Mr. Eldridge's 
 scowl as a new twinge seized his foot. 
 
 "That is a bodily ailment and would cease 
 with the body." 
 
 "As would most individual characteristics, 
 good as well as bad," Dilke answered. 
 
 "But to return to Mr. Brandy ce," Joyce 
 rushed in, seeing trouble ahead if the talk 
 drifted further in this line. " I wish you would 
 tell us more of him. It is a comfort to find 
 that there are such men in these prosaic days." 
 
 "You may have the opportunity of meeting 
 Brandy ce and judging him for yourself," Dilke 
 answered with a touch of constraint in his voice. 
 "There is a possibility that he may cross with 
 us. He talks of sailing on the i5th. 
 
 Joyce coloured brightly. "I am very glad," 
 she said. 
 
 For two weeks Dilke had been assuring himself 
 that he was not in love with Joyce Eldridge. 
 He had enumerated her faults, clearly enough 
 detected, he had dwelt upon her coolness toward 
 him, and told himself that he was not the man 
 to die of unrequited affection. He had pointed 
 out that marriage was not for him at present 
 under any conditions ; and now, in the twinkling 
 of an eye, all these sophistries were swept 
 away as he looked at her and saw that her
 
 178 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 thoughts were dwelling with eager interest upon 
 Brandy ce and the prospect of meeting him. 
 All at once the pasteboard helmet gave way, 
 fell to pieces at his feet, and Dilke knew that 
 love had struck the blow.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 
 
 " THE mission of woman is the gracious accept- 
 ance of the services of man." 
 
 Dilke made this observation as Joyce declined 
 his assistance in putting on her jacket. 
 
 They were waiting at the Pont Royal to take 
 the river steamer for St. Cloud. Madame du 
 Pont was standing at a little distance talking 
 with her uncle. They were arranging the de- 
 tails of her crossing the ocean with his party, as 
 some of her affairs and investments in America 
 needed her personal attention. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge drew out his watch and looked 
 at it with some traces of his old irritability. 
 Newbold was late, and Mr. Eldridge detested 
 unpunctuality. 
 
 Personally Dilke was sorry that Newbold was 
 to be of the party. Dilke preferred in general, 
 as he had told Joyce, not to mix friendships, and 
 in particular he felt that there would be a con- 
 straint in Newbold's presence owing to a con- 
 sciousness on both sides of past confidences. He 
 wished that he had kept his troubles and prob- 
 
 179
 
 180 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 lems to himself. " Slave of the spoken, lord of 
 the unspoken word." How often he had said 
 that over to himself and how little he had acted 
 upon it! 
 
 While he was in Newbold's presence he had 
 steadfastly resolved to adopt the artist's jovial 
 philosophy of life; but to-day he felt a peculiar 
 reaction of depression. Our habits are like 
 the French aristocracy nothing short of a 
 revolution can overthrow their power. 
 
 " The mission of woman to accept the services 
 of man?" Joyce repeated in answer to Dilke's 
 remark, and added scornfully, "You don't 
 believe that." 
 
 " Oh, no, certainly not; why do I not?" 
 
 That is the sort of response which men make 
 to drooping feminine eyes. They do not talk to 
 each other in that fashion. 
 
 " Because " Joyce began, and then inter- 
 rupted herself with: "There is Mr. Newbold! 
 We must hurry a little if we are to catch this 
 boat." 
 
 "Newbold always catches everything," Dilke 
 answered ; " but he catches it by the tail. Nothing 
 annoys him more than to find himself with five 
 minutes to spare." 
 
 The artist was in his highest spirits, and 
 seemed to find the trip on the river quite the 
 most delightful thing that could have been
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 181 
 
 planned, though for that matter if the expedi- 
 tion had been to Montmartre or Pere La Chaise, 
 he would have found equal cause for exhilara- 
 tion, especially if Madame du Pont had been 
 of the party. His enjoyment of most things 
 was purely subjective, and consisted in elimi- 
 nating the unpleasant side and dwelling on the 
 other. 
 
 And yet there are worse things in the world, 
 even objectively considered, than floating 
 through the heart of Paris in sunshiny weather, 
 slipping past the bridges and the islands, with 
 the gilded dome of the Invalides glistening in 
 the distance and two charming American women 
 in the foreground. 
 
 "Oh, look!" cried Joyce, as they passed the 
 lie des Cygnes, where swans no more disport 
 themselves. "See Liberty enlightening Paris 
 just as she does New York! " 
 
 "Yes," replied Newbold, "it makes one think 
 of Madame Roland. On the whole, of all the 
 crimes wrought in the name of liberty, Bar- 
 tholdi's is the most execrable." 
 
 " It must be very uncomfortable to be an 
 artist," Madame du Pont observed; "you see so 
 many faults that forbid you to enjoy things 
 which the rest of us find quite inspiring." 
 
 " Not at all," Newbold protested stoutly; "we 
 enjoy as many other things which most people
 
 182 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 find ugly human gargoyles, and old ash heaps 
 with their nice shaded greys and purples." 
 
 "Nine-tenths of your enjoyment in these 
 things is pure conceit," volunteered Dilke com- 
 batively. " You are secretly pleased that other 
 people do not find them beautiful, and you are 
 thinking what a fine fellow you are that you do." 
 
 Newbold laughed lightly, wrinkling his nose 
 and showing his white teeth. "Very well," he 
 answered, " have it any way you like. I am not 
 for tracking my sensations to their lair like that. 
 I am quite satisfied to enjoy without asking 
 why, and as for vanity, it is as good a foundation 
 for enjoyment as any other. Don't you think 
 so, Miss Eldridge ? " 
 
 Instead of answering his question, Joyce asked 
 another. " What is woman's mission, Mr. New- 
 bold?" 
 
 " Don't propound problems on a pleasure trip, 
 my dear," said her father, who till now had been 
 occupied in checking off the famous buildings 
 in his Baedeker. He never felt that he had 
 seen a sight till he had set a cross against it 
 probably a reminiscence of his banking experience 
 and constituting a sort of receipt from memory. 
 
 " But I want to know, Papa," Joyce answered, 
 smiling. "Doctor Dilke and I were discussing 
 the matter when Mr. Newbold came in. I don't 
 know exactly what I think."
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 183 
 
 " Woman's mission," said Newbold, " is not to 
 think, but to be." 
 
 Joyce laughed. " Doctor Dilke was just tell- 
 ing me that her mission was gracious accept- 
 ance of what man could do for her. I suppose 
 from your remark that we are to include think- 
 ing." 
 
 "Of course," said Mr. Eldridge, as if the sug- 
 gestion were too obvious to bear discussion. 
 
 "And are we to be equally grateful whether 
 the service pleases us or not, and however much 
 we may happen to disagree with the thinking?" 
 
 Madame du Font's suddenly lifted eyes car- 
 ried a shaft of derisive laughter. 
 
 Newbold threw back his head in a way fre- 
 quent with him when he heard anything which 
 pleased him; half closing his eyes and dilating 
 his nostrils, as if to breathe in the aroma of 
 the jest. 
 
 " Not grateful, perhaps," said Dilke answering 
 his own reflections rather than the speaker's, 
 as is common among men. " Heaven knows 
 gratitude is not a bellboy to be summoned by 
 pressing a button; but gracious, acknowledging 
 the intention to serve you." 
 
 "And then," said Newbold answering his own 
 reflections, " you have no need of thought. You 
 have divine intuitions." 
 
 "Humbug, Newbold!" exclaimed Dilke. "In-
 
 184 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 tuitions are opinions which the holder has not 
 taken the trouble to submit to the processes of 
 reason, and correspondingly worthless. Take 
 notice, Miss Eldridge, that it was not I who 
 made such an accusation against your sex." 
 
 "That is the point of view of the hardened 
 materialist," said Newbold. " I regard intuition 
 as a reasoning process too swift and subtle to be 
 reduced to logical terms, as smoke is the one 
 thing in the world more subtle than water. It 
 can rise above its source, where water cannot 
 follow." 
 
 "Except as it evaporates like steam," said 
 Dilke, pugnaciously. 
 
 While these young people had been using 
 their tongues instead of their eyes, the little 
 boat had been puffing its way along, with a stop 
 here and there at a bridge, past the thick 
 clustering edifices of Paris, and out into the 
 wider outlook where distant hills peeped above 
 the buildings on the bank and the river showed 
 bluer under the unsmoked skies. And now St. 
 Cloud was in sight St. Cloud with its park and 
 its leveled chateau and its beautiful church. To 
 which should they betake themselves first ? 
 
 Mr. Eldridge settled the matter swiftly and 
 imperatively by announcing that they would 
 have luncheon. No sight-seeing for him with- 
 out a comfortable meal as a foundation. They
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 185 
 
 found their way to the Pavilion Bleu from the 
 boat landing, and seated themselves around 
 a little table. Mr. Eldridge picked up the 
 bill of fare and devoted a business-like con- 
 sideration to ordering the meal. 
 
 "Doctor, can I have some filet?" he asked, 
 frankly bored with the conversation which he 
 had caught from time to time; and as usual 
 blaming Joyce for allowing it to take such a 
 silly turn. To Mr. Eldridge's mind everything 
 was silly which had no practical bearing. 
 
 Dilke looked doubtful. "Filet aux champig- 
 nons, gar con! "said Mr. Eldridge authoritatively, 
 " and a bottle of Burgundy ! " 
 
 Dilke looked deprecatingly at Joyce, and she 
 returned the glance with the sympathy of a 
 common powerlessness. 
 
 Newbold intercepted the look and placed his 
 own interpretation upon it. The reason why 
 Newbold saw so much was that few believed 
 him capable of seeing anything, and no one ever 
 got the benefit of the things which he did see. 
 
 " Have you been to the theatres much here in 
 Paris, Miss Eldridge?" Newbold asked by way 
 of filling the slight, awkward pause after the filet 
 episode. 
 
 " No," said Joyce, " I do not care for French 
 drama." 
 
 "Curious!" said Newbold, "I find it the only
 
 186 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 drama in the modern world. It has such 
 finesse, such art of climax. What is lacking?" 
 
 "Morals," said Dilke, taking up the cudgels. 
 
 "Ah, of course, if you drag in morals." 
 
 " I do not drag in morals. I simply decline 
 to throw them out of the window." 
 
 " But in the interest of art 
 
 " It is in the interest of art that I am speaking. 
 Standards of life universally accepted are essen- 
 tial to the making of either comedy or tragedy, 
 because it is variations from those standards 
 which stir one's pity or amusement." 
 
 Newbold was opening his lips to reply when 
 Mr. Eldridge exclaimed: "Great Scott! I have 
 a telegram for you, Dilke. I forgot all about it." 
 
 "Thank you," said Dilke, taking the telegram 
 and laying it unopened beside his place. 
 
 "Doctor Dilke," said Madame du Pont, with 
 a swift return to practical life, " don't pretend 
 to be so superior to the natural human impulse 
 of curiosity. You know that you are consumed 
 with curiosity to know what is in that telegram." 
 
 "Not I," Dilke answered. "I have rarely 
 received a telegram which did not contain news 
 which I would prefer not to read. Why hasten 
 the unpleasant moment?" 
 
 "Nonsense!" exclaimed Mr. Eldridge im- 
 patiently. " It's not business to neglect a tele- 
 gram. Open it at once!"
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 187 
 
 Again the glance of mutual comprehension 
 passed between Joyce and Dilke. Again New- 
 bold noted it and laid it aside for future reference. 
 
 "With your permission, then," said Dilke, 
 and tore open the envelope. " It is from Captain 
 Brandy ce," he observed as he folded the tele- 
 gram. " He asks me to secure a stateroom for 
 him on our steamer." 
 
 "A whole stateroom!" commented Mr. Eld- 
 ridge. "I call that extravagant." 
 
 " Brandy ce must have had a run of luck," 
 said Newbold to himself. " He borrowed five 
 pounds of me and has not returned it yet." 
 
 "So Captain Brandy ce is to cross with us!" 
 exclaimed Joyce. " Shall I find him amusing? " 
 
 "I fear," said Newbold, stroking his little 
 pointed beard contemplatively, "that I do not 
 always know whether people are amusing. 
 Amusingness depends so much on the person to 
 be amused, you know. How can you tell?" 
 
 " Do people invite him on social occasions or 
 do they only speak well of him when he is not 
 present?" queried Madame du Pont. "That is 
 the test. I am always suspicious of a man whom 
 I never meet anywhere, and whom I constantly 
 hear spoken of as ' dear old so and so.' ' 
 
 " B randy ce is invited on social occasions, 
 and I never heard him alluded to as ' dear old 
 Brandy ce,' " said Dilke.
 
 188 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Then I fancy that I shall like him," said 
 Joyce, smiling. 
 
 Joyce's remark stung Dilke, and luncheon 
 being ended he rose and proposed a stroll in the 
 park. Joyce rose also, but her father drew out 
 two cigars. " You and Emilie and Dilke may 
 go," he said to his daughter; "but Mr. New- 
 bold has seen it all" (Mr. Eldridge could not 
 imagine any advantage in seeing a thing twice 
 when he had once checked it off). "He, I 
 am sure, would rather have a comfortable smoke 
 here with me. A park is a park the world over, 
 and as for a church, I've seen so many that 
 they are just a jumble in my head." 
 
 Newbold bowed assent; but managed to con- 
 vey a glance of comic resignation toward Dilke, 
 a glance which said as plainly as words, " I told 
 you how it would be." 
 
 After Madame du Pont, Joyce and Dilke had 
 left, the talk fell flat. Every subject which in- 
 terested Newbold failed to interest Mr. Eld- 
 ridge, so at last it fell into a monologue by the 
 host on the American banking system, which 
 concerned Newbold about as much as the cur- 
 rency in Mars. 
 
 He found answers uncalled for, however, and 
 that left him able to carry on an independent 
 train of thought while Mr. Eldridge talked. He 
 fell to speculating a good deai on Dilke and on
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 189 
 
 his position in regard to the Eldridges. When 
 he first heard of that young man's good fortune 
 in finding such a patron he was inclined to be 
 envious; but time softens to us the prosperity 
 of our friends by developing its attendant incon- 
 veniences, and as Newbold looked into the 
 future, he could see many possible inconveniences 
 and embarrassments for Dilke. 
 
 Joyce seemed to be on the borderland of 
 serious interest, but would she ever cross the 
 border? Now she visibly swayed toward Dilke, 
 now away from him. A breath of wind might 
 blow them together or separate them forever. 
 A delicate situation, and likely to be further com- 
 plicated by the introduction of Brandyce into the 
 drama. Yes, Brandyce was distinctly a factor to 
 be reckoned with. Impossible to say how he 
 would impress a girl like Joyce Eldridge. 
 
 As he recalled her looks to-day, he felt that 
 he could understand the strength of Dilke's 
 sentiment. The elusive quality of her beauty 
 was a distinct charm in itself. On the whole, 
 he was glad that he was not to be further en- 
 tangled in this already too complicated affair. 
 
 After Mr. Eldridge had been discoursing on 
 banking for an interminable half hour, Newbold 
 caught sight of a black dress moving toward them. 
 
 "Why, there is Madame du Pont!" he ex- 
 claimed,
 
 190 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 4 
 
 "What brought you back so soon, Emilie?" 
 asked Mr. Eldridge as Madame du Pont came up 
 the steps alone. 
 
 " Old age, Uncle. I found myself unable to 
 keep pace with Joyce and Doctor Dilke. I went 
 to the cascades; but I had no courage for the 
 church. They insisted on coming back with 
 me ; but I would not let them come beyond the 
 turn of the path." 
 
 "Please sit down here," urged Newbold, 
 moving a chair where the sunlight was falling 
 full. 
 
 "Thank you, but the light is rather bright 
 there." 
 
 " You should always sit in a blaze of sunshine. 
 You seem a part of it.'* 
 
 "I think I will walk a little, myself," said 
 Mr. Eldridge. No one attempted to dissuade 
 him, and he strolled away with a freshly lighted 
 cigar. When he was gone Newbold drew his 
 chair nearer Madame du Pont. 
 
 " This is perhaps the last time that I shall see 
 you alone before you sail. That is nothing to 
 you; but it is a great deal to me. You do not 
 care for me. Tell me why." 
 
 "We are too different, my friend." 
 
 "I might change." 
 
 " For the worse, perhaps, if it were to make 
 you more like me."
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 191 
 
 Newbold shook his head in quick negative. 
 
 "No matter. You could not do it if you 
 wished ever so much. We were not born under 
 the same star. I am a worldly woman. This 
 is neither a confession nor a boast. It is the 
 simple truth. I should never be satisfied with 
 the life which you could offer me. I worship 
 success." 
 
 "Are the gates of success barred to me for- 
 ever?" Newbold asked with a smile which for 
 once had something of bitterness in it. 
 
 "Of the success for which I care yes," 
 Madame du Pont went on kindly, but firmly. 
 "You paint well. You will paint better; but 
 you will always live in some queer corner and 
 dine on a packing box. I like to dine on a 
 packing box once I should hate it and you 
 if I had to do it always." 
 
 "And why may I not make money like other 
 men?" 
 
 "Because you will not conform. You will 
 make no compromises, and compromise is the 
 condition of success." 
 
 "You are very right, Madame. I will not 
 have success at that cost. I will do my work 
 just as well as I can do it. If the public will 
 not have it why, that is its own affair. But 
 you surely you can see that it is better for a 
 man to do his best work an4 ta&e what come*
 
 192 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 of it than to juggle with his artistic conscience 
 and paint pot boilers." 
 
 "Oh, it is not any violation of your artistic 
 conscience for which I would ask only a 
 greater pliancy in meeting men and women and 
 trying to please them." 
 
 "You, at least, have no reason to com- 
 plain- 
 
 " No, but I should like to see you equally 
 anxious to please others." 
 
 "Then there would be no compliment in 
 it." 
 
 "Ah!" said Madame du Pont with an en- 
 chanting smile, "but I should not know, and 
 when I saw you popular, I should say: 'There 
 is a man whom everyone admires, and he 
 admires me.' Then your admiration would 
 be trebled in value. Here come Joyce and 
 Doctor Dilke." 
 
 There was a certain relief in Madame du Font's 
 tone as she made the announcement. Her gift 
 lay in skating over thin ice, and she felt that she 
 was in danger of breaking through and losing 
 control of the situation. 
 
 Newbold turned quickly at her words and 
 saw the two advancing toward them. Joyce 
 was carrying a bunch of wild flowers and her 
 cheeks were red ; but she came up rather eagerly 
 to join Newbold and made a point of addressing
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION 193 
 
 most of her conversation to him till they took 
 the train for Paris. 
 
 Newbold himself was not sorry for this. He 
 felt that all further talk with Madame du Pont 
 was worse than useless painful to him and 
 incapable of effect upon her. He was glad 
 when he bade her good bye at the hotel on the 
 rue de Rivoli, where she was to dine with her 
 cousin. He made his way hastily back to his 
 studio, determined to stifle his sorrows in work 
 tiU night fell. 
 
 On his table he found a letter. He opened it 
 with indifference ; an indifference which changed 
 to incredulous delight as he read. The note 
 contained a commission for the decoration of 
 the main hall in one of the largest houses in 
 Washington, a mansion to be occupied on its 
 completion by the Senator who now wrote 
 offering Newbold the work, and giving him 
 three months in which to complete it. 
 
 The artist laid down the letter and stood in 
 the middle of the floor absently stroking his 
 beard. Then he went to the corner, drew out 
 Madame du Pont's portrait and set it on the 
 easel. 
 
 "I know how this order came to me," he 
 murmured, half aloud, addressing the portrait. 
 " It came through you, through some of your 
 Washington connections. I will do it well.
 
 194 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 You shall see I will do it well, as if it were for 
 yourself. This is what your talk at St. Cloud 
 meant. You were trying to prepare me for 
 this. You think that I cannot change. Well, 
 you will see. To be the inspiration of a man's 
 best work that is the mission of woman, 
 about which we were talking to-day, and you 
 are fulfilling it. I thank you."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 STRANGERS AND FRIENDS 
 
 IN the reading room, situated on the ground 
 floor of the hotel, and opening from the break- 
 fast room, Joyce Eldridge sat one morning 
 in the sunshine, reading a letter from Mrs. Fen- 
 wick. 
 
 Joyce was guiltily conscious of her own epis- 
 tolary shortcomings toward her aunt, and know- 
 ing well that lady's views on such subjects, she 
 opened the letter with some trepidation, fearing 
 to find her sins set forth with a force and direct- 
 ness which Mrs. Fenwick did not hesitate to 
 employ toward her niece when she thought it 
 necessary. Affection only quickened the in- 
 convenient clearness of her vision, and faults 
 which might have been pardoned in those 
 to whom she was indifferent were summarily 
 dealt with in the case of anyone whom she 
 loved. 
 
 As Joyce's eyes fell upon the opening words, 
 she saw that her fears had not been groundless. 
 The letter was dated "Old Field, September 
 tenth," and began: 
 
 195
 
 196 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " My Dear Joyce: 
 
 "It seems four years instead of four months since 
 I have seen your face and heard the sound of your voice. 
 Letters are a poor substitute for personal intercourse, 
 and you have been rather chary of even these. Prompt- 
 ness in letter writing, my dear niece, is a shibboleth of 
 courtesy and should not be neglected. On this side of 
 the water, the telephone has rudely taken the place of 
 writing, and secures the maximum of trouble to the 
 other person with the minimum of inconvenience to 
 one's self, a principle which seems to have found ac- 
 ceptance with your generation. But the horrid clang 
 of the telephone, which summons one as if one were 
 a servant, is better than the ungraciousness of silence. 
 I would rather receive a souvenir card, that lowest 
 depth of infamy in correspondence, than to hear nothing 
 and fancy that you have quite forgotten me. Write 
 me details. Write me whom you are meeting and 
 what they are saying. Do not trouble yourself to 
 describe the scenery. What I wish is to know all about 
 you and your father and Doctor Dilke. 
 
 " From what you write of fimilie I judge that she has 
 changed very little since I used to know her as a girl. 
 She was then vain, flippant and selfish, and her marriage 
 tended to develop those qualities. She prided herself 
 on her manner; but she had learned neither deference 
 for the old nor helpfulness to the young. To judge a 
 woman's courtesy you must observe the bearing toward 
 those of a different generation or a different class 
 people from whom she has nothing to gain except good 
 will. 
 
 "Altogether, I confess that fimilie du Pont is not a 
 person whom I covet as a friend for you, and I do not 
 like to see you so strongly attracted to her. I dare say
 
 STRANGERS AND FRIENDS 197 
 
 you think this the result of prejudice. It is not it is 
 the result of judgment. 
 
 "You speak of my belonging to 'the old school.' My 
 dear, there is no old school. The world is divided now, 
 as it always has been, into two classes, one of which 
 believes in noise and display and self-advertising, the 
 other in a quiet pursuit of one's own aims and interests, 
 with due regard for the rights of others and an apprecia- 
 tion of the dignity of privacy. One class is prominent, 
 the other influential. 
 
 "I should be very sorry to believe that the first was 
 representative of America, though it certainly proclaims 
 itself such, and, as the trumpets on its tallyhos and 
 automobiles give strident notice of its approach, no one 
 can be ignorant of its presence. It is open to us, how- 
 ever, to accept or decline its association as we choose. 
 
 "In New York, I confess that it is difficult to escape 
 from its contact. It is bad enough to live in a city which 
 calls itself ' New ' without having the fitness of the term 
 forced upon one, by the garishness of recent riches and 
 the varnish of freshly acquired equipages. But here 
 on my quiet acres above the Hudson, everything has the 
 old-time serenity of Nature herself. 
 
 "Henry calls the place dull. Well, perhaps if the 
 place could speak it would call him dull. Henry finds it 
 necessary to his happiness to be constantly occupied 
 no matter how little he accomplishes ; to be moving and 
 moving rapidly, no matter in what direction. The auto- 
 mobile exists to meet tastes like his. 
 
 "He pities you for these months 'wasted,' as he calls 
 them, in Europe. I judge from your letters that you 
 are not greatly in need of his sympathy. Neither do I 
 need yours, expressed so warmly, for my rheumatism. I 
 wrote an account of my symptoms to Doctor Dilke
 
 198 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 partly to ask for a prescription and partly to secure an 
 account of you and of your father. His report of both 
 is satisfactory. 
 
 "I trust that you appreciate the advantage of com- 
 panionship with a man like Doctor Dilke, 'a man of 
 parts,' as they used to say. At present he has learned 
 too much from books and too little from life; but that 
 will change. So fimilie du Pont finds him ' unimportant, ' 
 does she? And what, pray, are fimilie's standards of 
 importance? But you need not answer. I know them 
 of old. Do not you be guided by them, Joyce. 
 
 " fimilie is an amusing companion in her thin, tinkling, 
 little way, but a poor counsellor and a poorer confidante. 
 Take my advice, and trust her only with creditable 
 secrets. She will repeat them and you will reap the 
 advantage. 
 
 "Your exchange confidences are not a fair bargain, 
 for you are really frank and she only seems so. You will 
 notice if you review her talk with care, that she has told 
 you nothing which she did not intend beforehand that 
 you should know. Her anecdotes of herself, however 
 refreshingly discreditable in the beginning, always take 
 on a rose-coloured light in the end. Worse than that, I 
 have sometimes had occasion to observe that they were 
 inaccurate, and nothing is so underbred as untruth- 
 fulness. 
 
 " I do not ask you to be suspicious. I only advise you 
 to be watchful. The Scriptures command us to love our 
 enemies, but not to trust them. I do not go so far as to 
 consider fimilie an enemy, but I do regard her as a 
 dangerous friend." 
 
 Joyce paused in her reading, and sat looking 
 down thoughtfully at the toes of her slippers.
 
 STRANGERS AND FRIENDS 199 
 
 "Aunt Sylvia is prejudiced. She is very unfair 
 to Emilie," the girl said to herself. Then, after 
 a moment's reflection, she added, "However, 
 it is as well to be on one's guard." 
 
 At this point in her reflections, she looked 
 up and saw Dilke standing by the table, idly 
 turning the pages of the latest Figaro. 
 
 His eyes met Joyce's glance. He crossed the 
 room and took a chair beside hers. 
 
 "You have letters from home?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes, one from Aunt Sylvia." 
 
 "Does she speak of her rheumatism?" 
 
 "Only incidentally, but she speaks of you." 
 
 "Indeed! Mrs. Fenwick's comments are so 
 trenchant that I hesitate to ask what she says." 
 
 "Oh, she speaks cordially," Joyce replied. 
 "She always does speak cordially of you; but 
 she says I wonder if she would object to my 
 telling you what she says 
 
 " Now you must tell me, or I shall imagine the 
 worst." 
 
