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1791	----	********************************************************************** THIS EBOOK WAS ONE OF PROJECT GUTENBERG'S EARLY FILES PRODUCED AT A TIME WHEN PROOFING METHODS AND TOOLS WERE NOT WELL DEVELOPED. THERE IS AN IMPROVED EDITION OF THIS TITLE WHICH MAY BE VIEWED AT EBOOK (#1529) ********************************************************************** 
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2175	----	YOU NEVER CAN TELL By George Bernard Shaw ACT I In a dentist's operating room on a fine August morning in 1896. Not the usual tiny London den, but the best sitting room of a furnished lodging in a terrace on the sea front at a fashionable watering place. The operating chair, with a gas pump and cylinder beside it, is half way between the centre of the room and one of the corners. If you look into the room through the window which lights it, you will see the fireplace in the middle of the wall opposite you, with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to your left, where you can see another window, underneath which stands a writing table, with a blotter and a diary on it, and a chair. Next the writing table, towards the door, is a leather covered sofa. The opposite wall, close on your right, is occupied mostly by a bookcase. The operating chair is under your nose, facing you, with the cabinet of instruments handy to it on your left. You observe that the professional furniture and apparatus are new, and that the wall paper, designed, with the taste of an undertaker, in festoons and urns, the carpet with its symmetrical plans of rich, cabbagy nosegays, the glass gasalier with lustres; the ornamental gilt rimmed blue candlesticks on the ends of the mantelshelf, also glass draped with lustres, and the ormolu clock under a glass-cover in the middle between them, its uselessness emphasized by a cheap American clock disrespectfully placed beside it and now indicating 12 o'clock noon, all combine with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution. There is no shadow of this on the two persons who are occupying the room just now. One of them, a very pretty woman in miniature, her tiny figure dressed with the daintiest gaiety, is of a later generation, being hardly eighteen yet. This darling little creature clearly does not belong to the room, or even to the country; for her complexion, though very delicate, has been burnt biscuit color by some warmer sun than England's; and yet there is, for a very subtle observer, a link between them. For she has a glass of water in her hand, and a rapidly clearing cloud of Spartan obstinacy on her tiny firm set mouth and quaintly squared eyebrows. If the least line of conscience could be traced between those eyebrows, an Evangelical might cherish some faint hope of finding her a sheep in wolf's clothing--for her frock is recklessly pretty--but as the cloud vanishes it leaves her frontal sinus as smoothly free from conviction of sin as a kitten's. The dentist, contemplating her with the self-satisfaction of a successful operator, is a young man of thirty or thereabouts. He does not give the impression of being much of a workman: his professional manner evidently strikes him as being a joke, and is underlain by a thoughtless pleasantry which betrays the young gentleman still unsettled and in search of amusing adventures, behind the newly set-up dentist in search of patients. He is not without gravity of demeanor; but the strained nostrils stamp it as the gravity of the humorist. His eyes are clear, alert, of sceptically moderate size, and yet a little rash; his forehead is an excellent one, with plenty of room behind it; his nose and chin cavalierly handsome. On the whole, an attractive, noticeable beginner, of whose prospects a man of business might form a tolerably favorable estimate. THE YOUNG LADY (handing him the glass). Thank you. (In spite of the biscuit complexion she has not the slightest foreign accent.) THE DENTIST (putting it down on the ledge of his cabinet of instruments). That was my first tooth. THE YOUNG LADY (aghast). Your first! Do you mean to say that you began practising on me? THE DENTIST. Every dentist has to begin on somebody. THE YOUNG LADY. Yes: somebody in a hospital, not people who pay. THE DENTIST (laughing). Oh, the hospital doesn't count. I only meant my first tooth in private practice. Why didn't you let me give you gas? THE YOUNG LADY. Because you said it would be five shillings extra. THE DENTIST (shocked). Oh, don't say that. It makes me feel as if I had hurt you for the sake of five shillings. THE YOUNG LADY (with cool insolence). Well, so you have! (She gets up.) Why shouldn't you? it's your business to hurt people. (It amuses him to be treated in this fashion: he chuckles secretly as he proceeds to clean and replace his instruments. She shakes her dress into order; looks inquisitively about her; and goes to the window.) You have a good view of the sea from these rooms! Are they expensive? THE DENTIST. Yes. THE YOUNG LADY. You don't own the whole house, do you? THE DENTIST. No. THE YOUNG LADY (taking the chair which stands at the writing-table and looking critically at it as she spins it round on one leg.) Your furniture isn't quite the latest thing, is it? THE DENTIST. It's my landlord's. THE YOUNG LADY. Does he own that nice comfortable Bath chair? (pointing to the operating chair.) THE DENTIST. No: I have that on the hire-purchase system. THE YOUNG LADY (disparagingly). I thought so. (Looking about her again in search of further conclusions.) I suppose you haven't been here long? THE DENTIST. Six weeks. Is there anything else you would like to know? THE YOUNG LADY (the hint quite lost on her). Any family? THE DENTIST. I am not married. THE YOUNG LADY. Of course not: anybody can see that. I meant sisters and mother and that sort of thing. THE DENTIST. Not on the premises. THE YOUNG LADY. Hm! If you've been here six weeks, and mine was your first tooth, the practice can't be very large, can it? THE DENTIST. Not as yet. (He shuts the cabinet, having tidied up everything.) THE YOUNG LADY. Well, good luck! (She takes our her purse.) Five shillings, you said it would be? THE DENTIST. Five shillings. THE YOUNG LADY (producing a crown piece). Do you charge five shillings for everything? THE DENTIST. Yes. THE YOUNG LADY. Why? THE DENTIST. It's my system. I'm what's called a five shilling dentist. THE YOUNG LADY. How nice! Well, here! (holding up the crown piece) a nice new five shilling piece! your first fee! Make a hole in it with the thing you drill people's teeth with and wear it on your watch-chain. THE DENTIST. Thank you. THE PARLOR MAID (appearing at the door). The young lady's brother, sir. A handsome man in miniature, obviously the young lady's twin, comes in eagerly. He wears a suit of terra-cotta cashmere, the elegantly cut frock coat lined in brown silk, and carries in his hand a brown tall hat and tan gloves to match. He has his sister's delicate biscuit complexion, and is built on the same small scale; but he is elastic and strong in muscle, decisive in movement, unexpectedly deeptoned and trenchant in speech, and with perfect manners and a finished personal style which might be envied by a man twice his age. Suavity and self-possession are points of honor with him; and though this, rightly considered, is only the modern mode of boyish self-consciousness, its effect is none the less staggering to his elders, and would be insufferable in a less prepossessing youth. He is promptitude itself, and has a question ready the moment he enters. THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN. Am I on time? THE YOUNG LADY. No: it's all over. THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN. Did you howl? THE YOUNG LADY. Oh, something awful. Mr. Valentine: this is my brother Phil. Phil: this is Mr. Valentine, our new dentist. (Valentine and Phil bow to one another. She proceeds, all in one breath.) He's only been here six weeks; and he's a bachelor. The house isn't his; and the furniture is the landlord's; but the professional plant is hired. He got my tooth out beautifully at the first go; and he and I are great friends. PHILIP. Been asking a lot of questions? THE YOUNG LADY (as if incapable of doing such a thing). Oh, no. PHILIP. Glad to hear it. (To Valentine.) So good of you not to mind us, Mr. Valentine. The fact is, we've never been in England before; and our mother tells us that the people here simply won't stand us. Come and lunch with us. (Valentine, bewildered by the leaps and bounds with which their acquaintanceship is proceeding, gasps; but he has no opportunity of speaking, as the conversation of the twins is swift and continuous.) THE YOUNG LADY. Oh, do, Mr. Valentine. PHILIP. At the Marine Hotel--half past one. THE YOUNG LADY. We shall be able to tell mamma that a respectable Englishman has promised to lunch with us. PHILIP. Say no more, Mr. Valentine: you'll come. VALENTINE. Say no more! I haven't said anything. May I ask whom I have the pleasure of entertaining? It's really quite impossible for me to lunch at the Marine Hotel with two perfect strangers. THE YOUNG LADY (flippantly). Ooooh! what bosh! One patient in six weeks! What difference does it make to you? PHILIP (maturely). No, Dolly: my knowledge of human nature confirms Mr. Valentine's judgment. He is right. Let me introduce Miss Dorothy Clandon, commonly called Dolly. (Valentine bows to Dolly. She nods to him.) I'm Philip Clandon. We're from Madeira, but perfectly respectable, so far. VALENTINE. Clandon! Are you related to-- DOLLY (unexpectedly crying out in despair). Yes, we are. VALENTINE (astonished). I beg your pardon? DOLLY. Oh, we are, we are. It's all over, Phil: they know all about us in England. (To Valentine.) Oh, you can't think how maddening it is to be related to a celebrated person, and never be valued anywhere for our own sakes. VALENTINE. But excuse me: the gentleman I was thinking of is not celebrated. DOLLY (staring at him). Gentleman! (Phil is also puzzled.) VALENTINE. Yes. I was going to ask whether you were by any chance a daughter of Mr. Densmore Clandon of Newbury Hall. DOLLY (vacantly). No. PHILIP. Well come, Dolly: how do you know you're not? DOLLY (cheered). Oh, I forgot. Of course. Perhaps I am. VALENTINE. Don't you know? PHILIP. Not in the least. DOLLY. It's a wise child-- PHILIP (cutting her short). Sh! (Valentine starts nervously; for the sound made by Philip, though but momentary, is like cutting a sheet of silk in two with a flash of lightning. It is the result of long practice in checking Dolly's indiscretions.) The fact is, Mr. Valentine, we are the children of the celebrated Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon, an authoress of great repute--in Madeira. No household is complete without her works. We came to England to get away from them. The are called the Twentieth Century Treatises. DOLLY. Twentieth Century Cooking. PHILIP. Twentieth Century Creeds. DOLLY. Twentieth Century Clothing. PHILIP. Twentieth Century Conduct. DOLLY. Twentieth Century Children. PHILIP. Twentieth Century Parents. DOLLY. Cloth limp, half a dollar. PHILIP. Or mounted on linen for hard family use, two dollars. No family should be without them. Read them, Mr. Valentine: they'll improve your mind. DOLLY. But not till we've gone, please. PHILIP. Quite so: we prefer people with unimproved minds. Our own minds are in that fresh and unspoiled condition. VALENTINE (dubiously). Hm! DOLLY (echoing him inquiringly). Hm? Phil: he prefers people whose minds are improved. PHILIP. In that case we shall have to introduce him to the other member of the family: the Woman of the Twentieth Century; our sister Gloria! DOLLY (dithyrambically). Nature's masterpiece! PHILIP. Learning's daughter! DOLLY. Madeira's pride! PHILIP. Beauty's paragon! DOLLY (suddenly descending to prose). Bosh! No complexion. VALENTINE (desperately). May I have a word? PHILIP (politely). Excuse us. Go ahead. DOLLY (very nicely). So sorry. VALENTINE (attempting to take them paternally). I really must give a hint to you young people-- DOLLY (breaking out again). Oh, come: I like that. How old are you? PHILIP. Over thirty. DOLLY. He's not. PHILIP (confidently). He is. DOLLY (emphatically). Twenty-seven. PHILIP (imperturbably). Thirty-three. DOLLY. Stuff! PHILIP (to Valentine). I appeal to you, Mr. Valentine. VALENTINE (remonstrating). Well, really--(resigning himself.) Thirty-one. PHILIP (to Dolly). You were wrong. DOLLY. So were you. PHILIP (suddenly conscientious). We're forgetting our manners, Dolly. DOLLY (remorseful). Yes, so we are. PHILIP (apologetic). We interrupted you, Mr. Valentine. DOLLY. You were going to improve our minds, I think. VALENTINE. The fact is, your-- PHILIP (anticipating him). Our appearance? DOLLY. Our manners? VALENTINE (ad misericordiam). Oh, do let me speak. DOLLY. The old story. We talk too much. PHILIP. We do. Shut up, both. (He seats himself on the arm of the opposing chair.) DOLLY. Mum! (She sits down in the writing-table chair, and closes her lips tight with the tips of her fingers.) VALENTINE. Thank you. (He brings the stool from the bench in the corner; places it between them; and sits down with a judicial air. They attend to him with extreme gravity. He addresses himself first to Dolly.) Now may I ask, to begin with, have you ever been in an English seaside resort before? (She shakes her head slowly and solemnly. He turns to Phil, who shakes his head quickly and expressively.) I thought so. Well, Mr. Clandon, our acquaintance has been short; but it has been voluble; and I have gathered enough to convince me that you are neither of you capable of conceiving what life in an English seaside resort is. Believe me, it's not a question of manners and appearance. In those respects we enjoy a freedom unknown in Madeira. (Dolly shakes her head vehemently.) Oh, yes, I assure you. Lord de Cresci's sister bicycles in knickerbockers; and the rector's wife advocates dress reform and wears hygienic boots. (Dolly furtively looks at her own shoe: Valentine catches her in the act, and deftly adds) No, that's not the sort of boot I mean. (Dolly's shoe vanishes.) We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because, as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners. But--and now will you excuse my frankness? (They nod.) Thank you. Well, in a seaside resort there's one thing you must have before anybody can afford to be seen going about with you; and that's a father, alive or dead. (He looks at them alternately, with emphasis. They meet his gaze like martyrs.) Am I to infer that you have omitted that indispensable part of your social equipment? (They confirm him by melancholy nods.) Them I'm sorry to say that if you are going to stay here for any length of time, it will be impossible for me to accept your kind invitation to lunch. (He rises with an air of finality, and replaces the stool by the bench.) PHILIP (rising with grave politeness). Come, Dolly. (He gives her his arm.) DOLLY. Good morning. (They go together to the door with perfect dignity.) VALENTINE (overwhelmed with remorse). Oh, stop, stop. (They halt and turn, arm in arm.) You make me feel a perfect beast. DOLLY. That's your conscience: not us. VALENTINE (energetically, throwing off all pretence of a professional manner). My conscience! My conscience has been my ruin. Listen to me. Twice before I have set up as a respectable medical practitioner in various parts of England. On both occasions I acted conscientiously, and told my patients the brute truth instead of what they wanted to be told. Result, ruin. Now I've set up as a dentist, a five shilling dentist; and I've done with conscience forever. This is my last chance. I spent my last sovereign on moving in; and I haven't paid a shilling of rent yet. I'm eating and drinking on credit; my landlord is as rich as a Jew and as hard as nails; and I've made five shillings in six weeks. If I swerve by a hair's breadth from the straight line of the most rigid respectability, I'm done for. Under such a circumstance, is it fair to ask me to lunch with you when you don't know your own father? DOLLY. After all, our grandfather is a canon of Lincoln Cathedral. VALENTINE (like a castaway mariner who sees a sail on the horizon). What! Have you a grandfather? DOLLY. Only one. VALENTINE. My dear, good young friends, why on earth didn't you tell me that before? A cannon of Lincoln! That makes it all right, of course. Just excuse me while I change my coat. (He reaches the door in a bound and vanishes. Dolly and Phil stare after him, and then stare at one another. Missing their audience, they droop and become commonplace at once.) PHILIP (throwing away Dolly's arm and coming ill-humoredly towards the operating chair). That wretched bankrupt ivory snatcher makes a compliment of allowing us to stand him a lunch--probably the first square meal he has had for months. (He gives the chair a kick, as if it were Valentine.) DOLLY. It's too beastly. I won't stand it any longer, Phil. Here in England everybody asks whether you have a father the very first thing. PHILIP. I won't stand it either. Mamma must tell us who he was. DOLLY. Or who he is. He may be alive. PHILIP. I hope not. No man alive shall father me. DOLLY. He might have a lot of money, though. PHILIP. I doubt it. My knowledge of human nature leads me to believe that if he had a lot of money he wouldn't have got rid of his affectionate family so easily. Anyhow, let's look at the bright side of things. Depend on it, he's dead. (He goes to the hearth and stands with his back to the fireplace, spreading himself. The parlor maid appears. The twins, under observation, instantly shine out again with their former brilliancy.) THE PARLOR MAID. Two ladies for you, miss. Your mother and sister, miss, I think. Mrs. Clandon and Gloria come in. Mrs. Clandon is between forty and fifty, with a slight tendency to soft, sedentary fat, and a fair remainder of good looks, none the worse preserved because she has evidently followed the old tribal matronly fashion of making no pretension in that direction after her marriage, and might almost be suspected of wearing a cap at home. She carries herself artificially well, as women were taught to do as a part of good manners by dancing masters and reclining boards before these were superseded by the modern artistic cult of beauty and health. Her hair, a flaxen hazel fading into white, is crimped, and parted in the middle with the ends plaited and made into a knot, from which observant people of a certain age infer that Mrs. Clandon had sufficient individuality and good taste to stand out resolutely against the now forgotten chignon in her girlhood. In short, she is distinctly old fashioned for her age in dress and manners. But she belongs to the forefront of her own period (say 1860-80) in a jealously assertive attitude of character and intellect, and in being a woman of cultivated interests rather than passionately developed personal affections. Her voice and ways are entirely kindly and humane; and she lends herself conscientiously to the occasional demonstrations of fondness by which her children mark their esteem for her; but displays of personal sentiment secretly embarrass her: passion in her is humanitarian rather than human: she feels strongly about social questions and principles, not about persons. Only, one observes that this reasonableness and intense personal privacy, which leaves her relations with Gloria and Phil much as they might be between her and the children of any other woman, breaks down in the case of Dolly. Though almost every word she addresses to her is necessarily in the nature of a remonstrance for some breach of decorum, the tenderness in her voice is unmistakable; and it is not surprising that years of such remonstrance have left Dolly hopelessly spoiled. Gloria, who is hardly past twenty, is a much more formidable person than her mother. She is the incarnation of haughty highmindedness, raging with the impatience of an impetuous, dominative character paralyzed by the impotence of her youth, and unwillingly disciplined by the constant danger of ridicule from her lighter-handed juniors. Unlike her mother, she is all passion; and the conflict of her passion with her obstinate pride and intense fastidiousness results in a freezing coldness of manner. In an ugly woman all this would be repulsive; but Gloria is an attractive woman. Her deep chestnut hair, olive brown skin, long eyelashes, shaded grey eyes that often flash like stars, delicately turned full lips, and compact and supple, but muscularly plump figure appeal with disdainful frankness to the senses and imagination. A very dangerous girl, one would say, if the moral passions were not also marked, and even nobly marked, in a fine brow. Her tailor-made skirt-and-jacket dress of saffron brown cloth, seems conventional when her back is turned; but it displays in front a blouse of sea-green silk which upsets its conventionality with one stroke, and sets her apart as effectually as the twins from the ordinary run of fashionable seaside humanity. Mrs. Clandon comes a little way into the room, looking round to see who is present. Gloria, who studiously avoids encouraging the twins by betraying any interest in them, wanders to the window and looks out with her thoughts far away. The parlor maid, instead of withdrawing, shuts the door and waits at it. MRS. CLANDON. Well, children? How is the toothache, Dolly? DOLLY. Cured, thank Heaven. I've had it out. (She sits down on the step of the operating chair. Mrs. Clandon takes the writing-table chair.) PHILIP (striking in gravely from the hearth). And the dentist, a first-rate professional man of the highest standing, is coming to lunch with us. MRS. CLANDON (looking round apprehensively at the servant). Phil! THE PARLOR MAID. Beg pardon, ma'am. I'm waiting for Mr. Valentine. I have a message for him. DOLLY. Who from? MRS. CLANDON (shocked). Dolly! (Dolly catches her lips with her finger tips, suppressing a little splutter of mirth.) THE PARLOR MAID. Only the landlord, ma'am. Valentine, in a blue serge suit, with a straw hat in his hand, comes back in high spirits, out of breath with the haste he has made. Gloria turns from the window and studies him with freezing attention. PHILIP. Let me introduce you, Mr. Valentine. My mother, Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon. (Mrs. Clandon bows. Valentine bows, self-possessed and quite equal to the occasion.) My sister Gloria. (Gloria bows with cold dignity and sits down on the sofa. Valentine falls in love at first sight and is miserably confused. He fingers his hat nervously, and makes her a sneaking bow.) MRS. CLANDON. I understand that we are to have the pleasure of seeing you at luncheon to-day, Mr. Valentine. VALENTINE. Thank you--er--if you don't mind--I mean if you will be so kind--(to the parlor maid testily) What is it? THE PARLOR MAID. The landlord, sir, wishes to speak to you before you go out. VALENTINE. Oh, tell him I have four patients here. (The Clandons look surprised, except Phil, who is imperturbable.) If he wouldn't mind waiting just two minutes, I--I'll slip down and see him for a moment. (Throwing himself confidentially on her sense of the position.) Say I'm busy, but that I want to see him. THE PARLOR MAID (reassuringly). Yes, sir. (She goes.) MRS. CLANDON (on the point of rising). We are detaining you, I am afraid. VALENTINE. Not at all, not at all. Your presence here will be the greatest help to me. The fact is, I owe six week's rent; and I've had no patients until to-day. My interview with my landlord will be considerably smoothed by the apparent boom in my business. DOLLY (vexed). Oh, how tiresome of you to let it all out! And we've just been pretending that you were a respectable professional man in a first-rate position. MRS. CLANDON (horrified). Oh, Dolly, Dolly! My dearest, how can you be so rude? (To Valentine.) Will you excuse these barbarian children of mine, Mr. Valentine? VALENTINE. Thank you, I'm used to them. Would it be too much to ask you to wait five minutes while I get rid of my landlord downstairs? DOLLY. Don't be long. We're hungry. MRS. CLANDON (again remonstrating). Dolly, dear! VALENTINE (to Dolly). All right. (To Mrs. Clandon.) Thank you: I shan't be long. (He steals a look at Gloria as he turns to go. She is looking gravely at him. He falls into confusion.) I--er--er--yes--thank you (he succeeds at last in blundering himself out of the room; but the exhibition is a pitiful one). PHILIP. Did you observe? (Pointing to Gloria.) Love at first sight. You can add his scalp to your collection, Gloria. MRS. CLANDON. Sh--sh, pray, Phil. He may have heard you. PHILIP. Not he. (Bracing himself for a scene.) And now look here, mamma. (He takes the stool from the bench; and seats himself majestically in the middle of the room, taking a leaf out of Valentine's book. Dolly, feeling that her position on the step of the operating chair is unworthy of the dignity of the occasion, rises, looking important and determined; crosses to the window; and stands with her back to the end of the writing-table, her hands behind her and on the table. Mrs. Clandon looks at them, wondering what is coming. Gloria becomes attentive. Philip straightens his back; places his knuckles symmetrically on his knees; and opens his case.) Dolly and I have been talking over things a good deal lately; and I don't think, judging from my knowledge of human nature--we don't think that you (speaking very staccato, with the words detached) quite appreciate the fact-- DOLLY (seating herself on the end of the table with a spring). That we've grown up. MRS. CLANDON. Indeed? In what way have I given you any reason to complain? PHILIP. Well, there are certain matters upon which we are beginning to feel that you might take us a little more into your confidence. MRS. CLANDON (rising, with all the placidity of her age suddenly broken up; and a curious hard excitement, dignified but dogged, ladylike but implacable--the manner of the Old Guard of the Women's Rights movement--coming upon her). Phil: take care. Remember what I have always taught you. There are two sorts of family life, Phil; and your experience of human nature only extends, so far, to one of them. (Rhetorically.) The sort you know is based on mutual respect, on recognition of the right of every member of the household to independence and privacy (her emphasis on "privacy" is intense) in their personal concerns. And because you have always enjoyed that, it seems such a matter of course to you that you don't value it. But (with biting acrimony) there is another sort of family life: a life in which husbands open their wives' letters, and call on them to account for every farthing of their expenditure and every moment of their time; in which women do the same to their children; in which no room is private and no hour sacred; in which duty, obedience, affection, home, morality and religion are detestable tyrannies, and life is a vulgar round of punishments and lies, coercion and rebellion, jealousy, suspicion, recrimination--Oh! I cannot describe it to you: fortunately for you, you know nothing about it. (She sits down, panting. Gloria has listened to her with flashing eyes, sharing all her indignation.) DOLLY (inaccessible to rhetoric). See Twentieth Century Parents, chapter on Liberty, passim. MRS. CLANDON (touching her shoulder affectionately, soothed even by a gibe from her). My dear Dolly: if you only knew how glad I am that it is nothing but a joke to you, though it is such bitter earnest to me. (More resolutely, turning to Philip.) Phil, I never ask you questions about your private concerns. You are not going to question me, are you? PHILIP. I think it due to ourselves to say that the question we wanted to ask is as much our business as yours. DOLLY. Besides, it can't be good to keep a lot of questions bottled up inside you. You did it, mamma; but see how awfully it's broken out again in me. MRS. CLANDON. I see you want to ask your question. Ask it. DOLLY AND PHILIP (beginning simultaneously). Who-- (They stop.) PHILIP. Now look here, Dolly: am I going to conduct this business or are you? DOLLY. You. PHILIP. Then hold your mouth. (Dolly does so literally.) The question is a simple one. When the ivory snatcher-- MRS. CLANDON (remonstrating). Phil! PHILIP. Dentist is an ugly word. The man of ivory and gold asked us whether we were the children of Mr. Densmore Clandon of Newbury Hall. In pursuance of the precepts in your treatise on Twentieth Century Conduct, and your repeated personal exhortations to us to curtail the number of unnecessary lies we tell, we replied truthfully the we didn't know. DOLLY. Neither did we. PHILIP. Sh! The result was that the gum architect made considerable difficulties about accepting our invitation to lunch, although I doubt if he has had anything but tea and bread and butter for a fortnight past. Now my knowledge of human nature leads me to believe that we had a father, and that you probably know who he was. MRS. CLANDON (her agitation returning). Stop, Phil. Your father is nothing to you, nor to me (vehemently). That is enough. (The twins are silenced, but not satisfied. Their faces fall. But Gloria, who has been following the altercation attentively, suddenly intervenes.) GLORIA (advancing). Mother: we have a right to know. MRS. CLANDON (rising and facing her). Gloria! "We!" Who is "we"? GLORIA (steadfastly). We three. (Her tone is unmistakable: she is pitting her strength against her mother for the first time. The twins instantly go over to the enemy.) MRS. CLANDON (wounded). In your mouth "we" used to mean you and I, Gloria. PHILIP (rising decisively and putting away the stool). We're hurting you: let's drop it. We didn't think you'd mind. I don't want to know. DOLLY (coming off the table). I'm sure I don't. Oh, don't look like that, mamma. (She looks angrily at Gloria.) MRS. CLANDON (touching her eyes hastily with her handkerchief and sitting down again). Thank you, my dear. Thanks, Phil. GLORIA (inexorably). We have a right to know, mother. MRS. CLANDON (indignantly). Ah! You insist. GLORIA. Do you intend that we shall never know? DOLLY. Oh, Gloria, don't. It's barbarous. GLORIA (with quiet scorn). What is the use of being weak? You see what has happened with this gentleman here, mother. The same thing has happened to me. MRS. CLANDON } (all { What do you mean? DOLLY } together). { Oh, tell us. PHILIP } { What happened to you? GLORIA. Oh, nothing of any consequence. (She turns away from them and goes up to the easy chair at the fireplace, where she sits down, almost with her back to them. As they wait expectantly, she adds, over her shoulder, with studied indifference.) On board the steamer the first officer did me the honor to propose to me. DOLLY. No, it was to me. MRS. CLANDON. The first officer! Are you serious, Gloria? What did you say to him? (correcting herself) Excuse me: I have no right to ask that. GLORIA. The answer is pretty obvious. A woman who does not know who her father was cannot accept such an offer. MRS. CLANDON. Surely you did not want to accept it? GLORIA (turning a little and raising her voice). No; but suppose I had wanted to! PHILIP. Did that difficulty strike you, Dolly? DOLLY. No, I accepted him. GLORIA } (all crying { Accepted him! MRS. CLANDON } out { Dolly! PHILIP } together) { Oh, I say! DOLLY (naively). He did look such a fool! MRS. CLANDON. But why did you do such a thing, Dolly? DOLLY. For fun, I suppose. He had to measure my finger for a ring. You'd have done the same thing yourself. MRS. CLANDON. No, Dolly, I would not. As a matter of fact the first officer did propose to me; and I told him to keep that sort of thing for women were young enough to be amused by it. He appears to have acted on my advice. (She rises and goes to the hearth.) Gloria: I am sorry you think me weak; but I cannot tell you what you want. You are all too young. PHILIP. This is rather a startling departure from Twentieth Century principles. DOLLY (quoting). "Answer all your children's questions, and answer them truthfully, as soon as they are old enough to ask them." See Twentieth Century Motherhood-- PHILIP. Page one-- DOLLY. Chapter one-- PHILIP. Sentence one. MRS. CLANDON. My dears: I did not say that you were too young to know. I said you were too young to be taken into my confidence. You are very bright children, all of you; but I am glad for your sakes that you are still very inexperienced and consequently very unsympathetic. There are some experiences of mine that I cannot bear to speak of except to those who have gone through what I have gone through. I hope you will never be qualified for such confidences. But I will take care that you shall learn all you want to know. Will that satisfy you? PHILIP. Another grievance, Dolly. DOLLY. We're not sympathetic. GLORIA (leaning forward in her chair and looking earnestly up at her mother). Mother: I did not mean to be unsympathetic. MRS. CLANDON (affectionately). Of course not, dear. Do you think I don't understand? GLORIA (rising). But, mother-- MRS. CLANDON (drawing back a little). Yes? GLORIA (obstinately). It is nonsense to tell us that our father is nothing to us. MRS. CLANDON (provoked to sudden resolution). Do you remember your father? GLORIA (meditatively, as if the recollection were a tender one). I am not quite sure. I think so. MRS. CLANDON (grimly). You are not sure? GLORIA. No. MRS. CLANDON (with quiet force). Gloria: if I had ever struck you-- (Gloria recoils: Philip and Dolly are disagreeably shocked; all three start at her, revolted as she continues)--struck you purposely, deliberately, with the intention of hurting you, with a whip bought for the purpose! Would you remember that, do you think? (Gloria utters an exclamation of indignant repulsion.) That would have been your last recollection of your father, Gloria, if I had not taken you away from him. I have kept him out of your life: keep him now out of mine by never mentioning him to me again. (Gloria, with a shudder, covers her face with her hands, until, hearing someone at the door, she turns away and pretends to occupy herself looking at the names of the books in the bookcase. Mrs. Clandon sits down on the sofa. Valentine returns.). VALENTINE. I hope I've not kept you waiting. That landlord of mine is really an extraordinary old character. DOLLY (eagerly). Oh, tell us. How long has he given you to pay? MRS. CLANDON (distracted by her child's bad manners). Dolly, Dolly, Dolly dear! You must not ask questions. DOLLY (demurely). So sorry. You'll tell us, won't you, Mr. Valentine? VALENTINE. He doesn't want his rent at all. He's broken his tooth on a Brazil nut; and he wants me to look at it and to lunch with him afterwards. DOLLY. Then have him up and pull his tooth out at once; and we'll bring him to lunch, too. Tell the maid to fetch him along. (She runs to the bell and rings it vigorously. Then, with a sudden doubt she turns to Valentine and adds) I suppose he's respectable--really respectable. VALENTINE. Perfectly. Not like me. DOLLY. Honest Injun? (Mrs. Clandon gasps faintly; but her powers of remonstrance are exhausted.) VALENTINE. Honest Injun! DOLLY. Then off with you and bring him up. VALENTINE (looking dubiously at Mrs. Clandon). I daresay he'd be delighted if--er--? MRS. CLANDON (rising and looking at her watch). I shall be happy to see your friend at lunch, if you can persuade him to come; but I can't wait to see him now: I have an appointment at the hotel at a quarter to one with an old friend whom I have not seen since I left England eighteen years ago. Will you excuse me? VALENTINE. Certainly, Mrs. Clandon. GLORIA. Shall I come? MRS. CLANDON. No, dear. I want to be alone. (She goes out, evidently still a good deal troubled. Valentine opens the door for her and follows her out.) PHILIP (significantly--to Dolly). Hmhm! DOLLY (significantly to Philip). Ahah! (The parlor maid answers the bell.) DOLLY. Show the old gentleman up. THE PARLOR MAID (puzzled). Madam? DOLLY. The old gentleman with the toothache. PHILIP. The landlord. THE PARLOR MAID. Mr. Crampton, Sir? PHILIP. Is his name Crampton? DOLLY (to Philip). Sounds rheumaticky, doesn't it? PHILIP. Chalkstones, probably. DOLLY (over her shoulder, to the parlor maid). Show Mr. Crampstones up. (Goes R. to writing-table chair). THE PARLOR MAID (correcting her). Mr. Crampton, miss. (She goes.) DOLLY (repeating it to herself like a lesson). Crampton, Crampton, Crampton, Crampton, Crampton. (She sits down studiously at the writing-table.) I must get that name right, or Heaven knows what I shall call him. GLORIA. Phil: can you believe such a horrible thing as that about our father--what mother said just now? PHILIP. Oh, there are lots of people of that kind. Old Chalice used to thrash his wife and daughters with a cartwhip. DOLLY (contemptuously). Yes, a Portuguese! PHILIP. When you come to men who are brutes, there is much in common between the Portuguese and the English variety, Doll. Trust my knowledge of human nature. (He resumes his position on the hearthrug with an elderly and responsible air.) GLORIA (with angered remorse). I don't think we shall ever play again at our old game of guessing what our father was to be like. Dolly: are you sorry for your father--the father with lots of money? DOLLY. Oh, come! What about your father--the lonely old man with the tender aching heart? He's pretty well burst up, I think. PHILIP. There can be no doubt that the governor is an exploded superstition. (Valentine is heard talking to somebody outside the door.) But hark: he comes. GLORIA (nervously). Who? DOLLY. Chalkstones. PHILIP. Sh! Attention. (They put on their best manners. Philip adds in a lower voice to Gloria) If he's good enough for the lunch, I'll nod to Dolly; and if she nods to you, invite him straight away. (Valentine comes back with his landlord. Mr. Fergus Crampton is a man of about sixty, tall, hard and stringy, with an atrociously obstinate, ill tempered, grasping mouth, and a querulously dogmatic voice. Withal he is highly nervous and sensitive, judging by his thin transparent skin marked with multitudinous lines, and his slender fingers. His consequent capacity for suffering acutely from all the dislike that his temper and obstinacy can bring upon him is proved by his wistful, wounded eyes, by a plaintive note in his voice, a painful want of confidence in his welcome, and a constant but indifferently successful effort to correct his natural incivility of manner and proneness to take offence. By his keen brows and forehead he is clearly a shrewd man; and there is no sign of straitened means or commercial diffidence about him: he is well dressed, and would be classed at a guess as a prosperous master manufacturer in a business inherited from an old family in the aristocracy of trade. His navy blue coat is not of the usual fashionable pattern. It is not exactly a pilot's coat; but it is cut that way, double breasted, and with stout buttons and broad lapels, a coat for a shipyard rather than a counting house. He has taken a fancy to Valentine, who cares nothing for his crossness of grain and treats him with a sort of disrespectful humanity, for which he is secretly grateful.) VALENTINE. May I introduce--this is Mr. Crampton--Miss Dorothy Clandon, Mr. Philip Clandon, Miss Clandon. (Crampton stands nervously bowing. They all bow.) Sit down, Mr. Crampton. DOLLY (pointing to the operating chair). That is the most comfortable chair, Mr. Ch--crampton. CRAMPTON. Thank you; but won't this young lady--(indicating Gloria, who is close to the chair)? GLORIA. Thank you, Mr. Crampton: we are just going. VALENTINE (bustling him across to the chair with good-humored peremptoriness). Sit down, sit down. You're tired. CRAMPTON. Well, perhaps as I am considerably the oldest person present, I-- (He finishes the sentence by sitting down a little rheumatically in the operating chair. Meanwhile, Philip, having studied him critically during his passage across the room, nods to Dolly; and Dolly nods to Gloria.) GLORIA. Mr. Crampton: we understand that we are preventing Mr. Valentine from lunching with you by taking him away ourselves. My mother would be very glad, indeed, if you would come too. CRAMPTON (gratefully, after looking at her earnestly for a moment). Thank you. I will come with pleasure. GLORIA } (politely { Thank you very much--er-- DOLLY } murmuring).{ So glad--er-- PHILIP } { Delighted, I'm sure--er-- (The conversation drops. Gloria and Dolly look at one another; then at Valentine and Philip. Valentine and Philip, unequal to the occasion, look away from them at one another, and are instantly so disconcerted by catching one another's eye, that they look back again and catch the eyes of Gloria and Dolly. Thus, catching one another all round, they all look at nothing and are quite at a loss. Crampton looks about him, waiting for them to begin. The silence becomes unbearable.) DOLLY (suddenly, to keep things going). How old are you, Mr. Crampton? GLORIA (hastily). I am afraid we must be going, Mr. Valentine. It is understood, then, that we meet at half past one. (She makes for the door. Philip goes with her. Valentine retreats to the bell.) VALENTINE. Half past one. (He rings the bell.) Many thanks. (He follows Gloria and Philip to the door, and goes out with them.) DOLLY (who has meanwhile stolen across to Crampton). Make him give you gas. It's five shillings extra: but it's worth it. CRAMPTON (amused). Very well. (Looking more earnestly at her.) So you want to know my age, do you? I'm fifty-seven. DOLLY (with conviction). You look it. CRAMPTON (grimly). I dare say I do. DOLLY. What are you looking at me so hard for? Anything wrong? (She feels whether her hat is right.) CRAMPTON. You're like somebody. DOLLY. Who? CRAMPTON. Well, you have a curious look of my mother. DOLLY (incredulously). Your mother!!! Quite sure you don't mean your daughter? CRAMPTON (suddenly blackening with hate). Yes: I'm quite sure I don't mean my daughter. DOLLY (sympathetically). Tooth bad? CRAMPTON. No, no: nothing. A twinge of memory, Miss Clandon, not of toothache. DOLLY. Have it out. "Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow:" with gas, five shillings extra. CRAMPTON (vindictively). No, not a sorrow. An injury that was done me once: that's all. I don't forget injuries; and I don't want to forget them. (His features settle into an implacable frown.) (re-enter Philip: to look for Dolly. He comes down behind her unobserved.) DOLLY (looking critically at Crampton's expression). I don't think we shall like you when you are brooding over your sorrows. PHILIP (who has entered the room unobserved, and stolen behind her). My sister means well, Mr. Crampton: but she is indiscreet. Now Dolly, outside! (He takes her towards the door.) DOLLY (in a perfectly audible undertone). He says he's only fifty-seven; and he thinks me the image of his mother; and he hates his daughter; and-- (She is interrupted by the return of Valentine.) VALENTINE. Miss Clandon has gone on. PHILIP. Don't forget half past one. DOLLY. Mind you leave Mr. Crampton with enough teeth to eat with. (They go out. Valentine comes down to his cabinet, and opens it.) CRAMPTON. That's a spoiled child, Mr. Valentine. That's one of your modern products. When I was her age, I had many a good hiding fresh in my memory to teach me manners. VALENTINE (taking up his dental mirror and probe from the shelf in front of the cabinet). What did you think of her sister? CRAMPTON. You liked her better, eh? VALENTINE (rhapsodically). She struck me as being-- (He checks himself, and adds, prosaically) However, that's not business. (He places himself behind Crampton's right shoulder and assumes his professional tone.) Open, please. (Crampton opens his mouth. Valentine puts the mirror in, and examines his teeth.) Hm! You have broken that one. What a pity to spoil such a splendid set of teeth! Why do you crack nuts with them? (He withdraws the mirror, and comes forward to converse with Crampton.) CRAMPTON. I've always cracked nuts with them: what else are they for? (Dogmatically.) The proper way to keep teeth good is to give them plenty of use on bones and nuts, and wash them every day with soap-- plain yellow soap. VALENTINE. Soap! Why soap? CRAMPTON. I began using it as a boy because I was made to; and I've used it ever since. And I never had toothache in my life. VALENTINE. Don't you find it rather nasty? CRAMPTON. I found that most things that were good for me were nasty. But I was taught to put up with them, and made to put up with them. I'm used to it now: in fact, I like the taste when the soap is really good. VALENTINE (making a wry face in spite of himself). You seem to have been very carefully educated, Mr. Crampton. CRAMPTON (grimly). I wasn't spoiled, at all events. VALENTINE (smiling a little to himself). Are you quite sure? CRAMPTON. What d'y' mean? VALENTINE. Well, your teeth are good, I admit. But I've seen just as good in very self-indulgent mouths. (He goes to the ledge of cabinet and changes the probe for another one.) CRAMPTON. It's not the effect on the teeth: it's the effect on the character. VALENTINE (placably). Oh, the character, I see. (He recommences operations.) A little wider, please. Hm! That one will have to come out: it's past saving. (He withdraws the probe and again comes to the side of the chair to converse.) Don't be alarmed: you shan't feel anything. I'll give you gas. CRAMPTON. Rubbish, man: I want none of your gas. Out with it. People were taught to bear necessary pain in my day. VALENTINE. Oh, if you like being hurt, all right. I'll hurt you as much as you like, without any extra charge for the beneficial effect on your character. CRAMPTON (rising and glaring at him). Young man: you owe me six weeks' rent. VALENTINE. I do. CRAMPTON. Can you pay me? VALENTINE. No. CRAMPTON (satisfied with his advantage). I thought not. How soon d'y' think you'll be able to pay me if you have no better manners than to make game of your patients? (He sits down again.) VALENTINE. My good sir: my patients haven't all formed their characters on kitchen soap. CRAMPTON (suddenly gripping him by the arm as he turns away again to the cabinet). So much the worse for them. I tell you you don't understand my character. If I could spare all my teeth, I'd make you pull them all out one after another to shew you what a properly hardened man can go through with when he's made up his mind to do it. (He nods at him to enforce the effect of this declaration, and releases him.) VALENTINE (his careless pleasantry quite unruffled). And you want to be more hardened, do you? CRAMPTON. Yes. VALENTINE (strolling away to the bell). Well, you're quite hard enough for me already--as a landlord. (Crampton receives this with a growl of grim humor. Valentine rings the bell, and remarks in a cheerful, casual way, whilst waiting for it to be answered.) Why did you never get married, Mr. Crampton? A wife and children would have taken some of the hardness out of you. CRAMPTON (with unexpected ferocity). What the devil is that to you? (The parlor maid appears at the door.) VALENTINE (politely). Some warm water, please. (She retires: and Valentine comes back to the cabinet, not at all put out by Crampton's rudeness, and carries on the conversation whilst he selects a forceps and places it ready to his hand with a gag and a drinking glass.) You were asking me what the devil that was to me. Well, I have an idea of getting married myself. CRAMPTON (with grumbling irony). Naturally, sir, naturally. When a young man has come to his last farthing, and is within twenty-four hours of having his furniture distrained upon by his landlord, he marries. I've noticed that before. Well, marry; and be miserable. VALENTINE. Oh, come, what do you know about it? CRAMPTON. I'm not a bachelor. VALENTINE. Then there is a Mrs. Crampton? CRAMPTON (wincing with a pang of resentment). Yes--damn her! VALENTINE (unperturbed). Hm! A father, too, perhaps, as well as a husband, Mr. Crampton? CRAMPTON. Three children. VALENTINE (politely). Damn them?--eh? CRAMPTON (jealously). No, sir: the children are as much mine as hers. (The parlor maid brings in a jug of hot water.) VALENTINE. Thank you. (He takes the jug from her, and brings it to the cabinet, continuing in the same idle strain) I really should like to know your family, Mr. Crampton. (The parlor maid goes out: and he pours some hot water into the drinking glass.) CRAMPTON. Sorry I can't introduce you, sir. I'm happy to say that I don't know where they are, and don't care, so long as they keep out of my way. (Valentine, with a hitch of his eyebrows and shoulders, drops the forceps with a clink into the glass of hot water.) You needn't warm that thing to use on me. I'm not afraid of the cold steel. (Valentine stoops to arrange the gas pump and cylinder beside the chair.) What's that heavy thing? VALENTINE. Oh, never mind. Something to put my foot on, to get the necessary purchase for a good pull. (Crampton looks alarmed in spite of himself. Valentine stands upright and places the glass with the forceps in it ready to his hand, chatting on with provoking indifference.) And so you advise me not to get married, Mr. Crampton? (He stoops to fit the handle on the apparatus by which the chair is raised and lowered.) CRAMPTON (irritably). I advise you to get my tooth out and have done reminding me of my wife. Come along, man. (He grips the arms of the chair and braces himself.) VALENTINE (pausing, with his hand on the lever, to look up at him and say). What do you bet that I don't get that tooth out without your feeling it? CRAMPTON. Your six week's rent, young man. Don't you gammon me. VALENTINE (jumping at the bet and winding him aloft vigorously). Done! Are you ready? (Crampton, who has lost his grip of the chair in his alarm at its sudden ascent, folds his arms: sits stiffly upright: and prepares for the worst. Valentine lets down the back of the chair to an obtuse angle.) CRAMPTON (clutching at the arms of the chair as he falls back). Take care man. I'm quite helpless in this po--- VALENTINE (deftly stopping him with the gag, and snatching up the mouthpiece of the gas machine). You'll be more helpless presently. (He presses the mouthpiece over Crampton's mouth and nose, leaning over his chest so as to hold his head and shoulders well down on the chair. Crampton makes an inarticulate sound in the mouthpiece and tries to lay hands on Valentine, whom he supposes to be in front of him. After a moment his arms wave aimlessly, then subside and drop. He is quite insensible. Valentine, with an exclamation of somewhat preoccupied triumph, throws aside the mouthpiece quickly: picks up the forceps adroitly from the glass: and--the curtain falls.) END OF ACT I. ACT II On the terrace at the Marine Hotel. It is a square flagged platform, with a parapet of heavy oil jar pilasters supporting a broad stone coping on the outer edge, which stands up over the sea like a cliff. The head waiter of the establishment, busy laying napkins on a luncheon table with his back to the sea, has the hotel on his right, and on his left, in the corner nearest the sea, the flight of steps leading down to the beach. When he looks down the terrace in front of him he sees a little to his left a solitary guest, a middle-aged gentleman sitting on a chair of iron laths at a little iron table with a bowl of lump sugar and three wasps on it, reading the Standard, with his umbrella up to defend him from the sun, which, in August and at less than an hour after noon, is toasting his protended insteps. Just opposite him, at the hotel side of the terrace, there is a garden seat of the ordinary esplanade pattern. Access to the hotel for visitors is by an entrance in the middle of its facade, reached by a couple of steps on a broad square of raised pavement. Nearer the parapet there lurks a way to the kitchen, masked by a little trellis porch. The table at which the waiter is occupied is a long one, set across the terrace with covers and chairs for five, two at each side and one at the end next the hotel. Against the parapet another table is prepared as a buffet to serve from. The waiter is a remarkable person in his way. A silky old man, white-haired and delicate looking, but so cheerful and contented that in his encouraging presence ambition stands rebuked as vulgarity, and imagination as treason to the abounding sufficiency and interest of the actual. He has a certain expression peculiar to men who have been extraordinarily successful in their calling, and who, whilst aware of the vanity of success, are untouched by envy. The gentleman at the iron table is not dressed for the seaside. He wears his London frock coat and gloves; and his tall silk hat is on the table beside the sugar bowl. The excellent condition and quality of these garments, the gold-rimmed folding spectacles through which he is reading the Standard, and the Times at his elbow overlaying the local paper, all testify to his respectability. He is about fifty, clean shaven, and close-cropped, with the corners of his mouth turned down purposely, as if he suspected them of wanting to turn up, and was determined not to let them have their way. He has large expansive ears, cod colored eyes, and a brow kept resolutely wide open, as if, again, he had resolved in his youth to be truthful, magnanimous, and incorruptible, but had never succeeded in making that habit of mind automatic and unconscious. Still, he is by no means to be laughed at. There is no sign of stupidity or infirmity of will about him: on the contrary, he would pass anywhere at sight as a man of more than average professional capacity and responsibility. Just at present he is enjoying the weather and the sea too much to be out of patience; but he has exhausted all the news in his papers and is at present reduced to the advertisements, which are not sufficiently succulent to induce him to persevere with them. THE GENTLEMAN (yawning and giving up the paper as a bad job). Waiter! WAITER. Sir? (coming down C.) THE GENTLEMAN. Are you quite sure Mrs. Clandon is coming back before lunch? WAITER. Quite sure, sir. She expects you at a quarter to one, sir. (The gentleman, soothed at once by the waiter's voice, looks at him with a lazy smile. It is a quiet voice, with a gentle melody in it that gives sympathetic interest to his most commonplace remark; and he speaks with the sweetest propriety, neither dropping his aitches nor misplacing them, nor committing any other vulgarism. He looks at his watch as he continues) Not that yet, sir, is it? 12:43, sir. Only two minutes more to wait, sir. Nice morning, sir? THE GENTLEMAN. Yes: very fresh after London. WAITER. Yes, sir: so all our visitors say, sir. Very nice family, Mrs. Clandon's, sir. THE GENTLEMAN. You like them, do you? WAITER. Yes, sir. They have a free way with them that is very taking, sir, very taking indeed, sir: especially the young lady and gentleman. THE GENTLEMAN. Miss Dorothea and Mr. Philip, I suppose. WAITER. Yes, sir. The young lady, in giving an order, or the like of that, will say, "Remember, William, we came to this hotel on your account, having heard what a perfect waiter you are." The young gentleman will tell me that I remind him strongly of his father (the gentleman starts at this) and that he expects me to act by him as such. (Soothing, sunny cadence.) Oh, very pleasant, sir, very affable and pleasant indeed! THE GENTLEMAN. You like his father! (He laughs at the notion.) WAITER. Oh, we must not take what they say too seriously, sir. Of course, sir, if it were true, the young lady would have seen the resemblance, too, sir. THE GENTLEMAN. Did she? WAITER. No, sir. She thought me like the bust of Shakespear in Stratford Church, sir. That is why she calls me William, sir. My real name is Walter, sir. (He turns to go back to the table, and sees Mrs. Clandon coming up to the terrace from the beach by the steps.) Here is Mrs. Clandon, sir. (To Mrs. Clandon, in an unobtrusively confidential tone) Gentleman for you, ma'am. MRS. CLANDON. We shall have two more gentlemen at lunch, William. WAITER. Right, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. (He withdraws into the hotel. Mrs. Clandon comes forward looking round for her visitor, but passes over the gentleman without any sign of recognition.) THE GENTLEMAN (peering at her quaintly from under the umbrella). Don't you know me? MRS. CLANDON (incredulously, looking hard at him) Are you Finch McComas? McCOMAS. Can't you guess? (He shuts the umbrella; puts it aside; and jocularly plants himself with his hands on his hips to be inspected.) MRS. CLANDON. I believe you are. (She gives him her hand. The shake that ensues is that of old friends after a long separation.) Where's your beard? McCOMAS (with humorous solemnity). Would you employ a solicitor with a beard? MRS. CLANDON (pointing to the silk hat on the table). Is that your hat? McCOMAS. Would you employ a solicitor with a sombrero? MRS. CLANDON. I have thought of you all these eighteen years with the beard and the sombrero. (She sits down on the garden seat. McComas takes his chair again.) Do you go to the meetings of the Dialectical Society still? McCOMAS (gravely). I do not frequent meetings now. MRS. CLANDON. Finch: I see what has happened. You have become respectable. McCOMAS. Haven't you? MRS. CLANDON. Not a bit. McCOMAS. You hold to your old opinions still? MRS. CLANDON. As firmly as ever. McCOMAS. Bless me! And you are still ready to make speeches in public, in spite of your sex (Mrs. Clandon nods); to insist on a married woman's right to her own separate property (she nods again); to champion Darwin's view of the origin of species and John Stuart Mill's essay on Liberty (nod); to read Huxley, Tyndall and George Eliot (three nods); and to demand University degrees, the opening of the professions, and the parliamentary franchise for women as well as men? MRS. CLANDON (resolutely). Yes: I have not gone back one inch; and I have educated Gloria to take up my work where I left it. That is what has brought me back to England: I felt that I had no right to bury her alive in Madeira--my St. Helena, Finch. I suppose she will be howled at as I was; but she is prepared for that. McCOMAS. Howled at! My dear good lady: there is nothing in any of those views now-a-days to prevent her from marrying a bishop. You reproached me just now for having become respectable. You were wrong: I hold to our old opinions as strongly as ever. I don't go to church; and I don't pretend I do. I call myself what I am: a Philosophic Radical, standing for liberty and the rights of the individual, as I learnt to do from my master Herbert Spencer. Am I howled at? No: I'm indulged as an old fogey. I'm out of everything, because I've refused to bow the knee to Socialism. MRS. CLANDON (shocked). Socialism. McCOMAS. Yes, Socialism. That's what Miss Gloria will be up to her ears in before the end of the month if you let her loose here. MRS. CLANDON (emphatically). But I can prove to her that Socialism is a fallacy. McCOMAS (touchingly). It is by proving that, Mrs. Clandon, that I have lost all my young disciples. Be careful what you do: let her go her own way. (With some bitterness.) We're old-fashioned: the world thinks it has left us behind. There is only one place in all England where your opinions would still pass as advanced. MRS. CLANDON (scornfully unconvinced). The Church, perhaps? McCOMAS. No, the theatre. And now to business! Why have you made me come down here? MRS. CLANDON. Well, partly because I wanted to see you-- McCOMAS (with good-humored irony). Thanks. MRS. CLANDON. --and partly because I want you to explain everything to the children. They know nothing; and now that we have come back to England, it is impossible to leave them in ignorance any longer. (Agitated.) Finch: I cannot bring myself to tell them. I-- (She is interrupted by the twins and Gloria. Dolly comes tearing up the steps, racing Philip, who combines a terrific speed with unhurried propriety of bearing which, however, costs him the race, as Dolly reaches her mother first and almost upsets the garden seat by the precipitancy of her arrival.) DOLLY (breathless). It's all right, mamma. The dentist is coming; and he's bringing his old man. MRS. CLANDON. Dolly, dear: don't you see Mr. McComas? (Mr. McComas rises, smilingly.) DOLLY (her face falling with the most disparagingly obvious disappointment). This! Where are the flowing locks? PHILIP (seconding her warmly). Where the beard?--the cloak?--the poetic exterior? DOLLY. Oh, Mr. McComas, you've gone and spoiled yourself. Why didn't you wait till we'd seen you? McCOMAS (taken aback, but rallying his humor to meet the emergency). Because eighteen years is too long for a solicitor to go without having his hair cut. GLORIA (at the other side of McComas). How do you do, Mr. McComas? (He turns; and she takes his hand and presses it, with a frank straight look into his eyes.) We are glad to meet you at last. McCOMAS. Miss Gloria, I presume? (Gloria smiles assent, and releases his hand after a final pressure. She then retires behind the garden seat, leaning over the back beside Mrs. Clandon.) And this young gentleman? PHILIP. I was christened in a comparatively prosaic mood. My name is-- DOLLY (completing his sentence for him declamatorily). "Norval. On the Grampian hills"-- PHILIP (declaiming gravely). "My father feeds his flock, a frugal swain"-- MRS. CLANDON (remonstrating). Dear, dear children: don't be silly. Everything is so new to them here, Finch, that they are in the wildest spirits. They think every Englishman they meet is a joke. DOLLY. Well, so he is: it's not our fault. PHILIP. My knowledge of human nature is fairly extensive, Mr. McComas; but I find it impossible to take the inhabitants of this island seriously. McCOMAS. I presume, sir, you are Master Philip (offering his hand)? PHILIP (taking McComas's hand and looking solemnly at him). I was Master Philip--was so for many years; just as you were once Master Finch. (He gives his hand a single shake and drops it; then turns away, exclaiming meditatively) How strange it is to look back on our boyhood! (McComas stares after him, not at all pleased.) DOLLY (to Mrs. Clandon). Has Finch had a drink? MRS. CLANDON (remonstrating). Dearest: Mr. McComas will lunch with us. DOLLY. Have you ordered for seven? Don't forget the old gentleman. MRS. CLANDON. I have not forgotten him, dear. What is his name? DOLLY. Chalkstones. He'll be here at half past one. (To McComas.) Are we like what you expected? MRS. CLANDON (changing her tone to a more earnest one). Dolly: Mr. McComas has something more serious than that to tell you. Children: I have asked my old friend to answer the question you asked this morning. He is your father's friend as well as mine: and he will tell you the story more fairly than I could. (Turning her head from them to Gloria.) Gloria: are you satisfied? GLORIA (gravely attentive). Mr. McComas is very kind. McCOMAS (nervously). Not at all, my dear young lady: not at all. At the same time, this is rather sudden. I was hardly prepared--er-- DOLLY (suspiciously). Oh, we don't want anything prepared. PHILIP (exhorting him). Tell us the truth. DOLLY (emphatically). Bald headed. McCOMAS (nettled). I hope you intend to take what I have to say seriously. PHILIP (with profound mock gravity). I hope it will deserve it, Mr. McComas. My knowledge of human nature teaches me not to expect too much. MRS. CLANDON (remonstrating). Phil-- PHILIP. Yes, mother, all right. I beg your pardon, Mr. McComas: don't mind us. DOLLY (in conciliation). We mean well. PHILIP. Shut up, both. (Dolly holds her lips. McComas takes a chair from the luncheon table; places it between the little table and the garden seat with Dolly on his right and Philip on his left; and settles himself in it with the air of a man about to begin a long communication. The Clandons match him expectantly.) McCOMAS. Ahem! Your father-- DOLLY (interrupting). How old is he? PHILIP. Sh! MRS. CLANDON (softly). Dear Dolly: don't let us interrupt Mr. McComas. McCOMAS (emphatically). Thank you, Mrs. Clandon. Thank you. (To Dolly.) Your father is fifty-seven. DOLLY (with a bound, startled and excited). Fifty-seven! Where does he live? MRS. CLANDON (remonstrating). Dolly, Dolly! McCOMAS (stopping her). Let me answer that, Mrs. Clandon. The answer will surprise you considerably. He lives in this town. (Mrs. Clandon rises. She and Gloria look at one another in the greatest consternation.) DOLLY (with conviction). I knew it! Phil: Chalkstones is our father. McCOMAS. Chalkstones! DOLLY. Oh, Crampstones, or whatever it is. He said I was like his mother. I knew he must mean his daughter. PHILIP (very seriously). Mr. McComas: I desire to consider your feelings in every possible way: but I warn you that if you stretch the long arm of coincidence to the length of telling me that Mr. Crampton of this town is my father, I shall decline to entertain the information for a moment. McCOMAS. And pray why? PHILIP. Because I have seen the gentleman; and he is entirely unfit to be my father, or Dolly's father, or Gloria's father, or my mother's husband. McCOMAS. Oh, indeed! Well, sir, let me tell you that whether you like it or not, he is your father, and your sister' father, and Mrs. Clandon's husband. Now! What have you to say to that! DOLLY (whimpering). You needn't be so cross. Crampton isn't your father. PHILIP. Mr. McComas: your conduct is heartless. Here you find a family enjoying the unspeakable peace and freedom of being orphans. We have never seen the face of a relative--never known a claim except the claim of freely chosen friendship. And now you wish to thrust into the most intimate relationship with us a man whom we don't know-- DOLLY (vehemently). An awful old man! (reproachfully) And you began as if you had quite a nice father for us. McCOMAS (angrily). How do you know that he is not nice? And what right have you to choose your own father? (raising his voice.) Let me tell you, Miss Clandon, that you are too young to-- DOLLY (interrupting him suddenly and eagerly). Stop, I forgot! Has he any money? McCOMAS. He has a great deal of money. DOLLY (delighted). Oh, what did I always say, Phil? PHILIP. Dolly: we have perhaps been condemning the old man too hastily. Proceed, Mr. McComas. McCOMAS. I shall not proceed, sir. I am too hurt, too shocked, to proceed. MRS. CLANDON (urgently). Finch: do you realize what is happening? Do you understand that my children have invited that man to lunch, and that he will be here in a few moments? McCOMAS (completely upset). What! do you mean--am I to understand--is it-- PHILIP (impressively). Steady, Finch. Think it out slowly and carefully. He's coming--coming to lunch. GLORIA. Which of us is to tell him the truth? Have you thought of that? MRS. CLANDON. Finch: you must tell him. DOLLY Oh, Finch is no good at telling things. Look at the mess he has made of telling us. McCOMAS. I have not been allowed to speak. I protest against this. DOLLY (taking his arm coaxingly). Dear Finch: don't be cross. MRS. CLANDON. Gloria: let us go in. He may arrive at any moment. GLORIA (proudly). Do not stir, mother. I shall not stir. We must not run away. MRS. CLANDON (delicately rebuking her). My dear: we cannot sit down to lunch just as we are. We shall come back again. We must have no bravado. (Gloria winces, and goes into the hotel without a word.) Come, Dolly. (As she goes into the hotel door, the waiter comes out with plates, etc., for two additional covers on a tray.) WAITER. Gentlemen come yet, ma'am? MRS. CLANDON. Two more to come yet, thank you. They will be here, immediately. (She goes into the hotel. The waiter takes his tray to the service table.) PHILIP. I have an idea. Mr. McComas: this communication should be made, should it not, by a man of infinite tact? McCOMAS. It will require tact, certainly. PHILIP Good! Dolly: whose tact were you noticing only this morning? DOLLY (seizing the idea with rapture). Oh, yes, I declare! William! PHILIP. The very man! (Calling) William! WAITER. Coming, sir. McCOMAS (horrified). The waiter! Stop, stop! I will not permit this. I-- WAITER (presenting himself between Philip and McComas). Yes, sir. (McComas's complexion fades into stone grey; and all movement and expression desert his eyes. He sits down stupefied.) PHILIP. William: you remember my request to you to regard me as your son? WAITER (with respectful indulgence). Yes, sir. Anything you please, sir. PHILIP. William: at the very outset of your career as my father, a rival has appeared on the scene. WAITER. Your real father, sir? Well, that was to be expected, sooner or later, sir, wasn't it? (Turning with a happy smile to McComas.) Is it you, sir? McCOMAS (renerved by indignation). Certainly not. My children know how to behave themselves. PHILIP. No, William: this gentleman was very nearly my father: he wooed my mother, but wooed her in vain. McCOMAS (outraged). Well, of all the-- PHILIP. Sh! Consequently, he is only our solicitor. Do you know one Crampton, of this town? WAITER. Cock-eyed Crampton, sir, of the Crooked Billet, is it? PHILIP. I don't know. Finch: does he keep a public house? McCOMAS (rising scandalized). No, no, no. Your father, sir, is a well-known yacht builder, an eminent man here. WAITER (impressed). Oh, beg pardon, sir, I'm sure. A son of Mr. Crampton's! Dear me! PHILIP. Mr. Crampton is coming to lunch with us. WAITER (puzzled). Yes, sir. (Diplomatically.) Don't usually lunch with his family, perhaps, sir? PHILIP (impressively). William: he does not know that we are his family. He has not seen us for eighteen years. He won't know us. (To emphasize the communication he seats himself on the iron table with a spring, and looks at the waiter with his lips compressed and his legs swinging.) DOLLY. We want you to break the news to him, William. WAITER. But I should think he'd guess when he sees your mother, miss. (Philip's legs become motionless at this elucidation. He contemplates the waiter raptly.) DOLLY (dazzled). I never thought of that. PHILIP. Nor I. (Coming off the table and turning reproachfully on McComas.) Nor you. DOLLY. And you a solicitor! PHILIP. Finch: Your professional incompetence is appalling. William: your sagacity puts us all to shame. DOLLY You really are like Shakespear, William. WAITER. Not at all, sir. Don't mention it, miss. Most happy, I'm sure, sir. (Goes back modestly to the luncheon table and lays the two additional covers, one at the end next the steps, and the other so as to make a third on the side furthest from the balustrade.) PHILIP (abruptly). Finch: come and wash your hands. (Seizes his arm and leads him toward the hotel.) McCOMAS. I am thoroughly vexed and hurt, Mr. Clandon-- PHILIP (interrupting him). You will get used to us. Come, Dolly. (McComas shakes him off and marches into the hotel. Philip follows with unruffled composure.) DOLLY (turning for a moment on the steps as she follows them). Keep your wits about you, William. There will be fire-works. WAITER. Right, miss. You may depend on me, miss. (She goes into the hotel.) (Valentine comes lightly up the steps from the beach, followed doggedly by Crampton. Valentine carries a walking stick. Crampton, either because he is old and chilly, or with some idea of extenuating the unfashionableness of his reefer jacket, wears a light overcoat. He stops at the chair left by McComas in the middle of the terrace, and steadies himself for a moment by placing his hand on the back of it.) CRAMPTON. Those steps make me giddy. (He passes his hand over his forehead.) I have not got over that infernal gas yet. (He goes to the iron chair, so that he can lean his elbows on the little table to prop his head as he sits. He soon recovers, and begins to unbutton his overcoat. Meanwhile Valentine interviews the waiter.) VALENTINE. Waiter! WAITER (coming forward between them). Yes, sir. VALENTINE. Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon. WAITER (with a sweet smile of welcome). Yes, sir. We're expecting you, sir. That is your table, sir. Mrs. Clandon will be down presently, sir. The young lady and young gentleman were just talking about your friend, sir. VALENTINE. Indeed! WAITER (smoothly melodious). Yes, sire. Great flow of spirits, sir. A vein of pleasantry, as you might say, sir. (Quickly, to Crampton, who has risen to get the overcoat off.) Beg pardon, sir, but if you'll allow me (helping him to get the overcoat off and taking it from him). Thank you, sir. (Crampton sits down again; and the waiter resumes the broken melody.) The young gentleman's latest is that you're his father, sir. CRAMPTON. What! WAITER. Only his joke, sir, his favourite joke. Yesterday, I was to be his father. To-day, as soon as he knew you were coming, sir, he tried to put it up on me that you were his father, his long lost father--not seen you for eighteen years, he said. CRAMPTON (startled). Eighteen years! WAITER. Yes, sir. (With gentle archness.) But I was up to his tricks, sir. I saw the idea coming into his head as he stood there, thinking what new joke he'd have with me. Yes, sir: that's the sort he is: very pleasant, ve--ry off hand and affable indeed, sir. (Again changing his tempo to say to Valentine, who is putting his stick down against the corner of the garden seat) If you'll allow me, sir? (Taking Valentine's stick.) Thank you, sir. (Valentine strolls up to the luncheon table and looks at the menu. The waiter turns to Crampton and resumes his lay.) Even the solicitor took up the joke, although he was in a manner of speaking in my confidence about the young gentleman, sir. Yes, sir, I assure you, sir. You would never imagine what respectable professional gentlemen from London will do on an outing, when the sea air takes them, sir. CRAMPTON. Oh, there's a solicitor with them, is there? WAITER. The family solicitor, sir--yes, sir. Name of McComas, sir. (He goes towards hotel entrance with coat and stick, happily unconscious of the bomblike effect the name has produced on Crampton.) CRAMPTON (rising in angry alarm). McComas! (Calls to Valentine.) Valentine! (Again, fiercely.) Valentine!! (Valentine turns.) This is a plant, a conspiracy. This is my family--my children--my infernal wife. VALENTINE (coolly). On, indeed! Interesting meeting! (He resumes his study of the menu.) CRAMPTON. Meeting! Not for me. Let me out of this. (Calling to the waiter.) Give me that coat. WAITER. Yes, sir. (He comes back, puts Valentine's stick carefully down against the luncheon table; and delicately shakes the coat out and holds it for Crampton to put on.) I seem to have done the young gentleman an injustice, sir, haven't I, sir. CRAMPTON. Rrrh! (He stops on the point of putting his arms into the sleeves, and turns to Valentine with sudden suspicion.) Valentine: you are in this. You made this plot. You-- VALENTINE (decisively). Bosh! (He throws the menu down and goes round the table to look out unconcernedly over the parapet.) CRAMPTON (angrily). What d'ye-- (McComas, followed by Philip and Dolly, comes out. He vacillates for a moment on seeing Crampton.) WAITER (softly--interrupting Crampton). Steady, sir. Here they come, sir. (He takes up the stick and makes for the hotel, throwing the coat across his arm. McComas turns the corners of his mouth resolutely down and crosses to Crampton, who draws back and glares, with his hands behind him. McComas, with his brow opener than ever, confronts him in the majesty of a spotless conscience.) WAITER (aside, as he passes Philip on his way out). I've broke it to him, sir. PHILIP. Invaluable William! (He passes on to the table.) DOLLY (aside to the waiter). How did he take it? WAITER (aside to her). Startled at first, miss; but resigned--very resigned, indeed, miss. (He takes the stick and coat into the hotel.) McCOMAS (having stared Crampton out of countenance). So here you are, Mr. Crampton. CRAMPTON. Yes, here--caught in a trap--a mean trap. Are those my children? PHILIP (with deadly politeness). Is this our father, Mr. McComas? McCOMAS. Yes--er-- (He loses countenance himself and stops.) DOLLY (conventionally). Pleased to meet you again. (She wanders idly round the table, exchanging a smile and a word of greeting with Valentine on the way.) PHILIP. Allow me to discharge my first duty as host by ordering your wine. (He takes the wine list from the table. His polite attention, and Dolly's unconcerned indifference, leave Crampton on the footing of the casual acquaintance picked up that morning at the dentist's. The consciousness of it goes through the father with so keen a pang that he trembles all over; his brow becomes wet; and he stares dumbly at his son, who, just conscious enough of his own callousness to intensely enjoy the humor and adroitness of it, proceeds pleasantly.) Finch: some crusted old port for you, as a respectable family solicitor, eh? McCOMAS (firmly). Apollinaris only. I prefer to take nothing heating. (He walks away to the side of the terrace, like a man putting temptation behind him.) PHILIP. Valentine--? VALENTINE. Would Lager be considered vulgar? PHILIP. Probably. We'll order some. Dolly takes it. (Turning to Crampton with cheerful politeness.) And now, Mr. Crampton, what can we do for you? CRAMPTON. What d'ye mean, boy? PHILIP. Boy! (Very solemnly.) Whose fault is it that I am a boy? (Crampton snatches the wine list rudely from him and irresolutely pretends to read it. Philip abandons it to him with perfect politeness.) DOLLY (looking over Crampton's right shoulder). The whisky's on the last page but one. CRAMPTON. Let me alone, child. DOLLY. Child! No, no: you may call me Dolly if you like; but you mustn't call me child. (She slips her arm through Philip's; and the two stand looking at Crampton as if he were some eccentric stranger.) CRAMPTON (mopping his brow in rage and agony, and yet relieved even by their playing with him). McComas: we are--ha!--going to have a pleasant meal. McCOMAS (pusillanimously). There is no reason why it should not be pleasant. (He looks abjectly gloomy.) PHILIP. Finch's face is a feast in itself. (Mrs. Clandon and Gloria come from the hotel. Mrs. Clandon advances with courageous self-possession and marked dignity of manner. She stops at the foot of the steps to address Valentine, who is in her path. Gloria also stops, looking at Crampton with a certain repulsion.) MRS. CLANDON. Glad to see you again, Mr. Valentine. (He smiles. She passes on and confronts Crampton, intending to address him with perfect composure; but his aspect shakes her. She stops suddenly and says anxiously, with a touch of remorse.) Fergus: you are greatly changed. CRAMPTON (grimly). I daresay. A man does change in eighteen years. MRS. CLANDON (troubled). I--I did not mean that. I hope your health is good. CRAMPTON. Thank you. No: it's not my health. It's my happiness: that's the change you meant, I think. (Breaking out suddenly.) Look at her, McComas! Look at her; and look at me! (He utters a half laugh, half sob.) PHILIP. Sh! (Pointing to the hotel entrance, where the waiter has just appeared.) Order before William! DOLLY (touching Crampton's arm warningly with her finger). Ahem! (The waiter goes to the service table and beckons to the kitchen entrance, whence issue a young waiter with soup plates, and a cook, in white apron and cap, with the soup tureen. The young waiter remains and serves: the cook goes out, and reappears from time to time bringing in the courses. He carves, but does not serve. The waiter comes to the end of the luncheon table next the steps.) MRS. CLANDON (as they all assemble about the table). I think you have all met one another already to-day. Oh, no, excuse me. (Introducing) Mr. Valentine: Mr. McComas. (She goes to the end of the table nearest the hotel.) Fergus: will you take the head of the table, please. CRAMPTON. Ha! (Bitterly.) The head of the table! WAITER (holding the chair for him with inoffensive encouragement). This end, sir. (Crampton submits, and takes his seat.) Thank you, sir. MRS. CLANDON. Mr. Valentine: will you take that side (indicating the side nearest the parapet) with Gloria? (Valentine and Gloria take their places, Gloria next Crampton and Valentine next Mrs. Clandon.) Finch: I must put you on this side, between Dolly and Phil. You must protect yourself as best you can. (The three take the remaining side of the table, Dolly next her mother, Phil next his father, and McComas between them. Soup is served.) WAITER (to Crampton). Thick or clear, sir? CRAMPTON (to Mrs. Clandon). Does nobody ask a blessing in this household? PHILIP (interposing smartly). Let us first settle what we are about to receive. William! WAITER. Yes, sir. (He glides swiftly round the table to Phil's left elbow. On his way he whispers to the young waiter) Thick. PHILIP. Two small Lagers for the children as usual, William; and one large for this gentleman (indicating Valentine). Large Apollinaris for Mr. McComas. WAITER. Yes, sir. DOLLY. Have a six of Irish in it, Finch? McCOMAS (scandalized). No--no, thank you. PHILIP. Number 413 for my mother and Miss Gloria as before; and-- (turning enquiringly to Crampton) Eh? CRAMPTON (scowling and about to reply offensively). I-- WAITER (striking in mellifluously). All right, sir. We know what Mr. Crampton likes here, sir. (He goes into the hotel.) PHILIP (looking gravely at his father). You frequent bars. Bad habit! (The cook, accompanied by a waiter with a supply of hot plates, brings in the fish from the kitchen to the service table, and begins slicing it.) CRAMPTON. You have learnt your lesson from your mother, I see. MRS. CLANDON. Phil: will you please remember that your jokes are apt to irritate people who are not accustomed to us, and that your father is our guest to-day. CRAMPTON (bitterly). Yes, a guest at the head of my own table. (The soup plates are removed.) DOLLY (sympathetically). Yes: it's embarrassing, isn't it? It's just as bad for us, you know. PHILIP. Sh! Dolly: we are both wanting in tact. (To Crampton.) We mean well, Mr. Crampton; but we are not yet strong in the filial line. (The waiter returns from the hotel with the drinks.) William: come and restore good feeling. WAITER (cheerfully). Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. Small Lager for you, sir. (To Crampton.) Seltzer and Irish, sir. (To McComas.) Apollinaris, sir. (To Dolly.) Small Lager, miss. (To Mrs. Clandon, pouring out wine.) 413, madam. (To Valentine.) Large Lager for you, sir. (To Gloria.) 413, miss. DOLLY (drinking). To the family! PHILIP. (drinking). Hearth and Home! (Fish is served.) McCOMAS (with an obviously forced attempt at cheerful domesticity). We are getting on very nicely after all. DOLLY (critically). After all! After all what, Finch? CRAMPTON (sarcastically). He means that you are getting on very nicely in spite of the presence of your father. Do I take your point rightly, Mr. McComas? McCOMAS (disconcerted). No, no. I only said "after all" to round off the sentence. I--er--er--er--- WAITER (tactfully). Turbot, sir? McCOMAS (intensely grateful for the interruption). Thank you, waiter: thank you. WAITER (sotto voce). Don't mention it, sir. (He returns to the service table.) CRAMPTON (to Phil). Have you thought of choosing a profession yet? PHILIP. I am keeping my mind open on that subject. William! WAITER. Yes, sir. PHILIP. How long do you think it would take me to learn to be a really smart waiter? WAITER. Can't be learnt, sir. It's in the character, sir. (Confidentially to Valentine, who is looking about for something.) Bread for the lady, sir? yes, sir. (He serves bread to Gloria, and resumes at his former pitch.) Very few are born to it, sir. PHILIP. You don't happen to have such a thing as a son, yourself, have you? WAITER. Yes, sir: oh, yes, sir. (To Gloria, again dropping his voice.) A little more fish, miss? you won't care for the joint in the middle of the day. GLORIA. No, thank you. (The fish plates are removed.) DOLLY. Is your son a waiter, too, William? WAITER (serving Gloria with fowl). Oh, no, miss, he's too impetuous. He's at the Bar. McCOMAS (patronizingly). A potman, eh? WAITER (with a touch of melancholy, as if recalling a disappointment softened by time). No, sir: the other bar--your profession, sir. A Q.C., sir. McCOMAS (embarrassed). I'm sure I beg your pardon. WAITER. Not at all, sir. Very natural mistake, I'm sure, sir. I've often wished he was a potman, sir. Would have been off my hands ever so much sooner, sir. (Aside to Valentine, who is again in difficulties.) Salt at your elbow, sir. (Resuming.) Yes, sir: had to support him until he was thirty-seven, sir. But doing well now, sir: very satisfactory indeed, sir. Nothing less than fifty guineas, sir. McCOMAS. Democracy, Crampton!--modern democracy! WAITER (calmly). No, sir, not democracy: only education, sir. Scholarships, sir. Cambridge Local, sir. Sidney Sussex College, sir. (Dolly plucks his sleeve and whispers as he bends down.) Stone ginger, miss? Right, miss. (To McComas.) Very good thing for him, sir: he never had any turn for real work, sir. (He goes into the hotel, leaving the company somewhat overwhelmed by his son's eminence.) VALENTINE. Which of us dare give that man an order again! DOLLY. I hope he won't mind my sending him for ginger-beer. CRAMPTON (doggedly). While he's a waiter it's his business to wait. If you had treated him as a waiter ought to be treated, he'd have held his tongue. DOLLY. What a loss that would have been! Perhaps he'll give us an introduction to his son and get us into London society. (The waiter reappears with the ginger-beer.) CRAMPTON (growling contemptuously). London society! London society!! You're not fit for any society, child. DOLLY (losing her temper). Now look here, Mr. Crampton. If you think-- WAITER (softly, at her elbow). Stone ginger, miss. DOLLY (taken aback, recovers her good humor after a long breath and says sweetly). Thank you, dear William. You were just in time. (She drinks.) McCOMAS (making a fresh effort to lead the conversation into dispassionate regions). If I may be allowed to change the subject, Miss Clandon, what is the established religion in Madeira? GLORIA. I suppose the Portuguese religion. I never inquired. DOLLY. The servants come in Lent and kneel down before you and confess all the things they've done: and you have to pretend to forgive them. Do they do that in England, William? WAITER. Not usually, miss. They may in some parts: but it has not come under my notice, miss. (Catching Mrs. Clandon's eye as the young waiter offers her the salad bowl.) You like it without dressing, ma'am: yes, ma'am, I have some for you. (To his young colleague, motioning him to serve Gloria.) This side, Jo. (He takes a special portion of salad from the service table and puts it beside Mrs. Clandon's plate. In doing so he observes that Dolly is making a wry face.) Only a bit of watercress, miss, got in by mistake. (He takes her salad away.) Thank you, miss. (To the young waiter, admonishing him to serve Dolly afresh.) Jo. (Resuming.) Mostly members of the Church of England, miss. DOLLY. Members of the Church of England! What's the subscription? CRAMPTON (rising violently amid general consternation). You see how my children have been brought up, McComas. You see it; you hear it. I call all of you to witness-- (He becomes inarticulate, and is about to strike his fist recklessly on the table when the waiter considerately takes away his plate.) MRS. CLANDON (firmly). Sit down, Fergus. There is no occasion at all for this outburst. You must remember that Dolly is just like a foreigner here. Pray sit down. CRAMPTON (subsiding unwillingly). I doubt whether I ought to sit here and countenance all this. I doubt it. WAITER. Cheese, sir; or would you like a cold sweet? CRAMPTON (take aback). What? Oh!--cheese, cheese. DOLLY. Bring a box of cigarettes, William. WAITER. All ready, miss. (He takes a box of cigarettes from the service table and places them before Dolly, who selects one and prepares to smoke. He then returns to his table for a box of vestas.) CRAMPTON (staring aghast at Dolly). Does she smoke? DOLLY (out of patience). Really, Mr. Crampton, I'm afraid I'm spoiling your lunch. I'll go and have my cigarette on the beach. (She leaves the table with petulant suddenness and goes down the steps. The waiter attempts to give her the matches; but she is gone before he can reach her.) CRAMPTON (furiously). Margaret: call that girl back. Call her back, I say. McCOMAS (trying to make peace). Come, Crampton: never mind. She's her father's daughter: that's all. MRS. CLANDON (with deep resentment). I hope not, Finch. (She rises: they all rise a little.) Mr. Valentine: will you excuse me: I am afraid Dolly is hurt and put out by what has passed. I must go to her. CRAMPTON. To take her part against me, you mean. MRS. CLANDON (ignoring him). Gloria: will you take my place whilst I am away, dear. (She crosses to the steps. Crampton's eyes follow her with bitter hatred. The rest watch her in embarrassed silence, feeling the incident to be a very painful one.) WAITER (intercepting her at the top of the steps and offering her a box of vestas). Young lady forgot the matches, ma'am. If you would be so good, ma'am. MRS. CLANDON (surprised into grateful politeness by the witchery of his sweet and cheerful tones). Thank you very much. (She takes the matches and goes down to the beach. The waiter shepherds his assistant along with him into the hotel by the kitchen entrance, leaving the luncheon party to themselves.) CRAMPTON (throwing himself back in his chair). There's a mother for you, McComas! There's a mother for you! GLORIA (steadfastly). Yes: a good mother. CRAMPTON. And a bad father? That's what you mean, eh? VALENTINE (rising indignantly and addressing Gloria). Miss Clandon: I-- CRAMPTON (turning on him). That girl's name is Crampton, Mr. Valentine, not Clandon. Do you wish to join them in insulting me? VALENTINE (ignoring him). I'm overwhelmed, Miss Clandon. It's all my fault: I brought him here: I'm responsible for him. And I'm ashamed of him. CRAMPTON. What d'y' mean? GLORIA (rising coldly). No harm has been done, Mr. Valentine. We have all been a little childish, I am afraid. Our party has been a failure: let us break it up and have done with it. (She puts her chair aside and turns to the steps, adding, with slighting composure, as she passes Crampton.) Good-bye, father. (She descends the steps with cold, disgusted indifference. They all look after her, and so do not notice the return of the waiter from the hotel, laden with Crampton's coat, Valentine's stick, a couple of shawls and parasols, a white canvas umbrella, and some camp stools.) CRAMPTON (to himself, staring after Gloria with a ghastly expression). Father! Father!! (He strikes his fist violently on the table.) Now-- WAITER (offering the coat). This is yours, sir, I think, sir. (Crampton glares at him; then snatches it rudely and comes down the terrace towards the garden seat, struggling with the coat in his angry efforts to put it on. McComas rises and goes to his assistance; then takes his hat and umbrella from the little iron table, and turns towards the steps. Meanwhile the waiter, after thanking Crampton with unruffled sweetness for taking the coat, offers some of his burden to Phil.) The ladies' sunshades, sir. Nasty glare off the sea to-day, sir: very trying to the complexion, sir. I shall carry down the camp stools myself, sir. PHILIP. You are old, Father William; but you are the most considerate of men. No: keep the sunshades and give me the camp stools (taking them). WAITER (with flattering gratitude). Thank you, sir. PHILIP. Finch: share with me (giving him a couple). Come along. (They go down the steps together.) VALENTINE (to the waiter). Leave me something to bring down--one of these. (Offering to take a sunshade.) WAITER (discreetly). That's the younger lady's, sir. (Valentine lets it go.) Thank you, sir. If you'll allow me, sir, I think you had better have this. (He puts down the sunshades on Crampton's chair, and produces from the tail pocket of his dress coat, a book with a lady's handkerchief between the leaves, marking the page.) The eldest young lady is reading it at present. (Valentine takes it eagerly.) Thank you, sir. Schopenhauer, sir, you see. (He takes up the sunshades again.) Very interesting author, sir: especially on the subject of ladies, sir. (He goes down the steps. Valentine, about to follow him, recollects Crampton and changes his mind.) VALENTINE (coming rather excitedly to Crampton). Now look here, Crampton: are you at all ashamed of yourself? CRAMPTON (pugnaciously). Ashamed of myself! What for? VALENTINE. For behaving like a bear. What will your daughter think of me for having brought you here? CRAMPTON. I was not thinking of what my daughter was thinking of you. VALENTINE. No, you were thinking of yourself. You're a perfect maniac. CRAMPTON (heartrent). She told you what I am--a father--a father robbed of his children. What are the hearts of this generation like? Am I to come here after all these years--to see what my children are for the first time! to hear their voices!--and carry it all off like a fashionable visitor; drop in to lunch; be Mr. Crampton--M i s t e r Crampton! What right have they to talk to me like that? I'm their father: do they deny that? I'm a man, with the feelings of our common humanity: have I no rights, no claims? In all these years who have I had round me? Servants, clerks, business acquaintances. I've had respect from them--aye, kindness. Would one of them have spoken to me as that girl spoke?--would one of them have laughed at me as that boy was laughing at me all the time? (Frantically.) My own children! M i s t e r Crampton! My-- VALENTINE. Come, come: they're only children. The only one of them that's worth anything called you father. CRAMPTON (wildly). Yes: "good-bye, father." Oh, yes: she got at my feelings--with a stab! VALENTINE (taking this in very bad part). Now look here, Crampton: you just let her alone: she's treated you very well. I had a much worse time of it at lunch than you. CRAMPTON. You! VALENTINE (with growing impetuosity). Yes: I. I sat next to her; and I never said a single thing to her the whole time--couldn't think of a blessed word. And not a word did she say to me. CRAMPTON. Well? VALENTINE. Well? Well??? (Tackling him very seriously and talking faster and faster.) Crampton: do you know what's been the matter with me to-day? You don't suppose, do you, that I'm in the habit of playing such tricks on my patients as I played on you? CRAMPTON. I hope not. VALENTINE. The explanation is that I'm stark mad, or rather that I've never been in my real senses before. I'm capable of anything: I've grown up at last: I'm a Man; and it's your daughter that's made a man of me. CRAMPTON (incredulously). Are you in love with my daughter? VALENTINE (his words now coming in a perfect torrent). Love! Nonsense: it's something far above and beyond that. It's life, it's faith, it's strength, certainty, paradise-- CRAMPTON (interrupting him with acrid contempt). Rubbish, man! What have you to keep a wife on? You can't marry her. VALENTINE. Who wants to marry her? I'll kiss her hands; I'll kneel at her feet; I'll live for her; I'll die for her; and that'll be enough for me. Look at her book! See! (He kisses the handkerchief.) If you offered me all your money for this excuse for going down to the beach and speaking to her again, I'd only laugh at you. (He rushes buoyantly off to the steps, where he bounces right into the arms of the waiter, who is coming up form the beach. The two save themselves from falling by clutching one another tightly round the waist and whirling one another around.) WAITER (delicately). Steady, sir, steady. VALENTINE (shocked at his own violence). I beg your pardon. WAITER. Not at all, sir, not at all. Very natural, sir, I'm sure, sir, at your age. The lady has sent me for her book, sir. Might I take the liberty of asking you to let her have it at once, sir? VALENTINE. With pleasure. And if you will allow me to present you with a professional man's earnings for six weeks-- (offering him Dolly's crown piece.) WAITER (as if the sum were beyond his utmost expectations). Thank you, sir: much obliged. (Valentine dashes down the steps.) Very high-spirited young gentleman, sir: very manly and straight set up. CRAMPTON (in grumbling disparagement). And making his fortune in a hurry, no doubt. I know what his six weeks' earnings come to. (He crosses the terrace to the iron table, and sits down.) WAITER (philosophically). Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing, sir. (Delicately sinking the philosopher in the waiter for a moment.) Perhaps you haven't noticed that you hadn't touched that seltzer and Irish, sir, when the party broke up. (He takes the tumbler from the luncheon table, and sets if before Crampton.) Yes, sir, you never can tell. There was my son, sir! who ever thought that he would rise to wear a silk gown, sir? And yet to-day, sir, nothing less than fifty guineas, sir. What a lesson, sir! CRAMPTON. Well, I hope he is grateful to you, and recognizes what he owes you. WAITER. We get on together very well, very well indeed, sir, considering the difference in our stations. (With another of his irresistible transitions.) A small lump of sugar, sir, will take the flatness out of the seltzer without noticeably sweetening the drink, sir. Allow me, sir. (He drops a lump of sugar into the tumbler.) But as I say to him, where's the difference after all? If I must put on a dress coat to show what I am, sir, he must put on a wig and gown to show what he is. If my income is mostly tips, and there's a pretence that I don't get them, why, his income is mostly fees, sir; and I understand there's a pretence that he don't get them! If he likes society, and his profession brings him into contact with all ranks, so does mine, too, sir. If it's a little against a barrister to have a waiter for his father, sir, it's a little against a waiter to have a barrister for a son: many people consider it a great liberty, sir, I assure you, sir. Can I get you anything else, sir? CRAMPTON. No, thank you. (With bitter humility.) I suppose that's no objection to my sitting here for a while: I can't disturb the party on the beach here. WAITER (with emotion). Very kind of you, sir, to put it as if it was not a compliment and an honour to us, Mr. Crampton, very kind indeed. The more you are at home here, sir, the better for us. CRAMPTON (in poignant irony). Home! WAITER (reflectively). Well, yes, sir: that's a way of looking at it, too, sir. I have always said that the great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life, sir. CRAMPTON. I missed that advantage to-day, I think. WAITER. You did, sir, you did. Dear me! It's the unexpected that always happens, isn't it? (Shaking his head.) You never can tell, sir: you never can tell. (He goes into the hotel.) CRAMPTON (his eyes shining hardly as he props his drawn, miserable face on his hands). Home! Home!! (He drops his arms on the table and bows his head on them, but presently hears someone approaching and hastily sits bolt upright. It is Gloria, who has come up the steps alone, with her sunshade and her book in her hands. He looks defiantly at her, with the brutal obstinacy of his mouth and the wistfulness of his eyes contradicting each other pathetically. She comes to the corner of the garden seat and stands with her back to it, leaning against the end of it, and looking down at him as if wondering at his weakness: too curious about him to be cold, but supremely indifferent to their kinship.) Well? GLORIA. I want to speak with you for a moment. CRAMPTON (looking steadily at her). Indeed? That's surprising. You meet your father after eighteen years; and you actually want to speak to him for a moment! That's touching: isn't it? (He rests his head on his hands, and looks down and away from her, in gloomy reflection.) GLORIA. All that is what seems to me so nonsensical, so uncalled for. What do you expect us to feel for you--to do for you? What is it you want? Why are you less civil to us than other people are? You are evidently not very fond of us--why should you be? But surely we can meet without quarrelling. CRAMPTON (a dreadful grey shade passing over his face). Do you realize that I am your father? GLORIA. Perfectly. CRAMPTON. Do you know what is due to me as your father? GLORIA. For instance---? CRAMPTON (rising as if to combat a monster). For instance! For instance!! For instance, duty, affection, respect, obedience-- GLORIA (quitting her careless leaning attitude and confronting him promptly and proudly). I obey nothing but my sense of what is right. I respect nothing that is not noble. That is my duty. (She adds, less firmly) As to affection, it is not within my control. I am not sure that I quite know what affection means. (She turns away with an evident distaste for that part of the subject, and goes to the luncheon table for a comfortable chair, putting down her book and sunshade.) CRAMPTON (following her with his eyes). Do you really mean what you are saying? GLORIA (turning on him quickly and severely). Excuse me: that is an uncivil question. I am speaking seriously to you; and I expect you to take me seriously. (She takes one of the luncheon chairs; turns it away from the table; and sits down a little wearily, saying) Can you not discuss this matter coolly and rationally? CRAMPTON. Coolly and rationally! No, I can't. Do you understand that? I can't. GLORIA (emphatically). No. That I c a n n o t understand. I have no sympathy with-- CRAMPTON (shrinking nervously). Stop! Don't say anything more yet; you don't know what you're doing. Do you want to drive me mad? (She frowns, finding such petulance intolerable. He adds hastily) No: I'm not angry: indeed I'm not. Wait, wait: give me a little time to think. (He stands for a moment, screwing and clinching his brows and hands in his perplexity; then takes the end chair from the luncheon table and sits down beside her, saying, with a touching effort to be gentle and patient) Now, I think I have it. At least I'll try. GLORIA (firmly). You see! Everything comes right if we only think it resolutely out. CRAMPTON (in sudden dread). No: don't think. I want you to feel: that's the only thing that can help us. Listen! Do you--but first--I forgot. What's your name? I mean you pet name. They can't very well call you Sophronia. GLORIA (with astonished disgust). Sophronia! My name is Gloria. I am always called by it. CRAMPTON (his temper rising again). Your name is Sophronia, girl: you were called after your aunt Sophronia, my sister: she gave you your first Bible with your name written in it. GLORIA. Then my mother gave me a new name. CRAMPTON (angrily). She had no right to do it. I will not allow this. GLORIA. You had no right to give me your sister's name. I don't know her. CRAMPTON. You're talking nonsense. There are bounds to what I will put up with. I will not have it. Do you hear that? GLORIA (rising warningly). Are you resolved to quarrel? CRAMPTON (terrified, pleading). No, no: sit down. Sit down, won't you? (She looks at him, keeping him in suspense. He forces himself to utter the obnoxious name.) Gloria. (She marks her satisfaction with a slight tightening of the lips, and sits down.) There! You see I only want to shew you that I am your father, my--my dear child. (The endearment is so plaintively inept that she smiles in spite of herself, and resigns herself to indulge him a little.) Listen now. What I want to ask you is this. Don't you remember me at all? You were only a tiny child when you were taken away from me; but you took plenty of notice of things. Can't you remember someone whom you loved, or (shyly) at least liked in a childish way? Come! someone who let you stay in his study and look at his toy boats, as you thought them? (He looks anxiously into her face for some response, and continues less hopefully and more urgently) Someone who let you do as you liked there and never said a word to you except to tell you that you must sit still and not speak? Someone who was something that no one else was to you--who was your father. GLORIA (unmoved). If you describe things to me, no doubt I shall presently imagine that I remember them. But I really remember nothing. CRAMPTON (wistfully). Has your mother never told you anything about me? GLORIA. She has never mentioned your name to me. (He groans involuntarily. She looks at him rather contemptuously and continues) Except once; and then she did remind me of something I had forgotten. CRAMPTON (looking up hopefully). What was that? GLORIA (mercilessly). The whip you bought to beat me with. CRAMPTON (gnashing his teeth). Oh! To bring that up against me! To turn from me! When you need never have known. (Under a grinding, agonized breath.) Curse her! GLORIA (springing up). You wretch! (With intense emphasis.) You wretch!! You dare curse my mother! CRAMPTON. Stop; or you'll be sorry afterwards. I'm your father. GLORIA. How I hate the name! How I love the name of mother! You had better go. CRAMPTON. I--I'm choking. You want to kill me. Some--I-- (His voice stifles: he is almost in a fit.) GLORIA (going up to the balustrade with cool, quick resourcefulness, and calling over to the beach). Mr. Valentine! VALENTINE (answering from below). Yes. GLORIA. Come here a moment, please. Mr. Crampton wants you. (She returns to the table and pours out a glass of water.) CRAMPTON (recovering his speech). No: let me alone. I don't want him. I'm all right, I tell you. I need neither his help nor yours. (He rises and pulls himself together.) As you say, I had better go. (He puts on his hat.) Is that your last word? GLORIA. I hope so. (He looks stubbornly at her for a moment; nods grimly, as if he agreed to that; and goes into the hotel. She looks at him with equal steadiness until he disappears, when she makes a gesture of relief, and turns to speak to Valentine, who comes running up the steps.) VALENTINE (panting). What's the matter? (Looking round.) Where's Crampton? GLORIA. Gone. (Valentine's face lights up with sudden joy, dread, and mischief. He has just realized that he is alone with Gloria. She continues indifferently) I thought he was ill; but he recovered himself. He wouldn't wait for you. I am sorry. (She goes for her book and parasol.) VALENTINE. So much the better. He gets on my nerves after a while. (Pretending to forget himself.) How could that man have so beautiful a daughter! GLORIA (taken aback for a moment; then answering him with polite but intentional contempt). That seems to be an attempt at what is called a pretty speech. Let me say at once, Mr. Valentine, that pretty speeches make very sickly conversation. Pray let us be friends, if we are to be friends, in a sensible and wholesome way. I have no intention of getting married; and unless you are content to accept that state of things, we had much better not cultivate each other's acquaintance. VALENTINE (cautiously). I see. May I ask just this one question? Is your objection an objection to marriage as an institution, or merely an objection to marrying me personally? GLORIA. I do not know you well enough, Mr. Valentine, to have any opinion on the subject of your personal merits. (She turns away from him with infinite indifference, and sits down with her book on the garden seat.) I do not think the conditions of marriage at present are such as any self-respecting woman can accept. VALENTINE (instantly changing his tone for one of cordial sincerity, as if he frankly accepted her terms and was delighted and reassured by her principles). Oh, then that's a point of sympathy between us already. I quite agree with you: the conditions are most unfair. (He takes off his hat and throws it gaily on the iron table.) No: what I want is to get rid of all that nonsense. (He sits down beside her, so naturally that she does not think of objecting, and proceeds, with enthusiasm) Don't you think it a horrible thing that a man and a woman can hardly know one another without being supposed to have designs of that kind? As if there were no other interests--no other subjects of conversation--as if women were capable of nothing better! GLORIA (interested). Ah, now you are beginning to talk humanly and sensibly, Mr. Valentine. VALENTINE (with a gleam in his eye at the success of his hunter's guile). Of course!--two intelligent people like us. Isn't it pleasant, in this stupid, convention-ridden world, to meet with someone on the same plane--someone with an unprejudiced, enlightened mind? GLORIA (earnestly). I hope to meet many such people in England. VALENTINE (dubiously). Hm! There are a good many people here-- nearly forty millions. They're not all consumptive members of the highly educated classes like the people in Madeira. GLORIA (now full of her subject). Oh, everybody is stupid and prejudiced in Madeira--weak, sentimental creatures! I hate weakness; and I hate sentiment. VALENTINE. That's what makes you so inspiring. GLORIA (with a slight laugh). Am I inspiring? VALENTINE Yes. Strength's infectious. GLORIA. Weakness is, I know. VALENTINE (with conviction). Y o u're strong. Do you know that you changed the world for me this morning? I was in the dumps, thinking of my unpaid rent, frightened about the future. When you came in, I was dazzled. (Her brow clouds a little. He goes on quickly.) That was silly, of course; but really and truly something happened to me. Explain it how you will, my blood got-- (he hesitates, trying to think of a sufficiently unimpassioned word) --oxygenated: my muscles braced; my mind cleared; my courage rose. That's odd, isn't it? considering that I am not at all a sentimental man. GLORIA (uneasily, rising). Let us go back to the beach. VALENTINE (darkly--looking up at her). What! you feel it, too? GLORIA. Feel what? VALENTINE. Dread. GLORIA. Dread! VALENTINE. As if something were going to happen. It came over me suddenly just before you proposed that we should run away to the others. GLORIA (amazed). That's strange--very strange! I had the same presentiment. VALENTINE. How extraordinary! (Rising.) Well: shall we run away? GLORIA. Run away! Oh, no: that would be childish. (She sits down again. He resumes his seat beside her, and watches her with a gravely sympathetic air. She is thoughtful and a little troubled as she adds) I wonder what is the scientific explanation of those fancies that cross us occasionally! VALENTINE. Ah, I wonder! It's a curiously helpless sensation: isn't it? GLORIA (rebelling against the word). Helpless? VALENTINE. Yes. As if Nature, after allowing us to belong to ourselves and do what we judged right and reasonable for all these years, were suddenly lifting her great hand to take us--her two little children--by the scruff's of our little necks, and use us, in spite of ourselves, for her own purposes, in her own way. GLORIA. Isn't that rather fanciful? VALENTINE (with a new and startling transition to a tone of utter recklessness). I don't know. I don't care. (Bursting out reproachfully.) Oh, Miss Clandon, Miss Clandon: how could you? GLORIA. What have I done? VALENTINE. Thrown this enchantment on me. I'm honestly trying to be sensible--scientific--everything that you wish me to be. But--but-- oh, don't you see what you have set to work in my imagination? GLORIA (with indignant, scornful sternness). I hope you are not going to be so foolish--so vulgar--as to say love. VALENTINE (with ironical haste to disclaim such a weakness). No, no, no. Not love: we know better than that. Let's call it chemistry. You can't deny that there is such a thing as chemical action, chemical affinity, chemical combination--the most irresistible of all natural forces. Well, you're attracting me irresistibly--chemically. GLORIA (contemptuously). Nonsense! VALENTINE. Of course it's nonsense, you stupid girl. (Gloria recoils in outraged surprise.) Yes, stupid girl: t h a t's a scientific fact, anyhow. You're a prig--a feminine prig: that's what you are. (Rising.) Now I suppose you've done with me for ever. (He goes to the iron table and takes up his hat.) GLORIA (with elaborate calm, sitting up like a High-school-mistress posing to be photographed). That shows how very little you understand my real character. I am not in the least offended. (He pauses and puts his hat down again.) I am always willing to be told of my own defects, Mr. Valentine, by my friends, even when they are as absurdly mistaken about me as you are. I have many faults--very serious faults--of character and temper; but if there is one thing that I am not, it is what you call a prig. (She closes her lips trimly and looks steadily and challengingly at him as she sits more collectedly than ever.) VALENTINE (returning to the end of the garden seat to confront her more emphatically). Oh, yes, you are. My reason tells me so: my knowledge tells me so: my experience tells me so. GLORIA. Excuse my reminding you that your reason and your knowledge and your experience are not infallible. At least I hope not. VALENTINE. I must believe them. Unless you wish me to believe my eyes, my heart, my instincts, my imagination, which are all telling me the most monstrous lies about you. GLORIA (the collectedness beginning to relax). Lies! VALENTINE (obstinately). Yes, lies. (He sits down again beside her.) Do you expect me to believe that you are the most beautiful woman in the world? GLORIA. That is ridiculous, and rather personal. VALENTINE. Of course it's ridiculous. Well, that's what my eyes tell me. (Gloria makes a movement of contemptuous protest.) No: I'm not flattering. I tell you I don't believe it. (She is ashamed to find that this does not quite please her either.) Do you think that if you were to turn away in disgust from my weakness, I should sit down here and cry like a child? GLORIA (beginning to find that she must speak shortly and pointedly to keep her voice steady). Why should you, pray? VALENTINE (with a stir of feeling beginning to agitate his voice). Of course not: I'm not such an idiot. And yet my heart tells me I should--my fool of a heart. But I'll argue with my heart and bring it to reason. If I loved you a thousand times, I'll force myself to look the truth steadily in the face. After all, it's easy to be sensible: the facts are the facts. What's this place? it's not heaven: it's the Marine Hotel. What's the time? it's not eternity: it's about half past one in the afternoon. What am I? a dentist--a five shilling dentist! GLORIA. And I am a feminine prig. VALENTINE. (passionately). No, no: I can't face that: I must have one illusion left--the illusion about you. I love you. (He turns towards her as if the impulse to touch her were ungovernable: she rises and stands on her guard wrathfully. He springs up impatiently and retreats a step.) Oh, what a fool I am!--an idiot! You don't understand: I might as well talk to the stones on the beach. (He turns away, discouraged.) GLORIA (reassured by his withdrawal, and a little remorseful). I am sorry. I do not mean to be unsympathetic, Mr. Valentine; but what can I say? VALENTINE (returning to her with all his recklessness of manner replaced by an engaging and chivalrous respect). You can say nothing, Miss Clandon. I beg your pardon: it was my own fault, or rather my own bad luck. You see, it all depended on your naturally liking me. (She is about to speak: he stops her deprecatingly.) Oh, I know you mustn't tell me whether you like me or not; but-- GLORIA (her principles up in arms at once). Must not! Why not? I am a free woman: why should I not tell you? VALENTINE (pleading in terror, and retreating). Don't. I'm afraid to hear. GLORIA (no longer scornful). You need not be afraid. I think you are sentimental, and a little foolish; but I like you. VALENTINE (dropping into the iron chair as if crushed). Then it's all over. (He becomes the picture of despair.) GLORIA (puzzled, approaching him). But why? VALENTINE. Because liking is not enough. Now that I think down into it seriously, I don't know whether I like you or not. GLORIA (looking down at him with wondering concern). I'm sorry. VALENTINE (in an agony of restrained passion). Oh, don't pity me. Your voice is tearing my heart to pieces. Let me alone, Gloria. You go down into the very depths of me, troubling and stirring me--I can't struggle with it--I can't tell you-- GLORIA (breaking down suddenly). Oh, stop telling me what you feel: I can't bear it. VALENTINE (springing up triumphantly, the agonized voice now solid, ringing, and jubilant). Ah, it's come at last--my moment of courage. (He seizes her hands: she looks at him in terror.) Our moment of courage! (He draws her to him; kisses her with impetuous strength; and laughs boyishly.) Now you've done it, Gloria. It's all over: we're in love with one another. (She can only gasp at him.) But what a dragon you were! And how hideously afraid I was! PHILIP'S VOICE (calling from the beach). Valentine! DOLLY'S VOICE. Mr. Valentine! VALENTINE. Good-bye. Forgive me. (He rapidly kisses her hands, and runs away to the steps, where he meets Mrs. Clandon, ascending. Gloria, quite lost, can only start after him.) MRS. CLANDON. The children want you, Mr. Valentine. (She looks anxiously around.) Is he gone? VALENTINE (puzzled). He? (Recollecting.) Oh, Crampton. Gone this long time, Mrs. Clandon. (He runs off buoyantly down the steps.) GLORIA (sinking upon the seat). Mother! MRS. CLANDON (hurrying to her in alarm). What is it, dear? GLORIA (with heartfelt, appealing reproach). Why didn't you educate me properly? MRS. CLANDON (amazed). My child: I did my best. GLORIA. Oh, you taught me nothing--nothing. MRS. CLANDON. What is the matter with you? GLORIA (with the most intense expression). Only shame--shame-- shame. (Blushing unendurably, she covers her face with her hands and turns away from her mother.) END OF ACT II. ACT III The Clandon's sitting room in the hotel. An expensive apartment on the ground floor, with a French window leading to the gardens. In the centre of the room is a substantial table, surrounded by chairs, and draped with a maroon cloth on which opulently bound hotel and railway guides are displayed. A visitor entering through the window and coming down to this central table would have the fireplace on his left, and a writing table against the wall on his right, next the door, which is further down. He would, if his taste lay that way, admire the wall decoration of Lincrusta Walton in plum color and bronze lacquer, with dado and cornice; the ormolu consoles in the corners; the vases on pillar pedestals of veined marble with bases of polished black wood, one on each side of the window; the ornamental cabinet next the vase on the side nearest the fireplace, its centre compartment closed by an inlaid door, and its corners rounded off with curved panes of glass protecting shelves of cheap blue and white pottery; the bamboo tea table, with folding shelves, in the corresponding space on the other side of the window; the pictures of ocean steamers and Landseer's dogs; the saddlebag ottoman in line with the door but on the other side of the room; the two comfortable seats of the same pattern on the hearthrug; and finally, on turning round and looking up, the massive brass pole above the window, sustaining a pair of maroon rep curtains with decorated borders of staid green. Altogether, a room well arranged to flatter the occupant's sense of importance, and reconcile him to a charge of a pound a day for its use. Mrs. Clandon sits at the writing table, correcting proofs. Gloria is standing at the window, looking out in a tormented revery. The clock on the mantelpiece strikes five with a sickly clink, the bell being unable to bear up against the black marble cenotaph in which it is immured. MRS. CLANDON. Five! I don't think we need wait any longer for the children. The are sure to get tea somewhere. GLORIA (wearily). Shall I ring? MRS. CLANDON. Do, my dear. (Gloria goes to the hearth and rings.) I have finished these proofs at last, thank goodness! GLORIA (strolling listlessly across the room and coming behind her mother's chair). What proofs? MRS. CLANDON The new edition of Twentieth Century Women. GLORIA (with a bitter smile). There's a chapter missing. MRS. CLANDON (beginning to hunt among her proofs). Is there? Surely not. GLORIA. I mean an unwritten one. Perhaps I shall write it for you--when I know the end of it. (She goes back to the window.) MRS. CLANDON. Gloria! More enigmas! GLORIA. Oh, no. The same enigma. MRS. CLANDON (puzzled and rather troubled; after watching her for a moment). My dear. GLORIA (returning). Yes. MRS. CLANDON. You know I never ask questions. GLORIA (kneeling beside her chair). I know, I know. (She suddenly throws her arms about her mother and embraces her almost passionately.) MRS. CLANDON. (gently, smiling but embarrassed). My dear: you are getting quite sentimental. GLORIA (recoiling). Ah, no, no. Oh, don't say that. Oh! (She rises and turns away with a gesture as if tearing herself.) MRS. CLANDON (mildly). My dear: what is the matter? What-- (The waiter enters with the tea tray.) WAITER (balmily). This was what you rang for, ma'am, I hope? MRS. CLANDON. Thank you, yes. (She turns her chair away from the writing table, and sits down again. Gloria crosses to the hearth and sits crouching there with her face averted.) WAITER (placing the tray temporarily on the centre table). I thought so, ma'am. Curious how the nerves seem to give out in the afternoon without a cup of tea. (He fetches the tea table and places it in front of Mrs. Cladon, conversing meanwhile.) the young lady and gentleman have just come back, ma'am: they have been out in a boat, ma'am. Very pleasant on a fine afternoon like this--very pleasant and invigorating indeed. (He takes the tray from the centre table and puts it on the tea table.) Mr. McComas will not come to tea, ma'am: he has gone to call upon Mr. Crampton. (He takes a couple of chairs and sets one at each end of the tea table.) GLORIA (looking round with an impulse of terror). And the other gentleman? WAITER (reassuringly, as he unconsciously drops for a moment into the measure of "I've been roaming," which he sang as a boy.) Oh, he's coming, miss, he's coming. He has been rowing the boat, miss, and has just run down the road to the chemist's for something to put on the blisters. But he will be here directly, miss--directly. (Gloria, in ungovernable apprehension, rises and hurries towards the door.) MRS. CLANDON. (half rising). Glo-- (Gloria goes out. Mrs. Clandon looks perplexedly at the waiter, whose composure is unruffled.) WAITER (cheerfully). Anything more, ma'am? MRS. CLANDON. Nothing, thank you. WAITER. Thank you, ma'am. (As he withdraws, Phil and Dolly, in the highest spirits, come tearing in. He holds the door open for them; then goes out and closes it.) DOLLY (ravenously). Oh, give me some tea. (Mrs. Clandon pours out a cup for her.) We've been out in a boat. Valentine will be here presently. PHILIP. He is unaccustomed to navigation. Where's Gloria? MRS. CLANDON (anxiously, as she pours out his tea). Phil: there is something the matter with Gloria. Has anything happened? (Phil and Dolly look at one another and stifle a laugh.) What is it? PHILIP (sitting down on her left). Romeo-- DOLLY (sitting down on her right). --and Juliet. PHILIP (taking his cup of tea from Mrs. Clandon). Yes, my dear mother: the old, old story. Dolly: don't take all the milk. (He deftly takes the jug from her.) Yes: in the spring-- DOLLY. --a young man's fancy-- PHILIP. --lightly turns to--thank you (to Mrs. Clandon, who has passed the biscuits) --thoughts of love. It also occurs in the autumn. The young man in this case is-- DOLLY. Valentine. PHILIP. And his fancy has turned to Gloria to the extent of-- DOLLY. --kissing her-- PHILIP. --on the terrace-- DOLLY (correcting him). --on the lips, before everybody. MRS. CLANDON (incredulously). Phil! Dolly! Are you joking? (They shake their heads.) Did she allow it? PHILIP. We waited to see him struck to earth by the lightning of her scorn;-- DOLLY. --but he wasn't. PHILIP. She appeared to like it. DOLLY. As far as we could judge. (Stopping Phil, who is about to pour out another cup.) No: you've sworn off two cups. MRS. CLANDON (much troubled). Children: you must not be here when Mr. Valentine comes. I must speak very seriously to him about this. PHILIP. To ask him his intentions? What a violation of Twentieth Century principles! DOLLY. Quite right, mamma: bring him to book. Make the most of the nineteenth century while it lasts. PHILIP. Sh! Here he is. (Valentine comes in.) VALENTINE Very sorry to be late for tea, Mrs. Clandon. (She takes up the tea-pot.) No, thank you: I never take any. No doubt Miss Dolly and Phil have explained what happened to me. PHILIP (momentously rising). Yes, Valentine: we have explained. DOLLY (significantly, also rising). We have explained very thoroughly. PHILIP. It was our duty. (Very seriously.) Come, Dolly. (He offers Dolly his arm, which she takes. They look sadly at him, and go out gravely, arm in arm. Valentine stares after them, puzzled; then looks at Mrs. Clandon for an explanation.) MRS. CLANDON (rising and leaving the tea table). Will you sit down, Mr. Valentine. I want to speak to you a little, if you will allow me. (Valentine sits down slowly on the ottoman, his conscience presaging a bad quarter of an hour. Mrs. Clandon takes Phil's chair, and seats herself deliberately at a convenient distance from him.) I must begin by throwing myself somewhat at your consideration. I am going to speak of a subject of which I know very little--perhaps nothing. I mean love. VALENTINE. Love! MRS. CLANDON. Yes, love. Oh, you need not look so alarmed as that, Mr. Valentine: I am not in love with you. VALENTINE (overwhelmed). Oh, really, Mrs.-- (Recovering himself.) I should be only too proud if you were. MRS. CLANDON. Thank you, Mr. Valentine. But I am too old to begin. VALENTINE. Begin! Have you never--? MRS. CLANDON. Never. My case is a very common one, Mr. Valentine. I married before I was old enough to know what I was doing. As you have seen for yourself, the result was a bitter disappointment for both my husband and myself. So you see, though I am a married woman, I have never been in love; I have never had a love affair; and to be quite frank with you, Mr. Valentine, what I have seen of the love affairs of other people has not led me to regret that deficiency in my experience. (Valentine, looking very glum, glances sceptically at her, and says nothing. Her color rises a little; and she adds, with restrained anger) You do not believe me? VALENTINE (confused at having his thought read). Oh, why not? Why not? MRS. CLANDON. Let me tell you, Mr. Valentine, that a life devoted to the Cause of Humanity has enthusiasms and passions to offer which far transcend the selfish personal infatuations and sentimentalities of romance. Those are not your enthusiasms and passions, I take it? (Valentine, quite aware that she despises him for it, answers in the negative with a melancholy shake of the head.) I thought not. Well, I am equally at a disadvantage in discussing those so-called affairs of the heart in which you appear to be an expert. VALENTINE (restlessly). What are you driving at, Mrs. Clandon? MRS. CLANDON. I think you know. VALENTINE. Gloria? MRS. CLANDON. Yes. Gloria. VALENTINE (surrendering). Well, yes: I'm in love with Gloria. (Interposing as she is about to speak.) I know what you're going to say: I've no money. MRS. CLANDON. I care very little about money, Mr. Valentine. VALENTINE. Then you're very different to all the other mothers who have interviewed me. MRS. CLANDON. Ah, now we are coming to it, Mr. Valentine. You are an old hand at this. (He opens his mouth to protest: she cuts him short with some indignation.) Oh, do you think, little as I understand these matters, that I have not common sense enough to know that a man who could make as much way in one interview with such a woman as my daughter, can hardly be a novice! VALENTINE. I assure you-- MRS. CLANDON (stopping him). I am not blaming you, Mr. Valentine. It is Gloria's business to take care of herself; and you have a right to amuse yourself as you please. But-- VALENTINE (protesting). Amuse myself! Oh, Mrs. Clandon! MRS. CLANDON (relentlessly). On your honor, Mr. Valentine, are you in earnest? VALENTINE (desperately). On my honor I am in earnest. (She looks searchingly at him. His sense of humor gets the better of him; and he adds quaintly) Only, I always have been in earnest; and yet--here I am, you see! MRS. CLANDON. This is just what I suspected. (Severely.) Mr. Valentine: you are one of those men who play with women's affections. VALENTINE. Well, why not, if the Cause of Humanity is the only thing worth being serious about? However, I understand. (Rising and taking his hat with formal politeness.) You wish me to discontinue my visits. MRS. CLANDON. No: I am sensible enough to be well aware that Gloria's best chance of escape from you now is to become better acquainted with you. VALENTINE (unaffectedly alarmed). Oh, don't say that, Mrs. Clandon. You don't think that, do you? MRS. CLANDON. I have great faith, Mr. Valentine, in the sound training Gloria's mind has had since she was a child. VALENTINE (amazingly relieved). O-oh! Oh, that's all right. (He sits down again and throws his hat flippantly aside with the air of a man who has no longer anything to fear.) MRS. CLANDON (indignant at his assurance). What do you mean? VALENTINE (turning confidentially to her). Come: shall I teach you something, Mrs. Clandon? MRS. CLANDON (stiffly). I am always willing to learn. VALENTINE. Have you ever studied the subject of gunnery--artillery--cannons and war-ships and so on? MRS. CLANDON. Has gunnery anything to do with Gloria? VALENTINE. A great deal--by way of illustration. During this whole century, my dear Mrs. Clandon, the progress of artillery has been a duel between the maker of cannons and the maker of armor plates to keep the cannon balls out. You build a ship proof against the best gun known: somebody makes a better gun and sinks your ship. You build a heavier ship, proof against that gun: somebody makes a heavier gun and sinks you again. And so on. Well, the duel of sex is just like that. MRS. CLANDON. The duel of sex! VALENTINE. Yes: you've heard of the duel of sex, haven't you? Oh, I forgot: you've been in Madeira: the expression has come up since your time. Need I explain it? MRS. CLANDON (contemptuously). No. VALENTINE. Of course not. Now what happens in the duel of sex? The old fashioned mother received an old fashioned education to protect her against the wiles of man. Well, you know the result: the old fashioned man got round her. The old fashioned woman resolved to protect her daughter more effectually--to find some armor too strong for the old fashioned man. So she gave her daughter a scientific education--your plan. That was a corker for the old fashioned man: he said it wasn't fair--unwomanly and all the rest of it. But that didn't do him any good. So he had to give up his old fashioned plan of attack--you know--going down on his knees and swearing to love, honor and obey, and so on. MRS. CLANDON. Excuse me: that was what the woman swore. VALENTINE. Was it? Ah, perhaps you're right--yes: of course it was. Well, what did the man do? Just what the artillery man does-- went one better than the woman--educated himself scientifically and beat her at that game just as he had beaten her at the old game. I learnt how to circumvent the Women's Rights woman before I was twenty- three: it's all been found out long ago. You see, my methods are thoroughly modern. MRS. CLANDON (with quiet disgust). No doubt. VALENTINE. But for that very reason there's one sort of girl against whom they are of no use. MRS. CLANDON. Pray which sort? VALENTINE. The thoroughly old fashioned girl. If you had brought up Gloria in the old way, it would have taken me eighteen months to get to the point I got to this afternoon in eighteen minutes. Yes, Mrs. Clandon: the Higher Education of Women delivered Gloria into my hands; and it was you who taught her to believe in the Higher Education of Women. MRS. CLANDON (rising). Mr. Valentine: you are very clever. VALENTINE (rising also). Oh, Mrs. Clandon! MRS. CLANDON And you have taught me n o t h i n g. Good-bye. VALENTINE (horrified). Good-bye! Oh, mayn't I see her before I go? MRS. CLANDON. I am afraid she will not return until you have gone Mr. Valentine. She left the room expressly to avoid you. VALENTINE (thoughtfully). That's a good sign. Good-bye. (He bows and makes for the door, apparently well satisfied.) MRS. CLANDON (alarmed). Why do you think it a good sign? VALENTINE (turning near the door). Because I am mortally afraid of her; and it looks as if she were mortally afraid of me. (He turns to go and finds himself face to face with Gloria, who has just entered. She looks steadfastly at him. He stares helplessly at her; then round at Mrs. Clandon; then at Gloria again, completely at a loss.) GLORIA (white, and controlling herself with difficulty). Mother: is what Dolly told me true? MRS. CLANDON. What did she tell you, dear? GLORIA. That you have been speaking about me to this gentleman. VALENTINE (murmuring). This gentleman! Oh! MRS. CLANDON (sharply). Mr. Valentine: can you hold your tongue for a moment? (He looks piteously at them; then, with a despairing shrug, goes back to the ottoman and throws his hat on it.) GLORIA (confronting her mother, with deep reproach). Mother: what right had you to do it? MRS. CLANDON. I don't think I have said anything I have no right to say, Gloria. VALENTINE (confirming her officiously). Nothing. Nothing whatever. (Gloria looks at him with unspeakable indignation.) I beg your pardon. (He sits down ignominiously on the ottoman.) GLORIA. I cannot believe that any one has any right even to think about things that concern me only. (She turns away from them to conceal a painful struggle with her emotion.) MRS. CLANDON. My dear, if I have wounded your pride-- GLORIA (turning on them for a moment). My p r i d e! My pride!! Oh, it's gone: I have learnt now that I have no strength to be proud of. (Turning away again.) But if a woman cannot protect herself, no one can protect her. No one has any right to try--not even her mother. I know I have lost your confidence, just as I have lost this man's respect;-- (She stops to master a sob.) VALENTINE (under his breath). This man! (Murmuring again.) Oh! MRS. CLANDON (in an undertone). Pray be silent, sir. GLORIA (continuing). --but I have at least the right to be left alone in my disgrace. I am one of those weak creatures born to be mastered by the first man whose eye is caught by them; and I must fulfill my destiny, I suppose. At least spare me the humiliation of trying to save me. (She sits down, with her handkerchief to her eyes, at the farther end of the table.) VALENTINE (jumping up). Look here-- MRS. CLANDON. Mr. Va-- VALENTINE (recklessly). No: I will speak: I've been silent for nearly thirty seconds. (He goes up to Gloria.) Miss Clandon-- GLORIA (bitterly). Oh, not Miss Clandon: you have found that it is quite safe to call me Gloria. VALENTINE. No, I won't: you'll throw it in my teeth afterwards and accuse me of disrespect. I say it's a heartbreaking falsehood that I don't respect you. It's true that I didn't respect your old pride: why should I? It was nothing but cowardice. I didn't respect your intellect: I've a better one myself: it's a masculine specialty. But when the depths stirred!--when my moment came!--when you made me brave!--ah, then, then, t h e n! GLORIA. Then you respected me, I suppose. VALENTINE. No, I didn't: I adored you. (She rises quickly and turns her back on him.) And you can never take that moment away from me. So now I don't care what happens. (He comes down the room addressing a cheerful explanation to nobody in particular.) I'm perfectly aware that I'm talking nonsense. I can't help it. (To Mrs. Clandon.) I love Gloria; and there's an end of it. MRS. CLANDON (emphatically). Mr. Valentine: you are a most dangerous man. Gloria: come here. (Gloria, wondering a little at the command, obeys, and stands, with drooping head, on her mother's right hand, Valentine being on the opposite side. Mrs. Clandon then begins, with intense scorn.) Ask this man whom you have inspired and made brave, how many women have inspired him before (Gloria looks up suddenly with a flash of jealous anger and amazement); how many times he has laid the trap in which he has caught you; how often he has baited it with the same speeches; how much practice it has taken to make him perfect in his chosen part in life as the Duellist of Sex. VALENTINE. This isn't fair. You're abusing my confidence, Mrs. Clandon. MRS. CLANDON. Ask him, Gloria. GLORIA (in a flush of rage, going over to him with her fists clenched). Is that true? VALENTINE. Don't be angry-- GLORIA (interrupting him implacably). Is it true? Did you ever say that before? Did you ever feel that before--for another woman? VALENTINE (bluntly). Yes. (Gloria raises her clenched hands.) MRS. CLANDON (horrified, springing to her side and catching her uplifted arm). Gloria!! My dear! You're forgetting yourself. (Gloria, with a deep expiration, slowly relaxes her threatening attitude.) VALENTINE. Remember: a man's power of love and admiration is like any other of his powers: he has to throw it away many times before he learns what is really worthy of it. MRS. CLANDON. Another of the old speeches, Gloria. Take care. VALENTINE (remonstrating). Oh! GLORIA (to Mrs. Clandon, with contemptuous self-possession). Do you think I need to be warned now? (To Valentine.) You have tried to make me love you. VALENTINE. I have. GLORIA. Well, you have succeeded in making me hate you-- passionately. VALENTINE (philosophically). It's surprising how little difference there is between the two. (Gloria turns indignantly away from him. He continues, to Mrs. Clandon) I know men whose wives love them; and they go on exactly like that. MRS. CLANDON. Excuse me, Mr. Valentine; but had you not better go? GLORIA. You need not send him away on my account, mother. He is nothing to me now; and he will amuse Dolly and Phil. (She sits down with slighting indifference, at the end of the table nearest the window.) VALENTINE (gaily). Of course: that's the sensible way of looking at it. Come, Mrs. Clandon: you can't quarrel with a mere butterfly like me. MRS. CLANDON. I very greatly mistrust you, Mr. Valentine. But I do not like to think that your unfortunate levity of disposition is mere shamelessness and worthlessness;-- GLORIA (to herself, but aloud). It is shameless; and it is worthless. MRS. CLANDON. --so perhaps we had better send for Phil and Dolly and allow you to end your visit in the ordinary way. VALENTINE (as if she had paid him the highest compliment). You overwhelm me, Mrs. Clandon. Thank you. (The waiter enters.) WAITER. Mr. McComas, ma'am. MRS. CLANDON. Oh, certainly. Bring him in. WAITER. He wishes to see you in the reception-room, ma'am. MRS. CLANDON. Why not here? WAITER. Well, if you will excuse my mentioning it, ma'am, I think Mr. McComas feels that he would get fairer play if he could speak to you away from the younger members of your family, ma'am. MRS. CLANDON. Tell him they are not here. WAITER. They are within sight of the door, ma'am; and very watchful, for some reason or other. MRS. CLANDON (going). Oh, very well: I'll go to him. WAITER (holding the door open for her). Thank you, ma'am. (She goes out. He comes back into the room, and meets the eye of Valentine, who wants him to go.) All right, sir. Only the tea-things, sir. (Taking the tray.) Excuse me, sir. Thank you sir. (He goes out.) VALENTINE (to Gloria). Look here. You will forgive me, sooner or later. Forgive me now. GLORIA (rising to level the declaration more intensely at him). Never! While grass grows or water runs, never, never, never!!! VALENTINE (unabashed). Well, I don't care. I can't be unhappy about anything. I shall never be unhappy again, never, never, never, while grass grows or water runs. The thought of you will always make me wild with joy. (Some quick taunt is on her lips: he interposes swiftly.) No: I never said that before: that's new. GLORIA. It will not be new when you say it to the next woman. VALENTINE. Oh, don't, Gloria, don't. (He kneels at her feet.) GLORIA. Get up. Get up! How dare you? (Phil and Dolly, racing, as usual, for first place, burst into the room. They check themselves on seeing what is passing. Valentine springs up.) PHILIP (discreetly). I beg your pardon. Come, Dolly. (He turns to go.) GLORIA (annoyed). Mother will be back in a moment, Phil. (Severely.) Please wait here for her. (She turns away to the window, where she stands looking out with her back to them.) PHILIP (significantly). Oh, indeed. Hmhm! DOLLY. Ahah! PHILIP. You seem in excellent spirits, Valentine. VALENTINE. I am. (Comes between them.) Now look here. You both know what's going on, don't you? (Gloria turns quickly, as if anticipating some fresh outrage.) DOLLY. Perfectly. VALENTINE. Well, it's all over. I've been refused--scorned. I'm only here on sufferance. You understand: it's all over. Your sister is in no sense entertaining my addresses, or condescending to interest herself in me in any way. (Gloria, satisfied, turns back contemptuously to the window.) Is that clear? DOLLY. Serve you right. You were in too great a hurry. PHILIP (patting him on the shoulder). Never mind: you'd never have been able to call your soul your own if she'd married you. You can now begin a new chapter in your life. DOLLY. Chapter seventeen or thereabouts, I should imagine. VALENTINE (much put out by this pleasantry). No: don't say things like that. That's just the sort of thoughtless remark that makes a lot of mischief. DOLLY. Oh, indeed. Hmhm! PHILIP. Ahah! (He goes to the hearth and plants himself there in his best head-of-the-family attitude.) McComas, looking very serious, comes in quickly with Mrs. Clandon, whose first anxiety is about Gloria. She looks round to see where she is, and is going to join her at the window when Gloria comes down to meet her with a marked air of trust and affection. Finally, Mrs. Clandon takes her former seat, and Gloria posts herself behind it. McComas, on his way to the ottoman, is hailed by Dolly. DOLLY. What cheer, Finch? McCOMAS (sternly). Very serious news from your father, Miss Clandon. Very serious news indeed. (He crosses to the ottoman, and sits down. Dolly, looking deeply impressed, follows him and sits beside him on his right.) VALENTINE. Perhaps I had better go. McCOMAS. By no means, Mr. Valentine. You are deeply concerned in this. (Valentine takes a chair from the table and sits astride of it, leaning over the back, near the ottoman.) Mrs. Clandon: your husband demands the custody of his two younger children, who are not of age. (Mrs. Clandon, in quick alarm, looks instinctively to see if Dolly is safe.) DOLLY (touched). Oh, how nice of him! He likes us, mamma. McCOMAS. I am sorry to have to disabuse you of any such idea, Miss Dorothea. DOLLY (cooing ecstatically). Dorothee-ee-ee-a! (Nestling against his shoulder, quite overcome.) Oh, Finch! McCOMAS (nervously, moving away). No, no, no, no! MRS. CLANDON (remonstrating). D e a r e s t Dolly! (To McComas.) The deed of separation gives me the custody of the children. McCOMAS. It also contains a covenant that you are not to approach or molest him in any way. MRS. CLANDON. Well, have I done so? McCOMAS. Whether the behavior of your younger children amounts to legal molestation is a question on which it may be necessary to take counsel's opinion. At all events, Mr. Crampton not only claims to have been molested; but he believes that he was brought here by a plot in which Mr. Valentine acted as your agent. VALENTINE. What's that? Eh? McCOMAS. He alleges that you drugged him, Mr. Valentine. VALENTINE. So I did. (They are astonished.) McCOMAS. But what did you do that for? DOLLY. Five shillings extra. McCOMAS (to Dolly, short-temperedly). I must really ask you, Miss Clandon, not to interrupt this very serious conversation with irrelevant interjections. (Vehemently.) I insist on having earnest matters earnestly and reverently discussed. (This outburst produces an apologetic silence, and puts McComas himself out of countenance. He coughs, and starts afresh, addressing himself to Gloria.) Miss Clandon: it is my duty to tell you that your father has also persuaded himself that Mr. Valentine wishes to marry you-- VALENTINE (interposing adroitly). I do. McCOMAS (offended). In that case, sir, you must not be surprised to find yourself regarded by the young lady's father as a fortune hunter. VALENTINE. So I am. Do you expect my wife to live on what I earn? ten-pence a week! McCOMAS (revolted). I have nothing more to say, sir. I shall return and tell Mr. Crampton that this family is no place for a father. (He makes for the door.) MRS. CLANDON (with quiet authority). Finch! (He halts.) If Mr. Valentine cannot be serious, you can. Sit down. (McComas, after a brief struggle between his dignity and his friendship, succumbs, seating himself this time midway between Dolly and Mrs. Clandon.) You know that all this is a made up case--that Fergus does not believe in it any more than you do. Now give me your real advice--your sincere, friendly advice: you know I have always trusted your judgment. I promise you the children will be quiet. McCOMAS (resigning himself). Well, well! What I want to say is this. In the old arrangement with your husband, Mrs. Clandon, you had him at a terrible disadvantage. MRS. CLANDON. How so, pray? McCOMAS. Well, you were an advanced woman, accustomed to defy public opinion, and with no regard for what the world might say of you. MRS. CLANDON (proud of it). Yes: that is true. (Gloria, behind the chair, stoops and kisses her mother's hair, a demonstration which disconcerts her extremely.) McCOMAS. On the other hand, Mrs. Clandon, your husband had a great horror of anything getting into the papers. There was his business to be considered, as well as the prejudices of an old-fashioned family. MRS. CLANDON. Not to mention his own prejudices. McCOMAS. Now no doubt he behaved badly, Mrs. Clandon-- MRS. CLANDON (scornfully). No doubt. McCOMAS. But was it altogether his fault? MRS. CLANDON. Was it mine? McCOMAS (hastily). No. Of course not. GLORIA (observing him attentively). You do not mean that, Mr. McComas. McCOMAS. My dear young lady, you pick me up very sharply. But let me just put this to you. When a man makes an unsuitable marriage (nobody's fault, you know, but purely accidental incompatibility of tastes); when he is deprived by that misfortune of the domestic sympathy which, I take it, is what a man marries for; when in short, his wife is rather worse than no wife at all (through no fault of his own, of course), is it to be wondered at if he makes matters worse at first by blaming her, and even, in his desperation, by occasionally drinking himself into a violent condition or seeking sympathy elsewhere? MRS. CLANDON. I did not blame him: I simply rescued myself and the children from him. McCOMAS. Yes: but you made hard terms, Mrs. Clandon. You had him at your mercy: you brought him to his knees when you threatened to make the matter public by applying to the Courts for a judicial separation. Suppose he had had that power over you, and used it to take your children away from you and bring them up in ignorance of your very name, how would you feel? what would you do? Well, won't you make some allowance for his feelings?--in common humanity. MRS. CLANDON. I never discovered his feelings. I discovered his temper, and his-- (she shivers) the rest of his common humanity. McCOMAS (wistfully). Women can be very hard, Mrs. Clandon. VALENTINE. That's true. GLORIA (angrily). Be silent. (He subsides.) McCOMAS (rallying all his forces). Let me make one last appeal. Mrs. Clandon: believe me, there are men who have a good deal of feeling, and kind feeling, too, which they are not able to express. What you miss in Crampton is that mere veneer of civilization, the art of shewing worthless attentions and paying insincere compliments in a kindly, charming way. If you lived in London, where the whole system is one of false good-fellowship, and you may know a man for twenty years without finding out that he hates you like poison, you would soon have your eyes opened. There we do unkind things in a kind way: we say bitter things in a sweet voice: we always give our friends chloroform when we tear them to pieces. But think of the other side of it! Think of the people who do kind things in an unkind way--people whose touch hurts, whose voices jar, whose tempers play them false, who wound and worry the people they love in the very act of trying to conciliate them, and yet who need affection as much as the rest of us. Crampton has an abominable temper, I admit. He has no manners, no tact, no grace. He'll never be able to gain anyone's affection unless they will take his desire for it on trust. Is he to have none--not even pity--from his own flesh and blood? DOLLY (quite melted). Oh, how beautiful, Finch! How nice of you! PHILIP (with conviction). Finch: this is eloquence--positive eloquence. DOLLY. Oh, mamma, let us give him another chance. Let us have him to dinner. MRS. CLANDON (unmoved). No, Dolly: I hardly got any lunch. My dear Finch: there is not the least use in talking to me about Fergus. You have never been married to him: I have. McCOMAS (to Gloria). Miss Clandon: I have hitherto refrained from appealing to you, because, if what Mr. Crampton told me to be true, you have been more merciless even than your mother. GLORIA (defiantly). You appeal from her strength to my weakness! McCOMAS. Not your weakness, Miss Clandon. I appeal from her intellect to your heart. GLORIA. I have learnt to mistrust my heart. (With an angry glance at Valentine.) I would tear my heart and throw it away if I could. My answer to you is my mother's answer. (She goes to Mrs. Clandon, and stands with her arm about her; but Mrs. Clandon, unable to endure this sort of demonstrativeness, disengages herself as soon as she can without hurting Gloria's feelings.) McCOMAS (defeated). Well, I am very sorry--very sorry. I have done my best. (He rises and prepares to go, deeply dissatisfied.) MRS. CLANDON. But what did you expect, Finch? What do you want us to do? McCOMAS. The first step for both you and Crampton is to obtain counsel's opinion as to whether he is bound by the deed of separation or not. Now why not obtain this opinion at once, and have a friendly meeting (her face hardens)--or shall we say a neutral meeting?--to settle the difficulty--here--in this hotel--to-night? What do you say? MRS. CLANDON. But where is the counsel's opinion to come from? McCOMAS. It has dropped down on us out of the clouds. On my way back here from Crampton's I met a most eminent Q.C., a man whom I briefed in the case that made his name for him. He has come down here from Saturday to Monday for the sea air, and to visit a relative of his who lives here. He has been good enough to say that if I can arrange a meeting of the parties he will come and help us with his opinion. Now do let us seize this chance of a quiet friendly family adjustment. Let me bring my friend here and try to persuade Crampton to come, too. Come: consent. MRS. CLANDON (rather ominously, after a moment's consideration). Finch: I don't want counsel's opinion, because I intend to be guided by my own opinion. I don't want to meet Fergus again, because I don't like him, and don't believe the meeting will do any good. However (rising), you have persuaded the children that he is not quite hopeless. Do as you please. McCOMAS (taking her hand and shaking it). Thank you, Mrs. Clandon. Will nine o'clock suit you? MRS. CLANDON. Perfectly. Phil: will you ring, please. (Phil rings the bell.) But if I am to be accused of conspiring with Mr. Valentine, I think he had better be present. VALENTINE (rising). I quite agree with you. I think it's most important. McCOMAS. There can be no objection to that, I think. I have the greatest hopes of a happy settlement. Good-bye for the present. (He goes out, meeting the waiter; who holds the door for him to pass through.) MRS. CLANDON. We expect some visitors at nine, William. Can we have dinner at seven instead of half-past? WAITER (at the door). Seven, ma'am? Certainly, ma'am. It will be a convenience to us this busy evening, ma'am. There will be the band and the arranging of the fairy lights and one thing or another, ma'am. DOLLY. The fairy lights! PHILIP. The band! William: what mean you? WAITER. The fancy ball, miss-- DOLLY and PHILIP (simultaneously rushing to him). Fancy ball! WAITER. Oh, yes, sir. Given by the regatta committee for the benefit of the Life-boat, sir. (To Mrs. Clandon.) We often have them, ma'am: Chinese lanterns in the garden, ma'am: very bright and pleasant, very gay and innocent indeed. (To Phil.) Tickets downstairs at the office, sir, five shillings: ladies half price if accompanied by a gentleman. PHILIP (seizing his arm to drag him off). To the office, William! DOLLY (breathlessly, seizing his other arm). Quick, before they're all sold. (They rush him out of the room between them.) MRS. CLANDON. What on earth are they going to do? (Going out.) I really must go and stop this-- (She follows them, speaking as she disappears. Gloria stares coolly at Valentine, and then deliberately looks at her watch.) VALENTINE. I understand. I've stayed too long. I'm going. GLORIA (with disdainful punctiliousness). I owe you some apology, Mr. Valentine. I am conscious of having spoken somewhat sharply-- perhaps rudely--to you. VALENTINE. Not at all. GLORIA. My only excuse is that it is very difficult to give consideration and respect when there is no dignity of character on the other side to command it. VALENTINE (prosaically). How is a man to look dignified when he's infatuated? GLORIA (effectually unstilted). Don't say those things to me. I forbid you. They are insults. VALENTINE. No: they're only follies. I can't help them. GLORIA. If you were really in love, it would not make you foolish: it would give you dignity--earnestness--even beauty. VALENTINE. Do you really think it would make me beautiful? (She turns her back on him with the coldest contempt.) Ah, you see you're not in earnest. Love can't give any man new gifts. It can only heighten the gifts he was born with. GLORIA (sweeping round at him again). What gifts were you born with, pray? VALENTINE. Lightness of heart. GLORIA. And lightness of head, and lightness of faith, and lightness of everything that makes a man. VALENTINE. Yes, the whole world is like a feather dancing in the light now; and Gloria is the sun. (She rears her head angrily.) I beg your pardon: I'm off. Back at nine. Good-bye. (He runs off gaily, leaving her standing in the middle of the room staring after him.) END OF ACT III ACT IV The same room. Nine o'clock. Nobody present. The lamps are lighted; but the curtains are not drawn. The window stands wide open; and strings of Chinese lanterns are glowing among the trees outside, with the starry sky beyond. The band is playing dance-music in the garden, drowning the sound of the sea. The waiter enters, shewing in Crampton and McComas. Crampton looks cowed and anxious. He sits down wearily and timidly on the ottoman. WAITER. The ladies have gone for a turn through the grounds to see the fancy dresses, sir. If you will be so good as to take seats, gentlemen, I shall tell them. (He is about to go into the garden through the window when McComas stops him.) McCOMAS. One moment. If another gentleman comes, shew him in without any delay: we are expecting him. WAITER. Right, sir. What name, sir? McCOMAS. Boon. Mr. Boon. He is a stranger to Mrs. Clandon; so he may give you a card. If so, the name is spelt B.O.H.U.N. You will not forget. WAITER (smiling). You may depend on me for that, sir. My own name is Boon, sir, though I am best known down here as Balmy Walters, sir. By rights I should spell it with the aitch you, sir; but I think it best not to take that liberty, sir. There is Norman blood in it, sir; and Norman blood is not a recommendation to a waiter. McCOMAS. Well, well: "True hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood." WAITER. That depends a good deal on one's station in life, sir. If you were a waiter, sir, you'd find that simple faith would leave you just as short as Norman blood. I find it best to spell myself B. double-O.N., and to keep my wits pretty sharp about me. But I'm taking up your time, sir. You'll excuse me, sir: your own fault for being so affable, sir. I'll tell the ladies you're here, sir. (He goes out into the garden through the window.) McCOMAS. Crampton: I can depend on you, can't I? CRAMPTON. Yes, yes. I'll be quiet. I'll be patient. I'll do my best. McCOMAS. Remember: I've not given you away. I've told them it was all their fault. CRAMPTON. You told me that it was all my fault. McCOMAS. I told you the truth. CRAMPTON (plaintively). If they will only be fair to me! McCOMAS. My dear Crampton, they won't be fair to you: it's not to be expected from them at their age. If you're going to make impossible conditions of this kind, we may as well go back home at once. CRAMPTON. But surely I have a right-- McCOMAS (intolerantly). You won't get your rights. Now, once for all, Crampton, did your promises of good behavior only mean that you won't complain if there's nothing to complain of? Because, if so-- (He moves as if to go.) CRAMPTON (miserably). No, no: let me alone, can't you? I've been bullied enough: I've been tormented enough. I tell you I'll do my best. But if that girl begins to talk to me like that and to look at me like-- (He breaks off and buries his head in his hands.) McCOMAS (relenting). There, there: it'll be all right, if you will only bear and forbear. Come, pull yourself together: there's someone coming. (Crampton, too dejected to care much, hardly changes his attitude. Gloria enters from the garden; McComas goes to meet her at the window; so that he can speak to her without being heard by Crampton.) There he is, Miss Clandon. Be kind to him. I'll leave you with him for a moment. (He goes into the garden. Gloria comes in and strolls coolly down the middle of the room.) CRAMPTON (looking round in alarm). Where's McComas? GLORIA (listlessly, but not unsympathetically). Gone out--to leave us together. Delicacy on his part, I suppose. (She stops beside him and looks quaintly down at him.) Well, father? CRAMPTON (a quaint jocosity breaking through his forlornness). Well, daughter? (They look at one another for a moment, with a melancholy sense of humor.) GLORIA. Shake hands. (They shake hands.) CRAMPTON (holding her hand). My dear: I'm afraid I spoke very improperly of your mother this afternoon. GLORIA. Oh, don't apologize. I was very high and mighty myself; but I've come down since: oh, yes: I've been brought down. (She sits on the floor beside his chair.) CRAMPTON. What has happened to you, my child? GLORIA. Oh, never mind. I was playing the part of my mother's daughter then; but I'm not: I'm my father's daughter. (Looking at him funnily.) That's a come down, isn't it? CRAMPTON (angry). What! (Her odd expression does not alter. He surrenders.) Well, yes, my dear: I suppose it is, I suppose it is. (She nods sympathetically.) I'm afraid I'm sometimes a little irritable; but I know what's right and reasonable all the time, even when I don't act on it. Can you believe that? GLORIA. Believe it! Why, that's myself--myself all over. I know what's right and dignified and strong and noble, just as well as she does; but oh, the things I do! the things I do! the things I let other people do!! CRAMPTON (a little grudgingly in spite of himself). As well as she does? You mean your mother? GLORIA (quickly). Yes, mother. (She turns to him on her knees and seizes his hands.) Now listen. No treason to her: no word, no thought against her. She is our superior--yours and mine--high heavens above us. Is that agreed? CRAMPTON. Yes, yes. Just as you please, my dear. GLORIA (not satisfied, letting go his hands and drawing back from him). You don't like her? CRAMPTON. My child: you haven't been married to her. I have. (She raises herself slowly to her feet, looking at him with growing coldness.) She did me a great wrong in marrying me without really caring for me. But after that, the wrong was all on my side, I dare say. (He offers her his hand again.) GLORIA (taking it firmly and warningly). Take care. That's a dangerous subject. My feelings--my miserable, cowardly, womanly feelings--may be on your side; but my conscience is on hers. CRAMPTON. I'm very well content with that division, my dear. Thank you. (Valentine arrives. Gloria immediately becomes deliberately haughty.) VALENTINE. Excuse me; but it's impossible to find a servant to announce one: even the never failing William seems to be at the ball. I should have gone myself; only I haven't five shillings to buy a ticket. How are you getting on, Crampton? Better, eh? CRAMPTON. I am myself again, Mr. Valentine, no thanks to you. VALENTINE. Look at this ungrateful parent of yours, Miss Clandon! I saved him from an excruciating pang; and he reviles me! GLORIA (coldly). I am sorry my mother is not here to receive you, Mr. Valentine. It is not quite nine o'clock; and the gentleman of whom Mr. McComas spoke, the lawyer, is not yet come. VALENTINE. Oh, yes, he is. I've met him and talked to him. (With gay malice.) You'll like him, Miss Clandon: he's the very incarnation of intellect. You can hear his mind working. GLORIA (ignoring the jibe). Where is he? VALENTINE. Bought a false nose and gone into the fancy ball. CRAMPTON (crustily, looking at his watch). It seems that everybody has gone to this fancy ball instead of keeping to our appointment here. VALENTINE. Oh, he'll come all right enough: that was half an hour ago. I didn't like to borrow five shillings from him and go in with him; so I joined the mob and looked through the railings until Miss Clandon disappeared into the hotel through the window. GLORIA. So it has come to this, that you follow me about in public to stare at me. VALENTINE. Yes: somebody ought to chain me up. Gloria turns her back on him and goes to the fireplace. He takes the snub very philosophically, and goes to the opposite side of the room. The waiter appears at the window, ushering in Mrs. Clandon and McComas. MRS. CLANDON (hurrying in). I am so sorry to have kept you waiting. A grotesquely majestic stranger, in a domino and false nose, with goggles, appears at the window. WAITER (to the stranger). Beg pardon, sir; but this is a private apartment, sir. If you will allow me, sir, I will shew you to the American bar and supper rooms, sir. This way, sir. He goes into the gardens, leading the way under the impression that the stranger is following him. The majestic one, however, comes straight into the room to the end of the table, where, with impressive deliberation, he takes off the false nose and then the domino, rolling up the nose into the domino and throwing the bundle on the table like a champion throwing down his glove. He is now seen to be a stout, tall man between forty and fifty, clean shaven, with a midnight oil pallor emphasized by stiff black hair, cropped short and oiled, and eyebrows like early Victorian horsehair upholstery. Physically and spiritually, a coarsened man: in cunning and logic, a ruthlessly sharpened one. His bearing as he enters is sufficiently imposing and disquieting; but when he speaks, his powerful, menacing voice, impressively articulated speech, strong inexorable manner, and a terrifying power of intensely critical listening raise the impression produced by him to absolute tremendousness. THE STRANGER. My name is Bohun. (General awe.) Have I the honor of addressing Mrs. Clandon? (Mrs. Clandon bows. Bohun bows.) Miss Clandon? (Gloria bows. Bohun bows.) Mr. Clandon? CRAMPTON (insisting on his rightful name as angrily as he dares). My name is Crampton, sir. BOHUN. Oh, indeed. (Passing him over without further notice and turning to Valentine.) Are you Mr. Clandon? VALENTINE (making it a point of honor not to be impressed by him). Do I look like it? My name is Valentine. I did the drugging. BOHUN. Ah, quite so. Then Mr. Clandon has not yet arrived? WAITER (entering anxiously through the window). Beg pardon, ma'am; but can you tell me what became of that-- (He recognizes Bohun, and loses all his self-possession. Bohun waits rigidly for him to pull himself together. After a pathetic exhibition of confusion, he recovers himself sufficiently to address Bohun weakly but coherently.) Beg pardon, sir, I'm sure, sir. Was--was it you, sir? BOHUN (ruthlessly). It was I. WAITER (brokenly). Yes, sir. (Unable to restrain his tears.) You in a false nose, Walter! (He sinks faintly into a chair at the table.) I beg pardon, ma'am, I'm sure. A little giddiness-- BOHUN (commandingly). You will excuse him, Mrs. Clandon, when I inform you that he is my father. WAITER (heartbroken). Oh, no, no, Walter. A waiter for your father on the top of a false nose! What will they think of you? MRS. CLANDON (going to the waiter's chair in her kindest manner). I am delighted to hear it, Mr. Bohun. Your father has been an excellent friend to us since we came here. (Bohun bows gravely.) WAITER (shaking his head). Oh, no, ma'am. It's very kind of you-- very ladylike and affable indeed, ma'am; but I should feel at a great disadvantage off my own proper footing. Never mind my being the gentleman's father, ma'am: it is only the accident of birth after all, ma'am. (He gets up feebly.) You'll all excuse me, I'm sure, having interrupted your business. (He begins to make his way along the table, supporting himself from chair to chair, with his eye on the door.) BOHUN. One moment. (The waiter stops, with a sinking heart.) My father was a witness of what passed to-day, was he not, Mrs. Clandon? MRS. CLANDON. Yes, most of it, I think. BOHUN. In that case we shall want him. WAITER (pleading). I hope it may not be necessary, sir. Busy evening for me, sir, with that ball: very busy evening indeed, sir. BOHUN (inexorably). We shall want you. MRS. CLANDON (politely). Sit down, won't you? WAITER (earnestly). Oh, if you please, ma'am, I really must draw the line at sitting down. I couldn't let myself be seen doing such a thing, ma'am: thank you, I am sure, all the same. (He looks round from face to face wretchedly, with an expression that would melt a heart of stone.) GLORIA. Don't let us waste time. William only wants to go on taking care of us. I should like a cup of coffee. WAITER (brightening perceptibly). Coffee, miss? (He gives a little gasp of hope.) Certainly, miss. Thank you, miss: very timely, miss, very thoughtful and considerate indeed. (To Mrs. Clandon, timidly but expectantly.) Anything for you, ma'am? MRS. CLANDON Er--oh, yes: it's so hot, I think we might have a jug of claret cup. WAITER (beaming). Claret cup, ma'am! Certainly, ma'am. GLORIA Oh, well I'll have a claret cup instead of coffee. Put some cucumber in it. WAITER (delighted). Cucumber, miss! yes, miss. (To Bohun.) Anything special for you, sir? You don't like cucumber, sir. BOHUN. If Mrs. Clandon will allow me--syphon--Scotch. WAITER. Right, sir. (To Crampton.) Irish for you, sir, I think, sir? (Crampton assents with a grunt. The waiter looks enquiringly at Valentine.) VALENTINE. I like the cucumber. WAITER. Right, sir. (Summing up.) Claret cup, syphon, one Scotch and one Irish? MRS. CLANDON. I think that's right. WAITER (perfectly happy). Right, ma'am. Directly, ma'am. Thank you. (He ambles off through the window, having sounded the whole gamut of human happiness, from the bottom to the top, in a little over two minutes.) McCOMAS. We can begin now, I suppose? BOHUN. We had better wait until Mrs. Clandon's husband arrives. CRAMPTON. What d'y' mean? I'm her husband. BOHUN (instantly pouncing on the inconsistency between this and his previous statement). You said just now your name was Crampton. CRAMPTON. So it is. MRS. CLANDON } (all four { I-- GLORIA } speaking { My-- McCOMAS } simul- { Mrs.-- VALENTINE } taneously). { You-- BOHUN (drowning them in two thunderous words). One moment. (Dead silence.) Pray allow me. Sit down everybody. (They obey humbly. Gloria takes the saddle-bag chair on the hearth. Valentine slips around to her side of the room and sits on the ottoman facing the window, so that he can look at her. Crampton sits on the ottoman with his back to Valentine's. Mrs. Clandon, who has all along kept at the opposite side of the room in order to avoid Crampton as much as possible, sits near the door, with McComas beside her on her left. Bohun places himself magisterially in the centre of the group, near the corner of the table on Mrs. Clandon's side. When they are settled, he fixes Crampton with his eye, and begins.) In this family, it appears, the husband's name is Crampton: the wife's Clandon. Thus we have on the very threshold of the case an element of confusion. VALENTINE (getting up and speaking across to him with one knee on the ottoman). But it's perfectly simple. BOHUN (annihilating him with a vocal thunderbolt). It is. Mrs. Clandon has adopted another name. That is the obvious explanation which you feared I could not find out for myself. You mistrust my intelligence, Mr. Valentine-- (Stopping him as he is about to protest.) No: I don't want you to answer that: I want you to think over it when you feel your next impulse to interrupt me. VALENTINE (dazed). This is simply breaking a butterfly on a wheel. What does it matter? (He sits down again.) BOHUN. I will tell you what it matters, sir. It matters that if this family difference is to be smoothed over as we all hope it may be, Mrs. Clandon, as a matter of social convenience and decency, will have to resume her husband's name. (Mrs. Clandon assumes an expression of the most determined obstinacy.) Or else Mr. Crampton will have to call himself Mr. Clandon. (Crampton looks indomitably resolved to do nothing of the sort.) No doubt you think that an easy matter, Mr. Valentine. (He looks pointedly at Mrs. Clandon, then at Crampton.) I differ from you. (He throws himself back in his chair, frowning heavily.) McCOMAS (timidly). I think, Bohun, we had perhaps better dispose of the important questions first. BOHUN. McComas: there will be no difficulty about the important questions. There never is. It is the trifles that will wreck you at the harbor mouth. (McComas looks as if he considered this a paradox.) You don't agree with me, eh? McCOMAS (flatteringly). If I did-- BOHUN (interrupting him). If you did, you would be me, instead of being what you are. McCOMAS (fawning on him). Of course, Bohun, your specialty-- BOHUN (again interrupting him). My specialty is being right when other people are wrong. If you agreed with me I should be of no use here. (He nods at him to drive the point home; then turns suddenly and forcibly on Crampton.) Now you, Mr. Crampton: what point in this business have you most at heart? CRAMPTON (beginning slowly). I wish to put all considerations of self aside in this matter-- BOHUN (interrupting him). So do we all, Mr. Crampton. (To Mrs. Clandon.) Y o u wish to put self aside, Mrs. Clandon? MRS. CLANDON. Yes: I am not consulting my own feelings in being here. BOHUN. So do you, Miss Clandon? GLORIA. Yes. BOHUN. I thought so. We all do. VALENTINE. Except me. My aims are selfish. BOHUN. That's because you think an impression of sincerity will produce a better effect on Miss Clandon than an impression of disinterestedness. (Valentine, utterly dismantled and destroyed by this just remark, takes refuge in a feeble, speechless smile. Bohun, satisfied at having now effectually crushed all rebellion, throws himself back in his chair, with an air of being prepared to listen tolerantly to their grievances.) Now, Mr. Crampton, go on. It's understood that self is put aside. Human nature always begins by saying that. CRAMPTON. But I mean it, sir. BOHUN. Quite so. Now for your point. CRAMPTON. Every reasonable person will admit that it's an unselfish one--the children. BOHUN. Well? What about the children? CRAMPTON (with emotion). They have-- BOHUN (pouncing forward again). Stop. You're going to tell me about your feelings, Mr. Crampton. Don't: I sympathize with them; but they're not my business. Tell us exactly what you want: that's what we have to get at. CRAMPTON (uneasily). It's a very difficult question to answer, Mr. Bohun. BOHUN. Come: I'll help you out. What do you object to in the present circumstances of the children? CRAMPTON. I object to the way they have been brought up. BOHUN. How do you propose to alter that now? CRAMPTON. I think they ought to dress more quietly. VALENTINE. Nonsense. BOHUN (instantly flinging himself back in his chair, outraged by the interruption). When you are done, Mr. Valentine--when you are quite done. VALENTINE. What's wrong with Miss Clandon's dress? CRAMPTON (hotly to Valentine). My opinion is as good as yours. GLORIA (warningly). Father! CRAMPTON (subsiding piteously). I didn't mean you, my dear. (Pleading earnestly to Bohun.) But the two younger ones! you have not seen them, Mr. Bohun; and indeed I think you would agree with me that there is something very noticeable, something almost gay and frivolous in their style of dressing. MRS. CLANDON (impatiently). Do you suppose I choose their clothes for them? Really this is childish. CRAMPTON (furious, rising). Childish! (Mrs. Clandon rises indignantly.) McCOMAS } (all ris- } Crampton, you promised-- VALENTINE } ing and } Ridiculous. They dress } speaking } charmingly. GLORIA } together). } Pray let us behave reasonably. Tumult. Suddenly they hear a chime of glasses in the room behind them. They turn in silent surprise and find that the waiter has just come back from the bar in the garden, and is jingling his tray warningly as he comes softly to the table with it. WAITER (to Crampton, setting a tumbler apart on the table). Irish for you, sir. (Crampton sits down a little shamefacedly. The waiter sets another tumbler and a syphon apart, saying to Bohun) Scotch and syphon for you, sir. (Bohun waves his hand impatiently. The waiter places a large glass jug in the middle.) And claret cup. (All subside into their seats. Peace reigns.) MRS. CLANDON (humbly to Bohun). I am afraid we interrupted you, Mr. Bohun. BOHUN (calmly). You did. (To the waiter, who is going out.) Just wait a bit. WAITER. Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. (He takes his stand behind Bohun's chair.) MRS. CLANDON (to the waiter). You don't mind our detaining you, I hope. Mr. Bohun wishes it. WAITER (now quite at his ease). Oh, no, ma'am, not at all, ma'am. It is a pleasure to me to watch the working of his trained and powerful mind--very stimulating, very entertaining and instructive indeed, ma'am. BOHUN (resuming command of the proceedings). Now, Mr. Crampton: we are waiting for you. Do you give up your objection to the dressing, or do you stick to it? CRAMPTON (pleading). Mr. Bohun: consider my position for a moment. I haven't got myself alone to consider: there's my sister Sophronia and my brother-in-law and all their circle. They have a great horror of anything that is at all--at all--well-- BOHUN. Out with it. Fast? Loud? Gay? CRAMPTON. Not in any unprincipled sense of course; but--but-- (blurting it out desperately) those two children would shock them. They're not fit to mix with their own people. That's what I complain of. MRS. CLANDON (with suppressed impatience). Mr. Valentine: do you think there is anything fast or loud about Phil and Dolly? VALENTINE. Certainly not. It's utter bosh. Nothing can be in better taste. CRAMPTON. Oh, yes: of course you say so. MRS. CLANDON. William: you see a great deal of good English society. Are my children overdressed? WAITER (reassuringly). Oh, dear, no, ma'am. (Persuasively.) Oh, no, sir, not at all. A little pretty and tasty no doubt; but very choice and classy--very genteel and high toned indeed. Might be the son and daughter of a Dean, sir, I assure you, sir. You have only to look at them, sir, to-- (At this moment a harlequin and columbine, dancing to the music of the band in the garden, which has just reached the coda of a waltz, whirl one another into the room. The harlequin's dress is made of lozenges, an inch square, of turquoise blue silk and gold alternately. His hat is gilt and his mask turned up. The columbine's petticoats are the epitome of a harvest field, golden orange and poppy crimson, with a tiny velvet jacket for the poppy stamens. They pass, an exquisite and dazzling apparition, between McComas and Bohun, and then back in a circle to the end of the table, where, as the final chord of the waltz is struck, they make a tableau in the middle of the company, the harlequin down on his left knee, and the columbine standing on his right knee, with her arms curved over her head. Unlike their dancing, which is charmingly graceful, their attitudinizing is hardly a success, and threatens to end in a catastrophe.) THE COLUMBINE (screaming). Lift me down, somebody: I'm going to fall. Papa: lift me down. CRAMPTON (anxiously running to her and taking her hands). My child! DOLLY (jumping down with his help). Thanks: so nice of you. (Phil, putting his hat into his belt, sits on the side of the table and pours out some claret cup. Crampton returns to his place on the ottoman in great perplexity.) Oh, what fun! Oh, dear. (She seats herself with a vault on the front edge of the table, panting.) Oh, claret cup! (She drinks.) BOHUN (in powerful tones). This is the younger lady, is it? DOLLY (slipping down off the table in alarm at his formidable voice and manner). Yes, sir. Please, who are you? MRS. CLANDON. This is Mr. Bohun, Dolly, who has very kindly come to help us this evening. DOLLY. Oh, then he comes as a boon and a blessing-- PHILIP. Sh! CRAMPTON. Mr. Bohun--McComas: I appeal to you. Is this right? Would you blame my sister's family for objecting to this? DOLLY (flushing ominously). Have you begun again? CRAMPTON (propitiating her). No, no. It's perhaps natural at your age. DOLLY (obstinately). Never mind my age. Is it pretty? CRAMPTON. Yes, dear, yes. (He sits down in token of submission.) DOLLY (following him insistently). Do you like it? CRAMPTON. My child: how can you expect me to like it or to approve of it? DOLLY (determined not to let him off). How can you think it pretty and not like it? McCOMAS (rising, angry and scandalized). Really I must say-- (Bohun, who has listened to Dolly with the highest approval, is down on him instantly.) BOHUN. No: don't interrupt, McComas. The young lady's method is right. (To Dolly, with tremendous emphasis.) Press your questions, Miss Clandon: press your questions. DOLLY (rising). Oh, dear, you are a regular overwhelmer! Do you always go on like this? BOHUN (rising). Yes. Don't you try to put me out of countenance, young lady: you're too young to do it. (He takes McComas's chair from beside Mrs. Clandon's and sets it beside his own.) Sit down. (Dolly, fascinated, obeys; and Bohun sits down again. McComas, robbed of his seat, takes a chair on the other side between the table and the ottoman.) Now, Mr. Crampton, the facts are before you--both of them. You think you'd like to have your two youngest children to live with you. Well, you wouldn't-- (Crampton tries to protest; but Bohun will not have it on any terms.) No, you wouldn't: you think you would; but I know better than you. You'd want this young lady here to give up dressing like a stage columbine in the evening and like a fashionable columbine in the morning. Well, she won't--never. She thinks she will; but-- DOLLY (interrupting him). No I don't. (Resolutely.) I'll n e v e r give up dressing prettily. Never. As Gloria said to that man in Madeira, never, never, never while grass grows or water runs. VALENTINE (rising in the wildest agitation). What! What! (Beginning to speak very fast.) When did she say that? Who did she say that to? BOHUN (throwing himself back with massive, pitying remonstrance). Mr. Valentine-- VALENTINE (pepperily). Don't you interrupt me, sir: this is something really serious. I i n s i s t on knowing who Miss Clandon said that to. DOLLY. Perhaps Phil remembers. Which was it, Phil? number three or number five? VALENTINE. Number five!!! PHILIP. Courage, Valentine. It wasn't number five: it was only a tame naval lieutenant that was always on hand--the most patient and harmless of mortals. GLORIA (coldly). What are we discussing now, pray? VALENTINE (very red). Excuse me: I am sorry I interrupted. I shall intrude no further, Mrs. Clandon. (He bows to Mrs. Clandon and marches away into the garden, boiling with suppressed rage.) DOLLY. Hmhm! PHILIP. Ahah! GLORIA. Please go on, Mr. Bohun. DOLLY (striking in as Bohun, frowning formidably, collects himself for a fresh grapple with the case). You're going to bully us, Mr. Bohun. BOHUN. I-- DOLLY (interrupting him). Oh, yes, you are: you think you're not; but you are. I know by your eyebrows. BOHUN (capitulating). Mrs. Clandon: these are clever children-- clear headed, well brought up children. I make that admission deliberately. Can you, in return, point out to me any way of inducting them to hold their tongues? MRS. CLANDON. Dolly, dearest--! PHILIP. Our old failing, Dolly. Silence! (Dolly holds her mouth.) MRS. CLANDON. Now, Mr. Bohun, before they begin again-- WAITER (softer). Be quick, sir: be quick. DOLLY (beaming at him). Dear William! PHILIP. Sh! BOHUN (unexpectedly beginning by hurling a question straight at Dolly). Have you any intention of getting married? DOLLY. I! Well, Finch calls me by my Christian name. McCOMAS. I will not have this. Mr. Bohun: I use the young lady's Christian name naturally as an old friend of her mother's. DOLLY. Yes, you call me Dolly as an old friend of my mother's. But what about Dorothee-ee-a? (McComas rises indignantly.) CRAMPTON (anxiously, rising to restrain him). Keep your temper, McComas. Don't let us quarrel. Be patient. McCOMAS. I will not be patient. You are shewing the most wretched weakness of character, Crampton. I say this is monstrous. DOLLY. Mr. Bohun: please bully Finch for us. BOHUN. I will. McComas: you're making yourself ridiculous. Sit down. McCOMAS. I-- BOHUN (waving him down imperiously). No: sit down, sit down. (McComas sits down sulkily; and Crampton, much relieved, follows his example.) DOLLY (to Bohun, meekly). Thank you. BOHUN. Now, listen to me, all of you. I give no opinion, McComas, as to how far you may or may not have committed yourself in the direction indicated by this young lady. (McComas is about to protest.) No: don't interrupt me: if she doesn't marry you she will marry somebody else. That is the solution of the difficulty as to her not bearing her father's name. The other lady intends to get married. GLORIA (flushing). Mr. Bohun! BOHUN. Oh, yes, you do: you don't know it; but you do. GLORIA (rising). Stop. I warn you, Mr. Bohun, not to answer for my intentions. BOHUN (rising). It's no use, Miss Clandon: you can't put me down. I tell you your name will soon be neither Clandon nor Crampton; and I could tell you what it will be if I chose. (He goes to the other end of the table, where he unrolls his domino, and puts the false nose on the table. When he moves they all rise; and Phil goes to the window. Bohun, with a gesture, summons the waiter to help him in robing.) Mr. Crampton: your notion of going to law is all nonsense: your children will be of age before you could get the point decided. (Allowing the waiter to put the domino on his shoulders.) You can do nothing but make a friendly arrangement. If you want your family more than they want you, you'll get the worse of the arrangement: if they want you more than you want them, you'll get the better of it. (He shakes the domino into becoming folds and takes up the false nose. Dolly gazes admiringly at him.) The strength of their position lies in their being very agreeable people personally. The strength of your position lies in your income. (He claps on the false nose, and is again grotesquely transfigured.) DOLLY (running to him). Oh, now you look quite like a human being. Mayn't I have just one dance with you? C a n you dance? (Phil, resuming his part of harlequin, waves his hat as if casting a spell on them.) BOHUN (thunderously). Yes: you think I can't; but I can. Come along. (He seizes her and dances off with her through the window in a most powerful manner, but with studied propriety and grace. The waiter is meanwhile busy putting the chairs back in their customary places.) PHILIP. "On with the dance: let joy be unconfined." William! WAITER. Yes, sir. PHILIP. Can you procure a couple of dominos and false noses for my father and Mr. McComas? McCOMAS. Most certainly not. I protest-- CRAMPTON. No, no. What harm will it do, just for once, McComas? Don't let us be spoil-sports. McCOMAS. Crampton: you are not the man I took you for. (Pointedly.) Bullies are always cowards. (He goes disgustedly towards the window.) CRAMPTON (following him). Well, never mind. We must indulge them a little. Can you get us something to wear, waiter? WAITER. Certainly, sir. (He precedes them to the window, and stands aside there to let them pass out before him.) This way, sir. Dominos and noses, sir? McCOMAS (angrily, on his way out). I shall wear my own nose. WAITER (suavely). Oh, dear, yes, sir: the false one will fit over it quite easily, sir: plenty of room, sir, plenty of room. (He goes out after McComas.) CRAMPTON (turning at the window to Phil with an attempt at genial fatherliness). Come along, my boy, come along. (He goes.) PHILIP (cheerily, following him). Coming, dad, coming. (On the window threshold, he stops; looking after Crampton; then turns fantastically with his bat bent into a halo round his head, and says with a lowered voice to Mrs. Clandon and Gloria) Did you feel the pathos of that? (He vanishes.) MRS. CLANDON (left alone with Gloria). Why did Mr. Valentine go away so suddenly, I wonder? GLORIA (petulantly). I don't know. Yes, I d o know. Let us go and see the dancing. (They go towards the window, and are met by Valentine, who comes in from the garden walking quickly, with his face set and sulky.) VALENTINE (stiffly). Excuse me. I thought the party had quite broken up. GLORIA (nagging). Then why did you come back? VALENTINE. I came back because I am penniless. I can't get out that way without a five shilling ticket. MRS. CLANDON. Has anything annoyed you, Mr. Valentine? GLORIA. Never mind him, mother. This is a fresh insult to me: that is all. MRS. CLANDON (hardly able to realize that Gloria is deliberately provoking an altercation). Gloria! VALENTINE. Mrs. Clandon: have I said anything insulting? Have I done anything insulting? GLORIA. you have implied that my past has been like yours. That is the worst of insults. VALENTINE. I imply nothing of the sort. I declare that my past has been blameless in comparison with yours. MRS. CLANDON (most indignantly). Mr. Valentine! VALENTINE. Well, what am I to think when I learn that Miss Clandon has made exactly the same speeches to other men that she has made to me--when I hear of at least five former lovers, with a tame naval lieutenant thrown in? Oh, it's too bad. MRS. CLANDON. But you surely do not believe that these affairs-- mere jokes of the children's--were serious, Mr. Valentine? VALENTINE. Not to you--not to her, perhaps. But I know what the men felt. (With ludicrously genuine earnestness.) Have you ever thought of the wrecked lives, the marriages contracted in the recklessness of despair, the suicides, the--the--the-- GLORIA (interrupting him contemptuously). Mother: this man is a sentimental idiot. (She sweeps away to the fireplace.) MRS. CLANDON (shocked). Oh, my d e a r e s t Gloria, Mr. Valentine will think that rude. VALENTINE. I am not a sentimental idiot. I am cured of sentiment for ever. (He sits down in dudgeon.) MRS. CLANDON. Mr. Valentine: you must excuse us all. Women have to unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the genuine good manners of their freedom. Don't think Gloria vulgar (Gloria turns, astonished): she is not really so. GLORIA. Mother! You apologize for me to h i m! MRS. CLANDON. My dear: you have some of the faults of youth as well as its qualities; and Mr. Valentine seems rather too old fashioned in his ideas about his own sex to like being called an idiot. And now had we not better go and see what Dolly is doing? (She goes towards the window. Valentine rises.) GLORIA. Do you go, mother. I wish to speak to Mr. Valentine alone. MRS. CLANDON (startled into a remonstrance). My dear! (Recollecting herself.) I beg your pardon, Gloria. Certainly, if you wish. (She bows to Valentine and goes out.) VALENTINE. Oh, if your mother were only a widow! She's worth six of you. GLORIA. That is the first thing I have heard you say that does you honor. VALENTINE. Stuff! Come: say what you want to say and let me go. GLORIA. I have only this to say. You dragged me down to your level for a moment this afternoon. Do you think, if that had ever happened before, that I should not have been on my guard--that I should not have known what was coming, and known my own miserable weakness? VALENTINE (scolding at her passionately). Don't talk of it in that way. What do I care for anything in you but your weakness, as you call it? You thought yourself very safe, didn't you, behind your advanced ideas! I amused myself by upsetting t h e m pretty easily. GLORIA (insolently, feeling that now she can do as she likes with him). Indeed! VALENTINE. But why did I do it? Because I was being tempted to awaken your heart--to stir the depths in you. Why was I tempted? Because Nature was in deadly earnest with me when I was in jest with her. When the great moment came, who was awakened? who was stirred? in whom did the depths break up? In myself--m y s e l f: I was transported: you were only offended--shocked. You were only an ordinary young lady, too ordinary to allow tame lieutenants to go as far as I went. That's all. I shall not trouble you with conventional apologies. Good-bye. (He makes resolutely for the door.) GLORIA. Stop. (He hesitates.) Oh, will you understand, if I tell you the truth, that I am not making an advance to you? VALENTINE. Pooh! I know what you're going to say. You think you're not ordinary--that I was right--that you really have those depths in your nature. It flatters you to believe it. (She recoils.) Well, I grant that you are not ordinary in some ways: you are a clever girl (Gloria stifles an exclamation of rage, and takes a threatening step towards him); but you've not been awakened yet. You didn't care: you don't care. It was my tragedy, not yours. Good-bye. (He turns to the door. She watches him, appalled to see him slipping from her grasp. As he turns the handle, he pauses; then turns again to her, offering his hand.) Let us part kindly. GLORIA (enormously relieved, and immediately turning her back on him deliberately.) Good-bye. I trust you will soon recover from the wound. VALENTINE (brightening up as it flashes on him that he is master of the situation after all). I shall recover: such wounds heal more than they harm. After all, I still have my own Gloria. GLORIA (facing him quickly). What do you mean? VALENTINE. The Gloria of my imagination. GLORIA (proudly). Keep your own Gloria--the Gloria of your imagination. (Her emotion begins to break through her pride.) The real Gloria--the Gloria who was shocked, offended, horrified--oh, yes, quite truly--who was driven almost mad with shame by the feeling that all her power over herself had been broken down at her first real encounter with--with-- (The color rushes over her face again. She covers it with her left hand, and puts her right on his left arm to support herself.) VALENTINE. Take care. I'm losing my senses again. (Summoning all her courage, she takes away her hand from her face and puts it on his right shoulder, turning him towards her and looking him straight in the eyes. He begins to protest agitatedly.) Gloria: be sensible: it's no use: I haven't a penny in the world. GLORIA. Can't you earn one? Other people do. VALENTINE (half delighted, half frightened). I never could--you'd be unhappy-- My dearest love: I should be the merest fortune-hunting adventurer if-- (Her grip on his arms tightens; and she kisses him.) Oh, Lord! (Breathless.) Oh, I-- (He gasps.) I don't know anything about women: twelve years' experience is not enough. (In a gust of jealousy she throws him away from her; and he reels her back into the chair like a leaf before the wind, as Dolly dances in, waltzing with the waiter, followed by Mrs. Clandon and Finch, also waltzing, and Phil pirouetting by himself.) DOLLY (sinking on the chair at the writing-table). Oh, I'm out of breath. How beautifully you waltz, William! MRS. CLANDON (sinking on the saddlebag seat on the hearth). Oh, how could you make me do such a silly thing, Finch! I haven't danced since the soiree at South Place twenty years ago. GLORIA (peremptorily at Valentine). Get up. (Valentine gets up abjectly.) Now let us have no false delicacy. Tell my mother that we have agreed to marry one another. (A silence of stupefaction ensues. Valentine, dumb with panic, looks at them with an obvious impulse to run away.) DOLLY (breaking the silence). Number Six! PHILIP. Sh! DOLLY (tumultuously). Oh, my feelings! I want to kiss somebody; and we bar it in the family. Where's Finch? McCOMAS (starting violently). No, positively-- (Crampton appears in the window.) DOLLY (running to Crampton). Oh, you're just in time. (She kisses him.) Now (leading him forward) bless them. GLORIA. No. I will have no such thing, even in jest. When I need a blessing, I shall ask my mother's. CRAMPTON (to Gloria, with deep disappointment). Am I to understand that you have engaged yourself to this young gentleman? GLORIA (resolutely). Yes. Do you intend to be our friend or-- DOLLY (interposing). --or our father? CRAMPTON. I should like to be both, my child. But surely--! Mr. Valentine: I appeal to your sense of honor. VALENTINE. You're quite right. It's perfect madness. If we go out to dance together I shall have to borrow five shillings from her for a ticket. Gloria: don't be rash: you're throwing yourself away. I'd much better clear straight out of this, and never see any of you again. I shan't commit suicide: I shan't even be unhappy. It'll be a relief to me: I--I'm frightened, I'm positively frightened; and that's the plain truth. GLORIA (determinedly). You shall not go. VALENTINE (quailing). No, dearest: of course not. But--oh, will somebody only talk sense for a moment and bring us all to reason! I can't. Where's Bohun? Bohun's the man. Phil: go and summon Bohun-- PHILIP. From the vastly deep. I go. (He makes his bat quiver in the air and darts away through the window.) WAITER (harmoniously to Valentine). If you will excuse my putting in a word, sir, do not let a matter of five shillings stand between you and your happiness, sir. We shall be only too pleased to put the ticket down to you: and you can settle at your convenience. Very glad to meet you in any way, very happy and pleased indeed, sir. PHILIP (re-appearing). He comes. (He waves his bat over the window. Bohun comes in, taking off his false nose and throwing it on the table in passing as he comes between Gloria and Valentine.) VALENTINE. The point is, Mr. Bohun-- McCOMAS (interrupting from the hearthrug). Excuse me, sir: the point must be put to him by a solicitor. The question is one of an engagement between these two young people. The lady has some property, and (looking at Crampton) will probably have a good deal more. CRAMPTON. Possibly. I hope so. VALENTINE. And the gentleman hasn't a rap. BOHUN (nailing Valentine to the point instantly). Then insist on a settlement. That shocks your delicacy: most sensible precautions do. But you ask my advice; and I give it to you. Have a settlement. GLORIA (proudly). He shall have a settlement. VALENTINE. My good sir, I don't want advice for myself. Give h e r some advice. BOHUN. She won't take it. When you're married, she won't take yours either-- (turning suddenly on Gloria) oh, no, you won't: you think you will; but you won't. He'll set to work and earn his living-- (turning suddenly to Valentine) oh, yes, you will: you think you won't; but you will. She'll make you. CRAMPTON (only half persuaded). Then, Mr. Bohun, you don't think this match an unwise one? BOHUN. Yes, I do: all matches are unwise. It's unwise to be born; it's unwise to be married; it's unwise to live; and it's unwise to die. WAITER (insinuating himself between Crampton and Valentine). Then, if I may respectfully put in a word in, sir, so much the worse for wisdom! (To Valentine, benignly.) Cheer up, sir, cheer up: every man is frightened of marriage when it comes to the point; but it often turns out very comfortable, very enjoyable and happy indeed, sir--from time to time. I never was master in my own house, sir: my wife was like your young lady: she was of a commanding and masterful disposition, which my son has inherited. But if I had my life to live twice over, I'd do it again, I'd do it again, I assure you. You never can tell, sir: you never can tell. PHILIP. Allow me to remark that if Gloria has made up her mind-- DOLLY. The matter's settled and Valentine's done for. And we're missing all the dances. VALENTINE (to Gloria, gallantly making the best of it). May I have a dance-- BOHUN (interposing in his grandest diapason). Excuse me: I claim that privilege as counsel's fee. May I have the honor--thank you. (He dances away with Gloria and disappears among the lanterns, leaving Valentine gasping.) VALENTINE (recovering his breath). Dolly: may I-- (offering himself as her partner)? DOLLY. Nonsense! (Eluding him and running round the table to the fireplace.) Finch--my Finch! (She pounces on McComas and makes him dance.) McCOMAS (protesting). Pray restrain--really--(He is borne off dancing through the window.) VALENTINE (making a last effort). Mrs. Clandon: may I-- PHILIP (forestalling him). Come, mother. (He seizes his mother and whirls her away.) MRS. CLANDON (remonstrating). Phil, Phil-- (She shares McComas's fate.) CRAMPTON (following them with senile glee). Ho! ho! He! he! he! (He goes into the garden chuckling at the fun.) VALENTINE (collapsing on the ottoman and staring at the waiter). I might as well be a married man already. (The waiter contemplates the captured Duellist of Sex with affectionate commiseration, shaking his head slowly.) CURTAIN. 
