VALIANT DUST 
 
By 
 KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD 
 
 VALIANT DUST 
 
 MODES AND MORALS 
 
 A CHANGE OF AIR 
 
 HAWAII : Scenes and Impressions 
 
 VAIN OBLATIONS 
 
 THE GREAT TRADITION 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
VALIANT DUST 
 
 BY 
 
 KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1922 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1919, 1922, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914,. 1915, 1916, 1919, BY HAFPEX &. BROTHERS 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 9i?, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, l?^, BY THri MP.TRCPOL.IYAN tTEL CATIONS, INC. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
F112 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. AN HONEST MAN i 
 
 II. HABAKKUK 40 
 
 III. Miss MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN .... 71 
 
 IV. MARTIN S HOLLOW 103 
 
 V. THE KNIGHT S MOVE 126 
 
 VI. BLUE BONNET 150 
 
 VII. EAST OF EDEN 179 
 
 VIII. SEA GREEN 208 
 
 IX. THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 239 
 
 X. LONQUIER S THIRD ACT 269 
 
 XI. THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 299 
 
 XII. BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 319 
 
 50-io,, 
 
VALIANT DUST 
 
VALIANT DUST 
 
 AN HONEST MAN 
 
 The first time that Annette, Countess Chudenitz, 
 met Andrew Radin was at a hectic "function" in her 
 cousin s (Mrs. Livingston Bollard s) house. I hardly 
 know how to describe the occasion, for it was of no 
 social genre. Radin talked for an hour; New York s 
 intelligentsia listened, rubbing shoulders with debu 
 tantes, bewildered matrons, and glib young women who 
 were officially garment-workers (on strike), but who 
 would have been more accurately labelled dynamite. 
 In positions of vantage sat the clever creatures, male 
 and female, who were running Mrs. Bollard s newest 
 publication the third and by far the most important 
 that she had yet financed. They were the ones who 
 asked the proper questions at the proper time, and gave 
 Radin a chance to make his points. The debutantes 
 were as bewildered as the matrons, but their bewilder 
 ment did not if you will pardon the paradox be 
 wilder them. They knew that this was the proper at 
 mosphere for them to breathe Mrs. Bollard said so 
 and they took their tea from the hands of the second 
 footman without perceiving that it should, logically 
 speaking, have choked them. Radin himself drank 
 tea. So did the garment-workers. So did all the 
 intelligentsia. So did every one except Annette Chu- 
 
 1 
 
2 VALIANT DUST 
 
 deriitz, to whom the whole scene was at once incredibly 
 familiar and alluringly strange. 
 
 Annette Davidge had married, in the nineties, 
 Ishtvan, Count Chudenitz, ornament of embassies and 
 wily Nestor of the Ballplatz. Now, a childless widow, 
 by no means in love with her husband s country, she 
 spent the better part of her time in America. Bertha 
 Dollard gathered in her garment-workers, her socialists 
 (real ones), her Radins, knowing them for queer, prid 
 ing herself on their queerness, but feeling them none 
 the less sacred as if they had been a new phenom 
 enon, creatures half-fish, half-divine. She had never 
 seen anything like them, but she believed that they, 
 and they only, knew the truth. The Countess Chu 
 denitz had seen thousands like them; their features 
 took her back to the Styrian countryside, to the ghettos 
 of Pest, to the streets of Vienna on the Kaiser s birth 
 day. But she had never sat next them on chairs before, 
 and her Americanism thrilled within her. Radin held 
 her from the first. She had read some of it before, but 
 she had never been face to face with it not without 
 the police, in a firm wall, between. This was what 
 her forefathers had done for her; something that 
 Ishtvan s forefathers could not have conceived, much 
 less performed. She could meet Andrew Radin, could 
 talk to him as one human being to another; they could 
 agree or differ, in Bertha Bollard s music-room, as if 
 they were in naked space. It was not sex that made 
 her ignore the garment-workers, push aside the bril 
 liant young women who helped edit Mrs. Bollard s 
 subsidized but very independent review, and make, 
 with assurance, for Radin himself forgetting tea, for 
 getting the spectacle of the social salad before her, 
 which at another time might have intrigued her. Some 
 thing in her went fearlessly out to meet something in 
 
AN HONEST MAN 3 
 
 Radin; there was born in her that afternoon one of 
 those bitter passions of the brain which often go farther 
 than any physical infatuation to make love a disease. 
 Sex never called to sex more imperiously than the qual 
 ity of Radin s intellect called to what she had of mind. 
 She was less than woman when she made her way 
 to him and tacitly offered herself. What she offered 
 was her brain, but she did it inwardly with as aban 
 doned a gesture as though it had been her body. If 
 you ask me whether such mental surrender is not one 
 of the known approaches of what folk call love, I can 
 only say that it has never struck me that way, though 
 there is no road which love cannot take. Annette 
 Davidge never had loved; so far as I know, never did 
 love. If she could have loved any man, it would have 
 been Peter Bollard, her cousin Bertha s bachelor 
 brother-in-law. It may be that Radin kept her, in 
 the end, from Peter; but, if he did, it was only 
 by shutting her off for a time from any human interest. 
 Socialism, communism, internationalism, are not hu 
 man interests which is why they invoke the New 
 Testament in vain. Not even by calling humanity an 
 organism can you inject the human element into them. 
 Annette Davidge did not know this, though Radin 
 probably did, at the very moment he bent to her. It 
 is no part of my purpose to discuss, even indirectly, 
 any economic or "social" problem whatsoever; only 
 to give you the true tale of Annette, Countess Chuden- 
 itz, for its own interest. Heaven and hell shall have 
 become less than names when the irony of fate ceases 
 to be perceived by human nature. Or, rather let 
 me not plagiarize 
 
 Earth and ocean shall be shadows when Prometheus shall be 
 dead. 
 
4 VALIANT DUST 
 
 All I wish to point out now is that Annette Davidge 
 was, one might say, a discarnate being when she made 
 her way through the crowd to Radin. 
 
 I have said that it is not my purpose to discuss 
 theories. This is a story a raw piece of human life 
 not, I take my oath, a fable. Nor is it my purpose 
 to analyze Andrew Radin for such as may read. 
 Equally, I can take my oath that about Radin I do 
 not know. I do not, that is, know the whole of that 
 personality which, though it acted so simply, must 
 have been, with his combined gifts, so complex. An 
 nette Davidge I think I do know; but I trace Radin 
 chiefly through his effect on her and certain outstand 
 ing visible acts of his own. I do not even pretend 
 (though I have shrewd guesses) to be more accurately 
 informed than you as to his origin and his heritage. 
 He was ever a man of mystery and, I believe, chose 
 to be. Otherwise, why doesn t the world know, to this 
 day, whether he was is, I should say pure Russian, 
 Galician, Lithuanian, Pole, or German Jew? He was 
 perfectly polyglot, and his blood may have been as 
 mixed as his speech. I confess that it does not con 
 cern me much. He was Radin (and may be, again, 
 though he is now as lost to the world as Enver Pasha) 
 and an internationalist. To Annette Davidge he 
 brought a whole new gospel. And yet one hates to 
 call it a gospel, for reasons before stated. A whole 
 new theory of life, let us say. Some of the catchwords 
 she had heard before, and now and then an editorial 
 in The Life Everlasting, Bertha Dollard s review, 1 ex 
 plained to her some side-issue that she had never un- 
 
 1 1 call it Mrs. Dollard s review by courtesy and for convenience. 
 Really, she had given it its head, and had about as much control 
 over it as though she had paid for a tank and sent it into action 
 with her blessing. Eventually, anyhow, it became self-supporting. 
 
AN HONEST MAN 5 
 
 derstood. But Radin was the fountain-head, and she 
 took her pitcher all the way to him. Radin encouraged 
 The Life Everlasting just as he encouraged a strike 
 here, an incendiary lecture there, sabotage somewhere 
 else, a bomb on the other side of the world. I doubt 
 if he ever thought it of prime importance, though he 
 must have chuckled to himself over the type of person 
 who took it seriously. No; I take that back. Radin 
 doubtless thought it quite proper, moderately useful, 
 and not at all funny, that rich, well-educated Ameri 
 cans should lend their money and their patronage to 
 anarchy; should give funds to the socialists and tea to 
 the I. W. W. Radin and his like walk in a queer twilit 
 world, never penetrated by the rays of mirth. Saturn 
 is their sun. Under Saturn there is no such thing as 
 a paradox or a joke. As Annette Davidge had wit 
 but no humor, she was able to breathe that air. 
 
 It was during the winter of 1913-14 that she saw 
 most of Radin. I do not know whether the man was 
 ever known to like any one, but he was with her a 
 good deal just as if he did like her. She gave him a 
 substantial amount of money for purposes that he sel 
 dom did more than sketch for her. She trusted him 
 completely, and, I believe, with reason; in the sense, 
 that is, that the money actually went, every penny of 
 it, to the purposes he had sketched. There was cer 
 tainly a Slavic vein in that extraordinary man, for he 
 talked to her sometimes for hours on end, over count 
 less cups of tea. (She had come to a samovar, all for 
 Radin.) Nor was it merely master and neophyte, for 
 Annette talked, too. Her altruism was as different 
 from Radin s as grape-juice from vodka, but they 
 called the two by the same name as they tipped their 
 glasses. ... It was a curious relationship. She be 
 lieved implicitly everything he said, though all along 
 
6 VALIANT DUST 
 
 she found difficulty in co-ordinating his points. He 
 cannot have been interested in her philosophy, for he 
 was adamant, a finished product, not one inch of him 
 left plastic not even an Achilles tendon. He asked 
 no more of her than to do what he advised. I cannot 
 conceive that Annette could have furnished him 
 With anything of value besides an occasional cheque. 
 Yet he let her talk to him as glibly as he talked 
 to her. Something in the quality of her mind ap 
 pealed, too, to the quality of his. Flattery, comfort, 
 money, blind devotion, personal passion even, he could 
 find did find, doubtless elsewhere. What he got ex 
 clusively from Annette must have been something else. 
 I give it as my theory that his feeling for her partook 
 of the nature of hers for him, though certainly it did 
 not go so far. Annette can never have filled the brain 
 of this busy man as he filled hers. But that curious 
 relationship was mental, and fed on talk of the most 
 impersonal. It was if you ll pardon the phrase as 
 if two vocabularies met and interbred. Sex comes into 
 it only by analogy; not by the slightest participation. 
 Radin obviously appreciated these odd facts as well 
 as, or better than, Annette Chudenitz. 
 
 We did not talk of Bolsheviki in the spring of 1914. 
 Radin, of course, was a Bolshevik a complete case. 
 But the tag had not yet been invented; decent people 
 over here had never heard of Lenin and Trotzky; and 
 he passed, in Mrs. Bollard s and Annette s circle, 
 rather vaguely as a socialist, or a communist, or some 
 such thing. The world in which he spent most of his 
 time, and where he was more completely understood 
 and more intelligently sympathized with, was quite 
 unknown to that circle. I doubt if he described those 
 other groups much, even to Annette, except by way of 
 statistics or rotund prophecy. Annette, that is, was 
 
AN HONEST MAN 7 
 
 permitted to know that the Social Revolution would 
 come and would find millions ready. And since the 
 Social Revolution seemed, in those days, no more im 
 minent than Gabriel s trumpet-call, many people al 
 luded to it as easily as church members allude to 
 Doomsday. It was scarcely more than a metaphor, 
 though it had a thrill to it. For the next three years, 
 of course, no one thought of anything but war. 
 
 In the spring of 1914, the Countess Chudenitz found 
 it necessary to return to Austria business of some 
 sort, under her husband s complicated will. She was 
 living in his Styrian stronghold when the Archduke 
 was murdered at Serajevo. The Countess Chudenitz 
 had little sympathy for war; and though she had at 
 Kirchberg no access to the facts, she had distrusted 
 the Ballplatz for many years. It was all that Count 
 Berchtold and his kind stood for, which had driven 
 her back, with avid mouth, to America. Altruism was 
 not their tipple. The mobilization left her well-nigh 
 servantless and tenantless. She found herself sur 
 rounded by toothless males and weeping females. 
 From the great terrace that looked down upon the 
 Enns, she saw stretches of empty fields and forsaken 
 vineyards. There was an unnatural number of chil 
 dren in the landscape. ... All the women in the 
 villages seemed to be pregnant. ... It was a land 
 scape given over to babes and tears. ... Or so, in 
 those first changed weeks, she saw it; and her con 
 ception of her duty shifted to match the physical 
 change. This was too mediaeval, by half, for her to 
 deal with. I neither defend nor accuse her; but I 
 think that if she had ever loved Ishtvan, her hus 
 band, flower of chancelleries though he was, she might 
 have seen her duty differently. She might, that is, 
 have adjusted herself to the feudal idea. Or if she 
 
8 VALIANT DUST 
 
 had had children. But she was too detached. A 
 European war seemed to her not only frightful, but 
 decadent. She had never liked Berchtold, Aerenthal, 
 any of them, though she admitted Berchtold s charm. 
 Radin had not taught her, certainly, to like Russia. 
 Germany and France yes, even England had in 
 volved themselves in this uncivilized behavior. She in 
 stalled a clever cousin of her husband a cripple from 
 childhood to co-operate with the aged steward; and 
 after a distasteful week in Vienna (where she was 
 made to realize what she had forgotten, that she was 
 not an American citizen, but an Austrian subject) she 
 left for Rome. 
 
 Let us pass over, as briefly as may be, her Roman 
 sojourn. Physically, it might be summed up in a single 
 sentence: months upon months of Red Cross work that 
 led eventually to a breakdown and a rest cure. I think 
 she would have tried to get back to America, but that 
 her American letters were so discouraging. Her an 
 cestral world had, apparently, lost its head over the 
 war. You were hardly safe in New York unless you 
 were pro-Ally. That made New York to Annette, 
 who was not pro-any thing as unthinkable as Vienna. 
 Even Bertha Bollard did nothing but work for France. 
 The President might recommend neutrality, but the 
 fact was that in America if you were neutral, you 
 were called pro-German; if you were a pacifist, you 
 were called pro-German. Poor Annette felt homeless 
 indeed, and even her belated copies of The Life Ever 
 lasting did not comfort her. They lacked something. 
 No, it was a world where, if you were not mad, you 
 were suspect. . . . Even her New York had gone back 
 on her. When Italy went in with the Allies, she, meta 
 phorically speaking, turned her face to the wall. Son- 
 nino and Giolitti were equally bad. No wonder that 
 
AN HONEST MAN 9 
 
 her nerves weakened, along with her body, and that 
 she took to a lonely little villa in the high hills. 
 
 Even in her lonely villa she found much to do, for 
 misery stalked everywhere. But being unorganized, 
 the work was more fitful, less gruelling. She could 
 snatch quiet hours. . . . And in those hours she had 
 leisure to remember Radin. Sentence after sentence of 
 his, page after page, you might say, though it had all 
 been talk, rang through her solitude. Her subcon- 
 sciousness flung up whole arguments, speeches, perora 
 tions of Radin s. It seemed to her that she had not 
 really forgotten anything he had ever said. She was 
 enabled gradually to forget the interval, to gaze over 
 the bloody battle-field of Europe to a millennial hori 
 zon. In her villa she became, as far as she had it in 
 her, what Radin was. There was nothing to distract 
 her from his logic, nothing in the squalid misery about 
 her to contradict his premises. She wondered where 
 he was; but it was two years since she had so much as 
 heard his name mentioned. Mrs. Bollard and her kind 
 had forgotten him; he had been merely one sensation 
 like another. If some of his teaching stuck, that was 
 all he could have hoped for. 
 
 When the Russian revolution came, Annette won 
 dered yet more. Had he been sucked into that 
 maelstrom, and would he yet rise on the very crest of 
 some unforeseen and mighty wave? Her memory was 
 solid Radin; she had only in solitude to open it like a 
 huge volume, a thick-printed magnum opus. She dis 
 trusted Miliukoff, Kerensky, from the start. An 
 nette, without knowing it, was a Bolshevik before 
 Bolshevism entered into the Western vocabulary, She 
 was internationalist, proletarian, all the rest of it, be 
 fore Kerensky requested the British to let Trotzky 
 through the blockade. She had never heard of 
 
10 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Trotzky, but her heart prophesied him. She held her 
 tongue among her hills for lack of any one to talk to. 
 The peasants knew her only as a fitful ministrant to 
 their woes a silent, handsome jorestiera with burn 
 ing eyes, who helped when and where she could and 
 then withdrew herself from the scene. The eyes, as 
 they did not know, were burning for Radin; with 
 hope that somewhere he was in a position to make 
 his philosophy tell, to redeem this war-mad world. An 
 nette Davidge hardly read the newspapers. The Ital 
 ian press was not sympathetic to her. Her mag 
 nificent, right-minded Russia was there treated with 
 contumely and contempt. Meanwhile, her American 
 birth and accent and atmosphere saved her from the 
 natural consequences of being an Austrian subject. 
 She was watched, but there was nothing to report. 
 Official Americans in Rome held her to be pure Ameri 
 can, bar that old accident of her marriage. She got, of 
 course, no mail from Austria, and her American let 
 ters were all that was most praiseworthy from a cen 
 sor s point of view. 
 
 No one of American birth was more miserable, in 
 April, 1917, than the Countess Chudenitz. America, 
 too and all her friends at home triumphant over the 
 sorry fact! Even The Life Everlasting which came 
 very irregularly seemed to bow down in the house of 
 Rimmon. Yes, the world was mad. She ministered 
 less and less to her people. They offended her with 
 their chauvinism, their lust of vengeance, their tales 
 of Austrian atrocities. Propaganda and counter-prop 
 aganda alike made her sick. So much passion spent 
 on the wrong issues! As if it mattered whether the 
 Kaiser or King Victor Emmanuel were victorious! 
 She fixed her eyes more rigidly than ever on the mil 
 lennial horizon. If she could only be in Russia the 
 
AN HONEST MAN 11 
 
 one nation in the world that was concerning itself with 
 fundamentals! A thick veil of censorship and silence 
 hung between her and Russian events, but behind that 
 veil she felt saints and sages to be moving; baffled, op 
 posed, stricken, yet imperturbably bent on saving man 
 kind not Russia only, but the world. Brotherhood, 
 equality, the rights of man and in no corrupt or minc 
 ing Anglo-French version. After Brest-Litovsk she 
 would not even touch the newspapers. She was con 
 vinced that they lied. She withdrew herself into abso 
 lute seclusion, walking in her wilderness of a garden 
 with the spirit of Radin. From every point of the 
 compass his words came back to her. They fell into 
 alluring sequences; his formulae had never been so 
 clear. Small wonder; for this time there was no con 
 text to challenge him or distract her mind. She wished 
 she knew where he was, that she might send him 
 money for his great task of reformation. If she only 
 knew, she would find ways. Countess Chudenitz would 
 stoop to any illegality or evasion to save the world. 
 Almost without realizing why, she lessened her gifts 
 to the Croce Rossa. An ailing child, a destitute fam 
 ily, could always wring something from her; but she 
 became niggardly with all official funds. No one won 
 dered: times were hard, taxes unbelievable, her status 
 and her fortune not quite clear in men s minds. Who 
 could have suspected that she was hoarding as best 
 she could, in the hope of some day lavishing her hoard 
 on the brothers of Andrew Radin? 
 
 There just there Annette Davidge, Countess 
 Chudenitz, stood when the armistice was signed. 
 
 The rest is narrative of the crudest. We need not 
 dwell on the means she employed, after the armistice, 
 to get back to her husband s country, or the inci- 
 
12 VALIANT DUST 
 
 dents of her progress thither. It was conscience that 
 took her, partly the sense that she would find duties 
 there which she could not hope to find in America. 
 War paralyzed Annette: in a world at peace she could 
 work as hard as any woman. True, there would still 
 be hatred, but with the war at an end, it was no crime 
 not to hate. It was characteristic of her neutrality, 
 her pacifism, that she felt happier once over the 
 Austrian border; happier, that is, in a defeated than 
 in a victorious land. Besides, was not the emperor in 
 hiding; was not there hope for the empire hope of 
 revolution, of popular rule, of the sudden end of a 
 loathed regime? She would stand by her husband s 
 "people"; would be their champion in their demands 
 play Joan of Arc, if need be, to a peasantry on whom 
 the millennial light was dawning. A red republican 
 should lead them; they should find an earnest pro 
 letarian in the frowning stronghold. Perhaps she even 
 saw herself presiding over the local soviet. ... At 
 all events, she blessed the idealism that had made her 
 withdraw herself, season after season, from her guests, 
 to study and practise the local patois. Annette Dav- 
 idge was not given to self-praise; but now, for the 
 first time in her life, she felt herself really important. 
 She had never before been powerful where she was 
 right, right where she was powerful. Happy Annette! 
 She found Nicholas Chudenitz still in charge at 
 Kirchberg, and dismissed him. His tales of hardship, 
 of famine, of vain sacrifice and heart-rending im 
 potence, left her, I fear, cold. Nicholas was a Chu 
 denitz, an aristocrat, unfit for the new times. No 
 doubt he had done his best to feed and doctor the 
 people as though the Chudenitz estates were the 
 Chudenitz kennels but the root of the matter was not 
 in him. She was even impatient with his gloom. If 
 
AN HONEST MAN 13 
 
 you had the right point of view, if you burned with 
 the holy emotions, would not bread be added unto you? 
 She was uneasy until Nicholas a poor wraith of a 
 man got off. 
 
 Upon the Countess Chudenitz s immediate labors we 
 need not dwell. Every step she took was clogged with 
 the mire of suspicion. Food the people would take at 
 her hands but nothing else. There was no soviet for 
 her to talk to. All talk stopped when she appeared, ex 
 cept the sullen or whining complaints. Now and then 
 soldiers returned to their villages, and drunken figures 
 would caper all night round bonfires. She could see 
 the fitful lights, far below, from her lonely, stately, 
 grass-and-weed-grown terrace. She came soon to 
 Nicholas Chudenitz s theory that food was the best 
 thing, for the time being, she could offer them. But 
 her negotiations for food went slowly. Letters were 
 lost, and telegrams seldom delivered. After a month 
 or two of vain, disorganized struggle, she went to 
 Vienna to fight it out on the spot. 
 
 But Vienna was, if anything, more discouraging than 
 Kirchberg. It was a city of wild rumors, of occasional 
 riots, of suffering and hatred and menace in every 
 form; a city where the facts of one day were the 
 fictions of the next; a city that changed over-night, yet 
 always went by some means or other from bad to 
 worse. And the last straw on the breaking back of 
 Annette Davidge never had Vienna been so gay: 
 with the hectic gayety of those, alike, who have every 
 thing, and those who have nothing, to lose. Its gloom 
 was as if it mourned for centuries, not years, of death; 
 yet its frivolity had never been so brainless and aban 
 doned. The official folk of Ishtvan Chudenitz s con 
 nection were, for the most part, absent or in fateful 
 retirement; she could not have gone to them had she 
 
14 VALIANT DUST 
 
 wished. Even with the new officials it was difficult to 
 deal, for they changed constantly. On Wednesday you 
 won promises from a black beard and a pair of spec 
 tacles; and on Thursday you faced a jaunty blond 
 youth who had never heard of those promises and 
 would by no means keep them. She resorted to cable 
 grams, but got few replies, and those discouraging. 
 The affairs of the world and all the individuals there 
 in, apparently, were to be settled in Paris; and out of 
 Paris came only misleading head-lines of newspapers 
 that altered their "policy" weekly, and went out of 
 business even oftener. Annette Davidge, in her dusty, 
 dismantled sitting-room, knew not what to do. But 
 she had learned enough of conditions to know that 
 Nicholas Chudenitz, whose address she possessed, 
 would be of no use to her, and she did not send for 
 or seek him. She sat waiting for the turbid tide to 
 turn. 
 
 Then, one day, the heavens opened. It is impos 
 sible to exaggerate the effect on Annette Davidge of the 
 news that Radin was in Buda-Pest. When she learned 
 that fact, she turned, on the spot, to a fanatic. The 
 Light of her World was in Pest. Radin figured to 
 her as that; also, as the measure of all things, and as 
 a positive solution for every difficulty, major or minor. 
 He would tell her what to do; he would guide her on 
 the path of infallible truth; he would show her how 
 to get food, or else prove to her that her duty was 
 other than food-getting. Annette had been sorely 
 beaten down from her pedestal of importance and 
 beneficence; she did not hope to be the leader of the 
 Revolution; but to work with Radin, under him, with 
 in the sphere of his influence, would be to live to the 
 glory of God. Her perplexities were over if she could 
 only get to Pest. She would carry banners, she would 
 
AN HONEST MAN 15 
 
 work in an office, she would strip herself of every 
 available penny she would do anything, however 
 conspicuous or however humble, so long as it had 
 Radin s sanction. She did not even ask now to be al 
 lowed to save the world; it would be enough if she 
 could be allowed, under Radin, to help save Hungary 
 to help save even Pest. Pride faded in the immanence 
 of the master. She asked only to be one of the crowd 
 of chosen, a little implement for a mighty hand. She 
 had at the same time a shrewd notion that she could 
 help best with such beastly capitalistic weapons as she 
 did, or could, possess. 
 
 Behold, then, Annette Davidge, Countess Chudenitz, 
 in the heart of revolutionary Pest. Her life there is in 
 describable. Radin she got through to him at once 
 used her in many ways. He expected her to take a 
 furnished house in a good street and she took it. 
 He expected her to have servants, and food and wine, 
 telephone and limousine, for the use of himself and his 
 various committees and, by superhuman effort, she 
 got them. She was too much a woman of the world 
 not to realize that the leaders must be served, must 
 have their time and energy saved. She gave her 
 drawing-rooms over cheerfully to the muddy boots 
 and muddier manners of Radin s chief henchmen. A 
 villa in the country that Count Chudenitz had owned 
 she turned over to him also. Meanwhile, as she could, 
 she drank in enough of Radin s eloquence to keep her 
 in a glow. Not speaking Magyar, she could not un 
 derstand most of the talk that went on in her house; 
 but she would have trusted Radin, though he only 
 mopped and mowed, to be serving the ends of right 
 eousness. She was expected, she found, to be only a 
 landlady and a purse not to plan or to counsel. But 
 again, her shrewd sense told her that it was eminently 
 
16 VALIANT DUST 
 
 necessary that the saviors of the proletariat should 
 have shelter and money. You didn t make even a revo 
 lution with bare hands not in these days. In return, 
 she was protected; furnished with grubby papers that 
 permitted her to go about the city papers so dirty 
 with much countersigning that the dirtiest Red patrol 
 man bowed down to them, recognizing the signs of his 
 own regime. When she used her car, it passed the 
 most truculent sentinels as being Radin s. The mas 
 ters of Pest recognized her for a good proletarian; for 
 some one in the counsels of Radin himself, possibly 
 even known to the distant godhead of Lenin. That the 
 hunted remnant of Pest, cowering behind its palace 
 shutters, fitfully raided and fitfully ignored, called her 
 Radin s mistress and somehow (between appeals to 
 Mr. Hoover) blamed America and President Wilson 
 for her unspeakable renegadeship, she did not, of 
 course, know. Nor would it have concerned her if she 
 had, since never once had she looked upon Radin as a 
 man. Their scandal would have been, for her, only 
 another nail in the coffin of the late Count Chudenitz. 
 Meanwhile the Reds were making their new laws for 
 Hungary laws that most citizens might have found 
 unintelligible except for the death penalty. Being un 
 certain as to what you might do and keep your life, you 
 went further than you conceived it necessary; you did 
 a little more than your damnedest. But in early 1919 
 Annette was privileged. Her car, her house, her per 
 sonal belongings, went untouched. She was never 
 raided or summoned, or stripped of anything that was 
 hers. It did not go with Annette s sense of fitness to 
 wear jewelry in these times, but when she saw women 
 handing over their pearls to the appointed officials, she 
 remembered that she had pearls of her own in her un 
 molested jewel-box, and assumed that the afflicted 
 
AN HONEST MAN 17 
 
 ladies had been convicted of conspiracy, or hoarding, 
 or smuggling gold to Vienna or Switzerland. 
 
 Even in Buda-Pest the Countess Chudenitz was not 
 notorious. Radin was too clever or perhaps too sin 
 gle-minded for that. If he drew more freely on An 
 nette s resources than on others , it was because she 
 had more resources than his other allies. She was 
 allowed to realize that there were other houses, other 
 rendezvous, other hospitalities, for him and his in 
 numerable committees, other loyal women besides her 
 self. She knew little of, and cared little for, those 
 other women. It stood to reason that she could not be 
 the only internationalist of her sex. Perhaps her 
 cognizance of other handmaidens to the Cause served 
 to keep her away from meetings. Perhaps, that is, 
 brotherhood was more to her mind, as a slogan, than 
 sisterhood. But let it be put down to Annette Dav- 
 idge s credit that she was content to satisfy Radin s 
 demands upon her without complacence or jealousy. 
 Her fervor was impersonal; and when the soviet elec 
 tions drew on, she refused to write herself down house 
 keeper or stenographer in order to be allowed to vote. 
 Annette Davidge was honest up to the limits of her 
 logic. 
 
 Even revolutions do not always have an easy time of 
 it. The Reds had their own troubles, and Radin had 
 need, indeed, to be a clever man. Trolley-cars were 
 running in Pest; shops were open; restaurants, also, 
 that served you next to nothing. All bourgeois were 
 barred from voting; and no one had respect or protec 
 tion who did not work with his hands. Bela Kun was 
 great in the land. Yet, with all these advantages, 
 Hungary was not happy. These folk did not at once 
 find all things added unto them. Rumania bothered 
 them; the unguessable decisions in Paris bothered 
 
18 VALIANT DUST 
 
 them; Czecho-Slovakia and Jugoslavia drove them to 
 frenzy. In other words, the sovereign people was ir 
 ritable and illogical as folk are only when the little 
 money they possess has no purchasing power. Soviet 
 rule did not bring bread; still less, luxuries, which, as 
 every one knows, are an integral part of any millen 
 nium. The bourgeois were suffering even more than 
 the populace; but the populace, which from childhood 
 had been accustomed to envy the bourgeois with rea 
 son, could not, all at once, see that. And because 
 they were not getting what they wanted, they threat 
 ened to take it by force, even if it was not there. At 
 such a time, Red leaders have to make quick decisions. 
 A great many quick decisions were made in 1919. . . . 
 But Radin took the way of his great compeers, Trotzky 
 and Lenin. No one can say, I believe, what his real 
 policy was; how far he directed and how far he was 
 dragged. Even the staff of The Life Everlasting can 
 not really have known. He may have thought that it 
 was better to lead a mob than to leave the mob unled, 
 or led by those without a philosophy. Or he may have 
 believed the things he told the wild torch-bearing 
 thousands in the Freiheits-Platz: that if their peaceful 
 government had not succeeded, because of corrupt 
 remnants and the natural depravity of all but the Red 
 dest, it was time for something more extreme still 
 time for the utmost humanitarian violence. Certain 
 it is that when Pest became a Bolshevik hell, Radin 
 played Sathanas. 
 
 Annette Davidge, Countess Chudenitz, endured that 
 hell for three days. Her faith in Radin whom she 
 had not seen for a week did not waver. Her house 
 stood empty, she its sole inhabitant, for those three 
 days. The last night she spent crouched in a corner 
 of the cellar. As a matter of curious fact, her house 
 
AN HONEST MAN 19 
 
 was not molested. They passed, reeling, screaming, 
 shooting, but they neither fired through her win 
 dows, nor applied the torch. Too many of them had 
 seen Radin go in and out of the great door; they were 
 not sure. Some said (for the people were no nicer- 
 minded than the aristocracy) there was a woman of 
 Radin s in there better let the place alone. There 
 were plenty of other houses to loot. But the noise and 
 the lurid uncertainty were the same; and on the third 
 day Annette decided that she could bear it no longer. 
 Possibly, she said to herself, the worst element had 
 got out of hand, and Radin was helpless in another 
 quarter. She did not dare trust her passports. It 
 might be that a new party, which would not honor 
 them, had come into power. As she crept up from 
 her cellar in the comparative quiet of early dawn, she 
 saw the light of many fires in the city, and debris un 
 speakable in the heart of her own street furniture, 
 empty wine-bottles, a wrecked machine-gun, bodies. 
 ... It came over Annette, crouching behind her 
 window-curtain, that in the present situation she was 
 quite useless to the Cause. I believe that even then, 
 if she could have felt sure of serving Radin s revolu 
 tion, she would have crept out into the ruined, smok 
 ing street. But to be both useless and in danger re 
 volted her common-sense. If no obvious duty called 
 her, then she would at least try for safety. 
 
 The city, having gone to rest well after midnight, 
 waked late; and she had some clear time before her. 
 She made up a parcel of food, a parcel of valuables, 
 and stowed money inside her dress. She clad her 
 self completely, to the very skin, in clothing left be 
 hind by her maid, who had grown panicky and fled, 
 the week before, to Vienna. She did not forget the 
 bundle of passports, which might or might not serve 
 
20 VALIANT DUST 
 
 her. Then she crept furtively, like an animal wrig 
 gling through cover, to the garage. The limousine 
 would have been worse than useless, but a battered 
 Ford had been housed there, and she blessed the 
 chance that had made her learn in Italy to take such 
 a car over rough hill roads. There was enough petrol 
 to start it, and she knew personally a Jew on the city 
 outskirts who would sell her more. Even Radin s lim 
 ousine had sometimes chosen out-of-the-way places to 
 stop for petrol, and the Jew in question would, beyond 
 the shadow of a doubt, recognize her. Of how many 
 people in Pest, after all, could she say that, she asked 
 herself. 
 
 Again, of Annette Davidge s progress to the villa 
 (property of the late Count Chudenitz) we do not need 
 the detail. She skirted many dangers, but, thanks to 
 the early, listless hour, she escaped them. Her pass 
 ports served, the only times she was challenged 
 amazingly few, until you realize that, in the very 
 nature of things, early morning is revolution s slack 
 hour. By eight she was at the villa, where she waked 
 the surly caretakers. The place was shrouded and 
 dismantled, for it had seldom been used, though she 
 had opened it up a few months before for Radin s 
 occasional use. Now and then there were interviews 
 which were better held outside the city. Dust lay 
 thick everywhere, and some of the furniture was 
 stained and broken; larder and cellar were nearly 
 bare; but the garage was water-tight, and the tele 
 phone in working order. A cheerless habitation; yet 
 it was peace beyond peace to be removed from the 
 tumult of the last days. She sank into that peace as 
 though wrapped in the innnermost fold of a cloud. 
 
 But revolutions have their own logic, and the soviet 
 omelette takes a notorious amount of egg-breaking. 
 
AN HONEST MAN 21 
 
 Annette had found sullenness at Kirchberg on the 
 Enns; here she was to see the fire when it had 
 passed the smouldering stage. The two caretakers 
 (male and female) were creatures of Radin s, not 
 hers and that had always been sufficient. Now 
 she realized that in a world of strange faces, theirs 
 were almost the strangest. She trusted them for 
 Radin, but she hardly trusted them for herself, 
 though they must know that the villa was hers. Cer 
 tainly she had never been so insolently served. 
 
 The villa was on the outskirts of the little town, 
 removed from it only by the extent of its own small 
 park. Late that night she sat, fully dressed, by 
 the window of her bedroom, wondering if she had 
 done well. Perhaps, if she had stayed on, that day, 
 in Pest, Radin would have come to her, would have 
 explained. Here, she was more uncertain than ever. 
 The wilderness of shrubbery and trees was darkly 
 alive. There was no light by which she could dis 
 cern, or count, the forms that crouched, that wrig 
 gled, that shook the boughs stealthily and made 
 darker blots upon the herbage. There might be only 
 half a dozen inquisitive marauders peasantry come 
 up to spy upon the villa. Or, for all her senses could 
 tell her, the people might be investing the grounds in 
 force, furtively but inimically intending what? An 
 nette was so used now to the strange, scarce-human 
 regime of revolution as to tell herself, without humor, 
 almost without irony, that this invasion, which might 
 mean arson and murder, might equally well be a mere 
 gathering for shrill talk. All the same, it shook her 
 nerves. 
 
 She slept, the next day, by snatches. She did 
 not dare she, the friend and helper of Radin to set 
 foot in the streets. Towards night she heard a me- 
 
22 VALIANT DUST 
 
 thodical succession of shots. She was used enough to 
 chaotic firing, yet she noticed this . . . even to her 
 innocent ears it had the rhythm of execution. At 
 nightfall, she descended and addressed the man, who 
 could speak, with an impossible accent, a little Ger 
 man. His manner, always insolent, was oddly 
 reflective, she thought. Annette, who understood 
 nothing of what was going on around her, who 
 had only metaphors and analogies to define her con 
 text with who could not say "this is," but only "it 
 is as if" felt that he regarded her for once lees as 
 an enemy than as an enemy disarmed; as (why not 
 say it at once?) a prisoner. His insolence had told 
 her that he hated her; now leisure and calm seemed 
 to have entered into his hatred. He was at ease about 
 her; she no longer irked him; she was caught, and 
 could be regarded almost with tolerance. The sense 
 of this made her, for the first time in her life, person 
 ally afraid. In her cellar she had known terror, but 
 only as one fears the lightning, which may strike but 
 may not. There was all the difference in the world be 
 tween happening to be in a dangerous situation and be 
 ing directly, deliberately threatened. His contem 
 plative manner frightened her as nothing else ever had 
 done; therefore she held her head very high not 
 from bravado, but just in order to keep herself going. 
 For ten minutes they talked in broken, monosyllabic 
 German; she standing, he seated, with a mug of beer 
 beside him. Now and then he drank, and set the 
 mug down to spill over on a gilded table. He wiped 
 his ragged beard from time to time with a bit of 
 Venice point torn from a cushion cover. And it was 
 a world in which Countess Chudenitz could not re 
 prove him. These, she told herself, were the inevitable 
 initial excesses. You cannot have capitalism at night, 
 
AN HONEST MAN 23 
 
 and smooth-running communism before the day 
 breaks. Even Radin could not put his formulae 
 through all at once, with no hitches. She thought of 
 Radin s programme but that way lay abstract terms. 
 Annette passed a hand over her aching forehead 
 spurred herself to her last dreaded questions got her 
 guttural, illiterate answers turned on her heel and 
 left the man. For the first time in her life, she was 
 feeling a sex fear. 
 
 Because her mind told her to, she dragged herself 
 on tired feet to the garage. Not an ounce of petrol 
 left. The tank had been scrupulously emptied, and 
 the car was a mere useless heap of machinery; as cun 
 ning a device, as logical an invention, as perfect in 
 plan, as ever, but deprived of all that gave it pur 
 pose and direction. Some such reflection crossed her 
 mind, but she bit off the analogy. She had fed on 
 too many, these latter days. Then she locked her 
 self into a room on the lower floor, to think. She was 
 afraid to go up-stairs. Up-stairs was too traplike. 
 
 The orgies in Pest continued, she had learned 
 though her uncouth interlocutor had not called them 
 orgies. This little town, virtuously inspired by the 
 example, had determined to do itself proud in an 
 other way. The local soviet had been meeting almost 
 continuously, and had decided on a programme that 
 had no blemish on its Red purity. Hungary must not 
 be slower than Russia; and if the larger towns would 
 not show the way, the small ones must. The munic 
 ipality which meant the soviet was, of course, self- 
 governing and accountable to none. The man s gib 
 berish had not been elaborate, but she had grasped 
 the gist of the programme. The "workmen s and sol 
 diers council" had, as usual, done the planning. 
 Within their local limits, it was to be thorough and 
 
24 VALIANT DUST 
 
 complete. They were very pleased with themselves, 
 she gathered from the intonations of her informant. 
 For the first time since she had known Radin, 
 Annette Chudenitz translated a "programme," com 
 pletely and without expurgation, into concrete terms; 
 dealt with revolution in plain English. Everything 
 that could be conceived of as property was to be seized 
 and pooled, then redistributed as seemed best to the 
 council, provided always that no one outside the 
 working-classes was to share in the distribution. In 
 order not to be the dupes of capitalistic devices, they 
 had created a kind of "grandfather" clause: no one 
 was to be haloed as a "worker" who had employed 
 labor in any way before the Revolution. That pro 
 vision took care of those folk who might have been 
 driven to manual labor by the Revolution itself, but 
 had been originally tainted with bourgeoisie. All 
 things were to be held in common, for the good of 
 the community itself, allotted only temporarily to 
 worthy individuals, and resumable at will by the coun 
 cil, should the individual take too individualistic an 
 attitude towards his new possessions. That, on the 
 other hand, would dispose of the capitalistically in 
 clined of their own class. Children, though they 
 might or might not be left to the care of parents, were 
 the wards of the municipality, and might be trans 
 ferred to whatever custody the council thought best. 
 Women, of course, were to be nationalized munici 
 palized, in this case. Works of art, jewelry, objects 
 of luxury, were to be sent to the melting-pot; what 
 ever of their substance, mineral or vegetable, could 
 be removed for useful purposes would be saved, the 
 rest burned in the market-place. Animals, like chil 
 dren, were wards of the council, and their custody 
 was a matter for determination. 
 
AN HONEST MAN 25 
 
 The awkward sentences of the caretaker had made 
 all this plain to her. Her perfect familiarity with 
 the theories of Bolshevism had enabled her to fill in 
 the grinning gaps. When he had sputtered lazily 
 over his beer, "All property in common: cattle 
 children women," she knew the programme; knew, 
 moreover, who would be eligible to committees and 
 who would not. She knew every twist and turn. Her 
 sole surprise had been to learn at the end that since 
 she had once possessed the villa, she was personally 
 involved in the reforms a subject of the local coun 
 cil, to be officially despoiled. She had withheld her 
 tongue from mentioning that her legal residence was 
 elsewhere. She could not deny that, in their logic, 
 the villa created for her a legal residence within reach 
 of their tentacles. 
 
 The villa! It was nothing to her. But the few be 
 longings she had with her; jewels of her girlhood, her 
 wedding-ring. . . . They took wedding-rings always, 
 she realized; on principle, as much as for patriotic 
 cupidity. She fought with herself a long time before 
 she consented to face the essential fact, the one thing 
 that mattered. But face it she did, and the vision 
 grayed her cheek and brow, her very lips, so that 
 she looked like a ghost in the twilight as she ques 
 tioned him. 
 
 Annette Davidge was in many ways a strong 
 woman. When she found that there was no petrol for 
 her in the garage, she turned herself aside from 
 hysteria by sheer pluck and main force. She was sure 
 the petrol was merely hidden, and she would have tried 
 to bribe the man to give it to her, save that her com 
 mon sense told her he would gain more by keeping 
 her there than by aiding her to escape and that, in 
 evitably, he knew it. There was only one thing in 
 
26 VALIANT DUST 
 
 the world to do, and that she must accomplish with 
 out delay. She must get through by telephone to 
 Radin. She unlocked her door and sought her keeper. 
 He should stand beside her and hear every word. 
 Therefore she would have to speak German. It might 
 be that Radin was lost to her; but she trusted still 
 in the magic of his name. 
 
 Indeed, if Annette Davidge had tried to reach by 
 telephone any place in Pest except Radin s headquar 
 ters, she would have been defeated. It took two hours 
 as it was. But she got through to him at last. Her 
 arm ached to numbness by the time his voice answered 
 her. The caretaker was half asleep in his chair, but 
 whenever she raised her voice he shook himself awake 
 to listen. In few words words she had decided on 
 and learned by heart in her two hours waiting she 
 told him where she was, and her necessity for seeing 
 him; she described the independent action of the 
 municipality, and the danger of her being caught in 
 this backwater, when she belonged with the larger 
 movement outside. She repressed, even in her tone, 
 every hint of her self-pity, her sense of injustice. As 
 a practical matter, would he come and see her, as she 
 could not go to him? It would also, of course, be a 
 great compliment to the soviet. . . . Reluctance, won 
 der, annoyance, seemed to be mingled in Radin s 
 voice, speaking English at the other end. Yes, he 
 would come, in the first hours after dawn for an 
 hour. Annette realized, in mid-gust of her relief, 
 that unless it had been otherwise convenient to 
 him, he could not and would not have consented; 
 that she had virtually appealed to a command 
 ing general in the thick of the hour of battle. 
 She was proportionately grateful; but even so, it 
 seemed natural that he should have made an effort 
 
AN HONEST MAN 27 
 
 with the thousands upon thousands he had had from 
 her. Natural of course. Yet she turned upon the 
 caretaker, who had listened greedily, and ordered 
 as she would not have dared to do an hour earlier 
 coffee for herself, in her own room. It was brought. 
 I have said that there was no hint of sex in the 
 comradeship of Annette Chudenitz and Radin. Yet 
 even Radin cannot have helped noticing that he faced, 
 physically speaking, a woman he had never seen. In 
 her shabby maid s dress, with her eyes hollowed out 
 by sleeplessness, her face paled by vigil, confinement, 
 and fear, her very voice shaken by the strangeness 
 of her world, their contact lost through the events of 
 their separation, she must have seemed to him different 
 indeed. They breakfasted together in the dirty din 
 ing-room. Annette had not been so well fed in many 
 days. She had Radin s presence to thank for that, she 
 knew. Yet her jailers were scarcely more than civil, 
 even to him. She remarked on this to Radin, when 
 the meal was finished. Radin, with the utmost frank 
 ness, at once explained. . . . 
 
 It was then, after the incredible explanation, that 
 Annette began really to readjust herself. AH along, 
 she had known her danger, but she had still thought 
 of Radin, at least, as all-powerful, and all her fear 
 had departed when she saw him enter the hall. Now 
 from his own lips she learned that he was not omni 
 potent or, in any case, that he declined to take ad 
 vantage of his omnipotence. Either he feared to in 
 terfere with the local soviet, or he did not wish to. 
 Either alternative was terrible to her, but she chose 
 the first, and tried persuasion. 
 
 "Surely they would not touch me if you took me 
 back in your car?" 
 
 "Perhaps probably not," he agreed. 
 
28 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Then why?" 
 
 He spoke very soberly. "It would discredit me." 
 
 "Is it possible for you to be discredited?" 
 
 "Quite possible. And I am too important at the 
 moment to do anything foolish. It would be a crime. 
 I am very much needed yonder." He jerked his 
 thumb Pestwards. 
 
 "Of course you are. But, after all, I, too, have 
 been loyal. Can t you explain that to the com 
 mittee?" 
 
 Radin sat down heavily. Then he looked at his 
 watch. He leaned forward and tapped her knee. "I 
 am very sorry." Nothing had ever been more metallic, 
 more perfunctory than his tone. "It was a mistake 
 for you to come here. For your own sake, you should 
 have stayed in Pest. As things stand I cannot pos 
 sibly interfere with the local council. They are with 
 in their rights. They are only doing what all com 
 munes will presently do. They are naturally proud 
 of their readiness, their thoroughness. If I interfered, 
 it would throw the gravest doubts on my own good 
 faith, and my work would be seriously impeded. If 
 it were a personal matter but it is not. In fact, there 
 are no personal matters, as far as I am concerned. 
 There is only the Revolution." 
 
 Even then, she could not believe it. "I am not 
 asking you to make it a personal matter." 
 
 "Pardon me, tovarischa" (was it deliberately, or by 
 mere instinct, that he used the reeking Russian 
 word?), "that is just what you are doing. They would 
 say" 
 
 "I do not care what these creatures say about me!" 
 she cried. 
 
 "Nor I. I was about to tell you that if I asked 
 for immunity for you, they would say that I demanded 
 
AN HONEST MAN 29 
 
 privileges, that my programme was good enough for 
 others, but not good enough for me and my friends; 
 that I do not really believe what I teach; that I prefer, 
 in my heart, the old bourgeois regime." He looked her 
 straight in the eyes. "Comrade Annetta, I do not 
 make a revolution only to go back on it. When I tell 
 them in the Freiheits-Platz that there is to be no 
 privileged class, no private property, that they are 
 right to confiscate, to communize, I cannot afford to 
 have some one in the crowd fling exceptions in my 
 face." 
 
 "Do I understand you to mean that you yourself 
 are willing, for yourself, to submit to this sort of 
 thing? To be ruled, in every detail of your life, by a 
 soviet?" 
 
 "Absolutely, yes. What do you take me for? A 
 charlatan?" 
 
 "But you," she replied, sarcastically, "are going 
 back to Pest, unmolested, in your automobile. Do you 
 mean that if some mob in the city decides to-morrow 
 to take your car and your freedom away, and to set 
 you to work with you hands, or make you one of a 
 thousand Red guards, you will submit?" 
 
 "Theoretically, yes. Why not? But they will not 
 do that," he went on, gravely, "I hope. They need 
 me in another capacity for a time. They need me to 
 direct; to counsel. The people are not yet in the sad 
 dle. They need me to set them there, and they 
 know it. Even a revolution must have some one to 
 think for it." 
 
 "And you intend always to occupy that superior 
 position!" 
 
 "As long as may be. Because" he spoke with 
 great emphasis, but with no emotion "the Revolu 
 tion needs me. Who do you think has brought the 
 
30 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Revolution about in Hungary? Bela Kun? Lenin, 
 over there in Russia? By no means. I, Radin." 
 There was not a trace of self-praise in his tone; he 
 might have been teaching her statistics from a book. 
 "Show me any man who can do my work better, and 
 I gladly give my place to him. But the man has 
 not arrived yet." 
 
 "I believe you." For that matter, she did. "And" 
 she worked carefully for logic "your services are 
 rewarded by immunity." 
 
 "If so you choose to put it. But that is a mere 
 matter of practical politics. If I serve the Revolu 
 tion best by being free to plan my days and my work, 
 that is right. If my immunity ceases to serve the 
 Revolution away with it!" He flicked the ash off 
 his cigar. 
 
 "You are very sure of yourself." 
 
 "I have spent my life in training," he replied, 
 simply. 
 
 "I am not questioning your fitness, your value 
 your supremacy, even," she went on. This was, after 
 all, the presence she had walked with among the 
 Italian hills. "Should I have left Vienna, given all 
 I had, if I had not been heart and soul with the cause 
 and believed you to be the mouthpiece of humanity?" 
 
 Radin scanned her carefully. "I think not. I 
 think, as far as you understood, you agreed. But 
 perhaps you could not understand much. Daughter of 
 the American bourgeoisie and widow of Count Chu- 
 deriitz!" 
 
 "You took my money, my houses, my servants, my 
 food. . . ." she cried. 
 
 "Again, why not? Would I have taken them so 
 simply if I had not thought it right? You offered 
 the people nothing that did not belong, morally speak- 
 
AN HONEST MAN 31 
 
 ing, to the people. Did I ever insult you, or myself, 
 or the Revolution, by thanking you?" 
 
 "You never thanked me." 
 
 "Exactly. Because I should have considered it 
 quite legitimate for us to take by force, had it been 
 physically necessary, everything that you freely gave. 
 That you gave freely proved you a friend of the Revo 
 lution, merely." 
 
 "And now that I can do nothing more for you 
 that my consent is not necessary I am not to be 
 treated as a friend! No immunity comes my way." 
 
 Radin rose and stood above her. "Have I ever 
 told you that you were to be immune from the regime 
 you were working to bring about? Did you not be 
 lieve what you said you believed? You told me 
 you were a proletarian; you gave, I thought, evidences 
 of your sincerity. Did you all the time expect to bring 
 about a rule for others and not for yourself? To be 
 a sort of republican queen? If you wanted to be a 
 bourgeoise, you should have stayed out of the move 
 ment to abolish the bourgeoisie. The smallest logic 
 would have taught you that. Ours, as you well knew, 
 is not a local but a world programme." 
 
 "I might at least have been treated as a friend, 
 not as an enemy." 
 
 "But who is treating you like an enemy?" He 
 spoke as to a child who cannot reason, yet with no 
 show of irritation. "Is any one proposing to im 
 prison you?" 
 
 "What they propose is worse than imprisonment, 
 as you well know." Her voice trembled with anger. 
 
 "Tchk!" He flung out his arms. "All I can say 
 is that I thought better of your intellect. Your sin 
 cerity I still do not question. The people are propos 
 ing to treat you as they treat themselves. You are, 
 
32 VALIANT DUST 
 
 as far as may be, a citizen of the state you professed 
 yourself a passionate believer in. I give you nothing 
 you did not profess to think desirable for your own 
 country, for all mankind. And now you want to 
 play the old game of exceptions! Once a bourgeoise, 
 always a bourgeoise! . . . You are not inexorable, 
 Comrade Annetta." 
 
 "Certainly, for myself, I do not go as far as they 
 go." 
 
 "That is no one s fault but your own." 
 
 "Did you ever tell me in New York when you 
 first instructed me that I might look forward to hav 
 ing all my belongings stolen, myself . . . national 
 ized . . ." The word came with difficulty, but she 
 brought it out. 
 
 "Did I ever tell you" he looked at his watch 
 again, not impatiently, but as if forced to calculate 
 "that I contemplated anything else? Did I ever hint 
 to you that I believed in one law for the masses, an 
 other for the privileged? Did I not explicitly say 
 that the abolition of privilege was the root of the 
 social revolution?" 
 
 "Yes. But I assumed that these plans were to be 
 worked slowly as far as might be without injustice to 
 the individual. . . ." 
 
 "A revolution that comes slowly is not a revolu 
 tion. And there is no question of injustice. The in 
 justice would be in making an exception for the in 
 dividual who objected to the policy of the govern 
 ment." 
 
 "You call that orgy in Pest a government?" 
 
 "It is on its way to become so." 
 
 "Therefore you excuse the excesses." 
 
 "If there are excesses, I excuse them on the score 
 
AN HONEST MAN 33 
 
 of inevitability. But I do not call the plans of your 
 local soviet excesses. They are doing nothing that 
 you did not subscribe to, in theory, some years ago." 
 
 "About women ... I never subscribed." 
 
 "Perhaps that was a detail that we did not discuss. 
 But the least logic would have enabled you to see that 
 the old-fashioned marriage is, in the last analysis, in 
 sistence on a property right. In twenty years, every 
 one will take it all quite naturally. The first moment 
 of change is bound to seem violent to some people. 
 When they take your pearls, you will probably con 
 sider them thieves. I should not have expected it, 
 but I see that you will. In spite of all your fine 
 talk, you do not see that the council which takes 
 your pearls and sells them for the common good is not 
 a thief." 
 
 "Pearls are only pearls," she protested. 
 
 "True; a commodity. And if you proceed logically, 
 you will see that what you would call your virtue is 
 also a commodity. Anything necessary, or even uni 
 versally desired, is a commodity." 
 
 "But" she reverted to the less distasteful instance 
 "some one will eventually wear the pearls. How 
 can one individual have more right to them than an 
 other?" 
 
 "Eventually, no individual will wear pearls so long 
 as their money value is what it is. Only when they 
 become valueless as sea-shells will they be innocent. 
 At present, I do not think any one in revolutionary 
 Hungary will be allowed to wear them. We can sell 
 them to the foreigner for money to spend on neces 
 sities." 
 
 "I am likeliest to see them on the neck of what 
 ever woman in the commune has the lightest morals," 
 she threw in bitterly. 
 
34 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Not for long, I think. And the morals of all 
 women will be controlled by the committee. 
 
 "We are getting into by-paths. I ask you, once 
 for all, Radin, are you going to turn me over to be 
 the victim of any peasant who chooses to pay?" 
 
 He frowned as if in sheer weariness. "You speak 
 over-dramatically. These things will be arranged 
 more calmly than that. You will be disposed of in 
 accordance with the best judgment of the committee. 
 But you will find, I think, that there is more freedom 
 under the Revolution than there was under the old 
 regime." 
 
 "Under the old regime I was free not to take a hus 
 band or a lover." 
 
 "You will find, I believe, that most women prefer 
 the freedom to take one. Assuming that, we say that 
 no woman shall take one without the sanction of the 
 authorities. The production of children is not a pri 
 vate matter. It is of the gravest import to the state. 
 To look upon it as a matter of personal pleasure is 
 obscurantism pure and simple. Because it is fraught 
 with such vital consequences, we must limit and con 
 trol the sexual relation as we limit and control the 
 money-making power of the individual. . . . But if 
 I failed to make myself clear in New York, when 
 we had time, I cannot make myself clear now when 
 we are all in a hurry." 
 
 Radin rose again, and called to the man. Annette 
 rose, too. 
 
 "Then you will do nothing for me?" she asked, in 
 a shaking voice. 
 
 "I will tell the local committee that you are a 
 benevolent friend of the Revolution and to be treated 
 with the respect due to any good citizen. Can I do 
 more?" 
 
AN HONEST MAN 35 
 
 "You throw me into that?" She could hardly shape 
 the words. 
 
 Radin turned on her then with the first flicker of 
 irritation that he had shown. "I? I throw you into 
 nothing. You hung on my words in America, and I 
 told you nothing but truth nothing that I have ever 
 had to deny. If you were amusing yourself, that was 
 your lookout. I thought you sincere. Especially 
 when you came to Pest to help us, did I think you 
 sincere. Many of those men and women in New York, 
 I knew well, had not the brains to see what revolution 
 meant. But I really believed you had thought it out. 
 I talked to you with the utmost freedom. And when 
 you came to Pest to join us, I was sure. I believe 
 in the Revolution; I care only for the Revolution. 
 I would kill only obstructionists. Them I would kill 
 because the people must not be hindered. But I am 
 exactly what I was when we sat over your samovar in 
 Sixty-second Street. I have been perfectly honest 
 from the beginning. If you were not honest, how was 
 I to know?" 
 
 He would not even ask her to bear witness to his 
 honesty. As far as he was concerned this mongrel 
 incorruptible it stood proved. But had she wished, 
 she could not have denied it. She had been, at some 
 stage or other of the game, a fool; but, even now, she 
 could not say where or when. How could she have 
 been expected not to misunderstand? 
 
 Radin held out his hand for farewell. "I will 
 recommend you as a good proletarian down yonder 
 on my way back. If I did that and also tried to smug 
 gle you out of the country, I should not be honest. I 
 am sorry if you have mistaken yourself. But you, and 
 none other, did it. The revolution is not a box of toys. 
 Never once have I spoken to you as if it were. I re- 
 
36 VALIANT DUST 
 
 peat, I am sorry if you have misapprehended. But I 
 could not suffer you to be so much as a pinch of dust 
 to clog the wheels. The fault" he tapped his fore 
 head "was apparently with the brain. You adhered 
 emotionally, not with your intellect. I did not realize 
 that." 
 
 "And if you had realized" she poured forth the 
 bitterness of her defeat "you would still have done 
 the same. You would have used me." 
 
 "I would have used you just so much as you were 
 fool enough to let yourself be used, without my lying 
 to you. I would not have lied to you for the sake of 
 no matter how many millions of dollars. But if you 
 persisted in thinking I did not mean what I said, I 
 could not have helped that. I told you over and 
 over again that I had no god except the will of the 
 sovereign masses; that your silly democracy meant 
 nothing to me; that I cared only for the Revolution. 
 I stand where I stood then. Good-bye madame." 
 
 "You may pay, too . . ." she flung out. 
 
 "I dare say. Human nature is not perfect. But if 
 I do, it will not be because I have misunderstood 
 myself." He passed out of the door, honest as ever. 
 
 Annette, Countess Chudenitz, "Comrade Annetta," 
 daughter of John Davidge and cousin of Bertha Dol 
 lar d, went slowly up to her bedroom. She had de 
 cided to make them mount the stairs to find her; not 
 to lessen their journey by one step. It was a pity 
 she had no pistol. Perhaps Radin would have given 
 her one if she had asked. Her torture, like her safety, 
 was nothing he had set his cold heart on. But it was 
 too late now. 
 
 Through the afternoon she mediated on the 
 technique of non-resistance. Finally, too worn out 
 for even fear to keep her awake, she fell asleep. 
 
AN HONEST MAN 37 
 
 When she woke, it was nearly dusk. She was stronger 
 after her sleep, and that she resented. She hated her 
 own alertness, and would infinitely have preferred the 
 anaesthesia of exhaustion. A ray of sunlight struck the 
 dressing-table. She arranged her jewels for the public 
 view. They should not say that she kept anything 
 back. Only her wedding-ring she stowed away inside 
 her clothing, thinking almost with tenderness of 
 Ishtvan. Then she began to hate Ishtvan for bringing 
 her here. . . . But the truth was that Radin, not 
 Ishtvan, had brought her now; and if she had not 
 returned to her own country, she would never have 
 known Radin. Only once did her fear make her 
 ignoble when she stretched out her hand to her van 
 ity-case. But she drew her hand back; she would 
 make no bid for desire. As she strained her eyes to 
 wards the twilit mirror, she saw herself stripped of 
 beauty as of a garment. Better so. For every reason 
 pride, expediency, what not better so. 
 
 She sat down at the window then to watch the night 
 come on. And with the paling of the west, the bright 
 ening of the stars, the darkening of the air, she found 
 things to notice. Again the great evergreens were 
 stirred and peopled. A little later the shrubs, too, 
 came alive. When the moon rose clear, the shadows 
 ceased to be stealthy. They formed in groups. In the 
 end it was the ordered march of confident folk. Lights 
 flared out from the drawing-rooms below, making a 
 broad, yellow path upon the grass. Along that path, 
 several abreast, they approached. She heard the low, 
 staccato hum of their talk. She could better have 
 borne guns and torches, the loose fabric of riot that 
 would offer interstices for escape. This was sober 
 ness itself; evidently a meeting of the local soviet to 
 be held in the great rooms of the villa that had been 
 
38 VALIANT DUST 
 
 hers. To this had it come; that not even in the 
 midst of red revolution last week had she so sensed her 
 doom as now. Annette Davidge s humor had been a 
 weakling that perished in Annette s own childhood. 
 Her irony had grown up with her, but it, too a 
 weak thing had passed away long since in Pest. 
 Not with mirth, but with prostrating fear, she noted 
 those ordered ranks. Annette Bavidge was to meet 
 her fate at a committee-meeting in a drawing-room 
 precisely as, long ago, she had met Radin. The two 
 settings were extraordinarily alike. Only this time, if 
 she listened, she would not understand the words ; and 
 this time it meant something. Perhaps some of Bertha 
 Bollard s guests, besides Radin, had meant something 
 before; but the tea, the debutantes, and the footmen 
 had been there to prove that Bertha Bollard meant 
 nothing. Annette wished still without humor that 
 this had been anything but a meeting. 
 
 An immense distaste came to her for being sum 
 moned by the chairman. She dragged herself up from 
 her post by the window, took her jewels and money 
 in her hand, and went down-stairs to the assembly in 
 which she had no vote. As she entered the room, her 
 eyes dazzled; but she laid her treasures on the table in 
 front of the bearded man who presided. The woman 
 who sat beside him snatched at the gems, but the 
 president laid a heavy hand on the woman s arm and 
 pushed them to the front of the table where all could 
 see. Then Annette sat quietly down in a corner; she 
 felt very shabby in her frayed black. The scarves 
 and shawls and petticoats of the peasant women over 
 powered her. Their eyes raked her all. the eyes 
 present, focussing themselves into one stare, which she 
 felt like a burning-glass. But presently the chairman 
 spoke again, and the heads turned back to him. His 
 
AN HONEST MAN 39 
 
 hand played with the gold before him. Annette fixed 
 her gaze upon the glinting pile. The strange sounds 
 the man uttered probably concerned her; but she left 
 those strange sounds over there, as she had left her 
 money and her jewels. She refused to have anything 
 to do with it with any of it. There was something 
 austere in the bearded man s guarding of her valu 
 ables. But she was tired of honest men. 
 
 Before, in Bertha Bollard s house she had been un 
 aware of her crisis, because she had misunderstood. 
 Now, in spite of her ignorance of their speech, she un 
 derstood better. Yet she had the luck, a second time, 
 to be unaware of her crisis when it came. For pres 
 ently, as if really hypnotized by the glint of her own 
 gold, she fainted so quietly, however, that no one 
 noticed it. 
 
II 
 
 HABAKKUK 
 
 When they carried Kathleen Somers up into the hills 
 to die where her ancestors had had the habit of dying 
 they didn t gad about, those early Somerses: they 
 dropped in their tracks, and the long grass that they 
 had mowed and stacked and trodden under their living 
 feet flourished mightily over their graves it was held 
 to be only a question of time. I say "to die," not 
 because her case was absolutely hopeless, but because 
 no one saw how, with her spent vitality, she could sur 
 vive her exile. Everything had come at once, and she 
 had gone under. She had lost her kin, she had lost 
 her money, she had lost her health. Even the people 
 who make their meat of tragedy and there are a 
 great many of them in all enlightened centres of 
 thought shook their heads and were sorry. They 
 thought she couldn t live; and they also thought it 
 much, much better that she shouldn t. For there was 
 nothing left in life for that sophisticated creature but 
 a narrow cottage in a stony field, with Nature to 
 look at. 
 
 Does it sound neurotic and silly? It wasn t. Con 
 ceive her if you can Kathleen Somers, whom prob 
 ably you never knew. From childhood she had nour 
 ished short hopes and straitened thoughts. At least: 
 hopes that depend on the aesthetic passion are short; 
 and the long perspectives of civilized history are very 
 narrow. Kathleen Somers had been fed with the Old 
 
 40 
 
HABAKKUK 41 
 
 World: that is to say, her adolescent feet had exercised 
 themselves in picture-galleries and cathedrals and 
 palaces; she had seen all the right views, all the right 
 ceremonies, and all the censored picturesqueness. 
 Don t get any Cook s tourist idea, please, about Miss 
 Somers. Her mother had died young, and her gifted 
 father had taken her to a hundred places that the 
 school-teacher on a holiday never gets to and thinks of 
 only in connection with geography lessons. She had 
 followed the Great Wall of China, she had stood before 
 the tomb of Tamburlaine, she had shaded her eyes 
 from the glare of Kai rouan the Holy, she had chaffered 
 in Tiflis and in Trebizond. All this before she was 
 twenty-five. At that time her father s health broke, 
 and they proceeded to live permanently in New York. 
 Her wandering life had steeped her in delights, but 
 kept her innocent of love-affairs. When you have fed 
 on historic beauty, on the great plots of the past, the 
 best tenor voices in the world, it is pretty hard to find 
 a man who doesn t, in his own person, leave out some 
 thing essential to romance. She had herself no par 
 ticular beauty, and therefore the male sex could get on 
 without her. A few fell in love with her, but she was 
 too enchanted and amused with the world in general to 
 set to work at the painful process of making a hero out 
 of any one of them. She was a sweet-tempered 
 creature; her mental snobbishness was not a pose, but 
 perfectly inevitable; she had a great many friends. As 
 she had a quick wit and the historic imagination, you 
 can imagine remembering her bringing-up that she 
 was an entertaining person when she entered upon mid 
 dle age: when, that is, she was proceeding from the 
 earlier to the later thirties. 
 
 It was natural that Kathleen Somers and her father 
 who was a bit precious and pompous, in spite of his 
 
42 VALIANT DUST 
 
 ironies should gather about them a homogeneous 
 group. The house was pleasant and comfortable 
 they were too sophisticated to be "periodic" and 
 there was always good talk going, if you happened to 
 be the kind that could stand good talk. Of course you 
 had to pass an examination first. You had at least to 
 show that you "caught on." They were high-brow 
 enough to permit themselves sudden enthusiasms that 
 would have damned a low-brow. You mustn t like 
 "Peter Pan," but you might go three nights running to 
 see some really perfect clog-dancing at a vaudeville 
 theatre. Do you see what I mean? They were eclectic 
 with a vengeance. It wouldn t do for you to cultivate 
 the clog-dancer and like "Peter Pan," because in that 
 case you probably liked the clog-dancer for the wrong 
 reason for something other than that sublimated skill 
 which is art. Of course this is only a wildly chosen ex 
 ample. I never heard either of them mention "Peter 
 Pan." And the proper hatreds were even more diffi 
 cult than the proper devotions. You might let 
 Shakespeare get on your nerves, provided you really 
 enjoyed Milton. I wonder if you do see what I mean? 
 It must be perfect of its kind, its kind being anything 
 under heaven; and it must never, never, never be sen 
 timental. It must have art, and parti pris, and point 
 of view, and individuality stamped over it. No, I can t 
 explain. If you have known people like that, you ve 
 known them. If you haven t, you can scarcely con 
 ceive them. 
 
 By this time you are probably hating the Somerses, 
 father and daughter, and I can t help it or, rather, 
 I ve probably brought it about. But when I tell you 
 that I m not that sort myself, and that I loved them 
 both dearly and liked immensely to be with them, 
 you ll reconsider a little, I hope. They were sweet and 
 
HABAKKUK 43 
 
 straight and generous, both of them, and they knew 
 all about the grand manner. The grand manner is the 
 most comfortable thing to live with that I know. I 
 used to go there a good deal, and Arnold Withrow 
 went even more than I did, though he wasn t even 
 hanging on to Art by the eyelids as I do. (I refer, 
 of course, to my little habit of writing for the best 
 magazines, whose public considers me intellectual. So 
 I seem to myself, in the magazines . . . "But out in 
 pantry, good Lord!" Anyhow, I generally knew at 
 least what the Somerses were talking about the 
 dears!) Withrow was a stock-broker, and always 
 spent his vacation in the veritable wilds, camping in 
 virgin forests, or on the edge of glaciers, or in the dust 
 of American deserts. He had never been to Europe, 
 but he had been to Buenos Aires. You can imagine 
 what Kathleen Somers and her father felt about that: 
 they thought him too quaint and barbaric for words; 
 but still not barbaric enough to be really interesting. 
 I was just beginning to suspect that Withrow was in 
 love with Kathleen Somers in the good old middle- 
 class way, with no drama in it but no end of devotion, 
 when the crash came. Mr. Somers died, and within a 
 month of his death the railroad the bonds of which had 
 constituted his long-since diminished fortune went into 
 the hands of a receiver. There were a pitiful few hun 
 dreds a year left, besides the ancestral cottage which 
 had never even been worth selling. His daughter had 
 had an operation, and the shock of that, plus the shock 
 of his death, plus the shock of her impoverishment, 
 brought the curtain down with a tremendous rush 
 that terrified the house. It may make my metaphor 
 clearer if I put it that it was the asbestos curtain which 
 fell suddenly and violently; not the great crimson drop 
 that swings gracefully down at the end of a play. It 
 
44 VALIANT DUST 
 
 did not mark the end; it marked a catastrophe in the 
 wings to which the plot must give place. 
 