 " It is not so bad in fact, it is not bad at all. 
 She says that you are ' a man of parts ' (isn't that 
 a good old-fashioned phrase!); but that you 
 know less of life than of books." 
 
 Dilke raised his eyebrows. 
 
 "May I ask in what connection the remark 
 was made?" he queried. 
 
 "In comparing you with Emilie," Joyce said
 
 200 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 after a moment's hesitation. "Aunt Sylvia 
 does not appreciate Emilie " 
 
 " I am not surprised at that. It is the clash 
 not only of temperaments, but of epochs. 
 Madame du Pont is the essence of the modern 
 spirit against which Mrs. Fenwick is a living 
 protest. Then they have common experiences 
 differently treated, which is always a barrier. 
 They are both widows, but they wear their rue 
 with a difference. Mrs. Fenwick thinks that 
 Madame du Pont has no heart, because she 
 finds so much worth while in life after her hus- 
 band's death. Madame du Pont considers that 
 Mrs. Fenwick has no philosophy because she 
 finds so little under similar circumstances." 
 
 Joyce looked up with a demure smile. 
 
 "It rankled, I see " 
 
 "Rankled? What rankled?" 
 
 "Aunt Sylvia's remark. You are willing to 
 show by your insight into character that you are 
 not so unskilled in real life as she thinks, and 
 you are not unwilling to have the remark re- 
 peated to her as a neat revenge." 
 
 Dilke coloured with vexation. 
 
 "I have been impertinent and ridiculous," 
 he exclaimed. " I thank you for stopping me." 
 
 Joyce's manner changed instantly. 
 
 " It is I who have been impertinent," she said. 
 "We have been thrown together so intimately
 
 STRANGERS AND FRIENDS 201 
 
 that I cannot help forgetting sometimes that I 
 am talking to a stranger." 
 
 If Joyce intended to punish Dilke for his 
 resentment, she succeeded beyond her wish. 
 He grew suddenly pale, and repeated her last 
 word. 
 
 "A stranger? Yes, I suppose I am that. But 
 even strangers may be something to each other. 
 The greatest encouragement which I ever re- 
 ceived came to me in my hour of need from a 
 stranger." 
 
 Something in Dilke 's tone touched his com- 
 panion. Her look softened and she leaned for- 
 ward, clasping both hands over her knee. 
 
 "And when was that?" she asked. 
 
 " It was once, in a crowd, when I was feeling 
 peculiarly forlorn and discouraged. I saw a 
 face a very beautiful face, but cold and utterly 
 indifferent as it turned toward me. Later it 
 fell in my way to do its owner some trifling ser- 
 vice and she thanked me with a smile which 
 changed the colour of life for me, and made me 
 feel that in what seemed an unfriendly world, 
 there might be a latent friendliness ready to be 
 called out if occasion offered. That girl will 
 never know what she did for me 
 
 "What a pity!" Joyce exclaimed. "It is 
 like the passing of Pippa. How much it would 
 mean to her if she could know! "
 
 202 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "No," Dilke answered, looking down, "I 
 don't think that she would care. The thought 
 of me as an individual probably never crossed 
 her mind. The smile was simply the expression 
 of an habitual graciousness." 
 
 "I will think of that girl after this," Joyce 
 said reflectively. "When I am tempted to be 
 sarcastic or uncivil, as I was just now, I will try 
 to cultivate a habit of graciousness ; so, you see, 
 your Pippa has done me good too." 
 
 Joyce rose as she spoke. " I think," she said, 
 "that I will go to my room and write to my 
 aunt, since we leave to-morrow. The letter 
 must reach home a few days before I do, else 
 my welcome will not be as warm as I could wish." 
 
 "Before you go," Dilke questioned, "would 
 you be willing to withdraw that objectionable 
 word 'stranger' which you applied to me a 
 minute ago?" 
 
 " Of course I will," Joyce answered. " It was 
 an absurd word to use after all our weeks of 
 intimate acquaintance 
 
 "'Acquaintance' does not satisfy me either," 
 Dilke rejoined. " Could you not stretch your 
 conscience and your vocabulary to the point of 
 calling me a friend?" 
 
 Joyce looked at him with the unselfconscious 
 gravity of a child. " I shall be very glad to 
 have you a friend, if you wish it," she said.
 
 STRANGERS AND FRIENDS 203 
 
 "But I must warn you that my standards of 
 friendship are somewhat exacting." 
 
 " I trust you will not find that mine fall below 
 them." 
 
 " Perhaps you would find mine exaggerated." 
 
 "What are these terrifying demands, may I 
 ask?" 
 
 "The chief is candour, a much more far- 
 reaching candour than that for which one looks 
 in an acquaintance. The amount of truth that 
 can be told between two people is the measure 
 of their friendship." 
 
 " Let us agree upon that basis then," Dilke 
 responded with a ring of cordial satisfaction in 
 his voice. "And since it will not do to shadow 
 the beginning of our candid friendship with even 
 a trifling deceit, let me make a confession 
 
 "Go on I am waiting," Joyce said with a 
 rising flush. 
 
 " The story which I told you a while ago of 
 the stranger, you remember " 
 
 " Yes, don't tell me that she was not real! " 
 
 " She was real. She was all that I said. What 
 I omitted to mention was that the stranger was 
 you." 
 
 Joyce raised her eyes with an expression 
 difficult to translate. 
 
 "Since we must be candid," she replied, "let 
 me make my confession I knew it all the time."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 
 
 DILKE stood with Joyce Eldridge watching 
 the wake left by the vessel as she steamed out 
 of the harbour of Hamburg. The sky was 
 grey -blue, the water blue also, but of a deeper 
 shade. The shores danced backward with the 
 rise and fall of the vessel as if they had motion 
 and were leaving instead of being left. The 
 band was playing on the deck, and everything 
 combined to give an air of festivity to this de- 
 parture. But neither Dilke nor Joyce was in 
 holiday humour. 
 
 " It is like the letting down of the curtain after 
 the play," Joyce said, "watching Europe fading 
 out of sight like that." 
 
 "Yes," Dilke answered; "and the worst of it 
 is that the end of the play means the beginning 
 of work." 
 
 " I wish that it did for me. You have no idea 
 how empty a woman's life seems when all this 
 travel and sight-seeing comes to an end and 
 there is nothing to take its place." 
 
 "But you have your housekeeping." 
 204
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 205 
 
 "Yes; but I am not needed not really 
 needed at home. A housekeeper could do it 
 as well and better." 
 
 " You are very necessary to your father." 
 
 "You really think so!" exclaimed Joyce, 
 brightening visibly. 
 
 "Why, yes, anyone can see that. His first 
 question wherever he appears is: 'Where is 
 Joyce?'" 
 
 " I am glad to have you tell me that. It gives 
 me more courage for things which are quite hard 
 to bear sometimes." 
 
 "I know I know," Dilke responded with 
 sympathy in his voice. Turning to look at her, 
 he saw tears standing on the dark fringe of her 
 eyelashes. 
 
 "Poor little girl!" he said, laying his hand 
 over hers on the railing. "You must let 
 me tell you just this once, my friend, how I 
 have watched you all these months and how I 
 have admired your patience and wisdom and 
 self-control." 
 
 "I thank you," Joyce answered, looking up 
 into his eyes, and not trying to withdraw her 
 hand from that friendly protecting clasp. "I 
 thank you more than I can say." 
 
 When Dilke lifted his hand it was shaking. 
 Words trembled on his lips, but he choked them 
 back.
 
 206 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Come, come!" he said, striving to force a 
 smile. "It will not do to begin the journey in 
 this spirit. We must try to make the voyage 
 the jolliest part of the trip." 
 
 As he turned away from Joyce, he was con- 
 scious that Brandyce was standing at his elbow 
 and touching him lightly on the arm. 
 
 "Are these your field glasses?" Brandyce 
 asked. 
 
 "No, they are not mine," Dilke answered. 
 " Miss Eldridge, may I present Captain Bran- 
 dyce, of whom I was speaking to you? " 
 
 To himself Dilke was saying : " Confound 
 Brandyce's impudence! Those field glasses are 
 his most cherished possession, but he means to 
 lose no time in meeting Miss Eldridge." 
 
 Joyce raised her eyes to Brandyce's face, and 
 then a quick wave of colour spread over her 
 own. " Why ! " she exclaimed, " you are Eustace 
 Brandyce. I had no idea that it was you of 
 whom Doctor Dilke was talking." 
 
 "Yes," said Brandyce, "I recognised you at 
 once. I wished to know if you remembered me 
 after all these years." 
 
 " Does a girl ever forget her first party? " 
 
 "You mean that fancy-dress party for chil- 
 dren at my uncle's a dozen years ago." 
 
 Joyce nodded. 
 
 " It was my first visit to America," Brandyce
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 207 
 
 said. " I remember wondering why boys and 
 girls enjoyed themselves so much more there 
 than in England, and wishing that I need never 
 go home." 
 
 "I had, no idea that you were English. I 
 thought then," Joyce added, with a pretty, 
 flattering intonation, "that I disliked the 
 English." 
 
 "Banish that thought at once!" exclaimed 
 Brandy ce. "Let me start at least without 
 prejudice in your mind. As for your not dis- 
 covering that I was English, I am rather proud 
 of that, for even at that early age I determined 
 not to carry my insularity about with me like 
 the brand on a broncho. I wished to be Amer- 
 ican in America and French in France. One 
 gets more in that way. Don't you think so?" 
 
 Dilke stood by, stupefied by finding that this 
 introduction which he had dreaded the necessity 
 of making was taken out of his hands, and liking 
 the situation none the better for that fact. 
 When Brandy ce finished speaking, Dilke said: 
 " Since you and Miss Eldridge are old acquaint- 
 ances, I will leave you for a few moments while 
 I attend to the steamer trunks. They have a 
 trick of getting into the hold if they are not 
 watched." As he turned away he saw that the 
 two returned at once to their talk. 
 
 "How it all comes back to me!" Joyce was
 
 208 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 saying. " It was one of the mortifying experi- 
 ences of my life." 
 
 "Mortifying?" 
 
 "Yes. Your cousin Janet did not want me. 
 She naturally thought that two guests from the 
 same family were enough, and Henry and my 
 cousin Emilie, who was visiting us for a week, 
 were going; but your uncle said: "Joyce shall 
 come if I have to dance with her myself." 
 
 "Janet always was selfish," said Brandy ce. 
 
 "Not at all. It was her party, and she did 
 not wish it spoiled by the intrusion of a child of 
 twelve among people of the proper age. 'The 
 proper age ' varies with the views of the speaker. 
 To Janet it suggested fifteen or sixteen. The 
 only grudge I bore against Janet was for repeat- 
 ing that humiliating remark of your uncle's to 
 Henry. Henry never had delicate perceptions. 
 He told the family and the family laughed. I 
 did not." 
 
 "Henry was a brute," assented Brandyce 
 sympathetically. It was wonderful how his 
 spirits were rising under this recalling of old 
 times. "Did you really object to that speech 
 of my uncle's?" 
 
 "Object! If the party had not been 'fancy 
 dress' my pride would have kept me at home. 
 As it was, I hesitated. If a party were over 
 when it was over it would not have been so bad;
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 209 
 
 but I knew that Henry and Emilie would be 
 talking over this one all through the week, while 
 I should sit by ignorant and ignored." 
 
 " Of course you could not do it. It was not 
 to be considered for an instant." 
 
 "Thank you. It is a comfort to feel that 
 there was some excuse for my lack of self- 
 respect. ' Fancy dress ' proved too alluring to 
 my imagination and I yielded. Emilie was to 
 be a court lady in a satin dress of my mother's 
 with Roman pearls and real lace. Henry was 
 to appear as the Duke of Modena. Just why 
 'Modena' I never knew; but it seemed to add 
 the finishing touch of aristocracy to his black 
 velvet suit. I had nothing to wear. That 
 was an argument for staying at home. Henry 
 and Emilie made it evident that they wished I 
 would. That was an argument for going but 
 why am I telling you all this in the midst of 
 bustle ? It is most egotistical and inappropriate. ' ' 
 
 " It's perfectly delightful ! " exclaimed Bran- 
 dy ce with emphasis. " Nothing in years has 
 made me feel so young. Let us take these two 
 chairs out of the crowd. Now please continue, 
 and remember everything that you can. Then I 
 will tell you what I remember. It will be like 
 'The Ring and the Book.' " 
 
 "Shall I really tell all that I remember?" 
 Joyce responded. " I believe I will, for I like
 
 210 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 talking about the time when I was a little girl. 
 In fact," Joyce admitted candidly, " I am afraid 
 I like talking about myself in general. 
 
 " I remember," she continued, " it was decided 
 that I should go as Bo Peep in my old white 
 dress. Of course it was short ; but shepherdesses 
 always showed their feet and ankles, and then I 
 thought the crook wound with blue ribbons en- 
 chanting. Henry said that it looked like a 
 barber's pole ; but he was in a bad humour. It 
 crowded the carriage and nearly broke the win- 
 dow, but it arrived in safety. 
 
 "We came down stairs, all together. Emilie 
 looked beautiful with her red cheeks and auburn 
 hair; but I do think her long gown helped her. 
 At any rate, she was seized upon at once and car- 
 ried off by a prince in light blue. I stood still and 
 waited simply waited. That was all nothing 
 happened. I wished, oh, how I wished that I had 
 never come! But I endured the suspense fairly 
 well, till I saw your uncle bearing down toward 
 me. Then I clutched Henry's arm, though 
 before I left home I had resolved on no account 
 to appeal to him. But this was no time for 
 niceties of behaviour. 
 
 '"You will dance this with me, won't you, 
 Henry ? ' I implored. Henry looked at me with 
 the air of one who had known all along how it 
 would be.
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 211 
 
 "'Yes,' he said, 'I'll dance this once; but I 
 don't want to get stuck with you.' ' 
 
 "He did not say that!" 
 
 " Oh, yes. It is the privilege of one's family 
 to say what other people only think. I assured 
 Henry that I should not mind being left alone 
 after the first; but I did. I could not bring 
 myself to let Henry's arm go. At length in 
 one of our turns we came opposite my crook, 
 which I had left propped against the wall. Here 
 Henry stopped firmly. ' You'd better sit down,' 
 he said, as one who has borne enough. 
 
 "'Oh, Henry, are you going to ask another 
 girl?' I asked. 'No,' he answered scornfully. 
 (You know how Henry despised the sex until he 
 began to fall in love.) ' I don't like talking to 
 girls. I'm going over to talk to Eustace Bran- 
 dy ce by the door there.' ' 
 
 B randy ce nodded, smiling at the picture which 
 rose in his mind; but he would not risk inter- 
 rupting the narrative. 
 
 " I asked Henry to bring you over where I 
 was; but he assured me that you wouldn't 
 like it. 
 
 " ' He might,' I ventured; but Henry crushed 
 me by retorting: 'It's his uncle's house I 
 guess if he wanted to, he'd come over without 
 an invitation.' There was no resisting the 
 pitiless logic of this remark, and I clasped my
 
 212 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 crook in cold fingers and watched my last hope 
 disappear with Henry." 
 
 "What a memory you have!" exclaimed 
 Brandyce, lost in admiration. 
 
 "Oh, one remembers well when things are 
 branded in. Emilie was dancing in the court 
 quadrille; but I had no room in my heart for 
 envy. My soul was too full of the sinking sense 
 of failure. All that I asked now was to escape 
 your uncle's gaze. He would dance with me 
 if no one else would! Oh, why had I not stayed 
 at home and improved my mind! 
 
 " I crept into a corner behind the curtain and 
 wiped my eyes with the end of the blue bow on 
 my crook; but nobody took any notice, and at 
 last the supper march began and all the Jacks 
 and Jills walked gaily past me. But the worst 
 of all was when your uncle rose up in front of 
 me as big as a house to my startled vision, and 
 with a voice that I was sure could be heard in 
 the supper room called out: 'Hulloa! How's 
 this ? Has Bo Peep lost her sheep ? ' 
 
 " When he said that I saw what a fool I had 
 been. 
 
 " Of course that crook was an unlucky symbol 
 of sheep lost and not to be recovered in the whole 
 unhappy evening. Before I could think of any- 
 thing to answer, your uncle beckoned to you. 
 'Here, Eustace,' he called, 'take this sheepless
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 213 
 
 young shepherdess into the other room and get 
 her some supper!' Then I looked up and saw 
 you standings there. Now you tell that is, if 
 you remember." 
 
 "I remember perfectly," said Brandyce. 
 "When you came in I thought that you were 
 quite the prettiest girl at the party. I wished 
 to ask you to dance, but you looked so young, 
 I was afraid people would laugh at us. At 
 seventeen it is a terrible thing to be laughed at. 
 I remember we discussed the subject of age at 
 supper and you descanted on the dreadfulness 
 of being young, and I tried to cheer you with 
 assurances that it was a trouble one outgrew; 
 but you said that it did not happen till you were 
 old and had ceased to care. 
 
 " Then we talked about schools and the diffi- 
 culties of Latin, and finally it was arranged that 
 I should walk to school with you next day and 
 carry your books." 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes ! " exclaimed Joyce gleefully. " I 
 shall never forget the pride with which I told 
 Henry about that. It increased his respect for 
 me so that he told mother when we reached 
 home that I had done very well at the party 
 toward the end." 
 
 Dilke came back from his oversight of the 
 luggage to find them still talking there, appar- 
 ently forgetful of everyone and everything but
 
 214 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 themselves on those easy terms which child- 
 ish acquaintance gives in later years. His heart 
 sank as he observed it. He stood at a little 
 distance and studied Brandyce more closely 
 than he had ever yet done studied him to 
 classify his own impressions and, if possible, to 
 gather some idea of how Joyce Eldridge would be 
 impressed. 
 
 Brandy ce's face was long and narrow and clean 
 shaven. The strong lines about the ear and jaw 
 showed to their best advantage. His hair had a 
 dash of premature grey which seemed an outward 
 token of experience of the world. His speech 
 with its mellow tone, its full vowels and careful 
 consonants, told unmistakably of his upbringing 
 among men and women who could afford time 
 for the niceties of language, and who were not 
 hurried into mumbled utterance. 
 
 His manner conveyed the impression of repose 
 with latent energy. He never wasted effort. 
 When a thing was to be done, he did it with 
 astonishing quickness and immediately was at 
 rest again, impassive as if there would never be 
 a call for future action. 
 
 His face gave large scope for interpretation, 
 and offered many interrogations to the observer. 
 Was the slightly receding chin weak or delicate ? 
 Was the thin-lipped mouth sensitive or treacher- 
 ous? Were the narrow grey eyes watchful or
 
 HOMEWAED BOUND 215 
 
 furtive? The answers to these questions varied 
 not only with the individual making of them, 
 but with the varying moods of that individual. 
 Dilke was never twice of the same mind in regard 
 to them. He was by turns repelled and at- 
 tracted, wavering and baffled. A question put 
 by Joyce led Dilke to draw nearer. 
 
 " How could you bear to leave the army ? " she 
 was asking. " To me it has always seemed the 
 most fascinating of careers." 
 
 Dilke 's curiosity was aroused and he waited 
 with some impatience for Brandy ce's answer, 
 which, when it came, was non-committal. 
 
 "Army life has its fascinations, certainly," he 
 said, " but it has its limitations, too, and very 
 irritating they become after a while. A man is 
 never his own master, you see, which is some- 
 times very vexatious, and then there is a gypsy 
 strain in my blood which makes wandering 
 more attractive than marching. I could not 
 give up for a lifetime the ability to rove about 
 the world at my own sweet will." 
 
 "That I can understand perfectly," Joyce 
 responded. " I often wonder at the dull content 
 with which people settle down to a life in 
 one place, a life of bondage to their belong- 
 ings." 
 
 "Yes/' said Brandyce, "I never see a gypsy 
 encampment without a thrill of admiration for a
 
 216 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 race which has learned the art of living without 
 possessions." 
 
 " Your friends do not seem to have outgrown 
 the taste for acquiring the possessions of others," 
 said Dilke, moving a step nearer Joyce and 
 joining in the talk. 
 
 Brandyce laughed. "Oh, for the most part 
 they only pick up stray horses, and you must 
 admit that horses belong by a process of natural 
 selection to nomads rather than to dull tillers 
 of the soil who live in the same smug house 
 generation after generation. A mule is quite 
 enough for their needs." 
 
 "Here comes Emilie!" exclaimed Joyce. "I 
 suppose, from her expression, that I have bor- 
 rowed something of her and forgotten to return 
 it. I am afraid that is the strain of gypsy blood 
 in my veins. What is it now, Emilie ? By the 
 way, let me introduce Captain Brandyce. My 
 cousin, Madame du Pont. Now I am ready to 
 be tried by court martial. What have I done ? " 
 
 "Only left the keys of your trunk and mine 
 on the dressing table of your room in the hotel 
 at Hamburg." 
 
 Joyce's eyes grew round with horror. 
 
 " I did! I did! It is all true," she exclaimed. 
 " You should never have trusted me with them, 
 Emilie." 
 
 " You may remember/' said her cousin, " that
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 217 
 
 I objected to lending you my key; but you 
 begged to put a hat in the top tray of my trunk, 
 and called down maledictions on your head if 
 you forgot to return the key." 
 
 "The curse has fallen. I am a convicted 
 felon. I can only appeal to the mercy of the 
 court." 
 
 "The court pronounces you guilty," said 
 Brandy ce, " and deputes Doctor Dilke to serve 
 your sentence by interviewing the ship's car- 
 penter, borrowing a chisel and opening the 
 trunks by force, while you on arriving in New 
 York shall pay a locksmith to repair Madame 
 du Font's 
 
 ' ' O wise young judge, O excellent young 
 man!"' exclaimed Dilke. "Come, Madame, let 
 us go and investigate first what can be done with 
 my keys." 
 
 To himself he said: "I wish that other 
 matters were as easily set right as this." 
 
 Dilke returned in a short time; but when he 
 joined the group Brandyce turned away, and 
 lighting a cigar, went forward, where he stood 
 alone gazing out to sea and watching the 
 vessels as they passed into port. 
 
 The meeting with Joyce Eldridge had recalled 
 vividly to Brandyce the days of his youth when 
 life seemed full of infinite possibilities which 
 had now narrowed to few and doubtful lines.
 
 218 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 He was much addicted to self-accusations in 
 the intervals of giving occasion for them; but 
 he had reached the dangerous stage where he 
 could dwell upon the mistakes of the past with- 
 out gathering from them the bitter tonic which 
 gives cogency and compelling force to resolu- 
 tions for the future. 
 
 There were certain passages in his life which 
 he kept under lock and key, and would no more 
 voluntarily draw out for contemplation than 
 he would choose a skeleton as a dinner guest. 
 His self-reproaches were always vague and 
 tempered with a feeling that he had been the 
 sport of circumstances, and that fate had dealt 
 hardly with a well-meaning fellow. 
 
 To-day, as he reviewed events, he told himself 
 that all his misfortunes dated from his going into 
 the army; that that had played the mischief 
 with his life. The career was not fitted for him, 
 but he had chosen it to please his mother. It 
 had been a sacrifice. 
 
 Had it really been the sacrifice he thought it? 
 Who shall say ? Do we not all look back to some 
 renunciation as the cause of our falling short of 
 the mark, and comfort ourselves with the 
 thought that all that followed, even if it cul- 
 minated in sin, was but the crabbed fruit on the 
 tree of virtue? 
 
 These few moments of talk with Joyce had
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 219 
 
 left him dissatisfied. Why had this girl come 
 suddenly into the field of his vision, to give him 
 a glimpse of heights which he might have 
 gained, to recall his old ambitions? 
 
 Meanwhile, in the stateroom below the deck 
 where Brandyce was standing, Madame du Pont 
 lay stretched out in her berth taking the after- 
 noon rest without which she held that no woman 
 could do credit"* to herself on sea or land. Her 
 slippered foot protruded from one of those 
 French confections of lace and silk which in their 
 elaboration suggest that the wearer must be 
 either a singularly fragile well person or a 
 singularly healthy invalid. 
 
 Joyce Eldridge, propped by pillows, sat on the 
 sofa opposite with hands clasped behind her 
 head. The ship was pitching now and the waves 
 slapped the porthole, leaving it wet and stream- 
 ing. 
 
 "What do you think of this Captain Bran- 
 dyce?" Madame du Pont asked. 
 
 " I have not had time enough to think any- 
 thing yet." 
 
 "The thoughts which you take time to have 
 are of no account. It is first estimates which 
 are trustworthy. Then the photographic plates 
 of the mind are fresh and not blurred by a com- 
 posite impression." 
 
 "But you see in a way my impression of
 
 220 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Captain Brandy ce was composite. I had met 
 him before." 
 
 " I thought that when you were in Paris you 
 were eager to meet him as a new experience." 
 
 " I was; but when I did meet him I found that 
 I had known him as a boy when he was visiting 
 in New York." 
 
 " Did you like him in those days? " 
 
 "Immensely! But I don't know whether 
 that is to be set down to the credit of his charm 
 or of my inexperience. You see, to a very young 
 girl, a boy has a glorious individuality. He is 
 not yet merged into a type. In fact, I think 
 he really has more personality than ten years 
 later." 
 
 Madame du Pont played with her rings, and 
 regarded her slender fingers and almond-shaped 
 nails in silence for several minutes. Then she said : 
 
 " Captain Brandy ce seemed to me to have 
 a great deal of personality, a peculiarly respon- 
 sive one at that. He lends himself to the con- 
 versation." 
 
 "Lends himself? Yes, but at a good rate of 
 interest. There is something in his eyes that 
 suggests many things unsaid. One wonders 
 what they are." 
 
 "You observed him closely." 
 
 "One naturally does in meeting an old ac- 
 quaintance newly."
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 221 
 
 "Joyce, you analyse too much. You give 
 yourself room for no natural emotions." 
 
 The girl opposite raised herself from her 
 pillow and pushed back the hair from her fore- 
 head. "Emilie!" she exclaimed with more 
 energy than the occasion seemed to warrant, 
 "do you know what it is to live in the top of 
 your mind because you do not dare to dive 
 down deep, because you are afraid of what you 
 might find there?" 
 
 Madame du Pont looked at her with astonish- 
 ment. This phase of Joyce Eldridge's character 
 was so new to her that she could not conceal the 
 surprise which showed itself in her face. Joyce 
 detected it and instantly withdrew behind her 
 customary guard of triviality. " Yes," she went 
 on, " I sometimes feel as I do at home when I 
 know that the cellar needs cleaning, and rather 
 than investigate I go out and buy a new piece 
 of bric-a-brac for the drawing room. I hope, 
 by the way, Emilie, that when we are in New 
 York you will help me to rearrange our rooms. 
 They are so stiff, so barren, compared with 
 yours. You have a genius for conversational 
 arrangement of furniture. No wonder that you 
 have successful evenings! The chairs seem to 
 talk of themselves. I can fancy them holding 
 a salon after you have gone to bed." 
 
