THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE FOG
 
 B TOlUam DuMcB pellec 
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 
 THE FOG 
 
 DRAG
 
 THE FOG 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY 
 
 BOSTON 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1925
 
 Copyright, JQ2I, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 PmiNTIO IH TH UNITtD STATES O7 AMERICA
 
 
 TO MY OWN BOY AT EIGHTEEN 
 
 " DANDELION FARM,'* 
 PASSUMPSIC, VT. 
 June 23, 1921. 
 
 2137S03 !
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 
 DRIZZLE AND MURK 
 
 CHAPTER >AGE 
 
 I THIS FRECKLED WORLD 3 
 
 II THE DRESDEN DOLL 12 
 
 III MORE PARENTS 21 
 
 IV THE FAIRY FOUNDLING 31 
 
 V IMPRESSIONS 3$ 
 
 VI THE ODD STICK 43 
 
 VII EXQUISITE THINGS 51 
 
 VIII PRAYER 58 
 
 IX BENDING THE TWIG 76 
 
 X THE SEX 89 
 
 XI POET IN HOMESPUN 102 
 
 XII FIRST COMPLICATIONS 120 
 
 XIII GOD AND THINGS 131 
 
 XIV CONSIDER THE WORM 141 
 
 XV VALLEY LAMPS 160 
 
 XVI MORE ROMANCING 167 
 
 XVII VALLEYS OF AVALON 187 
 
 XVIII ANOTHER CASE 203 
 
 XIX TACT AND DISCRETION 213 
 
 XX SIDE-TRACKED 227
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 
 
 CHAPTER PAG1 
 
 I Too EASY MONEY 245 
 
 II GROPING HORRIBLY 267 
 
 III GOOD RESOLUTIONS 291 
 
 IV POOR Sow's EAR 297 
 
 V ALWAYS JUSTIFIED 306 
 
 VI INFINITE PATIENCE 316 
 
 VII FINE FEATHERS 326 
 
 VIII DRIFTING 347 
 
 IX THE LAST STRAW 353 
 
 X FIRST LIGHT 367 
 
 XI MAN'S WORLD 391 
 
 XII UNTIL WHEN? 401 
 
 XIII INTERLUDE 410 
 
 XIV SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 419 
 
 XV THE AMETHYST MOMENT 439 
 
 XVI SYMPATHY - .... 447 
 
 XVII ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 458 
 
 XVIII EAST is WEST 474 
 
 XIX VIA LOHENGRIN 484 
 
 XX HILL TOPS 495
 
 BOOK ONE 
 DRIZZLE AND MURK
 
 THE FOG 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THIS FRECKLED WORLD 
 
 I straddled, precariously balanced, atop a seven-foot fence 
 marking the northern boundary of the little Vermont school 
 yard. As this was the opening morning for the September 
 term, I had left home painfully dressed in the full armor 
 of country-village scholarship. Already the puckering- 
 string of my blouse was broken and my new dollar-and-a- 
 quarter boots were hot upon my feet. No matter ! Noisily 
 on the philosophical old boards I whacked a barrel stave. I 
 had aspirations toward making the lower world of pinafored 
 humanity remark nervously of my valor and horrible pro 
 pensities for breaking an arm. But I did not address that 
 pinafored world directly. No such aplomb is possessed by 
 a youngster of eight. 
 
 A new boy edged his way into the yard twenty minutes 
 before the bell rang and moved along my fence. He con 
 centrated upon tallying its knotholes. I noted that he was 
 a stranger and immediately took his measure. 
 
 ;< 'Lo !" I greeted him. 
 
 " 'Lo, yourself !" he responded. 
 
 "What's yer name?" I demanded, piqued. 
 
 "Name, name, Puddin' Tame; ask me again and I'll tell 
 yer the same !" 
 
 "Aw, don't get fresh !" I advised him. "I could 'do' you 
 with one hand tied behind me if I wanted." 
 
 "My ma licks me if I fight when I'm dressed up. If it 
 wasn't for that, you couldn't." And the new boy looked 
 at me gladiatorially, expecting me to believe this bravado 
 without a question.
 
 4 THE FOG 
 
 Incipient hostilities were halted by the appearance or 
 condition of the new boy's face. Twenty-four years have 
 passed since that morning. I have beheld many boys. Yet 
 never since a freshly molded clay Adam was pronounced a 
 reasonably passable job and stood against the nearest rock 
 to dry has one human being looked into the features of 
 another, regardless of age, and beheld such freckles. 
 
 I once knew a boy who had thirty-one thousand seven 
 hundred and eighty-four freckles, not counting those behind 
 his ears or a few odd thousand remaining, sprinkled across 
 the back of his neck. The average boy manages to worry 
 along with eighteen or twenty thousand. But the infinity 
 of freckles upon that new boy's face was beyond all com 
 putation. The Lord might have known the number of 
 hairs in his head, but there He stopped. It would have been 
 hopeless even to try to separate those freckles so to com 
 pute them, anyhow. 
 
 "Aw, you don't need to tell me your old name," I con 
 descended. "You're one o' them Forges that's moved up to 
 Brown's." 
 
 "Howja guess?" 
 
 "I know by your freckles. I heard Lawyer Campbell 
 call your folks 'them freckled Forges.' Your ma's got 'em 
 and so's your pa. You've all got 'em like measles 'n itch." 
 
 Instead of growing more bellicose, the new boy became 
 apologetic. 
 
 "Yeah, but they ain't got so many as me Ma and Pa 
 ain't. Anyhow, I can't help it. I got a torpedoed liver." 
 
 "You gotta whatT" 
 
 "A torpedoed liver !" 
 
 "What's a torpedoed liver?" 
 
 He tried to explain. In the light of a maturer under 
 standing, I assume he meant a torpid liver. But I was 
 little wiser than he that morning, so one liver was as good 
 as another. 
 
 "Year, but they ain't got so many as me Ma and Pa 
 leaves. Ma says all us Forges has got too much iron in 
 our blood and it makes us rust all over, outside." 
 
 "Iron in yer blood !" I looked at the Forge boy incredu 
 lously. Was he spoofing me ? 
 
 "Howja know? I demanded. "Can yer hear it clank 
 together ?"
 
 THIS FRECKLED WORLD 5 
 
 I had a mental suggestion of sundry billets and bars of 
 cold steel, wagon springs, old horseshoes, machine castings 
 circulating through the new boy's system and wondered 
 how he managed it. 
 
 "Naw," he went on. " 'Tain't that kind of iron. It's all 
 melted or ground up to powder or sumpin'. I ain't never 
 heard it make no noise, anyway." 
 
 "Maybe we ain't got no floatin' iron in our family," I de 
 fended, "but my Aunt Lucy's got sumpin' just as good and 
 horrible. She's got floatin' ribs, three of 'em. Betcha you 
 ain't got nobody in your old family with floatin' ribs." 
 
 It was now the small Forge boy's turn to show incre 
 dulity. And momentarily I exulted. 
 
 "But ribs don't float," he contradicted. "They're hitched 
 to yer backbone and run around yer stomach like hoops. 
 I seen a pitcher of a man with his skin off, once. If they 
 was loose and floated, you'd be all flat and hollow and sort 
 of pushed in across your chest." 
 
 "Is that so ?" I demanded hotly. "Maybe you know my 
 Aunt Lucy's shape better'n me!" This stranger asked me 
 to believe he had iron circulating in his system and yet 
 doubted that mere bones could follow suit. 
 
 It was true that Aunt Lucy's irresponsible ribs had given 
 me much perplexity as to just where they floated, or where 
 they would go if they suddenly lost their buoyancy and 
 sank. Still, I knew my claim had a basis in fact. I had 
 overheard too many first-hand testimonials of her abstruse 
 condition from the fearfully and wonderfully unjointed 
 lady herself. 
 
 Before I could conjure up more human freaks, however, 
 related to me by facetious Nature, with a diplomacy which 
 has always been charming, young Nathan Forge introduced 
 a new subject. 
 
 "We just moved to Brown's place last month from Gil 
 berts Mills," he declared. "And we got five bedrooms and 
 a vegetable cellar and cockroaches an' everything. An' I 
 got a dog named Ned that don't get sick when he catches 
 skunks. He caught seven one autumn and brung 'em to 
 me. But one wasn't shook quite dead yet, and I had to 
 stay in bed a week while they buried my clothes. Pa wanted 
 to bury me, too, but Ma wouldn't stand for it !" 
 
 "That's nothin'," I countered. "We gotta cat at our
 
 6 THE FOG 
 
 house named Apron-strings 'cause she's always behind you 
 when you turn 'round. An' all you gotta do to make her 
 have kittens is watch her! My father says, 'Look twice at 
 that dratted little beast and she has young all over the 
 place.' He's goin' to dig a special well to drown 'em in 
 when he gets time. He said so." 
 
 "We got two wells over to our house already," Nat re 
 torted, "one to drink from and one to fish things out of. 
 Campbell's pants is down the last one." 
 
 "Campbell's pants !" 
 
 "My father said so. Lawyer Campbell come over the 
 day we moved in, to see about the hay. He'd bought some 
 new pants to the Center and had 'em in a bundle. On the 
 way home he missed 'em. When Pa heard, he says to Ma : 
 'He might look down that well in the south lot ! I've fished 
 everything out of it but money!' he says. 'Bet I could find 
 Campbell's pants if I fished long enough.' ' 
 
 Evidently the Forges occupied exceptionally interesting 
 premises. I congratulated myself that I had been discreet 
 about punching Nat's jaw. I would cultivate this new boy. 
 
 Not once during all this, however, had we looked each 
 other straight in the eye. That is another unethical thing 
 between boys of eight. We went through gyrations with 
 hands, legs, elastic torsos. We kicked at stones in the sand. 
 We pried them loose and threw them. But our faces were 
 always averted. 
 
 "Got any brothers or sisters ?" I finally demanded. 
 
 "Yeah. I gotta sister." 
 
 "Pshaw! How old?" 
 
 "Four. But she ain't no good only to tag 'round and 
 squeal to Ma when I skip my chores." 
 
 "Sure. I know. Girls always spoil everything. Ain't it 
 awful?" 
 
 "Awful's no name for it," agreed Nathan. 
 
 II 
 
 I learned other things of Nathan regarding his family 
 that morning and in the day and week ensuing. 
 
 The Forges had a cow, a grievance against the selectmen, 
 a hard time to get along and a mortgage. Nathan's mother
 
 THIS FRECKLED WORLD 7 
 
 was five years older than his father. The latter had once 
 aspired to be a minister. A premature marriage, however, 
 had sent him to the humbler calling of tapping and heeling 
 shoes. Along with farming in a small way to help out with 
 domestic expenses, Johnathan Forge now proposed to cobble 
 shoes at his new residence in East Foxboro. 
 
 On his father's side the boy's ancestry was English, that 
 bigoted, Quilpish English which contends that a man's wife 
 and children are his personal chattels and foot-scrapers. A 
 neurasthenic Yankee wife resented the absurdity but was 
 too weak-charactered to do much more than scream about 
 it. It puzzled me in those days to hear him orate to my 
 father about "every man's house being his castle." I could 
 never discern evidences of a "castle" about the flat-roofed, 
 drab-colored, hillside home for which Johnathan had paid 
 the Browns five hundred dollars. Nevertheless, he ran his 
 castle as he pleased, and all the neighbors could do was 
 shrug their individual and collective shoulders and mind 
 their own business. 
 
 Johnathan was a short man with watery blue eyes. And 
 his mouth never for a moment failed to register that the 
 world "had it in" for him. His antidote for this mundane 
 conspiracy was Religion. Religion completely strangled his 
 sense of humor if he ever possessed a sense of humor 
 and kept it strangled. As his children approached ma 
 turity, he went to and fro in the earth and moved up and 
 down in it with a stuffed club in his clothes always loaded 
 to the point of explosion, fearing that some one was tread 
 ing on his authority. He took his religion seriously, Johna 
 than did, and it gave him a sickening amount of trouble. 
 
 Nathan's mother also took life and religion seriously. 
 There was no other way to take it, with Johnathan for a 
 husband. As Johnathan aged, he became stout. As Anna 
 Forge aged, she became thin. But as I first recall her in 
 those East Foxboro days, she was a fairly well-rounded 
 woman with terribly work-reddened hands. She too had 
 weak eyes, greenish, pin-pointed eyes. Her neurasthenia 
 and hard work ultimately "wore the flesh all off her", and 
 soon she had contracted the nervous affliction of a twitch 
 ing face. She did her work in the hardest manner possible 
 and was always tired. She had a sallow, jaundiced com 
 plexion and it flavored her days and nights.
 
 8 THE FOG 
 
 Nat's little sister Edith was hardly more than a baby. 
 Yet even at four years she had her father's petulant mouth 
 and her mother's whine. 
 
 Nathan bore no resemblance to either parent. He was 
 just a freckle-faced, snub-nosed, wonder-eyed, good- 
 natured, little country boy. Quickly I found myself at 
 tached to him and he became my chum. 
 
 With all due respect to ninety-nine per cent, of that 
 specific sect who are emphatically all that the Forges were 
 not, the latter were Methodists. They were more. The 
 village had it they were "shouting Methodists." 
 
 I knew well enough what a regular Methodist was. 'My 
 own father and mother were Methodists. But a "shoutin' 
 Methodist" was a novelty and a mystery. I flew wildly 
 from the Forge shop one Saturday morning when, after 
 watching Johnathan at work on a pair of child's shoes for 
 a time, I summoned the nerve to ask : 
 
 "Say, Mr. Forge, tell me sumpin', will you ? I'm a brother 
 Methodist and all like that, you know, but not a 'shoutin' 
 Methodist', like all the village calls you, and, well, I'd like 
 to know what a 'shoutin' Methodist' is. Would you mind 
 shoutin' for me a coupla times so's I can see how you do 
 it and why?" 
 
 Johnathan not only shouted for me but he threw some 
 thing at me for good measure. I believe it was the nearest 
 old shoe. Both of which had nothing to do with religion. 
 I stopped running only when I had crossed the lower village. 
 I hid the balance of that forenoon under Artemus Wright's 
 blacksmith shop, lamenting that probably I would never be 
 allowed to play with my chum again. 
 
 It was in 1897 that the Forges bought the Brown place. 
 Rumors of war filled the land. If war came, my father 
 was going. My mother cried a lot about it. 
 
 in 
 
 The girlish young teacher gave Nat and me opposite 
 aisle seats in school that autumn morning, though quickly 
 Nathan went above me. His grandmother had taught him 
 to read; he was already familiar with ^Esop's "Fables" 
 and Grimm's "Fairy Tales."
 
 THIS FRECKLED WORLD 9 
 
 Late that afternoon, Nat and I walked home together, 
 down the hill, through East Foxboro village, past the 
 Methodist and Baptist churches, off on the Center road to 
 ward Brown's hill. The distance was only a mile, yet it 
 took us three hours. 
 
 Scuffing up the dust, stopping to throw stones at trees 
 or skipping them across the surface of the Causeway the 
 great sheet of water reaching on both sides of the road just 
 before we started to climb Brown's hill day after day 
 during that autumn we covered that distance together. 
 
 The Causeway does not look so "great" now. Nathan and 
 I drove over there the other day. The place was only a 
 depressing mud flat, rank with stagnant water, grotesque 
 stumps and tall rushes, where town loafers were trying to 
 hook discouraged hornpout. 
 
 But to make slow progress homeward to our "chores" 
 perhaps, but also to fathers and mothers and faces and scenes 
 which come now only in dreams, scaring out chipmunks, 
 sighting an occasional sand rabbit or woodchuck, sensing 
 the country air sensuous with ripened blackberry, goldenrod, 
 .nilkweed, or the roadside pines in Hadley's pasture for 
 that privilege again, dear God, Nathan and I would give 
 of our lives many years ! 
 
 For this is the first sorrow in the heart of a man, that 
 he should have known boyhood and never been able to appre 
 ciate its heritage until the clocks of time are all run down 
 and the chambers of his heart are peopled with ghosts ! 
 
 rv 
 
 In February of the year following, the Maine was mined 
 in Havana harbor. I remember my father coming home 
 through a storm of raw, wet sleet and leaving his horse un 
 harnessed while he entered the kitchen to read the head 
 lines of the Boston paper to my mother. In great block 
 letters on the front page was the grim word "WAR!" 
 
 Neighbors came in after supper. Opinion had it that 
 fighting would follow at once. They conversed as though 
 death were in the house. While they talked, I tried to listen. 
 I fell asleep under the sofa, and when I awoke I was in bed 
 with mother.
 
 io THE FOG 
 
 I could not understand why she hugged me to her heart 
 so fiercely and sobbed in the winter darkness. 
 
 Spring came quickly after that. It seems only yesterday 
 that Nat and I attended the "flag-raisings" and public 
 gatherings down on the village Common, with the boys in 
 blue getting ready for Chickamauga. I can hear again the 
 martial band music; I can see the flash of the drillmaster's 
 sword and hear the thumps of the rifle butts in the open 
 door of the town engine house where "Captain" Jack Hallo- 
 way was drilling the Foxboro boys. I watched them with 
 throttled heart and dry, hot throat. 
 
 My father was among them ! 
 
 Never shall I forget that last breakfast at home, how 
 smart he looked in his stiff blue uniform and how heavy his 
 rifle felt when I tried to lift it and point it at a target. 
 I remember too that he and mother avoided each other's 
 eyes during that breakfast. Mother did not go to the station. 
 She could not trust herself. I tried to see dad as the train 
 pulled out but the crowd engulfed me. 
 
 All my life since he has been but a picture in a plush 
 album on the center-table in mother's parlor an erect little 
 man with a fierce mustache, his slouch hat with crossed- 
 muskets showing plainly. 
 
 Nathan's father did not go to war. He said war "stood 
 condemned by Religion." He quit cobbling to move down 
 to the Center and open a store. 
 
 Micah Baker's eldest son Sela came home on a furlough 
 the following autumn. I remember his rumpled soldiering 
 clothes, the rakish angle of his hat, how he stood with his 
 back to the kitchen range, warming himself. He had been 
 ill with fever and wore an overcoat, roughly tied at the 
 neck with a piece of rope. My mother's face was ashen 
 as she waited for him to speak. As he was about to leave, 
 he remarked quietly: 
 
 "Herb wanted I should tell you his last thoughts was of 
 you and the boy. And ... he didn't suffer no more'n 
 could be expected. He said especially to tell the boy his 
 dad's sorry he can't be on hand to help him as he grows to 
 manhood." 
 
 That summer we sold the farm, mother being unable to 
 work it with father never coming back. We also moved 
 down to the Center. Mother happened to get a house near
 
 THIS FRECKLED WORLD n 
 
 the Forges. So Nathan and I set our little feet upon the 
 long journey that begins in vales of opal mystery and the 
 vvondertime of early childhood, winds pathetically through 
 twenty years of fog while growing boys are groping to find 
 themselves and hew their niche and accomplish their task, 
 . . . knows perhaps a few golden hours of life's philosophic, 
 sunlit afternoon, then ends in an afterglow of still greater 
 mystery out behind the farthest star.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DRESDEN DOLL 
 
 Caleb Gridley, the girl's father, ran the tannery in the 
 larger town of Paris, twenty miles west of the Foxboros. 
 He was a big-bodied, small headed man, with iron fists, a 
 paving-block jaw and legs like telephone poles. Some of his 
 words weigh seven to the pound and he did not secure them 
 from his Bible, either, if he ever read his Bible. 
 
 Mrs. Clementina Gridley, the girl's mother, claimed she 
 was related on her mother's side to a duchess. Then to 
 double rivet the exclusive ancestry, on her father's side she 
 had vague claims to a relative who had crossed on a certain 
 well-known occasion to this stern and rock-bound coast, 
 landing at Plymouth and marking the commencement of the 
 antique furniture business. Mrs. Gridley was short and in 
 upper contour resembled a barrel. She clothed herself 
 and little daughter in purple and fine linen, and both of 
 them toiled not, neither did they spin. She brought the first 
 lorgnette to Paris, hung its first pair of sunfast overdrapes, 
 called old Bill Chew, the colored man-of-all-work, the 
 "coachman", affected to be shocked when old Caleb blew his 
 tea in a saucer and tried unsuccessfully to start a local 
 aristocracy. 
 
 These two a mother with an ingrowing consciousness of 
 her own grandeur and a father who endured it because he 
 was too engrossed in making money to give his family 
 much attention were the little Gridley girl's mental, moral 
 and spiritual handicaps. More than one good woman's 
 fingers itched to paddle her ; more than one good man would 
 have counted it a special dispensation from Providence if 
 he could have spent five minutes alone with her and thor 
 oughly boxed her ears. But Bernie's extremities were never 
 paddled and Bernie's ears were never boxed.
 
 THE DRESDEN DOLL 13 
 
 At four, little Bernice was told she was made of better 
 clay than the ordinary run of Eve's daughters and at six 
 she was sure of it. At eight she frequently mentioned the 
 family "blood." At ten she had queried Mrs. Joseph 
 Fodder if "common children were not terribly coarse and 
 mortifying" and "why did the Creator ever make the lower 
 classes so disgustingly prolific?" 
 
 Yet the little snob was pretty, pretty as a Dresden doll. 
 And the Duchess kept her starched and ironed and curled 
 and furbelowed until the tired mothers of the disgustingly 
 prolific lower classes gave up all competition in despair. 
 
 For the opposite and lower end of the social seesaw the 
 Forges as a family would have answered as well as any caste 
 exhibit to the county. Living in Foxboro Center was 
 enough. Could any social good come out of Foxboro Center ? 
 Certainly not! Mute, inglorious Miltons might infest the 
 place, but the Gridleys at least, the female Gridleys 
 aspired to nothing in common with mute, inglorious Miltons. 
 
 II 
 
 It was a pleasant July afternoon, after we had moved 
 to the Center, that the head of the House of Gridley hitched 
 his sleek black mare to a neat piano-box buggy and drove 
 twenty miles eastward to call upon the House of Forge. 
 It was not a social call. The head of the House of Gridley 
 left all such nonsense to his Duchess. John Forge owed old 
 Caleb three lapsed payments for harness leather and old 
 Caleb intended "to get his money or bust hell wide open." 
 
 When he drove forth from the Gridley gates to "bust 
 hell wide open" that afternoon beside him was the Dresden 
 doll. She was ironed and starched and curled and furbe 
 lowed as usual and she kept the sun from her peach- 
 bloom complexion by a tiny, beribboned parasol. They had 
 not ridden a block before old Caleb referred to this parasol. 
 He said, "Keep that trick umbrella away from my hat or 
 I'll smash it!" Old Caleb was not at all aristocratic like 
 his Duchess. 
 
 The Gridleys reached Foxboro Center. John Forge was 
 at home, "getting in" his hay. Arrived there, old Caleb 
 descended, backed the mare around and unhooked her check-
 
 14 THE FOG 
 
 rein. He trusted her to remain without hitching, so long 
 as her nose was in the clover growing outside the Forge 
 front fence. Thereupon Caleb went down into the fragrant 
 hayfields in search of Johnathan. The mare spread her 
 front legs and began to enjoy herself. 
 
 Little Bernice-Theresa's first maneuver was to unwind 
 the reins from the whip. Holding them in one hand and 
 the foolish little parasol in the other, she greatly hoped 
 sundry persons would appear and remark upon what a mar 
 velous child was this, who could assume jurisdiction of an 
 untied mare while her elders were flagrantly absent. 
 
 It may be recorded that some one did appear ; Nathan 
 Forge "materialized" beside the picket fence and the drama, 
 old as the hills eternal, was commenced. 
 
 Nathan Forge, living in Foxboro Center, was naturally 
 of the earth, earthy. He was likewise of the soil, soily, 
 very much soiled in comparison with the starched and 
 beribboned daintiness of little Bernice-Theresa. His hair 
 needed cutting; his eyes were vague. His face had grown 
 a few odd-thousand additional freckles with the summer 
 vacation and one great toe was wrapped in a horribly un 
 sanitary rag. 
 
 This product of the disgustingly prolific lower classes 
 beheld the smart rig halted before the house and was seized 
 with an exasperating interest. 
 
 Now every one who has been a boy, or who owns a boy, 
 appreciates that while sisters are, generally speaking, of 
 no earthly consequence or account whatsoever, there are 
 girls and girls! This is better explained by studying the 
 behavior of such a boy in propinquity with a feminine 
 stranger who had first been properly starched and ironed 
 and curled and furbelowed, though not conventionally in 
 troduced. 
 
 The boy does not place his feet upon the surface of the 
 world in a methodical, orderly manner, maintaining himself 
 in a status of physical poise and bodily rectitude. He 
 demonstrates the difference between girls and girls by the 
 knots in which he proceeds to tie his spine. No boy ties his 
 spine into knots for his sister. So Nat made his first 
 concessions to The Sex by starting to wind himself in and 
 out through the holes where pickets were missing in his 
 father's fence.
 
 THE DRESDEN DOLL 15 
 
 I forego a record of the twistings and turnings, the writh- 
 ings and contortions, which ensued to attract the attention 
 of the Fayre Ladye and bind her to his chariot forever. 
 He did not neglect to rub his backbone on the gatepost four 
 times, whirl about without upsetting himself three, hit the 
 trunk of an adjacent tree with stones twice, and balance a 
 stick on his nose once. Then he climbed the gate and 
 swung head downward in horrible danger of dashing out 
 his brains. 
 
 "Lo !" he greeted. And he grinned. 
 
 The crass effrontery, the Use majeste, of daring to address 
 Her Royal Highness was bad enough. But that grin! 
 
 Bernice-Theresa Gridley sat stunned. She could con 
 jure up no phase of etiquette for meeting the situation but 
 a posture of frigid silence and staring stiffly ahead. He 
 was less than the dust beneath her carriage wheel. True, 
 he wasn't yet beneath her carriage wheel but he might land 
 there in a moment if he didn't stop trying to twist himself 
 into a human interrogation point. Why didn't her father 
 come? Oh, the mortification of it! 
 
 "Say, what's yer name?" persisted this awful progeny 
 of the lower classes. 
 
 A numbing silence. 
 
 Then, though embarrassed with his daring, Nathan an 
 nounced : 
 
 "That ain't the way to drive a horse. Girls don't know 
 nothin' bout animals, anyhow. I know how to drive a horse 
 better'n that! I'll climb up there and show yer!" 
 
 Bernice-Theresa jumped. 
 
 "You horrid boy!" she shrieked. "If you as much as 
 touch one of these buggy wheels, I'll have my father put 
 you in jail where the rats will run right over your face!" 
 It was the most hideous fate that Bernice-Theresa's nine 
 years could conceive. 
 
 "Huh! I ain't afraid o' rats! We caught a big one in 
 our trap last night. You stay here and I'll fetch him ! You 
 could take him home and stuff him and trim up a room with 
 him." 
 
 Acting on this generous impulse, Nathan quitted the gate 
 and ran to get the rigor-mortis exhibit. And in the ensuing 
 moments, confronted by the horror of his return, little 
 Bernice-Theresa suffered all the tortures of the damned.
 
 16 THE FOG 
 
 A filthy, intimate boy from the disgustingly productive lower 
 classes had gone to bring her a rat! Dead! He would 
 handle it. He might even drop it in the buggy. She must 
 fly while flying was possible. 
 
 But she could not climb down from the vehicle and fly 
 with legs. That would be common and crude ; beside, where 
 in the vicinity would she fly? No, it was far more con 
 sistent for the daughter of a Duchess to fly with a horse 
 and buggy. Therefore, ere the unspeakable vulgarian could 
 return, Bernice-Theresa got into action. 
 
 She shut her parasol and separated the reins. She nearly 
 pulled herself from the slippery seat, straining to raise the 
 mare's unwilling head from the clover. The animal's flank 
 was slapped sharply. When Nathan returned to the gate, 
 the road in front of the house was empty. 
 
 Nathan headed for the lower mowing. He approached 
 old Caleb without introduction. 
 
 "You gotta walk home, mister!" was his way of an 
 nouncing the news. "Or else you better chase your 
 buggy. Yer horse has runned off with it hitched behind 
 him !" 
 
 Old Caleb came up through the Forge yard in four- foot 
 jumps. He stopped for a speechless instant at the gate. 
 
 "If you're goin' right home, you might tell her I didn't 
 mean to scare her," explained Nathan. "We caught this 
 rat yesterday and I was going to let her have it " 
 
 "You little blatherskite! Scared her, did you? So she 
 took the lines and drove off home!" Caleb shook his 
 knotty fist under John Forge's nose. "If my girl's hurt, 
 I'll sue you for this ! I'll sue you anyhow, for the leather." 
 
 Thereupon old Caleb started after the rig in ludicrous 
 hops. 
 
 Hours later he reached Paris. His paving-block jaw 
 was still adamant but he had discovered no traces of buggy, 
 daughter or wreckage en route. By a miracle Bernice- 
 Theresa had reached home without mishap. The tragedy 
 was this: Finding at length that she had arrived at her 
 destination in safety, all parental solicitude vanished. Caleb 
 Gridley took the progeny of a Duchess across his knee and 
 spanked her! 
 
 As a result of that spanking, his wife made his life so 
 miserable that he sued Johnathan Forge at law. He had
 
 THE DRESDEN DOLL 17 
 
 to vent his spleen somewhere. And a week later, being 
 served with papers by the sheriff, Johnathan Forge also 
 had to vent his spleen somewhere and went in search of a 
 freckled-faced little boy. 
 
 Without explanation, simply desiring something weak on 
 which to wreak his temper, stifling his conscience with the 
 argument that the boy's misbehavior had frightened the 
 Dresden doll and precipitated the whole calamity, "Brother" 
 Forge of the local church belabored a contorting little body 
 with a harness tug until screams and howls brought his 
 mother. 
 
 Nat left his father and his mother "having it out." He 
 limped painfully, still sobbing, up the road to my house. 
 We climbed to our haymow together and Nathan finished 
 his weeping down beside me in the hay. 
 
 in 
 
 That was the first time Nathan and I seriously discussed 
 The Sex, when the boy's grief was spent and in its wake 
 came philosophy. 
 
 "Gee, but she was pretty, Billy," he confided. "She was 
 different, too, than girls here 'round Foxboro. I sort of 
 felt funny in my insides when I seen her. Mabel Turner 
 now she's fat and red- faced and her clothes is always 
 coming apart somewheres. Mary Anderson, she's always 
 laughin' and makin' fun of my freckles, and Alice Blake's 
 got freckles worse'n me, and warts besides. But this girl 
 gee, Billy, she was swell. I wonder why was it I felt so 
 funny about her right off as soon as I seen her. I never 
 felt that way about no girl before. Most girls is well, 
 just girls ! you know ! no good !" 
 
 "That's love!" I declared largely. 
 
 "Love?" Nathan was awed. "Then love's swell, ain't 
 it?" 
 
 "Depends how you look at it. Sometimes it is. Then 
 again it ain't." 
 
 Nat pondered this. It was deep. Finally in a whisper 
 he asked : 
 
 "Billy, why is it that girls is different from boys, and 
 women from men ?"
 
 i8 THE FOG 
 
 "It's on account of babies," I expatiated. "Benny Mayo 
 said so. A man told him once." 
 
 "How, on account o' babies, Billy?" 
 
 Thereupon I recounted boyhood's version of the intrica 
 cies of obstetrics, as viewed by boys who are not wholly 
 fools. 
 
 I hold no brief for myself. The parent who will not 
 concede that mere children do not seek light on life's great 
 est mystery where do people come from ? and ultimately 
 discuss it, is an ass. Only there was no perverted mischief 
 on my part about it. Nathan wanted to know something. 
 I possessed the information. It was no more than as if he 
 had asked me how to make a willow whistle or bait a chuck- 
 trap. 
 
 "Gee!" exclaimed Nathan frightenedly, "suppose it's so, 
 Billy?" 
 
 "There's sumpin to it," I averred. "We're all here, ain't 
 we? I'm gonna ask my Ma." 
 
 "So'm I," declared my chum. 
 
 Nathan finally started homeward. That night he sought 
 elucidation for the mystery exactly where it was normal he 
 should seek it, from his mother. But instead of supplying 
 his need in a healthy, kindly fashion fitted to his years, 
 Anna Forge did a narrow, vicious thing. 
 
 She whirled on her small son with an alacrity which 
 startled the senses out of him. And she administered a 
 shock to the sensitive boy whose effects did not entirely 
 vanish with manhood. 
 
 "Who put such ideas into your head?" she demanded 
 hysterically. 
 
 "Nobody 'specially, Ma. I was just thinkin', that's all." 
 
 "No ! Some one put the idea into your head. Who was 
 it?" 
 
 Nathan began to cry. 
 
 "B-B-Billy and me was talkin' about it in the haymow 
 this afternoon." 
 
 "So Billy did it ! I shall see Billy's mother in the morn 
 ing and have him horsewhipped for what he told you." 
 
 Nathan began to cry harder. 
 
 "Why, Ma?" he demanded in panic. 
 
 "Because all such things are vile and dirty and filthy and 
 horrible! Little boys who think them don't go to heaven
 
 THE DRESDEN DOLL 19 
 
 and have angels love them. They go to the Bad Place and 
 are burned in fire forever and ever. You know how it 
 hurt when you burnt your finger on my flatiron yesterday? 
 Imagine you were burnt all over your body like that and 
 there was no way to stop it and you just had to suffer 
 terribly with never a moment to sleep or forget. That's what 
 happens to bad little boys who say such things or even 
 think them !" 
 
 "But why is it bad, Ma? Billy didn't mean to be bad. 
 We just wondered, that's all. I can't help thinking about 
 'em, can I?" 
 
 "Oh, what a wicked, wicked little boy! Your dear 
 mother will be up in heaven and she won't have any little 
 son with her. Her little son will be down in the fires of 
 hell burning for always and always !" 
 
 The Forge woman pictured eternal torment so vividly 
 that Nathan grew hysterical. When the woman had the 
 boy worked into such a state that he was too terrified to 
 stay alone in the dark because of the devils waiting to grab 
 him, she made him promise never to think about girls or 
 women or babies again. Sniveling, the little shaver prom 
 ised. 
 
 His mother went to her bedroom and narrated the affair 
 to her husband. Johnathan was for thrashing the boy 
 soundly at once. 
 
 "No you've given him one whipping to-day and one 
 whipping a day is enough. I think I've scared him so 
 badly that he won't think of the subject again. And to 
 morrow I shall certainly see Billy's mother. If she doesn't 
 chastise her dirty-minded young one, I shan't let Nathan 
 go on playing with him." 
 
 Grumbling, John Forge was persuaded. Next day Mrs. 
 Forge went into indignant session with my mother. 
 
 "Yes, Billy catechised me in the same way," the latter re 
 sponded. "I told him what I thought it sane and reasonable 
 to tell a lad of his years. He'll learn it outside, anyway. 
 Probably he'll get a sordid, vulgar, perverted version. I 
 don't believe you can scare these things from the minds 
 of live-wire children, nor stifle the most normal impulses 
 of growing boyhood. I for one shan't try. As my boy 
 grows I want him to feel that he can come to his mother 
 at any time with his problems, especially his girl problems,
 
 20 THE FOG 
 
 without having the immortal daylights scared out of him 
 or made to feel that he's a criminal. It ain't natural, Anna 
 Forge, and so it ain't common sense." 
 
 "My boy shall not go on playing with yours, if that's the 
 sort of thing they're talking." 
 
 "Suit yourself, Anna Forge. I believe your philosophy's 
 wrong and you'll live to rue it." 
 
 "I don't have to be told what's decent for my own young 
 one !" 
 
 "Maybe you do and maybe you don't. That's yet to be 
 proven." 
 
 Anna Forge stalked homeward. The two women did 
 not speak for a month. But Nat's mother had done a 
 malicious thing that day. She had only turned the barb 
 of my friend's curiosity inward and prodded that worst 
 enemy of the human race to attack her small son viciously : 
 Repression.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MORE PARENTS 
 
 Over the meadows and far away in the dreamy hush 
 of summer days ; lying amid scented haycocks and watching 
 the castling clouds drift away like floating fairy isles in a 
 sea of turquoise; listening to the church bells of a quiet 
 Sunday morning; hearing the clear, distant note of a 
 trombone across the valley from some farmhouse in the 
 afterglow; watching the log sleds toil up the hill past our 
 homes into the cold, carmine glory of winter sunsets. Boy 
 hood's Memory Book is an anthology of little things 
 sweet, sad, haunting, all vital, ever poignant with heart- 
 hunger calling us back to live in their atmosphere again, 
 if only for a single blessed day. 
 
 Somehow Nat and I fail to remember the ending of the 
 Spanish war as we recall the beginning. Occasionally we 
 would be loitering about the station when trains pulled in 
 and sun-bronzed men in rumpled blue would swing off in 
 pairs, with blanket rolls around their bodies, thump their 
 rifles down in the corner of the nearest lunchroom and 
 appear too ravenously hungry even to flirt with the girl 
 who presided behind the sandwiches and wedges of leathery 
 pie beneath glass globes. 
 
 The war did not stop. It petered out. I will not say 
 I did not cry many times in the night when my mother 
 cried, because both of us missed father. But the war was 
 not for Nathan and me, not for our generation to bear. 
 Our war was coming later. We found food of some kind 
 available when we hungered and boys are not epicures. 
 So long as that food was forthcoming, and we had a place 
 to sleep at night, wars or endings of wars affected us not. 
 We were too occupied with things that were close to us and 
 close to the soil.
 
 22 THE FOG 
 
 One afternoon in the spring of 1917, before we went to 
 war, Nathan and I were walking together when we came 
 upon a crowd of deadly serious youngsters playing in a 
 vacant lot. One boy, tied securely, was arousing the neigh 
 borhood with his shrieking. 
 
 "We're playin' he's a German interned for perdition," one 
 of the lads explained. 
 
 "Perdition?" exclaimed Nathan. 
 
 "Yeah! Oratin' against the government and tryin' to 
 stop the war fer them that wanner fight. Intern fer perdi 
 tion, doncher understand ? Interned for perdition !" 
 
 "Kids don't change much, Bill," commented Nat, with a 
 sad smile, as we resumed our way. "Remember the day 
 we played 'Hang the Spy' and almost succeeded?" 
 
 "I remember it, Nat," I said. "But not because it has 
 anything to do with the sameness of boyhood in different 
 generations. I remember it for what happened to you 
 afterward what you got for it." 
 
 Nathan sighed. We paced a long way in silence. It was 
 not hard to recall the r.ear-tragic events of that afternoon 
 and their aftermath. 
 
 II 
 
 . We caught Nathan duly as the Castilian spy, and made 
 him "surrender his papers." A court-martial passed fatal 
 judgment upon him. He was led out beneath one of the 
 trees in Mrs. Fairbank's orchard and ordered to mount 
 "the scaffold", a dilapidated barrel. Around a high limb 
 I succeeded in tying one end of a rope. It had a slip noose 
 at its dangling end about eight feet from the ground. After 
 much perspiration I got this noose over Nathan's head. 
 
 "There's too much slack in it," the condemned man sug 
 gested, anxious that there should be no bungle in the 
 ceremony to spoil the grandeur. "When I'm hung, my 
 feet'll touch the ground and then I won't be! You bet 
 ter slip it further down, Billy under my arms or round 
 my waist." 
 
 Rather than reclimb the tree and retie the rope, I con 
 ceded. 
 
 A little French boy named Beauchamp was commissioned 
 to kick away the barrel and "send the miserable felon to
 
 MORE PARENTS 23 
 
 the wrath of a jealous God." We had somewhere heard it 
 phrased so. 
 
 Rolland Beauchamp played his part perfectly. In fact, 
 the whole execution was a bit too perfect. On a frenzied 
 run our mothers started for that orchard when from under 
 the biggest, highest tree began the wildest and most horrible 
 howling that ever disturbed the quiet of pastoral Vermont. 
 
 The spy, on being hung, had thought better of his fate. 
 It wasn't a bit of fun to be hung. Yet one could not alto 
 gether blame him. Never was a spy hung as our spy was 
 hung. 
 
 I had slipped the noose too far down Nathan's body. 
 When the barrel went out, the upper half of his torso out 
 weighed his legs. He was whipped upside down in a 
 twinkling and hung there ignominiously, kicking wildly 
 'twixt terra firma and the stars. 
 
 This in itself wouldn't have been so distressing if he had 
 not been suspended in a slipnoose. The more he kicked 
 and bellowed the sharper it tightened. 
 
 "We tried to hang him!" cried the terrified little French 
 boy. 
 
 "Tried!" wailed a wrathful mother when she beheld her 
 offspring suspended upside down, just out of reach. 
 
 "We could get him down with a ladder, if we only had 
 one!" volunteered the small Mayo boy who had been re 
 sponsible for all this brilliant business. "Mr. Simpson's 
 got one, a mile down the river. I tell you what !" he sug 
 gested enthusiastically to Mrs. Forge, "you come and ask 
 my mother if I can hitch up our horse and I'll go after 
 it! I could make it in less'n an hour an' not half try!" 
 
 "And leave this boy to be squeezed to death? I never 
 saw a Mayo around Foxboro yet that wasn't a fool !" Mrs. 
 Forge wrung her hands. "Oh, oh, oh ! Somebody's got to 
 climb that tree and cut this boy down and do it quickly, 
 or he'll die o' pinched vitals! Oh! oh! oh!" 
 
 "But if he's cut down sudden, he'll land on his head 
 and break his neck," groaned Mrs. Harper. "Why on earth 
 should they hang him upside down?" 
 
 Nat's unpremeditated inversion had complicated matters. 
 And all this time the spy was kicking and struggling and 
 bellowing until it was a mystery why he wasn't heard down 
 in the business part of the town. Moreover, the prospects
 
 24 THE FOG 
 
 were that if he were left there much longer, any attempts 
 to cut him down would be superfluous; he was coming 
 down himself in halves ! 
 
 But the Providence that looks after children, drunken 
 men and fools was proverbially kind that afternoon. It 
 sent old Amos Winch riding past atop a load of oats. Amos 
 took note of a kicking, shrieking boy suspended from an 
 apple bough above a group of distraught women and chil 
 dren and came down through that orchard in jumps. As 
 he ran, he unclasped a big pocketknife. Out on the limb, 
 he wound a taut rope twice about his mighty hand. Then 
 he hacked and cut above it. Hand over hand he hauled 
 the little Forge boy up, caught him firmly by the collar and 
 straightened him out. 
 
 Immediately that he was down and manifestly unhurt, 
 Mrs. Forge walked over to a lower apple bough and pulled 
 off a "sucker." She stripped the switch clean of leaves 
 and grasped her youngster firmly by the collar. 
 
 "But Ma! I didn't mean to do it! Please, Ma, don't 
 whip me. I didn't mean to do it !" 
 
 "I suppose you got hung upside down like that acci 
 dentally." 
 
 "We was only just playing 'Hang the Spy'!" 
 
 "And scaring your good, dear mother in consequence so 
 she's nearly a nervous wreck. I'm going to see you re 
 member never to do such a thing again." 
 
 "Anna!" interposed my mother, "don't be a fool!" 
 
 "You keep out of this!" snapped Mrs. Forge. "I can 
 run my own young ones without assistance from the neigh 
 bors." 
 
 And there, before that distressed audience, Nathan "got 
 it good." 
 
 in 
 
 I have not narrated this episode especially to excoriate 
 Anna Forge. I mention it because horror of horrors ! 
 among the teams to be blocked in the road by Amos Winch's 
 cart was the neat piano-box buggy and mare of Caleb 
 Gridley. The Duchess was out for a drive with the Dresden 
 Doll. 
 
 Nathan knew that the princess of his dreams was be-
 
 MORE PARENTS 25 
 
 holding him "catching it." And the welts of that switch 
 did not manufacture half as much pain as the hurts which 
 resulted to his dignity. For a boy has dignity. It is usually 
 a hard, honest, legitimate dignity in sharp contrast to 
 mere self -elation too often masquerading under that name 
 among older people. And that boyish dignity is a heritage. 
 In after years it is the genesis of that invaluable attribute, 
 Self-respect. 
 
 nr 
 
 The hanging episode was scarcely history before Nat and 
 I got into another scrape, illustrating the brilliant Forge 
 method of shaping childhood. 
 
 The execution of martial enemies being a bit too strenu 
 ous, the fertile little Mayo boy hit on "Slave in the Dismal 
 Swamp." He assured all witnesses that it was capital 
 sport playing "Slave in the Dismal Swamp." 
 
 In all our town, however, there was no colored boy, let 
 alone a small colored boy, available as the slave to escape 
 and be hunted. But that did not hamper the Mayo boy's 
 ingenuity. 
 
 "One of us can black himself and be the slave," he sug 
 gested. 
 
 "What with?" I demanded. "Ma won't let us have any 
 matches to burn cork. Besides, we couldn't get cork enough 
 anyhow." 
 
 "I know what's good and black that we can get a lot of," 
 Benny Mayo promised. "You all come with me and I'll 
 show you." 
 
 He led us down behind the Mayo barn. Several old carts, 
 hayracks and farm implements were stored there. 
 
 "Now then, Nathan, you take off all your clothes and 
 we'll black you," Benny directed. "This ain't goin' to hurt 
 you. How can it?" 
 
 "I won't do it unless Billy will!" Nathan objected 
 stoutly. 
 
 I submitted. 
 
 We disrobed, au naturel. The little Mayo boy and the 
 others set to work on us. 
 
 From the inside of the wagon hubs was scooped the 
 blackest, deadliest grease the malignity of man has ever
 
 26 THE FOG 
 
 invented. The axles of the vehicles, especially one old dump 
 cart, were rich with it. 
 
 Over the sunburned pelts of our little bodies the stuff 
 was smeared in handfuls. It smelled frightfully but we 
 remembered how it must feel to be a real slave, and stood 
 it as stoically as possible. 
 
 From head to foot we were covered with the green-black 
 "goo." Our handlers took especial care to rub it well into 
 our hair and ears. When that smearing "was called a 
 job", we were Africans with a vengeance. And the odor 
 shrieked to heaven. 
 
 "But we can't put on our clothes with this stuff all over 
 us!" wailed Nat suddenly. 
 
 "Slaves in a dismal swamp don't need no clothes," the Mayo 
 boy contended. "Start off just like you are and it'll make 
 it harder to hunt you." 
 
 "But somebody might see us without any clothes and 
 arrest us!" 
 
 "That's why it's goin' to make it harder to hunt you; 
 you'll keep out of sight better without clothes." 
 
 The dismal swamp was a cat-tail bog over on the 
 Hastings farm. Thither by back lanes we were escorted, 
 the "ferocious bloodhounds" being the Mayo boy's sky 
 terrier, Pink, and Nat's shepherd dog, Ned, with the afore 
 said immunity from the depredations of skunks. 
 
 Nat and I were turned loose like two justly celebrated 
 gold-dust twins, minus all concessions to civilization. And 
 in the next two hours we became relieved that there had 
 been an Emancipation Proclamation. 
 
 As the afternoon waned, the mosquitoes were bad 
 enough. But Nat's little sister, Edith, had beheld our 
 "making-up" from afar, and about the time we entered the 
 Dismal Swamp, she reached our mothers and told her story. 
 Two highly exasperated, grim-lipped women ultimately 
 joined the "bloodhounds" and outdid them. For our 
 mothers found us and the dogs did not. 
 
 Splashed with mud and slime on top of our coating of 
 axle grease, scratched by brambles and bruised by limbs 
 of dead trees which protruded from the most unexpected 
 places, the slaves in the dismal swamp finally found a soft 
 spot to sit down and weep with a great lamentation. We 
 had a disturbing hunch from our experience in the bog
 
 MORE PARENTS 27 
 
 water that our Ethiopian camouflage was not going to be 
 removed with any such dexterity as the Mayo boy had 
 assured us so glibly. 
 
 The posse finally surrounded us. There was no es 
 caping through that cordon. Our mothers' skirts were be 
 draggled. 
 
 Their shoes squeegeed water at every step. But they 
 bagged us. And the expression on their faces when they 
 held us at arm's length was sickening. Somehow we felt 
 that again the Mayo boy had "spoofed" us. The Mayo boy 
 was not among those present when we were taken into 
 custody, by the way. 
 
 "We're slaves in a Dismal Swamp," explained Nathan, 
 when his mother had firmly entwined her fingers around a 
 slippery ear. 
 
 "Well, in mighty short order you're going to be two 
 sorrowful boys in a darned dismal wash-dish!" prophesied 
 that wrathful lady. And she looked at my mother, not 
 knowing whether to laugh or to cry. 
 
 "Anna," gasped my horrified mother, " suppose sup 
 pose it won't wash off !" 
 
 "Then I'll set fire to my young one and burn it off!" 
 avowed Mrs. Forge grimly. Whereupon Nathan began 
 caterwauling and his asseverations that he didn't mean to 
 do it became as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. 
 
 Through the ups and downs of thirty years I have made 
 many strange journeys over many rough pathways. Not 
 one of them has equaled the aw fulness of traversing those 
 two miles of oozy bog that summer afternoon, dragged 
 wrath fully by a grim woman whose concentration was 
 glued on the impending ordeal of separating me from 
 that unspeakable coating of slime and grease. 
 
 "When I catch that Mayo young one," announced my 
 mother, "I'll skin him alive!" 
 
 "Amen !" affirmed Anna Forge. She gave Nathan a yank 
 that pulled him over a boghole as though he were greased. 
 Which he was. Greased thoroughly, adequately, irrev 
 ocably. 
 
 We got as far as the Forge homestead, and my mother 
 decided to stop there and cleanse her offspring in company 
 with her neighbor, rather to lighten the labor to say noth 
 ing of the color of her boy by sharing it.
 
 28 THE FOG 
 
 They tried rain water and they tried soap. They tried 
 cold water and they tried hot. None of it made any more 
 impression than as if they'd been trying to wash a duck. 
 They tried scraping it off with a paddle, as one scrapes 
 butter from a slice of bread. In certain localities this last 
 went so far as to disclose that deep down under the mass 
 we were young humans of the Aryan persuasion. In our 
 babyhood we might even have been pink. But at present 
 we were anything but pink. We were a sort of blue-mauve- 
 green. 
 
 "My God!" cried the nearly hysterical Mrs. Forge. 
 "There's going to be no getting this off successfully short 
 of boiling 'em !" Thereat, the woman's neurasthenia got the 
 better of her and she wept. 
 
 "Anna, stop your blubbering! I'm going to try kero 
 sene," my mother announced. "Billy may go round the 
 rest of his life smelling like the dirty end of a grocery 
 store, but I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I 'seen my 
 duty and I done it.' " And she whacked a little French 
 boy for meddling with her washcloths. 
 
 The two women pooled all the kerosene they could find 
 in the neighborhood. It wasn't the fairly cleanly product 
 that may be purchased in 1921. It is debatable which was 
 rankest in taste, feeling or smell that yellowish coal oil 
 or the devilish massage-muck which now ran down our 
 shivering bodies in streaks. Filling a tub with it, mother 
 started in, determined, like Grant, to fight it out along 
 that line if it took all summer. The prospects were that 
 it would take all summer. 
 
 I forget in how many "waters" of oil, hot steam and 
 soapsuds they washed us. Somewhere around thirty- 
 seven. There is no reason to doubt the figure. So much 
 concentrated washing had never happened to either of us 
 before. Thank God, it has never been needed since. 
 
 Nat and I were two sick boys physically as well as 
 spiritually long before those ablutions were completed. 
 A sizable number of persons of color, sold into servitude, 
 have undoubtedly been lost in swamps. But Nathan Forge 
 and his biographer were the first in history who were cap 
 tured, dragged out and washed in thirty-seven "waters" 
 before being slated for additional chastisement. 
 
 Vividly I recollect little Nathan's plaintive plea at about
 
 MORE PARENTS 29 
 
 the thirty-fifth "water", when he gradually began to ex 
 hibit evidences of Caucasian extraction. 
 
 "Ma, are you goin' to lick me?" he demanded, gazing 
 timorously up into his mother's twitching countenance. 
 It was the fearful, pitiful interrogatory of a naked, shiver 
 ing, thoroughly chastened little boy who had taken the word 
 of a fellow man at its face value and discovered, like the 
 psalmist of old, that all men are liars. 
 
 "I'm too done up to lick you! I'm going to let your 
 father lick you !" his mother assured him. 
 
 "Anna Forge, are you crazy?" my mother exploded. 
 
 "No, but I'm going to see that some discretion is put in 
 his make-up if I have to brand it in with an iron!" 
 
 "You may brand in more than discretion, Anna." 
 
 "I'll take my chances !" 
 
 I was sobbing mainly for Nathan's sake when my 
 mother led me home. She wrapped my red, flaccid little 
 body in warm flannels and put me to bed. I heard no 
 censure for my part in the day's foolishness. Only she 
 said wearily before she took out the light : 
 
 "Please, laddie, never play 'Slave in the Dismal Swamp' 
 again. You see what mother had to do, how tired she is?" 
 
 "Yes, Ma!" 
 
 "Then always remember, when a fellow does something 
 wrong sooner or later somehow or other it's his 
 mother that pays the price." 
 
 I could not see her haggard face for my tears. 
 
 She laughed, a queer, tired, tender laugh. Then she 
 kissed me again and was gone. My grief was mercifully 
 merged in slumber. 
 
 VI 
 
 It was a week before Nathan left his bed. His father 
 threw an ax handle at me when I went around to the rear 
 of the Forge premises to see if Nathan could come out to 
 play. 
 
 I think Johnathan was a bit ashamed of himself and 
 likewise afraid. He took this gentle method of suggesting
 
 30 THE FOG 
 
 that the neighbors, particularly the neighbors' offspring, 
 keep out of his family affairs. Because Nathan had dropped 
 unconscious during his subsequent chastisement and re 
 mained unconscious all night. Next day a doctor was sum 
 moned. The doctor was told that Nathan must have eaten 
 something which had failed to agree with him. 
 
 I finally figured out, in a boyish way, what was amiss 
 in Nathan's relation to his parents, particularly his father. 
 
 Obedience, to Johnathan, consisted in a child instinctively 
 knowing beforehand the thing to which the parental mind 
 objected and avoiding consummation of that thing like a 
 pestilence. Then, too, floggings and thrashings were uni 
 formly good for a youngster. They gave him character 
 and made him love and respect his dear parents when he 
 had grown to manhood and looked back on what an ex 
 asperating little devil he had been and how much he had 
 "tried" those who had done the most for him.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FAIRY FOUNDLING 
 
 In the heart of a man there are many chambers. Some 
 of these chambers have locked doors and behind them the 
 world may not penetrate. Dusty, discarded shrines are 
 there with the idols chipped and broken ; coffers rotted with 
 money may lie scattered about; brittle bouquets of faded 
 flowers; a coffin plate or two, or perhaps the more grisly 
 husks of dead romances that arise during slumber and 
 break out wailing, haunting the long, barren corridors of 
 the subconscious mind and only laid by sunlight. But 
 among these chambers somewhere is one sweet, clandestine 
 room only unlocked with a golden key on a diamond ring, 
 where warm and ruddy light floods out when the door is 
 opened. Luxury awaits him within, but greater than lux 
 ury: the mistress of his soul, soft-armed, starry-eyed, radi 
 ant with love. Back over far years or few, when that 
 mistress entered that heart-chamber and consented to remain 
 imprisoned there forever, then was Everyman's Amethyst 
 Moment. 
 
 Man, like the caliphs of old, may possess a thousand wives. 
 But his heart has one mistress only forever. 
 
 There is another phase of this narrative which it is ex 
 pedient to begin in order to make long preparation for 
 Nathan's Amethyst Moment. It starts in the city of Spring 
 field, Massachusetts, on a September afternoon twenty 
 years in the past. Upon an iron settee at the edge of a 
 Forest Park lily pond a woman sank to rest and to watch 
 a group of shrieking children playing with the swans. 
 
 She was a middle-aged woman, tall, comely, deep-chested, 
 one of those well-favored, high-caste matrons vaguely as 
 sociated with sweeping, trailing, draping house gowns, with 
 strings of jet and jade licking against her knees and an
 
 32 THE FOG 
 
 exotic perfume clinging about her personality like old rose 
 or lavender. 
 
 This afternoon she was clothed in black, black walking 
 dress, large black hat, black fur neckpiece, smooth black 
 gloves. She was the widow of a high army officer, killed 
 seven months before in the Philippines. Her name was 
 Gracia Theddon and she lived somehow on the income 
 from half a million dollars. 
 
 This woman's face grew wistful as she watched the chil 
 dren. She wanted to call them about her. Then she rea 
 lized that seven of the ten were clothed alike. The types 
 were too varied to make them brothers and sisters. She 
 was puzzled. 
 
 As she watched, one of the smallest youngsters poised 
 on the edge of the water and almost fell forward. In that 
 instant a little girl flashed from a near-by summer house 
 and pulled the baby back from danger. 
 
 The child whose watchful eye and quick coordination of 
 mind and body had effected this tiny rescue seized and held 
 Gracia Theddon's attention. She was slender and dark, 
 the most delicately wrought little girl that had ever moved 
 into Mrs. Theddon's scheme of things. Her features were 
 cut with the clearness of a cameo. She had strangely calm 
 eyes, extraordinary eyes, even for a child. 
 
 The woman finally summoned a youngster, a precocious 
 youngster of few illusions. 
 
 "Who's that little girl, boy?" she asked. "The one with 
 the pretty face and long black curls." 
 
 "Whatcher wanner knowfer?" 
 
 Mrs. Theddon found a dime in the tiny bead bag at her 
 girdle. 
 
 "Now tell me the little girl's name and what you know 
 about her." 
 
 "Name's Leggy it's short for sumpin' Leeg Leeg 
 sumpin' like Leegar." 
 
 "You mean Allegra?" 
 
 "Uh-huh!" 
 
 "And what's her last name?" 
 
 "Ain't got none. She didn't have no fadder nor mudder 
 like the rest of us. The fairies brought her. Leggy says 
 so! Say, there ain't no fairies, are there?" 
 
 "So that's why you're all dressed alike. You're orphans."
 
 THE FAIRY FOUNDLING 33 
 
 Mrs. Theddon's eyes went back to the little girl. "And 
 who's looking out for you?" 
 
 "Leggy is. We couldn't come to the Park at all if it 
 warn't fer her. She's a cuckoo, Leggy is. She says she 
 saw Santa Claus once. Say, there ain't no Santa Claus, is 
 there?" 
 
 "I used to think so, little boy." 
 
 "I arst Miss Howlan' once. But she got mad and tol' 
 me to get the hell out and stop askin' foolish questions, or 
 she'd slap my mouth " 
 
 "Who's Miss Rowland?" 
 
 "She runs the dump we live at. She's a quince and can't 
 get married. Say, you're rich, aincher? Is that a real bird 
 on your hat?" 
 
 "And does this Miss Rowland swear so before you chil 
 dren?" 
 
 "Huh, hell ain't swearin'. I know lots o' words worse'n 
 hell. So's Miss Rowland. Gee, you oughta hear her rip 
 when she gets mad. She says goddam an' " 
 
 "Stop, boy, stop! I merely wish to know about that 
 little girl. What's the name of the Orphanage where you 
 live?" 
 
 "The Corpses is Christened or sumpin' sounds like it." 
 
 "You mean Corpus-Christi ?" 
 
 "Uh-huh! Guess so!" 
 
 "And how long has that little girl been at the Corpus- 
 Christi Orphanage?" 
 
 "Since 'fore the world was made, I guess a nawful long 
 time. She b'longs to Miss Howlan'." 
 
 "Belongs to her !" 
 
 "Yeah! Miss Howlan's fixed it so Leggy can't be 
 adopted. When people come and wanner kid, trie first they 
 allus grab is Leggy. So Miss Howlan's hooked her up, 
 and Leggy'll have to stay to the place and be a orphan till 
 she's old and got grand-chillun. Miss Howlan' said she 
 done a good job when she hooked Leggy. I heard her tell 
 Bridget ; she cooks the stuff we eat and then eats it herself." 
 
 "And you're sure you never heard the little girl's last 
 name?" 
 
 "Say, wasser matter wicher? I said she ain't got none, 
 din't I? She warn't born like the rest of us. They found 
 her sleepin' on a haycock in a field. It was near some woods
 
 34 THE FOG 
 
 where the fairies stole out and left her. Say, what's a 
 haycock ?" 
 
 "And how long ago was it they found her?" 
 
 "Gee, you're thick, aincher? I said it was a nawful long 
 time back, 'fore my fadder busted my mudder open, and 
 then skipped so he wouldn't have to go to jail, and they 
 shoved me in the Corpses is Christened dump to be a 
 orphan " 
 
 The boy's worldly wisdom disturbed Mrs. Theddon so 
 painfully that she finally dismissed him in relief. 
 
 Then she called the Fairy Foundling. 
 
 The child approached with a dainty deference that won 
 the rich woman instantly if she had not been won from 
 the first. 
 
 This was no laborer's offspring. 
 
 Mrs. Theddon was almost minded to believe in fairies 
 after all. 
 
 n 
 
 The following day a pair of handsome grays stopped 
 before the Corpus-Christi Orphanage. Mrs. Theddon 
 alighted from her carriage, instructed her coachman to 
 wait and went up the broken steps to the grim front door. 
 
 The Orphanage was a mediocre double house in the 
 poorer quarter of the city; only a battered sign tacked to 
 the greenish clapboards indicated its character. Mrs. Thed- 
 don's ring was answered by an angular female who believed 
 in infant damnation, the prohibition issue and the curse 
 of the idle rich. Her hair was drawn tightly from her 
 square, sallow forehead, her shoulders were sharp, her face 
 on a man would have created a perfect butler for the lower 
 class motion pictures. 
 
 "I am Mrs. Gracia Theddon," announced the first, "and 
 I have called to see you about a certain child you have here 
 a little Allegra Something-or -other." 
 
 "You mean you want to adopt her?" 
 
 "If it's possible." 
 
 "It isn't possible! Allegra's my own." 
 
 "So I understand. But I want little Miss Allegra myself 
 and I'm well I'm prepared to make it worth while to be 
 reasonable."
 
 THE FAIRY FOUNDLING 35 
 
 Thereat the Rowland person thawed somewhat, not 
 much. 
 
 "Come in," she conceded. 
 
 She led the way into a bare cheerless "office." Mrs. Thed- 
 don sat down and raised her black veil. 
 
 "I saw the child in the Park yesterday. I talked with 
 her. And when I got home last night in bed I realized 
 how very much I should like to have such a little girl. I 
 have no children. My husband was killed last year in the 
 Philippines." 
 
 Miss Howland, it developed, was a "toe-tapper" and a 
 Competent Person. Moreover, she had dealt with finicky 
 patronesses of the Orphanage for years. She tapped her 
 toe now, though her face maintained its wooden expression. 
 
 "So I understand, Mrs. Theddon. But you see I also 
 love Allegra she is such a help to me about the place " 
 
 "You don't make that delicate little girl work!" 
 
 "No, no! Not work! Merely a few chores to give her 
 a sense of responsibility looking after the younger chil 
 dren and all that. They are an awful care at times, Mrs. 
 Theddon an awful care." 
 
 Mrs. Theddon was duly solicitous. She knew the How- 
 land type and how to "handle" it. Ten minutes were spent 
 ingratiating herself into the superintendent's sympathies 
 and the Howland woman thawed. 
 
 "But what do you know about the child?" Mrs. Theddon 
 asked. 
 
 "They found her in a hayfield over toward Ludlow ten 
 years ago last summer. But no one reported a lost child. 
 When the papers advertised her, no one came forward to 
 identify or claim her. So they brought her here." 
 
 "And you don't know her last name?" 
 
 "Nothing about her whatever. I gave her the name 
 Allegra, and of course when I adopted her, she got my 
 own " 
 
 "Then you have legally adopted her ?" 
 
 "Well, all the red tape isn't finished yet. I just say I've 
 adopted her when people come here for babies because they 
 always pick the prettiest first. And Leggy's turned out so 
 clever I could better afford to lose some of the older, home 
 lier ones " 
 
 Mrs. Theddon saw the psychological moment had arrived.
 
 36 THE FOG 
 
 "Miss Howland," she announced firmly, "I want that 
 child badly. But I don't want her badly enough to haggle 
 over her. I'll write you a check this moment for a thousand 
 dollars and not another cent more. But it's on the un 
 derstanding that all the legalities are settled by you with the 
 trustees and the girl is delivered at my home before the 
 coming Saturday!" 
 
 If Mrs. Theddon had drawn a revolver and shot the 
 Howland person, the latter could not have sat more totally 
 and adequately stunned. 
 
 "A thou sand dol lars !" 
 
 "Exactly. A thousand dollars!" Mrs. Theddon's pat 
 ronage had gone. She had the crisp poise she used when 
 bargaining with servants or tradesmen. 
 
 It took several moments for Miss Howland to recover. 
 A hundred dollars would have been a great persuader. But 
 a thousand! 
 
 Then her narrow, crafty nature roused from the mental 
 stupor which the offer had produced. If the Theddon 
 woman would pay a thousand dollars, she must want the 
 child very much indeed. Miss Howland flattered herself 
 she knew these pampered, petulant women. She gave facial 
 indications of thrust-and-parry. 
 
 "I couldn't " 
 
 "Very well," announced Mrs. Theddon. "I withdraw 
 my offer and bid you good-day. But I shall use my influ 
 ence in certain quarters to secure the child without the pay 
 ment of a cent. I made you a fair offer to avoid legal 
 procedure and undesirable publicity. But now I withdraw 
 it!" 
 
 Mrs. Theddon lowered her veil and prepared to depart 
 which she had not the least intention of doing. 
 
 "Wait a moment !" cried Miss Howland weakly. At once 
 she abandoned any attempt to dicker. It was too risky. 
 "I was about to say I couldn't desire anything better than 
 to think of little Allegra being adopted by a nice lady like 
 yourself - " 
 
 Mrs. Theddon produced her check book.
 
 THE FAIRY FOUNDLING 37 
 
 in 
 
 A little, misery-eyed, wood thrush of a girl in a drab- 
 blue pinafore crept out from her hiding place under a corner 
 desk. She fled across the "office", up the back stairs and 
 into her "room", a cot under an alcove, before the Rowland 
 person returned from the gate where she had enviously 
 watched the grays drive away. 
 
 The little girl had overheard. Parentless, nameless, she 
 had been sold by one person and bought by another, for 
 a thousand dollars! 
 
 The intuitive horror of her nonentity, of that sale and 
 purchase, never left the little girl, not even twenty years 
 later in womanhood. 
 
 She crouched a tiny mite in blue gingham on the cot 
 and failed to answer Miss Rowland when the latter went 
 through the house, calling for her angrily.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IMPRESSIONS 
 
 Looking back on those days in Foxboro Center now, 
 Nathan and I think of them as Nuggets of Time from the 
 Golden Mine of Boyhood, unalloyed. I would like to tran 
 scribe whole pages from the Memory Book, all of which 
 has contributed to the great mass of experience influencing 
 the most vital parts of our lives. Yet the subject matter 
 is too trivial and the type too fine to ask a busy world to 
 read. 
 
 There are no woods now like those Nathan and I ex 
 plored in those days. There are no valleys so peaceful, no 
 afternoons so long, no twilights so soft, no stars so high. 
 
 Thrushes and peewees sang in the leafy silences of those 
 woodlands. Cloistered glades would be suddenly desecrated 
 by the shrill screeches of jays. Brooks babbled unexpect 
 edly across marshy pathways, to be forded on mossy stones. 
 Jack-in-the-Pulpits and Lady's Slippers grew among the 
 smooth brown needles of hemlock-roofed hillsides. Occa 
 sionally, when lying in the forest quiet, we would hear the 
 tread of a lone partridge on last autumn's brittle leaves as 
 sharp and loud as the tread of a man. 
 
 But alas and alack! Nathan's little sister often "tagged 
 after us," demanding petulantly to be helped over stone 
 walls, around bramble patches and across ditches, getting 
 her feet wet in bogs and squealing hideously if we traveled 
 too fast or gave the slightest indication of abandoning her 
 to forest terrors. 
 
 There is only one thing more tragic to a small boy than 
 having a little sister to bother him. That is having an elder 
 sister to "boss" him. 
 
 There were rainy days, too, when we explored old attics, 
 playing among heirlooms and relics that to-day would be
 
 IMPRESSIONS 39 
 
 worth much money. There were days when we invented 
 weird pastimes in the fantastic nooks, crannies and haylofts 
 of two fragrant country barns. 
 
 Sometimes in the spring, when the winter is breaking up 
 and the soil is coming through in patches, sweet and wet, 
 I catch a breath of fragrance from those Foxboro play 
 times. I smell again the clear, cool, pungent dampness of 
 woodland ravines where we poked noisy leaves aside to 
 find the first may flowers. The odor of summer pastures 
 in the sunset comes to me and the sweet scent of ripening 
 huckleberries, briarbloom and fern. Autumn brings its scents 
 and odors, too crimson sumach and bursting milkweed; 
 the acrid sweetness of loaded apple trees with windfallen 
 fruit knobbing the ground beneath; old goldenrod; the 
 sharp nip of frost-bitten air blowing fitfully across the hills 
 on afternoons when the earth shivered in the nakedness of 
 fall and the sky was a museum of cloud. Then winter 
 came with gray days soft-muffled, snow-heavy moist 
 mornings, dripping noons, melancholy twilights when even 
 the carmine of the sinking sun was freezing cold ; then the 
 piercing stab of blue crystal nights when the stars were 
 very high and the panes of windows in empty rooms were 
 weirdly padded with frost. 
 
 Who can fathom the heart of a boy? I recall these items 
 especially here, because there were times when I would find 
 my friend indisposed to play. Often in these seasons and 
 settings, he would stop and grow strangely silent. "It's so 
 pretty, Billy, it hurts," he would tell me. "It makes me 
 afraid !" 
 
 One summer evening we sat on the Forge front steps 
 under the stars. The crickets were cheeping about us. 
 Now and then we saw ghostly petals of syringa blossoms 
 flutter down in the shadows beneath, the world voluptuous 
 with summer scents about us. 
 
 "I feel as if I'd like to write and tell somebody all about 
 it, Billy," he said to me. 
 
 "Tell 'em what?" 
 
 "How it hurts !" 
 
 "How what hurts ?" 
 
 "Oh the world and starry nights just livin' in it 
 all. It's holy somehow like church." 
 
 Faint piano music floated up the valley. Somewhere be-
 
 40 THE FOG 
 
 low a sweet soprano voice was singing "The Blue and the 
 Gray." 
 
 I choose to think of that night as the first time the poet- 
 soul of my friend was disclosed to me. Yet I would have 
 pooh-poohed poetry then. It was stagy stuff to be recited 
 hectically in school on Friday afternoons, beginning, "I am 
 dying, Egypt, dying!" and the demise complete before a 
 dozen lines had been rendered. 
 
 "Billy, do you s'pose all men when they was boys felt 
 like you and me?" 
 
 "Aw, I guess so." 
 
 "Wish I knew for sure, Billy." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "I dunno. Maybe it'd make things easier to stand. 
 
 II 
 
 As Nathan's sister Edith grew older, her petulancy of 
 mouth became more pronounced. Like most small sisters 
 her recreational specialty was ferreting out breaches of de 
 portment on the part of us boys and carrying dirty little 
 tales to our parents. Johnathan and his wife indirectly en 
 couraged this sort of thing. They thought it "cute." 
 
 One afternoon Edith broke a barn window. She declared 
 at once that Nathan did it. The brother's protestations of 
 innocence availed him nothing. He was punished on Edith's 
 unconfirmed say-so. Thereupon Edith discovered she held 
 a power over Nathan. She could blackmail him into doing 
 almost anything whim dictated by committing petty damage 
 herself and accusing the boy as the miscreant. 
 
 This went on for the better part of the autumn. Finally 
 Edith overdid it. One evening she accused Nathan of hav 
 ing let the horse out of the boxstall. She swore she saw 
 him. She gave a convincing and vivid account as an eye 
 witness. Only it happened Nathan had been with his father 
 down in the village all the afternoon, unknown to Edith. 
 
 Caught in a bald-faced lie, Edith snickered. Then she 
 slapped her brother's face as being somehow responsible. 
 
 Edith was not chastised for falsehood, but Nathan got 
 his ears boxed soundly for "daring to lay a finger on his 
 little sister" when he defended himself.
 
 IMPRESSIONS 41 
 
 In fact, Mrs. Forge thought the escape of the horse and 
 Edith's discomfiture a rather good joke. If there was wrong 
 in it, Edith would "grow out of it." Of course! She was 
 a girl ! 
 
 That night Mrs. Forge read Nathan a homily on chivalry. 
 There were many things boys could not do without punish 
 ment that were perfectly permissible for little girls. 
 
 in 
 
 Johnathan Forge "failed" at his store in the Center, as 
 he appeared to fail at everything everywhere. He became 
 convinced he "could do better in a larger place." Thus came 
 a certain day when Nathan raced up to my house bursting 
 with, excitement. 
 
 "We're going to move to Paris! We're going to move 
 to Paris!" he cried. "Dad's got a job in the newspaper 
 office and we're going as soon's we can pack our things." 
 
 Going to Paris, Vermont, at that age, was like going to 
 Paris, France, in these later years. It was not something 
 to be negotiated. It was something to be attained. 
 
 The day the family left town I hung about the Forge 
 house all the forenoon, divided between doing the work of 
 two men gratis, or getting in the way so skillfully that 
 Johnathan Forge was moved to profanity. But the goods 
 were loaded at last and after dinner Nat came over in his 
 "best clothes" to bid me good-by. 
 
 We spoke as two who are going different ways into far 
 countries. We made light of the situation and the play 
 times we had enjoyed together, though God knows the tears 
 were close to our eyelids. 
 
 "I left a swell pair of baby-carriage wheels up in the wig 
 wam in the woods. But you can have 'em for a peach of a 
 cart," he said generously. A pair of "swell baby-carriage 
 wheels" was a treasure beyond price among boys in those 
 days. Yet I was thinking with an awful heart-pinch that 
 Nathan and I would never play in that wigwam of leaves 
 and brush again. 
 
 "I suppose you'll always stay here in Foxboro," he went 
 on, with the condescension of the city mouse for the country 
 cousin. "But if you ever come to Paris, I'll expect you to
 
 42 THE FOG 
 
 visit me. Ill probably always live in Paris. It's a big place. 
 There's more advantages and op-op-opportunities." 
 
 We spoke stiffly and indifferently as the parting grew 
 nearer. 
 
 "Well, guess I'll have to be going," he said. "Good-by." 
 
 "Good-by," I said. "Maybe some day when we grow up 
 we'll meet again." 
 
 "Yes, good-by." 
 
 "Good-by." 
 
 John Forge was driving his family over the road in a 
 democrat wagon. I came to the gate to wave to them as they 
 passed down the road and around the turn. Then the vehicle 
 turned the corner and the road was empty. 
 
 The road? The world was empty. For the first time in 
 my life I knew loneliness horrible, unbearable, numbing 
 loneliness worse than the loss of my father ! 
 
 My mother came up to put me to bed that night. She 
 understood my tight silence. I was trying hard to keep my 
 nerve, but the thought of coming days, weeks, months, 
 years without Nat was dawning upon me in all its hideous 
 emptiness. 
 
 That night I was very glad I had a mother and that she 
 was not twitching-faced and pin-pointed of eye like 
 Nathan's.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ODD STICK 
 
 My mother's savings were exhausted in the spring of 
 1900. The payments on her pension were delayed. The 
 good woman was almost alone in the world with a seam- 
 ripping, button-bursting, small boy who demanded to be 
 clothed, fed, educated. Rather than submit to the slavery 
 of keeping house for some widowed farmer, she decided to 
 move to Paris also and try to find work in a store. 
 
 Thus I ultimately rejoined Nathan. 
 
 He did not greet me as effusively as I had expected. His 
 indifference hurt. But I soon made allowance. Nathan 
 was in love. The object of his affections was Bernie Grid- 
 ley. 
 
 "Come over to my house and tell me all about her," I 
 invited that first noontime. 
 
 "After school? I can't. I work." 
 
 "You work! Where?" 
 
 "I peddle papers every night Telegraphs" 
 
 "You mean you make real money? Gee, that's swell." 
 
 Nat shut his lips. 
 
 "Aw, I don't get nothin'. Pa makes me do it. He takes 
 it and uses it to help out at home." 
 
 "But you do the work and so the money belongs to 
 you !" 
 
 "Yeah! But pa figgers he's supportin' me and he had 
 to work when he was a boy and turn over the money to 
 his father. So he makes me do the same." 
 
 "I'd like to see wryself " 
 
 "Aw, you're talkin' through your hat! Whatter you 
 know about havin' a father? Your father died! Hang it 
 all, some guys have all the luck!"
 
 44 THE FOG 
 
 ii 
 
 Nathan was "goin* on fourteen" now. He had grown 
 older, somehow, older than the twenty months which had 
 intervened since I had last seen him warranted. 
 
 These three Nathan, the Dresden Doll and a shocky- 
 headed young troglodyte who had just arrived from the 
 wilds of Foxboro Center were seated near one another 
 during that year in the seventh grade of the old Academy 
 on the hill. 
 
 The American public school being the great common de 
 nominator for juvenile humanity, it had developed after 
 several months' scholastic propinquity between Nathan and 
 Bernie that he was not quite so impossible as the Dresden 
 Doll had at first assumed. And Bernie's teachers had 
 rather caustic ideas about the Gridley ' 'blood." The Dresden 
 Doll became a little more human. 
 
 "What are you going to give me for my birthday, boy?" 
 she demanded of Nathan one day, accosting him on the edge 
 of the school yard. "I'm going to have a party, you know. 
 Everybody's coming and must bring me something." 
 
 The abruptness of meeting and question left Nathan 
 speechless. With his temperament and home training or 
 lack of it it was only natural he should have been awk 
 ward in her presence. 
 
 But he finally rallied. 
 
 "Well, I'll try to give you something bigger 'n better than 
 you'll get from anybody else. You can bet on that!" 
 
 His declaration implied a promise. Moreover, after the 
 nature of such youthful indiscretions, it grew plain he 
 would have to make that promise good or be forever dis 
 credited and go through the rest of life a celibant. 
 
 What could he give her that would be greater and finer 
 and better than any other person chiefly boy might 
 offer? It became an awful quandary. Though only "goin' 
 on fourteen", it came to him he had thrust a foot into one 
 of life's traps. In his little cot-bed up under the eaves of the 
 cottage John Forge had taken for his family in Spring 
 Street, he pondered feverishly far into each night. And 
 with sickening speed the date of the affair approached and 
 found him still debating.
 
 THE ODD STICK 45 
 
 The underlying cause of his predicament was financial. 
 He hadn't a cent, was never allowed money and would have 
 to steal and lie to get any. If he had millions he could of 
 course present her with a diamond ring or a Maltese cat 
 or something like that. But not a cent! It was humiliat 
 ing. 
 
 The solution finally came via the unwitting agency of 
 the Duchess. She called on Mrs. Forge to purchase some 
 geranium slips and remained to discuss the precocity of 
 Bernice-Theresa. 
 
 "I am convinced she will be literary," the Duchess de 
 clared. "She has already finished the Bible, 'Pilgrim's 
 Progress' and 'Rollo's Travels in Switzerland.' I think I 
 shall start her next on the poets." 
 
 Nathan's mother asked which poets. And the Duchess 
 answered: "I understand 'Dauntless Inferno' by John Mil 
 ton is being read these days by all the best people. After 
 that I shall try Shakespeare. He's so romantic!" 
 
 Nathan lay in bed that night, turning this sudden literary 
 proclivity of the Gridley girl over in his mind. Then, by 
 the strange and wonderful convolutions of a boy's brain, he 
 had it! He could scarcely wait until morning to get to 
 Weathersbee & Hawkins' Second-hand Furniture Store. 
 There, after much mysterious maneuvering, he contracted 
 for the article he sought, agreeing to saw wood for Mr. 
 Hawkins Saturdays to pay for it. He carried it home the 
 night before the memorable birthday party and hid it in the 
 loft of the Forge woodshed. 
 
 The affair began at two-thirty the next day. Twenty- 
 seven boys and girls, painfully starched and ironed, gathered 
 awkwardly upon the Gridley lawn. A table had been placed 
 beside the veranda steps and upon it the birthday gifts were 
 deposited. Article by article the pile grew, some of them 
 pathetically inexpensive, a few indicating want of taste far 
 more than worldly goods. 
 
 When the Forge boy looked upon the daintiness and deli 
 cacy of most of the gifts, an awful qualm smote him. He 
 wondered if he might not have overdone the present busi 
 ness in his anxiety to make an impression? But Bernice 
 was demanding impatiently to know how he had fulfilled 
 his promise. There was no time to reconsider now cer 
 tainly not to go back and buy another present. He went to
 
 46 THE FOG 
 
 a secret place in the hedge and brought his gift from its 
 hiding. 
 
 Across the lawn he carried it with difficulty, for it was 
 nearly as large as himself. To the gift-altar he brought it, 
 small heart palpitating painfully. 
 
 "My goodness!" exclaimed the little patrician. "What 
 ever can it be ?" 
 
 The children, patronized by a few mothers, gathered 
 around to learn what the Forge boy had brought his dainty 
 little hostess which should leave all present speechless by its 
 cleverness and elegance. Nathan, badly scared, unwound 
 copious quantities of newspaper and cast them aside. Then, 
 using all his thirteen-year strength, up onto the table amid 
 the lesser gifts, its weight causing that table to rock rather 
 groggily for a moment, Nathan added a life-sized bust of 
 Julius Caesar. Caesar. In chalk ! 
 
 The Duchess raised her lorgnette. She and Caesar ex 
 changed . mutual glances of stupefaction for an instant. 
 
 "But who is it?" she demanded. 
 
 "It must be a new kind of a big doll !" exclaimed a little 
 girl with violent pigtails. 
 
 "Why why it's a it's a " Nathan wanted all 
 
 present to understand that it was sculpture of most poetic 
 motif having to do with the literary ramifications of one 
 W. Shakespeare. But he could not recall the words "sculp 
 ture", "statue" or "bust." 
 
 "It's a monument !" he choked. "For Julius Caesar I 
 mean of Julius Caesar. He divided Gaul into three parts 
 and they stabbed him !" 
 
 "A monument!" cried the Duchess. "Stabbed him! And 
 do you think he's buried hereabouts, that Bernice-Theresa 
 should be edified with his tombstone for a plaything?" 
 
 "You told Ma that Bernie was goin' to read the best 
 poets. I thought o' this mon-mon-monument I s-s-seen in 
 Weatherbee's store. He's got an ear gone and his nose is 
 bunged and maybe he needs washin'. But as far's the 
 missin' ear goes, you could stand it in a corner somewheres 
 so's his head would be against the wall " 
 
 "My God!" choked the Duchess. "William! William! 
 Where's William?" 
 
 William Chew, the elderly person of color, came forward. 
 
 "William," cried the Duchess, "remove this nightmare.
 
 THE ODD STICK 47 
 
 God love us! It looks as if this unspeakable boy had 
 brought Bernice-Theresa the upper half of somebody's 
 whitewashed corpse!" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am!" assented William. "What yo' want ah 
 should do with it, ma'am?" 
 
 "Do with it?" gasped the Duchess. "Take it home to 
 your family ! Set it up on your front lawn ! Hand it down 
 to your children! Only get the hideous thing off these 
 premises and never bring it back!" 
 
 William obediently toted off the bust. Then the Duchess 
 looked about for the giver of this good and perfect gift. 
 But Nathan had reached the gate and was fleeing down the 
 walk. For him there was no party. 
 
 William took the "monument" home. The last seen of it 
 was atop a post in the center of the Chew cornfield. The 
 colored man had draped a coat around the classic bust, hung 
 trousers beneath it, put an old straw hat on the brow that 
 produced the Commentaries, and relegated it to the job of 
 scaring off the crows. Its end came when old Webster 
 Nelson wandered into the field one night under the influence 
 of liquor, beheld the chalky features beneath the hat, and 
 reduced it to fragments under the crazed obsession that he 
 was being confronted by the supernatural. 
 
 in 
 
 A little girl makes love to a boy in school by the simple 
 expedient of allowing him to discover her eyes upon him 
 steadily when he raises his head from his studies and looks 
 in her direction. Nathan dragged himself to school next 
 day. But the topaz eyes of Bernice-Theresa were not upon 
 him, once! Thereupon did life become a delusion and a 
 snare and sorrow sit heavily upon him. 
 
 The Dresden Doll came out of the Academy at four 
 o'clock and started homeward. By some mysterious levita- 
 tion, she had not progressed three blocks before the street 
 held a party of the opposite sex employed in touching every 
 other picket in the fence, withal moving in her own direction. 
 
 "Say!" this person demanded plaintively, having somehow 
 crossed the thoroughfare by the time she reached the Baptist 
 Church. "Are you mad at me, Bernie?"
 
 48 THE FOG 
 
 "Of course I'm mad! Why shouldn't I be mad? You 
 tried to spoil my party." 
 
 "I didn't mean to spoil your party." 
 
 "Perhaps you didn't. But you're such a fool at times!" 
 
 "A fool!" 
 
 "Why do you do such perfectly silly things?" 
 
 "I I only tried to give you somethin' different, 
 Bernie. I only tried to make you like me." 
 
 "Then you don't know much about girls ! For instance 
 your clothes ! Why, you came to my party looking like a 
 a tramp !" 
 
 "They were my best clothes, Bernie the best I got." 
 
 "Then why on earth doesn't your father buy you some 
 new?" 
 
 "He says it's puttin' on style and foolish." 
 
 "But you look so ! Can't he see it ?" 
 
 "I guess, Bernie, he don't much care or understand." 
 
 "Then I'd work and buy my own." 
 
 "I do work. But he makes me give him all I earn." 
 
 "Then I'd run away or shoot him !" 
 
 She tossed her long mass of straw-colored curls haughtily 
 and walked from sight. 
 
 John Forge had not been able to hold his job in the 
 newspaper office. He "didn't get along with people." He 
 had opened a small shop on Main Street and gone back to 
 cobbling shoes. Next day Ben Williams, the clothier, looked 
 in at the Forge door and with half a laugh demanded : 
 
 "Can't you dress that young one of yours so he won't go 
 around makin' a nuisance of himself, John Forge? He was 
 in my place this noon with a crazy plea for me to save all 
 my bundles for Saturdays so he could deliver 'em and earn 
 himself a suit to look respectable." 
 
 John Forge went home with his weak jaw set grimly. 
 
 "I'll break that boy's foolish pride or I'll break his 
 back !" he promised himself dourly. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nathan lay back in the hammock in the summer-evening 
 depths of the front piazza and dreamed dreams with his 
 eyes open. Down the street old man Bailey's phonograph
 
 THE ODD STICK 49 
 
 was grinding out a squeaky program of popular ballads. 
 The moths were clustering around the sputtering arc 
 lamps. On the near-by corner the Allen girl was shame 
 lessly "flirting with a feller" who sat on his bicycle alongside 
 the curb, one foot upon it to steady himself. Occasionally 
 the girl tested the bell on the handle bars, and it ding-donged 
 a high and low musical note interspersed with low laughter. 
 The flirtation hurt Nathan. He was jealous of the older 
 fellow's freedom from "careful" parents. 
 
 "On'y seven years more just seven years ! then I can 
 marry her," the poor young colt told himself. "Marry her 
 whether Pa'll let me or not. Oh, Bernie, Bernie, I love 
 you. I love you more than anything else in the world! 
 You'll never understand!" 
 
 It was only half -past seven o'clock and yet his father 
 appeared and ordered him in to bed. 
 
 "Look here, you young pup," the man intercepted as Nat 
 drearily obeyed, " what's this nonsense I'm hearing about 
 you traipsin' around behind some girl? Do you?" 
 
 "N-N-No, sir!" 
 
 "I don't believe you ! Else folks around town wouldn't 
 be talking. If you lie to me I'll lay on the strap. Now who 
 is the girl and what about her ? Answer me quick, or it'll be 
 worse for you!" 
 
 "I don't know what you mean!" 
 
 A shrill cry of pain followed as the man twisted the boy's 
 ear. 
 
 "Answer me!" he thundered. 
 
 "B-B-Bernice Gridley," Nat confessed. 
 
 "Well you let me lay down a law right here and now ! 
 No son of mine is going to make a young jackass of him 
 self or ruin his life by getting mixed up with any girl 
 before he's old enough to know his own mind! You put 
 girls out of your mind once and for all, the same as when 
 we lived over in Foxboro you were told to put the baby 
 business out of your mind ! You hear me ? Don't you 
 ever be seen on the street with a girl. Don't you ever speak 
 to one excepting when you're absolutely obliged to on 
 strictly business! Don't you ever let me hear of you goin' 
 to any party where there's girls while as for loving or 
 kissing 'em my God, I'll skin you alive if I find you up 
 to any such looseness and wickedness. You promise that
 
 5c THE FOG 
 
 here and now before me and before God and may God 
 damn your disobedient young soul if you go back on your 
 promise." 
 
 Nathan was aghast. Johnathan tortured the boy until he 
 got his promise out. 
 
 This was a Thursday evening. The church bells were 
 droning idly in the soft summer dusk. Having heard young 
 Nathan climb sobbing into his creaking bed (while other 
 boys were still playing "Duck on the Rock" out under the 
 Adams Street arc light) Johnathan Forge went to prayer 
 meeting. There he made his ten-minute weekly testimony 
 about how precious Jesus had been to his soul since the 
 previous Thursday and how he Johnathan prayed in all 
 things to be guided by the Father's loving care.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 EXQUISITE THINGS 
 
 Mrs. Gracia Theddon, writing in her upstairs library the 
 Saturday morning after her visit to the Orphanage, was 
 disturbed by one Murfins, her butler. Murfins merely 
 thrust in his head, being florid and coatless from directing 
 the cleaning of near-by rooms. 
 
 "The small girl you spoke of Tuesday is here, ma'am," 
 was his simple way of announcing news to transcend all 
 future events in Gracia Theddon's life. 
 
 The woman arose, gripping her chair-back with one hand, 
 the other quieting her heart. 
 
 "Bring her up, Murfins," she directed huskily. 
 
 It was a new role for Mrs. Theddon, that of mother. 
 Capable of directing as brilliant a social galaxy as the annual 
 Charity Ball, she waited unnerved for the advent of a tiny, 
 dark-eyed stranger. 
 
 Three minutes later the foster mother beheld her new 
 child come down the room. 
 
 The Fairy Foundling had removed her twenty-cent hat 
 of brown straw and shaken free her dusky, ribbonless 
 tresses. She wore a drab Orphanage frock which only 
 reached her knees, her stockings were thick and shapeless 
 and her shoes had emphatically been selected for service and 
 not for style. Yet the child in either sackcloth or satin 
 would have divulged equal quality. There was no cheap 
 sniggering bashfulness, no clodhopper shyness in her de 
 meanor. But there was reserve and painful anxiety not 
 unmixed with a little dread. Her cameo features were 
 pale. Her delicate rosebud lips disclosed teeth like chips of 
 porcelain. Her deep brown eyes almost black held that 
 same queer calmness, but those eyes could easily turn starry, 
 as Mrs. Theddon discovered in the next few moments.
 
 52 THE FOG 
 
 "Makes me think she's always on the point of wanting 
 to weep with happiness, yet smilin' through tears that don't 
 quite come," was old Murfins' way of describing those 
 eyes to Stebbins, the second man. To which sentiments 
 Stebbins subscribed avidly, though with picturesque vari 
 ations. 
 
 Six feet from Mrs. Theddon the little girl halted. 
 
 "So you've come," was all that perturbed woman could 
 call up at the moment. She meant it kindly yet she realized 
 it was the wrong thing not at all cordial and maternal. 
 And she greatly longed to be cordial and maternal and set 
 riotously free the tenderness aching in her soul for expres 
 sion. 
 
 "Yes'm," returned the Fairy Foundling, with a tight 
 swallow, " I've come." 
 
 "And you'd like to be my little girl?" 
 
 "I'd like to be anybody's little girl that" (swallow) 
 "wanted me." 
 
 Mrs. Theddon sank sideways upon her chair. She could 
 feel every throb of her heart, count its ragged beatings. 
 
 Suddenly, as the wistful figure stood there, never so par- 
 entless, her frailness and smallness accentuated by the great 
 room above her, the rich woman held out her arms. 
 
 "Baby !" she cried brokenly. "Come !" 
 
 Murfins went back to his cleaning. 
 
 "Well, I'll be damned !" he cried. "Didn't know the old 
 girl had it in her. Just goes to prove that folks don't al 
 ways match their outsides! Yes, I'll be damned! I'll be 
 damned a couple of times maybe three !" 
 
 "Do you know how long I've wanted a little girl and 
 never knew what it was I wanted?" Mrs. Theddon asked 
 when her emotions permitted. 
 
 "No, ma'am," the princess answered. 
 
 "It's been a long, long time ! God never sent me a little 
 girl of my own excepting my Dream Girl, dear." 
 
 "Your Dream Girl?" 
 
 "Sometimes in dark nights I dreamed a little girl some 
 body very like yourself, came to me and " 
 
 "Please don't cry, Mrs. Theddon!" 
 
 "We're going to be so happy, you and I ! You must for 
 get the Orphanage or that you ever knew it. You must try 
 to believe you've lived with me always. You're going to
 
 EXQUISITE THINGS 53 
 
 have pretty dresses and a beautiful room. You're going to 
 have all sorts of nice people to teach you and help you. 
 And good times ! we're going to have all sorts of parties 
 and walks and travels together, you and I and then some 
 day all I own will be yours because you're all I'll have, 
 all I have now !" 
 
 "That will be awfully fine," the little girl replied joyously. 
 
 Most children would have been abashed or thoughtlessly 
 ecstatic. The Fairy Foundling was not unappreciative, yet 
 a fine reserve seemed bred in her blood and fiber. This 
 environment of culture and refinement, instead of distress 
 ing her, placed her vaguely at ease. 
 
 "And please, dear please don't call me 'Mrs. Theddon/ 
 I'm Mrs. Theddon to every one but you. You are to be 
 different from the rest. Call me if you can call me 
 mother ! Would you call me mother, little girl ?" 
 
 "I'd love to call you mother!" 
 
 The child smiled up sweetly into the woman's aching eyes. 
 And something caught in Mrs. Theddon's throat. Only for 
 an instant. Then another great wave of maternity swept 
 through her tightened breast and long-repressed motherhood 
 welled up gloriously, fine and overwhelming and golden 
 and true. 
 
 ii 
 
 Mrs. Theddon led the child down the outer hallway into 
 a small room which opened from her own. White and blue 
 was the color scheme in an atmosphere of silken daintiness. 
 Two windows opened upon a wide panorama of the Con 
 necticut Valley and the river, far-flung from north to south 
 below. 
 
 Little frocks were laid upon the counterpane. The dress 
 ing table was as complete as the boudoir appointments of 
 feminine royalty. Beyond the chamber opened a diminutive, 
 white-tiled bath. 
 
 "The workmen finished it yesterday afternoon, dear. I 
 made them rush to complete it in time for you to-day. Now 
 I'm going to bathe and dress you myself. I want to do it! 
 Marie, your maid, will not arrive until Monday. But that 
 was arranged on purpose. For the first two days I wanted 
 to accustom you to it, myself. I want us to get acquainted.
 
 54 THE FOG 
 
 You don't mind, do you, dear?" She asked it anxiously, 
 as though the child were a guest as old as herself. 
 
 "Oh, mother dear I'm so happy ! It's a dream 
 come true." 
 
 "A dream come true ?" Mrs. Theddon repeated the words 
 dazedly. "And have you ever dreamed of things like these, 
 little girl ?" 
 
 "Lots and lots of times. Somehow the Orphanage seemed 
 a place where I was staying for just a little while until 
 somebody I belonged to came after me." 
 
 "I'm so glad you're not like the other Orphanage 
 children, dear. I thought in some ways you might be. But 
 you don't know how pleased I am !" 
 
 "I'm just me," the princess affirmed. "And it seems 
 like coming home !" 
 
 The mother bathed and dressed the child, calling a servant 
 to carry away the Orphanage clothes. But if Mrs. Theddon 
 had been pleasantly surprised thus far, it was nothing to 
 her overpowering satisfaction when she beheld her little 
 ward clothed in the habilaments better befitting her char 
 acter. 
 
 "You're wonderful, girlie mine!" the woman whispered, 
 as she surveyed the transformation. 
 
 "And I think you're wonderful, too," the child answered. 
 
 And yet, twenty- four hours later, a gray Sunday twilight, 
 Mrs. Theddon entered her chamber to discover the child 
 huddled in a window-chair, sobbing convulsively. 
 
 "What's the matter, darling?" cried the shocked woman. 
 "Aren't you happy?" 
 
 The princess sought frantically to hide her tears. 
 
 "Yes'm I'm happy so happy it hurts. Yet well, I 
 guess I miss the orphans already!" 
 
 "Miss them ! You mean you'd rather be at the Orphanage 
 than here with me?" 
 
 "It isn't the nice things it isn't you it's it's " 
 
 "Yes, yes! What is it?" 
 
 "I guess it's just the orphans 'specially the babies. 1 
 miss havin' to do things for 'em. For they needed an awful 
 lot done for 'em, and I was happy because it was me that 
 could do it." 
 
 "But they have some one else to look after them now. 
 They're no worse off because you've gone."
 
 EXQUISITE THINGS 55 
 
 "No'm. Perhaps not. I wasn't 'specially thinking of 
 their side of it. I was thinking of mine. They liked to 
 have things done for 'em. They told me so. Miss Rowland 
 got awful cross sometimes. And I felt happy because I 
 was 'predated. That's an awful nice word, 'predated, isn't 
 it? I so want folks to 'predate me, Mrs. Thed mother 
 dear. I guess everybody does, don't they ? want to be 
 'predated ?" 
 
 Every one wants to be appreciated ? Dear God in heaven ! 
 
 "Child, what does put such mature thoughts into your 
 little head?" 
 
 "If you'd wondered and wondered who you were, and 
 never found out, maybe you'd know how sad you could 
 feel, thinking it was because nobody wanted you and you 
 wasn't 'predated." 
 
 "You poor, maternal, romantic little lamb ! You talk like 
 a woman grown, already." 
 
 "Do grown-up ladies feel like that, Mrs. Thed mother 
 dear?" 
 
 Mrs. Theddon did not answer at once. Her voice was 
 handicapped when she responded: 
 
 "Real women do, I fancy, my darling. But maybe there 
 are a lot who have a cruel time showing it. Come, baby! 
 Tell me did any one ever pick you up and rock you to 
 sleep in their arms? Did any one ever try to sing you a 
 lullaby, child?" 
 
 "Not much, Mrs. Thed mother. I always tried to do it 
 to those littler than me. But I loved to do it !" the princess 
 cried suddenly. 
 
 "Let's sit down in the rocker, child. And don't weep 
 any more. Because you'll never know how much you are 
 appreciated here." 
 
 The woman took the distraught, moist-eyed little girl in 
 her arms. She tried to soothe her by singing a lullaby. She 
 had a rich contralto voice, "trained" by a great Parisian 
 master for this ! to sing a little, parentless girl to sleep. 
 Yet she had to stop half way. She found that her training 
 had gone for naught. Her voice was cracked and jagged 
 and uneven and broken. 
 
 In that mellow pause, the child snuggled closer. She 
 whispered in the dusk: 
 
 "You're just like a real mother, Mrs. Theddon. I guess
 
 56 THE FOG 
 
 I know now why some of the babies at the Home stopped 
 crying when I began to rock them to sleep." 
 
 The future opened radiantly for Mrs. Gracia Theddon 
 then. And the past dropped away, colorless and shallow 
 and tinseled and wasted. 
 
 "Listen, dear," she said finally. "I'm going to ask if 
 you'll do something for me." 
 
 "I'll do anything in the world for you that I can." 
 
 "When Miss Howland took you into the Home, she called 
 you Allegra. When she partly adopted you, she gave you 
 her own name Howland. So while you were at the Or 
 phanage your name was Allegra Howland. But now that 
 you've left that life behind you, your last name is Theddon, 
 like my own." 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 "I don't like the name Allegra. I want you to let me 
 change that too. I've picked out a name I'd planned to call 
 a little girl of my own, if one ever came." 
 
 "What is it, mother dear? I'm sure I'll like it if you 
 picked it out." 
 
 "It's Madelaine!" 
 
 "It's an awful pretty name," said the child, after a mo 
 ment's silence. "It's so soft-sounding and pleasant, like all 
 the rooms here in your house and your eyes and your 
 voice since I've been here and you started to love me." 
 
 "God help me!" whispered the rich woman. "Maybe 
 You knew best, dear God. It's worth the dreary wait, after 
 all!" 
 
 And so Madelaine Theddon came into existence. So she 
 too started her journey a daintier, softer journey to 
 ward Life's Hilltop and the lambent stars and the Amethyst 
 Moment. 
 
 in 
 
 In the butler's pantry old Murfins was straightening out 
 the tradesmen's orders for a dinner party. Stebbins, near 
 by, was polishing liqueur glasses with a flannel cloth. 
 
 "But I'm thinking there's going to be family fireworks, 
 Steb, when the Ruggleses come home and hear what she's 
 done. They got an awful good opinion of themselves those 
 Ruggleses. Amos's wife threw an awful fit, I heard, when
 
 EXQUISITE THINGS 57 
 
 her brother married the Missus which up to that time had 
 been practically a Nobody. Now there's a child from an 
 orphanage come to get a look-see at the moneybags. Can 
 you see 'em standing for it, Steb?" 
 
 "The Missus is too smart to have any will drawed that 
 them Ruggleses can break." 
 
 "You never can tell, Steb. There's lawyers and lawyers. 
 Some of 'em could drive a coach unscorched through hell." 
 
 "Well, I hope young Gordon don't get any of it his 
 aunt's money, I mean. He's a bad one, Gordon is! Re 
 member how he almost killed the roan colt last time he was 
 here? Murphy wasn't goin' to stand by and have no horse 
 abused like that. I seen it all. When he interfered, Gord 
 went for him with his quirt. If the Missus hadn't showed 
 up when she did, Mike'd busted the young roughneck wide 
 open." Murphy was the Theddon coachman. 
 
 "She's provin' she's a bit of an angel," observed Murfins. 
 "I'd hate to see her get the short end of it." He meant 
 Madelaine. 
 
 They worked in silence for a few minutes. Then Steb- 
 bins remarked : 
 
 "Wonder how Gord'll behave next time he comes to visit 
 here and finds the princess his aunt's got out of an asylum." 
 
 "Not an asylum, Steb. An asylum's a crazy house where 
 they store insane lunatics that ain't quite right in their 
 heads!"
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 Bernie Gridley soon acquired a girl chum, a boy-baiting 
 little blond with a profile like the face on an old-style 
 quarter-dollar. Her name was Elinore Carver. 
 
 As I was Nathan Forge's squire, Elinore became my 
 Heart's Desire. Which may read like "peanut" poetry but 
 which really did possess so much poetry at the time that I 
 am allowing the euphony to remain. 
 
 Thus did our quartette facilitate the course of true love, 
 conspire to make it run smoothly and hoodwink our parents 
 considered as being meddlesome outsiders on general prin 
 ciple. Family catechisms in the evening as to our associa 
 tions during the day probed in vain for any milk-and-water 
 assignations so long as the parties on all sides could swear 
 truthfully that they had traveled during the shining hours 
 with those of their own sex and any propinquity came about 
 in pairs and purely by accident. 
 
 Although Bernie's mother did her worst to keep her off 
 spring an exasperating little prig, still in her heart the 
 Dresden Doll was a daughter of Eve. And ere long it was 
 accepted in school that she and Nathan had been called and 
 by one another chosen. 
 
 Peter Taro, the school's bad boy, had individualistic ideas 
 about it, however. Peter was too crude, too far down in the 
 social scale, to acquire a sweetheart. Therefore he had a 
 propensity to make light of the tenderest sentiments of 
 others. He would walk on the opposite side of any Lover's 
 Lane meaning any village street whereon boy and maid 
 could woo without the horrible possibility of being met by 
 parents or those who would carry tales to parents and 
 make of himself a general nuisance. On picket fences with 
 a stick he would beat a tom-tom. Or he would carry on
 
 PRAYER 59 
 
 loud-voiced conversation with the Romeo in the case on 
 subjects of which the Juliet was ignorant. Being snubbed 
 or rebuked, he sought vengeance in rhyme. His lines 
 apropos of Nathan's affair ran: 
 
 "Get your fiddle and feel quite fiddley ; 
 Nathan Forge and Bernice Gridley!" 
 
 This sort of thing he shouted at the top of his lungs tc 
 the perplexity of the neighborhood and the edification of the 
 grown-up world in general. Bernice affected to be furious. 
 So ultimately Nathan had to fight the Taro boy. Which he 
 did adequately. 
 
 It was the first fight of Nathan's career a "kid-fight" 
 perchance but no less virile or significant on that account. 
 For like many quiet, peaceable men, when aroused the boy 
 became a fury. Lithe as a cat, nimble as a bantam-weight, 
 he pounded Peter Taro until the blood-smeared youngster 
 fled. 
 
 Those were days of bliss and nights of heartburn. Vividly 
 the hours come back that we spent before kitchen mirrors, 
 steam-misty with boiling cabbage or wash-water of our 
 homes, tying and retying our "cravats", plastering down 
 our hair with pilfered bay rum. If we had the front of 
 our hair parted and well pasted down, and the toes of our 
 shoes reasonably shined, we were groomed satisfactorily 
 for hymeneal campaigning. 
 
 That each of us possessed a hat-lifting cowlick in the 
 rear like the business paraphernalia of a small porcupine and 
 that our heels were eternally yellow with mud were among 
 the happy paradoxes of boyhood. We were as we were when 
 we looked in our mirrors when we posed for phrenological 
 inventory and profile analysis. And besides, a good soldier 
 in either war or love never looks behind anyhow. 
 
 II 
 
 We had followed the two little girls homeward one after 
 noon, chaffing and mauling each other as we would never 
 have done if they had not been somewhere about to see, when 
 , we returned along the Green River in the afterglow. Even-
 
 60 THE FOG 
 
 tually we threw ourselves down on a knoll. While we idled 
 there, the valley grew hushed and the stars came out. 
 
 "Say, Nat," I demanded, "whatcher goin' to be when you 
 grow up?" 
 
 "A writer and a poet," he answered without hesitation. 
 
 I pondered this. We were emerging from the period 
 when manhood meant freedom to turn pirate or Indian 
 fighter. If Nathan had declared his intention of becoming 
 a locomotive engineer or a clown in a circus, I should not 
 have hesitated to take him at his word. But a writer a 
 poet! 
 
 "Aw, go on !" I retorted. "Poets don't make no money !" 
 
 "I dunno's I wanner make money." 
 
 I looked at him. His face growing a bit less freckled 
 now was held between his hands as he lay on his chest 
 and looked vaguely off across the smooth river where the 
 trout were jumping. But before I could comment causti 
 cally on this he asked, "Whatter you gonna be, Billy ?" 
 
 "I dunno. I'll be a business man, I guess, and make bar 
 rels of money as much as Mr. Gridley." 
 
 "What kind of business?" 
 
 "Oh, I dunno. I'll own a factory, I guess and be presi 
 dent of a bank afterwards, so when I want money all I 
 gotta do is go into my bank and help myself." 
 
 We lay in silence for several minutes. Then I per 
 sisted : 
 
 "If you're gonna be a writer, whatcher gonna write?" 
 
 "Oh, books and poems and things that hurt me so much 
 sometimes when I look at 'em." 
 
 "Huh ! That ain't a regular business. That's a lazy 
 man's job. Judge Prescott says so. His daughter, Annie, 
 married somebody who writes poetry and the Judge has to 
 support both of 'em. I heard him say so. Betcha your pa 
 don't letcher, anyhow !" 
 
 "Betcher he will ! Betcher he won't have anything to say 
 about it damn him!" 
 
 Nathan's lips tightened. It was not petulancy; it was 
 the bitterness of mistreated childhood. 
 
 "You ought not to swear about your father, Nat," I told 
 him, horrified. 
 
 "Why not? Is it worse to say what I think than to go 
 around with it makin' me mad inside?"
 
 PRAYER 61 
 
 **No, but it's wicked to swear about your folks. You 
 won't live long. The Ten Commandments says so." 
 
 "Aw, whatter I care for the old Ten Commandments? 
 All the Bible and the church and things is made for anyhow 
 is to back up grown folks when they wanner work off their 
 hell on us kids!" 
 
 "Don't you believe there's a God?" 
 
 "Well, somebody probably made all the stars and trees 
 and flowers all the pretty things. But it spoils it to 
 think it's the same person that dad says is so precious to his 
 soul every week in prayer meetin'. See that evenin' star 
 now, Billy, hangin' low over Haystack. Ain't it pretty? 
 S'pose anybody that made such a shinin' star would be in 
 partnership with a growed-up person who's so tight he 
 won't buy his kid a pair o' pants? Billy, whatter we got 
 all this God-business and church-business crammed down 
 our throats for? Why can't we just drink it in by comin' 
 out to a place like this, where it's all quiet, and watchin' an 
 evenin' star?" 
 
 "But we gotta love our parents, Nat. The Bible says so !" 
 
 "Yeah and the same Bible says we oughta be clean and 
 peaceful and good inside. And when a feller hates 
 anybody like I hate my father, how can he turn around 
 and say he loves him and act like he loves him, when he 
 don't?" 
 
 "All the same," I reiterated, "the Bible says we gotta, and 
 we have !" 
 
 "Well, I'll do it till I'm twenty-one," assented Nathan, 
 " 'cause I can't help myself. Then I'll go to hell and roast, 
 if it's wicked but I'll stop lovin' him and do as I honest 
 please. Between the time I'm twenty-one and the time I 
 go to hell, I'll feel peaceful and satisfied for a while, any 
 how." 
 
 I felt my friend was damning himself irrevocably, sin 
 ning against the Holy Ghost. I had to get away from those 
 sulphur fumes, so I went back to poetry. 
 
 "Howja know you can write poetry to make your livin' 
 at it? Have you tried?" 
 
 "Yeah ! Lots of times. It's a cinch !" 
 
 "You mean you've got some poems writ already?" 
 
 "Sure, slathers of 'em." 
 
 "Where are they?"
 
 62 THE FOG 
 
 "Home locked up so Pa won't get 'em along with 
 Bernie's letters." 
 
 "What's your Ma think about you bein' a poet?" 
 
 "Oh, she don't think nothin', only what a hard time she 
 has with Pa and that Edith will marry money." 
 
 "Ain't you ever talked with her about it?" 
 
 "I see myself!" 
 
 "Thunder! Can't you go to your Ma and talk about 
 things when you wanna ?" 
 
 "No! 'Stead o' that, I have to listen to Ma's troubles. 
 And if I don't happen to agree with her, she gets to twitchin' 
 all over her face and goes off to rock in the dark by herself. 
 She tells me, 'Oh, you're growin' up into a small-sized edi 
 tion of your father!' Damn her, too!" 
 
 "But if you can't talk with your Ma about things, and 
 what you're gonna be when you're growed up, who can you 
 talk 'em with?" 
 
 "Don't talk 'em with nobody exceptin' you sometimes. 
 Keep 'em to myself. That's why I wanner marry Bernie 
 just as quick as I can. I gotta feelin' way down inside that 
 she'll listen when she's my wife, and help." 
 
 He spoke the word wife with difficulty. 
 
 ill 
 
 "I have always understood my children perfectly," de 
 clared Anna Forge years later, when the Forge domestic 
 structure went down in wreckage, as it was bound to go 
 down in wreckage. "Edith would have been all right if it 
 hadn't been for her brother's example always before her. 
 And Nathan, he took after his father bigoted, stubborn, 
 cold-blooded, hard-hearted, indifferent to those who have 
 thanklessly tried to do their utmost to help him." 
 
 "I have always understood my children perfectly," con 
 tended Johnathan Forge to old Archibald Cuttner, when five 
 years later Johnathan was having a hysterical time to keep 
 Nathan from marrying his granddaughter. "Edith takes 
 after her mother fizzle-headed, irresponsible, neurotic, al 
 ways thinking of herself and her troubles, inconsistent, a 
 woman in every sense of the word. As for Nathan, God 
 only knows who he takes after. I'm almost ready to believe
 
 PRAYER 63 
 
 him sent to me as my cross. I trained the boy by ex 
 ample and precept to walk uprightly, flee evil, honor and 
 respect his parents, worship God. But he is determined 
 to go his own way, regardless of my counsel. It's partly 
 the age in which we live that's to blame. Disrespect 
 and profanation is in the very air the rising generation 
 breathes." 
 
 "I am persuaded," wrote a popular clergyman recently, 
 "that what this age needs more than all else is abstersion 
 from the follies and 'broad-mindedness' of this blatant day; 
 we need to return to the 'good old time,' the fundamental 
 things, unconditional respect for parents, rigorous observ 
 ance of the Sabbath, the replacement of woman back in 
 the home where Nature intended her to function ; less frivo 
 lous nonsense and 'isms' in our educational systems and 
 more reading- writing-and-arithmetic, good, old-fashioned 
 fear of fire and brimstone thundered from our pulpits and 
 a wholesome terror of the wrath of God injected into the 
 hearts of a shallow and mocking generation who bow down 
 and worship the Golden Calf." 
 
 "I hope," remarked Uncle Joe Fodder, the town philos 
 opher, one night when he and I discussed the Forges "I 
 hope the Lord's got a sense o' humor ! How could He re 
 main the Almighty without it?" 
 
 IV 
 
 The Forges, on coming to Paris, had taken a small gray 
 cottage on Spring Street. This cottage stood on a corner 
 with a short width of yard between the Adams Street side 
 walk and the windows of the Forge dining room. And on 
 summer nights when the heat required opened windows, 
 neighbors and pedestrians overheard the full barrage of 
 vocal artillery that husband and wife laid down over trivial 
 family matters or the scion who was "bringing their gray 
 hairs down in sorrow to the grave." 
 
 From the day he was born until the day he married, the 
 boy seemed a bone of contention between his parents. For 
 the most part thesd altercations had to do with his mother's 
 animosity toward the father's method of raising his family. 
 But always, when the man's brutality got the better of
 
 64 THE FOG 
 
 hysterical argument, the affair ended with the wife's con 
 tention, voiced in no very refined terms, that she "was go 
 ing home to her mother." 
 
 I forget how many times Anna Forge "went home to her 
 mother", if I ever knew. She threatened to do it a couple 
 of times a week. About twice a year she made the threat 
 good. On these occasions she packed all her personal 
 clothes and possessions in several bags and telescope valises, 
 took a half day to "wash and iron the children"; called 
 Uncle Joe Fodder's depot hack and "left her husband in 
 style", as Uncle Joe put it. 
 
 She returned to a grass-widowed mother who lived in a 
 small manufacturing city out in York State. This mother 
 sympathized with her the first day ; listened in silence to her 
 troubles the second ; was indifferent to them the third ; tole 
 rated them the fourth ; endured them the fifth ; "had words" 
 with her daughter the sixth; quarreled with her openly on 
 the seventh and ordered her out of the house on the eighth. 
 Then back Anna Forge returned to John, entered her own 
 home haughtily, failed to speak to him until the third day, 
 then started around the six-month cycle all over. 
 
 These semiannual trips were gala days in the lives of 
 Nathan and his sister, until he began to realize the tragedy 
 that sponsored them. 
 
 One night he came running over to my house in great 
 distress. He "whistled me out" and I found him sobbing 
 distraughtly. 
 
 "Pa an' Ma have had an awful fight, Billy!" he told me, 
 "Pa wouldn't give her no money for a dress to-day. But 
 when he came home from downtown he fetched one he'd 
 bought himself. Ma looked at it and said she wouldn't be 
 seen in the thing. Pa says she could wear it or go naked. 
 They got to havin' words, Billy, and pretty soon Ma picked 
 up the butcher knife and says by the White Christ she'd 
 cut Pa's throat. And Pa chucked a blue-glass pitcher at 
 her all full o' milk and said she was full o' high-flown Yankee 
 notions and he'd take 'em out of her. Ma says she'd go 
 back to her mother and Pa says, 'Yes, that'd be a good 
 scheme, only in a few days she'd have a fight with her 
 mother and be right back again.' Then Ma says she'd chuck 
 herself in the river. And Pa says she didn't have the guts, 
 And Ma says oh, she didn't have, did she, and started
 
 PRAYER 65 
 
 right out of the house. She's off toward the river now, 
 Billy, and I'm scared stiff she'll do it." 
 
 "You mean she's went to commit suicide?" I demanded 
 aghast. . 
 
 "Yeah ! And her forehead was all bloody where the 
 pitcher struck her." 
 
 "How long's she been gone?" 
 
 "She just started. I came right over. Pa sent me up to 
 bed and I skipped out over the woodshed roof." 
 
 "Can she swim?" 
 
 "No! Anyhow, people that's committing suicide don't 
 care whether they can swim ! Most of 'em don't !" 
 
 "Gosh, she may really kill herself. Whatcher want me 
 to do?" 
 
 "Come with me, Billy. Maybe we can stop her !" 
 
 We reached the river but found no woman. Nathan 
 felt for a certainty his mother had cast herself into the 
 water and would not be consoled. He knelt upon the close- 
 cropped grass and with face on his hands he sobbed dis 
 tressingly. 
 
 "Why can't I have a Pa and Ma that don't fight all the 
 time?" he cried hysterically. "Other fellows do! Why can't, 
 I? Oh, Ma! Ma! Ma!" 
 
 I tried to console him but I was rather ill myself. Some 
 how I felt responsible for Mrs. Forge's death, not having 
 reached the stream in time to intercept and dissuade her. My 
 own face was awash with tears as I tried to persuade my 
 friend to go home and tell his dad. 
 
 "I climbed out on the shed roof and skun away," cried 
 Nathan. "I'm scared stiff to go home again ever ! He'll 
 whale the daylights out o' me fer tellin' anybody about it, 
 even you !" 
 
 "We better go somewheres," I argued. "We can't save 
 her now. And we can't stay out here all night. You better 
 come home with me, and I'll tell my Ma and she'll see what 
 you better do. She ain't afraid of your Pa ! She'll tell him 
 what she thinks of him. My Ma's great at tellin' your folks 
 what she thinks of 'em!" 
 
 I persuaded Nat to come home with me. It was a tragic 
 return. 
 
 My mother gathered us against her ample bosom, an arm 
 about each of us, while she listened to the horror of the
 
 66 THE FOG 
 
 thing we blurted out. Then she smiled sadly and kissed 
 us. 
 
 "Bless your hearts ! Nathan's mother has been here with 
 me, telling me about it," mother said. "She must have turned 
 back through Pine Street while you were on the way to the 
 river. She wouldn't kill herself. She loves Nathan too 
 much to do that. She said so!" 
 
 Nathan's mother went home that night and when she re- 
 entered the house, John Forge looked up from his paper 
 and said: 
 
 "Huh ! Back, are you ? I thought so !" 
 
 The mother passed up to bed with some hot retort about 
 "her life belonging to her children". 
 
 But she cried all that night and John Forge slept on the 
 downstairs sofa. 
 
 "I heard him say it was a hell of a home," Nathan told 
 me afterward. 
 
 VI 
 
 Outside of parental incompatibility, the other bane of 
 Nat's life in those years was the manner in which his father 
 compelled him to dress. A high-strung, sensitive lad, nat 
 urally fastidious, he could not have suffered a worse handi 
 cap in the matter of polish and poise in later years than 
 resulted from Johnathan's policy of dressing his family. 
 
 The boy was the butt of the school for his oddities of 
 raiment. Johnathan's idea of clothing was merely some 
 thing to cover primeval nakedness. The first new suit the 
 boy possessed he purchased with money he had made run 
 ning errands. Invariably he wore coats and trousers cut 
 down from those his father had discarded. This would not 
 have been so bad if his mother had been any sort of tailoress. 
 But she was slovenly with needle and scissors and the jests 
 of his school companions were Chinese cruelty. "The Scare 
 crow" they called him. 
 
 Openly he was twitted that he was not invited to parties 
 because of his freakish appearance. Johnathan Forge was
 
 PRAYER 67 
 
 small in stature and at seventeen Nathan was almost of a 
 size with his father. After that the lad was compelled to 
 wear Johnathan's suits without remodeling. When John- 
 athan thus relegated a cast-off suit to his son, while he 
 bought himself a new one, he made the boy pay something 
 from his savings, whether he wanted to purchase the clothes 
 or not. John's philosophy was "making a man of Nat" and 
 "teaching him to take care of his clothes because they cost 
 money." But it took years of hard, deliberate self-training 
 to make Nat forego a painful self -consciousness of clothes 
 and personal appearance. 
 