 Then they carried Kathleen Somers to the hills. 
 
 It was Mildred Thurston who told me about it 
 first. Withrow would have rushed to the hills, I think, 
 but he was in British Columbia on an extended trip. 
 He had fought for three months and got them, and he 
 started just before Kathleen Somers had her sudden 
 operation. Mildred Thurston (Withrow s cousin, by 
 the way) threw herself nobly into the breach. I am 
 not going into the question of Mildred Thurston here. 
 Perhaps if Withrow had been at home, she wouldn t 
 have gone. I don t know. Anyhow, when she rushed 
 to Kathleen Somers s desolate retreat she did it, ap 
 parently, from pure kindness. She was sure, like every 
 one else, that Kathleen would die; and that belief 
 purged her, for the time being, of selfishness and 
 commonness and cheap gayety. I wouldn t take Mil 
 dred Thurston s word about a state of soul; but she 
 was a good dictagraph. She came back filled with 
 pity; filled, at least, with the means of inspiring pity 
 for the exile in others. 
 
 After I had satisfied myself that Kathleen Somers 
 was physically on the mend, eating and sleeping fairly, 
 and sitting up a certain amount, I proceeded to more 
 interesting questions. 
 
 "What is it like?" 
 
 "It s dreadful." 
 
 "How dreadful?" 
 
 Mildred s large blue eyes popped at me with sincere 
 sorrow. 
 
 "Well, there s no plumbing, and no furnace." 
 
 "Is it in a village?" 
 
 "It isn t in anything. It s a mile and a half from 
 a station called Hebron. You have to change three 
 
HABAKKUK 45 
 
 times to get there. It s half-way up a hill the house 
 is and there are mountains all about, and the barn is 
 connected with the house by a series of rickety wood 
 sheds, and there are places where the water comes 
 through the roof. They put pails under to catch it. 
 There are queer little contraptions they call Franklin 
 stoves in most of the rooms and a brick oven in the 
 kitchen. When they want anything from the village, 
 Joel Blake gets it, if he doesn t forget. Ditto wood, 
 ditto everything except meat. Some other hick brings 
 that along when he has killed. They can only see one 
 house from the front yard, and that is precisely a mile 
 away by the road. Joel Blake lives nearer, but you 
 can t see his house. You can t see anything except 
 the woods and the crick and the mountains. You can 
 see the farmers when they are haying, but that doesn t 
 last long." 
 
 "Is it a beautiful view?" 
 
 "My dear man, don t ask me what a beautiful view 
 is. My education was neglected." 
 
 "Does Kathleen Somers think it beautiful?" 
 
 "She never looks at it, I believe. The place is all 
 run down, and she sits and wonders when the wall 
 paper will drop off. At least, that is what she talks 
 about, when she talks at all. That, and whether Joel 
 Blake will remember to bring the groceries. The two 
 women never speak to each other. Kathleen s awfully 
 polite, but well, you can t blame her. And I was 
 there in the spring. What it will be in the winter! 
 But Kathleen can hardly last so long, I should think." 
 
 "Who is the other woman?" 
 
 "An heirloom. Melora Meigs. Miss Meigs, if you 
 please. You know Mr. Somers s aunt lived to an ex 
 treme old age in the place. Miss Meigs did for her. 
 And since then she has been living on there. No one 
 
46 VALIANT DUST 
 
 wanted the house the poor Somerses! and she was 
 used to it. She s an old thing herself, and of course 
 she hasn t the nerves of a sloth. Now she does for 
 Kathleen. Of course later there ll have to be a nurse 
 again. Kathleen mustn t die with only Melora Meigs. 
 I m not sure, either, that Melora will last. She s all 
 crooked over with rheumatism." 
 
 That was the gist of what I got out of Mildred 
 Thurston. Letters to Miss Somers elicited no real re 
 sponse only a line to say that she wasn t strong 
 enough to write. None of her other female friends 
 could get any encouragement to visit her. It was per 
 haps due to Miss Thurston s mimicry of Melora Meigs 
 she made quite a "stunt" of it that none of them 
 pushed the matter beyond the first rebuff. 
 
 By summer-time I began to get worried myself. 
 Perhaps I was a little worried, vicariously, for With- 
 row. Remember that I thought he cared for her. 
 Miss Thurston s pity for Kathleen Somers was the 
 kind that shuts the door on the pitied person. If she 
 had thought Kathleen Somers had a future, she 
 wouldn t have been so kind. I may give it to you as 
 my private opinion that Mildred Thurston wanted 
 Withrow herself. I can t swear to it, even now; but I 
 suspected it sufficiently to feel that some one, for 
 Withrow s sake, had better see Kathleen besides his 
 exuberant and slangy cousin. She danced a little too 
 much on Kathleen Somers s grave. I determined to 
 go myself, and not to take the trouble of asking vainly 
 for an invitation. I left New York at the end of 
 June. 
 
 With my perfectly ordinary notions of comfort in 
 travelling, I found that it would take me two days to 
 get to Hebron. It was beyond all the resorts that 
 people flock to: beyond, and "cross country" at that. 
 
HABAKKUK 47 
 
 I must have journeyed on at least three small, one- 
 track railroads, after leaving the Pullman at some 
 junction or other. 
 
 It was late afternoon when I reached Hebron; and 
 nearly an hour later before I could get myself de 
 posited at Kathleen Somers s door. There was no gar 
 den, no porch; only a long, weed-grown walk up to a 
 stiff front door. An orchard of rheumatic apple-trees 
 was cowering stiffly to the wind in a far corner of the 
 roughly fenced-in lot; there was a windbreak of per 
 ishing pines. 
 
 In the living-room Kathleen Somers lay on a cheap 
 wicker chaise-longue, staring at a Hindu idol that she 
 held in her thin hands. She did not stir to greet me; 
 only transferred her stare from the gilded idol to 
 dusty and ungilded me. She spoke, of course; the 
 first time in my life, too, that I had ever heard her 
 speak ungently. 
 
 "My good man, you had better go away. I can t 
 put you up." 
 
 That was her greeting. Melora Meigs was snuf 
 fling in the hallway outside listening, I suppose. 
 
 "Oh, yes, you can. If you can t, I m sure Joel Blake 
 will. I ve come to stay a while, Miss Somers. r 
 
 "Can you eat porridge and salt pork for supper?" 
 
 "I can eat tenpenny nails, if necessary. Also I can 
 sleep in the barn." 
 
 "Melora!" The old woman entered, crooked and 
 grudging of aspect. "This friend of my father s and 
 mine has come to see me. Can he sleep in the barn?" 
 
 I cannot describe the hostility with which Melora 
 Meigs regarded me. It was not a pointed and pas 
 sionate hatred. That, one could have examined and 
 dealt with. It was, rather, a vast disgust that hap-, 
 pened to include me. 
 
48 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "There s nothing to sleep on. Barn s empty." 
 
 "He could move the nurse s cot out there, if he really 
 wants to. And I think there s an extra washstand in 
 the woodshed. You ll hardly need more than one 
 chair, just for a night," she finished, turning to me. 
 
 "Not for any number of nights, of course," I agreed 
 suavely. I was angry with Kathleen Somers, I didn t 
 know quite why. I think it was the Hindu idol. Nor 
 had she any right to address me with insolence, un 
 less she were mad, and she was not that. Her eyes 
 snapped very sanely. I don t think Kathleen Somers 
 could have made her voice snap. 
 
 Melora Meigs grunted and left the room. The grunt 
 was neither assent nor dissent; it was only the most 
 inclusive disapproval: the snarl of an animal, pro 
 ceeding from the topmost of many layers of dislike. 
 
 "I ll move the things before dark, I think." I was 
 determined to be cheerful, even if I had to seem im 
 pertinent; though the notion of her sticking me out 
 in the barn enraged me. 
 
 "You won t mind Melora s locking the door between, 
 of course. We always do. I m such a cockney, I m 
 timid; and Melora s very sweet about it." 
 
 It was almost too much, but I stuck it out. Pres 
 ently, indeed, I got my way; and moved yes, actually 
 lugged and lifted and dragged the cot, the chair, and 
 the stand out through the dusty, half-rotted corridors 
 and sheds to the barn. I drew water at the tap in 
 the yard and washed my perspiring face and neck. 
 Then I had supper with Miss Somers and Melora 
 Meigs. 
 
 After supper my hostess lighted a candle. "We go 
 to bed very early," she informed me. "I know you ll 
 be willing to smoke out-of-doors, it s so warm. I 
 doubt if Melora could bear tobacco in the house. 
 
HABAKKUK 49 
 
 And you won t mind her locking up early. You can 
 get into the barn from the yard any time, of course. 
 Men are never timid, I believe; but there s a horn 
 somewhere, if you d like it. We have breakfast at 
 six-thirty. Good-night." 
 
 Yes, it was Kathleen Somers s own voice, saying 
 these things to me. I was still enraged, but I must 
 bide my time. I refused the horn, and went out into 
 the rheumatic orchard to smoke in dappled moonlight. 
 The pure air soothed me; the great silence restored 
 my familiar scheme of things. Before I went to bed 
 in the barn, I could see the humor of this sour ad 
 venture. Oh, I would be up at six-thirty! 
 
 Of course I wasn t. I overslept; and by the time 
 I approached the house (the woodshed door was still 
 locked) their breakfast was long over. I fully ex 
 pected to fast until the mid-day meal, but Kathleen 
 Somers relented. With her own hands she made me 
 coffee over a little alcohol lamp. Bread and butter 
 had been austerely left on the table. Miss Somers 
 fetched me eggs, which I ate raw. Then I went out 
 into the orchard to smoke. 
 
 When I came back, I found Miss Somers as she 
 had been the day before, crouched listlessly in her 
 long chair, fondling her idol. I drew up a horsehair 
 rocking-chair and plunged in. 
 
 "Why do you play with that silly thing?" 
 
 "This?" She stroked the idol. "It is rather lovely. 
 Father got it in Benares. The carving is very cun 
 ningly done. Look at the nose and mouth. The rank 
 Hinduism of the thing amuses me. Perhaps it was 
 cruel to bring it up here where there are no other gods 
 for it to play with. But it s all I ve got. They had 
 to sell everything, you know. When I get stronger, I ll 
 send it back to New York and sell it, too." 
 
SO VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Why did you keep it out of all the things you 
 had?" 
 
 "I don t know. I think it was the first thing we 
 ever bought in India. And I remember Benares with 
 so much pleasure. Wasn t it a pity we couldn t have 
 been there when everything happened?" 
 
 "Much better not, I should think. You needed 
 surgeons." 
 
 "Just what I didn t need! I should have liked to 
 die in a country that had something to say for itself. 
 I don t feel as though this place had ever existed, ex 
 cept in some hideous dream." 
 
 "It s not hideous. It s even very beautiful so 
 wild and untouched; such lovely contours to the moun 
 tains." 
 
 "Yes, it s very untouched." She spoke of it with 
 just the same scorn I had in old days heard her use 
 for certain novelists. "Scarcely worth the trouble of 
 touching, I should think shouldn t you?" 
 
 "The beauty of it last night and this morning has 
 knocked me over," I replied hardily. 
 
 "Oh, really! How very interesting!" By which 
 she meant that she was not interested at all. 
 
 "You mean that you would like it landscape-gar 
 dened?" Really, she was perverse. She had turned 
 her back to the view which was ripping, out of her 
 northern window. I could tell that she habitually 
 turned her back on it. 
 
 "Oh, landscape-gardened? Well, it would improve 
 it, no doubt. But it would take generations to do it. 
 The generations that have been here already don t 
 seem to have accomplished much. Humanly speak 
 ing, they have hardly existed at all." 
 
 Kathleen Somers was no snob in the ordinary sense. 
 She was an angel to peasants. I knew perfectly what 
 
HABAKKUK 51 
 
 she meant by "humanly." She meant there was no 
 castle on the next hill. 
 
 "Are you incapable of caring for Nature just 
 scenery?" 
 
 "Quite." She closed her eyes, and stopped her 
 gentle, even stroking of the idol. 
 
 "Of course you never did see America first," I 
 laughed. 
 
 Kathleen Somers opened her eyes and spoke 
 vehemently. "I ve seen all there is of it to see, in 
 transit to better places. Seeing America first! That 
 can be borne. It s seeing America last that kills me. 
 Seeing nothing else forever, till I die." 
 
 "You don t care for just beauty, regardless," I 
 mused. 
 
 "Not a bit. Not unless it has meant something to 
 man. I m a humanist, I m afraid." 
 
 Whether she was gradually developing remorse for 
 my night in the cobwebby barn, I do not know. But 
 anyhow she grew more gentle, from this point on. 
 She really condescended to expound. 
 
 "I ve never loved Nature she s a brute, and crawly 
 besides. It s what man has done with Nature that 
 counts; it s Nature with a human past. Peaks that 
 have been fought for, and fought on, crossed by the 
 feet of men, stared at by poets and saints. Most of 
 these peaks aren t even named. Did you know that? 
 Nature! What is Nature good for, I should like to 
 know, except to kill us all in the end? Don t Rus- 
 kinize to me, my dear man." 
 
 "I won t. I couldn t. But, all the same, beauty is 
 beauty, wherever and whatever. And, look where you 
 will here, your eyes can t go wrong." 
 
 "I never look. I looked when I first came, and the 
 stupidity, the emptiness, the mere wood and dirt and 
 
52 VALIANT DUST 
 
 rock of it seemed like a personal insult. I should 
 prefer the worst huddle of a Chinese city, I verily 
 believe." 
 
 "You ve not precisely the spirit of the pioneer, I 
 can see." 
 
 "I should hope not. But, God if a God there be, 
 is the substance of men, which is man. I have to 
 stay in the man-made ruts. They re sacred to me. 
 I ll look with pleasure at the Alps, if only for the sake 
 of Hannibal and Goethe; but I never could look with 
 pleasure at your untutored Rockies. They re so unin 
 tentional, you know. Nature is nothing until history 
 has touched her. And as for this geological display 
 outside my windows you ll kindly permit me to turn 
 my back on it. It s not peevishness." She lifted her 
 hand protestingly. "Only, for weeks, I stared myself 
 blind to see the beauty you talk of. I can t see it. 
 That s honest. I ve tried. But there is none that I 
 can see. I am very conventional, you know, very self- 
 distrustful. I have to wait for a Byron to show it to 
 me. American mountains poor hulking things 
 have never had a poet to look at them. At least, Poe 
 never wasted his time that way. I don t imagine 
 that Poe would have been much happier here than 
 I am. I haven t even the thrill of the explorer, for 
 I m not the first one to see them. A few thin gen 
 erations of people have stared at these hills and 
 much the hills have done for them! Melora Meigs 
 is the child of these mountains; and Melora s sense of 
 beauty is amply expressed in the Orthodox church in 
 Hebron. This landscape, I assure you" she smiled 
 "hasn t made good. So much for the view. It s no 
 use to me, absolutely no use. I give you full and 
 free leave to take it away with you if you want it. 
 And I don t think the house is much better. But I m 
 
HABAKKUK 53 
 
 afraid I shall have to keep that for Melora Meigs and 
 me to live in." It was her old smile. The bitterness 
 was all in the words. No, it was not bitterness, pre 
 cisely, for it was fundamentally as impersonal as 
 criticism can be. You would have thought that the 
 mountains were low-brows. I forebore to mention 
 her ancestors who had lived here: it would have 
 seemed like quibbling. They had created the situa 
 tion; but they had only in the most literal sense cre 
 ated her. 
 
 "Why don t you get out?" 
 
 "I simply haven t money enough to live anywhere 
 else. Not money enough for a hall bedroom. This 
 place belongs to me; the taxes are nothing. The good 
 farming land that went with it was sold long since. 
 And I m afraid I haven t the strength to go out and 
 work for a living. I m very ineffectual, besides. What 
 could I do even if health returned to me? I ve de 
 cided it s more decent to stay here and die on three 
 dollars a year than to sink my capital in learning 
 stenography." 
 
 "You could, I suppose, be a companion." Of course 
 I did not mean it, but she took it up very seriously. 
 
 "The people who want companions wouldn t want 
 me. And the one thing this place gives me is freedom 
 freedom to hate it, to see it intelligently for what 
 it is. I couldn t afford my blessed hatreds if I were 
 a companion. And there s no money in it, so that I 
 couldn t even plan for release. It simply wouldn t 
 do." 
 
 Well, of course it wouldn t do. I had never thought 
 it would. I tried another opening. 
 "When is Wi throw coming back?" 
 "I don t know. I haven t heard from him." She 
 
54 VALIANT DUST 
 
 might have been telling a squirrel that she didn t 
 know where the other squirrel s nuts were. 
 
 "He has been far beyond civilization, I know. But 
 I dare say he ll be back soon. I hope you won t put 
 him in the barn. I don t mind, of course, but his 
 feelings might be hurt." 
 
 "I shall certainly not let him come," she retorted. 
 "He would have the grace to ask first, you know." 
 
 "I shall make a point of telling him you want him." 
 But even that could strike no spark from her. She 
 was too completely at odds with life to care. I real 
 ized, too, after an hour s talk with her, that I had 
 better go take back my fine proposition about mak 
 ing a long visit. She reacted to nothing I could offer. 
 I talked of books and plays, visiting virtuosos and 
 picture exhibitions. Her comments were what they 
 would always have been, except that she was already 
 groping for the cue. She had been out of it for 
 months; she had given up the fight. The best things 
 she said sounded a little stale and precious. Her wit 
 perished in the face of Nature s stare. Nature was a 
 lady she didn t recognize: a country cousin she d never 
 met. She couldn t even "sit and play with similes." 
 If she lived, she would be an old lady with a clever 
 past: an intolerable bore. But there was no need to 
 look so far ahead. Kathleen Somers would die. 
 
 Before dinner I clambered up or down (I don t re- 
 t member which) to a brook and gathered a bunch of 
 wild iris for her. She had loved flowers of old; and 
 how deftly she could place a spray among her treas 
 ures! She shuddered. "Take those things away! 
 How dare you bring It inside the house?" By "It" 
 I knew she meant the wild natural world. Obediently 
 I took the flowers out and flung them over the fence. 
 I knew that Kathleen Somers was capable of getting 
 
HABAKKUK 55 
 
 far more pleasure from their inimitable hue than I; 
 but even that inimitable hue was poisoned for her be 
 cause it came from the world that was torturing her 
 the world that beat upon her windows, so that she 
 turned her back to the day; that stormed her ears, 
 so that she closed them even to its silence; that sur 
 rounded her, so that she locked every gate of her 
 mind. 
 
 I left, that afternoon, very desolate and sorry. Cer 
 tainly I could do nothing for her. I had tried to shock 
 her, stir her, into another attitude, but in vain. She 
 had been transplanted to a soil her tender roots could 
 not strike into. She would wither for a little under 
 the sky, and then perish. "If she could only have 
 fallen in love!" I thought, as I left her, huddled 
 in her wicker chair. If I had been a woman, I would 
 have fled from Melora Meigs even into the arms of a 
 bearded farmer; I would have listened to the most 
 nasal male the hills had bred. I would have milked 
 cows, to get away from Melora. But I am a crass 
 creature. Besides, what son of the soil would want 
 her: unexuberant, delicate, pleasant in strange ways, 
 and foreign to all familiar things? She wouldn t even 
 fall in love with Arnold Withrow, who was her only 
 chance. For I saw that Arnold, if he ever came, would, 
 fatally, love the place. She might have put up with 
 the stock-broking, but she never could have borne his 
 liking the view. Yes, I was very unhappy as I drove 
 into Hebron; and when I finally achieved the Pull 
 man at the Junction, I was unhappier still. For I felt 
 towards that Pullman as the lost child feels towards 
 its nurse; and I knew that Kathleen Somers, ill, poor, 
 middle-aged, and a woman, was a thousand times more 
 the child of the Pullman than I. 
 
 I have told this in detail, because I hate giving 
 
56 VALIANT DUST 
 
 things at second-hand. Yet there my connection with 
 Kathleen Somers ceased, and her tragedy deepened 
 before other witnesses. She stayed on in her hills; 
 too proud to visit her friends, too sane to spend her 
 money on a flying trip to town, too bruised and faint 
 to fight her fate. The only thing she tried for was 
 apathy. I think she hoped when she hoped any 
 thing that her mind would go a little: not so much 
 that she would have to be "put away"; but just enough 
 so that she could see things in a mist so that the hated 
 hills might, for all she knew, be Alps, the rocks turn 
 into castles, the stony fields into vineyards, and Joel 
 Blake into a Tuscan. Just enough so that she could 
 re-create her world from her blessed memories, with 
 out any sharp corrective senses to interfere. That, I 
 am sure, was what she fixed her mind upon through 
 the prolonged autumn; bending all her frail strength to 
 turn her brain ever so little from its rigid attitude 
 to fact. "Pretending" was no good: it maddened. If 
 her mind would only pretend without her help! That 
 would be heaven, until heaven really came. . . . You 
 can t sympathize with her, probably, you people who 
 have been bred up on every kind of Nature cult. I 
 can hear you talking about the everlasting hills. 
 Don t you see, that was the trouble? Her carefully 
 trained imagination was her religion, and in her own 
 way she was a ritualist. The mountains she faced 
 were unbaptized: the Holy Ghost had never descended 
 upon them. She was as narrow as a nun; but she 
 could not help it. And remember, you practical peo 
 ple who love woodchucks, that she had nothing but the 
 view to make life tolerable. The view was no mere ac 
 cessory to a normal existence. She lived, half-ill, in 
 an ugly, not too comfortable cottage, as far as the 
 moon from any world she understood, in a solitude 
 
HABAKKUK 57 
 
 acidulated by Melora Meigs. No pictures, no music, 
 no plays, no talk and this, the whole year round. 
 Would you like it yourselves, you would-be savages 
 with Adirondack guides? Books? Well: that was 
 one of life s little stupidities. She couldn t buy them, 
 and no one knew what to send her. Besides, books 
 deferred the day when her mind should, ever so little, 
 go back on her. She didn t encourage gifts of litera 
 ture. She was no philosopher; and an abstraction 
 Was of no use to her unless she could turn it to a 
 larger concreteness, somehow enhancing, let us say, a 
 sunset from the Acropolis. I never loved Kathleen 
 Somers, as men love women, but many a time that 
 year I would have taken her burden on myself, 
 changed lives with her, if that had been possible. 
 It never could have been so bad for any of us as for 
 her. Mildred Thurston would have gone to the church 
 sociables and flirted as grossly as Hebron conventions 
 permitted; I could have chopped wood. But to what 
 account could Kathleen Somers turn her martyrdom? 
 Withrow felt it, too not as I could feel it, for, as I 
 foretold, he thought the place glorious. He went up in 
 the autumn when everything was crimson and purple 
 and gold. Yet more, in a sense, than I could feel it, 
 for he did love her as men love women. It shows 
 you how far gone she was that she turned him down. 
 Many women, in her case, would have jumped at With 
 row for the sake of getting away. But she was so 
 steeped in her type that she couldn t. She wouldn t 
 have married him before; and she wasn t going to 
 marry him for the sake of living in New York. She 
 would have been ashamed to. A few of us who knew 
 blamed her. I didn t, really, though I had always 
 suspected that she cared for him personally. Kath 
 leen Somers s love, when it came, would be a very 
 
58 VALIANT DUST 
 
 complicated thing. She had seen sex in too many 
 countries, watched its brazen play on too many stages, 
 within theatres and without, to have any mawkish 
 illusions. But passion would have to bring a large 
 retinue to be accepted where she was sovereign. Lit 
 tle as I knew her, I knew that. Yet I always thought 
 she might have taken him, in that flaming October, if 
 he hadn t so flagrantly, tactlessly liked the place. He 
 drank the autumn like wine; he was tipsy with it; and 
 his loving her didn t tend to sober him. The conse 
 quence was that she drew away as if he had been 
 getting drunk on some foul African brew that was 
 good only to befuddle woolly heads with; as if, in 
 other words, he had not been getting drunk like a 
 gentleman. . . . Anyhow, Arnold came back with a 
 bad headache. She had found a gentle brutality to fit 
 his case. He would have been wise, I believe, to 
 bring her away, even if he had had to chloroform her 
 to do it. But Withrow couldn t have been wise in 
 that way. Except for his incurable weakness for 
 Nature, he was the most delicate soul alive. 
 
 He didn t talk much to me about it, beyond telling 
 me that she had refused him. I made out the rest 
 from his incoherences. He had not slept in the barn, 
 for they could hardly have let a cat sleep in the barn 
 on such cold nights; but Melora Meigs had apparently 
 treated him even worse than she had treated me. 
 Kathleen Somers had named some of the unnamed 
 mountains after the minor prophets; as grimly as if 
 she had been one of the people they cursed. I thought 
 that a good sign, but Withrow said he wished she 
 hadn t: she ground the names out so between her 
 teeth. Some of her state of mind came out through 
 her talk not much. It was from one or two casually 
 
HABAKKUK 59 
 
 seen letters that I became aware of her desire to go 
 a little just a little mad. 
 
 In the spring Kathleen Somers had a relapse. It 
 was no wonder. In spite of the Franklin stoves, her 
 frail body must have been chilled to the bone for many 
 months. Relief settled on several faces, when we 
 heard I am afraid it may have settled on mine. She 
 had been more dead than alive, I judged, for a year; 
 and yet she had not been able to cure her sanity. 
 That was chronic. Death would have been the kind 
 est friend that could arrive to her across those de 
 tested hills. We the "we" is a little vague, but sev 
 eral of us scurried about sent up a trained nurse, 
 delaying somewhat for the sake of getting the woman 
 who had been there before; for she had the advantage 
 of having experienced Melora Meigs without resultant 
 bloodshed. She was a nice woman, and sent faithful 
 bulletins; but the bulletins were bad. Miss Somers 
 seemed to have so little resistance: there was no in 
 terest there, she said, no willingness to fight. "The 
 will was slack." Ah, she little knew Kathleen Somers s 
 will! None of us knew, for that matter. 
 
 The spring came late that year, and in those north 
 ern hills there were weeks of melting snow and raw, 
 deep slush the ugliest season we have to face south 
 of the Arctic circle. The nurse did not want any of 
 her friends to come; she wrote privately, to those of 
 us who champed at the bit, that Miss Somers was fad 
 ing away, but not peacefully; she was better unvisited, 
 unseen. Miss Somers did not wish any one to come, 
 and the nurse thought it wiser not to force her. Sev 
 eral women were held back by that, and turned with 
 relief to Lenten opera. The opera, however, said little 
 to Withrow at the best of times, and he was crazed 
 by the notion of not seeing her before she achieved 
 
60 VALIANT DUST 
 
 extinction. I thought him unwise, for many reasons: 
 for one, I did not think that Arnold Withrow would 
 bring her peace. She usually knew what she wanted 
 wasn t that, indeed, the whole trouble with her? 
 and she had said explicitly to the nurse that she didn t 
 want Arnold Withrow. But by the end of May, With 
 row was neither to hold nor to bind: he went. I con 
 tented myself with begging him at least not to poison 
 her last hours by admiring the landscape. I had ex 
 pected my earnest request to shock him; but, to my 
 surprise, he nodded understandingly. "I shall curse 
 the whole thing out like a trooper, if she gives me the 
 chance." And he got into his day-coach the Pull 
 mans wouldn t go on until much later a mistaken 
 and passionate knight. 
 
 Withrow could not see her the first evening, and 
 he talked long and deeply with the nurse. She had 
 no hope to give him: she was mystified. It was 
 her opinion that Kathleen Somers s lack of will was 
 killing her, speedily and surely. "Is there anything 
 for her to die of?" he asked. "There s nothing, you 
 might say, for her to live of," was her reply. The 
 nurse disapproved of his coming, but promised to 
 break the news of his presence to her patient in the 
 morning. 
 
 Spring had by this time touched the hills. It was 
 that divine first moment when the whole of earth 
 seems to take a leap in the night; when things are 
 literally new every morning. Arnold walked abroad 
 late, filling his lungs and nostrils and subduing his 
 pulses. He was always faunishly wild in the spring; 
 and for years he hadn t had a chance to seek the sea 
 son in her haunts. But he turned in before midnight, 
 because he dreaded the next day supremely. He 
 didn t want to meet that face to face until he had to. 
 
HABAKKUK 61 
 
 Melora Meigs lowered like a thunderstorm, but she 
 was held in check by the nurse. I suppose Melora 
 couldn t give notice: there would be nothing but the 
 poor-farm for her if she did. But she whined and 
 grumbled and behaved in general like an electrical 
 disturbance. Luckily, she couldn t curdle the milk. 
 
 Withrow waked into a world of beauty. He walked 
 for an hour before breakfast, through woods all blurred 
 with buds, down vistas brushed with faint color. But 
 he would have given the spring and all springs to come 
 for Kathleen Somers, and the bitter kernel of it was 
 that he knew it. He was sharp-faced and sad (I know 
 how he looked) when he came back, with a bunch of 
 hepaticas, to breakfast. 
 
 The nurse was visibly trembling. You see, Kath 
 leen Somers s heart had never been absolutely right. 
 It was a terrible responsibility to let her patient face 
 Withrow. Still, neither she nor any other woman 
 could have held Withrow off. Besides, as she had 
 truly said, there was nothing explicitly for Kathleen 
 Somers to die of. It was that low vitality, that 
 whispering pulse, that listlessness; then, a draught, a 
 shock, a bit of over-exertion, and something real and 
 organic could speedily be upon her. No wonder the 
 woman was troubled. In point of fact, though she had 
 taken up Miss Somers s breakfast, she hadn t dared 
 tell her the news. And finally, after breakfast, she 
 broke down. "I can t do it, Mr. Withrow," she 
 wailed. "Either you go away or I do." 
 
 Withrow knew at first only one thing: that he 
 wouldn t be the one to go. Then he realized that the 
 woman had been under a long strain, what with the 
 spring thaws, and a delicate patient who wouldn t 
 mend and Melora to fight with, on behalf of all 
 human decency, every day. 
 
62 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "You go, then," he said finally. "I ll take care of 
 her." 
 
 The nurse stared at him. Then she thought, pre 
 sumably, of Kathleen Somers s ineffable delicacy, and 
 burst out laughing. Hysteria might, in all the cir 
 cumstances, be forgiven her. 
 
 Then they came back to the imminent question. 
 
 "I ll tell her when I do up her room," she faltered. 
 
 "All right. I ll give you all the time in the world. 
 But she must be told I m here unless you wish me 
 to tell her myself." Withrow went out to smoke. But 
 he did not wish to succumb again to the intoxication 
 Kathleen Somers so disdained, and eventually he went 
 into the barn, to shut himself away from temptation. 
 It was easier to prepare his vilifying phrases there. 
 
 To his consternation, he heard through the gloom 
 the sound of sobbing. The nurse, he saw, after much 
 peering, sat on a dusty chopping-block, crying un 
 healthily. He went up to her and seized her arm. 
 "Have you told her?" 
 
 "I can t." 
 
 "My good woman, you d better leave this after 
 noon." 
 
 "Not" the tone itself was firm, through the shaky 
 sobs "until there is some one to take my place." 
 
 "I ll telegraph for some one. You shan t see her 
 again. But I will see her at once." 
 
 Then the woman s training asserted itself. She 
 pulled herself together, with a little shake of self- 
 disgust. "You ll do nothing of the sort. I ll attend to 
 her until I go. It has been a long strain, and, con 
 trary to custom, I ve had no time off. I ll telegraph 
 to the Registry myself. And if I can t manage until 
 then, I ll resign my profession." She spoke with 
 sturdy shame. 
 
HABAKKUK 63 
 
 "That s better." Withrow approved her. "I m 
 awfully obliged. But honestly, she has got to know. 
 I can t stand it, skulking round, much longer. And no 
 matter what happens to the whole boiling, I m not 
 going to leave without seeing her." 
 
 "I ll tell her." The nurse rose and walked to the 
 barn-door like a heroine. "But you must stay here 
 until I come for you." 
 
 "I promise. Only you must come. I give you half 
 an hour." 
 
 "I don t need half an hour, thank you." She had 
 recovered her professional crispness. In the wide door 
 she stopped. "It s a pity," she said irrelevantly, "that 
 she can t see how lovely this is." Then she started 
 for the house. 
 
 "I believe you," muttered Withrow under his 
 breath. 
 
 In five minutes the nurse came back, breathless, 
 half -running. Arnold got up from the chopping-block, 
 startled. He believed for an instant (as he has since 
 told me) that it was "all over." With her hand on 
 her beating heart the woman panted out her words: 
 
 "She has come down-stairs in a wrapper. She 
 hasn t been down for weeks. And she has found your 
 hepaticas." 
 
 "Oh, hell!" Withrow was honestly disgusted. He 
 had never meant to insult Kathleen Somers with 
 hepaticas. "Is it safe to leave her alone with them?" 
 He hardly knew what he was saying. But it shows 
 to what a pass Kathleen Somers had come that he 
 could be frightened at the notion of her being left 
 alone with a bunch of hepaticas. 
 
 "She s all right, I think. She seemed to like them." 
 "Oh, Lord!" Withrow s brain was spinning. 
 
64 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Here I ll go. If she can stand those beastly flow 
 ers, she can stand me." 
 
 "No, she can t." The nurse had recovered her 
 breath now. "I ll go back and tell her, very quietly. 
 If she could get down-stairs, she can stand it, I think. 
 But I ll be very careful. You come in ten minutes. 
 If she isn t fit, I ll have got her back to bed by that 
 time." 
 
 She disappeared, and Withrow, his back to the 
 view, counted out the minutes. When the large hand 
 of his watch had quite accomplished its journey, he 
 turned and walked out through the yard to the side 
 door of the house. Melora Meigs was clattering dish- 
 pans somewhere beyond, and the noise she made cov 
 ered his entrance to the living-room. He drew a deep 
 breath: they were not there. He listened at the 
 stairs: no sound up there no sound, at least, to rise 
 above Melora s dish-pans, now a little less audible. 
 But this time he was not going to wait for anything. 
 He already had one foot on the stairs when he heard 
 voices and stopped. For just one second he paused, 
 then walked cat-like in the direction of the sounds. 
 The front door was open. On the step stood Kath 
 leen Somers, her back to him, facing the horizon. A 
 light shawl hung on her shoulders, and the nurse s 
 arm was very firmly round her waist. They did not 
 hear him, breathing heavily there in the hall behind 
 them. 
 
 He saw Kathleen Somers raise her arm slowly 
 with difficulty, it seemed. She pointed at the noble 
 shoulder of a mountain. 
 
 "That is Habakkuk," said her sweet voice. "I named 
 them all, you know. But I think Habakkuk is my 
 favorite; though of course he s not so stunning as 
 Isaiah. Then they run down to Obadiah and Malachi. 
 
HABAKKUK 65 
 
 Joel is just peeping over Habakkuk s left shoulder. 
 That long bleak range is Jeremiah." She laughed, 
 very faintly. "You know, Miss Willis, they are really 
 very beautiful. Isn t it strange I couldn t see it? For 
 I honestly couldn t. I ve been lying there, thinking. 
 And I found I could remember all their outlines, under 
 snow .... and this morning it seemed to me I 
 must see how Habakkuk looked in the spring." She 
 sat down suddenly on the top step; and Miss Willis 
 sat down too, her arm still about her patient. 
 
 "It s very strange" Wi throw, strain though he did, 
 could hardly make out the words, they fell so softly 
 "that I just couldn t see it before. It s only these 
 last days. . . . And now I feel as if I wanted to see 
 every leaf on every tree. It wasn t so last year. They 
 say something to me now. I don t think I should want 
 to talk with them forever, but you ve no idea you ve 
 no idea how strange and welcome it is for my eyes 
 to find them beautiful." She seemed almost to mur 
 mur to herself. Then she braced herself slightly 
 against the nurse s shoulder, and went on, in her light, 
 sweet, ironic voice. "They probably never told you 
 but I didn t care for Nature, exactly. I don t think I 
 care for it now, as some people do, but I can see that 
 this is beautiful. Of course you don t know what it 
 means to me. It has simply changed the world." She 
 waved her hand again. "They never got by, before. I 
 always knew that line was line, and color was color, 
 wherever or whoever. But my eyes went back on 
 me. My father would have despised me. He wouldn t 
 have preferred Habakkuk, but he would have done 
 Habakkuk justice from the beginning. Yes, it makes 
 a great deal of difference to me to see it once, fair and 
 clear. Why" she drew herself up as well as she 
 could, so firmly held "it is a very lovely place. I 
 
66 VALIANT DUST 
 
 should tire of it some time, but I shall not tire of it 
 soon. For a little while, I shall be up to it. And I 
 know that no one thinks it will be long." 
 
 Just then, Withrow s absurd fate caught him. 
 Breathless, more passionately interested than he had 
 ever been in his life, he sneezed. He had just time, 
 while the two women were turning, to wonder if he 
 had ruined it all if she would faint, or shriek, or re 
 lapse into apathy. 
 
 She did none of these things. She faced him and 
 flushed, standing unsteadily. "How long have you 
 been cheating me?" she asked coldly. But she held 
 out her hand before she went up-stairs with the nurse s 
 arm still round her. 
 
 Later he caught at Miss Willis excitedly. "Is she 
 better? Is she worse? Is she well? Or is she going 
 to die?" 
 
 "She s shaken. She must rest. But she s got the 
 hepaticas in water beside her bed. And she told me 
 to pull the shade up so that she could look out. She 
 has a touch of temperature but she often has that. 
 The exertion and the shock would be enough to give 
 it to her. I found her leaning against the door-jamb. 
 I hadn t a chance to tell her you were here. I can tell 
 you later whether you d better go or stay." 
 
 "I am going to stay. It s you who are going." 
 
 "You needn t telegraph just yet," the nurse replied 
 dryly. She looked another woman from the nervous, 
 sobbing creature on the chopping-block. 
 
 The end was that Miss Willis stayed and Arnold 
 Withrow went. Late that afternoon he left Kathleen 
 Somers staring passionately at the sunset. It was not 
 his moment, and he had the grace to know it. But 
 he had not had to tell her that the view was beastly; 
 
HABAKKUK 67 
 
 and, much as he loved her, I think that was a relief 
 to him. 
 
 None of us will ever know the whole of Kathleen 
 Somers s miracle, of course. I believe she told as 
 much of it as she could when she said that she had 
 lain thinking of the outlines of the mountains until 
 she felt that she must go out and face them: stand 
 once more outside, free of walls, and stare about at the 
 whole chain of the earth-lords. Perhaps the spring, 
 which had broken up the ice-bound streams, had 
 melted other things besides. Unwittingly by uncon 
 scious cerebration by the long inevitable storing of 
 disdained impressions she had arrived at vision. 
 That which had been, for her, alternate gibberish and 
 silence, had become an intelligible tongue. The blank 
 features had stirred and shifted into a countenance; 
 she saw a face, where she had seen only odds and ends 
 of modelling grotesquely flung abroad. With no stupid 
 pantheism to befuddle her, she yet felt the earth a 
 living thing. Wood and stone, which had not even 
 been an idol for her, now shaped themselves to hold 
 a sacrament. Put it as you please; for I can find no 
 way to express it to my satisfaction. Kathleen Somers 
 had, for the first time, envisaged the cosmic, had seen 
 something less passionate, but more vital, than his 
 tory. Most of us are more fortunate than she: we 
 take it for granted that no loom can rival the petal of 
 a flower. But to some creatures the primitive is a 
 cipher, hard to learn; and blood is spent in the strug 
 gle. You have perhaps seen (and not simply in the 
 old legend) passion come to a statue. Rare, oh, rare 
 is the necessity for such a miracle. But Kathleen 
 Somers was in need of one; and I believe it came to 
 her. 
 
 The will was slack, the nurse had said; yet it sufficed 
 
68 VALIANT DUST 
 
 to take her from her bed, down the stairs, in pursuit 
 of the voice straight out into the newly articulate 
 world. She moved, frail and undismayed, to the 
 source of revelation. She did not cower back and 
 demand that the oracle be served up to her by a 
 messenger. A will like that is not slack. 
 
 Now I will shuffle back into my own skin and tell 
 you the rest of it very briefly and from the rank out 
 sider s point of view. Even had I possessed the whole 
 of Arnold Withrow s confidence, I could not deal with 
 the delicate gradations of a lover s mood. He passed 
 the word about that Kathleen Somers was not going 
 to die though I believe he did it with his heart in 
 his mouth, not really assured she wouldn t. It took 
 some of us a long time to shift our ground and be 
 thankful. Wi throw, with a wisdom beyond his habit, 
 did not go near her until autumn. Reports were that 
 she was gaining all the time, and that she lived out-of- 
 doors staring at Habakkuk and his brethren, gathering 
 wild flowers and pressing them between her palms. 
 She seemed determined to face another winter there 
 alone with Melora, Miss Willis wrote. Withrow set 
 his jaw when that news came. It was hard on him 
 to stay away, but she had made it very clear that she 
 wanted her convalescent summer to herself. When 
 she had to let Miss Willis go and Miss Willis had 
 already taken a huge slice of Kathleen s capital he 
 might come and see her through the transition. So 
 Withrow sweltered in New York all summer, and 
 waited for permission. 
 
 Then Melora Meigs was gracious for once. With no 
 preliminary illness, with just a little gasp as the sun 
 rose over the long range of Jeremiah, she died. With 
 row, hearing this, was off like a sprinter who hears 
 the signal. He found laughter and wit abiding happily 
 
HABAKKUK 69 
 
 in Kathleen s recovered body. Together they watched 
 the autumn deepen over the prophets. Habakkuk, all 
 insults forgiven, was their familiar. 
 
 So they brought Kathleen Somers back from the 
 hills to live. It was impossible for her to remain on 
 her mountain side without a Melora Meigs; and Me- 
 lora, unlike most tortures, was unreplaceable. Kath 
 leen s world welcomed her as warmly as if her exile 
 had been one long suspense: a gentle hypocrisy we 
 all forgave each other. Some one went abroad and left 
 an apartment for her use. All sorts of delicate little 
 events occurred, half accidentally, in her interest. 
 Soon some of us began to gather, as of old. Marvel 
 of marvels, Withrow had not spoken in that crimson 
 week of autumn. Without jealousy, he had apparently 
 left her to Habakkuk. It was a brief winter for 
 Kathleen Somers s body, a kind of spring. You could 
 see her grow, from week to week: plump out and 
 bloom more vividly. Then, in April, without a word, 
 she left us disappeared one morning, with no explicit 
 word to servants. 
 
 Withrow once more poor Withrow shot forth, not 
 like a runner, but like a hound on a fresh scent. He 
 needed no time-tables. He leaped from the telephone 
 to the train. 
 
 He found her there, he told me afterwards, sitting 
 on the step, the door unlocked behind her but shut. 
 
 Indeed, she never entered the house again; for 
 Withrow bore her away from the threshold. I do not 
 think she minded, for she had made her point: she 
 had seen Habakkuk once more, and Habakkuk had 
 not gone back on her. That was all she needed to 
 know. They meant to go up in the autumn after their 
 marriage, but the cottage burned to the ground before 
 they got back from Europe. I do not know that they 
 
70 VALIANT DUST 
 
 have ever gone, or whether they ever will go, now. 
 There are still a few exotic places that Kathleen 
 Withrow has not seen, and Habakkuk can wait. After 
 all, the years are very brief in Habakkuk s sight. 
 Even if she never needs him again, I do not think he 
 will mind. 
 
Ill 
 
 MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 
 
 "Love?" repeated Hoyting queryingly. 
 
 I don t know how the word had been mentioned 
 between us. Love doesn t bulk big in Hoyting s vo 
 cabulary, or in mine when I m talking to him. But 
 occasionally one comes in sight of this great natural 
 wonder and can scarcely refrain from alluding to it. 
 This must have been one of the occasions. 
 
 "What about it?" I was curious to hear what 
 Hoyting had to say. I could have sworn that he him 
 self had never known the "sacred terror." His lurch 
 ing bulk and his brown face have been shaped and 
 tempered to other adventures and other solutions. 
 What a time (I ve often thought, without blasphemy) 
 St. Peter will have with Hoyting s pack when he dumps 
 it at the pearly gates for appraisal! No one I have 
 ever known has wandered so far afield disinterest 
 edly. I don t think Hoyting has ever plucked an 
 orchid or brought home but he has no home the 
 skin of a beast. What has ever mattered to him save 
 the encounter, in minor seas and insignificant ports, 
 with things that, to the end, did not concern him? No 
 Aziyades and Chrysanthemes, I feel sure, for Hoyting. 
 
 "Love?" he repeated again, relaxing his huge body 
 slowly and flinging one leg over the other. "I ve seen 
 as much of love as the next man, in more places than 
 most. I ve never been mixed up with it myself not 
 with the real thing. But most things are mixed up 
 
 71 
 
72 VALIANT DUST 
 
 with it. You ll believe that I don t read poetry. If 
 you people could ever get the beat of life, you d get it 
 with prose. Imagine fitting human beings black or 
 white into a stanzaic form! I realized that young. 
 I ve seen people make love all over the shop. I m 
 not denying it s effective. But the one thing I ve 
 never seen it do is really change a person. That s why 
 I don t believe in all the things they tell me the poets 
 say about it. Time and again I ve seen the trick tried; 
 and time and again I ve seen the woman or the man 
 slump back into the shape God made em in. Puffing 
 out like the frog in the fable and bursting, some 
 times but never turning into the ox, you know. 
 Humph!" Hoyting snorted mildly, emitting blue 
 smoke from his nostrils like a djinn. 
 
 I didn t care to take up the challenge. I have al 
 ways suspected Hoyting of suspecting me of perpetrat 
 ing fiction if you called it "literature," it would make 
 no difference to Hoyting. He must have read a few 
 books in his time, for now and then he quotes. But 
 if you placed Hoyting on the classic uninhabited island, 
 with the traditional spoils of shipwreck clustered about 
 him; if you went the wild length of floating in a prop 
 erly labelled Mudie box on the seventh wave: well, 
 my guess is that when the rescuing party came, they 
 would find Hoyting or perhaps his skeleton sitting 
 on the sand, hunched into the most comfortable posi 
 tion the scene afforded, and the box lying unopened 
 in the middle distance. I don t know any other hu 
 man creature of whom I could, with conviction, pre 
 dicate that. Hoyting prefers humanity to anything; 
 but he would prefer the barest vegetation to books. 
 
 As I said, I never supposed Hoyting an authority on 
 the "sacred terror" for one thing, I don t believe any 
 woman has ever gone the length of falling in love with 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 73 
 
 him but I should always be exceedingly interested to 
 know what he thought of anything so variously human. 
 So I egged him on, as the years have taught me how: 
 with vermouth close to his hand, the cigarettes just by, 
 and my own face turned non-committally to the fresh 
 sea-wind. The lights of the little cafe were going out 
 one by one as the prudent proprietor discovered that 
 they were no longer needed, and Frangois himself 
 withdrew on tiptoe to some region at the back, like 
 an inspired accomplice. Hoyting sleeps when he feels 
 like it, and no vigil discourages him. 
 
 I had to wait for a time, and I almost wondered if 
 Hoyting were not giving himself up to one of his in 
 considerate silences silences which, far into the 
 evening, he will end by rising and lurching into the 
 dusk, leaving you a coin with which to pay his shot, as 
 if you were his valet. Out of those silences something 
 may always come; but any show of curiosity snaps 
 the time-lock into place. If you question too airily, 
 you are sure to have to wait until the next day s sun 
 has renewed all things. And, with the next day s sun, 
 Hoyting may be anywhere. 
 
 He poured out the vermouth and screwed his lips 
 impatiently. "Yes, I ve seen the thing tried honestly 
 and fervently tried. Did you ever know a girl named 
 Marriott Eva Marriott or a man named Dallas?" 
 
 "I ve known two or three men named Dallas." 
 
 "Was any one of them English?" 
 
 "One of them was." 
 
 "What was he like?" 
 
 "A red-haired bruiser with a game leg that he got 
 from being thrown in the hunting-field. Or so he 
 said." 
 
 "Big, then?" 
 
 "Six feet three, and bulky in proportion." 
 
74 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "That is not the man. And you never knew the 
 girl?" 
 
 "Never. And I am safe, in any case," I reminded 
 him. 
 
 "Oh yes. Only I shouldn t like to ticket them. 
 But since you don t know either of them" Hoyt- 
 ing s gesture shed the pair down the windy ways of 
 time. 
 
 "She was young, very young; and he had the hope 
 less un-selfconsciousness of the pagan. Pagan is a 
 stupid word to use; but you know what I mean." 
 
 Hoy ting knitted his brows and jerked his chin to 
 wards me inquiringly. I didn t know, precisely, but 
 I wasn t going to delay him over a definition. "Yes." 
 I spoke very quietly. 
 
 "Well, then, let it go at that. He knew his way 
 about among his sensations, too, and was as serious 
 about them as if they had been his morals. Perhaps 
 they were. I don t mean he was a rotter though, 
 again, perhaps he was but that he couldn t see why 
 taking a cold bath when you needed it wasn t as 
 virtuous as selling all you had and giving to the poor. 
 He hadn t any brains, I think; neither had she not 
 twopence worth between them. If they had been ants, 
 the community would have executed them. And, of 
 course, they had to knock up against each other. She 
 was chaperoned by an intellectual aunt who expected 
 to write a book about her experiences in those dan 
 gerous and exotic lands where Cook has to buy your 
 railway ticket for you. Nothing could persuade the 
 aunt that she wasn t a sort of Marco Polo. She had 
 no brains, either: she was all intellect. They had got 
 to Biskra, and the aunt was filling note-books. You 
 can imagine how much brain she had if she was taken 
 in by Biskra. I won t stop to explain why I was there 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 75 
 
 myself. You can be sure it was by no fault of my 
 own." 
 
 "My dear Hoyting," I ventured, "it s unworthy of 
 you to apologize." 
 
 "I wasn t apologizing. I only meant that these 
 people and their kind had nothing to do with me. I 
 ran into them by accident as you might run into 
 sticking-plaster by accident. The result was much 
 the same. I was caught by the leg in that painted 
 and powdered and generally meretricious town. For 
 certain reasons, I had to be there a fortnight. And the 
 woman stalked me me! Some one had told her that 
 I had been in Persia. She wanted to know all about 
 Persia. Can you imagine me sitting in the garden of 
 the Palace Hotel answering questions about Persia? 
 I tried to make it clear to her that she couldn t go to 
 Persia. I didn t think her fit to go anywhere; but I 
 thought she would do less harm in Biskra than she 
 would anywhere else. Biskra, if she had only known 
 it, was just her size. I never put her wise; why should 
 I? My chief object was to keep her in Biskra the 
 rest of her life, so that I should never have to see 
 her again." 
 
 "What was she like?" 
 
 "Haven t I just told you?" 
 
 "Not wholly. She might have been a nice woman 
 or a harpy." 
 
 "She was a very curious person," Hoyting mused. 
 "I had some respect for her, you know. Apparently 
 she had wanted, all her life, to travel in strange places, 
 and had never been able to stir from her ancestral 
 homestead. Recently she had inherited a lot of money 
 and a niece to chaperone; and she had chucked all the 
 photographs and books that she had been feeding her 
 poor lean soul on, and started out, dragging the niece 
 
76 VALIANT DUST 
 
 with her. She was as respectable as even a woman of 
 her antecedents could possibly be; but she had no pre 
 judices. That was the one thing that distinguished her 
 from any other fussy old maid. It made her rather 
 pathetic. She had gradually, in the long, busy, baffled 
 years, managed to discard every tradition she had. 
 She was sceptical of everything that her native com 
 munity held for gospel. She didn t believe in revealed 
 religion, or the Ten Commandments, or the sacredness 
 of the marriage tie, or the superiority of the female 
 sex, or any of the things she must have been supposed 
 at home to stand for. She had sat perfectly still in 
 her own village for fifty years, and her only recreation 
 had been to burst silently, one by one, her intellectual 
 bonds. She wasn t in the least revolutionary; she 
 didn t want to preach or subvert. She only wanted 
 to see things with an unprejudiced eye. She might 
 have been magnificent if she had had youth or strength 
 or beauty; but she had none of those. Her body went 
 back on her mind at every turn. She was afraid of 
 every beast that walks, from camels to spiders; she 
 was dependent on a whole set of special medicaments 
 that had to be renewed every now and then from 
 America she couldn t have conceived of using a for 
 eign substitute, even British. She kept the vocabulary 
 of her prejudices, too, though she dispensed with the 
 prejudices. I am sure, for example, she hadn t the 
 slightest objection to the Ouled Nails, but she always 
 referred to them as l fallen women. She would have 
 been amusing if she hadn t been such a bore. In re 
 trospect, and safe from her, I do find her amusing. 
 She was naive to the last degree: any shifty Arab 
 could take her in. She bought things in the bazaars 
 that simply smelled of Birmingham. But not the 
 shiftiest Arab of the lot, even if he had once in a way 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 77 
 
 told her the truth, could have shocked her. And she 
 wasn t morbid, you understand. She wasn t hunting 
 horrors; she was only hunting something different 
 from all the things she had been fed up with. Every 
 thing was fish that came to her net everything. But 
 she was about as well equipped as a baby, to write a 
 book. Now do you know what she was like? She 
 had sandy hair, and a blue veil that hung crooked 
 over it, and always wore dirt-colored clothes, and al 
 ways had a clean handkerchief in her left hand." 
 
 "I see perfectly," I replied. "What about the 
 niece?" 
 
 "Oh, the niece? Well, little Eva Marriott had all 
 the prejudices her aunt hadn t. Morally speaking, 
 she went round in her aunt s discarded clothes. But 
 she was exquisitely pretty even I could see that. I m 
 no judge of female beauty I have lost all my stand 
 ards but I could see that her coloring was exceed 
 ingly satisfactory. She had red hair, and a white skin, 
 and sad green eyes, and a wonderful veil of sweetness 
 over all. She held herself badly, like all American 
 girls, but you could have written Chinese poetry to her 
 head and neck. She was about twenty, I believe, and 
 by the time the aunt clutched me in the hotel garden 
 young Eva and young Dallas were head over heels in 
 love with each other." 
 
 Hoyting refilled his glass, and turned his head 
 slowly from side to side as if to feel the wind move 
 across his skin. 
 
 "A civilized love-affair is the devil. It doesn t even 
 interest me. It s like trying to wrestle with stays on: 
 a fine exhibition of endurance, no doubt, but certainly 
 not good wrestling and most certainly not beautiful 
 to the onlooker. Oh, the heroine of this tale is the 
 aunt, if you like. I don t think even she had any imag- 
 
78 VALIANT DUST 
 
 ination; but a complete absence of prejudice is almost 
 as good. She liked Dallas no end I could see that 
 out of the tail of my eye. They didn t grow his kind 
 in her little Colonial village. He was as exotic, from 
 her point of view, as a palm-tree and, from mine, 
 no more interesting." 
 
 "Who was interesting, if none of them was?" I 
 asked. Hoyting does not deal in the platitudinous hu 
 man, and I didn t believe for a moment that he was 
 asking me to assist at any pious dissection of a spin 
 ster s wanderlust. 
 
 "None of them was; but the combination of the two 
 young things was irresistible. Puritan and pagan have 
 met often enough; but never were two such pure 
 and unprotected specimens of their different types. 
 She had been bred in the kind of atmosphere that I d 
 forgotten about. It never was mine, even when I was 
 a kid, but I d always heard of it. c Eva reads a great 
 deal a great deal. I have given up books for life/ 
 Miss Marriott said to me once. A perfectly decent 
 thing to do if you don t talk about it! and then gaze 
 like a love-sick owl at the filthy little village negre 
 across the way. You know what villages negres are 
 in French colonial towns so new that it s a wonder 
 they can be so dirty. The woman was a terrible 
 bore!" 
 
 "I didn t know you were ever terribly bored by the 
 same person more than once." Indeed, no one has 
 ever had less right than Hoyting to pose as a social 
 martyr. 
 
 "Urn no. But I was in Biskra because I had to 
 be as I explained. I had definite business there. I 
 was bound to be bored anyhow, and I d rather be 
 bored sitting still in a hotel garden than riding round 
 on a mule to see what the avaricious Arab has prepared 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 79 
 
 for people like Miss Marriott. Of course, sitting still 
 let me in for a certain amount of Miss Marriott, but 
 it was otherwise comfortable." 
 
 "I didn t know you ever had business anywhere." 
 
 "I seldom do. But I had then. It was not wholly 
 my own business, so I won t go into it." 
 
 Hoyting frowned and was silent for a moment. I 
 had naturally no intention of questioning him further; 
 but it was the first hint I had ever had of his doing 
 anything save what the instant suggested. Was it pos 
 sible that even he was at the mercy of past and future, 
 like the rest of us? I put the thought aside, for I have 
 got no end of mental luxury, first and last, out of the 
 Everlasting Now that is Hoyting. 
 
 "She let me understand that her young people were 
 engaged. She gave it to me like a piece of gossip, as 
 if it weren t her affair. I hadn t seen much of young 
 Eva, and scarcely more of young Dallas, but I was 
 curious to know if the aunt approved. It seemed to 
 me that in her place though I don t pretend to say 
 I could put myself there very successfully I 
 shouldn t. I said something. Oh, it s Eva s affair/ 
 
 she answered. In (she named their State) a 
 
 girl s of age at eighteen. 7 
 
 " My dear Miss Marriott/ I said, a State in which 
 a girl is of age at eighteen doesn t exist north of Can 
 cer or south of Capricorn. I don t know much about 
 the laws of my precious country, but I do know some 
 thing about climate. 
 
 " I think he s fascinating. That is all I could get 
 out of her. Not that I tried very hard to get anything 
 out of her. It would have been like going a-fishing 
 in a provincial aquarium. 
 
 "Now, mind you" Hoyting frowned again, then 
 shrugged his great shoulders as if to reassure himself 
 
80 VALIANT DUST 
 
 that the burden was gone from them "I don t say the 
 chap wasn t fascinating. He had bowled over Eva 
 Marriott, anyhow. Their love-affair had grown un 
 der that sun like the perfect date-palm in the perfect 
 oasis. It looked as if they d hunt up their respective 
 consuls and be married before they left Biskra. But 
 they didn t. At least, not before I left Biskra, and I 
 fancy not since. I am sure not since. He wasn t fit 
 to marry any one." 
 
 "You said he wasn t not past doubt, at least a 
 rotter." 
 
 " Rotter has nothing to do with him. You might 
 as well call him something in Coptic." 
 
 Hoyting frowned again. Then he turned suddenly. 
 "Let s not talk about it. I don t know why I started 
 out to tell you, anyhow. It s none of your business or 
 mine. Therefore it doesn t interest us. Only, you 
 mentioned love. . . . Let me tell you about the only 
 time I ever tried pig-sticking. It was a few months 
 ago, and I must have looked like one afflicted of 
 God." 
 
 "I ll hear that later." I was firm. "Tell me more 
 about these people. I shall never see them." 
 
 "No, I dare say not. But it isn t our business, all 
 the same." 
 
 "Probably I shouldn t agree with you," I went on. 
 "Until you prove it to me I sha n t believe you know 
 the sacred terror when you see it." 
 
 " The sacred terror. Um. . . . Probably, as you 
 say, you won t agree with me. But what does it mat 
 ter? I know what I know." He sealed his lips for a 
 moment, and I was afraid I hadn t overcome his re 
 luctance. But presently I knew that I had. Hoyting 
 narrowed his eyes until they were almost shut. Head 
 thrown back, he began to talk. 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 81 
 
 "I don t pretend, for a moment, to understand young 
 Dallas. He had obviously been brought up like every 
 one else, and he certainly had no theories. I think he 
 just wanted whatever he wanted at the moment. 
 Whether it was something to eat, or something to look 
 at, or something to go out and do, or something to 
 possess. He was a little more complicated than a 
 faun, but he was more like a faun than like anything 
 else that has ever had human shape." 
 
 "Furry ears? Donatello? All that sort of thing?" 
 Hoyting opened his puzzled eyes. "I don t know 
 what you mean." 
 
 "Oh, of course, you never read novels. Go on." 
 "If there has ever been a novel about a faun, you 
 can be sure it had nothing to do with Dallas. I only 
 meant that he seemed to have really no inhibitions. 
 He tried for what he wanted, and if such brawn and 
 brain as he had didn t give it to him, he lay down 
 placidly in the shade, as it were, and licked his wounds 
 and waited until he wanted something else. Then he 
 would try for that. He wouldn t have been likely to 
 raise his voice unduly or fail to dress for dinner, or 
 blaspheme before ladies; but if he had thought any 
 of those little things would give him real pleasure, he d 
 have done it. He was just a mass of desires and the 
 means to satisfy them. I said he had no brains. He 
 hadn t, I think; but he had a very keen knowledge 
 of what you might call physical arithmetic. He could 
 calculate his sensations, like lightning, to the fifth 
 place of decimals. If he wanted a glass of water 
 badly, and he had to go a distance to get it, he knew 
 like a shot whether the joy of the glass of water totted 
 up to more or less than the annoyance of going that 
 distance. And he went, or didn t, quite regardless of 
 
82 VALIANT DUST 
 
 the social situation at the moment. Do you see what 
 I mean?" 
 
 "Quite. But why did you say he wasn t a rotter?" 
 
 "I don t know." Hoy ting answered very simply. 
 "But there was something exhilarating in his sweet 
 ness, his simplicity, his health, his gayety. He didn t 
 even seem precisely selfish. He simply carried on 
 the business of his own organism as piously and effi 
 ciently as if it had been a model orphanage. I didn t 
 like either of them but I saw trouble ahead, in spite 
 of Miss Marriott s optimism. And the trouble came. 
 
 "You see, he had fallen in love with Eva Marriott. 
 His desires were concentrated upon her. And she was 
 in love with him. I think she thought her soul was in 
 love with him though how a soul can be in love with 
 a man passes my comprehension. If we have souls, 
 I m sure they don t mess about like that. Anyhow, 
 the two had so little in common, temperamentally, that 
 it must have been what you call the sacred terror. 7 
 You couldn t account for it except by the unforeknow- 
 able thunderbolt. Her face, I suppose, had focussed 
 his desires; he would never be satisfied until he had 
 kissed it into weariness. She oh, I suppose he stood 
 to her for all kinds of things she had never so much 
 as laid her fingers on. Probably in her village none 
 of the worthy male souls had had such exteriors. A 
 fortiori, the soul inside his exterior must be ten times 
 worthier than they. I may be wrong, but that s the 
 way I figured it out. The aunt loved him for his looks 
 and his way of getting things. It was extraordinarily 
 interesting to her to find a man who owned up to his 
 physical tastes. She had been used to seeing all de 
 sires either concealed or apologized for. 
 
 "If Dallas had had any brains, I think he could 
 have taught Eva Marriott his own hedonism. She 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 83 
 
 was a blank page, in spite of those austere Puritan 
 head-lines; and I fancy anything that sounded the 
 oretical could have got her for a disciple in no time. 
 But Dallas couldn t explain anything; he could only 
 manifest himself. And she was taken by that supple 
 exhibition. They wanted each other that was what 
 it came to. Why reason about it any more? You can 
 take my word for it that they did. And I suppose he 
 must have seemed to her very much her own kind 
 when all North Africa was jostling them in the streets. 
 But the aunt! No, I never supposed that her sort 
 existed. It was too futile. I dare say her sort doesn t 
 really exist she was probably a sport. But she was 
 there in the flesh, anyhow. 
 
 "And then she decided that she wanted to go to 
 Touggourt. Some women in the hotel had been, and 
 that started her off. She wouldn t go alone with Eva, 
 though. She found the natives much too interesting 
 to be trustworthy. Eva wouldn t go without Dallas 
 not she! Miss Marriott therefore said Dallas might 
 go. I advised her to give it up; especially as she 
 wouldn t go by diligence. She wanted a little caravan 
 of her own camels, and the rest. It shocked me to 
 think of Miss Marriott on a camel ; it somehow seemed 
 disrespectful both to the camel and to her. Let Dallas 
 and Eva go to Touggourt on their honeymoon if they 
 Wanted to, but why drag two young things, who had to 
 be chaperoned, out into the desert? They would 
 either be dreadfully bored or frightfully unhappy. 
 Hotel life and the distractions of Biskra the day all 
 chopped up into little amusements were much better 
 for them. But the aunt wouldn t see it. She thought 
 it would be romantic. What my senses told me wasn t 
 her business. I only gave her the results in a little 
 brief advice. 
 
84 VALIANT DUST 
 
 " They are very much in love/ she remarked. I 
 should like to see them in the desert. 
 
 "The retort was easy enough, but I couldn t make 
 it. I couldn t even tell her just why I thought they 
 would be very unhappy in the desert. If she wanted 
 to sacrifice them to her lack of prejudices, I couldn t 
 stop her without being rude. I m not sure I could 
 have stopped her even then. She was a most ex 
 traordinary creature. I knew enough about the desert 
 to know she d be damned sorry, some time, that she 
 had done it that is, if she had a grain of the human 
 aunt left in her but my lips were sealed. After all, 
 from any serious point of view, young Dallas and 
 young Eva were perfectly unimportant. And the re 
 lief of getting them all out of Biskra would be very 
 great. 
 
 "Well they went. Dallas made their arrange 
 ments for them. They were so busy for two days be 
 forehand that I hardly saw them. But I did see them 
 start. It came over me then, like a presentiment, that 
 it was all wrong. It isn t safe to have no more pre 
 judices than Miss Marriott. She ought to have seen 
 that God never meant her to go anywhere on a 
 camel; that He never even meant her to go to the 
 places that camels take you to. Anything so silly as 
 that had to come to grief. It made me sick; and I was 
 glad to see the last of Miss Marriott s blue veil. She 
 was so exalted that she hardly spoke to me; she was 
 surer than ever that she was Marco Polo. Miss Mar 
 riott was capable of anything; but I was a little puz 
 zled by Dallas s acquiescence. If you could have seen 
 Miss Marriott hunched up in an attatouch! I was 
 sure that he would much rather have stayed respect 
 ably behind and made love to Eva in Biskra. I know 
 he wanted to marry her on the spot; and I gathered 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 85 
 
 that she wouldn t. There are women girls, anyhow 
 who love being engaged. It s like well, never mind 
 what it s like. They don t analyze; they merely know 
 it s delightful. I fancy most men don t find it delight 
 ful, and Dallas was certainly the last man in the world 
 to find it so. The fact that he did go to Touggourt 
 with no trouble showed me at least that he wasn t 
 liking Biskra, and that he was probably in a state of 
 nerves. The rate of progress of a Saharan camel 
 wasn t going to improve his nerves; neither was Toug 
 gourt, or any other place where he didn t have to 
 dress for dinner where the physical habits of the 
 European world couldn t be reproduced. I ve seen 
 men in that condition before, plenty of times. We 
 all have. But I never saw one in that condition going 
 to Touggourt, on a camel, with Miss Marriott." 
 
 Hoyting spoke almost with bitterness. I could have 
 fancied that in his heart of hearts he blamed young 
 Dallas for everything whatever it was that had 
 happened. In spite of his cynical flings at the aunt, 
 it was clear that he had a particular respect for her. 
 He couldn t have been more irritated by her follies if 
 he had been really fond of her. 
 
 The evening was wearing on to night Frangois was 
 dropping with sleep somewhere behind us. I sum 
 moned him, and had with him a brief whispered col 
 loquy while Hoyting, his back turned to us, snuffed up 
 the wind as thirstily as if it had been a love-philtre. 
 I didn t know how long the tale might last, and I 
 wanted to forestall any interruption by a poor creature 
 who had to work and therefore had to sleep. Our 
 table was outside in the garden, and from the garden a 
 little path led, by way of a gate in the scrubby hedge, 
 to the sea-strand. I paid for the vermouth that stood 
 on the table, and bade Frangois lock up the cafe be- 
 
86 VALIANT DUST 
 
 hind us and leave us to our talk. A few sibilant whis 
 pers arranged it, and Frangois had disappeared before 
 Hoy ting had got his fill of the wind. Whether he 
 knew what had been accomplished behind his back, I 
 could not tell. Hoy ting never troubles himself with 
 details. The world more or less swings into his stride, 
 I ve noticed. Finally he turned to me and looked me 
 straight in the eyes. 
 
 "Never mind what I thought. . . . Let s get ahead 
 with this. I ve a notion I shall sleep to-night, and 
 sleep s a good thing. Um." 
 
 You understand that I can t report Hoyting ver 
 batim. He has no structure. But I ve learned to re 
 member the gist of what he says, and more or less in 
 his own words. I wish I could remember his every 
 phrase, for my own equivalents are poor stuff. But 
 Hoyting wouldn t help you reproduce him if he could. 
 He talks obstinately into the void. If he ever saw him 
 self recorded, he d never speak again. Yet the best I 
 have to give is Hoyting s. You ll pardon my way of 
 dealing with him, I hope. 
 
 "Never mind me." It was with some such phrase 
 that he returned to the tale. "I put in ten days more 
 in Biskra. I had to. Never Biskra again for me! 
 Odd, isn t it, how you hate any place where you ve 
 ever had to be? even though, if you like to look at it 
 in that way, you ve always got to be somewhere or 
 other until you die. Anyhow, in about eight days, 
 Miss Marriott and her niece returned to the hotel. 
 They came suddenly into the dining-room one night, 
 and I knew that if they had been to Touggourt at all, 
 they must have come back by diligence. Their kind 
 of camel for even Miss Marriott had had the wit to 
 stop short of a mehari couldn t have done the round 
 trip under a fortnight. Dallas wasn t with them; and, 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 87 
 
 somehow, from the moment I saw them come in, I 
 knew he wasn t even in Biskra. My first thought was 
 that I had been plain cheated. I had expected to be 
 off well before they returned, and if I ever saw Marco 
 Polo again, it wouldn t be my fault." 
 