35383	----	"The Little Missis" By Charlotte Skinner _Author of "Doctor Phill," "The Master's Messages to Women," etc._ With Six Illustrations LONDON S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO. LTD. OLD BAILEY [Illustration: "'SEE HOW CAREFULLY HE IS HELPING HER OUT OF THE CAB.'"] CONTENTS I. HIS PURPOSE II. THE HOME-COMING III. A GARDEN LEVÉE IV. A TESTING TIME V. WILL GOD ANSWER? VI. THE DARKNESS DEEPENS VII. THE LAME SHEPHERD VIII. A TWOFOLD PARTNERSHIP IX. A WOMAN'S WHIMS X. A GATHERED FLOWER XI. IS GOD GOOD? XII. THE STONE THROWN IN THE WATERS XIII. LOVE'S HOSPITAL XIV. AN UNFORTUNATE ENCOUNTER XV. JOY-MISSIONARIES XVI. THE CALL OF DEBORAH XVII. THE GOING FORTH OF DEBORAH XVIII. HER NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR XIX. THE NEW CLUB-ROOM XX. A STRANGE KIND OF PREACHING XXI. PARTNERS! XXII. LIGHT ON THE PATHWAY XXIII. LOYAL LOVE XXIV. RECOGNISED XXV. BESSIE COMES TO THE RESCUE XXVI. THE HOME-COMING XXVII. RALPH STARTS ON ANOTHER JOURNEY XXVIII. OLIVE LEAVES AND LAUREL LEAVES XXIX. CROWNED WITH JOY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "'See how carefully he is helping her out of the cab.'" "Phebe was in the shop taking a general look round" "'Bessie, you are to tell me right out what is troubling you'" "'Let us put this cold-blooded letter on the fire'" "She caused the cup with its contents to fall into Phebe's lap" "He was standing on the pavement, looking a sad, solitary figure" "THE LITTLE MISSIS" CHAPTER I HIS PURPOSE Creak--creak--creak! went the old mangle--one of the box sort, weighted with stones. "Are you dreadfully busy, Mrs. Colston?" called out a clear, young voice. "Bless me, is that you, Miss Phebe?" and the mangle was suddenly silent. "No, I'm not dreadfully busy, and in two minutes I was going to make myself some tea; and if you----" "Oh, won't I, rather! I should just think I will, you dearie; and I'll get it ready, too, while you play your last tune on your old organ." Creak, creak, went the mangle, clatter went the cups, and in less than ten minutes the two were seated at a little round three-legged table enjoying tea and talk. "Can't think what's the matter with you to-day, Miss Phebe. Have you got a new dress on, or have you been doing something to your complexion, or what is it?" asked Mrs. Colston, looking very intently across the table. "I have got my old dress on, and have not even washed my face in dew." "Well, then, what is it?--Ah, I know! you've fallen in love." "Yes, I fell in love with you a long time ago," answered her visitor demurely; "but I see you've guessed my secret, you are so clever. The fact is, I have got two secrets to tell you. I wonder which I should bring out first!" The old mangle woman got up from her arm-chair, and, going to where the girl was sitting, took the fair young face into her hands and kissed the right cheek, saying, as the tears started to her eyes: "There, my dear; that's in place of your mother's kiss, and," kissing the other cheek, "that's for myself." Resuming her seat there was silence for a minute or two, and then Mrs. Colston, said: "I think I can guess both your secrets. The first is, you have given yourself to Jesus; and the second is, you have promised to marry Stephen Collins." "Oh, dear, no," exclaimed the girl, rising from her seat. "Why, he has never asked me. Besides--no, I have promised to marry Ralph Waring." "Ralph Waring!" repeated the old woman, and then there was an awkward silence. "Oh, dear Mrs. Colston, you do not think I have done wrong, do you?" exclaimed the girl, sinking on her knees in front of her old friend, "say you do not!" "No, no, dearie; I don't exactly, but it's took me by surprise," and putting both her arms round her neck she kissed her again. "No, dearie, don't think that. Ralph is a very good young man, but I know very well how much Steve loves you." "It is strange," mused the girl; "Ralph asked me if I loved him more than I did Stephen, and I said of course I did." Then, rising to her feet, she said with a ring of pride in her voice, "You know Ralph is so clever; you should hear him give some of his lectures! He is a great favourite at several men's meetings. His great ambition is to be a Member of Parliament. He is sure to be mayor some day." "He does a good business, doesn't he?" "Just fancy, now, you thinking about that; I see, after all, you have an eye to money. I never thought it of you," and then Miss Phebe laughed quite naturally, and the little cloud which seemed to have risen between them cleared away and the sun shone again. "Why shouldn't I? We can't live without it--but bless me, your cup is empty: what can I be thinking of?" Phebe commenced drinking her second cup, never noticing that her companion had not touched the first one yet. "Now tell me all about the other secret: that's more interesting to me, you know, for it's so long since I fell in love I forget what it's like." "But it is a long time since you first loved Jesus, and you don't forget what that is like." "Ah! that's different, you see. He never changes; men and women do. But never you mind about my love affairs: tell me yours." Phebe rose and went and stood in front of the window, looking into the little bricked yard through which she had entered the house. There were some scarlet geraniums in the window doing duty in place of a curtain, and her cheeks seemed to have caught the hue of the blossoms. "You know for a long time I have wanted to be a Christian." "Yes;" and Mrs. Colston poked the fire during the pause. It was strange for Miss Phebe to continue the conversation while her back was towards her friend; many people can speak openly about earthly love matters, but are shy when the Great Lover is concerned. "All at once I seemed to understand wishing was not sufficient, that a definite act was needed. So the night before last I got out of bed and knelt down by my old easy-chair, and told Jesus I gave myself entirely to Him, that He should be my dear Master, and that I would be willing to do all He wished." How well the old friend could see the scene! She knew the room so well. The old chair was covered with brown leather, and it was the chair the girl's mother had died in. By its side stood a little writing-table, and on the wall above were portraits--mostly cut from newspapers and magazines--of some eminent men and women whom the girl regarded as heroes and heroines. An old apple-tree grew close by the window, and in the summer-time little could be seen of the outside world but its green leaves and greener fruit. When the wind blew the boughs tapped, tapped at the window-panes, but Phebe would not have them cut. "I like to think," said she, "they are messengers come to tell me the old tree's secrets." "Since then," the girl continued, "I have been so happy; and is it not funny," turning now towards the fire, "that the very next day Ralph should ask me to be his wife? So I have given myself away twice since I last saw you." "I wonder if there is anything left of you for me?" Mrs. Colston asked, with a twinkling smile. "Yes; I'm still yours. I could never forget how you loved me when I was a little crying mite. You gave me two kisses; I'll give you two--one for being good to me when I was a troublesome juvenile, and one for being good to me now I am a proper grown-up. But I have not finished my story, and if you interrupt me again I shall turn the mangle instead of talking to you. I think I told you a long time ago how much I wanted to write a book--indeed, I have tried, and sent little chapters of it to editors in London, but they have always been returned with thanks. Now you see Jesus has opened up my way to serve Him. I am going to help Ralph with his lectures and speeches--he says I shall--and I shall go with him to all his engagements. He says those who ask him must ask me, too; and, after all, to live a life for Jesus is better than writing a book for Him." "Comes to about the same thing, I should think." "I am sure you will be happy now I am a Christian"--this with a coaxing voice. "But you are a very young Christian." "A young Christian! Whatever do you mean?" "My dear child, you have only just started. Why, even the daisies don't come up all at once: flowers and fruits that do, don't come to much." "If that is what you mean," Phebe replied, with a sigh of relief, "I don't mind." "Why, you think of my work," the old woman continued; "I often do. The clothes are not finished when the dirt's out, and you are not a finished Christian as soon as your sin's forgiven. The clothes have to be bleached and dried, and then there comes the getting out of the creases, and so I mangle them and mangle them." "But look here," said Phebe, laughing, "you don't mean to say I have got to be mangled?" "You need not laugh, my dear, for I am quite sure if Jesus was to speak just now He'd use my old mangle for a text. I know He would; and why shouldn't He, just as well as using the woman's candle and yeast, and the man's fishing-net and pruning-knife." "I should not like to think I had to be mangled." "It's more than mangling, Miss Phebe, for if we want to put a nice polish on the clothes we use a hot iron to them. You are used to the thought of being like gold in the fire, and a lump of clay in the potter's hand: why not think of yourself as under my roller? I often and often think, as I smoothes out the marks, and stretches the corners, and turns, and turns, that is just how Jesus is doing with me." "H'm," mused Phebe, "I suppose it's another way of describing tribulation. But do you suppose everybody has tribulation?" "I do; there isn't a plant in my little garden I haven't used the scissors to." "Ah, well, I suppose we must submit." "Yes, dearie; and we must look beyond to the afterwards. When we see what the Lord has made us we shall thank Him. Why, the things that I carefully pack in the baskets are hardly like the same things I take out, they look that nice." "Do you think I shall have much tribulation, dear Mrs. Colston?" asked Phebe anxiously, placing her hand on her old friend's shoulder. "I don't know for certain; the Lord only can tell that. But," looking up lovingly into the face of her favourite, "don't you worry, He'll help you right through, sure enough." When Miss Phebe had taken her departure and the mangle had started again its painful song, the old woman said to herself: "Strikes me she will have a good deal; but it will be because the Lord wants her to be extra polished. She's real damask, she is; worth taking a good deal of trouble with. Some folks are only like dusters, and if the Lord was like me He'd not take much trouble with them. But, bless me, it's a good thing the Lord is not like me, it 'ud be a poor look-out for some folks if He was." As Miss Phebe walked home she said to herself: "I thought it was all settled, but it would seem I have only just commenced." That night she again knelt by the old arm-chair. It had always seemed she could pray best there, for it recalled the time when she had knelt at her mother's knees, and had first learnt to talk to Jesus. "Dear Lord," she prayed, "make me a true Christian; and help me to be perfectly willing to let Thee do it in whatever way you think will be best for me." A mile away, in a farmhouse on a height over-looking the little town of Hadley, another earnest soul knelt in prayer: "Lord, help me to put her out of my thoughts. If this is allowed by Thee as discipline, make me willing to bear it. Lord, help me, but Thou knowest how much I loved her!" and a sob, which would have broken his mother's heart if she had heard it, escaped from Stephen Collins as he looked forward into the future. At the foot of the same hill, in the back parlour of a thriving shop, a young fellow was counting his day's takings, and when he had finished, he drew his chair up to the fire to think things over. "Steve Collins thought he was sure of her, I know he did; but I got the start of him for once. I wonder if Phebe's father is really well off! I have got on very well so far, but it is slow work in this sleepy place." * * * * * The gardener pegs some of his plants down to the ground: some he places by a south wall, some in open spaces where the north wind has free access. He has a purpose with each, and whatever he does is for their "making." CHAPTER II THE HOME-COMING "I say, mother, they've come!" "Well, let them. What do I care?" "Oh, but just come and look a minute. See how carefully he is helping her out of the cab. She's a sight too good for him. There! I've got a brilliant idea. I'll go and give them a tune. She shall enter her bridal home to the strains of music," and away downstairs Miss Bessie Marchant rushed. She was the daughter of Mr. Marchant, chemist, Ralph Waring's neighbour. "What is that girl playing?" exclaimed Mrs. Marchant a few minutes afterwards, as she was preparing supper in the kitchen. Phill Marchant was sitting at the table working out a sum on his slate. "Why, it's the 'Dead March.' Is her kitten dead?" "That girl will be the death of me. Bessie, do you hear, stop that noise, will you? Haven't you one spark of human kindness left?" "No, mother," still going on playing, "I gave all the sparks to Phill." "Stop playing, will you? or I'll box your ears! It's perfectly cruel. The poor thing will have enough to put up with, without you worrying her with that bad omen." Bessie suddenly stopped, not because she was afraid of her ears being boxed, but deep down in her heart, where a good big piece of human kindness was thriving splendidly, in spite of her mother's fears, questionings had arisen lest she might not be defeating her own object. "I don't want to worry her; you know that. It is a funny world to live in if you cannot play the 'Dead March' when you like!" "You just march off and water the plants in the greenhouse, and don't interfere with what isn't your business." "All right, but I'll----" What exactly Miss Bessie was going still further to do, her mother did not catch, and it was not Miss Bessie's intention that she should. It was a drizzling wet night when Phebe Waring arrived at her new home. According to strict economical household arrangements, there was no bright fire in the back parlour to make the room look cosy, because it was near the end of June. The floor was covered with oil-cloth, no rug anywhere, and a table, small sideboard, and six small chairs with American leather cushions made up the whole of the furniture. "Not very homelike," Phebe thought, "but there, how could I expect bachelor's quarters to look anything different?" For supper the little maid had placed on the table a large white jug of lemon water, a piece of cheese, and some bread and butter. "There's a hamper for you, ma'am, from your father's: came about an hour ago." Quickly taking off her hat and jacket Phebe opened the hamper, and when she looked inside the tears came into her eyes; it was the first glimpse of anything homelike she had seen for a fortnight. A bunch of wallflowers came first, then a large pat of butter, a home-made cake, a roasted chicken, a piece of ham, and a large box of little gooseberry pies. "Dear old Sis, how thoughtful of her!" Soon the table was spread with the feast the loving sister in the old home had prepared, and to make the room look still further homelike Phebe got Janie, the maid, to light a fire in the empty, rusty grate. "It was quite fortunate I did not order anything further into the house," said Ralph. In the morning the room looked as cheerless as it did the night before, and Phebe's heart seemed to shrink as she noticed that the window looked into a yard, surrounded with high walls, and that nothing was growing in it but grass and dandelions. How different from the outlook over the well-kept garden at home! "But I'll soon make it look different," said the hopeful Phebe to herself. The only bright spot in the room was a bunch of beautiful pansies lying on the table; the wallflowers had been taken upstairs. As Phebe picked them up she noticed a slip of paper pushed beneath the string with which they were tied, and on it was written: "From Neighbour Bessie. I do hope you will be my friend." "Ah, that must be Mrs. Marchant's daughter, next door," thought Phebe, "I have heard Ralph speak of her. Of course we shall be friends. What beautiful flowers! Pansies--see, they mean 'heart's ease.' Did Bessie think--but of course she did not. She would not know their meaning." During breakfast Ralph put into her hand a black-edged envelope, saying, "See what I have had sent me. A funny sort of congratulation!" Inside the envelope was a card, bordered with ink lines, and in the centre, in letters to imitate printing, were the words: "Sacred to the Memory of SWEET LIBERTY, Who ceased to be on June 10th, 18--, And was interred in the residence of RALPH WARING, Draper, etc., Hadley." "Somebody thinks I'm going to be a poor martyr," said Ralph, putting on a very solemn look. Phebe also looked solemn, but her solemnity seemed real. "I don't know about that," she replied, "it seems to me it is my liberty which is referred to. If your liberty is interred in your house it is still yours." "Oh, dear, no; everybody knows women always have their own way--they never lose their liberty," and a slight tone of anger was in the voice, which made Phebe look up in surprise. "But there, it is only somebody's stupid joke; not worth thinking about," and he tore the card into shreds, feeling a trifle sorry he had spoken in the way he had done. Breakfast over, Ralph said: "And now, dearest, I should like a little business talk with you, if you can spare the time. You know we have had so much lovemaking to do we have had no opportunity of talking together about our business." "'Our business,'" thought Phebe, "that sounds nice." "The fact is," said Ralph, when the breakfast table had been cleared and they were alone, "I want to enlarge the business. I want to throw this room into the shop, take the house next door, which is to let, and start a grocery trade, too. Then my idea is to have a horse and cart and go into the villages for orders--many of them are growing considerably, and I think I could work up a splendid connection. Later on I should try to sell the whole affair, and start somewhere different from this sleepy place." "Somewhere different! I should never like to leave Hadley." "Of course not, women are never ambitious." "But I am very ambitious, and should like you to have a large business. How could you possibly leave all your public work here? and I could never leave Hadley while my poor old sick father lives." "We'll not worry about that," said Ralph, fearing he had gone too far. "We need not discuss that for years. I am glad to hear you say you would like me to have a big business; but how, without more capital, am I going to manage it?" "That certainly is a very difficult question." There was silence for a minute, and then Ralph, evidently disappointed she had not said more, asked: "Can you not suggest anything?" "No, I cannot; but if it is God's will He will show you how it can be done." "God won't do for us what we can do for ourselves," he answered a little impatiently. "I hardly like mentioning it, but haven't you some money in the bank?" "Yes." "How much?" "Three hundred pounds. It was my mother's money; and the interest has helped to buy my clothes, because father could not afford to give us much pocket-money." "Couldn't I have that money? Of course, I shall give you pocket-money enough." "You can have some of it, most certainly." "Not all?" "Wouldn't half do?" Ralph got up from his chair, went to the window, and then said slowly, "Yes, that will do." "We will go and draw it out next week," said Phebe, "if you like." "Yes; and of course you had better change the name, had you not? And it will seem more businesslike if you draw the whole of it and then put the half of it back in my name. It will be yours all the same." "I don't mind," said Phebe, "if that will please you." "Please me! I'm not a child." Fortunately, just then he was called into the shop. "Am I selfish?" questioned Phebe anxiously to herself. "Have I done wrong? Ought I to let him have the whole? But I am sure father would be cross if I did." All that day there was sunshine without, but very little within. Phebe worked hard to make the house more homelike; some rugs were laid on the parlour floor, two arm-chairs established each side the table, ferns arranged in the grate, vases of flowers put on the chimney-piece, pictures hung up, curtains placed at the window--and yet it seemed dreary. But how can there be sunshine in a room when there's a shadow on the spirit? After tea Ralph said: "I am going to Sunbury to a meeting this evening." "Oh, I am glad; I shall enjoy that." "But, dearest, I am sorry to disappoint you. I have promised to walk with old Mr. Cope, and it is too far for you. Besides, if you don't mind, I should like you to attend to the shop a little, just to check bills and take cash, for I am a young man short to-day. Will you?" "Oh, yes," replied Phebe gaily, trying hard to let the feeling of pride that Ralph thought her capable of doing this conquer the feeling of disappointment. "I shall be delighted to do it for your sake." And after that sweet little speech Ralph kissed her. The young man who was left in charge of the shop, being of a rather fiery disposition, and having resented somewhat Phebe's advent into the establishment, thought he would take this opportunity of having a little revenge. "Do you like business, Mrs. Waring?" he asked, when they were alone. "I hardly know, having had no experience." "Well, I suppose it is with you as with me, it is all the same whether we like it or not--we have got to do it." "I don't think the cases are quite parallel," she said, with a smile. "Oh, I thought they were, for when the governor gave Dick Forbes notice--he left to-day, you know--he said he should not require his services any longer, for when you came you would see after the business when he was away. It must be nice to have a wife to look after things while you are away enjoying yourself." "Your master is away doing God's business," she replied with dignity, and straightway walked into the parlour. The dignity all vanished when she laid her head on her hands on the table and had a little cry to herself. Things were all so different from what she had expected, and such a loneliness seemed to have crept into her heart! When she lifted up her tearful face she saw the bunch of pansies quite close to her, and their faces seemed to look into hers and whisper, "Heart's ease!" "What a comfort!" she whispered to herself. "'Heart's ease,' yes, I know where to get it from. I know I feel disappointed, but ought I not to ask: Is Ralph disappointed in me? and is Jesus disappointed in me?" "What a mean hound I've been!" thought the young shopman, as he caught sight afterwards of her swollen eyes. "It would have served me right if she had boxed my ears. She'll have enough to put up with without me adding to it." And that same night he walked two miles to beg a bunch of roses for her, saying as he gave them to her: "Please forgive me for having been rude to you." * * * * * When a king had chosen the design for the gold work of his signet and selected the stone, carefully studying its hue and markings, then came the _making_ of the signet: the gold was put in the fire, and the gem under the lapidary's hammer. CHAPTER III A GARDEN LEVÉE In a little over a year great alterations had been made in Ralph Waring's establishment. The shop next door had been duly taken, the partition wall broken down, and the grocery business started. The only part of Ralph's plan which had not come about was the throwing in of the back parlour into the business portion. "No," said Phebe firmly, "in this department I mean to come first. I am not going to vote for everything being sacrificed to the business; to have a dining-room upstairs means a great deal of extra work. I must also have the parlour of the other shop to convert into a decent kitchen. How can we expect Janie to be bright and happy with nothing better than a scullery to sit in? I mean my kitchen to be as bright and cheery as any room in the house." "I wonder who's master here!" said Ralph, with a snap. "We are partners--at least, that is what you have said, and you rule in one department and I in the other. I have no objection to you having one of the front rooms upstairs for a show-room." Ralph had never thought of that, and as it sounded rather "big," it pleased him, and so the dispute ended. But if changes had been effected in the front premises, a greater change had come about in the back garden, which at first had only looked like a walled-in yard. Where the dandelions had grown was a trim little lawn, with a flower-stand in the centre nearly covered with pink ivy geraniums; there was no space for any elaboration of design, so a narrow bed of flowers round the lawn touched the surrounding walls, which were already nearly covered with shoots of ivy, climbing roses, and that industrious plant, Virginia creeper. In one corner a little arbour had been erected, and, till the climbing plants had completed the covering, a gay red-striped awning had been fixed up, adding still more colour to the scene. Here one sunny August day Neighbour Bessie found her friend, Mrs. Waring, nursing her baby. "Well, you do make a pretty picture! Talk of gold pictures in silver frames, you are a picture of love in a frame of flowers." "Now, no more flattery, neighbour, for a week, or I'll send you to Coventry." Bessie at once sat down on the grass at Phebe's feet. She was never so happy as when resting on "Nature's bottom shelf." Her mother said this was a sign of laziness; Bessie said it was a sign of economy, because she did not wear out the chair-cushions, and also the sign of a cautious nature, because there was no fear of falling. "You haven't kissed the baby." "I don't much care if I do or not, so long as I can kiss you." After the process was over, she added, "If it had been a boy, I just wouldn't have kissed it, so I tell you." Knowing this was a very saucy little speech to make, she did not give Phebe a chance to reply, but hurried on, "It's fairly wonderful the change you have made in this place, and fancy you doing it all yourself! I used to call it 'Dandelion Farm.'" "What do you call it now?" "I haven't thought; let me see," leaning her head on her hands and puckering up her brow as though to press the thought in, "it's just like a patch of sunlight; yes, that would do, something out of the usual--Sunshine Patch." "Yes, that will do," said Phebe, laughing, "but it reminds me how much I disliked the place when first I had a peep of it; these walls fairly made me shudder, and now I wouldn't have them one brick lower, because they give privacy; and see how refreshing they will be to look at when covered with greenery; and look at that lovely laburnum of our neighbour's drooping over the wall; and in the spring that high lilac-tree was a perfect picture. This little patch, as you call it, Bessie, dear, has taught me a lesson I hope I shall remember all my life." "Whatever is that, teacher?" Bessie asked, looking up with mock wonder. "But I am serious, Bessie; it is that most of our dark patches we could turn into sunshine patches if only we had the will." "Do you know," said Bessie, with a real sigh, "my mother is my dark patch, and she walls me round like anything. I wonder if I could plant ivy slips round her!" "You are a naughty girl," said Phebe, trying hard not to laugh, "I think she has more need to plant them round you." "Phebe, where are you?" Ralph called out. "Oh," said Bessie, suddenly springing up, "I'll go at once and consult the gardening book," but Phebe knew this was only a pretence to avoid having to talk to Ralph. "It is fine to be you," said her husband, "to be able to sit in this retreat doing nothing this broiling hot day. How cool you look! but there, everything goes peacefully with you, while everything goes cross with me." "Can I put anything right for you?" "Of course you can't. I've been thinking," sitting down by her side, "what a stupid I am to put myself to so much trouble for people. You know I went last night to Hawtree Hall; I've been going there now for three years, and I haven't one customer in the place." "But, Ralph, dear, you have a higher aim surely than to get customers." "Of course I have; dear me, how you do misunderstand me! But surely decent, common gratitude would lead some of the people to deal with me, if they had any. They don't pay for my services!" "Of course not." "And why, pray, 'of course not'? The more I get, the more good I can do. Do you think I want money for any special, selfish gratification? God has called me to make money as well as to make speeches, and I can serve Him equally well in both ways." "Certainly, but I think we all have to watch lest we cloak our ambitions with the appearance of doing God's service, and so deceive ourselves." "A very nice way of calling me a hypocrite." "Oh, Ralph, Ralph, it is nothing of the sort! I have often had to watch against that sort of thing." "Well, don't measure my corn with your bushel, that's all. We'll change the subject. I see you opened that letter of Deason's, asking for that money. I am not going to pay him yet. I want that money for buying a 'new line' with. I am going to try another experiment this winter." "But, Ralph, that man needs his money, he is poor." "You can leave all those matters to me. You talk like a--but there, what do women know about business?" And he got up and walked towards the house, but before entering turned round and said, "I shall not be home till late; when it gets cooler perhaps you will be able to make me out a few bills." She felt inclined to answer, "I don't know enough about business to do that," but wisely kept silence. She had been taking lessons of late in the right use of the lips, and was getting them pretty well under control. When the cool of the evening came she was again sitting in Sunshine Patch, from whence she got just a little peep of the sunset sky. The baby was asleep; Janie was reading; Phebe had already spent two hours in bill-making and thought she might now conscientiously take the luxury of sitting and doing nothing, except having a good think. All day long there had been in her mind old Mrs. Colston's words about the process a Christian has to go through. "I think," she sighed, "instead of the creases getting out of my character, more creases get in. See how I seem to aggravate Ralph. Then to think of Bessie; I thought I might do real missionary work with her, and she's just as naughty as ever, and Janie is just as dull," and the tears began to come. "Please, ma'am, here's Mrs. Colston." It was Janie's voice, and Mrs. Colston herself immediately appeared. The old lady at once noticed the tear marks, and exclaimed, "I can see you are quite tired out; you must come in and lie down on the couch, and Janie shall get you something--no, I'll get it myself," and after half carrying Phebe indoors, she bustled away to the kitchen. "Now, Janie, get some milk, a saucepan, and an egg." While she was watching the milk lest it should boil over, she went on talking. "Look here, Janie, you are to look well after your mistress, or she'll slip through your fingers." "You don't mean to say she's going to die!" exclaimed Janie, in horror. "Oh, dear, what should I do! You don't know how different this place has been since she's been here, and you don't know what she's done for me." "No, I don't, but I can guess. You mustn't speak so loud or she will hear, and mind you don't go and tell her what I've said. Just shake yourself together a bit, my girl, and look well after her; be sure and feed her well, and see that she rests." Mrs. Colston having seen to her favourite's bodily wants, sat down to have a talk. "I suppose you've tired yourself with writing lectures and speeches." "'Lectures and speeches'!" exclaimed Phebe, trying to laugh, "whatever made you think I'd been doing that?" "You told me yourself you were going to help Ralph write his lectures and speeches." "Oh no, I do nothing of that sort," and try as she might the tone of disappointment would not be kept down, and the old friend caught it and guessed something of its meaning. "You've never told me baby's name yet." "She has two names." "That's right; that's one for each of you." "My name, I mean the one I chose for her, is Mary. I did not want to call her Phebe, because I don't see why married women should lose their Christian name, and they always do if they have a daughter called after them. I think no name can be so beautiful as Mary, because it was the name of the mother of Jesus. Ralph chose the other name; he said, simply Mary Waring would sound mean." "Perhaps so; Phebe Mary go well together, and it was only natural he would like her named after you." "It is not Phebe. Baby's name is Victoria Mary." Mrs. Colston had long ago commenced the training of her lips, and for a moment did not speak. "And may the little dear always have the victory. That's my wish for her." "And you don't think it sounds ridiculous then?" asked Phebe, raising herself up on her elbow, "I mean for a draper's daughter?" "Certainly not; why shouldn't a draper's daughter have as good a name as anybody else? I hope she will grow up a real queenie." "I was thinking, dear Mrs. Colston, as you came into the garden, that the process of Christian-making is slow work with me. Indeed, sometimes I am afraid it has stopped altogether." "Not it, my dear; not a wee bit of it," stroking her hair. "If you had said, 'I'm getting on fine--shall soon be a saint,' I should have said it was pretty nigh all up with you. But, bless you, my dear, you've got that feeling just now because the Lord's been dealing with you. I watched old Robert in the spring cutting his vine; my, there was a slaughtering! I fancy the poor old vine thought it was almost done for, but you should just see it now!" * * * * * As Mrs. Colston stepped out of the shop door that evening she nearly fell into the arms of Neighbour Bessie, as Phebe loved to call her. "How is Mrs. Waring?" Bessie asked anxiously. "Do you think she is all right?" "Yes, she'll get on with care." "Oh, she is a dumpling!" said the girl, with all her impulsive enthusiasm. "Well then, take care and keep her warm, for cold dumplings aren't up to much! She needs a lot of warmth--love, that's what I mean." "I'll see she has that," exclaimed Bessie, "if my sort is any good." "All real love is good, my dear, you may be sure of that." That night as the old mangle started its tune again, these were the words that went along with it. "There, bless me, how that dear Miss Phebe of mine has won those two girls! Why, she'll win them for Jesus yet. I know she will! Yes, I dare say she thinks she's done nothing. How little we can judge of our own work, or, come to that, of anybody else's, either. It's only our dear heavenly Father, who gets such a high view of things, seeing all over and into all the corners, that can really know how we're getting along." CHAPTER IV A TESTING TIME Two years went by, each day filled for Phebe, except the Sundays, with housework, care of the child, and looking after the business. From Monday till Saturday she hardly ever crossed the outer doorstep. "It will not be always like this," she said to her sister, who remonstrated with her. "When Ralph has got the business well established he will be able to afford more help." She often smiled somewhat bitterly to herself over the old dream of helping Ralph in his high endeavours to influence the souls of his fellows, and how she was to accompany him when he went forth to deliver his messages. "Never mind," she would say to herself. "I sell the people tea instead." She often called to mind the memorial-card of "Sweet Liberty," and saw how clearly it had proved prophetic of something she had truly lost. Long ago she guessed who the sender was, for she had found out what a keen reader of character Neighbour Bessie was, and what keen intuitive powers she possessed. Phebe never referred to the card, but she once said to Bessie, "I think you ought to be called 'Prophet Bessie.'" "If you spell that word 'p-r-o-f-i-t,'" replied Bessie, "mother would say you were out of your reckoning entirely. She would say it would be nearer the truth to call me 'Dead-loss Bessie.'" "Nay, nay, that would never do, but 'dear-loved Bessie' might." The girl looked at her with hungry eyes, but did not answer. To be so shut in, so entirely engrossed with affairs purely selfish, would to an ordinary woman have been both narrowing and depressing. "An old woman once lived in the Isle of Wight who had never seen the sea, and there are women living in Swiss valleys who have never watched a sunset. How little such women can know of what the world is like! How narrow their sympathies, and how small their ideas! I am something like them," thought Phebe, "but I'll do my best to get a wider outlook, somehow." So by her chair in a corner of the shop parlour you might always find some paper, magazine, or book she was interested in. During the early months of their marriage Ralph had read aloud to her in the evenings, or she to him, but lately he was far too much engrossed in other things. No one guessed the bitter sorrow Phebe suffered in thus burying her dreams. Alas, for the graves that are not found where willows grow within cemetery gates! for the flowerless graves we often weep over in our daily life! Yet deep in Phebe's heart was the hope that from this grave would blossom, some sunny morn, a husband's love such as she had dreamt of in her girlhood dreams. It seemed as if Ralph's love was sleeping, but surely some day it would waken. Oh, that God would teach her how to waken it! By this time Victoria Mary had a companion in the person of a little brother. "I should like him to be called Ralph," said Phebe. "I don't care for children to be made gravestones of," replied her husband. "You certainly shall choose one name and I the other, and you can choose anything you like but Ralph." The young arrival a few days later was described on his birth-certificate as "John Washington." These two young folks were ever afterwards known as "Queenie" and "Jack." What a lot of bother it would save if parents named their children what they intend afterwards to call them! "Phebe," said Ralph one evening, "just put your book down and talk to me." "That will be nice," said Phebe, with a choke in her voice, brought there by a sudden hope. "Wouldn't you like to travel?" "I should rather think I would." "Well then, don't you think the time has come when we might sell this business and start somewhere else? I should dearly like to go to Australia. Will you consent?" "If you will only wait till father is taken home, I will willingly go wherever you choose." "But why should we wait till then? The Bible says 'a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife.'" "Yes," said Phebe, trying to laugh, "but it does not say a woman shall leave her father and cleave unto her husband." Then, more seriously, "Do you think it is right for marriage to break every family tie? Don't you think a child has duties to its parents, however old it may become? Think how lovingly Jesus thought of His mother, providing as far as possible against her feeling lonely." "If you are going to preach, I'm done." "I am not preaching, but I do always like to see if there is anything in the life of Jesus that fits in with my life, so that it will guide me." "Well, I cannot 'fit in' with this humdrum life much longer, so I tell you that plainly, and I don't mean to, either. If God calls you to stay here, God calls me to go elsewhere; so how can you reconcile those two things?" "But why do you think God calls you elsewhere?" "I am not going to be cross-examined like a prisoner," he replied, almost fiercely, and walked away. So the conference came to an end. About two months afterwards Phebe received a note one dinner-time purporting to come from her sister, saying she wanted to see her at once. As the note was not in her sister's handwriting, and was so strangely worded, she was rather puzzled. "Who has brought the note?" she inquired of the shopman. "Some boy, but he has gone now." "It is strange," thought Phebe; "father must be worse, and she had not time to write herself; yet that is not at all like her." As quickly as possible Phebe hurried away, to find on her arrival her sister had not sent for her. "It must have been a trick of your neighbour, Bessie, to get you out for a change." And Phebe, thinking that idea was quite likely to be correct, made herself comfortable for the afternoon, knowing that Janie would be sure to keep faithful guard over the children. It was quite dark when she arrived home, for autumn was fast merging into winter. Ralph was out, but that was no uncommon occurrence. The evening was a very busy one, as the afternoon leisure had caused work to accumulate. When ten o'clock came, and the shopmen had both gone up to their bedroom, and Janie was preparing to retire also, Phebe began to think it was strange Ralph was so late. Going out on to the front pavement she gazed anxiously up and down the road. Very few people were about, for it was anything but a pleasant night for a stroll--true the moon was shining, but hurrying dark clouds were constantly passing in front of it, and a sighing wind seemed to prophesy the near approach of bad weather. At eleven o'clock she went out again: the clouds had grown larger, the intervals of moonlight were briefer. The wind sighed in a more mournful tone than before, and Phebe shivered, but more through apprehension than cold. At twelve o'clock she was on the watch again. The night was quite dark. "He must have missed the last train," she said to herself. "I will go to bed now." She must have slept for about two hours when she woke up with a sudden start. "Could there be any connection between that note and her husband's absence?"--that was the haunting question with which her mind was filled. "But how could there be?" she reasoned with herself. Sleep was wooed again, but all in vain. Rising and getting a light, she opened a drawer where Ralph kept some of his clothes. It was empty. Another drawer was opened; it also was empty. Then she looked in the cupboard, where his travelling-bag was kept; it was gone. She sat down to think: then, with startling suddenness, his words came to her mind, "I cannot fit in to this humdrum life much longer." For the next hour it seemed as if she was utterly alone. It was impossible even to think. She was fast becoming petrified, her very blood was freezing, when her baby woke up crying--and that cry saved her! She picked the baby up and strained it passionately to her, the hot tears raining on its little head. The child soon nestled to sleep again in its mother's arms; and then, still grasping her little one, she knelt down to pray. "O Jesus, take care of Ralph! O Jesus, take care of me and my little ones!" That was all she could say. After a moment or so of waiting, as though listening for the answer, she prayed again, and then came the sweet feeling of God's arms being round her, and she said, in a whisper to herself, "He will! He will!" She had been out in a dark wild storm, but had found the hiding-place. The next morning, while sending off some telegrams to places where she thought she could make inquiries without causing alarm, her sister called at the chemist's next door for some medicine for her father, and seeing Bessie just near the parlour-door, thought she would have it out with her. "Ah! I have found you out this time, young lady." "I don't know what you mean." "What has she been up to now?" asked her mother, who happened to be near. "Oh, nothing to be cross about," she hurried to explain, fearing lest she should get the girl into trouble. "Indeed, it was a little act of kindness she did." "I really don't know what you mean," said Bessie. "I know I've been up to no tricks, for I've been as good this last week as they're made. It's almost been the death of me, I've been so--" "But what about that note you sent my sister yesterday?" "Never sent her one." "Never sent her one!" "No, never wrote her, nor saw her all yesterday." "Well, that is very strange." "What note was it?" asked Mrs. Marchant. "A note saying her sister wanted very much to see her. Of course I did; I always do, so it was not untrue; but I did not send it. We thought Bessie sent it as a kind little plan to get her out a bit." "No, I know nothing about it." Just then Janie came in on an errand, and seeing her mistress's sister, came up hurriedly to her, saying, "Please come in; mistress is looking so bad, and master's not been home all night." "There!" exclaimed Bessie, as Phebe's sister hurried away, "you may depend that handsome man next door sent that note himself." "Why should you think that? You are so quick to judge people, and think yourself so mighty clever over it," said Mrs. Marchant. Instead of the usual saucy answer, Bessie was silent. Was she learning the same lesson Phebe had been learning? CHAPTER V WILL GOD ANSWER? Miss Lizzie Lawson soon found that the trouble which had befallen her sister Phebe was one which, at least for a time, could not be talked about. "What is the matter with you, Phebe?" she asked anxiously, as she caught sight of the weary-looking face. "I have had a very bad night." "Where is Ralph?" "I do not know." Then suddenly throwing her arms round her sister's neck and kissing her, Phebe said, "Lizzie, dear, I'll tell you all in a day or two, but I cannot now. You'll trust me, won't you? And do not say anything to father." "God bless and help you, Sis, darling." Of course the only conclusion the sister could come to was that husband and wife had quarrelled. "He will soon get over his sulks and come back," she said to herself. All that day Phebe watched minute by minute for postman or telegraph boy, but no message came. Even the shopmen went about on tip-toe, feeling that something strange was in the atmosphere, but the white set face of the mistress kept them from asking any questions. Sharp-witted Bessie for once was at a loss to know what to do. Should she show any sympathy? Should she go in, or stay away? Should she seem to know nothing, or all? These were the questions she weighed over and over. At last this little note was sent: "DEAR MRS. WARING, "Please ask me to come in to tea, or I shall go perfectly blue and never get a right colour again. "NEIGHBOUR BESSIE." Just a wee bit of a smile crept into Phebe's face as she read it, and the thought came, "What would she do if she had troubles like mine to face?" Bessie's blueness seemed to have quite vanished by tea-time. During the meal she kept up a lively chatter, and Phebe came to the conclusion that Bessie was not aware that anything unusual had happened. I don't know if Bessie had ever read that the way to cheer people who are down is not by bidding them count the blessings still remaining, for they are sure to sink still lower if you do that, but by counting up to them the blessings they have conferred on others. It has certainly a wonderful effect; and that was just what Bessie did. After she had helped Janie to clear the table she sat down for a minute or two on the rug at Phebe's feet, and then said, "When I began to write you that cheeky little note this morning I wanted to say something--I've wanted to say something for weeks, but don't know how." "Just tell me straight out," said Phebe gently, stroking her tangled hair, thinking it was some confession she wanted to make or to ask advice how to get out of a scrape. "It's only that I wanted to tell you how much I love you and what a help you have been to me. Do you remember telling me that story Jesus told about the woman who would have her way, and how it taught us how to pray? Well, last night, for the first time in my life, I really prayed. I felt quite sure Jesus was listening. Things have been so different since you have been here. I never had anybody to talk to as I can to you; you understand me, and don't scold me." "But I think I often scold you." "Bless you, that's not scolding." Phebe bent down and kissed her, saying in a low voice, "God bless you, Bessie, darling. I cannot tell you how your words have comforted me, just as though an angel had helped you to say them. Perhaps some day you will understand what I mean." Bessie thought she understood even now, but did not say so. "And I may love you just as much as ever I like, may I not?" "Of course you may, there is room in my life for a lot of love," and Phebe had suddenly to rise and go into the shop, but Bessie knew it was only that she might not see her tears. Next morning came, still no message. The day passed to Phebe as the previous one had done--she had been ever on the watch, a feeling of dumb despair taking possession of her. In the evening she had a visitor; no other than Stephen Collins, who asked if he might see her alone. After the first greetings were over there was an awkward silence, and then Stephen said, "Mrs. Waring, you are in trouble. I cannot tell you exactly now how I know, but will you not as an old friend confide in me?" No answer. Poor Phebe could not think what to say; she could only look up into his kind face and as suddenly let her glance fall again to hide her tears. But the look gave Stephen courage to go on. "Ralph has left you, has he not? Did he leave no message behind?" "I can find none," she replied frankly, "and I have searched everywhere." Quite unconsciously she thus for the first time revealed the secret trouble which was so crushing her. "Do not think me rude or interfering, dear Mrs. Waring" (how the name seemed to choke him!), "but are you left in difficulties?" "I don't think so--besides, he will come back soon. But why do you ask? Have you any reason?" "I am afraid people will think it is business difficulties that have made him go." "But the business is prospering." "Still you need some capital to go on with." "The business, I am sure, is all right, besides if I were pressed I have a little of my own." That morning she had found the key of Ralph's desk in her pocket. It had startled her at the time, for Ralph must have placed it there; and now, taking it from her pocket, she rose, went to the high desk standing in the corner, and unlocking it produced the bank book. She opened it quickly, took one glance and then closed it with a sob. Ralph had drawn the whole of the money out as recently as the previous Monday. She put the book from her with a shudder; it was like the death certificate of her husband's honour. A paper had fallen out of the desk, and mechanically she stooped to pick it up, praying as she did so for strength to appear calm. Stephen was watching her closely, a struggle going on in his own heart too. "Is the account all right?" he asked. "No," then another sob. Oh, for strength! Why could she not make herself be calm? She looked at the paper in her hand, and more because she thought it might give her time to master her feelings than for anything else, she said, "Can you tell me what all these figures are about?" Stephen took the paper and looked at it for a long time and then said, in a strained voice, "It is a statement Ralph has drawn out showing exactly how the business stands, with a list of all debtors and creditors. If you could get most of the debts in you would still need three hundred pounds to keep affairs going." "I cannot tell how it is; everything is so dark." "But if you will let me help you," he pleaded, "all will come right. I can easily lend you what you need." For an instant, like a vision, there came to her a feeling of restfulness, and she looked up to his face, bending over her, with eager trustfulness. What a safe strong arm his would be to lean on! But instantly she put the temptation from her; it would not be right to accept his help remembering what Mrs. Colston had said, and the sweet light which had arisen went suddenly out, leaving the darkness deeper than before. "No," she said firmly, "I cannot accept your help." "But what will you do?" "I cannot tell, but in some way God will help me. And surely Ralph will come back soon!" "I do not think so." "Why?" It was Stephen's turn to be silent this time; how could he tell her all he knew? How could he explain how evident it was that Ralph had drained all the money he possibly could from the business? "Do you know where Ralph is?" she asked suddenly. "No, I do not." After another pause Stephen said, "Perhaps I had better leave you now. When you have had time to think things over, you will trust me more." A minute ago she would have urged it was not for want of trust, but now her mind, all so confused, could not rid itself of the idea that he knew something about Ralph which he had not told her. When he had gone the idea gave rise to two questions, "What had first made Stephen think Ralph had left her when not even Bessie knew how he had gone away?" and "What had given him the idea Ralph had left her in difficulties when the success of the business had been so widely talked about?" But though she asked the questions over and over again, no answer would come. "Could Stephen have had any share in persuading Ralph to go away? had he tempted him away?" But the remembrance of the tender, true face made such thoughts seem wicked. Going to the desk for the paper which Stephen had replaced there she took it out to study it for herself, and with it, lying just beneath, she drew out a folded paper, and opening it found it to be--a letter from Ralph! How had it got there? Had Stephen placed it there?--but she was in too much of a hurry to read it to pause to reply. "MY DEAR WIFE, "I know this letter will pain you, it cannot help but do so, and for this I am very sorry. I would not willingly grieve you, but it all arises from the painful fact that you have always failed to understand me. You know that for a long time I have had a great desire for a larger sphere. You thought this was because my love to God had grown cold and the love of the world crept into my heart. I assured you this was not so, but that it was only a leading into other service. If I can make money and devote it to God's work, am I not still one of God's servants? I am now with my face set towards a foreign land, where I hope to win a fortune. I feel no remorse at the step I have taken, since I asked you to agree to emigrate and you would not. I know you will get on pretty well without me, because, if you fail in the business you can return to your father. The sale of the business will cover all liabilities and more. I shall let you know from time to time how I get on: it will always be a great pleasure to report progress to you. Never doubt but that all I make, which I do not return to God, I shall hasten home with one day to lay at your feet. Tell my dear children their father heard a call like Abraham did, and has gone out to seek a name and a fortune to enrich them with. I know I have no need to assure you that I shall always remain, "Your own faithful, loving husband, "RALPH WARING." "P.S.--I did not say 'good-bye' to you for fear you should succeed in persuading me to stay with you. Some day soon, I will send you an address where you can write to, as I shall be anxious to hear how you are getting on." It was strange, but the reading of that letter gave her the calm she had been struggling to obtain. After reading it a second time, she went out into the garden, named in the summer-time "Sunshine Patch." How long ago that seemed! Where was the sunshine now? But the stars shone down on it if the sun did not, and it was refreshing to feel the cool breezes on her face, and to be alone under the pitying skies. Now that she had read this letter a burden of uncertainty had gone; she knew now something of what she had to face. Surely Stephen had not been the bearer of that open letter; it must have been in the desk before! But the very doubt about it made it more easy to resist Stephen's offer. It was impossible for her to return to her father; how could she burden him with herself and two children when even now he could only just manage comfortably? But how could she get the three hundred pounds Stephen said she would need? She had no earthly friend she could go to and had nothing she could sell or mortgage. But, ah, there was always one source of help she could go to! There was one way still open--the upward way! Sitting down in the desolate little arbour, she buried her face in her hands and prayed, "Dear Lord, I have no one to help me but Thee. Please open up my way! Show me how I can continue the business. Give me also business ability. Show me my way very clearly. I know Thou art listening to me. I feel sure of it, just as Bessie did. And now I am going to carefully watch for the sign that Thou art going to help me. Oh, strengthen me; I feel so lonely!" A flood of tears came, but she could let them flow unhindered now. CHAPTER VI THE DARKNESS DEEPENS Early the next morning, as soon as the shutters were down, Phebe was in the shop taking a general look round, and examining the stock. With the help of Reynolds, the shopman who gave her the roses, she got a very good grasp of the state of things. "The stock is very low indeed," said Reynolds; "some things we are out of altogether. It's not my fault, for I told master a fortnight ago, and again last week, but he took no notice--said it was not my business." [Illustration: "PHEBE WAS IN THE SHOP TAKING A GENERAL LOOK ROUND."] Phebe only replied, "We must see to these things as soon as possible; thank you for helping me," and then went in to breakfast. She had got a clear view of the situation as far as the business was concerned, but all else was in a mist. When she tried to analyse her own feelings with regard to Ralph's conduct, what exactly it was that had prompted him to such a course, how it would appear to outsiders, what steps she was to take to secure capital to work the business, all seemed chaos. Breakfast over, she picked up a little Revised Bible from her book-corner, and went out into the arbour for a few minutes' quiet, hoping she might gain a little light. She had only just bought this Revised Bible, indeed it had not been out long. Opening it at random, her eyes fell on these words, from the prayer of Asa, "We rely on Thee." A feeling of awe crept over her. Surely an angel must have opened the Book! The sign she had prayed for last night had come. Scanning the page to find out all the story, the leaf was turned over, and then she caught sight of this description: "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him." "I must pray for the perfect heart," she said to herself, "and I shall just rely on God, and I am now going to watch how He will show Himself strong for me. I feel sure He will, for He knows I am relying on Him." But the angel's work was not over yet. Just then there dropped out of the Bible a little New Year's card which she had never carefully read as yet. Picking it up she looked at it in an absent sort of way, and then feeling that it was in some way specially meant for her she read: "An inner light, an inner calm, Have they who trust God's mighty arm, And hearing, do His will." "For He hath said, 'I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.' I took it as His word of honour."--David Livingstone. "And so will I," she said fervently. Just then there was a call from the shop, and all at once, with hardly a moment's warning, she went from the golden gate to the busy mart. A commercial traveller was waiting to see her, presenting an account for twenty-five pounds. With all a woman's wits about her she stood where her face was in the shadow. "I am sorry that Mr. Waring is not at home," she answered, "he is out of town. Can the account stand over till your next visit?" Her voice was quite steady. The traveller looked fixedly at her, but was quite unrewarded for his trouble, through her face being in the shadow. She however saw his uncertainty, but he answered suavely, "Certainly, madam, Mr. Waring's credit has always been good." Then added, after another moment's reflection, "Can I have another order to-day? I have some very cheap lines." Turning to Reynolds, she said, "You know better than I do what we are wanting; just make a list of what we usually have from this gentleman's firm," and she stood quietly by while this was done. "I hope Mr. Waring is well," remarked the traveller. "He was quite well when he left home." "I hope I shall have the pleasure of meeting him the next time I call." "I hope so, but, if possible, your cheque shall be sent on before then." When he had gone she said to the shopman, "Reynolds, I think I can trust you." The man nodded; he wanted to say "Yes," but could not for a lump in his throat. "I do not know where Mr. Waring is, except that he has gone abroad. If anybody asks you where he is, you had better say frankly you do not know." It was hard work to keep the voice steady. "Mrs. Waring," said Reynolds, huskily, "I'll stand by you to the best of my ability," and he put out his hand, which she took in both of hers. "I feel sure you will," she said with a choking sob. The thought which was uppermost in her mind that day was how she could explain her position to any one. Some report must be given to the outside world--what should that report be?--what could it be? If she did not give one the world would soon make one. She determined to go that evening and seek her sister's advice. The first thing on arriving at the old home was to show her sister Ralph's letter. They were alone in the sister's bedroom. After it had been read twice over the sister threw her arms round Phebe's neck, exclaiming, "You poor child! you poor child!" and then they sobbed together as they had never done since the time when they were first motherless. "What am I to do? What am I to tell people?" asked the deserted young wife. "I don't know; I must think," was the sister's answer, who was usually so clearbrained. "Will you come home to live? I wish you would. Father wouldn't object to it if I coax him." "No, I am not coming to be a burden on him. I must work for the children. But, oh, Lizzie, you don't know all. He has left me deeply in debt, and taken all my own money, and the stock is so low. But don't tell father!" "Left you in debt!--the rascal!" "No, no, don't say that; he asked me to go with him two months ago, and I would not consent. So you see it's partly my own fault. But I never thought he would go without me." "Well, you will just have to tell anybody that asks that he has gone to start a business abroad, and that you may be joining him later. It will be best to be straight about it." "If he sent for me, should I have to go?" "I expect you would. You had better tell father all about it, or he will be dreadfully angry if he hears of it from anybody else." The old father was sitting by the fire reading his paper. He was good at heart, and thought no end of his "girls," but he had always considered it would never do to let them know this, that it was a parent's duty to do a certain amount of scolding. "How's Ralph?" was his first question. "He's not been to see me for an age." "He was quite well when I saw him last." "Saw him last? Why, is he away from home?" "Yes." "Where has he gone?" "Abroad," in a very low voice. "What did you say?" wheeling his chair round towards her in quite a fierce way. "Why can't you speak out properly?" "Ralph has gone abroad." "Gone abroad! Whatever for?" "To start a business, I suppose." "Well, you do astonish me. I think he might have come up to bid me 'good-bye,' that I do. And what part has he gone to?" "To Australia, I think." "You 'think'! Really, Phebe, you are most exasperating. What are you keeping back?" "Look here, father," put in Lizzie, "it is like this: Ralph wanted Phebe to go to Australia and she objected. She didn't want to leave you, for one thing, so he's gone without her, and the worst of it is, he did not tell her he was going." "Didn't want to leave _me_! that's all fiddle-sticks. She ought to have gone with him. It serves her just right he has left her. Look here, Phebe," putting his hand sharply on her knee, "I consider you have brought disgrace upon me. A wife's place is by her husband's side. A nice talk the town will make of it." "Father! father!" exclaimed Lizzie, "do not be so hard on Phebe. You know very well you wouldn't let anybody else say a word against her. Of course it is the way of the world to put all the blame upon the woman, but it is rather hard if her own friends do not stand up for her." "If she had got any fault to find with Ralph she should have come up and told me all about it." "What! get a wife to tell tales about her husband!" "Well, it is no good talking anything more about it at present. It came so suddenly upon me. It's a good thing, Phebe, my girl, he's left the business behind him, he couldn't take that with him very well. Of course he could have sold it, but then if he had done so the cat would have been out of the bag. You must just tackle things with a brave hand." "Yes, I mean to do so, father," was all Phebe could manage to say. Presently she bade him "good-bye" in her usual manner, though her heart was very full. It was getting late, and there was a lonely bit of road to traverse, but the two sisters lingered at the garden gate, each loth to part from the other. "You said, Phebe, darling," the elder sister whispered, "your stock was low and there were debts. What are you going to do for money?" "I do not know. But I feel sure God will help me in some way or other. I am relying on Him." "Bless you! you were always a good girl. I wish I had your faith." "Don't say that, for you don't know how often my faith fails me. I am often ashamed of myself. But I feel sure the business will go on right enough." Just now the monetary difficulty seemed a very small one compared with the fresh shadow which had just fallen on her. "Well, look here, dearie, let me help you. Take my money and put it in the business. You know how welcome you are to it. And if I never have it back, it will not matter; I should not make any trouble of it." "You are good, but you know father would not like that, and we should be obliged to tell him;" then she added, as her sister was about to remonstrate, "I'll tell you what I'll do: if no other way is shown me, I will accept your loving offer." "That's right, darling. And now good-night, and may God bless and comfort you." All the way home her sister's words kept ringing in her ears, "It is the way of the world to put all the blame upon the woman." She had thought the world would wonder, and would doubtless pity her, but it had never dawned upon her before that the world might throw the blame of the present position upon her. Considering how she had suffered and patiently endured it was a bitter, galling thought. And how could she overcome it? how could she vindicate herself in the eyes of the world? What a stain would rest on the lives of her children! She had thought it would be a hard battle to shield them from poverty. Now she had in some way or other to fight a still harder battle--to shield them from dishonour. Did Stephen Collins think she was to blame? He surely could not have done so, or he would not have looked so pityingly at her. Neighbour Bessie was waiting when she arrived home. "I am so glad you have come," exclaimed the impetuous girl; "you have just saved me from such a sad fate." "Whatever do you mean?" and Phebe, in spite of her heartache, was obliged to smile at Bessie's dramatic attitude. "Mother thinks I am soundly asleep under the blankets by now. But how could I sleep without one sight of you?--haven't caught a glimpse of you all day. Mother will lock the door at ten o'clock, and if I am not in before then I shall have to sleep on the clothes line in the back yard. It is all up ready." CHAPTER VII THE LAME SHEPHERD Late the next evening Stephen Collins called on Phebe again, still hoping his offer of help would be accepted. They were alone together in the back parlour. "I do hope, Mrs. Waring, you will not think me too interfering, but for old friendship's sake I could not keep from coming. It grieves me so to think you are placed as you are and that you will not allow me to help you." He looked her steadily in the face, and she returned his gaze long enough to be quite sure he was not one of those who condemned her. Yet, in spite of that, her woman's heart craved for the assurance of word as well as look. "But why should you trouble, Mr. Collins? There are plenty of people who will say it serves me right, and that I must have been to blame"--the words seemed as if they would not come--"that I was not--that it was not an easy thing to live with me--to get on with me." Stephen Collins rose from his chair with an impetuous movement, and went and stood by the fire with his elbow on the mantelpiece. "Of course," he exclaimed, "the world will talk, but any one who knows you would fling back that accusation as a lie!" They wore both silent for a minute. Phebe was feeling a relief and gladness no words she could think of would match. At last she said: "It makes a difference, too, if it is known that I could have gone with him if I had chosen. Ralph spoke to me about going two months ago." "It would have been very difficult for Ralph to have taken you and the children with him, seeing he had no home prepared to take you to." "Yes, that is so; but still he wanted us to go." Stephen was looking intently into the fire, evidently weighing some thought over. "Perhaps I had better tell you, Ralph secured his berth to Sydney three months ago." "One berth?" "Yes." "May I ask how you know?" "I made inquiries, as I thought it would rest your mind to know exactly where he had gone." "And you think----" began Phebe. "I think," interrupted Stephen, anxious to save her all the pain he could, "that it was not his intention to take you with him." Only God knew what it cost that man to say those words; it seemed to him that he was giving this crushed woman an extra stab, but it was only to save her all he could of future pain. He wanted to keep her from building on the hope that her husband would send for her, for he believed in his heart that Ralph was only too glad to be relieved from the responsibility of providing for wife and children. "Perhaps it was much better he should go with a free hand," was all Phebe said. She wanted very much to ask Stephen to tell her all he knew, all he thought, but dared not do so; something held her back--something which told her there was a wound in that man's heart she might not touch nor look upon. "He will send for me some day," she said, after another pause; but still Stephen did not answer. It was such a hard struggle to keep himself well in hand--so hard to keep from cursing the man who had stolen his love from him, and who, because she had not brought him the dowry he had hoped for, had basely deserted her! Phebe thought he was busy turning over ways and means as to how she was to run the business; instead of that he was praying for strength and calmness. She got up from her seat and, standing by him, put her hand on his arm and said gently, "Stephen!"--that was how she used to call him--"you must not trouble about me. I shall battle through all right. God will help me. See these beautiful words I came across yesterday," and she picked up the Bible and read the words over again. He took the Bible and looked at the page, but the words were all in a mist. "There is not the slightest doubt but that He will help you," he managed to say. "My heart is not perfect," she continued, "but He knows I want it to be." "But don't forget, Phebe--Mrs. Waring," he said, turning towards her, as they both stood facing the fire, "that God works through human agents--very often does so." "I know He does," she replied, "and I think He prompted my sister last night to offer me the use of her money. I would have said 'Yes' at once, only I know it would vex father. Still, if no other way opens I shall accept her kind offer. So you see things will shape themselves--no, be shapened--all right. Reynolds is such a good 'stay-by' for me, and a commercial this morning let me order a lot of things, although I could not pay his account." "Oh, yes," he answered; "I know very well you will be a downright successful woman of business. Only, you know," with a smile, "I wanted to have a share in the success!" "And so you will have," she exclaimed. "Do you think it can ever go for nothing to have a friend like you--some one who believes in me?" He took her hand in both of his, and, in a voice full of emotion, said: "Phebe, you were always wise and far-sighted--that was why you always won in the games we played together. Your plan is the wise one. It would not do for us to be in any way connected--not even in business matters. But promise me if ever you should want my help you will send for me!" "I promise," she said, in a low voice; and then they parted: he to go right out, apparently, from her life for years; and yet, though she was long in learning it, never a week passed by but in some way or other his life touched hers. After he had gone it came upon the lonely woman with overwhelming force the sense of what she had lost, but with a bravery only a pure heart could know she put the thought of it from her and turned resolutely to her ledgers. Stephen Collins' way home led past Mrs. Colston's cottage. It was the desire for a little bit of human sympathy which led him to knock at her door. He could not unburden his heart to his mother--not that she would be unable or unwilling to understand and comfort, but because he was too chivalrous to burden her with any fresh trouble. He hardly realised it was sympathy he was wanting. Perhaps he might have resented such an idea if it had been presented to him in words, feeling that such a sorrow as his was too sacred for human sympathy; but at least there was the desire to talk over some of it with somebody, and to feel the nearness of sympathy. It surely was this same desire which bade Jesus so earnestly to request the three disciples to watch with him under the shadow of the olives! Mrs. Colston was busy at her work as usual. A big lad was turning the handle of the mangle, but she sent him home when she saw who her visitor was. Work at once entirely ceased, and the two sat together by the fire, each strangely silent. Mrs. Colston seemed to feel that there was something on his mind which he wished to unburden to her, but knew no way in which she could help him to begin. At last she hit upon an idea. "I don't suppose, Mr. Collins, you have had your supper," she exclaimed, rising from her chair with a kind of jump. "The idea of me not thinking of that before! and I've got the loveliest pork pie you ever tasted," and in a few minutes there was the refreshing fragrance of coffee in the room and a dainty supper laid on the little round table. Mrs. Colston had always a strong belief in keeping the body well nourished because of its great influence on the mind and heart. "So had the Lord Jesus," she often used to say; "don't you remember how He gave the plain hint to those parents that the girl would need food, and to the disciples about the crowd! And it was just lovely what He said to those fishermen on that early morning when they were cold and wet: 'Come and have something to eat.' Why, when the Lord wanted to give us a bright bit about Heaven He had to bring in a supper party." For all that, Stephen did not eat much, though there is no doubt the fact of a meal being about does help conversation, and to a certain extent raises the spirits. At last Stephen got near the secret of his visit. "Mrs. Colston"--his face was turned towards the fire--"suppose a shepherd out walking, who had become lame--could only walk on crutches--should come across on a dark night a lost lamb--a lamb he had loved dearly. What could he do? If he put the crutches down he could not carry it to its home? If you met a man like that what would you tell him to do?" "I should tell him to speak a few love-words to the lamb, and then hurry away to the nearest cottage and ask the man there to return with him to the lamb and get the man to carry it home." The answer was given straight off, with all a woman's ready tact. "And if he came to your house?" Stephen turned towards her eagerly. "I might not be able to carry the lamb," she said, with a little laugh, "but I would certainly help the poor man all I could, and, at least, I'd try to carry it." Then she added: "Mr. Collins, you are the shepherd; but I don't know who the lamb is. Tell me all about it. I know you trust me or you wouldn't have come to me; and you know I'll do all I can for you." "I know you will," and for the second time that evening he stretched out his hand to grasp another in a close grip. "The lamb is not on any hillside, but in a back parlour." "Whose parlour?" "A draper's." "You don't mean to say it's my Miss Phebe?" bending anxiously towards him, trying to read all she could from his face. "Yes." "Is she ill?--I must go to her at once." "Not ill in body, but heartsick, and in monetary difficulties." "Oh, dear, dear, what can have caused it all? And me not to know a word of it!" "She has told no one but her father and sister. I got to know of it in another way; but do not ask me how--some day I may tell you, but not now." "Where is her husband?" "On his way to Australia." "Poor lamb! poor stricken lamb!"--the tears would not keep back, and something like a sob came from Stephen as he rose to his feet to go. "Stay, stay," said Mrs. Colston, putting a detaining hand upon him, "the shepherd would be sure to give some particulars as to the lamb's whereabouts and what help it needed. Tell me how it is she is in difficulties about money, and what you would advise her to do." "You can guess how it is she is in difficulties; the worst reason you can think of will be the right one. What I want her to do is to accept my help, but that she refuses to do. If no other way opens up she will accept her sister's help, but she is rather afraid that would anger her father." "Yes, he has rather close ways. How much does she require?" "Three hundred pounds with care would set her upon her feet." In another five minutes the two had parted company outside in the road--Stephen to go home to the lonely farmhouse; Mrs. Colston to go and do shepherd-work. CHAPTER VIII A TWOFOLD PARTNERSHIP Mrs. Colston found Phebe seated at her books, where she had been ever since Stephen had left. A brighter look came into her face when she saw her old friend than had been there since Ralph's disappearance, but it was the brightness of the rainbow, for in a minute or two she was seated on a stool at Mrs. Colston's feet sobbing bitterly. "Poor lamb! You precious dear!" murmured the old friend, gently stroking the brown bowed head and putting her arm lovingly round her neck. She never sought to check the tears, knowing what a safety-valve they are. And who can say tears are either weak or wicked, since "Jesus wept"? "I am so glad to see you; I did so want you to come, but did not like to send for you," Phebe managed at length to say. "I came off the first minute I knew you were in trouble. I only wish I had known before," and she put both arms round her then, and kissed her--just like a mother would have done. "Stephen Collins told me, so I may as well tell you. Do you see these hands?" spreading them out before her. "There's a good deal of strength in them yet. No harm shall come near you that I can keep off. You're not alone in the world, thank God; there's one friend who'll stand by you if no one else does, and her name's Susan Colston!" Phebe looked up with quite a smiling face. "That does sound nice!" she exclaimed. "You are a dear. I cannot tell you how lonely I have been since Ralph went--just as if I were living in a desert; but such a load seems gone now you have come." Then Phebe told her story. Sometimes the words would hardly come for a choking sob; but at last it was spread out before her childhood's friend in all its grim, unromantic baldness. When it was finished Mrs. Colston said: "Well, dearie, I'm not going to say one word against Ralph; I hope I never shall. We will pray for him, that is all: he must just be left to God's dealings." "But he could not have loved me, could he?" sighed Phebe. Mrs. Colston wisely did not answer. Then Phebe spoke of her fresh trouble: "The world will blame me, won't it? People will say I was a dreadful sort of woman that Ralph could not live with." "I dare say they will, but what will that matter? Lots of people are wrongly judged and wrongly punished. All this goes into the making of a Christian. You know Job stood the trials of loss and bereavement, but he could not stand the trial of the loss of his good name. It was then he opened his mouth and used bad language. Up to that time he had blessed the Lord--a pretty good difference. Suppose they do take away your good name, the Lord will give it back to you again. Don't try to vindicate yourself: you just leave all that to Him, and He'll make all come out clear. People think it was the washing of those men's feet that showed how humble Jesus was. I don't think so. I think it was when He 'made Himself of no reputation'--just calmly let people take His character away. Don't you see, Miss Phebe, dear, that your life is getting a little bit more like the life of Jesus. Just a little step more, and, like Paul, you'll glory in tribulation." "I'm afraid I'm a long way from doing that." "No doubt you think so. But there now, I'm afraid my tongue is going on too fast. What I particularly want to know is how you are going to manage this business?" "I think I can manage very well if I have a little more capital, and if no other way opens up I can have my sister's money." "Will you let me ask a favour?" "Of course I will. You know that." "And won't be offended?" "How could I be?" "I want you to let me open the way for you. You have asked God to open up the way for you, let God answer your prayer through me." "Do you mean it?" in great astonishment. "Yes. Perhaps you think a poor old mangle-woman could not have a banking-account, but I have"--this with a pleasant ring of laughter. "There now, what do you think of that? I've just got three hundred pounds in the savings bank. Will that be enough?" _Three hundred pounds!_--just the amount Stephen said she would need. Phebe stood speechless. "Say, dear, won't you?" repeated Mrs. Colston. "Why, of course I will; am only too delighted. It is the wonder of it that made me quiet. You are good--so very good--and I'll see to it you shall never lose the money," lifting up a face full of love-light. "You are not to trouble about that. If it is lost it is lost; I shall not mind so long as we're partners. But there is something else I want to ask you, and this you may not grant because it is asking so much." "I am sure you cannot ask anything I should not be only too happy to grant." "If you are going to manage the business, who is going to look after the housekeeping and the children? You cannot do all." "No, I cannot." Then after a pause: "God, who has helped me thus far so wondrously, in such an unexpected way, will certainly make that clear also." "So He will!" jubilantly exclaimed the dear old body. "So He will, only He will let me do it for Him. It's just splendid to be on errands like this!" "Whatever do you mean?" Phebe was bewildered. "I mean this: let me come and live with you and be your housekeeper and nurse! I am tired of living alone, tired of my musical-box, and tired of having no one to show bits of love to when I've a mind to. Will you let me? I'll be so good if you will." "Let you! Why, it fairly takes away my breath. But I don't know if I ought to let you. It is taking too much from you. You would have to give up your own little home, and then there's the children----" "I know what you are going to say: that old folks don't want to be bothered with children. Perhaps some don't, but what would my life be worth now if I'd never had anything to do with children?" "Ah! but that was when you were younger." "I'm not old yet," drawing herself up with laughable dignity; "no, not yet, thank you. But now to business. As far as you yourself are concerned, have you any objection to my plan?" "None whatever, none. There's nothing you could have thought of that would give me greater joy." "Then it's settled," and a kiss--no, it was more than one--sealed the bargain. And then those two women involuntarily knelt down, and the elder one in a quavering voice prayed: "Father, I have followed Your directions, which You whispered to me as I came along the road to-night. Miss Phebe and I love each other, we are going to help each other; do bless us both. Let us feel just now You are blessing us." A pause. "Thank You. The peace in our hearts is the token. We love each other. Tighten with Your own hand, dear Father, the knot. From this moment may this business prosper. May the business be altogether Yours. And bless the two dear bairns. Help me to be another Hannah." When they rose from their feet Mrs. Colston said: "Before I go I must just have a peep at my charges." "Of course you shall," said Phebe, beginning at once to lead the way. "How I wish you were not going away from me to-night. I wish you could stay right off." "I must go to-night, dearie; but I shall not be very long before I'm back, bag and baggage. Janie won't mind me coming, I know." "She will be delighted." The two children were in Phebe's bedroom, Queenie in a little cot to herself. They were both asleep. The sight of a sleeping infant always suggests the thought of angels. It is not always the fear of waking a sleeping child that makes the heaviest feet go on tip-toe, but the awe which comes from the near presence of heavenly visitants. To be near a sleeping child is to be near Heaven. Jack was a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked, chubby child. One little arm lay under his head, and a smile seemed playing round his lips. He seemed almost like a picture of sunshine asleep. Mrs. Colston stooped down and kissed him--what woman could have helped doing so? She had once said she believed Jesus kissed His disciples, because Mark used the words, "When He had taken leave of them"--and Easterns took leave by kissing. Then she went to look at Queenie. Poor little Queenie! A dark-haired, sad-faced darling. Mrs. Colston could hardly have explained how it was she turned so quickly away from the little crib after ever such a hurried kiss. Perhaps it was because she had seen a mark on the child. Her father had been a forester, and often when out walking with him along the forest pathways she had seen a mark on some of the trees and knew by that sign they would soon be lying prostrate, stripped of all their green grandeur. It was not so much of the child she was thinking as of the child's mother. But when she reached the little parlour again, her face was as bright as ever. "I want you," she said to Phebe, "to let me teach the children to call me 'Nanna.' I had a friend once who was called 'Nanna.' Nothing could make me more proud than to think I was a second 'Nanna.'" "On certain conditions," said Phebe. "You are having it all your own way to-night. Now it is my turn." "What are they?" "That you call me Phebe, and that I call you 'Nanna,' too. I do so want to be mothered, and no one can do it but you." The little speech began with a laugh, but ended with something like a sob. How many there are who want "mothering," and how many could do "mothering" if they chose! "That's another bargain." "May I come in?" It was Neighbour Bessie's voice. "Bessie comes in each night to bid me good-night," explained Phebe. "You couldn't guess what good news I have to tell you," she continued, turning to Bessie. "Not that----" stammered Bessie. "Nothing about Mr. Waring!" quickly put in Phebe; and then Bessie was told the whole story. She was sitting on a little stool near the fire by the side of Mrs. Colston. "I am downright glad for your sake, Mrs. Waring," she exclaimed heartily. "It's just what you were wanting; but, oh dear," resting her chin on her hands, "there's lots of good times a-going, but I'm never in them." "Why, my dear child, you are always in them," exclaimed Mrs. Colston, patting her head. "Well, I should like very much to know how you reckon that sum up." "I reckon it up out of the Bible. You are one of those who have a continual feast." "A continual pickle, you should say, to be correct." "No, 'feast.' I know one riddle--and only one. Can you guess it? What is the longest feast mentioned in the Bible?" "I know," answered Bessie, laughing, "because you've done as good as tell it already: 'A merry heart is a continual feast.' But I haven't got the merry heart, you see. Now, why couldn't it have been arranged for me to be Mrs. Waring's partner?" "That I cannot tell. That's the Sunshine Patch meant for me. Your Sunshine Patch is all round you already, only you are given to looking too much over the fence." * * * * * Thus, without any pillar of cloud, or shining light, or glittering gems, guidance came. CHAPTER IX A WOMAN'S WHIMS It did not take Mrs. Colston long to sell up some of her furniture and the goodwill of her mangle, and settle down in her new quarters and to her new duties. By that time the three hundred pounds had not only been drawn out, but used, partly in paying debts and partly in adding to stock. On one point Phebe was very firm, and that was that a legal document be drawn up acknowledging the loan and agreeing to pay interest at five per cent. Not that Phebe considered that would cover all her liability. "As I prosper--if I do prosper," she said to Mrs. Colston, "you shall prosper too. We will be real partners." "I don't want any of that lawyer's writing. Your word is sufficient," said Mrs. Colston. "That may be, but I might be taken away, or some one else might step in," replied Phebe quietly. Mrs. Colston quickly saw what was in Phebe's mind, and wisely forbore saying anything further. When Nanna had been duly installed, not only by mistress Phebe and Janie but also by their majesties, Queenie and Jack, Phebe took hold of the business reins in true-going style. The first thing was to institute several reforms. One class of goods which had usually been sold under different prices received one fixed price; charges to different customers were made uniform. Reynolds was shocked. "So-and-so," said he, "will think the things are common if you don't put the price on." "Then shall we level up, instead of levelling down?" asked the shrewd mistress. "Oh, dear, no; for Mrs. Dash will deal somewhere else if she doesn't think she's having things extra cheap." "I cannot help all these little peculiarities," said Phebe. "I mean to run this business on true, straight lines, whatever happens." Reynolds wanted to say something about it being a woman's whim, but somehow or other the words would not come out. But a climax was reached when he felt that to keep silence longer would be guilty; this was when Phebe announced that in future the entire establishment would be closed every Saturday evening at eight o'clock. "Mrs. Waring!" he exclaimed; "you have no idea what sacrifice you are making. If it is your assistants you are considering, why not close earlier on Wednesdays?" "I intend to do that as well," she replied graciously; "but I may as well be frank with you and say it is _not_ out of consideration to my assistants I am closing earlier on Saturdays." "Then why do it? I want the business to be a success, and I am sure you do; but this plan, you will excuse me saying so, will be a dead loss. Why, we take as much sometimes on a Saturday evening as we do all day on Wednesday! And folks will say if we are so independent of their custom, they'll see we do without it altogether." "Thank you most sincerely, Reynolds, for so unselfishly studying my interests. But your reasoning is a little at fault," she added, with a laugh. "If people think we can afford to be independent, that is the very best advertisement we could have, for you know the old saying, 'Nothing succeeds like success.' But neither success nor non-success weighs with me in this matter." "May I ask, then, what does?" asked Reynolds, feeling quite in a fog. The question was put in a most respectful manner. The answer was given in one word, "God," and when it was spoken both felt no inclination to pursue the subject further. But to Mrs. Colston, Reynold's felt he might explode to his heart's content. "What's the good of trying to push things on, I should like to know? The mistress, with all these new-fangled ideas, will just ruin the business. What's God to do with a draper's shop, or a grocer's shop either?" "Keep cool, my dear boy, keep cool. If God's got nothing to do with these shops then they'd better be closed." "Do you mean to say God troubles Himself about sugar and calico?" "Yes, I do, and with everything that goes on under this roof." "Well, I don't, then; but if even He does, what has shutting up early on Saturday evenings to do with it?--that's what I want to know! I tell you it's only a woman's whim"--and he felt ever so much better after that expression had come out. "To give herself and her friends proper time to prepare for the Sabbath." "But she's not a Jewess." Mrs. Colston could not keep from laughing. "The idea that only Jews want preparation-time! Why, Reynolds, I'm ashamed of you. To think that a grown-up Sunday School boy like you should be so dense! How can anybody keep the Sabbath properly who is toiling up to midnight on Saturday? And look how mean it seems, as though you said to the Lord, 'I'll take precious good care You don't get five minutes more time than I can help.' I tell you, Reynolds, your mistress won't lose a penny by honouring God. You mark my words, God has said, 'Them that honour Me, I will honour.' And if even she did lose some customers, she won't lose in the end, I tell you. You watch, but don't take short views of things." "Well, you're a queer pair, that's all I can say." But it was not all he thought. Phebe had received no business training whatever; even when a child a book had more fascination for her than a pair of scales, and to dream dreams was more in her line than playing at shop, or even dressing dolls. But she was one of those women who, when they once realise what the work is they are shut up to, quickly master all the details, and with zest determine to become master of it. She saw plainly there was no path before her but what led behind counters. For her children's sake, and for God's sake, she determined to make the business "go"; the zeal she put into it acted as balm to her wounded heart; her industry kept away the feeling of desolation, giving her no time to brood over the hardness of her lot. Indeed, the business was a "godsend," but for it she might have sunk into a spiritless, listless life; instead of that, faculties were developed in her that her nearest and dearest never dreamed she possessed. Of course her father warned her against all unwomanly ways, constantly reminding her that the duty of every member of her sex was to be like a flower and "blush unseen"; but to others he daily sung her praises. Reynolds by degrees became reconciled to her reforms, and after watching the conflagration of a box of valuable feathers, doomed to destruction on account of the cruelty by which they were obtained, he decided that nothing which might happen in the future as to the conduct of the business would ever surprise him. Away in Texas there is a little plant called the compass plant, and the Indians, even in the night, can tell by feeling its leaves the direction in which they are going. The top leaves, weighted by dew or dust, sometimes lose their power to point in the right direction, but the young leaves, standing edgewise to the earth, are always true, ever pointing north and south. To Reynolds Phebe was as a compass plant by which he learned to measure right and wrong, but, best of all, she pointed him to God. Of all this she was unconscious, and it was better so; but would she always point true? Would the world's dust ever cause her to lose that charm? In spite of Reynolds' fears, all these reforms did not affect the business adversely; there were some losses, but the gains outnumbered them. A good many customers came out of curiosity, and gossip was pretty rife in the town, but all the information they got was that Mr. Waring had gone abroad with the idea of starting a business. Some even questioned Phebe herself and Mrs. Colston, but gained no further information. No other letter had been received from Ralph, but Stephen Collins sent a note one day saying that the ship which Ralph had sailed in had safely arrived after a pleasant journey, and all were well on board. Phebe supposed Stephen had gathered this information from the newspapers, but asked no questions. One day Reynolds startled his mistress by saying, "Don't you think we might begin to enlarge our borders?" "What do you mean?--do you want us to take in a third shop?" "No; but a long time ago master spoke of starting a village trade, and I don't see why we should not start it now." And then he went on to give the names of some villages which were quite growing localities through becoming small manufacturing centres, but where shops had not increased accordingly. By canvassing these and lonely farmhouses which lay between, he thought a good bit of business might be done. "It could not be done without a horse and cart, and I could not afford to buy those just now," said Phebe, shaking her head. "I have thought of that, but Higgins, the laundry people, have a horse and light van they use only three days a week; there's no doubt they would be willing to let us hire them." "Perhaps so; the plan is worth thinking over; but what should I do here while you were away? I should be obliged to engage another assistant." "Yes, you would; but I think you would find it pay." Phebe promised she would give the subject serious consideration--"and we must both pray about it," she added. It took quite an effort to bring the words out, but she wanted in every possible way to show Reynolds that God was to be consulted in all business details. The very next day Phebe had a visit from a young man seeking a situation. She liked his appearance very much, he had a frank expression on his face which touched her heart, and, besides that, she knew his mother very well and had a great respect for her. "Have you a reference from your last situation?" The young fellow's face darkened. "No, Mrs. Waring, I have not," he answered. "If I tell you all my trouble, will you promise not to tell my mother? It would break her heart if she knew all." "I promise," she replied. "Come into the parlour, and tell me all," and the young fellow did so--how he had been tempted to speculate, how he had used some of his master's money, and had been found out before he had time to withdraw money from the Post Office Savings Bank to refund it. "I have paid it all now," he added, "but the master said I need never ask him for a character. If you will trust me, Mrs. Waring, I promise you I will serve you faithfully. You shall never regret having me. Oh, for my mother's sake, do give me a chance!" "Just wait a minute," and then she went to consult Mrs. Colston, whom she had previously spoken to about Reynolds' suggestion. "Is this God's answer, Nanna? Or would it be unwise to engage a young man who had made such a mistake? I feel strongly inclined to give him a chance, if even we did not start a village trade." "I should take it as God's answer, dearie, you are to extend your trade. And, bless me, why shouldn't you give the young fellow a chance? God gives us plenty! But don't start him with a rope round his neck." "Whatever do you mean?" "Don't show any mistrust, that is all." Afterwards she said to herself, "Reynolds would call that another 'whim' if he knew about it. She wouldn't have engaged that young fellow as quickly as this before her trouble came, not she; it's just wonderful how trouble softens the heart. It's only them that's received mercy which show mercy." The young fellow's name was Jones--D. Jones--the "D." standing for David. Neighbour Bessie came in just afterwards on what she called her ginger-beer cork visits--a pop and go visit, and, of course, she was told of the new "hand" and the new scheme--but no hint as to the young man's past was given. "D. Jones," she exclaimed, clapping her hands, "makes me think of an old man in America my aunt knew, who had once been a soldier; he was 'D. Jones,' but you'd never guess what the 'D.' stood for, that you never would, but it is what I shall call your Mr. Jones." "Well, tell us what it was, Miss Smarty, or I'll shake you," said Nanna, trying to look fierce. "It's what I wish somebody would call me; it was 'Darling Jones.' It's a fact; I'm not making it up. Isn't it lovely! Just fancy, if my name was 'Darling,' what a fix mother would be in! She couldn't scold me and call me 'Darling' at the same time, now could she? Wouldn't it be rich to hear her call out 'Darling, you are a wretched girl!' It would be scrumptious, just!" "You're a naughty darling, that's what you are," said Mrs. Colston, solemnly shaking her head. "It's a pity you can't put all your fun and energy to some good purpose." "Well, I shall always call your Jones 'Darling,' you see if I don't." That same evening Reynolds was informed that the extension scheme was to be tried at once. "And may I ask," in a very quiet voice, looking earnestly into Phebe's face, "what led you to this decision?" "Yes, certainly. A young man came and asked me to give him employment. I had not advertised, nor spoken of the matter to any one but Mrs. Colston. I liked his manner very much. I took that as a guidance, and have engaged him. I am sending to-night to printers to have circulars prepared, and next week I will help you to get out samples. Perhaps you would not mind seeing Mr. Higgins for me." "Well, well," said Reynolds to himself, "the idea that God had anything to do with that young man coming here. We shall hear of angels serving the customers next." CHAPTER X A GATHERED FLOWER The printed circulars were issued in Phebe's own name. Whether she had the legal right to do this or not she did not know, but knew well enough the moral right was hers. The very first trial of the new scheme showed that it would prove a success. This was largely attributable to two things; first, to Reynolds' "push": the scheme being largely his own he felt the responsibility of it, and for his own credit's sake determined it should "go"; the other thing was Phebe's good sense; the grocery department she conducted from a housewife's standpoint, the drapery department from a Christian woman's standpoint, and thus in both had a considerable advantage over her husband. Fellow tradespeople marvelled that in the absence of the husband there should be an extension of the business. Woman is supposed to be conservative, yet at the same time it is acknowledged she quickly sees a point and seizes it while the man is still thinking about it. Each cannot be fully true. Love may make her at times conservative; but if roused to devoted service she cannot be anything but progressive. But if sunlight was growing in the business department the shadows were deepening in the home department. Sturdy little Jack had been elevated to sleeping in the crib, while frail little Queenie nestled each night to sleep in the mother's arms. Nanna could see that the child was a fading flower, soon to be transplanted to a fairer region, but, strange to say, the mother's eyes only saw the still brilliant tints of the sweet blossom. Very early every morning the child would sit up and stroke the mother's face till she wakened, such a glad light coming into her eyes when she had succeeded. A little later on she did not attempt to sit up, but stretched up her arms to her mother's face. Then came a morning when the mother woke without the touch of the little fingers; the child was awake, the love-light as usual in the soft, grey eyes, but with not strength enough left to show its love in the old way. Then it was Phebe grew alarmed, and the doctor was sent for. But all that human aid could do Nanna had already done. And then came a day when even the shopmen stole about on tip-toe. (The Potter was about to put His cup into the furnace again. There was high work designed for it, for which it needed great preparation.) All day long Phebe sat by the fire nursing her dying child on her knee. The angels must have bent very closely round Mary of Nazareth as she nursed her Babe; but surely they gather just as closely round a mother whose child they are about to conduct to their King! There was still the love-light in the little one's eyes. Nanna was standing at the window watching the sunlight fade from the sky; Phebe was watching the light slowly fade from her child's eyes. The angels were bending still closer. For one moment the little hand was once more raised to stroke the loving face bending over it. It was a last effort, and then the light was gone. The angels had gone. "It is time she had some more milk," said Nanna, coming near. "She is asleep," said Phebe, in a strained voice, "let her alone just now," and quite hastily she put her arm over the child, drawing the shawl partly over its face. Nanna did not feel she had the heart to press her point, and left the room for a few minutes. On her return she said, "Phebe, dear, you must wake Queenie, she must have her milk; it will never do to neglect any effort. Let me have her for a few moments. I'll promise to wake her gently," and she held out her arms beseechingly. Phebe's answer was to strain the little form passionately to her breast. "Come, come," said Nanna, more firmly, "let me take her." "To wake her?" asked Phebe, looking at her with wild eyes. "Yes, there's a dear. You will be quite worn out." "She will never wake again," wailed Phebe, and then tears came to her relief, tears which in the first moments of her agony seemed to be freezing her life's blood. "Phebe! Phebe! Why did you not tell me before? Did you know that she was gone when I spoke to you before?" "Yes, but I could not let you have her, and I cannot let you have her now." She rose to go upstairs, still carrying the little cold form. "But I must have her, Phebe, dear," said Nanna, planting herself firmly in Phebe's way. "Surely, you will not take her from me yet! I cannot, oh, I cannot part with her. It is so hard! Oh, so hard!" "It is hard just now, darling, I know. Sit down again, and let us look at the sweet little face." Phebe did so. "And won't you really let me have her at all?" Nanna continued; "surely, you will!" and Phebe, pressing a passionate kiss on the cold brow, yielded, knowing that never again in this life would she hold that little form in her arms. Was it any wonder she was loth to part with it, when, however much her arms might ache for it in the future, she could never again press it to her heart! And then came days of darkness. Why had God allowed her child to be taken? He could not have prevented her husband's desertion without taking away his free will, but the child did not wish to leave her; why did not God touch her with His healing hand? Was not her lot hard enough without this last trial? Why did not God, to make up for the loss of husband, allow the child to remain? Would not an earthly loving father have done as much? These questionings would come, and her heart could find no answers--yet. And Nanna, who knew all about them, never chided. She just waited, knowing that ere long comfort _would_ come. "It was the sight of sorrow such as yours that made Jesus shed tears," she said one day. "It fair broke the blessed Lord down to see that woman Mary cry so, and to see the trouble death brings." "Then you don't think He's cross with me for fretting so?" asked Phebe, with some excitement. "Not a bit of it, dearie. He knows right well what a blow it has been to you, and sympathises with you; rest on that." "That is a comfort, but then, Nanna, why did He not prevent it? He is all-powerful, and could have prevented it if He had chosen!" It was the old cry from a broken heart, "Why! Why!" "Because He wished for your child exactly the same as you do." She spoke very emphatically. "What is that?" Phebe asked, eagerly. "The greatest good. Be sure of this, if it had been for the child's good she would have stayed. God can judge so much better than we can what is the best, so He decided she was to go. You do believe, don't you, dearie, that God knows best?--He must do!" "Yes." But the voice had no ringing tone in it. "And there's another thing I want you to rest on, though you cannot work it out yet in your own mind, but it's true, for all that, and it's this, that God will make all this trouble work for good in your own life, quite apart from dear little Queenie's, or, even for your sake, He would not have permitted it." "I believe it all, Nanna, and yet it seems so hard to live out the belief." "Yes, dearie, I know, but that's just because the trouble has kind of stunned you. Just you wait awhile, and you will be able not only to rest on the fact of God's wisdom and goodness, but _cheerfully_ to rest." "I wish I could!" How strange it is that there is never a wounded heart but there's somebody close by to put in some extra drop of bitterness. A friend called in one day with the express intention of showing sympathy, but succeeded in doing just the opposite, by remarking she was sure it was not the will of God any little child should die, and what a pity it was we had not more faith. All this Phebe told to Nanna, and, for a wonder, Nanna was near to exploding. "I do wish folk would have more sense! Why, it seems to me, some folks think they know better than God Himself. If you had prayed, 'My child is not going to die, my faith will keep her here,' wouldn't that have been dictating to God! Then, think of all the holy men and women who have died young! Do you think God allowed them to die before their time simply because they didn't know they might have healing through faith! Don't trouble your head about that. Why, God, perhaps, has some work up yonder to do that only an innocent child-spirit like Queenie could do, or He may have taken her to shield her from some evil. If your faith could have saved that child you would have had the faith. God knew right enough you didn't want to part with her." Then when the dear old soul had taken breath, she started off again. "What is a sign? It's something out of the ordinary way to teach you some special lesson. Well, Jesus said the sick were to be cured by faith, as a sign, not as a rule. Nobody can get over that, so there now," and off she went to give Jack his supper. It was not long before Phebe herself realised at least one blessing which had come into her life since the child's departure, and that was the sense of the nearness of the spirit world. It seemed as if a line of light connected her world with the beyond, and the line of light was the pathway Queenie had trod. When she had lost her mother her grief was great, but it was the grief of a child, her soul had not the conscious power then to reach after her loved one as now she reached after her child. The whole of her life seemed made up of strips of light and shade, and just as this gleam from the golden land dawned upon her, the old darkness seemed all to come back again. The following letter was received from Ralph:-- "_Queen's Hotel, Adelaide._ "MY DEAR PHEBE, "I dare say you have been wondering what part of the globe I have travelled to. This letter will set your mind at rest on that score. I do not suppose I shall stay here long, but any letters you send will be sure to be forwarded to me. I have already found several friends here and have good prospects. No doubt my sudden departure was a shock to you, but I did it out of regard for you, and you must think of it in that way. And you cannot say I did not leave you well provided for. The goodwill of the business and the stock are worth a great deal. You are in a much better position now than before you were married. As soon as ever I am permanently settled we will discuss future plans. Of course I miss you and the children very much, and no doubt you miss me. This is a splendid country, with room to breathe in. I only wish I had come years ago. I mean to make my mark here; no more small pettifogging ways for me. My friends tell me I am just the man to succeed here. It is nice to be appreciated. "Write soon and tell me how you all are. "I am, "Your affectionate husband, "RALPH WARING." It was not long before Phebe noticed that though the letter was in a foreign envelope, it had neither stamp nor postmark of any description. By what means the letter had reached her seemed too great a mystery for her to attempt to unravel, so the thought of it was put right away, the change in Ralph's affections being quite sufficient for her to cope with just then. CHAPTER XI IS GOD GOOD? During these dark days Neighbour Bessie was a constant visitor, and she never came without seeking to bring some brightness, though mostly it was in the form of fun. Sometimes it jarred on Phebe when she first came in, but invariably Phebe was found enjoying the fun before Bessie left. Bessie was in high feather when Phebe told her in neighbourly confidence that an old great-uncle, recently deceased, had left her the freehold of a meadow at Edenholme, a place four miles from Hadley. "Do you mean to say you are a landed proprietress?" "Yes, if you care to put it in that grand style." "Of course I do--style is everything. But really to be serious, I should like to see this estate of yours!" "Estate! Just one field, with one solitary donkey, perhaps, in it." "Well, let's make the dear donkey's acquaintance, anyhow. Could we not drive there? Couldn't Darling Jones drive you and me, and let's have half-a-day's holiday? Now, do, there's a dear! I'm sure I'm losing all my complexion because I never get an outing." "I do wish you wouldn't call that young man by that foolish name. Suppose he should overhear you?" "That would be perfectly lovely! He'd put his hand on his heart, and say 'Somebody loves me!'" and Bessie put herself in the supposed tragic attitude. "You are a dreadful girl. Now, just for a punishment Reynolds shall drive us." "Then you consent to go?" and Bessie's eagerness confirmed Phebe in her suspicion that it was simply a ruse to get her out. However, the drive was taken and enjoyed. Instead of the donkey being found in the meadow, there was a blind child groping about on hands and knees for flowers and grasses. "Just look there!" exclaimed Bessie, quite philosophically; "and yet with two eyes of quite the proper sort and power, most of us miss heaps of flowers we might gather." The meadow was close by a small railway station soon to become an important junction, a new line being under construction which would run into it from quite an opposite direction. Reynolds drove them to the other side of the line, where some hundreds of men were at work on a long tunnel. The curious little wooden houses in which some of the men lived were inspected, and Phebe had quite a long chat with one of the "gangers." On their return home Bessie informed Mrs. Colston that the "estate" had some "park-like stretches," and was quite "a suitable site for a summer holiday with the help of a tent." "But it is a shame," she went on, "that it is not on the other side of the railway. Why, if that meadow had only been near that tunnel the railway folks would have given ever so much for it. Don't you think it is too bad?" "No, I don't." "You don't! Wouldn't you like Mrs. Waring to make an honest bit of money?" "Of course I should. But if it would have been better for the meadow to have been where you wished it, it would have been there, no doubt about that." "Do you think, then, that whatever is, is best? But I don't see how you can. I didn't have any breakfast this morning. Mother said I was in one of my tantrums. Suppose I was; but I can tell you it wasn't the best thing for me." "Perhaps it just was; but I cannot say positively about your affairs, because I don't know that you come under the same list as mistress does." "What list is that?" "The list of Christians. You know 'whatever is _is_ best' for them. Perhaps it doesn't seem so at the first, but God makes it so sooner or later." "He doesn't do so, then, for everybody?" "No, I don't think so; I can't see how they can expect Him to." "It's a bad look-out for me, then, Mrs. Colston," and the girl looked her frankly in the face. "I often wish I were a Christian; but there, I never shall be." "Why not, Bessie, dear? Tell me what is your difficulty." "I can't give up my nonsense and fun; it's no good, I couldn't be serious like Mrs. Waring is for anything. And then," dropping her voice, "mother would never believe I was trying to be good, no, not if I tried like an archangel." "What your mother believes, or doesn't believe, shouldn't come into the question, dear. It's the Lord's opinion of us we've got to trouble about. But you make a great mistake if you think you've got to give up fun, so long as it's innocent fun. Why, I believe God is often disappointed in His children because they're such a long-faced, sour lot; I do indeed." But just then Mrs. Marchant sent in a message that Bessie was wanted at once. That same evening Phebe was called into the grocery department to see a woman who particularly wished to speak to her. She was a very forlorn-looking being, and seeing the marks of tears upon her face Phebe invited her into the parlour, placing a chair for her by the fire, for the evening was chilly. "I've come to ask you, Mrs. Waring, if you will come and see my husband. I do believe he is dying." "But why do you want me to see him?" Phebe was feeling very bewildered. "Why not get a doctor? I'm not even a nurse." "Oh, it's not that. I've got a doctor for him; he wants to talk to you. It's him that sent me to ask you." "But why does he want to see me?" "I asked him if I should get anybody to come and pray to him, and he said as how he didn't want no parsons a-bothering of him, but he would like Mrs. Waring to come, for," in quite a whisper, "he's mortal afeared of dying." "He wants me to come in place of a minister?" said Phebe with a gasp. "How does he know me? How did he come to ask for me?" "Why, you know he used to go a good deal to 'The Rose in June,' and they was a-talking about you there one night--he told me so when he came home--as how you shut your shops early on Saturday 'cause you were particular about Sunday. One of your shopfolks said so to somebody. And my Jim said as how you must be one of the right sort, for your religion cost you summat. That's how it is. He's talked about it a lot of times; and one night some of the men that goes to 'The Rose in June' came to have a look at you." Phebe smiled. "I should like to help your husband all I could," she said, "but I am quite unfit to talk to a dying man. Why not let me send for one of our good ministers? Or, I will ask my friend if she will go." "I'm sure he won't see anybody else," the woman exclaimed, but Phebe was out of hearing. Presently she returned, saying in a very quiet voice that she would accompany her home at once. Nanna had firmly refused to go, saying it was a distinct call from God to Phebe herself, and that it would be wicked to disobey. So in great fear and trembling Phebe went. The man was lying on a wretched bed, evidently very weak, but with no signs of death about him. After inquiring as to how he felt Phebe started straightway by telling him how unfit she was to help anybody, being only a learner herself, and her very simple straightforwardness drew the sick man all the more to her. "But, look here, missis," he said, turning on his elbow eagerly towards her. "You can help me all I want, and I'd rather have you than one of them preaching chaps as is paid to do it. What I wants to know is this: Do you think as how God is good and only does good things?" Phebe paused for a moment, and while she hesitated the man was keenly watching her, with great hungry-looking eyes. "I want my answer to be perfectly true," she replied, "that is why I waited." "I know it'll be true," said the man. Is God good? What about the taking away of her child! Could she say to this hungry, seeking soul He was not good? A thousand times, _No_--that she could never do. "I have been in great trouble lately--for more than a year the way has been very dark"--there was a choke in her voice. "I guessed so," said the man softly. "But God _is_ good," her voice was clear and firm again. "Yes, He is good; I have found Him so over and over again. We judge Him too quickly so often, and so often blame Him for what comes through the sins of other." "There's so many queer things in the world," said the man, "that it seemed to me there couldn't be a good God." "It's the men and women who are queer." "But, look here, if He's really good, will He take pity on a poor chap like me, who's been such a wicked 'un, and only comes to Him when he's not got nobody else to go to?" There was a depth of yearning in the voice. "Before I answer that question I should like you to answer me one, because I cannot know your heart as God does. Suppose, now, God was to give you back health, how would you treat God then?" "Ah, now, missis, I must take time to think, as you did." Then, after a pause: "I'd stand by Him, blest if I wouldn't!" "And leave off going to the public-house and lead a straight, clean life?" "Yes, I would, if only He'd make me downright sure He wiped off all old scores agen me. Will you ask Him to?" "Yes, I will." "But I mean here--now!" To pray in public! She had never done such a thing in her life! Again came the feeling of fear, but again it was conquered. Kneeling down by the side of the bed, with the man's hand in hers, and the man's wife kneeling by her side, she slowly, in short sentences, asked for just what the man needed, and under his breath he repeated every word she said. If the man had never heard of Jesus, and what Jesus had done for him, he learnt it from that prayer, and grasped the truth for himself. "Now," said she, as she rose from her knees, "I believe you are going to get better." All the way home her thoughts dwelt on the fact that she had publicly testified to the goodness of God. "After that," she said to herself, "I must not grieve any more after my darling. It must have been right for her to go, since God is good. To doubt that will make me a liar, and my life, too, must show I do not doubt it; but, oh, that I might catch a glimpse of her just for a minute!" It was a trembling Phebe who left home--a radiant Phebe returned. Nanna could not understand the change, but when she heard the story she exclaimed: "There now, that's always the way! If ever you want help, go and help somebody else. I do declare it was the Lord Himself who got you to commit yourself in that way. He just cornered you for your own deliverance." It was a hard, strenuous life that Phebe Waring led day by day. An hour was spent in the business every morning before breakfast, and till the last shutter was up at night she was still at her post. But never a day passed without some portion of it being entirely given up to sunny-haired little Jack. There was no piece of work done in which she did not lend a hand, and not only was there in every department every evidence of fair and honest dealing, but the utmost economy was also studied, down to the tying of string and the folding up of paper. Economy is not the sign of a small mind, but waste the sign of a mind with empty corners. As the new year approached Reynolds asked if there was to be any stocktaking, and, if so, on what lines it should be done? The truth was Phebe had not thought of this, but did not think it necessary to say so. After due deliberation the whole affair was arranged, and when she cast up her accounts, to her great astonishment she found there had been considerable advance made--and this in spite of the extra help employed, the purchase of a horse and cart, and several improvements which had been made in the premises. "Is not that splendid!" she said to Nanna, as all the figures were explained. "I shall give a good bonus to Reynolds, for he deserves it; and Jones must have something, too. If I go on at this rate I shall some day be a rich woman! Think of that! God is indeed good!" "Ah, dearie, it's easy to say 'God is good!' when the balance is on the right side, but what must please Him best is when we can say it just as trustfully when the purse is empty." The truth was, Nanna was just a wee bit afraid lest her darling should not stand the test of wealth. She remembered an old story about a play which used to be enacted at country fairs in the days when the Quakers were so bitterly persecuted. Among the _dramatis personæ_ came the evil one, who, in the course of a speech, made these remarks: "Let these Quakers alone; it's no good hunting them down. This is my plan: God is sure to prosper them in basket and in store, because they serve Him faithfully; then when they are rich, that will be my time. I shall be sure to get them then." "God keep her from the snare of riches!" was the old woman's fervent prayer. CHAPTER XII THE STONE THROWN IN THE WATERS Neighbour Bessie had got a new thought! Not that this was an unusual occurrence, her brain being pretty prolific, but this was of special importance and gave her special delight. She was a member of a certain young woman's Bible class which happened just then to be without a teacher. The inspiring thought was, "Why should not Mrs. Waring become the teacher?" Hurrah! And she _should_ become the teacher, too, if Bessie could by any possible manoeuvres bring it about. That her own personal invitation was not sufficient she knew well enough, and was quite sure Mrs. Waring would never offer her services, though "coaxed like anything." "I know what I'll do!" she exclaimed to herself. "I'll get up a petition. See if I don't;" and she did, for when once Bessie willed she did, and there was "an end on't," as the Lancashire women say. She drew up the heading herself, one sentence being, "And we shall ever be grateful," which she thought would be especially "fetching." "None of your 'Kathleen Mavourneen' style about that: 'may be for years or may be for ever.'" Truth to tell, there was never much of the "Kathleen Mavourneen style" about any of Bessie's doings, her character being cast in too decided a mould for that. The following Sunday twelve out of twenty members were present, and all willingly signed the petition, somewhat tickled with the fun of it and Bessie's tragic manner. The other eight she visited at their homes, and thus the full number of signatures was obtained. Then came the formidable task of presenting the petition. "When a subject presents a petition to the Queen"--that was how she began her speech on the very first opportunity--"I suppose the proper thing is to drop down on the knees something like this," straightway kneeling down in front of Phebe. "Are you thinking of interviewing the Queen yourself, then? Is that your next adventure?" "I am already interviewing the queen of my heart, and would beseech her gracious majesty to carefully read this petition," spreading the paper out on Phebe's knee. "What nonsense are you up to now, Bessie?" asked Nanna, coming into the room just at that minute. "No nonsense at all, but real serious business, such as you would delight in yourself. Come and help me to persuade Mrs. Waring to say 'Yes.'" "But ought she to say 'Yes'?" "I am sure you will say so when you know all about it." Phebe at once, with a smile, handed Nanna the paper, and Nanna, with spectacles on nose, began to read with a face as solemn as the countenances of two judges photographed on to one negative. But sunshine soon conquered solemnity. "Well done, Bessie! It does you credit," was the instantaneous verdict. "I can see it's you that's been at the top and bottom of it all. Of course you'll say 'Yes'?" turning to Phebe. "It's very good of the girls, and it is just what I should like to do; but there is one thing they have forgotten to do." "What is that?" quickly questioned Bessie. "You have never asked the permission of the superintendent." "Never thought of that," exclaimed Bessie; "but there will be no difficulty in that quarter. Why should there be? Then you do really say 'Yes'?" "I will certainly try what I can do, but understand, the invitation must also come from the superintendent." "You are a dear," and impulsive Bessie flung her arms round her neck and kissed her. "Do you know I feel so good and virtuous I don't think I shall sleep to-night." Certainly Phebe did not go to sleep quickly that night, the idea of partly mothering twenty girls quite taking possession of her. If only she could get them to rise up to the full dignity of Christian womanhood what a splendid piece of work that would be! And there and then she began shaping her introductory talk to them. She looked upon Bessie's scheme as another means sent by God to fill the void left in her heart and life. The following Sunday afternoon she quite expected that Bessie would come in to tea, bringing with her the more formal invitation. The meal was even kept waiting, but no Bessie came. "She will come in after tea," said Phebe--still no Bessie. "She will be here at supper-time, sure enough," said Mrs. Colston. Supper-time came, but no Bessie. "She must be unwell, surely," thought Phebe; but Bessie's high voice overheard on Monday morning proved that to be quite a mistake. All Monday passed, but no Bessie came. On Tuesday morning Mrs. Colston sent her a message: "Why do you not come in? Have you forgotten what we are expecting?" To Phebe she said: "No doubt the superintendent was not present on Sunday, but at least she ought to have come in and told us so. I don't hold with girls being so thoughtless." Bessie's answer was: "I'll come in this evening." Poor Bessie! When she did come--and she made it as late as ever she could--she looked as if she had just made the acquaintance of the ducking-stool. "I know you wanted to hear what that superintendent said, and that's just why I didn't want to come in," she blurted out. "Poor old Bessie!" said Phebe, quite pained to see the change in her, "but don't fret about it, whatever it was." "But I can't help it! It is a downright big shame." "What dreadful thing did he say?" "He's going to take the class himself, but I can't stay any longer, mother will want me." "Bessie," said Phebe, laying her hand firmly on her arm, "there is something else troubling you." "The girls don't want a man to teach them--but I really must be going." "Bessie," Phebe forced her into a chair, and stood over her, "you are to tell me right out what is troubling you. Surely there are to be no secrets between us! Tell me just what the superintendent said." [Illustration: "'BESSIE, YOU ARE TO TELL ME RIGHT OUT WHAT IS TROUBLING YOU.'"] "That he should take it himself"--putting her hands over her face to hide the tears. "What else?" "That you were not suitable." "And what else? Why was I not suitable?" But Bessie could not answer for crying. "Tell me this"--and Phebe's voice was very strained--"was it because my husband had left me?" Bessie looked up at her with her tear-stained face; words would not come, but a little nod told all that was needed. The blow Phebe had feared so long had come. It was a fact, then, that her good name was tarnished. She went over to the fire, standing with her back to Bessie, to try to calm herself, to pray for strength to bear such a cruel blow. The sound of Bessie's sobbing was very painful to hear, but at last the girl roused herself, and coming and standing by Phebe she whispered, "I would have given anything to have kept it from you. You do believe me, don't you?" "Of course I do. Do not fret, dear; all will come right"--her breath was caught--"in time." "To think that I should have brought this on you." "But you did not--it is better for me to know how--people regard me. Now, go home, dear, and do what you have to do. I shall be feeling all right in the morning." It was a comfort when Phebe reached her own room to be alone, save for the sleeping child--and the unseen angels. And Bessie, too, was glad to be alone. She was thankful the whole affair had come out, having felt assured it was bound to do so, but her whole being was filled with indignation at the thought of the indignity her friend had been made to suffer. "If only I had never asked her till it was all settled it wouldn't have been so bad! What can I tell the girls? _I_ shan't let out all the reason, but _he_ will, I dare say. Wish I could be upsides down with him, that I do! What a mess I do make of everything, to be sure. If mother knew she'd say it was just like me. I feel perfectly wretched. I wonder how I could pay that man out for his meanness!" And then another bright idea struck Neighbour Bessie, and by the time she had worked her plan out she was fast asleep. The next day, during the minutes she could snatch from work, twenty dainty little notes were written, addressed to the twenty girls who had signed the petition. Each was supposed to be a private note, inviting the receiver to accompany Bessie next Sunday afternoon to some special meeting going on in the town, and to meet her at 2.45 by the market-pump. Not being very flush with pocket-money--she never was--the notes could not be posted, but during the next three evenings were all delivered by hand. Twelve favourable replies were received, some of the girls expressing appreciation of this marked token of Bessie's favour, Bessie being really a very popular member; four declined on the plea of colds or previous engagements; and four were blanks, but Bessie found out, in some way or other, that these were away from home. "That's just splendid," she said to herself, surveying the pile of assorted notepaper, "perfect." "I say, Bess, are you going to give a party?" asked her brother, happening to catch sight of the notes. "Yes." "When?" "I'll tell you when it's all over." At 2.45 on Sunday afternoon twelve girls met round the market-pump, each greatly surprised to see all the others. "I came here to meet Bessie Marchant," said one. "And so did I," said another. "And so did I," said they all; and then they all laughed, for they were a good-natured set of girls. "We'll make her answer for this when she turns up," said some of them. "What do you mean by this, Miss Bessie Marchant?" three or four called out all at once when at last she made her appearance puffing and blowing through hurrying. "Dreadfully sorry, girls, to be so late; really couldn't help it. Mean?" looking ever so solemnly sweet, "mean? You were all such dears I couldn't leave one of you out," and taking hold of the two girls she had the least confidence in marched off, all the others following. She told the whole story the same evening to Nanna, alone. "You would have died of laughing if you'd seen the faces of those girls as they cuddled round that pump, that you would. Some were hanging on to the handle, they felt that took back like. But I got them all to the meeting." "But what did you do it for?" "That's just what they wanted to know, and not one guessed. I told them after they came out, though." "Well, what was your reason?" "To pay that man out, of course. He pretended he wanted the class for himself, and I thought at least for one Sunday he shouldn't have that pleasure. It was splendid fun just to picture how he would look when he went into the room and found no one there. It did tickle the girls, I can tell you." "But you don't mean to say you told them all that!" "Of course I did. I was obliged to tell them how he had refused Mrs. Waring's offer, and so I explained to them how just for once I had paid him out." "And don't you suppose they will go and tell him what you have said?" "Some will, no doubt; but others are as cross as I am about it." "Oh, Bessie, Bessie, when will you learn wisdom!" exclaimed Mrs. Colston, in a very troubled voice. "What have I done wrong now, I should like to know? You don't mean to say you're cross with me?" "You have made that man more than ever the mistress's enemy. You have thrown a stone into the waters; you can never tell where its ripples will reach to. He may be a Christian. I don't know, but after the trick you have paid him he will dislike and mistrust Mrs. Waring more than ever. You may have done your dear friend a great unkindness, for if he's got any unsubdued malice in him he'll show it some day towards her; you'll see." "Mrs. Colston!" exclaimed Bessie, "you fairly take away my breath. I declare life is too much for me!" "It's too much for any of us--alone. With all your fun and nonsense you need a lot of prayer, that the Lord would keep you from doing anything that's against the Golden Rule." "I don't know what'll become of me, I'm sure. It's always my luck to do the wrong thing. There, I wish I were dead, that I do! But don't you go and tell Mrs. Waring what I've done, will you?" "No, I'll not tell her. Trust me for that." CHAPTER XIII LOVE'S HOSPITAL There often came back to Phebe's mind the prayer she offered just after her engagement, "Dear Lord, make me a true Christian, and help me to be perfectly willing to let Thee do it in whatever way Thou thinkest will be best for me." It was one of the few-remembered prayers; they are but few in anybody's experience. Our prayers are too often to us but as yesterday's faded rose-petals. She was not quite so sure to-day she could pray that prayer truthfully as when it was first framed. But there was this comfort, she had no desire to take herself from beneath the moulding Hands. Nanna was inwardly very indignant at the treatment Phebe had received, not that her teaching and her own private experiences did not agree, but she was one of those women who have to do a certain amount of boiling over and exploding before a calm level is obtained. She was, however, mostly wise enough to let this exciting process be carried on in private. She was a perfect tower of strength to Phebe; indeed, it would be impossible to reckon up all Phebe owed to her, and Phebe was quite aware of this, often saying that Nanna was the clever one who made the plans, while she was only the humble one who carried them out. "Look here, dearie," Nanna said, when she could trust herself to speak with calmness, "I say, and say it with all deliberateness, it was wicked to shut that door on you like that. If that man thought you were unfit to mix with those girls he should have first been quite sure of the grounds he was acting on. But, never you mind; mark this, and mark it well, man never shuts one door, but God opens another, and a bigger one, too. Men shut the door of the Ephesus Church against John, but look what a mighty big one God opened for him into Heaven! And it's the same to-day. So, you be on the look-out--I mean to--and see who sees it first. I told Bessie this, and she says she'll buy a spy-glass for one eye and a telescope for the other. I wonder if that girl will ever sober down!" "She will make a fine woman some day." "There's the making of a fine woman in her, and she's certainly on the mend." Bessie overheard Phebe one day referring to Mrs. Colston's leadership, whereupon that young lady remarked she ought to be called "teacher," and all the others in the house "disciples." It was at the tea-table. David Jones quietly observed, "You never hear of women disciples." "Yes, you do," snapped Bessie; "if you had ever read Grecian history, you would never have made that remark. Besides, women deserved the name of 'disciple' more than those men did who followed Jesus; they saw to His wants, if they did nothing more; it only mentions once that the men ever did so, and then it took the whole twelve of them to go and buy a meal, leaving the tired Jesus all alone, not even one there to get a drink for Him." "Better take care, Jones," said Reynolds, "you'll be sure to get the worst of it." "Yes, of course you will," said Mrs. Colston; "there are too many nasty little things said now-a-days about women. The other day I heard some one say he wished Satan had gone for Job's wife, but he knew better. I felt like calling out." "But then she was really a bad one," said Jones. "Indeed, she was not. That's just it; so often wrong judgments are passed on women." (Nanna had wanted to bring out this little speech for some time, and quite blessed Bessie for the opportunity she had made.) "That poor woman bore without a word being recorded against her, the loss of children and property, and it was only when she saw her husband stricken that she rebelled, and then she didn't say half the bad things as Job did a bit further on. Yet Job's held up for admiration, and the poor wife for execration. I tell you it's not fair." "I should think not, indeed," chimed in Bessie. "Now, is it?" asked Mrs. Colston, turning to the young men. They both agreed it was not. "Then do be careful," she continued, "both of you, whenever you are tempted to say sneering things about women." Phebe had left the table at the commencement of the conversation, which made it still more easy for Nanna to send home her message. There was one splendid thing about her: however cutting her rebukes might be, she always gave them in a bright, nice manner; as Bessie said, she always used the biggest spoon she could get--inferring that the pill was nearly lost in the amount of jam she used. Both the young fellows knew her words had a special significance; they were not at all offended, but rather, on the contrary, a fresh feeling of chivalry was stirred in their hearts towards their young mistress, "The Little Missis," as she was so often called. David Jones was even beginning to think there was a halo round everybody's head in that establishment, except his own, and a double halo round Bessie's, in spite of her snaps. If he had known all that took place in that little homestead he would have had a still more brilliant vision of glory--if even he had known the significance of the silver stars, one of which was found in a conspicuous place in every room, he would have felt like taking off his boots, for he was both impressionable and by nature devout. But not even Nanna knew till long afterwards what those stars meant, though she had a pretty shrewd guess about them. As can be easily imagined, Phebe's life was a lonely one. The fact of her husband cutting himself off from her in such an abrupt fashion was quite enough to bring about this loneliness. There was not even companionship through the pen; she had answered both Ralph's letters, and still continued to write, giving him all particulars of the business, trying to put as much love into the letters as she could truly find echo in her heart, but no further replies came. All was a blank. And then there was the further loneliness all souls find the nearer they get to God. True, she had her sister, and Nanna, and sunny Jack, and Bessie; but these only touched the outer part of her being. We stand as units before God, and the more we understand our relationship to God the more we realise the soul's loneliness from the human side--a loneliness which draws us nearer and nearer to God. Phebe often wished she could constantly remember the presence of God with her, but sometimes for a whole day she would forget Him, and she knew that was the reason why so often she failed, and the peace was broken. Prayer came very naturally to her when anything was wanted, but she felt that was not sufficient. "What do people do who have bad memories?" she asked herself. Then came thoughts of strings round fingers and knots in handkerchiefs, but these seemed childish. One day the words, "When they saw His star," were very much with her, and the thought came, "I wish I could always see His star!" and this was followed by what she thought a bright idea. She would make a number of silver stars and place one in each room, shops and sale-room included, where she could not fail to see them; no one but herself need know their meaning, and they would continually remind her of His presence until she had trained herself to do without their help. The plan was carried out. There was nothing in it anybody could object to; there was nothing of the fetish, nor crucifix, nor altar about it. Many an eye was raised up to those stars; the children were especially fascinated by them, and the shop was even spoken of by some as "The shop of the silver star," but none guessed their meaning. Reynolds was quite in the dark; though he often watched his mistress fix her eyes on them, he never came near the secret. Most people thought they were only in the nature of decoration. How often we draw near to holy places without even a thrill or look of wonder! And the stars helped her greatly. I do not say she never forgot, but every little help we can secure along life's way to bind us to the Divine we should make the most of and rejoice over. Even sharp-eyed, sharp-witted Bessie, who was now a real member of the circle, did not guess their meaning. Perhaps this was because she was so full of her own good-fortune that she was not keen on anything else just then, and when her first joy had cooled somewhat, the sight of the stars had become too familiar to excite comment. For a long time Mrs. Colston and Phebe had been of the opinion that Bessie would never make much progress while under her mother's roof. Both mother and daughter loved each other (there was no doubt about that), but they did not rest each other. Mrs. Marchant was a fretful woman; family cares had shattered her nerves; Bessie was all alive--"life in every limb" was intensely true about her three times over--and so they constantly irritated each other. As Bessie was washing up the tea-things one day, feeling very down-hearted, even dropping a tear now and again, she thought she would banish her gloom with a little song, and so piped up on her loudest key: "I'm sweeping through the gates;" not remembering more than one verse, the chorus was repeated several times. "Sakes alive!" screamed out the mother from the kitchen, "do stop that. Do, for goodness' sake, finish your sweeping, girl, and get through the gates and stop there!" "I only wish I could," replied Bessie, but not loud enough for the mother to hear. Soon after that she noticed her brother's jacket had slipped off a chair in the kitchen, where he had thrown it, and while she was sitting mending some stockings, she saw something moving on it. For a minute or two she kept a most careful watch, then cautiously picked the coat up and hung it at the back of the door. When her brother came to put it on she gave a nervous little wriggle on her chair, but said nothing. At supper-time there was quite an explosion, the brother declaring she had put a black-beetle in his pocket, in spite of knowing how much he dreaded them; he had drawn it out with his handkerchief at a choir-practice, right in front of all the boys. "I never did!" protested Bessie. "You had something to do with it, I'm sure; else why did you so carefully hang my jacket up, without a word of fault-finding?" "I saw it walk into your pocket; that's a very different thing from putting it in," the girl frankly explained. Instead of the mother seeing any fun in the situation, and quietly pointing out where fun ends and unkindness begins, and forgetting the many practical jokes Bessie herself had good-naturedly endured at the hands of her brother, she literally stormed at Bessie, declaring she should leave home at once and be put to some business. Phebe hearing of all this, offered to take Bessie, to which the mother readily agreed. So it was a very short journey indeed Bessie took from home. Deep down in her heart the girl was very grieved at the way she had left home, but outwardly kept her usual brightness, and was indeed truly delighted at now really being "one of the company." "If ever I get rich," she exclaimed, "and have a coat-of-arms, I shall have a black-beetle on my quarterings, for it was a black-beetle which carried me here; a fine old ebony coachman! Oh, Mrs. Waring," and a sad note came into the girl's voice just then, "life often seems to me such a tangle and jingle!" "Does it, dear? It has often seemed the same to me." Just then she caught sight of the star--she must not lose an opportunity--"but we must do our best to turn it into a song. We'll try together, won't we?" A squeeze of the hand was all the answer Bessie was able to give. It is strange that though we stand as units before God, the soul's progress can only be definitely marked by its relationship to others. By the way Phebe treated those who came under her influence was one test of her advance. The only objection Nanna raised to this addition to the family was the fear lest Bessie and Jones should be thrown too much together. "You must have noticed how she has ceased calling him 'Darling.'" "They are less likely to come together if they are constantly in each other's society than if they only saw each other occasionally," was all Phebe said. "I really think," remarked Nanna, "this house ought to be called a hospital for sick souls. First of all, you take this lonely soul in----" "Why, it was you who took me in," interrupted Phebe. "All lonely and forlorn," calmly continued Nanna, unheeding the interruption; "then Jones comes along, sore wounded in the battle, and now there's this poor young thing taken in with a broken wing. It's really nothing short of a hospital." "Well, then," replied Phebe, "we'll call it Love's Hospital." CHAPTER XIV AN UNFORTUNATE ENCOUNTER Jim Coates, the sick man whom Phebe Waring was called to visit, did not die; on the contrary, from the hour of her first visit he began to mend. Very often of an afternoon, when business was slack, she would go and have a talk with him, and nothing pleased him better than for her, instead of reading the Bible to him, to tell the stories out in her own words and with her own comments. No child ever drank in fairy stories more eagerly, and Phebe even discussed some infidel notions he had got hold of, overcoming many of his difficulties. If she had been told two months before that she could even attempt such things the firm answer would have been "Impossible!" After Jim had regained strength to a certain measure, came the difficult question of getting work for him. Phebe at once thought of the ganger at the railway-works, and drove over to enlist his sympathies on behalf of Jim, frankly telling him all the story. The man listened respectfully, and then said, "Yes, I'll put him on; but he'd better keep his mouth shut as to how he got here, or the men will give him a lively time, I bet. And if he keeps true blue among this crew, then he's a Briton, I can tell yer, for they're the rummiest lot I've ever had. I go to chapel myself with the missis, but I don't let on to them I do." "Do you think then, it is impossible to be a Christian and work with these men?" asked Phebe anxiously. "I don't say as much as that," answered the man, nervously grinding his heel into the soil as he spoke, "only you have to keep your religion to yourself." "Do you think that is possible?" The talk was getting a little too personal, and the ganger, with an extra red face and a muttered "Don't know," turned away. Jim Coates was delighted when Phebe took him the news. The distance from the town was no obstacle, he being the happy possessor of a "bone-shaker" bicycle. "But," said Mrs. Waring, in a serious tone, "the ganger says you must keep your religion to yourself. Are you going to do that?" "Not I; why should I?" "Because they will give you a lively time." "Well, let them; I'm not made of sugar." "That's splendidly said; and you'll show your colours from the very first, won't you?" "I should be a sneak if I didn't." That same day at the tea-table Phebe gave an account of her day's mission. Meal-times were always made as interesting as possible. Nanna remarked that she wondered what the men camped out there did with themselves on Sundays. Bessie suggested it would be a splendid thing if Mrs. Waring went over there on Sunday afternoons and talked to the men, adding, "I am sure she could do it splendidly, and they'd listen to her like anything; but there, that will never come to pass, because the Bible says women mustn't do that sort of thing." Nanna was on the war-path instantly. "In what part of the Bible do you find that, I should like to know? That's nothing but the teaching of the evil one, just to hinder the Lord's work. I'd think twice, if I were you, before I'd do that sort of dirty work." "It says women are not to speak in church; I'm sure it does," stammered Bessie, getting red and feeling uncomfortable. "It says they are not to chatter in the church, and nothing more; and that's what they still do in the east, so they say, both men and women. You forget that the Bible gives particulars as to how women should dress when they pray or prophesy, that Jesus Himself told women to spread the news about Him, that God told Joel his daughters should prophesy, that Phillip's daughters were prophets and Deaconess Phebe a foreign missionary! You forget all that; but there, you are no worse than lots of other women. Women run women down just as much as men do. Often and often when women might have done a good piece of work for God they got behind that bit of bad translation, and, like dying ducks, gurgle something about it 'not being modest.' It's a good deal more immodest to aid Satan in his work! I've no patience with the majority of women, and I do hope, Bessie, you won't become one of the brainless sort that think a good deal more about the fit of a skirt and the cut of a sleeve than they do about God's Kingdom!" Poor Bessie did not know what to answer. Fortunately the group broke up just then, and she followed Phebe out into Sunshine Patch, where little Jack was rolling in the grass, and where there was quite a show of spring's yellow and violet tints. "Life doesn't seem to get any easier," said Bessie, as they seated themselves in the little arbour; "seems impossible to know sometimes what is exactly right to do. But Mrs. Colston never seems at a loss, everything seems pretty straightforward to her." Phebe had been wondering how much of Nanna's speech had been intended for her own benefit. "You see," she answered, "Nanna is so much older than we are; her longer experience enables her to see more quickly through things, and on so many points she has fought her way to clear conclusions. We must not get discouraged. If we are willing to be trained by God all will come right in the end." "Yes; but I want things to come right now, and I want to be always able to know at once what is right." "I am afraid we all do, Bessie, dear; but we have to learn to curb our impatience. If we more constantly remembered that this life is only a training-time we should become more patient, and I find if I give myself time for a few moments of prayerful waiting I am taught which is the right thing to do." "Ah, you're sweet and patient, that's it, and I am not." "If it was a question of sweetness, dear heart, I think you'd gain the prize. I think it is more a question of being perfectly willing to let God train us." "And do you think Mrs. Colston is right about women doing things just like men?" "I think she is, though I never heard it put so forcibly before. You know it says we are 'all one in Christ Jesus.'" "I love to hear you talk, and I love to hear Mrs. Colston, too. I do believe I shall be real good some day; but I must rush in now, or Reynolds will be up a tree and it will take me a whole day to get him down again," and off the impulsive Bessie ran. If Bessie found it difficult to know what was the right thing to do Jim Coates did not. Right from the very first he had a plan ready, and carried it successfully through. The first thing he did was to write out the following notice with a pencil on a piece of tea-paper, and during the first dinner-hour he tacked it on to the end of one of the sheds. "This is to give notice that Jim Coates, who is a Christian, has come here to work, and he thinks it would be so much easier for him to keep straight if he had a mate going the same way as he's trying to go. If there is another Christian in any of the gangs do find me out and give me a word. You'll know me by a piece of red ribbon in my waistcoat-buttonhole. "JIM COATES." At first it passed unnoticed, but the second day a man tore it down to read it more readily. After he had spelt the words out he called out in a loud voice: "I say, chaps, here's a lark! Do you just listen: it's as good as a play," and then in quite an affected tone of voice he read out poor Jim's brave notice. "There he is!" exclaimed quite a score of voices, while as many derisive fingers were pointed in his direction, "there's the red ribbon," and then they gathered round their victim, and began giving him a warm time. One took away his ribbon, another tried to dry up imaginary tears from his face, and, last of all, they decided to carry him away to some pond and give him a ducking. Jim prayed as he never prayed before. It was so hard to keep down "swear words," but just as these rough fellows were about to carry their threat into execution the ganger, whose acquaintance Phebe had made, came along. "What are you up to, lads?" seeing Jim on the ground in their midst. "None of your larks, I tell you, or it'll be the worse for some of you." The words acted like magic. With a few sulky expressions, and a sly kick or two, they all moved on. The man who had taken the notice down tacked it up again--not through any spirit of restitution, but in the hope it would bring Jim further trouble. "Better keep yourself to yourself," was the ganger's advice, "or they'll make this too hot for you." The news of the "red ribbon man" and "the advertisement for a mate" spread all through the company, and men even came to have a look at Jim as a kind of curiosity. Two days passed, but no mate turned up, though he had put up a second notice in another place. The ganger's advice did not deter or frighten him in the least. But on the third day, just as he was mounting his machine, a very big, lanky fellow came up behind him and said: "I'm the fellow you're looking for, if you've found no one better." Jim grasped him heartily by the hand: "Bless God; I am so glad you've come. Now there are two of us we may find some more, and we might start a little prayer in the dinner-hour--a friend of mine (Mrs. Waring) says the railway-men do that in some places." "But I'm a poor sort of a Christian," said the man; "bless you, I couldn't pray in a meeting; and as for doing what you've done, I should never have had the courage in a whole blue moon. Why, I've stared at that paper two whole blessed days before I was man enough to come up to speak to you. I was afraid the fellows would see me." "What's your name?" asked Jim. "Dick--Dick Witherson." "Well, Dick, don't you go worrying 'cause you didn't speak to me sooner. I'm only too thankful you've come now. And you know the bravest disciple of all was the one that was at first the biggest coward, so don't you lose heart. Where shall we meet to-morrow in the dinner-hour?" The place was agreed on, and then they parted. The very next day a third mate was found, and this gave wonderful courage to Dick, almost transforming him into another sort of man. The following day was Saturday. Work was knocked off at twelve; so there was no time for meeting together again till Monday. Early that Saturday afternoon Mrs. Coates, breathless and agitated, came into Mrs. Waring's shop and, seeing Phebe behind the counter, went up to her at once, exclaiming, "Oh, Mrs. Waring, can you help me! Jim's never come home; he's quite an hour late. I know they often have to wait a good while to be paid, but that's not all. A lad as plays with my Freddie says he saw him go into 'The Rose in June' about half-an-hour ago. O God, help me; it's all over with him if he's gone in there!" "It cannot be true." "The lad says he was sure it was him. Oh, Mrs. Waring, would you mind going in to see if he's there, and try to get him to come home? I daren't go in by myself; he'd give me such a time afterwards if I did." "Do you want me to go into the public-house?" "Yes, if you would; we might get him out then before he had spent all his money and was quite drunk. Do you mind? I know it is asking a great deal." Phebe paused for a moment; but when she looked up at the star she at once answered: "Yes, I will come with you." It was a very busy time, she could ill be spared, but what was all that compared with the rescue of a soul! A few minutes afterwards these two women had passed through the swing-doors of "The Rose in June"--the first time Phebe had ever entered a public-house. No sooner had the doors swung to behind them than they were face to face with Jim! To say that a straw would have knocked the man down is but a faint description of his utter astonishment. "What--what--is the matter!" he gasped. There was not the slightest smell of drink about him. "Oh, come outside! Come outside, do!" exclaimed Mrs. Coates, bursting into tears. It did not take the three long to get the other side of the doors, and then, standing on the doorstep, Mrs. Waring began to explain: "You must forgive us; we were afraid----" "I understand it all, Mrs. Waring," broke in Jim. "Don't you make any trouble of it. You thought I'd come in to have a drink; but I hadn't. I only came in after some of my mates to keep them straight, if I could." "But, ought you to put yourself in the way of temptation?" "Bless you, the drink's no snare to me now. I hate even the smell of it. I thought----" and then he faltered. "I am so sorry," said Phebe Waring, putting her hand on Jim's arm. Just then who should go by but Stephen Collins and Bessie's superintendent. The former raised his hat and gave Phebe a smile; but the latter passed on without any recognition, except for an extra look of grimness on his face. "No, you're not to say you're sorry," said Jim, magnanimously. "It was only natural you should think it queer. As for my old woman here, no wonder she was nervous, after all she's suffered. And I thank you with all my heart, Mrs. Waring, for coming here, for it shows that if I had indeed gone crooked you wouldn't have given a fellow up." * * * * * "A very strange place for a woman who wishes to be thought respectable to be found in!" said the superintendent to Stephen. "Those three had just come out of that public-house." "Just the very place Jesus would have been found in," answered Stephen drily. CHAPTER XV JOY-MISSIONARIES No flower ever comes up to perfection through one single influence; many powers and companionships, great and tiny, unite to complete its beauty. The winds rock it, the rains wash it, the breezes fan it, the dew kisses it, the sun smiles on it, the clouds give rest to it, the soil feeds it, neighbouring shrubs shelter it, its leaves protect it, the insects enrich it--and over all is the Great Gardener. Thus groweth to perfect grace a little earthly flower. Flowers of the Kingdom grow in like manner. * * * * * If Bessie was not a success amid dishes and brooms she certainly was behind the counter; many a customer came again and again, attracted by the bright, sunny assistant, and would even patiently wait till she was disengaged rather than be served by any one else. In the home circle she was a constant source of pure merriment and joy; very seldom, indeed, was there anything like a cloud upon her spirits as there used so often to be, and this was largely owing to the fact that she was appreciated, that there was now-a-days no fear of being snubbed and scolded. Nanna certainly occasionally "sat upon her," but then it was always done with a smile, and Bessie knew right well every word of "the dear lecture" was uttered because Nanna wished her to be "a right sort of a woman." And then there was the daily inspiration of being with Mrs. Waring, who never lectured; sometimes she would give a look, but that was all, and then there was always love in the look. The girl often wondered why there could not have been the same state of matters at home, and never hesitated to take the most of the blame to herself. She went in home every other day, always with the same determination to be on her good behaviour, but never met with anything like success. It was a long time before she found out the reason of this--it was because the atmosphere of the homes was different. Some flowers can only bloom under certain conditions. One home was Bethany, the other was Gadara. All the fun and merriment Bessie went in for was not purely spontaneous; knowing the weight of trouble her friend had to carry, she, on set purpose, planned to bring the sparkle to Phebe's eye and the laugh to her lips. Her keen sense of the ludicrous and her ready wit always made her efforts appear natural. One day an old man--an old bachelor--came into the shop, and complained that so many people owed him money, mentioning one, a widow woman, but he added, "I shall stand it no longer, I shall 'court' her." Of course, he meant the county court. When Bessie retailed this at dinner, she described his look of blank wonder when she offered to be bridesmaid! "And do you know, that poor old dear never grasped what I meant, and I do believe he went away thinking I had made him an offer of marriage. I do indeed. I must not do any more adumbrations again." "What!" exclaimed Mrs. Colston, nearly choking. "I thought you'd think that was a good sort of a word. I only got hold of it to-day, and I had to turn the dictionary up myself to know what it means. It means 'to shadow forth.' I must not speak in shadow henceforth, but in plain English. Yes, I like that word. I mean to make up a list of nice-sounding words to bring out on special occasions." "Mind they fit in properly," said Reynolds. "I shan't trouble much about that," said the irrepressible Bessie, "a misfit often gives piquancy to a sentence. Only yesterday old Mrs. Bennett told me that the doctor had told her as how 'her calculation was that slow she was in a very bad state indeed.' I didn't tell the poor old dear she meant circulation, because I thought it would hurt her feelings. But I just thought that word delicious, and told her she'd have to hurry up with her figures." Had any one asked Bessie just then if she was a Christian, her answer might have been a "No," but that she was not far from the Kingdom is certain from the fact that she was constantly trying to frame her life to "high issues." "If I can do nothing else to please Jesus," she said to herself, "I can try to let folks have a bright time." If Bessie gained inspiration from Mrs. Waring, it is equally true Phebe gained the same from her. It was largely owing to Bessie's brightness that hope was still strong within her, that she went often to her work with a true zest, and that the sunny aspect of things took first place with her. Bessie had a gift which singers, orators and philosophers might envy, but it was Phebe who had first given the girl the idea that she could use it to the glory of God. One old woman, whose blood was thin and cold, declared that to be with Bessie for a quarter of an hour was "like sitting in a sunny garden a-smelling of roses." Phebe's enjoyment was something similar, but she had herself placed the seat and planted the roses, though it never struck her like that. Very often Phebe chided herself for being what she thought too gleesome in her ways, and one night after supper she had a talk with Nanna about it, when all the others had retired to bed. "Do you think I am getting too frivolous, Nanna? I often find myself laughing and even joking, and then I think how unbecoming it is for a matron like me, with all the responsibilities of a business resting upon me, and"--a sigh and a pause--"with such a shadow on my life, to be acting like that." "How do you think you ought to act, then, dearie?" lovingly stroking Phebe's hair. They were sitting in the old fashion, close by the fire, Phebe on a low stool, leaning on Nanna's knee. "Why, with something of a calm, quiet dignity," looking up with a smile. "Do you think that quite fits in with the idea of rejoicing ever more?" "Hardly." "Or with, that 'your joy may be full'?" "No. But, Nanna, dear, I don't want you to ask me questions. I want to know what you think yourself. And I want you to remember that mine is a sort of special case, that might not come under general rules." "Excuse me, I don't think yours is a special case; there's many women with sorer troubles than yours. Besides, if no one was joyful except those who had no burdens, I wonder who'd be joyful! Not many, if any, for burdens come to everybody." Phebe was silent, for we all, somehow or other, cling to the idea our burden is a specially heavy one. Then Nanna went on: "You want me to say what I think. Well, you must not scold if you don't like what I am going to say, seeing you would have it; but I've been thinking instead of you being too frisky, you're not joyful enough. You've got five young folks immediately under your control, not to speak of others, and for their sakes--if no other reason--you've got to be joyful. And then there's another reason--you profess to be a Christian, and they're shams and nothing else who don't go in for delight-work--delighting themselves in God. The idea that your trouble should be a sort of black veil to you is ridiculous. If you let your trouble shadow your life it's as good as saying God is not able to take care of you, and if you let it hinder you in your life it gives the victory to Satan, and seems to say trouble has more power over you than God's peace. No, our dear Heavenly Father knows what it is to be merry, and He expects His children to be merry too. So mind you are." "You dear, sunny preacher," said Phebe, reaching up and kissing her. "Ah, I do wish folks would go in for more joy. I do believe we could do with joy-missions and joy-missionaries." "You are one already." Again there was silence, and then Phebe said: "Of course, it's not as though I had no hope at all. Ralph may come back; sometimes I think that loneliness will waken up his love again, for they say love never dies." "No love dies," replied Nanna, "but it changes. There are a good many sorts of love. But even, dearie, if that hope never comes about, you've got God and Jack to hope in. Now, I may ask a question, mayn't I?" "You know you may, you old darling Nanna." "Are you going in for that 'calm, quiet dignity' affair, or are you going to be the Lord's happy-hearted Phebe?" "The latter, God helping me," in a quiet whisper. The next evening there was another conference, but this time it was a conference of three, Jim Coates having come to report progress. There was now a little band of four Christians among the navvies. They had held two meetings, at which a chapter had been read, and two had prayed. Their mates had not yet learnt the secret of these gatherings; lively times were expected when they did. Then Jim went on to say how he and Dick had visited the camp on Sunday and found a dreadful state of matters. "Talk o' heathen folks, they're not in it, not a bit of it, and never anybody comes along to say a word to 'em; not even to give 'em a tract. And you should hear 'em talk about religious folks, it 'ud fair make your hair stand on end, that it would. I've been thinking, Mrs. Waring----" and then poor Jim came to a standstill, and sat nervously twirling his hat in his hands. "I've been thinking," he started again, and again there came a pause. "You needn't be afraid of us, Mr. Coates," said Nanna, "we're only two poor lone women that a mouse would scare out of our wits." "I don't know about that," said Jim, with a laugh. The bit of fun set him quite at his ease. "I've been thinking that if only we could get the use of a shed we might hold a meeting there on Sundays." "I'm sure my friend the ganger would arrange that all right for you," put in Phebe. "Yes, I think he would," replied Jim; "it wasn't on that point I wasn't sure, but on something else." "And what is that?" inquired Phebe, feeling quite curious as to what could be making Jim shy. "Well, it's this. I've been thinking if only you'd come and talk to the men as you've talked to me, it might be the making of some of 'em." "That is impossible!" said Phebe, rising up from her chair in her agitation, "impossible." The star was forgotten. Nanna was darning some towels. As Phebe uttered the last word, she let the work drop and looked up, then instantly picked it up again and went on, without uttering a word. Phebe instinctively knew Nanna did not agree with her, and just a little feeling of resentment took possession of her. Nanna ought to have sympathised with her, and protected her from such an overwhelming request. "I'm sorry," said Jim; "p'raps you'll think better of it a little later on. I can't tell you how sorry I am." "I cannot help it. I am altogether unequal and unfitted for such a work. But that does not say I will not help you in some other way, for I do admire your earnestness so much. I will do my very best to find some one who would undertake it." "Well, that certainly is the next best thing," said Jim, feeling considerably relieved, and with that understanding they parted. Nanna still went on with her darning. "You do not think I have done right, Nanna?" "No, I do not." "But it would not be possible for me to do such a thing." "God has opened a door for you, and you have put out your hand to close it." "Don't say that. You cannot be sure the door was meant for me; perhaps it is that I am to find some one; that is to be my share of the work." "Child, I have more faith in you than that, and I do not think that is the way God works." It struck Phebe just then how unfair she had been to Nanna in her thoughts; instead of feeling aggrieved she ought to have felt flattered that her old friend had such confidence in her abilities. It would not do to make any confession, but she put her arms round Nanna's neck and kissed her as though to atone for the wrong she had done. "Ah, dearie, you've stood to-night, I'm thinking," Nanna continued, "where Moses stood and where Jeremiah stood, and you've made the same excuses they did." Just then Phebe caught sight of the star. Did she hear over again the old command, "On whatsoever errand I shall send thee, thou shalt go"? If she did, she certainly made no answer. CHAPTER XVI THE CALL OF DEBORAH It was a long time that night before Phebe got to sleep. She had even found it difficult to pray; this she tried to attribute to the unrest Nanna had caused her. Over and over again did she return to Jim's request, and each time seemed to find a fresh obstacle; the distance was surely one great obstacle. She tried her level best to rest on the firm conviction the work was not hers, and then to consider how she was to make good her promise to find some one who _would_ feel called to do it. Would it be any good to appeal to the church? She shrank from that, remembering her late experience. What could she do! Did God intend to convince her the call was hers by making it impossible for her to find a substitute? All at once she remembered a committee had recently been formed in the town consisting of representatives from various bodies, to attend to certain social and religious wants of the district--the very thing needed! The first thing she would do when morning light appeared, would be to write to that committee, and with that restful thought she fell asleep. The letter was written and posted directly after breakfast, but not a word to Nanna did she say about it. What a delight it would be when she could all at once announce the fact that this important committee had received her suggestion with grateful thanks and were commencing work at once! This said committee happened to meet on the following day. Stephen Collins was a member of it. Mr. Bell, Bessie's superintendent, was the honorary secretary. Phebe's letter was the first to be read when the item "Correspondence" on the agenda was reached. In a very pompous voice the letter was read aloud. It had taken the writer more than half-an-hour to frame, but it did not take many seconds to read. This is a copy of it: "DEAR SIRS, "My attention has lately been drawn to the sad state of matters among the men working at the railway-works at ----, especially on Sundays. I believe the use of a shed could be obtained if workers could be found to conduct a service there. I need hardly say that for such men it would need to be a bright one, and conducted on as fresh lines as possible. It is four miles from Hadley, not too far for a strong man to walk. If you would take up this work, I am sure it would be fulfilling the object for which you were called together, and would bring honour to God. It seems certainly very discreditable to the Christians of this town that no hand has yet been stretched out to help these men. Will you not retrieve our good name? If I can be of any assistance or give any suggestions, I shall only be too happy to do so. "Yours, in Christian service, "PHEBE WARING." "There are your marching orders, gentlemen, and a captain ready provided for you," said the honorary secretary sarcastically. "I do not think that letter calls for any such remark," said Stephen Collins. He was rather aghast at Mr. Bell's words, knowing nothing of the stone Bessie had thrown into the waters. Mr. Bell gave him a very fixed stare, causing Stephen Collins' face to grow very red. "I think it is a splendid piece of work she points out, and one that we should in no wise pass by." "I think we have quite enough work upon our hands already," remarked the chairman. "Excuse me, sir," said Stephen, "I thought our duty was first to ascertain how much needed to be done, and then to confer how best it is to be accomplished. We are not here to do so much and no more." "No one said we were," was the testy answer. "It's a fine state of matters," remarked one member who always acted as echo to the secretary, "if we are to be told our duty by a woman." "And by such a woman," remarked the secretary. "What do you mean, sir?" demanded Stephen. "Oh, I forgot she was a special friend of yours; I am very sorry if I offend"--this more blandly--"but I mean this: a woman whose husband was obliged to leave her, even forfeiting thereby a profitable business, and who is seen standing talking at the door of a low public-house, is not the kind of woman to do the Deborah act for us. That's what I mean," bringing his hand forcibly down upon the table. "Indeed, I know it for a fact that she was refused admittance as teacher to a certain Sunday School in the town, where she had offered her services." "That is a libel upon a good Christian woman," protested Stephen. "Gentlemen, I think we had better pass on to the next business," said the chairman. "No, sir," said Stephen, restraining himself with great effort, "I am about to move a resolution, and it is that an answer be sent to Mrs. Waring, thanking her for drawing our attention to this call for service, and assuring her it shall at once be considered how it can be met." This was seconded by a special friend Stephen happened to have sitting next to him. "And I beg to move an amendment, Mr. Chairman," said the echo; "it is that a reply be sent to Mrs. Waring to this effect:" and then he read a letter which all knew Mr. Bell had previously written and passed on to him. "'DEAR MADAM, "'Your esteemed communication to hand. It is strange, whoever your informant was, that we were not the first to be put in possession of the facts. We are obliged to you for your kind offer, but it is not work at all suitable for women, and indeed the workers would have to be very carefully chosen. At present we have sufficient work in Hadley to occupy us. Perhaps at some future time, when our committee is enlarged, we may be able to take in both Hadley and district. We are, madam, yours faithfully, on behalf of the committee, etc., etc.'" The amendment was carried with only three dissentients out of fifteen. One of the members remarked that no doubt the application would have met with a different reception if it had come from some other quarter. "Mark my words, gentlemen," said Mr. Bell, "Mrs. Waring will commence the work herself. What she wanted was to be able to do so under our auspices." "And now," said the echo, with a drawl, "she will put it about that she was obliged to do so because those dreadful men were too lazy and indifferent. Trust a woman to make her side right." Stephen said nothing; he prayed to be quiet, and the prayer was answered. Love urged him to vindicate the honour of this defenceless woman, but wisdom said, "If you love her, you will be silent." All this part of the committee's business was duly retailed afterwards by Mr. Bell to Mrs. and Miss Bell. From that time, although Phebe never knew the reason why exactly, she lost four good weekly customers. How many more these influenced could not be reckoned, and in addition to this several people who had been in the habit of saying "Good-day" to her as she met them in the street, now passed her by with the coolest of nods. The circle in the waters was spreading. When the committee's letter was received Phebe was more than disappointed; it was like a stab to the heart. For a little while the keen pain was followed by a dazed feeling. It was some time before she recovered sufficiently to fully understand the letter; then two conclusions were arrived at: the first was the committee had no sympathy with woman's work (it was entirely composed of men, although more than half the work they had under consideration had to do with women and children), and the other was that they had the same prejudice against her that Bessie's superintendent had. Then came three anxious questions. Should she show the letter to Nanna? Having failed to find a substitute, had she now to consider the call a personal one? How far was she justified in allowing men's prejudices to hinder her? The first was soon answered. It would be a poor return for all Nanna's love to keep this fresh trouble from her; besides, Nanna would be sure to supply answers quickly to the other questions. "But shall I be ready to accept her answers?" Phebe asked herself. "I'll wait and see; I am sure about nothing that concerns myself just now." That evening, at their usual time of confidences, and in their usual attitude, Phebe handed the letter to Nanna, giving no word of explanation. Nanna got her glasses, and began at once to read. It took her a minute or so to grasp whom the letter was from, and she turned more than once to the heading of the paper. "My poor child! You dear Phebe! But never mind; let us put this cold-blooded letter on the fire. Think of it no more, and let us go back to where we were the night Coates came. See, shall I?" holding the letter over the fire. [Illustration: "'LET US PUT THIS COLD-BLOODED LETTER ON THE FIRE.'"] Phebe nodded, and they both watched it curl up into a black mass, and then sink down into the heart of the fire. "Shall we go back, Phebe, dear?" "What does that mean, Nanna?" "That you give God your answer." "That I am willing to do that work myself?" "Yes." "And do you really think I could?" looking up into the strong, brave face bending over her. "Yes, I do; it is God's call, and He is sure to give you all you need. Will you?" There was a pause, and then a faint "Yes," but Nanna knew, though faint, it was meant. And there and then, without altering their position, Nanna prayed: "I thank Thee, dear Father, for this honour Thou art putting on my dear Phebe. Perhaps it is in some way to make up for the dishonour some have put upon her. Through the delay in answering Thee she has brought fresh pain to herself, but forgive her and comfort her, dear Father. Open up the way for her in this piece of work, everything going so smoothly that thereby she may see Thy dear hand in all, and be assured Thou art with her. Give her, dear Lord, to-morrow, if Thou seest it will be good, some extra bit of comfort to make up for what has wounded her so sorely to-day. May she be another of Thy brave Deborahs. We are in Thy hands; never let us even wish to be anywhere else, and do let us each feel the touch of those blessed hands." The next day at dinner, to everybody's surprise, Mrs. Colston announced that in all probability Mrs. Waring was going next Sunday afternoon to hold a meeting among the navvies. "You don't say so!" exclaimed Bessie; "then I shall go, too. It wouldn't be the proper thing, you know, to let her go alone." "And couldn't you sing a bit?" asked Nanna. "Yes, I would if Mrs. Waring would like me to do so." Bessie had a very nice voice, but was never very confident of herself as a singer. Phebe only smiled an answer. She was still feeling too nervous to talk much about the plan. Later on, Reynolds said: "I have been thinking, Mrs. Waring, they are rather a rough sort you are going among; if you've no objection, I should like to accompany you." And a little later, when Jones heard all about these arrangements, he exclaimed: "I'm not going to be left out, I'm sure. I'm coming, too; and if you've no portable organ or anything of that kind lent you, I could bring my concertina." He had a beautiful English concertina, and was really a very good player. "Splendid!" exclaimed Bessie, "we'll all gather round 'The Little Missis,'--that we will!" "I am sure you are all too good to me," said Phebe, with tears in her eyes, for she realised that all these offers were made out of pure devotion towards her, no higher motive as yet being apparent. "There, dear heart!" exclaimed Nanna, "there's the answer straightway." "What answer?" forgetting for the moment to what she referred. "Don't you remember what I asked the Lord for last night? A special bit of comfort to come to you to-day, and there it is straightway in the offer of these loving young hearts!" It struck Reynolds as a rather new idea that anything he did should be described as an answer to prayer. If that were so, God must often be very near to him, influencing him. The thought made him feel very quiet. CHAPTER XVII THE GOING FORTH OF DEBORAH Nanna lost no time in sending Jim Coates a verbal message as to Mrs. Waring's promise. This was followed later on by a note from that individual herself, asking Jim to see her friend the ganger, and ascertain if the use of one of the sheds would be granted for a Bible meeting on Sunday afternoons. The very next evening Jim paid another visit to Mrs. Waring's establishment, this time to give report number two. He little thought the night he came with some of his drinking companions to have a look at the woman whose religion "cost her summat," that he would ever be a welcome guest in her parlour, or even wish to be. Jim had already enlisted the sympathies of his three Christian mates in his scheme. Dick was especially taken up with it, and the two had lost no time in making all the arrangements they could. The ganger had done all in his power to help, but had not hesitated in uttering most doleful prophecies. "She's a little brick, that she is; but they'll either send her to Coventry or Bedlam." Jim repeated all the ganger had said, feeling it only right that Mrs. Waring should know the risks she was running. But Phebe only laughed, quietly remarking: "We shall have more on our side than those that are against us." Jim wondered very much at her reckoning up, but said nothing. He had not learnt yet to include the angels in his calculations. The whole company joined in discussing the plans--the two young men, Bessie and Nanna. "I don't see how you are going to walk those four miles," said Bessie; "it is that which troubles me, for you are not a good walker at any time." "I did think of that myself," said Phebe, "but if it is right for me to go God will give me the strength." "Hear, hear," said Nanna, clapping her rough little hands; "that's what I call the right note." "You stop a bit," said Jim mysteriously. "Dick and me have thought about that; you wait and you'll see." Then he went on to describe how they were going to fit the shed up and erect temporary seats. "But Dick and me want to know, Mrs. Waring, if it was a fine day, if you'd be willing to have the meeting out of doors? More of the men would listen if you would. Dick says if you sat with your back to the shed it would be a sounding-board for you, like as they have in churches." "That would be a good deal better than a stuffy old shed," put in Bessie, to which opinion Phebe also agreed. Punctually at a quarter to two on the next Sunday afternoon the little party was ready to start on its expedition. Nanna whispered to Phebe: "'Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.'" Nanna, with little Jack in her arms, and Janie by her side, stood at the street-door to wave their farewells. Prompted by Nanna, Jack screamed out: "Bye-bye, mummy; come back happy." Jim Coates, all radiant in a new black-and-white check suit, and hair well oiled, met them at the bottom of the street to act as conductor. "I say, Mr. Coates," exclaimed Bessie, "where's that carriage and pair of greys you promised Mrs. Waring? I wonder you are so forgetful." "You wait a while, miss, and you'll see I'm not so forgetful as you think," with a comically solemn look on his face. "Did you ever see such a swell--a real Beau Brummel, if you like!" whispered Bessie to Phebe. "He looks like 'a peacock with a wooden leg,' if you like. But he's 'a dear' for all that." When they had got less than half-way, lo! there, in the centre of the road, stood Dick, holding a tricycle. "There!" exclaimed Jim, with a triumphant smile, "there's the carriage and here's the greys," pointing to himself and Dick. A Bible was strapped on the handle-bar, on which also was hung a large motto-card, bearing the words "God is Love." "I thought," explained Jim, "these 'ud show as how you weren't riding for pleasure on Sunday." "You are quite right," said Phebe, feeling deeply touched by this exhibition, not only of thoughtful love, but of loyalty to God, "but I have never learnt to ride!" "Oh, that don't matter, ma'am," said Dick, coming to the help of his mate. "Jim an' me's a-going' to push you--at least one of us is, but we hasn't fought it out yet which is a-going to do it." These men were real heroes--truer than any who have ever trod a battlefield: they knew right well the pushing of that machine meant months of ill-natured chaff and persecution. As they neared the end of their journey, one of the men, who had been on the look-out for them, quickly took the word to the camp: "Gentleman Dick and Red Ribbon and their swells are coming along. Come on, I say, and let's have a fine old spree!" Quite a little crowd gathered close by the shed to witness the arrival. Jim and Dick were greeted with some very rude gibes, but the other members of the party escaped any personal remarks. With the same quickness and tact Phebe had shown in the management of her business, she set about this new work. Taking their seats in front of the shed, Phebe and Bessie began to sing, Reynolds and Jones standing close by, while Dick and Jim stood on each side as a kind of defence. The concertina was a great help, and when Bessie sang alone it formed a nice soft accompaniment. The men were quite taken off their guard, and thoroughly enjoyed it. "Give us some more, missis," they called out more than once. A little later on Phebe said: "If you don't mind, friends, sitting down on the grass, I'll tell you a story while my friend has a rest," and a good number of them did so. They hadn't the slightest idea, some of them, that they were attending "a meeting." First, with a story from her own girlhood, and then one told in her own words, from the life of Jesus, she got their closest attention. When one at the close called out, "How much are you paid for this, missis?" more than one tuft of grass was thrown at him, with several unparliamentary bits of advice as to what he was to do with his mouth. After more singing they asked her to talk to them again, and she did so, this time pressing home one or two truths, and then she prayed. Many of the men had never heard a prayer since they prayed at their mother's knee. Not many eyes were closed, but a wonderful silence fell upon that group of rough fellows as they listened to that "little woman" talking to God. "Will you come again, missis?" asked one. "Yes, I will, if you will let me. And please tell your wives, those of you who have them living here--will you?--how much I should like to see them, too. If it rains we should have to go into the shed--would you mind that?" "No, why should we?" they answered. "Not if the singing girl comes too." The four visitors went into the shed before starting home, just to see what it was like, and there a surprise met them. On a stool stood four cups and saucers, a jug of milk, a packet of sugar, and some biscuits. Presently Dick came in, carrying a teapot. This was all his own particular bit of work. He had made a fire at the back of the shed and boiled his kettle there, giving a boy a penny to stand guard over it. The journey home was accomplished in the same manner as the outward had been, and all four had to tell Nanna that they had really had a very enjoyable time. The most enjoyable part to Phebe had been a talk she had with a young fellow who had walked part of the way back with them. "I was the only useless one there, Mrs. Colston," said Reynolds. "My manly protecting strength was not required at all." Just like a woman with a dear old motherly heart, Mrs. Colston had ready for them a specially nice tea. "Is you tum home happy, mummy?" asked dear little Jack, as he gave his mother some welcome hugs. "Yes, darling, very happy." "Why is you vevy happy, mummy?" "Because, darling, I've tried to be obedient." But the thought of why his mother had to be obedient was too perplexing for him, so he turned to the easier task of counting the gooseberries in his little pie. Just before entering the town the little party had been met by Stephen Collins, who again passed by with a bow and a smile. But no smile was in his heart. "Others can stand by her and help her, but I must do nothing--not even defend her as she ought to be defended. God help me!" The following Sunday afternoon the same programme was carried out, with just a few additions. A few women were present, some of the men learnt a chorus; two women forcibly took the tea arrangements out of Dick's hands, the remark being, "What's a great yardstick like you know about making tea!" and instead of one man accompanying the little party on its way homewards there were four. The result of all this was that Bessie informed Nanna that "things were humming more than ever." If the men had been asked to attend a service there would have been nothing short of a mutiny; as it was they had done so unawares, and got accustomed to it before awaking to the fact. When they did a few rebelled, but the majority submitted to fate. After that second Sunday the feeling of extreme nervousness which had at first taken possession of Phebe passed away. She was able now to look upon the work as really hers, given by God, and began to study it in that light. It was imperative that she should look ahead. The railway-works would continue quite another twelve months. It was all very well to hold the meetings out-of-doors during the fine weather, but what about the winter-time! Would the men be really willing to come into the shed, and if even they were willing to endure the discomfort, what about heating and lighting arrangements? What was really needed, she told herself, was an iron room, which the men could use as a club-room during the week. How much would such a room cost? Advertisements were scanned. Yes, a second-hand one could be obtained, with all necessary fittings, for a hundred pounds. Could she afford to spend that amount just then? Would it be a wise expenditure? Just then she was about to open a branch business in which Jones was to be put as manager, and from which it was hoped to still further enlarge the country trade. This, of course, meant a considerable strain upon the exchequer, and it would only be with difficulty, in spite of her success, that a hundred pounds could be spared. "Well," she said to herself, "I must just leave the matter for a while, and wait and watch for the pointing Finger." On that first Sunday afternoon, unknown to Phebe and her little company, only excepting Dick, the ganger had been an attentive listener, standing at the back of the shed, close by Dick's fire, and with him, equally attentive, was one of the contractors, a gentlemanly-looking man. It was the ganger who had told the contractor of the meeting, and he was there partly out of curiosity and partly out of fear lest there might be some rather rough "horse-play." He had taken a house in the neighbourhood for two years, furnishing it with every comfort. He was by no means a Christian, having for the last few years been given over body and soul to just two things--money-making and pleasure. Lunch over, it suddenly occurred to him he might as well go to the works as sit by the fire reading a newspaper. Maybe there was a little hope somewhere in his heart that he might get a spice of enjoyment out of the fun going on. But in all that gathering there was no more attentive listener than Hugh Black, the contractor. He stayed till the little party started on its homeward journey, and then stood where he could watch them. "I say, Greaves," turning to the ganger, "yonder little woman is plucky, if you like. There's not many who would have won that lot of fellows as she has done this afternoon. And didn't she hold them! I never heard or saw anything like it in my life before. What brought her here, do you suppose?" Greaves muttered something about not knowing. "There's no money in it, that's certain; and it cannot be for popularity among her set, for I should think a good many folks would blame her for it." "I know what my missis would say there was in it," the ganger plucked up courage enough to say. "And what's that?" still with eyes fixed on the tricycle, held on either side the handle-bar by Dick and the fresh addition to the party. "She'd say as how it was to please God." "H'm." Then turning sharply round to the ganger, he exclaimed, "I say, Greaves; do you profess to be religious?" The ganger grew very red. "Not like she is," pointing towards Phebe. "I thought not. If you had, it would have come out before now. Well, I shall not soon forget that little woman." * * * * * As an earthly flower grows towards perfection its progress is of no help whatever to any other blossom. Even its fragrance, scattered so lavishly on the air, adds nothing to the perfume of another. Flowers of the Kingdom know nothing of this isolation--can know nothing. The growth of each in grace aids the growth of others. CHAPTER XVIII HER NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR Late one night Bessie took her favourite low seat close by the fire, and closer still to Phebe, occupying the same position Phebe did in her confidences with Nanna. "What's the matter, Bessie, dear?" Phebe was very quick to note any change in Bessie's manner, and try as she might Bessie never could hide her feelings. "I don't know how it is," said Bessie, with a sigh, "but try as I may I can't get on with mother," and then there came something like a sob. "Is there any fresh trouble?" "Yesterday was mother's birthday," went on Bessie, in a low voice, "so I thought I would give her a little present; it's ever so long since I've done so. I bought a brooch--I could not afford a gold one--and when I gave it her--she said she never wore sham jewellery----" Bessie's voice was too choked to go on any further. "Poor old girl!" said Phebe tenderly, taking hold of her hand; "never mind, you must keep on trying; love-work often goes slowly at first. You'll see, she will wear that brooch on Sunday, mark my words." "But that was not all she said," went on Bessie; "she said I was getting far too much of a saint for her; she wondered I had anything to do with such a wicked woman as she was,--but she believed it was only some clever trick I was up to,--mother even said I could act a sham to you, but she was not so easily gulled." "Something had surely been worrying her." "No, I don't suppose so, that's just mother. What is the good of me trying! I feel as if I'd never go in home again, that I do!" "Do you think that would be acting a daughter's part?" "No,"--very faintly. "Then your course is very clear, dearie." "Yes," with a deep sigh. "Don't despair, Bessie, darling," said Phebe, stooping down and kissing the girl's brow. "It's a difficult piece of work you have to do, but there'll be all the more joy when it is completed." There was a long silence between them, and the subject was not referred to again that evening. But Phebe sat long after Bessie had retired for the night thinking things over. The thought uppermost in her mind was this: "I plead for visitors to go to zenanas in India, but what is my duty to Mrs. Marchant? All the years she has been my neighbour I have never even prayed for her, or tried to pass on to her any helpful message! Fancy that! And I call myself a Christian!" When Nanna came into the room to bid her good-night, she said: "I wonder what her majesty is turning over so seriously in her mind!" "Her majesty's subject," with special emphasis on the last word, "is thinking sadly of a neglected duty." "Well!" exclaimed Nanna, laughing, "if the late lamented Mrs. Caudle had an eye for a bloater, my Phebe certainly has an eye for duties!" "But, Nanna, when I tell you what it is, you will not laugh." "Yes, I shall. I belong to the Guild of Gladness, and there's something to be glad about in everything,--if you look for it. If even this duty is a very solemn one, I am glad you have at last thought of it." "I know I can never get you in a corner." And then she told Nanna her thoughts. "You are quite right," was Nanna's reply, "we have both been to blame; we have thought so much of winning Bessie, we have lost sight of the mother." "I shall make 'a dash for it,' as Bessie says, to-morrow. And trust for guidance, at the moment as to the right thing to say." So the very next afternoon she went in to see her neighbour, and found her, of course, as busy--not as a bee, but, rather, as a cloud of dust. "I wish I had your easy life, Mrs. Waring! I am never done," she exclaimed, sinking down into a chair with a load of freshly mangled towels in her arms. "And as for troubles,--it seems as if my life was made up of them." "But I think you will acknowledge that I have had a few troubles lately, Mrs. Marchant, don't you think so?" "Yes; but then troubles slip off some people like rain off a cabbage-leaf, but it soaks into me like it does into a sponge. I can't shake it off nohow. I don't know how it is, I'm sure," and she put her bundle down on her lap and began to smooth the towels with her hands. "You are very highly strung," began Phebe. "Yes, I know that, but you're about the first one that has said so; everybody seems to think I ought to be made of cast-iron. I'm sure the trouble that Bessie of mine's been to me nobody knows. And then to think she can be such an angel to you while to her own mother she can never be anything but a worry!--it's exasperating! It makes me wild when I think of it." "I am sorry you feel like that. I know Bessie loves you dearly, and she is gaining so much more control that I thought you would have noticed a real improvement in her. Of course I know she is rather thoughtless--but there, you are proud of her for all that, and she is a girl any mother might be proud of!" "I don't know about that," but a little pleasanter look came on to her face which seemed to contradict her words. "But I did not come in to talk about Bessie," went on Phebe, "I came in to speak to you about yourself. I was saying to Nanna last night I did not think I had acted the neighbour's part to you; I have seldom ever been in even to ask how you were." "I am sure it is very kind of you," put in Mrs. Marchant, and she really meant it. We all like to be made of some importance. "I think housewives need all the cheer and sunshine they can get,"--Phebe suddenly paused, for Phill just at that moment came into the room, and Phebe then noticed, what she had not done before, that dinner for one was laid at the end of the table. Evidently Phill had come in with the intention of sitting down there; if so, it was "good-bye" to all private talk with his mother. After a few scattered remarks Phebe departed. "You have not been long," remarked Nanna; "what success have you had?" "Not any," answered Phebe; "just as I was drawing near to say something helpful Phill came in, and then my opportunity had gone. His arrival on the scene quite spoilt my little plan." But had it? If Phebe had known a little more of the Unseen Hand which shapes our lives, she would not have been quite so sure her little plan was spoilt. The sight of Mrs. Waring brought to Phill Marchant's mind a little train of thought he had been cogitating over lately, and as soon as she left he remarked to his mother: "Mrs. Waring has got something you haven't got, mother." "What's that?" snapped the mother. "I'm as well off as she is any day. She's got no jewellery to speak of, and goodness knows, her house is poor enough!" "Oh, I don't mean that sort of thing." "Well, what do you mean?" "She never seems to get into flusters like you do, she seems to have something that steadies her, somehow; I hardly know how to put it." Phill saw from the look on his mother's face he was getting on to dangerous ground, and that made it all the more difficult to clothe his thoughts in words. "Flusters, indeed! She'd be flustered right enough if she had the worries I have." "I should think she has more to worry her than you have," Phill ventured to remark. "That shows all you know about it! Why, she came in this afternoon to try and cheer me up a bit--she as good as said so just before you came in." "Yes, that's just it!" put in Phill eagerly, "she's got the knack of brightening things up for folks as well as for herself. She makes a fellow feel cheery like to be with her." "You'd better go and live with her then, like your sister's done. It's a fine thing when children take to lecturing their mother! It would be far more becoming of you to try to lessen your mother's worries than to make out she is so much worse than her neighbours!" After that Phill ate his dinner in silence, and took his departure as quickly as possible. But the thought of the difference between his mother and Mrs. Waring had taken still deeper root in his mind. The next time he met Bessie he was specially gracious to her. Bessie did not know what to make of it. "It is wretchedly dull at home now you're away, Bess. I do wish you would come back!" "Not if I know it!" answered that young lady. "I know when I'm well off. Besides, I thought you would get on like the steam out of Watts' kettle with me away!" "Yes, that's just it, I'm always in hot water," he replied in a doleful voice. "Well, what if you are? Isn't hot water better than black beetles? Hot water is a splendid thing to drink, but it would give you the creeps to have to eat beetles! Ugh!" "What a stupid you are, Bess, and just when a fellow wants to be serious!" Bessie had it on her lips to say, "Wonders will never cease!"--she had already raised her hands in a tragic style, but something in Phill's manner checked her. "What was it you wanted to say, Phill?" she asked quite kindly, suddenly dropping her hands. The lad looked up at her, struck with the change in her voice, and was silent for a moment or so. "Tell me, Bessie, what it is that makes Mrs. Waring so different to mother?" The sentence was quite shot out. "How did you find out there was any difference?" "Find out? It don't take long to find that out! Mrs. Waring don't worry and fluster like mother does, and yet I should think she's got more to worry about." "You're right there." "Well, what is the difference? I can hear you all laughing like anything sometimes." Bessie knew well enough what the difference was, but did not like to put it into words. "I wish I could come into Mrs. Waring's of an evening!" went on Phill. "Well, do," assented Bessie eagerly, "and then you can find out for yourself what the difference is. I am sure Mrs. Waring will be pleased for you to come. I'll ask her." Bessie was quite relieved by this way of avoiding the explanation of "the difference." Thus it came to pass that another member was added to "Love's Hospital." Many a bright, merry hour did the lad spend there. "Have you found it out?" Bessie ventured to ask him after a while. "Of course I have, and you are pretty dense if _you_ haven't! Why, a mole could see it!" "Well, what is it?" "I believe you know as well as I do." "Of course I do; I haven't lived with her all these months for nothing." "Then you tell me," said Phill. "It is that God counts for something in Mrs. Waring's life," was the girl's straight answer. "H'm," said Phill, "I suppose that's it." "Yes," said Bessie, now quite brave once she had started, "and what she can't do, she leaves to Him, and knows it will be all right. You see, when once you get to that point, there's no need of flusters and worries." The boy did not answer, but turned thoughtfully away. Mrs. Marchant was not able to forget Phill's words; even when her resentment had worn off a little, they were there with haunting power. "I'd give a good deal to know what it is she has that I haven't!" she kept saying to herself, "for, oh dear, life at times seems unbearable! It can't be her religion exactly, for lots of religious people are just as worried as I am. What can it be, I wonder! I have a good mind to ask her straight out the next time I see her." She had not long to wait, for Phebe was on the look-out for another opportunity of getting close to her neighbour, and Mrs. Marchant, true to her resolution, put the question to her. Phebe's heart bounded with joy. How splendidly her way was being opened up! when,--was it of the Evil One, or was it of God?