 Often in prayer meeting, which Nathan was forced to 
 attend religiously after fourteen, as I listened to John Forge 
 giving intimate details of the spiritual partnership between 
 himself and the Savior, I heard Nathan snarl under his 
 breath : 
 
 "Then I wish Jesus would put it into his head to get me 
 a new pair o' pants ! I hope the Lord goes around lookin' 
 decent in His clothes but I doubt it or He'd have some pity 
 on me !" 
 
 VII 
 
 Outside of school, our lives were tied up intimately with 
 the Methodist Church. We had no movies or theaters to 
 speak of in those days, few sports, certainly no parties or 
 dances, at least for Nathan. The only party he ever at 
 tended, with parental sanction, up to the time of his ma 
 jority, was little Bernice-Theresa's of previous record and 
 that largely because it fell within the scope of a school 
 affair. 
 
 We went to church morning and evening on Sunday and 
 to Junior League at four o'clock. We went to Tuesday- 
 night class meeting and were scared nearly out of our wits 
 at being called to stand up and testify how much we loved 
 God when we didn't know whether we loved Him or not. 
 And on Thursday nights we sat through those long, dis 
 tressing silences between testimonies when forty people 
 waited for the spirit to move the brethren and lips whis 
 pered silently, committing sentiments to memory which 
 were uttered parrot-like once the whisperers were on their 
 feet. We knew before we started in who was going to pray
 
 68 THE FOG 
 
 the longest and for what he was going to pray ; who was go 
 ing to sing the loudest and what he was going to "call for" 
 in the matter of hymns; who was going to testify the hard 
 est and what his remarks were going to include. My only 
 comment on these weekly spiritual gatherings, in so far as 
 two growing boys were made to attend under pressure, was 
 that they did us no lasting harm. 
 
 The red-letter days in our lives, however, were the 
 Friday-night "sociables" and bean suppers, or the concerts 
 given for Easter, Harvest and Christmas. 
 
 Absolutely forbidden company or contact with the other 
 sex by narrow parental decree, the boy Nathan, being a 
 normal, healthy youngster, had either to repress natural 
 maturing emotions until they found outlet in clandestine, 
 perverted channels, or he had to gain worldly knowledge 
 and sex-poise by the hard, raw route of searing experience 
 when John was no longer able to make his decree effective. 
 
 John Forge's argument was that sex, as well as money, 
 being a basic root of all human evil, the way to keep a boy 
 from disaster was to prohibit him the company of sex 
 altogether. 
 
 John Forge had married unhappily, therefore all mar 
 riages were unhappy. Nat should not duplicate his father's 
 mistake if John had to kill him to save him from it. 
 
 If Nathan attended any school or neighborhood gather 
 ing and his father heard of it afterward, the man had 
 two questions ready for his son: (i) "Were there any 
 girls present?" and (2) "Did you kiss 'em?" 
 
 John Forge had a crazed obsession about his boy kissing 
 a girl. 
 
 In the school yard and even at church "sociables" we 
 often played asinine childish games, "Ring Around the 
 Rosy", "Copenhagen" and "Drop the Pillow." But Nathan, 
 fearing his father's wrath, was ever the wallflower. And 
 he was deeply in love with Bernice-Theresa, or thought he 
 was. Other boys kissed their "girls." Why shouldn't he? 
 
 "I've got to kiss her ! I've just simply got to kiss her !" 
 he consequently affirmed to me; no emperor ever planned 
 the ravishing of a rival kingdom with the sangfroid with 
 which Nathan deliberated upon the necessity for osculatory 
 assault on the Dresden Doll. 
 
 "The thing to do," I advised gravely, "is to get her alone
 
 PRAYER 69 
 
 where she can't scream or bring help. And it's got to be 
 done in such a way that she don't tell her folks ! Because 
 then they'll tell your folks and your dad will just simply 
 kill you!" 
 
 This might seem impossible, but to fourteen nothing is 
 impossible. 
 
 We thought of intriguing Bernice into the woods at the 
 edge of town, into the haunted dwelling next to the tan 
 nery, into all sorts of lonely, lugubrious places. But the 
 difficulty lay in enticing her to the rendezvous and operating 
 on her rosebud lips without scaring the Dresden Doll half 
 out of her senses and bringing a boomerang back upon our 
 selves. Ultimately we resolved upon a bold maneuver: 
 We would kiss Bernice Gridley in church!" 
 
 "We could send her and Elinore a note," I planned, 
 "asking 'em to wait after the Easter concert. I could keep 
 Elinore and send Bernie out into the vestibule. Just 
 as she comes through the door you could grab her and do 
 it ! Then run like the devil !" 
 
 This was bold. It was terribly bold ! Yet it was feasible. 
 We had yet to learn that the ecstasy of osculation consists 
 largely in the warmth and passion of reciprocity. We were 
 midget cavemen, Nathan and I. Bernice-Theresa had to 
 be kissed if our lives were forfeit. 
 
 I blush now when I consider the terms of endearment 
 in which our letters of those days were penned. Hours 
 we spent writing them. The most indiscreet scion of Pitts 
 burgh aristocracy never committed himself more idiotically 
 (to repent subsequently in curses and coin) than Nathan 
 and I described our holiest, hottest feelings for the edifica 
 tion of those little snobs. So the intriguing epistles were 
 indited and delivered. The kissing of Bernice-Theresa 
 was on! 
 
 Nathan and I sensed little of that concert. We were too 
 much occupied visioning the epochal thing to ensue as its 
 aftermath. 
 
 The concert began, ran its course and ended. And the 
 Dresden Doll never appeared more bewitching than she 
 did upon that platform. Two small boys caught each other's 
 eyes and wiped perspiration from youthful brows. The 
 fatal day and hour had come. Did we have the nerve to 
 go through with it? Only the fear of each thinking the
 
 70 THE FOG 
 
 other cowardly held us from fleeing that church when the 
 organist began the postlude. 
 
 It had been a beautiful spring afternoon and during the 
 concert a thunderstorm played above the village. But later 
 the sun broke through upon a sweet and dripping world, 
 and the weather gave our elders no cause to tarry. The 
 two girls, silly and giggling, held converse with other little 
 girls up near the altar rail. They had signified by signs 
 and semaphoring to which grown folk have no code-book, 
 that they would wait and consider the momentous things we 
 had to propound. And the church continued to empty and 
 the janitor to close the windows. 
 
 Nathan and I stood waiting in the vestry. It was 
 shadowed out there. I occupied a doorway at one side. 
 I saw the two little, girls finally coming down the center 
 aisle, and made a sign to Nat. He nodded. His limbs 
 were turning to tallow ; he was hoping he would not faint 
 at the peak of the conspiracy when nerve alone was re 
 quired to see it through. 
 
 At the next to the last pew the two girls parted. Elinore 
 sidled off between the seats to make her way to my door. 
 Bernie kept on and stepped into the vestry. 
 
 The instant she appeared, all the pent-up intrigue of 
 weeks galvanized in Nathan. 
 
 I am not certain where he kissed her, but at the shock 
 of a small boy hurtling himself dramatically from the 
 shadows, the Dresden Doll recoiled and shrieked and 
 wilted. 
 
 Nathan exploded his kiss, trusting it to hit its mark. He 
 sensed much talcum powder and cologne in his nostrils, 
 contact with adolescent flesh, sweet and soft and warm. 
 Then, at the instant of glorious success, the wrath of God 
 broke from the heavens and consumed him as the fire that 
 blasted Sodom. From the skies above, from the earth, 
 from the waters beneath the earth, from somewhere came a 
 Voice, a terrible, blasting, annihilating Voice: 
 
 "Here ! Here ! Here ! What the devil's comin' off here, 
 anyhow ?" 
 
 Nat snapped up into the air. Then he assumed a Direc 
 tion. Luckily the open church door was ahead. Into the 
 soft spring dusk he shot and began to tread the world be 
 neath him crazily. His not to reason why, his but to flee
 
 PRAYER 71 
 
 or die ; Nathan cleared the doorstep into thin air and zoomed 
 for the horizon. I was close behind him. 
 
 We negotiated the walk, the curb and the street. We 
 made the opposite walk and kept on going. We went 
 through Pat Larkin's side yard and Mrs. Larkin's choicest 
 roses. A lot of sweet-pea vines came next, with most of 
 them trailing behind us. Nat stepped on a cucumber frame 
 and I plowed through a couple of yards of hen wire. 
 Thereupon we got through the Alderman property into 
 Adams Street. But we did not stop there. 
 
 We went through Adams Street, through Pine and 
 Walnut. Then out of town by the pumping station. We 
 covered two miles that night before we finally plunged 
 into Bancroft's Woods far down the river. There we 
 crawled into the underbrush and squatted on our haunches. 
 
 Said Nathan, "Who was it?" 
 
 Said I, "It was Mr. Gridley !" 
 
 Sickening silence ! 
 
 "Where'd he come from?" Nathan finally found strength 
 to ask. 
 
 "He came down the belfry stairs ! I remember now there 
 was something the matter with the bell-rope this morning. 
 He must have gone up with John Chase to fix it." 
 
 "Her father !" groaned Nathan. "Billy this is the end !" 
 
 "Not on your tintype it ain't! It's only the beginning!" 
 I retorted. 
 
 "Billy what are we going to do?" 
 
 So Guy Fawkes must have queried his lieutenants when 
 the well-known Gunpowder Plot went slightly awry. 
 
 "I dunno, Nathan. It's a cinch we can't go home! We 
 can't ever go home again !" 
 
 "That's right," agreed Nathan. "Maybe Mr. Gridley is 
 at my house right this minute, tellin' it all to dad !" 
 
 "It looks, Nathan, as if we'd have to leave this place 
 for good and all. Have you got any money?" 
 
 "Twenty cents," said my friend, totaling his pockets. 
 
 "I've got a dollar-seventy in my bank at home, if I could 
 sneak in and get it out." 
 
 "That'd be a dollar -ninety. We could live a long time 
 on a dollar -ninety." 
 
 " Where'd we go?" I asked. 
 
 "West, I guess. Everybody goes west. Nap Taro went
 
 72 THE FOG 
 
 west and come back rich. Maybe down the future years, 
 if we could come back rich, they'd forgive us." 
 
 "But how'd we get there ? It costs more'n a dollar-ninety 
 to get west. And we gotta eat in the meantime." 
 
 "We'd have to hop freight trains like the tramps. It's a 
 cinch we gotta get outa here or the police'll catch us." 
 
 "Oh, dear, I wisht we hadn't done it !" I groaned. 
 
 "So do I," lamented Nathan feverishly. "But it's done 
 now and can't be undone." 
 
 "That's right. I don't know as I ever heard of anybody 
 unkissing a girl. And we won't be able to grow up and 
 marry Elinore and Bernie at all " 
 
 "Maybe if we wrote a letter to 'em after we got west, 
 they'd wait for us. Women do that sort of thing some 
 times till death." 
 
 "But they're probably mad at us by now." 
 
 Nathan laid over on the rain-wet grass and hid his face 
 in his hands. After a time he sat up and asked as men 
 ask after drifting for weeks on an open sea: 
 
 "Billy, do you suppose it would do any good to pray?" 
 
 I considered this. 
 
 "Yes," I said devoutly, relievedly; "let's pray about it!" 
 
 "Who'll pray, Billy, you or me? You pray!" 
 
 "No you !" I argued. "You did the kissin' !" 
 
 "All right," said Nathan brokenly. "But what'll I say?" 
 
 "I'd ask God first to forgive the sin of it. Then I'd 
 beseech Him to show us a way out because we're sorry 
 terribly sorry and a way out is what we need 
 most." 
 
 Again Nathan considered, ashen-faced, biting his nails 
 until the blood came. Then two distraught boys, hatless, 
 their clothing bedaubed and briar-torn, facing the most 
 hideous dilemma thus far in their lives, knelt in the shower- 
 washed alders. Earnestly they besought aid from the 
 giver of every good and perfect gift. 
 
 "Oh, God," prayed Nathan, "we have sinned we have 
 sinned against heaven and against Thee. Lord, we have 
 kissed we have kissed no, / have kissed a g-g-girl 
 and her father, Mr. Caleb M. Gridley, who runs the tannery 
 here in Paris he caught us!" 
 
 Nathan paused. He was very near sobbing. His voice 
 broke several times in attempts to continue, striving to re-
 
 PRAYER 73 
 
 member orthodox forms of divine supplication which might 
 be appropriate for the present situation. 
 
 "He he he caught us, oh, God!" went on Nathan. 
 "Oh, God, we beseech Thee we beseech Thee not to 
 wreak Thy anger upon us, nor visit us with Thy dis 
 pleasure displeasure. Hear our prayers, we pray Thee 
 we pray Thee and have compassion upon us upon us. 
 Mr. C. M. Gridley is mad at my father anyhow, over a 
 suit for some leather that ain't never been settled up, and 
 now that he knows I've kissed his daughter, he'll probably 
 get action on collection. Mr. John H. Forge, my father, 
 will wreck his displeasure on me, his son. Oh, God, we 
 didn't mean to do it, God, that is, we meant to do it but 
 didn't mean to get caught. Therefore shield and protect 
 us in Thy infinite mercy, oh, God, and turn not Thine ear 
 from us Thine ear from us. Lead us not into temptation 
 but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the power and the 
 glory forever. Amen!" 
 
 Nathan turned quickly, anxiously. 
 
 "Did I say enough?" he demanded. "I suppose I might 
 have laid it on stronger." 
 
 I held some such idea, but it was unethical and inappro 
 priate now to return and reopen the prayer. I said God 
 was assumed to know everything and inferred that un 
 doubtedly He realized the exigency of the present cir 
 cumstances anyhow. 
 
 "What'll we do now?" Nathan next asked. "Had we 
 better go west?" 
 
 "No," I finally decided. "Let's wait and see how the 
 prayer takes hold. The Bible says 'Knock and ye shall 
 find ; seek and it shall be opened unto you'. I say we trust 
 Him." 
 
 "You mean go home?" 
 
 "Well, we can sort of sneak up and see what's happened. 
 And if the prayer don't do nothin' then we can think about 
 going west afterward." 
 
 This possessed sound points and as the stars were com 
 ing out and the frogs were piping shrilly in the boglands, 
 we arrived by back roads and streets at the Forge cottage. 
 
 "Pa and Ma are at it again !" groaned Nat in a sick 
 whisper. "Probably old Gridley's been here and told' em. 
 Listen !"
 
 74 THE FOG 
 
 I heard epithets applied to a woman which made my 
 mother's face whiten when I suggested them at bedtime. 
 
 "Nat and I heard 'em through the kitchen window," I 
 declared. "We was lyin' underneath it, listenin'." 
 
 "Well, sonny, don't you ever remember those words or 
 think of them again. They mean horrible, vile, foul, wicked 
 things. That's all I can tell you that you can understand 
 now!" 
 
 "But Nathan's father said 'em!" 
 
 "Then Nathan's father is a wicked man, even if he does 
 get up in prayer meeting and tell how precious the Lord 
 is to his soul. And did Nathan get into the house?" 
 
 "Yeah, he sneaked up to bed the front way. The door 
 was open." 
 
 "Well, you see, dear, your prayer was answered, wasn't 
 it?" 
 
 "It looks so, Ma!" 
 
 "Always remember it, laddie. You're going to get in 
 tighter situations than you got into to-night. Don't ever 
 be ashamed to pray, laddie. It never harms and always 
 helps." 
 
 "Do you think God really heard it, Ma?" 
 
 "Your prayer was answered, wasn't it, laddie?" 
 
 "Yeah, Ma!" 
 
 "Then isn't that answer enough ? What more need mother 
 say?" 
 
 It developed that Mr. Gridley had not recognized the 
 identity of his daughter's demonstrative friend. In fact, 
 he had forgotten the incident within ten seconds after Nathan 
 had taken unto himself wings and flown. He was far 
 more interested in finding a short ladder to fix that bell- 
 rope. 
 
 Thus for the first time in a great vicissitude Nathan and 
 I learned that the worst enemy a man can have is often 
 his own imagination. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The battle royal between Nathan's father and mother 
 had been caused by something of graver import to my 
 friend than any mere family adjustment between Forge 
 and Gridley over osculatory assault upon a little girl. It
 
 PRAYER 75 
 
 had been caused by a decision voiced earlier that Sunday 
 evening by Johnathan that he was determined to take Nat 
 from school and put him to work. 
 
 Nathan was now past fourteen and legally entitled to 
 his "papers" and educational "freedom." John had been 
 compelled to work ten hours a day at fourteen, turning 
 his money over to his father. Nathan should do the same. 
 And Mrs. Forge had objected, not so much for Nathan's 
 sake, as because it was Johnathan's proposition. 
 
 Old Caleb Gridley, although holding a seventy-dollar 
 court judgment over Johnathan, had never been able to 
 collect his money. He had made John's life a burden. 
 So John had it in mind to suggest that Nathan be given 
 a job in the tannery and work out his father's debt. 
 
 Nathan, conceded the smartest boy who attended the 
 Academy, was ultimately set to work at four dollars a week. 
 Johnathan bought his peace with his conscience by gen 
 erously returning his son twenty-five cents a week to be 
 "squandered" in any way the boy chose.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 
 
 The girl Madelaine had been within three weeks of her 
 eleventh birthday when Mrs. Theddon adopted her from 
 the Corpus-Christi Orphanage. 
 
 If the child were precocious in a queer, matronly way, 
 her clouded parentage and life at the Home were mainly 
 responsible. She was intensely feminine and affectionate, 
 fiercely maternal, all of which at first made for a certain 
 distress when thrust out into the coeducational environment 
 of the Springfield public schools with children of equal 
 age. 
 
 Like some unmarried women, Mrs. Theddon was full of 
 theories as to how a child should be reared. Yet the 
 woman was neither bigoted nor maudlin. She had brains 
 and common sense. If she held theories on child culture 
 and child psychology, it was because she had evolved them 
 from a shrewdness of observation when in contact with 
 the offspring of affluent parents with whom she associated. 
 There was no "private school nonsense" for her child there 
 fore, until Madelaine was old enough to know the meaning 
 and worth of exclusiveness. Beside^ for a few years, 
 Gracia Theddon wanted the little girl about her home and 
 private tutors could never supply that academic atmosphere 
 and class camaraderie which should be made chief among 
 the heritages of adolescence. 
 
 So Madelaine went to the Forest Park school, and while 
 the locality and its offspring were above normal, she stood 
 out in her classes like an orchid in a thistle bed. She did 
 careful, neat, thorough work and made friends. But she 
 had no giggly age. No boys wrote asinine notes to her 
 or tried to flirt with her. She shrank from participation 
 in adolescent pranks.
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 77 
 
 At home she quickly absorbed the atmosphere of the 
 Theddon household. She became an avid reader of every 
 thing in the big Theddon library. For hours at a time 
 she lay stretched face downward along the window seat 
 in the southeast corner of that splendid room, absorbed 
 in the classics. And three years passed like white magic. 
 
 During her term in the ninth grade Madelaine grew per 
 ceptibly. It was an awkward time but never wholly dis 
 tressing. At fifteen she was almost as tall as her foster- 
 mother. Then she began to grow willowy, lithe and graceful. 
 
 She had few companions even then, and did not seem to 
 cultivate them. 
 
 "Honestly, I wish the child would laugh once in a while," 
 Mrs. Theddon told a friend, calling one afternoon. "But 
 somehow it doesn't occur to her to laugh. She acts as if 
 the world were too big, wonderful and mystic to contain 
 such a thing as humor." 
 
 "Then you're satisfied with her?" the caller suggested. 
 
 "Satisfied? My dear woman, there are times when I'm 
 afraid I'll be unable to satisfy her! That sounds strange, 
 doesn't it? But the girl's faith in every one and every 
 thing is so absolute and her ideals so quaint that I almost 
 fear to have her grow further. I try to tell her, to pave 
 the way for disillusion, but I don't seem to get results. She 
 looks at me so hurt and incredulous that I feel as though I 
 were defiling Eden." 
 
 This incredulity of Madelaine's worried her mother far 
 more than the latter cared to admit. Likewise the girl's 
 instinctive estheticism and reserve. One summer evening, as 
 they strolled the length of Sumner Avenue, Mrs. Theddon 
 expounded her philosophy of life for the first time aggres 
 sively, to her daughter. 
 
 "Madelaine, dear," she declared, "I want you to think 
 of this world and look upon life as a long, long, series of 
 interesting and constructive experiences. All of them may 
 not be pleasant. But always they must be constructive. 
 Whether you make them interesting depends entirely upon 
 yourself, your capacity for participation in them." 
 
 "Participation!" repeated the girl. "What do you mean 
 by participation?" 
 
 "I mean plunging in and enjoying them for all they're 
 worth, taking part in everything your own accorded part
 
 78 THE FOG 
 
 to the utmost, regardless of how small that part may 
 be. Don't shrink from anything. Never be that most 
 distressing and unfinished product a "wallflower" or 
 spectator. Plunge in taste, feel, enjoy, laugh and love. 
 Be in the center of things, never on the edge. Of course, 
 I don't meant perverted things, activities or pursuits that 
 offend decency or violate self-respect. And there is never 
 excuse for stirring a sewer, in order to prove it's foul." 
 
 "I understand, mother dear." 
 
 "What I want to impress upon you, and the greatest 
 heritage a parent can pass on to any child, is this: It's 
 your world, yours to enjoy, yours to live in, play in, 
 work in, get the most from. Every healthy activity exists 
 to be experienced and not to be watched while others ex 
 perience. Every social accomplishment, every art, every 
 science, every hobby, has come about and is enjoyed be 
 cause normal, healthy people in the past have found pleasure, 
 enjoyment and improvement in them. If they have done 
 so you may likewise. Life has been given to you to get 
 your portion. But Life can't seize you by the shoulders 
 and drag you in. You must go in for yourself. The 
 deepest wrong I can conceive a grown person doing to 
 a younger is implanting within his or her subconscious mind 
 that horrible 'You mustn't !' It's the blackest handicap a 
 child can acquire. My creed is 'Do!' Never doubt your 
 self. Never believe you're any different from any girl or 
 woman who has ever lived on earth. Because you're not. 
 Yet you're not commonplace, either ! The greatest self- 
 crime is self -depreciation. Remember that all people be 
 lieve in you unless you doubt yourself. They take you 
 not at somebody else's appraisal but solely at the estimate 
 you place upon yourself. Timid people are only those 
 with half -developed souls. I don't mean by not being 
 timid that you should be noisy or obstreperous. A child's 
 home influences should curb or counteract hoydenism. But 
 hold up your head, be positive, never fear to look at life 
 courageously, to see it clearly and see it whole. The world 
 is yours, my dear, and all the men and women in it for 
 your enjoyment and boon companions." 
 
 "You make me afraid when you talk to me like that 
 and yet you make me glad !" the girl responded wonderingly. 
 
 "I've learned it by bitter experience, dear my philoso-
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 79 
 
 phy. I've told you something of my story: how I started life 
 a poor girl in a village up in Vermont. My father and 
 mother were never able to see beyond the village sky 
 line. Life and the outside world terrified them. Forever 
 they were telling me 'You can't!' Doubting themselves, 
 of course they doubted their daughter. From 'You can't!' 
 it was a step to 'You mustn't !' I loved a man at eighteen 
 as dearly as I ever loved anybody. He was a smart young 
 man, with many excellent qualities. In those days he was 
 considered so smart I doubted that I could be his wife. 
 It sounds strange. But I did. I thought he needed a 
 cleverer woman than myself to be that wife successfully. 
 I told him so. It broke his heart. Then my father and 
 mother died suddenly within a year of each other. I 
 had to make my way alone ; earn my living. I went to 
 Boston. Always I found myself a wallflower, a spectator, 
 while others played and enjjbyed. I wanted to play and 
 enjoy also. But I'd been taught to believe that 'nice girls' 
 didn't do anything but sit and fold their hands. Then, 
 praise God, a man came and took me up into an exceeding 
 high mountain." 
 
 "Captain Theddon?" 
 
 "No. Not Captain Theddon! He was a man from 
 Virginia. He loved me dearly. For a year I was almost 
 too happy to move. It seemed the world about me was made 
 of frail glass pink glass. If I moved it would crash. 
 This man took me in hand, I say. In a year he undid most 
 of my vicious training. He opened a new heaven and a 
 new earth by getting me to accept exactly what I told you 
 a moment ago to be a participant in everything instead of 
 a spectator. He taught me the simple truth that shyness 
 is only the fear of ridicule but that people who ridicule 
 are either deficient themselves or coarsely conceited. There 
 fore they are not deserving of attention at all. And under 
 his tutelage, for two short years I was deliriously happy!" 
 
 "Why didn't you marry him, mother dear?" 
 
 "He had to go to California because of tuberculosis. 
 He died out there." 
 
 The girl was shocked. Then she observed softly: 
 
 "I should have thought it would have broken you too, 
 mother dear." 
 
 "It would have broken me, Madelaine, if Hugh hadn't
 
 8o THE FOG 
 
 taught me, along with the rest, to consider every experience 
 that came to me as sent for some grand and constructive 
 purpose. I think he knew he was going to die before he 
 left me. Just a few moments before he boarded his train 
 he said, "The greatest experience of your life, dear girl, 
 lies just ahead. If you fail to apply it constructively, you're 
 not worthy of it at all.' Poor me! I thought he meant 
 our marriage if he recovered. He meant his own death 
 my loss of him. It came to me his last message after 
 he was only a memory. It was hard to see anything con 
 structive in that horrible disappointment. But I did. I 
 plunged into life, making it give me something to out 
 weigh my grief. I don't mean I became frivolous I simply 
 refused to be morbid for Hugh's sake at first then for 
 the sake of Life itself. I saw that my loss had been sent 
 to deepen my life, to make me sensitive to others who had 
 suffered. I found out how richly one may live, whether 
 it be in sunshine or in mist. And that philosophy now I 
 want to pass along to you. To live, dear girl, just to live 
 for its own sweet sake is a blessed, blessed privilege. 
 But alas, so few know how to live. They go on the 'I 
 mustn't' policy, never stopping to reason out why. They 
 merely exist even in the simplest of life's roles. And I 
 don't want you to merely exist, Madelaine. I want you 
 to get from beautiful Life every last fleck of sunshine and 
 shadow. There's no sorrow that can come to you, dear, 
 that you can't make beautiful. There's no joy or happiness 
 that you can't make injurious and vicious. Never mind 
 what your role in life is to be, dear, whether you become 
 a great artist or the unsung wife of an unsung man, what 
 ever your hands find to do, don't only 'do it with all your 
 might' but find some way to make it interesting. A sod 
 hut on a prairie can be made as interesting as a gallery of 
 Italian art if you only look at it in the right light, making 
 the utmost of yourself and materials. But to do that, you 
 must be a part of those materials yourself always a partici 
 pant, sure of yourself, positive, constructive, analytical, 
 intense, living each day to every one of the eighty-six thou 
 sand, four hundred seconds it contains." 
 
 Gracia Theddon not only preached this sort of thing ; she 
 lived it every one of the day's eighty-six thousand, four 
 hundred seconds herself. Her home, her social life, her
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 81 
 
 dress, her face, she had paid a price for everything that 
 she was and owned. And having paid the price, she saw 
 that she had her "Value Received." 
 
 ii 
 
 During these years, Madelaine had met very few of 
 Gracia Theddon's relatives. But the July after her gradua 
 tion from grammar school, young Gordon Ruggles, son 
 of Captain Theddon's sister, alighted from the Albany 
 train, gave a red-cap a half-dollar to carry his portmanteau 
 two hundred feet, had a taxi convey him where a street 
 car would have served at one-twentieth the expense and 
 entered his aunt's home without ringing the bell. 
 
 Young Ruggles was past sixteen, hard as nails, tough 
 as a young owl and twice as wise, could lick his weight 
 in wounded wildcats and circle the globe alone. One front 
 tooth grew over another on his upper jaw, and he had a 
 vicious right eye. When he wanted a thing, he went and 
 took it. If his father didn't care to pay the bill, the bill 
 simply went unpaid. Most spoiled rich boys are weaklings 
 and cowards. Gordon loved a fight as a girl loves silk. 
 
 Through the Theddoh household he went therefore, open 
 ing doors and slamming them, throwing his cap on a table 
 so carelessly it toppled and smashed a fancy vase, mount 
 ing the stairs with a curse and banging into his aunt's 
 room like a motion-picture villain looking for the escaped 
 heroine. 
 
 On the north side of his aunt's chamber he beheld the 
 door into the maid's room, at least it had been the maid's 
 room when last he had visited the house. Gordon crossed 
 over, yanked open the door, thrust in his head and shoulders 
 and cried hoarsely: 
 
 "Suffering Arabella!" 
 
 Facing him was a girl at her toilet twelve, fourteen, 
 sixteen years how old was she? Like a startled fawn, 
 rigid with alarm, she backed against the foot of her bed 
 and stopped the young Goth with her eyes. 
 
 Frock and pumps had yet to be negotiated. The former 
 she caught up now and crumpled against her alabaster 
 throat. So held, it only reached her knees. Her perfect
 
 82 THE FOG 
 
 legs were classic in silken hosiery, so slender it appeared a 
 mystery how those ankles supported the weight. 
 
 It was her head and her face, however, that had halted 
 the intruder so abruptly. Her dark hair fluffed back from 
 her forehead in a wavy pompadour. It was gathered with 
 a small jeweled barrette at the back and long curls fell over 
 an undraped shoulder, only accentuating the perfection of 
 flesh. Her eyes blazed with the indignity of this intrusion. 
 Her nostrils quivered. 
 
 "Gawd, what a filly !" was all the young worldly wiseman 
 could articulate. 
 
 "Who are you? And how dare you come in here now?" 
 
 "And who are you ?" returned Gordon. 
 
 "I'm Madelaine Theddon Mrs. Theddon's daughter!" 
 
 The lid of the boy's bad eye flopped twice. 
 
 "You're who?" he cried, amazed. 
 
 "I'm Mrs. Theddon's daughter, I told you " 
 
 "Tell that to the Marines! Aunt Gracia hasn't got a 
 
 daughter. Unless " Being naturally low-minded, the 
 
 alternative occurred to him promptly. 
 
 "But I am, I tell you ! She adopted me four years ago. 
 And please go out till I'm dressed." 
 
 Gordon laughed coarsely and licked his lips. 
 
 "Adopted you, did she? That's a good one. She never 
 told us about it." 
 
 "That's her business, isn't it ? I don't know as there was 
 any reason why she was required to do so, whoever you are. 
 But if you possess any traits of a gentleman you'll leave my 
 room until I'm dressed." 
 
 "Oh, don't be catty. I'm her nephew, Gord, and you 
 aren't the first dame I've ever seen half -dressed." 
 
 "I might gather as much from your conduct !" 
 
 "Been knocking me, has she? Well, just for that, I'll 
 get out when I please." 
 
 "I shall call the servants !" 
 
 "Go ahead; I can lick any darned fathead Aunt Gracia's 
 got around here. But I hope you have better luck than I 
 did. I hunted all over the place." 
 
 The girl was close to tears. She looked around desperately. 
 Then with a flash of white she was gone into the bath 
 room. The intervening door was fastened swiftly. 
 
 "A peach!" whistled the boy. He moved back into the
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 83 
 
 larger chamber. "Now I wonder where did Gracia pick 
 her up ? She's a pippin ! A dream ! A cuckoo ! A lulu 
 Whew!" 
 
 in 
 
 Gracia Theddon came into the room, trailed in, a long 
 string of jade beads clicking against her knees. She 
 stopped. 
 
 "Where did you come from?" she blazed. 
 
 "Johnsville ! They kicked me out !" 
 
 "You mean you've been expelled?" 
 
 "Call it that if you want." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "Oh, a bunch of us took Dutch leave one night and the 
 girl that was with us squealed. They said I was respon 
 sible." 
 
 "Which you probably were !" 
 
 "Well, what of it ? They kicked me out, anyhow. I might 
 as well be blamed as not." 
 
 "But why have you come here?" 
 
 "Haven't got any other place to go, have I? with the 
 mater and governor across." 
 
 "Meaning you've spent all your money?" 
 
 "I guess so." 
 
 "Take your feet off that polished chair! What do you 
 think I'm going to do about it?" 
 
 "Make me financial once more or lemme stay here till 
 the governor gets back. I'd just as soon stay," he grinned 
 with a glance at Madelaine's door. 
 
 "Oh, you had? Well, I'd as soon you had not!" 
 
 "Yeah on account of what you got in the bathroom, 
 what?" 
 
 "You unspeakable young vulgarian! How do you 
 know " 
 
 "Oh, I busted in there, looking for your maid. But you 
 don't need to be sore ! She's all right, leave it to me ! Great 
 taste you got, Aunt Grace. I couldn't 'a' picked a prettier 
 one myself !" 
 
 If Gracia Theddon had been less a lady she would have 
 flown into a rage. Instead she returned calmly : 
 
 "Young man, your insinuations are an insult. And
 
 84 THE FOG 
 
 whether Madelaine happens to be here or not, I don't want 
 you around my house." 
 
 "All right, give me some kale and I'll blow." 
 
 "I'll give you nothing." 
 
 "But look it, Aunt Gracia, I've got to have a place to 
 sleep and eat, haven't I? And the governor '11 be sore if 
 he comes back and knows I asked you for dough and you 
 gave me the icy stare." 
 
 Biting her lip, the woman trailed across the room and 
 stood by the window, looking out. After all, the boy's father 
 would reimburse her and it was better than having him re 
 main under the same roof with Madelaine. 
 
 "How much do you want?" she demanded. 
 
 "Oh, a thousand will do! Till I need more." And the 
 youngster laughed. 
 
 "A thousand dollars! Are you crazy?" 
 
 "No, but if I set the figure lower you'd fork it across. 
 And I'd rather stick around." 
 
 Gracia sat down at her desk, wrote a check and ripped 
 it from the check book. ^ 
 
 "Now get out!" she ordered. 
 
 The boy's bad eyelid flopped again. 
 
 "Until it's gone, Aunt Grace," he chaffed. "Happy days !" 
 
 "If I had my way, young man, you'd land in reform school. 
 Get out!" 
 
 Gracia Theddon whirled, however, at sound of a voice 
 from the door. 
 
 "You're not sending him away on my account, are you, 
 mother dear? I'm sure he didn't mean anything. He 
 couldn't find you and was looking for the maid. And be 
 sides, I should have locked my door." 
 
 "You should have done nothing of the sort," Mrs. Thed 
 don replied angrily. "He had no right to enter a girl's 
 room " 
 
 "Introduce us, Aunt Grace. I thought I'd met the 
 family." 
 
 Gracia Theddon waged a quick battle with her temper. 
 
 She introduced the two, stiffly. 
 
 "I'm sorry I was rude," the boy said awkwardly a moment 
 later. "But, you see, everybody goes on the idea that I'm a 
 roughneck and a low-brow and I I well, I've got to 
 live up to my reputation." He shot a challenge at his aunt.
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 85 
 
 "I won't think you a roughneck or low-brow whatever 
 those things mean," Madelaine returned. "And I'm sure we 
 can be friends. You're not sending him away, mother dear, 
 before I've even a chance to get acquainted with the only 
 cousin I have?" 
 
 "He's not your cousin " Gracia began angrily. She 
 
 meant to infer that Gordon and Madelaine had nothing in 
 common in the matter of breeding or character. If she had 
 not paused, she could have covered the break and it might 
 not have been noticed. But she did pause and the Fairy 
 Foundling flamed scarlet. For it taunted her with the old, 
 old ache that after all she was a nobody, living on the 
 Theddon generosity a child from an orphanage or one 
 who had been bought like a pretty slave for a thousand dol 
 lars to ameliorate an affluent woman's loneliness. 
 
 "Then we'll try to play the game that we are cousins," 
 Madelaine contended. "I'm sure you've been mistaken about 
 Gordon. It isn't fair to believe people are some things until 
 there's nothing left for them to do but become those things 
 
 is it?" 
 
 Gordon and his aunt both sensed the defense in the girl's 
 argument. Gordon thought he had won in spite of his aunt, 
 already. The girl's fine grain was lost on him entirely. But 
 not on the woman. She felt that the Fairy Foundling would 
 champion and mother the most foul-souled criminal that ever 
 drew breath. It was her heritage and her danger. 
 
 "Gordon," the woman propounded in an iron voice, "my 
 daughter is of different caliber than the girls you've been 
 meeting, whether you've been in military school or not. 
 So you keep in mind that you're a young gentleman or or 
 
 God help you !" 
 
 The boy pulled a daffodil from a near-by bowl and tore it 
 to pieces angrily. 
 
 "I guess I know class when I see it," he grumbled. 
 
 This was so raw and rude that even Madelaine paled. But 
 she recovered herself and laughed. 
 
 "You know what I said about some of the children when 
 they first came to the Home, mother dear ? Well let's all 
 try to get better acquainted."
 
 86 THE FOG 
 
 IV 
 
 At five o'clock the following afternoon, while Madelaine 
 was dressing for dinner, Gracia entered her room and passed 
 through to her daughter's. She dismissed the maid and 
 closed the door. 
 
 "I've just had an answer to my cable," she announced. 
 "Amos and Margaret are not coming back until spring. 
 Amos is asking as a special favor that I keep Gordon here 
 and look after him until he gets back and can deal with 
 him." 
 
 "But what of that, mother? I'm sure " 
 
 "I'm sure that young barbarian will succeed in ingratiating 
 himself into your sympathies, Madelaine. Make you believe 
 he's not the thing he emphatically is. I can't very well deny 
 Margaret's boy the shelter of my home. But I can and shall 
 deny him propinquity with my daughter. Madelaine, please 
 take it kindly and believe it hurts me far more than it does 
 yourself. But I'm going to send you away to school." 
 
 It was the girl's turn to struggle with self for a moment. 
 Then in even voice she replied quietly : 
 
 "Of course, I'll do whatever pleases you, mother dear. 
 For after all, you know, I'm indebted to you more than I 
 can ever repay." 
 
 Mrs. Theddon uttered a little cry. 
 
 "No, no! Madelaine! Don't take it that way! You're 
 not a helpless mercenary you weren't bought " 
 
 She stopped. The misery on the girl's face was unmis 
 takable. 
 
 "Wasn't I, mother dear ? I thought I was for a thou 
 sand dollars " 
 
 "Madelaine! How did you know ? Who told you ?" 
 
 "I happened to be hiding, unintentionally, in Miss How- 
 land's office that day. I heard everything. And there's not 
 been one day since, when I've heard you tear a check from 
 your check book, but what I've remembered why and how 
 I'm here ! Why did you do it ? Oh, mother dear ? Why 
 did you?" 
 
 "My God!" cried the woman. "Madelaine, I never 
 dreamed you knew ! Or if you did, I thought you too little 
 for it to make any difference. Sometimes I've wondered if
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 87 
 
 you're not really a woman even older and wiser than myself 
 
 merely using a young girl's body." 
 
 "Why did you, mother dear? You really didn't have to 
 do it!" 
 
 "And has that been bothering you, dear ?" 
 
 "Ever since the day I came!" 
 
 The woman's face and posture remained wooden for a 
 moment. Then she relaxed. 
 
 "You poor dear, parentless lamb ! Don't you know 
 don't you understand can't you see why ? I did it because 
 of my love !" 
 
 "Your love !" 
 
 "Exactly. Maybe I've been trained and molded these 
 last few years, Madelaine, to think of value as money. I 
 can't help that. A thousand people would have termed my 
 payment to the Howland woman absurd and ridiculous. Of 
 course it was. And yet I had a purpose in it. Dear heart 
 
 I wanted to feel you had cost me something. Some 
 thing I had paid for so I had the right to bona fide owner 
 ship !" 
 
 The girl's calm eyes searched the woman's face. They 
 read the truth. 
 
 "Cost you something?" she exclaimed. 
 
 "I couldn't go through the pain of giving you birth, dear 
 girl. Yet I felt myself cheapening you and cheapening my 
 self to get you for nothing. I wanted to pay pay some 
 thing ridiculous and I did !" The woman's voice cracked. 
 "It wasn't the Howland person getting money to which she 
 had no right it was my parting with it that counted ! 
 Can't you understand?" 
 
 "You might have given it to the Orphanage, instead of 
 Miss Howland who really didn't " 
 
 "Child, child ! You'll never know how much I have given 
 to the Orphanage since you arrived to make my life worth 
 while!" 
 
 "Mother," said the girl after a time, "tell me why you 
 really want me to go away? Why is it you don't want me 
 around where Gordon is ? What's the matter with him ?" 
 
 "I said he was a 'rotter.' That's enough !"
 
 88 THE FOG 
 
 "But what do you mean by a 'rotter'? What especially 
 could he do by just remaining here?" 
 
 Gracia Theddon bit her lip. 
 
 "Don't you know how a bad boy could compromise a girl 
 or woman if he took it into his head to do it?" 
 
 "Compromise her? Just what do you mean?" 
 
 Mrs. Theddon stood looking out of the window for a 
 time. 
 
 "Sit down, Madge," she directed, after decision showed 
 grimly on her strong face. "I'm going to tell you a lot of 
 things I wish that my mother had told me, even when I was 
 as young as yourself." 
 
 The room grew dark as they sat there. The girl had 
 drawn a chair to the window and as the mother finished, she 
 remained for a long time with her elbows on the sill, her 
 hands cupped about her face, staring down at the river and 
 the serried lights across the South End Bridge. 
 
 "I'm glad you've told me," she said at last. "I've always 
 wanted to know but never dared ask." 
 
 Gracia Theddon arose and snapped on the lights. 
 
 VI 
 
 A week later Gordon Ruggles accosted his aunt in the 
 garden. 
 
 "Look here, Aunt Gracie, what have you done with our 
 little Bird of Paradise?" he demanded angrily. 
 
 "Bird of Paradise! Madelaine left here night before last 
 for boarding-school. But what school it is, or where it is, 
 you'll never learn if I can help it !" 
 
 "Hid her away from me, eh ?" 
 
 "Speaking bluntly, precisely that! For a time at least." 
 
 "All right, Aunt Gracia! If you want to make it per 
 sonal, I accept the challenge. We'll see who gets Madelaine 
 in the end you or I. Only be a good sport if you lose, 
 Aunt Grace. Be a good sport if you lose !" 
 
 He vaulted the hedge and was gone.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SEX 
 
 In the summer of 1904, the Methodist Sunday school 
 held a picnic six miles up the river. It was a popular place 
 for picnics, a glen sloping down to a bathing beach, roofed 
 with tall hemlocks and cut off from the road by a level 
 meadow that made an excellent ball field. 
 
 Nathan's father had no grudge against picnics, at least 
 Sunday-school picnics. But he did resent the dangerous 
 mingling and flagrant propinquity of the sexes which such 
 affairs occasioned. So Johnathan, not being able to attend 
 the picnic himself and "keep an eye" on the boy, prohibited 
 him the outing altogether. Girls slathers of girls would 
 attend and lead Nat's feet into paths of wickedness and 
 byways that were vile. Johnathan had to go to Williams 
 Falls and "see about a position" which had been "offered" 
 him at more money than he was making in the cobbler shop. 
 But Nathan's mother, half in pique at John and half in dis 
 tressed mother-love at the bitterness of her boy's disappoint 
 ment, told him to go ahead and enjoy the picnic and if his 
 father said anything on his return, she would pay the piper. 
 
 Bernie Gridley's father cared nothing about picnics, even 
 though he was a deacon in the church. The Duchess ex 
 pected to attend merely to chaperone Bernice. But at the 
 last moment the 8:10 train pulled into the Paris station with 
 Gridley relatives. So the Duchess had to consign Bernice- 
 Theresa to the watchful care of a much harassed and over 
 worked Sunday-school teacher who later had a beau herself. 
 Nathan and the little Gridley girl became babes in the wood. 
 They needed no encouragement to make the most of their 
 opportunity. 
 
 It was one of those perfect August days of which youne 
 men write sonnets and older men compose symphonies. The
 
 90 THE FOG 
 
 sky gave no suggestion of the thunderstorm which was to 
 come at three o'clock, interrupt the ball game, send the 
 picnickers scurrying to cover and leave the world washed 
 afterward in moist and golden glory. 
 
 There is small space here for a detailed account of that 
 day's program, the sports or the luncheon or the minor 
 mishaps or the shower or the return homeward afterward 
 by moonlight. Only a brief record of a tryst which Nathan 
 and I kept with two little girls off in leafy woods. 
 
 A path led from the grove over the hill to the northward. 
 Knee-high with vagrant grass, bordered by white birches, 
 poplars and brambles, it wound into the thickest, quietest part 
 of that forest which once stretched from the Paris town 
 line to Center Wickford. We had not been in the grove 
 an hour before Nathan came dodging excitedly through the 
 crowd. He caught my arm and drew me aside. 
 
 "I've seen Bernie and Elinore !" he cried feverishly, Bernie 
 being about all the picnic meant for him, anyhow. "Her 
 Ma couldn't come and she's all alone. She says let's go way 
 off up the woods and eat our dinners together, just us four ! 
 Oh, gee, Billy, what a chance what a chance !" 
 
 "Chance for what?" I demanded. 
 
 My friend was crestfallen. 
 
 "Why why to Just be with 'em all day and per 
 haps we can kiss 'em !" He added this last in a 
 
 whisper. 
 
 "Oh, hake! I got sumpin' on my mind besides always 
 kissin' girls. I wanner see the sports and try for a prize!" 
 But he persuaded me. 
 
 Nathan carried his luncheon under his arm in a paper. 
 Already it was misshapen and greasy with handling. Some 
 boys had pushed it from his grasp and used it as a football. 
 It consisted of three very fatty doughnuts and some thick 
 slices of soggy, indigestible oatmeal bread with equally in 
 digestible chunks of hard cheese between them. This he 
 proposed to open in front of Bernie. It made me nerv 
 ous. 
 
 Shortly before twelve o'clock, therefore, we slipped away 
 from the prosaic rabble and followed two bareheaded, be- 
 ribboned coquettes up the woods road. And by processes 
 and maneuvers which would only be recognizable by boys, 
 Nathan ultimately found himself carrying Bernie's dainty
 
 THE SEX 91 
 
 lunch basket and I had become the personal knight and escort 
 of the Carver gir!. 
 
 Elinore and I loitered behind, of course with deliberation 
 and premeditation, and Bernie and Nathan disappeared over 
 the top of the hill. And we saw not one another again until 
 the day was far spent and we were forced by sunset to 
 come forth from Avalon. 
 
 The Gridley girl affected to be "mad" a goodly portion 
 of that setting-out and had to be coddled and entreated and 
 coaxed persistently to tell the cause of her distemper. By 
 the time it had been negotiated, restraint and bash fulness 
 had disappeared. Thereupon the Gridley girl exercised the 
 prerogatives of Eve's daughters since the flood, called upon 
 the Forge boy to fetch and carry, to suffer her idiosyncrasies 
 and foibles, to become deliriously happy or excruciatingly 
 miserable as she persisted in references to a future in which 
 the Forge boy did or did not have a part. And so in due 
 course they came to a far woodland brook that trickled 
 musically over mossy stones. The pines grew silent and 
 lofty here. The banks were strewn with needles. A trout 
 pool milled with the sluggishness of deep water a few 
 yards beyond an overhanging bowlder. The Gridley girl 
 at once commented upon its excellence as a place in which 
 to lunch. "It's so awful private" was the way she put it. 
 So they sat down. And the water babbled past them into 
 eternity. 
 
 What mattered it that the Forge boy's hair curled long 
 and uncut behind his ears; that he wore a suit his father 
 had shined by prior use to waxen smoothness ; that his face 
 still retained at least twelve thousand of the original thirty 
 thousand freckles ; that his collar was wrinkled and his shoes 
 were dusty ? The Poet lay at the feet of his Inspiration and 
 all the world was fair. 
 
 What mattered it also that their talk was of silly nothings 
 and what they spoke or did was forgotten almost as soon 
 as said or done? The boy had a girl of topaz eyes off alone 
 in leafy woods and all the clocks of time ran down. 
 
 ii 
 
 "I'm sorry I tried to kiss you that night in the vestry," 
 the boy blurted out. He was lying on his chest, pegging
 
 92 THE FOG 
 
 his knife in the needles. "I felt awful when your father 
 came down and caught me " 
 
 The girl turned her face in amazement. 
 
 "Kiss me!" she said faintly. "Was that what you were 
 up to?" 
 
 "Why, yes! Didn't you know?" 
 
 "I thought you were fooling that you jumped out to 
 scare me." 
 
 Each colored dully and looked away. The girl's hat was 
 tossed carelessly at one side. She sat with her chubby arms 
 clasped about her knees. 
 
 "Well, I was tryin'," confessed Nathan nervously. 
 
 "But for the land's sake, why make such an awful job of 
 it? You almost knocked me over." 
 
 "There wasn't any other way I could do it. My folks 
 never let me go to kissin' parties or things like that." 
 
 Silence ensued. Then the precocious, oversexed little 
 lady, several years older in worldly wisdom, picked apart a 
 nearby star-flower as she observed coyly : 
 
 "You must have wanted to kiss me awful bad to go to all 
 that trouble to do it." 
 
 "I guess I did, Bernie." 
 
 "Then why don't you make a good job of it now? 
 There's no one here to stop you, is there ?" 
 
 The world reeled. Nathan grew giddy. 
 
 "Aw, go on !" he cackled. "You're only f oolin' !" 
 
 "You might try and see if you weren't so awfully slow. 
 That's mostly the trouble with you, Nathan you're slow !" 
 
 "And you won't be mad ?" 
 
 "What if I am? A girl always loves the man who does 
 things he wants, whether she gets mad or not." Bernie had 
 secured this sort of thing undoubtedly from her mother's 
 Pansy Series. 
 
 The boy's embarrassment was so great that Bernice 
 reached her hand out to him, a soft, damp hand, though she 
 looked in the opposite direction. He took the hand, timidly 
 at first, and considered it as Adam considered the Apple. 
 
 He sat up beside her with a tremendous yawn, as though 
 he had lain too long and would change his position. As for 
 the girl, she was a bit frightened, white-faced. But an 
 atavism in her blood was militant. She was afraid and yet 
 she wasn't afraid. Any woman might explain it.
 
 THE SEX 93 
 
 "Aw, can I really kiss you, Bernie?" 
 
 "I said so, didn't I? And if you're goin' to do it, for 
 pity's sake, hurry up !" 
 
 He leaned over and kissed her on a peach-blown cheek, 
 searing hot and zero cold by turns. And no more chaste kiss 
 was ever given The Sex. 
 
 But Bernie responded in a way that Nathan never forgot. 
 She turned her face, her nostrils breathed into his own, she 
 kissed him once ! twice ! three times ! heavy, im 
 pulsive, lumberous kisses, squarely on his mouth. 
 
 The Forge boy wanted to flee or wanted to cry; he 
 couldn't quite decide which. And because he couldn't decide 
 he stayed where he was and waited for the rocking hysteria 
 of reaction to pass. 
 
 "Let's let's do it again," the girl suggested, as the boy 
 sat stiffly, vaguely remembering something about the eye 
 of God being upon the sinner even in the wilderness. 
 
 They went through that ecstasy again and again. And 
 astounding to record, the boy suddenly leaned over with 
 his face on his arm. 
 
 "Natie Forge! What in the world is the matter?" cried 
 the stupefied girl. 
 
 "Dunno," said the lad. "But somehow I feel we oughtn't." 
 
 "Well, I like that ! Why oughtn't we ?" 
 
 "Dunno. And besides it hurts !" 
 
 "Hurts? What hurts?" 
 
 "Didn't you never have anything happen to you that felt 
 so good it hurt?" 
 
 "Well, you are a queer one!" 
 
 "I know. That's what Pa's always sayin' ! And and 
 everybody. I wish I wasn't!" 
 
 "Here I let you kiss me as much as you want and you 
 make me feel as if I was doin' sumpin' wicked. Nathan 
 Forge I'm mad ! I never want to speak to you again !" 
 
 "Aw, don't be mad, Bernie. I didn't mean nothin'! 
 Honest !" 
 
 "Mother always said you were a yokel. I don't know 
 what it means but you are one, all right." 
 
 Under her exasperation the Dresden Doll was furious. 
 She had lowered the lattice of her modesty and knew it 
 perfectly. A crass boy was vaguely sounding a warning. 
 
 The quarrel was patched up somehow and they ate their
 
 94 THE FOG 
 
 lunch, at least they ate Bernie's lunch. For when the 
 Dresden Doll removed the cover from her dainty repast, 
 an awful qualm smote Nathan at the coarseness of his 
 own. With the subtlety of a boy, Nathan managed to 
 push his package off the bank into the brook. When Bernie 
 squealed a warning, the boy fell clumsily in his efforts to 
 recover. So it floated away downstream, out of sight and 
 certainly out of the possibility of humiliating mastication. 
 Thereat Nathan affected to be both regretful and indiffer 
 ent. He declared he could subsist till supper without 
 luncheon. The Israelites fasted for forty days, didn't they, 
 and remained alive? But Bernie prevailed upon him that 
 she had enough in her basket for half a dozen boys. So 
 they ate their meal together, eyes averted. 
 
 It was early afternoon when the girl suddenly cried: 
 
 "Do you know what I'd like to do? For once in my 
 life without Mother to say 'Shocking! Shocking!' I'd like 
 to paddle in this brook as if I was common, and like 
 vulgar children." 
 
 "You might fall in and get your clothes wet and have 
 to go home all drenched and slithery." 
 
 "But you could take off your shoes and stockings and let 
 me hold your hand!" 
 
 Nathan demurred. He could not have explained just 
 why. But the girl was not to be denied. She laughed at 
 his discomfiture, sat down near the water's edge, removed 
 her pretty buckled slippers, peeled off her lisle stockings, 
 rolled up her underclothing. Then she waded timidly at 
 first out into the brook, squealing with delight. And she 
 pulled her skirts higher and higher. Finally she had them 
 above her dimpled knees. 
 
 From his place on the bank, Nathan watched her and yet 
 tried not to watch her. Much of the real Bernice, down 
 underneath her mother's affectation and snobbery, was re 
 vealed that day in the extravagance of her kisses and the 
 bold display of her limbs. 
 
 Four short years later Bernice Gridley was a mother. 
 So it was more than a child's sexless figure displayed to 
 young Nathan that day. The boy's nerves began cutting 
 strange capers. Across forehead and chest was a queer, 
 constricted feeling. 
 
 The girl kicked and shrieked and played in the water.
 
 THE SEX 95 
 
 She called upon Nathan to follow. But the perturbed 
 boy, discovering for the first time that his physical being 
 was a thing apart from himself, tried to behave indiffer 
 ently, interest himself in something else. For him the girl 
 all girls changed again with that experience. Bernice 
 was no longer a fellow human, a playmate, even some one 
 to be kissed deliciously. 
 
 Bernice laughed when she beheld the perturbation she 
 was causing. Secretly she exulted. It was the first time 
 she had been privileged to thus test her physical charm 
 maliciously. 
 
 But more than the disclosure of the Gridley girl's limbs 
 was in store for Nathan that afternoon. Bernice splashed 
 in the water until she slipped and fell. With a wild scream 
 and a tremendous plunge, she went down and for a sicken 
 ing moment the water eddied over her. 
 
 Nathan was in the brook at once. He clutched at Bernie's 
 dress before she could be carried out into the greater 
 depth. Unmindful of himself, he got his arms beneath her. 
 With the panic-stricken girl gasping and choking, he lifted 
 her and carried her back to shore. 
 
 The water made her lacy clothing sinuous about her 
 body. 
 
 "I'm wet wet wet to the s-s-skin !" she chattered, as 
 she tried to pull her sloppy skirts about her limbs velvety 
 limbs, now ruddy with the shock of the water. "Oh, what 
 will I do whatever will I do ?" 
 
 "Guess by the looks of the sky, both of us is goin' to 
 get still wetter before we leave," Nathan managed. "We're 
 goin' to have a nawful shower. Listen!" 
 
 In the high northwest the thunderheads had been piled 
 up. A few moments later the storm broke. Boy and girl 
 were immediately soaked to the last inch of their frightened, 
 quivering bodies. That thunderstorm saved Bernice a bad 
 piece of explanation when she finally entered the home of 
 her parents that evening. 
 
 The thunder rattled and clacked furiously about the 
 heavens. The great drops of rain pelted the forest foliage 
 and surface of the brook like bullets. And huddled side by 
 side under a tree, Nathan and Bernie drew close together 
 and covered their heads as best they could with Nathan's 
 coat.
 
 96 THE FOG 
 
 The girl gripped the boy hysterically when the thunder 
 bowled loudest. The boy was badly frightened himself 
 but he strove to comfort her. And through it all he sensed 
 her soft, vibrant, rain-soaked body and the abyss of sex 
 opened wider and wider. 
 
 in 
 
 The storm finally ended, the clouds parted, the thunder 
 moved off muttering to the southwest. A radiant sun 
 broke through. Bernice seated herself in its invigorating 
 warmth. She removed the bedraggled ribbons and shook 
 down her straw-colored hair. Barefooted and nude of 
 limb still, she recovered her composure and began to make 
 light of the incident. But Nathan was thoughtful. 
 
 "You act as if you were afraid of me," Bernice cried 
 petulantly. 
 
 The boy sat apart, beating a stick intermittently on the 
 leaves. 
 
 "Aw, I ain't afraid," he laughed nervously, there being 
 few things less pitiful than a boy striving to affect the 
 sophistication he knows he lacks. 
 
 "Then what's the matter with you? Have I done any 
 thing 'specially wicked?" 
 
 "No! You ain't done nothin' wrong, I guess." 
 
 But they stole forth, back down the woods road as 
 Adam and Eve must have stolen from the Garden. 
 
 Just before they emerged into the clearing, Bernice 
 turned. She clutched Nathan's coat. 
 
 "Don't you ever tell I took off my shoes and stockings !" 
 she commanded. "Promise me ! And don't you dare break 
 your promise!" 
 
 The boy agreed readily enough. 
 
 "And now, Nathan Forge," she said, with a subtle glance 
 around, "kiss me! Just once more. For the last time! 
 A good one!" 
 
 But when the boy complied, his face burned. In the kiss 
 he sensed no ecstasy. 
 
 He went out to the picnic grounds to run directly into 
 the clutches of his father. 
 
 "Where have you been ?" Johnathan demanded ominously. 
 The whipcords of his neck stood out in anger.
 
 THE SEX 97 
 
 "Nowhere," whimpered Nathan. "Just over in the 
 woods." 
 
 "I'm told you've been missing all day." 
 
 The boy's face held the story. 
 
 "Have you been alone?" 
 
 "N-N-No!" 
 
 "Who's been with you ?" 
 
 "Billy !" 
 
 "And who else?" 
 
 The boy hesitated. It was hard to lie. But his little 
 sister piped up shrilly: 
 
 "Bernie Gridley and Elinore Carver's been with 'em! 
 I seen 'em go !" 
 
 "Is this so?" demanded Johnathan. 
 
 "Yes," confessed the boy boldly. 
 
 "You've been off in the woods with a girl all 
 day?" 
 
 "Yes, sir!" 
 
 "In spite of all that I've warned you?" 
 
 "Yes, sir!" 
 
 Johnathan reached out and lifted his terror-paralyzed 
 son in his wrath. 
 
 "You march home!" he commanded. "We'll see about 
 this ! What are you doing here at the picnic, anyhow, when 
 I said you couldn't come?" 
 
 "Ma said I could." 
 
 "But what did I say to you?" 
 
 "You said I couldn't." 
 
 "Then you deliberately disobeyed there, also?" 
 
 "But Ma said " 
 
 "Never mind what your mother said. You don't do what 
 your mother says. You do what I say! March!" 
 
 The worst part of that whole picnic-day episode wasn't 
 the humiliation before all the boys and girls and par 
 ticularly Bernie, nor the thrashing that followed. It was 
 that his mother had promised immunity, to defend him, to 
 "pay the piper" and did not keep her word. 
 
 Johnathan Forge got his boy home, took him out in the 
 wood-shed and ordered him to strip to his pelt. Before 
 the flogging began, he prolonged the terror by coddling the 
 weapon of assault a couple of feet of stiff harness tug 
 talking to it, explaining to it how he had told his boy to
 
 98 THE FOG 
 
 stay awaj from the picnic and "his boy" had disobeyed; 
 how he had been told to always keep away from girls and 
 had disobeyed there also. Then he laid it on. 
 
 Sordid all this to recount? As well delineate Johnathan 
 thrashing his boy around the calendar and be done with it. 
 But it was a matter of principle with Johnathan. He was 
 responsible for his boy's soul to God. The Bible said so. 
 
 Whack! Whack! Whack! 
 
 IV 
 
 Nathan lay on his bed that night with his arms behind his 
 head and stared up into the dark. 
 
 Moment by moment he lived that galaxy of sylvan love 
 over. Branded as with searing iron into his brain was 
 the picture of Bernice Gridley knee-deep in the brook 
 water, or as he had laid her down on the hemlock needles 
 when he had subsequently rescued her. 
 
 "I've got to marry her ! I've got to marry her right off," 
 he told himself. "Grandfather Forge married at sixteen, 
 he said so ; and Grandma Forge was only fourteen. That's 
 only two years older'n me, and what's two years? I'll ask 
 her! I'll ask her to-morrow." 
 
 And the poor young ass did. 
 
 It was down along the path through the Haskell meadow, 
 the "short cut" from Matthews Court to Windsor Street. 
 It was by accident he encountered the girl but he stopped 
 her. 
 
 "Marry you ! Marry you !" she choked. "I think you're 
 raving crazy. I'm not old enough to marry anybody. Be 
 sides, I'm mad at you, anyhow !" 
 
 "What for, Bernie?" 
 
 "You broke your promise! You tattled about me going 
 into the water." 
 
 "I did not!" 
 
 "You did!!' 
 
 "You can't prove it!" 
 
 "Well, somebody did and it might as well been you! 
 Besides, last night I dreamed you did and that settles it." 
 
 "But I can't help what you dream!" 
 
 "Well, I'm mad, anyhow. You haven't the backbone of
 
 THE SEX 99 
 
 a fish! You let your father jaw you, right there in tight 
 of everybody." 
 
 "Could I help it? He's bigger'n me. And besides, he's 
 my father." 
 
 "If my father dared to jaw me like that in front of 
 everybody I'd I'd I'd get a gun and I'd shoot him dead ! 
 I told you that before." 
 
 "I hate him as much as I love you, Bernie. At the same 
 time, I can't kill him." 
 
 "Well, you wanted to know why I won't marry you and 
 I'm telling you. Besides, who'd marry us?" 
 
 "We could run away, Bernie. I could tell some minister 
 we're older than we are. You could get some of your 
 mother's long dresses perhaps and I'm puttin' on long pants 
 next week anyhow " 
 
 "And who'd support us?" 
 
 "I've reached man's estate. I'm going to work next 
 week, anyhow. If I've reached man's estate and am going 
 to work and earn money, I've got a right to have the things 
 a man has a wife, for instance !" 
 
 "Where are you going to work?" 
 
 "In in your father's tannery. And if I've got a wife, 
 maybe my father will let me have my own money for 
 myself. He'll have to! The law'd make him " 
 
 "Well of all things ! Nathan Forge ! And do you think 
 I'd marry a man who worked in a smelly tannery?" 
 
 "Your father does !" 
 
 "My father owns it. It's different. Now I know you're 
 crazy! I bet your father hit you over the head and made 
 you crazy! I've heard of such things. And if you don't 
 get out of my way I'm going to scream!" 
 
 "Bernie don't go off mad ! I ain't crazy, Bernie " 
 
 "When I get married it's going to be a millionaire. And 
 he's not going to dress like a tramp, or go around with 
 freckles, or need a hair-cut, or be so slow when I let him 
 kiss me he makes me feel I was doing something wicked." 
 
 "Bernie you said in your letters you 1-1-loved me ! You 
 said " 
 
 "Oh, can't you take a joke? That was just for fun, 
 and besides, we aren't grown up so it didn't mean anything, 
 anyhow !" 
 
 "You were only foolin'?"
 
 TOO THE FOG 
 
 "Well, I didn't suppose you'd take it serious in such 
 a foolish way as this. Why, my father would horsewhip 
 you if he even dreamed you'd asked such a thing." 
 "Bernie you aren't you aren't playing fair." 
 "Well, a girl doesn't have to play fair if she doesn't 
 want. Anyhow, you're not the boy I'd marry even if we 
 were grown up. You aren't handsome! You're nothing 
 but an ordinary little freckle-faced frump." 
 
 "Then why did you let me kiss you " 
 
 "Oh, just because I liked it. And even so, you didn't 
 care enough to come with me into the water and save me 
 from getting all wet. And and I hate you and I'm 
 going to Rutland to spend the summer next week and then 
 I'm going to private school down to Mt. Hadley in the fall. 
 My mother said so. She heard about what happened at the 
 picnic. She said I wasn't going to stay around Paris and 
 get mixed up with the son of any village cobbler. I'm too 
 high-class. Now you get out of my way or I'll yell for 
 help!" 
 
 "You're goin' away and I'm never goin' to see you any 
 more?" 
 
 "I am. And I'm tickled to death to forget you !" 
 When Nathan could see through his misery, the girl had 
 vanished. 
 
 The following Sunday, tramping out on the Wick ford 
 road, Nathan beheld a two-seated Concord buggy drawn 
 by a well-lathered horse climbing the hill toward him. 
 
 The Dresden Doll, never so dainty, or frilled or furbe- 
 lowed, sat in the front seat beside a fellow whom Nathan 
 had never seen. The Carver girl with another young 
 stranger occupied the back seat. 
 
 Stopping aghast, Nathan looked directly into the Gridley 
 girl's eye. 
 
 She did not see him. She looked through and beyond 
 him. There was no recognition. 
 
 But after the rig had passed, leaving a leg-weary, dusty- 
 shoed boy standing in his heart-hunger by the fragrant 
 brambles, one of the quartette passed a remark, which he 
 knew in his hot shame referred to himself.
 
 THE SEX 101 
 
 A sneering little laugh drifted back to him. The rig 
 reached the hilltop and passed over out of sight. 
 
 VI 
 
 That night Nathan took a bundle of big square envelopes 
 tied with a red ribbon, Bernie's letters, and put them where 
 the sight could no longer hurt him. He hid them on a 
 beam close to the eaves out in the three-foot attic over the 
 Forge ell. Then he crawled back over the studding and but 
 toned the low door that led to that windowless garret from 
 his bedroom. That button also fastened a door on a 
 chamber in his little heart. He had completed his first 
 thumb-nail cycle with The Sex. 
 
 His cynical observations about "girls," delivered in the 
 family circle, gladdened the heart of his father and made 
 the latter feel that his precepts were at last bearing fruit, 
 that he had a son who might not be quite so incorrigible 
 as he had begun to fear. 
 
 That Christmas he gave Nathan five dollars and reminded 
 the boy of his paternal generosity all through the balance 
 of the year. 
 
 But the five dollars meant nothing to Nathan. He was 
 compelled to deposit it in the Paris Savings Bank. John- 
 athan "borrowed" it three years later to help pay a grocery 
 bill.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 POET IN ^HOMESPUN 
 
 Great was the exasperation among the local school 
 teachers when it became known that Nathan was not going 
 on into high school in September. 
 
 Cora Hastings, Nathan's last teacher and the good woman, 
 by the way, who did more than all others to encourage his 
 literary fluency and poetical promise, took it upon her sparse, 
 capable shoulders to wait upon the boy's father and "speak 
 him a piece of her mind." 
 
 "Don't you know your boy has been the brightest English 
 scholar in the whole eight grades ?" she demanded scathingly. 
 
 "Well," retorted Johnathan, "just what is it your busi 
 ness?" 
 
 "I've been his teacher and I know what's in him. Let 
 alone to study and equip himself, Nathan will make his 
 mark in the world. Take him from school now, and all 
 you may have is a mere working man." 
 
 "I'm not ashamed of having him a working man. His 
 folks were all working people. Look at me! No airs 
 to us!" 
 
 "Do you want your boy to turn out a fool?" 
 
 "Better a working fool than an educated fool. But I'm 
 not afraid of his bein' a fool. Work never made a fool 
 out of nobody." 
 
 "Don't you want him to be a success?" 
 
 "If he's got it in him to be a success it'll come out any 
 how, school or no school. If he hasn't, schoolin' '11 be 
 wasted. But it isn't wholly that. I need his money. I 
 don't make no bones abou" saying so. I'm a poor man, 
 ma'am. It's about time the boy commenced paying me 
 back for some of the trouble and expense he's been since 
 he was born?"
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 103 
 
 "Why should he? He didn't ask to be born!" 
 
 Johnathan dodged that. "I had to work at his age and 
 pay back my father." 
 
 "And hasn't the memory of that injustice softened you 
 toward you own son ?" 
 
 "Injustice? What injustice? I always had to work. I 
 never even had as much schoolin' as Nat has already. 
 And look at me!" 
 
 "Yes, look at you ! A bigoted, psalm-singing, heart- 
 hardened, petulant-mouthed, intolerable old hypocrite! 
 There !" 
 
 "What? What's that you say?" 
 
 "You heard me ! You're all of that and more. And the 
 whole town knows it. You've got a boy as rare and fine 
 and promising as you're common and coarse and vulgar. 
 And you're deliberately wrecking his life by taking him 
 away from his studies, setting him at work in a horrid 
 smelly tannery for a few easy dollars. Somebody ought 
 to have the law on you!" 
 
 "And you're nothing but a fussy, homely, trouble-messin' 
 old maid. You better go find a man and have a few 
 young ones of your own before you come 'round tellin' 
 other people how to raise theirs. If this is all you come 
 to see me about, I guess you can hoof it!" 
 
 "Don't you know your boy is capable of writing poetry!" 
 demanded the now hysterical teacher. 
 
 It was the worst thing she could have said. 
 
 "No, I don't. But if he is, all the more reason why he 
 should go to the tannery and learn to skin cows ! And the 
 sooner the better !" 
 
 "Don't you want to see your own son famous?" 
 
 "I've got no guarantee he'll be famous. But I'm sure, 
 darned sure, of the money he can earn between now and 
 the time he's twenty-one. Anyhow, knowing how to work 
 and earn money ain't goin' to stop him bein' famous, as 
 a poet or anything else, if he's got it in him!" 
 
 "But these years of his life are the most valuable he'll 
 ever have!" 
 
 "The more reason why he ought to learn to make money 
 in 'em !" 
 
 "It's a mystery why God sends children to such as you!" 
 
 "Well, He sends 'em and I reckon He knows his busi-
 
 104 THE 
 
 ness. He's been running this planet a darned long time." 
 Threat, appeal, argument did no good. Nathan went into 
 Caleb Gridley's tannery, into the foul, revolting, messy, 
 nauseating part of the business, and for six days of working 
 from 6:30 in the morning until 6:30 at night he received 
 four dollars, not in cash but in credit on the old harness 
 bill. In sixteen weeks the debt was paid. Then Johnathan 
 "began realizing good hard cash" on Nathan's earning 
 abilities. 
 
 Nathan's sister went on through the graded school and 
 high school. It was Nathan's money which bought her 
 graduation dress. 
 
 It was a very pretty dress. It cost twenty-nine dollars. 
 
 ii 
 
 Never did a boy change so completely or age so quickly 
 as Nathan in the three years which followed. He was 
 sick and broken the first two or three weeks at the sights 
 he was compelled to witness and the smells which adhered 
 to him like a plague wherever he moved. I tried to get 
 him to come out on Sundays. 
 
 "I dunno, Bill," he would answer, "I don't seem to 
 care much about fooling 'round. Seems as if I'm tired 
 these days, tired all the while. I no more'n get home Satur 
 day night than it's Monday morning and I gotta go back to 
 it all. Oh, Bill, it'll kill me sure. You don't know any 
 thing about it. It's awful !" 
 
 The boy lost weight. He grew more and more listless 
 bitter, moody. 
 
 "I don't care whether I live or die," he wailed one day 
 when I mentioned that after the Academy I was going on 
 to college. "Sometimes I wish old 'Cock-eye' Richards' 
 knife would slip when he's skinnin' and take me right acrost 
 the throat." 
 
 The boy's life suddenly became a hopeless, hideous 
 slavery. The horror of his work lay in his imagination. 
 A lad of coarser fiber would have become inured to the 
 tannery. Nathan never became inured to it. Yet he stuck 
 it through. There was no alternative. 
 
 Sunday afternoons he would wander over the hills, lie
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 105 
 
 on his back beside some peaceful meadow brook and dream 
 his dreams. He began taking a pad and pencil on these 
 solitary excursions, or a book. He cared little for Old 
 Cap Collier or King Brady or the other penny-dreadfuls 
 which were then in their heyday. His choice was poetry, 
 fairy tales, Shakespeare. 
 
 "What's the use of reading that stuff?" he demanded 
 contemptuously one day, after finishing a sample hair- 
 curler I had shown him. "It's all coarse and mechanical, 
 and you know the villain's going to die at the right minute, 
 anyhow, and the hero win out and all live happily ever 
 after. And if you know it in advance what's the use of 
 spending a whole day readin' through it to find it out?" 
 Then the boy 'pulled a volume of poems from beneath him, 
 a book that Miss Cora Hastings had loaned him. He read 
 me "Grey's Elegy." 
 
 I confess that, red-blooded, hob-raising kid that I was, 
 the sweet melancholy of the lines, as Nathan read them, 
 "got" me. Often I found myself watching my friend, at 
 a loss to understand him. 
 
 The other day while searching among the compartments 
 in an old wallet, I came upon a folded, time-yellowed sheet 
 of foolscap on which some verses had once been penned 
 in a youthful but symmetrical hand. It was a poem which 
 Nathan composed back in those years before he had "found" 
 himself. These are sample lines of what this sixteen-year- 
 old was producing: 
 
 DAY DREAMS 
 
 "Somewhere over the miles, dear heart, 
 
 Off over a turquoise sea, 
 There's a pleasant isle that is set apart 
 
 For your rendezvous with me. 
 There'll be never a cloud in its skies, dear heartj 
 
 And the days will be always fair, 
 For free as the summer winds that blow 
 
 We will live in our Eden there, 
 
 Somewhere ! 
 
 "There'll be no more heartache to spoil our dreams, 
 
 There'll be no more griefs to grieve, 
 
 We'll wander down eons of golden years 
 
 Through the vales of Make-Believe.
 
 io6 THE FOG 
 
 And I'll drink of your lips, your eyes, your arms, 
 Till I'm drunk with their beauty rare, 
 
 And you'll nestle me down till my stupor goes, 
 On a bed of your glorious hair. 
 Somewhere ! 
 
 "The wealth of the earth and the sun shall be ours, 
 
 We shall know neither pride nor shame 
 Nor ever grow weary of too much romance 
 
 Nor spoil our sweet isle with a name. 
 And no one shall find our rendezvous, 
 
 No world break the spell with its blare, 
 For that will be Heaven just you and I, 
 
 With no one to part us or care. 
 
 Somewhere !" 
 
 I submit this poem for what it is worth. The meter 
 undoubtedly might be improved. Yet it shows the way 
 the lad's mind was leaning, the romancer, the idealist, the 
 colorist, the emotionalist, always. 
 
 Johnathan Forge viewed a certain change in his son 
 with satisfaction. 
 
 "Thank God," he cried, "I've broken that boy's false 
 pride at last. Now maybe he'll get solid ground under his 
 feet and amount to something." 
 
 in 
 
 Yet one noontime in the October which followed, Nathan 
 so deported himself in a certain pugilistic situation that the 
 matter of broken pride was left open to reasonable doubt. 
 
 The boy had drawn apart to work upon a rime in a 
 notebook. He found no recreation in sitting around the 
 edge of the yard listening to cheap opinion, telling off- 
 color stories, pitching horseshoes or flipping pennies. In a 
 warm spot in the sunshine he worked upon a new poem 
 which he had titled "Girl-Without-a-Name." One Silas 
 Plumb stole up and snatched the notebook from him. 
 Worse and more mortifying, Si headed back for his fellow 
 laborers. Noting that what he had snatched was poetry, 
 he was seized with unholy glee. Disregarding Nathan's 
 cries of anger, Plumb leaped on a crate and dramatically 
 began to "elocute"
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 107 
 
 "Listen, fellers! This is rich! Poetry! Listen! 'You 
 came to me in my dreams last night, Dear Girl Without a 
 Name " 
 
 Blind, unreasoning rage boiled upward through Nathan. 
 Chagrin and indignation fired every nerve in the boy's 
 body to murderous retaliation. Plumb was a heavy-footed, 
 rumple-clothed, corn-fed son of a typical Vermont small 
 town. He was blue-eyed, shocky-headed, red-cheeked and 
 three years Nathan's senior. But to have the innermost 
 privacies of his romantic soul ballyhooed for the bucolic 
 ribaldry and bovine amusement of the tannery men was 
 like maddening vitriol poured on Nat's naked flesh. He 
 lurched for the notebook and when Si held on, Nathan 
 struck him the hardest smash in the face he had ever re 
 ceived in his life. 
 
 Si held his sickly grin for about ten seconds. Then it 
 froze on his mouth. He spat out blood and teeth. Purple 
 rage flooded his features. 
 
 "I'm goin' to get you for that!" he swore. 
 
 He dropped off his coat, smeared his bloody mouth with 
 the back of his big hand and fell into clumsy fighting 
 posture. Loafers in the tannery came a-running. Nathan 
 was pale but resolute. Silas struck him. Stung to 
 fury, Nathan hit back twice. The epochal battle began. 
 That battle was tannery talk for weeks, for months, for 
 years. 
 
 "Si had the punch to push his dukes through the side 
 of a plank fence," a local enthusiast described it afterward. 
 "But young Forge hit him three times and run around him 
 twice while Si was makin' up his mind where he'd hit 
 once." 
 
 Back and forth across the enclosure the two youths 
 struggled, upsetting boxes, knocking down hides, tripping 
 on yard refuse, falling backward into the circle of wildly 
 applauding spectators. Great pile-driver blows the larger 
 fellow smashed at his lighter opponent. Nathan's counter 
 attack was swift and rapier -keen, taking the other by sur 
 prise, getting inside his defenses, smashing his nose, closing 
 his eyes, lacerating his lips, but always lacking the bodily 
 weight to strike the other down or finish him off with a 
 knock-out. 
 
 There is something vitally fine and fair in an American
 
 io8 THE FOG 
 
 crowd. It wants to see the under dog get the best of it. 
 Nathan, because of his slenderness, was the under dog. Si 
 sensed that the moral support of the tanners was not with 
 him. He grew Germanically furious. 
 
 The moral support of his fellow workers meant little 
 to Nathan, however. He had to finish Plumb or be finished 
 himself. And those who, through that summer, had called 
 Nat a mollycoddle because he was finer grained than them 
 selves, were swift and fair in revising their opinion and 
 giving the stripling all the credit his proven prowess de 
 served. 
 
 The two came together in clinches only to break away 
 when one saw an opening for a telling blow. Twice they 
 both went down. The battle each time turned into a 
 wrestling match, with any sort of a "hold" permitted, 
 biting, eye-gouging and hair-tearing being eminently per 
 missible so long as it brought results. 
 
 At a quarter to one the fight had started. Fifteen min 
 utes later it was still going strong, arms and faces of both 
 combatants bleeding, shirts ripped to ribbons, lungs burst 
 ing. The employees paid no attention to the tannery whistle 
 for the reason that no tannery whistle was blown. The 
 engineer and fireman were enthusiastically howling in the 
 front row of spectators. The absence of the whistle was 
 responsible for bringing Caleb Gridley down into the yard. 
 But the old war-horse of the local leather business was 
 immediately too interested himself to interfere or start his 
 factory. He stood with a fierce, hard joy in his eye, await 
 ing the finish. 
 
 That finish came at ten minutes after one. Silas, worsted 
 but unconquered, picked up a piece of board and swung it 
 terribly for Nathan's head. A howl of protest arose, then 
 approval as Nathan dodged. But Nathan had not dodged 
 far enough nor soon enough. The board ripped his left 
 ear from the side of his head. Silas followed in, raising 
 one of his big boots to kick his opponent below the belt. 
 By accident more than design, Nathan tripped him. As 
 Silas went down, Nathan sent a left jab to his jaw. It 
 rocked the roughneck's head. He sagged, grinned, pitched 
 downward on his forehead, and went peacefully off to hear 
 little birds sing sweetly. 
 
 The fight was finished. Likewise both participants. For
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 109 
 
 Nathan saw his man prostrate, took three steps and crumpled 
 senseless. 
 
 Old Caleb pushed forward. "Take the kid to the office," 
 he ordered curtly. Grim satisfaction lay on his paving- 
 block jaw. "As for that low-brow, leave him lie busted. I 
 stand for the man that fights fair!" 
 
 They carried the unconscious Nathan to tannery head 
 quarters. Doctor Johnson was summoned by telephone. 
 Nat was losing alarming quantities of blood from the ragged 
 ear and more was trickling out between his teeth. First 
 aid was administered, but it was a sickening business. 
 
 "That's nasty bad," Johnson commented as he tried to 
 wash the wound. "It's almost tore from his head this 
 ear!" 
 
 "Sew it back," commanded Caleb. 
 
 "But he'll bear the scar for life." 
 
 "Can't help that ! Sew it back ! Mustn't have so gamey 
 a little bantam goin' through life with one ear missin'!" 
 
 Johnson phoned for Doctor Birch to help him. Birch 
 brought a crude anesthetizing outfit. The ear was sewed 
 at once to prevent the loss of more blood. The lad was as 
 white as paper in his coma. The exertion of the past half- 
 hour had been terrific. It showed grisly on his features. 
 
 Two o'clock arrived before the surgery was finished. 
 Nat's head was swathed in bandages which were reduced 
 to ribbons in the boy's thrashings, as he came out from 
 under the anesthetic. 
 
 "Leave him here !" ordered Caleb. "He's gotta stay here 
 till he's stronger." Then as Nathan gradually quieted, he 
 demanded of the yard boss: "What started that mix-up, 
 anyhow ?" 
 
 "Poetry !" said old Richards. "This !" And he proffered 
 a torn and besmirched notebook. 
 
 "Poetry!" cried Caleb. "Lemme see!" 
 
 "He's always moonin' 'round, writin' poetry," volunteered 
 Richards. "Si yanked it outer his hands and Nat waded into 
 him. We always thought Nat was a mollycoddle, sort of, 
 'count of his poetry and dandified talk. But I guess after 
 ihis he can do as he pleases." 
 
 Nathan's weakened condition quickly induced sleep. It 
 was night when he awoke. He was at home and his 
 mother was bending above him.
 
 i io THE FOG 
 
 "My poor, poor boy !" she crooned. And for the instant, 
 groggy and faint with fiery pain as he was, a great up- 
 welling tenderness toward his mother came in Nathan. 
 When she kissed him, his arms went up around her frail 
 shoulders and he clung to her. 
 
 But when he awoke the following morning all sugges 
 tions of tenderness were missing in the petulant, whining 
 Job's comfort she gave him. 
 
 "You've bloodied all my best sheets and pillow cases!" 
 she cried ; "besides getting your clothes all ripped and 
 markin' yourself for life! Oh, you do make it so hard 
 for your dear, dear mother so bitter, bitter hard!" 
 
 Nathan's father came up during the noon hour and sat 
 down beside the bed. Gravely he looked at his son and 
 admiration lurked in his weak blue eyes. 
 
 "Well, I'm glad you've shown some starch at last," he 
 commented. "I'd begun to think I was raising a sissy." 
 
 Thereupon, the seventeenth time for his son's edification 
 and future emulation, Johnathan launched good-humoredly 
 into a recount of how he (Johnathan) had whipped the 
 town bully at fifteen, against tremendous odds, a brick 
 wall, and a pair of brass knuckles. 
 
 It was Johnathan's way of being kind and showing his 
 appreciation of what his boy had done. The reports about 
 town of Nathan's prowess had come to the father as sweet 
 music. 
 
 Praise of his boy's artistry, poetic talent and romantic 
 temperament had touched only as the wind which bloweth 
 where it listeth. But that his offspring had gone into a 
 brute encounter, drawn blood, broken teeth, gouged eyes 
 and torn hair coming off victor though the struggle would 
 mark him for life was grand and noble and a cause for 
 pride and satisfaction altogether. Johnathan felt that he, 
 too, must not be found wanting. 
 
 So he finished off the town bully and then recounted 
 various other deeds of a heroic nature in which he had 
 also played the chief male lead. 
 
 Nathan had seen his father pale before the six-pound fist 
 of Caleb Gridley. He had seen him shiver and quake in 
 wardly when a neighbor announced that he would shoot 
 Johnathan Forge on sight for having wrung the necks of 
 the said neighbor's chickens and tossed the dead birds over
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN in 
 
 the fence in penalty for wandering into the Forge garden. 
 And Nat wondered at just what point between boyhood and 
 manhood his father had lost his bellicosity and proclivities 
 toward the manly art of self-defense. 
 
 That is, he asked himself consciously. But in his heart 
 he knew his father had never whipped any bullies or any 
 one else. He was about as heroic as an old mop. The 
 recount for emulation he was passing on to his boy was pure 
 fabrication in which the end justified the means. 
 
 Besides, Nat had heard of these Roman holidays so many 
 times that he could repeat them verbatim, even correct his 
 embattled sire when multiple narration brought exaggera 
 tion, or the father went astray on minor detail. Nat turned 
 over wearily, therefore, and went to sleep in the center 
 of a victory over the Foxboro selectmen in which "all hands 
 had been ingloriously humbled and brought down to the 
 dust" meaning that the Foxboro selectmen had apologized 
 and paid costs. Which they had not. 
 
 "And I used to tell that boy stories by the hour," John- 
 athan averred in later years, " all sorts of virile, manly 
 stories. But he never cared a great deal for anything I 
 said to him. The boy and I simply couldn't hitch. He 
 had his mother's blood he was a Farman through and 
 through !" 
 
 Nathan came back to consciousness and realized his father 
 was still by his side, demanding angrily, "Are you listen 
 ing?" and that Caleb Gridley's name was mentioned. 
 
 "He's sent word he wants to see you as soon's you're 
 fit over to his office. And for your own sake, young man, 
 let's hope he doesn't fire you for this mix-up!" 
 
 The father eventually went out and Nathan passed from 
 dreams with his eyes closed to dreams with his eyes open, 
 pondering. 
 
 IV 
 
 Out of Nat's convalescence the mother remembered that 
 she "had nursed him faithfully till she was about sick from 
 the strain." That she had "made of him" meaning un 
 doubtedly the moment of his awakening when he had em 
 braced her and she had kissed him and had done her best 
 by him according as the Lord gave her strength.
 
 112 THE FOG 
 
 The father remembered he had "told the lad stories by 
 the hour" (actual talking time, twenty-four minutes of a 
 single half -noon) and "cheered him by praising him for 
 not taking the back talk of anybody." 
 
 But Nathan! He only remembered that his mother had 
 fussed about the blood on the bed clothing; that his father 
 had come in and "reeled off the same old pack of lies" 
 about his own boyhood and ended by reminding him that if 
 he lost his job at the tannery, God help him for the father 
 would not, needing his money just then more than ever. 
 
 Nat left his bed and idled about the house. His father 
 came home at noon and contended that if he were strong 
 enough to "fool around the place" he was strong enough 
 to "get back on the job." So that afternoon Nat took an 
 hour to reel a dizzy way to the tannery office. 
 
 Caleb looked up from a pile of freight bills. 
 
 "Dad says you wanted to see me," announced the lad. 
 He hoped old Gridley would "fire" him. Any job would 
 be better than returning to the horrors of the tannery. 
 
 "Siddown," ordered Caleb with a wave of his slab-like 
 hand. 
 
 The boy accepted a seat and waited, his head whirling 
 lightly. Caleb finished his business and then jerked his 
 head toward a side room where the two could talk alone. 
 It had an unused desk, an old iron stove, a battered table, 
 a few chairs, an old green safe. 
 
 Caleb closed the door, motioned to a seat, found one 
 himself and proceeded to fall into deep thought. He cut 
 an enormous corner from a chunk of "chewin'." 
 
 "Perty good scrap you put up the other day, bub," he 
 remarked at length. 
 
 Nathan sought to keep his mental balance, wishing some 
 one would get him a drink, oh, for ice water! 
 
 "Thank you," he said weakly. 
 
 "I allus admire to see a man that can use his dukes. Head 
 hurt you much?" 
 
 "Yes," the boy said truthfully. 
 
 "Hard luck! But you gotta expect bangs and bruises
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 113 
 
 in this world, bub. What's your old man think about it?" 
 
 "He said if it lost me my job here, God help me," re 
 turned Nathan defiantly. 
 
 Caleb was silent for a time. Grim humor lurked in his 
 hard old eye. Twice he lurched forward, raised the cover 
 and spat in the bowels of the dead iron stove. 
 
 "That so? Sort of a goldarn slave-driver, your old man, 
 ain't he?" 
 
 Nathan offered no comment. 
 
 "Whatcher want to go gettin' into that fuss with Plumb 
 for, anyhow?" 
 
 "I was writing something private and Si came up 
 and grabbed it away. Then he wouldn't give it back." 
 
 Nathan stood in awe of old Gridley, partly because he 
 was the boy's employer, mostly because he was her father. 
 
 "Yeah," affirmed Caleb, "What was it?" 
 
 "It was it was poetry," the lad confessed lamely. He 
 wished he could get a drink, any kind of water if only it 
 would keep the office from spinning around and around. 
 
 "So you're a poet?" 
 
 "I like to read poetry and try writing it sometimes." 
 
 "So I heard. I'm a bit of a poet myself !" 
 
 For an instant Nathan was dumfounded. Had he heard 
 aright? The boy fought off his vertigo and stared. Was 
 the old man jesting? But apparently Old Caleb was never 
 more serious in his life. Moreover, he too was confused, 
 as though chagrined by the confession. Nathan would have 
 accepted that his employer had speared grizzlies, kicked over 
 baby carriages, fired orphan asylums and kicked the crutches 
 from cripples. But a poet! It was cataclysmic. 
 
 "Did you did you ever write any poetry?" 
 
 "Once!" 
 
 "What for? What came of it?" 
 
 "That was a perty good piece you started to write when 
 Plumb interrupted you. Jake gimme the book. Then 
 again, my wife lemme see a piece you writ and give to 
 my daughter a while back. You seem to be a perty good 
 poet. I'll show you somethin'." 
 
 To Nathan's utter bewilderment, Caleb went to the green 
 box safe. He selected an old wallet from its cavernous 
 compartments and returned to his creaking seat. With 
 his elbows on his enormous knees, he. leaned forward. He
 
 ii4 THE FOG 
 
 went through the wallet until he came to a paper he sought. 
 He drew it out with sausage-like fingers, a sheet of rusty, 
 mildewed parchment on which some verses had been written 
 in violet ink. Reverently he handed it across as though it 
 were a million-dollar government bond. 
 Nathan read: 
 
 "To G. H. 
 
 "Your eyes are like the twinkling stars, 
 Your voice is like the dew 
 I sit upon the hill and dream 
 Of you, my love, of you. 
 
 "You are the inspiration of my life 
 To you I will ever be true 
 When I am old and my hair is gray 
 I'll ever think of you. 
 
 "All of us have a secret love 
 Some, memories of yesterday, 
 Like cake to finish a good square meal 
 It cheers us on our way. 
 
 CALEB GRIDLEY." 
 Paris, Vt, June 2, 1871. 
 
 The old man watched the youth's face closely as he read. 
 There was pathetic anxiety in the question which followed : 
 
 "Well," demanded Caleb, "what's your opinion? There 
 was folks said it was good enough to have published once ! 
 But I couldn't I couldn't !" 
 
 The tanner sighed and arose. He walked to the window 
 looking down on the cluttered yard. There he stuck his 
 big hands in his stomach pockets and "rolled his chew." 
 
 With the tactlessness of boyhood, Nathan announced, 
 "The meter's off and besides it doesn't really say anything 
 that is, in a nice smooth way." 
 
 If he had struck old Caleb with a rock he could not 
 have surprised the tanner more dynamically. 
 
 "Don't say anything! Smooth way! Meter? What's 
 meter ?" 
 
 "In poetry it's the character of a stanza. It's made up 
 of any given number of lines, divided into measures equal 
 in time and length of syllables and rhythmic construc 
 tion."
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 115 
 
 "Well, I'll be damned!" cried Caleb. "Where did you 
 learn that them big words and all ?" 
 
 "Miss Hastings showed me. The rest sort of always 
 came easy to me." 
 
 "Then what the hell are you doin' workin' here in my 
 place, when you got book-learnin' like that?" 
 
 "My father makes me." 
 
 "He must be a dog-gone bigger fool than I allus took him 
 for. Say that book-learnin' over !" 
 
 Nathan complied. 
 
 "Now what does it mean in plain Vermont jaw -music?" 
 
 Nathan was beginning to forget his dizziness. 
 
 "It means that to make poetry read smoothly the lines 
 in each verse must have exactly the same number of syl 
 lables. They must be emphasized in the same way in the 
 same place in all the verses and yet give perfect emphasis. 
 You've just got a lot of lines here with the final words 
 rhyming." 
 
 "But you said it didn't say anything!" Caleb was not 
 angry so much as hurt, grievously hurt. "I allus thought 
 it said a lot," he added, with a little catch in his voice. 
 
 "I mean something really fine and beautiful and rare 
 different from the ordinary way we write or think or 
 talk, if you understand what I mean. For instance, you 
 say in your first line that somebody's eyes are like the 
 stars and his voice " 
 
 "Her voice!" corrected old Caleb. 
 
 " Her voice is like the dew. Well, that doesn't really 
 mean anything. Nobody ever saw a woman with eyes 
 like actual stars or a voice like real dew, because dew 
 doesn't make any noise, anyhow, let alone having a voice. 
 Poetry tries to say things better and softer and finer than 
 any one has ever said 'em before and that's where you've 
 fallen down." 
 
 "How would you say it?" 
 
 Caleb had come across, sunk down into the creaky chair 
 with his knees parted, his bulbous finger tips pressed to 
 gether between them, the world and business forgot, a 
 gray-haired man seeking pointers in rhyming from a minstrel 
 with a bashed head. 
 
 "Well, what you want to express is that you sat on a 
 hilltop thinking of a woman. And somehow the night was
 
 n6 THE FOG 
 
 so soft and wonderful you couldn't help comparing her with 
 the view around you. So suppose instead of saying you 
 sat on the hill and thought of the woman having star-like 
 eyes, you looked off to some star, the prettiest, brightest of 
 them all. And her face seemed to come before you in it 
 Say, who is this woman, anyhow?" Nathan broke off 
 suddenly. 
 
 Old Caleb's gaze dropped to his horny hands. He stopped 
 chewing. 
 
 "Once on a time, bub once on a time back in my life 
 there was a girl. Well I loved her and so I writ 
 this poetry." 
 
 It seemed to the awe-struck boy as though a section of 
 the universe slid back' then and disclosed the mighty works 
 which make the worlds go around. 
 
 Old Caleb Gridley, rich as the village phrased it "be 
 yond dreams of avarice", hard-cider drinker, leading select 
 man and poker-player Saturday nights under Jimmy Styles' 
 barber shop most of all her father! once upon a time 
 old Caleb Gridley had been as other boys and men, even 
 as Nathan. He had loved a girl and sought balm in hexam 
 eters. 
 
 "And did you marry her ?" asked the astonished boy after 
 a moment. He spoke as the superstitious refer to the dead. 
 "Was it Mrs. Gridley?" 
 
 "No, b'dam, it warn't Mrs. Gridley !" 
 
 A little tear squeezed out of the man's hard eye a 
 ludicrously little tear on a ludicrously big and beefy face. It 
 stayed there for a moment. Then it melted. 
 
 Nathan turned and tiptoed softly out of Eden. In quite 
 another voice he suggested: 
 
 "I could show you, perhaps, how to polish this and make 
 it better, by doing it with you as we go along." 
 A red-haired girl thrust her flaming head in the door. 
 
 "Mike Sweeney's come for them calfskins and they ain't 
 all bundled yet," she whined. 
 
 "You tell Mike Sweeney to go to hell!" roared Caleb. 
 "And if you interrupt me again with calfskins I'll kill the 
 both o' ye and fire you beside!" 
 
 The girl closed the door. Caleb swore volubly for a half- 
 moment about the deficiencies of certain hirelings "these 
 days" in the matter of mental endowment. Then he begged :
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 117 
 
 "Go on, bub! Tell me what you was sayin' about that 
 poetry." 
 
 "Let's get a pencil and paper," Nathan suggested. "We'll 
 work it out together." 
 
 VI 
 
 It was dark outside and the tannery had long been de 
 serted when a pathetically pleased old war horse of business 
 and an addle-pated young poet ended the new version of 
 Caleb Gridley's youthful sentiment. 
 
 "Now resui it all over, out loud," ordered the tanner. 
 He paced up and down with his dented, dusty, greenish 
 derby on the back of his head, cant-hook thumbs in the 
 armpits of his vest. Nat read: 
 
 "GRACIA 
 
 "Sometimes, dear heart, in the quiet night, 
 
 When the stars hang soft and low, 
 I slip away from the clash and care 
 
 To the Hills of Long Ago. 
 Across those Hills in the whisp'ring dark, 
 
 With the night breeze sighing through, 
 I see those castles we'd planned to build 
 
 When our dreams had all come true. 
 
 "Your face grows plain in an evening star, 
 
 Ere the moon rides high and cold, 
 And Memory tunes with the summer night 
 
 On a chord that's rare and old. 
 The troth we pledged comes in sad rebuke 
 
 To a thousand loveless days, 
 But wandering fires led me off and down, 
 
 'Long a thousand ambushed ways. 
 
 "Yet somewhere deep in each tuneful night 
 
 Plays a softer, sweeter lay; 
 Though life is gray with a thousand sighs 
 
 It has held one deep-pink day. 
 And thus the glow of the Long Ago 
 
 Keeps my path to you, dear, bright; 
 Yet a little while and Our Morning dawns 
 
 So good night, dear heart, good night !"
 
 ii8 THE FOG 
 
 "Don't you see," argued Nathan, "you've said the very 
 same thing, only this is smooth and dreamy. You have a 
 feeling old Mr. Abbot, the music teacher, might play it 
 on his 'cello, maybe. That's the meaning of real poetry, 
 Mr. Gridley at least as I see it to say the common thing 
 uncommon, sweet and soft and low, so it lurks in your mind 
 like music." 
 
 "I guess I understand, bub," replied the old man huskily. 
 "That's a dam' good piece we've writ here. If Sam Hod, 
 o' the Daily Telegraph, can't make space for it, I'll call 
 his notes. Bub, what the plunkin'-hell does your old man 
 be thinkin' of, settin' you to skinning cows? Want to 
 make you at my age what I am, maybe?" 
 
 Nathan was silent for a moment. Then he answered 
 sadly : 
 
 "It's the money I can earn. He needs it." 
 
 "Money? Money? Dam' money! Once I might o' 
 writ pieces like this, bub dam' good pieces. But my dad 
 put his foot down and said that I should make money too. 
 An' look at me! I ain't worth nothin' else. And all this 
 town knows it." The tanner's voice broke and he began to 
 chew furiously. He turned away. 
 
 "I can't help myself," lamented Nathan. "He makes 
 me work and so I must. I'm only waiting to grow. And 
 then I'll go away, I guess, where he can never get trace of 
 me again." 
 
 "Bub, what say you and me be partners in poetry?" 
 
 "Partners in poetry?" 
 
 "I'd like to write more pieces like this, with you, bub. 
 B'dam, I ain't had such a soul-satisfyin' afternoon in thirty 
 year! S'pose you quit the yard and come up here and 
 see to things about the office. The brains o' that red 
 headed girl rattle round in her head like a peanut in a wash 
 boiler. And now and then we'll fool with hexy 
 hexy " 
 
 "Hexameters," said Nathan gravely. 
 
 "Hexy-whatever you-call-'em," said Caleb. 
 
 "You mean you aren't going to fire me for fighting? 
 You'll give a me a job up here in the office, instead ?" 
 
 "That's it, bub. You and me! Cow hides for bread 
 and butter. Poems for dessert. Saturday afternoons and 
 Sundays? What say? what?"
 
 POET IN HOMESPUN 119 
 
 "Th-Th-Thank you, Mr. Gridley," was all that Nathan 
 could call up. He felt a sudden grim affection for the old 
 tanner who had been keeping the heart of a poet locked 
 under his tough hide for two or three decades. 
 
 "The wages," said Caleb, "will be two dollars more a week. 
 I guess a poet oughta be worth it. But the real reason for the 
 raise is keepin' your mouth shut. The minute you go tellin' 
 what you and me's mutually interested in you're fired!" 
 
 "I understand, Mr. Gridley. I'm much obliged." 
 
 Overwhelmed with this sudden turn in his affairs, the boy 
 began blindly picking up the scratch papers strewn about 
 which they had spoiled. Carelessly he ripped them in strips 
 until he came to the asinine lines of Caleb s in 1871. 
 
 "You won't need these any more, will you," he asked, "now 
 that we've written them better?" 
 
 The tanner rescued the sheet from the boy's hand, how 
 ever. Carefully folding it, he laid it away in the worn, brown 
 wallet and locked it up in the old green safe.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 FIRST COMPLICATIONS 
 
 "The Elms" school for girls consisted of a trio of high- 
 pillared Colonial buildings on the main street of Mount 
 Hadley, Massachusetts. They stood behind lofty arches of 
 towering trees that were old when Washington passed 
 through to inspect Ticonderoga. 
 
 Mount Hadley had an atmosphere possessed by many 
 scholastic, hilltop New England towns, wide-verandahed, 
 leisurely, sharply colored, exclusive. From its diminutive 
 brownstone Memorial library to its chaste white churches, 
 it expressed simplicity, asceticism, grace and dignified charm. 
 The nasturtium-flavored individuality of the town stood in 
 clearly defined contrast to the clash and clatter of muddy- 
 guttered, smoky-scented, foreign-populated paper cities far 
 ther down the Connecticut. A ninety-minute suburban trol 
 ley service connected it with Springfield, Massachusetts. 
 
 Madelaine Theddon was entering her second year at "The 
 Elms" when, upon emerging from the college store-and- 
 postoffice early one September evening, she saw a motor car 
 draw to the near-by curb and a man leap out. He blocked 
 her way with easy self-confidence. She recognized Gordor 
 Ruggles. 
 
 Physically, Gordon seemed to have attained maturity in 
 a year. He had gained in height at an expense of girth. 
 His auto togs made him look still taller and older. But 
 his twisted front tooth was as prominent and his eyelid 
 flopped as badly as ever. 
 
 'Hello, Madge!" he cried. "Still sore?" 
 
 "I've never been 'sore' at you, Gordon. That's a coarse 
 and unkind thing to say !" 
 
 "Well, you swallowed all the guff Aunt Grace handed you 
 me."
 
 FIRST COMPLICATIONS 121 
 
 "Please don't talk so, Gordon. If you haven't been 
 well, interesting, it's because you haven't seemed to me to 
 }ive up to the best that's in you." 
 
 "You didn't talk that way the first time we met, Madge 
 when Aunt Grace was showing tie the gate. You seemed 
 like a regular girl, for a time. Then right off you got stiff 
 stiff as froze mutton." 
 
 "You didn't act very gentlemanly around my home Af 
 terward, Gordon. Your behavior displeased my mother. 
 I couldn't help charging that displeasure against you." 
 
 "You made me feel for a time, Madge, as if you'd give a 
 fellow a chance. Then you turned the glassy stare on me 
 like like all the rest." Gordon said this in a hard, dry 
 self-pity which he knew intuitively how to employ with 
 deadly effect on Madelaine's type of femininity. 
 
 "Mother asked you not to try to see me or find out where 
 I'd started in school. She begged you to go away and leave 
 me alone. And you haven't paid the slightest regard to her. 
 Is that honorable ? What 'chance' do you want ?" 
 
 "What right did she have to ask it ? She flung me a dare. 
 Because I took it and smoked you out, she's sore. And she's 
 gypping my game with you." 
 
 "Just what is your 'game,' Gordon ?" 
 
 "Aw, you know what I want. You could show you were 
 a good sport once in a while. At least, be human. But 
 instead of acting like a cousin, you act and Aunt Grace 
 acts as if I were a pestilence. I want to be friends and 
 neither of you will let me." 
 
 Gordon had planted himself in front of Madelaine in 
 such a manner that she was unable to pass easily. But she 
 was not afraid, merely annoyed. She was willowy and 
 fragile beside him but her calm, dark eyes searched his own 
 bravely. 
 
 "We can be friends, if that's all you wish. But so long 
 as you annoy mother, you annoy me. And that's all I have 
 to say." 
 
 "You think I am a hell-buster, don't you, Madge? You 
 even you ! won't give me the benefit of the doubt." 
 
 Along this attack, Gordon knew he could always score, if 
 he acted sufficiently persistent and apparently sincere. The 
 quick gleam in those expressive dark eyes showed when he 
 had scored now.
 
 122 THE FOG 
 
 "Gordon," cried the girl, "why do you persist in coming 
 up here, week after week and month after month, talking 
 and acting as you do ? What is it you want ?" 
 
 "You're the only girl who ever made me feel that if she 
 were friendly, really friendly, I could pull up and amount 
 to something. Is it any wonder I should be interested in 
 sticking around? When a guy has met that kind of girl, 
 he's on the outs with every one unless he can have her to 
 play with. And that's you! And the truth!" 
 
 "But I can't play around with any one. I'm attending 
 school. And next spring mother and I are going 
 abroad " 
 
 "Every one plays 'round part of the time, Madge !" Gor 
 don came closer as the girl shrank back. "I've been think 
 ing about you nearly every day since I met you, Madge. 
 I'm in a rotten way. Instead of helping me, you make it 
 worse. Is that fair? When a fellow might go square if 
 he had the chance, is it fair to make it as hard as you can ?" 
 
 "I don't want to make it hard for any one, Gordon. But 
 mother made me promise I wouldn't encourage you and I 
 should keep that promise." 
 
 "A bad promise is better broken than kept, Madge. And 
 what kind of a promise is it anyway, when it injures and 
 hurts somebody?" 
 
 This sort of argument, harped upon long enough, would 
 have the girl's defenses down. 
 
 "Please, Gordon, let me pass. People are watching." 
 
 "Madge, are you afraid of me?" 
 
 "Of course I'm not afraid of you!" 
 
 "Get into the car then. For an hour let me talk to you 
 while we're driving, I mean. I'll have you back by eight 
 o'clock. I promise it, faithfully. You've never heard my 
 side of the story, Madge. Until you do, it's not fair to 
 condemn me. Not on your mother's say-so." 
 
 "I can't! I just can't!" 
 
 Gordon's face assumed the proper recklessness. 
 
 "All right, if that's the way you feel about it. But next 
 time you hear of me raising hell don't blame anybody but 
 yourself. Didn't you ever have the feeling that no one 
 care about you what you did, or what became of you i 
 No, of course you haven't " 
 
 "Gord ! Come back ! Don't go off feeling so !"
 
 FIRST COMPLICATIONS 123 
 
 "I can't help the way I feel. I'm getting to the place 
 where I don't give a hang. I thought for a time you might 
 help me. I see, as usual, I'm out o' luck !" 
 
 It hurt the girl to have the lad talk so, especially as he 
 appeared sincere. Suppose Mrs. Theddon were wrong ! Sup 
 pose she were prejudiced ! She, Madelaine, had known that 
 horrible feeling of nobody caring. Was it square of her 
 mother to put such restrictions upon her? The girl was a 
 queer mixture of half woman, half child. The "child" was 
 always the orphan child, wondering to whom it belonged, 
 why life had been "different." 
 
 "Where do you want to drive?" she asked. 
 
 "Oh, up to Amherst and back, or Greenfield; what 
 does it matter so long as I have a good chance to talk, and 
 get you back by eight o'clock?" 
 
 "Well, I'll have to tell Mrs. Anderson over to the House. 
 And you may have to assure her you're my cousin. It's 
 against the rules otherwise, you know." 
 
 "Fair enough! Hustle! We've a couple of hours yet 
 before dark." 
 
 H 
 
 Madelaine soon discovered, not without annoyance, that 
 the pummeling of the machine precluded much confidential 
 intercourse. Also, once under way on the Deerfield road, 
 Gordon's mood shifted. He began to show off his dexterity 
 in managing the contraption. Beside the motors of five 
 years hence, it would be listed as a "haybaler." But in 
 Gordon's hands it was no "haybaler." It was a threshing- 
 machine with the "governor" lost. 
 
 "I thought you wanted to tell me about yourself," the 
 girl reminded him as they reached a stretch of reasonably 
 smooth roadway three miles out of town. 
 
 "Oh, for the love of Mike! Can't you be human for 
 once, Madge? Simply enjoy jourself ! Or if you can't, 
 let me enjoy myself. It's enough for me to have you along 
 at such a time. You're that kind of girl. That's why I've 
 wanted you so much." 
 
 The sun sank down behind the Berkshires. The Connecti 
 cut valley was hushed and beautiful. Cattle lowed in moist 
 iarnyards along their way. They heard the clinking and
 
 124 THE FO'G 
 
 squeaking of milk pails and the nicker of horses with heads 
 hanging low over whitewashed paddock fences. 
 
 A dew mist hung above the glassy river. The world grew 
 dreamy. Gordon turned off upon a country road. With a 
 sudden twinge of alarm Madelaine lost her sense of direc 
 tion. 
 
 "Where are you going, Gordon?" she demanded at the 
 end of a half -hour. 
 
 "Oh, I know a short cut. You'll see. Hell ! What's that?" 
 
 They had passed through a thickly shadowed wood. The 
 road opened out between a hill of undergrowth on one side 
 and a pasture on the other. No houses were in sight. 
 They were surrounded by typical western Massachusetts 
 country. And the car had stopped abruptly. 
 
 The boy alighted, raised the hood, tinkered with the en 
 gine. He cranked several times in silence. At first Made 
 laine was interested. Then she grew annoyed. Gordon did 
 not appear out of temper. This was unnatural. He even 
 stood off, looked at the machine and grinned. 
 
 "Has anything gone wrong seriously wrong?" the girl 
 demanded. 
 
 "Don't know yet. Hope not !" 
 
 He toyed with the engine again, even going to the trouble 
 of producing a bag of tools. Then he lighted a cigarette, 
 inhaled a head full and opined: 
 
 "This looks like a peach of a fix, Madge. It's lucky I'm 
 your cousin!" 
 
 "But I've got to get back by eight o'clock, Gordon. You 
 promised that!" 
 
 "Schools make me sick! A girl as old as you having 
 to get into the house at dark like a little freckled-faced 
 brat! It's the limit. You ought to shock 'em good!" 
 
 "Gordon! Please see if you can't start the car. We've 
 come a long way and an evening star is shining already." 
 
 "I can't help it if something's gone wrong, can I? I'm 
 no mechanic. I didn't make the machine! I'd fix it if I 
 could !" 
 
 "You mean to say you can't fix it that there's no pros 
 pect of getting it fixed so we can get back by eight 
 o'clock?" 
 
 "Oh, get off your high horse, Madge! Have a heart! 
 What do you think I'm trying to do get you in Dutch ?"
 
 FIRST COMPLICATIONS 125 
 
 Madelaine looked at her watch. It was twenty-five min 
 utes past seven. The most disturbing phase of the predica 
 ment was that she had no knowledge of the locality nor 
 .vhere to go for help. Gordon lighted another cigarette and 
 stared at his car ruefully. 
 
 "There's only one way out," he finally declared, "find a 
 house with a telephone and have a garage car come out 
 and tow us." 
 
 "That will take an awful long time, won't it, Gordon?" 
 
 "Well, and what of it?" 
 
 "But I've got to be back at eight, I told you ! How many 
 times must I say it?" 
 
 "Oh, hang eight o'clock! I didn't guarantee to get you 
 back regardless of accident ! They ought to have sense 
 enough to know that some things might happen that couldn't 
 be helped." 
 
 "Perhaps they would if so many girls didn't use that acci 
 dent excuse until it's thin and threadbare. Besides, I'm 
 not quite convinced, Gordon, that this is an accident. I 
 fail to understand why your car should stop so suddenly 
 away off here in this lonely wood. Everything appeared 
 to be working excellently until we left the highway." Her 
 lips grew hard. "I think you'd better start hunting that 
 telephone, Gordon. And I'll go along and call mother in 
 Springfield. It's plain we're not going to return by eight 
 o'clock or anywhere near it." 
 
 "Well, you wait here till I go around the next turn. I'll 
 see if I sight a house. If I do, I'll call you." But the 
 girl did not miss the dull angry flush on Gordon's face at 
 reference to Mrs. Theddon. 
 
 The fellow stumbled off down the sandy road. Madelaine 
 waited. To run after him would have been asinine. He 
 was gone a disquieting time. The girl drew her sweater- 
 coat about her shoulders as the last daylight faded and the 
 stars grew brighter. It was ghastly quiet. Somewhere off 
 across the valley a dog barked. She heard the faint tinkle 
 of a cow bell. From down among the frowsy woodland 
 ferns at her right came a faint trickling of water. A mos 
 quito sang close to her ear. The dew was heavy. It gath 
 ered in huge drops on the leather seat and the thick, brass- 
 framed windshield. 
 
 Madelaine heard her cousin's returning footsteps in the
 
 i2f THE FOG 
 
 sana before she discerned his figure. Then he stopped to 
 light a cigarette. 
 
 "It was a devil of a ways, Madge, and I'm sorry I had 
 to leave you. But I got 'em! A tool car will come out in 
 an hour." 
 
 "An hour! You found a telephone?" 
 
 "A devil of a ways down the valley yes. I had to cut 
 through a pasture and swamp. There's nothing to do now 
 but wait." 
 
 "Gordon! I " 
 
 "Oh, don't get sore. I called The Elms, too. Miss An 
 derson said it was all O. K. I told her we'd met with an 
 accident a real accident and if she didn't believe it, she 
 could call the Mohawk Garage and find out if I hadn't sent 
 there for aid." 
 
 "You called Miss Anderson? She said it would be all 
 right ? On your honor ?" 
 
 "On my honor !" 
 
 He lurched up into the machine and Madelaine had to 
 make room for him in the single seat. 
 
 "Mind cigarette smoke?" he asked. "It'll keep off the 
 mosquitoes." 
 
 The girl was greatly troubled. She wished she could 
 believe that when Gordon swore "on his honor," it was his 
 honor. 
 
 "Great out here in the country, this time o' night, ain't 
 it?" observed the fellow, idly turning the impotent gas and 
 spark levers beneath the wheel. 
 
 "How far was it, Gordon, to the house where you 
 telephoned ?" 
 
 "Oh, I dunno. Couple of miles, I guess. Forget it, 
 Madge ! Too dark now for you to make it through all that 
 bog, anyhow." 
 
 Gordon twisted his body around and rested one arm 
 along the seat-back behind her. 
 
 "Did you tell the garage men very explicitly where we 
 were stalled?" 
 
 "Sure I did! What's biting you, Madge, anyhow?" 
 
 "How did you describe it ? Just where are we ?" 
 
 "On the Shutesbury road, about eight miles above Am- 
 herst." 
 
 "How far is it back to the main road?"
 
 FIRST COMPLICATIONS 127 
 
 "Say, Madge ! Are you afraid to wait here with me just 
 because there's no houses in sight?" 
 
 "Afraid? Oh, no, Gordon. I'm not afraid of you in 
 the least." 
 
 "Then I wish you'd cut out the catechism." 
 
 The girl bit her lip and slapped at a murderous mosquito 
 on her wrist. She drew the sweater coat tighter about her 
 and started that wait. She was glad she had her purse in 
 her sweater-coat pocket. Gordon smoked his cigarette to 
 the final puff and sighed philosophically as he lighted an 
 other. He restored his arm along the back of the seat. It 
 grew darker. 
 
 "Madge," said he, "did you know honestly ! you're 
 one of the swellest girls I ever ran across !" 
 
 "Please don't let's have any cheap flirting, Gordon. I'm 
 bothered enough as it is, by this predicament you've forced 
 upon me." 
 
 "I've forced upon you ! Madge, if I didn't have a whale 
 of a lot of patience, you'd certainly get my goat. Here you 
 are, away out here in this God-forsaken spot alone with me 
 in the dark, and you act as if we were in the middle of Main 
 Street, Springfield, with a whole flock of cops looking on !" 
 
 "Just what do you mean to infer by that, Gordon? Is 
 there any reason for me to expect anything but the most 
 correct conduct from you?" 
 
 "You can't go provoking and tantalizing a fellow and ex 
 pect him to remain a dummy forever !" 
 
 "Meaning just what, Gordon. You may speak plainly." 
 
 "Aunt Gracia ought to have wised you to a few things. 
 Then you'd try to be more agreeable." 
 
 "Your Aunt Gracia has 'wised me to a few things' as you 
 so crudely term it. Which is why I'm not afraid of you 
 in the least." 
 
 "Madge, let's cut this out ! I've got a rotten temper and 
 I know it. Sometimes it's a devil of a job to hang on to it. 
 So let's talk of pleasanter things. This breakdown gives me 
 just the chance I've wanted for a darn long time the 
 chance to talk about you ! Madge, look here ! I might as 
 well get it out of my system right off the bat and have it 
 done for good and all. Madge, honest-to-God, I love 
 
 you 
 
 "Gordon!"
 
 128 THE FOG 
 
 "Oh, never mind the high-horse stuff! It's no crime for 
 a fellow to love a girl " 
 
 "No, but it's a contemptible thing to intrigue one into 
 a dilemma where she must listen to your insults whether 
 she cares to or not !" 
 
 "Insults !" 
 
 "Very much so, Gordon. If you were a gentleman " 
 
 "Lookit, Madge ! Do you know what I could do to you, 
 if I wanted?" 
 
 "Yes. Being stronger physically, there are many things 
 you could do to me if you wanted. The question is, would 
 you ? I hardly think you would " 
 
 "Wouldn't I, though? I know this game! I've played 
 it before !" 
 
 It was a reckless assertion but it escaped before Gordon 
 gave it thought. 
 
 His worldly wisdom had been gained through contact 
 with femininity whose motto was : "Treat me rough, kid, 
 treat me rough!" He believed a woman enjoyed being 
 "mauled", even though she protested; that the man ulti 
 mately won who had the nerve to play out his hand. And 
 he had never been seriously called to account for indiscre 
 tions to date. Madelaine's attitude was cool dare a chal 
 lenge or he so assumed. He proceeded to accept that 
 challenge to show her what unleashed' male strength 
 could do. 
 
 Laughing coolly, the lad's arm closed tightly around Made 
 laine's shoulders. His left hand caught her two wrists and 
 held them firmly. He pulled the girl's face toward him. He 
 kissed her as much and as long as he pleased. 
 
 Madelaine stiffened as she might have taken a blow she 
 could not avoid. She did not attempt to fight back. She 
 did not try to scream, to struggle, to excoriate him, to claw 
 at his eyes. She endured the profanation until the boy's 
 temper was appeased. He could not hold her so always. His 
 own position was too contorted. The moment his iron 
 grip was loosened, she pushed open the car door and was 
 over its edge in a flash. Down into the soggy, fern-choked 
 ditch where the water trickled she jumped, falling on knees 
 and hands. Her face was scratched. But she struggled 
 up and darted around the rear of the car. 
 
 Gordon knew she must go that way and on the opposite
 
 FIRST COMPLICATIONS 129 
 
 side he waited. His lips were laughing but his face was 
 white. He had struck a shin-bone in scrambling from the 
 machine to capture her and the pain was maddening. As 
 well be killed now for a sheep as a lamb! He caught the 
 girl roughly by her left shoulder and almost pulled her from 
 her feet as he yanked her toward him. 
 
 Never for an instant was Madelaine confused. Without 
 a word she bent and scooped a handful of sand. Squarely 
 in the young man's features she threw it, in his eyes, his 
 nostrils, his half -opened mouth. 
 
 Gordon emitted a hoarse bellow and loosed her. In that 
 instant the girl darted away down the road, into the woodland 
 shadow, back in the direction from which they had come. 
 
 Gordon spat out mouth fuls of the grit and yowled his 
 curses. But the stuff in his eyes was blinding. It gouged 
 and seared his eyeballs, cutting and inflaming the lids so 
 that a great wash of tears coursed down his face, streaking 
 ft ludicrously. He groped his way to the car and sank on 
 the running board. Securing his handkerchief he swabbed 
 his eyes. 
 
 He was fifteen minutes clearing his sight. He lit the jets 
 in the big brass head lamps, cranked the car, scratched the 
 varnish viciously backing it into the brambles to turn it 
 around, then started after Madelaine. 
 