 "Come, Hoyting, you liked her!" 
 
 "I didn t like her. I don t like people I run across 
 in that way women, especially. I should be a nerv 
 ous ghost by this time if I had stopped to like people. 
 Fancy all one s chance encounters turning into pulls 
 on one s affection like the ropes the Lilliputians tied 
 round Gulliver. If I had been Gulliver, I should have 
 gone mad. I d rather be tied with one stout steel cable 
 than with a million threads. Liked her! Ugh!" 
 
 "Very well: you didn t like her. What did she do?" 
 
 "She did nothing except crumple her handkerchief 
 hard in her left hand. She spoke to me with a kind of 
 gasp. The girl was white as a Carrara cliff. All her 
 color had gone into her hair: that flamed out in the 
 most wicked way, as if every curl had been a licking 
 tongue of fire. After dinner, Miss Marriott indicated 
 that she would like to talk to me. I responded, for 
 evidently my purgatory wasn t yet over. I must have 
 sinned pretty often to have had that Biskra sojourn 
 so prolonged. 
 
 "We went out into the garden. Eva disappeared. 
 She hadn t said a word. She hadn t even answered my 
 polite questions. I might have been speaking to a 
 wax-work. It is uncanny to go on talking to a person 
 who pays no attention who doesn t even smirk; and 
 after five minutes I stopped. I was glad to have her 
 go away. I learned from Miss Marriott that they had 
 reached Touggourt on their camels, and that the next 
 morning she and her niece had taken the diligence 
 back. Dallas had stayed behind and said he was going 
 
88 VALIANT DUST 
 
 to Guerrara perhaps on to Ghardaia. She didn t 
 know when he would return. 
 
 " Then the desert wasn t so romantic as you 
 thought it would be if your little trip went to 
 smash? 
 
 "She didn t answer straight, only said: I m not 
 broken in to camels yet, I find. I was really ill 
 when we got to Touggourt. 
 
 "Poor thing! She did look a beastly color. I hoped 
 she had had all her American medicines in her at- 
 tatouch. I was sure she had needed them. 
 
 " Did your niece mind it? 
 
 " Oh, Eva soon learned. She wasn t ill, anyhow. 
 
 " Very c porting of her! So Dallas wanted to go 
 on, and as you weren t up to it, you had to bring your 
 niece back? It s a pity they weren t married before 
 you started. 
 
 "I was being merely flippant, and you can imagine 
 that I was surprised when she laid her foolish-virgin 
 claw on my arm and exclaimed tearfully: Oh, it is! 
 it is! 
 
 " Do you mean it s off, and that s why Dallas has 
 gone to Guerrara? Did the desert finish them? 
 
 "Miss Marriott mopped her eyes with the crumpled 
 handkerchief, and pulled herself together. 
 
 " I suppose it did. I shouldn t have taken them. 
 But Eva is a little fool. Her tone was not untender. 
 
 " She looks as if she were paying for it, then. 
 Isn t she ill? 
 
 " Eva s never ill. She was gloriously well when we 
 reached Touggourt. 
 
 "And Dallas? 
 
 "Miss Marriott looked back across the garden at the 
 lighted windows of the hotel. Then she spoke, as it 
 seemed to me, irrelevantly. 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 89 
 
 " I wish you would take me to one of those Ouled 
 Nail places. 
 
 " And Eva? 7 I mocked. 
 
 " Certainly not Eva. She s gone to bed. 
 
 "I paused a moment. I didn t want to insult the 
 woman; but for pure maniacal cheek! 
 
 " I m sorry to be disobliging, Miss Marriott, but I 
 certainly won t. Let me tell you something: it s either 
 a silly make-believe and not worth paying for, or it s 
 the real thing, and in that case you ve no business 
 there. I dare say one of your pet native guides will 
 take you, but I won t. 
 
 " Have you prejudices, then? 
 
 " A few. 
 
 " Ah, I have none. 
 
 "I had heard her affirm that many times, but never 
 before in the tone of despair. I turned and looked 
 at her. 
 
 " What is up, Miss Marriott? 
 
 "A mesh of her sandy hair was straying across her 
 forehead. She pushed it back, and still it wouldn t 
 stay. Finally she drew out a hairpin and stuck it 
 through the lock like a skewer. When she had suc 
 ceeded in making herself uglier than ever, she gazed 
 up at me, with her pale, stupid eyes. 
 
 " I suppose you think it s very queer of me. But I 
 thought perhaps it would help me to understand. 
 
 " Understand what? 
 
 " Eva and Herbert Dallas. There are two points 
 of view there, you see. They seem to me to have 
 quarrelled over nothing. That sort of thing is very 
 strange to me. I have never been in love. They are, 
 you know immensely. I thought I should like to 
 watch them. And they ve come to grief, and talking 
 to Eva does no good. 
 
90 VALIANT DUST 
 
 " What did you expect the Ouled Nails would do 
 for you? 
 
 " I thought/ the flat little voice of this extraordi- 
 ary creature went on, that if they were very disgust 
 ing, I might work myself up to be more tactful with 
 Eva. I have been very tactless. But of course noth 
 ing does disgust me. She sighed. To tell the truth, 
 I m very tired of her. I quite hated her in the 
 diligence. 9 
 
 " What did happen out there? I really wanted to 
 know. 
 
 "The first and last gleam of humor I ever detected 
 in Marco Polo came into her eyes then. I don t think 
 I can tell you though I haven t any prejudices. I m 
 just not used to talking about such things. My words 
 would probably shock you. 
 
 " No one could shock me. 
 
 " Oh yes, / could ! And she got up and trailed into 
 the hotel, her dust-colored skirt hanging somehow like 
 an Englishwoman s. 
 
 "I sat there for some time, wondering. As far as 
 I could make it out, young Eva and young Dallas had 
 quarrelled about the Ouled Nai ls. Yet they were 
 much too directly and personally in love with each 
 other to let sociology separate them. Still, Marco 
 Polo was capable de tout. She might have got them 
 going some evening under the desert moon. What a 
 fool! I made nothing of it, except that there must 
 have been a quarrel, or Dallas wouldn t have gone on 
 by himself to Guerrara. I don t know how long I sat 
 there in the sweet air. I know that, at one moment, a 
 white figure suddenly stood before me. It was Eva 
 Marriott, and she looked, all in white, with her white 
 face and her tortured, flaming hair, like a ghost that 
 has just begun to burn in hell. I pulled out a chair for 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 91 
 
 her, and she sat down. It was certainly her turn to 
 speak, so I waited for her. 
 
 "She said nothing for a long time. Then she looked 
 at me. 
 
 " Do you like my aunt? 
 
 " Very much. Why? 
 
 " I don t. I think she s dreadful. 
 
 " Well, my child, does it really matter? 
 
 " It matters, since she s all I ve got in the world. 7 
 
 " What about Dallas? 
 
 " Oh, I mustn t have him I mustn t. Not can t 
 or won t, you notice, but mustn t. 
 
 " Why not? 
 
 " Didn t Aunt Cordelia tell you? She came out 
 here with you after dinner. 
 
 " She did not. She said only that you and your 
 fiance had quarrelled. I should have known that any 
 how, from the fact that you came back without him. 
 
 " Well, I can t tell you. 
 
 " Apparently no one can. But why you both want 
 to talk to me about something you can t tell me, puz 
 zles me a good deal. 
 
 " Did Aunt Cordelia say nothing else? 
 
 " Nothing except that she didn t like camels. I 
 could have told her that before, but she wouldn t 
 listen to me. 
 
 " Yes; she was awfully ill before we got to Toug- 
 gourt. The girl spoke listlessly. 
 
 "I had an indiscreet impulse, which I followed. 
 She wanted me to take her to see the Ouled Nails 
 dance. I wouldn t. 
 
 " Oh, the dreadful, dreadful creature! Eva Mar 
 riott wailed. 
 
 " I don t believe she s dreadful, you know, for a 
 
92 VALIANT DUST 
 
 moment. Every one goes. I d have taken her like a 
 shot if the notion hadn t bored me so. 
 
 " It would be more to the point, Eva Marriott said 
 suddenly, if you d take me. 
 
 " So I gathered from your aunt though she 
 didn t tell me why, any more than you do. But how 
 can you call her dreadful, after what you ve just said? 
 
 " She is dreadful. She is. 
 
 " She strikes me as being an unusually nice woman. 
 I don t know why I flung compliments at Marco Polo s 
 back. Probably because it didn t seem wise to sow 
 dissension between the two. 
 
 ""Do you think any one can change? 
 
 " Do you mean your aunt? I shouldn t want her 
 to. 
 
 " No, I mean myself. 
 
 " Oh, I shouldn t want you to, either. 
 
 "I don t know where those silly answers of mine 
 came from. I felt like a heavy fool making them. A 
 trained nurse read me a lot of Tauchnitz trash in a 
 hospital once. Perhaps my faithless memory was do 
 ing it for me. In any case, that girl wasn t real. You 
 couldn t talk to her. If she hadn t been so deadly 
 white, I d have turned my back on her. 
 
 " But I want to. I want to change, for Herbert. 
 He doesn t like me the way I am. 
 
 " More probably you don t like him the way he is. 7 
 
 " Oh, I don t, I don t! And yet I do. Don t you 
 see? She broke down and cried hard. Fortunately 
 there was no one else in that corner of the garden. 
 I don t see she got her words out between sobs 
 who brought him up. He s been to Eton and Oxford 
 like any one else. Are all men like that? No, they 
 aren t, for I ve known men before nice ones. 
 
 " Then you did discuss sociology, you little fools! 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 93 
 
 " We never discussed anything, he and I. Aunt 
 Cordelia did all the discussing afterwards/ 
 
 " Do you mean that I fished about for a word 
 he insulted you ? 
 
 " He was perfectly lovely to me. But of course I 
 went away. Lucid, wasn t it? But I knew that she 
 wouldn t have defined over-insistent love-making as 
 lovely/ whatever she might have felt about it. Dal 
 las, in the sandy distance, suddenly grew interesting 
 to me. I tried another lead. 
 
 " If you don t want to marry him, youVe only to 
 say so. 
 
 "The fire stole down into her face again for an in 
 stant, but it couldn t strive against that whiteness. 
 
 " I want dreadfully to marry him I If he would 
 only say the right things, I would. But he won t. 
 
 " Have you given him a chance? 
 
 " He didn t wait for it. So he can t have meant 
 to say them. 
 
 "I was desperate. I couldn t stand this much 
 longer. I was beginning to feel like Gulliver. I got 
 up and stood in front of her. It was a relief to find 
 that I was able to get up. They had rooted me there 
 so long, those two! 
 
 " Is he still in love with you? 
 
 " He says he is. 
 
 " Dallas would never say it if he weren t. 
 
 " So I should think. Yet how can he be? Per 
 haps he is. But what difference does it make except 
 that, in that case, I can t ever see him again. For 
 I am so in love with him that my principles would 
 never hold out against him. 
 
 "It was all said rather stupidly, yet with obvious 
 sincerity. I shook my head. 
 
 " When is he coming back? 
 
94 VALIANT DUST 
 
 " In a week, I think. Just long enough to give me 
 time. But I ve had as much time as I can stand. It 
 will kill me. He ll never say the right thing. How 
 can I marry him? 
 
 " Of course I don t know what you want him to 
 say. But if you make love to him, he ll say it. 
 
 "I know I was brutal, but she was such a negligible 
 little idiot! My relief in knowing that a crisis, which 
 would come after Dallas s return, would also come 
 after my own departure, was too great. I couldn t 
 choose words. 
 
 " Oh no, not that! That wouldn t prove anything, 
 you see. 
 
 "I did see, of course, perfectly; but it seemed too 
 arrogant for a child like that to expect to be both loved 
 and understood. I lost all patience with her. 
 
 " You had better go to bed now, and buy a lot of 
 things in the bazaars tomorrow. A whole new shipload 
 has come in from Germany while you ve been away. 
 Run along, there s a good girl. And I wouldn t worry. 
 Worry never cleared up any situation. Then I re 
 pented a little, for her suffering would have been clear 
 to a blind man. Don t you see, my dear Miss Mar 
 riott, that, when you won t tell me the whole thing, I 
 can t advise? But it doesn t matter, for I honestly 
 believe that even Solomon would be a mere nuisance 
 to people who are in love with each other. They don t 
 need advice. Or put it that it s of no use to them. 
 Good-night. 
 
 " I wish I were different, she sighed out, even if it 
 meant that I was wrong. Then she slipped away, and 
 I could get them off my mind. 
 
 "Nor did I keep them on my mind the next day. I 
 went out to El-Kantara, merely to get rid of the Mar 
 riotts. If you realize that I went with a Cook s auto- 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 95 
 
 mobile party, you can imagine how much I wanted to 
 get rid of them. I should have changed my hotel but 
 for the nuisance of it. Besides, Miss Marriott would 
 have hunted me down anywhere, if she had felt like 
 it. She had no prejudices. I dined elsewhere; but I 
 went back to the Palace in the evening. Luckily the 
 Marriotts weren t about. I was just turning to go out 
 into the garden (having assured myself by careful re 
 connaissance that they weren t in the landscape) when 
 I heard some stir behind me. There, very dusty, very 
 worn and tired, but handsome as usual, stood Dallas. 
 I nodded at him and almost ran. I didn t even go to 
 the garden. I went to my room. I had no reason to 
 suppose that Dallas would pursue me, but you never 
 could tell. I decided to be safe, though hot, in my 
 own quarters. Didn t I curse the Marriotts as I sat 
 there under the lamp! Why are we such a beastly 
 articulate race? There are people in the world, you 
 know, who keep their affairs to themselves. Creatures 
 that are so damn confidential ought to be made to 
 stay at home!" 
 
 Hoy ting flung his latest cigarette away half smoked. 
 The silence round us was phenomenal. I ought to 
 have been able to hear the patron and his wife snoring, 
 but I couldn t. Perhaps they slept without it. No; 
 that was inconceivable. In such ridiculous little 
 spirals my mind went wandering while Hoyting took 
 breath beside me. 
 
 "Let s get this thing over. I m sleepy. I ll com 
 press as much as I can. . . . The end of that was that 
 after an hour or two, when I thought I was safe, I 
 sneaked down to the garden to get some air. Would 
 you believe it? I had no sooner sat down and hidden 
 myself well in the foliage when Dallas was upon me 
 like a cat. I don t know where he had come from, or 
 
96 VALIANT DUST 
 
 how he had seen me. He had to talk to me, too, ap 
 parently. Well: even that was almost better than 
 staying within and indeed Dallas was the only one 
 of the three about whom I had the least curiosity left. 
 
 "He did give me the clue the key to the enigma. 
 Apparently, by the way, he had sent up word to Miss 
 Marriott that he had returned, and she had sent word 
 down that Eva was asleep and she herself in bed, and 
 that she would see him in the morning. 
 
 "He had given up going to Guerrara when he was 
 a few miles out of Touggourt couldn t stand the 
 notion; had rushed back to Touggourt and come on 
 to Biskra as fast as he could, by the same old blessed 
 diligence. He was in a state! He asked me about the 
 Marriotts, first off; and when I told him I could make 
 nothing out except that there was a moral crisis of 
 sorts, which the aunt and niece were both muddling 
 according to their respective stupidities, he didn t wait 
 for more. He blurted out the whole thing. . . . 
 
 "Then I saw what a damned fool Marco Polo had 
 been. To take those young things out into the desert! 
 I suppose there are young things you could take into 
 the desert with impunity; but Dallas! Even a woman 
 who had never laid eyes on any man before ought to 
 have seen that Dallas was a special, a very special 
 case. She did see; she liked him because he was 
 so special; but well, it doesn t do for ignorance to 
 have no prejudices. Dallas was in no condition for a 
 journey of that sort with a very beautiful girl who 
 loved him and whom he was anxious, for every reason, 
 to marry as soon as possible. He didn t insult Eva 
 Marriott except in one indirect but fatally illuminat 
 ing way, as you ll see. If he had insisted on their 
 being married by a marabout at M rai er or Djemaa or 
 some other Saharan hole on the way, I m not ab- 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 97 
 
 solutely sure she wouldn t have done it it being per 
 fectly understood that they should run to their consuls 
 as soon as they got back. She was off her head about 
 him. And he, who had never seen why he shouldn t 
 have anything his organism craved, had had, for the 
 first time in his life, I judged, an inhibition. That is, 
 he didn t ask her to be married to him by a marabout. 
 He didn t say a word to her. He hadn t even seen her 
 alone since they left Biskra. Miss Marriott wanted to 
 watch romance; I wonder if she ever considered 
 whether romance would like to watch her. Eva Mar 
 riott must have managed to madden Dallas without 
 much talk . . . and you can imagine them at the door 
 of a Saharan caravanserai, under a Saharan moon 
 with Marco Polo egging them on. Humph! The in- 
 dencies of the decent are among the strangest things 
 in the world. 
 
 "Oh, well, never mind. . . . Isn t there any end to 
 this thing? . . . Yes, there was an end, just there in 
 Touggourt, where they turned up at nightfall after six 
 days at camels pace. Miss Marriott was completely 
 done up, and Eva had to look after her. And Dallas 
 well, Dallas broke away and ran amok in the Sahara. 
 Touggourt isn t very big, but it s big enough for that. 
 Almost any place is, in point of fact; and the Sahara 
 would, of course, have understood Dallas perfectly." 
 
 "And you said he wasn t a rotter?" 
 
 "I didn t say he wasn t a rotter. I said it seemed a 
 singularly inept word to apply to him. I tell you he 
 was like a faun. Fauns aren t perpetually sitting for 
 their portraits, are they? They re very pretty when 
 they are; but they must eat and drink, and scratch 
 themselves, and sprawl in the sun. After all, he could 
 have carried young Eva off if he had decided to. I 
 give you my word he could. Do you suppose any 
 
98 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Bedouin or Berber of them all would have stopped 
 him, so long as he could pay more than the aunt? And 
 he didn t so much as touch the hem of her skirt. She 
 was the cause of it all; but the results had nothing to 
 do with her. That, at least, was the way Dallas saw it. 
 
 "He was as much in love with Eva Marriott," went 
 on Hoyting, with annoyance, as if I had interrupted 
 him, "as he could be with any one; that is to say, he 
 worshipped her face. He wouldn t have understood 
 the soul part of it. Neither did she, if she had but 
 known it. But she mixed up his inches with the Ten 
 Commandments. I m not defending him; defending 
 him would imply a point of view, and I have none. 
 I mean only that, take him as he was, he behaved as 
 he couldn t help behaving. And she couldn t see it. 
 Certainly he was no person for her to marry, since 
 she couldn t see it. I don t say she oughtn t to have 
 been shocked. I say that she never understood. She 
 would have forgiven him like a shot for any insult to 
 herself though he hadn t the faintest wish to insult 
 her, poor pagan!" (Hoyting said it as one says "poor 
 devil!") "She would have condoned any sin if he had 
 once admitted that he had sinned, and was sorry. He 
 was sorry enough; but he couldn t consider that he 
 had sinned. He was willing to die if he had hurt her 
 willing to die at the thought that he had hurt her 
 willing to admit that it was natural she should be 
 hurt; but as for sin, he didn t know what it meant. 
 He must have heard about it all his life, but his organ 
 ism had thrown it off like a germ; he was perfectly 
 immune to any such notion as hers of morality. . . . 
 So they came back to Biskra, and he tried to go to 
 Guerrara, and couldn t." 
 
 "Do you mean to say that he owned up, and they 
 had it out in Touggourt?" 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN 99 
 
 "I don t think he so much owned up as was taxed 
 with it by the aunt and didn t lie. I doubt if there 
 was anything very explicit said, but the women some 
 how jumped to the right conclusion. A little place 
 like that it would have been easy enough. His 
 apologies didn t satisfy Eva of course fauns weren t 
 made for apologizing and she left." 
 
 "Naturally," I retorted. 
 
 "Yes, naturally," Hoyting rejoined quietly. "Well, 
 you see that Dallas s confession to me threw a white 
 light on all that Eva Marriott had said the night be 
 fore. I couldn t say anything to him except that I 
 thought he and Eva were utterly unsuited to each 
 other. That sounded rather colorless, but what else 
 could I say? I got up and went in; left him there 
 with a puzzled look on his face. He understood 
 jealousy, he understood pique, he understood passion; 
 but he didn t understand why, if she could personally 
 forgive him and take him back, she still had to nour 
 ish a grievance on behalf of the Almighty. Just 
 couldn t understand. And as long as he couldn t un 
 derstand that, she wouldn t take him back. A nice 
 thing Miss Marriott did when she took to travelling! 
 
 "I found the next morning, to my delight, that I 
 could leave Biskra in twenty-four hours more. I 
 didn t even have to go to El-Kantara again, for Dallas 
 himself, after one interview with Miss Marriott, had 
 gone there. I knew I must bid farewell to Marco 
 Polo, so I sent word to her that I should hope for a 
 few minutes after dinner in the garden. 
 
 "She came with Eva. And the first thing she 
 asked me before the girl was what Dallas had said 
 to me the night before. Imagine my position! I 
 would have talked biology all night with Miss Mar 
 riott if necessary, but I wasn t going to discuss Dal- 
 
100 VALIANT DUST 
 
 las s temperament with his ex-fiancee. So I held my 
 tongue. 
 
 " But I want to know. This, if you please, from 
 the ex-fiancee. 
 
 "I was desperate. I won t tell you. What Dallas 
 said is Dallas s affair. You have already made each 
 other suffer a good deal. I should advise you both to 
 go away from Biskra in opposite directions. Other 
 wise you will make each other suffer more. 
 
 " He wants to marry me, and I want to marry him; 
 but he won t, he just won t, make it right for me to. 
 Apparently Eva Marriott couldn t face my knowledge 
 of the situation, for, with that despairing little utter 
 ance, she fled. 
 
 "Marco Polo could face anything, though. You 
 are a fool, Eva, she called after the girl, in her flat, 
 slightly nasal voice. There was no reply from the 
 speeding white figure just a little twitch of the shoul 
 der, as if she had heard. 
 
 "I turned to the aunt. So you sympathize with 
 Dallas? 
 
 " I don t sympathize with him! She blushed 
 actually blushed and turned her head away. But the 
 weakness was very brief. How should I? she went 
 on. But I do think she s a fool not to marry him. 
 
 " Can t you understand her principles? 
 
 " Who should if I don t? I was brought up on 
 them. But they haven t anything to do with life as 
 I see it. Those two want each other desperately. 
 Why shouldn t they take each other? 
 
 " Because your niece disapproves of him. That 
 was easy. 
 
 "Then Marco Polo turned her face away and stared 
 hard at a palm. I ve never been in love with any one 
 in my life, she said. I don t know what it may do 
 
MISS MARRIOTT AND THE FAUN J01 
 
 to you. But I am quite sure that, if Eva wants him, 
 she had better take him while he wants her. 
 
 " And you didn t disapprove of his behavior? 
 
 "She turned her pale eyes on me. I thought it 
 very interesting. I have never seen human passion at 
 such close range before. 
 
 "Really, she made me sit up, that woman. You d 
 trust your niece to him, then? 
 
 " I would. He s fascinating. But she won t have 
 him because he won t lie to her. He told me this 
 morning that he had tried. He said: "I d say anything, 
 Miss Marriott; but she d catch me out, because, you 
 see, I can t get it through my head what she really 
 wants me to say." 
 
 " Can t you get it through yours, Miss Marriott, and 
 put him wise? 
 
 " Oh, / understand what she wants. But she ll 
 never get it out of him. He d make some mistake. I 
 shall pack her off home, and she can marry a vestry 
 man. There s one who wants her. 
 
 " I can t understand why you take his side. Nor 
 could I. 
 
 "Miss Marriott rose. Because he s so real. That 
 vestryman isn t. And I have no prejudices. 
 
 "She shook hands with me and went into the hotel. 
 That was the last I saw of any of them. 
 
 "I left, the next morning, myself. I happen to 
 know from other sources that young Dallas went to 
 Egypt immediately and stayed there many months, and 
 I heard last year, in Trebizond, of a solitary woman 
 who had been there en route for Persia, and who 
 sounded, in the descriptions I got, extraordinarily like 
 Marco Polo. I didn t follow up her trail to see. Ob 
 viously, the affair never came off. The faun couldn t 
 twist his lips to a Christian confession. If you had 
 
102 VALIANT DUST 
 
 ever seen Dallas, you would know what I mean. He 
 really couldn t. That section of his brain didn t work; 
 it was atrophied. Eva Marriott could have walked 
 all over him, but he couldn t lie his way about among 
 her convictions. He wasn t a rotter. He was made 
 like that. I don t believe the girl married her vestry 
 man, though. You wouldn t, you know, after you had 
 been in love with a faun. 
 
 "And all that is left of it for me, really" Hoyting 
 threw away the ultimate cigarette, and rose "is that 
 sometimes, in a tropically humorous situation, I see 
 that blue veil, and hear that flat voice saying: You 
 know, I have no prejudices. If you ever run across 
 the woman in the flesh, telegraph me. I ll get into the 
 other hemisphere." 
 
 I made no reply, for evidently Hoyting had abso 
 lutely nothing more to say. We went through the little 
 gate. I closed it carefully, and five minutes later I 
 separated from Hoyting on the deserted strand. 
 
IV 
 
 MARTIN S HOLLOW 
 
 I have always been of the opinion that, as a good 
 wine needs no bush, a good story needs no psychology 
 to speak of. Yet before I tell mine, I think I had 
 better describe myself briefly as I seem to myself to 
 have been at the moment of my adventure. 
 
 I was that most jaded of all types, the professional 
 scorner of fiction. I had my tongue in my cheek for 
 almost everything that came off a printing-press. I 
 was tired of red blood; I was even more tired of the 
 blue blood that drips out of a fountain-pen. I was 
 tired oh. very tired of "penny plain, 37 and almost 
 more tired of "twopence colored." I had hunted for a 
 real, healthy thrill in the books spread out before me, 
 until I believed there was no such thing. I was like 
 the boy in the folk-tale who could not shiver. I had 
 searched the newspapers for a sensation and found 
 there nothing but musical comedy. Most mysteries 
 turn into farce. Do you remember the Italian opera 
 company that went broke in Samarkand? Or the true 
 tale of Death Valley Scotty? Or the gentleman who 
 discreetly offered a fine Tudor house rent-free for a 
 year to any one intending murder? The prima donna 
 was entertained by the Russian governor-general; 
 Death Valley Scotty (I believe) went into vaudeville; 
 and the gentleman with the Tudor mansion was the 
 mildest of men: a thwarted romantic who wanted an 
 authentic ghost on the premises, and had to be content 
 
 103 
 
104 VALIANT DUST 
 
 with an expensive mechanical device that frightened 
 his friends but never, alas! deluded him. Even life 
 seemed to have declined in quality from Gilbert and 
 Sullivan to comic movies. 
 
 All this, not so very long ago, suddenly became 
 acute, and I planned an escape. I decided to leave 
 town, and go for a solitary walking-tour in and about 
 and over a certain range of mountains. I knew some 
 of the more important points in the region, but I had 
 never explored the remoter valleys, though I was aware 
 that they were lonely and lovely and sparsely inhabited. 
 Be it understood that I did not go in search of 
 mystery: I went to get back my appetite for plainer 
 food and simpler sensations; to savor to the core the 
 blessed impossibility of reading over-night, and review 
 ing the next day, ten volumes of the latest trash. I 
 went to get back my tone; to recapture a normal at 
 titude. The return to Nature, if taken seriously, is apt 
 to have bad effects; but I was in no danger of growing 
 mawkish over a woodchuck, or addressing the garter- 
 snake as "brother." I was willing to pay for hill- 
 winds as I would have paid for a good brand of Bur 
 gundy; and to have the sunset thrown in like the smile 
 of the perfect waiter. These things had a value and 
 a charm, a positive virtue of their own. I could not 
 get them in town; so Mohammed went to the moun 
 tains, though in no transcendental frame of mind. He 
 took with him survey maps, a rubber cape, a flask, 
 plenty of tobacco, and some of the other things that 
 Baedeker recommends to the pedestrian. 
 
 I shall not chart my course for you; I shall not name 
 my mountains or my valleys. I shall make no socio 
 logical estimates of the people I met; I shall not ac 
 count for them in any recognizable way, by descent or 
 occupation, politics or dialect. Let me content myself 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 105 
 
 with describing accurately. Too many people know 
 the trains I took, the towns through which I passed, 
 and the names of the heights I crossed. I have, above 
 all, no wish to fling discredit on that loveliest and lone 
 liest of remote valleys which I shall call Martin s Hol 
 low. Perhaps I am more sensitive than I need be, 
 because in my early youth I spent many summers in 
 and about these mountains, and have, myself, a vi 
 carious patriotism for the locality. Good men, honest 
 citizens and prosperous, have come out of the district 
 school in Martin s Hollow but few of them live in 
 Martin s Hollow now. 
 
 I had been tramping a week or more when the rain 
 came on. Usually I had managed to spend the night 
 in some village hotel or other, but this once I had had 
 to make shift with an atrocious boarding-house half 
 way up a lovely wooded slope. It was filled with 
 women in cheap frills, who walked on the narrow 
 porches with their arms round each other s waists, 
 and danced awkwardly together, after the dining-room 
 was cleared, to the nasal tones of a cheap victrola. 
 Some of the older ones played halma in the corners. 
 After a talk with the melancholy proprietor, the next 
 morning, I decided to spend that night on the moun 
 tain that lifted itself above the boarding-house. I was 
 to climb it that day, and by the next night I could 
 probably get to one of the bigger hotels in the second 
 valley beyond. 
 
 I started out early, and presently struck a trail of 
 which the boarding-house-keeper had told me. It was 
 not on my map. All went well until I reached the sum 
 mit or what I took to be the summit. The mountain 
 was wooded to the top, and there was no clearing from 
 which one could get a view. I had a glimpse of the 
 sky, however, from a desolate spot which had, at some 
 
106 VALIANT DUST 
 
 time, been cut over; and the sky looked ominous. I 
 decided to make for lower ground and the possibility 
 of a barn-roof, if nothing else, over my head. I al 
 ways leave behind something of importance, and this 
 time I had forgotten my compass. I had no means of 
 knowing surely into which valley I was going to drop; 
 but I took a trail that came to hand. It looked like 
 an old one ; which augured well, I thought, for habita 
 tions below me. The rain came on; and I dripped my 
 way along between the dripping trees, at a tremendous 
 downward slant. A little past sunset-time the rain let 
 up, and I stopped on a rock by a spring to eat and 
 drink and look at my map. It marked the trail I had 
 taken; and I gathered from the somewhat unfeatured 
 section of the map that I should presently strike the 
 Martin s Hollow brook, which, carefully followed, 
 would lead me into Martin s Hollow. 
 
 I have, since then, heard about Martin s Hollow. 
 It is one of the "shiftless" valleys; a place where the 
 farms have a curse on them and every other family 
 will probably count its degenerates. There are plenty 
 such among our older mountain communities, as every 
 one knows. They get a bad name, and the best ele 
 ment goes away to other countrysides. The feeble and 
 the mad and the shiftless and the hard drinkers are 
 apt to stay; and when they too are withdrawn, their 
 houses fall to ruin, until in after years you trace human 
 histories by old cellar foundations. None of this was 
 in my mind when I took the trail from somewhere near 
 the top of Silvernail Mountain. Martin s Hollow was 
 a mere name on a map to me; a place where I hoped 
 to find shelter of some sort from the gregarious show 
 ers that were chasing each other about the hills. 
 
 It must have been eight o clock when I got below 
 the timber-line on the southern spur of Silvernail. 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 107 
 
 Darkness was thickening, and I could see little except 
 a few separated lights below and beyond me to the 
 southward. The valley is very narrow and very steep; 
 at the bottom, in the middle, there is room only for 
 the brook and a little bordering meadowland. The 
 noose-like road runs higher up, on the hillsides, and 
 along it the farms are scattered. I say noose-like; and 
 yet the loop is incomplete, for the curved head of the 
 hollow is all woods and wilderness, and there is no 
 road across. If you wish to make the tour of the little 
 valley, you can only go up one side, make your way 
 back nearly to the mouth, where the single cross-road 
 lies, and take the other side. The valley opens out at 
 the mouth ever so slightly, so that from the head, on 
 a fine day, you would get a magnificent mountain 
 glimpse. 
 
 Here, then, at the head of Martin s Hollow, I found 
 myself, in the twilight. I knew from the mere look 
 of the place in the dimness that the farms were not 
 good. There was no big bulk of barns, and the hill 
 sides had the rough outline of rocky pasture. Here and 
 there, before me,. I could see the glimmer of an irregu 
 lar and desultory patch of buckwheat. I cursed the 
 weather and my compassless condition, which had com 
 bined to pitch me into this stupid gorge. I also cursed 
 a blister on my heel, which had joined itself to the 
 catastrophes of the afternoon. The proprietor of the 
 boarding-house had not mentioned Martin s Hollow by 
 name. "Better go through the next valley and over 
 to Woodelton," he had advised. "Or, better still, keep 
 along the lower ridge of Silvernail and Kettletop, and 
 drop right into Woodelton itself." I had not inquired 
 further, for I had intended fully to sleep on Silvernail 
 and walk for miles through the woods along the irregu 
 lar ridge, until I found the Woodelton trail. But here 
 
108 VALIANT DUST 
 
 I was in Martin s Hollow; and if the people were an 
 unprosperous lot, I could the more easily induce them 
 to let me sleep in a haymow. The houses would be 
 impossible of that I was sure. I had seen shiftless 
 valleys before. 
 
 And now I come to my adventure: which is nothing 
 more, really, than my single fluttering contact with 
 the devil. If I cannot explain how the walk down the 
 valley, with its casual encounters, was like a sudden 
 hypochondria progressing by leaps and bounds, I can 
 not make you feel why even the climax seemed to have 
 the terror of inexorable logic, as well as its own un 
 pleasantness, to inflict. I know how Dante felt ex 
 cept that I had no Virgil by my side. 
 
 The first farmstead I came upon was a small, ram 
 shackle, malodorous place. There was a light some 
 where within at the back, which illuminated a filthy 
 bit of barnyard. Some tuneless drunken singing of 
 Moody and Sankey hymns was going on inside. I de 
 cided to knock and ask for information. There are 
 worse people in the world than men who sing hymns in 
 their cups. The knock called forth the hoarse barking 
 of a dog, but the singing stopped. A youth opened the 
 door. He was surly, but sober. He did not think there 
 was any place in the Hollow where I could sleep, but 
 perhaps Foster s might take me in. They were over 
 on the other side, beyond the cross-road. But I had 
 better go six miles on to the village. He slammed the 
 door to; the barking subsided, and another hymn be 
 gan, more tuneless than ever. I went out into the road, 
 slightly depressed. The clouds were ominous; I could 
 hear the soft mutter of distant thunder, and there were 
 already a few practice flashes of lightning. As I got 
 into the road, an upper window was flung up, and I 
 heard the wail of a baby. I turned, but could see noth- 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 109 
 
 ing. A cracked voice issued from the window, how 
 ever, bidding me "go away, go away." I went, with 
 what dignity I could muster tired of the rucksack on 
 my back, tired of my own spleen and depression, 
 wearying unspeakably for the fly-blown boarding-house 
 of the night before. 
 
 I had gone a third of a mile, still on the same side 
 of the Hollow, before I came to another habitation. 
 The darkness had grown thicker: it was virtually night. 
 There was no rain yet, but the wind was tearing over 
 the top of Silvernail, behind me, and the mutter of the 
 thunder had deepened into long, weary, reverberating 
 rolls. Each casual lightning-flash showed me the pink 
 ish road winding on ahead of me. This house was 
 larger than the other, but there was no light in it. I 
 knew all about country hours, and hesitated to rouse 
 folk from their beds; but I should have the rain pelt 
 ing on my shoulders in five minutes, and I was desper 
 ate. There was a bigger barn, and I had hopes of 
 bribing them to drive me to the village. So I knocked. 
 There was dead silence for two minutes. People sleep 
 ing so soundly as that would not want to drive any 
 one anywhere, even if they waked to hear my request. 
 I turned to go away again, thoroughly disgusted, for 
 there was no doubt that this wind carried rain with it. 
 Just as I turned, a sudden creak broke through the 
 perfect silence the door was flung open. I started: 
 for there had not been the faintest sound of footsteps. 
 You would have thought that the person who opened 
 had been sleeping against the door, like an animal. I 
 grasped my stick firmly in my hand and lifted my cap. 
 A lightning-flash came to help me out the tenant of 
 the house had no light and I saw a bent and toothless 
 old man staring at me. I put my question, but got no 
 answer. He did not even shake his head. He simply 
 
110 VALIANT DUST 
 
 looked me over with an incompetent and hostile eager 
 ness. His eyes rested on my stick, and peered over 
 my shoulder at my rucksack. He was, clearly, very 
 much interested in me, but he did not speak. I pulled 
 the matches out of my pocket, struck one, and gave 
 him stare for stare. He did not seem insulted by my 
 inspection; only craned his neck a little more, as if to 
 see the rucksack better. Apparently his examination 
 was reassuring; but he still made no sound. I tried 
 sign language, thinking he might be dumb; I pointed 
 in various directions queryingly. He made no gesture 
 of reply; simply continued to look me over, with a 
 slow, snakelike motion of the head. Apparently he 
 was satisfied by the time I grew utterly disgusted, for 
 as I turned my back on him he shut the door. I was, 
 for some indefinite reason, on my guard; and I stopped 
 and listened after the door was shut. I heard no voices, 
 but I thought I caught a faint, senile cackle. If there 
 had been whispering, I could not have heard it, for, 
 though it was a warm night, the windows were all 
 shut. I stumbled over a rusted woodchuck trap, and 
 found myself in the road again. 
 
 Then the rain came on in earnest great sheets of 
 it torn from the skies and flung broadcast through the 
 valley. I was tempted to climb through a pasture 
 to the shelter of trees, but the thunder and lightning 
 had now reached the Hollow, peal simultaneous with 
 flash, and I pushed on, with my rubber cape over my 
 shoulders. The violence of the shower took half an 
 hour to spend itself, and in that half -hour though, to 
 be sure, I walked very slowly, impeded at every step 
 by the gurgling mud of the road I passed no inhabited 
 dwelling. One ruined house I saw, and I thought of 
 climbing in through one of the paneless windows and 
 taking such shelter as I could; but some fastidiousness 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 111 
 
 of the imagination restrained me. In that hour, I dare 
 say, the trash I spent my life in scorning told upon 
 me. I preferred encountering any of the detrimentals 
 of Martin s Hollow to spending the night in a hole 
 those detrimentals had forsaken. I do not think, at 
 the moment, I would have accepted the shelter of the 
 noblest castle if I had had to sleep in the haunted room. 
 I leaned against the house wall for a few moments 
 porch or other outside shelter there was none but 
 went on. 
 
 The thunder and lightning had pretty well stopped 
 by the time I reached the cross-road. The rain still 
 fell and the wind churned up and down the gorge, so 
 that I had reason to expect another shower would pres 
 ently cross the ridge of Silvernail. I quickened my 
 pace as well as I could for the mud, for I saw lights 
 ahead on the other side of the valley. The six miles to 
 the village five, by this time were not to be thought 
 of. At that house I would stop, until the rain was over, 
 at least, come what might. 
 
 It was about nine o clock, I fancy, when I reached 
 the house with the lights just beyond the cross-road, 
 a little way up the valley on the other side. I lit a 
 match on the door-step before I knocked. It was an 
 ancient stone house, low and small, but at least not 
 ruinous. One of the lights I had seen must have been 
 a lantern carried between house and barn, for at 
 present only one window was illuminated. My knock 
 was answered at last by the sliding of a bolt, and an 
 uncouth young fellow stood in the door before me. He 
 was heavily built and strong, but looked stupid. Be 
 hind him two fraternal faces appeared. One of the 
 youths behind carried a gun. 
 
 "He ain t here." The man spoke briefly. 
 
 I protested. "I don t know whom you mean. I 
 
112 VALIANT DUST 
 
 don t belong in this place. I ve been on a walking-trip, 
 and have got caught in the rain and want some place 
 to spend the night. If you know of a haymow any-, 
 where in this valley " I stopped. By this time I did 
 not in the least wish to spend the night in his hay 
 mow. 
 
 The three men had closed in round the door. There 
 was no consulting among them, but presently the sec^ 
 ond one the one with the gun spoke in exactly the 
 tone of his brother. 
 
 "We ain t got no haymow. We gin up keepin cattle. 
 You better go on to Foster s. They got thirty cows." 
 
 "Where is Foster s? And how far is it?" 
 
 The third one spoke. "It s on a piece, up the road. 
 A white house with two red barns. Them s the only 
 painted barns in the Hollow. You better hustle. It s 
 gittin late." 
 
 "Could you give me a glass of water?" 
 
 The first one answered. "We ain t got no glass." 
 The door was shut in my face. 
 
 I stepped down the bank into the road again and 
 turned but not in the direction of "Foster s." It was 
 foolish of me, I dare say, but my chief desire was to 
 get nearer the entrance to the Hollow, nearer the vil 
 lage, nearer the world. "Foster s" was the only sug 
 gestion of hospitality, apparently, that the inhabitants 
 of Martin s Hollow could make. But "Foster s" was up 
 the valley, nearer that unfinished loop where the woods 
 came down. I wanted every step I took to lead me 
 out of the Hollow, not deeper in. And "Foster s" was 
 problematical, in any case. The painted barns sounded 
 promising, as if they held whatever prosperity the val 
 ley had to offer; yet the recurring suggestion might 
 as easily be sinister as helpful. At all events, I would 
 not go up the gorge instead of down. I was alone, by 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 113 
 
 night, between two storms, in a valley where I trusted 
 no one. I would go down the road. There would be 
 comfort in seeing it or, rather, feeling it gradually 
 widen to the outer world. So I plodded on, away from 
 the stone house, away from "Foster s." 
 
 The thing was becoming dreamlike: my clogged 
 steps taking me, with decreasing speed, nowhere; and 
 each human encounter more sinister than the last. The 
 wind rose and fell, the trees swayed, and now and then 
 dark forms wavered in a hillside pasture. The atmos 
 phere, too, was not without that electrical suspense 
 which is the very breath of thunderous weather. The 
 Hollow seemed to be keyed up, waiting for something. 
 The drunken singing, the foolish ancient s curiosity, 
 the malicious cackle behind the closed door, the surly 
 speech of the armed brothers, the way in which I was 
 flung to "Foster s" at every turn all made me feel an 
 imperilled outsider in some crazy tragedy. The very 
 winds seemed to be in the business: every one in that 
 abominable valley was in it except me. Whatever it 
 was if it was only a human mood I did not wish to 
 be in it. I only desired, with a direct childlike passion, 
 a roof over my head, a chance to change into dry socks 
 and shoes, and a stiff drink of Scotch out of my flask 
 against the chill. The very road seemed to catch at 
 my feet as I walked; the unbroken darkness ahead of 
 me defied my efforts to emerge from the detestable 
 gorge, or to make connections with anything, any one, 
 of my own kind. I had lost all sense of time: I no 
 longer took out my watch, even for irony s sake. I 
 walked on and on, wet, tired, footsore, fatalistically 
 oppressed, dreading every rod of the valley road that 
 stretched on before me in the illimitable dark of a 
 nightmare. Only dawn could rescue me, I suspected; 
 and dawn was far away. But rest I would find; and 
 
114 VALIANT DUST 
 
 shelter, even though I could not sleep and a chill was 
 unescapable. I would not, I felt with blind wrath, be 
 beaten by a few fools in a God-forsaken valley not ten 
 miles from a railway. 
 
 Finally, I came to another house, set far back from 
 the road. The shutters were closed, but between the 
 slats I could see scattered lights within. No flame 
 could live in that wind, so this time I groped to the 
 bottom of my rucksack and found my little electric 
 flashlight. This enabled me to get a good look at the 
 place before I undertook the flagged path. The house 
 was large and ill-kept, but I could see by the propor 
 tions and the general hint of detail that it had once 
 had dignity. Though it was in sad need of paint and, 
 I suspected from my brief survey, of repairs, it looked 
 water-tight which was all I cared for. The same 
 could hardly be said of the barns. Great gaps between 
 the boards, and a crazy inclination of the walls, showed 
 that they had long been unused to shelter anything. 
 The roof of that house should cover my head until 
 morning, or I would know why. The perfectly respon 
 sible pedestrian is by no means unknown in these hills, 
 and I flattered myself that, if I was disreputable, it 
 was at all events not after the fashion of a tramp. I 
 knocked authoritatively on the front door with my 
 stick making it rattle, and flaking off, I regret to say, 
 a little more of its scanty paint. 
 
 I saw a light passing from room to room within the 
 house, then saw it extinguished. Presently I heard 
 footsteps. The door was neither locked nor bolted, 
 evidently, for it opened easily. 
 
 The figure that stood before me on the threshold 
 struck me dumb. I could not get out my prepared 
 speech, with its cunning combination of pathos, sim 
 plicity, and graceful firmness. The room behind the 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 115 
 
 woman was lighted faintly by four candles set in a 
 row on a central table. They did not flicker in the 
 draught from the open door. I dare say there was no 
 draught; that the wind was, at the moment, hurrying 
 round the other corners of the house, and that the ex 
 ceeding stillness of the flames in all that hurly-burly 
 was natural enough. But, at the instant, it did not 
 seem natural; and I wondered, somewhere at the back 
 of my brain, "Why four? Why four?" 
 
 The woman who surveyed me in silence was enough, 
 as I think any one would have admitted, to put a curse 
 on the candles for any traveller to whom she stood 
 suddenly revealed. She was well above middle height, 
 but her shoulders were fearfully bowed; and her thick 
 white hair, cropped short, stood out like a wild mane. 
 The candles were behind her, so that I could not see 
 her eyes, but I could make out the thinness of the 
 face, and the nose and the chin that approached each 
 other over the toothless mouth. I knew at once that 
 all the stage crones I had ever seen were mere mocker 
 ies of make-up. Still I was absolutely silent, and still 
 she did not ask me my business. Over her misshapen 
 shoulder, behind the table, I saw four chairs precisely 
 placed, and, behind those, four-ill-assorted mirrors 
 hung askew on the wall from which the paper was 
 peeling. And still we stared at each other with no word. 
 
 Finally she stood aside, obviously meaning for me 
 to come in. 
 
 Then I stammered out the ruins of my speech 
 hypnotized, simply, by the situation; for as soon as 
 I saw her and the room in which she stood, my inten 
 tion to stop there had slipped quite away. She paid 
 no attention to my words, but put her hand on my 
 arm and drew me inside the door. I hardly realized 
 what I was doing. Not a muscle opposed her touch. 
 
116 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Only when I found myself standing in the room itself, 
 I wondered why I had gone in. I put my hand on the 
 knob, intending to pass back at once across the thresh 
 old, but she shook her head. I waited, simulating 
 patience, to see what she would do, for one look at her 
 eyes and one quick comprehensive glance about the 
 room had explained everything. There were four 
 spoons on the table and four shovels carefully stacked 
 in the corner against one of the doors. Otherwise 
 except for a heap of red woollen cloth, evidently an 
 old curtain, on the floor beside me the room was 
 empty. The careful art of madness had arranged the 
 room, and the hand that had done it was the hand 
 that, a moment since, had been laid on my arm. The 
 eyes and the room together told me everything. 
 
 Then she spoke. "Have you seen them?" 
 
 I shook my head. "I haven t seen any one." And 
 I started to go out, but she twisted herself behind me 
 and shut the door. 
 
 She seemed disappointed. "You haven t seen her, 
 have you?" The dreadful brown eyes came an inch 
 nearer my face. 
 
 "No no one." 
 
 She nodded satisfied. "He isn t here." 
 
 "No, I am sure he isn t. There isn t any one here 
 except you, is there?" I spoke conversationally, edg 
 ing my way to the door, pushing her slightly before 
 me. My hand was on the knob again. 
 
 "Oh, yes, the house is full. But he isn t here. I 
 wouldn t let him in. You know I wouldn t." 
 
 Her voice was very deep, and her speech, though 
 ordinary enough, was not the slipshod idiom of the 
 other inhabitants of the Hollow whom I had en 
 countered. 
 
 I opened the door an inch or two open it farther 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 117 
 
 I could not, she was so close to it. A big moth flew 
 into one of the nearly burned-out candles, sizzling 
 loudly. She started towards it, and I opened the door 
 wider. I did not wish to make any sudden dash, for 
 somewhere back in my head was book-wisdom to the 
 effect that one must be intensely quiet with the insane. 
 She pulled the moth out with her long fingers and came 
 back. Her movements were exceedingly quick, but be 
 fore she reached me I had time to open the door wide, 
 and to pick up the red curtain and drop it on the floor 
 again between her and me. It parted and fell in four 
 pieces. She did not tread on it; she got down on her 
 knees to push it aside. But by that time I was on the 
 flagging in front of the house. 
 
 "Good-night," I said, as I turned still forcing my 
 self to move slowly. 
 
 "He isn t here. Come in, come in." The wind blew 
 the white mop of hair wildly as she craned her neck 
 out into the darkness. 
 
 "I know he isn t. But I have to go, you see." I 
 was half-way down the path, walking very slowly, 
 though every muscle cried haste, and I was dripping 
 with sweat. 
 
 "You re going to find him," the voice boomed after 
 me. But, thank heaven, she did not stir. 
 
 "Not I." I was still walking on, but looking back 
 at her over my shoulder as I went. A coquettish, 
 prancing effect it must have given mel At the gate 
 I turned squarely and looked up at the house. One of 
 the candles guttered out, and she must have heard 
 the faint sputter of it, for she turned from the wind 
 and the night and rushed back into the room, slam 
 ming the door. Mingled with the crash of the closing 
 door I heard an angry scream not like other screams. 
 The singular volume of her voice, quite uncontrolled 
 
118 VALIANT DUST 
 
 by mind or sense, lent it a quality that I can never 
 describe. Evidently her mad logic saw in the four 
 candle-flames some desperate symbol. I stepped down 
 into the road, and almost immediately I heard a clatter 
 of breaking glass, as if she had mistaken a window 
 for the door. I did not wait to hear more, but broke 
 across the road into the orchard opposite, where I 
 could neither be seen nor divined. Behind a twisted 
 apple-tree, long past bearing, I listened; but at the end 
 of five minutes all was still silent, except for the steady 
 choral chanting of the wind. 
 
 I reconnoitred carefully with my flashlight, taking 
 good care to interpose my body constantly between 
 the little spot of illumination and the road. I had no 
 desire to make any further attempt at demanding 
 shelter, though my watch, which I drew out gingerly, 
 showed me it was scarcely past ten o clock. I asked 
 only to live out the hours between then and daylight 
 with no human interruption. My cautious search re 
 vealed to me a little cave ahead of me in the hillside 
 the entrance shored up with stones, after the troglodyte 
 fashion of the countryside. Very slowly I made my 
 way to it. A vegetable-cellar was not the retreat I 
 should have chosen, but the broken and gaping door 
 suggested that it was no longer used that at least it 
 was not likely to be occupied. It was a loathsome hole, 
 I found, when I got in. My battery ran down at that 
 moment, and I was reduced to striking more matches. 
 Their little flicker made almost no impression on the 
 stenchy blackness of the place, but by dint of feeling 
 the entire circumference of the walls with a firm hand, 
 I assured myself of its proportions and its emptiness. 
 A rough trough was half -filled with rotten sacking, 
 and across the hard earth floor something brilliant 
 and green writhed in a hundred convolutions. I 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 119 
 
 started it was so rankly serpentine in that wavering 
 match-flare but it was only a potato-vine grossly in 
 tent on surviving. My chief comfort in being reduced 
 to this shelter was that it had obviously long been 
 out of use. "If she wants potatoes in the middle of 
 the night, she won t come here for them," I found 
 myself gravely whispering. I pulled to the rotten door 
 there was, of course, no inside fastening, and I 
 could only wedge it with sacking in a makeshift 
 fashion, against the wind. The gaps in the boards 
 were many, however, and I withdrew into a corner of 
 the cellar to light my pipe, calculating angles of vision 
 as best I could. I did not care to have the tiniest spot 
 of light visible from the road. 
 
 With a great deal of meticulous labor I got out socks 
 and shoes and flask from my rucksack. It really took 
 two hands on that windy night to keep a match going. 
 Finally I managed it, and sitting in the dark on the 
 edge of the trough, I changed into dry footgear and 
 took the most solitary drink I have ever had. There 
 was no hope of a restful position, but by sitting cross- 
 legged in the trough I could lean against the cold stones 
 of the wall behind. I hoped that somnolence would 
 come, if not sleep. 
 
 In a measure, I suppose, it did; for though I heard 
 hours later, as it seemed the baying of hounds, the 
 sound had some fantastic context that must have be 
 longed in part to a dream. A pistol-shot followed the 
 dogs baying, but it, too, wove itself into some vision 
 that I was sufficiently awake to know was partly sleep- 
 induced. The rest of the night was silent except for 
 the sudden gusts of wind and the patter of milder rains. 
 Now and then I relieved my cramped discomfort by 
 pacing the narrow floor of the cellar, but, luckily for 
 me, I was too tired to keep, through the endless hours, 
 
120 VALIANT DUST 
 
 unbrokenly alert. My nervousness dropped: I did 
 not feel alarmed. I was in a kind of trance, and my 
 only hold on waking sanity was to say to myself oc 
 casionally in a whisper: "Morning will come." I was 
 to that extent safe on the outer edge of nightmare, and 
 I spurred myself with the assurance now and then, 
 to keep myself on that outer edge. But Martin s Hol 
 low was very nearly impregnable to common sense. 
 
 Dawn finally came. I have had, ever since that 
 night, an absurd consideration for the solar system. 
 Quite honestly, it seemed to me in the hour before sun 
 rise as if nothing less fundamental and august than the 
 central mechanism of the spheres could release me. If 
 anything in magic or human science could have per 
 petuated that night, I should have felt sure that dawn 
 would never break. If I had not known beyond a 
 doubt that Martin s Hollow was ultimately subject 
 to the laws of the planet, I should have imagined suns 
 rising over other valleys of earth and leaving this free 
 in its own Stygian aberration. But against that doubt 
 the muscles of my mind contrived to array themselves. 
 Otherwise I should probably long since have qualified 
 myself for residence in Martin s Hollow. 
 
 When the light came, in a blessed irresistible flow, 
 I shook myself together and prepared to start on my 
 way. I was cold to the marrow, and stiff in every joint. 
 Somewhere inside me an insistent little pain protested 
 that I needed food. I was hungry, in no ravenous way, 
 but with a factitious exhaustion, as if I had been fast 
 ing for forty hours. And, reassured though I was by 
 the first streaks of light on the orchard outside, I was 
 loath to break my flimsy barricade. I had no wish 
 to look at the house across the road, though it was 
 morning of a perfect summer day. But the desire to 
 have done with Martin s Hollow overbore all else, and 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 121 
 
 about five o clock I stepped into the worn-out orchard 
 (not without bravado) like a free man. I kept to the 
 fields for a time, for even in the light I did not care 
 to be hailed from the house opposite. I was not more 
 than three-quarters of a mile above the entrance or 
 the outlet, rather, as my mood put it of the Hollow, 
 and I made my way at a good pace to the main road. 
 I passed a few houses, but did not stop. Even if I 
 sbould have luck, I preferred to eat elsewhere. 
 
 In half an hour I was clear of the gorge and on a 
 road that, as my map showed, would take me to 
 Hebron the "village" of my over-night colloquies. I 
 had turned for one view of the Hollow as I stepped 
 into the main road, and was constrained to admit that 
 it was very lovely. Far up the right-hand side I saw 
 some red barns undoubtedly " Foster s." 
 
 Presently a buckboard overtook me. The driver 
 half pulled up as he passed and nodded mechanically. 
 He was a cheerful, shrewd-looking farmer, and I de 
 cided to ask him for a lift. The man stopped and 
 looked me over. 
 
 "Get in," he said abruptly. 
 
 I thanked him politely, and described my general 
 situation. Instinct warned me not, at the moment, to 
 mention how I had spent the night. Some careful 
 references to the countryside at large, the mention of 
 a certain judge I knew in a small town down the rail 
 way, and probably my obvious cockneyism, seemed to 
 reassure him. He broke through one or two of the 
 outer walls of his reserve. 
 
 "Got caught in the rain on Silvernail, did you? Well, 
 them showers will come up, this time o year. Seems 
 as if we d had more n our fair share this season, though. 
 Been awful bad for the hayin ." 
 
 I made a few remarks well calculated to show that 
 
122 VALIANT DUST 
 
 I was familiar with the problems of the farmer. I also 
 put a few questions as to crops. My English was as 
 careful as I could make it. A few more outlying bas 
 tions crumbled silently. Finally he turned to me. 
 
 "Pretty early start I got this mornin ." 
 
 "It is early for any one who didn t get caught on 
 Silvernail in a shower." 
 
 "Yes had to take the constable over to Curtis. He 
 come to my place about half -past three. Go way, 
 John/ says I, chickens ain t up yet. You harness up 
 your team an take me over to Curtis, says he. County 
 business. An county business it was, but I ain t had 
 my breakfast yet, count of his county business." He 
 laughed. "They had the hounds out all night, but the 
 rain come an spoiled the scent, an he went over to 
 Curtis to get the sheriff an a posse, an they ll be back 
 some time along. I won t be drivin em, though. I m 
 goin to have my breakfast." 
 
 At this moment I happened to remember a college 
 acquaintance of mine who had been born most respect 
 ably in Hebron. The man slewed his horses skilfully 
 round a bad break in the road and settled down to 
 comfortable narrative. 
 
 "I knew there was trouble up in Martin s Hollow 
 weeks ago, but I didn t know when I went to bed last 
 night as how it had broke out again. One of the Teeder 
 boys shot up his cousin yesterday, an made for the 
 woods. His three brothers helpin him, of course." 
 
 "What was the trouble?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, the trouble goes back a piece, I guess. You 
 can t keep track o things over in Martin s Hollow. 
 We don t see them over our side much, except the 
 Fosters. They ve got a fine farm up there, but they re 
 down sick with typhoid now. They re about the only 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 123 
 
 folks in the Hollow that amounts to anything. It s 
 kind o gone to seed. If Jim Foster didn t have a 
 hankerin after his father s old place, he d move away, 
 too. Guess he d sell, but people ain t buyin much in 
 Martin s Hollow. It s too discouragin . Used to be 
 some good places up there, too." 
 
 We went over a dangerous grade crossing with 
 due solemnity. 
 
 "I never want to see the place again," I ventured. 
 And I told him of my vain hunt for a lodging, without 
 going into details. I was sure that the brothers in the 
 old stone house were Teeders, and I had no desire to 
 be detained as a witness in a clumsy country trial. 
 
 "Sho!" He laughed. "Excuse me, but the idea of 
 your goin round from one of those houses to the other 
 for a Christian lodgin is a little too much. How come 
 you didn t go to Foster s? Twouldn t have done any 
 good, for they re down sick, but you could have slept 
 in the barn, maybe. The hired man s all right. Less 
 they took you for Sam Teeder in the dark!" He 
 chuckled over his mild joke. "It was a bad night to 
 be in Martin s Hollow. Constable had the dogs all 
 over the place. Between you an me, I don t think 
 they ll find Sam. He might be in most any house over 
 there." 
 
 "Are they all such desperate characters?" 
 
 "Well, I wouldn t say desperate. Most of em ain t 
 up to that." He laughed again. "But they re all con 
 nected up over there Teeders an Rowells an Skeeles 
 an I guess they ve got sense enough to stick by each 
 other. The man that was shot was a Skeele, but he 
 an his family quarrelled, an I guess the whole crowd 
 would stick by Sam Teeder. Andy Skeele didn t have 
 anybody much left but his old father, an he s half 
 cracked." 
 
124 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Is there also an old woman in the Hollow who s 
 more than half cracked?" 
 
 "Old Mrs. Rowell, the Teeder boys aunt? She s 
 crazy as a loon. You didn t go there?" 
 
 "I did." Again I gave no details. 
 
 The man slapped his thigh. "Well, of all the 
 Guess you didn t want to stop after you seen her, did 
 you? I drove a patent-medicine fellow over to Mar 
 tin s Hollow last spring. Hebron s dry as a bone, an 
 all those folks can get is some kind of tonic with a 
 big per cent of alcohol in it. Well, he wanted to stop 
 there the house is kind of imposin , you know an I 
 thought I d let him. I don t care about agents much. 
 I stayed with the horses. Old Mrs. Rowell come to 
 the door, an he lit out with one whoop. I had to laugh. 
 I don t know what she said to him, but he wouldn t go 
 anywheres else except Foster s, an of course they 
 didn t want his stuff. Excuse me, but you certainly 
 did get the worst of the bunch. My father s told me 
 she used to be a real pretty woman, too, before anythin 
 happened to her. There was plenty of good stock up in 
 Martin s Hollow once, but well, you know how tis." 
 He looked a little shamefaced and lowered his voice. 
 "Fact is, they ve intermarried and intermarried over 
 there, till you don t know what relation any of them 
 is to each other. Guess they don t know themselves. 
 Now and then they have a row. Them Teeder boys 
 won t last long. They ain t worth the stones in their 
 own pasture." 
 
 "What was the Teeder-Skeele quarrel about?" 
 
 "Oh, it began with a girl. She died last winter, 
 but there s been bad blood ever since." 
 
 "Was she from Martin s Hollow?" 
 
 He did not answer my question directly. "Her name 
 was Rowell." 
 
MARTIN S HOLLOW 125 
 
 Though I had known Pete Manning at college, I was 
 still an outsider, and Martin s Hollow was in the town 
 ship. I quite understood the psychology of it, and did 
 not press him further. We drove into the peaceful vil 
 lage of Hebron, and I went to the hotel for breakfast. 
 
 I did not go on with my walking-trip. I was 
 afraid that my tone was past recovering. I took the 
 afternoon train, very glad to escape from hotel-porch 
 and corner-store gossip. The talk was all of Martin s 
 Hollow, and I was so bursting with the knowledge of 
 how I could have interested the inhabitants of Hebron, 
 had I chosen, that I was afraid I should proceed to 
 interest them in spite of myself. 
 
 Towards noon I met the man who had driven me into 
 Hebron. He waved his hand. " Spose you re goin 
 up Silvernail to-night?" he inquired jocosely as he 
 passed. The question was purely rhetorical. My an 
 swer also was purely rhetorical. 
 
 I went back to town where there were a dozen 
 thrillers on my desk, and I reviewed them with a pen 
 dipped in vitriol. With a Martin s Hollow in the 
 world, there really seemed no excuse for people s not 
 doing better. 
 
V 
 
 THE KNIGHT S MOVE 
 
 Havelock the Dane settled himself back in his chair 
 and set his feet firmly on the oaken table. Chantry 
 let him do it, though some imperceptible inch of his 
 body winced. For the oak of it was neither fumed nor 
 golden; it was English to its ancient core, and the 
 table had served in the refectory of monks before 
 Henry VIII decided that monks shocked him. Nat 
 urally Chantry did not want his friends boots havock 
 ing upon it. But more important than to possess the 
 table was to possess it nonchalantly. He let the big 
 man dig his heel in. Any man but Havelock the Dane 
 would have known better. But Havelock did as he 
 pleased, and you either gave him up or bore it. Chantry 
 did not want to give him up. 
 
 Chantry was a feminist; a bit of an aesthete but 
 canny at affairs; good-looking, and temperate, and less 
 hipped on the matter of sex than feminist gentlemen 
 are wont to be. That is to say, while he vaguely 
 wanted I homme moyen sensuel to mend his ways, he 
 did not expect him to change fundamentally. He 
 rather thought the women would manage all that when 
 they got the vote. You see, he was not a socialist: 
 only a feminist. 
 
 Havelock the Dane, on the other hand, was by no 
 means a feminist, but was a socialist. What probably 
 brought the two men together apart from their com- 
 
 126 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 127 
 
 mon likableness was that each, in his way, refused 
 to go the whole hog. They sometimes threshed the 
 thing out together, unable to decide on a programme, 
 but always united at last in their agreement that things 
 were wrong. Havelock trusted Labor, and Chantry 
 trusted Woman; the point was that neither trusted 
 men like themselves, with a little money and an in 
 herited code of honor. Havelock wanted his money 
 taken away from him; Chantry desired his code to be 
 trampled on by innumerable feminine feet. But each 
 was rather helpless, for both expected these things to 
 be done for them. 
 
 Except for this tie of ineffectually, they had nothing 
 special in common. Havelock s life had been adven 
 turous in the good old-fashioned sense: the bars down 
 and a deal of wandering. Chantry had sown so many 
 crops of intellectual wild oats that even the people who 
 came for subscriptions might be forgiven for thinking 
 him a mental libertine, good for subscriptions and not 
 much else. Between them, they boxed the compass 
 about once a week. Havelock had more of what is 
 known as "personality" than Chantry; Chantry more 
 of what is known as "culture." They dovetailed, on 
 the whole, not badly. 
 
 Havelock, this afternoon, was full of a story. 
 Chantry wanted to listen, though he knew that he could 
 have listened better if Havelock s heel had not been 
 quite so ponderous on the saecular oak. He took refuge 
 in a cosmic point of view. That was the only point 
 of view from which Havelock (it was, by the way, his 
 physical type only that had caused him to be nick 
 named the Dane: his ancestors had come over from 
 England in great discomfort two centuries since), in 
 his blonde hugeness, became negligible. You had to 
 climb very high to see him small. 
 
128 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "You never did the man justice," Havelock was say 
 ing. 
 
 "Justice be hanged!" replied Chantry. 
 
 "Quite so: the feminist slogan." 
 
 "A socialist can t afford to throw stones." 
 
 The retorts were spoken sharply, on both sides. 
 Then both men laughed. They had too often had it 
 out seriously to mind; these little insults were mere 
 convention. 
 
 "Get at your story," resumed Chantry. "I suppose 
 there s a woman in it: a nasty cat invented by your 
 own prejudices. There usually is." 
 
 "Never a woman at all. If there were, I shouldn t 
 be asking for your opinion. My opinion, of course, is 
 merely the rational one. I don t side-step the truth be 
 cause a little drama gets in. I am appealing to you 
 because you are the average man who hasn t seen the 
 light. I honestly want to know what you think. 
 There s a reason." 
 
 "What s the reason?" 
 
 "I ll tell you that later. Now, I ll tell you the 
 story." Havelock screwed his tawny eyebrows to 
 gether for a moment before plunging in. "Humph!" 
 he ejaculated at last. "Much good anybody is in a case 
 like this. What did you say you thought of Fergu 
 son?" 
 
 "I didn t think anything of Ferguson except that 
 he had a big brain for biology. He was a loss." 
 
 "No personal opinion?" 
 
 "I never like people who think so well of themselves 
 as all that." 
 
 "No opinion about his death?" 
 
 "Accidental, as they said I suppose." 
 
 "Oh, they said! It was suicide, I tell you." 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 129 
 
 "Suicide? Really?" Chantry s brown eyes lighted 
 for an instant. "Oh, poor chap; I m sorry." 
 
 It did not occur to him immediately to ask how 
 Havelock knew. He trusted a plain statement from 
 Havelock. 
 
 "I m not. Or yes, I am. I hate to have a man 
 inconsistent." 
 
 "It s inconsistent for any one to kill himself. But 
 it s frequently done." 
 
 Havelock, hemming and hawing like this, was more 
 nearly a bore than Chantry had ever known him. 
 
 "Not for Ferguson." 
 
 "Oh, well, never mind Ferguson," Chantry yawned. 
 "Tell me some anecdote out of your tapestried past." 
 
 "I won t." 
 
 Havelock dug his heel in harder. Chantry all but 
 told him to take his feet down, but stopped himself 
 just in time. 
 
 "Well, go on, then," he said, "but it doesn t sound 
 interesting. I hate all tales of suicide. And there isn t 
 even a woman in it," he sighed maliciously. 
 
 "Oh, if it comes to that, there is." 
 
 "But you said " 
 
 "Not in it exactly, unless you go in for post hoc, 
 propter hoc" 
 
 "Oh, drive on." Chantry was pettish. 
 
 But at that point Havelock the Dane removed his 
 feet from the refectory table. He will probably never 
 know why Chantry, just then, began to be amiable. 
 
 "Excuse me, Havelock. Of course, whatever drove 
 a man like Ferguson to suicide is interesting. And 
 I may say he managed it awfully well. Not a hint, 
 anywhere." 
 
 "Well, a scientist ought to get something out of it 
 for himself. Ferguson certainly knew how. Can t you 
 
130 VALIANT DUST 
 
 imagine him sitting up there, cocking his hair" (an 
 odd phrase, but Chantry understood), "and deciding 
 just how to circumvent the coroner? I can." 
 
 "Ferguson hadn t much imagination." 
 
 "A coroner doesn t take imagination. He takes a 
 little hard, expert knowledge." 
 
 "I dare say." But Chantry s mind was wandering 
 through other defiles. "Odd, that he should have 
 snatched his life out of the very jaws of what-do-you- 
 call-it, once, only to give it up at last, politely, of 
 his own volition." 
 
 "You may well say it." Havelock spoke with more 
 earnestness than he had done. "If you re not a so 
 cialist when I get through with you, Chantry, my 
 boy " 
 
 "Lord, Lord! don t tell me your beastly socialism 
 is mixed up with it all ! I never took to Ferguson, but 
 he was no syndicalist. In life or in death, I d swear 
 to that." 
 
 "Ah, no. If he had been! But all I mean is that, 
 in a properly regulated state, Ferguson s tragedy would 
 not have occurred." 
 