--that just at that moment Mr. Marchant should come into the room! There was no help for it but to again beat a retreat, but before doing so, she said: "Do come in some afternoon and have a cup of tea with me. You have never been in yet." "No, I have no time for visiting," was the abrupt answer. But when she got to the door with her visitor, she added, "Yes, I'll come." When Phebe reported progress to Nanna, that dear old body exclaimed: "Well, that's something to be thankful for! When a woman's got out of conceit with herself, and has an idea she'd like to be different to what she is, she is certainly on her way to Joseph's garden!" "Joseph's garden!" exclaimed Phebe; "you funny, old dear, what is that?" "Why, don't you know? Mary while at Bethany only listened to the Lord's message, and gave Him something; but when she got to Joseph's garden, she said, 'Master!' "But she had to go by the cross to get there!" CHAPTER XIX THE NEW CLUB-ROOM Autumn was drawing near, and still the pointing Finger had not been recognised. A few of the meetings had been held in the shed, and, although most of the men had been loyal to their promise, they had been anything but comfortable times. Nanna thought the matter had not been made a subject of united prayer enough. So at morning prayer, which Phebe had lately established, it was mentioned, and she also spoke of it to some of the men, asking them to pray about it too. Hugh Black had attended most of the meetings, taking up the same place behind the shed. The men had got to know of this, but said nothing, and once Phebe had caught sight of him herself. His presence brought back a little of the old nervousness, but when she told Nanna, that old Amazon said: "Toots, child, what difference should an extra quality in cloth make to you! I should say he needs your help as much as anybody." To Phebe's great astonishment he walked into the shop one morning. "Can I have a word with you alone, Mrs. Waring?" he asked. "Most certainly," and the two entered the parlour. Phebe's heart was going pit-a-pat at a very unusual rate. Could it be he had come to put any difficulties in the way--to make any complaints! How is it in any moment of excitement we are sure to jump to the most doleful conjectures? "Pray be seated, Mr. Black," she managed to say, in a tolerably steady voice. "Thank you. I have often wanted to come to see you, Mrs. Waring, and this morning I thought I'd just make a rush for it. Perhaps you wouldn't believe it, but I felt quite nervous at the thought of coming." "That is very strange; I am sure you are given to inspire more terror than I am. To tell you the truth I felt nervous when I saw you come in," and then they both laughed. There is nothing like a laugh for putting people at their ease. "Well, Mrs. Waring, I'd better go straight to the point at once. I like what you say to those men--indeed, I take most of it to myself, too. But that's not what I wanted to say. What are you going to do when the bad weather comes on?" "Wear a macintosh," was the simple answer. How could she be so dense! Surely here was the pointing Finger, yet she did not recognise it. "Yes, yes; but that's not it. Where are you going to hold the meetings?" Phebe grasped the arms of her chair to steady herself. She had caught sight of the Finger now. She lifted her eyes to the star--God was near! Then, with her usual simple straightforwardness, she told him all that had been in her mind and how she had been waiting for guidance to know if it was right to spend the hundred pounds. "I can afford to do so now," she added, "much better than I could at the beginning of the summer." "It would not be right to let you do it. I came here with the determination to offer you fifty pounds, if that would help you in any way, but I'll make it a hundred." "Sir!" gasped Phebe, her breath fairly taken away. "Yes, it's no more than I ought to do. I'm making a profit out of the men, and ought to do it; besides, I want to help you, too." "Mr. Black," she said earnestly, putting her hand on his arm, "I'll accept fifty pounds thankfully, but no more. I must do some of it myself. And do you know, you are here as God's servant! We have prayed so much about this, and God has sent you with the answer." "I'm not a religious man, Mrs. Waring. I don't want to sail under any false colours. I'm what you'd call 'a black sheep.'" "Perhaps so, but for all that you are doing some of God's work, and some day you'll do it for God's sake." "Do you think I shall?" and the man had quite a yearning look on his face. "Yes, I do." Then they talked of the best means of securing a second-hand iron building and the best place to put it. When they parted Hugh Black said: "Well, Mrs. Waring, if you will not accept more than the fifty for the building, I mean to help you in some other way." "So you shall, if God opens up the way." "Do you think that God wants me to do anything for Him?" "I am sure of it. The very fact that you were led to make that offer proves it. Do believe it, Mr. Black, for it will help you to get near to God." "I'll try." Then he shook hands with her, and, just as he was opening the door, turned round and said in a shaky voice: "Pray for me, Mrs. Waring, will you? I was not always what I am now." "I will, and God will answer." With another hearty shake of the hand he was gone. How the sun did shine that day! The sunbeams did not glance from the fifty sovereigns, but from this signal proof of God-partnership in the work. There is a little bit of the Thomas spirit in us all. We do so like to see! That day at dinner-time Phebe arranged that Bessie and Reynolds should be in at the same time. While Nanna was carving Phebe told her startling piece of news. Nanna put down her knife and fork, and, starting to her feet, exclaimed, clasping her hands: "Praise the Lord! it's worth more than fifty pounds to feel Him so near." "Glorious!" exclaimed Bessie; "let's sing the doxology." And they did so, Reynolds as heartily as anybody, and Janie coming to the door to join in, though she knew nothing of what the praise was specially for. "And another thing which is so fine," said Nanna, when they were quietly seated again, "is that all this proves God is working in that man's heart. We must all pray for him; we'll just pray him into the Kingdom." Reynolds wanted very much to ask if he was going to enter that way too. Nanna had certainly looked at him very significantly but said nothing. After dinner was over, Nanna whispered to Phebe: "Dear heart, wasn't it worth the pain that letter brought you to have all this?" "I should think so, a hundred times over." "We must not forget another time a shadow falls that God never lets Satan have the victory in the end. It only means a little waiting, a little enduring." The next Sunday afternoon Phebe startled the hearers by saying: "I want to correct a mistake which some of you have fallen into. You think I am not paid for my services here, but I am." "Whew!" went from more than one pair of lips. "I have had fifty pounds given me, and I have had other payments besides." "Share round, missis, and then we don't mind," said one voice. "Yes, I am going to share round, but perhaps not in the way you mean," and then she told them the whole of the story, of what her hopes had been, her difficulty, the watching for the Finger, and the gift of the fifty pounds. "Now," she exclaimed, joy lighting up her face, "who will say God is not watching over our little meeting?" "Hip, hip, hurrah!" shouted one of the men, which was quite equal, in his mind, to "Hallelujah!" The story had a splendid effect upon the men. The idea of a club-room all their own, of money being given for their special benefit, gave a decided impetus to the work, and the signal proof of God's near connection with them certainly led many a heart closer to God. "I say, missis," one man exclaimed, "let us have some share in the paying for this room, won't you? Gentleman Dick," turning towards that individual, "hand round yer hat for a collection. You lazy fellow, stir yourself, do." And before Phebe had time to say "Yes" or "No," twenty-one shillings were collected. "This must be spent in something extra," said she, when she had collected her thoughts together, "so I propose you appoint Mr. Dick your treasurer." To which they all agreed. It did not take long to secure the iron room, and before the autumn days had begun to show the touch of winter it was up, the floor was covered with linoleum, pictures were on the walls, and there were as many wooden arm-chairs as could be conveniently got in. Phebe's idea was that the room should be made as attractive as possible. The men's money was put to the chair fund. Arrangements were made for the room to be open every dinner-hour and every evening. Dick was appointed custodian, and one of the women paid to give it a good cleaning every Saturday. Dick thought he was quite equal to this latter duty, but Phebe was not quite so sure on that point. There were about fifty women in the camp, living in the long rows of little wooden houses specially built for them, just like married quarters in some military camps. Phebe wanted specially to get into touch with these women. In consulting with Mr. Black as to the best site for the room, Phebe happened to mention her ownership of the meadow on the other side of the line, wondering if that would be too far away. It was agreed that the room had better be as near the camp as possible, Mr. Black guaranteeing to be at the expense of its removal should it be found at any time necessary to do so, owing to any development of the railway work. The opening meeting was made a special one. Bessie had got a special solo, with a very taking chorus, and then some of the men gave little testimonies. To Phebe's great surprise and intense joy, after a little pause when she had asked if any one else would like to speak, Reynolds stepped forward. "Friends, I think it is high time I opened my mouth." His voice trembled very much when he first began, but gradually got steadier. "I've made up my mind to be a Christian. I gave myself to Jesus three weeks ago, and I made up my mind on the Sunday the room was opened to let this be known. It gave me a little courage to put it off a while. I was tempted this afternoon to put it off still longer, but I did not give in." ("Hear, hear!" said Dick, once the secret Christian himself.) "What I owe to my mistress here I can never tell you; she has made God so real to me." ("God bless her!" said Red Ribbon.) "That's all I have to say, as I am no speaker, but I thought I must let you know this." Emboldened by Reynolds' example three other men made a like confession, and then they all stood up and sang the doxology. "For," said Phebe, "if you cannot all praise God for yourselves you can for others." On the way home she grasped Reynolds firmly by the hand. "God bless you, Reynolds! This is a happy day. But always remember I am as much your debtor as you are mine. So, please, never praise me again. God only knows how much you have helped me, and what I owe to you. I should not be in the position I am to-day but for you." And what effect do you suppose that little speech had upon the young fellow? To make him proud and expect a bigger bonus than ever at Christmas? Not a bit of it; he was more than ever her willing slave. If masters knew the value of praise, there would be more "love-unions" than "trades-unions." Every dinner-hour in a small corner of Sunshine Hall--that was its formal name--a little group of men gathered together, either for prayer or to talk over any difficulties, and it was astonishing the knotty points they got hold of, and the difficult questions they afterwards propounded to their leader. In prayer they mostly spoke of her as "The Little Missis," "The Missis" being too cold and "Mrs. Waring" too formal. But, in spite of all this sunshine there were still deep shadows. Public opinion in Hadley passed very hard sentences on "The Little Missis," though fortunately she did not always hear them. "Unwomanly," "Forward," "Did not know her place," "Eager for popularity," "Fond of men's company," "Hand in glove with the world," "Knew how to advertise her business"--these were some of the comments. There was one good thing, however, about this state of matters--there was clearly no danger to be feared such as comes when all men speak well of you. How Satan must rejoice when he can get God's workers paralysed through the criticisms of Christians! CHAPTER XX A STRANGE KIND OF PREACHING The afternoon Mrs. Marchant came into "Love's Hospital," Bessie was very excited. Mrs. Marchant had previously sent word of her intended visit. "Are you pleased your mother is coming?" whispered Nanna to Bessie as they met on the stairs. "Of course,--but you might as well ask a magpie if it liked black and white feathers." "Well, don't act like a magpie, if you can help it, there's a dear," and Nanna patted the girl's cheek lovingly. Nanna saw to it that it was a specially grand tea, being anxious that their neighbour should realise they were desirous of doing her honour. To grace the occasion still further Nanna wore her Sunday gown and black silk apron; and Phebe, catching the contagion, put on a light coloured cashmere dress which Nanna had presented her with, having specially commissioned a traveller to buy it while on a visit to Paris. Bessie did not dare to do anything extra in the way of smartening herself up, except putting a red flower in her dress, for fear her mother should openly chide her for her extravagance. And that would be dreadful, if she did it before Reynolds--or--D.J.! "Do you think there is any chance that Mrs. Marchant will think we are trying to show off?" Phebe asked Nanna. "I should be so sorry if she did." "She will take it as a compliment, I am sure," replied Nanna. The fact was Phebe was not quite at home in her new dress, though she had a great liking for it, not only because it was Nanna's love-gift, but also because of its restful colour. She called it her "hope dress." It was a pale heliotrope colour, with silk flowers on it of the same shade, and to Phebe it seemed to speak of the hopefulness and gladness of the springtime. As a girl she had often gathered the wild crocuses in the meadows, and her dress was of the same hue; and the gladness of her girlhood days seemed to shine out at her from its folds. Though her dress was always of the simplest kind, she had a great liking for dashes of colour--not splashes. Nanna shared with her this love of colour, going in as she did for everything that increased true cheeriness. One of Phebe's favourite ideas was that there could not possibly be a "glum" mealtime if a red geranium in full blossom was on the table. Nanna presided at the tea-table; Phebe sat at the foot of the table, with Mrs. Marchant and Jack on her left, and Bessie and Reynolds on her right. Both Phebe and Nanna did their best to keep up a bright conversation. At first Bessie was very quiet, but when she did wake up all lost time was more than atoned for; indeed, Phebe had to give her several quiet touches under the table. When once Bessie started she always found it difficult to "slow up." Phebe could see that her mother was looking at her in a rather ominous manner, and feared there might be trouble. Reynolds happened to refer to some comical customer they had just had, and Bessie at once began a humorous description of the whole scene. "But, Bessie," said Phebe, "it is not kind, when you know the poor thing cannot help her singular ways." But it was too rich a bit of description for Bessie to let drop quickly, and she went on waving her arms in a dramatic manner. Just at the moment Phebe was taking a cup of tea from Mrs. Marchant, Bessie was exclaiming, "She perfectly waltzed up to Reynolds," when, lo! with a backward wave of her hand, she caused the cup with its contents to fall into Phebe's lap. [Illustration: "SHE CAUSED THE CUP, WITH ITS CONTENTS, TO FALL INTO PHEBE'S LAP."] In a moment there seemed a tempest in the room. Reynolds exclaimed, "Now you've done something!" Nanna screwed her lips up so tightly that only a little "Oh" came out. "Oh, mummy, your French dress!" cried out young Jack. Mrs. Marchant sprang to her feet and made a dash over the table as though she was going to box Bessie's ears. The table, however, being too broad she sank back into her chair, exclaiming: "There never, never was such a provoking girl, never! You may thank your stars, young madam, this did not happen in your own home!" Phebe was the only quiet one in the company. She had placed the empty cup-and-saucer on the table, and as she stood up, the tea streaming down the front of her dress on to the floor, she said, in a calm, low voice, "Pray, Mrs. Marchant, do not trouble about it, I can soon change my dress," but before moving away she bent down and kissed Bessie, who was sitting gazing fixedly at the havoc she had made. The kiss seemed to waken her, and she exclaimed, as the tears streamed down her face, "What shall I do? What shall I do?" "Do!" exclaimed Mrs. Marchant--"get some more sense into your head, that's what you should do, and drop all your wretched, nonsensical ways." When Phebe returned Nanna had wisely arranged that she and Mrs. Marchant should finish their tea alone. Mrs. Marchant's first words were: "Now I know that what our Phill said was true." "What was that, Mrs. Marchant?" "That you possess something I don't. If I had had a dress like that spoilt I should have gone into a towering passion, I know I should. But to see you taking it all so calmly, fairly staggered me. Tell me what it is that makes this difference between us?" Mrs. Marchant's voice was quite eager, and she looked beseechingly into Phebe's face. "Perhaps several things," said Phebe, after a moment's hesitation; "I have trained myself not to get into flurries if I can help it, for they never accomplish anything. Then I knew Bessie was grieved enough without me adding one word more. But the chief thing is--shall I tell you?--do you really want to know?" "Yes, I do, for I long to be like you." There was a catch in her voice that quite went to Phebe's heart. "My first thought was, Jesus is here, and He would not like to see me agitated over such a little thing." "Jesus!" "Yes,--Jesus." "Oh." There was a world of meaning in that one word. "I think the difference between us is this," said Phebe, taking Mrs. Marchant's bony hand and gently stroking it: "I have put my life entirely into God's hands, and knowing He rules over everything, I can well afford to take things restfully." "Then it is your religion that makes the difference?" "Yes, if you like to put it that way." "And would it make the same difference to me?" "Of course it would." "Well, I shall never forget the sight of your face when that tea went over. That sight was worth all the sermons I ever heard!" "Wouldn't Bessie be glad if she knew! I'm not a bit sorry she spilt the tea, now. It would be worth the spoiling of all my dresses if it makes you want--_Him!_"--the last word very softly. Her eyes were on the silver star, but the secret of the star was too sacred to speak of. "But," added Phebe, "you must not give me one bit of praise for keeping calm; I should have been as mad as anybody,--_but for Him_." "And do you think of Him as always with you?" "Sometimes I forget, and it is then that things go wrong." That evening Phebe found Bessie busily engaged in unpicking the skirt of the unfortunate dress. "I'll buy stuff to match it," exclaimed Bessie, "if I have to walk all the way to Paris!" "Well, my dear, you cannot do that, because of the English Channel, but I want you to thank God you spilt that tea." "Thank God I spilt that tea! What do you mean?" And then Phebe told her story. "Ah, it was not the tea, it was the blessed peace in your dear face that did it! It's just like your dear loving ways to want to give me a share in it! I tell you, mother is quite correct, I am the most exasperating girl that ever was! But"--and she looked up with a tender little smile--"I've caught a little bit of your secret to-day. As you stood up there with the tea all trickling down your dress, I fancied I saw Jesus just behind you! It was that which kept me from answering mother back." "That was just splendid, Bessie, I am proud of you!" "What, in spite of this!" holding up the stained breadth. "Yes, in spite of that and a dozen like it! What is that worth compared with my Bessie? And Nanna would say just the same." CHAPTER XXI PARTNERS! One December evening, after the opening of Sunshine Hall, Janie was telling little Jack wonderful stories about what people did at Christmas. "Nearly always when people go away for a long time, they come back at Christmas, and bring such lots of nice things with them." "My daddy's gone away," said the child, "mummy said so." "Yes, I know he has," said the slow-witted Janie. "Will he come back at Kiss-mus?" "Perhaps he will." "And will he bring Jacky nice things?" "Of course he will, when he comes." That expectation quite took root in the little brain, and when "Kiss-mus" morning came, his first words were "Has my daddy come? I want my daddy!" The mother was quite startled, and wondered what had given the child this idea. Janie explained it afterwards, when a considerable amount of brain-searching had been done. It took a wooden horse on wheels, a box of chocolate and a box of bricks to get the little fellow to dry his tears. The next Christmas, strange to say, there was the same expectation and the same disappointment, but with added sorrow. The child was older, and if it could appreciate good things more, also felt sorrow more. He had mingled with other children, whose fathers made much of them. "Perhaps daddy will come at Christmas," he would say to himself. Christmas morning came, but again no daddy. "Why doesn't daddy come?" he sobbed out on his mother's breast. "I don't know, darling." "Has he forgotten me?" he asked, turning up his tear-stained face to hers. "I do not know." The words had to be uttered. There was no way in which she could truthfully cover up the silence of years. To the sensitive child the words were like a cruel blow; after building upon the father's return to be told that father might have forgotten him was more than he could bear, and in his grief, to his little mind, the doubt became a certainty--his father had forgotten him! It was the child-soul's first knowledge of Gethsemane. The mother strained him passionately to her, showering both tears and kisses upon the little tear-stained face. "But mummy has not forgotten! Mummy never will forget!" she wailed over him. From that hour a new feeling took possession of little Jack. If his father had forgotten him, it was very likely the mother was also forgotten. Mummy must feel lonely too, but he would not forget her, and when he was a man he would work for her. He would be her champion and defender--not that he used these words to himself, they were rather too long for him, but the idea they expressed was in his brave, loyal little heart. Nanna often wondered at the quaint little ways in which he showed himself his mother's protector, but never knew the heart-sorrow which had given birth to them. The child's grief was an added weight to the mother's heart. She saw that her burden was no longer one which she had to bear alone, but that her child, her innocent, sunny-haired child, with the face of an angel, and brother to an angel, had to feel some of its weight also. * * * * * Away in Holland a gardener will patiently labour for even twenty years to bring one hyacinth to perfection. Its soil is often changed, and the hand, though moved by a heart which dearly loves the flower, does not hesitate to even use the knife to the sensitive root. With still greater patience bends the Great Gardener over the flowers of the Kingdom. And still there was no letter from Ralph. She had left off writing now, not knowing into whose hands her letters might fall. At last she ventured to write to Stephen Collins, asking if he thought there was anything more she could do. He at once replied that he was scanning several Australian papers every week, but had not come across any mention of Ralph, and that he could think of nothing further she could do. It did not seem to him to be at all necessary to seek police aid, though he did not say so in his note. Later on, he sent word that he had written to the proprietor of the hotel to which her letters had been addressed, and he had replied that for a long time six letters had been waiting for Mr. Waring, but a little while ago Mr. Waring had sent a messenger for them. Should that same messenger call again he would do his best to obtain Mr. Waring's address. This gave Phebe courage to write again, but after some months the hotel proprietor returned the letter, saying that nothing had been heard of Mr. Waring, but that if at any time he did receive news of him it should be forwarded instantly. After that all was a dark blank. Years passed, but not the faintest report of his doings was ever received. "Do you think he is dead, Nanna?" Phebe would often ask, but the old friend could only shake her head and say, "Dear heart, I do not know, but he's somewhere where the Lord knows all about him. We must rest on that." CHAPTER XXII LIGHT ON THE PATHWAY One Friday morning Mrs. Waring received a note from Mr. Hugh Black asking her to call, if possible, and see him at his house that morning, as he wished to consult her on important business. It was next to impossible for her to do so, as two travellers were expected, but, thinking the visit had to do with the hall or meeting, she sent Bessie in her place, and a note to Mr. Black, saying the bearer was her special friend with whom he could safely talk over any point, or trust with any number of messages. Reaching the house Bessie was shown into a conservatory where Mr. Black was writing some letters. He received her very courteously, and, as politely as he could do so, gave her to understand the business he wished to discuss with Mrs. Waring had nothing to do with the work among the men, but was quite private. He would, however, explain it all in a letter to Mrs. Waring, if Bessie would be kind enough to wait while he wrote it, and he would himself call on Mrs. Waring the next day. On a little table near by was some fruit and biscuits to which he asked her to help herself. But a fit of shyness seemed to have come over Miss Bessie, and though she looked wistfully at the tempting fruit, she only nibbled away at a biscuit while the letter was being written. It was an innocent-looking little missive Bessie carried home, but not nearly so unimportant as it looked. It did not contain exactly a bomb, but it certainly gave Phebe a shock. Both Nanna and Bessie noticed her excitement, but said nothing, as they were both quite sure they would hear all about it in due course. Mr. Black paid the promised visit, and remained talking a long time, but there was still the same kind of subdued excitement about Phebe when he had gone; indeed, the interview had even deepened it. At supper-time that day--Saturday--Bessie made a confession. There were some nice pears on the table, which Nanna informed the company were Bessie's gift. "Yes," said Bessie, "but I'd better tell you why I bought them. When I went to Mr. Black's yesterday he asked me to have some fruit. There was a tray with a nice white cloth on it and some plates, and on one plate a silver knife-and-fork and some parings. And on the tray, besides other things, a beautiful dish of pears, and another knife-and-fork. Oh, I did want one of those pears so badly; you can't tell how much I wanted one!" "Well, bless me," said Nanna, "why didn't you take one, then! Didn't he ask you to take one?" "You so often ask me to bless you, and I really haven't any blessings to spare. So please excuse me." "Your very presence is a blessing," put in Phebe. "That does sound nice, but really if you interrupt me so much I shall never get through my little story. Of course Mr. Black asked me, and that made me want one all the more. But the sight of that knife-and-fork made me feel I could not dream of having one--yes, I did dream of it, but I couldn't really take one! Just fancy me taking a pear with a knife and fork! I should have been as awkward as an elephant in a china-shop." "What did you do, then?" asked Reynolds. "Do? Why, I went without, of course. I wasn't going to show off my bad training. So to prevent such a display of self-sacrifice again I bought some pears this morning, and I had a downright good practice in the kitchen with Janie. We can both do it in high style now." And then everybody round the table, except David Jones, who usually spent week-ends at Hadley, and had arrived just in time to hear Bessie's story, began eating pears with a knife-and-fork, only the knives were steel ones. After supper David asked Bessie if she would take a little walk with him for a few minutes. It was not the first time he had done so. Both Phebe and Nanna had seen the growing nearness between these two, but had made no remark, for the friendship had certainly been helpful to both. "I could quite sympathise with you about that pear," said David as they reached a quiet road away from the usual Saturday night scenes. He did not always reach Hadley so early, but had made a special effort this night for a special purpose. There was something on his heart he wanted to say very much, and had hardly known how to introduce it. The story of the coveted pear seemed quite like "a godsend" to him. "Yes, I have felt like that myself." "Have you?" said Bessie. "Shouldn't have thought it; it isn't like a man to hesitate at a trifle like that." "Do you think I should have eaten it straight away out of my hand?" "Something like that." "Would you have blamed me if I had done so?" "I shouldn't have blamed you, most certainly not; but smart folks might." "I don't care for smart folks, do you?" "Can't say I don't, seeing I should like to be smart myself." There was a little pause, and then David said: "But you would advise me, if there was something I wanted very much, to take it the best way I could?" Bessie seemed to hesitate; perhaps she guessed what it was the young fellow wanted! "Certainly," she answered in a low voice. "Bessie," and he turned eagerly towards her, "it's a flower I want, a flower to wear for ever on my heart." "I think you're growing sentimental, and it's getting late; we had better turn back." "No, Bessie, now I've once started you must let me finish. It's you I want." And then he told her the old story which has had so many different endings, yet always beautiful when coming from lips sincere. That same night David told his mistress all about it. "And what did Bessie say?" asked Phebe, greatly interested and pleased at the confidence he showed in her. "Well, she didn't say much, but I think it will be all right." "You may rest assured if she had meant to refuse you she would have said so right out. But, David," and here she put her hand on his arm, and her voice took on a low, tender note "have you told her how you came to be in my employ?" "No, Mrs. Waring," all the joy suddenly dying out of his face; "do you think I need do so?" "Yes, I do; I think it is your plain duty to do so." "If I did she would throw me over as she would toss away one of her pears that was bad." "I don't think so; it is only your fear makes you have that thought." "But why should I tell her? That is all past and gone." "You would be starting life together with something withheld from her; there would be no thorough trust in each other. And, suppose some one told her of the occurrence? Such a thing would not be impossible. Better lose her now than lose her respect when you are tied together for life." There was a tender pleading in her voice which quite broke David down. "I believe you're right. I'll do it," he said in a broken voice. The next morning he was unusually quiet; during the walk to the meeting in the afternoon he was still as absorbed. Bessie did not know what to make of matters, trying in vain to read the secret of the gloom on his face. "I never knew he was of a sulky turn before," she said to herself; "if this is having a lover it's a mighty queer business. I wonder if it's something I've done wrong! I wonder if he expected I should have gone down on my knees in ecstasy last night!" But wonder as she might there came no answer. On the journey home David made a desperate effort to get the unpleasant task over. "Bessie, there's something I want to tell you which I ought to have told you last night, but did not like to." There was such a ring of pain in the voice that Bessie's heart was touched at once, and for the first time, and of her own accord, she slipped her hand into his arm. The little action was like balm of Gilead to David. "When Mrs. Waring engaged me, she took me without a character," he went on. "She did me, too," said Bessie, "so we're in the same boat." "I had used some of my master's money, and before I could pay him back he found it out. I was going to return it, for I had money in the savings bank." "Did you pay him back?" "Yes, every penny; but he would give me no reference, and I was dreadfully afraid mother would find it out. It would have broken her heart." "Well, that's all done with now, so forget it. You've good character enough now for the two of us." "And you don't think any the less of me?" he asked, bending anxiously towards her. "I think all the more of you," she said, looking up frankly into his face and pressing her hand upon his arm more firmly, "only it's made me feel rather queer, for I shall now be obliged to tell you not simply one bad thing I've done, but heaps. In fact, I don't know where to begin." "That's all nonsense," he said. "I know you are trying to cheer me, and I bless you for it, but there's still another thing I must say, for I want that there should never be a shadow between us. I did not want to tell you of my slip. I don't want you to think I was frank enough to tell you all this of my own accord. It was Mrs. Waring who pressed me to tell you." "That's just like her; she is a dear." "So she is; she's been the making of me." "So she has of me. Leastways," added Bessie in her characteristic manner, "she is making me. The business is not near finished yet." "It's all right," whispered David to Mrs. Waring as they went into tea. "I'm so glad," was her reply, "doubly glad." There was really no need for him to tell her this; his face told the story so plainly--so very plainly--that when tea was over, and they were standing in Sunshine Patch, Mrs. Colston went up to them and said: "And so you young folks have made each other happy." "Why, how do you know? Who told you?" exclaimed Bessie. "Know! Who told me? There was no need for anybody to tell me. Your faces tell the tale. Well, do you think you'll get on together all right?" "I can get on with anybody," sang out Bessie, "if they only let me have my own way." "Do you think we shall, Mrs. Colston?" asked David. "Yes, I've watched you, and I do think you will; but you must neither try to get in front of the other. It must be side by side." Taking a hand of each, she said in a sweet, serious way: "May the Lord bless you both; may you not only be strength to each other but to many besides." "You dear!" exclaimed Bessie, flinging her arms round her neck, and kissing her, while the tears streamed down her face; "if I'm only half as good as you, I'll do." "Nay, nay, child, you must not take any measurement by a mortal; Jesus is our measure. But look here, dears, you've both got to go in and tell your story to mother next door. Don't leave her in the cold. But, mark you, you'll have no silver forks to eat your pears with." "Oh, yes, she shall," exclaimed David as they both went away laughing. That same evening Phebe and Nanna talked this courtship over, and concluded that things were going on all right. Then Phebe started a fresh subject. "Perhaps you have wondered, Nanna, dear, what Mr. Black came about. I felt I could not tell you about it all in a hurry; it was too exciting, and I have not had a quiet moment till now." "It's all right, dearie; I knew you would tell me at the proper time." "Ah, my dear, I wish I always had your calmness." "I wonder how it is so many folks seem to envy me! I have nothing everybody cannot have as well as me." "Tell me in a word what you think your secret is, could you?" "How like I am to Mrs. Marchant!" she thought to herself. "How much we all lean upon one another!" "Yes, I think I could; but then it's your secret as well as mine." "Never mind whose else it is, tell it me, there's a dear." "It's only this--that I know the Lord is always with me, and that in His hands things are sure to come right--could not help but be, He's so clever and good. So why shouldn't I be calm?" "You say 'in His hand things are sure to be right,' but so often I say to myself, 'How can He make my tangle right?' He cannot make sin come right." "There's your mistake, dear heart," exclaimed Nanna. "He can! He can! He can make the wrong you've suffered work out splendid things in your character, and help you to do things you would never have force enough to do if you'd had a smooth life. And He's doing it now, now! So rest on that, you poor, tired child. Now tell me about Mr. Black, will you?" Phebe gave a little sigh of relief. "I had almost forgotten about it. It will almost take away your breath, so be prepared." "Stop one minute," said Nanna, "let me ask one question. Is it something you approve of?" "Yes, quite." "All right, then, nothing whatever can take away my breath now." "Don't be quite so sure about it. What do you say to him showing me how I can have two thousand pounds paid to me this week?" "I should simply say he couldn't." "But he has, and when I tell you how, you will advise me to take it, I am quite sure. Now, doesn't this take away your breath?" "No, I've still got a few gasps left." "You know that meadow of mine? It has a long frontage to the main road. Some men have been buying up the land all round the new railway-station. They expect it will be quite a busy centre owing to the junction of rails. Mr. Black knew I owned that meadow. I told him so when I thought the hall might go up there, and he has negotiated with these men for the sale of it. But for him I should have thought I was doing well if I had sold it for five hundred. He is trying to see if he can get a little more when I told him what I should use it for." "What is that?" a sudden fear again taking possession of Nanna lest money should become a snare to her darling. "To build or buy a house for a cottage hospital here in Hadley. I have long wanted to do it, and now, without any trouble, God is sending me the money." "God bless you, my dear one," said Nanna, her heart full of rejoicing. "And what do you think of this plan?" continued Phebe. "I should like to give the money to Stephen Collins, and let him do all the business, my name never to be mentioned. He need simply say a friend had entrusted him with it. Mr. Black, I know, will keep my secret. I thought two thousand would provide the building, and the town might be willing to pay for its upkeep. I should like it called 'Love's Hospital.'" "There! Didn't I tell you the Lord would help you to do big things? Can't you see if you'd never gone to the railway-men you would never have known Mr. Black!" "Yes, I can see it, and if I had never visited Jim Coates, I shouldn't have gone to the railway-men. It is all the Lord's doing. I have got another scheme I want to work out, but have not the money for it yet, and I don't see where it is to come from either. Still, after this wonder I shall not give up hope." * * * * * Stephen Collins accepted the task, called together a town's meeting; a committee was appointed, Bessie's old superintendent, Mr. Bell, being one of the number. An old-fashioned house, with a large garden was bought, and in less than twelve months "Love's Hospital" was in working order. Bessie, Reynolds and David knew Mrs. Waring had sold her meadow at a very good figure. They knew also of the anonymous donor of the hospital, and, as shrewd young people will, put two and two together; but the townsfolk, in spite of a good deal of curiosity, were not so wise. CHAPTER XXIII LOYAL LOVE When little Jack was nearly nine years old he came home from school one afternoon in a sorry plight. Not only was his face tear-stained, but his jacket was torn. There was every evidence that he had been in a battle, and had not come off victor, either. Fortunately, his mother was away spending the afternoon with her father and sister. "My dear boy!" exclaimed Nanna; "what ever have you been doing!" "Don't be cross with me, Nanna," cried out Jack, literally throwing himself into her arms, "I couldn't help myself. You would have done the same yourself." His arms were round her neck, and he was hugging her so tightly that she found it rather difficult to get her words out. The hugging really seemed to comfort him. Nanna felt alarmed, for it was so unusual for Jack to shed a tear or to be so demonstrative. Trying with one hand to loosen his grasp, and with the other stroking his tangled hair, she said: "You surely could never imagine your old Nanna mixed up with a fight, now could you? A pretty figure I should cut, shouldn't I?" "Well, you would have done something; I know you would," sobbed out the little fellow, who could no longer keep the tears back. "Ah, no doubt I should have done something; you're right there. But tell me what it's all about? Whatever will mummy say about it! And what do you suppose your little angel-sister thinks of you if she is looking at you now?" The thought of the "little angel-sister" did not distress him much; but at the mention of "mummy" his grief broke out afresh. "But you won't tell her, will you? And you'll mend my jacket for me, won't you?" taking his arms down from her neck to show the ugly rent by the pocket. "Not tell mummy? Keep anything from mummy? Why, Jack, what can you be thinking about? She would not like her boy to have any trouble she did not share. And if you have done wrong all that she will do will be to give you advice that might help you another time." "I know, I know," and the voice was a little fretful, an unusual thing for Jack, "but you don't understand: it's because it would make mummy cry I don't want her to know." "Well, tell me all about it, and then I shall understand." "And you won't tell her?" Nanna felt to be in a difficulty, and had to think. Jack saw the difficulty she was in, and, like the chivalrous little fellow he was, helped her out of it by saying, "I'll tell you first, and then I know you'll say she mustn't know, and Janie must not know," getting down from her knee and shutting the door--"nobody must know." Resuming his seat, and with one arm round her neck, he told out his little tale of woe, the tale that was so big to him. A fresh boy had come to his school whose displeasure he had won by obstinately keeping at the top of the class, a position keenly coveted by the new boy, whose name was Frank Bell. Knowing of no other invective he could hurl at his rival, Frank tried this one: "You're no good; you've no business among respectable boys. Your mother's a wicked woman, and that's why your father can't live with her. My ma says so; I heard her." "I told him she was as good as good could be, better than his mother, for my mother held meetings and his mother didn't. So he said he'd pay me out for calling his mother names, and after school he hit me in the face, and I hit him back." "And you got the worst of it?" "He's ever so much bigger than I am. My mother is good, isn't she?" lifting up his tear-stained face to look steadfastly at Nanna. There was no doubt in the loyal little heart of the mother's goodness, but there was one big mystery in his life he could not solve, and he wondered if Nanna could help him--or, would help him. "Of course she is good; we both of us know that." "If only daddy would come home! If he would, then Frank couldn't say anything." He watched her face attentively--the face that had always had truth written on it, that had never kept a secret from him. "I wish he would, too; but I don't know why he doesn't, and mummy doesn't know either. Perhaps--but you must not speak of this--perhaps he is dead. Sometimes we think he must be." "Poor daddy!" murmured the child, and then turned to look at his photo hanging over the mantelpiece. "But, Jack, dear, I want to show you where you have done wrong and how you must be wiser another time. It does not matter what any number of boys say about your mother; it could not alter the fact of her goodness. You need only have said he was making a mistake. Then you should not have questioned his mother's goodness; it is quite right for him to think his mother better than yours--every boy should think his mother the best that ever was. And then, when he struck you, you should not have struck back--that's what cowards do, heroes quietly walk away. You remember what our dear Jesus said, that when anybody strikes us on one cheek, we are to let them do it on the other side, too, if they like." Jack sighed. Life to him just then was indeed an "unsunned space," and it seemed getting darker. It was bad enough to have had his dear mummy so wickedly spoken about, but to be struck and not retaliate! And now Nanna was disappointed in him. There came another deep sigh. "Don't sigh, little man. It is by these mistakes we learn. You will be wiser next time, so cheer up. Let us ask Jesus to forgive us all our mistakes. We can afford to forget all about them then." In the most natural way possible the two knelt down and made their request of the invisible Master, whose presence in that room was always acknowledged. It was by no means the first time these two had done so. Jack was not at all surprised or confused. Prayer over, Nanna set about preparing tea, and Jack, still disconsolate, sat by the fire. His own share of the pain was forgotten, but he could not feel happy about his "mummy." He did not want her to know, and yet he longed to hear from her own dear lips that she did not mind. "You won't tell mummy, will you?" he pleaded before going to bed, and the promise was given. "Not till you say I may," said wise, far-seeing Nanna. The burden of having a secret from mummy was a heavy one, and Nanna felt sure it would not be long before it all came out, and that the loving little heart would only find peace in the mother's arms. Phebe that night went in as usual to give Jack his "good-night" kiss. He had cried himself to sleep. He had even laughed at supper-time, and forgotten all his sorrow, but in the darkness of the bedroom it had come back again with full force. The mother bent to kiss her boy--the face was damp--Jack had been crying! Nanna had said nothing about any trouble, yet she was always Jack's confidante. What could it be? She bent again to kiss him. Yes, it was quite damp--the pillow even was damp. Her sunny-faced, earnest, eager-hearted Jack, crying! The boy sighed in his sleep, tossed about, and then, the light of the lamp falling on his face, he woke up. "Oh, mummy! dear mummy!" The lamp was quickly put down, and in an instant the two were locked in each other's arms. "Jack, darling, you've been crying. You must tell me all about it." "But I can't--no--you are not to ask me." And then straightway he told her, though not in words. He smoothed her face, he examined her, then he hugged her, and whispered: "It is my _good_ mummy!" "Has somebody been telling you I'm not good?" "Did Nanna tell you?" he exclaimed. "Oh, dear, she promised she wouldn't!" "No, darling; Nanna did not tell me. She would not break her promise to you." "Then how did you know?" She could hardly explain. "I guessed it," she said. "I saw you had been crying. Who was it that was finding fault with me?" "Frank Bell; he's a new scholar." The name was not familiar. "See here, darling, you must never trouble about me. You know I do things differently from some mothers, and they think it is wrong, but I think it is God's wish; so it does not much matter. You understand?" "Yes." Then, after a pause: "And it has not anything to do with daddy not coming home?" There is a sisterhood of Mary found the wide world over--women who have felt the sword pierce the soul, and in that instant Phebe felt afresh what membership with that sisterhood meant. But her child, at all costs, must not know of it. "No, nothing at all," was her calm answer. And then came the story of the fight and the torn jacket. It was so nice to be able to tell her everything, and to know she was not hurt at all. "What, my Jack been in a battle!" trying hard to laugh. "Yes; but Nanna has mended my jacket, you'd never know it was torn, and I'm never going to fight again. Nanna says heroes walk away, and that must be so, 'cause it's harder." "Nanna's right, you dear little champion!" "When I am a man, nobody will dare to say you're not good." "Yes, they will, dear. You know Jesus told us to beware if everybody spoke well of us. That would show we were not quite brave enough." But the child spoke truer than she knew. The next morning Phebe sent Frank Bell a box of chocolate, which Jack willingly delivered. To say that Frank was mystified is putting it very mildly. "For me?" he exclaimed. "Yes, mother sent it you." "Does she know what I said about her?" "Yes, but I didn't tell her. I had to tell Nanna because of my jacket." Frank thought Nanna was the servant. He wanted very much to "round on" Jack for telling, but did not know how fairly to do it. "She knew what I said about her, and yet sent me this chocolate!" "Yes, you see she's a real Christian--Nanna says she's one of the right sort." "Well, she must be; my father's a Christian, but I don't speck he'd send anybody chocolates that snubbed _him_," and the very idea made the boy laugh. "You'll never say she's wicked again, will you?" pleaded Jack wistfully. "That I won't, I'll say she's a stunner, and she is, too!" And from that moment Phebe Waring had no more brave defender than chubby-faced Frank Bell. That same morning Phebe got a few minutes' talk with Nanna: "Jack told me last night you knew all about his little battle and what occasioned it." "Yes, he did," said Nanna, turning round to look at her carefully. She was not quite sure how much Phebe knew, nor how she would take it. The look satisfied her. "I only want to say," said Phebe, "that you need not worry about it for my sake. I have been so happy lately that I can afford to have a little drawback like that. Perhaps God saw I needed something to keep me humble." But she could not have spoken in that brave tone twelve hours before. She knew that, and Nanna guessed it too. "Ah!" said Nanna, "it wouldn't do for us any more than for the trees to have all sunshine and never have a storm." Yes, Phebe had been very blessed lately, and she not only knew it, but had drunk in all the joy of it. The railway-works had long since been completed, and the hall had been taken down and stored. Most of the men had been scattered all over the country, many of them taking with them the precious secret learnt from a woman's lips, but some still remained in Hadley and the neighbourhood, and these had persuaded Phebe to continue the meetings in the public hall. She had done so, and very happy gatherings they had proved to be. Every week the further scheme she had in her mind took deeper root: the more she saw of working-men, of their hard life and colourless existence, the more she pitied them. The scheme was often talked over with faithful Nanna, whose brain was as keen as ever, though her body was more bent. More than once she advised Phebe to consult Stephen Collins, but Phebe could not trust herself to do that, knowing too well that temptation lay in that direction. "Besides," she would add, "I have not money enough yet. Love's Hospital was not my gift--the money simply was passed on by me. This time God seems to show that I have to work for the money, storing it up little by little. When I have enough and have got my plans all settled, I'll ask Stephen to carry them out for me. I don't mind doing that; it would not take long." CHAPTER XXIV RECOGNISED Bessie's marriage passed off in high style,--the change that had come over her mother being most marked--and after a fortnight of "doing the grand" at Bournemouth she and her "Darling" Jones settled down to business with the firm determination of making it "hum." And "hum" it did. Bessie had been a treasure in the business at Hadley, but she was a far smarter business woman now that she shared some responsibility. Every morning the shutters were down at eight o'clock, every corner thoroughly swept by nine, every order attended to promptly, supplies well seen to. It was like taking in a breath of Swiss air to go into that shop. Many a sleepy country-woman rubbed her eyes and pulled herself together after an interview with Bessie. It was not simply done for the money it brought, though of course the more business done the more it was to the advantage of the managers, but the main impetus was in the thought that she was helping Mrs. Waring. Bessie's highest delight was to win her "Well done!"--to know she was hastening the development of her scheme, for Phebe had taken both Reynolds and Jones into her confidence. Bessie's mother marvelled at the change which had come over her, and wondered if it could possibly be the same girl who used to be always in hot water! If there was anything "hot" now-a-days it was more of the nature of milk than water. The money for Phebe's scheme was gradually accumulating. One or two special agencies had helped in this, but it had mostly been won by hard and constant application to work. And all the time the sum in the bank had been growing Phebe's influence had grown too. There was never a town's meeting called to discuss any forward movement, or to right any wrong, but she was invited, mostly accompanied by her boy. But, as nearly always happens, alongside with this growing influence was a growing disfavour with well-to-do, rut-bound people, especially with those who had class prejudices and believed that woman was simply the chattel of a man. This was very much accentuated when she was called in as an arbitrator in a dispute between some men and their master, and was still further manifested when she publicly exposed the wrongs of some laundry girls. Whenever she saw wrongs or injustice she was bound to speak out. She even once spoke out at a church-meeting against the custom of relegating the poorest members to the top seats in the church gallery. That was a shocking offence, and almost won for her church-discipline. But she calmly went on her way, her eyes still fixed on the silver stars, and more and more became the confidante and helper of the poor. The day at last arrived--the day she had looked forward to for months, even years--on which she paid into the bank to her "scheme account" the last needed amount before commencing operations, bringing the grand total up to five hundred pounds! The following day arrangements were made for an interview with Stephen Collins. Both Nanna and she agreed it had better take place at her sister's house, her old home. It would be quieter, and there would be less chance for gossip to make anything out of it. The father was dead, but the sister was still staying on in the old house. Phebe frankly told her she wanted a business talk with Stephen, and asked if she would mind inviting him. "I shall be only too pleased," was the reply. "The wonder to me is you manage to get along so much by yourself as you do. Who would have imagined our dreamy Phebe turning into an enterprising business woman, and quite a public character, too! How things change! I used to be the go-ahead, and now I'm as good as a recluse." "You've done the hardest piece of work, after all, dear," was Phebe's answer; "one that God won't forget. And, besides, you have the opportunity of coming out into the world and its work now father is at rest." Stephen Collins accepted the invitation, and on a dreary Friday afternoon at the end of October the three gathered round a cheerful fire in the old-fashioned parlour. For a minute or so Phebe thought they were girls and boy together again, and that the door would open presently and "mother" would come in with her cheery voice, "Girls, it's time for tea, and you'd better get Steve to help you!" How many a romp they had had together, especially when "father" was away at market! The fire crackled and the old clock ticked just as they had done then, but a glance at Stephen's iron-grey hair and his sad, earnest face gave proof enough that the old merry days had gone by for ever. They talked about the weather, about the new tenant in the next farm--all three seemed anxious to talk, and yet there were awkward pauses, and Phebe could not bring herself to mention her scheme. The Spirit of the Past seemed to hold them. The sister must have known Phebe's thoughts, for all at once she said: "It's no use waiting for mother to announce tea to-day. I must get it ready myself." "Let me help you," said Phebe. "No, you sit and talk with Stephen." She still called him by his Christian name. Phebe poked the fire, and swept some dust from the hearth, conscious all the time that Stephen was watching her closely. When she took her seat again they were both silent, till at last Stephen said: "Mrs. Waring, I have not the slightest idea what it is you wish me to do for you, but rest assured whatever it is I will do my utmost to fulfil your wish. Please do not hesitate. Trust me." "Trust you! There is no need to tell me to do that. I do not hesitate because of any thought of unwillingness or mistrust--never that." For the first time their eyes met and she could not resist putting her hand on his, just for an instant. "Why I hesitate is because I am going to ask so much, and you may not think my plan a wise one." "You need not hesitate on either of those points. I have plenty of time at my disposal, and I should not put my judgment before yours." "I don't think for a minute my sister will agree to my scheme." "Then we must try to convert her." It was not till the tea had been cleared away and the trio had gathered round the fire again that the scheme was unfolded. Phebe introduced it by saying: "You must please both of you let me tell my tale without interruptions, for I really feel nervous talking to two such critics. When I have quite finished, then you can talk. I must first of all tell you I have saved up five hundred pounds, and I want to buy Farmer Green's big meadow in Haystone Lane; he wants a thousand pounds for it." "How can you buy a thousand-pound meadow for five hundred pounds? Folks will say that's like a woman," interrupted the sister. "Will they? But you must please let me finish my story. I propose for the present getting a mortgage of five hundred. I want to put this meadow in trust of Mr. Collins, Mr. Black, Jim Coates, and my two assistants, Reynolds and Jones, with Mr. Collins as chairman, or something of that sort. Then I want this meadow turned into garden allotments. I think it will make forty. One of these I want to reserve for a plot for our railway-hall to stand on, to be used as a club-room. These thirty-nine allotments I want let out to working-men, or women, too, if they felt equal to spade-work. These would bring in a rental of thirty-nine pounds; twenty of this would be needed for interest and the remainder to be spent in prizes for the best things grown in the gardens. For the club I should propose that a small quarterly subscription be charged, which would be sufficient to keep the place going. I hope by the time the scheme is started to have saved another fifty pounds, which I should like spent in the purchase of plants and trees to start the gardens with." Phebe paused. The sister held up her hand like the children do at school: "Have you finished! Please may I talk?" "Yes, I have finished." "Well, I think you are a very foolish woman to squander your money in such a fashion! You've got your old age to think of, and your child to provide for. Let your working-men provide gardens for themselves--they can spend plenty of money in the public-house. You stint yourself to help them, and not one in twenty will give you a 'Thank you' for it. No, I say you are not called upon to do such a thing as this. What do you say, Stephen?" "I say, it's just like her." "That may be, but that doesn't say it's wise." "You are too hard on these men, Lizzie. They can afford no luxuries, no hobbies, and there is little wonder they go to the public-house. I often think if I had a home like they have I should do the same myself; there is nowhere else that is bright and attractive for them to go. As for their thanks, I don't want them; besides, my name is not to be mentioned in connection with the scheme. But before I die I hope to be able to clear off the mortgage. As for my boy he can always get a living out of the business. I have no need to provide further than that for him." Turning to Stephen: "Will you do this for me, Mr. Collins?" "I will." No marriage-vow was given with more earnestness. "Well, you are the funniest woman that ever God made," exclaimed the sister. When the time came to separate, Phebe would not hear of either her sister or Stephen accompanying her, though the night was dark. They went as far as the garden-gate with her, and as they stood there after she had left them, Stephen said in a choked voice: "You call her the funniest woman God made: I call her the best and the bravest." "So she is," the sister replied frankly; "but then it doesn't do to tell her so, does it?" "I only wish I might," was his low response. As the sister walked up the path again to the silent old home she whispered to herself: "Poor old Steve! Dear old fellow! What a queer world this is!" While Phebe was away from home that evening Nanna sat for a while in the desk in the grocery department; she often did so when a quiet time was expected. "I shall write a book some day," she used to say, "and the title will be 'From the Mangle to the Desk.'" Certainly she looked wonderfully wise there with her spectacles on her nose. All at once she was attracted by the sound of a voice. Her memory for faces was very defective, but for voices very acute. Where had she heard that voice before? Looking up she saw a tall, elderly, shabby-looking man, who every now and again gave a little hacking cough. She watched him as he bought half an ounce of tea, a rasher of bacon, one egg, and half a pound of sugar. Then she heard him say to Reynolds, who was serving him: "Who owns this shop?" "Mrs. Waring." "I wondered who 'P. Waring' was: it used to be 'R. Waring.'" "Yes." "Where is Ralph Waring now?" "I don't know--he went abroad on business." A little stifled laugh: "Oh, did he?" Nanna saw that Reynolds suddenly looked up and gave the man a searching look. When he had gone Reynolds went up to the desk. He was too agitated to speak, and Nanna was feeling just the same. At last she managed to say: "Follow him!" pointing to the door. Just as he was Reynolds rushed to the door; he looked to the right, he looked to the left, but the questioning customer with his cough and his laugh was out of sight, for the gathering gloom of the chilly autumn night made escape easy. It might have been a December night the way Reynolds was shivering. "Was it----?" he asked in a hoarse whisper as he returned to the desk. "Yes," was all her answer. Then, "I must go at once and meet the mistress." "Let me go." "No, that would never do. She would wonder what was the matter, and as long as possible we must keep it from her." As fast as she could the dear old lady hurried along the lonely country road. The little, stifled sarcastic laugh was still sounding in her ears, a laugh that spoke of a heart unchanged except as trouble had soured it. At last she heard footsteps--light ones--she could see a woman's form! Yes, it was her dear Phebe, and, thank God, she was alone! "Why, Nanna!" exclaimed Phebe, as soon as she recognised her; "whatever brought you out a night like this?"--kissing her on the cheek and taking hold of her arm. "To take care of you, dearie, to be sure; and, besides, I wanted a walk." "On a night like this?" "Yes, I felt stifled like," which was quite true. Phebe's suspicions were aroused, but finding all well at home, concluded it was just some whim of the dear old soul's, or else she had suddenly been seized with some unaccountable fear, as is sometimes the case even with young folks. CHAPTER XXV BESSIE COMES TO THE RESCUE For nearly ten years Ralph Waring had been a homeless wanderer, getting a living in a variety of ways. Of course things had gone well with him while he had money in his pocket, but when that had melted away his appreciative friends suddenly disappeared. Like other folks in that new country he had plenty of opportunities of getting on, but like so many others he wanted the top rung of the ladder first, and found that such a leap did not come within the bounds of possibility. Every bottom rung he was compelled to try proved too prosaic, and years were spent in becoming familiar with a whole series of bottom rungs. All the letters he had sent to Phebe had been under cover to Stephen Collins; even the one Stephen Collins had himself placed in the desk had been directed to him. Why Ralph had done this it would be difficult to say. His motive may have been the wish to provide Phebe during his absence with a reliable helper, but it was very questionable if he had really sufficient regard for either of them to do that. The letters ceased just as soon as his "castles in the air" came to grief. He could never bring himself to write to Phebe of defeat. He was once tempted to make up a story of good fortune, but had sufficient good sense left to know that should Fortune continue to frown upon him this would only add to his annoyance. No, it was better she should think him dead than poor. It was three years since his illness came upon him. He struggled against it with a heroism that would have placed him on the top rung if it had been shown earlier and in other ways. Then a feeling of home-sickness came over him; or perhaps it was that he missed the tender ministry of loving hands. But how was he to get home? There was no other way than to work his passage over, and that he must do at once before he got too weak to do so. A berth as assistant-steward was secured, and in a few hours after setting foot on English soil he found himself in the old country town of Hadley. His first impulse was to go straight to Phebe and pour out his heart to her, with all its bitter disappointments. Then his usual cautious habit reasserted itself--he would first of all make inquiries. After taking a very humble lodging he soon found out the position Phebe held in the town, and then his chagrin knew no bounds. He wished himself back again a hundred times over in the land of strangers--what a fool he had been! However, she should never have an opportunity of lording over him. "R. W." would stand for "Richard Wood" equally well as "Ralph Waring." A very old school-fellow had failed to recognise him, so it was not likely Phebe would. It was this strong belief in his changed appearance rendering his identity impossible that made him enter the shop. He quite chuckled over the way in which he had "done" Reynolds, and tried the experiment a second time. Reynolds was in the shop and again served him. As soon as he left the stolid look disappeared from Reynolds' face, and quick as lightning he despatched a shop-boy to follow "the tall, thin man with a cough" to see where he went. "Don't show yourself, though," was his parting injunction. The lad did his "shadowing" in quite a professional manner, and returned with the answer: "63 Dutton Street." "63 Dutton Street!" repeated Reynolds to himself. "Well, I never! Things get worse and worse! I mustn't tell Mrs. Colston that, the poor old dear! I won't let out he's been in again." After Ralph Waring had made his second lot of purchases and paid his lodgings a week in advance, he had one solitary half-crown left. He had no watch or anything with him he could sell or pawn; possessing absolutely nothing but the thin, shabby clothes he stood up in. He turned the silver coin over in his hand, and muttered: "Only that between me and the workhouse!" Day after day Nanna kept her secret from Phebe. How could she tell her! How could she bring such a double fold of gloom over her! And day after day she prayed for God's clear guidance. At every opportunity she kept a stealthy watch over every customer who came into the shop, and all the day she was for ever listening for that hollow, rasping cough. All this tension told upon her considerably. Phebe was quite certain she was not well, and she knew herself it was taking away her joy and breaking her peace. At last she pulled herself together, and decided she must carry the burden no longer. "It is too difficult a piece of work for me to do," she said to herself, "I must leave it all to God. If He wanted me to help in it He would have shown me the way. I'll just watch and see how He does it," and the joy and peace came back again. If she had known of "63 Dutton Street," she would have seen the beginning of God's plans. The knowledge soon came. She was in the business early one morning, when all at once she felt impelled to whisper to Reynolds-- "Have you seen Ralph Waring again?" Reynolds had no alternative but to answer "Yes." "Did he come into the shop?" Reynolds gave a solemn nod. "Tell me all you know, Reynolds," she said, fixing her clear grey eyes on him; "don't keep anything back. I am quite prepared, for I feel sure all will come right." And then Reynolds told her, first of all looking round to see if any one should be listening. "He is staying at 63 Dutton Street," he whispered. "63 Dutton Street!" she exclaimed, and then checked herself. "Why, that is where Mrs. Coates lives!" in a lower voice. "Yes, he is lodging with her." "Well! well!" She hardly knew what to say. Surely God had led Ralph there--but why?--why? "Why? Why?" kept repeating through her brain as she went about her work. That morning she received a letter from Bessie, in which that young lady said: "When are you coming to see me? Couldn't you come this afternoon?" "Yes, I will," she said to herself. "Bessie's brain is younger than mine, and quicker. Perhaps she can tell me what I ought to do." When Phebe knew of the intended visit, she said: "Well, I am glad! I do believe you are improving in your old age. Be sure and tell Bessie she has my permission to give you a good scolding for not going sooner." "How little she dreams of what my real errand is!" whispered Nanna to herself. "I wonder if I am doing right in not telling her! But surely if I can keep trouble from her that is right! Surely she has suffered enough through Ralph Waring already without having any more! She thinks he is dead--'tis better so." And with that assurance she started on her journey. "You blessed one!" exclaimed the excitable Bessie; "I have a good mind now you are here to lock you up like lavender, and never let you back again. Now I am going to get a high-style tea ready. If only I had been quite sure you were coming I would have bought a whole red-herring--they are the most economical things going, you only need one; you hand it all round the table, and each guest rubs his, or her, bread with it, and each one has all the delight of seeming to eat a whole bloater. However, as it is, we must stretch to sardines this time. David!"--peeping into the shop--"I'm not coming into the shop any more to-day, so if you can't manage to scrape along without me, you can put up the shutters at once." "You see, Mrs. Colston," said David, "she is just the same Bessie as ever." "Well, I never!" exclaimed Bessie, "if that isn't rich! Did you expect I should turn into somebody else?--say Polly Spriggs, or the Duchess of Marlborough!--which would you have preferred?" But David had fled back into the shop. It was during tea Nanna told her story--always the time for confidences. "We had such a strange customer in the other day, Bessie. Guess who it was!" "Was it one of the high levellers, or one of the low levellers?" "He looked like one of the low levellers, as you call them; but he used to be----" Nanna's hands trembled so much she almost dropped her cup. Bessie was quick to notice this. "Dear Mrs. Colston," she exclaimed, "you have some bad news to tell me! What is it?--Do tell me quickly!" "The customer was Ralph Waring." "Ralph Waring! And does the Little Missis know--did she see him?" and Bessie started up from her chair in her excitement. "No; I want your advice. Reynolds has found out that he is lodging at 63 Dutton Street. Just fancy that!" "63 Dutton Street!" repeated Bessie, quite bewildered. "Yes; with Mrs. Coates. You know Mrs. Coates. Do you think I ought to tell her?" "Tell Mrs. Coates?" "No--the Little Missis, as you call her." "Of course not. If his lordship does not choose to make himself known, why should you trouble her about him? She has had enough trouble with him already--at least, I think so." "That is just how I have been thinking." "Oh, dear, dear! Whatever in the world did he need to turn up again for! I wish to goodness I could run away with him, that I do!" "What is that you are saying?" exclaimed David, looking in from the shop, with quite a dramatic expression on his face. "Who is it you are wanting to elope with now? I really must know!" Amid both laughter and tears Nanna explained the situation. "Well, if she can manage to run away with him," said David magnanimously, "I am quite willing. But how can you work it, my sweet queen Bess?" "Ah, that's the difficulty," she sighed. "I shall have to put my thinking cap on." "There is no doubt he is very ill," said pitying Nanna; "he has a dreadful cough." "A consumptive cough?" asked David. "Yes." "Then may God help him! I know what that means. My father died of consumption in Warley Hospital." "I have it!" exclaimed Bessie, "let's get him into Warley Hospital! At least he would be some distance away, and would be better treated than in lodgings. Oh, yes, I'll manage to run away with him after all, you see if I don't! I'll call and see Mrs. Coates, and if I hear her lodger cough, I'll offer to get him an indoor letter for Warley Hospital. I'll not show myself at all, of course. Mrs. Coates shall do the real elopement work; I'll only superintend." CHAPTER XXVI THE HOME-COMING True to her word Bessie paid her visit to Mrs. Coates the next day. She had not been long in the house before the hollow cough was heard. "Good gracious!" exclaimed Bessie; though really listening for it, the sound had quite startled her. "What a dreadful cough!" "That it is. It's our lodger, poor fellow! I'm afraid he's not long for this world." "What is his name?" "Richard Wood." "H'm." If Mrs. Coates had been at all a sharp sort of woman she might have detected something peculiar in that expression. "I'm afraid he's very poor," continued Mrs. Coates. "He's paid me all right, but I don't think he's much left. I took him up some hot supper last night, and my! didn't he eat it up ravenously!" "Has he any friends?" "Doesn't seem to have any." "The best thing he could do would be to get into a hospital." "Yes, I suppose so. I really wish he would, for that cough quite wears on me." "I know some one who subscribes to the Warley Hospital: I could get him an in-letter for there, I feel sure, if he would care to go." "Do you really!"--quite eagerly. "I should be glad if he could be got there! I shouldn't like to tell him to go, it would seem cruel, but I'm sure I can't stand that cough much longer." "Well, go up at once and ask him," suggested Bessie. "I will, there can be no harm in that," and away Mrs. Coates went. There was quite a different look on her face when she returned. "No, he won't go," shaking her head, "couldn't move him!--says that when his money's all gone, he'll go into the workhouse; I needn't be frightened about being kept out of my money--as if I was thinking of that! But there, that's all I get for all my trouble! You might give your life for some folks, and they wouldn't give you even a nod in return, not they!" Mrs. Coates was evidently feeling very annoyed. "Yes," exclaimed Bessie, "he's just one of that sort"--and then suddenly added, "at least, I should think so, from what you say." Bessie could think of no other suggestion to make, but went away determined to think out some other plan for getting Mrs. Coates' lodger out of Hadley. The next time Mrs. Coates had an interview with her lodger, he suddenly asked: "Who was that woman who wanted to get me packed off to Warley?" "Mrs. Jones," was the curt answer. "And who's Mrs. Jones?" "A very nice woman," turning round quite fiercely towards him, "a very nice young woman indeed, and I can't see why you shouldn't be willing to let her do you a kindness--that I can't!" "Perhaps not," he replied, "but you haven't told me yet who she is. There are heaps of Mrs. Jones." "She used to live with Mrs. Waring; she's the daughter of Mr. Marchant, the chemist. I wish you'd let me ask Mrs. Waring to come and see you," exclaimed Mrs. Coates, not giving "Richard Wood" time to reply, the very mention of Phebe's name bringing, what she thought, a bright idea into her head; "she would be sure to know what was the best thing for you to do! I always take all my troubles to her." "Look here, woman!" exclaimed the lodger angrily, "don't bring that friend of yours here, for I will not see her. Please remember that." "But she is a good woman." "Is she!"--with a sneer. "Yes, she is--a very good woman!" "Then why did her husband have to leave her?--Yes, I know her just as well as you do, perhaps better." "You know nothing bad about her, that I'm certain," replied Mrs. Coates, raising her voice to quite an angry pitch; "you should ask, 'What sort of a sneak was her husband to leave such a woman?'--that's what you should ask." "So that is how she talks about her husband, is it?" "No, it isn't. I've never heard her mention him, so there. But I won't have you say one word against my Mrs. Waring. So I tell you!" And Mrs. Coates left the room for fear her tears should be seen. "The horrid man!" she said to herself. "I suppose God sees something in him to love, at least that's what Mrs. Waring would say, so I suppose I must search for it till I find it. But for that he should go out of this house this very day, that he should! Wouldn't Jim be riled if he knew what he said about Mrs. Waring! I'd better not tell him." Late one evening Phebe paid a visit to Jim Coates to explain to him her garden scheme and to secure his help for it. What a change there was in that home from what it was on her first visit! The whole family this evening was in a state of great excitement over the arrival of a new couch, and each member had been taking turns to lie down on it. Jim had also got a special and personal bit of news which considerably added to the excitement; he had just seen Mr. Black, who had offered him a good position as foreman on some fresh works quite near, and when Mrs. Waring added her news there was a state of matters in that little home difficult to describe. Jim clapped his hands and shouted: "If this isn't like being in Heaven afore the time! It beats everything I ever knowed!" "Don't make quite so much noise, then," put in Mrs. Coates. "You see," turning to Mrs. Waring, "we've got a lodger in bed upstairs, and he's that bad, poor fellow, I don't know what will become of him." "Bless you! he can't hear us," exclaimed Jim; "and if he did, it 'ud do him good. It does you good to laugh, and it does you good to hear a laugh, too." "Ah, but Mr. Wood is a good deal too bad for that." "Poor fellow!" said their visitor, "if I can help him in any way please let me know." "Look here, Mrs. Waring," put in Jim. "I wish you'd do us the honour of having a bit of supper with us. I'm of the same mind as your Mrs. Colston, when you're extra happy it seems like as if you ought to eat together. On the strength of my new job I've bought a tin of coffee and some new-laid eggs." Mrs. Waring felt it would be very ungracious if she did not accept the invitation, though just then time was very precious. "Don't you think I'm a lucky man, Mrs. Waring?" exclaimed Jim, as he stood with his watch in his hand, counting the minutes while the eggs were boiling, "and it's all come through you." "No, through God," was her correction. "Well, God used you, anyhow. And what a change there is in Mr. Black, too----" "Who is that!" suddenly exclaimed Phebe, springing to her feet. Mrs. Coates had just gone upstairs, leaving two doors open behind her. It was the lodger's cough she had heard. "It's only Mr. Wood coughing," explained Jim, and Phebe took her seat again feeling strangely tired. Again the cough was heard. It had a strange little moan at the end of it, almost like a suppressed cry. "Oh!" exclaimed Phebe, this time feeling powerless to rise, but stretching out her hands to Jim Coates, "_that is my husband coughing_!" Jim almost dashed his watch on the table and rushed towards her, taking hold of both of her hands. "It's our lodger, Mrs. Waring, don't be skeered. Come up and see him, if you like, and then your mind will be easy." "Yes, yes," whispered Phebe faintly, "in a minute I will." She would have fallen on the stairs if Jim had not put his strong arm round her, but when she reached the sick man's room she was herself again, only that her breath seemed very short. Just for an instant she stood at the foot of the bed, and then going to the side she took up one of his thin hands, and said gently: "Ralph, dear, why did you not come home?" "I didn't want any fine folks about me." "But I am not fine, I am your wife. You will come home now, won't you?"--the voice was full of pleading. "It is your home, I've kept the business on--it's yours, too." "Of course it is." There was not one loving tone in the voice, but he was stroking her hand gently. He was glad she had come, glad of her gentle welcome, but he did not want to show it. Jim Coates and his wife were dumb with surprise. When the meaning of it all dawned upon them, with the instinct of true gentle-people they crept quietly downstairs. Phebe bent and kissed Ralph on the brow. "I'll leave you now, dear," she said, "just for a little while. I must go home and arrange for your coming. I will not be long, and if we roll you up well in blankets and drive in a closed cab the journey will not harm you." His only answer was a nod, but that was better than a refusal. She walked home like one in a dream. Stephen was there waiting to ask her some question about the garden scheme. He was talking to Nanna. Almost abruptly Phebe broke in upon them. Her face was very white, she was trembling all over, and could scarcely speak. Nanna rushed to her, thinking she would fall before she reached a chair. It was Stephen who gently placed a seat near, and held his arm round her as Nanna stooped to loosen her boots. "Poor dearie, you're quite done up!" said Nanna, but she knew all the time the shadow had fallen. "I've found Ralph," she whispered. "I want you to light a fire upstairs--I am going to fetch him home in a cab." Stephen withdrew his arm and caught hold of the chair-back to steady himself; the room seemed to swim before him. "Yes," was all Nanna answered. "Did you know?" gasped Phebe. "Yes." "And you?" turning to Stephen. He could only shake his head. The sight of Stephen's struggle gave her fresh strength. "Why did you not tell me, Nanna?" "It was too difficult--I did not know." The words came with great effort. Phebe stroked her hair with a comforting touch; they had exchanged places. It was Stephen who fetched the cab, and when it drove up again and the limp figure with the incessant cough stepped out, he was standing on the pavement, looking a sad, solitary figure. [Illustration: "HE WAS STANDING ON THE PAVEMENT LOOKING A SAD, SOLITARY FIGURE."] It was very late. The shop had long been closed. Jack was safely in bed. Only Nanna and Janie knew of Ralph's arrival. CHAPTER XXVII RALPH STARTS ON ANOTHER JOURNEY As soon as their lodger had been removed, Mrs. Coates told her husband what he had said about Mrs. Waring. "And to think," she exclaimed, "that he should talk like that about his very own wife! I didn't tell you before 'cause I knew it 'ud rile you so." "I should think so," Jim cried out, "the good-for-nothing fellow. I should have been tempted to have picked him up and carried him straight off to the workhouse whether he wanted to go or whether he didn't." "Do you suppose Mrs. Waring knows how he's talked about her?" "No; shouldn't think so." "If she did, do you suppose she would have taken him home?" "Yes; that would make no difference to her. She's got too big a heart to hold spite against any one." "Did you know that she nursed Topsy Scarves for six weeks when she had the smallpox?" Jim shook his head. "No, but it's just like her if she did." "She did. Topsy wouldn't let no one else touch her, but she was like a lamb with Mrs. Waring; so Mrs. Waring stayed six weeks and let her business get on as well as it could without her. And when Mrs. Scarves wanted to thank her, she said she wasn't to, for it had been a real happy time for her. Mrs. Scarves says she did everything for Topsy, and wasn't frightened a wee bit. I told you Mrs. Bessie Jones offered to get Mr. Wood,--no, Mr. Waring,--into Warley Hospital. Do you think she knew who he was?" "Did she see him?" "No, she only heard him cough." "I wish to goodness she'd succeeded, and that it shouldn't have been in our house the Little Missis got such a blow! My! it was a staggerer for her when she heard him cough! I never saw any one look as she did! I wish we could help her in some way or other, that I do. I wonder God lets such a good woman like she is have so much trouble." "Perhaps it's trouble that's made her good," wisely remarked Mrs. Coates. "Perhaps so, it does some people." As soon as Ralph was safely in bed Janie was despatched for a doctor. His appearance alarmed Phebe more than ever. The cough was incessant, and occasionally thin streaks of blood were seen on the handkerchief. "I wish you'd get me a red handkerchief," he said, in an irritable voice. "A red handkerchief! Why? I haven't got one." "Yes, a red handkerchief. And if you don't possess such a thing, you could get one, couldn't you? I shouldn't see that blood if I had a red handkerchief." "I did not know exactly what you meant. I'll get you one at once out of the shop." It was the same old Ralph, always wanting to cover up trouble, never able to fairly and boldly face consequences. The doctor pronounced him in a dangerous condition, promised to send something at once to ease the cough, and in the morning would examine him more thoroughly. "But I am afraid he is not long for this world, Mrs. Waring," he said, as he bade her good-night; "he has had a very hard life lately, that is very evident." Yes, she saw it all; Ralph had come back with a wrecked life--had come home to die!--the man who had gone forth to win a fortune to lay at her feet. How bitterly disappointed he must be! This thought gave an added tenderness to her voice, and made her still more patient. All the night long she watched by his side. Sometimes he slept a little, but when awake lay gloomily staring at the wall. He never uttered a word of tenderness or pleasure at being home. Only once did he refer to the past, and then it was to rip open the old wound. "You've been very successful, Phebe." "Yes; God has greatly helped me." "No doubt; but still it was I who started you. I left you a good business, and in addition"--he had to pause to cough--"and in addition I had trained you well, so, after all, the success is mine as much as yours." How could she contradict him? If he found comfort in this thought would it not be cruel to put forward any doubts? So after a pause she answered: "Yes." "You don't seem very sure about it," with as much "snap" in the words as his breath would allow. "I should not be where I am now, but for you," she answered gently, and that answer seemed to please him. Then in a little while: "I must see the books in the morning. I shall soon be able to pick up the threads. There's a country branch, isn't there?" "Two." "Ah, that's good; I gave you that idea." Another fit of coughing. "I shall soon be all right; it's only an extra cold I've got. I'll soon be able to take the reins, and then----" But he was too weak to finish the sentence. Early in the morning Phebe went to break the news to Jack. He was sitting up in bed rubbing his eyes. She sat down by his side putting her arm round his neck, bringing his sunny head to nestle on her shoulder. "Jack, darling, I've something very particular to tell you." "Have you, mummy? What is it? Has Janie got a sweetheart?" "No, it is something very serious. You must not joke." "Is it?"--lifting his head to look at her. "Are you in trouble? Who's been hurting you?" in his impetuous way. "No one. Jack, your father has come home." "Father!--come home!" in a bewildered voice. "Father come home! I say," and he began to get excited, "I must get up at once. Then he wasn't dead after all?" "Stay a bit, Jack; he is very ill--and very poor." She knew the dreams the lad had cherished, of how his father would return, of the grand treasures he was to bring his boy. "Poor!" he exclaimed; "then why didn't he write and tell you so? Why did he leave us all this time!" "Jack," she answered gently, "I expect it was because he was so disappointed at not finding the fortune," and then she told him all the story of how she had found Ralph. "Has he asked after me?" "No, not yet. You see he is very ill." "Not asked after me! And been here all night!" He was rather glad to have this fresh reason for anger. "You must not take any notice of that. Remember how ill he is. Sick people cannot be expected to be thoughtful. Get dressed now, and then come and tell him you are glad he has come home." "But I'm not glad--and I don't want to see him." "Jack!" "No, I don't; and I won't see him," bursting into angry tears. "What's the good of a father like that! To stay away from us and never write us a letter, and only come back 'cause he's ill!" "It was I who brought him back, you must remember." "What will all the fellows say! I've told them----" "Never mind all that. You can tell them your father has had disappointments, and they will be sorry for him." "Not they, they'll sneer. Oh, mummy, I am so wretched!" She tried to soothe him, but the angry spirit had got hold of him too much. "Come and see him, there's a dear Jack. You will be sorry for him when you see how ill he is." "No, I won't. He's been cruel to you--cruel!" "Jack," standing straight up and speaking very firmly, "I am grieved, deeply grieved, at your unloving spirit. You had better get dressed and go at once to your aunt's and remain there till you have a more forgiving spirit. How could I tell your father that you refuse to see him!" It was the first time there had been a cloud between them. Each felt it keenly. Phebe went away with a heavy heart. The burden had more than doubled during that quarter of an hour. How gladly she would have entered the Golden Gate just then! It seemed as if now both husband and son had failed her. Entering the sick-room her eyes fell on the silver star, and the old motto came again to mind: "We rely on Thee." "I do," she murmured, "God is with me; He is working all things right." "Nanna," exclaimed Jack, when he got downstairs, "I can't find my cap." His eyes were too full of tears to see it. "Well, you don't want your cap before you have your breakfast." "I don't want any breakfast." "Don't want any breakfast! What nonsense! Where are you off to?" "To aunty's; mummy said I must go at once." "Mummy did not mean you to go without your breakfast. Of course she will want your aunty to know quickly of your father's return; but there's not so much hurry you cannot have your breakfast." He had been trying hard to keep back the tears, but could not succeed. "Oh, it's not that," he exclaimed. "Mummy is displeased with me, and is sending me away." "Jack," said Nanna, putting her hands on his shoulders and trying to look into his eyes, "do you mean to say you are going to desert your mother just at one of the darkest moments of her life?" "I don't want to go--she sent me away," freeing himself from her detaining hands. Arriving at his aunt's he was obliged to tell her the whole of the story. She felt inclined to share the boy's anger and resentment in the first moment of excitement, but, afterwards viewing the matter from the mother's standpoint, her words were very similar to Nanna's. "No doubt you are disappointed, but didn't it strike you your mother must be disappointed, too? I think you've done wrong, Jack, not to stand by her and make things as easy as you could for her." Poor little Jack! Everybody seemed against him! "What did Mrs. Colston say to you?" the aunt continued. "Just what you do," he answered, and then sighed deeply. "Ah! I thought she would. Your mother must be as disappointed in you as you are in your father, and I'm sure Mrs. Colston would say we disappointed God as much as we disappoint one another." In less than an hour love for his mother had overcome all pride, disappointment and anger, and he was back home again. Nanna met him with a smile. "Well done, Jack; you've scored a victory, I can tell it by your face. Mummy will be delighted! Jack, dear, it will do your heart good to see her loving patience. She makes me think of God. Her patience and love are just like what His must be--only, of course, His are bigger. I tell you what you must do when you go upstairs. Don't make any note of your father's funny ways; take notice only of how your mother's trying to win him----" "Should I go upstairs now?" "No, your father's dozing. Sit down and have some breakfast. I don't suppose you ate much while your burden was on you. Jack, have you ever heard of St. Bernard's Hospice?" "Yes, I've seen a picture of it." "The monks go out with their dogs in the winter to see if they can come across anybody perishing in the snow. They are love-missionaries. I think this house is a hospice just now. Your mummy's found a poor perishing soul, and she's brought it home to get it ready for heaven." "Is father going to die?" "Yes; I'm afraid he's not long for this world--the doctor says about a week; so you and I have got to do all we can to help mummy." "What can I do?" "A lot. Do what mummy does; show all the love you can." It was not until Ralph had finished his breakfast that he asked: "And how are the children?" "There's only one left down here." "Which one?" "The boy." "Well, it's a comfort it's the boy. I expect Washington is a fine lad by now!" "Washington!"--the name slipped out involuntarily, it sounded so strange. "Yes, Washington; that's the lad's name, and the one I mean to call him by. You can fetch me up the books now." Going downstairs she caught sight of Jack. "Mummy," exclaimed the lad, rushing towards her, "I'm so sorry I disappointed you! I couldn't stop away from you. I'll do what you want me to do, and I'll stand by you through thick and thin, that I will. You'll see if I won't," and the bargain was sealed with a hug and a kiss. He was received back without one word of reproach. "Jack, if your father calls you by your other name you must not express any surprise. I can get along fine now you are with me." This little rift in the home-music had puzzled as well as troubled Phebe, but all at once it struck her that God perhaps meant her to see a parable in it, and that was how it was to work good for her. "Perhaps Ralph got away from God as Jack went away from me, because things weren't as he wanted them. But he'll get back again to God, as Jack has got back to me." And the parable comforted her, and inspired her. For God can take even the wayward doings of a petted child to teach His lessons and do His work. Jack made his way upstairs at once. "Good-morning, father," he said in his cheeriest tone, "it must be nice for you to be home again." "Yes, nicer for me than you, I suppose"--the words were snappish, but Ralph looked at the boy with a kind of look which plainly said: "You will do." The business books were brought, but he was far too weak to master them: "I'll attend to them when I'm stronger," he said. But each new day found him weaker. If ever a man lived in an atmosphere of love Ralph Waring did. How much of the old love had revived it would be difficult to say, if even any had. But it was a love which was willing to forego self to the utmost, and what love could be richer, more Christlike, than that? It was a true testing-time to Phebe. It was not easy to relinquish every thread of work in which she had been so deeply interested, and it was harder still, after being her own mistress so long, to submit patiently to that dictatorial voice! It was as though the Great Gardener had taken His cherished plant on to a bleak moorland to see how its blossoms would thrive where the winds blew all around it. All the town soon knew of Ralph Waring's return, and many were the comments on it. Some said it was "mighty good of Phebe to take the rascal back again," and showed how loving her heart was. Others said it showed that Ralph still loved her in spite of her having driven him from home, and that he could not die in peace away from her. It was not till the last day came that there was any proof that love had conquered. The doctor's prophecy had not come true, for he had lingered week after week, and even on this last day there seemed no change, except in manner and voice. "Phebe," the tone was even stronger than usual, but quite startling in its tenderness, "my life has been a failure. I see it all so plainly now." "This part may have been so, dear; but you must remember this is not all." She had a great longing to soothe and comfort him, but the moments were too precious and solemn to allow her to cover up the truth, however much she might be tempted. "Yes, but the future must be a good deal according to what the past has been." "Yes, maybe; but I love to think that out of all our tangles God can produce a beautiful design if we turn to Him with all our hearts." Ralph sighed heavily. "It has been self all along with me. It was a good thing God did not let me succeed. How I have fought against my failure, what it has cost me to be here receiving all your kindness, knowing all about your success, you can never tell--never!" and for the first time in all her life Phebe saw tears rolling down his face. "Poor Ralph! I am grieved for you, dear!" "I know you are," taking hold of her hand and kissing it. "It has cost me a struggle to acknowledge that God has led me right. If I had been other than a bankrupt soul He could not have had mercy on me. He was obliged to bring me low. But I thank Him for it. You do forgive me the wrong I did you?" and he looked so wistfully at her. "Of course I do, a hundred times over," and she stooped to kiss him, her hot tears mingling with his. "Dear Phebe----" But strength had gone. With one hand clasping Phebe, and the other his boy, and with Nanna gently wiping the cold sweat from his brow, he passed to the other land. His last words were: "Phebe, come with--me!" But he had started on a journey he was obliged this time to take without her. CHAPTER XXVIII OLIVE LEAVES AND LAUREL LEAVES In a very few weeks after Ralph's death the whole affair of his return seemed but as a dream, so much had life resumed its old aspect for all in Phebe's household. But the calm was not to last long; there was first to be two big pieces of excitement, and then, as the young folks say in the old game of "Family Coach," a general "change" round. One glorious spring evening Jim Coates paid Mrs. Waring an unexpected visit. "I thought you were at Exton," exclaimed Phebe. She knew that Hugh Black had started work there on a very large scale, and that he had given Jim a good berth. "Yes, I was there; but I have come over specially to see you. I said to my mates, 'If there's anybody that can help us it's the Little Missis. And I mean to go and ask her, that I will.' So I've come." "Are you in trouble? You know I will do whatever I can for you." "I know you would, Mrs. Waring, I know you would. But, thank God, it's not anything that is specially _my_ trouble; it has to do with all the lads. They are threatening to come out on strike. They're just mad against Mr. Black, and I thought you might go and see him for us, he would listen to you. It would be no good me going; the lads say now that I'm afraid to open my mouth against him." "But I should not know what to say to him!" put in Phebe, feeling somewhat aghast at the new _rôle_ which was being thrust upon her. "I can soon tell you all about it, and then I know right well you'd know what to say--no one better. Mr. Black's got hisself into a kind of a corner. He's promised to have the work done by a certain date, and now he sees he can't do it. P'raps he got the job by making out he could do it quicker than others, I don't know about that: anyhow, he's in a fix, and the lads say he means us to get him out of it." "But how could you?" "Well, he wants us to work an hour a day extra." "Yes, you could do that," put in Phebe again in a quick voice, feeling relieved at this easy way out of the difficulty. "Yes; but what is he willing to pay us? We work ten hours a day now, and a long day it is at that heavy work, and to put another hour a day on to it without anything extra is what the lads won't stand." "Do you mean to say he wants you to work that hour for nothing? There must be some mistake!" exclaimed Phebe. "Oh, yes,--don't make a mistake,--he will pay us the usual money, of course, but the lads say that is not fair, if we work extra when we're tired he ought to pay us extra, specially when it's to get him out of a mess, and--my! he'll make a lot of money out of it too! And what I don't like," continued Jim, sinking his voice, "the fellows sneer at him so; they say he's been harder than ever since he's been a bit religious. 'That's what your religion does for a man!--makes him a bigger sneak than ever.' That's how they talk." Phebe was silent. If the men did talk like that, then it _was_ her duty to go and speak to Hugh Black. "And there is something worse still for you to hear," continued Jim. "Mr. Black says if the lads throw the job up, he shall put on a gang of Irishmen, and the fellows say if he does, they will never let them do any work, and there's sure to be bloodshed!" Another silence. Certainly if she could prevent bloodshed it was her duty to do so! And it seemed to her, too, that the men's claim was a just one; if they were willing to help Hugh Black out of his difficulty he ought to be willing to pay them something extra. "Are you willing for me to tell Mr. Black all you have just said?" "Will you go, then?" asked Jim eagerly. "Why, yes; how could I refuse?" The words came but very slowly. "There now!" exclaimed Jim excitedly, slapping his hands vigorously on his knees. "There, I said you would, and the lads bet all manner of things you wouldn't; they even said you wouldn't because you couldn't afford to offend Mr. Black. But I told them to wait and see." Phebe only answered: "Can you tell me exactly what the men would like Mr. Black to do?" "Yes, I could, but I wonder----" "Do not hesitate to speak out anything that is in your heart. But I wonder if I could guess what it is you wish to ask me to do! Is it to go and have a talk to the men first?" "It is!" exclaimed Jim, more excited than ever. "How could you know what was in my mind?" "Oh, very easily," replied Phebe, laughing. "I know what the lads want, and you are welcome to tell Mr. Black all I've said; but it will be a heap better if you will talk to the men theirselves." "Would they be willing for me to be their spokesman to Mr. Black, do you suppose?" "Why, of course I am. They'd only be too proud if you would." "When could I see them?" "They have a meeting to-night----" Again he hesitated, feeling he was asking so much. Phebe quickly answered, "I will go with you at once," and then added, "Ah, Mr. Coates, it is not the first time you have induced me to go on an errand I have shrunk from!" "And this one," exclaimed Jim, his face all aglow, "is going to be as well-ended as the other one was, you see if it isn't!" Half-an-hour's run by the train, and ten minutes' walk brought them to the place of meeting. Many thoughts passed through Phebe's mind during that short journey; how came it she should be led into such difficult positions?--how could she adequately deal with subjects so far removed from those of her everyday experience? Several of the men were on the look-out for her; evidently her visit was expected, for a potato-basket had been turned up for her to stand on, and a chair provided for her to sit on. The men had gathered, about sixty of them, just at the junction of some country roads, and were standing under the shelter of a high barn-wall, for a rather cold wind was blowing. Many a rough hand was stretched out in welcome to her, and though she was a stranger to some, no one seemed in the slightest to resent her coming. "I'll speak first and set the ball a-rolling," she said, in her bright way; "Mr. Coates has told me about the trouble you are in, and it is very good of you to let me share it." "It does one good to hear her voice agin," said one old man in a very audible whisper, which was followed quickly by a loud "Shut up!" Phebe went on in her calm, low, but incisive voice, commenting on what Jim had told her, and then she asked, "Who is your spokesman here?" "Ford!" called out a score of voices, and a thick-set man came forward. "What do you wish Mr. Black to give you for the extra hour?" she asked. "A shilling." "And if he agrees to that, what would become of the Irishmen whom you say are on their way here?" "Let them go back to their taters," some one called out. "Oirishmen are as good as ye are!" The accent was so unmistakable that a general laugh went up. But it did good. "Of course they are," replied Phebe, "and sometimes a bit better, and it is for them I want to plead. If I take any sides at all it will not be for the rich"--a big cheer, and much clapping of hands--"but for the poor and unfortunate. Those men come expecting work; if Mr. Black agrees to your terms you ought to be willing to stretch out a willing hand to those Irishmen. You all know Mr. Black has made an error in his calculations"--cries of dissent--"hear me to the end and I am sure you will agree with me." "We'll make them listen," called out a strong voice, followed by several others. "That we will!" "No, friends," Phebe calmly answered, "I will only have a willing audience." "You have! You have!" they all called out. "I am going to ask Mr. Black to give you fifteenpence for that extra hour, on condition that you are willing to work 'shifts' with these Irishmen. Couldn't you manage that?" "No," said Ford, "the days are not long enough." "Well, what could you suggest that would show that you were willing to do the brother's part by these men, and also show Mr. Black that the English working-man was willing to do as he would be done by?" Then there followed several little speeches of the usual Socialistic strain, to which Phebe replied: "Yes, I sympathise with you there, but those questions are out of order at this gathering. We must be practical." "Tell us what you would like us to say to him," said Ford, and another round of cheers followed this suggestion. Phebe paused for a moment to ask for guidance; the light from the blessed stars was very clear, but just then an added glory was given to the scene by the moon suddenly shining forth. The silver beams brought Phebe a message. "This is what I would suggest, friends," and as she spoke it seemed as if a sudden silence came over the men, "that instead of working the extra hour--for I am sure your day is long enough--you let the new men work with you, and that Mr. Black pay you a halfpenny an hour more than the usual rate--that would mount up in the course of the week; or, if that is not practicable, to work in 'shifts,' as I suggested before, which could very well be done with the aid of electric light. If he preferred the latter plan, I should still advise him to let you work the extra hour at the increased pay I mentioned. Of course this will greatly aid him in getting the work finished, perhaps long before the time. I am not, however, forgetting that the plan will shorten the job for you, but work will surely not be scarce this fine weather. Now, what do you think of my suggestions?" "I think they'll do all right," said Ford. "Do you all agree to them, and empower me to say so to Mr. Black?" "She speaks fair enough," said one man. "He'll never cave in to all that," called out another. "But do you agree?" A great shout went up: "We all agree." "And will you go on steadily and quietly with your work till you hear from me again?" "Yes, we all agree!" Every man of them must have joined in that shout by the noise they made. They all wanted to shake hands with her before she left; several wished her "luck," but one old man said solemnly: "Eh, missis, you're a clever 'un, but you'll never get anything out of Hugh Black." Before Jim started to accompany Mrs. Waring to the station he whispered to Ford: "There now! didn't I tell you she'd manage the men all right? I knew she'd handle them all neat enough! Trust the Little Missis for that." "Yes," assented Ford, "she's just splendid, but she won't succeed." The visit to Hugh Black was by no means so easy an affair as the one to the men had been. When he learnt what her errand was he could hardly believe it. "Whatever will those men get you to do next? I expect the next thing will be, you will represent them in Parliament. I shouldn't wonder, though, but that you'd do it better than the fellow who is there now. But to the point: what have those fellows talked you over to ask me?" "I want you to understand, Mr. Black, they have not told me at all what to say; what I am going to say to you is my own suggestion, to which they agreed." "If that is so it will make a considerable difference." Her first endeavour was to get him to sympathise with the men in their hard toil. She scored a good point when she expressed her surprise that clever men like he was did not invent more machinery to save such heavy toil. "I feel sure you could do it if you tried." From that she passed on to the fact that the men had some time ago found out he was seeking to live his life on a higher plane than at one time. "'A bit religious' is the way they put it." "Well, what if they do?" "I want them to see that that bit is real," was her straight answer; "that God has something to do with your business arrangements." He made no answer, and then she told him the two suggestions she had made to the men, and asked him which he preferred. "You fairly take away my breath!" he exclaimed. "The last one is a splendid idea! I had never thought of that wrinkle! The men would never agree working side by side, but the idea of the 'shifts' and the electric light is a dazzling one. The wonder is, I had never thought of it myself." "You think, then, the electric light could be managed?" "Yes, easily enough. Why, do you know, I should get this contract finished in time to take on another I was thinking I should have to decline! I really ought to pay you for the idea--excuse me," seeing a flush come to her face, "but I am really indebted to you!" "What may I say to the men, Mr. Black?" "That I will have the two 'shifts,' and that if they will work the extra hour I will pay them the sum you have named to them. I could do no other after the help you have been to me." "I wish," she said earnestly, "you had agreed to it out of sympathy with the men, and because you thought God would have you do so." But he made her no answer. Early that evening Jim Coates came to receive the message for the men. He lost no time in returning to his mates. They were assembled in the same place as before. Of course the message was received with cheers. Some of the men could hardly believe their ears. "Well, I never!" was all Ford and some others could say. "And I am to tell you," continued Jim, "that when this job is finished, Mr. Black will have another job on hand." Another cheer. "And he couldn't have taken this job but for the Little Missis." Still a louder cheer. "But there is something else I have to tell you," went on Jim again, "which she said I was to be sure to remember. When you asked her to say what she would have us ask, she took just a moment to ask God for guidance, and at that very moment the moon came out. It was the clear moonlight which brought her the message about the electric light. She says that was God's answer. You know it was all along of the electric light made Mr. Black so pleased; it made the way easy for two gangs of us to be at work, and made it possible for him to take on the other job. So the Little Missis says we are always to remember God will work for us if we will let Him." There was no cheering after that part of the speech, but the words, "God will work for us if we will let Him," rang in those men's ears for many a long day. They were repeated to Mr. Black by Jim Coates. "'God will work for us if we will let Him,'" Hugh Black repeated to himself, "how real God is to that little woman! I wish He were as real to me!" The moonlight never fell upon his path but the words came back to him, and they were always followed by the simple, earnest prayer: "Undertake for me, O my God." Hugh Black was Mayor of Hadley that year. One day Jim Coates put a little packet into his hand in a very mysterious manner. It contained two pounds in sixpences and threepenny bits, and this little note: "We'd like you to do something with this that would show our gratitude to the Little Missis.--A FEW ROUGH NAVVIES." He mused over it a few days, then he borrowed a photograph of "the Little Missis" from Bessie, had a coloured enlargement taken from it, then had it framed in carved oak, with the words in gilt beneath: "The Little Missis. Subscribed for by a few grateful admirers." The next step was to ask permission to hang it in the Council Chamber, which was readily granted. Thus in the very room where she had been spoken of as "a woman whose husband had been obliged to leave her," the portrait of "the Little Missis" had a place of honour. It was months before Phebe knew anything of this, and when she did, so many other things had come to pass that her mind seemed too full to either grieve or be glad over it. CHAPTER XXIX CROWNED WITH JOY Eighteen months had gone by since Ralph's death. Nothing of any unusual nature had occurred to Phebe or her household, except the completion of the Garden Scheme and the settling of the dispute between Hugh Black and his men. It had been a true resting-time, without any strain, without any need to study ways and means, and without any attempt to advance in any direction so far as outward things were concerned. And yet Phebe did not feel satisfied; there was something missing, life did not satisfy her in its present outlook. During Ralph's illness all her outside work had been given up, others had stepped in and carried it on, and she had never got back to her old place again entirely. This was not through any unwillingness on her part, it was simply that the way did not open up. While Ralph was away there had always been a sense of strain and tension which had buoyed her on and on. Now that was removed, and there was no necessity to be on the alert, there had crept over her a weariness and lassitude. "Nanna," she suddenly said one day, "I am going to leave you." "Going to leave me!--never!" "Not for long, you dear; you may rest on that. But I have thought I should like to get right away for three or four weeks. I want to view my life from a distance--that is, if I can. If I get away from my everyday surroundings perhaps I could see it more clearly. I'm not satisfied with it." "But you would take somebody with you? Your sister?" "No, not my sister; I should be all the time viewing _her_ life if I did." "Well, then, take Jack. I should not like you to go alone." "Yes, I might take Jack." So the two started on their journey alone, and only Nanna and Aunt Lizzie knew whither they were bound, both of whom were strictly charged to keep the matter secret. What the mountains are to the Swiss, the sea is to the islander. Phebe and her boy settled down at a watering-place on the east coast, the lad finding endless amusement and instruction among the fishermen, while the mother sat on the green cliffs under the shadowing of blossoming trees, watching the course of the distant river, and the great steamers passing by bound for foreign shores, but intent mostly with the study of the past and future. The steamers made steady progress, but the same could not be said of the personal studies. Day followed day, but no progress was made. She was just where she was when she first came. "Show me Thy will, O God," she prayed. "Thou knowest my heart is willing for it." One very warm day she had her sunshade up to keep off a darting sunbeam that would keep dancing on her book, and did not notice a gentleman taking a seat not two yards away from her. When it was nearly time to meet Jack for their evening stroll she suddenly became aware of her neighbour. Both sunshade and book dropped from her hands--only one word escaped her lips, and it was-- "Stephen!" Not even in a moment's excitement would he have called her "Phebe" unless in some way she had given him permission, but here it was, and eagerly he grasped it. "Phebe!" and their out-stretched hands met in a tight clasp. "What brought you here?" Phebe was the first to speak. "I may ask the same," said Stephen. "But sit down again; this is a quiet spot, and I should like to talk to you." So they sat down again, but close together this time. "I came here," continued Stephen, "to have a quiet time to think things over and to know God's will. Not a creature in Hadley knows where I am. I have long wanted to ask you to be my wife, as I did years ago, and during all the years since then no one has taken your place in my heart--no one ever could. Whether you accept my love, or not, you are still, as ever, my queen." His voice had sunk to a whisper. He knew from the pressure of her hand that it was not likely she would refuse it. "I would have spoken to you before this, but I was afraid--I thought you shrank from me. Forgive me, dearest, if I wronged you." "You have nothing to forgive. I only seemed to shrink from you because I feared"--it seemed so hard to get the words out, but he wanted to hear, so did not help her at all--"I feared lest you might not respond to my love." "What, after waiting all these years! Never mind, you shall not reproach yourself. I ought to have shown you more of my heart. But, tell me, will you have this grey-haired fellow for your very own?" They looked into each other's eyes, the answer was there plainly enough. "You know I will," said Phebe, "but I've nothing to give that is worthy such patient love." "That is my business," he said, with a laugh, "so don't trouble about that." "Shall I tell you what brought me here? I was so restless, I wanted to quietly review my life and plan something for the future. Only Nanna and Lizzie know where we are. Jack is with me. But I have been just as restless, and I prayed only an hour ago, 'Show me Thy will, O God.' God must have sent you to me." "I'm sure He did, my Phebe." There was such a glad ring in the voice. "If only we could be young again!" "Look at the sky, dearest!" There were bars of light and dark in the western sky, and above these a flock of tiny clouds. Along the edge of the horizon ran a line of rosy light. Presently the bars merged into dark purple clouds, the cloudlets above took on a rosy light, the glory widened from below and from above, till the whole western sky was aflame with radiant beauty. "That is like our life, dearest," Stephen whispered, putting his arm round her as they sat. "All our clouds which memory may bring or the future reveal are going to be made beautiful, covered all over with rosy love." "But it's evening, Stephen," she whispered, "the darkness is creeping on," and he felt that she was trembling. "But we are together. Besides, no illustration can be strained too far: it's evening in the heavens but mid-day in our lives." "Well I never!"--it was Jack's voice. (Was there ever stranger ending to a wooing!) "Are you two chums?" Evidently he was feeling very annoyed. His mother having failed to meet him at the appointed time and place he had come in search of her. Stephen jumped up at once, seized hold of the lad with loving hands, and compelled him to sit down between them. "Yes, we're chums," said Stephen, in his old bright manner, "and we want to tell you how it came about." Jack's face looked rather dark, and he muttered: "This is why, then, mummy wanted to come here so much." "No, it was not," said Stephen firmly, and then he told him of their unexpected meeting, of how God had seemingly led them both on the path, and of his (Stephen's) boyhood love for his mother. And all the time Phebe said never a word, but sat looking at the two with eyes full of love. "Ah!" said Jack, with a sigh of relief, "I don't mind now. I thought you'd been keeping it dark from me. But, I say, if you take mummy, you'll have to take me as well! Else what will become of me?" "Of course I shall; the fact is, we'll all be chums together, won't we?" "Rather!" said Jack. "I call this spiffin," and then their hands seemed to get all mixed up together. The next day Stephen had a particular request to make. It was that, seeing he had waited for his love so long, they should be married at once, and Phebe felt she could not refuse him. Nanna, Aunt Lizzie, Bessie, Reynolds and Jones were all communicated with at once, and on a given day the three establishments were closed, all assistants given a holiday, and the above-named individuals summoned to the ceremony. To please Jack he was allowed to give his mother away, and Reynolds was the bridegroom's best man. Bessie--the Bessie of old!--was delighted. "This is what I call fine! I'm as happy as if I were being married to my dear 'Darling Jones' over again!" Nanna was just as radiant; her old dream after all had come true! Once more during the honeymoon Phebe referred to the past. "If only we could have started our life together! How was it I was so blind? Why did not my heart respond to your love as it does now? Nanna was not nearly so blind as I was," and then she told Stephen of Mrs. Colston's guesses that afternoon in the old kitchen where the mangle was. "I cannot answer your questions, dearest; but I am sure you are the richer women to-day for the trials you have had." "Yes, Nanna said that day, when I told her I was a Christian, that to be a full Christian was a matter of development, that there were many creases in my nature God had to mangle out. I am afraid there are many creases still left." "Yes, though we may be blameless before God our education is still going on." "But I have been far from blameless. I have often thought if I had entered more into Ralph's ambitions it would have been better and his end would have been different. What if I should bring defeat into your life too!" "Dearest! you have brought nothing but inspiration into my life. You are not to have these sad thoughts. I was not brave enough in the past to show my love, or you might have seen it in a plainer manner--and all would have been different. But we neither of us acted from selfishness. You considered at the time you acted rightly by resisting Ralph's restlessness. God will never blame us for not acting up to any light that was hidden from us. If we have made mistakes in the past God has forgiven us, and therefore we should put the past entirely from us." "So we will," she answered, with a happy smile; "we are both making a new start, and we will let nothing hinder us." When the time came for their return home, there was great excitement among many of the Hadley people. The honeymoon had been considerably lengthened at Stephen's request, for two reasons--first, to give Phebe as long a rest as possible; and secondly, to give time for the beautifying of the old farmhouse on the hill above the town. Bay-windows and a porch had been built out, the front garden had been relaid, several rooms refurnished, and all had been kept a grand secret from Phebe. "I tell you what it is," said Jim Coates, "she shall have a welcome like a duchess, that she shall!" So instead of stepping into a cab as she expected she would do when she came out of the station, Phebe found a carriage-and-pair waiting them, and then at a certain bend of the road a whole body of men suddenly made their appearance, took out the horses, attached ropes to the carriage, and drew it along in triumphant style. Just for a moment Phebe was quite startled; the idea suddenly presented itself that they were being captured by robbers--it was but for an instant--and then the sight of Jim Coates' face, and the triumphant look on Stephen's, made it all clear to her, and partly laughing, partly crying, she managed to exclaim: "It is too much--too much!--don't let them do it, Steve!" But it would have taken more than Steve to hinder that loyal little band of stalwarts, if even he had been willing, which he was not. Wreaths of evergreens were stretched across the road, flags were fluttering everywhere; close to the house was a long banner, with the words in red letters, "Welcome home to the Little Missis and her husband." As the men paused at the gate they had still breath enough to exclaim: "Three cheers for the Little Missis and her husband!" and great hearty "Hip! Hip! Hurrahs!" rang out. "But, Steve----" exclaimed Phebe, as she looked up at the unfamiliar-looking house, and then a second revelation came to her. Steve answered her questioning look with a kiss on her cheek--and then there was another cheer. Bessie and Janie were both standing at the gate, bearing a great basket of roses. Bessie had decided that because she had not thought of scattering roses on the path at the wedding, she would do so at the home-coming. "Yes, she shall walk on roses this time," Bessie exclaimed; "the other time she was married she had only cold potatoes. I mean to make up for that." The idea of any one walking on cold potatoes fairly puzzled poor Janie. "I never heard of such a thing!" she exclaimed. "I'm sure she didn't when she came home. I was there, and ought to know." "You know well enough," retorted Bessie, "what a cold welcome she got. Didn't I see you lay the supper-table? And didn't I tell you it looked more like a meal for an errand-boy than for a bride? Don't you remember that?" "Yes," meekly answered the literal Janie, "but there were no cold potatoes messing about." So the roses were strewed on her path by the two young women, who though so different in character, had both learnt to love her with a wonderful devotion. But before Phebe trod on the roses, she stopped to kiss her friends, and then turning round to the group of men who looked very hot but very happy, she said: "You have done us too much honour, but may God bless you." They could see that her face was wet with tears as well as radiant with smiles and then another cheer went up for "the Little Missis and her husband." Dear old Nanna was standing on the doorstep with Jack by her side. "Welcome home, dear heart!" said Nanna, kissing her and giving her a motherly hug. Jack stood patiently by till he thought Nanna had had her full share, and then gave her a gentle reminder with his hand that it was his turn now. Did the sight of the loaded table and the gay, bright room bring back to her any thoughts of the past? If they did, no shadow from the past was allowed to linger. In a month's time they were all fairly settled down. Jack, Mrs. Colston and Janie had all removed to "the house on the hill," and Aunt Lizzie had taken up her residence at the business establishment, there to remain, God willing, till Jack should reach his majority. "Nanna," said Phebe one day, "do you remember telling me that a Christian is not perfected till death, that we have to be trained and disciplined? And do you remember what discipline I needed?" "Yes, I remember it well. You see, I'm always thinking about it because I like to watch the process." "I have been thinking God has ceased to do any training with me--could it be that He is disappointed with me?--that because I have not come up to what He expected, He has put me on one side." "Why, dearie, what has put that into your head?" "What discipline have I got now? Peace and joy and prosperity are with me in abundance." "All God's training is not done by pain. Bless me, the flowers know better than that! The cold winds and rains make them bloom right enough, but the sunshine has a good share in the work as well. Instead of you having no training just now, the sunshine all round you is doing it as fast as it can. And if God sees you can stand the sunshine without getting puffed up, or careless, or proud--I know you will forgive an old woman's plain words--He perhaps has glorious plans of work for you in the future. He can discipline and train you by all this wealth He has given you." "Trust you," replied Phebe, laughing, "for never giving me the ghost of a chance of being miserable. I never saw anybody like you for ruthlessly stripping away every shred of the blues!" "Do you want to keep a few of the blue rags, then?" "No, you know I do not." "Dear heart," said Nanna tenderly, "there was a time when you had to search round for your bright bits: now you are surrounded with it, take in all you can get--rejoice and exult in it, and don't lose one bit simply because you have got so much." When Phebe repeated this conversation to her husband, he added: "If God has crowned you with joy, sweetheart--and I hope from my heart He has done so--do not let anybody put a thorn in the crown God did not mean to be there. I would like to crown you every day myself with joy if I could--my queen!--my ray of glory!" "But, Steve, be serious." "I never was calmer in my life. You know I mean every word I say--say you do!" "Yes, you loyal lover mine," linking her arm in his, "but you don't have a monopoly in love for all that," looking up at him with a smile on her sweet face. "Now, I want to ask you a very serious question." "Ask on, my queen." "But it is really serious." "And so am I. What is it, darling?" bending down to kiss her. He never seemed to tire of proving to himself that she actually, after all the weary years of waiting, belonged to him, and he to her. "If God were to call me home to-night," she said in a low voice, "I should not want to go. That cannot be a right frame of mind to be in, now, is it?" "Yes, it is; a perfectly right frame of mind. If you were wanting to go home just now, it would seem to show you were not satisfied with what God had provided for you. When the call does come you may feel very different from what you do now. I never think we can be exactly sure what we should do under certain conditions--supposed conditions. It is only the present moment that we need to concern ourselves about, and I think we can both say we are ready this minute to do God's will. Don't you think so, sweetheart?" "God's will for us just now is so sweet," she answered, "that I somewhat mistrust myself. But I can truly pray, 'Teach me to do Thy will, O my God.'" "And that is everything," he exclaimed. "It is by our desires God judges us. And, sweetheart," again bending tenderly over her, "when the call does come, whether to you or to me, we'll clasp hands, if we can, to the last moment, and then we'll wait patiently till we clasp them again in the Sunny Land." "The Little Missis" had been toe well trained for the sunshine to spoil her--it did but bring out still fairer beauties in her character; and no end of work came to her, or she went to it, whichever way you prefer to have it. * * * * * The Great Gardener had kept this flower for long years in an exposed position, where winds and frosts had worked their will; and many a time had He bent over it, with loving look but with firm hand, to shape it into more perfect form and fairer beauty. And then He said: "I will put it into a sunny place." He did so. And there in that place of sunlight, by its very beauty it brought praise to His Name, and the winds which once had been so rough with it, bore its fragrance afar. THE END 
4520	----	AARON'S ROD by D. H. Lawrence CONTENTS I. THE BLUE BALL II. ROYAL OAK III. “THE LIGHTED TREE” IV. “THE PILLAR OF SALT” V. AT THE OPERA VI. TALK VII. THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN VIII. A PUNCH IN THE WIND IX. LOW-WATER MARK X. THE WAR AGAIN XI. MORE PILLAR OF SALT XII. NOVARA XIII. WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT XIV. XX SETTEMBRE XV. A RAILWAY JOURNEY XVI. FLORENCE XVII. HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE XVIII. THE MARCHESA XIX. CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY XX. THE BROKEN ROD XXI. WORDS CHAPTER I. THE BLUE BALL There was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve. Also the War was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace. A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general air. Also there had been another wrangle among the men on the pit-bank that evening. Aaron Sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line climbing the hill home from work. He was late because he had attended a meeting of the men on the bank. He was secretary to the Miners Union for his colliery, and had heard a good deal of silly wrangling that left him nettled. He strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and was in the long road of colliers' dwellings. Just across was his own house: he had built it himself. He went through the little gate, up past the side of the house to the back. There he hung a moment, glancing down the dark, wintry garden. “My father--my father's come!” cried a child's excited voice, and two little girls in white pinafores ran out in front of his legs. “Father, shall you set the Christmas Tree?” they cried. “We've got one!” “Afore I have my dinner?” he answered amiably. “Set it now. Set it now.--We got it through Fred Alton.” “Where is it?” The little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of the passage into the light of the kitchen door. “It's a beauty!” exclaimed Millicent. “Yes, it is,” said Marjory. “I should think so,” he replied, striding over the dark bough. He went to the back kitchen to take off his coat. “Set it now, Father. Set it now,” clamoured the girls. “You might as well. You've left your dinner so long, you might as well do it now before you have it,” came a woman's plangent voice, out of the brilliant light of the middle room. Aaron Sisson had taken off his coat and waistcoat and his cap. He stood bare-headed in his shirt and braces, contemplating the tree. “What am I to put it in?” he queried. He picked up the tree, and held it erect by the topmost twig. He felt the cold as he stood in the yard coatless, and he twitched his shoulders. “Isn't it a beauty!” repeated Millicent. “Ay!--lop-sided though.” “Put something on, you two!” came the woman's high imperative voice, from the kitchen. “We aren't cold,” protested the girls from the yard. “Come and put something on,” insisted the voice. The man started off down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors. The sky was clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under air. Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a spade and a box that was suitable. Then he came out to his neat, bare, wintry garden. The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of their hats under their chins as they ran. The tree and the box lay on the frozen earth. The air breathed dark, frosty, electric. “Hold it up straight,” he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree in the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the roots. When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. The girls were hovering excited round the tree. He dropped the barrow and stooped to the box. The girls watched him hold back his face--the boughs pricked him. “Is it very heavy?” asked Millicent. “Ay!” he replied, with a little grunt. Then the procession set off--the trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited little girls. They arrived at the door. Down went the legs of the wheel-barrow on the yard. The man looked at the box. “Where are you going to have it?” he called. “Put it in the back kitchen,” cried his wife. “You'd better have it where it's going to stop. I don't want to hawk it about.” “Put it on the floor against the dresser, Father. Put it there,” urged Millicent. “You come and put some paper down, then,” called the mother hastily. The two children ran indoors, the man stood contemplative in the cold, shrugging his uncovered shoulders slightly. The open inner door showed a bright linoleum on the floor, and the end of a brown side-board on which stood an aspidistra. Again with a wrench Aaron Sisson lifted the box. The tree pricked and stung. His wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his face averted. “Mind where you make a lot of dirt,” she said. He lowered the box with a little jerk on to the spread-out newspaper on the floor. Soil scattered. “Sweep it up,” he said to Millicent. His ear was lingering over the sudden, clutching hiss of the tree-boughs. A stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything sharp and hard. In the open fire-place a hot fire burned red. All was scrupulously clean and perfect. A baby was cooing in a rocker-less wicker cradle by the hearth. The mother, a slim, neat woman with dark hair, was sewing a child's frock. She put this aside, rose, and began to take her husband's dinner from the oven. “You stopped confabbing long enough tonight,” she said. “Yes,” he answered, going to the back kitchen to wash his hands. In a few minutes he came and sat down to his dinner. The doors were shut close, but there was a draught, because the settling of the mines under the house made the doors not fit. Aaron moved his chair, to get out of the draught. But he still sat in his shirt and trousers. He was a good-looking man, fair, and pleasant, about thirty-two years old. He did not talk much, but seemed to think about something. His wife resumed her sewing. She was acutely aware of her husband, but he seemed not very much aware of her. “What were they on about today, then?” she said. “About the throw-in.” “And did they settle anything?” “They're going to try it--and they'll come out if it isn't satisfactory.” “The butties won't have it, I know,” she said. He gave a short laugh, and went on with his meal. The two children were squatted on the floor by the tree. They had a wooden box, from which they had taken many little newspaper packets, which they were spreading out like wares. “Don't open any. We won't open any of them till we've taken them all out--and then we'll undo one in our turns. Then we s'll both undo equal,” Millicent was saying. “Yes, we'll take them ALL out first,” re-echoed Marjory. “And what are they going to do about Job Arthur Freer? Do they want him?” A faint smile came on her husband's face. “Nay, I don't know what they want.--Some of 'em want him--whether they're a majority, I don't know.” She watched him closely. “Majority! I'd give 'em majority. They want to get rid of you, and make a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it. Strikes me you need something to break your heart over.” He laughed silently. “Nay,” he said. “I s'll never break my heart.” “You'll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else: just because a lot of ignorant monkeys want a monkey of their own sort to do the Union work, and jabber to them, they want to get rid of you, and you eat your heart out about it. More fool you, that's all I say--more fool you. If you cared for your wife and children half what you care about your Union, you'd be a lot better pleased in the end. But you care about nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who don't know what they want except it's more money just for themselves. Self, self, self--that's all it is with them--and ignorance.” “You'd rather have self without ignorance?” he said, smiling finely. “I would, if I've got to have it. But what I should like to see is a man that has thought for others, and isn't all self and politics.” Her color had risen, her hand trembled with anger as she sewed. A blank look had come over the man's face, as if he did not hear or heed any more. He drank his tea in a long draught, wiped his moustache with two fingers, and sat looking abstractedly at the children. They had laid all the little packets on the floor, and Millicent was saying: “Now I'll undo the first, and you can have the second. I'll take this--” She unwrapped the bit of newspaper and disclosed a silvery ornament for a Christmas tree: a frail thing like a silver plum, with deep rosy indentations on each side. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Isn't it LOVELY!” Her fingers cautiously held the long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with a curious, irritating possession. The man's eyes moved away from her. The lesser child was fumbling with one of the little packets. “Oh!”--a wail went up from Millicent. “You've taken one!--You didn't wait.” Then her voice changed to a motherly admonition, and she began to interfere. “This is the way to do it, look! Let me help you.” But Marjory drew back with resentment. “Don't, Millicent!--Don't!” came the childish cry. But Millicent's fingers itched. At length Marjory had got out her treasure--a little silvery bell with a glass top hanging inside. The bell was made of frail glassy substance, light as air. “Oh, the bell!” rang out Millicent's clanging voice. “The bell! It's my bell. My bell! It's mine! Don't break it, Marjory. Don't break it, will you?” Marjory was shaking the bell against her ear. But it was dumb, it made no sound. “You'll break it, I know you will.--You'll break it. Give it ME--” cried Millicent, and she began to take away the bell. Marjory set up an expostulation. “LET HER ALONE,” said the father. Millicent let go as if she had been stung, but still her brassy, impudent voice persisted: “She'll break it. She'll break it. It's mine--” “You undo another,” said the mother, politic. Millicent began with hasty, itching fingers to unclose another package. “Aw--aw Mother, my peacock--aw, my peacock, my green peacock!” Lavishly she hovered over a sinuous greenish bird, with wings and tail of spun glass, pearly, and body of deep electric green. “It's mine--my green peacock! It's mine, because Marjory's had one wing off, and mine hadn't. My green peacock that I love! I love it!” She swung it softly from the little ring on its back. Then she went to her mother. “Look, Mother, isn't it a beauty?” “Mind the ring doesn't come out,” said her mother. “Yes, it's lovely!” The girl passed on to her father. “Look, Father, don't you love it!” “Love it?” he re-echoed, ironical over the word love. She stood for some moments, trying to force his attention. Then she went back to her place. Marjory had brought forth a golden apple, red on one cheek, rather garish. “Oh!” exclaimed Millicent feverishly, instantly seized with desire for what she had not got, indifferent to what she had. Her eye ran quickly over the packages. She took one. “Now!” she exclaimed loudly, to attract attention. “Now! What's this?--What's this? What will this beauty be?” With finicky fingers she removed the newspaper. Marjory watched her wide-eyed. Millicent was self-important. “The blue ball!” she cried in a climax of rapture. “I've got THE BLUE BALL.” She held it gloating in the cup of her hands. It was a little globe of hardened glass, of a magnificent full dark blue color. She rose and went to her father. “It was your blue ball, wasn't it, father?” “Yes.” “And you had it when you were a little boy, and now I have it when I'm a little girl.” “Ay,” he replied drily. “And it's never been broken all those years.” “No, not yet.” “And perhaps it never will be broken.” To this she received no answer. “Won't it break?” she persisted. “Can't you break it?” “Yes, if you hit it with a hammer,” he said. “Aw!” she cried. “I don't mean that. I mean if you just drop it. It won't break if you drop it, will it?” “I dare say it won't.” “But WILL it?” “I sh'd think not.” “Should I try?” She proceeded gingerly to let the blue ball drop, it bounced dully on the floor-covering. “Oh-h-h!” she cried, catching it up. “I love it.” “Let ME drop it,” cried Marjory, and there was a performance of admonition and demonstration from the elder sister. But Millicent must go further. She became excited. “It won't break,” she said, “even if you toss it up in the air.” She flung it up, it fell safely. But her father's brow knitted slightly. She tossed it wildly: it fell with a little splashing explosion: it had smashed. It had fallen on the sharp edge of the tiles that protruded under the fender. “NOW what have you done!” cried the mother. The child stood with her lip between her teeth, a look, half, of pure misery and dismay, half of satisfaction, on her pretty sharp face. “She wanted to break it,” said the father. “No, she didn't! What do you say that for!” said the mother. And Millicent burst into a flood of tears. He rose to look at the fragments that lay splashed on the floor. “You must mind the bits,” he said, “and pick 'em all up.” He took one of the pieces to examine it. It was fine and thin and hard, lined with pure silver, brilliant. He looked at it closely. So--this was what it was. And this was the end of it. He felt the curious soft explosion of its breaking still in his ears. He threw his piece in the fire. “Pick all the bits up,” he said. “Give over! give over! Don't cry any more.” The good-natured tone of his voice quieted the child, as he intended it should. He went away into the back kitchen to wash himself. As he was bending his head over the sink before the little mirror, lathering to shave, there came from outside the dissonant voices of boys, pouring out the dregs of carol-singing. “While Shep-ep-ep-ep-herds watched--” He held his soapy brush suspended for a minute. They called this singing! His mind flitted back to early carol music. Then again he heard the vocal violence outside. “Aren't you off there!” he called out, in masculine menace. The noise stopped, there was a scuffle. But the feet returned and the voices resumed. Almost immediately the door opened, boys were heard muttering among themselves. Millicent had given them a penny. Feet scraped on the yard, then went thudding along the side of the house, to the street. To Aaron Sisson, this was home, this was Christmas: the unspeakably familiar. The war over, nothing was changed. Yet everything changed. The scullery in which he stood was painted green, quite fresh, very clean, the floor was red tiles. The wash-copper of red bricks was very red, the mangle with its put-up board was white-scrubbed, the American oil-cloth on the table had a gay pattern, there was a warm fire, the water in the boiler hissed faintly. And in front of him, beneath him as he leaned forward shaving, a drop of water fell with strange, incalculable rhythm from the bright brass tap into the white enamelled bowl, which was now half full of pure, quivering water. The war was over, and everything just the same. The acute familiarity of this house, which he had built for his marriage twelve years ago, the changeless pleasantness of it all seemed unthinkable. It prevented his thinking. When he went into the middle room to comb his hair he found the Christmas tree sparkling, his wife was making pastry at the table, the baby was sitting up propped in cushions. “Father,” said Millicent, approaching him with a flat blue-and-white angel of cotton-wool, and two ends of cotton--“tie the angel at the top.” “Tie it at the top?” he said, looking down. “Yes. At the very top--because it's just come down from the sky.” “Ay my word!” he laughed. And he tied the angel. Coming downstairs after changing he went into the icy cold parlour, and took his music and a small handbag. With this he retreated again to the back kitchen. He was still in trousers and shirt and slippers: but now it was a clean white shirt, and his best black trousers, and new pink and white braces. He sat under the gas-jet of the back kitchen, looking through his music. Then he opened the bag, in which were sections of a flute and a piccolo. He took out the flute, and adjusted it. As he sat he was physically aware of the sounds of the night: the bubbling of water in the boiler, the faint sound of the gas, the sudden crying of the baby in the next room, then noises outside, distant boys shouting, distant rags of carols, fragments of voices of men. The whole country was roused and excited. The little room was hot. Aaron rose and opened a square ventilator over the copper, letting in a stream of cold air, which was grateful to him. Then he cocked his eye over the sheet of music spread out on the table before him. He tried his flute. And then at last, with the odd gesture of a diver taking a plunge, he swung his head and began to play. A stream of music, soft and rich and fluid, came out of the flute. He played beautifully. He moved his head and his raised bare arms with slight, intense movements, as the delicate music poured out. It was sixteenth-century Christmas melody, very limpid and delicate. The pure, mindless, exquisite motion and fluidity of the music delighted him with a strange exasperation. There was something tense, exasperated to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored breast, as he played the finely-spun peace-music. The more exquisite the music, the more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss; and at the same time, the more intense was the maddened exasperation within him. Millicent appeared in the room. She fidgetted at the sink. The music was a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was on her own mind. At length it ended, her father was turning over the various books and sheets. She looked at him quickly, seizing her opportunity. “Are you going out, Father?” she said. “Eh?” “Are you going out?” She twisted nervously. “What do you want to know for?” He made no other answer, and turned again to the music. His eye went down a sheet--then over it again--then more closely over it again. “Are you?” persisted the child, balancing on one foot. He looked at her, and his eyes were angry under knitted brows. “What are you bothering about?” he said. “I'm not bothering--I only wanted to know if you were going out,” she pouted, quivering to cry. “I expect I am,” he said quietly. She recovered at once, but still with timidity asked: “We haven't got any candles for the Christmas tree--shall you buy some, because mother isn't going out?” “Candles!” he repeated, settling his music and taking up the piccolo. “Yes--shall you buy us some, Father? Shall you?” “Candles!” he repeated, putting the piccolo to his mouth and blowing a few piercing, preparatory notes. “Yes, little Christmas-tree candles--blue ones and red ones, in boxes--Shall you, Father?” “We'll see--if I see any--” “But SHALL you?” she insisted desperately. She wisely mistrusted his vagueness. But he was looking unheeding at the music. Then suddenly the piccolo broke forth, wild, shrill, brilliant. He was playing Mozart. The child's face went pale with anger at the sound. She turned, and went out, closing both doors behind her to shut out the noise. The shrill, rapid movement of the piccolo music seemed to possess the air, it was useless to try to shut it out. The man went on playing to himself, measured and insistent. In the frosty evening the sound carried. People passing down the street hesitated, listening. The neighbours knew it was Aaron practising his piccolo. He was esteemed a good player: was in request at concerts and dances, also at swell balls. So the vivid piping sound tickled the darkness. He played on till about seven o'clock; he did not want to go out too soon, in spite of the early closing of the public houses. He never went with the stream, but made a side current of his own. His wife said he was contrary. When he went into the middle room to put on his collar and tie, the two little girls were having their hair brushed, the baby was in bed, there was a hot smell of mince-pies baking in the oven. “You won't forget our candles, will you, Father?” asked Millicent, with assurance now. “I'll see,” he answered. His wife watched him as he put on his overcoat and hat. He was well-dressed, handsome-looking. She felt there was a curious glamour about him. It made her feel bitter. He had an unfair advantage--he was free to go off, while she must stay at home with the children. “There's no knowing what time you'll be home,” she said. “I shan't be late,” he answered. “It's easy to say so,” she retorted, with some contempt. He took his stick, and turned towards the door. “Bring the children some candles for their tree, and don't be so selfish,” she said. “All right,” he said, going out. “Don't say ALL RIGHT if you never mean to do it,” she cried, with sudden anger, following him to the door. His figure stood large and shadowy in the darkness. “How many do you want?” he said. “A dozen,” she said. “And holders too, if you can get them,” she added, with barren bitterness. “Yes--all right,” he turned and melted into the darkness. She went indoors, worn with a strange and bitter flame. He crossed the fields towards the little town, which once more fumed its lights under the night. The country ran away, rising on his right hand. It was no longer a great bank of darkness. Lights twinkled freely here and there, though forlornly, now that the war-time restrictions were removed. It was no glitter of pre-war nights, pit-heads glittering far-off with electricity. Neither was it the black gulf of the war darkness: instead, this forlorn sporadic twinkling. Everybody seemed to be out of doors. The hollow dark countryside re-echoed like a shell with shouts and calls and excited voices. Restlessness and nervous excitement, nervous hilarity were in the air. There was a sense of electric surcharge everywhere, frictional, a neurasthenic haste for excitement. Every moment Aaron Sisson was greeted with Good-night--Good-night, Aaron--Good-night, Mr. Sisson. People carrying parcels, children, women, thronged home on the dark paths. They were all talking loudly, declaiming loudly about what they could and could not get, and what this or the other had lost. When he got into the main street, the only street of shops, it was crowded. There seemed to have been some violent but quiet contest, a subdued fight, going on all the afternoon and evening: people struggling to buy things, to get things. Money was spent like water, there was a frenzy of money-spending. Though the necessities of life were in abundance, still the people struggled in frenzy for cheese, sweets, raisins, pork-stuff, even for flowers and holly, all of which were scarce, and for toys and knick-knacks, which were sold out. There was a wild grumbling, but a deep satisfaction in the fight, the struggle. The same fight and the same satisfaction in the fight was witnessed whenever a tram-car stopped, or when it heaved its way into sight. Then the struggle to mount on board became desperate and savage, but stimulating. Souls surcharged with hostility found now some outlet for their feelings. As he came near the little market-place he bethought himself of the Christmas-tree candles. He did not intend to trouble himself. And yet, when he glanced in passing into the sweet-shop window, and saw it bare as a board, the very fact that he probably _could not_ buy the things made him hesitate, and try. “Have you got any Christmas-tree candles?” he asked as he entered the shop. “How many do you want?” “A dozen.” “Can't let you have a dozen. You can have two boxes--four in a box--eight. Six-pence a box.” “Got any holders?” “Holders? Don't ask. Haven't seen one this year.” “Got any toffee--?” “Cough-drops--two-pence an ounce--nothing else left.” “Give me four ounces.” He watched her weighing them in the little brass scales. “You've not got much of a Christmas show,” he said. “Don't talk about Christmas, as far as sweets is concerned. They ought to have allowed us six times the quantity--there's plenty of sugar, why didn't they? We s'll have to enjoy ourselves with what we've got. We mean to, anyhow.” “Ay,” he said. “Time we had a bit of enjoyment, THIS Christmas. They ought to have made things more plentiful.” “Yes,” he said, stuffing his package in his pocket. CHAPTER II. ROYAL OAK The war had killed the little market of the town. As he passed the market place on the brow, Aaron noticed that there were only two miserable stalls. But people crowded just the same. There was a loud sound of voices, men's voices. Men pressed round the doorways of the public-houses. But he was going to a pub out of town. He descended the dark hill. A street-lamp here and there shed parsimonious light. In the bottoms, under the trees, it was very dark. But a lamp glimmered in front of the “Royal Oak.” This was a low white house sunk three steps below the highway. It was darkened, but sounded crowded. Opening the door, Sisson found himself in the stone passage. Old Bob, carrying three cans, stopped to see who had entered--then went on into the public bar on the left. The bar itself was a sort of little window-sill on the right: the pub was a small one. In this window-opening stood the landlady, drawing and serving to her husband. Behind the bar was a tiny parlour or den, the landlady's preserve. “Oh, it's you,” she said, bobbing down to look at the newcomer. None entered her bar-parlour unless invited. “Come in,” said the landlady. There was a peculiar intonation in her complacent voice, which showed she had been expecting him, a little irritably. He went across into her bar-parlour. It would not hold more than eight or ten people, all told--just the benches along the walls, the fire between--and two little round tables. “I began to think you weren't coming,” said the landlady, bringing him a whiskey. She was a large, stout, high-coloured woman, with a fine profile, probably Jewish. She had chestnut-coloured eyes, quick, intelligent. Her movements were large and slow, her voice laconic. “I'm not so late, am I?” asked Aaron. “Yes, you are late, I should think.” She Looked up at the little clock. “Close on nine.” “I did some shopping,” said Aaron, with a quick smile. “Did you indeed? That's news, I'm sure. May we ask what you bought?” This he did not like. But he had to answer. “Christmas-tree candles, and toffee.” “For the little children? Well you've done well for once! I must say I recommend you. I didn't think you had so much in you.” She sat herself down in her seat at the end of the bench, and took up her knitting. Aaron sat next to her. He poured water into his glass, and drank. “It's warm in here,” he said, when he had swallowed the liquor. “Yes, it is. You won't want to keep that thick good overcoat on,” replied the landlady. “No,” he said, “I think I'll take it off.” She watched him as he hung up his overcoat. He wore black clothes, as usual. As he reached up to the pegs, she could see the muscles of his shoulders, and the form of his legs. Her reddish-brown eyes seemed to burn, and her nose, that had a subtle, beautiful Hebraic curve, seemed to arch itself. She made a little place for him by herself, as he returned. She carried her head thrown back, with dauntless self-sufficiency. There were several colliers in the room, talking quietly. They were the superior type all, favoured by the landlady, who loved intellectual discussion. Opposite, by the fire, sat a little, greenish man--evidently an oriental. “You're very quiet all at once, Doctor,” said the landlady in her slow, laconic voice. “Yes.--May I have another whiskey, please?” She rose at once, powerfully energetic. “Oh, I'm sorry,” she said. And she went to the bar. “Well,” said the little Hindu doctor, “and how are things going now, with the men?” “The same as ever,” said Aaron. “Yes,” said the stately voice of the landlady. “And I'm afraid they will always be the same as ever. When will they learn wisdom?” “But what do you call wisdom?” asked Sherardy, the Hindu. He spoke with a little, childish lisp. “What do I call wisdom?” repeated the landlady. “Why all acting together for the common good. That is wisdom in my idea.” “Yes, very well, that is so. But what do you call the common good?” replied the little doctor, with childish pertinence. “Ay,” said Aaron, with a laugh, “that's it.” The miners were all stirring now, to take part in the discussion. “What do I call the common good?” repeated the landlady. “That all people should study the welfare of other people, and not only their own.” “They are not to study their own welfare?” said the doctor. “Ah, that I did not say,” replied the landlady. “Let them study their own welfare, and that of others also.” “Well then,” said the doctor, “what is the welfare of a collier?” “The welfare of a collier,” said the landlady, “is that he shall earn sufficient wages to keep himself and his family comfortable, to educate his children, and to educate himself; for that is what he wants, education.” “Ay, happen so,” put in Brewitt, a big, fine, good-humoured collier. “Happen so, Mrs. Houseley. But what if you haven't got much education, to speak of?” “You can always get it,” she said patronizing. “Nay--I'm blest if you can. It's no use tryin' to educate a man over forty--not by book-learning. That isn't saying he's a fool, neither.” “And what better is them that's got education?” put in another man. “What better is the manager, or th' under-manager, than we are?--Pender's yaller enough i' th' face.” “He is that,” assented the men in chorus. “But because he's yellow in the face, as you say, Mr. Kirk,” said the landlady largely, “that doesn't mean he has no advantages higher than what you have got.” “Ay,” said Kirk. “He can ma'e more money than I can--that's about a' as it comes to.” “He can make more money,” said the landlady. “And when he's made it, he knows better how to use it.” “'Appen so, an' a'!--What does he do, more than eat and drink and work?--an' take it out of hisself a sight harder than I do, by th' looks of him.--What's it matter, if he eats a bit more or drinks a bit more--” “No,” reiterated the landlady. “He not only eats and drinks. He can read, and he can converse.” “Me an' a',” said Tom Kirk, and the men burst into a laugh. “I can read--an' I've had many a talk an' conversation with you in this house, Mrs. Houseley--am havin' one at this minute, seemingly.” “SEEMINGLY, you are,” said the landlady ironically. “But do you think there would be no difference between your conversation, and Mr. Pender's, if he were here so that I could enjoy his conversation?” “An' what difference would there be?” asked Tom Kirk. “He'd go home to his bed just the same.” “There, you are mistaken. He would be the better, and so should I, a great deal better, for a little genuine conversation.” “If it's conversation as ma'es his behind drop--” said Tom Kirk. “An' puts th' bile in his face--” said Brewitt. There was a general laugh. “I can see it's no use talking about it any further,” said the landlady, lifting her head dangerously. “But look here, Mrs. Houseley, do you really think it makes much difference to a man, whether he can hold a serious conversation or not?” asked the doctor. “I do indeed, all the difference in the world--To me, there is no greater difference, than between an educated man and an uneducated man.” “And where does it come in?” asked Kirk. “But wait a bit, now,” said Aaron Sisson. “You take an educated man--take Pender. What's his education for? What does he scheme for?--What does he contrive for? What does he talk for?--” “For all the purposes of his life,” replied the landlady. “Ay, an' what's the purpose of his life?” insisted Aaron Sisson. “The purpose of his life,” repeated the landlady, at a loss. “I should think he knows that best himself.” “No better than I know it--and you know it,” said Aaron. “Well,” said the landlady, “if you know, then speak out. What is it?” “To make more money for the firm--and so make his own chance of a rise better.” The landlady was baffled for some moments. Then she said: “Yes, and suppose that he does. Is there any harm in it? Isn't it his duty to do what he can for himself? Don't you try to earn all you can?” “Ay,” said Aaron. “But there's soon a limit to what I can earn.--It's like this. When you work it out, everything comes to money. Reckon it as you like, it's money on both sides. It's money we live for, and money is what our lives is worth--nothing else. Money we live for, and money we are when we're dead: that or nothing. An' it's money as is between the masters and us. There's a few educated ones got hold of one end of the rope, and all the lot of us hanging on to th' other end, an' we s'll go on pulling our guts out, time in, time out--” “But they've got th' long end o' th' rope, th' masters has,” said Brewitt. “For as long as one holds, the other will pull,” concluded Aaron Sisson philosophically. “An' I'm almighty sure o' that,” said Kirk. There was a little pause. “Yes, that's all there is in the minds of you men,” said the landlady. “But what can be done with the money, that you never think of--the education of the children, the improvement of conditions--” “Educate the children, so that they can lay hold of the long end of the rope, instead of the short end,” said the doctor, with a little giggle. “Ay, that's it,” said Brewitt. “I've pulled at th' short end, an' my lads may do th' same.” “A selfish policy,” put in the landlady. “Selfish or not, they may do it.” “Till the crack o' doom,” said Aaron, with a glistening smile. “Or the crack o' th' rope,” said Brewitt. “Yes, and THEN WHAT?” cried the landlady. “Then we all drop on our backsides,” said Kirk. There was a general laugh, and an uneasy silence. “All I can say of you men,” said the landlady, “is that you have a narrow, selfish policy.--Instead of thinking of the children, instead of thinking of improving the world you live in--” “We hang on, British bulldog breed,” said Brewitt. There was a general laugh. “Yes, and little wiser than dogs, wrangling for a bone,” said the landlady. “Are we to let t' other side run off wi' th' bone, then, while we sit on our stunts an' yowl for it?” asked Brewitt. “No indeed. There can be wisdom in everything.--It's what you DO with the money, when you've got it,” said the landlady, “that's where the importance lies.” “It's Missis as gets it,” said Kirk. “It doesn't stop wi' us.” “Ay, it's the wife as gets it, ninety per cent,” they all concurred. “And who SHOULD have the money, indeed, if not your wives? They have everything to do with the money. What idea have you, but to waste it!” “Women waste nothing--they couldn't if they tried,” said Aaron Sisson. There was a lull for some minutes. The men were all stimulated by drink. The landlady kept them going. She herself sipped a glass of brandy--but slowly. She sat near to Sisson--and the great fierce warmth of her presence enveloped him particularly. He loved so to luxuriate, like a cat, in the presence of a violent woman. He knew that tonight she was feeling very nice to him--a female glow that came out of her to him. Sometimes when she put down her knitting, or took it up again from the bench beside him, her fingers just touched his thigh, and the fine electricity ran over his body, as if he were a cat tingling at a caress. And yet he was not happy--nor comfortable. There was a hard, opposing core in him, that neither the whiskey nor the woman could dissolve or soothe, tonight. It remained hard, nay, became harder and more deeply antagonistic to his surroundings, every moment. He recognised it as a secret malady he suffered from: this strained, unacknowledged opposition to his surroundings, a hard core of irrational, exhausting withholding of himself. Irritating, because he still WANTED to give himself. A woman and whiskey, these were usually a remedy--and music. But lately these had begun to fail him. No, there was something in him that would not give in--neither to the whiskey, nor the woman, nor even the music. Even in the midst of his best music, it sat in the middle of him, this invisible black dog, and growled and waited, never to be cajoled. He knew of its presence--and was a little uneasy. For of course he _wanted_ to let himself go, to feel rosy and loving and all that. But at the very thought, the black dog showed its teeth. Still he kept the beast at bay--with all his will he kept himself as it were genial. He wanted to melt and be rosy, happy. He sipped his whiskey with gratification, he luxuriated in the presence of the landlady, very confident of the strength of her liking for him. He glanced at her profile--that fine throw-back of her hostile head, wicked in the midst of her benevolence; that subtle, really very beautiful delicate curve of her nose, that moved him exactly like a piece of pure sound. But tonight it did not overcome him. There was a devilish little cold eye in his brain that was not taken in by what he saw. A terrible obstinacy located itself in him. He saw the fine, rich-coloured, secretive face of the Hebrew woman, so loudly self-righteous, and so dangerous, so destructive, so lustful--and he waited for his blood to melt with passion for her. But not tonight. Tonight his innermost heart was hard and cold as ice. The very danger and lustfulness of her, which had so pricked his senses, now made him colder. He disliked her at her tricks. He saw her once too often. Her and all women. Bah, the love game! And the whiskey that was to help in the game! He had drowned himself once too often in whiskey and in love. Now he floated like a corpse in both, with a cold, hostile eye. And at least half of his inward fume was anger because he could no longer drown. Nothing would have pleased him better than to feel his senses melting and swimming into oneness with the dark. But impossible! Cold, with a white fury inside him, he floated wide eyed and apart as a corpse. He thought of the gentle love of his first married years, and became only whiter and colder, set in more intense obstinacy. A wave of revulsion lifted him. He became aware that he was deadly antagonistic to the landlady, that he disliked his whole circumstances. A cold, diabolical consciousness detached itself from his state of semi-intoxication. “Is it pretty much the same out there in India?” he asked of the doctor, suddenly. The doctor started, and attended to him on his own level. “Probably,” he answered. “It is worse.” “Worse!” exclaimed Aaron Sisson. “How's that?” “Why, because, in a way the people of India have an easier time even than the people of England. Because they have no responsibility. The British Government takes the responsibility. And the people have nothing to do, except their bit of work--and talk perhaps about national rule, just for a pastime.” “They have to earn their living?” said Sisson. “Yes,” said the little doctor, who had lived for some years among the colliers, and become quite familiar with them. “Yes, they have to earn their living--and then no more. That's why the British Government is the worst thing possible for them. It is the worst thing possible. And not because it is a bad government. Really, it is not a bad government. It is a good one--and they know it--much better than they would make for themselves, probably. But for that reason it is so very bad.” The little oriental laughed a queer, sniggering laugh. His eyes were very bright, dilated, completely black. He was looking into the ice-blue, pointed eyes of Aaron Sisson. They were both intoxicated--but grimly so. They looked at each other in elemental difference. The whole room was now attending to this new conversation: which they all accepted as serious. For Aaron was considered a special man, a man of peculiar understanding, even though as a rule he said little. “If it is a good government, doctor, how can it be so bad for the people?” said the landlady. The doctor's eyes quivered for the fraction of a second, as he watched the other man. He did not look at the landlady. “It would not matter what kind of mess they made--and they would make a mess, if they governed themselves, the people of India. They would probably make the greatest muddle possible--and start killing one another. But it wouldn't matter if they exterminated half the population, so long as they did it themselves, and were responsible for it.” Again his eyes dilated, utterly black, to the eyes of the other man, and an arch little smile flickered on his face. “I think it would matter very much indeed,” said the landlady. “They had far better NOT govern themselves.” She was, for some reason, becoming angry. The little greenish doctor emptied his glass, and smiled again. “But what difference does it make,” said Aaron Sisson, “whether they govern themselves or not? They only live till they die, either way.” And he smiled faintly. He had not really listened to the doctor. The terms “British Government,” and “bad for the people--good for the people,” made him malevolently angry. The doctor was nonplussed for a moment. Then he gathered himself together. “It matters,” he said; “it matters.--People should always be responsible for themselves. How can any people be responsible for another race of people, and for a race much older than they are, and not at all children.” Aaron Sisson watched the other's dark face, with its utterly exposed eyes. He was in a state of semi-intoxicated anger and clairvoyance. He saw in the black, void, glistening eyes of the oriental only the same danger, the same menace that he saw in the landlady. Fair, wise, even benevolent words: always the human good speaking, and always underneath, something hateful, something detestable and murderous. Wise speech and good intentions--they were invariably maggoty with these secret inclinations to destroy the man in the man. Whenever he heard anyone holding forth: the landlady, this doctor, the spokesman on the pit bank: or when he read the all-righteous newspaper; his soul curdled with revulsion as from something foul. Even the infernal love and good-will of his wife. To hell with good-will! It was more hateful than ill-will. Self-righteous bullying, like poison gas! The landlady looked at the clock. “Ten minutes to, gentlemen,” she said coldly. For she too knew that Aaron was spoiled for her for that night. The men began to take their leave, shakily. The little doctor seemed to evaporate. The landlady helped Aaron on with his coat. She saw the curious whiteness round his nostrils and his eyes, the fixed hellish look on his face. “You'll eat a mince-pie in the kitchen with us, for luck?” she said to him, detaining him till last. But he turned laughing to her. “Nay,” he said, “I must be getting home.” He turned and went straight out of the house. Watching him, the landlady's face became yellow with passion and rage. “That little poisonous Indian viper,” she said aloud, attributing Aaron's mood to the doctor. Her husband was noisily bolting the door. Outside it was dark and frosty. A gang of men lingered in the road near the closed door. Aaron found himself among them, his heart bitterer than steel. The men were dispersing. He should take the road home. But the devil was in it, if he could take a stride in the homeward direction. There seemed a wall in front of him. He veered. But neither could he take a stride in the opposite direction. So he was destined to veer round, like some sort of weather-cock, there in the middle of the dark road outside the “Royal Oak.” But as he turned, he caught sight of a third exit. Almost opposite was the mouth of Shottle Lane, which led off under trees, at right angles to the highroad, up to New Brunswick Colliery. He veered towards the off-chance of this opening, in a delirium of icy fury, and plunged away into the dark lane, walking slowly, on firm legs. CHAPTER III. “THE LIGHTED TREE” It is remarkable how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England. We hear continual complaints of the stodgy dullness of the English. It would be quite as just to complain of their freakish, unusual characters. Only _en masse_ the metal is all Britannia. In an ugly little mining town we find the odd ones just as distinct as anywhere else. Only it happens that dull people invariably meet dull people, and odd individuals always come across odd individuals, no matter where they may be. So that to each kind society seems all of a piece. At one end of the dark tree-covered Shottle Lane stood the “Royal Oak” public house; and Mrs. Houseley was certainly an odd woman. At the other end of the lane was Shottle House, where the Bricknells lived; the Bricknells were odd, also. Alfred Bricknell, the old man, was one of the partners in the Colliery firm. His English was incorrect, his accent, broad Derbyshire, and he was not a gentleman in the snobbish sense of the word. Yet he was well-to-do, and very stuck-up. His wife was dead. Shottle House stood two hundred yards beyond New Brunswick Colliery. The colliery was imbedded in a plantation, whence its burning pit-hill glowed, fumed, and stank sulphur in the nostrils of the Bricknells. Even war-time efforts had not put out this refuse fire. Apart from this, Shottle House was a pleasant square house, rather old, with shrubberies and lawns. It ended the lane in a dead end. Only a field-path trekked away to the left. On this particular Christmas Eve Alfred Bricknell had only two of his children at home. Of the others, one daughter was unhappily married, and away in India weeping herself thinner; another was nursing her babies in Streatham. Jim, the hope of the house, and Julia, now married to Robert Cunningham, had come home for Christmas. The party was seated in the drawing-room, that the grown-up daughters had made very fine during their periods of courtship. Its walls were hung with fine grey canvas, it had a large, silvery grey, silky carpet, and the furniture was covered with dark green silky material. Into this reticence pieces of futurism, Omega cushions and Van-Gogh-like pictures exploded their colours. Such _chic_ would certainly not have been looked for up Shottle Lane. The old man sat in his high grey arm-chair very near an enormous coal fire. In this house there was no coal-rationing. The finest coal was arranged to obtain a gigantic glow such as a coal-owner may well enjoy, a great, intense mass of pure red fire. At this fire Alfred Bricknell toasted his tan, lambs-wool-lined slippers. He was a large man, wearing a loose grey suit, and sprawling in the large grey arm-chair. The soft lamp-light fell on his clean, bald, Michael-Angelo head, across which a few pure hairs glittered. His chin was sunk on his breast, so that his sparse but strong-haired white beard, in which every strand stood distinct, like spun glass lithe and elastic, curved now upwards and inwards, in a curious curve returning upon him. He seemed to be sunk in stern, prophet-like meditation. As a matter of fact, he was asleep after a heavy meal. Across, seated on a pouffe on the other side of the fire, was a cameo-like girl with neat black hair done tight and bright in the French mode. She had strangely-drawn eyebrows, and her colour was brilliant. She was hot, leaning back behind the shaft of old marble of the mantel-piece, to escape the fire. She wore a simple dress of apple-green satin, with full sleeves and ample skirt and a tiny bodice of green cloth. This was Josephine Ford, the girl Jim was engaged to. Jim Bricknell himself was a tall big fellow of thirty-eight. He sat in a chair in front of the fire, some distance back, and stretched his long legs far in front of him. His chin too was sunk on his breast, his young forehead was bald, and raised in odd wrinkles, he had a silent half-grin on his face, a little tipsy, a little satyr-like. His small moustache was reddish. Behind him a round table was covered with cigarettes, sweets, and bottles. It was evident Jim Bricknell drank beer for choice. He wanted to get fat--that was his idea. But he couldn't bring it off: he was thin, though not too thin, except to his own thinking. His sister Julia was bunched up in a low chair between him and his father. She too was a tall stag of a thing, but she sat bunched up like a witch. She wore a wine-purple dress, her arms seemed to poke out of the sleeves, and she had dragged her brown hair into straight, untidy strands. Yet she had real beauty. She was talking to the young man who was not her husband: a fair, pale, fattish young fellow in pince-nez and dark clothes. This was Cyril Scott, a friend. The only other person stood at the round table pouring out red wine. He was a fresh, stoutish young Englishman in khaki, Julia's husband, Robert Cunningham, a lieutenant about to be demobilised, when he would become a sculptor once more. He drank red wine in large throatfuls, and his eyes grew a little moist. The room was hot and subdued, everyone was silent. “I say,” said Robert suddenly, from the rear--“anybody have a drink? Don't you find it rather hot?” “Is there another bottle of beer there?” said Jim, without moving, too settled even to stir an eye-lid. “Yes--I think there is,” said Robert. “Thanks--don't open it yet,” murmured Jim. “Have a drink, Josephine?” said Robert. “No thank you,” said Josephine, bowing slightly. Finding the drinks did not go, Robert went round with the cigarettes. Josephine Ford looked at the white rolls. “Thank you,” she said, and taking one, suddenly licked her rather full, dry red lips with the rapid tip of her tongue. It was an odd movement, suggesting a snake's flicker. She put her cigarette between her lips, and waited. Her movements were very quiet and well bred; but perhaps too quiet, they had the dangerous impassivity of the Bohemian, Parisian or American rather than English. “Cigarette, Julia?” said Robert to his wife. She seemed to start or twitch, as if dazed. Then she looked up at her husband with a queer smile, puckering the corners of her eyes. He looked at the cigarettes, not at her. His face had the blunt voluptuous gravity of a young lion, a great cat. She kept him standing for some moments impassively. Then suddenly she hung her long, delicate fingers over the box, in doubt, and spasmodically jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily raking one out at last. “Thank you, dear--thank you,” she cried, rather high, looking up and smiling once more. He turned calmly aside, offering the cigarettes to Scott, who refused. “Oh!” said Julia, sucking the end of her cigarette. “Robert is so happy with all the good things--aren't you dear?” she sang, breaking into a hurried laugh. “We aren't used to such luxurious living, we aren't--ARE WE DEAR--No, we're not such swells as this, we're not. Oh, ROBBIE, isn't it all right, isn't it just all right?” She tailed off into her hurried, wild, repeated laugh. “We're so happy in a land of plenty, AREN'T WE DEAR?” “Do you mean I'm greedy, Julia?” said Robert. “Greedy!--Oh, greedy!--he asks if he's greedy?--no you're not greedy, Robbie, you're not greedy. I want you to be happy.” “I'm quite happy,” he returned. “Oh, he's happy!--Really!--he's happy! Oh, what an accomplishment! Oh, my word!” Julia puckered her eyes and laughed herself into a nervous twitching silence. Robert went round with the matches. Julia sucked her cigarette. “Give us a light, Robbie, if you ARE happy!” she cried. “It's coming,” he answered. Josephine smoked with short, sharp puffs. Julia sucked wildly at her light. Robert returned to his red wine. Jim Bricknell suddenly roused up, looked round on the company, smiling a little vacuously and showing his odd, pointed teeth. “Where's the beer?” he asked, in deep tones, smiling full into Josephine's face, as if she were going to produce it by some sleight of hand. Then he wheeled round to the table, and was soon pouring beer down his throat as down a pipe. Then he dropped supine again. Cyril Scott was silently absorbing gin and water. “I say,” said Jim, from the remote depths of his sprawling. “Isn't there something we could do to while the time away?” Everybody suddenly laughed--it sounded so remote and absurd. “What, play bridge or poker or something conventional of that sort?” said Josephine in her distinct voice, speaking to him as if he were a child. “Oh, damn bridge,” said Jim in his sleep-voice. Then he began pulling his powerful length together. He sat on the edge of his chair-seat, leaning forward, peering into all the faces and grinning. “Don't look at me like that--so long--” said Josephine, in her self-contained voice. “You make me uncomfortable.” She gave an odd little grunt of a laugh, and the tip of her tongue went over her lips as she glanced sharply, half furtively round the room. “I like looking at you,” said Jim, his smile becoming more malicious. “But you shouldn't, when I tell you not,” she returned. Jim twisted round to look at the state of the bottles. The father also came awake. He sat up. “Isn't it time,” he said, “that you all put away your glasses and cigarettes and thought of bed?” Jim rolled slowly round towards his father, sprawling in the long chair. “Ah, Dad,” he said, “tonight's the night! Tonight's some night, Dad.--You can sleep any time--” his grin widened--“but there aren't many nights to sit here--like this--Eh?” He was looking up all the time into the face of his father, full and nakedly lifting his face to the face of his father, and smiling fixedly. The father, who was perfectly sober, except for the contagion from the young people, felt a wild tremor go through his heart as he gazed on the face of his boy. He rose stiffly. “You want to stay?” he said. “You want to stay!--Well then--well then, I'll leave you. But don't be long.” The old man rose to his full height, rather majestic. The four younger people also rose respectfully--only Jim lay still prostrate in his chair, twisting up his face towards his father. “You won't stay long,” said the old man, looking round a little bewildered. He was seeking a responsible eye. Josephine was the only one who had any feeling for him. “No, we won't stay long, Mr. Bricknell,” she said gravely. “Good night, Dad,” said Jim, as his father left the room. Josephine went to the window. She had rather a stiff, _poupee_ walk. “How is the night?” she said, as if to change the whole feeling in the room. She pushed back the thick grey-silk curtains. “Why?” she exclaimed. “What is that light burning? A red light?” “Oh, that's only the pit-bank on fire,” said Robert, who had followed her. “How strange!--Why is it burning now?” “It always burns, unfortunately--it is most consistent at it. It is the refuse from the mines. It has been burning for years, in spite of all efforts to the contrary.” “How very curious! May we look at it?” Josephine now turned the handle of the French windows, and stepped out. “Beautiful!” they heard her voice exclaim from outside. In the room, Julia laid her hand gently, protectively over the hand of Cyril Scott. “Josephine and Robert are admiring the night together!” she said, smiling with subtle tenderness to him. “Naturally! Young people always do these romantic things,” replied Cyril Scott. He was twenty-two years old, so he could afford to be cynical. “Do they?--Don't you think it's nice of them?” she said, gently removing her hand from his. His eyes were shining with pleasure. “I do. I envy them enormously. One only needs to be sufficiently naive,” he said. “One does, doesn't one!” cooed Julia. “I say, do you hear the bells?” said Robert, poking his head into the room. “No, dear! Do you?” replied Julia. “Bells! Hear the bells! Bells!” exclaimed the half-tipsy and self-conscious Jim. And he rolled in his chair in an explosion of sudden, silent laughter, showing his mouthful of pointed teeth, like a dog. Then he gradually gathered himself together, found his feet, smiling fixedly. “Pretty cool night!” he said aloud, when he felt the air on his almost bald head. The darkness smelt of sulphur. Josephine and Robert had moved out of sight. Julia was abstracted, following them with her eyes. With almost supernatural keenness she seemed to catch their voices from the distance. “Yes, Josephine, WOULDN'T that be AWFULLY ROMANTIC!”--she suddenly called shrilly. The pair in the distance started. “What--!” they heard Josephine's sharp exclamation. “What's that?--What would be romantic?” said Jim as he lurched up and caught hold of Cyril Scott's arm. “Josephine wants to make a great illumination of the grounds of the estate,” said Julia, magniloquent. “No--no--I didn't say it,” remonstrated Josephine. “What Josephine said,” explained Robert, “was simply that it would be pretty to put candles on one of the growing trees, instead of having a Christmas-tree indoors.” “Oh, Josephine, how sweet of you!” cried Julia. Cyril Scott giggled. “Good egg! Champion idea, Josey, my lass. Eh? What--!” cried Jim. “Why not carry it out--eh? Why not? Most attractive.” He leaned forward over Josephine, and grinned. “Oh, no!” expostulated Josephine. “It all sounds so silly now. No. Let us go indoors and go to bed.” “NO, Josephine dear--No! It's a LOVELY IDEA!” cried Julia. “Let's get candles and lanterns and things--” “Let's!” grinned Jim. “Let's, everybody--let's.” “Shall we really?” asked Robert. “Shall we illuminate one of the fir-trees by the lawn?” “Yes! How lovely!” cried Julia. “I'll fetch the candles.” “The women must put on warm cloaks,” said Robert. They trooped indoors for coats and wraps and candles and lanterns. Then, lighted by a bicycle lamp, they trooped off to the shed to twist wire round the candles for holders. They clustered round the bench. “I say,” said Julia, “doesn't Cyril look like a pilot on a stormy night! Oh, I say--!” and she went into one of her hurried laughs. They all looked at Cyril Scott, who was standing sheepishly in the background, in a very large overcoat, smoking a large pipe. The young man was uncomfortable, but assumed a stoic air of philosophic indifference. Soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. Jim stood in the background vaguely staring. The bicycle lamp sent a beam of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and hands worked. The night above was silent, dim. There was no wind. In the near distance they could hear the panting of some engine at the colliery. “Shall we light them as we fix them,” asked Robert, “or save them for one grand rocket at the end?” “Oh, as we do them,” said Cyril Scott, who had lacerated his fingers and wanted to see some reward. A match spluttered. One naked little flame sprang alight among the dark foliage. The candle burned tremulously, naked. They all were silent. “We ought to do a ritual dance! We ought to worship the tree,” sang Julia, in her high voice. “Hold on a minute. We'll have a little more illumination,” said Robert. “Why yes. We want more than one candle,” said Josephine. But Julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with arms slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a _pas seul_ before the tree, looking like an animated bough herself. Jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short, harsh, cackling laugh. “Aren't we fools!” he cried. “What? Oh, God's love, aren't we fools!” “No--why?” cried Josephine, amused but resentful. But Jim vouchsafed nothing further, only stood like a Red Indian gripping his pipe. The beam of the bicycle-lamp moved and fell upon the hands and faces of the young people, and penetrated the recesses of the secret trees. Several little tongues of flame clipped sensitive and ruddy on the naked air, sending a faint glow over the needle foliage. They gave a strange, perpendicular aspiration in the night. Julia waved slowly in her tree dance. Jim stood apart, with his legs straddled, a motionless figure. The party round the tree became absorbed and excited as more ruddy tongues of flame pricked upward from the dark tree. Pale candles became evident, the air was luminous. The illumination was becoming complete, harmonious. Josephine suddenly looked round. “Why-y-y!” came her long note of alarm. A man in a bowler hat and a black overcoat stood on the edge of the twilight. “What is it?” cried Julia. “_Homo sapiens_!” said Robert, the lieutenant. “Hand the light, Cyril.” He played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in a bowler hat, with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale, dazed, blinking face. The hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle over the left eye, the man was well-featured. He did not speak. “Did you want anything?” asked Robert, from behind the light. Aaron Sisson blinked, trying to see who addressed him. To him, they were all illusory. He did not answer. “Anything you wanted?” repeated Robert, military, rather peremptory. Jim suddenly doubled himself up and burst into a loud harsh cackle of laughter. Whoop! he went, and doubled himself up with laughter. Whoop! Whoop! he went, and fell on the ground and writhed with laughter. He was in that state of intoxication when he could find no release from maddening self-consciousness. He knew what he was doing, he did it deliberately. And yet he was also beside himself, in a sort of hysterics. He could not help himself in exasperated self-consciousness. The others all began to laugh, unavoidably. It was a contagion. They laughed helplessly and foolishly. Only Robert was anxious. “I'm afraid he'll wake the house,” he said, looking at the doubled up figure of Jim writhing on the grass and whooping loudly. “Or not enough,” put in Cyril Scott. He twigged Jim's condition. “No--no!” cried Josephine, weak with laughing in spite of herself. “No--it's too long--I'm like to die laughing--” Jim embraced the earth in his convulsions. Even Robert shook quite weakly with laughter. His face was red, his eyes full of dancing water. Yet he managed to articulate. “I say, you know, you'll bring the old man down.” Then he went off again into spasms. “Hu! Hu!” whooped Jim, subsiding. “Hu!” He rolled over on to his back, and lay silent. The others also became weakly silent. “What's amiss?” said Aaron Sisson, breaking this spell. They all began to laugh again, except Jim, who lay on his back looking up at the strange sky. “What're you laughing at?” repeated Aaron. “We're laughing at the man on the ground,” replied Josephine. “I think he's drunk a little too much.” “Ay,” said Aaron, standing mute and obstinate. “Did you want anything?” Robert enquired once more. “Eh?” Aaron looked up. “Me? No, not me.” A sort of inertia kept him rooted. The young people looked at one another and began to laugh, rather embarrassed. “Another!” said Cyril Scott cynically. They wished he would go away. There was a pause. “What do you reckon stars are?” asked the sepulchral voice of Jim. He still lay flat on his back on the grass. Josephine went to him and pulled at his coat. “Get up,” she said. “You'll take cold. Get up now, we're going indoors.” “What do you reckon stars are?” he persisted. Aaron Sisson stood on the edge of the light, smilingly staring at the scene, like a boy out of his place, but stubbornly keeping his ground. “Get up now,” said Josephine. “We've had enough.” But Jim would not move. Robert went with the bicycle lamp and stood at Aaron's side. “Shall I show you a light to the road--you're off your track,” he said. “You're in the grounds of Shottle House.” “I can find my road,” said Aaron. “Thank you.” Jim suddenly got up and went to peer at the stranger, poking his face close to Aaron's face. “Right-o,” he replied. “You're not half a bad sort of chap--Cheery-o! What's your drink?” “Mine--whiskey,” said Aaron. “Come in and have one. We're the only sober couple in the bunch--what?” cried Jim. Aaron stood unmoving, static in everything. Jim took him by the arm affectionately. The stranger looked at the flickering tree, with its tiers of lights. “A Christmas tree,” he said, jerking his head and smiling. “That's right, old man,” said Jim, seeming thoroughly sober now. “Come indoors and have a drink.” Aaron Sisson negatively allowed himself to be led off. The others followed in silence, leaving the tree to flicker the night through. The stranger stumbled at the open window-door. “Mind the step,” said Jim affectionately. They crowded to the fire, which was still hot. The newcomer looked round vaguely. Jim took his bowler hat and gave him a chair. He sat without looking round, a remote, abstract look on his face. He was very pale, and seemed-inwardly absorbed. The party threw off their wraps and sat around. Josephine turned to Aaron Sisson, who sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, rather slack in his chair, in his thickish overcoat. He did not want to drink. His hair was blond, quite tidy, his mouth and chin handsome but a little obstinate, his eyes inscrutable. His pallor was not natural to him. Though he kept the appearance of a smile, underneath he was hard and opposed. He did not wish to be with these people, and yet, mechanically, he stayed. “Do you feel quite well?” Josephine asked him. He looked at her quickly. “Me?” he said. He smiled faintly. “Yes, I'm all right.” Then he dropped his head again and seemed oblivious. “Tell us your name,” said Jim affectionately. The stranger looked up. “My name's Aaron Sisson, if it's anything to you,” he said. Jim began to grin. “It's a name I don't know,” he said. Then he named all the party present. But the stranger hardly heeded, though his eyes looked curiously from one to the other, slow, shrewd, clairvoyant. “Were you on your way home?” asked Robert, huffy. The stranger lifted his head and looked at him. “Home!” he repeated. “No. The other road--” He indicated the direction with his head, and smiled faintly. “Beldover?” inquired Robert. “Yes.” He had dropped his head again, as if he did not want to look at them. To Josephine, the pale, impassive, blank-seeming face, the blue eyes with the smile which wasn't a smile, and the continual dropping of the well-shaped head was curiously affecting. She wanted to cry. “Are you a miner?” Robert asked, _de haute en bas_. “No,” cried Josephine. She had looked at his hands. “Men's checkweighman,” replied Aaron. He had emptied his glass. He put it on the table. “Have another?” said Jim, who was attending fixedly, with curious absorption, to the stranger. “No,” cried Josephine, “no more.” Aaron looked at Jim, then at her, and smiled slowly, with remote bitterness. Then he lowered his head again. His hands were loosely clasped between his knees. “What about the wife?” said Robert--the young lieutenant. “What about the wife and kiddies? You're a married man, aren't you?” The sardonic look of the stranger rested on the subaltern. “Yes,” he said. “Won't they be expecting you?” said Robert, trying to keep his temper and his tone of authority. “I expect they will--” “Then you'd better be getting along, hadn't you?” The eyes of the intruder rested all the time on the flushed subaltern. The look on Aaron's face became slowly satirical. “Oh, dry up the army touch,” said Jim contemptuously, to Robert. “We're all civvies here. We're all right, aren't we?” he said loudly, turning to the stranger with a grin that showed his pointed teeth. Aaron gave a brief laugh of acknowledgement. “How many children have you?” sang Julia from her distance. “Three.” “Girls or boys?” “Girls.” “All girls? Dear little things! How old?” “Oldest eight--youngest nine months--” “So small!” sang Julia, with real tenderness now--Aaron dropped his head. “But you're going home to them, aren't you?” said Josephine, in whose eyes the tears had already risen. He looked up at her, at her tears. His face had the same pale perverse smile. “Not tonight,” he said. “But why? You're wrong!” cried Josephine. He dropped his head and became oblivious. “Well!” said Cyril Scott, rising at last with a bored exclamation. “I think I'll retire.” “Will you?” said Julia, also rising. “You'll find your candle outside.” She went out. Scott bade good night, and followed her. The four people remained in the room, quite silent. Then Robert rose and began to walk about, agitated. “Don't you go back to 'em. Have a night out. You stop here tonight,” Jim said suddenly, in a quiet intimate tone. The stranger turned his head and looked at him, considering. “Yes?” he said. He seemed to be smiling coldly. “Oh, but!” cried Josephine. “Your wife and your children! Won't they be awfully bothered? Isn't it awfully unkind to them?” She rose in her eagerness. He sat turning up his face to her. She could not understand his expression. “Won't you go home to them?” she said, hysterical. “Not tonight,” he replied quietly, again smiling. “You're wrong!” she cried. “You're wrong!” And so she hurried out of the room in tears. “Er--what bed do you propose to put him in?” asked Robert rather officer-like. “Don't propose at all, my lad,” replied Jim, ironically--he did not like Robert. Then to the stranger he said: “You'll be all right on the couch in my room?--it's a good couch, big enough, plenty of rugs--” His voice was easy and intimate. Aaron looked at him, and nodded. They had another drink each, and at last the two set off, rather stumbling, upstairs. Aaron carried his bowler hat with him. Robert remained pacing in the drawing-room for some time. Then he went out, to return in a little while. He extinguished the lamps and saw that the fire was safe. Then he went to fasten the window-doors securely. Outside he saw the uncanny glimmer of candles across the lawn. He had half a mind to go out and extinguish them--but he did not. So he went upstairs and the house was quiet. Faint crumbs of snow were falling outside. When Jim woke in the morning Aaron had gone. Only on the floor were two packets of Christmas-tree candles, fallen from the stranger's pockets. He had gone through the drawing-room door, as he had come. The housemaid said that while she was cleaning the grate in the dining-room she heard someone go into the drawing-room: a parlour-maid had even seen someone come out of Jim's bedroom. But they had both thought it was Jim himself, for he was an unsettled house mate. There was a thin film of snow, a lovely Christmas morning. CHAPTER IV. “THE PILLAR OF SALT” Our story will not yet see daylight. A few days after Christmas, Aaron sat in the open shed at the bottom of his own garden, looking out on the rainy darkness. No one knew he was there. It was some time after six in the evening. From where he sat, he looked straight up the garden to the house. The blind was not drawn in the middle kitchen, he could see the figures of his wife and one child. There was a light also in the upstairs window. His wife was gone upstairs again. He wondered if she had the baby ill. He could see her figure vaguely behind the lace curtains of the bedroom. It was like looking at his home through the wrong end of a telescope. Now the little girls had gone from the middle room: only to return in a moment. His attention strayed. He watched the light falling from the window of the next-door house. Uneasily, he looked along the whole range of houses. The street sloped down-hill, and the backs were open to the fields. So he saw a curious succession of lighted windows, between which jutted the intermediary back premises, scullery and outhouse, in dark little blocks. It was something like the keyboard of a piano: more still, like a succession of musical notes. For the rectangular planes of light were of different intensities, some bright and keen, some soft, warm, like candle-light, and there was one surface of pure red light, one or two were almost invisible, dark green. So the long scale of lights seemed to trill across the darkness, now bright, now dim, swelling and sinking. The effect was strange. And thus the whole private life of the street was threaded in lights. There was a sense of indecent exposure, from so many backs. He felt himself almost in physical contact with this contiguous stretch of back premises. He heard the familiar sound of water gushing from the sink in to the grate, the dropping of a pail outside the door, the clink of a coal shovel, the banging of a door, the sound of voices. So many houses cheek by jowl, so many squirming lives, so many back yards, back doors giving on to the night. It was revolting. Away in the street itself, a boy was calling the newspaper: “--'NING POST! --'NING PO-O-ST!” It was a long, melancholy howl, and seemed to epitomise the whole of the dark, wet, secretive, thickly-inhabited night. A figure passed the window of Aaron's own house, entered, and stood inside the room talking to Mrs. Sisson. It was a young woman in a brown mackintosh and a black hat. She stood under the incandescent light, and her hat nearly knocked the globe. Next door a man had run out in his shirt sleeves: this time a young, dark-headed collier running to the gate for a newspaper, running bare-headed, coatless, slippered in the rain. He had got his news-sheet, and was returning. And just at that moment the young man's wife came out, shading her candle with a lading tin. She was going to the coal-house for some coal. Her husband passed her on the threshold. She could be heard breaking the bits of coal and placing them on the dustpan. The light from her candle fell faintly behind her. Then she went back, blown by a swirl of wind. But again she was at the door, hastily standing her iron shovel against the wall. Then she shut the back door with a bang. These noises seemed to scrape and strike the night. In Aaron's own house, the young person was still talking to Mrs. Sisson. Millicent came out, sheltering a candle with her hand. The candle blew out. She ran indoors, and emerged again, her white pinafore fluttering. This time she performed her little journey safely. He could see the faint glimmer of her candle emerging secretly from the closet. The young person was taking her leave. He could hear her sympathetic--“Well--good night! I hope she'll be no worse. Good night Mrs. Sisson!” She was gone--he heard the windy bang of the street-gate. Presently Millicent emerged again, flitting indoors. So he rose to his feet, balancing, swaying a little before he started into motion, as so many colliers do. Then he moved along the path towards the house, in the rain and darkness, very slowly edging forwards. Suddenly the door opened. His wife emerged with a pail. He stepped quietly aside, on to his side garden, among the sweet herbs. He could smell rosemary and sage and hyssop. A low wall divided his garden from his neighbour's. He put his hand on it, on its wetness, ready to drop over should his wife come forward. But she only threw the contents of her pail on the garden and retired again. She might have seen him had she looked. He remained standing where he was, listening to the trickle of rain in the water-butt. The hollow countryside lay beyond him. Sometimes in the windy darkness he could see the red burn of New Brunswick bank, or the brilliant jewels of light clustered at Bestwood Colliery. Away in the dark hollow, nearer, the glare of the electric power-station disturbed the night. So again the wind swirled the rain across all these hieroglyphs of the countryside, familiar to him as his own breast. A motor-car was labouring up the hill. His trained ear attended to it unconsciously. It stopped with a jar. There was a bang of the yard-gate. A shortish dark figure in a bowler hat passed the window. Millicent was drawing down the blind. It was the doctor. The blind was drawn, he could see no more. Stealthily he began to approach the house. He stood by the climbing rose of the porch, listening. He heard voices upstairs. Perhaps the children would be downstairs. He listened intently. Voices were upstairs only. He quietly opened the door. The room was empty, save for the baby, who was cooing in her cradle. He crossed to the hall. At the foot of the stairs he could hear the voice of the Indian doctor: “Now little girl, you must just keep still and warm in bed, and not cry for the moon.” He said “_de_ moon,” just as ever.--Marjory must be ill. So Aaron quietly entered the parlour. It was a cold, clammy room, dark. He could hear footsteps passing outside on the asphalt pavement below the window, and the wind howling with familiar cadence. He began feeling for something in the darkness of the music-rack beside the piano. He touched and felt--he could not find what he wanted. Perplexed, he turned and looked out of the window. Through the iron railing of the front wall he could see the little motorcar sending its straight beams of light in front of it, up the street. He sat down on the sofa by the window. The energy had suddenly left all his limbs. He sat with his head sunk, listening. The familiar room, the familiar voice of his wife and his children--he felt weak as if he were dying. He felt weak like a drowning man who acquiesces in the waters. His strength was gone, he was sinking back. He would sink back to it all, float henceforth like a drowned man. So he heard voices coming nearer from upstairs, feet moving. They were coming down. “No, Mrs. Sisson, you needn't worry,” he heard the voice of the doctor on the stairs. “If she goes on as she is, she'll be all right. Only she must be kept warm and quiet--warm and quiet--that's the chief thing.” “Oh, when she has those bouts I can't bear it,” Aaron heard his wife's voice. They were downstairs. Their feet click-clicked on the tiled passage. They had gone into the middle room. Aaron sat and listened. “She won't have any more bouts. If she does, give her a few drops from the little bottle, and raise her up. But she won't have any more,” the doctor said. “If she does, I s'll go off my head, I know I shall.” “No, you won't. No, you won't do anything of the sort. You won't go off your head. You'll keep your head on your shoulders, where it ought to be,” protested the doctor. “But it nearly drives me mad.” “Then don't let it. The child won't die, I tell you. She will be all right, with care. Who have you got sitting up with her? You're not to sit up with her tonight, I tell you. Do you hear me?” “Miss Smitham's coming in. But it's no good--I shall have to sit up. I shall HAVE to.” “I tell you you won't. You obey ME. I know what's good for you as well as for her. I am thinking of you as much as of her.” “But I can't bear it--all alone.” This was the beginning of tears. There was a dead silence--then a sound of Millicent weeping with her mother. As a matter of fact, the doctor was weeping too, for he was an emotional sympathetic soul, over forty. “Never mind--never mind--you aren't alone,” came the doctor's matter-of-fact voice, after a loud nose-blowing. “I am here to help you. I will do whatever I can--whatever I can.” “I can't bear it. I can't bear it,” wept the woman. Another silence, another nose-blowing, and again the doctor: “You'll HAVE to bear it--I tell you there's nothing else for it. You'll have to bear it--but we'll do our best for you. I will do my best for you--always--ALWAYS--in sickness or out of sickness--There!” He pronounced _there_ oddly, not quite _dhere_. “You haven't heard from your husband?” he added. “I had a letter--“--sobs--“from the bank this morning.” “FROM DE BANK?” “Telling me they were sending me so much per month, from him, as an allowance, and that he was quite well, but he was travelling.” “Well then, why not let him travel? You can live.” “But to leave me alone,” there was burning indignation in her voice. “To go off and leave me with every responsibility, to leave me with all the burden.” “Well I wouldn't trouble about him. Aren't you better off without him?” “I am. I am,” she cried fiercely. “When I got that letter this morning, I said MAY EVIL BEFALL YOU, YOU SELFISH DEMON. And I hope it may.” “Well-well, well-well, don't fret. Don't be angry, it won't make it any better, I tell you.” “Angry! I AM angry. I'm worse than angry. A week ago I hadn't a grey hair in my head. Now look here--” There was a pause. “Well-well, well-well, never mind. You will be all right, don't you bother. Your hair is beautiful anyhow.” “What makes me so mad is that he should go off like that--never a word--coolly takes his hook. I could kill him for it.” “Were you ever happy together?” “We were all right at first. I know I was fond of him. But he'd kill anything.--He kept himself back, always kept himself back, couldn't give himself--” There was a pause. “Ah well,” sighed the doctor. “Marriage is a mystery. I'm glad I'm not entangled in it.” “Yes, to make some woman's life a misery.--I'm sure it was death to live with him, he seemed to kill everything off inside you. He was a man you couldn't quarrel with, and get it over. Quiet--quiet in his tempers, and selfish through and through. I've lived with him twelve years--I know what it is. Killing! You don't know what he was--” “I think I knew him. A fair man? Yes?” said the doctor. “Fair to look at.--There's a photograph of him in the parlour--taken when he was married--and one of me.--Yes, he's fairhaired.” Aaron guessed that she was getting a candle to come into the parlour. He was tempted to wait and meet them--and accept it all again. Devilishly tempted, he was. Then he thought of her voice, and his heart went cold. Quick as thought, he obeyed his first impulse. He felt behind the couch, on the floor where the curtains fell. Yes--the bag was there. He took it at once. In the next breath he stepped out of the room and tip-toed into the passage. He retreated to the far end, near the street door, and stood behind the coats that hung on the hall-stand. At that moment his wife came into the passage, holding a candle. She was red-eyed with weeping, and looked frail. “Did YOU leave the parlour door open?” she asked of Millicent, suspiciously. “No,” said Millicent from the kitchen. The doctor, with his soft, Oriental tread followed Mrs. Sisson into the parlour. Aaron saw his wife hold up the candle before his portrait and begin to weep. But he knew her. The doctor laid his hand softly on her arm, and left it there, sympathetically. Nor did he remove it when Millicent stole into the room, looking very woe-begone and important. The wife wept silently, and the child joined in. “Yes, I know him,” said the doctor. “If he thinks he will be happier when he's gone away, you must be happier too, Mrs. Sisson. That's all. Don't let him triumph over you by making you miserable. You enjoy yourself as well. You're only a girl---” But a tear came from his eye, and he blew his nose vigorously on a large white silk handkerchief, and began to polish his _pince nez_. Then he turned, and they all bundled out of the room. The doctor took his departure. Mrs. Sisson went almost immediately upstairs, and Millicent shortly crept after her. Then Aaron, who had stood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt, went quietly down the passage and into the living room. His face was very pale, ghastly-looking. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the mantel, as he passed, and felt weak, as if he were really a criminal. But his heart did not relax, nevertheless. So he hurried into the night, down the garden, climbed the fence into the field, and went away across the field in the rain, towards the highroad. He felt sick in every fibre. He almost hated the little handbag he carried, which held his flute and piccolo. It seemed a burden just then--a millstone round his neck. He hated the scene he had left--and he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck unchanging in his own breast. Coming to the high-road, he saw a tall, luminous tram-car roving along through the rain. The trams ran across country from town to town. He dared not board, because people knew him. So he took a side road, and walked in a detour for two miles. Then he came out on the high-road again and waited for a tram-car. The rain blew on his face. He waited a long time for the last car. CHAPTER V. AT THE OPERA A friend had given Josephine Ford a box at the opera for one evening; our story continues by night. The box was large and important, near the stage. Josephine and Julia were there, with Robert and Jim--also two more men. The women sat in the front of the box, conspicuously. They were both poor, they were rather excited. But they belonged to a set which looked on social triumphs as a downfall that one allows oneself. The two men, Lilly and Struthers, were artists, the former literary, the latter a painter. Lilly sat by Josephine in the front of the box: he was her little lion of the evening. Few women can sit in the front of a big box, on a crowded and full-swing opera night, without thrilling and dilating. There is an intoxication in being thus thrust forward, conspicuous and enhanced, right in the eye of the vast crowd that lines the hollow shell of the auditorium. Thus even Josephine and Julia leaned their elbows and poised their heads regally, looking condescendingly down upon the watchful world. They were two poor women, having nothing to do with society. Half bohemians. Josephine was an artist. In Paris she was a friend of a very fashionable dressmaker and decorator, master of modern elegance. Sometimes she designed dresses for him, and sometimes she accepted from him a commission to decorate a room. Usually at her last sou, it gave her pleasure to dispose of costly and exquisite things for other people, and then be rid of them. This evening her dress was a simple, but a marvellously poised thing of black and silver: in the words of the correct journal. With her tight, black, bright hair, her arched brows, her dusky-ruddy face and her bare shoulders; her strange equanimity, her long, slow, slanting looks; she looked foreign and frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark, far off. Julia was the English beauty, in a lovely blue dress. Her hair was becomingly untidy on her low brow, her dark blue eyes wandered and got excited, her nervous mouth twitched. Her high-pitched, sing-song voice and her hurried laugh could be heard in the theatre. She twisted a beautiful little fan that a dead artist had given her. Not being fashionable, they were in the box when the overture began. The opera was Verdi--_Aida_. If it is impossible to be in an important box at the opera without experiencing the strange intoxication of social pre-eminence, it is just as impossible to be there without some feeling of horror at the sight the stage presents. Josephine leaned her elbow and looked down: she knew how arresting that proud, rather stiff bend of her head was. She had some aboriginal American in her blood. But as she looked, she pursed her mouth. The artist in her forgot everything, she was filled with disgust. The sham Egypt of _Aida_ hid from her nothing of its shame. The singers were all colour-washed, deliberately colour-washed to a bright orange tint. The men had oblong dabs of black wool under their lower lip; the beard of the mighty Pharaohs. This oblong dab shook and wagged to the singing. The vulgar bodies of the fleshy women were unendurable. They all looked such good meat. Why were their haunches so prominent? It was a question Josephine could not solve. She scanned their really expensive, brilliant clothing. It was _nearly_ right--nearly splendid. It only lacked that last subtlety which the world always lacks, the last final clinching which puts calm into a sea of fabric, and yet is the opposite pole to machine fixity. But the leading tenor was the chief pain. He was large, stout, swathed in a cummerbund, and looked like a eunuch. This fattish, emasculated look seems common in stage heroes--even the extremely popular. The tenor sang bravely, his mouth made a large, coffin-shaped, yawning gap in his orange face, his little beard fluttered oddly, like a tail. He turned up his eyes to Josephine's box as he sang--that being the regulation direction. Meanwhile his abdomen shook as he caught his breath, the flesh of his fat, naked arms swayed. Josephine looked down with the fixed gravity of a Red Indian, immovable, inscrutable. It was not till the scene was ended that she lifted her head as if breaking a spell, sent the point of her tongue rapidly over her dried lips, and looked round into the box. Her brown eyes expressed shame, fear, and disgust. A curious grimace went over her face--a grimace only to be expressed by the exclamation _Merde!_ But she was mortally afraid of society, and its fixed institutions. Rapidly she scanned the eyes of her friends in the box. She rested on the eyes of Lilly, a dark, ugly man. “Isn't it nasty?” she said. “You shouldn't look so closely,” he said. But he took it calmly, easily, whilst she felt floods of burning disgust, a longing to destroy it all. “Oh-ho-ho!” laughed Julia. “It's so fu-nny--so funny!” “Of course we are too near,” said Robert. “Say you admire that pink fondant over there,” said Struthers, indicating with his eyebrows a blond large woman in white satin with pink edging, who sat in a box opposite, on the upper tier. “Oh, the fondant--exactly--the fondant! Yes, I admire her immensely! Isn't she exactly IT!” sang Julia. Josephine was scanning the auditorium. So many myriads of faces--like beads on a bead-work pattern--all bead-work, in different layers. She bowed to various acquaintances--mostly Americans in uniform, whom she had known in Paris. She smiled to Lady Cochrane, two boxes off--Lady Cochrane had given her the box. But she felt rather coldly towards her. The curtain rose, the opera wound its slow length along. The audience loved it. They cheered with mad enthusiasm. Josephine looked down on the choppy sea of applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking. The noise was strange and rattling. What a curious multiple object a theatre-audience was! It seemed to have a million heads, a million hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness. The singers appeared before the curtain--the applause rose up like clouds of dust. “Oh, isn't it too wonderful!” cried Julia. “I am wild with excitement. Are you all of you?” “Absolutely wild,” said Lilly laconically. “Where is Scott to-night?” asked Struthers. Julia turned to him and gave him a long, queer look from her dark blue eyes. “He's in the country,” she said, rather enigmatic. “Don't you know, he's got a house down in Dorset,” said Robert, verbally rushing in. “He wants Julia to go down and stay.” “Is she going?” said Lilly. “She hasn't decided,” replied Robert. “Oh! What's the objection?” asked Struthers. “Well, none whatsoever, as far as can be seen, except that she can't make up her mind,” replied Robert. “Julia's got no mind,” said Jim rudely. “Oh! Hear the brotherly verdict!” laughed Julia hurriedly. “You mean to go down to Dorset alone!” said Struthers. “Why not?” replied Robert, answering for her. “And stay how long?” “Oh--as long as it lasts,” said Robert again. “Starting with eternity,” said Lilly, “and working back to a fortnight.” “And what's the matter?--looks bad in the eyes of the world?” “Yes--about that. Afraid of compromising herself--” Lilly looked at them. “Depends what you take the world to mean. Do you mean us in this box, or the crew outside there?” he jerked his head towards the auditorium. “Do you think, Lilly, that we're the world?” said Robert ironically. “Oh, yes, I guess we're shipwrecked in this box, like Robinson Crusoes. And what we do on our own little island matters to us alone. As for the infinite crowds of howling savages outside there in the unspeakable, all you've got to do is mind they don't scrap you.” “But WON'T they?” said Struthers. “Not unless you put your head in their hands,” said Lilly. “I don't know--” said Jim. But the curtain had risen, they hushed him into silence. All through the next scene, Julia puzzled herself, as to whether she should go down to the country and live with Scott. She had carried on a nervous kind of _amour_ with him, based on soul sympathy and emotional excitement. But whether to go and live with him? She didn't know if she wanted to or not: and she couldn't for her life find out. She was in that nervous state when desire seems to evaporate the moment fulfilment is offered. When the curtain dropped she turned. “You see,” she said, screwing up her eyes, “I have to think of Robert.” She cut the word in two, with an odd little hitch in her voice--“ROB-ert.” “My dear Julia, can't you believe that I'm tired of being thought of,” cried Robert, flushing. Julia screwed up her eyes in a slow smile, oddly cogitating. “Well, who AM I to think of?” she asked. “Yourself,” said Lilly. “Oh, yes! Why, yes! I never thought of that!” She gave a hurried little laugh. “But then it's no FUN to think about oneself,” she cried flatly. “I think about ROB-ert, and SCOTT.” She screwed up her eyes and peered oddly at the company. “Which of them will find you the greatest treat,” said Lilly sarcastically. “Anyhow,” interjected Robert nervously, “it will be something new for Scott.” “Stale buns for you, old boy,” said Jim drily. “I don't say so. But--” exclaimed the flushed, full-blooded Robert, who was nothing if not courteous to women. “How long ha' you been married? Eh?” asked Jim. “Six years!” sang Julia sweetly. “Good God!” “You see,” said Robert, “Julia can't decide anything for herself. She waits for someone else to decide, then she puts her spoke in.” “Put it plainly--” began Struthers. “But don't you know, it's no USE putting it plainly,” cried Julia. “But DO you want to be with Scott, out and out, or DON'T you?” said Lilly. “Exactly!” chimed Robert. “That's the question for you to answer Julia.” “I WON'T answer it,” she cried. “Why should I?” And she looked away into the restless hive of the theatre. She spoke so wildly that she attracted attention. But it half pleased her. She stared abstractedly down at the pit. The men looked at one another in some comic consternation. “Oh, damn it all!” said the long Jim, rising and stretching himself. “She's dead nuts on Scott. She's all over him. She'd have eloped with him weeks ago if it hadn't been so easy. She can't stand it that Robert offers to hand her into the taxi.” He gave his malevolent grin round the company, then went out. He did not reappear for the next scene. “Of course, if she loves Scott--” began Struthers. Julia suddenly turned with wild desperation, and cried: “I like him tremendously--tre-men-dous-ly! He DOES understand.” “Which we don't,” said Robert. Julia smiled her long, odd smile in their faces: one might almost say she smiled in their teeth. “What do YOU think, Josephine?” asked Lilly. Josephine was leaning froward. She started. Her tongue went rapidly over her lips. “Who--? I--?” she exclaimed. “Yes.” “I think Julia should go with Scott,” said Josephine. “She'll bother with the idea till she's done it. She loves him, really.” “Of course she does,” cried Robert. Julia, with her chin resting on her arms, in a position which irritated the neighbouring Lady Cochrane sincerely, was gazing with unseeing eyes down upon the stalls. “Well then--” began Struthers. But the music struck up softly. They were all rather bored. Struthers kept on making small, half audible remarks--which was bad form, and displeased Josephine, the hostess of the evening. When the curtain came down for the end of the act, the men got up. Lilly's wife, Tanny, suddenly appeared. She had come on after a dinner engagement. “Would you like tea or anything?” Lilly asked. The women refused. The men filtered out on to the crimson and white, curving corridor. Julia, Josephine and Tanny remained in the box. Tanny was soon hitched on to the conversation in hand. “Of course,” she replied, “one can't decide such a thing like drinking a cup of tea.” “Of course, one can't, dear Tanny,” said Julia. “After all, one doesn't leave one's husband every day, to go and live with another man. Even if one looks on it as an experiment--.” “It's difficult!” cried Julia. “It's difficult! I feel they all want to FORCE me to decide. It's cruel.” “Oh, men with their beastly logic, their either-this-or-that stunt, they are an awful bore.--But of course, Robert can't love you REALLY, or he'd want to keep you. I can see Lilly discussing such a thing for ME. But then you don't love Robert either,” said Tanny. “I do! Oh, I do, Tanny! I DO love him, I love him dearly. I think he's beautiful. Robert's beautiful. And he NEEDS me. And I need him too. I need his support. Yes, I do love him.” “But you like Scott better,” said Tanny. “Only because he--he's different,” sang Julia, in long tones. “You see Scott has his art. His art matters. And ROB-ert--Robert is a dilettante, don't you think--he's dilettante--” She screwed up her eyes at Tanny. Tanny cogitated. “Of course I don't think that matters,” she replied. “But it does, it matters tremendously, dear Tanny, tremendously.” “Of course,” Tanny sheered off. “I can see Scott has great attractions--a great warmth somewhere--” “Exactly!” cried Julia. “He UNDERSTANDS!” “And I believe he's a real artist. You might even work together. You might write his librettos.” “Yes!--Yes!--” Julia spoke with a long, pondering hiss. “It might be AWFULLY nice,” said Tanny rapturously. “Yes!--It might!--It might--!” pondered Julia. Suddenly she gave herself a shake. Then she laughed hurriedly, as if breaking from her line of thought. “And wouldn't Robert be an AWFULLY nice lover for Josephine! Oh, wouldn't that be splendid!” she cried, with her high laugh. Josephine, who had been gazing down into the orchestra, turned now, flushing darkly. “But I don't want a lover, Julia,” she said, hurt. “Josephine dear! Dear old Josephine! Don't you really! Oh, yes, you do.--I want one so BADLY,” cried Julia, with her shaking laugh. “Robert's awfully good to me. But we've been married six years. And it does make a difference, doesn't it, Tanny dear?” “A great difference,” said Tanny. “Yes, it makes a difference, it makes a difference,” mused Julia. “Dear old Rob-ert--I wouldn't hurt him for worlds. I wouldn't. Do you think it would hurt Robert?” She screwed up her eyes, looking at Tanny. “Perhaps it would do Robert good to be hurt a little,” said Tanny. “He's so well-nourished.” “Yes!--Yes!--I see what you mean, Tanny!--Poor old ROB-ert! Oh, poor old Rob-ert, he's so young!” “He DOES seem young,” said Tanny. “One doesn't forgive it.” “He is young,” said Julia. “I'm five years older than he. He's only twenty-seven. Poor Old Robert.” “Robert is young, and inexperienced,” said Josephine, suddenly turning with anger. “But I don't know why you talk about him.” “Is he inexperienced, Josephine dear? IS he?” sang Julia. Josephine flushed darkly, and turned away. “Ah, he's not so innocent as all that,” said Tanny roughly. “Those young young men, who seem so fresh, they're deep enough, really. They're far less innocent really than men who are experienced.” “They are, aren't they, Tanny,” repeated Julia softly. “They're old--older than the Old Man of the Seas, sometimes, aren't they? Incredibly old, like little boys who know too much--aren't they? Yes!” She spoke quietly, seriously, as if it had struck her. Below, the orchestra was coming in. Josephine was watching closely. Julia became aware of this. “Do you see anybody we know, Josephine?” she asked. Josephine started. “No,” she said, looking at her friends quickly and furtively. “Dear old Josephine, she knows all sorts of people,” sang Julia. At that moment the men returned. “Have you actually come back!” exclaimed Tanny to them. They sat down without answering. Jim spread himself as far as he could, in the narrow space. He stared upwards, wrinkling his ugly, queer face. It was evident he was in one of his moods. “If only somebody loved me!” he complained. “If only somebody loved me I should be all right. I'm going to pieces.” He sat up and peered into the faces of the women. “But we ALL love you,” said Josephine, laughing uneasily. “Why aren't you satisfied?” “I'm not satisfied. I'm not satisfied,” murmured Jim. “Would you like to be wrapped in swaddling bands and laid at the breast?” asked Lilly, disagreeably. Jim opened his mouth in a grin, and gazed long and malevolently at his questioner. “Yes,” he said. Then he sprawled his long six foot of limb and body across the box again. “You should try loving somebody, for a change,” said Tanny. “You've been loved too often. Why not try and love somebody?” Jim eyed her narrowly. “I couldn't love YOU,” he said, in vicious tones. “_A la bonne heure_!” said Tanny. But Jim sank his chin on his chest, and repeated obstinately: “I want to be loved.” “How many times have you been loved?” Robert asked him. “It would be rather interesting to know.” Jim looked at Robert long and slow, but did not answer. “Did you ever keep count?” Tanny persisted. Jim looked up at her, malevolent. “I believe I did,” he replied. “Forty is the age when a man should begin to reckon up,” said Lilly. Jim suddenly sprang to his feet, and brandished his fists. “I'll pitch the lot of you over the bloody rail,” he said. He glared at them, from under his bald, wrinkled forehead. Josephine glanced round. She had become a dusky white colour. She was afraid of him, and she disliked him intensely nowadays. “Do you recognise anyone in the orchestra?” she asked. The party in the box had become dead silent. They looked down. The conductor was at his stand. The music began. They all remained silent and motionless during the next scene, each thinking his own thoughts. Jim was uncomfortable. He wanted to make good. He sat with his elbows on his knees, grinning slightly, looking down. At the next interval he stood up suddenly. “It IS the chap--What?” he exclaimed excitedly, looking round at his friends. “Who?” said Tanny. “It IS he?” said Josephine quietly, meeting Jim's eye. “Sure!” he barked. He was leaning forward over the ledge, rattling a programme in his hand, as if trying to attract attention. Then he made signals. “There you are!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “That's the chap.” “Who? Who?” they cried. But neither Jim nor Josephine would vouchsafe an answer. The next was the long interval. Jim and Josephine gazed down at the orchestra. The musicians were laying aside their instruments and rising. The ugly fire-curtain began slowly to descend. Jim suddenly bolted out. “Is it that man Aaron Sisson?” asked Robert. “Where? Where?” cried Julia. “It can't be.” But Josephine's face was closed and silent. She did not answer. The whole party moved out on to the crimson-carpeted gangway. Groups of people stood about chatting, men and women were passing along, to pay visits or to find drinks. Josephine's party stared around, talking desultorily. And at length they perceived Jim stalking along, leading Aaron Sisson by the arm. Jim was grinning, the flautist looked unwilling. He had a comely appearance, in his white shirt--a certain comely blondness and repose. And as much a gentleman as anybody. “Well!” cried Josephine to him. “How do you come here?” “I play the flute,” he answered, as he shook hands. The little crowd stood in the gangway and talked. “How wonderful of you to be here!” cried Julia. He laughed. “Do you think so?” he answered. “Yes, I do.--It seems so FAR from Shottle House and Christmas Eve.--Oh, wasn't it exciting!” cried Julia. Aaron looked at her, but did not answer. “We've heard all about you,” said Tanny playfully. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “Come!” said Josephine, rather irritated. “We crowd up the gangway.” And she led the way inside the box. Aaron stood and looked down at the dishevelled theatre. “You get all the view,” he said. “We do, don't we!” cried Julia. “More than's good for us,” said Lilly. “Tell us what you are doing. You've got a permanent job?” asked Josephine. “Yes--at present.” “Ah! It's more interesting for you than at Beldover.” She had taken her seat. He looked down at her dusky young face. Her voice was always clear and measured. “It's a change,” he said, smiling. “Oh, it must be more than that,” she said. “Why, you must feel a whole difference. It's a whole new life.” He smiled, as if he were laughing at her silently. She flushed. “But isn't it?” she persisted. “Yes. It can be,” he replied. He looked as if he were quietly amused, but dissociated. None of the people in the box were quite real to him. He was not really amused. Julia found him dull, stupid. Tanny also was offended that he could not _perceive her_. The men remained practically silent. “You're a chap I always hoped would turn up again,” said Jim. “Oh, yes!” replied Aaron, smiling as if amused. “But perhaps he doesn't like us! Perhaps he's not glad that we turned up,” said Julia, leaving her sting. The flautist turned and looked at her. “You can't REMEMBER us, can you?” she asked. “Yes,” he said. “I can remember you.” “Oh,” she laughed. “You are unflattering.” He was annoyed. He did not know what she was getting at. “How are your wife and children?” she asked spitefully. “All right, I think.” “But you've been back to them?” cried Josephine in dismay. He looked at her, a slow, half smiling look, but did not speak. “Come and have a drink. Damn the women,” said Jim uncouthly, seizing Aaron by the arm and dragging him off. CHAPTER VI. TALK The party stayed to the end of the interminable opera. They had agreed to wait for Aaron. He was to come around to the vestibule for them, after the show. They trooped slowly down-stairs into the crush of the entrance hall. Chattering, swirling people, red carpet, palms green against cream-and-gilt walls, small whirlpools of life at the open, dark doorways, men in opera hats steering decisively about-it was the old scene. But there were no taxis--absolutely no taxis. And it was raining. Fortunately the women had brought shoes. They slipped these on. Jim rocked through the crowd, in his tall hat, looking for the flautist. At last Aaron was found--wearing a bowler hat. Julia groaned in spirit. Josephine's brow knitted. Not that anybody cared, really. But as one must frown at something, why not at the bowler hat? Acquaintances and elegant young men in uniforms insisted on rushing up and bowing and exchanging a few words, either with Josephine, or Jim, or Julia, or Lilly. They were coldly received. The party veered out into the night. The women hugged their wraps about them, and set off sharply, feeling some repugnance for the wet pavements and the crowd. They had not far to go--only to Jim's rooms in Adelphi. Jim was leading Aaron, holding him by the arm and slightly pinching his muscles. It gave him great satisfaction to have between his fingers the arm-muscles of a working-man, one of the common people, the _fons et origo_ of modern life. Jim was talking rather vaguely about Labour and Robert Smillie, and Bolshevism. He was all for revolution and the triumph of labour. So they arrived, mounted a dark stair, and entered a large, handsome room, one of the Adams rooms. Jim had furnished it from Heale's with striped hangings, green and white and yellow and dark purple, and with a green-and-black checked carpet, and great stripe-covered chairs and Chesterfield. A big gas-fire was soon glowing in the handsome old fire-place, the panelled room seemed cosy. While Jim was handing round drinks and sandwiches, and Josephine was making tea, Robert played Bach on the piano--the pianola, rather. The chairs and lounge were in a half-circle round the fire. The party threw off their wraps and sank deep into this expensive comfort of modern bohemia. They needed the Bach to take away the bad taste that _Aida_ had left in their mouths. They needed the whiskey and curacao to rouse their spirits. They needed the profound comfort in which to sink away from the world. All the men, except Aaron, had been through the war in some way or other. But here they were, in the old setting exactly, the old bohemian routine. The bell rang, Jim went downstairs. He returned shortly with a frail, elegant woman--fashionable rather than bohemian. She was cream and auburn, Irish, with a slightly-lifted upper lip that gave her a pathetic look. She dropped her wrap and sat down by Julia, taking her hand delicately. “How are you, darling?” she asked. “Yes--I'm happy,” said Julia, giving her odd, screwed-up smile. The pianola stopped, they all chatted indiscriminately. Jim was watching the new-comer--Mrs. Browning--with a concentrated wolfish grin. “I like her,” he said at last. “I've seen her before, haven't I?--I like her awfully.” “Yes,” said Josephine, with a slight grunt of a laugh. “He wants to be loved.” “Oh,” cried Clariss. “So do I!” “Then there you are!” cried Tanny. “Alas, no, there we aren't,” cried Clariss. She was beautiful too, with her lifted upper-lip. “We both want to be loved, and so we miss each other entirely. We run on in two parallel lines, that can never meet.” She laughed low and half sad. “Doesn't SHE love you?” said Aaron to Jim amused, indicating Josephine. “I thought you were engaged.” “HER!” leered Jim vindictively, glancing at Josephine. “She doesn't love me.” “Is that true?” asked Robert hastily, of Josephine. “Why,” she said, “yes. Why should he make me say out here that I don't love him!” “Got you my girl,” said Jim. “Then it's no engagement?” said Robert. “Listen to the row fools make, rushing in,” said Jim maliciously. “No, the engagement is broken,” said Josephine. “World coming to pieces bit by bit,” said Lilly. Jim was twisting in his chair, and looking like a Chinese dragon, diabolical. The room was uneasy. “What gives you such a belly-ache for love, Jim?” said Lilly, “or for being loved? Why do you want so badly to be loved?” “Because I like it, damn you,” barked Jim. “Because I'm in need of it.” None of them quite knew whether they ought to take it as a joke. It was just a bit too real to be quite pleasant. “Why are you such a baby?” said Lilly. “There you are, six foot in length, have been a cavalry officer and fought in two wars, and you spend your time crying for somebody to love you. You're a comic.” “Am I though?” said Jim. “I'm losing life. I'm getting thin.” “You don't look as if you were losing life,” said Lilly. “Don't I? I am, though. I'm dying.” “What of? Lack of life?” “That's about it, my young cock. Life's leaving me.” “Better sing Tosti's Farewell to it.” Jim who had been sprawling full length in his arm-chair, the centre of interest of all the company, suddenly sprang forward and pushed his face, grinning, in the face of Lilly. “You're a funny customer, you are,” he said. Then he turned round in his chair, and saw Clariss sitting at the feet of Julia, with one white arm over her friend's knee. Jim immediately stuck forward his muzzle and gazed at her. Clariss had loosened her masses of thick, auburn hair, so that it hung half free. Her face was creamy pale, her upper lip lifted with odd pathos! She had rose-rubies in her ears. “I like HER,” said Jim. “What's her name?” “Mrs. Browning. Don't be so rude,” said Josephine. “Browning for gravies. Any relation of Robert?” “Oh, yes! You ask my husband,” came the slow, plangent voice of Clariss. “You've got a husband, have you?” “Rather! Haven't I, Juley?” “Yes,” said Julia, vaguely and wispily. “Yes, dear, you have.” “And two fine children,” put in Robert. “No! You don't mean it!” said Jim. “Who's your husband? Anybody?” “Rather!” came the deep voice of Clariss. “He sees to that.” Jim stared, grinning, showing his pointed teeth, reaching nearer and nearer to Clariss who, in her frail scrap of an evening dress, amethyst and silver, was sitting still in the deep black hearth-rug, her arm over Julia's knee, taking very little notice of Jim, although he amused her. “I like you awfully, I say,” he repeated. “Thanks, I'm sure,” she said. The others were laughing, sprawling in their chairs, and sipping curacao and taking a sandwich or a cigarette. Aaron Sisson alone sat upright, smiling flickeringly. Josephine watched him, and her pointed tongue went from time to time over her lips. “But I'm sure,” she broke in, “this isn't very interesting for the others. Awfully boring! Don't be silly all the time, Jim, or we must go home.” Jim looked at her with narrowed eyes. He hated her voice. She let her eye rest on his for a moment. Then she put her cigarette to her lips. Robert was watching them both. Josephine took her cigarette from her lips again. “Tell us about yourself, Mr. Sisson,” she said. “How do you like being in London?” “I like London,” said Aaron. Where did he live? Bloomsbury. Did he know many people? No--nobody except a man in the orchestra. How had he got his job? Through an agent. Etc. Etc. “What do you make of the miners?” said Jim, suddenly taking a new line. “Me?” said Sisson. “I don't make anything of them.” “Do you think they'll make a stand against the government?” “What for?” “Nationalisation.” “They might, one day.” “Think they'd fight?” “Fight?” “Yes.” Aaron sat laughing. “What have they to fight for?” “Why, everything! What haven't they to fight for?” cried Josephine fiercely. “Freedom, liberty, and escape from this vile system. Won't they fight for that?” Aaron sat smiling, slowly shaking his head. “Nay,” he said, “you mustn't ask me what they'll do--I've only just left them, for good. They'll do a lot of cavilling.” “But won't they ACT?” cried Josephine. “Act?” said Aaron. “How, act?” “Why, defy the government, and take things in their own hands,” said Josephine. “They might, some time,” said Aaron, rather indifferent. “I wish they would!” cried Josephine. “My, wouldn't I love it if they'd make a bloody revolution!” They were all looking now at her. Her black brows were twitching, in her black and silver dress she looked like a symbol of young disaster. “Must it be bloody, Josephine?” said Robert. “Why, yes. I don't believe in revolutions that aren't bloody,” said Josephine. “Wouldn't I love it! I'd go in front with a red flag.” “It would be rather fun,” said Tanny. “Wouldn't it!” cried Josephine. “Oh, Josey, dear!” cried Julia hysterically. “Isn't she a red-hot Bolsher! _I_ should be frightened.” “No!” cried Josephine. “I should love it.” “So should I,” said Jim, in a luscious sort of voice. “What price machine-guns at the end of the Strand! That's a day to live for, what?” “Ha! Ha!” laughed Clariss, with her deep laugh. “We'd all Bolsh together. I'd give the cheers.” “I wouldn't mind getting killed. I'd love it, in a real fight,” said Josephine. “But, Josephine,” said Robert, “don't you think we've had enough of that sort of thing in the war? Don't you think it all works out rather stupid and unsatisfying?” “Ah, but a civil war would be different. I've no interest in fighting Germans. But a civil war would be different.” “That's a fact, it would,” said Jim. “Only rather worse,” said Robert. “No, I don't agree,” cried Josephine. “You'd feel you were doing something, in a civil war.” “Pulling the house down,” said Lilly. “Yes,” she cried. “Don't you hate it, the house we live in--London--England--America! Don't you hate them?” “I don't like them. But I can't get much fire in my hatred. They pall on me rather,” said Lilly. “Ay!” said Aaron, suddenly stirring in his chair. Lilly and he glanced at one another with a look of recognition. “Still,” said Tanny, “there's got to be a clearance some day or other.” “Oh,” drawled Clariss. “I'm all for a clearance. I'm all for pulling the house down. Only while it stands I do want central heating and a good cook.” “May I come to dinner?” said Jim. “Oh, yes. You'd find it rather domestic.” “Where do you live?” “Rather far out now--Amersham.” “Amersham? Where's that--?” “Oh, it's on the map.” There was a little lull. Jim gulped down a drink, standing at the sideboard. He was a tall, fine, soldierly figure, and his face, with its little sandy moustache and bald forehead, was odd. Aaron Sisson sat watching him, unconsciously. “Hello you!” said Jim. “Have one?” Aaron shook his head, and Jim did not press him. It saved the drinks. “You believe in love, don't you?” said Jim, sitting down near Aaron, and grinning at him. “Love!” said Aaron. “LOVE! he says,” mocked Jim, grinning at the company. “What about it, then?” asked Aaron. “It's life! Love is life,” said Jim fiercely. “It's a vice, like drink,” said Lilly. “Eh? A vice!” said Jim. “May be for you, old bird.” “More so still for you,” said Lilly. “It's life. It's life!” reiterated Jim. “Don't you agree?” He turned wolfishly to Clariss. “Oh, yes--every time--” she drawled, nonchalant. “Here, let's write it down,” said Lilly. He found a blue pencil and printed in large letters on the old creamy marble of the mantel-piece panel:--LOVE IS LIFE. Julia suddenly rose and flung her arms asunder wildly. “Oh, I hate love. I hate it,” she protested. Jim watched her sardonically. “Look at her!” he said. “Look at Lesbia who hates love.” “No, but perhaps it is a disease. Perhaps we are all wrong, and we can't love properly,” put in Josephine. “Have another try,” said Jim,--“I know what love is. I've thought about it. Love is the soul's respiration.” “Let's have that down,” said Lilly. LOVE IS THE SOUL'S RESPIRATION. He printed it on the old mantel-piece. Jim eyed the letters. “It's right,” he said. “Quite right. When you love, your soul breathes in. If you don't breathe in, you suffocate.” “What about breathing out?” said Robert. “If you don't breathe out, you asphyxiate.” “Right you are, Mock Turtle--” said Jim maliciously. “Breathing out is a bloody revolution,” said Lilly. “You've hit the nail on the head,” said Jim solemnly. “Let's record it then,” said Lilly. And with the blue pencil he printed: WHEN YOU LOVE, YOUR SOUL BREATHES IN-- WHEN YOUR SOUL BREATHES OUT, IT'S A BLOODY REVOLUTION. “I say Jim,” he said. “You must be busting yourself, trying to breathe in.” “Don't you be too clever. I've thought about it,” said Jim. “When I'm in love, I get a great inrush of energy. I actually feel it rush in--here!” He poked his finger on the pit of his stomach. “It's the soul's expansion. And if I can't get these rushes of energy, I'M DYING, AND I KNOW I AM.” He spoke the last words with sudden ferocity and desperation. “All _I_ know is,” said Tanny, “you don't look it.” “I AM. I am.” Jim protested. “I'm dying. Life's leaving me.” “Maybe you're choking with love,” said Robert. “Perhaps you have breathed in so much, you don't know how to let it go again. Perhaps your soul's got a crick in it, with expanding so much.” “You're a bloody young sucking pig, you are,” said Jim. “Even at that age, I've learned my manners,” replied Robert. Jim looked round the party. Then he turned to Aaron Sisson. “What do you make of 'em, eh?” he said. Aaron shook his head, and laughed. “Me?” he said. But Jim did not wait for an answer. “I've had enough,” said Tanny suddenly rising. “I think you're all silly. Besides, it's getting late.” “She!” said Jim, rising and pointing luridly to Clariss. “She's Love. And HE's the Working People. The hope is these two--” He jerked a thumb at Aaron Sisson, after having indicated Mrs. Browning. “Oh, how awfully interesting. It's quite a long time since I've been a personification.--I suppose you've never been one before?” said Clariss, turning to Aaron in conclusion. “No, I don't think I have,” he answered. “I hope personification is right.--Ought to be _allegory_ or something else?” This from Clariss to Robert. “Or a parable, Clariss,” laughed the young lieutenant. “Goodbye,” said Tanny. “I've been awfully bored.” “Have you?” grinned Jim. “Goodbye! Better luck next time.” “We'd better look sharp,” said Robert, “if we want to get the tube.” The party hurried through the rainy narrow streets down to the Embankment station. Robert and Julia and Clariss were going west, Lilly and his wife were going to Hampstead, Josephine and Aaron Sisson were going both to Bloomsbury. “I suppose,” said Robert, on the stairs--“Mr. Sisson will see you to your door, Josephine. He lives your way.” “There's no need at all,” said Josephine. The four who were going north went down to the low tube level. It was nearly the last train. The station was half deserted, half rowdy, several fellows were drunk, shouting and crowing. Down there in the bowels of London, after midnight, everything seemed horrible and unnatural. “How I hate this London,” said Tanny. She was half Norwegian, and had spent a large part of her life in Norway, before she married Lilly. “Yes, so do I,” said Josephine. “But if one must earn one's living one must stay here. I wish I could get back to Paris. But there's nothing doing for me in France.--When do you go back into the country, both of you?” “Friday,” said Lilly. “How lovely for you!--And when will you go to Norway, Tanny?” “In about a month,” said Tanny. “You must be awfully pleased.” “Oh--thankful--THANKFUL to get out of England--” “I know. That's how I feel. Everything is so awful--so dismal and dreary, I find it--” They crowded into the train. Men were still yelling like wild beasts--others were asleep--soldiers were singing. “Have you really broken your engagement with Jim?” shrilled Tanny in a high voice, as the train roared. “Yes, he's impossible,” said Josephine. “Perfectly hysterical and impossible.” “And SELFISH--” cried Tanny. “Oh terribly--” cried Josephine. “Come up to Hampstead to lunch with us,” said Lilly to Aaron. “Ay--thank you,” said Aaron. Lilly scribbled directions on a card. The hot, jaded midnight underground rattled on. Aaron and Josephine got down to change trains. CHAPTER VII. THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN Josephine had invited Aaron Sisson to dinner at a restaurant in Soho, one Sunday evening. They had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle of Burgundy she was getting his history from him. His father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been killed by a fall down the shaft when Aaron was only four years old. The widow had opened a shop: Aaron was her only child. She had done well in her shop. She had wanted Aaron to be a schoolteacher. He had served three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone to the pit. “But why?” said Josephine. “I couldn't tell you. I felt more like it.” He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind, which had repudiated education. On purpose he kept the midland accent in his speech. He understood perfectly what a personification was--and an allegory. But he preferred to be illiterate. Josephine found out what a miner's checkweighman was. She tried to find out what sort of wife Aaron had--but, except that she was the daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing. “And do you send her money?” she asked. “Ay,” said Aaron. “The house is mine. And I allow her so much a week out of the money in the bank. My mother left me a bit over a thousand when she died.” “You don't mind what I say, do you?” said Josephine. “No I don't mind,” he laughed. He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. But he really kept her at a distance. In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond, erect, nicely built, fresh and English-seeming. But there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference to her--perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome. “Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?--Didn't you love them?” Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears. “Why I left her?” he said. “For no particular reason. They're all right without me.” Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes. “But you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all--” “Yes, I did. For no reason--except I wanted to have some free room round me--to loose myself--” “You mean you wanted love?” flashed Josephine, thinking he said _lose_. “No, I wanted fresh air. I don't know what I wanted. Why should I know?” “But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt,” said she. “Ah, well! A breath of fresh air, by myself. I felt forced to feel--I feel if I go back home now, I shall be FORCED--forced to love--or care--or something.” “Perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you,” she said. “Perhaps less. She's made up her mind she loves me, and she's not going to let me off.” “Did you never love her?” said Josephine. “Oh, yes. I shall never love anybody else. But I'm damned if I want to be a lover any more. To her or to anybody. That's the top and bottom of it. I don't want to CARE, when care isn't in me. And I'm not going to be forced to it.” The fat, aproned French waiter was hovering near. Josephine let him remove the plates and the empty bottle. “Have more wine,” she said to Aaron. But he refused. She liked him because of his dead-level indifference to his surroundings. French waiters and foreign food--he noticed them in his quick, amiable-looking fashion--but he was indifferent. Josephine was piqued. She wanted to pierce this amiable aloofness of his. She ordered coffee and brandies. “But you don't want to get away from EVERYTHING, do you? I myself feel so LOST sometimes--so dreadfully alone: not in a silly sentimental fashion, because men keep telling me they love me, don't you know. But my LIFE seems alone, for some reason--” “Haven't you got relations?” he said. “No one, now mother is dead. Nothing nearer than aunts and cousins in America. I suppose I shall see them all again one day. But they hardly count over here.” “Why don't you get married?” he said. “How old are you?” “I'm twenty-five. How old are you?” “Thirty-three.” “You might almost be any age.--I don't know why I don't get married. In a way, I hate earning my own living--yet I go on--and I like my work--” “What are you doing now?” “I'm painting scenery for a new play--rather fun--I enjoy it. But I often wonder what will become of me.” “In what way?” She was almost affronted. “What becomes of me? Oh, I don't know. And it doesn't matter, not to anybody but myself.” “What becomes of anybody, anyhow? We live till we die. What do you want?” “Why, I keep saying I want to get married and feel sure of something. But I don't know--I feel dreadful sometimes--as if every minute would be the last. I keep going on and on--I don't know what for--and IT keeps going on and on--goodness knows what it's all for.” “You shouldn't bother yourself,” he said. “You should just let it go on and on--” “But I MUST bother,” she said. “I must think and feel--” “You've no occasion,” he said. “How--?” she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh. Then she lit a cigarette. “No,” she said. “What I should really like more than anything would be an end of the world. I wish the world would come to an end.” He laughed, and poured his drops of brandy down his throat. “It won't, for wishing,” he said. “No, that's the awful part of it. It'll just go on and on-- Doesn't it make you feel you'd go mad?” He looked at her and shook his head. “You see it doesn't concern me,” he said. “So long as I can float by myself.” “But ARE you SATISFIED!” she cried. “I like being by myself--I hate feeling and caring, and being forced into it. I want to be left alone--” “You aren't very polite to your hostess of the evening,” she said, laughing a bit miserably. “Oh, we're all right,” he said. “You know what I mean--” “You like your own company? Do you?--Sometimes I think I'm nothing when I'm alone. Sometimes I think I surely must be nothing--nothingness.” He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. I only want to be left alone.” “Not to have anything to do with anybody?” she queried ironically. “Not to any extent.” She watched him--and then she bubbled with a laugh. “I think you're funny,” she said. “You don't mind?” “No--why--It's just as you see it.--Jim Bricknell's a rare comic, to my eye.” “Oh, him!--no, not actually. He's self-conscious and selfish and hysterical. It isn't a bit funny after a while.” “I only know what I've seen,” said Aaron. “You'd both of you like a bloody revolution, though.” “Yes. Only when it came he wouldn't be there.” “Would you?” “Yes, indeed I would. I would give everything to be in it. I'd give heaven and earth for a great big upheaval--and then darkness.” “Perhaps you'll get it, when you die,” said Aaron. “Oh, but I don't want to die and leave all this standing. I hate it so.” “Why do you?” “But don't you?” “No, it doesn't really bother me.” “It makes me feel I can't live.” “I can't see that.” “But you always disagree with one!” said Josephine. “How do you like Lilly? What do you think of him?” “He seems sharp,” said Aaron. “But he's more than sharp.” “Oh, yes! He's got his finger in most pies.” “And doesn't like the plums in any of them,” said Josephine tartly. “What does he do?” “Writes--stories and plays.” “And makes it pay?” “Hardly at all.--They want us to go. Shall we?” She rose from the table. The waiter handed her her cloak, and they went out into the blowy dark night. She folded her wrap round her, and hurried forward with short, sharp steps. There was a certain Parisian _chic_ and mincingness about her, even in her walk: but underneath, a striding, savage suggestion as if she could leg it in great strides, like some savage squaw. Aaron pressed his bowler hat down on his brow. “Would you rather take a bus?” she said in a high voice, because of the wind. “I'd rather walk.” “So would I.” They hurried across the Charing Cross Road, where great buses rolled and rocked, crammed with people. Her heels clicked sharply on the pavement, as they walked east. They crossed Holborn, and passed the Museum. And neither of them said anything. When they came to the corner, she held out her hand. “Look!” she said. “Don't come any further: don't trouble.” “I'll walk round with you: unless you'd rather not.” “No--But do you want to bother?” “It's no bother.” So they pursued their way through the high wind, and turned at last into the old, beautiful square. It seemed dark and deserted, dark like a savage wilderness in the heart of London. The wind was roaring in the great bare trees of the centre, as if it were some wild dark grove deep in a forgotten land. Josephine opened the gate of the square garden with her key, and let it slam to behind him. “How wonderful the wind is!” she shrilled. “Shall we listen to it for a minute?” She led him across the grass past the shrubs to the big tree in the centre. There she climbed up to a seat. He sat beside her. They sat in silence, looking at the darkness. Rain was blowing in the wind. They huddled against the big tree-trunk, for shelter, and watched the scene. Beyond the tall shrubs and the high, heavy railings the wet street gleamed silently. The houses of the Square rose like a cliff on this inner dark sea, dimly lighted at occasional windows. Boughs swayed and sang. A taxi-cab swirled round a corner like a cat, and purred to a standstill. There was a light of an open hall door. But all far away, it seemed, unthinkably far away. Aaron sat still and watched. He was frightened, it all seemed so sinister, this dark, bristling heart of London. Wind boomed and tore like waves ripping a shingle beach. The two white lights of the taxi stared round and departed, leaving the coast at the foot of the cliffs deserted, faintly spilled with light from the high lamp. Beyond there, on the outer rim, a policeman passed solidly. Josephine was weeping steadily all the time, but inaudibly. Occasionally she blew her nose and wiped her face. But he had not realized. She hardly realized herself. She sat near the strange man. He seemed so still and remote--so fascinating. “Give me your hand,” she said to him, subduedly. He took her cold hand in his warm, living grasp. She wept more bitterly. He noticed at last. “Why are you crying?” he said. “I don't know,” she replied, rather matter-of-fact, through her tears. So he let her cry, and said no more, but sat with her cold hand in his warm, easy clasp. “You'll think me a fool,” she said. “I don't know why I cry.” “You can cry for nothing, can't you?” he said. “Why, yes, but it's not very sensible.” He laughed shortly. “Sensible!” he said. “You are a strange man,” she said. But he took no notice. “Did you ever intend to marry Jim Bricknell?” he asked. “Yes, of course.” “I can't imagine it,” he said. “Why not?” Both were watching blankly the roaring night of mid-London, the phantasmagoric old Bloomsbury Square. They were still hand in hand. “Such as you shouldn't marry,” he said. “But why not? I want to.” “You think you do.” “Yes indeed I do.” He did not say any more. “Why shouldn't I?” she persisted. “I don't know--” And again he was silent. “You've known some life, haven't you?” he asked. “Me? Why?” “You seem to.” “Do I? I'm sorry. Do I seem vicious?--No, I'm not vicious.--I've seen some life, perhaps--in Paris mostly. But not much. Why do you ask?” “I wasn't thinking.” “But what do you mean? What are you thinking?” “Nothing. Nothing.” “Don't be so irritating,” said she. But he did not answer, and she became silent also. They sat hand in hand. “Won't you kiss me?” came her voice out of the darkness. He waited some moments, then his voice sounded gently, half mocking, half reproachful. “Nay!” he said. “Why not?” “I don't want to.” “Why not?” she asked. He laughed, but did not reply. She sat perfectly still for some time. She had ceased to cry. In the darkness her face was set and sullen. Sometimes a spray of rain blew across it. She drew her hand from his, and rose to her feet. “Ill go in now,” she said. “You're not offended, are you?” he asked. “No. Why?” They stepped down in the darkness from their perch. “I wondered.” She strode off for some little way. Then she turned and said: “Yes, I think it is rather insulting.” “Nay,” he said. “Not it! Not it!” And he followed her to the gate. She opened with her key, and they crossed the road to her door. “Good-night,” she said, turning and giving him her hand. “You'll come and have dinner with me--or lunch--will you? When shall we make it?” he asked. “Well, I can't say for certain--I'm very busy just now. I'll let you know.” A policeman shed his light on the pair of them as they stood on the step. “All right,” said Aaron, dropping back, and she hastily opened the big door, and entered. CHAPTER VIII. A PUNCH IN THE WIND The Lillys had a labourer's cottage in Hampshire--pleasant enough. They were poor. Lilly was a little, dark, thin, quick fellow, his wife was strong and fair. They had known Robert and Julia for some years, but Josephine and Jim were new acquaintances,--fairly new. One day in early spring Lilly had a telegram, “Coming to see you arrive 4:30--Bricknell.” He was surprised, but he and his wife got the spare room ready. And at four o'clock Lilly went off to the station. He was a few minutes late, and saw Jim's tall, rather elegant figure stalking down the station path. Jim had been an officer in the regular army, and still spent hours with his tailor. But instead of being a soldier he was a sort of socialist, and a red-hot revolutionary of a very ineffectual sort. “Good lad!” he exclaimed, as Lilly came up. “Thought you wouldn't mind.” “Not at all. Let me carry your bag.” Jim had a bag and a knapsack. “I had an inspiration this morning,” said Jim. “I suddenly saw that if there was a man in England who could save me, it was you.” “Save you from what?” asked Lilly, rather abashed. “Eh--?” and Jim stooped, grinning at the smaller man. Lilly was somewhat puzzled, but he had a certain belief in himself as a saviour. The two men tramped rather incongruously through the lanes to the cottage. Tanny was in the doorway as they came up the garden path. “So nice to see you! Are you all right?” she said. “A-one!” said Jim, grinning. “Nice of you to have me.” “Oh, we're awfully pleased.” Jim dropped his knapsack on the broad sofa. “I've brought some food,” he said. “Have you! That's sensible of you. We can't get a great deal here, except just at week-ends,” said Tanny. Jim fished out a pound of sausages and a pot of fish paste. “How lovely the sausages,” said Tanny. “We'll have them for dinner tonight--and we'll have the other for tea now. You'd like a wash?” But Jim had already opened his bag, taken off his coat, and put on an old one. “Thanks,” he said. Lilly made the tea, and at length all sat down. “Well how unexpected this is--and how nice,” said Tanny. “Jolly--eh?” said Jim. He ate rapidly, stuffing his mouth too full. “How is everybody?” asked Tanny. “All right. Julia's gone with Cyril Scott. Can't stand that fellow, can you? What?” “Yes, I think he's rather nice,” said Tanny. “What will Robert do?” “Have a shot at Josephine, apparently.” “Really? Is he in love with her? I thought so. And she likes him too, doesn't she?” said Tanny. “Very likely,” said Jim. “I suppose you're jealous,” laughed Tanny. “Me!” Jim shook his head. “Not a bit. Like to see the ball kept rolling.” “What have you been doing lately?” “Been staying a few days with my wife.” “No, really! I can't believe it.” Jim had a French wife, who had divorced him, and two children. Now he was paying visits to this wife again: purely friendly. Tanny did most of the talking. Jim excited her, with his way of looking in her face and grinning wolfishly, and at the same time asking to be saved. After tea, he wanted to send telegrams, so Lilly took him round to the village post-office. Telegrams were a necessary part of his life. He had to be suddenly starting off to keep sudden appointments, or he felt he was a void in the atmosphere. He talked to Lilly about social reform, and so on. Jim's work in town was merely nominal. He spent his time wavering about and going to various meetings, philandering and weeping. Lilly kept in the back of his mind the Saving which James had come to look for. He intended to do his best. After dinner the three sat cosily round the kitchen fire. “But what do you really think will happen to the world?” Lilly asked Jim, amid much talk. “What? There's something big coming,” said Jim. “Where from?” “Watch Ireland, and watch Japan--they're the two poles of the world,” said Jim. “I thought Russia and America,” said Lilly. “Eh? What? Russia and America! They'll depend on Ireland and Japan. I know it. I've had a vision of it. Ireland on this side and Japan on the other--they'll settle it.” “I don't see how,” said Lilly. “I don't see HOW--But I had a vision of it.” “What sort of vision?” “Couldn't describe it.” “But you don't think much of the Japanese, do you?” asked Lilly. “Don't I! Don't I!” said Jim. “What, don't you think they're wonderful?” “No. I think they're rather unpleasant.” “I think the salvation of the world lies with them.” “Funny salvation,” said Lilly. “I think they're anything but angels.” “Do you though? Now that's funny. Why?” “Looking at them even. I knew a Russian doctor who'd been through the Russo-Japanese war, and who had gone a bit cracked. He said he saw the Japs rush a trench. They threw everything away and flung themselves through the Russian fire and simply dropped in masses. But those that reached the trenches jumped in with bare hands on the Russians and tore their faces apart and bit their throats out--fairly ripped the faces off the bone.--It had sent the doctor a bit cracked. He said the wounded were awful,--their faces torn off and their throats mangled--and dead Japs with flesh between the teeth--God knows if it's true. But that's the impression the Japanese had made on this man. It had affected his mind really.” Jim watched Lilly, and smiled as if he were pleased. “No--really--!” he said. “Anyhow they're more demon than angel, I believe,” said Lilly. “Oh, no, Rawdon, but you always exaggerate,” said Tanny. “Maybe,” said Lilly. “I think Japanese are fascinating--fascinating--so quick, and such FORCE in them--” “Rather!--eh?” said Jim, looking with a quick smile at Tanny. “I think a Japanese lover would be marvellous,” she laughed riskily. “I s'd think he would,” said Jim, screwing up his eyes. “Do you hate the normal British as much as I do?” she asked him. “Hate them! Hate them!” he said, with an intimate grin. “Their beastly virtue,” said she. “And I believe there's nobody more vicious underneath.” “Nobody!” said Jim. “But you're British yourself,” said Lilly to Jim. “No, I'm Irish. Family's Irish--my mother was a Fitz-patrick.” “Anyhow you live in England.” “Because they won't let me go to Ireland.” The talk drifted. Jim finished up all the beer, and they prepared to go to bed. Jim was a bit tipsy, grinning. He asked for bread and cheese to take upstairs. “Will you have supper?” said Lilly. He was surprised, because Jim had eaten strangely much at dinner. “No--where's the loaf?” And he cut himself about half of it. There was no cheese. “Bread'll do,” said Jim. “Sit down and eat it. Have cocoa with it,” said Tanny. “No, I like to have it in my bedroom.” “You don't eat bread in the night?” said Lilly. “I do.” “What a funny thing to do.” The cottage was in darkness. The Lillys slept soundly. Jim woke up and chewed bread and slept again. In the morning at dawn he rose and went downstairs. Lilly heard him roaming about--heard the woman come in to clean--heard them talking. So he got up to look after his visitor, though it was not seven o'clock, and the woman was busy.--But before he went down, he heard Jim come upstairs again. Mrs. Short was busy in the kitchen when Lilly went down. “The other gentleman have been down, Sir,” said Mrs. Short. “He asked me where the bread and butter were, so I said should I cut him a piece. But he wouldn't let me do it. I gave him a knife and he took it for himself, in the pantry.” “I say, Bricknell,” said Lilly at breakfast time, “why do you eat so much bread?” “I've got to feed up. I've been starved during this damned war.” “But hunks of bread won't feed you up.” “Gives the stomach something to work at, and prevents it grinding on the nerves,” said Jim. “But surely you don't want to keep your stomach always full and heavy.” “I do, my boy. I do. It needs keeping solid. I'm losing life, if I don't. I tell you I'm losing life. Let me put something inside me.” “I don't believe bread's any use.” During breakfast Jim talked about the future of the world. “I reckon Christ's the finest thing time has ever produced,” said he; “and will remain it.” “But you don't want crucifixions _ad infinitum_,” said Lilly. “What? Why not?” “Once is enough--and have done.” “Don't you think love and sacrifice are the finest things in life?” said Jim, over his bacon. “Depends WHAT love, and what sacrifice,” said Lilly. “If I really believe in an Almighty God, I am willing to sacrifice for Him. That is, I'm willing to yield my own personal interest to the bigger creative interest.--But it's obvious Almighty God isn't mere Love.” “I think it is. Love and only love,” said Jim. “I think the greatest joy is sacrificing oneself to love.” “To SOMEONE you love, you mean,” said Tanny. “No I don't. I don't mean someone at all. I mean love--love--love. I sacrifice myself to love. I reckon that's the highest man is capable of.” “But you can't sacrifice yourself to an abstract principle,” said Tanny. “That's just what you can do. And that's the beauty of it. Who represents the principle doesn't matter. Christ is the principle of love,” said Jim. “But no!” said Tanny. “It MUST be more individual. It must be SOMEBODY you love, not abstract love in itself. How can you sacrifice yourself to an abstraction.” “Ha, I think Love and your Christ detestable,” said Lilly--“a sheer ignominy.” “Finest thing the world has produced,” said Jim. “No. A thing which sets itself up to be betrayed! No, it's foul. Don't you see it's the Judas principle you really worship. Judas is the real hero. But for Judas the whole show would have been _manque_.” “Oh yes,” said Jim. “Judas was inevitable. I'm not sure that Judas wasn't the greatest of the disciples--and Jesus knew it. I'm not sure Judas wasn't the disciple Jesus loved.” “Jesus certainly encouraged him in his Judas tricks,” said Tanny. Jim grinned knowingly at Lilly. “Then it was a nasty combination. And anything which turns on a Judas climax is a dirty show, to my thinking. I think your Judas is a rotten, dirty worm, just a dirty little self-conscious sentimental twister. And out of all Christianity he is the hero today. When people say Christ they mean Judas. They find him luscious on the palate. And Jesus fostered him--” said Lilly. “He's a profound figure, is Judas. It's taken two thousand years to begin to understand him,” said Jim, pushing the bread and marmalade into his mouth. “A traitor is a traitor--no need to understand any further. And a system which rests all its weight on a piece of treachery makes that treachery not only inevitable but sacred. That's why I'm sick of Christianity.--At any rate this modern Christ-mongery.” “The finest thing the world has produced, or ever will produce--Christ and Judas--” said Jim. “Not to me,” said Lilly. “Foul combination.” It was a lovely morning in early March. Violets were out, and the first wild anemones. The sun was quite warm. The three were about to take out a picnic lunch. Lilly however was suffering from Jim's presence. “Jolly nice here,” said Jim. “Mind if I stay till Saturday?” There was a pause. Lilly felt he was being bullied, almost obscenely bullied. Was he going to agree? Suddenly he looked up at Jim. “I'd rather you went tomorrow,” he said. Tanny, who was sitting opposite Jim, dropped her head in confusion. “What's tomorrow?” said Jim. “Thursday,” said Lilly. “Thursday,” repeated Jim. And he looked up and got Lilly's eye. He wanted to say “Friday then?” “Yes, I'd rather you went Thursday,” repeated Lilly. “But Rawdon--!” broke in Tanny, who was suffering. She stopped, however. “We can walk across country with you some way if you like,” said Lilly to Jim. It was a sort of compromise. “Fine!” said Jim. “We'll do that, then.” It was lovely sunshine, and they wandered through the woods. Between Jim and Tanny was a sort of growing _rapprochement_, which got on Lilly's nerves. “What the hell do you take that beastly personal tone for?” cried Lilly at Tanny, as the three sat under a leafless great beech-tree. “But I'm not personal at all, am I, Mr. Bricknell?” said Tanny. Jim watched Lilly, and grinned pleasedly. “Why shouldn't you be, anyhow?” he said. “Yes!” she retorted. “Why not!” “Not while I'm here. I loathe the slimy creepy personal intimacy.--'Don't you think, Mr. Bricknell, that it's lovely to be able to talk quite simply to somebody? Oh, it's such a relief, after most people---'” Lilly mimicked his wife's last speech savagely. “But I MEAN it,” cried Tanny. “It is lovely.” “Dirty messing,” said Lilly angrily. Jim watched the dark, irascible little man with amusement. They rose, and went to look for an inn, and beer. Tanny still clung rather stickily to Jim's side. But it was a lovely day, the first of all the days of spring, with crocuses and wall-flowers in the cottage gardens, and white cocks crowing in the quiet hamlet. When they got back in the afternoon to the cottage, they found a telegram for Jim. He let the Lillys see it--“Meet you for a walk on your return journey Lois.” At once Tanny wanted to know all about Lois. Lois was a nice girl, well-to-do middle-class, but also an actress, and she would do anything Jim wanted. “I must get a wire to her to meet me tomorrow,” he said. “Where shall I say?” Lilly produced the map, and they decided on time and station at which Lois coming out of London, should meet Jim. Then the happy pair could walk along the Thames valley, spending a night perhaps at Marlowe, or some such place. Off went Jim and Lilly once more to the postoffice. They were quite good friends. Having so inhospitably fixed the hour of departure, Lilly wanted to be nice. Arrived at the postoffice, they found it shut: half-day closing for the little shop. “Well,” said Lilly. “We'll go to the station.” They proceeded to the station--found the station-master--were conducted down to the signal-box. Lilly naturally hung back from people, but Jim was hob-nob with the station-master and the signal man, quite officer-and-my-men kind of thing. Lilly sat out on the steps of the signal-box, rather ashamed, while the long telegram was shouted over the telephone to the junction town--first the young lady and her address, then the message “Meet me X. station 3:40 tomorrow walk back great pleasure Jim.” Anyhow that was done. They went home to tea. After tea, as the evening fell, Lilly suggested a little stroll in the woods, while Tanny prepared the dinner. Jim agreed, and they set out. The two men wandered through the trees in the dusk, till they came to a bank on the farther edge of the wood. There they sat down. And there Lilly said what he had to say. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “it's nothing but love and self-sacrifice which makes you feel yourself losing life.” “You're wrong. Only love brings it back--and wine. If I drink a bottle of Burgundy I feel myself restored at the middle--right here! I feel the energy back again. And if I can fall in love--But it's becoming so damned hard--” “What, to fall in love?” asked Lilly. “Yes.” “Then why not leave off trying! What do you want to poke yourself and prod yourself into love, for?” “Because I'm DEAD without it. I'm dead. I'm dying.” “Only because you force yourself. If you drop working yourself up--” “I shall die. I only live when I can fall in love. Otherwise I'm dying by inches. Why, man, you don't know what it was like. I used to get the most grand feelings--like a great rush of force, or light--a great rush--right here, as I've said, at the solar plexus. And it would come any time--anywhere--no matter where I was. And then I was all right. “All right for what?--for making love?” “Yes, man, I was.” “And now you aren't?--Oh, well, leave love alone, as any twopenny doctor would tell you.” “No, you're off it there. It's nothing technical. Technically I can make love as much as you like. It's nothing a doctor has any say in. It's what I feel inside me. I feel the life going. I know it's going. I never get those inrushes now, unless I drink a jolly lot, or if I possibly could fall in love. Technically, I'm potent all right--oh, yes!” “You should leave yourself and your inrushes alone.” “But you can't. It's a sort of ache.” “Then you should stiffen your backbone. It's your backbone that matters. You shouldn't want to abandon yourself. You shouldn't want to fling yourself all loose into a woman's lap. You should stand by yourself and learn to be by yourself. Why don't you be more like the Japanese you talk about? Quiet, aloof little devils. They don't bother about being loved. They keep themselves taut in their own selves--there, at the bottom of the spine--the devil's own power they've got there.” Jim mused a bit. “Think they have?” he laughed. It seemed comic to him. “Sure! Look at them. Why can't you gather yourself there?” “At the tail?” “Yes. Hold yourself firm there.” Jim broke into a cackle of a laugh, and rose. The two went through the dark woods back to the cottage. Jim staggered and stumbled like a drunken man: or worse, like a man with locomotor ataxia: as if he had no power in his lower limbs. “Walk there--!” said Lilly, finding him the smoothest bit of the dark path. But Jim stumbled and shambled, in a state of nauseous weak relaxation. However, they reached the cottage: and food and beer--and Tanny, piqued with curiosity to know what the men had been saying privately to each other. After dinner they sat once more talking round the fire. Lilly sat in a small chair facing the fire, the other two in the armchairs on either side the hearth. “How nice it will be for you, walking with Lois towards London tomorrow,” gushed Tanny sentimentally. “Good God!” said Lilly. “Why the dickens doesn't he walk by himself, without wanting a woman always there, to hold his hand.” “Don't be so spiteful,” said Tanny. “YOU see that you have a woman always there, to hold YOUR hand.” “My hand doesn't need holding,” snapped Lilly. “Doesn't it! More than most men's! But you're so beastly ungrateful and mannish. Because I hold you safe enough all the time you like to pretend you're doing it all yourself.” “All right. Don't drag yourself in,” said Lilly, detesting his wife at that moment. “Anyhow,” and he turned to Jim, “it's time you'd done slobbering yourself over a lot of little women, one after the other.” “Why shouldn't I, if I like it?” said Jim. “Yes, why not?” said Tanny. “Because it makes a fool of you. Look at you, stumbling and staggering with no use in your legs. I'd be ashamed if I were you.” “Would you?” said Jim. “I would. And it's nothing but your wanting to be loved which does it. A maudlin crying to be loved, which makes your knees all go rickety.” “Think that's it?” said Jim. “What else is it. You haven't been here a day, but you must telegraph for some female to be ready to hold your hand the moment you go away. And before she lets go, you'll be wiring for another. YOU WANT TO BE LOVED, you want to be loved--a man of your years. It's disgusting--” “I don't see it. I believe in love--” said Jim, watching and grinning oddly. “Bah, love! Messing, that's what it is. It wouldn't matter if it did you no harm. But when you stagger and stumble down a road, out of sheer sloppy relaxation of your will---” At this point Jim suddenly sprang from his chair at Lilly, and gave him two or three hard blows with his fists, upon the front of the body. Then he sat down in his own chair again, saying sheepishly: “I knew I should have to do it, if he said any more.” Lilly sat motionless as a statue, his face like paper. One of the blows had caught him rather low, so that he was almost winded and could not breathe. He sat rigid, paralysed as a winded man is. But he wouldn't let it be seen. With all his will he prevented himself from gasping. Only through his parted lips he drew tiny gasps, controlled, nothing revealed to the other two. He hated them both far too much. For some minutes there was dead silence, whilst Lilly silently and viciously fought for his breath. Tanny opened her eyes wide in a sort of pleased bewilderment, and Jim turned his face aside, and hung his clasped hands between his knees. “There's a great silence, suddenly!” said Tanny. “What is there to say?” ejaculated Lilly rapidly, with a spoonful of breath which he managed to compress and control into speech. Then he sat motionless again, concerned with the business of getting back his wind, and not letting the other two see. Jim jerked in his chair, and looked round. “It isn't that I don't like the man,” he said, in a rather small voice. “But I knew if he went on I should have to do it.” To Lilly, rigid and physically preoccupied, there sounded a sort of self-consciousness in Jim's voice, as if the whole thing had been semi-deliberate. He detected the sort of maudlin deliberateness which goes with hysterics, and he was colder, more icy than ever. Tanny looked at Lilly, puzzled, bewildered, but still rather pleased, as if she demanded an answer. None being forthcoming, she said: “Of course, you mustn't expect to say all those things without rousing a man.” Still Lilly did not answer. Jim glanced at him, then looked at Tanny. “It isn't that I don't like him,” he said, slowly. “I like him better than any man I've ever known, I believe.” He clasped his hands and turned aside his face. “Judas!” flashed through Lilly's mind. Again Tanny looked for her husband's answer. “Yes, Rawdon,” she said. “You can't say the things you do without their having an effect. You really ask for it, you know.” “It's no matter.” Lilly squeezed the words out coldly. “He wanted to do it, and he did it.” A dead silence ensued now. Tanny looked from man to man. “I could feel it coming on me,” said Jim. “Of course!” said Tanny. “Rawdon doesn't know the things he says.” She was pleased that he had had to pay for them, for once. It takes a man a long time to get his breath back, after a sharp blow in the wind. Lilly was managing by degrees. The others no doubt attributed his silence to deep or fierce thoughts. It was nothing of the kind, merely a cold struggle to get his wind back, without letting them know he was struggling: and a sheer, stock-stiff hatred of the pair of them. “I like the man,” said Jim. “Never liked a man more than I like him.” He spoke as if with difficulty. “The man” stuck safely in Lilly's ears. “Oh, well,” he managed to say. “It's nothing. I've done my talking and had an answer, for once.” “Yes, Rawdy, you've had an answer, for once. Usually you don't get an answer, you know--and that's why you go so far--in the things you say. Now you'll know how you make people feel.” “Quite!” said Lilly. “_I_ don't feel anything. I don't mind what he says,” said Jim. “Yes, but he ought to know the things he DOES say,” said Tanny. “He goes on, without considering the person he's talking to. This time it's come back on him. He mustn't say such personal things, if he's not going to risk an answer.” “I don't mind what he says. I don't mind a bit,” said Jim. “Nor do I mind,” said Lilly indifferently. “I say what I feel--You do as you feel--There's an end of it.” A sheepish sort of silence followed this speech. It was broken by a sudden laugh from Tanny. “The things that happen to us!” she said, laughing rather shrilly. “Suddenly, like a thunderbolt, we're all struck into silence!” “Rum game, eh!” said Jim, grinning. “Isn't it funny! Isn't life too funny!” She looked again at her husband. “But, Rawdy, you must admit it was your own fault.” Lilly's stiff face did not change. “Why FAULT!” he said, looking at her coldly. “What is there to talk about?” “Usually there's so much,” she said sarcastically. A few phrases dribbled out of the silence. In vain Jim, tried to get Lilly to thaw, and in vain Tanny gave her digs at her husband. Lilly's stiff, inscrutable face did not change, he was polite and aloof. So they all went to bed. In the morning, the walk was to take place, as arranged, Lilly and Tanny accompanying Jim to the third station across country. The morning was lovely, the country beautiful. Lilly liked the countryside and enjoyed the walk. But a hardness inside himself never relaxed. Jim talked a little again about the future of the world, and a higher state of Christlikeness in man. But Lilly only laughed. Then Tanny managed to get ahead with Jim, sticking to his side and talking sympathetic personalities. But Lilly, feeling it from afar, ran after them and caught them up. They were silent. “What was the interesting topic?” he said cuttingly. “Nothing at all!” said Tanny, nettled. “Why must you interfere?” “Because I intend to,” said Lilly. And the two others fell apart, as if severed with a knife. Jim walked rather sheepishly, as if cut out. So they came at last past the canals to the wayside station: and at last Jim's train came. They all said goodbye. Jim and Tanny were both waiting for Lilly to show some sign of real reconciliation. But none came. He was cheerful and aloof. “Goodbye,” he said to Jim. “Hope Lois will be there all right. Third station on. Goodbye! Goodbye!” “You'll come to Rackham?” said Jim, leaning out of the train. “We should love to,” called Tanny, after the receding train. “All right,” said Lilly, non-committal. But he and his wife never saw Jim again. Lilly never intended to see him: a devil sat in the little man's breast. “You shouldn't play at little Jesus, coming so near to people, wanting to help them,” was Tanny's last word. CHAPTER IX. LOW-WATER MARK Tanny went away to Norway to visit her people, for the first time for three years. Lilly did not go: he did not want to. He came to London and settled in a room over Covent Garden market. The room was high up, a fair size, and stood at the corner of one of the streets and the market itself, looking down on the stalls and the carts and the arcade. Lilly would climb out of the window and sit for hours watching the behaviour of the great draught-horses which brought the mountains of boxes and vegetables. Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so massive and fleshy, yet so Cockney. There was one which could not bear donkeys, and which used to stretch out its great teeth like some massive serpent after every poor diminutive ass that came with a coster's barrow. Another great horse could not endure standing. It would shake itself and give little starts, and back into the heaps of carrots and broccoli, whilst the driver went into a frenzy of rage. There was always something to watch. One minute it was two great loads of empty crates, which in passing had got entangled, and reeled, leaning to fall disastrously. Then the drivers cursed and swore and dismounted and stared at their jeopardised loads: till a thin fellow was persuaded to scramble up the airy mountains of cages, like a monkey. And he actually managed to put them to rights. Great sigh of relief when the vans rocked out of the market. Again there was a particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and perky behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewhere to somewhere, under the arches beside the market. The great brawny porters would tease him, and he would stop to give them cheek. One afternoon a giant lunged after him: the boy darted gracefully among the heaps of vegetables, still bearing aloft his tea-tray, like some young blue-buttoned acolyte fleeing before a false god. The giant rolled after him--when alas, the acolyte of the tea-tray slipped among the vegetables, and down came the tray. Then tears, and a roar of unfeeling mirth from the giants. Lilly felt they were going to make it up to him. Another afternoon a young swell sauntered persistently among the vegetables, and Lilly, seated in his high little balcony, wondered why. But at last, a taxi, and a very expensive female, in a sort of silver brocade gown and a great fur shawl and ospreys in her bonnet. Evidently an assignation. Yet what could be more conspicuous than this elegant pair, picking their way through the cabbage-leaves? And then, one cold grey afternoon in early April, a man in a black overcoat and a bowler hat, walking uncertainly. Lilly had risen and was just retiring out of the chill, damp air. For some reason he lingered to watch the figure. The man was walking east. He stepped rather insecurely off the pavement, and wavered across the setts between the wheels of the standing vans. And suddenly he went down. Lilly could not see him on the ground, but he saw some van-men go forward, and he saw one of them pick up the man's hat. “I'd better go down,” said Lilly to himself. So he began running down the four long flights of stone stairs, past the many doors of the multifarious business premises, and out into the market. A little crowd had gathered, and a large policeman was just rowing into the centre of the interest. Lilly, always a hoverer on the edge of public commotions, hung now hesitating on the outskirts of the crowd. “What is it?” he said, to a rather sniffy messenger boy. “Drunk,” said the messenger boy: except that, in unblushing cockney, he pronounced it “Drank.” Lilly hung further back on the edge of the little crowd. “Come on here. Where d' you want to go?” he heard the hearty tones of the policeman. “I'm all right. I'm all right,” came the testy drunken answer. “All right, are yer! All right, and then some,--come on, get on your pins.” “I'm all right! I'm all right.” The voice made Lilly peer between the people. And sitting on the granite setts, being hauled up by a burly policeman, he saw our acquaintance Aaron, very pale in the face and a little dishevelled. “Like me to tuck the sheets round you, shouldn't you? Fancy yourself snug in bed, don't you? You won't believe you're right in the way of traffic, will you now, in Covent Garden Market? Come on, we'll see to you.” And the policeman hoisted the bitter and unwilling Aaron. Lilly was quickly at the centre of the affair, unobtrusive like a shadow, different from the other people. “Help him up to my room, will you?” he said to the constable. “Friend of mine.” The large constable looked down on the bare-headed wispy, unobtrusive Lilly with good-humoured suspicion and incredulity. Lilly could not have borne it if the policeman had uttered any of this cockney suspicion, so he watched him. There was a great gulf between the public official and the odd, quiet little individual--yet Lilly had his way. “Which room?” said the policeman, dubious. Lilly pointed quickly round. Then he said to Aaron: “Were you coming to see me, Sisson? You'll come in, won't you?” Aaron nodded rather stupidly and testily. His eyes looked angry. Somebody stuck his hat on his head for him, and made him look a fool. Lilly took it off again, and carried it for him. He turned and the crowd eased. He watched Aaron sharply, and saw that it was with difficulty he could walk. So he caught him by the arm on the other side from the policeman, and they crossed the road to the pavement. “Not so much of this sort of thing these days,” said the policeman. “Not so much opportunity,” said Lilly. “More than there was, though. Coming back to the old days, like. Working round, bit by bit.” They had arrived at the stairs. Aaron stumbled up. “Steady now! Steady does it!” said the policeman, steering his charge. There was a curious breach of distance between Lilly and the constable. At last Lilly opened his own door. The room was pleasant. The fire burned warm, the piano stood open, the sofa was untidy with cushions and papers. Books and papers covered the big writing desk. Beyond the screen made by the bookshelves and the piano were two beds, with washstand by one of the large windows, the one through which Lilly had climbed. The policeman looked round curiously. “More cosy here than in the lock-up, sir!” he said. Lilly laughed. He was hastily clearing the sofa. “Sit on the sofa, Sisson,” he said. The policeman lowered his charge, with a-- “Right we are, then!” Lilly felt in his pocket, and gave the policeman half a crown. But he was watching Aaron, who sat stupidly on the sofa, very pale and semi-conscious. “Do you feel ill, Sisson?” he said sharply. Aaron looked back at him with heavy eyes, and shook his head slightly. “I believe you are,” said Lilly, taking his hand. “Might be a bit o' this flu, you know,” said the policeman. “Yes,” said Lilly. “Where is there a doctor?” he added, on reflection. “The nearest?” said the policeman. And he told him. “Leave a message for you, Sir?” Lilly wrote his address on a card, then changed his mind. “No, I'll run round myself if necessary,” he said. And the policeman departed. “You'll go to bed, won't you?” said Lilly to Aaron, when the door was shut. Aaron shook his head sulkily. “I would if I were you. You can stay here till you're all right. I'm alone, so it doesn't matter.” But Aaron had relapsed into semi-consciousness. Lilly put the big kettle on the gas stove, the little kettle on the fire. Then he hovered in front of the stupefied man. He felt uneasy. Again he took Aaron's hand and felt the pulse. “I'm sure you aren't well. You must go to bed,” he said. And he kneeled and unfastened his visitor's boots. Meanwhile the kettle began to boil, he put a hot-water bottle into the bed. “Let us get your overcoat off,” he said to the stupefied man. “Come along.” And with coaxing and pulling and pushing he got off the overcoat and coat and waistcoat. At last Aaron was undressed and in bed. Lilly brought him tea. With a dim kind of obedience he took the cup and would drink. He looked at Lilly with heavy eyes. “I gave in, I gave in to her, else I should ha' been all right,” he said. “To whom?” said Lilly. “I gave in to her--and afterwards I cried, thinking of Lottie and the children. I felt my heart break, you know. And that's what did it. I should have been all right if I hadn't given in to her--” “To whom?” said Lilly. “Josephine. I felt, the minute I was loving her, I'd done myself. And I had. Everything came back on me. If I hadn't given in to her, I should ha' kept all right.” “Don't bother now. Get warm and still--” “I felt it--I felt it go, inside me, the minute I gave in to her. It's perhaps killed me.” “No, not it. Never mind, be still. Be still, and you'll be all right in the morning.” “It's my own fault, for giving in to her. If I'd kept myself back, my liver wouldn't have broken inside me, and I shouldn't have been sick. And I knew--” “Never mind now. Have you drunk your tea? Lie down. Lie down, and go to sleep.” Lilly pushed Aaron down in the bed, and covered him over. Then he thrust his hands under the bedclothes and felt his feet--still cold. He arranged the water bottle. Then he put another cover on the bed. Aaron lay still, rather grey and peaked-looking, in a stillness that was not healthy. For some time Lilly went about stealthily, glancing at his patient from time to time. Then he sat down to read. He was roused after a time by a moaning of troubled breathing and a fretful stirring in the bed. He went across. Aaron's eyes were open, and dark looking. “Have a little hot milk,” said Lilly. Aaron shook his head faintly, not noticing. “A little Bovril?” The same faint shake. Then Lilly wrote a note for the doctor, went into the office on the same landing, and got a clerk, who would be leaving in a few minutes, to call with the note. When he came back he found Aaron still watching. “Are you here by yourself?” asked the sick man. “Yes. My wife's gone to Norway.” “For good?” “No,” laughed Lilly. “For a couple of months or so. She'll come back here: unless she joins me in Switzerland or somewhere.” Aaron was still for a while. “You've not gone with her,” he said at length. “To see her people? No, I don't think they want me very badly--and I didn't want very badly to go. Why should I? It's better for married people to be separated sometimes.” “Ay!” said Aaron, watching the other man with fever-darkened eyes. “I hate married people who are two in one--stuck together like two jujube lozenges,” said Lilly. “Me an' all. I hate 'em myself,” said Aaron. “Everybody ought to stand by themselves, in the first place--men and women as well. They can come together, in the second place, if they like. But nothing is any good unless each one stands alone, intrinsically.” “I'm with you there,” said Aaron. “If I'd kep' myself to myself I shouldn't be bad now--though I'm not very bad. I s'll be all right in the morning. But I did myself in when I went with another woman. I felt myself go--as if the bile broke inside me, and I was sick.” “Josephine seduced you?” laughed Lilly. “Ay, right enough,” replied Aaron grimly. “She won't be coming here, will she?” “Not unless I ask her.” “You won't ask her, though?” “No, not if you don't want her.” “I don't.” The fever made Aaron naive and communicative, unlike himself. And he knew he was being unlike himself, he knew that he was not in proper control of himself, so he was unhappy, uneasy. “I'll stop here the night then, if you don't mind,” he said. “You'll have to,” said Lilly. “I've sent for the doctor. I believe you've got the flu.” “Think I have?” said Aaron frightened. “Don't be scared,” laughed Lilly. There was a long pause. Lilly stood at the window looking at the darkening market, beneath the street-lamps. “I s'll have to go to the hospital, if I have,” came Aaron's voice. “No, if it's only going to be a week or a fortnight's business, you can stop here. I've nothing to do,” said Lilly. “There's no occasion for you to saddle yourself with me,” said Aaron dejectedly. “You can go to your hospital if you like--or back to your lodging--if you wish to,” said Lilly. “You can make up your mind when you see how you are in the morning.” “No use going back to my lodgings,” said Aaron. “I'll send a telegram to your wife if you like,” said Lilly. Aaron was silent, dead silent, for some time. “Nay,” he said at length, in a decided voice. “Not if I die for it.” Lilly remained still, and the other man lapsed into a sort of semi-sleep, motionless and abandoned. The darkness had fallen over London, and away below the lamps were white. Lilly lit the green-shaded reading lamp over the desk. Then he stood and looked at Aaron, who lay still, looking sick. Rather beautiful the bones of the countenance: but the skull too small for such a heavy jaw and rather coarse mouth. Aaron half-opened his eyes, and writhed feverishly, as if his limbs could not be in the right place. Lilly mended the fire, and sat down to write. Then he got up and went downstairs to unfasten the street door, so that the doctor could walk up. The business people had gone from their various holes, all the lower part of the tall house was in darkness. Lilly waited and waited. He boiled an egg and made himself toast. Aaron said he might eat the same. Lilly cooked another egg and took it to the sick man. Aaron looked at it and pushed it away with nausea. He would have some tea. So Lilly gave him tea. “Not much fun for you, doing this for somebody who is nothing to you,” said Aaron. “I shouldn't if you were unsympathetic to me,” said Lilly. “As it is, it's happened so, and so we'll let be.” “What time is it?” “Nearly eight o'clock.” “Oh, my Lord, the opera.” And Aaron got half out of bed. But as he sat on the bedside he knew he could not safely get to his feet. He remained a picture of dejection. “Perhaps we ought to let them know,” said Lilly. But Aaron, blank with stupid misery, sat huddled there on the bedside without answering. “Ill run round with a note,” said Lilly. “I suppose others have had flu, besides you. Lie down!” But Aaron stupidly and dejectedly sat huddled on the side of the bed, wearing old flannel pyjamas of Lilly's, rather small for him. He felt too sick to move. “Lie down! Lie down!” said Lilly. “And keep still while I'm gone. I shan't be more than ten minutes.” “I don't care if I die,” said Aaron. Lilly laughed. “You're a long way from dying,” said he, “or you wouldn't say it.” But Aaron only looked up at him with queer, far-off, haggard eyes, something like a criminal who is just being executed. “Lie down!” said Lilly, pushing him gently into the bed. “You won't improve yourself sitting there, anyhow.” Aaron lay down, turned away, and was quite still. Lilly quietly left the room on his errand. The doctor did not come until ten o'clock: and worn out with work when he did come. “Isn't there a lift in this establishment?” he said, as he groped his way up the stone stairs. Lilly had heard him, and run down to meet him. The doctor poked the thermometer under Aaron's tongue and felt the pulse. Then he asked a few questions: listened to the heart and breathing. “Yes, it's the flu,” he said curtly. “Nothing to do but to keep warm in bed and not move, and take plenty of milk and liquid nourishment. I'll come round in the morning and give you an injection. Lungs are all right so far.” “How long shall I have to be in bed?” said Aaron. “Oh--depends. A week at least.” Aaron watched him sullenly--and hated him. Lilly laughed to himself. The sick man was like a dog that is ill but which growls from a deep corner, and will bite if you put your hand in. He was in a state of black depression. Lilly settled him down for the night, and himself went to bed. Aaron squirmed with heavy, pained limbs, the night through, and slept and had bad dreams. Lilly got up to give him drinks. The din in the market was terrific before dawn, and Aaron suffered bitterly. In the morning he was worse. The doctor gave him injections against pneumonia. “You wouldn't like me to wire to your wife?” said Lilly. “No,” said Aaron abruptly. “You can send me to the hospital. I'm nothing but a piece of carrion.” “Carrion!” said Lilly. “Why?” “I know it. I feel like it.” “Oh, that's only the sort of nauseated feeling you get with flu.” “I'm only fit to be thrown underground, and made an end of. I can't stand myself--” He had a ghastly, grey look of self-repulsion. “It's the germ that makes you feel like that,” said Lilly. “It poisons the system for a time. But you'll work it off.” At evening he was no better, the fever was still high. Yet there were no complications--except that the heart was irregular. “The one thing I wonder,” said Lilly, “is whether you hadn't better be moved out of the noise of the market. It's fearful for you in the early morning.” “It makes no difference to me,” said Aaron. The next day he was a little worse, if anything. The doctor knew there was nothing to be done. At evening he gave the patient a calomel pill. It was rather strong, and Aaron had a bad time. His burning, parched, poisoned inside was twisted and torn. Meanwhile carts banged, porters shouted, all the hell of the market went on outside, away down on the cobble setts. But this time the two men did not hear. “You'll feel better now,” said Lilly, “after the operation.” “It's done me harm,” cried Aaron fretfully. “Send me to the hospital, or you'll repent it. Get rid of me in time.” “Nay,” said Lilly. “You get better. Damn it, you're only one among a million.” Again over Aaron's face went the ghastly grimace of self-repulsion. “My soul's gone rotten,” he said. “No,” said Lilly. “Only toxin in the blood.” Next day the patient seemed worse, and the heart more irregular. He rested badly. So far, Lilly had got a fair night's rest. Now Aaron was not sleeping, and he seemed to struggle in the bed. “Keep your courage up, man,” said the doctor sharply. “You give way.” Aaron looked at him blackly, and did not answer. In the night Lilly was up time after time. Aaron would slip down on his back, and go semi-conscious. And then he would awake, as if drowning, struggling to move, mentally shouting aloud, yet making no sound for some moments, mentally shouting in frenzy, but unable to stir or make a sound. When at last he got some sort of physical control he cried: “Lift me up! Lift me up!” Lilly hurried and lifted him up, and he sat panting with a sobbing motion, his eyes gloomy and terrified, more than ever like a criminal who is just being executed. He drank brandy, and was laid down on his side. “Don't let me lie on my back,” he said, terrified. “No, I won't,” said Lilly. Aaron frowned curiously on his nurse. “Mind you don't let me,” he said, exacting and really terrified. “No, I won't let you.” And now Lilly was continually crossing over and pulling Aaron on to his side, whenever he found him slipped down on his back. In the morning the doctor was puzzled. Probably it was the toxin in the blood which poisoned the heart. There was no pneumonia. And yet Aaron was clearly growing worse. The doctor agreed to send in a nurse for the coming night. “What's the matter with you, man!” he said sharply to his patient. “You give way! You give way! Can't you pull yourself together?” But Aaron only became more gloomily withheld, retracting from life. And Lilly began to be really troubled. He got a friend to sit with the patient in the afternoon, whilst he himself went out and arranged to sleep in Aaron's room, at his lodging. The next morning, when he came in, he found the patient lying as ever, in a sort of heap in the bed. Nurse had had to lift him up and hold him up again. And now Aaron lay in a sort of semi-stupor of fear, frustrated anger, misery and self-repulsion: a sort of interlocked depression. The doctor frowned when he came. He talked with the nurse, and wrote another prescription. Then he drew Lilly away to the door. “What's the matter with the fellow?” he said. “Can't you rouse his spirit? He seems to be sulking himself out of life. He'll drop out quite suddenly, you know, if he goes on like this. Can't you rouse him up?” “I think it depresses him partly that his bowels won't work. It frightens him. He's never been ill in his life before,” said Lilly. “His bowels won't work if he lets all his spirit go, like an animal dying of the sulks,” said the doctor impatiently. “He might go off quite suddenly--dead before you can turn round--” Lilly was properly troubled. Yet he did not quite know what to do. It was early afternoon, and the sun was shining into the room. There were daffodils and anemones in a jar, and freezias and violets. Down below in the market were two stalls of golden and blue flowers, gay. “The flowers are lovely in the spring sunshine,” said Lilly. “I wish I were in the country, don't you? As soon as you are better we'll go. It's been a terrible cold, wet spring. But now it's going to be nice. Do you like being in the country?” “Yes,” said Aaron. He was thinking of his garden. He loved it. Never in his life had he been away from a garden before. “Make haste and get better, and we'll go.” “Where?” said Aaron. “Hampshire. Or Berkshire. Or perhaps you'd like to go home? Would you?” Aaron lay still, and did not answer. “Perhaps you want to, and you don't want to,” said Lilly. “You can please yourself, anyhow.” There was no getting anything definite out of the sick man--his soul seemed stuck, as if it would not move. Suddenly Lilly rose and went to the dressing-table. “I'm going to rub you with oil,” he said. “I'm going to rub you as mothers do their babies whose bowels don't work.” Aaron frowned slightly as he glanced at the dark, self-possessed face of the little man. “What's the good of that?” he said irritably. “I'd rather be left alone.” “Then you won't be.” Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion, a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body--the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted. Then Aaron was covered up again, and Lilly sat down in fatigue to look at his patient. He saw a change. The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face. Aaron was regaining himself. But Lilly said nothing. He watched his patient fall into a proper sleep. And he sat and watched him sleep. And he thought to himself: “I wonder why I do it. I wonder why I bother with him.... Jim ought to have taught me my lesson. As soon as this man's really better he'll punch me in the wind, metaphorically if not actually, for having interfered with him. And Tanny would say, he was quite right to do it. She says I want power over them. What if I do? They don't care how much power the mob has over them, the nation, Lloyd George and Northcliffe and the police and money. They'll yield themselves up to that sort of power quickly enough, and immolate themselves _pro bono publico_ by the million. And what's the bonum publicum but a mob power? Why can't they submit to a bit of healthy individual authority? The fool would die, without me: just as that fool Jim will die in hysterics one day. Why does he last so long! “Tanny's the same. She does nothing really but resist me: my authority, or my influence, or just ME. At the bottom of her heart she just blindly and persistently opposes me. God knows what it is she opposes: just me myself. She thinks I want her to submit to me. So I do, in a measure natural to our two selves. Somewhere, she ought to submit to me. But they all prefer to kick against the pricks. Not that THEY get many pricks. I get them. Damn them all, why don't I leave them alone? They only grin and feel triumphant when they've insulted one and punched one in the wind. “This Aaron will do just the same. I like him, and he ought to like me. And he'll be another Jim: he WILL like me, if he can knock the wind out of me. A lot of little Stavrogins coming up to whisper affectionately, and biting one's ear. “But anyhow I can soon see the last of this chap: and him the last of all the rest. I'll be damned for ever if I see their Jims and Roberts and Julias and Scotts any more. Let them dance round their insipid hell-broth. Thin tack it is. “There's a whole world besides this little gang of Europeans. Except, dear God, that they've exterminated all the peoples worth knowing. I can't do with folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs and orientals altogether. Only vermin teem by the billion. Higher types breed slower. I would have loved the Aztecs and the Red Indians. I KNOW they hold the element in life which I am looking for--they had living pride. Not like the flea-bitten Asiatics--even niggers are better than Asiatics, though they are wallowers--the American races--and the South Sea Islanders--the Marquesans, the Maori blood. That was the true blood. It wasn't frightened. All the rest are craven--Europeans, Asiatics, Africans--everyone at his own individual quick craven and cringing: only conceited in the mass, the mob. How I hate them: the mass-bullies, the individual Judases. “Well, if one will be a Jesus he must expect his Judas. That's why Abraham Lincoln gets shot. A Jesus makes a Judas inevitable. A man should remain himself, not try to spread himself over humanity. He should pivot himself on his own pride. “I suppose really I ought to have packed this Aaron off to the hospital. Instead of which here am I rubbing him with oil to rub the life into him. And I KNOW he'll bite me, like a warmed snake, the moment he recovers. And Tanny will say 'Quite right, too,' I shouldn't have been so intimate. No, I should have left it to mechanical doctors and nurses. “So I should. Everything to its own. And Aaron belongs to this little system, and Jim is waiting to be psychoanalysed, and Tanny is waiting for her own glorification. “All right, Aaron. Last time I break my bread for anybody, this is. So get better, my flautist, so that I can go away. “It was easy for the Red Indians and the Others to take their hook into death. They might have stayed a bit longer to help one to defy the white masses. “I'll make some tea--” Lilly rose softly and went across to the fire. He had to cross a landing to a sort of little lavatory, with a sink and a tap, for water. The clerks peeped out at him from an adjoining office and nodded. He nodded, and disappeared from their sight as quickly as possible, with his kettle. His dark eyes were quick, his dark hair was untidy, there was something silent and withheld about him. People could never approach him quite ordinarily. He put on the kettle, and quietly set cups and plates on a tray. The room was clean and cosy and pleasant. He did the cleaning himself, and was as efficient and inobtrusive a housewife as any woman. While the kettle boiled, he sat darning the socks which he had taken off Aaron's feet when the flautist arrived, and which he had washed. He preferred that no outsider should see him doing these things. Yet he preferred also to do them himself, so that he should be independent of outside aid. His face was dark and hollow, he seemed frail, sitting there in the London afternoon darning the black woollen socks. His full brow was knitted slightly, there was a tension. At the same time, there was an indomitable stillness about him, as it were in the atmosphere about him. His hands, though small, were not very thin. He bit off the wool as he finished his darn. As he was making the tea he saw Aaron rouse up in bed. “I've been to sleep. I feel better,” said the patient, turning round to look what the other man was doing. And the sight of the water steaming in a jet from the teapot seemed attractive. “Yes,” said Lilly. “You've slept for a good two hours.” “I believe I have,” said Aaron. “Would you like a little tea?” “Ay--and a bit of toast.” “You're not supposed to have solid food. Let me take your temperature.” The temperature was down to a hundred, and Lilly, in spite of the doctor, gave Aaron a piece of toast with his tea, enjoining him not to mention it to the nurse. In the evening the two men talked. “You do everything for yourself, then?” said Aaron. “Yes, I prefer it.” “You like living all alone?” “I don't know about that. I never have lived alone. Tanny and I have been very much alone in various countries: but that's two, not one.” “You miss her then?” “Yes, of course. I missed her horribly in the cottage, when she'd first gone. I felt my heart was broken. But here, where we've never been together, I don't notice it so much.” “She'll come back,” said Aaron. “Yes, she'll come back. But I'd rather meet her abroad than here--and get on a different footing.” “Why?” “Oh, I don't know. There's something with marriage altogether, I think. _Egoisme a deux_--” “What's that mean?” “_Egoisme a deux_? Two people, one egoism. Marriage is a self-conscious egoistic state, it seems to me.” “You've got no children?” said Aaron. “No. Tanny wants children badly. I don't. I'm thankful we have none.” “Why?” “I can't quite say. I think of them as a burden. Besides, there ARE such millions and billions of children in the world. And we know well enough what sort of millions and billions of people they'll grow up into. I don't want to add my quota to the mass--it's against my instinct--” “Ay!” laughed Aaron, with a curt acquiescence. “Tanny's furious. But then, when a woman has got children, she thinks the world wags only for them and her. Nothing else. The whole world wags for the sake of the children--and their sacred mother.” “Ay, that's DAMNED true,” said Aaron. “And myself, I'm sick of the children stunt. Children are all right, so long as you just take them for what they are: young immature things like kittens and half-grown dogs, nuisances, sometimes very charming. But I'll be hanged if I can see anything high and holy about children. I should be sorry, too, it would be so bad for the children. Young brats, tiresome and amusing in turns.” “When they don't give themselves airs,” said Aaron. “Yes, indeed. Which they do half the time. Sacred children, and sacred motherhood, I'm absolutely fed stiff by it. That's why I'm thankful I have no children. Tanny can't come it over me there.” “It's a fact. When a woman's got her children, by God, she's a bitch in the manger. You can starve while she sits on the hay. It's useful to keep her pups warm.” “Yes.” “Why, you know,” Aaron turned excitedly in the bed, “they look on a man as if he was nothing but an instrument to get and rear children. If you have anything to do with a woman, she thinks it's because you want to get children by her. And I'm damned if it is. I want my own pleasure, or nothing: and children be damned.” “Ah, women--THEY must be loved, at any price!” said Lilly. “And if you just don't want to love them--and tell them so--what a crime.” “A crime!” said Aaron. “They make a criminal of you. Them and their children be cursed. Is my life given me for nothing but to get children, and work to bring them up? See them all in hell first. They'd better die while they're children, if childhood's all that important.” “I quite agree,” said Lilly. “If childhood is more important than manhood, then why live to be a man at all? Why not remain an infant?” “Be damned and blasted to women and all their importances,” cried Aaron. “They want to get you under, and children is their chief weapon.” “Men have got to stand up to the fact that manhood is more than childhood--and then force women to admit it,” said Lilly. “But the rotten whiners, they're all grovelling before a baby's napkin and a woman's petticoat.” “It's a fact,” said Aaron. But he glanced at Lilly oddly, as if suspiciously. And Lilly caught the look. But he continued: “And if they think you try to stand on your legs and walk with the feet of manhood, why, there isn't a blooming father and lover among them but will do his best to get you down and suffocate you--either with a baby's napkin or a woman's petticoat.” Lilly's lips were curling; he was dark and bitter. “Ay, it is like that,” said Aaron, rather subduedly. “The man's spirit has gone out of the world. Men can't move an inch unless they can grovel humbly at the end of the journey.” “No,” said Aaron, watching with keen, half-amused eyes. “That's why marriage wants readjusting--or extending--to get men on to their own legs once more, and to give them the adventure again. But men won't stick together and fight for it. Because once a woman has climbed up with her children, she'll find plenty of grovellers ready to support her and suffocate any defiant spirit. And women will sacrifice eleven men, fathers, husbands, brothers and lovers, for one baby--or for her own female self-conceit--” “She will that,” said Aaron. “And can you find two men to stick together, without feeling criminal, and without cringing, and without betraying one another? You can't. One is sure to go fawning round some female, then they both enjoy giving each other away, and doing a new grovel before a woman again.” “Ay,” said Aaron. After which Lilly was silent. CHAPTER X. THE WAR AGAIN “One is a fool,” said Lilly, “to be lachrymose. The thing to do is to get a move on.” Aaron looked up with a glimpse of a smile. The two men were sitting before the fire at the end of a cold, wet April day: Aaron convalescent, somewhat chastened in appearance. “Ay,” he said rather sourly. “A move back to Guilford Street.” “Oh, I meant to tell you,” said Lilly. “I was reading an old Baden history. They made a law in 1528--not a law, but a regulation--that: if a man forsakes his wife and children, as now so often happens, the said wife and children are at once to be dispatched after him. I thought that would please you. Does it?” “Yes,” said Aaron briefly. “They would have arrived the next day, like a forwarded letter.” “I should have had to get a considerable move on, at that rate,” grinned Aaron. “Oh, no. You might quite like them here.” But Lilly saw the white frown of determined revulsion on the convalescent's face. “Wouldn't you?” he asked. Aaron shook his head. “No,” he said. And it was obvious he objected to the topic. “What are you going to do about your move on?” “Me!” said Lilly. “I'm going to sail away next week--or steam dirtily away on a tramp called the _Maud Allen Wing_.” “Where to?” “Malta.” “Where from?” “London Dock. I fixed up my passage this morning for ten pounds. I am cook's assistant, signed on.” Aaron looked at him with a little admiration. “You can take a sudden jump, can't you?” he said. “The difficulty is to refrain from jumping: overboard or anywhere.” Aaron smoked his pipe slowly. “And what good will Malta do you?” he asked, envious. “Heaven knows. I shall cross to Syracuse, and move up Italy.” “Sounds as if you were a millionaire.” “I've got thirty-five pounds in all the world. But something will come along.” “I've got more than that,” said Aaron. “Good for you,” replied Lilly. He rose and went to the cupboard, taking out a bowl and a basket of potatoes. He sat down again, paring the potatoes. His busy activity annoyed Aaron. “But what's the good of going to Malta? Shall YOU be any different in yourself, in another place? You'll be the same there as you are here.” “How am I here?” “Why, you're all the time grinding yourself against something inside you. You're never free. You're never content. You never stop chafing.” Lilly dipped his potato into the water, and cut out the eyes carefully. Then he cut it in two, and dropped it in the clean water of the second bowl. He had not expected this criticism. “Perhaps I don't,” said he. “Then what's the use of going somewhere else? You won't change yourself.” “I may in the end,” said Lilly. “You'll be yourself, whether it's Malta or London,” said Aaron. “There's a doom for me,” laughed Lilly. The water on the fire was boiling. He rose and threw in salt, then dropped in the potatoes with little plops. “There there are lots of mes. I'm not only just one proposition. A new place brings out a new thing in a man. Otherwise you'd have stayed in your old place with your family.” “The man in the middle of you doesn't change,” said Aaron. “Do you find it so?” said Lilly. “Ay. Every time.” “Then what's to be done?” “Nothing, as far as I can see. You get as much amusement out of life as possible, and there's the end of it.” “All right then, I'll get the amusement.” “Ay, all right then,” said Aaron. “But there isn't anything wonderful about it. You talk as if you were doing something special. You aren't. You're no more than a man who drops into a pub for a drink, to liven himself up a bit. Only you give it a lot of names, and make out as if you were looking for the philosopher's stone, or something like that. When you're only killing time like the rest of folks, before time kills you.” Lilly did not answer. It was not yet seven o'clock, but the sky was dark. Aaron sat in the firelight. Even the saucepan on the fire was silent. Darkness, silence, the firelight in the upper room, and the two men together. “It isn't quite true,” said Lilly, leaning on the mantelpiece and staring down into the fire. “Where isn't it? You talk, and you make a man believe you've got something he hasn't got? But where is it, when it comes to? What have you got, more than me or Jim Bricknell! Only a bigger choice of words, it seems to me.” Lilly was motionless and inscrutable like a shadow. “Does it, Aaron!” he said, in a colorless voice. “Yes. What else is there to it?” Aaron sounded testy. “Why,” said Lilly at last, “there's something. I agree, it's true what you say about me. But there's a bit of something else. There's just a bit of something in me, I think, which ISN'T a man running into a pub for a drink--” “And what--?” The question fell into the twilight like a drop of water falling down a deep shaft into a well. “I think a man may come into possession of his own soul at last--as the Buddhists teach--but without ceasing to love, or even to hate. One loves, one hates--but somewhere beyond it all, one understands, and possesses one's soul in patience and in peace--” “Yes,” said Aaron slowly, “while you only stand and talk about it. But when you've got no chance to talk about it--and when you've got to live--you don't possess your soul, neither in patience nor in peace, but any devil that likes possesses you and does what it likes with you, while you fridge yourself and fray yourself out like a worn rag.” “I don't care,” said Lilly, “I'm learning to possess my soul in patience and in peace, and I know it. And it isn't a negative Nirvana either. And if Tanny possesses her own soul in patience and peace as well--and if in this we understand each other at last--then there we are, together and apart at the same time, and free of each other, and eternally inseparable. I have my Nirvana--and I have it all to myself. But more than that. It coincides with her Nirvana.” “Ah, yes,” said Aaron. “But I don't understand all that word-splitting.” “I do, though. You learn to be quite alone, and possess your own soul in isolation--and at the same time, to be perfectly WITH someone else--that's all I ask.” “Sort of sit on a mountain top, back to back with somebody else, like a couple of idols.” “No--because it isn't a case of sitting--or a case of back to back. It's what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment. And it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion. It flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of them.” “What wouldn't?” “The possessing one's own soul--and the being together with someone else in silence, beyond speech.” “And you've got them?” “I've got a BIT of the real quietness inside me.” “So has a dog on a mat.” “So I believe, too.” “Or a man in a pub.” “Which I don't believe.” “You prefer the dog?” “Maybe.” There was silence for a few moments. “And I'm the man in the pub,” said Aaron. “You aren't the dog on the mat, anyhow.” “And you're the idol on the mountain top, worshipping yourself.” “You talk to me like a woman, Aaron.” “How do you talk to ME, do you think?” “How do I?” “Are the potatoes done?” Lilly turned quickly aside, and switched on the electric light. Everything changed. Aaron sat still before the fire, irritated. Lilly went about preparing the supper. The room was pleasant at night. Two tall, dark screens hid the two beds. In front, the piano was littered with music, the desk littered with papers. Lilly went out on to the landing, and set the chops to grill on the gas stove. Hastily he put a small table on the hearth-rug, spread it with a blue-and-white cloth, set plates and glasses. Aaron did not move. It was not his nature to concern himself with domestic matters--and Lilly did it best alone. The two men had an almost uncanny understanding of one another--like brothers. They came from the same district, from the same class. Each might have been born into the other's circumstance. Like brothers, there was a profound hostility between them. But hostility is not antipathy. Lilly's skilful housewifery always irritated Aaron: it was so self-sufficient. But most irritating of all was the little man's unconscious assumption of priority. Lilly was actually unaware that he assumed this quiet predominance over others. He mashed the potatoes, he heated the plates, he warmed the red wine, he whisked eggs into the milk pudding, and served his visitor like a housemaid. But none of this detracted from the silent assurance with which he bore himself, and with which he seemed to domineer over his acquaintance. At last the meal was ready. Lilly drew the curtains, switched off the central light, put the green-shaded electric lamp on the table, and the two men drew up to the meal. It was good food, well cooked and hot. Certainly Lilly's hands were no longer clean: but it was clean dirt, as he said. Aaron sat in the low arm-chair at table. So his face was below, in the full light. Lilly sat high on a small chair, so that his face was in the green shadow. Aaron was handsome, and always had that peculiar well-dressed look of his type. Lilly was indifferent to his own appearance, and his collar was a rag. So the two men ate in silence. They had been together alone for a fortnight only: but it was like a small eternity. Aaron was well now--only he suffered from the depression and the sort of fear that follows influenza. “When are you going?” he asked irritably, looking up at Lilly, whose face hovered in that green shadow above, and worried him. “One day next week. They'll send me a telegram. Not later than Thursday.” “You're looking forward to going?” The question was half bitter. “Yes. I want to get a new tune out of myself.” “Had enough of this?” “Yes.” A flush of anger came on Aaron's face. “You're easily on, and easily off,” he said, rather insulting. “Am I?” said Lilly. “What makes you think so?” “Circumstances,” replied Aaron sourly. To which there was no answer. The host cleared away the plates, and put the pudding on the table. He pushed the bowl to Aaron. “I suppose I shall never see you again, once you've gone,” said Aaron. “It's your choice. I will leave you an address.” After this, the pudding was eaten in silence. “Besides, Aaron,” said Lilly, drinking his last sip of wine, “what do you care whether you see me again or not? What do you care whether you see anybody again or not? You want to be amused. And now you're irritated because you think I am not going to amuse you any more: and you don't know who is going to amuse you. I admit it's a dilemma. But it's a hedonistic dilemma of the commonest sort.” “I don't know hedonistic. And supposing I am as you say--are you any different?” “No, I'm not very different. But I always persuade myself there's a bit of difference. Do you know what Josephine Ford confessed to me? She's had her lovers enough. 'There isn't any such thing as love, Lilly,' she said. 'Men are simply afraid to be alone. That is absolutely all there is in it: fear of being alone.'” “What by that?” said Aaron. “You agree?” “Yes, on the whole.” “So do I--on the whole. And then I asked her what about woman. And then she said with a woman it wasn't fear, it was just boredom. A woman is like a violinist: any fiddle, any instrument rather than empty hands and no tune going.” “Yes--what I said before: getting as much amusement out of life as possible,” said Aaron. “You amuse me--and I'll amuse you.” “Yes--just about that.” “All right, Aaron,” said Lilly. “I'm not going to amuse you, or try to amuse you any more.” “Going to try somebody else; and Malta.” “Malta, anyhow.” “Oh, and somebody else--in the next five minutes.” “Yes--that also.” “Goodbye and good luck to you.” “Goodbye and good luck to you, Aaron.” With which Lilly went aside to wash the dishes. Aaron sat alone under the zone of light, turning over a score of _Pelleas_. Though the noise of London was around them, it was far below, and in the room was a deep silence. Each of the men seemed invested in his own silence. Aaron suddenly took his flute, and began trying little passages from the opera on his knee. He had not played since his illness. The noise came out a little tremulous, but low and sweet. Lilly came forward with a plate and a cloth in his hand. “Aaron's rod is putting forth again,” he said, smiling. “What?” said Aaron, looking up. “I said Aaron's rod is putting forth again.” “What rod?” “Your flute, for the moment.” “It's got to put forth my bread and butter.” “Is that all the buds it's going to have?” “What else!” “Nay--that's for you to show. What flowers do you imagine came out of the rod of Moses's brother?” “Scarlet runners, I should think if he'd got to live on them.” “Scarlet enough, I'll bet.” Aaron turned unnoticing back to his music. Lilly finished the wiping of the dishes, then took a book and sat on the other side of the table. “It's all one to you, then,” said Aaron suddenly, “whether we ever see one another again?” “Not a bit,” said Lilly, looking up over his spectacles. “I very much wish there might be something that held us together.” “Then if you wish it, why isn't there?” “You might wish your flute to put out scarlet-runner flowers at the joints.” “Ay--I might. And it would be all the same.” The moment of silence that followed was extraordinary in its hostility. “Oh, we shall run across one another again some time,” said Aaron. “Sure,” said Lilly. “More than that: I'll write you an address that will always find me. And when you write I will answer you.” He took a bit of paper and scribbled an address. Aaron folded it and put it into his waistcoat pocket. It was an Italian address. “But how can I live in Italy?” he said. “You can shift about. I'm tied to a job.” “You--with your budding rod, your flute--and your charm--you can always do as you like.” “My what?” “Your flute and your charm.” “What charm?” “Just your own. Don't pretend you don't know you've got it. I don't really like charm myself; too much of a trick about it. But whether or not, you've got it.” “It's news to me.” “Not it.” “Fact, it is.” “Ha! Somebody will always take a fancy to you. And you can live on that, as well as on anything else.” “Why do you always speak so despisingly?” “Why shouldn't I?” “Have you any right to despise another man?” “When did it go by rights?” “No, not with you.” “You answer me like a woman, Aaron.” Again there was a space of silence. And again it was Aaron who at last broke it. “We're in different positions, you and me,” he said. “How?” “You can live by your writing--but I've got to have a job.” “Is that all?” said Lilly. “Ay. And plenty. You've got the advantage of me.” “Quite,” said Lilly. “But why? I was a dirty-nosed little boy when you were a clean-nosed little boy. And I always had more patches on my breeches than you: neat patches, too, my poor mother! So what's the good of talking about advantages? You had the start. And at this very moment you could buy me up, lock, stock, and barrel. So don't feel hard done by. It's a lie.” “You've got your freedom.” “I make it and I take it.” “Circumstances make it for you.” “As you like.” “You don't do a man justice,” said Aaron. “Does a man care?” “He might.” “Then he's no man.” “Thanks again, old fellow.” “Welcome,” said Lilly, grimacing. Again Aaron looked at him, baffled, almost with hatred. Lilly grimaced at the blank wall opposite, and seemed to ruminate. Then he went back to his book. And no sooner had he forgotten Aaron, reading the fantasies of a certain Leo Frobenius, than Aaron must stride in again. “You can't say there isn't a difference between your position and mine,” he said pertinently. Lilly looked darkly over his spectacles. “No, by God,” he said. “I should be in a poor way otherwise.” “You can't say you haven't the advantage--your JOB gives you the advantage.” “All right. Then leave it out with my job, and leave me alone.” “That's your way of dodging it.” “My dear Aaron, I agree with you perfectly. There is no difference between us, save the fictitious advantage given to me by my job. Save for my job--which is to write lies--Aaron and I are two identical little men in one and the same little boat. Shall we leave it at that, now?” “Yes,” said Aaron. “That's about it.” “Let us shake hands on it--and go to bed, my dear chap. You are just recovering from influenza, and look paler than I like.” “You mean you want to be rid of me,” said Aaron. “Yes, I do mean that,” said Lilly. “Ay,” said Aaron. And after a few minutes more staring at the score of _Pelleas_, he rose, put the score away on the piano, laid his flute beside it, and retired behind the screen. In silence, the strange dim noise of London sounding from below, Lilly read on about the Kabyles. His soul had the faculty of divesting itself of the moment, and seeking further, deeper interests. These old Africans! And Atlantis! Strange, strange wisdom of the Kabyles! Old, old dark Africa, and the world before the flood! How jealous Aaron seemed! The child of a jealous God. A jealous God! Could any race be anything but despicable, with such an antecedent? But no, persistent as a jealous God himself, Aaron reappeared in his pyjamas, and seated himself in his chair. “What is the difference then between you and me, Lilly?” he said. “Haven't we shaken hands on it--a difference of jobs.” “You don't believe that, though, do you?” “Nay, now I reckon you're trespassing.” “Why am I? I know you don't believe it.” “What do I believe then?” said Lilly. “You believe you know something better than me--and that you are something better than me. Don't you?” “Do YOU believe it?” “What?” “That I AM something better than you, and that I KNOW something better?” “No, because I don't see it,” said Aaron. “Then if you don't see it, it isn't there. So go to bed and sleep the sleep of the just and the convalescent. I am not to be badgered any more.” “Am I badgering you?” said Aaron. “Indeed you are.” “So I'm in the wrong again?” “Once more, my dear.” “You're a God-Almighty in your way, you know.” “So long as I'm not in anybody else's way--Anyhow, you'd be much better sleeping the sleep of the just. And I'm going out for a minute or two. Don't catch cold there with nothing on-- “I want to catch the post,” he added, rising. Aaron looked up at him quickly. But almost before there was time to speak, Lilly had slipped into his hat and coat, seized his letters, and gone. It was a rainy night. Lilly turned down King Street to walk to Charing Cross. He liked being out of doors. He liked to post his letters at Charing Cross post office. He did not want to talk to Aaron any more. He was glad to be alone. He walked quickly down Villiers Street to the river, to see it flowing blackly towards the sea. It had an endless fascination for him: never failed to soothe him and give him a sense of liberty. He liked the night, the dark rain, the river, and even the traffic. He enjoyed the sense of friction he got from the streaming of people who meant nothing to him. It was like a fox slipping alert among unsuspecting cattle. When he got back, he saw in the distance the lights of a taxi standing outside the building where he lived, and heard a thumping and hallooing. He hurried forward. It was a man called Herbertson. “Oh, why, there you are!” exclaimed Herbertson, as Lilly drew near. “Can I come up and have a chat?” “I've got that man who's had flu. I should think he is gone to bed.” “Oh!” The disappointment was plain. “Well, look here I'll just come up for a couple of minutes.” He laid his hand on Lilly's arm. “I heard you were going away. Where are you going?” “Malta.” “Malta! Oh, I know Malta very well. Well now, it'll be all right if I come up for a minute? I'm not going to see much more of you, apparently.” He turned quickly to the taxi. “What is it on the clock?” The taxi was paid, the two men went upstairs. Aaron was in bed, but he called as Lilly entered the room. “Hullo!” said Lilly. “Not asleep? Captain Herbertson has come in for a minute.” “Hope I shan't disturb you,” said Captain Herbertson, laying down his stick and gloves, and his cap. He was in uniform. He was one of the few surviving officers of the Guards, a man of about forty-five, good-looking, getting rather stout. He settled himself in the chair where Aaron had sat, hitching up his trousers. The gold identity plate, with its gold chain, fell conspicuously over his wrist. “Been to 'Rosemary,'” he said. “Rotten play, you know--but passes the time awfully well. Oh, I quite enjoyed it.” Lilly offered him Sauterne--the only thing in the house. “Oh, yes! How awfully nice! Yes, thanks, I shall love it. Can I have it with soda? Thanks! Do you know, I think that's the very best drink in the tropics: sweet white wine, with soda? Yes--well!-- Well--now, why are you going away?” “For a change,” said Lilly. “You're quite right, one needs a change now the damned thing is all over. As soon as I get out of khaki I shall be off. Malta! Yes! I've been in Malta several times. I think Valletta is quite enjoyable, particularly in winter, with the opera. Oh--er--how's your wife? All right? Yes!--glad to see her people again. Bound to be-- Oh, by the way, I met Jim Bricknell. Sends you a message hoping you'll go down and stay--down at Captain Bingham's place in Surrey, you know. Awfully queer lot down there. Not my sort, no. You won't go down? No, I shouldn't. Not the right sort of people.” Herbertson rattled away, rather spasmodic. He had been through the very front hell of the war--and like every man who had, he had the war at the back of his mind, like an obsession. But in the meantime, he skirmished. “Yes. I was on guard one day when the Queen gave one of her tea-parties to the blind. Awful affair. But the children are awfully nice children. Prince of Wales awfully nice, almost too nice. Prince Henry smart boy, too--oh, a smart boy. Queen Mary poured the tea, and I handed round bread and butter. She told me I made a very good waiter. I said, Thank you, Madam. But I like the children. Very different from the Battenbergs. Oh!--” he wrinkled his nose. “I can't stand the Battenbergs.” “Mount Battens,” said Lilly. “Yes! Awful mistake, changing the royal name. They were Guelfs, why not remain it? Why, I'll tell you what Battenberg did. He was in the Guards, too--” The talk flowed on: about royalty and the Guards, Buckingham Palace and St. James. “Rather a nice story about Queen Victoria. Man named Joyce, something or other, often used to dine at the Palace. And he was an awfully good imitator--really clever, you know. Used to imitate the Queen. 'Mr. Joyce,' she said, 'I hear your imitation is very amusing. Will you do it for us now, and let us see what it is like?' 'Oh, no, Madam! I'm afraid I couldn't do it now. I'm afraid I'm not in the humour.' But she would have him do it. And it was really awfully funny. He had to do it. You know what he did. He used to take a table-napkin, and put it on with one corner over his forehead, and the rest hanging down behind, like her veil thing. And then he sent for the kettle-lid. He always had the kettle-lid, for that little crown of hers. And then he impersonated her. But he was awfully good--so clever. 'Mr. Joyce,' she said. 'We are not amused. Please leave the room.' Yes, that is exactly what she said: 'WE are not amused--please leave the room.' I like the WE, don't you? And he a man of sixty or so. However, he left the room and for a fortnight or so he wasn't invited--Wasn't she wonderful--Queen Victoria?” And so, by light transitions, to the Prince of Wales at the front, and thus into the trenches. And then Herbertson was on the subject he was obsessed by. He had come, unconsciously, for this and this only, to talk war to Lilly: or at Lilly. For the latter listened and watched, and said nothing. As a man at night helplessly takes a taxi to find some woman, some prostitute, Herbertson had almost unthinkingly got into a taxi and come battering at the door in Covent Garden, only to talk war to Lilly, whom he knew very little. But it was a driving instinct--to come and get it off his chest. And on and on he talked, over his wine and soda. He was not conceited--he was not showing off--far from it. It was the same thing here in this officer as it was with the privates, and the same with this Englishman as with a Frenchman or a German or an Italian. Lilly had sat in a cowshed listening to a youth in the north country: he had sat on the corn-straw that the oxen had been treading out, in Calabria, under the moon: he had sat in a farm-kitchen with a German prisoner: and every time it was the same thing, the same hot, blind, anguished voice of a man who has seen too much, experienced too much, and doesn't know where to turn. None of the glamour of returned heroes, none of the romance of war: only a hot, blind, mesmerised voice, going on and on, mesmerised by a vision that the soul cannot bear. In this officer, of course, there was a lightness and an appearance of bright diffidence and humour. But underneath it all was the same as in the common men of all the combatant nations: the hot, seared burn of unbearable experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not to be relieved. The experience gradually cooled on top: but only with a surface crust. The soul did not heal, did not recover. “I used to be awfully frightened,” laughed Herbertson. “Now you say, Lilly, you'd never have stood it. But you would. You're nervous--and it was just the nervous ones that did stand it. When nearly all our officers were gone, we had a man come out--a man called Margeritson, from India--big merchant people out there. They all said he was no good--not a bit of good--nervous chap. No good at all. But when you had to get out of the trench and go for the Germans he was perfect--perfect--It all came to him then, at the crisis, and he was perfect. “Some things frighten one man, and some another. Now shells would never frighten me. But I couldn't stand bombs. You could tell the difference between our machines and the Germans. Ours was a steady noise--drrrrrrrr!--but their's was heavy, drrrrRURUrrrrRURU!-- My word, that got on my nerves.... “No I was never hit. The nearest thing was when I was knocked down by an exploding shell--several times that--you know. When you shout like mad for the men to come and dig you out, under all the earth. And my word, you do feel frightened then.” Herbertson laughed with a twinkling motion to Lilly. But between his brows there was a tension like madness. “And a funny thing you know--how you don't notice things. In--let me see--1916, the German guns were a lot better than ours. Ours were old, and when they're old you can't tell where they'll hit: whether they'll go beyond the mark, or whether they'll fall short. Well, this day our guns were firing short, and killing our own men. We'd had the order to charge, and were running forward, and I suddenly felt hot water spurting on my neck--” He put his hand to the back of his neck and glanced round apprehensively. “It was a chap called Innes--Oh, an awfully decent sort--people were in the Argentine. He'd been calling out to me as we were running, and I was just answering. When I felt this hot water on my neck and saw him running past me with no head--he'd got no head, and he went running past me. I don't know how far, but a long way.... Blood, you know--Yes--well-- “Oh, I hated Chelsea--I loathed Chelsea--Chelsea was purgatory to me. I had a corporal called Wallace--he was a fine chap--oh, he was a fine chap--six foot two--and about twenty-four years old. He was my stand-back. Oh, I hated Chelsea, and parades, and drills. You know, when it's drill, and you're giving orders, you forget what order you've just given--in front of the Palace there the crowd don't notice--but it's AWFUL for you. And you know you daren't look round to see what the men are doing. But Wallace was splendid. He was just behind me, and I'd hear him, quite quiet you know, 'It's right wheel, sir.' Always perfect, always perfect--yes--well.... “You know you don't get killed if you don't think you will. Now I never thought I should get killed. And I never knew a man get killed if he hadn't been thinking he would. I said to Wallace I'd rather be out here, at the front, than at Chelsea. I hated Chelsea--I can't tell you how much. 'Oh no, sir!' he said. 'I'd rather be at Chelsea than here. I'd rather be at Chelsea. There isn't hell like this at Chelsea.' We'd had orders that we were to go back to the real camp the next day. 'Never mind, Wallace,' I said. 'We shall be out of this hell-on-earth tomorrow.' And he took my hand. We weren't much for showing feeling or anything in the guards. But he took my hand. And we climbed out to charge--Poor fellow, he was killed--” Herbertson dropped his head, and for some moments seemed to go unconscious, as if struck. Then he lifted his face, and went on in the same animated chatty fashion: “You see, he had a presentiment. I'm sure he had a presentiment. None of the men got killed unless they had a presentiment--like that, you know....” Herbertson nodded keenly at Lilly, with his sharp, twinkling, yet obsessed eyes. Lilly wondered why he made the presentiment responsible for the death--which he obviously did--and not vice versa. Herbertson implied every time, that you'd never get killed if you could keep yourself from having a presentiment. Perhaps there was something in it. Perhaps the soul issues its own ticket of death, when it can stand no more. Surely life controls life: and not accident. “It's a funny thing what shock will do. We had a sergeant and he shouted to me. Both his feet were off--both his feet, clean at the ankle. I gave him morphia. You know officers aren't allowed to use the needle--might give the man blood poisoning. You give those tabloids. They say they act in a few minutes, but they DON'T. It's a quarter of an hour. And nothing is more demoralising than when you have a man, wounded, you know, and crying out. Well, this man I gave him the morphia before he got over the stunning, you know. So he didn't feel the pain. Well, they carried him in. I always used to like to look after my men. So I went next morning and I found he hadn't been removed to the Clearing Station. I got hold of the doctor and I said, 'Look here! Why hasn't this man been taken to the Clearing Station?' I used to get excited. But after some years they'd got used to me. 'Don't get excited, Herbertson, the man's dying.' 'But,' I said, 'he's just been talking to me as strong as you are.' And he had--he'd talk as strong and well as you or me, then go quiet for a bit. I said I gave him the morphia before he came round from the stunning. So he'd felt nothing. But in two hours he was dead. The doctor says that the shock does it like that sometimes. You can do nothing for them. Nothing vital is injured--and yet the life is broken in them. Nothing can be done--funny thing--Must be something in the brain--” “It's obviously not the brain,” said Lilly. “It's deeper than the brain.” “Deeper,” said Herbertson, nodding. “Funny thing where life is. We had a lieutenant. You know we all buried our own dead. Well, he looked as if he was asleep. Most of the chaps looked like that.” Herbertson closed his eyes and laid his face aside, like a man asleep and dead peacefully. “You very rarely see a man dead with any other look on his face--you know the other look.--” And he clenched his teeth with a sudden, momentaneous, ghastly distortion.--“Well, you'd never have known this chap was dead. He had a wound here--in the back of the head--and a bit of blood on his hand--and nothing else, nothing. Well, I said we'd give him a decent burial. He lay there waiting--and they'd wrapped him in a filthy blanket--you know. Well, I said he should have a proper blanket. He'd been dead lying there a day and a half you know. So I went and got a blanket, a beautiful blanket, out of his private kit--his people were Scotch, well-known family--and I got the pins, you know, ready to pin him up properly, for the Scots Guards to bury him. And I thought he'd be stiff, you see. But when I took him by the arms, to lift him on, he sat up. It gave me an awful shock. 'Why he's alive!' I said. But they said he was dead. I couldn't believe it. It gave me an awful shock. He was as flexible as you or me, and looked as if he was asleep. You couldn't believe he was dead. But we pinned him up in his blanket. It was an awful shock to me. I couldn't believe a man could be like that after he'd been dead two days.... “The Germans were wonderful with the machine guns--it's a wicked thing, a machine gun. But they couldn't touch us with the bayonet. Every time the men came back they had bayonet practice, and they got awfully good. You know when you thrust at the Germans--so--if you miss him, you bring your rifle back sharp, with a round swing, so that the butt comes up and hits up under the jaw. It's one movement, following on with the stab, you see, if you miss him. It was too quick for them--But bayonet charge was worst, you know. Because your man cries out when you catch him, when you get him, you know. That's what does you.... “No, oh no, this was no war like other wars. All the machinery of it. No, you couldn't stand it, but for the men. The men are wonderful, you know. They'll be wiped out.... No, it's your men who keep you going, if you're an officer.... But there'll never be another war like this. Because the Germans are the only people who could make a war like this--and I don't think they'll ever do it again, do you? “Oh, they were wonderful, the Germans. They were amazing. It was incredible, what they invented and did. We had to learn from them, in the first two years. But they were too methodical. That's why they lost the war. They were too methodical. They'd fire their guns every ten minutes--regular. Think of it. Of course we knew when to run, and when to lie down. You got so that you knew almost exactly what they'd do--if you'd been out long enough. And then you could time what you wanted to do yourselves. “They were a lot more nervous than we were, at the last. They sent up enough light at night from their trenches--you know, those things that burst in the air like electric light--we had none of that to do--they did it all for us--lit up everything. They were more nervous than we were....” It was nearly two o'clock when Herbertson left. Lilly, depressed, remained before the fire. Aaron got out of bed and came uneasily to the fire. “It gives me the bellyache, that damned war,” he said. “So it does me,” said Lilly. “All unreal.” “Real enough for those that had to go through it.” “No, least of all for them,” said Lilly sullenly. “Not as real as a bad dream. Why the hell don't they wake up and realise it!” “That's a fact,” said Aaron. “They're hypnotised by it.” “And they want to hypnotise me. And I won't be hypnotised. The war was a lie and is a lie and will go on being a lie till somebody busts it.” “It was a fact--you can't bust that. You can't bust the fact that it happened.” “Yes you can. It never happened. It never happened to me. No more than my dreams happen. My dreams don't happen: they only seem.” “But the war did happen, right enough,” smiled Aaron palely. “No, it didn't. Not to me or to any man, in his own self. It took place in the automatic sphere, like dreams do. But the ACTUAL MAN in every man was just absent--asleep--or drugged--inert--dream-logged. That's it.” “You tell 'em so,” said Aaron. “I do. But it's no good. Because they won't wake up now even--perhaps never. They'll all kill themselves in their sleep.” “They wouldn't be any better if they did wake up and be themselves--that is, supposing they are asleep, which I can't see. They are what they are--and they're all alike--and never very different from what they are now.” Lilly stared at Aaron with black eyes. “Do you believe in them less than I do, Aaron?” he asked slowly. “I don't even want to believe in them.” “But in yourself?” Lilly was almost wistful--and Aaron uneasy. “I don't know that I've any more right to believe in myself than in them,” he replied. Lilly watched and pondered. “No,” he said. “That's not true--I KNEW the war was false: humanly quite false. I always knew it was false. The Germans were false, we were false, everybody was false.” “And not you?” asked Aaron shrewishly. “There was a wakeful, self-possessed bit of me which knew that the war and all that horrible movement was false for me. And so I wasn't going to be dragged in. The Germans could have shot my mother or me or what they liked: I wouldn't have joined the WAR. I would like to kill my enemy. But become a bit of that huge obscene machine they called the war, that I never would, no, not if I died ten deaths and had eleven mothers violated. But I would like to kill my enemy: Oh, yes, more than one enemy. But not as a unit in a vast obscene mechanism. That never: no, never.” Poor Lilly was too earnest and vehement. Aaron made a fine nose. It seemed to him like a lot of words and a bit of wriggling out of a hole. “Well,” he said, “you've got men and nations, and you've got the machines of war--so how are you going to get out of it? League of Nations?” “Damn all leagues. Damn all masses and groups, anyhow. All I want is to get MYSELF out of their horrible heap: to get out of the swarm. The swarm to me is nightmare and nullity--horrible helpless writhing in a dream. I want to get myself awake, out of it all--all that mass-consciousness, all that mass-activity--it's the most horrible nightmare to me. No man is awake and himself. No man who was awake and in possession of himself would use poison gases: no man. His own awake self would scorn such a thing. It's only when the ghastly mob-sleep, the dream helplessness of the mass-psyche overcomes him, that he becomes completely base and obscene.” “Ha--well,” said Aaron. “It's the wide-awake ones that invent the poison gas, and use it. Where should we be without it?” Lilly started, went stiff and hostile. “Do you mean that, Aaron?” he said, looking into Aaron's face with a hard, inflexible look. Aaron turned aside half sheepishly. “That's how it looks on the face of it, isn't it?” he said. “Look here, my friend, it's too late for you to be talking to me about the face of things. If that's how you feel, put your things on and follow Herbertson. Yes--go out of my room. I don't put up with the face of things here.” Aaron looked at him in cold amazement. “It'll do tomorrow morning, won't it?” he asked rather mocking. “Yes,” said Lilly coldly. “But please go tomorrow morning.” “Oh, I'll go all right,” said Aaron. “Everybody's got to agree with you--that's your price.” But Lilly did not answer. Aaron turned into bed, his satirical smile under his nose. Somewhat surprised, however, at this sudden turn of affairs. As he was just going to sleep, dismissing the matter, Lilly came once more to his bedside, and said, in a hard voice: “I'm NOT going to pretend to have friends on the face of things. No, and I don't have friends who don't fundamentally agree with me. A friend means one who is at one with me in matters of life and death. And if you're at one with all the rest, then you're THEIR friend, not mine. So be their friend. And please leave me in the morning. You owe me nothing, you have nothing more to do with me. I have had enough of these friendships where I pay the piper and the mob calls the tune. “Let me tell you, moreover, your heroic Herbertsons lost us more than ever they won. A brave ant is a damned cowardly individual. Your heroic officers are a sad sight AFTERWARDS, when they come home. Bah, your Herbertson! The only justification for war is what we learn from it. And what have they learnt?--Why did so many of them have presentiments, as he called it? Because they could feel inside them, there was nothing to come after. There was no life-courage: only death-courage. Nothing beyond this hell--only death or love--languishing--” “What could they have seen, anyhow?” said Aaron. “It's not what you see, actually. It's the kind of spirit you keep inside you: the life spirit. When Wallace had presentiments, Herbertson, being officer, should have said: 'None of that, Wallace. You and I, we've got to live and make life smoke.'--Instead of which he let Wallace be killed and his own heart be broken. Always the death-choice-- And we won't, we simply will not face the world as we've made it, and our own souls as we find them, and take the responsibility. We'll never get anywhere till we stand up man to man and face EVERYTHING out, and break the old forms, but never let our own pride and courage of life be broken.” Lilly broke off, and went silently to bed. Aaron turned over to sleep, rather resenting the sound of so many words. What difference did it make, anyhow? In the morning, however, when he saw the other man's pale, closed, rather haughty face, he realised that something _had_ happened. Lilly was courteous and even affable: but with a curious cold space between him and Aaron. Breakfast passed, and Aaron knew that he must leave. There was something in Lilly's bearing which just showed him the door. In some surprise and confusion, and in some anger, not unmingled with humorous irony, he put his things in his bag. He put on his hat and coat. Lilly was seated rather stiffly writing. “Well,” said Aaron. “I suppose we shall meet again.” “Oh, sure to,” said Lilly, rising from his chair. “We are sure to run across one another.” “When are you going?” asked Aaron. “In a few days' time.” “Oh, well, I'll run in and see you before you go, shall I?” “Yes, do.” Lilly escorted his guest to the top of the stairs, shook hands, and then returned into his own room, closing the door on himself. Aaron did not find his friend at home when he called. He took it rather as a slap in the face. But then he knew quite well that Lilly had made a certain call on his, Aaron's soul: a call which he, Aaron, did not at all intend to obey. If in return the soul-caller chose to shut his street-door in the face of the world-friend--well, let it be quits. He was not sure whether he felt superior to his unworldly enemy or not. He rather thought he did. CHAPTER XI. MORE PILLAR OF SALT The opera season ended, Aaron was invited by Cyril Scott to join a group of musical people in a village by the sea. He accepted, and spent a pleasant month. It pleased the young men musically-inclined and bohemian by profession to patronise the flautist, whom they declared marvellous. Bohemians with well-to-do parents, they could already afford to squander a little spasmodic and self-gratifying patronage. And Aaron did not mind being patronised. He had nothing else to do. But the party broke up early in September. The flautist was detained a few days at a country house, for the amusement of the guests. Then he left for London. In London he found himself at a loose end. A certain fretful dislike of the patronage of indifferent young men, younger than himself, and a certain distaste for regular work in the orchestra made him look round. He wanted something else. He wanted to disappear again. Qualms and emotions concerning his abandoned family overcame him. The early, delicate autumn affected him. He took a train to the Midlands. And again, just after dark, he strolled with his little bag across the field which lay at the end of his garden. It had been mown, and the grass was already growing long. He stood and looked at the line of back windows, lighted once more. He smelled the scents of autumn, phlox and moist old vegetation and corn in sheaf. A nostalgia which was half at least revulsion affected him. The place, the home, at once fascinated and revolted him. Sitting in his shed, he scrutinised his garden carefully, in the starlight. There were two rows of beans, rather disshevelled. Near at hand the marrow plants sprawled from their old bed. He could detect the perfume of a few carnations. He wondered who it was had planted the garden, during his long absence. Anyhow, there it was, planted and fruited and waning into autumn. The blind was not drawn. It was eight o'clock. The children were going to bed. Aaron waited in his shed, his bowels stirred with violent but only half-admitted emotions. There was his wife, slim and graceful, holding a little mug to the baby's mouth. And the baby was drinking. She looked lonely. Wild emotions attacked his heart. There was going to be a wild and emotional reconciliation. Was there? It seemed like something fearful and imminent. A passion arose in him, a craving for the violent emotional reconciliation. He waited impatiently for the children to be gone to bed, gnawed with restless desire. He heard the clock strike nine, then half-past, from the village behind. The children would be asleep. His wife was sitting sewing some little frock. He went lingering down the garden path, stooping to lift the fallen carnations, to see how they were. There were many flowers, but small. He broke one off, then threw it away. The golden rod was out. Even in the little lawn there were asters, as of old. His wife started to listen, hearing his step. He was filled with a violent conflict of tenderness, like a sickness. He hesitated, tapping at the door, and entered. His wife started to her feet, at bay. “What have you come for!” was her involuntary ejaculation. But he, with the familiar odd jerk of his head towards the garden, asked with a faint smile: “Who planted the garden?” And he felt himself dropping into the twang of the vernacular, which he had discarded. Lottie only stood and stared at him, objectively. She did not think to answer. He took his hat off, and put it on the dresser. Again the familiar act maddened her. “What have you come for?” she cried again, with a voice full of hate. Or perhaps it was fear and doubt and even hope as well. He heard only hate. This time he turned to look at her. The old dagger was drawn in her. “I wonder,” he said, “myself.” Then she recovered herself, and with trembling hand picked up her sewing again. But she still stood at bay, beyond the table. She said nothing. He, feeling tired, sat down on the chair nearest the door. But he reached for his hat, and kept it on his knee. She, as she stood there unnaturally, went on with her sewing. There was silence for some time. Curious sensations and emotions went through the man's frame seeming to destroy him. They were like electric shocks, which he felt she emitted against him. And an old sickness came in him again. He had forgotten it. It was the sickness of the unrecognised and incomprehensible strain between him and her. After a time she put down her sewing, and sat again in her chair. “Do you know how vilely you've treated me?” she said, staring across the space at him. He averted his face. Yet he answered, not without irony. “I suppose so.” “And why?” she cried. “I should like to know why.” He did not answer. The way she rushed in made him go vague. “Justify yourself. Say why you've been so vile to me. Say what you had against me,” she demanded. “What I HAD against her,” he mused to himself: and he wondered that she used the past tense. He made no answer. “Accuse me,” she insisted. “Say what I've done to make you treat me like this. Say it. You must THINK it hard enough.” “Nay,” he said. “I don't think it.” This speech, by which he merely meant that he did not trouble to formulate any injuries he had against her, puzzled her. “Don't come pretending you love me, NOW. It's too late,” she said with contempt. Yet perhaps also hope. “You might wait till I start pretending,” he said. This enraged her. “You vile creature!” she exclaimed. “Go! What have you come for?” “To look at YOU,” he said sarcastically. After a few minutes she began to cry, sobbing violently into her apron. And again his bowels stirred and boiled. “What have I done! What have I done! I don't know what I've done that he should be like this to me,” she sobbed, into her apron. It was childish, and perhaps true. At least it was true from the childish part of her nature. He sat gloomy and uneasy. She took the apron from her tear-stained face, and looked at him. It was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman--a beautiful woman. At this moment, with her flushed, tear-stained, wilful distress, she was beautiful. “Tell me,” she challenged. “Tell me! Tell me what I've done. Tell me what you have against me. Tell me.” Watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face. Telling isn't so easy--especially when the trouble goes too deep for conscious comprehension. He couldn't _tell_ what he had against her. And he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances. He knew the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves. “You CAN'T,” she cried vindictively. “You CAN'T. You CAN'T find anything real to bring against me, though you'd like to. You'd like to be able to accuse me of something, but you CAN'T, because you know there isn't anything.” She watched him, watched. And he sat in the chair near the door, without moving. “You're unnatural, that's what you are,” she cried. “You're unnatural. You're not a man. You haven't got a man's feelings. You're nasty, and cold, and unnatural. And you're a coward. You're a coward. You run away from me, without telling me what you've got against me.” “When you've had enough, you go away and you don't care what you do,” he said, epigrammatic. She paused a moment. “Enough of what?” she said. “What have you had enough of? Of me and your children? It's a nice manly thing to say. Haven't I loved you? Haven't I loved you for twelve years, and worked and slaved for you and tried to keep you right? Heaven knows where you'd have been but for me, evil as you are at the bottom. You're evil, that's what it is--and weak. You're too weak to love a woman and give her what she wants: too weak. Unmanly and cowardly, he runs away.” “No wonder,” he said. “No,” she cried. “It IS no wonder, with a nature like yours: weak and unnatural and evil. It IS no wonder.” She became quiet--and then started to cry again, into her apron. Aaron waited. He felt physically weak. “And who knows what you've been doing all these months?” she wept. “Who knows all the vile things you've been doing? And you're the father of my children--the father of my little girls--and who knows what vile things he's guilty of, all these months?” “I shouldn't let my imagination run away with me,” he answered. “I've been playing the flute in the orchestra of one of the theatres in London.” “Ha!” she cried. “It's more than that. Don't think I'm going to believe you. I know you, with your smooth-sounding lies. You're a liar, as you know. And I know you've been doing other things besides play a flute in an orchestra. You!--as if I don't know you. And then coming crawling back to me with your lies and your pretense. Don't think I'm taken in.” “I should be sorry,” he said. “Coming crawling back to me, and expecting to be forgiven,” she went on. “But no--I don't forgive--and I can't forgive--never--not as long as I live shall I forgive what you've done to me.” “You can wait till you're asked, anyhow,” he said. “And you can wait,” she said. “And you shall wait.” She took up her sewing, and stitched steadily, as if calmly. Anyone glancing in would have imagined a quiet domestic hearth at that moment. He, too, feeling physically weak, remained silent, feeling his soul absent from the scene. Again she suddenly burst into tears, weeping bitterly. “And the children,” she sobbed, rocking herself with grief and chagrin. “What have I been able to say to the children--what have I been able to tell them?” “What HAVE you told them?” he asked coldly. “I told them you'd gone away to work,” she sobbed, laying her head on her arms on the table. “What else could I tell them? I couldn't tell them the vile truth about their father. I couldn't tell THEM how evil you are.” She sobbed and moaned. He wondered what exactly the vile truth would have been, had she _started_ to tell it. And he began to feel, coldly and cynically, that among all her distress there was a luxuriating in the violent emotions of the scene in hand, and the situation altogether. Then again she became quiet, and picked up her sewing. She stitched quietly, wistfully, for some time. Then she looked up at him--a long look of reproach, and sombre accusation, and wifely tenderness. He turned his face aside. “You know you've been wrong to me, don't you?” she said, half wistfully, half menacing. He felt her wistfulness and her menace tearing him in his bowels and loins. “You do know, don't you?” she insisted, still with the wistful appeal, and the veiled threat. “You do, or you would answer,” she said. “You've still got enough that's right in you, for you to know.” She waited. He sat still, as if drawn by hot wires. Then she slipped across to him, put her arms round him, sank on her knees at his side, and sank her face against his thigh. “Say you know how wrong you are. Say you know how cruel you've been to me,” she pleaded. But under her female pleading and appeal he felt the iron of her threat. “You DO know it,” she murmured, looking up into his face as she crouched by his knee. “You DO know it. I can see in your eyes that you know it. And why have you come back to me, if you don't know it! Why have you come back to me? Tell me!” Her arms gave him a sharp, compulsory little clutch round the waist. “Tell me! Tell me!” she murmured, with all her appeal liquid in her throat. But him, it half overcame, and at the same time, horrified. He had a certain horror of her. The strange liquid sound of her appeal seemed to him like the swaying of a serpent which mesmerises the fated, fluttering, helpless bird. She clasped her arms round him, she drew him to her, she half roused his passion. At the same time she coldly horrified and repelled him. He had not the faintest feeling, at the moment, of his own wrong. But she wanted to win his own self-betrayal out of him. He could see himself as the fascinated victim, falling to this cajoling, awful woman, the wife of his bosom. But as well, he had a soul outside himself, which looked on the whole scene with cold revulsion, and which was as unchangeable as time. “No,” he said. “I don't feel wrong.” “You DO!” she said, giving him a sharp, admonitory clutch. “You DO. Only you're silly, and obstinate, babyish and silly and obstinate. An obstinate little boy--you DO feel wrong. And you ARE wrong. And you've got to say it.” But quietly he disengaged himself and got to his feet, his face pale and set, obstinate as she said. He put his hat on, and took his little bag. She watched him curiously, still crouching by his chair. “I'll go,” he said, putting his hand on the latch. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and clutched him by the shirt-neck, her hand inside his soft collar, half strangling him. “You villain,” she said, and her face was transfigured with passion as he had never seen it before, horrible. “You villain!” she said thickly. “What have you come here for?” His soul went black as he looked at her. He broke her hand away from his shirt collar, bursting the stud-holes. She recoiled in silence. And in one black, unconscious movement he was gone, down the garden and over the fence and across the country, swallowed in a black unconsciousness. She, realising, sank upon the hearth-rug and lay there curled upon herself. She was defeated. But she, too, would never yield. She lay quite motionless for some time. Then she got up, feeling the draught on the floor. She closed the door, and drew down the blind. Then she looked at her wrist, which he had gripped, and which pained her. Then she went to the mirror and looked for a long time at her white, strained, determined face. Come life, come death, she, too would never yield. And she realised now that he would never yield. She was faint with weariness, and would be glad to get to bed and sleep. Aaron meanwhile had walked across the country and was looking for a place to rest. He found a cornfield with a half-built stack, and sheaves in stook. Ten to one some tramp would have found the stack. He threw a dozen sheaves together and lay down, looking at the stars in the September sky. He, too, would never yield. The illusion of love was gone for ever. Love was a battle in which each party strove for the mastery of the other's soul. So far, man had yielded the mastery to woman. Now he was fighting for it back again. And too late, for the woman would never yield. But whether woman yielded or not, he would keep the mastery of his own soul and conscience and actions. He would never yield himself up to her judgment again. He would hold himself forever beyond her jurisdiction. Henceforth, life single, not life double. He looked at the sky, and thanked the universe for the blessedness of being alone in the universe. To be alone, to be oneself, not to be driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is better than anything. He thought of Lottie, and knew how much more truly herself she was when she was alone, with no man to distort her. And he was thankful for the division between them. Such scenes as the last were too horrible and unreal. As for future unions, too soon to think about it. Let there be clean and pure division first, perfected singleness. That is the only way to final, living unison: through sheer, finished singleness. CHAPTER XII. NOVARA Having no job for the autumn, Aaron fidgetted in London. He played at some concerts and some private shows. He was one of an odd quartette, for example, which went to play to Lady Artemis Hooper, when she lay in bed after her famous escapade of falling through the window of her taxi-cab. Aaron had that curious knack, which belongs to some people, of getting into the swim without knowing he was doing it. Lady Artemis thought his flute lovely, and had him again to play for her. Aaron looked at her and she at him. She, as she reclined there in bed in a sort of half-light, well made-up, smoking her cigarettes and talking in a rather raucous voice, making her slightly rasping witty comments to the other men in the room--of course there were other men, the audience--was a shock to the flautist. This was the bride of the moment! Curious how raucous her voice sounded out of the cigarette smoke. Yet he liked her--the reckless note of the modern, social freebooter. In himself was a touch of the same quality. “Do you love playing?” she asked him. “Yes,” he said, with that shadow of irony which seemed like a smile on his face. “Live for it, so to speak,” she said. “I make my living by it,” he said. “But that's not really how you take it?” she said. He eyed her. She watched him over her cigarette. It was a personal moment. “I don't think about it,” he said. “I'm sure you don't. You wouldn't be so good if you did. You're awfully lucky, you know, to be able to pour yourself down your flute.” “You think I go down easy?” he laughed. “Ah!” she replied, flicking her cigarette broadcast. “That's the point. What should you say, Jimmy?” she turned to one of the men. He screwed his eyeglass nervously and stiffened himself to look at her. “I--I shouldn't like to say, off-hand,” came the small-voiced, self-conscious answer. And Jimmy bridled himself and glanced at Aaron. “Do you find it a tight squeeze, then?” she said, turning to Aaron once more. “No, I can't say that,” he answered. “What of me goes down goes down easy enough. It's what doesn't go down.” “And how much is that?” she asked, eying him. “A good bit, maybe,” he said. “Slops over, so to speak,” she retorted sarcastically. “And which do you enjoy more, trickling down your flute or slopping over on to the lap of Mother Earth--of Miss, more probably!” “Depends,” he said. Having got him a few steps too far upon the personal ground, she left him to get off by himself. So he found London got on his nerves. He felt it rubbed him the wrong way. He was flattered, of course, by his own success--and felt at the same time irritated by it. This state of mind was by no means acceptable. Wherever he was he liked to be given, tacitly, the first place--or a place among the first. Among the musical people he frequented, he found himself on a callow kind of equality with everybody, even the stars and aristocrats, at one moment, and a backstairs outsider the next. It was all just as the moment demanded. There was a certain excitement in slithering up and down the social scale, one minute chatting in a personal tete-a-tete with the most famous, or notorious, of the society beauties: and the next walking in the rain, with his flute in a bag, to his grubby lodging in Bloomsbury. Only the excitement roused all the savage sarcasm that lay at the bottom of his soul, and which burned there like an unhealthy bile. Therefore he determined to clear out--to disappear. He had a letter from Lilly, from Novara. Lilly was drifting about. Aaron wrote to Novara, and asked if he should come to Italy, having no money to speak of. “Come if you want to. Bring your flute. And if you've no money, put on a good suit of clothes and a big black hat, and play outside the best cafe in any Italian town, and you'll collect enough to get on with.” It was a sporting chance. Aaron packed his bag and got a passport, and wrote to Lilly to say he would join him, as invited, at Sir William Franks'. He hoped Lilly's answer would arrive before he left London. But it didn't. Therefore behold our hero alighting at Novara, two hours late, on a wet, dark evening. He hoped Lilly would be there: but nobody. With some slight dismay he faced the big, crowded station. The stream of people carried him automatically through the barrier, a porter having seized his bag, and volleyed various unintelligible questions at him. Aaron understood not one word. So he just wandered after the blue blouse of the porter. The porter deposited the bag on the steps of the station front, fired off more questions and gesticulated into the half-illuminated space of darkness outside the station. Aaron decided it meant a cab, so he nodded and said “Yes.” But there were no cabs. So once more the blue-bloused porter slung the big bag and the little bag on the strap over his shoulder, and they plunged into the night, towards some lights and a sort of theatre place. One carriage stood there in the rain--yes, and it was free. “Keb? Yes--orright--sir. Whe'to? Where you go? Sir William Franks? Yes, I know. Long way go--go long way. Sir William Franks.” The cabman spattered his few words of English. Aaron gave the porter an English shilling. The porter let the coin lie in the middle of his palm, as if it were a live beetle, and darted to the light of the carriage to examine the beast, exclaiming volubly. The cabman, wild with interest, peered down from the box into the palm of the porter, and carried on an impassioned dialogue. Aaron stood with one foot on the step. “What you give--he? One franc?” asked the driver. “A shilling,” said Aaron. “One sheeling. Yes. I know that. One sheeling English”--and the driver went off into impassioned exclamations in Torinese. The porter, still muttering and holding his hand as if the coin might sting him, filtered away. “Orright. He know--sheeling--orright. English moneys, eh? Yes, he know. You get up, sir.” And away went Aaron, under the hood of the carriage, clattering down the wide darkness of Novara, over a bridge apparently, past huge rain-wet statues, and through more rainy, half-lit streets. They stopped at last outside a sort of park wall with trees above. The big gates were just beyond. “Sir William Franks--there.” In a mixture of Italian and English the driver told Aaron to get down and ring the bell on the right. Aaron got down and in the darkness was able to read the name on the plate. “How much?” said Aaron to the driver. “Ten franc,” said the fat driver. But it was his turn now to screw down and scrutinise the pink ten-shilling note. He waved it in his hand. “Not good, eh? Not good moneys?” “Yes,” said Aaron, rather indignantly. “Good English money. Ten shillings. Better than ten francs, a good deal. Better--better--” “Good--you say? Ten sheeling--” The driver muttered and muttered, as if dissatisfied. But as a matter of fact he stowed the note in his waistcoat pocket with considerable satisfaction, looked at Aaron curiously, and drove away. Aaron stood there in the dark outside the big gates, and wished himself somewhere else. However, he rang the bell. There was a huge barking of dogs on the other side. Presently a light switched on, and a woman, followed by a man, appeared cautiously, in the half-opened doorway. “Sir William Franks?” said Aaron. “Si, signore.” And Aaron stepped with his two bags inside the gate. Huge dogs jumped round. He stood in the darkness under the trees at the foot of the park. The woman fastened the gate--Aaron saw a door--and through an uncurtained window a man writing at a desk--rather like the clerk in an hotel office. He was going with his two bags to the open door, when the woman stopped him, and began talking to him in Italian. It was evident he must not go on. So he put down the bags. The man stood a few yards away, watchfully. Aaron looked down at the woman and tried to make out something of what she was saying, but could not. The dogs still barked spasmodically, drops fell from the tall, dark trees that rose overhead. “Is Mr. Lilly here? Mr. Lilly?” he asked. “Signor Lillee. No, Signore--” And off the woman went in Italian. But it was evident Lilly was not at the house. Aaron wished more than ever he had not come, but had gone to an hotel. He made out that the woman was asking him for his name--“Meester--? Meester--?” she kept saying, with a note of interrogation. “Sisson. Mr. Sisson,” said Aaron, who was becoming impatient. And he found a visiting card to give her. She seemed appeased--said something about telephone--and left him standing. The rain had ceased, but big drops were shaken from the dark, high trees. Through the uncurtained window he saw the man at the desk reach the telephone. There was a long pause. At length the woman came back and motioned to him to go up--up the drive which curved and disappeared under the dark trees. “Go up there?” said Aaron, pointing. That was evidently the intention. So he picked up his bags and strode forward, from out of the circle of electric light, up the curved drive in the darkness. It was a steep incline. He saw trees and the grass slopes. There was a tang of snow in the air. Suddenly, up ahead, a brilliant light switched on. He continued uphill through the trees along the path, towards it, and at length, emerged at the foot of a great flight of steps, above which was a wide glass entrance, and an Italian manservant in white gloves hovering as if on the brink. Aaron emerged from the drive and climbed the steps. The manservant came down two steps and took the little bag. Then he ushered Aaron and the big bag into a large, pillared hall, with thick Turkish carpet on the floor, and handsome appointments. It was spacious, comfortable and warm; but somewhat pretentious; rather like the imposing hall into which the heroine suddenly enters on the film. Aaron dropped his heavy bag, with relief, and stood there, hat in hand, in his damp overcoat in the circle of light, looking vaguely at the yellow marble pillars, the gilded arches above, the shadowy distances and the great stairs. The butler disappeared--reappeared in another moment--and through an open doorway came the host. Sir William was a small, clean old man with a thin, white beard and a courtly deportment, wearing a black velvet dinner jacket faced with purple silk. “How do you do, Mr. Sisson. You come straight from England?” Sir William held out his hand courteously and benevolently, smiling an old man's smile of hospitality. “Mr. Lilly has gone away?” said Aaron. “Yes. He left us several days ago.” Aaron hesitated. “You didn't expect me, then?” “Yes, oh, yes. Yes, oh, yes. Very glad to see you--well, now, come in and have some dinner--” At this moment Lady Franks appeared--short, rather plump, but erect and definite, in a black silk dress and pearls round her throat. “How do you do? We are just at dinner,” she said. “You haven't eaten? No--well, then--would you like a bath now, or--?” It was evident the Franks had dispensed much hospitality: much of it charitable. Aaron felt it. “No,” he said. “I'll wash my hands and come straight in, shall I?” “Yes, perhaps that would be better--” “I'm afraid I am a nuisance.” “Not at all--Beppe--” and she gave instructions in Italian. Another footman appeared, and took the big bag. Aaron took the little one this time. They climbed the broad, turning stairs, crossed another handsome lounge, gilt and ormolu and yellow silk chairs and scattered copies of _The Graphic_ or of _Country Life_, then they disappeared through a doorway into a much narrower flight of stairs. Man can so rarely keep it up all the way, the grandeur. Two black and white chamber-maids appeared. Aaron found himself in a blue silk bedroom, and a footman unstrapping his bag, which he did not want unstrapped. Next minute he was beckoned and allured by the Italian servants down the corridor, and presented to the handsome, spacious bathroom, which was warm and creamy-coloured and glittering with massive silver and mysterious with up-to-date conveniences. There he was left to his own devices, and felt like a small boy finding out how it works. For even the mere turning on of the taps was a problem in silver mechanics. In spite of all the splendours and the elaborated convenience, he washed himself in good hot water, and wished he were having a bath, chiefly because of the wardrobe of marvellous Turkish towels. Then he clicked his way back to his bedroom, changed his shirt and combed his hair in the blue silk bedroom with the Greuze picture, and felt a little dim and superficial surprise. He had fallen into country house parties before, but never into quite such a plushy sense of riches. He felt he ought to have his breath taken away. But alas, the cinema has taken our breath away so often, investing us in all the splendours of the splendidest American millionaire, or all the heroics and marvels of the Somme or the North Pole, that life has now no magnate richer than we, no hero nobler than we have been, on the film. _Connu_! _Connu_! Everything life has to offer is known to us, couldn't be known better, from the film. So Aaron tied his tie in front of a big Venice mirror, and nothing was a surprise to him. He found a footman hovering to escort him to the dining-room--a real Italian footman, uneasy because milady's dinner was unsettled. He entered the rather small dining-room, and saw the people at table. He was told various names: bowed to a young, slim woman with big blue eyes and dark hair like a photograph, then to a smaller rather colourless young woman with a large nose: then to a stout, rubicund, bald colonel, and to a tall, thin, Oxford-looking major with a black patch over his eye--both these men in khaki: finally to a good-looking, well-nourished young man in a dinner-jacket, and he sat down to his soup, on his hostess' left hand. The colonel sat on her right, and was confidential. Little Sir William, with his hair and his beard white like spun glass, his manner very courteous and animated, the purple facings of his velvet jacket very impressive, sat at the far end of the table jesting with the ladies and showing his teeth in an old man's smile, a little bit affected, but pleasant, wishing everybody to be happy. Aaron ate his soup, trying to catch up. Milady's own confidential Italian butler, fidelity itself, hovered quivering near, spiritually helping the newcomer to catch up. Two nice little entree dishes, specially prepared for Aaron to take the place of the bygone fish and vol au-vents of the proper dinner, testified to the courtesy and charity of his hostess. Well, eating rapidly, he had more or less caught up by the time the sweets came. So he swallowed a glass of wine and looked round. His hostess with her pearls, and her diamond star in her grey hair, was speaking of Lilly and then of music to him. “I hear you are a musician. That's what I should have been if I had had my way.” “What instrument?” asked Aaron. “Oh, the piano. Yours is the flute, Mr. Lilly says. I think the flute can be so attractive. But I feel, of course you have more range with the piano. I love the piano--and orchestra.” At that moment, the colonel and hostess-duties distracted her. But she came back in snatches. She was a woman who reminded him a little of Queen Victoria; so assured in her own room, a large part of her attention always given to the successful issue of her duties, the remainder at the disposal of her guests. It was an old-fashioned, not unpleasant feeling: like retrospect. But she had beautiful, big, smooth emeralds and sapphires on her fingers. Money! What a curious thing it is! Aaron noticed the deference of all the guests at table: a touch of obsequiousness: before the money! And the host and hostess accepted the deference, nay, expected it, as their due. Yet both Sir William and Lady Franks knew that it was only money and success. They had both a certain afterthought, knowing dimly that the game was but a game, and that they were the helpless leaders in the game. They had a certain basic ordinariness which prevented their making any great hits, and which kept them disillusioned all the while. They remembered their poor and insignificant days. “And I hear you were playing in the orchestra at Covent Garden. We came back from London last week. I enjoyed Beecham's operas so much.” “Which do you like best?” said Aaron. “Oh, the Russian. I think _Ivan_. It is such fine music.” “I find _Ivan_ artificial.” “Do you? Oh, I don't think so. No, I don't think you can say that.” Aaron wondered at her assurance. She seemed to put him just a tiny bit in his place, even in an opinion on music. Money gave her that right, too. Curious--the only authority left. And he deferred to her opinion: that is, to her money. He did it almost deliberately. Yes--what did he believe in, besides money? What does any man? He looked at the black patch over the major's eye. What had he given his eye for?--the nation's money. Well, and very necessary, too; otherwise we might be where the wretched Austrians are. Instead of which--how smooth his hostess' sapphires! “Of course I myself prefer Moussorgsky,” said Aaron. “I think he is a greater artist. But perhaps it is just personal preference.” “Yes. _Boris_ is wonderful. Oh, some of the scenes in _Boris_!” “And even more _Kovantchina_,” said Aaron. “I wish we could go back to melody pure and simple. Yet I find _Kovantchina_, which is all mass music practically, gives me more satisfaction than any other opera.” “Do you really? I shouldn't say so: oh, no--but you can't mean that you would like all music to go back to melody pure and simple! Just a flute--just a pipe! Oh, Mr. Sisson, you are bigoted for your instrument. I just LIVE in harmony--chords, chords!” She struck imaginary chords on the white damask, and her sapphires swam blue. But at the same time she was watching to see if Sir William had still got beside his plate the white medicine _cachet_ which he must swallow at every meal. Because if so, she must remind him to swallow it. However, at that very moment, he put it on his tongue. So that she could turn her attention again to Aaron and the imaginary chord on the white damask; the thing she just lived in. But the rubicund bald colonel, more rubicund after wine, most rubicund now the Marsala was going, snatched her attention with a burly homage to her femininity, and shared his fear with her with a boyish gallantry. When the women had gone up, Sir William came near and put his hand on Aaron's shoulder. It was evident the charm was beginning to work. Sir William was a self-made man, and not in the least a snob. He liked the fundamental ordinariness in Aaron, the commonness of the common man. “Well now, Mr. Sisson, we are very glad to see you! Very glad, indeed. I count Mr. Lilly one of the most interesting men it has ever been my good fortune to know. And so for your own sake, and for Mr. Lilly's sake, we are very glad to see you. Arthur, my boy, give Mr. Sisson some Marsala--and take some yourself.” “Thank you, Sir,” said the well-nourished young man in nice evening clothes. “You'll take another glass yourself, Sir?” “Yes, I will, I will. I will drink a glass with Mr. Sisson. Major, where are you wandering off to? Come and take a glass with us, my boy.” “Thanks, Sir William,” drawled the young major with the black patch. “Now, Colonel--I hope you are in good health and spirits.” “Never better, Sir William, never better.” “I'm very glad to hear it; very glad indeed. Try my Marsala--I think it is quite good. Port is beyond us for the moment--for the moment--” And the old man sipped his brown wine, and smiled again. He made quite a handsome picture: but he was frail. “And where are you bound, Mr. Sisson? Towards Rome?” “I came to meet Lilly,” said Aaron. “Ah! But Lilly has fled over the borders by this time. Never was such a man for crossing frontiers. Wonderful person, to be able to do it.” “Where has he gone?” said Aaron. “I think to Geneva for the moment. But he certainly talked of Venice. You yourself have no definite goal?” “No.” “Ah! You have not come to Italy to practice your art?” “I shall HAVE to practice it: or else--no, I haven't come for that.” “Ah, you will HAVE to practice it. Ah, yes! We are all under the necessity to eat. And you have a family in England? Am I not right?” “Quite. I've got a family depending on me.” “Yes, then you must practice your art: you must practice your art. Well--shall we join the ladies? Coffee will no doubt be served.” “Will you take my arm, Sir?” said the well-nourished Arthur. “Thank you, thank you,” the old man motioned him away. So they went upstairs to where the three women were sitting in the library round the fire, chattering not very interested. The entry of Sir William at once made a stir. The girl in white, with the biggish nose, fluttered round him. She was Arthur's wife. The girl in soft blue spread herself on the couch: she was the young Major's wife, and she had a blue band round her hair. The Colonel hovered stout and fidgetty round Lady Franks and the liqueur stand. He and the Major were both in khaki--belonging to the service on duty in Italy still. Coffee appeared--and Sir William doled out _creme de menthe_. There was no conversation--only tedious words. The little party was just commonplace and dull--boring. Yet Sir William, the self-made man, was a study. And the young, Oxford-like Major, with his English diffidence and his one dark, pensive, baffled eye was only waiting to be earnest, poor devil. The girl in white had been a sort of companion to Lady Franks, so that Arthur was more or less a son-in-law. In this capacity, he acted. Aaron strayed round uneasily looking at the books, bought but not read, and at the big pictures above. It was Arthur who fetched out the little boxes containing the orders conferred on Sir William for his war-work: and perhaps more, for the many thousands of pounds he had spent on his war-work. There were three orders: one British, and quite important, a large silver star for the breast: one Italian, smaller, and silver and gold; and one from the State of Ruritania, in silver and red-and-green enamel, smaller than the others. “Come now, William,” said Lady Franks, “you must try them all on. You must try them all on together, and let us see how you look.” The little, frail old man, with his strange old man's blue eyes and his old man's perpetual laugh, swelled out his chest and said: “What, am I to appear in all my vanities?” And he laughed shortly. “Of course you are. We want to see you,” said the white girl. “Indeed we do! We shouldn't mind all appearing in such vanities--what, Lady Franks!” boomed the Colonel. “I should think not,” replied his hostess. “When a man has honours conferred on him, it shows a poor spirit if he isn't proud of them.” “Of course I am proud of them!” said Sir William. “Well then, come and have them pinned on. I think it's wonderful to have got so much in one life-time--wonderful,” said Lady Franks. “Oh, Sir William is a wonderful man,” said the Colonel. “Well--we won't say so before him. But let us look at him in his orders.” Arthur, always ready on these occasions, had taken the large and shining British star from its box, and drew near to Sir William, who stood swelling his chest, pleased, proud, and a little wistful. “This one first, Sir,” said Arthur. Sir William stood very still, half tremulous, like a man undergoing an operation. “And it goes just here--the level of the heart. This is where it goes.” And carefully he pinned the large, radiating ornament on the black velvet dinner-jacket of the old man. “That is the first--and very becoming,” said Lady Franks. “Oh, very becoming! Very becoming!” said the tall wife of the Major--she was a handsome young woman of the tall, frail type. “Do you think so, my dear?” said the old man, with his eternal smile: the curious smile of old people when they are dead. “Not only becoming, Sir,” said the Major, bending his tall, slim figure forwards. “But a reassuring sign that a nation knows how to distinguish her valuable men.” “Quite!” said Lady Franks. “I think it is a very great honour to have got it. The king was most gracious, too-- Now the other. That goes beside it--the Italian--” Sir William stood there undergoing the operation of the pinning-on. The Italian star being somewhat smaller than the British, there was a slight question as to where exactly it should be placed. However, Arthur decided it: and the old man stood before the company with his two stars on his breast. “And now the Ruritanian,” said Lady Franks eagerly. “That doesn't go on the same level with the others, Lady Franks,” said Arthur. “That goes much lower down--about here.” “Are you sure?” said Lady Franks. “Doesn't it go more here?” “No no, no no, not at all. Here! Isn't it so, Sybil?” “Yes, I think so,” said Sybil. Old Sir William stood quite silent, his breast prepared, peering over the facings of his coat to see where the star was going. The Colonel was called in, and though he knew nothing about it, he agreed with Arthur, who apparently did know something. So the star was pinned quite low down. Sir William, peeping down, exclaimed: “Well, that is most curious now! I wear an order over the pit of my stomach! I think that is very curious: a curious place to wear an order.” “Stand up! Stand up and let us look!” said Lady Franks. “There now, isn't it handsome? And isn't it a great deal of honour for one man? Could he have expected so much, in one life-time? I call it wonderful. Come and look at yourself, dear”--and she led him to a mirror. “What's more, all thoroughly deserved,” said Arthur. “I should think so,” said the Colonel, fidgetting. “Ah, yes, nobody has deserved them better,” cooed Sybil. “Nor on more humane and generous grounds,” said the Major, _sotto voce._ “The effort to save life, indeed,” returned the Major's young wife: “splendid!” Sir William stood naively before the mirror and looked at his three stars on his black velvet dinner-jacket. “Almost directly over the pit of my stomach,” he said. “I hope that is not a decoration for my greedy APPETITE.” And he laughed at the young women. “I assure you it is in position, Sir,” said Arthur. “Absolutely correct. I will read it out to you later.” “Aren't you satisfied? Aren't you a proud man! Isn't it wonderful?” said Lady Franks. “Why, what more could a man want from life? He could never EXPECT so much.” “Yes, my dear. I AM a proud man. Three countries have honoured me--” There was a little, breathless pause. “And not more than they ought to have done,” said Sybil. “Well! Well! I shall have my head turned. Let me return to my own humble self. I am too much in the stars at the moment.” Sir William turned to Arthur to have his decorations removed. Aaron, standing in the background, felt the whole scene strange, childish, a little touching. And Lady Franks was so obviously trying to _console_ her husband: to console the frail, excitable old man with his honours. But why console him? Did he need consolation? And did she? It was evident that only the hard-money woman in her put any price on the decorations. Aaron came forward and examined the orders, one after the other. Just metal playthings of curious shiny silver and gilt and enamel. Heavy the British one--but only like some heavy buckle, a piece of metal merely when one turned it over. Somebody dropped the Italian cross, and there was a moment of horror. But the lump of metal took no hurt. Queer to see the things stowed in their boxes again. Aaron had always imagined these mysterious decorations as shining by nature on the breasts of heroes. Pinned-on pieces of metal were a considerable come-down. The orders were put away, the party sat round the fire in the comfortable library, the men sipping more _creme de menthe_, since nothing else offered, and the couple of hours in front promising the tedium of small-talk of tedious people who had really nothing to say and no particular originality in saying it. Aaron, however, had reckoned without his host. Sir William sat upright in his chair, with all the determination of a frail old man who insists on being level with the young. The new guest sat in a lower chair, smoking, that curious glimmer on his face which made him so attractive, and which only meant that he was looking on the whole scene from the outside, as it were, from beyond a fence. Sir William came almost directly to the attack. “And so, Mr. Sisson, you have no definite purpose in coming to Italy?” “No, none,” said Aaron. “I wanted to join Lilly.” “But when you had joined him--?” “Oh, nothing--stay here a time, in this country, if I could earn my keep.” “Ah!