 Joyce did not stop till she had led the con-
 
 222 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 versation to an entirely safe distance from the 
 original subject. She was conscious of one of 
 her sudden delicate antagonisms. She felt that 
 she had in a way cheapened herself by revealing 
 a real feeling to a highly artificial listener. 
 Emilie du Pont understood some things. She 
 knew how a room should be furnished, she 
 knew how a woman should dress, she knew 
 how a man could be made comfortable; but to 
 have expected of her the comprehension of a 
 genuine emotion was a stupidity for which 
 Joyce blushed, and in the reaction of anger 
 against herself and her companion, she plunged 
 again into the subject which she had been at 
 such pains to end, and asked abruptly: 
 "Emilie, did you ever feel anything?" 
 " Feel anything? Heat or cold or hunger, for 
 example?" 
 
 "No, I mean feel anything in your heart." 
 " In my youth I felt quite too much. I found 
 it inconvenient. I learned that cultivating 
 sensitiveness was cultivating points of attack. 
 I discovered the superior advantages of emotions 
 which remain under control, the more subtle 
 forms of grief which have a perfume of melan- 
 choly, the secondary pleasures which like sec- 
 ondary colours are more satisfying, more lasting 
 than the primary ones." 
 
 Joyce raised her eyebrows. "That is the,
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND 223 
 
 fault which I find in you. You play at life as 
 Marie Antoinette played at farming in the 
 Trianon gardens. You make real people seem 
 bucolic, real feeling a clumsiness." 
 
 Madame du Pont only smiled and answered 
 lightly: 
 
 " Calomniez! Calomniez! II en reste tou jours 
 quelquechose." 
 
 " It is not a calumny. It is the truth." 
 
 " Ah! That is spoken like your friend Doctor 
 Dilke. He identifies himself with the cause 
 of truth till he cannot tell which is which." 
 
 "There it is!" Joyce exclaimed with rising 
 temper. "You do not like him because he is 
 real. He does not 'lend himself to conversa- 
 tion,' as you say. He assumes that you have 
 a firm conviction or a genuine desire for enlight- 
 enment when you make a statement or ask a 
 question." 
 
 "What a droll point of view! I should take 
 my convictions to a debating society, my 
 ignorance to a dictionary or an encyclopedia. 
 When I seek a man's society it is to get at his 
 personality." 
 
 "Or to impress him with yours." 
 
 " Quite the same thing in the end, my dear. 
 Mutual impressions are the raison d'etre of 
 society. Now I will tell you something. If 
 Doctor Dilke could rid himself of his super-
 
 224 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 fluous reality, I should begin to take a distinct 
 interest in him." 
 
 "And I should lose mine." 
 
 " You have one, then." 
 
 " I take an interest in everyone whom I 
 meet," Joyce answered, conscious that keen 
 eyes were fixed upon her. "The world is full 
 of delightful problems in human form, person- 
 alities which attract and repel by turns." 
 
 " Your interest, then, is purely psychological. 
 You feel no tremors, no thrills? " 
 
 What Joyce's answer might have been is 
 purely conjectural, for at this moment Madame 
 du Font's maid knocked at the door, asking 
 what robe madame would wish laid out for 
 dinner, and Joyce went to find her father and 
 inquire what arrangements he had made for 
 seats at table.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 A GAME -OP CHESS 
 
 THE steamer which Mr. Eldridge had selected 
 was a slow one. The screws seemed to turn 
 with a quiet tenacity of purpose, keeping steadily 
 at their task, but with no undue haste in achiev- 
 ing their ultimate goal. 
 
 The days came and went monotonously, un- 
 marked save by the sounding of the fog-horn, 
 the betting on the log, the sighting of other 
 vessels and the endless game of human nature 
 which goes on by land and sea, but perhaps 
 most intensely by sea. 
 
 One evening Dilke saw Joyce walking the 
 deck alone, her face white and her brows knit. 
 
 "What is the matter?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, nothing, nothing at all," but her lips 
 quivered. She held to her self-control with an 
 effort, but it was obvious that she was suffering 
 physical pain. As she answered, Dilke caught a 
 glimpse of her bandaged finger. 
 
 "What is this?" he asked, still more im- 
 peratively; " I insist upon knowing." 
 
 " I remember of old that when you insist upon 
 225
 
 226 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 knowing you will know, so I may as well tell the 
 whole story and furnish another instance of 
 my contumacy." 
 
 Joyce tried to smile, but the result was rather 
 pitiful. 
 
 "Go on," Dilke commanded, his lip caught 
 between his teeth. 
 
 " I had opened my porthole in defiance of the 
 steward's orders. I had endured the air of that 
 cabin till I was perishing for lack of breath, so 
 I opened the porthole, and a wave came in as 
 the steward had said it would. I tried to close 
 the window hastily and my finger was crushed, 
 as it deserved to be. That is all." 
 
 "All! Quite enough, I should say. And 
 why did you not come to me at once instead of 
 binding it yourself and doing, perhaps, no end 
 of harm?" 
 
 "I did not bind it myself; I went to the 
 ship's doctor." 
 
 "The dickens you did! The ship's doctor is 
 a good fellow. May I ask, however, why you 
 preferred his services to mine ? " 
 
 "Oh!" said Joyce, avoiding the dark glance 
 bent upon her and fixing her eyes on the 
 lifeboat ahead. "Don't you remember how 
 we agreed there on Lake Geneva that you 
 were Papa's physician and not mine, and 
 that if my health ever suffered from my
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 227 
 
 carelessness, I should consult a doctor of my 
 own?" 
 
 " I remember nothing of the kind, and neither 
 do you," Dilke answered with scant civility; 
 "but this is no time for quibbles or recrimina- 
 tions. I must see that finger. Is Madame du 
 Pont in her cabin? " 
 
 " I believe so. She left the deck some time 
 ago." 
 
 "Let us go down there, and I will join you 
 when I have found my bag with its dressings 
 and antiseptics." 
 
 "Very well," Joyce answered, turning toward 
 the companionway. " But probably when you 
 look at my finger, you will find the matter of 
 small consequence and wonder why I made such 
 a bother about it." 
 
 " I hope so," Dilke replied, shortly, as he 
 turned in the direction of his room. 
 
 A few moments later he was unwinding the 
 bandages about the finger and swearing in- 
 wardly because he could not prevent his own 
 hands from trembling. Joyce too was trembling 
 and her face was pale. When Dilke spoke, 
 however, his tone was cool and professional. 
 
 "An ugly bruise," he said; "a little more and 
 you would have lost the top of your finger. As 
 it is, I think we shall be able to save even the 
 nail; but it must be looked to each day, and
 
 228 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 this is not the proper dressing at all, though I 
 ought not to say it of another man's work." 
 
 "And what shall / say to the other doctor?" 
 queried Joyce with sudden embarrassment. 
 "He told me to let him see it to-morrow." 
 
 "Tell him that the dressings came off and I 
 replaced them. Tell him whatever you choose. 
 But I shall speak to him myself, and I do not 
 think that he will ask." 
 
 Madame du Pont looked up with something 
 like admiration in her eyes. 
 
 " You play the surgeon as masterfully as you 
 play at chess," she said. 
 
 " Both are games, Madame. Quickness and 
 decision are the main points." 
 
 As he spoke he finished the treatment, swiftly 
 reapplied the bandages and without another 
 word turned and left the stateroom. 
 
 For a long time after binding the finger 
 Dilke wandered up and down the deck in sullen 
 misery, thinking of Joyce and of Brandyce 
 and of his own duty to each. Turn where he 
 would he could see no opening. In vain he 
 asked himself what the ideal man would do in 
 his place. Perhaps he was too far from the 
 ideal himself to grasp in imagination the course 
 that such a man would follow. 
 
 He might go to Brandyce and say : " Will you 
 tell the truth about yourself to Joyce Eldridge,
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 229 
 
 or shall I do it for you? I admit all the obliga- 
 tion under which I lie, all the seeming falseness 
 in betraying one to whom I owe so much; but 
 the truth must be told." 
 
 Then he fancied Brandyce turning smiling, 
 sarcastic eyes upon him and saying: "My 
 dear Judas, exactly what is the truth to which 
 you refer?" 
 
 He knew that he should be dumb and abashed 
 before that question, to which he had no 
 answer. 
 
 He might talk with Mr. Eldridge and put h m 
 on his guard by a judicious hint or two; but 
 hinting was not in Dilke's line. That form of 
 attack is the art of meaner men. Moreover, Mr. 
 Eldridge required heavy-handed measures to 
 make him see a situation, and the situation 
 once seen, he would never end till he had probed 
 it to the bottom, turned on the searchlight of 
 investigation baldly with neither tact nor mercy, 
 and at the end there might be only himself 
 pilloried as a traitor to his friend. 
 
 Then his thoughts turned to Joyce turned 
 to her? Did they ever turn away? Did they 
 not cling to her as a man clings to a live wire 
 which he cannot let drop though the death 
 agony convulses every muscle? 
 
 If he spoke to Joyce herself he had no obtuse- 
 ness to fear. Her intelligence would dart like
 
 230 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 a hound upon the scent, if he threw out the 
 faintest suggestion of his suspicions. But she 
 too would demand proofs, where he had none to 
 give, and he felt that he could not meet the 
 scorching scorn of her glance, if she detected in 
 some quiver of his tone, some unguarded word, 
 some trembling of the fingers, that he too 
 loved her. 
 
 His fancy pictured her with her head turned 
 a little to one side as she often sat, and the 
 delicate mockery of her mouth as she would ask: 
 
 "And is it wholly disinterested, this betrayal 
 of the man who saved your life, or do you throw 
 out these dark hints because you fear that he is 
 winning the prize for which you would give 
 your life?" 
 
 Of course he knew that those would not be 
 her words; but such would be the purport of 
 her speech, and he told himself that there 
 would be truth in it. He was not disinterested. 
 He knew it, and hard as he tried to hold the 
 balance of justice even, he could not tell how 
 far he was influenced against Brandyce by the 
 very fact of Joyce's preference of him. His 
 own dislike had grown day by day, and yet with 
 no more cause than it had in the beginning. 
 Surely that was a sign of hallucination such as 
 he should recognise in any man who came to 
 consult him as a patient.
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 231 
 
 At last he decided that silence and inaction, 
 the hardest achievements for a man of strong 
 will and eager activity, must be his course. 
 But oh, the bitterness of it all! 
 
 The next few days were a period of the deepest 
 heart-searching that Dilke had ever known 
 Hitherto he had always supposed that for an 
 honest man the path of life must be tolerably 
 clear. He might find it difficult to do right ; but 
 he must always be able to see clearly what was 
 the right if he had strength to do it. Now he 
 found with surprise that there were many 
 faces to duty, and many questions involved as to 
 the person to whom one owed the highest duty. 
 
 From the moment of Brandyce's meeting with 
 Joyce Eldridge he had devoted himself to her, 
 at first with the easy " God-bless- the-ladies " 
 air which marks the manner of the military man 
 the world over, and which therefore gave Dilke 
 no uneasiness. But as the days went on those 
 long shipboard days which count for weeks and 
 months in the opportunities which they offer 
 of intimate acquaintance his attentions took 
 on a far more serious and personal character. 
 This new interest seemed to brush aside the 
 characteristics of cynical trifling, to reveal the 
 man of action and the man of race. 
 
 Dilke found himself speculating as to whether 
 he had ever known the real Brandyce. He
 
 232 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 could not wonder that Joyce was so evidently 
 attracted, interested and absorbed. 
 
 For himself he saw only one course open, and 
 that was withdrawal. He was glad that Madame 
 du Pont was on board, since her companionship 
 gave him so good an excuse for avoiding all talk 
 with Joyce. He did not count as talk the conver- 
 sation which goes on among a group of people 
 when remarks are tossed about like confetti at a 
 Roman carnival; the syndicate conversations 
 without reality or substance, with their struggle 
 after epigram, which is another name for the 
 clever statement of an untruth. The talk which 
 he resolved to avoid at all cost was the one-to- 
 one exchange of sincere opinions and personal 
 feelings, hot argument and free guesses at 
 truth, which had grown to be natural to him 
 in trnse five months with Joyce Eldridge. He 
 missed it as one misses food and drink; but he 
 refused it to himself, as a man resolved to 
 starve pushes away the plate of bread. 
 
 It seemed to him that a malign fate had 
 ruled all his acquaintance with Brandyce, im- 
 planting that instinctive prejudice which made 
 it hateful to him to receive his life at the man's 
 hands, then forcing unwilling admiration for his 
 fine qualities, and finally calling upon him to 
 meet the debt which he had incurred by laying 
 the better part of himself upon the altar and
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 233 
 
 watching it consume, giving up all that made 
 life worth living, in favour of the man who had 
 saved his bodily life. With his heart's blood 
 if necessary, he had sworn to Brandyce to 
 repay his obligation, and with his heart's blood 
 he was paying now. But the sacrifices which 
 we are called upon to make are rarely those 
 which we have planned or imagined beforehand. 
 
 To the present sacrifice he could have nerved 
 himself if he had felt sure perfectly sure that 
 Joyce would be happy if she married Brandyce ; 
 but always there was this haunting doubt, this 
 hesitation, this questioning whether he were 
 not sacrificing both himself and her to a quixotic 
 scrupulosity. 
 
 He studied the situation closely. He watched 
 Brandyce and he watched Joyce. It seemed to 
 him that he could see them drawing toward 
 each other day by day, and yet he detected, or 
 thought he detected, in Joyce a shadow of the 
 same hesitancy which had disturbed himself in 
 his estimate of Brandyce. As this shadow grew 
 apparently less, Dilke made up his mind that 
 Joyce had either wholly dismissed it or had made 
 up her mind that the qualities which gave her 
 pause were such as she could easily change if 
 she married him. 
 
 Nothing is more pathetic to the onlooker than 
 the nonchalance with which girls talk of alter-
 
 234 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 ing what is fundamental in a man's character, 
 things to which the Ethiopian's skin and the 
 leopard's spots are superficial trifles. 
 
 Dilke looked on all this with a growing sense 
 of exasperation at her willingness to trust her 
 feelings instead of pursuing her doubts, and 
 proving or disproving them thoroughly. Men 
 prefer that women in a general way should be 
 guided by emotion rather than by reason; but 
 in the particular case in hand they find the 
 emotional guidance exceedingly irritating. 
 
 Dilke had other causes of depression beside 
 the pangs of misprized love. He was bound for 
 his native land, yet as he drew near home he 
 experienced none of the elation proper to the 
 occasion. Instead, he felt that each revolution 
 of the screw brought him nearer to certain inev- 
 itable and embarrassing practical problems. 
 
 His income had been of a size to narrow his 
 activities without enlarging his opportunities, 
 and in his pursuit of enlarged opportunities he 
 had had recourse to the simple expedient of 
 eking out income with capital, drawing upon 
 the future with the confidence which youth 
 invariably entertains in that shadowy bank. 
 There is a day of reckoning for such experiments, 
 and Dilke 's had come. 
 
 When Mr. Eldridge urged this European 
 expedition he had promised Dilke that he should
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 235 
 
 not suffer financially, and had assured him that 
 he would make it his business to help him build 
 up a permanent practice; but now Dilke expe- 
 rienced a distinct revolt against dependence 
 upon his patron, and resolved to make Hercu- 
 lean efforts to put himself on an independent 
 footing. 
 
 That was very well as a consideration for the 
 future, but the pressing problem was the occu- 
 pation of the present. Dilke recalled grimly 
 the saying of Marcus Aurelius, and wondered 
 if even on a steamer life might be led well; but 
 he swiftly decided that it could not. All he 
 could hope to do was to kill time or at least to 
 administer an anodyne that it might sleep 
 through the next week. 
 
 Looking up, while this reflection was passing 
 through his mind, he saw Madame du Pont, and 
 crossing the deck, he joined her. 
 
 "You do not feel any anxiety about Joyce's 
 finger?" she asked, as they began to pace the 
 deck slowly. 
 
 "Oh, no. The trouble has been taken in 
 time, and threatens nothing worse than a few 
 days of discomfort." 
 
 " It was like Joyce to hurt it in that way. She 
 is always doing something headlong, and it gen- 
 erally results disastrously." 
 
 Dilke made no answer. He did not find it
 
 236 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 easy to discuss Joyce with anyone, least of all 
 with the woman beside him. 
 
 " Your friend Captain Brandy ce is a fascinat- 
 ing man," said Madame du Pont, breaking the 
 silence abruptly. 
 
 "Most people find him so," Dilke answered. 
 
 " Yes, there is something about him a some- 
 thing which only travel and a wide acquaintance 
 with the world can give." 
 
 "That is very true." 
 
 Madame du Pont darted a quick glance at 
 Dilke. As not infrequently happened, a dim 
 suspicion haunted her that he was amusing him- 
 self at her expense; but his face was imper- 
 turbable. 
 
 "Of course," she went on, "a roving life such 
 as Captain Brandyce has led has its disad- 
 vantages ; it begets a certain disregard of stand- 
 ards. A man must have connections at home 
 to hold him; but I should judge that he had 
 connections. Such breeding as his bespeaks 
 early training. What is it the Jesuits say: 
 that if they can have a child until he is seven 
 years old, anyone may take him afterward ? " 
 
 "Something like that, I believe." 
 
 " But to return to Captain Brandyce." 
 
 "I knew that she would return," said Dilke 
 to himself. 
 
 " He was in the service, I think Joyce said "
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 237 
 
 "Yes, he was in the service." 
 
 "He has left it, then? What is he doing 
 now?" 
 
 "At present I believe he is travelling as 
 correspondent for a London paper." 
 
 Madame du Pont paused and lifted her 
 lorgnon to inspect a passing steamer. 
 
 "His position, then his financial position 
 is is somewhat precarious." 
 
 There was neither curiosity nor anxiety in 
 Madame du Font's tone. The thing was admir- 
 ably well done ; but Dilke read it in the light of 
 his experience of the lady's character, and per- 
 ceived at once the direction in which her in- 
 quiries were drifting. 
 
 " I know nothing of Captain Brandyce's finan- 
 cial circumstances," he answered, goaded into 
 some irritation. "I seem constantly forced to 
 explain that he is only a chance acquaintance to 
 whom I happen to be under a great obligation." 
 
 "Yes, I have heard about that a gallant 
 rescue a most romantic episode. But no doubt 
 you are somewhat informed as to his social 
 standing. Englishmen are so different from 
 Americans there. They are classed once for 
 all, and it is easy to know all about them. 
 Captain Brandyce carries aristocracy in his 
 bearing. My instincts deceive me if he has not 
 good blood in his veins."
 
 238 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " Your instincts seldom deceive you, Madame." 
 
 "Then he has good blood." 
 
 " He has an uncle in the Cabinet, and, I 
 believe, a reversionary interest in a title 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Madame du Pont, clapping 
 her white hands softly. "I am so glad; it 
 would have been a terrible blow to me to be 
 compelled to relinquish my confidence in my 
 instincts. You see they are all that we women 
 have to guide us." 
 
 " They seem to guide in eminently safe direc- 
 tions," Dilke answered. They had paused in 
 their walk, and he leaned against the side of 
 the cabin regarding Madame du Pont curiously. 
 She had all the technique of charm, pretty ges- 
 tures of hand and wrist, a slow, graceful turn 
 of the head, a captivating trick of arching eye- 
 brows. Where she failed to charm it was only 
 because she failed to convince, and Dilke had 
 looked on at her little play from the wings, where 
 it was much less effective than from before the 
 footlights. 
 
 A moment's silence fell between them. 
 
 " Do you play chess? " was Madame du Pont's 
 next question. 
 
 "In amateur fashion," Dilke responded with- 
 out enthusiasm. 
 
 "I challenge you to a tournament," Madame 
 du Pont went on "I am a fair player myself."
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 239 
 
 "Which being translated," said Dilke to him- 
 self, "signifies that she intends to leave the 
 field to Brandyce and put me out of harm's 
 way." 
 
 "I accept the challenge," said Dilke, and if 
 his eyes conveyed more meaning than his words, 
 Madame du Pont gave no sign. Instead, she 
 said, " If you will go down to the cabin my 
 maid will give you my board. It would be 
 pleasanter, don't you think, to play here on 
 deck?" 
 
 "By all means," Dilke answered. "Shall we 
 sit over there where Miss Eldridge and Brandyce 
 appear to have found a comfortable corner?" 
 As he spoke, he glanced toward a laughing 
 group of which Joyce and Brandyce were the 
 centre. 
 
 From the time of his coming on board, 
 Brandyce had been the idol of all the children. 
 He drew them to him as if he had been a pied 
 piper. They were enchanted by the grave 
 courtesy with which he treated them, as if he 
 and they were contemporaries and equals, and 
 then he told such delightful stories of African 
 deserts and Australian gold mines! But his 
 most entrancing accomplishment was the cutting 
 of paper figures elephants under palm trees, 
 endless lines of camels with shawled ladies on 
 their backs, and still more thrilling, crocodiles
 
 240 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 with the agonised legs of little boys disappear- 
 ing through their rapacious jaws. No wonder 
 that mothers were compelled to beg him to be 
 less entertaining, or at least less exciting, as 
 bedtime drew near! No wonder that the chil- 
 dren clamoured for his favour, and clambered 
 over him, and fought as now for precarious 
 and uncomfortable seats on the slippery arms 
 of his steamer chair, while all the time Joyce 
 looked on and followed his every motion with 
 smiling attention. 
 
 Madame du Pont followed Dilke's glance, 
 hesitated, as if considering judicially his propo- 
 sition to join the group; but after an instant's 
 graceful indecision remarked that the sun 
 would soon be too bright there, and that 
 they would be more comfortable on the other 
 side. 
 
 Again Dilke bowed, again he smiled. He 
 was at no pains to disguise from this fair dip- 
 lomatist that he understood her tactics. For 
 his own part, he decided to offer no obstruc- 
 tions. On the whole, her scheme fell in well 
 enough with his own plans. But he determined 
 that he would make reprisals. 
 
 " Did you ever see Newbold's picture of the 
 chess players?" he asked, as they sat down 
 with the board between them. 
 
 "No. Was it good?"
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 241 
 
 "Excellent. He paints well. That is, I 
 think so and you?" 
 
 " Decidedly. I have been so loud in his 
 praises that I have persuaded a friend of mine, 
 a Senator in Washington, to give Mr. Newbold 
 the work of decorating the hall in his new 
 house." 
 
 Dilke pondered on this speech, and on how 
 much or how little it might mean. 
 
 "Do you prefer to play with the blacks or 
 the whites?" he asked. 
 
 "The blacks, if you don't care." 
 
 "It is all one to me. I shall need only a 
 good reason for being defeated. As for Newbold, 
 I am very glad to hear of this opportunity for 
 him very glad indeed all he needs is to be 
 known." 
 
 " He never will be." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " He does not care enough about it. He has 
 no initiative." 
 
 "Perhaps," insinuated Dilke, "if he married 
 an ambitious wife she might supply the lack." 
 
 Madame du Pont shot one glance across the 
 board. " And Newbold says her eyes are neither 
 hard nor bright," Dilke thought to himself, 
 and wondered if he could be so deceived. 
 
 " Do men confide in each other as women do ? " 
 asked Madame du Pont.
 
 242 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "I do not know your sex well enough to 
 answer that. I should say that confidences 
 were rare among men, especially on sentimental 
 subjects ; but men observe each other and draw 
 their conclusions." 
 
 "Then," said Madame du Pont, "let us dis- 
 cuss Mr. Newbold as a generality." 
 
 " By all means ! That is a form of vivi- 
 section which serves the interest of science 
 without permanently injuring the victim; but 
 I feel bound to point out that if you leave your 
 bishop on that square I shall take it with my 
 knight." 
 
 "How honourable of you! I shall avail 
 myself of your generosity and withdraw the 
 bishop." 
 
 "To return to Newbold," Dilke began tenta- 
 tively. 
 
 "Yes, in that connection I was about to say 
 that at my age 
 
 "How can you use that phrase, Madame? 
 It is only dull people who think in terms of age." 
 
 "With my experience of life, then 
 
 "That is better." 
 
 " I feel more and more that the most unhappy 
 of marriages is that between an ambitious 
 woman and an unambitious man. It is like 
 wedding a gadfly to a sheep. The sheep is 
 in a state of chronic annoyance and the gadfly
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 243 
 
 is constantly exasperated that she cannot make 
 her sting pierce the wool." 
 
 Dilke smiled. He studied the board for some 
 time, moved a pawn and asked: " Is there any 
 happy marriage for a gadfly?" 
 
 "Certainly with another gadfly." 
 
 Madame du Font's hand hovered over her 
 king. Finally with decision she castled, and 
 then said suddenly: 
 
 "I seldom make confidences; but I am 
 strongly inclined to make one to you." 
 
 "I shall be highly flattered." 
 
 "A Senator in Washington has done me the 
 honour to ask me to marry him, and I am con- 
 sidering the proposal very seriously." 
 
 "The position would suit you admirably." 
 
 "I think so myself. I should enjoy the 
 sense of power, of advancement. Mr. Newbold 
 could not understand that. He always seems 
 to me like a man who is looking at the view 
 while an army is marching by." 
 
 " Marching where? " 
 
 "Toward success, arriving at some goal." 
 
 "That interests me. I am so doubtful some- 
 times whether there is any goal at which to 
 arrive whether we might not all of us as well 
 sit down and look at the view as to go marching 
 and countermarching and perhaps coming back 
 to the old spot in the end."
 
 244 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " I would not dispense with ambition for any 
 enjoyment to be had in views or anything else." 
 
 "No, you are an ambitious woman. I have 
 seen that from the beginning of our acquaint- 
 ance." 
 
 "Yes, I am ambitious I admit it frankly." 
 
 Dilke saw that, as in most things which 
 people admit frankly about themselves, the 
 quality struck Madame du Pont as distinctly 
 interesting. Before he could speak she con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "And you are an ambitious man." 
 
 " I may be; but I do not make a boast of it, 
 as you do. I acknowledge it regretfully as a 
 defect. Ambition is a very youthful quality." 
 
 "Perhaps that is why I am proud of it and 
 you ashamed." 
 
 "Why on earth did you make that move?" 
 said Mr. Eldridge, who had come up and was 
 leaning on the back of Dilke's chair. "You 
 have exposed your queen." 
 