 "So it was a tragedy?" 
 
 "He was a loss to the state, God knows." 
 
 Had they been speaking of anything less dignified 
 than death and genius, Havelock might have sounded 
 a little austere and silly. As it was Chantry bit back, 
 and swallowed, his censure. 
 
 "That s why I want to know what you think," went 
 on Havelock, irrelevantly. "Whether your damned 
 code of honor is worth Ferguson." 
 
 "It s not my damned code any more than yours," 
 broke in Chantry. 
 
 "Yes, it is. Or, at least, we break it down at differ- 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 131 
 
 ent points theoretically. Actually, we walk all round 
 it every day to be sure it s intact. Let s be honest." 
 
 "Honest as you like, if you ll only come to the point. 
 Whew, but it s hot! Let s have a gin-fizz." 
 
 "You aren t serious." 
 
 Havelock seemed to try to lash himself into a rage. 
 But he was so big that he could never have got all 
 of himself into a rage at once. You felt that only part 
 of him was angry his toes, perhaps, or his com 
 plexion. 
 
 Chantry rang for ice and lemon, and took gin, sugar, 
 and a siphon out of a carved cabinet. 
 
 "Go slow," he said. He himself was going very 
 slow, with a beautiful crystal decanter which he set lov 
 ingly on the oaken table. "Go slow," he repeated, 
 more easily, when he had set it down. "I can think 
 just as well with a gin-fizz as without one. And I didn t 
 know Ferguson well; and I didn t like him at all. I 
 read his books, and I admired him. But he looked 
 like the devil the devil, you ll notice, not a devil. 
 With a dash of Charles I by Van Dyck. The one 
 standing by a horse. As you say, he cocked his hair. 
 It went into little horns, above each eyebrow. I m 
 sorry he s lost to the world, but it doesn t get me. He 
 may have been a saint, for all I know; but there you 
 are I never cared particularly to know. I am serious. 
 Only, somehow, it doesn t touch me." 
 
 And he proceeded to make use of crushed ice and 
 lemon juice. 
 
 "Oh, blow all that," said Havelock the Dane finally, 
 over the top of his glass. "I m going to tell you, any 
 how. Only I wish you would forget your prejudices. I 
 want an opinion." 
 
 "Go on." 
 
 Chantry made himself comfortable. 
 
132 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "You remember the time when Ferguson didn t go 
 down on the Argentina?" 
 
 "I do. Ferguson just wouldn t go down, you know. 
 He d turn up smiling, without even a chill, and mean 
 while lots of good fellows would be at the bottom of 
 the sea." 
 
 "Prejudice again," barked Havelock. "Yet in point 
 of fact, it s perfectly true. And you would have pre 
 ferred him to drown." 
 
 "I was very glad he was saved." Chantry said it in a 
 stilted manner. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because his life was really important to the world." 
 
 Chantry might have been distributing tracts. His 
 very voice sounded falsetto. 
 
 "Exactly. Well, that is what Ferguson thought." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "He told me." 
 
 "You must have known him well. Thank heaven, 
 I never did." 
 
 Havelock flung out a huge hand. "Oh, get off that 
 ridiculous animal you re riding, Chantry, and come to 
 the point. You mean you don t think Ferguson should 
 have admitted it?" 
 
 Chantry s tone changed. "Well, one doesn t." 
 
 The huge hand, clenched into a fist, came down on 
 the table. The crystal bottle was too heavy to rock, 
 but the glasses jingled and a spoon slid over the edge 
 of its saucer. 
 
 "There it is what I was looking for." 
 
 "What were you looking for?" Chantry s wonder 
 was not feigned. 
 
 "For your hydra-headed Prejudice. Makes me want 
 to play Hercules." 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 133 
 
 "Oh, drop your metaphors, Havelock. Get into the 
 game. What is it?" 
 
 "It s this: that you don t think or affect not to 
 think that it s decent for a man to recognize his 
 own worth." 
 
 Chantry did not retort. He dropped his chin on his 
 chest and thought for a moment. Then he spoke, very 
 quietly and apologetically. 
 
 "Well I don t see you telling another man how 
 wonderful you are. It isn t immoral, it simply isn t 
 manners. And if Ferguson boasted to you that he 
 was saved when so many went down, it was worse 
 than bad manners. He ought to have been kicked for 
 it. It s the kind of phenomenal luck that it would have 
 been decent to regret." 
 
 Havelock set his massive lips firmly together. You 
 could not say that he pursed that cyclopean mouth. 
 
 "Ferguson did not boast. He merely told me. He 
 was, I think, a modest man." 
 
 Incredulity beyond any power of laughter to express 
 settled on Chantry s countenance. "Modest? and he 
 told you?" 
 
 "The whole thing." Havelock s voice was heavy 
 enough for tragedy. "Listen. Don t interrupt me 
 once. Ferguson told me that, when the explosion came, 
 he looked round considered, for fully a minute, his 
 duty. He never lost control of himself once, he said, 
 and I believe him. The Argentina was a small boat, 
 making a winter passage. There were very few cabin 
 passengers. No second cabin, but plenty of steerage. 
 She sailed, you remember, from Naples. He had been 
 doing work, some very important work, in the Aquar 
 ium. The only other person of consequence I am 
 speaking in the most literal and unsnobbish sense 
 in the first cabin, was Benson. No" (with a lifted 
 
134 VALIANT DUST 
 
 hand), "don t interrupt me. Benson, as we all know, 
 was an international figure. But Benson was getting 
 old. His son could be trusted to carry on the House 
 of Benson. In fact, every one suspected that the son 
 had become more important than the old man. He 
 had put through the last big loan while his father was 
 taking a rest-cure in Italy. That is how Benson pere 
 happened to be on the Argentina. The newspapers 
 never sufficiently accounted for that. A private deck 
 on the Schrecklichkeit would have been more his size. 
 Ferguson made it out: the old man got wild, suddenly, 
 at the notion of their putting anything through with 
 out him. He trusted his gouty bones to the Argentina." 
 
 "Sounds plausible, but " Chantry broke in. 
 
 "If you interrupt again," said Havelock, "I ll hit 
 you, with all the strength I ve got." 
 
 Chantry grunted. You had to take Havelock the 
 Dane as you found him. 
 
 "Ferguson saw the whole thing clear. Old Benson 
 had just gone into the smoking-room. Ferguson was 
 on the deck outside his own stateroom. The only 
 person on board who could possibly be considered as 
 important as Ferguson was Benson; and he had good 
 reason to believe that every one would get on well 
 enough without Benson. He had just time, then, to 
 put on a life-preserver, melt into his stateroom and get 
 a little pile of notes, very important ones, and drop into 
 a boat. No, don t interrupt. I know what you are 
 going to say. Women and children. What do you 
 suppose a lot of Neapolitan peasants meant to Fergu 
 son or to you, and me, either? He didn t do anything 
 outrageous; he just dropped into a boat. As a result, 
 we had a big book a year later. No" (again crush 
 ing down a gesture of Chantry s), "don t say anything 
 about the instincts of a gentleman. If Ferguson hadn t 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 135 
 
 been perfectly cool, his instincts would have governed 
 him. He would have dashed about trying to save 
 people, and then met the waves with a noble gesture. 
 He had time to be reasonable; not instinctive. The 
 world was the gainer, as he jolly well knew it would 
 be or where would have been the reasonableness? I 
 don t believe Ferguson cared a hang about keeping 
 his individual machine going for its own sake. But he 
 knew he was a valuable person. His mind was a Kohi- 
 noor among minds. It stands to reason that you save 
 the Kohinoor and let the little stones go. Well, that s 
 not the story. Only I wanted to get that out of the 
 way first, or the story wouldn t have meant anything. 
 Did you wish," he finished graciously, "to ask a ques 
 tion?" 
 
 Chantry made a violent gesture of denial. "Ask a 
 question about a hog like that? God forbid!" 
 
 "Um-m-m." Havelock seemed to muse within him 
 self. "You will admit that if a jury of impartial men 
 of sense could have sat, just then, on that slanting deck, 
 they would have agreed that Ferguson s life was worth 
 more to the world than all the rest of the boiling put 
 together?" 
 
 "Yes, but " 
 
 "Well, there wasn t any jury. Ferguson had to be it. 
 I am perfectly sure that if there had been a super-Fer 
 guson on board, our Ferguson would have turned his 
 hand to saving him first. In fact, I honestly believe 
 he was sorry there hadn t been a super-Ferguson. For 
 he had all the instincts of a gentleman ; and it s never 
 a pleasant job making your reason inhibit your in 
 stincts. You can t look at this thing perfectly straight, 
 probably. But if you can t, who can? I don t happen 
 to want an enlightened opinion: I ve got one, right 
 here at home. You don t care about the State: you 
 
136 VALIANT DUST 
 
 want to put it into white petticoats and see it cross 
 a muddy street." 
 
 "I don t wonder the socialists won t have anything 
 to do with you." 
 
 "Because I m not a feminist? I know. Just as the 
 feminists won t have anything to do with you because 
 you re so reactionary. We re both out of it. Fifty 
 years ago, either of us could have been a real prophet, 
 for the price of a hall and cleaning the rotten eggs 
 off our clothes. Now we re too timid for any use. But 
 this is a digression." 
 
 "Distinctly. Is there anything more about Fergu 
 son?" 
 
 "I should say there was. About a year ago, he be 
 came engaged. She s a very nice girl, and I am sure 
 you never heard of her. The engagement wasn t to be 
 announced until just before the marriage, for family 
 reasons of some sort cockering the older generation 
 somehow. I ve forgotten; it s not important. But 
 they would have been married by now, if Ferguson 
 hadn t stepped out." 
 
 "You seem to have been very intimate with Fergu 
 son." 
 
 "He talked to me once just once. The girl was a 
 distant connection of my own. I think that was why. 
 Now I ve got some more things to tell you. I ve let 
 you interrupt a good lot, and if you re through, I d 
 like to start in on the next lap. It isn t easy for me 
 to tell this thing in bits. It s an effort." 
 
 Havelock the Dane set down his second emptied 
 glass and drew a long breath. He proceeded, with 
 quickened pace. 
 
 "He didn t see the girl very often. She lives at 
 some little distance. He was busy you know how 
 he worked and she was chained at home, more or 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 137 
 
 less. Occasionally he slipped away for a week-end, 
 to see her. One time the last time, about two months 
 ago he managed to get in a whole week. It was as 
 near happiness as Ferguson ever got, I imagine; for 
 they were able to fix a date. Good heaven, how he 
 loved that girl! Just before he went, he told me of 
 the engagement. I barely knew her, but, as I said, 
 she s some sort of kin. Then, after he came back, 
 he sent for me to come and see him. I didn t like his 
 cheek, but I went as though I had been a laboratory 
 boy. I m not like you. Ferguson always did get me. 
 He wanted the greatest good of the greatest number. 
 Nothing petty about him. He was a big man. 
 
 "I went, as I say. And Ferguson told [jne, the very 
 first thing, that the engagement was off He began 
 by cocking his hair a good deal. But he almost lost 
 control of himself. He didn t cock it long: he ruffled 
 it instead, with his hands. I thought he was in a 
 queer state, for he seemed to want to give me, with 
 his beautiful scientific precision as if he d been pre 
 paring a slide the details of a country walk he and 
 she had taken the day before he left. It began with 
 grade crossings, and I simply couldn t imagine what 
 he was getting at. It wasn t his business to fight 
 grade crossings though they might be a very pretty 
 symbol for the kind of thing he was fighting, tooth 
 and nail, all the time. I couldn t seem to see it, at 
 first; but finally it came out. There was a grade 
 crossing, with a Took out for the Engine sign, and 
 there was a towheaded infant in rags. They had 
 noticed the infant before. It had bandy legs and 
 granulated eyelids, and seemed to be dumb. It had 
 started them off on eugenics. She was very keen on 
 the subject; Ferguson, being a big scientist, had some 
 reserves. It was a real argument. 
 
138 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Then everything happened at once. Towhead with 
 the sore eyes rocked on to the track simultaneously 
 with the whistle. They were about fifty yards off. 
 Ferguson sprinted back down the hill, the girl scream 
 ing pointlessly meanwhile. There was just time 
 you ll have to take my word for this; Ferguson ex 
 plained it all to me in the most meticulous detail, but 
 I can t repeat that masterpiece of exposition for 
 Ferguson to decide. To decide again, you understand, 
 precisely as he had decided on the Argentina. Rotten 
 luck, wasn t it? He could just have flung towhead 
 out of the way by getting under the engine himself. 
 He grabbed for towhead, but he didn t roll on to the 
 track. So towhead was killed. If he had got there 
 ten seconds earlier, he could have done the trick. He 
 was ten seconds too late to save both Ferguson and 
 towhead. So once more he saved Ferguson. Do 
 you get the situation?" 
 
 "I should say I did!" shouted Chantry. "Twice in 
 a man s life good Lord! I hope you walked out of 
 his house at that point." 
 
 "I didn t. I was very much interested. And by the 
 way, Chantry, if Ferguson had given his life for tow- 
 head, you would have been the first man to write a 
 pleasant little article for some damned highbrow re 
 view, to prove that it was utterly wrong that Fergu 
 son should have exchanged his life for that of a little 
 Polish defective. I can even see you talking about the 
 greatest good of the greatest number. You would have 
 loved the paradox of it: the mistaken martyr, self- 
 preservation the greatest altruism, and all the rest of 
 it. But because Ferguson did exactly what you would 
 have said in your article that he ought to have done, 
 you are in a state of virtuous chill." 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 139 
 
 "I should have written no such article. I don t see 
 how you ca* be so flippant." 
 
 "Flippant I? Have I the figure of a flippant man? 
 Can t you see honestly, now, can t you see? that it 
 was a hideous misfortune for that situation to come 
 to Ferguson twice? Can t you see that it was about as 
 hard luck as a man ever had? Look at it just once 
 from his point of view." 
 
 "I can t," said Chantry frankly. "I can understand 
 a man s being a coward, saving his own skin because 
 he wants to. But to save his own skin on principle 
 humph! Talk of paradoxes: there s one for you. 
 There s not a principle on earth that tells you to save 
 your own life at someone s else expense. If he thought 
 it was principle, he was the bigger defective of the two. 
 Of course it would have been a pity; of course we 
 should all have regretted it; but there s not a human 
 being in this town, high or low, who wouldn t have ap 
 plauded, with whatever regret who wouldn t have 
 said he did the only thing a self-respecting man could 
 do. Of course it s a shame; but that is the only way 
 the race has ever got on: by the strong, because they 
 were strong, going under for the weak, because they 
 were weak. Otherwise we d all be living, to this day, 
 in hell." 
 
 "I know; I know." Havel ock s voice was touched 
 with emotion. "That s the convention invented by 
 individualists, for individualists. All sorts of people 
 would see it that way, still. But you ve got more sense 
 than most; and I will make you at least see the other 
 point of view. Suppose Ferguson to have been a good 
 Catholic or a soldier in the ranks. If his confessor 
 or his commanding officer had told him to save his 
 own skin, you d consider Ferguson justified; you might 
 even consider the priest or the officer justified. The 
 
140 VALIANT DUST 
 
 one thing you can t stand is the man s giving himself 
 those orders. But let s not argue over it now let s go 
 back to the story. I ll make you get Ferguson any 
 how even if I can t make him get you. 
 
 "Well, here comes in the girl." 
 
 "And you said there was no girl in it!" 
 
 Chantry could not resist that. He believed that 
 Havelock s assertion had been made only because he 
 didn t want the girl in it resented her being there. 
 
 "There isn t, as I see it," replied Havelock the Dane 
 quietly. "From my point of view, the story is over. 
 Ferguson s decision: that is the whole thing made 
 more interesting, more valuable, because the repeti 
 tion of the thing proves beyond a doubt that he 
 acted on principle, not on impulse. If he had flung 
 himself into the life-boat because he was a cow 
 ard, he would have been ashamed of it; and whatever 
 he might have done afterwards, he would never have 
 done that thing again. He would have been sensitive: 
 not saving his own life would have turned into an 
 obsession with him. But there is left, I admit, the 
 murder. And murders always take the public. So 
 I ll give you the murder though it throws no light 
 on Ferguson, who is the only thing in the whole ac 
 cursed affair that really counts." 
 
 "The murder? I don t see unless you mean the 
 murdering of the towheaded child." 
 
 "I mean the murder of Ferguson by the girl he 
 loved." 
 
 "You said suicide a little while ago," panted Chan 
 try. 
 
 "Technically, yes. She was a hundred miles away 
 when it happened. But she did it just the same. Oh, 
 I suppose I ve got to tell you, as Ferguson told me." 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 141 
 
 "Did he tell you he was going to kill himself?" 
 Chantry s voice was sharp. 
 
 "He did not. Ferguson wasn t a fool. But it was 
 plain as day to me after it happened, that he had done 
 it himself." 
 
 "How" 
 
 "I m telling you this, am I not? Let me tell it, 
 then. The thing happened in no time, of course. The 
 girl got over screaming, and ran down to the track, 
 frightened out of her wits. The train managed to stop, 
 about twice its own length farther down, round a bend 
 in the track, and the conductor and brakeman came 
 running back. The mother came out of her hovel, car 
 rying twins. The the thing was on the track, 
 across the rails. It was a beastly mess, and Ferguson 
 got the girl away; set her down to cry in a pasture, and 
 then went back and helped out, and gave his testi 
 mony, and left money, a lot of it, with the mother, 
 and all the rest. You can imagine it. No one there 
 considered that Ferguson ought to have saved the 
 child; no one but Ferguson dreamed that he could 
 have. Indeed, an ordinary man, in Ferguson s place, 
 wouldn t have supposed he could. It was only that 
 brain, working like lightning, working as no plain 
 man s could, that had made the calculation and seen. 
 There were no preliminary seconds lost in surprise or 
 shock, you see. Ferguson s mind hadn t been jarred 
 from its pace for an instant. The thing had happened 
 too quickly for any one except Ferguson to un 
 derstand what was going on. Therefore he ought to 
 have laid that super-normal brain under the wheels, 
 of course! 
 
 "Ferguson was so sane, himself, that he couldn t 
 understand, even after he had been engaged six 
 months, our little every-day madnesses. It never oc- 
 
142 VALIANT DUST 
 
 curred to him, when he got back to the girl and she 
 began all sorts of hysterical questions, not to answer 
 them straight. It was by way of describing the event 
 simply, that he informed her that he would just have 
 had time to pull the creature out, but not enough to 
 pull himself back afterwards. Ferguson was used to 
 calculating things in millionths of an inch; she wasn t. 
 I dare say the single second that had given Ferguson 
 time to turn round in his mind, she conceived of as a 
 minute at least. It would have taken her a week to 
 turn round in her own mind, no doubt a month, a 
 year, perhaps. How do I know? But she got the 
 essential fact: that Ferguson had made a choice. Then 
 she rounded on him. It would have killed her to 
 lose him, but she would rather have lost him than to 
 see him standing before her, etc., etc. Ferguson 
 quoted a lot of her talk straight to me, and I can re 
 member it; but you needn t ask me to soil my mouth 
 with it. And half an hour before, she had been saying 
 with a good deal of heat that that little runt ought 
 never to have been born, and that if we had decent 
 laws it never would have been allowed to live. Fergu 
 son said that to me, with a kind of bewilderment. 
 You see, he had made the mistake of taking that little 
 fool seriously. Well, he loved her. You can t go be 
 low that: that s rock-bottom. Ferguson couldn t dig 
 any deeper down for his way out. There was no 
 deeper down. 
 
 "Apparently Ferguson still thought he could argue 
 it out with her. She so believed in eugenics, you see 
 a very radical, compared with Ferguson. It was she 
 who had had no doubt about towhead. And the love 
 part of it seemed to him fixed: it didn t occur to him 
 that that was debatable. So he stuck to something 
 that could be discussed. Then and this was his 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 143 
 
 moment of exceeding folly he caught at the old epi 
 sode of the Argentina. That had nothing to do with 
 her present state of shock. She had seen towhead; 
 but she hadn t seen the sprinkled Mediterranean. 
 And she had accepted that. At least, she had spoken 
 of his survival as though it had been one of the few 
 times when God had done precisely the right thing. 
 So he took that to explain with. The fool! The rea 
 sonable fool! 
 
 "Then oh, then she went wild. (Yet she must 
 have known there were a thousand chances on the Ar 
 gentina for him to throw his life away, and precious 
 few to save it.) She backed up against a tree and 
 stretched her arms out like this" Havelock made a 
 clumsy stage-gesture of aversion from Chantry, the 
 villain. "And for an instant he thought she was afraid 
 of a Jersey cow that had come up to take part in the 
 discussion. So he threw a twig at its nose." 
 
 Chantry s wonder grew, swelled, and burst. 
 
 "Do you mean to say that that safety-deposit vault 
 of a Ferguson told you all this?" 
 
 "As I am telling it to you. Only much more detail, 
 of course and much, much faster. It wasn t like a 
 story at all: it was like like a hemorrhage. I didn t 
 interrupt him as you ve been interrupting me. Well, 
 the upshot of it was that she spurned him quite in the 
 grand manner. She found the opposites of all the 
 nice things she had been saying for six months, and 
 said them. And Ferguson your cocky Ferguson 
 stood and listened, until she had talked herself out, 
 and then went away. He never saw her again; and 
 when he sent for me, he had made up his mind that 
 she never intended to take any of it back. So he 
 stepped out, I tell you." 
 
 "As hard hit as that," Chantry mused. 
 
144 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Just as hard hit as that. Ferguson had had no 
 previous affairs; she was very literally the one woman; 
 and he managed, at forty, to combine the illusions cf 
 the boy of twenty and the man of sixty." 
 
 "But if he thought he was so precious to the world, 
 wasn t it more than ever his duty to preserve his ex 
 istence? He could see other people die in his place, 
 but he couldn t see himself bucking up against a 
 broken heart. Isn t that what the strong man 
 does? Lives out his life when he doesn t at all like 
 the look of it? Say what you like, he was a coward, 
 Havelock at the last, anyhow." 
 
 "I won t ask for your opinion just yet, thank you. 
 Perhaps if Ferguson had been sure he would ever do 
 good work again, he wouldn t have taken himself off. 
 That might have held him. He might have stuck by 
 on the chance. But I doubt it. Don t you see? He 
 loved the girl too much." 
 
 "Thought he couldn t live without her," snorted 
 Chantry. 
 
 "Oh, no not that. But if she was right, he was 
 the meanest skunk alive. He owed the world at least 
 two deaths, so to speak. The only approach you can 
 make to dying twice is to die in your prime, of your 
 own volition." Havelock spoke very slowly. "At 
 least, that s the way I ve worked it out. He didn t 
 say so. He was careful as a cat." 
 
 "You think" Chantry leaned forward, very eager 
 at last "that he decided she was right? That I m 
 right that we re all of us right?" 
 
 Havelock the Dane bowed his head in his huge 
 hands. "No. If you ask me, I think he kept his own 
 opinion untarnished to the end. When I told him I 
 thought he was right, he just nodded, as if one took 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 145 
 
 that for granted. But it didn t matter to him. I am 
 pretty sure that he cared only what she thought." 
 
 "If he didn t agree with her? And if she had 
 treated him like a criminal? He must have despised 
 her, in that case." 
 
 "He never said one word of her bar quoting some 
 of her words that wasn t utterly gentle. You could 
 see that he loved her with his whole soul. And it s 
 my belief he gave her the benefit of the doubt. In 
 killing himself, he acted on the hypothesis that she 
 had been right. It was the one thing he could do for 
 her." 
 
 "But if no one except you thinks it was suicide 
 and you can t prove it " 
 
 "Oh, he had to take that chance the chance of her 
 never knowing or else create a scandal. And that 
 would have been very hard on her and on his family. 
 But there were straws she could easily clutch at as I 
 have clutched at them. The perfect order in which 
 everything happened to be left even the last notes he 
 had made. His laboratory was a scientist s paradise, 
 they tell me. And the will, made after she threw him 
 over, leaving everything to her. Not a letter un 
 answered, all little bills paid, and little debts liqui 
 dated. He came as near suggesting it as he could, in 
 decency. But I dare say she will never guess it." 
 
 "Then what did it profit him?" 
 
 "It didn t profit him, in your sense. He took a very 
 long chance on her guessing. That wasn t what con 
 cerned him." 
 
 "I hope she will never guess, anyhow. It would 
 ruin her life, to no good end." 
 
 "Oh, no." Havelock was firm. "I doubt if she 
 would take it that way. If she grasped it at all, she d 
 believe he thought her right. And if he thought her 
 
146 VALIANT DUST 
 
 right, of course he wouldn t want to live, would he? 
 She would never think he killed himself simply for 
 love of her." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Well, she wouldn t. She wouldn t be able to con 
 ceive of Ferguson s killing himself for merely that 
 with his notions about survival." 
 
 "As he did." 
 
 "As he did and didn t." 
 
 "Ah, she d scarcely refine on it as you are doing, 
 Havelock. You re amazing." 
 
 "Well, he certainly never expected her to know that 
 he did it himself. If he had been the sort of weakling 
 that dies because he can t have a particular woman, 
 he d have been also the sort of weakling that leaves 
 a letter explaining." 
 
 "What then did he die for? You ll have to explain 
 to me. Not because he couldn t have her; not because 
 he felt guilty. Why, then? You haven t left him a 
 motive." 
 
 "Oh, haven t I? The most beautiful motive in the 
 whole world, my dear fellow. A motive that puts all 
 your little simple motives in the shade." 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 "Don t you see? Why, I told you. He simply as 
 sumed, for all practical purposes, that she had been 
 right. He gave himself the fate he knew she con 
 sidered him to deserve. He preferred loving her as 
 he did to do what she would have had him do. He 
 knew she was wrong; but he knew also that she was 
 made that way, that she would never be right. And 
 he took her for what she was, and loved her as she 
 was. His love don t you see? was too big. He 
 couldn t revolt from her: she had the whole of him 
 except, perhaps, his excellent judgment. He couldn t 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 147 
 
 drag on a life which she felt that was about. He 
 destroyed it, as he would have destroyed anything she 
 found loathsome. He was merely justifying himself to 
 his love. He couldn t hope she would know. Nor, I 
 believe, could he have lied to her. That is, he couldn t 
 have admitted in words that she was right, when he 
 felt her so absolutely wrong; but he could make that 
 magnificent silent act of faith." 
 
 Chantry still held out. "I don t believe he did it. I 
 hold with the coroner." 
 
 "I don t. He came as near telling me as he could 
 without making me an accessory before the fact. 
 There were none of the loose ends that the most 
 orderly man would leave if he died suddenly. Take 
 my word for it, old man." 
 
 A long look passed between them. Each seemed to 
 be trying to find out with his eyes something that 
 words had not helped him to. 
 
 Finally Chantry protested once more. "But Fergu 
 son couldn t love like that." 
 
 Havelock the Dane laid one hand on the arm of 
 Chantry s chair and spoke sternly. "He not only 
 could, but did. And there I am a better authority 
 than you. Think what you please, but I will not have 
 that fact challenegd. Perhaps you could count upon 
 your fingers the women who are loved like that; but, 
 anyhow, she was. My second cousin once removed, 
 damn her!" He ended with a vicious twang. 
 
 "And now" Havelock rose "I d like your opin 
 
 ion." 
 
 "About what?" 
 
 "Well, can t you see the beautiful sanity of Fergu 
 son?" 
 
 "No, I can t," snapped Chantry. "I think he was 
 wrong, both in the beginning and in the end. But I 
 
148 VALIANT DUST 
 
 will admit he was not a coward. I respect him, but 
 I do not think, at any point, he was right except per 
 haps in doing the coroner." 
 
 "That settles it, then/ said Havelock. And he 
 started towards the door. 
 
 "Settles what, in heaven s name?" 
 
 "What I came to have settled. I shan t tell her. 
 If I could have got one other decent citizen and I 
 confess you were my only chance to agree with me 
 that Ferguson was right right about his fellow- 
 passengers on the Argentina, right about towhead on 
 the track I d have gone to her, I think. I d rather 
 like to ruin her life, if I could." 
 
 A great conviction approached Chantry just then. 
 He felt the rush of it through his brain. 
 
 "No," he cried. "Ferguson loved her too much. 
 He wouldn t like that not as you d put it to her." 
 
 Havelock thought a moment. "No," he said in 
 turn; but his "no" was very humble. "He wouldn t. 
 I shall never do it. But, my God, how I wanted to!" 
 
 "And I ll tell you another thing, too." Chantry s 
 tone was curious. "You may agree with Ferguson all 
 you like; you may admire him as much as you say; 
 but you, Havelock, would never have done what he 
 did. Not even" he lifted a hand against interruption 
 "if you knew you had the brain you think Ferguson 
 had. You d have been at the bottom of the sea, or 
 under the engine-wheels, and you know it." 
 
 He folded his arms with a hint of truculence. 
 
 But Havelock the Dane, to Chantry s surprise, was 
 meek. "Yes," he said, "I know it. Now let me out 
 of here." 
 
 "Well, then" Chantry s voice rang out trium 
 phant "what does that prove?" 
 
 "Prove?" Havelock s great fist crashed down on the 
 
THE KNIGHT S MOVE 149 
 
 table. "It proves that Ferguson s a better man than 
 either of us. I can think straight, but he had the sand 
 to act straight. You haven t even the sand to think 
 straight. You and your reactionary rot! The world s 
 moving, Chantry. Ferguson was ahead of it, beckon 
 ing. You re an ant that got caught in the machinery, 
 I shouldn t wonder." 
 
 "Oh, stow the rhetoric! We simply don t agree. 
 It s happened before." Chantry laughed scornfully. 
 "I tell you I respect him; but God Almighty wouldn t 
 make me agree with him." 
 
 "You re too mediaeval by half," Havelock mused. 
 "Now, Ferguson was a knight of the future a knight 
 of Humanity." 
 
 "Don t!" shouted Chantry. His nerves were be 
 ginning to feel the strain. "Leave chivalry out of it. 
 The Argentina business may or may not have been 
 wisdom, but it certainly wasn t cricket." 
 
 "No," said Havelock. "Chess, rather. The game 
 where chance hasn t a show the game of the intel 
 ligent future. That very irregular and disconcerting 
 move of his. . . . And he got taken, you might say. 
 She s an irresponsible beast, your queen." 
 
 "Drop it, will you!" Then Chantry pulled himself 
 together, a little ashamed. "It s fearfully late. Bet 
 ter stop and dine." 
 
 "No, thanks." The big man opened the door of the 
 room and rested a foot on the threshold. "I feel like 
 dining with some one who appreciates Ferguson." 
 
 "I don t know where you ll find him." 
 
 Chantry smiled and shook hands. 
 
 "Oh, I carry him about with me. Good-night," said 
 Havelock the Dane. 
 
VI 
 BLUE BONNET 
 
 "Here is the letter." 
 
 George Delano squared his fine shoulders judi 
 cially as he presented a handful of thin, blue sheets 
 to his brother-in-law. 
 
 Harold Redreeve frowned. He looked like a tired 
 hawk, muscles relaxed, eyes dull, but muscles and eyes 
 pre-eminently meant for speed and light. 
 
 "I left my glasses up-stairs. Would Mary mind 
 reading it aloud? I don t believe there s anything in 
 it. Millicent is always upsetting you." 
 
 "I am not easily upset, Harry," Delano answered 
 reproachfully. "Your wife Millicent has all the 
 family nerves. But I think you will agree with us that 
 the letter is alarming. I have far too many important 
 things on my mind to be perturbed over nothing. I 
 think it extremely fortunate that your business called 
 you in our direction. Frankly, I don t know how to 
 answer it, nor does Mary. It is a family matter, I 
 should say; a delicate one. I am sorry to trouble you 
 when you are so busy with your own big case, but 
 troubles have a knack of falling in at the wrong time. 
 You have to learn to meet a good many things at once 
 in this world." 
 
 He squared his shoulders again with the gesture of a 
 hopeful Atlas. George Delano was the type of per 
 son to whom you must never suggest, in any given 
 case, that he has had luck. Harold Redreeve knew 
 
 150 
 
BLUE BONNET 151 
 
 him of old; was fond of him; sometimes wished that 
 old George would come a mild cropper, so that he could 
 know how it felt to hit the dust when you weren t ex 
 pecting to. Mary Delano murmured sympathetically 
 in her corner as she unfolded the letter. She never 
 doubted, when each big deal went through, that George 
 had done it all himself, with the least possible aid from 
 the Almighty. His pompousness was sweet to her; his 
 wealthy and able associates were to her merely the in 
 evitable parasites of a great man. George was solid; 
 he was reckoned brilliant by people who had seen their 
 own inheritances dwindle. 
 
 Then her sweet voice proceeded to the letter, 
 emphasizing faithfully every underlined word. Har 
 old Redreeve listened keenly to his wife s letter, let 
 ting his cigarette go out. Delano, standing in front 
 of the chimney-piece, rocked gently and safely to and 
 fro, frowning judicially now and then, as one ac 
 customed to weigh evidence. Harold had often felt 
 that his brother-in-law, in marble, would symbolize 
 democratic justice admirably on the fagade of a court 
 house. He didn t look like a judge; but he was the 
 platonic idea of the foreman of a jury. 
 
 " My dear George, " began Mary, then: "I ll skip 
 all the first, about the garden and that girl s camp she 
 recommended to us for Violet. Here is the important 
 part. 
 
 " I write surrounded by strange people very 
 strange. Harry doesn t know about them. Two of 
 them are men, gray-bearded men with eye-glasses, 
 reading newspapers. Annette has a dreadful habit of 
 letting them pile up on the tables. But there are one 
 or two women; one is wearing a great many pearls. I 
 think they must be imitation the kind that are set 
 with real diamonds in platinum for no one could 
 
152 VALIANT DUST 
 
 carry about so many real ones on a hot day in a 
 stranger s house. Also, there is the most dreadful lit 
 tle girl in a blue sunbonnet who goes about and hits 
 the furniture with her hard little knuckles. The older 
 people change, but the little girl almost always comes. 
 I suppose they can t lose her. She looks as if she 
 would hang on behind, with her legs dangling, and 
 then lean over the seat and crow horridly at them. 
 But why she comes here! 
 
 " Indeed, why any of them come! I haven t spoken 
 to Harry about it. They have always arrived and left 
 before he gets home from town. I haven t even 
 spoken to the maids. They are well-bred people, who 
 just might come over from the club or stop in their 
 motors on their way back to town. Once or twice An 
 nette has looked a little surprised. You see, I can t 
 tell Annette I don t know who they are. They are pre 
 cisely the kind of people one does know all except 
 the little girl, and she may be the offspring of some 
 family mesalliance. They come in and speak charm 
 ingly, then sit down and make themselves comfortable, 
 and fan themselves, and admire the view, and talk 
 about Maria. The first time I thought they must be 
 friends of the Outamaros, and had come to call. We 
 didn t expect to have the house until the last moment. 
 I thought they might think I was Mrs. Outamaro. 
 You know he married again very suddenly last spring. 
 But they never called me that. I went away for a 
 fortnight, the day after their first visit, and forgot to 
 tell Harold anything about it. When I came back, 
 they arrived again, and said they had called once or 
 twice meantime, but had been told I was away. I 
 asked Annette who had been here in my absence, and 
 she s?id no one had been except the Stacys and some 
 men ycr Harold. I don t like Annette, she s so inac- 
 
BLUE BONNET 153 
 
 curate and careless. Think of how I should like to 
 know their names! 
 
 " It s a killing situation in which to be. You see, 
 they always come on fine days, when every approach 
 to the house is wide open. They don t ring any bells; 
 they just camp on the porches or the terrace, and 
 speak to me very charmingly, as if they were old 
 friends. They rest and chat, or read, and then go 
 on to the club or to Fawneck or in the direction of 
 town. I nearly die of laughter; and sometime I shall 
 burst out and say, "Who are you, anyway, and who 
 do you think I am?" I leave them quite to them 
 selves, as if they were aunts and uncles and cousins 
 who came so often they didn t have to be bothered 
 with. To-day, you see, I m writing a letter at the 
 wicker desk on the porch. One of the men he really 
 must be somebody, for he has a gray imperial, and a 
 Legion of Honor ribbon in his buttonhole has gone 
 to sleep in the chaise-longue. Presently he ll apol 
 ogize, I know, for he s Chester fied to the life. Blue 
 Bonnet isn t here to-day, or I shouldn t be writing. 
 She would think it a beautiful joke to grab the ink 
 and throw it from behind (she does all her tricks be 
 hind your back) over my new white serge. 
 
 " Now, you see, they ve come so often that it has 
 almost gone beyond a joke. If Harry should come 
 home early and notice all their little familiar ways, he 
 couldn t believe I didn t know them. / don t believe 
 they know I don t know them. It would be an awful 
 moment when I was unable to introduce properly. 
 They are the kind to think it quite immodest of me 
 to be greeting them constantly when I didn t know 
 them. And I really couldn t face Legion-of-Honor go 
 ing sadly down the terrace to the car, thinking I wasn t 
 a lady. Isn t it screaming, when you realize that the 
 
154 VALIANT DUST 
 
 original mistake was all theirs? I ve always known, 
 from the first moment, that I had never laid eyes on 
 them before. 
 
 " The first time it happened so naturally: I was on 
 the porch when they got out of the car; Legion-of- 
 Honor and Mock-Pearls-and-Platinum (she is his wife, 
 I make out) came up and said: " We ve been wanting 
 to know you for so long, and now that we re compara 
 tively near, we can drop in often on our way to and 
 fro." They just took it for granted I knew all about 
 them. I thought it was amusing, and would never hap 
 pen again. I didn t write to Harry (he was up in 
 Canada with Jack Lee, and letters didn t get to him 
 much) for I thought it would be a good story to tell 
 him after he got back. But they came twice again 
 before he did get back, and by that time they were a 
 habit. Yes, a habit. And now I m so deep in, all on 
 account of their mistake, that I dread to have Harry 
 meet them. 
 
 " Annette has no manners at all. I rang for her 
 one day when it looked thunder-showery, and I had 
 begged them not to start off again, and told her to 
 bring tea early. "Six cups," I said; for I knew Blue 
 Bonnet would make a fuss if she didn t have some. 
 While she and Lily were getting it inside, the clouds 
 got blacker and blacker, and they suddenly said they 
 thought they d get home before the storm broke. I 
 begged them to have some tea at least; but they were 
 very pretty about it said they couldn t wait, for if 
 they once began to drink my delicious tea they would 
 never get off in time, and I might have to keep them 
 until evening. So they piled off at top speed in the 
 motor, and when Annette finally came out with the 
 things, she had only one cup. Of course I reproved 
 her. "Why, Annette, I told you six cups." "Yes, 
 
BLUE BONNET 155 
 
 ma am, but I thought you wanted your tea right now, 
 and I knew there wouldn t be any one else." Of course 
 I shall get rid of Annette in the autumn. Even if 
 she was wise enough to see they d go before tea was 
 ready, she should have obeyed orders, and been sur 
 prised, like any well-bred servant. I should have felt 
 disgraced forever if they had been there when that 
 small tray came. I only said: "When I tell you tea 
 for six, Annette, bring tea for six. Lily can always 
 help you to hurry it." No one else did come, though, 
 and I didn t insist on her trotting out a lot more 
 dishes in the middle of the thunder-storm. I had to 
 run for cover, as it was, with my own tea-cup. 
 
 " This is an endless letter, and I don t know what 
 you and Mary will make of it, you think me so ir 
 responsible anyway; but I really had to tell some one. 
 I laugh and laugh over my predicament, and yet I 
 dread telling Harry. These people were no bigger 
 than a man s hand at first, and now they overspread 
 the heavens. I actually dress for them; I try to go 
 out when I feel sure they won t come they never do 
 when there s a high wind; Pearls-and-Platinum won t 
 wear motoring things, and her bonnet goes aukew if 
 there s a wind; she explained it to me in such a sweet 
 old-lady fashion and I ask people in bad weather if 
 I ask them at all. Very few people do come, anyhow, 
 except for dinner; the distances are such that we all 
 meet at the club. And up to this time they have never 
 run into any other guests. But I can t be preserved 
 forever. It s too silly of me to mind telling Harry. 
 Only he d think me such an incompetent not to have 
 found out all about them the first time ! I quite dread 
 being laughed at. And you know he s fearfully wor 
 ried and busy over that beast of a Tractions case. 
 So I prolong the misunderstanding with them., and shall 
 
156 VALIANT DUST 
 
 say nothing about it until events force it on me. They 
 have certainly shown up Annette. She is perfect ex 
 cept when they re here, and then she seems to lose 
 her head. Point of pride: not to let Annette know 
 they re not my most intimate friends. She slipped and 
 nearly knocked into Legion-of-Honor the other day, 
 and only said "Oh!" not even "I beg your pardon. 7 
 Fortunately, he was staring through the field-glasses 
 at the golf-links, and only backed away blindly with 
 a little murmur. I must keep her until we leave, for 
 it would be impossible to get any one else up here 
 now; and except for these people, she s a treasure. 
 So I weakly ignore it. 
 
 " Tm so sorry you and Mary weren t able to come 
 to us this year. I keep pretty quiet and go out very 
 little, as the doctor bade me, and am immensely bet 
 ter. It s a little lonely sometimes, Harry is so busy 
 gets home so late and never takes a day off and 
 I m positively grateful for these people, if truth were 
 told. All except Blue Bonnet. The other people they 
 bring are just as nice as they are. But who are they? 
 Do you and Mary know any friends of the Outamaros 
 who answer to my description? If so, do tell me pri 
 vately, and then I can, by discreet allusions, straighten 
 it all out before I tell Harry. The comfort it would 
 give me, too, to be able to mention a name or two in 
 a good firm voice to Annette! 
 
 " Your affectionate sister, 
 
 " MlLLICENT. " 
 
 Harold Redreeve had not moved since she began. 
 Except for a faint, occasional motion of the lips, even 
 his features had not stirred. When Mary s voice had 
 quite died away, George Delano spoke: 
 
 "I think you will agree with me, Harry, that this 
 
BLUE BONNET 157 
 
 is something you ought to know about. You see how 
 clear it is that no one sees these people except my 
 sister. Annette is, I suppose, a perfectly normal 
 creature and well recommended?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, admirably recommended. Quite normal, 
 I should say. Millicent has always seemed to like her. 
 Though, really, I ve been at home so little, and so 
 busy, that I haven t noticed her much." 
 
 "Yes, of course, the Tractions case. It s a big thing, 
 and we all wish you luck. If you pull that off, Conway 
 says you re made." Perhaps he noticed how tired the 
 hawk-face before him was; for he went on: "We 
 did a good deal of consulting together before we de 
 cided to tell you of this just now. Indeed, I asked 
 Boyce about it putting it, of course, as a hypo 
 thetical case, but quoting the letter largely; I have an 
 excellent verbal memory and he thought it an inter 
 esting and probably serious case. The whole point in 
 these matters is to take the person at the start, before 
 the delusions go too far. Boyce says do you know 
 Boyce?" 
 
 "Not personally." 
 
 "He has been called in by the district attorney so 
 often I thought you might have run across him. I 
 shall be delighted to introduce you, and you could 
 ask him to run down. He is very busy, but he would 
 do it for us. Quite the best alienist in the state and, 
 I think, one of the best in the country. They are 
 teaching us nowadays to be very hopeful about insan 
 ity treat it just like any other illness, with large 
 chances of cure. I ve dipped into it a good deal, talk 
 ing with Boyce and reading his books, and I know 
 something about it myself." 
 
 "Well?" The weariness had an odd likeness to 
 patience. 
 
158 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "I should say, if it weren t my poor sister who is 
 concerned, that it was a very interesting case. You 
 notice the ah the cunning shown in not reproving 
 the maid Annette. Depend upon it, she has a sus 
 picion that she s going off the track. Also the desire 
 to tell somebody, which is why Mary and I get the 
 letter. She still thinks there s something odd in it; 
 the delusions aren t complete. She hasn t reached the 
 point of telling every one; tries not to have people 
 meet them, and so forth. But she herself is perfectly 
 convinced, for herself. The violent aversion to the 
 little girl she calls ah Blue Bonnet, is also charac 
 teristic. And she has gone so far that all the circum 
 stantial evidence of their unreality the maid An 
 nette bumping into an invisible old gentleman, and 
 not bringing tea-cups for non-existent people ceases 
 to be evidence for her at all: it is merely a ground for 
 annoyance. Her endeavor to rationalize the situation 
 by hypotheses as to their origin, their possible rela 
 tion to the owners of the house, is also interesting. It 
 is a complicated case, as Boyce at once saw. Of 
 course I could not be expected to find it interesting 
 when it was in reality my poor sister who was suffering 
 from this mental lesion; but I was glad for her sake 
 that it interested him. I think you had better have 
 him down as soon as you can manage it. This week 
 end, perhaps? I am sure Boyce would make sacri 
 fices if I explained to him. He could come as a 
 friend; and if the delusions came on while he was 
 there, it would be singularly fortunate." 
 
 "Yes, yes. I ll try to arrange it. But hadn t I 
 better see Millicent first and have it all out with her?" 
 
 "She ll be furious that we ve shown you the letter, 
 won t she?" This was Mary, sweet- voiced and sym 
 pathetic. 
 
BLUE BONNET 159 
 
 "This is not a moment for such considerations. I 
 am willing to shoulder that with poor Millicent. She 
 may be permitted to think that we were worried about 
 the character of her callers, and thought you should 
 know. Millicent has often, in her youth, called me 
 officious." George Delano smiled with perfect good 
 humor. 
 
 "I am afraid I must let you take that on yourselves. 
 Millicent won t be angry for long. She hasn t a trace 
 of bad temper in her, you know. And she s perfectly 
 normal with me, a little tired of late, but nothing else. 
 After all, remember that I ve been living with my 
 wife all summer, even if, in the course of things, we 
 have had to be separated more or less." 
 
 "I take that as most encouraging," Delano com 
 mented judicially. "They are apt to make their scenes 
 with the people they care for most. The fact that 
 she hasn t turned on you in any way shows that she 
 hasn t gone beyond the point of recapture. Of course 
 there is a slight hint in her concealing from you a 
 thing that she would normally tell you at once." 
 
 "Yes" Harold Redreeve frowned painfully 
 "that is quite true. I dare say if she had known I 
 was to spend the night here, she wouldn t have writ 
 ten. Poor child! I must get back at once, though I 
 ought to go on to-morrow and see Stephenson. But 
 I can t leave her another day. I shall have to write 
 him." He sighed. The strain of the Tractions case 
 had been great. He had staked a good deal on it, and 
 it seemed to his wearied imagination that he would 
 stand or fall by it. But Millicent he couldn t leave 
 her another day with her delusions. Thank heaven! 
 they weren t horrible ones yet. He must get back 
 and question Annette discreetly; and Boyce yes, 
 Boyce had better come down, if he would. 
 
160 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Do you know Boyce well enough to make a point, 
 for me, of his coming to us? Could you run up to 
 town and manage for me to meet him at luncheon? 
 Could you somehow arrange it all? That is, if, after 
 I ve been home, it seems best." 
 
 "Certainly. Leave it to me. Wire me what day. 
 Boyce is near town this summer. Oughtn t you to 
 see Stephenson, anyhow? Surely one day more 
 couldn t matter." 
 
 "What I should say to Stephenson, if I saw him in 
 my present state of mind, would matter. Do you sup 
 pose I should be sitting here now if I didn t know it 
 was too late to get home to-night? Perhaps you 
 think this is gay for me." 
 
 "I don t. Indeed, I don t," Delano hastened to as 
 sure him. "I think it s the devil and all. If Mary and 
 I hadn t felt it so .serious, I should have waited until 
 the Tractions case came off before saying anything to 
 you. But the great thing is to take it in time." 
 
 "Oh, I know that; I may not be a friend of Boyce s, 
 but I read magazine articles occasionally on the 
 train. I ve heard of psychiatry myself, George." He 
 could not keep bitterness out of his tone, before the 
 spectacle of his brother-in-law s interested immunity. 
 
 "It s very hard, having it come just now. If Mary 
 could go down; but there are the Vincents coming on 
 from the West next week, and a hundred things. Of 
 course she would go if she could do any real good. 
 I know all about it. Didn t Violet have pneumonia 
 last winter just when we were putting the screws on 
 Singer and all the C. & O. gang? But life is like 
 that." 
 
 "I didn t tell you about Violet until you had got 
 your screws on." Mary spoke mildly, in the interests 
 of literal truth. 
 
BLUE BONNET 161 
 
 "I hope you don t mean, Mary" Delano turned to 
 his wife "that you think we shouldn t have told 
 Harry. Last night you said " 
 
 But Mary was already in a flutter of compunction. 
 
 "Oh, my dearest George, how could you think so? 
 We talked it all over for an hour before you decided. 
 Only I am sorry Harry doesn t feel he can see Stephen- 
 son." 
 
 "I think myself he might as well. Twenty-four 
 hours could make no difference. Millicent is quite 
 happy. All the first part of the letter was about the 
 garden. See." He picked up the letter Mary had left 
 on the table, and handed it to Redreeve. 
 
 "I haven t my glasses," Redreeve muttered as he 
 took up the thin sheets in the familiar hand the hand 
 that might have been his own, so intimately for years 
 had it written of his deepest concerns. "May I take 
 it?" 
 
 Delano pursed his lips. 
 
 "Why yes, I suppose so. Hadn t you better see 
 Stephenson to-morrow? You have an appointment, 
 haven t you?" 
 
 "Yes, but I ll telegraph." 
 
 "Will it look well?" 
 
 "I don t care a damn how it looks. He ll get a letter 
 explaining. I d like an early breakfast, Mary, if it 
 isn t too much trouble. I must take the six forty-five. 
 Thank you both very much. Good-night." He 
 marched away, clutching the letter in his hand. 
 
 When Harold Redreeve reached his summer home 
 after a hot, broken journey, the westering sun was 
 falling in long, level streaks across his wide lawn; the 
 porches were empty; the big doors stood restfully 
 open; and only a bird-call was to be heard. He felt 
 a slovenly creature, thirsty, tired, and unsuccessful, to 
 
162 VALIANT DUST 
 
 be coming into such a peaceful haunt. For a moment 
 his obsession seemed a thing to be washed off presently 
 with the dirt of travel; the only things he could con 
 ceivably need were a shower and iced tea. He rang 
 to give warning of his presence, then stepped into the 
 wide tiled hall. Millicent was not in sight, but An 
 nette appeared at once, surprised, obviously, to see 
 him. 
 
 "Where is Mrs. Redreeve?" 
 
 "At the club, sir. She usually goes there for tea. 
 She wasn t expecting you." 
 
 "No, I know." He started to the stairs. "Have 
 the Stacys been here this week?" He had to ap 
 proach the matter as awkwardly as that. 
 
 "No one has been here, sir, since you went away, 
 except Mr. and Mrs. Carle to dinner last night. Mrs. 
 Redreeve plays bridge most afternoons now with the 
 other ladies at the club." 
 
 "What time do you expect her back?" 
 
 "Just in time to dress, sir. Nobody is here to 
 night." 
 
 "Have some tea for me, will you, Annette, in about 
 twenty minutes? I ll be down on the porch for it." 
 He went up to his dressing-room for his bath. 
 
 Redreeve had time for thought before Millicent re 
 turned. His letter to Stephenson, following up his 
 telegram, he had had just time to dictate from his 
 office in town between trains. He had hated the look 
 of concern that came over the face of his stenographer 
 when he announced, in the letter, that he had been 
 suddenly called home by his wife s illness. It seemed 
 as if, so long as they could keep the trouble secret, 
 it need hardly be a trouble at all. But, after all, what 
 could be more public than George Delano, with his 
 perpetual air of speaking for a cowed group, behind 
 
BLUE BONNET 163 
 
 him, of eleven good men and true? The whole house 
 was so peaceful, Annette so little seemed to want her 
 opportunity of speaking to him privately, Millicent 
 seemed by inference so happy and harmless over at 
 the club yonder, he felt almost a fool not to have seen 
 Stephenson. And yet, could he have done otherwise? 
 He took the letter from his pocket and read it through 
 once more. No; George had been right. It was 
 alarming; and, more probably than not, Annette was 
 simply frightened and puzzled, or else silently laying 
 plans to take another place. Every element for ap 
 prehension that George had mentioned was certainly 
 there. Probably he never should see Stephenson; 
 probably he would simply have to turn over the Trac 
 tions case to Welby and miss his chance. If anything 
 went wrong with Millicent, it would go wrong with 
 him. George might be the kind to put a big deal 
 through with a thing like that going on at home. 
 Harry Redreeve knew he himself wasn t. 
 
 Then he turned with a start, for Millicent was 
 before him. 
 
 "You here? Why did you come? Anything 
 wrong?" She smothered him for an instant in her 
 frills. 
 
 "No, nothing wrong. I just came." 
 
 "But didn t you see Stephenson?" 
 
 "No. To-day s interview was called off. I hope to 
 see him in a few days." 
 
 The letter had still not attracted her attention. If 
 she was aware of it, she probably thought it a letter 
 of hers to him. He must study her, he thought wear 
 ily; must note every detail as if he were a doctor. 
 And indeed she did seem a little nervous, a little thin. 
 But that was positively all. She glanced at the letter 
 once or twice, uneasily, he thought. Of course, they 
 
164 VALIANT DUST 
 
 hadn t been apart enough for her to have written him 
 recently so many pages. He laid his arm over the 
 thin, blue sheets. 
 
 "Much doing down here?" 
 
 "Nothing. That s why I have to go over to the 
 club every blessed afternoon and play auction. We 
 make it a kind of half-way house go there instead 
 of going to each other." 
 
 "Do you like this place?" 
 
 "Do you?" 
 
 "I haven t been here a great deal so far. It seems 
 restful." 
 
 "Oh, restful, yes. Sometimes" her brow knotted; 
 she seemed to hesitate "sometimes I do get a little 
 bored. You aren t here, you see, to share the rest- 
 fulness." 
 
 "Doesn t anything happen to interest you all the 
 long days?" 
 
 She looked at him with wide, honest blue eyes. 
 
 "Not anything, Harry, except the bridge, which 
 doesn t really interest me. No; I haven t seen an in 
 triguing human being all summer." 
 
 "You know we chose it particularly for quiet." 
 
 "Oh, yes; and I m sure it s the right thing. Only, 
 next year, I hope I shall be strong enough, and you 
 will be free enough, for us to do something amusing. 
 I m perfectly happy, but no one could say the place 
 is riotous. But, by the way, Harry, who called off the 
 Stephenson interview? Does that mean he will make 
 trouble?" 
 
 Harry Redreeve lifted both hands and pushed his 
 hair back from his forehead. His sudden gesture 
 loosened the pages of the letter at his elbow. Millicent 
 leaned over and looked at them. One glance was 
 
BLUE BONNET 165 
 
 enough, for, without listening to her husband s ex 
 planation, she clutched it. 
 
 "Harry Redreeve, where did you get this?" 
 
 "I spent last night at George s. 7 
 
 "And he gave you this? The beast!" 
 
 Redreeve looked his wife gravely in the eyes, brac 
 ing himself for a scene of some unknown kind. "I 
 don t know why he s a beast. He couldn t well do 
 other." 
 
 "But I particularly told him I wasn t telling you." 
 
 "Yes; but you can see that, if George thought the 
 thing serious, he would feel I must know sooner or 
 later." 
 
 "Did you call off the interview with Stephenson?" 
 She rose and stood, very flushed, before him. 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Because of this?" 
 
 "Yes, dear. I was worried." 
 
 "Oh, my poor darling, my poor darling! I wouldn t 
 have had it happen for anything. What a pompous 
 fool George is! I ll never forgive him. And Mary 
 sat in a corner and said how wonderful George was. 
 7 know. Oh, you poor darling! But when can you 
 see Stephenson?" 
 
 "I don t know. Later in the week, I hope." 
 
 And you let George make you come home straight, 
 and cut the interview?" 
 
 "Certainly not, my dear. I didn t need any advice 
 to make me come home as straight as I could." 
 
 "You don t mean that that wretched letter worried 
 you?" 
 
 "Why shouldn t it?" 
 
 "How could it? George is capable of any idiocy, 
 but you mustn t tell me that you believed those people 
 in there were real." 
 
166 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "No; and neither did George." 
 
 "Oh, George deserves to be steeped to the lips in 
 a saturated solution of himself. But you! I never 
 meant you to see the thing naturally. I shall never 
 get over your having called off the Stephenson inter 
 view on my account. I ll owe George one for that to 
 the end of time. But you don t mean to say that you 
 didn t see?" 
 
 "See what?" He was bewildered. He felt as if he 
 himself were perhaps a little mad. Certainly Millicent 
 looked the acme of sanity, with her eyes shining and 
 all that delicate color in her face. 
 
 "Why, that it was a gigantic hoax on George, of 
 course! If I had ever dreamed of your seeing the 
 letter at all, I should have expected you to rock with 
 delight over my cleverness. I got so tired of his 
 encyclopaedic ways, I thought I d give him a stoss. I 
 meant George to think I was going off my head. 
 Though I thought he might be dull enough to stop 
 at wondering if I wasn t doing something unconven 
 tional. But you I should have thought you would 
 see it the first minute. You must have been tired, if 
 you thought your old Millikins would spend her after 
 noons with a lot of spooks and, on top of that, write to 
 George about it! It must have been a good rag, if it 
 could take you in. I m rather proud of it. Why, I 
 was afraid even George would see through that little 
 girl in the blue sunbonnet." She lay back in her chair 
 and laughed consumingly. "Forgive me; I ll put my 
 mind on the serious things of life in a moment. But 
 it is funny!" 
 
 If it had not been for the accident with the Stephen- 
 son interview, Harry Redreeve would have been 
 tempted to laugh himself. As it was, there was the 
 practical worry at the heart of his great relief. 
 
BLUE BONNET 167 
 
 "I nearly didn t post the letter, you know. I just 
 started out to see what I could do, and then it grew 
 so beautifully under my hand that I thought George 
 ought to have it. So I posted it, after all, and it has 
 led to this! It comes of being bored. I always used 
 to startle George when I was bored. But if I had 
 dreamed of your going up there 
 
 "I didn t expect to; but it turned out to be con 
 venient, and I telephoned them yesterday afternoon 
 that I would come for the night." 
 "What did you say to Stephenson?" 
 "Wired him that my wife was ill." 
 "And you haven t written him?" 
 "Yes, to-day, from the office, before I took the train 
 up here." 
 
 "What did you say?" 
 "That I hoped for a later appointment." 
 "Very well; you can telegraph him from here to 
 night. Say that I m out of danger, and fix another 
 day. He will forgive you if he knows you telegraphed 
 him as soon as I was out of danger. I m sorry about 
 the fibbing, but this is a good deal truer than the lie 
 George got you into. Don t send until after dinner. 
 That will be more plausible. Now I must dress." 
 
 As Mrs. Redreeve went through the door, she turned 
 to look at her husband and laughed again. 
 
 "I can t help it, dear. I know I was a beast to do 
 it just because I was bored. When I think of Blue 
 Bonnet, I feel like Mrs. Piper or Palladino or Sally. 
 But I shan t laugh about it again. You see, the cream 
 of the joke is gone forever if you were taken in, too. 
 I m glad I didn t register delirium tremens for 
 George. He would have had an ambulance and a 
 strait-jacket down here on the afternoon train." 
 At last Harry Redreeve grinned. 
 
168 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "He nearly did have Dr. Boyce. He s expecting to 
 send him down over Sunday." 
 
 Millicent leaned against the lintel of the door, and 
 closed her eyes in mock-consternation. 
 
 "An alienist? For me? Oh, George Delano, you 
 have such an unclean mind! It isn t decent to be so 
 up to date as George is. He gave me Freud to read 
 last winter, you remember, and for a week I dreamed 
 things that didn t need any interpreting. And you 
 were going to let the man into the house?" 
 
 Redreeve looked at her very gravely. 
 
 "Yes, I was going to let him in." 
 
 Mrs. Redreeve dashed back to the porch and picked 
 up the letter. Then she tore it viciously, scattering 
 the pieces over the porch-floor. 
 
 "There! I m sorry to make a mess, but Annette s 
 a saint. She won t mind. I must have been inspired 
 by the devil to write stuff that would affect you like 
 that. It s pretty bad, you know, that you could have 
 thought me off my head." 
 
 Her husband leaned his head back and closed his 
 eyes. 
 
 "Yes, dear, it is pretty bad. But I m awfully tired, 
 and George considers he has a gift for presenting evi 
 dence. He isn t easy to interrupt. I m very sorry; 
 but you must take it as a compliment. It was damn 
 ably well done to the lay mind, at least." 
 
 By the time that Redreeve had had a chance to 
 communicate with Delano, Delano s zeal had out 
 stripped their original plan. He himself had run in 
 on Boyce, and disclosed his fears. Dr. Boyce prom 
 ised to hold himself in readiness to go to the Red- 
 reeves should he be summed, and Delano then set 
 himself frantically to recover the lost letter from Mil- 
 licents husband. He naturally wished to submit it to 
 
BLUE BONNET 169 
 
 Boyce. Redree ve was, however, far too busy with 
 the Tractions case to inform Delano that the letter, in 
 a thousand pieces, had been swept into the dust-bin by 
 "the maid Annette." He had to arrange to see 
 Stephenson and a dozen other men. He was caught 
 in the big machine and had to keep time to the en 
 gines. Beyond once reassuring Delano in a cryptic 
 telegram, he had done nothing. George s letters he 
 had no time to answer. Millicent promised to attend 
 to the matter. 
 
 The crisis drew nearer, and sometimes Redreeve felt 
 as if the days lengthened in arithmetical progression. 
 By late September, when the case was actually called, 
 it seemed to him that the sun took fifty hours for its 
 diurnal course. Yet he could not have spared one of 
 the fifty, if he was to go fully armed, with not an inch 
 of unprotected skin, into court. There was excitement 
 in it, a kind of fury of astuteness, a Pythian rage of 
 foresight, that lifted him above the crowd he directed. 
 It divorced him from country peace, and he saw little 
 of Millicent in the fervid autumn weeks. Sometimes 
 she went up to town for a few days in order to lunch 
 and dine with him; but after the case was actually on, 
 she found that such jaunts tired her, and she went 
 back to the country to rest and wait for her husband 
 to be free. It had been decided that they should keep 
 the house until November, and try for a quiet holiday 
 there together in the late autumn when the case was 
 over. Harry now came home, unless he gained a brief 
 respite from the law s delays, only at the week-end. 
 On the long Sundays, before he took the evening train, 
 they sat, almost silent, on the wide porch, in the sub 
 dued autumn warmth. He was too tired even for her 
 chatter; too tired to dare to relax, when his nerves 
 would have to be taut as a singing rope on the mor- 
 
170 VALIANT DUST 
 
 row. And when at last the case was over, and Re- 
 dreeve s clients had got their verdict, he was almost 
 too tired to be glad. 
 
 Still, she pushed him off for a little golf now and 
 then on a fine day; and occasionally they had friends, 
 belated birds like themselves, to dinner. It marked 
 one of the long stages of Harry Redreeve s relief when 
 he asked her one night: 
 
 "Did George ever answer your letter? I positively 
 forgot to ask." 
 
 "What letter?" 
 
 "Your letter explaining about the hoax." 
 
 "I never wrote it." She flushed. 
 
 "Never wrote it? Oh, my dear girl, you said you 
 would. That s why he has never congratulated me 
 on my luck." 
 
 "I m sorry," she faltered. "I will write to-morrow, 
 honor bright. If I hadn t thought so much about just 
 what to write him, I dare say I could have done it 
 long since. When I haven t been thinking of the case, 
 I ve been thinking of George. I wish you could have 
 got a verdict against him." 
 
 "Well, I suppose I can write now. Perhaps it will 
 be easier for me. Only you must give me carte 
 blanche to say all sorts of things for you. George had 
 a right to be cut up, I think, dear." 
 
 "He d take every right of the sort he had, you may 
 be sure." But her tone was listless. 
 
 "Yes, George is not an easy-going person. How 
 ever, we d best not quarrel with them. Have they 
 asked us up there next month?" 
 
 "Not yet. We didn t intend to go, in any case." 
 
 "No; but it s odd they haven t asked us. They al 
 ways do. I think I d better write to-night." 
 
BLUE BONNET 171 
 
 "Won t it do as well to-morrow?" 
 "I dare say. But why not to-night ?" 
 "Because I want to talk to you." They rose from 
 the table at this point, and she put her arm through 
 his. "Coffee on the porch, Annette, please." 
 
 "A very odd thing has happened," she went on a 
 few moments later, as they faced the harvest moon. 
 "You remember those people I wrote about? Those 
 people I made up to bother George with?" 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well" she turned her head away, and he saw her 
 pure profile in the moonlight "I saw them this after- 
 
 "At the club?" 
 
 "No, here on the porch, where I told George they 
 used to come. Blue Bonnet and all. They sat in the 
 chairs. They went away in the motor. They did all 
 the things I said they did. Only this time they did 
 them." 
 
 "Millicent!" 
 
 "Harry, dear, I m not such a fool as to play the 
 same game twice. Besides, I never meant to play it on 
 you. Of course it s a hallucination. It must be. It" 
 her voice broke a little "it takes some courage to 
 say it, because every sense I have could swear that they 
 were real. If I hadn t made them up in the first place, 
 I should say now, to you, that they were real. I don t 
 dare to, having invented them once. Life doesn t give 
 you coincidences like that. But, as far as I am con 
 cerned, I would believe in them. I took the little girl s 
 blue sunbonnet off and felt of it crumpled the stiff 
 edge in my hand. It s gingham, starched. For your 
 sake, I didn t ask Annette to bring them tea." She 
 stopped. 
 
172 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "You re very tired," began Redreeve in a shaking 
 voice. 
 
 "No, I m not tired that way. I m horribly yes, 
 horribly, that s the word rested. I wish I were tired. 
 But I ll do anything you say." 
 
 "Then go to the club to-morrow while I m in town. 
 I ll come back right after luncheon, and pick you up 
 there. I m afraid I have to go, dear. I ve promised 
 to see the district attorney. Do you want to come?" 
 
 "Oh, no, I d rather stay here. Must I go to the 
 club? There won t be any one there except a few 
 golfing men. No one goes any more." 
 
 "I d rather you would. I wish we had a motor: 
 I d send you over to the Stacy s for the day." 
 
 "I m quite all right here, dearest; but I ll telephone 
 and ask Kate Stacy to come over and lunch and take 
 me for a drive." 
 
 "Good. And don t worry about it. We ll consult 
 a nerve-man; and if you have to go to Europe on a 
 bat, off you go. You ve never seen them before, have 
 you?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "You ll do, dear. That was a brick to tell me. And 
 I ll write to George to-morrow. I think if you put 
 him and the damned apology quite out of your mind, 
 you ll pull through with no further trouble. Don t 
 worry about it: that s the thing I beg of you." 
 
 "I won t." And she turned her face to him 
 again. 
 
 When Redreeve came home late the next afternoon, 
 he did not see his wife in her accustomed chair. 
 "Hardly time yet for Kate Stacy to bring her back," 
 he muttered to himself. Just then Annette, the maid 
 came through the door of the service wing, very 
 quietly, into the hall where he stood. 
 
BLUE BONNET 173 
 
 "What time did Mrs. Redreeve say she would be 
 back?" he asked. 
 
 "She didn t go out at all, sir. Mrs. Stacy was in 
 town, she found when she telephoned." 
 
 "Where is she?" 
 
 "Up-stairs in her room, I think, sir." 
 
 "Well, tell her I m here. And you might bring me 
 something to drink, Annette. I m frightfully thirsty." 
 
 "Yes, sir. Would you mind stepping on the porch 
 a moment just a moment, sir?" 
 
 He followed her. There was the tea-tray still un 
 cleared. Six cups stood on it, and all had been used. 
 
 "I left them for you to see, sir. Now I must clear 
 them, or Mrs. Redreeve will be displeased." 
 
 "What is the matter?" The six cups seemed some 
 how reassuring. 
 
 The maid looked behind her furtively into the empty 
 hall, then bent and whispered quickly: 
 
 "There was no one here to-day, sir. And from in 
 side I saw Mrs. Redreeve wet the spoons, and drink a 
 little sip out of each cup." 
 
 Redreeve turned on her angrily, but the maid s eyes 
 were full of tears. He pushed past her and went up 
 stairs, while she began quietly clearing the tea-things 
 away. 
 
 "Oh, Harry, I m so sorry! I ve been asleep. I 
 meant to be down to meet you. 7 Millicent raised a 
 flushed face from her pillows. "And the Carles are 
 coming to dinner to-night. I telephoned them this 
 afternoon. Kate Stacy was in town to-day, so I 
 couldn t get her to lunch or motor or anything." 
 
 He felt a wild impulse to sneak down and ask An 
 nette or some other maid if the Carles really were 
 coming, but he forbore. 
 
174 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Good! What sort of day have you had?" 
 
 "All right, dear. Only" she roused herself to a 
 sitting position, and began patting his knee softly with 
 her hand "they came again to-day and took tea. 
 They ve never done that before. I had to ask An 
 nette to bring tea for them, Blue Bonnet and all. I 
 wasn t sure even this afternoon, you see, that they 
 were real, though I think they are. And Annette 
 brought the tea perfectly. She didn t stumble over 
 any of them." 
 
 "Did they drink the tea?" 
 
 Mrs. Redreeve flushed. 
 
 "You can ask Annette if she didn t find every cup 
 used!" 
 
 A great wave of pity swept over him, bringing a 
 kind of choking relief with it. She wouldn t lie to him, 
 poor darling, so long as she could keep truth on her 
 lips. But how real they must have been to her, for 
 her to adopt that subterfuge to try to prove to An 
 nette, in Annette s own crude terms, that they were 
 there. She must have a hideous, baffled sense of being 
 the only person with eyes in a blind world so much 
 worse than being blind in a world of those who see. 
 He bent and kissed her. 
 