--earn your keep? So you hope to earn your keep here? May I ask how?” “By my flute.” “Italy is a poor country.” “I don't want much.” “You have a family to provide for.” “They are provided for--for a couple of years.” “Oh, indeed! Is that so?” The old man got out of Aaron the detailed account of his circumstances--how he had left so much money to be paid over to his wife, and had received only a small amount for himself. “I see you are like Lilly--you trust to Providence,” said Sir William. “Providence or fate,” said Aaron. “Lilly calls it Providence,” said Sir William. “For my own part, I always advise Providence plus a banking account. I have every belief in Providence, plus a banking account. Providence and no banking account I have observed to be almost invariably fatal. Lilly and I have argued it. He believes in casting his bread upon the waters. I sincerely hope he won't have to cast himself after his bread, one of these days. Providence with a banking account. Believe in Providence once you have secured enough to live on. I should consider it disastrous to believe in Providence BEFORE. One can never be SURE of Providence.” “What can you be sure of, then?” said Aaron. “Well, in moderation, I can believe in a little hard cash, and in my own ability to earn a little hard cash.” “Perhaps Lilly believes in his own ability, too.” “No. Not so. Because he will never directly work to earn money. He works--and works quite well, I am told: but only as the spirit moves him, and never with any eye to the market. Now I call that TEMPTING Providence, myself. The spirit may move him in quite an opposite direction to the market--then where is Lilly? I have put it to him more than once.” “The spirit generally does move him dead against the market,” said Aaron. “But he manages to scrape along.” “In a state of jeopardy: all the time in a state of jeopardy,” said the old man. “His whole existence, and that of his wife, is completely precarious. I found, in my youth, the spirit moved me to various things which would have left me and my wife starving. So I realised in time, this was no good. I took my spirit in hand, therefore, and made him pull the cart which mankind is riding in. I harnessed him to the work of productive labour. And so he brought me my reward.” “Yes,” said Aaron. “But every man according to his belief.” “I don't see,” said Sir William, “how a man can BELIEVE in a Providence unless he sets himself definitely to the work of earning his daily bread, and making provision for future needs. That's what Providence means to me--making provision for oneself and one's family. Now, Mr. Lilly--and you yourself--you say you believe in a Providence that does NOT compel you to earn your daily bread, and make provision. I confess myself I cannot see it: and Lilly has never been able to convince me.” “I don't believe in a kind-hearted Providence,” said Aaron, “and I don't believe Lilly does. But I believe in chance. I believe, if I go my own way, without tying my nose to a job, chance will always throw something in my way: enough to get along with.” “But on what do you base such a very unwarrantable belief?” “I just feel like that.” “And if you are ever quite without success--and nothing to fall back on?” “I can work at something.” “In case of illness, for example?” “I can go to a hospital--or die.” “Dear me! However, you are more logical than Lilly. He seems to believe that he has the Invisible--call it Providence if you will--on his side, and that this Invisible will never leave him in the lurch, or let him down, so long as he sticks to his own side of the bargain, and NEVER works for his own ends. I don't quite see how he works. Certainly he seems to me a man who squanders a great deal of talent unworthily. Yet for some reason or other he calls this true, genuine activity, and has a contempt for actual work by which a man makes provision for his years and for his family. In the end, he will have to fall back on charity. But when I say so, he denies it, and says that in the end we, the men who work and make provision, will have to fall back on him. Well, all I can say is, that SO FAR he is in far greater danger of having to fall back on me, than I on him.” The old man sat back in his chair with a little laugh of triumph. But it smote almost devilishly on Aaron's ears, and for the first time in his life he felt that there existed a necessity for taking sides. “I don't suppose he will do much falling back,” he said. “Well, he is young yet. You are both young. You are squandering your youth. I am an old man, and I see the end.” “What end, Sir William?” “Charity--and poverty--and some not very congenial 'job,' as you call it, to put bread in your mouth. No, no, I would not like to trust myself to your Providence, or to your Chance. Though I admit your Chance is a sounder proposition than Lilly's Providence. You speculate with your life and your talent. I admit the nature which is a born speculator. After all, with your flute, you will speculate in other people's taste for luxury, as a man may speculate in theatres or _trains de luxe_. You are the speculator. That may be your way of wisdom. But Lilly does not even speculate. I cannot see his point. I cannot see his point. I cannot see his point. Yet I have the greatest admiration for his mentality.” The old man had fired up during this conversation--and all the others in the room had gone silent. Lady Franks was palpably uneasy. She alone knew how frail the old man was--frailer by far than his years. She alone knew what fear of his own age, what fear of death haunted him now: fear of his own non-existence. His own old age was an agony to him; worse than an agony, a horror. He wanted to be young--to live, to live. And he was old, he was breaking up. The glistening youth of Aaron, the impetuousness of Lilly fascinated him. And both these men seemed calmly to contradict his own wealth and honours. Lady Franks tried to turn off the conversation to the trickles of normal chit-chat. The Colonel was horribly bored--so were all the women--Arthur was indifferent. Only the young Major was implicated, troubled in his earnest and philosophic spirit. “What I can't see,” he said, “is the place that others have in your scheme.” “Is isn't a scheme,” said Aaron. “Well then, your way of life. Isn't it pretty selfish, to marry a woman and then expect her to live on very little indeed, and that always precarious, just because you happen to believe in Providence or in Chance: which I think worse? What I don't see is where others come in. What would the world be like if everybody lived that way?” “Other people can please themselves,” said Aaron. “No, they can't--because you take first choice, it seems to me. Supposing your wife--or Lilly's wife--asks for security and for provision, as Sir William says. Surely she has a right to it.” “If I've no right to it myself--and I HAVE no right to it, if I don't want it--then what right has she?” “Every right, I should say. All the more since you are improvident.” “Then she must manage her rights for herself. It's no good her foisting her rights on to me.” “Isn't that pure selfishness?” “It may be. I shall send my wife money as long as I've money to send.” “And supposing you have none?” “Then I can't send it--and she must look out for herself.” “I call that almost criminal selfishness.” “I can't help it.” The conversation with the young Major broke off. “It is certainly a good thing for society that men like you and Mr. Lilly are not common,” said Sir William, laughing. “Becoming commoner every day, you'll find,” interjaculated the Colonel. “Indeed! Indeed! Well. May we ask you another question, Mr. Sisson? I hope you don't object to our catechism?” “No. Nor your judgment afterwards,” said Aaron, grinning. “Then upon what grounds did you abandon your family? I know it is a tender subject. But Lilly spoke of it to us, and as far I could see....” “There were no grounds,” said Aaron. “No, there weren't I just left them.” “Mere caprice?” “If it's a caprice to be begotten--and a caprice to be born--and a caprice to die--then that was a caprice, for it was the same.” “Like birth or death? I don't follow.” “It happened to me: as birth happened to me once--and death will happen. It was a sort of death, too: or a sort of birth. But as undeniable as either. And without any more grounds.” The old, tremulous man, and the young man were watching one another. “A natural event,” said Sir William. “A natural event,” said Aaron. “Not that you loved any other woman?” “God save me from it.” “You just left off loving?” “Not even that. I went away.” “What from?” “From it all.” “From the woman in particular?” “Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, that.” “And you couldn't go back?” Aaron shook his head. “Yet you can give no reasons?” “Not any reasons that would be any good. It wasn't a question of reasons. It was a question of her and me and what must be. What makes a child be born out of its mother to the pain and trouble of both of them? I don't know.” “But that is a natural process.” “So is this--or nothing.” “No,” interposed the Major. “Because birth is a universal process--and yours is a specific, almost unique event.” “Well, unique or not, it so came about. I didn't ever leave off loving her--not as far as I know. I left her as I shall leave the earth when I die--because it has to be.” “Do you know what I think it is, Mr. Sisson?” put in Lady Franks. “I think you are just in a wicked state of mind: just that. Mr. Lilly, too. And you must be very careful, or some great misfortune will happen to you.” “It may,” said Aaron. “And it will, mark my word, it will.” “You almost wish it might, as a judgment on me,” smiled Aaron. “Oh, no, indeed. I should only be too sorry. But I feel it will, unless you are careful.” “I'll be careful, then.” “Yes, and you can't be too careful.” “You make me frightened.” “I would like to make you very frightened indeed, so that you went back humbly to your wife and family.” “It would HAVE to be a big fright then, I assure you.” “Ah, you are really heartless. It makes me angry.” She turned angrily aside. “Well, well! Well, well! Life! Life! Young men are a new thing to me!” said Sir William, shaking his head. “Well, well! What do you say to whiskey and soda, Colonel?” “Why, delighted, Sir William,” said the Colonel, bouncing up. “A night-cap, and then we retire,” said Lady Franks. Aaron sat thinking. He knew Sir William liked him: and that Lady Franks didn't. One day he might have to seek help from Sir William. So he had better placate milady. Wrinkling the fine, half mischievous smile on his face, and trading on his charm, he turned to his hostess. “You wouldn't mind, Lady Franks, if I said nasty things about my wife and found a lot of fault with her. What makes you angry is that I know it is not a bit more her fault than mine, that we come apart. It can't be helped.” “Oh, yes, indeed. I disapprove of your way of looking at things altogether. It seems to me altogether cold and unmanly and inhuman. Thank goodness my experience of a man has been different.” “We can't all be alike, can we? And if I don't choose to let you see me crying, that doesn't prove I've never had a bad half hour, does it? I've had many--ay, and a many.” “Then why are you so WRONG, so wrong in your behaviour?” “I suppose I've got to have my bout out: and when it's out, I can alter.” “Then I hope you've almost had your bout out,” she said. “So do I,” said he, with a half-repentant, half-depressed look on his attractive face. The corners of his mouth grimaced slightly under his moustache. “The best thing you can do is to go straight back to England, and to her.” “Perhaps I'd better ask her if she wants me, first,” he said drily. “Yes, you might do that, too.” And Lady Franks felt she was quite getting on with her work of reform, and the restoring of woman to her natural throne. Best not go too fast, either. “Say when,” shouted the Colonel, who was manipulating the syphon. “When,” said Aaron. The men stood up to their drinks. “Will you be leaving in the morning, Mr. Sisson?” asked Lady Franks. “May I stay till Monday morning?” said Aaron. They were at Saturday evening. “Certainly. And you will take breakfast in your room: we all do. At what time? Half past eight?” “Thank you very much.” “Then at half past eight the man will bring it in. Goodnight.” Once more in his blue silk bedroom, Aaron grimaced to himself and stood in the middle of the room grimacing. His hostess' admonitions were like vitriol in his ears. He looked out of the window. Through the darkness of trees, the lights of a city below. Italy! The air was cold with snow. He came back into his soft, warm room. Luxurious it was. And luxurious the deep, warm bed. He was still asleep when the man came noiselessly in with the tray: and it was morning. Aaron woke and sat up. He felt that the deep, warm bed, and the soft, warm room had made him sleep too well: robbed him of his night, like a narcotic. He preferred to be more uncomfortable and more aware of the flight of the dark hours. It seemed numbing. The footman in his grey house-jacket was neat and Italian and sympathising. He gave good-morning in Italian--then softly arranged the little table by the bedside, and put out the toast and coffee and butter and boiled egg and honey, with silver and delicate china. Aaron watched the soft, catlike motions of the man. The dark eyes glanced once at the blond man, leaning on his elbow on the pillow. Aaron's face had that watchful, half-amused expression. The man said something in Italian. Aaron shook his head, laughed, and said: “Tell me in English.” The man went softly to the window curtains, and motioned them with his hand. “Yes, do,” said Aaron. So the man drew the buff-coloured silk curtains: and Aaron, sitting in bed, could see away beyond red roofs of a town, and in the further heaven great snowy mountains. “The Alps,” he said in surprise. “Gli Alpi--si, signore.” The man bowed, gathered up Aaron's clothes, and silently retired. Aaron watched through the window. It was a frosty morning at the end of September, with a clear blue morning-sky, Alpine, and the watchful, snow-streaked mountain tops bunched in the distance, as if waiting. There they were, hovering round, circling, waiting. They reminded him of marvellous striped sky-panthers circling round a great camp: the red-roofed city. Aaron looked, and looked again. In the near distance, under the house elm-tree tops were yellowing. He felt himself changing inside his skin. So he turned away to his coffee and eggs. A little silver egg-cup with a curious little frill round it: honey in a frail, iridescent glass bowl, gold-iridescent: the charm of delicate and fine things. He smiled half mockingly to himself. Two instincts played in him: the one, an instinct for fine, delicate things: he had attractive hands; the other, an inclination to throw the dainty little table with all its niceties out of the window. It evoked a sort of devil in him. He took his bath: the man had brought back his things: he dressed and went downstairs. No one in the lounge: he went down to the ground floor: no one in the big hall with its pillars of yellow marble and its gold arches, its enormous, dark, bluey-red carpet. He stood before the great glass doors. Some red flowers still were blooming in the tubs, on the steps, handsome: and beautiful chrysanthemums in the wide portico. Beyond, yellow leaves were already falling on the green grass and the neat drive. Everywhere was silent and empty. He climbed the wide stairs, sat in the long, upper lounge where the papers were. He wanted his hat and coat, and did not know where to find them. The windows looked on to a terraced garden, the hill rising steeply behind the house. He wanted to go out. So he opened more doors, and in a long drawing-room came upon five or six manservants, all in the grey house-jackets, all clean-shaven, neat, with neat black hair, all with dusters or brushes or feather brooms, and all frolicking, chattering, playing like so many monkeys. They were all of the same neat, smallish size. They were all laughing. They rolled back a great rug as if it were some football game, one flew at the curtains. And they merely looked at Aaron and went on chattering, and laughing and dusting. Surprised, and feeling that he trespassed, he stood at the window a moment looking out. The noise went on behind him. So he turned, smiling, and asked for his hat, pointing to his head. They knew at once what he wanted. One of the fellows beckoned him away, down to the hall and to the long cupboard place where hats and coats and sticks were hung. There was his hat; he put it on, while the man chattered to him pleasantly and unintelligibly, and opened for him the back door, into the garden. CHAPTER XIII. WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT The fresh morning air comes startling after a central heated house. So Aaron found it. He felt himself dashing up the steps into the garden like a bird dashing out of a trap where it has been caught: that warm and luxurious house. Heaven bless us, we who want to save civilisation. We had better make up our minds what of it we want to save. The kernel may be all well and good. But there is precious little kernel, to a lot of woolly stuffing and poisonous rind. The gardens to Sir William's place were not imposing, and still rather war-neglected. But the pools of water lay smooth in the bright air, the flowers showed their colour beside the walks. Many birds dashed about, rather bewildered, having crossed the Alps in their migration southwards. Aaron noted with gratification a certain big magnificence, a certain reckless powerfulness in the still-blossoming, harsh-coloured, autumn flowers. Distinct satisfaction he derived from it. He wandered upwards, up the succeeding flights of step; till he came to the upper rough hedge, and saw the wild copse on the hill-crest just above. Passing through a space in the hedge, he climbed the steep last bit of Sir William's lane. It was a little vineyard, with small vines and yellowing leaves. Everywhere the place looked neglected--but as if man had just begun to tackle it once more. At the very top, by the wild hedge where spindle-berries hung pink, seats were placed, and from here the view was very beautiful. The hill dropped steep beneath him. A river wound on the near side of the city, crossed by a white bridge. The city lay close clustered, ruddy on the plains, glittering in the clear air with its flat roofs and domes and square towers, strangely naked-seeming in the clear, clean air. And massive in the further nearness, snow-streaked mountains, the tiger-like Alps. Tigers prowling between the north and the south. And this beautiful city lying nearest exposed. The snow-wind brushed her this morning like the icy whiskers of a tiger. And clear in the light lay Novara, wide, fearless, violent Novara. Beautiful the perfect air, the perfect and unblemished Alp-sky. And like the first southern flower, Novara. Aaron sat watching in silence. Only the uneasy birds rustled. He watched the city and the winding river, the bridges, and the imminent Alps. He was on the south side. On the other side of the time barrier. His old, sleepy English nature was startled in its sleep. He felt like a man who knows it is time to wake up, and who doesn't want to wake up, to face the responsibility of another sort of day. To open his darkest eyes and wake up to a new responsibility. Wake up and enter on the responsibility of a new self in himself. Ach, the horror of responsibility! He had all his life slept and shelved the burden. And he wanted to go on sleeping. It was so hateful to have to get a new grip on his own bowels, a new hard recklessness into his heart, a new and responsible consciousness into his mind and soul. He felt some finger prodding, prodding, prodding him awake out of the sleep of pathos and tragedy and spasmodic passion, and he wriggled, unwilling, oh, most unwilling to undertake the new business. In fact he ran away again. He gave a last look at the town and its white-fanged mountains, and descended through the garden, round the way of the kitchen garden and garage and stables and pecking chickens, back to the house again. In the hall still no one. He went upstairs to the long lounge. There sat the rubicund, bald, boy-like Colonel reading the _Graphic_. Aaron sat down opposite him, and made a feeble attempt at conversation. But the Colonel wasn't having any. It was evident he didn't care for the fellow--Mr. Aaron, that is. Aaron therefore dried up, and began to sit him out, with the aid of _The Queen_. Came a servant, however, and said that the Signor Colonello was called up from the hospital, on the telephone. The Colonel once departed, Aaron fled again, this time out of the front doors, and down the steep little park to the gates. Huge dogs and little dogs came bounding forward. Out of the lodge came the woman with the keys, smiling very pleasantly this morning. So, he was in the street. The wide road led him inevitably to the big bridge, with the violent, physical stone statue-groups. Men and women were moving about, and he noticed for the first time the littleness and the momentaneousness of the Italians in the street. Perhaps it was the wideness of the bridge and the subsequent big, open boulevard. But there it was: the people seemed little, upright brisk figures moving in a certain isolation, like tiny figures on a big stage. And he felt himself moving in the space between. All the northern cosiness gone. He was set down with a space round him. Little trams flitted down the boulevard in the bright, sweet light. The barbers' shops were all busy, half the Novarese at that moment ambushed in lather, full in the public gaze. A shave is nothing if not a public act, in the south. At the little outdoor tables of the cafes a very few drinkers sat before empty coffee-cups. Most of the shops were shut. It was too soon after the war for life to be flowing very fast. The feeling of emptiness, of neglect, of lack of supplies was evident everywhere. Aaron strolled on, surprised himself at his gallant feeling of liberty: a feeling of bravado and almost swaggering carelessness which is Italy's best gift to an Englishman. He had crossed the dividing line, and the values of life, though ostensibly and verbally the same, were dynamically different. Alas, however, the verbal and the ostensible, the accursed mechanical ideal gains day by day over the spontaneous life-dynamic, so that Italy becomes as idea-bound and as automatic as England: just a business proposition. Coming to the station, he went inside. There he saw a money-changing window which was open, so he planked down a five-pound note and got two-hundred-and-ten lire. Here was a start. At a bookstall he saw a man buy a big timetable with a large railway map in it. He immediately bought the same. Then he retired to a corner to get his whereabouts. In the morning he must move: where? He looked on the map. The map seemed to offer two alternatives, Milan and Genoa. He chose Milan, because of its musical associations and its cathedral. Milano then. Strolling and still strolling, he found the boards announcing Arrivals and Departures. As far as he could make out, the train for Milan left at 9:00 in the morning. So much achieved, he left the big desolating caravanserai of the station. Soldiers were camped in every corner, lying in heaps asleep. In their grey-green uniform, he was surprised at their sturdy limbs and uniformly short stature. For the first time, he saw the cock-feathers of the Bersaglieri. There seemed a new life-quality everywhere. Many worlds, not one world. But alas, the one world triumphing more and more over the many worlds, the big oneness swallowing up the many small diversities in its insatiable gnawing appetite, leaving a dreary sameness throughout the world, that means at last complete sterility. Aaron, however, was too new to the strangeness, he had no eye for the horrible sameness that was spreading like a disease over Italy from England and the north. He plunged into the space in front of the station, and took a new, wide boulevard. To his surprise he ran towards a big and over-animated statue that stood resolutely with its back to the magnificent snow-domes of the wild Alps. Wolves in the street could not have startled him more than those magnificent fierce-gleaming mountains of snow at the street-end, beyond the statue. He stood and wondered, and never thought to look who the gentleman was. Then he turned right round, and began to walk home. Luncheon was at one o'clock. It was half-past twelve when he rang at the lodge gates. He climbed through the leaves of the little park, on a side-path, rather reluctantly towards the house. In the hall Lady Franks was discussing with Arthur a fat Pekinese who did not seem very well. She was sure the servants did not obey her orders concerning the Pekinese bitch. Arthur, who was more than indifferent, assured her they did. But she seemed to think that the whole of the male human race was in league against the miserable specimen of a she-dog. She almost cried, thinking her Queenie _might_ by some chance meet with, perhaps, a harsh word or look. Queenie apparently fattened on the secret detestation of the male human species. “I can't bear to think that a dumb creature might be ill-treated,” she said to Aaron. “Thank goodness the Italians are better than they used to be.” “Are they better than they used to be?” “Oh, much. They have learnt it from us.” She then enquired if her guest had slept, and if he were rested from his journey. Aaron, into whose face the faint snow-wind and the sun had brought a glow, replied that he had slept well and enjoyed the morning, thank you. Whereupon Lady Franks knitted her brows and said Sir William had had such a bad night. He had not been able to sleep, and had got up and walked about the room. The least excitement, and she dreaded a break-down. He must have absolute calm and restfulness. “There's one for you and your jawing last night, Aaron, my boy!” said our hero to himself. “I thought Sir William seemed so full of life and energy,” he said, aloud. “Ah, did you! No, he WANTS to be. But he can't do it. He's very much upset this morning. I have been very anxious about him.” “I am sorry to hear that.” Lady Franks departed to some duty. Aaron sat alone before the fire. It was a huge fireplace, like a dark chamber shut in by tall, finely-wrought iron gates. Behind these iron gates of curly iron the logs burned and flickered like leopards slumbering and lifting their heads within their cage. Aaron wondered who was the keeper of the savage element, who it was that would open the iron grille and throw on another log, like meat to the lions. To be sure the fire was only to be looked at: like wild beasts in the Zoo. For the house was warm from roof to floor. It was strange to see the blue air of sunlight outside, the yellow-edged leaves falling in the wind, the red flowers shaking. The gong sounded softly through the house. The Colonel came in heartily from the garden, but did not speak to Aaron. The Major and his wife came pallid down the stairs. Lady Franks appeared, talking domestic-secretarial business with the wife of Arthur. Arthur, well-nourished and half at home, called down the stairs. And then Sir William descended, old and frail now in the morning, shaken: still he approached Aaron heartily, and asked him how he did, and how he had spent his morning. The old man who had made a fortune: how he expected homage: and how he got it! Homage, like most things, is just a convention and a social trick. Aaron found himself paying homage, too, to the old man who had made a fortune. But also, exacting a certain deference in return, from the old man who had made a fortune. Getting it, too. On what grounds? Youth, maybe. But mostly, scorn for fortunes and fortune-making. Did he scorn fortunes and fortune-making? Not he, otherwise whence this homage for the old man with much money? Aaron, like everybody else, was rather paralysed by a million sterling, personified in one old man. Paralysed, fascinated, overcome. All those three. Only having no final control over his own make-up, he could not drive himself into the money-making or even into the money-having habit. And he had just wit enough to threaten Sir William's golden king with his own ivory queen and knights of wilful life. And Sir William quaked. “Well, and how have you spent your morning?” asked the host. “I went first to look at the garden.” “Ah, not much to see now. They have been beautiful with flowers, once. But for two and a half years the house has been a hospital for officers--and even tents in the park and garden--as many as two hundred wounded and sick at a time. We are only just returning to civil life. And flowers need time. Yes--yes--British officers--for two and a half years. But did you go up, now, to the belvedere?” “To the top--where the vines are? I never expected the mountains.” “You never expected the mountains? Pray, why not? They are always there!” “But I was never there before. I never knew they were there, round the town. I didn't expect it like that.” “Ah! So you found our city impressive?” “Very! Ah, very! A new world to me. I feel I've come out of myself.” “Yes, it is a wonderful sight--a wonderful sight-- But you have not been INTO the town?” “Yes. I saw the men being shaved, and all the soldiers at the station: and a statue, and mountains behind it. Oh, I've had a full morning.” “A full morning! That is good, that is good!” The old man looked again at the younger man, and seemed to get life from him, to live in him vicariously. “Come,” said the hostess. “Luncheon.” Aaron sat again on his hostess' left hand. The Colonel was more affable now it was meal-time. Sir William was again in a good humour, chaffing the young ladies with an old man's gallantry. But now he insisted on drawing Aaron into the play. And Aaron did not want to be drawn. He did not one bit want to chaffer gallantries with the young women. Between him and Sir William there was a curious rivalry--unconscious on both sides. The old knight had devoted an energetic, adventurous, almost an artistic nature to the making of his fortune and the developing of later philanthropies. He had no children. Aaron was devoting a similar nature to anything but fortune-making and philanthropy. The one held life to be a storing-up of produce and a conservation of energy: the other held life to be a sheer spending of energy and a storing-up of nothing but experience. There they were, in opposition, the old man and the young. Sir William kept calling Aaron into the chaffer at the other end of the table: and Aaron kept on refusing to join. He hated long distance answers, anyhow. And in his mood of the moment he hated the young women. He had a conversation with Arthur about statues: concerning which Aaron knew nothing, and Arthur less than nothing. Then Lady Franks turned the conversation to the soldiers at the station, and said how Sir William had equipped rest-huts for the Italian privates, near the station: but that such was the jealousy and spite of the Italian Red Cross--or some such body, locally--that Sir William's huts had been left empty--standing unused--while the men had slept on the stone floor of the station, night after night, in icy winter. There was evidently much bitter feeling as a result of Sir William's philanthropy. Apparently even the honey of lavish charity had turned to gall in the Italian mouth: at least the official mouth. Which gall had been spat back at the charitable, much to his pain. It is in truth a difficult world, particularly when you have another race to deal with. After which came the beef-olives. “Oh,” said Lady Franks, “I had such a dreadful dream last night, such a dreadful dream. It upset me so much. I have not been able to get over it all day.” “What was it?” said Aaron. “Tell it, and break it.” “Why,” said his hostess, “I dreamed I was asleep in my room--just as I actually was--and that it was night, yet with a terrible sort of light, like the dead light before dawn, so that one could see. And my maid Giuseppina came running into my room, saying: 'Signora! Signora! Si alza! Subito! Signora! Vengono su!'--and I said, 'Chi? Chi sono chi vengono? Chi?'--'I Novaresi! I Novaresi vengono su. Vengono qui!'--I got out of bed and went to the window. And there they were, in the dead light, rushing up to the house, through the trees. It was so awful, I haven't been able to forget it all day.” “Tell me what the words are in English,” said Aaron. “Why,” she said, “get up, get up--the Novaresi, the people of Novara are coming up--vengono su--they are coming up--the Novara people--work-people. I can't forget it. It was so real, I can't believe it didn't actually happen.” “Ah,” said Aaron. “It will never happen. I know, that whatever one foresees, and FEELS has happened, never happens in real life. It sort of works itself off through the imagining of it.” “Well, it was almost more real to me than real life,” said his hostess. “Then it will never happen in real life,” he said. Luncheon passed, and coffee. The party began to disperse--Lady Franks to answer more letters, with the aid of Arthur's wife--some to sleep, some to walk. Aaron escaped once more through the big gates. This time he turned his back on the town and the mountains, and climbed up the hill into the country. So he went between the banks and the bushes, watching for unknown plants and shrubs, hearing the birds, feeling the influence of a new soil. At the top of the hill he saw over into vineyards, and a new strange valley with a winding river, and jumbled, entangled hills. Strange wild country so near the town. It seemed to keep an almost virgin wildness--yet he saw the white houses dotted here and there. Just below him was a peasant house: and on a little loggia in the sun two peasants in white shirtsleeves and black Sunday suits were sitting drinking wine, and talking, talking. Peasant youths in black hats, their sweethearts in dark stuff dresses, wearing no hat, but a black silk or a white silk scarf, passed slowly along the little road just below the ridge. None looked up to see Aaron sitting there alone. From some hidden place somebody was playing an accordion, a jerky sound in the still afternoon. And away beyond lay the unchanging, mysterious valley, and the infolding, mysterious hills of Italy. Returning back again another way, he lost himself at the foot of the hill in new and deserted suburb streets--unfinished streets of seemingly unfinished houses. Then a sort of boulevard where bourgeois families were taking the Sunday afternoon walk: stout papas, stout, pallid mamas in rather cheap black fur, little girls very much dressed, and long lads in short socks and round sailor caps, ribbons fluttering. Alien they felt, alien, alien, as a bourgeois crowd always does, but particularly a foreign, Sunday-best bourgeois crowd. Aaron wandered and wandered, finding the tram terminus and trying blank, unfinished street after street. He had a great disinclination to ask his way. At last he recognised the bank and the little stream of water that ran along the street side. So he was back in time for tea. A hospital nurse was there, and two other strange women. Arthur played the part of host. Sir William came in from a walk with the dogs, but retired to his room without taking tea. And so the evening fell. Aaron sat in the hall at some distance from the fire, which burned behind its wrought iron gates. He was tired now with all his impressions, and dispirited. He thought of his wife and children at home: of the church-bells ringing so loudly across the field beyond his garden end: of the dark-clad people trailing unevenly across the two paths, one to the left, one to the right, forking their way towards the houses of the town, to church or to chapel: mostly to chapel. At this hour he himself would be dressed in his best clothes, tying his bow, ready to go out to the public house. And his wife would be resenting his holiday departure, whilst she was left fastened to the children. Rather tired and dispirited in this alien place, he wondered if he wished himself back. But the moment he actually _realised_ himself at home, and felt the tension of barrenness which it meant, felt the curious and deadly opposition of his wife's will against his own nature, the almost nauseating ache which it amounted to, he pulled himself together and rejoiced again in his new surroundings. Her will, her will, her terrible, implacable, cunning will! What was there in the female will so diabolical, he asked himself, that it could press like a flat sheet of iron against a man all the time? The female will! He realised now that he had a horror of it. It was flat and inflexible as a sheet of iron. But also it was cunning as a snake that could sing treacherous songs. Of two people at a deadlock, he always reminded himself, there is not one only wholly at fault. Both must be at fault. Having a detached and logical soul, he never let himself forget this truth. Take Lottie! He had loved her. He had never loved any other woman. If he had had his other affairs--it was out of spite or defiance or curiosity. They meant nothing. He and Lottie had loved one another. And the love had developed almost at once into a kind of combat. Lottie had been the only child of headstrong, well-to-do parents. He also had been the only child of his widowed mother. Well then, both he and Lottie had been brought up to consider themselves the first in whatsoever company they found themselves. During the early months of the marriage he had, of course, continued the spoiling of the young wife. But this never altered the fact that, by his very nature, he considered himself as first and almost as single in any relationship. First and single he felt, and as such he bore himself. It had taken him years to realise that Lottie also felt herself first and single: under all her whimsicalness and fretfulness was a conviction as firm as steel: that she, as woman, was the centre of creation, the man was but an adjunct. She, as woman, and particularly as mother, was the first great source of life and being, and also of culture. The man was but the instrument and the finisher. She was the source and the substance. Sure enough, Lottie had never formulated this belief inside herself. But it was formulated for her in the whole world. It is the substantial and professed belief of the whole white world. She did but inevitably represent what the whole world around her asserted: the life-centrality of woman. Woman, the life-bearer, the life-source. Nearly all men agree to the assertion. Practically all men, even while demanding their selfish rights as superior males, tacitly agree to the fact of the sacred life-bearing priority of woman. Tacitly, they yield the worship to that which is female. Tacitly, they conspire to agree that all that is productive, all that is fine and sensitive and most essentially noble, is woman. This, in their productive and religious souls, they believe. And however much they may react against the belief, loathing their women, running to prostitutes, or beer or _anything_, out of reaction against this great and ignominious dogma of the sacred priority of women, still they do but profane the god they worship. Profaning woman, they still inversely worship her. But in Aaron was planted another seed. He did not know it. He started off on the good old tack of worshipping his woman while his heart was honest, and profaning her in his fits of temper and revolt. But he made a bad show. Born in him was a spirit which could not worship woman: no, and would not. Could not and would not. It was not in him. In early days, he tried to pretend it was in him. But through his plaintive and homage-rendering love of a young husband was always, for the woman, discernible the arrogance of self-unyielding male. He never yielded himself: never. All his mad loving was only an effort. Afterwards, he was as devilishly unyielded as ever. And it was an instinct in her, that her man must yield to her, so that she should envelop him yielding, in her all-beneficent love. She was quite sure that her love was all-beneficent. Of this no shadow of doubt. She was quite sure that the highest her man could ever know or ever reach, was to be perfectly enveloped in her all-beneficent love. This was her idea of marriage. She held it not as an idea, but as a profound impulse and instinct: an instinct developed in her by the age in which she lived. All that was deepest and most sacred in he feeling centred in this belief. And he outraged her! Oh, from the first day and the first night, she felt he outraged her. True, for some time she had been taken in by his manifest love. But though you can deceive the conscious mind, you can never deceive the deep, unconscious instinct. She could never understand whence arose in her, almost from the first days of marriage with him, her terrible paroxysms of hatred for him. She was in love with him: ah, heaven, how maddeningly she was in love with him: a certain unseizable beauty that was his, and which fascinated her as a snake a bird. But in revulsion, how she hated him! How she abhorred him! How she despised and shuddered at him! He seemed a horrible thing to her. And then again, oh, God, the agony of her desire for him. The agony of her long, long desire for him. He was a passionate lover. He gave her, ostensibly, all she asked for. He withheld from her nothing, no experience, no degree of intimacy. She was his initiate, or he hers. And yet, oh, horror for a woman, he withheld everything from her. He withheld the very centre of himself. For a long time, she never realised. She was dazed and maddened only. But as months of married experience passed into years of married torment, she began to understand. It was that, after their most tremendous, and, it seemed to her, heaven-rending passion--yea, when for her every veil seemed rent and a terrible and sacred creative darkness covered the earth--then--after all this wonder and miracle--in crept a poisonous grey snake of disillusionment, a poisonous grey snake of disillusion that bit her to madness, so that she really was a mad woman, demented. Why? Why? He never gave himself. He never came to her, _really_. He withheld himself. Yes, in those supreme and sacred times which for her were the whole culmination of life and being, the ecstasy of unspeakable passional conjunction, he was not really hers. He was withheld. He withheld the central core of himself, like the devil and hell-fiend he was. He cheated and made play with her tremendous passional soul, her sacred sex passion, most sacred of all things for a woman. All the time, some central part of him stood apart from her, aside, looking on. Oh, agony and horror for a passionate, fierce-hearted woman! She who loved him. She who loved him to madness. She who would have died for him. She who did die with him, many terrible and magnificent connubial deaths, in his arms, her husband. Her husband! How bitter the word grew to her! Her husband! and him never once given, given wholly to her! Her husband--and in all the frenzied finality of desire, she never _fully_ possessed him, not once. No, not once. As time went on, she learned it for inevitable. Not once! And then, how she hated him! Cheated, foiled, betrayed, forced to love him or to hate him: never able to be at peace near him nor away from him: poor Lottie, no wonder she was as a mad woman. She was strictly as a woman demented, after the birth of her second child. For all her instinct, all her impulse, all her desire, and above all, all her _will_, was to possess her man in very fulness once: just once: and once and for all. Once, just once: and it would be once and for all. But never! Never! Not once! Never! Not for one single solitary second! Was it not enough to send a woman mad! Was it not enough to make her demented! Yes, and mad she was. She made his life a hell for him. She bit him to the bone with her frenzy of rage, chagrin, and agony. She drove him mad, too: mad, so that he beat her: mad so that he longed to kill her. But even in his greatest rages it was the same: he never finally lost himself: he remained, somewhere in the centre, in possession of himself. She sometimes wished he would kill her: or that she would kill him. Neither event happened. And neither of them understood what was happening. How should they? They were both dazed, horrified, and mortified. He took to leaving her alone as much as was possible. But when he _had_ to come home, there was her terrible will, like a flat, cold snake coiled round his soul and squeezing him to death. Yes, she did not relent. She was a good wife and mother. All her duties she fulfilled. But she was not one to yield. _He_ must yield. That was written in eternal letters, on the iron tablet of her will. _He_ must yield. She the woman, the mother of his children, how should she ever even think to yield? It was unthinkable. He, the man, the weak, the false, the treacherous, the half-hearted, it was he who must yield. Was not hers the divine will and the divine right? Ha, she would be less than woman if she ever capitulated, abandoned her divine responsibility as woman! No, _he_ must yield. So, he was unfaithful to her. Piling reproach after reproach upon himself, he added adultery to his brutality. And this was the beginning of the end. She was more than maddened: but he began to grow silent, unresponsive, as if he did not hear her. He was unfaithful to her: and oh, in such a low way. Such shame, such shame! But he only smiled carelessly now, and asked her what she wanted. She had asked for all she got. That he reiterated. And that was all he would do. Terrible was, that she found even his smile of insolent indifference half-beautiful. Oh, bitter chain to bear! But she summoned up all her strange woman's will. She fought against his fascination, the fascination he exerted over her. With fearful efforts of will she fought against it, and mastered it. And then, suddenly, horror and agony of it, up it would rush in her again, her unbearable desire for him, the longing for his contact, his quality of beauty. That was a cross hard to bear. Yet even that she bore. And schooled herself into a fretful, petulant manner of indifference. Her odd, whimsical petulance hid a will which he, and he alone, knew to be stronger than steel, strong as a diabolical, cold, grey snake that presses and presses and cannot-relax: nay, cannot relax. She became the same as he. Even in her moments of most passionate desire for him, the cold and snake-like tension of her will never relaxed, and the cold, snake-like eye of her intention never closed. So, till it reached a deadlock. Each will was wound tense, and so fixed. Fixed! There was neither any relaxing or any increase of pressure. Fixed. Hard like a numbness, a grip that was solidifying and turning to stone. He realised, somehow, that at this terrible passive game of fixed tension she would beat him. Her fixed female soul, her wound-up female will would solidify into stone--whereas his must break. In him something must break. It was a cold and fatal deadlock, profitless. A life-automatism of fixed tension that suddenly, in him, did break. His will flew loose in a recoil: a recoil away from her. He left her, as inevitably as a broken spring flies out from its hold. Not that he was broken. He would not do her even that credit. He had only flown loose from the old centre-fixture. His will was still entire and unabated. Only he did not know: he did not understand. He swung wildly about from place to place, as if he were broken. Then suddenly, on this Sunday evening in the strange country, he realised something about himself. He realised that he had never intended to yield himself fully to her or to anything: that he did not intend ever to yield himself up entirely to her or to anything: that his very being pivoted on the fact of his isolate self-responsibility, aloneness. His intrinsic and central aloneness was the very centre of his being. Break it, and he broke his being. Break this central aloneness, and he broke everything. It was the great temptation, to yield himself: and it was the final sacrilege. Anyhow, it was something which, from his profoundest soul, he did not intend to do. By the innermost isolation and singleness of his own soul he would abide though the skies fell on top of one another, and seven heavens collapsed. Vaguely he realised this. And vaguely he realised that this had been the root cause of his strife with Lottie: Lottie, the only person who had mattered at all to him in all the world: save perhaps his mother. And his mother had not mattered, no, not one-half nor one-fifth what Lottie had mattered. So it was: there was, for him, only her significant in the universe. And between him and her matters were as they were. He coldly and terribly hated her, for a moment. Then no more. There was no solution. It was a situation without a solution. But at any rate, it was now a defined situation. He could rest in peace. Thoughts something in this manner ran through Aaron's subconscious mind as he sat still in the strange house. He could not have fired it all off at any listener, as these pages are fired off at any chance reader. Nevertheless there it was, risen to half consciousness in him. All his life he had _hated_ knowing what he felt. He had wilfully, if not consciously, kept a gulf between his passional soul and his open mind. In his mind was pinned up a nice description of himself, and a description of Lottie, sort of authentic passports to be used in the conscious world. These authentic passports, self-describing: nose short, mouth normal, etc.; he had insisted that they should do all the duty of the man himself. This ready-made and very banal idea of himself as a really quite nice individual: eyes blue, nose short, mouth normal, chin normal; this he had insisted was really himself. It was his conscious mask. Now at last, after years of struggle, he seemed suddenly to have dropped his mask on the floor, and broken it. His authentic self-describing passport, his complete and satisfactory idea of himself suddenly became a rag of paper, ridiculous. What on earth did it matter if he was nice or not, if his chin was normal or abnormal. His mask, his idea of himself dropped and was broken to bits. There he sat now maskless and invisible. That was how he strictly felt: invisible and undefined, rather like Wells' _Invisible Man_. He had no longer a mask to present to people: he was present and invisible: they _could_ not really think anything about him, because they could not really see him. What did they see when they looked at him? Lady Franks, for example. He neither knew nor cared. He only knew he was invisible to himself and everybody, and that all thinking about what he was like was only a silly game of Mrs. Mackenzie's Dead. So there. The old Aaron Sisson was as if painfully transmuted, as the Invisible Man when he underwent his transmutations. Now he was gone, and no longer to be seen. His visibility lost for ever. And then what? Sitting there as an invisible presence, the preconceived world melted also and was gone. Lady Franks, Sir William, all the guests, they talked and maneuvered with their visible personalities, manipulating the masks of themselves. And underneath there was something invisible and dying--something fading, wilting: the essential plasm of themselves: their invisible being. Well now, and what next? Having in some curious manner tumbled from the tree of modern knowledge, and cracked and rolled out from the shell of the preconceived idea of himself like some dark, night-lustrous chestnut from the green ostensibility of the burr, he lay as it were exposed but invisible on the floor, knowing, but making no conceptions: knowing, but having no idea. Now that he was finally unmasked and exposed, the accepted idea of himself cracked and rolled aside like a broken chestnut-burr, the mask split and shattered, he was at last quiet and free. He had dreaded exposure: and behold, we cannot be exposed, for we are invisible. We cannot be exposed to the looks of others, for our very being is night-lustrous and unseeable. Like the Invisible Man, we are only revealed through our clothes and our masks. In his own powerful but subconscious fashion Aaron realized this. He was a musician. And hence even his deepest _ideas_: were not word-ideas, his very thoughts were not composed of words and ideal concepts. They too, his thoughts and his ideas, were dark and invisible, as electric vibrations are invisible no matter how many words they may purport. If I, as a word-user, must translate his deep conscious vibrations into finite words, that is my own business. I do but make a translation of the man. He would speak in music. I speak with words. The inaudible music of his conscious soul conveyed his meaning in him quite as clearly as I convey it in words: probably much more clearly. But in his own mode only: and it was in his own mode only he realised what I must put into words. These words are my own affair. His mind was music. Don't grumble at me then, gentle reader, and swear at me that this damned fellow wasn't half clever enough to think all these smart things, and realise all these fine-drawn-out subtleties. You are quite right, he wasn't, yet it all resolved itself in him as I say, and it is for you to prove that it didn't. In his now silent, maskless state of wordless comprehension, he knew that he had never wanted to surrender himself utterly to Lottie: nor to his mother: nor to anybody. The last extreme of self-abandon in love was for him an act of false behaviour. His own nature inside him fated him not to take this last false step, over the edge of the abyss of selflessness. Even if he wanted to, he could not. He might struggle on the edge of the precipice like an assassin struggling with his own soul, but he could not conquer. For, according to all the current prejudice and impulse in one direction, he too had believed that the final achievement, the consummation of human life, was this flinging oneself over the precipice, down the bottomless pit of love. Now he realised that love, even in its intensest, was only an attribute of the human soul: one of its incomprehensible gestures. And to fling down the whole soul in one gesture of finality in love was as much a criminal suicide as to jump off a church-tower or a mountain-peak. Let a man give himself as much as he liked in love, to seven thousand extremities, he must never give himself _away_. The more generous and the more passionate a soul, the more it _gives_ itself. But the more absolute remains the law, that it shall never give itself away. Give thyself, but give thyself not away. That is the lesson written at the end of the long strange lane of love. The _idee fixe_ of today is that every individual shall not only give himself, but shall achieve the last glory of giving himself away. And since this takes two--you can't even make a present of yourself unless you've got somebody to receive the present; since this last extra-divine act takes two people to perform it, you've got to take into count not only your giver but your receiver. Who is going to be the giver and who the receiver. Why, of course, in our long-drawn-out Christian day, man is given and woman is recipient. Man is the gift, woman the receiver. This is the sacrament we live by; the holy Communion we live for. That man gives himself to woman in an utter and sacred abandon, all, all, all himself given, and taken. Woman, eternal woman, she is the communicant. She receives the sacramental body and spirit of the man. And when she's got it, according to her passionate and all-too-sacred desire, completely, when she possesses her man at last finally and ultimately, without blemish or reservation in the perfection of the sacrament: then, also, poor woman, the blood and the body of which she has partaken become insipid or nauseous to her, she is driven mad by the endless meal of the marriage sacrament, poisoned by the sacred communion which was her goal and her soul's ambition. We have pushed a process into a goal. The aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof. Love is a process of the incomprehensible human soul: love also incomprehensible, but still only a process. The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish. The completion of the process of love is the arrival at a state of simple, pure self-possession, for man and woman. Only that. Which isn't exciting enough for us sensationalists. We prefer abysses and maudlin self-abandon and self-sacrifice, the degeneration into a sort of slime and merge. Perhaps, truly, the process of love is never accomplished. But it moves in great stages, and at the end of each stage a true goal, where the soul possesses itself in simple and generous singleness. Without this, love is a disease. So Aaron, crossing a certain border-line and finding himself alone completely, accepted his loneliness or singleness as a fulfilment, a state of fulfilment. The long fight with Lottie had driven him at last to himself, so that he was quiet as a thing which has its root deep in life, and has lost its anxiety. As for considering the lily, it is not a matter of consideration. The lily toils and spins hard enough, in her own way. But without that strain and that anxiety with which we try to weave ourselves a life. The lily is life-rooted, life-central. She _cannot_ worry. She is life itself, a little, delicate fountain playing creatively, for as long or as short a time as may be, and unable to be anxious. She may be sad or sorry, if the north wind blows. But even then, anxious she cannot be. Whether her fountain play or cease to play, from out the cold, damp earth, she cannot be anxious. She may only be glad or sorry, and continue her way. She is perfectly herself, whatever befall! even if frosts cut her off. Happy lily, never to be saddled with an _idee fixe_, never to be in the grip of a monomania for happiness or love or fulfilment. It is not _laisser aller_. It is life-rootedness. It is being by oneself, life-living, like the much-mooted lily. One toils, one spins, one strives: just as the lily does. But like her, taking one's own life-way amidst everything, and taking one's own life-way alone. Love too. But there also, taking one's way alone, happily alone in all the wonders of communion, swept up on the winds, but never swept away from one's very self. Two eagles in mid-air, maybe, like Whitman's Dalliance of Eagles. Two eagles in mid-air, grappling, whirling, coming to their intensification of love-oneness there in mid-air. In mid-air the love consummation. But all the time each lifted on its own wings: each bearing itself up on its own wings at every moment of the mid-air love consummation. That is the splendid love-way. ............... The party was festive at dinner-time, the women in their finest dresses, new flowers on the table, the best wine going. It was Sunday evening. Aaron too was dressed--and Lady Franks, in black lace and pearls, was almost gay. There were quails for dinner. The Colonel was quite happy. An air of conviviality gathered round the table during the course of the meal. “I hope,” said Aaron, “that we shall have some music tonight.” “I want so much to hear your flute,” said his hostess. “And I your piano,” he said. “I am very weak--very out of practise. I tremble at the thought of playing before a musician. But you must not be too critical.” “Oh,” said Aaron, “I am not a man to be afraid of.” “Well, we will see,” said Lady Franks. “But I am afraid of music itself.” “Yes,” said Aaron. “I think it is risky.” “Risky! I don't see that! Music risky? Bach? Beethoven! No, I don't agree. On the contrary, I think it is most elevating--most morally inspiring. No, I tremble before it because it is so wonderful and elevating.” “I often find it makes me feel diabolical,” said he. “That is your misfortune, I am sure,” said Lady Franks. “Please do take another--but perhaps you don't like mushrooms?” Aaron quite liked mushrooms, and helped himself to the _entree_. “But perhaps,” said she, “you are too modern. You don't care for Bach or Beethoven or Chopin--dear Chopin.” “I find them all quite as modern as I am.” “Is that so! Yes. For myself I am quite old-fashioned--though I can appreciate Strauss and Stravinsky as well, some things. But my old things--ah, I don't think the moderns are so fine. They are not so deep. They haven't fathomed life so deeply.” Lady Franks sighed faintly. “They don't care for depths,” said Aaron. “No, they haven't the capacity. But I like big, deep music. Oh, I love orchestra. But my instrument is the piano. I like the great masters, Bach, Beethoven. They have such faith. You were talking of faith--believing that things would work out well for you in the end. Beethoven inspires that in me, too.” “He makes you feel that all will be well with you at last?” “Yes, he does. He makes me feel faith in my PERSONAL destiny. And I do feel that there is something in one's special fate. I feel that I myself have a special kind of fate, that will always look after me.” “And you can trust to it?” “Yes, I can. It ALWAYS turns out right. I think something has gone wrong--and then, it always turns out right. Why when we were in London--when we were at lunch one morning it suddenly struck me, haven't I left my fur cloak somewhere? It was rather cold, so I had taken it with me, and then never put it on. And I hadn't brought it home. I had left it somewhere. But whether in a taxi, or in a shop, or in a little show of pictures I had been to, I couldn't remember. I COULD NOT remember. And I thought to myself: have I lost my cloak? I went round to everywhere I could think of: no-trace of it. But I didn't give it up. Something prompted me not to give it up: quite distinctly, I felt something telling me that I should get it back. So I called at Scotland Yard and gave the information. Well, two days later I had a notice from Scotland Yard, so I went. And there was my cloak. I had it back. And that has happened to me almost every time. I almost always get my things back. And I always feel that something looks after me, do you know: almost takes care of me.” “But do you mean when you lose things--or in your life?” “I mean when I lose things--or when I want to get something I want--I am very nearly ALWAYS successful. And I always feel there is some sort of higher power which does it for me.” “Finds your cloak for you.” “Yes. Wasn't it extraordinary? I felt when I saw my cloak in Scotland Yard: There, I KNEW I should recover you. And I always feel, as I say, that there is some higher power which helps me. Do you feel the same?” “No, not that way, worse luck. I lost a batch of music a month ago which didn't belong to me--and which I couldn't replace. But I never could recover it: though I'm sure nobody wanted it.” “How very unfortunate! Whereas my fur cloak was just the thing that gets stolen most.” “I wished some power would trace my music: but apparently we aren't all gifted alike with guardian angels.” “Apparently not. And that is how I regard it: almost as a gift, you know, that my fairy godmother gave me in my cradle.” “For always recovering your property?” “Yes--and succeeding in my undertakings.” “I'm afraid I had no fairy godmother.” “Well--I think I had. And very glad I am of it.” “Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at his hostess. So the dinner sailed merrily on. “But does Beethoven make you feel,” said Aaron as an afterthought, “in the same way--that you will always find the things you have lost?” “Yes--he makes me feel the same faith: that what I lose will be returned to me. Just as I found my cloak. And that if I enter into an undertaking, it will be successful.” “And your life has been always successful?” “Yes--almost always. We have succeeded with almost everything.” “Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at her again. But even so, he could see a good deal of hard wornness under her satisfaction. She had had her suffering, sure enough. But none the less, she was in the main satisfied. She sat there, a good hostess, and expected the homage due to her success. And of course she got it. Aaron himself did his little share of shoe-licking, and swallowed the taste of boot-polish with a grimace, knowing what he was about. The dinner wound gaily to an end. The ladies retired. Sir William left his seat of honour at the end of the table and came and sat next to Aaron, summoning the other three men to cluster near. “Now, Colonel,” said the host, “send round the bottle.” With a flourish of the elbow and shoulder, the Colonel sent on the port, actually port, in those bleak, post-war days! “Well, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “we will drink to your kind Providence: providing, of course, that we shall give no offence by so doing.” “No, sir; no, sir! The Providence belonged to Mr. Lilly. Mr. Sisson put his money on kindly fortune, I believe,” said Arthur, who rosy and fresh with wine, looked as if he would make a marvelous _bonne bouchee_ for a finely-discriminating cannibal. “Ah, yes, indeed! A much more ingratiating lady to lift our glasses to. Mr. Sisson's kindly fortune. _Fortuna gentil-issima_! Well, Mr. Sisson, and may your Lady Fortune ever smile on you.” Sir William lifted his glass with an odd little smirk, some touch of a strange, prim old satyr lurking in his oddly inclined head. Nay, more than satyr: that curious, rather terrible iron demon that has fought with the world and wrung wealth from it, and which knows all about it. The devilish spirit of iron itself, and iron machines. So, with his strange, old smile showing his teeth rather terribly, the old knight glowered sightlessly over his glass at Aaron. Then he drank: the strange, careful, old-man's gesture in drinking. “But,” said Aaron, “if Fortune is a female---” “Fortune! Fortune! Why, Fortune is a lady. What do you say, Major?” “She has all the airs of one, Sir William,” said the Major, with the wistful grimness of his age and culture. And the young fellow stared like a crucified cyclops from his one eye: the black shutter being over the other. “And all the graces,” capped Sir William, delighted with himself. “Oh, quite!” said the Major. “For some, all the airs, and for others, all the graces.” “Faint heart ne'er won fair lady, my boy,” said Sir William. “Not that your heart is faint. On the contrary--as we know, and your country knows. But with Lady Fortune you need another kind of stout heart--oh, quite another kind.” “I believe it, sir: and the kind of stout heart which I am afraid I haven't got,” said the Major. “What!” said the old man. “Show the white feather before you've tackled the lady! Fill the Major's glass, Colonel. I am quite sure we will none of us ever say die.” “Not likely. Not if we know it,” said the Colonel, stretching himself heartily inside his tunic. He was becoming ruddier than the cherry. All he cared about at the moment was his gay little port glass. But the Major's young cheek was hollow and sallow, his one eye terribly pathetic. “And you, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “mean to carry all before you by taking no thought for the morrow. Well, now, we can only wish you success.” “I don't want to carry all before me,” said Aaron. “I should be sorry. I want to walk past most of it.” “Can you tell us where to? I am intrigued, as Sybil says, to know where you will walk to. Come now. Enlighten us.” “Nowhere, I suppose.” “But is that satisfactory? Can you find it satisfactory?” “Is it even true?” said the Major. “Isn't it quite as positive an act to walk away from a situation as to walk towards it?” “My dear boy, you can't merely walk away from a situation. Believe that. If you walk away from Rome, you walk into the Maremma, or into the Alban Hills, or into the sea--but you walk into something. Now if I am going to walk away from Rome, I prefer to choose my direction, and therefore my destination.” “But you can't,” said the Major. “What can't you?” “Choose. Either your direction or your destination.” The Major was obstinate. “Really!” said Sir William. “I have not found it so. I have not found it so. I have had to keep myself hard at work, all my life, choosing between this or that.” “And we,” said the Major, “have no choice, except between this or nothing.” “Really! I am afraid,” said Sir William, “I am afraid I am too old--or too young--which shall I say?--to understand.” “Too young, sir,” said Arthur sweetly. “The child was always father to the man, I believe.” “I confess the Major makes me feel childish,” said the old man. “The choice between this or nothing is a puzzler to me. Can you help me out, Mr. Sisson? What do you make of this this-or-nothing business? I can understand neck-or-nothing---” “I prefer the NOTHING part of it to the THIS part of it,” said Aaron, grinning. “Colonel,” said the old man, “throw a little light on this nothingness.” “No, Sir William,” said the Colonel. “I am all right as I am.” “As a matter of fact, so are we all, perfectly A-one,” said Arthur. Aaron broke into a laugh. “That's the top and bottom of it,” he laughed, flushed with wine, and handsome. We're all as right as ninepence. Only it's rather nice to talk.” “There!” said Sir William. “We're all as right as ninepence! We're all as right ninepence. So there well leave it, before the Major has time to say he is twopence short.” Laughing his strange old soundless laugh, Sir William rose and made a little bow. “Come up and join the ladies in a minute or two,” he said. Arthur opened the door for him and he left the room. The four men were silent for a moment--then the Colonel whipped up the decanter and filled his glass. Then he stood up and clinked glasses with Aaron, like a real old sport. “Luck to you,” he said. “Thanks,” said Aaron. “You're going in the morning?” said Arthur. “Yes,” said Aaron. “What train?” said Arthur. “Eight-forty.” “Oh--then we shan't see you again. Well--best of luck.” “Best of luck--” echoed the Colonel. “Same to you,” said Aaron, and they all peered over their glasses and quite loved one another for a rosy minute. “I should like to know, though,” said the hollow-cheeked young Major with the black flap over his eye, “whether you do really mean you are all right--that it is all right with you--or whether you only say so to get away from the responsibility.” “I mean I don't really care--I don't a damn--let the devil take it all.” “The devil doesn't want it, either,” said the Major. “Then let him leave it. I don't care one single little curse about it all.” “Be damned. What is there to care about?” said the Colonel. “Ay, what?” said Aaron. “It's all the same, whether you care or don't care. So I say it's much easier not to care,” said Arthur. “Of course it is,” said the Colonel gaily. “And I think so, too,” said Aaron. “Right you are! We're all as right as ninepence--what? Good old sport! Here's yours!” cried the Colonel. “We shall have to be going up,” said Arthur, wise in his generation. As they went into the hall, Arthur suddenly put one arm round Aaron's waist, and one arm round the Colonel's, and the three did a sudden little barn-dance towards the stairs. Arthur was feeling himself quite let loose again, back in his old regimental mess. Approaching the foot of the stairs, he let go again. He was in that rosy condition when united-we-stand. But unfortunately it is a complicated job to climb the stairs in unison. The whole lot tends to fall backwards. Arthur, therefore, rosy, plump, looking so good to eat, stood still a moment in order to find his own neatly-slippered feet. Having found them, he proceeded to put them carefully one before the other, and to his enchantment found that this procedure was carrying him magically up the stairs. The Colonel, like a drowning man, clutched feebly for the straw of the great stair-rail--and missed it. He would have gone under, but that Aaron's hand gripped his arm. So, orientating once more like a fragile tendril, he reached again for the banister rail, and got it. After which, lifting his feet as if they were little packets of sand tied to his trouser buttons, he manipulated his way upwards. Aaron was in that pleasant state when he saw what everybody else was doing and was unconscious of what he did himself. Whilst tall, gaunt, erect, like a murdered Hamlet resurrected in khaki, with the terrible black shutter over his eye, the young Major came last. Arthur was making a stern fight for his composure. His whole future depended on it. But do what he would, he could not get the flushed, pleased, mess-happy look off his face. The Colonel, oh, awful man, did a sort of plump roly-poly-cake-walk, like a fat boy, right to the very door of that santum-sanctorum, the library. Aaron was inwardly convulsed. Even the Major laughed. But Arthur stiffened himself militarily and cleared his throat. All four started to compose themselves, like actors going on the stage, outside that library door. And then Arthur softly, almost wistfully, opened and held the door for the others to pass. The Colonel slunk meekly in, and sat in a chair in the background. The Major stalked in expressionless, and hovered towards the sofa where his wife sat. There was a rather cold-water-down-your-back feeling in the library. The ladies had been waiting for coffee. Sir William was waiting, too. Therefore in a little tension, half silent, the coffee was handed round. Lady Franks was discussing something with Arthur's wife. Arthur's wife was in a cream lace dress, and looking what is called lovely. The Major's wife was in amethyst chiffon with dark-red roses, and was looking blindingly beautiful. The Colonel was looking into his coffee-cup as wistfully as if it contained the illusion of tawny port. The Major was looking into space, as if there and there alone, etc. Arthur was looking for something which Lady Franks had asked for, and which he was much too flushed to find. Sir William was looking at Aaron, and preparing for another _coeur a coeur_. “Well,” he said, “I doubt if you will care for Milan. It is one of the least Italian of all the towns, in my opinion. Venice, of course, is a thing apart. I cannot stand, myself, that miserable specimen the modern Roman. He has most of the vices of the old Romans and none of the virtues. The most congenial town, perhaps, for a stranger, is Florence. But it has a very bad climate.” Lady Franks rose significantly and left the room, accompanied by Arthur's wife. Aaron knew, silently, that he was summoned to follow. His hostess had her eye on him this evening. But always postponing his obedience to the cool commands of women, he remained talking with his host in the library, and sipping _creme de menthe_! Came the ripple of the pianoforte from the open doorway down at the further end of the room. Lady Franks was playing, in the large drawing-room. And the ripple of the music contained in it the hard insistence of the little woman's will. Coldly, and decidedly, she intended there should be no more unsettling conversations for the old Sir William. Aaron was to come forthwith into the drawing room. Which Aaron plainly understood--and so he didn't go. No, he didn't go, though the pianoforte rippled and swelled in volume. No, and he didn't go even when Lady Franks left off playing and came into the library again. There he sat, talking with Sir William. Let us do credit to Lady Franks' will-power, and admit that the talk was quite empty and distracted--none of the depths and skirmishes of the previous occasions. None the less, the talk continued. Lady Franks retired, discomfited, to her piano again. She would never break in upon her lord. So now Aaron relented. He became more and more distracted. Sir William wandered away like some restless, hunted soul. The Colonel still sat in his chair, nursing his last drop of _creme de menthe_ resentfully. He did not care for the green toffee-stuff. Arthur was busy. The Major lay sprawled in the last stages of everything on the sofa, holding his wife's hand. And the music came pathetically through the open folding-doors. Of course, she played with feeling--it went without saying. Aaron's soul felt rather tired. But she had a touch of discrimination also. He rose and went to the drawing-room. It was a large, vacant-seeming, Empire sort of drawing-room, with yellow silk chairs along the walls and yellow silk panels upon the walls, and a huge, vasty crystal chandelier hanging from a faraway-above ceiling. Lady Franks sat at a large black Bechstein piano at one end of this vacant yellow state-room. She sat, a little plump elderly lady in black lace, for all the world like Queen Victoria in Max Beerbohm's drawing of Alfred Tennyson reading to her Victorian Majesty, with space before her. Arthur's wife was bending over some music in a remote corner of the big room. Aaron seated himself on one of the chairs by the wall, to listen. Certainly it was a beautiful instrument. And certainly, in her way, she loved it. But Aaron remembered an anthem in which he had taken part as a boy. His eye is on the sparrow So I know He watches me. For a long time he had failed to catch the word _sparrow_, and had heard: His eye is on the spy-hole So I know He watches me. Which was just how it had all seemed to him, as a boy. Now, as ever, he felt the eye was on the spy-hole. There sat the woman playing music. But her inward eye was on the spy-hole of her vital affairs--her domestic arrangements, her control of her household, guests and husband included. The other eye was left for the music, don't you know. Sir William appeared hovering in the doorway, not at all liking the defection of Mr. Aaron. Then he retreated. He seemed not to care for music. The Major's wife hovered--felt it her duty to _aude_, or play audience--and entered, seating herself in a breath of lilac and amethyst again at the near distance. The Major, after a certain beating about the bush, followed and sat wrapt in dim contemplation near his wife. Arthur luckily was still busy with something. Aaron of course made proper musical remarks in the intervals--Arthur's wife sorted out more pieces. Arthur appeared--and then the Colonel. The Colonel tip-toed beautifully across the wide blank space of the Empire room, and seated himself on a chair, rather in the distance, with his back to the wall, facing Aaron. When Lady Franks finished her piece, to everybody's amazement the Colonel clapped gaily to himself and said Bravo! as if at a Cafe Chantant, looking round for his glass. But there was no glass. So he crossed his neatly-khakied legs, and looked rapt again. Lady Franks started with a _vivace_ Schumann piece. Everybody listened in sanctified silence, trying to seem to like it. When suddenly our Colonel began to spring and bounce in his chair, slinging his loose leg with a kind of rapture up and down in the air, and capering upon his posterior, doing a sitting-down jig to the Schumann _vivace_. Arthur, who had seated himself at the farthest extremity of the room, winked with wild bliss at Aaron. The Major tried to look as if he noticed nothing, and only succeeded in looking agonised. His wife studied the point of her silver shoe minutely, and peeped through her hair at the performance. Aaron grimly chuckled, and loved the Colonel with real tenderness. And the game went on while the _vivace_ lasted. Up and down bounced the plump Colonel on his chair, kicking with his bright, black-patent toe higher and higher, getting quite enthusiastic over his jig. Rosy and unabashed, he was worthy of the great nation he belonged to. The broad-seated Empire chair showed no signs of giving way. Let him enjoy himself, away there across the yellow Sahara of this silk-panelled salon. Aaron felt quite cheered up. “Well, now,” he thought to himself, “this man is in entire command of a very important branch of the British Service in Italy. We are a great race still.” But Lady Franks must have twigged. Her playing went rather stiff. She came to the end of the _vivace_ movement, and abandoned her piece. “I always prefer Schumann in his _vivace_ moods,” said Aaron. “Do you?” said Lady Franks. “Oh, I don't know.” It was now the turn of Arthur's wife to sing. Arthur seemed to get further away: if it was possible, for he was at the remotest remote end of the room, near the gallery doors. The Colonel became quiet, pensive. The Major's wife eyed the young woman in white lace, and seemed not to care for lace. Arthur seemed to be trying to push himself backwards through the wall. Lady Franks switched on more lights into the vast and voluminous crystal chandelier which hung like some glory-cloud above the room's centre. And Arthur's wife sang sweet little French songs, and _Ye Banks and Braes_, and _Caro mio ben_, which goes without saying: and so on. She had quite a nice voice and was quite adequately trained. Which is enough said. Aaron had all his nerves on edge. Then he had to play the flute. Arthur strolled upstairs with him, arm-in-arm, where he went to fetch his instrument. “I find music in the home rather a strain, you know,” said Arthur. “Cruel strain. I quite agree,” said Aaron. “I don't mind it so much in the theatre--or even a concert--where there are a lot of other people to take the edge off-- But after a good dinner--” “It's medicine,” said Aaron. “Well, you know, it really is, to me. It affects my inside.” Aaron laughed. And then, in the yellow drawing-room, blew into his pipe and played. He knew so well that Arthur, the Major, the Major's wife, the Colonel, and Sir William thought it merely an intolerable bore. However, he played. His hostess even accompanied him in a Mozart bit. CHAPTER XIV. XX SETTEMBRE Aaron was awakened in the morning by the soft entrance of the butler with the tray: it was just seven o'clock. Lady Franks' household was punctual as the sun itself. But our hero roused himself with a wrench. The very act of lifting himself from the pillow was like a fight this morning. Why? He recognized his own wrench, the pain with which he struggled under the necessity to move. Why shouldn't he want to move? Why not? Because he didn't want the day in front--the plunge into a strange country, towards nowhere, with no aim in view. True, he said that ultimately he wanted to join Lilly. But this was hardly more than a sop, an excuse for his own irrational behaviour. He was breaking loose from one connection after another; and what for? Why break every tie? Snap, snap, snap went the bonds and ligatures which bound him to the life that had formed him, the people he had loved or liked. He found all his affections snapping off, all the ties which united him with his own people coming asunder. And why? In God's name, why? What was there instead? There was nothingness. There was just himself, and blank nothingness. He had perhaps a faint sense of Lilly ahead of him; an impulse in that direction, or else merely an illusion. He could not persuade himself that he was seeking for love, for any kind of unison or communion. He knew well enough that the thought of any loving, any sort of real coming together between himself and anybody or anything, was just objectionable to him. No--he was not moving _towards_ anything: he was moving almost violently away from everything. And that was what he wanted. Only that. Only let him _not_ run into any sort of embrace with anything or anybody--this was what he asked. Let no new connection be made between himself and anything on earth. Let all old connections break. This was his craving. Yet he struggled under it this morning as under the lid of a tomb. The terrible sudden weight of inertia! He knew the tray stood ready by the bed: he knew the automobile would be at the door at eight o'clock, for Lady Franks had said so, and he half divined that the servant had also said so: yet there he lay, in a kind of paralysis in this bed. He seemed for the moment to have lost his will. Why go forward into more nothingness, away from all that he knew, all he was accustomed to and all he belonged to? However, with a click he sat up. And the very instant he had poured his coffee from the little silver coffee-pot into his delicate cup, he was ready for anything and everything. The sense of silent adventure took him, the exhilarated feeling that he was fulfilling his own inward destiny. Pleasant to taste was the coffee, the bread, the honey--delicious. The man brought his clothes, and again informed him that the automobile would be at the door at eight o'clock: or at least so he made out. “I can walk,” said Aaron. “Milady ha comandato l'automobile,” said the man softly. It was evident that if Milady had ordered it, so it must be. So Aaron left the still-sleeping house, and got into the soft and luxurious car. As he dropped through the park he wondered that Sir William and Lady Franks should be so kind to him: a complete stranger. But so it was. There he sat in their car. He wondered, also, as he ran over the bridge and into the city, whether this soft-running automobile would ever rouse the socialistic bile of the work-people. For the first time in his life, as he sat among the snug cushions, he realised what it might be to be rich and uneasy: uneasy, even if not afraid, lurking there inside an expensive car.--Well, it wasn't much of a sensation anyhow: and riches were stuffy, like wadded upholstery on everything. He was glad to get out into the fresh air of the common crowd. He was glad to be in the bleak, not-very-busy station. He was glad to be part of common life. For the very atmosphere of riches seems to be stuffed and wadded, never any real reaction. It was terrible, as if one's very body, shoulders and arms, were upholstered and made cushiony. Ugh, but he was glad to shake off himself the atmosphere of wealth and motor-cars, to get out of it all. It was like getting out of quilted clothes. “Well,” thought Aaron, “if this is all it amounts to, to be rich, you can have riches. They talk about money being power. But the only sort of power it has over me is to bring on a kind of numbness, which I fairly hate. No wonder rich people don't seem to be really alive.” The relief of escaping quite took away his self-conscious embarrassment at the station. He carried his own bags, bought a third-class ticket, and got into the train for Milan without caring one straw for the comments or the looks of the porters. It began to rain. The rain ran across the great plain of north Italy. Aaron sat in his wood-seated carriage and smoked his pipe in silence, looking at the thick, short Lombards opposite him without heeding them. He paid hardly any outward attention to his surroundings, but sat involved in himself. In Milan he had been advised to go to the Hotel Britannia, because it was not expensive, and English people went there. So he took a carriage, drove round the green space in front of Milan station, and away into the town. The streets were busy, but only half-heartedly so. It must be confessed that every new move he made was rather an effort. Even he himself wondered why he was struggling with foreign porters and foreign cabmen, being talked at and not understanding a word. But there he was. So he went on with it. The hotel was small and congenial. The hotel porter answered in English. Aaron was given a little room with a tiny balcony, looking on to a quiet street. So, he had a home of his own once more. He washed, and then counted his money. Thirty-seven pounds he had: and no more. He stood on the balcony and looked at the people going by below. Life seems to be moving so quick, when one looks down on it from above. Across the road was a large stone house with its green shutters all closed. But from the flagpole under the eaves, over the central window of the uppermost floor--the house was four storeys high--waved the Italian flag in the melancholy damp air. Aaron looked at it--the red, white and green tricolour, with the white cross of Savoy in the centre. It hung damp and still. And there seemed a curious vacancy in the city--something empty and depressing in the great human centre. Not that there was really a lack of people. But the spirit of the town seemed depressed and empty. It was a national holiday. The Italian flag was hanging from almost every housefront. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Aaron sat in the restaurant of the hotel drinking tea, for he was rather tired, and looking through the thin curtains at the little square outside, where people passed: little groups of dark, aimless-seeming men, a little bit poorer looking--perhaps rather shorter in stature--but very much like the people in any other town. Yet the feeling of the city was so different from that of London. There seemed a curious emptiness. The rain had ceased, but the pavements were still wet. There was a tension. Suddenly there was a noise of two shots, fired in rapid succession. Aaron turned startled to look into the quiet piazza. And to his amazement, the pavements were empty, not a soul was in sight. Two minutes before the place was busy with passers-by, and a newspaper man selling the Corriere, and little carriages rattling through. Now, as if by magic, nobody, nothing. It was as if they had all melted into thin air. The waiter, too, was peeping behind the curtain. A carriage came trotting into the square--an odd man took his way alone--the traffic began to stir once more, and people reappeared as suddenly as they had disappeared. Then the waiter ran hastily and furtively out and craned his neck, peering round the square. He spoke with two youths--rather loutish youths. Then he returned to his duty in the hotel restaurant. “What was it? What were the shots?” Aaron asked him. “Oh--somebody shooting at a dog,” said the man negligently. “At a dog!” said Aaron, with round eyes. He finished his tea, and went out into the town. His hotel was not far from the cathedral square. Passing through the arcade, he came in sight of the famous cathedral with its numerous spines pricking into the afternoon air. He was not as impressed as he should have been. And yet there was something in the northern city--this big square with all the trams threading through, the little yellow Continental trams: and the spiny bulk of the great cathedral, like a grey-purple sea-urchin with many spines, on the one side, the ornamental grass-plots and flower beds on the other: the big shops going all along the further strands, all round: and the endless restless nervous drift of a north Italian crowd, so nervous, so twitchy; nervous and twitchy as the slipping past of the little yellow tram-cars; it all affected him with a sense of strangeness, nervousness, and approaching winter. It struck him the people were afraid of themselves: afraid of their own souls, and that which was in their own souls. Turning up the broad steps of the cathedral, he entered the famous building. The sky had cleared, and the freshened light shone coloured in living tablets round the wonderful, towering, rose-hearted dusk of the great church. At some altars lights flickered uneasily. At some unseen side altar mass was going on, and a strange ragged music fluttered out on the incense-dusk of the great and lofty interior, which was all shadow, all shadow, hung round with jewel tablets of light. Particularly beautiful the great east bay, above the great altar. And all the time, over the big-patterned marble floor, the faint click and rustle of feet coming and going, coming and going, like shallow uneasy water rustled back and forth in a trough. A white dog trotted pale through the under-dusk, over the pale, big-patterned floor. Aaron came to the side altar where mass was going on, candles ruddily wavering. There was a small cluster of kneeling women--a ragged handful of on-looking men--and people wandering up and wandering away, young women with neatly dressed black hair, and shawls, but without hats; fine young women in very high heels; young men with nothing to do; ragged men with nothing to do. All strayed faintly clicking over the slabbed floor, and glanced at the flickering altar where the white-surpliced boys were curtseying and the white-and-gold priest bowing, his hands over his breast, in the candle-light. All strayed, glanced, lingered, and strayed away again, as if the spectacle were not sufficiently holding. The bell chimed for the elevation of the Host. But the thin trickle of people trickled the same, uneasily, over the slabbed floor of the vastly-upreaching shadow-foliaged cathedral. The smell of incense in his nostrils, Aaron went out again by a side door, and began to walk along the pavements of the cathedral square, looking at the shops. Some were closed, and had little notices pinned on them. Some were open, and seemed half-stocked with half-elegant things. Men were carrying newspapers. In the cafes a few men were seated drinking vermouth. In the doorway of the restaurants waiters stood inert, looking out on the streets. The curious heart-eating _ennui_ of the big town on a holiday came over our hero. He felt he must get out, whatever happened. He could not bear it. So he went back to his hotel and up to his room. It was still only five o'clock. And he did not know what to do with himself. He lay down on the bed, and looked at the painting on his bedroom ceiling. It was a terrible business in reckitt's blue and browny gold, with awful heraldic beasts, rather worm-wriggly, displayed in a blue field. As he lay thinking of nothing and feeling nothing except a certain weariness, or dreariness, or tension, or God-knows-what, he heard a loud hoarse noise of humanity in the distance, something frightening. Rising, he went on to his little balcony. It was a sort of procession, or march of men, here and there a red flag fluttering from a man's fist. There had been a big meeting, and this was the issue. The procession was irregular, but powerful, men four abreast. They emerged irregularly from the small piazza to the street, calling and vociferating. They stopped before a shop and clotted into a crowd, shouting, becoming vicious. Over the shop-door hung a tricolour, a national flag. The shop was closed, but the men began to knock at the door. They were all workmen, some in railway men's caps, mostly in black felt hats. Some wore red cotton neck-ties. They lifted their faces to the national flag, and as they shouted and gesticulated Aaron could see their strong teeth in their jaws. There was something frightening in their lean, strong Italian jaws, something inhuman and possessed-looking in their foreign, southern-shaped faces, so much more formed and demon-looking than northern faces. They had a demon-like set purpose, and the noise of their voices was like a jarring of steel weapons. Aaron wondered what they wanted. There were no women--all men--a strange male, slashing sound. Vicious it was--the head of the procession swirling like a little pool, the thick wedge of the procession beyond, flecked with red flags. A window opened above the shop, and a frowsty-looking man, yellow-pale, was quickly and nervously hauling in the national flag. There were shouts of derision and mockery--a great overtone of acrid derision--the flag and its owner ignominiously disappeared. And the procession moved on. Almost every shop had a flag flying. And every one of these flags now disappeared, quickly or slowly, sooner or later, in obedience to the command of the vicious, derisive crowd, that marched and clotted slowly down the street, having its own way. Only one flag remained flying--the big tricolour that floated from the top storey of the house opposite Aaron's hotel. The ground floor of this house consisted of shop-premises--now closed. There was no sign of any occupant. The flag floated inert aloft. The whole crowd had come to a stop immediately below the hotel, and all were now looking up at the green and white and red tricolour which stirred damply in the early evening light, from under the broad eaves of the house opposite. Aaron looked at the long flag, which drooped almost unmoved from the eaves-shadow, and he half expected it to furl itself up of its own accord, in obedience to the will of the masses. Then he looked down at the packed black shoulders of the mob below, and at the curious clustering pattern of a sea of black hats. He could hardly see anything but hats and shoulders, uneasily moving like boiling pitch away beneath him. But the shouts began to come up hotter and hotter. There had been a great ringing of a door-bell and battering on the shop-door. The crowd--the swollen head of the procession--talked and shouted, occupying the centre of the street, but leaving the pavement clear. A woman in a white blouse appeared in the shop-door. She came out and looked up at the flag and shook her head and gesticulated with her hands. It was evidently not her flag--she had nothing to do with it. The leaders again turned to the large house-door, and began to ring all the bells and to knock with their knuckles. But no good--there was no answer. They looked up again at the flag. Voices rose ragged and ironical. The woman explained something again. Apparently there was nobody at home in the upper floors--all entrance was locked--there was no caretaker. Nobody owned the flag. There it hung under the broad eaves of the strong stone house, and didn't even know that it was guilty. The woman went back into her shop and drew down the iron shutter from inside. The crowd, nonplussed, now began to argue and shout and whistle. The voices rose in pitch and derision. Steam was getting up. There hung the flag. The procession crowded forward and filled the street in a mass below. All the rest of the street was empty and shut up. And still hung the showy rag, red and white and green, up aloft. Suddenly there was a lull--then shouts, half-encouraging, half-derisive. And Aaron saw a smallish-black figure of a youth, fair-haired, not more than seventeen years old, clinging like a monkey to the front of the house, and by the help of the heavy drain-pipe and the stone-work ornamentation climbing up to the stone ledge that ran under ground-floor windows, up like a sudden cat on to the projecting footing. He did not stop there, but continued his race like some frantic lizard running up the great wall-front, working away from the noise below, as if in sheer fright. It was one unending wriggling movement, sheer up the front of the impassive, heavy stone house. The flag hung from a pole under one of the windows of the top storey--the third floor. Up went the wriggling figure of the possessed youth. The cries of the crowd below were now wild, ragged ejaculations of excitement and encouragement. The youth seemed to be lifted up, almost magically on the intense upreaching excitement of the massed men below. He passed the ledge of the first floor, like a lizard he wriggled up and passed the ledge or coping of the second floor, and there he was, like an upward-climbing shadow, scrambling on to the coping of the third floor. The crowd was for a second electrically still as the boy rose there erect, cleaving to the wall with the tips of his fingers. But he did not hesitate for one breath. He was on his feet and running along the narrow coping that went across the house under the third floor windows, running there on that narrow footing away above the street, straight to the flag. He had got it--he had clutched it in his hand, a handful of it. Exactly like a great flame rose the simultaneous yell of the crowd as the boy jerked and got the flag loose. He had torn it down. A tremendous prolonged yell, touched with a snarl of triumph, and searing like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of yelling rose up unheard. There was a great clutch and hiss in the crowd. The boy still stood unmoved, holding by one hand behind him, looking down from above, from his dangerous elevation, in a sort of abstraction. And the next thing Aaron was conscious of was the sound of trumpets. A sudden startling challenge of trumpets, and out of nowhere a sudden rush of grey-green carabinieri battering the crowd wildly with truncheons. It was so sudden that Aaron _heard_ nothing any more. He only saw. In utmost amazement he saw the greeny-grey uniformed carabinieri rushing thick and wild and indiscriminate on the crowd: a sudden new excited crowd in uniforms attacking the black crowd, beating them wildly with truncheons. There was a seething moment in the street below. And almost instantaneously the original crowd burst into a terror of frenzy. The mob broke as if something had exploded inside it. A few black-hatted men fought furiously to get themselves free of the hated soldiers; in the confusion bunches of men staggered, reeled, fell, and were struggling among the legs of their comrades and of the carabinieri. But the bulk of the crowd just burst and fled--in every direction. Like drops of water they seemed to fly up at the very walls themselves. They darted into any entry, any doorway. They sprang up the walls and clambered into the ground-floor windows. They sprang up the walls on to window-ledges, and then jumped down again, and ran--clambering, wriggling, darting, running in every direction; some cut, blood on their faces, terror or frenzy of flight in their hearts. Not so much terror as the frenzy of running away. In a breath the street was empty. And all the time, there above on the stone coping stood the long-faced, fair-haired boy, while four stout carabinieri in the street below stood with uplifted revolvers and covered him, shouting that if he moved they would shoot. So there he stood, still looking down, still holding with his left hand behind him, covered by the four revolvers. He was not so much afraid as twitchily self-conscious because of his false position. Meanwhile down below the crowd had dispersed--melted momentaneously. The carabinieri were busy arresting the men who had fallen and been trodden underfoot, or who had foolishly let themselves be taken; perhaps half a dozen men, half a dozen prisoners; less rather than more. The sergeant ordered these to be secured between soldiers. And last of all the youth up above, still covered by the revolvers, was ordered to come down. He turned quite quietly, and quite humbly, cautiously picked his way along the coping towards the drain-pipe. He reached this pipe and began, in humiliation, to climb down. It was a real climb down. Once in the street he was surrounded by the grey uniforms. The soldiers formed up. The sergeant gave the order. And away they marched, the dejected youth a prisoner between them. Then were heard a few scattered yells of derision and protest, a few shouts of anger and derision against the carabinieri. There were once more gangs of men and groups of youths along the street. They sent up an occasional shout. But always over their shoulders, and pretending it was not they who shouted. They were all cowed and hang-dog once more, and made not the slightest effort to save the youth. Nevertheless, they prowled and watched, ready for the next time. So, away went the prisoner and the grey-green soldiers, and the street was left to the little gangs and groups of hangdog, discontented men, all thoroughly out of countenance. The scene was ended. Aaron looked round, dazed. And then for the first time he noticed, on the next balcony to his own, two young men: young gentlemen, he would have said. The one was tall and handsome and well-coloured, might be Italian. But the other with his pale thin face and his rimless monocle in his eye, he was surely an Englishman. He was surely one of the young officers shattered by the war. A look of strange, arch, bird-like pleasure was on his face at this moment: if one could imagine the gleaming smile of a white owl over the events that had just passed, this was the impression produced on Aaron by the face of the young man with the monocle. The other youth, the ruddy, handsome one, had knitted his brows in mock distress, and was glancing with a look of shrewd curiosity at Aaron, and with a look of almost self-satisfied excitement first to one end of the street, then to the other. “But imagine, Angus, it's all over!” he said, laying his hand on the arm of the monocled young man, and making great eyes--not without a shrewd glance in Aaron's direction. “Did you see him fall!” replied Angus, with another strange gleam. “Yes. But was he HURT--?” “I don't know. I should think so. He fell right back out of that on to those stones!” “But how perfectly AWFUL! Did you ever see anything like it?” “No. It's one of the funniest things I ever did see. I saw nothing quite like it, even in the war--” Here Aaron withdrew into his room. His mind and soul were in a whirl. He sat down in his chair, and did not move again for a great while. When he did move, he took his flute and played he knew not what. But strange, strange his soul passed into his instrument. Or passed half into his instrument. There was a big residue left, to go bitter, or to ferment into gold old wine of wisdom. He did not notice the dinner gong, and only the arrival of the chamber-maid, to put the wash-table in order, sent him down to the restaurant. The first thing he saw, as he entered, was the two young Englishmen seated at a table in a corner just behind him. Their hair was brushed straight back from their foreheads, making the sweep of the head bright and impeccable, and leaving both the young faces clear as if in cameo. Angus had laid his monocle on the table, and was looking round the room with wide, light-blue eyes, looking hard, like some bird-creature, and seeming to see nothing. He had evidently been very ill: was still very ill. His cheeks and even his jaw seemed shrunken, almost withered. He forgot his dinner: or he did not care for it. Probably the latter. “What do you think, Francis,” he said, “of making a plan to see Florence and Sienna and Orvieto on the way down, instead of going straight to Rome?” He spoke in precise, particularly-enunciated words, in a public-school manner, but with a strong twang of South Wales. “Why, Angus,” came the graceful voice of Francis, “I thought we had settled to go straight through via Pisa.” Francis was graceful in everything--in his tall, elegant figure, in the poses of his handsome head, in the modulation of his voice. “Yes, but I see we can go either way--either Pisa or Florence. And I thought it might be nice to look at Florence and Sienna and Orvieto. I believe they're very lovely,” came the soft, precise voice of Angus, ending in a touch of odd emotion on the words “very lovely,” as if it were a new experience to him to be using them. “I'm SURE they're marvellous. I'm quite sure they're marvellously beautiful,” said Francis, in his assured, elegant way. “Well, then, Angus--suppose we do that, then?--When shall we start?” Angus was the nervous insister. Francis was quite occupied with his own thoughts and calculations and curiosity. For he was very curious, not to say inquisitive. And at the present moment he had a new subject to ponder. This new subject was Aaron, who sat with his back to our new couple, and who, with his fine sharp ears, caught every word that they said. Aaron's back was broad enough, and his shoulders square, and his head rather small and fairish and well-shaped--and Francis was intrigued. He wanted to know, was the man English. He _looked_ so English--yet he might be--he might perhaps be Danish, Scandinavian, or Dutch. Therefore, the elegant young man watched and listened with all his ears. The waiter who had brought Aaron his soup now came very free and easy, to ask for further orders. “What would you like to drink? Wine? Chianti? Or white wine? Or beer?”--The old-fashioned “Sir” was dropped. It is too old-fashioned now, since the war. “What SHOULD I drink?” said Aaron, whose acquaintance with wines was not very large. “Half-litre of Chianti: that is very good,” said the waiter, with the air of a man who knew only too well how to bring up his betters, and train them in the way they should go. “All right,” said Aaron. The welcome sound of these two magic words, All Right! was what the waiter most desired. “All right! Yes! All Right!” This is the pith, the marrow, the sum and essence of the English language to a southerner. Of course it is not _all right_. It is _Or-rye_--and one word at that. The blow that would be given to most foreign waiters, if they were forced to realize that the famous _orye_ was really composed of two words, and spelt _all right_, would be too cruel, perhaps. “Half litre Chianti. Orye,” said the waiter. And we'll let him say it. “ENGLISH!” whispered Francis melodramatically in the ear of Angus. “I THOUGHT so. The flautist.” Angus put in his monocle, and stared at the oblivious shoulders of Aaron, without apparently seeing anything. “Yes. Obviously English,” said Angus, pursing like a bird. “Oh, but I heard him,” whispered Francis emphatically. “Quite,” said Angus. “But quite inoffensive.” “Oh, but Angus, my dear--he's the FLAUTIST. Don't you remember? The divine bit of Scriabin. At least I believe it was Scriabin.--But PERFECTLY DIVINE!!! I adore the flute above all things--” And Francis placed his hand on Angus' arm, and rolled his eyes--Lay this to the credit of a bottle of Lacrimae Cristi, if you like. “Yes. So do I,” said Angus, again looking archly through the monocle, and seeing nothing. “I wonder what he's doing here.” “Don't you think we might ASK him?” said Francis, in a vehement whisper. “After all, we are the only three English people in the place.” “For the moment, apparently we are,” said Angus. “But the English are all over the place wherever you go, like bits of orange peel in the street. Don't forget that, Francesco.” “No, Angus, I don't. The point is, his flute is PERFECTLY DIVINE--and he seems quite attractive in himself. Don't you think so?” “Oh, quite,” said Angus, whose observations had got no further than the black cloth of the back of Aaron's jacket. That there was a man inside he had not yet paused to consider. “Quite a musician,” said Francis. “The hired sort,” said Angus, “most probably.” “But he PLAYS--he plays most marvellously. THAT you can't get away from, Angus.” “I quite agree,” said Angus. “Well, then? Don't you think we might hear him again? Don't you think we might get him to play for us?--But I should love it more than anything.” “Yes, I should, too,” said Angus. “You might ask him to coffee and a liqueur.” “I should like to--most awfully. But do you think I might?” “Oh, yes. He won't mind being offered a coffee and liqueur. We can give him something decent--Where's the waiter?” Angus lifted his pinched, ugly bare face and looked round with weird command for the waiter. The waiter, having not much to do, and feeling ready to draw these two weird young birds, allowed himself to be summoned. “Where's the wine list? What liqueurs have you got?” demanded Angus abruptly. The waiter rattled off a list, beginning with Strega and ending with cherry brandy. “Grand Marnier,” said Angus. “And leave the bottle.” Then he looked with arch triumph at Francis, like a wicked bird. Francis bit his finger moodily, and glowered with handsome, dark-blue uncertain eyes at Mr. Aaron, who was just surveying the _Frutte_, which consisted of two rather old pomegranates and various pale yellow apples, with a sprinkling of withered dried figs. At the moment, they all looked like a _Natura Morta_ arrangement. “But do you think I might--?” said Francis moodily. Angus pursed his lips with a reckless brightness. “Why not? I see no reason why you shouldn't,” he said. Whereupon Francis cleared his throat, disposed of his serviette, and rose to his feet, slowly but gracefully. Then he composed himself, and took on the air he wished to assume at the moment. It was a nice degage air, half naive and half enthusiastic. Then he crossed to Aaron's table, and stood on one lounging hip, gracefully, and bent forward in a confidential manner, and said: “Do excuse me. But I MUST ask you if it was you we heard playing the flute so perfectly wonderfully, just before dinner.” The voice was confidential and ingratiating. Aaron, relieved from the world's stress and seeing life anew in the rosy glow of half a litre of good old Chianti--the war was so near but gone by--looked up at the dark blue, ingenuous, well-adapted eyes of our friend Francis, and smiling, said: “Yes, I saw you on the balcony as well.” “Oh, did you notice us?” plunged Francis. “But wasn't it an extraordinary affair?” “Very,” said Aaron. “I couldn't make it out, could you?” “Oh,” cried Francis. “I never try. It's all much too new and complicated for me.--But perhaps you know Italy?” “No, I don't,” said Aaron. “Neither do we. And we feel rather stunned. We had only just arrived--and then--Oh!” Francis put up his hand to his comely brow and rolled his eyes. “I feel perfectly overwhelmed with it still.” He here allowed himself to sink friendlily into the vacant chair opposite Aaron's. “Yes, I thought it was a bit exciting,” said Aaron. “I wonder what will become of him--” “--Of the one who climbed for the flag, you mean? No!--But wasn't it perfectly marvellous! Oh, incredible, quite incredible!--And then your flute to finish it all! Oh! I felt it only wanted that.--I haven't got over it yet. But your playing was MARVELLOUS, really marvellous. Do you know, I can't forget it. You are a professional musician, of course.” “If you mean I play for a living,” said Aaron. “I have played in orchestras in London.” “Of course! Of course! I knew you must be a professional. But don't you give private recitals, too?” “No, I never have.” “Oh!” cried Francis, catching his breath. “I can't believe it. But you play MARVELLOUSLY! Oh, I just loved it, it simply swept me away, after that scene in the street. It seemed to sum it all up, you know.” “Did it,” said Aaron, rather grimly. “But won't you come and have coffee with us at our table?” said Francis. “We should like it most awfully if you would.” “Yes, thank you,” said Aaron, half-rising. “But you haven't had your dessert,” said Francis, laying a fatherly detaining hand on the arm of the other man. Aaron looked at the detaining hand. “The dessert isn't much to stop for,” he said. “I can take with me what I want.” And he picked out a handful of dried figs. The two went across to Angus' table. “We're going to take coffee together,” said Francis complacently, playing the host with a suave assurance that was rather amusing and charming in him. “Yes. I'm very glad,” said Angus. Let us give the show away: he was being wilfully nice. But he _was_ quite glad; to be able to be so nice. Anything to have a bit of life going: especially a bit of pleased life. He looked at Aaron's comely, wine-warmed face with gratification. “Have a Grand Marnier,” he said. “I don't know how bad it is. Everything is bad now. They lay it down to the war as well. It used to be quite a decent drink. What the war had got to do with bad liqueurs, I don't know.” Aaron sat down in a chair at their table. “But let us introduce ourselves,” said Francis. “I am Francis--or really Franz Dekker--And this is Angus Guest, my friend.” “And my name is Aaron Sisson.” “What! What did you say?” said Francis, leaning forward. He, too, had sharp ears. “Aaron Sisson.” “Aaron Sisson! Oh, but how amusing! What a nice name!” “No better than yours, is it?” “Mine! Franz Dekker! Oh, much more amusing, _I_ think,” said Francis archly. “Oh, well, it's a matter of opinion. You're the double decker, not me.” “The double decker!” said Francis archly. “Why, what do you mean!--” He rolled his eyes significantly. “But may I introduce my friend Angus Guest.” “You've introduced me already, Francesco,” said Angus. “So sorry,” said Francis. “Guest!” said Aaron. Francis suddenly began to laugh. “May he not be Guest?” he asked, fatherly. “Very likely,” said Aaron. “Not that I was ever good at guessing.” Francis tilted his eyebrows. Fortunately the waiter arrived with the coffee. “Tell me,” said Francis, “will you have your coffee black, or with milk?” He was determined to restore a tone of sobriety. The coffee was sipped in sober solemnity. “Is music your line as well, then?” asked Aaron. “No, we're painters. We're going to work in Rome.” “To earn your living?” “Not yet.” The amount of discretion, modesty, and reserve which Francis put into these two syllables gave Aaron to think that he had two real young swells to deal with. “No,” continued Francis. “I was only JUST down from Oxford when the war came--and Angus had been about ten months at the Slade--But I have always painted.--So now we are going to work, really hard, in Rome, to make up for lost time.--Oh, one has lost so much time, in the war. And such PRECIOUS time! I don't know if ever one will even be able to make it up again.” Francis tilted his handsome eyebrows and put his head on one side with a wise-distressed look. “No,” said Angus. “One will never be able to make it up. What is more, one will never be able to start again where one left off. We're shattered old men, now, in one sense. And in another sense, we're just pre-war babies.” The speech was uttered with an odd abruptness and didacticism which made Aaron open his eyes. Angus had that peculiar manner: he seemed to be haranguing himself in the circle of his own thoughts, not addressing himself to his listener. So his listener listened on the outside edge of the young fellow's crowded thoughts. Francis put on a distressed air, and let his attention wander. Angus pursed his lips and his eyes were stretched wide with a kind of pleasure, like a wicked owl which has just joyfully hooted an ill omen. “Tell me,” said Francis to Aaron. “Where were YOU all the time during the war?” “I was doing my job,” said Aaron. Which led to his explaining his origins. “Really! So your music is quite new! But how interesting!” cried Francis. Aaron explained further. “And so the war hardly affected you? But what did you FEEL about it, privately?” “I didn't feel much. I didn't know what to feel. Other folks did such a lot of feeling, I thought I'd better keep my mouth shut.” “Yes, quite!” said Angus. “Everybody had such a lot of feelings on somebody else's behalf, that nobody ever had time to realise what they felt themselves. I know I was like that. The feelings all came on to me from the outside: like flies settling on meat. Before I knew where I was I was eaten up with a swarm of feelings, and I found myself in the trenches. God knows what for. And ever since then I've been trying to get out of my swarm of feelings, which buzz in and out of me and have nothing to do with me. I realised it in hospital. It's exactly like trying to get out of a swarm of nasty dirty flies. And every one you kill makes you sick, but doesn't make the swarm any less.” Again Angus pursed and bridled and looked like a pleased, wicked white owl. Then he polished his monocle on a very choice silk handkerchief, and fixed it unseeing in his left eye. But Francis was not interested in his friend's experiences. For Francis had had a job in the War Office--whereas Angus was a war-hero with shattered nerves. And let him depreciate his own experiences as much as he liked, the young man with the monocle kept tight hold on his prestige as a war hero. Only for himself, though. He by no means insisted that anyone else should be war-bitten. Francis was one of those men who, like women, can set up the sympathetic flow and make a fellow give himself away without realising what he is doing. So there sat our friend Aaron, amusingly unbosoming himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch, subtle attentiveness of the handsome Francis. Angus listened, too, with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, pursing his shrunken jaw. And Aaron sipped various glasses of the liqueur, and told all his tale as if it was a comedy. A comedy it seemed, too, at that hour. And a comedy no doubt it was. But mixed, like most things in this life. Mixed. It was quite late before this seance broke up: and the waiter itching to get rid of the fellows. “Well, now,” said Francis, as he rose from the table and settled his elegant waist, resting on one hip, as usual. “We shall see you in the morning, I hope. You say you are going to Venice. Why? Have you some engagement in Venice?” “No,” said Aaron. “I only was going to look for a friend--Rawdon Lilly.” “Rawdon Lilly! Why, is he in Venice? Oh, I've heard SUCH a lot about him. I should like so much to meet him. But I heard he was in Germany--” “I don't know where he is.” “Angus! Didn't we hear that Lilly was in Germany?” “Yes, in Munich, being psychoanalysed, I believe it was.” Aaron looked rather blank. “But have you anything to take you to Venice? It's such a bad climate in the winter. Why not come with us to Florence?” said Francis. Aaron wavered. He really did not know what to do. “Think about it,” said Francis, laying his hand on Aaron's arm. “Think about it tonight. And we'll meet in the morning. At what time?” “Any time,” said Aaron. “Well, say eleven. We'll meet in the lounge here at eleven. Will that suit you? All right, then. It's so awfully nice meeting you. That marvellous flute.--And think about Florence. But do come. Don't disappoint us.” The two young men went elegantly upstairs. CHAPTER XV. A RAILWAY JOURNEY The next day but one, the three set off for Florence. Aaron had made an excursion from Milan with the two young heroes, and dined with them subsequently at the most expensive restaurant in the town. Then they had all gone home--and had sat in the young men's bedroom drinking tea, whilst Aaron played the flute. Francis was really musical, and enchanted. Angus enjoyed the novelty, and the moderate patronage he was able to confer. And Aaron felt amused and pleased, and hoped he was paying for his treat. So behold them setting off for Florence in the early morning. Angus and Francis had first-class tickets: Aaron took a third-class. “Come and have lunch with us on the train,” said Angus. “I'll order three places, and we can lunch together.” “Oh, I can buy a bit of food at the station,” said Aaron. “No, come and lunch with us. It will be much nicer. And we shall enjoy it as well,” said Angus. “Of course! Ever so much nicer! Of course!” cried Francis. “Yes, why not, indeed! Why should you hesitate?” “All right, then,” said Aaron, not without some feeling of constraint. So they separated. The young men settled themselves amidst the red plush and crochet-work, looking, with their hair plastered smoothly back, quite as first class as you could wish, creating quite the right impression on the porters and the travelling Italians. Aaron went to his third-class, further up the train. “Well, then, _au revoir_, till luncheon,” cried Francis. The train was fairly full in the third and second classes. However, Aaron got his seat, and the porter brought on his bags, after disposing of the young men's luggage. Aaron gave the tip uneasily. He always hated tipping--it seemed humiliating both ways. And the airy aplomb of the two young cavaliers, as they settled down among the red plush and the obsequiousness, and said “Well, then, _au revoir_ till luncheon,” was peculiarly unsettling: though they did not intend it so. “The porter thinks I'm their servant--their valet,” said Aaron to himself, and a curious half-amused, half-contemptuous look flickered on his face. It annoyed him. The falsity occasioned by the difference in the price of the tickets was really humiliating. Aaron had lived long enough to know that as far as manhood and intellect went--nay, even education--he was not the inferior of the two young “gentlemen.” He knew quite well that, as far as intrinsic nature went, they did not imagine him an inferior: rather the contrary. They had rather an exaggerated respect for him and his life-power, and even his origin. And yet--they had the inestimable cash advantage--and they were going to keep it. They knew it was nothing more than an artificial cash superiority. But they gripped it all the more intensely. They were the upper middle classes. They were Eton and Oxford. And they were going to hang on to their privileges. In these days, it is a fool who abdicates before he's forced to. And therefore: “Well, then--_au revoir_ till luncheon.” They were being so awfully nice. And inwardly they were not condescending. But socially, they just had to be. The world is made like that. It wasn't their own private fault. It was no fault at all. It was just the mode in which they were educated, the style of their living. And as we know, _le style, c'est l'homme_. Angus came of very wealthy iron people near Merthyr. Already he had a very fair income of his own. As soon as the law-business concerning his father's and his grandfather's will was settled, he would be well off. And he knew it, and valued himself accordingly. Francis was the son of a highly-esteemed barrister and politician of Sydney, and in his day would inherit his father's lately-won baronetcy. But Francis had not very much money: and was much more class-flexible than Angus. Angus had been born in a house with a park, and of awful, hard-willed, money-bound people. Francis came of a much more adventurous, loose, excitable family, he had the colonial newness and adaptability. He knew, for his own part, that class superiority was just a trick, nowadays. Still, it was a trick that paid. And a trick he was going to play as long as it did pay. While Aaron sat, a little pale at the gills, immobile, ruminating these matters, a not very pleasant look about his nose-end, he heard a voice: “Oh, there you ARE! I thought I'd better come and see, so that we can fetch you at lunch time.--You've got a seat? Are you quite comfortable? Is there anything I could get you? Why, you're in a non-smoker!--But that doesn't matter, everybody will smoke. Are you sure you have everything? Oh, but wait just one moment--” It was Francis, long and elegant, with his straight shoulders and his coat buttoned to show his waist, and his face so well-formed and so modern. So modern, altogether. His voice was pleasantly modulated, and never hurried. He now looked as if a thought had struck him. He put a finger to his brow, and hastened back to his own carriage. In a minute, he returned with a new London literary magazine. “Something to read--I shall have to FLY--See you at lunch,” and he had turned and elegantly hastened, but not too fast, back to his carriage. The porter was holding the door for him. So Francis looked pleasantly hurried, but by no means rushed. Oh, dear, no. He took his time. It was not for him to bolt and scramble like a mere Italian. The people in Aaron's carriage had watched the apparition of the elegant youth intently. For them, he was a being from another sphere--no doubt a young milordo with power wealth, and glamorous life behind him. Which was just what Francis intended to convey. So handsome--so very, very impressive in all his elegant calm showiness. He made such a _bella figura_. It was just what the Italians loved. Those in the first class regions thought he might even be an Italian, he was so attractive. The train in motion, the many Italian eyes in the carriage studied Aaron. He, too, was good-looking. But by no means as fascinating as the young milordo. Not half as sympathetic. No good at all at playing a role. Probably a servant of the young signori. Aaron stared out of the window, and played the one single British role left to him, that of ignoring his neighbours, isolating himself in their midst, and minding his own business. Upon this insular trick our greatness and our predominance depends--such as it is. Yes, they might look at him. They might think him a servant or what they liked. But he was inaccessible to them. He isolated himself upon himself, and there remained. It was a lovely day, a lovely, lovely day of early autumn. Over the great plain of Lombardy a magnificent blue sky glowed like mid-summer, the sun shone strong. The great plain, with its great stripes of cultivation--without hedges or boundaries---how beautiful it was! Sometimes he saw oxen ploughing. Sometimes. Oh, so beautiful, teams of eight, or ten, even of twelve pale, great soft oxen in procession, ploughing the dark velvety earth, a driver with a great whip at their head, a man far behind holding the plough-shafts. Beautiful the soft, soft plunging motion of oxen moving forwards. Beautiful the strange, snaky lifting of the muzzles, the swaying of the sharp horns. And the soft, soft crawling motion of a team of oxen, so invisible, almost, yet so inevitable. Now and again straight canals of water flashed blue. Now and again the great lines of grey-silvery poplars rose and made avenues or lovely grey airy quadrangles across the plain. Their top boughs were spangled with gold and green leaf. Sometimes the vine-leaves were gold and red, a patterning. And the great square farm-homesteads, white, red-roofed, with their out-buildings, stood naked amid the lands, without screen or softening. There was something big and exposed about it all. No more the cosy English ambushed life, no longer the cosy littleness of the landscape. A bigness--and nothing to shelter the unshrinking spirit. It was all exposed, exposed to the sweep of plain, to the high, strong sky, and to human gaze. A kind of boldness, an indifference. Aaron was impressed and fascinated. He looked with new interest at the Italians in the carriage with him--for this same boldness and indifference and exposed gesture. And he found it in them, too. And again it fascinated him. It seemed so much bigger, as if the walls of life had fallen. Nay, the walls of English life will have to fall. Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again. The _presence_ of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England. In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left free. Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone and reveal what is inside. And every other passenger is forced, by the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also. Which in the end becomes a sort of self-conscious madness. But here, in the third class carriage, there was no tight string round every man. They were not all trussed with self-conscious string as tight as capons. They had a sufficient amount of callousness and indifference and natural equanimity. True, one of them spat continually on the floor, in large spits. And another sat with his boots all unlaced and his collar off, and various important buttons undone. They did not seem to care if bits of themselves did show, through the gaps in the wrapping. Aaron winced--but he preferred it to English tightness. He was pleased, he was happy with the Italians. He thought how generous and natural they were. So the towns passed by, and the hours, and he seemed at last to have got outside himself and his old conditions. It seemed like a great escape. There was magic again in life--real magic. Was it illusion, or was it genuine? He thought it was genuine, and opened his soul a if there was no danger. Lunch-time came. Francis summoned Aaron down the rocking tram. The three men had a table to themselves, and all felt they were enjoying themselves very much indeed. Of course Francis and Angus made a great impression again. But in the dining car were mostly middle-class, well-to-do Italians. And these did not look upon our two young heroes as two young wonders. No, rather with some criticism, and some class-envy. But they were impressed. Oh, they were impressed! How should they not be, when our young gentlemen had such an air! Aaron was conscious all the time that the fellow-diners were being properly impressed by the flower of civilisation and the salt of the earth, namely, young, well-to-do Englishmen. And he had a faint premonition, based on experience perhaps, that fellow-passengers in the end never forgive the man who has “impressed” them. Mankind loves being impressed. It asks to be impressed. It almost forces those whom it can force to play a role and to make an impression. And afterwards, never forgives. When the train ran into Bologna Station, they were still in the restaurant car. Nor did they go at once to their seats. Angus had paid the bill. There was three-quarters-of-an-hour's wait in Bologna. “You may as well come down and sit with us,” said Francis. “We've got nobody in our carriage, so why shouldn't we all stay together during the wait. You kept your own seat, I suppose.” No, he had forgotten. So when he went to look for it, it was occupied by a stout man who was just taking off his collar and wrapping a white kerchief round his neck. The third class carriages were packed. For those were early days after the war, while men still had pre-war notions and were poor. Ten months would steal imperceptibly by, and the mysterious revolution would be effected. Then, the second class and the first class would be packed, indescribably packed, crowded, on all great trains: and the third class carriages, lo and behold, would be comparatively empty. Oh, marvellous days of bankruptcy, when nobody will condescend to travel third! However, these were still modest, sombre months immediately after the peace. So a large man with a fat neck and a white kerchief, and his collar over his knee, sat in Aaron's seat. Aaron looked at the man, and at his own luggage overhead. The fat man saw him looking and stared back: then stared also at the luggage overhead: and with his almost invisible north-Italian gesture said much plainer than words would have said it: “Go to hell. I'm here and I'm going to stop here.” There was something insolent and unbearable about the look--and about the rocky fixity of the large man. He sat as if he had insolently taken root in his seat. Aaron flushed slightly. Francis and Angus strolled along the train, outside, for the corridor was already blocked with the mad Bologna rush, and the baggage belonging. They joined Aaron as he stood on the platform. “But where is YOUR SEAT?” cried Francis, peering into the packed and jammed compartments of the third class. “That man's sitting in it.” “Which?” cried Francis, indignant. “The fat one there--with the collar on his knee.” “But it was your seat--!” Francis' gorge rose in indignation. He mounted into the corridor. And in the doorway of the compartment he bridled like an angry horse rearing, bridling his head. Poising himself on one hip, he stared fixedly at the man with the collar on his knee, then at the baggage aloft. He looked down at the fat man as a bird looks down from the eaves of a house. But the man looked back with a solid, rock-like impudence, before which an Englishman quails: a jeering, immovable insolence, with a sneer round the nose and a solid-seated posterior. “But,” said Francis in English--none of them had any Italian yet. “But,” said Francis, turning round to Aaron, “that was YOUR SEAT?” and he flung his long fore-finger in the direction of the fat man's thighs. “Yes!” said Aaron. “And he's TAKEN it--!” cried Francis in indignation. “And knows it, too,” said Aaron. “But--!” and Francis looked round imperiously, as if to summon his bodyguard. But bodyguards are no longer forthcoming, and train-guards are far from satisfactory. The fat man sat on, with a sneer-grin, very faint but very effective, round his nose, and a solidly-planted posterior. He quite enjoyed the pantomime of the young foreigners. The other passengers said something to him, and he answered laconic. Then they all had the faint sneer-grin round their noses. A woman in the corner grinned jeeringly straight in Francis' face. His charm failed entirely this time: and as for his commandingness, that was ineffectual indeed. Rage came up in him. “Oh well--something must be done,” said he decisively. “But didn't you put something in the seat to RESERVE it?” “Only that _New Statesman_--but he's moved it.” The man still sat with the invisible sneer-grin on his face, and that peculiar and immovable plant of his Italian posterior. “Mais--cette place etait RESERVEE--” said Francis, moving to the direct attack. The man turned aside and ignored him utterly--then said something to the men opposite, and they all began to show their teeth in a grin. Francis was not so easily foiled. He touched the man on the arm. The man looked round threateningly, as if he had been struck. “Cette place est reservee--par ce Monsieur--” said Francis with hauteur, though still in an explanatory tone, and pointing to Aaron. The Italian looked him, not in the eyes, but between the eyes, and sneered full in his face. Then he looked with contempt at Aaron. And then he said, in Italian, that there was room for such snobs in the first class, and that they had not any right to come occupying the place of honest men in the third. “Gia! Gia!” barked the other passengers in the carriage. “Loro possono andare prima classa--PRIMA CLASSA!” said the woman in the corner, in a very high voice, as if talking to deaf people, and pointing to Aaron's luggage, then along the train to the first class carriages. “C'e posto la,” said one of the men, shrugging his shoulders. There was a jeering quality in the hard insolence which made Francis go very red and Augus very white. Angus stared like a death's-head behind his monocle, with death-blue eyes. “Oh, never mind. Come along to the first class. I'll pay the difference. We shall be much better all together. Get the luggage down, Francis. It wouldn't be possible to travel with this lot, even if he gave up the seat. There's plenty of room in our carriage--and I'll pay the extra,” said Angus. He knew there was one solution--and only one--Money. But Francis bit his finger. He felt almost beside himself--and quite powerless. For he knew the guard of the train would jeer too. It is not so easy to interfere with honest third-class Bolognesi in Bologna station, even if they _have_ taken another man's seat. Powerless, his brow knitted, and looking just like Mephistopheles with his high forehead and slightly arched nose, Mephistopheles in a rage, he hauled down Aaron's bag and handed it to Angus. So they transferred themselves to the first-class carriage, while the fat man and his party in the third-class watched in jeering, triumphant silence. Solid, planted, immovable, in static triumph. So Aaron sat with the others amid the red plush, whilst the train began its long slow climb of the Apennines, stinking sulphurous through tunnels innumerable. Wonderful the steep slopes, the great chestnut woods, and then the great distances glimpsed between the heights, Firenzuola away and beneath, Turneresque hills far off, built of heaven-bloom, not of earth. It was cold at the summit-station, ice and snow in the air, fierce. Our travellers shrank into the carriage again, and wrapped themselves round. Then the train began its long slither downhill, still through a whole necklace of tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank. So down and down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the Arno valley. But then began the inevitable hitch that always happens in Italian travel. The train began to hesitate--to falter to a halt, whistling shrilly as if in protest: whistling pip-pip-pip in expostulation as it stood forlorn among the fields: then stealing forward again and stealthily making pace, gathering speed, till it had got up a regular spurt: then suddenly the brakes came on with a jerk, more faltering to a halt, more whistling and pip-pip-pipping, as the engine stood jingling with impatience: after which another creak and splash, and another choking off. So on till they landed in Prato station: and there they sat. A fellow passenger told them, there was an hour to wait here: an hour. Something had happened up the line. “Then I propose we make tea,” said Angus, beaming. “Why not! Of course. Let us make tea. And I will look for water.” So Aaron and Francis went to the restaurant bar and filled the little pan at the tap. Angus got down the red picnic case, of which he was so fond, and spread out the various arrangements on the floor of the coupe. He soon had the spirit-lamp burning, the water heating. Francis proposed that he and Aaron should dash into Prato and see what could be bought, whilst the tea was in preparation. So off they went, leaving Angus like a busy old wizard manipulating his arrangements on the floor of the carriage, his monocle beaming with bliss. The one fat fellow--passenger with a lurid striped rug over his knees watched with acute interest. Everybody who passed the doorway stood to contemplate the scene with pleasure. Officials came and studied the situation with appreciation. Then Francis and Aaron returned with a large supply of roast chestnuts, piping hot, and hard dried plums, and good dried figs, and rather stale rusks. They found the water just boiling, Angus just throwing in the tea-egg, and the fellow-passenger just poking his nose right in, he was so thrilled. Nothing pleased Angus so much as thus pitching camp in the midst of civilisation. The scrubby newspaper packets of chestnuts, plums, figs and rusks were spread out: Francis flew for salt to the man at the bar, and came back with a little paper of rock-salt: the brown tea was dispensed in the silver-fitted glasses from the immortal luncheon-case: and the picnic was in full swing. Angus, being in the height of his happiness, now sat on the seat cross-legged, with his feet under him, in the authentic Buddha fashion, and on his face the queer rapt alert look, half a smile, also somewhat Buddhistic, holding his glass of brown tea in his hand. He was as rapt and immobile as if he really were in a mystic state. Yet it was only his delight in the tea-party. The fellow-passenger peered at the tea, and said in broken French, was it good. In equally fragmentary French Francis said very good, and offered the fat passenger some. He, however, held up his hand in protest, as if to say not for any money would he swallow the hot-watery stuff. And he pulled out a flask of wine. But a handful of chestnuts he accepted. The train-conductor, ticket-collector, and the heavy green soldier who protected them, swung open the door and stared attentively. The fellow passenger addressed himself to these new-comers, and they all began to smile good-naturedly. Then the fellow-passenger--he was stout and fifty and had a brilliant striped rug always over his knees--pointed out the Buddha-like position of Angus, and the three in-starers smiled again. And so the fellow-passenger thought he must try too. So he put aside his rug, and lifted his feet from the floor, and took his toes in his hands, and tried to bring his legs up and his feet under him. But his knees were fat, his trousers in the direst extreme of peril, and he could no more manage it than if he had tried to swallow himself. So he desisted suddenly, rather scared, whilst the three bunched and official heads in the doorway laughed and jested at him, showing their teeth and teasing him. But on our gypsy party they turned their eyes with admiration. They loved the novelty and the fun. And on the thin, elegant Angus in his new London clothes, they looked really puzzled, as he sat there immobile, gleaming through his monocle like some Buddha going wicked, perched cross-legged and ecstatic on the red velvet seat. They marvelled that the lower half of him could so double up, like a foot-rule. So they stared till they had seen enough. When they suddenly said “Buon 'appetito,” withdrew their heads and shoulders, slammed the door, and departed. Then the train set off also--and shortly after six arrived in Florence. It was debated what should Aaron do in Florence. The young men had engaged a room at Bertolini's hotel, on the Lungarno. Bertolini's was not expensive--but Aaron knew that his friends would not long endure hotel life. However, he went along with the other two, trusting to find a cheaper place on the morrow. It was growing quite dark as they drove to the hotel, but still was light enough to show the river rustling, the Ponte Vecchio spanning its little storeys across the flood, on its low, heavy piers: and some sort of magic of the darkening, varied houses facing, on the other side of the stream. Of course they were all enchanted. “I knew,” said Francis, “we should love it.” Aaron was told he could have a little back room and pension terms for fifteen lire a day, if he stayed at least fifteen days. The exchange was then at forty-five. So fifteen lire meant just six-shillings-and-six pence a day, without extras. Extras meant wine, tea, butter, and light. It was decided he should look for something cheaper next day. By the tone of the young men, he now gathered that they would prefer it if he took himself off to a cheaper place. They wished to be on their own. “Well, then,” said Francis, “you will be in to lunch here, won't you? Then we'll see you at lunch.” It was as if both the young men had drawn in their feelers now. They were afraid of finding the new man an incubus. They wanted to wash their hands of him. Aaron's brow darkened. “Perhaps it was right your love to dissemble But why did you kick me down stairs?...” Then morning found him out early, before his friends had arisen. It was sunny again. The magic of Florence at once overcame him, and he forgot the bore of limited means and hotel costs. He went straight out of the hotel door, across the road, and leaned on the river parapet. There ran the Arno: not such a flood after all, but a green stream with shoals of pebbles in its course. Across, and in the delicate shadow of the early sun, stood the opposite Lungarno, the old flat houses, pink, or white, or grey stone, with their green shutters, some closed, some opened. It had a flowery effect, the skyline irregular against the morning light. To the right the delicate Trinita bridge, to the left, the old bridge with its little shops over the river. Beyond, towards the sun, glimpses of green, sky-bloomed country: Tuscany. There was a noise and clatter of traffic: boys pushing hand-barrows over the cobble-stones, slow bullocks stepping side by side, and shouldering one another affectionately, drawing a load of country produce, then horses in great brilliant scarlet cloths, like vivid palls, slowly pulling the long narrow carts of the district: and men hu-huing!--and people calling: all the sharp, clattering morning noise of Florence. “Oh, Angus! Do come and look! OH, so lovely!” Glancing up, he saw the elegant figure of Francis, in fine coloured-silk pyjamas, perched on a small upper balcony, turning away from the river towards the bedroom again, his hand lifted to his lips, as if to catch there his cry of delight. The whole pose was classic and effective: and very amusing. How the Italians would love it! Aaron slipped back across the road, and walked away under the houses towards the Ponte Vecchio. He passed the bridge--and passed the Uffizi--watching the green hills opposite, and San Miniato. Then he noticed the over-dramatic group of statuary in the Piazza Mentana--male and physical and melodramatic--and then the corner house. It was a big old Florentine house, with many green shutters and wide eaves. There was a notice plate by the door--“Pension Nardini.” He came to a full stop. He stared at the notice-plate, stared at the glass door, and turning round, stared at the over-pathetic dead soldier on the arm of his over-heroic pistol-firing comrade; _Mentana_--and the date! Aaron wondered what and where Mentana was. Then at last he summoned his energy, opened the glass door, and mounted the first stairs. He waited some time before anybody appeared. Then a maid-servant. “Can I have a room?” said Aaron. The bewildered, wild-eyed servant maid opened a door and showed him into a heavily-gilt, heavily-plush drawing-room with a great deal of frantic grandeur about it. There he sat and cooled his heels for half an hour. Arrived at length a stout young lady--handsome, with big dark-blue Italian eyes--but anaemic and too stout. “Oh!” she said as she entered, not knowing what else to say. “Good-morning,” said Aaron awkwardly. “Oh, good-morning! English! Yes! Oh, I am so sorry to keep you, you know, to make you wait so long. I was upstairs, you know, with a lady. Will you sit?” “Can I have a room?” said Aaron. “A room! Yes, you can.” “What terms?” “Terms! Oh! Why, ten francs a day, you know, pension--if you stay--How long will you stay?” “At least a month, I expect.” “A month! Oh yes. Yes, ten francs a day.” “For everything?” “Everything. Yes, everything. Coffee, bread, honey or jam in the morning: lunch at half-past twelve; tea in the drawing-room, half-past four: dinner at half-past seven: all very nice. And a warm room with the sun--Would you like to see?” So Aaron was led up the big, rambling old house to the top floor--then along a long old corridor--and at last into a big bedroom with two beds and a red tiled floor--a little dreary, as ever--but the sun just beginning to come in, and a lovely view on to the river, towards the Ponte Vecchio, and at the hills with their pines and villas and verdure opposite. Here he would settle. The signorina would send a man for his bags, at half past two in the afternoon. At luncheon Aaron found the two friends, and told them of his move. “How very nice for you! Ten francs a day--but that is nothing. I am so pleased you've found something. And when will you be moving in?” said Francis. “At half-past two.” “Oh, so soon. Yes, just as well.--But we shall see you from time to time, of course. What did you say the address was? Oh, yes--just near the awful statue. Very well. We can look you up any time--and you will find us here. Leave a message if we should happen not to be in--we've got lots of engagements--” CHAPTER XVI. FLORENCE The very afternoon after Aaron's arrival in Florence the sky became dark, the wind cold, and rain began steadily to fall. He sat in his big, bleak room above the river, and watched the pale green water fused with yellow, the many-threaded streams fuse into one, as swiftly the surface flood came down from the hills. Across, the dark green hills looked darker in the wet, the umbrella pines held up in vain above the villas. But away below, on the Lungarno, traffic rattled as ever. Aaron went down at five o'clock to tea, and found himself alone next a group of women, mostly Swedes or Danish or Dutch, drinking a peculiar brown herb-brew which tasted like nothing else on earth, and eating two thick bits of darkish bread smeared with a brown smear which hoped it was jam, but hoped in vain. Unhappily he sat in the gilt and red, massively ornate room, while the foreign women eyed him. Oh, bitter to be a male under such circumstances. He escaped as soon as possible back to his far-off regions, lonely and cheerless, away above. But he rather liked the far-off remoteness in the big old Florentine house: he did not mind the peculiar dark, uncosy dreariness. It was not really dreary: only indifferent. Indifferent to comfort, indifferent to all homeliness and cosiness. The over-big furniture trying to be impressive, but never to be pretty or bright or cheerful. There it stood, ugly and apart. And there let it stand.--Neither did he mind the lack of fire, the cold sombreness of his big bedroom. At home, in England, the bright grate and the ruddy fire, the thick hearth-rug and the man's arm-chair, these had been inevitable. And now he was glad to get away from it all. He was glad not to have a cosy hearth, and his own arm-chair. He was glad to feel the cold, and to breathe the unwarmed air. He preferred the Italian way of no fires, no heating. If the day was cold, he was willing to be cold too. If it was dark, he was willing to be dark. The cosy brightness of a real home--it had stifled him till he felt his lungs would burst. The horrors of real domesticity. No, the Italian brutal way was better. So he put his overcoat over his knee, and studied some music he had bought in Milan: some Pergolesi and the Scarlatti he liked, and some Corelli. He preferred frail, sensitive, abstract music, with not much feeling in it, but a certain limpidity and purity. Night fell as he sat reading the scores. He would have liked to try certain pieces on his flute. But his flute was too sensitive, it winced from the new strange surroundings, and would not blossom. Dinner sounded at last--at eight o'clock, or something after. He had to learn to expect the meals always forty minutes late. Down he went, down the long, dark, lonely corridors and staircases. The dining room was right downstairs. But he had a little table to himself near the door, the elderly women were at some little distance. The only other men were Agostmo, the unshapely waiter, and an Italian duke, with wife and child and nurse, the family sitting all together at a table halfway down the room, and utterly pre-occupied with a little yellow dog. However, the food was good enough, and sufficient, and the waiter and the maid-servant cheerful and bustling. Everything felt happy-go-lucky and informal, there was no particular atmosphere. Nobody put on any airs, because nobody in the Nardini took any notice if they did. The little ducal dog yapped, the ducal son shouted, the waiter dropped half a dozen spoons, the old women knitted during the waits, and all went off so badly that it was quite pleasant. Yes, Aaron preferred it to Bertolini's, which was trying to be efficient and correct: though not making any strenuous effort. Still, Bertolini's was much more up to the scratch, there was the tension of proper standards. Whereas here at Nardini's, nothing mattered very much. It was November. When he got up to his far-off room again, Aaron felt almost as if he were in a castle with the drawbridge drawn up. Through the open window came the sound of the swelling Arno, as it rushed and rustled along over its gravel-shoals. Lights spangled the opposite side. Traffic sounded deep below. The room was not really cold, for the summer sun so soaks into these thick old buildings, that it takes a month or two of winter to soak it out.--The rain still fell. In the morning it was still November, and the dawn came slowly. And through the open window was the sound of the river's rushing. But the traffic started before dawn, with a bang and a rattle of carts, and a bang and jingle of tram-cars over the not-distant bridge. Oh, noisy Florence! At half-past seven Aaron rang for his coffee: and got it at a few minutes past eight. The signorina had told him to take his coffee in bed. Rain was still falling. But towards nine o'clock it lifted, and he decided to go out. A wet, wet world. Carriages going by, with huge wet shiny umbrellas, black and with many points, erected to cover the driver and the tail of the horse and the box-seat. The hood of the carriage covered the fare. Clatter-clatter through the rain. Peasants with long wagons and slow oxen, and pale-green huge umbrellas erected for the driver to walk beneath. Men tripping along in cloaks, shawls, umbrellas, anything, quite unconcerned. A man loading gravel in the river-bed, in spite of the wet. And innumerable bells ringing: but innumerable bells. The great soft trembling of the cathedral bell felt in all the air. Anyhow it was a new world. Aaron went along close to the tall thick houses, following his nose. And suddenly he caught sight of the long slim neck of the Palazzo Vecchio up above, in the air. And in another minute he was passing between massive buildings, out into the Piazza della Signoria. There he stood still and looked round him in real surprise, and real joy. The flat empty square with its stone paving was all wet. The great buildings rose dark. The dark, sheer front of the Palazzo Vecchio went up like a cliff, to the battlements, and the slim tower soared dark and hawk-like, crested, high above. And at the foot of the cliff stood the great naked David, white and stripped in the wet, white against the dark, warm-dark cliff of the building--and near, the heavy naked men of Bandinelli. The first thing he had seen, as he turned into the square, was the back of one of these Bandinelli statues: a great naked man of marble, with a heavy back and strong naked flanks over which the water was trickling. And then to come immediately upon the David, so much whiter, glistening skin-white in the wet, standing a little forward, and shrinking. He may be ugly, too naturalistic, too big, and anything else you like. But the David in the Piazza della Signoria, there under the dark great palace, in the position Michelangelo chose for him, there, standing forward stripped and exposed and eternally half-shrinking, half--wishing to expose himself, he is the genius of Florence. The adolescent, the white, self-conscious, physical adolescent: enormous, in keeping with the stark, grim, enormous palace, which is dark and bare as he is white and bare. And behind, the big, lumpy Bandinelli men are in keeping too. They may be ugly--but they are there in their place, and they have their own lumpy reality. And this morning in the rain, standing unbroken, with the water trickling down their flanks and along the inner side of their great thighs, they were real enough, representing the undaunted physical nature of the heavier Florentines. Aaron looked and looked at the three great naked men. David so much white, and standing forward, self-conscious: then at the great splendid front of the Palazzo Vecchio: and at the fountain splashing water upon its wet, wet figures; and the distant equestrian statue; and the stone-flagged space of the grim square. And he felt that here he was in one of the world's living centres, here, in the Piazza della Signoria. The sense of having arrived--of having reached a perfect centre of the human world: this he had. And so, satisfied, he turned round to look at the bronze Perseus which rose just above him. Benvenuto Cellini's dark hero looked female, with his plump hips and his waist, female and rather insignificant: graceful, and rather vulgar. The clownish Bandinellis were somehow more to the point.--Then all the statuary in the Loggia! But that is a mistake. It looks too much like the yard of a monumental mason. The great, naked men in the rain, under the dark-grey November sky, in the dark, strong inviolable square! The wonderful hawk-head of the old palace. The physical, self-conscious adolescent, Michelangelo's David, shrinking and exposing himself, with his white, slack limbs! Florence, passionate, fearless Florence had spoken herself out.--Aaron was fascinated by the Piazza della Signoria. He never went into the town, nor returned from it to his lodging, without contriving to pass through the square. And he never passed through it without satisfaction. Here men had been at their intensest, most naked pitch, here, at the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. Since then, always rather puling and apologetic. Aaron felt a new self, a new life-urge rising inside himself. Florence seemed to start a new man in him. It was a town of men. On Friday morning, so early, he heard the traffic. Early, he watched the rather low, two-wheeled traps of the peasants spanking recklessly over the bridge, coming in to town. And then, when he went out, he found the Piazza della Signoria packed with men: but all, all men. And all farmers, land-owners and land-workers. The curious, fine-nosed Tuscan farmers, with their half-sardonic, amber-coloured eyes. Their curious individuality, their clothes worn so easy and reckless, their hats with the personal twist. Their curious full oval cheeks, their tendency to be too fat, to have a belly and heavy limbs. Their close-sitting dark hair. And above all, their sharp, almost acrid, mocking expression, the silent curl of the nose, the eternal challenge, the rock-bottom unbelief, and the subtle fearlessness. The dangerous, subtle, never-dying fearlessness, and the acrid unbelief. But men! Men! A town of men, in spite of everything. The one manly quality, undying, acrid fearlessness. The eternal challenge of the un-quenched human soul. Perhaps too acrid and challenging today, when there is nothing left to challenge. But men--who existed without apology and without justification. Men who would neither justify themselves nor apologize for themselves. Just men. The rarest thing left in our sweet Christendom. Altogether Aaron was pleased with himself, for being in Florence. Those were early days after the war, when as yet very few foreigners had returned, and the place had the native sombreness and intensity. So that our friend did not mind being alone. The third day, however, Francis called on him. There was a tap at the bedroom door, and the young man entered, all eyes of curiosity. “Oh, there you ARE!” he cried, flinging his hand and twisting his waist and then laying his hand on his breast. “Such a LONG way up to you! But miles--! Well, how are you? Are you quite all right here? You are? I'm so glad--we've been so rushed, seeing people that we haven't had a MINUTE. But not a MINUTE! People! People! People! Isn't it amazing how many there are, and how many one knows, and gets to know! But amazing! Endless acquaintances!--Oh, and such quaint people here! so ODD! So MORE than odd! Oh, extraordinary--!” Francis chuckled to himself over the extraordinariness. Then he seated himself gracefully at Aaron's table. “Oh, MUSIC! What? Corelli! So interesting! So very CLEVER, these people, weren't they!--Corelli and the younger Scarlatti and all that crowd.” Here he closed the score again. “But now--LOOK! Do you want to know anybody here, or don't you? I've told them about you, and of course they're dying to meet you and hear you play. But I thought it best not to mention anything about--about your being hard-up, and all that. I said you were just here on a visit. You see with this kind of people I'm sure it's much the best not to let them start off by thinking you will need them at all--or that you MIGHT need them. Why give yourself away, anyhow? Just meet them and take them for what they're worth--and then you can see. If they like to give you an engagement to play at some show or other--well, you can decide when the time comes whether you will accept. Much better that these kind of people shouldn't get it into their heads at once that they can hire your services. It doesn't do. They haven't enough discrimination for that. Much best make rather a favour of it, than sort of ask them to hire you.--Don't you agree? Perhaps I'm wrong.” Aaron sat and listened and wondered at the wisdom and the genuine kindness of the young _beau_. And more still, he wondered at the profound social disillusionment. This handsome collie dog was something of a social wolf, half showing his fangs at the moment. But with genuine kindheartedness for another wolf. Aaron was touched. “Yes, I think that's the best way,” he said. “You do! Yes, so do I. Oh, they are such queer people! Why is it, do you think, that English people abroad go so very QUEER--so ultra-English--INCREDIBLE!--and at the same time so perfectly impossible? But impossible! Pathological, I assure you.--And as for their sexual behaviour--oh, dear, don't mention it. I assure you it doesn't bear mention.--And all quite flagrant, quite unabashed--under the cover of this fanatical Englishness. But I couldn't begin to TELL you all the things. It's just incredible.” Aaron wondered how on earth Francis had been able to discover and bear witness to so much that was incredible, in a bare two days. But a little gossip, and an addition of lurid imagination will carry you anywhere. “Well now,” said Francis. “What are you doing today?” Aaron was not doing anything in particular. “Then will you come and have dinner with us--?” Francis fixed up the time and the place--a small restaurant at the other end of the town. Then he leaned out of the window. “Fascinating place! Oh, fascinating place!” he said, soliloquy. “And you've got a superb view. Almost better than ours, I think.--Well then, half-past seven. We're meeting a few other people, mostly residents or people staying some time. We're not inviting them. Just dropping in, you know--a little restaurant. We shall see you then! Well then, _a rivederci_ till this evening.--So glad you like Florence! I'm simply loving it--revelling. And the pictures!--Oh--” The party that evening consisted all of men: Francis and Angus, and a writer, James Argyle, and little Algy Constable, and tiny Louis Mee, and deaf Walter Rosen. They all snapped and rattled at one another, and were rather spiteful but rather amusing. Francis and Angus had to leave early. They had another appointment. And James Argyle got quite tipsy, and said to Aaron: “But, my boy, don't let yourself be led astray by the talk of such people as Algy. Beware of them, my boy, if you've a soul to save. If you've a soul to save!” And he swallowed the remains of his litre. Algy's nose trembled a little, and his eyes blinked. “And if you've a soul to LOSE,” he said, “I would warn you very earnestly against Argyle.” Whereupon Algy shut one eye and opened the other so wide, that Aaron was almost scared. “Quite right, my boy. Ha! Ha! Never a truer thing said! Ha-ha-ha.” Argyle laughed his Mephistophelian tipsy laugh. “They'll teach you to save. Never was such a lot of ripe old savers! Save their old trouser-buttons! Go to them if you want to learn to save. Oh, yes, I advise it seriously. You'll lose nothing--not even a reputation.--You may lose a SOUL, of course. But that's a detail, among such a hoard of banknotes and trouser-buttons. Ha-ha! What's a soul, to them--?” “What is it to you, is perhaps the more pertinent question,” said Algy, flapping his eyelids like some crazy owl. “It is you who specialise in the matter of soul, and we who are in need of enlightenment--” “Yes, very true, you ARE! You ARE in need of enlightenment. A set of benighted wise virgins. Ha-ha-ha! That's good, that--benighted wise virgins! What--” Argyle put his red face near to Aaron's, and made a _moue_, narrowing his eyes quizzically as he peered up from under his level grey eyebrows. “Sit in the dark to save the lamp-oil--And all no good to them.--When the bridegroom cometh--! Ha-ha! Good that! Good, my boy!--The bridegroom--” he giggled to himself. “What about the bridegroom, Algy, my boy? Eh? What about him? Better trim your wick, old man, if it's not too late--” “We were talking of souls, not wicks, Argyle,” said Algy. “Same thing. Upon my soul it all amounts to the same thing. Where's the soul in a man that hasn't got a bedfellow--eh?--answer me that! Can't be done you know. Might as well ask a virgin chicken to lay you an egg.” “Then there ought to be a good deal of it about,” said Algy. “Of what? Of soul? There ought to be a good deal of soul about?--Ah, because there's a good deal of--, you mean.--Ah, I wish it were so. I wish it were so. But, believe me, there's far more damned chastity in the world, than anything else. Even in this town.--Call it chastity, if you like. I see nothing in it but sterility. It takes a rat to praise long tails. Impotence set up the praise of chastity--believe me or not--but that's the bottom of it. The virtue is made out of the necessity.--Ha-ha-ha!--Like them! Like them! Ha-ha! Saving their souls! Why they'd save the waste matter of their bodies if they could. Grieves them to part with it.--Ha! ha!--ha!” There was a pause. Argyle was in his cups, which left no more to be said. Algy, quivering and angry, looked disconcertingly round the room as if he were quite calm and collected. The deaf Jewish Rosen was smiling down his nose and saying: “What was that last? I didn't catch that last,” cupping his ear with his hand in the frantic hope that someone would answer. No one paid any heed. “I shall be going,” said Algy, looking round. Then to Aaron he said, “You play the flute, I hear. May we hear you some time?” “Yes,” said Aaron, non-committal. “Well, look here--come to tea tomorrow. I shall have some friends, and Del Torre will play the piano. Come to tea tomorrow, will you?” “Thank you, I will.” “And perhaps you'll bring your flute along.” “Don't you do any such thing, my boy. Make them entertain YOU, for once.--They're always squeezing an entertainment out of somebody--” and Argyle desperately emptied the remains of Algy's wine into his own glass: whilst Algy stood as if listening to something far off, and blinking terribly. “Anyhow,” he said at length, “you'll come, won't you? And bring the flute if you feel like it.” “Don't you take that flute, my boy,” persisted Argyle. “Don't think of such a thing. If they want a concert, let them buy their tickets and go to the Teatro Diana. Or to Marchesa del Torre's Saturday morning. She can afford to treat them.” Algy looked at Argyle, and blinked. “Well,” he said. “I hope you'll get home all right, Argyle.” “Thank you for your courtesy, Algy. Won't you lend me your arm?” As Algy was small and frail, somewhat shaky, and as Argyle was a finely built, heavy man of fifty or more, the slap was unkind. “Afraid I can't tonight. Good-night--” Algy departed, so did little Mee, who had sat with a little delighted disapproval on his tiny, bird-like face, without saying anything. And even the Jew Rosen put away his deaf-machine and began awkwardly to take his leave. His long nose was smiling to itself complacently at all the things Argyle had been saying. When he, too, had gone, Argyle arched his brows at Aaron, saying: “Oh, my dear fellow, what a lot they are!--Little Mee--looking like an innocent little boy. He's over seventy if he's a day. Well over seventy. Well, you don't believe me. Ask his mother--ask his mother. She's ninety-five. Old lady of ninety-five--” Argyle even laughed himself at his own preposterousness. “And then Algy--Algy's not a fool, you know. Oh, he can be most entertaining, most witty, and amusing. But he's out of place here. He should be in Kensington, dandling round the ladies' drawing rooms and making his _mots_. They're rich, you know, the pair of them. Little Mee used to boast that he lived on eleven-and-three-pence a week. Had to, poor chap. But then what does a white mouse like that need? Makes a heavy meal on a cheese-paring. Luck, you know--but of course he's come into money as well. Rich as Croesus, and still lives on nineteen-and-two-pence a week. Though it's nearly double, of course, what it used to be. No wonder he looks anxious. They disapprove of me--oh, quite right, quite right from their own point of view. Where would their money be otherwise? It wouldn't last long if I laid hands on it--” he made a devilish quizzing face. “But you know, they get on my nerves. Little old maids, you know, little old maids. I'm sure I'm surprised at their patience with me.--But when people are patient with you, you want to spit gall at them. Don't you? Ha-ha-ha! Poor old Algy.--Did I lay it on him tonight, or did I miss him?” “I think you got him,” said Aaron. “He'll never forgive me. Depend on it, he'll never forgive me. Ha-ha! I like to be unforgiven. It adds ZEST to one's intercourse with people, to know that they'll never forgive one. Ha-ha-ha! Little old maids, who do their knitting with their tongues. Poor old Algy--he drops his stitches now. Ha-ha-ha!--Must be eighty, I should say.” Aaron laughed. He had never met a man like Argyle before--and he could not help being charmed. The other man had a certain wicked whimsicality that was very attractive, when levelled against someone else, and not against oneself. He must have been very handsome in his day, with his natural dignity, and his clean-shaven strong square face. But now his face was all red and softened and inflamed, his eyes had gone small and wicked under his bushy grey brows. Still he had a presence. And his grey hair, almost gone white, was still handsome. “And what are you going to do in Florence?” asked Argyle. Aaron explained. “Well,” said Argyle. “Make what you can out of them, and then go. Go before they have time to do the dirty on you. If they think you want anything from them, they'll treat you like a dog, like a dog. Oh, they're very frightened of anybody who wants anything of them: frightened to death. I see nothing of them.--Live by myself--see nobody. Can't stand it, you know: their silly little teaparties--simply can't stand it. No, I live alone--and shall die alone.--At least, I sincerely hope so. I should be sorry to have any of them hanging round.” The restaurant was empty, the pale, malarial waiter--he had of course contracted malaria during the war--was looking purple round the eyes. But Argyle callously sat on. Aaron therefore rose to his feet. “Oh, I'm coming, I'm coming,” said Argyle. He got unsteadily to his feet. The waiter helped him on with his coat: and he put a disreputable-looking little curly hat on his head. Then he took his stick. “Don't look at my appearance, my dear fellow,” said Argyle. “I am frayed at the wrists--look here!” He showed the cuffs of his overcoat, just frayed through. “I've got a trunkful of clothes in London, if only somebody would bring it out to me.--Ready then! _Avanti!_” And so they passed out into the still rainy street. Argyle lived in the very centre of the town: in the Cathedral Square. Aaron left him at his hotel door. “But come and see me,” said Argyle. “Call for me at twelve o'clock--or just before twelve--and let us have luncheon together. What! Is that all right?--Yes, come just before twelve.--When?--Tomorrow? Tomorrow morning? Will you come tomorrow?” Aaron said he would on Monday. “Monday, eh! You say Monday! Very well then. Don't you forget now. Don't you forget. For I've a memory like a vice. _I_ shan't forget.--Just before twelve then. And come right up. I'm right under the roof. In Paradise, as the porter always says. _Siamo nel paradiso_. But he's a _cretin_. As near Paradise as I care for, for it's devilish hot in summer, and damned cold in winter. Don't you forget now--Monday, twelve o'clock.” And Argyle pinched Aaron's arm fast, then went unsteadily up the steps to his hotel door. The next day at Algy's there was a crowd Algy had a very pleasant flat indeed, kept more scrupulously neat and finicking than ever any woman's flat was kept. So today, with its bowls of flowers and its pictures and books and old furniture, and Algy, very nicely dressed, fluttering and blinking and making really a charming host, it was all very delightful to the little mob of visitors. They were a curious lot, it is true: everybody rather exceptional. Which though it may be startling, is so very much better fun than everybody all alike. Aaron talked to an old, old Italian elegant in side-curls, who peeled off his grey gloves and studied his formalities with a delightful Mid-Victorian dash, and told stories about a _plaint_ which Lady Surry had against Lord Marsh, and was quite incomprehensible. Out rolled the English words, like plums out of a burst bag, and all completely unintelligible. But the old _beau_ was supremely satisfied. He loved talking English, and holding his listeners spell-bound. Next to Aaron on the sofa sat the Marchesa del Torre, an American woman from the Southern States, who had lived most of her life in Europe. She was about forty years of age, handsome, well-dressed, and quiet in the buzz of the tea-party. It was evident she was one of Algy's lionesses. Now she sat by Aaron, eating nothing, but taking a cup of tea and keeping still. She seemed sad--or not well perhaps. Her eyes were heavy. But she was very carefully made up, and very well dressed, though simply: and sitting there, full-bosomed, rather sad, remote-seeming, she suggested to Aaron a modern Cleopatra brooding, Anthony-less. Her husband, the Marchese, was a little intense Italian in a colonel's grey uniform, cavalry, leather gaiters. He had blue eyes, his hair was cut very short, his head looked hard and rather military: he would have been taken for an Austrian officer, or even a German, had it not been for the peculiar Italian sprightliness and touch of grimace in his mobile countenance. He was rather like a gnome--not ugly, but odd. Now he came and stood opposite to Signor di Lanti, and quizzed him in Italian. But it was evident, in quizzing the old buck, the little Marchese was hovering near his wife, in ear-shot. Algy came up with cigarettes, and she at once began to smoke, with that peculiar heavy intensity of a nervous woman. Aaron did not say anything--did not know what to say. He was peculiarly conscious of the woman sitting next to him, her arm near his. She smoked heavily, in silence, as if abstracted, a sort of cloud on her level, dark brows. Her hair was dark, but a softish brown, not black, and her skin was fair. Her bosom would be white.--Why Aaron should have had this thought, he could not for the life of him say. Manfredi, her husband, rolled his blue eyes and grimaced as he laughed at old Lanti. But it was obvious that his attention was diverted sideways, towards his wife. Aaron, who was tired of nursing a tea-cup, placed in on a table and resumed his seat in silence. But suddenly the little Marchese whipped out his cigarette-case, and making a little bow, presented it to Aaron, saying: “Won't you smoke?” “Thank you,” said Aaron. “Turkish that side--Virginia there--you see.” “Thank you, Turkish,” said Aaron. The little officer in his dove-grey and yellow uniform snapped his box shut again, and presented a light. “You are new in Florence?” he said, as he presented the match. “Four days,” said Aaron. “And I hear you are musical.” “I play the flute--no more.” “Ah, yes--but then you play it as an artist, not as an accomplishment.” “But how do you know?” laughed Aaron. “I was told so--and I believe it.” “That's nice of you, anyhow--But you are a musician too.” “Yes--we are both musicians--my wife and I.” Manfredi looked at his wife. She flicked the ash off her cigarette. “What sort?” said Aaron. “Why, how do you mean, what sort? We are dilettanti, I suppose.” “No--what is your instrument? The piano?” “Yes--the pianoforte. And my wife sings. But we are very much out of practice. I have been at the war four years, and we have had our home in Paris. My wife was in Paris, she did not wish to stay in Italy alone. And so--you see--everything goes--” “But you will begin again?” “Yes. We have begun already. We have music on Saturday mornings. Next Saturday a string quartette, and violin solos by a young Florentine woman--a friend--very good indeed, daughter of our Professor Tortoli, who composes--as you may know--” “Yes,” said Aaron. “Would you care to come and hear--?” “Awfully nice if you would--” suddenly said the wife, quite simply, as if she had merely been tired, and not talking before. “I should like to very much--” “Do come then.” While they were making the arrangements, Algy came up in his blandest manner. “Now Marchesa--might we hope for a song?” “No--I don't sing any more,” came the slow, contralto reply. “Oh, but you can't mean you say that deliberately--” “Yes, quite deliberately--” She threw away her cigarette and opened her little gold case to take another. “But what can have brought you to such a disastrous decision?” “I can't say,” she replied, with a little laugh. “The war, probably.” “Oh, but don't let the war deprive us of this, as of everything else.” “Can't be helped,” she said. “I have no choice in the matter. The bird has flown--” She spoke with a certain heavy languor. “You mean the bird of your voice? Oh, but that is quite impossible. One can hear it calling out of the leaves every time you speak.” “I'm afraid you can't get him to do any more than call out of the leaves.” “But--but--pardon me--is it because you don't intend there should be any more song? Is that your intention?” “That I couldn't say,” said the Marchesa, smoking, smoking. “Yes,” said Manfredi. “At the present time it is because she WILL not--not because she cannot. It is her will, as you say.” “Dear me! Dear me!” said Algy. “But this is really another disaster added to the war list.--But--but--will none of us ever be able to persuade you?” He smiled half cajoling, half pathetic, with a prodigious flapping of his eyes. “I don't know,” said she. “That will be as it must be.” “Then can't we say it must be SONG once more?” To this sally she merely laughed, and pressed out her half-smoked cigarette. “How very disappointing! How very cruel of--of fate--and the war--and--and all the sum total of evils,” said Algy. “Perhaps--” here the little and piquant host turned to Aaron. “Perhaps Mr. Sisson, your flute might call out the bird of song. As thrushes call each other into challenge, you know. Don't you think that is very probable?” “I have no idea,” said Aaron. “But you, Marchesa. Won't you give us hope that it might be so?” “I've no idea, either,” said she. “But I should very much like to hear Mr. Sisson's flute. It's an instrument I like extremely.” “There now. You see you may work the miracle, Mr. Sisson. Won't you play to us?” “I'm afraid I didn't bring my flute along,” said Aaron “I didn't want to arrive with a little bag.” “Quite!” said Algy. “What a pity it wouldn't go in your pocket.” “Not music and all,” said Aaron. “Dear me! What a _comble_ of disappointment. I never felt so strongly, Marchesa, that the old life and the old world had collapsed.--Really--I shall soon have to try to give up being cheerful at all.” “Don't do that,” said the Marchesa. “It isn't worth the effort.” “Ah! I'm glad you find it so. Then I have hope.” She merely smiled, indifferent. The teaparty began to break up--Aaron found himself going down the stairs with the Marchesa and her husband. They descended all three in silence, husband and wife in front. Once outside the door, the husband asked: “How shall we go home, dear? Tram or carriage--?” It was evident he was economical. “Walk,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Aaron. “We are all going the same way, I believe.” Aaron said where he lived. They were just across the river. And so all three proceeded to walk through the town. “You are sure it won't be too much for you--too far?” said the little officer, taking his wife's arm solicitously. She was taller than he. But he was a spirited fellow. “No, I feel like walking.” “So long as you don't have to pay for it afterwards.” Aaron gathered that she was not well. Yet she did not look ill--unless it were nerves. She had that peculiar heavy remote quality of pre-occupation and neurosis. The streets of Florence were very full this Sunday evening, almost impassable, crowded particularly with gangs of grey-green soldiers. The three made their way brokenly, and with difficulty. The Italian was in a constant state of returning salutes. The grey-green, sturdy, unsoldierly soldiers looked at the woman as she passed. “I am sure you had better take a carriage,” said Manfredi. “No--I don't mind it.” “Do you feel at home in Florence?” Aaron asked her. “Yes--as much as anywhere. Oh, yes--quite at home.” “Do you like it as well as anywhere?” he asked. “Yes--for a time. Paris for the most part.” “Never America?” “No, never America. I came when I was quite a little girl to Europe--Madrid--Constantinople--Paris. I hardly knew America at all.” Aaron remembered that Francis had told him, the Marchesa's father had been ambassador to Paris. “So you feel you have no country of your own?” “I have Italy. I am Italian now, you know.” Aaron wondered why she spoke so muted, so numbed. Manfredi seemed really attached to her--and she to him. They were so simple with one another. They came towards the bridge where they should part. “Won't you come and have a cocktail?” she said. “Now?” said Aaron. “Yes. This is the right time for a cocktail. What time is it, Manfredi?” “Half past six. Do come and have one with us,” said the Italian. “We always take one about this time.” Aaron continued with them over the bridge. They had the first floor of an old palazzo opposite, a little way up the hill. A man-servant opened the door. “If only it will be warm,” she said. “The apartment is almost impossible to keep warm. We will sit in the little room.” Aaron found himself in a quite warm room with shaded lights and a mixture of old Italian stiffness and deep soft modern comfort. The Marchesa went away to take off her wraps, and the Marchese chatted with Aaron. The little officer was amiable and kind, and it was evident he liked his guest. “Would you like to see the room where we have music?” he said. “It is a fine room for the purpose--we used before the war to have music every Saturday morning, from ten to twelve: and all friends might come. Usually we had fifteen or twenty people. Now we are starting again. I myself enjoy it so much. I am afraid my wife isn't so enthusiastic as she used to be. I wish something would rouse her up, you know. The war seemed to take her life away. Here in Florence are so many amateurs. Very good indeed. We can have very good chamber-music indeed. I hope it will cheer her up and make her quite herself again. I was away for such long periods, at the front.--And it was not good for her to be alone.--I am hoping now all will be better.” So saying, the little, odd officer switched on the lights of the long salon. It was a handsome room in the Italian mode of the Empire period--beautiful old faded tapestry panels--reddish--and some ormolu furniture--and other things mixed in--rather conglomerate, but pleasing, all the more pleasing. It was big, not too empty, and seemed to belong to human life, not to show and shut-upedness. The host was happy showing it. “Of course the flat in Paris is more luxurious than this,” he said. “But I prefer this. I prefer it here.” There was a certain wistfulness as he looked round, then began to switch off the lights. They returned to the little salotta. The Marchesa was seated in a low chair. She wore a very thin white blouse, that showed her arms and her throat. She was a full-breasted, soft-skinned woman, though not stout. “Make the cocktails then, Manfredi,” she said. “Do you find this room very cold?” she asked of Aaron. “Not a bit cold,” he said. “The stove goes all the time,” she said, “but without much effect.” “You wear such thin clothes,” he said. “Ah, no, the stove should give heat enough. Do sit down. Will you smoke? There are cigarettes--and cigars, if you prefer them.” “No, I've got my own, thanks.” She took her own cigarette from her gold case. “It is a fine room, for music, the big room,” said he. “Yes, quite. Would you like to play for us some time, do you think?” “Do you want me to? I mean does it interest you?” “What--the flute?” “No--music altogether--” “Music altogether--! Well! I used to love it. Now--I'm not sure. Manfredi lives for it, almost.” “For that and nothing else?” asked Aaron. “No, no! No, no! Other things as well.” “But you don't like it much any more?” “I don't know. Perhaps I don't. I'm not sure.” “You don't look forward to the Saturday mornings?” he asked. “Perhaps I don't--but for Manfredi's sake, of course, I do. But for his sake more than my own, I admit. And I think he knows it.” “A crowd of people in one's house--” said Aaron. “Yes, the people. But it's not only that. It's the music itself--I think I can't stand it any more. I don't know.” “Too emotional? Too much feeling for you?” “Yes, perhaps. But no. What I can't stand is chords, you know: harmonies. A number of sounds all sounding together. It just makes me ill. It makes me feel so sick.” “What--do you want discords?--dissonances?” “No--they are nearly as bad. No, it's just when any number of musical notes, different notes, come together, harmonies or discords. Even a single chord struck on the piano. It makes me feel sick. I just feel as if I should retch. Isn't it strange? Of course, I don't tell Manfredi. It would be too cruel to him. It would cut his life in two.” “But then why do you have the music--the Saturdays--then?” “Oh, I just keep out of the way as much as possible. I'm sure you feel there is something wrong with me, that I take it as I do,” she added, as if anxious: but half ironical. “No--I was just wondering--I believe I feel something the same myself. I know orchestra makes me blind with hate or I don't know what. But I want to throw bombs.” “There now. It does that to me, too. Only now it has fairly got me down, and I feel nothing but helpless nausea. You know, like when you are seasick.” Her dark-blue, heavy, haunted-looking eyes were resting on him as if she hoped for something. He watched her face steadily, a curious intelligence flickering on his own. “Yes,” he said. “I understand it. And I know, at the bottom, I'm like that. But I keep myself from realising, don't you know? Else perhaps, where should I be? Because I make my life and my living at it, as well.” “At music! Do you! But how bad for you. But perhaps the flute is different. I have a feeling that it is. I can think of one single pipe-note--yes, I can think of it quite, quite calmly. And I can't even think of the piano, or of the violin with its tremolo, or of orchestra, or of a string quartette--or even a military band--I can't think of it without a shudder. I can only bear drum-and-fife. Isn't it crazy of me--but from the other, from what we call music proper, I've endured too much. But bring your flute one day. Bring it, will you? And let me hear it quite alone. Quite, quite alone. I think it might do me an awful lot of good. I do, really. I can imagine it.” She closed her eyes and her strange, sing-song lapsing voice came to an end. She spoke almost like one in a trance--or a sleep-walker. “I've got it now in my overcoat pocket,” he said, “if you like.” “Have you? Yes!” She was never hurried: always slow and resonant, so that the echoes of her voice seemed to linger. “Yes--do get it. Do get it. And play in the other room--quite--quite without accompaniment. Do--and try me.” “And you will tell me what you feel?” “Yes.” Aaron went out to his overcoat. When he returned with his flute, which he was screwing together, Manfredi had come with the tray and the three cocktails. The Marchesa took her glass. “Listen, Manfredi,” she said. “Mr. Sisson is going to play, quite alone in the sala. And I am going to sit here and listen.” “Very well,” said Manfredi. “Drink your cocktail first. Are you going to play without music?” “Yes,” said Aaron. “I'll just put on the lights for you.” “No--leave it dark. Enough light will come in from here.” “Sure?” said Manfredi. “Yes.” The little soldier was an intruder at the moment. Both the others felt it so. But they bore him no grudge. They knew it was they who were exceptional, not he. Aaron swallowed his drink, and looked towards the door. “Sit down, Manfredi. Sit still,” said the Marchesa. “Won't you let me try some accompaniment?” said the soldier. “No. I shall just play a little thing from memory,” said Aaron. “Sit down, dear. Sit down,” said the Marchesa to her husband. He seated himself obediently. The flash of bright yellow on the grey of his uniform seemed to make him like a chaffinch or a gnome. Aaron retired to the other room, and waited awhile, to get back the spell which connected him with the woman, and gave the two of them this strange isolation, beyond the bounds of life, as it seemed. He caught it again. And there, in the darkness of the big room, he put his flute to his lips, and began to play. It was a clear, sharp, lilted run-and-fall of notes, not a tune in any sense of the word, and yet a melody, a bright, quick sound of pure animation, a bright, quick, animate noise, running and pausing. It was like a bird's singing, in that it had no human emotion or passion or intention or meaning--a ripple and poise of animate sound. But it was unlike a bird's singing, in that the notes followed clear and single one after the other, in their subtle gallop. A nightingale is rather like that--a wild sound. To read all the human pathos into nightingales' singing is nonsense. A wild, savage, non-human lurch and squander of sound, beautiful, but entirely unaesthetic. What Aaron was playing was not of his own invention. It was a bit of mediaeval phrasing written for the pipe and the viol. It made the piano seem a ponderous, nerve-wracking steam-roller of noise, and the violin, as we know it, a hateful wire-drawn nerve-torturer. After a little while, when he entered the smaller room again, the Marchesa looked full into his face. “Good!” she said. “Good!” And a gleam almost of happiness seemed to light her up. She seemed like one who had been kept in a horrible enchanted castle--for years and years. Oh, a horrible enchanted castle, with wet walls of emotions and ponderous chains of feelings and a ghastly atmosphere of must-be. She felt she had seen through the opening door a crack of sunshine, and thin, pure, light outside air, outside, beyond this dank and beastly dungeon of feelings and moral necessity. Ugh!--she shuddered convulsively at what had been. She looked at her little husband. Chains of necessity all round him: a little jailor. Yet she was fond of him. If only he would throw away the castle keys. He was a little gnome. What did he clutch the castle-keys so tight for? Aaron looked at her. He knew that they understood one another, he and she. Without any moral necessity or any other necessity. Outside--they had got outside the castle of so-called human life. Outside the horrible, stinking human castle Of life. A bit of true, limpid freedom. Just a glimpse. “Charming!” said the Marchese. “Truly charming! But what was it you played?” Aaron told him. “But truly delightful. I say, won't you play for us one of these Saturdays? And won't you let me take the accompaniment? I should be charmed, charmed if you would.” “All right,” said Aaron. “Do drink another cocktail,” said his hostess. He did so. And then he rose to leave. “Will you stay to dinner?” said the Marchesa. “We have two people coming--two Italian relatives of my husband. But--” No, Aaron declined to stay to dinner. “Then won't you come on--let me see--on Wednesday? Do come on Wednesday. We are alone. And do bring the flute. Come at half-past six, as today, will you? Yes?” Aaron promised--and then he found himself in the street. It was half-past seven. Instead of returning straight home, he crossed the Ponte Vecchio and walked straight into the crowd. The night was fine now. He had his overcoat over his arm, and in a sort of trance or frenzy, whirled away by his evening's experience, and by the woman, he strode swiftly forward, hardly heeding anything, but rushing blindly on through all the crowd, carried away by his own feelings, as much as if he had been alone, and all these many people merely trees. Leaving the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele a gang of soldiers suddenly rushed round him, buffeting him in one direction, whilst another gang, swinging round the corner, threw him back helpless again into the midst of the first gang. For some moments he struggled among the rude, brutal little mob of grey-green coarse uniforms that smelt so strong of soldiers. Then, irritated, he found himself free again, shaking himself and passing on towards the cathedral. Irritated, he now put on his overcoat and buttoned it to the throat, closing himself in, as it were, from the brutal insolence of the Sunday night mob of men. Before, he had been walking through them in a rush of naked feeling, all exposed to their tender mercies. He now gathered himself together. As he was going home, suddenly, just as he was passing the Bargello, he stopped. He stopped, and put his hand to his breast pocket. His letter-case was gone. He had been robbed. It was as if lightning ran through him at that moment, as if a fluid electricity rushed down his limbs, through the sluice of his knees, and out at his feet, leaving him standing there almost unconscious. For a moment unconscious and superconscious he stood there. He had been robbed. They had put their hand in his breast and robbed him. If they had stabbed him, it could hardly have had a greater effect on him. And he had known it. He had known it. When the soldiers jostled him so evilly they robbed him. And he knew it. He had known it as if it were fate. Even as if it were fated beforehand. Feeling quite weak and faint, as if he had really been struck by some evil electric fluid, he walked on. And as soon as he began to walk, he began to reason. Perhaps his letter-case was in his other coat. Perhaps he had not had it with him at all. Perhaps he was feeling all this, just for nothing. Perhaps it was all folly. He hurried forward. He wanted to make sure. He wanted relief. It was as if the power of evil had suddenly seized him and thrown him, and he wanted to say it was not so, that he had imagined it all, conjured it up. He did not want to admit the power of evil--particularly at that moment. For surely a very ugly evil spirit had struck him, in the midst of that gang of Italian soldiers. He knew it--it had pierced him. It had _got_ him. But he wanted to say it was not so. Reaching the house, he hastened upwards to his far-off, lonely room, through the dark corridors. Once in his own apartment, he shut the door and switched on the light, a sensation like fear at his heart. Then he searched his other pockets. He looked everywhere. In vain. In vain, truly enough. For he _knew_ the thing was stolen. He had known it all along. The soldiers had deliberately plotted, had deliberately rushed him and taken his purse. They must have watched him previously. They must have grinned, and jeered at him. He sat down in a chair, to recover from the shock. The pocket-book contained four hundred francs, three one-pound notes, and various letters and private effects. Well, these were lost. But it was not so much the loss as the assault on his person that caused him to feel so stricken. He felt the jeering, gibing blows they had given as they jostled him. And now he sat, weak in every limb, and said to himself: “Yes--and if I hadn't rushed along so full of feeling: if I hadn't exposed myself: if I hadn't got worked up with the Marchesa, and then rushed all kindled through the streets, without reserve, it would never have happened. I gave myself away: and there was someone ready to snatch what I gave. I gave myself away. It is my own fault. I should have been on my guard. I should be always on my guard: always, always. With God and the devil both, I should be on my guard. Godly or devilish, I should hold fast to my reserve and keep on the watch. And if I don't, I deserve what I get.” But still he sat in his chair in his bedroom, dazed. One part of his soul was saying emphatically: It serves you right. It is nothing but right. It serves everybody right who rushes enkindled through the street, and trusts implicitly in mankind and in the life-spirit, as if mankind and the life-spirit were a playground for enkindled individuals. It serves you right. You have paid about twelve pounds sterling for your lesson. Fool, you might have known beforehand, and then you needn't have paid at all. You can ill afford twelve pounds sterling, you fool. But since paid you have, then mind, mind the lesson is learned. Never again. Never expose yourself again. Never again absolute trust. It is a blasphemy against life, is absolute trust. Has a wild creature ever absolute trust? It minds itself. Sleeping or waking it is on its guard. And so must you be, or you'll go under. Sleeping or waking, man or woman, God or the devil, keep your guard over yourself. Keep your guard over yourself, lest worse befall you. No man is robbed unless he incites a robber. No man is murdered unless he attracts a murderer. Then be not robbed: it lies within your own power. And be not murdered. Or if you are, you deserve it. Keep your guard over yourself, now, always and forever. Yes, against God quite as hard as against the devil. He's fully as dangerous to you.... Thus thinking, not in his mind but in his soul, his active, living soul, he gathered his equanimity once more, and accepted the fact. So he rose and tidied himself for dinner. His face was now set, and still. His heart also was still--and fearless. Because its sentinel was stationed. Stationed, stationed for ever. And Aaron never forgot. After this, it became essential to him to feel that the sentinel stood guard in his own heart. He felt a strange unease the moment he was off his guard. Asleep or awake, in the midst of the deepest passion or the suddenest love, or in the throes of greatest excitement or bewilderment, somewhere, some corner of himself was awake to the fact that the sentinel of the soul must not sleep, no, never, not for one instant. CHAPTER XVII. HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE Aaron and Lilly sat in Argyle's little loggia, high up under the eaves of the small hotel, a sort of long attic-terrace just under the roof, where no one would have suspected it. It was level with the grey conical roof of the Baptistery. Here sat Aaron and Lilly in the afternoon, in the last of the lovely autumn sunshine. Below, the square was already cold in shadow, the pink and white and green Baptistery rose lantern-shaped as from some sea-shore, cool, cold and wan now the sun was gone. Black figures, innumerable black figures, curious because they were all on end, up on end--Aaron could not say why he expected them to be horizontal--little black figures upon end, like fishes that swim on their tails, wiggled endlessly across the piazza, little carriages on natural all-fours rattled tinily across, the yellow little tram-cars, like dogs slipped round the corner. The balcony was so high up, that the sound was ineffectual. The upper space, above the houses, was nearer than the under-currents of the noisy town. Sunlight, lovely full sunlight, lingered warm and still on the balcony. It caught the facade of the cathedral sideways, like the tips of a flower, and sideways lit up the stem of Giotto's tower, like a lily stem, or a long, lovely pale pink and white and green pistil of the lily of the cathedral. Florence, the flowery town. Firenze--Fiorenze--the flowery town: the red lilies. The Fiorentini, the flower-souled. Flowers with good roots in the mud and muck, as should be: and fearless blossoms in air, like the cathedral and the tower and the David. “I love it,” said Lilly. “I love this place, I love the cathedral and the tower. I love its pinkness and its paleness. The Gothic souls find fault with it, and say it is gimcrack and tawdry and cheap. But I love it, it is delicate and rosy, and the dark stripes are as they should be, like the tiger marks on a pink lily. It's a lily, not a rose; a pinky white lily with dark tigery marks. And heavy, too, in its own substance: earth-substance, risen from earth into the air: and never forgetting the dark, black-fierce earth--I reckon here men for a moment were themselves, as a plant in flower is for the moment completely itself. Then it goes off. As Florence has gone off. No flowers now. But it HAS flowered. And I don't see why a race should be like an aloe tree, flower once and die. Why should it? Why not flower again? Why not?” “If it's going to, it will,” said Aaron. “Our deciding about it won't alter it.” “The decision is part of the business.” Here they were interrupted by Argyle, who put his head through one of the windows. He had flecks of lather on his reddened face. “Do you think you're wise now,” he said, “to sit in that sun?” “In November?” laughed Lilly. “Always fear the sun when there's an 'r' in the month,” said Argyle. “Always fear it 'r' or no 'r,' _I_ say. I'm frightened of it. I've been in the South, I know what it is. I tell you I'm frightened of it. But if you think you can stand it--well--” “It won't last much longer, anyhow,” said Lilly. “Too long for me, my boy. I'm a shady bird, in all senses of the word, in all senses of the word.--Now are you comfortable? What? Have another cushion? A rug for your knees? You're quite sure now? Well, wait just one moment till the waiter brings up a syphon, and you shall have a whiskey and soda. Precious--oh, yes, very precious these days--like drinking gold. Thirty-five lire a bottle, my boy!” Argyle pulled a long face, and made a noise with his lips. “But I had this bottle given me, and luckily you've come while there's a drop left. Very glad you have! Very glad you have.” Here he poked a little table through the window, and put a bottle and two glasses, one a tooth-glass, upon it. Then he withdrew again to finish shaving. The waiter presently hobbled up with the syphon and third glass. Argyle pushed his head through the window, that was only a little higher than the balcony. He was soon neatly shaved, and was brushing his hair. “Go ahead, my boys, go ahead with that whiskey!” he said. “We'll wait for you,” said Lilly. “No, no, don't think of it. However, if you will, I shall be one minute only--one minute only. I'll put on the water for the tea now. Oh, damned bad methylated spirit they sell now! And six francs a litre! Six francs a litre! I don't know what I'm going to do, the air I breathe costs money nowadays--Just one moment and I'll be with you! Just one moment--” In a very little while he came from the tiny attic bedroom, through the tiniest cupboard of a sitting-room under the eaves, where his books were, and where he had hung his old red India tapestries--or silk embroideries--and he emerged there up above the world on the loggia. “Now then--_siamo nel paradiso_, eh? Paradisal enough for you, is it?” “The devil looking over Lincoln,” said Lilly laughing, glancing up into Argyle's face. “The devil looking over Florence would feel sad,” said Argyle. “The place is fast growing respectable--Oh, piety makes the devil chuckle. But respectability, my boy, argues a serious diminution of spunk. And when the spunk diminishes we-ell--it's enough to make the most sturdy devil look sick. What? No doubt about it, no doubt whatever--There--!” he had just finished settling his tie and buttoning his waistcoat. “How do I look, eh? Presentable?--I've just had this suit turned. Clever little tailor across the way there. But he charged me a hundred and twenty francs.” Argyle pulled a face, and made the little trumping noise with his lips. “However--not bad, is it?--He had to let in a bit at the back of the waistcoat, and a gusset, my boy, a gusset--in the trousers back. Seems I've grown in the arsal region. Well, well, might do worse.--Is it all right?” Lilly eyed the suit. “Very nice. Very nice indeed. Such a good cloth! That makes all the difference.” “Oh, my dear fellow, all the difference! This suit is eleven years old--eleven years old. But beautiful English cloth--before the war, before the war!” “It looks quite wonderfully expensive and smart now,” said Lilly. “Expensive and smart, eh! Ha-ha-ha! Well, it cost me a hundred and twenty francs to have it turned, and I found that expensive enough. Well, now, come--” here Argyle's voice took on a new gay cheer. “A whiskey and soda, Lilly? Say when! Oh, nonsense, nonsense! You're going to have double that. You're no lily of the valley here, remember. Not with me. Not likely. _Siamo nel paradiso_, remember.” “But why should we drink your whiskey? Tea would do for us just as well.” “Not likely! Not likely! When I have the pleasure of your company, my boy, we drink a glass of something, unless I am utterly stripped. Say when, Aaron.” “When,” said Aaron. Argyle at last seated himself heavily in a small chair. The sun had left the loggia, but was glowing still on Giotto's tower and the top of the cathedral facade, and on the remoter great red-tiled dome. “Look at my little red monthly rose,” said Argyle. “Wonderful little fellow! I wouldn't have anything happen to him for the world. Oh, a bacchic little chap. I made Pasquale wear a wreath of them on his hair. Very becoming they were, very.--Oh, I've had a charming show of flowers. Wonderful creatures sunflowers are.” They got up and put their heads over the balcony, looking down on the square below. “Oh, great fun, great fun.--Yes, I had a charming show of flowers, charming.--Zinnias, petunias, ranunculus, sunflowers, white stocks--oh, charming. Look at that bit of honeysuckle. You see the berries where his flowers were! Delicious scent, I assure you.” Under the little balcony wall Argyle had put square red-tiled pots, all round, and in these still bloomed a few pansies and asters, whilst in a corner a monthly rose hung flowers like round blood-drops. Argyle was as tidy and scrupulous in his tiny rooms and his balcony as if he were a first-rate sea-man on a yacht. Lilly remarked on this. “Do you see signs of the old maid coming out in me? Oh, I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. We all end that way. Age makes old maids of us all. And Tanny is all right, you say? Bring her to see me. Why didn't she come today?” “You know you don't like people unless you expect them.” “Oh, but my dear fellow!--You and Tanny; you'd be welcome if you came at my busiest moment. Of course you would. I'd be glad to see you if you interrupted me at any crucial moment.--I am alone now till August. Then we shall go away together somewhere. But you and Tanny; why, there's the world, and there's Lilly: that's how I put it, my boy.” “All right, Argyle.--Hoflichkeiten.” “What? Gar keine Hoflichkeiten. Wahrhaftiger Kerl bin ich.--When am I going to see Tanny? When are you coming to dine with me?” “After you've dined with us--say the day after tomorrow.” “Right you are. Delighted--. Let me look if that water's boiling.” He got up and poked half himself inside the bedroom. “Not yet. Damned filthy methylated spirit they sell.” “Look,” said Lilly. “There's Del Torre!” “Like some sort of midge, in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform. I can't stand it, I tell you. I can't stand the sight of any more of these uniforms. Like a blight on the human landscape. Like a blight. Like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies. Europe's got the smother-fly in these infernal shoddy militarists.” “Del Torre's coming out of it as soon as he can,” said Lilly. “I should think so, too.” “I like him myself--very much. Look, he's seen us! He wants to come up, Argyle.” “What, in that uniform! I'll see him in his grandmother's crinoline first.” “Don't be fanatical, it's bad taste. Let him come up a minute.” “Not for my sake. But for yours, he shall,” Argyle stood at the parapet of the balcony and waved his arm. “Yes, come up,” he said, “come up, you little mistkafer--what the Americans call a bug. Come up and be damned.” Of course Del Torre was too far off to hear this exhortation. Lilly also waved to him--and watched him pass into the doorway far below. “I'll rinse one of these glasses for him,” said Argyle. The Marchese's step was heard on the stone stairs: then his knock. “Come in! Come in!” cried Argyle from the bedroom, where he was rinsing the glass. The Marchese entered, grinning with his curious, half courteous greeting. “Go through--go through,” cried Argyle. “Go on to the loggia--and mind your head. Good heavens, mind your head in that doorway.” The Marchese just missed the top of the doorway as he climbed the abrupt steps on to the loggia.--There he greeted Lilly and Aaron with hearty handshakes. “Very glad to see you--very glad, indeed!” he cried, grinning with excited courtesy and pleasure, and covering Lilly's hand with both his own gloved hands. “When did you come to Florence?” There was a little explanation. Argyle shoved the last chair--it was a luggage stool--through the window. “All I can do for you in the way of a chair,” he said. “Ah, that is all right,” said the Marchese. “Well, it is very nice up here--and very nice company. Of the very best, the very best in Florence.” “The highest, anyhow,” said Argyle grimly, as he entered with the glass. “Have a whiskey and soda, Del Torre. It's the bottom of the bottle, as you see.” “The bottom of the bottle! Then I start with the tail-end, yes!” He stretched his blue eyes so that the whites showed all round, and grinned a wide, gnome-like grin. “You made that start long ago, my dear fellow. Don't play the _ingenue_ with me, you know it won't work. Say when, my man, say when!” “Yes, when,” said Del Torre. “When did I make that start, then?” “At some unmentionably young age. Chickens such as you soon learn to cheep.” “Chickens such as I soon learn to cheap,” repeated Del Torre, pleased with the verbal play. “What is cheap, please? What is TO CHEAP?” “Cheep! Cheep!” squeaked Argyle, making a face at the little Italian, who was perched on one strap of the luggage-stool. “It's what chickens say when they're poking their little noses into new adventures--naughty ones.” “Are chickens naughty? Oh! I thought they could only be good!” “Featherless chickens like yourself, my boy.” “Oh, as for featherless--then there is no saying what they will do.--” And here the Marchese turned away from Argyle with the inevitable question to Lilly: “Well, and how long will you stay in Florence?” Lilly did not know: but he was not leaving immediately. “Good! Then you will come and see us at once....” Argyle rose once more, and went to make the tea. He shoved a lump of cake--or rather panetone, good currant loaf--through the window, with a knife to cut it. “Help yourselves to the panetone,” he said. “Eat it up. The tea is coming at once. You'll have to drink it in your glasses, there's only one old cup.” The Marchese cut the cake, and offered pieces. The two men took and ate. “So you have already found Mr. Sisson!” said Del Torre to Lilly. “Ran straight into him in the Via Nazionale,” said Lilly. “Oh, one always runs into everybody in Florence. We are all already acquainted: also with the flute. That is a great pleasure.” “So I think.--Does your wife like it, too?” “Very much, indeed! She is quite _eprise_. I, too, shall have to learn to play it.” “And run the risk of spoiling the shape of your mouth--like Alcibiades.” “Is there a risk? Yes! Then I shan't play it. My mouth is too beautiful.--But Mr. Sisson has not spoilt his mouth.” “Not yet,” said Lilly. “Give him time.” “Is he also afraid--like Alcibiades?” “Are you, Aaron?” said Lilly. “What?” “Afraid of spoiling your beauty by screwing your mouth to the flute?” “I look a fool, do I, when I'm playing?” said Aaron. “Only the least little bit in the world,” said Lilly. “The way you prance your head, you know, like a horse.” “Ah, well,” said Aaron. “I've nothing to lose.” “And were you surprised, Lilly, to find your friend here?” asked Del Torre. “I ought to have been. But I wasn't really.” “Then you expected him?” “No. It came naturally, though.--But why did you come, Aaron? What exactly brought you?” “Accident,” said Aaron. “Ah, no! No! There is no such thing as accident,” said the Italian. “A man is drawn by his fate, where he goes.” “You are right,” said Argyle, who came now with the teapot. “A man is drawn--or driven. Driven, I've found it. Ah, my dear fellow, what is life but a search for a friend? A search for a friend--that sums it up.” “Or a lover,” said the Marchese, grinning. “Same thing. Same thing. My hair is white--but that is the sum of my whole experience. The search for a friend.” There was something at once real and sentimental in Argyle's tone. “And never finding?” said Lilly, laughing. “Oh, what would you? Often finding. Often finding. And losing, of course.--A life's history. Give me your glass. Miserable tea, but nobody has sent me any from England--” “And you will go on till you die, Argyle?” said Lilly. “Always seeking a friend--and always a new one?” “If I lose the friend I've got. Ah, my dear fellow, in that case I shall go on seeking. I hope so, I assure you. Something will be very wrong with me, if ever I sit friendless and make no search.” “But, Argyle, there is a time to leave off.” “To leave off what, to leave off what?” “Having friends: or a friend, rather: or seeking to have one.” “Oh, no! Not at all, my friend. Not at all! Only death can make an end of that, my friend. Only death. And I should say, not even death. Not even death ends a man's search for a friend. That is my belief. You may hang me for it, but I shall never alter.” “Nay,” said Lilly. “There is a time to love, and a time to leave off loving.” “All I can say to that is that my time to leave off hasn't come yet,” said Argyle, with obstinate feeling. “Ah, yes, it has. It is only a habit and an idea you stick to.” “Indeed, it is no such thing. Indeed, it is no such thing. It is a profound desire and necessity: and what is more, a belief.” “An obstinate persistency, you mean,” said Lilly. “Well, call it so if it pleases you. It is by no means so to me.” There was a brief pause. The sun had left the cathedral dome and the tower, the sky was full of light, the square swimming in shadow. “But can a man live,” said the Marchese, “without having something he lives for: something he wishes for, or longs for, and tries that he may get?” “Impossible! Completely impossible!” said Argyle. “Man is a seeker, and except as such, he has no significance, no importance.” “He bores me with his seeking,” said Lilly. “He should learn to possess himself--to be himself--and keep still.” “Ay, perhaps so,” said Aaron. “Only--” “But my dear boy, believe me, a man is never himself save in the supreme state of love: or perhaps hate, too, which amounts to the same thing. Never really himself.--Apart from this he is a tram-driver or a money-shoveller or an idea-machine. Only in the state of love is he really a man, and really himself. I say so, because I know,” said Argyle. “Ah, yes. That is one side of the truth. It is quite true, also. But it is just as true to say, that a man is never less himself, than in the supreme state of love. Never less himself, than then.” “Maybe! Maybe! But what could be better? What could be better than to lose oneself with someone you love, entirely, and so find yourself. Ah, my dear fellow, that is my creed, that is my creed, and you can't shake me in it. Never in that. Never in that.” “Yes, Argyle,” said Lilly. “I know you're an obstinate love-apostle.” “I am! I am! And I have certain standards, my boy, and certain ideals which I never transgress. Never transgress. And never abandon.” “All right, then, you are an incurable love-maker.” “Pray God I am,” said Argyle. “Yes,” said the Marchese. “Perhaps we are all so. What else do you give? Would you have us make money? Or do you give the centre of your spirit to your work? How is it to be?” “I don't vitally care either about money or my work or--” Lilly faltered. “Or what, then?” “Or anything. I don't really care about anything. Except that--” “You don't care about anything? But what is that for a life?” cried the Marchese, with a hollow mockery. “What do YOU care for?” asked Lilly. “Me? I care for several things. I care for my wife. I care for love. And I care to be loved. And I care for some pleasures. And I care for music. And I care for Italy.” “You are well off for cares,” said Lilly. “And you seem to me so very poor,” said Del Torre. “I should say so--if he cares for nothing,” interjaculated Argyle. Then he clapped Lilly on the shoulder with a laugh. “Ha! Ha! Ha!--But he only says it to tease us,” he cried, shaking Lilly's shoulder. “He cares more than we do for his own way of loving. Come along, don't try and take us in. We are old birds, old birds,” said Argyle. But at that moment he seemed a bit doddering. “A man can't live,” said the Italian, “without an object.” “Well--and that object?” said Lilly. “Well--it may be many things. Mostly it is two things.--love, and money. But it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science, art--many things. But it is some objective. Something outside the self. Perhaps many things outside the self.” “I have had only one objective all my life,” said Argyle. “And that was love. For that I have spent my life.” “And the lives of a number of other people, too,” said Lilly. “Admitted. Oh, admitted. It takes two to make love: unless you're a miserable--” “Don't you think,” said Aaron, turning to Lilly, “that however you try to get away from it, if you're not after money, and can't fit yourself into a job--you've got to, you've got to try and find something else--somebody else--somebody. You can't really be alone.” “No matter how many mistakes you've made--you can't really be alone--?” asked Lilly. “You can be alone for a minute. You can be alone just in that minute when you've broken free, and you feel heart thankful to be alone, because the other thing wasn't to be borne. But you can't keep on being alone. No matter how many tunes you've broken free, and feel, thank God to be alone (nothing on earth is so good as to breathe fresh air and be alone), no matter how many times you've felt this--it wears off every time, and you begin to look again--and you begin to roam round. And even if you won't admit it to yourself, still you are seeking--seeking. Aren't you? Aren't you yourself seeking?” “Oh, that's another matter,” put in Argyle. “Lilly is happily married and on the shelf. With such a fine woman as Tanny I should think so--RATHER! But his is an exceptional nature, and an exceptional case. As for me, I made a hell of my marriage, and I swear it nearly sent me to hell. But I didn't forswear love, when I forswore marriage and woman. Not by ANY means.” “Are you not seeking any more, Lilly?” asked the Marchese. “Do you seek nothing?” “We married men who haven't left our wives, are we supposed to seek anything?” said Lilly. “Aren't we perfectly satisfied and in bliss with the wonderful women who honour us as wives?” “Ah, yes, yes!” said the Marchese. “But now we are not speaking to the world. Now we try to speak of that which we have in our centre of our hearts.” “And what have we there?” said Lilly. “Well--shall I say? We have unrest. We have another need. We have something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside. Do I speak the truth?” “Yes. But what is the something?” “I don't know. I don't know. But it is something in love, I think. It is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer,” said the Italian. “But why should it? Is that the nature of love?” said Lilly. “I don't know. Truly. I don't know.--But perhaps it is in the nature of love--I don't know.--But I tell you, I love my wife--she is very dear to me. I admire her, I trust her, I believe her. She is to me much more than any woman, more even than my mother.--And so, I am very happy. I am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our marriage.--But wait. Nothing has changed--the love has not changed: it is the same.