 "Which ambition leads me to capture un- 
 scrupulously," said Madame du Pont, sweeping 
 down six squares with her bishop. 
 
 "'By that sin fell the angels,'" Dilke re- 
 sponded. "The sacrifice of my queen enables 
 me to say checkmate with my castle." 
 
 "It is your game, and well played," said 
 Madame du Pont, who knew how to lose as well
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 245 
 
 as how to win. " I congratulate no, I felicitate 
 you. But I will have my revenge to-morrow." 
 
 "A mere accident," said Dilke, folding the 
 board. " Your attention was distracted from 
 the game by conversation. To-morrow we will 
 play in silence." 
 
 A sailor came up to them at this moment and 
 announced that he had been sent by the cap- 
 tain to ask if Madame du Pont would like to 
 come up on the bridge and look through his 
 glass at a whale which was spouting in the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Madame du Pont would be delighted. 
 
 Dilke watched her as she walked away. 
 
 "There is a woman," he said to himself, 
 " who knows exactly what she wants and knows 
 how to go to work to attain it. Heaven help 
 the man who looks to her for love or sympathy ; 
 but for executive force I have never met her 
 equal. Poor Newbold! After all, he is well 
 out of the entanglement. He is in love with 
 an ideal, and it is better for him to lose all at 
 once than to face a process of gradual dis- 
 enchantment day by day. I wish that I knew 
 of what Joyce Eldridge and Brandyce are talk- 
 ing." 
 
 As if in answer to his question, the two people 
 in his thoughts strolled by. As they passed 
 he caught Brandyce's voice saying: "I can
 
 246 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 understand the glamour which unfamiliarity 
 casts over the vagrant life to you, Miss Eldridge ; 
 but you have no idea what it means to a man 
 not to know the meaning of home, nor how he 
 envies those who have it." 
 
 Dilke looked up from a magazine which he 
 was reading. 
 
 "Ask Brandy ce to repeat to you a remark 
 which he recently made to me about the Prod- 
 igal Son," he said. 
 
 The two paused before his chair, and Dilke rose. 
 
 " Doctor Dilke flatters me by remembering 
 some foolishness which I uttered six weeks ago. 
 Whatever it was, it has wholly slipped my 
 mind," said Brandyce. 
 
 "Then how do you know that it was made 
 six weeks ago?" Dilke inquired. 
 
 Brandyce tossed back his head and laughed 
 a boyish laugh. " You have mistaken your 
 vocation, Dilke," he exclaimed; "you should 
 have been a barrister. It did not occur to me 
 that I was subject to cross-examination. How 
 do you get on with him, Miss Eldridge? " 
 
 " By always admitting that he is right. I 
 find it easiest in the end." 
 
 "Pre-cisely!" ejaculated Brandyce. "That 
 bears out an old theory of mine that physicians 
 and clergymen deteriorate from the professional 
 necessity of dealing with women more than with
 
 A GAME OF CHESS 247 
 
 men. They grow accustomed to the attitude 
 of deference and miss the invaluable discipline 
 of contradiction to which the rest of us are 
 forced to submit in the rough-and-tumble skir- 
 mish of life. Contradiction is a mordant which 
 bites into our self-esteem like aquafortis and 
 does us good." 
 
 Dilke ignored the challenge in Brandyce's 
 words. He felt that if he took up the gauntlet 
 and entered the lists of discussion, he should be 
 carried away to say more than he wished, and 
 he preferred to remain neutral. 
 
 Turning to Joyce, he said, as if Brandyce's 
 remark had not intervened: 
 
 " I never observed this yieldingness of which 
 you speak." 
 
 "No?" Joyce queried, smiling. "Then you 
 are less observant than I have given you credit 
 for being." 
 
 " On the contrary, I am extremely observant, 
 quite too much so for my own best interests." 
 
 Dilke attempted to speak lightly; but when 
 there is a deep undercurrent of emotion it will 
 often find its way into the voice, quite without 
 the intention, even against the will of the 
 speaker. Both Brandyce and Joyce felt the 
 slight embarrassment which is caused by an 
 unexpected note of seriousness in a surface 
 conversation.
 
 248 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Brandyce made a movement to walk on. It 
 was his habit in life always to turn his back 
 upon awkward situations; but Joyce, with the 
 courtesy which was a matter of intuition with 
 her, turned to Dilke, saying: "Will you not 
 join our walk? You are always preaching 
 exercise to me, and yet you take so little your- 
 self that your advice will soon fall into the 
 neglect which follows preaching without prac- 
 tice." 
 
 Dilke felt grateful. He realised the tact which 
 had dealt delicately with a possible awkward- 
 ness; but he could not meet it half way. His 
 heart was too sore, his nerves still too unstrung. 
 
 "No, thank you," he said; "I promised to 
 restore Madame du Font's chess board to the 
 safe keeping of her maid." 
 
 With these words Dilke turned and went 
 down to his cabin, from which he did not reap- 
 pear. He shut himself up in solitude to brood 
 over the bitterness of "misprized love." If 
 the thought of Joyce had been a compelling 
 factor in his life before, it had now become an 
 overwhelming passion. To think of her with 
 Brandyce was torture. 
 
 Love is the prototype of the music which 
 Munchausen found frozen in the postboy's horn 
 waiting for midsummer to release it. Jealousy 
 is midsummer.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 JOYCE and Brandyce were sitting beside the 
 skylight of the cabin. Amateur music was 
 going on within. A young man with a large 
 and sonorous voice was assuring his hearers 
 that if doughty deeds his lady pleased, right 
 soon he would mount his steed, though exactly 
 how he was to execute his plan in midocean 
 might have puzzled his audience if they had 
 been less intent on tone production and more 
 absorbed in the meaning of the song. 
 
 "Do you sing?" Brandyce asked in answer 
 to Joyce's amused smile." 
 
 "I? Oh, no. I have no accomplishments." 
 
 "You have achievements, then. All young 
 American women have either achievements or 
 accomplishments. ' ' 
 
 "I have neither," Joyce answered. "You 
 see, I have no perse verence. If I begin a piece 
 of embroidery the final result is a rusty needle and 
 a skein of tangled silk. I never finish anything." 
 
 "You have finished one thing," Brandyce 
 observed. 
 
 249
 
 250 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Joyce hesitated for the fraction of a second, 
 and in that space of time decided that it would 
 be less marked to speak than to be silent. 
 
 "If I have finished anything, I trust it is 
 something worth while," she said. 
 
 ,"It is changing a man's life," Brandyce 
 answered, and then to relieve the tension of 
 the situation, he added: "There is Dilke danc- 
 ing attendance upon Madame du Pont as usual. 
 It amuses me to see him so completely captured. 
 He has always been so loftily superior to senti- 
 ment." 
 
 'Yes?" was all Joyce said; but her eyes 
 followed Brandyce's glance to the companion- 
 way where Dilke and Madame du Pont were 
 standing. 
 
 "I think," Brandyce went on, "that if I 
 were a woman I should fall in love with Dilke." 
 
 "What is it that attracts you so in him?" 
 Joyce inquired indifferently. 
 
 "Perhaps it is the attraction of opposites. 
 He has the qualities which I lack and which I 
 most admire. Curiously enough, however, the 
 attraction is not mutual. He is far from admir- 
 ing me." 
 
 " He has spoken to me of you with admira- 
 tion. He told us the story of your saving his 
 life." 
 
 "Ah, he made too much of that. A happy
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 251 
 
 accident, nothing more. It is not his gratitude 
 that I want, but his good opinion, and I shall 
 never have it, and yet there is only one thing in 
 the world that I should value more. Probably 
 I shall not get that either. Fate has played me 
 shabby tricks in every crisis of my life." 
 
 "But surely," Joyce interrupted hastily, the 
 colour rising in her cheeks, " gratitude alone will 
 insure you Doctor Dilke's good opinion." 
 
 : 'You think so?" Brandyce rejoined, with 
 smiling scepticism in his glance. "That shows 
 how little you know of the world. Gratitude, 
 my dear Miss Eldridge, is a repelling and not 
 an attracting force." 
 
 Joyce shook her head. "Men are not so 
 mean as that," she exclaimed. "I refuse to 
 believe in such a cynical view." 
 
 "And a woman? She might be supposed to 
 feel gratitude when a man lays his love at her 
 feet. But does that fact make her like him?" 
 
 Brandyce paused and looked keenly at Joyce 
 from his narrow grey eyes. 
 
 :< The case is quite different," the girl answered. 
 " What he proposes is not a gift but a bargain. 
 He asks for as much as he offers." 
 
 Brandyce smiled. He found an unexpected 
 piquancy in the mingled frankness and with- 
 drawal of Joyce's manner. "Well, at least," 
 he said, "I shall wish Dilke good luck in his
 
 252 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 wooing." And again Brandyce's glance turned 
 toward the companionway. 
 
 Madame du Pont and Dilke had come up from 
 luncheon together. The ship was bounding 
 along under a blue sky, leaving a black trail 
 of smoke to eastward. As they reached the deck, 
 and at the moment when Joyce and Brandyce 
 were observing them, Madame du Pont paused, 
 playing with a heavy chain to which were sus- 
 pended a gold purse and a lorgnon. 
 
 "Will you play chess again this afternoon?" 
 Dilke asked. 
 
 Madame du Pont smiled and shook her head. 
 
 "Not with you," she answered. "You de- 
 ceived me basely. You affected in the begin- 
 ning not to play well in order to increase your 
 triumph in the end. I decline to be humil- 
 iated further." 
 
 " But we must do something. Life on ship- 
 board does not afford a vast variety of enter- 
 tainment." 
 
 Madame du Pont hesitated, her head a little 
 bent. Then she suggested: 
 
 "You might read aloud to me." 
 
 " I shall be most happy to be permitted," 
 Dilke responded. 
 
 "You are more than permitted, you are 
 urged," rejoined Madame du Pont with just 
 enough exaggeration to suggest that it was a
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 253 
 
 matter of no moment whatever. In the world 
 a woman may only express interest when she 
 does not feel it. Madame du Font's manner 
 was constantly marked by such nice adjust- 
 ments. 
 
 "And what shall the book be?" Dilke asked. 
 
 "What are those two books protruding from 
 your pockets and making you look like a book 
 agent?" 
 
 "This," said Dilke, drawing out a grey vol- 
 ume with a white label, "is Browning's poems. 
 The other small red book is ' Pilgrim 's Progress.' 
 Which will you have?" 
 
 " 'Pilgrim's Progress'!" exclaimed Madame 
 du Pont, with a little gasp of mingled terror 
 and astonishment. " Why in the world do you 
 carry that about with you ? Are you religious ? " 
 
 "No, Madame," Dilke answered. "That is 
 why I enjoy the work of a man who was. But 
 there is another reason for my interest in 
 Bunyan's story. It tells about a fellow who 
 carried a burden on his shoulders. I sympa- 
 thise with him." 
 
 " For my part," said Madame du Pont, " I read 
 to be entertained, not to be instructed, and I 
 prefer to hear about people nearer me, people 
 whom I can understand. Read me something 
 from Browning, though I confess that I should 
 prefer a novel."
 
 254 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Dilke bowed and returned the little red, worn 
 volume to his pocket. " I am very well suited," 
 he said; "I like Browning. I like his medical 
 poems. His doctors use their terms right." 
 
 "Let it be Browning, then." 
 
 Dilke moved the chairs to the stern of the 
 ship beyond the promenaders. He spread 
 Madame du Font's rug over her feet and ar- 
 ranged the cushions for her head. That lady 
 was an adept in the art of accepting graciously 
 the services of man, which Dilke had declared 
 to be woman's mission. 
 
 "Have you any preference?" he asked, as he 
 took the volume from his pocket and turned 
 the pages idly. 
 
 " I prefer that you should choose." 
 
 The truth was that Madame du Font's recol- 
 lections of Browning were rather vague, and 
 she did not care to show her ignorance. 
 
 "We will try 'Andrea del Sarto,' then. Do 
 you know it?" 
 
 " Not so well but that I should enjoy hearing 
 it again." 
 
 Dilke turned the leaves till he found the 
 poem which he sought, and began reading : 
 
 "But do not let us quarrel any more, 
 No, my Lucrezia ; bear with me for once ; 
 Sit down and all shall happen as you wish 
 You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? "
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 255 
 
 Dilke had a fine voice and enjoyed using it. 
 Moreover, as he read, a certain dramatic instinct 
 took possession of him. He fancied himself not 
 the Florentine painter addressing his faithless 
 wife, but Newbold talking to the woman before 
 him. So would Newbold have pleaded for his 
 art, so have striven to make her comprehend 
 his aims, the best that was in him, and so would 
 he have failed. 
 
 When Dilke reached the saddest line in the 
 poem: 
 
 "You at the point of your first pride in me 
 (That's gone, you know)," 
 
 he looked up, half expecting that Madame du 
 Pont would show some sign of consciousness; 
 but she was looking down and smoothing the 
 cuffs of embroidered muslin on her black sleeves. 
 
 "Ah!" thought Dilke, "that is an added bit 
 of realism. So Lucrezia would have occupied 
 herself with some detail of finery when a man 
 was breaking his heart for her and trying in 
 vain to wring from her some sign of sympathy." 
 
 He did not look up after this, but read on 
 more quietly, though still to him it was Newbold 
 telling the story of failure to reach the highest 
 things, because he had stooped to work for 
 gain instead of glory, and all to please the wife 
 who could not comprehend, could not appre- 
 ciate, could not even be true.
 
 256 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS . 
 
 At last he reached the final words: 
 "Again the cousin's whistle. Go, my sweet!" 
 
 "Well, what do you think of her?" he asked, 
 closing the book and turning to Madame du 
 Pont with a question in his eyes. 
 
 " My sympathies are very much aroused." 
 
 "Yes, everyone must feel for him." 
 
 " For him? Not at all for her." 
 
 Dilke looked up with distinct and surprised 
 interest. 
 
 "Why, please?" 
 
 " Because she has had no chance to lay her 
 side of the story before the world, and in the 
 opposition stands a great artist backed by a 
 great poet. The odds are not fair. I believe 
 myself, however, that a good plea might be 
 made for her, based on the poem itself." 
 
 "And how?" 
 
 Madame du Pont cooked her opinions in a 
 chafing dish in full view of the person to whom 
 they were offered. She felt no need of a mental 
 kitchen, and made no profession of a full larder. 
 She rather preferred intellectual tidbits and 
 trusted to the piquancy of her sauce to flavour 
 the original material. 
 
 Never before having heard of either Andrea 
 del Sarto or his wife, she was still quite ready to 
 dash into a disquisition on their rival rights
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 257 
 
 and wrongs. The strife for truth more than 
 triumph was quite beyond her ken. She was 
 of the faction described by Bacon, who preferred 
 what might be said to what should be thought. 
 
 With hardly an instant's pause she answered 
 Dilke's question. 
 
 " Why, you detect at once that the artist was 
 vain. He wished her to be always coupling his 
 name with his superiors like Raphael and 
 Michael Angelo. Then he never asks her any- 
 thing about herself or about what she is doing. 
 He paints away all day, and then wishes 
 her to sit holding his hand all the evening. 
 Now you see for yourself that that would 
 make a very dull time for an active young 
 woman." 
 
 "Especially with the cousin whistling under 
 the window." 
 
 "No doubt she cared for the cousin because 
 she saw that he cared for her for her as she 
 really was not idealised, and not as material 
 for pictures to save models." 
 
 " I can imagine you this Lucrezia," said Dilke. 
 " You would have been willing that a man should 
 sell his soul for you and you would have felt, as 
 she did, that he was well repaid by a smile or 
 by permission to hold your hand." 
 
 "You think it is not in me really to care for 
 anyone?"
 
 258 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Perhaps in response to indifference, not to 
 reward passion with love." 
 
 Madame du Pont looked full at Dilke for one 
 instant. He understood now why Newbold 
 compared her eyes to the sea. 
 
 "Do you know," she said as if seeking to 
 change the current of her thoughts, "what 
 woman, of all whom we know, would tire soonest 
 of the man she married?" 
 
 "I know the one whom you have in mind," 
 Dilke answered slowly. 
 
 "Joyce Eldridge?" 
 
 "Precisely." 
 
 " I think so. With Joyce fatuousness is final, 
 and with all due regard for your sex, most men 
 are fatuous now and then." 
 
 "Thanks for the qualification!" 
 
 "Yes," Madame du Pont went on, not 
 heeding Dilke's ironical comment; "that is 
 why she admires Mr. Brandyce so much. 
 I suppose in writing to space and all 
 that, he learned to edit his remarks so 
 that they come out in final and restrained 
 form." 
 
 Dilke looked out to sea across the interminable 
 swell of recurrent waves. 
 
 "You would like to see that marriage come 
 about, would you not? " he said at length. 
 
 " The likings of outsiders have so little to do
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 259 
 
 with bringing marriages about!" Madame du 
 Pont answered non-committally. 
 
 "That is not true of you," Dilke answered, 
 with brutal directness. " You intended to bring 
 this one about from the moment when you 
 heard that Brandyce might come in for a title. 
 That was why you challenged me to that 
 chess tournament. You did not intend to 
 leave even a pawn where it might obstruct 
 your game." 
 
 "You think me ?" 
 
 " I think you very adroit. You resolved at 
 once to take possession of me, to put me out of 
 harm's way, though you took no interest what- 
 ever in me personally." 
 
 "Perhaps I did not then. How did you 
 know?" 
 
 "It is one of the stupidities of clever people 
 to underrate the cleverness of stupid ones. I am 
 not quite a fool. Don't you suppose that if I 
 had chosen I could have brushed away your 
 scheming with my little ringer?" 
 
 "You are a strong man. That is why I ad- 
 mire you." 
 
 "It chanced," Dilke went on, ignoring the 
 compliment, "that your plans suited mine, 
 therefore I lent myself to them. At the same 
 time I had much interest in watching you play 
 the game."
 
 260 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "You despised me, then." 
 
 Dilke made no answer. 
 
 "And you despised me again for what I told 
 you about the Senator?" 
 
 "No. There you mistake. I liked you for 
 that. It was the first hint I had that you could 
 be frank." 
 
 "And I I have regretted it ever since. You 
 see at that time it did not occur to me that I 
 could ever care what you thought of me." 
 
 "Yes," said Dilke, "it is often like that, is it 
 not ? We play our parts best before an unknown 
 public. As our audience assumes personality 
 it grows more embarrassing." 
 
 "You think me hard and scheming. Well, 
 let it be so. But there is one thing you can never 
 know, and that is the woman I might have been. 
 What was that line in the poem you were read- 
 ing ? ' So free we seem, so fettered fast we 
 are ! ' Do you believe in destiny ? " 
 
 " I believe in a kind of destiny probably not 
 your kind." 
 
 "What kind?" 
 
 "I subscribe to the idea of destiny which 
 defines it as an equation between temperament 
 and circumstances." 
 
 " That sounds discouraging. There is so little 
 hope of changing either." 
 
 "I don't know. The struggle is interesting.
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 261 
 
 It is the spirit in which your born gambler goes 
 into the game, not for the pleasure of winning, 
 but for the pure enjoyment of play." 
 
 " Do you think that we can influence destiny? " 
 
 " More or less not only our own but that of 
 others. I think that you could influence Mr. 
 Eldridge's, for instance." 
 
 " I ! influence Uncle Martin. How little 
 you know him! Even Joyce has no influence 
 in that quarter." 
 
 "She least of all, perhaps. She cares too 
 much what he thinks. He needs someone who 
 can entertain him, and yet when occasion arises, 
 treat him as if he did not exist." 
 
 " But the trouble is that on those occasions he 
 treats me as if I did not exist. As for Joyce, 
 she is growing intolerant. She is always looking 
 about for some altar upon which to sacrifice 
 herself. Her father suited her admirably as 
 long as he was a cheerful altar; but she did 
 not like vinegar poured over her burnt offerings. 
 What do you suppose made Uncle Martin a 
 pessimist?" 
 
 " My dear Madame du Pont, to make a pessi- 
 mist out of an egotist, you need only give him 
 every wish of his heart. Philosophic pessimism 
 is a creed which many great men have reluc- 
 tantly adopted after a profound study of human 
 conditions. Practical pessimism like Mr. Eld-
 
 262 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 ridge's is a formulated irritation over trifling 
 inconveniences. ' ' 
 
 " I never know what to say to Uncle Martin 
 when he is in one of his rages," Madame du Pont 
 protested. " I generally change the subject or 
 ask him something about business." 
 
 "Ah! " said Dilke. " That is why I want you 
 to help me, because you know when to speak 
 and when to be silent. It is a great gift." 
 
 "I shall be glad to help you," Madame du 
 Pont answered, "if only in return for the help 
 that you have given me here." She pointed the 
 remark with a glance at Joyce and Brandyce. 
 
 Dilke bit his lip. 
 
 " Pardon me," he said, "but I do not wish to 
 leave you under a misapprehension. It has not 
 been my intention to render any help in that 
 quarter, but simply to remain neutral. I am 
 not a conspirator, but simply an onlooker." 
 
 "There was a time," Madame du Pont said 
 slowly, looking up at the clouds as she spoke, 
 "when I thought that you were interested in 
 Miss Eldridge." 
 
 "A strange delusion! And when did you dis- 
 cover your mistake?" 
 
 " Oh, as I have watched you. Your indiffer- 
 ence has been quite palpable. Even Joyce has 
 noticed it." 
 
 "Has she spoken of it?"
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 263 
 
 "Only in passing. She said that your man- 
 ner had suffered a sea change ; that in Paris you 
 had been so friendly, and here on the voyage 
 you had seemed positively to avoid her." 
 
 " I should not suppose that she would have 
 had time to notice anyone's manner except 
 Brandyce's." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Madame du Pont. "No 
 indifference there. His manner is all that a 
 lover's should be." 
 
 While Madame du Pont was speaking, Joyce 
 and Brandy ce came up and joined them. " We 
 have come," Joyce said, "to ask if you would 
 join us in a game of shuffleboard." 
 
 Dilke rose with alacrity. He began to feel 
 that a continuance of his conversation with 
 Madame du Pont was beyond his powers, that 
 he was being stretched on the rack of the inquisi- 
 tion, and that in a few moments more he should 
 have cried out his secrets to the winds and waves. 
 
 "An excellent idea," he assented; " let us go." 
 
 Madame du Pont regarded the interruption 
 as ill-timed, but no one would have guessed her 
 state of mind from the smiling eagerness with 
 which she rose to comply. Before she could 
 speak, however, the ship's doctor came up rather 
 hastily and drew Dilke aside. The others 
 walked on. A few moments later Dilke rejoined 
 them.
 
 264 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "I am sorry," he said, "but I am afraid that 
 you will be obliged to find another man to make 
 the fourth at your game. A sailor has fallen 
 down a hatchway and broken his leg. Doctor 
 Vogel thinks it will be necessary to amputate' 
 it an ugly job with the sea rolling as it is 
 now. He wants me to help him. He has 
 strained his wrist and does not trust himself to 
 operate. 
 
 "Will he really need you?" inquired Madame 
 du Pont. 
 
 " Not only does he need me, but we need some- 
 one else to help us administer the chloroform." 
 
 " Can't I do it ? " Joyce asked eagerly. 
 
 " No, no ! " 
 
 " I am not in the least afraid." 
 
 Dilke hesitated. 
 
 " Do you really think that you could ? Re- 
 member the first time we met." 
 
 Joyce looked up indignantly. " Do you think 
 I faint on all occasions? " she asked. " I assure 
 you that I am a reasonable human being and 
 quite capable of conducting myself as such. 
 Only try me!" 
 
 "Take me, Dilke!" said Brandyce. 
 
 "Very well, Brandyce, we can use you too; 
 but I have a notion that if Miss Eldridge is sure 
 of herself, it will be a comfort to the poor fellow 
 to see a woman about. Let me feel your hand,"
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 265 
 
 he said, turning to Joyce. " I think you will do. 
 Come, then, both of you, if you will." 
 
 "The chloroform is on the stand," Dilke said 
 briefly, as Joyce entered the cabin a little later, 
 where all the grim preparations for surgery were 
 completed. " Put a few drops in the inhaler 
 and hold it over the face, not too close. Give 
 him a little air at first. Turn toward his head 
 and don't look round. Now, Doctor, I am 
 ready if you are. Will you watch the heart?" 
 
 Silence reigned in the little cabin. Joyce 
 strove to fix her attention wholly on the wet 
 cloth in her hand. Behind her she heard the 
 drawing of a knife. An eternity seemed to 
 pass while, oblivious of all that was passing 
 around her, she struggled to concentrate her 
 attention on mastering a horrible sinking sen- 
 sation at her heart. 
 
 "Now lend a hand with the dressing," she 
 heard Dilke say at last. Joyce felt blood swim 
 before her eyes. 
 
 "It is all over, Miss Eldridge," Dilke 's voice 
 rang out in reassuring tones, and then she heard 
 him say hastily to Doctor Vogel: "You and 
 Brandy ce get the man into his berth! I will 
 take Miss Eldridge to her cabin." 
 
 Joyce swayed unsteadily. 
 
 "Take my arm and shut your eyes." 
 
 Joyce stretched out her hand blindly and
 
 266 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 grasped the supporting arm. She staggered into 
 the corridor, and then fell to the floor. 
 
 Dilke raised her in his arms and strode along 
 to her cabin door, which he opened with a kick 
 of his foot. He laid Joyce in the berth and 
 dashed water in her face. Her eyes opened 
 slightly. "I was a fool," she murmured. 
 
 " I was worse than a fool to permit you to 
 make such an experiment," Dilke answered 
 hotly. " I should have remembered that day 
 in New York " 
 
 "You did not permit me. I did it myself. 
 And really, I do not often behave so foolishly," 
 Joyce responded with the ghost of a smile. 
 Then "the fringed curtain of her eyes" closed 
 again over the pale cheek. 
 
 Dilke rang sharply. When the steward came 
 he said: " Bring me brandy at once, and then 
 find Madame du Pont and send her here." 
 
 The man disappeared, and Dilke knelt beside 
 Joyce, chafing her cold hands between his own 
 hot ones. Then, overcome by the tide of feeling 
 which swept over him, he stooped his head and 
 kissed the white wrist. "I love you, dear!" 
 he cried, "I love you I love you!" 
 
 A rustle behind him caught his ear, and rising 
 hastily, he saw Madame du Pont standing in 
 the doorway. The steward had executed the 
 last part of the order first.
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 267 
 
 Emile du Font's face was as white as the door 
 against which she leaned. Her hair glistened 
 red around her pale forehead. Her lips moved, 
 but no sound would come. 
 