 "I must dress if the Carles are coming. So must 
 you. Don t worry, sweetheart. We ll work it all out. 
 I ll stay and see them to-morrow. They never come in 
 the morning, do they?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "Well, then, it s all right. I have to go round the 
 links with Stacy in the morning, but I ll be on deck all 
 the afternoon." 
 
 The next morning Redreeve went to the club. He 
 was glad Stacy was a scratch man; he might have had 
 
BLUE BONNET 175 
 
 to try to beat him if he had been in his own class. It 
 would have been pretty hard to try to beat any one 
 that day. The links were all hazards and bunkers, 
 and on the fifth green his ball had got to within a few 
 inches of the hole, he couldn t remember how he 
 swung his cleek mechanically as if for a tremendous 
 drive. 
 
 "Good Lord!" murmured Stacy. 
 
 "Good Lord, indeed/ echoed Redreeve. Fact is," 
 he pulled himself together quickly "my mind is 
 anywhere, and my general game is too poor to go on 
 by itself. Sorry to have played tennis all the morning. 
 A man telegraphed he was coming down this afternoon 
 for an important conference. I m wool-gathering. I 
 think I ll pull out." 
 
 Stacy nodded good-humoredly. 
 
 "I m just out for the fun of the thing. I ll finish 
 and see what I can do with Bogey. You have a right 
 to be off your feed. So long!" 
 
 Redreeve went home, dully thankful that he had 
 won his big case, and the consideration of men with 
 it. He had tried deliberately to keep life in the nor 
 mal round, thinking that, until he could decide, that 
 was the safest thing to do for Millicent. Whatever 
 happened or didn t, in these few crucial days, he would 
 make her take everything sanely. He wouldn t deviate; 
 he wouldn t turn the house into a psychopathic ward. 
 People should come and go, and the business of life 
 should be pursued, until he knew. She was still quite 
 perfect with outsiders: she had been delightful with 
 the Carles the night before; she would be charming 
 with the district attorney if he got there in time for 
 luncheon. And never again, during this little period 
 of suspense, would he leave her alone in the afternoon. 
 Everything should go by the board rather than that. 
 
176 VALIANT DUST 
 
 If he could once be present when the "people" came! 
 He thought it unlikely that he ever should; yet he 
 hoped once at least to watch her with the hallucination 
 full upon her. Perhaps he could hold her tight to his 
 side, make her see with his eyes, force her to stare 
 until the chairs were empty, even for her. He built 
 great hopes on the fact that she hadn t lied to him; 
 that she had kept, poor dear, the mirror of her con 
 sciousness as clear for him as she could. Some little 
 spring that still worked in her brain had clicked out, 
 at his direct question, an evasion instead of a lie. But 
 he wouldn t play golf again until it was over. He should 
 have to see Boyce sooner or later, he supposed. 
 
 Mrs. Redreeve met him on the porch. Though An 
 nette was beside her, pulling chairs into place, his wife 
 spoke at once: 
 
 "Harry, I told you they never came except in the 
 afternoon. But they did come this morning to say 
 good-bye. They re going back to town. Isn t it ex 
 traordinary that I don t know their names yet?" 
 
 "Come in, dear, come in." He tried to draw her into 
 the house. 
 
 "No, wait a minute. The old gentleman looked at 
 his watch and said they would be late for luncheon if 
 they didn t hurry. And his wife said how unfor 
 tunate it was, and how odd, they had never met you. 
 You don t have to worry about me any more, darling, 
 for this time I know they were real. See?" She pulled 
 out a blue sunbonnet from behind her back. 
 
 He had his arm about her and was leading her into 
 the house. But she detained him. 
 
 "Tell Mr. Redreeve where you found it, Annette." 
 
 "On the long chair, under the cushion." The maid s 
 eyes were lowered. 
 
BLUE BONNET 177 
 
 "She s such a madcap! They ll hardly send back 
 for it; it s perfectly worthless. Throw it away, An 
 nette. But you see they are real." 
 
 Redreeve stopped in the hall. "Hadn t you better 
 put on something else? The district attorney may be 
 here to luncheon." 
 
 "Of course. I was just going to dress. You d better 
 hurry, yourself. Don t you want a shower first? It s 
 extraordinarily hot for October. Bye-bye." She ran 
 up the stairs, but leaned over the rail and spoke again : 
 
 "I m glad Blue Bonnet left it, so you could see. 
 Tell Annette to throw it away. It s a horror. No, you 
 can call to her. Come up at once, dear. You ll be 
 late, and he ll be here." 
 
 But Redreeve went back to the porch. The maid, 
 as white as wax, was holding the blue sunbonnet in a 
 shaking hand. When she saw Redreeve emerge from 
 the house alone, she burst into tears. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Redreeve, I can t stand it any longer!" 
 
 "Who was here, Annette?" He took the sunbonnet 
 from her and held it with numb fingers. 
 
 "No one, sir, no one." 
 
 "Where did this come from, then?" 
 
 "She bought the gingham in the village this morning, 
 Mr. Redreeve, just after you went over to the club. 
 I saw the package under her arm when she came back. 
 And she sewed it in her room. I didn t dream, sir 
 I wouldn t spy on a lady but I saw her when I was 
 tidying the dressing-room. Look at it, sir how gob 
 bled the stitches are. It don t hardly hold together. 
 And an hour after, I found it on this chair, with the 
 pillows all throwed round. She made it herself, Mr. 
 Redreeve, so as you d think somebody left it here. Do 
 you understand it, sir?" 
 
178 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Harry Redreeve was very white. 
 
 No, Annette, I don t. But you had better throw 
 it away, as she told you. And, for heaven s sake, stop 
 crying!" 
 
 He went into the house to dress, but before he went 
 up-stairs, he entered the telephone-closet and shut the 
 door. Watch in hand, he telephoned the telegram. He 
 had to spell "Delano" three times. 
 
VII 
 EAST OF EDEN 
 
 I was with Twining when it happened. Nothing but 
 that actual presence on the spot could give me the 
 right to tell the tale; for, untypical as it is, irrelevant, 
 unique, unexpected, to sit at home and imagine it would 
 be merely morbid. Some people may think it morbid 
 to relate it, in any case. To such I can only say that 
 facts need no apology. The thing occurred. What 
 is morbid is the comment of the people very far away 
 who never understood. I was there; day by day, by 
 his side, I saw him through it, and I can honorably 
 assert that Twining was sincere to the core, honest to 
 the bitter end. Though why chosen for this peculiar 
 destiny, I have never been able to guess. 
 
 Since my day they have set a statue on the Kings- 
 borough campus that is an adequate portrait of Roger 
 Twining s type. I don t know what it calls itself, but 
 it is a young athlete, half in a gown, half out of it, with 
 a football under his arm and hockey shoes on his 
 feet, with a Bible and tennis racquets heaped vaguely 
 against him a symbolic presentment, I take it, of 
 young Kingsborough going forth to preach the Gospel 
 to every creature. A very nice person, that statue, 
 but too heterogeneously equipped. Twining, to the 
 life: if he could once have got his Polynesians to play 
 basket-ball, he could have gone on, I believe, to ex 
 pound the Pauline epistles to them with fluent ease. 
 For he was not a fool, and he was the best fellow in the 
 
 179 
 
180 VALIANT DUST 
 
 world. Only, you see, by Twining s time at Kings- 
 borough (he graduated a few years after I did) they 
 had completely canalized religion between Y. M. C. A. 
 embankments. No one cared about categorical im 
 peratives any more not even Tug Lambert when he 
 was drunk. The statue is the expression of the Kings- 
 borough spirit which moulded Twining. For the very 
 special trick life was going to play him, he was a little 
 handicapped by all those implements of sport. They 
 didn t fit his fate. Variety without complication 
 "muscular," all of it. And Roger Twining was to be 
 an optimist caught by the Furies, a lad by no means 
 Prometheus chained to the Promethean rock. If it 
 weren t for the old Kingsborough clannishness, I should 
 be tempted to say that he was the seat of a terrific 
 tempest and was himself only teapot size. But, then, 
 I have always stuck to the categorical imperative; 
 and, while it is an open question in my mind whether 
 you can ever really convert a heathen, I am quite 
 sure that you cannot convert him with basket-ball. In 
 that I side with Aunt Miriam. 
 
 Twining himself felt something of it in those first 
 discouraged days at his remote, incredible post, where, 
 by mismanagement at home and the inopportune death 
 on the high seas of the man who was to follow him 
 at once, he was for a time in sole charge. (You will 
 have made out, I hope, that he was a missionary.) 
 As he put it to me petulantly one night on his big 
 verandah, "If I could only have worked backward in 
 stead of forward, unlearned all the things a Christian 
 child knows, acquired a totem instead of a diploma!" 
 He was coming to realize, and not without regret, that 
 basket-ball can never take the place of good, soul- 
 shaking ritual. Besides, the natives would not play 
 basket-ball. They preferred to spear fish, and get 
 
EAST OF EDEN 181 
 
 drunk of an evening, and smile as no Christian has 
 ever smiled. 
 
 Now let me get to work and abridge for you the 
 preluding weeks. 
 
 Pure Kingsborough clannishness led Twining, when 
 he found me existing, tourist-fashion, in the best hotel 
 on the island, to ask me to come up to the Mission 
 and pay him a visit. Pure Kingsborough clannishness 
 made it possible for me to accept; for, though we had 
 plenty of common acquaintance, we had never known 
 each other, and missionaries are not my tipple. They 
 are like ginger-ale, neither intoxicating nor refreshing. 
 I had been in twenty minds about accepting, and finally 
 I went up to see for myself. Having seen, I stayed. 
 The scene got me. I was new to the South Seas. 
 
 I shall never forget how I found Twining, that first 
 day, when I went to return his visit. He was sitting 
 on a palm-wreathed eminence, gazing fixedly down 
 a forty-five-degree slant of vegetation, at the huddle 
 of roofs whence I had climbed to his hill. Behind him, 
 the wooden buildings of his new compound gashed the 
 dense, illimitable green of the jungle. In a year or 
 two the compound would be assimilated to the land 
 scape; it would be caressed, covered, crept over, by 
 innumerable vegetable parasites. But now it was a 
 raw wound in the beauty of the forest. The town lay 
 a few hundred feet below. Beyond the roofs were 
 docks of a sort, and enough corrugated iron to prove 
 that this paradise existed commercially. Then the 
 boats, the reef, and the ocean which took up the tale 
 of infinity where the jungle left it off. Twining sat 
 there on his volcanic headland, staring; and as I ap 
 proached, a little pile of cocoanuts toppled over on his 
 left foot as he jerked it nervously. The Chinese boy 
 who had guided me to his retreat disappeared with the 
 
182 VALIANT DUST 
 
 merest grunt of announcement. Twining nodded, then 
 picked up a cocoanut and flung it petulantly down the 
 slant of vegetation, in the direction of the town. It 
 grazed the green tree-tops for a second or two, then 
 dipped through the branches of a breadfruit and fell, 
 no doubt, to earth somewhere. 
 
 "A perfectly good cocoanut wasted," I remarked, 
 as I sat down beside him. 
 
 "I d like to waste a few thousands," he groaned. 
 "It would be a darned good thing for these dwellers 
 in Eden if they had to rustle a little more for a living. 
 On my word, I sometimes envy Sherry Spencer over in 
 China rice-Christians and all. Sherry groans over 
 the Oriental mind. Heavens! It s something you can 
 get your teeth into, anyhow, even if it bites back. 
 These folk aren t anything. They re a law unto them 
 selves. No, there re not; they re just a set of privi 
 leges unto themselves. Nature cockers them as if they 
 were worth it. ... Man, you can t teach the 
 Gospel to a bunch of people who don t want anything 
 they haven t got. They don t even regret the good 
 old days of long pig." 
 
 "Dying out, aren t they?" 
 
 "Oh yes, and they ll be Presbyterians when they re 
 dead, I shouldn t wonder." And he kicked the ruins 
 of the cocoanut-heap with a white-canvas toe. 
 
 That was Twining s state of mind when I first en 
 visaged him and his situation. I did not reply; I 
 leaned back and looked, taking my ease; for on this 
 occasion I should have to decide whether or not to 
 accept his invitation. He did not interrupt my con 
 templation, even by shying another cocoanut. I filled 
 my eyes with the scene, my lungs with the air, my heart 
 with all that uncomprehended exotic implication. The 
 beauty was overpowering. Nothing that you could rea- 
 
EAST OF EDEN 183 
 
 sonably ask for was omitted from the landscape. 
 Mountain, gorge, and valley were assembled in a hun 
 dred romantic contours; unseen torrents tinkled softly 
 in my ears; the trees and flowers were those of an em 
 peror s dream. A cool, sweet trade-wind ruffled all 
 that gorgeousness into life. And for the last fillip, 
 the thatched roofs below, constant hint that you were 
 on the threshold of something you could never hope 
 to understand. . . . Down in the town were offi 
 cials, commercial travellers, beach-combers, men "from 
 Sydney" (sinister appellation), natives in corduroy 
 trousers dramatic, full of plot for comic opera or a 
 shilling shocker. But I would eschew drama; I would 
 live for a time on the unspoiled heights. 
 
 Had I but known it, I was like a man with weak 
 nerves refusing Stevenson and taking to Sophocles. 
 But I did not know. 
 
 "I ll stay, thank you," I said at last, and waved my 
 hand inclusively to suggest that it was to Nature 
 I succumbed. 
 
 "Ripping, isn t it? I m so glad you will," was 
 Twining s rejoinder. His tone told me that he was 
 glad, but the tribute to the scenery was merely con 
 ventional. 
 
 So I came up and stayed with Twining and his aunt 
 Miriam at the Mission. I have, as well as I can, given 
 you some inkling of Twining. You will know more 
 about him later. I must not, I suppose, take time to 
 expound Aunt Miriam, though I succumbed at once 
 to her peculiarly American charm. It is enough here 
 to define her externally a woman of sixty-odd, with 
 iron-gray hair, and a vast serenity which veiled her 
 executive type. She was not Roger s aunt; she and her 
 husband had adopted Roger, who was an orphan, and 
 it was her late husband, "Uncle Ephraim" (he, too, 
 
184 VALIANT DUST 
 
 in his time, a Kingsborough man), who had destined 
 Roger to the "foreign field." Roger s vocation was not 
 spontaneous, you see; it was a form of gratitude, an 
 earnest of devotion ; and that is important. Aunt Mir 
 iam was there to see that he did his job; but she was 
 especially and chiefly there to help him through the 
 months of his novitiate, to keep his house until he got 
 a wife ("helpmeet" was often Aunt Miriam s word). 
 Then she would go back to her sisters in Illinois, to 
 whom she wrote long journal -letters. Aunt Miriam 
 never went down the Mission hill to the town. She 
 knitted endlessly, and made calico clothes for those 
 native children whom the grim wolf with privy paw 
 had not yet devoured. And she would sit for hours, 
 her writing-pad on her lap, gazing at the summit of the 
 volcanic headland where I first found Roger and had 
 made my earth-shaking decision. We had people to 
 dinner now and then, and I explored passes and 
 ravines and caves while Roger was busy below us 
 with dark souls that matched the dark skins. 
 
 I stayed with them, as retrospectively it seems to 
 me, an unconscionably long time. I was a loafer, with 
 my hands in my pockets, and I had never seen any 
 thing I liked so much as this. I sketched a little; I 
 dipped into Twining s folk-lore books; I bathed in cold 
 mountain pools; I held Aunt Miriam s wool for her 
 to wind. The place enchanted me in no metaphorical 
 sense. I can never hope to reproduce for you the un 
 reality of that island and its beauty. It was out of the 
 world as I conceived and knew the world; I hung, sus 
 pended in time, over the landscape of a dream. There 
 was no past or future; no relation, no claim, no human 
 plot. I might (as in childhood one dreams of doing) 
 have been floating on cirrhus clouds or treading the 
 
EAST OF EDEN 185 
 
 Milky Way. That is why this story will never seem to 
 me morbid. 
 
 From this fourth-dimensional world in which I 
 moved and breathed I was awakened, after many 
 weeks, by the entrance of the heroine. Even then I 
 did not wake all at once, for the manner of her en 
 trance was in keeping with the scene. We were dining 
 that night, Roger and I, with the British consul, and 
 we took a short cut through the jungle, instead of 
 going round by road. The trail was well marked and 
 well used, but even so, the wild guava clipped us close, 
 and we tripped over the offspring of the patriarchal 
 bamboos. As we tore down the last slant, she rose 
 materialized you might say before our eyes: a 
 white figure, rounding a huge palm-trunk and standing 
 suddenly before us. She was laughing, under her 
 wreath of orchids, and the juice of a half-eaten mango 
 rippled lusciously over her right hand. 
 
 She made no pretence of not knowing us, or of in 
 troducing herself. She did not even say, "You are 
 Mr. Twining and Mr. Malcolm, and I am Letitia 
 Quayle, whom you are to meet at dinner." She merely 
 greeted and joined us. Nor did she apologize for the 
 mango (which is a fruit without social virtues), though 
 she threw it away. 
 
 I did not know, just at first, how it affected Twining, 
 for I was busy feeling the pleasant shock of it to the 
 full. She was artless and exquisite as a dryad or as 
 Virginia on the sands of Mauritius. She came forward 
 as if she belonged to us, as if we all belonged together 
 in some naif legend. She did not break the dream. 
 She was natural as the mango that she flung away to 
 rot beneath the bamboos. Perhaps I can describe bet 
 ter the effect of her apparition if I say that my mind 
 
186 VALIANT DUST 
 
 suddenly became a reminiscent welter of Atala, Typee, 
 and the like though she was fair as a lily. 
 
 It was I who made foolish talk until we turned into 
 the consular garden. Twining was dumb. Only as 
 we climbed the steps of the verandah he turned to her 
 and asked, "Do you ever wear blue?" 
 
 "Constantly." And the least shade of formality, 
 of Europeanism, crept over her face. 
 
 "I thought so." He turned away and walked up 
 to the consul. 
 
 My thoughts veered sharply to Aunt Miriam, above. 
 Perhaps the "helpmeet" was nearer than she thought. 
 Roger was pale, his dark eyes had recaptured their lost 
 fervor, and an immortal curiosity sharpened his fine 
 features. Mentally, I withdrew on the spot. I devoted 
 myself to that eminent scientist, Professor Quayle, fel 
 low of every society that exists for the purpose of dis 
 covering the skeleton in the racial closet. It was worth 
 while. He was eclectic, as the great scientists are; he 
 knew a lot about anthropology, and could see the 
 humor of a dinosaur. His talk was delightful; negli 
 gently challenged by our host, he became the Schehera 
 zade of the Stone Age. Also he had been everywhere 
 scientists are the pampered children of our genera 
 tion and his metaphors were as good as his facts. 
 If this be "shop," I thought, let me never hear anything 
 else. Letitia had accompanied him to many places 
 far from trade centres, and joined in with eager anec 
 dotes. A curious education, I reflected, as I listened 
 to her. She had never been to Paris or Rome, but 
 she was intimate with sharks and fruit-eating bats, 
 and the Falls of the Zambesi were to her a more 
 familiar name than Niagara. Fair, very fair, her blond 
 hair growing in a widow s peak; young with the very 
 essence of youth; a child, not of cosmopolis, but of the 
 
EAST OF EDEN 187 
 
 planet. I let my eyes dwell on her in sheer pleasure, 
 this girl of strictly Saxon featuring, whose familiar 
 allusions were to places, people, food, and customs that 
 I had never heard of. The only drawback to my irre 
 sponsible delight (for, remember, I had withdrawn 
 while yet there was time had taken a great backward 
 leap before I reached the threshold) was Roger s 
 silence. Though I had never witnessed the phenome 
 non before, I knew what it was and what it meant: the 
 stored experience of the race had taught me this thing 
 which I had never seen as you would recognize an 
 earthquake the first time you felt it. Love at first sight 
 was its name; even before we reached the consular 
 garden Roger had handed over the key. So much 
 beauty lies buried for me in that South Sea isle to which 
 I shall never return, and the most beautiful of all 
 things in that isolated dream, I now feel, was the sud 
 denness and completeness of Roger Twining s sur 
 render to the miracle. They step through the pages of 
 the great fairy-tales the Dantes, the Romeos, the 
 Siegfrieds and we watch and listen, and are moved to 
 tears, and go away disbelieving. But once in a thou 
 sand moons Life makes the incomparable gesture for 
 herself; and I shall always thank God, in spite of 
 everything, that I have seen love burst into complete 
 flower in a single instant. 
 
 Letitia? Well, she was a woman; she had her little 
 part to play; and, that evening, after his hoarse ques 
 tion ("Do you ever wear blue?" How it rings, sinister 
 in my ears, but sweet! ) she played it. But he saw her 
 first stepping out of the forest as Virginia. Letitia 
 Quayle was complicated, yes. But what is more com 
 plicated than a flower? We prate of the simplicity 
 of Nature by way of disparaging the poor little nursery 
 subtleties of civilization. We are great fools. Letitia 
 
188 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Quayle was simple as a rose; and let the botanists say 
 how simple that is. Now you see what I mean. She 
 was idyllically natural and very complex. She 
 bloomed and glowed with perfect fitness at the heart 
 of that tropic jungle; she surprised us no more than 
 a butterfly. But simple? I stick to my own theory. 
 
 In spite of her initial playing of the part, Letitia 
 came to Roger Twining very naturally. Professor 
 Quayle was due to stay for a month, investigating coral 
 formations. Aunt Miriam lifted Letitia bodily from 
 the hospitalities below and carried her up to the Mis 
 sion headland. I do not know how else to put it, 
 though of course Mrs. Twining never stirred from the 
 compound. There seemed to be no formal invitations; 
 simply, Aunt Miriam expected her, and she came. 
 Roger and I would take her back, late in the evening, 
 after dinner. Mrs. Twining had seen, as I had seen, 
 and she wanted to be sure. I do not think it occurred 
 to her that Miss Quayle would refuse Roger. Nor did 
 it occur to me, though never was courtship less like 
 courtships at home. Roger showed less ardor than 
 absorption; he went about the business of life as 
 though Letitia were the air he breathed. He took her, 
 you would say, calmly; but she was the basis of exist 
 ence. When she was not there, he seemed to suffer 
 dumbly, like an animal. I could swear that for a fort 
 night he spoke no word to her; yet if he had been 
 visibly on his knees, his attitude could not have been 
 clearer. His Polynesians got drunk in peace, those 
 days. 
 
 And Letitia? No girl in my world has ever treated 
 a lover, declared or undeclared, as she treated Roger. 
 She turned to him for everything. We picnicked in 
 deep, vine-hung ravines above frigid and shadowed 
 pools; and I have seen her, without coquetry, without 
 
EAST OF EDEN 189 
 
 affectation, bend her head forward to drink from a cup 
 he held, or feed him a rose apple with her own fingers. 
 They clambered down exotic trails hand in hand, and 
 stood together like children to gaze at a waterfall. Not 
 a hint of passion; only that beautiful and calm clinging 
 to each other. My constant presence did not em 
 barrass them; if it was Arden, I was their faithful fool. 
 Do you wonder that my dream was so long undisturbed, 
 or that, in spite of all that came after, I look back 
 upon it as the most beautiful thing in life a thing 
 (sometimes I desperately feel) that fate should never 
 have dared to touch? 
 
 The wonder of it is, of course, that that fortnight 
 could ever have been. Even I, completely obsessed 
 with the notion that we were existing outside of his 
 tory, knew that it could not last like this. A breath 
 suffices to destroy so delicate a beauty. I knew the 
 breath would come. Even in tales, it always does. 
 We pay tribute forever to the Eumenides. 
 
 All those enchanted days, Aunt Miriam said nothing. 
 She left Letitia to Roger and to me though Letitia 
 spent many an hour by Aunt Miriam s side, and God 
 knows what they talked of. That Aunt Miriam s was 
 not the first disturbing breath, I know. Sixty years 
 of self-control had made Aunt Miriam a marvel of a 
 woman. She was, in this case, the more of a marvel 
 that she had no romance in her. I have been bitter, 
 very bitter, about it all; but, strangely enough, never, 
 in my most sky-defying moods, bitter against Aunt 
 Miriam. 
 
 The disturbing breath came, as I knew it would and 
 must; came when Roger Twining s cup spilled over 
 and his passion declared itself. Disturbing, at first, 
 only in the sense that the manner of perfection 
 changed; that the tenderness quickened and flashed 
 
190 VALIANT DUST 
 
 and kindled into a romance so poignant that my eyes 
 smarted in beholding it. By what slow gradations or 
 what swift transmutation, known only to their inmost 
 selves, it came, I cannot say. Though two people 
 were never more meetly chaperoned, they were some 
 times alone; and I fancy that change could have be 
 come conscious only when they were together in soli 
 tude. They came back hand in hand from the vol 
 canic headland where I had first found Roger petulant 
 ly staring, and ranged themselves like decorous chil 
 dren before Aunt Miriam and me. The flaming sunset 
 was behind them; the sudden twilight was already 
 darkening the remoter corners of the verandah. Hand 
 in hand, with soft, awe-struck voices, they told us that 
 they were going to be married. It was the gentlest 
 climax I have ever known, yet I felt as if something 
 perfect had passed away. The marvel, as I have said 
 before, was that the previous fortnight could ever have 
 been. Roger Twining fell manfully in love at sight; 
 nothing but the perfect concord of the two creatures 
 could have kept him like a child with her just so long 
 as she wanted to be a child. You pay for concord like 
 that between man and woman pay with sacrifices laid 
 on the immemorial altar of sex. Love itself is a fever; 
 and, as if that were not enough, the irrelevant world 
 steps in to point out that marriage is a practical matter. 
 With love announced, the world, the flesh, and the devil 
 troop in. Small wonder that priests bolster marriage 
 up with sacraments! 
 
 As luck would have it, Professor Quayle had gone, 
 in a motor-boat, to cruise for a few days among out 
 lying uninhabited islands and far reefs whence he could 
 gather polypi at will. Letitia was under the nominal 
 chaperonage of the British consul s wife, but it had 
 been arranged that she should spend a night or two 
 
EAST OF EDEN 191 
 
 at the Mission. To this Aunt Miriam now objected. 
 Letitia must not be her guest, she told Roger, until 
 Professor Quayle had sanctioned the betrothal. The 
 flesh had come in, you see, already, and here was the 
 world. The devil got his innings later. Roger affected 
 to be shocked by the conventions what true lover is 
 not shocked by them? but Aunt Miriam was adamant. 
 Letitia succumbed dumbly, like a hurt child. It seemed 
 wanton cruelty to part them. That Professor Quayle 
 should refuse Roger was incredible. It was mere super 
 stition, vain as any tabu. I took it upon myself to tell 
 Mrs. Twining this; but she did not move a hair s 
 breadth from her position. Until Letitia s father could 
 give his consent, she would not have Letitia under her 
 roof as Roger s betrothed. She owed it to Professor 
 Quayle. So we took Letitia down to the town again, 
 instead of keeping her with us on the heights. 
 
 The prohibition was purely formal, as even Aunt 
 Miriam admitted, and Letitia was at liberty to come 
 each morning and "spend the day." So few of those 
 days of prohibition there were only three, all told, 
 between the engagement and Professor Quayle s re 
 turn. Yet, with their atmosphere of trial, of waiting, 
 we seemed to be taking something indefinite, equivocal, 
 painful, into our lungs with each breath we drew. Gone 
 was the happy oxygen of the idyllic fortnight. Some 
 times I gazed up at the low-hung stars and clenched my 
 fists and vowed it shouldn t pass; that one instant 
 should suffice for Quayle s consent, and that then 
 Letitia and Roger should wander back hand in hand, 
 for a time, to their Eden. I, their faithful fool, would 
 stand guard between them and the world. Curiously, 
 you see, I did not crave an immediate marriage for 
 them; I craved, rather, a return of the uncapturable 
 days. Nothing had ever been so beautiful as the fort- 
 
192 VALIANT DUST 
 
 night of their idyll. Nothing I set it down with an 
 unflinching pen ever has been. I stand committed 
 to that. 
 
 They stuck the dears! more closely to Aunt 
 Miriam during those days. The world and the flesh, 
 as I was saying, had got in their work. They were not 
 so happy as they had been, though love was in every 
 sweet and modest gesture. I knew don t ask me 
 how that they themselves (even as I, the spectator) 
 were looking back rather than forward. Better, in 
 finitely, marriage than this; but, oh, best of all, the 
 unreal days forever past. Their ardor was the tender- 
 est thing imaginable. Even Roger seemed only to want 
 Letitia s hand to hold quietly, peacefully, in our pres 
 ence. It was not mawkish, for there was no ulterior 
 suggestion in that simple, mutual caress. Friends, you 
 would have said, if friends ever had just that hunger. 
 But I knew better than that, for my room was next to 
 Roger s, and I knew how he paced his wide porch, 
 sleepless, through the night, and how he was never 
 himself again until the morning when Letitia came 
 stepping through the garden, bringing calm with her. 
 They were bad, those three days of the professor s ab 
 sence, but so cunningly arranged that each hour was 
 tolerable, almost desirable, compared with the one that 
 followed it. In all that stillness and sweetness, events 
 progressed with catastrophic speed. It seemed as 
 though an unseen hurricane drove us on, though the 
 Trade never ceased its gentle rhythm. 
 
 It was the second evening, and the last savored hour 
 before Letitia must descend to the hospitality of the 
 consul s wife. Mrs. Twining stirred the scented air 
 with some faint rebuke of Roger for neglect of duty. 
 He answered, defending himself. Then Aunt Miriam 
 turned to Letitia to make her peace. 
 
EAST OF EDEN 193 
 
 "I don t see why you shouldn t go down to the school 
 to-morrow, my dear. You can t know too soon about 
 the work that you will share if you marry Roger." 
 
 "Oh, but I couldn t." The girl stopped, as if to 
 find a tone even gentler than that first murmur of hers. 
 "You see, I don t believe any of it." 
 
 Aunt Miriam gave no sign of what must have been 
 to her a terrible shock. A strong woman, very. "You 
 mean that you are not a Christian, Letitia?" 
 
 "A Christian? Oh no. I ve never been to any 
 church. Father has no religion, and of course I think 
 as he does." 
 
 "You poor child!" 
 
 It must have been Letitia Quayle s beauty that wrung 
 this groan from Mrs. Twining, for on matters of faith 
 she was uncompromising. I felt sick. 
 
 "Did you know this, Roger?" His aunt turned to 
 him. 
 
 "It never occurred to me to tell him." Letitia threw 
 in. "Does it matter, Roger?" 
 
 Twining answered, slowly, heavily, "Not the least 
 bit in the world, my dear." 
 
 "You see." The girl turned to Mrs. Twining. "He 
 says it doesn t matter." 
 
 "But, Letitia" Aunt Miriam faltered for an instant, 
 then went on "how could you, an atheist, marry a 
 Christian missionary? A wife must be a helpmeet." 
 
 I breathed more easily now that the fatal word was 
 out; it had not been pronounced before, and it was 
 inevitable that some time it should be. 
 
 "I was brought up on all those books Roger has in 
 there. I couldn t believe the Christian religion though 
 of course it is a very nice religion. I didn t know I 
 should have to teach it. I knew Roger would have to, 
 
194 VALIANT DUST 
 
 but I supposed I should just stay at home and love 
 him." Then, with a stifled desperation (but all so 
 gentle pianissimo): "I haven t thought about mar 
 riage much. I ve only thought about Roger. And 
 forgive me, Mrs. Twining if Roger doesn t mind, need 
 you? He is a missionary himself, you see. He must 
 know best." Then she tried for mirth. "If Roger 
 throws me over why, then, we shan t have to bother 
 with asking father, shall we? It will all be out of the 
 way before he gets back." 
 
 Roger leaned over and grasped Letitia s hand. Mrs. 
 Twining rose from her deep chair and paced the wide 
 verandah once, twice, three times the length of it. 
 Then she stopped before the pair and spoke, and I 
 knew she was trying not to sound harsh: 
 
 "Roger will convert you." 
 
 The two young things started. They had already 
 had time to forget. 
 
 "Oh no, I shan t, Aunt Miriam. I don t want her 
 different in any way." 
 
 I, of course, said nothing. The idyll was spoiling 
 slowly before my eyes, attacked first here, then there, 
 by insidious, destructive agents. But the hero and 
 heroine were perfect still. How long would it be be 
 fore the poison ate in reached the heart of the idyll, 
 and them? 
 
 That night I had two sleepless housemates, I knew; 
 I could hear Aunt Miriam walking about her room. 
 Mrs. Twining was a strong woman. She said nothing 
 to me; she bade Roger good-bye when he went off to 
 the school as naturally as if his religious integrity were 
 not threatened. She greeted Letitia with a serenity 
 that was almost sweetness. Only I, perhaps, knew how 
 deep was her disturbance, for I caught her replacing 
 Primitive Paternity on Roger s shelves with a little dis- 
 
EAST OF EDEN 195 
 
 gusted push. I did not know but that she might call 
 on me to be devil s advocate; to expound to her how 
 one might be non-Christian and yet not heathen. But 
 apparently she was waiting for Quayle s return before 
 making any move. Twining himself, that day, seemed 
 untroubled. He had not yet awakened from his dream. 
 Letitia, too, seemed unconscious. It was only Aunt 
 Miriam and I who, under a sunny sky, put up help 
 less hands against the coming storm. I was not 
 shocked, as she was, by Letitia s non-religiousness. It 
 hit me in quite another place. Roger Twining was not 
 any too enamoured of his profession, as I well knew; 
 it might be that Letitia would ruin it utterly in his eyes. 
 And if Uncle Ephraim (stout old son of Kingsborough) 
 was a portentous ghost to me, who had never seen him, 
 what must he be to Roger, bowed down under his 
 burden of gratitude and to Aunt Miriam, who had 
 been flesh of his flesh and soul of his sturdy soul? 
 Only three days before, I had walked in Eden with 
 the untroubled pair. And already my fourth-dimen 
 sional world was receding into the original myth. The 
 slow sun gave no sign; but the moon, past the full 
 and rising later each evening, seemed to be marking 
 off the stages of the legend. That very night we should 
 sit in darkness, and we should escort Letitia home, 
 each of us with a lantern in his hand. . . . Believe 
 me, the moon is the real timekeeper; it is she who 
 marks our human intervals. 
 
 It came very suddenly, that night, as we sat looking 
 at the stars. By "it" I mean oh, it is very hard to 
 tell the real irruption of the devil, perhaps. The 
 world and the flesh, with their simultaneous utterance 
 of the word "marriage," had had their turn, and they 
 had not been able to shatter the dream. The devil 
 came in, I suppose, with Letitia s paganism (if you 
 
196 VALIANT DUST 
 
 can call it that) ; but that was only his formal entrance, 
 his conventional cue. We were all breathing a little 
 hard, but we were not without hope. There was a 
 deep plot among us the only time we four conspired 
 together to put off consideration of the problem, to 
 pretend that there was no problem. Even Aunt Mir 
 iam, with a quiet hand on Letitia s knee, seemed to 
 be waiting for it to solve or dissolve itself. But the 
 devil had made a good entrance. He was in fine form, 
 I may say. None of us helped him, but he did not 
 need our help. 
 
 Letitia, as if with a half-thought of explaining her 
 self, of showing the decency of her impious up-bring 
 ing, had given us a wandering narrative of her youth. 
 Mrs. Quayle had died when Letitia was ten. Since 
 then, her life had been the interesting and curious thing 
 I have earlier hinted at. Her stress was not, as it had 
 first been, on the exotic side of that wandering life; 
 rather, I thought, on the important things Professor 
 Quayle had done, and the distinguished friends they 
 had had in every part of the globe. But Letitia was 
 not herself interested she was incapable of "side" 
 and Aunt Miriam asked no eager questions. She had 
 clasped Letitia s hand in hers firmly, as if she would 
 hold her bodily back from Heathenesse. Roger had 
 Letitia s other hand, and so they sat. 
 
 Then I was startled by Roger s voice, seeming to 
 come from very far away, from the inmost recesses of 
 the dream in which he walked: 
 
 "Do you ever wear blue, Letitia?" 
 
 It was the first question he had ever asked her. 
 It brought back to me all the savor of that woodland 
 miracle when we had met her, garlanded, in the forest, 
 and Virginia had flung away her dripping mango un 
 ashamed. 
 
EAST OF EDEN 197 
 
 "Often. Do you want me in a blue frock?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I ll put one on to-morrow. White is what I like 
 best. But why?" 
 
 Her tone had changed, as it always changed when 
 she spoke to Roger, and his when he spoke to her. 
 They seemed to strike the same note; their voices 
 mingled; it had nothing to do with the gamut they kept 
 for the rest of the world. 
 
 "It s your widow s peak, I think. I used to play 
 with a little girl who wore blue and had yellow hair in 
 a widow s peak. I was very fond of her. What was 
 her name, Aunty?" 
 
 Letitia laughed. "Yes, what was her name?" 
 
 Mrs. Twining seemed to rouse herself from deafness. 
 "What is it, my dear?" 
 
 "The girl I used to play with, who had yellow hair 
 and a widow s peak, and always wore blue?" 
 
 Aunt Miriam answered, slowly, "It must have been 
 Mabel Cheyne, Roger." 
 
 "I remember Minnie Cheyne. She wasn t like that." 
 
 "Mabel was her little sister who died. You played 
 with her in the very beginning. I am surprised that 
 you remember her." 
 
 "I don t, very well. It must have been very far back, 
 when I was tiny. I can t say I really remember Mabel, 
 but I do remember the widow s peak and the blue 
 dress. Did I go to her funeral?" 
 
 "Of course not!" Mrs. Twining s voice was sharp. 
 "You were far too young to go to funerals. We went, 
 of course. She was a pretty child, and, in your baby 
 way, you were very fond of her. You soon got over 
 it, of course." 
 
 "It is odd that I should remember. But you 
 know I ve always liked widow s peaks, uncannily, 
 
198 VALIANT DUST 
 
 since Mabel if that was her name. And she must 
 have had blue dresses." 
 
 "And you want me to wear blue in memory of her?" 
 Letitia was totally without coquetry, I knew, but I 
 thought she would be amused. There was no amuse 
 ment in her tone, however only a blank meekness. 
 
 "I don t really care a bit. Only, somehow, blue fits 
 with your hair. I seem to see it that way." 
 
 Mrs. Twining turned to her. "He used to play 
 with Mabel every day such babies they were. In 
 some queer way, it made an impression." It was al 
 most as if she were apologizing for Roger s vagaries. 
 
 "As if I cared a hang, dear!" His tone was the 
 Letitia tone again, pure and full the tone he kept 
 for her. Then I heard it sunk to a whisper. "For 
 me, you are forever and forever in white." I don t 
 think Mrs. Twining heard. She had turned her head 
 away from them. 
 
 Though we longed for the moon, she did not rise, 
 and Letitia bravely made ready to go. A little breeze 
 had sprung up from the forest, and the scent of ginger 
 struggled with the frangipani in our nostrils. The 
 stars were very clear. We were all loath, in our own 
 way, I think, to let the moment go. Far down the 
 tree-smothered slope to the east, a native voice rose 
 through our silence, piercing it with melancholy song 
 some late farer from a feast, winding up a green 
 trail to his village. 
 
 "Your father comes back to-morrow?" It was Aunt 
 Miriam who asked it, her hands on the girl s shoul 
 ders. 
 
 "By ten in the morning, he said." 
 
 Aunt Miriam kissed her good-night. "I ll go down 
 and see him, and fetch you back with me, if he ll 
 let me." 
 
EAST OF EDEN 199 
 
 "You? And why not I?" Roger broke in. 
 
 4 You ll be busy, my dear, in the morning. Your 
 work your calling your sacred task must come 
 first of all. Your people mustn t think you put even 
 Letitia" she kissed the girl "before them. Of 
 course you will see Professor Quayle but I must see 
 him, too. Your uncle would have wished it done in 
 that way." There was no gainsaying her tone. 
 
 "Can t I bring father up to you?" Even Letitia 
 knew that Mrs. Twining never left the Mission. 
 
 "My dear, I stand in my husband s place. I must 
 go to him for Roger. And you children must start at 
 once. It is late, I m afraid. Good-night." She 
 clasped the girl to her, then kissed Roger and went 
 into the house. 
 
 I was privately amused that Mrs. Twining s con 
 servatism should choose to take, in this instance, so 
 European a form. The gesture didn t "go" with her, 
 but her firmness did, and I saw afresh how Roger was 
 both supported and handicapped. Wonderful Aunt 
 Miriam ! 
 
 We stood, the three of us, looking at the stars for 
 a moment before starting down the trail. A faint radi 
 ance in the east showed that the moon was on her 
 way to us. How I wish we had waited for her defied 
 the world, the flesh, and the devil; prolonged that 
 moment, and seen her rise! But we did not. We 
 plunged into the forest on our downward path I in 
 front, like a link-boy; Letitia and Roger (the dar 
 lings!), hand in hand, behind me. My heart was 
 very light over the little matter of creeds; they were 
 so beautiful, those two, together. That, of course, was 
 the devil getting well down to his part my lightness 
 of heart, I mean. 
 
 The next day was, as it were, the last; and I hardly 
 
200 VALIANT DUST 
 
 know how to chronicle it for you. I will at least leave 
 out every irrelevant thing, though it was packed, wil 
 fully, with irrelevancies. The native boy who came 
 running to Roger at dawn, because his father was dy 
 ing; the snake I killed after breakfast in the garden; 
 the sudden shower that came drenchingly down and 
 delayed Mrs. Twining s expedition to the town all 
 those things were irrelevant, though they figured in 
 the general irritation of our hearts. Personally, I 
 could hardly wait for the old ex-chief to die, leaving 
 Roger free, or until Aunt Miriam should return, lead 
 ing Letitia as a bride. I could not read; it was too 
 wet to stroll; I was of no use to any human being. 
 The time seemed very long before Mrs. Twining came 
 back from her unusual journey gray as wood-ash, 
 and without Letitia. Roger had not yet returned. 
 
 She faced me as I met her at the steps, then flung 
 up her hands above her noble head, and passed by me 
 without speaking. Inside the house I heard one low 
 groan. I rushed to her, for I was frightened. "Take 
 care of Roger. Keep him away from me," she said, in 
 a voice that sounded rusty with age, and passed on 
 to her own room. I heard the key turn. 
 
 When Roger did come back, an hour later, exhausted 
 and eager, I could not help him. Letitia had not come. 
 His aunt was locked in her own room, and a terrible 
 silence brooded over the scene. Even Loo seemed to 
 be performing his tasks in a vacuum, for I had neither 
 seen nor heard him. 
 
 Roger got admittance to Mrs. Twining s room, and 
 I spent the longest half-hour I have ever lived, while 
 I waited for him on the headland amid the cocoa- 
 palms, looking out to sea. I say "waited." I had no 
 knowledge of whether he would come to me; but there 
 I could be either reached or avoided, and even a mad- 
 
EAST OF EDEN 201 
 
 man would know that I was discreetly out of earshot 
 of the house. 
 
 Finally Roger stood before me, white from head 
 to foot even his face and his hands were white as 
 the linen he wore. I held out my hand; he took it, 
 and with sudden violence pulled me to my feet. The 
 devil had got in his work. 
 
 "Has she told you?" 
 
 "Nothing." I was trembling physically, I mean. 
 But the young athlete before me stood like a rock. 
 
 "Will you go down at once and see Letitia?" 
 
 "For God s sake, go yourself!" I did not know 
 what was the matter, but I felt sure that neither man 
 nor woman, neither science nor creed, could with 
 stand Roger Twining when he looked like that. 
 
 "She lied to me last night." 
 
 "Who? What?" 
 
 "Aunt Miriam. About Mabel Cheyne." 
 
 "Mabel Cheyne?" I had forgotten the name. I 
 tried to pull my hand from his, to get far enough away 
 from him to focus him, to define his aberration. But 
 his hand was a trap for mine. 
 
 "There was no Mabel Cheyne." 
 
 "What of it?" 
 
 "Letitia is my sister." 
 
 I sank back so suddenly that, involuntarily, he let 
 me go. There was nothing to add to that statement; 
 no need to trace its birth and growth from Aunt 
 Miriam s sudden fear, the night before, to the cor- 
 roboration she had received that morning from Pro 
 fessor Quayle. No need to assemble the evidence; it 
 had been assembled, put together, with tense accuracy, 
 by two suffering, gray-haired people that morning. 
 
 Roger Twining had no great desire for speech, I 
 
202 VALIANT DUST 
 
 could see. But a few more words were wrung from 
 him: "Letitia never knew until to-day that she was 
 an orphan, that she had been adopted. I m older. I 
 remembered her, you see, without realizing. You must 
 go to her and talk to her, I am going off to be alone." 
 And he turned from me toward the forest. Just once 
 he looked back: "Don t be afraid; I ll be back in a 
 few hours. Not to lunch. I don t want any." He 
 disappeared among the huge breadfruit-trees. 
 
 I didn t go to Letitia. I would in time, I thought, 
 if Roger insisted; but not now, not until I had some 
 notion of what to say. I felt, too, that I must not 
 leave at once. I did not wish to go farther away from 
 Roger, or farther away from Mrs. Twining. Each 
 pulled me with invisible cords, as though I were their 
 defender. When I could think of ten words I could 
 say to Letitia Quayle without touching on a raw 
 wound, I would go. Just now I could not stir. 
 
 All sense of time left me. In my retreat I was 
 blind to the sun that might have told me how the 
 hours were passing. Forward and back, forward and 
 back, I went in my dreary mind, from one impossible 
 course of action to another. All through those hours 
 I grew at once more inert and more ashamed of my 
 inertia. My will rose with great gasps to lift me from 
 where I sat; then fell back paralyzed before this or 
 that clear perception of my helplessness. It was the 
 heat of early afternoon, penetrating my high palm 
 roof, that drove me back at last to the house. 
 
 Luncheon lay on the table, untasted and undis 
 turbed, hardened into a disgusting effigy of food. Mrs. 
 Twining met me in another room. Her face was 
 drawn and twisted, as though she had had a "stroke," 
 but she spoke clearly: 
 
 "Where is Roger?" 
 
EAST OF EDEN 203 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders vaguely. "Safe off there, 
 somewhere alone." 
 
 "Go and find him." 
 
 This seemed to be just the urge I needed. I started 
 off obediently. She must have divined that I knew, 
 for as I left the porch she said, in a very low voice: 
 
 "I knew there was a little sister, though until to-day 
 I never knew who took her. But when Roger remem 
 bered, last night, I suddenly grew afraid. Just for 
 an instant they looked alike. So I lied." 
 
 I walked slowly, hardly directing my footsteps, ex 
 cept that of course I went the way I had seen Roger 
 go. My feet dragged; but by this time my brain was 
 blessedly numb, and I was no longer afraid to pre 
 sent myself with my errand undone. I had lost the 
 sense of faithlessness to duty. 
 
 I found him at last beside the musical waterfall, in 
 the deep-shaded, vine-hung ravine. He had wandered 
 back to that scene of passionate innocence, and now 
 sat by the pool where, a few days before, I had seen 
 her drink from the cup he held. He did not question 
 me as I sat down beside him; in silence, in our re 
 spective ways, we pieced together the rent fragments 
 of that most beautiful dream. We must both have 
 been very tired, for Twining did not speak at all and I 
 found my eyes drowsily closing to match that blessed 
 anaesthesia of the spirit. The only sounds I heard 
 were the unchanging sounds of Nature, and the re 
 membered voices of my two friends at play in Eden. 
 I saw the green dazzle of leaves, the tender vividness 
 of blossoms, and, now and then, moving as by right 
 among those natural sweetnesses, the white figure of 
 Letitia. I must almost have dreamed in earnest, for 
 during a little space of time I recaptured the unre- 
 
204 VALIANT DUST 
 
 capturable. It was as it had been, and we were happy, 
 out of the world. 
 
 Finally Roger stirred violently, and I shook myself 
 awake to see him standing, with that face of rock, be 
 side me, staring. Just for a moment I thought it was 
 a dream come true, for, though the things about me 
 were sharp with reality, Letitia stood there before us 
 in the flesh, and spoke the same white Letitia who 
 had come to us laughing from behind a palm-tree. 
 
 "I ran away," she said, very quietly. " Father 
 doesn t know. I thought you would be here. So I 
 came, straight." 
 
 She smiled at me wonderful child! and held out 
 her hand to Roger. The blood came back into his 
 face, but he did not take her hand. He folded his 
 arms instead, and bent his dark eyes on the ground. 
 
 The girl shook her head very sadly, and smiled 
 more sadly still. "May I sit down?" And she went 
 to the rock where she had sat drinking from the cup 
 he held. 
 
 If I had not been able to obey Roger s earlier com 
 mand to go and talk to Letitia Quayle, I could still 
 less talk to her there, before him. I turned, in silence, 
 to go up the trail down which the white figure had 
 just come. 
 
 "Don t go." She stopped me. "Roger and I don t 
 mind. And I d rather you would hear what I have to 
 say. It s better so. Come, Roger, sit down." 
 
 She placed me, by her tone, where they had always 
 tacitly placed me in the days now so diabolically re 
 produced. I was again their faithful fool. She did 
 not touch him, but she beckoned him to sit near her. 
 To my surprise, he sank down in the exact spot she 
 pointed to. I drew off to a little distance, my heart 
 near to breaking. 
 
EAST OF EDEN 205 
 
 "Father means to take me away on the Rarotonga 
 to-morrow," she said, "and of course he didn t think 
 I d want to see you again. But I had to say good 
 bye, didn t I?" 
 
 She tucked her feet up under her like a little girl, 
 and, like a little girl, began plaiting the fronds of a 
 fern. Roger still had not spoken. I did not wonder. 
 How could he speak to a child like that of the dark 
 things that lay between them? What words could he 
 use? And as I looked once more, stealthily, at him, 
 my pity gushed out afresh; for he, too, seemed un 
 ready for life, a beautiful young body with soul scarce 
 budded. Yet if he had been the unformed lad I felt 
 him, he would have stretched out his hand and taken 
 hers as of old. 
 
 "It is good-bye, Roger, dear, I suppose." She had 
 thrown off her hat, and now she bent her head so 
 low over her frond-weaving that I could not see the 
 little peak of hair. "And never again, until we are 
 very old. . . ." Oh, how softly her words came, scarce 
 audible above the waterfall! "I didn t know anything 
 could hurt so. But we re hurt together. That s one 
 thing, isn t it?" 
 
 "Yes, that s one thing." It was the first time he had 
 spoken, but his voice struck the very note of hers. I 
 turned my head away. 
 
 "You won t even take my hand, will you?" she went 
 on, in her gentle, wondering tone. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 I got up softly, meaning to leave them to lose my 
 self, at least, just beyond in the trail. I could not en 
 dure to be there. A terrible altar was slowly being 
 raised by that secret waterfall; terrible as the altar 
 that legend said had once abided in that spot. It was 
 
206 VALIANT DUST 
 
 not meant for me to see the rearing of that sacrificial 
 stone. 
 
 But Letitia held me with a gesture of her little hand. 
 "No, you must not go. We must not be alone. I ran 
 away. ... It wouldn t be fair." 
 
 "Then you must come with me." I knew only that 
 this poignancy must not be prolonged. 
 
 "I will." And she got up, flinging her fronds away. 
 "Good-bye, Roger." She did not hold out her hand. 
 He stood five paces away from her, his leaden eyes 
 still seeking the ground. 
 
 "Not just my hand once?" she pleaded with him. 
 
 And again he shook his head. 
 
 "Because it is good-bye." 
 
 Nothing broke the silence. 
 
 Then suddenly she moved to his side close to him, 
 although she did not touch him. I heard her voice 
 change utterly. I saw her face flush, and her eyes 
 draw his unwilling eyes to her. "Because listen, 
 Roger if you choose, I ll stay forever. I don t un 
 derstand anything; I don t believe anything; and 
 nothing they say makes any difference. I love you 
 better than the whole world, or what you call God, or 
 anything. No one is real but you the rest is just 
 what people get out of books!" 
 
 She had flung her head back as she spoke, and I 
 saw her face unforgettably there before me changed 
 as her voice was changed, the face of a woman hard 
 beset, tragic with passion, beautiful with utter un 
 consciousness of self. The rite was being ac 
 complished before me. I stood, rooted. 
 
 Then Roger Twining did a strange thing. He 
 leaned to her and passed his shaking hand over her 
 beautiful, ageless face as you would pass your hand 
 over a mask. She closed her eyes to his touch, bend- 
 
EAST OF EDEN 207 
 
 ing forward in complete docility. When he took his 
 hand away, she opened her eyes and smiled up at him 
 as she had smiled of old. The face that had leaped 
 out at us as from an immemorial dark myth was gone, 
 and there again stood the fresh apparition of the for 
 est. 
 
 "Good-bye, Letitia. Malcolm will take you back. 
 Good-bye, dear." And Roger grew young again be 
 fore my eyes, a boy, biting his lips not to cry. 
 
 "Good-bye!" Her voice chimed in with his, and I 
 led her away from the storied spot. Before the bushes 
 closed over us I looked back once. Roger was lying 
 face down on the ground, his shoulders heaving. 
 Letitia s eyes inquired of mine. 
 
 "He s all right, dear," I soothed her. "I ll take 
 care of him. It s just hell for a little. Don t look 
 back. Don t do anything that would be cruel to him." 
 
 I spoke as to a child, and like a child she followed 
 me, unquestioningly, up the trail. 
 
VIII 
 SEA-GREEN 
 
 The first night, I remember, was not so bad. One 
 braces oneself, I suppose, for a first encounter with 
 people who have power over one. I was a free man, 
 according to any legal fiction that may prevail; but I 
 was young, and poor, and ambitious. Youth, poverty, 
 and ambition put you in the clutch of the older, richer, 
 and devilishly detached people who dally with the no 
 tion of giving you a living wage in return for services 
 rendered. If I had refused to be in the Fenbys power, 
 I should presently have been in the clutch of a bony 
 allegorical figure you might call Destitution. So I 
 use the phrase advisedly. Poor Ralph had taken my 
 last cent my last ten-dollar bill, anyhow so that 
 it was important for me to get on with these Fenbys. 
 Old Crowninshield had recommended me to them as 
 tutor for their grandson. It was the first and last 
 thing old Crowninshield ever did for me; and I have 
 never known whether to be grateful or not. 
 
 My drive from the station was accomplished in the 
 leisurely twilight of late May; but there was afterglow 
 enough to show me that the region had neither physical 
 charms nor social resources. The mansion seemed to 
 have been left high and dry by the retreating human 
 wave. We passed one darkened factory and a bunch 
 of gaunt wooden tenements stuck in the fields a mile 
 beyond the station, with the casual gesture industry 
 sometimes makes in our older Eastern states. There 
 
 208 
 
SEA-GREEN 209 
 
 was not a hill, not a lake, not a brook, even, for all it 
 was such open country. The man who drove me had a 
 kind of taciturn humor. I placed him at once: an old 
 Irish dependent who had by this time forgotten all 
 about Ireland. His type was so familiar to me (I 
 had been brought up in the next state) that I could 
 almost foretell the drawing-room furniture. It would 
 not, of course, be called the "drawing-room." The 
 carriage was comfortable and had once had style. 
 After three-quarters of an hour I alighted at the steps 
 of an ugly stone house, built evidently in the fifties. 
 The figure on the threshold was obviously my em 
 ployer. A lantern swinging from the porch roof en 
 abled me to decide that at once. He leaned on a 
 gold-headed stick of course. Any man to whom Old 
 Crowninshield confidently recommended you would 
 lean on a gold-headed stick. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Fenby had waited supper for me; and 
 I came down from my neat, faded, comfortable room, 
 as soon as possible, to sit with them. The little 
 boy had gone to bed, I was told. A gaunt maid 
 served us with excellent food things that, belonging 
 peculiarly to supper, make you wonder why we are 
 ever such fools as to dine at night. I can scarcely say 
 that our talk was lively, but I had a vivid sense that 
 they meant it to be so. Whether they were bent on 
 proving that they were not out of the current, or 
 merely anxious to set me at my ease, I could not tell. 
 Old Mr. Fenby was both pompous and nervous; evi 
 dently accustomed to be deferred to, yet suspicious of 
 the world s having gone beyond him. His wife seemed 
 but of course I knew my imagination might be play 
 ing me tricks to be secretly deriding, in some pol 
 ished corner of her mind, both his pretensions and his 
 fears. She was a small woman, white-haired and very 
 
210 VALIANT DUST 
 
 wrinkled, and her mouth twisted a little to one side. 
 She scarcely spoke, except to ask me a question or to 
 agree very positively with her husband. Probably it 
 was the unnatural twist of her lips that gave at once 
 a sardonic effect to her stilted, harmless talk. The first 
 night, as I said, was not so bad. The Fenbys seemed, 
 if not precisely eager to please me, at least unwilling 
 that I should think ill of them. Old Mr. Fenby, I re 
 member, mentioned explicitly various privileges that 
 would be mine the run of his library for my own pur 
 poses, complete control over Carol s mind and morals, 
 a horse to ride if I cared for one, and (this from him 
 surprised me exceedingly) breakfast in my own room. 
 Of course, nothing of any sort could be settled off 
 hand; I should have to grow into the house and its 
 ways. I merely expressed myself politely with refer 
 ence to his kind suggestions. As the clock struck, I 
 saw by certain mechanical gestures, some little invol 
 untary stir on their part, that something usually hap 
 pened at that hour. 
 
 "We retire very early," began Mr. Fenby. 
 
 "And always have prayers at nine/ his wife con 
 cluded for him. 
 
 Four women entered the room. My coachman was 
 evidently exempt. Three of them the maid who had 
 served us and two others might have been (forgive 
 the undignified word) triplets. I had not noticed the 
 waitress particularly; but their joint effect was very 
 grim. They were like the Graeae. The fourth was 
 younger and of a different mould and race. The three 
 who had not yet seen me the young one and two of 
 the Graeae gave me one respectful, curious stare. I 
 was puzzled by the respectfulness of the youngest one. 
 She did not have the air, as she came in, of respecting 
 any one in the room except me. Prayers over, Mrs. 
 
SEA-GREEN 211 
 
 Fenby mentioned to me the names of the maids, as 
 they filed out: "Hannah" (the waitress) "you know; 
 Martha the cook; Rachel the chambermaid." 
 
 "And ?" I pointed to the back of the younger 
 woman. 
 
 Mrs. Fenby looked at her husband and busied her 
 self with extinguishing one of the lamps. 
 
 "Miss Susan." Mr. Fenby answered me. "She 
 would prefer to be called Miss Susan. She is ac 
 customed to it. He position is a little anomalous, per 
 haps, but we are used to her. She has no employ 
 ment, yet we keep her busy. She sews for my wife, 
 puts up preserves, orders the meals. She" he smiled 
 a little "she does not consider herself precisely a 
 servant. Nor do we. She has been with us a great 
 many years." 
 
 "I see," and I was turning away. 
 
 "No, perhaps you do not see. We have spoiled her, 
 I admit, but she is not of the servant class. We treat 
 her more or less as one of the family. She is a de 
 pendent, but of good birth. I only mention all this to 
 explain to you why perhaps it would be better for you 
 not to ask any service of her. She makes herself in 
 dispensable to us, but she has never lived with any one 
 in a menial capacity. Indeed, she has never lived in 
 any house but this." 
 
 "Except, of course, her parents ." Again Mrs. Fen 
 by concluded her husband s sentence for him. 
 
 "Of course, except her parents . Mr. Sladen un 
 derstood me. I meant lived as one says it of servants. 
 I really need not have gone into it so extensively, but 
 I wished to warn Mr. Sladen not to treat her like the 
 others. Miss Susan is so quiet that her own manner 
 might not have made it clear." 
 
 "Quite so. Good-night, Mr. Sladen." Mrs. Fenby 
 
212 VALIANT DUST 
 
 offered me an exquisite claw. "You will not see much 
 of Miss Susan, in any case. She sits with me a good 
 deal; and Carol is not fond of her. He is delighted 
 that you have come. I could hardly get him to go to 
 sleep to-night. Hannah will leave a tray outside your 
 door at eight." 
 
 Mr. Fenby saw me to my room. 
 
 It did not take me long to get acquainted with my 
 pupil. He did indeed seem glad to see me; and who 
 could blame him? The Fenbys were obviously re 
 spectable and rich; and I gathered vaguely that they 
 intended to send Carol to a good preparatory school 
 (if I could get him ready) and then to the oldest 
 college in the country. Their moral attitude seemed 
 to have been transmitted to them intact from worthy 
 ancestors. But they were not cheerful people for a 
 child to consort with, especially as all future benefits 
 to Carol were explicitly contingent on his good be 
 havior. I did not believe for a moment that his grand 
 parents, if he turned out badly at school, would send 
 him to work in the gaunt factory beyond their gates, 
 but if Carol had said that he believed it, I should not 
 necessarily have thought him stupid. The Fifth Com 
 mandment was all over the place, and there was, be 
 sides, a tang of Isaac Watts in the air. The old peo 
 ple seemed fond of the boy, yet anxious to conceal 
 their fondness both from him and from all the other 
 inmates of the household. That twist of attitude I 
 had seen before: they were simply marching with their 
 own generation, in the rut of their racial tradition. 
 
 I grew fond of him, of course. He was an attractive 
 child, with something mutinous and elfin in him that 
 occasionally gave me pause. He would grow up into 
 either a charmer or a beast, was my conclusion at the 
 end of a few weeks. He had good parts, but loathed 
 
SEA-GREEN 213 
 
 coercion; was willing to learn like lightning at cer 
 tain hours, or to have adorable manners when he hap 
 pened to be in a ruffled and powdered mood. He was 
 very fond of me, I may say, so far as I could tell; and 
 I kept him with me as much as possible. After all, it 
 didn t matter what he said before me, and I jealously 
 didn t want him making temperamental breaks before 
 his grandparents, who might not like them. We 
 worked in the morning, and walked or did other out 
 door things in the afternoon. After supper Carol went 
 to bed; and the big library really a fine collection in 
 a rather magnificent old room stood open to me dur 
 ing the evening hours. Mr. Fenby always sat with 
 his wife after supper ; and they went to bed after nine- 
 o clock prayers. Many enchanted midnights found 
 me beneath a mild old lamp in the Fenbys library. 
 That was real freedom; they asked of me only to re 
 main in the room five minutes after extinguishing the 
 lamp, and to go up-stairs without a candle. Old Mrs. 
 Fenby was mortally afraid of fire; as well she may 
 have been, for no help could have come to us except 
 from the coachman and gardener. By the time any 
 thing arrived from the town, the place would have 
 been in ruins. 
 
 It was a curious household so much bodily com 
 fort and so little amenity. The Gray Sisters cooked, 
 cleaned, and waited with a grim and noiseless perfec 
 tion; but I never saw one of them smile, even at Carol. 
 They were, of course, not really sisters could not 
 have been, I mean; for I never knew the facts. 
 Nature does not provide three such in one hour of 
 labor. But they might easily have been kin in the 
 spiritual sense lay sisters of some harsh and secret 
 order, fruit of some strange Protestant aberration. 
 Their silent co-operation seemed more than habit: they 
 
214 VALIANT DUST 
 
 seemed to be bound by a like vow; their minds, like 
 their faces, were all in one mould. I inwardly con 
 gratulated Mrs. Fenby; no triumph of perfectly 
 matched footmen could equal the psychologic indis- 
 tinguishability of Hannah, Martha, and Rachel. Miss 
 Susan was another matter. Perhaps, I thought, you 
 have to pay for three such maids with a discord like 
 Miss Susan. She was as quiet as Mrs. Fenby had 
 said; and I hardly ever had occasion to speak to her. 
 I gathered from Carol that she sometimes came to 
 meals with them when they were alone; but she never 
 did while I was there. "Doesn t want to, I suppose," 
 he suggested in his charming treble. "Does what she 
 pleases, I guess. I don t like her." I could not dis 
 cover the ground of his dislike. Certainly she never, 
 so far as I could see, interfered with him in any way. 
 I didn t like to probe Carol; but I wondered whether 
 he, with his sensitive precocity, had noticed, as I had, 
 the strange barometric effect of her changing expres 
 sion. There were times when, scarce seen, she low 
 ered over the house like a dull and thunderous sky; 
 and once, coming upon her at the turn of a winding 
 corridor, I seemed to be face to face with a wandering 
 flame. For the most part, however, she effaced her 
 self into oblivion; and it has often happened to me to 
 be startled, on passing Mrs. Fenby s open door, to see 
 Miss Susan sitting beside the old lady s couch. I did 
 not mean, a moment since, to hint that Miss Susan was 
 beautiful. Usually you passed her by without looking 
 or wishing to look. She wore habitually a black frock 
 with a white apron ; her eyes were always lowered ; her 
 thick chestnut hair was done precisely like Hannah s 
 or Rachel s. She spoke, if at all, so briefly that one 
 scarcely knew if her voice or her diction were good. 
 Carol s remarks surprised me. I should have said that 
 
SEA-GREEN 215 
 
 she was terribly afraid of both her employers; afraid, 
 in true servile fashion, of endangering her position, 
 losing her asylum. I did not hear her subjected to 
 verbal harshness, but Mrs. Fenby had a way of watch 
 ing her that was scarcely short of insult. 
 
 I am recording all this because I feel that it is im 
 portant: it clears up a little for me that turbid in 
 terlude to recall, back to the very beginning, any de 
 tail I can of the Fenby household. These scattered 
 notes of memory may be insignificant, considering the 
 shape events presently took, yet I like to clarify my 
 recollections to that extent. 
 
 One night in early July, I was sitting late in the 
 library. The day had been hot; the evening was 
 blessedly cool. With a kind of wonder I had heard 
 the family and servants depart to their rooms. How 
 could one refuse to await Nature s apology for the heat 
 of noon? A west wind wandered in through the 
 screened windows, carrying with it the close-blended 
 sweetness of flowering shrubs outside on the lawn. 
 Even the oil-lamp beside me did not oppress. I found 
 no end of things, first and last, in old Mr. Fenby s 
 library books that I had always meant to read and 
 never had read. There was time in those peaceful 
 evening periods for works in many volumes. There 
 was nothing to hurry me: it would take me a year at 
 least to get Carol ready for any school. 
 
 I was turning a page of Sir Charles Grandison, some 
 where midway of the work, where he is practising his 
 steps among Clementina s relatives. You can imagine 
 that, if I had time for eight volumes of punctilio and 
 smelling-salts, I was wrapped thick in leisure. It 
 must have been near midnight; and that I was not 
 weary of Harriet Byron shows, I think, that I was 
 not sleepy. 
 
216 VALIANT DUST 
 
 It was not a noise that reft me from Harriet Byron; 
 it was a vague visual sense of a companion in the 
 room. Slowly I looked up, wondering; for it was 
 three hours since every one else in the house had 
 gone to bed. It is difficult to trace the history of a 
 sense-impression on its path to the brain, but I must 
 have thought that it was Mrs. Fenby, for I remember 
 rising, alarmed that such a frail old creature should 
 be wandering about at night without a candle. The 
 woman shut the door, very slowly and softly as 
 slowly and softly as she must have opened it and I 
 saw, completely at a loss to know why, that it was 
 Miss Susan. 
 
 She glided only thus can I express her noiseless 
 progress across to the window, and closed that, with 
 infinite precaution, and still without speaking. We 
 were now shut into the library together. Apparently 
 then she felt safe, though she breathed heavily and 
 her hand went to her heart in the typical feminine 
 gesture. She came and stood very close to me before 
 she spoke. Her chestnut hair was loosened about her 
 face, and was drawn forward over her shoulders in 
 two magnificent braids. Her face was very white, 
 with two beautiful feverish spots of color on the 
 cheek-bones. She was swathed from neck to foot 
 in some sort of dressing-gown a wadded, brocaded, 
 sea-green garment, shapeless and rich and ancient like 
 a cere-cloth; something, I judged automatically, that 
 Mrs. Fenby must have pulled out of a cedar chest and 
 given to her in a fit of irony. It became her well; 
 which is simply to say, I suppose, that, clad in a rich 
 stuff, the whole texture of her seemed immediately to 
 have changed. Her skin, I saw, was fine; one imag 
 ined a supple sleekness of body beneath those sea- 
 green folds. I remembered Cinderella and the ball. 
 
SEA-GREEN 217 
 
 I had time for this impression before she spoke 
 bending very close to me and almost whispering the 
 first words: 
 
 "May I ask you a question? Will you excuse my 
 intruding?" 
 
 The tone and words did not go with the vision. She 
 spoke as humbly as if Mrs. Fenby had sent her. 
 
 "Surely, surely " I stammered out. "Won t you 
 sit down?" 
 
 She shook her head, and we remained standing. 
 
 "It is only that I don t quite know how to ex 
 plain." Miss Susan twisted one lustrous braid of hair 
 in her hand nervously. 
 
 "Why not?" I smiled a little to put her at her ease. 
 
 "It is only this." She tossed her head, shaking her 
 braids back. Her voice grew stronger. She was now 
 speaking in almost a normal tone. "I am very igno 
 rant. I have never had the chance to learn as much 
 as I wanted. Could you sometimes let me have one 
 of Carol s old lesson-books? History, geography, 
 arithmetic, Latin anything. I have a good deal of 
 time to myself." 
 
 "Do you, indeed, Miss Susan? I should not have 
 thought it." 
 
 "Oh yes." Her affirmation had a sharp edge 
 whether of bitterness or boredom I could not say; 
 but certainly of some very un-Cinderella-like emotion. 
 "Evenings, for example. I go to sleep very late, and 
 I really am anxious to learn. Of course I want only 
 the books that Carol has finished with." 
 
 "You don t use the library, then?" 
 
 "Mr. Fenby would not like that. But how could he 
 object to my using old school-books? And I thought 
 you would know which ones Carol did not need." 
 
 "He needs very few." 
 