--And yet we are NOT happy. No, we are not happy. I know she is not happy, I know I am not--” “Why should you be?” said Lilly. “Yes--and it is not even happiness,” said the Marchese, screwing up his face in a painful effort of confession. “It is not even happiness. No, I do not ask to be happy. Why should I? It is childish--but there is for both of us, I know it, something which bites us, which eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don't know where. But it drives us, and eats away the life--and yet we love each other, and we must not separate--Do you know what I mean? Do you understand me at all in what I say? I speak what is true.” “Yes, I understand. I'm in the same dilemma myself.--But what I want to hear, is WHY you think it is so. Why is it?” “Shall I say what I think? Yes? And you can tell me if it is foolish to you.--Shall I tell you? Well. Because a woman, she now first wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted. Do you understand?--You know--supposing I go to a woman--supposing she is my wife--and I go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I who want. Then she puts me off. Then she says, not now, not now, I am tired, I am not well. I do not feel like it. She puts me off--till I am angry or sorry or whatever I am--but till my blood has gone down again, you understand, and I don't want her any more. And then she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me--till she rouses me once more. So, and so she rouses me--and so I come to her. And I love her, it is very good, very good. But it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know.--I do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know. She will yield to me--because I insist, or because she wants to be a good submissive wife who loves me. So she will yield to me. But ah, what is it, you know? What is it a woman who allows me, and who has no answer? It is something worse than nothing--worse than nothing. And so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.--If I say to her, she says it is not true--not at all true. Then she says, all she wants is that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire her. But even that is putting her will first. And if I come to her so, if I come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. She puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her. Even now it is the same after ten years, as it was at first. But now I know, and for many years I did not know--” The little man was intense. His face was strained, his blue eyes so stretched that they showed the whites all round. He gazed into Lilly's face. “But does it matter?” said Lilly slowly, “in which of you the desire initiates? Isn't the result the same?” “It matters. It matters--” cried the Marchese. “Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters--” interrupted Argyle sagely. “Ay!” said Aaron. The Marchese looked from one to the other of them. “It matters!” he cried. “It matters life or death. It used to be, that desire started in the man, and the woman answered. It used to be so for a long time in Italy. For this reason the women were kept away from the men. For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage. So that with their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this woman's desire over a man, beforehand. This desire which starts in a woman's head, when she knows, and which takes a man for her use, for her service. This is Eve. Ah, I hate Eve. I hate her, when she knows, and when she WILLS. I hate her when she will make of me that which serves her desire.--She may love me, she may be soft and kind to me, she may give her life for me. But why? Only because I am HERS. I am that thing which does her most intimate service. She can see no other in me. And I may be no other to her--” “Then why not let it be so, and be satisfied?” said Lilly. “Because I cannot. I cannot. I would. But I cannot. The Borghesia--the citizens--the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who can. Oh, yes. The bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, these serve their wives so, and their wives love them. They are the marital maquereaux--the husband-maquereau, you know. Their wives are so stout and happy, and they dote on their husbands and always betray them. So it is with the bourgeoise. She loves her husband so much, and is always seeking to betray him. Or she is a Madame Bovary, seeking for a scandal. But the bourgeois husband, he goes on being the same. He is the horse, and she the driver. And when she says gee-up, you know--then he comes ready, like a hired maquereau. Only he feels so good, like a good little boy at her breast. And then there are the nice little children. And so they keep the world going.--But for me--” he spat suddenly and with frenzy on the floor. “You are quite right, my boy,” said Argyle. “You are quite right. They've got the start of us, the women: and we've got to canter when they say gee-up. I--oh, I went through it all. But I broke the shafts and smashed the matrimonial cart, I can tell you, and I didn't care whether I smashed her up along with it or not. I didn't care one single bit, I assure you.--And here I am. And she is dead and buried these dozen years. Well--well! Life, you know, life. And women oh, they are the very hottest hell once they get the start of you. There's NOTHING they won't do to you, once they've got you. Nothing they won't do to you. Especially if they love you. Then you may as well give up the ghost: or smash the cart behind you, and her in it. Otherwise she will just harry you into submission, and make a dog of you, and cuckold you under your nose. And you'll submit. Oh, you'll submit, and go on calling her my darling. Or else, if you won't submit, she'll do for you. Your only chance is to smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart. Or she'll do for you. For a woman has an uncanny, hellish strength--she's a she-bear and a wolf, is a woman when she's got the start of you. Oh, it's a terrible experience, if you're not a bourgeois, and not one of the knuckling-under money-making sort.” “Knuckling-under sort. Yes. That is it,” said the Marchese. “But can't there be a balancing of wills?” said Lilly. “My dear boy, the balance lies in that, that when one goes up, the other goes down. One acts, the other takes. It is the only way in love--And the women are nowadays the active party. Oh, yes, not a shadow of doubt about it. They take the initiative, and the man plays up. That's how it is. The man just plays up.--Nice manly proceeding, what!” cried Argyle. “But why can't man accept it as the natural order of things?” said Lilly. “Science makes it the natural order.” “All my ---- to science,” said Argyle. “No man with one drop of real spunk in him can stand it long.” “Yes! Yes! Yes!” cried the Italian. “Most men want it so. Most men want only, that a woman shall want them, and they shall then play up to her when she has roused them. Most men want only this: that a woman shall choose one man out, to be her man, and he shall worship her and come up when she shall provoke him. Otherwise he is to keep still. And the woman, she is quite sure of her part. She must be loved and adored, and above all, obeyed, particularly in her sex desire. There she must not be thwarted, or she becomes a devil. And if she is obeyed, she becomes a misunderstood woman with nerves, looking round for the next man whom she can bring under. So it is.” “Well,” said Lilly. “And then what?” “Nay,” interrupted Aaron. “But do you think it's true what he says? Have you found it like that? You're married. Has your experience been different, or the same?” “What was yours?” asked Lilly. “Mine was the same. Mine was the same, if ever it was,” said Aaron. “And mine was EXTREMELY similar,” said Argyle with a grimace. “And yours, Lilly?” asked the Marchese anxiously. “Not very different,” said Lilly. “Ah!” cried Del Torre, jerking up erect as if he had found something. “And what's your way out?” Aaron asked him. “I'm not out--so I won't holloa,” said Lilly. “But Del Torre puts it best.--What do you say is the way out, Del Torre?” “The way out is that it should change: that the man should be the asker and the woman the answerer. It must change.” “But it doesn't. Prrr!” Argyle made his trumpeting noise. “Does it?” asked Lilly of the Marchese. “No. I think it does not.” “And will it ever again?” “Perhaps never.” “And then what?” “Then? Why then man seeks a _pis-aller_. Then he seeks something which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw him, with a terrible sexual will.--So he seeks young girls, who know nothing, and so cannot force him. He thinks he will possess them while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his wishes.--But in this, too, he is mistaken. Because now a baby of one year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made up, so it will force a man.” “And so young girls are no good, even as a _pis-aller_.” “No good--because they are all modern women. Every one, a modern woman. Not one who isn't.” “Terrible thing, the modern woman,” put in Argyle. “And then--?” “Then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love.--But it is all _pis-aller_, you know.” “Not by any means, my boy,” cried Argyle. “And then a man naturally loves his own wife, too, even if it is not bearable to love her.” “Or one leaves her, like Aaron,” said Lilly. “And seeks another woman, so,” said the Marchese. “Does he seek another woman?” said Lilly. “Do you, Aaron?” “I don't WANT to,” said Aaron. “But--I can't stand by myself in the middle of the world and in the middle of people, and know I am quite by myself, and nowhere to go, and nothing to hold on to. I can for a day or two--But then, it becomes unbearable as well. You get frightened. You feel you might go funny--as you would if you stood on this balcony wall with all the space beneath you.” “Can't one be alone--quite alone?” said Lilly. “But no--it is absurd. Like Saint Simeon Stylites on a pillar. But it is absurd!” cried the Italian. “I don't mean like Simeon Stylites. I mean can't one live with one's wife, and be fond of her: and with one's friends, and enjoy their company: and with the world and everything, pleasantly: and yet KNOW that one is alone? Essentially, at the very core of me, alone. Eternally alone. And choosing to be alone. Not sentimental or LONELY. Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one's own nature one is alone. The being with another person is secondary,” said Lilly. “One is alone,” said Argyle, “in all but love. In all but love, my dear fellow. And then I agree with you.” “No,” said Lilly, “in love most intensely of all, alone.” “Completely incomprehensible,” said Argyle. “Amounts to nothing.” “One man is but a part. How can he be so alone?” said the Marchese. “In so far as he is a single individual soul, he IS alone--ipso facto. In so far as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, in so far, I am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self-knowledge.” “My dear boy, you are becoming metaphysical, and that is as bad as softening of the brain,” said Argyle. “All right,” said Lilly. “And,” said the Marchese, “it may be so by REASON. But in the heart--? Can the heart ever beat quite alone? Plop! Plop!--Can the heart beat quite alone, alone in all the atmosphere, all the space of the universe? Plop! Plop! Plop!--Quite alone in all the space?” A slow smile came over the Italian's face. “It is impossible. It may eat against the heart of other men, in anger, all in pressure against the others. It may beat hard, like iron, saying it is independent. But this is only beating against the heart of mankind, not alone.--But either with or against the heart of mankind, or the heart of someone, mother, wife, friend, children--so must the heart of every man beat. It is so.” “It beats alone in its own silence,” said Lilly. The Italian shook his head. “We'd better be going inside, anyhow,” said Argyle. “Some of you will be taking cold.” “Aaron,” said Lilly. “Is it true for you?” “Nearly,” said Aaron, looking into the quiet, half-amused, yet frightening eyes of the other man. “Or it has been.” “A miss is as good as a mile,” laughed Lilly, rising and picking up his chair to take it indoors. And the laughter of his voice was so like a simple, deliberate amiability, that Aaron's heart really stood still for a second. He knew that Lilly was alone--as far as he, Aaron, was concerned. Lilly was alone--and out of his isolation came his words, indifferent as to whether they came or not. And he left his friends utterly to their own choice. Utterly to their own choice. Aaron felt that Lilly was _there_, existing in life, yet neither asking for connection nor preventing any connection. He was present, he was the real centre of the group. And yet he asked nothing of them, and he imposed nothing. He left each to himself, and he himself remained just himself: neither more nor less. And there was a finality about it, which was at once maddening and fascinating. Aaron felt angry, as if he were half insulted by the other man's placing the gift of friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver's hands. Lilly would receive no gift of friendship in equality. Neither would he violently refuse it. He let it lie unmarked. And yet at the same time Aaron knew that he could depend on the other man for help, nay, almost for life itself--so long as it entailed no breaking of the intrinsic isolation of Lilly's soul. But this condition was also hateful. And there was also a great fascination in it. CHAPTER XVIII. THE MARCHESA So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi. He was quite startled when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else. She seemed like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance. She wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides. It was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her beautiful white arms. Round her throat was a collar of dark-blue sapphires. Her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. She was most carefully made up--yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite intentional, and which frightened Aaron. He thought her wonderful, and sinister. She affected him with a touch of horror. She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. She had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. Aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot. It was as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity. She must have seen his face, seen that he was _ebloui_. “You brought the flute?” she said, in that toneless, melancholy, unstriving voice of hers. Her voice alone was the same: direct and bare and quiet. “Yes.” “Perhaps I shall sing later on, if you'll accompany me. Will you?” “I thought you hated accompaniments.” “Oh, no--not just unison. I don't mean accompaniment. I mean unison. I don't know how it will be. But will you try?” “Yes, I'll try.” “Manfredi is just bringing the cocktails. Do you think you'd prefer orange in yours?” “Ill have mine as you have yours.” “I don't take orange in mine. Won't you smoke?” The strange, naked, remote-seeming voice! And then the beautiful firm limbs thrust out in that dress, and nakedly dusky as with gold-dust. Her beautiful woman's legs, slightly glistening, duskily. His one abiding instinct was to touch them, to kiss them. He had never known a woman to exercise such power over him. It was a bare, occult force, something he could not cope with. Manfredi came in with the little tray. He was still in uniform. “Hello!” cried the little Italian. “Glad to see you--well, everything all right? Glad to hear it. How is the cocktail, Nan?” “Yes,” she said. “All right.” “One drop too much peach, eh?” “No, all right.” “Ah,” and the little officer seated himself, stretching his gaitered legs as if gaily. He had a curious smiling look on his face, that Aaron thought also diabolical--and almost handsome. Suddenly the odd, laughing, satanic beauty of the little man was visible. “Well, and what have you been doing with yourself?” said he. “What did you do yesterday?” “Yesterday?” said Aaron. “I went to the Uffizi.” “To the Uffizi? Well! And what did you think of it?” “Very fine.” “I think it is. I think it is. What pictures did you look at?” “I was with Dekker. We looked at most, I believe.” “And what do you remember best?” “I remember Botticelli's Venus on the Shell.” “Yes! Yes!--” said Manfredi. “I like her. But I like others better. You thought her a pretty woman, yes?” “No--not particularly pretty. But I like her body. And I like the fresh air. I like the fresh air, the summer sea-air all through it--through her as well.” “And her face?” asked the Marchesa, with a slow, ironic smile. “Yes--she's a bit baby-faced,” said Aaron. “Trying to be more innocent than her own common-sense will let her,” said the Marchesa. “I don't agree with you, Nan,” said her husband. “I think it is just that wistfulness and innocence which makes her the true Venus: the true modern Venus. She chooses NOT to know too much. And that is her attraction. Don't you agree, Aaron? Excuse me, but everybody speaks of you as Aaron. It seems to come naturally. Most people speak of me as Manfredi, too, because it is easier, perhaps, than Del Torre. So if you find it easier, use it. Do you mind that I call you Aaron?” “Not at all. I hate Misters, always.” “Yes, so do I. I like one name only.” The little officer seemed very winning and delightful to Aaron this evening--and Aaron began to like him extremely. But the dominating consciousness in the room was the woman's. “DO you agree, Mr. Sisson?” said the Marchesa. “Do you agree that the mock-innocence and the sham-wistfulness of Botticelli's Venus are her great charms?” “I don't think she is at all charming, as a person,” said Aaron. “As a particular woman, she makes no impression on me at all. But as a picture--and the fresh air, particularly the fresh air. She doesn't seem so much a woman, you know, as the kind of out-of-doors morning-feelings at the seaside.” “Quite! A sort of sea-scape of a woman. With a perfectly sham innocence. Are you as keen on innocence as Manfredi is?” “Innocence?” said Aaron. “It's the sort of thing I don't have much feeling about.” “Ah, I know you,” laughed the soldier wickedly. “You are the sort of man who wants to be Anthony to Cleopatra. Ha-ha!” Aaron winced as if struck. Then he too smiled, flattered. Yet he felt he had been struck! Did he want to be Anthony to Cleopatra? Without knowing, he was watching the Marchesa. And she was looking away, but knew he was watching her. And at last she turned her eyes to his, with a slow, dark smile, full of pain and fuller still of knowledge. A strange, dark, silent look of knowledge she gave him: from so far away, it seemed. And he felt all the bonds that held him melting away. His eyes remained fixed and gloomy, but with his mouth he smiled back at her. And he was terrified. He knew he was sulking towards her--sulking towards her. And he was terrified. But at the back of his mind, also, he knew there was Lilly, whom he might depend on. And also he wanted to sink towards her. The flesh and blood of him simply melted out, in desire towards her. Cost what may, he must come to her. And yet he knew at the same time that, cost what may, he must keep the power to recover himself from her. He must have his cake and eat it. And she became Cleopatra to him. “Age cannot wither, nor custom stale--” To his instinctive, unwilled fancy, she was Cleopatra. They went in to dinner, and he sat on her right hand. It was a smallish table, with a very few daisy-flowers: everything rather frail, and sparse. The food the same--nothing very heavy, all rather exquisite. They drank hock. And he was aware of her beautiful arms, and her bosom; her low-crowded, thick hair, parted in the centre: the sapphires on her throat, the heavy rings on her fingers: and the paint on her lips, the fard. Something deep, deep at the bottom of him hovered upon her, cleaved to her. Yet he was as if sightless, in a stupor. Who was she, what was she? He had lost all his grasp. Only he sat there, with his face turned to hers, or to her, all the time. And she talked to him. But she never looked at him. Indeed she said little. It was the husband who talked. His manner towards Aaron was almost caressive. And Aaron liked it. The woman was silent mostly, and seemed remote. And Aaron felt his life ebb towards her. He felt the marvellousness, the rich beauty of her arms and breast. And the thought of her gold-dusted smooth limbs beneath the table made him feel almost an idiot. The second wine was a gold-coloured Moselle, very soft and rich and beautiful. She drank this with pleasure, as one who understands. And for dessert there was a dish of cacchi--that orange-coloured, pulpy Japanese fruit--persimmons. Aaron had never eaten these before. Soft, almost slimy, of a wonderful colour, and of a flavour that had sunk from harsh astringency down to that first decay-sweetness which is all autumn-rich. The Marchese loved them, and scooped them out with his spoon. But she ate none. Aaron did not know what they talked about, what was said. If someone had taken his mind away altogether, and left him with nothing but a body and a spinal consciousness, it would have been the same. But at coffee the talk turned to Manfredi's duties. He would not be free from the army for some time yet. On the morrow, for example, he had to be out and away before it was day. He said he hated it, and wanted to be a free man once more. But it seemed to Aaron he would be a very bored man, once he was free. And then they drifted on to talk of the palazzo in which was their apartment. “We've got such a fine terrace--you can see it from your house where you are,” said Manfredi. “Have you noticed it?” “No,” said Aaron. “Near that tuft of palm-trees. Don't you know?” “No,” said Aaron. “Let us go out and show it him,” said the Marchesa. Manfredi fetched her a cloak, and they went through various doors, then up some steps. The terrace was broad and open. It looked straight across the river at the opposite Lungarno: and there was the thin-necked tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the great dome of the cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of stars. Little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge on the right. And from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees. “You see,” said the Marchesa, coming and standing close to Aaron, so that she just touched him, “you can know the terrace, just by these palm trees. And you are in the Nardini just across there, are you? On the top floor, you said?” “Yes, the top floor--one of the middle windows, I think.” “One that is always open now--and the others are shut. I have noticed it, not connecting it with you.” “Yes, my window is always open.” She was leaning very slightly against him, as he stood. And he knew, with the same kind of inevitability with which he knew he would one day die, that he would be the lover of this woman. Nay, that he was her lover already. “Don't take cold,” said Manfredi. She turned at once indoors. Aaron caught a faint whiff of perfume from the little orange trees in tubs round the wall. “Will you get the flute?” she said as they entered. “And will you sing?” he answered. “Play first,” she said. He did as she wished. As the other night, he went into the big music-room to play. And the stream of sound came out with the quick wild imperiousness of the pipe. It had an immediate effect on her. She seemed to relax the peculiar, drug-like tension which was upon her at all ordinary times. She seemed to go still, and yielding. Her red mouth looked as if it might moan with relief. She sat with her chin dropped on her breast, listening. And she did not move. But she sat softly, breathing rather quick, like one who has been hurt, and is soothed. A certain womanly naturalness seemed to soften her. And the music of the flute came quick, rather brilliant like a call-note, or like a long quick message, half command. To her it was like a pure male voice--as a blackbird's when he calls: a pure male voice, not only calling, but telling her something, telling her something, and soothing her soul to sleep. It was like the fire-music putting Brunnhilde to sleep. But the pipe did not flicker and sink. It seemed to cause a natural relaxation in her soul, a peace. Perhaps it was more like waking to a sweet, morning awakening, after a night of tormented, painful tense sleep. Perhaps more like that. When Aaron came in, she looked at him with a gentle, fresh smile that seemed to make the fard on her face look like a curious tiredness, which now she might recover from. And as the last time, it was difficult for her to identify this man with the voice of the flute. It was rather difficult. Except that, perhaps, between his brows was something of a doubt, and in his bearing an aloofness that made her dread he might go away and not come back. She could see it in him, that he might go away and not come back. She said nothing to him, only just smiled. And the look of knowledge in her eyes seemed, for the moment, to be contained in another look: a look of faith, and at last happiness. Aaron's heart stood still. No, in her moment's mood of faith and at last peace, life-trust, he was perhaps more terrified of her than in her previous sinister elegance. His spirit started and shrank. What was she going to ask of him? “I am so anxious that you should come to play one Saturday morning,” said Manfredi. “With an accompaniment, you know. I should like so much to hear you with piano accompaniment.” “Very well,” said Aaron. “Will you really come? And will you practise with me, so that I can accompany you?” said Manfredi eagerly. “Yes. I will,” said Aaron. “Oh, good! Oh, good! Look here, come in on Friday morning and let us both look through the music.” “If Mr. Sisson plays for the public,” said the Marchesa, “he must not do it for charity. He must have the proper fee.” “No, I don't want it,” said Aaron. “But you must earn money, mustn't you?” said she. “I must,” said Aaron. “But I can do it somewhere else.” “No. If you play for the public, you must have your earnings. When you play for me, it is different.” “Of course,” said Manfredi. “Every man must have his wage. I have mine from the Italian government---” After a while, Aaron asked the Marchesa if she would sing. “Shall I?” she said. “Yes, do.” “Then I will sing alone first, to let you see what you think of it--I shall be like Trilby--I won't say like Yvette Guilbert, because I daren't. So I will be like Trilby, and sing a little French song. Though not Malbrouck, and without a Svengali to keep me in tune.” She went near the door, and stood with heir hands by her side. There was something wistful, almost pathetic now, in her elegance. “Derriere chez mon pere _Vole vole mon coeur, vole_! Derriere chez mon pere Il y a un pommier doux. _Tout doux, et iou Et iou, tout doux. Il y a unpommier doux_. Trois belles princesses _Vole vole mon coeur, vole_! Trois belles princesses Sont assis dessous. _Tout doux, et iou Et iou, tout doux. Sont asses dessous._” She had a beautiful, strong, sweet voice. But it was faltering, stumbling and sometimes it seemed to drop almost to speech. After three verses she faltered to an end, bitterly chagrined. “No,” she said. “It's no good. I can't sing.” And she dropped in her chair. “A lovely little tune,” said Aaron. “Haven't you got the music?” She rose, not answering, and found him a little book. “What do the words mean?” he asked her. She told him. And then he took his flute. “You don't mind if I play it, do you?” he said. So he played the tune. It was so simple. And he seemed to catch the lilt and the timbre of her voice. “Come and sing it while I play--” he said. “I can't sing,” she said, shaking her head rather bitterly. “But let us try,” said he, disappointed. “I know I can't,” she said. But she rose. He remained sitting at the little table, the book propped up under the reading lamp. She stood at a little distance, unhappy. “I've always been like that,” she said. “I could never sing music, unless I had a thing drilled into me, and then it wasn't singing any more.” But Aaron wasn't heeding. His flute was at his mouth, he was watching her. He sounded the note, but she did not begin. She was twisting her handkerchief. So he played the melody alone. At the end of the verse, he looked up at her again, and a half mocking smile played in his eyes. Again he sounded the note, a challenge. And this time, as at his bidding, she began to sing. The flute instantly swung with a lovely soft firmness into the song, and she wavered only for a minute or two. Then her soul and her voice got free, and she sang--she sang as she wanted to sing, as she had always wanted to sing, without that awful scotch, that impediment inside her own soul, which prevented her. She sang free, with the flute gliding along with her. And oh, how beautiful it was for her! How beautiful it was to sing the little song in the sweetness of her own spirit. How sweet it was to move pure and unhampered at last in the music! The lovely ease and lilt of her own soul in its motion through the music! She wasn't aware of the flute. She didn't know there was anything except her own pure lovely song-drift. Her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly breathes, as it rests on a leaf and slowly breathes its wings. For the first time! For the first time her soul drew its own deep breath. All her life, the breath had caught half-way. And now she breathed full, deep, to the deepest extent of her being. And oh, it was so wonderful, she was dazed. The song ended, she stood with a dazed, happy face, like one just coming awake. And the fard on her face seemed like the old night-crust, the bad sleep. New and luminous she looked out. And she looked at Aaron with a proud smile. “Bravo, Nan! That was what you wanted,” said her husband. “It was, wasn't it?” she said, turning a wondering, glowing face to him. His face looked strange and withered and gnome-like, at the moment. She went and sat in her chair, quite silent, as if in a trance. The two men also sat quite still. And in the silence a little drama played itself between the three, of which they knew definitely nothing. But Manfredi knew that Aaron had done what he himself never could do, for this woman. And yet the woman was his own woman, not Aaron's. And so, he was displaced. Aaron, sitting there, glowed with a sort of triumph. He had performed a little miracle, and felt himself a little wonder-worker, to whom reverence was due. And as in a dream the woman sat, feeling what a joy it was to float and move like a swan in the high air, flying upon the wings of her own spirit. She was as a swan which never before could get its wings quite open, and so which never could get up into the open, where alone it can sing. For swans, and storks make their music only when they are high, high up in the air. Then they can give sound to their strange spirits. And so, she. Aaron and Manfredi kept their faces averted from one another and hardly spoke to one another. It was as if two invisible hands pushed their faces apart, away, averted. And Aaron's face glimmered with a little triumph, and a little grimace of obstinacy. And the Italian's face looked old, rather monkey-like, and of a deep, almost stone-bare bitterness. The woman looked wondering from one man to the other--wondering. The glimmer of the open flower, the wonder-look, still lasted. And Aaron said in his heart, what a goodly woman, what a woman to taste and enjoy. Ah, what a woman to enjoy! And was it not his privilege? Had he not gained it? His manhood, or rather his maleness, rose powerfully in him, in a sort of mastery. He felt his own power, he felt suddenly his own virile title to strength and reward. Suddenly, and newly flushed with his own male super-power, he was going to have his reward. The woman was his reward. So it was, in him. And he cast it over in his mind. He wanted her--ha, didn't he! But the husband sat there, like a soap-stone Chinese monkey, greyish-green. So, it would have to be another time. He rose, therefore, and took his leave. “But you'll let us do that again, won't you?” said she. “When you tell me, I'll come,” said he. “Then I'll tell you soon,” said she. So he left, and went home to his own place, and there to his own remote room. As he laid his flute on the table he looked at it and smiled. He remembered that Lilly had called it Aaron's Rod. “So you blossom, do you?--and thorn as well,” said he. For such a long time he had been gripped inside himself, and withheld. For such a long time it had been hard and unyielding, so hard and unyielding. He had wanted nothing, his desire had kept itself back, fast back. For such a long time his desire for woman had withheld itself, hard and resistant. All his deep, desirous blood had been locked, he had wanted nobody, and nothing. And it had been hard to live, so. Without desire, without any movement of passionate love, only gripped back in recoil! That was an experience to endure. And now came his desire back. But strong, fierce as iron. Like the strength of an eagle with the lightning in its talons. Something to glory in, something overweening, the powerful male passion, arrogant, royal, Jove's thunderbolt. Aaron's black rod of power, blossoming again with red Florentine lilies and fierce thorns. He moved about in the splendour of his own male lightning, invested in the thunder of the male passion-power. He had got it back, the male godliness, the male godhead. So he slept, and dreamed violent dreams of strange, black strife, something like the street-riot in Milan, but more terrible. In the morning, however, he cared nothing about his dreams. As soon as it was really light, he rose, and opened his window wide. It was a grey, slow morning. But he saw neither the morning nor the river nor the woman walking on the gravel river-bed with her goose nor the green hill up to San Miniato. He watched the tuft of palm-trees, and the terrace beside it. He could just distinguish the terrace clearly, among the green of foliage. So he stood at his window for a full hour, and did not move. Motionless, planted, he stood and watched that terrace across above the Arno. But like a statue. After an hour or so, he looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. So he rang for his coffee, and meanwhile still stood watching the terrace on the hill. He felt his turn had come. The phoenix had risen in fire again, out of the ashes. Therefore at ten o'clock he went over the bridge. He wrote on the back of his card a request, would she please let him have the little book of songs, that he might practise them over. The manservant went, and came back with the request that Aaron should wait. So Aaron entered, while the man took his hat. The manservant spoke only French and Spanish, no English. He was a Spaniard, with greyish hair and stooping shoulders, and dark, mute-seeming eyes. He spoke as little as possible. The Marchesa had inherited him from her father. Aaron sat in the little sitting-room and waited. After a rather long time the Marchesa came in--wearing a white, thin blouse and a blue skirt. She was hardly made up at all. She had an odd pleased, yet brooding look on her face as she gave Aaron her hand. Something brooded between her brows. And her voice was strange, with a strange, secret undertone, that he could not understand. He looked up at her. And his face was bright, and his knees, as he sat, were like the knees of the gods. “You wanted the book of _chansons_?” she said. “I wanted to learn your tunes,” he replied. “Yes. Look--here it is!” And she brought him the little yellow book. It was just a hand-book, with melody and words only, no accompaniment. So she stood offering him the book, but waiting as if for something else, and standing as if with another meaning. He opened the leaves at random. “But I ought to know which ones you sing,” said he, rising and standing by her side with the open book. “Yes,” she said, looking over his arm. He turned the pages one by one. “_Trois jeunes tambours_,” said she. “Yes, that.... Yes, _En passant par la Lorraine_.... _Aupres de ma blonde_.... Oh, I like that one so much--” He stood and went over the tune in his mind. “Would you like me to play it?” he said. “Very much,” said she. So he got his flute, propped up the book against a vase, and played the tune, whilst she hummed it fragmentarily. But as he played, he felt that he did not cast the spell over her. There was no connection. She was in some mysterious way withstanding him. She was withstanding him, and his male super-power, and his thunderbolt desire. She was, in some indescribable way, throwing cold water over his phoenix newly risen from the ashes of its nest in flames. He realised that she did not want him to play. She did not want him to look at the songs. So he put the book away, and turned round, rather baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was withstanding him. He glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was her Cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it. He could not understand it. What was it in her face that puzzled him? Almost angered him? But she could not rob him of his male power, she could not divest him of his concentrated force. “Won't you take off your coat?” she said, looking at him with strange, large dark eyes. A strange woman, he could not understand her. Yet, as he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking at his limbs, his physical body. And this went against him, he did not want it. Yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her beautiful white arms, her whole soft white body. And such desire he would not contradict nor allow to be contradicted. It was his will also. Her whole soft white body--to possess it in its entirety, its fulness. “What have you to do this morning?” she asked him. “Nothing,” he said. “Have you?” He lifted his head and looked at her. “Nothing at all,” said she. And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. Then again he looked at her. “Shall we be lovers?” he said. She sat with her face averted, and did not answer. His heart struck heavily, but he did not relax. “Shall we be lovers?” came his voice once more, with the faintest touch of irony. Her face gradually grew dusky. And he wondered very much to see it. “Yes,” said she, still not looking at him. “If you wish.” “I do wish,” he said. And all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on her face, and she sat with her face averted. “Now?” he said. “And where?” Again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself. Then she looked at him--a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible, and which he did not like. “You don't want emotions? You don't want me to say things, do you?” he said. A faint ironic smile came on her face. “I know what all that is worth,” she said, with curious calm equanimity. “No, I want none of that.” “Then--?” But now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes. It annoyed him. “What do you want to see in me?” he asked, with a smile, looking steadily back again. And now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky colour came in her cheek. He waited. “Shall I go away?” he said at length. “Would you rather?” she said, keeping her face averted. “No,” he said. Then again she was silent. “Where shall I come to you?” he said. She paused a moment still, then answered: “I'll go to my room.” “I don't know which it is,” he said. “I'll show it you,” she said. “And then I shall come to you in ten minutes. In ten minutes,” he reiterated. So she rose, and led the way out of the little salon. He walked with her to the door of her room, bowed his head as she looked at him, holding the door handle; and then he turned and went back to the drawing-room, glancing at his watch. In the drawing-room he stood quite still, with his feet apart, and waited. He stood with his hands behind him, and his feet apart, quite motionless, planted and firm. So the minutes went by unheeded. He looked at his watch. The ten minutes were just up. He had heard footsteps and doors. So he decided to give her another five minutes. He wished to be quite sure that she had had her own time for her own movements. Then at the end of the five minutes he went straight to her room, entered, and locked the door behind him. She was lying in bed, with her back to him. He found her strange, not as he had imagined her. Not powerful, as he had imagined her. Strange, in his arms she seemed almost small and childish, whilst in daily life she looked a full, womanly woman. Strange, the naked way she clung to him! Almost like a sister, a younger sister! Or like a child! It filled him with a curious wonder, almost a bewilderment. In the dark sightlessness of passion, she seemed almost like a clinging child in his arms. And yet like a child who in some deep and essential way mocked him. In some strange and incomprehensible way, as a girl-child blindly obstinate in her deepest nature, she was against him. He felt she was not his woman. Through him went the feeling, “This is not my woman.” When, after a long sleep, he awoke and came fully to himself, with that click of awakeness which is the end, the first shades were closing on the afternoon. He got up and reached for his watch. “Quarter past four,” he said. Her eyes stretched wide with surprise as she looked at him. But she said nothing. The same strange and wide, perhaps insatiable child-like curiosity was in her eyes as she watched him. He dressed very quickly. And her eyes were wide, and she said no single word. But when he was dressed, and bent over her to say goodbye, she put her arms round him, that seemed such frail and childish arms now, yet withal so deadly in power. Her soft arms round his neck, her tangle of hair over his face. And yet, even as he kissed her, he felt her deadly. He wanted to be gone. He wanted to get out of her arms and her clinging and her tangle of hair and her curiosity and her strange and hateful power. “You'll come again. We'll be like this again?” she whispered. And it was hard for him to realise that this was that other woman, who had sat so silently on the sofa, so darkly and reservedly, at the tea at Algy's. “Yes! I will! Goodbye now!” And he kissed her, and walked straight out of the room. Quickly he took his coat and his hat, quickly, and left the house. In his nostrils was still the scent with which the bed linen was faintly scented--he did not know what it was. But now he wiped his face and his mouth, to wipe it away. He had eaten nothing since coffee that morning, and was hungry, faint-feeling. And his face, and his mind, felt withered. Curiously he felt blasted as if blighted by some electricity. And he knew, he knew quite well he was only in possession of a tithe of his natural faculties. And in his male spirit he felt himself hating her: hating her deeply, damnably. But he said to himself: “No, I won't hate her. I won't hate her.” So he went on, over the Ponte Vecchio, where the jeweller's windows on the bridge were already blazing with light, on into the town. He wanted to eat something, so he decided to go to a shop he knew, where one could stand and eat good tiny rolls split into truffle or salami sandwiches, and drink Marsala. So one after the other he ate little truffle rolls, and drank a few glasses of Marsala. And then he did not know what to do. He did not want to eat any more, he had had what he wanted. His hunger had been more nervous than sensual. So he went into the street. It was just growing dark and the town was lighting up. He felt curiously blazed, as if some flame or electric power had gone through him and withered his vital tissue. Blazed, as if some kind of electric flame had run over him and withered him. His brain felt withered, his mind had only one of its many-sighted eyes left open and unscorched. So many of the eyes of his mind were scorched now and sightless. Yet a restlessness was in his nerves. What should he do? He remembered he had a letter in his pocket from Sir William Franks. Sir William had still teased him about his fate and his providence, in which he, Aaron, was supposed to trust. “I shall be very glad to hear from you, and to know how your benevolent Providence--or was yours a Fate--has treated you since we saw you---” So, Aaron turned away, and walked to the post office. There he took paper, and sat down at one of the tables in the writing room, and wrote his answer. It was very strange, writing thus when most of his mind's eyes were scorched, and it seemed he could hardly see to hold the pen, to drive it straight across the paper. Yet write he must. And most of his faculties being quenched or blasted for the moment, he wrote perhaps his greatest, or his innermost, truth.--“I don't want my Fate or my Providence to treat me well. I don't want kindness or love. I don't believe in harmony and people loving one another. I believe in the fight and in nothing else. I believe in the fight which is in everything. And if it is a question of women, I believe in the fight of love, even if it blinds me. And if it is a question of the world, I believe in fighting it and in having it hate me, even if it breaks my legs. I want the world to hate me, because I can't bear the thought that it might love me. For of all things love is the most deadly to me, and especially from such a repulsive world as I think this is....” Well, here was a letter for a poor old man to receive. But, in the dryness of his withered mind, Aaron got it out of himself. When a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else. Perhaps the same is true of a book. His letter written, however, he stamped it and sealed it and put it in the box. That made it final. Then he turned towards home. One fact remained unbroken in the debris of his consciousness: that in the town was Lilly: and that when he needed, he could go to Lilly: also, that in the world was Lottie, his wife: and that against Lottie, his heart burned with a deep, deep, almost unreachable bitterness.--Like a deep burn on his deepest soul, Lottie. And like a fate which he resented, yet which steadied him, Lilly. He went home and lay on his bed. He had enough self-command to hear the gong and go down to dinner. White and abstract-looking, he sat and ate his dinner. And then, thank God, he could go to bed, alone, in his own cold bed, alone, thank God. To be alone in the night! For this he was unspeakably thankful. CHAPTER XIX. CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY Aaron awoke in the morning feeling better, but still only a part himself. The night alone had restored him. And the need to be alone still was his greatest need. He felt an intense resentment against the Marchesa. He felt that somehow, she had given him a scorpion. And his instinct was to hate her. And yet he avoided hating her. He remembered Lilly--and the saying that one must possess oneself, and be alone in possession of oneself. And somehow, under the influence of Lilly, he refused to follow the reflex of his own passion. He refused to hate the Marchesa. He _did_ like her. He did _esteem_ her. And after all, she too was struggling with her fate. He had a genuine sympathy with her. Nay, he was not going to hate her. But he could not see her. He could not bear the thought that she might call and see him. So he took the tram to Settignano, and walked away all day into the country, having bread and sausage in his pocket. He sat for long hours among the cypress trees of Tuscany. And never had any trees seemed so like ghosts, like soft, strange, pregnant presences. He lay and watched tall cypresses breathing and communicating, faintly moving and as it were walking in the small wind. And his soul seemed to leave him and to go far away, far back, perhaps, to where life was all different and time passed otherwise than time passes now. As in clairvoyance he perceived it: that our life is only a fragment of the shell of life. That there has been and will be life, human life such as we do not begin to conceive. Much that is life has passed away from men, leaving us all mere bits. In the dark, mindful silence and inflection of the cypress trees, lost races, lost language, lost human ways of feeling and of knowing. Men have known as we can no more know, have felt as we can no more feel. Great life-realities gone into the darkness. But the cypresses commemorate. In the afternoon, Aaron felt the cypresses rising dark about him, like so many high visitants from an old, lost, lost subtle world, where men had the wonder of demons about them, the aura of demons, such as still clings to the cypresses, in Tuscany. All day, he did not make up his mind what he was going to do. His first impulse was never to see her again. And this was his intention all day. But as he went home in the tram he softened, and thought. Nay, that would not be fair. For how had she treated him, otherwise than generously. She had been generous, and the other thing, that he felt blasted afterwards, which was his experience, that was fate, and not her fault. So he must see her again. He must not act like a churl. But he would tell her--he would tell her that he was a married man, and that though he had left his wife, and though he had no dogma of fidelity, still, the years of marriage had made a married man of him, and any other woman than his wife was a strange woman to him, a violation. “I will tell her,” he said to himself, “that at the bottom of my heart I love Lottie still, and that I can't help it. I believe that is true. It isn't love, perhaps. But it is marriage. I am married to Lottie. And that means I can't be married to another woman. It isn't my nature. And perhaps I can't bear to live with Lottie now, because I am married and not in love. When a man is married, he is not in love. A husband is not a lover. Lilly told me that: and I know it's true now. Lilly told me that a husband cannot be a lover, and a lover cannot be a husband. And that women will only have lovers now, and never a husband. Well, I am a husband, if I am anything. And I shall never be a lover again, not while I live. No, not to anybody. I haven't it in me. I'm a husband, and so it is finished with me as a lover. I can't be a lover any more, just as I can't be aged twenty any more. I am a man now, not an adolescent. And to my sorrow I am a husband to a woman who wants a lover: always a lover. But all women want lovers. And I can't be it any more. I don't want to. I have finished that. Finished for ever: unless I become senile---” Therefore next day he gathered up his courage. He would not have had courage unless he had known that he was not alone. The other man was in the town, and from this fact he derived his strength: the fact that Lilly was there. So at teatime he went over the river, and rang at her door. Yes, she was at home, and she had other visitors. She was wearing a beautiful soft afternoon dress, again of a blue like chicory-flowers, a pale, warm blue. And she had cornflowers in her belt: heaven knows where she had got them. She greeted Aaron with some of the childish shyness. He could tell that she was glad he had come, and that she had wondered at his not coming sooner. She introduced him to her visitors: two young ladies and one old lady and one elderly Italian count. The conversation was mostly in French or Italian, so Aaron was rather out of it. However, the visitors left fairly early, so Aaron stayed them out. When they had gone, he asked: “Where is Manfredi?” “He will come in soon. At about seven o'clock.” Then there was a silence again. “You are dressed fine today,” he said to her. “Am I?” she smiled. He was never able to make out quite what she felt, what she was feeling. But she had a quiet little air of proprietorship in him, which he did not like. “You will stay to dinner tonight, won't you?” she said. “No--not tonight,” he said. And then, awkwardly, he added: “You know. I think it is better if we are friends--not lovers. You know--I don't feel free. I feel my wife, I suppose, somewhere inside me. And I can't help it---” She bent her head and was silent for some moments. Then she lifted her face and looked at him oddly. “Yes,” she said. “I am sure you love your wife.” The reply rather staggered him--and to tell the truth, annoyed him. “Well,” he said. “I don't know about love. But when one has been married for ten years--and I did love her--then--some sort of bond or something grows. I think some sort of connection grows between us, you know. And it isn't natural, quite, to break it.--Do you know what I mean?” She paused a moment. Then, very softly, almost gently, she said: “Yes, I do. I know so well what you mean.” He was really surprised at her soft acquiescence. What _did_ she mean? “But we can be friends, can't we?” he said. “Yes, I hope so. Why, yes! Goodness, yes! I should be sorry if we couldn't be friends.” After which speech he felt that everything was all right--everything was A-one. And when Manfredi came home, the first sound he heard was the flute and his wife's singing. “I'm so glad you've come,” his wife said to him. “Shall we go into the sala and have real music? Will you play?” “I should love to,” replied the husband. Behold them then in the big drawing-room, and Aaron and the Marchese practising together, and the Marchesa singing an Italian folk-song while her husband accompanied her on the pianoforte. But her singing was rather strained and forced. Still, they were quite a little family, and it seemed quite nice. As soon as she could, the Marchesa left the two men together, whilst she sat apart. Aaron and Manfredi went through old Italian and old German music, tried one thing and then another, and seemed quite like brothers. They arranged a piece which they should play together on a Saturday morning, eight days hence. The next day, Saturday, Aaron went to one of the Del Torre music mornings. There was a string quartette--and a violin soloist--and the Marchese at the piano. The audience, some dozen or fourteen friends, sat at the near end of the room, or in the smaller salotta, whilst the musicians performed at the further end of the room. The Lillys were there, both Tanny and her husband. But apart from these, Aaron knew nobody, and felt uncomfortable. The Marchesa gave her guests little sandwiches and glasses of wine or Marsala or vermouth, as they chose. And she was quite the hostess: the well-bred and very simple, but still the conventional hostess. Aaron did not like it. And he could see that Lilly too was unhappy. In fact, the little man bolted the moment he could, dragging after him the indignant Tanny, who was so looking forward to the excellent little sandwiches. But no--Lilly just rudely bolted. Aaron followed as soon as he could. “Will you come to dinner tomorrow evening?” said his hostess to him as he was leaving. And he agreed. He had really resented seeing her as a conventional hostess, attending so charmingly to all the other people, and treating him so merely as one of the guests, among many others. So that when at the last moment she quietly invited him to dinner next day, he was flattered and accepted at once. The next day was Sunday--the seventh day after his coming together with the Marchesa--which had taken place on the Monday. And already he was feeling much less dramatic in his decision to keep himself apart from her, to be merely friends. Already the memory of the last time was fanning up in him, not as a warning but as a terrible incitement. Again the naked desire was getting hold of him, with that peculiar brutal powerfulness which startled him and also pleased him. So that by the time Sunday morning came, his recoil had exhausted itself, and he was ready again, eager again, but more wary this time. He sat in his room alone in the morning, playing his flute, playing over from memory the tunes she loved, and imagining how he and she would get into unison in the evening. His flute, his Aaron's rod, would blossom once again with splendid scarlet flowers, the red Florentine lilies. It was curious, the passion he had for her: just unalloyed desire, and nothing else. Something he had not known in his life before. Previously there had been always _some_ personal quality, some sort of personal tenderness. But here, none. She did not seem to want it. She seemed to hate it, indeed. No, all he felt was stark, naked desire, without a single pretension. True enough, his last experience had been a warning to him. His desire and himself likewise had broken rather disastrously under the proving. But not finally broken. He was ready again. And with all the sheer powerful insolence of desire he looked forward to the evening. For he almost expected Manfredi would not be there. The officer had said something about having to go to Padua on the Saturday afternoon. So Aaron went skipping off to his appointment, at seven o'clock. Judge of his chagrin, then, when he found already seated in the salotta an elderly, quite well-known, very cultured and very well-connected English authoress. She was charming, in her white hair and dress of soft white wool and white lace, with a long chain of filigree gold beads, like bubbles. She was charming in her old-fashioned manner too, as if the world were still safe and stable, like a garden in which delightful culture, and choice ideas bloomed safe from wind and weather. Alas, never was Aaron more conscious of the crude collapse in the world than when he listened to this animated, young-seeming lady from the safe days of the seventies. All the old culture and choice ideas seemed like blowing bubbles. And dear old Corinna Wade, she seemed to be blowing bubbles still, as she sat there so charming in her soft white dress, and talked with her bright animation about the influence of woman in Parliament and the influence of woman in the Periclean day. Aaron listened spell-bound, watching the bubbles float round his head, and almost hearing them go pop. To complete the party arrived an elderly litterateur who was more proud of his not-very-important social standing than of his literature. In fact he was one of those English snobs of the old order, living abroad. Perfectly well dressed for the evening, his grey hair and his prim face was the most well-dressed thing to be met in North Italy. “Oh, so glad to see you, Mr. French. I didn't know you were in Florence again. You make that journey from Venice so often. I wonder you don't get tired of it,” cried Corinna Wade. “No,” he said. “So long as duty to England calls me to Florence, I shall come to Florence. But I can LIVE in no town but Venice.” “No, I suppose you can't. Well, there is something special about Venice: having no streets and no carriages, and moving about in a gondola. I suppose it is all much more soothing.” “Much less nerve-racking, yes. And then there is a quality in the whole life. Of course I see few English people in Venice--only the old Venetian families, as a rule.” “Ah, yes. That must be very interesting. They are very exclusive still, the Venetian _noblesse_?” said Miss Wade. “Oh, very exclusive,” said Mr. French. “That is one of the charms. Venice is really altogether exclusive. It excludes the world, really, and defies time and modern movement. Yes, in spite of the steamers on the canal, and the tourists.” “That is so. That is so. Venice is a strange back-water. And the old families are very proud still, in these democratic days. They have a great opinion of themselves, I am told.” “Well,” said Mr. French. “Perhaps you know the rhyme: “'Veneziano gran' Signore Padovano buon' dotore. Vicenzese mangia il gatto Veronese tutto matto---'” “How very amusing!” said Miss Wade. “_Veneziana_ gran' Signore. The Venetian is a great gentleman! Yes, I know they are all convinced of it. Really, how very amusing, in these advanced days. To be born a Venetian, is to be born a great gentleman! But this outdoes divine right of king.” “To be born a Venetian GENTLEMAN, is to be born a great gentleman,” said Mr. French, rather fussily. “You seriously think so?” said Miss Wade. “Well now, what do you base your opinion on?” Mr. French gave various bases for his opinion. “Yes--interesting. Very interesting. Rather like the Byzantines--lingering on into far other ages. Anna Comnena always charmed me very much. HOW she despised the flower of the north--even Tancred! And so the lingering Venetian families! And you, in your palazzo on the Grand Canal: you are a northern barbarian civilised into the old Venetian Signoria. But how very romantic a situation!” It was really amusing to see the old maid, how she skirmished and hit out gaily, like an old jaunty free lance: and to see the old bachelor, how prim he was, and nervy and fussy and precious, like an old maid. But need we say that Mr. Aaron felt very much out of it. He sat and listened, with a sardonic small smile on his face and a sardonic gleam in his blue eyes, that looked so very blue on such an occasion. He made the two elderly people uncomfortable with his silence: his democratic silence, Miss Wade might have said. However, Miss Wade lived out towards Galuzzo, so she rose early, to catch her tram. And Mr. French gallantly and properly rose to accompany her, to see her safe on board. Which left Aaron and the Marchesa alone. “What time is Manfredi coming back?” said he. “Tomorrow,” replied she. There was a pause. “Why do you have those people?” he asked. “Who?” “Those two who were here this evening.” “Miss Wade and Mr. French?--Oh, I like Miss Wade so very much. She is so refreshing.” “Those old people,” said Aaron. “They licked the sugar off the pill, and go on as if everything was toffee. And we've got to swallow the pill. It's easy to be refreshing---” “No, don't say anything against her. I like her so much.” “And him?” “Mr. French!--Well, he's perhaps a little like the princess who felt the pea through three feather-beds. But he can be quite witty, and an excellent conversationalist, too. Oh yes, I like him quite well.” “Matter of taste,” said Aaron. They had not much to say to one another. The time passed, in the pauses. He looked at his watch. “I shall have to go,” he said. “Won't you stay?” she said, in a small, muted voice. “Stay all night?” he said. “Won't you?” “Yes,” he said quietly. Did he not feel the strength of his desire on him. After which she said no more. Only she offered him whiskey and soda, which he accepted. “Go then,” he said to her. “And I'll come to you.--Shall I come in fifteen minutes?” She looked at him with strange, slow dark eyes. And he could not understand. “Yes,” she said. And she went. And again, this night as before, she seemed strangely small and clinging in his arms. And this night he felt his passion drawn from him as if a long, live nerve were drawn out from his body, a long live thread of electric fire, a long, living nerve finely extracted from him, from the very roots of his soul. A long fine discharge of pure, bluish fire, from the core of his soul. It was an excruciating, but also an intensely gratifying sensation. This night he slept with a deeper obliviousness than before. But ah, as it grew towards morning how he wished he could be alone. They must stay together till the day was light. And she seemed to love clinging to him and curling strangely on his breast. He could never reconcile it with her who was a hostess entertaining her guests. How could she now in a sort of little ecstasy curl herself and nestle herself on his, Aaron's breast, tangling his face all over with her hair. He verily believed that this was what she really wanted of him: to curl herself on his naked breast, to make herself small, small, to feel his arms around her, while he himself was remote, silent, in some way inaccessible. This seemed almost to make her beside herself with gratification. But why, why? Was it because he was one of her own race, and she, as it were, crept right home to him? He did not know. He only knew it had nothing to do with him: and that, save out of _complaisance_, he did not want it. It simply blasted his own central life. It simply blighted him. And she clung to him closer. Strange, she was afraid of him! Afraid of him as of a fetish! Fetish afraid, and fetish-fascinated! Or was her fear only a delightful game of cat and mouse? Or was the fear genuine, and the delight the greater: a sort of sacrilege? The fear, and the dangerous, sacrilegious power over that which she feared. In some way, she was not afraid of him at all. In some other way she used him as a mere magic implement, used him with the most amazing priestess-craft. Himself, the individual man which he was, this she treated with an indifference that was startling to him. He forgot, perhaps, that this was how he had treated her. His famous desire for her, what had it been but this same attempt to strike a magic fire out of her, for his own ecstasy. They were playing the same game of fire. In him, however, there was all the time something hard and reckless and defiant, which stood apart. She was absolutely gone in her own incantations. She was absolutely gone, like a priestess utterly involved in her terrible rites. And he was part of the ritual only, God and victim in one. God and victim! All the time, God and victim. When his aloof soul realised, amid the welter of incantation, how he was being used,--not as himself but as something quite different--God and victim--then he dilated with intense surprise, and his remote soul stood up tall and knew itself alone. He didn't want it, not at all. He knew he was apart. And he looked back over the whole mystery of their love-contact. Only his soul was apart. He was aware of the strength and beauty and godlikeness that his breast was then to her--the magic. But himself, he stood far off, like Moses' sister Miriam. She would drink the one drop of his innermost heart's blood, and he would be carrion. As Cleopatra killed her lovers in the morning. Surely they knew that death was their just climax. They had approached the climax. Accept then. But his soul stood apart, and could have nothing to do with it. If he had really been tempted, he would have gone on, and she might have had his central heart's blood. Yes, and thrown away the carrion. He would have been willing. But fatally, he was not tempted. His soul stood apart and decided. At the bottom of his soul he disliked her. Or if not her, then her whole motive. Her whole life-mode. He was neither God nor victim: neither greater nor less than himself. His soul, in its isolation as she lay on his breast, chose it so, with the soul's inevitability. So, there was no temptation. When it was sufficiently light, he kissed her and left her. Quietly he left the silent flat. He had some difficulty in unfastening the various locks and bars and catches of the massive door downstairs, and began, in irritation and anger, to feel he was a prisoner, that he was locked in. But suddenly the ponderous door came loose, and he was out in the street. The door shut heavily behind him, with a shudder. He was out in the morning streets of Florence. CHAPTER XX. THE BROKEN ROD The day was rainy. Aaron stayed indoors alone, and copied music and slept. He felt the same stunned, withered feeling as before, but less intensely, less disastrously, this time. He knew now, without argument or thought that he would never go again to the Marchesa: not as a lover. He would go away from it all. He did not dislike her. But he would never see her again. A great gulf had opened, leaving him alone on the far side. He did not go out till after dinner. When he got downstairs he found the heavy night-door closed. He wondered: then remembered the Signorina's fear of riots and disturbances. As again he fumbled with the catches, he felt that the doors of Florence were trying to prevent his egress. However, he got out. It was a very dark night, about nine o'clock, and deserted seeming. He was struck by the strange, deserted feeling of the city's atmosphere. Yet he noticed before him, at the foot of the statue, three men, one with a torch: a long torch with naked flames. The men were stooping over something dark, the man with the torch bending forward too. It was a dark, weird little group, like Mediaeval Florence. Aaron lingered on his doorstep, watching. He could not see what they were doing. But now, the two were crouching down; over a long dark object on the ground, and the one with the torch bending also to look. What was it? They were just at the foot of the statue, a dark little group under the big pediment, the torch-flames weirdly flickering as the torch-bearer moved and stooped lower to the two crouching men, who seemed to be kneeling. Aaron felt his blood stir. There was something dark and mysterious, stealthy, in the little scene. It was obvious the men did not want to draw attention, they were so quiet and furtive-seeming. And an eerie instinct prevented Aaron's going nearer to look. Instead, he swerved on to the Lungarno, and went along the top of the square, avoiding the little group in the centre. He walked the deserted dark-seeming street by the river, then turned inwards, into the city. He was going to the Piazza Vittoria Emmanuele, to sit in the cafe which is the centre of Florence at night. There he could sit for an hour, and drink his vermouth and watch the Florentines. As he went along one of the dark, rather narrow streets, he heard a hurrying of feet behind him. Glancing round, he saw the torch-bearer coming along at a trot, holding his flaming torch up in front of him as he trotted down the middle of the narrow dark street. Aaron shrank under the wall. The trotting torch-bearer drew near, and now Aaron perceived the other two men slowly trotting behind, stealthily, bearing a stretcher on which a body was wrapped up, completely and darkly covered. The torch-bearer passed, the men with the stretcher passed too, hastily and stealthily, the flickering flames revealing them. They took no notice of Aaron, no notice of anything, but trotted softly on towards the centre of the city. Their queer, quick footsteps echoed down the distance. Then Aaron too resumed his way. He came to the large, brilliantly-lighted cafe. It was Sunday evening, and the place was full. Men, Florentines, many, many men sat in groups and in twos and threes at the little marble tables. They were mostly in dark clothes or black overcoats. They had mostly been drinking just a cup of coffee--others however had glasses of wine or liquor. But mostly it was just a little coffee-tray with a tiny coffee pot and a cup and saucer. There was a faint film of tobacco smoke. And the men were all talking: talking, talking with that peculiar intensity of the Florentines. Aaron felt the intense, compressed sound of many half-secret voices. For the little groups and couples abated their voices, none wished that others should hear what they said. Aaron was looking for a seat--there was no table to him-—when suddenly someone took him by the arm. It was Argyle. “Come along, now! Come and join us. Here, this way! Come along!” Aaron let himself be led away towards a corner. There sat Lilly and a strange man: called Levison. The room was warm. Aaron could never bear to be too hot. After sitting a minute, he rose and took off his coat, and hung it on a stand near the window. As he did so he felt the weight of his flute--it was still in his pocket. And he wondered if it was safe to leave it. “I suppose no one will steal from the overcoat pockets,” he said, as he sat down. “My dear chap, they'd steal the gold filling out of your teeth, if you happened to yawn,” said Argyle. “Why, have you left valuables in your overcoat?” “My flute,” said Aaron. “Oh, they won't steal that,” said Argyle. “Besides,” said Lilly, “we should see anyone who touched it.” And so they settled down to the vermouth. “Well,” said Argyle, “what have you been doing with yourself, eh? I haven't seen a glimpse of you for a week. Been going to the dogs, eh?” “Or the bitches,” said Aaron. “Oh, but look here, that's bad! That's bad! I can see I shall have to take you in hand, and commence my work of reform. Oh, I'm a great reformer, a Zwingli and Savonarola in one. I couldn't count the number of people I've led into the right way. It takes some finding, you know. Strait is the gate--damned strait sometimes. A damned tight squeeze....” Argyle was somewhat intoxicated. He spoke with a slight slur, and laughed, really tickled at his own jokes. The man Levison smiled acquiescent. But Lilly was not listening. His brow was heavy and he seemed abstracted. He hardly noticed Aaron's arrival. “Did you see the row yesterday?” asked Levison. “No,” said Aaron. “What was it?” It was the socialists. They were making a demonstration against the imprisonment of one of the railway-strikers. I was there. They went on all right, with a good bit of howling and gibing: a lot of young louts, you know. And the shop-keepers shut up shop, and nobody showed the Italian flag, of course. Well, when they came to the Via Benedetto Croce, there were a few mounted carabinieri. So they stopped the procession, and the sergeant said that the crowd could continue, could go on where they liked, but would they not go down the Via Verrocchio, because it was being repaired, the roadway was all up, and there were piles of cobble stones. These might prove a temptation and lead to trouble. So would the demonstrators not take that road--they might take any other they liked.--Well, the very moment he had finished, there was a revolver shot, he made a noise, and fell forward over his horse's nose. One of the anarchists had shot him. Then there was hell let loose, the carabinieri fired back, and people were bolting and fighting like devils. I cleared out, myself. But my God--what do you think of it?” “Seems pretty mean,” said Aaron. “Mean!--He had just spoken them fair--they could go where they liked, only would they not go down the one road, because of the heap of stones. And they let him finish. And then shot him dead.” “Was he dead?” said Aaron. “Yes--killed outright, the Nazione says.” There was a silence. The drinkers in the cafe all continued to talk vehemently, casting uneasy glances. “Well,” said Argyle, “if you let loose the dogs of war, you mustn't expect them to come to heel again in five minutes.” “But there's no fair play about it, not a bit,” said Levison. “Ah, my dear fellow, are you still so young and callow that you cherish the illusion of fair play?” said Argyle. “Yes, I am,” said Levison. “Live longer and grow wiser,” said Argyle, rather contemptuously. “Are you a socialist?” asked Levison. “Am I my aunt Tabitha's dachshund bitch called Bella,” said Argyle, in his musical, indifferent voice. “Yes, Bella's her name. And if you can tell me a damneder name for a dog, I shall listen, I assure you, attentively.” “But you haven't got an aunt called Tabitha,” said Aaron. “Haven't I? Oh, haven't I? I've got TWO aunts called Tabitha: if not more.” “They aren't of any vital importance to you, are they?” said Levison. “Not the very least in the world--if it hadn't been that my elder Aunt Tabitha had christened her dachshund bitch Bella. I cut myself off from the family after that. Oh, I turned over a new leaf, with not a family name on it. Couldn't stand Bella amongst the rest.” “You must have strained most of the gnats out of your drink, Argyle,” said Lilly, laughing. “Assiduously! Assiduously! I can't stand these little vermin. Oh, I am quite indifferent about swallowing a camel or two--or even a whole string of dromedaries. How charmingly Eastern that sounds! But gnats! Not for anything in the world would I swallow one.” “You're a bit of a SOCIALIST though, aren't you?” persisted Levison, now turning to Lilly. “No,” said Lilly. “I was.” “And am no more,” said Argyle sarcastically. “My dear fellow, the only hope of salvation for the world lies in the re-institution of slavery.” “What kind of slavery?” asked Levison. “Slavery! SLAVERY! When I say SLAVERY I don't mean any of your damned modern reform cant. I mean solid sound slavery on which the Greek and the Roman world rested. FAR finer worlds than ours, my dear chap! Oh FAR finer! And can't be done without slavery. Simply can't be done.--Oh, they'll all come to realise it, when they've had a bit more of this democratic washer-women business.” Levison was laughing, with a slight sneer down his nose. “Anyhow, there's no immediate danger--or hope, if you prefer it--of the re-instituting of classic slavery,” he said. “Unfortunately no. We are all such fools,” said Argyle. “Besides,” said Levison, “who would you make slaves of?” “Everybody, my dear chap: beginning with the idealists and the theorising Jews, and after them your nicely-bred gentlemen, and then perhaps, your profiteers and Rothschilds, and ALL politicians, and ending up with the proletariat,” said Argyle. “Then who would be the masters?--the professional classes, doctors and lawyers and so on?” “What? Masters. They would be the sewerage slaves, as being those who had made most smells.” There was a moment's silence. “The only fault I have to find with your system,” said Levison, rather acidly, “is that there would be only one master, and everybody else slaves.” “Do you call that a fault? What do you want with more than one master? Are you asking for several?--Well, perhaps there's cunning in THAT.--Cunning devils, cunning devils, these theorising slaves--” And Argyle pushed his face with a devilish leer into Aaron's face. “Cunning devils!” he reiterated, with a slight tipsy slur. “That be-fouled Epictetus wasn't the last of 'em--nor the first. Oh, not by any means, not by any means.” Here Lilly could not avoid a slight spasm of amusement. “But returning to serious conversation,” said Levison, turning his rather sallow face to Lilly. “I think you'll agree with me that socialism is the inevitable next step--” Lilly waited for some time without answering. Then he said, with unwilling attention to the question: “I suppose it's the logically inevitable next step.” “Use logic as lavatory paper,” cried Argyle harshly. “Yes--logically inevitable--and humanly inevitable at the same time. Some form of socialism is bound to come, no matter how you postpone it or try variations,” said Levison. “All right, let it come,” said Lilly. “It's not my affair, neither to help it nor to keep it back, or even to try varying it.” “There I don't follow you,” said Levison. “Suppose you were in Russia now--” “I watch it I'm not.” “But you're in Italy, which isn't far off. Supposing a socialist revolution takes place all around you. Won't that force the problem on you?--It is every man's problem,” persisted Levison. “Not mine,” said Lilly. “How shall you escape it?” said Levison. “Because to me it is no problem. To Bolsh or not to Bolsh, as far as my mind goes, presents no problem. Not any more than to be or not to be. To be or not to be is simply no problem--” “No, I quite agree, that since you are already existing, and since death is ultimately inevitable, to be or not to be is no sound problem,” said Levison. “But the parallel isn't true of socialism. That is not a problem of existence, but of a certain mode of existence which centuries of thought and action on the part of Europe have now made logically inevitable for Europe. And therefore there is a problem. There is more than a problem, there is a dilemma. Either we must go to the logical conclusion--or--” “Somewhere else,” said Lilly. “Yes--yes. Precisely! But where ELSE? That's the one half of the problem: supposing you do not agree to a logical progression in human social activity. Because after all, human society through the course of ages only enacts, spasmodically but still inevitably, the logical development of a given idea.” “Well, then, I tell you.--The idea and the ideal has for me gone dead--dead as carrion--” “Which idea, which ideal precisely?” “The ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call goodness, charity, benevolence, public spirited-ness, the ideal of sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity--all the lot--all the whole beehive of ideals--has all got the modern bee-disease, and gone putrid, stinking.--And when the ideal is dead and putrid, the logical sequence is only stink.--Which, for me, is the truth concerning the ideal of good, peaceful, loving humanity and its logical sequence in socialism and equality, equal opportunity or whatever you like.--But this time he stinketh--and I'm sorry for any Christus who brings him to life again, to stink livingly for another thirty years: the beastly Lazarus of our idealism.” “That may be true for you--” “But it's true for nobody else,” said Lilly. “All the worse for them. Let them die of the bee-disease.” “Not only that,” persisted Levison, “but what is your alternative? Is it merely nihilism?” “My alternative,” said Lilly, “is an alternative for no one but myself, so I'll keep my mouth shut about it.” “That isn't fair.” “I tell you, the ideal of fairness stinks with the rest.--I have no obligation to say what I think.” “Yes, if you enter into conversation, you have--” “Bah, then I didn't enter into conversation.--The only thing is, I agree in the rough with Argyle. You've got to have a sort of slavery again. People are not MEN: they are insects and instruments, and their destiny is slavery. They are too many for me, and so what I think is ineffectual. But ultimately they will be brought to agree--after sufficient extermination--and then they will elect for themselves a proper and healthy and energetic slavery.” “I should like to know what you mean by slavery. Because to me it is impossible that slavery should be healthy and energetic. You seem to have some other idea in your mind, and you merely use the word slavery out of exasperation--” “I mean it none the less. I mean a real committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being.” “It'll take a bit of knowing, who are the inferior and which is the superior,” said Levison sarcastically. “Not a bit. It is written between a man's brows, which he is.” “I'm afraid we shall all read differently.” “So long as we're liars.” “And putting that question aside: I presume that you mean that this committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to someone higher shall be made voluntarily--a sort of voluntary self-gift of the inferiors--” “Yes--more or less--and a voluntary acceptance. For it's no pretty gift, after all.--But once made it must be held fast by genuine power. Oh yes--no playing and fooling about with it. Permanent and very efficacious power.” “You mean military power?” “I do, of course.” Here Levison smiled a long, slow, subtle smile of ridicule. It all seemed to him the preposterous pretentiousness of a megalomaniac--one whom, after a while, humanity would probably have the satisfaction of putting into prison, or into a lunatic asylum. And Levison felt strong, overwhelmingly strong, in the huge social power with which he, insignificant as he was, was armed against such criminal-imbecile pretensions as those above set forth. Prison or the lunatic asylum. The face of the fellow gloated in these two inevitable engines of his disapproval. “It will take you some time before you'll get your doctrines accepted,” he said. “Accepted! I'd be sorry. I don't want a lot of swine snouting and sniffing at me with their acceptance.--Bah, Levison--one can easily make a fool of you. Do you take this as my gospel?” “I take it you are speaking seriously.” Here Lilly broke into that peculiar, gay, whimsical smile. “But I should say the blank opposite with just as much fervour,” he declared. “Do you mean to say you don't MEAN what you've been saying?” said Levison, now really looking angry. “Why, I'll tell you the real truth,” said Lilly. “I think every man is a sacred and holy individual, NEVER to be violated; I think there is only one thing I hate to the verge of madness, and that is BULLYING. To see any living creature BULLIED, in any way, almost makes a murderer of me. That is true. Do you believe it--?” “Yes,” said Levison unwillingly. “That may be true as well. You have no doubt, like most of us, got a complex nature which--” C R A S H! There intervened one awful minute of pure shock, when the soul was in darkness. Out of this shock Aaron felt himself issuing amid a mass of terrible sensations: the fearful blow of the explosion, the noise of glass, the hoarse howl of people, the rushing of men, the sudden gulf, the awful gulfing whirlpool of horror in the social life. He stood in agony and semi-blindness amid a chaos. Then as he began to recover his consciousness, he found himself standing by a pillar some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, nearly everybody gone: he saw the owner, or the manager, advancing aghast to the place of debris: he saw Lilly standing not far off, white as a sheet, and as if unconscious. And still he had no idea of what had happened. He thought perhaps something had broken down. He could not understand. Lilly began to look round. He caught Aaron's eye. And then Aaron began to approach his friend. “What is it?” he asked. “A bomb,” said Lilly. The manager, and one old waiter, and three or four youths had now advanced to the place of debris. And now Aaron saw that a man was lying there--and horror, blood was running across the floor of the cafe. Men began now hastily to return to the place. Some seized their hats and departed again at once. But many began to crowd in--a black eager crowd of men pressing to where the bomb had burst--where the man was lying. It was rather dark, some of the lamps were broken--but enough still shone. Men surged in with that eager, excited zest of people, when there has been an accident. Grey carabinieri, and carabinieri in the cocked hat and fine Sunday uniform pressed forward officiously. “Let us go,” said Lilly. And he went to the far corner, where his hat hung. But Aaron looked in vain for his own hat. The bomb had fallen near the stand where he had hung it and his overcoat. “My hat and coat?” he said to Lilly. Lilly, not very tall, stood on tiptoe. Then he climbed on a chair and looked round. Then he squeezed past the crowd. Aaron followed. On the other side of the crowd excited angry men were wrestling over overcoats that were mixed up with a broken marble table-top. Aaron spied his own black hat under the sofa near the wall. He waited his turn and then in the confusion pressed forward to where the coats were. Someone had dragged out his, and it lay on the floor under many feet. He managed, with a struggle, to get it from under the feet of the crowd. He felt at once for his flute. But his trampled, torn coat had no flute in its pocket. He pushed and struggled, caught sight of a section, and picked it up. But it was split right down, two silver stops were torn out, and a long thin spelch of wood was curiously torn off. He looked at it, and his heart stood still. No need to look for the rest. He felt utterly, utterly overcome--as if he didn't care what became of him any further. He didn't care whether he were hit by a bomb, or whether he himself threw the next bomb, and hit somebody. He just didn't care any more about anything in life or death. It was as if the reins of his life slipped from his hands. And he would let everything run where it would, so long as it did run. Then he became aware of Lilly's eyes on him--and automatically he joined the little man. “Let us go,” said Lilly. And they pushed their way through the door. The police were just marching across the square. Aaron and Lilly walked in the opposite direction. Groups of people were watching. Suddenly Lilly swerved--in the middle of the road was a large black glisten of blood, trickling horribly. A wounded man had run from the blow and fallen here. Aaron did not know where he was going. But in the Via Tournabuoni Lilly turned towards the Arno, and soon they were on the Ponte Santa Trinita. “Who threw the bomb?” said Aaron. “I suppose an anarchist.” “It's all the same,” said Aaron. The two men, as if unable to walk any further, leaned on the broad parapet of the bridge and looked at the water in the darkness of the still, deserted night. Aaron still had his flute section in his hand, his overcoat over his arm. “Is that your flute?” asked Lilly. “Bit of it. Smashed.” “Let me look.” He looked, and gave it back. “No good,” he said. “Oh, no,” said Aaron. “Throw it in the river, Aaron,” said Lilly. Aaron turned and looked at him. “Throw it in the river,” repeated Lilly. “It's an end.” Aaron nervelessly dropped the flute into the stream. The two men stood leaning on the bridge-parapet, as if unable to move. “We shall have to go home,” said Lilly. “Tanny may hear of it and be anxious.” Aaron was quite dumbfounded by the night's event: the loss of his flute. Here was a blow he had not expected. And the loss was for him symbolistic. It chimed with something in his soul: the bomb, the smashed flute, the end. “There goes Aaron's Rod, then,” he said to Lilly. “It'll grow again. It's a reed, a water-plant--you can't kill it,” said Lilly, unheeding. “And me?” “You'll have to live without a rod, meanwhile.” To which pleasant remark Aaron made no reply. CHAPTER XXI. WORDS He went home to bed: and dreamed a strange dream. He dreamed that he was in a country with which he was not acquainted. Night was coming on, and he had nowhere to sleep. So he passed the mouth of a sort of cave or house, in which a woman, an old woman, sat. Therefore he entered, and though he could not understand the language, still his second self understood. The cave was a house: and men came home from work. His second self assumed that they were tin-miners. He wandered uneasily to and fro, no one taking any particular notice of him. And he realized that there was a whole vast country spreading, a sort of underworld country, spreading away beyond him. He wandered from vast apartment to apartment, down narrow corridors like the roads in a mine. In one of the great square rooms, the men were going to eat. And it seemed to him that what they were going to eat was a man, naked man. But his second self knew that what appeared to his eyes as a man was really a man's skin stuffed tight with prepared meat, as the skin of a Bologna sausage. This did not prevent his seeing the naked man who was to be eaten walk slowly and stiffly across the gangway and down the corridor. He saw him from behind. It was a big handsome man in the prime of life, quite naked and perhaps stupid. But of course he was only a skin stuffed with meat, whom the grey tin-miners were going to eat. Aaron, the dream-Aaron, turned another way, and strayed along the vast square rooms, cavern apartments. He came into one room where there were many children, all in white gowns. And they were all busily putting themselves to bed, in the many beds scattered about the room at haphazard. And each child went to bed with a wreath of flowers on its head, white flowers and pink, so it seemed. So there they all lay, in their flower-crowns in the vast space of the rooms. And Aaron went away. He could not remember the following part. Only he seemed to have passed through many grey domestic apartments, where were all women, all greyish in their clothes and appearance, being wives of the underground tin-miners. The men were away and the dream-Aaron remembered with fear the food they were to eat. The next thing he could recall was, that he was in a boat. And now he was most definitely two people. His invisible, _conscious_ self, what we have called his second self, hovered as it were before the prow of the boat, seeing and knowing, but unseen. His other self, the palpable Aaron, sat as a passenger in the boat, which was being rowed by the unknown people of this underworld. They stood up as they thrust the boat along. Other passengers were in the boat too, women as well, but all of them unknown people, and not noticeable. The boat was upon a great lake in the underworld country, a lake of dark blue water, but crystal clear and very beautiful in colour. The second or invisible Aaron sat in the prow and watched the fishes swimming suspended in the clear, beautiful dark-blue water. Some were pale fish, some frightening-looking, like centipedes swimming, and some were dark fish, of definite form, and delightful to watch. The palpable or visible Aaron sat at the side of the boat, on the end of the middle seat, with his naked right elbow leaning out over the side. And now the boat entered upon shallows. The impalpable Aaron in the bows saw the whitish clay of the bottom swirl up in clouds at each thrust of the oars, whitish-clayey clouds which would envelope the strange fishes in a sudden mist. And on the right hand of the course stakes stood up in the water, at intervals, to mark the course. The boat must pass very near these stakes, almost touching. And Aaron's naked elbow was leaning right over the side. As they approached the first stake, the boatmen all uttered a strange cry of warning, in a foreign language. The flesh-and-blood Aaron seemed not even to hear. The invisible Aaron heard, but did not comprehend the words of the cry. So the naked elbow struck smartly against the stake as the boat passed. The rowers rowed on. And still the flesh-and-blood Aaron sat with his arm over the side. Another stake was nearing. “Will he heed, will he heed?” thought the anxious second self. The rowers gave the strange warning cry. He did not heed, and again the elbow struck against the stake as the boat passed. And yet the flesh-and-blood Aaron sat on and made no sign. There were stakes all along this shallow part of the lake. Beyond was deep water again. The invisible Aaron was becoming anxious. “Will he never hear? Will he never heed? Will he never understand?” he thought. And he watched in pain for the next stake. But still the flesh-and-blood Aaron sat on, and though the rowers cried so acutely that the invisible Aaron almost understood their very language, still the Aaron seated at the side heard nothing, and his elbow struck against the third stake. This was almost too much. But after a few moments, as the boat rowed on, the palpable Aaron changed his position as he sat, and drew in his arm: though even now he was not aware of any need to do so. The invisible Aaron breathed with relief in the bows, the boat swung steadily on, into the deep, unfathomable water again. They were drawing near a city. A lake-city, like Mexico. They must have reached a city, because when Aaron woke up and tried to piece together the dream of which these are mere fragments, he could remember having just seen an idol. An Astarte he knew it as, seated by the road, and in her open lap, were some eggs: smallish hen's eggs, and one or two bigger eggs, like swan's, and one single little roll of bread. These lay in the lap of the roadside Astarte.... And then he could remember no more. He woke, and for a minute tried to remember what he had been dreaming, and what it all meant. But he quickly relinquished the effort. So he looked at his watch: it was only half-past three. He had one of those American watches with luminous, phosphorescent figures and fingers. And tonight he felt afraid of its eerily shining face. He was awake a long time in the dark--for two hours, thinking and not thinking, in that barren state which is not sleep, nor yet full wakefulness, and which is a painful strain. At length he went to sleep again, and did not wake till past eight o'clock. He did not ring for his coffee till nine. Outside was a bright day--but he hardly heeded it. He lay profitlessly thinking. With the breaking of the flute, that which was slowly breaking had finally shattered at last. And there was nothing ahead: no plan, no prospect. He knew quite well that people would help him: Francis Dekker or Angus Guest or the Marchese or Lilly. They would get him a new flute, and find him engagements. But what was the good? His flute was broken, and broken finally. The bomb had settled it. The bomb had settled it and everything. It was an end, no matter how he tried to patch things up. The only thing he felt was a thread of destiny attaching him to Lilly. The rest had all gone as bare and bald as the dead orb of the moon. So he made up his mind, if he could, to make some plan that would bring his life together with that of his evanescent friend. Lilly was a peculiar bird. Clever and attractive as he undoubtedly was, he was perhaps the most objectionable person to know. It was stamped on his peculiar face. Aaron thought of Lilly's dark, ugly face, which had something that lurked in it as a creature under leaves. Then he thought of the wide-apart eyes, with their curious candour and surety. The peculiar, half-veiled surety, as if nothing, nothing could overcome him. It made people angry, this look of silent, indifferent assurance. “Nothing can touch him on the quick, nothing can really GET at him,” they felt at last. And they felt it with resentment, almost with hate. They wanted to be able to get at him. For he was so open-seeming, so very outspoken. He gave himself away so much. And he had no money to fall back on. Yet he gave himself away so easily, paid such attention, almost deference to any chance friend. So they all thought: Here is a wise person who finds me the wonder which I really am.--And lo and behold, after he had given them the trial, and found their inevitable limitations, he departed and ceased to heed their wonderful existence. Which, to say the least of it, was fraudulent and damnable. It was then, after his departure, that they realised his basic indifference to them, and his silent arrogance. A silent arrogance that knew all their wisdom, and left them to it. Aaron had been through it all. He had started by thinking Lilly a peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing: then cruel and intolerant, allowing no man to have a soul of his own: then terribly arrogant, throwing a fellow aside like an old glove which is in holes at the finger-ends. And all the time, which was most beastly, seeing through one. All the time, freak and outsider as he was, Lilly _knew_. He knew, and his soul was against the whole world. Driven to bay, and forced to choose. Forced to choose, not between life and death, but between the world and the uncertain, assertive Lilly. Forced to choose, and yet, in the world, having nothing left to choose. For in the world there was nothing left to choose, unless he would give in and try for success. Aaron knew well enough that if he liked to do a bit of buttering, people would gladly make a success of him, and give him money and success. He could become quite a favourite. But no! If he had to give in to something: if he really had to give in, and it seemed he had: then he would rather give in to the little Lilly than to the beastly people of the world. If he had to give in, then it should be to no woman, and to no social ideal, and to no social institution. No!--if he had to yield his wilful independence, and give himself, then he would rather give himself to the little, individual man than to any of the rest. For to tell the truth, in the man was something incomprehensible, which had dominion over him, if he chose to allow it. As he lay pondering this over, escaping from the _cul de sac_ in which he had been running for so long, by yielding to one of his pursuers: yielding to the peculiar mastery of one man's nature rather than to the quicksands of woman or the stinking bogs of society: yielding, since yield he must, in some direction or other: yielding in a new direction now, to one strange and incalculable little individual: as Aaron lay so relaxing, finding a peculiar delight in giving his soul to his mind's hero, the self-same hero tapped and entered. “I wondered,” he said, “if you'd like to walk into the country with me: it is such a nice day. I thought you might have gone out already. But here you are in bed like a woman who's had a baby.--You're all right, are you?” “Yes,” said Aaron. “I'm all right.” “Miserable about your flute?--Ah, well, there are more flutes. Get up then.” And Lilly went to the window, and stood looking out at the river. “We're going away on Thursday,” he said. “Where to?” said Aaron. “Naples. We've got a little house there for the winter--in the country, not far from Sorrento--I must get a bit of work done, now the winter is coming. And forget all about everything and just live with life. What's the good of running after life, when we've got it in us, if nobody prevents us and obstructs us?” Aaron felt very queer. “But for how long will you settle down--?” he asked. “Oh, only the winter. I am a vagrant really: or a migrant. I must migrate. Do you think a cuckoo in Africa and a cuckoo in Essex is one AND the same bird? Anyhow, I know I must oscillate between north and south, so oscillate I do. It's just my nature. All people don't have the same needs.” “Perhaps not,” said Aaron, who had risen and was sitting on the side of the bed. “I would very much like to try life in another continent, among another race. I feel Europe becoming like a cage to me. Europe may be all right in herself. But I find myself chafing. Another year I shall get out. I shall leave Europe. I begin to feel caged.” “I guess there are others that feel caged, as well as you,” said Aaron. “I guess there are.” “And maybe they haven't a chance to get out.” Lilly was silent a moment. Then he said: “Well, I didn't make life and society. I can only go my own way.” Aaron too was silent. A deep disappointment was settling over his spirit. “Will you be alone all winter?” “Just myself and Tanny,” he answered. “But people always turn up.” “And then next year, what will you do?” “Who knows? I may sail far off. I should like to. I should like to try quite a new life-mode. This is finished in me--and yet perhaps it is absurd to go further. I'm rather sick of seekers. I hate a seeker.” “What,” said Aaron rather sarcastically--“those who are looking for a new religion?” “Religion--and love--and all that. It's a disease now.” “Oh, I don't know,” said Aaron. “Perhaps the lack of love and religion is the disease.” “Ah--bah! The grinding the old millstones of love and God is what ails us, when there's no more grist between the stones. We've ground love very small. Time to forget it. Forget the very words religion, and God, and love--then have a shot at a new mode. But the very words rivet us down and don't let us move. Rivets, and we can't get them out.” “And where should we be if we could?” said Aaron. “We might begin to be ourselves, anyhow.” “And what does that mean?” said Aaron. “Being yourself--what does it mean?” “To me, everything.” “And to most folks, nothing. They've got to have a goal.” “There is no goal. I loathe goals more than any other impertinence. Gaols, they are. Bah--jails and jailers, gaols and gaolers---” “Wherever you go, you'll find people with their noses tied to some goal,” said Aaron. “Their wagon hitched to a star--which goes round and round like an ass in a gin,” laughed Lilly. “Be damned to it.” Aaron got himself dressed, and the two men went out, took a tram and went into the country. Aaron could not help it--Lilly put his back up. They came to a little inn near a bridge, where a broad stream rustled bright and shallow. It was a sunny warm day, and Aaron and Lilly had a table outside under the thin trees at the top of the bank above the river. The yellow leaves were falling--the Tuscan sky was turquoise blue. In the stream below three naked boys still adventurously bathed, and lay flat on the shingle in the sun. A wagon with two pale, loving, velvety oxen drew slowly down the hill, looking at each step as if they were going to come to rest, to move no more. But still they stepped forward. Till they came to the inn, and there they stood at rest. Two old women were picking the last acorns under three scrubby oak-trees, whilst a girl with bare feet drove her two goats and a sheep up from the water-side towards the women. The girl wore a dress that had been blue, perhaps indigo, but which had faded to the beautiful lavender-purple colour which is so common, and which always reminded Lilly of purple anemones in the south. The two friends sat in the sun and drank red wine. It was midday. From the thin, square belfry on the opposite hill the bells had rung. The old women and the girl squatted under the trees, eating their bread and figs. The boys were dressing, fluttering into their shirts on the stream's shingle. A big girl went past, with somebody's dinner tied in a red kerchief and perched on her head. It was one of the most precious hours: the hour of pause, noon, and the sun, and the quiet acceptance of the world. At such a time everything seems to fall into a true relationship, after the strain of work and of urge. Aaron looked at Lilly, and saw the same odd, distant look on his face as on the face of some animal when it lies awake and alert, yet perfectly at one with its surroundings. It was something quite different from happiness: an alert enjoyment of rest, an intense and satisfying sense of centrality. As a dog when it basks in the sun with one eye open and winking: or a rabbit quite still and wide-eyed, with a faintly-twitching nose. Not passivity, but alert enjoyment of being central, life-central in one's own little circumambient world. They sat thus still--or lay under the trees--for an hour and a half. Then Lilly paid the bill, and went on. “What am I going to do this winter, do you think?” Aaron asked. “What do you want to do?” “Nay, that's what I want to know.” “Do you want anything? I mean, does something drive you from inside?” “I can't just rest,” said Aaron. “Can't you settle down to something?--to a job, for instance?” “I've not found the job I could settle down to, yet,” said Aaron. “Why not?” “It's just my nature.” “Are you a seeker? Have you got a divine urge, or need?” “How do I know?” laughed Aaron. “Perhaps I've got a DAMNED urge, at the bottom of me. I'm sure it's nothing divine.” “Very well then. Now, in life, there are only two great dynamic urges--do you believe me--?” “How do I know?” laughed Aaron. “Do you want to be believed?” “No, I don't care a straw. Only for your own sake, you'd better believe me.” “All right then--what about it?” “Well, then, there are only two great dynamic urges in LIFE: love and power.” “Love and power?” said Aaron. “I don't see power as so very important.” “You don't see because you don't look. But that's not the point. What sort of urge is your urge? Is it the love urge?” “I don't know,” said Aaron. “Yes, you do. You know that you have got an urge, don't you?” “Yes--” rather unwillingly Aaron admitted it. “Well then, what is it? Is it that you want to love, or to be obeyed?” “A bit of both.” “All right--a bit of both. And what are you looking for in love?--A woman whom you can love, and who will love you, out and out and all in all and happy ever after sort of thing?” “That's what I started out for, perhaps,” laughed Aaron. “And now you know it's all my eye!” Aaron looked at Lilly, unwilling to admit it. Lilly began to laugh. “You know it well enough,” he said. “It's one of your lost illusions, my boy. Well, then, what next? Is it a God you're after? Do you want a God you can strive to and attain, through love, and live happy ever after, countless millions of eternities, immortality and all that? Is this your little dodge?” Again Aaron looked at Lilly with that odd double look of mockery and unwillingness to give himself away. “All right then. You've got a love-urge that urges you to God; have you? Then go and join the Buddhists in Burmah, or the newest fangled Christians in Europe. Go and stick your head in a bush of Nirvana or spiritual perfection. Trot off.” “I won't,” said Aaron. “You must. If you've got a love-urge, then give it its fulfilment.” “I haven't got a love-urge.” “You have. You want to get excited in love. You want to be carried away in love. You want to whoosh off in a nice little love whoosh and love yourself. Don't deny it. I know you do. You want passion to sweep you off on wings of fire till you surpass yourself, and like the swooping eagle swoop right into the sun. I know you, my love-boy.” “Not any more--not any more. I've been had too often,” laughed Aaron. “Bah, it's a lesson men never learn. No matter how sick they make themselves with love, they always rush for more, like a dog to his vomit.” “Well, what am I to do then, if I'm not to love?” cried Aaron. “You want to go on, from passion to passion, from ecstasy to ecstasy, from triumph to triumph, till you can whoosh away into glory, beyond yourself, all bonds loosened and happy ever after. Either that or Nirvana, opposite side of the medal.” “There's probably more hate than love in me,” said Aaron. “That's the recoil of the same urge. The anarchist, the criminal, the murderer, he is only the extreme lover acting on the recoil. But it is love: only in recoil. It flies back, the love-urge, and becomes a horror.” “All right then. I'm a criminal and a murderer,” said Aaron. “No, you're not. But you've a love-urge. And perhaps on the recoil just now. But listen to me. It's no good thinking the love-urge is the one and only. _Niente_! You can whoosh if you like, and get excited and carried away loving a woman, or humanity, or God. Swoop away in the love direction till you lose yourself. But that's where you're had. You can't lose yourself. You can try. But you might just as well try to swallow yourself. You'll only bite your fingers off in the attempt. You can't lose yourself, neither in woman nor humanity nor in God. You've always got yourself on your hands in the end: and a very raw and jaded and humiliated and nervous-neurasthenic self it is, too, in the end. A very nasty thing to wake up to is one's own raw self after an excessive love-whoosh. Look even at President Wilson: he love-whooshed for humanity, and found in the end he'd only got a very sorry self on his hands. “So leave off. Leave off, my boy. Leave off love-whooshing. You can't lose yourself, so stop trying. The responsibility is on your own shoulders all the time, and no God which man has ever struck can take it off. You ARE yourself and so BE yourself. Stick to it and abide by it. Passion or no passion, ecstasy or no ecstasy, urge or no urge, there's no goal outside you, where you can consummate like an eagle flying into the sun, or a moth into a candle. There's no goal outside you--and there's no God outside you. No God, whom you can get to and rest in. None. It's a case of: 'Trot, trot to market, to buy a penny bun, And trot, trot back again, as fast as you can run.' But there's no God outside you, whom you can rise to or sink to or swoop away to. You can't even gum yourself to a divine Nirvana moon. Because all the time you've got to eat your dinner and digest it. There is no goal outside you. None. “There is only one thing, your own very self. So you'd better stick to it. You can't be any bigger than just yourself, so you needn't drag God in. You've got one job, and no more. There inside you lies your own very self, like a germinating egg, your precious Easter egg of your own soul. There it is, developing bit by bit, from one single egg-cell which you were at your conception in your mother's womb, on and on to the strange and peculiar complication in unity which never stops till you die--if then. You've got an innermost, integral unique self, and since it's the only thing you have got or ever will have, don't go trying to lose it. You've got to develop it, from the egg into the chicken, and from the chicken into the one-and-only phoenix, of which there can only be one at a time in the universe. There can only be one of you at a time in the universe--and one of me. So don't forget it. Your own single oneness is your destiny. Your destiny comes from within, from your own self-form. And you can't know it beforehand, neither your destiny nor your self-form. You can only develop it. You can only stick to your own very self, and NEVER betray it. And by so sticking, you develop the one and only phoenix of your own self, and you unfold your own destiny, as a dandelion unfolds itself into a dandelion, and not into a stick of celery. “Remember this, my boy: you've never got to deny the Holy Ghost which is inside you, your own soul's self. Never. Or you'll catch it. And you've never got to think you'll dodge the responsibility of your own soul's self, by loving or sacrificing or Nirvaning--or even anarchising and throwing bombs. You never will....” Aaron was silenced for a moment by this flood of words. Then he said smiling: “So I'd better sit tight on my soul, till it hatches, had I?” “Oh, yes. If your soul's urge urges you to love, then love. But always know that what you are doing is the fulfilling of your own soul's impulse. It's no good trying to act by prescription: not a bit. And it's no use getting into frenzies. If you've got to go in for love and passion, go in for them. But they aren't the goal. They're a mere means: a life-means, if you will. The only goal is the fulfilling of your own soul's active desire and suggestion. Be passionate as much as ever it is your nature to be passionate, and deeply sensual as far as you can be. Small souls have a small sensuality, deep souls a deep one. But remember, all the time, the responsibility is upon your own head, it all rests with your own lonely soul, the responsibility for your own action.” “I never said it didn't,” said Aaron. “You never said it did. You never accepted. You thought there was something outside, to justify you: God, or a creed, or a prescription. But remember, your soul inside you is your only Godhead. It develops your actions within you as a tree develops its own new cells. And the cells push on into buds and boughs and flowers. And these are your passion and your acts and your thoughts and expressions, your developing consciousness. You don't know beforehand, and you can't. You can only stick to your own soul through thick and thin. “You are your own Tree of Life, roots and limbs and trunk. Somewhere within the wholeness of the tree lies the very self, the quick: its own innate Holy Ghost. And this Holy Ghost puts forth new buds, and pushes past old limits, and shakes off a whole body of dying leaves. And the old limits hate being empassed, and the old leaves hate to fall. But they must, if the tree-soul says so....” They had sat again during this harangue, under a white wall. Aaron listened more to the voice than the words. It was more the sound value which entered his soul, the tone, the strange speech-music which sank into him. The sense he hardly heeded. And yet he understood, he knew. He understood, oh so much more deeply than if he had listened with his head. And he answered an objection from the bottom of his soul. “But you talk,” he said, “as if we were like trees, alone by ourselves in the world. We aren't. If we love, it needs another person than ourselves. And if we hate, and even if we talk.” “Quite,” said Lilly. “And that's just the point. We've got to love and hate moreover--and even talk. But we haven't got to fix on any one of these modes, and say that's the only mode. It is such imbecility to say that love and love alone must rule. It is so obviously not the case. Yet we try and make it so.” “I feel that,” said Aaron. “It's all a lie.” “It's worse. It's a half lie. But listen. I told you there were two urges--two great life-urges, didn't I? There may be more. But it comes on me so strongly, now, that there are two: love, and power. And we've been trying to work ourselves, at least as individuals, from the love-urge exclusively, hating the power-urge, and repressing it. And now I find we've got to accept the very thing we've hated. “We've exhausted our love-urge, for the moment. And yet we try to force it to continue working. So we get inevitably anarchy and murder. It's no good. We've got to accept the power motive, accept it in deep responsibility, do you understand me? It is a great life motive. It was that great dark power-urge which kept Egypt so intensely living for so many centuries. It is a vast dark source of life and strength in us now, waiting either to issue into true action, or to burst into cataclysm. Power--the power-urge. The will-to-power--but not in Nietzsche's sense. Not intellectual power. Not mental power. Not conscious will-power. Not even wisdom. But dark, living, fructifying power. Do you know what I mean?” “I don't know,” said Aaron. “Take what you call love, for example. In the real way of love, the positive aim is to make the other person--or persons--happy. It devotes itself to the other or to others. But change the mode. Let the urge be the urge of power. Then the great desire is not happiness, neither of the beloved nor of oneself. Happiness is only one of many states, and it is horrible to think of fixing us down to one state. The urge of power does not seek for happiness any more than for any other state. It urges from within, darkly, for the displacing of the old leaves, the inception of the new. It is powerful and self-central, not seeking its centre outside, in some God or some beloved, but acting indomitably from within itself. “And of course there must be one who urges, and one who is impelled. Just as in love there is a beloved and a lover: The man is supposed to be the lover, the woman the beloved. Now, in the urge of power, it is the reverse. The woman must submit, but deeply, deeply submit. Not to any foolish fixed authority, not to any foolish and arbitrary will. But to something deep, deeper. To the soul in its dark motion of power and pride. We must reverse the poles. The woman must now submit--but deeply, deeply, and richly! No subservience. None of that. No slavery. A deep, unfathomable free submission.” “You'll never get it,” said Aaron. “You will, if you abandon the love idea and the love motive, and if you stand apart, and never bully, never force from the conscious will. That's where Nietzsche was wrong. His was the conscious and benevolent will, in fact, the love-will. But the deep power-urge is not conscious of its aims: and it is certainly not consciously benevolent or love-directed.--Whatever else happens, somewhere, sometime, the deep power-urge in man will have to issue forth again, and woman will submit, livingly, not subjectedly.” “She never will,” persisted Aaron. “Anything else will happen, but not that.” “She will,” said Lilly, “once man disengages himself from the love-mode, and stands clear. Once he stands clear, and the other great urge begins to flow in him, then the woman won't be able to resist. Her own soul will wish to yield itself.” “Woman yield--?” Aaron re-echoed. “Woman--and man too. Yield to the deep power-soul in the individual man, and obey implicitly. I don't go back on what I said before. I do believe that every man must fulfil his own soul, every woman must be herself, herself only, not some man's instrument, or some embodied theory. But the mode of our being is such that we can only live and have our being whilst we are implicit in one of the great dynamic modes. We MUST either love, or rule. And once the love-mode changes, as change it must, for we are worn out and becoming evil in its persistence, then the other mode will take place in us. And there will be profound, profound obedience in place of this love-crying, obedience to the incalculable power-urge. And men must submit to the greater soul in a man, for their guidance: and women must submit to the positive power-soul in man, for their being.” “You'll never get it,” said Aaron. “You will, when all men want it. All men say, they want a leader. Then let them in their souls submit to some greater soul than theirs. At present, when they say they want a leader, they mean they want an instrument, like Lloyd George. A mere instrument for their use. But it's more than that. It's the reverse. It's the deep, fathomless submission to the heroic soul in a greater man. You, Aaron, you too have the need to submit. You, too, have the need livingly to yield to a more heroic soul, to give yourself. You know you have. And you know it isn't love. It is life-submission. And you know it. But you kick against the pricks. And perhaps you'd rather die than yield. And so, die you must. It is your affair.” There was a long pause. Then Aaron looked up into Lilly's face. It was dark and remote-seeming. It was like a Byzantine eikon at the moment. “And whom shall I submit to?” he said. “Your soul will tell you,” replied the other. THE END 
4787	----	Proofreading Team [Illustration: "It has never occurred to one of you to ask _why_ I am different from other women--to ask just what made me so!"] THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE BY KATHLEEN NORRIS _Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert_ 1915 CHAPTER I To Emeline, wife of George Page, there came slowly, in her thirtieth year, a sullen conviction that life was monstrously unfair. From a resentful realization that she was not happy in her marriage, Emeline's mind went back to the days of her pert, precocious childhood and her restless and discontented girlhood, and she felt, with a sort of smouldering fury, that she had never been happy, had never had a fair chance, at all! It took Mrs. Page some years to come to this conclusion, for, if she was shrewd and sharp among the women she knew, she was, in essential things, an unintelligent woman, and mental effort of any sort was strange to her. Throughout her entire life, her mind had never been truly awakened. She had scrambled through Grammar School, and had followed it with five years as saleswoman in a millinery store, in that district of San Francisco known as the Mission, marrying George Page at twenty-three, and up to that time well enough pleased with herself and her life. But that was eight years ago. Now Emeline could see that she had reached--more, she had passed--her prime. She began to see that the moods of those early years, however violent and changing, had been fed upon secret springs of hope, hope vague and baseless enough, but strong to colour a girl's life with all the brightness of a thousand dawns. There had been rare potentialities in those days, anything might happen, something _would_ happen. The little Emeline Cox, moving between the dreary discomfort of home and the hated routine of school, might surprise all these dull seniors and school-mates some day! She might become an actress, she might become a great singer, she might make a brilliant marriage. As she grew older and grew prettier, these vague, bright dreams strengthened. Emeline's mother was an overworked and shrill-voiced woman, whose personality drove from the Shotwell Street house whatever small comfort poverty and overcrowding and dirt left in it. She had no personal message for Emeline. The older woman had never learned the care of herself, her children, her husband, or her house. She had naturally nothing to teach her daughter. Emeline's father occasionally thundered a furious warning to his daughters as to certain primitive moral laws. He did not tell Emeline and her sisters why they might some day consent to abandon the path of virtue, nor when, nor how. He never dreamed of winning their affection and confidence, or of selecting their friends, and making home a place to which these friends might occasionally come. But he was fond of shouting, when Emeline, May, or Stella pinned on their flimsy little hats for an evening walk, that if ever a girl of his made a fool of herself and got into trouble, she need never come near his door again! Perhaps Emeline and May and Stella felt that the virtuous course, as exemplified by their parents, was not all of roses, either, but they never said so, and always shuddered dutifully at the paternal warning. School also failed with the education of the inner Emeline, although she moved successfully from a process known as "diagramming" sentences to a serious literary analysis of "Snow-Bound" and "Evangeline," and passed terrifying examinations in ancient history, geography, and advanced problems in arithmetic. By the time she left school she was a tall, giggling, black-eyed creature, to be found walking up and down Mission Street, and gossiping and chewing gum on almost any sunny afternoon. Between her mother's whining and her father's bullying, home life was not very pleasant, but at least there was nothing unusual in the situation; among all the girls that Emeline knew there was not one who could go back to a clean room, a hospitable dining-room, a well-cooked and nourishing meal. All her friends did as she did: wheedled money for new veils and new shoes from their fathers, helped their mothers reluctantly and scornfully when they must, slipped away to the street as often as possible, and when they were at home, added their complaints and protests to the general unpleasantness. Had there been anything different before her eyes, who knows what plans for domestic reform might have taken shape in the girl's plastic brain? Emeline had never seen one example of real affection and cooperation between mother and daughters, of work quickly and skilfully done and forgotten, of a clean bright house and a blossoming garden; she had never heard a theory otherwise than that she was poor, her friends were poor, her parents were poor, and that born under the wheels of a monstrous social injustice, she might just as well be dirty and discouraged and discontented at once and have done with it, for in the end she must be so. Why should she question the abiding belief? Emeline knew that, with her father's good pay and the excellent salaries earned by her hard-handed, patient-eyed, stupid young brothers, the family income ran well up toward three hundred dollars a month: her father worked steadily at five dollars a day, George was a roofer's assistant and earned eighty dollars a month, and Chester worked in a plumber's shop, and at eighteen was paid sixty-five dollars. Emeline could only conclude that three hundred dollars a month was insufficient to prevent dirt, crowding, scolding, miserable meals, and an incessant atmosphere of warm soapsuds. Presently she outraged her father by going into "Delphine's" millinery store. Delphine was really a stout, bleached woman named Lizzie Clarke, whose reputation was not quite good, although nobody knew anything definite against her. She had a double store on Market Street near Eleventh, a dreary place, with dusty models in the windows, torn Nottingham curtains draped behind them, and "Delphine" scrawled in gold across the dusty windows in front. Emeline used to wonder, in the days when she and her giggling associates passed "Delphine's" window, who ever bought the dreadful hats in the left-hand window, although they admitted a certain attraction on the right. Here would be a sign: "Any Hat in this Window, Two Dollars," surrounded by cheap, dust-grained felts, gaudily trimmed, or coarse straws wreathed with cotton flowers. Once or twice Emeline and her friends went in, and one day when a card in the window informed the passers-by that an experienced saleslady was wanted, the girl, sick of the situation at home and longing for novelty, boldly applied for the position. Miss Clarke engaged her at once. Emeline met, as she had expected, a storm at home, but she weathered it, and kept her position. It was hard work, and poorly paid, but the girl's dreams gilded everything, and she loved the excitement of making sales, came eagerly to the gossip and joking of her fellow-workers every morning, and really felt herself to be in the current of life at last. Miss Clarke was no better than her reputation, and would have willingly helped her young saleswoman into a different sort of life. But Emeline's little streak of shrewd selfishness saved her. Emeline indulged in a hundred little coarsenesses and indiscretions, but take the final step toward ruin she would not. Nobody was going to get the better of her, she boasted. She used rouge and lip red. She "met fellers" under flaming gas jets, and went to dance halls with them, and to the Sunday picnics that were her father's especial abomination; she shyly told vile stories and timidly used strong words, but there it ended. Perhaps some tattered remnant of the golden dream still hung before her eyes; perhaps she still clung to the hope of a dim, wonderful time to come. More than that, the boys she knew were not a vicious lot; the Jimmies and Johnnies, the Dans and Eds, were for the most part neighbours, no more anxious to antagonize Emeline's father than she was. They might kiss her good-night at her door, they might deliberately try to get the girls to miss the last train home from the picnic, but their spirit was of idle mischief rather than malice, and a stinging slap from Emeline's hand afforded them, as it did her, a certain shamed satisfaction. George Page came into "Delphine's" on a windy summer afternoon when Emeline had been there for nearly five years. He was a salesman for some lines of tailored hats, a San Franciscan, but employed by a New York wholesale house. Emeline chanced to be alone in the place, for Miss Clarke was sick in bed, and the other saleswoman away on her vacation. The trimmers, glancing out through a plush curtain at the rear, saw Miss Cox and the "drummer" absorbed in a three hours' conversation. From two to five o'clock they talked; the drummer watching her in obvious admiration when an occasional customer interrupted, and when Miss Cox went home the drummer escorted her. Emeline had left the parental roof some two years before; she was rooming, now, with a mild and virtuous girl named Regina Lynch, in Howard Street. Regina was the sort of girl frequently selected by a girl of Emeline's type for confidante and companion: timid, conventional, always ready to laugh and admire. Regina consented to go to dinner with Emeline and Mr. Page, and as she later refused to go to the theatre, Emeline would not go either; they all walked out Market Street from the restaurant, and reached the Howard Street house at about nine o'clock. Regina went straight upstairs, but Emeline and George Page sat on the steps an hour longer, under the bright summer moon, and when Emeline went upstairs she woke her roommate up, and announced her engagement. George came into the store at nine o'clock the next morning, to radiantly confirm all that they had said the night before, and with great simplicity the two began to plan for their future; from that time they had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together every day; they were both utterly satisfied; they never questioned their fate. In October George had to go to San Diego, and a dozen little cities en route, for the firm, and Emeline went, too. They were married in the little church of Saint Charles in Eighteenth Street, only an hour or two before they started for San Jose, the first stop in George's itinerary. Emeline's mother and sisters came to her wedding, but the men of the family were working on this week-day afternoon. The bride looked excited and happy, colour burned scarlet in her cheeks, under her outrageous hat; she wore a brown travelling gown, and the lemon-coloured gloves that were popular in that day. Emeline felt that she was leaving everything unpleasant in life behind her. George was the husband of her dreams--or perhaps her dreams had temporarily adapted themselves to George. But, indeed, he was an exceptionally good fellow. He was handsome, big, dashingly dressed. He was steady and successful in his work, domestic in his tastes, and tenderly--and perhaps to-day a little pityingly--devoted to this pretty, clever girl who loved him so, and had such faith in him. His life had kept him a good deal among men, and rather coarse men; he had had to do more drinking than he cared to do, to play a good deal of poker, to listen to a good deal of loose talk. Now, George felt a great relief that this was over; he wanted a home, a wife, children. The bride and groom had a cloudless three weeks of honeymoon among a score of little Southern towns--and were scarcely less happy during the first months of settling down. Emeline was entirely ignorant of what was suitable or desirable in a home, and George had only the crude ideals of a travelling man to guide him. They enthusiastically selected a flat of four handsome, large, dark rooms, over a corner saloon, on O'Farrell Street. The building was new, the neighbourhood well built, and filled with stirring, interesting life. George said it was conveniently near the restaurant and theatre district, and to Emeline, after Mission Street, it seemed the very hub of the world. The suite consisted of a large front drawing-room, connected by enormous folding doors with a rear drawing-room, which the Pages would use as a bedroom, a large dining-room, and a dark kitchen, equipped with range and "water back." There were several enormous closets, and the stairs and hall, used by the several tenants of the house, were carpeted richly. The Pages also carpeted their own rooms, hung the stiff folds of Nottingham lace curtains at the high narrow windows, and selected a set of the heavily upholstered furniture of the period for their drawing-room. When Emeline's mother and sisters came to call, Emeline showed them her gold-framed pictures, her curly-maple bed and bureau, her glass closet in the dining-room, with its curved glass front and sides and its shining contents--berry saucers and almond dishes in pressed glass, and other luxuries to which the late Miss Cox had been entirely a stranger. Emeline was intoxicated with the freedom and the pleasures of her new life; George was out of town two or three nights a week, but when he was at home the two slept late of mornings, and loitered over their breakfast, Emeline in a loose wrapper, filling and refilling her coffee cup, while George rattled the paper and filled the room with the odour of cigarettes. Then Emeline was left to put her house in order, and dress herself for the day--her corsets laced tight at the waist, her black hair crimped elaborately above her bang, her pleated skirts draped fashionably over her bustle. George would come back at one o'clock to take her to lunch, and after lunch they wandered up and down Kearney and Market streets, laughing and chatting, glad just to be alive and together. Sometimes they dined downtown, too, and afterward went to the "Tivoli" or "Morosco's," or even the Baldwin Theatre, and sometimes bought and carried home the materials for a dinner, and invited a few of George's men friends to enjoy it with them. These were happy times; Emeline, flushed and pretty in her improvised apron, queened it over the three or four adoring males, and wondered why other women fussed so long over cooking, when men so obviously enjoyed a steak, baked potatoes, canned vegetables, and a pie from Swain's. After dinner the men always played poker, a mild little game at first, with Emeline eagerly guarding a little pile of chips, and gasping over every hand like a happy child; but later more seriously, when Emeline, contrary to poker superstition, sat on the arm of her husband's chair, to bring him luck. Luck she certainly seemed to bring him; the Pages would go yawning to bed, after one of these evenings, chuckling over the various hands. "I couldn't see what you drew, George," Emeline would say, "but I could see that Mack had aces on the roof, and it made me crazy to have you go on raising that way! And then your three fish hooks!" George would shout with pride at her use of poker terms--would laugh all the harder if she used them incorrectly. And sometimes, sinking luxuriously into the depths of the curly-maple bed, Emeline would think herself the luckiest woman in the world. No hurry about getting up in the morning; no one to please but herself; pretty gowns and an adoring husband and a home beyond her maddest hopes--the girl's dreams no longer followed her, happy reality had blotted out the dream. She felt a little injured, a little frightened, when the day came on which she must tell George of some pretty well-founded suspicions of her own condition. George might be "mad," or he might laugh. But George was wonderfully soothing and reassuring; more, was pathetically glad and proud. He petted Emeline into a sort of reluctant joy, and the attitude of her mother and sisters and the few women she knew was likewise flattering. Important, self-absorbed, she waited her appointed days, and in the early winter a wizened, mottled little daughter was born. Julia was the name Emeline had chosen for a girl, and Julia was the name duly given her by the radiant and ecstatic George in the very first hour of her life. Emeline had lost interest in the name--indeed, in the child and her father as well--just then; racked, bewildered, wholly spent, she lay back in the curly-maple bed, the first little seed of that general resentment against life that was eventually to envelop her, forming in her mind. They had told her that because of this or that she would not have a "hard time," and she had had a very hard time. They had told her that she would forget the cruel pain the instant it was over, and she knew she never would forget it. It made her shudder weakly to think of all the babies in the world--of the schools packed with children--at what a cost! Emeline recovered quickly, and shut her resentment into her own breast. Julie, as she was always called, was a cross baby, and nowadays the two front rooms were usually draped with her damp undergarments, and odorous of sour bottles and drying clothes. For the few months that Emeline nursed the child she wandered about until late in the day in a loose wrapper, a margin of draggled nightgown showing under it, her hair in a tumbled knot at the back of her head. If she had to run out for a loaf of bread or a pound of coffee, she slipped on a street skirt, and buttoned her long coat about her; her lean young throat would show, bare above the lapels of the coat, but even this costume was not conspicuous in that particular neighbourhood. By the time Julia was weaned, Emeline had formed the wrapper habit; she had also slipped back to the old viewpoint: they were poor people, and the poor couldn't afford to do things decently, to live comfortably. Emeline scolded and snapped at George, shook and scolded the crying baby, and loitered in the hall for long, complaining gossips with the other women of the house. Time extricated the young Pages from these troubled days. Julia grew into a handsome, precocious little girl of whom both parents could be proud. Emeline never quite recovered her girlish good looks, her face was thin now, with prominent cheek bones; there was a little frowning line drawn between her eyes, and her expression was sharp and anxious, but she became more fond of dress than ever. George's absences were a little longer in these days; he had been given a larger territory to cover--and Emeline naturally turned for society toward her women neighbours. There were one or two very congenial married women of her own type in the same house, pleasure-loving, excitable young women; one, a Mrs. Carter, with two children in school, the other, Mrs. Palmer, triumphantly childless. These introduced her to others; sometimes half a dozen of them would go to a matinee together, a noisy, chattering group. During the matinee Julia would sit on her mother's lap, a small awed figure in a brief red silk dress and deep lace collar. Julia always had several chocolates from the boxes that circulated among her elders, and usually went to sleep during the last act, and was dragged home, blinking and whining and wretched, by one aching little arm. George was passionately devoted to his little girl, and no toy was too expensive for Julia to demand. Emeline loved the baby, too, although she accepted as a martyrdom the responsibility of supplying Julia's needs. But the Pages themselves rather drifted apart with the years. Both were selfish, and each accused the other of selfishness, although, as Emeline said stormily, no one had ever called her that before she was married, and, as George sullenly claimed, he himself had always been popularity's self among the "fellows." In all her life Emeline had never felt anything but a resentful impatience for whatever curtailed her liberty or disturbed her comfort in the slightest degree. She had never settled down to do cheerfully anything that she did not want to do. She had shaken off the claims of her own home as lightly as she had stepped from "Delphine's" to the more tempting position of George's wife. Now she could not believe that she was destined to live on with a man who was becoming a confirmed dyspeptic, who thought she was a poor housekeeper, an extravagant shopper, a wretched cook, and worse than all, a sloven about her personal appearance. Emeline really was all these things at times, and suspected it, but she had never been shown how to do anything else, and she denied all charges noisily. One night when Julia was about four George stamped out of the house, after a tirade against the prevailing disorder and some insulting remarks about "delicatessen food." Emeline sent a few furious remarks after him, and then wept over the sliced ham, the potato salad, and the Saratoga chips, all of which she had brought home from a nearby delicacy shop in oily paper bags only an hour ago. She wandered disconsolately through the four rooms that had been her home for nearly six years. The dust lay thick on the polished wood and glass of the sideboard and glass closet in the dining-room; ashes and the ends of cigarettes filled half a dozen little receptacles here and there; a welter of newspapers had formed a great drift in a corner of the room, and the thick velour day cover of the table had been pushed back to make way for a doubled and spotted tablecloth and the despised meal. The kitchen was hideous with a confusion of souring bottles of milk, dirty dishes, hardened ends of loaves, and a sticky jam jar or two; Emeline's range was spotted and rusty, she never fired it now; a three-burner gas plate sufficed for the family's needs. In the bedroom a dozen garments were flung over the foot of the unmade bed, Julia's toys and clothing littered this and the sitting-room, the silk woof had been worn away on the heavily upholstered furniture, and the strands of the cotton warp separated to show the white lining beneath. On the mantel was a litter of medicine bottles and theatre programs, powder boxes, gloves and slippers, packages of gum and of cigarettes, and packs of cards, as well as more ornamental matters: china statuettes and glass cologne bottles, a palm-leaf fan with roses painted on it, a pincushion of redwood bark, and a plush rolling-pin with brass screws in it, hung by satin ribbons. Over all lay a thick coat of dust. Emeline took Julia in her lap, and sat down in one of the patent rockers. She remained for a long time staring out of the front window. George's words burned angrily in her memory--she felt sick of life. A spring twilight was closing down upon O'Farrell Street. In the row of houses opposite Emeline could see slits of gaslight behind lowered shades, and could look straight into the second floor of the establishment that flourished behind a large sign bearing the words, "O'Connor, Modes." This row of bay-windowed houses had been occupied as homes by very good families when the Pages first came to O'Farrell Street, but six years had seen great changes in the block. A grocery and bar now occupied the corner, facing the saloon above which the Pages lived, and the respectable middle-class families had moved away, one by one, giving place to all sorts of business enterprises. Milliners and dressmakers took the first floors, and rented the upper rooms; one window said "Mme. Claire, Palmist," and another "Violin Lessons"; one basement was occupied by a dealer in plaster statuary, and another by a little restaurant. Most interesting of all to the stageloving Emeline was the second floor, obliquely opposite her own, which bore an immense sign, "Gottoli, Wigs and Theatrical Supplies. Costumes of all sorts Designed and on Hand." Between Gottoli's windows were two painted panels representing respectively a very angular, moustached young man in a dress suit, and a girl in a Spanish dancer's costume, with a tambourine. Gottoli did not do a very flourishing business, but Emeline watched his doorway by the hour, and if ever her dreams came back now, it was at these times. To-night Julia went to sleep in her arms; she was an unexacting little girl, accustomed to being ignored much of the time, and humoured, over-indulged, and laughed at at long intervals. Emeline sat on and on, crying now and then, and gradually reducing herself to a more softened mood, when she longed to be dear to George again, to please and content him. She had just made up her mind that this was no neighbourhood for ideal home life, when George, smelling strongly of whiskey, but affectionate and repentant, came in. "What doing?" asked George, stumbling in the dark room. "Just watching the cable cars go up and down," Emeline said, rousing. She set the dazed Julia on her feet, and groped for matches on the mantel. A second later the stifling odour of block matches drifted through the room, and Emeline lighted a gas jet. "Had your supper?" said she, as George sat down and took the child into his arms. "Nope," he answered, grinning ashamedly. "Thought maybe you and I'd go to dinner somewheres, Em." Emeline was instantly her better self. While she flew into her best clothes she told George that she knew she was a rotten manager, but she was so darn sick of this darn flat--She had just been sitting there wondering if they hadn't better move into the country, say into Oakland. Her sister May lived there, they might get a house near May, with a garden for Julia, and a spare room where George could put up a friend. George was clumsily enthusiastic. Gosh, if she would do that--if she could stand its being a little quiet-- "I'd get to know the neighbours, and we'd have real good times," said Emeline optimistically, "and it would be grand for Julie!" Julia had by this time gone off to sleep in the centre of the large bed. Her mother removed the child's shoes and some of her clothing, without rousing her, loosened her garters, and unbuttoned whatever buttons she could reach. "She'll be all right," she said confidently. "She never wakes." George lowered the gas, and they tiptoed out. But Julie did waken half an hour later, as it happened, and screamed for company for ten hideous minutes. Then Miss Flossie Miniver, a young woman who had recently rented the top floor, and of whom Emeline and the other ladies of the house disapproved, came downstairs and softly entered the Page flat, and gathered the sobbing little girl to her warm, soft breast. Miss Miniver soothed her with a new stick of gum and a pincushion that looked like a fat little pink satin leg, with a smart boot at one end and a ruffle of lace at the other, and left Julia peacefully settled down to sleep. But Julia did not remember anything of this in the morning, and the pincushion had rolled under the bed, so Emeline never knew of it. She and George had a good dinner, and later went to the Orpheum, and were happier than they had been for a long time. The next Sunday they went to Oakland to see Emeline's sister, and possibly to begin househunting. It was a cold, dark day, with a raw wind blowing. Gulls dipped and screamed over the wake of the ferryboat that carried the Pages to Oakland, and after the warm cabin and the heated train, they all shivered miserably as they got out at the appointed corner. Oakland looked bleak and dreary, the wind was blowing chaff and papers against fences and steps. Emeline had rather lost sight of her sister for a year or two, and had last seen her in another and better house than the one which they presently identified by street and number. The sisters had married at about the same time, but Ed Torney was a shiftless and unfortunate man, never steadily at work, and always mildly surprised at the discomfort of life. May had four children, and was expecting a fifth. Two of the older children, stupid-looking little blondes, with colds in their noses, and dirt showing under the fair hair, were playing in the dooryard of the shabby cottage now. The gate hung loose, the ground was worn bare by children's feet and dug into holes where children had burrowed, and littered with cans and ropes and boxes. Emeline was genuinely shocked by the evidences of actual want inside. May was a thin, bent, sickly looking woman now, her graying hair hanging in a loose coil over her cotton wrapper. Floors everywhere were bare, a few chairs were here and there, a few beds running over with thin bedding, a table in the kitchen was covered with scattered dishes, some dirty and some clean. Ashes drifted out of the kitchen stove, and in the sink was a great tin dish-pan full of cool, greasy water. The oldest child, a five-year-old girl, had followed these dazzling visitors in, and now mounted a box and attacked this dish-pan with pathetic energy. The two younger children sat on the floor, apathetically staring. May made only a few smiling apologies. They "could see how she was," she said, limping to a chair into which she dropped with a sigh of relief. They had had a "fierce" time since Ed--Ed was the husband and father--had lost his job a year ago. He had not been able to get anything permanent since. Ed had been there just a minute ago, she said--and indeed the odour of tobacco was still strong on the close air--but he had been having a good deal of stomach trouble of late, and the children made him nervous, and he had gone out for a walk. Poor May, smiling gallantly over the difficulties of her life, drew her firstborn to her knees, brushed back the child's silky, pale hair with bony, trembling fingers, and prophesied that things would be easier when mamma's girlies got to work: Evelyn was going to be a dressmaker, and Marguerite an actress. "She can say a piece out of the Third Reader real cute--the children next door taught her," said May, but Marguerite would not be exploited; she dug her blonde head into her mother's shoulder in a panic of shyness; and shortly afterward the Pages went away. Uncle George gave each child a dime, Julia kissed her little cousins good-bye, and Emeline felt a sick spasm of pity and shame as May bade the children thank them, and thanked them herself. Emeline drew her sister to the door, and pressed two silver dollars, all she happened to have with her, into her hand. "Aw, don't, Em, you oughtn't," May said, ashamed and turning crimson, but instantly she took the money. "We've had an awful hard time--or I wouldn't!" said she, tears coming to her eyes. "Oh, that's all right!" Emeline said uncomfortably, as she ran down the steps. Her heart burned with sympathy for poor May, who had been so pretty and so clever! Emeline could not understand the change! May had graduated from High School with honours; she had held a good position as a bookkeeper in a grocery before her marriage, but, like Emeline, for the real business of life she had had no preparation at all. Her own oldest child could have managed the family finances and catered to sensitive stomachs with as much system and intelligence as May. On the boat Emeline spoke of her little money gift to her sister, and George roused himself from a deep study to approve and to reimburse her. They did not speak again of moving to the country, and went straight from the boat to a French table d'hote dinner, where Julia, enchanted at finding herself warm and near food after the long cold adventures of the day, stuffed herself on sardines and sour bread, soup and salad, and shrimps and fried chicken, and drank tumblers of claret and sugar and ice water. There were still poker parties occasionally in the Page flat; Emeline was quite familiar with poker phraseology now, and if George seemed less pleased than he had been when she rattled away about hands, the men who came were highly diverted by it. Two or three other wives generally joined the party now; there would be seven or eight players about the round table. They all drank as they played, the room would get very warm, and reek of tobacco and of whiskey and beer. Sometimes Julia woke up with a terrified shout, and then, if Emeline were playing, she would get George, or one of the other men or women, to go in and quiet the little girl. These games would not break up until two or three o'clock. Emeline would be playing excitedly, her face flushed, her eyes shining, every fibre of her being alert, when suddenly the life would seem to fade out of the whole game. An overwhelming ennui would seize her, a cold, clear-eyed fatigue--the cards would seem meaningless, a chill would shake her, a need of yawning. The whole company would be suddenly likewise affected, the game would break up with a few brief words, and Emeline, going in with her guests to help them with hats and wraps, would find herself utterly silent, too cold and weary for even the most casual civilities. When the others had gone, she and George would turn the lights out on the wreckage of the dining-room, and stagger silently to bed. Fatigue would follow Emeline well into the next day after one of these card parties. If George was going out of town, she would send Julia off to play with other children in the house, and lie in bed until noon, getting up now and then to hold a conversation with some tradesman through a crack in the door. At one she might sally forth in her favourite combination of wrapper and coat to buy cream and rolls, and Julia would be regaled on sausages, hot cakes, bakery cookies, and coffee, or come in to find no lunch at all, and that her mother had gone out for the afternoon. Emeline had grown more and more infatuated with the theatre and all that pertained to it. She went to matinees twice a week, and she and her group of intimate friends also "went Dutch" to evening performances whenever it was possible. Their conversation was spattered with theatrical terms, and when, as occasionally happened, a real actress or even a chorus girl from the Tivoli joined their group, Emeline could hardly contain her eagerness and her admiration. She loved, when rare chance offered, to go behind the scenes; she frankly envied the egotistic, ambitious young theatrical beginners, so eager to talk of themselves and their talents, to discuss every detail from grease paint to management. To poor hungry Emeline it was like a revelation of another, brighter world. She would loiter out from the brief enchantment of "Two True Hearts" into the foggy dampness of Market Street, at twilight, eagerly grasping the suggestion of ice-cream sodas, because it meant a few minutes more with her friends. Perhaps, sipping the frothy confection, Emeline would see some of the young actresses going by, just from the theatre, buttoned into long coats, their faces still rosy from cold cream; they must rush off for a light dinner, and be back at the theatre at seven. At the sight of them a pang always shot through Emeline, an exquisite agony of jealousy seized her. Oh, to be so busy, so full of affairs, to move constantly from one place to another--now dragging a spangled gown, now gay as a peasant, now gaudily dressed as a page! Emeline would finish her soda in silence, lift the over-dressed Julia from her chair, and start soberly for home. Julia's short little legs ached from the quick walk, yet she hated as much as her mother the plunge from brightly lighted O'Farrell Street into their own hall, so large and damp and dark, so odorous of stale beer and rubber floor covering. A dim point of gas in a red shade covered with symmetrical glass blisters usually burned over the stairway, but the Pages' apartment was dark, except for a dull reflected light from the street. Perhaps Julia and her mother would find George there, with his coat and shoes off, and his big body flung down across the bed, asleep. George would wake up slowly, with much yawning and grumbling, Emeline would add her gloves and belt to the unspeakable confusion of the bureau, and Julia would flatten her tired little back against the curve of an armchair and follow with heavy, brilliant eyes the argument that always followed. "Well, we could get some chops--chops and potatoes--and a can of corn," Emeline would grudgingly admit, as she tore off her tight corsets with a great gasp of relief, and slipped into her kimono, "or you could get some spaghetti and some mangoes at the delicatessen--" "Oh, God, cut out the delicatessen stuff!" George invariably said; "me for the chops, huh, Julie?" "Or--we could all go somewhere," Emeline might submit tentatively. "_Nit_," George would answer. "Come on, Ju, we'll go buy a steak!" But he was not very well pleased with his dinner, even when he had his own way. When he and Julia returned with their purchases Emeline invariably met them at the top of the stairs. "We need butter, George, I forgot to tell you--you'll have to go back!" she would say. Julia, tired almost beyond endurance, still preferred to go with her father. There was not enough gas heat under Emeline's frying pan to cook a steak well; George growled as he cut it. Emeline jumped up for forgotten table furnishings; grease splashed on the rumpled cloth. After the one course the head of the house would look about hungrily. "No cheese in the house, I suppose?" "No--I don't believe there is." "What's the chances on a salad?" "Oh, no, George--that takes lettuce, you know. My goodness!" And Emeline would put her elbows on the table and yawn, the rouge showing on her high cheek bones, her eyes glittering, her dark hair still pressed down where her hat had lain. "My goodness!" she would exclaim impatiently, "haven't you had enough, George? You had steak, and potatoes, and corn--why don't you eat your corn?" "What's the chances on a cup of tea?" George might ask, seizing a half slice of bread, and doubling an ounce of butter into it, with his great thumb on the blade of his knife. "You can have all the tea you want, but you'll have to use condensed milk!" At this George would say "Damn!" and take himself and his evening paper to the armchair in the front window. When Emeline would go in, after a cursory disposition of the dishes, she would find Julia curled in his arms, and George sourly staring over the little silky head. "It's up to you, and it's your job, and it makes me damn sick to come home to such a dirty pen as this!" George sometimes burst out. "Look at that--and look at that--look at that mantel!" "Well--well--well!" Emeline would answer sharply, putting the mantel straight, or commencing to do so with a sort of lazy scorn. "I can't do everything!" "Other men go home to decent dinners," George would pursue sullenly; "their wives aren't so darn lazy and selfish--" Such a start as this always led to a bitter quarrel, after which Emeline, trembling with anger, would clear a corner of the cluttered drawing-room table and take out a shabby pack of cards for solitaire, and George would put Julia to bed. All her life Julia Page remembered these scenes and these bedtimes. Her father sometimes tore the tumbled bed apart, and made it up again, smoothing the limp sheets with clumsy fingers, and talking to Julia, while he worked, of little girls who had brothers and sisters, and who lived in the country, and hung their stockings up on Christmas Eve. Emeline pretended not to notice either father or daughter at these times, although she could have whisked Julia into bed in half the time it took George to do it, and was really very kind to the child when George was not there. When George asked the little girl to find her hairbrush, and blundered over the buttons of her nightgown, Emeline hummed a sprightly air. She never bore resentment long. "What say we go out later and get something to eat, George?" she would ask, when George tiptoed out of the bedroom and shut the folding door behind him. But several hours of discomfort were not to be so lightly dismissed by George. "Maybe," he would briefly answer. And invariably he presently muttered something about asking "Cass" for the time, and so went down to the saloon of "J. Cassidy," just underneath his own residence. Emeline, alone, would brood resentfully over her cards. That was the way of it: men could run off to saloons, while she, pretty and young, and with the love of life still strong in her veins, might as well be dead and buried! Bored and lonely, she would creep into bed beside Julia, after turning the front-room light down to a bead, and flinging over the "bed lounge," upon which George spent the night, the musty sheets and blankets and the big soggy pillows. But George, meanwhile, would have found warmth, brightness, companionship, and good food. The drink that was his passport to all these good things was the least of them in his eyes. George did not care particularly for drink, but he usually came home the worse for it on these occasions, and Emeline had a real foundation for her furious harangues in the morning. She would scold while she carried him in hot coffee or chopped ice, scold while she crimped her hair and covered her face with a liquid bleach, scold as she jerked Julia's little bonnet on the child's lovely mane, and depart, with a final burst of scolding and a bang of the door. One day Emeline came in to find George at home, ill. She had said good-bye to him only the day before, for what was supposedly a week, and was really concerned to find him back so soon, shivering and mumbling, and apparently unable to get into bed. Emeline sent Julia flying to a neighbour, made George as comfortable as she could in the big bed, and listened, with a conviction as firm as his own, to what he believed to be parting instructions and messages. "I'm going, Em," said George heavily. "I'm worse now than I was when I started for home. I wanted to see you again, baby girl, and Julia, too. I--I can't breathe----" Julia presently came flying in with a doctor and with a neighbour, Mrs. Cotter, who had telephoned to him. The doctor said that George had a sharp touch of influenza, and Emeline settled down to nurse him. George was a bad patient. He had a great many needs, and he mentioned one after another in the weighty, serious tone of a person imparting valuable information. "Ice--ice," said George, moving hot eyes to meet his wife's glance as she came in. "And take that extra blanket off, Emeline, and--no hurry, but I'll try the soup again whenever you say--I seem to feel weak. I must have more air, dear. Help me sit up, Em, and you can shake these pillows up again. I think I'm a good deal sicker man than Allan has any idea----" Emeline got very tired of it, especially as George was much better on the third day, and could sit up. He developed a stiff neck, which made him very irritable, and even Julia "got on his nerves" and was banished for the day to the company of the cheerful Jewish family who lived on an upper floor. He sat in an armchair, wrapped in blankets, his rigid gaze roving a pitifully restricted perspective of street outside the window, an elaborate cough occasionally racking him. Emeline had gotten a fairly tempting dinner under way. She could cook some things well, and at five o'clock she came in from the kitchen with an appetizing tray. "Gosh, is it dinner time?" asked George. "After five," Emeline said, flitting about the bed-room. Julia had come home now, sweet and tired, and was silently eating slice after slice of bread and jelly. Emeline opened out the bed lounge, spread sheets and blankets smoothly, and flung a clean little nightgown for Julia across the foot. Darkness had fallen outside; she lighted the gas and drew the shades. "This is comfortable!" said George. "I wouldn't mind being sick now and then at this rate! Come over here and undress near Pop, Julie. I'll tell you what, Em--you call down the air shaft to Cass, and tell him to send Henny up to make us a nice little coal fire here. I'll give Henny a quarter." "She's gone into the bathroom to fix her hair and wash her face," Julia observed, as Emeline did not answer. A second later the child jumped up to answer a sharp knock on the door. To George's disgust it was Emeline's friend, Mrs. Marvin Povey, who came in. Mrs. Povey was a tightly corseted, coarse-voiced, highly coloured little blonde, breathless now from running upstairs. Her sister, Myrtle Montague, was an ingenue in the little stock company at the Central Theatre, and Mrs. Povey kept house for her and Mr. Povey, who spent all his waking hours at the racetrack. The Poveys' flat was only a block away from the Pages'. George was furious to have this woman, whom he particularly detested, come in upon him thus informally, and find him at so great a disadvantage. His neck was better, but he could not move it very easily still; he was trapped here in blankets like a baby; he was acutely conscious of his three days' beard, of Julia's bed made up in the middle of the drawing-room, and of Julia's self, partly disrobed, and running about in the general disorder. "Well, how does the other feller look?" said Mrs. Povey, laughing good-naturedly. "You look like you'd broke out of San Quentin, George, with that face! Hello, darlin'," she added, waylaying Julia. "When are you going to come and be Aunt Mame's girl, huh? Going to come home with me to-night?" "Em!" bellowed George, with only a sickly smile for the guest. "_Em_!" "My God, what is it now?" said Emeline sweetly, popping in her head. "Oh, hello, Mame!" she added, coming in. "Where's the rest of the girls?" "They've all blew up to the house with Myrt," said Mrs. Povey, staring blankly at Emeline. "But say, ain't you going, dear?" "Wait till I get my dress on, and we'll talk it over while I hook up," Emeline said, disappearing again. She did not glance at George. "Myrt's in a new show, and a few of us girls are going to see that she gets a hand," Mrs. Povey said. "We're going to have supper at my house. Mary will have some of the boys there." "I guess Emeline will have to wait till the next time," George said coldly. "She wouldn't get much pleasure out of it, leaving me here as sick as I am!" "Oh, I don't know!" Mrs. Povey half sang, half laughed. "Emeline likes a good time, like all the rest of us, George, and it don't do to keep a pretty girl shut up all the time!" "Shut up? She's never here," George growled. "Well, we'll see!" Mrs. Povey hummed contentedly. A moment later Emeline came in, wrenching the hooks of her best gown together. She had her hat on, and looked excited and resolute. "I forgot I'd promised to go out with the girls, George," she began. "You don't care, do you? You've had your supper, and all Julia's got to do is get into bed." George looked balefully from one to the other. Mrs. Povey chanced a quick little wink of approval and encouragement at Emeline, and he saw it. "A lot you forgot!" he said harshly to his wife. "You've been getting ready for the last hour. Don't either of you think that you're fooling me--I see through it! I could lay here and die, and a lot you'd care! You forgot--ha!" The blood rushed instantly to Emeline's face, she turned upon him her ugliest look, and the hand with which she was buttoning her glove trembled. "Now, I'll tell you something, Mr. George Page!" said she, in an intense and passionate tone, "there _are_ things I'd rather do than set around this house and hear you tell how sick you are! You think I'm a white chip in this family, but let me tell you something--there's plenty of lovely friends I got who think I'm a fool to keep it up! I had an offer to go on the stage, not a month ago, from a manager who didn't even know I was married; didn't I, Mame? And if it wasn't for Julie there----" "You've not got anything on me, Em," George said, breathing hard, his face blood red with anger. "Do you think that if it wasn't for this kid, I'd----" "Oh, folks--folks!" Mrs. Povey said, really concerned. "Well, I don't care!" Emeline said, panting. She crossed the floor, still panting, kissed Julia, and swept from the room. Mrs. Povey, murmuring some confused farewell, followed her. Julia climbed out of her big chair. Like all children, she was frightened by loud voices and domestic scenes; she was glad now that the quarrel was over, and anxious, in a small girl's fashion, to blot the recent unpleasantness from her father's mind. She sat on his knee and talked to him, she sang, she patted his sore neck with sleek, dirty little fingers. And finally she won him. George laughed, and entered into her mood. He thought her a very smart little girl, as indeed she was. She had a precocious knowledge of the affairs of her mother's friends, sordid affairs enough, and more sordid than ever when retailed by a child's fresh mouth. Julia talked of money trouble, of divorce, of dressmaker's bills, of diseases; she repeated insolent things that had been said to her in the street, and her insolent replies; her rich, delicious laugh broke out over the memory of the "drunk" that had been thrown out of Cassidy's. George laughed at it all; it sounded very funny to him, coming from this very small person, with her round, serious eyes, and her mop of gold. He asked her what she wanted him to bring her next time he came home, and Julia said black boots with white tops and tassels, and made him laugh again. Thus early did Julia act as a mediator between her parents, but of this particular occasion she had no recollection, nor of much that followed it. Had she been a few years older she might really have affected a lasting reconciliation between them, for all that was best in George made him love his daughter, and Emeline was intensely proud of the child. As it was, Julia was too young. She might unconsciously be the means of reuniting them now and then, but she could not at all grasp the situation, and when she was not quite seven a decree of divorce, on the ground of desertion, set both Emeline and George free, after eight years of married life. Emeline was too frightened at the enormity of the thing to be either glad or sorry. She had never meant to go so far. She had threatened George with divorce just as George had threatened her, in the heat of anger, practically since her wedding day. But the emotion that finally drove Emeline to a lawyer was not anger, it was just dull rebellion against the gray, monotonous level of her days. She was alone when George was away on trips; she was not less alone when he was in town. He had formed the habit of joining "the boys" in the evening; he was surly and noncommittal with his wife, but Julia, hanging about the lower hall door or playing with children in the street, always heard a burst of laughter as he joined his friends; everybody in the world--except Emeline--liked George! Poor Emeline--she could easily have held him! A little tenderness toward him, a little interest in her home and her child, and George would have been won again. Had he but once come home to a contented wife and a clean house, George's wavering affection would have been regained. But Emeline was a loud-mouthed, assertive woman now, noisily set upon her own way, and filled with a sense of her own wrongs. She had discussed George too often with her friends to feel any possible interest in him except as a means of procuring sympathy. George bored her now; as a matter of fact, Emeline had almost decided that she would prefer alimony to George. Goaded on by Mrs. Povey, and a young Mrs. Sunius, affectionately known as Maybelle, Emeline went to see a lawyer. The lawyer surprised her by his considerate brevity. Getting a divorce was a very simple affair, much better done than not. There were ways to make a man pay his alimony regularly, and the little girl would stay with her mother, of course; at her age no other solution was possible. Emeline felt that she must know how much expense she would be put to, and was gratified to find that it would cost her not more than fifty dollars. The lawyer asked her how soon she could get hold of her husband. "Why, he'll let me know as soon as he's in town," Emeline said vaguely; "he'll come home." "Come home, eh?" said the lawyer, with a shrewd look. "He knows your intentions, of course?" "He ought to!" said Emeline with spirit, and she began again: "I don't think there's a person in the world could say that I'm not a good wife, Mr. Knowles! I never so much as looked at another man--I swear to God I never did! And there's no other man in the case. If I can have my dolling little girl, and just live quiet, with a few friends near me, that's all I ask! If Mr. Page had his way, I'd never put foot out of doors; but mind you, _he'd_ be off with the boys every night. And that means drink, you know--" "Well, well," the young lawyer said soothingly, "I guess you've been treated pretty mean, all right." Emeline went home to find--somewhat to her embarrassment--that George had come in, and was in his happiest mood, and playing with Julia. Julia had somehow lost her babyish beauty now; she was thin and lanky, four teeth were missing, and even her glorious mop of hair seemed what her mother called "slinky." "I landed the Fox order right over Colton's head!" said George. Emeline said: "I wish to the Lord you'd quit opening that window, leaving the wind blow through here like a cave!" "Well, the place smelled like a Jap's room!" George retorted, instantly aggressive. "We're going to the Park!" Julia chanted. "How d'ye mean you're going to the Park?" Emeline asked, as she slammed down the offending window. "Well, I thought maybe I'd take her there; kinder fun walking round and seeing things, what?" George submitted. Emeline shrugged. "I don't care what you do!" She sat down before a dresser with a triple mirror, which had lately been added to the bedroom furniture, and began to ruffle the coarse puffs of her black hair with slim, ringed fingers. "You've got something better to do, of course!" George said. "Don't go to a matinee, Mother!" said Julia, coming to lean coaxingly against her mother's arm. Emeline looked down at the pale, intelligent little face, and gave the child a sudden kiss. "Mama isn't going to a matinee, doll baby. But papa ain't as crazy for her to go to the Park as you are!" she said, with an oblique and challenging glance at George. "Oh, come on!" George urged impatiently. "Only don't wear that rotten hat," he added. "It don't look like a respectable woman!" Emeline's expression did not change, but fury seethed within her. "Don't wait for me," she said levelly. "I'm not going." "Well, put the kid's hat on then," George suggested, settling his own with some care at the mantel mirror. "Get your hand-embroidered dress out of your drawer, Julia," said her mother, "and the hat Aunt Maybelle gave you!" "I'm going to Cass's to telephone, and I need some cigarettes," George announced from the door. "I'll be back in five minutes for Julie." "Don't forget to get a drink while you're in Cass's," Emeline reminded him, as she flung an embroidered dress over Julia's limp little draggled petticoats. George's answer was a violent slamming of the hall door. Julia's little face was radiant as her mother tied on a soiled white straw bonnet covered with roses, and put a cologne-soaked handkerchief into the pocket of her blue velvet coat. The little girl did not have many pleasures; there were very few children in the neighbourhood, and Julia was not very strong; she easily caught colds in dark O'Farrell Street, or in the draughty hall. All winter long she had been hanging over the coal fire in the front room, or leaning against the window watching the busy street below--but today was spring! Sunlight glorified even the dreary aspect from the windows above "J. Cassidy's" saloon, and the glorious singing freshness of the breeze, the heavenly warmth of the blue air, had reached Julia's little heart. When she was quite dressed, and was standing at the window patiently watching for her father, Emeline came and stood beside her. "I'll tell you what!" said Emeline suddenly. "I'll go, too! It's too grand to be indoors today; we'll just go out to the Park and take in the whole show! And then perhaps papa'll take us somewhere to dinner!" She began swiftly to dress, pinning on a hat that George liked, and working on long gray kid gloves as a complement to a gray gown. Then she came to stand behind Julia again, and both watched the street. "I guess he's waiting for his change?" suggested Julia, and Emeline laughed. "We'll walk over and take the Geary Street car," said she. "We'll go right to the fountain, and get dummy seats. And we could have dinner at the Poodle Dog--" "Here he comes!" Julia cried. And indeed George was to be seen for a moment, between two friends, standing on the corner. A long wait ensued. Then steps came up the stairs. Emeline, followed by Julia, went to the door. It was not George, but a note from George, delivered by Henny, of Cassidy's saloon. "Dear Em," Emeline read, "a couple of the fellows want me to go to Emeryville, have dinner at Tony's, and sit in a little game afterward. Tell Julie I will take her to the Park to-morrow--and buy her anything she wants. George." "Thanks, Henny," Emeline said, without visible emotion. But Julia's lip quivered, and she burst into bitter crying. Six-years-old knows no tomorrows, and Julia tasted the bitterness of despair. She cried quietly, her little body screwed into a big armchair, her face hidden in the crook of a thin little arm. Emeline stood it as long as she could, then she slapped and shook Julia to stop her, and Julia strangled and shrieked hysterically. Peace was presently restored, and Julia was asked if she would like to go see her Auntie Mame, and assented with a hiccough. So her mottled little face was wiped with a soggy gray towel, and her bonnet straightened, and they set out. Mrs. Povey was so sympathetic that Emeline stayed with her for dinner, a casual meal which Myrtle Montague and a sister actress came in to share. Julia sat with them at table, and stuffed solemnly on fresh bread and cheese, crab salad and smoked beef, hot tomato sauce and delicious coffee. The coffee came to table in a battered tin pot, and the cream was poured into the cups from the little dairy bottle, with its metal top, but Julia saw these things as little as any one else--as little as she saw the disorderly welter of theatrical effects in the Poveys' neglected rooms, the paint on the women's faces, the ugly violence and coarseness of their talk. But she did see that they were an impulsive, warm-hearted, generous set. Nobody ever spoke crossly to her, she was given the freedom of their rooms, she listened to their chatter, she was often caught up for embraces heavy with cologne; they loved to dress her up in preposterous costumes, and shouted with laughter at the sight of her in Dolly Varden bonnets, Scotch kilts, or spectacles and wigs. "Baby doll," "Lovey," and "Honey Babe" were Julia's names here, and she was a child hungry for love and eager to earn it. To-night she ate her supper in that silence so grateful to grown people, and afterward found some stage jewellery and played with it until her head was too heavy to hold up any longer. Then she went to sleep upon an odorous couch piled deep with all sorts of odd garments, her feet thrust into a tangle of lifeless satin pillows, her head upon the fur lining of some old cape, a banjo prodding her uncomfortably whenever she stirred. Julia--all pins and needles--was presently jerked up into a glare of lights, and tied into the rose-crowned bonnet, and buttoned into the velvet coat again. She had not been covered as she slept, and sneezed and shivered in the cold night air. Emeline walked along briskly, and Julia stumbled beside her. The child was in such an agony of fatigue and chill that every separate step toward bed was dreaded by this time. She fell against her mother, as Emeline tore off shoes and stockings, stretched blundering, blind little arms for her nightgown sleeves, and sank deliciously against her pillows, already more than half asleep. But Emeline sat wide eyed, silent, waiting for George. George did not come home at all that night. On the next afternoon--Sunday afternoon--Julia was playing in the street with two other small girls. Their game was simple. The three huddled into the deep doorway that led to Julia's home, clinging tight to each other, laughing and shouting. Then at a given signal they rushed screaming forth, charged across the street as if pursued by a thousand furies, and took shelter in a similar doorway, next to the saloon across the street. This performance had been repeated, back and forth, perhaps a dozen times, when Julia found her father waylaying her. "Where y' going?" asked Julia, noticing that he carried a hand bag. George sat down on the dirty cement steps that connected his dwelling with the sidewalk, and drew Julia between his knees. "I've got to go away, baby," said he soberly. "And ain't choo going to take me to the Park--_never_?" asked Julia, with a trembling lip. George freed a lock of her hair that had gotten caught in her collar, with clumsy, gentle fingers. "Mama's mad at me, and I'm going away for a while, Babe," said he, clearing his throat. "But you be a good girl, and I'll come take you to the Park some day." Something in the gravity of his tone impressed Julia. "But I don't want you to go away," she said tearfully. George got up hastily. "Come on, walk with Pop to the car," he commanded, and Julia trotted contentedly beside him to Market Street. There she gave him a child's soft, impersonal kiss, staring up at the buildings opposite as she did so. George jumped on a cable car, wedged his bag under his knees as he took a seat on the dummy, and looked back at the little figure that was moving toward the dingy opening of O'Farrell Street, and at the spring sunshine, bright on the child's hair. CHAPTER II In summer the rear parlour that was Mrs. Page's bedroom was a rather dim and dreary place; such light as it had fell through one long, high window that gave only upon a narrow air shaft; it was only in mid-July that the actual sunlight--a bright and fleeting triangle--touched the worn red carpet and the curly-maple bed. In winter the window gave almost no light at all. Julia dressed by gaslight ten months out of the year, and had to sit up in her warm blankets and stare at the clock on a certain January morning in her fifteenth year, to make sure whether it said twenty minutes of eleven or five minutes of eight o'clock. It was five minutes of eight--no mistake about it--but eight o'clock was early for the Pages, mother and daughter. Julia sighed, and cautiously stretched forth an arm, a bare, shapely little arm, with bangles on the round wrist and rings on the smooth fingers, and picked a book from the floor. Cautiously settling herself on the pillows she plunged into her novel, now and then pushing back a loose strand of hair, or bringing her pretty fingernails close to her eyes for an admiring and critical scrutiny. An hour passed--another hour. The clock in the front room struck a silvery ten. Then Julia slammed her book noisily together, and gave a sharp push to the recumbent form beside her. "Ah--no--darling!" moaned Mrs. Page, tortured out of dreams. "Don't--Julie--" "Aw, wake up, Mama!" the daughter urged. Whereupon the older woman rolled on her back, yawned luxuriously, and said, quite composedly: "Hello, darling! What time is it?" Emeline had aged in seven years; she looked hopelessly removed from youth and beauty now, but later in the day, when her hair would be taken out of its crimping kids, her sallow cheeks touched with rouge, and her veined neck covered by a high collar, a coral chain, and an ostrich-feather ruff, some traces of her former good looks might be visible. She still affected tight corsets, high heels, enormous hats. But Emeline's interest in her own appearance was secondary now to her fierce pride and faith in Julia's beauty. Drifting along the line of least resistance, asking only to be comfortable and to have a good time, Emeline had come to a bitter attitude of resentment toward George, toward the fate that had "forced" her to leave him. Now she began lazily to fasten upon Julia as the means of gratifying those hopes and ambitions that were vain for herself. Julia was beautiful, Julia would be a great success, and some day would repay her mother for the sacrifices she had made for her child. Emeline dressed, went about, flirted, and gossiped still; she liked cocktails and cards and restaurant dinners; she was an authority on all things theatrical; her favourite pose was that of the martyred mother. "All I have left," Emeline would say, kissing her daughter effectively, before strangers. "And only God knows what it has cost me to keep my girlie with me!" Julia would grin good-naturedly at this. She had no hallucinations about her mother. She knew her own value, knew she was pretty, and was glad with the simple and pathetic complacence of fourteen. Julia at eight had gone to dancing school, in the briefest skirts ever seen on a small girl, and the dirtiest white silk stockings. She had sung a shrill little song, and danced a little dance at a public benefit for the widows of three heroic firemen, when she was only nine. Her lovely mop had been crimped out of all natural wave; her youthful digestion menaced by candy and chewing gum; her naturally rather sober and pensive disposition completely altered, or at least eclipsed. Julia could chatter of the stage, could give a pert answer to whoever accosted her, could tell a dressmaker exactly how she wanted a gown made, at twelve. While her mother slept in the morning, before the girl learned to sleep late, too, the child would get up and slip out. Her playground was O'Farrell Street, dry and hot in summer, wrapped in soft fog four mornings a week the year round, reeking of stale beer, and echoing to the rattle of cable cars. The little Julia flitted about everywhere: watching janitors as they hosed down the sidewalks outside the saloons, or rinsed cuspidors; watching grocers set out their big signs for the day; watching little restaurants open, and first comers sit down to great cups of coffee and plates of hot cakes. Perhaps the sight of food would remind the little girl of her own empty stomach; she would straggle home just as the first sunshine was piercing the fog, and loiter upstairs, and peep into the bedroom to see what the chances of a meal might be. Emeline usually rolled over to smile at her daughter when she heard the door open, and Julia would be sent to the delicatessen store for the component parts of a substantial meal. Julia loved the cramped, clean, odorous shop that smelled of wet wood and mixed mustard pickles and smoked fish. A little cream bottle would be filled from an immense can at her request, the shopkeeper's wife wiping it with a damp rag and a bony hand. And the pat of butter, and the rolls, and the sliced ham, and the cheese--Herr Bauer scratched their prices with a stubby pencil on an oily bit of paper, checked their number by the number of bundles, gave Julia the buttery change, and Julia hurried home for a delicious loitering breakfast with her mother. Emeline, still in her limp, lace-trimmed nightgown, with a spotted kimono hanging loosely over it, and her hair a wildly tousled mass at the top of her head, presided at a clear end of the kitchen table. She and Julia occupied only two rooms of the original apartment now; a young lawyer, with his wife and child, had the big front room, and the dining-room was occupied by two mysterious young men who came and went for years without ever betraying anything of their own lives to their neighbours. Julia only knew that they were young, quiet, hard working, and of irreproachable habits. But she knew the people in the front room quite well. Mrs. Raymond Toomey was a neat, bright, hopeful little woman, passionately devoted to her husband and her spoiled, high-voiced little son. Raymond Toomey was a big, blustering fool of a man, handsome in a coarse sort of way, noisy, shallow, and opinionated. Whenever there were races, the Toomeys went to the races, taking the precocious "Lloydy," in his velvet Fauntleroy suit and tasselled shoes, and taking "Baby," a shivering little terrier with wet, terrified eyes. Sometimes Mrs. Toomey came out to the kitchen in the morning, to curl her ostrich feathers over the gas stove, or join Mrs. Page in a cup of coffee. "God, girlie, that goes to the spot," she would yawn, stirring her cup, both elbows on the table. "We had a fierce day yesterday, and Ray took a little too much last night--you know how men are! He had a stable tip yesterday, and went the limit--like a fool! I play hunches--there's no such thing as a tip!" And sometimes she would put a little printed list of entries before Julia and say: "Pick me a winner, darling. Go on--just pick any one!" Julia soon reached the age when she could get her own breakfast, and then, mingled with a growing appreciation of the girl's beauty, her mother felt that gratitude always paid by an indolent person to one of energy. She knew that her child was finer than she was, prettier, more clever, more refined. She herself had never had any reserves; she had always screamed or shouted or cried or run away when things crossed her, but she saw Julia daily displaying self-control and composure such as she had never known. There were subtleties in Julia: her sweet firm young mouth closed over the swift-coming words she would not say, her round, round blue eyes were wiser already than her mother's eyes. The girl had grown very handsome. Her joyous, radiant colouring was contradicted by her serious expression, her proud, unsmiling mouth. Her eyes were dark, her colouring softly dark; she had the velvety, tawny skin that usually accompanies dark hair. Yet her hair was a pure and exquisite gold. She wore it fluffed over her ears, cut in a bang across her forehead, and "clubbed" on her neck, in a rather absurd and artificial fashion. But the effect of her grave little face and severe expression, with this opulent gold, and her red lips and round blue eyes, was very piquant. Even powder, earrings, and "clubbing" her hair did not rob Julia of the appearance of a sweet, wilful, and petulant child. Besides the powder and earrings, she indulged in cologne, in open-work silk stockings and high heels, in chains and rings and bracelets; she wore little corsets, at fourteen, and laced them tight. Julia's mind, at this time, was a curious little whirlpool. She had the natural arrogance of her years; she felt that she had nothing to learn. She had an affectionate contempt for her mother, and gave advice more often than she accepted it from Emeline. Julia naturally loved order and cleanliness, but she never came in contact with them. Emeline sometimes did not air or make her bed for weeks at a time. She washed only such dishes as were absolutely necessary for the next meal. She never sent out a bundle to the laundry, but washed handkerchiefs and some underwear herself, at erratic intervals, drying them on windows, or the backs of various chairs. Emeline always had a pair or more of silk stockings soaking in a little bowl of cold suds in the bedroom, and occasionally carried a waist or a lace petticoat to the little French laundress on Powell Street, and drove a sharp bargain with her. Julia accepted the situation very cheerfully; she and her mother both enjoyed their lazy, aimless existence, and to Julia, at least, the future was full of hope. She could do any one of a dozen things that would lead to fame and fortune. The particular day that opened for her with two hours of quiet reading progressed like any other day. The mother and daughter arose, got their breakfast in the kitchen, and sat long over it, sharing the papers, the hot coffee, the cream, and dividing evenly the little French loaf. Julia's nightgown was as limp as her mother's, her kimono as dirty, and her feet were thrust in fur slippers, originally white, now gray. But her fresh young colour, and the rich loops and waves of her golden hair, her firm young breasts under her thin wraps, and the brave blue of her eyes made her a very different picture from her mother, who sat opposite, a vision of disorder, feasting her eyes upon the girl. There was a murder story, of which mother and daughter read every word, and a society wedding to discuss. "The Chases went," said Julia, dipping her bread in her coffee, her eyes on the paper. "Isn't that the limit!" "Why, Marian Chase was a bridesmaid, Julie!" "Yes, I know. But I didn't think the Byron Chases would go to Maude Pennell's wedding! But of course she's marrying an Addison--that helps. 'Mrs. Byron Chase, lavender brocade and pearls,'" read Julia. "Well, Maude Pennell is getting in, all right!" "What'd Mrs. Joe Coutts wear?" Emeline asked. Among the unknown members of the city's smartest set she had her favourites. "'Mrs. Joseph Foulke Coutts,'" Julia read obligingly. '"Red velvet robe trimmed with fox.'" "For heaven's sake, Julie--with that red face!" "And Miss Victoria Coutts in pink silk--she's had that dress for a year now," Julia said. "Well, Lord!" She yawned luxuriously. "I wouldn't marry Roy Addison if he was made of money--the bum!" She pushed the paper carelessly aside. "What you going to do to-day, Ma?" she asked lazily. "Oh, go out," Emeline answered vaguely, still reading a newspaper paragraph. "Gladys has had to pay over a quarter of a million for that feller's debts!" said she, awed. "Well, that's what you get for marrying a duke," Julia answered scornfully. "Let's pile these, Ma, and get dressed." They went into the bedroom, where the gas was lighted again, the bureau pushed out from the wall, that the mirror might catch the best light, and where, in unspeakable confusion, mother and daughter began to dress. Julia put on her smart little serge skirt, pushing it down over her hips with both hands. Then she fixed her hair carefully, adjusted her hat, tied on a spotted white veil, and finally slipped into a much-embroidered silk shirtwaist, which mother and daughter decided was dirty, but would "do." Rings, bangles, and chains followed, a pair of long limp gloves, a final powdering, and a ruff of pink feathers. Julia was not fifteen and looked fully seventeen, to her great delight. She gave herself a sober yet approving glance in the mirror; the corners of her firm yet babyish mouth twitched with pleasure. She locked the doors, set an empty milk bottle out on the unspeakably dreary back stairway, and flung the soggy bedding over the foot of the bed. Then mother and daughter sauntered out into the noontime sunshine. It was their happiest time, as free and as irresponsible as children they went forth to meet the day's adventures. Something was sure to happen, the "crowd" would have some plan; they rarely came home again before midnight. But this sunshiny start into the day Was most pleasant of all, its freshness, its potentialities, appealed to them both. It was a February day, warm and bright, yet with a delicious tingle in the air. "Leave us go up to Min's, Julie; some of the girls are sure to be there. There's no mat. to-day." "Well--" Julia was smiling aimlessly at the sunlight. Now she patted back a yawn. "Walk?" "Oh, sure. It's lovely out." It was tacitly understood that Julia was to be an actress some day, when she was older, and the boarding-house of Mrs. Minnie Tarbury, to which the Pages were idly sauntering, was inhabited almost entirely by theatrical folk. Emeline and Julia were quite at home in the shabby overcrowded house in Eddy Street, and to-day walked in at the basement door, under a flight of wooden stairs that led to the parlour floor, and surprised the household at lunch in the dark, bay-windowed front room. Mrs. Tarbury, a large, uncorseted woman, presided. Her boarders, girls for the most part, were scattered down the long table. Luncheon was properly over, but the girls were still gossiping over their tea. Flies buzzed in the sunny window, and the rumpled tablecloth was covered with crumbs. Mrs. Tarbury kissed Mrs. Page, and Julia settled down between two affectionate chorus girls. "You know you're getting to be the handsomest thing that ever lived, Ju!" said one of these. Julia smiled without raising her eyes from the knives and forks with which she was absently playing. "She's got the blues to-day," said her mother. "Not a word out of her!" "Is that right, Ju?" somebody asked solicitously. "Just about as right as Mama ever gets it," the girl said, still with her indifferent smile. Because her mother was shallow and violent, she had learned to like a pose of silence, of absent-mindedness, and because of the small yet sufficient income afforded by the rented rooms and from alimony, Julia was removed from the necessity that drove these other girls to the hard and constant work of the stage, and could afford her favourite air of fastidious waiting. She was going to be an actress, yes, but not until some plum worthy of her beauty and youth was offered. Meanwhile she listened to the others, followed the history of the favourites of the stage eagerly, and never saw less than four shows a week. Julia, at Juliet's age, had her own ideas as to the interpretation of the Balcony Scene, and could tell why she thought the art of Miss Rehan less finished than that of Madame Modjeska. But personally she lacked ambition, in this direction at least. However, she joined in the girls' talk with great zest; a manager was to be put in his place, and several theories were advanced as to his treatment. "I swear to God if Max don't give me twenty lines in the next, I'll go on to New York," said a Miss Connie Girard dispassionately. "There's a party I know there rents a house that Frohman owns, and he'd give me a letter. What I want is a Broadway success." "That time we played--you know, seven weeks running, in Portland," said a stout, aging actress, "the time my little dance made such a hit, you know--" "Mind jer, Max never come near us this morning," interrupted a Miss Rose Ransome firmly. "Because he knew what he done, and he wasn't looking for trouble! He wrote a notice--" "One of the Portland papers, in c'menting on the show--" the dancer resumed. "Say, Julie, want to walk down to Kearney with me?" Miss Girard said, jumping up. "I want to get my corsets, and we might drop in and see if we can work Foster for some seats for to-night." "I've got a date to-night," said Julia, with a glance at her mother. "What's that?" Emeline said sharply. "Why, Mama, I told you I was going to the Orpheum with the Rosenthals--" "She's going with the whole bunch," Mrs. Page commented, with a shrug. "I can't stand them, but she can!" "I think Mark Rosenthal's a darling," some girl said, "I want to tell you right now there's not anybody can play the piano as good as he can." "That's right," Julia said, very low. "Well, excuse me from the bunch!" Mrs. Page said lazily. "But we've got a real pretty little blush, just the same!" Mrs. Tarbury said, smiling at Julia. The girls shouted, and Julia grew still more red. "Never mind, baby love!" said the older woman soothingly. "It's just Aunt Min's nonsense! Say, but listen, Julia!" Her tone grew suddenly intense. "I meant to ask you something--listen. Say, no fooling, Artheris wants to know if you would take a job." "Twenty a week, and twenty towns a month," Julia said, still ruffled. "No, I would not!" "No, this isn't anything like that, dearie," explained Mrs. Tarbury. "There's going to be a big amachure show for charity at the Grand next month, and they want a few professionals in it, to buck up the others. All the swells are going to be in it--it's going to be something elegant! Of course they'd pay something, and it'd be a lot of fun for you! Artheris wants you to do it, and it wouldn't hurt you none to have him on your side, Julia. I promised I'd talk to you." "One performance?" Julia asked. "What play?" "I'd do it in a minute," said the stout actress from Portland, whose dance had been so gratifying a success, "but I'm signed up." "One night, dear," Mrs. Tarbury said. "I don't think they've decided on the play." "I don't know," Julia hesitated. "What d'ye think, Mama?" "I think he's got his gall along," Mrs. Page admitted. "One night!