 Dilke looked at her with defiant confession in 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I love her. You heard 
 me say it and you may repeat it to the 
 world. You see now how little your train- 
 ing in reading a man's mind amounted to 
 I love her." Then, with a sudden change 
 of voice: "The steward is standing outside 
 with the brandy. Be good enough to hand it 
 tome!" 
 
 Still without a word, Madame du Pont 
 handed him the flask and the glass. She 
 might have been an automaton moved only by 
 the will of the man before her. 
 
 Dilke half filled the glass with the spirits f 
 added water from the stand and forced it down 
 the girl's throat. It did its work. The eye- 
 lids fluttered and then rose. The colour crept 
 back to the white cheek, the fingers warmed 
 in Dilke's clasp. 
 
 "Did I do any harm?" Joyce asked in a 
 weak voice. 
 
 "You helped us to save a life. But we will 
 talk about that later." 
 
 "Is that you, Emilie?"
 
 268 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " It is I," Madame du Pont answered in level 
 tones. 
 
 "I will leave her to you, Madame," Dilke 
 said. " Open her dress and keep her head low. 
 I will see her in an hour; and, remember, please, 
 no conversation." 
 
 Then he went out. As he strode toward the 
 deck, he muttered to himself: "Now I have 
 thrown away my last chance of saying anything 
 about Brandyce."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 IT was a grey, sullen day, a day symbolic of 
 the fatigue of the whole human race. A fitful, 
 feeble breeze lifted the fog here and there 
 and scattered it in whiffs of spray along the 
 deck. 
 
 On such a morning one wakes with a sense of 
 heaviness. Time creeps leaden chained instead 
 of flying with spread wings. In place of an 
 hour-glass he carries an iron weight, and the 
 edge of his scythe is dulled so that it cuts no 
 swift swathe, but hacks painfully at the grain 
 of life. 
 
 Dilke rose early and stumbled through the 
 companionway to a deck still slippery from the 
 sailors' swabbing. To his surprise, he saw 
 Joyce Eldridge in her steamer chair with a cup 
 of coffee in her hand. As it was the last day of 
 the voyage, he resolved to put aside his deter- 
 mination to avoid her and to indulge himself in 
 one more conversation. 
 
 "You are out early," he said, dropping into 
 the chair beside her. 
 
 269
 
 270 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Yes. It is not that I love the deck more, 
 but my stateroom less." 
 
 " You are none the worse, I hope, for yester- 
 day's experiences." 
 
 " Not in the least. And, you know, I think 
 that such an experience is worth all it costs in 
 what it teaches one of other people's lives. How 
 is the sailor?" 
 
 " Oh, he is coming on finely. He talks of 
 you incessantly, and he made me promise to 
 give you this. It is his chief treasure." 
 
 As he spoke, Dilke spread out on Joyce's lap 
 a large red cotton handkerchief covered with 
 anchors and with a border of shell pattern. 
 
 "It is beautiful," said Joyce, with decision. 
 "I shall keep it always. Would you think "me 
 unappreciative if I er had it washed?" 
 
 Dilke threw back his head, and laughed as 
 he had not laughed for weeks. "I believe," 
 he said, "that when your halo is handed 
 to you in heaven, you will take out your 
 handkerchief and dust it, lest it may have 
 been too promiscuously handled by the other 
 angels ' 
 
 "It might be a wise precaution. I will try 
 to remember it," Joyce answered demurely. 
 " But I assure you I shall cherish this memento 
 on earth. It will remind me of the sea, and I 
 do love the sea from the land,"
 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 271 
 
 "You must be a good sailor to be up at all 
 in a swell like this." 
 
 "A good sailor I? Oh, no! I rather detest 
 an ocean voyage. I feel buffeted and blown 
 about, as I used to feel after a discussion with 
 you on one of our Swiss walks." 
 
 " You 'rather detested ' those, then, perhaps." 
 
 "Certainly. So would you if you had been 
 as thoroughly worsted as I not that you were 
 always right; but I could not make you see 
 my point of view. 
 
 "Precisely what was your point of view?" 
 
 " I remember only that I was very strong 
 somewhere ; but you were always saying : ' Don't 
 you admit this?' or 'Do I understand you to 
 say that? ' till I felt my feet slipping from under 
 me, as they did this morning on the wet deck." 
 
 " I must have been very irritating." 
 
 "No, not irritating; but depressingly con- 
 vincing." 
 
 " Why depressing? " 
 
 " Oh, you always seemed like a pilgrim to the 
 tomb of truth; reverent, you know, but as if 
 it were all quite dead." 
 
 Dilke smiled. "A few things seem alive to 
 me still, however," he said. 
 
 "What things, for instance?" 
 
 "It is too prosaic an hour of the day to men- 
 tion love, So let me say friendship."
 
 272 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Ah so you think friendship is an all-day 
 theme, while love must be reserved for an 
 occasional sentimental hour. 'It follows, then,' 
 as you used to say, that friendship is the more 
 durable stuff more lasting wears better." 
 
 " It is more temperate, certainly more sure. 
 Friendship is a philosophy; love, a religion." 
 
 Miss Eldridge balanced her spoon on the edge 
 of her cup a difficult feat, taking into account 
 the motion of the ship. 
 
 " I understand," she said, watching the spoon. 
 " You are a philosopher and an infidel." 
 
 "Say rather a doubter ready to be con- 
 vinced." 
 
 "Do you think a man would do more for 
 friendship or for love?" Joyce asked. 
 
 "Perhaps he would do more for friendship, 
 but he would endure more for love. Friend- 
 ship starves if it is not fed by good will, but 
 love can live on astonishingly meagre fare." 
 
 "There love and I part company," exclaimed 
 Miss Eldridge with a light laugh, rising from 
 her chair and throwing off her rug, "for I feel 
 a distinctly normal and friendly appetite for 
 breakfast." 
 
 Thus trivially ended the conversation which 
 Dilke had entered upon with trembling eager- 
 ness. He had no further speech with Joyce. 
 Early in the day he saw her sitting a little apart
 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 273 
 
 from the others engaged in earnest and appar- 
 ently engrossing talk with Brandyce. Dilke's 
 own chair was so near that he could not avoid 
 catching scraps of their conversation. 
 
 "It is all true, what you observe about 
 subtleties holding us," Brandyce was saying. 
 "I am sure that is why I think about you so 
 much. I am always trying to match what you 
 say to-day with what you said yesterday, and 
 wondering if they can be made to fit." 
 
 "Am I so inconsistent as all that?" 
 
 " I do not call it being inconsistent," Brandyce 
 answered; "I call it being fearlessly yourself. 
 But it seems as though you were two people at 
 once, and the two did not always agree. One 
 of them rushes on headlong and impetuous, 
 and then the other comes along and closes her 
 lips or makes some little formal decorous speech 
 as if to cover up the impetuosity. Do you not 
 recognise it in yourself?" 
 
 "Yes, I do; of course I do. I feel so sure 
 sometimes that a thing is right that I rush in, 
 and then in the middle of it I begin to feel how 
 foolish it has all been, and I try weakly to go 
 back or to stop where I am." 
 
 " Yes, but it is the headlong things which you 
 do that make people care for you so much." 
 
 "That ends it," said Dilke to himself. "I 
 am watching the close of the comedy. God
 
 274 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 grant that it may not be the beginning of a 
 tragedy for her! " And to avoid further eaves- 
 dropping he rose and moved his chair farther 
 along the deck beside that of Madame du Pont. 
 
 At dinner Joyce did not appear. Her father 
 said that she had a headache. Dilke felt a 
 bitter satisfaction that at least she was not 
 spending this last evening in Brandyce's society. 
 
 For himself Dilke had little taste for company, 
 and stood alone by the railing in the darkness 
 chewing the cud of exceeding bitter thoughts. 
 At length he could bear it no longer the dark- 
 ness, the solitude, the thoughts. He lighted a 
 cigar and entered the smoking room. It was 
 not an easy matter for a man measuring six 
 feet two inches in height to make entrance or 
 exit through that low doorway, and he was 
 compelled to stoop. When he raised his head 
 the electric lights half blinded him after the 
 darkness outside. 
 
 As his eyes grew accustomed to the bright- 
 ness, he saw that the cabin was almost empty. 
 Three men occupied the centre. The ship's 
 doctor stood looking on at a game of cards 
 played by Brandyce with a man from Texas, 
 named Colby. The Texan was of thin, wiry 
 build like the typical Yankee of fifty years ago. 
 His arms were long and loose jointed but 
 evidently powerful, His face was shaped like
 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 275 
 
 a hatchet, and two long front teeth held down 
 visibly the lower lip. 
 
 Dilke never knew what game it was which 
 Colby and Brandyce were playing. He only 
 knew that a roll of bills lay on the table between 
 them, and that as he came forward, he saw the 
 Texan study his cards, take a keen look at 
 Brandyce and then reach out toward the roll 
 of bills. As he put the bills and cards together 
 into his pocket, he said calmly, turning toward 
 the ship's doctor: "That man is cheating. 
 The cards are marked and he has two aces in his 
 sleeve." 
 
 As Dilke listened to Colby's insult, he sud- 
 denly felt the breath of the primeval forest on 
 his forehead, and the crackling of a campfire 
 was in his ears. The fire itself seemed to leap 
 in his blood. He sprang upon the Texan with 
 uplifted arm. The doctor threw himself in his 
 way; but in his rush of rage he would have 
 brushed him aside like a fly. What stopped 
 him was Brandy ce's extended hand waving him 
 away, Brandyce's white face and Brandyce's 
 shaking voice, as he said low and unsteadily: 
 "The matter is not worth a scandal. Better 
 come away!" 
 
 As Brandyce dropped his arm, two cards were 
 shaken out of his sleeve and lay upon the cabin 
 floor. Each bore one accusing spot of scarlet
 
 276 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 on its face. He stood for an instant looking 
 down at them. Then without a word, he turned 
 and went out into the night. 
 
 Dilke felt the blood rush to his face till it 
 scorched his forehead. He was humiliated, as 
 if he had done this thing himself. "Gentle- 
 men," he said, coming up to the table, "there 
 is nothing to be said of the situation. It is 
 as bad as it can be. But I am under obligation 
 to Captain B randy ce for an immense service. 
 I should be glad to help him if I could. I 
 trust that you will not feel obliged to mention 
 this this most unfortunate occurrence." 
 
 "I'm satisfied if he is," Colby observed with 
 a sardonic smile, fingering the bills in his pocket. 
 " Only I hope they're not going to let him 
 marry that pretty girl." 
 
 Dilke set his teeth and clenched his fists; but 
 he spoke no word. 
 
 "For my part," observed Doctor Vogel 
 "it is for my interest to hold my tongue. It 
 would hurt the line to have it known that we 
 had card sharpers on board; and besides, after 
 the way you helped me with the sailor, I wouldn't 
 go back on a friend of yours." 
 
 A friend of his! Yes, Brandyce was his 
 friend. Dilke himself had just admitted as 
 much; but it is one thing to call a man that, 
 and another to have it said by a third party.
 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 277 
 
 Dilke made no answer. He was sick and 
 stunned. He turned on his heel and followed 
 Brandyce out into the darkness. It was good 
 to be rid of the lights, of the odious accusing 
 presence of the two men. He wished to be 
 alone and to think. 
 
 It was the last moment that he would have 
 chosen in which to be put to a critical test ; but 
 fate seems to take malign pleasure in seizing 
 the occasion when our guard is down and our 
 armour unbraced to spring an assault upon us. 
 Happy is the man who can look back on a 
 supreme crisis and feel that he met it as he 
 would have wished afterward that he had 
 met it. 
 
 As Dilke groped his way along the deck, he 
 almost ran against Mr. Eldridge, who was pacing 
 the deck also. 
 
 "Ah, Dilke!" he said. "I am glad to have 
 stumbled upon you. I was intending to hunt 
 you up. The fact is, I want to have a talk 
 with you, a confidential talk. Shall we walk, 
 or find seats somewhere?" 
 
 "Let us walk, by all means," replied Dilke, 
 who felt that physical movement was essential 
 and that repose would be intolerable. He was 
 grateful for the onward rush of the steamer, 
 as if its energy were the expression of his own 
 excited mood.
 
 278 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Very well; let us walk, then." 
 
 Dilke wheeled about and mechanically fell 
 into step with Mr. Eldridge. He told himself 
 that talk would be a relief from the remembrance 
 of that scene in the smoking room, and yet he 
 had a haunting sense of trouble in the air. 
 
 It was a long while before Mr. Eldridge 
 opened the subject on which he wished to 
 speak, and Dilke made no effort to help him. 
 In fact, he felt an inward dread of what might 
 be coming, which made him long to turn and 
 run away. 
 
 "Dilke," said Mr. Eldridge at last, "I want 
 to make some inquiries, some very particular 
 inquiries, about this friend of yours, Captain 
 Brandyce." 
 
 The words " card sharper " still rang in Dilke's 
 ears, and he answered hastily, " Not my friend. 
 You know I explained to you at the outset that 
 he was only an acquaintance." 
 
 "Very well. Then it will be all the easier 
 for us to be quite outspoken together. I have 
 been taken aback in the last two or three days 
 to find how far things have gone between 
 Brandyce and my little girl. I have meant to 
 watch and guard her as as her mother would 
 have wished. But she always has men around 
 her. She's an attractive girl, you know; at 
 least I think so?"
 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 279 
 
 The last remark was put almost as a question ; 
 but Dilke's heart was beating so quickly that 
 he could not speak. He only bowed. 
 
 " Her manner has always been so cool to 
 everyone," Mr. Eldridge went on, "that it 
 never occurred to me that she would think of 
 marriage for years to come. Yet here in this 
 little week she has given her heart away." 
 
 "She has told you so?" 
 
 " No, she has not told me. Indeed, I have 
 never spoken with her on the subject. Some- 
 how I couldn't I was never intimate with 
 Joyce. Men make a great mistake not to be 
 intimate with their children ; it is so much harder 
 to talk over things. I suppose the habit slipped 
 by in those years when I was shut up with 
 myself and my gloomy thoughts; but that's 
 neither here nor there. I see this affair going 
 on between Joyce and Brandyce, and I want 
 to know from you if it's all right." 
 
 Dilke's lips felt stiff and, dry, and his voice 
 seemed to come from over the starboard rail 
 as he answered, striving to temporise: 
 
 "From what I know of Miss Eldridge, I 
 should doubt if anyone could stop an affair in 
 which her heart was really engaged." 
 
 "She's my daughter," Mr. Eldridge burst out 
 angrily, " and I intend to have some say about 
 the man she marries. She shall not marry a cad. ' '
 
 280 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Suddenly his voice broke, and he said, with 
 a tenderness as passionate as his anger: "You 
 don't know how I love that child no one would 
 know it, I suppose. My temper has made a breach 
 between us. That temper has been my greatest 
 enemy. It spoiled the life of my wife, the sweet- 
 est woman who ever lived yes, and the most 
 beautiful and the most patient. It spoiled her 
 life," he repeated, "and I don't want Joyce's 
 life to be spoiled. I want her to marry a man 
 who will make her happy." 
 
 Dilke found it impossible to break the silence 
 which fell as Mr. Eldridge finished. At length 
 he managed to stammer out: "I appreciate 
 your feelings. I profoundly hope that your 
 wishes for your daughter "will be realised." 
 
 " I came to you not for sympathy but for 
 help," Mr. Eldridge went on with an aggrieved 
 air. 
 
 "I am sorry," Dilke answered, "but I am 
 afraid that I cannot help you. I have known 
 Captain Brandyce a comparatively short time, 
 and I know nothing of his past." 
 
 "That's not it. That's not it at all," Mr. 
 Eldridge declared testily. " I don't expect you 
 to know anything of his past. The more ques- 
 tionable a man's past is the less anyone knows 
 about it. What I am asking of you is some 
 information about his present."
 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 281 
 
 "He saved my life, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I remember your telling us about that. 
 I have sometimes thought that Joyce's interest 
 in Brandy ce began there. She has always had 
 romantic notions. She loves a hero. That is 
 all very fine; but it is not enough. To my 
 mind, the central point, the fundamental qual- 
 ity of a man's character, is honesty, as chastity 
 is in a woman. Now what I want to ask you 
 is this: Whether in all those weeks which you 
 spent with Brandyce in the intimate associa- 
 tion of camp life, you ever saw anything which 
 suggested any shade of dishonesty." 
 
 "Never." ' 
 
 Mr. Eldridge's brow cleared. Perhaps he had 
 been harassed, as Dilke had been, by vague 
 impalpable suspicions. It was curious how 
 Brandyce failed to be convincing even to those 
 who liked him best. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge paused in his walk and held 
 out his hand to Dilke with an air of relief. 
 
 "Then I have your word for it," he said, 
 " that you believe Brandyce to be an honorable 
 and trustworthy man, a safe husband for Joyce ? " 
 
 Again Dilke felt the forest wind on his cheek, 
 again he heard the crackle of the campfire, 
 again his own words echoed in his ear: "If 
 I can ever do anything for you, you may count 
 upon me."
 
 282 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "In God's name how can I tell!" Dilke 
 cried, tormented by the cruelty of a fate which 
 was crushing him between the upper and nether 
 millstones of opposing obligations. But Mr. 
 Eldridge had no clue to his state of mind, and 
 went on thinking aloud. 
 
 " Of course, of course, you can't tell," he 
 said. "That is imposing too large a responsi- 
 bility upon any man, to be asked to tell who 
 would be a safe husband. But there is a haunt- 
 ing something which impels me to question you. 
 Tell me simply this : In all the time you have 
 known him, did you ever see him do a dishon- 
 ourable act?" 
 
 Dilke paused for a single instant, as a man on 
 the brink of suicide pauses on the edge of the 
 cataract before he flings himself into inevitable 
 disaster. He decided on his action and resolved 
 to bear its consequences, consequences not only 
 to himself but to another dearer than himself. 
 A dry, dumb agony paralysed him. He sub- 
 mitted as if the weight of an inevitable destiny 
 bore him down. He remembered his vow: 
 "With my heart's blood I will help you if I 
 can. ' ' He opened his lips to say " No, ' ' when the 
 thought of Joyce Eldridge rose and choked him. 
 
 The memory of another vow loomed before 
 him. He saw himself in his office in the grey 
 dawn tearing in bits a pasteboard card, and he
 
 COUNTERCLAIMS 283 
 
 heard himself registering an oath that never 
 again under any circumstances, for any cause, 
 would he soil his soul with the shadow of a lie. 
 
 He hesitated. Again the vision of Joyce rose 
 before him Joyce as she had looked in the 
 reading room of the Parisian hotel when she had 
 accepted his proffer of friendship and his promise 
 of absolute truth- telling between her and him. 
 
 His hand shook as if he had the palsy. His 
 cigar dropped to the slippery deck and rolled away. 
 
 "Don't ask me!" he groaned, and turned 
 aside abruptly. But Mr. Eldridge caught him 
 by the arm. 
 
 " I shall ask you," the old man went on with 
 passionate insistence, "and I expect a truthful 
 answer as from man to man. No fanciful 
 question of gratitude or etiquette can stand 
 for a moment in a case so urgent as this. You 
 know something of Brandyce which you will 
 not tell." 
 
 "Which I will not tell," echoed Dilke. 
 
 "That silence is an accusation." 
 
 "No," said Dilke, "it is not. The man who 
 makes an accusation and refuses proofs is a 
 blackguard. You drove me into this, step by 
 step, till I had no recourse but a lie or refusal 
 to speak. Now you may deal with the matter 
 as you choose. Further I do not go for you 
 or any man."
 
 284 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 With this Dilke shook himself free of Mr. 
 Eldridge's detaining hand, and moved rapidly 
 toward the companionway. On his way down 
 to the cabin he met Brandyce coming up. 
 Which face was ghastlier it would have been 
 hard to tell. Dilke would have passed without 
 speaking, but Brandyce barred the way. 
 
 " I suppose it is all over the ship by this time," 
 he whispered from between white lips. 
 
 "No," Dilke answered wearily. "Neither of 
 those two men will tell. I took care of that. 
 But- 
 Then with that impulse which drives crim- 
 inals on to confession because their burden is 
 too heavy to be borne alone, Dilke went on: 
 
 "Mr. Eldridge asked me just now if I knew 
 anything discreditable of you if I had ever 
 seen you do a dishonourable thing." 
 
 " Thank you, Dilke. You are a good friend. 
 I know you stood by me. This is what you 
 meant by saying you would pay the debt of 
 your life on the instalment plan." 
 
 A convulsion passed over Dilke's face, leaving 
 it stern and set and old. 
 
 "I refused to answer," he said. 
 
 "That was an answer in itself." 
 
 "Yes," said Dilke, and plunged down the 
 stairway, pursued by the remembrance of 
 Brandyce's glance.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 DILKE MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 " THANK heaven for work ! " This was Dilke's 
 exclamation as he seated himself once more 
 before the desk in his office. "Thank heaven 
 for work!" Have we not all felt the same 
 thrill in our deepest mental storm and stress? 
 It was surely no spirit of revenge, but a pro- 
 found pity, which moved the angel of the flam- 
 ing sword to drive out Adam and Eve into a 
 world of forced activity. An idle Paradise is 
 the saddest of all abiding places for those who 
 remember and regret. 
 
 In the great crises of our lives we are dom- 
 inated by some power seemingly outside ourselves 
 which makes our action apparently inevitable 
 as fate ; but in the after days of relaxation comes 
 a painful period of questioning when we ask 
 ourselves: "After all, was the action so inev- 
 itable ? Would not wiser men have avoided the 
 crisis or have ruled it to different issues?", 
 
 Dilke's mind was full of such questionings. 
 He was conscious of an oppression which would 
 not be brushed away. When the ship touched 
 
 285
 
 286 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 the dock he had made haste to escape from it 
 as from a pest house. Evil spirits seemed to 
 haunt its decks and cabins. Painful asso- 
 ciations hung about it from stem to stern. He 
 was thankful that Brandyce seemed as anxious 
 as himself to avoid a meeting. They were like 
 two criminals who dared not look in each other's 
 faces for fear of the detection and reproach 
 which each should read in the other. 
 
 Of Joyce and of her father Dilke had almost 
 an equal terror, so he took refuge by the side 
 of Madame du Pont and stood with her by the 
 forward rail as the vessel left quarantine and 
 moved slowly and majestically up the bay. He 
 had fancied that with her at least there would 
 be no awkwardness, no lurking thoughts under- 
 lying surface speech and making its trifling a 
 mockery. But he had forgotten the episode in 
 the stateroom, the almost brutal frankness of 
 his revelation of his feeling for Joyce. What- 
 ever the effect upon Madame du Pont, there 
 could be no question that it had made an entire 
 change in her manner. Though she was too 
 much a woman of the world to betray resent- 
 ment, there was a distinct withdrawal of all 
 cordiality. 
 
 Dilke's mind, however, was too much occupied 
 with other things to pay much heed to her cool- 
 ness. Everything that had happened before
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 287 
 
 last night seemed blotted out, a mere back- 
 ground before which the terrible events of the 
 past evening stood out in lurid relief. He won- 
 dered in his heart if other men on the ship were 
 as miserable as he; if despair reigned in other 
 souls while smiling lips made superficial com- 
 ments on the growth of the city, the high 
 buildings, the busy wharves of "the finest har- 
 bour in the world." 
 
 Madame du Pont spoke with interest, well 
 feigned if it were not real, of the changes since 
 she had been in the country last, and asked 
 the names of the various towers and office 
 buildings as they passed, yet perhaps she was 
 no less glad than Dilke when the ship swung into 
 her berth and the process of disembarking began. 
 
 After the customs examination, Dilke bade 
 hasty farewells to the party. He experienced 
 a sense of immense relief that the strained 
 situation was drawing to an end. But when 
 Mr. Eldridge grasped his hand at parting and 
 said: "You will find that I am not ungrate- 
 ful I have written to a life insurance com- 
 pany in which I am interested, asking to have 
 you appointed one of its medical directors," 
 Dilke felt like a Judas receiving the thirty pieces 
 of silver for the betrayal of a friend. 
 
 Even now, in his office, he could not put the 
 scene of the smoking room behind him, could
 
 288 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 not help framing in his mind the things which 
 he might have said to Mr. Eldridge afterward; 
 the evasions, which were no lies but only sup- 
 pressions of the truth, which he might have 
 produced if he had been clever enough. He 
 told himself that there was deep wisdom in Bun- 
 yan's allegory which made the Town of Stupidity 
 a near neighbour to the City of Destruction. 
 
 Then suddenly another mood seized him, and 
 he blamed himself, not for having spoken the 
 truth, but for having suppressed it so long. It 
 was true that he owed a debt to Brandyce; 
 but did he not owe a higher debt to the woman 
 whom he loved ? Ought he not at the beginning 
 to have put Joyce on her guard, to have let 
 fall some hint at least, which to a mind as quick 
 as hers would have been a danger signal and 
 would have prevented her leaping into love 
 for this newcomer without a questioning, an 
 investigation, a period of probation? 
 
 After all, could any construction of his obli- 
 gation to Brandyce be carried so far as to 
 involve a lowering of his own moral standards? 
 The words of the old saint crossed his mind: 
 "He who does an unworthy action in zeal for 
 his friend, burns the golden thread which binds 
 their hearts together." And Brandyce had not 
 been even his friend, but only a stranger who 
 held this strange mortgage on his life.
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 289 
 
 And Joyce? What, he wondered, had been 
 the effect upon her of the revelation, if her father 
 had discussed the matter with her. Had she 
 argued, examined, insisted on further investiga- 
 tion and convincing proof? He decided that 
 everything would depend on how deeply she was 
 in love. Surface affection might be killed by 
 doubts cast on her lover's integrity; but if she 
 had really given her heart into this man's keep- 
 ing, he felt sure from his knowledge of her that 
 not crime itself could loosen her hold, and that 
 suffering and ignominy would only make her cling 
 the closer. It was a true knowledge of human 
 nature which led a sad heart to cry out that a 
 woman who loved could sooner stay away from the 
 Transfiguration than from the foot of the Cross. 
 
 From these thoughts which constantly tor- 
 mented him, Dilke sought relief in the routine 
 of daily labour, in looking up his old patients, 
 in study and in the sorting of the mail which had 
 accumulated in the weeks of his absence, since 
 he had ordered it held. 
 
 Among the first letters which he opened was 
 one from his mother. It ran as follows : 
 
 "PIERIA, October 2oth. 
 "My Dear Tony: 
 
 " I hope you will be pleased to hear that I am thinking 
 of paying you a visit this fall, if you can find me an 
 abiding place near you. I have been saving the six-
 
 290 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 pences for the purpose. Even my beloved grey cat, 
 who used to enrage you by curling up in your arm chair, 
 has been included in the economies and put on a diet of 
 milk instead of cream. But there is a satisfaction 
 in economies when they procure a great pleasure, so I 
 am enjoying mine. 
 