 He knew it to be four or five miles back to the main high 
 way. Madelaine could not yet have covered the distance. 
 So the big reflectors lighted the cloistered woods several 
 hundred feet ahead and a cloud of ghostly dust hung low 
 in his rear. 
 
 Madelaine, fleeing along the shadowed wood-road, heard 
 and saw the machine coming behind, before it made the 
 turn. She darted into a copse of willows and hid there until 
 it passed, Gordon low above the wheel, one hand holding 
 his handkerchief to his face. So he missed her, ultimately 
 reaching the Amherst highway in another fit of black rage 
 and disappointment. 
 
 It was after nine o'clock when Madelaine emerged from 
 the wood. She saw the valley and its main highway ghostly 
 in the starlight before her. Far to the north an electric 
 car was coming, bobbing up and down on the uneven 
 roadbed. She climbed a low fence on the south and ran 
 swiftly across the hay stubble in a diagonal direction. With
 
 130 THE FOG 
 
 deer-like, gymnastic suppleness she covered the distance. 
 Into the highway she finally stumbled, hair fallen free and 
 lungs distressed. But the electric car was still far down the 
 line. She had time to recover her breath, cleanse her 
 scratched face, and arrange hair and clothing before the car 
 worked its rocking way toward her. 
 
 No one could detect in the pretty, flushed girl who boarded 
 that trolley the recent victim of a near-assault in the woods 
 to the eastward. 
 
 The car went through to Holyoke. Madelaine remained 
 aboard. While waiting to secure a Springfield connection, 
 she slipped into a High Street drug store and called Mrs. 
 Anderson. As she now suspected, Gordon had not 'phoned 
 The Elms. Mrs. Anderson was informed that she need not 
 expect her pupil back that evening, as Madelaine had left 
 suddenly for Springfield. Then Madelaine called her mother 
 but her trolley arrived before she had secured her number. 
 
 Gordon left his auto on the main road, extinguished its 
 lamps and went back toward the woods afoot, hoping to 
 encounter his nimble foster -cousin. 
 
 "All right, you little wildcat," he snapped as he returned 
 to his machine an hour later. "Get lost if you want! But 
 believe me, next time I get you alone, it'll be where there's 
 no sand to throw in my eyes. A catty woman's dirty trick ! 
 We'll seel"
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 GOD AND THINGS 
 
 A favorite retreat for most of the Paris boys in those 
 days was the region known as "down the river." From the 
 Process Works dam to the mill pond at Hastings Crossing 
 flowed a wide, smooth body of water between indolent, pas 
 toral hills and fern-clogged, wooded shores musty with 
 swamp bog or rotting second-growth. 
 
 Often Nathan and I borrowed Pete Collins' old red scow, 
 let the current carry us dreamily down-stream in the after 
 glow, to work our way slowly homeward under the stars. 
 The hills, mist-haunted, were exotic in those late evening 
 hours. Trees in the silhouetted woods rose weird against 
 the sky. It was not difficult to imagine ourselves back in 
 Neolithic ages, those trees rising out of decaying fens, 
 with outlandish shapes wallowing in the bogs along the shore. 
 
 They were pleasant, never-to-be-forgotten nights, those 
 trips down the river. To the dull, rhythmic knock of oars 
 in creaky oarlocks, and the drip of warm water as we dis 
 turbed the far-flung expanse of fallen stars, we talked of 
 many things. Our elders might have smiled if they had 
 heard. But then, if our elders could have heard, we would 
 never have given those long, long thoughts expression. 
 
 One sultry sunset we had gone down the river and were 
 opposite Haskell's clearing on our return, when Nathan, 
 who was lying along the boat's bottom, with arms behind 
 his head, remarked in his slow, meditative way: 
 
 "Billy did you ever wonder about the stars?" 
 
 "Not especially. What about the stars ?" I asked. 
 
 "Did you ever imagine you were God, away above all 
 the suns and worlds, looking down now and then at the 
 earth? It would be an awful small place, the earth now, 
 wouldn't it?"
 
 132 THE FOG 
 
 "I suppose it would," I agreed. 
 
 The boy was silent for several minutes. Then he con 
 tinued : 
 
 "If some of those stars are suns like I read in a book a 
 while back and each sun has its worlds revolving about 
 it too, the earth's only an awful small speck in a great big 
 space, isn't it, Billy? It can't be anything else!" 
 
 "Well, and what if it is?" 
 
 "If the earth's only an awful small speck in a great big 
 space, think how much smaller we livin' people must show 
 up down here on it. I don't mean in size, Billy, I mean 
 importance. Well, then, if you were God, away off up in 
 the heavens, what would one little earth like this amount to, 
 anyhow? Still less, what would any one person or persons 
 amount to you and me, for instance? If you or I wanted 
 to go to the devil, be just as bad as we pleased, do anything 
 we wanted, what really big difference would it make? Do 
 you know, Billy, I don't believe God gives any single person 
 half so much attention, or cares half so much what becomes 
 of him, as a lot of grown folks try to make out. It's just 
 conceit. That's the word, Billy; conceit! Men like my 
 father, for instance ! They get the idea that God's a whole 
 lot like themselves. They think he's got the time and pa 
 tience to go sneakin' around watching for folks doing things 
 they've been told not to do. But somehow, when I lie out 
 in a boat like this and think about the stars, I sort of see 
 things different. Myself, for instance. And the minute I 
 go back home and listen to Pa, I get my proportion all 
 twisted. My sins are all big and important again." 
 
 "But the Bible says the hairs of our heads have all got 
 numbers on 'em," I defended. "And no one goes out and 
 shoots an English sparrow but what God sees it when it 
 starts kicking." 
 
 "I don't believe it, Billy! Because if God did know the 
 numbers of the hairs on everybody's heads, what good would 
 it do Him? And what if He does know when some one 
 shoots a few birds? What's the use of Him losing sleep 
 over tiny, foolish things like those when it's lots more im 
 portant to keep that frail, pretty evening star hung up there 
 in space? Seems to me there's too many folks want to 
 make God a cranky old man, always finding fault with peo 
 ple because they don't do things His way or a bookkeeper
 
 GOD AND THINGS 133 
 
 like old Joe Nevins at the knitting mills who almost wrecks 
 the place if he finds two cents off in his balance." 
 
 "And what kind of a person do you think God is? You 
 believe there is a God, don't you ?" 
 
 "I like to think God would be a kind old man. His eyes 
 would laugh when people take Him so serious, and think 
 He's as fussy as themselves. And He'd have long white 
 whiskers that it'd be lots of fun to pull so long as it didn't 
 hurt Him much." 
 
 "I'm glad you believe there is a God anyway," I told 
 Nathan, shocked with the Use majeste. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. I haven't said I really do yet. Oh, 
 Billy we don't know nothing about Him not a single 
 thing! Then why is it we keep fooling ourselves that we 
 do? Why not be honest and say we don't? If there is a 
 God, don't you suppose He's wise enough and big enough 
 so He knows we don't know nothing about Him? Why is 
 it such a sin to refuse to take everything on faith, like old 
 Doctor Dodd is always shouting about, on Sundays? We 
 don't think it's any terrible crime to 'want to be shown' 
 in business or science. Why should it be in religion? If 
 we're honest and ready to believe the right thing when 
 we're shown it is the right thing, why shouldn't that be 
 enough ?" 
 
 "You can search me!" I answered. 
 
 "Well," continued Nathan, "I don't know there is a God 
 and if there is and He's Pa's kind of God, I don't want 
 anything to do with Him. And if He isn't Pa's kind of God, 
 then Pa's all wrong about all the other things. And if Pa's 
 all wrong in the other things, then he doesn't know what he's 
 talking about in the first place and I'm not obliged to be 
 lieve him in anything. Oh, Billy, I wish I could live in a 
 world that would just be honest! I wish I could live in a 
 world where people were brave enough to come right out 
 and confess they don't know anything about God and re 
 ligion, I mean, but were willing to be shown." 
 
 "Don't you believe in the church and the Cross and every 
 thing, and Jesus Christ?" 
 
 "I don't know what I believe," Nat repeated angrily. 
 "And I don't believe any one else does, either, if they'd be 
 honest. I'm sick of being ordered to believe things whether 
 I do or not!"
 
 134 THE FOG 
 
 "But if you don't believe in the church and the Cross and 
 everything, you'll go to hell. The Bible says so ?" 
 
 "I don't believe there is a hell," snapped Nathan. "Every 
 body tells us hell's a place where the wicked burn forever 
 and ever. Who's the wickedest man in this town?" 
 
 "Why, Jake Pumpton over on the East Road, I guess. 
 Or Mr. Gridley, he swears so much !" 
 
 "All right ! Say any one of them ! Now then, you know 
 how hot the furnace fire is at the tannery in the winter? 
 Never mind how rotten and wicked old Pumpton or Gridley 
 are, could you shove 'em into that fire and see 'em writhe 
 and shriek and burn?" 
 
 "No!" I protested weakly. 
 
 "Then you're more kind and merciful than God. Yet 
 you're only human. According to the Bible, God's worse 
 than you. Because He would! Could you love anybody 
 who'd shove a live man into the tannery furnace? No 
 of course you couldn't! And if God does things like that, 
 you couldn't lore Him and neither could I or any one, never 
 mind how much you swore you could or did! They're 
 lying when they say so! I'd hate and loathe a God like 
 that who'd even allow such a place. And I'm not afraid 
 to say so, either. So I don't believe there's any hell because 
 the kind of God who made that pretty evening star couldn't 
 roast folks alive any more than you or I." 
 
 "Well, that takes an awful load off my mind, to know 
 there ain't a hell," I declared. "Because there's lots of things 
 I like about Mr. Pumpton and Mr. Gridley even if they are 
 Lost Souls." 
 
 Suddenly Nat made a gesture of despair : 
 
 "Why? Why? Why are we sent into this world, Billy? 
 When we weren't asked if we wanted to come into it in the 
 first place, why are we scared and pounded and prohibited 
 and lambasted, day after day and year after year, made to 
 work, or get sick, or get well, or die and so long as we 
 say things with our mouths we'll be saved, and if we're 
 honest and won't say 'em, we'll be sent to roast in everlasting 
 fire. Why is it, Billy? Why is it?" 
 
 I couldn't answer. Of course I couldn't answer. But I 
 fancy that ghosts of the Pharaohs heard and echoed Nathan's 
 heart-cry from the night-wind. Isaiah and Socrates and 
 Napoleon listened and shook their heads sadly. The saints
 
 GOD AND THINGS 135 
 
 and the prophets sighed from the far-flung shadows and the 
 infinite hosts of the dead were in atonement with two little 
 boys blinking at the stars from a river scow in a New Eng 
 land summer night. 
 
 ii 
 
 On another night Nathan asked: 
 
 "Did you ever think about your marriage, Billy, and 
 wonder what day it would come in the future, and where 
 it would happen, and who the girl was to be, and just where 
 she is and what she happens to be doing right this minute?" 
 
 "Yes," I answered. What boy or girl has not ? 
 
 "A queer feeling comes over me at times, Billy. Some 
 where ahead in life it seems I'm standing in a great church 
 with faces as far as I can see. There's millions of flowers, 
 Billy, and soft autumn light is coming in at a window on the 
 left. The music's playing so it makes me want to bawl and 
 everything's wildly beautiful and there's laughter and love 
 and fragrance all around me. I can see that picture awfully 
 plain at times, Billy. Down the long aisle from the back 
 there's a woman in white coming toward me the most 
 beautiful woman in all the world really beautiful, Billy, 
 not because I'm in love with her and she looks that way to 
 me. That's my wedding day, Billy and it's fine and grand. 
 Do you ever picture yours that way ?" 
 
 "Somethin' like it," I answered. "Only mine's in a house 
 at night so my w-w-wife and I can sneak off in the dark 
 and not get our hats busted with old shoes. They threw 
 shoes at Matty Henderson's weddin' and broke the win 
 dows in the hack and the horses ran away and tipped over 
 a banana stand." 
 
 ill 
 
 Edith Forge was growing along with Nathan, but saucer- 
 eyed and awkward. At school they nicknamed her "Yard 
 sticks" and the insinuation made her furious. Nevertheless, 
 despite her ungainliness, she was the worst "boy-struck" 
 girl in town. 
 
 The day that she was twelve and Johnathan came upon 
 her giggling with an unknown boy in an empty Sunday-
 
 136 THE FOG 
 
 school room, the sex prohibition went promptly into effect 
 for Edith also. But between Nathan and his sister was this 
 difference: a certain sense of self -discipline and proclivity 
 toward law, order and obedience, strong in the boy, was 
 utterly lacking in the girl. She possessed instead a "terrible 
 temper." She didn't propose to forego the most interesting 
 subject on earth, Boys, not a little bit. She "had a tantrum" 
 and for the first and only time in her life Johnathan Forge 
 thrashed her. Thereupon when the neighborhood had 
 been duly edified and quieted Edith went promptly into 
 illicit alliance with the brother. 
 
 "You help me to sneak out and I'll help you!" she bar 
 gained. 
 
 In her studies, Edith had the academic mentality of a 
 child of eight. But at thirteen she knew how to dance bet 
 ter than that "questionable" Miss La Mott, the village 
 teacher. And at fourteen Edith was insisting that school 
 would never do her any good anyhow, and she wanted to 
 go to work "sticking eight-point" in the local newspaper 
 office "to buy herself some rags that looked decent." 
 
 Her mother prevailed upon her to stay in school by the 
 compromise of filching money from the father's trousers 
 after he had retired. They tore holes in the man's pockets 
 so he would believe he lost the money. The petty loot went 
 to purchase ribbons, waists, high-heeled shoes and two- 
 dollar bouquets from Higgins's greenhouse for Edith to 
 wear to twenty-five-cent parties. 
 
 Early in the girl's life it was expected that ultimately Edith 
 would "marry money." That was quite the natural and 
 rational solution for every conjugal and domestic woe; 
 Edith must marry money. 
 
 Not that Edith especially merited the good fortune of 
 marrying money. Simply that if Edith were thus clever 
 enough to land a husband of means, the girl's family might 
 turn parasites and dip their penurious hands into son-in- 
 law's golden pile. 
 
 It is always a daughter or a sister whom a family hold 
 up when it wants funds. Never conceded, yet always rec 
 ognized, when a boy of means marries a girl without means, 
 he likewise marries her family. What are blood ties for? 
 Why else have we daughters^ being poor in purse as well as 
 in spirit?
 
 GOD AND THINGS 137 
 
 Of course Edith would have nothing to give such a wealthy 
 husband but her bovine body ; the mind of the girl is always 
 a thing passed over. So Edith's education, begun at twelve 
 by a work-gnarled, disappointed, narrow-visioned mother, 
 had solely to do with making her body attractive and plan 
 ning what would be done with the Unknown's cash when 
 it was secured. 
 
 Edith "met boys" at school, she "met boys" at church; 
 she also "met boys" on the streets. Half the parents in town 
 at some time or other took note of those clandestine meet 
 ings and opined wrath fully, "If that Forge girl was mine, 
 I'd lambaste her good and plenty," well knowing they would 
 do nothing of the sort. Because under the jurisdiction of 
 other parents, Edith's sex proclivities would probably have 
 been diverted into normal, healthy channels. 
 
 Edith "never did a stroke of work at home." It was Mrs. 
 Forge's contention that daughter must be "saved" from it 
 and not get her hands all hard and red or her face lined with 
 premature care, or she wouldn't be attractive to Money. 
 
 So Mrs. Forge "slaved and drudged" and was always too 
 tired at night to go anywhere or do anything but retire into 
 the front room and rock in the dark. Edith, like the Dresden 
 Doll, toiled not, neither did she spin. She fussed and fumed 
 in the morning and was always late to school. She "never 
 ate her meals" properly at noon, and after school she was 
 either off on the edge of town, fire-playing with her latest 
 short-trousered "catch," or sprawled on the couch devour 
 ing Charlotte Braeme, Bertha M. Clay or Laura Jean Libby. 
 At fourteen she knew more than most women know on their 
 wedding night and what she didn't know she was reasonably 
 willing to learn. 
 
 So Edith whiled away the shining hours around the calen 
 dar and Johnathan Forge ruled over a painfully moral house 
 hold. 
 
 It is notable, however, that his moral responsibility to 
 God for Edith's soul didn't cause him a quarter of the fuss 
 he made over Nathan's. 
 
 IV 
 
 Of etiquette in the Forge home or manners at the Forge 
 table there were none. Etiquette was snobbish, "putting
 
 138 THE FOG 
 
 on airs." "Manners" were something to be displayed largely 
 for the edification of company. The only time the Forges 
 were scrupulously polite in the privacies of the family circle 
 were when they were angry at each other. 
 
 Mrs. Forge railed at times about her children eating too 
 fast or fleeing the table without folding their napkins. When 
 they wanted a helping of food, they were supposed to say 
 "Please" and "Thank you", and on quitting the board to 
 say "Excuse me." But as the parents never observed these 
 niceties themselves, practice by the children was rather su 
 perficial, and Mrs. Forge's despair. 
 
 Whatever else may be said of Johnathan, the fact re 
 mained that "he did relish his vittles." "Good food and 
 plenty of it" was his motto. So it became a matter for spe 
 cial domestic citation to "see who could eat the most", not 
 ably at Sunday dinner, Thanksgiving or Christmas. A 
 monstrous appetite was a sign of health and virility and 
 a distended stomach more to be desired than gold yea, 
 than the gold of the caliphs. Roast beef and boiled pota 
 toes, corned beef and cabbage, anything that afforded inward 
 bulk, therefore, were favorite and familiar dishes on the 
 Forge menu. 
 
 Johnathan's favorite dinner pleasantry was wiping his 
 mouth on the tablecloth as a coy rebuke to his wife for for 
 getting the napkins. 
 
 During the progress of the meal, knives, forks and spoons 
 sprawled all over the cloth or against dishes, and the clatter 
 of china and silver exceeded the cutlery music from twenty 
 tables at a church supper. 
 
 The mother was ever in hot water because Edith only 
 "nibbled at her food" and Nathan "washed his down with 
 water." After the meal, like a gorged python, Johnathan 
 leaned back and picked and prodded his mouth for five or ten 
 minutes with a huge toothpick. 
 
 In allied domestic functions the Forges followed suit. 
 Sometimes on Saturday nights the family bathed. Some 
 times it did not bathe. It all depended on whether Mrs. 
 Forge was energetic enough to "heat the water." 
 
 The household ran on no schedule. Nothing could be 
 kept in its place because nothing had a place in which it 
 could be kept. Edith particularly was the worst offender. 
 Her bedroom resembled the pathway of a Missouri cyclone
 
 GOD AND THINGS 139 
 
 through a rummage sale until her mother "found time to 
 pick up", about once in two or three weeks. 
 
 Clothes and shoes were bought and worn until they were 
 worn out. Then more were grudgingly bought and worn 
 until they were worn out also. Excepting Edith's. 
 
 Johnathan boasted mostly to his wife and children 
 that he and his family were solid and substantial; you al 
 ways knew "just where to find him." No stuck-up notions 
 or fancy fairs to the Forges. People like themselves were 
 the backbone of the nation. 
 
 Once, at Christmas, the children, imbued with the holiday 
 spirit, wanted a tree. A tree was easily procured by Nathan 
 and hauled home on his sled. Mrs. Forge and Edith strung 
 popcorn and made paper chains. Johnathan, in a spirit of 
 holiday generosity, gave his wife five dollars. The children 
 got a dollar apiece with which to buy presents. 
 
 Mrs. Forge bought a much-needed underskirt with most 
 of her money, knitting the children mufflers and keeping 
 her purchases down to a few pathetic gifts in the 
 local "five and ten." She searched long for a gift for John 
 athan. She finally chose a little painted picture of a scene 
 in the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius smoking in the background. 
 She said it was "so pretty." The gifts made a rather thin 
 exhibit on the tree. 
 
 Christmas morning, when the tree was denuded, John 
 athan got his picture, opened it, threw back his head 
 and roared. 
 
 Mrs. Forge had hunted a long time for Johnathan's gift. 
 The little picture meant a blind, vague, piteous groping 
 after Beauty in her crushed and maltreated soul. It was 
 "so pretty." 
 
 But Johnathan failed utterly to grasp its erudite potenti 
 alities. He spent the greatest part of that Christmas morn 
 ing making fun of the picture. He got a string and hung 
 it around his neck, sandwich-board fashion. He said he 
 admired his wife's tastes in frames; he had a rubber-heel 
 placard at his shop which would fit it exactly. 
 
 Mrs. Forge, who had parted with seventy-five cents which 
 she might better have used for stockings, finally fled the
 
 140 THE FOG 
 
 room in tears. During the ensuing year, the picture was 
 facetiously referred to as "Mother's Volcano." 
 
 Johnathan, by the way, gave his wife a new bread 
 board and Edith a fancy calendar. 
 
 Nathan received a small, leather-bound copy of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 It was a red-letter Christmas!
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 
 
 By the time he had reached seventeen Nathan had at 
 tained what it too often requires discouraging years for 
 older persons to negotiate. 
 
 He had lifted his handicapped, browbeaten young shoul 
 ders above the drab-colored dead level of village mediocrity. 
 
 Fourteen of his poems had been printed intermittently 
 as "boxed" features on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 The village, therefore, had been forced to admit grudg 
 ingly to be sure, but nevertheless to admit that if he kept 
 it up long enough, and nothing stopped him, and the quality 
 of his verse showed improvement instead of deterioration, 
 and no one surpassed him, and the Telegraph kept out of 
 bankruptcy, and the Federal constitution wasn't amended so 
 as to prohibit poetry altogether somewhere down long vis 
 tas of future years he might possibly be expected to ap 
 proach a fair-to-middlin' resemblance to a near-celebrity. 
 
 These qualifying adverbs and adjectives constitute an 
 attempt at faithful reproduction of the community's attitude 
 toward budding talent. Paris, like all Vermont, like all 
 New England, like small towns all over the planet, was 
 doggedly determined that a loophole should be left, in fact 
 several loopholes, so that in case of failure and fizzle it 
 might be in that crushing position to retort, "I told you so!" 
 
 To bet on a local son's ability to rise above the common 
 herd's tenor of nothing-in-particular and have the wager 
 turn out a loss was more to be deplored than a failure of 
 the nation's credit system. The grocery-store and barber 
 shop economists could blame the prevailing administration 
 for the latter, but for the former there would be no one to 
 take the ignominy but themselves. 
 
 It was only natural that there should be those in town
 
 142 THE FOG 
 
 who had no patience whatever with the tone of Nathan's 
 verse. It was sickly, sloppy, moon-sighing stuff, that sug 
 gested "dying calves with their mouths full of mush." 
 
 Another element, chiefly recruited from the young, un 
 married set, or Raveled Ends of Might-Have-Been Ro 
 mances, clipped out the boy's verses and mailed them to 
 sweethearts. Or they pasted them in scrapbooks alongside 
 clippings from the Poet's Corner in the Boston Sunday 
 Globe. 
 
 But as a matter of genuine enthusiasm, the bulk of the 
 local census was phlegmatic. They read the boy's amateur 
 ish little girl rhymes with indifference, waiting for it to be 
 disclosed "whether that mopey Forge young one was a darn 
 bright kid or a goddam fool." 
 
 Yet the fact remained that the lad was getting "published." 
 And every effusion carried its tuppence worth of advertis 
 ing. Soon the town was forced to sit up and take notice. 
 Some of the best of Nat's work had been clipped from our 
 smudgy, homely, country sheet and been copied in the Spring 
 field Union or the aforesaid Boston Globe. 
 
 That a lethargic exchange editor in each case, hunting 
 for material to fill odd corners with "hay", had snipped out 
 the verses with a vast and pardonable ennui, spiked them 
 on a linotype hook and forgotten them, was immaterial, even 
 if it had been generally known. Paris felt duly edified. 
 
 The effect on Johnathan the day Uncle Joe Fodder, the 
 town philosopher, found the first of Nat's poems in the 
 Globe and advised John to that effect was as amusing as it 
 was interesting. 
 
 John had been positive his boy's propensity for poetry 
 was in the same category with his Abaddonic proclivity to 
 ward girls. Realization that fame was being forced upon 
 the family despite his dogged assumption to the contrary 
 came as a shock. A great city newspaper had printed the 
 name of a Forge and circulated the same by hundreds of 
 thousands of copies! What could Johnathan do in the face 
 of such titanic refutation ? Nothing but to glow in his heart 
 that the celebrity was his son and then treat the said celeb 
 rity as his own personal washpot. 
 
 "I guess I know best how to bring out talent and ability 
 in a youngster," he affirmed. "Keep 'em in their places and 
 give 'em a little hardship to rise above! That's the thing
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 143 
 
 that makes men. Give a boy encouragement and he either 
 gets a swelled head or turns out a mollycoddle." 
 
 Besides, what encouragement had his father ever given 
 him? 
 
 II 
 
 Many times in those months and years, I saw the man op 
 posite me in church or shop and studied him. But there 
 was little to "study." 
 
 It puzzled me for a long time how two such people as 
 Johnathan and Anna could remain together year after year 
 in any such loveless connubiality and not realize its prosti 
 tution. But of one thing I am convinced absolutely: John 
 athan was no hypocrite ; up to the time of Nathan's mar 
 riage and still more vital events yet to be delineated, the 
 man, however narrow, had the courage of his convictions. 
 
 Separating from a woman whom he had once married and 
 by whom he had received children even if not divorcing 
 her was not only heresy and against all ethics, but it struck 
 at the very roots of society and nominated him for the 
 seventh strata of the bottomless pit. 
 
 All marriages were made in heaven. That was the Alpha 
 and Omega of the whole business. The Bible says a man 
 shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh, though 
 they fight openly from New Year's to Christmas and make 
 the home life of growing children a nerve-racking hell. You 
 can't get back of the Bible. There it is in black and white. 
 And you know what it says in the ending of Revelations 
 about daring to change one jot or tittle of Holy Writ. 
 
 If there were unpleasantness in his home, it was the wo 
 man's fault. She rebelled against the hypothesis that he was 
 the head of his house, the arbiter of its destinies, the party 
 responsible for its souls and bodies to God and State. She 
 spat upon the verdict of St. Paul : "Wives, submit your 
 selves unto your husbands as unto the law of God." She 
 was responsible for everything wrong. She was "under 
 mining Church and State." She was a sinner from wayback. 
 
 The man totally lacked the capacity to see himself in any 
 other role than that of model father, husband, citizen and 
 church member. 
 
 He was one of those men of whom it may truthfully be
 
 144 THE FOG 
 
 said that he took life seriously. To say nothing of himself. 
 To associate, disport or enjoy himself with family or neigh 
 bors was something he did not know how to do. He couldn't 
 have taken enjoyment from life even if he had wanted. It 
 was rather pathetic. 
 
 He was a finished product of his own philosophy and 
 never saw it. His father had succeeded in doing in him ex 
 actly what he was trying to do in Nathan. Only there were 
 leavening and countering chromosomes in Nathan's make-up 
 ultimately working for the boy's salvation which had not 
 been Johnathan's heritage. 
 
 He rarely attended any church or village function unless 
 admittance was free, and on rare occasions when the circus 
 came to Paris and he consented to take his children, he 
 bought no admittance to performance or side shows. He 
 taught them to be content with standing off in the back 
 ground and "watching people make fools of themselves." 
 
 When by unavoidable circumstance he was forced to par 
 ticipate in any social function where people looked on, he 
 either did so with an awkward, clumsy, painful, red- faced 
 self -consciousness, or he "tried to be funny." But in both 
 cases he withdrew into innocuous desuetude as quickly as 
 he was permitted. Thereupon, unless the affair had been 
 directly connected with religion, he carried away the impres 
 sion that he had been a "cut-up" and a "card." 
 
 Once, just once, when Edith had been ten, the Forge 
 home had been opened for a party. But on that occasion he 
 had not been content to let the youngsters work out their 
 own social salvation. It had devolved upon him as "master 
 of his house" and "protector of his children's morals" to 
 place himself in the best chair in the front room and preside 
 over the progress of the affair. It was his business to see 
 that no kissing games were played, suggest when the chil 
 dren had applied themselves to each pastime long enough, 
 inject witty criticisms of juvenile deportment, indicate when 
 it was time for the refreshments to be served and when the 
 hour had come for adjournment. All this he did in slippered 
 feet, with hair a bit rumpled and vest unbuttoned. On the 
 whole, it was quite a responsibility. 
 
 Vainly his wife had tried to spirit him out and away so 
 the children might act naturally and enjoy themselves. John- 
 athan was indignant. He guessed it was his house. His
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 145 
 
 carpets were being scuffed out. His money was paying for 
 the ice cream and cake. He stayed. 
 
 His favorite contribution to the entertainment when the 
 children sat around like little wooden puppets, half fright 
 ened to death by the Moloch presiding over them, was the 
 demand, accompanied by an indulgent toe-tapping: "Who 
 can tell a tunny story or sing a funny song ?" But ten-year- 
 olds who wanted to play "Copenhagen" or "Drop the Pil 
 low" were rather deficient in the matter of volunteering 
 comic anecdotes or rendering humorous ballads. And 
 whereas Johnathan's repertoire was rather limited along 
 those lines also, the party was not all it might have been. 
 
 That night in bed an exasperated wife "started in her 
 same old tirade" and ended her excoriation by kicking her 
 loving husband in the shins. Johnathan exhibited the black 
 and blue spot to Nathan in the week ensuing to prove to 
 the son that his father had married a virago. There never 
 was another party. 
 
 And now Nathan, the offspring of a God-fearing male 
 and an unholy female, was upsetting all his father's unas 
 sailable calculations and becoming known throughout our 
 part of New England as a celebrity. Just what should 
 Johnathan do about it ? Not being in a position to do much 
 of anything about it, the father concluded it best to pursue 
 a policy of watchful waiting. 
 
 So matters drifted with Nathan performing rather in 
 definite tasks in the tannery, the vague nature of which both 
 ered his father not a little bit, but which nevertheless brought 
 in six dollars a week until the disturbing young coot "up 
 and wrote 'The Pagans.' " 
 
 ill 
 
 To speak truthfully, our prune-and-prism community re 
 ceived a shock. Sam Hod, proprietor of the Telegraph, un 
 doubtedly wanted to administer a shock. Anyhow, he not 
 only printed what the precocious rhymster had composed 
 but called attention to its moral excellence in his editorial 
 column that night.
 
 146 THE FOG 
 
 "THE PAGANS 
 
 "We bought two slaves on the Block of Life, 
 
 Out-crying the bidders all; 
 Two slaves as rare as the maids of Punt, 
 
 White-limbed as the girls of Gaul. 
 The Pagan bought for the right to own, 
 
 With gold that he could not miss 
 While I bought mine for the right to love 
 
 And swapped for her flesh a kiss. 
 
 "We pushed our slaves from the auction hall 
 
 And drove them along Life's street; 
 We jested over their bodies pink, 
 
 The pad of their naked feet. 
 Ahmed chained his to a black floor ring 
 
 As butt for his brutal fun, 
 While I chained mine to a kitchen range 
 
 And work that was never done. 
 
 "The Pagan's slave was a high-strung lass 
 
 And fought with a courage rare ; 
 But broke at last 'neath her master's whip 
 
 And pain from her tortured hair. 
 Now my slave, too, was a high-strung lass, 
 
 And so for my right was clear 
 I broke her back with a thankless drudge 
 
 And a baby every year. 
 
 "The Pagan swore that his slave should die 
 
 By slash 'cross her milk-white throat, 
 Her body sewed in a sack by night 
 
 Be dropped in his harem moat. 
 I likewise ordered my slave should die 
 
 But I did the thing with art : 
 I ground my spleen to a rapier point 
 
 And stabbed till I found her heart. 
 
 "The Pagan slept when his slave was dead, 
 
 For he had much gold to spare; 
 Next day he went to the market place 
 
 And bought with a better care. 
 But when my slave had been killed with wordi 
 
 I placed at her head a stone: 
 'Here sleeps the one that I loved most dear 
 
 While I go my way alone!'
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 147 
 
 "We bought two slaves on the Block of Life, 
 
 The Pagan and I one day ; 
 But he killed his with a short, curved sword, 
 
 A damued, paganistic way. 
 My slave died too, but a Christian's death, 
 
 And God tells me all is well ; 
 So while white heaven's ahead for me, 
 The Pagan must writhe in hell. 
 
 " NATHANIEL FORGE. 
 "Paris, Vt., Sept. 25, 1906. 
 
 It should not be difficult to understand where Nathan de 
 rived material or satire for this poem. Neither should its 
 reception be difficult to grasp in a prudish New England 
 community. 
 
 "That boy's mind is becoming positively foul !" cried Mrs. 
 Caleb Gridley when she had found the paper that night and 
 then dropped it as though it were hot. "The very idea of 
 putting such a thing in type ! What's Mr. Hod thinking of ? 
 Moral excellence, indeed! I thank the Lord that pure- 
 minded little Bernice-Theresa is out of town and away from 
 it all. Her sweet morals are safeguarded from any such 
 youthful depravity as that Forge boy is showing." 
 
 Old Caleb secured the paper and read the verses in silence. 
 
 "Oh, I dunno," he answered after a time. Then he sat 
 staring into space. 
 
 Many husbands in Paris sat staring into space after read 
 ing Nat's poem that night. A few, however, did not get the 
 chance to stare into space. 
 
 "Cost me twenty-five dollars!" growled Artemus Har 
 rington in the Smoke Shoppe Cigar Store later that evening. 
 "My wife says it was the best thing she'd ever read and it 
 would do a heap o' men around town good to read it, too. 
 One thing led to another and we ended up in a fight. She 
 made me 'fork over,' and she sashayed home to her mother's." 
 
 Cora Whipple, Nathan's former teacher, declared it was 
 bizarre, but nevertheless Literature. She said it ought to be 
 printed in all the best magazines. Her prim old-maid sister 
 called it the height of obscenity and gave the Telegraph's 
 editor a piece of her mind over the 'phone, ringing off be 
 fore Sam had the chance to reply. The poem set the town 
 by the ears, so to speak. 
 
 "You sure can pick out which hubbies love their wives and
 
 148 THE FOG 
 
 which women ain't happily married by the way that poetry 
 sets on their stummicks!" observed Uncle Joe Fodder. 
 "B'dam whether I think the kid writ it himself or whether 
 he's got some old person coachin' him. But believe me, if 
 Sam goes on printin' the likes of that poem he's sure goin' 
 to swell his subscription list. And not because folks want 
 to see the report o' the tax commissioners, either." 
 
 It was old Doctor Dodd who caused the direct reaction 
 on Nathan, however. The poem particularly the last two 
 lines perturbed the old minister grievously. And he "took 
 it up in prayer meeting" that evening. 
 
 Johnathan had read the verses shortly after supper while 
 waiting for the drone of the weekly church bell. Nathan 
 had luckily returned downtown before the carrier boy 
 tossed a Telegraph on the Forge veranda. 
 
 The father sat stupefied for a moment, after bringing the 
 front legs of his chair to the floor with a clump. Then as 
 the "coat" fitted him perfectly, he proceeded to put it on. 
 He left the house without speaking and wandered through 
 the neighborhood, hands clasped behind his back, lips set 
 tightly. 
 
 Reaching the church, hoping to receive comfort and con 
 solation from the service in this latest parental "trial", 
 Doctor Dodd "opened up" on it. And the father's blood 
 ran icy cold. 
 
 The minister's subject was "Train up a child in the way 
 he shall go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." 
 Every person in that vestry knew to whom and what the 
 pastor was referring. Every face was turned toward the 
 ashen mask that was Johnathan's countenance before that 
 discourse ended. 
 
 The father stared stonily ahead until the minister had 
 finished. Then he arose and "testified." It was deathly 
 quiet in the prayer-meeting room as Johnathan concluded 
 that "testimony." 
 
 Everybody present felt "so sorry" for poor Brother and 
 Sister Forge. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nathan slunk like a felon through the back streets to reach 
 his home. He knew the town was talking about his poem.
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 149 
 
 He was shy of praise and criticism hurt him. Not because 
 it was criticism but because it usually rested on some one's 
 disapproval. The last thought in his head was any back 
 fire at home from the verses. Consequently he was puzzled 
 when on reaching the Spring Street corner he saw his sister 
 arise from the steps and hurry toward him. 
 
 "Natie !" she cried. "Don't go in ! Run and hide !" 
 
 "Hide! What for?" 
 
 "Dad's whopping mad over what you had in the paper to 
 night. He's laying for you good." 
 
 "Laying for me?" 
 
 "He thinks you've slammed him somehow, for the fights 
 he has with Ma. And I guess the minister didn't like it 
 either and jawed him about it in prayer meeting. Anyway, 
 Pa came in as white as a ghost. He asked for you. When 
 Ma said you was still out, he took off his things and started 
 pulling down all the curtains. He shoved back the furni 
 ture and went and got the strap. Ma wanted to know what 
 was eating him, and he said when you came in he was going 
 to give you the darnedest dressing down you'd ever got in 
 your life." 
 
 Nathan sank down on the low cement wall which ran 
 around the Granger lawn. 
 
 "And how did Ma take it?" 
 
 "Oh, she stood up for you. Not because she'd read the 
 poetry or cared a hoot what you'd said in it. Just because 
 it was something to fight about with Pa. They were going 
 it hot and heavy when I decided to sit out on the steps and 
 warn you. I've got to go back before they miss me, so, 
 listen! You hang around outside, Natie, and if Ma talks 
 him out of it or he gets winded and goes to bed, I'll put 
 a lamp in my upstairs window and you'll know it's a sign 
 to sneak in." 
 
 Nathan remained seated on the fence. Once or twice he 
 cast glances toward his home, fearing to go in, fearing to 
 remain out later. He looked down at his shoes, worn, 
 sloppy and unshined. He felt supinely small in the ludicrous 
 suit he wore, an old one of his father's. His hands were 
 soiled. His finger nails were broken. He needed a bath, 
 in fact, it seemed as though he always needed a bath. He 
 felt grimy and seamy and prematurely old. 
 
 He had been that evening in the Seaver home.. Fred
 
 ISO THE FOG 
 
 Seaver's father ran a meat and grocery store in East Main 
 Street. Fred was experimenting with electricity and Nat 
 had gone over to inspect his apparatus. But it had not been 
 the apparatus which had most interested Nathan. It had 
 been the Seaver home. 
 
 The Seaver home had hardwood floors and all the rooms 
 were lighted by electric chandeliers. The dining room had 
 a cozy "dome" above the table, and silver sparkled amid cut 
 glass on the buffet. The Seaver parlor wasn't "saved for 
 company." It was open all the time and in one corner an 
 open fire burned cheerily. The Seavers called it the "living 
 room." There were bookshelves between the windows and 
 a soft-shaded reading lamp on the center table. 
 
 In the Forge home, Johnathan "roared like a bull" if more 
 than one gas light was burned at once. Out from the west 
 wall of the Forge kitchen stuck a twelve-inch gas bracket 
 with a single Welsbach burner. It was a white, cheerless 
 light which burned unevenly. Beneath it each night Johna 
 than tipped back his plain wooden chair and read his Tele 
 graph. If the rest of the family cared to read, they "strained 
 their eyes" or waited until the father had finished. Nathan 
 could not help comparing the two lamps, the difference in 
 homes which they represented. 
 
 The Seaver home was inviting, restful. In the Forge 
 home, clothes were always piled on chairs or tables. More 
 ironed clothes were usually strung on a wire from corner 
 to corner, making the kitchen atmosphere stuffy. The sink 
 was always filled with greasy dishes. The faucet dripped. 
 There were crumbs on the red tablecloth and sugar grains 
 on the worn linoleum. 
 
 Nathan had compared the two and wished, poor boy, that 
 he might know such a home as Fred Seaver's. He thought 
 of it now as he sat out in the chill September night, afraid 
 to enter a house where a father waited to flog him. 
 
 Of one thing the boy was grimly resolved. At exactly 
 the moment the law allowed him his freedom, he would find 
 a girl somewhere and have a home that should exhibit some 
 claim toward beauty, cheerfulness and peace. Who the girl 
 might be was immaterial. To flee the horrible, fear-driven, 
 Scripture-surfeited place he had known from earliest boy 
 hood was becoming the greatest objective in existence. But 
 meanwhile, what should he do ?
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 151 
 
 The question answered itself. The front door of his 
 father's house opened and Johnathan himself emerged. He 
 wore hat and coat. Down the steps he started and in the 
 opposite direction from where Nathan waited. Before the 
 boy could solve the mystery, his sister appeared. She ran 
 frantically for the place where she had left her brother. 
 
 "Natie!" she cried hysterically. "Natie come quick! 
 Something's happened to Ma!" 
 
 Across the street Nathan leaped and into the dark hall 
 way. He bumped into a door, stumbled over a chair, reached 
 the kitchen. 
 
 His mother was seated on the floor, hammering her 
 gnarled fists crazily upon the linoleum. One of her legs 
 stuck out, uncovered, from beneath her body. Her spectacles 
 were off, her face was swollen as it usually was swollen 
 
 with weeping. 
 
 "She's having one of her spells!" cried the awe-struck 
 sister. "You'll have to put her to bed or do something !" 
 The girl spoke as though they were gazing down on a strange 
 biological exhibit. 
 
 Mrs. Forge was only letting her nerves go in an enjoyable 
 fit of hysterics. But it was an epochal fit of hysterics. She 
 pounded the floor and she kicked her heels. She tore down 
 her hair and ripped her washed-out blue wrapper from her 
 thin shoulders, leaving soiled underclothes and rusty, broken 
 corsets exposed. 
 
 "I'll kill myself!" she shrieked. "I will! I will! I'll 
 not stand it another day ! I'll kill myself !" She emphasized 
 each "will" with a thump of her tightly clenched fist upon 
 the floor. 
 
 "Doctor Johnson told Pa once the quickest way to bring 
 folks out of a 'spell' was to throw cold water on 'em !" sug 
 gested Edith. "You better get the bucket, Nat. Give her 
 a sloppin' a good one!" 
 
 But Nat could not "give her a sloppin'." He was sud 
 denly overwhelmed with pity. 
 
 "Come, mother," he said. "Let me help you to bed !" 
 
 "I don't want to go to bed! I want to kill myself! And 
 I will! I will! I will! Get me the butcher knife! Edith! 
 
 Nathan ! Get the butcher knife ! Watch your mother 
 kill herself." 
 
 Edith started to cry. Nathan saw something should be
 
 152 THE FOG 
 
 done and he did it. He stooped and picked up his mother. 
 Though she fought and clawed his face, he managed it. 
 Bidding Edith go ahead with the lamp, he carried his strug 
 gling mother up the stairs and into her chamber. There 
 he laid her on the bed. 
 
 "Undress her, Edie," he ordered. "Get her into bed be 
 fore Pa comes back." 
 
 "I dassent, Nat. I'm afraid." 
 
 Nathan locked his mother into the bedroom, first making 
 certain there was nothing about the chamber with which she 
 could "do anything rash." Then he went back down the 
 stairs. 
 
 He was inclined to agree with an oft-expressed sentiment 
 of his father's. It was a "hell of a home." 
 
 "Where you going, Natie?" cried Edith. "Don't leave 
 me alone with her. I'm afraid, I say." 
 
 "She can't get oat, unless she jumps through a window, 
 and I don't aim to be here when Pa comes back." 
 
 "Where you going?" 
 
 "I dunno. Just out." 
 
 Nathan started for the hallway. But he got no farther. 
 He met his father coming in. 
 
 Johnathan made an arresting gesture. 
 
 "Young man," he announced hoarsely, "I want to see 
 you." 
 
 The boy was startled by the strange quality of Johnathan's 
 voice. The father's face was white and drawn. There were 
 puffy circles beneath his eyes and almost no color in his 
 lips. 
 
 "Whatter you want?" demanded the boy sullenly. 
 
 "It's time that you and I had a talk, young fellow. You're 
 approaching man's estate. It's time that you and I had a 
 talk." 
 
 They went into the parlor and sat down in the dark. 
 Nathan was first puzzled, then alarmed. As the time passed 
 and his father sat silent, an ominous silhouette opposite in 
 the dark, that alarm increased to panic. Finally Johnathan 
 cleared his throat. 
 
 "I just met Caleb Gridley up the street a pace," he an-
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 153 
 
 notmced. "We had a talk him and me. We talked about 
 you and your poetry." 
 
 "Mr. Gridley?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Gridley! You've been coming along, Nathan 
 iel. You've been coming along so fast I've hardly noticed. 
 But to-night you've had a thing printed in the paper that's 
 brought me to my senses. You're getting too big to thrash. 
 So I've concluded to talk with you, I say. It's time we got 
 this poetry business straight. I'm responsible to God for 
 your soul and this poetry business brings home how much. 
 How old are you, Nathan?" 
 
 "Seventeen," the boy answered grimly. 
 
 "Yes, you're seventeen. And at the wild, foolish age of 
 seventeen you're starting out to ruin your life precisely as 
 I started out to ruin mine. And did! Only I started at 
 twenty-one instead of bally seventeen." 
 
 "Ruining my life? How am I ruining my life, by writing 
 poetry?" 
 
 "No ! By going contrary to your father's best judgment 
 for your welfare and future. By trying to do something 
 and be something which your father doesn't approve of. 
 At twenty-one I was in the same position toward my father 
 I admit it ! My father knew what was best for me ; he 
 was older and therefore wiser. He wanted me to be a 
 business man to set up a shop with him. But I had hazy, 
 half-baked ideas that I wanted to be a minister. So I went 
 contrary to my father's advice and his wiser judgment." 
 
 "You regretted wanting to be a minister?" 
 
 "No! I've regretted I presumed to know more than my 
 father about what I was best fitted to do. And now my 
 own boy has come along and stands exactly on the brink 
 of the same horrible precipice. I'd have thanked my father 
 if he'd broken my neck for my independence. I'm not 
 going to do that to you. But I want to show you the hideous 
 mistake you're making. Nathaniel, I want to save you from 
 frittering away your life being any such puerile, willy-nilly 
 thing as a poet !" 
 
 "But I like being a writer! I could do something big!" 
 
 "Stop! I'm doing the talking! You like to write poems, 
 yes. And some men like to drink whisky and smoke ciga 
 rettes. But this isn't a world in which we can pamper our 
 selves in the things we like to do. It's a world in which
 
 154 THE FOG 
 
 we've got to school ourselves in stiff self-discipline do the 
 things we don't like to do. Always ! The moment a boy or 
 a man goes doing something he likes to do, he's guilty of a 
 weakness of a sin ! and sin is displeasing in the sight of 
 the Heavenly Father. The Bible says so!" 
 
 "But if I can't write, what do you want I should 
 do?" 
 
 "The Bible says, 'By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou 
 eat bread,' Genesis, third chapter, nineteenth verse. That 
 means a man's chief concern in this world is work, business. 
 All other things come second to work, business. A man 
 should first of all have a trade, succeed in a good business, 
 make money. After he's done these things, then perhaps he 
 can waste a little time with foolishness like poetry. But 
 to put the poetry nonsense first, that's the cart before the 
 horse; that's to court failure, poverty, all the hardships I've 
 had to endure, wanting to be a minister before I knew my 
 own mind marrying your mother! And I've decided I 
 don't intend to see you do it. As you're not old enough 
 to make up your own mind yet, it's my duty to make it up 
 for you. But I want you to see why and how it's done. 
 Twenty years from to-night, on your bended knees, with 
 tears in your eyes, you'll kiss my hand and thank me just 
 as you're going to thank me some day for keeping you 
 from girls or setting you to work in the tannery having 
 that valuable experience in contacting with unpleasant 
 things." 
 
 "Pa!" cried the aghast boy. "You're not going to say 
 I can't write any more poetry !" 
 
 "I'm going to say you can't write any more poetry until 
 you know your own mind. What you've written in to 
 night's paper goes to show the injury an immature, undis 
 ciplined boy can do to himself and to those who love him 
 by not knowing his own mind. All over this town to-night 
 sensible people are reading your poetry. They're laughing 
 at you and pitying you. But they're damning me as your 
 father for not keeping a guiding hand on you, training your 
 thoughts and impulses into healthy, money-making channels. 
 To-night in the House of God I hung my head in shame for 
 the thing my son had done. Even a minister of the Gospel 
 rebuked me before the Elders in the Temple. And that 
 shame, your shame as well as mine, is almost greater than I
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 155 
 
 can bear. It can't be duplicated, young man. It's got to 
 stop before you do something far more sickening." 
 
 "But, Pa ! I like to write poetry ! It comes so easy " 
 
 "Who are you little, inconsequential, immature Nathan 
 iel Forge that you should consider yourself capable or tal 
 ented enough to go before the public with your silly little 
 rhymes? What do you know about life and its responsi 
 bilities and penalties merely living here in this quiet, shel 
 tered, comfortable home with your dear father and mother 
 and little sister? Hasn't it yet dawned on your brazen 
 little brain that all the great poets have been men of mature 
 intellect and venerable years Longfellow, Tennyson, Whit- 
 tier what were they but bent beneath the weight of time, 
 with gray heads and flowing beards ?" 
 
 "Bryant wrote 'Thanatopsis' at eighteen !" flashed Nathan. 
 "And it's one of the biggest poems in the English language !" 
 
 "Don't argue!" roared Johnathan, his temper rising. 
 " 'Harken to my counsel and give heed to my understanding !' 
 I'm talking for your own best interest." 
 
 "Hang it all, Pa, I don't care about business! I don't 
 take to money-making at all !" 
 
 "Then all the more reason why you should be made to 
 take to money-making correct a weakness in your charac 
 ter. Making money, doing business, is fine and manly and 
 virile. But is there anything fine and manly and virile about 
 wasting your time on silly, obscene lines of rhymes that 
 start a whole town laughing at you and pointing the fin 
 ger of scorn at your father? Answer me, sir! Answer 
 me!" 
 
 "I don't know what to answer. You cut all the solid 
 ground out from under me. I thought I'd found something 
 I could be a success in, if I did it long enough. But you 
 throw me all up in the air. I don't know what I want to 
 be, or what I want to aim for, at all !" 
 
 "That's God speaking to you, my boy telling you you're 
 not old enough nor wise enough yet to decide such matters 
 for yourself. That's why boys are given fathers 
 to decide for them. The proper and commendable conduct 
 for a boy is to be meek and docile and humble, to accept 
 the dictates and judgments of those who are wiser and older. 
 The Bible says, 'Blessed are the meek: for they shall in 
 herit the earth !' Matthew, fifth chapter, fifth verse. All
 
 156 THE FOG 
 
 great men are meek men. They efface themselves. They 
 barken to those more learned and venerable not ram about 
 the world trying to poke their half -digested opinions at 
 people, especially at seventeen. And in poetry!" 
 
 "I suppose I should have been meek when Si Plumb made 
 me the laughing-stock of the tannery crowd that day ? Let 
 him walk all over me. You said then you were glad I'd 
 showed some starch " 
 
 "Young man, we'll not make this an argument! Stand 
 ing up for your rights in a fist fight is a far different matter 
 than trying to show you are somebody in print, before you've 
 reached your majority. Besides, if you hadn't been drooling 
 around with poetry that day, you wouldn't have got yourself 
 into that fight in the first place!" 
 
 Nathan had difficulty in following his father's logic ex 
 cepting that Johnathan had decided he did not care to have 
 his boy a poet, at least at present. Tears welled in his 
 eyes. He pillowed his head wearily on his arm. 
 
 "Hang it all, Pa ! It seems as if Life's getting to be noth 
 ing but a regular fog. I feel as if I were groping my way 
 around in it not being able to see much sun bumping 
 into all sorts of things not knowing which way to go to get 
 out, or reach any special place. I'm just blundering around 
 and around and around and oh, what's the use?" 
 
 "All the more reason why you should listen to your lov 
 ing father's counsel. I've been through the mill of experi 
 ence. I want to save you from going through it, too mak 
 ing all my hideous, horrible mistakes." 
 
 "But you haven't made a success of your own life, Pa! 
 Then how can you tell me what to do, when you haven't 
 been able to do it yourself?" 
 
 "Be careful, young man ! No impudence ! I'm older than 
 you and therefore must know better." 
 
 A long, strained silence followed. Finally came Nathan's 
 voice. 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 "Yes, my son?" 
 
 "I'm not going to do it!" 
 
 "You're not going to do what?" 
 
 "Stop writing !" 
 
 Johnathan Forge could scarcely believe his ears. For a 
 quarter moment he sat rigid, hardly seeming to breathe.
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 157 
 
 "What say? What say?" he gasped weakly. 
 
 "I'm not going to promise to stop writing poetry noth 
 ing of the sort ! I've got a hunch for it, if I am blundering 
 around in a fog. But somewhere, sometime, I'll find my 
 way out. I know I'm not the kind of son you wish you'd 
 had. Edith's not the kind of daughter or mother isn't the 
 kind of wife, either. But I'm me and I'm going to keep 
 trying. Nobody's going to stop me and " 
 
 "You saucy young pup ! You saucy young pup !" 
 
 "I'm not saucy! I'm honest. I'm giving you a fair, 
 square answer " 
 
 "I'll flog you within an inch of your life!" 
 
 "Don't do it, dad! It'll only make things worse." 
 
 There was a queer ring in the boy's voice. Johnathan 
 was so totally and completely taken aback he was weak all 
 over. His own son ! in his own house ! openly defying 
 him ! declaring bluntly and boldly that he, the father, was 
 not to have perfect obedience in all things. 
 
 "My son, don't have me call down the curse of God upon 
 you! It will follow you all the days of your life." 
 
 "You don't have to call down anything, Pa. You're try 
 ing to make me give up the only thing I know how to do 
 and do well. You haven't any right to do it. I know you 
 haven't. I feel it. I can write good enough to get pub 
 lished. So I'm going on. I don't believe you know what's 
 good for me at all, or you wouldn't ask it. Instead of help 
 ing me in the fog, you're only making it worse." 
 
 "You miserable, little ' 
 
 "I'm going to be twenty-one in just four years more. 
 I'm going to boss my own life then. You can lick me now 
 if you want. But if you do for just wanting to keep on 
 with the thing I can do best and easiest and like to do 
 I've pretty near made up my mind I'm going to run away 
 where you can't find me till I'm twenty-one. And I'm never 
 coming back." 
 
 "God's curses " 
 
 "I don't believe God curses any one, Pa. He's too busy 
 running the stars and suns and heaven to care whether 
 I like poetry or you want me to be a business man." 
 
 "And you'd stand up to your father like this ?" 
 
 "When I don't think I've done any wrong, yes." 
 
 "I'll thrash you "
 
 158 THE FOG 
 
 "All right, Pa. Only to-morrow morning I won't be here. 
 You'll never do it again." 
 
 "I'll have the law on you and fetch you back!" 
 
 "The law'll never know where I am to fetch me back." 
 
 For the first time, Johnathan stood checkmate. That queer, 
 hard ring in his incorrigible son's voice told him subcon 
 sciously that he wa c , close to the end of seventeen years of 
 bullying. 
 
 Such a thing had never happened before. His wife had 
 fought with him, indeed, but it had always been a "chewing 
 match." Though he had never struck her, the fact remained 
 that he could strike her and beat her up thoroughly, if he 
 chose. He had a feeling, however, that if he went beyond 
 a certain point with Nathan, the devil had hold of his son's 
 soul just hard enough so that Johnathan might encounter 
 the distressing predicament of not being able to come off 
 victor. Nathan had whipped the Plumb fellow. The Plumb 
 fellow was larger than Johnathan. In popular parlance, 
 Johnathan was rather "up against it." 
 
 The father did a strange thing. He arose abruptly, turned 
 and walked from the room. Nathan heard him pass through 
 the hall, out the front door, across the veranda and down 
 the steps. 
 
 Why had he gone? Where was he headed? This silent, 
 abrupt, unexplained, ominous departure unnerved the lad 
 more than any commencement of fistic hostilities. 
 
 Johnathan Forge did not return that evening. All that 
 night he walked the streets, debating whether he should call 
 down God's curses on his boy. He actually believed that 
 if he did, the son's life would be blasted forever. Morning 
 came cold and gray and clammy across the eastern hills. 
 
 But in the morning the Forge household resumed the even 
 tenor of its way. Only Johnathan did not speak to his son 
 for four days and then only on matters of absolute necessity. 
 
 Nathan, however, had made a discovery. This is a world 
 in which people suffer and endure exactly what they choose 
 to suffer and not much more. When the worm turns, ninety 
 per cent, of the early birds turn also. 
 
 As a discovery, it opened many prolific possibilities.
 
 CONSIDER THE WORM 159 
 
 VI 
 
 Johnathan, on that night's walk, however, had determined 
 upon a maneuver and reached a great decision. 
 
 If he could not control his son by scoring his body with 
 a harness tug for the good of his soul, he would employ 
 tact and discretion. In order to save his son from a horrible 
 life of poetry, he would get into some business, ostensibly 
 of a manufacturing nature, which might grip his boy's in 
 terest as his own, and set up an industrial counter-irritant 
 to poetic pathology. 
 
 If Nathan hadn't written that Pagan poem and set his 
 father by the ears, Johnathan would never have gone into 
 business and taken Nathan with him. And if he had not 
 gone into business and taken Nathan with him, all the course 
 of the boy's life would have been changed. 
 
 Viewed from the perspective of the present, truly it was 
 a happy stroke, writing that Pagan poem.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 VALLEY LAMPS 
 
 Madelaine Theddon was seventeen that autumn. She was 
 one of those rare girls who seem to slip subtly into maturity 
 while contemporaries of equal age are giggling over pimply- 
 faced lovers, locking themselves away in bedrooms to indite 
 silly billet-doux, sighing over novels or clandestinely "put 
 ting up their hair." 
 
 On an afternoon in mid-September she had climbed Mt. 
 Tom with a party of schoolmates older than herself in 
 nothing but years. They had accidentally (?) encountered 
 college boys from Amherst. They lunched, flirted, drank 
 and danced in the great, airy Summit House. 
 
 Madelaine was an accomplished dancer because of her 
 litheness and exquisite grace of carriage. Yet to-day she 
 had not cared for dancing. "Old Mother Hubbard" the 
 boys often nicknamed her, and left her alone. It was in 
 creasingly difficult for Madelaine to endure the crudities and 
 vaporings of slangy, big-footed adolescence. They had left 
 her much alone to-day. 
 
 She stole down the deck-like Summit House verandas, 
 one by one, down the weather-mellowed and unpainted steps, 
 and wandered off to the lower point of ledge at the south of 
 that summit plateau. The Connecticut valley was far-flung 
 at her feet, already hazy with dew-fog and twinkling with 
 the first lamps of evening. 
 
 Hushed, peaceful, lofty, that place was, serene, like the 
 hour. The western afterglow was dying into lead. The 
 sky always finer and vaster from a mountain height 
 seemed a mammoth arch of sapphire porcelain where a low- 
 hung evening star in the clear southwest shared ephemeral 
 honors with a chaste new moon. 
 
 Madelaine stood for a time with her figure in silhouette
 
 VALLEY LAMPS 161 
 
 against the south, far out on the point of rock, raised in 
 spirit above the world. The night wind, warm and river- 
 moistened, blew up from vistaed lowlands, rippled her ac 
 cordion skirt and raised pretty havoc with her hair. Her 
 hands were thrust in the pockets of her sweater-coat, a 
 sinuous protection of old-rose silk. She drank deeply of 
 the night wind. She was thankful for the solitude. 
 
 The world was very beautiful in these first clear hours of 
 early evening. She sank down after a time on the rock, 
 gathering skirts about fragile ankles. She rested an elbow 
 on a knee, a cheek in a shapely hand. And fancy wan 
 dered. 
 
 Faint, disturbing yearnings had throbbed in the girl's body 
 of late her hunger for an Unknown Something was grad 
 ually changing assuming a different aspect. There were 
 times when she wanted to love overwhelmingly every 
 one and everything in the world. Then she hated the world 
 for its crudities and shrank from the monstrosities which 
 shocked her on every hand. 
 
 Why did people remark and keep on remarking that 
 she was "different"? Wherein was she different? 
 
 In so far as her school life developed, she played tennis, 
 gave chafing-dish parties, went canoeing and handled the 
 canoe herself, was officer and active worker in most of the 
 school societies. She was versatile without being prodigal. 
 Yet through all her activities ran that same thread of dark- 
 eyed observation, poise, self-conservation without repres 
 sion, the intuitive ability to be ever the spectator while also 
 the participant. 
 
 The other girls frankly "did not know what to make of 
 her." Yet when they were in difficulty or desired help 
 on matters they were restrained from carrying to their eld 
 ers, they sought out Madelaine Theddon as straight as a 
 homing bee. 
 
 Up and down the slope at her left, the mountain cable- 
 cars kept steep and endless shuttling. At her feet the ser 
 ried lights of Holyoke Highlands brightened. Far to the 
 south the concentration of radiance she knew to be Spring 
 field glowed clearer on the horizon. Yet none of these, nor 
 the stars, nor the fresh new moon, held the attraction of 
 those dots of brave, optimistic twinkle where isolated homes 
 were scattered upon the face of a night-shrouded valley
 
 162 THE FOG 
 
 floor. Was that it the thing that troubled her the 
 lights of other people's homes? 
 
 She did not wonder that heaven was peaceful, that God 
 could be calm and omnipotent, high above the world. The 
 spot and the panorama was an allegory. Yes, the earth was 
 beautiful very beautiful. She had always known it so. 
 She knew it now a hundredfold. The pain came from won 
 dering about her part in it, and of it, even as in her school 
 life she remained the spectator though virilely the participant. 
 
 Waltz music from the Summit House drifted down to her. 
 The world was hers, all its lights and laughter, all its fine 
 rare things, all its rewards and fairies. No, the world was 
 nothing of the sort ! She was a mendicant, a Nobody. Al 
 ways a Nobody. How could she ever forget that? So her 
 moods played upon her. This at seventeen. 
 
 For Madelaine Theddon at seventeen, on a mountain height 
 in the starlight, was as surely the Madelaine Theddon whom 
 One Man found gloriously, as the sand-crusted diamond in 
 the Kaffir's girdle is the same burst of iridescent whiteness 
 on Milady's finger at Delmonico's. 
 
 Madelaine, on the rock, wondered about the future, what 
 she should do in the world, what niche she should fill. At 
 times she felt a wild, instinctive impulse to attempt great 
 tasks, build, win, create, worship vast gods. Then her 
 own weakness, namelessness, impotency, would overwhelm 
 her. She must be attached to something substantial to do 
 great work. Some one must have emphatic need of her. 
 In these last moods she felt that building, winning, creating, 
 worshiping vast gods, was all hollow nonsense, tinsel and 
 mummery. She only wanted to complement. But what she 
 wanted to complement she could not decide, even if she could 
 reach that far in her self -analysis. She was flowering in 
 deed, but she was still seventeen. 
 
 The evening deepened. The afterglow even the leaden 
 afterglow died on the hills. The stars and moon rode 
 close. Lethe-like, exotic scents wandered through the upper 
 air, no longer earthbound, soaring onward and upward to 
 sweeten the reaches of infinity. 
 
 She was not in love, not at seventeen, despite encroach 
 ing maturity. Boys she knew, even the best of them, were 
 calloused, independent, painfully sophisticated young hoy 
 dens whose principal invocation to the opposite sex was
 
 VALLEY LAMPS 163 
 
 "Say!" And yet that restive, insatiable hunger to comple 
 ment the finest, grandest heritage of true womanhood 
 was gnawing. Gnawing pitifully. 
 
 Yet if she were not in love, love was in her, blind, wing 
 less, already beginning to look up through the latticed win 
 dows of cloistered maidenhood, observe the stars, long for 
 freedom without knowing exactly what she would do with 
 freedom if it were suddenly accorded her. Dreams came 
 to her in detached hours, vague, breeze-wafted, miracle- 
 laden. But when she tried to lay hold upon those dreams, 
 make them over into conformity with reality, the world 
 veered askew. She seemed to abrase her delicate soul in 
 the enforced juxtaposition. 
 
 II 
 
 The "crowd", regardless of proper chaperonage, had to be 
 back in Mount Hadley at nine o'clock. But the girl stayed 
 there on the ledge until the final moment of departure. 
 Alarmed companions, missing her, searched the mountain 
 top, calling her name. 
 
 The "chaperone" was a hulking maiden whose eligibility 
 consisted in the fact that "come December she was going 
 to be married." The woman arraigned Madelaine severely. 
 
 ". . . If you ever give me another scare like this, I'll have 
 you read out of school! The very idea of running off by 
 yourself and moping close to the edge of a dangerous 
 precipice in the dark ! I never had such a fright in my life !" 
 
 "I'm sorry," returned Madelaine. "The valley was very 
 beautiful. I stole off to watch the twinkling lamps." 
 
 "Oh you stole off to watch the twinkling lamps ? Rather 
 watch a few twinkling lamps than have some real fun while 
 you've got the chance. I wouldn't be like you, Madge Thed- 
 don, for all the money there is in Massachusetts. Why! 
 You simply don't know how to enjoy yourself " 
 
 "Maybe," suggested a snippish little prig who had enterea 
 the school a couple of years before, "maybe she's wondering 
 who her folks are!" 
 
 The prig's name was Gridley and she had shown a dis 
 like for Madelaine from the first afternoon. Miss Bernice 
 Gridley had small patience with the quiet smile that played
 
 164 THE FOG 
 
 about Madelaine's lips when the former sought to impress 
 upon whosoever it might concern the vast importance of 
 the Gridley money and blood. "She's an orphan," went 
 on the Gridley girl, loud enough for Madelaine to overhear. 
 As Bernice intended she should. "An awful nice feller I 
 got acquainted with at the prom last June told me so. He's 
 a cousin of hers or something. She was adopted out of an 
 orphan asylum. She's all stuck up because her foster-mother 
 happens to have money ! I'd rather be poor than a nobody !" 
 
 Madelaine's features burned scarlet. A newspaper was 
 lying on the seat of the trolley beside her. She picked up 
 the sheet and tried to read, hiding her flaming face behind it. 
 
 It was the editorial page of that evening's Springfield 
 Union. In the "goofus" column the staff humorist had in 
 cluded several verses clipped from an exchange. When 
 Madelaine's sight had cleared, she read the words. Then 
 she forgot the ill-bred Gridley girl. The subject and senti 
 ment was mesmeric and the catty environment faded. 
 
 "GIRL-WITHOUT-A-NAME 
 (From The Paris [Vt.] Telegraph) 
 
 "You came to me in my dreams last night, 
 
 Dear Girl-Without-a-Name ; 
 A lovely phantom from out the space 
 
 That parts our lives, you came. 
 You greeted me with your eyes, dear heart, 
 
 And secrets Peri keep; 
 I moved with you, with your hand in mine, 
 
 Down the mystic glades of sleep. 
 
 "We idled long in those glades, dear heart, 
 
 The world a purple mist; 
 Beside an amethyst stream we strolled 
 
 And kept that midnight tryst. 
 The little stars drifted down the sky, 
 
 A hush ! . . . I felt a hand, 
 And once . . . just once ! . . . came a whisper soft: 
 
 'Dear heart, I understand!' 
 
 "I do not know all we said, dear heart, 
 
 The night ran swift away, 
 But all the charm of your presence sweet 
 Came back from Dream to Day.
 
 VALLEY LAMPS 165 
 
 It's not the words that you spoke, dear heart, 
 
 That made that tryst so fine, 
 But that kind night found a subtle way 
 
 To bring your hand to mine. 
 
 "The tears and toil we may know, dear heart, 
 
 Must some day reach an end; 
 Through miles and years we must search sometimes, 
 
 Ten thousand for one friend. 
 Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright, 
 
 In some vast open space, 
 You'll stand, flesh-clothed, with your arms outstretched 
 
 And triumph on your face. 
 
 "I know few words will be needed then, 
 
 Lament nor name nor plea, 
 We'll let our eyes speak the message sweet: 
 
 'Grow old along with me !' 
 A thousand years shall become as one 
 
 As heart to heart shall press, 
 And God shall start all his worlds anew 
 
 From that first white caress. 
 
 "You may be dark or you may be fair, 
 
 You may not have a name, 
 Though you've been sold for a caliph's gold 
 
 That kiss will mean the same. 
 The soul of man has a thousand lives, 
 
 Yet Love has only one, 
 That leaps alive to the glory-cry: 
 
 'Dear heart, the trek is done !' 
 
 "And so the nights with a velvet tread 
 
 Mount softly into years; 
 The gray days come and the bright days go, 
 
 With smiles and fears and tears. 
 But somewhere off o'er a clean sea's track, 
 
 Each soul's High Noon is due; 
 Be strong, dear heart, though the wait is hard ; 
 Till then . . . just dreams . . . and You ! 
 
 "NATHANIEL FORGE." 
 
 "Madelaine read the fine-typed verses again and again. An 
 inexplicable, constricted feeling tightened across her chest. 
 Somehow the lines frightened her, as though a Voice had 
 come from the void and whispered a promise close at her ear.
 
 166 THE FOG 
 
 She finally creased the edges of the column neat and true. 
 She tore away the ragged portions and folded the poem in 
 her purse. 
 
 Who was Nathaniel Forge? Why should he write such 
 a poem? She wondered. She saved the poem.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MORE ROMANCING 
 
 Nathan was in love again! 
 
 The winter of 1906-1907 contributed two incidents of 
 far-reaching importance to this account of hectic romance. 
 
 Johnathan Forge bought the local box shop. 
 
 Miss Carol Gardner came to Paris from Ohio pro 
 nounced "A-higher" and when the boy met her, "to his 
 eye there was but one beloved face on earth and that was 
 shining on him." 
 
 It developed that for a considerable time, unsuspected by 
 his family, Johnathan had been "looking around for some 
 good business", professedly of a manufacturing nature 
 where the labor of others might accrue to his benefit in more 
 sizable portions than the cobbling business allowed. Henry 
 Campbell died suddenly in November. The executors of 
 fered his property for sale. The first inkling Paris re 
 ceived that the town cobbler had aspirations toward capital 
 ism came via the Telegraph one February evening. A deal 
 had gone through that day with Johnathan Forge for the 
 box shop. The cobbler was assuming management at once. 
 
 Mrs. Anna Forge heard the news via the Telegraph also, 
 by the way. 
 
 The Campbell Press-Board Company, as the firm had 
 been listed in town directory and telephone book, made 
 pasteboard boxes. In them were packed the products of 
 the larger industries of Paris, the Thorne Knitting Mills, 
 the Stevens Hard-Rubber Process Works. The business 
 was considered profitable, in a modest way, if expenses 
 were held to a minimum. Johnathan felt himself especially 
 born to that business. If there was one thing he em 
 phatically knew how to do, in business or family, it was 
 holding expenses to a minimum. To his wife's stupefac-
 
 168 THE FOG 
 
 tion, he drew eighteen hundred dollars from the Paris 
 Savings Bank and gave notes aggregating thirty-two hun 
 dred in addition. Thus Johnathan became a "manufac 
 turer." 
 
 The "box shop" was located on the northern edge of 
 town where Paris "ran out" in cheap pastureland and cat 
 tail bog. It was a big ark of a building, constructed on 
 filled-in-land, two stories in height and painted a dirty 
 yellow. In the southeast corner, facing the roadway, was 
 a fourteen-foot room known as the "office." In this office 
 Johnathan established himself, and the son, the moon and 
 the stars were summoned to rise and set at his bid 
 ding. 
 
 Only the son obeyed, however. The moon and the stars 
 were not at all affected by Johnathan's new industrial im 
 portance. Nathan was called upon to relinquish his position 
 in Caleb Gridley's office on the simple hypothesis that "his 
 father needed him." The idea was that office help cost 
 money. "Until the business was firmly established" (it 
 had been running twelve years), the boy should be willing 
 to work for his father, gratis. Besides, there was the need 
 for saving him from poetry. 
 
 Nathan demurred against leaving old Caleb. If he had 
 tutored the tanner in the gentle art of poetic composition, 
 the tanner had reciprocated by schooling Nathan in the 
 fundamentals and finesse of business until to-day, down 
 here in 1921, that same education is responsible for my 
 friend holding down a position that nets him an annual 
 salary of but that is anticipating. Old Caleb laid the 
 foundation for all that Nathan knows about business. If 
 Nathan has gone far and is going further, what old Caleb 
 taught him is responsible, augmented by his own artist's 
 imagination and inherent creative ability. Yet Nathan's 
 demurring availed him nothing. Nat bade old Caleb a 
 tearful good-by one February night and the tannery was a 
 closed chapter in his life. 
 
 After six months without Nathan, old Caleb sold the 
 tannery. 
 
 There were several antiquated job presses in the Campbell 
 plant, fitted with cutting dies, on which orders for folding 
 cartons were executed. But the bulk of the work was 
 done by girls on a piece-work basis. There were about
 
 MORE ROMANCING 169 
 
 twenty of these girls when Johnathan assumed the man 
 agement. Their average weekly wage was seven dollars. 
 Johnathan looked over this "organization", was at once 
 persuaded that Henry Campbell had not "held expenses 
 down to a minimum", conceived that if all hands did twice 
 as much work, half the employees could be dispensed with, 
 and the labor item thereby reduced jtist fifty per cent. So 
 f.he second morning the "organization" consisted of one 
 lone male to work the paper-cutter and ten girls to paste 
 the boxes. Nothing was said about giving these eleven 
 more money. They should count themselves lucky to retain 
 jobs at any wage. "Twice as much output or discharge" 
 was the cheery motto that Johnathan hung in his "factory" 
 and he pursued it consistently. 
 
 He pursued it so consistently, in fact, that the second 
 week no one was working but Johnathan, Anna Forge, 
 Nathan, Edith and an undersized boy with adenoids. The 
 pay roll had been cut from $163.00 a week to $4.50. The 
 boy got the $4.50. He had to be paid money or his folks 
 wouldn't let him work. 
 
 Johnathan was so intent on holding expenses to a mini 
 mum that the art and necessity of likewise holding his help 
 was entirely overlooked. The box-shop girls may have 
 been only seven-dollar caliber but they had their ideas 
 about slavery, as practiced by Johnathan on his immediate 
 family. They walked out to a girl and the man with them. 
 Then local firms began wrathfully demanding boxes. 
 
 Johnathan knew how to hold down expenses. There was 
 not a doubt about it. Pay out no money, whether necessary 
 or not. Bank the balance and work the family. 
 
 Thus matters drifted along into the second week and 
 the third, Anna Forge trying to do the work of four 
 former girls and Edith doing about one-half of one girl. 
 Nathan ran the paper-cutter. Johnathan spent most of his 
 time down in the office, punching out "important corre 
 spondence" on an old blind typewriter with his two fore 
 fingers. The adenoidal boy spent his time out on the back 
 platform clandestinely smoking cigarettes. 
 
 By the end of the first month so many orders had been 
 cancelled and the remainder were in such a hopeless state 
 of chaos that Nathan, with old Caleb's training and the 
 imagination of the artist, saw that something had to be
 
 i;o THE FOG 
 
 done and done quickly. As usual, there was no one to do 
 it but himself. 
 
 "Pa," he observed one noontime, "I've got a proposition 
 to make that will save us money." 
 
 "Go back to your work!" snapped Johnathan. "If we 
 don't get a gross of Number Sevens to the knitting mill by 
 five o'clock we lose their business." 
 
 "That's exactly why I want to make you a proposition. 
 I'd like you to turn over that room upstairs to me absolutely 
 and let me organize and systematize the production end 
 as I please " 
 
 "Turn over the business to you? Have you gone crazy 
 or do you think I have?" 
 
 " for a specified price per box over the cost of mate 
 rials and profit. Let me spend the money as I choose so 
 long as I turn you out the boxes and have them on schedule 
 time on the shipping platform?" 
 
 "Do you mean to infer you know more about running a 
 business than your father, who's wiser and older and there 
 fore must " 
 
 "I'm not arguing that I want to run the business! I 
 only want to run the production. We've got an order for 
 fifty thousand Number Tens for the process works. We're 
 far behind, already. You're getting eight cents a piece for 
 those boxes. The stock costs three and you're figuring half 
 a cent profit. That leaves four and a half cents to cover 
 labor and all factory expense. Will you give me three and 
 a half cents for producing every box, regardless of how 
 I spend the money ? You stay down here and run the office 
 and have no care but supplying the materials, getting the 
 orders and collecting the money?" 
 
 "No !" snapped Johnathan, "I will not ! Get back to your 
 work." 
 
 One week later the order for the process works was 
 cancelled. The -process works announced they were putting 
 in their own box department. They had no time to waste 
 while Johnathan ran a factory as he ran his family. More 
 over, the knitting mills also delivered an ultimatum. John 
 athan called his son to his "office." 
 
 "Nathaniel," he declared, in a large voice, "I've been 
 thinking over what you suggested Friday. I don't know 
 but I'm disposed to give it a trial. For one week, say to
 
 MORE ROMANCING 171 
 
 see if you could assume such a big responsibility. I doubt 
 it. But I've got so much work and worry here in the office, 
 with this correspondence and all " 
 
 "A week! I couldn't work out anything permanently 
 effective inside of three months." 
 
 "Three months? What would take three months?" 
 
 "Getting order out of that awful chaos upstairs. There's 
 got to be a careful organization planned, routings for the 
 work laid out and systems installed." 
 
 Johnathan shied at that word "organization." It meant 
 spending money, giving hard cash to indolent employees who 
 "soldiered" the moment his back was turned. But in the 
 end he capitulated. He had to capitulate. 
 
 Nathan, with the high heart of youth eternal, set to 
 work. The boy traded with his father until he made him 
 promise on his honor not to cut the piece rate if Nathan 
 cut the costs. On that promise the artist-imagination of 
 the lad built soundly and swiftly. 
 
 Johnathan was horrified at the number of girls and 
 women Nathan set to work at the long tables. That they 
 were being paid piece rates and if they failed to deliver, 
 got no money, cut small figure. The great, stark, horrible 
 fact remained that some of them were earning eight, ten, 
 twelve, fourteen dollars a week. Money was running out 
 like water, or blood from a wound in Johnathan's side. So 
 many boxes were being produced that it was taxing him 
 to the utmost to get materials up to the benches. Not only 
 were all booked orders being filled on schedule, but others 
 had to be secured to keep the little plant running. All this 
 was never once weighed against the money going out for 
 pay rolls. One cow-like little girl, Milly Richards, had 
 perfected a certain operation so deftly that she was drawing 
 fifteen to eighteen dollars a week, and it could not con 
 tinue ! 
 
 What mattered it if Nathan had used his imagination 
 and inherent creative ability to cut corners and manage 
 efficiently until the cost per box had dropped to less than 
 a cent and a half ? That Richards girl was drawing eighteen 
 perfectly good dollars every Saturday noon. And it could 
 not continue! 
 
 Johnathan awoke in the night and agonized over it. 
 
 Finally, while checking up the pay roll one week* the
 
 i;2 THE FOG 
 
 father threw down his pencil and banged an angry fist 
 on the desk. 
 
 "I'll not pay that Richards girl eighteen dollars a week! 
 I'll not do it! This nonsense stops right here and now!" 
 
 "She's earned it!" 
 
 "Before she came here she worked in the process works 
 and was content with eight dollars. But you get her down 
 here and the first thing I know, she's run eight dollars up 
 to eighteen. Eighteen dollars! For a woman! I'll not 
 pay it. You can go and tell her so." 
 
 "You mean you'll cut the rate?" 
 
 "I mean I won't pay any female eighteen dollars for six 
 days' work! That's what I mean and it stands!" 
 
 "You made a bargain with me for three and a half cents 
 a box. I get the cost down to a cent and a half and you 
 want to break your promise." 
 
 "I'll not pay any girl eighteen dollars for six days' work !" 
 This outrageous thing had become an obsession with John- 
 athan. "Why, you obstreperous young dolt, you've gone 
 and gathered an organization here that's making so much 
 stuff I can't get materials or orders to keep it going! And 
 you want to pay one girl eighteen dollars a week !" 
 
 "I should think the proper thing would be to hustle out 
 and put in your valuable time getting more orders not 
 waste it worrying over the high wages one clever girl has 
 managed to make by applying herself to her job." 
 
 "Don't give me any lip, young man! I know how much 
 business I want to do. And you've built an organization 
 to do too much ! Another phase of your youthful indis 
 cretion, the same that made you write that obscene poem 
 about slaves before you knew your own mind and I stopped 
 it. If I gave you a free rein here, you'd wreck the place!" 
 
 "If you gave me a free rein here I'd build a sales force 
 that would find firms who would consume our boxes," the 
 lad answered grimly. 
 
 "And where would the money come from to swing all 
 that business?" 
 
 "I'd go to the bank and borrow it!" 
 
 "Huh ! I suppose you think banks are just lying awake 
 nights hoping I'll come and ask to relieve them of their 
 surplus? Maybe you'd enjoy knowing that I've been to 
 the banks here twice. Each time I've been refused, but
 
 MORE ROMANCING 173 
 
 you'd still keep paying eighteen dollars to eight-dollar girls." 
 
 Nathan felt that he knew why Judge Farmer, president 
 of the People's Bank, might have refused Johnathan money. 
 But he said nothing. 
 
 "Well," snapped Johnathan. "Answer me!" 
 
 "If the bank wouldn't loan me money, then I'd get out 
 and incorporate this business and put out some seven per 
 cent, stock. I've got twenty-five girls and four men up 
 stairs. A certain percentage of work must be turned off 
 to carry this overhead, rent, taxes, depreciation, insurance. 
 It isn't how little we can do or how much we can do. It's 
 how much we're obliged to do, to operate at a profit. And 
 I've found that figure exactly. Not a man or girl can be 
 turned off without crippling our output and losing us 
 money by running up our overhead per unit of production. 
 What's more, if you cut the piece rate, the girls are going 
 to get discouraged and quit, or if they don't quit, do just 
 enough to hold their jobs. What's the answer? It's some 
 body's business around here to find orders and I'd say it 
 was up to you. I've done my part. Now you do yours." 
 
 Johnathan arose, his face pale. 
 
 "We'll go into that some other time, you saucy young 
 pup," he snapped. "Just now I've got to get to the bank. 
 But I'm marking down the Richards girl to ten dollars. 
 That's all I'll give her. Not a cent more. Not a cent less ! 
 Ten dollars!" 
 
 "But, Pa!" cried the son aghast. "You're not going to 
 cut her this week on the work she's done already ?" 
 
 "Four times I've told you I'll pay no female eighteen dol 
 lars a week. I could get a man a man as old as me to 
 work for eighteen dollars !" 
 
 "What's the use of a man what ice would a man cut 
 anyhow if a girl can do the work as well and quicker ?" 
 
 "Don't sass me and don't argue ! This is my business and 
 you're my son ! I propose to run both in any way I please." 
 
 And Johnathan slammed out the door, fully persuaded 
 that no man's earthly trial is greater than headstrong off 
 spring. 
 
 The pay envelopes were made out that afternoon, John 
 athan getting great enjoyment from writing the names on 
 each in a very precise hand and admiring his penmanship 
 with great self-pride. When they were filled, he took them
 
 174 THE FOG 
 
 upstairs personally. "Paying off" was something he always 
 reserved for himself. It gave dignity to the owner of a 
 business. The help thereby associated him with money. 
 Finally the Richards girl's envelope remained. 
 
 "You give her this, and explain why it's short," the father 
 ordered, tossing it across to the boy when he returned to the 
 office. Such a thing was good discipline for obstreperous 
 youth. 
 
 Nathan removed his overalls and went upstairs. He 
 had eight dollars clandestinely removed from the petty 
 cash. 
 
 "There's a mistake in your envelope, Milly," he said. "It 
 only holds ten dollars. So here's the other eight to make it 
 right. And Milly?" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Monday morning I'm not coming back. If you know of 
 a better job, you'd better take it." 
 
 "Where you goin', Nathan ?" 
 
 "Back to the tannery, to keep the books for Mr. Gridley." 
 
 The girl's face fell. She was pretty in a dumpish, com 
 mon sort of way. She flushed slightly and turned toward 
 the window looking down on the acres of rushes. 
 
 "I dunno as I care to keep my job here if you're going, 
 Nathan," she confessed. 
 
 Then she fled down the stairs, leaving the boy stupefied. 
 
 ii 
 
 It was Saturday night and Nathan went up to the Gridley 
 front door and rang the bell. The Duchess answered. The 
 boy asked for her husband. 
 
 Old Caleb had been the only real father Nathan had ever 
 known. Old Caleb had been the first to notice him, a poor 
 young slave in an abattoir, the first to encourage him, to treat 
 him kindly, to give credence and deference to the boy's opin 
 ions, efforts and dreams. It had been old Caleb who had 
 kept his spark of self-confidence alive and burning when 
 time after time Johnathan tried to extinguish it. Old Caleb, 
 let it be stated now, loved Nathan like a son. As for 
 Nathan's love of old Caleb, it stood for the lad's entire faith 
 in human nature. If old Caleb had ever betrayed his con-
 
 MORE ROMANCING 175 
 
 fidence the milk of human kindness in the lad might have 
 turned to sour clabber. 
 
 "He's in his study, on the second floor," declared the 
 Duchess grandly. 
 
 Nathan knew his way upstairs ; he had been there before. 
 The Duchess returned to a visitor in the side room as Nathan 
 passed the portieres. 
 
 The boy was closeted with old Caleb half the evening. 
 
 "No, bub, I wouldn't quit your old man yet," the tanner 
 advised. "My advice to you is to mark your time. Always 
 remember that the man who can deliver the goods is the man 
 who rules! You've delivered the goods down to the box 
 shop and so you're the real ruler. All your old man needs 
 is a lesson. You stay out for a week; pretend you're sick 
 if you want, then let him try to boss the gang. He'll have 
 you back high, wide and handsome with a valuable les 
 son learned in addition. At least let's hope so." 
 
 "He tried to get some money at the bank " Nathan 
 
 began. 
 
 "Sure ! I know ! I'm head o' the discount committee. I 
 turned down his loan. A man that can't run his family no 
 better than your dad's run his can't run no business on 
 bank money, anyhow. If he gets sick and quits, or there's 
 any way for you to have full charge o' the business, come and 
 see me, bub. But your dad's exactly my idea o' nothin' to 
 brag about, and the sooner he finds it out, the better !" 
 
 Tears came to Nathan's eyes. 
 
 "I'm much obliged, Mr. Gridley," he choked. 
 
 "That's all right, bub. Come 'round some day and we'll 
 talk poetry. We was so kind of busy boomin' the leather 
 business just before your dad took you away that we almost 
 forget poetry, didn't we ? But maybe we can ring in a day 
 or two yet. Writin' any more yourself ?" 
 
 "I've been so interested in getting the shop running 
 smoothly I haven't had time." 
 
 "Pshaw, now! Don't you go lettin' business get ye too 
 hard ! You're a poet, young feller, and you got a talent that 
 demands development." 
 
 "I wish I could make dad see it." 
 
 "He's goin' to see it one o' these days. But I'm all-fired 
 'fraid it's goin' to be too late !" 
 
 Nathan reluctantly withdrew and started downstairs.
 
 176 THE FOG 
 
 Caleb came after him in slippered feet, vest unbuttoned. 
 This sort of thing always horrified his Duchess. If she 
 could have had her way, the tanner would have spent his 
 time at home in a dinner jacket. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs a young woman was being helped 
 into her cloak. It was a bright red cloak, trimmed with 
 gray lambskin. She had been the caller in the side room 
 when Nathan went up. 
 
 "Know this girl, maybe?' asked Caleb of Nathan. 
 
 The boy colored. 
 
 "I've not had that pleasure," he answered. He had heard 
 the minister's wife so rise to a similar situation and consid 
 ered it neat. 
 
 "Introduce 'em, Clem," suggested Caleb. His wife's name 
 was Clementina but Clem was plenty good enough for 
 Caleb. She was far from being a Duchess to her hus 
 band. 
 
 The woman withered her husband with a glance of loath 
 ing, then forced a wooden smile. 
 
 "This is Mr. Nathan Forge," she condescended. "Mr. 
 Forge, Miss Carol Gardner." 
 
 "Hello !" said Miss Carol Gardner. And she giggled. 
 
 Nathan bowed stiffly. He raised his hand, lowered it, 
 raised it again, thrust it behind him. 
 
 "Mr. Forge has been engaged with my husband in the 
 leather business," the Duchess explained largely. Then to 
 Nathan, "Miss Gardner has recently come from Ohio to 
 visit her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Cuttne.' " 
 
 Nathan bowed stiffly again. It was characteristic of him, 
 a habit he had acquired the last few years, to turn his muti 
 lated ear away from those with whom he might be con 
 versing. But his eyes had met the roguish, laughing face 
 of the Gardner girl. And he had seen enough. She was 
 very easy to gaze upon. 
 
 "If you're leavin'," suggested Caleb to Miss Gardner, 
 "Nat better hoof it along with you to see you don't up-end 
 on the ice. The walk is slippery to-night." 
 
 The Duchess assumed a "this-is-what-I-have-to-endure" 
 expression while Nathan tried to find his tongue. Referring 
 to this girl's risk of accident between the Forge residence 
 and the business section as an up-ending was embarrassing 
 to the ninth degree.
 
 MORE ROMANCING 177 
 
 "If I'm going your way, I'd be glad to see you safe home," 
 the boy volunteered. 
 
 "Oh, that's so sweet of you!" responded the girl. She 
 found her gray lambskin muff, buried the lower part of her 
 oval face in it, looked slantwise at Nathan and laughed that 
 mischievous giggle again. 
 
 They went down the steps to the sidewalk. It was a 
 stinging cold night. The sky was clear, deep sapphire. The 
 full moon resembled a Japanese print, shining through bare, 
 gaunt limbs of winter-creaking trees. 
 
 "I better take your arm, Miss Gardner," the boy sug 
 gested. "You might fall down at that." 
 
 "Grab hold !" the girl assented. 
 
 Nathan slid his hand in the warm aperture between her 
 right sleeve and her soft body. His fingers closed about that 
 plump arm delicately. The girl in red and gray, a head 
 shorter than himself, pressed against him with the usual 
 helplessness of the man-escorted female. 
 
 And at contact with her body thus in that instant he 
 knew he had grown a man. 
 
 Miss Gardner slipped on the Pine Street walk, whether by 
 accident or design is unknown. The thing that counted was 
 that Nathan caught her in time and she did not resent it. 
 In fact, she rather enjoyed it. She laughed gleefully and 
 turned her small, snub-nosed face up to his, coyly and 
 viciously close. 
 
 "I'm awfully clumsy," she confided. She did not en 
 lighten him whether she was equally clumsy when walking 
 without an escort. 
 
 This opened conversational possibilities. Nathan averred 
 that she was nothing of the sort. So they traversed two 
 blocks, 'Miss Gardner insisting that she was clumsy and 
 Nathan making it his portion of the argument that she was 
 not. Anybody might slip on the old icy walks, as icy as they 
 were around the little old town of Paris. They had a rotten 
 old lot of selectmen no sand or ashes on the walks or any 
 thing so on toward Walnut Street. 
 
 "So you're in the leather business with Mr. Gridley," the 
 girl observed. 
 
 "No ! I was in the leather business with Mr. Gridley. 
 Now I'm in the paper-box business with my father." 
 
 Miss Gardner observed that it must be an awful interest-
 
 i;8 THE FOG 
 
 ing business. Nathan observed, Oh, he didn't know ; some 
 times it was and then again, sometimes it wasn't. 
 
 "And what position in the business do you occupy?" the 
 girl asked next. 
 
 "Oh, I run the place," Nathan told her with a careless ges 
 ture, as though running places was the most inconsequential 
 and offhand job in the world; undoubtedly he could run 
 places before breakfast or between meals or in his sleep. 
 So Miss Gardner was left to infer. 
 
 "Very interesting !" the girl commented. "And how many 
 employees have you in your factory?" 
 
 Nathan was suddenly ashamed of his factory, the size 
 of it. Oh, to be able to describe it in hundreds of thousands 
 or tens of thousands ! 
 
 "Twenty-nine," he said truthfully, with difficulty. 
 
 "I'm sure we're going to be awful good friends," re 
 marked Miss Gardner quickly. "I'm so lonesome here, you 
 know, a new place and all." Being a stranger in a new 
 place was hard, hard. 
 
 Nathan assured her he knew how she felt exactly. He 
 would do his utmost to see that she was not lonely. He 
 promised it. It really was his duty, as a resident and a 
 matter of civic responsibility. Strangers must be graciously 
 acclimated and made to feel at home. That was only ordi 
 nary hospitality. 
 
 "I've been living out in Ohio with my father," said Miss 
 Gardner. "But he married again and my stepmother was 
 cruel to me. So I came east to stay with grandpa and 
 grandma and enjoy life for a little time before I have to go 
 back to it all again." This sort of thing was also hard, 
 hard. 
 
 Naturally, likewise as a resident and a taxpayer, Nathan 
 was duly sympathetic. How could any one male or female 
 be "cruel" to such a delicious little woman in red and 
 gray? He tried to frame phrases appropriate to the senti 
 ment but decided the time was not yet auspicious to give 
 them utterance. 
 
 "You must come in," declared the Gardner girl when they 
 reached old Archie Cuttner's house. "I'll simply not take 
 'No !' I'm so deeply grateful to you for seeing me home so 
 safely. Why ! I might have fallen and broken a limb !" 
 
 By her tone she made Nathan feel that he had done some-
 
 MORE ROMANCING 179 
 
 thing akin to averting a national panic, or negotiating the 
 peace of hemispheres. He went in. 
 
 Old Archibald Cuttner "had money" at least enough to 
 "let him potter 'round" after a lifetime of keeping the books 
 in the Thorne Knitting Mills. He and his wife lived in the 
 eastern half of a big double house at the far end of Walnut 
 Street. Nathan had never met the Cuttners, but he felt 
 agreeably nay, graciously disposed toward them. At 
 least they were fellow Parisians in the responsibility of en 
 tertaining the stranger within the gates and they were also 
 her relatives. He would cultivate the Cuttners. Why had it 
 never occurred to him to do so before ? Why, some day he 
 might be intimately calling Old Archibald "Grandpop!" 
 Stranger things had happened. 
 
 There was to be no cultivating of the Cuttners that night, 
 however. Both had retired, leaving the oil center lamp burn 
 ing and turned down low on the reading table. 
 
 Nathan followed the girl into the close, oil-scented sitting 
 room furnished in mid-Victorian and with Larkin soap 
 premiums. There was a horse-hair sofa, several chairs, 
 hideous with handworked "tidies", a sewing machine, a 
 what-not, a mantel holding curios from the four corners of 
 the earth and Troy, N. Y. and an upright piano of two- 
 day installation. 
 
 "Do you sing, Mr. Forge ?" asked this siren from Ohio. 
 
 Nathan countered by desiring to know if she played. And 
 when she said a little, not much, Nathan affirmed he also 
 sang a little, not much. And Miss Gardner "took his things" 
 and hung them in the adjoining bedroom and came back into 
 the sitting room, feeling of her belt in the back and primping 
 and patting her hair. Likewise she produced a pair of tiny 
 pince-nez spectacles and polished them with great care while 
 Nathan kept his mutilated ear away from her and wished 
 to high heaven he had given better attention lately to his 
 nails. 
 
 Putting on the spectacles at last, Miss Gardner poked her 
 lacy handkerchief away in her blouse and sank in an op 
 posite chair. She remarked that it was fortunate Grandpa 
 Cuttner had retired, because now they had the house all to 
 themselves and Nathan agreed it was indeed fortunate 
 Grandpa Cuttner had retired, because they had the house all 
 to themselves, although what they were going to do with the
 
 i8o THE FOG 
 
 house, now that they had it all to themselves, remained to be 
 disclosed. 
 
 Seated beside the lamp, Nathan had his first satisfactory 
 look at the girl who might possibly "be his consort and his 
 comfort down all the future years." Undoubtedly both 
 would always look back to this night and cherish it as one of 
 Life's Great Moments! And to think he was living in it 
 now that very instant ! 
 
 She was a well-built girl, rather small in stature, with soft 
 chestnut hair and large hips. She had a kissable mouth and 
 a slightly snubbed nose and pink, shell-like ears. Likewise 
 she had a "You-don't-dare" manner that was tantalizing. 
 She pulled her heavy mohair skirt down quickly over her 
 ankles as Nathan sat opposite her and thereby the boy ap 
 preciated she was very modest and chaste and altogether a 
 worthy object for the bestowal of his connubial affections. 
 He tried to imagine that she was his wife already, sitting so 
 domestically beside the lamp, and came back to earth by 
 realizing she held an open library book in her lap and had 
 launched into a dissertation on the decline of current fiction. 
 
 Nathan clandestinely smoothed his hair, shot his cuffs, got 
 his feet stored away under his chair with minimum display 
 and agreed that there were no masters like the old masters. 
 As for himself, give him Dickens. There was a certain style 
 about Dickens. Then at the psychological moment he re 
 marked contemptuously: 
 
 "I write a bit, myself!" 
 
 "You write! What?" 
 
 "Poetry!" 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" 
 
 "Why! how perfectly stunning!" It developed the Gard 
 ner girl was just wild about poetry. And had Nathan ever 
 had anything published ? 
 
 Nathan gave her a blase smile such as Kipling might be 
 stow on a high-school sophomore from Racine, Wisconsin. 
 Certainly he had been published. No one could count them 
 selves real writers or poets until they had been published. 
 Did she happen to have a file of last year's Telegraphs 
 handy ? 
 
 Unfortunately the Cuttners did not keep such a lexicon 
 of local pabulum handy about the house. The Daily Tele-
 
 MORE ROMANCING 181 
 
 graph served a more practical purpose each morning by 
 kindling the Cuttner fire. But it really didn't matter ! Any 
 body in Paris could tell her who Nathan Forge was and 
 what he had done. All she had to do was ask. 
 
 The Gardner girl was gratifyingly impressed. To think 
 she had come to know a poet and never realized it ! 
 
 Nathan drummed his ringers on the chair arm, tightened 
 his tie, took his feet from storage long enough to tap a 
 tattoo on the carpet, put them back hastily, hitched on his 
 chair, remarked it was too bad the Cuttners had gone to bed, 
 for that unfortunate retirement of course precluded any 
 chance of music. 
 
 Miss Carol Gardner immediately assured him that 
 Grandpa Cuttner loved music, even in his sleep, and she 
 would go to the public library to-morrow and read every 
 thing Nathan had ever written. In a sort of daze at thus 
 entertaining a celebrity unawares, Carol moved across and 
 twirled the piano stool no one ever saw a piano stool 
 twirled to its proper height for extemporaneous performance 
 anyhow and What could Nathan sing ? 
 
 Nathan affected a great ennui as he left his chair, and 
 they went through the sheet music and popular ballads of 
 the day with their heads rather close together. 
 
 Did he know this and did she know that? It was hard 
 finding selections with which both were familiar. But this 
 was awful pretty and maybe he could catch the words. So 
 Carol played the opening bars of "Come Take a Ride in My 
 Airship," which was just then going the rounds of the pic 
 ture shows, graphophones and street pianos. 
 
 Nathan hummed this initial experiment in melodious avia 
 tion and then declared he believed it too high for his voice. 
 He had something more negotiable ready: "Everybody 
 Works but Father." The sentiment was rather silly, of 
 course, but the tune was catchy. 
 
 Between a badly tuned piano and Nathan's cold which 
 he had not realized he possessed until that moment the 
 symposium on parental aversion to physical exertion was 
 duly delineated. By which time both conspirators in this 
 nocturnal songfest had lost much of their self-consciousness 
 and were "ready for most anything" in the way of lyric and 
 harmony. 
 
 Of course it was only natural that ballads of a more senti-
 
 182 THE FOG 
 
 mental and intimate persuasion should be acceptable by 
 both. So down in the pile, which had recently come from 
 A-higher, Nathan found more sober and touching offerings : 
 " 'Neath the Old Acorn Tree" was particularly appropriate, 
 especially the last verse : 
 
 "Out in the golden west to-night I'm dreaming, 
 
 The moon shines o'er the mountains, clear and cold; 
 I'm going East where candle-lights are gleaming, 
 
 Again to wander through the scenes of old. 
 The old mill wheel seems silent, all is lonely, 
 
 No loving form is waiting there for .ne. 
 In fancy I can hear a dear voice calling : 
 
 'Dear heart, I'm sleeping 'neath the acorn tree.' " 
 
 "How sweet and beautifully sad !" affirmed Miss Gardner. 
 "Death is always so sweet and sad, isn't it, Mr. Forge ? But 
 then, not so sad as disappointed love. Have you ever been 
 in love, Mr. Forge?" 
 
 "Yes," responded Nathan thickly. 
 
 "Oh, how romantic! And did you suffer a great disap 
 pointment ?" 
 
 "Oh, I lived through it," returned the boy with a sad 
 laugh. 
 
 "But what you really mean to say is that it left its scars 
 on your soul. True love always does that, doesn't it, Mr. 
 Forge?" 
 
 Nathan began to feel that the temperature of the room 
 was uncomfortably high. 
 
 "I guess I don't know tnuch about true love," he returned. 
 "To be frank, I've never run up against the real thing." 
 
 "I understand perfectly. You're waiting for some great 
 overwhelming passion to come into your life and sweep you 
 off your feet. There's always an overwhelming passion in 
 everybody's life, isn't there, Mr. Forge? How true! How 
 true !" 
 
 Nathan had an *mcomfortable hunch that the Gardner 
 girl was talking drivel. So he put a new piece of music 
 on the rack before her. 
 
 "Let's play *His," he suggested in lieu of a lowered win 
 dow. 
 
 They hollered through "The Good Old Summer-Time," 
 or at least Nathan did, and old man Cuttner in the next room
 
 MORE ROMANCING 183 
 
 the same who liked music even in his sleep arose on one 
 elbow in the dark and swept his arm around the floor at the 
 head of his bed in hope of locating a shoe which he could 
 hurl at the door. Not rinding any shoe, however, he slammed 
 over angrily and jerked the bedclothes over his head, mut 
 tering something about brainless young cootes who didn't 
 have gray matter enough to let honest folks get a good night's 
 rest, and who in hell had Carrie picked up so quick before 
 she'd been in town two days ? 
 
 "And have you ever been in love?" asked Nathan amus 
 edly, as he sought in the avalanche of melodious sentiment 
 for more breaches of the Cuttner nocturnal peace. 
 
 Miss Gardner played the scale with one finger. 
 
 "Oh, there's a dear-enough boy back in A-higher that 
 loves me to distraction. I suppose I'll marry him eventu 
 ally. But I can't quite decide whether I love him enough 
 yet." 
 
 The sheet-music titles fused before Nathan's gaze and his 
 stomach turned over. 
 
 "Has he asked you yet ?" was Nathan's quiet question. He 
 hummed through the tune of the sheet upon his knees "On 
 the Hills of My Old New Hampshire Home" as he asked 
 it. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" (Long sigh!) "But there's quite a story to 
 it. Some day maybe I'll tell it to you. I'd really like your 
 advice as to what it's best to do." 
 
 Nathan felt himself extremely competent to give advice 
 on what it was best for her to do. In fact, he rather knew 
 in advance what the tenor of that advice would be, regard 
 less of the detail of the predicament. Music rather lost its 
 charm after that. Carol arose and walked across to the win 
 dow. She stood looking out into the winter moonlight where 
 the shade was but half-way drawn. 
 
 "A girl now ought to marry for love alone, hadn't she ?" 
 was her question. 
 
 "Absolutely !" affirmed Nathan. 
 
 "Yes. I've always thought so! There isn't anything 
 greater in the world than love, is there ?" 
 
 "No," cried the boy grimly. "And if more people would 
 only stop to realize it, this world would be a better place. 
 Happier, anyhow !" 
 
 "It's so good to get a fresh, virile, masculine viewpoint on
 
 184 THE FOG 
 
 so important a subject. Because it affects one's life so 
 vitally, doesn't it ?" sighed Carol. 
 
 "My God !" groaned Archibald Cuttner in his bedroom. 
 Whereupon his wife curtly advised him that he was pulling 
 the bedclothes all up at the bottom. 
 
 Carol went on : 
 
 "And we can't see a problem in proper perspective when 
 it's up too close to our noses, now, can we ?" 
 
 "Usually not," agreed the boy. 
 
 "Do you know, Mr. Forge, I think we're going to be aw 
 fully good friends. We understand each other so com 
 pletely. And it's such a relief for a girl to have a firm, true 
 gentleman-friend to turn to in such a vital matter as love 
 and marriage." 
 
 "I wish you could have read some of the stuff I've writ 
 ten," observed Nathan. "You'd get my viewpoint exactly." 
 
 "It must be very wonderful, Mr. Forge. You understand 
 human nature so perfectly." 
 
 Nathan thought it discreet to preserve a dignified silence, 
 as befitted one competent to advise perplexed young women 
 on such momentous subjects as love and marriage. 
 
 "I'm hungry!" declared the girl suddenly. "You wait 
 here. I'll see what I can rustle in the pantry." 
 
 Nathan arranged the music in order and laid it away on 
 the lower shelf of the what-not. He paced the room only 
 to sink down into a rocker, hands thrust deep in his pockets. 
 
 So he had found the girl at last ! 
 
 Vaguely he remembered a Biblical verse "All things 
 work together for good to those who love God." He won 
 dered just how much he loved God. His conscience pricked 
 him a bit as he recollected his caustic comment upon the 
 Almighty in the past. Somehow the Lord was magnani 
 mously returning good for evil. Yes, he had treated God 
 rather scurvily. And in return, the Almighty had sent him 
 this great happiness! Henceforth Nathan would take his 
 Sunday-morning presence at church more seriously. 
 
 Nat decided to apply himself at the factory with redoubled 
 energy, beginning the ensuing Monday morning. What was 
 a mere quarrel with his father over one cheap girl's wages 
 beside losing the financial chance to keep his wife-to-be in the 
 style and luxury she deserved? What if the Richards girl 
 did get a raw deal? Who was the Richards girl, anyhow?
 
 MORE ROMANCING 185 
 
 Nathan felt like offering her up on the industrial altar with 
 out a qualm, in the same class with the A-higher Un 
 known. 
 
 Carol returned. She had a big fancy plate holding half a 
 layer cake and a pitcher of milk. 
 
 "It's all I could find," she apologized. "But I'm hungry 
 enough to eat a boiled owl." 
 
 Nathan affirmed he likewise was sufficiently emaciated to 
 assimilate boiled owl, but the cake would be a perfectly sat 
 isfactory substitute, seeing there was no boiled owl to be 
 had at that hour. And so he was served to a generous help 
 ing of the cake and dropped jam on his pants and crumbs on 
 the floor. Whereupon he was advised not to mind What 
 were a few crumbs on the floor? and as for the jam on his 
 pants, she would get him a damp rag and she di,d. 
 
 But when Miss Gardner affirmed that she had made the 
 cake, Nathan ate with a new relish and the fastidiousness of 
 an epicure. 
 
 So she was a cook ! She could make cake as good as the 
 sample under present mastication ! What a girl ! And what 
 a wife! Nathan wondered if he hadn't better get down on 
 his knees that night and humbly say some regular prayers. 
 
 Of course she depreciated her ability as a cake-maker. 
 This was merely a little old mess she had "thrown together." 
 Some night he must come to tea and she would show him 
 what a real meal was like. Would he come to tea ? 
 
 Oh, well, Nathan might. He applied himself rather dili 
 gently at the "office", didn't have much time for social non 
 sense. Still there were occasions when it was beneficial for 
 a man's head to forget business. Yes, possibly he might 
 squeeze out a night and come to tea. 
 
 The cake being eaten and the milk consumed so much 
 so that Old Man Cuttner ate his porridge next morning 
 milkless and the hour being late, there was nothing for 
 Nat to do but take his departure. Which he did regret 
 fully. 
 
 "I'm depending on you to help me with my problem, Mr. 
 Forge," was the last thing the girl whispered to him sol 
 emnly in the cold front hall. 
 
 "Depend upon it, I shall not fail you," were Nathan's 
 magnanimous words, closing that wonderful evening. And 
 he walked off with his head high in the air, manfully, master-
 
 186 THE FOG 
 
 fully, to skid badly on the ice by the gate and turn bottom 
 up with his hat flattened beneath him. But the Cuttner front 
 door had closed. His fiancee had not seen. 
 
 Therefore Nathan picked himself up painfully, knocked 
 the dents from his hat, limped more carefully down the rest 
 of the sidewalk and came back to the world.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 
 
 It was a rainy Sunday afternoon in March. Nathan lay 
 on his bed and tried to read. But his book was developing 
 into a love story, weak and asinine beside the greater love 
 story he felt he was living. What was she doing ; how was 
 she putting in that long, dreary, windy, Sunday afternoon? 
 
 A febrile restlessness ached in Nathan's limbs. There 
 was a hot, uncontrollable nervousness in his torso. The girl's 
 hazel eyes came between the lines of his story. Her face 
 laughed at him witchingly 'twixt simile and metaphor. Ver 
 ily the heroine of his narrative was but a painted bawd be 
 side the diminuitive figure in red and gray, always in the 
 background of Nathan's mind. 
 
 "I'll go calling on her," he avowed. "I'll be darned if I 
 won't go calling on her." 
 
 "Where are you headed for?" his father's stern voice de 
 manded as he crept softly down the front stairs. 
 
 "Out to take a walk," the son answered sullenly. "I've 
 read so long my head's muddled." 
 
 "I'll go with you," announced Johnathan. He arose from 
 the couch and started after his hat and coat. Of course this 
 was manifestly and emphatically what Nathan did not want. 
 Yet how could he explain? 
 
 Vague rumors had come to Johnathan of late about his 
 son being seen in the outlying sections walking with a girl. 
 Johnathan at once had more "load" added to his burden. 
 For ten years he had successfully "kept his boy away from 
 girls", or so he supposed. That was all very well while 
 the son was a youngster. Nathan was no longer a youngster. 
 He was eighteen and taller than his father. As his son had 
 grown bigger than himself, as well as shown an alarming 
 propensity for managing his own affairs, the time had come
 
 i88 THE FOG 
 
 for Johnathan to exercise "discretion, diplomacy and tact", 
 getting him past the "girl age." It being Sunday and Na 
 than's restlessness having culminated in a desire to walk, 
 it was only too evident that he meant to meet a girl. There 
 fore Johnathan would frustrate any such assignation by 
 becoming Nathan's companion and chaperone. This was the 
 father's idea of exercising discretion, diplomacy and tact. 
 A couple of years before he would have snapped, "You'll do 
 nothing of the sort. Go back to your room." But the boy 
 had to be given a little more leash now. He must not be op 
 posed openly. He must be frustrated. 
 
 So Nathan bit his lip in anger and exasperation, execrat 
 ing himself for not sneaking down the back stairs. He 
 suffered himself to go to walk with his father and they 
 talked about the business. Or rather Johnathan talked about 
 business. Nathan answered in monosyllables. 
 
 II 
 
 Perhaps this tendency of Johnathan's toward sudden dis 
 cretion, diplomacy and tact had been partly augmented by 
 the past month's events at the factory. 
 
 The boy had begun to show a perturbing independence. 
 He gave veiled hints daring his father to thrash him. For 
 instance, the week following the quarrel about the Richards 
 girl's pay, Nathan had absolutely refused to work, "sulked" 
 was what John Forge called it. 
 
 "If you can run that bunch upstairs better than I, that's 
 your privilege, Pa," was the way he had put it. 
 
 Johnathan had purposed to demonstrate whether he was 
 to be bullied and bulldozed by a few spoiled employees and 
 a stiff-necked, incorrigible son. He had talked dramatically 
 about the sharpness of a serpent's tooth, thrown things about 
 the office, stormed upstairs, donned a duster coat and pro 
 ceeded to "boss his own factory." 
 
 He had "bossed" it so adequately and completely that at 
 twenty minutes to three o'clock that same afternoon, the men 
 "walked out flat", and all the girls but Milly Richards had 
 been mysteriously missing one by one each time Johnathan 
 came back from office calls downstairs. 
 
 Johnathan said all right! he was glad they had gone it
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 189 
 
 saved him the trouble of firing a lot of cheap help whom 
 his boy had spoiled with too much money. He would hire 
 new and train them as he wanted them trained. Meanwhile 
 he 'phoned for Edith and his wife to come down and paste 
 boxes. Mrs. Forge came humbly enough but a dour time 
 followed with Edith. According to Johnathan she was as 
 similating altogether too much of her brother's growing in- 
 corrigibility. 
 
 During the next day John began hiring "new" help. It 
 was a discouraging business. All workmen were spoiled 
 these days, anyhow. They knew their places no longer. 
 They expected too much money. All the men who re 
 sponded wanted three to four dollars a day. No girls could 
 be procured on a piece-work basis at any price because the 
 cutting of the piece rate had quickly percolated through the 
 laboring element of the community. John "took on" old 
 Mike Taro to help unload a car of cardboard and two 
 rouged and perfumed young ladies who had never held one 
 job for two consecutive weeks anywhere in our section of 
 Vermont. They were temporarily willing to accept three 
 dollars a week apiece because they had "gentlemen friends", 
 they explained, who would help their otherwise slender 
 exchequers. But all three of these failed to show up for 
 work the second morning because Taro was dead drunk, 
 and the rouged young ladies had been mysteriously warned 
 to remain in discreet desuetude or direful calamities were 
 liable to fall upon them from unexpected quarters, chiefly 
 police. 
 
 The fourth day Johnathan sent for Joe Partridge, one of 
 Nathan's cutter-men. Joe came down late in the afternoon 
 dressed in his painful best and smoking a cheap cigar. 
 Johnathan took him into the office and "went into confer 
 ence" with him. Joe listened for a time with an exasperat 
 ing lack of servility. 
 
 "I don't understand none of them big words," Joe finally 
 confessed. "But so far as us working folks is concerned, 
 the situation is just this : Your boy Nat knows how to run 
 this business better'n you. And until he comes back, we 
 don't care about working." 
 
 This was flat and frank. Johnathan was angrily jolted. 
 
 "If that's the way you feel about it, you'll never come 
 back," he roared.
 
 190 THE FOG 
 
 "I ain't so sure about that." 
 
 "You mean you'll dictate to me how to run my own busi 
 ness ?" 
 
 "No, but I reckon we got something to say about who'll 
 fill our jobs." 
 
 "I'll hire other people to take your places !" 
 
 "Why ain't you hired 'em already ?" 
 
 "Because I wanted to be fair and square " 
 
 "Oh, hell ! You ain't been able to get nobody to take our 
 places ! And you won't be able to get nobody so long's Nat 
 stays away. We're seein' to that." 
 
 "You mean you'll intimidate any persons I may hire in 
 your places ?" 
 
 "We'll knock the blocks off any one who takes a job 
 here while we're out. Yes !" 
 
 "You get out of my office !" 
 
 "Surest thing you know !" 
 
 Johnathan held out for nine days. 
 
 "I'm too nervously constituted to handle such cheap hu 
 manity as factory help," he explained stiffly to Nathan the 
 evening of the ninth day. "I'm not giving in, understand, or 
 admitting you're anything but a bumptious, swelled-headed 
 boy. But I want you to go back upstairs and get those 
 orders off somehow! It's only because I haven't the 
 patience and time to give to the manufacturing end that I'm 
 temporarily sacrificing my principles " 
 
 "The piece rate stands, Pa ?" 
 
 "For the present, yes ! When I've had time to study into 
 it, we'll go into conference over it." 
 
 "All right if you'll promise to keep hands off, I'll try 
 to get the wheels turning once more. But, Pa !" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I'm getting kind of sick working here for next to noth 
 ing. I want to go down on the books for twenty dollars a 
 week." 
 
 "Twenty dol " 
 
 Johnathan nearly fell on his forehead. 
 
 "Twenty dollars, yeah!" 
 
 "Not a measly penny ! You've having two whole dollars 
 a week now to squander " 
 
 "I'm filling a superintendent's job here that couldn't be 
 filled by any one else short of thirty. I'll pay board at
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 191 
 
 home. But I want what I'm worth and I'm not a bit un 
 reasonable to ask it." 
 
 They compromised on twelve dollars. 
 
 The box-shop "help" trooped back exultantly. Nat knew 
 how to handle human nature. The peak of production was 
 regained in a single afternoon. 
 
 Outside, the labor differences at the Forge plant were 
 colloquially known as "the box-shop strike." But Johna- 
 than would have had an arm torn out before he would have 
 admitted any strike. His boy had simply "poisoned the 
 minds" of the help against his own father and they had 
 refused to work. 
 
 "I've got an awful problem on my hands, Doctor Dodd," 
 he told the pastor of the Methodist church the following 
 Thursday evening. "And where it's going to end, the Father 
 only knows. My son's behavior is graying my hair. Think 
 of him having no more filial loyalty than engineering a 
 walk-out of my employees and keeping them out until I give 
 him a raise in his wages of six hundred per cent!" 
 
 "God will humble him," the kindly old man solaced. 
 "The sympathy of the community is with you, Brother 
 Forge!" 
 
 ill 
 
 And now the long-dreaded, the sickening thing, had hap 
 pened. All the father's care and worry and training had 
 gone for naught. Nathan had taken up with a girl ! 
 
 Johnathan refused to believe it. It was absolutely impos 
 sible, after all his father had said to him, and warned him, 
 and preached to him, and threatened. The boy simply 
 couldn't be such a deceiver, such a double-dealer, such an 
 ingrate such a sneak! 
 
 And yet rumors persisted. People had actually seen 
 Nathan with the girl ; swore they had seen him ! 
 
 True, boy and girl had been doing nothing exceptionally 
 amiss, except strolling along unfrequented by-paths looking 
 rather sheepish and irresponsible, and acting mutually in 
 fatuated. Still, Nathan was deliberately disobeying his 
 father ; he was "carrying on" behind his father's back. Sup 
 pose the hussy she must be a hussy intrigued the boy 
 into premature matrimony ! God in heaven ! Suppose he
 
 192 THE FOG 
 
 had to marry her! Johnathan went icy at the horror of it. 
 Better the boy lay dead in his coffin. Somehow he must be 
 saved from his folly. Yet such was his precocity and inde 
 pendence that it must be done in a manner not to drive him 
 into the girl's arms or make him run away and therefore 
 cause another loss of his services at the box shop. Yes, in 
 God's name, what was the pitiable, harassed father to do? 
 He prayed much over it. He lost sleep. His face grew 
 drawn, and gray appeared in fine strands at his temples. 
 
 Then one Sunday afternoon in April Johnathan came 
 home from a few hours' work on his books to find the gas 
 lighted in the front parlor and some one playing on the 
 cottage organ. 
 
 The father purposely went around to the rear door. His 
 wife was preparing supper in the kitchen. 
 
 "Who's in the parlor?" he demanded hotly. 
 
 "Only Edith and a friend of hers and Nathan." 
 
 "A friend of Edith's a girl?" 
 
 "Yes! I didn't think there was any harm letting them 
 play on the organ." 
 
 "Who is she ttiz girl?" 
 
 "Her name's Gardner. She's visiting the Cuttners. She 
 sang in the choir last Sunday." 
 
 "Anna ! Answer me, quick ! Is it the girl Nat's been seen 
 publicly on the streets with?" 
 
 "I don't know. Perhaps so! What if it is? There's no 
 crime in Nat being seen walking the streets with a girl, that 
 I know of. Nat's got to have his girl friends some time." 
 
 "But my God, woman! Suppose she compromises the 
 innocent, unsuspecting boy ! Suppose " 
 
 "Compromises him ?" 
 
 "Suppose the boy loses his head and has to marry her! 
 I'll see him dead before I'll see him make hamburg of his 
 life as marriage made hamburg of mine!" 
 
 "You'll only make it worse by opposing him ! Do have a 
 little sense !" The wife was too calloused to appreciate the 
 insult to herself. 
 
 "I know ! That's the hard part. What can I do ? I feel 
 so helpless and weak and incompetent." 
 
 "Why go to all this fuss? Why do anything at all 
 about it? You're an awful lot of trouble to yourself at 
 times, John Forge! Let the whole thing work itself out.
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 193 
 
 If you don't attach any importance to it, neither will 
 Nathan." 
 
 "But he's such a sickly, sentimental young fool ! I can't 
 trust him ! I can't trust him, I say !" 
 
 Nevertheless, intent on seeing what manner of Circe was 
 ruining his son's life, Johnathan shed hat and coat and 
 headed grimly for the parlor. 
 
 Hands in pockets, face glowering, Johnathan stood be 
 tween the portieres, waiting for the music to cease. Nathan 
 was advised of his father's appearance by a warning dig 
 from Edith's elbow. Miss Gardner sensed something amiss, 
 stopped playing, turned around. 
 