--and to learn the whole thing for that. I'll tell you what to tell him--you tell him this: you say that you can't do it for one cent less'n a hundred dollars!" "Lay down, Towse!" said Connie Girard, and Mrs. Tarbury expressed the same incredulity as she said benevolently: "What a pipe dream, Em--she's lucky if she gets ten!" "Ten!" squeaked Julia's mother, but Julia silenced her by saying carelessly: "I'll tell you what, Aunt Min. If Con and I get through in time we'll go in and see Artheris to-day. I'd do it for twenty-five--" "You would not!" said her mother. "Well, you might get twenty-five," Mrs. Tarbury said, mollified, "if it's a long part." "If it don't take a lot of dressing," Julia said thoughtfully, as she and Miss Girard powdered their noses at the dark mirror of the sideboard. "Don't you be fool enough to do it for a cent under fifty," Emeline said. Julia smiled at her vaguely, and added to her farewells a daughterly, "Your hat's all right, Mama, but your veil's sort of caught up over your ear. Fix it before you go out. We'll be back here at five--" "Or we'll meet you at Monte's,'" said Connie. The two girls walked briskly down Eddy Street, conscious of their own charms, and conscious of the world about them. Connie was nearly nineteen, a simple, happy little flirt, who had been in and out of love constantly for three or four years. Julia knew her very well, and admired her heartily. Connie had twice had a speaking part in the past year, and the younger girl felt her to be well on her way toward fame. Miss Girard's family of plain, respectable folk lived in Stockton, and were somewhat distressed by her choice of a vocation, but Connie was really a rather well-behaved girl,--and a safe adviser for Julia. "Say, listen, Con," said Julia, presently, "you know Mark Rosenthal?" "Sure," said Connie. "Look here, Ju!" She paused at a window. "Don't you think these Chinese hand bags are swell!" "Grand. But listen, Con," said Julia, shamefacedly honest as a boy. "He's got a case on me----" "On you?" echoed Connie. "Why, he's twenty!" "I know it," Julia agreed. "But, my Lord, Ju, your Mother won't stand for that!" "Mama don't know it." "Well, I don't think you ought to do that, Ju," Connie began gravely. But Julia, with sudden angry tears in her eyes, stopped her. "I've _not_ done anything!" she said crossly. And suddenly Connie saw the truth: that Julia, in spite of paint and powder, rings and "clubbed" hair, was only a little girl, after all, still unsexed, still young enough to resent being teased about boys. "What's he do?" she asked presently. "Well, he--he--I have supper with them sometimes"--Julia's words poured out eagerly--"and he'll kiss me, you know--" "_Kiss_ you! The nerve!" "Oh, before them all, I mean--like he always has done. His mother just laughs. And then, last week, when he asked me to go to Morosco's with them, why, it was just us two--the others had gone somewhere else." "Well, of all gall!" said Connie, absorbed. "And I've been up there with him thousands of times," said Julia. "Maybe Hannah'd be there, or Sophy, but sometimes we'd be alone--while he was playing the piano, you know." "Well, now you look-a-here, Julie," said Connie impressively, "you cut out that being alone business, and the kissing, too. And now how about to-night? Are you sure his whole family is going to-night?" "Well, that's just it, I'm not," Julia confessed, flattered by Connie's interest. "Then you don't go one step, my dear; just you fool him a bunch! You see you're like a little boy, Ju: kisses don't mean nothing to you, _yet_. But you'll get a crush some day yourself, and then you'll feel like a fool if you've got mixed up with the wrong one--see?" "Sure," said Julia, hoarse and embarrassed. Yet she liked the sensation of being scolded by Connie, too, and tried shyly, as the conversation seemed inclined to veer toward Connie's own affairs, to bring it back to her own. The little matter of the corsets being settled, they sauntered through the always diverting streets toward the office of Leopold Artheris, manager of the Grand Opera House, and a very good friend of both girls. They found him idle, in a bright, untidy office, lined with the pictures of stage favourites, and with three windows open to the sun and air. "You're placed, I think, Miss Girard?" said he, giving her a fat little puffy hand. He was a stout, short man of fifty, with a bald spot showing under a mop of graying curls, and a bushy moustache also streaked with gray. "If you call it placed," said Connie, grinning. "We open Monday in Sacramento." "Aha! But why Sacramento?" "Oh, we've got to open somewhere, I suppose! Try it out on the dog, you know!" Connie said, with a sort of bored airiness. "And you, my dear?" said Artheris, turning toward Julia. "She's come to see you about that amachure job," said Connie, reaching over to grab a theatrical magazine from the desk, and running her eye carelessly over its pages. Artheris's blandly smiling face underwent an instant change. He elevated his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and nodded with sudden interest. "Oh--to be sure--to be sure! The performance of 'The Amazons' for the Hospital--yes, well! And what do you think of it, Miss Page?" he said. Julia stretched out her little feet before her, shrugged, and brought an indifferent eye to bear upon the manager. "What's there in it?" she asked. "Well, now, _that_ you'd have to settle with them," smiled Mr. Artheris. "Oh, rot!" said Connie cheerfully. "_You_ manage that for her; what does _she_ know? Go on!" "But, my dear young lady, _I_ have nothing to do with it!" the man protested. "They come to me and wish to hire my theatre, lights, ushers, orchestra, and so, and they ask me if I know of a young actress who will take a part--to give them all confidence, you see"--he made encouraging gestures with his fat little hands--"to--to carry the performance, as it were!" "What part?" asked Connie shrewdly. "The part of--of--a splendid part, that of the Sergeant," said Artheris cheerfully. "Yes, I know that part," Connie said grimly. "The idea is to have Miss Julie here understudy all the parts," said the manager quickly. "These amateurs are very apt to disappoint, do you see? They feel that there would be a sense of security in having a professional right there to fill in a gap." "Why, that would mean she'd have to learn practically the whole play," said Connie. "They ought to be willing to pay a good price for that. Of course Miss Page is only seventeen," she continued, a calculating eye on Julia, whose appearance did not belie the statement. "No objection at all--they are all very young! Come now, what do you say, Miss Page?" "Oh, I don't know," said Julia discontentedly. "I'm not so crazy about acting," she went on childishly. "I'm not so sure I want all these swells to stand around and impose on me--" She hesitated, uncertain and vague. "And I don't believe Mama'd be so anxious," she submitted lamely. Just then the door of Mr. Artheris's office was opened, and a man put in his head. He was a young man, tall, thin, faultlessly dressed, and possessed of an infectious smile. "Excuse me, Mr. Artheris," beamed the intruder, "but could I have a look at the stage? Far be it from me to interrupt or any little thing like that," he continued easily, "but my Mother'd have me dragged out and shot if I came home without seeing it!" "Come in, come in, Mr. Hazzard," said Artheris cordially; "you're just the man we want to see! Miss Girard--Miss Page--Mr. Hazzard. Mr. Hazzard is managing this very affair--manager, isn't that it?" "God knows what I am!" said Carter Hazzard, mopping his forehead, and appreciative of Miss Page's beauty and the maturer charms of Miss Girard. "I'm bell-hop for the whole crowd. My sister plays Thomasine, her steady is Tweenwayes, and my Mother's a director in the hospital. Fix it up to suit yourselves; you'll see that I'm every one's goat." Both the girls laughed, and Artheris said: "I am glad you came in, for Miss Page is the young lady of whom I spoke to you. Unfortunately, it seems that she has just promised to sign a contract with the Alcazar people." "Oh, shucks! Can't you put it off until after the fifteenth?" asked Mr. Hazzard in alarm. "Too much money in it," Connie said, shaking her head. "Well--well, we expected to--to pay, of course," Carter said, embarrassed at this crudeness. And Julia, blushing furiously, muttered, "Oh--it wasn't the _pay_!" "In a word, Miss Page's price is twenty-five dollars a night," said Artheris. "Could your people pay it?" "Why--why, I suppose we could," Hazzard said uncomfortably. "It's--it's for a charity, you know," he ended weakly. "Well, Miss Page's usual price is fifty; she's already reduced it half!" Connie said briskly. Julia was now bitterly ashamed of her manager and her friend; her face was burning. "I'll do it, of course," she promised. "And we'll arrange the terms afterward!" "Good work!" said Hazzard gayly. In a few moments, when they all went out to look at the stage, he dropped behind the others and began to walk beside her. "You're sure you're old enough to be on the stage, Miss Page; no Gerry Society scandal at the last minute?" he asked banteringly. "You look about twelve!" Julia flashed him an oblique look. "The idea! I'm nearly seventeen!" she said, with an uncertain little laugh. His ardent eyes embarrassed her. "Honest?" said Carter Hazzard, in a low, caressing tone. He laid his fingers on her arm. "What's your hurry?" he asked. "We ought to keep with the others," Julia stammered, scarlet cheeked but half laughing. At the same instant his inclination to cut across her path brought her to a full stop. She backed against a heavily tasselled and upholstered old armchair that chanced to be standing in the wings, and sitting down on one of its high arms, looked straight up into his eyes. The others had gone on; they were alone in the draughty wings. "Why ought we?" said Hazzard, still in a low voice full of significance, his eyes on her shoulder, where he straightened a ruffle that was caught under a chain of beads. "If you like me and I like you, why shouldn't we have a little talk?" However young she might appear, the inanities of a flirtation were a familiar field to Julia. She gave him a demure and unsmiling glance from between curled lashes, and said: "What would you like to talk about?" By this time their faces were close together; a sort of heady lightness in the atmosphere set them both to laughing foolishly; their voices trembled on uncertain notes. An exhilarating sense of her own sex and charm thrilled Julia; she knew that he found her sweet and young and wonderful. "I'd like to talk about _you_!" said Carter Hazzard. Julia found his audacity delightful; she began to feel that she could not keep up with the dazzling rush of his repartee. "You know, the minute I saw you--" he added. "Now, _don't_ tell me I'm pretty!" Julia begged, with another flashing look. "No--no!" the man exclaimed, discarding mere beauty with violence. "Pretty! Lord! what does prettiness matter? Of course you're pretty, but do you know what I said to myself the minute I saw you? I said, 'I'll bet that little girl has _brains_!' You smile," said Mr. Hazzard, with passionate earnestness, "but I'll swear to God I did!" "Oh, you just want me to believe that!" scoffed Julia, dimpling. What they said, however, mattered as little as what might be said by the two occupants of a boat that was drifting swiftly toward rapids. "Why do you think an unkind thing like that?" Carter asked reproachfully. "Was that unkind?" Julia countered innocently. At which Mr. Hazzard observed irrelevantly, in a low voice: "Do you know you're absolutely fascinating? Do you? You're just the kind of little girl I want to know--to be friends with--to have for a pal!" Julia was quite wise enough to know that whatever qualifications she possessed for this pleasing position could hardly have made themselves evident to Mr. Hazzard during their very brief acquaintance, and she was not a shade more sincere than he as she answered coquettishly: "Yes, that's what they all say! And then they--" She stopped. "And then they--what?" breathed Carter, playing with the loose ribbons of her feather boa. "Then they fall in love with me!" pouted the girl, raising round eyes. Carter was intoxicated at this confession, and laughed out loud. "But you're too young to play at falling in love!" he warned her. "How old are you--seventeen? And you haven't told me your name yet?" "You know my name is Miss Page," smiled Julia. "And do you think I'm going to call you that?" Carter reproached her. "It might be Jane," she suggested. "Yes, but it isn't, you little devil!" Suddenly the man caught both her wrists, and Julia got on her feet, and instinctively flung back her head. "You're going to kiss me for that!" he said, half laughing, half vexed. "Oh, no, I'm not!" A sudden twist of her body failed to free her, and the plume on her hat brushed his cheek. "Oh, yes, you are!" He caught both wrists in one of his strong hands, and put his arm about her shoulders like a vise, turning her face toward him at the same time. Julia, furious with the nervous fear that this scuffling would be overheard, and that Carter would make her ridiculous, glared at him, and they remained staring fixedly at each other for a few moments. "You _dare_!" she whispered then, held so tightly that Carter could hear her heart beat, "and I'll scream loud enough to bring every one in the place!" "All right--you little cat!" he laughed, freeing her suddenly. Julia tossed her head and walked off without speaking, but presently an oblique swift glance at him showed his expression to be all penitent and beseeching; their eyes met, and they both laughed. Still laughing, they came upon Artheris and Connie, and all walked out together on the deserted stage. The great empty arch was but dimly lighted, draughty, odorous, and gloomy. Beyond the extinguished footlights they could see the curved enormous cavern of the house, row upon row of empty seats. In the orchestra box two or three men, one in his coat sleeves, were disputing over an opera score. High up in the topmost gallery some one was experimenting with the calcium machine; a fan of light occasionally swept the house, or a man's profile was silhouetted against a sputter of blue flame. Artheris and young Hazzard paced the stage, consulted, and disagreed. Connie practised a fancy step in a wide circle, her skirt caught up, her face quite free of self-consciousness. Julia sat on a box, soberly looking from face to face. Something had happened to her, she did not yet know what. She was frightened, yet strangely bold; she experienced delicious chills, yet her cheeks were on fire. Love of life flooded her whole being in waves; she was wrapped, lulled, saturated, in a new and dreamy peace. Julia felt a sudden warm rush of affection for Connie--dear old Con--the best friend a girl ever had! She looked about the theatre; how she loved the old "Grand!" Above all possible conditions in life it was wonderful to be Julia Page, sitting here, the very hub of the world, a being to love and be loved. There, at that hour, she came to that second birth all women know; she was born into that world of drifting sweet odours, blending and iridescent colours, evasive and enchanting sounds, that is the kingdom of the heart. Julia did not know why, from this hour on, she was no longer a little girl, she was no longer dumb and blind and unseeing. But a new and delightful consciousness woke within her, a new sense of her own importance, her own charm. When she and Connie strolled out again, it was, for Julia at least, into a changed world. The immortal hour of romance touched even sordid Mission Street with gold. Julia walked demurely, but conscious of every admiring glance she won from the passers-by, conscious of a score of swallows taking flight from a curb, conscious of the pathetic beauty of the little draggled mother wheeling home her sleepy baby, the setting sunlight glittering in the eyes of both. "He's nothing but a big spoiled kid, if you want to know what I think," said Connie, ending a long dissertation to which Julia had only half listened. "He--who?" asked Julia, suddenly recalled from dreams, and feeling her heart turn liquid within her. A weakness seized her knees, a delicious chill ran up her spine. "Hazzard--the smarty!" Connie elucidated carelessly. "Oh, sure!" Julia said heavily. She made no further comment. She and Connie wandered in and out of a few shops, asking prices, and fingering laces and collars. They went into the dim, echoing old library on Post Street, to powder their noses at the mirror downstairs; they went into the music store at Sutter and Kearney, and listened for a few moments to a phonograph concert; they bought violets--ten cents for a great bunch--at the curb market about Lotta's fountain. The sweetness of the dying spring day flooded the city, and its very essence pierced Julia's heart with a vague pain that was a pleasure, too. Presently she and Connie walked to California Street, and climbed a steep block or two to the Maison Montiverte. Julia and her mother, and a large proportion of their acquaintances, dined chez Montiverte perhaps a hundred times a year. There was a regular twenty-five-cent dinner that was extremely good, there was a fifty-cent dinner fit for a king, and there were specialties de la maison, as, for example, a combination salad at twenty cents that was a meal in itself. Irrespective of the other order, the guest of the Maison Montiverte was regaled with boiled shrimps or crabs' legs while he waited for his dinner, was eagerly served with all the delicious French bread and butter that he could eat, and had a little cup of superb black coffee without charge to finish his meal. Brilliant piano music swept the rooms whenever any guest cared to send the waiter with a five-cent piece to the old mechanical piano, and sprightly conversation, carried on from table to table, gave the place that tone that Monsieur Montiverte considered to be its most valuable asset. Monsieur himself was a dried-up little rat of a man, grizzled, and as brown as a walnut. Madame was large and superb and young, smooth faced, brown haired, regal in manner. It was said that Madame had had a predecessor, a lady now living in France, whose claim upon Jules Montiverte was still valid. However that might be, it did not seem to worry Jules, nor his calm and lovely companion, nor their two daughters, black-eyed baby girls, whose heavy straight hair was crimped at the ends into bands of brownish-black fuzz, and who wore white stockings and tasselled boots, and flounced, elaborately embroidered white dresses on Sundays. Whatever their bar sinister, the Montivertes flourished and grew rich, and a suspicion of something irregular, some high-handed disposition of the benefit of clergy, helped rather than hurt their business. Julia and Connie were early to-night, and took their regular places at a long table that was as yet surrounded only by empty chairs. Madame, who was feeding bread and milk to a black-eyed three-year-old at a little table in a corner, nodded a welcome, and a young Frenchwoman, putting her head in through a swinging door at the back, nodded, too, and said, showing a double row of white teeth: "Wait--een?" "Yes, we'll wait for the others!" Connie called back. She and Julia nibbled French bread, and played with their knives and forks while they waited. The dining-room had that aspect of having been made for domestic and adapted to general use that is so typically un-American, yet so dear to the American heart. An American manager would have torn down partitions, papered in brown cartridge, curtained in pongee, and laid a hardwood floor. Monsieur Montiverte left the two drawing-rooms as they were: a shabby red carpet was under foot, stiff Nottingham curtains filtered the bright sunlight, and an old-fashioned paper in dull arabesques of green and brown and gold made a background for framed dark engravings, "Franklin at the Court of France," and "The Stag at Bay," and other pictures of their type. The tablecloths were coarse, the china and glass heavy, and the menus were written in blue indelible pencil, in a curly French hand. From the windows at the back one could look out upon an iron-railed balcony, a garden beyond, and the old, brick, balconied houses of the Chinese quarter. At the left the California Street cable car climbed the hill, and the bell tower of old St. Mary's rose sombre and dignified against the soft sunset sky. At the right were the Park, with a home-going tide pouring through it at this hour, and Kearney Street with its jangling car bells, and below, the square roofs of the warehouse district, and the spire of the ferry building, and the bay framed in its rim of hills. Montiverte owned the house in which he conducted his business; it was one of the oldest in the city, built by the French pioneers who were the first to erect permanent homes in the new land. This had been the fashionable part of town in 1860, but its stately old homes were put to strange uses in these days. Boarding-houses of the lowest class, shops, laundries, saloons, and such restaurants as Jules Montiverte's overran the district; the Chinese quarter pressed hard upon one side, and what was always called the "bad" part of town upon the other. Yet only two blocks away, straight up the hill, were some of San Francisco's most beautiful homes, the brownstone mansion, then the only one in California, that some homesick Easterner built at fabulous cost, the great house that had been recently given for an institute of art, and the homes of two or three of the railroad kings. Patrons of Montiverte began to saunter in by twos and threes. Some of these the girls knew, and saluted familiarly; others were strangers, and ignored, and made to feel as uncomfortable as possible. Julia's beauty was always the object of notice, and she loved to appear entirely unconscious of it, to sparkle and chatter as if no eyes were upon her. Emeline came in, with one or two older women, and Julia looked up from a great bowl of soup to nod to her. "Sign up?" asked Emeline languidly. And two or three strangers, obviously impressed by the term, waited for the answer. "Oh, I guess I'll do it to please Artheris!" Julia said. The girl was fairly aglow to-night, palpitating and thrilling with youth and the joy of life. Everything distracted her--everything amused her--yet now and then she found a quiet moment in which to take out her little memories of the afternoon, and to review them with a curiously palpitating heart. "If you like me and I like you ... I want to talk about you ... do you know you're absolutely fascinating? ... you're going to kiss me for that! ..." She could still hear his voice, feel his arm about her. Somebody producing free seats for the Alcazar Theatre, Julia allowed herself to drift along with the crowd. They were late for the performance, but nobody cared; they had all seen it before, and after commenting on it in a way that somewhat annoyed their neighbours, straggled out, in the beginning of the last act, giggling and chewing gum. Julia, raising bewildered, sweet, childish eyes to the stars above noisy O'Farrell Street, was brought suddenly to earth by a touch on her arm. It was a dark, tall young man who stepped out of a shadowy doorway to address her, a man of twenty, perhaps, with all the ripe and sensuous beauty of the young Jew. His skin was a clear olive, his magnificent black eyes were set off with evenly curling lashes, and his firm mouth, under its faint moustache, made a touch of scarlet colour among the rich brunette tones. He was dressed with a scrupulous niceness, and carried a long light overcoat on his arm. "Julia!" he said sombrely, coming forward, his eyes only for her. "Why, hello, Mark!" Julia answered. And with a little concern creeping into her manner she went on, "Why, what is it?" Young Rosenthal glanced at her friends, and, formally offering her his arm, said seriously: "You will walk with me?" "We were going down to Haas's for ice-cream sodas," Julia submitted hesitatingly. "Well, I will take you there," Mark said. And as the others, nodding good-naturedly at this, drifted on ahead, Julia found herself walking down O'Farrell Street on the arm of a tall and handsome man. It was the first time that she had done just this thing--or if not the first time, it had never seemed to have any particular significance before. Now, however, Julia felt in her heart a little flutter of satisfaction. Somehow Mark did not seem just a commonplace member of the "Rosenthal gang" to-night, nor did she seem "the Page kid." Mark was a man, and--thrilling thought!--was angry at Julia, and Julia, hanging on his arm, with a hundred street lights flashing on her little powdered nose and saucy hat, was at last a "young lady!" "What's the matter, Mark?" she asked, by way of opening the conversation. "Oh, nothing whatever!" Mark answered, in a rich, full voice, and with elaborate irony. "You promised to go to the Orpheum with me, and I waited--and I waited--and you did not come. But that is nothing, of course!" Julia's anger smote her dumb for a moment. Then she jerked her arm from his, and burst out: "I'll _tell_ you why I didn't meet you to-night, Mark Rosenthal, and if you don't like it, you know what you can do! Last week you asked me would I go to Morosco's with you, and I said yes, and then when it came right down to it--your mother wasn't going, and Sophy and Hannah weren't going, and Otto wasn't going--and I tell you right now that Mama don't like me to go to the theatre--" "Well, well, well!" Mark interrupted soothingly, half laughing, half aghast at this burst of rebuke from the usually gentle Julia. "Don't be so cross about it! So--" He put her arm in his again. "I like to have you to myself, Julia," he said, his boyish, handsome face suddenly flushing, his voice very low. "Do you know why?" "No," said Julia after a pause, the word strangling her. "You don't, eh?" Mark said, with a smiling side glance. "Nope," said Julia, dimpling as she returned the look, and shutting her pretty lips firmly over the little word. "Do you know you are ador-r-rable?" Mark said, in a sort of eager rush. "Will you go to Maskey's with me, instead of joining the others at Haas's?" he asked, more quietly. "Well," Julia said. She was her own mistress. Her mother had gone home during the play with Mrs. Toomey, who complained of a headache. So, grinning like conspirators, they stayed on the south side of the street until it joined Market, and then went by the fountain and the big newspaper buildings, and slipped into the confectioner's. Julia sent an approving side glance at herself in the mirror, as she drew a satisfied breath of the essence-laden air. She loved lights, perfumes, voices--and all were here. An indifferent young woman wiped their table with a damp rag, as she took their order, both, with the daring of their years, deciding upon the murderous combination of banana ice-cream and soda with chopped nuts and fruit. Julia had no sooner settled back contentedly to wait for it, than her eye encountered the beaming faces of her late companions, who, finding Haas's crowded, had naturally drifted on to Maskey's. Much giggling and blushing and teasing ensued. Julia was radiant as a rose; every time she caught sight of her own pretty reflection in the surrounding mirrors, a fresh thrill of self-confidence warmed her. She and Mark followed the banana confection with a dish apiece of raspberry ice-cream, and afterward walked home--it was not far--to the house in which they both lived. "And so we don't quarrel any more?" Mark asked, in the dim hallway outside her door. "Not if you won't play mean tricks on me!" Julia pouted, raising her face so that the dim light of the gas jet that burned year in and year out, in the blistered red-glass shade, fell upon the soft curves of her face. It was a deliberate piece of coquetry, and Julia, although neither he nor any other man had ever done it before, was not at all surprised to have Mark suddenly close his strong arms about her, and kiss her, with a sort of repressed violence, on the mouth. She struggled from his hold, as a matter of course, laughed a little laugh of triumph and excitement, and shut herself into her own door. Emeline was lying in bed, looking over some fashion and theatrical magazines. Upon her daughter's entrance she gave a comfortable yawn. "Did Mark find you, Julie? He was sitting on the stairs when I got home, mad because you didn't go out with them." "Yep, he found me!" Julia answered, still panting. "It strikes me he's a little mushy on you, Julie," Emeline said, lazily, turning a page. "And if you were a little older, or he had more of a job, I'd give him a piece of my mind. You ain't going to marry _his_ sort, I should hope. But, Lord, you're both only kids!" "I guess I can mind my own business, Mama," Julia said. "Well, I guess you can," Emeline conceded amiably. "Look, Ju, at the size of these sleeves--ain't that something fierce? Get the light out as soon as you can, lovey," she added, flinging away her magazine, and rolling herself tight in the covers, with bright eyes fixed on the girl. Ten minutes later Emeline was asleep. But Julia lay long awake, springtime in her blood, her eyes smiling mysteriously into the dark. CHAPTER III By just what mental processes Emeline Page had come to feel herself a dignified martyr in a world full of oppressed women, it would be difficult to say: Emeline herself would have been the last person from whom a reasonable explanation might have been expected. But it was a fact that she never missed an opportunity to belittle the male sex; she had never had much charm for men, she had none now, and consequently she associated chiefly with women: with widows and grass widows of her own type, and with the young actresses and would-be actresses of the curious social level upon which she lived. Emeline's lack of charm was the most valuable moral asset she had. Had she attracted men she would not long have remained virtuous, for she was violently opposed to any restriction upon her own desires, no matter how well established a restriction or how generally accepted it might be. For a little while after George's going, Emeline had indeed frequently used the term "if I marry again," but of late years she had rather softened to his memory, and enjoyed abusing other men while she revelled in a fond recollection of George's goodness. "God knows I was only a foolish girl," Emeline would say, resting cold wet feet against the open oven door while Julia pressed a frill. "But your papa never was anything but a perfect ge'man, never! I'll never forget one night when he took me to Grant's Cafe for dinner! I was all dressed up to kill, and George looked elegant--" A long reminiscence followed. "I hope to God you get as good a man as your papa," said Emeline more than once, romantically. Julia, thumping an iron, would answer with cool common sense: "Well, if I do, I want to tell you right now, Mama, I'll treat him a good deal better than you did!" "Oh, you'll be a wonder," Emeline would concede good-naturedly. At very long intervals Emeline dressed herself and her daughter as elaborately as possible, and went out into the Mission to see her parents. With the singular readiness to change the known discomfort for the unknown, characteristic of their class, the various young members of the family had all gone away now, and lonely old Mrs. Cox, a shrivelled little shell of a woman at sixty-five, always had a warm welcome for her oldest daughter and her beautiful grandchild. She would limp about her bare, uninviting little rooms, complaining of her husband's increasing meanness and of her own physical ills, while with gnarled, twisted old hands she filled a "Rebecca" teapot of cheap brown glaze, or cut into a fresh loaf of "milk bread." "D'ye see George at all now, Emeline?" "Not to speak to, Mom. But"--and Emeline would lay down the little mirror in which she was studying her face--"but the Rosenthal children say that there's a man who's _always_ hanging about the lower doorway, and that once he gave Hannah----" And so on and on. Mrs. Cox was readily convinced that George, repentant, was unable to keep away from the neighbourhood of his one and only love. Julia, dreaming over her thick cup of strong tea, granted only a polite, faintly weary smile to her mother's romances. She knew how glad Emeline would be to really believe even one tenth of these flattering suspicions. A few weeks after Julia's long day of events with Artheris, with Carter Hazzard, and young Rosenthal, she chanced to awaken one Saturday morning to a pleasant, undefined sensation that life was sweet. She thought of Mr. Hazzard, whom she had seen twice since their first meeting, but not alone again. And she reflected with satisfaction that she knew her part of "The Amazons" perfectly, and so was ready for the first rehearsal to-day. This led to a little dream of the leading lady failing to appear on the great night, and of Julia herself in Lady Noel's part; of Julia subsequently adored and envied by the entire cast; of Carter Hazzard---- Julia had made an engagement with Mark for to-day, but the rehearsal plan must interfere. She wondered how she could send him word, and finally decided to see him herself for a moment early in the afternoon. Mark, originally employed as office boy, pure and simple, had now made himself a general handy man, reference and filing clerk, in the big piano house of Pomeroy and Parke. He had all the good traits of his race, and some of the traits that, without being wholly admirable, help a man toward success. No slur at himself or his religion was keen enough to pierce Mark's smiling armour of philosophy, no hours were too hard for him, no work too menial for him to do cheerfully, nor too important for him to undertake confidently. A wisdom far older than his years was his. Poverty had been his teacher, exile and deprivation. When other children were in school, repeating mechanically that many a little made a mickle, that genius was an infinite capacity for taking pains, and that a man has no handicaps but those of his own making, Mark _knew_ these things, he knew that the great forces of life were no stronger than his own two hands, and that any work of any sort must bring him to his goal--the goal of wealth and power and position. He knew that his father was not so clever as he was, and why. He saw that his mother was worn out with housework and child-bearing. He did not idealize their home, where father, mother, and seven children were crowded into four rooms, and where of an evening the smell of cabbage soup and herrings, of soap-suds and hot irons on woollen, of inky school books and perspiring humanity, mingled with the hot, oily breath of the lamp. Yet Mark saw beyond this, too. The food was good, if coarse, the bills were paid, the bank account grew. Some day the girls would be married, the boys in good positions; some day the mother should have a little country house and a garden, and the father come home early to smoke his pipe and prune his rose bushes. Not a very brilliant future--no. But how brilliant to them, who could remember Russia! As for him, Mark, there was no limit to his personal dream at all. Some day, while yet as young as Mr. Parke, he would be as rich as Mr. Pomeroy, he would have five splendid children, like the Pomeroy children, he would have a wife as beautiful as young Mrs. Parke. To his beautiful Jackson Street palace the city's best people should come, and sometimes--for a favoured few--he would play his rippling etudes and nocturnes, his mazurkas and polonaises. Julia Page, an unnoticed little neighbour for many years, had, just at present, somewhat ruffled the surface of his dream. Julia was not the ideal wife of his mind or heart; nor was she apt to grow to fill that ideal. Mrs. Mark Rosenthal must be a Jewess, a wise, ripened, poised, and low-voiced woman, a lover of music, babies, gardens, cooking, and managing. Yet there had been a certain evening, not long before that spring evening upon which Julia's own awakening came, when Mark had been astonished to find a sudden charm in the little girl. She was only a little girl, of course, he said to himself later; just a kid, but she was a mighty cunning kid! Julia often had dinner with the Rosenthals; she loved every separate member of the family and she knew they all loved her. She used to run upstairs and pop her pretty head into the Rosenthal kitchen perhaps twice a week, sure of a welcome and a good meal. On the occasion so significant to Mark she had been there when he got in from work, helping his sisters Sophy and Hannah with that careless disposition of iron knives, great china sugar bowl, oddly assorted plates, and thick cups that was known as "setting the table." Mark had noticed then that Julia's figure was getting very pretty, and he watched her coming and going with a real pleasure. She sat next him at table, and, conscious as he was of her nearness and of himself, he found her unconsciousness very charming. Julia had burned her arm serving the fried hominy, and she held it up for Mark to see, the bare, sweet young arm close to his face. And since then, poor Mark seemed to be bewitched. He could not think of anything but Julia. It made him angry and self-contemptuous, but he was no better off for that. He did not want to fall in love with Julia Page; he would not admit that what he felt for Julia was love; he raged with disappointment at the mere thought of bondage so soon, and especially this bondage. But the sweetness of her stole upon his senses nevertheless, tangling about him like a drifting bit of vaporous mist; he had no sooner detached one section of it than another blew across his eyes, set pulses to beating in his temples, and shook his whole body with a delicious weakness. And then came the night when she had not kept her appointment, and he had followed her to the Alcazar Theatre, and later kissed her in the dark hallway. Then Mark knew. From the instant her fresh lips touched his, and he felt the soft yielding as he drew her to him, Mark knew that he was of the world's lovers. He wanted her with all the deep passion of first love--first love in an ardent and romantic and forceful nature. His dreams did not change; Julia changed to fit them. She was everything for which he had ever longed, she was perfection absolute. She became his music, his business, his life. Every little girl, every old woman that he passed in the street, made him think of Julia, and when he passed a young man and woman full of concern for, and of shy pride in, their lumpy baby in its embroidered coat, a wave of divine envy swept Mark from head to foot. To-day he whistled over his work, thinking of Julia. They were to meet at three o'clock, "just to bum," as the girl said, laughing. Mark thought that, as the season was well forward, they might take a car to the park or the beach, but the plan had been left indefinite. He ate his lunch, of butterless bread and sausage, and an entire five-cent pie, in a piano wareroom, taking great bites, with dreamy studying of the walls and long delays between. Then he wandered down through the empty offices--it was Saturday afternoon and Pomeroy and Parke closed promptly at twelve--had a brief chat with the Japanese janitor, and washed his hands and combed his hair very conscientiously in the president's own lavatory. At half-past one he went into one of the glass showrooms, a prettily furnished apartment whose most notable article of furniture was a grand piano in exquisitely matched Circassian walnut. Absorbed and radiant, Mark put back the cover, twirled the stool, and carefully opened a green book marked "Chopin." Then he sat down, and, with the sigh of a happy child falling upon a feast, he struck an opening chord. The big flexible fingers still needed training, but they showed the result of hours and hours of patient practice, too. Through his seven years in the music house, Mark had been faithful to his gift. He made no secret of it, his associates knew that he came back after dinner to the very rooms that they themselves left so eagerly at the end of the day. Mark had indeed once asked old Mr. Pomeroy to hear him play, an occasion to which the boy still looked back with hot shame. For when his obliging old employer had settled himself to listen after hours on an appointed afternoon, and Mark had opened the piano, the performer suddenly found his spine icy, his hands wet and clumsy. He felt as if he had never touched a piano before; the attempt was a failure from the first note, as Mark well knew. When he had finished he whisked open another book. "That was rotten," he stammered. "I thought I could do it--I can't. But just let me play you this--" But the great man was in a hurry, it appeared. "No--no, my boy, not to-day--some other time! Perhaps a little bit too ambitious a choice, eh? We must all be ambitious, but we must know our limitations, too. Some other time!" Then Mr. Pomeroy was gone and Mark left to bitterest reflection. But he recovered very sensibly from his boyish chagrin, and very sensibly went at his practicing again. On this particular Saturday afternoon he attacked a certain phrase in the bass, and for almost an hour the big fingers of his left hand rippled over it steadily. Mark, twisted about halfway on the bench, watched the performance steadily, his right hand hanging loose. "Damn!" he said presently, with a weary sigh, as a sharp and familiar little pain sprang into his left wrist. "Mark!" breathed a reproachful voice behind him. He whirled about, to see Julia Page. She had come noiselessly in at the glass doorway behind him, and was standing there, laughing, a picture of fresh and demure beauty, despite the varied colours in hat and waist and gown and gloves. "I had to see you!" said Julia, in a rush. "And nobody answered your telephone--there's a rehearsal of that play at the theatre to-day, so I can't meet you--and the janitor let me in----" Mark found her incoherence delicious; her being here, in his own familiar stamping-ground, one of the thrilling and exciting episodes of his life. He could have shouted--have danced for pure joy as he jumped up to welcome her. Julia declared that she had to "fly," but Mark insisted--and she found his insistence curiously pleasant--upon showing her about, leading her from office to office, beaming at her whenever their eyes met. And he _must_ play her the little Schumann, he said, but no--for that Julia positively would _not_ wait; she jerked him by one hand toward the door. Mark had his second kiss before they emerged laughing and radiant into the gaiety of Kearney Street on a Saturday afternoon. And Julia was not late for her rehearsal, or, if late, she was at least earlier by a full quarter hour than the rest of the caste. She took an orchestra seat in the empty auditorium at the doorkeeper's suggestion, and yawned, and stared at the coatless back of a man who was tuning the orchestra piano. Presently two distinguished looking girls, beautifully dressed, came in, and sat down near her in a rather uncertain way, and began to laugh and talk in low tones. Neither cast a glance at Julia, who promptly decided that they were hateful snobs, and began to regard them with burning resentment. They had been there only a few moments when two young men sauntered down the aisle, unmistakably gentlemen, and genuine enough to express their enjoyment of this glimpse of a theatre between performances. Two of them carried little paper copies of "The Amazons," so Julia knew them for fellow-performers. Then a third young woman came in and walked down the aisle as the others had done. This was an extremely pretty girl of perhaps eighteen, with dark hair and dark bright eyes, and a very fresh bright colour. Her gown was plain but beautifully fitting, and her wide hat was crowned with a single long ostrich plume. She peered at the young men. "Hello, Bobby--hello, Gray!" she said gayly, and then, catching sight of the two other girls across the aisle, she added: "Oh, hello, Helen--how do you do, Miss Carson? Come over here and meet Mr. Sumner and Mr. Babcock!" Babel ensued. Three or four waiting young people said, "Oh, Barbara!" in tones of great delight, and the fourth no less eagerly substituted, "Oh, Miss Toland!" "How long have you poor, long-suffering catfish been waiting here?" demanded Miss Barbara Toland, with a sort of easy sweetness that Julia found instantly enviable. "Why, we're all out in the foyer--Mother's here, chaperoning away like mad, and nearly all the others! And"--she whisked a little gold watch into sight--"my dears, it's twenty minutes to four!" Every one exclaimed, as they rushed out. Julia, unaccountably nervous, wished she were well out of this affair, and wondered what she ought to do. Presently some twenty-five or thirty well-dressed folk came streaming back down the main aisle in a wild confusion of laughter and talk. Somehow the principals were filtered out of this crowd, and somehow they got on the stage, and got a few lights turned on, and assembled for the advice of an agitated manager. Dowagers and sympathetic friends settled in orchestra seats to watch; the rehearsal began. Julia had strolled up to the stage after the others; now she sat on a shabby wooden chair that had lost its back, leaned her back against a piece of scenery, and surveyed the scene with as haughty and indifferent an air as she could assume. "And the Sergeant--who takes that?" demanded the manager, a young fellow of their own class, familiarly addressed as "Matty." The caste, which had been churning senselessly about him, chorussed an explanation. "A professional takes that, Mat, don't you remember?" "Well, where is she?" Matty asked irritably. Julia here sauntered superbly forward, serenely conscious of youth, beauty, and charm. Every one stared frankly at her, as she said languidly: "Perhaps it's I you're looking for? Mr. Artheris--" "Yes, that's right!" said Matty, relieved. He wiped his forehead. "Miss--Page, isn't it?" He paused, a little at a loss, eying the other ladies of the caste dubiously. The girl called Barbara Toland now came forward with her ready graciousness, and the two girls looked fairly into each other's eyes. "Miss Page," said Barbara, and then impatiently to the manager, "Do go ahead and get started, Matty; we've got to get home some time to-night!" Julia's introduction was thus waived, and business began at once. The wavering voices of the principals drifted uncertainly into the theatre. "Louder!" said the chaperons and friends. The men were facetious, interpolating their lines with jokes, good-humoured under criticism; the girls fluttered nervously over cues, could not repeat the simplest line without a half-giggling "Let's see--yes, I come in here," and were only fairly started before they must interrupt themselves with an earnest, "Mat, am I standing still when I say that, or do I walk toward her?" Julia was the exception. She had been instructed a fortnight before that she must know her lines and business to-day, and she did know them. Almost scornfully she took her cues and walked through her part. "Matty" clapped his hands and overpraised her, and Julia felt with a great rush of triumph that she had "shown those girls!" She had an exhilarating afternoon, for the men buzzed about her on every possible occasion, and she knew that the other girls, for all their lofty indifference, were keenly conscious of it. She went out through the theatre with the others, at an early six. The young people straggled along the aisle in great confusion, laughing and chattering. Mrs. Toland, a plump, merry, handsomely dressed woman, was anxious to carry off her tall daughter in time for some early boat. "_Do_ hurry, Barbara! Sally and Ted may be on that five-fifty, and if Dad went home earlier they'll have to make the trip alone!" At the doorway they found that the street was almost dark, and foggy. Much discussion of cars and carriages marked the breaking-up. Enid Hazzard, a rather noisy girl, who played Noel Belturbet, elected to go home with the Babcocks. This freed from all responsibility her brother Carter, who had suddenly appeared to act as escort. Julia, slipping up the darkening street, after a few moments spent in watching this crowd of curious young people, found him at her side. "No coat, Miss Page?" said the easy tones. "I didn't know it would be so foggy!" said Julia, her heart beginning to thump. "And where are you going?" "Home to get a coat." "I see. Where is it? I'll take you." "Oh, it's just a few blocks," Julia said. She knew nothing of the reputation of San Francisco's neighbourhoods, but Carter gave her a surprised look. When Julia, quite unembarrassed, stopped at the door beside the saloon, he was the more confused of the two, although the accident of seeing him again had set the blood to racing in Julia's veins and made speech difficult. She had been longing for just this; she was trembling with eagerness and nervousness. "Father and Mother live here?" asked Carter. "Just Mama--she rents rooms." "Oh, I see!" He had stepped into the deep doorway, and catching her by the shoulders he said now, inconsequently: "Do you know you're the prettiest girl that ever _was_?" "Am I?" said Julia, in a whisper. "You know you are--you--you little flirt!" Hazzard said, his eyes three inches from hers. For a tense second neither stirred, then the man straightened up suddenly: "Well!" he said loudly. "That'll be about all of _that_. Good-night, my dear!" He turned abruptly away, and Julia, smiling her little inscrutable smile, went slowly upstairs. The bedroom was dark, unaired, and in disorder. Julia looked about it dreamily, picked her library book from the floor and read a few pages of "Aunt Johnnie," sitting meanwhile on the edge of the unmade bed, and chewing a piece of gum that had been pressed, a neat bead, upon the back of a chair. After a while she got up, powdered her nose, and rubbed her finger-nails with a buffer--a buffer lifeless and hard, and deeply stained with dirt and red grease. Emeline had left a note, "Gone up to Min's--come up there for supper," but Julia felt that there was no hurry; meals at Mrs. Tarbury's were usually late. During the ensuing fortnight there were two or three more rehearsals of "The Amazons" at the Grand Opera House, which only confirmed Julia's first impression of her fellow-players. The men she liked, and flirted with; for the girls she had a supreme contempt. She found herself younger, prettier, and a better actress than the youngest, prettiest, and cleverest among them. While these pampered daughters of wealth went awkwardly through their parts, and chatted in subdued tones among themselves, Julia rattled her speeches off easily, laughed and talked with all the young men in turn, posed and pirouetted as one born to the footlights. If Julia fancied that any girl was betraying a preference for any particular man, against that man she directed the full battery of her charms. Carter Hazzard came to every rehearsal, and was quite openly her slave. He did not offer to walk home with her again, but Julia knew that he was conscious of her presence whenever she was near him, and spun a mad little dream about a future in which she queened it over all these girls as his wife. It was all delightful and exciting. Life had never been dark to Julia; now she found the days all too short for her various occupations and pleasures. Mark was assuming more and more the attitude of a lover, and Julia was too much of a coquette to discourage him utterly. She really liked him, and loved the stolen hours in Pomeroy and Parke's big piano house, when Mark, flinging his hair out of his eyes, played like an angel, and Julia nibbled caramels and sat curled up on the davenport, watching him. And through the casual attentions of other men, the occasional flattering half-hours with Carter Hazzard, the evenings of gossip at Mrs. Tarbury's, and round the long table at Montiverte's, Julia liked to sometimes think of Mark; his admiration was a little warm, reassuring background for all the other thoughts of the day. At the end of the fourth or fifth rehearsal Julia noticed that pretty Barbara Toland was trying to manage a moment's speech with her alone. She amused herself with an attempt to avoid Miss Toland just from pure mischief, but eventually the two came face to face, in a garishly lighted bit of passage, Barbara, for all her advantage in years and in position, seeming the younger of the two. "Oh, Miss Page," said Barbara nervously, "I wanted to--but were you going somewhere?" "Don't matter if I was!" said Julia, airily gracious, but watching shrewdly. "Well, I--I hope you won't think this is funny, but, well, I'll tell you," stammered Barbara, very red. "I know you don't know us all very well, you know--it's different with us--we've all been brought up together--but I didn't know whether you knew--perhaps you did--that Carter Hazzard is married?" Julia felt stunned, and a little sick. She got only the meaning of the words, their value would come later. But with a desperate effort she pulled herself together, and smiled with dry lips. "Yes, I knew that," she said, pleasantly, not meeting Barbara's eye. "Oh, well, then it's all _right_," Barbara said hastily, relieved. "But he--he has a teasing sort of way, you know. His wife is in San Diego now, with her own people." "Yes, he told me that," Julia said, only longing to escape before a maddening impulse to cry overpowered her. Barbara saw the truth, and laid a friendly hand on Julia's arm. "I just wanted you to know," she said in her kindliest tone. Suddenly Julia burst out crying, childishly blubbering with her wrists in her eyes. Barbara, very much distressed, shielded her as well as she could from the eyes of possible passers-by, and patted her shoulder with a gloved hand. "I don't know why--perfectly _crazy_--" gulped Julia, desperately fighting the sobs that shook her. "And I've had a dreadful headache all day," she broke out, pitifully, beginning to mop her eyes with a folded handkerchief, her face still turned away from Barbara. "Oh, poor thing!" said Barbara. "And the rehearsal must have made it worse!" "It's splitting," Julia said sombrely. She gave Barbara one grave, almost resentful, look, straightened her hat and fluffed up her hair, and went away. Barbara looked after her, and thought that Carter was a beast, and that there was something very pitiful about common little ignorant Miss Page, and that she wouldn't tell the girls about this, and give them one more cause to laugh at the little actress. For Barbara Toland was a conscientious girl, and very seriously impressed with the gravity of her own responsibility toward other people. Meanwhile Julia walked toward the Mechanics' Library in a very fury of rage and resentment. She hated the entire caste of "The Amazons," and she hated Barbara Toland and Carter Hazzard more than the rest! He could play with her and flirt with her and deceive her, and while she, Julia, fancied herself envied and admired of the other girls, this delicately perfumed and exquisitely superior Barbara could be deciding in all sisterly kindness that she must inform Miss Page of her admirer's real position. Angry tears came to Julia's eyes, but she went into the Mechanics' Library and washed the evidences of them away, and made herself nice to meet Mark. But a subtle change in the girl dated from that day; casual and foolish as the affair with Carter had been, it left its scar. Julia's heart winced away from the thought of him as she herself might have shrunk from fire. She never forgave him. It was good to find Mark still enslaved, everything soothing and reassuring. When Julia left him, at her own door at six o'clock, she was her radiant, confident self again, and they kissed each other at parting like true lovers. To his eager demand for a promise Julia still returned a staid, "Mama'd be crazy, Mark. I ain't sixteen yet!" but on this enchanted afternoon she had consented to linger, on Kearney Street, before the trays of rings in jewellers' windows, and it was in the wildest spirits that Mark bounded on upstairs to his own apartment. Julia had expected to find her mother at home. Instead the room was empty, but the gas was flaring high, and all about was more than the customary disorder; there were evidences that Emeline had left home in something of a hurry. The girl searched until she found the explanatory note, and read it with knitted brow. "I'm going to Santa Rosa on important business, deary," Emeline had scribbled, "and you'd better go to Min's for a few days. I'll write and leave you know if there is anything in it, otherwise there's no use getting Min and the girls started talking. There's ten dollars in the hairpin box. With love, Mama." "Well, I'd give a good deal to know what struck Em," said Mrs. Tarbury, for the hundredth time. It was late in the evening of the same day, and the lady and Julia were in the room shared by Miss Connie Girard and Miss Rose Ransome. Both the young actresses had previously appeared in a skit at a local vaudeville house, but had come home to prepare for a supper to be given by friends in their own profession, after the theatres had closed. Each girl had a bureau of her own, hopelessly cluttered and crowded, and over each bureau an unshielded gas jet flared. "Well, I'm _going_ to know!" Julia added, in a heavy, significant tone. She had come to feel herself very much abused by her mother's treatment, and was inclined to entertain ugly suspicions. "Oh, come now!" Rose Ransome said, scowling at herself in a hand mirror as she carefully rouged her lips. "Don't you get any silly notions in your head!" "No," Mrs. Tarbury added heavily, as she rocked comfortably to and fro, "no, that ain't Em. Em is a cut-up, all right, and she's a great one for a josh with the boys, but she's as straight as a string! You'll find that she's got some good reason for this!" "Well, she'd better have!" Julia said sulkily. "I'm going out to see my grandmother to-morrow and see if she knows anything!" But she really gave less thought to her mother than to the stinging memory of Barbara Toland's generosity and Carter Hazzard's deception. She settled down contentedly enough, sharing the room with Connie and Rose, and sharing their secrets, and her visit to old Mrs. Cox was indefinitely postponed. The girls drifted about together, in and out of theatres, in and out of restaurants and hotels, reading cheap theatrical magazines, talking of nothing but their profession. The days were long and dull, the evenings feverish; Julia liked it all. She had no very high ideal of home life; she did not mind the disorder of their room, the jumbled bureau drawers, the chairs and tables strewn with garments, the fly-specked photographs nailed against the walls. It was a comfortable, irresponsible, diverting existence, at its worst. Emeline did not write her daughter for nearly two weeks, but Julia was not left in doubt of her mother's moral and physical safety for that time. Only two or three days after Emeline's disappearance Julia was called upon by a flashily dressed, coarse-featured man of perhaps forty who introduced himself--in a hoarse voice heavy with liquor--as Dick Palmer. "I used to know your Pop when you's only a kid," said the caller, "and I know where your Mamma is now--she's gone down to Santa Rosa, see?" "What'd she go there for?" Julia demanded clearly. Mr. Palmer cast an agitated glance about Mrs. Tarbury's dreadful drawing-room, and lowered his voice confidentially: "Well, d'ye see--here's how it is! Your Papa's down there in Santa Rosa. I run acrost him in a boarding-house a few days ago, and d'ye see--he's sick. That's right," added the speaker heavily, "he's sick." "Dying?" said Julia dramatically. "No, he ain't dying. It's like this," pursued the narrator, still with his air of secrecy, "there's a party there that runs the boarding-house--her name's Lottie Clute, she's had it for years, and she's got on to the fact that George is insured for nine thousand dollars, d'ye see? Well, she's got him to promise to make the policy over to her." "Ha!" said Julia, interested at last. "Well, d'ye see?" said Mr. Palmer triumphantly. "So I come up to town last week, and I thought I'd drop in on your Mamma! No good letting this other little lady have it _all_ her own way, you know!" "That's right, too, she's no more than a thief!" Julia commented simply. "I don't know what Mama can do, but I guess you can leave it to Mama!" Mr. Palmer, agreeing eagerly to this, took his leave, after paying a hoarse tribute to the beauty of his old friend's daughter, and Julia dismissed the matter from her mind. She told Connie that she meant, as soon as this amateur affair was over, to try the stage in real earnest, and Connie, whose own last venture had ended somewhat flatly, was nevertheless very sanguine about Julia's success. She took Julia to see various managers, who were invariably interested and urbane, and Julia, deciding bitterly that she would have no more to do with her fellow-performers in the caste of "The Amazon," had Connie accompany her to rehearsals, and went through her part with a sort of sullen hauteur. She and Connie were down in the dressing-rooms one day after a rehearsal chatting with the woman star of a travelling stock company, who chanced to be there, when Barbara Toland suddenly came in upon them. "Oh, Miss Page," said Barbara in relief, "I _am_ so glad to find you! I don't know whether you heard Mr. Pope announce that we're to have our dress rehearsal on Saturday, at the yacht club in Sausalito? There is quite a large stage." Julia shook her head. "I don't know that I can come Saturday," she objected, only anxious to be disobliging. "Oh, you _must_," said Barbara brightly. "_Do_ try! You take the one-forty-five from the Sausalito ferry, and somebody'll meet you! And if we should be kept later than we expect, somebody'll bring you home!" "I have a friend who would come for me," said Julia stiffly, thinking of Mark. For just a second mirth threatened Barbara's dignity, but she said staidly: "That's fine! And remember, we _depend_ on you!" CHAPTER IV The family of Dr. Robert Toland, discovered at breakfast in the Tolands' big house in Sausalito on an exquisite May morning, presented to the casual onlooker as charming a picture of home life as might be found in the length and breadth of California. The sunny dining-room, with its windows wide open to sunshine and fresh sea air, the snowy curtains blowing softly to and fro, the wide sideboard where the children's outgrown mugs stood in a battered and glittering row, the one or two stiff, flat, old oil portraits that looked down from the walls, the jars of yellow acacia bloom, and bowls of mingled wild flowers; these made a setting wonderfully well suited to the long table and the happy family about it. There were seven children, five girls and two boys; there was the gracious, genial mother at the head and the wiry, gray-haired and gray-bearded surgeon at the foot; there was, as usual, Jim Studdiford, and to-day, besides, there was Aunt Sanna, an unmarried younger sister of the doctor, and a little black-eyed, delicate ten-year-old guest of the eleven-year-old Janie, Keith Borroughs, who was sitting near to Janie, and evidently adoring that spirited chatterbox. And there was Addie, a cheerful black-clad person in a crackling white apron, coming and going with muffins and bacon, and Toy, who was a young cousin of Hee, the cook, and who padded softly in Addie's wake, making himself generally useful. Barbara, very pretty, very casual as to what she ate, sat next to her father; she was the oldest of the seven Tolands, and slipping very reluctantly out of her eighteenth year. Ned, a big, handsome fellow of sixteen, came next in point of age, and then a tall, lanky, awkward blond boy, Richie, with a plain thin face and the sweetest smile of them all. Richie never moved without the aid of a crutch, and perhaps never would. After Richie, and nearing fourteen, was a sweet, fat, giggling lump of a girl called Sally, with a beautiful skin and beautiful untidy hair, and a petticoat always dragging, a collar buttoned awry, and a belt that never by any chance united her pretty shirt waist to her crisp linen skirt. Only a year younger than Sally was Theodora, whose staid, precocious beauty Barbara already found disquieting--"Ted" was already giving signs of rivalling her oldest sister--then came Jane, bold, handsome, boyish at eleven, and lastly eight-year-old Constance, a delicate, pretty, tearful little girl who was spoiled by every member of the family. The children's mother was a plump, handsome little woman with bright, flashing eyes, dimples, and lovely little hands covered with rings. There was no gray in her prettily puffed hair, and, if she was stouter than any of her daughters, none could show a more trimly controlled figure. Mrs. Toland had been impressed in the days of her happy girlhood with the romantic philosophies of the seventies. To her, as an impulsive young woman brimful of the zest of living, all babies had been "just too dear and sweet," all marriages were "simply _lovely_" regardless of circumstances, and all men were "just the dearest great big manly fellows that ever _were_!" As Miss Sally Ford, Mrs. Toland had flashed about on many visits to her girl friends admiring, exclaiming, rejoicing in their joys, and now, as a mother of growing girls and boys, there still hung between her and real life the curtain of her unquenchable optimism. She loved babies, and they had come very fast, and been cared for by splendid maids, and displayed in effective juxtaposition to their gay little mother for the benefit of admiring friends, when opportunity offered. And if, in the early days of her married life, there had ever been troublous waters to cross, Sally Toland had breasted them gallantly, her fixed, confident smile never wavering. At first Doctor Toland had felt something vaguely amiss in this persistent attitude of radiant and romantic surety. "Are you sure the boy understands?" "D'ye think Bab isn't old enough to know that you're just making that up?" he would ask uneasily, when a question of disciplining Ned or consoling Barbara arose. But Mrs. Toland always was sure of her course, and would dimple at him warningly: "Of course it's all right, Daddykins, and we're all going to be happy, and not even think of our naughty old troubles any more!" So the doctor gave her her way, and settled back to enjoy his children and his wife, his yacht and his roses; growing richer and more famous, more genial and perhaps a little more mildly cynical as time went on. And the children grew up, their mother, never dreaming that Barbara at eighteen was more than the sweet, light-hearted, manageable child she had been at ten; that Ned was beginning to taste of a life of whose existence she was only vaguely aware; that Sally was plotting an escape to the ranks of trained nurses; that Ted needed a firm hand and close watching if she were not to break all their hearts. No, to Mrs. Toland they were still her "rosebud garden," "just the merriest, romping crowd of youngsters that ever a little scrap of a woman had to keep in order!" "Now, you're going to wipe that horrid frown off your forehead, Daddy," she would say blithely, if Doctor Toland confessed to a misgiving in the contemplation of any one of his seven, "and stop worrying about Richie! His bad old hip is going to get well, and he'll be walking just like any one else in no time!" And in the same tone she said to Barbara: "I know my darling girl is going to that luncheon, and going to forget that her hat isn't quite the thing for the occasion," and said to little Constance, "We're going to forget that it's raining, and not think about dismal things any more!" No account of flood or fire or outrage was great enough to win from her more than a rueful smile, a sigh, and a brisk: "Well, I suppose such things _must_ be, or they wouldn't be permitted. Don't let's think about it!" Women who knew Mrs. Toland spoke of her as "wonderful." And indeed she was wonderful in many ways, a splendid manager, a delightful hostess, and essentially motherly and domestic in type. She was always happy and always busy, gathering violets, chaperoning Sally or Barbara at the dentist's, selecting plaids for the "girlies'" winter suits. Her married life--all her life, in fact--had been singularly free from clouds, and she expected the future to be even brighter, when "splendid, honourable men" should claim her girls, one by one, and all the remembered romance of her youth begin again. That the men would be forthcoming she did not doubt; had not Fate already delivered Jim Studdiford into her hands for Barbara? James Studdiford, who had just now finished his course at medical college, was affectionately known to the young Tolands as "Jim," and stood to them in a relationship peculiarly pleasing to Mrs. Toland. He was like a brother, and yet, actually, he bore not the faintest real kinship to--well, to Barbara, for instance. Years before, twenty years before, to be exact, Doctor Toland, then unmarried, and unacquainted, as it happened, with the lovely Miss Sally Ford, had been engaged to a beautiful young widow, a Mrs. Studdiford, who had been left with a large fortune and a tiny boy some two years before. This was in Honolulu, where people did a great deal of riding in those days, and it presently befell that the doctor, two weeks before the day that had been set for the wedding, found himself kneeling beside his lovely fiancee on a rocky headland, as she lay broken and gasping where her horse had flung her, and straining to catch the last few agonized words she would ever say: "You'll--keep Jim--with you, Robert?" How Doctor Toland brought the small boy to San Francisco, how he met the dashing and indifferent Sally, and how she came at last to console him for his loss, was another story, one that Mrs. Toland never tired of telling. Little Jim had his place in their hearts from their wedding day. Barbara was eleven years old when, with passionate grief, she learned that he was not her half brother, and many casual friends did not know it to this day. Jim, to the doctor's delight, chose to follow the profession of his foster father, and had stumbled, with not too much application, through medical college. Now he was to go to New York for hospital work, and then to Berlin for a year's real grind, and until the Eastern hospital should open classes, was back in his old enormous third-floor bedroom upstairs, enjoying a brief season of idleness and petting, the handsome, unaffected, sunshiny big brother of Mrs. Toland's fondest dreams. "And he can hardly keep his eyes off Babbie," the mother confided to her sister-in-law. Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance. "For heaven's sake don't get that notion in your head, Sally! Babbie may be ready to make a little fool of herself, but if ever I saw a man who _isn't_ in love, it's Jim!" said Miss Toland, who was a thin, gray-haired, well-dressed woman of forty, with a curious magnetism quite her own. Miss Toland had lived in France for the ten years before thirty, and had a Frenchwoman's reposeful yet alert manner, and a Frenchwoman's art in dressing. After many idle years, she had suddenly become deeply interested in settlement work, had built a little settlement house, "The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House," in one of the factory districts south of San Francisco, and was in a continual state of agitation and upset because worthy settlement workers were at that time almost an unknown quantity in California. Just at present she was availing herself of her brother's hospitality because she had no assistant at all at the "Alexander," and was afraid to stay in its very unsavoury environment alone. She loved Barbara dearly, but she was usually perverse with her sister-in-law. "You may say what you like about notions in my head," Mrs. Toland answered with a wise little nod. "But the dear girl is _radiant_ every time she looks at him, and both Dad and I think we notice a new _protective_ quality in Jim--" "Did Robert say so?" Miss Toland asked dryly. To this Mrs. Toland answered with a merry laugh and a little squeeze of her sister-in-law's arm. "Oh, you old Sanna!" she chided. "You won't believe that there's a blessed time when Nature just takes the young things by the hand and pushes them right into happiness, whether or no!" This little talk had taken place just before breakfast, and now Mrs. Toland was reassuring herself of her own position with many a glance at Barbara and at Jim. Barbara seemed serious almost to ungraciousness--that might be a sign. Jim was teasing Sally, who laughed deeply and richly, like a child, and spilled her orange juice on her fresh gown. Perhaps he was trying to pique Barbara by assuming an indifferent manner--that might be it---- "Jim!" It was Barbara speaking. Jim did not hear. "Jim," said Barbara again, patient and cold. "I beg your pardon!" Jim said with swift contrition. His glance flashed to Barbara for a second, flashed back to Sally. "Now, you throw that--you throw that," said he to the latter young woman, in reference to a glass of water with which she was carelessly toying, "and you'll be sorrier than you ever were in your life!" "Sally, what are you thinking of!" her mother said. "Look out--look out!" Sally said, swinging the glass up and down. Suddenly she set it back on the table firmly. "You deserve that straight in your face, Jim, but Mother'd be mad!" "Well, I should think Mother would!" Mrs. Toland said, in smiling reproof. "But we interrupted Bab, I think. Bab had something dreadfully important to say," she added playfully, "to judge from that great big frown!" "It wasn't dreadfully important at all," Barbara said, in cold annoyance. "Oh, wasn't it? And what was it, dear?" "It was simply--it was nothing at all," Barbara protested, reddening. "I was just thinking that we have to have that rehearsal at the clubhouse this afternoon, and I was wondering if Jim would walk down there with me now, and see about getting the room ready----" "Dad's got an eleven-o'clock operation, and I'm going to assist," said Jim. "Did you forget that, dear?" Mrs. Toland asked. "It's of no consequence," said Barbara, her voice suddenly thick with tears. Her hand trembled as she reached for a muffin. "Keith, do you want to go down with us to the rehearsal this afternoon?" said Sally amiably to the little guest. "Oh, I don't think the whole pack of us ought to go!" Ted protested in alarm. "You aren't going to let Janey and Con go, are you, Mother?" "Oh, why not?" Mrs. Toland asked soothingly. Barbara here returned to the discussion with a tragic: "Mother, they _can't_! It would look perfectly awful!" "Well, you don't own the yacht club, you know, Babbie," Ted supplied sweetly. "Well," said Barbara, rising, and speaking quickly in a low voice, "of course the whole family, including Addie and Hee, can troop down there if they want to, but I think it's too bad that I can't do a thing in this family without being tagged by a bunch of _kids_!" The door closed behind her; they could hear her running upstairs. "Now she'll cry; she's getting to be an awful cry baby," said Janey, wide eyed, pleasurably excited. "Doesn't seem very well, does she, Mummie? Not a bit like herself," said the head of the house, raising mild eyebrows. "Now, never mind; she's just a little bit tired and excited over this 'Amazon' thing," Mrs. Toland assured him cheerfully, "and she'll have a little talk with Mother by and by, and be her sweet self again by lunch time!" The little episode was promptly blotted out by the rising tide of laughter and conversation that was usual at breakfast. Miss Toland presently drifted into the study for some letter writing. Jim took a deep porch rocker, and carried off the morning papers. Richie, sitting at his father's left, squared about for one of the eager rambling talks of which he and his father never tired. The doctor's blue eyes twinkled over his theories of religion, science, history, poetry, and philosophy. Richie's lean, colourless face was bright with interest. Ted volunteered, as she often volunteered of late, to go for the mail, and sauntered off under a red parasol, and Mrs. Toland slipped from the table just in time to waylay her oldest son in the hall. "Not going to catch the 9:40, Ned?" she asked. "Sure pop I am!" He was sorry to be caught, and she saw it under his bluff, pleasant manner. "You couldn't take the 10:20 with Dad and Jim?" "I've got to meet Reynolds at half-past ten, Mother," the boy said patiently. "Reynolds!" she frowned. "Don't like my fine big boy to have friends like that--" His eyes warned her. "Friends that aren't as fine and dear and good as he is!" she finished, her hands on his shoulders. "Reynolds is all right," said Ned, bored, and looking coldly beyond her. "And you'll be home for dinner, Ned?" "Sure! Unless the Orpheum should be awfully long. In that case we may get a bite somewhere." "Try to be home for dinner," persisted the mother. And, as if to warrant the claim on his consideration, she added: "I paid the Cutter bill myself, dear, and Dad will pay Jordan next month. I didn't say anything about Cutter, but he begged me to make you _feel_ how wrong it is to let these things run. You have a splendid allowance, Ned," she was almost apologetic, "and there's no necessity of running over it, dear!" "Sure. I'm not going to do that again," Ned said gruffly, uncomfortably. "That's right, dear! And you will--you'll try to be home for dinner?" "Sure I'll try!" and Ned was gone, down through the roses and through the green gate. Mrs. Toland watched him out of sight. Then she trotted off to Hee's domain. Sally straggled out into the garden, with Janey and Constance and the small boy following after. There was great distress because the little girls were all for tennis, and Keith Borroughs frankly admitted that he hated tennis. The Tolands' rambling mansion was built upon so sharp a hill that the garden beds were bulkheaded like terraces, and the paths were steep. Roses--delicious great white roses and the apricot-coloured San Rafael rose--climbed everywhere, and hung in fragrant festoons from the low, scrub-oak trees that were scattered through the garden. Every vista ended with the blue bay, and the green gate at the garden's foot opened directly upon a roadway that hung like a shelf above the water. Sally and the children gathered nasturtiums and cornflowers and ferns for the house. The place had been woodland only a few years ago, the earth was rich with rotting leaves, and all sorts of lovely forest growths fringed the paths. Groups of young oaks and an occasional bay or madrone tree broke up any suggestion of formal arrangement, and there were still wild columbine and mission bells in the shady places. Presently, to the immense satisfaction of her little sisters, Sally dismissed them for tennis, and carried the music-mad small boy off to the old nursery, where he could bang away at an old piano to his heart's content, while she pasted pictures in her camera book, in a sunny window. Now and then she cast a look full of motherly indulgence at the little figure at the piano: the pale, earnest little face; the tumbled black hair, the bony, big, unchildlike hands. The morning slipped by, and afternoon came, to find Barbara welcoming the arriving players at the yacht club, and looking her very prettiest in a gown of striped scarlet and white, and a white hat. Hello, Matty--Hello, Enid--Hello, Bobby--and did any one see Miss Page? Ah, how do you do, Miss Page, awfully good of you to make it. The girls dressed in a square room upstairs, lined with hooks and mirrors. Julia was not self-conscious, because, while different from the crisp snowy whiteness of the other girls' linen, it did not occur to her that her well-worn pink silk underwear, her ornate corset cover, and her shabby ruffled green silk skirt were anything but adequate. Carter Hazzard was not in evidence to-day, to Julia's relief. The rehearsal dragged on and on, everybody thrown out because Miss Dorothy Chase, the girl who was to play Wilhelmina, failed to appear. Julia took the part, when it was finally decided to go on without Dorothy, but by that time it was late, and the weary manager assured them that there must be another rehearsal that evening. Hilariously the young people accepted this decree, and Julia was carried home with the Tolands to dinner. Good-hearted Mrs. Toland could be nothing less than kind to any young girl, and Julia's place at table was next to the kindly old doctor, who only saw an extremely pretty girl, and joked with her, and looked out for her comfort in true fatherly fashion. Julia carried herself with great dignity, said very little, being in truth quite overawed and nervously anxious not to betray herself, and after the first frightened half-hour she enjoyed the adventure thoroughly. The evening rehearsal went much better, a final rehearsal was set for Sunday, and Julia was driven to the ten o'clock boat in the station omnibus, which smelled of leather and wet straw. She sat yawning in the empty ferry building, smiling over her recollection of dinner at the Tolands': the laughter, the quarrels, the joyous confusion of voices. Suddenly struck by the deserted silence of the waiting-room, Julia jumped up and went to the ticket office. "Isn't there a train at 10:03?" The station agent yawned, eyed her with pleasant indifference. "No train now until 12:20, lady," said he. For a moment Julia was staggered. Then she thought of the telephone. A few minutes later she climbed out of the station omnibus again, this time to be warmly welcomed into the Tolands' lamp-lighted drawing-room. Barbara and her mother were still at the yacht club, but the old doctor himself was eagerly apologetic. Doctor Studdiford, Ned, and Richie added their cheerful questions and regrets to the hospitable hubbub, and Sally, who had been at the piano, singing Scotch ballads to her father, took possession of Julia with heartening and obvious pleasure. Sally took her upstairs, lighted a small but exquisitely appointed guest room, found a stiffly embroidered nightgown, a wrapper of dark-blue Japanese crepe, and a pair of straw slippers. Julia, inwardly trembling with excitement, was outwardly calm as she got ready for bed; she hung her clothes in a closet delightfully redolent of pine, and brushed and braided her splendid hair. Sally whisked about on various errands, and presently Mrs. Toland bustled in, brimful of horrified apologies and regrets, and Barbara dawdled after, rolling her belt and starched stock, generally unhooking and unbuttoning. Perhaps the haughty Barbara found the round-eyed, golden-haired girl in a blue wrapper a little more companionable than the dreadful Miss Page, or perhaps she was a little too lonely to-night to be fastidious in her choice of a confidante. At all events, she elected to wander in and out of Julia's room while she undressed, and presently sat on Julia's bed, and braided her dark hair. And if the whole adventure had excited Julia, she was doubly excited now, frantic to win Barbara's friendship, nervously afraid to try. "You're an actress, Miss Page?" asked Barbara, scowling at her hairbrush. "Will be, I guess! I've had dozens of chances to sign up already, but Mama don't want me to be in any rush." The other girl eyed her almost enviously. "I wish I could do something--sometimes," she sighed. And she added, giving Julia a shamefaced grin, "I've got the blues to-night." It was from this second that Julia dated her love for Barbara Toland. A delicious sensation enveloped her--to be in Barbara's confidence--to know that she was sometimes unhappy, too; to be lying in this fragrant, snowy bed, in this enchanting room-- "Well," said Barbara presently, jumping up, "you'll want _some_ sleep. If you hear us rushing about, at the screech of dawn to-morrow, it's because some of us may go out with Dad in the Crow, if there's a breeze. Do you like yachting? Would you care to go?" "I've never been," said Julia. "Oh, well, then, you ought to!" Barbara said with round eyes. "I'll tell you--I'll peep in here to-morrow, and if you're awake I'll give you a call!" she arranged, after a minute's frowning thought. "I sleep awfully sound!" smiled Julia. But she was awake when Barbara, true to her plan, peeped in at five o'clock the next morning, and presently, in a bluejacket's blouse and brief blue skirt, with a white canvas hat on her head, and a boy's old gray jersey buttoned loosely about her, followed muffled shapes through the cold house and into the wet, chilly garden. Richie was going, Sally had the gallant but shivering Jane and the dark-eyed Keith by the hand, and Barbara hung on her father's arm. The waters of the bay were gray and cold; a sharp breeze swept their steely surfaces into fans of ruffled water. The little Crow rocked at her anchor, her ropes and brasswork beaded with dew. Julia, sitting in desperate terror upon a slanting upholstered ledge, felt her teeth chatter, and wondered why she had come. Barbara, Sally, Richie, and their father all fell to work, and presently, a miracle to Julia, the little boat was running toward Richardson's Bay under a good breeze. Presently glorious sunlight enveloped them, flashed from a thousand windows on San Francisco hills, and struck to dazzling whiteness the breasts of the gulls that circled Sausalito's piers. Everything sparkled and shone: the running blue water that slapped the Crow's side, the roofs of houses on the hillside, the green trees that nearly concealed them. Growing every instant warmer and more content, Julia sat back and let her whole body and soul soak in the comfort and beauty of the hour. Her eyes roved sea and sky and encircling hills; she saw the last wisp of mist rise and vanish from the stern silhouette of Tamalpais, and saw an early ferryboat cut a wake of exquisite spreading lacework across the bay. And whenever her glance crossed Sally's, or the doctor's, or Richie's glance, she smiled like a happy child, and the Tolands smiled back. They all rushed into the house, ravenous and happy, for a nine o'clock breakfast, Julia so lovely, in her borrowed clothing and with her bright, loosened hair, that the young men of the family began, without exception, to "show off" for her benefit, as Theodora scornfully expressed it. And there was bacon and rolls and jam for every one, blue bowls of cereal, glass pitchers of yellow cream, smoking hot coffee always ready to run in an amber stream from the spout of the big silver urn. "And you must eat at least four waffles," said Ned, "or my father will never let you come again! He has to drum up trade, you know--" It was all delightful, not the less so because it was all tinged, for Julia, with a little current of something exquisitely painful; not envy, not regret, not resentment, a little of all three. This happy, care-free, sun-flooded life was not for her, how far, far, far from her, indeed! She was here only by accident, tolerated gayly for hospitality's sake, her coming and going only an insignificant episode in their lives. Wistfully she watched Mrs. Toland tying little Constance's sash and straightening her flower-crowned hat for church; wistfully eyed the cheerful, white-clad Chinese cook, grinning as he went to gather lettuces; wistfully she stared across the brilliant garden from her deep porch chair. Barbara, in conference with a capped and aproned maid at the end of a sunny corridor, Sally chatting with Richie, as she straightened the scattered books on the library table, Ted dashing off a popular waltz with her head turned carelessly aside to watch the attentive Keith; all these to Julia were glimpses of a life so free, so full, so invigorating as to fill her with hopeless longing and admiration. All her affectation and arrogance dropped from her before their simple, joyous naturalness. Julia had no feeling of wishing to impress them, to assert her own equality. Instead she genuinely wanted them to like her; she carried herself like the little girl she looked in her sailor blouse, like the little girl she was. At twelve o'clock a final rehearsal of "The Amazons" was held at the yacht club, and to-day Julia entered into her part with zest, her enthusiasm really carrying the performance, as the appreciative "Matty" assured her. She had the misfortune to step on a ruffle of her borrowed white petticoat, at the very close of the last act, and slipped into the dressing-room to pin it up as soon as the curtain descended. The dressing-room was deserted. Julia found a paper of pins, and, putting her foot up on a chair, began to repair the damage as well as she could. The day was warm, and only wooden shutters screened the big window that gave on one of the club's wide porches. Julia, humming contentedly to herself, presently became aware that there were chairs just outside the window, and girls in the chairs--Barbara Toland and Ted, and Miss Grinell and Miss Hazzard, and one or two Julia did not know. "Yes, Mother's a darling," Barbara was saying. "You know she didn't get this up, Margaret; she had _nothing_ to do with it, and yet she's practically carrying the whole responsibility now! She'll be as nervous as we are to-morrow night!" Julia pinned on serenely. It was in no code of hers to move out of hearing. "The only thing she really bucked at was when she found Miss Page at our house last night," Ted said. "Mother's no snob--but I wish you could have seen her face!" "Was she perfectly awful, Ted?" somebody asked. "Who, Miss Page? No-o, she wasn't perfectly awful--yes, she was pretty bad," Theodora admitted. "Wasn't she, Babbie?" "Oh, well"--Barbara hesitated--"she's--of course she's terribly common. Just the second-rate actress type, don't you know?" "Did she call your Mother 'ma'am'?" giggled Enid Hazzard. "Do you remember when she said 'Yes, ma'am?' And did she say 'eyether,' and 'between you and I' again?" Something was added to this, but Julia did not catch it. The girls laughed again. "Listen," said Ted, "this is the richest yet! Last night Sally said to her, 'Breakfast's at nine, Miss Page; how do you like your bath?' and she looked at Sally sort of surprised and said, '_I_ don't want a bath!'" "Oh, I don't think that's fair, Teddy," Barbara protested; "she's never had any advantages; it's a class difference, that's all. She's simply not a lady; she never will be. You'd be the same in her place." "Oh, I would not! I wouldn't mark my eyebrows and I wouldn't wear such dirty clothes, and I wouldn't try to look twenty-five--" Ted began. Again there was a quick commentary that Julia missed, and another laugh. Then Barbara said: "Poor kid! And she looked so sweet in some of Sally's things." Julia, still bent over her ruffle, did not move a muscle from the instant she first heard her name until now, when the girls dismissed the subject with a laugh. She felt as if the house were falling about her, as if every word were a smashing blow at her very soul. She felt sick and dizzy, cold and suddenly weak. She walked across the room to the door, and stood there with her hand on the knob, and said in a whisper: "Now, what shall I do? What shall I do?" At first she thought she would hide, then that she would run away. Then she knew what she must do: she opened the dressing-room door, and walked unchallenged through the big auditorium. Groups of chattering people were scattered about it; somebody was banging the piano; nobody paid the least attention to Julia as she went down the stairs, and started to walk to the Toland house. She was not thinking now. She only wanted to get away. Nobody stopped her. The house was deserted. A maid put her head in Julia's door, and finding Julia dressing immediately apologized. "I beg your pardon, Miss Page! I thought--" "That's all right," said Julia quietly. She was very pale. "Will you tell Mrs. Toland that I had to take the two o'clock boat?" "Yes'm. You won't be here for dinner?" "No," said Julia, straining to make a belt meet. "Could I bring you a cup of tea or a sandwich?" "Oh, no, thank you!" The maid was gone. Julia went down through the house quietly, a few moments later. Her breath came quick and short until she was fairly on the boat, with Sausalito slipping farther and farther into the background. Even then her mind was awhirl, and fatigue and perhaps hunger, too, made it impossible to think seriously. Far easier to lean back lazily in the sun, and watch the water slip by, and make no attempt to control the confused, chaotic thoughts that wheeled dreamily through her brain. Now and then memory brought her to a sudden upright position, brought the hot colour to her face. "I don't care!" Julia would say then, half aloud. "They're nothing to me and I'm nothing to them; and good riddance!" May--but it was like a midsummer afternoon in San Francisco. A hot wind blew across the ferry place; papers and chaff swept before it. Julia's skirt was whisked about her knees, her hat was twisted viciously about on her head. She caught a reflection of herself in a car window, dishevelled, her hat at an ugly angle, her nose reddened by the wind. Mrs. Tarbury's house, when she got to it, presented its usual Sunday afternoon appearance. The window curtains were up at all angles in the dining-room, hot sunshine streamed through the fly-specked panes, the draught from the open door drove a wild whirl of newspapers over the room. Cigarette smoke hung heavy upon the air. Julia peeped into the dark kitchen; the midday meal was over, and a Japanese boy was hopelessly and patiently attacking scattered heaps of dishes and glassware. The girl was hungry, but the cooling wreck of a leg of mutton and the cold vegetables swimming in water did not appeal to her, and she went slowly upstairs, helping herself in passing to no more substantial luncheon than two soda crackers and a large green pickle. Mrs. Tarbury, dressed in a loose kimono, with her bare feet thrust into well-worn Juliet slippers, was lying across her bed, in the pleasant leisure of Sunday afternoon, a Dramatic Supplement held in one fat ringed hand, her head supported by her pillows in soiled muslin cases, and several satin and velvet cushions from a couch. In the room also were Connie Girard and Rose Ransome, who had a bowl of soapsuds and several scissors and orange-wood sticks on the table between them, and were manicuring each other very fastidiously. A third actress, a young Englishwoman with a worn, hard face, rouged cheeks, and glittering eyes, was calling, with her little son, upon Mrs. Tarbury. "Hello, darling!" said the lady of the house herself, as Julia came in. The girls gave her an affectionate welcome, and Julia was introduced to the stranger. "Mrs. Cloke is my real name," said the Englishwoman briskly. "But you'd know me better as Alice Le Grange, I daresay. You'll have heard of my little sketches--the Mirror gave Mr. Cloke and I a whole page when first we came to this country, and we had elegant bookings--elegant. I'd my little flat in New York all furnished, and," she said to Mrs. Tarbury, "I was used to _everything_--the managers at home all knew me, and all, you know--" She laughed with some bitterness. "It does seem funny to be out here doing this," she added. "But there was the kiddy to consider--and, as I told you, there was trouble!" "Parties who used their influence to get 'em out!" said Miss Girard darkly, in explanation, with a glance at Julia. "Favouritism--" "And jealousy," added Alice Le Grange. Julia was sympathetic, but not deeply impressed. She had heard this story in many forms before. She attracted the attention of little Eric Cloke, and showed him the pictures of the Katzenjammer Kids and Foxy Grandpa in the newspaper. Later she accompanied Rose and Connie to their room, put on loose clothing, and lay on her bed watching them dress. The girls were to dine together, with two admirers, and urged Julia to ask a third man, and come, too. Julia refused steadily; she was very quiet and the others thought her tired. She lay on her side, one hand falling idle over the edge of the bed, her serious, magnificent eyes moving idly from Connie's face to Rose's, and roving over the room. Hot sunlight poured through the dirty windows and the torn curtains of Nottingham lace, and flamed on the ugly wallpaper and the flawed mirrors. A thousand useless knickknacks made the room hideous; every possible surface was strewn with garments large and small, each bureau was a confusion of pins and brushes, paste and powder boxes, silk stockings and dirty white gloves, cologne bottles and powdered circles of discoloured chamois, hair kids and curls of false hair, handkerchiefs and hat pins, cheap imitations of jewellery, cheap bits of lace, sidecombs, veils and belts and collars, and a hundred other things, all wound up in an indistinguishable mass. From these somewhat sodden heaps Connie and Rose cheerfully selected what they needed, leaning over constantly to inspect their faces closely in the mirrors. Julia watched them with a sudden, new, and almost terrifying distaste growing in her heart. How dirty and shiftless and common--yes, common--these girls were! Julia felt sick with the force of the revelation. She saw Connie lace her shabby pink-brocade corset together with a black shoestring; she saw Rose close with white thread a great hole in the heel of a black silk stocking. Their crimped hair nauseated her, their rouge and powder and cologne. She could hardly listen in patience to their careless and sometimes coarse chatter. And when they were gone she still lay there, thinking--thinking-- thinking! The sunlight crept lower and lower over the room's disorder; its last bright triangle was gone, twilight came, and the soft early darkness. Mrs. Tarbury presently called Julia, in mellifluous accents, and the girl pulled herself stiffly from the bed, and went blinking down to an improvised supper. They two were alone in the big house, and fell into intimate conversation over their sardines and coffee and jam, discussing the characters of every person in the house with much attention to trivial detail. At nine o'clock some friends came in to see Mrs. Tarbury, and Julia went upstairs again. She lighted the bedroom, and began idly to fold and straighten the clothes that were strewn about everywhere. But she very speedily gave up the task: there were no closets to hang things in, and many things were too torn or dirty to be hung up, anyway! Julia went down one flight of stairs to the nearest bathroom, in search of hot water, but both faucets ran cold, and she went upstairs again. She hunted through Connie's bureau and Rose's for a fresh nightgown, but not finding one, had to put on the limp and torn garment one of the girls had loaned her a week or two before. Now she sat down on the edge of her bed, vaguely discouraged. Tears came to her eyes, she did not quite know why. She opened a novel, and composed herself to read, but could not become interested, and finally pushed up the window the two inches that the girls approved, turned out the lights, and jumped into bed. She would want her beauty sleep for "The Amazons" to-morrow night. Julia had been fully determined, when she got home, to abandon the amateur company, to fail them at the very hour of their performance, but a casual word from Connie had caused her to change her mind. "Don't you be a fool and get in Dutch with Artheris!" Connie had said, and upon sober reflection Julia had found the advice good. But she got no beauty sleep that night. She lay hour after hour wakeful and wretched, the jumbled memories of the last twenty-four hours slipping through her mind in ceaseless review: the green, swift-rushing water, with gulls flying over it; the coffee pot reflecting a dozen joyous young faces; the garden bright with roses-- And then, with sickening regularity, the clubhouse and the girls' voices-- How she hated them all, Julia said to herself, raising herself on one elbow to punch her sodden pillow, and sending a hot, restless glance toward the streak of bright light that forced its way in from a street lamp. How selfish, how smug, how arrogant they were, with their daily baths, and their chests full of fresh linen, and their assured speech! What had Sally and Theodora Toland ever done to warrant their insufferable conceit? Why should they have lovely parents and an ideal home, frocks and maids and delightful meals, while she, Julia, was born to the dirt and sordidness of O'Farrell Street? Barbara--but no, she couldn't hate Barbara! The memory of that moment of confidence last night still thrilled Julia to her heart's core. Barbara had been kind to her in the matter of Carter Hazzard, had defended her to-day, in her careless, indifferent fashion. Julia's heart ached with fierce envy of Barbara, ached with fierce longing and admiration. She tortured herself with a picture of the charm of Barbara's life: her waking in the sunshine, her breakfast eaten between the old doctor and the young, her hours at her pretty writing-desk, on the porch, at the piano. Always dignified, always sweet and dainty, always adored. Well, she, Julia, should be an actress, a great actress. But even as she flung herself on her back and stared sternly up at the ceiling, resolving it, her heart failed her. It was a long road. Julia was fifteen; she must count upon ten or fifteen years at least of slavery in stock companies, of weeks spent in rushing from one cheap hotel to another, of associating with just such women as Connie and Rose. No one that she knew, in the profession, had bureaus full of ruffled fresh linen, had a sunshiny breakfast table with flowers on it-- Julia twisted about on her arm and began to cry. She cried for a long time. True, she could marry Mark, and Mark would be rich some day. But would Barbara Toland Studdiford--for Julia had married them as a matter of course--ever stoop to notice Julia Rosenthal? No, she wouldn't marry Mark. Then there was her mother's home, over the saloon. Julia finally went to sleep planning, in cold-blooded childish fashion, that if her father died, and left her mother a really substantial sum of money, she would persuade Emeline to take a clean, bright little flat somewhere, and leave this neighbourhood forever. "And we could keep a few boarders," thought Julia drowsily, "and I will learn to cook, and have nice little ginghams, like Janey's--" The amateur performance of "The Amazons" duly took place on the following night, with a large and fashionable audience packing the old Grand Opera House, and society reporters flitting from box to box between the acts. Julia found the experience curiously flat. She had no opportunity to deliver to Barbara a withering little speech she had prepared, and received no attention from any one. The performers were excited and nervous, each frankly bent upon scoring a personal and exclusive success, and immediately after the last act they swarmed out to greet friends in the house, and Babel ensued. Walking soberly home with Mark at half-past eleven, with her cheque in her purse, Julia decided bitterly that she washed her hands of them all; she was done with San Francisco's smart set, she would never give another thought to a single one of them. CHAPTER V Days of very serious thinking followed this experience. The face of the world was changed. Much that had been unnoticed, or taken for granted, became insufferable to Julia now. She winced at Connie's stories, she looked with a coldly critical eye at Mrs. Tarbury's gray hair showing through a yellow "front"; the sights and sounds of the boarding-house sickened her. She was accustomed to helping Mrs. Tarbury with the housework, not in any sense as payment for her board--for never was hospitality more generously extended--but merely because she was there, and idle, and energetic; but she found this a real hardship now. The hot, close bedrooms, odorous of perfume and cigarette smoke, the grayish sheets and thin blankets were odious to her; she longed to set fire to the whole, and start afresh, with clean new furnishings. Presently Connie asked her if she would care to talk to a manager about going on an "eleven weeks' circuit," as assistant to a sleight-of-hand performer. "Twenty a week," said Connie, "and a whole week in Sacramento and another in Los Angeles. All you have to do is wear a little suit like a page, and hand him things. Rose says he looks like an old devil--I haven't seen him, but you can sit on him easy enough. And the Nevilles are making the same trip, and she's a real nice woman. Not much, Ju, but it's a start, and I think we could land it for you." "Yes, I know," Julia said vaguely. "Well, wake up!" said Connie briskly. "Do you want it?" "I'd rather wait until Mama gets here," the younger girl decided uncomfortably. And that afternoon, in vague hope of news of her mother, she took a Mission Street car and went out to call on her grandmother. As usual, old Mrs. Cox's cheap little house reeked of soapsuds and carbolic acid. Julia, admitted after she had twisted the little gong set in the panels of the street door, kissed her grandmother in a stifling dark hall. Mrs. Cox was glad of company, she limped ahead into her little kitchen, chattering eagerly of her rheumatism and of family matters. She told Julia that May's children, Evelyn and Marguerite, were with her, Marguerite holding a position as dipper in a nearby candy factory, and Evelyn checking in an immense steam laundry. "How many children _has_ Aunt May now?" Julia asked, sighing. "She's got too many!" Mrs. Cox said sharply. "A feller like Ed, who never keeps a position two weeks running, has got no business to raise such a family! For a while May had two of the boys in a home--" "Oh, really!" said Julia, distressed. "Lloyd and Elmer--yes, but they're home again now," the old woman pursued. "May felt dreadful when they went, but I guess she wasn't so awfully glad to get them back. Boys make a lot of work." "Elmer and Lloyd, and then there was Muriel, and another baby?" Julia asked. "Muriel and Geraldine, and then the baby, Regina." "Has Aunt May seven children?" Julia asked, awed. Mrs. Cox delayed the brewing of a pot of tea while she counted them with a bony knotted hand. Then she nodded. Julia digested the fact in frowning silence. "Grandma," said she presently, "did you ever have enough money?" Mrs. Cox, now drinking her tea from a saucer, smiled toothlessly. "Oh, sure," said she, with a cackle of laughter, "Why, there's nobody knows it, but I'm rich!" But immediately the sorry joke lost flavour. The old woman sighed, and into her wrinkled face and filmed eyes there came her usual look of patient and unintelligent endurance. "I've never yet had a dollar that didn't have to do two dollars' work," said she, suddenly, in a mighty voice, staring across the kitchen, and lifting one hand as if she were taking an oath. "I've never laid down at night when I wasn't so tired my back was splitting. I've never had no thanks and no ease--the sixty years of my life! There's some people meant to be rich, Julia, and some that'll be poor the longest day of their lives, and that's all there is to it!" "I know--but it don't seem fair," Julia mused. She presently went on an errand for her grandmother, and came back with sausages and fresh pulpy bread and large spongy crullers from the grocery. By this time the windy summer twilight was closing in, and the homegoing labourers and factory hands were filing home through the dirty streets. Julia found her two cousins in the lamp-lighted kitchen, Evelyn rather heavy and coarse looking, Marguerite reedy and thin, both wearing an unwholesome pallor. They made a little event of her coming, and the three girls chatted gayly enough throughout the meal, which was eaten at the kitchen table and washed down with strong tea. Julia's grandfather, a gnarled old man in a labourer's rough clothes, who reeked of whiskey, mumbled his meal in silence, and afterward went into the room known as the parlour, snarling as he went that some one must come in and light his lamp. Julia went in with Evelyn to the rather pitiful room: a red rug was on the floor, and there were two chairs and a cheap little table, besides the big chair in which the old man settled himself. "Ain't he going out, Grandma?" said Evelyn, returning to the kitchen, and exchanging a rueful look with Marguerite. "Well, I thought he was!" Mrs. Cox made a pilgrimage to the parlour door, and returned confident. "He'll go out!" she said reassuringly. "Comp'ny coming?" Julia asked smilingly. The other girls giggled and looked at each other. "Well, why couldn't Grandpa sit in the kitchen?" the girl asked. "There's a better light out here!" "Catch him doing anything decent," Evelyn said, and Marguerite added: "And, Ju, he'll sit there sometimes just to be mean, and he'll take his shoes off, and put his socks up----" "And nights he knows we want the parlour he'll stay in on purpose," Evelyn supplemented eagerly. "I wouldn't _stand_ for it," Julia asserted. "Pa's awfully cranky," Mrs. Cox said resignedly. "He's always been that way! You cook him corn beef--that's the night he wanted pork chops; sometimes he'll snap your head off if you speak, and others he'll ask you why you sit around like a mute and don't talk. Sometimes, if you ask him for money, he'll put his hand in his pocket real willing, and other times for weeks he won't give you a cent!" "I wouldn't put up with it," said Julia again. "What does he _do_ with his money?" "Oh, he treats the boys, and sometimes, when he's drunk, they'll borrow it off him," said his wife. "Pa's always open-handed with the boys!" Evelyn, who had washed her coarse, handsome face at the kitchen sink, began now to arrange her hair with a small comb that had been wedged into the sinkboard. Marguerite, having completed similar operations, offered to walk with Julia to the Mission Street car. "The worst of Grandpa is this," said Marguerite, on the way, and Julia glancing sideways under a street lamp surprised an earnest and most winning expression on her cousin's plain, pale face, "he don't give Grandma any money, d'you see?--and that means that Ev and I have to give her pretty much what we get, and so we can't help Mamma, and that makes me awfully blue." "But--but Uncle Ed's working, Rita?" "Pop works when he can, Ju. Work isn't ever very steady in his line, you know. But he don't drink any more, Mamma says, only--there's five children younger'n we are, you know--" "Sure," said Julia, heavy oppressed. But Marguerite was cheered at this point by encountering two pimply and embarrassed youths, and Julia, climbing a moment later into a Mission Street car, looked back to see her cousin walking off between the two masculine forms, and heard their loud laughter ring upon the night. About ten days later, unannounced, Emeline came home, and with her came a stout, red-faced, grayhaired man, in whom Julia was aghast to find her father. They reached Mrs. Tarbury's at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and Julia, coming in from a call on a theatrical manager, found them in the dining-room. George had been very ill, and moved ponderously and slowly. He looked far older than Julia's memory of him. There were sagging red pockets under his eyes, and his heavy jowls were darkened with a day's growth of gray stubble. He and Emeline had had a complete reconciliation, and entertained Mrs. Tarbury with the history of their remarriage and an outline of their plans. George took a heavy, sportive interest in his pretty girl, but Julia could not realize their relationship sufficiently to permit of any liberties. She smiled an uneasy, perfunctory smile when George kissed her, and moved away from the arm he would have kept about her. "Don't liked to be kissed?" asked George. "Oh, I don't mind," said Julia, in a lifeless voice, and with averted eyes. "Did you go to the flat, Mama?" she asked, clearing her throat. "I did," Emeline answered, biting a loose thread from a finger of her dirty white gloves. "I got Toomey's rent, and told them that we might want the room on the first." "Going to give up the flat?" Julia asked, in surprise. "Well"--Emeline glanced at her husband--"it's this way, Ju," said she: "Papa can't stand the city, sick as he is now--" George coughed loosely in confirmation of this, and shook his head. "And Papa's got a half interest in a little fruit ranch down in Santa Clara Valley," Emeline pursued. "So I'm going to take him down there for a little while, and nurse him back to real good health." "My God, Em, you'll die!" Mrs. Tarbury said frankly. "Why'n't you go somewhere where there's something doing?" "My sporting days are over, Min," George said with mournful satisfaction. "No more midnight suppers in mine!" "Nor mine, either. I guess I'm old enough to settle down," Emeline added cheerfully. She and Mrs. Tarbury exchanged a look, and Julia knew exactly what concessions her mother had made before the reconciliation; knew just how sincere this unworldly wifely devotion was. "Doc says I am to have fresh air, and light, nourishing foods, and quiet nights," George explained, gravely important. "And what about Julie?" asked Mrs. Tarbury. "Well, we thought we'd leave Julie here, Min," Emeline began comfortably, "until we see if it works. Then in, say, a month--" "Mama, you can't!" Julia interrupted, cheeks hot with shame. "Aunt Min's got to rent that room--" "You see how it is, Em," the lady of the house explained regretfully: "Connie's gone off on the road now, and Rose Ransome's gone to Virginia City, and there's a party and wife that'll give me twenty a month for the room. And as it happens I'm full up now, Em--" "Well, of course we'll pay--" George was beginning, somewhat haughtily, but Emeline, who had grown rather red, interrupted: "It don't make the slightest difference," she said, with spirit. "I guess I'm the last woman in the world to want my child to stay where she isn't welcome!" "It ain't that at all, Em," Mrs. Tarbury threw in pacifically, but Emeline was well launched now. "If it hadn't been that George was all but passing away with kidney trouble," Emeline said, her voice rising, "I never would of let such an arrangement go on for five minutes! But there was days when we never knew from hour to hour that George wasn't dying, and what with having him moved and that woman holding up his clothes, and telling the doctor lies about me, I guess I had troubles enough without worrying about Julie. But I want to tell you right now, Min," said Emeline, with kindly superiority, "that this isn't the kind of a house I'm crazy about having my daughter in, anyway. It ain't you, so much--" "Ha! that's good!" Mrs. Tarbury interpolated, with a sardonic laugh. "But you know very well that such girls as Rosie and Con--" Emeline rushed on. "Oh, my God, Em!" Mrs. Tarbury began in a low voice rich with feeling, but Julia took a hand. "Don't be such a fool, Aunt Min!" she said, going over to sit on an arm of Mrs. Tarbury's chair, and putting a caressing arm about her shoulders. "And cut it out, Mama! Aunt Min's been kinder to me than any one else, and you know it--and I've felt pretty darn mean living here day after day! And now I say if Aunt Min has a chance to rent her room--" "God knows you're welcome to that room as long as you'll stay, Julie," Mrs. Tarbury said tremulously; "it's only--" "If every one was as good to me as you are, Aunt Min!" Julia said, beginning to cry. Mrs. Tarbury burst into sobs, and they clung together. "I never meant that you wasn't awfully good to her, Min," Emeline said stiffly. Then her eyes watered, and she, too, began to cry, and groped for her handkerchief. "I'm just worn out with worrying and taking care of George, I guess," sobbed Emeline, laying her head on the arm she flung across a nearby table. "Don't cry, Mama!" Julia gulped, leaving Mrs. Tarbury's lap to come and pat her mother's shoulder. Emeline convulsively seized her, and their wet cheeks touched. "If any one ever says that I don't appreciate what you've done for me and mine," choked Emeline, "it's a lie!" "Well, it didn't _sound_ like you, Em," Mrs. Tarbury said, drying eyes between sniffs. Emeline immediately went over and kissed her, and all three laughed shakily over a complete reconciliation, which was pleasingly interrupted by George's gallant offer to take the whole crowd to dinner, if they didn't mind his eating only tea and toast. Still, it was decided that Julia should not stay at Mrs. Tarbury's, but should spend the next week or two with her grandmother in the Mission. Julia's quiet acceptance of this arrangement was both unexpected and pleasing to her parents. But as a matter of fact the girl was rather dazed, at this time, too deeply sunk in a miserable contemplation of her own affairs to be conscious of the immediate discomfort of the moment. She had dreamed many a happy dream, as the years went by, of her father: had thought he would claim her some day, be proud of her. She had fancied a little home circle of which she would be the centre and star, spoiled alike by father and mother. Dearer than any dream of a lover had been to Julia this hope for days to come, when she should be a successful young actress, with an adoring Daddy to be proud of her. Now the dream was clouded; her father was an old man, self-absorbed; her mother--but Julia had always known her mother to be both selfish and mercenary. More than this, her little visit in Sausalito had altered her whole viewpoint. Ignorant of life as she was, and bewildered by the revelations of that visit, she was still intelligent enough to feel an acute discontent with her old world, an agonizing longing for that better and cleaner and higher existence. How to grasp at anything different from life as it was lived in her mother's home--in her grandmother's, in Mrs. Tarbury's--Julia had not the most remote idea. Until a few months ago she had not known that she wanted anything different. She brooded over the problem night and day; sometimes her hours of gloomy introspection were interrupted by bursts of rebellious fury. She would _not_ bear it, she would _not_ be despised and obscure and ignorant, when, so close to her, there were girls of her own age to whom Fate had been utterly kind; it was not her fault, and it was not _right_--it was not right to despise her for what she could not help! But usually her attitude was of passive if confused endurance. Julia pored over the society columns of the Sunday papers, in these days, and when she came across the name of Barbara Toland or Enid Hazzard, it was as if a blow had been struck at her heart. Barbara's face, smiling out at her from a copy of the News Letter, made Julia wretched for a whole day, and the mere sight of the magazine that contained it was obnoxious to her for days to come. Walking with Mark, she saw in some Kearney Street window an enlarged photograph of a little yacht cutting against a stiff breeze, and felt a rush of unwelcome memories suddenly assail her. Mark was very much the devoted lover just now, but the contemplation of marriage with Mark never for a moment entered Julia's head. She had really liked him much better when he was only Hannah's big brother, who ignored all small girls in kindly, big-boy fashion. His adoring devotion embarrassed her, and his demand for a definite answer to his suggestion of marriage worried and perhaps a little frightened her. One summer Sunday Mark asked her to go to the Park with him, and the two made the trip on a Geary Street dummy front, and wandered through wide, sunny stretches of lawn and white roadway to the amphitheatre, where several thousand persons of all ages and conditions were already listening to the band. Benches were set in rows under a grove of young maple and locust trees, and Julia and Mark, sauntering well up to the front, found seats, and settled themselves to listen. Julia, enjoying the sunshine and the good hour, looked lazily at the curiously variegated types about them: young men who lay almost horizontally in their seats, their eyes shut, newspapers blowing about their feet; toddling babies in Sunday white; young fathers and mothers with tiny coats laid across their laps; groups of middle-aged Teutons critically alert, and, everywhere, lovers and lovers and lovers. Mark was pleasantly aware that his companion's beauty made her conspicuous, even though Julia was plainly, almost soberly, dressed to-day, and showed none of her usual sparkle and flash. She wore a trim little gown of blue serge, with a tiny white ruffle about its high collar for its only relief, her gloves were black, her small hat black, and she wore no rings, no chains, and no bangles, a startling innovation for Julia. The change in her appearance, and some more subtle change in face and voice and manner, affected Mark like a strong wine. "Do you know you're different from what you uster be, Julie?" he said, laying his arm about her shoulders, on the back of the bench, and squaring about so that his handsome black eyes could devour her. "Getting older, maybe," Julia smiled indifferently. "I'll be sixteen in no time, now!" "My mother was only fifteen when she was married," Mark said, in a deep and shaken voice, yet with pride and laughter in his eyes. Julia flushed and looked at the toe of her shoe. "Well, what about it--eh?" Mark pursued in an eager undertone. Julia was silent. "What about it?" he said again. "Why--why, I don't know," Julia stammered, uncomfortably, with a nervous and furtive glance about her; anywhere but at his face. "Suppose I _do_ know?" he urged, tightening a little the arm that layabout her. "Suppose I know for us both?" Julia straightened herself suddenly, evading the encircling arm. "Don't, Mark!" she pleaded, giving him a glimpse of wet blue eyes. "I'm not teasing you, darling," he said tenderly. "I'm not going to tease you! But you do love me, Julia?" A silence, but she tightened the hold of the little glove that rested on his free hand. "Don't you, Julie?" he begged. "Why--you know I do, Mark!" the girl said, and both began to laugh. "But then what's the matter?" Mark asked, serious again. "Well--" Julia looked all about her, and finally brought her troubled eyes to rest on his. "Well, what, you darling?" "Well, it's just this, Mark. I don't know whether I can get it over to you." The girl interrupted herself for a little puzzled laugh. "I don't know that I can get it over to myself," she said. "But it's this: I feel as if I didn't know _myself_ yet, d'ye see? I don't know what I want, myself, and of course I don't know what I want my husband to be like--d'ye see, Mark? I--I feel as if I didn't know _anything_--I don't know what's good and what's just common. I haven't read books, I haven't had any one to tell me things, and show me things!" She turned to him eyes that he was amazed to see were brimming again. "My mother never told me about things," she burst out incoherently, "about how to talk, and taking baths--and not using cologne!" Mark could not quite follow this argument, but he was quick with soothing generalities. "Aw, pshaw, Julie, as if you aren't about as good as they make 'em, just as you are! Why, I'm crazy about you--I'm crazy about the way you look and about the way you act; you're good enough for _me_! Julie," his voice sank again, "Julie, won't you let me pick out a little flat somewheres? Pomeroy said I could have any one of the old squares for nothing; we could get some rugs and chairs from the People's Easy Payment Company. Just you and me, Julie; what do you think?" "I-I'd like to have a cute little house," said Julia, with a shaky smile. "Sure you would! And a garden--" "Oh, I'd love a little garden!" The girl smiled again. "Well, then, why not, Julia?" She looked at him obliquely. "Suppose I stopped loving you, Mark?" Mark gave a great laugh. "Once I have you, Ju, I'll risk it!" Child that she was, a glimpse of that complete possession stained her cheeks crimson. "I have to go down to Mama in Santa Clara next week," she submitted awkwardly. "Well, go down. But--how about New Year's, Julie? Will you marry me then?" Julia got up, and they walked away across the soft green of the grass. "I don't honestly know what I want to do, Mark," she said a little drearily. "I'm not crazy to go to Santa Clara, and yet it's something awful--living at my grandmother's house! I'd like to kill my grandfather, I know that. He's the meanest old man I ever saw. I suppose I could keep at Artheris for an engagement--he's awfully decent--but now that Rose and Connie have gone, I have to go round alone, and--it isn't that I'm afraid of anything, but I simply don't seem to care any more! I don't believe I want to be an actress. Artheris offered me small parts with the Sacramento Star Stock, playing fourteen weeks and twenty plays, this winter, but I thought of getting up there, and having to hunt up a boarding-house--" Her voice sank indifferently. "I don't believe I'd take anything less than ingenue," she added presently. "Florence Pitt played ingenue in stock when she was only fifteen!" "You could work up, Ju," Mark suggested, honestly anxious to console. "Yes, the way Connie and Rose have!" the girl answered dryly. "Con's been in the business six years and Rose nine!" Her eyes travelled the blue spaces of the summer sky. "I wish I could go to New York," she said vaguely. "They say New York is jam-packed with girls hanging round theatrical agencies," Mark submitted, to which Julia answered with a dispirited, "I know!" George had promised to send five dollars each week to old Mrs. Cox for Julia's board, so that her stay in the Mission Street house was agreeable for more than one reason, and her cousins understood perfectly that Julia was to remain idle while they continued to be self-supporting. They had no room in their crowded lives for envy of the prettier and more fortunate Julia, but Julia vaguely envied them, seeing them start off for work every morning, and joined by other girls and young men as they reached the corner. Evelyn and Marguerite had each an admirer, and between the romance of their evenings and the thousand little episodes of the factory day, they seemed to find life cheerful enough. Julia tried, early in her stay, to make the room she shared with her cousins, and her grandmother's kitchen, a little more attractive. But the material to her hand was not very easily improved. In the bare bedroom there was an iron bed, large enough to be fairly comfortable for three tenants, two chairs, a washstand, and a chest of drawers that would not stand straight. The paper was light, and streaked with dirt and mould, and the bare wooden floor was strewn with paper candy bags and crumpled programs from cheap theatres. There were no curtains at the two windows, and the blue-green roller shades were faded by the sun. Not a promising field for a reformer whose ideal was formed on a memory of the Tolands' guest room! The kitchen was quite as bad; worse in the sense that while Julia might do as she pleased in the bedroom, her grandmother resented any interference in what old Mrs. Cox regarded as her own domain. The old woman found nothing amiss in the dirty newspapers that covered the table, the tin of melting grease on the stove, the odds and ends of rags and rope and clothespins and stockings that littered the chairs and floor, the flies that walked on the ceiling and buzzed over the sugar bowl. Julia quite enraged her on that morning that she essayed to clean a certain wide shelf that, crowded to its last inch, hung over the sink. "Do you need this, Grandma--can I throw this away?" the girl said over and over, displaying a nearly empty box of blacking, a moist bag tightly rolled over perhaps a pound of sugar, a broken egg beater, a stopped alarm clock, a bottle of toothache drops, a dog's old collar, a cracked saucer with a cake of brown soap tightly adhering to it, a few dried onions, a broken comb, the two halves of a broken vase, and a score of similarly assorted small articles. "Jest don't meddle with 'em, Julia," Mrs. Cox said over and over again uneasily. "I'm going to give all that a thorough cleaning when I get around to it!" She was obviously relieved when Julia gave the whole thing up as a bad job, and went back to her aimless wandering about the house. Mrs. Cox never went out except to church, but now and then Julia went down to Mrs. Tarbury's and vaguely discussed the advisability of taking a theatrical engagement, exactly as if several very definite offers were under consideration. Just at this time Julia's youngest uncle, Chester Cox, wrote his mother from the big prison at San Quentin that he was coming home. The letter, pencilled on two sheets of lined, grayish paper, caused a good deal of discussion between Mrs. Cox, her husband, and her granddaughters. Chester, now about thirty years old, had been pardoned because of late evidence in his favour, when a five-year term for burglary was but one quarter served, but in his old father's eyes a jailbird was a jailbird, and Chester was still in some mysterious way to blame. Mrs. Cox was only concerned because the boy was ill and out of a job and apt to prove a burden, but the three girls, frankly curious about him, nevertheless reserved judgment. He had always been an idler, he had always been a weakling, but if he really were accused falsely, they could champion him still. The day he had set for his return was a Sunday, but he arrived unexpectedly on the Saturday afternoon, to find great trouble in the Mission Street house. Evelyn and Marguerite were free for the afternoon, and were in the kitchen with Julia and their grandmother. It had lately come to Evelyn's ears that her grandfather had been borrowing money on the little property, and old Mrs. Cox was beside herself with anger and fear. The house was her one hope against a destitute old age. She fairly writhed at the contemplation of her husband's treachery in undermining that one stay. While she was slaving and struggling, he had airily disposed of three hundred dollars. She was stifled by the thought. "He'd ought to be sent to jail for it!" the old woman said bitterly. "You can't do it," Evelyn, the bearer of the badnews, assured her impatiently. "Well, he'll see what I can do, when he gets home!" Mrs. Cox muttered. Julia, distressed by the scene, laid her hand over her grandmother's old knotted one, as she sat beside her at the table, but could find no words with which to comfort her. Her soul was sick with this fresh sordid revelation; she felt as if she must scream in another minute of existence in this dreary, dirty house, with the glaring sunshine streaming in the kitchen window and a high summer wind howling outside. The talk was ended by a ring at the door, and Julia went through the dark, stifling passage to admit a lean, pale young man, with a rough growth of light hair on his sunken cheeks, and a curious look of not belonging to his clothes. "It's Uncle Chess, Grandma," said she, leading the way back to the kitchen. Mrs. Cox gave her youngest child a kiss, assuring him that she never would have known him, he looked like a ghost, she said, and Chester sat down and talked a little awkwardly to his mother and nieces. His voice was husky, full of apologetic cadences; he explained painstakingly the chance that had brought him home twenty-four hours early, as if it were the most important thing in the world. Julia, helping her grandmother with preparations for dinner, did not know why she found Chester's presence unendurably trying; she did not know that it was pity that wrung her heart; she only wished he were not there. An hour's talk cheered the newcomer amazingly, as perhaps did also the dinner odours of frying potatoes and bacon. He was venturing upon a history of his wrongs when a damper fell upon the little company with the arrival of the man of the house. Her husband's return brought back in a flood to old Mrs. Cox's heart the memory of his outrageous negotiations regarding the house; the three girls all cordially detested the old man and were silent and ungracious in his presence, and Chester flushed deeply as his father came in, and became dumb. Old Cox made no immediate acknowledgement of the newcomer's arrival, but grunted as he jerked a chair to the table, indicating his readiness for dinner, and dinner was served with all speed. It was only when he had drunk off half a cup of scalding strong tea that the man of the house turned to his last born and said: "So, you're out again?" "I should never have been in!" Chester said, eagerly and huskily. "Yes, I've heard lots of that kind of talk," the old man assured him. "'Cording to what you hear there's a good many up there that never done nothing at all!" Julia saw the son shrink, and a look of infinite wistfulness for a moment darkened his eyes. He was a stupid-looking, gentle-faced fellow, pitiable as a sick child. "Perhaps you'll read these, Pa," he said, fumbling in his pockets for a moment before producing two or three short newspaper clippings from an inner coat pocket. "There--there's the truth of it; it's all there," he said eagerly. "'Cox will immediately be given his freedom--after sixteen months as an innocent victim of the law'--that's what it says!" "I'll read nothin'," the old man said, sweeping back the slips with a scornful hand, his small, deep-set eyes blinking at his son like a monkey's. "Well, all right, all right," Chester answered, his thin face burning again, his voice hoarsely belligerent. "That's the jestice you'll get from your father!" the old woman said, with a cackle. Julia gathered up the newspaper clippings. "Aren't you mean, Grandpa!" she said, indignantly, beginning to read. "Maybe I am, maybe I am," he retorted fiercely. "But you'll find there's no smoke without some fire, my fine lady, and when a boy that's always been a lazy, idle shame to his father and mother gets a taste of blame, you can depend that no newspaper is going to make a saint of him!" "Grandma, don't let him talk that way!" Julia protested, her breast rising and falling. Chester turned to his father. "Maybe if you'd a-give me a better chance," he said sullenly, "maybe if us boys hadn't been kicked around so much, shoved into the first job that came handy, seeing Ma and the girls afraid to breathe while you was in the house--" Both men were now standing, their faces close together. "Well, you ain't going to have another chance here!" the old man shouted. "I'll have no jailbirds settin' around here to be petted and babied! Get that into your head! Don't you let me come into the house and find you here again----" "Pa!" protested Mrs. Cox, fired by the eyes of her granddaughters. "Yes--an' 'Pa'!" he snarled, pulling on his old hat, and opening the kitchen door. "But it'll be Pa on the wrong side of your face if you make any mistake about it! Jailbird!" he muttered to himself, with a final slam at the door. The others looked at each other. "That's a sweet welcome home," said Chester, with a bitter laugh. He was standing, his head lowered; there was bewilderment as well as anger in his look. "Pa's got to be a terrible crank," said Mrs. Cox, returning to her teapot, after a glance through the window at her retiring lord. "He carries on something terrible sometimes." "Well, he won't carry on any longer as far as I am concerned!" Chester said, a little vaguely. "I don't know what's got into Pa!" his wife complained. "Don't you care, Uncle Chess," Marguerite submitted with timid sympathy. "Oh, no, sure I don't care," the man said with a short laugh. "Of course it's nothing to me! A man comes home to his own folks, he's had a tough time--" His voice sank huskily. The sleeves of his coat were too short for him, and Julia noticed how thin his wrists were, as he gathered up his newspaper clippings and restored them to his inside pocket. The women watched him in silence. Presently he stooped down and kissed his mother's forehead, at the edge of her untidy, grizzled hair. "Good-bye, Ma!" he said. "Good-bye, girls!" "It'll be a judgment on your father," Mrs. Cox protested. "I don't know what's gotten into him!" But she made no further objection; she did not get up from her place at table when Chester crossed the kitchen, opened the street door, and went out. "Grandpa's a prince, all right!" said Marguerite then, and Evelyn added, "Wouldn't it give you a pain?" "But I notice that none of us did anything about it!" Julia said bitterly. "If your grandpa found Chess here when he got home to-night, there'd be a reckoning!" the old woman asserted dully. "And what is Uncle Chess supposed to do?" Julia demanded. "I betcher he kills himself," Evelyn submitted. "I betcher he does," her sister agreed. "Well, it'll be on your grandfather's head!" the old woman said. She began to cry, still drinking her tea. "I wonder if he has any money?" speculated Julia. "Where'd he get money?" Evelyn said. Julia, following an uncomfortable impulse, went to the window in the close little parlour and looked out into the street. It was about six o'clock, and still broad day. The wind had died down, but the street was dirty, and the glaring light of the sinking sun fell full on the faces of the home-going stream of men and women. Julia's quick eye found Chester instantly. He had loitered no farther than the corner, a hundred feet away, and was standing there, irresolute, stooped, still wearing his look of vague bewilderment. The girl ran upstairs, and snatched her hat and a light coat. Two minutes later she was downstairs again, the chatelaine bag in which all girls carried their money in those days jumping at her belt. But in those two minutes Chester had disappeared. Julia felt sick with disappointment as she reached the corner only to find him gone. She stood looking quickly about her: up the street, down the street; he was gone. It seemed to the girl that she could not go back to her grandmother's house again; a disgust for everything and everybody in it shook her from head to foot. She was sorry for them, her grandmother, her cousins, but the simple fact remained that they could bear this sort of existence and she could not; it was stifling her; it was killing her. "If they minded things as I do they would change them, somehow!" said Julia to herself, walking on blindly. "My grandmother should never have let things get to such a pass--I can't bear it! The smells and the fights--" She stopped a car, one of the cable cars that ran out into the factory district. Julia had no idea where she was going, nor did she care. She got on because one of the small forward outside seats was empty, and she could sit there comfortably. The car went on and on, through a less and less populated district, but Julia, buried in unhappy thought, paid no attention to route or neighbourhood. "All off!" shouted the conductor presently. Julia had meant to keep her seat for the return trip, but the man's glance at her young beauty annoyed her, and she got off the car. She walked aimlessly along a battered cement sidewalk, between irregularly placed and shabby little houses. These were of too familiar a type to interest Julia, but she presently came to a full stop before a wide, one-story brick building, with a struggling garden separating it from the street, and straggling window boxes at every one of the wide windows. A flight of steps led up from the garden to the pretty white front door, and a neat brass plate, screwed to the cement at the turn of the steps, bore the words: "Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House." It would have been a pretty house anywhere, with its crisp dotted muslin curtains, its trim colonial walls, but in this particular neighbourhood it had an added charm of contrast, and Julia stood before it literally spellbound by admiration, and smitten, too, with that strange sick fascination to which the mere name of Toland subjected her. And while she stood there, Miss Anna Toland came to the door and stood looking down at the street. Julia's heart began to beat very fast, and the blood rushed to her face. She bowed, and Miss Toland bowed. "Oh, Miss Page!" said Miss Toland then, crisply ready with the name and the request. "This is very fortunate! I wonder if you won't come in and help me a moment? I've been trying for one hour to make the hall key work." Julia said nothing. She mounted the steps and followed Miss Toland into the hall. CHAPTER VI The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House, familiarly known by all who had anything to do with it as The Alexander, was small, as neighbourhood houses go, but exceptionally pretty and complete, and financially so well backed by a certain group of San Francisco's society women as to be entirely free from the common trouble of its kind. Miss Toland had built it, and had made it her personal business to interest some of her friends in its success, but she now found herself confronted by an unexpected problem: it seemed impossible to get an experienced woman as resident worker with whom Miss Toland could live in peace. The few women who had been qualified to try the position had all swiftly, quietly, and firmly resigned, with that pained reticence that marks the trained worker. Miss Toland told her committees, with good-humoured tolerance, that Miss Smith or Mrs. Brown had been a splendid person, perfectly splendid, but unable to understand the peculiar conditions that made social work in San Francisco utterly--and totally--different from social work elsewhere. Meanwhile, she did the best she could with volunteer workers, daily bewailing the fact that, without the trained worker, her girls' clubs and classes, her boys' and mothers' clubs, had been difficult to start, and maintained but a languishing existence. She was a sanguine woman, and filled with confidence in the eventual success of The Alexander, and with energy to push it toward a completely fruitful existence, but she herself was inexperienced, and Julia had chanced upon her in a thoroughly discouraged mood. Julia's first aid--in climbing through a transom and opening a stubborn door--being entirely successful, Miss Toland kept her to show her the little establishment, and was secretly soothed and pleased by the girl's delight. The front door opened into a wide square hall, furnished with neat Mission chairs and tables, and with a large brown rug. There were two doors on each side, and a large double door at the back. One door on the right led to a model kitchen, floored in bright blue-and-white linoleum, and with a shining stove, a shining dresser full of blue-and-white china, a tiled sink, a table, and two chairs. The other right-hand door opened into a little committee room, where there were wall closets full of ginghams and boxes of buttons and braid, and more Mission furniture. On the left each door opened into a bedroom, one occupied by Miss Toland and littered by her possessions, one empty and immaculate. The two were joined by a shining little bath. Julia looked at the white bed in the unoccupied room, the white bureau, the white chairs, the white dotted curtains at the windows, the dark-blue rugs on a painted floor, and a gasp of honest admiration broke from her. Miss Toland gave her a quick approving glance, but said nothing. Through the big double door they stepped straight on the stage that filled one end of the tiny auditorium, Miss Toland touching an electric button that flooded the room with light, for Julia's benefit. There were wide windows, curtained in crisp dotted white, all about the hall, and a door at the far end that gave, as Julia afterward learned, on a side street. An upright piano was on the stage, and at one side a flight of three or four steps led down to the hall. The main floor was broken by tables and benches, a hundred sewing bags of blue linen hung on numbered hooks on the wall, and at the far end there were two deep closets for kindergarten materials and sewing supplies. The tour of inspection was ended in the kitchen, where Miss Toland put several paper bags on the table, dropped into a chair, and asked Julia also to be seated. "Well, what do you think of it?" she said, reaching behind her to get a knife from a drawer. With the knife she cut a spongy crust from a loaf of bread, without fairly withdrawing it from the bag, and subtracting a thin pink slice of ham from some oiled paper in another bag, she folded it into the crust and began to eat it. "I picnic here--when I come," said Miss Toland, unembarrassed. "You've had your dinner?" "Oh, yes," said Julia, "but do let me--" And without further words she took two plates from the dresser, served the ham neatly, cut a slice or two of bread, and removed the bags. "Ah, yes, that's _much_ better!" Miss Toland said. "There's tea there. I suppose you couldn't manage a cup?" A deep and peculiar pleasure began to thrill through Julia. She stepped to the entrance hall, laid aside her hat and jacket, and returned to set about tea-making with deftness and quickness. She found a wilted slice of butter in a safe, and set out cups and sugar beside it. Miss Toland stopped eating, and watched these preparations with great satisfaction. Presently she stood up to pin her handsome silk-lined skirt about her hips, and pushed her face veil neatly above the brim of her hat. The water in the white enamelled kettle boiled, and Julia made tea in a blue Japanese pot. "This is _much_ better!" said Miss Toland again. "I get to be a perfect barbarian--eating alone!" She rummaged in a closet. "Here's some jam Sally sent," said she, producing it. "They are always sending me pies and fresh eggs and jelly; they are always afraid of my starving to death." They began the meal again, and this time Julia joined her hostess, and really enjoyed her tea and bread and jam. It was dark now, and they drew the shades at the two street windows and turned on the electric light. Julia knew by some instinct that she need not be afraid of the gray-haired, eccentric, kindly woman opposite; in that very hour she assumed a maternal attitude that was to be the key to her relationship with Miss Toland for many years. The two, neither realizing it, instantly liked each other. Never in her rather reserved little life had Julia shown her heart as she showed it in this hour over the teacups. "So you like it?" said Miss Toland. "It's small, but it's the most complete thing of the kind in the State. I've been scrambling along here as best I might for three months, but as soon as I get a resident head worker, we'll get everything straightened out." She gave her nose a sudden rub with her hand, frowned in a worried fashion. "Girls--regularly appointed girls ought to take care of all this!" she went on, indicating the kitchen with a wave of her hand. "But no! You can't get them to systematize! Now I tell you," she added sternly, "I am going to lay down the law in this house! They do it in other settlement houses, and it shall be done here! Every yard of gingham, every thimble and spool of thread, is going to be _accounted_ for! Do you suppose that at the Telegraph Hill House they allow the children to run about grabbing here and grabbing there--poh! They'd laugh at you!" "Of course," said Julia vaguely. "Classes of the smaller girls should keep this kitchen and bathroom like a _pin_," said Miss Toland sharply. "And, as soon as we get a regular manager in here--Now that's what I tell my sister Sally, that is Mrs. Toland," she broke off to say. "Here's Barbara, home from a finishing school and six months abroad. Why couldn't she step in here? But no! Barbara'll come in now and then if it's a special occasion--" "But she has such wonderful good times at home; she has everything in the world now," Julia said wistfully. Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance; it was as if she saw Julia for the first time. "Barbara?" Barbara's aunt poured herself another cup of tea, and fell into thought for a few moments. Then she set down her cup, straightened herself suddenly, and burst forth: "Barbara! That's one of the most absurd things in the world, you know--the supposition that a girl like Barbara is perfectly happy! Perfectly wretched and discontented, if you ask me!" "Oh, no!" Julia protested. "Oh, yes! Barbara's idle, she's useless, she doesn't know what to do with herself. No girl of her age does. I know, for my mother brought me up in the same way. She got a lot of half-baked notions in school; she had a year of college in which to get a lot more; she came home afraid to go back to college for fear of missing something at home, afraid of staying home for fear of missing something at college; compromised on six months in Europe. Now, here she is, the finished product. We've been spending twelve years getting Barbara ready for something, and, as a result, she's ready for nothing! What does she know of the world? Absolutely nothing! She's never for one instant come in contact with anything real--she can't. She's been so educated that she wouldn't know anything real if she saw it! Mind you," said Miss Toland, fixing the somewhat bewildered Julia with a stern eye, "mind you, I admit it's hard for people of income to bring a girl up sensibly. 'But,' I've said to my sister-in-law, 'hand me over one of the younger girls--I'll promise you that she'll grow up something more than a poor little fashionably dressed doll, looking sidewise out of her eyes at every man she meets, to see whether he'll marry her or not!' Of course there's only one answer to that. I've never married, and I don't know anything about it!" "Miss Toland will marry," Julia submitted. "Perhaps she will," her aunt said. "Perhaps, again, she won't. But at all events, it's a rather flat business, all this rushing about to dinners and dances; it'll last a few years perhaps--then what? I tell you what, my dear, there's only one good thing in this world, and that's _work_--self-expression. It hurts my pride every time I see a nice girl growing older year after year, idle, expensive, waiting for some man to miraculously happen along and take her out of it. I tell you the interesting lives are those of people who've had to work up from the bottom. A working girl may have her troubles, but they're _real_. Why, let's suppose that Barbara marries, that she marries the man her mother has picked out, for example, still she doesn't get away from the tiring, the sickening conventions that all her set has laid down for her! I wish I had my own girlhood to live over--I know that!" finished the older woman, with a gloomy nod. "Miss Toland seems to me to have everything in the world," Julia said, in childish protest. "She's--she's beautiful, and every one loves her. She's always been rich enough to do what she pleased, and go places, and wear what she liked! And--and"--Julia's eyes watered suddenly--"and she's a lady," she added unsteadily. "She's always been told how to do things, she's--she's different from--from girls who have had no chances, who--" Her voice thickened, speech became too difficult, and she stopped, looking down at her teacup through a blur of tears. Miss Toland watched her for a silent moment or two; despite all her oddities, no woman who ever lived had a kinder heart or a keener insight than Anna Toland. It was in a very winning tone that she presently said: "Tell me a little something about yourself, Miss Page!" "Oh, there's nothing interesting about _me_!" Julia said, ashamed of showing emotion. She jumped up, and began to put the kitchen in order. But the recital came, nevertheless, beginning with Chester, and ending with Julia's earliest memories of the O'Farrell Street house. The girl tumbled it out regardless of sequence, and revealing far more than she knew. Julia told of the episode of Carter Hazzard; she repeated the conversation she had overheard at the club. Miss Toland did not once interrupt her; she listened in an appreciative silence. They washed and put away the dishes, straightened the kitchen, and finally found themselves standing in the reception room, Julia still talking. ".... so you see why it sounds so funny to me, your talking about your niece," Julia said. "Because she--she seems to me such _miles_ ahead--she seems to have everything I would like to have!" She paused, and then said awkwardly: "I'll never be a lady, I know that. I--I wish I had a chance to be!" And she sat down at the little Mission table, and flung her arms out before her, her face tired and wretched, her blue eyes dark with pain. Miss Toland's face, from showing mere indulgent interest, took on a sharper look. She was a quick-witted woman, and this chanced to touch her in a sensitive spot. "As for a lady, ladies are made and not born," she said decidedly. "Don't ever let them fool you. Barbara may run around until she's tired talking about belonging to the Daughters of Southern Officers; she can stick a sampler up here, and lend a Copley portrait to a loan exhibition now and then; but you mark my words, Barbara had to learn things like any other girl. One sensible mother in this world is worth sixteen distinguished great-grandmothers!" Julia said nothing; she began to think it was time for her to go. But Miss Toland was well launched in a favourite argument. "Why, look here," said the older woman, who was enjoying herself, "you're young, you're pretty, you're naturally inclined to choose what is nice, what is refined. You say you're not a lady--how do you know? You may take my word for it--Julia, your name is?--Julia, then, that if you make up your mind to be one, nothing can stop you. Now I've been thinking while we talked. Why couldn't you come here and try this sort of thing? You could keep things running smoothly here; you could work into the girls' clubs, perhaps; no harm to try, anyway. Do you sing?" Julia had to clear her throat before she could say huskily: "I can play the piano a little." "You see--you play. Well, what do you think of it, then?" "Live here?" stammered Julia. "Certainly, live right here. I want some one right _here_ with me. You can arrange your own work, you can read all the books you want, you'll come in contact with nice people. I'm afraid to be here alone at night very much, and I've come to the conclusion that we'll never accomplish anything until I can stay, day out and in. Why don't you try it, anyway? Telephone your grandmother--sleep right here to-night!" Julia struggled for absolute control of her facial muscles. "Here?" she asked, a little thickly. "Right in here--you can but try it!" Miss Toland urged, throwing open the door of the immaculate, unused bedroom. Julia looked again at the fresh white bed, the rug, the bureau. Her own--her own domain! Just what entering it meant to her she never tried to say, but the moment was a memorable one in her life. She presently found herself telephoning a message to the drug store that was nearest her grandmother's home. She selected a flannelette nightgown from a deep drawer marked: "Nightgowns and petticoats--Women's." She assured Miss Toland that she could buy a toothbrush the next day, and when the older woman asked her how she liked her bath in the morning, Julia said very staidly: "Warm, thank you." "Warm? Well, so do I," said Miss Toland's approving voice from the next room. "This business of ice-cold baths! Fad. There's a gas heater in the kitchen." Julia, laying her underwear neatly over a chair, was struck by the enormity of the task she had undertaken. A great blight of utter discouragement swept over her--she never could do it! Her mother--all her kin--seemed to take shadowy shape to menace this little haven she had found. Chester--suppose he should find her! Suppose Mark should! Sooner or later some one must discover where she was. And clothes! These clothes would not do! She had no money; she must borrow. And how was she to help in sewing classes and cooking classes, knowing only what she knew? ".... said to her as nicely as I could, but firmly," Miss Toland was saying, above the rasp of a running faucet in the bathroom, '"Well, my dear Miss Hewitt, you may be a trained worker and I'm not, but you can't expect your theories to work under conditions--'" "What a bluffer I am," thought Julia, getting into bed. She snapped her light off, but Miss Toland turned it on again when she came to the door to look at Julia with great satisfaction. "Comfortable, my dear?" "Oh, yes, thank you." "Have you forgotten to open your window?" Julia raised herself on an elbow. "Well, I believe I have," said she. Miss Toland flung it up. "We're as safe as a church here," she said, after a moment's study of the street. "Sometimes the Italians opposite get noisy, but they're harmless. Well, I'm going to read--you'll see my light. Sleep tight!" "Thank you," said Julia. Miss Toland went back to her room, and Julia, wide awake, lay staring at her own room's pure bare walls, the triangle of light that fell in the little passageway from Miss Toland's reading lamp, and the lights in the street outside. Now and then a passing car sent lights wheeling across her ceiling like the flanges of a fan; now and then a couple of men passing just under her window roused her with their deep voices, or a tired child's voice rose up above the patter of footsteps like a bird's pipe in the night. Cats squalled and snarled, and fled up the street; a soprano voice floated out on the night air: "But the waves still are singing to the shore As they sang in the happy days of yore--" To these and a thousand less sharply defined noises, to the constant, steady flicking of stiff pages in Miss Toland's room, Julia fell asleep. Miss Toland told her family of the arrangement some three months later. She met her sister-in-law and oldest niece downtown for luncheon one day in November, and when the ladies had ordered their luncheon and piled superfluous wraps and parcels upon a fourth chair, Barbara, staring about the Palm Room, and resting her chin on one slender wrist, asked indifferently: "And how's The Alexander, Aunt Sanna?" "Why don't you come and see?" asked her aunt briskly. "You've all deserted me, and I don't know whether I'm on speaking terms with you or not! We're getting on splendidly. Nineteen girls in our Tuesday evening club; mothers' meetings a great success. I've captured a rare little personality in Julia." She enlarged upon the theme: Julia's industry, her simplicity, her natural sympathy with and comprehension of the class from which the frequenters of The Alexander were drawn. Mrs. Toland listened smilingly, her bright eyes roving the room constantly. Barbara did not listen at all; she studied the scene about her sombrely, with heavy-lidded eyes. Barbara was at an age when exactly those things that a certain small group of her contemporaries did, said, and thought, made all her world. She wished to be with these young people all the time; she wished for nothing else, to-day she was heartsick because there was to be a weekend house party to which she was not invited. A personal summons from the greatest queen of Europe would have meant nothing to Barbara to-day, except for its effect upon the little circle she desired so eagerly to impress. Parents, sisters, and brothers, nature, science, and art, were but pale shapes about her. The burning fact was that Elinor Sparrow had asked the others down for tennis Saturday and to stay overnight, and had asked her, Barbara, to join them on Sunday for luncheon-- "Tell Aunt Sanna about the wedding, dear!" commanded Mrs. Toland suddenly. Barbara smiled with mechanical brightness. "Oh, it was lovely! Every one was there. Georgie looked stunning--ever so much prettier than Hazel!" she said, rather lifelessly. "Tell Aunt Sanna who got the bride's bouquet!" "Oh," Barbara again assumed an expression of animation. "Oh, I did." "Jim go?" "Oh, yes, he went with the Russells. That's getting to be quite a case, you know," Barbara said airily. "I _thought_ that was Elinor Sparrow and her mother," Mrs. Toland said, bowing to two ladies who were now at some distance, and were leaving the room. "They were at that table, but I couldn't be sure who they were until they got up." "Was Elinor right there?" Barbara asked quickly. "Why, yes; but as I say--" Barbara pushed back her broiled bird with a gesture of utter exasperation. "I think you might have _said_ something about it, Mother," she said, angry and disappointed. "Why, my darling," Mrs. Toland began, fluttered, "how could I dream--besides, as I say, I couldn't see--" "You knew how I felt about Saturday," Barbara said bitterly, "and you let them sit there an hour! I could have turned around--I could have--" "Listen to Mother, dear. You--" "And I can't understand why you wouldn't naturally mention it," Barbara interrupted, in a high, critical voice. Tears trembled into her eyes. "I would have given a great deal to have seen Elinor to-day," she said stiffly. Mrs. Toland, smitten dumb with penitence, could only eye her with sympathy and distress. "Listen, dear," she suggested eagerly, after a moment. "Suppose you run out and see Elinor in the cloakroom? Mother's so sorry she--" "No, I couldn't do that," Barbara answered moodily. "It would have been all right to have it just seem to happen--No, it doesn't make any difference, Mother. Please--_please_--don't bother about it." "I'm sure Elinor didn't see you," Mrs. Toland continued. Barbara, throwing her a glance of utter weariness, begged politely: "_Please_ don't bother about it, Mother. _Please_. I'd rather not." "Well," Mrs. Toland conceded, with dissatisfaction. An uncomfortable silence reigned, until Miss Toland began suddenly to talk of Julia. "She's a very unusual girl," said she. "She's _utterly_ and _entirely_ satisfactory to me." "I think you're very fortunate, Sanna," Mrs. Toland commented absently. She speculated a little as to Julia; there really must be something unusual about the girl; Sanna was notoriously difficult to live with. "She's not stiff--she's amenable to reason," Miss Toland said, smiling vaguely. "We--we have really good times together." "I hope she's improved in appearance," Mrs. Toland remarked severely. "You remember how dreadfully she looked, Barbara?" Barbara smiled, half lifted dubious brows, and shrugged slightly. "She's _enormously_ improved," Miss Toland said sharply. "She wears an extremely becoming uniform now." "She's evidently got _your_ number, Auntie," Barbara said, watching three young men who were entering the room. "She evidently knows that you're nutty about appearances!" "I am not nutty about appearances at all," her aunt responded, as she attacked an elaborate ice. "I like things done decently, and I like to see Julia in her nice, trim dresses. That Eastern woman I tried, Miss Knox, wouldn't hear of wearing a uniform--not she! Julia has more sense." "I expect that Julia hasn't an idea in her head that you haven't put there," Barbara said dryly. "Don't you believe it!" her aunt said with fire. She seemed ready for further speech, but interrupted herself, and was contented with a mere repetition of her first words, "Don't you _believe_ it." "Your geese are all swans, Sanna," Mrs. Toland said, with a tolerant smile. "Very likely," Miss Toland said briefly, drinking off her black coffee at a draught. "Now," she went on briskly, "where are you good people going? Julia's to meet me here in the Turkish Room at two; we have to pick out a hundred books, to start our library." "It's after that now," Barbara said. "She's probably waiting. Let's go out that way, Mother, and walk over to Sutter?" They sauntered along the wide passage to the Turkish Room, and just before they reached it a young woman came toward them, a slender, erect person, under whose neatly buttoned long coat showed the crisp hem of a blue linen dress. Julia bowed briefly to the mother and daughter, but her eyes were only for Miss Toland. She was nervous and constrained; bright colour had come into her cheeks; she could not speak. But Barbara merely thought that the cheap little common actress had miraculously improved in appearance and manner, and noted the blue, blue eyes, and the glittering sweep of hair under Julia's neat hat, and Miss Toland felt herself curiously touched by the appealing look that Julia gave her. "Now for the books, Julia," said she, beaming approval. The two went off together, chattering like friends and equals. "What does Aunt Sanna _see_ in her?" marvelled Barbara, watching. "Your aunt is peculiar," Mrs. Toland said, with vague disapproval, compressing her lips. "Well, the way she runs The Alexander is curious, to say the least," Barbara commented vigorously. "I couldn't stay out there one _week_, myself, and have Aunt Sanna carrying on the way she does, planning a thing, and forgetting it in two seconds, and yelling at the children one day, and treating them to ice-cream the next! Why, the last time I went out there Aunt Sanna was in bed, at eleven o'clock, because she felt like reading, and she'd called off the housekeeping class for no reason at all except that she didn't feel like it!" "Yes, I know, I know," Mrs. Toland said, picking her way daintily across Market Street. "But she has her own money, and I suppose she'll go her own gait!" But she looked a little uneasy, and was silent for some moments, busy with her own thoughts. Long before this Julia's whereabouts had been discovered by her own family, and by at least one of her friends, Mark Rosenthal. Mark walked in upon her one Sunday afternoon, when she had been about a month at The Alexander. Miss Toland had gone for a few hours to Sausalito, and Julia was alone, and had some leisure. She put on her hat, and she and Mark walked through the noisy Sunday streets; everybody was out in the sunshine, and saloons everywhere were doing a steady business. "Evelyn told me where you were," Mark explained. Julia made a little grimace of disapproval, and the man, watching her, winced. "Are you so sorry to have me know?" he asked, a sword in his heart. "Oh, it's not that, Mark! But"--Julia stammered--"but I only went home to see grandma Thursday, and it struck me that Evelyn hadn't lost much time!" "Wouldn't you ever have written me?" Mark asked, his dark eyes caressing her. "Oh, of course I would. Only I wanted to get a start first. Why do you laugh?" Julia broke off to ask offendedly. "Just because I love you so, darling. Just because I've been hungry for you all these weeks--and it's just ecstasy to be here!" Mark's eyes were moist now, though he was still smiling. "You don't know it, but I just _live_ to see you, Julie. I can't think of anything else. This--this new job isn't going to make any difference about our marrying, is it, darling?" Julia surveyed a stretch of dirty street lined with dirty yet somewhat pretentious houses. Women sat on drifts of newspapers on the steps, white-stockinged children quarrelled in the hot, dingy dooryards. "I wish you didn't care that way, Mark," she said, uncomfortably. "Why, dearest?" he said eagerly. "Because I care more for you than you do for me? I know that, Julie." He watched the cool little cheek nearest him. "But wait until we're married, Julie, you'll love me then; I'll _make_ you!" But all his young fire could not touch her. He could only win an occasional troubled glance. "I want to stay here a long, long time, you know, Mark--if I can. I want to read things and study things. I want to be let alone. It'll be _years_ before I want to marry!" Julia raised her anxious, harassed eyes to his. "I don't really think of men or of marriage at all," said she. "Well, that's all right, darling," Mark said, smiling down at her, a little touched. "I'm going to be sent up to Sacramento for a while; I'll not worry you. But see here, if I go back to the house with you again, do I get a kiss?" Julia gave him a grave smile, and let him follow her into the settlement house. But Mark did not get his kiss, for Miss Toland was there, and a group of eager club girls who had something to arrange for a meeting the following night. Mark left the lady of his delight staidly discussing the relative merits of lemonade and gingersnaps and two pounds of "broken mixed" candy, as evening refreshments, and carried away a troubled heart. He wrote Julia, at least twice a week, shyly affectionate and honestly egotistical letters, but it was some months before he saw her again. Julia's visit to her grandparents, through which Mark had been able to trace her, had taken place some days before, on a certain Wednesday afternoon. Suddenly, after the daily three o'clock sewing class had had its meeting in the big hall, the thought had come to her that she must see her own people. It was a still autumn afternoon, a little chilly, and Julia, setting forth, felt small relish for her errand. Her grandmother's house presented a dingy, discouraging front. Julia twisted the familiar old bell, and got the familiar old odours of carbolic acid and boiling onions, superimposed upon a basis of thick, heavy, stale air. But the hour she spent in the dirty kitchen was nevertheless not an unpleasant one. Her grandmother was all alone, and was too used to similar vagaries on the part of all her family to resent Julia's disappearance and long silence. "We had your postal," she admitted, in answer to her granddaughter's embarrassed query. "You look thin, me dear; you've not got your old bold, stylish look about you." And she wrinkled her old face and studied Julia with blinking eyes. "The girls was glad enough to use your dresses. Marguerite looked real nice in the one she took. Your Mama wrote in to know what kind of a job you had--Sit down, Julia," she said as she poked about the stove with a lid lifter. Julia, who had drawn a long breath to recount her experiences, suddenly expelled it. It occurred to her, with a great relief, that her grandmother was not interested in details. Her hard life had left her no curiosity; she was only mildly satisfied at finding her granddaughter apparently prosperous and well; Mrs. Cox was never driven to the necessity of borrowing trouble. Julia learned that her own father and mother were in Los Angeles, where George was looking for employment. Evelyn had developed a sudden ambition to be a dressmaker, Marguerite had a new admirer. Pa, Mrs. Cox said, was awful cross and cranky. Julia, with a premonition of trouble, asked for Chester. "He's fine; he's the only one Pa'll speak to," her grandmother said, unexpectedly. "Oh," said Julia eagerly, "he's here?" "Sure, he come back," Mrs. Cox assured her indifferently. "He's got good work." Walking home in the early darkness, Julia could have danced for very lightness of heart. She had dreaded the call, dreaded their jealousy of her new chance, dreaded the possibility of their wishing to share the joys of The Alexander with her. She found them entirely uninterested in her problems, and entirely absorbed in themselves. Marguerite remarked that she did not see why Julia "let them make" her wear the plain linen uniform of which Julia was secretly so proud. Evelyn was fretting because dressmakers' apprentices could depend upon such very poor pay, and vouchsafed Julia a moment's attention only when Julia observed that the Tolands patronized a very fashionable dressmaker, and might say a good word to her for Evelyn. This excited Evelyn very much, and she suggested that perhaps she herself had better see Miss Toland. "No--no! I'll do it," Julia said hastily. Mrs. Cox, upon her departure, extended her granddaughter a warm invitation. "If they don't treat you good, dearie, you come right back here and Grandma'll take good care of you," said she, and Evelyn and Marguerite, eying Julia over their cups of tea, nodded half pityingly. They thought it a very poor job that did not permit one to come home to this kitchen at night, even less desirable than their own despised employments. Julia's being kept at night only added one more item to the long total that made the helplessness of the poor. It was as if Julia, dancing back to The Alexander in the early darkness, hugged to her heart the assurance that these kinswomen were as contentedly independent of her as she of them. These experiences belonged to early days at The Alexander. There were other experiences, hours of cold discouragement and doubt, hours of bitter self-distrust. Julia trembled over mistakes, and made a hundred mistakes of which she never knew. But by some miracle, she never chanced to offend her erratic superior. To Miss Toland there was small significance in the fact of an ill-cut pattern or a lost key. At the mothers' meetings, when Julia was dismally smitten with a sense of her own uselessness, Miss Toland thought her shy little attempts at friendliness very charming, and when she casually corrected the faults of Julia's speech, she gave no further thought to the matter, although Julia turned hot and cold at the recollection for many a day to come. Julia never made any objection, never hinted by so much as a reproachful eyelid, that Miss Toland's way of doing things was not that usually adopted. Julia would show her delight when a shopping tour and a lunch downtown were substituted for a sewing lesson; she docilely pushed back her boiling potatoes and beef stew when Miss Toland was for delaying supper while they went out to buy a waffle iron, and made some experiments with batter. On three or four mornings each week there were no classes, and on these mornings the two loitered along over their coffee and toast, Miss Toland talking, Julia a passionately interested listener. Perhaps the older woman would read some passage from Meredith or de Balzac, after which Julia dipped into Meredith for herself, but found him slow, and plunged back into Dickens and Thackeray. It amused Miss Toland to watch her read, to have Julia burst out, with flaming cheeks: "Oh, I _hope_ Charles Darney won't be such a fool as to go to Paris _now_--oh, _does_ he?" or: "You wouldn't catch _me_ marrying George Osborne--a spoiled, selfish pig, that's what _he_ is!" So the months went by, and the day came when Julia, standing shyly beside Miss Toland, said smilingly: "Do you know what day _this_ is, Miss Toland?" "To-day?" Miss Toland said briskly. "No, I don't. Why?" "I've been here a year to-day," Julia said, dimpling. "You _have_?" Miss Toland, handling bolts of pink-and-white gingham at a long table, straightened up to survey her demure little assistant. "Well, now I'll tell you what we'll do to celebrate," she said, after a thoughtful interval. "I understand that the Sisters over on Lake Merritt have a very _remarkable_ sewing school. Now, we ought to see that, Julia, don't you think so?" "We might get some ideas," Julia agreed. "Precisely. So you put the card--'No Classes Today'--on the door, and we'll go. And put your milk bottle out, because we may be late. I hate to do it, but I really think we should know what they're doing over there." "I do, too," Julia said. This form preceded most of their excursions. A few moments later they were out in the open air, with the long sunny day before them. The months sped on their way again, and Julia had been in the settlement two years--three years. She was eighteen, and the world did not stand still. She was nineteen--twenty. She changed by slow degrees from the frightened little rabbit that had fled to Miss Toland for refuge to an observant, dignified young woman who was quietly sure of herself and her work. The rumpled ashen glory that had been her hair was transformed into the soft thick braids that now marked Miss Page's head apart from those of the other girls of her day. The round arms were guiltless of bracelets; Julia wore her severe blue uniform, untouched by any ornament; her stockings and shoes were as plain as money could buy. Her beauty, somewhat in eclipse for a time, presently shone out again. But there were few to see it. Miss Watts, the simple, sweet, middle-aged teacher of the kindergarten, admired it wistfully, and Miss Toland watched it with secret pride. But the society girls and young matrons who flitted in once or twice a week to teach their classes never saw it at all, or, seeing it, merely told each other that little Miss Page would be awfully pretty in decent things, and the women and girls and children who formed the classes at The Alexander never saw her at all. The women were too much absorbed in their own affairs, children are proverbially blind to beauty, and the girls who came to the monthly dances, the evening sewing classes and reading clubs, thought their sober little guardian rather plain, as indeed she was, when judged by their standard of dress, their ruffled lace collars and high-heeled shoes, their curls and combs and coloured glass jewellery. Julia's amazing detachment from the ordinary ideals of girlhood was an unending surprise to Miss Toland. "She has simply and quietly set that astonishing little mind of hers upon making herself a lady," Miss Toland said now and then to her sister-in-law. Mrs. Toland would answer with only an abstracted smile. If she had any convictions at all in her genial view of life, she certainly believed a lady to be a thing born, not made. But she was not concerned about Julia; she hardly realized the girl's existence. Miss Toland, however, was keenly concerned about Julia. Julia had come to be the absorbing interest of her life. It was quite natural that Julia should love her, yet to the older woman it always seemed a miracle, tremulously dear. That any one so young, so lovely, so ardent as Julia should depend so utterly upon her was to Anna Toland an unceasing delight. Julia had been bewildered and heartsick when she turned to The Alexander, but she had never in her life known such an aching loneliness as had been Miss Toland's fate for many years. To such a nature the solitary years in Paris, the solitary return to California, the tentative and unencouraged approaches to her nieces, all made a dark memory. Rich as she was, independent and popular as she was, Miss Toland's life had brought her nothing so sweet as this young thing, to teach, to dominate, to correct, and to watch and delight in, too. As Julia's grammar and manner and appearance rapidly improved, Miss Toland began to exploit her, in a quiet way, and quietly gloried in the girl's almost stern dignity. When the members of the board of directors were buzzing about, Julia, with her neatly written report, was a little study in alert and silent efficiency. "She's a cute little thing," said Mrs. von Hoffmann, president of The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House, after one of these meetings of the board, "but she never has much to say." "No, she's a very silent girl," Miss Toland agreed, with that little warmth at her heart the thought of Julia always brought. "You imported her, Sanna?" "Oh, no. She's a Californian." "Really? And what do we pay her?" "Forty." "Forty? And didn't we pay that awful last creature sixty-five?" "Seventy-five--yes." Miss Toland smiled wisely. "But she had been specially trained, Tillie." "Oh, specially trained!" Mrs. von Hoffmann, flinging a mass of rich sables about her throat, began to work on the fingers of her white gloves. "This girl's worth two of her," she asserted, "with her nice little silent ways and her little uniform!" "I'll see that she's treated fairly," Miss Toland promised. "Well, do! Don't lose her, whatever you do! I suppose she has beaus?" "Not Julia! She's entirely above the other sex. No; there's a young Jew in Sacramento who writes her now and then, but that's a mere boy-and-girl memory." "Well, let's hope it remains one!" And the great lady, sailing out to her waiting coupe, stopped on the outer steps to speak to Miss Page, who was tying up some rain-beaten chrysanthemums in the little front garden. "How crushed they are! Do you like flowers, Miss Page?" "Oh, yes," smiled Julia, looking like a flower herself in the clear twilight. "You must come and see Mr. von Hoffmann's orchids some day," Mrs. von Hoffmann volunteered. Julia smiled again, but did not speak. The older woman glanced up and down the desolate street, and shuddered. "Dreadful neighbourhood!" she said with a rueful smile and a shake of the head, and climbing into her carriage, she was gone. Julia looked about her, but found the neighbourhood only interesting and friendly, as usual, and so returned to her flowers. When her chrysanthemums were trim and secure once more, perhaps--if this were one of the club evenings--she put on her long coat, and the hat with the velvet rose, and went upon a little shopping expedition, a brown twine bag dangling from one of her ungloved arms. The bakery was always bright and odorous, and at this hour filled with customers. The perspiring Swedish proprietress and a blond-haired daughter or two would be handling the warm loaves, the flat, floury pies, and the brown cookies as fast as hands could move; the cash register behind the counter rang and rang, the air was hot, the windows obscured with steam. Men were among the customers, but the Weber girls had no time to flirt now. They rustled the thin large sheets of paper, snapped the flimsy pink string, lifted a designated pie out of the window, or weighed pound cake with serious swiftness. From the bakery Julia crossed an indeterminate street upon which shabby scattered houses backed or faced with utter disregard of harmony, and entered a dark and disorderly grocery, which smelled of beer and brooms and soap and stale cakes. Tired women, wrapped in shawls, their money held tight in bony, bare hands, sat about on cracker boxes and cheese crates, awaiting their turn to be served. A lamp, with a reflector, gave the only light. The two clerks, red-faced young men in their shirt sleeves, leaned on the dark counter as they took orders, listening with impatient good nature to whispered appeals for more credit, grinding coffee in an immense wheel, and thumping each loaf of bread as they brought it up from under the counter. Julia, out in the street again and enjoying, as she always did enjoy, the sense of being a busy householder, facing the tide of home-goers, would perhaps have an errand in the damp depth of the big milk depot, would get chops or sausages at some small shop, or stop a fruit cart, driving by in the dimness, for apples or oranges. Then home to the brightly lighted little kitchen, the tireless little gas stove. Julia, cheerfully attempting to do ten things at once, would look up to see Miss Toland, comfortably wrappered and corsetless, in the doorway. "Don't forget your window shades, Julie." "I know, but I wanted to get this oven started--if these sweets are to bake." "Give me something to do!" And the older woman, seated, was pleased to cut bread and fill salt shakers at the request of her busy assistant. "To-night's the older girls, is it?" she would yawn. "Is Miss Pierce coming? Good! Well, tell me if you need me, and I'll dress and come out." "Oh, we're not doing much to-night," Julia invariably assured her. Miss Toland never questioned the verdict that freed her for an evening of restful reading. Julia it was who lighted the hall and opened the street door, and welcomed the arriving club girls. Sometimes these young women brought their sewing--invariably fancywork. Sometimes there was a concert to rehearse, or they danced with each other, or stood singing about Julia at the piano while she banged away at the crude accompaniments of songs. Miss Pierce or Miss Watts, older women, usually came in for a little while to see what was going on, but again it was Julia alone who must bid the girls good-night and lock and darken the hall. Once a month there was a dance for the older girls, to which their "friends," a word which meant to each girl her foremost male admirer, were asked, and at which cake and ice-cream were served. Julia always wore her uniform to these dances, but she also danced, when asked, and never attempted to deny that she enjoyed herself. But that there was an immense gulf already widening between her and these other girls, one of whom she might have been, she soon began to perceive. They were noisy, ignorant, coarse young creatures, like children unable to see beyond the pleasure or the discomfort of the day, unable to help themselves out of the sordid rut in which they had been born. Julia watched them soberly, silently, as the years went by. One by one they told her of their wedding plans, and introduced the boyish, ill-shaven, grinning lads who were to be husbands and fathers soon. One by one Julia watched the pitifully gay little weddings, in rooms poisonous with foul air and crowded with noisy kinspeople. One by one she welcomed old members of the Girls' Club as new members of the Mothers' Club. The young mother's figure would be curiously shapeless now, her girlish beauty swept away as by a sponge, her nervous pride in the beribboned baby weakened by her own physical weakness and clouded by the fear that already a second child's claim was disputing that of the first. And already her young voice would borrow some of the hopeless whining tones of the older women's. Julia was really happiest in her relationship with the children. She frequently peeped into the kindergarten during the morning, and had her dearly loved favourites among the tiny girls and boys, and she could never be absent from the sewing class every afternoon when some forty small girls scattered themselves about the assembly hall, and chattered and sang as they worked. Volunteers from among the city's best families were usually on hand to inspect the actual sewing--vague, daintily dressed girls who alternately spoiled and neglected their classes, who came late and left early--but Julia kept order, supplied materials, recited the closing prayer, and played the marches by which the children marched out at five o'clock. Now and then she incited some small girl to sing or recite for the others, and two or three times a year the sewing classes gave an evening entertainment--extraordinary affairs at the memory of which Julia and Miss Toland used to laugh for weeks. To drill the little, indifferent, stupid youngsters in songs and dances, to spangle fifty costumes of paper cambric and tissue, to shout emphatic directions about the excited murmurings of the churning performers, to chalk marks on the stage, and mark piano scores, were all duties that fell to the two resident workers. Julia sacrificed her immaculate bedroom for a green room, the perspiration would stream from her face as she whipped off one dirty little frock after another, fastened the fairy regalia over unspeakable undergarments, and loosened sticky braids of black or yellow hair into something approaching a fairylike fluffiness. One second to straighten her own tumbled hair at a mirror, another to warn her carefully ranged performers in the passage, and Julia was off to light the hall and open the street door to the clamorous audience. Opening the performance with a crash of chords from the piano, fifteen minutes later, she would turn her face to the stage, that the singers might see her lips framing the words they were so apt to forget, and manage to keep a watchful eye upon the noisy group of boys that filled the back benches and the gaslights that might catch a fairy's spear or a witch's wand. "Well, we've had some _awful_ performances in the place, but really I think to-night's was _about_ the worst!" Miss Toland might remark, when the last dirty little garment had been claimed by its owner, and the last fairy had reluctantly gone away. "Well, the mothers and fathers thought it was fine," Julia would submit, with a weary grin. "When that awful Cunningham child, with her awful, flat, slapping feet, began to dance the Highland Fling, I truly thought I would strangle, trying not to laugh!" Miss Toland, gazing absently over her book, would add reflectively. "And the Queen of the Elves in those _dirty_ pink stockings! And poor Hazel, bursting into tears as usual!" Julia, collapsed in a chair, dishevelled and rosy, would give a long sigh of relaxation and relief. "But we don't do the slightest good this way," Miss Toland sometimes said with asperity. "We merely amuse them; it goes no further. Now, next time, we will make it an absolute condition that every child has a bath before coming, and wears clean clothes!" "But we made that a condition this time, and it didn't do any good." "Very well. Next time"--flushed at the merest hint of opposition, Miss Toland would speak with annoyance--"next time every child who hasn't had a bath will go straight into that tub, I don't care if the performance doesn't begin until midnight!" "Well," Julia would concede tolerantly. She very speedily learned not to dispute these vigorous resolutions. Miss Toland always forgot them before morning; she would not have considered them seriously in any case. "We are the laughing-stock of the city," she would frequently say with bitterness, upon being informed that more thimbles were needed, or that the girls hated to sew on the ugly gray ginghams. But sometimes Julia found her giving out candy and five-cent pieces, without regard for the girls' merits and achievements, for the mere pleasure of hearing their thanks. Or sometimes, when for any reason the attendance upon the sewing classes was poor, Miss Toland bought herself a new blank book, dated it fiercely, and proceeded to ransack the neighbourhood for children in a house-to-house canvass. Julia and she would take a car into Mission Street, eat their dinner at the Colonial dining-room, where all sorts of wholesome dairy dishes were consumed by hungry hundreds every night, and where a white-clad man turned batter cakes in the window. "They do that everywhere in New York," said Miss Toland, thereby thrilling Julia. "What, d'you like New York?" asked the older woman. "I've never seen it!" Julia breathed. "Well, some day we'll go on--study methods there. Spring's the time," said Miss Toland, raising gold-rimmed eyeglasses to study the grimy and spotted menu. "Spring afternoons on the Avenue, or driving in the Park--it's quite wonderful! I see they have chicken pie specially starred, thirty-five cents; shall we try that?" After the meal the canvassing began, Miss Toland doing all the talking, while Julia stared about the small, stuffy interiors, and smiled at the babies and old women. Miss Toland jotted down in her book all the details she gathered in each house, and only stopped in her quest when the hour and the darkened houses reminded her that the evening was flying. This might keep up every free evening for two weeks; it would end as suddenly as it began, and Miss Toland enter upon a lazy and luxurious phase. She would spend whole mornings and even afternoons in bed, reading and dozing, and fresh from a hot bath at four o'clock, would summon her assistant and make a suggestion or two. "Julia, suppose we go down to the Palace for tea?" Julia, standing gravely in the doorway, considered. "The girls won't be gone for another hour, Miss Toland!" "The--Oh, the girls, to be sure. Of course. Who else is there, Julia?" "Miss Parker and Miss Chetwynde. And Mrs. Forbes Foster was here for a little while." Miss Toland, drawing on silk stockings, would make a grimace. "What did you tell them?" "Sick headache." "Oh, yes, quite right! Well, get through out there, and we'll go somewhere." The assistant, about to depart, would hesitate: "I have nothing to wear but my tailor-made and a white waist, Miss Toland." "And quite good enough! No one will notice us." Perhaps truly no one noticed the eagerly talking, middle-aged woman and her pretty and serious little companion, as they sat in a quiet corner of the big grill-room, eating their dinner, but Julia noticed everything, and even while she answered Miss Toland politely, her eyes were moving constantly to and fro. She watched the cellarer, in his leather apron, the well-dressed, chattering men and women who came and went; she drank in the warm, perfumed air as if it were the elixir of life. The music enchanted her, the big room with its lofty ceiling, its clustered lights and flowers, swam in a glorious blur before her. Miss Toland would bow now and then, and tell Julia about the people to whom she bowed. Once they saw Doctor Studdiford laughing and talking at a distant table with a group of young men, and once it was Barbara, lovely in a blue evening gown, who came across the room to speak to her aunt. "And hello, Julia!" said Barbara pleasantly, on this occasion, resting her armful of blue brocade and eiderdown upon a chair back. "It's awfully nice to see you two enjoying yourselves!" "What are you doing, dear?" her aunt asked. "Mrs. Maitland's party--and we're going to the Orpheum. I don't care much for vaudeville, though" And idly eying Julia, she added, "Do you, Julia?" Julia's heart leaped, her mouth felt dry. "I like plays," she stammered, trying to smile, and clearing her throat. "Well, so do I." Barbara shrugged, gathered up her coat again, and drifted away. Julia heard nothing else that night but the kindly, insolent little voice that seemed to make a friend and equal of her, and when she was alone in bed in the dark, she went over and over the little scene again, and thrilled again at Barbara's graciousness. Perhaps six times a year Miss Toland went to Sausalito for a few days, and then, during her first year as a settlement worker, Julia went to her grandmother's house. Evelyn was now working with Ryan, the Tolands' fashionable dressmaker, and doing extremely well. Marguerite was engaged to be married, and as foolishly happy as if her eyes had been fixed upon ideal unions since the days of her childhood. Nobody paid very much attention to Julia except Marguerite's promised husband, who disgusted her by hoarsely assuring her that she was a little peach, and attempting to kiss her. There were several letters from her mother, from which Julia learned that her father was well again, but that he had left her mother, who had entered, with a friend, upon the boarding-house business in Los Angeles. She wrote her mother an affectionate letter, and, after a few months, stopped going to her grandmother's house. Miss Pierce, a delicate, refined, unmarried woman, was a daily teacher in the kindergarten, and grew very fond of the grave, demure, silent Miss Page. Julia felt enormously flattered when Miss Pierce suggested that she come home with her during one of Miss Toland's brief absences, and as merry, impulsive, affectionate little Miss Scott followed suit, she usually had the choice of two pleasant places in which to spend her holidays. Miss Pierce lived with her old mother in a handsome upper flat on Broadway. Julia liked the quiet, dignified neighbourhood, and thought Mrs. Pierce a lovely old lady. She chattered with Adachi, the Japanese boy, tried the piano, whistled at the canary, and sat watching Mrs. Pierce's game of patience with the absorption of a rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed child. Miss Pierce, glancing up now and then from her needlework, thought it very nice to see pretty Miss Page there and Mamma so well amused, and wished that she had more inducements to offer her young guest. But Julia found the atmosphere, the quiet voices and quiet laughter, inducement enough, and quite touched Mrs. Pierce with her gratitude. The first visit to Miss Scott's house, however, was a revelation, and the memory of it stood out in such bold colours as made the decorous pleasures of the visit to Miss Pierce turn pale. Julia was rushed into the centre of a group of eager, noisy, clever young people, six brothers and sisters who had been motherless from babyhood, and were in mourning now for their father. The Scotts were bold and outspoken in their grief as in everything else; they showed Julia their father's picture before she had been ten minutes in the house, and Kennedy--Julia's "Miss Scott" of The Alexander--flung open the big desk so violently as to bring two vases and a calendar to the floor, and read Julia various notes and letters that had been sent them at the time of their father's death, until tears stood in more than one pair of lovely black eyes. Dinner was somehow cooked in a Babel of voices, served in a rush, and afterward their chatter rose above the hissing of dishwater and the clash of hot plates. Julia laughed herself tired at the nonsense, the mad plans, and untrammelled dreams. Kennedy was to be a writer, 'Lizabeth the president of a girls' college, little Mary wanted to live in "Venith." The boys were all to be rich; Peter, the oldest, drew his brothers into a long, serious discussion as to the exact proportions of the ideal private car. "We'll have the finish mahogany, d'ye see?" said Peter, "and the walls and curtains of dark green velvet." "Dark green velvet!" Kennedy said, from the couch where she was sitting, busy with a torn sleeve lining. "Oh, horrors! Why not red velvet and gold braid!" "Well, what would _you_ have?" Peter asked belligerently. "Oh, grayish blue velvet," 'Lizabeth suggested rapturously. "Very pale, you know, and silvery curtains," Kennedy agreed, "and one gorgeous bluish-grayish-pinkish rug, like the two-thousand-dollar one at the White House!" "Well," Peter said, satisfied. "And what colour upholstery?" "Dark blue might be beautiful," Julia submitted timidly. "Dark blue--you're on, Miss Page!" "Or a sort of blue brocade," 'Lizabeth said dreamily. "And I'll tell you what we'll name the cars," George, the second brother, suddenly contributed; "you know they've got to be named, Pete. We'll call the dining-car, 'Dinah,' and the sleeper, 'Bertha'; do you see?" The others shouted approval, Peter adding with a grin, a moment later: "And we might call the observation car 'Luke'!" "Oh, _Peter_!" Kennedy expostulated, laughing. She presently interrupted the completing details of the private train by general suggestions of bed. The four girls went upstairs together. "Oh, Mary, you've fixed everything, you little angel, you!" said Kennedy, seeing that hats and wraps had been put away, and a couch made up in a large shabby bedroom. 