 "I wonder if you have been thinking of me as con- 
 stantly as I of you during these past months of ab- 
 sence " 
 
 Here Dilke laid down the letter and gave 
 himself up to the compunctions of conscience. 
 Alas, how seldom thoughts of his mother had 
 crossed his mental vision of late ! When a man 
 is living intensely, the drama of his own life is 
 too absorbing to be interrupted by thoughts of 
 the absent. The dramatis persona on the im- 
 mediate scene occupy his whole attention, and 
 the rest of the world exists only in a haze of 
 vague memories and half perceptions. 
 
 Now that his mother's letter brought her 
 more vividly to mind, he was forced to confess 
 that it was not with pure joy that he thought 
 of her and of her project of coming to New 
 York. If it had been last year! But no, that 
 would not have suited him either. He felt that 
 he would wish to share his joys with his mother. 
 He was sure that he would wish to share her 
 griefs with her; but his own griefs and chagrins 
 he preferred to keep to himself. 
 
 An acknowledged sorrow may gain relief by
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 291 
 
 expression; but for those festering inward 
 wounds, unexplained and unexplainable, there 
 is no balm save in "silence and slow time." 
 
 Dilke drew pen and paper hastily toward him 
 and began a response. He found it so difficult 
 that he was compelled to tear up three sheets of 
 paper before he had composed a letter which 
 satisfied him, and after all, it rang false in his 
 own ear as he read it over. He could only hope 
 that it would not betray itself to his mother. 
 He had emphasised his love for her, his apprecia- 
 tion of her goodness in making such a journey, 
 and he could not tell her how much he should 
 look forward to seeing her. But it would be 
 only tantalising to have her near when he could 
 not spend a great deal of time with her. At 
 present, he told her, he was absorbed in the 
 task of resuming practice and all the rearrange- 
 ment which it involved ; but a little later, in the 
 Christmas holidays, perhaps, he should be more 
 his own master, and then they would enjoy New 
 York together. How much they would have to 
 say to each other and how much he would enjoy 
 telling her of his travels! If she could bring 
 with her some of the little rose cakes which 
 she used to make for him, they would be 
 deeply appreciated by her devoted son, Anthony 
 Dilke. 
 
 The letter finished, Dilke folded and sealed it
 
 292 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 with a sigh of relief. Then he betook himself to 
 professional business. 
 
 Dilke had told the Eldridges that he should 
 not see them for some days, as his private affairs 
 would require regulating, and both father and 
 daughter had assented with a readiness which 
 gave him satisfaction at the time, but now he 
 was tormented by an uncontrollable desire to see 
 Joyce and judge for himself how she was bearing 
 her trial. 
 
 As the days went on, he picked up the paper 
 each morning with a nervous dread, and turned 
 at once to the society column, half expecting to 
 read the announcement of Joyce's engagement. 
 In a way he felt that it would be almost a relief, 
 since then, at all events, his sense of responsi- 
 bility would be at an end, and suspense was 
 worse than certainty. 
 
 One morning, in his customary search, his eye 
 was arrested, not by the notice which he sought 
 but by one which surprised him more the 
 announcement of the engagement of Senator 
 Jacob Penhallow Secor and of Madame Emilie 
 du Pont, widow of M. Caravel du Pont, once a 
 Secretary of the French Legation at Washing- 
 ton. "The wedding," the announcement went 
 on to say, " will be in Paris in the spring. Sena- 
 tor Secor will return with his bride to Washing- 
 ton, where he is building a magnificent house
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 293 
 
 with very original decorations, which are the 
 work of Mr. Brackett Newbold." 
 
 Dilke leaned back in his chair and gasped 
 with amazement. Jacob Secor married to Mad- 
 ame du Pont! He could as soon fancy Caliban 
 wedded to Cleopatra. So this was the Senator 
 concerning whom Madame du Pont had flattered 
 him with a confidence there on the steamer! He 
 had almost forgotten the fact of Secor 's election 
 to the Senate following his successful candidacy 
 for the lower house, so completely had Pieria 
 and all its affairs slipped out of his life. It was 
 all like a scene in a comedy and impossible to 
 take seriously. As his mind rapidly rehearsed 
 his interview with Emilie du Pont, he became 
 more and more convinced that she had intended 
 to add his broken heart to her collection of such 
 trifles. The conviction both amused and irri- 
 tated him. 
 
 " No, no, my lady! " he exclaimed half aloud. 
 "A man who has seen the best and loved it, does 
 not fall victim to charms such as yours." 
 
 Then he fell to reviewing Secor's career, and 
 asked himself in bitterness of spirit: "Is there 
 any success in America that money cannot win? 
 Are there any customs so nice that they will not 
 courtesy to the great kings of finance? Can a 
 man be so bad that society will not accept him, 
 if his rating in Bradstreet's be high enough?"
 
 294 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 The next day brought him a note from Joyce 
 asking him to dine with them on Friday of the 
 following week to meet Senator Secor, who was 
 to be in town for a few days only. " I take it 
 for granted," Joyce said in closing, "that you 
 have seen the announcement in the papers of his 
 engagement to my cousin, which is, I do not 
 doubt, as great a surprise to you as it is 
 to us." 
 
 Dilke accepted the invitation with avidity. 
 He was overwhelmed with curiosity to encounter 
 Jacob Secor in these new relations and surround- 
 ings. Above all, he experienced an overmas- 
 tering desire to see him with Madame du Pont, 
 since his imagination absolutely refused to couple 
 them. 
 
 It was some time after eight o'clock on the 
 night of the dinner when Dilke entered the 
 Eldridges' drawing room. He had been delayed 
 by attendance upon a very sick patient, and was 
 one of the last guests. Mr. Eldridge indeed 
 looked at his watch conspicuously as Dilke came 
 in; but the malefactor only smiled. He felt 
 that he had a good excuse and intended to pre- 
 sent it in due time, but not at the point of a pistol 
 or the click of a watch. 
 
 As Dilke paused for a moment in the door- 
 way, his eye took in the various rearrangements 
 and improvements wrought by Madame du
 
 Font's taste the sofa at right angles with the 
 fireplace and with its back to the window, the 
 tete-a-tete easy chairs, the low, well-shaded 
 lights. 
 
 The party was large, of diverse ages and vary- 
 ing degrees of importance. By the fire stood a 
 leading financier in talk with Madame du Pont. 
 Near by, her grey hair showing white against 
 the black oak of the chair in which she sat, was 
 Mrs. Fenwick, calmly surveying the company. 
 In the corner, a fashionable architect, the de- 
 signer of the new Secor mansion, was devoting 
 himself, with professional civility, to a heavy 
 dowager in green brocade. In the centre stood 
 Senator Secor talking with Joyce. Instinctively 
 and unreasonably, a wave of resentment swept 
 over Dilke and caused him to bite his lip hard. 
 What business had a man like that to be so near 
 her! 
 
 But in spite of his resentment, in spite of all 
 the recollections of Secor and his past, Dilke was 
 forced to an unwilling recognition that outwardly 
 a great change had swept over the man. In 
 these two brief years he had assumed a wholly 
 new air and bearing. His slouching carriage 
 was transformed to an erect one. His few 
 months of public life had given him a distin- 
 guished enunciation and an impressive manner 
 which lent a fictitious importance to his utter-
 
 296 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 ances, so that listeners felt that they had only 
 themselves to blame if they failed to discern the 
 significance of his remarks. 
 
 Dilke looked eagerly at Joyce, striving to 
 judge whether she too were under this man's, 
 spell; but he quickly decided that she stood 
 quite apart from Secor's sphere of influence and 
 was drawing him on by her air of gentle inquiry 
 to lay bare his character before those shrewd 
 young eyes, which saw more from under their 
 drooping lids than swims into the ken of most 
 people's full-orbed vision. All this Dilke took 
 in during the instant while he paused in the 
 doorway. Then he greeted his hostess, and 
 made his way to Mrs. Fenwick. 
 
 "Were you surprised at this marriage?" she 
 aske"d in cautious tones of Dilke as he stood 
 beside her. 
 
 "Very much," he answered. 
 
 "What do you think of it?" 
 
 " I think it accords admirably with the fitness 
 of things." 
 
 "At least it is likely to secure the happiness 
 of two people." 
 
 l( You are sure that they will be happy? " 
 
 " Oh, not they! I was thinking of the people 
 whom they might have married." 
 
 Dilke raised his eyebrows and smiled. 
 
 " You are severe upon them both," he said.
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 297 
 
 "Yet the world will call the marriage a judi- 
 dicious one for him and a brilliant one for her. " 
 
 Mrs. Fenwick waved her fan slowly to and fro. 
 "I question," she said, "whether there is such 
 a thing as a brilliant marriage in America. A 
 republic, in doing away with rank, makes the 
 social struggle a farce money, publicity, one 
 may attain; but in a few years, a turn of 
 fortune's wheel brings obscurity, and then what 
 is left of a marriage of ambition except its bonds ? 
 I should pity Emilie except that she deserves 
 her fate. She has chosen it with her eyes open. 
 It is the natural result of the development of 
 her character. As to the fitness of a widow's 
 marrying again, I do not presume to speak; but 
 at least she should choose with a discretion which 
 does credit to her acquired experience." 
 
 " Madame du Pont will enjoy the opportu- 
 nities of Washington life." 
 
 "Oh, yes, she will be prominent, and promi- 
 nence is dear to Emilie 's soul. She will fill her 
 place to perfection. The Washington of to-day 
 is not the Washington that I used to know. 
 Emilie will find herself in congenial surround- 
 ings and in an environment which will show 
 her husband to the best advantage." 
 
 Dinner was announced, and the forced talk 
 which precedes that signal changed to an air 
 of cheerful anticipation. Dilke gave his arm
 
 208 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 to Miss Jermaine, the young woman whose name 
 he had found on his card. He suspected Joyce 
 of having chosen her in a spirit of mockery, in 
 return for the lectures which Miss Eldridge had 
 received from him on the subject of athletics. 
 Surely it should have been a pleasure to any 
 student of hygiene to escort this vigorous young 
 golf champion. Dilke divined her honours as soon 
 as she drew off her gloves and he saw her brown, 
 muscular arms against the white of her gown; 
 but he was not left long to the guidance of sus- 
 picion, for Miss Jermaine began at once on the rela- 
 tive merits of the links at Baltusrol and Ardsley . 
 
 Dilke listened and assumed an interest if he 
 had it not, all the time wondering what town- 
 bred gallant would have the courage to offer his 
 protection to this buxom young woman who 
 looked quite able to fight her own battles and 
 protect her protector if necessary. Then he 
 wisely reflected that his role was not that of 
 protection but of a decent civility, and he strove 
 to give his whole attention to the mysteries of 
 tees and putters, and the incredible villainy of 
 caddies in searching industriously for balls which 
 they had secreted in their pockets. 
 
 In a pause of the conversation Joyce turned 
 to him and said: "Senator Secor tells me that 
 he is a native of Pieria. How does it happen 
 that you do not know each other? "
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 299 
 
 " We have never met, but we have had some 
 correspondence," Dilke answered stiffly, won- 
 dering if Secor knew anything of his connection 
 with the affair of the library. 
 
 " Do not force me, Miss Eldridge, "the Senator 
 interpolated, " to confess to the greater number 
 of my years which prevented my knowing 
 Doctor Dilke personally. I had left Pieria 
 before he began practice there. But I had some 
 correspondence with him, and I have watched 
 his professional career with interest. Last year 
 when I was in New York I chanced to be strolling 
 down one of the avenues when my attention 
 was attracted by a singular sign in the window. 
 It was gone the next day. Do you still practise 
 pagan healing, Doctor Dilke?" 
 
 Dilke coloured to his temples and Joyce, 
 noting it, rushed to his rescue. "There is no 
 kind of healing at which Doctor Dilke is not an 
 adept," she said. "Some day when he is as 
 well known as Sir Morell McKenzie, for instance, 
 we shall claim him as our discovery. By the 
 way, who are your leading physicians in Wash- 
 ington? You have good ones, I trust, for my 
 cousin's sake. Her health is not so strong as it 
 seems." 
 
 The conversation was successfully diverted, 
 but not before the men's glances had met like 
 the crossing of swords. Secor's was a challenge.
 
 300 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "We both have our secrets," it said. "Spare 
 me or beware of me! " 
 
 Jacob Secor had made it the practice of a life- 
 time to possess himself, so far as he was able, of 
 any disagreeable secret touching the past of 
 every man with whom he came in contact. 
 Although he had never heard of Machiavelli, he 
 was fully alive to the wisdom of his maxim that 
 to the man who would be great, two courses are 
 open: to conciliate or to crush. Of the two he 
 preferred the former, but it was always well to 
 hold the latter in reserve. 
 
 Dilke took up his glass of champagne and 
 drained it. Then he turned and strove to give 
 his attention once more to his neighbour; but 
 he answered "yes" or "no" at random, and 
 soon he had informed her that he went to Palm 
 Beach every year, that he liked the life there, 
 but was sorry to be away at midwinter, because 
 one missed so many cotillons, and all the time 
 he was wholly unconscious of these flagrant 
 misstatements. His real conversation was with 
 himself. 
 
 "'Scorned to be scorned by one that I scorn, 
 Is that a matter to make me fret?' 
 
 Yes, by Jove, it is the hardest thing there is to 
 bear. To lose the right to feel superior to a 
 man whom I hold contemptible is the lowest
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 301 
 
 depth of self-abasement. That damning sign 
 was only in the window for one day. Why 
 should Jacob Secor of all men have been the 
 one to see it?" 
 
 We can never look upon any action as dead 
 and buried. Our deeds are like Wandering 
 Jews which may rise on any street corner to 
 confront us, and we may be sure it will always 
 be when we desire their acquaintance least. 
 
 The dinner seemed to Dilke to drag on end- 
 lessly. Would it never be done! The cigars 
 alone with the men were not so bad; but he 
 was thankful when it was time to join the ladies. 
 
 In 'a spirit of defiance of Secor, Dilke walked 
 directly over to Madame du Pont. She had 
 laid aside her mourning and wore a dress 
 spangled with gold. Fillets of gold leaves 
 bound the ripples of her hair, looking dulled 
 beside its lustre. 
 
 "You have come to congratulate me?" she 
 said smiling, though her lips were drawn. 
 
 This time Dilke was so little moved by 
 emotion that evasion came trippingly to his 
 tongue. 
 
 "Not I!" he answered, smiling too. "When 
 a man has carried off a charming woman, there 
 is a distinct sense of injury in the rest of us 
 which forbids our congratulating her, whatever 
 we may feel toward him,"
 
 302 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "You still play games well," said Madame 
 du Pont, looking up at him. 
 
 " I have been under the instruction of a 
 skilful teacher, Madame," Dilke replied. 
 
 "Emilie," said Mr. Eldridge, "Mr. Winthrop, 
 Senator Secor's architect, wishes to meet you 
 and to talk about the house with you." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Winthrop, a tall, slender 
 man who stooped a little as if under the weight 
 of a mass of hair falling over his forehead, " I 
 have been noting a curious thing, and wishing 
 to ask you if there were any explanation of 
 the coincidence. To-day I received Mr. New- 
 bold's coloured sketch for the decorations of the 
 Senator's main hall. They promise to be fine, 
 by the way; but to-night as I have sat looking 
 at you, I could have taken my oath that the 
 main figure was a portrait of you a very 
 pretty compliment certainly. Is it by the Sen- 
 ator's orders?" 
 
 Madame du Pont answered with one of her 
 smiles of dubious interpretation, neither affirm- 
 ing nor denying. That smile had stood her in 
 good stead on many occasions. There is nothing 
 like a smile for conveying an impression with- 
 out committing one afterward. 
 
 "A portrait of Emilie!" Mr. Eldridge ex- 
 claimed. "Are you sure it was intentional?" 
 
 shall judge for yourself," Mr. Winthrop
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 303 
 
 answered. " I have had the drawings photo- 
 graphed and reduced. I brought them to-night, 
 thinking that Madame du Pont would be inter- 
 ested." 
 
 As he spoke, he drew from his pocket three or 
 four photographs and handed them to Madame 
 du Pont, who laid them in her lap and took up 
 the first, which was a reproduction of the central 
 panel to be placed above the grand stairway. 
 
 Dilke, who stood above her, felt his eyes 
 drawn toward it almost against his will. As 
 he looked, he was amazed at the idealising power 
 which art and love combined can give. There 
 stood Madame du Pont the likeness was un- 
 mistakable; but how transfigured! This god- 
 dess of hospitality was something more than 
 the woman who had inspired and suggested it 
 could ever comprehend. Here was a spirit 
 breathing gracious warmth. The red hair was 
 transformed to a hazy aureole about her head, 
 the Greek draperies left her rounded arm bare. 
 One hand, white and slender, was extended as 
 if in welcome. Her foot was poised lightly on 
 a cloud, and underneath the picture ran the 
 inscription which Dilke recalled so clearly, 
 scrawled in red chalk under the pastel sketch 
 in Newbold's studio, the lines from a Greek poet: 
 
 "Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps 
 Not on the earth; but on the hearts of men."
 
 304 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 For an instant Dilke's wrath was swallowed 
 up in admiration. Then a wave of indignant 
 protest rose in his soul as he thought of that 
 gentle, loyal spirit serving the lady of his 
 dreams in a distant land, while she sat here, a 
 smile of pleased vanity on her lips, indifferent, 
 wholly indifferent to the wound which she had 
 dealt. 
 
 "Through what unworthy channels great 
 inspirations may come to a man, and after all, 
 how fortunate a thing it is that, whatever the 
 romancer may tell us, love is not the only thing 
 in life. If it were, a man might as well go out 
 and hang himself when he loses the woman he 
 loves. But men like Newbold have a blessed 
 consolation in their devotion to their craft. 
 He will come out of this experience a greater 
 artist, and, I believe, a stronger man." 
 
 All this Dilke was saying to himself while he 
 studied the photograph which he had taken up 
 and held in his hand. As he returned it to 
 Madame du Pont, he observed aloud: "It is 
 wonderfully done, and as Mr. Winthrop says, 
 a very subtle compliment. I trust, Madame, 
 that its associations, as well as its beauty, will 
 give you great pleasure." 
 
 "Thank you," Madame du Pont exclaimed, 
 quite mistress of herself now. " I hope that you 
 will see it in place some day and permit the
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 305 
 
 goddess of hospitality to welcome you in 
 Washington." 
 
 " Perhaps Newbold and I may see it together 
 some time. It would be most interesting to 
 watch his satisfaction in his work." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Newbold is an artist to the finger 
 tips. Nothing in the world but his painting 
 would really ever satisfy him." 
 
 It was all like an eighteenth century comedy, 
 the talk between these two, so innocent of under 
 meaning to those who stood about, so charged 
 with intent to the speakers. Dilke meant that 
 this woman should catch the covert sneer in 
 his voice. She did, and met it with defiant 
 eyes and smiling lips. Yet if he could have 
 known the pain at her heart he might have 
 forgiven her much. As she looked up at that 
 indignant face bent over her, she realised with 
 a swift pang that here was the one man whom 
 she might have loved. Not even to herself 
 would she admit that he was the man whom she 
 did love. That long misery of knowledge was 
 reserved for the years to come. 
 
 In response to Madame du Font's last words 
 Dilke simply bowed, and turning, walked quietly 
 across the room to Joyce Eldridge, who was 
 standing for the moment alone. Her dress was 
 of white tulle trimmed with hyacinths and made 
 in Paris. To Dilke's eyes it was a gown of
 
 306 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 mist, fashioned in fairyland, and hung with 
 celestial asphodels. 
 
 " I have come to say 'good night,' " said Dilke. 
 
 "So soon?" 
 
 " Yes, my reason for leaving early is the same 
 as my excuse for coming late. I have a patient 
 who is very ill." Then, looking closely at Joyce, 
 he added: 'Tell me how you are how you 
 really are?" 
 
 "Why do you ask?" 
 
 " You are looking thin and a little, worn in 
 spite of your high colour, and your eyelids are 
 tired over the bright excitement of your eyes." 
 
 "Thank you. In other words, I am looking 
 rather plain." 
 
 "You know," Dilke answered, "that you 
 never looked lovelier. Your mirror told you 
 that when you looked into it. I am not here 
 to repeat its flatteries. I speak as a physician 
 and a friend." 
 
 "Thank you again, and this time I say it 
 seriously. As a matter of fact, I am a little 
 tired, but otherwise quite well far better than 
 you, judging by your looks." 
 
 "I arri well enough, physically." 
 
 A soft sympathy dawned in Joyce's eyes. 
 " I know," she said; "you don't mind my telling 
 you that I understand." 
 
 "It is good in you I knew you would."
 
 DILKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 307 
 
 "Yes," Joyce went on hurriedly, a swift, 
 nervous colour rising in her cheek, " I thought 
 it all over before I asked you to-night I trust 
 I did not make a mistake. I thought it would 
 be easier for you to meet them like this in a 
 crowd." 
 
 Dilke looked up bewildered; but before he 
 could reply, a man on the other side of Joyce 
 claimed her attention, and Dilke could only 
 repeat his good night and leave the room. 
 
 Once outside the room and the house, he 
 found himself dizzy, and wondered if he could 
 have drunk more wine than he realised. There 
 must be something wrong with him. Surely 
 his mind must be bewildered to let such fancies 
 creep into it as were assailing it now. He 
 repeated Joyce's words over and over to him- 
 self. What did they mean? Surely, surely she 
 had not thought, she could not think that he 
 was in love with her cousin. Preposterous! 
 And yet what other interpretation could he 
 place on her sympathy, on her saying that it 
 would be easier for him to meet "them" in a 
 crowd ? 
 
 It was it must be true! Then how much 
 or how little did it mean ? Had it been a belief 
 in this imaginary interest of his in Madame du 
 Pont which had led to the indifference of Joyce's 
 manner to himself?
 
 308 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 In spite of himself, a wild wave of excitement 
 swelled in a deluge over his soul. When it 
 subsided it left him gloomy. 
 
 "No," he said to himself, "I will not think 
 of it not for a moment. I have opened my 
 Pandora's box, and all the troubles that afflict 
 humanity have flown out to sting me; but 
 hope is still safely locked inside. Let her stay 
 there till she dies for lack of food. If she ever 
 escaped to whisper her soft promises in my ear, 
 and then I found them lies and was forced to 
 face the bitter truth again, I could not bear 
 it I would rather die." 
 
 Dilke came out of the house and started at 
 a brisk pace walking eastward from Washing- 
 ton Square. The weather was damp, with a 
 light fog hanging like a curtain of gauze among 
 the trees in the park. The streets were wet 
 and the reflection of the lamps lengthened 
 themselves on the pavement. 
 
 There is a curious power in atmosphere to 
 affect the memory, to bring back things seen 
 and felt under similar conditions. Recollec- 
 tions of a night like this in Paris rushed back 
 on Dilke's mind. Just so had the steam risen 
 from the garden of the Tuilleries; so had the 
 lights shone upside down from the pavements, 
 and so had the figure of Joyce Eldridge moved 
 before him like an apparition.
 
 U1LKE MEETS AN ACQUAINTANCE 309 
 
 The fog seemed to have bewildered his brain. 
 He could not think distinctly, could not reason 
 clearly. Precisely how much or how little was 
 it reasonable to attach to Joyce's words in the 
 drawing room a few moments ago? Evidently 
 their significance must be estimated in the light 
 of the past. In vain he tried to recall every 
 little circumstance in the past six months 
 which could help him. Had this "ice maiden," 
 as Newbold called her, ever shown a trace of 
 warmth toward him ? Had she blushed or paled 
 when he took her hand? Even there on the 
 steamer, when he had ventured for one blessed 
 moment to lay his hand over hers, was there 
 anything in her acceptance of that clasp which 
 suggested more than friendship? 
 
 Honesty compelled him to answer in the 
 negative. 
 
 So decisive was the response to his inward 
 questionings that he began to doubt rather his 
 interpretation of the scene which he had just 
 left behind him. It was vanity alone, or van- 
 ity and love mingled, which had led him to 
 read hope in eyes that spoke only pity. She 
 -vas sorry for him, that was all; but what a 
 lature it was that could exclude self enough 
 for pity, and pity extended to the man who of 
 all others had been most responsible for her 
 own unhappiness!
 
 310 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 If he could only see her alone, only explain 
 how it had all come about, only know how she 
 felt toward Brandy ce, only clear himself at 
 least of the odious suspicion of having been in 
 love with Madame du Pont ! For some strange 
 reason that accusation rankled more than the 
 suggestion of having failed in his duty to 
 Brandy ce. Perhaps because, conscious as he 
 was of a feeling deeper than anything else in 
 him toward Joyce herself, it seemed like a 
 charge of falseness to his love, of treating lightly 
 a devotion which, though unrewarded, must 
 always remain the master motive of his life ; be- 
 cause it had for him the force of an intimate 
 presence as little to be evaded or escaped as life 
 itself. 
 
 Of that strange misconception of his possible 
 falseness to her, at least, he could and would 
 dispose finally and forever. Joyce should not 
 rest under that delusion a moment longer 
 than he could not help. He would go to her 
 to-morrow. What or how much he would tell 
 her he left to the interview itself to decide.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 A DIVIDED DUTY 
 
 ON the morning after the Eldridge dinner, 
 Dilke sat in his office figuring accounts. He 
 had always found working with figures the best 
 antidote for dreaming. It braced the mind to 
 deal with hard facts, with actualities. There 
 was no "if" or "perhaps" about 4 -f 4 or 
 77 x 89. Things were either true or false, 
 and results must tally with universal law which 
 feeling was powerless to alter by a jot. 
 
 So closely was Dilke's attention engaged, that 
 he scarcely raised his head from the ruled page 
 before him when the office bell rang. The door 
 opened and Senator Secor walked in. He was 
 dressed in a quiet, faultlessly fitting suit of 
 grey, and he wore a white carnation in the 
 buttonhole of his coat. His whole appearance 
 was fresh as the morning. 
 
 This man had been so constantly in Dilke's 
 thoughts of late that his bodily presence seemed 
 only a materialisation of mental impressions. 
 The Senator stood in front of the table, sharply 
 outlined against the sunlight which poured in 
 
 311
 
 312 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 through the unshaded windows. Dilke, as he 
 looked at Secor, seemed to be studying a tangi- 
 ble symbol of success, a mathematical demon- 
 stration of ultimate arrival. Here was a man 
 who had pushed his way to the front, who 
 had broken "his birth's invidious bar," had 
 overcome or cast down every obstacle, had 
 forced himself on public attention, had gained 
 every prize on which he had set his heart. 
 