 "This is my father," said Nathan thickly. "Pa, this is 
 Miss Gardner." 
 
 Carol arose and moved over effusively, one hand on a 
 hip, the other outstretched to Johnathan. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Forge," she gushed, "I've heard so much about 
 you and so wanted to meet you " 
 
 Johnathan did not remove his hands from his pockets. 
 He addressed himself to his daughter. 
 
 "Edith, your mother wants you ! Nathan, you and I have 
 business to discuss. Miss Gardner will excuse us." 
 
 Edith's face flamed scarlet. 
 
 "But, dad, I've asked Miss Gardner to stay to sup 
 per " 
 
 "I'm sorry ! We've got other company to supper. Miss 
 Gardner will excuse us from supper too." 
 
 At the coarse insult, the righteously angered Gardner girl 
 threw her chin in the air. 
 
 "I'm sorry I'm intruding," she said. "I'll be going." 
 
 "Carol ! I " Nathan's face was piteous with the hu 
 miliation of it. 
 
 "Nathaniel !" The father's voice was ominous. "As soon 
 as Miss Gardner's gone, come to the kitchen. I've pressing 
 business to discuss with you !" 
 
 The Gardner girl departed in high pique. The boy's face 
 wore an unhealthy look as he came into the kitchen. Edith 
 was already sobbing on her mother's sharp shoulder. John 
 athan closed the door and spoke first.
 
 THE 
 
 IV 
 
 "You dared," he cried hoarsely, "to bring her right here 
 into this house ! You dared !" 
 
 "Well," demanded the son desperately, "what do you 
 want me to do ? Sneak up some back alley with her ?" 
 
 The apparent impudence of the question was so flagrant 
 that Johnathan's temper exploded with a bang. Like light 
 ning he ripped a hand from his pocket and struck Nathan 
 in the head, an unexpected blow so fierce and hard it 
 knocked the boy sprawling over a clothes basket. 
 
 "Pa ! I " 
 
 "Shut up ! Not a word out of you ! There may be mur 
 der done in this house to-night ! You're not too big yet for 
 me to thrash, even if you can line the help up against me 
 in my own factory." 
 
 Despite his white-hot rebellion Nathan saw a facial ex 
 pression that made him fear his father. It cowed him. 
 Beside, at heart he was still much of a boy and the habit 
 of obedience was strong in him. 
 
 "Now," declared Johnathan, "you're going tc listen to 
 me. Edith! Anna! Go out! This is my affair and Na 
 than's alone !" 
 
 The terrified women withdrew. Father and son faced 
 one another beneath that ghastly white light from the burner 
 sticking out from the wall. 
 
 "You've been going with that girl unbeknown to me 
 you've been seen with her !" 
 
 Johnathan began moving back the chairs dramatically. 
 
 "All right! Suppose I have ! What of it?" 
 
 "Then you you admit it !" 
 
 "Yes. I admit it!" 
 
 "Unbeknown to me against all I've told you you've 
 gone with her and now you admit it !" 
 
 "Do you want me to say I haven't ? Do you want me to 
 lie to you ?" 
 
 "I want you to keep your mouth shut ! Don't speak un 
 less you're spoken to !" 
 
 "But you did speak to me, didn't you ?" 
 
 Johnathan walked over deadly close. 
 
 "Nathan," he said gutturally, "you're my son and mur-
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 195 
 
 der is punishable by hanging. But I swear if you give me 
 any more of your lip, I'm going to send you to the under 
 taker and I'm going to do it to-night!" 
 
 The boy backed away from his father against the wall, as 
 far as he could retreat. He did not answer. He waited. 
 
 "Six or eight years ago," went on Johnathan, when he 
 saw he had browbeaten his boy into silence, "six or eight 
 years ago I told you you were to have nothing to do with 
 girls ! Not until you were old enough to know your own 
 mind, became of age and reached years of discretion. You 
 understood me plainly enough then, didn't you? What? 
 You may answer ! What ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir!" 
 
 "And all down the years you've understood I insisted on 
 obedience, didn't you right down until to-night ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir!" 
 
 "But regardless of the fact that you knew my wishes and 
 preferences in the matter perfectly, regardless of my warn 
 ings, my whippings, my admonitions just like you did that 
 picnic day with the Gridley girl you've deliberately dis 
 obeyed me, haven't you? You may answer me that too! 
 What?" 
 
 "Yes, sir!" 
 
 "Then what's the answer ? What is it you deserve de 
 serve terribly?" 
 
 "Nothing, sir!" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "I said 'Nothing' !" 
 
 "Nothing!" 
 
 "Precisely! Nothing! You can't lay down a law that 
 runs contrary to human nature and expect obedience." 
 
 "Nathan I'm going to kill you!" 
 
 The boy never batted an eyelid. 
 
 "No, father, you're not going to kill me. And when you 
 go talking so, I've cause to believe you're not quite sane." 
 
 It was the boy's utter calm and perfect poise in a crucial 
 situation, more than the girl question now, which was mak 
 ing Johnathan a man obsessed. He wanted Nathan to 
 cringe and be afraid. Nathan was driven back against the 
 wall but he did not cringe. Neither was he afraid. For the 
 son had at last looked into his father's weak, inflamed eyes 
 and realized that he the son was the better man.
 
 196 THE FOG 
 
 Johnathan's lips moved ghastly before his voice would 
 come. 
 
 "So I'm crazy, am I? And if I choose to murder you, 
 what would you do ?" 
 
 "I won't hit you, father. But no one could criticize me 
 for defending myself when any one, even my own father, 
 announces he's going to murder me." 
 
 "You'll defend yourself? How?" 
 
 "That remains to be seen." 
 
 "God Almighty " 
 
 "It strikes me, father and this is as good a time to say 
 it as any it strikes me that there's altogether too much 
 dragging of God into our family affairs, and mouthing His 
 name over and over is little short of blasphemy. Let's leave 
 God out of this and settle it between ourselves." 
 
 On the son's face was slight contempt. Johnathan moved 
 deadly close. Forked lights were dancing in his eyes. 
 
 "I demand respect and obedience," began Johnathan in a 
 cracked, unnatural voice. 
 
 "Respect isn't something that one person can demand of 
 another, father. It's something we earn by the way we 
 conduct ourselves, day by day " 
 
 Nathan never finished his sentence. Johnathan aimed a 
 blow for his son's jaw which, landed, would have split 
 open the lad's face. But this time Nathan saw the blow 
 coming. And 
 
 The step from terrible tragedy to divine comedy is oft 
 but the space of a hair. Johnathan struck for his son's 
 jaw. But when his fist reached his son's jaw, his son's jaw 
 wasn't there. It had moved. With a boxer's nicety of 
 perception for distance, Nathan had whipped his head to the 
 left. 
 
 The father's fist went through plaster and lath halfway in 
 to the elbow. 
 
 Anna Forge heard the dull smash and Johnathan's bellow 
 of agony. She burst into the kitchen. She beheld her hus 
 band for an instant with his hand and arm caught in a 
 ragged aperture in the plaster. Off to one side Nathan 
 stood with a tired, amused smile around his mouth. 
 
 But there was no amusement in the incident for Johna 
 than. He had broken two small bones in his right hand. 
 And all further attempts at parental chastisement were ad-
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 197 
 
 journed for that night in the greater calamity of broken 
 bones. 
 
 "You go to bed!" he ordered his son hoarsely. "We'll 
 finish this in the morning." The father's face had been 
 ashen with anger. Now it was white with agony, and his 
 eyes were streaming tears. 
 
 Nathan pitied his father. But he shrugged his shoulders 
 and went from the room. The pain from the broken 
 knuckles was so great that Johnathan soon sobbed openly. 
 Still, one could hardly expect the boy to leave his face 
 around to intercept any such blow as Johnathan had pur 
 posed. 
 
 It was after ten o'clock when Nathan heard his father 
 come in from the doctor's. The boy had gone to his room 
 to throw himself, fully dressed, upon his bed. He lay star 
 ing out through opened windows at the warm spring stars. 
 Somewhere down to the south of town the frogs were piping 
 faintly. Wonderful scents of awakening shrubs and sod 
 wafted in at the window. The night was hushed, mystic. 
 He was eighteen and in love. 
 
 He waited until the snarling voices of father and mother 
 had become double-muffled by the closed door of their bed 
 room. He heard both father and mother retire. The hour 
 slipped on into deeper night and utter nerve exhaustion 
 brought sleep to his parents. Then he arose and tiptoed 
 softly across the hall. 
 
 "Edie," he whispered, "I'm going out." 
 
 Edith sat up in bed. 
 
 "Where are you going, at this time of night ?" 
 
 "Down to see Carol. I've got to square myself for the 
 raw deal she got to-night." 
 
 "How you going to get out ?" 
 
 "Over the woodshed roof. And listen ! If Pa or Ma get 
 wise, hang something white in your window, so I won't be 
 climbing into a trap. It'd be just like him to hit me a crack 
 from the dark before I could defend myself." 
 
 "I'll do it if to-morrow night you'll keep watch while I 
 sneak out 1" 
 
 "Why do you want to sneak out ?"
 
 /98 THE FOG 
 
 "To meet Tad MacHenry. He's just wild about me. 
 You oughta hear him. If Pa won't lemme have him into 
 the house or even speak to a feller during the day, why I'll 
 do it at night, that's all." 
 
 "But, Edie it's a little different for a fellow to go out 
 at night than for a girl to I " 
 
 "Huh! Think you're smart, don't you? Think you've 
 thought up a swell way to see Carrie, skinnin' out over the 
 woodshed room. Well, just for that, I'll have you know that 
 Mr. Turner, the hardware man, made a duplicate of the 
 back-door key most two months ago. I been seein' Tad 
 two or three times a week since February, already." 
 
 The flabbergasted brother managed to ask : 
 
 "Then why do you want me to let you out to-morrow 
 night " 
 
 "It's my nerves, skinnin' back into a dark house and 
 thinkin' I was walkin' into Pa who'd missed me and was up 
 waitin' for me. Besides, I got a good scare one morning 
 when I almost run into old Braithwaite, the milkman." 
 
 "We'll talk about that to-morrow, Edie. You're taking 
 pretty tall chances for a girl going out all night with a 
 fellow like Tad. He's a pretty smooth pool player and with 
 girls " 
 
 "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself and no thanks 
 to Pa and Ma, either. Anyhow, you don't need to sneak out 
 over the woodshed roof. You can use my key. But for 
 the Lord's sake, don't go sprawlin' over anything in the 
 kitchen or the jig's up." 
 
 VI 
 
 Carol and Nathan had reached that stage of intimacy 
 where a private whistle had been evolved in case Nathan 
 elected to call Carol without advising her grandpar 
 ents. 
 
 Nathan approached the Cuttner house now through silent, 
 deserted streets. An arc light on the distant corner of 
 Walnut and Pearl disclosed the length of the Cuttner side 
 piazza ghostily. Nathan dodged into the shadow of a big 
 maple before the house and cautiously gave the whistle. 
 
 Twice, three times he repeated it. No signs of life stirred 
 within. Was the girl sleeping too soundly to hear? Or was
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 199 
 
 she too incensed over the father's conduct to want any more 
 of the son? 
 
 As Nat stood waiting, wondering, hoping wistfully, with 
 a sudden thump of his heart he saw the Cuttner front door 
 give way and a figure slip through. This figure in silhouette 
 turned and remained for a moment with face close to the 
 door, latching it slowly and in perfect quiet. Then it tip 
 toed stealthily across the veranda, down the steps and Carol 
 came into his arms. She had arisen from bed, dressed 
 hastily and by no means completely, thrown up her hair 
 in a^quick knot at her neck and made the red cloak cover 
 the exigencies of a hasty toilet. She giggled mawkishly as 
 she met him. She too assayed this tryst on pique, against 
 her grandfather. Old Archibald had declared "she'd got 
 to cut out havin' fellers traipsin' into the house every night 
 and twice a day on Sundays, that Forge yelp in particular. 
 He didn't have any too good a reputation about town on 
 account of writing dirty-minded poetry." But Carol, having 
 heard Nathan's side of the story, was inclined to give the 
 lad the benefit of the doubt. Besides, it was spring and 
 "she couldn't sleep a wink, anyhow." A walk in the night 
 was very acceptable. Love laughed at locksmiths, didn't 
 it? And think how romantic it was, just like Romeo and 
 Juliet. Taking care that no neighbors saw them, they went 
 down Pearl Street hill, out along Adams Street, past the 
 Catholic Cemetery and the pumping station, into world-old, 
 moist, spring country. 
 
 It was one of those warm, sensuous nights which often 
 visit New England in early April, with the snow almost 
 gone excepting in far corners of sunless woods, with the 
 ground drying and the incense of budding leaves and flowers 
 surfeiting the shrine of Youth in the vast out-of-doors. 
 The stars hung large and mellow and close. In another 
 hour a half-made moon would find its way through the 
 ephemeral stratas of upper haze. It would stay clear and 
 fine until early morning. 
 
 It matters not where they walked; all the spring world 
 through which they moved was wrapped into a soft, sweet 
 dream. There were no distances. Distances were blurred, 
 dissolved in fantasies of mauve and purple nothingness. 
 Poor, distorted, twisted, perverted young love had mocked 
 at locksmiths, indeed. But the singing, sighing spring night
 
 200 THE FOG 
 
 threw a mantle of sweet solitude over those distortions and 
 perversions. The boy and the girl were alone, off under a 
 starlit sky in the great out-of-doors. And earth was a 
 garden spread in silver and bound around with impalpable 
 walls of Heart's Desire. 
 
 Nathan recounted what had ensued in his home following 
 Carol's departure. The girl was already acquainted with 
 the sordid injustices done the boy. 
 
 "Served him right !" she snapped pertly. "Personally I 
 think your father's a little bit 'off' !" 
 
 "Let's forget it," responded Nathan. "Let's just talk 
 about ourselves." And he breathed a happy sigh. Parents 
 and guardians were sleeping, like all the world about them. 
 The night and its hours belonged to themselves. 
 
 "Carrie," said the boy thickly, softly as they moved 
 slowly through infinite reaches of happiness, deep-toned, 
 voluptuous with the spell of springtime, "I want to tell you 
 something." 
 
 "Yes, Natie!" 
 
 The boy's arm was about her warm, yielding, corsetless 
 waist. Instinctively it tightened. 
 
 "Carrie dear ! I love you ! !" 
 
 He had never said it in plain words before. His heart 
 leaped with the admission. The hour, the vastness of their 
 freedom, acted upon his self-conscious ego as an opiate. 
 He was the eternal lover. 
 
 The girl hung her head. She pressed her arm against 
 the hand which held her tightly. Laughing nervously, she 
 returned : 
 
 "I love you too, Natie, or I wouldn't be here, would I? 
 No girl would trust herself out with a fellow so, unless she 
 loved him very much. Isn't that right?" 
 
 "You know you can trust me, dear." 
 
 "I don't know as I'm thinking very much about it, Natie. 
 There's a point where a girl doesn't care, you know, when 
 she loves a fellow very much." 
 
 They covered a quarter mile in silence. 
 
 Far out beyond the Cogswell place was an abandoned pile 
 of weather-grayed lumber. It was half hidden under bram 
 bles and wild grape. Nat and the girl reached this pile. 
 Behind it the Cogswell wood lot reared like an enchanted 
 forest, Stygian dark, peri haunted. Across the road, a
 
 VALLEYS OF AVALON 201 
 
 pasture of sumach and blueberry fell away to the lower 
 shores of a choked and stagnant pond. The hour was too 
 late for the frog chorus to pipe down in this bogland. But 
 occasionally up across the pasture came a single plaintive 
 note or the dull, lugubrious "gut-a-chunk" of a philosophic 
 bullfrog. Once very far away they heard a whippoorwill. 
 
 They sat down on this pile of lumber, its weather-spiced 
 fiber even more fragrant than the shrubs and sod around 
 them. Darkness hid scarlet faces. Nathan took the girl on 
 his lap. Their lips met. 
 
 Carol resigned herself with a happy quiver. She lay in 
 his powerful young arms like a tired child and blinked at 
 him owlishly in the weird moonlight. 
 
 "I think, Natie," she whispered, "I think I love you 
 more than I ever dreamed I could love any man even 
 back in A-higher." 
 
 Her weight began to numb the boy's limbs. Yet he could 
 not disturb her ; she was a wonderful burden. 
 
 Hairpins bothered where her head rested against his 
 shoulder. With her left hand she pulled them out. She 
 shook her riotous chestnut tresses free and they fell about 
 her oval face like the bacchanal crown of a Sybarite. The 
 lad bent his head and buried his lips in them. 
 
 She was his his ! Such a night would never come again 
 could never come again because this was the first. No 
 thrust-and-parry, drooling calf-talk ; no bids for sex-interest 
 here. 
 
 Youth, nature and night were stripped to their framework. 
 For this were the worlds made and the constellations hung 
 infinitely. For such was a soul given a maid and a man. 
 For this had a cricket sung beneath these old gray boards 
 for a hundred thousand years. 
 
 Again the boy's lips found the girl's. Her left arm crept 
 up his right shoulder and around his neck. Their lips clung 
 together. 
 
 "Oh, Natie !" she whispered. She had no strength. 
 
 "Let's stroll back toward home," the boy suggested 
 thickly. 
 
 The old clock in the tower of the Universalist Church was 
 striking three when they finally reached the Cuttner gate. 
 In another hour the first streaks of warm dawn would bring 
 the summit of Haystack Mountain into sharper silhouette.
 
 202 THE FOG 
 
 "Just once more, dear boy," the girl whispered as she 
 stood close before him in the hush of somnambulistic 
 morning. 
 
 Arms interlocked, once more Nathan kissed her. 
 
 She bade him good-by in a whisper. She tiptoed up and 
 on to the veranda. The door yielded. The Cuttner house 
 hold still slept. She waved him a comradely farewell and 
 slipped noiselessly inside. 
 
 Nathan hurried through the deserted town and into 
 Spring Street. There was no white signal in Edith's win 
 dow. The Forge house was weirdly quiet. 
 
 From the other side the partition he could hear his 
 father's lumberous snoring, when he gained his bedroom. 
 He undressed and slipped into an unmade bed as a trillion 
 birds were beginning to awaken and hold tuneful conversa 
 tion in a hundred thousand tree tops.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 ANOTHER CASE 
 
 June had come again. A class of eighteen girls, graduat 
 ing from The Elms, were holding Commencement on the 
 twenty-fifth. 
 
 Commencement Week was Mardi Grass for Mount Hadley 
 in a refined, dignified, academic way. While The Elms was 
 chiefly a college-preparatory school, many of its graduates 
 were going abroad, becoming debutantes, receiving no fur 
 ther schooling. So Commencement Week and especially 
 Commencement Night was a gala time. The little tree- 
 bowered, hilltop town overflowed with parents, relatives and 
 guests. Music, lights, laughter and love were as extrava 
 gantly squandered as the wealth of Nature poured out for 
 the sensual gratification of insatiable summer. 
 
 And the Door of Life opened large on the world. 
 
 Madelaine Theddon was among those graduating from 
 The Elms with that Commencement. She had taken a 
 course preparing her for college. What college and what 
 lifework was coming after had not been decided. She hoped 
 to reach a decision before September. 
 
 The afternoon of June 24th, strange to relate, found 
 Madelaine aboard a suburban trolley, headed for Spring 
 field. Her face wore an expression of vague worry. In 
 her calm eyes was dread. This while merrymaking at Mount 
 Hadley was approaching its peak and no one was more 
 urgently sought after than the girl /vhose school nickname 
 had been "Old Mother Hubbard." 
 
 A letter had been responsible. It had been scrawled upon 
 several sheets of expensive note paper bearing the crest of a 
 Springfield hotel. It was a woman's penmanship ; Made 
 laine would have recognized to whom it belonged had no 
 name been appended. But a name had been appended
 
 204 THE FOG 
 
 Bernice Gridley's name and there was no ignoring the 
 letter's appeal. 
 
 Reaching Springfield, Madelaine hurried to the hotel 
 whither Bernice had preceded her by two days. It was then 
 about six-thirty in the evening and a warm summer rain was 
 shining on city walks and pavements, reflecting the first 
 lamps of evening nebulously. Madelaine called Bernie in 
 her room, announcing her arrival. Then she went upstairs. 
 Bernie admitted her. The room was unlighted. 
 
 Bernice threw her arms around Madelaine when the door 
 had closed, despite the latter's wet silken gossamer, before 
 Madelaine had even found a place for her dripping um 
 brella. 
 
 "I'm so glad you've come! You're an old dear," choked 
 Bernie huskily. 
 
 Despite the rain clouds and spring mist smothering the 
 city, there was yet light enough in the lavish apartment for 
 Madelaine to see that Bernie was in trouble, terrible trouble. 
 "Old Mother Hubbard" stood her umbrella in the bath and 
 threw her gossamer over the nickel-work of the shower. 
 She cast aside the mannish felt hat she had worn because of 
 the wet and returned to where Bernie had dropped into a 
 chair by the window. Madelaine took the rocker opposite, 
 their knees almost touching. 
 
 "What is it, dear a man ?" 
 
 "Yes," whispered Bernie, her voice poignant. 
 
 "Just how bad ?" 
 
 "Mother's due to arrive in the morning, for Commence 
 ment. I can't see her, Madge. I can't see her again, ever !" 
 
 Bernie fumbled for her handkerchief. She had braided 
 her tawny hair in a single heavy cable ; it fell down across 
 her left shoulder and breast. She wore a Japanese kimono, 
 incongruously flowered, with obi girdle. At nineteen the 
 Dresden Doll was a Dresden Doll no longer. She had be 
 come a big-bodied girl with prominent, bony features, a 
 small, narrow forehead, wide cheek bones, prominent nose 
 and weak, sensuous mouth. The saving feature of her 
 countenance was a deep dimple in her chin. It was a coy, 
 devilish dimple and had wrought much damage. A type 
 of Mona Lisa face, Bernie's without the Mona Lisa 
 humor. 
 
 Madelaine sat motionless, her hands relaxed along the
 
 ANOTHER CASE 205 
 
 chair arms. She was very calm, very grave. Only tender 
 compassion lay upon her cameo features now. 
 
 "How did it happen, dear?" she asked. "Do you want 
 to tell me that ?" 
 
 "No ! I want you to tell me what I ought to do 
 what's ahead for me. Oh, Madge! Madge! I'm so scared 
 I want to die !" 
 
 The Gridley girl fell into a paroxysm of trembling, such 
 an ague that Madelaine leaned forward and took her hands. 
 Bernice was ill, far worse than Madelaine had expected. 
 Though Bernice made the demand on her as a right, the girl 
 called "Old Mother Hubbard" was broad enough and hu 
 man enough to make allowance. Bernie was a woman 
 grown physically, perhaps. Otherwise she was a little child, 
 alone in the dark, panic-stricken in a world of savage ig 
 norance and injustice. 
 
 "There's nothing to be frightened about, Bernie. Noth 
 ing. Get it firmly into your mind and hold it there. We only 
 fear the things we fail to understand. Apparently that's 
 where you've made your blunder. You haven't understood. 
 The secret of solving any great trouble is to keep calm and 
 poised about it. Remember there's no human difficulty but 
 what there's a human solution. Now, then, what we want 
 to determine first is the thing that's frightening you most. 
 Once cleared away, we can proceed to the elimination of 
 other bothersome things. Just what bothers you worse, 
 dear physical fear or the reaction of your predicament 
 on your family and f uture ?" 
 
 "Oh, Madge ! You're so wonderful. I'm sorry for all 
 the mean and spiteful things I said about you ! You're an 
 angel and a " 
 
 "Let's not talk about myself, dear. I'm here to talk about 
 you. If you've said or done anything unfair about me in the 
 past, it's because you didn't understand. So not under 
 standing, you can't of course be wholly blamed. Anyway, I 
 believe it's an obligation all of us have, to give our help so 
 long as people are sent into contact with us who need and 
 deserve it. If there's any way I can aid you, I'm here to 
 do it. And I want you to feel my friendship before we gd 
 any further." 
 
 "I guess I can't help it," choked Bernie. 
 
 Madelaine softly pressed the two cold hands she held.
 
 206 THE FOG 
 
 "Now then, dear, let's have the story. What's frightening 
 you most?" 
 
 "Madge! I've got to tell you how it happened. I can't 
 tell you his name. I just can't! Don't ask me why I can't. 
 But I just can't " 
 
 "I know, dear. You love him. To protect the man who 
 has taken advantage is a feminine atavism since river-drift 
 days, I suppose. I don't want to know his name. And I 
 only want to know the story as it helps to show what's 
 bothering you most." 
 
 "Madge ! It happened this way. One night " 
 
 The rain stopped after a time. The clouds rolled away 
 toward the southeast. Stars shone brightly. The roar of 
 the Springfield evening traffic, the honk of motor cars, the 
 purring grind of trolleys, arose to the room where Made 
 laine had lowered the upper sash of the big window. When 
 Bernice completed her ragged story, she was leaning for 
 ward, weeping intermittently. Madelaine was a silhouette 
 in the semi-dark. She rocked slowly. 
 
 "But, Bernice," she said at last, "why should you do it? 
 I'm not rebuking you, dear. I'm asking for information. 
 I can't understand it. Why didn't an intuitive reserve and 
 decency prompt you to conserve yourself? Why didn't the 
 very greatness of your love urge you to nurture and cherish 
 those things which lie at the root of it not squander and 
 spatter and waste and cheapen them?" 
 
 "I don't know, Madge. Somehow I just felt devilish. I 
 wanted to do something shockingly wicked. I wanted to get 
 as far away from all the goodness and decency I've known 
 all my life as I could. That's the truth, Madge. At the 
 moment I didn't care. I'll tell you more truth : I gloried in 
 it ! Yes, I did ! I was glad I was wicked until until I 
 saw I was going to face all the penalty." 
 
 "I can't understand," murmured Madelaine. 
 
 "No, perhaps not. But you might if you knew my 
 mother. Ever since I was a tiny girl, Madge, I've lived in 
 an atmosphere of things that were 'strictly proper.' Oh, 
 how tired and sick I grew of things that were 'strictly 
 proper.' Mother always gave me to understand I was dif 
 ferent than other children, I was better quality. So I had 
 to live up to that better quality. It was awful dull and 
 tedious. At times it maddened me. Mother lay awake
 
 ANOTHER CASE 207 
 
 nights worrying about her culture and mine. After she'd 
 married dad, she made the discovery that on her mother's 
 side, a few generations back, she'd descended from a 
 duchess. Being born in a two-room apartment over a Rut 
 land Quick Lunch and then discovering there was the blood 
 of a duchess in her veins, she had a horrible time with her 
 self, and with dad too, forgetting 'Quick Lunch' beginnings. 
 Dad was a money-maker. He never worried much about 
 his culture. Beside, I don't think they were very happily 
 married. He didn't understand her. He let her go her 
 way as she pleased. Just paid the bills. So in the second 
 generation, meaning poor me, mother determined the 'Quick 
 Lunch' business should be outbred if it cost her a leg. And 
 I lived our royalty from Monday morning to Saturday night, 
 double doses on Sunday. And when I gQt old enough to see 
 how much fun I was missing by not being just natural and 
 normal, without consciously thinking about our culture 
 every minute, I rebelled. Madge, dear, why is it their cul 
 ture gives some people such a horrible, distressing time, 
 making them miserable and wooden-like, instead of natural 
 and joyous?" 
 
 Madelaine was silent a moment before answering. 
 
 "I think, Bernice, it must be because they've missed the 
 meaning of true culture entirely. They have a blind pride 
 groping for higher things. That's fine and commendable. 
 But they don't stop to reason why that culture should be, 
 what lies at the bottom of it, I mean. Speaking for myself, 
 I've reasoned it that real culture has its base and foundation 
 in an inherent appreciation of the Beautiful. And unless 
 one has an inherent taste and appreciation of the Beautiful, 
 dear, and builds all things upon that, they're merely apes 
 and imitators. They're ludicrously copying the behavior 
 and tastes of those who have. People who do the most 
 worrying about their culture, as you phrase it, are not wor 
 rying about their own sense of the beautiful and appropriate. 
 They're worrying because they may not be aping correctly 
 some one who has the fundamentals and is letting culture 
 take care of itself. Having no fundamentals of their own, 
 the imitators, I mean, merely a superficial, competitive pride, 
 they fret their lives away. They make themselves and all 
 those around them miserable acting a part instead of liv 
 ing a part."
 
 208 THE FOG 
 
 "Well," continued Bernie, "mother crammed royalty and 
 culture down my throat so long and hard that when I got 
 outside I just had to explode. I guess you're right, Madge ; 
 I never had it reasoned out for me why I should do this or 
 that. Mother's battle-cry was, 'It simply isn't done by the 
 Best People!' I got so heartily sick of those Best People 
 whoever they were that I wanted to shriek. This thing 
 wasn't nice and that thing wasn't proper. The Best People 
 never did exactly the things I hungered to do. And every 
 thing was 'shocking! shocking!' Life wasn't like that. I 
 saw it soon enough. And repressing all my curiosity and 
 impulse to get my share of fun out of it grew more and 
 more unbearable. I remember once I went on a picnic. I 
 wandered off in the woods with one of the little hicks of 
 our town. I wanted to be just as bad as I knew how. But 
 all my poor little pate could conceive was kissing him and 
 letting him kiss me as much as I pleased and taking off 
 shoes and stockings and paddling in a brook. I felt I was 
 getting back at mother. Though why I should get back at 
 her, or what I hoped to gain by it, I never stopped to think. 
 Mother never told me anything about myself. She never 
 sat down and reasoned with me. She never tried to make 
 me understand what my impulses meant or why I possessed 
 them. It seemed as if everything natural and normal was 
 just shocking, shocking " 
 
 "And hasn't the reason for intuitive decency and normal 
 ity ever occurred to you, dear ?" 
 
 "I never stop to reason things out. I'm not like you, 
 Madge ! I go more by my feelings." 
 
 Madelaine toyed thoughtfully with a tiny gold watch 
 chain encircling her neck. 
 
 "Sometimes, dear," she observed, "when I think how nar 
 row and short-sighted and unfair some parents seem to be, 
 I wonder the race is as clean and decent as it is." 
 
 "Don't talk like old Prexy Anderson to-night, Madge. 
 It makes my head ache. I don't want to know the reason 
 for things. I just want to know the way out of them." 
 
 Madelaine shook her head sadly. 
 
 "And so that's how you met with this trouble? You 
 wanted to spite your mother again." 
 
 "Not altogether. It wasn't mother especially just then. 
 Tt was everything mother stood for. He flung at me, 'Oh,
 
 ANOTHER CASE 209 
 
 you're one of those "nice" girls, are you?' and it made me 
 wild. I proposed to show him I wasn't one of those 'nice' 
 girls and the sky was the limit. He couldn't fling any such 
 insult in my teeth as that. Then I didn't care what hap 
 pened." 
 
 "You don't love him?" 
 
 "I didn't say so." 
 
 "Well, would you marry him?" 
 
 "I don't know. Oh, Madge, I don't know anything 
 where I am what I want to do what I ought to do 
 what's to become of me. I guess my folks are bothering 
 most. Dad's hard-boiled in lots of ways. Yet all the same, 
 I don't fear him half so much as I do mother. It'll scan 
 dalize her so she's going to make my life a misery. And 
 not half so much because I've done any moral wrong as 
 because what I've done isn't sanctioned by the Best People. 
 Damn the Best People! Who are they? Where are they? 
 What are they that they should injure me so ?" 
 
 "Calm yourself, child. Then it's fright of your mother 
 that's bothering you most ?" 
 
 "I guess so. Yes!" 
 
 "Then don't be frightened any more. Because when your 
 mother comes to Mount Hadley in the morning, I'll take it 
 upon myself to see her and explain everything away all 
 right. As for yourself, my foster-mother is very sensible 
 about such things. Perhaps that's why I've come to look 
 upon them so impersonally myself. I'll go up and have a talk 
 with mother. For a few months you can be our guest. 
 When the crucial time comes, mother will arrange matters. 
 We are going abroad this summer. In so far as any one, 
 even your parents, need know, you are accompanying us as 
 our guest. My mother won't even ask who you are, if you 
 don't care for her to know ; any name you wish to go by will 
 be perfectly all right." 
 
 "And my mother need never learn ?" 
 
 "That depends upon my talk with her in the morning. 
 Just now, in so far as Mount Hadley is concerned, you've 
 broken down as a result of the final exams, and the excite 
 ment of Commencement." 
 
 "Oh, Madge ! Madge !" Bernice went down suddenly on 
 her knees with her feverish head in Madelaine's lap. She 
 covered Madelaine's cool, capable hands with kisses. Her
 
 210 THE FOG 
 
 tears came in such a flood they dripped from her dimpled 
 chin. "Tell me, Madge you know everything tell me 
 what's ahead for me. I don't know, Madge. I never knew. 
 Those things were always 'shocking ! shocking !' " 
 
 In the next half-hour Madelaine simplified the great fun 
 damentals of life into words of one syllable. Bernie clung 
 to her convulsively when Madelaine came to leave. 
 
 "There's a God," whispered the tanner's daughter thickly, 
 reverently, "because He made you, Madelaine Theddon !" 
 
 At ten-thirty that same evening Madelaine was back in 
 Hathaway Hall, Mount Hadley, perfect in an evening gown 
 of gold satin and cobweb lace, dancing divinely with a clean- 
 cut young fellow from Boston "Tech" who was going to 
 Buenos Aires in August as an architect for the Argentine 
 Government. 
 
 The clean-cut young fellow decided Miss Theddon the 
 cleverest girl he had ever met, as well as the most beautiful. 
 She discussed architecture with him as though she had 
 already qualified for an architect's position herself. 
 
 ii 
 
 The following evening Madelaine sat in her room and 
 from her ivy-bordered window looked down upon the little 
 town she was leaving on the morrow. Behind her the lights 
 had been extinguished. Now and then a trio of white fig 
 ures moved across the lawn or the Common below, in and 
 out of the shadows made by the lordly elms. Happy laugh 
 ter died on the summer night. Somewhere down the street 
 piano keys were tinkling and the rich tenor of a man's voice 
 was softened by the distance. 
 
 Madelaine was thinking of Bernie's problem. Yet not 
 altogether. She was also thinking of her own. Life was 
 coming to her now as a responsibility. She owed much to 
 her mother, far more to the world that had been so good to 
 her, and the poor, perplexed, fog-groping men and women 
 especially young men and women in it. What should 
 be her life work? How should she try to repay that debt 
 mounting with each passing month and year to overwhelm 
 ing proportion ? 
 
 Marriage did not seem her end and aim. Not then ! She
 
 ANOTHER CASE 211 
 
 had an intuition that marriage would come afterward, after 
 she had paid the debt, or tried to pay it. What then? 
 
 Always her well-ordered brain came back to Bernie. 
 There must be many Bernies. Could she find her niche 
 helping them? How? 
 
 She tried drastic self -analysis. Then she relaxed and 
 tried yielding herself unreservedly to instinct. 
 
 Finally she thought of Bernie in terms of immediate help 
 guiding her through her Gethsemane concretely. The 
 function of nursing was but a step to conceiving herself the 
 physician of body as well as mind. 
 
 The aptness of it struck her with peculiar force. A 
 physician ! Why not ? Women were assailing all citadels 
 of professions and business. Why not a physician? A 
 great, warm, poignant self-assurance welled up within her. 
 Why had she not thought of it before? 
 
 In the ensuing ten moments her life course lay clear as 
 an etching before her. The film between herself and the 
 future had suddenly been swept aside. She was radiantly, 
 unreasoningly happy. She wanted to sing with the ecstasy 
 of the revelation. 
 
 in 
 
 She did sing. Whereupon she was so happy too that she 
 wept a little bit. What had taken possession of her ? For 
 the first time she felt blindly content to relax to intuitions 
 and emotions. 
 
 It was her last night in the dormitory room, where she 
 had passed four beautiful years. Her roommate had already 
 departed. Madelaine arose, her calm face suffused with a 
 quiet glory. She turned on the lights. 
 
 On the dressing table the last of her effects lay for final 
 packing in her bag on the morrow. Among them was a 
 poem framed in a heavy copper border. It had hung above 
 her study table the two years past. She had grown very 
 intimate with that little news-print, poem on its deep brown 
 mapping. 
 
 Though she could repeat it perfectly, she read it again 
 now, line by line and word by word : 
 
 "Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright 
 In some vast open space,
 
 212 THE FOG 
 
 You'll stand, flesh-clothed, with your arms outstretched, 
 And triumph on your face." 
 
 She sat for a quarter hour with the framed poem in her 
 shapely fingers. Her eyes were looking through a million 
 miles. Nathaniel Forge! Who was he? What had ever 
 caused him to write such a poem ?
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 TACT AND DISCRETION 
 
 The box-shop was haunted ! 
 
 Old Jake Richards made the discovery. He based his 
 contention on concrete observation and abstract deduction. 
 
 Jake was the father of the Richards girl who had re 
 mained at work in the Forge factory during the "strike." 
 He had three boys and four other girls. The Richards fam 
 ily lived on the northern edge of the "flats" at the end of 
 the road on which the box-shop was situated. It was a 
 hollow-eyed gray house with broken steps, set back in a 
 cluttered yard. It had a French roof and its blinds were 
 missing and family bedding was everlastingly hanging from 
 the second-story windows. 
 
 Jake was Caleb Gridley's "all-around man" at the tannery, 
 a sort of workman-foreman-superintendent. He had held 
 the position for many years. Socially, from the mere loca 
 tion of his domicile, he did not exist. Then there was the 
 nature of his trade, the skinning of carcasses. Lastly his 
 gross prolificality in the matter of children. Openly he 
 bragged of his wife's versatility at giving birth to offspring 
 in the morning and "doin' a good week's wash" in the after 
 noon. This may or may not have been true. In so far as 
 fastidious Paris was concerned, however, it established Jake 
 as somewhat beyond the pale. 
 
 Jake, old Caleb and a gang of steam fitters had worked 
 until three o'clock one Sunday morning installing a new 
 boiler in the tannery. Jake had plodded his weary way 
 homeward just before daylight. Arriving opposite the 
 box-shop office, he raised his eyes to receive the start of his 
 life. There were not many starts in old Jake's life, by the 
 way. Most of them were stops. 
 
 The box-shop was built about fifty feet back from the
 
 214 THE FOG 
 
 road. Not back so far, however, but that Jake had an un 
 obstructed view of the office door. There were no lights 
 in the gaunt, ark-like structure. The nearest arc lamp was 
 an eighth of a mile away, across the waving acres of cat 
 tails, and rushes. Also the moon was going down. 
 
 Nevertheless, outlined quite clearly in the window of that 
 inky black office door was a human torso. Also a very white 
 face. 
 
 It was absolutely motionless, that apparition. As Jake 
 chanced to be in the shadow of the rushes across the road, 
 it appeared to take no note of him or behave as though he 
 had seen. 
 
 Jake could not pass onward. He stood rooted to the spot 
 while icy chills played up and down his back. Who could 
 be in an unlighted box-shop at three in the morning, stand 
 ing grimly behind the door glass, gazing out into the waning 
 night, "like corpses fresh from the grave ?" 
 
 Jake was too far away to make out the features or gain 
 any idea of identity. He simply remained motionless and 
 watched. 
 
 Then as picture films dissolve and fade into gray nothing 
 ness, so that apparition dissolved into the blackness behind. 
 The oblong of door window was empty once more. 
 
 Jake finally believed a great physical weariness had been 
 responsible for an optical illusion. He went home. But 
 he awoke his wife and told her and Milly and the oldest boy 
 also awoke and heard. 
 
 The boy confided to his sister when the house had quieted : 
 
 "I seen lots o' funny lights in the box-shop in the night ! 
 This ain't no news to me! Huh, I thought dad had more 
 brains !" 
 
 "Brains? Whatter you mean?" demanded Milly. 
 
 The young worldly wiseman laughed, turned over and 
 went back to sleep. 
 
 II 
 
 It was Milly who carried the news to Nathan the follow 
 ing morning. 
 
 Johnathan never arrived at the office until nine or ten 
 o'clock. But he never failed to set the alarm for five- 
 thirty. When it banged off, he called to Nathan and kept
 
 TACT AND DISCRETION 215 
 
 calling him until he had the boy awakened and groggily 
 dressing. 
 
 Johnathan believed that a proprietor should always be 
 the first one at a place of business in the morning. It set the 
 proper example for the rest of the "help." So Nathan 
 always reached the place at a quarter to seven. Milly called 
 Nat over behind the paper-cutter. She whispered what her 
 father had seen before she shed her big over-sized cloak for 
 work. 
 
 Nathan's face colored queerly. 
 
 "Please keep this to yourself, Milly," he ordered. "If 
 it gets out, and the other girls believe it, they may quit in 
 fright and refuse to come back, especially if I should want 
 them to work overtime, nights." 
 
 Milly promised. She would have promised "to go seventy 
 miles up the Amazon River, turn to the right and stay there 
 the rest of her life" if Nathan had desired it. So far as her 
 small, commonplace soul was capable, she worshiped the 
 young foreman as the Greeks once worshiped Apollo. Her 
 feminine intuition grasped the difficulties Nathan encoun 
 tered with his father's twopenny policies. She sympathized 
 with him. Because it had been Nathan's business and 
 Nathan's father, she had remained in her place during the 
 "strike." Once when the boy had been compelled to work 
 supperless until midnight, installing a new motor, she had 
 plodded uptown in a storm of sleet and bought him a basket 
 of lunch. 
 
 The boy was not insensible to these indications of interest. 
 He felt rather buoyant about them. He was something in 
 the nature of a lady-killer. But to "let himself go" down 
 into the slough of such a liaison, he could not. Milly was 
 "factory help." Owner's sons didn't do such things. She 
 was preposterously out of caste. 
 
 Yet he enjoyed the sensation of being the object of an 
 unrequited affection. It flattered his vanity. Without ap 
 pearing to do so, he threw favors in Milly's way. Once 
 when she injured her hand on a jagged box nail, he applied 
 first aid, and second aid and third aid and fourth. He con 
 tended such dressings were merely saving the business from 
 the expense of doctor's fees. He was thus forestalling a 
 suit for damages from Milly. It was a matter of business 
 acumen, pure and simple. Once when Old Jake had been
 
 216 THE FOG 
 
 abusively intoxicated and taken her weekly pay envelope 
 cruelly in the street, Nat had called her back and presented 
 her with a second envelope, from his own money. It made 
 him feel rather heroic to do this. 
 
 Further than these small experiments in fire-playing, there 
 was nothing between them. Of course not. There could 
 never be anything between them. Yet there were times 
 when the two found themselves alone together in the print 
 ing room, especially in the summer time when Milly's collar 
 disclosed a generous V of soft chest as white as milk, that 
 the boy's fancies ran riot. They carried him away, back 
 to Foxboro Center days when he and I had first come in 
 contact with the mystery surrounding sex, especially The 
 Sex. She was only a factory girl. Of course. And yet, 
 well, she had shown in a hundred crass ways that she loved 
 him. She would love him more if he would allow it. All 
 in all, it was not unpleasant. Yet the situation was not 
 without its pathos. Milly could not help being one of Old 
 Jake's offspring. 
 
 Meanwhile, of course, he was in love with Carol, very 
 much in love with Carol. 
 
 in 
 
 How much he was in love with Carol only the heart of a 
 nineteen-year-old could attest. 
 
 Having discovered how easy and simple it was to keep 
 nocturnal trysts, Nathan began to show a sudden filial do 
 cility which pleased and puzzled Johnathan. The father 
 soon realized that an entire fortnight had passed during 
 which he had accounted for every moment of his son's time 
 perfect alibis in every instance and not once had Nathan 
 seen or spoken to the girl. If Nathan had gone two weeks 
 without her, of course he had taken his father's counsel 
 and given up the Sybarite forever. That was only logic. 
 If the boy showed a strange and unaccountable drowsiness 
 around three o'clock each afternoon, or if it became in 
 creasingly difficult to awaken him each morning at five- 
 thirty, it was according to his mother because he was 
 "working too hard to the shop." To which Nathan amus 
 edly subscribed. Because he had given heed to his father 
 and yielded obedience without that threatened murder being
 
 TACT AND DISCRETION 217 
 
 necessary, Johnathan conceived the idea of letting the boy 
 have a week's vacation and take a little trip somewhere, say 
 down to Nantasket. Nathan, however, failed to enthuse. 
 With visible relief on Johnathan's part, the vacation idea 
 was swiftly dropped. The father did not cease from re 
 minding the son of the former's magnanimity, however, 
 when later differences arose upon other matters. 
 
 The thing which troubled Nathan in those hectic days was 
 Edith's propensity to be allowed the same nocturnal privi 
 lege. It was quite all right for Nathan to spend his nights 
 in the company of a reasonably pretty girl who was treated 
 "cruelly" by her relatives. He was a man. But MacHenry 
 shot too good a ame of Kelly pool to make Nathan feel 
 that a duplication of the stunt by his sister was advisable. 
 His anxiety was ended one morning, however, when Edith 
 fell over a chair in the outer hallway on her return, before 
 her brother knew she had been out. The parents did not 
 awaken but Nathan did. He leaped out to find Edith's hair 
 down and her clothing torn. One sleeve of her shirt waist 
 was slit to ribbons and she was limping painfully. 
 
 "What's happened, Edie; where you been?" the brother 
 cried frightenedly. 
 
 "Oh, he tried to get too fresh !" was the sister's rejoinder. 
 She went to her room, destroyed the torn waist and slipped 
 into bed. The MacHenry fellow disappeared from town 
 next day. While Nat had never given his consent to Edith's 
 nocturnal absences nor abetted them, he was thankful his 
 sister's interest had waned. 
 
 For Nathan, however, no summer was ever quite like 
 that summer. For spring passed and June came, and at 
 least three times a week he left his room as soon as he 
 heard his father's heavy snoring to return in the moist, 
 mystic hush of dawn dawn broken only by the energetic 
 chirping of countless song birds and the dull knocking rattle 
 of distant milk wagons. 
 
 The news which Milly Richards had brought advised him 
 that he was growing overbold, however. For two weeks 
 thereafter, he and Carol took the Gilberts Mills road instead 
 of going down to the box-shop, where the girl spent the 
 night nestled in her lover's arms. 
 
 So it was not this illicit tryst-keeping, finally wrecked by 
 its own success, that caused Johnathan's complacency to ex-
 
 218 THE FOG 
 
 plode in his face. It was a letter that inadvertently fell 
 from Nathan's hip pocket one day in the mill and which 
 Joe Patridge brought with a grin to Johnathan. 
 
 "Picked up some private correspondence," he observed. 
 "Guess it belongs to Nathan." 
 
 Private correspondence? Nathan? 
 
 Johnathan took the bulky envelope addressed in a wo 
 man's round hand to his son at the local postoffice, Gen 
 eral Delivery. He pulled out the sheets and the opening 
 salutation struck him between the eyes like a brick. 
 
 Johnathan was limp all over when he had finished that 
 effusive epistle. The father scarcely had the strength to 
 rise from his chair. He found his hat and coat and went 
 out into the August sunshine. He must think, think. 
 
 So they were keeping the asinine courtship alive by cor 
 respondence? Fool that he was, he might have suspected. 
 
 Yet John had read between the lines of the girl's letter 
 what was no thumb-nail sentiment between lovesick adoles 
 cents. The two addressed each other now as grown man 
 and woman. Fortunately, no references had been made by 
 Carol to their nocturnal rendezvous. Johnathan never knew 
 and does not appreciate to this day toward the brink of 
 what precipice he did all in his power to drive his boy. But 
 he knew that Nathan had asked the girl to be his wife. 
 She had accepted him. They were only waiting the saving 
 of enough money on Nathan's part and the making of 
 enough "clothes" on Carol's to perfect an elopement. 
 
 The father's imagination and seLf-pity started on a ram 
 page again. His temper began to growl. By six o'clock he 
 was a roaring small-town lion, seeking whom he might de 
 vour, principally something in the boy line under twenty- 
 one. 
 
 Tact and discretion! Tact and discretion! 
 
 Johnathan knew he should employ them, that he must con 
 trol his temper or another time he might break worse than 
 his knuckles. Yet how could he save his son from this hor 
 ribly yawning pit of premature matrimony? At last he 
 had it! Archibald Cuttner! 
 
 It was true that Johnathan did not know Archibald Cutt 
 ner only as he sometimes thrust the collection plate in front 
 of him on Sunday mornings, or had brought his Congress 
 shoes to the Main Street shop for resoling "in the old
 
 TACT AND DISCRETION 219 
 
 days", as Johnathan already phrased it. But that did not 
 deter him from going at once and laying his case before the 
 girl's grandparent in a great tumult of hysterical fatherhood. 
 
 The Cuttners were finishing the evening meal as Johnathan 
 rang the bell. Old Archibald, a thin little man with queer, 
 humped shoulders, came out with his napkin still tucked 
 in his turkey neck. 
 
 They sat down in the porch chairs for a time and John 
 athan handed the girl's letter aross and Archibald read it. 
 
 "God !" was Cuttner's comment as he finished page after 
 page of the "mush." It disgusted him as much as it had 
 angered Johnathan. It had been fifty years since Archibald 
 had been nineteen and in love. 
 
 "S'pose we walk a pace," he suggested. "I'd like to 
 smoke. And we'll talk." 
 
 The two men left the house and while Cuttner puffed at 
 a long black cheroot, Johnathan narrated his parental "trou 
 bles" from the first. 
 
 "Yer right, Forge," the old man agreed. "Getting a boy 
 past the 'girl age' is the hardest job a man can have shoved 
 on to him and the most thankless. Give 'em a free rein 
 and the young asses go stick their heads in the trap o' mar 
 ried care. Tighten the rein and it only makes 'em crazier 
 to get at it. So what's a man to do, anyhow? I'm begin 
 ning to think we don't lay on the harness tug these days 
 strong enough to begin with girls as well as boys." 
 
 "That doesn't save Nathaniel from this misalliance with 
 your granddaughter now. What can we do ?" 
 
 "What do you want I should do at the girl end of it?" 
 
 "Couldn't you send her back where she came from?" 
 
 "Back to A-higher? Yeah, I can send her back to A- 
 higher? But what assurance you got this balky young 
 colt won't kick over the traces the minute she's gone and 
 start after her, dragging the whiffletree ?" 
 
 "I'll attend to that. You get the girl out of town. I'll 
 keep with him and watch him if I have to eat and sleep 
 with him every night from now till the time he's twenty- 
 one." 
 
 "Won't be able to help yerself then, will yer?" 
 
 "But he'll be a man grown, then, in the eyes of the law. 
 He'll know his own mind." 
 
 "Ain't far from it now, Forge. Nineteen, ain't he?"
 
 220 THE FOG 
 
 "But two years at this period makes all the difference 
 in the world. Anyhow, if he deliberately goes wrong the 
 moment he's of age, my hands are clean. I'll have done 
 my duty in the eyes of the law and of God. After that, he's 
 got only himself to thank if he makes a foul bed and has 
 to lie in it." 
 
 So Johnathan found an unexpected ally in Archibald Cutt- 
 ner. And the latter returned home to order Carol to "pack 
 her traps and go back to her folks." 
 
 IV 
 
 Johnathan was especially jovial and agreeable about trie 
 house that night. He came in whistling. He cracked 
 a couple of ancient jokes and talked about "sparing the 
 money" to get the hall papered. His family looked at one 
 another in puzzled astonishment. Mrs. Forge asked for 
 ten dollars to spend on clothes and got five, three of which 
 were promptly appropriated by Edith for a waist to wear 
 to a dance that she was going to attend unbeknown to her 
 parents. All of them felt electrically that some extraor 
 dinary business was afoot. 
 
 The family retired about ten o'clock. The lights went 
 out. Johnathan fell asleep almost at once. He said it was 
 easy for him to fall asleep because he always had a clear 
 conscience. 
 
 But Nathan, sitting in his room, heard a sudden familiar 
 whistle on the walk outside, about midnight. He escaped 
 by the usual method to find his sweetheart in tears. They 
 had walked a considerable distance before Nathan learned 
 the cause. Now her grandfather was "cruel" to her. 
 
 "Oh, Nathan! I've got to go back to A -higher. He 
 he doesn't want me around here any more." 
 
 Nathan heard this with a clammy throttling of his heart. 
 Then his mind leaped intuitively to his father's unusual 
 affability that night. 
 
 "Carrie I'll bet five dollars my father's seen your gramp 
 and they've clubbed together to bust us up !" 
 
 "I'm sick and disgusted with being treated like children 
 by two old bigots!" the girl cried vehemently. "I'm al 
 most ready to quit!"
 
 TACT AND DISCRETION 221 
 
 "Quit?" cried Nathan in alarm. 
 
 "Yes quit ! We're grown up, now ! What difference 
 does a couple of years make, anyhow?" 
 
 "Let's risk the box-shop once more, Carrie. Let's go 
 dcwn and talk it over and I'll hold you." 
 
 "Holding her" was eminently to be desired by all wit 
 nesses to these presents. So toward the box-shop they 
 headed. 
 
 It was a close, muggy night with the heat lightning play 
 ing off in the low northwest. Clouds hid the moon and 
 stars. The dusty earth was thirsty for rain. Most 
 of the lamps were already extinguished in the houses en 
 route as boy and girl made their way down toward the 
 "flats." 
 
 They stole into the shadowed factory yard, keeping well 
 out of sight close to the rushes. Nathan unlocked the door 
 softly. On tiptoe they entered. The door was locked be 
 hind them. The office was very stuffy. It smelled of musty 
 ledgers and wintergreen library paste. High on the wall 
 a philosophical old clock ticked on through the night. 
 
 The boy removed hat and coat. He pulled out one of the 
 cane-seated swivel chairs. Almost before he had seated 
 himself the girl was in his arms and sobbing convulsively 
 on his shoulder. 
 
 Nathan pulled out a low desk-drawer for his feet. He 
 leaned back and smoothed the girls' soft chestnut hair. 
 The lone arc lamp far across the rushes shone weirdly into 
 the room, making a rectangular splotch of light upon the 
 western wall. 
 
 "Oh, Natie," the girl sobbed softly, "I love you so! I 
 don't want to go back to A-higher! And they treat me 
 so cruel so cruel! My stepmother doesn't like me and 
 my gramp doesn't want me. I wish I was dead!" 
 
 "You've got me, dear," the boy reminded her. A thou 
 sand love-struck swains would have said the same. 
 
 "But I won't have, Natie, if I go back to A-higher!" 
 
 "Oh, Carrie, I wish I was sure dad wouldn't have our 
 marriage annulled. I'd say let's get married right off now 
 and spite him. But I'm afraid he would. He's just that 
 crazy against me having a girl of any sort, you or anybody. 
 Then again, here's the shop. This'll be mine some day, 
 if I don't run off. I'm making it into a whale of a business.
 
 222 THE FOG 
 
 Oh, Carrie, if dad would only be sensible like other boys' 
 fathers! If he only would!" 
 
 "Natie, tell me something." The girl's voice was soft. 
 Her face was averted. She picked aimlessly at one of his 
 shirt buttons. "Is that why you've dodged running away 
 and getting married up to now ? Because you've been afraid 
 your dad would have our marriage annulled? Because 
 you weren't of age, maybe?" 
 
 "Yes, Carrie. That's the reason." 
 
 A long silence ensued. The girl's weeping had ceased. 
 The night and the world were very quiet, excepting for a 
 light hot wind which was blowing over the rushes in the 
 vanguard of a shower. Some of the rushes brushed eerily 
 against the box-shop walls. The old building gave off 
 queer creakings and night noises upstairs. A mouse nib 
 bled at something which rattled in a far corner. 
 
 "Oh, Carrie!" 
 
 The boy drew a thick poignant sigh. The girl turned her 
 pale face up to his for a kiss. She got it. Both sighed. 
 She nestled close. The clock ticked ticked ticked 
 
 Suddenly the boy sensed that the girl was trembling. She 
 raised her free hand and smoothed his hair for a moment. 
 Then gradually she dropped it dropped it down to her 
 own face held it across her eyes. 
 
 "Nathan," she whispered softly. 
 
 "Yes, Carrie!" 
 
 The girl drew a quick breath with an effort. She 
 placed her lips close to her lover's ear and whispered. 
 
 Young Nat Forge, "incorrigible son," sat with the girl 
 he loved at nineteen, sat and held her close. And his 
 throbbing eyes stared across fields of romance, down into 
 valleys of verb ot en Avalon where acacia trees grew too 
 thickly at a moment for passage through. 
 
 It was a woman who came to the first man in the Gar 
 den. She carried fruit of the knowledge-tree of good and 
 evil and bade him eat. Yet perchance she loved him no 
 less on that account. 
 
 It was a quarter to three. The storm had rolled and clacked 
 above the sleeping town and countryside. The office had
 
 TACT AND DISCRETION 223 
 
 been lighted by swift and vivid whips of electric violence. 
 The deluge of nocturnal rain had washed the earth cool and 
 pure again. Steadily in a corner trough outside, an eaves 
 spout emptied with a singing sound, even as the deserted 
 streets ran mud and rivulets. 
 
 The girl still lay in Nathan's arms. She had not moved. 
 Neither had moved. The boy's muscles ached. The air 
 was horribly stuffy, almost sickish. Morning would come 
 now was coming swiftly. 
 
 "Carrie," said the boy huskily, "there's a lot we owe to 
 ourselves to our own happiness! In fourteen months 
 I'll be of age. Fourteen months can be a long, long time 
 or awful, awful short. Suppose, dear, you do as your 
 grandfather wishes go back to Ohio. Stay there as best 
 you can. Live as I'll be living for the day I'm twenty- 
 one. On that day you and I'll be married. That's how 
 much I love you, dear!" 
 
 The girl sensed rebuke in his pronouncement. Her face 
 burned. Unconsciously she shrank away. She wholly 
 lacked the capacity to appreciate the depth of the lad's great 
 affection or the worth of his soul thereby disclosed. The 
 lad went on quickly: 
 
 "Go away as if we didn't mind as if we agreed to the 
 separation. But I'll find some one in town to whom you can 
 mail your letters who'll slip them safely to me without 
 dad knowing. We can write " 
 
 "Nathan, are you so weak, so under your father's thumb, 
 that you're afraid to outwit him?" 
 
 "No," the other whispered. "I'm not." And he spoke the 
 truth. "I love you, dear. I told you that before." 
 
 "Do you think it's easy for me to go?" The girl's voice 
 was tight with pain. What was it she feared? What had 
 happened that night, affecting them both so. vitally? 
 
 "No easier than it is for me to stay. It's always hardest 
 for the one who stays, Carrie !" 
 
 "You're a man! Such things mean more to a woman 
 than a man." They had both traveled far from the night 
 they had talked drivel in the Cuttner sitting room. 
 
 "It seems to. me the right thing to do, Carrie. There's 
 really nothing else!" 
 
 The girl left his arms. She went to the door. With 
 hands on hips, she stood looking out.
 
 224 THE FOG 
 
 "I see you don't love me as much as I thought you 
 did!" she said bitterly. 
 
 "Carrie!" The boy's cry rang sharp. "Don't say that! 
 Don't!" 
 
 "What else can I say?" 
 
 "Carrie! I " 
 
 "Let's go. home, Nathan. It must be almost morning!" 
 
 He came around in front of her. He laid tender hands 
 upon her shoulders. He forced her to look up into his 
 drawn young face. 
 
 She suffered it, yet brokenly. She had lifted back a 
 veil from the vestal treasures of her Inner Shrine and he 
 had mocked those treasures somehow. So she believed. 
 
 "Carrie," he promised, "I'll wait for you, I'll work for 
 you, I'll plan for you, I'll bend all my effort and all my 
 life to make you happy. And it will be very sweet when 
 it comes, dear, very sweet." 
 
 Her eyes blinked at him several times in the dusk. She 
 turned her face away without answering, off toward that 
 distant arc lamp across the acres of rain-washed rushes. 
 
 "I'll go!" she said in a strained voice. Then she hung 
 her head suddenly. 
 
 Nathan raised her face again and drew her to him. Their 
 lips met. But the perturbed boy suddenly shuddered. 
 Carol's lips were cold, unresponsive. 
 
 The boy's joints were stiff. There was a bitter, brackish 
 taste in his mouth. His head throbbed from lack of sleep. 
 But from his finger he slipped a small bloodstone ring he 
 had purchased the week following the "strike" with the 
 first big money he had ever owned. He found the girl's 
 left hand. It was cold, lifeless. But the ring fitted her 
 finger. He kissed it. 
 
 "Let it stay there dear until until " 
 
 The girl turned away. At the door again she stood look 
 ing out. Around and around on her finger she turned the 
 ring. 
 
 VI 
 
 They stole forth from the building and yard. And vivid 
 to Nathan came memory of another day back in younger 
 boyhood when he had stolen forth so from a wood, back
 
 TACT AND DISCRETION 225 
 
 to a picnic ground, wondering why he was not entirely 
 happy, why the kisses of a girl had become cloying and 
 tasteless. Only with this difference: there was no father 
 now to meet and flog him. 
 
 Carol went ahead. They had to pick their way care 
 fully or sink ankle-deep in mire. The town still slept but 
 it had changed somehow. It had changed. 
 
 No further word was spoken until the Cuttner gate. 
 
 The girl shuddered when with a proprietary right the 
 boy took her in his arms for the final embrace. 
 
 "Oh, Natie!" she cried huskily, "you'll never, never 
 know !" 
 
 "Know what, dear?" 
 
 "I can't tell you! You wouldn't understand. Good- 
 by, dear ! It's it's getting light and some of the neighbors 
 might see us." 
 
 She had never remarked upon this before. 
 
 "When will you be leaving, dear?" he asked when he 
 could trust himself to speak. 
 
 "On the eleven o'clock, probably." It was a spiritless 
 answer. "There's no use for me waiting around if I'm 
 really going." 
 
 "But, Carrie! Don't take it that way! Don't act as if I 
 were sending you off." 
 
 "What else are you doing, Nathan? Good night, dear. 
 I've got to go in! It's getting lighter and lighter." 
 
 "I'll be at the station to see you off if I have to lock dad 
 in a closet to do it!" 
 
 "Your dad! I hope he'll feel satisfied with what he's 
 done ! He's made a good job of it and you !" 
 
 Up the steps she crept stealthily and into the house. 
 Though she waved him good-by at the door, the boy was 
 miserable. But she was gone and nothing remained but for 
 him to go also. 
 
 The Forge box-shop was never notable thereafter for 
 any untoward spiritualistic phenomena. 
 
 VII 
 
 It rained that morning. A steady drizzle continued to 
 fall in the aftermath of the thunderstorm. At the breakfast
 
 226 THE FOG 
 
 table Nathan had looked his father straight in the eye and 
 announced : 
 
 "Dad, Carol Gardner's leaving town for Ohio this morn 
 ing. I'm going down to see her off!" 
 
 Johnathan was angered by the way his son spoke. But 
 he decided, after all, he could afford to be magnanimous. 
 A boy Nat's age ought -to begin to have a few privileges. 
 
 "I understand," the father answered. And he prepared to 
 leave for the shop as though it was quite the usual thing. 
 
 So Nathan went to the depot to spend a last few minutes 
 wildly sweet, bitterly poignant with the first girl he had 
 loved with the maturing affection of a man. 
 
 The clouds never dripped a more depressing, groggy rain. 
 The station platform was a long, greasy puddle. Bobbing 
 umbrellas were everywhere as the down train to the junc 
 tion pulled in. 
 
 "Well Carrie good-by," he said at last. 
 
 "Good-by, Nathan," she answered. 
 
 "Till we meet again." 
 
 "Yes ! Till we meet again !" 
 
 That was all either had the chance to say. A crowd of 
 rain-soaked travelers bore the girl away from him, into a 
 small umbrella-closing mob around the car steps. Carol 
 managed a last wave from the platform of the coach. Then 
 she had to attend to the business of finding a seat. The 
 train pulled out. 
 
 "My God ! Have I done the right thing letting her go ?" 
 the heartbroken boy cried hoarsely, as the train drew slowly 
 from the platform, gathering speed as it clicked on shining 
 rails down the yards. But there was no one to answer his 
 heart cry. 
 
 The train had gone. Carol had gone. The town re 
 mained the factory work memories ! 
 
 It rained that morning !
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 SIDETRACKED 
 
 The train had gone. Carol had gone. The town remained 
 the factory work memories. 
 
 Coat collar upturned, hands deep-thrust in trousers pock 
 ets, Nathan slopped through the puddles along down to the 
 shop. 
 
 The office chanced to be empty as he entered. He looked 
 around. It was difficult to believe that this was the same 
 room in which just a few hours before he had held the girl 
 he loved in his arms. It was difficult to credit that at this 
 moment a train was bearing her away, farther and farther 
 away; that there would be no more talks and walks and 
 trysts ; that she was gone, gone ! 
 
 Then the reaction came. He passed a hideous day. 
 
 The rain stopped around five o'clock, though the trees 
 dripped throughout the evening and pedestrians were gro 
 tesque through mist in which th,e arc lamps were nebulous. 
 
 His father was still more affable during supper, even bore- 
 somely jocular. He had turned a neat piece of business. 
 Some day on bended knee Johnathan was strong on the 
 "bended knee" and "kissed hand" metaphor his boy would 
 thank him gratefully and humbly. It was with a vast relief 
 that the man was able to wave his hand in generous per 
 mission when Nathan announced he was going for a walk. 
 Why should not Nathan go for a walk? He, Johnathan, 
 had walked much when a young man. And, thank God, 
 there was no longer any need for nerve-racking surveillance 
 to see that the son kept away from The Sex. Had not he, 
 Johnathan, made certain the girl had left town by watching 
 that departure from the interior of a fruit-store opposite 
 the depot, that morning? 
 
 Nathan went out and roamed the streets of Paris. It
 
 228 THE FOG 
 
 was inevitable that after ten o'clock he should draw near the 
 Cuttner premises. 
 
 In the shadow of the big tree at the gate he gazed at the 
 darkened house. The lonely boy tried to imagine Carol still 
 in the place, awaiting his whistle. Once he did whistle, for 
 at heart he was much of a child. But he was whistling at 
 the husk of a memory. The soul of the Cuttner homestead 
 had departed. 
 
 In his loneliness that night, locked finally in his room, 
 the boy's emotions overpowered him and he sobbed. John- 
 athan, listening at the door, finally tiptoed back to his own 
 room. 
 
 "He's crying," the man told his wife. "He's sorry! But 
 he'll come to see that his father knew best after all!" 
 
 "Poor Nat !" sighed the mother. "He does go into things 
 head-over-heels so even a little passing acquaintance with 
 a strange girl." 
 
 "Those tears will bring him back to God," opined John- 
 athan. 
 
 "Oh, bosh!" snapped Anna Forge. She rolled angrily as 
 far from Johnathan as she could get and in this contorted 
 position sighed at her own hard lot and fell asleep. 
 
 II 
 
 The remainder of that summer and autumn and the ensu 
 ing winter, when Nat turned twenty, was a time of com 
 ment-causing expansion for the box-shop. 
 
 The town had been left for Nathan though a town with 
 its soul gone out, like Archibald Cuttner's house and the 
 factory had been left and work and memories. But the 
 greatest of these was work. The boy threw himself into 
 business with a febrile intensity which alarmed his father 
 almost as much as it pleased him. Alarmed him because he 
 could not exactly account for it. Also he had difficulty 
 keeping up with his son in the matter of handling the busi 
 ness. This aroused his ire. 
 
 Nathan, as has been emphasized, had received an in 
 valuable training under old Caleb Gridley. Moreover, after 
 Carol left, in order to anesthetize his loneliness, the boy 
 spent evening after evening with old Caleb. Sometimes this
 
 SIDETRACKED 229 
 
 queer pair indulged their esthetic souls in poetry, Cowper, 
 Wordsworth, Keats, Pope, Browning; Old Caleb would sit 
 in his big chair before the fire, slipper swinging, vest un 
 buttoned, iron-gray head nodding in approval, as the lad's 
 musical voice rose and fell in cadence of the finer selec 
 tions. 
 
 More often they discussed the box-shop and its affairs. 
 To old Caleb the boy brought his problems, his newly dis 
 covered short cuts, his dilemmas encountered with the idiosyn 
 crasies of employees, his tangles of finance. And old Caleb, 
 from a wealth of Yankee experience and common sense, en 
 couraged the boy in the right places and delicately discour 
 aged him when he might otherwise have "flown off at a 
 tangent" and allowed his enthusiasms to go galloping. 
 
 Johnathan never knew of these consultations. He never 
 dreamed that Caleb was really running his shop through his 
 son ; that Caleb subsequently knew more about the folding- 
 box business than Johnathan himself. The latter only knew 
 that Nathan "did things" and then "consulted him" after 
 ward. That the "things" which Nathan did reduced ex 
 penses, increased production, sold goods, brought money from 
 delinquent creditors, cut small figure with the father. Some 
 how his boy had no patience when time after time the father 
 expressed a wish to "go into conference." There were two 
 great joys in being a business man, for Johnathan. One was 
 opening the morning mail. The other was ''going into con 
 ference." 
 
 The fact of the matter was that Nathan had deftly taken 
 the management of the business out of his father's hands. 
 There was nothing left for Johnathan to do. There was 
 no one to "boss." He worried a lot about it. 
 
 This worry often broke out in open rebellion. At such 
 times, father and son quarreled. These quarrels had chiefly 
 to do with supplies. One day Nathan ordered a new cutter- 
 knife. It cost twenty-eight dollars. The father's contention 
 was that while Nathan might have had to get the knife quickly 
 to maintain production, they had not "gone into conference" 
 about it first. 
 
 "But you were in Baldwinsville that day all day!" 
 snapped Nathan. "How could I consult you when you 
 weren't here to consult?" 
 
 "You could have awaited my return !"
 
 230 THE FOG 
 
 shut down the cutter to do it s end Partridge home 
 make him lose a day's wages and the business 9- matter 
 of a hundred and seventy-five dollars just to ask you ii 
 I could buy a new knife which you wouM have had to con 
 sent to, anyway ? Where's the sense in that ?" 
 
 The economics of the thing were swept aside by John- 
 athan. He clung doggedly to the contention that they had 
 not "gone into conference" about it first. Thereupon he 
 passed the rest of that day evolving a very elaborate order 
 system. With a needle-pointed pencil and a ruler he laid 
 out an order form. He took it up to the local print shop 
 and ordered twenty thousand blanks printed and finished off 
 in pads. Prominently upon the face of each was the line 
 in big type: "No orders valid without the signature of J. 
 H. Forge, Pres." The bill for the printing was seventy- 
 eight dollars. The fallacy of the system was that Johnathan 
 had to be on hand to sign a blank every time the business 
 required anything from a bottle of paste to the use of a 
 storehouse for goods waiting shipment. This grew to be 
 a nuisance. Nathan began to "countersign" the orders, as 
 he was "on the job" twelve hours a day. The fouith week 
 the blanks were discarded, as order forms. The second 
 month the office girls were using them for scratch paper. 
 But they cost seventy-eight dollars. 
 
 It was Nathan who made a hurried trip to Burlington 
 one Saturday afternoon and landed the Cudworth and Hal- 
 stead business for candy cartons. It was Nathan who clev 
 erly "tied up" the output of the Cobb City Pressed Board 
 Mills and diverted it to the Forge plant when prices shot up 
 after the depression of 1907. It was Nathan who suggested 
 scrapping all their old presses and putting in the latest type 
 of power machines then being evolved by a Philadelphia firm. 
 To finance this radical move, it was Nathan who suggested 
 that they incorporate the box-shop ancJ put out fifteen thou 
 sand dollars' worth of its preferred stock. And it was 
 Nathan who, under the clandestine tutelage oi old Caleb, 
 engineered that organization and got the money. 
 
 Against all these departures Johnathan fought tooth and 
 claw, all but the procuring of new money. The size to 
 which his thumb-viail business had grcwn began to frighten 
 him. More and more he wanted to "go into conference." 
 But Nathan, the load of the organization on his enthusiastic
 
 SIDETRACKED 231 
 
 young shoulders, formed the habit of humorously respond 
 ing, "I'm too busy doing things to talk about them!" That 
 angered Johnathan. It pushed him back into a slough of 
 self-pity, outraged dignity and mocked parental authority. 
 All but the procuring of new capital, I say. It was a vast 
 responsibility, being accountable for new capital. It also 
 worried Johnathan mightily. But it was nevertheless a 
 pleasant sort of worry. He inflated in his own esteem. He 
 walked about Paris as a Somebody. He gave less and less 
 time to the "practical" affairs of the company. He no longer 
 "paid off personally" on Saturday afternoons. Instead, he 
 appeared for the first time in tailored clothes, kept banker's 
 hours and saw himself as a Capitalist. 
 
 A stenographer had long ago been hired to ameliorate the 
 time-consuming process of punching out correspondence with 
 one finger on the old blind caligraph. Johnathan had a bell 
 installed in a "private" office to push when he wanted this 
 girl. He pushed it on an average of twice an hour. He 
 wrote letters soliciting business from firms too far away to 
 permit of freight rates leaving any profit. He answered 
 advertisements for catalogs in the back of System Magazine 
 and The Modern Factory. Of course important letters about 
 supplies and shipments which Nathan had dictated hurriedly 
 during noon hour, were sidetracked for these dictations by 
 Johnathan. Wasn't he president and treasurer? 
 
 Frequently, he made a "tour of inspection" through his 
 factory, especially after the addition was built, the principal 
 feature of these trips being to criticize methods which Nathan 
 had instigated, pick up bits of cardboard and string from the 
 floor on the contention that the only way to get rich is to 
 watch the waste boxes, and left a long list of orders behind 
 which were never executed, which the employees laughed 
 at, and which Johnathan himself forgot within five minutes 
 after returning to his swivel chair. 
 
 in 
 
 Of course, all this expansion and feverish industrial ac 
 tivity on Nathan's part had but one basis : The day he was 
 twenty -one he was going to marry Carol and he proposed to 
 have a business sizable enough and profitable enough to
 
 232 THE FOG 
 
 clothe her in purple and fine linen and make her a Somebody 
 because she was the wife of Nathan Forge. 
 
 The first month after Carol's departure, and well along 
 into the autumn, bulky epistles arrived for Nathan on an 
 average of twice a week. Nathan had at once appealed to 
 me to act as clearing house for this correspondence, and I 
 therefore unwittingly kept a finger on the pulse of the court 
 ship. 
 
 Johnathan, with small-bored shrewdness, had given orders 
 at the local postoffice that all Nathan's mail was to be saved 
 and delivered to himself. And as no letters with Ohio post- 
 markings or addressed in feminine penmanship ever arrived 
 in those following months, Jonathan knew the "affair" was 
 over, and, praise the Almighty, "over" successfully. Carol's 
 letters came to me in a double envelope, with Nat's name in 
 side. When he wasn't at Caleb Gridley's in the evening, he 
 was at my house using my desk and typewriter answering 
 them. 
 
 Something of the old intimacy between Nat and myself 
 was restored after Carol's departure. I had meanwhile fin 
 ished high school but been obliged to take a job in the local 
 newspaper office. After work, or on Sundays, we fell into 
 the habit of taking long walks about the town and country 
 side, while the boy raved to me of the undying affection 
 in Carol's letters or his increasing successes at the fac 
 tory. 
 
 Carol, it appeared, had recovered her aplomb upon her 
 return to A-higher. Her letters were full of minute account 
 ings of her time and activities and how she was "getting her 
 clothes ready" and what house in town Nathan should try 
 to procure for their habitation, and what a boor and a bear 
 Johnathan was, and what a trial and a nuisance he must be 
 to the son generally. 
 
 And yet, through all of that twentieth year, and especially 
 throughout the summer, there were days and nights when 
 the boy's loneliness almost crazed him. 
 
 Through the town he wandered, bareheaded beneath the 
 stars. There was one ballad he and Carol had sung over 
 and over until the lad knew the words from memory. Nat 
 hummed the tune to himself on many starlit nights when 
 he walked out toward the old lumber pile on the Gilberts 
 Mills road:
 
 SIDETRACKED 233 
 
 "I am writing .to you, Molly, while the fair moon softly 
 
 shines, 
 
 As it did the night before you went away; 
 When it shone in all its glory 
 And I told Love's old, old story 
 And you promised you'd return and wed some day." 
 
 It was a sickly, sentimental thing, being sung in all the 
 picture shows and Wednesday-evening courting hours. But 
 it was the second verse which probed the boy's heart and 
 always brought tears to his eyes: 
 
 "All alone I'm roaming, Molly, 
 Down the dear old village lane, 
 To the wildwood where we strolled with hearts so 
 
 light; 
 
 In the old church they are singing, 
 Fondest memories it's bringing 
 Of the girl I love, so far away, to-night. 
 Some folks laugh and call it folly 
 When I tell them you're still true, 
 But you love me, don't you, Molly? 
 Say you're coming back, please do!" 
 
 The boy forgot all about his poetry, unless it was to try 
 putting his loneliness and heart-hunger in words. Yet some 
 how he could not publish these. He filed them away with 
 Carol's letters. He lived, moved, had his being, in the box- 
 shop. 
 
 Johnathan had been elected president and treasurer, Char 
 ley Newton who had left an office job at the process works 
 to become the Forge bookkeeper (and learn how to thwart 
 Johnathan making entries in his books and getting them 
 awry), had been elected vice-president. Joe Partridge, who 
 had arisen to the prominence of foreman, was clerk of the 
 corporation, though Lawyer Bob Hentley did the secretarial 
 work and all Joel had to do was sign on the dotted line. 
 Nathan, not being of age, could not be an officer. His large 
 capacity was "General Superintendent." 
 
 As money flowed into the firm's coffers, the prospects of 
 the Forge family started looking up. 
 
 Johnathan began buying suits of clothes, evolved a pro 
 pensity for bat neckties and learned to smoke cigars. He 
 was less conscientious about his attendance at church and
 
 234 THE FOG 
 
 took long trips off "to keep the trade in line." Invariably 
 he found, however, that his son had contrived to do this by 
 letter. When his "trade" began discussing deals and dis 
 counts of which Johnathan had never heard, it made him feel 
 rather foolish and always angry. He returned grimly de 
 termined that he was going to run his own business or know 
 the reason why. But before the first day was ended, he had 
 become so engrossed in some new office contrivance or new 
 set of forms, that he forgot larger problems, or some quar 
 rel with his boy sent him off to walk the streets for hours 
 and pity himself. The matter of running his own business 
 sagged until it was time for another venture at "keeping the 
 trade in line." 
 
 The Forges left the Spring Street house and bought the 
 old Longstreet residence on Vermont Avenue. Whereupon 
 Mrs. Forge and Edith began to "put on style" and rise to 
 the occasion generally. The womenfolk of a prominent man 
 ufacturer had to keep up appearances. Charge accounts 
 were opened at the leading stores and for the first time in 
 her mortal existence Mrs. Forge's appetite for chocolate 
 caramels was satiated, the kind with nuts in them. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nathan was to become twenty-one on the second day of 
 December. I knew, as his confidant, that the original plan 
 was a wedding between Carol and himself on the ensuing 
 Christmas. But as that late summer and autumn dragged 
 along toward the first frosts, I grew increasingly worried. 
 The cause of my perturbation was Carol's correspond 
 ence. 
 
 The first letters, written in the initial pangs of separation, 
 had come to hand twice a week, or as often as Nat's reply 
 allowed. From September to the first week in November, no 
 letter whatever came for Nat. Then an epistle arrived which 
 the boy tore open and read with an avidity that was piteous. 
 She had been ill. She would write at greater length when 
 she felt better. 
 
 "I'd find an excuse to make a road trip, Bill, and go out 
 and see her," he told me. "But, hang it all, I can't leave 
 the factory. Dad would have things so snarled up when
 
 SIDETRACKED 235 
 
 I got back I'd be six months getting the debris cleared away 
 and things going smoothly again." 
 
 Worry weighed the boy down. He grew increasingly ir 
 ritable and somewhat surly. For hours at a time Johnathan 
 would sit and figure. He would prove to Nathan that on 
 some order made and shipped six months before they had 
 lost two mills of a cent on every carton. Thereupon he 
 declared that Nat's obstreperousness was heading his father 
 into bankruptcy. (Johnathan never spent hours figuring 
 orders where the firm had cleaned up handsomely and ab 
 sorbed the losses on lesser ventures.) He would arise in the 
 middle of the night and go down to the shop after the fires 
 had been lighted in late October to see if old Mike Hen- 
 nessy, the watchman, was sleeping on the job. He caught 
 him one night fortifying his courage with a short flat bottle 
 and discharged him on the spot. The help came down next 
 morning to find the fires out. It was noon before the plant 
 was again up to standard. Father and son fought out the 
 question of "hiring and firing" in front of the help which 
 is an extremely effective method for maintaining respect 
 among employees for the principals in any business and all 
 this sapped Nat's vitality. 
 
 "Thank God you're twenty-one in a few weeks and my 
 responsibility is ended !" the father swore as he paced the 
 expansive dining room of the sepulchral Longstreet resi 
 dence. His eyes were wild and his hair was rumpled. He 
 walked with his hands in his pockets and occasionally grabbed 
 up a book or magazine to hurl at his son whose retorts were 
 always so apt, effective and unanswerable that Johnathan 
 had to vent his feelings in action somehow. 
 
 Then the night when Nathan was twenty-one came, 
 the epochal date when he was free at last. 
 
 It was marked by two episodes. The quarrel over Edith 
 and the newspaper clipping I was called upon to give my 
 friend. 
 
 It was a Saturday night and Edith was taking part in 
 a church concert on the morrow. She had left the house 
 ostensibly to "practice her part" at the home of a friend. 
 Instead of which she had met the Nelson boy and inquiry 
 developed, quite accidentally, that she had "skipped off" to 
 a dance in Wickford. 
 
 Nathan had taken his sister's part. The boy, in the exalta-
 
 236 THE FOG 
 
 tion of his majority, had dropped an unfortunate remark: 
 
 "You'll be just about as successful in thwarting Edie as 
 you've been successful in thwarting me. You think you 
 busted up my engagement to Carol, dad. But you didn't. 
 Carol went away simply to get her clothes ready. And you 
 might as well know now as any time that I'm marrying her 
 on Christmas day in exactly three weeks!" 
 
 Johnathan had remained rather wild-eyed for a moment. 
 Then he found his voice and started cursing. Not content 
 with cursing, he waited until his son's back was turned and 
 then dealt him a blow in the shoulder which sent Nathan 
 smashing against the table. He knocked off crockery with 
 a crash and sent a coffee pot into the front of a near-by 
 china closet. 
 
 Mrs. Forge came running, and as usual, joined in the al 
 tercation. Johrtathan's cursing included his wife. His wife 
 turned livid at a particularly vile epithet and hurled a plate. 
 Johnathan dodged the plate and it went neatly through a 
 pane of heavy glass. Then Johnathan picked up a chair 
 and threw it. It hit the dome above the dining table and 
 dropped its glass in a shower, leaving the brass shell sway 
 ing ludicrously. Mrs. Forge shrieked and Johnathan bel 
 lowed. 
 
 On the night of the son's majority a pleasant time was 
 had by all ! 
 
 Nathan was unhurt. He walked from the room, got his 
 hat and coat. He passed out the front door and left his 
 father and mother having their last quarrel, while he was 
 an occupant of their house. He came to me. 
 
 "Any mail, Bill ?" he asked anxiously. 
 
 I was punching away at my typewriter in the sitting room. 
 I recollect that I took a long moment to fill my pipe and 
 relight it before I answered. But there was no way out 
 for me. I had been working, trying subconsciously to 
 evolve a way to break the news to my friend gently. 
 
 "No, Nat," I said at length. "There's no mail come for 
 you directly. But mother gave me a newspaper when I 
 came home an Ohio paper, addressed to me." 
 
 "A paper!" cried the boy. "What's the big idea?" 
 
 There was no way out, indeed. The paper was lying on 
 my desk. An item in the "Social and Personal" column 
 was marked in red ink. I handed it across.
 
 SIDETRACKED 237 
 
 COLE-GARDNER 
 
 A pretty home wedding was solemnized at the residence of 
 Mr. and Mrs. P. H. Gardner on Temple Street last evening, 
 when Mr. Gardner's daughter Carol was joined in matrimony 
 to Mr. Blodgett Cole, son of Mr. and Mrs. Roger Cole of 
 Union Place. The marriage was the outcome of a boy-and-girl 
 romance begun in the graded schools of East Gilead, when . . . 
 
 I don't think my friend ever quite finished reading that 
 item. The paper dropped through his fingers, through his 
 knees, down with a sharp plop! to the carpet. 
 "Bill!" cried my friend hoarsely, "Bill!" 
 "Hard luck, Nat !" was all I could say. "But don't you 
 let it upset you. If she's that kind of girl, she wasn't worth 
 waiting for in the first place." 
 
 The boy stumbled down our front steps. By the time I 
 had spoken to my mother and secured hat and coat, he had 
 disappeared. 
 
 Where he went no one knows. Anyhow, it doesn't mat 
 ter. Around eight o'clock he appeared at the box-shop. 
 He unlocked the office door and groped his way inside. 
 
 The office had expanded in keeping with the rest of the 
 plant. It now bore little resemblance to the room in which 
 Nat had kept bitter-sweet rendezvous with Carol in those 
 Memory Nights. A private office two of them, because 
 Johnathan had insisted upon one had been constructed off 
 on the right. And Nathan stumbled into his own, leaving 
 all doors open and lamps burning. He sank in his swivel 
 chair and his forehead went down in his arms. 
 
 "Hello !" called a cheery voice. 
 
 Nathan raised his head. His face was the countenance of 
 a middle-aged man. 
 
 A girl was standing in the doorway. She was hatless, 
 despite the winter chill. She wore an oversized cloak of 
 heavy green plaid. The sleeves were too long and had been 
 folded back. The cloak was unbuttoned; two of the but 
 tons, in fact, were missing, and a third was due to fall off 
 momentarily. Underneath the cloak was a plain white shirt
 
 238 THE FOG 
 
 waist with an inappropriate low neck. But her hair was 
 done very prettily and her face was flushed with health and 
 the nip of the night wind. It was Milly Richards. 
 
 "Hello!" returned Nat lifelessly. 
 
 "Why! What's the matter, Nathan? You're sick!" 
 
 The boy's hollow eyes fastened upon the girl. Deliber 
 ately he looked down her figure as she stood in the doorway, 
 from the pile of brown hair with its marcelled wave to the 
 curve of her neck, the slightly heaving bosom, the ample 
 torso and hips, the stolid ankles. 
 
 "Shut the door!" said Nathan. 
 
 Milly was puzzled, not a little alarmed. But she shut the 
 door. Across to a chair she moved. Keeping her eyes in 
 tently upon him, she raised her forearms, with locked hands, 
 and rested them across the corner of the intervening desk 
 top. 
 
 The lad continued to gaze upon her. The color of his lips 
 wae gruesome. No word was spoken. 
 
 The clock on the wall showed seventeen minutes past 
 eight. The night wind blew some papers from Charley New 
 ton's desk in the outer office where the door had been left 
 open. 
 
 "Nathan ! Something horrible's happened ! Can't you tell 
 me?" 
 
 "Milly! You know how much trouble father and I are 
 always having around the shop, here?" 
 
 "Yes ! 'Course I know ! So does everybody !" 
 
 "It's reached the point, Milly, where I can't stand it any 
 longer." 
 
 "All the fellers and girls would follow you out to a per 
 son, if you was to ask 'em." 
 
 "I'm especially thinking of home. You can imagine, 
 can't you, that if dad quarrels with me here, he acts the same 
 way at home. Well, he does, anyhow! And I'm sick 
 of it!" 
 
 "Then I should think you'd get out and," she dropped 
 her eyes, adding unsteadily, "get a home o' your 
 own." 
 
 "I haven't any one to do it with, Milly." 
 
 His face returned to his arms. "I thought I had, but I 
 haven't." 
 
 "You thought you had?"
 
 SIDETRACKED 239 
 
 "I thought I had, yes. But the girl went off and married 
 somebody else. I just learned it to-night!" 
 
 "She couldn't have loved you very much to do that, 
 Nathan." 
 
 "I suppose not! No!" 
 
 "I'm I'm awful sorry, Nathan! Sorry for you! If 
 there was anything I could do, you know I'd do it, don't 
 you?" 
 
 He raised his face again. His hands wandered around 
 the desk top, as though groping blindly. 
 
 Fog! Fog! Or perhaps he was searching for some 
 thing. 
 
 "Milly, I feel like the loneliest chap on God's earth!" 
 Two huge tears brimmed in his hot, hard eyes, blurred his 
 sight, zigzagged down his haggard, unshaven cheeks. He 
 arose, walked to the window. The girl's eyes were riveted 
 on him. When he came close to her, she only tilted her 
 head back to look up into his face. 
 
 "Nathan," she lisped, "is there anything I could do to 
 make you happy?" 
 
 It was her soft, ample bosom which he saw heaving that 
 brought that constricted feeling across his own chest and 
 words to his lips. 
 
 "I don't know, Milly. Oh, God, I'm tired tired !" 
 
 Milly found the strength to rise. She had seen Nat enter 
 the office and followed to tell him there had been a mistake 
 of ten cents in her weekly envelope. But it was plain she 
 had come instead to encounter, all unwittingly, her Amethyst 
 Moment. 
 
 She made an appealing picture, standing before the lad 
 with wistful solicitation on her face, half -frightened, not 
 knowing whether to stay or to flee, held half by morbid 
 curiosity, half by the titanic possibilities of the drama. Every 
 thing about her was cheap, but was that not because she 
 had been denied something better like the boy himself ? 
 
 Hardly knowing that he did so, groping, the scion of the 
 House of Forge raised his left hand. His fingers touched 
 the fabric of her cloak sleeve. 
 
 He did not especially want Milly. He wanted Woman 
 the solacing, maternal spirit wanted it horribly in one of 
 life's great disappointments. Milly at the moment only stood 
 for Woman.
 
 240 THE FOG 
 
 The girl did not shrink from his touch. She stood motion 
 less, waiting, with the blood dying out of her face. 
 
 The boy's other hand found the girl's other arm. Both 
 his hands crept up toward her ample shoulders. 
 
 Nathan took old Jake Richards' daughter to his heart. 
 And old Jake Richards' daughter responded somehow, 
 frightened out of her wits. 
 
 It was twenty-one minutes past eight. The town clerk's 
 office would be open until nine o'clock. The day was Satur 
 day and taxpayers came in to settle their assessments and 
 water rents. There was time, then, that night, to get a 
 marriage license. 
 
 Nathan had no heart to take his hideoiis disappointment 
 back to a home where father and mother were still "at it." 
 Forever ''at it." 
 
 Milly thought it a great lark. On the way uptown her 
 head was swimming with the realization. 
 
 "I guess Pa and Maw ain't got the stunning of their lives 
 coming when they see I've copped off the boss!" 
 
 VI 
 
 One night back over the years, Nathan and I had idled 
 down the Green River in the starlight, and the poet had 
 dreamed dreams of his wedding day fantastic, vague, 
 exotic the wonder noon of the future all blurred in 
 autumn lights, laughter, love and flowers. 
 
 Fred Babcock, real-estate agent and justice of the peace, 
 in the Norwalk Block, tucked a small brown flask hurriedly 
 in the bottom drawer of his desk when he heard somebody 
 coming up the stairs. He threw his "chew" in the stove 
 and nipped his finger on the hot iron door. He was 
 shaking the smarting hand and swearing when Nathan 
 appeared in the doorway. There was some one behind 
 him. 
 
 "Mr. Babcock," asked the boy in a strained voice, "won 
 der if I could get you to perform a m-m-marriage ?" 
 
 "Whose?" gaped Fred. 
 
 "Mine! Mine and Miss Richards." 
 
 Fred looked from one to the other blankly. 
 
 "Well, of course, if it's bad as that," he assented. "Come
 
 SIDETRACKED 241 
 
 in! Gawd! I ain't hitched nobody for so long b'darned if 
 I know where to look for the book." 
 
 Milly clung to Nathan frightenedly. Her other hand held 
 her cloak together, for the dangling button had ceased its 
 dangling somewhere en route. 
 
 Fred found the book in an empty cigar box that had 
 fallen upon a pile of old overshoes and fishing tackle. 
 
 "B'darn ! We gotta have a witness !" he declared. "An* 
 you gotcha license all proper, aincher?" 
 
 Nathan could produce a license but not a witness. Fred 
 departed to "scare one out." He was pleased with the pros 
 pect of making five dollars so easily to top off the week, 
 just like "picking it up in the street." 
 
 While Fred was absent, Milly and Nathan sat stiffly. 
 Dimly in the grief -stunned boy's mind was a thought that 
 by this he was going Carol one better ! Wait until she heard ! 
 Then too, he never would have to go back to his father and 
 mother. Milly was all right ! As good as the run of 'em ! 
 She was The Sex anyhow and had proved that she loved 
 him. Had she not stayed at work during the strike? Had 
 she not gone uptown once and brought him down a basket 
 of supper, unasked? 
 
 Fred came back with a colored man in tow, old Ezra 
 Hassock, janitor for a half-dozen Main Street blocks and 
 tender of their nocturnal fires. He wore white overalls 
 and a dented felt hat. The hat had cobwebs on it, and his 
 hands hung from the length of his arms like smoked hams. 
 
 "Well, stand up, and we'll have the agony over," was 
 the cheery way the justice of the peace phrased it. "Gotta 
 ring?" 
 
 "Yes," said Nathan thickly. "I bought one when we came 
 across the square just now." 
 
 "Well, grab her left lunch-hook and hang on," was Fred's 
 equally jovial way of directing the ceremonies. "You, Ezra ! 
 Take the cotton battin' out your ears and look like a witness !" 
 
 "Ain't got no cotton battin' in mah ears!" rejoined Ezra. 
 Thereat all present laughed. It was an excellent joke. 
 
 "In the name of God, Amen!" 
 
 A knife ran into Nathan's heart. Where was Carol this 
 moment and what was she doing ? The paper must have been 
 mailed a week before she had been several days on her 
 honeymoon already. . . . Carol had wanted him to get the
 
 242 THE FOG 
 
 Harvey house in Pearl Street. . . . Milly's hand was very 
 sweaty and hard, calloused from the pasting of many boxes. 
 . . . Where had old Ezra got so many cobwebs on his hat? 
 . . . Where would he take Milly that first night? . . . 
 Where was Carol and what 
 
 "Yes ! I mean 'I do !' " he answered anent keeping, lov 
 ing and cherishing this female in sickness and in health and 
 all the rest of it, whatever it was. 
 
 He was dimly conscious that he was trying to get the ring 
 on Milly's finger; it didn't fit half so well as it had in the 
 jewelry store. Ezra was grinning showing ivories like an 
 enameled picket-fence it was fourteen minutes after nine 
 o'clock Carol had said she wanted the living room fur 
 nished in Mission 
 
 "... I now therefore pronounce you man and wife and 
 may God bless your union, Amen! And it'll cost you five 
 bucks." 
 
 Nathan and Milly came down into Main Street. It looked 
 quite like Main Street on a hundred other Saturday nights. 
 
 "Where'll we go ?" asked Milly, as they paused on the top 
 step in front of the Norwalk Block so as not to be jostled 
 by the grocery-bill-paying, Sunday-meat-buying crowd. 
 She clung to Nathan's arm with one hand and in the other 
 held her marriage certificate as though she didn't know 
 what to do with it. Which she didn't. 
 
 "I dunno!" said Nathan vaguely. "What do you want 
 to do?" 
 
 "I want to go home and tell Ma and the kids," returned 
 Milly honestly. "To think when I left the house to-night, 
 I was coming back married! My Gawd!" 
 
 They descended the four stone steps and were obliterated 
 at once in the serpentine sidewalk traffic of hopeless medioc 
 rity.
 
 BOOK TWO 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 
 
 Regardless of the chagrin the reminder often cost its wom 
 enfolk, the foundation for the Ruggles family "Money" 
 had been laid in the junk business. Junk. Exactly. Junk! 
 
 Jasper Ruggles, the grandfather, had started life as one of 
 those peddlers who drove about New England in a cart re 
 sembling a small-sized circus wagon of flaming scarlet. He 
 swapped tinware with farmers' wives for rags and old metal 
 and never got cheated. From gathering old metal was but 
 a step to melting it. From melting was but another step to 
 finding a manufactured product. So an iron works had 
 flourished following the Civil War and canny investments 
 had done the rest. 
 
 Amos Ruggles, Gordon's father, called himself a barrister, 
 not a lawyer, but a barrister ! He maintained an expen 
 sive suite of offices in one of the most prominent Springfield 
 buildings, but no one had ever heard of his trying a case 
 and among his fellow attorneys he was considered more or 
 less of a joke. He looked after the family "investments" 
 and dabbled in politics. Six months of the year he spent 
 traveling, principally in Europe, where he demonstrated what 
 Americans are not like at home, even at their worst. 
 
 In appearance, Amos Ruggles was a tall, ample-girthed im 
 maculately clad man with a certain over-clean whiteness about 
 him, a whiteness that looked unhealthy. He suggested he 
 had been kept away from sunlight until his flesh had become 
 bleached. His thin, silky-fine white hair was combed from 
 the back of his head forward, and he had a perpetually sur 
 prised look in his eye as though forever startled at finding 
 himself alive and asking, "Bless my stars! Where am I, 
 anyhow?" He had another look on his face, a look of always 
 being on the point of saying something tremendously impor 
 tant but never quite bringing himself to do it.
 
 246 THE FOG 
 
 His political experience to date had been but a single term 
 in the legislature. Certain questionable "interests" who 
 wanted a "perfect dummy" in the place had been responsible, 
 not Amos's solicitude for the welfare of the laboring classes 
 and his brilliant defense of the Constitution, as he had always 
 assumed. During this single term, his Bills were versatile 
 if not always feasible. Among those especially demonstrat 
 ing the man's brilliance may be cited (i) A Bill to miti 
 gate social conditions by making it a penal offense for la 
 borers earning less than a thousand a year to have more than 
 two children; (2) A Bill making it a criminal violation to 
 alight from moving street cars while facing in the wrong 
 direction. His bills were quietly killed in committee. Still, 
 they were good bills and if they had gone through, Amos 
 felt that he would not have lived wholly in vain. His inten 
 tions were good, at any rate, even if the execution of his 
 legislation may have presented difficulties insurmountable. 
 
 Margaret Ruggles, his wife, was a Theddon and even as 
 a girl had been so wealthy she could afford to be homely. 
 She came from "Boston and Rhode Island," as the local 
 society reporters quoted it, making it sound like a railroad. 
 
 In later life Margaret Ruggles's nerve was iron and her 
 savoir faire flawless. Rumor had it that she instructed Amos 
 how and when to do everything, from selling United Fruit 
 Common to changing his waistcoat. And a local grocer had 
 a yarn about having sent a special team out to the Ruggleses 
 residence to deliver three lemons, and Margaret had ordered 
 the man to wait and take back two of them because cook 
 had discovered there were already two lemons in the house. 
 She was a close buyer and a difficult customer and yet young 
 Gordon only child of these two was allowed, from 
 earliest boyhood, to spend money like a Monte Cristo in 
 knickers. At three he cried for the moon but was given 
 the earth instead, and found it so absorbing that he never 
 gave it back. Not even when other people wanted it. 
 
 Gordon had never gone to school three consecutive years 
 in his life. He had never shown interest in anything for 
 two consecutive days, in his life, except fighting. Yet he 
 even refused to make fighting a business, or he might have 
 turned out a notable pugilist or worked his belliocosities off 
 to some good purpose in the Army. 
 
 Amos and Margaret absolutely refused to credit their son
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 247 
 
 with faults. They looked at him and beheld that he had a 
 body, a brain, a temperament and an appetite. But faults? 
 Not a one! He committed indiscretions, irresponsibilities, 
 sowed a few wild oats, perhaps! But that was to be ex 
 pected. Why should he work when the Ruggleses already 
 had more money than they could ever spend ? Besides, why 
 should he work when he wouldn't work and they couldn't 
 make him work, even if they wanted? That he would ulti 
 mately "go in for something" as his father had "gone in" for 
 law and foreign travel was vaguely understood. But 
 the insinuation that Gordon was one whit worse than a mil 
 lion other boys they would not tolerate an instant. The 
 Ruggleses second generation had a queer outlook on 
 life, one which it is perhaps difficult for hoi polloi to under 
 stand: The world was their personal bootjack and any one 
 who essayed to question that fact was a "disturbing ele 
 ment" and "a menace against established institutions." 
 
 Nevertheless, Gordon at twenty-six was giving Amos not 
 a little anxiety. While a few wild oats were expected of a 
 boy to show that he was a boy and virile in fact, Amos 
 had rolled in a wild oat or two himself when a boy or when 
 his wife was occasionally elsewhere it didn't necessarily 
 follow that the son should turn wholesale agriculturist and 
 rear elevators with the family money in which to house his 
 disturbing grain crops. Not that it offended Amos's sense 
 of decency the things he had to pay for, from broken 
 china to broken women so much as it affected the family 
 prestige. It was time the boy calmed down, and the boy 
 gave no symptoms whatever of calming down. He had, in 
 fact, calmed upward considerably of late and grown a little 
 out of hand, if indeed he ever was in hand. Thereat 
 Amos, like most of his type, looking into his own experi 
 ence for solution, hit upon the brilliant idea that what Gordon 
 needed most of all to straighten him out was a brainy, 
 strong-minded wife. The very thing. Gordon must have 
 a wife. Then a baby or two. If a baby or two couldn't 
 tone Gordon down then nothing could tone Gordon down. 
 Amos would speak to his son about it. 
 
 Which, on a winter's evening in March, 1915, he did. 
 Gordon was talking about going to France and "guttin' Frit- 
 zies" for the fun of it, and that must be nipped at any cost. 
 Why, the boy might get shot. Amos was especially peeved
 
 248 THE FOG 
 
 at the Germans and the war, anyhow it was making a con 
 tinental colander out of all his favorite watering places and 
 spoiling his annual trips abroad by filling the seas with sub 
 marines that actually blew people up. Not that Gordon cared 
 anything about the moral aspects of the war. Such a venture 
 merely promised a new thrill. 
 
 Amos called his boy into the big Ruggles library, had a 
 Scotch and soda with him, lighted a big cigar and assumed 
 a place on the hearth rug with one hand behind his coat tails. 
 There he rocked on his toes and heels and became the De 
 claiming Parent. 
 
 II 
 
 "Marry!" cried Gordon. "Who the devil will I marry? 
 Those I might marry I don't want I can have 'em any old 
 day. And those I do want I can't have, because they won't 
 have me. So damn all women, anyhow." 
 
 "Tut, tut, sir!" cried Amos. "Your mother is a woman, 
 understand !" 
 
 "Gad, so she is! Well, well! We'll make an exception 
 of her. Damn all the others excepting " 
 
 "I'd like to know," declaimed Amos grandly, as he had 
 expounded his two-child-a- family bill before the legislature, 
 "I'd like to know, sir, where the woman is you might want 
 that you can't have? Tut, tut, sir! Do not let us fritter 
 away our time with nonsense." 
 
 "If you want to know straight, Pop, there's only one 
 skirt in these whole United States I could ever care two 
 hamstrings for. But she's about as interested in me as that 
 Frances Willard dame would be to sit in on a bock-beer con 
 vention." 
 
 "Ah! Then you have felt the possibilities in the grand 
 passion? And may I have the lady's name, sir? We shall 
 see what can be done about ii." 
 
 "It's that girl of Aunt Grace's Madelaine!" 
 
 "What, sir? What? The brat from the orphanage?" 
 
 "Believe me, Pop, she's a long throw from being a brat. 
 I guess you haven't seen her lately." 
 
 "Not for half a dozen years, sir, I haven't seen her. Went 
 to college, didn't she? To be a lady doctor, or something?" 
 
 "She's in Medical School now. She graduated from
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 249 
 
 Radcliffe this past June. And you can take it from me, Pop, 
 she's there!" 
 
 "But, my God, sir ! Do you mean to sit there and in 
 sinuate that a brat from an orphanage a Nobody ! re 
 fuses to look with favor on the suit of a Ruggles? She 
 cannot understand who you are, sir ! You cannot have asked 
 her seriously. Have you asked her, by the way? Have 
 you ? Seriously ?" 
 
 "No. And I haven't asked the King of Belgium to come 
 over here and take a job driving my Stutz, either. There 
 are some things that simply aren't done." 
 
 "But what has she against you, especially? Doesn't the 
 girl realize she's a Nobody? Doesn't she see how she could 
 improve her social position by marrying my son a Rug- 
 gles?" 
 
 "She doesn't give a hoot for anybody's social position. 
 Not even her own. She's class, Pop, with a capital C. If 
 you could see her as she's grown up now, you'd understand 
 and close the door softly as you go out. I've got as much 
 chance of making a hit with her as the Czar of Russia stands 
 of being elected recording secretary of the Forest Park 
 Home Improvement and Loan Society." 
 
 "Do I understand you to say, sir, you want this girl 
 that you'd marry her, and settle down if she'd have you?" 
 
 "Will a duck swim?" 
 
 "We are not discussing ducks, sir. We are discussing 
 women! This is most interesting and enlightening. We 
 will look into this matter. Yes, we certainly will look into 
 the matter. At once!" 
 
 Which Amos Ruggles at once set about. As John Alden 
 for his boy, he was one of the most efficient steam fitters who 
 ever tackled a job and had to go back for his tools while 
 a boiler exploded. 
 
 in 
 
 Having nothing of larger consequence to attend upon, that 
 week, Amos took a mighty trip to Boston to interview the 
 "brat from the Orphanage" on behalf of his beloved off 
 spring. 
 
 Madelaine, strange as the statement may appear, had never 
 met Amos Ruggles. Rising hastily now from her book-
 
 250 THE FOG 
 
 littered desk, she beheld her maid admit to her outer sitting 
 room a very carefully groomed, white-faced, fastidiously 
 caned and perfectly spatted elderly man who wore a red 
 carnation in his buttonhole and a Facial Expression prepared 
 for the worst. 
 
 But Madelaine's interest was not to be compared with old 
 "Am's" stunned surprise when he raised his owlish eyes and 
 saw "the brat from the Orphanage" confronting him from 
 the opposite doorway. Subconsciously Amos had failed to 
 conceive of that brat as anything but a brat. Certainly not 
 a woman grown to maturity. Up to the moment of admit 
 tance he had looked vaguely forward to interviewing a 
 knock-kneed child in pigtails and a gingham apron. He had 
 once visited an orphanage while on a legislative committee. 
 He had come away impressed that the crying need of the 
 institution at the moment was to have its individual and col 
 lective nose wiped. 
 
 Instead of such a mite of parentless humanity whom he 
 might pat on the head and suggest peanuts to, the man con 
 fronted a tall, perfectly poised, athletic young woman whose 
 calm eyes made him wonder if he had rumpled himself any 
 where in that hectic two-hour trip on the Boston and 
 Albany. 
 
 For an instant Amos felt petulant. Persons unknown 
 had tricked him. For Madge Theddon was grown into a 
 "goddess." The metaphor is Amos's. And she "had a way 
 with her." Yes, she had very much of a way with her. 
 One of her fellow students had described her: "Calm as 
 a mountain thinking aloud; ineligible for analysis as moon 
 light playing on a nocturnal waterfall." 
 
 "I am Madelaine, yes!" she announced in response to 
 "Am's" suggestion that there was a mistake somewhere. 
 "You are my mother's brother-in-law. I am very glad to 
 make your acquaintance, Mr. Ruggles." She moved for 
 ward, extending a lithe, cool, capable hand. 
 
 Amos took the hand and kissed it, or he believed he kissed 
 it, at the same time annoyed that she had called him her 
 mother's brother-in-law instead of her own uncle. 
 
 "Madam, charmed!" And Amos made another bow. 
 But he was not charmed. He was bumped. He was badly 
 bumped ! There was not a doubt about it. 
 
 With an amused smile, Madelaine's maid withdrew.
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 251 
 
 Amos produced a billowy silk handkerchief and began pat 
 ting various exposed portions of his anatomy. He ran 
 out of exposed portions and then accepted the chair Made- 
 laine indicated, still in his imbecilic daze. 
 
 "Y-Y-You may think it strange that I have called, Miss 
 Madel Miss Madel Miss Theddon it is about my son. 
 You two have become quite well acquainted in the past, I 
 understand." 
 
 "Quite," returned the girl. Her tone was a trifle ironic. 
 
 Amos was at a loss. 
 
 "Yes, yes ! True, true very true." Came another dis 
 tressing pause while Amos considered. "You see, it's like 
 this, Miss Madel Miss Madel Miss Theddon getting 
 along famously, are we not? nothing could please his 
 mother and myself just now more than the knowledge that 
 he is married and safely in the hands of some good and 
 firm- willed woman. And so beautiful apartment you have 
 here ! I decided I would come down and talk it over with 
 you." 
 
 "I see," Madelaine responded. "You've come to enlist 
 my aid, perhaps, in rinding a wife for Gordon. Or my 
 advice as to how to proceed ; which is it ?" 
 
 "Well er in fact, a little of both and none of either." 
 Amos was happily growing more at ease. He stored his 
 handkerchief in his outside breast pocket, left a couple of 
 inches exposed, put his pink, manicured finger tips pre 
 cisely together between his knees. 
 
 "The idea is this, Miss Madelaine. The boy is well 
 the boy is deeply impressed by yourself and purely as 
 a father with a father's paternal interest, understand I 
 have called to appraise for myself the extent of the gulf 
 between you and get you to consider the matter for er 
 early negotiation." 
 
 "What matter? Just what do you mean?" 
 
 "The matter, Miss Madelaine, of er becoming his 
 wife!" 
 
 Amos breathed once more. The worst was over. 
 
 Madelaine could not control the flush that crept toward 
 her temples. 
 
 "Did Gordon ask that you do this ?" she demanded. 
 
 "Not at all ! Not at all ! The idea is my own entirely 
 absolutely my own!" Amos inferred that as an idea it
 
 252 THE FOG 
 
 certainly had its points and on the whole he was rather proud 
 of it. 
 
 "Then Gordon knows nothing of it?" 
 
 "Not a whittle, Miss Madeiaine, not a whittle." 
 
 The girl sat for a time in silence. Her emotions were 
 resentful. They wanted to riot. Her lips twitched once 
 or twice. Then came a saving sense of humor. 
 
 "Just why should I consider a marriage with your son, 
 Mr. Ruggles ? On what basis do you rear that contention ?" 
 
 "I er I " 
 
 Madeiaine pitied his sudden distress. For the first time 
 in his life Amos Ruggles appreciated that any reference 
 to the Ruggles wealth would be crude and insulting, before 
 such a woman as he confronted now. 
 
 "He's a he's a mighty fine boy, Miss Madeiaine!" 
 was the father's compromise. 
 
 "I apologize if I seem rude, Mr. Ruggles. But that must 
 remain a matter of opinion." 
 
 "You mean he isn't a mighty fine boy ?" 
 
 "Must we discuss him his good points and his bad ?" 
 
 "But he has no bad points, my dear lady. Of course, 
 during adolescence he has been virile and erratic and per 
 haps indulged himself in some few indiscretions common 
 to all boys. Why, I have even passed through such a 
 stage myself. But there's nothing really bad about him 
 nothing but what a characterful wife could eventually 
 eradicate." 
 
 "Mr. Ruggles, has Gordon ever recounted how very un- 
 gentlemanly in fact, grossly insulting his conduct to 
 ward myself has been consistently from the moment of 
 our first meeting?" 
 
 Incredulity, a flick of exasperation, now passed over Amos 
 Ruggles's features. There was a certain trick of intonation 
 in Madelaine's voice which quashed irrevocably any argu 
 ment that Gordon had not been ungentlemanly and insult 
 ing. And yet Amos was not quite willing to subscribe to 
 that. And argument was cheapening. 
 
 "Just how has he acted what has he done ?" 
 
 "You really wish me to tell you?" 
 
 "I should consider it in the light of a very great favor, 
 my dear lady." 
 
 Madeiaine considered. She leaned back in the chair and
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 263 
 
 put two slender fingers of each hand at a temple, her dark 
 eyes fixed appraisingly upon her foster-uncle. 
 
 Then she told him. 
 
 She began with Gordon's conduct and language the day 
 ten years before, when he had violated the privacy of her 
 bedroom. That was insipid, however, beside the later in 
 dignities she had suffered. She gave a truthful account of 
 each situation when he had taken her at a disadvantage, 
 forced himself upon her, defiled her lips or tried to com 
 promise her still more seriously. The night of the bogus 
 auto accident became but an incident in that sordid recount. 
 The most brazen piece of insult and effrontery had been 
 a night in a Boston hotel when Gordon had followed her, 
 secured a room next to her own and bought a mercenary 
 night clerk to let him scratch the girl's name from the 
 register and substitute "Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Ruggles" 
 instead. He then added the consecutive room numbers as 
 a suite. Cheap witnesses had been procured to substan 
 tiate that Madelaine had apparently gone to Boston, met 
 Gordon clandestinely and shared an apartment with him 
 for a night. With his citadel of crazy folly thus gar 
 risoned, the foster-nephew had brazenly offered the girl the 
 alternative of marriage or exposure, and only an astute 
 lawyer had contrived to squelch the scandal without pub 
 licity. 
 
 Amos was dum founded. She waited for him to com 
 ment. But he held his peace. Then Madelaine laughed 
 good-naturedly. 
 
 "And after such persecution I hope you'll permit me to 
 call it that, Mr. Ruggles ten or twelve years of it ! you 
 come to me and suggest I marry your son because he's 
 really 'not such a bad fellow, after all !' " 
 
 "Don't you believe a good woman can reform a 
 man ?" Amos demanded quickly. 
 
 "That all depends on the man. In some cases, absolutely 
 not. The material must first be there to work upon. As 
 a general proposition, I consider it thankless nonsense. 
 There may be some good men who have been bruised and 
 buffeted and almost wrecked by life's cruellest vicissitudes. 
 They may have lost their moorings and their faith in human 
 nature. All they require is kind and loving care, and 
 tenderness and proper ministration to bring them back to
 
 254 THE FOG 
 
 normal. In so far as that is 'reform', I believe it possible 
 and admirable and well worth the effort. But taking a man 
 who has never had a care or worry and whose career has 
 been one long fling in self-indulgence, and endeavoring to 
 makes a man of him the woman who will waste her time 
 trying it displays evidences of imbecility." 
 
 "Then I take it there's no hope for Gordon ?" 
 
 "I haven't said so. I've said that Gordon, or any man 
 who wants my respect and ministration, must prove to me 
 first that, in popular language, he's 'got the stuff in him.' 
 I'll say this much : When your son Gordon has proved to 
 me he's sincerely penitent and made of the material that 
 perhaps hasn't had a fair chance to develop, he stands as 
 good a chance to gain my favor as any man. That's all 
 the 'encouragement' I can give. Just now I've too much 
 to occupy my time to think of matrimony, anyway. It 
 doesn't enter into my plans. I'm studying to be a physi 
 cian." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know! Very commendable. I wish Gordon 
 had some interest in life some " 
 
 "I'll even go further, Mr. Ruggles. I'll say that all the 
 vulgarity and insult which I've suffered consistently from 
 your son will not handicap him if he turns over a new 
 leaf and shows he's really made of stuff worth while. In 
 fact, I'd be inclined to count it in his favor, strange as it 
 may sound. For it will be a criterion of what he has over 
 come." 
 
 "Thank you," said Amos. "Thank you very much !" 
 
 IV 
 
 All the week that call of Gordon's father perturbed 
 Madelaine. Or rather, it accentuated emotions which the 
 nature of her activities and the demands upon her time were 
 forcibly keeping latent. 
 
 She had reached twenty-four and was still heart-free. 
 Yet there were times when she distrusted herself. She 
 wanted to shed tears without exactly knowing why. She 
 felt herself groping out for a Something she could not give 
 a name? Was it love? It troubled her. 
 
 She had met men, all types and varieties and tempera-
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 255 
 
 ments. She had golfed with them, danced with them, 
 ridden with them, crossed social swords with them at house 
 parties and on yacht cruises. She had looked at them 
 frankly and fearlessly; assayed them; asked herself with 
 a cold brain if she could think of herself as wife to any 
 of them, with all which wifehood, to a girl like herself, 
 implied. The answer had always been negative, from re 
 pulsion or indifference. She mothered them, she sister ed 
 them, she heard their troubles, she even allowed a few of 
 the elect to flirt with her, in a harmless, blue-blooded way. 
 But as for meeting a man in whose personality she could 
 abandon herself, whom she could tolerate beside her 
 always, in every situation that life might hold, most of 
 all in its great privacies, there had never been such a man. 
 She wondered at times if there would be. 
 
 The young architect had gone to the Argentine. For a 
 time he had corresponded with her. She felt a queer little 
 pang and breathed a sigh when news came back one autumn 
 of his marriage to the daughter of an American consul. 
 There had been a young artist whom she had met in Paris. 
 He had grasped her roughly in his arms one night and 
 covered her face and throat with kisses. Strange to relate, 
 she had felt neither insult nor repulsion. But she had dis 
 covered him a week later doing the same with another 
 woman. She had laughed a queer little laugh and con 
 sidered herself the butt of a rather good jest. 
 
 She and her mother had completed their world trip; 
 had come back across America; and she had begun her 
 college studies. She had counseled other girl's love affairs. 
 She had been bridesmaid at many weddings. She had 
 beheld love in all its wealth of tenderness and idealism; 
 and she had seen it defiled and degraded to brutish lust. 
 She knew what love could do, that it was very beautiful 
 and much to be desired. Yet she had a feeling that when 
 she loved, it would be with a force and passion that would 
 melt down the world her world and recast it. She must 
 proceed carefully and tolerate no blunders. 
 
 The name "Old Mother Hubbard" still clung to her. 
 She could not always approach her medical studies in that 
 cold, impersonal way she felt was necessary for professional 
 success. Human beings were always human beings, never 
 biological cases for the application of abstract logic or the
 
 256 THE FOG 
 
 working out of a theorem. At times she wondered if shi 
 were constituted to make a success of medicine, particu 
 larly obstetrics. She almost believed a course in nursing 
 would have supplied that hunger in her heart to alleviate 
 suffering. But there were so many nurses the life was 
 at times so proscribed and mechanical 
 
 It was queer that Amos Ruggles had chosen that par 
 ticular time to make his call. Because a month before, 
 her roommate of the past year had suddenly abandoned her 
 studies to become a wife, had written back from Japan 
 how much her life had been changed and enriched, con 
 tending that the course which Madelaine had elected was 
 unnatural and would never wholly bring her Woman Hap 
 piness. That hurt most of all. Because of late Madelaine 
 had begun to doubt it herself. And yet, marrying Gordon ! 
 Anybody but Gordon! 
 
 The fellow had a dread influence over her. She could 
 not describe it. It was cruelly mesmeric. It seemed to 
 have persisted, in spite of all the man's behavior, since the 
 first day she had beheld his hot 'young gaze upon her. 
 He had challenged her foster-mother that in the end he 
 would win her, by fair means or foul. Consistently through 
 the past decade he had kept in touch with her. Something 
 in his eyes declared, "Fight as much as you wish, my pretty 
 lady ; I'll have my way in the end." Now it was plain that 
 Gordon wanted her, as a man ; he must have conveyed that 
 desire to his family or Amos never would have made his 
 call. If Gordon persisted long enough, would he break 
 through her defenses and bear her away in spite of herself? 
 No, no, no! 
 
 Romance! What was romance? 
 
 The girl went back to her study table and tried to continue 
 her thesis. It was banal and lifeless and drab. 
 
 Romance ! What was romance ! 
 
 She threw down her fountain pen and cupped her cheeks 
 with her hands. 
 
 Straight before her on the wall was a long, narrow, 
 copper-hued frame. Inside it, a liberal expanse of brown 
 mapping. In the center of the mapping was a faded strip of 
 news-print. 
 
 Why was she saving that poem? Who was Nathaniel 
 Forge and why should he write such a poem?
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 257 
 
 Unconsciously she read over the lines again. And when 
 she had come to the name signed at the bottom, Madelaine 
 Theddon did a strange thing, for Madelaine Theddon. 
 That wonder who Nathaniel Forge might be, and why he 
 should have written such a poem, started her thoughts 
 romancing. That romancing crystallized in a concrete de 
 cision. What harm could there be in making a trip up to 
 this Paris, Vermont, in the week of vacation beginning 
 Monday, and learning what she might of Nathaniel Forge 
 even looking into his face, perhaps provided she did not 
 declare her identity or divulge her errand? 
 