218 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Is he clever?" Again there was an edge was it 
 of hostility? in her tone. 
 
 "Rather!" 
 
 "Then he will be through with his books all the 
 sooner. May I have them?" 
 
 "Of course, there is no conceivable objection on 
 my part," I began. "They aren t my books, even, 
 you know." 
 
 "No, they re theirs. Or Carol s, perhaps. I don t 
 know about those things." She paused a moment, 
 then looked up at me sharply from under the thick 
 brown ridge of her eyebrows. "Are you afraid to give 
 them to me for fear Mr. and Mrs. Fenby will mind?" 
 
 "No. Why should I be? I suppose I thought it 
 odd that you didn t speak to them instead of to me." 
 My honest thought came out thus. Then I won 
 dered. . . . "If there is anything in the world that I 
 can do, I shall be glad to if you really want to begin 
 Latin, for example. I am just starting Carol." 
 
 She appeared to consider. "But he would be using 
 the book himself, wouldn t he?" 
 
 "Not at any hour when you would be using it." I 
 laughed. "Especially not in the evening." 
 
 "I wouldn t ask you many questions, and I could 
 always return the books here in the early morning." 
 
 "Done, then. What do you most want? I will get 
 them for you to-morrow." 
 
 "Oh, almost anything. What Carol has had will 
 do for me to begin on." She smiled gratefully, but 
 not at me. She looked away as she smiled. Appar 
 ently her errand was quite finished, for she moved to 
 wards the door. 
 
 "Miss Susan!" I could not help it. I felt I must 
 ask her. "Why should the Fenby s mind your teach 
 ing yourself out of the boy s books? Why do you 
 
SEA-GREEN 219 
 
 think they would? Do you fancy they would be 
 afraid" 
 
 "That I might better myself if I had more educa 
 tion?" She took the words out of my mouth though 
 I may say I shouldn t have uttered just those. "Yes, 
 I think they would be afraid of that. That s why I 
 don t like to ask them." 
 
 "But why haven t you bought text-books long 
 since?" 
 
 "Oh, if I had had money to buy text-books with " 
 She shrugged her shoulders and turned her back on 
 me, moving again towards the door. But I had seen 
 the sudden crimson in her cheeks before she turned; 
 and I did not pursue her with more words. She opened 
 the library door and shut it again behind her, as 
 quietly as she had done it before. 
 
 In a few moments I blew out the lamp; and I sat 
 loyally in the dark for five minutes, keeping my prom 
 ise to Mrs. Fenby. The elegant Harriet Byron no 
 longer intrigued me, whereas poor Miss Susan did. 
 I was forced to infer that she served my employers 
 for food and shelter rather than for wages. It seemed 
 rather niggardly of them, for there was evidently 
 plenty of money. I wondered a little why she had 
 never married. For under the lamplight the truth 
 had come out Miss Susan, give her half a chance, 
 was handsome. Not only that: she was handsome in 
 no forbidding way. There was, in her presence, a 
 potential mind, I don t say actual invitation to woo. 
 She wasn t a bit like the Graeae. There was enough 
 reticence there to banish the thought of intrigue; 
 but that she shouldn t have married in her lustrous 
 youth seemed odd a pretty little problem in fatal 
 ities. After all, though (it came to me as I mounted 
 the dark stairs), any suitor would have had to walk 
 
220 VALIANT DUST 
 
 many miles to reach her in that mansion; and an 
 anomalous position like hers is not the predestined 
 setting for a bride. She had ambition, evidently, still ; 
 but a worn and warped ambition that asked only for 
 Carol s old school-books. Hang the Fenbys! She 
 should have them. I would teach her the Greek verb 
 at midnight if she thought it would please her. Her 
 hair had been magnificent against that sea-green stuff. 
 
 The encounter which I have just related was the 
 first of three. I saw Miss Susan daily, as I saw the 
 Gray Sisters; but my casual meetings with her about 
 the house when, as of old, she slipped by me, eyes 
 lowered, in her black dress were empty of personal 
 savor. I did not even, for many days, have a chance 
 to hand over the school-books I had sifted out for 
 her. Mrs. Fenby s regime for her was iron. Some 
 times I even wondered if Miss Susan had really visited 
 me if, rather, she had done anything save "appear" 
 as a ghost does. Was it perhaps some eidolon of her, 
 some unconscious projection of a stifled desire, that 
 had met me face to face in the library? Had she 
 walked in her sleep? Or, more precisely, had some 
 aspect, some fragment, of her personality visited me 
 while the familiar part of her lay sleeping? In such 
 reflections when Carol left me time for reflection 
 I spent the next ten days. Most of all in the library 
 at night, alone with my eighteenth-century books, did 
 I wonder; and more than once I lifted my eyes to see 
 if the door would open on a sea-green shape. 
 
 They were to be three, my genuine encounters with 
 Miss Susan under that roof each one violently and 
 strangely different from the others. They deepened 
 those three scenes to the climax, as cunningly as if 
 they had been staged. I do not think she ever knew 
 that, or thought for one instant what must be the 
 
SEA-GREEN 221 
 
 dramatic history of my attitude to her. The first 
 chute de rideau she might have planned; the others, in 
 essence, she was innocent of. I do not believe she ever 
 once calculated her effect on me. 
 
 Ten days after her request for school-books a re 
 quest that, as I explained, she had never given me the 
 chance to fulfil (for, after all, she had to seek me out; 
 I could not mount to her attic), I sat again late in the 
 library. July was heavy upon us, and there was no 
 cool west wind. For very heat, I could not go to bed, 
 and I marvelled that others could. Mrs. Fenby had 
 the immunity to heat of her fragility. She was one 
 of those thin old creatures who wear a shawl in the 
 hottest weather, as it their veins stored ice that was 
 in perpetual need of thawing. Her husband, however, 
 was of a sanguine constitution, full-fleshed and flush 
 ing easily. I should have expected him to share my 
 vigils, though I was always grateful to hear his heavy 
 footsteps following his wife s up-stairs. Night by 
 night they ascended together, like an aging mastiff 
 and a decrepit parrot. Hannah, Martha, and Rachel 
 would follow presently, dogging each other closely, the 
 three making a single indistinguishable smudge on the 
 twilit staircase. Miss Susan usually preceded them 
 all. 
 
 The night was hotter than any other even in that 
 hot July. I could not read with comfort, and while 
 I got over a good many pages, it was by dint of chang 
 ing my position constantly and drinking ice-water in 
 great gulps. Some time after eleven I went out 
 through the French window to the porch. The cov 
 ered porch was as hot as the room; I stepped down 
 on the lawn. At least the ceiling of the lawn was high! 
 I strolled up and down, wondering if I shouldn t sim 
 ply fling myself down on cool turf to spend the night 
 
222 VALIANT DUST 
 
 under the stars. Of course, though, if I did, I should 
 have to go in first and put out that wretched lamp. 
 Instinctively, with the thought, I looked toward the 
 house. Framed in the French window of the library 
 was a sea-green figure. 
 
 "Oh!" That ejaculation was wrenched from me. 
 Why, on such a hot night? Well, I would give her 
 the books and then come out and throw myself on the 
 grass. I walked across to the long window. She 
 stepped aside for me to enter. 
 
 I found the books for her and handed them over 
 with a few curt words. It was, for some reason, an 
 noying to have waited vainly all those days, and now, 
 at this torrid moment, to be called to account. My 
 enthusiasm for this spinster s schooling had ebbed. 
 Yet, as she stood beside me, asking eager questions, 
 the second self of Miss Susan call it what you will 
 wrought upon me again. My second impression was 
 more vivid than my first had been, probably because 
 it had the fiist, for past, to go upon. Suspicions re 
 solved themselves into conclusions. I did not need to 
 note again details I had already noted. The whiteness 
 of her skin, the sheen of her hair, the suppleness of her 
 form beneath its rich shroud, I took for granted now; 
 and I proceeded to take in other details: a vague scent 
 about her sea-green draperies, a small foot pushed out 
 in its slipper beneath the swirling hem of her gown, 
 the excellent shape of her slightly roughened hands. 
 But most of all, as we faced each other across the 
 marble chimney-piece (having withdrawn by common 
 impulse from the tropic radius of the lamp-ray), were 
 her eyes revealed to me. I met them, glowing in the 
 dimness, with a kind of shock. In point of fact, as 
 I realized, I had never seen Miss Susan s eyes before. 
 She seemed quite unconscious of the kind of figure she 
 
SEA-GREEN 223 
 
 cut: I dare say she was. No intention was revealed 
 to me, at all events; only an unsuspected capacity 
 for what? Well, for being like other women; that 
 was all. Imagine how little like other women she must 
 have seemed, day by day, going about the Fenbys 
 business I And a sea-green gown, of no fashion and 
 unquestioned age, had done it. The only malice you 
 could record against Miss Susan was her wearing it at 
 all her thinking it worth while, for the sake of some 
 starved sense in her, to masquerade to herself in a bit 
 of cast-off finery. I did not even then believe that 
 she had "dressed up" for me. If it had occurred to 
 me, I could have felt only pity for an instinct that 
 had to satisfy itself with a dressing-gown that came 
 from Mrs. Fenby s grandmother. 
 
 So we stood, exchanging a few words about the 
 Latin grammar. "You are very kind/ was the most 
 personal thing said between us, and she said it as 
 humbly as if I had tipped her. 
 
 "If you have any questions, I should be glad to 
 answer them. And surely you don t need to sit up to 
 all hours to ask them. Almost any time in the day 
 when I see you " 
 
 "I don t dare in the day-time. Really, it is better 
 not." Her acknowledged fear sat oddly on her mag 
 nificence. So, too, did her desire for book-learning. 
 You could have imagined her in sea-green wanting 
 a personal success; I couldn t readily imagine her 
 in sea-green caring to spell correctly. That creature 
 ought to have despised the technique of respectability 
 though she looked, too, as innocent as gunpowder 
 that has never heard of a gun. I felt all this a little 
 thickly and incoherently. I can t give you her effect so 
 logically as I should like. I was very young when I 
 encountered Miss Susan. 
 
224 VALIANT DUST 
 
 She was starting to go away, I think at all events, 
 she had removed her vague, burning glance from me 
 when I heard a voice in the hall. Immediately the 
 door was thrown open quietly; but no other human 
 being could quite achieve the soundlessness of Miss 
 Susan s performance. 
 
 Mr. Fenby, candle in hand, confronted us. The 
 books she was just taking them from my hand 
 dropped to the floor with a little crash. The noise 
 woke me to a daylight reality. I almost expected the 
 sea-green wrapper to change in a twinkling to black 
 stuff, and the braids of hair to arrange themselves in 
 compact Cinderella fashion on Miss Susan s head. 
 But she did not change in any respect. She was evi 
 dently too much surprised to adventure even into an 
 other manner all at once. 
 
 "What is this?" He stormed impartially at us both. 
 
 "Miss Susan asked me for some text-books. I found 
 them and gave them to her. She was just taking them 
 up-stairs." 
 
 "Carol s text-books?" 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "Carol s text-books. He is quite 
 through with them. Have you any objection, Mr. 
 Fenby?" 
 
 Miss Susan had not crumpled yet. She was quite 
 self-possessed. 
 
 "Of course I have." Mr. Fenby didn t precisely 
 shout, but his voice sounded to my nervous ear like 
 summer thunder. "What right have you to Carol s 
 books? They belong to my dead son s boy. Pick 
 them up." 
 
 I stooped and gathered up the books. I was not 
 going to see any woman obeying orders issued in that 
 tone. 
 
SEA-GREEN 225 
 
 "Your dead son s boy." She spoke musingly. "No, 
 I never did care for your dead son." 
 
 "And you come here, at night, in that costume" 
 he pointed a scornful finger at her "to get up an 
 intrigue with this young man!" 
 
 "Nothing of the sort, Mr. Fenby," I said, roundly. 
 "I don t know why Miss Susan wants text-books, but 
 neither could I be supposed to see why she shouldn t 
 have them. She has been here only five minutes, and 
 I have been explaining to her how she had better begin. 
 We have had no conversation whatever on any other 
 subject, so you will kindly reverse your opinion." 
 
 "I m not accusing you of anything, young man. I 
 don t suppose you d look at her. But you" he turned 
 to Miss Susan "traipsing around my house at mid 
 night not even in a decent dress your hair down 
 It s disreputable, you " 
 
 I won t repeat the word he used. It s sufficiently 
 well known to be guessed. 
 
 Before I could reply, either for myself or for Miss 
 Susan, a tottering figure stood in the doorway. Mrs. 
 Fenby had crept down after her husband, and was 
 now making her way to his side. She stood there, 
 hunched and rounded and frail in dressing-gown and 
 shawl, facing her husband and the other woman. 
 
 "That is no word for you to use to Susan, Horace." 
 Her voice was very thin and piping, but she got an 
 effective emphasis all the same. 
 
 He did not answer at once, but his rage against Miss 
 Susan appeared to abate. Or, at least, rage seemed to 
 pass out of him, like air from a deflated balloon. His 
 wife s eyes and his fixed each other during this shrink 
 ing process; to my imagination, dark accusations 
 passed silently between them. When those few in- 
 
226 VALIANT DUST 
 
 stants had passed, Mrs. Fenby turned to Miss Susan. 
 Her words came shrill and sudden. 
 
 "Go, woman! My husband is right. I have no 
 doubt of your intentions. But it shall not happen 
 again. What deceptions you have practised on this 
 misguided young man it is not for me to say or to 
 know. But they shall not be practised any further. 
 My household is safe from you. Do you understand? 
 Safe! I will see to that. Carol s tutor should have 
 been sacred even to you." 
 
 "Mrs. Fenby!" I, in my turn, almost shouted. "I 
 have already told your husband that Miss Susan came 
 to me with a request for some paltry school-books. 
 She said she wished to study by herself. I gave them 
 to her. I don t know the meaning of all your abomi 
 nable talk, but it has nothing to do with any facts I 
 know anything about. If you choose to insult her pri 
 vately, I can t control it, I suppose; but you shall not 
 insult her in my presence with lies. I did not see at 
 first why she had to conceal so innocent a request from 
 you and Mr. Fenby, but I do see now, and I shouldn t 
 have believed it possible!" 
 
 Miss Susan came forward and offered her hand to 
 me. "Thank you," she said. "I didn t know men 
 ever spoke the truth. Apparently they do. You re 
 good for that, whether you are good for anything else 
 or not." She smiled straight into my face, maliciously 
 as if she had, after all, in many ways found me 
 wanting. Then she turned to Mr. and Mrs. Fenby. 
 "As for you two" some word seemed to stick in her 
 throat "I apologize. It shall not happen again. 
 Your grandson s books shall be sacred." 
 
 And, lifting the little pile from the chimney-piece, 
 she flung them on the floor. Apparently the gesture 
 relieved her pent emotion, for with it all passion 
 
SEA-GREEN 227 
 
 and likewise all lustre seemed to ebb from her. In 
 spite of her costume, she looked like her daily self once 
 more. "I apologize," she repeated. "I wouldn t have 
 done it if I had known." 
 
 The words were spoken to Mrs. Fenby alone. She 
 turned her back on the husband. 
 
 Miss Susan s movements had brought her very near 
 the mistress of the house; and at this point Mrs. Fen 
 by, with a myopic start, caught at the sea-green sleeve 
 and held it to her eyes. "Wretched girl!" she piped. 
 "You wore this down here at midnight!" 
 
 "Yes, I did. But I never will again," and the sea- 
 green figure passed out into the hall. 
 
 "I am cold, Horace cold !" All Mrs. Fenby s 
 shrillness had gone. She cowered against her hus 
 band in a shivering revulsion. Apparently she was 
 crying. 
 
 "Of course you are cold. You must go back to 
 bed," he said, vaguely, while with one hand he mopped 
 the sweat from his own brow. "Take my arm. Or 
 if Mr. Sladen will go up-stairs ahead of us, I will give 
 you my dressing-gown to put round you." 
 
 Mrs. Fenby s teeth were chattering. There was 
 nothing for it but to put out the lamp and precede 
 them, letting Mr. Fenby give his wife that extra cov 
 ering. This I did. After all, I wanted an interval of 
 solitude before the inevitable explanations came. 
 
 But the inevitable explanations, paradoxically, did 
 not come. Mr. Fenby, in his wife s presence, the next 
 day, apologized to me for anything that might inci 
 dentally have offended me the evening before. His 
 words were as vague and inclusive as that. There was 
 nothing for me to take up, I saw by daylight, unless 
 Miss Susan chose to appeal to me. Whatever dark 
 
228 VALIANT DUST 
 
 stuff of hatred they had woven between them was not 
 for me to lift unchallenged. Miss Susan was not 
 visible to me for some days; but by the end of the 
 week she appeared again about the house. She seemed 
 to take pride in not altering her accustomed de 
 meanor in neither lifting her eyes to mine nor quick 
 ening her pace when she had occasion to pass me. I 
 gave her chances; for, though I did not like her, I 
 thought her oppressed. She took none of them; and 
 as I had now no reason to think her either stupid 
 or simple, I ceased to occupy myself with her. 
 
 That last statement is of course not quite true. I 
 ceased to put myself, however unobtrusively, in her 
 way; but my hours of solitude were full of wild sur 
 mises. I tried to keep away from the subject; for 
 a time, I went to my own room after prayers, 
 eschewing the library. These people were my em 
 ployers; I needed their money; I was fond of Carol; 
 I almost respected them for not explaining to me 
 things that most people if they did not turn me out 
 of the house at once would have bitten their tongues 
 in their haste to explain. Their power over Miss 
 Susan was certainly a moral power; for she had had 
 chances to give me a sign, and did not take them. The 
 decent thing to do since I wasn t prepared to chuck 
 my position was to forget. And yet, how could I? 
 
 There is scarcely a thinkable solution that my 
 brain did not work out to its passionate, illogical end. 
 I sailed with the wind straight into Sophoclean trag 
 edy; I tacked into Dumas fils. What had there been 
 between Miss Susan and Horace Fenby that stirred 
 the crackling ire of his wife? Or, had she embittered 
 the son s brief marriage? Carol s mother had died in 
 childbirth, I had learned; his father, of typhoid, not 
 long after her. Or did it all go further back, and was 
 
SEA-GREEN 229 
 
 Miss Susan herself a result, not a cause, of scandal? 
 Above all, had there been any reason, any precedent, 
 for their implication that she had sought me out with 
 no holy emotion? I could not think it; though I re 
 membered the malice of her final glance at me. What 
 hold had she on people who hated her so? Why did 
 she stay with people she so detested? What strange 
 situation kept the balance between them a claim 
 they acknowledged so meanly; a hatred that she could 
 not keep from being humble? I made nothing of it; 
 and, as I say, I was not sure that I had the right to 
 wonder too cleverly, had I been able. They were pay 
 ing for the full bloom of my mental powers. I could 
 not cheat Carol of that. 
 
 Yet, even so, my curious fever would not abate at 
 once. It waxed with the waxing heat of July. By 
 August the heat was even greater, and other symptoms 
 began to possess me. A strange inward coolness took 
 the place of my brief delirium; my chill mind seemed 
 to react against the physical torridity and save me. 
 I longed only for autumn to reconcile once more the 
 temperatures of body and brain. Perhaps the mas 
 sive fixity of the household hypnotized me. I took to 
 sitting in the library again at night; and after the first 
 few evenings I ceased to expect a sea-green shape to 
 rise upon the threshold. Perhaps we had all been mad 
 together; crazed by the highest temperature in years. 
 
 In any case, it was upon a state of mind from which 
 all expectancy had been wrung that my third en 
 counter with Miss Susan fell. I had gone back to 
 Richardson not to Sir Charles Grandison, which in 
 deed I have never finished; but to Pamela. I was 
 wondering idly what it would feel like to be "Mr. B."; 
 I was even wondering, with equal idleness, what "Mr. 
 B." would have made of the Fenby household. My 
 
230 VALIANT DUST 
 
 brain was scarcely working, as you can see, and it took 
 me some moments to authenticate the smell of smoke 
 in my own nostrils. I was slow about investigating; 
 it was a nuisance to get up, and probably the kerosene- 
 lamp beside me was guilty. But the odor was too 
 strong and significant. I suddenly realized that, and 
 my limbs as suddenly ceased to be lazy. I walked 
 quickly across the library and opened the door. A 
 great acrid gust choked me, and I dashed up-stairs, 
 where, in the darkness, I already heard a mild com 
 motion. The Gray Sisters rushed by me in weird 
 nightgear. Two of them went to Mrs. Fenby s room, 
 where I heard Mr. Fenby shouting encouragement to 
 her. The other fled before me down the corridor that 
 led to Carol s room in the wing. That was the path I 
 took instinctively, myself; and I called through the 
 smoke to the maid Martha, the cook to go to the 
 stables and wake the coachman and gardener. She 
 turned and shuffled away through the smoke. 
 
 That moment was such a chaos of sensations that 
 even memory cannot straighten it out. I know that I 
 had a purpose at the back of my mind to get every 
 living creature out of the house, and then, with the 
 other men, to see what could be done. The Fenbys 
 and the servants were awake and aware; but no sound 
 had come from Carol. I intended, I know, to carry 
 the child outside, myself, in my own arms, before that 
 terrible air grew hotter. I could not yet see flames 
 anywhere, but I heard cracklings and rumblings. Mrs. 
 Fenby s fear had materialized. I heard her excited 
 moaning somewhere behind me as I rushed down to 
 Carol s room; I heard the others pleading with her; 
 but I did not stop. The smoke grew greasier, hotter, 
 thicker, with each step I took towards Carol. I judged 
 it as far as in that dash I could judge anything to 
 
SEA-GREEN 231 
 
 have started in the floor or walls above that wing; I 
 hoped, beyond Carol s own room. 
 
 The child was sleeping, but woke, choking and 
 spluttering, as I felt for him roughly in the dark. 
 He was frightened, but surrendered himself to me 
 without too much kicking. Common sense came to 
 my rescue in a single flash. I flung a blanket round 
 him, picked up his slippers and put them on his feet. 
 His weight was more than I had bargained for, though ; 
 I could not be sure of stumbling ahead fast enough 
 with him in my arms. I felt for the washstand, 
 dipped a towel in the pitcher against emergencies, 
 and bade him walk quickly by my side, holding my 
 hand. The sleep was jolted out of him by this time, 
 and he obeyed, whispering and asking absurd ques 
 tions. It seemed an age before I got him down the 
 hall to the main staircase; but the flames did not 
 reach us, though they were creeping stealthily down 
 towards us now from the end of the wing. 
 
 Mrs. Fenby was calling in her piping shriek for 
 Carol. I shouted that I had him safe, and I heard 
 them bumping down the stairs. Evidently they had 
 to carry her, among them. I told them we were fol 
 lowing close behind, and by this time they could hear 
 Carol s own voice still asking angry questions. Their 
 rickety progress was resumed. Martha had not yet 
 brought the men back from the stables. The whole 
 group got, finally, into the outer air, and Mr. Fenby 
 and I rushed back for wraps. There could be no ques 
 tion of trying to save anything on the upper floors. 
 Just as we came out of Mrs. Fenby s room, staggering 
 laden through the smoke, feeling for the hand-rail of 
 the staircase, something turned me sick and nearly 
 knocked me over. Not one of us had thought of Miss 
 Susan! I flung my load over the banisters into the 
 
232 VALIANT DUST 
 
 hall below and turned to the third-story staircase. Old 
 Mr. Fenby started down, and I let him go without 
 speaking to him. It was too hideous to mention, that 
 we should not have thought of her. There was light 
 now the awful apocalyptic light of flame where flame 
 should not be. And as I approached the attic stairs 
 no speech is quick enough to tell all this, nor yet con 
 fused enough a sea-green figure came half falling, 
 half running down them. I tried to stop Miss Susan, 
 but could not. Her face and hair were singed, and 
 one blackened hand was bleeding. She tore past me 
 to the wing, straight into the beginning conflagration. 
 "Carol! Carol!" I heard her cry, as she dashed past 
 me through the smoke. 
 
 "He is safe! He s outdoors!" I shouted to her, 
 but she did not hear me. She tore her way into the 
 fire, beating a passage through the smoke with her 
 wounded hand. 
 
 "Carol! Carol! I m coming!" 
 
 "Miss Susan!" I screamed it in her ear. "I took 
 him down. He s safe. Every one is safe." 
 
 She heard me then and gripped my arm. "You 
 swear it?" 
 
 "I swear it. I went for the boy first of all, of 
 course. For God s sake, come! The ceiling is falling 
 in." 
 
 She turned. "It started in the attic next my room, I 
 think. My door got jammed. I had to fight my way 
 out. It s all burning up there. The windows are all 
 open. Where is he? Where is he?" 
 
 I led her down, almost at a run, my arm around 
 her waist; for the second floor was already doomed. 
 
 "Carol!" she called in the hall below. But there 
 was no answer. The family had gone, I realized after 
 ward, to the far end of the lawn. "Carol!" she called 
 
SEA-GREEN 233 
 
 again in the doorway. And when no answer came, 
 she struck at me and ran back to the staircase. I 
 clutched her, willing to be brutal if necessary, for 
 she was far gone in hysteria. By God s providence, 
 at that moment Carol s own cry came authentically 
 from outside. He ran across the lawn, wrapped in 
 his blanket, elfin and comic in the lurid glow. 
 
 "My son! my son! my own little son!" Neither 
 Hannah nor Rachel could get him, for a moment, out 
 of Miss Susan s clutch, though the boy, frightened, 
 no doubt, writhed to get free from her blackened face 
 and arms. At last, for sheer physical weakness, she 
 let him go. But I had heard the cry, and so had the 
 maids and Mr. Fenby, who now stood beside them. 
 
 Take the boy to his grandmother," he commanded. 
 "You have frightened him sick, Susan." 
 
 He ran to meet the two men who had just reached 
 the house, and tried to pull me along with him. I 
 half gave to his pull, but before I actually moved from 
 the spot I spoke to Miss Susan. "They have taken 
 chairs off the porch. Go over there and rest. You 
 can t do anything now. We must try to save some 
 of the books." 
 
 "Rest?" She looked about her wildly. "Where 
 should I rest? With my mother over there, who has 
 taken my boy away from me? I ll stay here." 
 
 And, wrapping her green garment about her, she 
 flung herself face downward on the turf. 
 
 "Get a blanket, Martha!" I called. Even in that 
 instant I remembered it was Martha who had tried 
 first to save Carol. I managed finally to get Miss 
 Susan up from the ground and lead her to a wicker 
 couch under a tree. We had got wraps from the lower 
 floor, and the women, at the far end of the lawn, were 
 protected from chill. Miss Susan would not have her 
 
234 VALIANT DUST 
 
 couch placed near the others when she saw that Carol s 
 sleepy head was on his grandmother s lap. Mrs. Fen- 
 by called to her peevishly, but Miss Susan gave her 
 only a curt reply as she passed. 
 
 "God has cursed me in my daughter, and now he 
 has taken my home. Blessed be the name of the 
 Lord." That solemn whimper of Mrs. Fenby s in 
 sight of her blazing house haunts me still. 
 
 Then Susan Fenby turned on her. "You have 
 frightened me with God long enough, mother. You 
 will never do it again. I see now that you are only 
 a fool." 
 
 "Grace is not in you, Susan." It was hardly more 
 than a whisper, for all its shrillness. The old woman s 
 chin dropped wearily on her breast, and she was silent 
 in her coil of wrappings. Miss Susan flung herself 
 upon her couch and gazed, unwinking and speechless, 
 at the burning house. 
 
 After this bitter little interlude I ran back to help 
 Mr. Fenby and the men with the books. The silver, 
 carefully carried up-stairs every night to Mrs. Fenby s 
 room, we could not go for. We saved a few volumes 
 more or less at random, I am afraid, for it was im 
 possible either to turn Mr. Fenby out or to disobey 
 him, and he had completely lost his head. The house 
 was doomed from the start, and when, an hour later, 
 the engines came from the town, there was little they 
 could do save fling some water on what seemed the 
 very spirit of fire. 
 
 The morrows of such nights are strange. By dawn 
 we persuaded the women to go down to the stables. 
 Before dawn not one of them would stir. It was eight 
 o clock before I went down myself; and when I got 
 there I found that Mr. Fenby, Carol, and all the 
 women had been driven to the hotel in the town. The 
 
SEA-GREEN 235 
 
 gardener s wife gave me breakfast, and I ate it hun 
 grily. The morning I spent in groping about among 
 the ruins, estimating the usefulness of the walls that 
 were left, picking up charred objects from the debris, 
 waiting for Mr. Fenby s return. I could hardly divine 
 what my next move would be until I had seen him. 
 
 It must have been noon when I was suddenly con 
 fronted, in the middle of what had been the library, 
 by a strange figure. Susan Fenby, in cheap gingham, 
 stood before me under the August sun. 
 
 "I walked back," she said, simply. "They are 
 all sleeping except Mr. Fenby, who is seeing the in 
 surance people. He will be here pretty soon. I shan t 
 see you again." 
 
 "Do you know what they are going to do?" 
 
 "No." She shook her head. "Go somewhere, prob 
 ably, until the house can be rebuilt." 
 
 "How is Mrs. Fenby?" I dared not be the first 
 to mention Carol. 
 
 "Asleep, I told you." 
 
 "And you think they won t need my services any 
 more?" 
 
 "They ll never keep you on." She shook her head. 
 "They will have to keep me. That will be bad enough 
 after last night. They ll be very nice to you; you 
 won t suffer. But you can be sure they will never want 
 to see you again." 
 
 "Probably not," I mused. "And you will still stay 
 on after last night?" I was deeply embarrassed. 
 But, leaning against the cracked marble of the fire 
 place, in that roofless room, under the crude August 
 sun, it seemed to me that nothing was too strange to 
 be said. 
 
 "I shall stay. It s in the bargain. I have done 
 everything they made me standing up, sitting down, 
 
236 VALIANT DUST 
 
 and on my knees for the sake of being near Carol. 
 If you are out of the way, it will all go on as before. 
 If it hadn t been for the fire, I should never have 
 broken out again. And I shan t now, as long as Carol 
 is still at home. I m not afraid of God any more, as 
 I used to be nor of them. But I have learned how 
 to hold my tongue. Only, of course, you ll have to go. 
 They couldn t stand it with any one who knew except 
 the maids, and they have always known. They ve been 
 with us since I was born." 
 
 "But what about Carol?" 
 
 "They re already hoping he s forgotten, in the ex 
 citement. I dare say he has." She passed her hand 
 kerchief nervously over her lips with her bandaged 
 hand, then broke out, passionately: "I did keep my 
 word. I should never have told him if I hadn t been 
 mad with fear for him." 
 
 She closed her eyes convulsively. Her whole face 
 twitched. 
 
 "What I really came for," she said, dully, "was 
 to advise you to ask your own price. I mean, for 
 going away like a gentleman and holding your tongue. 
 Probably you would do it, anyhow, but they might 
 as well pay." 
 
 "Miss Susan!" I exclaimed. "What do you take me 
 for?" 
 
 "I don t know anything about you, but if any one 
 can get anything out of them, it s all to the good." 
 
 "Besides," I went on for she laid no leash on curi 
 osity "what is there for me to tell?" 
 
 "I should think that it was clear enough," she said, 
 indifferently. "My name is Susan Fenby, and Carol is 
 my son. That is more than enough for them, any 
 how. I was their only child, remember." 
 
 "How they have had to lie!" I murmured. 
 
SEA-GREEN 237 
 
 "Of course they ve had to. And they don t like 
 it, either; so that shows you how they feel about it 
 if they can lie like that when they think it s a sin to 
 lie. They had to come here to this God-forsaken place 
 to live, too. I m not defending myself, you understand. 
 I used to think I was as bad as my mother said I was. 
 I never took much stock in what my father said. He 
 was no saint himself, I guess, in the beginning. I don t 
 think anything much, now and I guess it s pull Dick, 
 pull devil, between us. He has a temper, and she is 
 as cold as ice. I m like both of them. That s all." 
 She began to pick her way out of the debris. "I only 
 came to tell you to ask, in reason, what you like. 
 They ll give it to you. They can afford to. I must 
 go now, or he ll find me when he comes." 
 
 "Miss Susan " I stopped her "why do you give 
 me this advice?" 
 
 "Because you were kind about the school-books. I 
 did want to keep up with Carol. And I liked having 
 his books in my hands. But " Suddenly she turned 
 wholly round to me, her deep blush making her almost 
 handsome again. In that most unbecoming scene and 
 light she had been like the Miss Susan I used to see 
 slip through the corridors slavishly intent on Mrs. 
 Fenby s business. "They were quite wrong, that night. 
 It was only the school-books. Though" she raised 
 her eyes to mine with one desperate grip on honesty 
 "I don t blame them. They had no reason to trust me. 
 Good-bye!" She would not take my hand; would 
 not even let me help her, in spite of her crippled arm; 
 and I watched her pick her way out of the ruined 
 house. Five minutes later Mr. Fenby had returned. 
 
 I did not follow up Miss Susan s suggestion of 
 putting a price on my silence. But I fell in with Mr. 
 Fenby s idea of an immediate departure, and I ac- 
 
238 VALIANT DUST 
 
 cepted his own offer of paying me six months salary 
 the more readily because I knew how grateful he 
 was for the chance to give it. I agreed with him very 
 gravely that we had all gone off our heads the night 
 before. He trusted me to the point of letting me 
 spend one long morning alone with Carol. Carol 
 talked to me, as freely as a running brook, of all 
 that had happened; but he mentioned Miss Susan only 
 casually. I honestly believe that, in the drugged sleep 
 which followed close on such excitement, he had for 
 gotten. 
 
IX 
 THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 
 
 Persis Lambert was asleep in her berth when the 
 catastrophe came. The boat was not crowded she 
 was not an Atlantic liner nor yet a P. & O. in 
 the season and Miss Lambert s aunt, with whom she 
 was travelling, had, with her maid, a separate state 
 room. The niece was the solitary occupant of her 
 own. The alarm was sudden, and the ship s discipline 
 none of the best. Mrs. Lambert s maid, having an eye 
 to a legacy long promised, and the utter futility of the 
 legacy if she did not survive, clothed her bulky in- 
 validish asset as well as she could, and put her whole 
 soul into dragging herself and the asset on deck. There 
 were valuables, too, to collect in that hurried moment, 
 for the chief asset would not stir without them. 
 
 The maid was sent to wake the young girl so much, 
 the second wife of Persis Lambert s uncle demanded of 
 her but it is a question whether her excited rattling 
 of the stateroom door and her single cry did more 
 than start Persis Lambert on a dallying path towards 
 waking. It was, in any case, the hurrying feet on 
 the deck above and the shouting of stewards in the cor 
 ridor that made her sit up in her berth and decide 
 to dress as quickly as ever she could. Not once 
 throughout the whole experience did she set eyes on 
 Mrs. Lambert or Mrs. Lambert s maid. 
 
 By the time Persis Lambert got on deck, all the 
 other women and children in the cabin had been thrust 
 
 239 
 
240 VALIANT DUST 
 
 into the boats that were now dotting the moon-lit sea 
 at sparse and helpless intervals. Those of the under- 
 officers and crew who were left on board were coping 
 as best they could with a swirling, shrieking crowd 
 of third-class passengers men, chiefly. The officers 
 in command had done their best to sift out women 
 and children from the malodorous throng that beset 
 the narrow exits from the steerage. Stewards had 
 been sent down to search for any left behind; but 
 several of the stewards had gone overboard on their 
 own account with life-belts, swimming for the boats 
 as they pulled off. The ship was sinking in a heavy, 
 businesslike fashion by the stern the captain on her 
 bridge like a statue. He had lost his head, and the 
 first mate was virtually in charge. The only thing 
 that stuck, out of some twenty lucky years at sea, 
 was the conviction that he must go down with his 
 ship. His silence was extraordinary; he posed there 
 for death; and Persis Lambert herself, crawling and 
 climbing up the companion-way to the outer air, saw 
 the last gesticulations of appeal made to him by his 
 second officer who, even as she found support in a 
 brass rail, and clung, trying to arrange her mazed 
 thoughts, flung up his arms with a despairing oath and 
 slid aft into the babel. He did not see her clinging 
 to her rail. 
 
 Persis Lambert had put on a life-belt before leaving 
 her stateroom, but she felt it impossible now to test 
 its value. She was in that condition where the mind 
 seems at once omniscient and useless. She perceived 
 the alternatives before her, with no power to act 
 in any way a paralysis not so much of the motor 
 nerves as of the will itself. She stood there, cramped 
 and waiting, in a great lucid dream of indecision. To 
 be sure, neither of the alternatives was tempting to 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 241 
 
 try her luck with the screaming mongrels aft, or to 
 climb to the deck rail and leap into the glittering black 
 waste of sea. If it came to that, why not face the stern 
 of the boat and wait until the ocean took her? She 
 could not swim; it was folly for a non-swimming fe 
 male to betake herself to the biggest ocean in the 
 world before she had to. The only thing she felt like 
 doing was climbing up on the bridge and standing be 
 side the captain, at parade. That, too, was foolish. 
 Yet she would move as soon as she was sure of not 
 doing something silly. 
 
 All this, instead of being told as a sequence, should 
 be placed before you, if that were possible, in one syn 
 thetic glimpse. These thoughts co-existed in her mind: 
 it was a pigeon-holed instant, clear to perception as 
 a small, slightly complicated picture. Her past life, 
 contrary to precedent (for she was virtually drowning), 
 did not, in any detail, occur to her. 
 
 Long before the thing could have been put into 
 words, a man stood before her. He had somehow, be 
 tween moonshine and crazy lantern-ray, made her out, 
 clutching her rail close to the companion-way whence 
 she had emerged. 
 
 "Come along." There was nothing excited in his 
 tone. He was as stolid as the Owara at her business of 
 sinking, as the captain at his business of going down 
 with the ship. 
 
 Persis Lambert scarcely recognized the man at her 
 side, though she knew his name Angier. She had 
 seen him on deck and in the dining-saloon, but they 
 had never spoken. Mrs. Lambert now tossing in one 
 of those distant cockle-shells had given her niece 
 little or no time for new acquaintances. 
 
 "Where to?" 
 
242 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Angler took her arm in his to steady her. "Any 
 where out of this." 
 
 "What was it?" 
 
 "Reef, I guess. Stove in in the wrong place. Oh, 
 quick!" He pulled her towards the side of the ship. 
 "Not much time. There ll be an explosion any second, 
 probably." 
 
 "But where? I can t swim. Do you want me to 
 jump overboard?" 
 
 "You ll have to. No chance of those boats." He 
 jerked a shoulder aft. "It s hell down there. Disci 
 pline all gone to pot. Not room for everybody. Pity 
 about the captain." He turned for an instant and 
 lifted his cap bridgeward with his free arm. 
 
 "Can you get into that?" Angier pointed over 
 the side to a small boat. "It s not such a jump as it 
 would have been an hour ago." 
 
 "Yes. But what s the use? It must leak or some 
 thing or they wouldn t have left it." 
 
 The man paused an instant and looked at her. "I m 
 not making you. I don t know a thing about the 
 blamed tub. But my guess is that after the very first, 
 in the rush for the bigger ones, they forgot this. They 
 got it ready, you see. I don t insist. If you want 
 to chance it down there. . . . But you must do 
 something quick." 
 
 Persis Lambert looked aft. She saw men, brown and 
 white, struggling in a confused mass. It was like a 
 pit of snakes. She heard a pistol-shot or two, and in 
 describable cries inarticulate, indecent. Then she 
 turned back to Angier. "Shall I jump?" 
 
 "I ll go first, thanks. Then jump at for me, as 
 far as the moon will let you." He felt his pockets 
 quickly, then buttoned his coat. "Wait a second!" 
 he called, and actually disappeared across the deck. 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 243 
 
 Before she could wonder very hard, he had returned 
 with a shapeless bundle that looked like a heap of 
 blankets. "No good to the Owara" he muttered, as he 
 flung them into the rocking boat overside. Then he 
 jumped. There was silence for an instant, but pres 
 ently in the moonlight, Miss Lambert saw him holding 
 up his arms. 
 
 "For God s sake, fall as straight and as limp as you 
 can." 
 
 The deck was uncannily near the water. Miss Lam 
 bert heard his scarcely raised voice without difficulty. 
 She brought him to his knees as she fell into his arms, 
 but they soon righted themselves. After stooping for 
 an instant, groping on the bottom of the boat, he 
 stood up with a quick motion of his whole body. 
 
 "It doesn t leak, I think. They just forgot. Lord, 
 what a rotten bunch!" 
 
 Angier loosed the falls, then unshipped the oars and 
 bent to them. "Can t stop to make you comfortable 
 now. We must get out of this party. Just look and see 
 if there is water in that keg, please. Yes? I know 
 there s food. I saw the tins." 
 
 "Are you going to try to follow the other boats?" 
 
 "Might as well try to follow a firefly. I m going 
 to get us out of this er place, if I can. I am sure 
 you re like me you d rather die in the open." 
 
 He rowed steadily away from the Owara, out to sea 
 a phrase that ill suggests their infinitesimal progress. 
 Still, one wave shoved them idly on to another, and in 
 a few moments they were perceptibly farther away 
 from the sinking Owara. The cries grew less horrid to 
 the ear; they sounded more like a queer, shrill snarling 
 across the water. At last, louder than the death-throes 
 behind them, sounded in Persis Lambert s ear the 
 cracking of the man s muscles as he rowed. 
 
244 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "We re the only people, I believe, on this side of the 
 ship," she ventured, finally. She had not moved from 
 her uncomfortable position on the big bundle Angier 
 had thrown into the boat. 
 
 "You bet we are." That was all his reply. 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 Angier pulled for five minutes before replying. "Can 
 you get one of those extra oars?" he asked, finally. 
 
 The girl reached for one and pulled it towards her. 
 "Well? Do you want me to row, too?" 
 
 "Hardly. Though you ll probably have to learn to 
 steer. But if any damned Lascar comes swimming 
 along and trying to catch hold, chop him over the arm 
 with it. I told you I wanted to get out of the party. 
 And I don t make for a reef if I think there is one 
 there. We may tie up on one before morning, but at 
 least I m not trying to run us on the shore. Don t 
 forget about the Lascar." And his muscles cracked 
 again. 
 
 Miss Lambert laid down the oar. "I don t think 
 I could do that, thanks. There s plenty of room, and 
 if there weren t, I wouldn t try to keep any one out." 
 
 "No, I dare say you wouldn t. But I prefer to die 
 decently. So I ll trouble you to leave that oar where 
 I can get at it myself without disengaging one of these. 
 Better make yourself as comfortable as you can- 
 though I don t advise you to lie down. . . . Ah!" 
 
 The explosion had come. Both mechanically ducked 
 their heads, then lifted them. The crazy lights of the 
 Owara were quenched by the sea. They could see, 
 by the moon s glimmer, the quick final rush of her 
 settling. The captain s interminable wait on the 
 bridge, they knew, was over. But by common instinct 
 they did not speak of the catastrophe. Angier was row 
 ing hard, and the girl tried to limber her cramped limbs 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 245 
 
 and get herself into a more competent condition and 
 posture. Carefully, deftly, she arranged the things 
 that lay pell-mell in the bottom of the boat, selected 
 her seat, and composed herself. 
 
 While the moon lasted, the excitement of the situ 
 ation kept Persis Lambert s mind strictly at home 
 in the foreshortened world of the little boat. She 
 peered about her, taking stock of her physical context. 
 There were blankets she had wrapped herself in one 
 of them a water-keg, tins that must hold food. There 
 were also a few irregularly shaped objects here and 
 there which she could not identify in the faint light. 
 
 They talked very little after the moon had set. 
 Angier stopped rowing now and then for a moment, 
 letting his body relax. Once, he pulled a flask from 
 his pocket, removed the silver cup and passed it to 
 her, asking her to fill it from the water-keg. He offered 
 her whisky, but she refused it. Excited, warmly 
 wrapped, as yet she felt no chill. The stars paled 
 gradually, seeming to sink deeper into a lightening 
 sky as if they were withdrawing, backwards, out of 
 the presence of earth and sea. The tropic dawn was 
 coming upon them. Around was the constant complex 
 noise of the ocean, running through a watery gamut, 
 from the distant boom to the swishing of the waves 
 round the boat itself. 
 
 On the Owara, Persis Lambert had seen little or 
 nothing of her companion; but she remembered him as 
 tall and dark, and given to inhabiting the smoking- 
 room. Occasionally, since they had crossed the 
 equator, she had seen him walking the deck at a tre 
 mendous pace. She had never seen him talking to any 
 one, though of course she had not known how he might 
 spend his time in the smoking-room. Mrs. Lambert 
 had made friends with no one, and her niece had, per- 
 
246 VALIANT DUST 
 
 force, followed her example. But she was sure that 
 she had never seen Angler in any of the groups who 
 chattered away the tedious leagues. She felt she must 
 settle a few things before the day was upon them. So 
 strange a day it was bound to be! 
 
 "How did it happen you weren t with the first 
 boats?" she asked. 
 
 "How did it happen you weren t?" He stopped row 
 ing for a moment. 
 
 "I must have slept through a good deal. My aunt s 
 maid waked me, but I didn t realize until I heard the 
 confusion. ... I was pretty slow in dressing, I 
 fancy. And I was trying to decide what to do when 
 you came and told me. I m very grateful to you." 
 
 "Urn yes. I dare say I m grateful to you. I hadn t 
 made up my mind, either. You re sure your aunt 
 got off on one of the first boats?" 
 
 "I think she must have. They wouldn t overlook 
 her. Let s not talk about it. Every one loses his 
 wits at such a time. Think of the poor captain." 
 
 "I ve no time to waste thinking of anything. Do 
 you realize what we re in for?" 
 
 "No, I don t." Persis Lambert answered in a 
 matter-of-fact way. "I m no heroine, by the way. 
 I m never seasick, but that s all you can say for me. 
 I hope I shan t fail you or be a nuisance, but I can t 
 imagine that I shall be any good." 
 
 "Humph! Well, I m no Swiss Family Robinson my 
 self. I m fairly strong in the arms, legs, and back, 
 but I am not what you call a resourceful person. I ve 
 never had any experience of this kind. So if we do 
 strike land, you needn t expect any of the comforts of 
 camp life. I haven t even a pistol, if worse should 
 come to worst. What did you manage to save?" 
 
 "I ve got some money, which is of no use and a 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 247 
 
 flask and my warmest clothes on and, I think, a 
 toothbrush in my pocket, and a cake of soap. I didn t 
 see any sense in weighting myself down." 
 
 "I did better than you, then. At least, I hope there s 
 some loot worth having in that blanket you have your 
 feet on. I stepped into the smoking-room for a mo 
 ment, you remember. Matches, anyhow. Ah, there s 
 the sun. Suppose we eat. It might give us courage 
 to look around. We must be in a mess of islands about 
 here, you know; and there s a great choice in islands, 
 in these parts especially when you haven t a pistol. 
 ... I hope you won t let me get on your nerves," 
 he added, suddenly. "It s a queer hole to be in, and 
 you must be sensible. If you played the fool, I d 
 chuck you overboard." 
 
 "I don t think you would." Miss Lambert s head 
 was bent over a biscuit-tin. "You chucked me on 
 board, you remember." 
 
 "Oh, it was no place to die that disreputable old 
 tub with all her virtue oozing out of her." 
 
 "You seem to be very fastidious about your place 
 of dying." 
 
 "Well!" he jerked his head back and faced the sun 
 "you can t say it isn t decent here. You didn t want 
 to go down strangling with a lot of dirty Chinks biting 
 you in the back, did you? When I m through break 
 fast, I ll look over that loot. I hope I was inspired 
 last night in the smoking-room. I pawed about like 
 lightning for ten seconds. By the way, what is your 
 name? Mine is Angier." 
 
 "Persis Lambert. I should like a drink of water, 
 please. Thank you. And what are we going to do 
 about the sun?" 
 
 "Rig up something if we can. And, for heaven s 
 sake, go slow on the water. I ve got a map in my 
 
248 VALIANT DUST 
 
 pocket, but it s rather small. The boat s not much 
 bigger, and you ll kindly remember that we may be 
 dead before night. If a storm came up like the one 
 two days ago, you certainly would be. You can t swim, 
 remember." 
 
 "Why should I go slow on the water then?" 
 
 "Because we have a fighting chance." 
 
 "Even if I can t swim?" 
 
 "Oh, I d keep you up as long as I could, if you 
 didn t clutch me." 
 
 "You said you d throw me overboard if necessary." 
 Persis Lambert raised her hand. "Kindly understand 
 me. I m not asking for anything. Only it would be 
 much more convenient if you would explain to me 
 briefly what I can expect from you. What sort of man 
 are you, anyhow? I don t care, one way or the other. 
 I simply should like to know. Are you going to leave 
 me to shift for myself, or are you going to be conven 
 tional?" 
 
 Angier laughed a strange, impotent sound in that 
 waste of sunny waters. "You can bet I m going to be 
 conventional. That is, I ll play the game if you will. 
 If you re a good girl, I ll be a good boy if only be 
 cause being chivalrous at a time like this, edging along 
 towards the tropic of Capricorn, is so ridiculous. I ll 
 let you have the last mouthful, just because it would 
 be so sensible not to." 
 
 "You don t mean that." 
 
 "Well, just to prove that I am a free man. I m not 
 going to chuck a helpless thing like the moral law, just 
 because a big brute like the Pacific Ocean comes along 
 and tells me to. I let it pretty much alone when I m at 
 home, but damned if it isn t worth wasting time on 
 in a place like this, just as a spectacle. Don t you 
 worry. It ll probably be a shark or a native that does 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 249 
 
 for you. It won t be I unless you take to acting in 
 a way no man could stand. There s such a thing 
 as being too conventional, you know." He looked her 
 squarely in the eyes. 
 
 "Ill be as sensible as I can. But I m a free woman, 
 too." 
 
 "Not if you can t swim." 
 
 "Oh, if you think you can swim across the Pacific, 
 I don t wonder you boast about being free." Then, 
 for the first time since the accident, a drawing-room 
 manner returned to her. She spoke very sweetly. 
 "But let s not quarrel. What are we going to do about 
 sleeping? You must be absolutely exhausted. Couldn t 
 I do something with the oars while you took a nap?" 
 
 "You might decorate them if you ve got a box of 
 colors about you. Thanks, I m not sleepy. But 
 you re quite right. You d better curl up for a while. 
 I ll try to rig up something with an oar and one of 
 the blankets. I ll wake you when I want you. You 
 don t look very strong, by the way." 
 
 "I m not, but I m perfectly well. I m at my normal 
 weight. It isn t much. But " She looked around. 
 
 "I ll be sleeping, myself, later. Then you can comb 
 your hair." 
 
 Miss Lambert curled herself up obediently and un 
 comfortably under the improvised tent. She fell asleep 
 sooner than she had hoped, and the man, taking up the 
 oars, with a pocket compass before him on the water- 
 keg, rowed steadily on. The first boats had gone 
 north, making, he suspected, for a port. The other lot, 
 what with bad discipline and savage endeavors de 
 feating themselves, must have gone down, taken by 
 the sharks or that mid-sea level which buoys up the 
 drowned. Many of them had probably been killed 
 outright by huge splinters of the exploding Owara. 
 
250 VALIANT DUST 
 
 No relic, no fragment, since the dawn, had drifted their 
 way. He kept his course, as well as he could, due 
 south. "A great get-away," he murmured to himself. 
 He did not once look at the girl. 
 
 When, a few hours later, Persis Lambert crawled 
 out of her improvised tepee, her sleep-soaked eyes saw, 
 thanks to the glare of the sun on multiplied leagues of 
 water, only the vague litter of objects about her. Her 
 eyes clung to the blessedly dark surfaces of little 
 things a blanket, the handle of an old hatchet, her 
 own skirt. Then they traveled to Angier s figure at 
 the bow. By lifting and lowering her eyelids in quick 
 rhythm, to shake the sleep out, she managed finally 
 to focus her gaze, to discount to some extent the rude 
 blaze of the ocean. Angier had not spoken to her, and 
 she now saw why. Oblivious of Persis Lambert, his 
 back half turned to her, he was looking steadily out to 
 sea through a small pair of binoculars. Perfectly mo 
 tionless, he seemed to be studying some fixed point 
 in the distance. He must have heard the stir of her 
 waking and moving forward in the boat, but he paid 
 no more attention to her than if she had been the 
 ship s cat stretching itself. She did not know to 
 what point of the compass his gaze was directed all 
 directions were alike to her, with the sun overhead. 
 She limbered her cramped limbs as best she could in 
 that tiny rocking space, smoothed her hair, and wiped 
 her face with her handkerchief. Finally she turned to 
 parallel with her own eyes the path of his long, steady 
 gaze through the glass. Then she exclaimed, for land, 
 no less, was what she saw. She was incapable of judg 
 ing distances, but the peculiar outline of palms was 
 distinguishable to her, lifted above a tiny colorless 
 strip that must be shore. At the girl s exclamation, 
 Angier turned and put the glass down carefully. 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 251 
 
 "These aren t much good tourist things but you 
 can see for yourself what I m looking at." He did 
 not offer her the glass; and she did not ask for it. 
 
 "How far away?" 
 
 "I don t know. Distances are deceptive, of course. 
 But you will notice that there is a favoring wind, and a 
 current too, I m pretty sure. I don t know that I 
 like the current; but I can t say that I like being boiled 
 alive, either. We shall get there soon enough, I think. 
 You didn t sleep more than an hour or two. I think 
 I ll turn in myself, after you ve got some notion of 
 steering. No point in using up muscle to keep out of 
 this wind-and-current combination. There must be a 
 current, you know " He knotted his brows, as if in 
 displeasure. 
 
 "Why do you mind the current so?" 
 
 Angier grinned. "I m no navigator, please remem 
 ber. Nobody ever taught me what to do with a cur 
 rent in a coral area! But you can wake me up before 
 we get anywhere near." 
 
 "May I see the map?" 
 
 "Sure! But I am afraid it was made only for 
 European consumption. There must be several hun 
 dred islands in the immediate neighborhood" he 
 waved his arm impartially in a circular sweep round 
 the horizon. "I do know about where the Owara went 
 down. I looked at the ship s chart last evening. But 
 it doesn t help us much, does it? Now let me show 
 you what to do back here." 
 
 Persis Lambert took her instructions in steering as 
 intelligently as she could. They were, for that matter, 
 haltingly given. Angier had to confess, with grim 
 laughter, that he knew very little about the business. 
 "I ve had a lot of things happen to me, but they ve 
 never been in boats. Perhaps it s a pity we didn t ship 
 
252 VALIANT DUST 
 
 a Lascar while we were about it. But what would 
 have been the good of a Lascar without a pistol to 
 shoot him with? Wake me up any minute you want 
 me. I don t think there s much you can do, as a matter 
 of fact, except try to keep her from slewing entirely 
 out of her course. And if it is wind-and-current com 
 bination, she couldn t do that if she tried. Au revoir!" 
 
 He stuck his head out of the tepee after he had 
 burrowed his way in. "You didn t bring a pistol, did 
 you?" 
 
 "Of course not. I never had a pistol in my life." 
 
 "All right, all right. Only it is just as well to be 
 sure." 
 
 "Did you think I would shoot you?" 
 
 A deal of pent-up sarcasm went into her tone. There 
 was no reply. Persis Lambert looked about for the 
 binoculars, but they had gone, slung over Angier s 
 shoulder, into the tepee. She sat for a long time clutch 
 ing the steering-rope as he had directed, gazing at 
 the line of palms on the horizon. It was a great relief 
 to be alone. Occasionally she closed her eyes for a 
 moment to shut out the glare that stabbed like a mil 
 lion arrows; but whenever she opened them again, she 
 stared always at that fixed point as if there were no 
 other fact abroad upon the sea. 
 
 It was late afternoon when Angier and Persis Lam 
 bert landed on their island. Angier confessed that he 
 had feared a hundred easy ways of destruction, but 
 in point of fact the low, sandy coast seemed positively 
 to welcome them. A tiny recess in the shore-line em 
 braced their little boat, harbor-fashion though the 
 Owara would have filled its curving arms to overflow 
 ing. Angier had trained his glass on the land many 
 times before landing, but at last he slung it back over 
 his shoulder, and eventually they heard the soft 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 253 
 
 crunch of sand under the keel as they beached the 
 boat the first land-noise either had heard for many 
 a day. They seemed to have stepped out of a mov 
 ing nightmare of great waters, a vast, aqueous vision, 
 into a firm, terrestrial reality. Persis Lambert 
 hummed to herself as she carried things from the boat 
 to the shade of a palm-grove. 
 
 "Stop that, will you, please?" The man s harassed 
 voice sounded close behind her. 
 
 "Why? I hated the boat." 
 
 "You don t yet know whether we have this bit of 
 hell to ourselves or not. And as soon as I can decide 
 what to do with you, I ve got to find out." 
 
 She stopped where she was, with her load. "And 
 leave me?" 
 
 "Some one s got to stay with the stores. They aren t 
 much, but they may be all we ll have for some time." 
 
 "Do you really think" it was her sweet tone, 
 brought back into use for the occasion "that I should 
 be very effective if any one did turn up who wanted 
 them?" 
 
 Angier laughed shortly. "Right you are. You 
 wouldn t unless it were an animal." 
 
 "There are very few animals" she turned again 
 toward the palm-grove "that wouldn t soon be in 
 possession, for all me. My relations with our dumb 
 brothers don t extend beyond dogs small ones, with 
 collars." 
 
 He looked at her curiously. "I should think you 
 would like to get rid of me for a little while." 
 
 "I d love to." Her tone was still very sweet. "But 
 I prefer you to a quadruped. And until I m better 
 acquainted with the natives, I think I prefer you to 
 them. Of course, they may turn out very nice. In that 
 case, we ll see." 
 
254 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Angler shrugged his shoulders. "All right. Only, 
 if you can spare me for five minutes, I ll go into that 
 next bunch of palms and look through the glass. 
 There ll be a lagoon, or I miss my guess. Keep down 
 by the boat, please, and, if you want me, shout. I 
 shall be close by." In his promised five minutes, he 
 returned. "It s a smallish place, after all. There is 
 a lagoon. We d better walk around it, I fancy. It 
 would be something of a relief to know that we are 
 the sole inhabitants, though what we shall live on 
 Oh, well, hang it! no use borrowing trouble." 
 
 Both man and girl were silent on their strange pil 
 grimage. Persis Lambert, indeed, was all but ex 
 hausted; and as soon as Angier delivered himself 
 grudgingly of the opinion that they were indeed the 
 only human occupants of the island, she begged to 
 return to the landing-place. The circumference of 
 the atoll Angier judged to be a scant two miles. It 
 was the classic coral island; baldly described, a ring 
 of palms inclosing a lagoon. Vegetation was scanty, 
 and there seemed to be little or no animal life: many 
 birds and insects, and a few lizards. The blue lagoon 
 teemed with parti-colored fish, and the palms in their 
 due time would drop cocoanuts; so much they could 
 count on. They might, with good luck, snare some 
 pigeons. Beyond that, the less thought about it the 
 better. 
 
 Angier worked hard, before dark came upon them, 
 to rig up a shelter for the girl. In time he hoped to 
 do wonders with thatch, he told her, dryly; just now 
 she must stick to an oar-and-blanket device. At least, 
 thanks to his plunder of matches, they could have a 
 fire. They ate their supper beside the little blaze of 
 brush. Not since dawn had either one mentioned the 
 Owara. They took the catastrophe for granted, as 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 255 
 
 the warp on which they must weave their strange and 
 painful pattern. They assumed it callously, as one 
 assumes the basic conditions of life the climate, or 
 one s Caucasian blood. Slowly, in their spasmodic 
 talk, they staked out the little dominion of their pres 
 ent expedients for netting fish, for catching rain 
 water, for rigging up a signal. With the air of a chan 
 cellor of the exchequer, Miss Lambert promised a 
 petticoat for the common weal. As they planned and 
 Angier smoked, full-length by the fire, Persis Lambert 
 drew a ribbon from her pocket, and measuring it care 
 fully, she knotted it about a ring she took from her 
 finger, then hung the ring round her neck. 
 
 "Why is that?" The man s voice seemed to rise 
 up from beneath the sand. 
 
 "It s a pearl. I mustn t get it wet." 
 "Wouldn t it be safer in one of my pockets?" 
 "I think not. See I put it under everything." 
 "Why not wrap it up and bury it? It s no pro 
 tected life you re going to live." 
 
 "Thanks, no. It s my engagement ring." 
 "Oh " This time the voice seemed to sink into the 
 sand hollow where the man s head rested. 
 
 "I m going to bed," said Persis Lambert at last. 
 "What are you going to do? You ve given me all the 
 blankets." 
 
 "What of it?" Angier sprang to a sitting position. 
 There are only three, two for your shelter and one to 
 cover you with. I have my overcoat. And sand isn t 
 hard. Better than the boat, anyhow." 
 "Aren t the nights cool in the tropics?" 
 "I m not a class in geography! It was devilishly 
 hot last night, rowing. That s all I know. Anything 
 I can do for you?" 
 
 "No." She disappeared into the shelter. It had 
 
256 VALIANT DUST 
 
 been braced as well as possible against the strong sea- 
 breeze. 
 
 Half an hour later Miss Lambert came out. Angier, 
 who had been dozing by the dying fire, was now sitting 
 up and drinking from his flask. His teeth chattered 
 against the cup. She looked at him gravely. "Have 
 you any medicines?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Nor I. So I think you d better not get a chill 
 first off. Why don t you build up the fire?" 
 
 "I don t precisely feel like starting out for more 
 firewood. Besides, it s going to rain. Do get along 
 in there and don t bother me unless you re cold. Are 
 you?" He pulled himself up to his feet slowly and 
 stood before her. 
 
 "No, I m not." She paused an instant, then went 
 on in her coldest tone: "What good there is in the 
 shelter I think you have as much right to as I. When 
 we achieve thatch houses, it will be different. I should 
 be much obliged if you would get out of the sea-wind, 
 too." 
 
 "If you would take a little of that damned hostility 
 out of your voice, I would! " 
 
 Miss Lambert looked surprised. "Didn t we decide 
 all that sort of thing in the boat? I don t suppose this 
 is pleasant for either of us." Great drops fell on her 
 forehead. "Is this likely to be a hard storm?" she 
 asked hastily. 
 
 "How do I know? I m no meteorologist." There 
 was enough in his own tone of the "damned hostility" 
 of which he had complained. 
 
 Miss Lambert laughed a very tired tinkle of a 
 laugh. "No; neither one of us is exactly the person 
 the other would have chosen to be cast away with. 
 We re both tenderfeet. I rather wonder what you used 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 257 
 
 to do for a living. Listen" the drops came faster 
 and faster, and the swish of the palm-leaves high above 
 their heads grew shriller and wilder "I don t know 
 you at all. So far as I do know you, I certainly don t 
 like you." Even the beat of her words grew quicker, 
 like all the audible rhythms of the world about them, 
 whipped up, accelerated by the wind. "You create 
 in me a positive aversion. But your strength is the 
 only thing either of us has to depend on. So you 
 will come into the shelter. It s sufficiently open to 
 the sky, as it is. I intend to sleep, and I probably 
 shouldn t if I knew you were rotting in the rain outside. 
 If you wish me to take the space nearest the blanket" 
 she pointed at the seaward screen "I will." 
 
 "I think that may turn out to be the wettest spot 
 of all since the wind is that way and we don t have 
 much to weight the rug with," he answered. "I think 
 I ll take it myself. If I find I m keeping at all dry, 
 I ll ask you to change." 
 
 He followed her and flung himself down in the in 
 dicated spot, on the carpet of leaves and brush he had 
 earlier in the evening strewn hastily over the sandy 
 soil. Presently both slept. 
 
 Six weeks to a day was the duration of Angier s 
 and Per sis Lambert s stay on their island. But six 
 actual weeks, with a possible future of years, means 
 a lifetime as complete as many that consider them 
 selves rounded to the full sum of human experience. 
 The intensity of an existence that is limited to itself 
 is something few of us can conceive we who are free 
 to brood on the past and hope for the future, whose 
 days are mere portals looking two ways. Neither one 
 discussed a past life in which the other had no share; 
 and their talk of the future stopped at a possible 
 rescue. By some common instinct, mutually rein- 
 
258 VALIANT DUST 
 
 forced, they refrained from narrative. At the end 
 of their exile Persis Lambert was still ignorant of 
 Angier s business in life, as he was ignorant of the 
 name of her fiance. The girl s frankly stated aversion 
 to the man doubtless dried up the springs of confi 
 dential talk in her and, by natural result, in him. 
 Anecdote sometimes drifted their way: an analogy out 
 of past experience or an allusion to a book the one 
 or the other had read. But they played a game of 
 which should reveal the less. They bounded their 
 world, as rigidly as children, by the fringe of the sand 
 beneath the circle of palms. 
 
 And all the while, precisely as if they were children, 
 whose intimate confidences are all objective, im 
 mediate, and innocent of moral import, their intimacy 
 grew. By a curious inversion of experience they came 
 to speak naturally of things that, in years of con 
 ventional acquaintance, would never have been men 
 tioned. What the merest friend at home might have 
 known about either was jealously concealed, while the 
 little details, which scarcely anything but the closest 
 relation would have brought to free discussion, came 
 vividly and frequently into their talk. It was as if the 
 outer walls were defended while the enemy chaffered 
 quietly in the market-place. Necessity, which drove 
 them to be "sensible," could not drive them to be 
 friends. They seemed to vent their private rage at 
 their plight by being squeamish over things Mrs. 
 Grundy could never have objected to as if the last 
 resort of dignity lay in being squeamish over some 
 thing, no matter what. If they had to speak of their 
 digestions, they would never divulge their home ad 
 dresses! They should have been Adam and Eve 
 at their housekeeping; instead, they were still Miss 
 Lambert and Mr. Angier in Eden. Eden is used 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 259 
 
 metaphorically, to be sure; for the resources of their 
 island were scantier than those of the Seventh Day. 
 They struggled experimentally for food and shelter, 
 working out, with bent brows, the evolution of early 
 periods, achieving in a hard day what neolithic cen 
 turies had gone to discovering. When they laughed, 
 it was the grim laughter of the Stone Age at the 
 fish clumsily speared, or the ripe cocoanut floating out 
 to sea. But if Persis Lambert wept in secret, the tears 
 she shed had taken all history to produce. A strange 
 working of inhibitions, in a place that had never heard 
 the word or seen the thing. 
 
 Needless to say, it was the girl who set their psychic 
 pace. More than once Angier bit off in the very ut 
 terance some speech that had tried for freedom his 
 silence following hard upon the chill tightening of her 
 lips. Yet she was not ungracious or taciturn; only 
 clinging desperately, one would have said, to some 
 privacy of the mind. Of the physical privacy which 
 every woman takes for granted, she had next to 
 none, "sensible" as she had promised to be. She 
 could not have accused Angier, had she wished, of 
 limiting it voluntarily; but circumstances did the 
 job as completely as if he had been a brute. The 
 tropic showers that flung them huddled in their 
 blankets against the same tall palm-trunk; the neces 
 sary co-operation in all tasks, since her slender, igno 
 rant hands must ever be guided by his; the night- 
 terror that often made her rise and creep where she 
 could hear his breathing; the sordid talk of a hand- 
 to-mouth existence, where one of the hundred forms 
 of death rises up ever to dwarf any more delicate 
 danger every fact of every hour seemed to make 
 them more one than wedlock. The man saw to it 
 that she should have her due share of solitude, but 
 
260 VALIANT DUST 
 
 her solitude on such terms was scarcely worth the 
 name. It shrieked the bodily fact of him back at her 
 from whatever point of the compass he had betaken 
 himself to. 
 
 Once Angier suggested that they should try the boat 
 again, and seek a wider and more fertile exile. "This 
 is too much like rats in a hole. Pretty soon we shall 
 get the stink of those fish we are drying, clear across 
 the lagoon." 
 
 "You can go if you like," she said. "I will wait for 
 you." 
 
 "Oh! . . . and if I never came back?" 
 
 "I shouldn t be worse off, should I?" 
 
 The man s face twitched slightly. "Permit me to be 
 lieve that you would." 
 
 "Of course I should," she said, perfunctorily. "But 
 I won t go. I will never get into that boat again 
 never." 
 
 "You have a lot of grit, but I should say, no sense." 
 With that, Angier dropped the subject. 
 
 One night Persis Lambert woke suddenly, out of a 
 sound, dog-tired sleep. Something was near her, in the 
 dark, an indistinct shape bending over her. Almost 
 immediately she knew it for Angier, and closed her 
 eyes again, quietly waiting, every muscle and cord 
 tense under her blanket. Soon he rose noiselessly 
 from his kneeling position and walked slowly away. 
 He did not go back to his own sleeping-place, but 
 moved off through the palm-grove towards the lagoon. 
 As soon as she judged him out of earshot, she rose 
 and followed him, tracking him through the moonlight, 
 furtively. She saw him walk down the little shore to 
 the lagoon and lie down full-length, hiding his face on 
 his arms. 
 
 She did what he had done a few minutes before 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 261 
 
 knelt down and bent over him. But though he was 
 awake, he was not aware of her, as a thick sob told 
 her. Careless, therefore, she bent still closer. It did 
 not occur to her that she was eavesdropping they 
 were as cruelly close as that! But no words came, 
 only the sobs, worse than words. She pressed so near 
 though still not touching him that her ring, hang 
 ing from its ribbon, swung lightly against his face. 
 She pulled it away, but he had felt it, and sprang to 
 his feet, facing her in the moonlight. The little lagoon 
 rippled softly beside them. 
 
 "You devil!" he cried. "Why did you follow me?" 
 
 "Why did you wake me?" 
 
 "I didn t wake you." 
 
 "Then I didn t follow you." 
 
 Silently they walked back to their palm-grove. As 
 they separated, she paused an instant and looked at 
 him. Then she dug her wrists into the deep sockets 
 of her eyes. The gesture blurred her vision, and she 
 saw him only dimly. 
 