 Dilke experienced a protesting admiration as 
 he watched him, and envied the foresight, the 
 determination, the force which had made him 
 what he was. Secor had been hampered by 
 no tenderness of feeling, no hesitant scruples, 
 no delicacy of conscience. These handicaps in 
 the race of life he had thrown away, and behold 
 the victor, smiling down at defeated com- 
 petitors from the heights of his place in the 
 Senate House! 
 
 Dilke felt his mind bewildered as these 
 thoughts flashed through it inchoate and dis- 
 connected, as flying thoughts come. 
 
 "Good morning," said the Senator, a broad, 
 good-natured smile rippling across his ample 
 mouth and losing itself in the creases of his 
 commodious chin. 
 
 "Good morning, Senator," Dilke answered, 
 rising and playing with the papers on his desk 
 as an excuse for not offering his hand.
 
 A DIVIDED DUTY 313 
 
 " I came to see you on business," Secor went 
 on, "and I chose this time because Miss 
 Eldridge told me that it was your office hour; 
 but as my business is personal rather than pro- 
 fessional, you must not let me detain you from 
 waiting patients." 
 
 With this the Senator cast a bland and imper- 
 sonal glance at the empty chairs around the 
 room. 
 
 Dilke flushed. "I have no patients this 
 morning," he replied. " I very frequently have 
 none. I am only a beginner, you know." 
 
 "Beginnings are always difficult," Secor re- 
 sponded. " I still have a keen recollection of 
 my own. The worst of it is that in forcing our 
 knife into the oyster we sometimes cut ourselves 
 on the shell." 
 
 Dilke remained silent. His power of silence 
 was a distinct social asset. In this case it forced 
 Secor to show his hand before he had intended. 
 
 "Yes," he repeated, "I cut myself more 
 than once, and though the wounds have healed, 
 the scars remain. I am quite ready to admit 
 that my early life was marked by indiscretions. 
 I sowed my wild oats." 
 
 "They seem to have reaped a rich harvest," 
 Dilke interrupted in a tone difficult to interpret. 
 The Senator chose to accept it as compli- 
 mentary.
 
 314 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "Yes, fortune has favoured me, as you say; 
 but one looks back and regrets. One wishes 
 to shut the door of the past and live in the 
 present." 
 
 With this he sank into an arm chair which 
 Dilke had neglected to offer, and said with a 
 cordiality which had a genuinely winning qual- 
 ity: "Doctor Dilke, I have come to ask you to 
 help me to shut this door, to bolt and bar it, so 
 that I can go on with new courage for the future." 
 
 Dilke waited, determined not to be lured into 
 an ambush. The Senator went on still more 
 candidly. 
 
 "You know my past. You also know the 
 woman who is to be my wife. There is much 
 that women cannot understand. They should 
 not be brought unnecessarily into contact with 
 the rough facts of life. You agree with me? " 
 
 "I see your point." 
 
 "Ah," said the Senator, placing his fingers 
 together and regarding them attentively. " That 
 is what it is to deal with a clever man. There 
 is no call for explanations when people are quick. 
 You started out there in Pieria with village 
 standards. I knew that when you came to 
 New York you would begin to look at things as 
 a man of the world looks at them. You would 
 see that success lies at the top of the ladder. 
 The upper rungs of the ladder are in the public
 
 A DIVIDED DUTY 315 
 
 eye and should be open to inspection; but the 
 foot must be underground and bear the marks 
 of the soil. When I passed your window last 
 year and saw that sign 
 
 Dilke turned white and bit his under lip till 
 the blood came. 
 
 "When I saw that sign," the Senator re- 
 peated, " I said to myself : ' That young man will 
 get on. He has dropped the sickly imbecility 
 of expecting to reform the world and has adapted 
 himself to existing conditions. The people want 
 humbug. Let them have it!" 
 
 While this talk was flowing easily from Secor's 
 lips, Dilke felt as if he were Faust and this 
 Mephistopheles come to offer ironical congratu- 
 lations on his joining the company of the 
 damned. His one emotion was a wild deter- 
 mination to separate himself from this man's 
 association, by which he felt himself smirched 
 and contaminated. 
 
 "That sign," he said with slow emphasis, 
 "was a dirty, dishonourable trick, to which I 
 persuaded myself by a course of sophistical 
 reasoning intended to stifle my knowledge that 
 I was making myself a charlatan. The only 
 patient it brought me was Mr. Eldridge, and I 
 laid the whole matter bare before him the next 
 day." 
 
 "That was a still cleverer move," the Senator
 
 316 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 answered with a sarcastic glint in his eye. 
 "Your sign attracted attention. Your candour 
 clinched confidence. I admire you, Doctor 
 Dilke." 
 
 Dilke dug his nails into his palms under the 
 table. 
 
 " Our notions of what is admirable are so differ- 
 ent," he said, "that it is quite useless to discuss 
 the matter. Your business with me this morn- 
 ing, I judge, was to secure my silence as toward 
 Madame du Pont, concerning any inconvenient 
 episodes in your past which may have come to 
 my knowledge." 
 
 " That was part of my business, and I should 
 wish to put the matter on a business basis." 
 
 "Thank you," Dilke answered, his voice 
 striving to be ironical, but choked by rising 
 anger. " If you intend to imply an honorarium 
 for my silence, I must assure you that it would 
 not be acceptable. If I keep silence, it is because 
 my relation to Madame du Pont is not such as 
 to lead me to burden her with either advice or 
 confidences. I regard her as a charming woman 
 quite capable of conducting her own affairs." 
 
 Secor waved an appreciation with his hand 
 from his shirt front outward toward Dilke. 
 
 " I am glad that you share my admiration for 
 Madame du Pont," he said, "and I am grateful 
 that I can depend on your judicious reserve.
 
 A DIVIDED DUTY 317 
 
 At present evidently I am unable to testify my 
 gratitude in material form; but if you should 
 ever wish to go into politics and I could forward 
 your advancement 
 
 "All that is quite out of my line," Dilke inter- 
 rupted. " Let us consider the episode closed. 
 But you spoke of this as only part of your busi- 
 ness. As my office hour is nearly ended and I 
 have an engagement up town, may I ask if there 
 is anything further about which you wish to 
 consult me?" 
 
 "A minor matter, and I will finish it quickly," 
 Secor answered, lifting a paper-knife from the 
 table and balancing it on his finger. "You 
 know Captain Brandyce?" 
 
 Again Dilke felt as if Mephistopheles sat before 
 him, touching every stop of pain in the organ of 
 his being and striking discords which jarred 
 through the whole gamut of his nature. But 
 he gripped his self-control hard and held his 
 features immovable. 
 
 "Yes, I know him," he replied. 
 
 " It is about him that I wish to consult you." 
 
 Dilke nodded, but made no verbal reply. He 
 was gathering his powers to meet the situation 
 as it might develop. He resolved on caution 
 and reticence. 
 
 " Is he a man whom you would recommend? " 
 Secor asked.
 
 318 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "For what position?" 
 
 "Hm! for a somewhat delicate one, involving 
 tact, pliancy, and discretion." 
 
 " Brandy ce has all three." 
 
 "Ah! So Madame du Pont tells me. Won- 
 derful woman, Madame du Pont keen and 
 sharp as a razor." 
 
 "That will be a happy marriage," Dilke 
 commented to himself; "no illusions on either 
 side." It crossed his mind to wonder whether 
 Mr. Eldridge had imparted his own doubts of 
 Brandy ce to Madame du Pont; whether, if he 
 had, Madame du Pont would have been preju- 
 diced thereby. From what Dilke had observed 
 of that lady, he was inclined to believe that she 
 would be very lenient toward any shortcomings 
 which did not militate against worldly success. 
 Perhaps, indeed, with her usual insight, she had 
 perceived in Brandyce's failing a distinct ele- 
 ment of usefulness to his prospective employer. 
 Truly the Senator was justified in calling her a 
 wonderful woman. 
 
 While Dilke was occupied with these thoughts 
 he almost forgot Secor's presence till the latter 
 continued : 
 
 " However, she advised me to consult you." 
 
 "I appreciate the compliment." 
 
 " Yes, she said you knew him thoroughly and 
 would tell me what I wish to know. I am look-
 
 A DIVIDED DUTY 319 
 
 ing for a private secretary who shall be, how- 
 ever, much more than is generally expected in 
 that office. I should wish him to be my repre- 
 sentative in matters in which I did not care to 
 appear personally." 
 
 ("Lobbying for the whiskey trust," Dilke 
 commented inwardly.) 
 
 " I prefer a new man, not formerly associated 
 with me." 
 
 ("Clever scheme to disarm suspicion.") 
 
 " He would need to be accustomed to good 
 society at home and abroad." 
 
 (" International lobbying. Secor is spreading 
 out.") 
 
 " In short, a man who would make a favour- 
 able impression, who would be true to my inter- 
 ests, which would also be his own, and who would 
 not be fanatical in dealing with transactions 
 involving delicate negotiations. Is this Captain 
 Brandy ce such a man?" 
 
 "Precisely." 
 
 "You would cordially endorse him, then?" 
 
 "You could not find a better man for the 
 position, I should say." 
 
 "Thanks. Would you perhaps be good 
 enough to open negotiations with him on my 
 behalf? You would be at liberty to state that 
 the salary would be a large one if he proves satis- 
 factory. I am too good a business man not to
 
 320 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 pay liberally for services demanding peculiar 
 talent." 
 
 ("In other words, for dirty work done by men 
 of clean reputation.") 
 
 "And this at least you would surely consent 
 to allow me to acknowledge as a business trans- 
 action with you." 
 
 "No, no, not that!" Dilke answered hastily, 
 and then sat silent, studying the wall behind 
 Senator Secor's head. Under the mask of 
 immobility which confronted the visitor, a 
 tumult of emotions was raging emotions which 
 Secor was as incapable of suspecting as of com- 
 prehending. Where did duty lie? This was a 
 question which dominated all Dilke's queries. 
 Brandy ce was well suited for the place. There 
 was no doubt of that. Secor had chosen with 
 his usual mixture of luck and shrewdness. 
 Moreover, the opportunity set Dilke's pulses to 
 beating as he pictured himself going to Brandyce 
 with this offer in his hand, saying to him : " Here 
 is an opening to wealth, power, success; I bring 
 it to you as payment of my debt and as a peace 
 offering." But in reality he knew that the 
 offer was devil-sent ; that it meant bringing out 
 the worst that was in Brandyce, shutting the lid 
 of the coffin on any good impulses and resolu- 
 tions which might have sprung to life in repent- 
 ance for his past sins.
 
 A DIVIDED DUTY 321 
 
 If he had sincerely repented and if Joyce 
 Eldridge still clung to him, there was a possible 
 future, a possible honourable career, still open to 
 Brandy ce. This bargain would close it. Could 
 Dilke bring himself to lend a hand at such a 
 transaction ? 
 
 No one has learned to live who does not some- 
 times live in the lives of others, and for the 
 moment Dilke made Brandyce's case his own, 
 and strove to consider what offered most of hope 
 and true betterment. At length he broke 
 silence, saying: 
 
 " I will open the negotiations as you suggest, 
 Senator; but I must be candid with you. If I 
 speak to Captain Brandyce I shall set the case 
 clearly before him. If he asks my advice, I 
 shall give it. Do you care for my services on 
 those terms?" 
 
 Secor smiled wearily, like a politician dealing 
 with a college professor whose unf amiliarity with 
 the practical world at once irritates and amuses 
 him. 
 
 "You are quite at liberty to introduce the 
 matter in any way you choose," he answered, 
 "only I must ask you to emphasise the im- 
 portance which I attach to the service, the 
 political opening which it may offer, and the 
 fact that a large salary goes with the appoint- 
 ment."
 
 322 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " I will not fail to do so," said Dilke. 
 
 The Senator rose. "If you will make an 
 appointment with Captain Brandyce, I will see 
 him at my hotel. And now I must apologise 
 for taking so much of your time," he said, laying 
 down the paper-cutter and looking straight at 
 Dilke. " But I cannot be sorry. I feel that for 
 the first time in my life I have met an honest 
 man." 
 
 Dilke held out his hand. Was it vanity which 
 moved him to concede what he had withheld 
 at first, or was it a sudden appreciation of a 
 latent manliness in this intriguing, unscrupulous, 
 Mephistophelian politician? 
 
 Dilke himself pondered on the question, and 
 after the door closed he decided that it was crass 
 vanity to which he had yielded, an imbecile satis- 
 faction in hearing himself called an honest man 
 by one who had no standards of honesty; 
 but while he stood in Secor's presence he felt 
 himself swayed by the current of electricity 
 which passes from man to man and explains the 
 quality which we call magnetism. 
 
 All through the interview Dilke had been won- 
 dering at the change which had come over Secor 
 not that his morals showed signs of funda- 
 mental improvement, but that he had learned at 
 least to veil them with a decent regard for other 
 men's prejudices in favour of a different code.
 
 A DIVIDED DUTY 323 
 
 Outward respectability seemed to be the latest 
 but most cherished luxury which his wealth had 
 been able to purchase. The manners and vocab- 
 ulary of society he had acquired with astonish- 
 ing celerity, and now he was drawing near to 
 decency. Perhaps, after all, Madame du Pont 
 had made as good a bargain as she deserved. 
 
 When Dilke found himself alone he gave way 
 to a wild exultation. At last it seemed that 
 fortune had put in his way a means of repaying 
 his debt. Here at length was the quid pro quo, 
 for which he had been vainly longing. He would 
 state the case fairly, would set before Brandy ce 
 all the dangers which might beset his course; 
 but, after all, Brandyce was a full-grown man. 
 The ultimate decision must rest in his own hands, 
 while Dilke would feel that however it eventu- 
 ated, he had done his part. The opportunity 
 for service had offered itself and he had grasped 
 it. His mind had no room for any other feeling 
 than joy. It was as if prison doors had been 
 suddenly flung wide and the prisoner had a 
 glimpse of liberty. At last the shackles of 
 obligation were about to fall off and leave him 
 a free man.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 
 
 NOT for an instant had Dilke lost sight of his 
 purpose of seeing Joyce Eldridge. His mind 
 was full of her. All other thoughts sank into 
 insignificance beside the intensity of his desire 
 to explain his position to her. He longed to 
 be assured from her own lips that he had not in 
 her eyes committed what was to him the un- 
 pardonable sin. 
 
 How he should phrase all that he had to say 
 was nc-t quite clear to him; but he had faith 
 that it would come to him as he spoke. The 
 main thing was the opportunity of seeing her 
 alone. At first he thought of writing and 
 asking Joyce to name a time when she would be 
 free. Then that struck him as giving formality 
 to an interview which he wished to make in- 
 formal, at least in the beginning, so he decided 
 to take his chance. 
 
 There is no truer saying, however, than that 
 pleasant memories must be arranged for in 
 advance, and when Dilke met Madame du Pont 
 and Joyce stepping out of the Eldridge carriage 
 
 324
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 325 
 
 as he neared the house, he cursed his own folly 
 in not forestalling such a happening. 
 
 It was too late, however, to arrange anything, 
 and he was conscious of a double embarrass- 
 ment in meeting these two women together 
 the one whom he loved and the one whom he 
 was supposed by her to love, though the truth 
 was known to the second, who for reasons of her 
 own had evidently not revealed it. 
 
 It was easy to resolve to appear uncon- 
 cerned, but quite another thing to carry out 
 the programme. Dilke was not enough of a 
 man of the world to play a part at any time, 
 and especially when he was deeply moved as 
 now. He was conscious that he was flushing 
 high, that he was fingering his hat nervously, 
 and that he followed the two women into the 
 house with an air of embarrassment which 
 would tend to confirm rather than to allay 
 Joyce's suspicions. 
 
 A few moments later Senator Secor entered, 
 but Madame du Pont showed no inclination to 
 withdraw with him. In fact, she devoted her- 
 self rather ostentatiously to Dilke and left the 
 Senator to talk with Joyce, who answered in 
 obviously indifferent monosyllables. Only once 
 did she manifest any interest, and that was 
 when Brandyce's name was mentioned. Dilke 
 looked up quickly and caught the flush on her
 
 326 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 cheek, the trouble in her eyes. He longed to 
 listen to what she was saying, but Madame du 
 Pont held his attention closely. 
 
 She was talking of temperament, of how far 
 it was innate and how far it could be cultivated. 
 
 "Temperament is the aroma of personality, 
 isn't it, Doctor Dilke?" she said as she lifted 
 the teacup which the Senator had handed to 
 her. ' You know it just as you recognise the 
 bouquet of this flowery Pekoe before you put 
 it to your lips." 
 
 Dilke smiled in spite of himself. The asso- 
 ciation of flowery Pekoe and Jake Secor was 
 too diverting for his gravity. Madame du Pont, 
 who had an uncanny power of divining what 
 was going on in the mind of a person with whom 
 she was talking, continued with a note of explana- 
 tion in her voice: "Of course there are some 
 characters so strong that they impress them- 
 selves directly and without any prelude of 
 subtlety. That perhaps is the true American 
 type, our contribution, as it were; and, to 
 me, after living so long on the other side 
 where everything is indirect and subtle, 
 these direct, dominant natures have a peculiar 
 interest." 
 
 "I can readily understand it," Dilke an- 
 swered, his features under control once more. 
 "It is doubtless the law of opposite attractions.
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 327 
 
 But meanwhile what have I done to be excluded 
 from the sacred rites of tea drinking?" 
 
 "Oh, I beg your pardon!" Joyce answered 
 from behind the tea table, turning toward him 
 from the Senator, "I thought that you never 
 took tea." 
 
 " I intend to make an exception this after- 
 noon. Madame du Pont assures me that your 
 tea is a symbol of temperament, and I wish to 
 make an effort to penetrate the mystery." 
 
 If Dilke had hoped to make a diversion, he 
 was disappointed, for no one moved except to 
 widen the circle a little so as to make the con- 
 versation general; and to Dilke, whose mind 
 was full of vital things, the touch and go of 
 small talk quickly became intolerable. 
 
 After a few moments he rose. As he did so 
 Henry Eldridge entered. His hearty manner 
 and explosive welcome seemed to relieve the 
 social tension a tension which everyone had 
 felt, though no one could have explained. 
 
 "Glad to see you, doctor!" Henry exclaimed. 
 " It's lucky for you there aren't many men as 
 healthy as I in New York. Feel that! " and he 
 doubled his arm with visible pride at the bulg- 
 ing of the biceps. 
 
 "Henry!" said his sister in a vain effort to 
 subdue her brother's manner to the conven- 
 tions of the drawing room.
 
 328 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 " What's the matter now, Joyce? " her brother 
 answered with jovial self-assertion. "Can't a 
 man show his muscle before people? Is it any- 
 thing to be ashamed of?" 
 
 "We are willing to take it for granted," his 
 sister began, but Madame du Pont interrupted 
 her. "Don't try to change Henry," she said 
 in an aside. " He is so delightfully typical." 
 
 Few people enjoy having those for whom 
 they feel responsible regarded as "types." 
 Joyce wished that Henry would learn to differ- 
 entiate his down- town and up-town manners. 
 
 m 
 
 She wished that Emilie's green eyes were not 
 so keen. Above all she wished that Dilke would 
 take his leave. From the beginning of his call 
 she had felt that he desired to see Madame du 
 Pont alone, and she was enraged with herself 
 for lacking the social tact to separate herself 
 and Senator Secor from the group. It was 
 this feeling which had left her so unable to 
 carry on a conversation. "Perhaps," she said 
 now to her brother, "Senator Secor would be 
 interested to see the gymnasium which you 
 have fitted up in the basement. We might 
 show it to him as a suggestion for his Washing- 
 ton house." 
 
 The Senator accepted the invitation with the 
 smile of endurance with which the average man 
 contemplates the inspection of the house of an
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 329 
 
 acquaintance; but to the surprise of Joyce, 
 Dilke only hastened his farewells. 
 
 "I have nothing to say to you," he observed 
 to Henry as he withdrew his fingers with diffi- 
 culty from that youth's clenched arm. " It is 
 simply an impertinence for a man to be in such 
 robust condition after a summer in New York." 
 
 "Oh, but I spent a week with Aunt Sylvia 
 at ' Old Field,' and a week in her courts is better 
 than a thousand much better!" 
 
 Madame du Pont smiled approval. "You 
 found it a little dull ? " she questioned encourag- 
 ingly. Emilie du Pont was an adept in the art 
 of inducing others to say things which she 
 wished said. 
 
 Joyce frowned, but her brother declined to 
 be suppressed. " Dull! " he exclaimed. " It was 
 deadly. The flowers were asleep in their beds. 
 The coachman nodded on his box, the horses 
 jogged along with their eyes shut. When we 
 drove, every butcher's wagon passed us on the 
 road; but Aunt Sylvia did not care. She said 
 the speed of other vehicles was a matter of 
 indifference to her; that she was out to enjoy 
 the delightful air. 
 
 "Ridicule," Joyce exclaimed, indignantly, "is 
 a poor return for hospitality. After a visit 
 
 "This was not a visit; it was a course of 
 lectures."
 
 330 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Dilke, seeing that Joyce was really disturbed 
 by Henry's ill-timed pleasantry, sought to end 
 the situation by taking his leave. 
 
 "Good afternoon, Madame du Pont," he 
 began, paused an instant, and said, turning to 
 Joyce: "Could you give me half an hour 
 to-morrow morning? I want to speak to you 
 about your father and other matters 
 
 In spite of himself, a note of earnestness 
 crept into Dilke 's voice and alarmed Joyce. 
 
 "You don't think my father ill? Please tell 
 me the exact truth. He is not seriously ill? " 
 
 Scarcely a day goes by in a doctor's life that 
 he is not greeted by some such question, asking 
 for the truth in one breath and pleading to 
 have it tempered to the anxious heart in the 
 next. 
 
 Dilke instantly reproached himself for the 
 unnecessary pang which he had inflicted. " No, 
 indeed!" he said hastily; "I did not mean to 
 alarm you Then, catching Madame du 
 
 Font's eyes fixed upon him with an expression 
 hard to read, an expression which he had never 
 seen in them before, he bowed and withdrew 
 in some confusion. 
 
 The Senator followed him several paces toward 
 the door. 
 
 "Have you spoken to Brandyce?" he asked. 
 
 " No, I am on my way to see him now. You
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 331 
 
 have nothing to add to what you told me this 
 morning?" 
 
 " Nothing. But I should be glad to hear 
 from him as early as possible, and I shall hope 
 for a favourable reply." 
 
 "You certainly offer a great deal," Dilke 
 answered, "and I will ask Brandyce to answer 
 promptly." 
 
 The Senator smiled. 
 
 "I see," he said, "that you do not mean to 
 set out the situation in glowing colours, and 
 you think Brandyce will have scruples will 
 decline. Now I would like to lay you a wager 
 that he will accept." 
 
 " I think myself that he will," Dilke answered 
 as he took his leave. 
 
 The Senator turned back into the drawing 
 room. Henry ran whistling up the stairs, and 
 Joyce was moving to follow him when her 
 cousin gripped her wrist with a fierce energy. 
 "Don't go!" Madame du Pont whispered in so 
 urgent a tone that Joyce sank into an easy 
 chair and looked at her cousin in bewilderment. 
 There was a note in Emilie's voice which she 
 had never heard till now, a note of entreaty and 
 appeal. 
 
 Joyce looked at her in surprise. The lightness 
 of manner was all gone. This was a real woman 
 with a real woman's emotions speaking in these
 
 332 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 hurried accents, as Madame du Pont played 
 nervously with the rings on her left hand. 
 
 The Senator was walking slowly up and down 
 the room. Both women fixed their eyes upon 
 him. Joyce wondered what it was which dif- 
 ferentiated him so completely from Doctor 
 Dilke. The surface was not so different; but 
 something in Secor's manner suggested a veneer 
 applied over a coarse grain. One who wished 
 to like him would hesitate to probe deep. 
 
 "A curious man, that Dilke!" the Senator 
 said, winding his watch chain round his finger, 
 as he stood in front of Madame du Pont. "I 
 don't think he has chosen his profession well. 
 He will never succeed with women, and naturally 
 most of his work will lie with them." 
 
 "He is certainly not a ladies' man," Joyce 
 commented. 
 
 "No," Secor answered. "He is too blunt, 
 too uncompromising, to get on with men, and 
 much more with women, and yet I should not 
 be surprised to see some woman fall desperately 
 in love with him." 
 
 Madame du Pont narrowed her eyes to a 
 green thread as she shot a glance at Joyce, who 
 was tying her wisp of filmy handkerchief into 
 a series of hard knots and bending her head 
 above it till her face scarcely showed. 
 
 " I should be sorry for any woman who fell
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 333 
 
 in love with Doctor Dilke," Madame du Pont 
 said with dry lips. " In my opinion he is not 
 a man to give away his heart or to have it 
 worth taking if he did. His real interest and 
 absorption will always be in his work. His 
 wife would always be second in his thoughts." 
 
 "I do not agree with you, Emilie," Joyce 
 said, throwing her head back suddenly and 
 facing her cousin with wide, courageous eyes. 
 " I think Doctor Dilke is capable of falling in 
 love royally, flinging his heart at a woman's 
 feet without calculation or any thought of him- 
 self at all, and of going on loving to the end 
 whether she cared or not. There is Papa!" 
 
 Joyce rose as her father's footstep was heard 
 in the hall, and went out of the room, leaving 
 Secor and Madame du Pont together. 
 
 There is nothing more embarrassing for people 
 who are not in love than to be left in a position 
 where they are expected to behave as lovers. 
 There was no misunderstanding between Mad- 
 ame du Pont and the Senator. They both 
 accepted frankly the fact that their marriage 
 was one of convenience, of ambition on her 
 part, on his of the choice of a wife likely to 
 help him forward. Both believed that matters 
 would arrange themselves naturally after mar- 
 riage; but these preliminary days of courtship 
 were not without their awkwardness, which not
 
 334 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 even Madame du Font's diplomacy could wholly 
 ease. They felt it peculiarly now that they 
 were alone together. 
 
 The Senator walked to the window and 
 looked out for a moment. Then he said: "It 
 strikes me that your cousin spoke with more 
 heat than the occasion warranted. Is she by 
 any chance a little touched in that direction?" 
 
 "Really, I know nothing about it," Madame 
 du Pont answered. " Joyce has never favoured 
 me with any confidences." When she had 
 spoken so far a sudden angry colour rose in 
 her cheeks, and she added unsteadily: "As 
 for Doctor Dilke, I wish you would never men- 
 tion his name to me again I I hate him!" 
 