 The more she thought about it, the more the novelty 
 of the proposal grew upon her. She had saved that poem 
 so long, it had meant so much, that she wanted that won 
 derment answered. 
 
 Could it be possible that Kismet had ordained that the 
 poem purposely should find its way into her life for a 
 beautiful purpose? She would see. Why not? 
 
 She put away her ponderous books with their long, itali 
 cized words and abstruse meanings. She would go to Paris, 
 Vermont, that following Monday, telling no one. 
 
 Madelaine arrived in our town at four o'clock of a drab, 
 depressing winter's afternoon. The weather was treacher 
 ously balmy. The snow was thin, hard-packed and dirty. 
 Paris in no other season of year looked less attractive or 
 more mediocre. She alighted from the Junction train and 
 walked down the length of the station platform with a 
 little dread. Did she want to know about Nathaniel Forge, 
 after all? Did she really want to see him? Suppose he 
 was hopeless, that the poem had simply been a trick of 
 circumstance and coincidence? Would it not be better 
 to let him remain ever as she had idealized him, whoever 
 and whatever he was, perhaps the One-Who-Might-Have- 
 Been. Then she condemned herself for an emotional, senti 
 mental little weakling, afraid to face facts. She wandered 
 up Depot Street to East Main, carrying a light traveling 
 bag, looking for the hotel. 
 
 In her trim tailored suit of green worsted and small
 
 258 THE FOG 
 
 mannish hat, she resembled a hundred traveling sales 
 women or demonstration women of the better class. Half 
 a dozen drummers so "placed" her before she had been in 
 the Whitney House ten minutes. With a room secured, she 
 started out to see the town. 
 
 The town! She wandered up one side of Main Street 
 and down the other. She saw a jumble of drab, discour 
 aged, discordant, chaotic blocks and buildings such as 
 border Main Street in every town of ten thousand inhabi 
 tants from the Presidio to Plymouth Rock. Its people 
 were a painfully self-conscious, muddy-shoed procession 
 of everybody not mentioned in Who's Who and never 
 likely to be mentioned in Who's Who. The sky was 
 smothered with depressing mist. It shut out the distant 
 mountain sky line. The sordidness and commonness of the 
 community grated horribly. 
 
 A single-track car line wound through Main Street, not 
 much caring whether cars went over it or not. The People's 
 National Bank, the Bishop Jewelry with the sidewalk clock 
 that was never correct, Joe Service's News Room, Edwards 
 Brothers' Cigar Store, The Red Front Grocery, the 
 Michalman Misses-and-Ladies-Suits, the Bon Ton Millinery, 
 the Woolworth Five-and-Ten, the Daily Telegraph office 
 with bulletins about the latest developments on the Somme, 
 the Masonic Temple, the Y. M. C. A., Williams Clothing 
 Emporium, a thousand towns had them and would always 
 have them until America ceased to be. She was glad she 
 possessed a sense of humor. And yet what a dispirited, 
 uninteresting, plodding sort of existence. The plainness 
 and crudity of everything bothered her. It was -piteous. 
 
 She saw a greasy barber shop next door to the filite 
 Lunch Room with a fly-speckled sign in the window of the 
 latter: "Eat Here or We Both Starve." She caught 
 glimpses of rakishly barbered heads moving about pool 
 tables behind a foggy window filled with wrestling-match 
 placards and announcements of dance carnivals. A basket 
 of eggs marked "Fresh at ijc" was set down close to the 
 glass in the window of the Metropolitan Drug Store. A 
 small boy with an enormous fur cap clanked the iron tie 
 ring in front of a gift shop with a torn awning. A washed- 
 out woman in a hideous hat waited in a sleigh while her 
 husband smoked a five-cent cigar and then came to untie
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 259 
 
 the huge-rumped horse with his big fingers and take his 
 place beside her beneath a ponderous buffalo robe. A long 
 curb-line of carefully groomed young bucks with no place 
 to go but home assayed her figure as she passed in front 
 of the Olympic Movie and commented about her ankles. 
 
 She stopped in front of the hotel again and tried to 
 decide what one thing was the keynote to the place and its 
 people. She finally decided it must be the dilapidated Ford 
 truck with a torn and dirty horse blanket thrown over its 
 radiator. The truck was left, headed into the curb in a 
 hay-strewn gutter, in front of the Atlantic and Pacific Tea 
 Store. A flock of pigeons about it were being extremely 
 bothered by the sidewalk traffic. 
 
 Madelaine was neither prig nor snob. Yet she won 
 dered how people could possibly pass all their lives in such 
 a place. Especially she pitied the women. She went inside 
 the hotel at last and found that the "Ladies' Parlor" over 
 looked the street. Before she made any inquiries as to 
 Nathan, she sank into one of the rockers. As she medi 
 tated, with a little ache of excitement in her heart, other 
 scenes came to her, scenes she unconsciously compared 
 with the lot of the town's women here. The first lamps 
 of evening blinked on and found her still meditating. 
 
 The shape of a hansom clopping through the London 
 fog; a careless laugh floating back on a French boulevard 
 in the hush of a soft, spring night; evening on the Grand 
 Canal with the eternal slap, slap, slap of the water and the 
 memory of a weird song mixed with the musty decay of old 
 palaces ; blue-toned Greece where the landscapes were as 
 clear and sharp as far-flung cameos of mountain size; the 
 heat-soaked Holy Land; Sunday morning from the Mount 
 of Olives ; breakfast in a Persian camp ; noon on a Chinese 
 river; twilight and a Japanese moon riding mystic above 
 eucalyptus trees, what did the women of such a land 
 locked little town know of the world's beauties and its far 
 places? Or the men either? The men! Who was 
 Nathaniel Forge and why should he have written such 
 a poem? She wondered if she was beginning to understand. 
 
 She had no appetite for dinner they called it supper 
 up here, she supposed at least in the dining room where 
 all the first arrivals would leer at her. She went back down 
 to the lobby and approached Pat Whitney, the proprietor.
 
 260 THE FOG 
 
 "I wonder if you could assist me," she said, "in finding 
 a certain type of person in this town for whom I'm 
 looking." 
 
 Pat did not remove his two-inch toothpick. He did try 
 to button his vest. 
 
 "Shoot, lady !" he answered. 
 
 Madelaine smiled to herself, then "shot." 
 
 "I'd like to be directed to some elderly man or woman 
 who has lived a long time here and is acquainted with 
 most of the town's people. Especially those who lived here 
 about ten years ago. I'm hunting a friend. Yet I don't 
 want my business made public. I'd prefer some elderly, 
 accommodating man " 
 
 "That's a cinch!" returned Pat. "Skin around the 
 corner and see Uncle Joe Fodder." 
 
 "Uncle Joe Fodder?" 
 
 "Yeah; he runs the livery stable. He knows everybody 
 from way back, who their grandmothers was and what the 
 family et for supper the night they was born." 
 
 "That's very good of you," returned Madelaine. And 
 she thanked him. 
 
 "I'm all yours, Missie," was Pat's rejoinder. He meant 
 no offense. He dealt so with all the "lady drummers". 
 
 Madelaine picked her way into the puddle-dotted, straw- 
 strewn livery yard. A single light burned over the big 
 stable door. Another shone through the murky window- 
 panes of a tiny office at the left. 
 
 Three men were in that office with a kindly old fellow 
 who looked exactly as William Cullen Bryant might have 
 looked if William Cullen Bryant had conducted a livery 
 stable in one Vermont community for half a century. He 
 wore a blue gingham shirt, patched trousers and soiled 
 suspenders. But Madelaine liked his eyes. 
 
 "Mr. Fodder?" the girl asked. 
 
 Three jaws lowered. Three pairs of eyes stared. Three 
 pairs of front chair legs clumped to the floor. Taking their 
 cue, three specimens of bewhiskered humanity "hoofed 
 along 'bout their business." 
 
 "Mr. Whitney at the hotel sent me to you," Madelaine 
 declared when they were alone and the soft-eyed old 
 philosopher had dusted a chair and pushed the "spit-box" 
 from sight. "He said you were well acquainted in Paris
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 261 
 
 and could assist me in getting information about a particular 
 person who may, or may not, live here at present. My 
 name is Rowland Allegra Rowland and I come from 
 Springfield, Mass. But my visit here and my business 
 must remain unknown. I'd like you to assure me you'll 
 keep it confidential before I go further." 
 
 The old man stroked his whiskers gently and his blue eyes 
 smiled. 
 
 "Pat claimed I knowed everybody, did he ? Wai, wal ! 
 He does manage to tell the truth once in a dog's age. What 
 is it you want to know, daughter?" 
 
 "It's about a man named Forge. Has such a man ever 
 lived here in Paris?" 
 
 Madelaine caught the startled expression which for a 
 moment chilled the kindly laughter in those lackluster eyes. 
 
 "Which Forge, daughter? Nat or the old man?" 
 
 "There are two, then?" 
 
 "Nat and Johnathan. Nat's the boy. Johnathan's the 
 dad. Which you want to know about?" 
 
 "The one called Nathaniel. He he several years ago 
 he wrote a poem. It interested me greatly. So much 
 so I thought if I ever happened up this way, I'd stop and 
 compliment the poet." 
 
 "Pshaw, now ! That's too bad !" 
 
 "Why is it too bad?" 
 
 The expression of trouble deepened on the old hostler's 
 face. 
 
 "It's been quite a spell since Nat writ poetry. His dad 
 sort o' discouraged it. Nat give it up." 
 
 "He's a young man, then?" Why did the girl's heart 
 leap? 
 
 "Let's see, Nat was ten or so when he come to Paris from 
 over Foxboro way. That was in ninety-nine. Now it's 
 nineteen-fifteen. That'd make Natie 'bout twenty-six at 
 present, wouldn't it? yaas, twenty-six!" 
 
 "He's still living here, then?" 
 
 "Yaas he's still livin' here. Just now, we're sort o' 
 sorry to say, he's livin' in jail." 
 
 "In fail!" 
 
 It was a diaphragm blow. Madelaine could hear, see, 
 feel, but she could not move. "Why is he in jail ?" she asked 
 faintly.
 
 262 THE FOG 
 
 "It's a long story, ma'am. 'Tain't exactly a pleasant one. 
 You see, Nat come down here from Foxboro and his old 
 man started a shoe place over next to the Red Front Gro 
 cery. Him and his woman always had trouble and I guess 
 'twa sort o' hell for the Forge kids. Nat went to school 
 here a piece, and then was pulled out and set to work for 
 Gridley to the tannery. Old Cal took pity on him, the boy 
 bein' a good sort o' kid, and put him in the office. Nat writ 
 poems just after leavin' school. They tickled old Gridley. 
 He got Hod to print 'em in the Telegraph." 
 
 "Gridley? Why, I know a girl named Gridley! And she 
 came from up around here, too. She went to school with 
 me at Mount Hadley." 
 
 "That's the one! Bernice! Went abroad for a spell, 
 didn't she? Then married a millionaire feller from some 
 where out Chicawgie?" 
 
 "Yes," said Madelaine faintly. "Please go on! It was 
 her father, then. And what about Nathaniel?" 
 
 "Well, Johnathan got sick o' cobblin' folkses' shoes. Had 
 a chance to buy Dink Campbell's box-shop. Didn't do very 
 well till young Nat got stuck on a girl from A-higher. Com 
 menced workin' like the devil then, Nat did, to get a stake 
 so's he could marry her. Caleb coached him, I guess. Least 
 wise the town says so, and Cal ain't never denied it. That 
 was 'fore his woman, the Duchess, died, and Cal started 
 travelin'. Anyhow, Nat worked like sixty down to the box- 
 shop and planned when he was twenty-one he'd marry the 
 kid from A-higher. It was sort o' too bad. She give him 
 the Grand Bounce, married another feller. Pore Natie got 
 it square between the eyes the night he turned twenty-one. 
 He was plannin' on marryin' her the comin' Christmas. 
 Rotten deal! Hurt him awful!" 
 
 'Madelaine's throat was dry. She nodded. 
 
 "Care if I smoke, daughter?" the old man asked. 
 
 "Please do," begged the girl. He was that type of pic 
 turesque old fellow who looks at a loss without a corncob 
 pipe. Uncle Joe pulled a package of black shag from his 
 hip, took his cob from off his desk and for several moments 
 meditated as he applied the shag to the bowl and ramped it 
 hard with a gnarled forefinger. 
 
 " 'Course," he went on, as the match flame leaped several 
 times upon being applied to the top of the pipe, "it's only
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 263 
 
 natcheral that Natie should 'a' been sort of upset and all. 
 Still, we didn't calculate he'd turn so quick and crazy-like, 
 and pull off the stunt he did. I s'pose he was just home 
 sick for a woman, his Ma being pretty much a jawbones 
 and the home life at sixes and sevens. Anyhow, that very 
 night when Natie learned the other girl had married an 
 other feller, he goes plumb to work and marries 'Cock-eye' 
 Richards' eldest girl, Milly the dumpy one that was always 
 sloppy 'bout her shoes." 
 
 "Married ! He's married then ?" 
 
 "Oh, yaas, he's married. Got a kid girl kid ! Been mar 
 ried let's see been married better'n five year now. Kid's 
 pretty good size. Goes to school, I think." 
 
 "Go on," said the girl listlessly. "You said he was in 
 jail." 
 
 "Yaas box-shop's busted high, wide and handsome." 
 
 "Just how do you mean ?" 
 
 "Well, Nat got going pretty good there, for a piece. He 
 was working for a stake to marry the A-higher girl like I 
 said, and when a kid's got his back up to do something big 
 for a girl, there's times when a team o' hosses can't hold 
 him. He was keen enough, too, for a kid. He'd probably 
 come out all right if he hadn't been sidetracked by marryin' 
 that dumpy Richards thing. Anyhow, he'd had the business 
 incorporated and hittin' the high spots and it was making so 
 much money for a spell that lots o' folks hereabouts bought 
 stock. Bought some myself! But it reached its peak the 
 first year o' Nat's marriage. Guess the boy lost heart. Then 
 again, his old man give him trouble. What John didn't 
 know about business, any kind of business, would fill a 
 dam' big book. So they pulled and they hauled and they 
 sawed, and with a baby comin', the boy couldn't very well 
 break away. Then him and Milly didn't get along him 
 bein' a poet and she bein' a cow. Taken altogether, the 
 box-works commenced to slide." 
 
 "And now it's reached bankruptcy ?" 
 
 ' 'T wouldn't have gone into bankruptcy if old John hadn't 
 had one last walloper of a fight with his woman, and one 
 mornin' showed up missin'. The girl Edith that's Nat's 
 sister she holds out for marryin' a feller by the name o' 
 Dubois French feller from Montreal. Folks objected, 
 her folks. They objected so much she ran off with him one
 
 264 THE FOG 
 
 night and the old man couldn't have the marriage busted 
 'cause there was a fambly comin'. John's woman got scrap- 
 pin' and blamin' him for makin' a mess o' things generally 
 and so, well last week he simply pulled his stakes and 
 blowed." 
 
 "But why should they put the son in jail?" 
 
 "Wai, seems Johnathan got the idea from somewheres 
 that because he was president and had started the business, 
 it belonged to him, 'specially the funds. He forgot there 
 was stockholders been interested. He gets peeved and draws 
 out a rotten lot o' the company's workin' capital. Cripples 
 it so it can't pay its bills. He takes it with him, and God 
 knows where he's gone. The bank folks here certainly'd 
 like to. The stockholders get together and bein' pretty hot 
 under the collar and all, they thinks Nat might blow too, 
 and they claps him in the hoosegow. The bank puts fig- 
 gerers ont' the books and they found the shop's been losing 
 money for most three years just eatin' into its capital and 
 eatin' and eatin'. John's skippin' out sorter pulled down the 
 temple. The boy's helpless, 'cause they set his bail so high 
 there won't nobody go it, though they do say old Caleb 
 in California, or somewheres, has wired he'd come back and 
 lend a hand to straighten things out. But there ain't much 
 hope o' re-openin' the business. Won't pay fifteen cents on 
 the dollar. Feel like a fool about it myself. Had in fifty 
 dollars." 
 
 "And how does his mother and wife take it?" Madelaine 
 asked. Not that she particularly cared, but she had to say 
 something. 
 
 "Oh, John's woman's mad at the boy ; she and Milly don't 
 get along. Then agin, Nat got into the mess by bein' in 
 business with his father and Anna always did hate his 
 father. She owns the Longstreet property up on Vermont 
 Avenue leastwise it was put in her name a while back and 
 the courts can't get it. She could go Nat's bail if she 
 would. But she won't. She says it's 'good enough for him.' 
 Let him rot in jail a piece and think it over. Good revenge 
 on John, Nat bein' his son. It's makin' a heap o' talk 'round 
 the village. Milly Gawd, she ain't got brains enough to 
 boil water; all she can do is wring her hands and weep. 
 Folks say a chap named Si Plumb is shinin' around her 
 used to be in love with her before she married Nat. But
 
 TOO EASY MONEY 265 
 
 I'm thinkin* that's talk. No, the boy ain't got much help 
 from his women folks. Never did have, for that matter. 
 Sad case, sad case !" 
 
 "What became of the sister?" 
 
 "She's off up to Montreal. Dubois got a job up there in a 
 paper mill. Ordinary sort o' feller makes two-seventy-five 
 a day, maybe." 
 
 Old Fodder puffed on his pipe for a time. Madelaine 
 could hear his horses munching their evening oats out in 
 the low-studded stable. Finally she drew a deep sigh. 
 
 "Then I guess it would be somewhat embarrassing for me 
 to congratulate him on his poetry just now, wouldn't it? 
 Satisfy a woman's curiosity, Mr. Fodder. What sort of 
 looking man is he ? I've drawn a picture of him from his 
 poem and I'd like to know how far I'm correct." 
 
 "Fair-lookin' chap!" Uncle Joe poised his shining pipe- 
 stem in mid-air. "Had a fight with this Plumb who they sez 
 is sashayin' round his wife, just now long time ago. Got 
 a busted ear. Used to have fifty million freckles but them 
 sort o' faded out. Been goin' about the village sort o' seedy- 
 lookin' lately guess his woman spent a pile, thinkin' he had 
 gobs o' money. Got_fair eyes, but sort o' hounded-lookin'. 
 Yes, fair sort o' feller but kinda ordinary. Feel sorry for 
 him myself." 
 
 Madelaine laughed. She affected an indifference she did 
 not feel. 
 
 "I'm awfully obliged to you, Mr. Fodder. This informa 
 tion has forestalled an awkward situation. And you'll for 
 get I came to see you, won't you?" 
 
 "Sartin! Sartin ! Stoppin' in the place long?" 
 
 "No, I'm going down-country to-night." 
 
 "Well, glad to metcher. Ever stoppin' here again, look 
 me up. Want me to say anythin' to Nat 'bout you callin', 
 if he wins out all right?" 
 
 "No, no! It was only idle curiosity. He doesn't know 
 me anyway and never will." 
 
 "Well, good night. And watch the ice in the yard. 'Mare 
 broke a leg there Thursday. Dam' nice mare, too. Had to 
 be shot. Got twelve dollars for her hide. Good night." 
 
 Madelaine went out again to Main Street. She strolled 
 about for a time in thought. Her walk brought her in front 
 of the Court House. Nathaniel Forge, the man who had
 
 266 THE FOG 
 
 written the little poem that had meant much in her life, was 
 down in a basement cell at that moment two hundred feet 
 away ten thousand miles. 
 
 She entered the hotel and found she still had no appetite 
 for supper. She asked what time she could catch a train 
 back to the Junction. 
 
 "Find yer man ?" demanded Pat Whitney. 
 
 "Oh, yes," Madelaine answered cheerily enough. "The 
 person I hoped to find isn't here any longer." 
 
 VI 
 
 Twenty-four hours later she stood in her apartment and 
 took down the copper frame from the wall. 
 
 "Married ! A wife and little girl ! In jail! And all the 
 time I might have asked Bernice ! Oh, well !" 
 
 She laughed and called herself a silly fool. She ripped off 
 the backboard of the copper frame and extracted the poem. 
 She found a photograph of her mother and cut it to fit. The 
 frame restored, she picked up the mapping with the slip of 
 news-print pasted thereon. She started to tear it. She 
 did tear it once across. She had started another tear when 
 she stopped. She smoothed the torn pieces out. She found 
 an envelope that would hold them and tucked it away in a 
 bottom drawer. 
 
 "Oh, why did I go?" she cried, as she turned once again 
 to her work. "I shot my Bird of Paradise !" 
 
 She fell to thinking, dry-throated, hard-eyed. So Gor 
 don Ruggles wanted to marry her, did he? The rotter! 
 
 Romance! What was Romance?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 
 
 Into the town lock-up came Caleb Gridley. And Caleb 
 Gridley was one mad man. 
 
 It was four-thirty of a gray afternoon in March. The 
 local police force tilted back in its chair with its feet on its 
 desk and perused the day's issue of the Telegraph with the 
 official corncob of the department exquisitely odoriferous 
 and the atmosphere of headquarters suggesting gas masks, 
 cheese knives and quickly lowered windows. 
 
 "So this is how you earn taxpayers' money !" snarled the 
 tanner. "Where's young Forge?" 
 
 The police force lowered its paper and blinked at old 
 Caleb in stupefaction. The last known address of the tan 
 ner had been Los, Angeles. 
 
 " Where'd you come from now ?" it demanded weakly. 
 
 "None o' your damn business where I .come from now. 
 What's the idea o' jailin' an innocent youngster like Natie 
 Forge for his old man's cussedness ? That's what I wanner 
 know and I'm gonna find out. Somebody's goin' to answer 
 for this and they're goin' to answer to me !" 
 
 The police force gradually recovered from this astonish 
 ing levitation of the Gridley corpus across three thousand 
 continental miles. It became human and a servant of the 
 public, meaning Caleb. 
 
 "You needn't blame me. I ain't got nothin' against him. 
 All I do is carry out the law." 
 
 "Well, carry it out now and never bring it back. Where's 
 the boy ? Got him here ?" 
 
 "Sure I got him here. Wanner see him?" 
 
 "What the devil do you think I'm here for to gaze at 
 your homely mug, maybe?" 
 
 Gridley followed the police force out into the rear corridor
 
 268 THE FOG 
 
 and down the twin rows of steel cages until they reached 
 the last on the left. A drawn-faced figure looked up anx 
 iously. 
 
 "Got visitors, Nat," announced the department. "Friend 
 o' yours ! Gridley !" 
 
 Caleb walked into the cell as big-bodied, small-headed, 
 beefy-jawed as ever derby on the back of his head, big 
 hands in trousers pockets, fully prepared to make hamburg 
 of the entire penal system of the State of Vermont. 
 
 "Well, bub," roared the tanner, "what sort o' fumi-diddles 
 is this, anyhow ?" 
 
 "Mr. Gridley !" gasped the young prisoner. Then repeat 
 ing the department's question: "Where'd you come from 
 now ?" 
 
 "California! Got a wire from your old-maid school 
 teacher the Hastings female one that learned you poetry 
 writin', remember? Come east to see what kind o' horse 
 play they're puttin' over on you, anyhow." To the depart 
 ment : "Mike, you get air in the space you're now occupyin' ! 
 Me'n Nat may wanner discuss poetry. And poetry's some- 
 thin' just natcherly outter your class." 
 
 The boy rose unsteadily. Inability to exercise had left 
 his muscles flaccid. 
 
 The tanner was a trifle shocked by the changed appear 
 ance of the young man's face. Every spare ounce of flesh 
 had disappeared. The skin was drawn tightly over the 
 bones. Every turn of the jaw and depression of the cheek 
 was sharply defined. Yet for all its leanness, it was the 
 countenance of a young man grimly determined to find him 
 self ; not to give way to weakness and self-pity. It was 
 growing into a strong face. The lips came together with 
 exquisite precision/ The muscles on each side the mouth 
 were cable-heavy. Only the eyes showed his true state of 
 mind. They were hollow and hounded. 
 
 "You came from California to help me?" The boy 
 put out a hand. 
 
 Suddenly Caleb opened his gorilla arms. They en 
 circled the lean young torso, pulled Nathan tightly to the 
 tobacco-daubed vest. Those huge arms squeezed half the 
 life out of him and then began belaboring him crazily on 
 the back. 
 
 "Ain't got no license to go hoofin' all over the dam' planet
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 269 
 
 when I might better be seem' to things right here in Paris ! 
 Bub ! Bub ! They been takin' pounds o' flesh away from 
 your heart. I can see it in them eyes !" 
 
 "You heard how I landed here?" the boy asked gravely, 
 evenly, a moment later, when Caleb had released him. Caleb 
 had to release him, else Nat could not have said it. 
 
 Caleb did something to his nose with a handkerchief. 
 The noise of it suggested he would blast Nat from his con 
 finement with one terrific explosion. 
 
 "Yeah ! Fodder told me, comin' up on the 'bus. But to 
 hell with how you got here ! Point is, how we goin' to get 
 you out." 
 
 "Judge Wright set my bail at ten thousand dollars. My 
 old chum Bill did everything short of hocking his interest 
 in the Telegraph, trying to raise it. Seventy-five hundred 
 in cash-money was the best he could do. So I've just had 
 to wait here and wait and wait and wait. It's been hor 
 rible. For the first time in my life I've found out how long 
 an hour can be or a day or a week. That terrible help 
 less feeling being shut up like an animal in a cage, power 
 less. It's done for me." 
 
 "Naw it ain't done for you! You're good as you ever 
 was, and a darn sight better. But that's neither here nor 
 there as the feller says when he was chasin' the hen. 
 Point is, you gotta get out where you can do some fightin'. 
 How much'd she bust for? The box-shop?" 
 
 "Counting liabilities to stockholders, twenty-two thou 
 sand." 
 
 "How much is the bank in for?" 
 
 "About twelve." 
 
 "How much'd your old man swipe?" 
 
 "Close to ten." 
 
 "B'damn, we'll fix this lock-up business, quick enough! 
 But why the devil didn't your Ma come forward with her 
 house ?" 
 
 "She said it was all she had to show for a life of hard 
 work. She was afraid of losing it," responded Nathan 
 humorously. 
 
 "But it was only leavin' it as bail." 
 
 "I know. She doesn't understand." 
 
 "Does she think more o' that damn property than she does 
 of her boy?"
 
 270 THE FOG 
 
 "Apparently ! No, that's unfair. She thinks I should be 
 punished a while for keeping on with father. She wanted 
 me to oust him a long time ago. But I couldn't, even if I'd 
 wanted. He had control of the stock. I can't blame her. 
 It's hard to blame people who haven't the capacity to under 
 stand." 
 
 "Trouble with you, young feller, you're too soft-hearted 
 for your own good. You need to cultivate a little healthy 
 selfishness. Never mind ! Maybe if you was selfish so, I 
 wouldn't love your dratted young hide like I do always 
 goin' and landin' in scrapes. Well, just thought I'd call in 
 on my way to give Hentley hell, and tell you I was here on 
 the job. You wait a few minutes till I've fixed this bail 
 stuff. Then we'll go out somewheres and assault food and 
 talk it over. Down to the box-shop, maybe, and have a 
 look-see round." 
 
 "We can't go down there. The shop's in charge of the 
 sheriff. They won't let us in." 
 
 "Won't they, though? I'd like to see the goofus-brained 
 pie-eater in this tank-town as would stop me. I'd pull out 
 his nose a coupla feet and tie a knot in it !" 
 
 II 
 
 It was after ten o'clock when Nathan reached his home. 
 He had eaten with Caleb and then gone to the box-shop. 
 Milly did not know of her husband's freedom until he ad 
 mitted himself into their cold front hall and opened the 
 sitting-room door beyond. 
 
 "You !" she cried, springing up. "Have you broke jail, 
 or what?" 
 
 "Caleb Gridley came back from California this afternoon. 
 He bailed me. You needn't worry, Milly. It's coming out 
 all right." 
 
 "You mean the shop's goin' to start again?" 
 
 "It's too badly smashed for that. But they won't blame 
 me I mean to hold me responsible for anything that 
 father " 
 
 "But the disgrace! Oh, my Gawd! Think o' what this 
 means to me!" The wife turned angrily. "And little 
 Mary !" she snapped over her shoulder.
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 271 
 
 "I couldn't help it, Milly. I didn't know dad was going 
 to loot the business." 
 
 "Seems to me you oughta been smart enough to stop it 
 somehow. I used to think you was awful smart, once. But 
 you certainly fooled me, Nat. You fooled me good." 
 
 "Thanks!" 
 
 "Don't give me none o' your cheap lip !" 
 
 Nathan stood with hands clasped behind, face sadly down 
 cast, looking at his wife's back. 
 
 Milly was stouter than when she had worked in the box- 
 shop. She had also coarsened. Her washed-out hair was 
 gathered in a hasty knot at the back of her neck. "Scolding 
 locks" stuck out at wild angles. The back of that neck was 
 flat and homely. She wore a gingham house dress that was 
 torn in the front and she could have materially improved 
 her appearance by discarding her apron. 
 
 "Well," she demanded, without looking around, "if the 
 shop ain't going to start up, what you aimin' to do ?" 
 
 "I haven't thought that far yet. Get a job, probably. 
 Go to work !" 
 
 "S'pose old Gridley would set you up in somethin'?" 
 
 "I wouldn't ask him, even if he would." 
 
 "But what about me, I say? What about Mary?" 
 
 "You won't starve. I'll see to that." 
 
 "You'll see to that ! Huh ! You couldn't even see your 
 self out of jail! Gridley had to come clean from California 
 and see it for you !" 
 
 "Milly, don't let's have any argument to-night. Please! 
 I'm nearly all in." 
 
 "So am I all in ! You never give a thought about me !" 
 
 "Is there anything to eat in the house?" was Nat's way 
 of turning the edge of the altercation. 
 
 Milly shrugged her shoulders. Nathan went out into 
 the cluttered, odorous kitchen and hunted around for 
 food. 
 
 He found a stale frankfurter and a piece of soggy pie. 
 He drew a glass of cold water and sat down to satisfy his 
 hunger with the indigestible mess. 
 
 "Mary cut her finger this afternoon," announced the wife. 
 "I had to get Doc Johnson to see to it." Milly, it had de 
 veloped, was one of those persons who summon a doctor 
 for every indisposition known to medicine from plain old-
 
 272 THE FOG 
 
 fashioned stomachache to falling off the roof and breaking 
 a neck. 
 
 "I've got something else to think about now, Milly, besides 
 Mary cutting her finger." 
 
 "Yeah ! I s'pose you have. You're just like your father. 
 A devil of a lot you care about your women folks !" Milly 
 rammed the fire angrily and poked most of the live coals 
 through into the ash-pan. "The fire's out!" she snapped. 
 "And there ain't any wood." 
 
 "But I gave you money to buy wood only last Friday." 
 
 "Dad's out o' work. Nellie'd have to give up her pianner 
 lessons if Ma didn't have money from somewheres till dad's 
 took on again. I loaned it to her. Blood's a little thicker in 
 our family than it is in yours, Nat Forge!" 
 
 The food Nat had eaten failed to digest. He was tired 
 and distraught and broken. But he kept his temper. 
 
 "Let's go to bed and talk it over in the morning," he 
 begged. "I told you I'm nearly all in. Can't you see it?" 
 
 "No, sir! You don't go to bed, Nat Forge! Not till 
 you've made this fire outta somethin'. You don't catch me 
 crawlin' out into a cold house when Mary wakes up in the 
 mornin' and buildin' no fire like your mother used ter. Not 
 while you lie abed and enjoy yourself. Besides, it's so cold 
 to-night the pipes'll freeze. Go down and smash up the 
 piano box, if you can't find anything else." 
 
 Nathan lighted a lantern, went into the cellar and found 
 kindling. When he had the fire negotiated, Milly was in 
 bed with the little daughter, a small bed in the side room. 
 
 Nathan had to go into another bedroom, where the hoar 
 frost was furry on the glass, and crawl between icy sheets 
 alone. 
 
 He thought of many things that night, for sleep refused 
 to come. Most of all he thought of Carol. He wondered 
 what had become of her, where she was living and if she 
 was happy. Then his thoughts turned to his father, and he 
 wondered how easily Johnathan was resting that night, with 
 his theft on his soul and the desertion of his family on his 
 spirit. He thought of his mother up in the big ark on 
 Vermont Avenue, crazed by the possibility that the court 
 might wrest away her property by that iron process known 
 as The Law. He thought of his sister, married to a French 
 laborer, with a baby coming, up in Canada. He thought of
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 273 
 
 Bernie Gridley and her father's report of her satisfactory 
 marriage to a Chicago millionaire. He thought, step by 
 step, back to his boyhood and his days with me in Foxboro 
 happy, carefree days. 
 
 "Oh, God," he whispered in the dark. "Why do things 
 happen so ? Where's the reason behind it all for there 
 must be a reason ? Do events and experiences come hit-or- 
 miss by chance in this world ? It can't be !" 
 
 Nathan asked himself if he were doing right, living thus 
 with Milly when he seemed to have nothing in common with 
 her but their child, when he did not love her? Marriage? 
 What was marriage ? Did it mean merely living in the same 
 house with a woman, eating at the same table, sharing the 
 same bed? Or did marriage mean something finer and 
 higher and better than that, something which he had missed ? 
 Something which his father had caused him to miss. What 
 was that Something? Where should he go to look for it? 
 What must he do ? He had to confess he did not know. He 
 had no standards by which to judge, no training to help 
 him. Even Caleb Gridley could not help him there. He 
 remembered that Caleb had seemed vaguely relieved when 
 the Duchess had passed on. 
 
 Out of the ruck of all the fellow's bittersweet memories, 
 his present perplexities, the foggy blur of the future, one 
 fact stood pieeminent, however. 
 
 He must go on. Somehow he must go on. Perhaps time 
 would solve the problem, supply the great answer. But 
 
 He must go on. 
 
 in 
 
 The night Fred Babcock married them, there had been 
 no place for Nathan to take his bride but the local hotel. 
 He would not take her to his father's home ; he did not care 
 to go to Milly's. They had separated for an hour, each 
 going for their "things", pitifully meeting at the Whitney 
 House later to set sail on the tempestuous seas of mismated 
 connubiality. 
 
 Nathan had found his father pacing the same room, wild- 
 eyed, wild-faced, wild-haired, hands thrust deep in trousers 
 pockets. The room was in wreckage. His mother was in 
 an adjacent apartment, eternally rocking, rocking, rocking,
 
 274 THE FOG 
 
 considering her troubles in the dark. Father and mother 
 quickly forgot their differences, however, when they beheld 
 Nathan coming down the front stairs, suitcase in either 
 hand. 
 
 "Where you going?" demanded Johnathan sharply. 
 
 "To the hotel." 
 
 "You're going nowhere of the sort. Put those valises 
 back upstairs. No story'll go 'round this town if I can help 
 it, that the very night my son turned twenty-one, he packed 
 his traps and scooted." 
 
 "Do you think I'm going to bring a wife into this?" 
 
 "Bring a what ?" 
 
 "A wife!" 
 
 "Wait till you've got a wife before you talk about 
 bringing her into anything. Put those suitcases back up 
 stairs !" 
 
 "But I've got a wife. I married one at nine o'clock.". 
 
 In the darkened room Mrs. Forge's rocker went over with 
 a bump, she sprang from it so quickly. Johnathan reached 
 out a hand and clutched the banisters. 
 
 "You married one at nine o'clock? Who have you mar 
 ried?" 
 
 "Mildred Richards. Good night!" 
 
 Nathan left his apoplectic parents standing side by side. 
 
 "Oh, my God!" groaned Johnathan. He staggered to the 
 stairs and sat down flaccid, his face buried in his hands. 
 He remained that way for half an hour. 
 
 Mrs. Forge walked slowly back into the wrecked dining 
 room. She stood looking out one of the windows, with 
 clenched fists pushed against her hips, face twitching, biting 
 one corner of her upper lip so nervously it was difficult to 
 discern which was twitch and which was bite. 
 
 After that first tragic half -hour, Mrs. Forge's thinking 
 amounted to this: Nathan had packed his clothes and gone 
 to a wife and those clothes were not in a very happy state 
 of laundering. She had put off her wash that week until 
 she could get a new wringer. She still did her own wash 
 ing. Laundries mangled clothes so. 
 
 It would be hectic to follow on into the week, the month, 
 the year which followed, in so far as Nat's marriage affected 
 his father. A competent phychologist might have explained 
 Johnathan, but explaining him would have availed Nathan
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 275 
 
 little nor lightened his load. Johnathan's ultimate attitude 
 was: 
 
 He had preserved stainless the morals and directed suc 
 cessfully, though thanklessly, the spiritual education of his 
 son for twenty-one wasted years. The lad had turned out 
 incorrigible. That did not alter the fact that Johnathan 
 had done his duty. His conscience was now clear. He had 
 discharged his obligations to God and State. He was a free 
 man. 
 
 The attainment of his majority and the acquisition of a 
 "helpmeet" left Nathan to be treated as a man. And the 
 chief incident in that treatment was a deliberate compaign 
 soon started for a show-down to determine who was to be 
 manager of that box-shop. 
 
 The effect on the business did not seem to occur to Johna 
 than. Or if he thought about it, he told himself the busi 
 ness was so large he could afford to lose occasionally for 
 the sake of winning a principle. 
 
 Not once did the man realize or admit the rights of stock 
 holders, or consider them on a par with himself in the mat 
 ter of ownership. Stockholders were but a step raised 
 above "help." They had merely been privileged to share in 
 a small portion of the company's annual profits. Fiddle 
 sticks with stockholders ! 
 
 Nathan had kept the firm "right side up" and always 
 progressing in the right direction. Johnathan had thereby 
 gained the idea that businesses at least manufacturing 
 businesses once established, ran themselves. By sheer 
 force of organization ! He now set out deliberately and ma 
 liciously to checkmate his son and retard him in every way 
 he could conceive. The business was a bit beyond Johna 
 than's grasp. So he decided upon a policy of "retrench 
 ment." 
 
 "Retrenchment" became his slogan and the motto on his 
 ensign. Refusing to order necessary office and factory sup 
 plies was "retrenchment." Turning down requests for quo 
 tations on new business on the ground that the company 
 already had business enough was "retrenchment." "Dock 
 ing" a little flaxen-haired stenographer a half-day's wages 
 when she went home ill at three in the afternoon was "re 
 trenchment." Anything and everything that could discount 
 Nathan, discredit his administration, get the employees dis-
 
 276 THE FOG 
 
 satisfied with the boy's management, curtail production -. 
 to show a loss which could be triumphantly charged co 
 Nathan all this was "retrenchment" most commendable 
 "retrenchment." Nathan grew to abhor the word. 
 
 At such times as the father succeeded in his policy and 
 the boy was humiliated and stopped, Johnathan waved his 
 hand grandly and said: "You see! Some day you will 
 grasp that your father is older and therefore must know 
 better !" To beat Nathan and get his word doubted or his 
 ability discounted among employees or stockholders pleased 
 Johnathan more than declaring a twelve per cent, dividend. 
 
 Nathan had flouted his father, deliberately plunged into 
 matrimony in spite of all his father's threats and admoni 
 tions. He had made his bed. Now let him lie in it. But in 
 addition, Johnathan, as the mocked parent, intended to see 
 that the bed was as hard, knotty and acanaceous as the 
 father knew how to make it. 
 
 If Nathan didn't like all this, let him quit. He, Johna 
 than, had managed to exist a considerable time before Na 
 than came into it ; he guessed he could take care of himself 
 and his business "for a while yet." 
 
 But Nathan had made a discovery which comes ultimately 
 to many organizers and builders, that there is a point 
 where the human creator may become slave to the thing 
 created. 
 
 It was easy enough for people to declare wrathfully that 
 Nathan should leave the box-shop and strike out for himself 
 to teach John a lesson. They did their thinking super 
 ficially. Nathan had built that business under old Caleb's 
 coaching. He had a thousand details at his finger tips. 
 Large numbers of humble folk had invested in the com 
 pany's stock, and there were the bank loans. The boy 
 knew his father could not run the plant, that chaos and 
 failure would follow swift and sure upon his retirement. 
 And because of this knowledge, practical experience and 
 large bump of moral responsibility, the boy believed he had 
 obligations which he could not entirely sacrifice to self- 
 interest. The business owned him. He must go on, not 
 because of his father, but in spite of him. Perhaps Johna 
 than might be persuaded to drop out or dispose of his stock. 
 Better still, he might die. Or the bankers and stockholders 
 might some day learn the truth in a way that would not
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 277 
 
 jeopardize the business. In that event, merit and loyalty 
 must be rewarded. But nothing of the sort happened. 
 
 Johnathan had controlling stock in the company, and he 
 saw to it that he kept controlling stock in the company. He 
 would no more have considered making Nat a present of a 
 block than he would have considered making the boy a 
 present of his severed hand. He had worked hard for all 
 he possessed, Johnathan had. His father had never helped 
 him. Besides, Nathan had proven himself incorrigible. He 
 had married against his father's wishes. Therefore let him 
 suffer the full penalty, or get out and hustle and cultivate 
 the acquisitive faculty for himself. 
 
 Anyhow, Nathan received no stock and he continued in 
 the large capacity of General Superintendent. The most 
 he could screw from the business was thirty dollars a week, 
 and Johnathan constantly reminded him that this was far 
 more than any boy of twenty-two had any title or right to 
 expect. At twenty-two, he, Johnathan, had drawn only 
 eight dollars a week ; why on earth should Nathan receive 
 more? Because he was married, with an establishment of 
 his own ? What a reason ! Johnathan had wasted the best 
 years of his life thwarting Nathan's propensity toward just 
 that dilemma. Why recognize and regard incorrigibility by 
 turning over profits to a young upstart, even in the form of 
 salary ? Beside, he was committed to a policy of' vigorous 
 "retrenchment." 
 
 This situation at the shop was something Mildred could 
 never understand. She and her family had assumed that 
 marrying Nathan meant marrying Millions. Both had be 
 lieved that with the Monday following the nuptials, it was 
 to be Milly's delirious destiny to dip her red, paste-bedaubed 
 fingers into the Forges' golden pile and exist forever after 
 in castles in Spain. The realization that she must keep her 
 domestic budget inside of thirty weekly dollars came as a 
 blunt shock. "Why, that's only ten dollars more than father 
 makes; it's just like Ma's had to do all her life!" cried the 
 angry, astounded girl. Nevertheless, it was the truth, the 
 brutal truth. And early she made Nathan feel that he had 
 buncoed her. 
 
 Nathan's subsequent estimate of Milly was no more sat 
 isfying. He had met her at the hotel that first night, con 
 vinced Pat Whitney they were properly married and been
 
 278 THE FOG 
 
 given one of the lower front rooms. It was Milly's first 
 contact with a real bathroom, and "a regular tub" as she 
 expressed it. In fact, the whole experience for a time was 
 not unlike a glorious entrance into marble halls of which all 
 heroines daydreamed in the Elsie books. The two features 
 of their apartment which most interested and impressed her 
 were the globular receptacle on the washstand which, being 
 inverted, spilled liquid soap, and the hemp rope with handles 
 on it coiled on a hook beside a window for use in case of 
 fire. She rather hoped there would be a fire. It might be 
 interesting, going down that rope. Milly had heard that 
 vaguely mystic phrase, "Hotel life." She decided she liked 
 "hotel life." Everything was so convenient and "classy" 
 and modern. 
 
 Nathan's first disillusion came when the girl started boldly 
 to disrobe and toss her clothing about on the chairs and the 
 status of her undergarments was disclosed. There were 
 many disillusions that night and the day and week ensuing. 
 Milly had never before seen pyjamas at close range. "Gawd, 
 Ma," she confided awesomely next day, "he goes to sleep 
 in white pants! You oughta see 'em!" 
 
 Nathan awoke first, the following morning, that cold, 
 much celebrated dawn commencing the "day afterward." 
 He looked upon the features of his still-sleeping wife as a 
 man coming from metempsychosis. She wore a heavy flan 
 nel nightgown which had once been pink, buttoned to her 
 throat with Chinese chastity. Her marcelled pompadour 
 was shoved over one ear. Her mouth was open and several 
 teeth needed immediate dental attention. A shudder ran 
 through the boy. He was in bed with an utter stranger, 
 with whom he had nothing in common, a female of whom 
 he knew little excepting that she had always lived on the 
 edge of the "flats" with multitudinous brothers and sisters, 
 and that her father skinned cows. And he had promised 
 to lovej honor and cherish her until death! He suddenly 
 wanted to flee Milly, his parents, the business, Paris, every 
 thing, in a panic. 
 
 Yet he could have forgiven his new wife many deficien 
 cies, perhaps, if she had supplied that thing he had most 
 expected : Sanctuary in her arms. 
 
 Milly had supplied no sanctuary in her arms. If Milly 
 had arms, they were far from the purpose of solacing dis-
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 279 
 
 traught masculinity. Milly's arms were very necessary con 
 nections between her paste-bedaubed hands and her ample^ 
 shoulders. Nothing more. What else did he expect thern 
 to be? 
 
 Nathan was shocked. She was a Woman, wasn't she? 
 He had made her his wife. She had said that she loved 
 him and asked him if there were anything she could do to 
 make him happy. What, then, was wrong ? 
 
 A small-town Pygmalion waited for the conjugal Galatea 
 he had created to be struck with divine fire and return his 
 embrace gloriously. But divine fires, alae^ rarely impregnate 
 dough pans. 
 
 Nathan had made the sickening mistake that millions of 
 poor youngsters make piteously every day, that keeps 
 divorce mills grinding to the horror of sanctimonious relig 
 ionists : He had mistaken Sex for Ladyhood. 
 
 Instead of Milly inviting Nathan into Carmel, it was the 
 man who descended to the girl as though she were a coarse 
 grained child. 
 
 Milly in propinquity with her suddenly acquired husband 
 was the charwoman who had found a wounded demigod 
 by the wayside and did not know what to do with him, nor 
 exactly how to treat him, after his bruised hulk Olympus 
 ostracized was hers for the taking. 
 
 Nathan and Milly, however, were married. In metempsy 
 chosis or no, the lad had assumed obligations he felt he 
 could not retract. A home might solve the problem. So 
 Nathan set about acquiring a home. With an eye to the 
 limitations of thirty dollars, he rented the Mills cottage on 
 Pine Street, a six-room structure of poor sanitary equip 
 ment and no furnace. His first purchases were two stoves, 
 one set up in the kitchen, the other in the "sitting room." 
 Milly, her first shock of disillusion over, proceeded to make 
 the best of a bad bargain. 
 
 IV 
 
 It quickly developed that she had a passion for soap clubs 
 and a dangerous propensity toward buying from agents. 
 The former was the more harmless for some deliberation 
 was usually given to premiums. But those agents ! 
 
 Milly bought a twelve-volume set of encyclopedias "on
 
 28o THE FOG 
 
 time" before she and Nathan had found a bedroom carpet. 
 She bought several "shrieking" rugs from Armenian peddlers 
 and a banquet lamp in anticipation of domestic equipment 
 to be requisite when the Forges had attained to banquets. 
 She was imposed upon for patent mops and cheated on 
 carpe* heaters. She laid in enough stove polish to shine 
 all the baseburners in Paris County. Nathan came home 
 one night and found himself in debt for an upright piano, 
 twenty dollars down and five dollars a month until death. 
 Milly thought it was "just simply grand" and contracted to 
 begin music lessons before she had sheets enough for her 
 beds. 
 
 But her wildest orgies were carried on in the depths of 
 the local "five and ten." 
 
 Milly swore by F. W. Woolworth as by a savior. Nathan 
 gave her fifty dollars to temporarily furnish her pantry, 
 more money than she had ever held in her hands at one time 
 in all her past life. Twenty-five dollars she "slipped" to 
 her mother to get all her younger brothers and sisters some 
 shoes. With the other half she "descended" on the five-and- 
 ten. 
 
 She bought all her dishes and pantry ware from the five- 
 and-ten. She bought ribbons, pictures and three cardboard 
 wastebaskets. She bought flour sifters that wouldn't sift 
 and tack pullers that wouldn't pull. She procured a huge 
 cambric bag and came home each night, straining beneath it 
 or with a young brother pulling it on his sled. Saturday 
 afternoon she had twenty-five cents remaining. She hunted 
 the five-and-ten anxiously for five articles of a nickel apiece 
 which "might come in handy around the house." Her last 
 purchase was a half-dozen lead pencils. They slipped from 
 her moth-eaten muff before she reached her gate however. 
 
 The Forge home became a jumble of nothing in particular 
 but in character somewhat weird. A mahogany rocker, a 
 mission center table, a golden-oak whatnot (secondhand) 
 and a gilt corner chair were exhibits A, B, C and D in the 
 front room. The walls of the house not hung with small 
 ten-cent pictures were spattered with colored postcards on 
 big pins, from Savin Rock or Nantasket Beach. The 
 chaotic total of all this shabby gentility shocked Nathan 
 when he beheld it. He decided it was a lack of money. He 
 didn't possess enough to furnish a home like the Seavers
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 281 
 
 of previous mention. But he did make a start the first 
 Christmas by surprising Milly with a quartered-oak victrola 
 to harmonize with the mission center table, the idea being 
 to unify eventually the scheme of the room as more bizarre 
 effects could be culled out. But three things happened to 
 the victrola with lamentable swiftness. First, Milly decided 
 it wasn't the center table she wanted the victrola to match ; 
 it was the installment piano. So without consulting Nathan 
 she went as usual to the "five-and-ten" and bought a half- 
 dozen cans of "paint" whose outer labels bore some re 
 semblance to the color of the piano. The effect on the beau 
 tiful, dull, mission finish was not at all what Milly had 
 anticipated; in fact, the victrola looked as though it had 
 weathered a bad attack of cherry measles. The painting 
 was still a casus belli in the Forge "parlor" when Jake 
 Richards' youngest child pulled out most of the records one 
 Sunday afternoon and broke them ; they "cracked with such 
 a nice noise !" Lastly, young Tommy Richards decided dur 
 ing an after-school visit to his sister that something ailed 
 the "works" of the victrola and they emphatically needed 
 fixing. So he dug out an alarming array of "five-and-ten" 
 tools, everything in fact but an ax, and proceeded to "fix" 
 them. The novelty of it palled on him after he had pinched 
 a finger, and he deserted the science of melodious mechanics 
 entirely when he unscrewed a mysterious metal compart 
 ment and the mainspring exploded in his face. Mechani 
 cally speaking, he got beyond his depth. He discreetly yan- 
 ished and the victrola sang not again. 
 
 Nathan's first quarrel of note with Milly resulted from 
 the appropriation of the married sister's home by the Rich 
 ards tribe as an extension of their own. 'My friend made 
 the additional discovery common to many men who have 
 wedded Sex instead of Ladyhood, that he had also married 
 the girl's family. As soon as Milly had sorted out her 
 Woolworth dishes and run up a thirty-dollar bill at the Red 
 Front Grocery, she affected to demonstrate her housewivery 
 by inviting all of that family to dinner, Sunday dinner. 
 And her family came. Great was the coming thereof. 
 
 Nathan held a dim idea there had been various brothers 
 and sisters in the Richards house across the "flats." But 
 that first Sunday dinner was a revelation likewise the 
 alarming quantities of food it required to satiate them. The
 
 282 THE FOG 
 
 Forge larder reasonably resembled "a land overflowing with 
 milk and honey" before they came. After they had gone, 
 that thirty-dollar commissary had been attacked as by a 
 plague of Egyptian locusts. Nathan, however, had not be 
 grudged the food. What bothered him most was their 
 methods of assimilation. There had been little or no table 
 etiquette at Johnathan's house. But such as it had been, it 
 was courtly beside the demonstration in "manners", or lack 
 of them, revealed at that first Sunday dinner as well as in 
 many hectic repetitions. 
 
 When the Richards tribe recovered from their awe of 
 Nathan, discovered him quite a mortal being with two arms, 
 two legs and a propensity to consume food at conventional 
 intervals like themselves, they "pitched in." The younger 
 children squalled and fought over smaller delicacies. Two 
 of them enjoyed a pleasing altercation with pieces of baked 
 potato. Mother Richards held the baby against a moist 
 breast and allowed the little barbarian to pull a plate of soft 
 squash pie into her lap. This was lamentable but cute. 
 Undoubtedly Nathan had pulled a plate of soft squash pie 
 into his mother's lap at "thirteen months." 
 
 Nathan took issuance with old Jake one Sunday, however, 
 for producing a flat, brown hip-flask and using copious 
 draughts therefrom to "give him an appetite." Thereafter 
 old Jake "made his vittles set right" with more. The lad, 
 sick of the whole Richards tribe, at the frayed end of his 
 patience generally, advised old Jake in hot phrases to work 
 up his appetites and make his vittles set right with alcohol 
 elsewhere, never to repeat the disgusting performance in 
 his home again. A dour time followed. Old Jake had 
 imbibed enough to be quarrelsome. Milly took her father's 
 part. She called Nathan a hypocrite because "he couldn't 
 stand the sight of a little hooch." It was her house as well 
 as Nathan's and if Nathan didn't like it, she guessed she 
 knew what he could do. Which Nathan did. He grabbed 
 old Jake by turkey neck and trouser seat and threw him out 
 into the mud. Old Jake's flask and hat followed. So did 
 the Richards tribe, though they went voluntarily and side 
 stepped the mud. They swore they had been insulted ; they 
 would never set foot in Nathan's house again. But a month 
 later they were back ; old Jake had apologized, he had said 
 "blood was thicker than water" and it didn't pay to hold
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 283 
 
 grudges. And they descended on the large assortment of 
 table delicacies purchased the previous evening at the filite 
 Bakery and ate until the boy wondered if sheer hunger 
 hadn't driven them back. He thought they must conserve 
 their appetites during the week to distend their stomachs 
 on Sunday noon at his expense. 
 
 The same superficial logicians who would acclaim Nat a 
 weakling for not leaving his father to learn his lesson at the 
 box-shop would undoubtedly have the boy kick his way out 
 of the domestic slough in which he had slipped now, get 
 divorced and make a fresh start elsewhere. Very good 
 indeed for those able to see the situation in perspective or 
 whose enlightenment permits them so to decide the matter 
 for their own gratification. Nathan could not see the situa 
 tion in any perspective; he had little training and less en 
 lightenment to help him decide any matter; he only knew 
 that in his heart was a blind, piteous groping for something 
 higher and better, knew instinctively that this sort of thing 
 was not for him and that he had blundered, blundered hor 
 ribly. But how to correct that blunder was quite another 
 question. 
 
 There was a baby coming! 
 
 The lad couldn't bring himself to cast aside or leave a 
 woman "in Milly's condition" as Mother Richards sighed 
 over it. One narrow mistake, made far back the day Mrs. 
 Forge had whirled on her small son and scared him so 
 badly anent sex, had been followed by another and another. 
 As he grew older, blunder after blunder had rolled up, like a 
 ball of soft snow juggernauting down hill. Now he was 
 about to become a father, temperamentally a pathetic mix 
 ture of half man, half boy himself. No, he could see no 
 self-justification in separating from Milly. Not then. And 
 things went from bad to worse. 
 
 The baby was born and any neatness and housewifery 
 which Milly may have shown before its arrival were quickly 
 dispensed with, "caring for baby." Milly apparently spent 
 whole days and weeks "caring for baby." Her floors went 
 unswept and her dishes went unwashed. Nathan subsisted 
 on various sticky pastries procured from the filite Bakery. 
 With increasing frequence he was advised frankly to "go up 
 town and get his supper" because "care of baby" had so 
 preoccupied the shining hours that Milly hadn't even had
 
 284 THE FOG 
 
 time to do up her hair. Which was self-evident. If she 
 "did up her hair" twice a week, she performed the extraordi 
 nary. She "twisted it up for comfort" in the morning and 
 it was still twisted up for comfort when she retired at night. 
 And Milly was always overworked, frightfully overworked. 
 She said so. Nathan had to listen. All this, while Johna- 
 than was doing his utmost at the factory to show his son 
 that he was wrong in everything on general principle and 
 all the trouble between father and son was Nat's conceit, 
 incorrigibility and inherent animosity against "retrench 
 ment." 
 
 Nathan had heard somewhere about the queer, constricted 
 twinge which comes to a father who feels the tiny fingers of 
 his first-born grip his own. Nathan felt no such twinge. 
 The baby was born at the Richards' home across the "flats." 
 Nathan had wished his wife to go to the local hospital but 
 Milly was shy of hospitals. She called them "butcher 
 shops." Nathan ate his meals at the lite the week 
 preceding the great event and slept in an unmade bed 
 in a slovenly house. Then one mid-afternoon young 
 Tom burst into the box-shop office. Excitedly he accosted 
 Nathan. 
 
 "Hey !" he yelled. "Yer kid's come ! An' I lost my bet 
 with Mickey Sweeney. I said it was gonna be a boy and the 
 darn thing's cost me thirty cents !" 
 
 Nathan went at once to the "house across the flats." The 
 baby was much in evidence, or its lungs were. Nathan 
 thought it sounded like the victrola when the needle ran off 
 and played one horrible sound over and over. 
 
 The child looked like a worm and was hideously homely. 
 Mrs. Richards refused to let him take it. He could see 
 Milly "sometime to-morrow." 
 
 He went back to the shop. Six men had "walked out 
 coi(i" because Johnathan had seized upon his enforced ab 
 sence to insist they load a freight car his way and in the de 
 fiance of a method Nathan and the men had spent months 
 in perfecting. 
 
 "Huh! Father, are you?" sniffed Johnathan. "And the 
 milk isn't wiped off your own chin yet. A father ! Fiddle 
 sticks!" 
 
 Five years of this, incredible as it may seem, and now 
 the box-shop had gone the way of all flesh.
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 285 
 
 Nathan slept in the dark, old Caleb and myself the only 
 sincere friends he had on earth. 
 
 Oh, Mediocrity! What crimes against youth may be 
 committed in thy name! 
 
 The evening following Nathan's release from custody, 
 my mother met me as I entered our home, the hour about 
 seven-thirty. 
 
 "Nathan's ill," she declared. "I met the Doctor's wife 
 at the missionary meeting this afternoon and she told me. 
 He ate something last night that disagreed with him and 
 had a bad case of acute indigestion along toward morning. 
 But the Doctor says what really ails Nat is a general 
 nervous breakdown and collapse. You'd better go over. 
 If there's anything I can do, let me know. I'll keep your 
 supper in the fireless cooker." 
 
 I went to the Pine Street cottage. 
 
 Milly had always distrusted me. She said Nathan "car 
 ried tales" to me about herself and her folks. Therefore 
 she was customarily surly when she admitted me. 
 
 I found Nathan in a side room, the place warmed by a 
 stinking oil heater. He was lying on his stomach in a 
 rumpled bed, his fevered face buried in his arms. He 
 turned over when I entered. He smiled grimly. Milly 
 stood at the door for an instant and then said to Nathan : 
 
 "Guess you'll live till I get back. I'm going down to 
 mother's. Ruth's having a party and " 
 
 "Yeah!" shrieked little Mary, "and they're gonna have 
 ice cream !" 
 
 So Mildred and the child slammed out of the house. I 
 scooped an armful of miscellaneous clutter from a chair 
 and swung it over to Nat's bedside. But first I lowered 
 the window and changed the air. 
 
 "I'm glad you've come, Bill," he said huskily. "If it 
 wasn't for you and old Gridley, there's times it seems I'd 
 be almost ready to quit." 
 
 "Buck up, old man," I told him. "Nothing's so bad that 
 it can't be worse." 
 
 "Yes, I know ! And God Almighty hates a quitter ! But 
 I'm so muddled and antagonized and shot to pieces
 
 286 THE FOG 
 
 physically that I've almost lost my grit to go on. I've lost 
 it, Billy, because somehow I can't see much incentive for 
 going ahead." 
 
 We talked then as men will talk. We were not choice 
 as to metaphor or idiom. We discussed The Sex with re 
 lieving frankness ; we did not refer to spades as long- 
 handled agricultural implements used to turn over the sod 
 to find fishworms or for the digging of graves. 
 
 "Bill ! Bill !" my friend cried feverishly. "Tell me what 
 it's all for! Tell me why it's happened to me like this! 
 Tell me where I've erred! Tell me how it's all to end! 
 What's the constructive meaning in it all, Bill, and is there 
 any constructive meaning?" 
 
 Tell him? How could I tell him? How could I make 
 him see that his present predicament was as simple a 
 denouement of causes set in motion years back as it was 
 natural for a field of waving corn to follow the dropping of 
 potent yellow kernels in the spring. 
 
 Married to a cheap woman who "guessed he wouldn't 
 die" before she returned from a party where the chief 
 item of interest was ice cream, lying in a slovenly claptrap 
 of a home, excoriated by thoughtless local people, facing a 
 court hearing and possible disgrace, laden with domestic 
 obligations from which there was no escape in honor, as 
 a man of his type conceives honor, all harked back, I say, 
 to the first day he had sought enlightenment about sex 
 from the place he should have sought it, his mother, and 
 been shocked instead into vicious repression. That childish 
 "shocking" was an epilogue of all the sordid method of 
 training him. For what? For exactly what Nathan was 
 as he lay this night upon his bed. 
 
 The intolerable vileness and injustice of the whole miser 
 able business lay in the fact that the father and mother 
 responsible not only went scot free from the penalty son 
 and daughter must pay, but saw absolutely no blame for 
 themselves in that denouement. Blame for themselves? 
 They actually believed themselves wronged. 
 
 Nathan rolled feverishly on his rumpled bed. 
 
 "Bill," he rambled on wistfully, "remember the walks and 
 talks we had when we were kids the nights under the 
 starlight the boat rides down the river when I looked 
 into the future and the world seemed so beautiful and
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 287 
 
 wonderful, it hurt? I dreamed of a future then, Bill, in 
 which I was affluent and successful a wonder-time when 
 all my dreams were coming true. And have a look, Bill! 
 I'm loaded with the disgrace of the box-shop failure and 
 half the poor people in town, it seems, weeping over their 
 lost savings ; married to a wife I don't seem to get along 
 with with a baby that isn't being brought up at all the 
 way I'd like to see her brought up paying the bills of a 
 home where I can't even get food cooked to eat nor a bed 
 made to sleep on less than a hundred dollars to my 
 name " 
 
 "I'll loan you whatever money you need, Nat! How 
 much ?" 
 
 "Oh, it isn't that, Bill, it isn't that ! I dreamed of a wife 
 who'd be a mate and a pal, Bill ; one who'd be in a woman 
 all that mother and the rest of the women I've known 
 were not who could work with me and play with me and 
 laugh with me and love with me and and I've gone 
 to work and tied myself for life to a poor girl who writes 
 her name like a seven-year-old and doesn't know whether 
 Bacon was a poet or something you buy for twelve cents 
 a pound at the butcher's and comes from a hog. I dreamed 
 of a home, Bill fine and rare and restful and rich, where 
 all my treasures were to be gathered, where lights were 
 seductive and every hour a golden moment what was that 
 line I quoted to you once, Bill about 'art drawing-rooms 
 softly shaded at midnight?' And look what I've got! 
 Six rooms cluttered with junk, one step removed from 
 squalor in a mud hut! This is my life, Bill, and I'm only 
 twenty-six ! They say America may get drawn into the war. 
 Maybe maybe that's going to be my way out. Only 
 somehow, going to war in that spirit and leaving a foul 
 nest behind seems weakness, Bill, not a whole lot different 
 than putting the muzzle of a shotgun into my mouth and 
 pulling the trigger with my foot!" 
 
 As I remained silent, he went on : 
 
 "Bill, remember the day I told you something about 
 life being a fog in which I groped blindly? Who's re 
 sponsible for that fog? Am I responsible, Bill because I 
 can't find any way out ?" 
 
 "No!" I cried wrathfully. "Your folks are responsible! 
 Damn them bringing kids into the world and thinking
 
 288 THE FOG 
 
 they've done their whole duty by simply giving them food 
 for their bodies and clothes for their backs! Damn the 
 assumption that parents are under no obligation to supply 
 as much protection and training for a child's mind and 
 spirit as the law demands shall be supplied to its body!" 
 
 "I'm groping, Bill ! Groping, groping groping ! Will I 
 ever find my way out? I wonder? It's too late now to 
 damn father and mother. Poor souls, I'm just beginning 
 to see now they didn't know any better. And the hopeless 
 part of my predicament is that now I'm the father of a 
 child in turn although somehow I can't feel like a father ! 
 and if I don't play out my hand, the day's coming when 
 my child is going to turn around and execrate me as 
 cordially as I feel like execrating my own folks to-night!" 
 
 "The trouble with you is, Nat you're too darned con 
 scientious for your own good. You've got a great bump 
 of moral responsibility and it fills the whole of the inside 
 of you. What you lack is a good healthy selfishness that 
 would make people especially your own relatives quit 
 playing you for a sucker!" 
 
 "Easy enough to say, Bill. That's what Caleb Gridley 
 contended. But if I acquired such a selfishness, where 
 would I start in to exercise it? Father? He's gone! 
 Mother? Lord! She'd run shrieking through Main Street 
 and probably end up in an asylum. Besides, after all, she's 
 my mother! Milly? I've married her and burdened her 
 with a child. She's no different than she was when I mar 
 ried her. In so far as she's been given the light, or had the 
 training in turn from her parents, she's doing the best she 
 knows how. No, the trouble with me is, Bill, I'm cursed 
 with the type of mind that unconsciously turns back to 
 causes for every result. And when I analyze those causes, 
 I can't do anything that savors of injustice. I don't think 
 I'm pitying myself when I say that I've known so much 
 injustice myself that I can't find it in my heart to pass 
 more along to others. Folks who have suffered are quicker 
 to detect suffering, I suppose. They shrink from passing 
 it along. I don't know ! Somehow I've learned to judge 
 folks, not by their conscious acts or the results they get, 
 so much as by their motives.. But it's got me in a devil 
 of a mess, Bill. And I'm a poor hater a rotten poor hater. 
 There's dad now, I don't hate him half as much as I did
 
 GROPING TERRIBLY 289 
 
 a few years ago. I'm beginning to pity him for his nar 
 rowness and weakness and the things he couldn't under 
 stand." 
 
 What can be done with a chap like that? I give it up. 
 The predicament simply had to work itself out. 
 
 "John and Anna Forge are only types of lots o' parents, 
 William," said Uncle Joe Fodder when I went to the old 
 philosopher for counsel later that week. "Not all of 'em 
 are so narrow and vicious as John and Anna. It isn't always 
 the girl question that gets 'em all het up so they raise 
 Cain with their kids. But most parents is nuts over 
 somethin', and their kids has to take the backwash. And 
 most growed folks don't make their selves much trouble 
 forgettin' their own kidhood or how they felt about life's 
 big problems while they too was growin'. But the worst 
 sin they're guilty of, William, is bringing kids into the 
 world, raisin' 'em to sixteen, eighteen or twenty-one, maybe 
 then turnin' 'em loose to shift for theirselves and lettin' 
 the devil take the hindmost. Among all the animals, Man, 
 the highest in development, is the only one that don't take 
 much trouble to show their young how to hunt a livin' or 
 dodge life's traps. And more's the pity! Why, even a 
 woodchuck does better'n that!" 
 
 "Oh, well, Nat," I said, as I finally arose to leave that 
 night, "if the allotted span of human life is seventy years, 
 as Holy Writ contends, and you're only twenty-six now, 
 you've got forty-four years ahead of you yet. And forty- 
 four years can bring many changes, old man. Perhaps all 
 this is only education and training for something finer and 
 grander and sweeter than you've ever dreamed of yet. 
 Only being down close to it and going through it right now 
 to-night it's rather hard to see it." 
 
 "You really think so, Bill?" Nathan asked almost pite- 
 ously. 
 
 "Who knows, Nat?" 
 
 "I've been studying my Bible a bit, Bill I'm not ashamed 
 to admit it. Not dad's Bible the Bible. Men in perplexity 
 have been going to the Bible for a long, long time, Bill. 
 And I've been doing a lot of thinking about the words of 
 the psalmist : 'Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.' I've 
 never forgotten how you and I prayed that poor little kid's 
 prayer that night in the alders after I'd tried to kiss
 
 290 "THE FOG 
 
 Bernie Gridley. I've done a lot of praying, Bill I mean 
 to do more. I've wondered if it's true, 'Whom the Lord 
 loveth, He chasteneth ?' Is that the reason I must grope for 
 a time in a fog before finding a hill top where the sun's 
 shining gloriously and Someone is waiting for me to 
 come up? I wonder if there is a God if the world is 
 anything but a little fleck of gravel, twirling off in space 
 if the hairs of our heads are not numbered if the sparrows 
 aren't seen when they fall? I wonder, Bill, if the Almighty 
 perhaps does love me ? And that's the rea 
 son?" 
 
 My throat grew thick at the way he said it. Nathan on 
 the bed blurred before me. There was nothing maudlin 
 about it. 
 
 VI 
 
 Nathan was ill two weeks. The affairs of the box-shop 
 were wound up. Nathan was exonerated from any criminal 
 complicity in his father's felony. The fiasco passed into 
 small-town industrial history. 
 
 My friend secured a position in the sales department of 
 the knitting mills. A month later he started off on the road. 
 His salary was two thousand a year and a generous bonus 
 in commissions. I think Caleb Gridley was responsible. 
 
 VII 
 
 Milly considered herself left a widow without a widow's 
 privileges. One night she met Si Plumb on the street and 
 let him take her into the Olympic picture show. 
 
 She knew people were commenting and was defiant. 
 
 The film was, "Her Right to Happiness." There was 
 a travelogue and a current pictorial beforehand. However, 
 the travelogue and current pictorial didn't count.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 GOOD RESOLUTIONS 
 
 Madelaine Theddon had returned from a matinee one 
 spring afternoon when she was met by the announcement 
 that a gentleman had been waiting an hour. Gordon Ruggles 
 arose to greet her. 
 
 Madelaine's first feeling was one of extreme annoyance 
 and defiant exasperation. She looked at Gordon, however, 
 and realized in an instant that a change had come over 
 the fellow. What had happened? 
 
 "Don't be angry, Madge," he pleaded respectfully enough. 
 "All I want is a few minutes to talk." 
 
 Gordon was clothed differently. His rakish, sport suit 
 had given way to sober black. He stood erect and not 
 with a leering slouch. Most of all, he had visited a surgeon- 
 dentist and that disfiguring front tooth had been corrected. 
 It had been cut off and a crown put in its place which 
 gave his mouth and the entire front of his face a different 
 appearance. Yes, Gordon had changed. 
 
 "I'm not angry, Gord. Why, you're looking fine ! What's 
 happened ?" 
 
 "Maybe I can explain if you'll give me the opportunity. 
 I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, Madge." 
 
 She laid her street wraps on the bed in the adjoining 
 room and came back, patting her hair. 
 
 "May I smoke, Madge? It would help what I want to 
 say." 
 
 Might he smoke? It was the first time Gordon had ever 
 made such a request. Formerly he would have smoked 
 whether it offended her or not. 
 
 "Certainly," she replied. 
 
 He did not produce his familiar gold-plated cigarette 
 case. He lighted a cigar. Then, having accepted the chair
 
 292 THE FOG 
 
 she indicated, he leaned back and put a half-inch of ash 
 on the tip of the fine Havana before he started. 
 
 "Madge, I've been an awful cad, haven't I?" 
 
 "Yes, Gordon," was the girl's candid answer. "You 
 have!" 
 
 "I know! I'm sorry!" 
 
 "You're sorry! And how long have you been sorry?" 
 
 "Dad came down here to see you, didn't he a few 
 months ago?" 
 
 "I'll be frank. He did." 
 
 "Yes. He went back to Springfield. And do you know 
 what he did?" 
 
 "What did he do?" 
 
 "He gave me the darndest thrashing the first he 
 ever gave me in his life. I never suspected he had it in 
 him!" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "He did. I wish he'd given it to me a dozen years ago. 
 I had it coming." 
 
 Madelaine sat astonished. This from Gordon ! 
 
 "Yes, he did and I had it coming, I say. Not only that, 
 he stopped my allowance; I haven't had a cent from him 
 for weeks months ! Four of them !" 
 
 "Where what how are you supporting yourself?" 
 
 "I went to work, Madge. I've been working since the 
 last of February." 
 
 "Gordon Ruggles!" 
 
 "I don't want any credit. And don't compliment me. I 
 don't deserve it." 
 
 "What sort of work are you doing?" 
 
 "I got a job in an iron foundry. I make forty dollars a 
 week. And did you know, Madge honestly it looks big 
 ger than the whole thousand your mother let me have the day 
 we first met." 
 
 Madelaine could not keep her pleasure from her voice. 
 
 "That's simply fine, Gord! And what do your father 
 and mother think about it?" 
 
 "Pop doesn't say much. He's too riled. You must have 
 given him a pretty bad jolt when he came to see you. He 
 always thought we Ruggleses were so absolutely perfect it 
 certainly took him down a peg, you bet. Mother well, 
 mother thinks I'm crazy or at least father is. She thinks
 
 GOOD RESOLUTIONS 293 
 
 it's pretty much another lark I'm on and in time I'll get 
 over it." 
 
 "That's not the right attitude, Gord. You're doing a 
 splendid thing." 
 
 Gordon shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Mother's got her notions. They're pretty high-flown. 
 We don't see much of each other. I'm not living at home. 
 I'm boarding with a fellow who works in the same 
 office." 
 
 "And you did this because your father thrashed you?" 
 
 "Not exactly, Madge. The fact that father as much 
 of a fop and a prig as he's always been could do it, started 
 me thinking. Besides anyway, Madge honestly, I was 
 tired of searching for thrills. I'd tried all the thrills till 
 only one remained Work. I wonder if you can under 
 stand?" 
 
 "Perhaps I understand, Gord, better than you think." 
 
 "Madge, I'm going to tell you something else." 
 
 "I'm sure I'm delighted to hear whatever you've got to 
 tell me along this line. It's perfectly splendid !" 
 
 "Madge, I'm going to tell you something because I've 
 got to tell you. Madge I lote you!" He said this last 
 in a whisper. 
 
 It was silent in the apartment for a moment after that. 
 The manner of the fellow's declaration was different. This 
 was not the hoyden who had tried to compromise her. His 
 eyelid didn't flop, either. Madge noticed that. 
 
 "I love you, Madge," the man went on before she could 
 frame a suitable reply. "I've always loved you. I loved 
 you from the moment I set eyes on you that day I banged 
 into your bedroom, although I didn't know it was love 
 not then. You've always had a peculiar influence over me, 
 Madge. I've been a rotter. I've done things for which I 
 can't look myself in the mirror to say nothing of you. 
 But well, if a chap can be sorry, then I'm sorry. I'm 
 trying to show I'm sorry by straightening out. I've met 
 other girls and I've raised blue hell with them. But they've 
 been incidents in my life; they've come and they've gone. 
 You haven't come and gone, Madge. Always you have held 
 the same place in my feelings and emotions. You've seemed 
 steady, sure, something just a little above me, waiting for 
 me to come through clean. I say I love ,,ou, Madge. I've
 
 294 THE FOG 
 
 come down here to tell you so. I had to tell you. I wanted 
 you to know and understand." 
 
 "You're paying me a great compliment, Gordon," the 
 woman managed to articulate at last. "But but I can't 
 marry you, Gord. Somehow I can't." 
 
 "I'm not asking you to marry me, not yet, Madge. In a 
 lot of ways I'm my same old self. But I want you to know 
 that I'm working for something, even if it's only your 
 regard and esteem and respect, Madge. That's been the 
 big trouble with me, all my life. I've never had an in 
 centive any goal ahead to win. From as far back as I 
 can remember, there's been no occasion for me to work 
 and win anything. Everything came easy or rather, it was 
 at hand for me to sample by simply reaching out and taking 
 it, even other girls and women, Madge. You've been the 
 only thing that's been denied me; that piqued me because 
 I couldn't have you by bawling for you or 'rushing' you. 
 Pop and mother let me have all the money I wanted from 
 the day I could reach up over a counter and hand some 
 one silver coins. Nothing was ever too good for me. I 
 got a rotten idea of my own importance. And I've known 
 I had it for a long, long time. There's a lot of it left yet. 
 But I've reached the place where I'm tired of having every 
 thing handed to me. Honest to God, Madge! The world 
 and everything in it was beginning to go stale. I'd ex 
 plored everything I'd seen to explore ; I'd had everything 
 I caterwauled for; people had gone and come the moment 
 I set up a tantrum or showed fight. And life was going 
 stale, I say. It was the same old thing, over and over 
 and over. I might have a better motor-car or a prettier 
 woman. But still it would only be an automobile and a 
 a some one to play with. I looked into the future and 
 saw nothing different until the day I dropped. And then 
 Pop banged me in good shape one night in the library. 
 He used a razor strop yes, he did. I'm tall as he is, and 
 I thought I could lick my weight in anything human that 
 lived, male or female. But he showed me I couldn't. We 
 made an awful mess. But he trimmed me properly and 
 sat on my chest. When he'd shown he could do it, he started 
 talking to me. Among other things, he made me promise 
 I'd come down here at the first opportunity and humbly 
 ask your forgiveness. I vowed for a time I wouldn't. But
 
 GOOD RESOLUTIONS 295 
 
 I found a new thrill and a new interest in work and I 
 wondered if I wasn't cheating myself by not playing the 
 gentleman with you with everybody. I don't mean as 
 a policy," the fellow added hastily. "I mean because it 
 was what I ought to do. And so I've come, Madge. I've 
 got to be back on the job Monday morning, but I want to 
 go back feeling I've got a new interest in life something 
 worth while. That's the whole story in a nutshell, Madge. 
 And I'm telling you frankly I love you and I'm sorry 
 terribly sorry!" 
 
 What could she do? What could she say? Her reply 
 sounded trite and inadequate. 
 
 "That's manly of you, Gordon. And well, I'm going 
 to tell you exactly what I told your father if you prove 
 the stuff that's latent in you, you stand as good a chance of 
 winning my friendship permanently and maybe more as 
 any man I know now or ever will know. In fact, you've 
 got a bit of advantage, because I know you will have over 
 come more handicaps." 
 
 "Madge, is there any one else who " 
 
 "Who loves me? I don't know, Gordon. I have many 
 men friends and go about much." 
 
 "Is there any one whom you love? It's a rotten thing 
 to ask but hang it all, I'm jealous!" 
 
 What was the little heart-pinch that came to Madeline 
 then ? Why should her thoughts flee secretly to some torn 
 pieces of paper in an envelope in her bottom dresser 
 drawer ? 
 
 "Not enough to marry, Gordon. That's as far as I want 
 to be interrogated." 
 
 "Madge! Have I got a chance?" 
 
 The girl smiled, a wonderful smile. 
 
 "All the chance in the world, Gordon. Go through with 
 this thing and you'll prove yourself a man!" 
 
 "Madge! There never was a woman like you. There'll 
 never be another." 
 
 "Fiddlesticks! The world is filled with women like 
 myself !" 
 
 "Then they don't move on the strata where the fellows 
 who need them most can contact them." 
 
 Madelaine left the contention open. She was thinking 
 about Gordon's language. He had always talked like a
 
 296 THE FOG 
 
 street gamin despite his home culture. Now his vocabulary 
 was more refined, far more careful. 
 
 It was an hour before he arose to go. 
 
 "Madge," he said at the door, "you're never going to 
 practice, even if you graduate from medical school." 
 
 "Why not, Gordon? What makes you think so?" She 
 was amused. 
 
 "There are too many men who need you in a slightly 
 different capacity than doling out pills!" 
 
 She was glad when the door had closed on him that he 
 had not said, "Because I want you and intend to marry 
 you myself !" 
 
 Poor Gordon! Perhaps he too had been more sinned 
 against than sinning. 
 
 Madelaine went back to her chair and remained for a 
 long time in thought. 
 
 "I can't let myself drift into it I can't. I can't! Oh, 
 dear, where can I go, what can I do, to escape it? Will 
 I marry him after all? Will his persistence win in the 
 end?" 
 
 Tears filmed her eyes. She had felt that strange pinch 
 in her heart again, remembering the envelope in the drawer. 
 
 "I want a man who has won out in spite of everything!" 
 she cried. "Never mind how Gordon wins out, he will not 
 have won out over enough !" 
 
 She wondered while dressing for dinner that night if 
 Nathaniel Forge had come through that jail scrape "with 
 a clean bill of health."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 POOR SOW'S EAR 
 
 We hear much comment about Genius in this clay-and- 
 paint age. Mediocrity is amazed that there can be persons 
 capable of doing many things and doing them exceptionally 
 well. It fails to grasp that the same brain power and 
 caliber which makes a success of a specialty can be turned 
 with equal success into any line of endeavor and approxi 
 mate the same general result. 
 
 Nathan had gone on the road for the Thorne Knitting 
 Mills as a traveling salesman. He had business experience ; 
 he had brains whetted by dilemmas in the box-shop. But 
 most of all he had imagination. And that same imagination, 
 whether applied to poetry, paper boxes or the sale of union 
 suits, brought the same satisfying result. 
 
 My friend started at "two thousand a year and commis 
 sion." His territory was eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey 
 and a portion of middle New York. At the end of his 
 first year he had realized four thousand dollars and Milly 
 wondered if her prospects were not looking up and she 
 hadn't been a bit wrong about that business of being bun 
 coed? Four thousand a year is nearly eighty dollars a 
 week. The Forges left the Pine Street cottage and took 
 a better house on Preston Hill. And Nathan did a manly 
 thing. He started the task of making the poor mill girl 
 he had married into a lady. He began by taking Milly 
 with him on some of his trips and letting her see life outside 
 a drab Vermont country town. 
 
 New York was a revelation to Milly. She had always 
 been a frump in her dress, but Fifth Avenue kindled a 
 spark of incentive in her, and under Nat's gentle encour 
 agement, she honestly tried to make something of herself. 
 She came back to Paris full of ideas and aspirations. And
 
 298 THE FOG 
 
 give her credit. The first thing she did was to junk all 
 the jumble of assorted furniture, get rid of her Woolworth 
 trimmings and try to Be Somebody. 
 
 Try to Be Somebody ! Oh, what a tangled web we weave, 
 when first we practice to try to be somebody ! 
 
 Anyhow, the Forges refurnished their house and Milly's 
 pride in its altered appearance was such that she put down 
 her foot on all her relatives treating it like their personal 
 ash box. Thereupon the Richards family, individually and 
 collectively, turned up their noses and averred that Mildred 
 was trying to be tony and put on style and be a snob. Her 
 mother "just ran up" one spring day and asked to borrow 
 ten dollars. For the first time in their lives Milly de 
 manded to know what the money was wanted for. When 
 Mother Richards announced that as usual Popper was out 
 of work and Sarah wanted a new dress to wear to the 
 Knights of Columbus Dance on St. Patrick's day, Milly 
 told her mother that if Sarah wanted a new dress let her 
 stick to her job in the Bon Ton and earn it, not get peeved 
 at Miss Morgan and quit whenever the proprietress wanted 
 her to work overtime. Mother Richards departed, fully 
 persuaded that in her case also, no serpent's tooth is sharper 
 than an ungrateful child. 
 
 The fact of the matter was, Milly had found some House 
 Beautiful magazines with "classy interiors" illustrated 
 therein and was straining Nathan's pay envelope to get 
 the wherewithal to buy a set of Heppelwhite furniture for 
 her dining room. It was no especial consideration for her 
 husband that made her turn down her mother. Her motive 
 was entirely selfish. Also I learned later that whereas I 
 had lately taken unto myself a wife, Milly wanted to awe 
 me with the "class" in her home and prove to Nathan he 
 had annexed a more aristocratic helpmate than had been 
 acquired by his lifelong friend. 
 
 II 
 
 Anna Forge, as usual, had not found life any bed of 
 roses. She had managed to retain the property on Vermont 
 Avenue but at a disturbing price. For she discovered that 
 whereas property was property and the house was appraised
 
 POOR SOW'S EAR 299 
 
 on the tax list at ten thousand dollars, yet even a ten- 
 thousand-dollar house did not stand for the epitome of 
 worldly wealth and affluence when there were no funds 
 forthcoming to pay those taxes, keep up repairs, heat the 
 place and give her the wherewithal to feel and clothe herself 
 so she could reside therein. She had to sell the house and 
 furnishings, retaining only enough of the latter to make two 
 rooms livable in the top of the Nor walk block where she 
 finally sat down in her loneliness and meditated darkly on 
 the ingratitude of all flesh. 
 
 In July an alluring oil prospectus fell into her hands. 
 Without consulting her son, fully expectant of realizing 
 a fortune within three months the prospectus inferred 
 that she would she gave up all but a few hundreds of 
 dollars for some sheets of beautifully lithographed paper 
 delivered by a well-dressed young man who had "a nice 
 face." 
 
 Edith in Montreal had presented her husband with 
 triplets! The husband had seen no advantage in triplets, 
 however, and had been inclined to act peevish. Anna sent 
 Edith five hundred of the remaining nine hundred dollars 
 "to help out dear daughter." And dear daughter's husband 
 had commandeered the money, played a bucket shop and 
 taken a better job down in Pennsylvania. 
 
 In September Anna Forge was reduced to seventy-nine 
 dollars. Where the balance had gone the Lord only knew. 
 Thereupon her thoughts turned to her better half who had 
 "skun out and left her to starve" and she brought her trou 
 bles to Nathan, the idea being that Nathan should get the law 
 after his father and have him brought back and made to 
 support his wife. 
 
 But threescore wrathful stockholders and two national 
 banks had also voted that Johnathan should be apprehended 
 and brought back, quite a time before. The difficulty in 
 both cases had been that neither knew exactly where to go 
 to apprehend Johnathan and bring him back. So Johnathan 
 had not been brought back and the matter languished. 
 
 By October, unbeknown to Milly, Nathan was mailing 
 his mother a few dollars a week for her food and room 
 rent. When he came in off the road he occasionally brought 
 her new clothes. Mrs. Forge was grateful for the clothing 
 but felt it would have been "nicer" in Nathan to give her
 
 300 THE FOG 
 
 the money and let her buy her clothes herself. But Nathan 
 wanted the money to go for clothes. 
 
 She talked quite a lot about it, and not within the im 
 mediate family circle, either. 
 
 ni 
 
 In November, when the Forge house was furnished after 
 some of the most gorgeous and least expensive plans in 
 House Beautiful, Milly and Nathan sent my wife and self 
 an invitation to "come up some night and have dinner." 
 Mary Ann had made a wry face. But for Nathan's sake 
 with whose vicissitudes she had become more or less 
 acquainted she finally consented. 
 
 Milly had acquired a certain middle-class pride in her 
 establishment by this time. But it was the narrow, pathetic, 
 provincial, poorly bred sort of pride which is ofttimes 
 the worst vulgarity, since it admits a knowledge of the 
 existence of etiquette but refuses to reason it out or work 
 out the finesse of detail which makes living on a certain 
 well-mannered, soft-toned, fine-grained plane an existence 
 of beauty and a joy forever. 
 
 Milly's idea of serving a perfect meal was bulk attuned 
 to brilliance. But in the fine epicurean points of house 
 wifery, she was as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. 
 She was careful to procure a three-dollar roast, cook it to 
 the best of her ability (and Farmers Cook Book) bedeck 
 it with pretty garnishes, and, let it set around some 
 where until it was clammy and greasy as cold-storage goose 
 and about as delectable. She worked hard to get the appro 
 priate flowers for a centerpiece and forgot the butter plates. 
 She would spend half an afternoon preparing a lavish 
 dessert, and by the time it came to the table the hour was 
 so late and so much that was over-hearty had gone before, 
 that her guests could only nibble at it. Then she accused 
 them of not liking it or rinding something the matter with 
 it. She wept angrily when she was finally alone and de 
 clared "she wouldn't get up another feed for nobody" if 
 the whole world starved. Poor Milly! It was a hectic 
 thing, Trying to Be Somebody ! 
 
 Well, Mary Ann and I went up to Nathan's. Little
 
 POOR SOW'S EAR 301 
 
 Mary, their child, was about six years of age at the time, 
 a red-cheeked, obstreperous little bumpkin who meant well 
 enough but never knew exactly what it was she was sup 
 posed to mean. Immediately we got into the house, Milly 
 and her child viewed us as "company" and acquired that 
 same old agonizing woodenness of the lowly-born known 
 as "remembering their manners." 
 
 Milly came to greet us cordially enough, then excused 
 herself to oversee preparations for her dinner in the kitchen. 
 Nathan led us into the living room. Through the archway 
 into the dining room I could not help noting a profusion 
 of white linen, silver, cut glass and flowers. But the savor 
 of the forthcoming meal was strong through the house, 
 along with something which has scorched acridly. To close 
 the door between dining room and kitchen never occurred to 
 Milly. It was her house, wasn't it? What did a door or 
 two matter? From my position at table when we were 
 subsequently placed, I sat throughout the meal with a 
 kitchen vista before me in a chaotic mass of pots, pans, 
 kettles and paper bags, all but the bags greasy and sooty 
 and piled in the sink in plain sight over Milly's shoulder. 
 
 In the interval before dinner, however, regardless of the 
 fact that we were ostensibly there to visit her parents, 
 little Mary assumed that it devolved upon her to entertain 
 us. Which she did in all childish innocence and utter good 
 intention, but which became quickly embarrassing even to 
 the point of wholesome exasperation. 
 
 We had not been in the place four minutes before she 
 dug up dolls, doll carriages, toy houses and games and 
 insisted that we interest ourselves in all of them. Again 
 and again Nathan reprimanded her or sent her out. Back 
 she would come in a moment with the utmost self-assur 
 ance. "Mamma says I can !" she explained to her father 
 each time and finally shoved a primer in my face with the 
 persistent demand, did I want to hear her read? Now I 
 like youngsters and so does Mary Ann. But God knows 
 there's a time and place for everything, even children. 
 And little Mary soon got on my nerves. Nathan tried to 
 "save his face" and send her out as patiently and kindly as 
 he could. But Mary continued to run appealing to her 
 mother and demanded to know if "Uncle Billy couldn't 
 hear her read?" and I overheard Milly retort "Certainly!"
 
 302 THE FOG 
 
 as though astonished that any one might not want to hear 
 a first-grade reading lesson as prelude to a five-course 
 dinner. So back came Mary, poked up into my arms, con 
 veyed kitchen flour all over my clothes and started to out- 
 talk her father with such asinine twaddle as, "I see a cat. 
 Can the cat run? Yes, the cat can run. It is a black cat. 
 Oh, see the pretty kittens." Etc., etc., etc. 
 
 Nathan colored, grew grim of lip, ordered the child 
 from the room in no mild tone. And little Mary started 
 for the kitchen with a sudden, high-pitched, heart-broken 
 bawl. In the kitchen she stayed permanently this time, to 
 bounce back a few moments later, loll at the corner of the 
 doorway and announce: 
 
 "Ma says to come and eat while everything's hot be 
 cause food ain't no good when it's cold." On the strength 
 of this startling information, we went into the dining room. 
 Thereupon we had more Child. "I wanner sit side o' 
 Uncle Billy! Ma says I can! Pa, I wanner sit side of 
 Uncle Billy!" And when she had ascertained for a cer 
 tainty that she could sit side of Uncle Billy, she danced 
 around the table, pointing out each of our places and then 
 dragged a high chair noisily from the opposite end of 
 the room over between Nathan and myself. There was also 
 some confusion about the transfer of a patent-rimmed 
 infant's plate, a mug, a spoon, a napkin. 
 
 Nathan sent an appealing glance at his wife. 
 
 "Oh, leave the child alone!" cried Milly wearily, in front 
 of her guests. "You're always picking on her; she never 
 does anything that suits you." And so Nathan "left the 
 child alone." But it was noisily incumbent on me to lift 
 her into her high chair and tie her bib. Thereupon little 
 Mary started to "make music" with the cutlery on the edge 
 of her plate and announce to us of what the forthcoming 
 meal was to consist. 
 
 "Start right in, folks," Milly invited. "I've got some 
 things to see to upstairs before I can eat," and she went 
 above to dress, leaving her husband and guests to await 
 her return or eat without her, also leaving a little girl who 
 suddenly remembered her "manners", sat with her hands 
 folded school-fashion on the edge of her plate and allevi 
 ated the distressing pauses by entertaining us with choice 
 bits of household information, such as: that Ma had on all
 
 POOR SOW'S EAR 303 
 
 her best dishes; such as: that the green pitcher came from 
 the five-and-ten ; such as: that Ma came near not puttin' 
 on that pickled preserve because when she opened the jar 
 and smelled it, she thought it had spoiled; such as- oh, 
 bother ! 
 
 Poor Nathan! He sat with the steaming food before 
 him and then said thickly, "She'll probably be a considerable 
 time. Perhaps we hadn't better wait." But I knew he 
 was wondering why his wife could not have negotiated her 
 wardrobe before our arrival and thrown off a mere apron 
 or something of the sort, to do the honors of her table. 
 
 Little Mary cried shrilly above my wife's attempt at 
 sympathetic conversation with Nathan to inform her father 
 what particular portion of the roast she desired and what 
 vegetables and what drinkables. Finally Nat could stand 
 it no longer. Milly being out of earshot, he frankly apolo 
 gized for the child. But I read behind his apology the 
 heartache of a tired man who did his best to train his 
 child as opportunity offered and he himself had enlighten 
 ment. But a man at business ninety per cent, of the time 
 may easily have much good work discounted by a child's 
 propinquity with an unbred mother. He ended finally by 
 telling the child that another word from it would earn 
 instant dismissal from the board. That worked admirably 
 until Milly's appearance when the roast was almost finished. 
 Little Mary then recounted to her mother what her father 
 had instructed her, etc., etc. 
 
 I will forbear a detailed account of that dinner. It was 
 an ordeal. The table was crammed with dishes, there was 
 no one to take away emptied plates and nowhere to set 
 them. Nathan had to arise and take them away himself. 
 Twice little tyfary scrambled down and followed him into 
 the kitchen, leaving Mary Ann and myself alone and feeling 
 rather foolish. 
 
 Mary Ann settled down into an hour of agony. Little 
 Mary pushed her food upon her broad fork with her 
 fingers. She threw back her head and sucked the last 
 drop from her water glass. She arose in her high chair, 
 would have stood upon it and reached for her own butter 
 if Nathan had not stopped her. Milly was in her place 
 by this time and Nathan asked her if she couldn't "see to 
 little Mary." Whereat Milly smoothed back the child's
 
 304 THE FOG 
 
 hair, fiddled with a hairpin to twine the hair up from the 
 child's eyes, patted it and said bless her, she was mother's 
 little daughter, wasn't she, and was remembering her man 
 ners, wasn't she, too; and little Mary agreed that she was 
 remembering her manners and demanded to know if mamma 
 had yet "let on" to Uncle Billy that they had ice cream 
 among other items for dessert. 
 
 The dessert came at last, about the time when I was 
 wondering if Mary Ann were going to live to partake of it. 
 
 "We've got some cheese, that horribly smelly kind that 
 Nat likes so well, if anybody wants any of it but him," 
 was Milly's final comment anent a most delectable Camem- 
 bert. 
 
 "Yeah!" piped up Mary. "And it comes in a wooden 
 box and when you take the cover off it, you could almost 
 think there was sompin' dead inside it!" 
 
 We got away from the table. 
 
 Mary Ann went home and to bed, and if I could have 
 spared the time, I would have had Doctor Johnson "fix me 
 up" too. 
 
 What was it Nathan had told himself that night in the 
 office when he had gazed upon Milly after the Carol Gardner 
 disappointment ? Something about "one woman being as 
 good as another ?" Sex versus Ladyhood. 
 
 "The trouble with most young colts who fly into matri 
 mony with the first exhibit of the sex that sashays along, 
 is that they seem to forget they're gonna have thirty to 
 fifty years of it," comments Uncle Joe Fodder, when he 
 hears of some particularly rash marriage about the village. 
 "If a feller can't be good, b'dam, why can't he be careful?" 
 
 IV 
 
 Milly gave it out that Mary Ann was snobbish and 
 "stuck up", that she couldn't be sociable and neighborly 
 if it cost her a leg because she never accepted another in 
 vitation from Milly and her personal opinion was that 
 Nathan's bosom friend had married a "quince." 
 
 Mary Ann gave a dinner party for a number of the 
 summer colonists on Preston Hill shortly afterward and 
 neglected to invite Milly.
 
 POOR SOW'S EAR 305 
 
 "After me about breakin' my neck to give her that swell 
 feed to our house in March !" lamented Milly. "She's a 
 cat and I hope she chokes on her own cream." 
 
 Nathan never referred to the dinner thereafter, however.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ALWAYS JUSTIFIED 
 
 The Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Japan, is built close to 
 the edge of Tokio Bay. Only the width of a macadam 
 street separates it from a walled embankment with a twenty- 
 foot drop down to the harbor water. It is a long, red 
 building with a wide portico running the entire length of 
 the eastern side. Tourists from the seven corners of the 
 earth sit before the great, opened windows and gaze across 
 the blue waters where outgoing liners are heading for home. 
 
 In a wicker lounging chair before one of those great 
 windows at twilight of an August day in 1916 sat an 
 oldish man with weak, watery eyes and a petulant mouth. 
 He was dressed in white pongee, somewhat rumpled, and 
 in his lap he toyed with a wide-brimmed Panama hat. His 
 eyes were far away; he too was thinking of those liners, 
 outward bound, heading for home. Home! 
 
 Johnathan Forge had never had a home. Or so he told 
 himself. A house, a wife, children, expense, all these, yes! 
 But a home, never ! It was his wife's fault. She had never 
 been a home-maker from the beginning. 
 
 His thoughts turned backward this August afternoon 
 back to America New England Vermont ! He won 
 dered about the people he had known so long and so inti 
 mately there. What had happened after he left them? How 
 had they fared ? What were they doing now this after 
 noon this moment? 
 
 Johnathan Forge believed that life had given him a 
 scurvy deal. 
 
 His father had made him work from earliest boyhood 
 and he had turned over his wages to his parents until the 
 day and the night he was twenty-one. That following 
 year he had married married Anna Farman. She had
 
 ALWAYS JUSTIFIED 307 
 
 clerked in the same store where Johnathan had been a 
 sort of all-around handy man and shipping clerk. He had 
 been very much in love with her, or thought he was. Yet 
 almost from the first night he had discovered that between 
 his mother and his wife a gulf existed as wide as China. 
 His father's life had been happy because his mother was 
 a conscientious Christian woman. She knew how to keep 
 her place. 
 
 His father had been absolute lord and Czar of the Forge 
 family fortunes. No one ever presumed to question that 
 such was not his right. His mother had never scoffed at 
 St. Paul's injunction anent wives submitting themselves 
 unto their husbands as unto the law of God. Mrs. Forge, 
 his mother, had taken note of St. Paul and rather approved 
 of him, following his domestic admonitions without question. 
 The result had been peace and happiness; at least there 
 had never been any disgraceful quarreling or contention 
 between wife and husband in the home of his father. The 
 husband had laid down the law and the wife had obeyed. 
 It was simple. Was he not the husband and father? Why 
 shouldn't she obey? Happy? What greater happiness 
 could a woman desire than obeying her husband, submitting 
 to him as unto the law of God? At least, when women did 
 that sort of thing, domestic peace and connubial bliss re 
 sulted. Anna Farman had not done that sort of thing and 
 showed she had not the least intent in the world of doing 
 that sort of thing. She had married and then promptly 
 declared she intended to preserve her own individuality 
 and do as she pleased. It was plain therefore what chaos 
 and misery ensued when any one especially woman 
 flouted the decrees of the Almighty, His seers, His 
 prophets and His saints. 
 
 Not only had Anna refused to obey her husband but 
 she had early shown herself extravagant and impractical. 
 At first she had wanted shoes, clothes, hats for every season 
 of the year. Think of a woman with four hats! Or four 
 pairs of shoes ! Why, his own mother had worn one hat 
 three years, done it cheerfully, thought nothing of it! 
 Anna had quarreled with Johnathan over the subject of 
 clothing so bitterly that the young husband might have left 
 her the first year, if a baby had not been coming. After 
 that he was in for it. There was no hope, no escape. And
 
 308 THE FOG 
 
 for twenty-five years he had endured it. Twenty-five years ! 
 A quarter-century! To think of it! What a fool he had 
 been! What a fool! 
 
 A year of foreign travel illicit though it might have 
 been considered in certain obnoxious quarters had changed 
 Johnathan in many ways, however. For one thing, it had 
 radically revised his ideas about God. The myriad millions 
 of Asia, in their sordid, gnat-like existence, had caused him 
 to wonder just how "personal" God really was. Anyhow, 
 his conscience was clear about leaving home in so far as God 
 was concerned. 
 
 In the first place, he had done his full duty by his 
 children. He had given them a home, food for their grow 
 ing bodies, clothes for their backs. He had made them 
 attend divine services, he had kept their morals clean and 
 their minds .pure. It had been an awful ordeal to keep 
 Nathan away from The Sex. Still he had managed it. 
 That Nathan had promptly married at twenty-one had noth 
 ing to do with Johnathan. Johnathan had only been re 
 sponsible for the boy until maturity. Not one moment 
 after ! The boy had become a man then. He had passed 
 out of the father's jurisdiction. If he had made a hard 
 bed, let him lie in it, indeed. It only went to show he 
 should have taken his loving father's counsel to heart. 
 
 As for leaving his wife, they had nothing in common, 
 with the children married. Why, then, should they live to 
 gether? Beside, had he not left her in undisputed posses 
 sion of a ten-thousand-dollar house? Let her sell that 
 house if she so desired and live on the money. Ten thou 
 sand dollars should keep her the rest of her life. In fact, 
 Johnathan flattered himself he had done rather handsomely 
 by his wife. No cause for self -execration there! Then 
 how about the box-shop ? Ah, yes ! The box-shop ! 
 
 Well, it was this way: In the beginning he had saved 
 eighteen hundred dollars of hard-earned money in spite 
 of his wife's spendthrift habits, and bought the box-shop. 
 He had obligated himself for thirty-two hundred dollars 
 more in notes. And, thank God, somehow he had paid 
 them. But it had been with his own money, before he 
 turned the factory over to the corporation and accepted 
 stock. 
 
 He had been very clever in that transfer. He had taken
 
 ALWAYS JUSTIFIED 309 
 
 thirteen thousand dollars' worth of stock for the five thou 
 sand equity he had originally held in the business; well, 
 it belonged to him. If he was cute on a trade, it was the 
 other fellow's fault if the other fellow didn't watch out 
 and found himself cheated. Then had come those hectic 
 years when his boy's ramifications had "grayed his hair." 
 Johnathan never thought of them but what he grew angry, 
 even in his exile. What he had suffered from that boy 
 his crazy ideas, his impertinence his insolence, his refusal 
 to "go into conference" with his father for the good of the 
 business his hot-headed, know-it-all, don't-give-a-damn 
 attitude toward the one in all the world who had done so 
 much for him! How had the father ever "stuck them 
 out" those years ? But he had stuck them out. And he 
 had only left the whole miserable mess when it was self- 
 evident that the unnatural son's bigotry and business in 
 ability were going to pile his beautiful business on the 
 rocks at last. That was only the first law of nature, 
 self-preservation. Even rats desert a sinking ship, and 
 how much more sensible and intelligent should grown men 
 show themselves than rats ! Yet what had he taken from 
 that business that was not due him? That was not his 
 own? He had sold his five-thousand-dollar concern for 
 thirteen thousand dollars. Very good! All he had with 
 drawn at the last was ten thousand dollars. Not a penny 
 more; ten thousand dollars! Three thousand less than the 
 value of his stock. And to show he had no criminal intent, 
 he had duly made out and endorsed his certificates back to 
 the company back to the corporation's treasurer and 
 left them on Nathan's desk for transfer. Very good, then! 
 He had simply decided he would rather have his money 
 than the stock and made the swap. Nothing crooked about 
 that! If he had carried away the certificates with him and 
 the money ah, then he would be a criminal in sight of 
 God and man. But he had simply been shrewd. If his 
 boy was so tarnation smart, let him sell the father's stock 
 to some one about the village and use the money to reim 
 burse the company for what Johnathan had taken. That 
 the "Board of Directors" had not sanctioned such a pur 
 chase from the treasury was nothing to Johnathan. Who 
 were the "Board" but Nathan and Charley Newton and 
 Peter Whipple of the Process Works and one or two
 
 310 THE FOG 
 
 others? They never would have understood Johnathan's 
 domestic position anyhow, or appreciated why he should 
 want to leave home forever. How could they know the 
 indignities and quarrels which had been his portion for 
 twenty-five dreary years? What was the mere technicality 
 of recording such a transfer on the books, anyway? If 
 he had told them first, they would only have objected; and 
 he would have had to hold a meeting and use his stock- 
 control to club them into it. That would have aroused the 
 banks and "pulled down the temple," making the stock 
 worthless. 
 
 No, Johnathan had only exercised ordinary Yankee 
 shrewdness. And yet 
 
 The great, bothersome, indefatigable fact remained that 
 the banks and Paris investors would never see the deal in 
 the light in which Johnathan saw it himself. He could not 
 go home! 
 
 Not that he wanted to go home, of course. But still, 
 he could not go home. And it bothered him. 
 
 Likewise there was the Carlysle woman. Great, fine, 
 much-to-be-desired romance had come into Johnathan's life 
 at last. 
 
 And if he married her, still more emphatically than ever 
 he could not go home. He would be guilty of bigamy, 
 and the authorities in the States who could never appre 
 ciate what a hard time Johnathan had endured through 
 twenty-five hectic years had very strict ideas about 
 bigamy. And some day Mrs. Johnathan Forge, nee Carlysle, 
 might want to go home. Then how could he explain ? What 
 could he do? 
 
 Johnathan sighed and sloughed down in his chair. After 
 all these years, happiness was within his grasp and he could 
 not grasp it. The world was very hard. Hard! Hard! 
 Hard! 
 
 There were other crosses in it, after all, besides Nathan. 
 
 n 
 
 Nathan went up to the desk and the Yates Hotel in 
 Syracuse and asked for his key and his mail. 
 
 He received a postcard from Milly asking him to send
 
 ALWAYS JUSTIFIED 311 
 
 her money a telephone and a gas bill which had been for 
 warded for payment, a letter from young Ted Thorne, his 
 sales manager, and a long narrow envelope with a queer 
 stamp. Nathan was puzzled by that stamp. It was a ten- 
 sen stamp. What foreign country had sen among their coin 
 age and who should be writing him from one of them? 
 
 He slit the envelope at the cigar counter while the clerk 
 waited for him to select his smokes from a proffered hand 
 ful. Then a queer, hard surprise smote him as he read : 
 
 Yokohama, Japan, 
 August 2, 1916. 
 Nathaniel Forge, 
 
 Paris, Vt, U. S. A. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I write to you from a foreign land, afar from home, and an 
 exile from all I hold most dear. My life almost wrecked by 
 a brainless woman and thankless, unnatural children, here I sit 
 in the forty-eighth year of my age, trying not to see the awful 
 past, only to pierce the unknown future, and give you one last 
 chance to redeem yourself and call down upon your head your 
 father's blessing. 
 
 You are perfectly aware, Nathaniel, of what my domestic life 
 was, for twenty-five fearful years. You, grown now to man's 
 estate, realize that your father showed the mettle and stamina 
 to endure blindly for conscience' sake and from his sense of 
 great, grim duty. If your rattle-brained marriage has turned 
 out happily, you know what your devoted father missed. If it 
 has turned out unhappily (for which you have no one to blame 
 but yourself!) you are tasting the fruits of all the wormwood 
 and aloes that was my potion since the first day I looked upon 
 your baby face and hugged you to my bosom with a father's 
 pride. 
 
 In either case, you should be in a position to sympathize with 
 me and at last pay your great debt to me by exerting yourself 
 there at home in a trifling matter in my behalf. 
 
 Nathaniel, I may say I have broadened mentally in many 
 things since leaving Paris and altered my views on many mat 
 ters, principally the subject of divorce. Against my will, after 
 all your mother has done, I am compelled to believe in divorce. 
 Now that you children are grown and we have completely ful 
 filled our duties, responsibilities and offices as parents in every 
 way, there is no longer need for your father and your mother to 
 pull against one another and fight disgracefully till stark death 
 closes down in the peace which passeth human understanding. 
 Therefore, Nathaniel, as one who has reached man's estate, 1
 
 312 THE FOG 
 
 write to you and make my last request. Then I shall give you 
 my blessing, go my way and never trouble you again only to 
 remember you in my prayers. Nathaniel, I want you to help me 
 get a divorce from your mother. Moreover, I want it at once. 
 This much is not only my right but your duty. Never mind 
 how the vast reaches of earthly distance may separate us, re 
 member I am always the father who gave you birth. 
 
 I am not ashamed to write why I want a divorce. The fact 
 is, an enforced exile in a foreign land, charged with a crime 
 which was not a crime if my position could only be understood, 
 I have met a lady who is all which your mother never has been, 
 is not now and never can be. Beautiful of face and form, 
 talented, poised, brainy and cultured, I would turn over a new 
 page in life, redeem the past and live as God intended every 
 man should live normally,. happily, at peace with his wife and 
 the world. This is my right, I say. This phase of it you have 
 no license to question. 
 
 So I desire you to engineer a divorce at once. The grounds 
 of course, would be incompatibility. Your mother must not 
 know of this that I wish it or she will show her inherent 
 meanness and cheapness at once and oppose it simply because 
 I desire it. You alone have influence with her. And I am not 
 unprepared to make it worth your while. 
 
 The lady I want to make my real wife is very wealthy. She 
 is a widow living with her father who is in trade out here. 
 I met her coming across nine months ago and for the first time 
 in my life the cup of happiness is held to my lips. It remains 
 to be seen whether the son for whom I sacrificed twenty-five 
 of the best years of my life will dash it away. 
 
 The day you forward me a copy of the court's decree, assur 
 ing me I am a free man, I solemnly promise to pay you one 
 thousand dollars and no questions asked. Of course all this, 
 including my present whereabouts, is strictly confidential. 
 
 I await your reply with interest. In fact, I think I should 
 like you to cable me an answer that you are working on the 
 case, that within the year I may be free. Free ! Free ! Free ! 
 Your hideously wronged father, 
 
 JONATHAN H. FORGE. 
 
 Nathan crossed to one of the lobby chairs and sat down. 
 He lighted one of his cigars absently. Once or twice he 
 smiled bitterly. Then he picked up the several sheets covered 
 on both sides with his father's weak, pothook penmanship 
 and read them again. When his cigar had been smoked 
 to the end, he went upstairs to the writing room, laid aside 
 hat and raincoat, lighted a fresh cigar and at twenty minutes
 
 ALWAYS JUSTIFIED 313 
 
 to nine o'clock started his reply. It was ten minutes after 
 one when he signed his name. 
 
 For the first time in his life, Nathan unleashed his right 
 eous wrath and told his father what he thought of him. For 
 the first time, devoid of religious fetish or mawkish "re 
 spect", the son drew forth the whips of his scorn and laid 
 them without stint on his father's naked back. He had noth 
 ing to lose which he cared for, and nothing to gain that he 
 desired. With a maturing understanding, a cold brain and 
 a righteous anger, he gave his father to understand in no 
 uncertain terms what he thought of his "twenty-five years 
 of sacrifice" and his "right to happiness" with a strange 
 woman. 
 
 "I am not interested in the lady," he concluded; "not 
 because you want to shelve mother and take up with another 
 woman but the method you essay a rather contemptible 
 method from my standpoint to go about it. God was 
 mighty real to you and a hard taskmaster when Edith and 
 I were growing, reaching out and demanding that nature be 
 answered with the most natural and normal things of life. 
 Apparently He's taking a vacation when you arrive at the 
 place where you want them yourself. I'm not calling you 
 a hypocrite. If I could, that would explain much. But I 
 am saying that I'm not made of the stuff to take money for 
 freeing my father from my mother, that my father may 
 gratify his own happiness while mother trims hats in a 
 small-town millinery for a handful of dollars a week. In 
 fact, if it wasn't coarse, I'd feel like telling you to take your 
 self-pity, your twisted outlook on life, your belated love 
 affair and go to the devil. That's crude. But it would ex 
 press the state of my feelings with neatness, conciseness and 
 dispatch." 
 
 Nathan read over the packet of pages he had produced. 
 Then he jogged them with ink-daubed fingers and folded 
 them into an envelope. With a consciousness of good work 
 well executed, he stored the addressed envelope away in his 
 pocket and went back downstairs. 
 
 He went out into the city and down Salina Street. He 
 found the all-night Western Union office open. 
 
 He despatched a cable to his father four words. 
 
 "Letter received. Not interested."
 
 314 THE FOG 
 
 He went back to his hotel, ripped his evening's work to 
 shreds and dropped them in his waste basket. 
 
 in 
 
 Nathan was at home a month later when another letter 
 arrived from Japan. Milly was down to her mother's and 
 he was dining from a corner of the kitchen table when the 
 bell rang and the postman handed it in. Nathan read it while 
 finishing his lunch. 
 
 Tokio, Japan, 
 Sept. 10, 1916. 
 Nathan Forge, 
 Paris, Vt. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Your cable has reached me, saying you got my letter giving 
 you your last chance to do the square thing by your father and 
 repay him for all he has done and suffered for you and you 
 are not interested. 
 
 I might have known. You are that kind of a son. I am done 
 with you done, done, done ! 
 
 Carefully through my things I have searched and culled out 
 all that pertains to you; every reminder of you. Out of my 
 heart and my life I am blotting you. Henceforth my son is 
 dead. I never had a son. 
 
 Certain things which I have carried in my wallet, I am re 
 turning herewith. Cherish them! Save them for the dark 
 hours, the melancholy twilights, the haunting midnights. Sleep 
 with them beneath your pillow and take them out in dreams 
 and say : I am cursed by my father ! I am a son outside the pale ! 
 I have desecrated God. I have damned my soul! 
 
 Your cable and its unnatural message cuts the last ties binding 
 me to the past. Henceforth I go alone, a wanderer on the face 
 of the earth, the cup of happiness dashed from my lips, life an 
 inferno of What-Might-Have-Been made so by the boy whom 
 I gave the breath of life and who now brings down my gray 
 hairs in sorrow to the grave. 
 
 Where I go and what becomes of me, you will never know. 
 You will wonder after your dear father but the winds shall 
 return no answer where he has gone the hideous ingratitude 
 of the course you have elected to pursue will arise and point 
 taunting fingers at you. All your joys and happiness shall be 
 blighted. The rain shall patter down and the night winds whine 
 in the casements. And to you they shall say "I am accursed !"
 
 ALWAYS JUSTIFIED 315 
 
 I am accursed! My father has accursed me and nowhere on 
 earth is there peace for my throbbing head!" 
 
 Therefore, farewell ! When you look into the faces of your 
 children, may your crime and ingratitude sear you to madness. 
 In the midst of your laughter may you be sobered and the nectar 
 of joy in your glass turn to vinegar. And if in the last great 
 day, pursuing my right to happiness, I stumble and fall, on your 
 head be my sin ! 
 
 Already in the lowest depths of hell (in unhappiness and 
 misery of spirit) I point my awful finger at you and I cry: 
 "Curse you ! Curse you ! Curse you !" 
 Good-by forever! 
 
 JONATHAN HADLEY FORGE. 
 
 Nathan looked through what his father had so dramatically 
 enclosed : A lock of Edith's baby hair tied with a tiny pink 
 ribbon; a small tintype of himself and Anna Forge taken 
 at some street fair back in the Nineties; two snapshots of 
 Nathan taken the year before moving to Paris from Fox- 
 boro Center ; a picture postcard of Main Street, Paris 
 lacking none of the features which had so depressed Made- 
 laine Theddon a newspaper clipping containing the first of 
 Nathan's poems copied by the Sunday Globe the cable 
 gram of Nathan's last message as Johnathan had received it 
 in Japan. 
 
 Nathan soaked a half a doughnut in his lukewarm tea as 
 the pathetic assortment lay before him. Then he read his 
 father's letter again and smiled. He had to smile. 
 
 He gathered up the envelope's contents a quarter of an 
 hour later. He jogged them together and for want of interest 
 and a better place, slipped them between an ammonia bottle 
 and the wall at the end of the shelf above the kitchen sink. 
 
 Next noontime Johnathan Hadley Forge, in the lowest 
 depths of hell, was smeared with copious gobs of whisker- 
 flecked lather from Nathan's razor. 
 
 Nothing else being handy at the moment, Nathan used the 
 letter for shaving paper!
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 INFINITE PATIENCE 
 
 It was the day of the Harvard-Pennsylvania boat race. 
 Madelaine Theddon had come from Boston to cheer for the 
 crimson. Gordon met her and after the races off Court 
 Square they went to The Worthy for dinner. 
 
 Springfield was holding open house whether it wanted to 
 hold open house or no. Groups of college boys paraded the 
 streets. Banners were rampant ; bands played. In early 
 evening large numbers of Harvard undergrads descended 
 upon The Worthy dining room and commandeered the place 
 for their personal mess hall. It was a hilarious, happy, bois 
 terous crowd, and atmosphere. In another year the grim 
 hand of war would grip the vitals of the nation. Let academic 
 masculinity eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow most 
 of it would be slopping in trench water or dodging shrapnel. 
 
 Madelaine and Gordon had entered the room early. They 
 had secured a table beside one of the Worthington Street 
 windows. The day died and evening came. The air was 
 balmy and the windows were open. Madelaine felt light- 
 hearted. The vacation was welcome and she abandoned her 
 self to that carnival spirit. 
 
 Gordon had "straightened out." There was no doubt 
 about it. He had likewise straightened up. He was sleekly 
 barbered at the moment, almost distinguished in his dinner 
 clothes. He acted and talked like a man with a great life 
 purpose. He spoke of the iron works, swollen with muni 
 tions orders, as he spoke of his pocket. Yet not in conceit 
 or brag. He had been placed in charge of an important 
 department and was pursuing that business as though it 
 were his own. And the end was not yet. Gordon so con 
 tended, and had found the biggest thrill of all in building, 
 creating, producing, doing some great, useful thing, the re-
 
 INFINITE PATIENCE 317 
 
 suits from which he could see with his eyes and touch with 
 his hands. 
 
 In the interim between, race and dinner, Madelaine had 
 hurried home and changed her frock. She was now a dream 
 a vision in black tulle lightened with silver, her cheeks 
 flushed, her calm eyes unusually merry, the inverted lights 
 of the big dining room shining on raven hair massed high 
 above a wide, brainy forehead. With Gordon in his new 
 incarnation across the snowy linen and a tiny candle-lamp 
 with a red-mulled shade at her right wrist making the dinner 
 rendezvous cozy, despite the noise going on in the room, 
 Madelaine almost fancied she was in love with Gord and the 
 world a bit nebulous with glorified mist. 
 
 Wine flowed freely at the college tables. Glitter went in 
 hand with horseplay. A big tin horn was much in evidence. 
 At intervals, its blare cleft the tumult with nerve-jolting 
 suddenness. Ever and anon, amid the tinkle of tableware 
 and the popping of corks, there was song. 
 
 The boys sang "Fair Harvard", "There's a Tavern in 
 the Town", "Little Brown Jug", and that latter-day classic, 
 "Mary Ann McCarty, She Went Out to Dig Some Clams", 
 and they kept time to Mary Ann McCarty's vicissitudes in 
 the clam-digging vocation with cutlery, wine bottles and 
 feet. An especially hilarious group of fat boys off in a corner 
 originated new yells. Colored waiters sweated and hurried 
 and dodged bits of food hurled at them and made themselves 
 as agreeable as possible at the prospect of many bowls filled 
 with tip money to be left behind for distribution when the 
 festivities were over. 
 
 The waiter who served Madelaine and her escort asked 
 about wine. Gordon raised an inquiring eyebrow. Made 
 laine named her preference. Gordon ordered an elaborate 
 dinner but no liquor for himself. 
 
 "What?" the astonished girl exclaimed. 
 
 Gordon laughed as he slid the big menu carefully under 
 the base of the lamp. 
 
 "I've had enough of that stuff in the past enough to last 
 me all the rest of my life. It's time I let it alone, Madge. 
 Besides, I don't feel I can afford it. Oh, I don't mean the 
 cost in money. I'm swinging a big thing, Madge, and I 
 can't afford a muddled head." 
 
 A queer thrill burned at the roots of the girl's fine hair.
 
 318 THE FOG 
 
 "Well, you have changed, Gordon ! I'll give you credit !" 
 
 "You're responsible, Madge. If you hadn't given me an 
 incentive, I'd still be blowing around western Massachusetts 
 dodging traffic cops and breaking glass. You know that, 
 don't you, dear?" 
 
 He reached his hands across the small table and covered 
 her own. 
 
 "Don't, Gord! Not here!" 
 
 "Don't you, Madge?" 
 