 "I m sorry," she whispered. 
 
 "Oh, damn you . . ." he murmured, with a 
 curious, meditative inflection, and walked away. She 
 did not watch him further, but went back to her bed 
 and slept. 
 
 Neither one alluded, in the days that followed, to the 
 incident of that night. Their eyes were clear of allu 
 sion, their talk as sterile as ever. On the fifth day 
 after, deliverance came in the shape of a government 
 patrol-boat doing pacific duty among the islands. The 
 signal, religiously kept afloat, was an easy mark for 
 binoculars that steadily raked the horizon for any sign 
 of trouble. 
 
 Their return to the world was as swift and inevitable 
 as their departure from the Owara. Per sis Lambert 
 
262 VALIANT DUST 
 
 stood on the strip of sand, watching the boat rowed 
 shoreward by vigorous sailors. When it was within 
 a few rods of them, she turned to look for Angier ; 
 who had disappeared from her side. 
 
 "Is he leaving it to me the cad?" she whispered to 
 herself. But he returned from the camp in time to 
 greet the under-officer who sprang from the gunwale to 
 the sand, in high excitement. Miss Lambert, after a 
 grave greeting, left all explanations to Angier. He 
 made them very well, then suddenly fell silent, his eyes 
 fixed on the dwindling coronet of palms. Miss Lam 
 bert, her back to Angier and the young officer, strained 
 her glance towards the little steamer. Once on it, she 
 went below to quarters hurriedly arranged for her; 
 and when, some hours afterward, she came on deck 
 again, the island of their six weeks sojourn was lost 
 forever in the dusk and distance. 
 
 Angier approached her the next morning. "They 
 seem to think we have a lot to say to each other. As 
 a matter of fact, we haven t. But I might tell you that 
 they are taking us on to a port of call of the Wallaby, 
 going to Singapore. We shall just about make it in 
 time to catch her. We ought to be on board her to 
 
 morrow." 
 
 Miss Lambert nodded. "Have you any money?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Quite enough to go on with." 
 
 "I saved a lot, you know. At least, I suppose a let 
 ter of credit is still good." 
 
 "I think you ll find it so in spite of everything." 
 
 "I wish you would tell me how much you have." 
 
 "Is that the kind of thing I ever have told you? 
 Why should I begin now?" 
 
 "As you like." She turned her head away from him. 
 
 "I m sorry, by the way, about your aunt. . . ." 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 263 
 
 Persis Lambert s eyes filled. "That s all right. I 
 mean, you ve said all you need to say. Do you think 
 they really know?" 
 
 "It seems to be their business to know everything 
 that happens in this archipelago. I think they pretty 
 well live up to it. I m afraid there s no doubt. The 
 first two boats were overloaded. . . . Rotten dis 
 cipline." He walked away. 
 
 The next morning they trans-shipped quickly in a 
 lurid tropic harbor; and Persis Lambert took posses 
 sion of a stateroom from which, for three days, she 
 did not stir. When, braced to face the world again 
 a world whose thousand curious eyes she had felt burn 
 ing through the very decks to reach her as she lay in 
 her berth she disposed herself nonchalantly in a 
 deck-chair, a steward brought her a note. So oddly 
 had the two inverted the natural course of experience 
 that she felt Angier had taken a liberty in writing to 
 her. The liberty taken was slight, however, and this 
 she freely admitted after a glance. It was a single 
 line to inform her that he was to leave the steamer 
 at the next port. He must have landed the night be 
 fore. She remembered objecting, as she tried to 
 drowse, to the noises of landing the hurrying feet, the 
 unintelligible native babel, the scraping and pound 
 ing and shouting before the dinghy went ashore. 
 
 Persis Lambert rose and went to the deck rail. The 
 torn bits of the note fluttered over the side. Then she 
 came back to face the congested curiosity of a portly 
 Dutchwoman who had been stalking her for three 
 days. 
 
 Summer was heavy on the big town, but Miss Lam 
 bert still lingered behind shuttered windows, in a world 
 of brown holland and shadows. Her step-sister, with 
 
264 VALIANT DUST 
 
 her own family, had left for the mountains. Miss 
 Lambert would follow, she said, when she could; and 
 the old caretaker and his wife would meanwhile suffice 
 to her service. Mrs. Bayle supposed she knew why 
 Persis stayed on; Tony Wainwright was still in town, 
 working on gigantic plans for some competition or 
 other. After poor Persists harrowing adventure, it 
 must be good to breathe the metropolitan dust and 
 build up her nerves on Tony s devotion. Persis had 
 not said precisely that; but for all Persis ever said ! 
 
 Miss Lambert had seen her betrothed many times 
 in the crowded weeks since her return. She had not 
 particularly sought chances to see him alone. She 
 had taken his and her and every one s engagements 
 as they came. But if Tony Wainwright had had the 
 instinct to complain, he should by rights have stifled 
 it, for, in planning to stay on after the family, Miss 
 Lambert gave him promise of ample time to have her 
 quite to himself. 
 
 She had, in point of fact, seen him quite alone sev 
 eral times; yet she prepared for him this afternoon 
 as if it were their first reunion after her long and 
 eventful absence. She began to speak to him at once, 
 indeed, on a new, strange note a note, had he but 
 known it, tempered under the Southern Cross. 
 
 "Tony, it can t be." 
 
 "What can t be, my darling?" 
 
 "This any of it. I stayed on to tell you. Nothing 
 makes any difference not even being quite alone with 
 you. I have waited to see. Now I know." 
 
 "But what?" He focussed his eyes on her keenly 
 as she stood near him in the shadows, a frail, pale 
 figure with wavering outlines. 
 
 "I can t marry you." 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 265 
 
 "May I open the shutters?" He moved to the win 
 dows. "I d like a little light on this." 
 
 "If you think his Satanic majesty, the sun, is going 
 to help you," she murmured. 
 
 "Why shouldn t he?" 
 
 "I ve seen him at home, remember." 
 
 In the rich afternoon light, they faced each other, 
 still standing among the wan masses of the shrouded 
 furniture. 
 
 "Look here, Persis. what is all this about? Any 
 thing to do with that rotten voyage?" 
 
 She did not answer at once. 
 
 "Or with that man Angier?" 
 
 "Yes, everything to do with him." 
 
 "You re in love with him?" He dropped into a 
 chair, put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his 
 hands. 
 
 "Try not to be stupid, Tony. To the best of my 
 recollection, I detested him." 
 
 "You ve praised him highly." 
 
 "Yes? I m glad of that, for I think he deserved 
 it. I should have scarcely expected myself to do my 
 duty in that way, though." 
 
 "Well, then. . . . Have you heard from him?" 
 Tony Wainwright, in the presence of a problem, could 
 not, for the life of him, help behaving like a lawyer. 
 His tones were so familiar that Persis Lambert smiled 
 a little. 
 
 "Heard from him? Never. What do you take me 
 for?" 
 
 "I don t see why you shouldn t." 
 
 "I fancy he sees. But that isn t the point." She 
 sat down, herself, then. "What I have to say, Tony, 
 is very simple or it would be simple if you weren t 
 likely to think it preposterous. The honest fact is that 
 
266 VALIANT DUST 
 
 I can t marry any one. I feel like a widow, if you 
 want to know." 
 
 He was silent for a moment. "I see." Then he got 
 up and walked to the chimney-piece. 
 
 "I d be willing to wager a good deal that you don t 
 see." Her voice was hard as porcelain with a wonder 
 ful glaze. 
 
 "I tell you I detested him. For that matter, I don t 
 know why. He behaved with exceeding consideration 
 throughout. He rose out of a nightmare and went 
 away into a nightmare, and in between he did every 
 thing he could for me. I know nothing about him 
 who he is, or where he came from, or where he has 
 gone. If either one of us can help it, I am quite sure 
 we shall never meet again. That is the whole history 
 of that." 
 
 "What is there, then?" 
 
 "Quite simply this: that I feel as if I had been mar 
 ried to him, and I m quite incapable of marrying 
 again." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 "Try it yourself, Tony! Six weeks they tell me it 
 was six weeks, but it was the longest lifetime I ve ever 
 lived of complete isolation on a naked coral island 
 with a man you ve never seen before. Nothing be 
 tween you and him nothing. As lonely we were as 
 the first man and woman; and for all I knew, it might 
 go on for ever. You ve never experienced an intimacy 
 like that. Compared with us, you and I are strangers. 
 I can t describe it. ... Night after night, the 
 only thing that stood between me and dying of fear 
 was the sound of his breathing. Time after time his 
 body kept mine from being soaked, flesh and bone, 
 with rain. I mended his clothes with a sharpened 
 thorn, and we huddled under the same thatch to keep 
 
THE PENALTIES OF ARTEMIS 267 
 
 off the horrible sun. There has never been anything 
 like it. I never dreamed of living such a life with you. 
 And" her voice grew thin, disdainful, remote "I 
 disliked him." 
 
 "Do you dislike me?" Wainwright asked curi 
 ously. 
 
 "I am exceedingly fond of you. But I have a horror 
 of marriage. I have a horror of ever again being inti 
 mate with any human creature. I can t do it; and 
 that s the end of it." 
 
 "Damn him!" said Wainwright, under his breath. 
 
 "You needn t damn him. He did his best. And I 
 did mine. But we were flung on that sand to root 
 for existence like two animals. Every nerve in me 
 has been violated. I never wish to face a single reality 
 of life again. To be a wife would be more than I 
 could bear." 
 
 "We ll talk of it again." Tony Wainwright, with 
 almost superhuman composure, started towards the 
 door. "You have always been hypersensitive, and 
 now, my poor darling, you are ill. It has been too 
 much for you. It will take time, and I shan t hurry 
 you. You re right about that. I knew something was 
 up, but I imagined it was just the beastly reaction af 
 ter such a time. I dare say I d better leave you now. 
 When may I come again?" 
 
 She rested her eyes on him tenderly. "Whenever 
 you like, so long as you understand that we re not en 
 gaged." 
 
 He took a step towards her. "Persis, I can t go 
 away like this. You snap a thread and blow me down 
 the wind. You must let me have it out with you when 
 you re rested, when you re calmer. 
 
 "Am I not calm?" 
 
 "Not sanely calm, no." 
 
268 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Then I never shall be." 
 
 "I don t believe that, dear." He bent over her and 
 touched her hair very lightly. "I ll come to-morrow, 
 earlier." She did not look up, but he bent no nearer. 
 In a moment he straightened himself, drawing a deep 
 breath. "Wasn t he in love with you, Persis?" 
 
 She started slightly as if she had heard something 
 other than words as if, across half the earth, the 
 faint ripple of a lagoon could sound faintly and die 
 away. "No, Tony, I am quite sure that he wasn t." 
 
 "Could you have told? He must have been, dear." 
 
 "I could have told. He wasn t." 
 
 "And I may come to-morrow?" He took her hand. 
 
 Gently, Persis Lambert worked her hand free. 
 "Surely, you may come whenever you will if you 
 understand that it s over." 
 
 "And you are all to win again? Oh, Persis, Persis! 
 But you re worth it, darling, and I ll never say a word 
 too much. I ll serve seven years if I must." 
 
 "It won t take you seven years to find out the 
 truth." She shook her head at him as he turned on 
 the threshold to look back. "You ll get no more of it 
 from me, ever, than you ve had this afternoon." 
 
 By old habit, she went to the window to watch him 
 come out. The same habit made him lift his face. She 
 blew him a kiss, and stood there until he was out of 
 sight. "That is the last thing I shall ever do for any 
 man," she said, aloud, as she turned away from the 
 window. 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 
 
 Louquier had been crossed in love. The old phrase 
 covers his case. The girl does not matter, the cir 
 cumstances do not matter; nothing matters except that 
 Louquier had fallen in love, and that the lady had 
 not reciprocated not at least effectively, to the point 
 of marrying Louquier. She does not come into the 
 story in her own person; only as a cause. She affected 
 Louquier; and his state is responsible for what hap 
 pened. Of course Louquier s own temperament counts 
 largely; other men might have been affected differ 
 ently. Louquier, crossed in love, was a very special 
 human formula. 
 
 Louquier was cursed with a small patrimony that 
 made it entirely unnecessary for him to work, so long 
 as his tastes remained simple. The lady apart, he had 
 no ambitions; he was, I regret to say, the sort of ob 
 solescent fool who thinks that it is more lovely to be 
 than to do, and that your most serious task in life is 
 to adorn and beautify your personality. If he had 
 been up to it, he would have been a first-class dilet 
 tante. He would have loved rejecting (like Walter 
 Pater) exquisite cinerarias of the wrong color, or leav 
 ing a concert-hall because Beethoven was too vul 
 garly romantic. But he could never have done either, 
 for the simple reason that his good, garish taste would 
 never have given him the tip. His way did not lie 
 through Art. He was too easily pleased. He loved 
 
 269 
 
270 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Beauty even when it was merely pretty. No, his way 
 did not lie through Art. 
 
 Louquier knew something of all this and wisely did 
 not try for instincts that he did not possess. But he 
 had his own way of being a highbrow. He could first 
 isolate and then appreciate an emotion or a sensation 
 either in himself or in others. He loved the quiet 
 dramas that take place within an individual nature; 
 he could scent psychologic moments from afar. The 
 twist of a mouth or the lift of an eyebrow meant to 
 him unutterable things. He would carry home with 
 him a gesture, a phrase, a twitch of the mask, and be 
 fore his comfortable fire sit, as in a parquet-box, 
 watching a gorgeous third act of his own creation. It 
 should be said here that Louquier was usually right 
 about his third acts and seldom mistook a curtain- 
 raiser for a play. He had a flair. He rejected, at sight, 
 the kind of human being to whom no spiritual ad 
 ventures come; and could recognize hysterical imita 
 tion a mile away. He despised emotion for emotion s 
 sake. It might be as slight as you liked, but it must 
 be the real thing. He was perfectly sincere in his own 
 amorous misadventure; he suffered as naively as a 
 boy of eighteen. His heart was veritably broken, and 
 when he withdrew from the world it was to nurse a 
 real wound. 
 
 Louquier had brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin, 
 the lean figure that best sorts with that general brown- 
 ness and half presupposes an eye-glass. He did not, 
 however, wear an eye-glass; and he had large, white, 
 tombstone teeth not the teeth of his type. He was a 
 good fellow, and popular with men. You see, he never 
 told any one about his passion for other people s crises; 
 he kept it very shyly and decently to himself. More 
 over, no one ever brought first-aid to the emotionally 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 271 
 
 injured more promptly than Louquier, so people told 
 him things. Yet, as he had no business, and had wan 
 dered a good deal (in the most conventional ways), 
 he had no fixed circle of friends. At any given mo 
 ment, in any given place, he was apt to be rather 
 solitary. 
 
 That is enough about Louquier s personality. If 
 you can t "get" him, I can hardly give him to you. 
 
 Louquier withdrew, as I say, into himself retreated 
 to a house that, by accident of a cousin s investment, 
 now, the cousin being dead, belonged to him. He had 
 hitherto rented it, for the few years that he had owned 
 it; but the lease had expired, and it struck Louquier 
 that he had never lived in a house of his own. That 
 in itself might give him a sensation a conventional 
 one, but worth experiencing. As he couldn t marry, 
 and had no religion, perhaps it was as near as he would 
 ever come to feeling like a pillar of society. It was 
 really that sense of the curious value of living under 
 one s own vine and fig-tree which drew him. His nat 
 ural instinct would have been to retire to mountain 
 fastnesses, or discover some Ravenswoodish ruin in 
 which to shiver. You can see that he was very hard 
 hit, and that he was not a subtle person. 
 
 The villa was at least remote from the scene of his 
 discomfiture. It was a smallish, comfortable, rather 
 ugly mansion on the bank of the Assiniboine, one of 
 the older houses on Wellington Crescent, Winnipeg, 
 Manitoba. Girdled by a high wall, its best rooms 
 arranged at the back, facing the river, to which its 
 tangled garden sloped negligently down, "Whitewood" 
 had a wholly English flavor of privacy and comfort. 
 It was at once modest and sturdy; it lived to itself, 
 and asked favors of no one least of all the favor of 
 looking into its neighbors premises. That suited 
 
272 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Louquier perfectly; he saw at once that a British 
 tradition was there to offset the newness of Winni 
 peg. Of course, being officially an American, he 
 couldn t well taste the essence of being "colonial," 
 but he thought he could be secluded and guindi and 
 "middle" with the best. It quite suited his present 
 temper, and he established himself. Good servants 
 sprang miraculously into being on the spot probably 
 because he was a bachelor. The Assiniboine was a 
 noble stream; the wall round his garden was very 
 high; it was delightfully incongruous of him to be there 
 at all; he was pleased with himself for having had the 
 courage to come. He felt more steeped in foreignness 
 than if he had done something more exotic. He saw 
 no one, except for necessary business. He did not wish 
 to force the note. He rather liked subjecting his dra 
 matic sense to local color. Still, he never forgot the 
 girl, for he had been very hard hit. At this stage of 
 Louquier s life he even shrank a little from encounter 
 ing a woman. 
 
 Then it was hard to say just when, for his ex 
 perience was very gradual he began to be uncom 
 fortable; he could not precisely say how or why. He 
 had mapped out for himself a course of reading 
 that included some notorious modern Frenchmen. 
 (This was all before the war.) He hoped, I fancy, 
 to get a sensation out of reading Huysmans on the 
 banks of the Assiniboine. Certainly any effect that 
 Huysmans and Catulle Mendes could succeed in pro 
 ducing, in Winnipeg, would be a real effect, not mere 
 triciously aided. The long evenings were a good time 
 to read. During the day, he wandered about out of 
 doors or went about the slow business of regenerat 
 ing the interior of the house. One of his concessions 
 had been to buy furniture in bulk, on the spot; but 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 273 
 
 there were still gaps to be filled and rearranging to 
 be done. His library was disfigured by a hideous 
 stained-glass window. He was always planning to 
 have it replaced; but in the end he kept it because 
 he thought the Indians would have liked it. You 
 can see how unworthily Louquier amused himself. 
 The fact is that he was very tired of it all "it all" 
 being life. He was bored with his own depression; but 
 he simply could not bestir himself for an antidote. 
 For a long time he felt, peevishly, that it was up to 
 Wellington Crescent to be the antidote. 
 
 The spring came early that year, and, as I said, 
 Louquier spent a good deal of time out of doors. 
 Once, driven forth by his curious mental discom 
 fort which had begun in the late winter, he took a 
 train to Calgary. He returned almost immediately, 
 and while he found that he was glad to get back, still, 
 Calgary had not done for him what he hoped. Cal 
 gary was nauseous in retrospect without making him 
 feel that Winnipeg was heaven. The fact is, Winnipeg 
 was no place for Louquier. But his discomfort was 
 of that peculiar kind which one does not run away 
 from. At first it showed itself in mere inability to 
 keep his mind on his book or on anything else. Lou 
 quier took a blue-pill and hired a horse to ride. But 
 still he could not, in the evenings, keep his mind on 
 anything. Then he wondered if the stained-glass 
 window were not responsible: he hated it so. Even 
 with the curtain drawn across it at night, he was con 
 scious of it behind his back. The stained glass was 
 not a picture, and was a design only by courtesy. It 
 looked like what one used to see through an old- 
 fashioned kaleidoscope; or, rather, it looked like cir 
 cumstantial evidence of a lunatic s having been turned 
 loose in a kindergarten. Yet the weeks went by, and 
 
274 VALIANT DUST 
 
 he did not replace it. A morbid indolence was gain 
 ing the secret channels of his soul. His mind seemed 
 as complicated an organism as the body, and it felt 
 as your body feels when you have a bad case of 
 grippe he seemed to have mental hands and feet and 
 vital organs, all of which ached and were tired. Yet 
 he was still perfectly capable of admiring the tech 
 nique of En Menage when he could pay attention 
 to it. That was the trouble: he could not concentrate. 
 Each thing refused to hold him and passed him on to 
 another. He was a shuttle-cock among a thousand bat- 
 tledores. He was not consciously averse to any of 
 the physical facts of his life, except the stained-glass 
 window. Finally he took to keeping the curtain drawn 
 across it all day; but when the sun struck it, it spotted 
 and dashed and figured the pale silk curtain. That 
 was dreadful to think that it had power to make over 
 something else in its own indecent likeness. Lou- 
 quier did rouse himself to get a heavy drapery of red 
 rep hung over it. He felt that life would be better 
 after that; but then the almond-smell began. 
 
 Louquier was never able positively to account for 
 the odor of bitter almonds that beset him in the late 
 spring. It had nothing to do with the vegetation at 
 "Whitewood." He sniffed every flower, shrub, and 
 tree to find out. It was not merely in Louquier s 
 mind, for when he went in to town or rode about 
 the environs of Winnipeg he escaped it utterly. Nor 
 was it the natural effluvium of the Assiniboine River. 
 Besides, it was noticeable only in the house. He re 
 marked it at first without suspicion, with a languid 
 curiosity. He was almost happy, the one or two days 
 that he spent sniffing. It gave him something to think 
 about, for a few hours; something to do for its own 
 sake. When he had proved the innocence of nature, 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 275 
 
 he investigated the house. He crept down into the 
 kitchen one afternoon when both the servants were 
 safe elsewhere, opened canisters, and peeped into cup 
 boards. He could find no source for the odor. The 
 almond-smell surrounded him faintly in the kitchen as 
 it did everywhere else, but there was no sharp increase 
 of it in any corner to guide him. So he eliminated the 
 kitchen from his conjectures, but he did not get rid of 
 the smell. It was not unpleasant in itself, but it was 
 too constant. To sit in the library, day after day, be 
 side the red rep curtain and smell bitter almonds was 
 too much just too much. 
 
 Louquier had, of course, questioned the cook in the 
 beginning; but she had disavowed completely all cul 
 inary use of almonds. At last, however -he had 
 sniffed all the furniture by this time, and he was con 
 vinced that no unholstery or varnish was responsible 
 he decided to get rid of the cook. The odor had not 
 been there when he settled in the villa, and that he 
 did not carry the scent upon himself was proved by 
 the fact that only in his own house were his nostrils 
 oppressed by it. Of course he had sniffed through his 
 whole wardrobe. It might be that his cook was an 
 almond-carrier, as some people are typhoid-carriers. 
 Getting rid of her meant getting rid also of his 
 capable man-servant, for the two were united in the 
 bonds of matrimony. It was a great nuisance, for 
 they served him well; but in the end he did it. Lou 
 quier could not bring himself to put to the woman 
 a straight question as to whether any of her toilet 
 accessories were almond-scented. He had attested the 
 fact of the pervasive odor and shown that he objected 
 to it; if she used almond soap or anything of the kind, 
 it was up to her, on that hint, to change her cosmetic 
 habit. But there was no sign of her making any such 
 
276 VALIANT DUST 
 
 concession to his prejudices. He shrank from active 
 discussion of so personal a matter. He had given 
 hints enough, and his hints were disregarded. Either 
 the woman wasn t responsible, or, being responsible, 
 she chose not to reform. There was only one way 
 out: he sacked them both. 
 
 The almond episode had no real sequel, but it had 
 two important results. In the first place, the servants 
 were not easily replaced. They left their "situation," 
 undoubtedly spreading tales. Louquier was probably 
 the victim of a servile boycott. At all events, he 
 could not find their equivalents, and he had no friend 
 among the Winnipeg ladies to turn to for counsel. It 
 reduced itself to his getting on with a charwoman who 
 came to get his breakfast and departed after cook 
 ing him an early and unspeakably English dinner. 
 An old Scotchman pottered about the garden for a 
 few hours each day. This domestic discomfort was 
 one result of the almond nuisance. The other was a 
 serious impairment of Louquier s nervous condition. 
 The mental discomfort became acute. That he was 
 not the easy prey of obsessions is shown by the fact 
 that he really did, within a week or so after the serv 
 ants 7 departure, cease to notice the almond-smell. 
 Had he been a nervous wreck, it would have been only 
 too easy for him to invent the odor for himself; and 
 that he did not do. It was really gone, and his nostrils 
 bore unimpeachable witness to the fact. I do not 
 offer Louquier s refusal to shut up the villa and leave 
 Winnipeg as an evidence of sanity. To leave would 
 have been the most sensible thing he could do. But 
 there his mortal indolence came in. He could go 
 about sniffing, but he could not go about packing. He 
 simply stuck on, the worse for wear. Louquier also, 
 of course, had the universal male illusion: namely, 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 277 
 
 that he was a practical person. It was much more 
 sensible to stay on a few months more and rent, if 
 he could, in the autumn; no one would rent in the 
 spring, anyhow; it would be a bad advertisement 
 to leave so soon; and, besides, he was saving money. 
 Everything, you see, combined to keep him there. 
 Early in May he heard from a kind friend that the 
 lady had announced her engagement. That disposed 
 of any wandering notions he might have had of de 
 parture. It would be to insult his own heart to pretend 
 it was a casino when it was really a tomb. Meanwhile 
 the mental discomfort grew and grew like a secret 
 malady. It is only fair to say that Louquier did not 
 in the least enjoy his own drama. He would have 
 given the world and all to be happy. 
 
 By mid-May, Huysmans, Catulle Mendes et C ie - 
 were flung aside. Louquier simply could not stand 
 literature. He took to American fiction, which again 
 shows his sanity. The novels disgusted him, but for 
 a time they worked; even the love-making did not de 
 press him, for it was very badly done. But after a 
 fortnight the charm failed. He found himself idly 
 inverting all the situations making the characters 
 (when there were any) sardonically and plausibly do 
 something quite different. His running marginal gloss 
 turned the most ridiculous and optimistic plots into 
 the most logical and depressing horrors. The hero 
 ceased, for Louquier, to rescue the heroine; the heroine 
 walked not unscathed through her vicious context; the 
 villains flourished like the green bay-tree, refusing 
 either to reform or to perish. He stopped reading our 
 serious contemporaries and took to the humorists. But 
 he soon found that one cannot laugh indefinitely alone. 
 
 By June, Louquier was really in a bad way. If he 
 had not tried to be sensible, he would have done much 
 
278 VALIANT DUST 
 
 better; but he was busy adorning his personality with 
 an iron will. At that stage of the game an iron will 
 was about as useful to him as the red curtain over the 
 stained-glass window. He ought, in the interests of 
 health and happiness, to have wobbled a little; to have 
 seized on Falstaman wisdom and run away. His brown 
 face was growing white with his effort. But Lou- 
 quier was perfectly sincere in not seeing it that way. 
 Remember, too, that his chosen diversion was failing 
 him. A recluse on the banks of the Assiniboine, he 
 had no third acts to divine. His flair, disused, became 
 temporarily lost to him, and he found the Winnipeg 
 streets barren of drama. He could not even recon 
 struct the tragedy of his own charwoman, though ob 
 viously every charwoman must have had one. The 
 Scotch gardener was as impenetrable as a Scotch mist. 
 Louquier gave up riding; he gave up his blue-pills; 
 he stuck to his own vine and upas-tree. If he had not 
 always expected to leave Winnipeg in the autumn, I 
 think he would have gone under. But he did not 
 quite. 
 
 Louquier was now afraid. Up to that time he 
 had not experienced fear; his condition had stopped 
 at acute discomfort. It was very like a bodily ail 
 ment, not serious, for which people try home remedies. 
 The home remedies had not worked, but he was not 
 going to a specialist for a malady that seemed to at 
 tack him in one spot as much as, and no more than, 
 in another. He would, you might say, hardly know 
 whether to choose an aurist or an orthopedist. His 
 broken heart, his indolence, and his iron will combined 
 to keep him passive; and he called it being sensible. 
 Thanks to the girl, flavor had gone out of life like the 
 taste out of honey; it was a thick, insipid glue. It 
 was wearing; it was disagreeable; but it could be 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 279 
 
 borne, since other men had borne it. Then, as I say, 
 fear came. 
 
 Louquier was sitting alone in his library, trying 
 to read. The charwoman had left a few hours 
 since; the gardener, of course, long before that. 
 Quite suddenly he realized that he had a new 
 fact to reckon with. He laid his book down very 
 softly on the table, rose, by the aid of his iron will, 
 from his chair, and walked slowly across to the cor 
 ner of the room between the fireplace and the built- 
 in book-shelves. A light chair that stood in his way 
 he moved, first passing his hand across its satin seat. 
 Then he took his stand in the exact corner of the 
 room, facing outward, arms truculently folded. He 
 stood there for about five minutes, his eyes glancing 
 hither and yon. Then he walked back, lugged his 
 easy-chair over by the fireplace and set it with its 
 back to the wall. Before leaving it, he passed his 
 hand carefully down the wall behind it. Then he 
 moved the table, with the lamp, over beside the arm 
 chair. Thus the chair was hemmed in between the 
 square table on one side and the jutting chimney- 
 breast on the other. Behind it was a windowless wall. 
 Louquier then sat down and took up his book again. 
 He knew as well as if he had seen it with his eyes or 
 heard it with his ears, where the thing was that dis 
 turbed him, but he refused to treat it as anything 
 more than a manifestation of impudence. He trusted 
 that by putting it, as it were, in its place, he could 
 teach it manners perhaps discourage it finally. The 
 presence was perceptible to no sense; it flowed from 
 spot to spot as quietly as air; but Louquier knew at 
 any given moment where it was. He knew, too, 
 whether it faced him or turned away; and he was 
 more comfortable when it turned away. He kept his 
 
280 VALIANT DUST 
 
 eyes on his book; he turned over pages; he even 
 lighted and smoked a cigarette. He put up a brave 
 front to the beastly thing. All the same, he knew 
 that if it did not go away, he should have to sit there 
 all night. He was not going to turn his back to it, to 
 pass through the door; and he would not, positively 
 would not (here was the iron will), back out of the 
 room. Besides, if the thing followed him up-stairs, it 
 would be worse. He could not switch on the up-stairs 
 lights from below. It was very curious, how much he 
 seemed to know about the thing its size, for example, 
 and the measure of its gait as it moved. He had even 
 a vague impression of its shape, though his eye could 
 not detect the faintest alteration in the look of the 
 spot where it so definitely stood. He had as yet no 
 means of knowing whether it was malevolent or not, 
 but he loathed it. Occasionally he looked up from his 
 book, oriented the presence, and looked directly at it 
 with bored and scornful eyes. That was all he could 
 do get up again, he would not. Nor would he speak 
 to it. He had a curious conviction that that way lay 
 madness. No; he would meet it on its own ground. 
 It moved, and he might move; it directed itself in 
 some unnamable way towards him, and he would stare 
 at it insolently; it occupied its place, and he would 
 definitely occupy his own. But he would not speak; 
 he would not probe the laws of its being further 
 than itself announced them. The merest visual 
 sign would have been an immense relief to him a 
 devil with cloven hoof, a ghost draped in white, would 
 have been child s play. Then he could have trusted 
 his eye or his ear; as it was, he had to depend wholly 
 on this nameless sense which placed his enemy for 
 him. That nameless sense must not get blunted. He 
 must keep very wide awake lest his enemy steal a 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 281 
 
 march on him. Above all, he must not pretend to be 
 unaware, and at the same time must pretend not to be 
 frightened. How much intelligence the thing had, of 
 course he did not know. It might be laughing at his 
 bluff, but at least he would keep it up. He hoped he 
 should not grow sleepy. He had long since given up 
 coffee and other stimulants. Louquier had become a 
 man for whom there is absolutely no sense in keeping 
 awake. 
 
 After an hour, during which Louquier turned over 
 just forty pages he kept careful track of his intervals 
 the thing departed by the door open into the hall. 
 Louquier felt it go. He had a very pretty problem to 
 face, then: whether to follow it or not. If he did not, 
 it meant sitting all night in his library a great 
 nuisance and a craven act. It would prove to the 
 thing that he was afraid of it, and that would be ex 
 ceedingly unfortunate. He ought, of course, to pre 
 tend that he was tired and wanted to go to bed and 
 to go. On the other hand, it was going to be a diffi 
 cult business to blow out the lamp, walk into a dark 
 hall, and mount the dark stairs to his bedroom. True, 
 he could not see the thing, even in the lighted room; 
 but he doubted if, in the dark, he could place it at 
 all. It could be lived with only if it could be placed 
 delimited, as it were. He would not answer for his 
 perfect conduct if the thing turned out to be lurking 
 in the hall. He had no clue whatever to the intel 
 ligence of this besetting presence; but he felt, some 
 how, that it gauged him by the visual signs he gave. 
 It might, if he stayed there, know that he was afraid 
 of it; still, it might not be clever enough to make that 
 inference. Whereas if he rushed out into the dark 
 ness, he could not answer for what he should do 
 something, very likely, that would show beyond ques- 
 
282 VALIANT DUST 
 
 tion how terrified he was. He might even blunder into 
 the thing itself, in the dark. He was by no means 
 sure that it was perceptible even to the touch, yet 
 he dreaded the thought of such an impact as though 
 it had been certain death. There was nothing for 
 him to do but stay though, for all he knew, the 
 thing might already have wandered out into the night. 
 He would not even get up and shut the door. How 
 did he know whether doors were an obstacle to it? 
 And if it should elect to come back, through the closed 
 door, he would be more mocked than ever to say 
 nothing of the sense he would have of being shut in 
 with it, without redress. No, there was nothing for 
 it but for him to stay and to fend off sleep somehow. 
 If he should drowse and it should return, he would 
 be left to its unclean mercy. Louquier was angry. 
 First, the girl; then the stained-glass and the bitter 
 almonds; then the recognized but unadmitted stupid 
 ity of his whole Winnipeg idea; the acute discomfort 
 and now this. 
 
 Louquier got through the night without mischance. 
 Towards dawn he grew so sleepy that nothing but sleep 
 seemed to matter; his stupor blunted all his nerves. 
 He fell asleep in his chair, indeed, and woke up with 
 the streaming light of morning. The room was clear 
 and free; you would never have guessed that any 
 thing save the commonplace had inhabited it. Natur 
 ally, Louquier took the line of wondering if he had not 
 eaten something that oppressed him; though why 
 boiled lettuce should introduce you to the supernat 
 ural ! The memory was vivid, however, and he saw a 
 man about installing electric switches below-stairs 
 one inside the library door, and one in the hall out 
 side. The business took a day or two, and until it 
 was done Louquier went straight from his dining-room 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 283 
 
 to his bedroom, locked the door, and read there. He 
 did not sleep very well on these nights. For one thing, 
 he was acutely ashamed of being up-stairs behind a 
 locked door; for another, he had a very definite con 
 ception though he had no corroborative "sense" of it 
 of the thing s ranging about below in unholy and 
 unlawful occupation of his, Louquier s, premises. No 
 man really likes to pull the bedclothes over his head 
 while the burglar is frankly stealing the plate below, 
 even though he may wisely choose to do so; and that 
 is precisely what it seemed to Louquier that he was 
 doing. Still he was not going, for any consideration 
 of mere dignity, to risk another encounter until he 
 had guarded his exit with electricity. With the lights 
 properly installed, electric switches marking his natural 
 line of progress from after-dinner coffee to bed, he 
 returned to his habit of spending the evening in the 
 library. The fact that there was nothing he really 
 wanted to read ergo, no joy to be had in sitting there, 
 anyhow tipped all his plans and precautions with 
 irony. Still, a man has to assume that his routine 
 whatever it may be has an unimpeachable reason 
 for being, or he has given up the game completely. 
 Louquier was not ready to destroy his convention and 
 let life depart. 
 
 The next fortnight, to Louquier, was a long, cumula 
 tive agony. There would be no point in making a diary 
 of it; given the initial facts, psychic and physical, 
 which I have tried to make clear, one has only to let 
 logic deal with the situation. Each day became, in its 
 turn, a new irritation as well as a fresh irritant. Night 
 after night he faced the thing in his library. Its hours 
 of appearing and disappearing differed slightly, from 
 evening to evening; it chose apparently, not to work 
 like an automaton or a mechanism, but to create to 
 
284 VALIANT DUST 
 
 the end its impression of individuality, of volition. 
 It kept its appointment irregularly, as though it had 
 other engagements; but it always kept it. 
 
 Of course, in the long, irrelevant, sunlit hours, he 
 balanced in his mind the possibilities of the thing s 
 getting at his sanity. But he took his sanity objec 
 tively, too. If his body was the citadel that must not 
 crumble, his healthy mind was the garrison within that 
 must, if possible, live on, and live on without sur 
 rendering. He did not want to crawl out by any sub 
 terranean passage, and then make a hopeless running 
 fight of it. Not he! He stood on his rights; but he 
 stood even more, soldier-fashion, on his counted am 
 munition and the state of his supplies. You could 
 not truthfully say, however, that the wall was un- 
 breached. There were some nasty little breaks in it 
 here and there as if the girl, the stained-glass, and 
 the almond-smell, the unaccountable discomfort of all 
 the months, had been spies doing effective work with 
 in, while awaiting the real coup. Louquier was not, 
 nervously, all that he might have been. Already, 
 after a fortnight, he felt less able to combat the thing. 
 If it had appeared irregularly, so that Louquier could 
 have held it, to any extent, dependent on outside 
 causes the weather, his digestion, anything it would 
 have been easier. But whatever else might come or 
 go, and though it chose its precise hour to suit itself, it 
 never failed him. "Old Faithful," he jeered silently to 
 himself once. Sometime between dusk and dawn he 
 could be sure of it. In the third week of his siege he 
 began definitely to fear that he could not keep up his 
 bluff much longer. He had a horrid vision of some 
 surrendering gesture of his speaking to it, or going 
 on his knees to it. He loathed it almost more than 
 he feared it. It seemed a dishonorable enemy for a 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 285 
 
 man to be up against. He would not be treated like a 
 soldier and a gentleman, if he did surrender. 
 
 Then came a night when Louquier walked from din 
 ing-room to library, preternaturally grave. He felt so 
 sapped and shrunken that he wasted no gestures in 
 bravado. He let himself walk like a tired man which 
 he was. He put his tobacco beside him; he piled up his 
 books; he passed his hand over the hollow of the chair 
 before seating himself; he shook the lamp a little to 
 see if there was oil enough to last out the night, if 
 need be. All that was mere ritual and how tired 
 he was of it! If the thing would only let up on him 
 for once give him a rest, a chance to revictual him 
 self and bury his dead! This inevitable vigilance was 
 like a cancer, eating daily further into his vital tissue. 
 Should he never again be able to live carelessly, as 
 other men do? In an hour, or two hours, or three, 
 he would look up from his book and be aware of its 
 entrance; would diagnose its actual mood and select 
 his mask accordingly; would go through the same 
 difficult and wearisome ordeal. When its whim was 
 spent, and it took leave of him, he would go up-stairs 
 to bed. Towards morning he would sleep. He had 
 never shut the door against it, judging that his state 
 of mind would be worse if, to his knowledge, it came 
 through a closed door. He left the portal hospitably 
 open, and it entered like any human through the 
 passage provided. Good God! how bored he was! 
 
 He did not have to wait long to-night. It came as 
 early as if it had rushed straight from dinner. Im- 
 meditely he knew how it placed itself in a Morris- 
 chair opposite him, beside a French window that led 
 into the garden. There was something jaunty and 
 flippant in its manner. Absurd though it may sound 
 to speak of the thing s manner, it is quite within the 
 
286 VALIANT DUST 
 
 facts as Louquier s mind registered them. He was 
 aware, as I have said, of its gait; some stir of the dis 
 placed air where it moved informed him. He per 
 ceived, though by none of the five senses, mass and 
 coherence in this creature, just as some hitherto use 
 less convolution of his brain registered its temper. It 
 breathed its humor to him to-night in some exact, un- 
 namable way. Louquier leaned his head back and 
 waited. Perhaps it would go early; perhaps it had 
 merely looked in to remind him, and would presently 
 be off, having other Stygian fish to fry. He hoped so, 
 for he was very tired. He even felt drowsiness com 
 ing on before its time, and Louquier had no spur to 
 prick him awake. None but fear; and its sharp edge 
 was blunted with much rowelling of his own flesh. He 
 closed his eyes occasionally for an instant, as one 
 does to push sleep out with the firm, sudden gesture 
 of opening the eyelids. And at last, in one of those 
 lightning-brief intervals, the thing moved towards him. 
 The event was all too quick for Louquier to think, 
 to diagnose afresh its mood. He knew only, as he had 
 never known before, that he must have done with it. 
 He had reached the point known to all of us though, 
 thank heaven, in other contexts when ennui becomes 
 a passion like hatred or blood-lust, when weariness 
 turns from a sigh to a shriek. And with that sense he 
 knew that the enemy was at last in the citadel. His 
 sanity was threatened. He dared wait no longer for 
 its moment. Louquier caught up a light chair that 
 stood near and brought it heavily down on the spot 
 where the thing stood. The slim chair rocked on its 
 broken legs, and sank down in a mass of splinters. 
 For the first time, Louquier turned his back on the 
 presence and fled from the room. He did not care; 
 he was not afraid any more as he rushed up the 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 287 
 
 stairs; he was only passionately excited and conscious 
 of relief at having at last acted, in however mad a 
 way. All his sanity had gone into the blow; it was 
 Louquier s protest, the protest of the whole of him, 
 of the integral man, against the sly and foul attack 
 on his integrity. That was what the thing had de 
 sired to resolve his integrity, to riddle his ego, and 
 shred up his very soul; to leave him incapable of say 
 ing "I" with conviction. It had wanted to disintegrate 
 Louquier, to smash his singleness into bits, to turn 
 him to a loose agglomeration of mental dust so that 
 no man again should be able to say, "This is Lou 
 quier." Louquier knew as well as any of us that you 
 do not combat the psychic fact with physical weapons, 
 yet the violent gesture had seemed his only way out. 
 Though he could not hope to destroy the thing, he 
 could perhaps prove to it that he was not a mere pud 
 dle of fear. Practically, it was as silly as trying to 
 stab a ghost; yet it had counted, to Louquier himself. 
 He had no notion that he had hurt the thing, but he 
 had shown that his muscles were still at the service 
 of his hatreds. Just before he rose, he had felt him 
 self going; the very marrow of his nature oozing away 
 through unguessed channels. By that one gesture the 
 faithful flesh had saved him. 
 
 Or, at least, so he thought, standing in his bedroom, 
 erect and panting, facing the door with clenched hands. 
 A trickle of blood across one knuckle elated him; it 
 showed that he had put forth strength, that the chair 
 had really crashed and splintered under his hands. 
 Within him, the blood pumped through his heart; he 
 felt its healthy, impatient motions through his body. 
 Would the thing rush up the stairs to avenge itself? 
 He did not care. Let it come. It might kill him, 
 but not, now, before he had made his gesture; not 
 
288 VALIANT DUST 
 
 before he had let it know how he loathed it, and how 
 little it had mesmerized his spirit. He could at least 
 die a free man, overmatched, but not cowed. For the 
 first time in months Louquier felt genial, like a man 
 playing an honest part in a world of other men. All 
 the last weeks he had seemed to himself isolated, 
 shamefully, as a criminal is isolated, because he is 
 not worthy to associate with others. All the things 
 that had happened to him had seemed chosen and se 
 lected for the purpose of showing him that he was 
 small game of a very dirty sort. 
 
 Louquier, standing there, triumphant over the un 
 real, with blood on his knuckles from a smashed and 
 splintered chair, is an absurd figure to the inward 
 eye. He was more like a silly and complacent drunken 
 gentleman than a hero who has fought with the pow 
 ers of darkness. I am aware of that. But Louquier, 
 to whom, aforetime, a lifted hand or a reverence de la 
 cour could seem, for reasons, an epic gesture, did not 
 see himself in that light. He was conscious only that 
 for the first time since he had said good-bye to the 
 girl, he had expressed himself. Hanging the red rep 
 curtain, for example, had been the mere pout of the 
 aesthete. Sacking the cook was a weak artificial ges 
 ture. But now he walked into his dressing-room and 
 washed the blood it was only a drop or two off his 
 knuckle with the beautiful physical simplicity of a 
 navvy. It was an honorable wound; and honorable 
 wounds got in the day s work you stanch as quickly 
 as you can. 
 
 Louquier s sense of the presence had never worked, 
 away from it. He did not know whether it remained 
 below or had departed from his house. It had not 
 followed him, and after half an hour he realized that 
 it did not mean to leap to its revenge. He mused a 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 289 
 
 little, strategically. It seemed possible that his 
 enemy, insulted by a mere thing of flesh, might bide 
 its time wait for him to sleep and then pursue him. 
 He fancied it very angry; so angry, perhaps, that it 
 would not leave his roof before it had struck back. 
 Note that Louquier, on reaffirming his independence, 
 in defying his terror, had no sense whatever of step 
 ping out from under an obsession. The thing was 
 not an obsession; it was real, and it had been per 
 haps still was there. His conception of facts had 
 not been false; his attitude to them, only, had been 
 wrong. He realized, for example, that he must watch 
 until morning, for he still did not wish to be help 
 less in sleep before his enemy. So far as he knew, 
 the only power that could prevail against it was the 
 sovereign sun. Still the practical man, he made with 
 alert and vivid gestures his preparations for the night: 
 drew an easy-chair under the light, put on a com 
 fortable dressing-gown, set a pitcher of cold water on 
 the table beside him, and took up one of the humorists. 
 Tobacco was not forgotten. It was an hour or more, 
 though, before he either smoked or read; for quite 
 that length of time he waited for a sign. The silence 
 of night ebbed and flowed around him. External 
 sounds a voice, carriage-wheels, the stir of an animal 
 in the shrubbery fell across it occasionally; but every 
 now and then he would seem to reach some central 
 pool of stillness, and then that sense in him which 
 perceived the presence would be strainingly on its 
 guard. No sign came, however none at all; and 
 after an hour he relaxed a little and lighted a pipe. 
 
 The hours that followed were singularly monotonous. 
 Suspicion, reassurance, false alarms and quick reac 
 tions followed one another interminably. Louquier 
 was perfectly sure that something would happen be- 
 
290 VALIANT DUST 
 
 fore morning; that his enemy, having perfected its 
 plan, would mount in search of him. Thence re 
 sulted a curious ignorance of how time was passing. 
 He had covered his watch with a cushion so as not 
 to hear its ticking, for though the straining of that 
 sense was not listening, it was more like listening 
 than anything else. The dawn, when it came, was 
 incredible to him; it seemed impossible that the thing 
 should not have struck before fleeing, though the dim 
 light on the waters of the Assiniboine proved to him 
 that he was safe. Louquier, still half-dressed, threw 
 himself on his bed and slept. He dreamed, a chain 
 of dreams, about the girl, and woke jaded. 
 
 The disapproving charwoman had set out his break 
 fast in response to his ring from above-stairs. Lou 
 quier went straight to the dining-room and ate. His 
 first cigarette he took outside in the garden; there 
 was time enough, in all conscience, to revisit the battle 
 field. To him, among the flower-beds, appeared the 
 charwoman, twisting her apron in red, wet hands. She 
 had found the heap of broken wood, and all the self- 
 righteousness of her clan was in arms. She had not 
 touched nothing, so help her; she had looked in with 
 her mop and all, before breakfast, and she had seen 
 what she had seen. She had not gone in; she had 
 left things as they was for the master to see with his 
 own eyes. Louquier, standing on the threshold of 
 the garden door, his back to the light, realized swiftly 
 that there were three possibilities to affect not to 
 believe her, to admit that he had done it himself, or 
 to say that it was very curious and perfectly incom 
 prehensible. It does not matter which one he chose, 
 for it is plain to see that with charring easy come by, 
 to say nothing of plenty of places nearer ome, and 
 her with three children to leave all day by theirselves 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 291 
 
 it is plain to see that all three must inevitably have 
 led to the same conclusion. Either she had been 
 called a liar, or Louquier drank, or he couldn t keep 
 other people from playing the monkey with his prop 
 erty. The charwoman, of course, gave notice, to take 
 effect after dinner that evening. Louquier thought for 
 a moment of asking the gardener if he could cook; but 
 whatever the gardener could have cooked, Louquier 
 knew certainly he could not have eaten. Nor would 
 he for the twentieth time consult an employment 
 agency in vain. It was a dog s life, and he wouldn t 
 live it. He would go to a hotel. 
 
 You are not to think that Louquier intended even 
 then to run away. He formed, during the day, a 
 somewhat complicated plan. Mingled with the relief 
 of his decision to sleep and eat elsewhere the char 
 woman, showing a proper pride to the last, burned 
 everything she cooked for him that day was the an 
 noyance of realizing that he must also stick by. He 
 must not really leave the house; he must spend much 
 of his day there. Also and this was most important 
 of all he must be at his post during the long evening. 
 If the thing returned, it must find him on the spot. 
 His relation to it had become to Louquier the most 
 important present fact of life, the fact he could least 
 ignore. It it did not come well, after, say, three 
 nights, he might honorably assume that it did not 
 intend to return. Then he could shut up the villa and 
 leave Winnipeg, if he liked. The practical man could 
 no longer insist that he was saving money by living in 
 his own house if he was sleeping and eating at an 
 inn. He could tell the agent that he found it hard 
 to get satisfactory servants; that wouldn t give the 
 house a black eye. The practical man, absolved and 
 justified, could go anywhere he liked, having done, 
 
292 VALIANT DUST 
 
 in perfect dignity, with his Winnipeg adventure. You 
 may infer from all this that Louquier was a different 
 man after dealing, in however absurd a way, with his 
 enemy. But he was not precisely different; he had 
 merely, as it were, rearranged the furniture; a num 
 ber of things had gone into the attic. His mind was 
 in no sense a new house, or even a refurnished one. 
 To prove this, I have only to tell you that Lou 
 quier felt his enemy, if anything, more actual, more 
 dangerous, than during the long vigil in his bedroom 
 the night before. It had not perished. Was a mock- 
 Sheraton chair ever known to destroy an elemental 
 being? The fact that it had delayed its revenge 
 seemed to Louquier significant and appalling, and re 
 inforced his conception of it as a creature of com 
 plicated intelligence. It was not a mere evil im 
 pulse, to spend itself in windy, ungoverned ways. It 
 could control itself, hold off, plan achieve, prob 
 ably. It is no exaggeration to say that Louquier 
 looked forward to the evening as being very probably 
 fatal to him. If his will had not already been made, 
 he would, I fancy, have made it that day. You are 
 to realize that Louquier did not feel himself strong; 
 he only felt himself decent. He had hit back and 
 proved himself normal. What gesture he should find 
 to meet it with again, he did not know perhaps none. 
 For that matter, it might bring seven other devils 
 with it when it came again. Louquier was very tired, 
 and his domestic arrangements and disarrangements 
 did not make him less so. At the end of the after 
 noon he flung himself down in his hotel bedroom 
 and slept, waking only in time for a late and hasty 
 dinner. He dressed for dinner, too, which cut his 
 margin down. As he got into a cab and gave his 
 own address to the driver, he had all the sense of 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 293 
 
 being late for an important engagement. He dis 
 tinctly wanted to be first on the ground. Besides, he 
 had to light up the house and fling open the windows 
 to say nothing of arranging the library, as usual, for 
 the encounter. 
 
 First on the ground he was. He had plenty of time 
 to make his preparations to the last detail. He was 
 more tired than he remembered having been at all; 
 but he had taken coffee and did not fear sleep. He 
 thought with irritation of the tourist crowd he had 
 left in the hotel a mob with suit-cases, ready to go 
 on to Banff and Lake Louise. They had been very 
 irrelevant to his own situation or was he merely ir 
 relevant to theirs? Sitting in his library, he recalled 
 their fantastic hats and voices. Suppose he had kid 
 napped one or two of them, and chucked them into 
 his library there above the Assiniboine! He felt in 
 jured; he almost wished he could have. 
 
 The evening lengthened; and still Louquier sat 
 there, back against the wall, flimsily barricaded as 
 usual. The thing was late, very late. Ten o clock, 
 and still it had nut come. He read a little, or pre 
 tended to, then at last lit a cigarette. And as if the 
 striking of the match had been a signal, his enemy 
 entered. Louquier s, heart sank; he knew then that 
 all day, beneath his certainty, he had nursed a frail 
 hope that it would not return; that it had had enough 
 of him. Just as always, his sense placed it for him, 
 showed him where it moved and how it felt. It 
 moved haltingly, jerking from corner to corner, as if 
 the anger in his famous gesture had maimed it. But 
 it did not sit down. It moved about the room in odd 
 curves and tangents, limping ever a little nearer to 
 Louquier. Louquier could not stir; he could not even, 
 this time, rise. Never had the thing so concentrated 
 
294 VALIANT DUST 
 
 its emotion on him; it focussed him as with straight 
 glances from its invisible eyes. He had not dreamed 
 that he, that any man, could be hated like that. The 
 thing was hate, as God is love. It came swerving 
 towards him like a drunken doom. Louquier sat braced 
 in his chair, his right hand, with the lighted cigarette, 
 shaking. There was no redress for this; the thing 
 had stripped itself of manner and of all hypocrisy. 
 It was coming; it was on him. Intenser than a 
 physical touch, it covered him, pushing him back 
 against the cushions until the chair strained and 
 creaked. His head bent backward over the rim of 
 the chair his neck felt like to break. Had it been 
 human, its breath would have suffocated him, so close 
 was its invisible countenance to his. He could not 
 move his legs or feet, or his left arm, but his right 
 elbow, pushed out across the wideish arm of the chair, 
 had a little margin still. He drove his elbow out 
 farther, then strained up a tense forearm and dug the 
 lighted cigarette into the air directly in front of his 
 own face. So complete was his consciousness of this 
 terrible imponderable thing that he expected it to feel 
 pain. He held the cigarette there implacably, not 
 three inches from his own nose. In about ten seconds 
 the lighted end went out. Yet he held it there, as if the 
 dead cigarette could still brand his enemy. Slowly, 
 very slowly, he got the sense of the thing s slipping 
 from him, of its weakly pulling away. It seemed to 
 withdraw, a loose and diminished being, out into the 
 room. He could lift his head again ; he could lean for 
 ward, could stir his legs and feet. It was still there, 
 but its hatred seemed weaker, like the hatred of a 
 sick man. Louquier s eyes never left it, but he threw 
 away the cigarette stub and reached out to the box at 
 his left for another, which he lighted and began to 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 295 
 
 smoke. His neck ached shockingly, and he was limp 
 from the pressure of his antagonist that curious, 
 weightless pressure on his body, as of air on the lungs. 
 As he smoked, he watched it. It drew farther and 
 farther away, proceeding now with indecision, differ 
 ent indeed from the angry lurches by which it had ap 
 proached him. It seemed vaguer, weaker, almost help 
 less. For an instant it seemed to Louquier that the 
 thing was groping for the door and could not find it 
 as if he had blinded it. Then it disappeared utterly, 
 flowing aimlessly, feebly, across the threshold. He 
 was aware of it to the last knowing even the moment 
 of its crossing the threshold and the instant when there 
 was no vestige left of it. 
 
 For a half-hour Louquier sat on in his library, smok 
 ing, but not pretending to read. The thing would not 
 come back that night, he knew; it had gone with all 
 the gestures of defeat. He left the house then, though 
 he took the precaution of leaving the light in the hall 
 to burn on until daylight. He wanted no ambushes. 
 Walking through the garden to the street was perhaps 
 the worst moment Louquier had ever had, for the night 
 was at his back. Safe in his bed at the hotel, he fell 
 instantly asleep, and did not wake until the sun was 
 high. 
 
 Louquier had been tired many times in Winnipeg 
 during the last month almost continuously so. But 
 his weariness on this day was such a weariness of the 
 body as he had not hitherto known. He felt sick, 
 as if he had drunk deep the night before; he had all 
 the sensations of recovering from orgy. His face in 
 the mirror frightened him. Positively, it was a marvel 
 that he had stood out against his enemy as he had. 
 He had a desperate desire to send the keys to his 
 agent and to fling himself into a train; but after a day 
 
296 VALIANT DUST 
 
 of conflict, during which all his food tasted fever- 
 soaked, and his feet seemed cunningly wrapped in 
 lead, he decided that he must go back once more to 
 Wellington Crescent. After that, he would be free. 
 Louquier s ardor had ebbed; the magnificent physical 
 rage that had enabled him to smash the chair down 
 upon his enemy, and then rush past it up the stairs, 
 even the tense and quiet determination with which he 
 had pushed the lighted cigarette into its face, were 
 gone. He was very clear as to what had happened. 
 The thing had nearly had him; his mind w^s just on 
 the point of surrendering before its advance, and the 
 stupid, loyal flesh had stepped in and saved him. 
 Twice his arm had been lifted, by no conscious volition 
 of his own, when his brain had accepted defeat. What 
 he had feared the first time was madness; the second 
 time he had feared only death. Still, even from that 
 lesser catastrophe, it was his body that had defended 
 him, and with no orders from him. The body had 
 done enough; he ought to give it rest, let its noble in 
 stincts relax and recuperate. Suppose he went again: 
 would it not be too much to ask of the taxed flesh? 
 He had no reason to suppose that if he spent another 
 evening in his unloved library, anything whatever 
 would "happen." He fancied the thing was tired of 
 the game. Yet he could not promise that; and he 
 knew that, should it reappear, he could not combat it 
 with mind alone. Never, for example, could he focus 
 his weary emotions sufficiently to meet its hatred with 
 like hatred if, indeed, anything human could. This 
 thing carried no useless baggage; it could give itself 
 entirely to its business of hating; and its capacity was 
 one of the well-kept secrets of the universe. No; if 
 he met it again, he would have simply to hope that his 
 body would make another effort. He had done noth- 
 
LOUQUIER S THIRD ACT 297 
 
 ing, really, except register his attitude to the presence; 
 but that, only his body had been capable of doing. He 
 had expressed himself to it only in two wild, instinctive 
 gestures. Would there be strength enough there for 
 another, if another were needed? How could he go? 
 
 Yet, in the end, Louquier went. He could never 
 have done with the enemy until he had passed an 
 evening in his library unvisited by it. He longed pas 
 sionately to ask some one to go with him. A bell-boy 
 from the hotel would do. But he knew such an 
 evening would be no test. He ordered a cab to come 
 for him at eleven, and told the driver not to ring the 
 bell, but to whistle outside. When he reached the 
 gate, it seemed to him that he could not enter; but 
 something the rusted remnant of his iron will, per 
 haps carried him in. In his pocket he had a loaded 
 pistol a quaint notion, which none the less gave him 
 some comfort. Completely uncorporeal as the thing 
 was, it seemed to understand his motions. He .could 
 not speak to it; his silent spirit could not communicate 
 with its silence; he could make it know what he felt 
 about it, apparently, only by the gestures of some low 
 fellow in a rage. Oh, it was a vulgar beast! 
 
 Pistol cocked in his hand, Louquier sat through his 
 first half-hour, waiting. There was no sign of its ap 
 proach. Then, little by little, he became aware that 
 it was not going to come. So slowly did this assur 
 ance gain on him that he knew it only as a deepening 
 peace, gradual as the long northern twilight. The 
 room was splendidly empty of the presence empty of 
 it to all eternity. He could fling his keys at the agent, 
 and take a train to-morrow. He had the definite sense 
 of having crossed something; of being on the other 
 side of a gulf; of having emerged from a region of 
 horror and having left a big neutral space between it 
 
298 VALIANT DUST 
 
 and him. It even came over him as he sat there, 
 healthily lulled, that he had, without knowing it, ex 
 perienced a third act of his own. Louquier s enemy 
 was at last, for him, behind footlights. He had got 
 his grip, and could now deal with the episode as drama. 
 It "composed" for him: clear proof that he was bless 
 edly outside it; and that he was again (as it had in 
 tended he never should be) Louquier. His weariness 
 became pleasant, turned to a velvet drowsiness. Not 
 once, since the girl had rejected him, had he known 
 such peace. He could almost, with half-shut eyes, 
 envisage a future a happy future that he could build 
 with patience and delight. Louquier drowsed, sunk in 
 his chair. He knew now that it would not come, and 
 he felt safe as a child in its cradle. He was too dog- 
 tired to mind the discomfort of his position. Pres 
 ently he slept profoundly, his head on his curled arm. 
 The cabman s whistle sounded in the late evening, 
 and Louquier came up through layers of sleep to greet 
 it. In that waking instant before the pattern of life 
 is wholly clear, he jumped, startled. His cramped, un 
 conscious fingers closed tight on the trigger of the 
 pistol, and he fired, as neatly as if he had meant to. 
 Louquier was even spared the knowledge of what he 
 had done, for the bullet, knowing what it was made 
 for and knowing nothing else, went straight. For he 
 had won his moral victory; and there was nothing left 
 his baffled enemy but to stoop to physical accident. 
 At last the impatient cabman s ring pealed through 
 the house, but no one answered it. 
 
XI 
 THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 
 
 I didn t exactly want to go; but there are cowardices 
 for which there is no excuse. If I had come back to 
 America, I must face America; and Joan Delabere was 
 the thing in America supremely to be faced. I should 
 have been showing my heels to the whole adventure if 
 I had turned my back on her. I hadn t seen her since 
 the accident and the two or was it three? operations 
 that followed. I had been away for four years, and 
 not from one person had I had one vital fact about 
 Joan. There were letters from the whole group let 
 ters that skimmed the subject and took everything for 
 granted. If I asked them plainly and directly for news 
 of Joan Delabere, I got no answer; my question was 
 flung silently back on my hands. And yet there must 
 be news, I had always reasoned. A hideous thing like 
 that didn t happen to a creature like that, without 
 results. If she had been completely done for, 
 stricken into nullity, why did they mention her at 
 all? If she had managed to be exquisite among the 
 ruins of her life, why didn t they sound the tabret in 
 her honor? There was a conspiracy among them all 
 not to answer the great, inevitable query: How, on 
 the whole, has she made it out with life? Beautiful; 
 adoring her husband and adored by him; waiting, al 
 most like the slim girl in an old Annunciation, for her 
 child that blow could not have found a prettier mark 
 than Joan Delabere. More than once, before I finally 
 
 299 
 
300 VALIANT DUST 
 
 took my way to Joan s own house, I recalled the 
 fabulous toad with a jewel in its forehead; the toad 
 that may, if one will, symbolize disaster. In what 
 guise would disaster have come to her? Would it bear 
 the jewel in its forehead, or should I see, on Joan Dela- 
 bere s threshold, only the squat batrachian figure un 
 adorned? 
 
 The house was large and cool and empty; full of 
 light, with pale vistas stretching everywhere. It was 
 airy and soundless, like a palace kept in order but un 
 inhabited. Joan had arranged it originally, I sus 
 pected, for a background to her own ambient vivid 
 ness. The high walls and the polished floors called, 
 like a stage, for moving human color. Joan would 
 have been color enough; but now, in their purposeless 
 state, they seemed more uncannily irrelevant than the 
 shrouded and darkened chambers of a house before a 
 funeral. The master, too, was absent abroad, as I 
 had learned in New York and there was nothing any 
 where that suggested male ownership or habitation. 
 The rooms had evidently once been Joan s; and since 
 then had been no one s. 
 
 It was half an hour before I was led up-stairs by a 
 pale, cheerful nurse, and shown into a sunny sitting- 
 room; panelled, floored, and ceiled in pale, polished 
 woods, adorned with carved Eastern furniture. It was 
 like Joan, I thought as 1 stood on the treshold, to 
 change her aesthetic mood so completely on the second 
 floor: down-stairs, the French perfections; here, this 
 carved casket of a room. Then I saw her. 
 
 She lay on a broad chaise-longue, propped into a 
 strange position with white silk cushions of every size 
 and shape. She wore if the word does not belie the 
 shapelessness of her wrappings a thin gown of apri 
 cot-colored stuff, frilled and pleated, ruffled and tucked 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 301 
 
 into exceeding elaboration; and over her whole form- 
 face, feet, and body was thrown a sheer veil of white 
 tulle. Through it, very vaguely, I could see her mov 
 ing eyes; and at one side a white hand crumpled the 
 soft folds. The eyes and the hand were all I could 
 see of Joan Delabere; for the shapeless shape, in its 
 yards of apricot chiffon, might have been anybody 
 or anything. 
 
 The hand disengaged itself and met mine neither 
 limply nor feverishly; a mere conventional clasp. For 
 very awkwardness, I could not kiss her. 
 
 "I am sorry to have kept you waiting. It takes 
 them a long time to move me; and if I am moved be 
 forehand. I have just so much less time to stay here. 
 I wanted a good talk I want to hear all about Eu 
 rope." 
 
 I sighed a little with relief. The voice, at least, was 
 all right; fresh and healthy, though Joan s old musical 
 modulations seemed to have gone. I was soothed by 
 it; it was recognizable, it made a frail bridge to the 
 past. But it was hard to know what to say. I had 
 intended to begin with something banal about her 
 looking well. The veil somehow made it very difficult 
 to say anything. 
 
 "Oh, Europe is always the same." Joan Delabere 
 and I, for talk, had come to this! 
 
 "Nonsense! Europe s never the same two days 
 running. That s why I keep Tony over there so 
 much." There was a touch of the old imperiousness 
 in her impatience. 
 
 I was tongue-tied. The vision must be worse than I 
 had dreamed, since it could affect me so: that was the 
 curious inverted path my reasoning took. The form 
 on the chaise-longue stirred ever so slightly; there was 
 the faintest perceptible movement in my direction of 
 
302 VALIANT DUST 
 
 that mass of chiffon and lace; the head was turned to 
 me beneath the veil. I felt the hand tighten on mine, 
 and I looked down at it, fastening my corporeal gaze 
 on that one member of familiar flesh. 
 
 "I have very little pain, you know, Garda. I m just 
 rather useless." Her voice struck one or two of the 
 crisp, sweet notes one had always stopped to listen to. 
 
 "Thank heaven for that, my dear! You see oh, 
 Joan, you see no one has ever told me anything I 
 wanted to know! And until now, I couldn t come." 
 
 I felt the eyes roving over my lustreless crepe dress, 
 my long black veil. 
 
 "Your poor brother has died?" 
 
 "Yes, only two months since. I was with him to the 
 last." 
 
 "Lucky you to be able to do things for him. Was 
 it a bad illness?" 
 
 "Very bad, Joan. Day and night, for well, you 
 may call it years." 
 
 "Oh, you lucky thing!" 
 
 It was the very tone with which, of old, she would 
 have congratulated me on a heap of cotillion favors. I 
 did not, just at once, see why. But I would give her 
 no inkling of poor Philip s bodily and mental decay 
 pile horrors on that veiled creature. If she thought 
 me lucky, whether for Phil s having lived or for his 
 having died, let her think me so. It was luck enough 
 for any human creature not to be Joan Delabere. Per 
 haps that was all she meant. 
 
 "No one is wholly lucky, Joan. But I do feel lucky, 
 in spite of everything, just to see you again and hear 
 your voice. It has been so long." 
 
 "Ye-es. We ll let it go at the voice for a little while, 
 Garda, if you don t mind. I ll unveil before you go. 
 I m what you call disfigured, you know." 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 303 
 
 Joan was not making it easy for me; but the mere 
 fact that she was not trying to helped me a little. I 
 had known that she would not be lachrymose imagine 
 Joan lachrymose! but I had been afraid that she 
 would try to spare me things, and that I should break 
 down under her futile efforts. It is a terrible thing 
 when the weak and luckless play at ministering to one 
 worse when they seem to succeed. Joan had been 
 very dear to me ever since we climbed the trees of 
 the old orchard below the fish-pond . . . and the stair 
 case was near, and the car waiting. We would be 
 magnificent together or I would run. There need be 
 no miserable compromise. I grew stronger moment 
 by moment. 
 
 "Do as you like you Eastern lady in an Eastern 
 room. But I m not afraid of anything of anything, 
 you understand." I forced myself to seek the brilliant 
 brown eyes beneath the veil. 
 
 Joan patted my hand. "Dear old Garda! I really 
 believe you aren t. But I ll lead you down from giro 
 to giro neatly, Virgil-fashion, if you don t mind. I 
 know a little better than you all about it. I ve never 
 shrunk from mirrors." She drew her hand under the 
 veil. 
 
 "It s a charming hand, Joan. You needn t pull it 
 away." 
 
 Immediately she laid it on the cushion beside her. 
 "Yes, it s a good hand. But useless oh, how use 
 less! ... So you like my room?" 
 
 "Yes. It s odd, and, decoratively speaking, has no 
 place in the house; but I like it. It s a wonder the 
 architect let you do it. Of course it swears absolutely 
 at the rest." 
 
 "It s lucky I got my way. I had it done last year. 
 Imagine me down-stairs among the various French 
 
304 VALIANT DUST 
 
 periods! Every chair in the drawing-rooms would 
 know that I belonged in a convent. But this is East 
 ern and timeless. Eastern and timeless / she re 
 peated; "it just suits me. For any sense of com 
 pany, I have to go to the zenana. If I m like any 
 thing human, I m like the first wife of a Rajput. I 
 just might be that, you know. And it is excellent to 
 feel oneself human, on any terms to fall in with some 
 type, no matter what. One comes to seem so outside 
 of it all." 
 
 She crossed her arms above her head so familiar 
 a gesture! and the wide veil rippled like a wave and 
 fell into new folds. 
 
 "This is what I have been waiting for, all this time: 
 some one I could really talk to. Except when Tony 
 is at home, there is no one; and there are so many 
 things I can t say to Tony God bless him! that it s 
 rather a relief to have him on the other side. We 
 must have a long gossip, you and I. I can say any 
 thing to you, because you re not involved." 
 
 "How do you manage to get rid of Tony so much?" 
 True, cataclysmic things had happened since I had 
 seen Joan and Tony Delabere plight their troth before 
 the dim high altar of Saint Jude s; but it had been a 
 real love, I fancied. 
 
 "I make Miss Stanley write and engage his passage. 
 I make his man pack his things. I hold out the ticket 
 to him; and then I give him a commission something 
 I am languishing for, that can t be got this side of 
 Paris or Rome or Constantinople. It takes a deal of 
 thinking, for there s not much you can t get in New 
 York, as we all know. But I am hoping to discover 
 something yet that he ll have to fetch in person from 
 New Zealand unless by that time his philosophy is 
 as ripe as mine. He takes managing, Tony does." 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 305 
 
 "Isn t it a little unkind, Joan?" 
 