 Meanwhile Dilke, all unconscious of the dis- 
 cussion going on in the Eldridge drawing room, 
 was pondering on Secor's last words and on his 
 own answer. 
 
 " I think he will take it. Yes, Brandy ce will 
 jump at the offer, no doubt. But what will 
 the end be?" 
 
 Strongly stimulated by the keen October air, 
 he walked briskly along the northern side of 
 the square, his blood tingling in his veins with 
 the mere physical intensity of existence. He 
 was cheered by the gaiety of the park filled 
 with a diverse crowd of humanity. Loungers 
 were reading their daily papers on the benches,
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 335 
 
 children wheeled to and fro on roller skates, 
 and in the background, against the deep blue 
 of the sky, rose the marble arch which stands 
 like a connecting link between the world of 
 business and the world of fashion. 
 
 At the corner he turned into Fifth Avenue 
 and walked on still more briskly till he reached 
 a hotel much frequented by foreigners, a hotel 
 where he himself had often stopped, and where, 
 as he knew, Brandyce made his headquarters 
 when in the city. 
 
 He was full of a vague expectant eagerness 
 not unmixed with embarrassment. The look in 
 Brandyce's eyes as he had passed him in the 
 companionway of the ship was still vivid in 
 his memory. What if the same look met him 
 now! What if Brandyce turned upon him with 
 scorn and refused to accept a favour at his 
 hands! He felt that he could not blame him. 
 Brandyce would be justified in regarding him 
 as that worst of enemies, a friend who has 
 failed in the crucial test of friendship. 
 
 If he had robbed this man of his chance of 
 winning the woman whom he loved, what a 
 paltry exchange must seem this offer which he 
 was bearing to him! No savage was ever 
 treated worse in bartering a lump of gold for 
 a string of beads. The more Dilke reflected 
 on the matter the more his courage sank. He
 
 336 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 half wished that Brandyce might have left 
 town. Then he could write, and it is always 
 easier to handle a difficult situation in writing 
 at least then there is no perturbing glance of 
 contempt, no interpolated sarcasm, to cause a 
 stammering apology. Yes, on the whole he 
 distinctly hoped that Brandyce had gone. And 
 yet in that case he would miss the reconcilia- 
 tion to which he had looked forward, the self- 
 justification to which he had aspired. He 
 would be merely Senator Secor's amanuensis 
 transmitting a business communication. In 
 this mixed state of mind Dilke arrived at the 
 hotel. As he entered the office, the hotel 
 clerk, who knew him, looked up and nodded. 
 Then he said suddenly: "Oh, Doctor Dilke, a 
 man in room 131 has sent down to ask for a 
 physician, and we were just going to send out 
 for one. They say he seems very ill, and we're 
 anxious to lose no time. Perhaps you can see 
 him." 
 
 Dilke hesitated. "Yes," he answered, after 
 a moment, " I will take a look at him, though 
 I am in rather a hurry. What's his name?" 
 
 The clerk looked at the hotel register to 
 refresh his memory. "Eustace Brandyce," he 
 said; "registers from London." 
 
 "Eustace Brandyce!" 
 
 "Do you know him?"
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 337 
 
 "I crossed on the steamer with him. In 
 fact, I had called to see him this afternoon. 
 Where is his room?" 
 
 "Here," said the clerk, calling to a bellboy t 
 "show this gentleman to room 131." 
 
 As Dilke made his way to Brandy ce's room 
 he had a sensation of helplessness, as if the 
 hand of fate were on his shoulder pushing him 
 forward. He had feared to feel embarrass- 
 ment, but when the door opened and he saw 
 Brandyce lying there on his bed, he was con- 
 scious that the issues were too large, the crisis 
 too momentous, for any small emotions. 
 
 "Ah, Brandyce, I am sorry to see you like 
 this," he said, going close to the bed. 
 
 The sick man raised himself. 
 
 "They sent for you!" Brandyce exclaimed, 
 with something like irony in his tone. 
 
 "No. They did not send for me. I hap- 
 pened to drop in as they were arranging to 
 summon someone. You can have somebody 
 else now; but they spoke of haste, and I thought 
 I would come as a stop-gap. 
 
 "Kismet!" exclaimed Brandyce, with an 
 attempt at a laugh which set him coughing. 
 
 "Stop talking, please, and lie down. There 
 " that's right. Now, let me feel your pulse." 
 
 Brandyce obeyed as to lying down; but he 
 went on speaking, still with irony in his eyes.
 
 338 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "You think you're going to save my life, 
 don't you, to make things quits? Well, you're 
 not. I took precious good care not to send for 
 a doctor in time, because there was always a 
 chance that he might do the trick. I dare say 
 it would have been safe enough, but they do 
 blunder on a cure now and then, and I did not 
 choose to risk it. Now if you can give me 
 something to stop the pain, I'll thank you." 
 
 Dilke made no answer in words. He was 
 counting the pulse, and saying to himself, as 
 the passing stranger said of Keats, "There's 
 death in that hand." 
 
 "A neglected cold, I suppose," he com- 
 mented aloud. 
 
 Brandyce nodded. 
 
 "How long have you had it?" 
 
 "Oh, for some time, ever since I landed, in 
 fact." 
 
 "How long have you had fever?" 
 
 " For several days." 
 
 "And you have done nothing taken no 
 medicine?" 
 
 Brandyce shook his head. Then he put his 
 hand to his side and winced as if the pain were 
 intolerable. Still he would persist in talking. 
 
 " I am off my head sometimes," he said. " If 
 I say things, remember they do not mean any- 
 thing."
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 339 
 
 "They rarely do," Dilke answered. "When 
 people are delirious they babble like Falstaff. 
 Let me listen to your lungs, please." 
 
 "Bad isn't it!" exclaimed Brandyce hope- 
 fully. 
 
 " Very bad," responded Dilke gravely. " Now 
 I tell you, Brandyce. If I take your case I 
 am going to do all I possibly can to cure you, 
 and you must help me, or I will send another 
 physician. As for sitting by and seeing you 
 commit suicide while I sign the certificate I 
 will not do it. You may not care for life. I 
 am sure that I do not. But, if I go into the 
 case, I shall go in to win if I can." 
 
 Brandyce smiled with a trace of his old 
 gayety. 
 
 "Go in, then," he said; "that is, if it will 
 amuse you to try." 
 
 "And you will take the medicines and do 
 as I say." 
 
 " It will make no difference. Yes I will 
 do as you say." 
 
 "Good! The first prescription is that you 
 speak only when absolutely necessary and then 
 in a whisper. The second order is that you 
 pull the coverlet over your chest and lie still 
 till I come back. I shall be gone about five 
 minutes." 
 
 Once outside Brandyce's room, Dilke dashed
 
 340 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 into the office, ordered a nurse from the nurses' 
 registry, ran to the nearest drug store for brandy, 
 drugs and appliances which he needed, and then, 
 breathless, re-entered the sick room, prepared for 
 a hand-to-hand fight with death. 
 
 "Double pneumonia very alarming case," 
 had been his diagnosis to the clerk, and he saw 
 no reason to change it as he stood looking down 
 at Brandyce, who had fallen asleep in his ab- 
 sence. The livid lips, the dusky flush on the 
 cheek, the laboured shallow breathing, told a 
 discouraging story; but Dilke would not listen 
 to the whisper of discouragement. He felt as 
 if destiny had thrown in his way one last chance 
 to regain his self-respect. Brandyce had stated 
 the case with cynical frankness. If he could 
 save this man's life they would be quits. 
 
 While these thoughts were seething in his 
 mind his hands were busy cracking ice and 
 preparing medicine. As he attempted to admin- 
 ister the dose Brandyce roused, but not to 
 consciousness. Delirium had set in. He talked 
 hurriedly and with gasping breath, now of a 
 children's party, now of the army, now of work 
 for his paper. He seemed oppressed with the 
 feeling that he must prepare "copy," and Dilke 
 had all that he could do to hold him down. 
 
 He quieted after a little; but still went 
 on talking, softly now as if he were speaking
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 341 
 
 to a woman. His words were scarcely audible, 
 but the note of pleading was distinctly per- 
 ceptible. 
 
 Dilke felt as if there were a kind of indelicacy 
 in listening, and almost feared to catch a mean- 
 ing which he could not misunderstand. 
 
 He turned hastily and walked to the window, 
 which looked out upon a court. Blank walls 
 and drawn shades met his gaze, but he did not 
 see them. That face on the pillow filled his 
 imagination and left no room for physical 
 vision. The pale, aristocratic profile, the sen- 
 sitive, smiling mouth seemed clothed with a 
 new and spiritual beauty. "Surely, surely," 
 Dilke argued with himself, "such a face must 
 be the index of a sensitive soul within, a nature 
 with immense latent possibilities of good, gone 
 astray by some strange freak of education or 
 inheritance some black drop of poison in the 
 blood bequeathed by a recreant ancestor. Oh, 
 why must we be such slaves to the past, and 
 how unequally the spiritual inheritance of the 
 ages is divided! Two heirs to the same blood, 
 and behold the difference in result, in the part' 
 ing of the ways. 
 
 "From the same cradle's side, 
 
 From the same mother's knee, 
 One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
 One to the peaceful sea!"
 
 342 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Dilke sighed heavily and moved back to his 
 old station by the bedside. 
 
 Thankful enough he was when the nurse 
 appeared to re-enforce him. He had given up 
 all thoughts of going home. The symptoms 
 pointed to a crisis at hand in the night or the 
 early morning. He must stay. As he sat by 
 the bedside in the softened light of the night 
 lamp, Dilke wondered to think that only a 
 few hours ago he had been drinking tea and 
 chattering of nothings. No contrasts which our 
 imaginations conjure up exceed those which 
 occur in real life in our own lives and leave us 
 bewildered as to which is real and which unreal. 
 
 In such seasons as this we are compelled to 
 meet ourselves face to face, and the encounter 
 is often disagreeable to both parties. Dilke 
 knew that he was fighting for Brandy ce's life 
 from no altruistic purpose; but partly from 
 the acquired professional zeal which rises most 
 alert and most resolute before a desperate case, 
 partly from a desire to atone for the past, to 
 feel that, having discharged his debt, whatever 
 he might have said, or might see fit to say in 
 the future, was his own affair. 
 
 His thoughts drifted to Joyce, and he won- 
 dered if he were bringing Brandyce back to 
 life for her. If this were so, it was perhaps 
 but a doubtful kindness that he was doing her,
 
 PORT AFTER STORMY SEAS 343 
 
 yet this had not been given him to decide. He 
 was there only to struggle to the end. 
 
 In the nature of things death cannot affect 
 the physician with the same sense of shock with 
 which it strikes the rest of the world. It is too 
 familiar to his experience. But there is per- 
 haps a deeper solemnity in it to "an eye which 
 has kept watch o'er man's mortality." 
 
 Then, too, disease has a certain terrible 
 beauty in his eyes. He sees it as an enemy of 
 mankind, yet no longer as a strange wild beast 
 leaping out of the undiscovered dark upon its 
 victim; but rather as a foe marshalled under 
 unalterable law and marching with ruthless 
 rhythmic motions, a foe which may be com- 
 bated with weapons which science has put into 
 the hands of man and which there is a pro- 
 found satisfaction in wielding to the extent of 
 one's ability, even if the fight at last 
 prove hopeless and the victory lie with the 
 enemy. 
 
 A little before dawn, as the nurse was pre- 
 paring the milk and brandy, Brandyce opened 
 his eyes bright with delirium. 
 
 Dilke moved. The sick man sat up in bed 
 before the doctor could prevent him. 
 
 "I call your bluff!" he cried, throwing out 
 his hand with a triumphant smile, and fell 
 back dead.
 
 344 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 "There was no hope from the first," the 
 nurse said. 
 
 Dilke shook his head gloomily. "No hope 
 from the first," he assented, echoing her words. 
 
 He realised now, however, by the keenness 
 of his disappointment that there had been hope 
 in his own mind and that he had scored another 
 failure, to embitter his life. It is seldom that 
 men are permitted to check off their account 
 with destiny as if it were a bank. 
 
 The nurse pulled up the shade at the window. 
 The morning light fell greyly on the dead face. 
 Dilke stepped close to the bed and took Bran- 
 dyce's cold hand in his. 
 
 "Good bye," he murmured. "And wherever 
 you are, let there be peace between us ! " 
 
 As he turned away, there shot across his 
 mind the words spoken by Napoleon's physician 
 in closing the eyes of the great dead: " Ainsi 
 passe la gloire" " If glory," thought Dilke, 
 "why not shame? "
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 AFTER ALL 
 
 WHEN Dilke had superintended the final 
 arrangements, always painful in their brutal 
 practicality, following so soon on the footsteps 
 of majestic Death, he went out into the 
 avenue. The street was full of early morning 
 bustle. Heavy trucks lumbered along on their 
 way up town, automobiles whirled by, shop 
 girls crossed hastily from the side streets 
 toward their business on Broadway, newsboys 
 were running up and down steps dropping 
 papers at the doors of the houses. 
 
 The last sight brought sharply back to Dilke's 
 mind one morning a little less than a year ago, 
 when he had been walking the streets as now, 
 and he remembered how eagerly and fearfully he 
 had snatched the morning paper. 
 
 A year ago was it only so long? It seemed 
 now as if he were looking back at it across 
 infinite ages. Why, his whole life had happened 
 since then! and yet he could place no event. 
 He no longer reckoned from dates in the calen- 
 dar, but from the day on which he first met 
 
 345
 
 346 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 Joyce Eldridge, the occasion of his first en- 
 counter with Brandy ce. 
 
 His watch by the sick bed had been a season 
 of inward purification for Dilke. His ministry 
 to the dying man had swept away every feeling 
 toward him but that of pity. He no longer 
 hated or condemned. He was bowed beneath 
 a new humility and the tenderness of an un- 
 availing sympathy. 
 
 It is rarely possible to keep in the morning 
 the mystic heights which we gain in the night. 
 The Sancho Panza within us rises to nudge the 
 elbow of Quixote, bidding him leave his dream- 
 ing and wake to the practical issues of the 
 day. So it was with Dilke. He must bathe 
 and change to his morning dress, visit his 
 office, inquire into the condition of his patients, 
 write prescriptions, open his mail, answer his let- 
 ters, all as if he had gone through no great experi- 
 ence, as if no further ordeal still lay awaiting him. 
 
 When he had done these things he started 
 to retrace his steps down the avenue, and as 
 he did so his thoughts turned to the other night's 
 dinner. He recalled with stinging acuteness 
 Secor's remarks, and saw them in dispropor- 
 tionate magnitude. He fancied Secor saying 
 to himself: "Here is a man who posed as the 
 only honest man in the board of library trustees 
 there in Pieria, a Cato who could not be bribed,
 
 AFTER ALL 347 
 
 at least by money which was not to find its 
 way into his private pocket; but when it came 
 to a question of earning his living he was ready 
 to stoop to any expedient. What a hypo- 
 crite!" 
 
 It gave Dilke no comfort to reflect that Secor 
 could not look down upon his conduct from 
 any superior heights. It was not this man's 
 contempt which Dilke resented; but his fellow- 
 ship. 
 
 Perhaps it was true that everyone had his 
 price. Secor's was the vulgar bait of a vulgar 
 ambition. Madame du Pont was about to 
 marry him for an ambition equally vulgar if 
 expressed in more subtle terms. Brandyce had 
 cheated in the eagerness of play and he himself 
 had he too not flinched in the crisis of his 
 fate! Who was he that he should say to any 
 one of them: "Go to! I am holier than thou"? 
 
 The remembrance of the dinner had turned to 
 gall and wormwood. It is the small things 
 which make us most unhappy, perhaps because 
 they are so trivial that we are not braced against 
 them. We nerve ourselves to meet the surgeon's 
 knife ; but the pin-prick finds us unprepared and 
 therefore the readier to cry out. 
 
 With the thought of the dinner, the image 
 of Joyce Eldridge rose full and vivid on 
 his inward eye Joyce flushed and vivacious,
 
 348 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 in gayer mood than he had ever seen her 
 before, yet with a shade too deep a colour in her 
 cheek, a brightness in her glance which sug- 
 gested that the gayety was not wholly natural 
 but the result of some nervous tension resolutely 
 held in check, perhaps of some profound sad- 
 ness, thrust back into her heart and covered by 
 this surface buoyancy. 
 
 All through the night of his watch beside 
 Brandy ce's death bed this vision of Joyce had 
 been present with him. While every thought 
 seemed fixed upon the dying man, every energy 
 bent toward devices for possible aid to him, 
 there had been an underlying consciousness of 
 the woman to whom Brandy ce's life or death 
 might be of such overwhelming importance. 
 When the. issue was decided, when Death had 
 spoken its final "Never! Never!" still his 
 thoughts turned insistently toward Joyce. All 
 the time, as he was moving about and making a 
 final clearing of the room before summoning the 
 clerk of the hotel, his thoughts were busy with 
 Joyce Eldridge. 
 
 What would she say when she saw the death 
 notice in the papers? Would it quite break her 
 heart? 
 
 The more Dilke thought over the matter the 
 clearer one thing became in his mind. He must 
 go to her, must see her before her eyes were met
 
 AFTER ALL 349 
 
 by the cold print of the public notice, and break 
 the news to her as well as he could. It was this 
 intention which had driven him through his 
 morning tasks with such feverish energy. He 
 had been awake and at work since dawn, and it 
 was only half past ten when he retraced his steps 
 to the Eldridges' door. He half feared, half 
 hoped that Joyce might have gone out; but it 
 was not so. 
 
 As he sat waiting for her in the drawing room 
 he tried fifty ways of stating his message. One 
 seemed flippant, another brutal, a third cruel. 
 Should he plunge into it at once or try to lead 
 up to it? Would it not after all have been 
 better to write ? 
 
 Joyce's entrance put an end to all question- 
 ings, and she herself gave him his opening. 
 
 " How ill you are looking as if you had not 
 slept at all!" 
 
 " I have not slept. I have been up all night 
 with a very sick man." 
 
 "The one of whom you spoke last evening?" 
 
 " No, another one for whom I felt far more 
 deeply because I knew him. You knew him 
 too." 
 
 Joyce paled. 
 
 " I knew him? " she repeated. 
 
 "Yes, it was Captain Brandyce." 
 
 "Captain Brandyce?"
 
 350 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 It seemed as if all that Joyce could do was to 
 echo Dilke's words. The man before her decided 
 that it would be kindest to let the blow fall at 
 once. 
 
 "I found him very low with pneumonia," he 
 said. "We tried everything we knew to save 
 him, but it was too late." 
 
 " You think that he is going to die? " 
 
 "He is dead." 
 
 Joyce sank slowly into a chair behind her. 
 The great tears welled into her eyes. 
 
 "Terrible!" she exclaimed. 
 
 "I I knew that you would feel it so," said 
 Dilke, turning away as if there were indelicacy 
 in peering into her trouble. "That is why I 
 came to tell you instead of leaving you to read it 
 in the papers, and I thought that perhaps you 
 could give me the address of Brandyce's relatives 
 here, the ones at whose house you met him first." 
 
 Joyce pondered, her finger on her lip. " I am 
 afraid," she said, "that they have sailed for 
 Europe. I met his cousin last week and she 
 spoke of their going on Saturday." 
 
 "Then we must arrange to notify them, and 
 meanwhile we must hold some sort of ser- 
 vice " 
 
 "You must have him brought here now at 
 once," Joyce exclaimed. " I am sure that Papa 
 will wish it. Oh, I hope I hope that you are
 
 AFTER ALL 351 
 
 telling me the truth. He did die of pneumonia 
 and not not by his own hand?" 
 
 The girl paled and shuddered as she spoke. 
 
 "I give you my word," said Dilke gravely, 
 "that I am telling you the exact truth. That 
 is what I came here to do." 
 
 Joyce rose and stood with her back to the 
 table, gripping its edge with both hands for sup- 
 port. 
 
 "Oh, I am so sorry!" she exclaimed. ''And 
 yet so glad that it came as it did! " 
 
 Only one sentence and yet it carried con- 
 viction to Dilke 's soul and changed the world 
 for him. It was sympathy and not love which 
 spoke in this low tone. The relief was almost 
 too great. Dilke felt his own voice tremble as 
 he put the next question: 
 
 " Then it will not break your heart? " 
 
 " No," Joyce answered, raising her eyes full 
 to meet his. " It will not break my heart. Did 
 you think that it would?" 
 
 " I felt sure of it," said Dilke. 
 
 Joyce swayed a little unsteadily, but she made 
 no reply. Dilke stood looking at her with every 
 sense on the alert, noting the pale blue of her 
 gown, the little slippers peeping out underneath 
 its ruffles. He longed to fall down and kiss them, 
 and all the while he was saying over and over to 
 himself like an idiot who knows only one sen-
 
 352 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 tence in the world: " She does not care for him. 
 She does not care she does not care." 
 
 "Tell me one thing," he said at last aloud: 
 "Perhaps I ought not to ask you this; but I 
 have been carrying a burden which has become 
 intolerable. Tell me honestly. Did your father 
 repeat to you my conversation with him?" 
 
 " Yes," said Joyce, drooping her head till Dilke 
 could no longer read her eyes. "He told me 
 what you had said." 
 
 "Did that have anything to do was that 
 why you ceased to care for Brandy ce?" Joyce 
 was conscious of a peculiar vibration in Dilke's 
 voice, such as she had heard only once before 
 when they talked of love in the twilight on the 
 Lake of Geneva. She gripped the table still 
 harder. Whatever happened, she was deter- 
 mined to show no weakness now. Yet she had 
 difficulty in forcing her lips to speech. She 
 wished that Dilke would not look at her as she 
 could feel him doing, now, although her eyes 
 were cast down. She wished she did not know 
 what but speak she must. 
 
 " I refused Captain Brandy ce the morning 
 before your talk with my father." 
 
 "Then that had nothing to do with your 
 refusal?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "Thank heaven for that!" Dilke paused a
 
 AFTER ALL 353 
 
 moment after he had said it, and then went on. 
 "One more question 
 
 " I may not choose to answer it." 
 
 " There is no compulsion ; but I think that out 
 of kindness you will. Did you think it dis- 
 honourable in me to speak?" 
 
 " If there was anything dishonourable it was 
 not that. You owed candour even to a stranger 
 in such a matter, and I had thought had fan- 
 cied that you did not regard me quite as a 
 stranger I remember indeed one morning in 
 the reading room of the hotel there in Paris 
 when you asked to be my friend, when you 
 promised me the truth, the strict truth, as the 
 basis of that friendship." 
 
 Joyce's voice grew indignant as she went on: 
 " Did your conscience never suggest to you that 
 you were breaking that compact in keeping 
 silence in an affair which you believed of vital 
 consequence to me? Were you so absorbed in 
 the thought of what you owed to Captain Bran- 
 dyce that you had never a misgiving as to what 
 you owed to your friend? Of course, however, 
 when you spoke of being my friend you meant 
 nothing by it. It was only an empty phrase, 
 and when other deeper feelings came, and your 
 interests were absorbed but I will not go on 
 I did not mean to hurt you forgive me! " 
 
 The colour burned in Dilke's face. " Forgive
 
 354 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 you?" he exclaimed. "I confess that I find it 
 hard to forgive you for making such a mistake, 
 for misjudging me like that. I can pardon all 
 that you say of my silence. God knows I said 
 it over to myself often enough, and called myself 
 harder names than any that you could invent, 
 yet speak I could not. I knew nothing till that 
 last night on the ship. I only suspected. And 
 I thought that you cared I was sure that you 
 cared for Brandyce. He had saved my life. 
 There was nothing open to me but silence and 
 withdrawal. It seemed to me then the only 
 honourable course. My vision might have been 
 clearer, my action wiser if I had not feared all 
 the time to be blinded and prejudiced by my 
 own love for you 
 
 Joyce groped a little with her hands before 
 her face, as if she were clearing away a fog. " By 
 your love for me! " she repeated. " Oh, no! no! 
 You do not know what you are saying. Remem- 
 ber, we pledged ourselves to speak truth to each 
 other!" 
 
 Dilke made a stride toward her, but stopped 
 with his arms folded across the back of a chair at 
 a little distance. He was breathing hard and 
 spoke with difficulty. 
 
 "Listen, Joyce," he said. "You and I have 
 played at cross-purposes long enough. You 
 thought that I was in love with Madame du Pont ?"
 
 AFTER ALL 355 
 
 "You were, you know 
 
 " Pardon me I do not claim to be a very wise 
 man. I may, as Mrs. Fenwick says, have very 
 little grip on real life ; but I think I have intelli- 
 gence enough to know with what woman I am 
 in love. There has never been any other. She 
 was the stranger of a year ago, the stranger of 
 whom we talked do you remember? there in 
 Paris. But she has lived in my heart till I know 
 her better than I know myself. No one will ever 
 take her place. Do you really mean that you 
 did not suspect it you, who see so much that is 
 hidden, did you see not that, which must have 
 been written in my eyes every time they turned 
 toward you? Oh, you are not so dull as that ! 
 Why, everyone knew it Newbold Madame du 
 Pont- 
 
 "Emilie!" 
 
 "Certainly. On that day on shipboard in 
 your stateroom, when you had fainted and I was 
 talking all sorts of incredible folly, I looked up 
 and saw her standing there; she had heard it 
 all!" 
 
 "Emilie!" Joyce repeated again, incredu- 
 lously, and then added under her breath: " Oh, 
 Aunt Sylvia, how right you were! " 
 
 Dilke bowed his head above the high back of 
 the carved oak chair and closed his eyes as if to 
 shut out the sight of Joyce. When he spoke
 
 356 CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS 
 
 again, it was with the calmness of a man who 
 has regained a nearly lost self-control and means 
 to hold it. 
 
 "I must not speak now," he said. "I must 
 not come nearer, or stretch out my hand to 
 touch yours. I will not. It would seem an- 
 other wrong to that dead man lying still un- 
 buried. I must go away, and do penance yet a 
 little while ; but some day when I have made my 
 peace with myself and with the memory of 
 Brandy ce, I shall come to you and ask you to be 
 my wife." 
 
 Joyce lifted her eyes and looked at him for an 
 instant. Then she left the table and crossed the 
 room to the low, old-fashioned marble mantel. 
 She folded her arms upon it, and bending her 
 head, laid her hot cheek against the cool marble. 
 It was a gesture of surrender but also of pride. 
 It said as plainly as words: "If you have not 
 spoken, I have not answered." 
 
 Dilke understood it and was content. He 
 walked backward out of the room, holding all 
 the time the figure by the mantel in his fixed 
 gaze. When he closed the door behind him, a 
 new look was on his face, the look of one who 
 has talked with "Shining Ones."