 "Don't I what?" 
 
 "Don't you know it that you're responsible?" 
 
 "Do you mean by that, if I were suddenly removed from 
 your scheme of things you'd go all to pieces back to the 
 kind of chap you were a couple of years ago?" 
 
 The man's face fell. 
 
 "Perhaps, Madelaine," he said solemnly. 
 
 "That's weak, Gordon. You must play the man for the 
 sake of playing the man, not because you want to court the 
 favor of a certain woman." 
 
 "I hoped you'd take it as a compliment, Madge." 
 
 "I do take it as a compliment. But the responsibility isn't 
 reassuring. I don't want to feel that I'm a man's goal. 
 There's so much worth while in the world as a goal beside 
 the mere winning of a woman." 
 
 "Not when a fellow's in love, Madge." 
 
 "Let's not talk about love. Let's just enjoy ourselves." 
 
 Gordon felt he was annoying her. He changed the sub- 
 jfect. 
 
 "All Springfield seems to be divided into two camps to 
 night," he said. "Those who are college people and those 
 who are not." The remark was occasioned by the stream 
 of people passing along the walk outside, at shoulder-height 
 below them. 
 
 Madelaine turned to watch the crowd. At the riot of 
 hilarity from within the big dining room, many paused and 
 smiled. Others appeared annoyed. Still others looked wist 
 ful. Notably among the latter was a young fellow who stood 
 on the edge of the Worthington Street curbing and stared 
 up into the dining room. He was a pale-faced, grim-jawed, 
 plainly clothed chap with hungry eyes. Madelaine was con 
 scious that he had been standing opposite their window, 
 staring up for several minutes.
 
 INFINITE PATIENCE 319 
 
 "What's that fellow doing?" demanded Gordon. "Is he 
 staring at you and me or merely trying to snitch a chunk 
 of this room's boisterousness free of charge?" 
 
 "Poor fellow!" returned' the girl. "He looks as though 
 he belonged in here but for some reason knew that he'd 
 be ejected if he tried to enter and what a peculiar ear he 
 has. Mercy, I wish he wouldn't stare so! His expression 
 will haunt me in sleep to-night." 
 
 "I'll send some one out to tell him to move on !" 
 
 "No ! No ! Don't do that ! Let's just ignore him. Maybe 
 he'll go away." 
 
 The waiter came with iced blue-points. When Madelaine 
 next glanced sideways out the window, the fellow with the 
 wistful face had gone away. 
 
 ii 
 
 Nathan wandered the streets of Springfield's business sec 
 tion and his heart was heavy within him. The college boys 
 jostled him from the walks. The band music and the blar 
 ing horns hurt him. He lamented the coincidence which 
 had brought him to Springfield on a day's sales business 
 while this alma-mater joviality was in progress. It mocked 
 him with all of that youthful heritage of which he felt 
 himself cheated. 
 
 The windows of The Worthy had held an especial fascina 
 tion. It wasn't altogether the care-free college singing, the 
 mardi-gras spirit, the esprit de corps among all college men 
 in town that night. It was a sense of his own inability to 
 attain to what these things stood for without hurting some 
 one to do it. He would have liked to be dining in such a 
 place, across a snowy table from a beautifully gowned 
 woman, like it very, very much. But probably the fellow 
 whom he had watched with that princess in black tulle 
 thought nothing of it. That was his life. He placed no 
 value on the delights of high-caste living because he had 
 never known anything else. He disclosed it by his poise and 
 easy familiarity with his environment, his graceful behavior 
 and carriage in juxtaposition to his charming companion. 
 Economists and peanut politicians might rail that America 
 has no classes or castes. What a mockery! Between the
 
 320 THE FOG 
 
 lowly-born and the purple must ever exist a gulf as wide as 
 the planets. It was not something to be attained: it was 
 a heritage. At least he believed so. 
 
 Nathan went to his hotel down near the railroad arch and 
 tried to get solace from a cigar. It was a very expensive 
 cigar. It had cost him thirty-five cents. But it was Job's 
 comfort. He might make a fortune, he might buy clothes 
 that cost thousands and smoke thirty-five-cent cigars by the 
 bale, but that would never give the provincial the easy grace 
 and the utter lack of self -consciousness displayed by that 
 fellow and girl outlined in the Wonder Window. For it 
 was a Wonder Window to poor Nathan. It opened in a 
 Castle Wall where the tatterdemalion crowd passed under 
 neath to wend their clodhopper turkey tracks to mud huts 
 out on the edge of the moor. 
 
 "And I suppose, if dad had only been minded that way, 
 I might have worked my way through college and been in 
 such a place with a crowd of revelers and such a woman 
 across from me to-night," he said bitterly. "Yet my prob 
 lem is how to overcome that handicap now. How can I? 
 What must I do ? Some one ought to write a book on how 
 to climb out of mediocrity and Be Somebody!" 
 
 Be Somebody! That was Milly's code now. But what 
 a mess she was making of it! Some one ought to write a 
 book to help women to be somebody, also. Hang it all, 
 what was the matter with life, anyhow? Where in it all 
 was! the great constructive purpose?" 
 
 Nathan never forgot that night in Springfield when all 
 unwittingly he had beheld Madelaine Theddon above him 
 in the hotel window. Not because he had seen Madelaine 
 and remembered her, but because of the events which fol 
 lowed swiftly. 
 
 He had just retired to bed and pushed the button ex 
 tinguishing his lamp, to lie and ponder on the problem of 
 how he could Be Somebody, when two sharp taps came 
 at his door. He arose and opened it a crack. 
 
 "Telegram, sir!" said the lad outside. 
 
 Nathan reached for his vest and gave the boy ten cents. 
 Then he sank down on the edge of his bed and tore the end 
 of the flimsy yellow envelope. 
 
 COME AT ONCE URGENT ACCIDENT MILDRED
 
 INFINITE PATIENCE 321 
 
 Nathan tried to get his home in Paris on the long-distance. 
 There had been a bad thunderstorm above Brattleboro and 
 the wires were down. He arose and dressed but could not 
 get a train to take him through to White River Junction 
 before six-thirty in the morning. 
 
 ill 
 
 At my wife's suggestion, I went down the line to meet 
 Nathan. Mary Ann drove the roadster down to Gilberts 
 Mills. I boarded the shuttle train there in order to ride up 
 into the town with him alone. I found him in the vile- 
 flavored smoker. He jumped as I laid a hand on his shoul 
 der. 
 
 "Bill!" he cried. "Where'd you come from now?" 
 
 "Just getting back from the Mills where I had to chase 
 a news story," I lied. "You haven't been home yet, I take 
 it?" 
 
 "I'm just getting home. I got a telegram from Mildred. 
 Do you know about anything happening to her or my folks, 
 Bill ?" he asked anxiously. 
 
 "Move over, old man," I requested. "Let's smoke a 
 cigar a good one." 
 
 "Do you, Bill?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What is it ? In God's name, what is it ?" 
 
 "Nathan, it's a darned long lane that doesn't have a turn 
 ing sometime," said I. "And some of the turns are pleasant 
 and some are hard. The mystery to me is why most of the 
 turns for some people seem to be hard ones." 
 
 "Bill, cut out the suspense. You're trying to prepare 
 me for bad news. And I think you're lying about that 
 news story. You came down a purpose to meet me. Let's 
 have it the worst. I've stood a lot. But I well, any- 
 thing's better than suspense. What's happened?" 
 
 Once before I had been called to break bad news to my 
 chum. I had done it crudely, tossed him a paper with a 
 red-inked item which had aborted his whole life. I wanted 
 to do a more artistic bit of work now. But I'm afraid again 
 I messed' it. 
 
 "It's your little girl, Nat," said I. "She's gone away."
 
 322 THE FOG 
 
 "Gone away ? You mean she's run off she's lost ?" 
 
 "Runoff? No! Lost? Yes!" 
 
 He gripped my arm 
 
 "You mean little Mary's dead ?" 
 
 My cigar tasted like tar and ashes. I simply proffered 
 him a short clipping from the Telegraph of the previous 
 evening. 
 
 AUTO KILLS CHILD 
 
 SMALL DAUGHTER OF MR. AND MRS. NATHAN FORGE HIT BY 
 RED FRONT GROCERY TRUCK IN MAIN STREET 
 
 The community was shocked at four o'clock this afternoon 
 when it became known that little Mary Frances Forge, aged 
 six years, had been struck by one of the delivery trucks be 
 longing to the Red Front Grocery in East Main Street opposite 
 the Catholic Cemetery. 
 
 The little girl was on her way home from school when the 
 accident happened. One of her companions chased her and 
 she left the sidewalk and darted into the road to escape her 
 pursuer. The truck was coming from a westerly direction. . . . 
 
 Nathan passed his hand across his eyes. He took a long 
 hreath, held it, released it raggedly. 
 
 "Takes grit to live sometimes, doesn't it, Bill? Just 
 grit!" he said. 
 
 Little more was spoken on that ensuing two miles before 
 the train drew alongside the Paris depot platform. 
 
 rv 
 
 It takes grit to live sometimes just grit! 
 
 Milly naturally was the more grief -stricken of the two in 
 the hectic days which followed. But it was Mrs. Anna 
 Forge who shed the most tears and acted generally as though 
 the bottom had dropped from the universe. 
 
 She gave up her job in the millinery store just why it 
 was necessary to give up her job under the circumstances 
 is difficult to explain, but she did and moved to Nathan's 
 house, bag and baggage, "to help." That her help had not 
 been solicited was immaterial. That there was nothing 
 especially to "help" was likewise passed over. She had not
 
 INFINITE PATIENCE 323 
 
 visited Nathan's home a dozen times since his marriage, not 
 being able to "get along" with Nathan's wife. And the 
 child had once blandly commented that its grandmother "had 
 starin', ugly eyes," which had prejudiced her from intimacy 
 with Nat's youngster and convinced her that Nathan's wife 
 and family were somehow in league against her and had 
 put the child up to it. But now that the forked tines of 
 death had struck near home, and tears being right in her 
 line, she insisted on a bed in the front room, and no paid 
 Semitic mourner ever gave greater satisfaction for services 
 rendered than Mrs. Forge before that ordeal was ended. 
 
 Incredible to relate, Nathan's loss called up all her own 
 losses a hundredfold and the distressing period was aggra 
 vated by the mother's worry because the oil-stock salesman 
 had stopped answering her letters as to just when she was 
 to get her dividends of three thousand per cent., and the 
 cold, stark presentiment began to dawn on the woman that 
 perhaps her investment was in jeopardy. It being a time 
 of general sorrow, her own worries and troubles were right 
 in line and she bunched them together. Nathan heard about 
 them for the three-hundredth time ; what the oil-stock sales 
 man had said to her, and what she had said to the oil-stock 
 salesman, and what he had promised and what she had ex 
 pected, and what Johnathan had said to her apropos of her 
 value as a \vif~s during twenty-five years of incompatibility, 
 and what she had retorted to Johnathan, till Milly ex 
 ploded and declared if she said another word, she, Milly, 
 would shriek; which Mrs. Forge did and which Milly did, 
 and Nathan had to act as peacemaker and keep all hands as 
 reasonably pleasant as possible until after the services. 
 
 I slept with Nathan the night before the funeral. Milly 
 had sent for her own mother and was sleeping with her, the 
 wife characteristically preferring the solace and companion 
 ship of her mother to her husband, and my presence being 
 proffered to mitigate my friend's load as much as I could. 
 And Mrs. Forge wept for her lost grandchild and oil-stock 
 or oil-stock and grandchild and would not be com 
 forted. 
 
 I marveled at my chum's moral fiber and mental strength. 
 Once I caught tears streaming down his face, when alone 
 for a moment. But he smiled courageously through them 
 and seemed grateful for my sympathy. His lips were very
 
 324 THE FOG 
 
 firm through that ghastly ordeal and his patience was infinite. 
 
 On the night before the funeral, as aforesaid, Mrs. Anna 
 Forge walked the upper hallway outside our door, thought 
 of all the indignities, injustices and sorrows she had ever 
 experienced and gave the two of us a full account of them. 
 Whole hours passed thus and time slipped on into deeper 
 night. At intervals Mrs. Forge's haranguing voice stopped 
 or she was compelled to stop because of her sobbing. But 
 she soon started in again. Then it dawned upon her that 
 Nathan might not be listening. When she called to him and 
 he failed to answer though he was wide-awake enough 
 she planted herself in front of the bedroom door and gave 
 Nathan to understand in high-C language that if Nathan 
 didn't come down in the parlor and hear all about his father 
 and the oil stock and "what she had suffered", she would 
 come in there and talk to him even if there was a strange 
 man in the bed. She didn't propose to go on talking when 
 he didn't show any more "respect" for his mother than to 
 go to sleep. 
 
 "Nat," said I, "may I take a hand and settle this? You 
 can't listen to this harangue all night. You've got to get 
 some sleep or you'll go crazy." 
 
 "No, no, Bill," he answered. He sighed and stretched 
 wearily in the bed. "It's only mother and well, she can't 
 help it. She's built that way, and I suppose her own trou 
 bles have sort of unbalanced her." 
 
 "Nathan!" came the mother's stringent demand. "I'll 
 not stand here talking all night ! Will you come down and 
 hear what I've got to say, or will I come in ?" 
 
 "Nat," I cried angrily, "for God's sake let me settle this!" 
 
 "You couldn't, Bill. You'd only make her worse. And 
 I don't want her to run screaming down the center of the 
 street at this time of night, arousing the neighbors and tell 
 ing them all her troubles. I'll go down and talk with her." 
 
 And he did. 
 
 I lay in the bed alone and heard the clock strike two and 
 three. And still the mother kept the son downstairs and re 
 counted things that Nathan had heard a thousand times, 
 what Johnathan had said and what she had said, and it would 
 have been better to have death in her own house at such a 
 time, wouldn't it, than to have "put up" with what she "put 
 up" with, and would Nathan see a lawyer in the morning and
 
 INFINITE PATIENCE 325 
 
 get him after those oil-company rascals, and where did 
 Nathan think his father had gone and was there any prospect 
 of making him suffer for deserting her? So on and on 
 and on and on, into the hours of morning. 
 
 But the poor fellow did not lose his temper, did not op 
 pose her or argue with her or treat her in any way but with 
 the same kindly patience he had shown toward every one 
 since the tragedy happened. 
 
 Mrs. Anna Forge literally talked herself out. A few 
 minutes after four o'clock she assented to being tucked in 
 on the front-room sofa and demanded that Nathan should 
 kiss her good night, for he was all she had, wasn't he, and 
 did he love his dear, dear mother and who had done any 
 more for him than she had done? Then Nathan came back 
 to bed, tossed his bathrobe on the footboard and crawled in 
 beside me. 
 
 "Cut out the hero stuff, Bill," he snapped. "She's simply 
 a mental invalid and should be treated as such. Anything 
 otherwise would be cruel." 
 
 There may be those who have felt out of patience with 
 Nathan at certain periods in this intimate biography. They 
 may have execrated him for an "easy mark." They may 
 have wanted to kick him, grab him by the shoulders and 
 shake some spine into him. I confess I have felt so myself. 
 But speaking for myself, away down deep in my heart of 
 hearts, there's something about a fellow who could do what 
 Nathan did, the night before his baby was buried, that has 
 my humble admiration. In the parlance of my newspaper 
 office, I've got "to hand it to him." He's the sort of man 
 the world needs more of. He's far from being a weakling. 
 He's big! 
 
 And so the Forge baby was buried.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 FINE FEATHERS 
 
 One feature of that funeral I'll be a long time forgetting 
 was the unexpected appearance of old Caleb Gridley. 
 
 Old Caleb had traveled much since he lost his Duchess and 
 disposed of his tannery. He had made money and knew 
 how to make more money, but for the first time in his life 
 he had begun to enjoy a little of it himself. He spent several 
 winters in Florida and a couple in California. He was ab 
 sent much in New York and Boston. Between times he 
 turned a quick dollar wherever opportunity presented, in 
 timber lands, wood pulp, short-term notes or sure things in 
 the stock market. 
 
 Nobody knew he was in town until the hour for the ser 
 vices. He came to the front door and rang the muffled bell. 
 He was duly admitted and for the first time in my life, I 
 truthfully believe, I saw the old tanner without his derby 
 hat. He looked nude without it, horribly nude. He held 
 it, old style, by the brim in the crook of his left arm, at the 
 same time proffering Mother Richards a little bouquet of 
 pink rosebuds with his right. 
 
 "Bought 1 'em myself," he announced in a husky whisper, 
 "fer the baby." He said it like an apology. "Babies always 
 seemed to me like pink rosebuds. Just gimme a seat next 
 the door. I'll be goin' presently." 
 
 But the old man did not go presently. He sat through 
 the entire services and when Nathan had helped his hysteri 
 cal young wife away, it was Caleb who gave the undertaker 
 what assistance was required. 
 
 "Come up and see me, bub," he invited Nathan, meeting 
 the young man when that distressing afternoon was a 
 thing of the past and Milly had gone home to her mother's. 
 "Now and then I hanker for the old days when you an' me 
 used to read poetry."
 
 FINE FEATHERS 327 
 
 Nathan went. No place other than Caleb's room in the 
 hotel could have been more appropriate or consoling for 
 him at the moment. Gridley loosened his vest and clothes, 
 a process he designated as "easin' up for comfort", and the 
 queer pair sat down together, it being several moments before 
 either broke the silence. Finally the old man, with his mas 
 sive chin thrust deep in his shirt, one big leg thrown over 
 the other and a slipper sole swinging, cleared his throat. 
 With his eyes averted, he declared huskily : 
 
 "Bub, you an' me always liked poetry and read a heap o' 
 the stuff, ain't we? And some of it was mighty good, 
 specially Tennyson. But do you know, I made a discovery 
 t'other day. I come across a copy o' the Bible down to Bos- 
 ting where the Psalms was all laid out, poetry- fashion. I 
 never seen 'em that way before and it struck me they was 
 the best sort o' poetry I'd ever stumbled over. Specially 
 the Twenty-third Psalm. Ever read the Twenty-third Psalm 
 like verses o' poetry, bub?" 
 
 "I don't know that I have, Mr. Gridley." 
 "Wonder if they gotta Bible here? I'll show ye!" 
 There was a Gideon Bible in one of the dresser drawers. 
 And the tanner resumed his seat. Then whether by design 
 or no but I rather suspect it was by design old "God- 
 Damning" Gridley, as some folk called him, tried to heal the 
 wound in the boy's spirit by the beautiful cadences of that 
 masterpiece of all poems : 
 
 "The Lord is my shepherd," he began, "I shall not want. 
 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; 
 He leadeth me beside the still waters,. 
 He restoreth my soul. 
 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
 
 Death, 
 
 I will fear no evil. 
 For thou art with me, . . . 
 Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." 
 
 Nathan said afterward it would be impossible to repeat 
 the infinite pathos and tenderness in the hard-boiled old busi 
 ness man's voice as he intoned the lines, his dangling slipper 
 swinging time with the rhythm. 
 
 "Bub," said the old man finally, "I lost a boy when I 
 was 'bout your age. Nobody in Paris ever knew about it.
 
 328 THE FOG 
 
 It was them lines helped me most of all. Great stuff 
 poetry !" 
 
 ii 
 
 Through Caleb's maneuvering it was, some time later, that 
 Nathan was called one afternoon into Ted Thome's offices 
 at the knitting mill. 
 
 "Nat," announced that young commercial dignitary, "the 
 old man and I have been talking you over. Gridley was in 
 here the other day you know who I mean old duffer 
 who used to run the tannery. Well, he owns a rotten lot of 
 stock in this mill. Put it in when dad first started. And the 
 old man goes by Gridley's advice a lot. Seems old Gridley's 
 scraped up an interest in you somewhere and first father 
 and I knew, old Caleb was cussin' like a Malay pirate and 
 laying down the law about how we ought to reconstruct our 
 sales force. But it looks as if we might get drawn into the 
 war and we're watching our step." 
 
 "Yes, it does look like war," returned Nat gravely. "I 
 just read the President's message to Congress this morning." 
 
 "It's this way, Nat. Mosely, who's been running our New 
 York offices, is unmarried. He'll probably go if they call 
 for volunteers. He says he wants to go, anyhow. You're 
 married and have your wife and mother to care for, and 
 probably you'll get exempted, if they resort to a draft. So 
 dad and I put two and two together Mosely's going to 
 war and Gridley's cussin' in your behalf and I'm prepared 
 to make you a proposition." 
 
 "But why should Mr. Gridley do any such thing? I've 
 got a fair position already." 
 
 Ted smoked a moment in silence, loath to prod into Nat's 
 personal affairs. But apparently it had to be. 
 
 "Nat, you married old Jake Richards' oldest girl, didn't 
 you ? I remember her as a kid in school she sat across the 
 aisle from me in a couple of the early grades." 
 
 "Yes. But what of it?" 
 
 Ted suddenly decided to be frank. 
 
 "Nat, according to Caleb, he thinks you're unhappily mar 
 ried because your wife has never had much of a chance to 
 see other kind of existence but life in a little town like Paris. 
 Old Cal believed that if you and Mildred could settle in some
 
 FINE FEATHERS 329 
 
 place like Boston or New York, where Mildred could get 
 out among people, it would change her so much and broaden 
 her so, that you and she might be drawn closer together. 
 Don't take offense. We might as well talk things frankly." 
 
 "What's your proposition?" asked Nathan. 
 
 "I've told you! Running our New York office in Fred 
 Mosely's place." 
 
 "That's quite a step from my present job, Ted." 
 
 "We think you may be more adapted for it ; you had a 
 great knack of handling help while you and your father 
 were in business here. There's a salary of eight thousand 
 a year attached to it but in New York you'll find you'll need 
 it. And of course dad will always expect you to earn it. 
 But it'll be a complete change and give your wife a new in 
 terest in things. How about it?" 
 
 "Whew!" cried Nathan. "I don't know what to say!" 
 
 And he didn't. 
 
 Three weeks later, however, he and Milly went down to 
 New York, Nathan to "look over" the New York office 
 of the Thorne Mills and decide whether he felt capable of 
 filling the position. 
 
 in 
 
 Mosely, manager at the time, was some five or six years 
 older than Nathan, a typical young New Yorker. His peo 
 ple were wealthy. His mother was somewhat of a society 
 woman. Her son had "taken up" the woolen business and 
 secured his present position through the influence of his 
 father, a retired banker and semi-invalid who was in 
 timately acquainted with the Thornes. 
 
 "Wife with you?" asked Mosely, as one afternoon's con 
 sultation drew to a close. "Fine! Mother has a dinner 
 affair on to-morrow night not very big just a few 
 friends. Say, you and your wife run up and I'll introduce 
 you to a few fellows you'll be doing business with if you 
 get my place." 
 
 With the limitations of the provincial, Nathan was at 
 once panic-stricken. 
 
 Mosely did not add or explain that he intended to ask his 
 mother to lay two more covers because he wanted to 
 discern how far Nat had the ability to associate with certain
 
 330 THE FOG 
 
 metropolitan types which would be absolutely requisite to 
 his success in the contemplated position. 
 
 Nathan reluctantly accepted and hurried to the hotel to 
 advise Milly. 
 
 Milly was panic-stricken also, but worse, far worse. 
 She went weak all over and had to sit down. Then she de 
 clared it was impossible for her to go, she didn't have a thing 
 to wear. And when Nathan said she could have what money 
 she desired to get anything she wanted, she came out flat- 
 footed and confessed that she was "afraid to run with the 
 swells" because she'd never know how to act and they might 
 laugh at her. 
 
 "Very well," sighed Nathan. "But I must go as a mat 
 ter of business. You can go to a movie." 
 
 "What! Leave me all the evening alone in New York? 
 And you off to a tony party, enjoying yourself?" 
 
 "But what else is there to do? If you don't want to 
 go and don't want to stay at home, just what do you 
 want ?" 
 
 "I don't want you to go, either. You could sneak out of 
 it and go with me to a show. I don't believe I'll ever get 
 my fill of shows in New York." 
 
 "Unfortunately I feel I ought to go, Milly. You've al 
 ways talked about wanting to meet high-caste people and 
 now when the chance is open, you're half-frightened to 
 death." 
 
 "You're frightened too!" 
 
 "I'll not deny it not frightened so much as nervous. 
 But it's a chance to go and learn something and show me 
 what I lack. Those people can't eat me and I intend to take 
 it. If I've got to learn, now's as good a time as any to start 
 in." 
 
 Milly gave a nasty little chuckle. 
 
 "And to think that once I thought you was my hero," she 
 observed, "as far above me in class as the stars !" 
 
 "We won't go into that, Milly. Do you care to go with 
 me to this dinner to-morrow night or do you not ?" 
 
 "I'll go," snapped Milly, "but you needn't blame me if 
 I put my foot in it." 
 
 "Milly, did it ever strike you that you're not trying to 
 help me very much as my wife to get on, I mean 
 holding up your end?"
 
 FINE FEATHERS 331 
 
 "I'm no different than I was when you married me! 
 Kindly remember that !" 
 
 "How can I forget it, Milly?" 
 
 "You needn't give me none o' your nasty slurs like your 
 Pa was always throwin' your mother. Oh, I know all about 
 'em ! Your mother told me and I seen enough of him at 
 the shop to know she warn't far wrong!" 
 
 "Let's not quarrel, Milly. If you're going to the dinner 
 you'll need some clothes something new." 
 
 "You bet I will !" cried Milly defiantly, then added as 
 though the expense might make Nathan think better of the 
 rash engagement, "It'll cost you all of fifty dollars, Mr. 
 Man!" 
 
 "Milly, this thing may mean a lot to me. I want you to 
 appear extra attractive. Fifty dollars ! I'm going to give 
 you two hundred and fifty dollars and I want to see you 
 'dress to kill !' Find a masseuse first and have her doll you 
 up and then go over in Fifth Avenue and splurge ! for 
 once splurge !" 
 
 Two hundred and fifty dollars ? Milly nearly had a spasm. 
 She remained struck voiceless as Nathan actually handed 
 over the money with a vague idea that some such sum would 
 be necessary. Like many poor males, Nathan held the sub 
 conscious notion that all that was necessary to dress a 
 woman "to kill" was money. 
 
 And Milly? She swore she was being robbed when a 
 masseuse had worked over her an hour and a half and 
 charged her ten dollars, though she was not wholly dis 
 pleased with the resultant change in her appearance. But 
 when she walked into Martinets, Incorporated, with an 
 aplomb she did not feel and discovered that "the cheapest 
 dress they had" cost two hundred and sixty dollars, her nerve 
 fled and so did Milly. Over on Sixth Avenue she bought 
 something "perfectly stunning" for seventeen dollars and 
 ninety-eight cents, a difference of two hundred and forty- 
 two dollars and two cents by traveling one block. Which 
 only went to prove how much money you could save in 
 New York when you only knew where to shop! 
 
 The "perfectly stunning" creation was an afternoon dress 
 of cerise taffeta, gorgeously strung over the front with span 
 gles. Milly went on the theory that shine and "class" were 
 synonymous, "class" being Milly's favorite word and
 
 332 THE FOG 
 
 "shine" Milly's favorite idea of beauty. And if the lights 
 of Mrs. Percival Mosely's dining room didn't shine on Milly's 
 frock it was going to be through no fault of the goods 
 whereof the said frock was constructed. Milly also bought 
 a dark bottle-green fan on the principle that colors show off 
 best by contrast. 
 
 Truly Milly was a "queen" when the adjustments were 
 finally completed. She wondered if she could go through 
 with it. 
 
 The Moselys lived in the East Fifties, two blocks off The 
 Avenue, a rather coldly impersonal house with a gray- 
 stone front. At seven-forty-five Milly permitted Nathan to 
 help her alight from the taxi. In fact, his help was extremely 
 welcome. For Milly's knees had turned to tallow long be 
 fore Nathan had "hooked her up", not knowing whether he 
 exactly approved of Milly's purchases or not. The fan 
 shocked him so badly that he absolutely forbade her carrying 
 it. Likewise he made her dispense with the twenty-cent 
 aigrette she had purchased to add "class" to her hair. On 
 the whole, Milly did not object to dispensing with these 
 things, although she did wonder what she was going to do 
 with her hands. 
 
 When he had finally drawn off and looked at his wife, Nat 
 knew there was something vaguely wrong somewhere. But 
 the time was going and if they delayed longer they would 
 be late. Milly insisted it was fashionable to arrive late. 
 Nevertheless, her husband believed in being punctual at so 
 critical a time to himself. As for Nathan, he had bought his 
 first suit of dinner clothes and, exceptional to recount, the 
 fellow felt strangely at home in them. 
 
 A second-man in full house livery tended the door, 
 the butler being busy with last touches on the table. Nathan 
 tried to nudge Milly to go ahead. But Milly was too terror- 
 stricken and shrank in his rear. The husband instinctively 
 felt foolish stumbling ahead with Milly tagging after like 
 a poor relation he could not shake off. But she clung to 
 his arm as though she might lose him. 
 
 The house-man conducted Nathan to the smoking room, 
 raising his Celtic eyebrows when Milly followed, as in a 
 daze. The smoking room had been set aside for the gentle 
 men's street clothes. 
 
 "This way, madam, please," he corrected, with a cough
 
 FINE FEATHERS 333 
 
 to hide his smile. And with an expression of despair, Milly 
 was borne away to where a maid took her in charge at the 
 end of the hall in a dressing room set apart for the ladies. 
 
 Mrs. Mosely had her drawing-room lighted with shaded 
 lamps and adorned with flowers. The curtains had been 
 drawn and the piano opened. Milly furtively watched for 
 Nathan to appear and then almost ran across the broad hall 
 to join him. She clutched her husband again and "tagged 
 after him" despite the man's quick whisper to go ahead. 
 "I'm afraid," she choked. "You go ahead!" So Nathan 
 and his wife moved into the big drawing-room and Milly's 
 daze continued, as though she were following her husband 
 into the glories of heaven. 
 
 Mosely senior, being bedridden, was not in evidence. 
 Young Mosely was assisting his mother in receiving. He 
 caught sight of Nathan and moved slightly forward with an 
 outstretched hand. Milly dodged him and crept behind 
 her husband. 
 
 "Glad to see you, Forge," was the young man's easy 
 greeting. 
 
 "Meet my wife," suggested Nat, wondering if it was the 
 right thing to say, or rather, the right way to say it. 
 
 "I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Forge." 
 
 "Pleezeter meecher," lisped Milly from a safe position 
 halfway around her husband's back. 
 
 "I want to present you to my mother," went on Fred 
 Mosely. "Mother, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel 
 Forge. Mr. Forge is the one I spoke of possibly taking 
 my place at the office." 
 
 Mrs. Mosely was a remarkable woman. Her coiffure was 
 a classic. Despite her sixty years, her face had an onyx 
 beauty, unwittingly reflected in her voice. She wore silver- 
 satin and cobweb lace. Her shrewd eye appraised both new 
 arrivals and grasped the young country wife's distress at 
 once. Regardless of who or what her guests might be, first, 
 last and foremost they were her guests always and must be 
 put at their ease. The fine, hard old society matron extended 
 a blue-veined hand. 
 
 Milly shifted her clutch on Nat from her right hand to 
 her left. But she didn't let go of him. He might fly through 
 the windows, up through the ceiling, down through the floor 
 or explode in her face, if she failed to hang on to him. She
 
 334 THE FOG 
 
 gave the hostess the hand thus disengaged. Thereafter the 
 next three minutes were one phonographic repetition of 
 "pleezeter-meechers" as though the needle had slipped on 
 a scratched record and hiccoughed the word over and over 
 again. Six other men and six other women smiled quietly 
 but affected not to notice. 
 
 Introductions completed, the various groups returned to 
 their intercourse. Nathan and Milly stood apart, looking 
 uncomfortable and feeling worse. Nathan at length shook 
 himself free of Milly's blood-binding clutch. Milly found 
 her wits long enough to gasp hoarsely in her husband's ear, 
 "Gee, ain't it swell, Natie ! Lookit ! They got a coon orches 
 tra !" Then a moment later, "You stick by me, Natie ! Don't 
 you go lettin' 'em set me off by myself away with folks I 
 don't know !" 
 
 "They'll probably have place cards, Milly. This isn't any 
 Vermont church supper." 
 
 "Place cards ! What's them ?" 
 
 But Mrs. Mosely had noted Milly and Nathan standing 
 alone, and remarked to a gorgeous creation in old-gold georg 
 ette and (to Milly) shocking shoulders: 
 
 "For pity's sake, Cynthia, go rescue that poor little girl 
 in the afternoon dress. Put her at her ease, or she'll ruin 
 my party!" 
 
 So before Nat could explain about place cards, the girl 
 Cynthia interrupted. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Forge!" she cried, "do let me show you the 
 new study by Roerich that Mrs. Mosely just secured at 
 the Aldine Galleries. I'm sure you'll be interested." 
 
 Milly shrank from the onslaught as though Cynthia What- 
 ever-her-last-name-was had jabbed the deadly muzzle of an 
 automatic into her midriff. She sent a desperate appeal to 
 Nathan with her eyes as though Nathan should speak up 
 and put the Cynthia person in her place with, "No thank 
 you, Madame; my wife has absoluely no interest in Roerich 
 or any one or anything else but her husband." But Nathan 
 did nothing or the sort. He even looked relieved. Relieved 
 until he saw his wife moving down the big library beside the 
 old-gold gown. Milly wasn't only a frump: she was a 
 monstrosity! That flaming cerise with those awful span 
 gles ! Could it be possible that Milly had paid two hundred 
 and fifty dollars for that? Where was Milly's taste, any-
 
 FINE FEATHERS 335 
 
 way? Must he not only support his wife and shelter and 
 feed her and educate her, but turn modiste as well ? It 
 was sickening! 
 
 Cerise Taffeta and Old Gold Georgette brought up before 
 a large canvas at the northern end of the library. Milly duly 
 recognized that it was a picture because it was bounded by 
 a gold frame and had a shade of inverted lights above it. 
 
 "Have you ever seen any of Roerich's work before?" 
 queried the Cynthia person. She was amused in a way, but 
 it was a painful amusement. 
 
 "No," gulped Milly. 
 
 "This is called the 'Rain Princess/ " went on Old Gold 
 Georgette. "You know, I dearly love Roerich. He has so 
 much tartaric virility such bold, wide sweep and atmos 
 phere. His brown steppes, his blue seas, and his purple 
 mountains seem to come from a borderland " 
 
 "Yes," gulped Milly. "It it ain't painted very plain, 
 is it?" 
 
 "Roerich is always the colorist, the emotionalist. And 
 in the East, form ever remains subservient to color, you 
 know." 
 
 "I like paintin's," averred Milly, "where you can tell what 
 you're lookin' at. There was an artist come to Paris one 
 time. He painted pictures in the window of The Modern 
 Bargain Store painted 'em right while you watched 
 houses and trees and things. He asked ten dollars apiece for 
 'em. But it did seem a pity to pay him so much he did 
 'em so quick." 
 
 "Paris, France?" demanded the puzzled Cynthia. 
 
 "Lord, No! Paris, Vermont." 
 
 "Oh !" said the other quickly. 
 
 "Me, I go in for sepia," confided Milly, gaining a bit 
 of self-confidence and evincing the volubility of the provin 
 cial once started. "I'm doing my sitting room in browns and 
 such. I got a print of St. Cecilia at Michlaman's. He 
 lemme have it for seven dollars because the frame was 
 scratched. But you never'd notice unless you looked close. 
 And it was a fifteen-dollar picture!" 
 
 "How interesting !" murmured the other in slight distress. 
 
 "Oh, I know how to buy, once I have the money to buy 
 with! I got a whole set of that funny furniture with the 
 twisted legs to Blake Whipple's for our dining room. Only
 
 336 THE FOG 
 
 fifty-nine dollars! It was marked a hundred and fifteen 
 but Whipple lemme have it because he got stuck with it. 
 Folks in our town ain't much on stylish stuff. They want 
 chairs that has good strong legs, made to be set on and not 
 much else." 
 
 "Undoubtedly!" 
 
 "Madam, dinner is served," came a somewhat sonorous 
 voice off toward the left. A butler in complete evening livery 
 a rare and an awesome sight for Milly whose only contact 
 with butlers had been in the motion pictures stood by the 
 dining-room door. Instantly the hum of conversation 
 ceased. 
 
 A rapier stab of fright pierced Milly's vitals. Where 
 was Nathan and would he wait for her? The wife aban 
 doned the Cynthia person abruptly and frantically tried to 
 pick her husband from the seven men all dressed alike. 
 Horror of horrors ! Nathan was talking to that stout girl 
 in silver -gray ; she had a hand on his arm and they were mov 
 ing toward the dining room. 
 
 Milly had a wild impulse to flee. She would have flown 
 if she had dared search out the dressing room alone. In her 
 pitiful panic young Mosely approached her. 
 
 "May I take you in, Mrs. Forge?" he asked easily. 
 
 "I guess so," the girl responded dazedly. 
 
 Mosely held out his arm but Milly did not essay to take 
 it. The idea of such presumption! He should have taken 
 her arm, of course. All the fellows had done it at the Satur 
 day night dances in Foresters Hall before she was married. 
 So in a cold sweat and flaming fright, somehow she moved 
 toward the great double doors. Soft music started playing 
 behind a bank of palms on the landing. 
 
 Milly forgot her terror for an instant at sight of that "won 
 derful" table. The overhead chandeliers had been extin 
 guished. Shaded candle lamps were so concentrated that 
 every part of the cloth was in radiant light. Upon the cen 
 terpiece of drawn work a low crystal bowl held a gay mix 
 ture of blossoms, mostly small roses. Milly wondered where 
 the food was, what they intended to eat. All she saw in 
 evidence were a few nuts and some "soup plates filled with 
 cracked ice." Then she came back to her dilemma. The 
 "crowd" was wandering about the table, looking over the 
 napery and silverware, horribly ill-bred, Milly thought. Then 

 
 FINE FEATHERS 337 
 
 she grasped that they were reading names on "little card 
 board signs" as she told her mother afterward. Inertia 
 took Milly forward. With a little jolt she came upon her 
 own name. It startled her. 
 
 She sat down at once and then got up again hastily. 
 
 She expected that Nathan's place would be beside her 
 own ; Mrs. Mosely would have fixed it that way if she knew 
 anything. But apparently Mrs. Mosely didn't know any 
 thing, because Milly found herself between two disturbingly 
 strange men, one a "bald-headed old fool" and "a tall, sleek 
 young man with a trick mustache who looked like Charley 
 Chaplin." 
 
 Milly beheld that she "was in for a sickening evening." 
 She wished that awful Mrs. Mosely had at least put one 
 woman beside her. 
 
 Guests finally took their seats when Mrs. Mosely had 
 taken hers up in Paris a hostess was always the last 
 seated and more usually out in the kitchen, looking after 
 things and then Milly got her first shock of that evening 
 of shocks when she shook out her napkin and found some 
 one had hidden a roll in it. Down on the floor went the 
 roll and Milly had quite a time recovering. The fat gentle 
 man told her not to mind and to leave it for the servants 
 to recover later. But Milly remarked, not without some heat, 
 that "somebody might step on it and work it into the carpet", 
 and the roll episode being closed, she faced her "plate of 
 cracked ice." 
 
 In the next five minutes Milly discovered oyster cock 
 tail and rather approved of oyster cocktail; when she had 
 held back to see which spoon the Cynthia person employed 
 and how she employed it, finding it to be a fork, "pickle 
 fork, at that!" thought Milly. "And one for everybody!" 
 Then Milly "caught on" as to where the food was. As fast 
 as you disposed of one course the servants took your empty 
 plate and brought another. Great idea, but what an awful 
 lot of dishes you had to have. And think of the job of 
 washing them afterward! 
 
 During the soup, Milly located Nathan. She was a little 
 surprised at Nathan. He was proceeding cautiously but 
 did not appear at all distressed. Nathan, in fact, looked as 
 though he were actually enjoying himself. He had the stout 
 girl in silver-gray on one side and a tall, cold-faced Amazon
 
 338 THE FOG 
 
 in black upon the other. And he was carrying on conversa 
 tion with both. Milly felt rather proud of Nathan. Never 
 until this moment had she noticed how well he parted his 
 hair. Maybe she had not done so poorly in marrying Nathan, 
 after all. 
 
 A maid distributed plates from the left and after her 
 came another, laying knives and forks softly in their proper 
 places. Then a manservant presented the various dishes, 
 and until Milly noticed that the others were not doing 
 it, she took the big dish from the servant's hand as she 
 helped herself, a proceeding which perturbed that worthy 
 greatly. 
 
 The fellow with the trick mustache essayed several at 
 tempts at conversation which Milly answered in monosylla 
 bles. Then the fat man at her right turned to her with a sud 
 denness which almost made her upset her water glass and 
 asked : 
 
 "Have you seen Barrymore in 'Peter Ibbetson' yet, Mrs. 
 Forge?" " 
 
 Milly had not seen Barrymore in "Peter Ibbetson." In 
 the first place she had not the slightest notion who Barry- 
 more was and in the second place she had not the slightest 
 idea of what he should be doing in "Peter Ibbetson" or any 
 one else, and how he managed it. 
 
 "Who's Barrymore?" demanded Milly. 
 
 "My dear woman! Is it possible you don't know the 
 Barrymores ?" 
 
 "One can't know everybody," remarked Milly wither- 
 ingly. She considered this neat and sophisticated, wishing 
 at the same time she had bought a dress with a low neck. 
 She had as good shoulders as any one in the room. Be 
 sides, this was New York. She would buy a "low neck" 
 a "very low neck" next day. She was glad she still had 
 almost two hundred dollars left of Nat's money. 
 
 "But the Barrymores, Mrs. Forge. I mean Lionel and 
 John." 
 
 "Are they brothers or something?" 
 
 "Yes," collapsed the stout man, "Brothers? Oh, yes! 
 Certainly!" 
 
 "And who's Peter Ibbet's Son?" 
 
 "Peter Ibbetson Ibbetson! A play, you know at the 
 Republic."
 
 FINE FEATHERS 339 
 
 "Oh," exclaimed Milly. "You're talkin' about a show. 
 What kind of show is it? Funny?" 
 
 "No. I wouldn't call it funny. Although first night was 
 rather amusing. One of the back drops caught somehow at 
 the dark-change in the last act. Some of the scenery was 
 in distressing danger of coming down on Barrymore's bed." 
 
 "That oughta been a riot," observed Milly. She felt her 
 self-confidence returning again. She was, as it were, getting 
 along famously. "We had a show like that once at the Opera 
 House up to Paris. Some of the scenery fell flat and knocked 
 the orchestra leader clean into the first violin. They couldn't 
 ring down the curtain. They couldn't do nothin'. Just 
 beller! Funniest part was, what different folks was doin' 
 behind the scenes when the thing went over. One man 
 was changin' his pants. He got outter sight awful quick!" 
 
 The fat man roared. But the real reason for that roar 
 entirely missed Milly. He wasn't such a bad sort, after all. 
 
 Mrs. Mosely observed that Milly had sprung a highly en 
 tertaining bon mot and was amusing her near-by table com 
 panions greatly. She leaned forward. The fat gentleman, 
 in fact, was growing purple in the face and giving alarming 
 symptoms of sliding under the table. 
 
 "Really, Mrs. Forge, you must tell us the joke," sug 
 gested the hostess. 
 
 "Yes, please do!" pleaded a few feminine voices. 
 
 The attention of the diners thus being focused on her 
 self, Milly colored scarlet and felt her scalp take fire. Con 
 versation ceased. They were waiting. 
 
 "I I this this man and I were talking about a 
 show that come to Paris one night," stammered Milly. 
 "That's our home town Paris ! Up in Vermont, you 
 know!" 
 
 "I understand," smiled Mrs. Mosely. Her onyx voice 
 was at its best. "And what happened?" 
 
 "Some of the scenery fell flat and knocked the piano 
 player clean into the first violin. They couldn't ring down 
 the curtain. They couldn't do nothing on the stage, I mean 
 just holler. But the funniest part was what different 
 folks happened to be doing at the moment the thing flopped 
 over. One man was one man was " 
 
 "Yes, my dear !"
 
 340 THE FOG 
 
 "One man was changing his pants!" gulped Milly. And 
 waited for the explosion of applauding merriment. 
 
 But instead of an explosion of applauding merriment came 
 a ghastly silence. Mrs. Mosely tried to smile but turned 
 a queer pea-green. The stout girl beside Nathan looked 
 wildly around the table and jabbed her fork quickly into 
 a morsel of roast. One of the men made a weird noise, 
 it sounded as though he had swallowed a worm, a long, up 
 holstered, fuzzy one. A little red-haired girl giggled. And 
 poor Nathan ! Nathan was suddenly out on the bounding 
 billows of a raging main looking avidly for a particularly 
 inviting spot in which to drown with neatness and despatch. 
 
 "How very interesting!" remarked Mrs. Mosely. She 
 turned to her ever-present help in time of trouble, the Old 
 Gold Georgette. "Cynthia, my dear," she suggested, "and 
 suppose you tell us that other amusing anecdote about De 
 Carter when he tried to find Mr. Whitesmith at the Hermit 
 age, and ran into the character actor who looked just like 
 him, you know !" 
 
 Cynthia caught her cue and the cogs of the universe moved 
 again. But it had been a hideous ten seconds while it lasted. 
 
 Milly was the last to finish her food at each course and 
 the dinner dragged in consequence. She never noted she was 
 holding up the dinner. She essayed other conversation with 
 the stout man after a time, waving choice morsels on her 
 fork as she did so, before putting them into her mouth. Her 
 knife leaned against her plate, or sprawled at rakish angles 
 from other dishes. She felt, however, that those present 
 had not appreciated the delicious comedy in her anecdote. 
 "High-brow," she snapped to herself. She decided she 
 detested Mrs. Mosely, and as for the Cynthia person's anec 
 dote, it wasn't funny at all. 
 
 At the conclusion of the dinner Mrs. Mosely led the way 
 into the drawing-room and left the men to cigars. The big 
 double doors between the two apartments were then closed. 
 Again Milly was "thrown on her own." And 
 
 She wished to Gawd she were home! 
 
 If this were high life in the brilliant metropolis, give her 
 good old Paris, where folks ate their food naturally and 
 talked about subjects a body could understand : the weather, 
 perhaps, the latest film at the Olympic, what bargains Mich- 
 alman was showing in his basement, how many chops Bud
 
 FINE FEATHERS 341 
 
 Jones gave for a dollar. What fun was there sitting around 
 like a lot of "dummies at a wake", nibbling at a very little 
 food in slathers of dishes, having so many forks it took all 
 the joy out of eating to remember to use the right one, 
 and made one's head ache beside? 
 
 What enjoyment was there for a woman to be stuck be 
 tween two men whom she just knew wanted to talk business, 
 and be stiff and uncomfortable and starched and nerve- 
 racked to death for two mortal hours ? Then a seance in the 
 big room afterward and music on the piano that sounded 
 like the player trying to see how many chords she could 
 touch per minute or how many trick combinations of sounds 
 she could manufacture on the keyboard? As for Milly, 
 give her "Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet", or "Alexander's 
 Rag Time Band." 
 
 No, Milly didn't like society. One agonizing evening 
 was enough. She would be a nervous wreck in two months 
 if she had to endure it night after night as a program. 
 This thing she decided emphatically off in a corner by her 
 self. Nathan was not going to take any job where a steady 
 menu of this sort of thing might be necessary. Not if she 
 could help it, and she flattered herself that she could and 
 she would. 
 
 Milly was almost in tears when she finally culled out her 
 husband. 
 
 "I wanner go home!" she almost cried. "And if you 
 won't come with me, I'll go alone!" That a lady and gen 
 tleman were talking with Nathan made no difference to Milly. 
 She had enough. She wanted to go home. She meant what 
 she said. 
 
 Nathan excused himself as adroitly as he could. And 
 Milly "sashayed" from the drawing-room, straight to the 
 dressing-room door. 
 
 "We must say good night to Mrs. Mosely," said Nathan, 
 before he started for his own wraps. 
 
 "Oh, you can do it for me! I don't ever want to speak 
 to her again! I think she's horrid! She asked me that 
 jbke about the pants and then made me feel like thirty 
 cents when I told it." 
 
 "But, Milly, it'll be almost insult to walk out this way; 
 ordinary courtesy demands you come with me and bid her 
 good night. Don't you want to be courteous?"
 
 342 THE FOG 
 
 "Not to such as her! No! She's too much of a higl 
 brow ! She makes me sick ! You can tell her I said so !" 
 Milly got her street clothes and put them on in the hallwa; 
 
 as she might have "gone off mad" at a surprise party 
 home when some one present had "slapped her face." 
 
 Nathan went to Mrs. Mosely and apologized for his wife's 
 indisposition. "She's taken suddenly ill," he explained, "and 
 I must hurry to the hotel with her at once." 
 
 Milly was anything but ill when they went down the steps 
 at last and headed west in the invigorating night air toward 
 the Avenue. Milly continued her comment anent Mrs. 
 Mosely and all Mrs. Mosely's guests, comparing them to 
 sundry "honest-to-God" folks up in Paris. Nathan was 
 at last stung to remark : 
 
 "That was a rotten break you made ! I should think your 
 own intuitive good taste would have told you that those peo 
 ple think along a little higher plane than a stage hand chang 
 ing his pants. That might be excellent humor for your 
 father up in Gridley's tannery. But in a New York draw 
 ing-room " 
 
 "Well, Gridley's tannery and Paris and my father are good 
 enough for me! And you needn't think you're so all-fired 
 high-brow, either. It wasn't only a few years ago you was 
 helpin' skin cows right alongside my father." 
 
 "I didn't do it from choice. I was made to do it." 
 
 "I suppose you'll be telling me next that a continual bil 
 of fare of the 'class' we had to-night is what you'd 'like 
 from choice'?" 
 
 "Certainly it is ! You bet it is ! And I intend to have it 
 
 if it's possible to get." 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you one thing, Nathan Forge, you'll have 
 it without me! If that's 'high-brow', then gimme the 'flats, 
 where people live natural and enjoy themselves!" 
 "What do you mean you'll have it without me?" 
 "Just what I said. I'll go back to Ma for good. Oh, 
 guess I can earn my own living again! I did it once, re 
 member. You used to say I was the smartest girl in the 
 box-shop once!" And Milly began to sob openly as she 
 trotted along by Nathan's side. Pedestrians on the Avenue 
 turned and stared.
 
 FINE FEATHERS 343 
 
 IV 
 
 Extract from a letter mailed from the New York office 
 of the Thome Knitting Mills under date of October 3, 
 1916, to Theodore E. Thorne, vice president and sales man 
 ager at the main offices and plant, Paris, Vermont: 
 
 ... I hardly know what to say, Ted. You're putting me in 
 a rotten dilemma. God knows I'm no knocker. Also the last 
 thing in the world I'd want on my conscience would be the dirty 
 work of knifing a poor devil in the back because he hasn't had 
 advantages which some of us have been lucky to receive. 
 But what alternative are you leaving me when you put it 
 up as a question of policy affecting the welfare of the Com 
 pany ? 
 
 Forge came down here and spent the better part of a week 
 going over things. As I'm leaving anyway, I was absolutely 
 unprejudiced you believe that, don't you? I showed him all 
 there was to show. He impressed me as being a fair business 
 man, considering his age, a little higher than the average, per 
 haps. He's got imagination and executive ability, especially the 
 last, and there's not a doubt he'd work his head off to make 
 good. I think he's especially endowed with the faculty for 
 managing help. But this isn't a factory down here, Ted. The 
 office help requiring management, or even the local sales staff, 
 are almost negligible. This job calls for a "mixer," a diplomat, 
 and a personality capable of holding the trade and adding to it 
 by adroit business politics. I can conceive of Forge being a 
 fair success out in the boardwalk towns, selling union suits to 
 merchants who wait on the feminine trade with their vests un 
 buttoned and a toothpick between their lips. But running up 
 against such smooth articles as old Anstruther, or the Caldwell 
 boys or the Perkinsnaith people, they'd walk through him like a 
 crooked lawyer driving a coach through a will written on the 
 back of wall-paper. 
 
 You know that this business, as the New York territory has 
 always done, contains a big portion of the personal element. 
 Many's the time we might have lost business with some of the 
 heavy-weights if I hadn't been "in right" personally with their 
 families and womenfolk. Take Haymarker and the Tonowanda 
 affair last June: you may not have known it, but I got old 
 Haymarker and his wife to come out to the Long Island place 
 for the week-end or mother did, which amounts to the same 
 thing and played around with him until the psychological 
 moment. Before he returned to town he clapped me on the
 
 344 THE FOG 
 
 shoulder and said : "Let's forget the business fuss, Fred. We're 
 too good friends in a social way to let a matter of a few 
 dollars break up our relations outside the office." 
 
 . . . and that's how young Forge must carry on, and I'm 
 frank to tell you, Ted, I don't believe he's there. Oh, he may 
 catch on in a year or so, but the cost to the company in the 
 meantime may be ruinous. Why should the Thome Knitting 
 Mills pay for the education of a man who should have received 
 that education at home from his parents ? It's a cruel handicap 
 he's under, but business is business. What his folks can have 
 been thinking of is beyond me. And his wife oh, my God! 
 
 . . . perhaps the average outsider would say that a man's wife 
 down here would have little bearing on his job. But believe me, 
 Ted, it isn't so. Maybe I'm over-emphasizing the social part, 
 but business is sometimes a bit more than price asked and price 
 paid. There are times when personality, family connections, tact, 
 diplomacy, politics played, by a fellow's wife in a social way 
 can mean thousands of dollars in the course of a year. And 
 poor Forge has a millstone around his neck and an anvil tied 
 to each wrist. 
 
 . . . I've nothing against her because she comes from a small 
 town. But just because a person comes from a small town is 
 no license to show themselves as mud-hut peasants who wear 
 their boots to bed. A certain nicety of taste is expected of the 
 least of us. And honestly, Ted, that girl Forge calls his wife 
 is absolutely impossible. He must have found her and married 
 her from the lowest class of factory help, just because she was 
 female. 
 
 . . . she came to the dinner in a cheap afternoon frock whose 
 shrieking color would stop a train she clutched him like a 
 poor relation mother was almost a nervous wreck when the 
 ordeal was over, and I should have been kicked for pulling any 
 such stunt. She's been all the week figuring out ways to 
 apologize to her guests. The height of Mrs. Forge's mentality 
 and idea of dinner wit was an anecdote about somebody up in 
 your town changing his trousers. 
 
 ... of course you're running your own business and it's none 
 of my affair. But I do hate to see all the good work I've tried 
 to do and the organization I've built leak away or go to smash 
 through being turned over to a poor country boob with a wife 
 who remarks that "the servants mustn't be onto their job in this 
 place" because they've neglected to set out the toothpicks along 
 with the demitasses and actually thinks they aren't. 
 
 . . . Forge wants to learn all right and he probably will. But 
 the New York office of the Thome Knitting Mills isn't the place 
 to teach him, and beause his wife is so pitifully deficient in the 
 common fundamentals of etiquette, I'm afraid the opportunity
 
 FINE FEATHERS 345 
 
 is not for him. I'm no snob, as you know, Ted. But there 
 are some things that simply are not done. 
 
 Nathan entered the Paris offices of the knitting mills the 
 day following and instinctively felt that something was 
 wrong. A certain cordiality and solicitation were missing 
 in the sales manager's manner. His behavior, in fact, was a 
 bit apologetic, furtive. 
 
 "Nat," began the other, "it seems to us that the Pennsyl 
 vania and middle-New York territory is in such a precarious 
 state just now, on account of the prospect of war, that the 
 directors have decided it for the best interests of the company 
 not to transfer you to New York for a while. We want you 
 to keep on as you have been going drumming the depart 
 ment-store trade." 
 
 Nat's disappointment was heart-rending, for a moment. 
 
 "Back to the road again?" he whispered wearily. "It's 
 sort of monotonous, Ted; the same thing over and over, 
 week after week " 
 
 "I know, Nathan. But unfortunately there are those 
 kinds of jobs in the world and somebody's got to fill 'em. 
 With war in prospect, we really don't feel warranted in 
 making the shift. That's about all I can say, After all, you 
 know, I'm under my directors." 
 
 "That's tough," commented Nat finally. "I'd sort of set 
 my heart on getting a big office job like that and really show 
 ing what I feel capable of doing. And and well, I've 
 sort of grown beyond small-town living, and New York made 
 me feel as though it was the sort of thing I'd hungered for, 
 without exactly knowing what made that hunger." 
 
 "I'm sorry, Nat. But business is business." 
 
 That night Mrs. Anna Forge met her son on Main 
 Street. 
 
 ". . . and he came down from upstairs, Nat! I'll swear 
 he came down from upstairs! And what could he have 
 been doing up there that was all level and on the square?" 
 
 "What were you doing up at the house, to catch him?" 
 . "Well, I I went up to see you and hear all about your 
 New York trip. Milly's bragging all over town about a 
 swell dinner they gave you down there, and how you're 
 going down there to live and have swell dinners all the 
 year 'round."
 
 346 THE FOG 
 
 "Don't worry, Ma, I'm not going. The Thornes have 
 changed their minds." 
 
 Nathan went on toward home at the end of another ten 
 minutes. Grimly he considered two things to which his 
 mother had given voice, her worst fears about the man who 
 had come down from the upstairs of Nathan's home in com 
 pany with Milly and his mother's comment after she had 
 forced him to tell her all about the "swell" dinner. 
 
 "Oh, Natie," she had cried anxiously, "I do hope you 
 remembered your manners and said 'please' and folded your 
 napkin afterwards, like I always tried to teach you at home !" 
 
 "Milly," demanded the husband when he faced his wife 
 in the kitchen half an hour later, "what was Si Plumb doing 
 upstairs with you, when mother called the first of the after 
 noon ?" 
 
 The girl flashed him a look of defiance. 
 
 "So ! Your mother's been carryin' tales, has she ? Well, 
 it's just like her! If you want to know* Mr. Smartie, I 
 sent for Si to come and tighten the faucets in the upstairs 
 bathroom." Si had long since quit the tannery and become 
 a steam-fitter in the village. 
 
 But somehow Milly's explanation sounded thin. 
 
 "I could have done such a simple job as that," Nathan 
 observed. "You didn't need to call Si and run up a plumber's 
 bill!" 
 
 "You tighten bathroom faucets ? You're a high-brow, re 
 member! You're above tightening bathroom faucets these 
 days, Nat Forge !"
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DRIFTING 
 
 America was not going to preserve her neutrality and keep 
 from the European shambles much longer. As the days 
 passed and 1917 drew closer, there was less and less doubt 
 about it. 
 
 The Lusitania tragedy had forecast what might possibly 
 come; the President's famous note of May 13 had met with 
 general approval. Wilson had received a vote of confidence. 
 He was free to deal with the situation created by the various 
 peace proposals of the winter of 1916-1917. But the nego 
 tiations which followed in December and January were ob 
 scure at the time and the vital issue by no means clear. 
 Then on the twenty-second of January came the announce 
 ment of unrestricted submarine warfare. Declaration of 
 war on April 6 was only a matter of denouement. 
 
 When Madelaine came home for the spring vacation, she 
 was hardly in a mood, with the swift and ominous trend 
 of world events moving about her, to consider any advances 
 of a marital tenor from Gordon or any other man. Then 
 one night in late February it came to her how short the 
 space can really be between a blind exasperation and intol 
 erance of anything threatening a fierce desire for complete 
 independence, and a frantic heart-cry after reliance on a 
 man's strength, the most tender and intimate dependence 
 life had to offer her. 
 
 She would arise in the morning fully determined to post 
 pone her studies until the German menace was blasted for 
 ever and follow scores of her sister students to France, 
 to work out her own salvation on bloody fields where men 
 in the abstract needed her most. She went to bed to clutch 
 the counterpane hysterically as the most lonesome and un 
 wanted woman in God's bloody world. Between these two
 
 348 THE FOG 
 
 moods she swayed back and forth, wondering at times if 
 she were losing her capacity for straight, cold-brained rea 
 soning. 
 
 Gordon came up to the house that February night and 
 found Madelaine in the upstairs library. Mrs. Theddon 
 was down in the city directing some Red Cross affair. The 
 servants were below in the rear., out of sight and in so far 
 as Madelaine went out of mind. A coal fire glowed beau 
 tifully in the open grate. In silken gown which only accen 
 tuated the strength and comeliness of her figure, the young 
 woman sank down before the coals with Gordon across from 
 her. Neither spoke for a long time. Madelaine knew it 
 was no ordinary call which had brought Gordon up to-night. 
 The man's manner was perturbing. 
 
 "Madge," he said at last, "I've been doing a lot of think 
 ing lately." 
 
 "About what, Gordon?" 
 
 "About the war and myself." 
 
 "I wonder if we're really going to have war, Gordon?" 
 
 "We are ! There's not a doubt about it. They're expect 
 ing it at the Works and preparing accordingly." 
 
 "Mother told me last night you'd been promoted again. 
 I'm glad you're doing so finely. I'm really proud of you !" 
 
 "That's just the trouble, Madge. Sooner or later I've 
 got to reach a decision." 
 
 "What sort of decision?" 
 
 "Whether I'm going to be a 'desk cootie' through this Big 
 Show, or whether I'm going to do my stunt like a he-man." 
 
 "Explain a little more fully, Gordon. Do you mean " 
 
 "If we get into the Big Show, there's going to be a draft. 
 Everybody's talking about it down at the office. There's 
 no other way, with so much factional feeling among these 
 hyphenated Americans. If they have a draft, it's only rea 
 sonable to suppose that certain of us who know our jobs 
 extra well at home may be ordered to enlist and yet to re 
 main on those jobs as being more valuable at home than 
 stabbing Germans. It looks as if that sort of thing might 
 come to me old Dalliworth is making plans along that line 
 already. And Madge I I " 
 
 "Don't be afraid to talk it out, Gordon. You may tell 
 me without fear of being misundersood." 
 
 "You bet I can!" cried the fellow thickly. "God bls*
 
 DRIFTING 349 
 
 you, Madge! What I started to say was, I can't make up 
 my mind which I ought to do stay home and direct the 
 making of shells or go to France and have a part in firing 
 them off!" 
 
 "Which do you want to do, Gord?" 
 
 "I think I want to go to France, Madge. I know my job 
 and all that. But well, there ought to be lots of older 
 chaps unfitted for active service who could do the home job 
 as well as myself." 
 
 "Then, Gordon," said the woman, without an instant's 
 hesitation, "I'd go to France!" 
 
 Silence fell between them. It was broken by the man's 
 long sigh. He looked around the room. 
 
 "This used to be your mother's chamber, wasn't it, Madge 
 
 before she had the house done over ? It was in this room 
 I met you first." 
 
 "You as you are now, Gordon were never that hot 
 headed little boor. Not only do I refuse to admit it, but 
 I can't conceive it. You've changed so, Gordon. You're 
 not the same fellow at all." 
 
 He laughed a depreciating laugh. 
 
 "Well," he said philosophically, "if that's true, you know 
 what I told you down in Boston a while ago. You and 
 you alone have been responsible. 'You made me what I 
 am to-day I hope you're satisfied.'' 1 And once more he 
 laughed. But it was plain the laugh did not come from his 
 heart. 
 
 "How long have we known each other, Gord? Let's see, 
 I'm tweny-seven this spring and I was eleven when mother 
 brought me here and gave me this home ; that's sixteen years 
 ago! It doesn't seem possible sixteen years! How time 
 slips away!" 
 
 Gordon leaned forward toward her, elbows on his knees. 
 
 "Madelaine," he asked suddenly, sincerely, "are you happy 
 
 really happy?" 
 
 "Why do you ask me such a question, Gord? Of course 
 I'm happy! After all I've had done for me, why shouldn't 
 I be happy ?" 
 
 "There seem to be times forgive me, Madge, if I'm 
 rude but there seem to be times when I fancy you're not. 
 I don't know exactly what it is an expression on your 
 face, perhaps, a glance of your eye I could almost believe
 
 350 THE FOG 
 
 you were secretly grieving over something, dear. Isn't it 
 so?" 
 
 The girl felt the springs of emotion beginning to well 
 deep in her spirit. She averted her face. She looked down 
 at her hands, laced together suddenly and tightly in her lap. 
 
 "You know, Gordon, I've always had a slight mist of 
 tragedy hovering over me, never knowing who my parents 
 were, how I came to be found as I was. A woman could 
 never quite forget that, especially when strangers have been 
 kind to her and tried to treat her like their own." 
 
 "I like that pretty little fantasy associated with you as a 
 girl, Madge. I mean about the fairies leaving you for 
 earthly persons to discover. It makes you very sweet and 
 rare, Madelaine. To me you will ever be that a fine and 
 tender woman, brought to earth in babyhood by the fairies !" 
 
 "Gordon ! Please don't !" 
 
 "How can I help it, Madelaine? Every man must have 
 some sweet, rare, fine, tender woman in his life, mustn't 
 he to work for to please to bring out the best that's 
 in him ? And having been that to me, how can I help telling 
 you so, dear girl?" 
 
 "I've just been myself !" the girl responded huskily. 
 
 "Yourself! Yes! Thank God for that! Yourself! 
 Madge, does a woman ever realize what she can mean to a 
 man sometimes who loves her because she has given him 
 a goal and a promise of still finer things to be and faith 
 the essence of things hoped for, but not seen?" 
 
 "I'll tell you the truth, Gordon. Yes, there are moments 
 when I'm miserable terribly miserable and not because 
 of my clouded parentage, either. Sometimes I don't think 
 I quite know what it is. And yet and yet at 
 others " 
 
 "Madge, you've never been really in love, have you 
 away down deep inside so deep that you could give that 
 loved one up, if need be, to insure that loved one's happi 
 ness ?" 
 
 "No, Gordon, I don't believe I have." 
 
 "That's strange, Madge. It's extraordinary for a woman 
 to reach twenty-seven and never have known a love affair 
 a real one. And yet in your case, I don't know that it's so 
 extraordinary, after all. You're so different in many 
 ways "
 
 DRIFTING 351 
 
 He stopped abruptly at the mask of pain which slipped 
 over the girl's cameo features. "So different!" Always 
 she had heard that "so different." And never once had she 
 ever wanted to be different, not realizing how beautifully 
 Gordon meant it, what a compliment he was trying to pay 
 her, entirely aside from any question of policy or to abet his 
 own suit. 
 
 "Please don't say I'm different, Gordon," she pleaded. 
 "It hurts terribly!" 
 
 "But you are different, you know. Not queer or eccentric, 
 I don't mean. You're so much more elegant and delicate 
 oh, tosh! I don't mean to sound silly, or indulge in the 
 callow ravings of a school kid. But oh, Madge, the man 
 who gets you will get a gift direct from the fairies, indeed!" 
 He waited a moment and then added softly, "And, God ! 
 how I'd appreciate being that man !" 
 
 Tumultuous emotions swept and swayed the girl. She 
 studied the toe of her satin house slipper. That feeling of 
 helplessness came over her again the sensation of drifting, 
 drifting on and on into Gordon Ruggles's arms at last 
 his wife ! Well, and what of it ? He was proving himself 
 a man and he loved her. There was not a doubt about that. 
 He loved her. 
 
 "Gordon," she said unevenly, "you're going to keep at me 
 and keep at me until you make me your wife, aren't you?" 
 There was no rebuke in her voice. 
 
 "In what other way, dear, does a man win the heart of 
 the woman he loves?" 
 
 Madelaine sprang from the divan and walked down the 
 room. She threw up her soft, bare, beautiful arms. From 
 her throat came a cry. 
 
 "Yes, I'm different different! different because ro 
 mance has never come to me as it has come to other girls 
 sweet, wild romance that would make me love a man so 
 deeply and fiercely I'd follow him over the world and live 
 with him in a hovel, to be close beside him ! love him so 
 that he would beat me, if you please, and I could suffer it 
 because I loved him! Oh, Gordon! Gordon! You may 
 win, after all, for you've overcome the most of any man I've 
 ever known. But you'll never know the heart of a woman! 
 You'll never know! You'll never know!" 
 
 He kissed her hand when he left her at the door that night.
 
 352 THE FOG 
 
 Despite his great love, despite the inspiration she was in 
 his life was he hurting her by denying her that Great Ro 
 mance she might possibly find after he had married her? 
 
 For that would be a terrific hurt. Madelaine would be 
 true as steel to any man whom she had once promised to 
 love, honor and cherish, come what might, afterward. She 
 was that kind of woman.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LAST STRAW 
 
 Nathan was facing the prospect of a dreary, rainy Sunday 
 in a Wilkes-Barre hotel when that "turning-point" telegram 
 arrived from Thorne. Since that day in Springfield when 
 he had received a wire from Mildred concerning his child's 
 death, telegrams had not been without a flavor of calamity. 
 Yet Thome's message on its face looked harmless enough. 
 It read : 
 
 DROP EVERYTHING COME HOME AT ONCE IMPOR 
 TANT MISSION FOR YOU. 
 
 T. E. THORNE. 
 
 An important mission for him! Nathan had a queer, 
 telepathic intuition that something had happened, or was 
 about to happen, that was to affect his career and perhaps 
 his whole life vitally. It never left him. In fact, it grew 
 upon "Kim as he entered Vermont the next afternoon and his 
 train drew into Paris about half -past seven o'clock. 
 
 Usually Nat wired Milly when he was returning from his 
 trips ; his wife was piqued and exasperated when he "walked 
 in on her" with no food ready in the house or when she 
 was in the midst of neighborhood or family activities such 
 as occupied her time while her husband was absent. But 
 he had been so intent on making his trains that this time he 
 had forgotten. When the man finally alighted on the depot 
 platform Sunday evening, the place showed no signs of life ; 
 not even a Ford taxi met the train. So Nathan left his suit 
 cases in the baggage room to be brought up next morning 
 and started toward the business section afoot. 
 
 He entered the Metropolitan Drug Store pay-station and 
 called Ted Thorne. Ted was out for the evening and Nat
 
 354 THE FOG 
 
 promised to call him later. Then he called Milly to inform 
 her that he had returned to town and would be up in a few 
 minutes. Milly, did not answer the 'phone. 
 
 "Probably down to her mother's," he said. So he stopped 
 for a lunch at the filite, lit a cigar and headed for Preston 
 Hill at a leisurely pace. This was about half -past eight. 
 
 It was one of those blowy nights in early March with the 
 wind drying up the snow puddles and clouds scurrying across 
 the face of a high white moon. Spring would be on New 
 England in a handful of weeks. Already most of the snow 
 had gone and only sickly, dirty patches, the last vestiges 
 of winter drifts, were disclosed on the northern sides of walls 
 and fences where the sunlight failed to touch them. 
 
 His house was dark when he finally turned into Vermont 
 Avenue. As Milly had not answered the 'phone, he thought 
 nothing of it. He went up the front veranda steps and let 
 himself into the hall with his latchkey. The warm odor of 
 his own home was pleasant and inviting, the house welcomed 
 him after his three-weeks' absence by its mellow darkness. 
 He pressed on the lamp button in the hall and called his 
 wife's name. But he received no answer. The house was 
 very quiet. The wind blew a loose blind somewhere. On 
 the distant kitchen sink-shelf a brassy alarm clock ticked 
 faintly. Nathan hung hat and coat on the hall hat -tree and 
 pressed out the hall light as he moved into the sitting room 
 on the west side. 
 
 He pulled the tiny chain on the reading lamp and looked 
 around for his mail. It contained nothing of interest, most 
 of it being bills. He glanced over the recent copies of the 
 Daily Telegraph. But his thoughts were upon Ted Thorne 
 and why he should have been called so abruptly off the road. 
 
 After a time the moon got around to where it cast a splotch 
 of lemon-colored light on the sitting-room floor. The win 
 dow shades had not been drawn. Nathan glanced up and 
 saw the cold, round disk behind the gaunt, waving tree 
 boughs. He turned his chair a heavy wing-rocker so 
 that it faced the window, its back to the room. Then he 
 reached a hand and pulled off the reading light to enjoy the 
 wild, windy beauty of the outside night. 
 
 He had turned many bitter things over in his mind and 
 it was after nine o'clock when the man heard a strange 
 sound. It seemed to come from the rear of the house, out
 
 THE LAST STRAW 
 
 355 
 
 on the back porch beyond the kitchen. At first Nat thought 
 it some freak of the wind. Then, as the latter died down and 
 perfect quiet reigned for a moment, the sound came again, 
 sharp and distinct. 
 
 Some one had tried several keys in the back-porch door. 
 Finally they had found one which fitted. A gust of wind 
 swept through the house and the door was immediately 
 closed. 
 
 Nathan had no desire to startle his wife. He was about 
 to rise and call, to advise her of his presence in the darkened 
 home, when there came a thunderous thud in the kitchen and 
 an oath. 
 
 A man was in the kitchen! He had fallen over a chair! 
 
 Nathan drew back into the protective depths of the 
 rocker. He was frightened. Most normal people know 
 some degree of terror when it is evident burglars are in 
 the house. He debated what he should do. Then it oc 
 curred to him to keep silent a moment, to see what the in 
 truded was after and where he would go. 
 
 The burglar apparently righted the chair and groped his 
 way to the sitting room, where Nathan held his breath and 
 waited, completely hidden by the enormous back of the 
 rocker. The intruder came in, still groping. Nathan could 
 hear his deep breathing through the semi-dark. 
 
 Apparently the man stood for a time in the center of the 
 room, hesitant. Then, to Nathan's bewilderment, he sank 
 down on the sofa. Nathan heard the springs creak plainly. 
 Next came the scratch of a match, the silhouette the flare 
 made of adjacent furniture on west wall and ceiling, and the 
 acrid odor of cigar smoke. A queer burglar, this! He 
 sat down on the family sofa and lit a smoke before pro 
 ceeding to his loot. And Milly might come at any minute. 
 
 Milly came. She let herself in the front way. Nathan 
 knew when she had arrived by another draught of spring 
 wind and the sharp click when the front door closed and 
 the lock snapped. But she did not turn on the lights. Her 
 footstep sounded on the hard- wood floor of the hall and he 
 knew without looking around that she was standing in the 
 door. 
 
 The sofa springs creaked. Nathan waited for Milly to 
 shriek when she beheld a burglar smoking in the room. He 
 had his mind ready to reach for the chain of the reading
 
 356 THE FOG 
 
 lamp and snap it on. After that, well, Nathan still knew 
 how to use his fists. 
 
 But Milly did not shriek. Instead, he heard her say in 
 the most normal, natural intonation of voice, softened with 
 a trace of humor: 
 
 "Don't take you long to make yourself comfortable, does 
 it?" 
 
 And a man's coarser bass returned from that dark: 
 
 "You bet it don't! Leave it to your uncle!" 
 
 "I hope to Gawd nobody spotted you gettin' in. That 
 ol' Miss Pease next door puts her eyes on the doorstep 
 when she sleeps, same as she puts out her cat." 
 
 "Naw, I waited until a cloud went over the moon before 
 I left the shadow o' the fence. But I did knock my shin 
 over a chair in the kitchen. I'll break that dam' thing if you 
 leave it in my way again fell over it last Sunday night, 
 very same way !" 
 
 Nathan was too stunned to move. He seemed all at once 
 to have no body, so completely had all physical sensation 
 fled. He might have been a disembodied spirit sitting in 
 that chair which he was, so far as the man and his wife 
 were concerned. And they thought him six hundred miles 
 away! He waited. He knew Milly was pulling off her 
 gloves and unpinning her hat. 
 
 "You didn't light any lights, did you?" It was Milly's 
 voice that asked it. 
 
 "What th' hell sort o' boob do you take me for, Mil? 
 Besides, whatter we need lights for you an' me ?" 
 
 The sofa springs suddenly creaked with Milly's added 
 weight. 
 
 "Gawd, kiss me, honeybunch ! Gimme a good old hum 
 dinger. There ain't nobody can raise my hair with kissin' 
 like you can, Si, or anything else, for that matter. Seems 
 just as if a gorilla had me and I was perfectly willin 
 the gorilla should!" 
 
 They kissed. 
 
 Later-day motion-picture censors would have shortened 
 that kiss considerably, say about forty seconds. 
 
 "Honestly, Si," cried the girl, "when you kiss me like 
 that, I just wanner die or wish I could!" 
 
 "Some little kisser I am, huh? Nat don't kiss you like 
 that, now, does he, what?"
 
 THE LAST STRAW 357 
 
 "Oh, Gawd ! If he could do it that way or ever had 
 maybe you'd never had the chance, Si. A girl likes to be 
 mauled once in a while you know treated rough ! But 
 he's too much of a high -brow to maul anybody. I suppose 
 it ain't poetical !" 
 
 Milly laughed. Plumb swore. As for Nathan, he sank 
 deeper into his chair. His mind was in that state which 
 a wrecked body sometimes knows between a mangling acci 
 dent and the moment when blasted nerves begin to respond 
 and bring excruciating agony. 
 
 "Mil, honestly, this can't go much longer ! You ain't his 
 wife, Mil. You never was his wife. He had no business 
 to marry you in the first place. You belong to me. And 
 the right thing all around would be to either come out flat- 
 footed and have a show-down, or else run off and just love 
 as much as we please forever. I may be a roughneck, Mil, 
 but I hate this bein' a sneak !" 
 
 "I know, Si, but think o' the dough I'm layin' by ! I got 
 almost seven hundred saved right now. Did I tell you about 
 the New York dress? Nat gimme two hundred and fifty 
 to buy some togs for that high-brow dinner. Do you know 
 what I did? I got a thing that cost seventeen ninety-eight 
 and made him think I'd blowed the whole wad. Made two 
 hundred and thirty at a crack, right there ! Gee, he's easy ! 
 He believes anything I tell him. Just because I'm a woman, 
 he takes everything I say for gospel truth." 
 
 "I don't care nothin' about his money unless you wanner 
 blow it on yourself. I got money. And I can get a job 
 anywheres. And honestly, Mil, I'm dam' tired and sick 
 every time a blind blows thinkin' it's him come back by 
 surprise to catch us and raise hell." 
 
 "Aw, he wouldn't raise hell. He ain't got the starch." 
 Milly laughed and apparently pulled Si's hair. "He's a 
 high-brow and a poet. Poets don't fight !" 
 
 "Don't they, though?" commented Plumb. "I had one 
 scrap with Nat. I ain't hankerin' to mix up in another. He 
 could even gun me for what we're doin' now, Mil, and I 
 wouldn't have a leg to stand on." 
 
 "He wouldn't gun you not if I was around," snapped 
 Milly. "I'd just like to see him. He's the least o' my wor 
 ries. I can handle him !" 
 
 "But it ain't alone that, Mil. I want you myself ! You're
 
 358 THE FOG 
 
 my class. Honestly, when I'm at work some days, I got 
 a regularly gnawin' inside to feel your arms 'round me 
 and hear your old ribs crackin' when I squeeze you in an 
 honest-to-Gawd hug! I wancher always, Mil. I thought 
 a heap o' you before you ever took up with him " 
 
 "I thought he was class and rich," lamented the girl. 
 "He sure did bunco me fierce." 
 
 "Well, yer kid's gone and he don't love you no more or 
 he wouldn't go off months at a stretch and leave you 
 exposed to me!" Si laughed. "Mil, you and me just got 
 to fix this up. It'd probably jolt His Nibs terrible to 
 have a divorce. Besides, he'd probably start messin' things 
 up. Still it oughtta be done. Where's he now? When's 
 he comin' home?" 
 
 "He oughta be doin' Pennsylvania this week. It's his time 
 for it. He'll be back about a week from Thursday night." 
 
 "Mil, what th' hell do we care for him or anybody? Let's 
 cut out this sneakin'-in-the-back-door business. Let's 
 blow!" 
 
 There was silence for a long time after that. 
 
 "Where'd we go, Si?" 
 
 "I gotta swell chance to go down to Jersey and get a 
 job in a shipyards. They're payin' big money for riveters. 
 A feller was tellin' to the shop yesterday that if we get 
 fightin' the Germans, them that works on ships won't have 
 to go across. Let's blow, Mil! Let's get outta here for 
 good and all!" 
 
 "There's Ma and Pa and the kids " 
 
 "Yer Ma and Pa wanner see you happy, don't they? 
 And they know Nat ain't doin' it. Then what's the answer ? 
 Besides, I can get along with your Pa a lot better'n Nat. 
 Yer Pa and me speak the same language!" 
 
 Another lunge of the couch springs. 
 
 "Treat me rough, kid!" cried the girl softly. "Treat 
 me rough enough and I might !" 
 
 Nathan reached up and pulled on the light. 
 
 II 
 
 Milly shrieked. Plumb sat stunned. He blinked in the 
 abrupt illumination like an imbecile.
 
 THE LAST STRAW 359 
 
 Nathan arose to his full height. He viewed the two. 
 He drew a long breath for strength, poise and self-control. 
 Then he leaned back against the table and regarded them 
 gravely. 
 
 Milly sat up on the edge of the sofa. Her hair was down 
 and her bodice open. Hairpins dropped on the hard, 
 polished floor at her feet. 
 
 "Where'd you come from?" she cried when she could 
 speak. 
 
 "This chair! I've been sitting here since nine o'clock." 
 
 "You heard?" 
 
 "Yes I heard ! How could I help it ?" 
 
 Milly mustered up her courage. 
 
 "You dirty, eavesdropping sneak!" 
 
 Nathan raised his hand. On his harrowed face was a 
 sad, disillusioned smile. He addressed himself to Plumb. 
 
 "How long has it been going on, Si?" 
 
 The steam-fitter was dressed in his Sunday-evening best. 
 His Sunday-evening best was slightly rumpled by his liaison 
 with Milly. Once he cast his eyes about as though debating 
 whether to try for the door or dash through the window 
 glass. 
 
 "How long has what been going on?" he asked weakly. 
 
 "Come, come! Let's not spar. It isn't necessary." 
 Nathan took his hands from the table edge and folded his 
 arms. "You needn't try to get up nerve to leap through 
 the glass. I'm not going to hurt you ! I may be a poet 
 but I'm not quite a fool." 
 
 Si breathed easier. He sat up. They were a cheap, dis 
 heveled, foolish-looking pair, ranged there side by side, a 
 cow of a woman and a bull of a man. Was there any 
 reason why they should not seek each other's embrace? 
 
 "I been lovin' Mil ever since you married her." The 
 steam-fitter confessed it sheepishly, picking at his broken 
 finger nails. "I was lovin' of her when you stepped in to 
 the shop and cut me out. If you're goin' to blame anybody, 
 blame yourself!" 
 
 "I am blaming myself," Nathan t returned quietly. "All 
 I can't understand is, Milly how could you do it ?" 
 
 "Do what ?" snapped the girl. 
 
 "All the time I was trying to do things for you get you 
 this home furnish it as you wanted buy you clothes
 
 360 THE FOG 
 
 take you with me on my trips introduce you to people in 
 New York hand you out more money than you'd ever be 
 able to earn yourself and all the time you loved another 
 man behind my back ! You were carrying on with him while 
 I had the utmost confidence in you at least, I refused to 
 believe what all the town tried to tell me." 
 
 Milly began to cry. 
 
 "It was little Mary," she sobbed. "You was her father. 
 Besides, you'd never understand how or why I loved Si. 
 I didn't suppose you ever could." 
 
 "I should think you'd have felt like a virago," declared 
 Nathan disgustedly. "What else can you call yourself?" 
 He looked down upon her as upon some biological specimen 
 that was exhibiting strange phenomena. 
 
 "I don't know what it means, but I can guess and if 
 I'm that for lovin' Si more'n you well, I ain't ashamed 
 of it! It's bein' done every day! You could go see a few 
 classy films if you wasn't so high-brow !" 
 
 "That's plenty, Milly. You love Plumb enough to follow 
 him into disgrace. Is that it?" 
 
 "With my kind of love there ain't no disgrace. In 'Sex 
 and the High Heart' it showed where " 
 
 "And you love Milly enough to make her your legal 
 wife?" Nathan interrupted in hard voice to the steam-fitter. 
 
 "You betcha life I do ! I'd " 
 
 "Then take her !" snapped Nathan contemptuously. With 
 lips closed tightly, he turned. The episode was at an end. 
 
 "Huh ! You want to get rid o' me, don't you ? Same's 
 your father got rid o' your mother! I might o' known!" 
 
 "Shut up, Mil! Don't be a fool!" ordered Plumb. He 
 had a man's brain and masculine grasp of proportion, slug 
 gish, but equipped nevertheless with a certain amount of 
 common sense. "You mean this, Nat?" 
 
 "Do I look as if I were jesting? Two wrongs never yet 
 made a right. I wronged Milly when I took her from you. 
 Every day since, I've wronged myself. I see now as I 
 should have seen from the case of my father and mother 
 that all the legal and religious promises in the world can't 
 affect raw nature. People mated will love, honor and 
 cherish one another. People not mated may live in the 
 same house, eat at the same table, sleep in the same bed 
 for a thousand years. Every moment of those thousand
 
 THE LAST STRAW 361 
 
 years they'll be prostitutes. I see it now. And any one 
 who teaches or preaches differently is an ass. Get out!" 
 
 Plumb heard and agreed inwardly that Nat was a high 
 brow. "Must o' swallowed a dictionary!" he explained 
 afterward. But from the dangerous predicament he needed 
 no second invitation to exit. 
 
 "But I gotta get my clothes!" cried Milly, "and all my 
 things !" 
 
 "All your 'things' will be sent to your mother's house in 
 the morning. Get out!" 
 
 "Then you mean for me to get a divorce?" 
 
 "I'll get the divorce, thank you! I've taken this sort of 
 thing lying down long enough. I said get out !" 
 
 "Come on, Mil," ordered Silas. "I know a place we can 
 go for to-night. How long'll it take you to get that divorce, 
 Nat?" 
 
 in 
 
 Ted Thorne, in the library of his home at ten-thirty 
 that night, beheld the face of his young salesman with 
 anxiety. 
 
 "For heaven's sake, Nat, what's the matter? Sick?" 
 
 "No, just a bit upset, that's all, Ted. You wired me to 
 come home in a hurry and I forgot to telegraph my wife. 
 I reached the house to find " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "That she loved that Plumb fellow the steam-fitter that 
 works for Holcomb." 
 
 "You caught them?" 
 
 "Yes. I caught them!" 
 
 Nathan stretched his legs and drew a long sigh. His lips 
 were very firm. His self-control was admirable. 
 
 "And what's the answer?" demanded Thorne. 
 
 "She's gone with Plumb. I told her to go." 
 
 "You told her to go ! My God ! I'd have got a gun and 
 plugged that steam-fitter so full of holes " 
 
 "The man who'll so lower himself as to run amuck and 
 shoot anybody up for the sake of a woman who doesn't 
 love him enough to be true to him deserves exactly what 
 the jury hands him in case they fail to disagree !" 
 
 "But there's such a thing as the Unwritten Law and "
 
 362 THE FOG 
 
 ^Unwritten fiddlesticks! Let's get down to business. 
 What's this important mission you want to send me on?" 
 
 "Suppose we smoke," suggested Ted weakly. He was 
 too upset at the moment to discuss business. When the 
 cigars had been lighted he sat with his chin deep in his 
 chest for a time and then said frankly, "You've had a sort 
 of a rotten experience with women, haven't you, Nat? Oh, 
 I know all about it ! Most of the town does. Your mother 
 that Gardner girl now your wife say, Nat, the mar 
 vel to me is, that regardless of it all, there doesn't seem to be 
 the least shred of cynicism in your whole make-up. I've 
 got to hand it to you, Nat. I don't understand it." 
 
 "It's nothing but common sense, Ted. What's the use 
 of showing yourself a mean, small-bored, surly little runt, 
 rooting about the earth or frothing cheap spleen, just be 
 cause you haven't had the chance to know the right people? 
 It's this way, Ted : When I was a kid, and even later in 
 my 'teens, I felt that I'd been handed a raw deal. I got 
 an awful dose of it, or thought I did such a dose of it that, 
 frankly, I began to get curious about it. I couldn't place 
 any other construction on it finally, Ted, but that some 
 where, somehow, there was a purpose behind it. Uncon 
 sciously these last few years, I've been searching to de 
 termine just what that purpose could be. I've searched 
 the Bible. I've read a lot of what all the big thinkers in 
 other ages have left behind. I've watched people other 
 folks in trouble. Why should some fellows be born with 
 silver spoons in their mouths and a whole regiment of 
 solicitous relatives standing around at birth and afterward, 
 to help them stir with it, and other fellows have to scratch 
 for themselves, buy their own spoon and do most of their 
 own stirring? Ted, there must be a reason behind all this 
 hodgepodge of life. Ever stop to think about it? Human 
 vicissitudes, Ted, seem to be the only things in the universe 
 that aren't subject to pretty well-defined laws for pretty 
 sharply defined purposes. The seasons come and go seed 
 time and growing time and harvest for a purpose. 
 Showers follow muggy weather to water the thirsty earth. 
 Even the very nitrogen from our lungs in devitalized ex 
 halation becomes food for the fairest flowers. It's a pretty 
 intricate universe, Ted, with precious little happening by 
 chance. All but the ups and downs of human life. Do you
 
 THE LAST STRAW 363 
 
 mean to tell me that human life, the highest organism in all 
 nature, runs hit or miss? I can't believe it, Ted. The 
 very fact that there's no apparent reason for all our ups 
 and downs convinces me there is a reason. And it's simple 
 as dirt. There's some of us deficient in some attribute or 
 other that only raw dealing and struggle make strong. 
 Others have follies and weaknesses. Sorrow and hard luck 
 burn the dross away or show the whole stuffing of us is 
 dross and not worth the Almighty monkeying with at all. 
 The whole trouble happens to be that we poor mortals 
 don't know what the assay of ourselves was before we 
 came into the darned world and started living in it in the 
 first place. So we can't know what we need and what 
 we don't need. And we kick and we caterwaul and we 
 revile and we squirm. Or we show we're only cheap stuff 
 and 'turn cynical' as you call it. But I'm beginning to 
 believe, Ted, that people who let themselves sink into self- 
 pity and get cynical and rail against the ups and downs of 
 life are only cheating themselves. They're probably de 
 liberately knuckling under on precisely the load of trial and 
 tribulation they need to make them strong in this world- 
 or for some other race on some distant planet further 
 on! Got it? Them's my sentiments' on the woman mess. 
 The class is dismissed. Now let's get down to business !" 
 
 "You're a philosopher !" gasped Ted Thome weakly. 
 
 "Until a man becomes a philosopher in some form or 
 other, he's going to have a mighty hard scratch in this 
 world, Ted, to dig up reasons for all that happens to 
 him." 
 
 Ted Thorne looked at his salesman in frank admiration. 
 He saw a prematurely old young fellow with fine flecks of 
 gray beginning to show at his temples, even at twenty- 
 seven. There were deep creases of still deeper strength 
 about his mouth. His eyes were calmer and held a 
 wounded look at times which melted into growing reassur 
 ance that life, after all, was mostly what we make it. Nose 
 was prominent. Mouth and chin were stubborn, though 
 lips came together evenly. His head was perfectly propor 
 tioned. His hands were the slender hands of the artist, the 
 builder, the creator. He had the properties of piano wire, 
 somehow wire capable of producing the finest melodies in 
 all nature when properly tightened and tuned yet strong
 
 364 THE FOG 
 
 enough to bear a weight more out of proportion to its size 
 and stress than any other substance in existence. 
 
 "Nathan," he said gravely, "we're going to have war; 
 did you know it?" 
 
 "I hope not!" 
 
 "All the same, we're going to have war. And if we have 
 war, there'll be a draft. Before that comes, I want to 
 utilize your services in doing something for the company 
 we can't spare any other man to do. I believe it'll be ex 
 tremely agreeable to yourself, too a change an educa 
 tion an opportunity to get out and see what the world is 
 like. I want to send you abroad." 
 
 "Abroad!" gasped Nathan. 
 
 "Your wife's elimination comes at an especially happy 
 time, old man. Besides, a change of scene may soften the 
 sting of the experience. How long will it take to start 
 the divorce business?" 
 
 "A week to start it, perhaps. The case can't be heard 
 until June, anyhow." 
 
 "It'll be purely mechanical, of course, seeing it probably 
 won't be contested." 
 
 Nathan nodded. 
 
 "Where do you want me to go?" he asked quietly. 
 "France?" 
 
 "Siberia!" 
 
 Thorne made the announcement as he might have named 
 Rutland, Bennington or Troy, New York. 
 
 "What !" 
 
 "Here's the story, Nat. About eight months ago we 
 manufactured a lot of shirts for the Russian government. 
 Ships were at a premium to transport goods across the 
 Atlantic. Beside, they might be subject to seizure going 
 up through the Baltic if the German fleet came out. So 
 we routed those goods across America and shipped them 
 over the Pacific. But you know what's happening up in 
 Russia. And here we are, with about forty thousand dol 
 lars' worth of goods stuck somewhere in the Orient, and 
 what's going to become of them if we don't send a repre 
 sentative to look out for them, the Lord only knows. Nat, 
 the directors couldn't give you that New York job because 
 of the impediment your wife was I'd just as soon say sc 
 now. But we can give you this trip and a bigger job wher
 
 THE LAST STRAW 365 
 
 you get back, if the war turns out the way we hope. We 
 want you to go to Vladivostok within the next thirty days 
 and look after the placing of those goods in the hands of 
 the proper parties." 
 
 "Whew!" exclaimed Nathan. "A mere trifle! What 
 else?" 
 
 "Nat, old man, we've got confidence that you can work 
 it out, or we wouldn't send you. Well get your passports 
 and routing to sail from San Francisco on or about the 
 first of April. And you can have until that time to wind 
 up your affairs. You may be gone a devil of a time and 
 circle the world before you get back. But it'll be a college 
 education and I don't want you to refuse." 
 
 "Ill go of course," assented the lad. But for a time 
 his gaze was blank. 
 
 He was thinking of his father, last heard from in Japan 
 directly in his route. 
 
 IV 
 
 A dour time followed when Mrs. Anna Forge heftrd 
 that Nathan had been slated for a trip to the Far East. 
 
 She acclaimed in the highways and byways that the 
 Thornes were sending her boy to his death, to be gnawed 
 by wolves and lashed with knouts. She visited old Jim 
 Thorne in his offices and told him what she thought of 
 him. Nathan had to be called to take her away. The week 
 before Nat left town she clawed his face when he tried to 
 get her out of my house, whither she had come to invoke 
 my intercession in stopping the mad enterprise. 
 
 "After all I've done for him, he goes off to the other 
 side the world and leaves me! Casts me aside like an old 
 shoe ! He shan't go ! He shan't ! He shan't !" 
 
 It developed that she was not half so much concerned 
 for Nathan's welfare, or what might possibly happen to 
 him in the Orient, as she was for herself and how she was 
 going to live in the meantime. 
 
 With Nathan's wife eliminated at last, of course God had 
 shown plainly enough that He wished the son to devote the 
 rest of his days and dollars to his darling mother. 
 
 She went and saw a lawyer about it and when the lawyer 
 was cool, she visited the editor of the local paper and
 
 366 THE FOG 
 
 wanted a "piece" inserted therein, flaying the lawyer alive 
 and exposing him as a double-dealer, a horse thief, a wife 
 beater and a villain of the deepest dye. 
 
 Nathan gave her a hundred dollars and a five-pound 
 box of chocolate caramels the kind with nuts in them 
 whereupon Mrs. Forge conceded that Siberia might have 
 its good points and would he write to her every week and 
 be sure to wear his heavy underwear in those awful Siberian 
 winters ? 
 
 Nathan promised and Mrs. Forge departed through the 
 town to spend seventy-two of the hundred dollars before 
 five o'clock on clothes for Edith's youngsters. Not be 
 cause Edith's youngsters especially needed the clothes, but 
 because Mrs. Forge had the hundred dollars.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FIRST LIGHT 
 
 The afternoon and evening before Nathan's departure 
 he spent with me. An arrangement was finally effected 
 whereby Mrs. Forge received the money accruing from the 
 sale of Nathan's household goods, and with an additional 
 sum deposited with me to keep her during his absence, she 
 went down to start living with Edith. Her own mother 
 had died at the time Nathan worked in the tannery and she 
 "was on the outs" with her three brothers and their wives. 
 So bag and baggage upon Edith she descended and mother 
 and daughter "had words" before she'd been in Edith's home 
 six hours. That, however, was no concern of Nathan's 
 prior to his departure. He was very patient and tender 
 with her when he saw her off on her train. But he 
 turned to me with a philosophical smile afterward and re 
 marked, "Of all troubles, Bill, there are no troubles 
 quite like family troubles, are there?" Father Adam in 
 the Garden probably originated the remark after the well- 
 known dispossess notice. Anyhow, the afternoon and 
 evening before Nat's departure he spent with me. 
 
 It was a sunny day in late March and it cleared off into 
 a beautiful starlit evening. We roamed about town and 
 talked of many things before dinner, for deep down within 
 both of us was the vague dread that perhaps it was our 
 last walk and talk, that we might never see each other again. 
 Then in the evening we sat in my living room and smoked 
 our pipes, and the past was brought back vividly again. 
 
 I have already referred to the group of small boys we 
 encountered interning mimic Huns for sedition and the 
 reminiscence it called up of the afternoon back in Spanish 
 War time when we played "Hang the Spy" and "Slaves in 
 the Dismal Swamp." These were only two of many anec-
 
 368 THE FOG 
 
 dotes over which we had much laughter to hide the ache 
 in our hearts. 
 
 We talked of the day we had first met in the school yard 
 in East Foxboro; those walks homeward in the late after 
 noons; the day that Bernie Gridley had driven old Caleb's 
 mare home in terror because Nat wished to present her 
 with a deceased rodent as a gift with which she could 
 "trim up a room." We lived again our early days in Paris, 
 Bernie's birthday party when Nathan presented the little 
 girl with a bust of Caesar, the "happiest day" off in the 
 woods at the Sunday-school picnic. 
 
 "By the way," said I suddenly, "what's become of Bernie, 
 anyhow? I don't think she's been back here to Paris since 
 her mother died." 
 
 "Old Caleb told me one evening, Bill, and I've always 
 considered it confidential; but I guess there's no harm in 
 telling you now. Most every one in Paris thinks she 
 went abroad after school, with some friends from Spring 
 field." 
 
 "And didn't she?" 
 
 "No, she didn't. Bernie got into trouble with a man. 
 The trip abroad was only camouflage to cover up the 
 scandal. She never went abroad. Her baby didn't live 
 and I guess it hardened Bernie the whole experience. 
 And if the truth were known, I think that's what killed 
 her mother. It was a body blow to the Duchess 'after the 
 nice way in which Bernice-Theresa had always been brought 
 <p.' You remember how she suddenly withdrew from her 
 grand direction of village and church affairs under the 
 excuse she had heart trouble. It wasn't heart trouble. The 
 woman's bump of ego got the coup de grace, Bill. It fin 
 ished her!" 
 
 "Old Caleb knew?" 
 
 "In time he found out. But poor old Caleb ! Do you 
 know what he remarked to me one night, Bill?" 
 
 "I can't imagine." 
 
 "It was the Sunday night that I'd first quarreled with 
 Mildred because her father brought gin into our house 
 and got drunk at Sunday dinner. I went up to spend the 
 evening with Caleb and get cheered. I had to tell him 
 something of what I was going through with Milly. That 
 recalled my experience with Carol and even something of
 
 FIRST LIGHT 369 
 
 my earlier calf-love for his daughter. He was silent for 
 a long time and then he sighed. 'Bub,' said he, 'don't think 
 you're the only man on earth, young or old, that ain't been 
 able to get along with women nor understand 'em.' You 
 can imagine how he said it. 'You'll find there's lots of 
 fellows can pal with men and make friendships the grave 
 can't bury. But when it comes to the weaker sex, life's 
 just one dam' thing after another. And most of 'em 
 wears petticoats and gets their way with tears/ said he. 
 Poor old Gridley! I guess he's had his family troubles, 
 too." 
 
 "But what became of Bernie?" 
 
 "Old Caleb saw that Bernie had been through some ter 
 rific experience and wasn't long worming it out. He didn't 
 have much to say. All the same, he wanted her to come 
 back to Paris and keep house for him. They quarreled 
 before Bernie returned to Springfield with the mother 
 not two days buried. And I guess Bernie said some snippy 
 things that cut the old man pretty deep. It seems old Caleb 
 had a love affair when a young man, but the girl broke it 
 off because she didn't think herself competent to be his 
 wife. He stood in just that awe of the sex that he didn't 
 try to persist and overcome that foolish little objection. 
 And the disappointment gashed deep. He married the 
 Duchess much as I married Mildred. The wound healed 
 but the scars never left his heart. And Bernie learned 
 of it and twitted him about it. Her principal indictment 
 of old Caleb was that he had been content to remain a 
 small-town man and bring her up as a small-town girl so 
 that when she got out in the world 'among real people', 
 as she called it, she was always at a disadvantage." 
 
 "There was a rumor about the place a few years ago 
 that she married a Chicago millionaire." 
 
 "She did. But whether she found happiness with him 
 seems to be unknown, at least back here at home. I don't 
 believe her dad has heard a word from her since she left 
 in high dudgeon after her mother's funeral." Nathan 
 paced along by my side for a quarter-mile in silence. Then 
 he laughed sadly and said, "Bill, did you ever know about 
 me asking Bernie to marry me, the week before she went 
 away to school?" 
 
 "Marry you ! Why, Bernie was only about fifteen "
 
 370 THE FOG 
 
 "I know it! That's why it's so amusing about as 
 funny as the 'Death of Little Nell.' It was down along 
 the pathway through the Haskell meadow the 'short cut' 
 from Matthews Court to Windsor Street all built up now 
 with bungalows. I met her and proposed to her desperately 
 poor short-trousered little ass that I was. But she was 
 mad at me; she said I hadn't the backbone of a fish. If 
 I was half a man I'd get a gun and shoot dad for whaling 
 me that picnic day in front of everybody. She ended by 
 calling me a freckled- faced little frump and declared when 
 she married any one, it was going to be a millionaire. Well, 
 she made good there, all right. But the way she scorched 
 me at the time surely blistered for many a month afterward. 
 I remember I returned home, took all her letters and tied 
 them up with a ribbon my first rosary. I hid them away 
 out in the ell attic of the Spring Street house. By gosh, 
 they must be there yet! I haven't thought of them from 
 that day to this!" 
 
 So that last walk of Nathan's and mine ended by making 
 a trip to the Spring Street house; my friend had a little 
 hunch that he would like to see if those letters were still 
 hidden there and read them over again, because of what 
 they had once stood for in his precocious young life. A 
 family by the name of Bailey had bought the Spring Street 
 place and grudgingly gave consent for us to search the 
 garret. Nathan found the packet, laid there on the mellow, 
 brown rafters in the dark through sixteen years and smelling 
 acridly of dried plaster, dank soot and moist creosote from 
 the near-by kitchen chimney. 
 
 After dinner that night, as we smoked our pipes, Nathan 
 opened them, a packet of boy-and-girl love notes faded 
 with the flight of time and bringing back the joys of Long 
 Ago. Scrawled sheets where "he was mad" and "she was 
 mad" and he had spoken to some other little girl yesterday, 
 and she had permitted Sammy Sargent to walk home from 
 school with her and carry her books. There were dozens of 
 them. And though Nathan smiled at the "till-death-do-us- 
 part" endings, I knew they were vibrating raw heart chords. 
 Excoriations of Nathan's dad, intrigues for him to "skin 
 out" and go with her to parties, little petulant fault findings, 
 all were very sweet now, misty, as those years had become 
 with the nebulous glow of Boyhood Romance.
 
 FIRST LIGHT 371 
 
 "Bill," said my friend finally, "I've got a hunch I'll call 
 off in Chicago and look Bernie up. I might return these 
 letters to her as an excuse for seeing her, if nothing else. 
 I'd like to talk over old times with Bernie, even if I was 
 a mushy young calf. Yes, I'll stop off in Chicago and 
 look Bernie up. After all, a man rarely forgets his first 
 love, never mind how many follow." 
 
 We mentioned Milly only once in our talk that last night. 
 She had disappeared from town immediately and so had 
 Plumb. 
 
 "It was all my mistake marrying her in the first place, 
 Bill," he said. "I had brains enough to know better but 
 not the common sense to exercise them. And I was lonely 
 God, how lonely ! Poor Milly ! After all, she was more 
 sinned against than sinning." 
 
 He went away on the same train next forenoon on which 
 Carol Gardner had left our homely little railroad station, 
 nine years before. 
 
 Only it wasn't raining the morning Nathan left. The sun 
 was shining shining gloriously bright and warm. I was 
 too deeply concerned with bidding my friend good-by, how 
 ever, to attach much significance to the sunshine. 
 
 So we parted for War ! 
 
 Old Caleb Gridley's train reached Paris at twelve o'clock. 
 He missed bidding Nat farewell by an hour. 
 
 II 
 
 Queer things happen in life. Just beyond Buffalo that 
 night, the train newsboy came through, crying the evening 
 dailies. The papers were black with headlines. The big 
 munitions plant at Russellville, New Jersey, engaged in 
 making shells for the British government, had blown up 
 that afternoon, killing hundreds, destroying the town. The 
 conflagration was still burning, with shells exploding in 
 the vitals of the flames like a small battle transferred to 
 this side the Atlantic. 
 
 Nathan read the account of the disaster like a hundred 
 million others that evening, thinking "Such is war!" 
 
 He found my wire when he reached The Morrison in 
 Chicago. I thought he should know ; the gypsy trail of the
 
 372 THE FOG 
 
 world spread before him now with many mystic and perhaps 
 romantic twists and turns yet to be negotiated.- I worded 
 my telegram thus: 
 
 MILDRED RICHARDS IN LIST RUSSELLVILLE DEAD 
 IS MILLY FOLKS JUST RECEIVED WORD PLUMB HAD 
 TAKEN JOB SHIPYARDS NEARBY IS UNHURT NO 
 TRACE MILLY FOUND BEST WISHES PLEASANT TRIP 
 MOTHER WIFE AND SELF 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was a week before Nathan located Bernice. Not be 
 cause he did not know her address ; he had procured it 
 from Elinore Carver who had married a local furniture 
 man and with whom Bernie had kept up an intermittent 
 correspondence since leaving Paris. It was because Milly's 
 passing affected him grievously. Somehow it was difficult 
 to shake off the presentiment that in ordering her from the 
 house that Sunday night, he had unwittingly sent her to 
 her death. Certainly she would not have left with Plumb 
 so soon and gone to work in the munitions plant. I think 
 he went to Bernie's apartment on the North Shore, seeking 
 some poor solace in a woman's company. Anyhow, think 
 ing to surprise her and never dreaming she would not be 
 glad to see him, he dressed in dinner clothes one Wednesday 
 evening and set out for the address Elinore had supplied. 
 
 The place where Bernice now resided was an exclusive 
 apartment, with an onyx marble entrance and a negro 'phone 
 attendant to announce callers to rooms above. 
 
 "Yo' is one of de guests, ah s'pose," commented the 
 African, and then, before the puzzled Vermonter could 
 respond, "De guests is to go up wifout bein' announced. 
 Flo' Three, 'partment Three-Fifty-Fo'." 
 
 Nathan went up in the automatic lift. 
 
 A Japanese boy answered his ring and immediately the 
 door was opened, from regions behind came jazzy music. 
 
 "May I see Mrs. DuMont?" asked my friend. 
 
 The Oriental grinned and held wide the door. 
 
 "You please to give me your name," suggested the Jap. 
 "I tell her to come out to see you."
 
 FIRST LIGHT 373 
 
 "What's going on a party ?" 
 
 But the Oriental only grinned the more and shrugged his 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Well, tell her a man from her old home town is here 
 and would like a few moments with her. Forge! Nathan 
 Forge!" 
 
 And in a few moments Bernie came. 
 
 Nathan was shocked, badly shocked. He had seen 
 Bernice on the streets of Paris once, at the time of her 
 mother's funeral. But he had not beheld her in a "close 
 up" or spoken with her since the day in Haskell's pasture. 
 He looked at the woman approaching him now and and 
 she was Bernice Gridley but oh, how changed ! 
 
 Nathan knew she was of an age with himself, just 
 turning twenty-seven. She looked forty and not very suc 
 cessful in looking it, either. She was half a head shorter 
 than Nathan and had to look slightly upward into his eyes. 
 Yet she was big-boned and coarsened, and the daring gown 
 she wore did nothing to soften the outlines of coarseness 
 in her figure. The gown was plainly expensive, yet on 
 Bernie it was hideous. It was dull green, to contrast with 
 her once-gold hair. But it was cut from the bust down 
 almost to her waist in the back and the display of nudity 
 was disgusting and repellant, particularly so because Bernie 
 had lost her girlhood plumpness. Her bones poked through 
 her skin and her sawtooth spine reminded Nathan of some 
 pictures he had once seen of starving Cubans, taken 
 nude to show their pathetic emaciation. The woman car 
 ried a large green fan which she now held against her 
 flat breasts in a manner that only called attention to her 
 bizarre costume and admitted that subconsciously it shamed 
 her. 
 
 Nathan was so stunned by the change that for a few 
 seconds he could only stare, his tongue glued to the roof of 
 his mouth. Bernice took it for self -consciousness and pro 
 vincial awkwardness, traits she detested. They reminded 
 her too vividly of her humble origin and "what she had 
 risen from." 
 
 "Well, Nathan ?" she demanded sharply. "Where did you 
 come from?" 
 
 Nathan fought for his wits. 
 
 "I'm on my way to the Orient," he stammered. "It's
 
 374 THE FOG 
 
 the first time I was ever in Chicago and I thought I'd 
 stop off and look you up !" 
 
 "The Orient! What in the world are you going to the 
 Orient for ? Aren't you afraid you'll get lost out there 
 such a long way from Vermont?" 
 
 "Of course, if you don't care about seeing me, Bernie, 
 I won't impose on you," returned Nathan stiffly. 
 
 Bernice covered her annoyance with a forced smile. 
 
 "What did you want to see me about?" she demanded. 
 
 Well, what did he want to see her about ? It would be a 
 foolish reason the true one to explain. 
 
 "I I haven't seen you for going on sixteen years, 
 Bernie. And I thought I thought well, I saw your 
 father about a month ago." 
 
 "Yes? How is he?" Bernice asked it perfunctorily, as 
 she might have asked after sundry unfortunates in dev 
 astated Belgium. 
 
 "He's well," gulped Nathan. He looked dov/n at his 
 hands, raised his eyes to Bernie's, smiled foolishly, dropped 
 them again in embarrassment. 
 
 Bernice made no comment on her father being well. And 
 Nathan saw how life had hardened her. The woman was 
 adamant. Her eyes, as she watched the man's embarrass 
 ment, seemed to declare, "Oh, what a hick you are! Oh, 
 what a hick!" 
 
 "Well?" she suggested irritably. 
 
 "I won't take any of your time to-night, Bernie. But I 
 would like to talk over old times with you before I go 
 on!" 
 
 "I'm having a few friends in to-night, so I can't see you. 
 But if you'll come to-morrow night, I'll try and give you a 
 few minutes. How's your wife? Is she with you?" 
 
 "I have no wife. She died." 
 
 "What business are you in now?" 
 
 "Until lately I've been on the road for the Thornes. They 
 took me off and are sending me to Vladivostok on special 
 business." 
 
 "How's your father and mother ?" 
 
 Nathan looked up in surprise. 
 
 "Didn't you hear? About father's going away and all?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. Seems to me I did. He stole a lot of money 
 and left for parts unknown, didn't he?"
 
 FIRST LIGHT 375 
 
 "Yes," said Nat in a whisper. His thoughts turned to 
 a little packet of love notes in his pocket. Could it be 
 possible this hardened woman and himself had ever loved ? 
 That she was the little girl by the side of the stream that 
 picnic day that together they had crouched beneath his 
 coat from a shower and she had kissed him. 
 
 "Well, come back to-morrow night," ordered Bernice. 
 "I've got to get back to my guests." 
 
 "Your husband " began Nathan. 
 
 Bernie started. 
 
 "I have no husband," she snapped angrily. "I divorced 
 him three years ago." 
 
 "Oh!" said Nathan quickly. 
 
 IV 
 
 He went back the next night. 
 
 Bernice received him in a pale-blue smock, her hair 
 twisted up in slovenly fashion at the back of her neck, a 
 black band about her head. The smock looked greasy. 
 Bernie was smoking a cigarette as she admitted him herself. 
 
 "It's Hashi's night out," she explained. "We'll be alone 
 and can talk. Come in !" And she led him into a spacious 
 studio room behind, where the evening before the music had 
 been playing. Nathan was clothed again in his Tuxedo. 
 Bernie surveyed him and smiled quietly, aggravatingly. 
 
 She shoved a chair across for him and reclined on a chaise- 
 longue. She did not offer to apologize for not including 
 him among her guests of the prior night, although Nathan 
 soon learned why she had not done so, and not because the 
 woman was ashamed of her guests, either. 
 
 "Now," declared Bernie, "tell me all about that damned 
 hick town of Paris!" 
 
 Nathan honestly tried to do so. It was sketchy. 
 
 "But when did your wife die?" the woman demanded. 
 
 "May I smoke?" the man asked. 
 
 "Smoke? Of course you can smoke! Don't be such a 
 disgusting rube. I'm smoking, am I not ?" 
 
 He lit a cigar. 
 
 "I had some trouble with my wife, Bernie. She was 
 untrue to me while I was away on the road. I came back
 
 376 THE FOG 
 
 one night and caught her in another man's arms. She left 
 Paris next day. You read about the Russellville explosion 
 last week? She was either blown to atoms or burned to 
 death in it!" 
 
 For a moment Bernie forgot her pose and looked frankly 
 incredulous. Then she tapped her cigarette and sniffed. 
 
 "I don't know that I blame her, Nat. You always were 
 rather impossible from a woman's standpoint, you know." 
 
 Nathan let it pass. 
 
 "I've brought you something, Bernie, that you might 
 like to keep," he said. And upon the table at her elbow 
 he laid the little packet of childhood love letters. 
 
 "For God's sake, what're those?" 
 
 "The letters we wrote, Bernie, wnile we were boy-and- 
 girl sweethearts in the graded school together." 
 
 Bernie dropped her cigarette. She had a bad time re 
 covering it and the fire burned a small hole in the smock 
 before she had done so. She swore. 
 
 "But what the devil do you suppose I want of them 
 now ?" 
 
 "I don't know, Bernie. I thought perhaps they might 
 mean something to you little relics from the past, as I've 
 always regarded them." 
 
 "You always were a sickly, sentimental fool, Nat. As 
 for the past, the less we discuss it or think about it, the 
 better I'll be pleased. I've had trouble enough weaning 
 myself 'from the past.' The present a.id future gives me 
 bother enough, God knows. As for Paris, I hate it as I 
 hate copperheads in a mangrove swamp. I'm done with it 
 forever and never want to be dragged back into it again 
 not even to be buried." 
 
 "It's your old home town, Bernie. You can't get back 
 of that." 
 
 "I don't want any 'old home town.' I've risen above it. 
 I was simply unlucky enough to be born in the little tank- 
 burg, and that's plenty. And as soon as possible I shook 
 clear from it and all it stood for! I got over being a hick 
 quite a while ago, Nathan. And I hate everything that 
 reminds me of it as the devil hates holy water. I don't 
 want to have to think of the disgusting depths I've come 
 up from." 
 
 "I'm sorry, Bernie."
 
 FIRST LIGHT 377 
 
 "You're not half so sorry as I am! Paris nearly did for 
 me. Father and mother especially mother ! ugh !" 
 
 "What about your mother? You thought she was pretty 
 classy once " 
 
 "Nathan Forge ! Don't say 'classy' or I'll scream. More 
 provincialism! 'Classy' was one of mother's favorite 
 words. The other was 'blood.' Blood! And for all her 
 grand airs, she was cheap as dirt! But how could I know 
 it until I got out in the world and had to suffer for it? 
 And God, what a Golgotha it's been ! When I first married 
 Wallace and was taken into his family, life was one long 
 nightmare of 'break' after 'break' before his people. They 
 were Real Blood. And they looked down on me right 
 eously from the day he brought me home until the day I 
 divorced him. I've had enough of vulgarians and low 
 brows. I'll have you know I'm a lady!" And in proof that 
 she was a lady, Bernice lit another cigarette and inhaled 
 the smoke. 
 
 "I apologize, Bernice," the man offered. 
 
 "Oh, you needn't apologize. Don't depreciate yourself. 
 That's 'hick' too! And don't sit sprawled out so, as though 
 you didn't know what to do with your hands and your feet. 
 Paris is stamped all over you, from the cravat in your 
 collar to the cut of your shoes. And yet Ted Thorne is send 
 ing you to the Orient to represent him! Oh, well, after 
 all, he's 'hick' too. Probably doesn't know any better. It's 
 none of my business!" 
 
 Nathan's face burned. She was the same old Bernie. 
 He might have known. He tried to appear at ease al 
 though nothing the woman could have done would have made 
 him more self-conscious and he smoked for a moment in 
 perturbed silence. She broke that silence by exclaiming 
 angrily : 
 
 "And I wish, as a favor to me, that you'd stop eating 
 that cigar! And I'll bet it cost five cents and came from 
 Tom Edwards' cigar store next to the newspaper office " 
 
 "It cost twenty cents," defended Nat, with foolish ire. 
 
 "I'm not going by the cost. I'm going by the smell! 
 Just goes to show how much bringing up you've had. If 
 you didn't come from a small town, you'd know more than 
 to drag out a heavy, offensive cigar in front of a lady ; you'd 
 smoke a delicate, gentlemanly cigarette."
 
 378 THE FOG 
 
 "I don't smoke cigarettes," the other replied dully. 
 
 "Well, you would if you weren't a rube. Thank God 
 I didn't introduce you to those people I had in here last 
 evening! I suppose you'd have pulled out one of those 
 sickening cabbages and lighted up right in my drawing- 
 room." 
 
 Unconsciously Nat's eyes swept the apartment. It didn't 
 look like a drawing-room. 
 
 Bernie's tone suddenly softened. Perhaps it was the 
 sudden misery and pain of self-consciousness in the man's 
 eyes. She leaned over with her elbows on her knees and 
 the cigarette fumes bathing her colorless face. 
 
 "Natie, tell me something. Hasn't anybody ever broken 
 the news to you what an awful hick you are and have 
 always been?" 
 
 "N-N-No !" choked the young man. 
 
 The woman regarded him gravely for a quarter-moment. 
 Then as though to herself she remarked: 
 
 "Honestly, I almost think it's my Christian duty, as a 
 woman and a one-time friend of yours, to hold up a mirror 
 in front of you and let you look at yourself properly." 
 
 Nathan arose, walked to the window and threw out the 
 offensive cigar. 
 
 "What did you do then?" cried Bernie hysterically. 
 
 "Threw out my cigar, of course. You said you didn't 
 like it." 
 
 "Yes. But where did you throw it? Out of one of 
 my windows like a Polack at a drink-fest down by the 
 railroad yards on a Sunday afternoon. Suppose there's 
 somebody down in the court that happens to know my 
 window ! What will they think of me, when my window 
 opens and rains down nasty cigar butts? Oh, Nathan, in 
 God's name, where is your bringing up ?" 
 
 "I guess I haven't had very much," the poor man 
 choked. 
 
 "You never said a truer thing in your life! And stop 
 walking the floor ! As though we were married and having 
 a quarrel! Come and sit down quietly and poised as a 
 gentleman should and let me show you how very im 
 possible you are to a well-bred lady !" 
 
 Nathan obediently returned to his chair. 
 
 "In the first place, why did you come up here to-night
 
 FIRST LIGHT 379 
 
 in dinner clothes ! just for a social call when you knew 
 I'd be in careless negligee myself?" 
 
 "I didn't know it. Anyhow, to wear a business suit " 
 
 "I shouldn't have minded you in a business suit! Just 
 goes to show how little you Forges understand women ! 
 But we'll let the dinner clothes pass. Oh, Nathan ! Nathan ! 
 Nathan!" The last word was almost a hysterical shriek. 
 
 "Now what am I doing?" cried the thoroughly unnerved 
 fellow. 
 
 "Picking at your thumb nail!" cried Bernie. From the 
 cold horror in her voice one might imagine Nathan had 
 drawn the decapitated head of a child from his clothes and 
 juggled it to amuse himself while she talked. 
 
 "Excuse me," he muttered. And he dropped his hands 
 in his lap and looked the picture of misery. What could 
 he do but sit quietly like a tailor's dummy and take the 
 hot-shot she poured into him, broadside? And she poured 
 it. There was no doubt about it. She poured it. 
 