 "Well, of course" her tones were growing more 
 and more familiar "it s a pretty weak bluff to chuck; 
 but Tony is too well-bred to question me. He sees I 
 want him to go; and we play the game out, every time, 
 very prettily. It s a great strain on us both there s 
 the truth. And Tony goes; and one of my sisters 
 comes to stay with me, and I pack her off as soon as 
 he has sailed. Miss Stanley s worth all my family 
 to me, and more. Imagine them, Garda, snuffling in 
 their lace handkerchiefs! They do it by the hour 
 and whisper outside the door, and then come in with a 
 smile that apparently aches. They don t ask me to 
 take off my veil. I do it in spite of them. Oh yes, 
 I pack them off as soon as I get Tony s first wireless. 
 Tony used to come back always on the next steamer 
 sick for the leash, he would say; but now his excuses 
 are nearly as transparent as mine. One day there ll 
 be no more excuses naked truth between us, and 
 then my blessed brain can go to sleep, as all my senses 
 have done." She broke off suddenly, and reached for 
 the enamelled bell-handle beside. "Please, Miss 
 Stanley, tell Myra we are ready for tea." The cheer 
 ful nurse rearranged half a dozen cushions deftly, in 
 accordance with some mysterious law, and went out, 
 smiling. "A nice woman, that," murmured Joan. 
 "Treats me as if I had a mild case of grippe; has been 
 doing it for four years. Treats me also as if all 
 normal beings had atrophy of the emotions. A very 
 nice woman." 
 
 I laughed. Joan was so like herself that I had 
 only to turn my eyes away from her to forget. But 
 as I poised the teapot, my hand trembled a little. I 
 realized that, to eat or drink, Joan would have to 
 strip her face of the concealing veil. "None for me," 
 
306 VALIANT DUST 
 
 she said; and, looking down again, I saw that there 
 was only one cup. My strength returned to me in a 
 shamefaced flood. I would rather have broken some 
 thing than have been so relieved. 
 
 "I eat queer nursery things at queer nursery times, 
 and, I m afraid, in queer nursery fashion." She spoke 
 quite simply. Nothing that she had said before had 
 focussed light on so many elements of her frustration 
 as did, by sheer trickery of phrase, that little speech. 
 Poor Joan! It was not only one life, not even only 
 two, but three that fate had reached by that "acci 
 dent." But her voice had not faltered; it had not even 
 been carefully controlled; it had been colorless. 
 
 I drank some tea in silence. I ate one after the 
 other, three infinitesimal cakes. In such trivial fash 
 ion I braced myself. Joan watched me, and waited 
 but not, I felt sure, to brace herself. She was giving 
 me time. Joan Delabere was wonderful. In her place 
 I suddenly felt it as I watched the mockery of good 
 cheer, the Sevres and silver, carried out of the door 
 I would have opened my lips to taste only one 
 thing. . . . 
 
 "Yes; but you see, Garda, I can t get it." It was 
 Joan s voice, sounding very clear, as the footsteps 
 of the maid, beyond the closed door, went down the 
 hall. 
 
 I started. Witchlike, to an unloving eye, in all that 
 formless drapery, she would from the first have 
 seemed; now, in that bit of divination, she seemed 
 witchlike to me. But Joan laughed. 
 
 "It s what you all think of, sooner or later. You 
 were bound to think of it sooner than some and later 
 than others. You thought of it, my dear Garda, at 
 just about the right time. Sooner would have proved 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 307 
 
 you hard; later would have proved you dull. I m 
 glad you re neither; I m still more glad you re here." 
 
 I bit my lip. The situation was, as always, Joan s 
 very own. Her luck could be maimed in every way 
 but that. 
 
 "I was much too canny to ask for it explicitly, ever; 
 but I ve tried every indirect way that I could think 
 of. No use: they have me utterly in their power; and 
 they ll give me every gift but poison. I ve stopped 
 thinking about it, even that way lies madness. But 
 you couldn t help thinking of it once. I used to 
 hope the ether would play me tricks; but you have 
 thought it was my sister, Water, it was so loyal to 
 my poor old heart. No, Garda; there is no discharge 
 in this war. And that is the whole point. It is just 
 there that Tony comes in to complicate a situation 
 that without him would have the simplicity of hell." 
 
 There was a long pause. She went on, half dream 
 ily, yet always with that crispness in her voice which 
 of old had given her lightest speech factitious weight. 
 
 "Did it ever occur to you that the only argument 
 against purgatory is the complexity of it that to 
 keep purgatory going for all those millions would tax 
 even the wits of Omniscience? Prison is organized, 
 at least; but imagine being probation officer for all 
 the sons of Adam! No, I m not irreverent; but, as I 
 said, I ve only a brain left, and sometimes it whirls." 
 
 Well, I had wanted to have, at any cost, vital talk 
 with Joan Delabere, and I was to get it. It was clear 
 to me, from the rapidity with which we had come to 
 the core of the matter, that Joan had not intended, 
 from the first, to waste time. 
 
 Again, as if in answer to the unspoken, she took 
 up the thread of my thought. 
 
308 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "You see, they don t allow me in here too long 
 at a time. Miss Stanley will come at any minute to 
 say I must be moved back. I don t let any one see 
 me in my bedroom except Tony and for days to 
 gether not even him. There are sickening parapher 
 nalia there I have to be propped in all sorts of queer 
 ways. Not that they hope for anything better, but I 
 will say they work like nailers to make me as com 
 fortable as they can. And I am comfortable, you 
 know, most of the time; only it takes queer things to 
 make me so. Now, I rather fancy myself here. I 
 feel like Madame Recamier but much more like that 
 faded Rajput queen. Smell the sandalwood, Garda! 
 I love it. It s my ounce of civet, to sweeten my imagi 
 nation. I tremble to think what Tony s ounce of 
 civet may be." 
 
 I laid my hand on her arm gently, almost fearfully. 
 "Don t run on like that, Joan. It s humiliating to have 
 you trying to distract me. There s nothing I can t 
 stand. Out with it! 
 
 She clasped her hands on her breast. "I could go 
 on like that endlessly with no effort, I assure you. 
 But I m glad you re game, for I haven t overmuch 
 time, as I said, and you may not come back." 
 
 "Indeed I shall come back!" I cried. 
 
 "Well I hope so; but you may not, all the same. 
 I shan t be hurt, because nothing hurts me any more. 
 If things hurt me, I should be dead. There isn t a 
 thing in the world that could shock or wound me. 
 Inaction has brought its anodyne. You can t lie like 
 a log for four years, with a veil between you and 
 the world, and still care, you know. There s only 
 one thing I want; and I sometimes think it s only for 
 the honor of my five wits that I want that. See if 
 you can help me." 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 309 
 
 "What is it you want, Joan?" 
 
 "I want a way out for Tony." She was silent for 
 a moment, and we faced each other lucidly and in 
 timately, for all the veil between. I did not want 
 to enter the labyrinth, but I could not step back 
 and still be loyal. 
 
 " A way out for Tony. " I repeated it mechanically 
 while I searched the phrase for all its implications. 
 
 "Yes." She clasped her hands. Her wedding-ring 
 gleamed through the tulle. "You may not know what 
 a sordid and useless tangle our divorce laws are," she 
 went on. "There s no decent way, apparently, for him 
 to be quit of me. I m divorceable enough, one would 
 think, but the law doesn t see it in that light. Or, at 
 least, the law sees nothing that Tony and I can bring 
 ourselves to see. Besides, Tony won t divorce me. I 
 don t know that you could expect him to. It s in his 
 tradition to fling himself in the path of the unfortu 
 nate and let poor crippled feet stamp on him. . . . 
 Never marry a gentleman, Garda, unless you can be 
 perfectly sure of giving him more than he gives you. 
 Otherwise, he ll make your life a hell of humility. It 
 must have taken nerve to marry Cophetua. Certainly 
 I never planned to do it; yet here I am." 
 
 She stopped a minute; then, still with clasped hands, 
 went on in her didactic tone, so like the occasional 
 Joan of old. 
 
 "You can, as an impartial witness, consider that pos 
 sibility eliminated. Tony will not divorce me. There 
 remains only the possibility of my divorcing him. 
 That, again, isn t easy. If I could go out west, as 
 the others do but even then, what judge wouldn t 
 rock with laughter at the notion of a fragment like 
 me wanting a divorce? I should be a by-word, noth 
 ing more. I ought to be glad and grateful the whole 
 
310 VALIANT DUST 
 
 world would say to get any man to stick to me, 
 even in the empty legal sense. . . . And here 
 Well, how, lying here, in the effete East, can I get 
 a divorce? Especially as Tony won t help." 
 
 "If Tony won t help, I should think it clear enough 
 that Tony doesn t want it. And really, Joan" I tried 
 to be very quiet and convincing "if Tony doesn t 
 want it, I don t see that you ve anything to complain 
 of. It s unimaginable that you should care about be 
 ing legally free. What would you get out of that?" 
 
 "Nothing of any importance only my self-respect." 
 She spoke with concentrated bitterness. 
 
 "My dear Joan, if any human creature has a right 
 to self-respect, I think it s you." I said it honestly, 
 brooding for a moment on all the things that white 
 hand of hers had gallantly rejected: hysteria, melan 
 choly, egotistic evasions, vanity. I spoke my thought: 
 "A platonic devotion to truth is enough for self- 
 respect, I imagine. And that you ve got; you ve saved 
 it out of whatever wreck there may have been." 
 
 "Trust you to strike home, Garda!" she cried, 
 softly. "Now that is the best thing that has been 
 said to me for many a day, though Herbert Melcham 
 has written a sonnet to me as I am poor young de 
 cadent! To hold the mirror up to nature and not 
 let your hand shake. That s it. ... When the 
 senses are dead, you must satisfy the brain. It clamors 
 in the night one s brain. Why should I have a brain 
 at all? I don t know. But it will not release me until 
 it has saved Tony. It will keep on working until it 
 does." 
 
 There was a long silence. I determined to let Joan 
 herself break it. She stirred at last and spoke again. 
 
 "Probably you can t imagine, Garda, what an odd 
 thing it is to lie outside of time and space, as I dc 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 311 
 
 discarnate, except for this accidental burden of flesh 
 that I carry like a pack. I suppose it s what hap 
 pened to the saints. Perhaps I should be a saint if I 
 could get rid of Tony. It s worse than having pas 
 sions of your own, to lie there like a dead thing and see 
 other people s passions hard at work. Usually one has 
 something at stake, oneself. There s the blindness 
 and the beauty of the game to carry one on. I m out 
 of the game, but I mustn t forget that Tony isn t. 
 That s what my brain beats in on me. That s why 
 Tony drives me mad; why I have to send him off." 
 
 "My dear child, you must remember that Tony has 
 inhibitions, too. You re not the only civilized person 
 in the world." 
 
 " Inhibitions! " She mocked me. "We ve all had 
 them, always. That s not the name of my malady. 
 But don t you suppose that I remember what life was 
 before I was stricken? Do you suppose I imagine for 
 a moment that Tony is in my case? I may have, as it 
 were, no lips to kiss with; but Tony is still the magnifi 
 cent young pagan god he always was." 
 
 "It s a very curious thing, Joan" I bent forward 
 to her "that the great love has always been able to 
 do anything it liked with the body; but so it is." 
 
 She was very patient with me. "I don t know 
 whether or not you ve ever been in love, Garda; but I 
 do know that you ve never been married to the man 
 you loved. And I am forced to tell you that there is 
 a part of the philosophy of life that can t be resolved 
 in the cloister." 
 
 "One has eyes in one s head, my dear, and life s 
 an open common. Why talk like an old wife by the 
 fire?" 
 
 "Simply because you will babble like a child in 
 
 arms." 
 
312 VALIANT DUST 
 
 It was very like old times. As before, I had only 
 to turn my head away to forget. 
 
 "What you perhaps don t know, my dear girl," she 
 went on, crisply, "is that there s love and love. 
 Tony will care for me always, in one way, more than 
 anything else. But through these last years I ve be 
 come a different creature. I m not precisely the 
 woman he loved. Strange eyes, new limbs and no 
 lips to kiss. It s not mere loss of any looks I had. If 
 I were maimed as I am, and still cared, we could 
 subsist, perhaps, on mere caring. It s the lack of long 
 ing, the coldness of the grave between us, the absolute 
 deadness of desire. I ve sifted that tenderness of his 
 to the last grain, and there s not a whit of passion in 
 it. How should there be? It would be morbid if there 
 were." 
 
 "How can you speak for Tony?" 
 
 "I speak for him by the letter of the law. It s not 
 that, by accident, I can no longer be Tony s wife 
 your inhibitions might manage that. It s that I am 
 wooden to his touch. In that sense, there is no life left 
 in me. If I were a ghost, I couldn t be more fleshless,. 
 When Tony kisses me sometimes he does I wonder 
 why any two people have ever kissed. At that rate, 
 he won t want to kiss me very long. For coldness 
 breeds coldness. Take that back to your cloister for a 
 new addition to the sum of knowledge." 
 
 "It s not as if you didn t love him." I was per 
 plexed, but I clung to that. 
 
 "That is where you are wrong. It is precisely as 
 if I didn t love him. Oh, if I longed for him, however 
 vainly, it would be a very different problem, my dear 
 Garda and one I probably shouldn t trouble you 
 with. All I can get from Tony I do get. From me 
 Tony gets nothing. He s simply my kind Providence. 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 313 
 
 Oh, I wouldn t stick at alimony, you know if that 
 were all. I d take it in a minute." 
 
 "But there is something beyond all this, Joan; some 
 thing that you are, unalterably, to each other." 
 
 "Nothing" and her voice sounded very clear and 
 very cold "that makes a man and a woman find it 
 imperative to live under the same roof. One can be 
 Beatrice at a distance. In fact, one usually is. And 
 I never was precisely Beatrice, you know, Garda." 
 
 "But Tony loves you." I clung to it doggedly. 
 
 "He s happier away from me perhaps because he 
 loves me." 
 
 "Aren t you quibbling?" 
 
 With a sudden movement she flung off her veil and 
 stared fixedly at me. I did not flinch outwardly- 
 one could not, for very shame, be weak with Joan 
 Delabere but within me it was as if every bone in 
 my body had turned to arctic ice. 
 
 "That was brutal of you, Joan." My voice, I sus 
 pect, was as cold as the rest of me. But what an argu 
 ment to let fly at me, with a turn of the hand! 
 
 "I thought you needed strong drink. You looked 
 it. I have it on tap for people who are fools enough 
 to ask for it." She flung the veil negligently by, and 
 rested her head comfortably on the pillow. "We ll 
 face the rest of it in the light of this." She stared 
 past me out of the window. "Oh, Garda, Garda, if 
 I were playing for sympathy, it would be a low trick; 
 but I am playing only for Tony. I have to show 
 you his side." 
 
 I stole a look at her, while she was not facing me. 
 Her argument was perfectly good; it covered all 
 points. I turned my eyes away. 
 
 "What does Tony say? You must have had it out 
 with him." 
 
314 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "Often. The last time I had it out with him, I didn t 
 have to make Miss Stanley write for his ticket. He 
 rushed to town and bought it himself." 
 
 "Poor Tony!" 
 
 "That s what I wanted you to say. Oh, I know you 
 don t mean it quite as I mean it. But you will, before 
 the end." 
 
 I thought very carefully before I spoke. "He has 
 had hard luck with his bargain, but so have you. Your 
 contract was the same. I suppose you ll both have to 
 abide by the results." 
 
 "Ah, but I haven t had such hard luck as Tony!" 
 
 The tears came to my eyes. "My dear, I think you 
 have if that s any comfort." 
 
 "You mean that he can get away from this thing 
 that lies here, and that I can t? True; and that is 
 what Tony himself for a long time felt, I fancy. But 
 I think he has come to see now how much more fortu 
 nate I am; for he has learned that I don t feel. The 
 days go by like long shimmering stretches of the 
 desert. They shift and reshape themselves; but in the 
 end they re all the same. I don t know by what law 
 the physical catastrophe has managed to get at the 
 very springs of the soul and dry them up; but I know 
 that it has. The brain is left, but the heart is dried. 
 And, accordingly, I see the terms of that contract 
 more clearly than any one else, perhaps, ever has. 
 For it s not simply over for me with Tony; it s over 
 for me with everything. So long as you re human, 
 you may have a future though sometimes you have 
 to stoop pretty low to get it. I m not human, and 
 there s no future at all for me. I can no more care 
 than I can walk. And therefore I m a negligible quan 
 tity. It s monstrous that I should interfere with any 
 normal creature s life." 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 315 
 
 "My dear Joan" I put it to her "would you be 
 so insistent on Tony s marrying again if you died?" 
 
 "I shouldn t have to be," she flashed back at me. 
 "Time and Tony would look out for that. But as it 
 is, though I m quite dead, I lie here and haunt Tony. 
 And that s not decent." 
 
 "I wonder if you really hate him," I mused. It was 
 always best to say to Joan Delabere whatever crossed 
 one s mind. She herself would never keep the but 
 tons off the foils. 
 
 Her eyes filled. "I m excessively fond of Tony. 
 I even feel about him as sometimes one insanely feels 
 it about a stranger as if in some other life we had 
 had a past together. I am always thinking, How odd 
 that I seem to know him so well. There was a long 
 interval, you see, when only my body and the things 
 they did to it in hospitals seemed to count; and just 
 a few little feeble memories come across the interval 
 to account for his being here. Indeed, indeed, I am 
 fond of him, Garda; but not as I used to be. It s as 
 if, one of those times when they had me unconscious, 
 they had cunningly removed my heart as if there 
 were a seat of the soul that a knife could find. And 
 I think, if I could see Tony provided for if I could 
 arrange for him like a French mamma I should be a 
 curiously happy creature because of this anaesthetic 
 state. There s the case complete." 
 
 "What do you really want? That he should fall in 
 love with another woman?" 
 
 "Ultimately that, I suppose. But don t you see? 
 I want him in a position to love and woo any woman 
 he pleases. The women who would take him as he 
 is aren t the women that would make him happy. I 
 want him free to carry his heart, his hand, and all his 
 
316 VALIANT DUST 
 
 young magnificence to some piece of loveliness who ll 
 have better luck than I did." 
 
 "There are plenty of girls who wouldn t marry a 
 man, however free/ so long as his first wife lived." 
 
 Joan tossed her head. "I d like to see any girl tell 
 him she wouldn t marry him on my account! Send 
 such a little fool to me. I d soon have her at the near 
 est parson s in an agony of impatience." 
 
 Then and there, at the very heart of the tangle, I 
 laughed. 
 
 "Joan, Joan, how could any man forego living with 
 you?" 
 
 She turned her face to me again. I came back to 
 the situation. 
 
 "What I want, please, Garda," she went on crisply, 
 "is a new law: divorce on demand, as they have it in 
 France. Have you any political pull, anywhere? I 
 should be willing to pay. Tony, that is, ought to be 
 willing to run to a fat sum in his own interests." 
 
 Her irony hurt like a rusty knife. It didn t leave 
 a clean wound. "I m afraid if you want a divorce, 
 there will have to be collusion. Tony will have to 
 help you out." 
 
 "Precisely what he won t do. And when you come 
 to think of it, it s a grim and sordid thing to ask any 
 man to go in for. So you think we shall have to 
 wait?" 
 
 "I can see nothing else." 
 
 "You lack imagination, Garda. But I have liked to 
 talk to you. It s a little hard to talk to Tony. He 
 aches so with the strain of not giving himself away! 
 But it s odd, isn t it, that there should be no divorce 
 for decent people in our easy-going land? Somebody 
 simply has to be a horror, somewhere. Why don t 
 
THE TOAD AND THE JEWEL 317 
 
 you write a book about it, Garda? You used always 
 to be scribbling." 
 
 "Stop girding at me, Joan, and say what you really 
 have to say." 
 
 She beat her hands softly together, and moaned. 
 "Oh, don t you see? There s bound to be another 
 woman some time. Tony can t live forever tied to 
 a cold caricature of a wife. And I want her to be the 
 right woman; and my brain tells me that, as things 
 are, there s little or no chance of that. It isn t fair, 
 it isn t fair, that we should be damned in the end just 
 because in the beginning we were a shade too decent to 
 do the things that damn other people!" 
 
 "Time is up, I m afraid, Mrs. Delabere." It was 
 the pale Miss Stanley who said it, cheerfully, after her 
 light tap at the door had been answered. Having given 
 her warning, she closed the door again and walked 
 softly away. 
 
 Slowly Joan Delabere drew her veil over her face 
 again, and arranged it in careful folds about her. It 
 was like a corpse enshrouding itself with its own 
 hands, 
 
 I rose and stood beside her. "I haven t a way out 
 for you, Joan. But don t you see that it s just the 
 chance of such bad luck as yours that makes the mag 
 nificence of the whole contract? I don t think I ever 
 realized before" I used my words deliberately 
 "what a splendid sporting proposition marriage is. I 
 shall never blame either you or Tony for anything 
 you do. But if you don t do anything, I shall con 
 sider you the best losers I ve ever known." 
 
 She lay with shut eyes, and I put my hand on her 
 forehead. I could not kiss that terrible veil. Finally 
 she spoke, very quietly. "You were the last cartridge 
 I had left, and you missed fire. I ll never believe 
 
318 VALIANT DUST 
 
 never in anything men do needlessly for other men s 
 pain. I ll mock at us forever for being squeamish 
 only to come heaven knows what cropper in the end. 
 Perhaps the only way out my brain will succeed in 
 devising is for it deliberately to run itself off the track. 
 I fancy that would make it easier for Tony. But it s 
 a little rough of you to tell me I m not a sport. Who 
 would let me in on any game, now? Is it my fault 
 that I m disqualified?" 
 
 "Joan, Joan!" I cried, bending to her, "didn t I 
 say you were magnificent?" 
 
 She took my hand in hers, and stroked it gently 
 for good-bye. "You said so many things I was glad 
 to hear! I have liked talking to you, my dear. I 
 hoped you could help, but I might have known there 
 was no help. I ve spent a long time on it, myself." 
 She raised my hand to her lips. "Good-bye, dear. 
 Thank you a hundred times for coming." Her voice 
 was very low and sweet. "You always were a bit of a 
 prig, Garda." She turned her face from me as the 
 nurse and two servants entered the room. 
 
 Before I drove off I gave a long look at the stately 
 lines of the facade. My mind recurred to the symbol 
 of disaster. In the thickening twilight I seemed to 
 perceive the squat form seated on the threshold; but 
 the shadows were too heavy along the eastern front of 
 Tony Delabere s house for me to make out the jewel. 
 
XII 
 BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 
 
 " c Belshazzar had a letter; he never had but one/ 
 murmured Fenwick. 
 
 I should never have suspected Fenwick of having 
 read, much less having memorized, the works of Emily 
 Dickinson. Fenwick does not read much; and how 
 should he have got hold of Emily, anyhow? It ap 
 peared presently for of course he was questioned 
 that he had picked up her poems in the home of a 
 foreign missionary, where he had once perforce been 
 marooned during a cholera epidemic. Fenwick 
 himself is, I fancy, outside all creeds; but he 
 can t help given his life running into mission 
 aries, and he usually speaks well of them. He takes 
 them, at all events, as all in the day s work, as he 
 reports, from very strange places, to the "interests" 
 that employ him. They have an eye out, those "inter 
 ests," for a good many different commodities, though I 
 incline to believe that rubber is the chief. Adventure 
 has never seemed to pry Fenwick loose from his very 
 American moorings, though he told me on a certain 
 occasion, with a dropped jaw (in a kind of wry whis 
 per) that he had lost his religion once just like that 
 in a typhoon. 
 
 I mention these facts concerning Fenwick for rea 
 sons that will appear later. He was leaving for San 
 Francisco and the East the next week, by the way, 
 and this was a scratch gathering of friends and ac- 
 
 319 
 
320 VALIANT DUST 
 
 quaintances more or less to do Fen wick honor. Ben 
 Allis and Mrs. Allis were giving the "party." Nora 
 Pate, Mrs. Allis s niece, was spending with them an 
 enforced holiday from school. She was at the dinner- 
 table on sufferance merely. It was Nora, with her 
 giggling flapper-ish reference to a ouija-board occur 
 rence at school that had elicited Fenwick s humorous 
 quotation. 
 
 Now you must also know that we were a fairly 
 intimate but more than fairly eclectic group at the 
 Allises table. Most of us were bred to one or another 
 form of the Christian religion, went to church spas 
 modically (except Nora, who of course had to go every 
 Sunday), and comfortably or uncomfortably, accord 
 ing to temperament, let the whole thing slide took it 
 for granted, or permitted it euthanasia, as it and our 
 souls chose. But Mrs. Conway was a Catholic "just 
 the ordinary kind, 7 as she had once said herself, with 
 a sidelong glance at Mrs. Medford, who was waver- 
 ingly "High;" Allis was a scientific skeptic, and Fen- 
 wick a reverent free-thinker. Or so I had gathered. 
 The typhoon had made him a free-thinker, and his in 
 heritance and temperament had apparently kept him 
 reverent. My personal convictions do not matter, but 
 when it comes to ouija-boards, I am all with Allis. 
 
 Young Nora had been rather stumped by Fenwick s 
 quotation. She had probably heard of Belshazzar, 
 but she had never heard of Miss Dickinson, and she 
 certainly did not see what it had to do with the ouija- 
 board revelations at midnight in Betty Dane s room. 
 
 After we had found out just where Fen wick had 
 read Emily Dickinson, the talk swung back to the 
 occult. Mrs. Medford s pearl-powdered face and nat 
 urally red lips were eager. She even wanted the com 
 plete account of what had happened in Betty Dane s 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 321 
 
 room. Nora needed no more encouragement than that. 
 
 "Why, Betty was desperate because she couldn t 
 be at home when her cousin had his leave; and she 
 asked ouija if there wasn t any chance of his leave 
 being changed. And ouija said, Measles will make 
 you free/ and of course we all laughed. Then we 
 thought probably her cousin would have measles, so 
 he couldn t come, and Betty would be free of disap 
 pointment. And the next week Pauline Case came 
 down with them and Betty is at home with her 
 cousin, and she s going to bring back a book that tells 
 all about everything depending on the way the breath 
 circulates in your body." 
 
 The flushed Nora, at a glance from her aunt, sank 
 out of sight below the conversational tide. But Mrs. 
 Medford had smiled comfortingly at her. 
 
 "Prophesying is one thing they won t usually en 
 gage to do, you know," some one threw in. "I be 
 lieve even Doyle and Lodge say that." 
 
 "Naturally since they have to get it out of your 
 subconscious." This was Mrs. Conway. 
 
 Mrs. Medford turned upon her, a little acrid. You 
 may have noticed that the two kinds of "Catholic" 
 don t mix very well. "Has the Church decided that 
 it s all your subconscious?" 
 
 Mrs. Conway s smile was all that she herself could 
 have wished it to be. "Why, I believe so. Where else 
 could they get it?" 
 
 "Whom do you mean by they ?" the other woman 
 challenged. 
 
 "Why, the evil spirits." Mrs. Conway reached for 
 a mint drop. "You see, the Church had all this to 
 settle so many centuries ago. It s hardly a new 
 phenomenon." 
 
 If there was irony in Mrs. Conway s tone, it was 
 
322 VALIANT DUST 
 
 not sharp enough to wound Fanny Medford. She 
 looked rather pleadingly at the other woman s clever, 
 gentle face. " Always evil spirits?" she murmured. 
 "Never good ones?" 
 
 Mrs. Conway murmured back, and the two seemed 
 for a moment to be isolated together. "Never good 
 ones; and never the real dead. That is forbidden, 
 you know." 
 
 I had hoped that our moving from the dining-room 
 would break the current, but I had reckoned without 
 Fenwick. We had our coffee all together in Allis s big 
 library so much the nicest room in the house that 
 I didn t much wonder at Maud Allis s refusing, except 
 under great pressure, to drag the women away else 
 where. Nora Pate was sent upstairs to study, and we 
 were freer. As soon as she had gone, Fenwick led 
 us back to the subject. Mrs. Conway sat apart in 
 the shadows, moving a fan slowly. Mrs. Medford 
 fixed her eyes hungrily on Fenwick. The rest of us 
 listened. After all, it was Fenwick s party. 
 
 "Of course you see all kinds of trances, and 
 miracles, and levitation, and tricks, out in the East," 
 he began. "I confess I m not much interested in what 
 Hindus and such do. They re so different, anyhow. 
 But it does interest me to come back to America for 
 the first time since the war, and find everybody going 
 it this way. The Americans and English out there do 
 it, too. But there s an epidemic here, as far as I can 
 make out. Look at your niece and her ouija-board. 
 And all of us ready to argue about it. Honestly, I m 
 interested. I m perfectly open-minded about it, my 
 self. I m not psychic, or whatever you call it." 
 
 "You don t have to be psychic. There s no such 
 thing." This came out of the shadows where Mrs. 
 Conway s fan waved. 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 323 
 
 Mrs. Medford turned and gazed at her, as if trying 
 to penetrate even deeper shadows that lay between 
 them. 
 
 "Oh, well, I mean I sat in on table-tipping once or 
 twice, but I don t think I added much. I never saw 
 any ghosts, or had anything queer happen to me. I 
 know a man out in Singapore who does automatic 
 writing, though gets stuff through from his mother. 
 At least, he says he doesn t believe it s his mother, 
 but he keeps right on, all the same. He says she has 
 told him things that no one else could have known 
 about." 
 
 "He knew about them, didn t he?" asked Allis, with 
 heavy matter-of-factness. 
 
 "Why, yes he and she." 
 
 "Well, it all came out of his subconscious." 
 
 "I dare say." Fenwick set down his coffee-cup and 
 took a cigarette proffered him by Mrs. Allis. "Only 
 I m sick of you people all wagging your heads and 
 saying the subconscious every time you re up against 
 it. Why don t you get busy and explain how the 
 thing works?" 
 
 "Ah yes, why don t you?" Mrs. Medford seized on 
 Fenwick s challenge as if it were her own. 
 
 Allis pulled his moustache and spoke judicially. 
 "I m not a psychologist myself, as you very well know 
 not even a biologist. I don t know that science has 
 explained the technique of it yet, though they are 
 working on this sort of thing all the time. Hysteria, 
 secondary personality, dreams all these things are 
 being put under the microscope, and they re finding 
 out." 
 
 "I d rather believe in spooks than in Freud, any 
 day." This was Carter, a gay soul. 
 
324 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Allis ignored him. "I dare say you do know, though, 
 that alienists are using automatic writing in their 
 treatment of patients now. They find that some 
 traumas, too deep-laid for hypnotism to probe to, can 
 be brought to the surface by getting the patient to 
 write automatically. That is one for the subconscious, 
 anyhow." 
 
 "But this was Fanny Medford, brave on her 
 own account "what about the things that never were 
 in your subconscious; couldn t have been there? They 
 get those too indeed they do." 
 
 "I agree with Fanny and Mr. Fenwick," said Maud 
 Allis. "I don t believe it s the spirits of the dead; 
 but neither do I believe that the psychologists have 
 explained it yet. I m open-minded." 
 
 "I m open-minded, too," laughed younq; Carter. 
 "Ready to try anything. Except Nora s ouija-board. 
 That s too darned easy." 
 
 A slim form in white came out of the shadows 
 Mrs. Conway, gray-eyed, ivory-cheeked, like a warm 
 ghost. "Can t you see," she said, "that an open mind 
 is the most dangerous thing there is? Because if your 
 mind is really open, any evil thing can get in." 
 
 She put her arm round Fanny Medford s waist, with 
 a soft, sidelong gesture, though she faced our host, 
 directly questioning him. Mrs. Medford stirred a lit 
 tle against the light encircling arm barely noticing 
 it, it seemed. Her face was flushed beneath her pearl 
 powder. She addressed Allis and Carter, now standing 
 abreast before the fireplace. 
 
 "Have you ever tried automatic writing?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Nor I," cut in Mrs. Allis, "but I m going to try 
 sometime. Has any one here tried it?" Maud Allis 
 went on, looking round at her group. 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 325 
 
 I shook my head, Fenwick and Carter theirs. Mrs. 
 Conway merely said, "You forget I m a Catholic." 
 
 "How about Mrs. Medford herself?" Young Carter 
 marked us off on his fingers. 
 
 "Oh, I I ve tried it, yes. But I can t do it!" She 
 bit her lip and turned away, and before we quite real 
 ized that she was crying she had made a soft plunge 
 through the wide doorway into the next room. Maud 
 Allis followed her, but returned in a few moments. 
 
 "She ll be all right presently. She ll come back. 
 It s just that she is so interested. Ever since her 
 brother, Jack Hilles, was killed, she s been trying to 
 get through to him; and she can t do it herself. She 
 began going to a medium, and the woman had no 
 sooner established communication for her than she 
 died. Now, Fanny s rather up against it. She s not 
 the kind that likes to go to mediums, you know. I m 
 awfully sorry you started the subject." 
 
 "Why didn t you stop us, if you knew all that?" 
 Ben queried. 
 
 "I didn t. She just told me about the medium now. 
 Oh, she ll pull herself together all right. It may do 
 her good to have it out with a sensible crowd like 
 this. We didn t put it into her head. It s there all 
 the time has been, ever since Jack Hilles was killed 
 in the Argonne." 
 
 "Well, we ll drop it right here," Allis replied. 
 
 But Mrs. Medford was back among us and heard 
 him. 
 
 "You won t drop anything on my account, I hope. 
 Maud may have told you it s the one thing I m inter 
 ested in. It s just awfully hard luck that I can t do 
 anything myself. If you people really feel like try 
 ing anything, don t let me stop you. I dare say the 
 rest of you are as bad as I am, anyway. Not psychic 
 
326 VALIANT DUST 
 
 though Mrs. Conway says there s nothing in that." 
 
 "There isn t," Mrs. Conway averred again. 
 
 "Let s try it, anyhow," cried young Carter. "Not 
 table-tipping. Let s sit about and turn the lights out 
 and each take a pencil, and see if we can do auto 
 matic writing." 
 
 Fanny Medford clapped her hands. "Oh, do! Only, 
 of course I can t. But perhaps" she looked us over 
 hungrily "some of you can, and I might get a tip 
 as to the right way to manage. And, anyway, it s 
 so interesting." Certainly she had recovered. 
 
 "I m not going to sit with the lights out all the 
 evening," grumbled Allis. "This was supposed to be, 
 in its humble way, a dinner-party." 
 
 "Well, of course, not all the evening," Maud con 
 ceded. "A quarter of an hour. And then we ll stop 
 and play bridge." 
 
 "It would be rather fun." This was Genevieve 
 Ford. I have not mentioned Miss Ford before, sim 
 ply because she had taken no part in the conversa 
 tion that I have detailed. She happened to you, once 
 in so often, in somebody s house, and you didn t much 
 care, one way or the other. She was just a nice girl, 
 a little more restful than some, perhaps. I think 
 the Allises hoped against hope that some day she and 
 Carter. ... I don t know why. 
 
 Somehow Miss Ford s quiet speech clinched it. Per 
 haps because she had been an outsider through the 
 talk. 
 
 "Good for you. Let s!" Carter dashed to Ben s 
 table and swept some pencils off it. "Paper, Allis? 
 And more pencils. We ll scatter about through the 
 rooms so that everyone can have a table-edge or a 
 chair-arm. 
 
 Allis found us pads of paper, and pencils all except 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 327 
 
 Mrs. Conway, who refused to join us and went off to 
 fetch her knitting. We all looked at each other rather 
 helplessly. 
 
 "How do you begin?" I asked. 
 
 "I suppose you douse the glim." Carter snapped off 
 the light nearest to him. 
 
 "That s perfectly unnecessary," Fenwick com 
 mented. "The man I know in Singapore does it any 
 time in broad daylight, between courses at tiffin, if 
 he feels like it. All you do is to let your hand go slack, 
 and think about something quite different." 
 
 Mrs. Conway, who had returned with her knitting, 
 intervened. "I wouldn t think too hard about some 
 thing quite different, if I were you. That is, not if 
 you want results." 
 
 "But we want to play fair," Maud Allis protested. 
 "There s no sense in trying this kind of thing unless 
 you do your best." 
 
 "I only meant," Mrs. Conway explained, "that if 
 you really want to let them in, you must make your 
 mind as blank as possible. Don t make an effort to 
 think of anything. Just open the door and wait. You 
 make me feel like an accessory before the fact" she 
 smiled a little "except that I really don t believe any 
 thing will happen." 
 
 She withdrew to a sofa and began to knit. 
 
 "You just have to be quiet." Fenwick gave his 
 last explanations. "And let your right arm be com 
 fortably slack, and don t look at the paper if you 
 do begin to write. And if nothing happens in twenty 
 minutes" he looked interrogatively at Maud Allis 
 "then we play bridge, do we?" 
 
 Mrs. Allis nodded. "And I m going to put out some 
 of the lights, whether it s necessary or not. We d be 
 rather ridiculous in a glare, and we d probably all be 
 
328 VALIANT DUST 
 
 looking at each other to see if anyone s else arm was 
 moving." So she reduced the room to a demi- 
 obscurity, very soothing and non-committal. 
 
 Fenwick sat at the other end of Mrs. Conway s sofa, 
 resting his pad on his knee. "Won t your knitting 
 spoil it?" he murmured. 
 
 "Dear, no," she whispered back. "I ll stop, if you 
 like. But knitting-needles won t keep them away." 
 
 "No fooling, Ben." Mrs. Allis s admonishing words 
 were the last spoken. After that, silence. 
 
 I did my best to play the game, but my hand did 
 not move. I became, somehow, perfectly sure that it 
 never would move, and that conviction edged my vol 
 untary slackness of spirit. The corners of the room 
 were too dark for me to see how each fellow-guest was 
 faring; but I noted idly the little stir of Mrs. Con- 
 way s needles, the faint fire-glow on Mrs. Medford s 
 bent blond head, Ben Allis s comfortably hunched 
 position, Miss Ford s graceful, pensive attitude. After 
 fifteen minutes, I constituted myself time-keeper, mov 
 ing my left hand so that the radium dial of my wrist- 
 watch showed. I stared at it until I began to feel 
 prickly all over. If my arm didn t move then, I 
 thought, I was surely no good at the business; for 
 I was half hypnotized by my concentrated stare at 
 the dial, and my left hand certainly had no physical 
 knowledge of what my right hand, off in space, was 
 doing. 
 
 When twenty minutes were up, no one stirred. I 
 decided to give them a little more time, for good meas 
 ure. The minute-hand crawled as it does when you 
 are taking a pulse or a temperature. Before the half 
 hour was quite reached, Ben Allis leaped to his feet. 
 
 "I m tired of this. There s nothing in it. Switch 
 on the lights, you people." 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 329 
 
 But the others were stretching cramped limbs, ris 
 ing slowly from their fixed positions, tottering in the 
 half gloom. I had not risen, myself, and I watched 
 them. They looked drugged, unsure, wan and un 
 graceful in the dim light purgatorial poor souls. 
 Only for a second; but just for a second the only nor 
 mal thing in the scene was the implacable motion of 
 Mrs. Conway s fingers. Then Carter turned on the 
 light at my elbow, and I saw my own pad of paper. 
 The page, ten inches by eight, was covered with the 
 huge scrawl of two words: "Ask Fenwick." And I 
 had not known, staring at the dial of my watch, that 
 my arm had moved. 
 
 The other lights went on, then. People held their 
 sheets of paper up before them like shields, and moved 
 to the nearest lamp. All except Fenwick, who still 
 held to his corner of the sofa. 
 
 "Nothing of course." Mrs. Medford spoke first, 
 then flung her pad down on the table. 
 
 "Nothing here." Ben Allis grinned over his. 
 
 "Mine says something!" Maud Allis cried, as she 
 bent over it under a lamp. "But I can hardly read it, 
 it s so queer." 
 
 Miss Ford and Carter pressed towards her. 
 
 "Oh, I see now," she said. "It s Ask Fenwick. " 
 
 I bit my lip and delayed my contribution to knowl 
 edge. But while Carter and Genevieve Ford were ex 
 amining the unsoiled whiteness of their sheets of paper, 
 I looked at Fenwick. He sat in his corner, open-eyed 
 now but tired, surrounded by white things. Mrs. Con- 
 way had stopped knitting, and was looking at him with 
 concentrated interest. Her hand fluttered over the 
 sheets of paper that lay between them on the sofa, but 
 never once quite touched them. 
 The group at the table turned to me. "Did you get 
 
330 VALIANT DUST 
 
 anything?" they chorused. Their backs were all more 
 or less turned to Fenwick and Mrs. Conway, you un 
 derstand. 
 
 I came forward. "Just like Maud s. Ask Fen- 
 wick/ Pick up your manuscript, Fenwick/ I called, 
 "and let us see it." 
 
 They all turned, then. 
 
 "Why, he s written heaps!" Mrs. Medford rushed 
 to the sofa, but Mrs. Conway s lifted hand fended her 
 off from the papers. "Give him time," she murmured; 
 "he doesn t realize yet what he s done." 
 
 Mrs. Medford stopped, but Carter was not so easily 
 dealt with. He strode over and began picking up the 
 sheets of paper. 
 
 Fenwick yawned. "Can I have a cigarette? By 
 gum! I think I must have pulled something off, my 
 arm is so tired." He flexed it as he rose. 
 
 "You did, my boy, you did! Well, who says we 
 aren t psychic?" This was Carter, arranging the 
 sheets in the order in which presumably they had 
 fallen from Fenwick s busy hand. 
 
 An odd look passed between Mrs. Conway and her 
 host. Both started to speak together. Then she 
 yielded to him, nodding acquiescence as Ben said: 
 "They are Fenwick s property. It s up to him whether 
 or not he gratifies our curiosity." 
 
 But Fenwick, jaunty now, uncramped, waved his 
 cigarette. "It belongs to the company. I m delighted 
 to have been successful. But isn t it extraordinary 
 that I shouldn t once have realized that I was writing 
 or that I was tearing those sheets off?" 
 
 "You did it very quietly. There was no noise," 
 Mrs. Conway volunteered. 
 
 "Can t we read the stuff, right off?" Carter inquired 
 anxiously. 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 331 
 
 Allis leaned over and took the papers from him. 
 There must have been four or five sheets. Neither he 
 nor Carter had examined them. 
 
 "Fenwick s property. It s up to Fenwick." 
 
 "I don t want the stuff. Let s read it aloud if it 
 makes any sense." 
 
 Mrs. Conway rose with determination. "Why not 
 hand it over to me? I won t read it." 
 
 But Mrs. Medford cried out. "Mr. Gregory wrote 
 Ask Fenwick. 7 So did Maud Allis. We must ask 
 Fenwick." 
 
 "Yes. What s the use of spending all this time 
 in an experiment if we can t see what we ve accom 
 plished?" Miss Ford voiced her own and Carter s 
 grievance. 
 
 "Well, Fenwick" Allis s bantering voice threw in 
 "if you are ready to vouch for the absolute purity 
 of your subconscious, shall we oblige the ladies?" 
 
 Fenwick looked sheepish. "Oh, I say! You don t 
 mean to load that stuff, whatever it is, off on me. Why, 
 it may be a resume of the last French novel I read 
 or anything." 
 
 Mrs. Conway spoke, for the first time, with some 
 sharpness. "You don t, any of you, know what may 
 be there. It may be utter nonsense, or it may be a 
 sermon. But whatever is there comes from no good 
 place." 
 
 Some of us laughed. "You re very hard on Fen- 
 wick s subconscious," Allis said. 
 
 "It s the first time you ve ever done it?" Mrs. Con- 
 way asked. 
 
 "Absolutely the first." Fenwick nodded. 
 
 "Well, then" she sighed "it s probably all right. 
 They re usually careful how they begin." She 
 shrugged her shoulders. 
 
332 VALIANT DUST 
 
 We moved in a body to the big lamp on Allis s writ 
 ing table. "Thank goodness, Nora s upstairs," Maud 
 Allis giggled in my ear. 
 
 Fenwick now had let himself go in the spirit of 
 Carter and Gene vie ve Ford, as they chaffed him. "All 
 right," he said; "I may be done for, but who wrote 
 Ask Fenwick ? Seems to me we re all tarred with the 
 same brush, anyhow." 
 
 He held up the first page, getting the light over 
 his shoulder, and began to read. 
 
 " Jack Hilles speaking ." The manuscript opened 
 like a telephone call. 
 
 Fenwick broke off. "Oh, I say, you don t want me 
 to read this. There can t be anything in it, and we d 
 all be sorry to go any further " 
 
 But Mrs. Medford came close to him, her eyes al 
 most glaring with the intensity of her feeling a queer, 
 soft, mad glare. I saw, like a shot, that she wasn t 
 going to be easy to manage. 
 
 "Mr. Fenwick, you ve no right to stop," she panted. 
 
 Ben Allis had gone completely white under his pink- 
 and-tan. Later, I knew why, but then I was merely 
 surprised. Ben was not the man to be upset by pre 
 posterous hints of the supernatural. 
 
 Fenwick tried to temporize. "But, Mrs. Medford, 
 we can t play with serious matters. We must respect 
 the dead." Fenwick had not looked ahead; it was 
 obvious that he simply did not wish to be responsible 
 for anything that purported to be a message. 
 
 "He s my brother! And if he gets through to you 
 while I m here, it s for me. That is my property." 
 
 Allis came up and looked shamelessly over Fen- 
 wick s shoulder at the writing. "No, it isn t, Fanny. 
 It s Fenwick s. He shall do absolutely what he pleases 
 with it in my house. I m responsible." 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 333 
 
 There was a curious morbid note of confession in his 
 voice. But no one paid any attention to tones of voice, 
 because a very undignified scene followed immediately 
 on his words. 
 
 Mrs. Medford clutched the papers that Fenwick 
 held. She got away with the first page, too, and 
 turned her back on us heading for the drawing-room 
 beyond. "Don t you dare, as you believe in a God, 
 to destroy any of it," she threw back over her shoul 
 der. 
 
 She had to fight for even her one page not very 
 hard, for of course Fenwick couldn t struggle with her 
 physically. The two men, Allis and Fenwick, looked 
 ridiculous as they faced each other in the tacit ad 
 mission that they couldn t help themselves. Ben pulled 
 himself together quickly. "Get that away from her, 
 Maud by force, if necessary." 
 
 "But, Ben " 
 
 "I said by force, if necessary, Maud," he repeated 
 sternly. 
 
 She flew ahead after Mrs. Medford, obedient, but 
 sowing her path with protesting murmurs. 
 
 Genevieve Ford giggled, nervously. Carter raised 
 his eyebrows to the ceiling. "What is up, you fel 
 lows?" he asked weakly. 
 
 I heard Allis whisper to Fenwick. "Did you ever 
 know him Hilles?" 
 
 "No. Never heard his name till tonight." 
 
 "Then what the devil " 
 
 "I thought you d come to the devil in time." This 
 was Mrs. Conway on the outskirts. 
 
 An indignant cry came back from Maud Allis. 
 "Really, Ben, I can t. You d better come yourself. 
 She won t give it to me. Fanny, be sensible!" Then 
 the sound trailed away. 
 
334 VALIANT DUST 
 
 We followed Allis, Fenwick, Miss Ford, and I. 
 We passed through the drawing-room where they had 
 been a few seconds before, and out into the hall. Maud 
 Allis stood there furious, a little dishevelled, sucking a 
 hurt finger. "She s locked herself into the telephone 
 closet. I don t know what you expect me to do." 
 
 "Not anything more. We can t help it now. We ll 
 go away and leave her. She ll come out." 
 
 But Maud was shaking with anger and nervous 
 ness. "How do you know she will? If it s anything 
 so bad that she oughtn t to see it, she may never 
 come out. She may just die there." 
 
 Allis smiled, in spite of himself. "People don t just 
 die in telephone closets. And she ll come out, if for 
 nothing else, because she wants to see the rest of it." 
 
 "But if it should be so dreadful " 
 
 "It doesn t make any difference how dreadful it may 
 be. She ll feel she s got to see it. Oh, damnl" 
 
 Then he moved over to the door of the closet. 
 "Fanny," he shouted, "we re going back to the library. 
 If you don t come out inside of five minutes, we ll 
 break down the door. Now what a fool thing that 
 was to say," he murmured, precisely as if we were 
 to blame for his words. 
 
 A slender figure in white Spanish lace became sud 
 denly manifest among us. "Mrs. Allis, can I tele 
 phone?" Mrs. Conway asked softly. 
 
 "No, I m afraid you can t." Maud s answer was 
 grim. "Fanny Medford has locked herself into the 
 telephone closet with the first sheet of that wretched 
 stuff." 
 
 "Then will some one go out and telephone for me" 
 she gave the number "and ask them to send my 
 car at once?" 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 335 
 
 "Ben can telephone from the extension upstairs," 
 Maud suggested sullenly. 
 
 "Oh, thank you. I wish he would." 
 
 Allis turned suddenly upon Mrs. Conway. "I can t 
 pretend that, as a host, I m proud of my hospitality. 
 But don t you think it would be kinder all round if 
 we didn t break up? We might be able to get that 
 poor thing out of her hysteria if we all stuck about and 
 did our best?" 
 
 "I have no intention of going before Mrs. Medford 
 does, Mr. Allis," was the very quiet reply. "I thought 
 it might be a good thing to have the car waiting. 
 Mayn t I go up and telephone, myself? I think Mr. 
 Allis ought to stay here." 
 
 Maud nodded. "It s in my room. And Mrs. Con- 
 way moved up-stairs. She leaned over the stair-rail 
 on the first landing and spoke to Fenwick. "Don t 
 destroy those other pages. If she still wants to see 
 them, she d better much better." 
 
 "You don t know what s in them," Fenwick an 
 swered. Nor did he, but he evidently considered they 
 were not to be lightly treated. 
 
 "It doesn t make any difference what s in them. 
 Not even if were the Black Mass." She went on, up. 
 
 We went back into the library then, and Allis stood, 
 watch in hand, waiting. He was beginning to mean 
 it, about breaking down the door, I could see. Allis 
 had had a good glimpse of the first page. Fenwick 
 had seen a little. None of the rest of us knew any 
 thing but those three first words like a telephone call: 
 "Jack Hilles speaking." 
 
 Before Allis moved, Mrs. Medford came slowly 
 through the drawing-room, holding the sheet of paper 
 very carefully in her hand. A little behind, Mrs. Con- 
 way s white form gently stalked her. 
 
336 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Fanny Medford s poor little head was held very 
 high. "I suppose you people have read the rest and 
 doubtless Mr. Fenwick has told you what is in this." 
 She tapped the paper. 
 
 "Not one of us knows anything or has read a word," 
 Maud Allis declared. 
 
 Allis frowned. "That s not quite true, Maud. I 
 saw a little a few sentences of what Mrs. Medford 
 took with her. I dare say Fenwick saw as much. But 
 no one has seen all of it except Mrs. Medford, and 
 no one has seen any of the other sheets. That is the 
 exact state of the case." 
 
 "You will kindly give me the rest of the writing," 
 Mrs. Medford went on, to Fenwick. 
 
 But Mrs. Conway stepped forward and slipped the 
 sheets from Fenwick s grasp. He let her take them, 
 though he looked at Allis anxiously. The situation 
 was becoming Mrs. Conway s. 
 
 "I have them, you see." She turned to Mrs. Med 
 ford. "And if you insist, you shall have them. Of 
 course I wish you would let me destroy them all, here 
 and now. It isn t true, you know, that the dead com 
 municate. They don t." 
 
 Mrs. Medford was shaking, but her voice was still 
 her own. "They do. I know they do. Jack talked 
 to me through Mrs. Weale, who s dead now. But not 
 this kind of thing. It s wicked, it s beastly, what 
 you ve done!" she cried to Fenwick. 
 
 "But, Mrs. Medford, I don t even know what s there 
 except the first sentences. I never knew your 
 brother. I don t believe this stuff, of course." 
 
 "Nobody believes anything, Fanny." Allis corrobo 
 rated him. "This sort of thing has been shown up, 
 time and again, for the most arrant trash. It s just our 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 337 
 
 bad luck that something got written that was upset 
 ting for you." 
 
 "You believe it you know you do." Her voice 
 was half a choke in her throat. 
 
 To my consternation, Allis did not deny it, at once 
 and with passion. "Fanny, don t be absurd. You 
 know perfectly well what my attitude to these matters 
 is. Purely scientific skepticism." 
 
 "I say that you believe those things of Jack. As 
 for Mr. Fenwick" she disposed of him then and 
 there with a look of loathing "I leave him to the rest 
 of you." 
 
 Maud Allis followed her out of the room. 
 
 Allis took out his handkerchief and wiped his fore 
 head. "Any one of you men feel like seeing her 
 home?" he asked. "Fenwick and I would seem to be 
 out of the running." 
 
 Mrs. Conway put out her hand. "Good-night, Mr. 
 Allis. Of course I m going to take her home. What 
 did you suppose I ordered my car for?" She did not 
 bid the rest of us good-night, but she seemed to ad 
 dress us all in parting. "Naturally, I don t know 
 what s in these papers. But I take it, it is something 
 pretty bad about her brother. Mrs. Medford may 
 have to see them, since I promised her; but I guar 
 antee you they shall be destroyed without my, or any 
 one s else, reading them. It s all nonsense, of course, 
 but you see she half believes. Truly, I m the best 
 person to see her through, because I can explain it." 
 
 "It s just some foolish trick of muscles and re 
 arranging all the words in the dictionary," burst in 
 Fenwick, hotly. 
 
 "Yes." She smiled. "But what foolish trick? 
 That s what you can t explain to her. And I can. 
 You may not think my explanation is correct, but at 
 
338 VALIANT DUST 
 
 least it begins at the beginning and sees you through 
 to the end. That is why I shall try to convince her. 
 You open-minded people can t." 
 
 "Even so, Allis said, "I don t see how you re going 
 to manage it." 
 
 She had turned to go, but she stopped and answered 
 him. "I ve this advantage, you see. You can t tell 
 her why it happened. I can. Malice accounts for 
 everything." 
 
 "There s not an ounce of malice in this crowd," 
 Carter remarked. 
 
 "No, not among us. But the things you let into 
 your foolish minds are all malice. Believe me, they ve 
 had a ripping time to-night. They have to take what 
 they can find yes. It s the way they use it that 
 counts." 
 
 "But suppose whatever it is were true," Miss Ford 
 murmured. "Suppose it was her brother, after all, 
 getting through." 
 
 "I ve told you the dead can t get through not the 
 real dead. It s only spirits pretending." 
 
 "You ll never get her to believe that," Allis said 
 ruefully. "None of us could believe that." 
 
 "Pardon me, I could," Mrs. Conway threw back. 
 "And if I can make Mrs. Medford believe it, too, it 
 will be the best way out of the mess you ve made." 
 
 "Good luck go with you," he called after her. But 
 he seemed dazed. 
 
 When Maud Allis came back, Miss Ford made her 
 adieux, and Carter left with her. They had been, 
 from first to last, outsiders, and perhaps it was the 
 most tactful thing they could have done. I prepared 
 to follow them, and Maud Allis, saying good-night to 
 them, bade me good-night, too. 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 339 
 
 "I ve got to see Nora," she said. "I promised her 
 I would before she went to bed. I meant to cut out 
 from bridge. Probably I shall see you again, Mr. 
 Fenwick. Sorry you have to go, Mr. Gregory." There 
 was certainly no urge to stay, in her voice. She was 
 more done up than she owned. Yet she had not seen 
 those sheets that Fenwick had written any more than 
 I had, or Mrs. Conway, or Genevieve Ford, or Carter. 
 
 I let Carter and Miss Ford get away a little in front 
 of me, thinking that they were best by themselves, 
 in the fellowship of their detachment from it all. 
 Whatever had happened to the rest of us had left them 
 unscathed. They had not been touched, apparently, 
 by the episode, except to see that Mrs. Medford s 
 exit was a cue for them to break up the party. I 
 lighted a cigarette in the vestibule, and craned my neck 
 to see them turn the corner. I was jerked back by a 
 clutch on my collar, and I dropped the cigarette. 
 
 "Come back in here, you idiot!" said Allis in my 
 ear. "Did you really think you were going?" 
 
 Yes, I really had thought so; but I went in again. 
 
 I found, when I reached the library (Allis locked 
 the door behind us) that he had furnished Fenwick 
 with a precious drink. He offered me none, and was 
 taking nothing himself. Whiskey is medicine, in these 
 days. 
 
 "Fenwick and I need someone else to sit in with 
 us," Allis declared. "I may have to tell Maud later. 
 That s neither here nor there. I m glad those two 
 young people had the sense to go. If they hadn t, I d 
 have kicked them out." 
 
 "Well, of course, I m eaten alive with curiosity," I 
 admitted. "Only it all sounded like the sort of thing 
 that wouldn t be mentioned again unless necessary. I 
 never saw a word of the stuff, remember." 
 
340 VALIANT DUST 
 
 "I saw precious little of it, and Fenwick here saw no 
 more than I did." Allis began to walk about with his 
 hands in his pockets. "You can see the effect it has 
 had on Fenwick." 
 
 Fenwick s head was buried in his hands. "I wrote 
 the damned stuff. That s what gets me." I saw why 
 Allis had fetched whiskey for him. 
 
 "We aren t going to quote it for your benefit even 
 if we could," went on Allis. "But you can take it from 
 us that it was unmitigated filth. We judge by sam 
 ple." 
 
 "Then why did you give the rest of it to those 
 women?" I shouted. "Why didn t you burn up what 
 you had your hands on, at least?" 
 
 "Easy, now, easy." But Allis was troubled. He 
 made an eloquent gesture over Fenwick s bowed head. 
 "We practically had to do what Mrs. Conway said. 
 I believe she is the person to deal with Fanny Med- 
 ford. Evil spirits are the best way out if she can 
 take it. And Mrs. Conway is a clever woman. But 
 we three have got to sift the matter. It seemed to be 
 autobiographical, by the way statement of things 
 done in the past. Buck up, Fenwick. It s more my 
 fault than yours." 
 
 "Your fault? You didn t even write Ask Fen 
 wick, our friend retorted. The whiskey was 
 strengthening him a little. 
 
 Allis paid no attention. "I take it for granted that 
 none of us now present subscribes to Mrs. Conway s 
 theory. Very well. That s that. Fenwick wrote 
 automatically a lot of stuff of which he and I have 
 seen a little. It all purported to be Jack Hilles speak 
 ing, and on that basis it was Jack Hilles very much 
 giving himself away. Of course, it wasn t Jack Hilles 
 any more than it was the Secretary of State. Mrs. 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 341 
 
 Conway is right, at least, when she says the dead don t 
 communicate." 
 
 "Then this kind of thing just flowers naturally out 
 of the rich soil of my mind, I suppose?" Fenwick asked 
 sarcastically. 
 
 Allis smiled faintly. "I wouldn t say that. But 
 you ve knocked about the world more than most of 
 us, and you ve seen more than your share of exotic rot 
 tenness. Gregory and I would have had to go out and 
 hunt for it. You ve had it thrust upon your notice. If 
 your subconscious stores it up, it isn t your fault." 
 
 "But what on earth should make me drag out hor 
 rors and attribute them to a man I never laid eyes on, 
 who died fighting for his country in the Argonne?" 
 
 "That," said Allis deliberately, "is where I come 
 in." 
 
 "You?" We both exclaimed. 
 
 Allis leaned against the chimney-piece, his hands 
 still in his pockets. "Well, yes. Of course Jack Hilles 
 name was bound to appear if any name appeared 
 after the way Fanny had gone on. But if that sort 
 of thing was dragged out of you, about Hilles, instead 
 of nice, sweet, comforting things, it was probably be 
 cause my mind was stronger than Fanny Medford s." 
 
 "Do you mean that you were thinking that kind of 
 thing about Hilles all the time?" Fenwick queried. 
 
 "No, I wasn t thinking those things about him," 
 Allis answered slowly. "I merely knew those things 
 about him. That is I never knew he did anything 
 so bad as what was written there, but I knew he was 
 a bad lot." 
 
 "Then why didn t you write the stuff?" 
 
 "Like Mrs. Conway, I m not open-minded. I dis 
 believe it too utterly. I m prejudiced. But I don t 
 doubt my knowledge acted telepathically on your more 
 
342 VALIANT DUST 
 
 sensitive what shall I say? mental mechanism. It s 
 all suggestion. Mrs. Medford involuntarily suggests 
 Jack Hilles to you, and I involuntarily suggest the 
 kind of person I knew him to be." 
 
 We were silent a moment. 
 
 "It s hideous, all the same," I said finally. "He s 
 dead, after all in the Argonne." 
 
 "But not fighting for his country," Allis remarked 
 quietly. "He was shot for other reasons. I ve no 
 particular business to know that for a fact, but I do. 
 Fanny Medford never knew the worst of Jack Hilles, 
 but she had no illusions about him until he went into 
 the war. Then he became a hero. When he was 
 killed in the Argonne which is all she knows about 
 it he was a fortiori a hero: a super-hero, if you like. 
 You may have noticed that Fanny isn t exactly imper 
 sonal in her attitude to life." 
 
 He went on, after a pause. "I hope no one saw any 
 thing in my expression. ... I was rather shaken by 
 the glimpse I got. I never thought even Jack Hilles 
 went so far as that. I wonder if Fanny saw. She ac- 
 caused me of believing it all. She must have meant she 
 thought I believed it on the score of Fenwick s auto 
 matic writing. I believe it on the score of knowing 
 that Hilles was capable of anything. That, I per 
 haps didn t conceal sufficiently. And all of it, I m 
 banking heavily on Mrs. Con way to explain." 
 
 "I still don t see why I had to write the miserable 
 stuff," argued Fenwick though he seemed a little 
 more at ease than he had been. 
 
 "Well, I can t tell you that," Allis replied. "I m in 
 clined to believe that Mrs. Conway is wrong about 
 people s not being, more or less, psychic. Certainly 
 even she would have to admit that some are more 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 343 
 
 sensitive, readier vehicles, than others. It looks to 
 me as though you were a corker, Fenwick!" 
 
 Fenwick brooded for a time in silence, while Allis 
 and I smoked. At last he spoke. "No, it s too queer. 
 Evil spirits would explain everything, but I haven t 
 gone back to the Middle Ages yet. You try to explain 
 it, Allis, by arranging an intricate system of mental 
 telephone wires installed in an instant, ready for the 
 emergency. That may be accurate, but it s extremely 
 complicated. Too complicated, I d say. I m not con 
 tradicting you, you understand. But for myself, I 
 usually take the line of least resistance." He rose and 
 faced us. His fingers twitched a little as he, in turn, 
 lighted a cigarette. 
 
 "Meaning ?" Allis queried. 
 
 "Meaning that if Jack Hilles was the kind of per 
 son you say he was, the easiest place for that sort of 
 screed to have come from is Jack Hilles." 
 
 Allis s lips folded themselves firmly. "If you choose 
 to admit the supernatural hypothesis, I suppose it is 
 easy. I was ruling out impossibilities." 
 
 "The fact that you haven t proved a thing possible 
 doesn t mean that you ve proved it impossible, does it? 
 How about you, Gregory?" Fenwick turned to me. 
 
 I threw up my hands. "Oh, I m with Allis. It 
 sounds queer and far-fetched and all, but anything is 
 more reasonable than believing the dead communicate 
 in that way. Even Mrs. Conway is more reasonable." 
 
 "Well, I wish to God they had rigged up their wire 
 less on Allis s roof instead of mine!" Fenwick ex 
 ploded. He turned his back on us and walked over 
 to a dark window. 
 
 I tried to be judicial. "If Allis was thinking about 
 the sort of creature Jack Hilles really was, that in 
 itself accounts for the telepathy business." 
 
344 VALIANT DUST 
 
 Allis glared at me. "I wasn t thinking of Jack 
 Hilles. I knew he was a very bad lot, but I wasn t 
 thinking about it not at all. I was wondering if 
 Carter and Genevieve Ford would pull it off. And, 
 anyhow, I couldn t have thought that kind of thing 
 about Hilles. It just wouldn t naturally have occurred 
 to me. Whereas, it might have, to Fenwick, with his 
 background." 
 
 Ben Allis stopped, suddenly, and I felt the blood in 
 my body, for an instant, back up in its channels. For 
 just as Allis finished speaking, Fenwick drew back 
 from his window and crumpled up against the sofa. 
 No, he did not faint. He was, rather, at bay there, 
 against the world; against Allis and me, who rushed 
 to him at once. I did not try to read that face, though 
 it shouted at me silently. I turned my head away. 
 "Damn you all, damn you all!" Fenwick s white lips 
 were saying. "And I thought I d got rid of it forever. 
 Oh, damn you both!" Yet he did not seem to be 
 standing outside his own curse. 
 
 Fenwick roused himself at the sound of a knock on 
 the library door, and we faced about. The knock 
 saved us three from something pretty awful. 
 
 It was Maud Allis, and in her hand she carried a 
 ouija-board. "I found Nora playing with this thing," 
 she said; "and after to-night it was more than I could 
 bear. Will you please burn it up now so I can see it 
 burn?" 
 
 "You bet I will!" Allis broke it over his knee, and 
 went to the fire, which had almost died out. 
 
 With one eye on Fenwick, slowly, very slowly, com 
 posing himself to a normal posture and a normal ex 
 pression, with a sense that I must keep Maud off him, 
 I drew her away in the direction of the door. "I 
 hope" and I laid my hand on her wrist "the thing 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 345 
 
 hasn t been worrying Nora. She didn t get any echoes, 
 did she?" 
 
 "Oh dear, no. It had just been writing foolishness 
 probably the kind of foolishness you would expect 
 to come out of Nora s subconscious." 
 
 "Nothing about Jack Hilles?" I tried to laugh. 
 
 "I should hope not! Betty Dane s cousin, they re 
 all in love with; and their matinee heroes; and their 
 school commencement. But I ve put her to bed and 
 taken it away. I will not have my niece ouija-ing." 
 
 Ouija was now burning brightly above the Cape Cod 
 lighter. Ben Allis called to his wife. "Maud, do get 
 a taxi round at once for Fenwick. He s tired and 
 doesn t want to walk." 
 
 "Certainly, I will. Did you people come to any 
 conclusion?" 
 
 "Ben has the right of it, I m sure. Telepathy." I 
 spoke quite loud. "He ll tell you all about it. We re 
 going." 
 
 Maud went off to the telephone. 
 
 Fenwick s voice cut in. "Thanks for thinking of 
 the taxi, Allis. I believe I do want one. Good-night." 
 
 "Shall I come along with you?"- I asked, thinking 
 of Mrs. Conway s brave support of Fanny Medford. 
 
 Allis frowned, and Fenwick, though he had got him 
 self in hand, seemed to cringe a little before the frown. 
 "No, thanks. I m going straight to bed. It s needless 
 to say, I suppose, that this thing shall go no further, 
 as far as I am concerned. I can t say it has been a 
 pleasant evening, but it has been interesting. It s 
 funny, isn t it" he spoke rapidly, but carefully 
 "that a party of friends can react so differently? Mrs. 
 Conway thinks it s evil spirits; I think Hilles did get 
 through; and you and Allis think it was all com 
 municated from Allis s subconscious to mine. But we 
 
346 VALIANT DUST 
 
 all hope that Mrs. Con way will convince Mrs. Med- 
 ford." 
 
 No; he could evidently take care of himself now. 
 Mrs. Allis, returning, rallied him as she said good 
 night. 
 
 "Your taxi is there already, I think, Mr. Fenwick. 
 What do you think of Belshazzar s letter now? I m 
 sorry you had to get the letter." 
 
 It was all right for Maud to carry things off lightly 
 probably she felt it was her duty but it didn t help 
 Allis and me so much as she doubtless hoped. 
 
 "I think I can promise 1 never to meddle with this 
 sort of thing again," he said gravely. "I m convinced 
 it was the real thing. Your husband thinks he was re 
 sponsible. He ll explain to you." 
 
 Allis answered the plea that sounded faintly in Fen- 
 wick s voice. "Yes, Maud shall have my telepathy 
 theory. I think she ll agree. Maud, do go to the door 
 with Fenwick. There s no fender here, and I don t 
 like to leave ouija." 
 
 Maud Allis, as you may have made out, was a good 
 wife who never argued an absurdity if her husband 
 perpetrated it. She preceded Fenwick to the hall. 
 
 Allis gripped my hand. "I shall tell Maud exactly 
 what I said. You ll tell nobody anything." 
 
 "Of course not. For Mrs. Medford s sake, if noth 
 ing else." 
 
 Allis relaxed his grip. "Yes and Fenwick s, too. 
 I ve been fond of him for a long time. Perhaps he ll 
 never give himself away again." 
 
 "Perhaps not/ 7 I agreed. "Asia is a large con 
 tinent. He may come to believe it was Hilles com 
 municating, you know." 
 
 "Well, I rather hope he does. Fenwick s got to 
 live. But you and I don t believe it." 
 
BELSHAZZAR S LETTER 347 
 
 "No, we don t. 
 
 "It s queer," Allis mused; "you and I are the only 
 ones of the crowd who know what happened; and the 
 one thing we are most anxious for is that everyone 
 concerned even Fenwick himself should be con 
 vinced of some explanation we know is wrong. We 
 want Mrs. Medford to believe Mrs. Con way; I want 
 Maud to believe what I said here a while ago; and I 
 even want Fenwick to believe that the dead com 
 municate. We re a scientific lot, aren t we?" 
 
 "I m not sure I wouldn t rather believe any of those 
 things than believe what I do," I said grimly. I re^ 
 membered Fenwick s face. 
 
 "Exactly. Poor science!" 
 
 Mrs. Allis returned, and I bade my host and hostess 
 good-night. This time I did not go back again. 
 
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