 "Look at you!" she cried witheringly, her neurasthenia 
 getting the upper hand. "Feet clad in rakish patent leather 
 shoes! Dinner clothes, when you know you're from a 
 little tank-town anyhow and never wore dinner clothes there 
 in your life! Necktie drawn too tight! Shirt bosom hard 
 and smooth instead of soft and pleated ! Collar two seasons 
 out of style! Hair parted on one side instead of deftly 
 and sophisticatedly in the middle ! Ears look at your ears ! 
 especially your left one! Ugh! It gives me the creeps 
 to look at it " 
 
 "It's an injury, Bernie. I can't help that, can I?" 
 
 "Certainly you can help it! You got into the fight that 
 made it that way, didn't you? And if I remember aright, 
 it was over some of your asinine poetry! But aside from 
 getting into the fight in the first place, surely you could 
 have submitted to a surgical operation and had it removed 
 and put on right ! And your hands ! Look at your hands ! 
 Knotted and gnarled in the knuckles " 
 
 "If you'd had to do as much manual labor with your 
 hands as I've had to do with mine, your hands would be 
 knotted and gnarled in the knuckles!" 
 
 "There you go! Hick again! Trying to defend your 
 self ! Insulting a lady !" 
 
 "But aren't you insulting me a trifle, Bernie, by calling
 
 380 THE FOG 
 
 attention to the condition of my hands, which I can't help ?" 
 
 "No!" Bernie's hysteria was growing a trifle wilder. 
 "If a man is a perfect gentleman and perfectly bred 
 never mind what a lady says to him, he concedes her the 
 privilege of insulting him as her right because she is a 
 lady! But what can you know about that, of course 
 coming from Paris!" 
 
 "I don't think a perfect lady would be cruel enough to 
 remind a fellow of things about his appearance he can't 
 help." 
 
 "What do you know about perfect ladies? Where have 
 you met any perfect ladies? Who are you, that you pre 
 sume to sit there and question my knowledge of etiquette 
 and what's right and polite?" 
 
 Nathan gave a tired laugh. He drew a long breath, 
 that sigh of infinite patience when called upon to hold his 
 temper and indulge irascible, inconsistent, spoiled woman 
 hood. 
 
 "It's true I haven't had many social advantages, Bernie," 
 he conceded. "But that's never been because I didn't hanker 
 for them " 
 
 "There you go! Hanker! That's a nice word to use 
 before a lady. Hanker ! I can see old man Fodder using 
 it, while he spits foully on the floor and wipes his dirty 
 whiskers with the back of his hand. Hanker! Nathan, 
 you'll leave me a nervous wreck!" 
 
 "What should I say?" 
 
 "Hunger is bad enough. Because you 'never desired 
 them' would be better and more refined." 
 
 "Well, then, it's never been because I've never desired 
 them. But what can a fellow do when his father " 
 
 "That's right ! Blame your father ! Blame your mother, 
 blame your sister, blame your town, blame every one and 
 everything but yourself ! In a moment you'll be blaming 
 me! Do you remember the day after the Sunday-school 
 picnic when your father flogged you for going off alone 
 with me in the woods? Do you remember what I told you 
 to do?" 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Get a gun and shoot him !" 
 
 "Precisely! Why didn't you? Don't you suppose that
 
 FIRST LIGHT 381 
 
 if you'd found a shotgun and peppered his hide with holes, 
 the big, hypocritical, child-mauling bully wouldn't have had 
 a new respect for you and left you alone?" 
 
 "But suppose I'd killed him?" 
 
 "Well, suppose you had? Wouldn't it have been what 
 he deserved?" 
 
 "But, Bernie! Be reasonable! You're not advising a 
 boy to get a gun and commit murder? Where would I 
 have ended ? In the electric chair or on the gallows." 
 
 "They don't hang children!" 
 
 "But do you think it would be pleasant to go through 
 the rest of life with the realization that I'd shot my own 
 father ?" 
 
 "If you were justified as you were ! there would have 
 been no remorse. Besides, if you had been hounded by 
 remorse, it just goes to show you've got a clinging, messy, 
 sentimental mind!" 
 
 Nathan had a feeling that he was talking to some one who 
 was not quite rational. Still, he was accustomed to dealing 
 with irrational people especially, The Sex. 
 
 "I preferred not to do it," he returned dully. 
 
 "Just so ! And your father walked all over you, and took 
 your earnings, and imposed on you, and ground you down 
 so that at twenty-one you flew into the arms of that little 
 Richards slut. And now you come yowling around me for 
 sympathy " 
 
 "I haven't I'm not 'yowling around you for sym 
 pathy/ " 
 
 "You needn't think I haven't any brains! You needn't 
 add that to your boorish insults! You came here to-night, 
 with your cheap peasant wife dead and those silly love 
 notes, thinking to stir up something of our kid romance 
 ask me to marry you, perhaps. As if I would marry you 
 you! Oh, my God, what an insult! I could call the police 
 and have you ejected for it, right this minute!" 
 
 "Oh, Bernie, please be reasonable! I haven't asked you 
 to marry me ! I " 
 
 "You don't need to add falsehood to it all. If I'd marry 
 you to-morrow, you'd feel highly complimented, because 
 there's nothing in Paris to equal me. Isn't that so?" 
 
 Nathan hesitated to say "No," and felt that "Yes" was 
 falsehood.
 
 382 THE FOG 
 
 "Answer me !" 
 
 "I hardly know, Bernie. I " 
 
 But Bernie was obsessed with her own assumption. 
 
 "Well, I'll have you know I'm done with men, do you 
 understand? There's never been one yet that shot straight 
 with me! Look in my eyes, Nathan Forge! Do you see 
 that stabbed look there?" 
 
 Nathan looked in her eyes. He saw no stabbed look. 
 But he did see the wild forked light and iris dilations of 
 a rampant neurasthenic. And moreover, if no males had 
 ever shot straight with Bernie, Nathan had a quiet hunch 
 he knew the reason. But Bernie, of course, would have 
 exploded in one grand cataclysm of atomic energy if he had 
 not agreed that he did see a stabbed look in her eyes. 
 
 "Men have put that stabbed look there, Nathan Forge! 
 Your sex! Even you have had your part in doing it!" 
 
 "Me?" cried the amazed young man. 
 
 "You ! You, you, you ! That day off in the woods 
 remember it? You bet you remember it! You tempted 
 me to degrade my girlish modesty! You taught me what 
 fascination a woman's body has upon " 
 
 "Bernice! I " 
 
 "Stop! Not a word! I guess I know! I've suffered 
 enough for it! You and your sex are rotten! Rotten! 
 Rotten ! And I'm done with it ! And yet here you come, 
 sniveling around in your small-town boorishness and dinner 
 clothes, bringing me old love letters, thinking I'd marry 
 you ! And what have you done that I should marry you ? 
 What are you in the world, anyway among real men, I 
 mean ? What goals have you won ? What have you to offer 
 a woman ?" 
 
 "I hope I've got a reasonable amount of decency " 
 
 The effect on Bernice was a shriek. 
 
 "Decency! Oh, my God, what conceit! You're worse 
 than some of those Los Angeles picture actors I met last 
 summer ! 'A reasonable amount of decency !' You ! Who 
 lived for six years in foul propinquity with a woman you 
 didn't love " 
 
 "I believed that sticking by my wife when I'd given 
 her a child was the right and proper thing to do. Men 
 usually are sports that way." 
 
 "More conceit ! So you're a sport, are you along with
 
 FIRST LIGHT 383 
 
 being eligible to an especial halo for decency? As if any 
 thing could offset sleeping even for one night ! with a 
 woman who was not your ideal and your princess! It just 
 goes to show where your self-respect is! You haven't any! 
 You never had any self-respect! If you'd had any self- 
 respect you never would have permitted your father to 
 bamboozle you as he did! Oh, what a dirty little cad you 
 are! And you talk of decency!" 
 
 Nathan was beginning to lose his sense of proportion; 
 he was getting muddled trying to follow Bernie's logic. 
 
 "All I've had to go by is experience, what I've been 
 taught, what I've contacted," he blurted out. "If I did 
 wrong it was because I didn't know any better !" 
 
 "And here I am, trying to show you wherein you're 
 wrong, like a sincere friend, or a woman who loves you 
 and you sit there in all your small-town boorishness and 
 bigotry and conceit and try to defend yourself! Faugh!" 
 
 Nathan, ever supersensitive, began to wonder how far 
 Bernie was right and how far wrong. And the woman's 
 continued tirade did nothing to enlighten him: 
 
 "Hasn't it dawned on you," she cried, her voice strained 
 with hysteria, "why you've never gotten on in the world 
 why at twenty-seven you're no further along than you 
 were at seventeen ? I'll tell you ! It's because you've never 
 been able to see yourself as others see you ! You're a boob ! 
 A hick! A sentimental little small -town vulgarian. And I 
 bet at table you eat with your knife and blow your coffee 
 in a saucer! No wonder you haven't got ahead. Hasn't 
 there ever been a time when opportunity opened for you 
 and then when people you met saw you that oppor 
 tunity mysteriously closed ? Answer me ! Hasn't there ?" 
 
 At once into poor Nathan's distraught brain came the 
 experience of the New York knitting-mills management. 
 His acknowledgment showed plainly on his bewildered face. 
 
 "Ah! I thought so!" cried Bernie exultantly. "And 
 why did you lose that opportunity? Because you were a 
 hick! Because you didn't know how to act! Because you 
 probably deported yourself before fine-grained, well-bred 
 people the way you've been deporting yourself in my house 
 to-night like a savage who pads around naked before his 
 family and tears his food apart with his fingers! That's 
 why you've never gotten ahead and you never will ! You're
 
 384 THE FOG 
 
 small-town, I say! You're rube and hick! A vulgarian! 
 And a rotter beside !" 
 
 Nathan stared blankly ahead of him. Was he? He 
 almost began to think that he was. 
 
 Bernie drew a long jagged sigh for breath, stared at 
 him in self-satisfaction, then arose abruptly and crossed 
 the room to the steam radiator. Bending down, she rattled 
 the valve to turn it off. She came back. Nathan was still 
 in his daze. Hands on hips, a slurring sneer on her features, 
 Bernie paused before him contemptuously. 
 
 "Look at you!" she snapped. "Just as I say! Sit there 
 and let a woman turn off a steam radiator never make a 
 single move, or offer to do it for her!" 
 
 Again Nathan was taken aback. 
 
 "You didn't ask me," he defended thickly. 
 
 "Ask you! Ask you! And has a woman to ask a man 
 every time she wants a thing done? I can see your father 
 sticking out all over you! All her life your mother had 
 to ask him to get things done. A gentleman would anticipate 
 all a woman's little whims and desires and please her before 
 she had to ask for them ! And you ! you want to marry 
 me!" 
 
 Nathan was sick and getting sicker. More than sick, he 
 felt bruised and bleeding, somehow. Bernice had jabbed 
 the lance of her spleen into his most sensitive feelings of 
 self -consciousness and handicap. 
 
 Were all women like this, even the best of them? 
 
 Again he had the feeling of holding out his hands to 
 a woman and having them slapped. Slapped? His hands? 
 Bernie was cuffing his hands, his mouth, his ears, belabor 
 ing him with blows from which he had no defense, which 
 he could not return because she was woman, The Sex. 
 
 "I guess I better go, Bernie," he whispered huskily after 
 a time. 
 
 "That's right, you piker! Run! Just when you hear 
 the naked truth about yourself, run! It's like you! It's 
 just like every man. It's especially like a Forge, and your 
 father! I understand he didn't stop running until he got 
 out of the country with a valise of other people's money! 
 And you ask me to marry you his son !" 
 
 "Bernie, I haven't asked you to marry me! At least if 
 I did, I wasn't conscious of it!"
 
 FIRST LIGHT 385 
 
 "Then why are you here to see me?" 
 
 "To to talk over old times in Paris !" 
 
 "Fiddlesticks! Why should I want to talk over old 
 times in Paris, when I despise and detest the place and all 
 it stands for?" 
 
 "I didn't know you despised and detested the place. How 
 could I? The trouble with you seems to be, Bernie, you 
 want a man to anticipate what's in your mind, or think of 
 what you're thinking about, before you even begin to think 
 about it yourself " 
 
 "Well, a brainy man would! Not being able to do it is 
 another phase of your provincialism the deficiency and 
 mediocrity that's held you back so that right now, sitting 
 in that chair, you're not a millionaire, a great success in 
 life, a big-leaguer socially " 
 
 "I simply happened to be 'way off here, passing through 
 Chicago " 
 
 " 'Way off here ! A long, long way from home, aren't 
 you? A long, long way from Vermont and the General 
 Store and the Village School and Uncle Josh Weatherbee's 
 Farm? Faugh! Yes, I think you'd better go! And I'm 
 going to bed and call a doctor. And if I'm ill as a result 
 of this, your firm will get my doctor's bill, and don't you 
 forget it !" 
 
 Nathan walked back to The Morrison. It was still early 
 evening. The wind off the lake was delightfully welcome. 
 As he walked he carried his hat in his hand and let that 
 night wind cool his hot forehead. 
 
 He had been shocked, shocked terribly. He felt as he had 
 felt one night back over the years when he had asked his 
 mother about the origin of infants and that mother had 
 given him a terrifying delineation of the everlasting fires 
 of hell instead. The rapier point of Bernie's arraignment 
 had cut through the armor of his philosophy, through his 
 very vitals and almost punctured the sac of self-faith which 
 wrapped his pulsing young soul. 
 
 He tried to analyze Bernie. She was irrational, a 
 monomaniac, a neurotic, the full and final flower of her 
 mother's infirmities. There were ways in which Bernie was
 
 386 THE FOG 
 
 very like his own mother. Yet Bernie had never been 
 weighed down and had her individuality twisted and per 
 verted by the narrowness and mediocrity his mother had 
 encountered. Bernie had been "out in the world." She 
 had been academically educated. She had met the world's 
 diverse types and temperaments. What, then, was wrong 
 with Bernie? 
 
 Frankly, he gave it up. It was beyond him. If he could 
 have analyzed Bernie he felt he could have analyzed him 
 self. He decided that she was simply a small-town girl 
 even as he was a small-town boy, only he was trying to 
 put all his handicaps, vicissitudes and experiences to a con 
 structive purpose, so far as he had the light, and Bernie 
 was not and never had tried. There he had to let the 
 matter rest, never realizing how near the truth he had 
 stumbled. 
 
 Yet in all this hectic analysis business, in all this vicious 
 contact with parental mediocrity, in all his heart-breaking 
 experience with The Sex as he had known The Sex thus 
 far, the boy had never once grasped an explanation as simple 
 and obvious and plain as sunlight and as common as mud. 
 
 He had lived for twenty-seven years among people of 
 half -developed or deficient mentality. He had been sur 
 feited with persons "who had no brains." 
 
 Looking upon the men and women he had known, espe 
 cially the women, he had observed that they possessed 
 bodies, limbs, heads, faces. They moved about, they talked, 
 they ate, they slept. To all outward intents and purposes, 
 excepting perhaps for a certain vacancy across the eyes, 
 they were no different than the most profound philosophers 
 who had ever walked the earth. And because they possessed 
 bodies, limbs, heads, faces, because they moved about at 
 their daily activities, talked, ate, slept, he had subcon 
 sciously expected them to know all, see all, be all, and impart 
 to him a birthright heritage of mental and spiritual nutri 
 tion for which his growing soul and spirit hungered. The 
 nearest he had ever approximated this was when he said 
 of his mother, "She can't help it ; she's made that way." 
 It was not that his mother was "made that way" so much 
 as it was that she had not been made anything better or 
 finer or greater. And the same general hypothesis applied 
 pretty well to all those who had surrounded him.
 
 FIRST LIGHT 387 
 
 Mediocrity was only mental limitation. It was not default 
 of intelligence, as he had always assumed. It was boundary. 
 Beyond a certain point, God seemed to have ordained that 
 certain mortals should not pass. 
 
 Nathan had yet to learn that in the bodies of men and 
 women, individually and severally, never collectively and 
 rarely racially, and regardless of where they may discover 
 themselves at birth, exist or do not exist chromosomes 
 vital, literal cells of character, high quality, divine dis 
 satisfaction, goal -winning discontent, beauty hunger, atone 
 ment with Perfection, which is God. It seems as though God 
 had picked out certain persons throughout the human race, 
 endowed them with the divine Order of Merit, favored them 
 with the Cosmic Urge to approach Idealism. Those chromo 
 somes might lie dormant through generations, to appear sud 
 denly virulent as they had appeared in my friend. And this 
 being a world in which like seeks like, Nathan was groping 
 for fellowship with other immortals in that divine Legion 
 of Honor and thus far had not found them and was miser 
 able until at times he almost doubted himself. 
 
 People of no brains ! Mediocrity! Small-townism ! Self- 
 satisfaction! Sordidness! Narrowness! Bigotry! Stag 
 nation ! Dross ! Chaff ! Nature segregating her human 
 waste ! Nathan was not yet sufficiently enlightened to sweep 
 them all into the same great basket and discard them from 
 his scheme of things forever. 
 
 And this was the thing that bothered most: He knew 
 instinctively that in certain portions of her indictment, per 
 haps in its very fundamentals, Bernie had been right. But 
 where to go to overcome those deficiencies she had excoriated, 
 how to lift himself above them, perfect himself who was 
 there to show him, give him his cue, point a way? He 
 had assumed his parents could do it. They had not done it. 
 He had looked for Woman to do it, The Sex. But thus 
 far The Sex had not done it. Whence was the light and 
 the help coming? For divine discontent with mediocrity 
 and sordidness was now rampant in his heart and could never 
 be eradicated. Fog! Fog! Fog! 
 
 Nathan finally turned into The Morrison. He passed 
 through the crowded lobby. Every woman he saw raised 
 a feeling of repulsion in his breast. In his heart was a 
 blind impulse to smash and crush even the pretty little eleva-
 
 388 THE FOG 
 
 tor operator who made a laughing remark about a fussy 
 old man who wanted to alight on the fifth floor. 
 
 He reached the sanctuary of his own room and locked him 
 self in. He threw of! hat and coat and lighted a cigar. He 
 sank full length on the bed, snapping the burned match 
 angrily at the footboard. 
 
 He knew that culturally he was a provincial, a small-town 
 "rube", as Bernie had called it. He didn't want to be told 
 those things. What he wanted was to be shown how to cor 
 rect his crudities and have them nursed out of him, not 
 blasted out with a torch ; helped in his great moments of 
 self-doubt; he needed a knowing friend to face him in the 
 right direction, be patient with him when he stumbled, be 
 lieve in him, have confidence that he could win, win with 
 him! 
 
 There was no one, yet ! 
 
 Even his own philosophy as he had spoken it to Ted 
 Thorne almost failed him that night in Chicago. Bernie had 
 been too cruel. 
 
 What was he groping for ? What was this thing for which 
 he hungered so blindly? What was this "small-town" busi 
 ness, fundamentally? Why was there such execration in 
 being a provincial? Why did it bother him so? Why the 
 necessity for climbing out of it? When he had "climbed 
 out of it", what then? 
 
 He thought of Paris, Vermont, as he lay there on the 
 bed. He thought of the view of Main Street from the 
 Whitney House steps, the same scene which Madelaine 
 Theddon had found so depressing two years before. What 
 was the matter with it? Why was it depressing? Why 
 should it stand for all the things he was trying to shake 
 from his fingers like sticky fly-paper? Was it lack of beauty 
 in the place? No! Many parts of the town were beautiful. 
 And hundreds of great cities were filled with sordid, de 
 pressing neighborhoods and quarters. It wasn't a question 
 of size. It wasn't a question of beauty. What then ? 
 
 "Mediocrity, provincialism, small-townism," he reasoned 
 to himself, when philosophy was beginning to win out and 
 his hurt brain and consciousness could function again. "It 
 must be nothing more or less than the embodiment of stand 
 ing still ! Backwaters of life, peopled by those who fear 
 the great, rugged currents, living to a standard and never
 
 FIRST LIGHT 389 
 
 daring or attempting to raise that standard seeing no rea 
 son why they should ! Lethargy abiosis existing from 
 week to week, month to month, year to year in the same 
 fashion and speed and gait as the week, the month, the year 
 before. It's the hideousness of standing all one's life in 
 one set of tracks when something inside shrieks to go on, 
 to move, to improve, to be bigger, better, broader next 
 year than last." 
 
 He arose and walked to his room. He wished he had old 
 Caleb to talk it with. 
 
 "That must be what's been the matter with me," he ar 
 gued to himself, as the hours slipped on toward midnight. 
 "I wanted something better at home and father and mother 
 couldn't grasp it. I tried to get it in the business and in so 
 far as I got it the business prospered and there was money 
 and we approached some degree of happiness. I wanted to 
 go on and up with Milly and she couldn't appreciate it. And 
 I've subconsciously hated everything and everyone about 
 me because they gave me no approval or supplied no incen 
 tive or showed understanding of that urge to create, improve, 
 Go Up. That hatred made for intoleration and I kept it 
 repressed inside me. I'm not a hick! I won't admit it. 
 Nobody can be a hick so long as they've got the urge to go 
 on up, to rise to better things, better ways of living, better 
 ways of understanding one's fellows, better ways of ex 
 pressing the fine things of life in Art ideas, up, up 
 toward God waiting at the Top. Perfection at last. The 
 provincials are only those who hide in the backwaters, con 
 tent to stay- in the backwaters, to remain in their tracks, to be 
 satisfied with little, inconsequential things, to see no reason 
 for changing their standards. And I'm not !" 
 
 Torn and mangled of spirit as he was that night, emaciated 
 with the great hunger of brain and heart for a birthright 
 of sane, constructive, inspiring, encouraging, understanding 
 parenthood which had been denied him, Nathan fought out 
 his problem, step by step, for himself, and in the recesses 
 of his own soul looked for the way, the truth and the light. 
 
 He would keep moving. To move meant enlightenment. 
 It must mean enlightenment. He would hew at his niche 
 and accomplish his task though a thousand millstones and 
 anvils were loaded upon him. Somewhere were High Hill 
 tops, peopled with soft voices and calm eyes, manifesta-
 
 390 THE FOG 
 
 tions of elegant living because such was social efficiency 
 still another phase of omnipotent perfection toward which 
 he groped blindly Art waves in which the soul of him 
 might bathe luxuriantly, somewhere were High Hill Tops. 
 There was no disgrace being born in the valley so long as he 
 had no choice in the matter and was consistently and sin 
 cerely hunting the evasive pathway up to those Hill Tops 
 up to the Dwelling Places of Light. 
 
 My friend had within him the gift of the Magi beyond 
 rubies, the great galvanism of Divinity energizing, 
 vitalizing, driving his young Soul Indomitable to cry from 
 far up the heights "Excelsior!" to battle forever toward 
 the stars. Yet he knew it not. 
 
 To Abaddon with cloying, handicapping, misunderstand 
 ing parenthood! With fretting, abusive womanhood with 
 coarse environments with petty twopenny handicaps ! He 
 would go on, doing his duty as he saw it, taking advantage 
 of the last iota of opportunities as they came, fighting as he 
 went, true to the Aryan that was in him. 
 
 And after that night, he set his face to the west and he 
 went on, disregarding what the going cost him, little realiz 
 ing that he was suddenly carrying his High Aspiration writ 
 ten large on his fighting face for the World and One Woman 
 to see! 
 
 VI 
 
 Back in her apartment, Bernice picked up the packet of 
 faded love notes, untied the string with sneering amusement 
 and selected a letter at random. She read and the sneer 
 disappeared. 
 
 She picked up another and read and the worldliness fell 
 from her face. She picked up a third, a fourth, a fifth. 
 She did not read the sixth. 
 
 Face downward in the tapestry pillows, she sobbed out 
 her heart.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 MAN'S WORLD 
 
 The Czar had been deposed in the opening weeks of 
 March. Sturmer, Golitzin and Protopapvov had been ar 
 rested. The Imperial Russian family were under tragic 
 detention in Tsarkoe-Selo Palace. On March 15 came the 
 coalition cabinet of the revolutionists. As April began, the 
 Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates were declar 
 ing it necessary for them to control the course of the pro 
 visional government. Events were moving in seven-league 
 boots in the land of the luckless Romanoffs. But where they 
 were moving or what would be the state of affairs when the 
 moving was ended, no one dared to predict. 
 
 Nathan sailed from San Francisco on the first day of 
 April. Queer emotions played through him as the big Jap 
 anese liner, Tenyo Maru, turned its prow about, started its 
 engines, gathered speed away from the line of handkerchiefs, 
 cheers and tears along the dock, down the harbor, past the 
 Presidio, followed by swarms of crying gulls out through 
 the Golden Gate, off into the mystic West which strangely 
 becomes the East again. Much might happen before he next 
 saw the clock on the Market Street ferry-house tower. 
 
 As the land dropped lower behind the ship and the flocks 
 of gulls thinned out arid the arms of the Pacific opened 
 wider and wider, a sense of vast freedom came to Nathan. 
 Those broad ocean reaches stirred deep reactions within 
 him. They beckoned him away from petty things. Hour 
 after hour he walked the Tenyo's decks or sank down in 
 his steamer chair and dozed there, sending dream-cargoes 
 off across the miles. Every day carried him farther from 
 the handicap, sordidness, mediocrity, trial, pose, struggle, 
 which had been the sum and substance of his life and en 
 vironment to date. Something big and vital must transpire
 
 392 THE FOG 
 
 out in this world whence he was going. He would look for 
 it. It was all in the epilogue of Going On. 
 
 Entering the dining saloon for lunch on April 6, he found 
 beside his plate a copy of the little daily news sheet filled 
 with items received by wireless. 
 
 America had declared war. 
 
 Tourist trade to the Orient had dropped to zero. Pas 
 sengers aboard were people of importance, outward bound 
 on serious business. Nathan shared his cabin with an In 
 ternational Y. M. C. A. official going to Siberia to open 
 cantonment work among the Russian troops. 
 
 With his easy ability to "get along" with those of his own 
 sex, he had become intimate with the Y. man before two 
 days had passed. By the end of the week he knew most 
 of the men on board and had talked textiles to a group of 
 South Americans in the smoking room one night so intel 
 ligently that one of them had approached him next day de 
 claring his government needed a man of Nathan's experience 
 and ability, and would Nathan consider a position in Bolivia 
 when his present mission was over. 
 
 Nathan laughed, shrugging his shoulders. 
 
 He could not help feeling as he "held his own" among 
 those of his own sex, that they minded little the talon aspect 
 of his gnarled hands or his mutilated ear. That for Ber- 
 nie ! It was what a man was in his head and his heart which 
 counted most. He began to get a perspective on himself. 
 
 Yet he hungered. He hardly spoke to a woman through 
 out the voyage. But this was true : for the first time in his 
 life Nathan had day after day to dream, to do absolutely 
 nothing but think. 
 
 He tried to assay his mental equipment in those long, lazy 
 days of meditation, to determine what he was best fitted to 
 do, how to make up for lost years, whether he should go 
 on as a salesman and make textiles his business after his 
 return and now that he was free, or specialize in some pro 
 fession or art. His poetry? He had long ago seen enough 
 of life to realize it would be a dreary day before he could 
 hope to secure a living from poetry. Well enough as a 
 hobby, perhaps. But life meant more than compilation of 
 romantic rhymes. He felt it too late now to go to college. 
 But it was never too late to educate himself for some pro 
 fession or art. Just what should that education be ? To what
 
 MAN'S WORLD 393 
 
 purpose? What did he enjoy doing best, aside from com 
 posing rhymes? Of what could he make a success because 
 his heart would be in his work? 
 
 One night, as the great liner swung down the northern 
 border of tropical seas, he leaned over the railing and watched 
 the soft, warm stars. One star in particular was very 
 luminous and close. A snatch of an old poem came to 
 him 
 
 "Sometimes, dear heart, in the quiet night, 
 When the stars hang soft and low, 
 I slip away from the clash and care 
 To the Hills of Long Ago. 
 Across those hills in the whisp'ring dark, 
 With the night-breeze sighing through, 
 I see those castles we'd planned to build 
 When our dreams had all come true !" 
 
 The lines brought the tropic skies close. Nat's heart sang 
 in rhythm with the swash of the water and beat of the screw. 
 Who was the one with whom he had built castles Bernie ? 
 Carol? Mildred? Who? 
 
 "Your face glows plain in an evening star, 
 Ere the moon rides high and cold, 
 And memories tune with the summer night 
 On a chord that's rare and old " 
 
 A face in a star! Whose face? He thought for a time 
 he could almost discern. Fancy led him to invent a face 
 which should approximate his ideal. What was his ideal 
 woman's face? If he were a great painter and would put 
 on canvas the features of his Dream Girl, what manner and 
 type of face would he paint? 
 
 The boat swayed on in the starlit dark. Above it, lights 
 of God looked down their mighty passwords over the waters. 
 Stygian smoke furled from great funnels and dropped 
 a billowy screen across their phosphorescent wake. A happy 
 laugh floated out a sharply defined door from the ladies 
 lounging room up forward. 
 
 A face in a star ! Whose face ? 
 
 Nathan thought of a woman he had seen in Springfield 
 one night the night of the Harvard-Pennsylvania boat race
 
 394 THE FOG 
 
 . before he had gone to his hotel to get that awful wire 
 about little Mary's going away a girl sitting across a 
 snowy-white table from a man in dinner clothes, a girl 
 raised just above him with features he had never quite 
 forgotten, they were so fine and tender and cameo-rare. 
 
 If he were a painter, he believed he would try to sketch 
 that woman's face as something very like his Dream Girl. 
 He wondered who she had been her name ? The fellow's 
 wife probably. Strange how things stick in the back of a 
 man's mind at times. 
 
 A face in a star, indeed ! 
 
 Happily, new scenes and clean, free horizons were taking 
 pressure from head and brain. The world with which he 
 had battled was drawing off in increasingly better perspec 
 tive. He was humbly thankful. 
 
 He awoke one morning to find the engine's heart-throb 
 stopped and the vessel strangely quiet. Glancing out his 
 stateroom porthole in the hush of dawn, he beheld a moun* 
 tain sky line weirdly close. They had approached Hawaii 
 and Honolulu during the night. Dense, tropical vapo* 
 clouded the mauve mountain summits. The city was almost 
 hidden in foliage. A molten sun came up while he was break 
 fasting. About ten o'clock he went ashore. 
 
 The narrow, low-roofed streets with queer souvenir shops ; 
 the native, comic-opera policemen at intersections of traffic; 
 picturesque brown men with hatbands and collars wreathed 
 with flowers; quaint Japanese women with brilliant sun 
 shades, among them Nathan felt like a schoolboy off on 
 his first vacation. 
 
 n 
 
 Many features of that voyage supplied "atmosphere" which 
 Nathan will never forget. Laughing forenoons swashing 
 through shimmering waves; schools of flying fish winging 
 low above the whitecaps like dragon flies, to flip from sight 
 as one watched them; children playing on the after-deck 
 and a kiddie-car always left for peripatetics to stumble over ; 
 soft sea breezes wafting through velvet-covered saloons; 
 a wisp of smoke on the far horizon where another steamer 
 passed; the sun going aslant down the sky and making a 
 shadow ship that sailed into flaming carmine with them;
 
 MAN'S WORLD 395 
 
 nights of laughter and music; dancing under Japanese lan 
 terns; the close, hot confines of narrow white stateroom 
 passages faintly scented with bilge, one grows to love a 
 ship which has carried one in safety over thousands of watery 
 miles. 
 
 And his father had known all this, three years before. 
 
 His first sight of Japan came about eleven o'clock the 
 morning of the seventeenth day at sea. A hatless young 
 missionary in white duck, China bound, came around the 
 southern side of the promenade deck with field-glass case 
 swinging from one shoulder. 
 
 "Japan ahead!" he cried. "Just sighted Fujiyama!" 
 Then Nathan noted that the deck where he had been reading 
 was deserted. 
 
 On the opposite side of the ship, up forward, passengers 
 were telescoped against the rail. It was some time before 
 Nathan discerned the great, weird, snow-white cone, high 
 and vague in the clouds, guarding the portals of the East, 
 though no shore was visible yet. But the shore loomed 
 quickly after that, though the mountain outline faded. 
 
 During lunch he glanced through the dining-room port 
 holes to see low, sandy coast slipping past on the north, 
 as though the liner had entered an inland river. A chalk- 
 white lighthouse on which the sun dazzled gray, jagged 
 clrffs against the northern horizon boats hugging the 
 beach ; they were at the mouth of Tokio Bay. They would 
 dock at Yokohama late that afternoon. 
 
 And when the vessel veered sharply northward, in the 
 ensuing two-hour ride up that bay, with the smoke pall of 
 Yokohama hanging in the sky ahead and weird, thatched- 
 cottage, dwarf -pine, deep-bowered shores gliding away on 
 east and west, the man's heart beat with pardonable excite 
 ment. In a handful of hours he might meet his father. 
 
 It would be a dramatic meeting, not without a trace of 
 pride on the part of the son. 
 
 It was a wonderful ride up to Yokohama. The sunshine 
 was dazzling. The mazarine water was a-shimmer with 
 whitecaps and spectrums. A bizarre touch was given that 
 seacape by scores of sampans, native fishing boats, with 
 long rudders and leg-o' -mutton sails, that worked so close 
 to the incoming leviathan as to disclose their contents, 
 fish poles, nets, discarded clothing, coils of rope
 
 396 THE FOG 
 
 Yokohama's smoke drew closer. It was ten minutes of 
 five and the sun was beginning to sink over the city's western 
 hills, when the mighty engines stopped at last and the soul 
 of the ship delivered her bulk to fretty little tugs that finally 
 worked her up against her dock. The pilings creaked with 
 the shock. The hawsers tightened. 
 
 The voyage was ended. Nathan had reached Japan! 
 
 As a dozen half -naked coolies pulled and groaned and 
 jabbered and cried, getting the high gang-plank raised, hand 
 kerchiefs waved on the dock. Friends recognized friends. 
 Relatives called joyously to relatives. 
 
 The bulk of the crowd on shore were Japanese, ludi 
 crous old men in black nightshirts and wooden sandals, heads 
 shaded with cheap straw hats, baggy umbrellas clutched 
 by their middles; somber-clad, high-coiffured Japanese 
 women surrounded by slathers of babies ; here and there the 
 figure of a "foreigner" in pongee, a white face anxiously 
 seeking the lines of humans high above, along the rail. 
 
 Nathan looked for his father. At any moment he might 
 meet him. 
 
 He eventually descended the gang-plank stairs, down 
 into the seething, joyous, jabbering, gesticulating mob, in 
 through the long, shadowed dock -house, out into a circular 
 front yard where bowler-hatted riksha men sat on the shafts 
 of their vehicles and waited for fares, beckoning and honk 
 ing now frantically. 
 
 Nathan stored his bags in one vehicle and stepped up 
 into another. The lean, sweating, diminutive draysters re 
 ceived instructions; shafts were raised; the high-wheeled, 
 rubber-*tired little carriages crunched away over powdered 
 trap-rock, out into a hard gravel street, fresh sprinkled, off 
 toward the hotel in the cool of that wonderful afternoon. 
 
 Japan! Spotless streets flanked by high stucco walls or 
 buildings were shuttered windows a bit of old London, 
 somehow a group of boys in gingham playing ball half 
 a dozen in "bathing suits" riding bicycles, despite clumsy 
 wooden sandals rikshas trotting noiselessly in groups of 
 two or three, the sinking sun glinting on bright steel-wire 
 wheel spokes a street corner with a far vista of tiny 
 dragon-scrolled shops three nude men washing after their 
 day's labors at a public horse trough. 
 
 Southward along The Bund the rikshas rolled along the
 
 MAN'S WORLD 397 
 
 side of quiet Tokio Bay, in the sunset; then came the long, 
 low, red front and cool porticos of The Grand Hotel 
 much confusion about procuring Japanese money to pay 
 the kuruma men. The sea trip was ended. 
 
 Nathan looked around the big lobby. Any one might 
 suddenly turn out to be his father. But he saw nb John- 
 athan. 
 
 Nathan followed the Japanese boy upstairs to his room, 
 a great airy chamber facing the east and home ! 
 
 He forgot his father temporarily in the ensuing irritations 
 of Chinese tradesmen continually knocking at his door, 
 pongee suit-makers, boot-makers, guides for the city in the 
 day and week following. He liked Japan. 
 
 in 
 
 Wiley was strolling about the lobby when Nathan came 
 down for dinner. Wiley was the Y. man who had shared 
 Nat's cabin. They dined together. Afterward they ex 
 plored Yokohama in the warm summer evening. 
 
 Through dank, clean-smelling side streets their silent 
 kuruma, or riksha men, trotted them, in and out of moon 
 light and shadow, past tradesmen's shops where the trades 
 man's family sprawled on shining-matted rooms in the rear, 
 a single electric droplight hanging from the low, polished 
 ceiling, across a canal, northwestward where lights glowed 
 and music played, and Theater Street reveled in illumination 
 and bunting and laughter. 
 
 Laughter, laughter ! Everywhere was laughter. The land 
 was saturated with it. Old men laughed, young men laughed, 
 women laughed, children shrieked continually. Everybody 
 seemed gloriously happy. 
 
 Wiley and Nathan left their kuruma and walked the 
 length of Theater Street, with its bizarre shops, exotic music, 
 peanut whistles, shuffling geta; they went to a Japanese movie 
 and sat on floor cushions while a "lecturer" talked the film 
 as it unreeled ; they bought "ice cream," scraped ice with 
 fruit juice spilled upon it; three times they narrowly 
 "dodged" being run into geisha houses. 
 
 Nathan retired to bed finally with a little twinge of dis 
 appointment. He had not met his father.
 
 398 THE FOG 
 
 He went to the Consulate promptly next morning. 
 
 "Forge?" repeated the consul. "Came out three years 
 ago, you say? I'll have one of the boys look back over the 
 books. But I don't know any Johnathan Forge living here 
 in the country at present." 
 
 The books were searched. There was no record. 
 
 "Then he couldn't have come here under that name," 
 Nathan was informed. "Was there any reason why he 
 should have employed a different one?" 
 
 Nathan shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "It doesn't matter," he observed. 
 
 He did not find his father. 
 
 IV 
 
 He was sitting in one of the big windows of the southern 
 portico looking out over Tokio Bay, ten days later, when 
 Wiley caught sight of him and came abruptly over. 
 
 Wiley was in khaki, a bright new uniform. On his left 
 sleeve glowed a heavy scarlet triangle. 
 
 "I'm off to-morrow, Nathan," he cried, "How goes it? 
 Found your goods yet?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Nathan. "Found them in a fine mess ! All 
 smashed together in a godown over in Tsuruga, on the other 
 side the island. They'd been held up because of broken 
 crates and lack of tonnage to carry them up across the 
 Japan Sea." 
 
 "What are you going to do with them?" 
 
 "Sell them to the Japanese Government. To thunder with 
 the Russians ! In another year they won't have cash enough 
 to buy their own propaganda newspapers." 
 
 "Nat, they're going to have a draft at home!" 
 
 "I've heard about it." 
 
 "Listen, old man; why don't you dodge it by kicking 
 into this thing with me? You can't enlist out here; there's 
 only the Regulars down at Manila and they're not taking 
 volunteers. If you wait for the draft, it'll mean going way 
 back to Vermont, being sent to camp, maybe not getting into 
 the scrap at all. You're out here now, just a few hundred 
 miles from real war. Enlist in the Red Triangle and come 
 on through to Moscow with me. I'm going straight across
 
 MAN'S WORLD 399 
 
 Siberia. Man, it's the chance of your life. We'll be in 
 the thick of it within a week." 
 
 "But I've got to wait for an answer to my cable first, 
 Dick. That much is due my employers." 
 
 "If you really mean it, Nat, I'll delay my departure so 
 we can go up together." 
 
 Nathan really meant it. Wiley delayed his departure. 
 
 Far back in America and up in Vermont five weeks later, 
 Ted Thorne called me on the telephone at the newspaper 
 office. 
 
 "Just ot a long letter from Nathan, Bill!" he cried. 
 "And what do you suppose that darned son-of-a-gun has gone 
 to work and done? He not only found our goods and took 
 'em in charge, but he's engineered a sale to the Japanese 
 Government for twenty-two cents per garment more than 
 we ever dreamed of getting from the Russians. And by 
 the living Jehosaphat, he's got his money!" 
 
 "That's bully, Ted. I always thought Nat had the stuff 
 in him, if he only had a chance. What's he going to do 
 now come home ?" 
 
 "No, that's why I called you up thought you'd like to 
 know. He wants to join the American Red Triangle and 
 plunge into the heart of Russia." 
 
 "Well, you're going to let him, aren't you?" 
 
 "Holy Moses ! Do you think I'd try to stop him? But be 
 lieve me, he's going to have some jtob with us if he ever 
 comes home !" 
 
 VI 
 
 Nathan and his friend Wiley sailed into the Golden Horn 
 Bay at Vladivostok on a drizzly morning, the first day of 
 the following July. The steamer was the perky little Pensa 
 of the Russian Volunteer Fleet. 
 
 Against a great arch of murky sky on the three hills to 
 the northward lay the bizarre city huge, gaunt, towering, 
 ponderous, mosque-domed Siberia ! 
 
 To meet the Pensa and tie it up along the wharf with
 
 4 oo THE FOG 
 
 maximum clumsiness and confusion were a mob of men 
 who resembled the foreigners below the railroad yards back 
 home in Paris, who once had beer delivered to them reg 
 ularly on Saturday afternoons and got into fights Sundays. 
 
 Nathan and his friend had come into a nation of them, 
 the land of Whiskers, Vodka and "Neechivo!" which 
 translated into plain United States means "I should worry !" 
 He was in a khaki uniform and a military cap. On his 
 sleeve was a flaming scarlet triangle. 
 
 "Dick," he cried, as he stood with his companion in the 
 lee of a deck-house to escape the rain, "there's adventure!" 
 Nat made a gesture at Vladivostok and what lay in its 
 mystic hills behind. 
 
 "You said a mouthful!" returned Wiley. "And us for 
 it!" 
 
 Nat left the ship and went down among the vile-smelling 
 crowd on the wharf. The crowd enveloped himself and 
 Wiley. 
 
 Enveloped them, I say. 
 
 For one solid year, in so far as his relatives and friends 
 back home were concerned, Nathan Forge vanished from 
 the face of the earth. 
 
 Siberia !
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 UNTIL WHEN? 
 
 "We're entraining on the 'eleven o'clock' for New York 
 to-night, Madge. I'm supposed to have my men on the 
 transport to-morrow at noon." Gordon pulled back a khaki 
 sleeve and looked at his gunmetal wrist-watch. "I must be 
 back at the Armory at nine o'clock sharp. It will take me 
 half an hour to reach it. It's now five minutes to eight. 
 So I suppose, like most of the boys about the city to-night, 
 I've got to cram eternity into thirty-five fateful minutes." 
 Gordon said the words with a smile. But his features were 
 white as chalk. "I suppose, Madge, it's good-by!" 
 
 "But you didn't expect orders for two weeks yet, Gor 
 don !" Madeline arose from the divan with a hand against 
 her heart. 
 
 "I know it, Madge! But the order came through sud 
 denly." 
 
 "Sit down, Gordon!" The girl's request was a piteous 
 whisper. 
 
 Gordon laid his officer's cap on a corner of the table. 
 
 His new puttees creaked as he sank in an opposite chair. 
 
 "Does this mean our last meeting before you go to 
 France?" Madelaine groped for the seat behind her and 
 her knees wilted. 
 
 "By this time to-morrow night, I'll be dodging submarines. 
 Ho for a life on the bounding main!" The man's tone af 
 fected a lightness that was ghastly. 
 
 Madelaine's throat was cruelly dry as she appraised his 
 fine figure. His outfit was so new it seemed as though he 
 were only playing at war. He was so clean-shaven his 
 cheeks were blue. His hair was close-cropped. His mouth 
 was firm. His eye was straight and true. He was a man ! 
 
 "It's come so quickly! I'm all unprepared to say good- 
 by to-night, Gordon, dear!"
 
 402 THE FOG 
 
 "It's all in the business the dirty business of wiping 
 the earth clean of Huns. But let's not talk about that. Let's 
 talk about ourselves. Let's talk about you !" 
 
 Madelaine closed her eyes. Her head was light. In her 
 heart was an ache like an ulcer. Then all the nights she had 
 ever lived had narrowed down to this! Gordon was going 
 away and might never come back. Did that ache in her 
 heart mean that at last she knew she loved him? Had she 
 discovered in the past two weeks what it meant for a woman 
 to send a man to war? 
 
 "Gordon it seems it seems as if all I'd like to do 
 would be to sit quietly and say nothing !" 
 
 Gordon leaned forward with elbows on his knees. He 
 studied his hands for a moment, lithe, patrician hands. 
 Very quietly he said: 
 
 "I'd like to take that to mean that you care, Madge. A 
 little bit!" 
 
 Madelaine pressed her hands against her eyes. 
 
 "Oh, Gord," she said in a hoarse, difficult whisper. "If 
 I only knew for a certainty. If I only did ! If I only 
 could!" 
 
 "Doesn't a woman recognize love when it comes to her, 
 Madge?" 
 
 "She should. That's just it. Maybe that's the trouble." 
 
 "Madge, what is the trouble between you and me? Is 
 it what went before the sort of a chap I started out to be?" 
 
 "No! No! Somehow I've never thought of you that 
 way the last few years. You're not the same man at all. 
 But but it's a serious thing for a woman to send a man 
 to war under the impression she loves him, when she isn't 
 sure of it herself. And real love the long, fine, enduring 
 kind ought not to leave any room for doubt." 
 
 "I've never begged for your love, Madge. I'll not begin 
 now. I hoped to command it " 
 
 "And oh, how splendidly you've done, Gordon! I'm so 
 proud of you as I see you sitting here in your new uni 
 form now and compare you with a boy I faced one horrible 
 night in a Boston hotel. I'm so proud of you it hurts. But 
 I'm wondering if love can be even commanded, Gordon? It 
 just comes unannounced, for no apparent reason in the 
 world, excepting that two people realize they've been cre 
 ated for each other and want to be together always. And
 
 UNTIL WHEN? 403 
 
 Gordon in fairness to you I don't know that our recog 
 nition has yet come that way! Maybe maybe the 
 war will show it." 
 
 "I may not come back from the war, Madge." He did 
 not say it as a threat or in self-pity. It was a simple state 
 ment of fact which he made no effort to ignore. 
 
 "I know, Gordon ! Oh, how I wish I had a few weeks 
 more to decide. You want me, don't you, dear? There's 
 no doubt in your love, is there?" 
 
 An unusual thing happened, unusual for an erect, clean- 
 cut, strong-jawed young lieutenant in khaki only a few days 
 back from Plattsburg. As Madelaine turned her large, 
 luminous eyes toward his face, she saw his own, brimming 
 tears. Those tears dropped down his smoothly shaven cheeks 
 and off the point of his cleft chin. He made no move to 
 brush them away did not act as though he realized they 
 were there. 
 
 "No, Madelaine," he said solemnly, "in my love for you 
 there's no doubt. There's never been a doubt. And 1 
 brought you something to-night I hope to leave with you 
 as a pledge between us until 'the war is over.' " 
 
 His fingers were steady, as steady as his voice when he 
 unbuttoned the breast pocket of his uniform and from it took 
 a little box of wine-red plush. He snapped back the cover. 
 
 The library lamp caught an iridescent drop of white fire, 
 cold as a thousand winters, pure as a baby's tear, with all 
 the love and tragedy of the race deep in its refractive depths. 
 
 Gordon passed it across. 
 
 It was the ring he hoped her to wear, the gift which 
 stood for his heart. It was significant that the man did 
 not take the ring from its white satin casket. He did not 
 try to crush it on her finger. 
 
 The girl gazed down upon it. 
 
 "You beautiful, beautiful thing!" she whispered rever 
 ently. 
 
 "Somehow I had to save it for the last minute, dear. I've 
 carried it for weeks because because I either wanted to 
 go away deliriously happy or knowing there wasn't any hope. 
 Then war would be mighty welcome." 
 
 "Don't say that, Gordon ! It implies a weakness !" 
 
 "I might as well be honest, Madge." 
 
 "Gordon, if I take this ring and wear it, I'll be engaged
 
 404 THE FOG 
 
 to you. And if you come back safely, it means that we'll 
 be married." 
 
 "Pray God I come!" 
 
 "Do you know what it means for a girl to be engaged to 
 a man? After the word is spoken, that man will be my life 
 and my world." 
 
 "I know." 
 
 "Then don't you see at what a cruel disadvantage you're 
 placing me? To leave this until the last moment so? To 
 ask me to love you forever while in my heart there's the 
 least little doubt?" 
 
 "You know I didn't mean it for an intrigue, Madge." 
 
 "True! I can't conceive of you doing such a thing 
 now. And yet, oh, Gordon, I want so much to make you 
 happy, to reward you for your manhood and your faith and 
 your hope. And yet, dear boy, I want to be happy, deliri 
 ously happy, myself. Not for my own selfishness but be 
 cause that much will also be due to you !" 
 
 Her appeal was suddenly that of the lonely little orphan 
 girl pleading for a chance to give of her nameless life and 
 love to its fullest. 
 
 "Gordon!" 
 
 "Yes, dear?" 
 
 "Can't we can't we let the war decide ?" 
 
 "What do you mean, let the war decide ?" 
 
 "Can't you go away with my promise that when you 
 return you shall have my answer with the knowledge that 
 you're the first man thus far in my life that I love you 
 more dearly than any other man up till to-night that the 
 ending of the war may bring more happiness than either 
 of us dare dream? Can't you go away being happy and 
 temporarily satisfied with that?" 
 
 His voice was like aching iron as he asked: 
 
 "You wish it, Madelaine?" 
 
 "I wish it yes!" 
 
 "And what of the ring ?" 
 
 "Because you're so far the dearest man in my life closer 
 than any man has yet become I'll keep the ring. But it 
 must lie in white satin until I'm sure. Then when the 
 Better World we're fighting for has come, and you return 
 with victory perhaps there'll be an Amethyst Moment 
 when you may take this beautiful thing from its satin and
 
 UNTIL WHEN? 405 
 
 place it on my finger, Gordon. And if the doubt is all washed 
 away, that moment will be very, very sweet. That's half a 
 promise, Gordon. But it can't be a full promise yet. I 
 must know for certain." 
 
 "If you wish it, Madelaine. Above everything, your hap 
 piness comes first." 
 
 She moved over so that by leaning forward she could drop 
 her forehead on his tightly interlaced fingers. Her free 
 tears fell upon those fingers. He unclasped them. One 
 hand smoothed her wondrous hair. Then he bent and placed 
 a kiss upon that hair, tenderly. 
 
 "I know you love me very much indeed, when you say 
 that, Gordon. A girl could easily trust herself to a man 
 who'd think of her happiness so much at such a time as 
 this." 
 
 For fifteen minutes that would never come again they 
 sat so, the girl's left hand gripping the wine-colored box 
 and the trinket which meant the ultimate surrender of her 
 womanhood and heart forever. Her deft fingers toyed with 
 the clasp. Her other hand gripped Gordon's wrist. And 
 that hand was cold. 
 
 "And if I don't come back, dear?" he said hoarsely at 
 last. 
 
 "Maybe, Gordon, I'll wear no other ring the rest of 
 my life. Who knows?" 
 
 "Perhaps, after all, dear girl, it's better so." 
 
 "But even until I know, I shall have a little song in my 
 heart, dear. I shall have a man at the wars. And he is a 
 man! Of that there's never a doubt. Not even now, to 
 night." 
 
 Verily in the life of every man, sooner or later, comes 
 one white-hot moment when small things drop away. 
 Prophets and seers are silenced and dismissed. The earth 
 is without form and void. Darkness is often upon the face 
 of the deep. With only great thoughts, great feelings, great 
 decencies left in nakedness to give what help they can in 
 that zero hour in Gethsemane, a man proves himself, not 
 for what others have tried to make or unmake him, but for 
 what he will be when God has returned and ordered there 
 be light again. 
 
 Gordon arose, that last night, that last hour, that last 
 moment, alone with the girl he loved. And because his own
 
 406 THE FOG 
 
 happiness would perchance make that girl unhappy, at least 
 cast a shadow upon her happiness, he accepted a great dis 
 appointment. And he never murmured. 
 
 "I must go," he said simply. 
 
 The girl stood before him, pale and fine, exquisite and 
 fragile, the biggest and best thing that had ever been in his 
 life. Calm eyes were starry now. They were raised to his 
 face. She was trying to smile. She could not send him 
 away knowing she had not smiled. 
 
 "Gordon!" 
 
 "Yes, dear," he answered huskily. 
 
 "You may kiss me if you will, Gordon. My lips are 
 yours just once to-night freely." 
 
 He stole his arms about her soft shoulders as though he 
 feared to profane and desecrate a holy thing. She raised her 
 sweet face to his, fearlessly, poignantly, softened with the 
 parting. 
 
 He kissed her. But it was not upon her lips. It was upon 
 her fine, cold forehead. 
 
 The choice had been his. He could have tasted her lips, 
 but he did not want to remember them so. He had 
 changed much in the last few years. He went away without 
 that memory to haunt him. 
 
 He knew he had lost. Madelaine Theddon would never 
 be his wife. 
 
 ii 
 
 Gracia Theddon came home about eleven o'clock. De 
 spite the iron gray in her hair, the years seemed to have had 
 small effect upon her. She had changed little since that 
 day at the Orphanage. But then, that might have been 
 Madelaine and the great happiness she had found in her 
 daughter. 
 
 "Madelaine !" she cried, "the boys are entraining to-night ! 
 Gordon's company ! We should have been told, so we could 
 have gone to the station to see them off why, Madelaine ! 
 what's the matter, child?" 
 
 "I know about the boys entraining to-night. Gordon has 
 been here this evening. I know !" 
 
 Mrs. Theddon dropped off her hat, her furs, her coat. 
 The daughter, woman-grown though she was, came into her
 
 UNTIL WHEN? 407 
 
 arms. Together they sank to the divan, the daughter a dis 
 traught little girl, sobbing upon her mother's lap. 
 
 "He asked me to be his wife for the last time to-night, 
 mother mine. He brought me a diamond." 
 
 "Madelaine! Are you engaged to marry him?" 
 
 "I couldn't, mother -mine! I couldn't! I couldn't! I 
 love Gordon. But somehow it's the great love of a sister 
 for a brother. Oh, mother-mine, what's the matter with 
 me? What is it? What is it?" 
 
 What could Mrs. Theddon say? 
 
 "I feel that I've so much to offer, mother-mine, so much 
 to give ! And I want my heart to leap as I give it. I want 
 to look into his face his eyes and read there the great, 
 sweet mystery that we were made for each other from the 
 first. I want the world to fade out as he takes me. I want 
 to abandon myself in his tenderness. I want to lose all 
 that I am, or ever may be, in the depths of his love which I 
 know in that one great Moment I'm meeting gloriously. I 
 want Romance mother-mine! And I want it to bear me 
 up and away to a Palace where the eastern sunrise lies al 
 ways radiant upon its towers. And I haven't found it, 
 mother-mine. I've only found a sweet, deep friendship that 
 makes me feel that the real essence of womanhood is passing 
 me by !" 
 
 "Madelaine! Madelaine! You tear my heart when you 
 talk so !" 
 
 "I want a man who's been through more than Gordon 
 has whose fight has cost him more who's been true to 
 himself in spite of everything! I want a man who's gone 
 through dark shadows and black fog and never once lost 
 faith that somewhere above the sun was shining brightly. 
 I want to work with him, play with him, laugh with him, 
 love with him. I want him to draw upon me, to feed upon 
 me, body as well as brain to leave me stronger than ever 
 for the things I may give him. I want to be his work 
 mate, his playmate, his hunt-mate, his home-mate! I want 
 to be his partner, his mother, his sister, his mistress every 
 thing, everything, everything! I want to feel that he's the 
 other half of myself, for whom I've hunted a dreary time 
 and found at last and know that all the world is wonderful 
 and God is good. And I haven't found that man yet, mother- 
 mine. I've never met him yet. And I want to meet him so.
 
 408 THE FOG 
 
 I'm cruelly lonely without him. I've suffered that loneli 
 ness a hideous time. Where is he, mother-mine? Tell me 
 where he is, that I can go to him quickly ? Wherever he is, 
 he wants me he needs me ! Right at this moment he's hun 
 gry for me, too!" 
 
 "Hush, dear ! Don't feel so badly ! You'll meet him yet. 
 I know you'll meet him yet. God is good! He wouldn't 
 permit it otherwise." 
 
 "I've never had a real love affair, mother-mine. But it's 
 not because I've never wanted to love. It's because I could 
 never seem to throw myself away. I had to save myself 
 for him! Maybe I'm a silly little idealist, mother-mine. 
 But I've dreamed so much! I couldn't be satisfied with 
 any one but him! I couldn't! I couldn't!" 
 
 "And you mustn't, dear," declared Gracia Theddon. 
 
 in 
 
 It was nearly midnight. 
 
 "Mother," cried the girl fiercely as she walked the room, 
 '"'I've got to get into this thing! I've got to have some part 
 in this war ! Some great, vital, strength-sapping part ! I 
 can't stay here merely folding bandages and waiting, wait 
 ing, waiting ! I've got to do something with my hands, 
 my heart all that I am or can be ! They're going away 
 the boys to die to pour themselves out to give their 
 all to make a better and safer world. And I can't merely 
 wait and smugly accept the fruits of their sacrifice. I'm 
 going to get in!" 
 
 "But what can you do, my dear? Your studies aren't yet 
 completed. They won't take you as a doctor. You know 
 nothing in the way of a trade or a " 
 
 "I'll find a place! I'll make a place! Maybe. off over 
 the rim of the world I'll find my Amethyst Moment 
 though it's only for a moment ! I've got to get in !" 
 
 "God will it!" whispered Gracia Theddon, as somewhere 
 a clock struck twelve deep-toned and mellow. 
 
 She had to get into the war! 
 
 Madelaine went to her room. Features deathly pale with 
 all the emotions the evening had wrought, she turned down 
 the heavy lid of her desk and pulled on the tiny chain of
 
 UNTIL WHEN? 409 
 
 her writing lamp. But she did not write. She had nothing 
 to write. She sat before her desk, elbows upon it, strong, 
 lithe fingers covering her face. 
 
 Finally, with a breath as though for strength, she reached 
 into one of the lower pigeonholes and drew forth a packet 
 of letters. Among them she found one that she sought. It 
 had a Chicago postmark. 
 
 . . . and perhaps you might like to know, she read, that 
 the fellow you were so curious about a while ago, the Forge 
 fellow, that I might have told you about all along if I'd only 
 known you were interested in him, . . . called off to see me on 
 his way through to San Francisco last week ... he brought 
 me a little packet of love-letters we wrote to each other when we 
 were school-kids, years ago . . . Oh, Madge, dear, you're the 
 dearest friend I ever had, I've got to tell you ! . . . after he 
 had gone they broke me all up, Madge ! After all, they meant 
 so much ! . . . I told you a story, Madge, when I said he didn't 
 come out of that jail scrape clean. He did come out of it clean. 
 He's an awful provincial, Madge, . . . he'd shock you to death in 
 lots of ways ... his etiquette is impossible . . . but I guess he 
 never had a chance, Madge, like you and me. I'm sorry I treated 
 him so. I said a lot of things which hurt him terribly. But 
 he's gone now and I don't know where he is, to let him know 
 I'm sorry ... he lost both his child and his wife ... there's 
 no woman in his life ... but there's something hickory about 
 him, Madge, deep down under his awful manners . . . oh, Madge ! 
 ... I wish he didn't come from a small town ... I wish he 
 wasn't a small-town fellow ... I wish I wasn't so world-wise 
 ... I'd like to have him love me greatly, a man like him . . . and 
 forget . . . everything ... in his great, strong tenderness . . . 
 
 Madelaine read the letter, in its coarse, underscored pen 
 manship, to the end. 
 
 It was two o'clock when she laid down on her bed and 
 tried to get a few hours' sleep before morning. 
 
 Next day the marines went into action at Chateau-Thierry.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 INTERLUDE 
 
 Take your atlas, find Siberia, locate Vladivostok in the 
 northwest corner of the Japan Sea and trace your finger 
 inland. Follow the Trans-Siberian railroad. One branch 
 will travel upward along the Amur River, as though in the 
 United States the traveler started from Boston, went north 
 ward and down the St. Lawrence, to reach Buffalo. An 
 other branch of the Trans-Siberian drops in a southwesterly 
 direction toward Harbin, Manchuria, then up to Chita, away 
 across the steppes to Lake Baikal and beyond, thousands of 
 miles beyond, almost in a straight line into European Russia. 
 Transposing Vladivostok for Boston, Harbin would be Bing- 
 hamton, Chita would be Buffalo, Lake Baikal would be Lake 
 Michigan, Irkutsk would be Chicago. Further west Omsk 
 would be Lincoln, Nebraska, Ekaterinburg would be Den 
 ver, the Urals would be the Rockies, Petrograd would be 
 San Francisco, Moscow would be Los Angeles. The geo 
 graphical similarity of the two countries is extraordinary. 
 Only Siberian distances are three times as great and Siberian 
 populations one-thirtieth as large. 
 
 If any lasting gain is totaled from the great Russian bed 
 lam, emphasized in it prominently must be the opening of 
 Siberia to the world. As boys and girls, and even as grown 
 men and women, we thought of Siberia as an arctic waste 
 of snow and ice, ravaged by man -hunting wolves, dottec' 
 with world-lost exile mines, peopled by a strange semi- 
 barbaric race in fur and lambskin and dwelling in half- 
 real dusk beneath the bondage of the knout. 
 
 It is only the winter picture which has come to us ; then 
 only such a picture as a Russian traveler in America might 
 carry home by describing conditions around a Hudson Bay 
 trading post in late January.
 
 INTERLUDE 411 
 
 Siberia is a pleasant, smiling land, a land of sunshine and 
 blue distances, of green fields and wild flowers. It is a land 
 of bowered forests, baked prairies, heat-soaked deserts, bab 
 bling brooks, plashing, purling rivers. 
 
 And the eye of mortal man since Eden has never gazed 
 upon such sunsets! 
 
 It has great cities with paved streets, electric car lines, 
 pretentious stores, massive theaters, imposing mansions. And 
 a high-caste Siberian Tartar knows how to make his resi 
 dence imposing. Many of the great railroad stations, when 
 lighted and viewed at a distance by night, resemble the mar 
 ble halls which come to us in dreams. But alas, Siberia has 
 its little earth-lost country villages its "small towns" too 
 its Podunk Corners and its Gilberts Mills, its East Gileads 
 and its Hastings Crossings. Russian writers have dwelt 
 unduly upon peasant life in these earth -lost villages as 
 though an American Tolstoi drew a picture of contempora 
 neous American life solely from Rupert Hughes's "Car 
 thage" or Sinclair Lewis's "Gopher Prairie", eliminating and 
 ignoring entirely Boston, New York, Palm Beach, New Or 
 leans, San Francisco. There are many intermediate steps in 
 Russian living between six log huts clustered on a prairie 
 where half -wild males and females rear families like animals, 
 and the Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg or the Grand 
 Mosque at Moscow, as both existed before the cataclysm. 
 
 In the heart of Eastern Siberia is Great Baikal, a lake 
 sixty miles long and twenty to thirty miles wide. On the 
 northwest corner of this lake, back on the Irkut River, lies 
 the city of Irkutsk. In size it compares with Springfield, 
 Massachusetts, or Cincinnati, Ohio. The river flows through 
 the metropolis. The railroad station and freight yards are 
 set upon the western bank, the main part of the city upon 
 the eastern. Connecting the two is a dilapidated floating 
 bridge of gray, weather-beaten, flood-racked timbers. 
 
 Irkutsk was the farthest western point reached by Jap 
 anese or Yankee troops in the recent Intervention. From 
 Irkutsk westward to the Urals, the Germans were check 
 mated from shipping submarines in sections across the Trans- 
 Siberian for submersion in the Japan Sea and "unrestricted" 
 warfare in the Pacific, by a stout little army of pro-Ally 
 Slavs who should have a place in history with Ulysses on 
 his Odyssey and Leonidas at the Pass.
 
 412 THE FOG 
 
 From Russian internment camps under Kerensky "the 
 Talker", the Czecho-slovaks pronounced "Checko-slow- 
 vacks" started for France, via Siberia, Japan, America, 
 the Atlantic. The Germans, through Lenine, heard and said 
 they should not go. France said they should go and sup 
 plied the money. The Czechs were willing, eager, to go. 
 So they fought their way forward, holding the Trans-Si 
 berian as they moved, to journey no farther than Vladivos 
 tok. 
 
 But there were no Lusitania horrors in the Pacific. 
 
 ii 
 
 Far down the southern end of the Irkutsk railroad yards 
 on a muddy night in September, 1918, three men in khaki 
 sat in a caboose freight car around a small sheet-iron store. 
 Upon a near-by shelf -table, a lone candle burned in an 
 empty bottle. 
 
 The interior of the car was warm but sordid. Living 
 utensils and army paraphernalia were strewn around, with 
 scraps of food. In an alcove behind, two rumpled bunks 
 showed indistinctly. Outside the wind was blowing, bring 
 ing down the febrile, incessant tootings of locomotive switch 
 ers up the yards, where swarthy engineers in lambskin hats 
 signaled their yardmen with maximum of noise and blun 
 der. 
 
 They were lean-jawed, copper-faced men with khaki shirts 
 torn open roughly at their throats. One had the insignia 
 of the United States Engineering Corps (officially known 
 as the "Stevens Mission") on his pocket. The others were 
 Red Triangle "secretaries." And the air was blue with 
 their pipe smoke. They talked horrors which will never be 
 written in books. 
 
 A pause came in their conversation. The locomotive blasts 
 died down. For a time the silence was so deep the only sound 
 was the crackle of the flames in the stove or a meditative 
 tapping of a briar-stem against the smaller man's teeth. The 
 deepness of that silence was suddenly disturbed by a noise. 
 It was a noise like a cry. It was followed by a thud. Some 
 one had fallen on the outside steps. 
 
 A burly young fellow from Scranton, Pennsylvania, in
 
 INTERLUDE 413 
 
 charge of the Y train at the moment, leapt up and opened 
 the door. "What do you want?" he cried irritably into 
 the dark. Some drunken trainman was probably after 
 "pappyroose" Russian cigarettes again. 
 
 "Give me a hand, will you? This is the Y. car, isn't it? 
 I'm all in !" 
 
 "My God !" cried the Y. man. "It's a Yank !" 
 
 They helped the stranger into the car. The door was 
 closed, shutting out the murky night. The stranger sank 
 on an inverted box by the wall shelf and for a minute leaned 
 his forehead over on his wrist. Then he raised a gaunt, 
 haggard face and looked at each man in turn. 
 
 The three saw a fellow countryman of twenty-eight or 
 thirty who might have come through the well-known Inferno 
 as amanuensis for the late Mr. Dante. His uniform was foul 
 with grease, dried mud, stains of origin beyond explana 
 tion. His eyes were deep-sunken. Hair fell an inch over 
 his collar. His thin beard was stringy and ragged. He 
 wore an old Russian hat with a great chunk of the lamb- 
 wool missing in front. 
 
 "I just got in," he said, "train pulled in a few minutes 
 ago haven't eaten anything for two days rode for the 
 past forty-eight hours packed away in a dark berth behind 
 two stinking Chinamen. Who's got a cigarette?" 
 
 Three pairs of hands began frantically fumbling in six 
 pairs of pockets. 
 
 "What's your name, 'bo? Where' ve you come from 
 now?" 
 
 "Forge is my name Nat Forge. I've just come through 
 from from Moscow." 
 
 Crack! One of the briars had fallen to the floor and the 
 hard-rubber stem had broken in two pieces. 
 
 "Forge? Nat Forge? God in heaven! Are you the 
 fellow that started in toward Moscow with Dick Wiley 
 a year ago? Where's Wiley?" 
 
 "Dead," responded Nat simply. "They shot him. Let 
 me have that cigarette." 
 
 They got him his cigarette. They got him many cigarettes. 
 They rolled them for him as fast as he could smoke them, 
 meeting each other's eyes blankly. The fellow from Scran- 
 ton dug around in his boxes and cartons for food. The 
 fire was poked in thick silence. A battered pot was set
 
 414 THE FOG 
 
 thereon. Coffee was sifted in from a scoop of open fingers 
 down in a bag. 
 
 They finally set food before him. They had sense enough 
 not to prod the famished, emaciated man with dam fool ques 
 tions until he had partially recovered his strength. 
 
 "War? Gad, boys I've seen enough war! You guys 
 at this end of the country don't know anything about it. 
 This is the first square meal I've eaten in seven months. 
 I mean it. Seven months. Since last February when we 
 left Omsk, going east." 
 
 It was pathetic, the way he ate that food. A square meal ! 
 
 "You been in Moscow ever since ?" 
 
 "No. We reached Moscow, turned right round and walked 
 right out again. I've been with the Czechs at Kolybelsk. 
 I'm on my way out to Harbin or Vladivostok to see if 
 I can't hustle along some supplies. Medical supplies. They're 
 chopping off arms and legs down there with butcher knives 
 and no anesthetics." 
 
 Ten minutes had elapsed before more was spoken. The 
 sudden introduction of food into the man's weakened vitals 
 distressed him. He drank cup after cup of the vile coffee. 
 But it was hot. Heat was what counted. Then more ciga 
 rettes. Eleven of them. 
 
 "I know my clothes must smell like hell, boys, but if 
 you'd seen what I've been thrown among, coming across 
 from " 
 
 "I've got an extra outfit you can change into," offered 
 the man from Scranton. "Jake, turn some fresh water into 
 that kettle and put it on. Forge'll want to shave." 
 
 "Yes," said Nat, with a choke of emotion at being among 
 his countrymen again. "And which of you boys is a bar 
 ber? Some one's got to harvest this hair. Nothing fancy. 
 Anything to get it off." 
 
 Nat took a sponge bath, nude at one side before them, 
 at the huge samovar. He changed into clean garments. He 
 removed his stringy beard with scissors and shaved his face. 
 His hair was sheared. He came back and sat down at the 
 stove. 
 
 "When did they shoot Wiley? What for?" 
 
 "They shot him at Krasnoyek. We got there in the rainy 
 dark. We were on our way back toward Ekaterinburg. 
 Something was the matter with his papers a V wasn't
 
 INTERLUDE 415 
 
 crossed or an V dotted somewhere. He was standing within 
 three feet of me without a word they asked him to step 
 aside an official pumped four bullets from an automatic 
 into his chest and stomach before he knew what it was all 
 about he looked at me in surprise sort of sickly he 
 just sank down to a sitting posture on the ground, holding 
 himself up on a stiffened arm, his other hand at his stomach 
 
 then he laid his forehead down on his wrist he never 
 spoke a word just died. God damn this bloody country 
 and all the low-browed fiends in it! It's getting just what 
 it deserves my papers happened to be all right thank the 
 Lord for tobacco how long you fellows been here, anyhow 
 
 and for the love of Mike, tell me what's happening in 
 France ?" 
 
 in 
 
 The Americans were "doing things" in France. The Ger 
 man steam-roller had smashed head-on into another steam 
 roller and the second steam-roller had not been the one 
 reduced to pig iron. 
 
 "We're givin' 'em hell !" informed the Stevens man. "Con 
 sulate here got a long wire this morning. We're hangin' 
 our dirty shirts on the Hindenburg line and pepperin' Chin- 
 less Willy's pants with buckshot so he looks like a country 
 signboard." 
 
 "Down where we were, not a word's come through since 
 the fuss at Chateau-Thierry. Won that, didn't we?" 
 
 "Won it? Won it? Think the Yanks come across to 
 hold a tea party, maybe? God! They're only stoppin' the 
 slaughter o' Huns when their rifles get hot and plug. This 
 war's goin' to be over by Christmas, I'd almost be willin' to 
 bet by Thanksgiving. I hear there was one time they or 
 dered the Yanks to retire but the order to retire couldn't 
 catch up with 'em fast enough so they used it to wipe Ger 
 man blood off their pants. And went out and killed a few 
 thousand more before supper just to call it a day! You 
 been out here since it first started, ain't you ?" 
 
 "Wiley and I came up a year ago last July. A year ago 
 last July ! Fellows, it seems like it seems like eighteen 
 years !" 
 
 They were very sober. They understood.
 
 4i6 THE FOG 
 
 "And what do you hear from America home ?" 
 
 They told him all they had heard from America and 
 home. 
 
 At eleven o'clock that night, Nathan was still talking. 
 
 " in those get-away trains from Moscow the poor 
 
 devils were even hanging to the locomotives like flies 
 some standing on the red-hot piston boxes, gripping the cow 
 catchers. They slammed us into a freight car and locked 
 us in pitch dark ! men and women, Lord it didn't make 
 any difference who or what we were ! two hundred 
 and twenty -one of us slammed in a tepluska, crammed so 
 tightly we couldn't raise our hands to our shoulders 
 twenty- four hours of it agony just standing up, and when 
 we couldn't stand up any longer we just sagged on those 
 about us they took out seventy-eight corpses when they 
 finally unlocked the door and let us out rode with a dead 
 woman pushed so hard into my right side her cold body hurt 
 my ribs she was a well-dressed woman too; her fur boa 
 kept tickling my ear and the typhus down there ! What 
 do you hear from the Red Cross ? Any trains come out this 
 way?" 
 
 "Doc Seaver and Cleeve are headed this way with a train. 
 The Consulate expects them some time the last of next 
 week." 
 
 Nathan leaned forward with his face in his hands. 
 
 "Thirty million dead in Russia since the bust started 
 think of it, fellows thirty million! That's an awful mass 
 of dead bodies." 
 
 "Yes," said the Scranton man tersely. And the railroad 
 man observed, "I'm natcherly a peaceable yap. But for once, 
 if they'd lynch that dam' Kaiser, believe me, I'd pull on 
 the rope!"" 
 
 "Amen !" said the small man who had not spoken. 
 
 "I wonder what the chances are for getting transporta 
 tion through to Vladivostok ? Lord, I've got to get through ! 
 Those poor devils off there at 'Cold-belly' as we called it, 
 are dying like flies, just for bandages and disinfectant." 
 
 "Better go over to the Consulate in the morning and ask 
 Thompson. He'll know. There's a he-man." This from 
 the engineer. 
 
 "They run a string of 'empties' through to Harbin for 
 supplies about once a week," added the chap from Scranton.
 
 INTERLUDE 417 
 
 "There's a consular courier named Roach going out when the 
 next one starts. Maybe you could kick in with him." 
 
 IV 
 
 Hartshorn, the Scranton man, offered Nat the upper bunk 
 in the caboose car that night. And Nathan crawled in be 
 tween blankets for the first time in weeks. 
 
 It was very easy to think, lying awake there in the dark. 
 But Nathan did not want to think. He wanted to forget 
 forget quickly. 
 
 Yet he did think. 
 
 One great, vital fact stood out white-hot above all other 
 facts in his consciousness he was alive! He wasn't out of 
 the melee yet. But to date he was alive ! A year had passed 
 
 gone like a terrific nightmare. And he was alive. Alive, 
 alive, alive ! He couldn't get over that stunning realization. 
 
 There were days and even weeks in that year which were 
 blurred. His mind had been so filled with impressions that 
 it had absolutely refused to absorb any more. Oh, how 
 picayune all his introspection, his love affairs, his family 
 troubles, his Golgotha of small-town life had been back 
 home, compared with life stripped stark naked as he had 
 seen it out here! He seemed to be living now in another 
 incarnation. He was not he couldn't be the same fellow 
 who had once lived in the Pine Street house with Milly, who 
 had read poetry with old Caleb Gridley, who had drummed 
 the trade from Wilkes-Barre up to Syracuse for the Thorne 
 Mills, selling dozens and grosses of ladies' and misses' "thirty- 
 sixes" and "forty- fours" and "spring-needle union suits with 
 reenforced seats." 
 
 How different life would appear when he got back if he 
 ever did get back ! 
 
 What was his mother doing at this moment, Edith with 
 her increasing family, Ted Thorne, myself? The boy's 
 mind grew sluggish; vague thoughts trooped helter-skelter 
 across the filmy playground of his brain : Main Street, Paris 
 
 the filite Bakery and Lunch Room with smoky ham-and- 
 eggs frying at the back the rumbling roll of the door in 
 the box-shop that opened out upon the shipping platform 
 shaking down the furnace the last thing before going to bed
 
 4i8 THE FOG 
 
 in the Preston Hill home Milly's bake-bean-flavored pan 
 try of a Sunday morning and most of the beans burned in 
 the pot on top how the March wind washed through the 
 bare tree limbs the night he had sat in the dark and caught 
 Milly with Plumb Bernie Gridley's colorless face bathed 
 in blue cigarette smoke as her forked eyes impaled him 
 that night in Chicago a girl raised just above him in a hotel 
 window, a girl with a clear-cut profile and calm eyes 
 queer, indeed, the things that stick in a man's mind across 
 the months and years! 
 
 He fell asleep. But he was alive! 
 
 He was headed out toward Vladivostok and when the war 
 was ended, he would go back to what ? 
 
 His disordered imagination, twisted and wracked by the 
 horrors he had witnessed, bathed him in icy sweat all night. 
 
 Milly tied hand and foot to a rail fence, a big cavalry of 
 ficer in front of her with a saber little Mary crying across 
 a vast space, tiny hands blood-smeared his father crawling 
 along railroad tracks with eyes seared out, holding to the 
 ties in hope of some one picking him up his mother sitting 
 in the midst of multitudinous household goods and wanting 
 him to listen while she told him what the Germans had done ! 
 All night long ! horrible specters ! handless, headless ! Then 
 along toward morning the girl of the hotel window, the girl 
 of the calm eyes, leaning out of that window, reaching a 
 hand down toward him, telling him not to mind the fellow 
 who had been her escort had gone she was not his wife ! 
 She had never been his wife! Wouldn't he find his way 
 in at the door and finish the meal with her 
 
 He awoke with some one's hand upcn his shoulder. A 
 bleary-eyed face was close to a candle beside the bunk. 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, Forge, old man what's the trouble? 
 You've been groaning horribly the last five hours. It's al 
 most more than a fellow can stand, to hear you." 
 
 "It's all that coffee I drank," apologized Nat. "I shouldn't 
 have taken so much. I'm sorry!" 
 
 But it was not the coffee.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 
 
 But Nathan had one more terrific experience to suffer be 
 fore he was finished with the Russian bedlam, an experi 
 ence and an aftermath beside which all that has gone before 
 everything! pales into insignificance and becomes as 
 nothing. And like most stupendous experiences in life, it 
 came when least expected, certainly unannounced. 
 
 Nathan reached that great tenth day of October, 1918. 
 
 "It was the turning point the hinge ! of my whole 
 life, Bill," he has said to me since. "I wouldn't have missed 
 it for a million dollars, but whether I'd take a million dollars 
 to go through with it again it's a question, Bill it's a 
 question !" 
 
 ii 
 
 At the Consulate the following morning he met Roach. 
 The young courier was delighted with a companion the bal 
 ance of that hectic journey. One week later they were on 
 their way. 
 
 Nathan had recuperated quickly during that week. Plenty 
 of food, plenty of soap and water, the chance to shave every 
 morning simple things had given him a new lease on 
 life. 
 
 Nathan had changed, anyway, during that year with the 
 Czechs. Mental troubles had stopped bothering. He had 
 far more to worry him than his culture. Despite his phys 
 ical hardships, the young man had added weight. Hard, 
 healthy exercise in the open, soldier fare, rough living, had 
 toughened him. He was a stripling no longer. He had 
 learned to walk erectly. His shoulders were square, almost 
 burly. And his face
 
 420 THE FOG 
 
 Though Nathan knew it not, a whole life epilogue lay upon 
 his features. He was bronzed to copper red with sunburn, 
 wind-burn and snow-burn. At his temples was a faint sprin 
 kling of gray. True, as Bernie had said, there was no woman 
 in his life, and that also showed upon his features and in 
 his strong, gray eyes. But Nathan had been , through "a 
 thousand measley little small-town hells" which can often 
 take more from a man than a few big hells. He had lived 
 above them. Then had come the few big hells also, that 
 autumn, winter and spring at Kolybelsk after the flight from 
 Moscow. He had come through all that too and lived. 
 He would go on living. He had damned Russia and the war 
 a hundred times, especially when poor Wiley's surprised 
 face came back to him with a body suddenly punctured by 
 bullets; but what normal man without a heart of brass had 
 not damned the war after seeing men die horribly? Still, 
 that had not shaken Nathan's faith in human nature. A 
 peasant army gone mad was no criterion of the entire human 
 race ! And that Nathan had not lost faith in human nature 
 showed in his face also. It was growing into a Lincolnesque 
 face. Self-control, self-discipline, infinite patience, the capac 
 ity for fathomless tenderness. When I looked into Nathan's 
 features a year later and compared him with the fellow who 
 had bade me good-by at the Paris railroad depot that sunny 
 morning when old Caleb missed him by an hour, frankly 
 I was shocked. But it was a thrilling shock. I felt a choke 
 in my throat. Nathan's face ! A far, far cry from the little, 
 freckled-blotched, snub-nosed countenance upturned to me 
 that day when I belabored a barrel-stave on the fence boards 
 in the yard of the Foxboro school. All that Nathan needed 
 now was a great woman, an infinitely tender woman, a 
 woman with a big soul, and there would be something rather 
 glorious about my friend, though it is hard to say, looking 
 back over the quite prosaic vicissitudes of his life, just 
 wherein and why. It was a presentiment lying too deep for 
 the intellect. It belonged in the realm of the emotions. 
 
 So Nathan started out of Irkutsk one morning with Roach 
 eastward, eastward toward the greatest adventure in 
 his life. 
 
 The country, up to the week of the fifth, had been riotous 
 with the screaming yellows and flaming scarlets of autumn 
 not unlike New England not unlike Vermont. Hour after
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 421 
 
 hour as the dilapidated train crawled infinitesimally across 
 moorlands and steppes, through mountain denies, along val 
 ley bottoms, around the edges of great inland lakes always 
 eastward, eastward, eastward he sat in the door of the 
 howling, bumping, empty freight car and drank in the glory 
 of titanic Siberia, the undiscovered wonderland of the planet. 
 
 Vastness, strength, poetry, he saw in that land through 
 which he traveled. It was the home of a race still primi 
 tive, though old as the world, with deep faith, with curiosity, 
 with many passions, with suspicions, with fears, with heart 
 ache, striving piteously to work out a social and economic 
 problem as far above their grasp as God. It was a land of 
 brown steppes, blue waters, purple mountains ; that barbaric, 
 borderland world where troglodytes lived with large-bodied 
 women who might have ridden with the Valkyries out to 
 meet Briinhilde. The very proximity of death gave outlines 
 to that wonderful land; that lucid sadness which is the es 
 sence of the soul of Russia. Deserts, distances, lisps of 
 forms and ideas, the powerful simplicities of souls already 
 in Infinity, and yet too, a land of junk and chaos almost 
 crashed into wreckage along with the thing that man called 
 Civilization. 
 
 Colors, colors, riotous colors ! Its yellows were great tar- 
 taric life-motives, thwarted and defiled; its blacks were ter 
 rible doubts, hatreds, abuses and cruelties ; its reds were the 
 accouchement of a great people where a nation's natal pains 
 were griping amid the roar of war ; its blues were for simple 
 strengths which could endure all and still survive, and loves 
 which could never quite fade from life's horizons. Colors, 
 colors, riotous colors ! And Nathan the colorist, the emo 
 tionalist, the mystic, the romancer drank them in deeply 
 and let them cleanse him from the Terror through which 
 he had slipped. No life could never be small and petty 
 and landlocked and drab again. 
 
 It was time for snow now, yet the weather had remained 
 steaming warm. Instead of snow there had been rain. For 
 hours the train had crawled through vast infinities of de 
 pressing fog. The entire day of the ninth the car doors had 
 been closed to keep out the dismal mist and chill. They had 
 no fire. They could only sit on the floor of that rocking 
 box-on-wheels and play the hours away with a deck of cards 
 which Roach had somehow managed to keep in his luggage.
 
 422 THE FOG 
 
 About seven o'clock the night of the ninth Roach arose and 
 opened the door. 
 
 ''We're going through a lot of hills," he declared. "And 
 my God ! It's dark as the devil's pocket ! I never saw such 
 fog. You can almost taste it!" 
 
 The two spread their blankets on the cold, hard planking. 
 They lay down, automatics within easy reach, and tried to 
 sleep. It was torturous business. 
 
 "Well, old man," cried Roach in grim humor, "if we 
 don't live to see morning, here's good-by !" 
 
 They had employed such a "Good night" every evening 
 since the fortunes of war had thrown them together. For 
 the country was filled with bands of murderous Bolsheviki, 
 striving to break through the Czech guard lines and cut the 
 railroad at a vulnerable point in order to maroon enemy forces 
 farther in-country. 
 
 "Same to you and many of them !" laughed Nat. And he 
 pulled up his blanket to his chin, pillowed his arms behind his 
 head and dozed off to the shrieking grind of the wheels. 
 
 Outside of one terrible shriek which Roach gave three 
 hours later, they were the last words Nathan ever heard him 
 utter. 
 
 My friend had dozed off to dream as usual that he was 
 back in Paris in the box-shop with his father going 
 home to Milly and the Pine Street house furnished in mid- 
 Victorian and Larkin Soap premiums brooding over 
 boyish troubles, always introspecting always worry-rid 
 den when in his dreams, half-way in the borderland of 
 slumber, came a crash as though all hell had exploded and 
 blown the earth to shreds in his face ! 
 
 in 
 
 The crash was part of Nathan's nightmare, part of it 
 until he felt himself rocking, bumping, knocking, billowing, 
 hurled at a strange tangent he could not comprehend. 
 
 Then came another crash, more horrible than before. He 
 was falling, down, down, down. BUMP ! 
 
 Roach uttered one long-drawn, grisly cry. A car beam 
 had crushed his legs. When some ominous ripping sound 
 followed, a portion of the iron underwork broke through
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 423 
 
 the timbers where he lay impaled, crushing his skull in the 
 inky dark. 
 
 For an instant all was quiet, the ghastly quiet before 
 pandemonium. Then from up front started a gigantic hiss 
 ing of steam. The engine boiler blew an instant later. When 
 the roar had echoed away across the distance, hoarse voices 
 were calling, a staccato tatting began, a machine-gun spit 
 ting death. 
 
 Nathan came to his senses and tore frantically at nail- 
 jagged sheathing that pinned his lower limbs. His hat was 
 lost. One of his legs was shot with sudden agony where 
 a nail had spiked it to the bone. 
 
 But he crawled out. Somehow he crawled out. The leg 
 was not broken. He looked around. 
 
 Through black fog loomed a horrible glare. Sharp tongues 
 of ruddy, ominous flame shot up, forked, ravenous. The 
 glare grew brighter. It disclosed grotesque, hysterical fig 
 ures silhouetted against roaring yellow. In the wrecked 
 cars, imprisoned men were bellowing in agony. From sur 
 rounding banks of murky dark, fiends were shooting down 
 others as they crawled from wreckage or forced twisted 
 doors open and leaped down the embankment. 
 
 The wreckage fired terribly. It might have been sprayed 
 with oil, so swiftly did those tongues of liquid flame leap 
 from timber to timber. And through the hissing, crackling, 
 snapping, roaring tumult which obliterated the next few 
 minutes came sharp rifle fire and singing death. 
 
 It was massacre ! 
 
 Nathan could not grasp where he was, where to flee, what 
 to do. Fear-grazed, he stood irresolute. The fire-painted 
 fog blanketed everything. 
 
 Then from the mist-wall a short distance away he heard 
 more frenzied shrieking than the rest. 
 
 " 'Americanski! Americanski!" The attackers had recog 
 nized his uniform. 
 
 Nat tried to run forward. He slipped and fell. The 
 entire Bolshevik army piled immediately on his back. 
 
 Nathan waited for the impact of bullet or bayonet stab 
 to finish him. His terror was so great he was physically 
 paralyzed. The fortunes of war ! The end had come ! He 
 was interested to see what Death would be like. Let it 
 come quickly.
 
 424 THE FOG 
 
 But the entire Bolshevik army lifted itself from his back. 
 He was yanked to his feet. In front of him, lighted by the 
 wild, barbaric flames was a huge, bearded man in a high, out 
 landish, lambskin hat pushed over one ear. He jabbered at 
 Nathan crazily. 
 
 "N'panam'ayu!" (I don't understand!) cried Nathan fran 
 tically. 
 
 But his contention had small effect on the Russian. Nathan 
 protested hysterically that he did not understand. 
 
 The big Bolshevik grew angrier and angrier. Then a 
 tall, lithe figure, girt with a huge cavalry sword, jammed his 
 way forward. He looked like a Cossack, though the Cos 
 sacks were considered pro-Ally. 
 
 This man took note of Nathan's uniform. To the boy's 
 stunned astonishment he spoke in broken Germanic English. 
 
 "You are American?" 
 
 "Yes," cried Nathan. He could scarcely make himself 
 heard amid the increasing tumult all around. 
 
 "You are American soldat yist?" 
 
 "I'm a Y. M. C. A. man !" 
 
 "Where are you going? You help Czecho-slovak 
 
 yistf" 
 
 "I was only traveling on the train Petrograd to Amer 
 ica!" 
 
 The panther-like young fellow jabbered to the man in 
 the lambskin hat. A dozen others tried to harangue each 
 other at once. Nathan looked death in the face. A dozen 
 bayonets were ready to finish him without further ado, for 
 Nathan heard that sickening word "shteek!" Finally the 
 Cossack prevailed. 
 
 "You go with us. Do not run away. We ask you ques 
 tion afterward!" 
 
 A dozen maniacal hands gripped him. Down the incline 
 on the south side of the horrible furnace he was hustled, 
 out of range of the bullets. 
 
 The bullet fire was subsiding, however. The flames were 
 roaring in triumph over the long line of splintered cars where 
 a few luckless human beings were roasting horribly. 
 
 Nathan was half -dragged, half -carried to the bottom of 
 an embankment. There were hordes of stampeding horses 
 there. One had a bullet through its nose and was shrieking 
 in agony. There is no earthly cry like the shriek of a
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 425 
 
 wounded horse. It was dispatched with a shot in the hea4 
 and broke a man's leg in its writhing. 
 
 The attacking crowd which had engineered this holocaust 
 was a tattered, unruly, blood-crazed mob. 
 
 "You climb up!" ordered the tall Cossack grimly. He 
 indicated a scrubby pony that three men were holding by 
 the head. 
 
 Nathan had no choice. He was living by minutes now. 
 The Cossack threw his pipe-stem leg over another pony. 
 His act was followed by a dozen. There was a howling argu 
 ment over something. Then southward from the roaring, 
 roasting horror, serpentine along the trackage, a cavalcade 
 started abruptly down into deeper southern fog. Nathan 
 had to grip the high Siberian saddle tightly to preserve his 
 balance. It was like riding atop a moving fence post. The 
 Cossack had the reins of the pony's bridle. 
 
 Nathan was conscious of traveling down a far, far slope. 
 He marveled how the men knew their way in that fog. 
 The slope seemed miles long before they reached the valley 
 bottom. Then he realized the cavalcade was taking its course 
 from the depression in the hills. But the horses walked. 
 The hysteria of the crime which had been consummated 
 burned itself out. 
 
 Several horsemen trotted alongside and howled questions 
 at Nat in their native tongue. Over and over the young 
 man had to protest he did not understand. Finally when 
 they stopped once in that labyrinth of mist, Nathan demanded 
 of the Cossack: 
 
 "Where are you taking me?" 
 
 "Beeg commandant! You see! Stop talk!" 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "You have come from Petrograd! To answer question! 
 I say stop talk!" 
 
 "And what then?" 
 
 "Ah! We see how good you answer question!" 
 
 rv 
 
 Due southward they bore if Nathan kept sense of direc 
 tion. It was uncanny how these horses found their foot 
 ing in that fog. The ride became a nightmare in which
 
 426 THE FOG 
 
 huge bearded demons rode with him. Hour after hour it 
 seemed to continue. Then far ahead, lights gleamed fan 
 tastic through the mist. They were approaching a settle 
 ment, back from the railroad. 
 
 Nathan had been in scores of such lost Siberian villages. 
 One long, wide, muddy street of log huts with acres of 
 sapling- fenced cattle pens behind : they were all alike. Two 
 big beacons were afire before the largest house in the 
 place, half-way up a slight incline on the right. 
 
 "You come!" ordered the Cossack. 
 
 Nathan almost fell to the ground when first his weight 
 bore upon his stiffened leg. He groaned with the pain. 
 But he was immediately grabbed and jostled forward. In 
 behind the twisted fence he was hurried, while aroused 
 villagers, a tatter dermalion crew, gathered from fifty direc 
 tions. 
 
 The room into which he was pushed was low-studded and 
 rough-hewn. Candle-lighted, its corners and furnishings 
 were mostly in shadow. At a rough plank table in the 
 center sat a bear of a man in a great ulster with a fur hat 
 like a drum major's. He had immense black whiskers in 
 which he might easily have lost articles of small compass 
 such as stub pencils, cigar holders, toothpicks, pipe-stems, 
 and never found them again and those whiskers were 
 finished off at the top with the longest, wildest, most won 
 derful pair of mustaches that Nathan dreamed could ever 
 adhere to a male countenance and allow that male to pre 
 serve any semblance of Dignity. But there was not an 
 inkling of doubt about the Dignity of this bear-like Com 
 mandant. It was immense, and the whiskers and mustaches 
 did it. He took great pride in his whiskers and mustaches. 
 Undoubtedly they had been responsible for his elevation 
 to Commandant. A man with such stupendous hirsute 
 adornments could be nothing less. And in further proof 
 that he was a truly great man, across and about both breasts 
 was a display of moth-eaten medals and badges that made 
 his chest resemble the souvenir board of a street fakir at 
 an Elks Field Day or Fireman's Muster, back in Vermont. 
 
 A half-dozen of the bear's "staff" were gathered in dis 
 tressing Dignity also about the table as Nat was brought 
 forward. They too were high-hatted and bewhiskered, 
 though not so terrifically as the Commandant. There was
 
 SUNSHINE GLOklOUS 427 
 
 but one set of such whiskers on earth, and they were upon 
 the Commandant's countenance. One man had a big, greasy 
 book open before him. He appeared to be "clerk" of this 
 Inquisition. When he wrote in the book, he put his tongue 
 in his cheek and lowered his accipitral nose within 
 four inches of his writing. He had hands like boxing 
 gloves. The panther-like Cossack continued to act as inter 
 preter. 
 
 "Now you tell Commandant where you go," he ordered. 
 
 "Moscow to Harbin, then to America," declared Nathan 
 hoarsely. The stolid ring of Tartar faces drew close to the 
 candle-light. 
 
 "You been with Czecho-slovak yist?" 
 
 "I passed through their lines," assented the Yankee. 
 
 "Where you pass through lines?" 
 
 "Ybargenosk !" 
 
 "What for you go to America?" 
 
 "To tell my people the truth about the Bolsheviki," Nathan 
 answered. Not to humor these men meant swift and un 
 speakable death. "The Americanski know only lies about 
 the Bolsheviki," he stumbled onward, hoping against hope 
 to make friends. "I go to America to stop the lies. It will 
 help your cause much." 
 
 All present seemed to be impressed when this was in 
 terpreted. A general discussion ensued, principally with 
 hands. 
 
 "We wish to know how much Czecho-slovak at Ybar 
 genosk," the Cossack declared, interpreting the Com 
 mandant's next question. 
 
 There were three hundred, a pitiful little garrison, at 
 Ybargenosk. 
 
 "Three thousand !" said Nathan promptly. 
 
 At once any good will which he might have manufac 
 tured by his references to America and his mission was lost 
 in the disfavor which this announcement received. Impre 
 cations and abuses were hurled at him as though he per 
 sonally were responsible. 
 
 "How far Czech's line go?" was the next query. 
 
 "As far as Chita," Nathan responded. "From there to 
 Harbin the Japanese are in control." 
 
 They questioned Nat about Czech equipment, about Czech 
 plans, about Czech supplies, about the recent passage of.
 
 428 THE FOG 
 
 goods trains, about conditions in Moscow, about a rumor 
 which had spread over mid-Siberia that a medical train was 
 headed westward loaded with Red Cross supplies. Nathan 
 answered as best he could. But he was distrusted. Senti 
 ment curdled against him. 
 
 One man wished to know if the skies were blue in 
 America, the same as they were in Russia. Another de 
 clared that he had heard that all horses end cows in America 
 had two legs, and how did a horse or cow move about if 
 it only had two legs? 
 
 And such human material was striving to found a new 
 nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition 
 that all men are created equal! 
 
 Rapidly Nathan lost caste. They took away his khaki 
 coat and the contents of his pockets. There was much refer 
 ence to the notes that the man with the big hands had 
 recorded in the greasy book. Then from the melee of 
 confusion and discussion, Nat's blood began to curdle as he 
 heard the general word "shteek" on all sides. ("Bayonet 
 him!") 
 
 The tall Cossack seemed to be defending Nat. The 
 Cossack had to give it up. He shrugged his narrow 
 shoulders and stalked out, his big saber rattling noisily. 
 
 With a blunt wave of his huge arm, the Commandant 
 arose from the table. He gave an order in Russian and two 
 men stepped forward. After a fashion they saluted. They 
 were sandy-complexioned and had no chins. Another order, 
 with a jerk of a big thumb toward the ashen-faced Yankee. 
 They saluted again. 
 
 Nathan was seized and bundled from the room. The 
 crowd trailed after. The flaming knots burned higher out 
 side the door, death pylons now. 
 
 Into the yard Nat was dragged and the crowd fell back. 
 They formed a semicircle for the execution. One of the 
 soldiers drew his long glistening bayonet from a loop at 
 his left hip. He clicked it upon the end of his rifle. Then 
 he jumped the gun up into his hands and steeled himself 
 for the messy thing he had been ordered to do. 
 
 But Nathan Forge of Paris, Vermont, U.S.A. had no 
 intention of standing there and being stuck like an animal 
 in an abattoir. His body stiffened. Horror maddened him. 
 The only weapons, the only friends, he had left in the
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 429 
 
 world were the two gnarled fists that Bernie Gridley had 
 cauterized. 
 
 Nathan's gorge rose. He leaped like a cat. His right 
 fist smashed straight at the head soldier's lack of chin. 
 The blow broke his jaw. The gun dropped from his hands, 
 fell sideways, and the bayonet stuck a bystander in the 
 throat. Nathan's boot then came up and stove into the pit 
 of the other man' abdomen. The man doubled like a jack- 
 knife. 
 
 At this sudden display of agility and damage, the flabber 
 gasted spectators shrank back. Nathan crashed another 
 blow at the gaping features of a lean fellow who barred his 
 way to the fence. Over the fence went the Yankee and into 
 the murk. 
 
 And bedlam broke loose behind him! Hoarse bellows 
 roared in the fog. Shots snapped. A group of horses by 
 the gate began stampeding. The log house spilled soldiers 
 and officers, and the yard bumbled like a nest of yellow- 
 jackets. 
 
 Nathan tripped on the other side the fence and went down 
 on his face. He cut a gash across his forehead that for the 
 moment blinded him. But he ran ran somehow ran 
 wildly. 
 
 He was suddenly thankful for the fog. It enveloped him. 
 It shut off pursuit. 
 
 Down the hill he fled, guiding himself by weak, nebulous 
 window lights from huts on either hand. He knew a mob 
 was trailing after. Horses were coming. Two shots 
 cracked in quick succession. The boy felt a deadly, cruel 
 kick in his left arm. In an instant the arm went numb. 
 Something warm and sticky dripped from his fingers. He 
 had been shot. The arm was bleeding. 
 
 Into a passageway between two houses he dodged, on into 
 cattle runs behind. Again he was living by moments. He 
 smashed head-on into a diminutive cow. Which was the 
 most terrified will never be known. But he did not lose 
 his sense of direction. Down the hill the road by which they 
 had entered the settlement turned at right angles north 
 ward, out toward that great defile in the hills. His pursuers 
 had lost him in the fog. tie skirted through back yards, 
 climbed endless fences, bumped into all sorts of palings and 
 impedimenta. But he reached the bottom of that incline.
 
 430 THE FOG 
 
 There were hoarse shoutings all about him. Several more 
 shots were fired wildly. A group of breathless, running 
 men passed within three feet of where he crouched in the 
 shadow of a gate. 
 
 The place swarmed with frustrated Bolsheviks who had 
 been cheated of their quarry, outwitted by a Yankee! 
 Nathan left it swarming. He got onto the steppe's road 
 and headed off northward into soggy, inky night. And fog ! 
 That fog! 
 
 The boy had a blind instinct to strike back toward the 
 railroad. The railroad meant a frail chance for stopping a 
 troop train and rejoining his fellows. Yet hunting the 
 railroad in that fog was like groping for a lost love in 
 Abaddon. 
 
 He walked into a post and had the breath knocked from 
 him, learning that he had not yet reached the edge of the 
 village. He stumbled over old boards, half-buried in muck. 
 After that he groped his way more carefully with his one 
 good arm. 
 
 The pursuers gave up the hunt early. It was nonsense, 
 hunting a fugitive in such a fog. Sounds of the village 
 grew fainter behind the groping, stumbling, tight-lipped 
 Yankee. A vastness as of infinity between the planets 
 enveloped him. There were no stars or lights. He wore 
 neither hat nor coat only his khaki shirt and the fog 
 penetrated to his marrow. 
 
 He had found the road out of town, and he tried to keep 
 the road out of town. The only way he knew that he was 
 keeping the road out of town was by the muck in which 
 he staggered and sloughed his way. The moment he found 
 himself walking on hard, frost-nipped grass, he returned to 
 the slough. 
 
 Foot by foot, yard by yard, rod by rod, he went out and 
 on, into absolute blackness, not daring to stop an instant, 
 fearing the morning might find the fog lifted and disclose 
 him. That would mean recapture and a consummation of 
 the fate he had dodged that night. 
 
 His face became splashed with blood and muck. He 
 could not tie a bandage about his head, first because he 
 had no bandage, second because his left arm was useless 
 and negligible for the tying of anything. He did not have 
 a left arm. Only a stiff Something hitched to his left
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 431 
 
 shoulder. Not that his arm had been shot away. The 
 chance bullet had struck a nerve and effected temporary 
 paralysis. 
 
 On ! On ! On ! 
 
 Ankles were wrenched and twisted. Again and again 
 he fell forward. He only saved his face by plunging his 
 good arm, elbow deep, in bog. At times he had to stop, go 
 back and picked up his route again. 
 
 That fog! It was thick like cheese, black like paint. It 
 shut out noises. The slough ! slough ! slough ! of his boots 
 were the only sounds he heard. He might have been grop 
 ing across a world-wide pit of the damned. Yet he had to 
 go on. He must go on. He prayed for the morning and yet 
 he feared what the morning might disclose. 
 
 He lost track of time. He could not recollect how long 
 he and Roach had slept before that murderous crash. 
 Roach ! Poor Roach ! Then it must have taken the caval 
 cade an hour to ride down that long defile in the hills ; how 
 many hours after that to reach the village, he had no 
 memory or conception. He had been before the Commandant 
 another half -hour. After a time he was obsessed with the 
 notion that he had been going on, hours upon hours, himself. 
 Morning must come soon. Or wasn't it yet midnight? 
 
 Leg movement began to grow mechanical. He counted 
 his progress by steps, one, two, three, four, five, six ! One, 
 two, three, four, five, six! He felt of his left hand and 
 discovered the blood had caked hard. Then the bleeding 
 must have stopped. It was queer. But thank God for 
 it, nevertheless. 
 
 On! On! On! One, two, three, four, five, six! One, 
 two, three, four, five six! Lost in Siberia! Lost in Siberia! 
 One, two, three, four, five, six! One two three 
 four five six ! 
 
 He grew feverish. It was almost more than human 
 flesh and blood could endure. His injured leg was afire. 
 Every bend of his knee sent whips of flame up and down 
 its cords, from ankle to thigh, from thigh to ankle. One, 
 two, three, four, five, six! Slough, slough, slough! He 
 grew hysterical ; he began talking aloud. Oh, God, keep him 
 from weakening! Give him the strength to go on! 
 
 God! 
 
 Into his mind came another time of desperate predica-
 
 432 THE FOG 
 
 ment back over the years, a night when two terrified little 
 boys squatted in wet alders and prayed the Almighty to 
 save them from the terrible retribution of kissing a little 
 girl. 
 
 God! 
 
 Nathan went down on his knees. It was not because 
 he intended to kneel in prayer. It was because he stumbled 
 and could not rise again. 
 
 "Dear God," he cried hoarsely, wildly. "Dear God " 
 
 In the awful void, no seeming contact with anything 
 mundane but the feel of mud and steppe grass beneath his 
 boots, he felt suddenly so light-headed that he wondered 
 what was happening to him. Was he dying? 
 
 "Dear God Dear God " 
 
 He fainted. Or rather, he collapsed. 
 
 There is always a morning. 
 
 Strange, unreal gray permeated the void. Rolling on 
 billows of nausea, Nathan recovered groggy senses. He 
 was freezing cold; he was being consumed by fire. Where 
 was he? His mouth was dried leather. Where was he? 
 He had no eyes; they had been burned out, or they were 
 in the process of burning out right now. Where was 
 he? 
 
 He moved and it agonized him. He uttered a piteous 
 cry for no one to hear. He fell back. He moved again. 
 He got up on an elbow, the length of an arm. He fell 
 back again. Where was he? 
 
 It came to him where he was. He was lost in Siberia. 
 He must go on. 
 
 There are depths of endurance in the human spirit which 
 no man can assay until he has a last great need for taking 
 their fathoms. 
 
 Nathan got up reeling. He did go on. 
 
 The quickened circulation of his blood caused by the 
 exertion warmed his stiffened limbs somewhat. Joints bent 
 more easily with use. 
 
 The events of the past night finally came to him in full 
 terror. He remembered he might yet be only a mile or
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 433 
 
 so from the tatterdermalion crew in that horror-village. 
 He drove himself forward faster. 
 
 He drank mud water, foul with grit, to assuage a burning 
 thirst. 
 
 The world was gray now. There was no longer need 
 for groping. But it was a ghastly, grisly grayness. At 
 any moment phantoms might loom in the mist. There was 
 light enough to examine his arm. Mercifully he could not 
 see how bad a wound the bullet had made, what had hap 
 pened. It was too near his shoulder in the back. 
 
 "I've got to go on ! I will go on !" he cried indomitably. 
 
 The fog showed no prospect of lifting. It was still a 
 world without form and void. Dimly conscious in his direc 
 tion, treading now on the firmer ground that bordered the 
 steppe's road, Nathan went on and away into nothing, noth 
 ing! Only fog! 
 
 Once he heard a horse approaching, slopping through 
 the quag. Frenziedly he left the road, drew into the deeper 
 mist, flattened himself to earth. Horse and rider passed 
 him about a hundred feet to the east, a high-hatted rider on 
 a dirty, creamy pony. Then quiet again ethereal quiet 
 the journey on and on and on! 
 
 The fog of the world and of life was having a last great 
 rubble with Nathan. 
 
 There could never be another fog like the fog of that 
 night. There could never be another grayness quite like 
 that last awful morning. 
 
 A couple of hours after dawn Nathan began drawing on 
 raw nerve to make that journey. He had no prospect of 
 finding food. He had no prospect of finding any one, even 
 if he made the railroad. Trains over the railroad ran days 
 apart now. He was far closer to death than he suspected. 
 
 But the blind instinct to live, to win an objective, drove 
 him onward. And the road and the hills kept his footsteps 
 true. Hour after hour, mile after mile, still he staggered 
 onward. Little six-inch steps at times now. Fog! Fog! 
 Fog! 
 
 Had the sun risen ? Could the sun be shining above ? 
 
 The fog was luminous different somehow. It seemed so. 
 
 "It's got to lift sometime!" he cried brokenly. "The 
 sun's shining somewhere. The sun is always shining some 
 where. I must find it. I must !"
 
 434 THE FOG 
 
 How long he had been traveling since he awakened on 
 damp ground and fought himself to his feet, he had no way 
 of telling. Whether the sun had risen and was shining 
 brightly above, he did not know. How close or how far 
 he was to the railroad was equally vague. But Nathan, 
 following that straight, muddy, northern road, came at 
 last to a turn. The road bore off at right angles to the 
 eastward. 
 
 He stopped, swaying dizzily. 
 
 "I didn't come to any such corner last night," he cried. 
 "I know I didn't! If I'm down in a valley in a defile 
 somewhere around here are hills. I'm going straight north 
 ward and see if I can't find hills. Then I'll climb somehow 
 to the top and try and get my direction see if I can locate 
 the railroad." 
 
 It was not a decision to be taken lightly. So long as he 
 kept to the road, that road must lead somewhere. If he 
 lost that road by wandering away into the hills, he might 
 never be able to find it again. Yet could he always follow 
 it through lowlands, always stumble and stagger onward 
 down in fog? He had to make that decision. And he did 
 make that decision. He decided to climb upward on to the 
 heights and trust to the sunlight above to set him aright. 
 
 The sunlight above to set him aright! 
 
 Anyhow, that climb started. For he found a hill almost 
 directly ahead of that abrupt turn in the road to the east 
 ward. That is why it had turned, to avoid the grade. 
 
 It might not have been a serious climb for a normal man. 
 But for a man exhausted and broken as Nathan was ex 
 hausted and broken, it was Golgotha in earnest. This was 
 its only redeeming feature: as he dragged himself up, it 
 became quickly evident that the world was growing brighter 
 about him. 
 
 Yes, somewhere above the sun was shining, shining 
 gloriously ! 
 
 Up, up, up! On hands and knees now. The fog was 
 thinning. He knew, because somehow the air felt warmer 
 in those moments when his body was cold. 
 
 Because he was turned face downward, crawling tor 
 tuously, he did not see that sun when first it was discernible 
 through the vapor. 
 
 He had to stop many times. When he started again he
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 435 
 
 wondered in the back of his splitting head and grinding 
 consciousness where he was rinding the energy to make 
 that ascent. At times he was so ill with vertigo that his 
 stomach was racked; perhaps it was only the intuitive 
 fear of falling and rolling back that long and sharp slope 
 to the bottom into the fog again! that kept him con 
 scious. 
 
 He was clawing upward a few feet now, then stopping 
 half -hours, it seemed, for rest. His tongue was swollen. 
 He could not shut his eyes for the agony. He tried to 
 swallow and his throat refused to function. It came to him 
 that in those self-commands to go on, the voice was not 
 his own. It was no voice at all. He was making crazy, 
 growling, guttural sounds. 
 
 And then the sun! 
 
 Raising his eyes after one of his pauses for rest, hang 
 ing weirdly above him he beheld a ball of pale lemon, 
 lambent in the heavens. Was it the sun? Could it be the 
 sun? 
 
 Of course it was the sun ! Nathan laughed at himself 
 for the question. He did not realize his laugh was a crazy 
 cackle. 
 
 Nathan climbed out of the fog. 
 
 He emerged from the fog-belt in the space of a hundred 
 feet, left it below him entirely. 
 
 It was not quite the top. Not yet ! 
 
 But when he had climbed out of that fog-belt into the 
 warm, enervating sunshine, he saw the top. 
 
 Yes, he saw it, and he saw something else. The wounded, 
 groping, clawing, climbing man raised tortured body from 
 above the last mist-wreath, a hundred feet below the very 
 summit of the grade. But as he raised blistered eyes toward 
 that top what was it? an illusion? It must be! No! 
 It was not an illusion ! 
 
 There on the peak, swathed in the Sunlight Glorious, 
 Nathan saw a woman! 
 
 Queenly and tall, she was, Diana of the Morning ! Calm 
 eyes were gazing afar across limitless billows of night 
 mist. Sunlight glinted on breeze-blown tresses. About her 
 arrow-straight figure floated in beautiful folds a cape of 
 blue with a scarlet lining. She was a white woman, and
 
 436 THE FOG 
 
 blue and scarlet cape was the field uniform of the American 
 Red Cross, the Greatest Mother in the World! 
 
 Nathan was hideous with grime and filth. Blood was 
 caked upon him. One arm hung useless. He had to pull 
 himself that last hundred feet by inches. But when he 
 knew it was not an illusion, not a mirage of glazed eye 
 balls and mangled imagination, he uttered a cry, a piteous 
 cry, and held out his one good hand. 
 
 He held out his one good hand to Woman Beautiful on 
 the Hill Top Woman Beautiful at the Summit who 
 seemed waiting there for him to come up, though the last 
 hundred feet he came sightless and staggering. 
 
 That was the one big time when Nathan held out his 
 hand in agony of body and spirit to Womanhood and 
 Womanhood responded as a ministering angel. 
 
 Woman Beautiful started at the cry, turned her gaze 
 down, beheld him. Then 
 
 Swiftly she started down the grade to greet him 
 to reach him to give him the final help he needed to 
 realize attainment to reach the pinnacle whereon is Vic 
 tory. 
 
 Woman Beautiful came down. In her eyes was all 
 Tenderness. On her face was Sympathy Infinite. She 
 uttered a little cry of compassion. She caught his hand. 
 
 "You poor, poor fellow !" were the words that Nathan 
 heard. "You're hurt! Let me help you!" 
 
 Regardless of his broken body, no woman had ever 
 spoken to Nathan in that tone before. Tears flooded across 
 his glazed eyes then. Moisture welled in his throat. He 
 wanted to speak, to answer. He could not. 
 
 Let her help him ! No woman had ever said that to him, 
 either. 
 
 "Lean" on me!" came the invitation from her wealth of 
 compassion and tenderness. "You've only a little way more 
 to go. Make a little more effort. Then you can rest 
 up in the Sunlight!" 
 
 He could rest up in the Sunlight ! 
 
 The third miracle happened then. The broken man felt 
 his arm being lifted across a woman's shoulders. And sud 
 denly by his side the resilient, supple strength of a woman 
 sustained him. He felt a woman's effort added to his own. 
 He felt her almost lift him. He never knew that a woman
 
 SUNSHINE GLORIOUS 437 
 
 could possess such strength. She spoke with compassion, 
 she asked to help him, she placed his arm across her 
 shoulder, she sustained him, she added her effort to his 
 own, she lifted him, she gave him her strength all she 
 had to give, all that he needed ; she literally bore him upward 
 to the summit. He reached the Hill Top. 
 
 It was all Sunlight. 
 
 A thousand feet away was the railroad. A long train 
 of a dozen white cars stood there, great carmine crosses 
 emblazoned upon their sides, the glory insignia of the 
 great Red Cross. The engine had been detached. Train 
 crew and guard of soldiers were using that locomotive to 
 shunt off piles of charred and smoldering wreckage ta 
 clear the track that the Red Cross on its mission of mercy 
 might "carry on." 
 
 Into the last car broke the woman in blue and scarlet. 
 She interrupted the doctor in charge. 
 
 "Come quickly !" she cried. "A wounded soldier ! I went 
 off to that point of land to the south while they were clear 
 ing the track. As I stood here, a horribly hurt man crawled 
 up the slope out of the valley fog. He's stretched out on 
 the ground in collapse. Come quickly !" 
 
 A stream of white-clad figures poured from the coaches, 
 across the level plateau to the edge of the ravine. Two 
 young surgeons bore a stretcher. 
 
 They picked up Nathan and laid him upon it. It was the 
 work of a few moments to bear him back to the train. 
 
 "An American soldier! One of our boys!" cried Doctor 
 Cleeve. "They probably attacked the train last night and 
 captured him and he escaped from them!" 
 
 It was mid-afternoon when the Red Cross train was able 
 to proceed again, into the deeper heart of Siberia, bearing 
 Nathan backward. But he was among his friends his 
 countrymen people of his blood and homeland. 
 
 He awoke in a white-iron berth, gauze bandages about 
 his head, his left arm in a sling, bound tightly against his 
 body. It was night. The great mercy-train was clicking 
 steadily westward. 
 
 "Where is she?" he cried wildly, as he raised himself 
 on his good elbow and addressed the young doctor, nodding 
 by the window. 
 
 "Where is who?"
 
 438 THE FOG 
 
 "The woman who came down the hill the one who 
 helped me to the top!" 
 
 "She's asleep ! It's the middle of the night. You've been 
 unconscious and in delirium. Feeling better?" 
 
 "Who is she? Where have I seen her before? Or was 
 she just an angel ! And her face from my own imagination ?" 
 
 "Miss Theddon found you, old man. She's a new nurse, 
 just out from the States. Joined us from Manila. You're 
 a lucky guy !" 
 
 "Theddon? Theddon? What's her first name?" 
 
 "Madelaine, I think. Madelaine Theddon." 
 
 "What part of the States does she come from?" 
 
 "Somewhere up in Massachusetts. I think I heard her 
 talking with Doctor Cleeve about Springfield." 
 
 "It wasn't illusion !" cried Nathan then. "It was my girl 
 of the Star ! My girl of the Window out here away 
 out here in Siberia ! Oh, my God !" 
 
 "You know her, old man?" 
 
 "I saw her face once in a star," affirmed Nathan. "I " 
 
 Another doctor heard Nathan's wild declamation and 
 entered hastily. 
 
 "Delirium!" announced the first. "He thinks he knows 
 Miss Theddon. Better give him another shot, Jack. He's 
 pretty near done for!" 
 
 But it was not delirium. How could they understand?
 
 Nathan had been too toughened by eighteen months of 
 soldiering to remain long indisposed. What he wanted 
 more than all else was sleep, hours and hours of sleep. 
 
 The man never would have become so exhausted in so 
 short a time as a night and a morning and a journey through 
 fifteen miles of muddy slough, if he had not lost far more 
 blood from the wound in his arm than he realized, and if 
 that flight had not been made in pitchy darkness which 
 turned his overwrought emotions and racked imagination 
 inward and sapped his nerve force with even far more 
 deadly effect than the injury to his shoulder. Therefore, 
 when the mud and blood and filth had been washed from 
 his face and body, his wounds sterilized and bound, and 
 his mind fully saturated with the consciousness that he 
 had been saved and the whole horror was a thing of the 
 past, his invalidism was short-lived. 
 
 They kept him under opiates the first day and night. 
 The second morning he awoke, raved for a time, was made 
 to take food, then went back to sleep again. The third 
 morning he sat up, called for his clothes and got them. 
 There was small room on that train for invalids to remain 
 invalids for the luxury of it. His clothes had been cleaned 
 in the time intervening. He dressed with a doctor's help. 
 But he felt dizzy after breakfast when he tried to smoke 
 and lay down on his berth again. He must have fallen 
 asleep, for when he awoke it was high noon and the train 
 had stopped. Far out on the expanse of hard brown 
 steppe, it had turned upon a siding to permit an eastern- 
 bound train of "empties" to clear. 
 
 Nathan arose and looked out of the window. The world 
 was surfeited with sunshine. Never had there been such 
 a day. The small white-enameled compartment in which his
 
 440 THE FOG 
 
 bunk was located was empty. Off across the prairie he 
 saw doctors and nurses strolling. A warning whistle would 
 bring them back in time. Beside, they could see the western 
 track for miles, straight to the far horizon. Nathan sud 
 denly wanted to be out there in the sunshine too. 
 
 He discovered that his leg, where the jagged nail had 
 penetrated, had been cauterized and tightly bandaged. But 
 it gave him no especial distress. The cut in his forehead, 
 when dried gore and caked muck had been washed away, 
 had turned out to be a two-inch gash above his right eye 
 which a bit of adhesive plaster covered. His wounded arm, 
 in which the feeling had begun to return about noon of the 
 previous day, was tightly bound against his body. Thirty 
 hours of sleep had brought back his strength and rebuilt 
 his shattered nerves. Yes, Nathan suddenly wanted to 
 be out there in the sunshine too. There were several 
 khaki coats on the bunk above. He swung one around and 
 got his good arm into its right sleeve. He pulled it as 
 best he could over his battered shoulder and fastened a 
 couple of black-copper buttons at the throat. An officer's 
 cap hung on a hook in the passageway. Nathan went out 
 into the iron vestibule and down the steps. 
 
 He had not seen Madelaine since she had helped him to 
 the hill top. The car to which she was attached was far 
 up forward. Nathan had been hurriedly carried into the 
 next to the last coach. He wanted to find Madelaine, how 
 ever, and thank her. But most of all, he simply wanted to 
 gaze into her face, to see "in a close-up" his Girl of the 
 Window. His stunned brain had not quite assimilated yet 
 that he had found her, far out on the other side of the globe, 
 deep in the lands of the Tartars. 
 
 "What the devil are you doing out here?" demanded 
 a sharp voice behind him. Nathan turned to behold one 
 of the surgeons. 
 
 "Soaking in sunshine," was his simple response. 
 
 "You're supposed to be sick for another day, at least." 
 
 "Sick? Hell! I'm all right. All I needed was sleep. 
 And I guess I got it." 
 
 "But, man, you may take cold in those wounds." 
 
 "I'll be hanged if I'm going to stay in there and be fed 
 beef tea while the rest of you people enjoy yourselves out 
 side on a day like this !"
 
 THE AMETHYST MOMENT 441 
 
 "Were you on that smashed train we had to clear off 
 the track?" 
 
 "Yes," said Nathan. Briefly he recounted his experience. 
 Doctors and nurses gathered around as he talked. Made- 
 laine was not among them. 
 
 "Fortunes of war!" observed one of the surgeons philo 
 sophically, when the terse recital was ended. "Think of all 
 the poor devils who have failed to make their hill tops in 
 time." 
 
 "Can I ever forgot them?" asked Nathan huskily. "I 
 wish I could!" 
 
 ii 
 
 His stiffened limbs ached for action. He begged a 
 cigarette and started northward over the plain. 
 
 The air was balmy with a lingering suggestion of Indian 
 Summer. But there was no haze. The flatness of the earth 
 only accentuated the vast arch of the sky. That sky was 
 sharp cobalt. The earth had mellowed to a golden brown, 
 awaiting the snow. And against that combination of cobalt 
 and golden brown, far on ahead, Nathan suddenly saw a 
 furl and flash of deep scarlet, a vivid splash of color as 
 the noon breeze, blowing from the ends of the world, 
 caught the cape of a lone Red Cross nurse and rippled it 
 slightly ahead of her. 
 
 She was walking pensively as Nathan came up. She was 
 leaning slightly backward against the breeze. Her loosened 
 hair was blowing about her temples and face. In the crook 
 of her right wrist she carried a book, her forefinger keep 
 ing a place in the pages. Soul of the sky and the earth 
 and the wind and the distances, she seemed somehow, a 
 picture for an artist! 
 
 She paused at his step behind her. Nathan paused also. 
 He did not wish to frighten her. The woman turned. 
 Slowly they inventoried one another, their eyes met. 
 
 Twenty-nine years were focussed in that moment. 
 
 The man saw his Woman of Vague Dreams before him 
 in reality. She was straight as a Norway pine, exquisitely 
 turned as a Venus de Medici, dark as a Castilian. She 
 was fragile of ankle, strong of thigh, deep of breast, soft 
 of shoulder.
 
 442 THE FOG 
 
 On her finely chiseled and sensitive features lay a slight 
 pallor. Her lips were half-parted.. Great brown eyes were 
 faintly startled, inquiring, lucid with an infinite delicacy 
 and tenderness. She was a woman with a big soul! It 
 was all there, on her features. 
 
 Madelaine beheld a man ten feet from her, unlike any 
 man she had ever seen. He was a head taller than herself, 
 agile of carriage, cordy of shoulder and bicep, sure of 
 tread, controlled of muscle and nerve. His features were 
 burned to the hue of brick. His gray eye carried as true 
 as a rifle ball. And his mouth ! His lips were classic ; 
 every mean and petty thing he had risen above, every 
 heckling trial he had met with infinite patience, every hell 
 he had groped through because he believed that to go 
 on was self -obligation and that somewhere above a sun 
 must be shining gloriously, the whole long chronicle of 
 what he had lived was all concentrated in two cable jaw 
 muscles and the manner in which he closed his lips. 
 
 He also had calm eyes now. 
 
 His strong, virile body, war -hardened, was clad in a 
 uniform that indicated no rubber-stamp soldier. His khaki 
 shirt was left loosely open at the throat, disclosing a chest 
 as tough as leather. He wore his cap at a rakish, he-man 
 angle and his forehead wound and bungling shoulder only 
 accentuated his virility instead of making him clumsy. 
 
 The woman slowly viewed his face and his frame. And a 
 queer thrill shot deep and true, far down into the innermost 
 reaches of her being. Here was a MAN ! 
 
 Two pairs of calm eyes met in that moment. Face to 
 face, eye to eye, they looked upon each other and those 
 glances held. Male and female, worthy of each other, made 
 for each other, they met at high noon under an infinite 
 cobalt sky on a spot as level and far-flung as the Table 
 lands of Eternity. And all around and about them was 
 Sunshine. It had to be in the sunshine, that ! 
 
 in 
 
 The woman was the first to speak. 
 "Why! You're the soldier who climbed toward me day 
 before yesterday, out of the fog."
 
 THE AMETHYST MOMENT 443 
 
 Nathan's voice was steady. 
 
 "Out of the Fog, yes!" he replied. "And you were the 
 Good Angel who saw me trying to get out of the Fog and 
 came down and helped me to make the Top." 
 
 "I suppose we should introduce ourselves, as there's no 
 one apparently to do it for us. I am Madelaine Theddon 
 from Springfield, Massachusetts." 
 
 The breeze stopped blowing for a moment. All sounds 
 softened into eternal silence. Even the sunlight waited. 
 Nathan never took his eyes from that cameo face. 
 
 "Forge is my name, Miss Theddon," he said. "Nathaniel 
 Forge! I'm from Vermont." 
 
 Off over the rim of the world, washed by the crisp 
 whitecaps of a mazarine sea, once was a coral island which 
 no man's chart has ever compassed. There had never been 
 a gray day upon that coral island. The sunlight started 
 there. Deep in its heart were bowered valleys and acres of 
 flowers, and in the vesper hour sweet notes came down 
 the evening silence, played upon reeds. It was the island 
 of Arcadie. And far, far back before the lid of Pandora's 
 Box was opened, loosing its swarm of griefs and troubles 
 upon the world, Everyman dwelt there and in the starlit 
 dark Someone came to him, Someone who was part of 
 himself and covered him with the wealth of her 
 hair. 
 
 The gods were jealous of those who lived upon that coral 
 island. They destroyed it. And ever since, Everyman 
 has been hunting, hunting, up and down the worlds, for 
 the one who came to him as a Whisper and a bit of Incense, 
 in that dark. Sometimes that search ends beautifully. 
 Nathan was not so far wrong in his youthful poetry after 
 all. 
 
 "Forge!" cried the woman. "Nathaniel Forge!" 
 
 "Yes," the man answered. He never knew why she 
 spoke his name as she did. He only knew that, gazing 
 deep into her face, he saw the blood die out and an expres 
 sion come as though she would cry aloud. He knew that 
 she dropped the book and half-raised her arms toward 
 him. 
 
 A man's brain may play queer pranks in life's Great 
 Moments. Came to Nathan then some lines he had written 
 long ago, even as it was coming to the woman, intuitively,
 
 444 THE FOG 
 
 subconsciously, that both of them, in some far, previous 
 incarnation had met so, had stood so, had spoken so, long 
 before. 
 
 ". . . the toil and tears we may know, dear heart, 
 
 Must some day reach an end; 
 Through miles and years we must search sometimes, 
 
 Ten thousand for one friend. 
 Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright, 
 
 In some vast, open space, 
 You'll stand, flesh-clothed, with your arms outstretched, 
 
 And triumph on your face. 
 
 "I know few words will be needed then, 
 
 Lament nor name nor plea, 
 We'll let our eyes speak the message sweet; 
 
 'Grow old along with me!' 
 The soul of man has a thousand lives, 
 
 Yet Love has only one, 
 That leaps alive to the Glory Cry: 
 
 'Dear Heart, the trek is done !' " 
 
 Nathan had builded better than he ever knew. It was 
 his ! and hers ! that noontime. The trek was done. 
 
 Madelaine's eyes were starry, starry as they had never 
 been before in all her days. This copper-hued, clear -eyed, 
 lean-jawed, firm-voiced man was Nathaniel Forge! This 
 was the one who had written a little poem which she had 
 folded away in lavender and old lace and placed in a little 
 casket deep beneath her Inner Shrine, turning piteously 
 from the poignant fantasy that it could possibly have been 
 meant for her. 
 
 Romance? What was Romance? This was Romance! 
 This was Romance the height and the depth and the width 
 and the breadth of it idealism unfathomable the most 
 beautiful thing in the world. 
 
 On a thousand nights in her orphaned heart she had 
 wondered what he could be like, how he could appear, how 
 his voice might sound. But that wonder had been forcibly 
 sent away, off to the mystic vales behind the sunset where 
 all our little unborn wishes go. Kismet, however, could 
 be kind. This was a world after all in which action and 
 reaction could be equal. There were still rewards and 
 fairies. The mjri of her little heart-locked romance stood
 
 THE AMETHYST MOMENT 445 
 
 before her in the flesh at last. And he was all that she 
 had ever dreamed a man could be and more. 
 
 Yes, it was all there, all there on his face. 
 
 "Let us walk together, you and I," said Madelaine, when 
 her heart throbbed again and the great cog-wheels of the 
 universe turned once more. 
 
 But in the woman's suggestion lay a far deeper sig 
 nificance than Nathan grasped at the time. 
 
 IV 
 
 They fell into step and moved off, side by side, across 
 the stubble. The sunshine sang and the breezes rioted. 
 What mattered it that they stood in a land of blood and 
 junk and chaos, with war roaring across the horizons and 
 all the world on fire? There was a cobalt sky above them 
 and the world stretched true into the western Infinite. It 
 was a long way to the horizon, a very long way. 
 
 "Miss Theddon," said Nathan, "life is very queer at times, 
 isn't it in some of its coincidences and denouements, I 
 mean ?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Madelaine, scarcely recognizing her own 
 voice. She was trying to credit that this romantically garbed, 
 erect-figured, firm-footed, steady-voiced man by her side was 
 Nathaniel Forge. She felt rather light-headed about it. She 
 did not note just where they were walking. She did not care. 
 There was a sky and it was blue. There was sunshine and it 
 flooded over them. There was a horizon, and as they walked, 
 it moved even farther away. 
 
 "Because, Miss Theddon, this doesn't happen to be the 
 first time I've seen you, I believe, though I dare say you 
 never knew. Some day I'd like to tell you. Not now. Please 
 don't ask it. But somehow I feel I know you very well, that 
 I've always known you." He laughed lightly. "After all, 
 Massachusetts and Vermont are very close together, aren't 
 they?" 
 
 How could she tell him ? Could she tell him ? She heard 
 herself speaking, as though she were a third person, listening 
 to the conversation. 
 
 "And I feel that I know you too very well indeed. Though 
 I'm not yet quite over the shock of meeting you, away
 
 446 THE FOG 
 
 off here in the heart of Asia. You you wrote a poem 
 once " 
 
 He lost a step in his abrupt surprise. Then he recovered 
 himself. 
 
 "While I was seventeen I had a period when I wrote a few 
 rhymes, yes," he affirmed. "Every fellow does, I fancy. 
 Only some write them worse than others." 
 
 "One of those poems happened into my possession. I 
 found it in a newspaper. It it interested me. I kept it. 
 I wondered who you were and why you should have writ 
 ten such a poem." 
 
 "Which poem was it? I wrote several." 
 
 "I'll tell you that some day when you tell me where 
 you saw me before," she answered. It was sincerely spoken, 
 not coquetry. 
 
 "We find we know one another and we meet out here ! It 
 is almost too much to credit." 
 
 On the mellow brown steppe they were two figures sil 
 houetted against the sky, a bronzed man in khaki and a 
 beautiful woman in blue and scarlet. They were walking 
 rather close together. 
 
 In the far distance sounded a long-drawn whistle the 
 east-bound freight. They had to return. But their Amethyst 
 Moment had slipped into Memory! 
 
 "Look here, Forge," cried a young surgeon angrily, when 
 he came through the train a quarter-hour later, "what the 
 devil did you say to that Theddon girl that she should come 
 back, lock herself in her compartment and shed tears all 
 over the place ? The nurses up front are all talking about it." 
 
 "Say to her? Tears? Me? Why, I didn't say anything 
 to her. Is she weeping?" 
 
 "I said so, didn't I? What the devil's happened, anyhow? 
 Have you ever known her before?" 
 
 "From the beginning of the world, old man !" 
 
 "You're bughouse!" snapped the doctor. "You haven't 
 come out of the ether. The beginning of the world ! Night 
 before last you were seeing stars. You're a nut! Jack, 
 where's that morphine ? Give this coot another shot !"
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 SYMPATHY 
 
 Snow began covering Siberia east of Baikal. It seemed as 
 though winter arrived in a night. Still there were many 
 mornings when the high, cold sunshine glinted in a trillion 
 jewels across thin snows of early November and the nipping 
 air was like wine, piercing a world suddenly frozen hard as 
 wood. It was such a morning when the great white train 
 finally moved in off the eastern steppes and began that all- 
 day crawl around the southern and western shores of Baikal, 
 up toward Irkutsk. Sunshine, sunshine! Cobalt blue and 
 sunshine! If Nathan remembered Japan as a land of laugh 
 ter, he remembered Siberia as a land of Sunlight Glorious. 
 The night in black fog was only a dream, a nightmare, which 
 had slipped in between some flaming sunset and a singing 
 sunrise. And the sunshine glinted now on the far-rolling 
 whitecaps of Baikal as though the water reached up and 
 scooped nets of it from the air and rolled it over into liquid 
 sacks of shimmering green until that imprisoned sunshine 
 burst and made evanescent foam and swashing water laugh 
 ter, icy cold. 
 
 The train was headed for far Western Siberia, in toward 
 the Ural Mountains Ufa, Samara and the Volga where 
 a thin line of valiant, ragged Czechs were stemming the 
 Bolshevik tide eastward. Yet it dropped hospital and medical 
 supplies and occasionally a surgeon, as it went along. It 
 would stay a week in Irkutsk. The only patients it contained 
 to date were unfortunates who had been picked up en route, 
 like Nathan, pro-Ally soldat who had escaped from Bolshevik 
 camps or with eyes blinded and tongues pulled out had been 
 turned loose in great Siberia to perish in agony for daring 
 to question the political acumen and sociological sagacity of 
 an ex-anarchist and a Bronx dish-washer.
 
 448 THE FOG 
 
 Crowds gathered quickly at stations where the train 
 stopped, stolid, smoothly boarded, wooden stations resem 
 bling American freight houses in towns of ten thousand 
 inhabitants, stations with queer, Tartar filigree and scroll 
 work decorating the side gables, and all painted a militant 
 mustard yellow. Madelaine beheld what Nathan had been 
 familiar with for over a year. Flat-faced, gray- whiskered 
 peasants in lambskin hats, green blouses, knee-length boots, 
 who might have stepped from the pages of Tolstoi ; tall, 
 burly, chinless young men with long sandy mustaches, child 
 like blue eyes, massive hands, in dark green military caps, 
 ragged civilian coats, calves protected from winter cold by 
 spirals of coarse juting; big-bellied, deep-chested officials 
 who seemed all the same age around fifty years in 
 arum-major hats of black lambskin dented at rakish angles, 
 dressed in great overcoats that forever required brushing, and 
 possessing hands that always needed warming; youths with 
 big legs and small ears, wearing cadet caps, blouses buttoned 
 at the left shoulder, belts with big front buckles resembling 
 closed nickel cigarette cases, long trousers like cotton overalls 
 that bagged at the knees and flopped about each ankle like 
 a sailor's; women with dough-like faces, no breasts, prom 
 inent abdomens and raw hands, who wore mannish coats and 
 swathed their heads in brilliant shawls until their features 
 could hardly be discerned ; Khirgese desert folk in suits made 
 from undressed skins; shivering Chinese in black cambric, 
 old felt hats and pigtails who tried to eke out a living selling 
 corky cabbages piled in baskets swung at opposite ends of a 
 five- foot pole ; ponderous Mongolian Tartars in mountainous 
 ulsters of goatskin and no hats, with their cues wound atop 
 their heads and most of them forever accompanied by a long 
 cattle whip ; little children in over-size hats and caps, braving 
 the killing wind in cotton clothing, strange indeed was the 
 aggregation which gathered miraculously when news of the 
 great " Americanski" train permeated each railroad settle 
 ment. And all around and about were dogs, hundreds of 
 dogs half-starved, ravenous, snapping, snarling, wolfish, 
 with wild, greenish eyes who watched for scraps of gar 
 bage and fought over them, the stronger driving off the 
 weaker and leaving them animated creatures of mere skin 
 and bone, to perish of slow starvation. 
 
 They reached Irkutsk in the night. Next morning Nathan
 
 SYMPATHY 449 
 
 went off to find the Consul and Hartshorn and report his 
 abortive attempt to get through to Harbin. He was absent 
 all day. It began to snow about four o'clock. Hartshorn 
 entered the office car with a scowl. 
 
 "They're holding a dance over-town to-night because of 
 the arrival of all the Red Cross girls," he announced; "a last 
 bust before they go in-country." 
 
 "Well," demanded Nathan, "what of it?" 
 
 "I'd like to go and I can't. Somebody's got to look after 
 these cars and be here in case the Czechs want anything." 
 
 About six o'clock Madelaine accidentally encountered 
 Nathan up the platform of the great marble station. 
 
 "I'm not going to-night," he said, in response to her 
 question. "I'm looking after the office car so Hartshorn can 
 go. The poor fellows here haven't had a holiday for months, 
 and my life lately has been pretty much all holidays, espe 
 cially the past week." 
 
 "I should very much like to see the Red Triangle outfit," 
 said Madelaine. 
 
 "And I'd like you to meet some of the Czechs. They're 
 the finest chaps on earth! They call us Y. men the 'Little 
 Uncles from America.' " 
 
 "It wouldn't require much persuasion to make me forget 
 they were giving us a dance to-night," said Madelaine softly. 
 
 II 
 
 The Y. cars serving the Czechs had been permanently 
 shunted off on a western spur, a mile south of the big main 
 station. They were great Manchurian freight cars, sheathed 
 inside and made habitable with doors, windows and stove 
 pipe chimneys. All of the service and recreational parapher 
 nalia supplied to Red Triangle huts in France was also 
 supplied to these club cars. There could be no huts in 
 Siberia. There was no trench fighting. Armies maneuvered 
 too swiftly, principally by rail. 
 
 Every Czech in every car arose as Madelaine passed 
 through. An American Red Cross nurse! They held their 
 caps in their hands. They were gentlemen, every man of 
 them, college-bred lawyers, professors, doctors, artists, 
 high-caste tradesmen. In one car Madelaine halted in
 
 450 THE FOG 
 
 astonishment before a painting in oils done upon the boards 
 of the inside wall from materials which came from God- 
 knew-where. It was "The Burning of John Huss," the great 
 Bohemian patriot, executed with a craft fitting to hang in 
 any art gallery. The graceful young officer in charge spoke 
 English. He laughed depreciatingly. 
 
 "Ah, it eese nothing. One man, he paint eet because he 
 have much time and nothing other to do." 
 
 Madelaine and Nathan came finally to the caboose car, 
 Hartshorn's combination office and living quarters. In addi 
 tion to the sheet-iron stove and shelf-table were a desk, an 
 oil lamp, a few wooden chairs. Nathan lighted the oil lamp 
 and poked the fire, throwing in several new billets of wood. 
 It was then about half -past eight. 
 
 "Let's sit here and rest and talk," begged Madelaine. 
 "The crowd won't return until midnight or after; there's 
 no necessity for hurrying back." 
 
 Nathan placed a chair for her so she could dry her damp 
 footwear and skirts. He threw off his coat, for it was bun 
 gling and uncomfortable. Madelaine insisted upon it. She 
 insisted, too, that he smoke; she saw the stem of his briar 
 protruding from the breast pocket of his shirt. 
 
 "I know you want to smoke," she laughed. "A man looks 
 so gloriously comfortable and relaxed when he's ruminating 
 over his pipe." 
 
 "I can't fill it," returned Nathan lamely. "Not with one 
 hand. It's of no consequence." 
 
 "I'll fill it for you," declared the girl. It was not an offer. 
 It was a simple statement. 
 
 Nathan surrendered pipe and tobacco tin and she filled 
 his briar. She had no nonsense about it. She did not affect 
 to be coy or awkward, or act as if men who smoked pipes 
 were some type of monster who occasionally devoured 
 women and little girls. She simply filled it and tamped the 
 tobacco down hard and that was the beginning and end of 
 the whole matter. Neither did she act as though either pipe 
 or tobacco should be handled with tongs. She might have 
 been filling men's pipes for a livelihood since her school days. 
 And when she handed it across, and the pipe was drawing 
 evenly, she made him pull the low box on which he sat over 
 close to the comfortable stove near her feet. Then as Sigurd 
 might have sat at the feet of Briinhilde "with the flames all
 
 SYMPATHY 451 
 
 around them, while she sang him the sacred runes, of war, 
 of pity, of safety, of thought wise words, sweet words, 
 speech of great game," so Nathan sat before Madelaine for 
 the first time that night and once more in his life the clocks 
 of time went unwound. 
 
 Outside, the snow was now falling heavily, smothering 
 the city, burying them in. It hushed all the sounds of the 
 world. No wind stirred. The flakes were great polls of 
 wool that piled quickly. So it would snow for a week, two 
 weeks, and create the winter-bound Siberia of old-time story 
 and conception. They were alone, these two, in the heart of 
 great Asia. Alone together! Little else mattered! With 
 one big talon hand wrapped about the briar, a strong fore 
 finger pressing into its bowl from time to time, Nathan 
 leaned forward, half toward Madelaine, half toward the little 
 stove. 
 
 They sat in silence for several minutes, a silence so great 
 that Nathan could hear the woman's wrist watch ticking 
 distinctly. Finally Madelaine said: 
 
 "You and I have an acquaintance in common, I believe. 
 Bernice Gridley. Isn't that so?" 
 
 "You know Bernie Gridley ?" Nathan forgot to 
 smoke, so great was his surprise. 
 
 "We attended the same preparatory school at Mount 
 Hadley, Massachusetts, for a time." 
 
 "Then you you must be the 'Springfield friend' 
 with whom she went abroad. That is I mean was sup 
 posed to go abroad." 
 
 It was Madelaine's turn to be startled. 
 
 "You know about Bernice?" 
 
 "Her father, Caleb Gridley, is one of the best friends I've 
 ever had. If it hadn't been for old Caleb God bless him! 
 I'm afraid I wouldn't have done much with my rhymes 
 or anything. He's been the only real father I've ever 
 known." 
 
 "But how did you know about Bernice?" 
 
 "Her father told me one night. I forget what started it. 
 He was feeling pretty blue over it, although he wouldn't say 
 much. Bernie and I were rather good friends once." 
 
 "What do you mean about Mr. Gridley being the only real 
 father you've ever known? Isn't your own father living?" 
 
 Nathan swallowed with difficulty.
 
 452 THE FOG 
 
 "It's a long story rather sordid too long for me to 
 hope to explain." 
 
 Madelaine noted the choke in his voice. She studied his 
 well-shaped head and muscular, capable shoulders. Some 
 live cinders had dropped into the stove's open ashpan. They 
 still burned. Those ruddy flames lighted his copper coun 
 tenance. What a specimen of a man he was! 
 
 She loved him. Already she loved him. Deeply. 
 
 "Perhaps I understand better than you think," she replied 
 calmly. "I happened to be in Paris, Vermont, one night. 
 I met a queer old philosopher who ran the livery stable 
 Pve forgotten his name. He told me about you much!" 
 
 "You've been in Paris!" 
 
 "I remembered a little poem of yours I had saved 
 had first appeared in a Paris paper. I stopped off there to 
 look up the poet. Naturally, I was interested to see what he 
 might be like. It was a rather unfortunate time. You had 
 recently suffered a serious business setback. I decided to 
 postpone my good wishes until a more appropriate occa 
 sion." 
 
 "What night was it ? Tell me frankly. Was it while they 
 had me locked up?" 
 
 He was so candid that his question demanded an answer 
 equally candid. 
 
 "Yes," she replied. Then after a time she leaned forward. 
 "My dear boy," she said softly, seriously, "you've kept things 
 inside yourself, repressed and unvoiced so long, you've done 
 yourself an injury. Why not tell me all about them ? Won't 
 you believe I'd like to be your friend?" 
 
 "It's a long story," he repeated. "It's the story of almost 
 my entire life. And nobody wants to hear that!" 
 
 "I want to hear 'that.' And there is much time before 
 midnight." 
 
 Then, as New England would express it, "one word led 
 to another", and before many minutes had passed Madelaine 
 Theddon was adroitly drawing from Nathan all the hot, hard 
 story of his sordid, perverted, mediocre past. He scarcely 
 realized the girl was thus intriguing him. A great, relieving 
 freedom lifted him, gaye him one long, wide-open opportunity 
 to unburden his tired heart. At times his voice broke with 
 the stress of it. 
 
 He began where all good stories should begin, at the begin-
 
 SYMPATHY 453 
 
 ning. He did not boast and he did not depreciate. He took 
 no undue credit for himself and he made no maudlin, insipid 
 bid for compassion. He did not spare himself and he did 
 not spare others. He hewed a straight, simple, naked nar 
 rative of fact and experience and let the chips of blame or 
 censure clutter where and whom they would. 
 
 The green billets burned lazily in the little stove. The 
 smoke from Nathan's briar curled upward and after shaping 
 into sweeter pictures of the future than it could ever make 
 of the past, it wafted out a slightly lowered window at the 
 back. 
 
 And Madelaine listened. She was one of those big women 
 whose ability to listen is part of her birthright her ma 
 ternal heritage. When Nathan spoke frankly and fearlessly 
 of his experience with Carol, and why the Gardner girl had 
 returned to Ohio, she interrupted for the first time. 
 
 "But couldn't she see it was because of your great, clean 
 love for her that you couldn't soil that love with anything 
 sordid? Wasn't she big enough to realize you didn't want 
 your idol to have feet of clay of your own modeling?" 
 
 Nathan sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He made no 
 comment. 
 
 Then he told of his life with Milly, the cheapness, the 
 shallowness, the depression and handicap of it. He told of 
 the petty bickerings and the reasons for them; the hideous, 
 mediocre, unsatisfying slovenliness of her home while he 
 hungered bitterly for beautiful things without knowing how 
 to satisfy that hunger. He told the incident of the repainted 
 victrola as an illustration of six discouraging years. He 
 could afford to laugh at it now. He did laugh. But Made 
 laine did not laugh. She was very close to tears. 
 
 When he came to the incident where old Caleb had brought 
 the pink rosebuds to the child's funeral and then read Nathan 
 the Twenty-third Psalm in the hotel afterward, Madelaine 
 laughed, strange as the statement may sound. But it was 
 not in mirth. It was to counteract the tears which had 
 brimmed over. She smeared them away with her naked 
 fingers, not bothering to draw out her handkerchief. 
 
 Nathan told of his business struggle with his father; the 
 neurotic extravagances of his mother; the death of Milly 
 after her liaison with Plumb. Then he came to that night 
 in Chicago when he had visited Bernie and had acid poured
 
 454 THE FOG 
 
 on his quivering flesh because of his infirmities. Made- 
 laine paled a moment. Then righteous anger flooded her 
 face. 
 
 "And Bernie said any such tiling? Acted in any such 
 way? Twitted you for things you could not help? I'd like 
 to pull her ears!" 
 
 No woman had ever declared before that she would like 
 to pull any one's ears in Nathan's behalf. It was a new 
 experience for the lonely man and it overwhelmed him. 
 Especially when Madelaine went on: 
 
 "I don't think your hands are homely. I've watched your 
 hands ever since we met. I think they're the strongest, most 
 virile hands I've ever seen upon a man. If I were in deep 
 trouble, unable to protect myself, I should very much like 
 to have hands like yours clenched into pile-driver fists, strik 
 ing blows in my behalf ! That for Bernie ! She's absolutely 
 heartless and a little vulgarian herself, beside. I think she's 
 horrid. Oh, you poor boy ! You haven't mentioned a single 
 girl or woman who's come into your life or gone out of it 
 who's been anything but a heartache and a handicap. Hasn't 
 there been one, Nathan not one ?" It was the first time she 
 had called him Nathan. But it was spoken too naturally to 
 be crude or forward. 
 
 "I've told you the whole story," said the man simply, 
 thickly. 
 
 He put out his hand in a gesture, that old, old habitual 
 gropirvg motion, as though feeling for some one or something 
 by his side. But now, for the first time in his life, that hand 
 did not grope fruitlessly. It grasped a woman's hand, soft, 
 strong, human, electric in that contact! 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he cried, startled. 
 
 "There's no need for begging my pardon, dear boy. Some 
 how I feel you and I are going to be rather good friends. 
 Some other night I'll return your confidence by telling you 
 my story. But to-night belongs to you." She waited a 
 moment and asked : 
 
 "And you never did any more with your talent for writing 
 after your father stopped you ?" 
 
 "I couldn't. I never had the heart. Mr. Hod, editor of 
 the local paper, hurt my feelings one night by telling me he 
 couldn't print any more of my rhymes until I'd stopped a 
 certain wail and and well he said I ought to sing!
 
 SYMPATHY 455 
 
 But I couldn't sing. There was no song in my heart. I 
 gave up the poetry nonsense for good." 
 
 "No ! Not for good. You will write again, finer things. 
 You will learn to sing. I feel certain of it; you will learn 
 to sing !" 
 
 Nathan laid his pipe aside and sat with his big talon claws 
 at his right temple to hide the emotions playing over his face. 
 As he seemed disposed to silence, Madelaine continued: 
 
 "It's almost too much to understand, dear boy how 
 you've stood out true to yourself and your ideals against such 
 a background. Most boys would have succumbed. But you 
 kept the faith with yourself. That was glorious. Such a 
 constancy makes me want to sing. There are so few who 
 keep the faith and go on, plow on fight on ! through 
 everything !" 
 
 "I haven't done anything yet," was Nathan's answer, "not 
 anything that really counts. I've felt as though I were wait 
 ing to get my fundamentals straight, my feet on firm ground. 
 Then I'd really go on. Then I'd really plow ahead. Then 
 I'd fight in earnest ! When I've won, maybe I'll sing again. 
 Yes perhaps !" 
 
 The heart cry beneath his brave optimism and blind faith 
 in the Ultimate Good was not lost on the girl. Lost on her ? 
 It surcharged her, overpowered her, surfeited through her 
 and under her and about her till her calm eyes glowed starry 
 again. It was like him. He would say it. She knew it 
 years before expected it. 
 
 And Bernie had made her believe that this man was a 
 provincial, a "hick," impossible! Poor Bernie! She had 
 wanted a man who could wear a monocle without looking 
 silly or lead a cotillion. And he was so big that little tinsel- 
 worshiping Bernie couldn't see him. So she struck him, 
 scarred him, wounded him without knowing, discounting all 
 Gentlewomen by her narrowness. 
 
 What this man needed was simple, pitifully simple. He 
 needed some one in his life with the capacity to love greatly. 
 All else would follow as a matter* of normal denouement. 
 
 "Dear boy," she said huskily, "relax! Don't worry any 
 longer. Let all the past and pressure ease away. Let's even 
 forget that you're a man and I'm a woman. Let's see if we 
 can't just be good friends for a time and help each other. 
 You have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide, nothing
 
 456 THE FOG 
 
 to worry over, nothing to hold you or handicap you any 
 more. You have courage. You have strength. You have 
 inherent ability. You have hunger for beauty and divine 
 discontent which the world needs more of. You have that 
 great, indefinable, invaluable thing which the world calls 
 Personality your greatest asset ! All life lies ahead of you. 
 It's flooded with color and sunshine. And you're 'leaping as 
 a strong man to run a race.' Wonderful ! Start that race ! 
 Start for the Higher Hill Top. You can do it. All you 
 need is some one to believe in you. Well, maybe there are 
 far more people believing in you than you've ever dreamed. 
 Keep the faith with them, even as you've kept it so far with 
 yourself. Be true to your high calling wherewith you were 
 called. Everything which has gone before has been Educa 
 tion. You have reached Commencement now. Ahead lies 
 the world the Battlefield! Go in with your Strongheart 
 singing. Oh, dear boy, you deserve it so! I know you 
 deserve it the spoil and the Hill Top !" 
 
 "God !" cried Nathan. He spoke the holy word in a way 
 that kept it holy. A woman telling him this! 
 
 There was a pain like a knife-thrust in the back of his 
 throat. He sat like a man turned to stone, scarcely daring 
 to move. But he did move. He turned his face and looked 
 up into calm eyes. Calm eyes ? But starry eyes too. They 
 could be both. Verily they could be both. 
 
 With the self-assurance of the wise nurse the woman of 
 medicine perhaps at the moment who knew what her pa 
 tient needed more than all else for swift recovery Made- 
 laine gently drew Nathan toward her. She opened her lap. 
 
 Nathan's face went down into that lap. That strong face 
 was awash with hot, hard, terrible man-tears, though all the 
 girl saw was a slight, intermittent, noiseless contraction of 
 his broad shoulders. 
 
 But his one good talon hand stole out halfway around 
 her waist. A grip of iron! 
 
 It was the end of the trek for Nathan. In that simple 
 privilege, that soft lap, those cool, gentle hands that stroked 
 his hair, the soothing touch on his bowed back, the whispered 
 words of comfort and incentive, the lad came to know at 
 last the great, indefinable, unfathomable solace of a loving 
 woman's ministering tenderness. He did not want a mate 
 not then. -He wanted only a mother. And he got a mother.
 
 SYMPATHY 457 
 
 He got a mother-spirit glorious. Richly it was his, for the 
 taking; how richly he never dreamed at the time. There 
 was no less respect nor mate-love for Nathan on the girl's 
 part in that moment, because he wanted the mother in her. 
 If he had not wanted it, she would have been disappointed. 
 Other things would come afterward perhaps after he 
 had found himself, satiated his starved, emaciated soul with 
 her gentle sympathy and wisdom of his need. 
 
 It was a strange scene to occur far in the empire of the 
 ill-fated Romanoffs. New England was twelve thousand 
 miles removed at that moment. And yet at the ends of the 
 earth these two who needed each other so greatly had found 
 Arcadie. And all was well! 
 
 Heavier and thicker fell the snow outside. All sounds 
 were muffled. The world was shut out. The odorous oil 
 lamp sputtered fussily a perturbed chaperone. Pleasant 
 crackling of flame leaped now and then in the little stove. 
 Yet the war had been fought for this moment. Years before, 
 this tiny car had left the Moscow shops for this moment. 
 It had been drawn to Irkutsk and left precisely here for this 
 moment. All things on earth had moved forward and existed 
 down to and for this moment. And Nathan felt that what 
 ever happened now, life from this moment would never be 
 the same again not quite the same. 
 
 In his life there was now a Woman!
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 
 
 It was cherry-blossom time in Japan. 
 
 Not only had the war ended in precisely the way the war 
 should end, but Nathan and Madelaine had lived through 
 that horrible winter of 1918-1919 in the typhus pest house 
 that was Siberia and come through unscathed. 
 
 It had been an overwhelming revelation to Nathan of the 
 woman he was growing to love with all the untwisted, un 
 leashed, latent forces that were best within him during the 
 horror days of that winter. Cool, poised, positive, Madelaine 
 had never flinched, never complained, never shirked the most 
 terrible and revolting of situations. For two months she had 
 lain down to sleep each night in a medical train side-tracked 
 but fifty feet from carloads of frozen corpses piled like billets 
 of wood on freight trains in the forty-below-zero weather, 
 waiting wholesale interment far outside the city in the spring. 
 
 Nathan had been obliged to leave her in January. The 
 central Siberian Government at Omsk had fallen. The 
 Czechs were departing for home. Steadily and deadly, the 
 bloody hand of the Lenine Government was reaching out for 
 crazed jurisdiction over all the Russias. Nathan made the 
 long trip out to Vladivostok and remained there helping to 
 wind up the post-war activities of the Red Triangle. Then 
 he went down to Japan. From January to the last of April 
 he did not hear from the girl, and there were nights when 
 fear that she had succumbed to the typhus tortured him so 
 that the furrows in his cheeks and forehead were like saber 
 scars. 
 
 But the nightmare ended. He had gone down to Tsuruga 
 to meet her. A typhoon had churned the Japan Sea to a two- 
 day fury. She had been ill. With a stab of compassion 
 Nathan beheld how weak and spent she was. They dined in
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 459 
 
 the little European restaurant on the second floor of the 
 ticket building at the length of the wharf. 
 
 "And you succeeded in getting sailings?" asked Made- 
 laine. 
 
 "On the Siberia Maru for the twenty-first. We've almost 
 ten days to rest and look around Japan. I'm sorry you look 
 so tired. You need the holiday !" 
 
 "How glorious it will be to get back to God's country," 
 the girl returned, "where there's law and order and clean 
 liness and decency. Where you can address a stranger on 
 the street," she laughed, "and have him understand you at 
 once !" 
 
 After lunch they had taken kurumas across Tsuruga City 
 to the station where the train was being made up for Yoko 
 hama. Gradually Madelaine recovered her buoyancy of 
 heart, shutting away thought of the Siberian horror which 
 no panacea in the world but time could cure. In fact, there 
 were periods in the reaction when she was almost childish in 
 her effort to live now only for the present and the future. 
 All that day they had followed the great northern sweep of 
 the Inland Sea whose colors and vistas were like a painting 
 on a Japanese screen. They had reached Yokohama at seven 
 o'clock. 
 
 They were like lovers on their honeymoon already. They 
 changed into civilian clothes. In the next few days they 
 visited Tokio, Nikko, Fujiyama, the Great Buddha and 
 Torii at Kamakura. 
 
 It was cherry-blossom time now in Japan. And in cherry- 
 blossom time in Japan came that night when Nathan asked 
 the Girl-Without-a-Name to take his own and be his wife. 
 
 ii 
 
 He had not meant to ask her to be his wife, not then. But 
 the night before they sailed he had gone with her on a last 
 walk about Yokohama, their final contact with the quaint, 
 droll, beautiful empire of cloisonne, and iris, of weird dis 
 tances and romantic shrines, of well, just Japan. 
 
 It was a moonlit, lazy-warm May evening. They sank 
 down to rest finally in the little park opposite the Interna 
 tional Y. M. C. A. The great treaty port was hushed, that
 
 460 THE FOG 
 
 fantastic, pregnant, unreal hush which permeates all Nip 
 ponese cities by night, even though they know little clash of 
 traffic by day. The hour was late. The park was deserted. 
 Street lamps had been extinguished; the moonlight made 
 them superfluous. The exotic shrubbery, the great yellow 
 moon peeping over the top of a gigantic pepper-tree, the 
 sharp, intermittent cleek of the cicadas and other night insects 
 singing out of tune around them, now and then the light of 
 a pink-paper lantern bobbing along on the shafts of a distant 
 riksha turned that park into a Garden of Dreams. 
 
 Madelaine was clothed in a white frock, white pumps ; she 
 carried a white parasol splashed over with quaint figures in 
 pink. Nathan wore pongee and a Panama. They had fallen 
 into talk about the future; what each expected to do when 
 they reached home. They sank down upon a wooden bench 
 just off the main pathway and Nathan drew aimless marks 
 in the powdered trap-rock with his stick. 
 
 "I suppose I should go on with my medical studies," 
 Madelaine observed. "But somehow oh, dear ! they 
 seem so colorless and prosaic now, after what has happened 
 in Siberia. I feel I have paid my debt there. Oh, laddie, my 
 whole life has changed so! Things that I thought so great 
 and vital have shrunken to such inconsequence. And others 
 which have been only vague instincts and intuitions seem to 
 matter more than all else in the world even its sufferings 
 just now. I don't believe I can explain it so you'd under 
 stand." 
 
 But Nathan did understand. 
 
 "Madelaine," he said slowly after a time, "I received a 
 letter from Ted Thome about a month ago; he's my sales 
 manager who sent me out here in the first place. Mosely, 
 manager of our New York office, was killed in France. The 
 man who took his place can't handle the work. Ted has 
 offered it to me. It carries ten thousand a year, now. You 
 remember me telling you how I expected the position once, 
 but felt I lost caste at Mrs. Mosely's dinner party? Well, 
 I'd like to go to New York now and try again. But 
 but " 
 
 "You have a ten-thousand dollar position awaiting you? 
 How perfectly splendid!" 
 
 "Madelaine, I can't go back to what I left the emptiness, 
 the petty troubles with petty people, the groping around
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 461 
 
 blindly for social cues, the the loneliness, Madelaine ! I 
 can't go back to half-a-life again. Despite all the horrors of 
 war, I've been happy out here ! I've found happiness out 
 here. I want it to stay. It must stay ! I can't go down into 
 the Fog. Not again. I feel I've gained a little hilltop. I 
 mustn't lose even that partial height. I can't." 
 
 "Nathan," came the girl's whisper, "do you know what 
 you want?" 
 
 Did he know? The poet in Nathan spoke then. 
 
 "Yes," he cried hoarsely. "I want to go on. I want to 
 leave sordid mediocrity behind me forever. I want fine, 
 rare, delicate, beautiful things about me. I want to live in 
 an atmosphere of them and a home of them. I want to feed 
 my heart and my soul upon them. I want to make them a 
 part of me. I want to gain from life every last iota of 
 artistry and softness and richness it has to give. I want to 
 do my work with a song in my heart. I want every hour a 
 golden moment and time just something to pass away. I 
 want money and opportunity to indulge that deep and vital 
 impulse that once prompted me to express myself in rhyme. 
 Do I know what I want ? You ask me that ! Yes, I know 
 what I want ! I want all of these things. Not to imitate 
 somebody else or because I was once a poor, distraught young 
 colt working in an abattoir for a dollar a day. Not that! 
 But for the sake of beautiful things and one hundred per 
 cent, living in itself because beauty is next to godliness ! 
 Yes, it is! But there's something I want more than all of 
 that, Madelaine. I want the woman I first saw above me on 
 a Hill Top, standing in glorious sunshine looking off across 
 a far country. I want the good angel who saw me wounded 
 and exhausted, struggling up from low-lying Fog, and came 
 down to me and gave me her strength to make the Summit. 
 I want the woman who listened to my foolish, pent-up 
 heartache that winter's night in far-away Irkutsk and opened 
 her lap and told me that nothing else mattered except lack 
 of belief in myself. I want the woman who's been patient 
 and ministering and inspiring in a thousand hours since to 
 go home with me, Madelaine to dwell with me in a 
 Palace Beautiful, dear girl whose windows look out upon 
 Delectable Mountains. I want you, dear Madelaine! And 
 my heart is filled with such rich, mellowed love for you that 
 it chokes my throat. You stand for all of the things I've
 
 462 THE FOG 
 
 totaled, dear girl. You're the best and biggest thing that's 
 ever come into my life. I want you and I want you ter 
 ribly!" 
 
 A pause. An insect cheeping somewhere under boxwood. 
 
 "Then why don't you take me, foolish boy?" Woman 
 Beautiful laughed softly. 
 
 Hushed Japanese night, the moon riding hazily above the 
 rakish branches of eucalyptus now, cicadas singing on into 
 eternity, paper lanterns bobbing far across elfin dark ! They 
 stood amid the trillion blossoms of cherry trees whose petals 
 sifted all around them, and Nathan knew for the first time 
 in twenty-nine barren, heart-breaking years, the sensation of 
 a real woman's soft arms about his neck and the sweet, 
 scented, delicate impress of a real woman's kiss upon his 
 lips, returning his caress with a warmth and a tenderness 
 that fused his heart and his soul and made them as one 
 forever. 
 
 The white parasol was lying on the bench. No one was 
 left in the park but themselves. The moonlight was again 
 shining into a woman's face as they stood there for an 
 instant and Nathan held her close. But she was not weakly 
 flaccid in his embrace. Her body thrilled to his. 
 
 "Dear lad," she said in a faint whisper, "I've waited a 
 dreary time for your strong arms around me and your hard- 
 shaven cheek close to mine. Oh, I don't mean merely since 
 the Great Noon-time in Siberia. Years before that, dear lad, 
 years and years ! Sunlit days, gray days, rainy afternoons, 
 empty twilights, nights when I wanted to sob in the darkness 
 I thought of you and wondered where you were, and what 
 you were doing, and if in your heart there was a little lonely 
 ache likewise. I wondered how badly you needed me, dear 
 lad, even as I needed you. For my heart ached for Romance, 
 too, until it almost seemed I'd accept my disappointment and 
 believe it had passed me by. But God is good. You're get 
 ting only a little orphaned girl, dear lad, found under a hay 
 cock on the edge of a wood. But she loves you loves you 
 a bit terribly she has always loved you loved you even 
 before she knew your name, or where you were, or what 
 the sound of your voice was like. You are her life and her 
 world henceforth. She, too, has found her Other Half and 
 her heart will never greet the sunshine coming across the 
 hill tops in the morning without a song springing to her lips
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 463 
 
 and tears to her eyes. It has been a bitter wait, dear lad, 
 and the way has not always seemed clear. But the end of the 
 trek it is sweet, very sweet. We will go back, we will go 
 home. And all the beautiful things you have wanted, that 
 I can help you get they shall come to you. Ail the artistry 
 and softness and richness I can help bring to you shall sur 
 round you. You shall do your work with a song in your 
 heart also. Every hour shall be a golden moment. Time 
 shall be a thing only to pass away. Oh, Nathan dear, I'm the 
 happiest of women. We'll go home with the morrow. To 
 gether we will go home and dwell in a Palace Beautiful 
 whose windows look out on Delectable Mountains, indeed!" 
 
 "To-morrow at two o'clock home!" 
 
 "Home!" she repeated. "Oh, Nathan!" 
 
 in 
 
 During that night before their departure, clouds blew in 
 from the Pacific and blanketed the sea-coast country. They 
 awoke the next morning to find a light drizzle falling. But 
 it held up after breakfast and Madelaine declared, as she 
 turned in her room keys: 
 
 "I've several purchases to make before we go on board. 
 Let's go penny-shopping together." 
 
 They went out the west door of The Grand, brushing 
 aside the eager, solicitous kuruma men and turned northward 
 along the back street afoot. Madelaine wore a traveling 
 suit of gray worsted, the short skirt permitting a light, easy 
 stride. Her head was covered with a mannish hat of black 
 velour, half the brim turned down. She cared little for 
 the wet. 
 
 They picked their way through greasy streets, but always 
 when it was necessary for the woman to walk ahead, the 
 man's eyes followed her hungrily. Would he never become 
 weary of simply gazing upon her? The sheer grace and 
 delicacy of her every curve and line; her erect, supple car 
 riage; her frank, fearless, appraising eyes; her perfect poise, 
 regardless of the situation ; the ephemeral expressions which 
 played upon her cameo features ; the neatness of her hair at 
 the back of her neck; what a thoroughbred she was to her 
 finger tips!
 
 464 THE FOG 
 
 They made many little purchases in stores and curio 
 shops. Nathan could not buy her the diamond he wanted 
 until they reached America; his funds were too low and 
 he had no time to draw on home for more. Her diamond 
 must wait until they reached New York. But it would be 
 a diamond! 
 
 They were gradually wending their way toward the Ori 
 ental Steamship wharf when a window of carved ivory curios 
 caught Nathan's fancy. 
 
 "Let's go in and look them over," Madelaine suggested. 
 "We've still four hours to spend somehow before sailing." 
 
 They went inside. The shop was arranged European style, 
 deep showcases running along either side of the back. The 
 proprietor laid out several trays and cases for their inspec 
 tion. Then a Japanese boy came and jabbered at him. 
 
 "You excuse," the proprietor grinned. "I send Angleese 
 man sell you," and he went to a door opening into a sort of 
 workshop and called in an order. 
 
 The "English" clerk came forward, along behind the 
 counter. Nathan's head was bent close to Madelaine's, exam 
 ining an ingenious carving. Nathan turned to the clerk and 
 held it out, his eyes still on it. 
 
 "What's the price of this?" he asked. As he asked it, he 
 raised his eyes to the clerk's face. 
 
 He was looking directly into the features of his father 
 
 IV 
 
 His father! 
 
 Separated by the width of the show case whose edges both 
 gripped suddenly. Nathan and Johnathan gazed into each 
 other's suddenly ashen faces. 
 
 "You!" cried Johnathan. "You! My son!" 
 
 Johnathan had grown stouter but he had aged twenty 
 years. Remorse, loneliness, self-pity and the ever-present 
 realization that he was an exile had eaten into his features 
 like acid. Both temples were white but it was a weak, 
 rusted, moth-eaten whiteness. His eyes were more watery 
 than ever and his mouth as loose, excepting for the petulant 
 knots of muscles in each corner. 
 
 "Father !" the boy gasped huskily.
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 465 
 
 Madelaine frowned, then looked on wide-eyed. From his 
 son's bronzed, muscular face, Johnathan's gaze leaped to 
 Madelaine's, then back again. Ivory carvings were forgotten. 
 
 "What are you doing out here ?" 
 
 "I'm on my way back home from Russia," Nathan an 
 swered mechanically. His mind was still stunned with the 
 drama of it. 
 
 "You have been to Russia ?" 
 
 "Siberia ! Yes ! I've been up there almost a year and a 
 half, working among the Czechs." 
 
 Johnathan's body had not moved. Only his eyes and face. 
 Again the father's eyes sought Madelaine. 
 
 "Up in Siberia? Alone?" 
 
 "Yes. But I'm not going back alone. This is a very dear 
 friend of mine. Madelaine, apparently I can introduce my 
 father. Father, this is Miss Theddon. She is going to 
 be my wife." 
 
 "Your wife? What's become of " 
 
 "Of Mildred? She died some time ago." 
 
 "My God !" cried Johnathan weakly. He rubbed the back 
 of a puffy hand across his forehead. Down back of the 
 counter he moved unsteadily to reach the intersection where 
 he could come out from behind the cases. He had not 
 acknowledged Madelaine or the introduction, by the way. It 
 was a distressing moment for Madelaine but she recovered 
 as Johnathan came up. 
 
 "I'm sure I'm delighted to meet Nathan's father," she said. 
 
 Johnathan gave her a slight nod and turned at once to his 
 son. In so far as he was concerned, she might have been 
 marooned on a ring around Saturn. 
 
 The tears were streaking down Johnathan's face. He 
 raised his hands and gripped the boy by his elbows. 
 
 "How long have you been in Yokohama?" He cried 
 hoarsely. 
 
 "Ten days. But I lived here three months before I went 
 to Siberia." 
 
 "And you never looked me up !" 
 
 "I tried hard enough. But nobody knew any Johnathan 
 Forge " 
 
 Johnathan started at the pronouncement of his name. He 
 shot a frightened glance around. 
 
 "My name is Smith!" he cried "John Smith!"
 
 466 THE FOG 
 
 "I couldn't know that, of course," returned Nathan dryly. 
 He was beginning to recover from the shock of the encounter. 
 
 "You must come with me!" declared the father. "You 
 must tell me all about Paris and home. I will find a place 
 for you to " 
 
 "I'm sorry, father. But Miss Theddon and I are sailing 
 for San Francisco at two o'clock." 
 
 "Not to-day!" 
 
 "To-day, yes." 
 
 "But but we've only just found each other." 
 
 "That's lamentable, of course. But I can't help " 
 
 "You must put off your sailing." Johnathan said it as 
 though he had settled the entire matter. 
 
 Nathan shook his head. 
 
 "Sorry, father," he answered. "It's impossible! We've 
 been lucky enough to secure immediate passage, and we must 
 get back. Miss Theddon is not in the best of health and 
 I've got a New York job waiting that can't go begging 
 another moment." 
 
 "My Lord! You're not going to run after we've just 
 found each other! Not that, Natie, not that!" 
 
 "I'm not running. But I've been away from home a year 
 and a half and we're expected back June first without fail." 
 
 Johnathan looked around frantically, desperately. 
 
 "No," he said after a time. "I don't suppose you would 
 stay, not for me! I never cut much of a figure in your 
 life, anyhow, did I, Nathan? You and your plans never took 
 much account of your father, did they? Maybe if they had, 
 I'd never have left home in the first place." Again Johnathan 
 smeared the back of his hand across his forehead. He 
 turned to Madelaine. "For twenty-five years it was just like 
 this !" he told her. "And you see what it's done to me." He 
 submitted himself abjectly for general compassion and sym 
 pathy. Madelaine's voice was courteous enough but a bit 
 icy as she responded : 
 
 "Your son has told me the whole story, Mr. Forge. I 
 understand perfectly." 
 
 Johnathan was pitying himself too much in this closing 
 phase of his domestic drama to interpret her sentiment 
 correctly. He assumed that Madelaine was sympathizing 
 with him against Nathan. 
 
 "He always was headstrong," began Johnathan promptly.
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 467 
 
 "Went right along demanding his own way even as a beard 
 less boy that couldn't " 
 
 "Pardon, Mr. Forge. You misunderstood. I said your 
 son has told me the whole story and therefore I recognize 
 exactly where the blame lies." 
 
 Johnathan gaped for a moment. There was no mistaking 
 her calm hostility. He turned to his son. 
 
 "Nathan ! For God's sake, don't go ! Don't desert me 
 now when I've j'ust found you again. I never deserted you, 
 Nathan ; for twenty-five years I did my duty " 
 
 It was awkward to have his father suddenly begin to act 
 so. Other customers had entered the shop and were behold 
 ing. Madelaine read on her lover's face the distress he was 
 seeking a way to ameliorate, somehow. Her indignation 
 rose. 
 
 "Really, Mr. Forge, is it quite fair to appeal to Nathan so? 
 Because I've been under the impression you did desert him 
 and left him to face a somewhat cruel set of circumstances." 
 
 "What do you know about it?" snapped Johnathan. 
 "You're a stranger to us Forges " 
 
 "Father! That'll be enough of addressing Miss Theddon 
 so, please ! And I suggest we find a place less public where 
 we may talk." 
 
 "Yes, yes!" agreed Johnathan. "The back office here. 
 They'll leave us alone. Come into the back office, Natie." 
 
 Nathan glanced at Madelaine. She nodded. They moved 
 toward the back office. 
 
 "Your woman friend will excuse us," suggested the father 
 curtly. "We have much to talk over in private, Nathan." 
 
 "Oh, no," responded the son. "I don't care to discuss 
 anything I do not wish Miss Theddon to hear." And Nathan 
 stood aside for Madelaine to precede him into the cluttered 
 little workshop. Johnathan was not so courteous. 
 
 Johnathan, in fact, was piqued. In Madelaine he sensed 
 an adversary. Immediately he took no care to keep con 
 cealed his estimate of her, of all women. They seated them 
 selves, a smile of grim humor lurking about Madelaine's 
 pretty mouth. 
 
 "First you will cancel your passage," began Johnathan 
 doggedly. "You must promise me, Nathan! Remember, 
 you'll never have but one father." 
 
 "I cannot and will not delay our sailing, father." Nat's
 
 468 THE FOG 
 
 voice was kind but firm. "Now that's settled, what about 
 home do you especially wish to know?" 
 
 Johnathan produced a soiled handkerchief and blew his 
 nose. But he saw that because of the influence of a "female" 
 undoubtedly, the son was the same adamant, bigoted colt he 
 had always been. 
 
 "You might tell me about yourself," he said lamely, petu 
 lantly. "You had a wonderful little wife, Nathan. What 
 happened to her ?" Johnathan said this for Madelaine. And 
 he did not miss the pallor which took the humorous lip-smile 
 from the girl's features as he said it. He had a way to 
 wound the girl, perhaps drive a wedge between her and his 
 boy. "And your child, Natie! Little Mary was one of the 
 sweetest tots I ever saw. What became of her?" 
 
 "She was killed by a truck a year before Milly died," was 
 the son's rejoinder. He said it stiffly. He wondered if his 
 father was to be deliberately mean if it might not have 
 been better after all to ask Madelaine to wait until the visit 
 was ended. 
 
 "That's hard, Natie. It must have been awful ; you 
 thought so much of her. And Milly? I always loved Milly. 
 She was such a wonderful little woman and did so much for 
 you. I remember she was the only one who stuck by us in 
 the factory the time you had that trouble with the help and 
 they all walked out on you." 
 
 "Milly was untrue to me," returned Nathan with con 
 tinued stiffness. "She ran away with that Plumb fellow and 
 was killed when a munitions plant exploded in Russell- 
 ville, New Jersey." 
 
 Johnathan assimilated this after a time. He murmured 
 philosophically, "The ways of the Lord are true and righteous 
 altogether. Blessed be the name of the Lord !" 
 
 Nathan grimaced. 
 
 "What else do you wish to know, father ?" he asked 
 and waited. 
 
 "And now you're plunging into matrimony again so quick ! 
 I don't see how you can do it, Natie out of respect to 
 Milly's memory if nothing else." 
 
 Nathan kept his temper admirably. He could apologize 
 to Madelaine for the insult afterward an entire lifetime of 
 apology. 
 
 "I owe Milly nothing. I told you she ran away with
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 469 
 
 Plumb. Anyway, we won't talk about that. You're only 
 dwelling upon it because you see it annoys Miss Theddon. 
 What other information can I give you?" 
 
 Johnathan's manner changed. 
 
 "How about your mother?" he demanded like a challenge. 
 
 "Mother had a bitter time after you left us. She sold the 
 Longstreet house but a smooth oil-stock salesman cheated 
 her out of the money. At present she's living with Edith." 
 
 Johnathan turned to Madelaine. 
 
 "And among the things my son has told you," he demanded, 
 "did he include, perhaps, an account of the twenty-five 
 years of hell I lived with his mother? For twenty-five 
 years she was my trial and my cross. I couldn't stand it 
 finally. I had to get out. There was no other escape but 
 flight. Human flesh and blood couldn't stand it, I tell you ! 
 Wait till you get to know her. Then you'll sympathize with 
 me. There's righteousness and justice in this world some 
 where and the wicked get their deserts." 
 
 Madelaine made no comment. The pause which ensued 
 angered Johnathan. 
 
 "From the very night I was married," he went on in a 
 trifle higher tone, "the tussle began. Never once did she try 
 to help me or stand back of me in my battle with the world. 
 She nagged me and she fought me. She " 
 
 "Possibly, Mr. Forge," interrupted Madelaine. "But why 
 tell me about it?" 
 
 "You're marrying into the family, ain't you? There's 
 things which you should know." 
 
 "I'm merely marrying Nathan," responded Madelaine. 
 
 The interview was going badly. Great tears continued to 
 roll down Johnathan's face and he blew his nose again and 
 again. 
 
 "What business are you in, Natie?" he finally asked. He 
 was an injured man. There was not a doubt about it. All 
 the world had it in for him. 
 
 "I secured a position with the Thorne knitting mills," 
 returned Nathan. "I traveled for them a year and a half. 
 Then they sent me out here to the Orient. I'm going back 
 as manager of their New York office." 
 
 "Well, Natie, you have your father to thank for that! 
 If it hadn't been for the business training I gave you, no 
 firms would ever be offering you any New York manage-
 
 470 THE FOG 
 
 ments at your age. Why, when I was your age I was lucky 
 to draw twelve dollars a week. We worked for our money 
 in those days." 
 
 Nathan finally felt it time to put a few inquiries himself. 
 
 "How does it happen you're working here, father ? Money 
 give out?" 
 
 Johnathan turned quickly and looked through the window 
 into a dismal yard. 
 
 "The curse of us Forges, Natie," he finally responded, 
 "has always been women. You'll learn it one of these days !" 
 
 "How does it happen you're working here? Money give 
 out?" Nathan repeated. 
 
 "I started to tell you, if you'll be respectful and wait a 
 moment. Don't be so hot-headed. Hot-headedness and lack 
 of respect always were your faults, Natie!" 
 
 Nathan waited as patiently as possible. 
 
 "I came out here," Johnathan went on, "seeking love and 
 surcease from all I'd suffered. I met a woman. I thought 
 she was in every way a woman to be desired, Nathan. I 
 married her ' 
 
 "You married her ! You were never divorced from 
 mother !" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I was! Do you think I'm a bigamist? I got 
 a divorce from your mother under the Japanese laws " 
 
 "Mother never knew about it." 
 
 "I can't help that." 
 
 "The divorce laws of Japan, Nathan," explained Made- 
 laine with a faint smile, "are very simple. When a man 
 grows tired of his wife in Japan he may dispense with her 
 by merely walking out and leaving her, first informing the 
 police to that effect, I believe. Then he contracts a new 
 marriage by going to live with his paramour and duly in 
 forming the police to that effect also, giving his new resi 
 dence. One of the Y. W. C. A. girls explained it to me." 
 
 Johnathan ignored Madelaine. He went on: 
 
 "I got a divorce from your mother under the laws of 
 Japan. I married what I supposed was a woman who'd be 
 the wife I deserved after all I'd been through back in the 
 States. But she was like all women. I lived with her just 
 two days. I was fool enough to intrust my bank account to 
 her. The third day she was missing and so was the money. 
 I've never got trace of either, since. I had to take a job."
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 471 
 
 Nathan flushed again with the new insult te Madelaine. 
 But for an instant his anger was arrested by the announce 
 ment that his father had been flimflammed by an adventuress. 
 
 "Edith has six children now," he essayed, after a painful 
 moment. 
 
 But Johnahan was not interested in the fact that Edith 
 had six children. He went on in the same whine: 
 
 "I'm living from hand to mouth, Natie. I've been here 
 the last three years waiting on trade, interpreting for my 
 employers because I learned how to speak a little Japanese. 
 Think of it, Natie waiting on trade for a godless heathen 
 me!" 
 
 "Under the circumstances it ought to be a very good posi 
 tion," observed the son. 
 
 The visit continued in this strain until noontime. Then 
 they went out together to a small restaurant and had tiffin. 
 Johnathan managed to get Nathan alone. 
 
 "Son," he cried brokenly, "you must loan me some money. 
 I'm at the end of my rope. Some days I think there's nothing 
 left but to jump in the Bay." 
 
 "How much money do you need ?" 
 
 "All you can spare me," was Johnathan's modest request. 
 
 "I'm low on funds, father. I've got just about enough to 
 get me back to Vermont. I wanted to buy Miss Theddon a 
 diamond but have had to wait until " 
 
 "Could you let me have a thousand yen, say ? That's only 
 five hundred and ten dollars ! in cash !" 
 
 "It's out of the question, just now. I've only a hundred 
 and eighty dollars with me and my passage across America 
 will use up a hundred of that." 
 
 Ultimately Nathan gave his father twenty-five dollars, 
 fifty-five ten-yen notes. Johnathan took them rather sourly. 
 He placed more stock in the money Nathan promised to wire 
 when he reached Vermont. 
 
 "Oh, my boy, my boy! What are you doing?" he next 
 cried, anent Madelaine. "You're fortunate enough for your 
 first wife to die on you. Straightaway you go putting your 
 head in the halter again ! After all I tried to save you from ! 
 After all your father's example! Oh, well! You deserve 
 nothing but the misery coming to you ! This is a just world !" 
 
 "Let's not talk about Miss Theddon, father. She's the 
 sort of lady I'm afraid you wouldn't understand."
 
 472 THE FOG 
 
 "Wouldn't I, though? Don't try to tell me there's any 
 kind of female I don't understand ! I'm older than you and 
 therefore must know better. And never mind how many 
 miles of land and water separate us, young man, remember 
 I am always your father. I am always your father !" 
 
 "Just what has that to do with an understanding of 
 womanhood?" asked Nathan quietly. The old, old feel 
 ing of groping in a fog the moment he came in contact 
 with his father came over him. He wanted to fight it sav 
 agely. 
 
 "Just you wait till you're married to her a spell long 
 enough for the 'new' to wear off! You'll see! You think 
 she's fine and grand now, just because she's got a pretty 
 face ! But you wait ! You'll be sorry not taking your wise 
 father's advice. Just as you did once before. Wait till 
 you see her running around in broken corsets or dirty under 
 clothes " 
 
 "Father, you're disgusting. Please change the subject!" 
 
 "You can't tell me nothing about women, young man! 
 Didn't I live twenty-five years with one ! They're all alike ! 
 And ninety-nine per cent, of 'em are bad bad clean 
 through to the spleen. But I'll pray for you, my son I'll 
 never cease praying for you!" 
 
 The Siberia Maru was prompt in casting off. Johnathan 
 grew a bit abusive, then hysterical, as the hour drew near 
 for departure. He clutched his boy as though he would 
 hold him by force. Nathan waited until the last moment. 
 Then he turned and extended his hand. 
 
 "Good-by, father," he said. 
 
 Johnathan's face resembled the hue of a drowned corpse 
 when he said good-by in a whisper. Nathan hurried aboard. 
 Hatches were being battened down, winches fastened, the 
 gangplank raised, as he found Madelaine by the rail high 
 on the promenade deck. Side by side they leaned over and 
 watched the crowd below. In that crowd Nathan finally 
 located his father's upturned face. 
 
 Madelaine started to say something sympathetic to her 
 lover, but the three-minute blast of the vessel's departing 
 whistle drowned out her voice.
 
 ENTANGLING ALLIANCES 473 
 
 Slowly the liner backed from her little stall in the great 
 port. A steam tug at her prow turned her southward. 
 
 Nathan lost his father's figure in the crowd, then found 
 him again. 
 
 Johnathan was using his handkerchief alternately to smear 
 his face and then wave the little flash of white as bravely as 
 he could. 
 
 "Have I done right by him, Madelaine?" begged the son 
 brokenly. "For heaven's sake, tell me if I've erred ?" 
 
 "You have not erred, Nathan. This is a world in which 
 our sins punish themselves always." 
 
 Nathan looked back as the ship's great engine-beat started, 
 a throbbing which would not cease until they paused in 
 Honolulu harbor, ten days later. 
 
 A lone figure was on the farthest point of the dock. A 
 tiny white kerchief was rising and falling weakly. Then an 
 incoming liner hid it from sight.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 EAST IS WEST 
 
 That journey homeward! 
 
 The backlash of a typhoon blown up from the China Sea 
 made rough sailing the first two days of the voyage. Pas 
 sengers kept to their staterooms. But the third evening 
 Madelaine dressed for dinner. 
 
 She had a dinner gown in her trunk which had reposed 
 in the Tokio Y. W. C. A. during her absence in Siberia. 
 When she joined Nathan in the passageway after her toilet 
 was complete, the man failed to recognize her for an instant. 
 She actually had to speak to him as she approached. Then 
 a thrill shot through him at sight of her loveliness that burned 
 to the roots of his hair. 
 
 She was a sensation as she preceded her lover through the 
 crowded saloon a moment later. 
 
 "'Sst! Get onto the peach!" Nathan overheard a little 
 undersized Hebrew whisper swiftly to a fellow diner as he 
 and Madelaine passed one of the door tables. 
 
 They walked afterward on the upper deck in the mellow 
 starlit darkness, a light scarf about the girl's bare shoulders. 
 Those stars hung very luminous and close again. But now 
 they were merely watchwords, hung over the sea. 
 
 Off by the tarpaulined lifeboats in the shadows cast by the 
 massive ventilators, the two finally leaned over the rail. The 
 moon was coming up. It came up while they stayed there. 
 
 The man's arm stole around the girl's waist. He drew her 
 close. And she sighed contentedly in that embrace and 
 relaxed against him. 
 
 "Happy, dear?" she whispered. 
 
 "Happy? Madelaine, there's a dull, poignant ache way 
 down inside that I'm going to awaken soon and find it all 
 a dream. I can't explain it. The world is changed. To-
 
 EAST IS WEST 475 
 
 night this moment I'm the happiest man in it and I'd go 
 through it all again if I thought that in the end I'd reach 
 the luxury of this moment." 
 
 "We're going to have a big church wedding, laddie, dear 
 if you'll agree. There must be lights and flowers and 
 laughter and music a surfeit of it, because we've wanted 
 it so long, both of us. Besides, it's the last thing mother'll 
 be able to do for me. It would break her heart if she 
 couldn't." 
 
 "You've written to her about me?" Nathan asked 
 thickly. 
 
 "Do you think I could keep it to myself, you foolish boy? 
 And she's going to meet us at the Springfield station and 
 you're to stay with us a few days before you go up to Ver 
 mont and close your position with your mill people." 
 
 "When will it happen, dear the lights and the laughter, 
 the flowers and the music?" 
 
 "I'd like it to be the first of October, laddie. Mother will 
 certainly want that much time to prepare. But never mind. 
 The weeks will go quickly. And you'll be right near-by in 
 New York. You must come up every week-end. And I'll 
 be in New York to do my wedding shopping too, laddie. 
 Also there's the question of our house. We'll want to settle 
 that in the meantime." 
 
 The man was silent. The moon came up out of a tropical 
 sea and made a pathway of silver straight to their feet. His 
 voice shaking with emotion, he finally said : 
 
 "Madelaine dear, there's something I've been wanting to 
 speak about for a long, long time. It's about myself. In a 
 way I'm glad you saw father. Maybe you can understand 
 why I've wanted to be a little bigger and better than he has 
 shown himself. But I haven't had any one to coach me, dear. 
 I've grown rather hit-or-miss and had to get the corners 
 removed in a hard, rough way. And I'm afraid they're not 
 all removed far from it." 
 
 "Coach you?" 
 
 "I know I'm rough and crude. In a lot of ways Bernie 
 was right. I know there are times when perhaps I shock 
 you with those crudities. But it isn't because I haven't the 
 desire to learn. If you'll only be patient, I'll try my 
 best " 
 
 "Let's not talk about it, laddie. Of course I know you'll
 
 476 THE FOG 
 
 try your best. I've seen you eager to do your best so many 
 times it's often brought tears to my eyes. You never knew. 
 Of course there are old habits you've been almost thirty 
 years forming that can't be broken in a moment. They're 
 deeper than your conscious mind. Yes I know all that! 
 I guess it's because you're trying so hard that I've gone on 
 loving you more and more. No man need despair of becom 
 ing a polished, courtly gentleman who has a basic love of 
 beauty in his heart. All else is a matter of practice and 
 contact. Anyway, you suit me, and if you keep on the way 
 you've been going the past six months, at forty I'm going 
 to drop right down on my bony old knees and worship you 
 the little tin god that I've made!" 
 
 "No woman ever talked to me as you do, Madelaine. It 
 would be a pretty cheap fellow who couldn't respond to your 
 'handling.' You don't scold or preach, like all the rest, and 
 make me more self-conscious than ever. There's something 
 you radiate that simply won't let a fellow be a boor while 
 you're around. And I love you! Dear God, how I love 
 you ! What can I ever do to show it ? I wonder what ?" 
 
 "Well, dear, just now you might kiss me," Madelaine 
 responded, pinching his hard ruddy hand. "For the present 
 that will be quite sufficient." 
 
 Music started somewhere on the decks below. 
 
 "A waltz !" cried the girl. "Come on, Natie, let's dance." 
 
 "I can't dance," confessed Nathan bitterly. 
 
 "Well, what the stuff-and-nonsense difference does that 
 make? I'm here to teach you, am I not? Come on, you 
 horrible troglydyte ! You're going to get your first lesson in 
 waltzing under the absolutely impersonal instruction of your 
 Girl-Without-a-Name !" 
 
 And he did. 
 
 ii 
 
 A dream, a dream all a dream ! 
 
 The lights of Telegraph Hill showed nebulous through 
 the evening coast-mist on the night of the twenty-fifth. The 
 following day they were on their way through Nevada. 
 They reached Chicago on the twenty-ninth and Albany 
 eighteen hours later. Thence they traveled in a chair-car 
 to Springfield.
 
 EAST IS WEST 477 
 
 Madelaine had time to call her mother on the long-distante 
 telephone in Albany. Mrs. Theddon was meeting them 
 with the motor at the Union station in Springfield. And as 
 all journeys must have an end some time, even a Dream 
 Journey, the steel girders of the railroad bridge across the 
 Connecticut finally vibrated to the dull roar of their incom 
 ing train. A moment later they had crossed over the stone 
 arch with the brilliant illumination of Main Street, Spring 
 field, stretching north and south. The train came to a stop. 
 Gracia Theddon espied them through the Pullman windows. 
 
 Nathan turned to help Madelaine down the steps. Never 
 was there such a reunion. 
 
 "And this is Nathan!" cried Mrs. Theddon. She did 
 everything but kiss him. "It makes me happy to greet you 
 because I can see you have made my Madelaine so happy ! 
 Come, the car is waiting. We will go up at once." 
 
 A chauffeur seemed to materialize out of atmosphere and 
 appropriate the suit cases. They passed through the big 
 waiting room to the portico steps on the south, where a 
 limousine throbbed softly. . And as Nathan followed into 
 that car and the driver closed the door, the man who had 
 always known crude and sordid things, even though he 
 rebelled against them, had an overwhelming sense of peace. 
 He was finding his own. A world of beautiful things awaited 
 him, beauty and richness, not for cheap, provincial show, 
 not because they had to do with The Best People, but beauty 
 for beauty's sake because at heart he had ever been the 
 artist. It was not the awed provincial finding himself sud 
 denly amid patrician environment. It was fine, rare, delicate 
 atonement at last with all the best things which deepen life 
 and enrich it, the delectable attributes toward which man 
 kind has aspired on all the long climb from mumbling over 
 bones in the river bottoms of the Neanderthal age to the 
 twentieth century and as Nathan had once expressed it- 
 "art drawing-rooms softly shaded at midnight." The wor 
 ship of beauty had become a religion with Nathan. It stood 
 for God. And what is there irreverent in that? 
 
 It had never occurred to Nathan that he was "marrying 
 money." He knew in a general way that Madelaine's foster- 
 mother was wealthy. But when the limousine rolled under 
 the Long Hill porte-cochere and old Murfins, gray-haired 
 now what hair remained was waiting for them in the
 
 478 THE FOG 
 
 opened doorway, the home into which the young Vermonter 
 passed brought the realization to him with perturbing force. 
 He felt immediately chagrined. He was impatient to start 
 his work and show these people who were accepting him for 
 their own that he was worthy of their confidence. 
 
 Dinner was served almost as soon as Nathan could groom 
 himself. And after it was over though they sat for a long 
 time over their coffee while Madelaine tried to convey to her 
 mother a faint idea of what the two had experienced they 
 went out upon the wide veranda at the back of the house. 
 The place was softly lighted and awning shaded. The broad 
 sweep of the Connecticut was calm as a mill pond at their 
 feet, the serried lights of the south-end bridge prinkling in 
 the water as the afterglow died upon the distant Berkshires. 
 
 in 
 
 Their trunks had arrived and been carried to their rooms 
 during dinner. It was shortly after eight-thirty when 
 Madelaine exclaimed to Nathan : 
 
 "I know what let's do ! Suppose we slip upstairs and dress 
 in our army clothes to show mother how we looked in the 
 field ! I think it would be jolly !" 
 
 Nathan complied. It took him a quarter-hour to make 
 the change. 
 
 "It's not exactly what I'd wear on parade," he apologized 
 grimly on his return. 
 
 "I imagine Siberia was no tea party!" returned Mrs. 
 Theddon. She was as happy as a young girl herself this 
 night, though she had faded much through worry over her 
 daughter. Her hair was almost iron gray now with that 
 anxiety. 
 
 Madelaine was in the center of the veranda, turning about 
 to show her mother a rent in her cape where a stray Bolshevik 
 bullet had penetrated one night beyond Omsk, when old 
 Murfins appeared in the doorway. 
 
 "Mr. Ruggles is calling, Miss Madelaine," he announced. 
 "Mr. Gordon Ruggles!" 
 
 Gordon ! 
 
 From the Great High Noon the one slender shadow cast 
 upon Madelaine's happiness had been the thought of Gordon.
 
 EAST IS WEST 479 
 
 She stood for a moment irresolute now. Then to the servant 
 she said evenly : 
 
 "Please show him upstairs the library. I'll be up di 
 rectly." Madelaine turned to Nathan. "I want him to 
 meet you. But not just yet. I must talk to him first." 
 
 Gordon was standing before the west window, looking 
 down on the Connecticut with his back to the room when 
 Madelaine finally entered. It was the same apartment where 
 she had bade him good-bye offered him her lips which 
 he had not taken. He was still in his uniform and she knew 
 when she beheld it, as well as the man inside, that he had not 
 played at war. 
 
 "Gordon!" she cried, coming swiftly forward. She held 
 out both hands. 
 
 He did not speak. If he was surprised at beholding her 
 in a nurse's outfit, he gave no sign. 
 
 War had taken its toll from Gordon. It seemed as though 
 his fine patrician mold had been cast into the Great Furnace 
 and when the dross had been melted away he was pure metal 
 but hardened somehow. He was thin ; he looked as though 
 he had suffered much. 
 
 "I'm sorry to intrude to-night, Madge. But I couldn't 
 help it. Forgive me! Under the circumstances I had to 
 come !" 
 
 "Oh, I'm so glad to see you ! And it's perfectly all right !" 
 
 He grasped her outstretched hand and bent above it. It 
 was very neatly done, very much the appropriate thing for 
 Gordon. 
 
 It was not until he had been called to meet Nathan and 
 Madelaine saw his peculiar gait in crossing the room that 
 she knew he had not returned as he went away. Gordon had 
 lost his left leg at the knee in the Argonne, but aside from 
 a stiffness in his stride, no one might suspect. 
 
 "I've intruded to-night because I'm going to Chicago and 
 thence out to Kansas at once, Madge. And I wanted to offer 
 my best wishes. I'm glad, Madge glad that you are 
 very happy!" 
 
 "Gordon! You know?" 
 
 "Aunt Gracia told me. I was discharged from the hospital 
 in January. Aunt Grace allowed me to read certain portions 
 of your letters about html It couldn't be, Madge you 
 and I. And in fairness to us both, I ought to add that I felt
 
 480 THE FOG 
 
 it the night I went away. At least I felt I couldn't take you 
 
 with clean hands." 
 "Oh, Gord!" 
 
 "You had known me so long I had grown up with you 
 and showed myself such a rotter before you straightened 
 me out that there would have been little real romance in it, 
 between you and me, if I had been the man. I felt a little 
 bitter over it when I first heard. But a fellow learns a lot 
 of things in such a Big Show as we've just ended. He learns 
 not to whimper if luck goes against him. But aside from that 
 
 there was yet another reason." 
 
 For a moment they surveyed one another. Of the two, 
 Madelaine was the most perturbed. Perturbed because after 
 her half-year propinquity with Nathan, everything which 
 her fiance possessed stood forth so sharply by contrast with 
 the man who faced her now. 
 
 Nathan had calm eyes. Gordon's eyes were not calm. 
 They were troubled. Nathan had hard-muscled jaws and 
 philosophical lips. Gordon had well, just a mouth, and it 
 was a bit too harsh. Nathan carried himself gravely, shoul 
 ders well back, feet on the ground. Gordon had a proclivity 
 toward a slight, slender, patrician slouch. Nathan had talon 
 hands, a man's hands, made to grasp, create, build, deal 
 sledge-hammer blows. Gordon's hands were lithe, pink, 
 neatly manicured, made to handle a cigarette gracefully. 
 
 Yet Gordon was no less a man than Nathan. He was 
 simply a different type of man. 
 
 Comparing the two now, however, Madelaine understood 
 why she had never been able to abandon herself to Gordon. 
 Being very feminine, she had hungered for the virility of 
 Nathan's jaws and hands and iron arms. 
 
 "You're going to Chicago and Kansas, Gordon? Why?" 
 
 "I am going to be married, Madge." 
 
 "Married!" 
 
 "I have told Aunt Gracia why. When I'm gone, she will 
 explain. You think it strange perhaps after what happened 
 here in this room when we parted. But when I knew I had 
 lost, with you and then one night Over Across when I got 
 in a pinch where I had no assurance I would live until morn 
 ing, I did some vital thinking, Madge. I found there were 
 many things in my life which, if I had the chance, I would 
 rectify. I was spared to rectify them. I did a rotten thing
 
 EAST IS WEST 481 
 
 by another girl once, Madge. And I choose to think I lost 
 you because I dared approach you without my debt to another 
 woman paid in full. At any rate, without trying to make a 
 hero of myself in this distressing explanation, I well I 
 found the girl loved me very dearly and had married another 
 man whom she did not love because he was willing to have 
 her after after well, to speak the brutal truth, in army 
 slang after I'd 'made hamburg' of her life. We're to be 
 married, I say, and we're going out to Kansas. I shall try 
 to nurse the girl back to to what she was when I met 
 her. My treatment made her a nervous wreck." 
 
 Madelaine was very pale as Gordon made this confession. 
 She backed against the table and whetted her parted lips. 
 
 "Gordon," she whispered huskily, " is it Bernie Grid- 
 ley?" 
 
 "Yes," said the man simply. "And I want you to know 
 that even if you had not found Mr. Forge, and had returned 
 willing to accept me, I should still have pursued the course 
 I'm taking now." 
 
 For a moment Madelaine surveyed him. And then she 
 saw the clean-cut character in the thing he was doing. With 
 her intuitive understanding of psychology, she realized that 
 the very best side of her cousin was disclosing itself now. 
 
 "Gordon was that why you would not kiss me on the 
 lips the last time we faced each other in this room ?" 
 
 "Something of the sort, Madge. Yes." 
 
 "Gordon, this is a very manly thing you're doing. A 
 big thing !" 
 
 "Please don't make it any more distressing. I'm not doing 
 it from any hope of praise or sense of duty. I'm doing it 
 because I found a new thrill in shooting straight, after you 
 gave me the incentive to stop sloughing, Madge. And I've 
 learned more in France. Miss Gridley can never be to me 
 what you have been, Madge. But then, I don't deserve you, 
 and never did. I can make Miss Gridley very happy. I can 
 nurse her back to normality and health. She has very great 
 confidence in me. She loves me greatly. She was very 
 tender when she heard I had returned and was confined in 
 the hospital. She visited me every day. It will not be at all 
 difficult to love her for that tenderness. All of us have the 
 capacity to love, I find, Madge, when the basis of love is 
 service. And there is usually a Great Circumstance where
 
 482 THE FOG 
 
 we eventually find we can serve very beautifully. Please 
 don't weep, Madelaine. Your mother my aunt " 
 
 "Mother doesn't need to tell me anything, Gordon. I 
 understand. I cared for Bernie in her dilemma. And I 
 know now why she would not tell me her lover's name. 
 You were a relative. There is much that is fine in Bernie. 
 But, Gordon, it hasn't had a chance. Oh, I'm so overwhelmed 
 with everything turning out this way that I don't know 
 what to do or say." 
 
 "I bothered you to-night, Madge, because i delayed my 
 departure almost ten days now, awaiting your return. I 
 had to see you and say this personally. I felt it would be 
 yellow to leave it to a letter. I am leaving for Chicago at 
 midnight. Bernice and I are going to Pittsfield, Kansas, as 
 soon as we are married. I am going out to manage an iron 
 works out there. If we're unable to return east for your 
 wedding, I want you to let me offer you all my good wishes, 
 now to-night. Forge is a lucky dog, with your life in his 
 keeping. I feel sure he appreciates it. You would not love 
 him enough to marry him if he lacked the capacity for such 
 appreciation." 
 
 Madelaine moved across to Gordon then. She lifted her 
 hands to his shoulders and stood looking up into his war- 
 hardened face. 
 
 "Gordon," she said softly, "you're doing a big thing. 
 You'll be happy because you are doing it. I can see it in 
 your eyes already. I know you will make Bernie's hard life 
 very rich. But I want to say more than that. I want to tell 
 you that I have loved you loved you from the night you 
 came to my room down in Boston and showed me you had 
 taken stock of yourself and your birthright and were going 
 to play the man. It wasn't a romantic love, Gordon. It was 
 the love of a sister for a very dear brother. And that love 
 is still yours, Gordon. You may carry it away with you 
 and retain it always. God has been very good to the homeless 
 waif that is myself. He has given me a very dear foster- 
 mother. More than that, he has sent two fine, virile men 
 into my life. And they hold my heart in their powerful 
 hands between them. What more could a girl ask?" 
 
 Gordon took both hands and kissed them again. And 
 Madelaine, placed one arm around Gordon's neck drew 
 him down kissed him on the forehead.
 
 EAST IS WEST 483 
 
 The man blindly fumbled in his pocket. He pulled from 
 it a little wine-colored box of plush. 
 
 "I want you to keep it, Madelaine. To remember me by, 
 in the years ahead. Aunt Gracia let me have it, and I had 
 the stone put in a slightly different setting. Please wear 
 it on your right hand as a sort of personal wedding 
 
 gift." 
 
 She let him slip the ring on her right third finger. 
 
 "I want him to meet you, Gordon," she said. 
 
 They went downstairs and across to the porch door. As 
 she came through, she heard her mother's voice explaining 
 something to Nathan, who sat with his elbows on his knees, 
 leaned forward, face thoughtful. " and the war sent their 
 value up scandalously and Madelaine will get almost a mil 
 lion that will require a good business man's oversight " 
 
 Mrs. Theddon stopped abruptly and raised her eyes to her 
 daughter's crimson face. "Well, dear?" she stammered, as 
 though she had been caught in a misdemeanor. 
 
 "I want Nathan and Gordon to meet. He's here in the 
 drawing-room." 
 
 "Have him out, by all means," declared Mrs. Theddon, 
 arising. 
 
 Gordon's tall figure stood outlined for a moment in the 
 veranda door. It was Mrs. Theddon who introduced them. 
 
 Two weather-bronzed men in khaki, fresh from the wars, 
 looked in each other's eyes, level and straight. Then their 
 hands came together. 
 
 *. . . and there shall be neither east nor west, 
 
 Nor pride nor pain nor birth, 
 When two strong men meet face to face, 
 Tho' they come from the ends of the earth."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 VIA LOHENGRIN 
 
 While perhaps it may perturb strict sticklers for etiquette, 
 nevertheless my own marital status was ignored and at 
 Nathan's earnest solicitation I was best man at his wedding. 
 
 Never did weeks speed past so swiftly as they did that 
 summer. October was approaching almost before we realized 
 it, least of all Nathan. What with acclimating himself at 
 his new work, house-planning with Madelaine in those 
 roseate New York days which followed, attending to the 
 thousand and one details having to do with his approaching 
 state as a benedict again, he was grateful when the time sepa 
 rating him from the Great Day narrowed down to a week, 
 then three days, then two, then one, grateful entirely out 
 side his anticipation of having Madelaine with him perma 
 nently. 
 
 Three weeks before the event, the invitations had been 
 mailed, and it was pathetic when Madelaine applied to her 
 lover for a list of those he wished to invite to the nuptials. 
 
 "List?" he laughed sadly. "It's a rather short list, dear 
 girl. The Thornes, Caleb Gridley, Mother and Edith, old 
 Sam Hod who published my first bally poems in his paper. 
 And and that's about all, I guess. Bill and his wife, of 
 course, though Bill's acting as best man." 
 
 It was a pretentious wedding. It seemed as though every 
 body of consequence in Springfield was invited. Madelaine's 
 maids of honor were old school chums from Mount Hadley 
 days. The gifts covered two great tables, facetiously men 
 tioned by Murfins and old Steb in the servants' quarters as 
 "the great American pickle-dish exhibit". Two days before 
 hand a rehearsal was held in which every one seemed as 
 painfully self-conscious as possible and managed to get 
 twisted up and in each other's way and permit confusion to
 
 VIA LOHENGRIN 485 
 
 reign supreme. But through it all Madelaine never once lost 
 her head and was its soul and guiding spirit. 
 
 The ceremony was scheduled for four o'clock, and Christ 
 Church was a mammoth conservatory of flowers a day and 
 a night beforehand. Then the evening before the great day, 
 Mrs. Anna Forge and Edith arrived in Springfield, and 
 Madelaine went with Nathan to the station to meet them and 
 have dinner with them, that the mother might meet her son's 
 new wife informally. 
 
 II 
 
 Nathan was a little ..aicen aback when he saw his mother 
 and sister. Mrs. Forge had lost height and weight ; she was 
 a poor, pucker-faced, broken-down, little old lady. Nathan 
 knew her to be fifty-three. She looked seventy. He felt 
 a heart-stab when he saw her clothing, it was so poor and 
 threadbare and out of taste. And Edith! 
 
 Edith was now the "mother of seven !" Verily! She had 
 grown into a tall, awkward, raw-boned woman with a coarse 
 face, sloppy cornflower hair and a hat which resembled a 
 cross between a basket of flowers and a fried egg. The 
 broken status of her corsets was immediately noticeable 
 when she had removed her outer cloak, and her skirt hung 
 lower in the rear than in the front. She was messy along 
 side Madelaine and looked as though she had hurriedly 
 dropped a gummy baby in a clothes basket while she threw on 
 any clothes lying handy to come to her brother's "swell 
 weddin.' " 
 
 Mrs. Forge clung to Nathan hysterically when she met 
 him on the station platform. And she wept openly when 
 Madelaine took her unceremoniously in her arms and kissed 
 her. They went to the Worthy for rooms and dinner. 
 
 Madelaine waited in the ladies' parlor while Nathan went 
 up with his relatives. Edith first entered the room which 
 Nathan had reserved as though her footfalls profaned the 
 very carpets. 
 
 "My Gawd, what class!" she cried blankly. "Nat, is she 
 worth a million dollars on the level ?" 
 
 Nathan laughed. That was the only feature of the forth 
 coming alliance to mar his perfect happiness. Madelaine 
 was worth a million dollars. It was awkward.
 
 486 THE FOG 
 
 "I guess so," he responded carelessly. 
 
 "You guess so! My Gawd, don't you know? I should 
 think that'd be the first thing " 
 
 "I'll have to go back and stay with Madelaine," the brother 
 interrupted. "Come down as soon as you're ready." He 
 counted out money. "Take this, mother. And to-morrow 
 morning buy yourself something out of the ordinary for 
 clothes. Please! I wish it!" 
 
 When he had gone, Edith flounced down on the bed, dis 
 covered the resiliency of the springs, and bobbed up and 
 down, testing them. 
 
 "She's a cuckoo, Ma!" declared the daughter, anent Made 
 laine. "But I bet a hat right now there ain't goin' to be 
 much family visitin' back and forth! Lord, if she ever come 
 into my shack, and Joe and all the kids piled in to give her 
 the once-over, somebody'd have to stick their feet out the 
 window to leave room to breathe. She'd take more gorgeous 
 space than all the rest of us put together, includin' a ward 
 robe trunk!" 
 
 "I think she's a dear," announced Mrs. Forge. "She's so 
 democratic." 
 
 "I'd give ten dollars to know what she sees in Nat, though. 
 Huh! It warn't so awful long ago we was all takin' Satur 
 day night baths up in Paris and undressin' together in the 
 kitchen because the upstairs rooms was cold. A million 
 bucks ! Can you beat it, Ma ! Wonder how much her hat 
 cost?" 
 
 They went down into the Worthy dining room. Made 
 laine chose a table beside a north window. Mrs. Forge 
 and Edith promptly put on their "manners." 
 
 Mother and daughter absolutely dumb in the presence 
 of a colored waiter and a million-dollar-bride-to-be said 
 they guessed they wasn't a bit hungry, and yet at each of 
 Nat's suggestions from the menu they nodded their heads 
 avidly. Madelaine tried her best to put the two at their ease, 
 but it was a sorry business. Mrs. Forge and Edith "knew 
 how to behave in company", which was to act as stiff and un 
 natural and wooden as possible and assume that every one 
 in the dining room was watching them like jewelry thieves. 
 
 The Indian summer night was lazily warm. The windows 
 were open. Over in the southwest corner a group of Dart 
 mouth alumni men were holding a reunion supper.
 
 VIA LOHENGRIN 487 
 
 "My stars!" whispered Mrs. Forge to Nathan, "they're 
 drinkin' licker! You don't drink licker, do you, Nathan?" 
 
 Nathan affirmed that he did not drink "licker" and then 
 he turned his head away and looked out of the window upon 
 his left as the college men broke into roistering song. 
 
 Outside on the curbing a young man stopped and gazed up 
 into the room. 
 
 "Madge," said Nathan thickly, "one night, several years 
 ago, I stood outside like that, and looked up at a fellow and 
 girl sitting here just like this " 
 
 A quick exclamation. Madelaine had overturned a water 
 glass. 
 
 "Was that you, Nathan ?" she cried, astounded. "So that's 
 where you saw me first? Well, foolish boy, just for that, 
 the title of your damage-making little old poem was 'Girl- 
 Without-a-Name.' And I was conceited enough to think it 
 was written for me, and no one else." 
 
 "Perhaps," said Nathan gravely, "it was! Who knows?" 
 
 Edith was rather glad to see Madelaine tip over her water 
 glass. It just went to prove that even The Best People, 
 Millionairesses, those who Had Money, did such things. She 
 cast a glance at her mother as much as to say, "You see! 
 She isn't such a Thingumbob after all. She tips over her 
 water glass at table !" 
 
 in 
 
 The Day! 
 
 For perfection of weather, only one other day in Nathan's 
 experience had surpassed it, the high noon in Siberia when 
 he had seen a splash of vivid scarlet against sharp cobalt and 
 golden brown. 
 
 I made a trip up to the church around noon for some de 
 tail, when the florists had called their work complete. I 
 stood by the door for a moment and felt prayful with the 
 beauty and portent of it. The chancel had been almost 
 smothered in fine palms. There were banks and vases of cut 
 flowers on the altar. Wreaths were draped about the reading 
 desk, chancel rail and choir stall, and a rope of flowers 
 cast across the center aisle instead of white ribbon, reserv 
 ing the first six pews for relatives and special guests. 
 
 Anticipating her daughter's departure by a few minutes,
 
 4 88 THE FOG 
 
 at a quarter to four Mrs. Theddon entered her car with old 
 Amos Ruggles, who was to give the bride away, and who 
 never looked more vacuous or pop-eyed in his life. Arriv 
 ing at the church, she entered on the head usher's arm and 
 then to the door came the motors of the bridal party. 
 
 Vestibule and center aisle were cleared of guests when the 
 bridal party arrived. Doors to street and church were 
 closed. At five minutes to four, the bride and her maids 
 assembled. An electric word came to Nathan and myself, 
 waiting in a side room behind the chancel, that Madelaine 
 and her party had arrived. The organist was on the 
 alert for the opening of the great doors at the far end 
 of the center aisle. The ceremony was a matter of min 
 utes. 
 
 It is popularly accepted that a groom a few moments be 
 fore his marriage must be flustrated, senseless and speech 
 less, a comic object generally and only acceptable because 
 if he failed to put in appearance the wedding machine might 
 have a minor cog missing somewhere, causing it to rasp 
 horribly. As a matter of fact, most grooms are quite cool 
 and collected, at least outwardly. They may misplace a 
 few little things of minor importance, such as hats, railroad 
 tickets or sense of humor. But on the whole, they really 
 know a surprising lot of what it's all about and why they 
 are there and what the outcome of the entire tuss may aggre 
 gate. Nathan was no exception. 
 
 He had not seen Madelaine that morning; he had break 
 fasted and lunched with me and we had reached the church 
 at about three- forty-five. I was agreeably surprised at sight 
 of him in his wedding clothes, black cutaway, gray trou 
 sers, white waistcoat, gray suede gloves. It came to me with 
 a smash that my little freckled-faced friend of the Foxboro 
 schoolyard had flowered into a handsome man. Not the 
 Gordon-Ruggles, matinee-idol type of handsomeness, but the 
 rugged individuality of the male who has his fundamentals 
 established, who has found himself and carries the whole 
 struggle on firm features. 
 
 "Well, Bill, old man," he said, as we waited for the great 
 signal, "it's come! The day and the hour we talked about 
 one night down the Green River in the old red scow. Re 
 member ?" 
 
 "Yes, Nat," I returned. "How can either of us forget?"
 
 VIA LOHENGRIN 489 
 
 "There is a God, Bill. And He is good. We talked about 
 Him too, if I recall correctly." 
 
 "At least I've never doubted," said I, "that He's on the 
 side of the chap who tries to do the best he* can." 
 
 Those were the last words I ever spoke to my lifelong 
 friend as a single man. At that moment word came that 
 Madelaine was ready. 
 
 Into the chancel he went behind the rector and I followed. 
 Outside the communion rail he stood facing that great church 
 of faces, manner grave but easy, a man in perfect control 
 of himself. 
 
 Neither of us chanced to be looking at the end of the mid 
 aisle when the sexton opened the big doors. A sudden peal 
 of music from the high organ over our heads announced 
 that Nathan's Woman Beautiful was advancing to become 
 his wife. 
 
 The wedding was on! 
 
 The ushers came first, walking two and two with the 
 train of bridesmaids behind. A vast, motionless hush fell 
 over that church as the wedding party moved toward the 
 chancel and the bride came into view. Several women had 
 their handkerchiefs ready to enjoy themselves. They did. 
 At the profusion of autumnal flowers, the afternoon sun 
 light flooding richly through the huge stained-glass window 
 high on the left, Madelaine advancing behind her maids on 
 the arm of old "Am" Ruggles, a choke came in my own 
 throat, I'll admit, and I teetered on the verge of making 
 an ass of myself and spoiling my make-up generally. 
 
 Madelaine was wonderfully gowned, with a sweeping 
 train. From her dusky coiffure fell a long tulle veil. She 
 carried a mammoth bouquet of American Beauty roses. Her 
 face was flushed. She was happy in that moment ; it radiated 
 from her. 
 
 She slipped her hand from old "Am's" arm and the music 
 suddenly died away. The church was very quiet. A pause. 
 
 "In the name of God, Amen!" 
 
 There was no blur in Nathan's mind now, no wonder what 
 another girl was doing, no wandering memories. He was 
 paying attention. Oh, very much he was paying attention. 
 
 Old Amos waited beside Madelaine during the preliminary 
 exhortation. Then Madelaine gave her maid of honor her 
 bouquet and when the rector demanded, "Who giveth this
 
 490 THE FOG 
 
 woman away?" old Amos allowed he gaveth this woman 
 away with an "I do!" which suggested he had kept the 
 words locked in his system for weeks, for months, and the 
 relief of letting them explode at last was almost sleep-pro 
 ducing. Then he turned, and his saucer eyes demanded, 
 "Now, bless my soul! Whereabouts do I find myself, any 
 how?" And finding himself at a wedding and the observed 
 of all observers, he spatted his way to a pew seat and sat 
 down and twirled his thumbs and looked wise as a serpent 
 and harmless as a dove. And the wedding went on. 
 
 Nathan was married again. The ceremony was finished. 
 The blessing was spoken. And the man was glad, glad. 
 
 With her left hand on the arm of her new husband, Made- 
 laine turned with him to leave the altar. At that instant the 
 great organ was given its leash. Thunderously above us all, 
 it pealed into a ringing march of triumph. The very church 
 arches shook with the delirium of it. The little flower girls 
 who had brought up the rear of the procession now turned 
 and were prompted forward. And down the aisle my friend 
 and the woman who loved him moved forward to happiness 
 on a carpet of flowers. 
 
 Millions of unborn men and women are yet to be married 
 and given in marriage. But no wedding ceremony will ever 
 pass off with such velvet perfection and infinite smoothness. 
 
 In the vestibule Nathan received hat, gloves and stick. 
 The Theddon motor was waiting. In a moment the pair 
 were seated therein and it had eased away from the Chest 
 nut Street curbing. 
 
 Alone in the limousine, as it purred down South Main 
 Street toward Long Hill and the wedding reception, Made- 
 laine was the first to speak. 
 
 "Well, laddie, I'm yours," she said simply. "And I'm 
 so happy that it's my turn to dream now. And I pray the 
 dear Lord I never awake." 
 
 Nathan's great talon claw stole out and completely oblit 
 erated her right hand. 
 
 "You'll never awaken if I can help it, dear," he said 
 huskily. "And I have a quaint idea that I can." 
 
 Yet there was more happiness in store for them that aft 
 ernoon.
 
 VIA LOHENGRIN 491 
 
 IV 
 
 The Theddon drawing-room was opened to its fullest and 
 banked with more flowers. The motors which had followed 
 began to empty bridesmaids, ushers and invited guests. Bride 
 and groom stood before a solid screen of cut flowers with 
 Gracia Theddon in silver-gray. 
 
 And almost the first person to appear with congratulations 
 and good wishes was old Caleb Gridley ! 
 
 If Nathan lost his head that day, it was when he recog 
 nized Caleb and blinked at him stupidly. It was their first 
 meeting in two years. Gridley had been "out west" on farm 
 mortgage business for the People's Bank and as usual had 
 barely arrived in time for the ceremony. But it was because 
 old Caleb had changed that Nathan stared in stupefac 
 tion. Was this could it be old Gridley of the tannery 
 office? 
 
 Caleb was clean-shaven and dressed in afternoon clothes 
 which the most fastidious authority on male attire could not 
 criticize. His iron hair was no longer a wiry, unruly mass. 
 A heroic barber had conquered it and old Caleb with his pon 
 derous size, big shoulders, flawless clothes, was the most dis 
 tinguished man in that drawing-room, not excepting the 
 groom himself. He still had the paving-block jaw. But 
 his ugly, tobacco-stained incisors were gone. He displayed 
 two rows of fine, even teeth, though he did remove them 
 at night "to get some mouth comfort in his sleep" as he 
 expressed it afterward. 
 
 Old Caleb had suddenly emerged from a chrysalis of 
 small-town mediocrity into a gentleman of the world. He 
 had left backwater and stroked out into strong, main cur 
 rent. He was a personage of parts. 
 
 But still more than his altered appearance was making 
 Nathan stare. It was the tableau occurring near the door. 
 Old Caleb had come face to face with Gracia Theddon. 
 And Madelaine's foster-mother was very near to fainting. 
 She had one hand at her heart and the other was clutching 
 the edge of a table behind her. 
 
 "Caleb !" she cried hoarsely. 
 
 "B'damn!" was all Caleb could articulate. Showing that 
 in a flower-banked drawing-room amid bevies of ladies, there
 
 492 THE FOG 
 
 were still a few trifling irregularities in his culture that left 
 room for improvement. 
 
 Nathan stepped forward. 
 
 "You know Mrs. Theddon, Mr. Gridley?" 
 
 Caleb beheld his altered protege as in a daze. "It was an 
 afternoon of daisies," or dazes, as Edith expressed it after 
 ward. 
 
 "You an' me writ a poem about her once, didn't we ?" was 
 the tanner's perturbing demand before those wondering 
 guests. "Know her? Bub! Bub! To think it's all 
 ended here Gracie Hemin'way !" 
 
 Mrs. Theddon fought for self-possession and won. 
 
 "Mr. Gridley and myself knew each other very intimately 
 when we were in our twenties," she announced. 
 
 The guests were arriving and crowding in and old Caleb 
 had to give way. But he gripped Madelaine's hand with a 
 palm which had thrown hides for twenty years and could 
 not exactly be described as "moonbeam." He cried husk- 
 ily: 
 
 "Ma'am you got the finest boy in the world, b'damn if 
 you haven't ! Only you got to see the unholy scrapes he can 
 get into, to find it out. Same as me. We writ poetry, once, 
 ma'am. B'damn if we didn't write perty good poetry. I 
 congratulate you, ma'am. This is a scrumpshus occasion 
 a dam' fine one !" 
 
 Madelaine laughed merrily. 
 
 "You're so good, Mr. Gridley. You're going to be one 
 of my dearest friends, because you've been Nathan's. He's 
 told me all about you. He said you were the only real father 
 he'd ever known." 
 
 "Did he now? Well, just goes to show what excellent 
 judgment he's got ! Haven't had much time to do no letter- 
 writin' or send presents, but I guess it ain't too late to pay 
 my respects and show how I allus appreciated Nat's readin' 
 me poetry. Take this here. I gotta go see a man !" 
 
 Caleb said this last suddenly and a bit wildly. He had no 
 man to "see" but he did have to get away before he choked 
 so tightly he could only gurgle. With his declaration, how 
 ever, he pressed a bit of heavy, crinkled, folded paper into 
 Madelaine's palm. 
 
 Madelaine laughed again and thanked him and handed it 
 to her husband. Nathan shoved it in the pocket of his waist-
 
 VIA LOHENGRIN 493 
 
 coat. The reception was well over before he thought to 
 look at it. 
 
 It was old Caleb's check, drawn on a Boston bank for ten 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 But Mrs. Nathaniel Forge, nee Theddon, never knew how 
 truly she spoke, nor significantly, when she declared that old 
 Caleb was to be one of her dearest friends because he had 
 been Nathan's. And for a reason entirely apart from her 
 husband. 
 
 After her supper to her bridesmaids, Madelaine slipped 
 upstairs to change into her traveling suit. Her mother had 
 been unpardonably missing for over an hour. Having occa 
 sion to enter the upper library, Madelaine drew back aghast. 
 
 Her mother was in there alone with old Caleb. Her mother 
 was sobbing. But her mother was merely exercising sweet 
 woman's prerogative to weep gloriously and copiously, in 
 proof that she was happy, happy, happy. 
 
 Madelaine turned blank of face from what she had seen. 
 She met Nathan on the stairs. She caught her husband and 
 spoke in swift and stupefied whispers. 
 
 Nathan grinned. Yes, he did! 
 
 "Oh, well, Girl-o'-Mine," he admonished. "We needn't 
 be selfish and demand a monopoly of all the happiness that's 
 going around to-day. The springtime of life is all fine and 
 wonderful. But we've got to admit there's many a love 
 flower that blossoms in Indian Summer. And it's usually 
 all the more fragrant and exquisite on that account. Where's 
 the telephone?" 
 
 VI 
 
 In their rooms at The Worthy that night, after Madelaine 
 and Nathan had left town, Mrs. Anna Forge and Edith 
 locked their door carefully. Mrs. Forge had read in news 
 papers of "strange men" who "prowled" around hotel cor 
 ridors. 
 
 "Whew!" cried Edith, flopping down in a rocker and 
 sprawling her ungainly legs. "After all that class, I'm plumb 
 bowled over. My Gawd, Ma, think of it! And Natie's
 
 494 THE FOG 
 
 gotta spend all the rest of life livin' up to it. Poor Natie!" 
 
 Mrs. Forge stood by the window, holding to the lace drape 
 and using a badly overworked handkerchief as it was needed 
 at her features. Whatever else might be said for Mrs. Anna 
 Forge in her sunset years, she had not forgotten how to weep. 
 
 "I think it was all heavenly, Edie. For one afternoon 
 for the first time in all my life I just reveled in it. And 
 I think Natie's the luckiest boy in the world." 
 
 "Baggin' a million dollars ? You bet ! But think of havin' 
 to sit around all the rest of life on your manners and never 
 darin' to open your mouth for fear o' puttin' your foot in 
 it ! Gawd, it'd have me in a sanatorium in a month !" 
 
 "Nathan's got what he wanted and deserved. He can't 
 help but be happy with that beautiful wife and surrounded 
 by fine things." 
 
 "Sufferin' catfish, Ma! You don't mean to say you'd 
 wanner live up to it, too? Then it ain't hard to see where 
 Natie gets his crazy ideas for swell things and manners. 
 You can knock Pa all you wanner. But he's my dad and I'm 
 his girl. And I kiss my soup at table if I feel like it, and if 
 I wanner I loll 'round the house in a blanket. That's my 
 privilege. No airs to me. You always know just where 
 to find me. I'm honest !" 
 
 And Edith fully believed that she was and remained 
 smugly content, the "mother of seven." 
 
 Mrs. Forge not answering (Mrs. Forge, in fact, living 
 over the glories of that wonder-day with the lacklustre gone 
 from her pin-point eyes and her pinched face softened, for 
 the first time in years), Edith finally concluded: 
 
 "Say, Ma! Wonder how quick it'd be safe to 'touch' Nat 
 for a couple o' thousand and stand any show o' gettin' it ? 
 Joe's gettin' awful restless lately with so many kids to sup 
 port. And a couple thousand would give him a swell start 
 in the express business. Nat oughta set him up. It's his 
 duty. After all, he can't sneak outta the fact that I'm his 
 sister !"
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 PILL TOPS 
 
 Their baby was born the following August. 
 
 The day of its arrival, Nathan paced the cool, impersonal 
 corridors of the maternity hospital like an animal crazed, 
 obsessed with the necessity of getting relief by tearing some 
 thing. 
 
 He had often smiled over the acclaimed nervousness and 
 general distress of certain young fathers, awaiting the ar 
 rival of their first-born. He was not smiling now. Suppose 
 the child should cost Madelaine her life? What youngster 
 could ever compensate for the Woman Beautiful who from 
 the first had made matrimony almost an idealist's dream ? If 
 he lost Madelaine, he could understand how fathers could 
 hate their offspring. 
 
 But there was to be no occasion for any such unnatural 
 attitude. At twenty minutes past three o'clock, a nurse 
 came down the elevator and accosted him with a cheery, 
 knowing smile. 
 
 "Congratulations first, Mr. Forge," she cried. "You have 
 an eight-pound son. Everything's perfectly normal and your 
 wife's doing lovely." 
 
 A son! 
 
 A hot knife went straight through Nathan's heart and 
 into his soul. 
 
 "Come back about six o'clock," the nurse advised him, 
 though Nathan scarcely heard. "You'll find your wife in 
 Room Eighty-eight." 
 
 A few minutes later Nathan left the hospital. He sped 
 blindly for a florist's to buy flowers, flowers' millions of 
 flowers. He was boyishly obsessed to buy flowers. 
 
 Madelaine was dozing when Nathan entered her room 
 at six o'clock. She turned her head toward him, lifting eyes
 
 496 THE FOG 
 
 that were still hollow and slightly glazed with suffering. 
 But when she recognized him, a coy smile showed about her 
 delicate mouth. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Man?" she demanded. "And now what have 
 you to say ? We have a son !" 
 
 Nathan, down beside the bed, buried his face in her soft 
 mother-throat. 
 
 "If there was only something big I could do to show how 
 much I love you, dear," he cried thickly, " oh, God, if I 
 only knew what to do " 
 
 "Do ? I thought we settled that the night on the steam 
 ship coming back from Japan? A similar 'do' will be 
 quite sufficient for the present also." 
 
 She held up her lips. He did. 
 
 It was not until the following morning, however, that Nat 
 saw his son. The nurse entered with a heavy roll of flannel 
 and laid the baby in his arms. Gently Nat pulled aside the 
 blanketing and a tiny hand came up. It was groping in its 
 new-born blindness, groping, groping, groping. 
 
 But it did not grope fruitlessly. That exquisite, shell-like 
 little palm found a great talon claw, the life-twisted hand 
 of its father. And it gripped that calloused Thing tightly. 
 It could always grip that calloused Thing tightly. 
 
 Nathan's only comment came in a whisper. To his boy 
 he spoke a promise: 
 
 "There shall be no Fog for you, little son. As you grow 
 along your dad will understand !" 
 
 Hill Tops! 
 
 It was a night in November. Darkness had fallen early. 
 A fire had been lighted in the open grate and the big south 
 ern living room was pungently warm. Shades had been 
 drawn, shutting out the dreary autumn afterglow. Aside 
 from the ruddy gleam of the crackling fire, the only illumina 
 tion in the apartment came from the pedestal lamp beside a 
 piano. The lamp had an old-rose shade. All the hues and 
 angles of the room were softened and blended by its rich 
 ness. 
 
 Nathan came down the wide front stairs, tying the cords
 
 HILL TOPS 497 
 
 of his dressing-gown as he descended. He turned into the 
 living room. A few feet inside the door, he paused. 
 
 The room was perfect. White, mahogany, and old rose 
 was the color scheme. The ceiling was shaded and the 
 furniture was heavy. Yet so deftly had the latter been ar 
 ranged and so perfect the spacing, that the room had an air 
 of fine distance and perspective; relaxation and rest was 
 the result and it soothed like an opiate. 
 
 The man's artist-eye could neither miss nor pass lightly 
 over the proportion and fastidiousness that gave the room 
 its character, the sense of perfect order without the least 
 sacrifice of comfort. A few oil paintings filled appropriate 
 spaces upon the warm brown walls. Smaller corners held 
 etchings and exotic prints that Madelaine had brought from 
 Japan. The dull polish of the piano, writing tdesk, music 
 cabinet, table, reflected the glint of the firelight. An exquis 
 ite sculptural study showed at just the right point in the 
 corner across the heavy divan drawn up before the grate. 
 And as Nathan inventoried these things, a deep sense of 
 peace grew upon him. It entered into his being with the 
 atmosphere he breathed. An old phrase he had used some 
 where before whispered softly again in his subconscious 
 mind, something about " art drawing-rooms, softly shaded 
 at midnight." This was home, his home! One born to 
 such things might never appreciate them as Nathan could 
 appreciate them now. 
 
 He moved across. From the carved black cherry box on 
 the end of the reading table he found a Havana. His eve 
 ning paper was there also. He picked up the paper and 
 went round the divan. He sank down before the fire, but 
 after lighting the cigar with all the ceremony of a priest 
 kindling a sacred altar flame, he did not read. 
 
 The wind rose and drew the flames higher into the deep, 
 broad flue. Somewhere out on the Avenue rose the gear- 
 clack and purr of a 'bus. It was a wild, melancholy night 
 outside. It would rain or snow before morning. But wind 
 nor weather had no part or parcel with that home, inside. 
 The room might have been in a castle in Spain for all the 
 drear outside weather had to do with its comfort. The man 
 felt with an overwhelming emotion that he had reached a 
 safe harbor, the hinterland of peace. 
 
 Madelaine had been overseeing bedtime rites in the nurs-
 
 498 THE FOG 
 
 ery. Nathan's cigar had scarcely an inch of finely powdered 
 ash before he heard his wife's step on the stair. As though 
 he had never been in the room before, as though it were 
 all a dream, he turned his head as she came across. 
 
 She had put off her dinner frock and was clothed now in 
 silken lingerie soft, trailing, beautiful things that accentu 
 ated her height and perfect figure. Like a cameo against 
 ebony she fitted into that room ; had she not been its creator ? 
 She paused and adjusted her hair. Beautiful hands they 
 were, that gleamed white and deft in the half-light, slen 
 der, characterful hands for taste and resolute purpose. 
 
 "Junior was a perfect dear about going to bed," she re 
 marked as she gave her tresses a final pat and turned toward 
 her husband. "I'll flatter your conceit enough, Mr. Man, 
 to say that he grows more like his dad every day." 
 
 Her voice was vibrant and mellow, like the room and 
 the house. Queer how thoughts enter a man's mind. Nathan 
 could not help contrasting Madelaine's ordering of her home 
 and child with Milly's. Milly given even the same setting 
 would have had books, papers, interrupted sewing, baby's 
 clothing oh, damn Milly. A vast sense of fulfillment 
 welled up in Nathan's throat. It veiled his vision for a 
 moment. What if he had missed Madelaine that morning on 
 the Hill Top? 
 
 Madelaine saw her husband was pensive. She drew a 
 low cushion across before Nathan could get it for her. 
 She sank down at his feet, and with a faint expression of 
 amusement, her dark eyes fastened on the flames. She re 
 mained that way for a time, then leaned her head over 
 against the man's knee. Nathan's hand stole down and 
 smoothed her hair. 
 
 "Happy, dear?" she asked, as she had asked a thousand 
 nights. 
 
 "I'm very happy, Madelaine," he said huskily, like a boy. 
 
 "It pleases me to have you say that," was the woman's 
 comment. 
 
 "At the door, a few moments ago, I had to stand for a time 
 and 'drink in' my 'art drawing-room softly shaded at mid 
 night.' This sort of thing was what I'd dreamed of, so 
 long, it well, it hurt. Even now it hurts. But it's a sweet 
 hurt. That's the 'hick' in me, I suppose. I can't get over it." 
 
 Madelaine smiled, a bit sadly. Reaching up, she drew
 
 HILL TOPS 499 
 
 the hand despoiling her hair down beside her cheek and pat 
 ted it. (Milly would have reminded him curtly that he was 
 "mussing her" or asked him if he thought she could do her 
 hair a dozen times a day just for him to yank out of place 
 oh, damn Milly ! ) 
 
 "Nathan, dear," the wife whispered, calm eyes looking 
 deep in the flames, "pride in one's home appreciation of 
 the efforts of loved ones to please, is never provincial; 
 neither should a lifelong hunger for beautiful things hurt. 
 I say that, Nathan, and yet you make me confess that you've 
 not been alone in that hunger; you haven't been the only 
 one who has come into a heritage of such things, to know 
 that sweet hurt. And remember too, dear, without earthly 
 shadows we see no high lights. It's the wealth of life to 
 measure our happiness at last by the price attainment has 
 cost us." 
 
 Ill 
 
 "My Girl the Fairies Brought!" whispered Nathan, after 
 a time. "I never want to think of her as coming from any 
 where else. There still are fairies." 
 
 Madelaine arose at the end of a half -hour, despite her 
 husband's protest. 
 
 "I'm only going above stairs to get an envelope, dear. It 
 holds two pieces of brown mapping with a strip of newspaper 
 pasted upon them. I want you to take them to an art store 
 when you go down to the office in the morning. Have the 
 slip of newsprint remapped and put in a copper frame. It 
 must hang over my writing desk permanently." 
 
 "Newsprint? Copper frame? What's the idea?" 
 
 "I want my Rosary out in sight, where I can look upon 
 it constantly." 
 
 She rumpled his hair. Then she leaned over the back of 
 the divan. Her delicate lips were very close. He did. 
 
 IV 
 
 As I draw this intimate biography to a close, they are 
 sleeping in my house, two doors down this upper hallway 
 from my study. Nathan came to Paris this week-end to
 
 Soo THE FOG 
 
 visit his home office about business in England next month. 
 He made a motor-trip of it and brought Madelaine, Nathan 
 Junior and Junior's nurse. 
 
 Mary Ann gave a dinner for them to-night. Many of 
 our friends among the Preston-Hill set, as our summer col 
 ony is known, were invited, notable among them Mrs. Perci- 
 val Mosely. The Moselys have lately bought a summer 
 place here in Paris at the instigation of the Thornes. 
 
 Mary Ann's dinner was very mulch of a success. It was 
 aided toward that end by Madelaine, mightily so. 
 
 A score of times to-night I caught myself staring rudely 
 at Nathan's wife. With smashing beauty of face, figure and 
 gown, and a personal charm beyond all clumsy male adjec 
 tives, she kept that table on qui vvve with her bon mots and 
 delicious repartee eyes shining, cheeks flushed, ruby lips 
 sparkling and my cellar is not stocked with anything but 
 pumpkins and last season's peach preserve, either. And the 
 pride and happiness on her husband's face was entirely par 
 donable and heart-mellowing. 
 
 I would conclude with Mrs. Mosely's remark to Mary 
 Ann at the door. Naturally Mrs. Mosely is a comparative 
 stranger to Paris. 
 
 "I've had a truly wonderful evening," she cried, in her 
 smooth onyx voice, "and I'm especially grateful for being 
 placed beside that young Mr. Forge at dinner. I met him 
 once in New York but really had no opportunity to make 
 his acquaintance closely. Why, he told me more about Rus 
 sia and Russian art than I've learned in eleven summers 
 abroad. And as for poetry he spoke of that new book 
 that's causing such a sensation in New York : 'Life Lyrics of 
 a Tanner', as though he might have written it himself. 1 
 should have liked to have known his parents. Truly, they 
 must have been most remarkable people. Why, I haven't 
 met such a well-informed, intelligent, perfectly poised and 
 smoothly polished young fellow in the last dozen years. I 
 think he's perfectly charming!" 
 
 The "Life Lyrics of a Tanner!" It's a great book. An 
 autographed copy lies here upon my desk, weighing down 
 my high pile of manuscript. Pity it was published anony 
 mously ! 
 
 For the tanner isn't old Caleb Gridley. I'll tell the world 
 he isn't. And that's not army slang, either.
 
 "Ilia a chapter out of American life, a vital and significant chapter, 
 and ably written" Baltimore Sun. 
 
 THE 
 
 GREATER 
 
 GLORY 
 
 By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY 
 
 With frontispiece by Norman Price. 
 
 12mo. Cloth. 376 pages. 
 
 'It is a human interest story, written by the wise old editor 
 himself in his familiar, colloquial style, with a touch of humor here, 
 and a touch of pathos there, to move the sentimental reader. 
 Throughout, there is the warmth of human understanding of the 
 man who has studied his fellow men intimately, for a long time, 
 and who has drawn from that study a gentle optimism." Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 " The Greater Glory' is pure gold in the literary field, and it 
 will endure. When an anthology of truly American novels is 
 compiled, this is our nomination." St. Louis Star. 
 
 " 'The Greater Glory* is decidedly worth reading. It has a 
 robustness and a genial warmth that are too seldom discovered in 
 the fiction of our age." The Boston Post. 
 
 "A novel so compelling in its challenge, so convincing in its 
 recital and so searching in its analysis that it stands in the first 
 rank of the books of the year." Boston Herald, 
 
 "He has produced one .of the most readable and enjoyable stories 
 of the year a story of genuine human interest told with a gentle 
 heart warming optimism and a kindly spirit of appreciation of his 
 neighbors and spiced with appealing humor." New Haven 
 Journal Courier, 
 
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