'Lizabeth, professing that she loved a couch, settled herself upon it with great satisfaction, Julia had a single bed, and Kennedy and the little Mary shared a somewhat larger one. Julia watched the sisters with deep admiration; they were all tired, she knew, yet vigorous ablutions went on in the cold little bathroom, and clothes were brushed and made ready for to-morrow's need. Their joyous talk was pitifully practical, Mary raising the dread topic of new shoes for Stephen, the youngest, and Kennedy somewhat ruefully conceding that the shoes must be had, even at the cost of the needed gallon of olive oil. "No salads for a month, and they're so cheap!" she mourned. "And that young terror seems to me to need shoes every week! Don't ever have sons, Miss Page, they're a heart scald wid the bould ways av thim! Stephen had nine pairs of shoes in eight months--that's true, isn't it, 'Lizabeth? For we were keeping accounts then--while Dad's will was in probate, we had to." "A good thing to have a will to fall back on," said Julia. "Even if we only inherited one hundred and sixteen dollars apiece," 'Lizabeth added. "Dad had had losses--it wasn't any one's fault--everything went to smash," Kennedy supplemented instantly. "And of course when we found that Steve had been braking his coaster with his feet, that helped. But me--I'm going to have only girls--five darling little gray-eyed girls with brown hair!" "I'd like a boy to start off with," 'Lizabeth said. "He could take his sisters to parties--" "Yes, but they never do; they take other girls to parties!" the fifteen-year-old Mary said suddenly, and the older girls laughed together at her sapience. "Peter has a girl," Kennedy said. "But naturally he won't desert the bunch. Next year, when some bills we simply couldn't help--" "Doctor and nurse when George and Mary had typhoid," 'Lizabeth explained. "--are paid off," Kennedy continued. "Then, if he still likes her, he might. But he never stays in love very long," she ended hopefully. The four girls talked late into the night, and after a picnic the next day, a Sunday, Julia felt as if she loved them all, and she and Kennedy began shyly to call each other by their given names. Peter and George did not go on the picnic, having plans of their own for the day, but the others spent a dreamy day on Baker's Beach, and the two older boys, joining the group at dinner, ended the holiday happily. Julia carried away definite impressions to be brooded over in her quiet times. The Scotts were "ladies," of course. Somehow, although they were very poor, they all worked very hard, and all dressed very shabbily, they were "ladies," and knew only nice people. The sisters were really stronger and braver than the brothers, and loved their brothers more than they were loved. Julia wondered why. Also she came a little reluctantly to the conclusion, as girls at twenty, whether they be Julias or Barbaras, usually do, that if there were a great many nice young men in the world, there were a great many marriageable girls, too. No girl could expect a very wide choice of adorers, there were too many other girls. And affairs of the heart, and offers of marriage, occurred much more often in books than in life. Two or three times a week Miss Toland liked to rise early and go to the beautiful eight o'clock mass at St. Anne's, the big institution for unfortunate girls that was not far from The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House. There was no church in the immediate vicinity, and in asking for permission to come to the convent chapel, Miss Toland had felt herself doing no extraordinary thing, had felt almost within her rights. But the good nuns in charge of St. Anne's had whetted her appetite for the experience by interposing unexpected objections. Their charges, they explained, about two hundred in number, were very impressionable, very easily excited. A stranger in the chapel meant a sensation. Of course, the lay workers of the institution and the old people from the Home across the way sometimes came in, but they were so soberly dressed. Perhaps if Miss Toland and Miss Page would dress in dark things, and assure Good Mother that they would not speak to the girls-- "Oh, certainly!" Miss Toland had agreed eagerly. Julia, awed by the airy, sombre interior of the great building, the closed doors, the far-away echoes of footsteps and subdued voices, was a little pale. "And this is your little assistant?" said Good Mother, suddenly, turning a smile of angelic brightness upon Julia. "Well, come to mass by all means, both of you. And pray for our poor children, dear child; we are always in need of prayers." "You must have extraordinary experiences here," Miss Toland said. "And extraordinary compensations," said the nun. "Of course, some of our poor children are very wild--at first. We do what we can. I had a little pet of mine here until yesterday, Alice, ten years old; she is--" "_Ten_!" ejaculated Miss Toland. "Oh, yes, my dear! And younger; she was but eight when she came. What I was going to say was that her mother took her away yesterday, and Sister Philip Neri was amused to see how sad I was to have her go. She reminded me that when Alice first came here she had bitten my hand to the bone, so that I could not use it for three weeks. Ah, well!" And Good Mother gave the sweet toneless laugh of the religious. "That is not the worst of it--a clean bite on the hand!" Miss Toland bought an alarm clock on the way home, and she and Julia went to early mass on the very next morning. Julia found this first experience an ordeal; she and Miss Toland were in a side pew before the big gong struck, and Julia did not raise her eyes from her book as the girls filed in. The steady rustle of frocks and shuffle of feet made her feel cold and sick. A day or two later she could watch them, although never without profound emotion. Two hundred girls, ranging in years from ten to twenty, with roughly clipped hair, and the hideous gray-green checked aprons of the institution. Two hundred faces, sullen or vacuous, pretty, silly faces, hard faces, faces tragically hopeless and pale. These young things were offenders against the law, shut away here behind iron bars for the good of the commonwealth. Julia, whose life had made her wise beyond her years, watched them and pondered. Here was an almost babyish face; what did that innocent-looking twelve-year-old think of life, now that she had thrown her own away? Here was a sickly looking girl a few years older, coughing incessantly and ashen cheeked; why had some woman borne her in deathly anguish, loved her and watched her through the years that least need loving and watching? This thing that they had all done--this treasure they had all thrown away--what did they think about it? She would come out very soberly into the convent garden, and walk home, through the delicious airs of a spring morning, without speaking, perhaps to break out, over her belated coffee: "Oh, I think it's horrible--their being shut up there, the poor little things!" "They have sensible work, plenty to eat, and they're safe," Miss Toland might answer severely. "And that's a great deal more than they deserve!" "Nobody worried about them until it was too late," Julia suggested once, in great distress. "Lots of them never would have done anything wrong if they'd had work and food _then_!" "Well, the nuns are very kind to them," Miss Toland answered comfortably; and Julia knew this was true, as far as possible. One morning, when Julia slipped into her place in St. Anne's, she saw, two feet away from her, on an undraped trestle, a narrow coffin, and in the coffin the rigid form of a girl who had been prayed for a few mornings earlier as very ill. There was not a flower on the still, flat young breast, and no kindly artifice beautified the stern face or the bare, raw little hands that protruded from the blue-green gingham sleeves. The ruined little tenement that had served some man's pleasure and been flung aside lay there as little beholden to the world in death as it had been in life. And as if the usual silence of the chapel would be too hard to bear, the living girls chanted to-day the "Dies Irae" and the "Libera me." When winter came, the little trestle was often in requisition, for the inmates of St. Anne's were ill-fitted to cope with any sickness. Once it was a nun, in her black robes, who lay there, her magnificent still face wearing its usual deep, wise smile, her tired hands locked about her crucifix. For her there were flowers, masses of flowers, and more than one black-robed priest, and a special choir, and Julia knew that the other nuns envied that one of their number who had gone on to other work in other fields. She grew grave, who was always grave, thinking of these things, and talked them over with Kennedy Scott. Kennedy was deeply, even passionately, concerned for a while, and she and Julia decided to establish a home some day for girls who were still to be saved. Time went very swiftly now: years were not as long as they used to be, one birthday was in sight of another. Sometimes Julia was astonished and a little saddened, as is the way of youth, at the realization of the flying months. She was busy, contented, beloved; she was accomplishing her ambition--but at what a cost of years! The great moment might come now at any time--Prince Charming might be on his way to her now, but meantime she must work and eat and sleep--and the birthdays came apace. Sometimes she grew very restless; this was not life! But a visit to her grandmother's house usually sent her back to The Alexander with fresh courage. No possible alternative offered itself anywhere. Just at first she had hoped for inspiring frequent glimpses of her adored Tolands, but these were very few. Sometimes Barbara or the younger girls would come to Easter or Christmas entertainments at the settlement, but Julia, always especially busy on these occasions, saw no more than Barbara's pretty, bored face, framed in furs, across a room full of people, or returned a dignified good-bye to Sally's hasty, "Mother and the others have gone on, Miss Page; they asked me to say good-bye!" But then there was the prospect of a day with Kennedy Scott, to console her, or perhaps the reflection that little Mr. Craig, who came out on Tuesday evenings to the meetings of the Boys' Club, was in love with her. She did not wish to marry Mr. Craig, still it was nice of him to admire her; it was nice to have a new hat; it was pleasant to visit the San Jose convent, with Miss Toland, and be petted by the nuns. So Julia cheated herself, as youth forever cheats itself, with the lesser joys. She went home for three or four days at the time of her father's death, and afterward deliberately decided not to accompany her mother on a trip south. Emeline had nine thousand dollars of life insurance, and thought of buying a half interest in a boarding-house in Los Angeles. "All the theatrical trade goes there," said Emeline, "and you could get a berth as easy as not!" "Yes, I know," Julia said, gently, concealing an inward shudder. She went quietly back to The Alexander, when the funeral was over, to her mother's disgust. Emeline did not go south, but lingered on at home, drinking tea and gossiping with her mother, quarrelling with her old father, and gradually eating into her bank account. She called upon her daughter, to Julia's secret embarrassment, though the girl introduced this overdressed, sallow, hard-eyed mother with what dignity she could muster to Miss Pierce, Miss Scott, and Miss Toland. Emeline laughed and talked with an air of ease, was forced into silence when Julia said the closing prayer, and burst out laughing at its close. "That does sound so funny, dolling! But I mustn't laugh," said Emeline. "I'm sure you do wonders for these girls, and they need it," she added graciously to Miss Toland. She followed Julia into the little kitchen. "Don't she help you cook?" she asked in a low tone, indicating Miss Toland with a jerk of her much-puffed head. "Sometimes she does," Julia answered, annoyed. "H'm!" Emeline said. And she asked curiously a moment later, "Why you do it is what gets me! Here's Marguerite going to get married, and Ev has an elegant job, and I want you to go south with me; you'd have a _grand_ time!" She stopped on a complaining note, her eyes honestly puzzled. Julia closed the oven door upon some potatoes, and stood up. "I'm perfectly satisfied, Mama," said she briefly. "I'm doing what I want to do." "Lord!" Emeline ejaculated, discontentedly, vaguely baffled by the girl's definiteness and dignity. She left soon after, Julia dutifully walking with her to her car. Miss Toland said nothing of the visitor when Julia came back, but she knew the girl was troubled, and lay awake a long time herself that night, conscious that Julia, in the next room, was restless and wakeful. Besides a certain troubled consciousness of her failure to please her own people, Julia had in these years a more definite source of worry. Mark Rosenthal was still her patient adorer, and if, like Julia, he allowed the flying months to steal a march upon him, and drifted along in the comfortable conviction that "a little while" would bring a change in Julia's feeling, still he was none the less a watchful and ardent lover, with whom she sometimes found it very difficult to deal. Mark, always tall, was broad as well now, an imposing big fellow, prosperous, shrewd, and self-confident. He had handsome dark eyes, and showed white teeth when he laughed; he dressed well, but not conspicuously; his shoes might be well worn, but they were always bright; and if his suit were shabby, still he was never without gloves. He liked to talk business; he had long ago given up his music and devoted himself with marvellous success to his work. He was no longer with the piano house, but had an excellent position as adjuster of damages, out of court, for one of the street railway companies. The history of his various promotions and his favour with his employers was absorbing to him; but the time came, when Julia was about twenty-two, when his determination to win her became a serious menace to her peace. His manner, which had once been boyish and uncertain, was in these days good-humouredly proprietary. He laughed at little Julia's earnest explanations, and would answer her most eager appeal only with a lover's fond comment upon her eyes. "Yes, darling, I wasn't listening--forgive me!" he said one day, when, with a spark of real anger, Julia had begged him to make his calls at the settlement house a little less frequent and less conspicuous. "What was it?" And with twinkling eyes he caught up the hand that lay near him on the table and kissed it. "I want you not to do that, Mark," said Julia gravely, moving a little farther away, "and please don't call me darling!" "All right, darling!" smiled Mark. "I'm not joking," Julia said resentfully, two red spots in her cheeks. Mark moved to lay his hand over hers penitently, and said, in the low, gentle voice Julia dreaded: "Do you know what's the matter with you, Julie? I'll tell you. You love me and you won't admit it. Girls never will. But that's what makes you so unhappy--you won't let yourself go. Ah, Julia! be fair to yourself, darling! Tell me that you care for me. I've waited seven years for you, dear--" "Oh, you have not!" Julia said impatiently. "I'd like to know why I haven't!" Mark said challengingly. "Ah, but you know I have, darling. And I want my wife." It was a Saturday afternoon, and Miss Toland was dozing in her own room. Julia and Mark were alone in the deserted assembly hall. Suddenly he slipped on his knees beside her, and locked one arm about her waist. "You will, won't you, Julia?" he stammered. Julia, scarlet cheeked, tried to rise, and held him off with her hands. "Oh, please, _please_," she begged. "I can't, Mark. You are awfully good to me--I'm not worth it, and all that--but I _can't_. I--it's not my fault I don't want to, is it? It would be wrong to do it, feeling this way--" She was on her feet now, and Mark stood up, too. Both were breathing hard; they looked at each other through a widening silence. Flies buzzed against the closed windows, a gust of summer wind swept along the street outside. Suddenly Mark caught Julia fiercely in his arms, and felt her heart beating madly against him, and forcing up her chin with a gentle big hand, kissed her again and again upon her unresponsive lips. "There!" he said, freeing her, a laugh of triumph in his voice. "Now you belong to me! That's the kind of a man that's in love with you, my girl, and don't you think for one instant that you can play fast and loose with him!" Julia sat still for a long time after the street door banged, staring straight ahead of her. She was going for this week-end to the little house the Scotts had been loaned in Belvedere for the season, and she dressed and packed her suitcase very soberly. Miss Toland went with her to the ferry, both glad to get the fresh breath of the water, and Julia had a riotous dinner with the Scotts, and a wonderful evening drifting about in their punt between the stars in the low summer sky and the stars in the bay. When they were in their porch beds she told Kennedy all about Mark, and Kennedy commented that he certainly was a gratifyingly ardent admirer. "Ardent? I should think so!" sighed Julia, and went to sleep, not ill-pleased with her role of the inaccessible lady. But the fact that Mark's persistence could not be discouraged fretted her a good deal. He rarely gave her a chance for a definite snub; if she was ungracious, his humble patience waited tirelessly upon her mood; and if she smiled, he showed such wistful delight that even Julia's cool little heart was stirred. That he never stirred her in any deeper way, that his kisses did not warm her, was not a serious trouble to Mark. She would be all the sweeter to win; he would wake her in his arms to the knowledge that she loved him! And Julia won, as his little wife, would be dearer even than the demure and inaccessible Julia of to-day. Mark fed his hungry heart on love tales; many a man had won a harder fight than his; these cold, shy girls made the best wives in the world! Julia began seriously to consider the marriage. She visioned a safe and pleasant life, if no very thrilling one. Mark was handsome, devoted, he was making money, he would be faithful to his wife and adore his children. Julia would have no social position, of course. She sighed. She would be a comfortable little complacent wife among a thousand others. She would have her silk gowns, her cut glass; she could afford an outing at Pacific Grove with the children; some day she and Mark would go to New York-- No, not she and Mark! She couldn't; she didn't love him enough to sit opposite him all the mornings of her life, to sell her glowing dreams for him! She had come so far from the days that united her childhood with all the Rosenthals--she had not seen Mrs. Tarbury, nor Rose, nor Connie for years. She was climbing, climbing, away from all those old associations. And she could climb faster alone! CHAPTER VII One warm morning in August, when Miss Toland was stretched out on the reception-room couch, and Julia, who had washed her hair, was shaking it, a flying, fluffy mop, over the sill of the bathroom window, a sudden hubbub broke out in the kindergarten. Miss Toland flung down her book and Julia gathered her loose wrapper about her, and both ran to the door of the assembly hall. The children, crying and frightened, were gathered in a group, and in the centre of it Julia, from the elevation of the stage, could see Miss Pierce half-kneeling and leaning over as if she tried to raise something from the floor. While they watched she arose, holding the limp body of a five-year-old child in her arms. "What is it--what is it?" screamed Miss Toland, but as every one else was screaming and crying, and Julia's automatic, "Is she dead?" was answered over and over again only by Miss Pierce's breathless, "No--no--no--I don't think so!" it was some time before any clear idea of the tragedy could be had. The small girl was carried in to Julia's bed, where she lay half-conscious, moaning; great bubbles of blood formed from an ugly skin wound in her lip, and her little frock was stained with blood. As an attempt to remove her clothes only roused her to piercing screams, Julia and Miss Pierce gave up the attempt, and fell to bathing the child's forehead, which, with the baby curls pushed away from it, gave a ghastly look to the little face. "Well, you've killed her, Miss Pierce!" said Miss Toland, beside herself with nervousness. "That's a dying child, if I ever saw one. That ruins _this_ Settlement House! That ends it! Poor little thing!" "I was at the board," said Miss Pierce, white-lipped, and in a low tone. "I don't care where you were," said Miss Toland. "There, there, darling! I pay you to watch these children! It's a fine thing if a child is going to be killed right here in the house! Where was Miss Watts?" she broke off to ask. "Miss Watts is at home, sick," Miss Pierce said eagerly. "And I was at the board, when some of those bigger boys set a bench up on top of another bench. I heard the noise and turned around; this child--poor little Maude Daley, it is--was standing right there, and got the full weight of both benches as they fell." "This boy is back," said Julia, coming from the front door, "and he says that Doctor White is out and Doctor McGuire is out, too!" "Great heavens!" Miss Toland began despairingly. "No doctor! of course, eleven o'clock they're all out on morning rounds! And the child's mother, where is she? Am I the only person here who can do something except sit around and say 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry!'" "She has no mother, and her grandmother's out," Julia said soothingly. "Miss Toland, if I telephone do you think I can catch Doctor Studdiford at the City and County?" "A two hours' trip from Sausalito!" Miss Toland said scornfully. "You must be crazy, that's all! No! Go into Mission Street--" "I don't mean in Sausalito," Julia said firmly; "he's at the City and County on Wednesday mornings, you know. I could get him there." Miss Toland stared at her unblinkingly for a second. "Yes, do that!" she said then. "Yes, that's a good idea!" And as Julia ran to the telephone she called after her, "Yes, that's a very good idea!" Julia's heart thumped as she called the big institution, thumped when after a long wait a crisp voice, out of utter silence, said: "Yes? This is Doctor Studdiford!" She explained as concisely as she could, feeling that he listened attentively. "Keep the child flat, no pillow," he said, as Julia concluded. "Tell my aunt I'll be there in fifteen minutes." Julia, thrilled by she knew not what, knotted her flying hair loosely on her neck and buttoned on a fresh uniform. Ten minutes later she admitted Doctor Studdiford to the sickroom. He had laid aside his hat and washed his hands. Now he sat down by the bed and smiled at the dazed, moaning little Maude. Julia felt something expand in her heart as she watched him, his intense, intelligent face, his singularly winning smile, the loose lock of dark hair on his forehead. "Now, then, Maude," said he, his clever, supple fingers on her wrist, "where does it hurt?" Maude whimpered something made unintelligible by the fast-stiffening cut in her lip. "Her back's broken, Jim, no doubt about it," said Miss Toland grimly. "I think her side hurts," Miss Pierce submitted eagerly. "Well, we'll see--we'll see!" Doctor Studdiford said soothingly. "Now, if you'll help me, Miss Page, we'll get off these clothes--ah!" For an anguished moan from the sufferer coincided with his discovery that the little left arm hung limp. Julia loosened the sleeve as the surgeon's scissors clipped it away, and she held the child while the arm was set and bandaged. Miss Pierce was faint, and Miss Toland admitted freely that she hated to see a child suffer, and went away. "Only a clean dislocation, Aunt Sanna!" said Jim, cheerfully, when he came out of the sickroom. "She'll have to lie still for a while, but that's all. The cut on her mouth doesn't amount to anything. She's all right, now--Miss Page is telling her stories. She ought to have a glass of milk, or soup, or something; then she'll go to sleep. I'll be in to-morrow. By the way, you have a little treasure there in Miss Page!" "Julia? Glad you have the sense to see it, Jim!" "She--is--a--peach!" the doctor mused, packing his very smart little instrument case. "Who is she?" "A little girl I found. Yes, she's a nice child, Julia. She's been here six years now." "Six years! Great Scott! How old is she?" "Twenty-two--twenty-three--something like that." "It doesn't sound much of a life for a young girl, Aunt Sanna. Imagine the Barbary-flower!" Doctor Studdiford shook his thermometer, looked at it, and screwed it into its case. "How _is_ Barbara?" Miss Toland asked dryly. "Fine! Mother came to me with a long tale, the other day, about her being run down, or blue, or something, but I don't see it. She has a dandy time." "Why doesn't she marry? Barbara must be twenty-six," her aunt said, with directness. "Oh, I don't know; why don't all the girls? The fellows they run with are an awfully bum lot," Jim said contentedly. "Look at me! Why don't I?" he added, laughing. "Well, why don't you?" "I'm waiting to settle the others off, I guess. Besides, you know, I've been working like the devil! Sally's been worrying Mother with her affairs lately," said Jim. "_Sally_--and who?" "Keith Borroughs!" Jim announced, grinning. "Keith Borroughs? Why, he's ten years younger!" "He's about three years younger, and he's an awful fool," said Jim, "but he's very much in love with Sally, and she certainly seems to like it!" "I think that's disgusting!" said Miss Toland. "Has he a _job_?" "Job? He's a genius, my dear aunt. His father pays for his music lessons, and his mother gives him an allowance. He's a pianist." "H'm!" commented the lady briefly. "Ned has definitely announced his intention of marrying his Goldfield girl," pursued Jim. "Yes, I knew that. Kill your mother!" "It'll just about kill her. And the latest is Ted--falling in love with Bob Carleton!" "Carleton! Not the lumber man? But he's fifty!" "He's forty-five, forty-seven perhaps." "But he's married, Jim!" "Divorced, Aunt Sanna." "Oh, Jim, that's awful!" said his aunt, horrified. "Well, it may come to nothing. Ted's only twenty--I hope devoutly it will. There--that's all the news!" Jim jumped up from his chair, and gave his aunt a kiss. "Why don't you come over and get it for yourself, now and then! I don't know how much there is in any of this stuff, because I use my rooms at the club a good deal, but it's all in the wind. That little Julia Page is a peach, isn't she?" "You said that once," Miss Toland said dispassionately. Jim grinned, unabashed. He had been in love with one girl or another since his fourteenth year, and liked nothing so much as having his affairs of the heart discussed. "Well, it's true, and I'll say it again for luck!" said he. "Who is she? I suppose Pius Aloysius Maloney, or some good soul who comes to teach the kids boxing, has got it all framed up with her?" "I don't know any Mr. Maloney," Miss Toland answered imperturbably. "Mr. Craig is director of the Boys' Club, and I know he admires her, and she has another admirer, too, who comes here now and then. But how likely she is to marry I really can't say! She's an extremely ambitious girl, and she has determined to raise herself." "Raise herself!" Jim said, with a casual laugh. "I don't suppose she started much lower than other people?" "Oh, I imagine she did. Her father was a--I don't know--a sort of drummer, I guess, but her mother is an awful person, and her grandfather was a day labourer!" "Ha!" Jim said, discomfited. "Well, see you tomorrow!" he added, departing. He walked briskly to the corner of the street, and experienced a thump at the heart when a casual backward glance discovered Julia, in a most fetching hat, coming out of the settlement house with a market basket on her arm. She did not see him, and Jim decided not to see her. Of course she _was_ a little peach, but that labourer grandfather was too much. That same evening Julia used the accident to little Maude as an excuse to break a half engagement with Mark. He was to be given only a few moments' chat before the Girls' Club met for a rehearsal, but he showed such bitter disappointment at losing it that Julia, half against her will, promised to spend at least part of her Sunday afternoon with him. This was on Wednesday, and on Thursday and Saturday Doctor Studdiford came to see his little patient, and both times saw Julia, too. He asked Julia what books she liked, and, surprised that she knew nothing of Browning, he sent her a great volume of his poetry, a leather-bound exquisite edition that Jim had taken some trouble to find. With the book came a box of violets, and Julia, opening the package, suddenly remembered that he was a rich man, and stood, flushed and palpitating to a thousand emotions, looking down at the damp, fragrant flowers. She wore a few violets at the breast of her sober little gown when she met Mark on Sunday for the promised walk. Julia had been most reluctant to go, but Maude had been moved to her own home, and the child's father was sitting with her, so that Julia had no excuse to visit her. "I want to show you something--something you'll like!" said Mark eagerly. "We take the Sixteenth Street car and transfer down Sacramento." Julia accepted his guidance good-naturedly, and they crossed the city, which lay in a clear wash of the warm September sunlight. Mark led Julia finally to the ornate door of a new apartment house in Sacramento Street. "What is it, Mark?" the girl asked, as they went in. "Some one we know live here?" "You wait!" Mark said mysteriously. He went to a desk in the handsome entrance hall, and talked for a few moments to a clerk who sat there. Then a quiet-looking, middle-aged woman came out, and Mark and Julia went upstairs with her, in a little elevator. The woman turned a key in a door, and led them into a charmingly bright front apartment of four good-sized rooms and a shining bathroom. There was a bedroom with curly-maple furniture, a dining-room with a hanging lamp of art glass on a brass chain, and Mission oak table and chairs, a kitchen delightfully convenient and completely equipped, and a little drawing-room, with a gas log, a bookshelf, a good rug, a little desk, and some rocking chairs and small tables. The sun shone in through fresh net curtains, and the high windows commanded a bright view of city roofs and a glimpse of the bay. Julia began to feel nervous and uncomfortable. She did not understand at all what Mark meant by this, but it was impossible to doubt, from his beaming face, that some plan involving her was afoot. He couldn't have furnished this apartment in the hope--? "Whose place _is_ this, Mark?" she asked, trying to laugh naturally. "Do you like it?" Mark countered, his eyes dancing. "Like it? It's simply sweet, of course! But whose is it?" "Well, now listen," Mark explained. "It's Joe Kirk's furniture; he's just been married, you know. He and his wife had just got back from their honeymoon when Joe got an offer of a fine job in New York. He asked me to see if I couldn't find a tenant for this--two years' lease to run--just as it stands; no raise in rent. And the rent's fifty-five?" he called to the woman in the next room. "Fifty, Mr. Rosenthal," she answered impassively. "Fifty!" Mark exulted. "Think of getting all this for fifty! Ah, Julia"--he came close to her as she stood staring down from the window, and lowered his voice--"will you, darling? Will you? You like it, don't you? Will you marry me, dearest, and make a little home here with me?" "Oh, Mark!" Julia stammered, a nervous smile twitching her lips. "Well, why won't you, Ju? Do you doubt that I love you? Answer me that!" "Why, no--no, I don't, of course." Julia moved a little away. "Don't go over there; she'll hear us! And you love me, don't you, Ju?" "But not that way I don't, Mark," Julia said childishly. "Oh, 'not that way'--that's all rubbish--that's the way girls talk; that's just an expression they have! Listen! Do you doubt that I'll always, _always_ love you?" "Oh, no, Mark, of course not!" Julia admitted. "But I don't want to marry any one--" "Well, what do you want? Haven't I loved you since you were a little girl?" "Yes, I know--of course you have! Only"--Julia gave him a desperate smile--"only I can't discuss such things here," she pleaded, "with that woman so near!" "You're right!" Mark said, with military promptness, and as one who loves to receive his lady's orders. "We'll go out. Only--I wanted you to see it!" And as they went out he must stop to show her the admirably deep drawers of the little sideboard and the ingenious arrangement by which the gas was electrically lighted. They thanked the woman, and began the long ride back to the settlement house, for Julia never left Miss Toland long alone. In the Sacramento Street car they both had to stand, but Mark found seats without difficulty on the dummy of the Fillmore Street car, and laying his arm along the back of Julia's seat, swung about so that his face was very close to hers. A world of wistful tenderness filled his voice as he said again: "Well, darling, what do you think of it?" Poor Mark! Perhaps if he had asked her only a week earlier, his lady might have given him a kinder answer. But Julia was walking in a golden dream to-day, a dream peopled only by herself and one other, and she hardly noticed his emotion. She fixed her blue eyes vaguely on the black eyes so near, and smiled a little. "Oh, answer me, Julia!" Mark said impatiently. And a second later he asked alertly: "Where'd you get the violets?" "Oh--somebody," Julia temporized. Pink flooded her cheeks. "Who?" said Mark, very calm. "Oh, Mark, what a tone! Nobody you know!" Julia laughed. "Is he in love with you?" Mark asked fiercely. "Oh, don't be so silly! No, of course he's not." "Tell me who he is!" Mark commanded grimly. "Now, look here, Mark," Julia said sternly, "you stop that nonsense, or you can get straight off this car, and I'll go home alone! And don't you sulk, either, for it's too ridiculous, and I won't have it!" Mark succumbed instantly. "It's because I love you so," he said humbly. There was a little silence, then Julia, watching the Sunday streets, said suddenly: "Look, Mark, look at the _size_ of that hat!" Mark, disdaining to turn his eyes for the fraction of a moment from her face, said reproachfully: "Are you going to answer me, Julia?" "How do you mean?" Julia said nervously. "You know what I mean," Mark answered, with an impatient nod. "No, I don't," Julia said, with a little laugh. "Now, you look-a-here, Julia--you look-a-here," Mark began, almost angrily. "I am going to ask you to marry me! You've fooled about it, and you've laughed about it, and I've got a right to _know_! I think about it all the time; I lie awake at night and think about it. I"--his voice softened suddenly--"I love you awfully, Julia," he said. And then, with a sort of concentrated passion that rather frightened the girl, he added, "So I'm going to ask you once more. I want you to answer me, d'ye see?" The car sped on, clanged across Market Street, turned into the Mission. Julia had grown a little pale. She gave Mark a fleeting glance, looked away, and finally brought her eyes back to him again. "I wish you wouldn't take things so _seriously_, Mark," she began uneasily. "You're always forcing me to say things--and I don't want to--I don't want to get married _at all_--" "Nonsense!" said Mark harshly. "It's not nonsense!" Julia protested, glad to feel her anger rising. Mark saw her heightened colour, and misread it. "Yes," he said sneeringly. "That's all very well, but I'll bet you'd feel pretty badly if I never came near you again--if I let the whole thing drop!" "Oh, Mark," said Julia fervently, "if you only _would_--I don't mean that!" she interrupted herself, compunction seizing her at the look of mortal hurt on his face. "But I mean--if you only didn't love me! You see, I'm perfectly happy, Mark, I've got what I want. And if Miss Toland takes me abroad with her next year, why, it'll mean more to me than _any_ marriage could, don't you see that? You know what my childhood was, Mark; my mother didn't love my father--" And as a sudden memory of the old life rose to confront her, Julia's tone became firm; she felt a certain sureness. "Married people ought to love each other, Mark," she said positively. "I _know_ that. And I won't--I _never_ will marry a man I don't love. If everything goes wrong, after that, you have only yourself to blame. And so many times it goes wrong, Mark! I should be unhappy, I should keep wondering if I wouldn't be happier going my own way--wondering if I wouldn't have--have gotten farther--do you understand me?" This was a long speech for Julia, and during it Mark had twisted about, and pulled his hat over his face. Now, in a voice curiously dead and hard, he asked briefly: "Gotten farther--_where_?" "I don't know," said Julia candidly. "But the more I read, and the more I think, the more it seems to me that anyone can be anything in this world; there's some queer rule that makes you rise if you want to rise, if only you don't compromise! The reason so many people _don't_ ultimately get what they want is because they stop trying for it, and take something else!" "And marriage with me would be a compromise, is that it?" Mark muttered sullenly. "It would be for me," Julia answered serenely. "Because staying where I am keeps me nearer what I want." "Money, huh?" asked Mark. "Oh, money, _no_! Books and talk--things. And--and if I loved you, Mark, then don't you see it _would_ be the right thing to marry you?" she added brightly. "But now, it would only be because it was easier, or because I was tired of The Alexander, do you see?" "I suppose so," Mark answered drearily. A long silence ensued. In silence they got off the car, and walked through the cheerless twilight of the dirty streets, and they were almost in sight of the settlement house before Mark burst out, a little huskily: "Then there's no chance for me at all, Julie?" "Oh, Mark, I feel rotten about it!" said Julia frankly, her eyes full of pity and regret, and yet a curious relief evident in her voice. "I _am_ so sorry! I've just been thinking of girls who like this sort of thing--I don't see how they _can_! I _am_ so sorry! But you won't mind very long, Mark; you won't always care; you'll--why, there's Doctor Studdiford's automobile!" For they were in sight of The Alexander now, and could see the electric runabout at the door. Motor cars were still new to San Francisco and to the world, and a crowd of curious children surrounded the machine. "What's he there for?" Mark asked gruffly. Julia explained: the accident--the emergency call. "Well, but the kid is not there now, you say?" "Yes, I know. But he didn't know that. I suppose he's calling on his aunt." To this Mark made no immediate answer. Presently he said: "City and County! I'll bet the city pays for his automobile!" "Oh, no!" Julia protested. "He's a rich man in his own right, Mark." They were at the house now, and went up the steps together. Doctor Studdiford was in the little reception hall with Miss Toland. He looked very handsome, very cheerful, as he came forward with his fine eyes on Julia. And Julia stood looking up at him with an expression Mark never had won from her, her serious, beautiful little face flooded with light, her round eyes soft and luminous. A woman at last, she seemed as she stood there, a grave and wise and beautiful woman, ripe for her share of loving and living, ready to find her mate. "You got the book?" Jim said, with a little laugh. He laughed because his heart was shaking curiously, and because the sudden sight of Julia disconcerted him so that he hardly knew what he said. Julia did not answer; she only touched the wilting and fragrant violets on her breast with her free hand. Jim still held one hand. "You--you'll like Browning," added Jim. And inconsequentially he added, "I was thinking of our little talk yesterday--all night." "So was I," Julia breathed. They turned suddenly and self-consciously to Miss Toland and Mark. Julia introduced the men; her breath was coming unevenly and her colour was exquisite; she talked nervously, and did not meet Mark's eye. Mark was offered a lift in Doctor Studdiford's motor car, and declined it. The doctor seemed to be in no hurry to go; wandered into her room to advise his aunt upon the placing of a telephone extension. Julia and Mark loitered about the assembly hall for a few empty moments, and then Mark said he must go, and Julia, absently consenting, went with him toward the stage door. "And he's rich, is he?" said Mark. Julia came out of a brief dream. "He's very rich--yes!" she smiled. She mounted to the stage as she spoke, and Mark held out his hand and turned about as if to say goodbye. The next instant Julia felt as if the dull twilight room had turned to brass and was falling with a wild clamour; she felt as if her heart were being dragged bodily to her lips, and she heard her own wild scream. Silence fell, and Mark was still staring at her, still smiling. But now he toppled slowly toward her and stumbled, and as his body, with a hideous, slithering sound, slipped down to the floor, his arm fell lax, and the still smoking revolver slid to Julia's very feet. "_Stop_, Julia--what is it?--what is it?" Miss Toland was crying. She locked her arms tight about the girl, and drew her back into the reception hall. Julia was silent, suddenly realizing that she had been screaming. She moved her tongue over her dry lips, and struggled to explain. "Now we understand perfectly!" Doctor Studdiford said soothingly. "He shot himself, poor fellow. I'm going to take care of him, do you see? Just keep _still_, Aunt Sanna, or we'll have a crowd here. Aunt Sanna, do you want this to get into the papers?" For Miss Toland's surmises were delivered at a sort of shriek. "Oo--oo--oo!" shuddered Julia, fearful eyes on the assembly room door. "He was--we were just talking--" "Is he dead, Jim?" asked Miss Toland fearfully. "I think so. I'm going to call the hospital for an ambulance, anyway." Doctor Studdiford was all brisk authority. "But what ever possessed him?" shrilled Miss Toland again. "Of all _things_!" "Had you quarrelled?" asked Jim, keen eyes on Julia as he rattled the telephone hook. "No," Julia said shortly, like a child who holds something back. Then her face wrinkled, and she began to cry. "He wanted to marry me," she said piteously. "He wanted me to promise! But he always has asked me--ever since I was fifteen years old, and I always said no!" "Well, now," Jim said soothingly. "Don't cry. You couldn't help it. Do you know why he carried a revolver?" "He has to carry it, his business isn't a very safe one," Julia said shakily. "He's shown it to me once or twice!" Her voice dropped on a trembling note, and her eyes were wild with fright. "Now, Aunt Sanna," said Jim quietly, after telephoning, "I think that you and Miss Page ought to get out of here. You'll have a raft of reporters and busybodies here to-morrow. It's a ghastly thing, of course, and the quieter we keep it the better for every one. I'll manage my end of it. I'll have as conservative an account as I can in the papers--simply that he was despondent over a love affair and, in a fit of temporary aberration--and so on. Could you close this place up for a week?" "Certainly!" said Miss Toland, with Spartan promptness, beginning to enjoy the desperate demand of the hour. "And could you take that poor child somewhere, out of the public eye?" "I will indeed, Jim!" "Well, that's the best way to do. You're a trump, Aunt Sanna! I will say that Miss Page is naturally prostrated, and gone away to friends." "Jim, has that poor boy a chance?" "A chance? No. No; he died instantly. It was straight through the brain. Yes, terrible--naturally. Now, will you take what you need--" "Instantly!" said Miss Toland, with a shudder. "Oh, Jim, I'm so glad you're a doctor," she added weakly, clutching his arm, "and so cold blooded and reliable!" "I'm glad I was here," Jim answered simply. "Hello, look at poor little Miss Page! She's fainted!" CHAPTER VIII It was Christmas time before Julia saw Doctor Studdiford again, and then it was but for a few minutes. Christmas Eve was wet and blowy out of doors, but the assembly hall of The Alexander looked warm and bright; there were painfully made garlands of green looped about the windows, bells of red paper hung from all the chandeliers, and on the stage an enormous Christmas tree glittered with colour and light. Six hundred people were crowded into the room, more than half of them children. Babies twisted and climbed on the laps of their radiant mothers, small girls and boys everywhere were restless with excitement and anticipation. Miss Toland only appeared at intervals, spending most of the afternoon with a few chosen guests in the reception hall, but Julia was everywhere at once. She wore a plain white linen gown, with a bit of holly in her hair and on her breast, and whether she was marshalling small girls into groups, stopping to admire a new baby, meeting the confectioner's men and their immense freezers at the draughty side door, talking shyly with the directors in Miss Toland's room, or consoling some weeping infant in the hall, she was followed by admiring eyes. At three o'clock the general restlessness visibly increased, and the air in the hall, between steaming wet garments and perspiring humanity, became almost insufferable. Julia experimentally opened a door and let in a wet blast of air, but this was too drastic, and her eyes were brought back from a wistful study of the high windows by a voice that said: "Merry Christmas! Give me a stick, and I'll do it for you!" The girl found her hand in Doctor Studdiford's, and their eyes met. "I didn't know you were here!" said Julia, in swift memory of their last meeting. "Just come." He looked at her, all kindliness. "How goes it?" "Finely," Julia answered. When he had opened a window, he followed her across the room. "I may stay near you, mayn't I?" "I am just going to begin," Julia said, taking her place at the piano, and facing the room across the top of it. Her small person seemed suddenly fired with authority. She struck a full chord. "Children!" she said. "_Children_! Who is talking? Some one is still talking! Keep still, everybody, please! Keep still, every one. "Now we are going to sing the 'Adeste'--four verses. And then we'll give out the presents. Listen, every one! We are going to sing the 'Adeste,' and then give out the presents. The presents, of course, go only to our own girls and boys, do you understand that? Listen, children, please! "But we have a box of candy for every child here, whether that child comes to any of the classes or not! So don't go home without your candy. And don't come up for your present until you hear your name called, do you understand that? If I see any child coming up before Miss Pierce calls her name, I'll send her right back to her seat! Now, the 'Adeste,' please!" Jim had listened in intense amusement. How positive she was and how authoritative! Her straight little back, her severe braids, her stern blue eyes roving the hall as she touched the familiar chords, were all so different from the vague young women who were Barbara's friends. She played a few wandering chords after the distribution of gifts began, watching the children file up the aisle, and listening, with only an occasional lifting of her blue eyes to his face, to Doctor Studdiford's smiling comments. Her heart was beating high under a flood of unsensed joy, she did not know why--but she was happy beyond all words. "I'm afraid I'll have to go help Miss Pierce and Miss Furey, Doctor," she said presently, standing up. "Our Miss Scott, who got married two years ago, used to be a perfect wonder at times like this! Here, little girl, little girl! You don't come to the classes, do you? No? Well, then, go back to your seat and wait--you see!" She turned despairingly to Jim. "You see, they're simply making a _mess_ of it!" "I have to go, anyway," said Jim. "Oh?" Julia turned surprised eyes toward him, and said the one thing she meant to avoid. "But Mrs. Toland and Miss Barbara are coming," she submitted. "And what of it?" Jim said meaningly. It was his turn to say the awkward thing. "How are the nerves these days?" he asked quickly. Colour flooded Julia's face. "Much better, thank you! I gave the tonic up weeks ago. It was just nerves," explained Julia, "a sort of breakdown after we came back from Cloverdale! And I'm so much obliged to you!" she ended shyly. "Oh, not at all, not at all!" Jim protested gruffly. An unmanageable silence hung between them for a few seconds; then Julia, with a murmured excuse, went to the extrication of Miss Pierce, now hopelessly involved in a surge of swarming children, and Jim went on his way. He carried with him a warm memory of the erect young figure in white, and the thick twisted braid, set against a background of Christmas green. For Julia the rest of the afternoon was enchanted; an enchantment subtly flavoured with the odour of evergreen, and pierced by rapturous voices, and by the glowing colours of the Christmas tree, and the slapping rain at the window. She and Miss Toland sat down, exhausted and well satisfied, at seven o'clock, to a scrappy little supper in the littered dining-room: one director had left chocolates, another violets; a child's soiled hair ribbon, still tied, lay on the floor; the chairs were pushed about at all angles. "Give me some more coffee, dear, and open that box of candy," said Miss Toland luxuriously. "We'll sleep late, and go to high mass at the Cathedral. Alice always has room in her pew. And then we might go over to Sausalito and say 'Merry Christmas.' They'll all be scattered; Jim tells me he and my brother have an operation at twelve, poor wretches! And I suppose Barbara and little Sally will be off somewhere. Sally always tries to keep them together for Christmas Eve, but in my opinion they're all bored by this tree and stocking business. But of course Ned and his extraordinary wife will be all over the place!" "I've not been in Sausalito, except once, for eight years," Julia said reflectively. "I know you've not. Well, we'll go to-morrow." Miss Toland reached for a cigarette; yawned as she lighted it. But Julia's heart began to beat fast in nervous anticipation. Mrs. Toland received them very graciously the next day, and Julia was at once made to feel at home in the pretty house, which was littered charmingly to-day with all sorts of Christmas gifts, and bright with open fires. Barbara was there, and the crippled Richie, but Sally had gone to a Christmas concert with her devoted little squire, Keith Borroughs, and Mrs. Toland presently took Miss Sanna aside for a long, distressed confidence. Theodora, it seemed, had had a stormy argument with her father on the subject of her admirer, Robert Carleton, some days before, and yesterday had left, in defiance of all authority, to meet him for a walk, and lunch with him. She and her father had not spoken to each other since, and Ted was keeping her room. Julia met Ned's wife, a pretentious, complacent little gabbling village belle, and was dragged about by the younger sisters to look at everybody's presents. "Must be a long time since we saw you here, Miss Page?" said the old doctor, smiling at her over his glasses, as he carved at luncheon. "I was here two years ago, one afternoon," Julia smiled. "But I think I haven't seen _you_ since 'The Amazons'--eight years ago!" "Eight years!" Barbara said, struck. "Mother, do you realize that it is eight years since I was in that play with the Hazzards and Gray Babcock and the Grinells? Isn't that _awful_?" She fell into sombre thought. Julia went through the day in a sort of deep study. This was the enchanted castle that had stood to her for so long as the unattainable height of dreams; these were the envied inhabitants of that castle. Everything was the same, except herself, yet how incredibly the change in her affected everything about her! She was at home here now, could answer the table pleasantries with her ready, grave smile, could feel that her interest in Constance and Jane was a pleasure to them, or could pick a book from the drawing-room table with the confidence that what she said of it would not be ridiculous. She could even feel herself happier than Barbara, who listened so closely to what Julia said of the settlement house, and sighed as she listened. After luncheon Richie took her driving over cold country roads, behind a big-boned gray mare, and adored her, though she never dreamed it, because she neither offered to take the reins nor asked him at intervals if his back was tired. He was finishing work at the school of medicine now, and although he could never hope to be in regular practice, his thin, bony face was very bright as he outlined his plans. Julia listened to him sympathetically, and said good-bye to him at the boat with a sense of genuine liking on both sides. Miss Toland was waiting for her on the upper deck, her long nose nipped and red in the cold air. "Well, he saw that you didn't miss it, after all!" said she, with a welcoming light for Julia in her sharp eyes, though she did not smile. "Sit down! I've been hearing nice things about you, my dear! I said to Sally, 'So there _is_ something in old maids' children, eh?'" Miss Toland chuckled; she was well pleased with her protegee. Julia settled herself comfortably beside her. She liked to watch the running gray water, and to feel the cold December wind in her face. The thought of Mark was always with her, poor Mark! so much more in her heart dead than living! But to-day his memory seemed only a part of the tender past; it was toward the future that her heart turned; she felt young and strong and full of hope. In the new year Jim began to come pretty regularly to the settlement house. Sometimes he stayed but for two minutes, never for more than ten, and usually, even if Julia was out, he left some little gift for her, a book or a magazine, flower seeds, or violets, or a box of candy. She would glance up from the soiled and rumpled sewing of some small girl to find Jim smiling at her from the stage door, or come back from her little shopping round and have a moment's chat with him on the steps. She grew more and more silent, more and more self-contained, but her beauty deepened daily, and her eyes shone like blue stars. "God, I will not believe it--I _cannot_ believe it!" said Julia, on her knees, at night, her hands pressed tight against her eyes. "But I think he is beginning to love me!" And she walked in a strange dazzle of happiness, rejoicing in every sunny morning that, with its warmth and blueness and distant soft whistles from the bay, seemed to promise the spring, and rejoicing no less when rain beat against the windows of The Alexander, and the children rushed in upon her at three o'clock with raindrops in their hair and on their glowing cheeks. The convent garden, in the February mornings, the assembly room, with late uncertain sunlight checking its floor in the long afternoons, the Colonial restaurant filled with lights and the odours of food at night, all these familiar things seemed strangely new and thrilling, and the arrival of the postman was, twice a day, a heart-shaking event. In April Doctor Toland went on a fortnight's trip to Mexico, and took his third daughter with him, in the undisguised hope of winning some small share of her confidence, and convincing her of his own disinterested affection. Two days later Barbara telephoned her aunt the harrowing news of Sally's elopement with Keith Borroughs, and Miss Toland went at once to Sausalito, taking Julia along. They found the big house full of excitement. Richie was with his mother, who had retired to her room and was tearful and hysterical; Ned and his wife had gone back after Christmas to the country town, where he held a small position under his father-in-law; and Jim was doing both his own work and that of his foster father for the time being, and could not be found by telephone; so Julia was received by Barbara and the two younger girls, who were not inclined to make light of the event. "Four years younger than Sally!" said Constance, not for the first time. "It's not _that_," Barbara contributed disgustedly. "But he's only nineteen--not of age, even! And he hasn't one single penny! Why, Mrs. Carter was thinking of sending him abroad for two years' work with his music. I _see_ her doing it now! Little sloppy-haired, conceited idiot, that's what _he_ is!" "And Richie says he'll have to have his mother's consent before he can marry her," said Jane with a virtuous air. "It's too disgusting!" Barbara added, giving Jane a sharp glance. "And you oughtn't talk that way, Jane; it doesn't sound very well in a girl your age to talk about any one's having to marry any one!" "I know this," said Constance gloomily. "It's going to give this family a horrible black eye. A fine chance we'll have to marry, we younger ones, with Sally disgracing every one this way!" Constance was the handsomest of all the Tolands, and felt keenly the disadvantages of being the youngest of four unmarried sisters. "Don't worry about your marriage until it comes along, Con," said Barbara wearily. "I'll bet I marry before you do!" said Constance, without venom. "I long ago made up my mind never to marry at all," Barbara said, with a bored air. Julia chuckled. "It is so funny to hear you go at each other," she explained. "It sounds so cross--and it really isn't at all! Don't worry, Miss Toland," she added soothingly, "Miss Sally wouldn't marry him if she didn't love him--" "Oh, she loves him fast enough!" Barbara admitted, consoled. "And if people love each other, it's all right," Julia went on. Barbara sighed. "Oh, I hope it is, Julia!" said she, as conscious of the little familiarity for all her abstracted air as Julia was, and suspecting that it thrilled Julia, as indeed it did. "And it's all the result of idleness, that's what it is, and that's what I've been telling your mother," said Miss Toland, coming in. "You've all got nothing to do except sit about and think how bored you are!" "Oh, Auntie, aren't you low?" Barbara said tranquilly, going to take an arm of her chair. "All sorts of people elope--there's nothing so disgraceful in _that_." "It's disgraceful considering what a father you've got, and what a mother!" Miss Toland said vexatiously. "And Ted worrying your father to death about that scamp, too! I declare it's too much!" "He's a pretty rich scamp, and a pretty attractive scamp," Barbara said in defence of Theodora's choice. "He's not like that _kid_ of a Keith!" Julia heard the garden gate slam, and a quick, springing step on the porch before the others did, but it was Jane who said, "Here's Jim!" and Barbara who went to let him in. "Oh, Jimmy, have you heard of Sally?" she faltered, and as they came in from the hall Julia's quick eye saw that she was half clinging to his shoulder, sister fashion, and that his arm was half about her. "Hello, every one!" said his big, reassuring voice. "How's Mother? Hello, Aunt Sanna--and Miss Page, too! Well, this is fun, isn't it? Yes, Miss Babbie, I've heard of Sally, Sally Borroughs, as she is now--" "What! Married?" said every one at once, and Mrs. Toland, making an impressive entrance with Richie, sank into a deep chair and echoed: "Married?" "Married, Mother dear," said Jim. "They found me in Dad's office at five o'clock; Keith's father, a fierce sort of man, was with them, and was for calling the whole thing off. Sally was crying, poor girl, and Keith miserable--" "Oh, poor old Sally!" said Barbara's tender voice. "You should have brought her straight home to me!" Mrs. Toland added severely. "Well, so I thought at first. But they had their license, which would be in the morning papers anyway, and Sally had done the fool thing of mailing letters to two girl friends when she left here this morning--" "She left me a mere scribble, pinned to her pin-cushion," said her mother, magnificently. "Just as any common actress--" "Oh, Mother! it wasn't pinned to her cushion at all!" Barbara protested. "She had no pincushion, she has a pin tray." "I hardly see how it matters, Babbie; it was on her bureau, anyway! Just like a servant girl!" Mrs. Toland persisted. "Well, anyway, it seemed best to push it right through," said Jim, "especially as they persisted that they would do it again or die--or rather, Sally did!" "Oh, Jim, _don't_!" wailed Sally's mother. "Poor, deluded child!" "I don't mean that Keith wasn't fiery enough," Jim hastened to say. "He's a decent enough little fellow, and he's madly in love. So we all went up to the French church, and Father Marchand married them--" "A child of mine!" said Mrs. Toland, stricken. "Keith's father and I witnessed," pursued Jim, "and we both kissed the bride--" "Sally! And she was such a dear sweet baby!" whispered Mrs. Toland, big tears beginning to run down her cheeks. "Ah, Mother!" Constance said soothingly, at her mother's knees. "Sally's of age, of course," Jim argued soothingly, "and one couldn't bring her home like a child. The thing would have gotten out, and she'd have been a marked girl for life! There's really no _reason_ why they shouldn't marry, and the boy--Keith, that is, put her into a carriage quite charmingly, and they drove off. They'll go no farther than Tamalpais or the Hotel Rafael, probably, for Keith has to be back at work on Monday, and I made him promise to bring Sally here on Sunday night." "And what will they live on?" Mrs. Toland asked stonily. "That isn't worrying them. Sally has--what? From those bonds of her grandfather's?" "Three hundred a year," Mrs. Toland said discouragingly. "And Keith gets fifty-five a month. That's eighty--h'm!" pursued Jim. "Well, some of us simply will have to help them," suggested Mrs. Toland, with a swift, innocent glance at Miss Sanna. "His father will have to help," Miss Toland countered firmly. They presently adjourned to the dining-room, all still talking--even Julia--of Sally. Sally would have to take the Barnes cottage, at fifteen dollars a month, and do her own cooking, and her own sewing-- "They can dine here on Sundays," said Sally's mother, sniffing and wiping her eyes. "And wouldn't it be awful if they had a baby!" Jane flung out casually. Every one felt the indelicacy of this, except Julia, who relieved all Jane's hearers by saying warmly: "Oh, don't say awful! Why, you'd all go wild over a dear little baby!" Doctor Studdiford gave her a curious look at this, and though Julia did not see it, Barbara did. After dinner the doctor and Barbara played whist with the older ladies, and Julia sat looking over their shoulders for a few minutes, and then went upstairs with Constance and Jane for a long, delightful gossip. The girls must show her various pictures of Keith and Sally, books full of kodak prints, and everywhere Julia saw Jim, too: Jim from the days of little boyhood on to to-day, Jim as camp cook, Jim as tennis champion, Jim riding, yachting, fishing; a younger Jim, in the East at college, a small, stocky, unrecognizable Jim, in short trousers and straw hat. And everywhere, with him, Barbara. "That's when they gave a play--I was only five," Constance said. "See, this is Jim as Jack Horner, and Babbie as Mother Goose. And look! here's Jim on a pony--that's at his grandfather's place in Honolulu, He stayed there a month every year, when he was a little boy, and Mother and Barbara visited there once. Here we all are, swimming, at Tahoe. And here's Bab in the dress she wore at her coming-out tea--isn't it dear? And look! here she is in an old dress of Jim's mother, and see the old pearls; aren't they lovely? Jim gave them to her when she was twenty." "Jim was crazy about her then," said Jane. "_I_ don't think he was," Constance said perversely. "Oh, Con, you know he was!" Jane protested. "He _was_, too," she added, to Julia. "_I_ don't think he was," persisted Constance lightly. Barbara came in a second later, and again the talk went back to Sally. "Mother and Aunt Sanna said good-night," reported Barbara, "and Aunt Sanna said to leave the door between your rooms open, and--oh, yes, Doctor Studdiford has been teasing Aunt Sanna to stay for a few days, Miss Page; he says you look as pale as a little ghost!" "I liked so much to have you call me Julia," was Julia's extremely tactful answer to this. Barbara, perhaps glad to find her message so casually dismissed, smiled her prettiest. "Julia--then!" and Barbara sat down on a bed, and began to roll up her belt. "Aunt Sanna says she gives Sally and Keith about three months--" she began. Two days later, on Sunday, the bride and groom came home. Sally, who looked particularly well and was quite unashamed, rushed into her mother's arms, and laughed and cried like a creature possessed. She kissed all her sisters, and if there was a note of disapproval in her welcome, she did not get it. Richie having charitably carried off the somewhat sullen young husband, the bride was presently free to open her heart to the women of the house. "It's all so different when you're married, isn't it, Mother?" bubbled Sally. "Going into hotels and everything--you don't care who looks at you, you know you've a perfect right to go anywhere with your husband! Now, that look that Keith just gave me, as he went off with Richie--_blazing_! Well, it would just have amused me when we were engaged, but now I know that he's simply wretched with jealousy, and I'll have to pet him a little and quiet him down! He is a perfect child about money; he _will_ spend too much on everything, and if we go abroad I'll simply have to--" "Go abroad?" every one echoed. "Oh, I think we must, for Keith's music," Sally said gravely. "He can't settle down here, you know. He's got to live abroad, and he's got to have lessons--expensive lessons. Office work makes him too nervous, anyway." "Well, my dear, I hope you have money enough to carry out these pleasing plans," said Miss Toland dryly. "Well, we have my twenty-five a month," Sally said capably, "and Keith's father _ought_ to give him another twenty-five, because the expense of having Keith live at home will be gone, and"--Sally fixed a hopeful eye on her mother--"and I should think Dad would give me at least that, Mother," said she. "I must cost him much more than that!" "Oh, I--don't--know!" said Mrs. Toland guardedly, taken unawares, and slowly shaking her head. "Then I thought," pursued the practical Sally, "that if you would give me half the clothes of a regular trousseau, and if Dad would give us our travelling expenses to Berlin for a wedding present--why, there you are!" "But you two couldn't live on seventy-five dollars a month, Sally!" "Oh, Mother, Jeannette said you could get a lovely room for two--in a pension--for a dollar a day! And that leaves forty for lessons, two a week, and five dollars over!" "For laundry and carfare and doctor's bills," said Miss Toland unsympathetically. "Well!" Sally flared, resentful colour in her cheeks. "And Dad will never consent to anything so _outrageously_ unfair as living on thirty-five and spending forty for lessons!" said Barbara. Poor little Sally looked somewhat crushed. "For heaven's sake don't let Keith hear you say that, Babbie!" she said nervously. "It makes him frantic to suggest that you can get decent lessons in harmony for nothing! I don't know what you know about it, anyway. I'll fix it with Dad!" "If Dad allows Sally so much, he ought to do the same for the rest of us," Constance suggested. Julia, foreseeing a scene, slipped out of the room. In the hallway she encountered Doctor Studdiford, who was just downstairs after a late sleep. Jim had the satisfied air of a man who has had a long rest, a shave and a bath, and a satisfactory breakfast. "Family conference?" he said, nodding toward the sitting-room door. "Sally and Keith are here," Julia announced. "Oh, are they? Well, I ought to go in. But I also ought to walk up to the Ridge, and see that poor fellow who ran a shaft into his leg." Jim hesitated. "I suppose you wouldn't like to go with me?" he asked, with his sudden smile. Julia's heart jumped; her eyes answered him. "Well, wrap up snug," said Jim, "for there's the very deuce of a wind!" So Julia tied herself into the most demure of hats, and buttoned her long coat about her, and Jim shook himself into his heaviest overcoat, and pulled an old cap down over his eyes. They let themselves out at a side door, and a gust of wet wind howled down upon them, and shook a shower from the madly rippling ivy leaves. The sky was high and pale, and crossed by hurrying and scattered clouds; a clean, roaring gale tore over the hills, and ruffled the rain pools in the road, and bowed the trees like whips. The bay was iron colour; choppy waves chased each other against the piers. Now and then a pale flicker of sunlight brightened the whole scene with blues and greens and shadows spectacularly clear; then the clouds met again, and the wind sang like a snapped wire. Julia and the doctor climbed the long flights of stairs that cut straight up through the scattered homes on the hill. These earthen steps were still running with the late rain, and moss lay on them like a green film. Julia breathed hard, a veil of blown hair crossed her bright eyes, her stinging cheeks glowed. "I love this kind of a day!" she shouted. Jim's gloved hand helped her to cross a wide pool, and his handsome eyes were full of all delight as he shouted back. Presently, when they were in a more quiet bit of road, he told her of some of his early boyish walks. "Listen, Julia!" he said, catching her arm. "D'you hear them? It's the peepers! We used to call them that, little frogs, you know--sure sign of the spring!" And as the wind lulled Julia heard the brave little voices of a hundred tiny croakers in some wet bit of meadow. "We'll have buttercups next week!" said Jim. He told her something of the sick man to whom they were going, and spoke of other cases, of his work and his hopes. "Poor Kearney!" said Jim, "his oldest kid was sick, then his wife had a new baby, and now this! You'll like the baby--he's a nice little kid. I took him in my arms last time I was here, and I wish you could have seen the little lip curl up, but he wouldn't cry! A kid two months old can be awfully cunning!" He looked a little ashamed of this sentiment, but Julia thought she had never seen anything so bright and simple and lovable as the smile with which he asked her sympathy. She was presently mothering the baby, in the Kearneys' little hot living-room, while Doctor Studdiford caused the patient in the room beyond to shout with pain. The howling wind had a sinister sound, heard up here within walls, and Julia was glad to be out in it, and going down the hills again. "Well, how do you like sick calls?" asked Jim. "I was glad not to have to see him," Julia confessed. "But it is a darling baby, and such a nice little wife! She has a sister who comes up every afternoon, so she can get some sleep, poor thing. His mother is going to pay their rent until he gets well, and he gets two dollars a week from his union. But she said that if you hadn't--" "Well, you know now, for such a quiet little mouse of a girl, Julia, you are a pretty good confidence woman!" "And the baby's to be named for you!" Julia ended triumphantly. "Lord, they needn't have done that!" said the doctor, with his confused, boyish flush. "Look, Julia, how the tide has carried that ferryboat out of her course!" Julia's heart flew with the winds; she felt as if she had never known such an hour of ecstasy before. They had crossed the upper road, and were halfway down the last flight of steps, when Jim suddenly caught her hand, and turned her about to face him. Dripping trees shut in this particular landing, and they were alone under the wind-swept sky. Jim put his arms about her, and Julia raised her face, with all a child's serene docility, for his kiss. "_Do_ you love me, Julie?" said Jim urgently, then. "Do you love me, little girl? Because I love you _so_ much!" Not the words he had so carefully chosen to say, but he said them a score of times. If Julia answered, it was only with a confused murmur, but she clung to him, and her luminous eyes never moved from his own. "Oh, my God, I love you so!" Jim said, finally releasing her, only to catch her in his arms again. "Won't you say it once, Julia, just to let me hear you?" "But I did say it," Julia said, dimpling and rosy. "Oh, but darling, you don't know how _hungry_ I am to hear you!" "How--how could I help it?" Julia stammered; and now the blue eyes she raised were misty with tears. Jim found this satisfactory, intoxicatingly so. They went a few steps farther and sat on a bit of dry bulk-heading, and began to discuss the miracle. About them the winds of spring shouted their eternal promise, and in their hearts the promise that is as new and as old as spring came to dazzling flower. "My clever, sweet, little dignified girl!" said Jim. "Julia, do you know that you are the most fascinating woman in the world? I never saw any one like you!" "I--Oh, Jim!" was all that Julia said, but her dimples and the nearness of the blue eyes helped the stammered words. "Among all the chattering, vapid girls I know," pursued Jim, "you stand utterly alone, you with your ambitions, and your _wiseness_! By George! when I think what you have made of yourself, I could get down and worship you. I feel like a big spoiled kid beside you! I've always had all the money I could spend, and you, you game little thing, you've grubbed and worked and made things do!" "I never had any ambition as high as marrying _you_," Julia said, with the mysterious little smile that at once baffled and enchanted him. "When I think of it, it makes me feel giddy, like a person walking in a valley who found himself set down on top of a mountain! I never thought of marriage at all!" "But you are going to marry me, sweet, aren't you?" Jim asked anxiously. "And you _are_ happy, dear? For I feel as if I would die of joy and pride!" "Oh, I'm happy!" Julia said, and instantly her lip quivered, and her eyes brimmed with tears. She jumped to her feet, and caught him by the hand. "Come on!" she said. "We _mustn't_ be so long!" "But darling," said Jim, infinitely tender, "why the tears?" For answer she caught his coat in her shabbily gloved little hands. "Because I love you so, Jim," she faltered, trying to smile. "You don't know how much!" Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and for a moment her eyes looked far beyond him, down into the valley, and at the iron-cold bay with its racing whitecaps. Then she took his hand, and they began to descend the steps. "I may tell my mother, Julie?" Jim asked joyously. "And Aunt Sanna? And do you know that Julia is one of my favourite names--" "No, I want you not to tell any one," Julia decided quickly. "You must promise me that. Nobody." Something in her tone surprised, a little chilled, him. "Julie--but why?" "Well, because we want to be _sure_--" "Oh, sure! Why, but, dearest, _aren't_ you--" "No, but wait a moment," Julia interrupted, and Jim, turning toward her, saw a real trouble reflected in her face. "I want you to meet my mother, and my own people," she said, scarlet cheeked. Jim's grave, comprehensive look met hers. "And I want to, dear," he said. And then, as her face did not brighten: "Why, my dearest, you aren't going to worry because your people aren't in the Social Register, and don't go to the Brownings'? I know all sorts of people, Ju--Kearney, up there, is a good friend of mine! And I know from Aunt Sanna that you're a long way ahead of your own people." "I don't know whether it's 'ahead' or not," said Julia, with a worried laugh. "I suppose only God knows the real value of finger bowls and toothbrushes and silk stockings! I _suppose_ it's 'ahead'!" She opened the Tolands' side gate as she spoke, and they went into the bare garden. "Well--but _don't_ go in," pleaded Jim, "there'll be a mob about us in no time, and I've never had you to myself before! When may I come see your people?" "Will you write?" Julia asked at the side door. "Oh, but darling, when we've just begun to talk!" fretted Jim. "Would you dare to kiss me right here--no one could possibly see us!" "I would _not_!" And Julia flashed him one laughing look as she opened the door. A moment later he heard her running up the stairway. Julia found Miss Toland upstairs, hastily packing. "Well, runaway!" said the older lady. And then, in explanation, "I think we'd best go, Julia, for my brother and Teddy have just got home, and there'll have to be a great family council to-night." "Would you stay if I went?" Julia asked, coming close to her. "No, you muggins! I'd pack you off in a moment if that was what I meant! No, I'm glad enough to get out of it!" Miss Toland stood up. "What's Jim Studdiford been saying to you to give you cheeks like that?" she asked. "I don't know," Julia whispered, with a tremulous laugh. And for the first time she went into Miss Toland's open arms, and hid her face, and for the first time they kissed each other. "Anything settled?" the older woman presently asked in great satisfaction. "Not--quite!" Julia said. "Not quite! Well, that's right; there's no need of hurry. Oh, law me! I've seen this coming," Miss Toland assured her; "he all but told me himself a week ago! Well, well, well! And it only goes to show, Julia," she added, shaking a skirt before she rolled it into a ball and laid it in her suitcase, "that if you give a girl an occupation, she's better off, she's more useful, and it doesn't keep her fate from finding her out! You laugh, because you've heard me say this before, but it's true!" Julia had laughed indeed; her heart was singing. She would have laughed at anything to-day. Four days later, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Doctor Studdiford called at The Alexander, and Miss Page joined him, in street attire, at once. They walked away to the car together, in a street suddenly flooded with golden sunshine. "Did you tell your mother I was coming, dear?" "Oh, Jim, of course! I never would dare take them unawares!" "And did you tell her that you were going to be my adored and beautiful little wife in a few months?" "In a few months--hear the man! In a few years! No, but I gave them to understand that you were my 'friend.' I didn't mention that you are a multi-millionaire and a genius on leg bones--" "Julia, my poor girl, if you think you are marrying a multi-millionaire, disabuse your mind, dear child! Aren't women mercenary, though! Here I thought I--No, but seriously, darling, why shouldn't your mother have the satisfaction of knowing that your future is pretty safe?" "Well, that's hard to say, Jim. But I think you will like her better if she takes it for granted that you are just--well, say just the sort of doctor we might have called in to the settlement house, establishing a practice, but quite able to marry. I feel," said Julia, finding her words with a little difficulty, "that my mother might hurt my feelings--by doubting my motives, otherwise--and if she hurt my feelings she would anger you, wouldn't she?" "She certainly would!" Jim smiled, but the look he gave his plucky little companion was far removed from mirth. "And I do dread this call," Julia said nervously. "I came down here yesterday, just to say we were coming, and it all struck me as being--However, there's the house, and you'll soon see for yourself!" The house itself was something of a shock to Jim, but if Julia guessed it, he gave her no evidence of his feeling, and was presently taken into the stifling parlour, and introduced to Julia's mother, a little gray now, but hard lipped and bright eyed as ever, and to Mrs. Cox, who had been widowed for some years, and was a genial, toothless, talkative old woman, much increased in her own esteem and her children's as the actual owner of the old house. "Mother, we want some air in here!" Julia said, going to a window. "Julia's a great girl for fresh air," said Emeline. "Sit down, Doctor, and don't mind Ma!" Mrs. Cox, perhaps slightly self-conscious, was wandering about the room picking threads from the carpet, straightening the pictures on the walls, and dubiously poking a small stopped clock on the mantel. "How's your arm to-day?" Julia asked, stopping behind her mother's chair, and laying two firm young hands on her shoulders. "What do you think of a girl that runs off and doesn't see her mother for weeks at a time, Doctor?" Mrs. Page demanded a little tartly. "Her papa and I was devoted to her, too! But I suppose if she marries, she'll be too grand for us altogether!" "Now, Mother!" said Julia pleadingly, half vexed, half indulgent. "I had an elegant little place myself when I was first married," Mrs. Page continued, in a sort of discontented sing-song. "Julia must have told you about her papa--" Julia's serious eyes flashed a look to Jim, and he saw something almost like humour in their blue deeps. "That's a crayon enlargement of my youngest son," the old woman was presently saying, "Chess. A better boy never lived, but he got in with bad companions and they got him in jail. Yes, indeed they did! On'y the governor let him out again--" The call was not long. Doctor Studdiford shook hands with both the ladies, in departing, and Julia kissed her mother and grandmother dutifully. The two walked almost in silence to the car. "Downtown?" asked Julia, in surprise. "Downtown, for tea," Jim said. And when they were comfortably established in a secluded corner of the Golden Pheasant, he expelled a long breath from his lungs, and sent Julia his sunniest smile as he said: "Well, you're a wonder!" "I?" Julia touched her heart with her fingers, and raised her eyebrows. "Oh, yes, you are!" Jim repeated. "You're a little wonder! To make yourself so sweet and fine and dear, it shows that you're one of the big people of the world, Julie! Some one of the writers, Emerson I guess it was, says that when you find a young person who is willing to accept the wisdom of older people, and abide by it, why, you may watch that young person for great things. And you see, I propose to!" Julia had no answering smile ready. Instead her face was very grave as she said musingly: "I hardly know why I wanted you to meet my mother and grandmother, Jim. I don't know quite what I expected when you _did_ meet them, but--but you mustn't make light of the fact that they _are_ different from your people, and different from me, too. For three or four days and nights now I've been thinking about--us. I've been wondering whether this engagement would be a--a happy thing for you, Jim. I've wondered--" "But, sweetheart!" he interrupted eagerly, "I love you! You're the only woman I ever wanted to marry! I love you just because you _are_ different, you are so much wiser and deeper and truer than any other girl I ever knew, and if your people and your life have made you that, why I love them, too! And you do love me, Julie?" Julia raised heavy eyes, and he could see that tears were pressing close behind them. She did not speak, but her look suddenly enveloped him like a cloud. Jim felt a sudden prick of tears behind his own eyes. "Sweetness," he said gravely, "I know you love me! And Julia, my whole soul is simply on fire for you. Don't--_don't_ let any mere trifle come between us now. Let me tell my mother and father to-morrow!" A clear light was shining in Julia's eyes. Now, as she automatically arranged the tea things before her, and poured him his first cup of tea, she said: "Jim, I told you that I haven't thought much about marriage for myself. I suppose it's funny that I shouldn't, for they say most girls do! But perhaps it was because the biographies and histories I began to read when I came to the settlement house were all about men: how Lincoln rose, how Napoleon rose, how this rich man sold newspapers when he was a little boy, and that other one spent his first money in taking his mother out of the poorhouse. And of course marriage doesn't enter so much into the lives of men. It came to me years ago that what wise men are trying to din into young people everywhere is just this: that if you make yourself ready for anything, that thing will come to you. Just do your end, and somewhere out in the queer, big, incomprehensible machinery of the world your place will mysteriously begin to get ready for you--Am I talking sense, Jim?" "Absolutely. Go on!" said Jim. "Well, and so I thought that if I took years and years I might--well, you won't see why, but I wanted to be a lady!" confessed Julia, her lips smiling, but with serious eyes. "And, Jim, everything comes so much more easily than one thinks. Your aunt knew I wasn't, but I happened to be what she needed, and I kept quiet, and listened and learned!" "And suppose you _hadn't_ happened upon the settlement house?" asked Jim, his ardent eyes never moving from her face. "Why, I would have done it somehow, some other way. I meant to take a position in some family, and perhaps be a trained nurse when I was older, or study to be a librarian and take the City Hall examinations, or work up to a post-office position! I had lots of plans, only of course I was only a selfish little girl then, and I thought I would disappear, and never let my own people hear from me again!" "But you softened on that point, eh?" asked Jim. "Oh, right away!" Julia's wonderful eyes shone upon him with something unearthly in their light. "Because God decides to whom we shall belong, Jim," said she, with childish faith, "and to start wrong with my own people would mean that I was all wrong, everywhere. But my highest ambition then was to grow, as the years went on, to be useful to nice people, and to be liked by them. I never dreamed every one would be so friendly! And when Miss Pierce and Miss Scott have asked me to their homes, and when Mrs. Forbes took me to Santa Cruz, and Mrs. Chetwynde asked me to dine with them, well, I can't tell you what it meant!" "It meant that you are as good--and better, in every way--than all the rest of them put together!" said the prejudiced Jim. "Oh, Jim!" Julia looked at him over her teacup, a breach of manners which Jim thought very charming. "No," she said, presently, pursuing her own thoughts, "but I never thought of marriage! And now you come along, Jim, so--so good to me, so infinitely dear, and I can't--I can't help caring--" And suddenly her lip trembled, and tears filled her eyes. She looked down at her teacup, and stirred it blindly. "You angel!" Jim said. "Don't--make--me--cry--!" Julia begged thickly. A second later she looked up and laughed through tears. "And I feel like a person who has been skipped over four or five grades at school; I don't know whether I _can_ be a rich man's wife!" she said whimsically. "I know I can go on as I am, reading and thinking, and listening to other people, and keeping quiet when I have nothing to say, but--but when I think of being Mrs. James Studdiford--" "Oh, I love to hear you say it!" Jim leaned across the table, and put one warm big hand over hers. "My darling little wife!" The word dyed Julia's cheeks crimson, and for the long hour that they lingered over their tea she seemed to Jim more charming than he had ever found her before. Her gravity, with its deep hint of suppressed mirth, and her mirth that was always so delicate and demure, so shot with sudden pathos and seriousness, were equally exquisite; and her beauty won all eyes, from the old waiter who hovered over their happiness, to the little baby in the street car who would sit in Julia's lap and nowhere else. Jim presently left Julia to her Girls' Club, consoling himself with the thought that on the following night they were to make their first trip to the theatre together. But when, at half-past seven the next evening, Jim presented himself at the settlement house, he found Julia alone, and obviously not dressed for the theatre. She admitted him with a kiss that to his lover's enthusiasm was strangely cool, and drew him into the reception hall. "Your aunt had to go out with Miss Parker," said Julia. "But she'll positively be here a little after eight." "My darling, I didn't come to see Aunt Sanna!" Jim caught her to him. "But, sweetheart," he said, "how hot your face is, and your poor little hands are icy! Aren't you well?" "No, I don't believe I'm very well!" Julia admitted restlessly, lighting the shaded lamp on the centre table, and snapping off the side lights that so mercilessly revealed her pale face and burning eyes. "Not well enough for the theatre? Well, but darling, I don't care one snap for the theatre," Jim assured her eagerly. "Only I hate to see you so nervous and tired. Has it been a hard day? Aunt Sanna--?" "No, your aunt's an angel to me--no, it's been an easy day," Julia said, dropping into a chair, and pushing her hair back from her face with a feverish gesture. A second later she sprang up and disappeared into the assembly hall. "I thought I mightn't have locked the door," she said, returning. "Why, sweetheart," Jim said, in great distress, "what is it? You're not one bit like yourself!" "No, I know I'm not," Julia said wildly. She sat down again. "I've been thinking and thinking all day, until I feel as if I must go _crazy_!" she said with a desperate gesture. "And it's come to this, Jim--Don't think I'm excited--I mean it. I--we can't be married, Jim. That's all. Don't--don't look so amazed. People break engagements all the time, don't they? And we aren't really engaged, Jim; nobody knows it. And--and so it's _all_ right!" Anything less right than Julia's ashen face and blazing eyes, and the touch of her cold wet little hands, Jim thought he had never seen. He stepped into the bathroom, and ran his eye along the trim row of labelled bottles on the shelf. "Here, drink this, dear," he said, coming back to her with something clear and pungent in a glass. "Now, come here," and half lifting the little figure in his arms he put her on the couch, and tucked a plaid warmly about her. "Don't forget that your husband is also a doctor," said Jim, sitting down so that he could see her face, and hold one hand in both of his. "You're all worn out and excited, and no wonder! You see, most girls take out their excess emotion on their families, but my little old girl is too much alone!" Julia's eyes were fixed on him as if she were powerless to draw them away. It was sweet--it was poignantly sweet--to be cared for by him, to feel that Jim's warm heart and keen mind were at her service, that the swift smile was for her, the ardour in his eyes was all her own. For perhaps half an hour she rested, almost without speaking, and Jim talked to her with studied lightness and carelessness. Then suddenly she sat up, and put her hands to her loosened hair. "I must look wild, Jim!" "You look like a ravishing little gipsy! But I wish you had more colour, mouse!" "Am I pale?" Julia asked, with a little nervous laugh. Jim dropped on one knee beside her, and studied her with anxious eyes, and she pushed the hair off his forehead, and rested her cheek against it with a long sigh as if she were very tired. "What is it, dear?" asked Jim, with infinite solicitude. "Well!" Julia put the faintest shadow of a kiss on his forehead, then got abruptly to her feet and crossed the room, as if she found his nearness suddenly insufferable. "I can't break my engagement to you this way, Jim," said she. "For even if I told you a thousand times that I had stopped loving you"--a spasm of pain crossed her face, she shut her hands tightly together over her heart--"even then you would know that I love you with my whole soul," she said in a whisper with shut eyes. "But you see," and Julia turned a pitiful smile upon him, "you see there's something you don't understand, Jim! You say I have climbed up alone, from being a tough little would-be actress, who lived over a saloon in O'Farrell Street, to this! You say--and your aunt says--that I am wise, wise to see what is worth having, and to work for it! But has it never occurred to _one_ of you--" Julia's voice, which had been rising steadily, sank to a cold, low tone. "No," she said, as if to herself, sitting down at the table, and resting her arms upon it. "No, it has never occurred to one of them to ask _why_ I am different--to ask just what made me so! Life boils itself down to this, doesn't it?" she went on, staring drearily at the shadowy corner of the room beyond her. "That women have something to sell, or give away, and the question is just how much each one can get for it! That's what makes the most insignificant married woman feel superior to the happiest and richest old maid. She says to herself, 'I've made my market. Somebody chose me!' That's what motherhood and homemaking rest on: the whole world is just one great big question of sex, spinning away in space! And even after a woman is married, she still plays with sex; she likes to feel that men admire her, doesn't she? At dinners there must be a man for every woman; at dances no two girls must dance together! And here, the minute a new girl comes to join my clubs, I try to read her face. Is she pure, or has she already thrown away--" "Julia, _dear_!" said Jim, amazed and troubled, but she silenced him with a quick gesture. Her cheeks were burning now, and her words came fast. "Those poor little girls at St. Anne's," she said feverishly, "they've thrown their lives away because this thing that is in the air all about them came too close. They were too young legally to be trusted as Nature has trusted them for years! They heard people talk of it, and laugh about it--it didn't _seem_ very dangerous--" "Julia!" Jim said again, pleadingly. "Just one moment, Jim, and I'll be done! When they had learned their lesson, when they had found out what sorrow it brought, when they knew that there was only loss and shame in it for them--then it was too late! Then men, and women, too, expected them to go on giving; there was nothing else to do. Oh," said Julia, in a heartbreaking voice, bringing her locked hands down upon the table as if she were in physical agony, "if the law would only take a hand before and not afterward! Or if, when they are sick to death of men, they could believe that time would wash it all away; that there was clean, good work for them somewhere in the world!" "My darling, why distress yourself about what can't possibly concern you?" Jim said. Julia stared at him thoughtfully for a few silent seconds. "It _does_ concern me. That's how I bought my wisdom," she said quietly then, with no emotion deeper than a mild regret visible in her face. Voice and manner were swept bare of passion; she seemed infinitely fatigued. "That's why I can't marry you, Jim." "What do you mean?" Jim said easily, uncomprehendingly, the indulgent smile hardly stricken from his lips. Julia's eyes met his squarely across the lamplight. "That," she said simply. There was a silence, and no change of expression on either face. Then Jim stood up. "I don't believe it!" he said, with a short laugh. "It's true," said Julia. "I was not fifteen. How long ago it was! Nobody has ever known--you need not have known. But I am glad I told you. I have been thinking of nothing else but telling you for two days and two nights. And sometimes I would say to myself that what that old little ignorant Julia did would not concern you--" Jim made an inarticulate sound, from where he sat with his elbows on his knees, with his face dropped in his hands. "But I see it does concern you!" Julia said, quickly, with great simplicity. "I--luckily I decided to tell you this morning," she said, "for I am absolutely exhausted now. It was a terrible thing to keep thinking about, and I could not have fought it out any longer! There were extenuating circumstances, I suppose. I was a spoiled little empty-headed girl; the girls all about me were reckless in everyway; I did not know the boundary-line, or dream that it mattered very much, so long as no one knew! My mother had been unhappy in my childhood, and used to talk a good deal about the disappointment of marriage. Perhaps I don't make myself clear?" "_You_! Julia!" Jim whispered, his hands still over his face. "Yes, I know," Julia said drearily. "I don't seem like that sort of a girl, I know." Then there was a long silence. "You--poor--little--kid!" Jim said, after a while, getting up and beginning to walk the floor. "Oh, my God! My God! Poor little kid!" "I suppose there are psychological moments when one wakes up to things," Julia went on, in a tone curiously impersonal. "I was in some theatricals with your sister, years ago. Every one snubbed me, and no wonder! There was a man named Carter Hazzard--and I suddenly seemed to wake up at about that time--" "Carter Hazzard!" The horror in Jim's voice rang through the room. Julia frowned. "I only saw him two or three times," she said. "No. But he flirted with me, and flattered me, and then Barbara told me he was married, and then I found out that they all thought I was vulgar and common--and so I was. And I suppose I wanted to be loved and made much of, and he--this man--was good to me!" "Not you--of all women!" Jim said dully, as if to himself. "I know how you feel," Julia said without emotion, "because of course I feel that way, too--now! And I never loved him, never even thought I did! It was only a little while--two weeks or three, I guess--before I told him I couldn't ever love him. I said I thought I might, but it was like--like realizing that I had been throwing away gold pieces for dimes. Do you know what I mean? And the most awful disgust came over me, Jim--a sort of disappointment, that this talked-of and anticipated thing was no more than that! And then I came here, and I knew that keeping still about it was my only chance, and oh, how sick I was, soul and body, for a fresh start! And then your aunt talked to me, and said what a pity it is that young girls think of nothing but love and lovers, and so throw away their best years, and I thought that I was done with love; no more curiosity--no more thrill--and that I would do something with my life after all!" Her voice dropped, and again there was silence in the room. Jim continued to pace the floor. "Why, there's never been a morning at St. Anne's that I haven't looked at those girls," Julia presently resumed, "and said to myself that I might have been there, with my head shaved and a green check dress on! Lots of them must be better than I!" "Don't!" Jim said sharply, and there was a silence until Julia said wonderingly: "Isn't it funny that all last night, and the night before, I thought I was going to _die_, telling you this--and now it just doesn't seem to matter at all?" "That's why you've never married?" Jim said, clearing his throat. "I've never wanted to until now," Julia said. "And I--I am so changed now that somehow I would never think of that--that bad old time, in connection with marriage! It was as if that part of my life was sealed beyond opening again-- "And then you came. I only wanted no one to guess that I cared at first. And then, when I saw that you were beginning to care, too, oh, my God! I thought my heart would burst!" And with sudden terrible passion in her voice, she got up in her turn and began to pace the room. Jim, who had flung himself into a chair opposite hers, rested his elbows on the table, and his face in his hands. "But I feel this about your caring for me, Jim," Julia said. "In a strange, mysterious way I feel that giving you up--giving you up, my best and dearest, is purification! When--when this is over, I shall have paid! It may be"--tears flooded her eyes, and she came back to her chair and laid her head on her arm--"it may be that I can't bear it, and that I will die!" sobbed Julia. "But I shall always be glad that I told you this to-night!" There was a long silence, and then again Jim came to kneel beside her, and put one arm about her. "My own little girl!" said he. At his voice Julia raised her head, and put her arms about his neck like a weary child, and rested her wet face against his own. "My own brave girl!" Jim said. "I know what courage it took to have you tell me this! It will never be known to any one else, sweetheart, and we will bury it in our hearts forever. Kiss me, dearest, and promise me that my little wife will stop crying!" For a moment it was as if she tried to push him away. "Jim," she whispered, tears running down her face, "have you thought--are you _sure_?" "Quite sure, sweetheart," he said soothingly and tenderly. "Why, Julie, wouldn't you forgive me anything I might have done when I was only an ignorant little boy?" Julia tightened her arms about him, and sobbed desperately for a long while. Then her breathing quieted, and she let Jim dry her eyes with his own handkerchief, and listened, with an occasional long sigh, to his eager, confident plans. They were still talking quietly when the street door was flung open and Miss Toland came in, on a rush of fresh air. "Rain!" said Miss Toland. "Terrible night! Not an umbrella in the Parker house until Clem came home--it's quarter to ten!" "Congratulate us, Aunt Sanna," said Jim, rising to his feet with his arm still about Julia. "Julia has promised to marry me!" End of Part One PART II CHAPTER I Yet Dr. James Studdiford, walking down to his club, an hour later, with the memory of his aunt's joyous congratulations ringing in his ears, and of Julia's last warm little kiss upon his cheek, was perhaps more miserable than he had been before in the course of his life. Julia was his girl--his own girl--and the thrill of her submission, the enchanting realization that she loved him, rose over and over again in his heart, like the rising of deep waters--only to wash against the firm barrier of that hideous Fact. Jim could do nothing with the Fact. It did not seem to belong to him, or to Julia, to their love and future together, or to her gallant, all-enduring past. Julia was Julia--that was the only significant thing, the sweetest, purest, cleverest woman he knew. And she loved him! A rush of ecstasy flooded his whole being; how sweet she was when he made her say she loved him--when she surrendered her hands, when she raised her gravely smiling blue eyes! What a little wife she would be, what a gay little comrade, and some day, perhaps, what a mother! Again the Fact. After such a little interval of radiant peace it seemed to descend upon him with an ugly violence. It was true; nothing that they could do now would alter it. And, of course, the thing was serious. If anything in life was serious, this was. It was frightful--it seemed sacrilegious to connect such things for an instant with Julia. Dear little Julia, with her crisp little uniforms, her authority in the classroom, her charming deference to Aunt Sanna! And she loved him---- "Damn it, the thing either counts or it doesn't count!" Jim muttered, striding down Market Street, past darkened shops and corners where lights showed behind the swinging doors of saloons. Either it was all important or it was not important at all. With most women, all important, of course. With Julia--Jim let his mind play for a few minutes with the thought of renunciation. There would be no trouble with Julia, and Aunt Sanna could easily be silenced. He shook the mere vision from him with an angry shake of the head. She belonged to him now, his little steadfast, serious girl. And she had deceived them all these years! Not that he could blame her for it! Naturally, Aunt Sanna would never have overlooked that, and presumably no other woman would have engaged her, knowing it, even to wash dishes and sweep steps. "Lord, what a world for women!" thought Jim, in simple wonder. Hunted down mercilessly, pushed at the first sign of weakening, they know not where, and then lost! Hundreds of thousands of them forever outcast, to pay through all the years that are left to them for that hour of yielding! Hundreds of thousands of them, and his Julia only different because she had made herself so-- It seemed to Jim, in his club now, and sunk in a deep chair before the wood fire in the quiet library, that he could never marry her. It must simply be his sorrow to have loved Julia--God, how he did love her! But, through all their years together, there must not be that shadow upon their happiness; it was too hideous to be endured. "It must be endured," mused Jim wretchedly. "It is true! "Anyway," he went on presently, rousing himself, "the thing is no more important than I choose to make it. Ordinarily, yes. But in this case the thing to be considered is its effect on Julia's character, and if ever any soul was pure, hers is! "And if we marry, we must simply make up our minds that the past is dead!" And suddenly Jim's heart grew lighter, and the black mood of the past hour seemed to drop. He stretched himself luxuriously and folded his arms. "If Julia isn't a hundred per cent, sweeter and better and finer than these friends of Babbie's, who go chasing about to bad plays and read all the rottenest books that are printed," he said, "then there's no such thing as a good woman! My little girl--I'm not half worthy of _her_, that's the truth!" "Hello, Jim!" said Gray Babcock, coming in from the theatre, and stretching his long cold hands over the dying fire. "We thought you might come in to-night. Hazzard and Tom Parley had a little party for Miss Manning, of the 'Dainty Duchess' Company, you know--awfully pretty girl, straight, too, they say. There were a couple of other girls, and Roy Grinell--things were just about starting up when I came away!" Jim rose, and kicked the scattered ends of a log toward the flame. "I've not got much use for Hazzard," he observed, frowning. Babcock gave a surprised and vacant laugh. "Gosh! I thought all you people were good friends!" "Hazzard's an ass," observed Jim irritably. "There are some things that aren't any too becoming to college kids--however, you can forgive them! But when it comes to an ass like Hazzard chasing to every beauty show, and taking good little girls to supper--" "Alice don't care a whoop what he does," Babcock remarked hastily. "Yes, so of course that makes everything all right," Jim said ironically. But Mr. Babcock was in no mood to be critical of tones. "Sure it does!" he agreed contentedly. And when Jim had disgustedly departed, he remained still staring into the fire, a pleased smile upon his face. Julia spent the next day in bed fighting a threatened nervous breakdown, and Jim came to see her at two o'clock, and they had a long and memorable talk, with Jim's chair drawn close to the couch, and the girl's lax hand in his own. She had not slept all night, she told him, and he suspected that she had spent much of the long vigil in tears. Tears came again as she begged a hundred times to set him free, but he quieted her at last, and the old tragedy that had risen to haunt them was laid. And if Julia felt a rush of blind gratitude and hope when they sealed their new compact with a kiss, Jim was no less happy--everything had come out wonderfully, and he loved Julia not less, but more than he had ever loved her. The facts of her life, whatever they had been, had made her what she was; now let them all be forgotten. "Still, you are not sorry I told you, Jim?" Julia asked. "No, oh, no, dearest! If only because you would have been sure to want to do it sooner or later--it would have worried you. But now I do know, Julie, you little Spartan! And this ends it. We'll never speak of it again, and we'll never think of it again. You and I are the only two who know--And we love each other. When all's said and done, it's I that am not good enough for you, darling, not worthy to tie your little shoe laces!" "Oh, _you_!" Julia said, in great content. The rest followed, as Julia herself said, like "a house-maid's dream." Jim went home to tell his own people that night, and the very next morning Julia, surprised and smiling, took in at the door a trim little package that proved to be a blue-and-white Copenhagen teacup, with a card that bore only the words "Miss Barbara Lowe Toland." Julia twisted it in her fingers with a curious little thrill at the heart. The "nicest" people sent cups to engaged girls, the "nicest" people sent their cards innocent of scribbled messages. She, Julia Page, was one of the "nicest" people now, and these were the first tentacles of her new estate reaching out to meet her. Notes and flowers from the Tolands and the warm-hearted Tolands themselves followed thick and fast, and in a day or two notes and cups--cups--cups--were coming from other people as well. The Misses Saunders, the Harvey Brocks, the George Chickerings, Mr. Peter Coleman, Mr. Jerome Phillips, Mrs. Arnold Keith, and Miss Mary Peacock--all had found time to go into Nathan Dohrmann's, or Gump's, or the White House, and pick out a beautiful cup to send Miss Julia Page. Six weeks--five weeks--three weeks to the wedding, sang Julia's heart; the time ran away. She had dreaded having to meet Jim's friends, and had dreaded some possible embarrassment from an unexpected move on the part of her own family, but the days fled by, and the miracle of their happiness only expanded and grew sweeter, like a great opening rose. Their hours together, with so much to tell each other and so much to discuss, no matter how short the parting had been, were hours of exquisite delight. And as Julia's beauty and charm were praised on all sides, Jim beamed like a proud boy. As for Julia, every day brought to her notice something new to admire in this wonderful lover of hers: his scowl as he fixed his engine, the smile that always met hers, the instant soberness and attention with which he answered any question as to his work from the older doctor--all this was delightful to her. And when he took her to luncheon, his careless big fingers on the ready gold pieces and his easy nod to the waiter were not lost upon Julia. She had loved him for himself, but it was additionally endearing to learn that other people loved him, too, to be stopped by elderly women who smiled and praised him, to have young people affectionately interested in his plans. "You know you are nothing but a small boy, Jim," Julia said one day, "just a sweet, happy kid! You were a spoiled and pitied little boy, with your big eyes and your velvet suits and your patent leathers; you loved every one--every one loved you; you had your allowance, you were born to be a surgeon, and chance made your guardian a doctor--" "I fell down on my exams," Jim submitted meekly. "And there was a fellow at college who said I bored him!" "Oh, dearest," Julia said, beginning to laugh at his rueful face, "and are those the worst things that ever happened to you?" "About," said Jim, enjoying the consolatory little kiss she gave him. "And your youngness baffles me," pursued Julia thoughtfully. "You're ten years older than I am, you've been able to do a thousand things I never did, you're a rising young surgeon, and yet--and yet sometimes there's a sort of level--level isn't the word!--a sort of _positive_ youth about you that makes me feel eighty! It's just as if you had been born everything you are, ready made! When you have to straighten a child's hip, you push your hair back like a nice little kid, and say to yourself, 'Sure--I can do that!' You seem as pleased and surprised as any one else when everything comes out right!" "Well, gosh! I never can put on any lugs!" said James, rumpling his hair in penitential enjoyment. "I have to learn things so _hard_," Julia mused, "they dig down right into the very soul of me--" "You're implying that I'm shallow," said the doctor sternly. "You think I'm a pampered child of luxury, but I'm not! I just think I'm a pretty ordinary fellow who came in for an extraordinary line of luck. I would have made a pretty good bluff at supporting myself in any sort of life; as it was, when I was a youngster, growing up, I used to say to myself, 'You think you're going to be rich, but half the poor men in the world are born rich, anything may happen!' However, I enjoyed things just the same, and I went to medical college just because Dad said every man ought to be able to support himself. Then I got interested in the thing, and old Fox was a king to me, and told me I ought to go in for surgery. My own father was a surgeon, you know. Some hands are just naturally better for it than others, and his were, and mine are. And at twenty-five I came of age, and found that my money was pretty safely fixed, and that Dad was kind of counting on my going in with him. So there you are! Things just come my way; as I say, I'd have been satisfied with less, but I've got in the habit of taking my luck for granted." "And some people, like--well, like my grandmother, for instance, just get in the habit of bad luck," Julia said, with a sigh. "And some, like myself," she added, brightening, "are born in the bad belt, and push into the good! And we're the really lucky ones! I shall never put on a fresh frock, or go downtown with you to the theatre, without a special separate joy!" Jim said, "You angel!" and as she jumped up--they had been sitting side by side in the hall at The Alexander--he caught her around the waist, and Julia set a little kiss on the top of his hair. "But you do love me, Ju?" Jim asked. "But I do indeed!" she answered. "Why do you always ask me in that argumentative sort of way? But me no buts!" "Ah, well, it's because I'm always afraid you'll stop!" Jim pleaded. "And I do so want you to begin to love me as much as I do you!" "You must have had thousands of girls!" Julia remarked, idly rumpling his hair. "I never was engaged before!" he assured her promptly. "Except to that Delaware girl, as I told you, and after five years she threw me over for a boy named Gregory Biddle, with several millions, but no chin, Julia, and had the gall to ask me to the wedding!" "Jim, and you went?" "Sure I went!" Jim declared. "Oh, Jim!" and Julia gave him another kiss, through a gale of laughter, and ran off to change her gown and put on her hat. It was a Saturday afternoon, and they were going to Sausalito. But first they went downtown in the lazy soft spring afternoon, to buy gloves for Julia and a scarf pin for Richie, who was to be Jim's best man, and to go into the big railroad office to get tickets for the use of Dr. and Mrs. James Studdiford three days later. "Where are we going?" Julia asked idly, her eyes moving about the bright pigeonholed office, and to the window, and the street beyond. Jim for answer put his thumb upon the magic word that stared up at her from the long ticket. "New York!" she whispered; her radiant look flashed suddenly to him. "Oh, Jim!" And as they went out he heard a little sigh of utter content beside him. "It's too much!" said Julia. "To go to New York--with you!" "Wherever you go, you go with me," he reminded her, with a glance that brought the swift colour to her face. Then they went down to the boat. It was the first hot afternoon of the season; there was a general carrying of coats, and people were using the deck seats; there was even some grumbling at the heat. But Sausalito was at its loveliest, and Julia felt almost oppressed by the exquisite promise of summer that came with the sudden sound of laughter and voices in lanes that had long been silent, and with the odour of dying grass and drooping buttercups beside the road. The Toland garden was full of roses, bright in level sunshine, windows and doors were all wide open, and the odours from bowls of flowers drifted about the house. Barbara, lovely in white, came to meet them. "Come in, you poor things, you must be roasted! Jim, you're as red as a beet; go take a bath!" said Barbara. "And Julia, Aunt Sanna is here, and she says that you're to lie down for not less than an hour. And there are some packages for you, so come up and lie down on my bed, and we'll open them!" "Barbara, I am so happy I think my heart will burst!" said Julia, ten minutes later, from Barbara's pillows. "Well, you ought to be, my good woman! Jim Studdiford--when he's sober--is as good a husband as you're likely to get!" said Barbara, laughing. "Now, look, Julia, here's a jam pot from the Fowlers--Frederic Fowlers--I call that decent of them! Janey, come in here and put this jam pot down on Julia's list! And this heavy thing from the Penroses. I hope to goodness it isn't more carvers!" It was Barbara who said later to Julia, in a confidential undertone: "You know you've got to write personal notes for every bit of this stuff, Julia, right away? Lots of girls do it on their honeymoons." "Well, I wanted to ask you, Barbara: how do I sign myself to these people I've never seen: 'Yours truly'?" "Oh, heavens, no! 'Sincerely yours' or 'Yours cordially' and make 'em short. The shorter they are the smarter they are, remember that." "And if I sign J. P. Studdiford, or Julia P. Studdiford--then oughtn't 'Mrs. J. N.' go in one corner?" "Oh, _no_, you poor webfoot! No. Just write a good splashy 'Julia Page Studdiford' all over the page; they'll know who you are fast enough!" "Thanks," said Julia shyly. "You're welcome," Barbara said, smiling. "Are you ready to go down?" After dinner the young Tolands, augmented by several young men, and by Julia and the doctor, all wandered out into the thick darkness, rejoicing in the return of summer. Sausalito's lanes were sweet with roses, lights shone out across the deep fresh green of gardens, and lights moved on the gently moving waters of the bay. A ferryboat, a mass of checkered brightness, plowed its way from Alcatraz--far off the city lay like a many-stranded chain of glittering gems upon the water. Julia and Doctor Studdiford let the others go on without them, and sat together in the dim curve of the O'Connell seat, and the heartbreaking beauty of the night wrapped them both in a happiness so deep as to touch the borderland of pain. "Was there ever such a night?" said little Julia. "Shall we ever be so happy again?" Jim could not see her clearly, but he saw her bright, soft eyes in the gloom, the shimmer of her loosened hair, the little white-clad figure in the seat's wide curve, and the crossed slim ankles. He put his arm about her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. "Don't say that, darling!" said Jim. "This is great, of course. But it's nothing to all the happy months and years that we'll belong to each other. Nothing but death will ever come between you and me, Julie!" "And I shouldn't be afraid of death," murmured Julia, staring up at the stars. "Strange--strange--strange that we all must go that way some day!" she mused. "Well, please God, we'll do some living first," Jim said, with healthy anticipation. "We'll go to New York, and gad about, and go to Washington and Boston, and pick up things here and there for the house, do you see? Then we'll come back here and go to a hotel, and find a house and fix it up!" "That'll be fun," said Julia. "You bet your life it'll be fun! And then, my dear, we'll give some corking dinners, and my beautiful wife will wear blue velvet, or white lace, or peachy silk--" "Or all three together," the prospective wife suggested, "with the flags of all nations in my hair!" "Then next year we'll visit old Gilchrist, at Monterey, and go up to Tahoe," continued Jim, unruffled. "Or we could take some place in Ross--" "And then I will give a small and select party for one guest," said Julia whimsically, "and board him, free, for fifteen or twenty years--" "Julia, you little _duck_!" Jim bent his head over her in the starlight, and felt her soft hair brush his face, and caught the glint of her laughing eyes close to his own, and the vague delicious little perfume of youth and beauty and radiant health that hung about her. "Do you know that you are as cunning as a sassy kid?" he demanded. "Now, kiss me once and for all, and no nonsense about it, for I can hear the others coming back!" Two days later they were married, very quietly, in the little Church of Saint Charles Borromeo, where Julia's father and mother had been married a quarter of a century ago. They had "taken advantage," as Julia said, of her old grandfather's death, and announced that because the bride's family was in mourning the ceremony would be a very quiet one. Even the press was not notified; the Tolands filled two pews, and two more were filled by Julia's mother, her grandmother, and cousins. Kennedy Scott Marbury and her husband were there, and sturdy two-year-old Scott Marbury, who was much interested in this extraordinary edifice and impressive proceeding, but there were no other witnesses. Julia wore a dark-blue gown, and a wide black hat whose lacy brim cast a most becoming shadow over her lovely, serious face. She and Miss Toland drove from the settlement house, and stopped to pick up Mrs. Page, who was awed by Julia's dignity, and a little resentful of the way in which others had usurped her place with her daughter. However, Emeline had very wisely decided to make the best of the situation, and treated Miss Toland with stiff politeness. Julia was in a smiling dream, out of which she roused herself, at intervals, for only a gentle, absent-minded "Yes" or "No." "I tried to persuade her to be married at the Cathedral, by His Grace," said Miss Toland to Mrs. Page. "But she wanted it this way!" "Well, I'm sure she feels you've done too much for her as it is," Emeline said mincingly. "Now she must turn around and return some of it!" To this Miss Toland made no answer except an outraged snort, and a closer pressure of her fine, bony hand upon Julia's warm little fingers. They presently reached the church, and Julia was in Barbara's hands. "You look lovely, darling, and your hat is a dream!" said Barbara, who looked very handsome herself, in her brown suit and flower-trimmed hat. "We go upstairs, I think. Jim's here, nervous as a _fish_. You're wonderful--as calm! I'd simply be in spasms. Ted was awful; you'd think she had been married every day, but Robert--his collar was _wilted_!" They had reached the upper church now, and Miss Toland and Mrs. Page followed the girls down the long aisle to the altar. Julia saw her little old grandmother, in an outrageous flowered bonnet, and Evelyn who was a most successful modiste now, and Marguerite, looking flushed and excited, with her fat, apple-faced young husband, and three lumpy little children. Also her Aunt May was there, and some young people: Muriel, who was what Evelyn had been at fifteen, and a toothless nine-year-old Regina, in pink, and some boys. On the other side were the elegant Tolands, the dear old doctor in an aisle seat, with his hands, holding his eye-glasses and his handkerchief, fallen on either knee; Ted lovely in blue, Constance and Jane with Ned and Mrs. Ned, frankly staring. As Julia came down the aisle, with a sudden nervous jump of her heart, she saw Jim and Richie, who was limping badly, but without his crutch, come toward her. The old priest came down the altar steps at the same time. She and Jim listened respectfully to a short address without hearing a word of it, and found themselves saying the familiar words without in the least sensing them. Julia battled through the prayer with a vague idea that she was losing a valuable opportunity to invoke the blessing of God, but unable to think of anything but the fact that the bride usually walked out of church on the groom's arm, and that St. Charles's aisle was long and rather dismal in the waning afternoon light. "Here, darling, in the vestry!" Jim was whispering, smiling his dear, easy, reassuring smile as he guided her to the nearby door. And in a second they were all about her, her first kiss on the wet cheek of Aunt Sanna, the second to her mother--"Evelyn, you were a darling to come way across the city, and Marguerite, you were a darling to bring those precious angels"--and then the old doctor's kiss, and Richie's kiss, and a pressure from his big bony fingers. Julia half knelt to embrace little Scott Marbury. "He's beautiful, Kennedy; no wonder you're proud!" And she tore her beautiful bunch of roses apart, that each girl might have a few. "I've got to get her to the train!" Jim protested presently, trying patiently to disengage his wife's hands, eyes, and attention. "Julia! Julia Studdiford!" "Yes, I know!" Julia laughed, and was snatched away, half laughing and half in tears, and hurried down to the side street, where a carriage was waiting. And here there was one more delay: Chester Cox, a thin shambling figure, came forward from a shadowy doorway, and rather timidly held out his hand. "I couldn't get away until jest now," said Chester. "But of course I wish you luck, Julia!" "Why, it's my uncle!" Julia said, cordially clasping his hand. "Mr. Cox--Doctor Studdiford. I'm so glad you came, Chess!" "Glad to know you, Mr. Cox," Jim said heartily. "And I brought you a little present; it ain't much, but maybe you can use it!" mumbled Chester, terribly embarrassed, and with a nervous laugh handing Julia a rather large package somewhat flimsily wrapped and tied. "Oh, thank you!" Julia said gratefully. And before she got in the carriage she put her hand on Chester's arm, and raised her fresh, exquisite little face for a kiss. "Now, about this--" Doctor Studdiford began delicately, glancing at Chester's gift, which Julia had given him to hold. "I wonder if it wouldn't be wise to ask your uncle to send this to my mother's until we get back, Ju. You see, dear--" "Oh, no-no!" Julia said eagerly, leaning out of the carriage, and taking the package again. She sent Chester a last bright smile, as Jim jumped in and slammed the door, but it was an April face that she turned a second later to her husband. "They're all so good to me, and it just breaks my heart!" she said. "At last--it's all over--and you belong to me!" exulted Jim. "I have been longing and _longing_ for this, just to be alone with you, and have you to myself. Are you tired, sweetheart?" "No-o. Just a little--perhaps." "But you do love me?" "Oh, Jim--you idiot!" Julia slipped her hand into his, as he put one arm about her, and rested against his shoulder. "When I think that I will often ride in carriages," she mused, half smiling, "and that, besides being my Jim, you are a rich man, it makes me feel as if I were Cinderella!" "You shall have your own carriage if you want it, Pussy!" he smiled. "Oh, don't--don't give me anything more," begged Julia, "or a clock somewhere will strike twelve, and I'll wake up in The Alexander, with the Girls' Club rehearsing a play!" When she had examined every inch of her Pullman drawing-room, and commented upon one hundred of its surprising conveniences, and when her smart little travelling case, the groom's gift, had been partly unpacked, and when her blue eyes had refreshed themselves with a long look at the rolling miles of lovely San Mateo hills, then young Mrs. Studdiford looked at her Uncle Chester's wedding gift. She found a brush and comb and mirror in pink celluloid, with roses painted on them, locked with little brass hasps into a case lined with yellow silk. "Look, Jim!" said Julia pitifully, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. "Gosh!" said the doctor thoughtfully, looking over the coat he was neatly arranging on a hanger. "I've often wondered who buys those things!" "I'll give it to the porter," Julia decided. "He may like it. Dear old Chess!" And Jim grinned indulgently a few minutes later at the picture of his beautiful little wife enslaving the old coloured porter, and gravely discussing with him the advantages and disadvantages of his work. "You know, we could have our meals in here, Ju," Jim suggested. "Claude here"--all porters were "Claude" to Jim--"would take care of us, wouldn't you, Claude?" "Dat I would!" said Claude with husky fervour. But Julia's face fell. "Oh, Jim! But it would be such fun to go out to the dining-car!" she pleaded. Jim shouted. "All right, you baby!" he said. "You see, my wife's only a little girl," he explained. "She's--are you eight or nine, Julia?" "She sho' don't look more'n dat," Claude gallantly assured them, as he departed. "I'll be twenty-four on my next birthday," Julia said thoughtfully, a few moments later. "Well, at that, you may live three or four years more!" Jim consoled her. "Do you know what time it is, Loveliness? It's twenty minutes past six. We've been married exactly two hours and twenty minutes. How do you like it?" "I love it!" said Julia boldly. "Do I have to change my dress for dinner?" "You do not." "But I ought to fix my hair, it's all mashed!" Julia did wonders to it with one of the ivory-backed brushes that had come with the new travelling case, fluffing the thick braids and tucking the loose golden strands about her temples trimly into place. Then she rubbed her face with a towel, and jumped up to straighten her belt, and run an investigating finger about the embroidered "turn-down" collar that finished her blue silk blouse. Finally she handed Jim her new whisk-broom with a capable air, and presented straight little shoulders to be brushed. Jim turned her round and round, whisking and straightening, and occasionally kissing the tip of a pink ear, or the straight white line where her hair parted. "Here, you can't keep that up all night!" Julia suddenly protested, grabbing the brush. "I'll do you!" But Jim stopped the performance by suddenly imprisoning girl and whiskbroom in his arms. "Do you know I think we are going to have great fun!" said he. "You're such a good little sport, Ju! No nerves and no nonsense about you! It's such fun to do things with a person who isn't eternally fussing about heat and cold, and whether she ought to wear her gloves into the dining-car, and whether any one will guess that she's just married!" "Oh, I have my nervous moments," Julia confessed, her eyes looking honestly up into his. "It seems awfully strange and queer, rushing farther and farther away from home, alone with you!" Her voice sank a little; she put up her arms and locked them about his neck. "I have to keep reminding myself that you are just you, Jim," she said bravely, "who gave me my Browning, and took me to tea at the Pheasant--and then it all seems right again! And then--such lots of nice people _have_ got married, and gone away on honeymoons," she ended, argumentatively. The laughter had gone from Jim's eyes; a look almost shy, almost ashamed, had taken its place. He kept her as she was for a moment, then gave her a serious kiss, and they went laughing through the rocking cars to eat their first dinner together as man and wife. And Jim watched her as she radiantly settled herself at table, and watched the frown of childish gravity with which she studied her menu, with some new and tender emotion stirring at his heart. Life had greater joys in it than he had ever dreamed, and greater potentialities for sorrow, too. What was bright in life was altogether more gloriously bright, and what was dark seemed to touch him more closely; he felt the sorrow of age in the trembling old man at the table across the aisle, the pathos of youth in the two young travelling salesmen who chattered so self-confidently over their meal. Several weeks later young Mrs. Studdiford wrote to Barbara that New York was "a captured dream." "I seem to belong to it," wrote Julia, "and it seems to belong to me! I can't tell you how it _satisfies_ me; it is good just to look down from my window at Fifth Avenue, every morning, and say to myself, 'I'm still in New York!' For the first two weeks Jim and I did everything alone, like two children: the new Hippodrome, and Coney Island, and the Liberty Statue, and the Bronx Zoo. I _never_ had such a good time! We went to the theatres, and the museums, and had breakfast at the Casino, and _lived_ on top of the green 'busses! But now Jim has let some of his old college friends know we are here, and we are spinning like tops. One is an artist, and has the most fascinating studio I ever saw, down on Washington Square, and another is an editor, and gave us a tea in his rooms, overlooking Stuyvesant Square, and Barbara, everybody there was a celebrity (except us) and all so sweet and friendly--it was a hot spring day, and the trees in the square were all such a fresh, bright green. "They make a great fuss about the spring here, and you can hardly blame them. The whole city turns itself inside out; people simply stream to the parks, and the streets swarm with children. Some of the poorer women go bareheaded or with shawls, even in the cars--did you ever see a bareheaded woman in a car at home? But they are all much nearer the peasant here. And after clean San Francisco, you wouldn't believe how dirty this place is; all the smaller stores have shops in the basements, and enough dirt and old rags and wet paper lying around to send Doctor Blue into a convulsion! And they use pennies here, which seems so petty, and paper dollars instead of silver, which I hate. And you say 'L' or 'sub' for the trains, and always 'surface cars' for the regular cars--it's all so different and so interesting. "Tell Richie Jim is going to assist the great Doctor Cassell in some demonstrations of bone transplanting, at Bellevue, next week--oh, and Barbara, did I write Aunt Sanna that we met the President! My dear, we did. We were at the theatre with the Cassells, and saw him in a box, and Doctor Cassell, the old darling, knows him, and went to the President's box to ask if we might be brought in and presented, and, my dear, he got up and came back with Doctor Cassell to our box, and was simply _sweet_, and asked me if I wasn't from the South, and I nearly said, 'Yes, south of Market Street,' but refrained in time. I had on the new apricot crepe, and a black hat, and felt very Lily-like-a-princess, as Jane says. "But we're both getting homesick; it will seem good to see the old ferry building again--and Sausalito, and all of you." Early in July they did start homeward, but by so circuitous a route, and with such prolonged stops at the famous hotels of Canada, that it was on a September afternoon that they found themselves taking the Toland household by storm. And Julia thought no experience in her travels so sweet as this one: to be received into the heart of the family, and to settle down to a review of the past five months. Richie was so brotherly and kind, the girls so admiring of her furs and her diamonds, so full of gay chatter, the old doctor so gallant and so affectionate! Mrs. Toland chirped and twittered like the happy mother of a cageful of canaries; and Julia, when they gathered about the fire after dinner, took a low stool next to Miss Toland's chair and rested a shoulder, little-girl fashion, against the older woman's knee. "It was simply a tour of triumph for Ju," said Doctor Jim, packing his pipe at the fireplace, with satisfied eyes on his wife. "She has friends in the Ghetto and friends in the White House. We went down to the Duponts', on Long Island, and Dupont said she--" "Oh, please, Jim!" Julia said seriously. "Dupont said she was one of the most interesting women he ever talked to," Jim continued inexorably, "and John Mandrake wanted to paint her!" "Tell me the news!" begged Julia. "How's The Alexander, Aunt Sanna--how is Miss Striker turning out?" "She's turned out," said Miss Toland grimly, her knitting needles flashing steadily. "She came to me with her charts and rules, and oh, she couldn't lie in bed after half-past six in the morning, and she couldn't put off the sewing class, and she would like to ask me not to eat my breakfast after nine o'clock! A girl who never cared what she ate--sardines and tea!--and she wouldn't come in with me to dinner at the Colonial because she was afraid they used coal tar and formaldehyde--ha! Finally she asked me if I wouldn't please keep the expenditures of the house and my own expenditures separate, and that was the _end_!" Jim's great laugh burst out, and Julia dimpled as she asked demurely: "What on _earth_ did you say?" "Say? I asked her if she knew I built The Alexander, and sent her packing! And now"--Miss Toland rubbed her nose with the gesture Julia knew so well--"now Miss Pierce is temporarily in charge, but she won't stay there nights, so the clubs are given up," she observed discontentedly. "And what's the news from Sally?" Julia pursued. "Just the loveliest in the world," Mrs. Toland said. "Keith is working like a little Trojan; and Sally sent us a perfectly charming description of the pension, and their walks--" "Yes, and how she couldn't go out because she hadn't shoes," Jane added, half in malice, half in fun. "_Don't_ look so shocked, Mother dear, you know it's true. And the landlady cheating them out of a whole week's board--" "Gracious me!" said Mrs. Toland, in a low undertone full of annoyance. "Did any one ever hear such nonsense! All that is past history now, Janey," she reminded her young daughter, in her usual hopeful voice. "Dad sent a cheque, like the dear, helpful daddy he is, and now everything's lovely again!" Julia did not ask for Ted until she saw Barbara alone for a moment the next day. It was about ten o'clock on a matchless autumn morning, and Julia, stepping from her bedroom's French window to the wide sunny porch that ran the width of the house, saw Barbara some forty feet away sitting just outside her own window, with a mass of hair spread to the sun. Julia joined her, dragged out a low, light chair from Barbara's room, and settled herself for a gossip. "Had breakfast?" Barbara smiled. "Jim downstairs?" "Oh, hours ago!" Julia said to the first question, and to the second, with the young wife's conscious blush, "Jim's dressing. He's the most impossible person to get started in the morning!" Barbara did not blush but she felt a little tug at her heart. "Come," she said, "I thought Jim had no faults?" "Well, he hasn't," Julia laughed. And then, a little confused by her own fervent tone, she changed the subject, and asked about Ted. "Why, Ted's happy, and rich, and simply adored by Bob Carleton," Barbara summarized briefly, in a rather dry voice, "but Mother and Dad never will get over it, and I suppose Ted herself doesn't like the idea of that other wife--she lives at The Palace, and she's got a seven-year-old girl! It's _done_, you know, Julie, and of course Ted's accepted everywhere; she'll go to the Brownings' this year, and Mrs. Morton has asked her to receive with her at some sort of dinner reception next month, you'll meet her everywhere. But I do think it's terribly hard on Mother and Dad!" "But how _could_ she, that great big black creature?" "Oh, she loves him fast enough! It was perfectly legal, of course. I think Dad was at the wedding, and I think Richie was, but we girls never knew anything until it was all over. Mother simply announced to us one night that Ted was married, and that there was to be no open break, but that she and Dad were just about _sick_! I never saw Mother give way so! She said--and it's true--that if ever there was a mother who deserved her children's confidence, and so on! All the newspapers blazed about it--Ted's picture, Bob's picture--and, as I say, society welcomed her with open arms. They've got a gorgeous suite at the St. Francis, and Ted really looks stunning, and acts as if she'd done something very smart. Con says that when she called, it reminded her of the second act of a bad play. Ted came here with Bob, one Saturday afternoon, but Mother hasn't been near her!" "It seems too bad," Julia said thoughtfully, "when your father and mother are always so sweet!" "There must be some reason for it," Barbara observed, "I suppose we were all spoiled as kids, with our dancing schools and our dresses from Paris, and so now when we want things we oughtn't have, we just take 'em, from habit! I remember a governess once, a nice enough little Danish woman, but Ned and I got together and decided we wouldn't stand her, and Mother let her go. It seems funny now. Mother used to say that never in her life did she allow her children to want anything she could give them; but I'm not at all sure that's a very wise ideal!" "Nor I," said Julia earnestly. Barbara had parted and brushed her dark hair now, and as she gathered it back, the ruthless morning sunlight showed lines on her pretty face and faint circles about her eyes. "Because life gets in and gives you whacks," Barbara presently pursued, "you're going to want a lot of things you can't have before you get through, and it only makes it harder! Sally's paying for her jump in the dark, poor old Ned is condemned to Yolo City and Eva for the rest of his life, and somehow Ted's the saddest of all--so confident and noisy and rich, boasting about Bob's affection, buying everything she sees--and so _young_, somehow! As for me," said Barbara, "my only consolation is that nearly every family has one of me, and some have more--a nice-looking, well-liked, well-dressed young woman, who has cost her parents an enormous amount of money, to get--nowhere!" "Why, Lady Babbie!" Julie protested. "It's not like you to talk so!" Barbara patted the hand that had been laid upon her knee, and laughed. "And the moral of that is, Ju," she said, "if you have children, don't spoil them! You've had horribly hard times, but they've given you some sense. As for Jim, he's an exception. It's a miracle he wasn't ruined--but he wasn't!" And she gathered up her towels and brushes to go back into her room. "But I needn't tell you that, Julie!" said she. "Ah, well, Jim!" Julia conceded, smiling. Jim had no faults, of course. Yet the five-months wife sighed unconsciously as she went back to her room. Jim had qualities that had now and then caused a faint little cloud to drift across Julia's life, but that sheer loyalty had kept her from defining, even in her inmost heart. Now this talk with Barbara had suddenly seemed to make them clear. Jim was--spoiled was too harsh a word. But Jim wanted his own way, in little things and big--all the time. The world just now for Jim held only Julia. What she wanted he wanted, and, at any cost, he would have. If her gown was not right for the special occasion, she should have a new gown; if the motor car was out of order, telephone for another; if the steward assured them that there was not another table in the dining-room--tip him, tip everybody, make a scene, but see that the "Reserved" card comes off somebody's table, and that the Studdifords are seated there in triumph. At first Julia had only laughed at her lord's masterful progress. It was very funny to her to see how quickly his money and his determination won him his way. A great deal of money was wasted, of course, but then, this was their honeymoon, and some day they would settle down and spend rationally. Jim, like all rich men, had an absolute faith in the power of gold. The hall maid must come in and hook Mrs. Studdiford's gown; oh, and would she be here at, say, one o'clock, when Mrs. Studdiford came home? She went off at twelve, eh? Well, what was it worth to her to stay on to-night, until one? Good. And by the way, Mrs. Studdiford had torn a lace gown and wanted it to-morrow; could the maid mend it and press it? She didn't think so? Well, come, there must be somebody who would rush it through for Mrs. Studdiford? Ah, that was fine, thank you very much, that would do very nicely. Or perhaps it was a question of theatre tickets, and Jim would stop his taxicab on Broadway at the theatre's door. Here, boy! Boy, come here! Go up and ask him what his best for to-night are? There's a line of people waiting, eh?--well, go up and ask some fellow at the top of the line what it's worth to him to get two seats for me. Oh, fine. Much obliged to you, sir. Thank you. And here--boy! "Do you think the entire world circles about your convenience, Jim?" Julia asked amusedly one day, after some such episode. "Sure," he answered, grinning. "Jim, you don't think you can go through life walking over people this way?" "Why not, my good lady?" "Well," said Julia gravely, "some day you may find you want something you _can't_ buy!" "There ain't no such animal," Jim assured her cheerfully. Only a trifling cloud, after all, Julia assured herself hardily. But there was a constant little sensation of uneasiness in her heart. She tried to convince herself that the sweetness of his nature had not been undermined by this ability to indulge himself however fast his fancies shifted; she reasoned that because so many good things were his, he need not necessarily hold them in light esteem. Yet the thought persisted that he knew neither his own mind nor his own heart; there had been no discipline there, no hard-won battles--there were no reserves. "I call that simply borrowing trouble!" said Kennedy Scott Marbury healthily, one day when she and the tiny Scott were lunching with Julia at the hotel. Kennedy was close to her second confinement, and the ladies had lunched in Julia's handsome sitting-room. "Lord, Julie dear! It seems sometimes as if you have to have _something_ in this world," Kennedy went on cheerfully; "either actual trouble or mental worries! Anthony and I were talking finances half last night: we decided that we can't move to a larger house, just now, and so on--and we both said _what_ would it be like to be free from money worries for ten minutes--" "But, Ken, don't you see how necessary you are to each other!" said Julia, kneeling before the chair in which her fat godson was seated, and displaying a number of gold chains and bracelets for his amusement. "You have to take a turn at everything--cooking and sewing and caring for old Sweetum here--Anthony couldn't get on without you!" "And I suppose you think Doctor Studdiford could find twenty wives as pretty and clever and charming as you are, Ju?" "Fifty!" Julia answered. "Well, now, that just shows what a little idiot you are!" Mrs. Marbury scolded. "Not but what most women feel that way sooner or later," she added, less severely. "I remember that phase very well, myself! But the thing for you to do, Julie, is to remember that you're exactly the same woman he fell in love with, d'you see? Just mind your own affairs, and be happy and busy, and try not to fancy things!" "What a sensible old thing you are, Ken!" said Julia gratefully. And as Kennedy came over to stand near her, Julia gave her a little rub with her head, like an affectionate pony. "I think it's partly this hotel that's demoralizing me," Julia went on, a little shamed. "I feel so useless--getting up, eating, dressing, idling about, and going to bed again. Jim has his work, and I'll be glad when I have mine again!" CHAPTER II In these days, the Studdifords were househunting in all of Jim's free hours; confining their efforts almost entirely to the city, although a trip to San Mateo or Ross Valley made a welcome change now and then. It was not until late in October that the right house was found, on Pacific Avenue, almost at the end of the cable-car line. It was a new house, large and square, built of dignified dark-red brick, and with a roomy and beautiful garden about it. There was a street entrance, barred by an iron gate elaborately grilled, and giving upon three shallow brick steps that led to the heavily carved door. On the side street was an entrance for the motor car and tradespeople, the slope of the hill giving room for a basement kitchen, with its accompanying storerooms and laundries. Upstairs, the proportions of the rooms, and their exquisite finish, made the house prominent among the city's beautiful homes. Even Jim could find nothing to change. The splendid dark simplicity of the drawing-room was in absolute harmony with the great main hall, and in charming contrast to the cheerful library and the sun-flooded morning-room. The dining-room had its own big fireplace, with leather-cushioned ingle seats, and quaint, twinkling, bottle-paned windows above. On the next floor the four big bedrooms, with their three baths and three dressing-rooms and countless closets, were all bright and sunny, with shining cream-coloured panelling, cretonne papers in gay designs of flowers and birds, and crystal door knobs. Upstairs again were maids' rooms, storerooms lined in cedar, and more baths. "Perfect!" said Jim radiantly, on the afternoon when, the Studdifords first inspected the house. "It's just exactly right, and I'm strong for it!" He came over to Julia, who was thoughtfully staring out of a drawing-room window. Her exquisite beauty was to-day set off by a long loose sealskin coat, for the winter was early, and a picturesque little motor bonnet, also of seal, with a velvet rose against her soft hair. "Little bit sad to-day, sweetheart?" Jim asked, kissing the tip of her ear. "No--o. I was just thinking what a lovely, sheltered backyard!" Julia said sensibly, raising her blue eyes. But she had brightened perceptibly at his tenderness. "I love you, Jim," she said, very simply. "And I adore you!" Jim answered, his arms about her. "I've been thinking all day how rotten that sounded this morning!" he added in a lower tone. "I'm so sorry!" "As if it was your fault!" Julia protested generously. And a moment later she charmed him by declaring herself to be entirely satisfied with this enchanting house, and by entering vigorously upon the question of furnishings. The little episode to which Doctor Studdiford had made a somewhat embarrassed allusion had taken place in their rooms at the hotel that morning, while they were breakfasting. Plans for a little dinner party were progressing pleasantly, over the omelette and toast, when Jim chanced to suggest that a certain Mrs. Pope be included among the guests. "Oh, Jim--not Mrs. Jerry Pope?" Julia questioned, wide eyed. "Yes, but she calls herself Mrs. Elsie Carroll Pope now. Why not?" "Oh, Jim--but she's divorced!" "Well, so are lots of other people!" "Yes, I know. But it was such a horrid divorce, Jim!" "Horrid how?" "Oh, some other man, and letters in the papers, and Mr. Pope kept both the children! It was awful!" "Oh, come, Ju--she's a nice little thing, awfully witty and clever. Why go out of your way to knock her!" "I'm not going out of my way," Julia answered with dignity. "But she was a great friend of Mary Chetwynde, who used to teach at The Alexander, and she came out there two or three times, and she's a noisy, yelling sort of woman--and her hair is dyed--yes, it _is_, Jim!" "Lord, you women do love to rip each other up the back!" Jim smiled lazily, as he wheeled his chair about, and lighted a cigarette. "I'm not ripping her up the back at all," Julia protested with spirit. "But she's not a lady, and I hate the particular set she goes with--" "Not a lady--ha!" Jim ejaculated. "She was a Cowdry." Julia leaned back in her chair, and opened a fat letter from Sally Borroughs in Europe, that had come in her morning's mail. "Ask her by all means to dinner," she said calmly. "Only don't expect me to admire her and approve of her, Jim, for I won't do it; I know too much about her!" "It's just possible Mrs. Pope isn't waiting for your admiration and approval, my dear," Jim said, nettled "But I doubt, whatever she knew of you, if she would speak so unkindly about _you_!" Julia turned as scarlet as if a whip had fallen across her face. She stared at him for a moment with fixed, horrified eyes, then crushed her letter together with a spasmodic gesture of the hands, and let it fall as she went blindly toward the bedroom door. Jim sat staring after her, puzzled at first, then with the red blood surging into his face. He dropped his cigarette and his newspaper, and for perhaps three minutes there was no sound in the apartment but the coffee bubbling in the percolator, and the occasional clank of the radiator. Then Jim jumped up suddenly and flung open the door of the bedroom. Julia was sitting at her dressing-table, one elbow resting upon it, and her head dropped on her hand. She raised heavy eyes and looked at him. "Don't be a fool, Ju," Jim said, solicitous and impatient. "You know I didn't mean anything by that. I wouldn't be such a cad. You know I wouldn't say a thing like that--I couldn't. Come on back and finish your coffee." But he did not kiss her; he did not put his arm about her; and Julia felt curiously weary and cold as she came slowly back to her place. Jim immediately lighted a fresh cigarette, and began to rattle away somewhat nervously of his plans for the day. He was going over to the Oakland Hospital to look at his man with the spine--better not try to meet for lunch. But how about that Pacific Avenue house? If Julia took the motor and stopped at the agent's for the key, he would meet her there at four--how about it? Agreed. Gosh! It was nearly ten o'clock, and Jim had to get out to the Children's Hospital before he went to Oakland. Julia had a quick kiss, and was advised to take good care of herself. Then Jim was gone, and she could fling her arm across the table and sob as if her heart would break. Julia cried for a long time. Then she stopped resolutely, and spent a long half hour in serious thought, her fingers absently tracing the threads of the tablecloth with a fork, her thoughts flying. Presently she roused herself, telephoned Jim's chauffeur and the agent of the Pacific Avenue house, bathed her reddened eyes, and inspected her new furs, just home from the shop. Now and then her breast rose with a long sigh, but she did not cry again. "I'll wear my new furs," she decided soberly. "Jim loves me to look pretty. And I _must_ cheer up; he hates me to be blue! Who can I lunch with, to cheer up? Aunt Sanna! I'll get a cold chicken and some cake, and go out to The Alexander!" So the outward signs of the storm were obliterated, and no one knew of the scar that Julia carried from that day in her heart. Only a tiny, tiny scar, but enough to remind her now and then with cold terror that even into her Paradise the serpent could thrust his head, enough to prove to her bitter satisfaction that there was already something that Jim's money could not buy. The furnishing of the Pacific Avenue house proceeded apace--it was an eminently gratifying house to furnish, and Jim and Julia almost wished their labours not so light. All rugs looked well on those beautiful floors; all pictures were at their best against the dull rich tones of the walls. Did Mrs. Studdiford like the soft blue curtains in the library, or the dull gold, or the coffee-coloured tapestry? Mrs. Studdiford, an exquisite little figure of indecision, in a great Elizabethan chair of carved black oak, didn't really know; they were all so beautiful! She wondered why the blue wouldn't be lovely in the breakfast room, if they used the gold here? Then she wouldn't use the English cretonne in the breakfast room? Oh, yes, of course, she had forgotten the English cretonne! At last it was all done, from the two stained little Roman marble benches outside the front door, to the monogrammed sheets in the attic cedar closet. The drawing-room had its grand piano, its great mahogany davenport facing the fire, its rich dark rugs, its subdued gleam of copper and crystal, dull blue china and bright enamel. The little reception room was gay with yellow-gold silk and teakwood; Jim's library was severely handsome with its dark leather chairs and rows of dark leather bindings. A dozen guests could sit about the long oak table in the dining-room; the great sideboard with its black oak cupids and satyrs, and its enormous claw feet, struck perhaps the only pretentious note in the house. A wide-lipped bowl, in clear yellow glass, held rosy pippins or sprawling purple grapes on the table in the window, the sideboard carried old jugs and flagons in blackened silver or dull pottery. Upstairs the sunny perfection of the bedrooms was not marred by the need of so much as a cake of violet soap. Julia revelled in details here: flowers in the bedrooms must match the hangings; there must be so many fringed towels and so many plain, in each bathroom. She amused as well as edified Jim with her sedate assurance in the matter of engaging maids; her cheeks would grow very pink when interviews were afoot, but she never lost her air of calm. "We are as good as they are," said Julia, "but how hard it is to remember it when you are talking to them!" Presently Foo Ting was established supreme in the kitchen, Lizzie secured as waitress, and Ellie, Lizzie's sister, engaged to do upstairs work. Chadwick, Jim's chauffeur, was accustomed occasionally to enact also the part of valet, so that it was with a real luxury of service that the young Studdifords settled down for the winter. Julia had anticipated this settling as preceding a time of quiet, when she and Jim should loiter over their snug little dinners, should come to know the comforts of their own chairs, at each side of the library fire, and laugh and cry over some old book, or talk and dream while they stared into the coals. The months were racing about to her first wedding anniversary, yet she felt that she really knew Jim only in a certain superficial, holiday sense--she knew what cocktail he liked best, of course, and what seats in the theatre; she was quite sure of the effect of her own beauty upon him. But she longed for the real Jim, the soul that was hidden somewhere under his gay mask, under the trim, cleanshaven, smiling face. When there was less confusion, less laughing and interrupting and going about, then she would find her husband, Julia thought, and they would have long silent hours together in which to build the foundation of their life. Her beautiful earnest face came to have a somewhat strained and wistful look, as the weeks fled past without bringing the quiet, empty time for which she longed. All about her now stretched the glittering spokes of the city's great social wheel, every mail brought her a flood of notes, every quarter hour summoned her to the telephone, every fraction of the day had its appointed pleasure. Julia must swiftly eliminate from her life much of the rich feminine tradition of housewifery; it was not for her to darn her husband's hose, to set exquisite patches in thinning table linen, to gather flowers for jars and vases. Julia never saw Jim's clothing except when he was wearing it, the table linen was Ellie's affair, and Lizzie had the entire lower floor bright and fragrant with fresh flowers before Jim and Julia came down to breakfast. Young Mrs. Studdiford found herself readily assuming the society woman's dry, brief mannerisms. Jim used to grin sometimes when he heard her at the telephone: "Oh, that would be charming, Mrs. Babcock," Julia would say, "if you'll let me run away at three, for I must positively keep an appointment with Carroll at three, if I'm to have my gown for dear Mrs. Morton's bal masque Friday night. And if I'm just a tiny bit late you won't be cross? For we all do German at twelve now, you know, and it _will_ run over the hour! Oh, you're very sweet! Oh, no, Mrs. Talcott spoke to me about it, but we can't--we're both _so_ sorry, but this week seems to be just _full_--no, she said that, but I told her that next week was just as bad, so she's to let me know about the week after. Oh, I know she is. And I _did_ want to give her a little tea, but there doesn't seem to be a _moment_! I think perhaps I'll ask Mrs. Castle to let us dine with her some other time, and give Betty a little dinner Monday--" And so on and on, in the quick harassed voice of one who must meet obligations. "You're a great social success, Ju," Jim said, smiling, one morning. Julia made a little grimace over her letters. "Oh, come off, now!" her husband railed good-naturedly. "You know you love it. You know you like to dress up and trot about with me and be admired!" "I like to trot about with you," Julia conceded, sighing in spite of her smile. "But I get very tired of dinners. Some other woman gets you, and some other woman's husband gets me, and we say such _flat_ things, about motor cars, or the theatre--nothing friendly or intimate or interesting!" "Wait until you know them all better, Ju. Besides, you couldn't get intimate at a dinner, very well. Besides"--Jim defended the institutions of his class--"you didn't look very gay when young Jo Coutts seemed inclined to get very friendly at dinner the other night!" "Jo Coutts was drunk," Julia asserted briefly. "As they very often are," she added severely. "Not raging drunk, but just silly, or sentimental and important, you know." "I know," Jim laughed. "And it makes me furious!" Julia said. "As for knowing them better, they aren't one bit more interesting when they're old friends. They're more familiar, I admit that, but all this cheeky yelling back and forth isn't interesting--it's just tiresome! 'I'm holding your husband's hand, Alice!' 'All right, then I'm going to kiss your husband!'" Her voice rose in mimicry. "And then Kenneth Roberts tells some little shady story, and every one screams, and every one goes on telling it over and over! Why, that little silly four-line verse Conrad Kent had last night--every one in the room had to learn it by heart and say it six hundred times before we were done with it!" "You're a cynic, woman," Jim said, kissing his wife, who by this time had come around to his chair. "It's all too easy for you, that's the trouble! They've accepted you with open arms; you're the rage! You ought to have been kept for a while on the anxious seat, like the poor Groves, and Mrs. McCann; then you'd appreciate High Sassiety!" "Well, I wouldn't make myself ridiculous and pathetic like the Groves, trying to burst into society, and giving people a chance to snub me!" Julia said thoughtfully. "Never mind," she added, "next month Lent begins, and then there must be some let-up!" However, Lent had only begun when the Studdifords made a flying trip to Honolulu, where Jim had a patient. The great liner was fascinating to Julia, and, as usual, her beauty and charm, and the famous young surgeon's unostentatious bigness, made them friends on all sides, so that the life of cocktail mixing and card playing and gossip went on as merrily as it had in San Francisco. Julia could not spend the empty days staring dreamily out at the rolling green Pacific; every man on board was anxious to improve her acquaintance, from the Captain to the seventeen-year-old little English lad who was going out to his father in India, and to not one of them did it ever occur that lovely little Mrs. Studdiford might prefer to be left alone. But the sea air shook Julia into splendid health and energy, and she was her sweetest self in Honolulu; she and Jim both seemed to recapture here some of the exquisite tenderness of their honeymoon a year ago. Neither would admit that there had been any drifting apart, they had never been less than lovers, yet now they experienced the delights of a reconciliation. Julia, in her delicate linens and thin embroidered pongees, with a filmy parasol shading her bright hair, seemed more wonderful than ever before, and lovely Hawaii was a setting for one of their happiest times together. On the boat, coming home, however, there occurred a little incident that darkened Julia's sky for a long time to come. On the very day of starting she and Jim, with some other returning San Franciscans, were standing, a laughing group on the deck, when a dark, handsome young woman came forward from a nearby cabin doorway, and held out her hand. "Do you remember me, Julia?" said she, smiling. Julia, whose white frock was draped with a dozen ropes of brilliant flowers, and who looked like a little May Queen in her radiant bloom, looked at the newcomer for a few moments, and then said, with a clearing face: "Hannah! Of course I know you. Mrs. Palmer, may I present Doctor Studdiford?" Jim smilingly shook hands, and as the rest of the group melted away, Mrs. Palmer explained that her husband's business was in Manila, but she was bringing up her two little children to visit her parents in Oakland. "She's extremely pretty," Jim said, when he and Julia were alone in their luxurious stateroom. "Who is she?" "I don't know why I supposed you knew that she is one of Mark's sisters," Julia said, colouring. "I saw something of them all, after--afterward, you know." "Oh!" Jim's face, which he chanced to be washing, also grew red; he scowled as he plunged it again into the towel. Julia proceeded with her own lunch toilet in silence, humming a little now and then, but the brightness was gone from the day for her; the swift-flying green water outside the window had turned to lead, the immaculate little apartment was bleak and bare. Jim did not speak as they went down to lunch, nor was he himself when they met again, after a game of auction, at dinner. In fact, this marked Julia's first acquaintance with a new side of his character. For Jim's sunny nature was balanced by an occasional mood so dark as to make him a different man while it lasted. Barbara had once lightly hinted this to Julia--"Jim was glooming terribly, and did nothing but snarl"--and Miss Toland had confirmed the hint when she asked him, at Christmas dinner, when he and Julia had been eight months man and wife: "Well, Jim, never a blue devil once, eh?" "Never a one. Aunt Sanna!" Jim had responded gayly. "What should he have blue devils about?" Julia had demanded on this occasion, presenting herself indignantly to them, and looking in her black velvet and white lace like a round-eyed child. She thought of that happy moment this afternoon, with a little chill at her heart. For there was no doubt that Jim had blue devils now. When she came back to her stateroom at six o'clock, he was already there, flung across the bed, his arms locked under his head, his sombre eyes on the ceiling, where green water-lights were playing. "Jim, don't you feel well, dear?" "Perfectly well, thank you!" Jim said coldly. Slightly angered by his tone, Julia fell silent, busied herself with her brushes, hooked on a gown of demure cherry colour and gray, caught up a great silky scarf. "Anything I can do for you, Jim?" she said then, politely. "Just--_let me alone_!" Jim answered, without stirring. Hurt to the quick, and with sudden colour in her face, Julia left the room. She held her head high, but she felt almost a little sick with the shock. Five minutes later she was the centre of a chattering group on the deck. A milky twilight held the sea, the skyline was no longer to be discerned in the opal spaces all about them, the ship moved over a vast plain of pearl-coloured smooth waters. Where staterooms were lighted, long fingers of rosy brightness fell across the deck; here and there in the shelter of a bit of wall were dark blots that were passengers, wrapped and reclining, and unrecognizable in the gloom. Julia and a young man named Manners began to pace the deck. Mr. Manners was a poet, and absorbed in the fascinating study of his own personality, but he served Julia's need just now, and never noticed her abstraction and indifference. He described to Julia the birth of his own soul, when he was what the world considered only a clumsy, unthinking lad of seventeen, and Julia listened as a pain-racked fever patient might listen with vague distress to the noise of distant hammers. Presently they were all at dinner; soup, but no Jim; fish, but no Jim. Here was Jim at last, pale, freshly shaven, slipping into his place with a muttered apology and averted eyes. With a sense of impending calamity upon her, Julia struggled through her dinner; after a while she found herself holding cards, under a bright light; after a while again, she reached her stateroom. Julia turned up the light. The room was close and empty, littered with the evidences of Jim's hasty toilet. She opened a window, and the sweet salt air filtered in, infinitely soothing and refreshing. She began to go about the room, picking up Jim's clothes, and putting the place in order. Once or twice her face twitched with pain, and once she stopped and pressed Jim's coat to her heart with both hands, as if to stop a wound, but she did not cry, and presently began her usual preparations for bed in her usual careful fashion. The cherry-coloured gown had been put away, and Julia, in an embroidered white kimono almost stiff enough to stand alone, was putting her rings into their little cases when Jim came in. She looked at him over her shoulder. "Where have you been, Jim?" she asked quietly, noticing his white face, his tumbled hair, and a certain disorder in his appearance. Jim did not answer, and after a puzzled moment Julia repeated her question. "Up on deck," Jim said, a bitter burst of words breaking through his ugly silence. He dropped into a chair, and put his head in his hands. Julia watched him for a few moments in silence, while she went on with her preparations. She wound her little watch and put it under her pillow; she folded the counterpanes neatly back from both beds, and got out her slippers. Then she sat down to put trees into the little satin slippers she had been wearing, and carried them to the closet. Suddenly Jim sat up, dropped his hands, and stared at her haggardly. "Julia," said he hoarsely, "I've been up there thinking--I'm going mad, I guess--" He stopped, and there was silence. Julia stood still, looking at him. "Tell me," Jim said, "was it Mark?" The hideous suddenness of it struck Julia like a bodily blow; she stood as if she had been turned to ice. A great weight seemed to seize her limbs, a sickening vertigo attacked her. She had a suffocating sense that time was passing, that ages were going by in that bright, glaring room, with the sea air coming in a shuttered window, and the two beds, with their smooth white pillows, so neatly turned down--Still, she could not speak--not yet. "Yes, it was Mark," she said tonelessly and gently, after a long silence. "I thought you knew." "Oh, my God!" Jim said, choking. He flung his hands madly in the air and got on his feet. Then, as if ashamed, through all the boiling surge of his emotions, at this loss of control, he rammed his hands into the pockets of his light overcoat, and began to pace the room. "You--you--you!" he said, in a sort of wail, and in another moment, muttering some incoherency about air, he had snatched up his cap and was gone again. Julia slowly crossed the room, and sat down on her bed. She felt as a person who had swallowed a dose of poison might feel: agonies were soon to begin that would drive the life from her body, but she could not feel them yet. Instead she felt tired, tired beyond all bearing, and the lights hurt her eyes. She slipped her kimono from her, stepped out of her slippers, and plunged the room into utter darkness. Like a tired child she crept into bed, and with a great sigh dropped her head on the pillow. The ship plowed on, its great lights cutting a steady course over the black water, its whole bulk quivering to the heartbeat of the mighty engines; whispered good-nights and laughing good-nights were said in the narrow, hot hallways. Lights went out in cabin after cabin. The decks were dark and deserted. Below stairs the world that never slept hummed like a beehive; squads of men were washing floors, laying tables; the kitchen was as hot and busy as at midday; the engine rooms were filled with silhouetted forms briskly coming and going. Up on one of the dark decks, with the soft mist blowing in his face, Jim spent the long night, his folded arms resting on the rail, his sombre eyes following the silent rush of waters, and in her cabin Julia lay wide awake and battling with despair. She had thought the old dim horror over and done with. Now she knew it never would be that; now she knew there was no escape. The happy little castle she had builded for herself fell about her like a house of cards; she was dishonoured, she was abased, she was powerless. In telling Jim her whole history, on that terrible night at the settlement house, she had flung down her arms; there was no new extenuating fact to add to the story; it was all stale and unchangeable; it must stand before their eyes forever, a hideous fact. And it seemed to Julia, tossing restlessly in the dark, that a thousand sleeping menaces rose now to terrify her. Perhaps Hannah Palmer knew! Julia's breath stopped, her whole body shook with terror. And if Hannah, why not others? A letter of Mark's to some one--to any one--might be in existence now, waiting its hour to appear, and to disgrace her, and Jim, and all who loved them! And was it for this, she asked herself bitterly, that she had so risen from the past, so studied and struggled and aspired? Had she been mad all these years to forget the danger in which she stood, to imagine that she had buried her tragedy too deep for discovery? Had she been mad to marry Jim, her dear, sweet, protecting old Jim, who was always so good to her? But at the thought of him, and of her bitter need of him in this desolate hour, Julia fell to violent crying, and after her tears she drifted into a deep sleep, her lashes wet, and her breast occasionally rising with a sharp sigh as a child's might. When she awakened, dawn was breaking, the level waste of the sea was pearl colour and rose under a slowly rising mist. Julia bathed and dressed, and went out to the deck, where, with a great plaid wrapped about her, she might watch the miracle of the birth of day. And as the warming rays of the sun enveloped her, and the newly washed decks dried under its touch, and as signs of life began to be heard all about, slamming doors and gay greetings, laughter and the crisp echoes of feet, hope and self-confidence crept again into her heart. She was young, after all, and pretty, and Jim's very agony of jealousy only proved that he loved her. She had never deceived him, he could not accuse her of one second's weakness there. He had only had a sudden, terrible revelation of the truth he had known so long; it could not affect him permanently. "Going down?" said a voice gayly. Julia turned to smile upon a group of cheerful acquaintances. "Thinking about it," she smiled. "Where's Himself?" somebody asked. "Still asleep--the lazy bones!" Julia answered calmly. They all went downstairs together, and Julia was perhaps a little ashamed to find the odours of coffee and bacon delightful, and to enjoy her breakfast. Afterward she went straight to her room, not at all surprised to find Jim there, flung, dressed as he was, across his bed, and breathing heavily. Julia studied him for a moment in silence. Then she set about the somewhat difficult task of rousing him, quite her capable wifely little self when there was something she could do for him. "Jim! You'll have to get these damp things off, dear! Come, Jim, you can't sleep this way. Wake up, Jim!" Drowsily, heavily, he consented to be partially undressed, and covered with a warm rug. Julia grew quite breathless over her exertions, tucked him in carefully. "I'm going to tell the chambermaid not to come in until I ring, Jim. But shall I send you in a cup of coffee?" "Ha!" Jim said, already asleep. "Do you want some coffee, Jim?" "No--no coffee!" Julia tiptoed about the room a moment more, took her little sewing basket and a new magazine, and giving a departing look at her husband, found his eyes wide open and watching her. Instantly a rush of tears pressed behind her eyelids, and she felt herself grow weak and confused. "Thank you for fixing me up so nicely, darling," Jim said meekly. "Oh, you're welcome!" Julia answered, with a desperate effort to appear calm. "Will you kiss me, Julie?" Jim pursued, and a second later she was on her knees beside him, their arms were locked together, and their lips met as if they had never kissed each other before. "You little angel," Jim said, "what a beast I am! As if life hadn't been hard enough for you without my adding to it! Oh, but what a night I've had! And you'll forgive me, won't you, sweetheart, for I _love_ you so?" Julia put her face down and cried stormily, her wet face pressed against his, his arms holding her close. After a while, when the sobs lessened, they began to talk together, and then laugh together in the exquisite relief of being reconciled. Then Jim went to sleep, and Julia sat beside him, his hand in hers, her eyes idly following the play of broken bright lights that quivered on the wall. She leaned back in her big chair, feeling weary and spent, broken, but utterly at peace. From that hour life was changed to her, and she dimly felt the change, accepted it as stoically as an Indian might the loss of a limb, and adjusted herself to all it implied. If Jim was a little less her god, he was still hers, hers in some new relationship that appealed to what was protective and maternal in her. And if the burden of her secret had grown inconceivably heavy for her to bear, she knew by some instinct that this burst of jealous frenzy had somehow lightened its weight for Jim; she, not he, would henceforth pay the price. "And life isn't easy and gay, say what you will," thought Julia philosophically. "There is no use grumbling and groaning, and saying to yourself, 'Oh, if only it wasn't just this or that thing worrying me!' for there is always this or that. Kennedy and Bab think I am the most fortunate girl in the world, and yet, to be able to go back ten years, and live a few weeks over again, I'd give up everything I have, even Jim. Just to start _square_! Just to feel that wretched thing wasn't there like a layer of mud under everything I do, making it a farce for me to talk of uplifting girls by settlement work, as people are eternally making me talk! Or if only every one _knew_ it, it would be easier, for then I would feel at least that I stood on my own feet! But now, of course, that's impossible, on Jim's account. What a horrible scandal it would be, what a horrible thing it _is_, that any girl can cloud her own life in this way! "As for boys, I suppose mighty few of them are pure by the time they're through college, by the time they're through High School, perhaps! It's all queer, for that involves girls and women, too, thousands of them! And how absurd it would be to bring such a charge as this against a man, ten years after it happened, when he was married and a respectable citizen! "Well, society is very queer; civilization hasn't got very far; sometimes I think virtue is a good deal of an accident, and that people take themselves pretty seriously!" And so musing, Julia dozed, and wakened, and dozed again. But in her heart had been sowed the seed that was never to be uprooted, the little seed of doubt: doubt of the social structure, doubt of its grave authorities, its awe-inspired interpreters. What were the mummers all so busy about and how little their mummery mattered! This shall be permitted, this shall not be permitted; what is in your heart and brain concerns us not at all; where your soul spends its solitudes is not our affair; so that you keep a certain surface smoothness, so that you dress and talk and spend as we bid you, you--for such time as we please--shall be one of us! CHAPTER III Nevertheless, the young Studdifords, upon their return to San Francisco, entered heartily upon the social joys of the hour. Barbara had been only waiting their arrival to demurely announce her engagement, and Julia's delight immediately took the form of dinners and theatre parties for the handsome Miss Toland and her fiance. A new and softened sweetness marked Barbara in these days; she was more gentle and more charming than she had ever been before. Captain Edward Francis Humphry Gunther Fox was an officer in the English army, a blond, silent man of forty, with kind eyes and a delightfully modulated voice. He had a comfortable private income, a "place" in Oxfordshire, an uncle, young and healthy to be sure, but still a lord, and an older sister who had married a lord, so that his credentials were unexceptionable, and Mrs. Toland was nearly as happy as her daughter was. "It's curious," said Barbara to Julia, in one of their first hours alone, "but there _is_ a distinction and an excitement about getting engaged, and you enjoy it just as much at thirty as at twenty--perhaps more. People--or persons, as Francis says--who have never paid me any attention before, are flocking to the front now with presents and good wishes, and some who never have seen Captain Fox congratulate me--it amounts to congratulation--as if _any_ marriage were better than none!" "Well, there is a something about marriage," Julia admitted; "you may not have any reason for feeling so, but you _do_ feel superior, 'way down in your secret heart! And yet, Babbie," and a little shadow darkened her bright face, "and yet, once you _are_ married, you see a sort of--well, a sort of uncompromising brightness about girlhood, too! When I go out to The Alexander now, and remember my old busy days there, and walking to chapel with Aunt Sanna, in the fresh, early mornings--I don't know--it makes me almost a little sad!" "Don't speak of it," said Barbara. "When I think of leaving Dad, and home, and going off to England, and having to make friends of awful women with high cheek bones, and mats of crimps coming down to their eyebrows, it scares me to death!" And both girls laughed gayly. They were having tea in Julia's drawing-room on a cold bright afternoon in May. "I'll miss Dad most," pursued Barbara seriously. "Mother's so much with Ted now, anyway." She frowned at the fire. "Mother's curious, Ju," she added presently. "Every one says she's an ideal mother, and so on, and I suppose she is, but--" "You're more like your father, anyway," Julia suggested in the pause. "It's not only that," said Barbara slowly, "but Mother has never been in sympathy with any one of us! Ned deceived her, Sally deceived her, Theodora went deliberately against her advice, and broke her heart, and Con and Jane don't really respect her opinion at all! I'm the oldest, her first born--" "And she loves you dearly," Julia said soothingly. "Used to Ju, when I was a baby. And loves me theoretically now. But she has taken my not marrying to heart much more than the curious marriages Ned and the girls have made! Hints about old maids, and stories about her own popularity as a girl, regardless of the fact that no one wanted me--" "Oh, Babbie!" "Well, no one did!" Barbara laughed a little dryly. "Why, not two months ago," she went on, "that little sprig of a Paul Smith called on Con, and Mother engineered me out of the room, and said something laughingly to Richie and Ted about not wanting to stand in Con's way, 'one old maid was enough in a family!'" "Maddening! Yes, I know," Julia said, laughing and shaking her head. "I've heard her a hundred times!" "Of course it's all love and kisses, now," Barbara added, "and Francis is a bold, big thief, and how can she give up her dear big girl--" "Oh, Barbara, don't be bitter!" "Well," Barbara flung her head back as if she tossed the subject aside, "I suppose I am bitter! And why you're not, Ju, I can't understand, for you never had one tenth the chance I did!" "No," Julia assented gravely, "I never did. If my mother had kept me with her--and she could have done it--if she hadn't left my father--he loved me so--it would all have been different. Mothers are strange, Babby, they have so much power--or seem to! It seems to me that one could do so much to straighten things out for the poor little baby brains; this is worth while, and this isn't worth while, and so on! Suppose"--Julia poured herself a fresh cup of tea, and leaned back comfortably in her chair--"suppose you had young daughters, Bab," said she, "what would you do, differently from your mother, I mean?" "Oh, I don't know!" Barbara said, "only it seems funny that mothers can't help their daughters more. Half my life is lived now, probably, yet Mother goes right on theorizing, she--she doesn't get down to _facts_, somehow! I don't know--" "It all comes down to this," Julia said briskly, as Barbara's voice trailed into silence, "sitting around and waiting for some one to ask her to marry him is not a sufficiently absorbing life work for the average young woman!" "She isn't expected to do anything else," Barbara added, "except-- attract. And it isn't as if she could be deciding in her own mind about it; the decision is in _his_ mind: if he chooses he can ask her; if he doesn't, all right! It's a _shame_--it's a shame, I say, not to give her a more dignified existence than that!" "Yes, but, Bab, your mother couldn't have put you into a shop to sell ribbons, or made a telephone girl of you!" "No; my brothers didn't sell ribbons, or go on a telephone board, either. But I don't see why I shouldn't have studied medicine, like Jim and Richie, or gone into the office at the works in Yolo City, like Ned." "Yes, but, Babby, you've no leaning toward medicine!" "Well, then, something else, just as Jim would have done something else, in that case! Office hours and responsibility, and meeting of men in some other than a social way. You and I have somehow dragged a solution out of it, Julie: we are happy in spite of all the blundering and stumbling, but I've not got my Mother to thank for it, and neither have you!" "No, neither have I!" Julia said, with a long sigh, and for a few moments they both watched the coals in silence. The room was quite dark now; the firelight winked like a drowsy eye; here and there the gold of a picture frame or the smooth curve of a bit of copper or brassware twinkled. The windows showed opaque squares of dull gray; elsewhere was only heavy shadow, except where Barbara's white gown made a spot of dull relief in the gloom, and Julia's slipper buckles caught the light. A great jar of lilacs, somewhere in the room, sent out a subtle and delicious scent. "Funny world, isn't it, Julie?" "Oh, _funny_!" Julia put out her hand, and met Barbara's, and their fingers pressed. "Nothing better in it, Barbara, than a friend like you!" she said affectionately. "That's what I was thinking," said Barbara. The Studdifords went to San Mateo after the wedding, and Julia, who had taken herself seriously in hand, entered upon the social life of the summer with a perfectly simulated zest. She rode and drove, played golf and tennis and polo, gossiped and spent hours at bridge, she went tirelessly from luncheon to tea, from dinner to supper party, and when Jim was detained in town, she went without him; a little piece of self-reliance that pleased him very much. If society was not extremely popular with Julia, Julia was very popular with society; her demure beauty made her conspicuous wherever she went, and in July, prominent in some theatricals at the clubhouse, she earned all honours before her. Julia found the theatricals perilously delightful; the grease paint and the ornate costume seemed like old friends; she was intoxicated and enchanted by the applause. For several days after her most successful performance she was thoughtful: what if she had never joined the "Amazon" caste, never gone to Sausalito, followed naturally in the footsteps of Connie Girard and Rose Ransome? She might have been a great actress; she would have been a great beauty. San Mateo, frankly, bored her, although she could not but admire the beautiful old place, the lovely homes set in enchanting old gardens, the lawns and drives stretching under an endless vista of superb oaks. There, alone with Jim, in a little cottage--ah, there would have been nothing boring about that! But the Hardesty cottage never seemed like home to her, they had rented the big, shingled brown house for only three months, and Jim was anxious that she should not tire herself with altering the arrangement of furniture and curtains for so casual a tenancy. The Hardesty's pictures looked down from the wall, their chairs were unfriendly, their books under lock and key. Not a lamp, not a cup or saucer was familiar to Julia; she felt uncomfortable in giving dinner parties with "H" on the silver knives and forks; she never liked the look of the Hardesty linen. Life seemed unreal in the "Cottage"; she seemed to be pushed further and further away from reassuring contact with the homely realities of love and companionship; chattering people were always about her, pianoplayers were rippling out the waltz from "The Merry Widow," ice was clinking in cocktail shakers, the air was scented with cigarettes, with the powder and perfumery of women. She and Jim dined alone not oftener than once a week, and their dinner was never finished before friendly feet crisped on the gravel curve of the drive, and friendly invaders appeared to invite them to do something amusing: to play cards, to take long spins in motor cars, or to spend an idle hour or two at the club. Sometimes they were separated, and Julia would come in, chilled and tired after a long drive, to find Jim ahead of her, already sound asleep. Sometimes she left him smoking with some casual guest, and fell asleep long before the voices downstairs subsided. Even if they went upstairs together, both were tired; there was neither time nor inclination for confidences, for long and leisurely talk. "Happy?" Jim said to his wife one day, when Julia, looking the picture of happiness, had come downstairs to join him for some expedition. "Happy enough," Julia said, with her grave smile. She took the deep wicker chair next his, on the porch, and sat looking down the curve of the drive to the roadway beyond a screen of trees. "Heavenly afternoon," she said. "Just what are we doing?" "Well, as near as I got it from Greg," Jim informed her a little uncertainly, "we go first to his place, and then split up into about three cars there; Mrs. Peter and Mrs. Billings will take the eats, Peter will have a whole hamper of cocktails and things, and we go up to the ridge for a sort of English nursery tea, I think." "Doing it all ourselves?" Julia suggested, brightening. "Well, practically. Although Greg's cook is going ahead with a couple of maids in the Peters' car. They're going to broil trout or something; anyway, I know Greg has been having fits about seeing that enough plates go, and so on. I know Paula Billings is taking something frozen--" "Oh, Lord, what a fuss and what a mess!" Julia said ungratefully. "Well, you know how the Peters always do things. And then, after tea, if this glorious weather holds, we'll send the maids and the hampers home, and all go on down to Fernand's." "Fernand's! Forty miles, Jim?" "Oh, why not? If we're having a good time?" "Well, I hope Peter Vane and Alan Gregory keep sober, that's all!" Julia said. "The ride will be lovely, and it's a wonderful day. But Minna Vane always bores me so!" "Why, you little cat!" Jim laughed, catching her hand as it hung loose over the arm of her chair. "They've no brains," complained Julia seriously; "they were born doing this sort of thing, they think they like it! Buying--buying--buying--eating--dancing--rushing--rushing--rushing! It's no life at all! I'd rather pack a heavy basket, and lug it over a hot hill, and carry water half a mile, when I picnic, instead of rolling a few miles in a motor car, and then sitting on a nice camp-chair, and having a maid to pass me salads and ices and toast and broiled trout!" "Well, if you would, I wouldn't!" Jim said good-naturedly. "I wasn't born to this," Julia added thoughtfully; "my life has always been full of real things; perhaps that's the trouble. I think of all the things that aren't going right in the world, and I _can't_ just turn my back on them, like a child--I get thinking of poor little clerks whose wives have consumption--" "Oh, for heaven's sake!" Jim protested frowningly, biting the end from his cigar with a clip of firm white teeth. "It isn't as if I had never been poor," Julia pursued uncertainly. "I know that there are times when a new gown or a paid bill actually would affect a girl's whole life! I think of those poor little girls at St. Anne's--" "I would like to suggest," Jim said incisively, "that the less you let your mind run on those little girls from St. Anne's, the better for you! If you have no consideration for my feelings in this matter, Julie, for your own I should think you would consider such topics absolutely--well, absolutely in poor taste!" Silence. Jim puffed on his cigar. Julia sat without stirring, feeling that every drop of blood in her body had rushed to her head. The muscles of her temples and throat ached, her eyes saw only a green-and-gold dazzle, her wet little hands gripped the arms of her chair. "It is all very well to criticise these people," pursued Jim sententiously, after a long silence, "although they have all been kindness and graciousness itself to you! They may be shallow, they may be silly; I don't hold any brief for Minna Vane and Paula Billings. But I know that Minna is on the Hospital Board, and Paula a mighty kind-hearted, good little woman, and they don't sit around pulling long faces, and wishing they were living south of Market Street!" Julia sat perfectly still. She could not have battled with the lump in her throat if life had depended upon her speaking. She felt her chest strain with a terrible rush of sobbing, but she held herself stiffly, and only prayed that her tears might be kept back until she was alone. "Hello! Here's Greg," Jim said cheerfully, after another silence. And here, truly, was Alan Gregory, a red-faced, smooth-shaven young man, already slightly hilarious and odorous of drink, and very gallant to beautiful Mrs. Studdiford. A great silky veil must be tied over Julia's hat; sure she was warm enough? Might be late, might get cold, you know. "Shall I get you your white coat, dear?" Jim asked solicitously. "Oh, no, thank you, Jim!" Then they were off, and Julia told herself that men and their wives often quarrelled this way; it was a common enough thing to have some woman announce, with a casual laugh, that she and her husband had had a "terrible scene," and "weren't speaking." Only, with Jim it seemed so different! It seemed so direfully, so hopelessly wrong! She felt a hypocrite when they joined the others, and when she presently found herself laughing and talking with them all, even with Jim. And through the jolly afternoon and noisy evening she found herself watching her husband, when she could do so unobserved, with gravely analytical eyes. No barbed sentence of his could long affect her, for Julia had pondered and prayed too long over this matter to find any fresh distress in a reminder of it. Her natural simple honesty very soon adjusted the outraged sensibilities. But Jim could hurt himself with his wife, and this afternoon he had done so. Unconsciously Julia said to herself, over and over, "Oh, he should not have said that! That was not kind!" Mrs. Vane had a great favour to ask the men of the party to-night. She proffered it somewhat doubtfully, like a spoiled child who is almost sure of being denied, yet risks its little charms in one more entreaty. She and Paula, yes, and Mrs. Jerome, and little Julia--wasn't that so, Julia?--wanted to see a roadhouse. No--no--no--not the sort of place where nice women went, but a regular roadhouse--oh, please, please, please! They had their veils to tie over their faces, and they would keep very unobtrusively in the background, and there was a man apiece and two men over to protect them. "All the girls in town are doing it!" argued Mrs. Vane, "and they say it's perfectly killing! Dancing, you know, and singing. You have to keep your veil down, of course! Betty said they'd been three times!" "Nothing doing," Jim said good-naturedly, shaking his head. "Oh, now, don't say that, Doctor!" Mrs. Vane commanded animatedly; "it's too _mean_! Well, if you couldn't take us to the very worst, where _could_ you take us--Hunter's?" "Hunter's!" the three men echoed, laughing and exchanging glances. "Well, where then?" the lady pursued. "Look here, Min," said her husband uneasily, "there's nothing to it. And you girls might get insulted and mixed into something--" "Oh, divine!" Mrs. Billings said; "now I _will_ go!" "White's, huh, Jim?" Greg suggested tentatively. "White's?" Jim considered it, shook his head. "Nothing doing there, anyway!" was his verdict. "Larry's, where the pretty window boxes are," suggested Mrs. Vane, hopeful eyes upon the judges. "Come on! _Oh, come on_! You see such flossy ladies getting out of motor cars in front of Larry's!" "There's this about Larry's," Mr. Billings contributed; "we could get one of those side places, and then, if things got too hot, just step out on to the porch, d'ye see, and get the girls away with no fuss at all." "That's so," Jim conceded; "but I'll be darned if I know why they want to do it. However--" "However, you're all angels!" sang Mrs. Vane, and catching Julia about the waist, she began to waltz upon the pleasant meadow grass where they had just had their high tea. "Come on, everybody! We won't be at Fernand's until nearly night, then dinner, and then Larry's!" "Mind now," growled one of the somewhat unwilling escort, "you girls keep your veils down. Nix on the front-page story to-morrow!" "Oh, we'll behave!" Mrs. Billings assured him. And slipping an affectionate arm about Julia's waist, as they walked to the motor cars, she murmured: "My dear, there isn't one decent woman in the place! Isn't this fun!" Julia did not answer. She got into the car and settled herself for the run; so much of the day at least would be pleasant. It was the close of a lovely summer afternoon, the long shadows of the trees lay ahead of them on the road, the sky was palest blue and palest pink, a flock of white baby clouds lay low against the eastern horizon. The warm air bore the clean good scent of wilting grass and hot pine sap. The car rolled along smoothly, its motion stirring the still air into a breeze. Mr. Billings, sitting next to Julia, began an interested disquisition upon the difficulties of breeding genuine, bat-eared, French bulldogs. Julia scarcely heard him, but she nodded now and then, and now and then her blue eyes met his; once she gratified him with a dreamy smile. This quite satisfied Morgan Billings, to whom it never occurred that Julia's thoughts might be on the beauties of the rolling landscape, and her smile for the first star that came prickling through the soft twilight. And after a while some aching need of her soul grew less urgent, and some of the wistfulness left her face. She forgot the ideals that had come with her into her married life, and crushed down the conviction that Jim, like all men, liked his wife to slip into the kitchen and concoct some little sweet for his supper, even with an artist like Foo Ting at his command. She realized that when she declined old Mrs. Chickering's luncheon invitation for the mere pleasure of rushing home to have lunch with Jim, her only reward might be a disapproving: "My Lord! Julia, I hope you didn't offend Mrs. Chickering! She's been so decent to us!" It was as if Julia, offering high interest on her marriage bond, had at last learned that one tenth of what she would pay would satisfy Jim. Feeling as she did that no demonstration on his part, no inclination to monopolize her, would do more than satisfy her longing to be all in all to him, it was not an easy lesson. For a while she could not believe that he knew his own happiness in the matter, and a dispassionate onlooker might have found infinitely pathetic the experimental temerity with which she told him that this invitation had been accepted, this social obligation incurred, this empty Sunday filled to overflowing with engagements. And now Jim approved, and Julia had to hide in the depth of her hurt soul the fact that she had never dreamed he _could_ approve. However tired, he liked to come home to the necessity of immediately assuming evening dress, and going out into the night again. He and Julia held a cheerful conversation between their dressing-rooms as they dressed; later they chattered eagerly enough in the limousine, Jim enthusiastic over his wife's gown, and risking a kiss on her bare shoulder when the car turned down a dark street. Jim, across a brilliant table, in a strange house, did not seem to Julia to belong to her at all; but it was almost as if he found his wife more fascinating when the eyes of outsiders were upon her, and admired Julia in a ballroom more than he did when they had the library and the lamplight to themselves, at home. They would come home together late and silent. Ellie would come in to help her lovely mistress out of the spangled gown, to lift the glittering band from her bright hair. And because of Ellie, and because Jim usually was dressed and gone before she was up in the morning, Julia had a room to herself now. She would have much preferred to breakfast with her lord, but Jim himself forbade it. "No, no, no, Ju! It's not necessary, and you're much better off in bed. That's the time for you to get a little extra rest. No human being can stand the whole season without making some rest up somehow! You'll see the girls begin to drop with nervous prostration in January; Barbara used to lose twenty pounds every winter. And I won't _have_ you getting pale. Just take things easy in the morning, and sleep as late as you can!" Julia accepted the verdict mildly. With the opening of her second winter in San Francisco's most exclusive set, she had tried to analyze the whole situation, honestly putting her prejudices on one side, and attempting to get her husband's point of view. It was the harder because she had hoped to be to Jim just what Kennedy Marbury was to Anthony, united by a thousand needs, little and big, by the memory of a thousand little comedies and tragedies. Kennedy, who worried about bills and who dreaded the coming of the new baby, could stop making a pie to administer punishment and a lecture to her oldest son, stop again to answer the telephone, stop again to kiss her daughter's little bumped nose, and yet find in her tired soul and body enough love and energy to put a pastry "A. M." on the top of her pie, to amuse the head of the house when he should cut into it that night. But this mixture of the ridiculous and the sublime was not for Julia. And just as Kennedy had adjusted herself to the life of a poor man's wife, so Julia must adjust herself to her own so different destiny. And adjust herself she did. Nobody dreamed of the thoughts that went on behind the beautiful blue eyes, nobody found little Mrs. Studdiford anything but charming. With that steadfast, serious resolution that had marked her all her life, Julia set herself to the study of gowns, of dinners, of small talk. She kept a slim little brown Social Register on her dressing-table, and pored over it at odd moments; she listened attentively to the chatter that went on all about her. She drew infinitely less satisfaction from the physical evidences of her success--her beauty, her wealth, her handsome husband, and her popularity--than any one of the women who envied her might have done, yet she did draw some satisfaction, loved her pretty gowns, the freedom of bared white neck and shoulders, the atmosphere of perfumed drawing-rooms and glittering dinner tables. She wrote long letters to Barbara, was a devoted godmother to Theodora Carleton's tiny son, loved to have Miss Toland with her for an occasional visit, and perhaps once a month went over to Sausalito, to spoil the old doctor with her affectionate attentions, hold long conferences with their mother on the subject of the girls' love affairs, and fall into deep talks with Richie--perhaps the happiest talks in her life, for Richie, whose mind and body had undergone for long years the exquisite discipline of pain, was delightfully unexpected in his views, and his whole lean, ungainly frame vibrated with the eager joy of expressing them. Perhaps once a month, too, Julia went to see her own mother, calls which always left her definitely depressed. Emeline was becoming more and more crippled with rheumatism, the old grandmother was now the more brisk of the two. May's two younger girls, Muriel and Geraldine, were living there now, as Marguerite and Evelyn had done; awkward, dark, heavy-faced girls who attended the High School. Julia's astonishing rise in life had necessarily affected her relatives, but much less, she realized in utter sickness of spirit, than might have been imagined. She and Jim were paying for the schooling of two of May's boys, and a substantial check, sent to her mother monthly, supposedly covered the main expenses of the entire household. Besides this, Chess was working, and paying his mother something every week for board. It had been Julia's first confident plan to move the family from the Mission entirely. There were lovely roomy flats in the Western Addition, or there were sunny houses out toward the end of Sutter Street, where her mother and grandmother would be infinitely more comfortable and more accessible. She was stunned when her grandmother flatly refused. Even her mother's approval of the plan was singularly wavering and half hearted. Mrs. Cox argued shrilly that they were poor folks, and poor folks were better off not trapesing all over the city, and Emeline added that Ma would feel lost without her backyard and her neighbours, to say nothing of the privilege of bundling up in a flat black bonnet and brown shawl, hot weather or cold, and trotting off to St. Charles's Church at all hours of the day and night. "I don't care, Julie," Mrs. Page made her daughter exquisitely uncomfortable by saying very formally, "but there's no girl in God's world that wouldn't think of asking her mother to stay with her for a while--till things got settled, anyway. You haven't done it!" "Well, I'll tell you, Mama--" Julia began, but Emeline interrupted her. "You haven't done it, Julie, and let me tell you right now, it looks queer. I'm not the one that says it; every one says it. I don't want to force myself where I'm not--" "But, Mama _dear_, we're only at the hotel now!" Julia protested, feeling a hypocrite. "I see," said Emeline, "and I'm not good enough, of course. I couldn't meet your friends, of course!" She laughed heartily. "That's _good_!" she said appreciatively. Julia used to flush angrily under these withering comments, at first; later, her poor little mother's attitude filled her only with a great pity. For Emeline was suffering a great deal now, and Julia longed to be able to take her with her to the Pacific Avenue house, if only to prove that its empty splendour held no particular advantages over the life on Shotwell Street, for Emeline. She was definitely better off in her mother's warm kitchen, gossiping and idling her days away, than she would have been limping aimlessly about in Julia's house, and catching glimpses of Julia only between the many claims of the daughter's day. More than this, Jim would not hear of such a visit; it never even came to a discussion between husband and wife; he would have been frankly as much surprised as horrified at the idea. So Julia did what was left to her, for her mother: listened patiently to long complaints, paid bills, and supplemented Jim's generous cheque with many a gold piece pressed into her mother's hand or slipped into her grandmother's dreadful old shopping-bag. She carried off her young cousins to equip them with winter suits and sensible shoes, aware all the while that their high-heeled slippers and flimsy, cheap silk dresses, the bangles that they slipped over dirty little hands, and the fancy combs they pushed into their untidy hair, were infinitely more prized by them. The Shotwell Street house was still close and stuffy, the bedrooms as dark and horrible as Julia remembered them, and no financial aid did more than temporarily soften the family's settled opinion that poor folks were poor folks, and predestined to money trouble. Julia knew that when the clothes she bought her cousins grew dirty they would not be cleaned; she knew that her grandmother had never taken a tub bath in her life and rather scorned the takers of tub baths; she knew that such a thing as the weekly washing of clothes, the transformation of dirty linen into piles of fragrant whiteness, never took place in the Shotwell Street house. Mrs. Cox indeed liked to keep a tub full of gray suds standing in the kitchen, and occasionally souse in it one of her calico wrappers, or a shirt waist belonging to the girls. These would be dried on a rope stretched across the kitchen, and sooner or later pressed with one of the sad irons that Julia remembered as far back as she remembered anything; rough-looking old irons, one with a broken handle, all with the figure seven stamped upon them with a mould. Mrs. Cox had several ironholders drifting about the kitchen, folds of dark cloth that had been so often wet and singed that the covering had split, and the folded newspaper inside showed its burned edges, but she never could find one when she wanted it, and usually improvised a new one from a grocery bag or the folds of her apron, and so burned her veined old knotted hands. Julia came soon to see that her actual presence did them small good, and did herself real harm, and so, somewhat thankfully, began to confine her attentions more and more to mere financial assistance. She presently arranged for the best of medical care for her mother, even for a hospital stay, but her attitude grew more and more that of the noncommittal outsider, who helps without argument and disapproves without comment. Evelyn had made a great success of her dressmaking, but such aid as she could give must be given her sister, for Marguerite's early and ill-considered marriage had come to the usual point when, with an unreliable husband, constantly arriving and badly managed babies, and bitter poverty and want, she found herself much in the position of her mother, twenty years before. May was still living in Oakland, widowed. Her two sons were at home and working, and with a small income from rented rooms as well, the three and her youngest daughter, Regina, somehow managed to maintain the dreary cottage in which most of the children were born. "They all give me a great big pain!" Evelyn said one day frankly, when Julia was at Madame Carroll's for a fitting, and the cousins--one standing in her French hat and exquisite underlinen, and the other kneeling, her gown severely black, big scissors in hand, and a pincushion dangling at her breast--were discussing the family. "Gran'ma isn't so bad, because she's old, but Aunt Emeline and Mama have a right to get next to themselves! Mama had a fit because I wouldn't take a flat over here, and have her and Regina with me; well, I could do it perfectly well; it isn't the money!" Evelyn stood up, took seven pins separately and rapidly from her mouth, and inserted them in the flimsy lining that dangled about Julia's arm. "You want this tight, but not too tight, don't you, Julie?" said she. "That can come in a little, still. No," she resumed aggrievedly, "but I board at a nice place on Fulton street; the Lancasters, the people that keep it, are just lovely. Mrs. Lancaster is so motherly and the girls are so jolly; my wash costs me a dollar a week; I belong to the library; I've got a lovely room; I go to the theatre when I want to; I buy the clothes I like, and why should I worry? I know the way Mama keeps house, and I've had enough of it!" "It's awfully hard," Julia mused, "Marguerite's just doing the same thing over again. It's just discouraging!" "Well, you got out of it, and I got out of it," Evelyn said briskly, "and they call it our luck! Luck? There ain't any such thing," she went on indignantly. "I'm going to New York for Madame next year--me, to New York, if you please, and stay at a good hotel, and put more than twenty thousand dollars into materials and imported wraps and scarfs and so on--is there any luck to that? There's ten years' slavery, that's what there is! How much do you suppose you'd have married Jim Studdiford if you hadn't kept yourself a little above the crowd, and worked away at the settlement house for years and years?" she demanded. "I can put a little hook in here, Ju, where the lace comes, to keep that in place for you!" she added, more quietly. "Well, it's true!" Julia said, sighing. She looked with real admiration at the capable, black-clad figure, the clear-skinned, black-eyed face of Madame Carroll's chief assistant. "Why don't you ever come and have lunch with me, Evelyn?" she demanded affectionately. "Oh, Lord, dearie!" Evelyn said, in her most professional way, as she pencilled a list of young Mrs. Studdiford's proportions on a printed card, "this season Madame has our lunches, and even our dinners, sent in--simply one rush! But some time I'd love to." "You like your work, don't you, Evelyn?" Julia said curiously. "You go tell Madame I'm ready for Mrs. Addison," Evelyn said capably to a small black-clad girl who answered her bell, "and then carry this to Minnie and tell her it's rush--don't drop the pins out. I love my work," she added, when she and Julia were alone again; "I'm crazy about it! The girls here are awfully nice, and some of the customers treat me simply swell--most of them do. This way, Julia. Christmas time we get more presents than you could shake a stick at!" said Evelyn, opening a door. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Addison, I'm all ready for you." "That's a good girl!" the woman who was waiting in Carroll's handsome parlour said appreciatively; she recognized Julia. "Well, how do you do, Mrs. Studdiford?" she smiled, "so sorry not to see you on Saturday, you bad little thing!" Julia gave her excuse. "You know Evelyn here is my cousin?" she said, in her quiet but uncompromising way, as she hooked her sables together. "About eleven times removed!" Evelyn said cheerfully. "Right in here, please, Mrs. Addison! At the same time to-morrow, Mrs. Studdiford. Thank you, good-night." "Good-night!" Julia said, smiling. For some reason she could not fathom, Evelyn never seemed willing to claim the full relationship; always assumed it to be but a hazy and distant connection. It was as if in her success the modiste wished to recognize no element but her own worth; no wealthy or influential relative could claim to have helped _her_! Julia always left her with a certain warmth at her heart. It was good to come in contact now and then with such self-confidence, such capability, such prosperity. "I could almost envy Evelyn!" thought Julia, spinning home in the twilight. CHAPTER IV The Studdifords, with some four hundred other San Francisco society folk, regarded the Browning dances as quite the most important of the winter's social affairs, and Julia, who thoroughly liked the host and the brilliant assembly, really enjoyed them more than the smaller and more select affairs. The Brownings were a beloved and revered institution; very few new faces appeared there from year to year, except the very choice of the annual crop of debutantes. Little Mrs. Studdiford had made a sensation when she first came, at her handsome husband's side, a year ago, her dazzling prettiness set off by the simplest of milk-white Paris gowns, her wonderful crown of hair wound about with pearls. Now she was a real favourite, and at the January ball, in her second winter in society, a score of admirers assured her that her gown was the prettiest in the room. "That pleases you, doesn't it, Jim?" she smiled, as he put her into a red velvet armchair, at the end of the long ballroom, and dropped into a chair beside her. "Well, it's true," Jim assured her, "and, what's more, you're the most beautiful woman in the room, too!" "Oh, Jeemy! What a story! But go get your dances, dear, if we're not going to stay for supper. Here's Mrs. Thayer to amuse me," said Julia, as a magnificent old woman came toward her with a smile. "Not dancing, dear?" said the dowager, as she sank heavily into the seat Jim left. "Whyn't you dancing with the other girls? I"--she panted and fanned, idly scanning the room--"I tell Brownie I don't know how he gets the men!" she added, "lots of 'em; supper brings 'em, probably! Whyn't you dancing, dear?" "She's implying that her ankle was sprained," Jim grinned, departing. Julia dimpled. The dowager brought an approving eye to bear upon her. "Well--well, you don't say so? Now that's very nice indeed," she said comfortably; "well, I declare! I hadn't heard a word of it--and you're glad, of course?" "Oh, very glad!" Julia assured her, colouring. "That's nice, too!" Mrs. Thayer rumbled on, her eyes beginning again to rove the room. "Fuss, of course, and lots of trouble, but you forget all that! Yes, I love children myself, used to be the most devoted mother alive, puttin' 'em to bed, and all that, yes, indeed!" "You had two?" Julia hazarded. The dowager gave her a surprised glance. "I, me dear? I had five--Rose there, that's Mrs. St. John, and Kate, you know her? Mrs. Willis, and my boy that's in Canada now, and the boy I lost, and Lillian--Lily we called her, she was only three. Diphtheria." "Oh!" Julia said, shocked. "Yes, indeed, I thought it would break Colonel Thayer's heart," pursued Mrs. Thayer, fanning regally, and watching the room. "She was the first--Lily would be nearly forty now! Look, Julia, who is that with Isabel Wallace? Who? Oh, yes, Mary Chauncey. See if you can see her husband anywhere. I'd give a good deal to know if she came with him!" "Mrs. Thayer," said Julia presently, "how long have you been coming to the Brownings?" "I? Oh, since they were started, child. There was a little group of us that used to dance round at each other's houses, then some of the men got together and formed a little club--Brownie was one of them. The Saunders used to come. Ella was about eighteen, and Sally and Anna Toland, and the Harts, and the Kirkwoods. Who's that with young Brice, Julia, me dear? Peter Coleman, is it?" "Talking to Mr. Carter, yes, that's Mr. Coleman. He's a beautiful dancer," said Julia. "Peter is? Yes, well, then, why don't you--But you're not dancing, of course," Mrs. Thayer said. "There's Gordon Jones and his wife! Why Brownie ever let them in I don't--Ah, Ella, how are you, dear?" "Fine, thank you!" said the newcomer, a magnificent woman of perhaps forty, in a very beautiful gown. "How do you do, Mrs. Studdiford?" she added cordially, as she sat down. "Dancing, surely?" "Now she's got the best reason in the world for not dancing," said old Mrs. Thayer, with a protective motion of her fan. "Oh--so?" Miss Saunders said, after a quick look of interrogation. "Well, that's--dutiful, isn't it?" She raised her eyebrows, made a little grimace, and laughed. "Now, Ella, don't ye say anything wicked!" Mrs. Thayer warned her, and the fan was used to tap Miss Saunders sharply on her smooth, big arm. "Wicked!" Miss Saunders said negligently, watching the dancers, "I think it's fine. I always said I'd have ten. Is Jim pleased?" "He's perfectly delighted--yes," Julia assented, suddenly feeling that this careless talk, in this bright, hot room, was not fair to the little one she already loved so dearly. "Is that Mrs. Brock or Vera?" Mrs. Thayer asked. "I declare they look alike!" "That's Alice," Ella answered, after a glance, "don't you know that blue silk? They've got the Hazzards with them." "Gets worse every year, absolutely," the old lady declared, "doesn't it, Ella? Emily here?" "No, she's wretched, poor kid. But Ken's here somewhere. There are the Geralds," Miss Saunders added, leaning toward the old woman and sinking her tone to a low murmur. "Have you heard about Mason Gerald and Paula Billings--oh, _haven't_ you? Not about the car breaking down--_haven't_ you? Well, my _dear_--" Julia lost the story, and sat watching the room, a vague little smile curving her lips, her blue eyes moving idly to and fro. She saw Mrs. Toland come in with her two lovely daughters. Julia had had tea with them that afternoon at the hotel, where they would spend the night. The orchestra was silent just now, and the dancers were drifting about the room, a great brilliant circle. Some of the men were clapping their hands, all of them were laughing as they bent their sleek heads toward their partners, and all the girls were laughing, too, and talking animatedly as they raised wide-open eyes. Julia admired the gowns: shining pink and cloudy pink, blue with lace and blue with spangles, white alone, and white with every colour in the world; a yellow and black gown that was indescribably dashing, and a yellow and black gown that somehow looked very flat and dowdy. She noticed the Ripley pearls on Miss Dolly Ripley's scrawny little lean neck, and that charming Isabel Wallace danced a good deal with her own handsome, shy young brothers, and seemed eager that they should enjoy what was evidently their first Browning. She studied the old faces, the hard faces, the faded faces, the painted cheeks and powdered necks; she read the tragedy behind the drooping head of some debutante, the triumph in the high laugh of another. There was poor Connie Fox, desperately eager and amiable, dancing with the youngest men and the oldest men, glittering and jolly in her dingy blue silk; and Connie's mother, who was her chaperon, a little fluttering fool of a woman, nervously eager to ingratiate, and nervously afraid to intrude her company upon these demi-gods and goddesses; and Theodora Carleton, handsome in too low cut a gown, laughing with Alan Gregory, and aware, as every one in the room was aware, that her husband's first wife was also at the dance. The room grew warm, the air heavy with delicate perfumes. Men were mopping their faces; some of the debutantes looked like wilting roses; the faces of some of the older women were shining. It was midnight, the latest comers had arrived, the floor was well filled. "I wonder if I will be doing this twenty years from now," thought Julia. "I wonder if my daughter will come to the Brownings, then?" "... which I call disgraceful, don't you, Mrs. Studdiford?" asked Miss Saunders suddenly. "I beg your pardon!" Julia said, startled into attention, "I didn't hear you!" "I know you didn't," the other said, laughing, "nevertheless, it was a low trick," she added to Mrs. Thayer, "and Leila Orvis can wait a long time before she makes the peace with _me_! Charity's all very well, but when it comes to palming off girls like that upon your friends, it's just a little too _much_!" "How's it happen ye didn't ask the girl for any references, me dear?" asked Mrs. Thayer. "Because Leila told me she knew all about her!" snapped Miss Saunders. "What was she, a waitress?" Julia asked, amused. "No, she was nothing!" Miss Saunders said in high scorn; "she'd had no training whatever--not that I mind _that_. She was simply supposed to help with the pantry work and make herself generally useful. Well, one day Carrie, a maid Mother's had for _years_, told Mother that something this Ada had said she fancied Ada had been in some sort of reform school--imagine! Of course poor Mother collapsed, and Emily telephoned for me--the kid always rises to an emergency, I will say that. So I rushed home, and got the whole story out of Ada in five minutes. At first she cried a good deal, and pretended it was an orphans' home; orphans' home--ha! Finally I scared her into admitting that it was a place just for girls of her sort--" "Fancy!" said Mrs. Thayer, fanning. Julia had grown a little pale. "What did you do, Miss Saunders?" said she. "Do? I sent her packing, of course!" said that lady, smiling as she bowed to an acquaintance across the room. "I told her to go straight back to Mrs. Orvis, and say I sent her. However, she didn't, for I telephoned Leila at once--Lucy Bacon is trying to bow to you, Mrs. Studdiford--over there, with your husband!" "I wonder where she did go?" pursued Julia. "I really have no idea!" Miss Saunders said. "You may be sure she knew just where to go, a creature like that!" old Mrs. Thayer said wisely. "How de do, Peter, Auntie here?" she called to a smiling man who went by. "Oh, she wouldn't go utterly bad," Julia protested; "you can't tell, she may have been decent for years. It may have been years ago--" "Still, me dear," old Mrs. Thayer said comfortably, "one doesn't like the idea--one can't overlook that, ye know." "Of course, it's too bad," Miss Saunders added briskly, "and it's a great pity, and things ought to be different from what they are, and all _that_; but at the same time you couldn't have a girl like that in the house, now could you?" "Oh, yes, I could!" said Julia, scarlet cheeked, "I was just thinking how glad I would be to give her a trial!" She stopped because Jim, very handsome in evening dress and with his pretty partner beside him, had come up to them. "Tired, dear?" Jim said, smiling approval of the little figure in white lace, and the earnest eyes under loosened bright hair. "Just about time you came up, Jim!" Ella Saunders said cheerfully, "here's your wife championing the cause of unfortunate girls--_she_ wouldn't care what they'd done, she'd take them right into her home!" "And very sweet and nice of her," Mrs. Thayer observed, with a consolatory pat on Julia's arm, "only it isn't quite practical, me dear, is it, Jim?" "Julia'd like to take in every cat and dog and beggar and newsboy she sees," said Jim, with his bright smile. But Julia knew he was not pleased. "Do you want to come speak to Mother and the girls, dear, before I take you home?" he added, offering his arm. Julia stood up and said her good-nights, and crossed the room, a slender and most captivating little figure, at his side. It was not until she was bundled into furs and in the motor car that she could say, with an appealing hand on his arm: "Don't blame me, Jimmy. I didn't start that topic. Miss Saunders happened to tell of a poor girl who--" "I don't care to discuss it," Jim said, removing her hand by the faintest gesture of withdrawing. Julia sighed and was silent. The limousine ran smoothly past one lighted corner after another; turned into Van Ness Avenue. After a while she said, a little indignation burning through her quiet tone: "I've said I was not responsible for the conversation, Jim. And it seems to me merely childish in you to let a casual remark affect you in this way!" "All right, then, I'm childish!" Jim said grimly, folding his arms as he leaned back in his seat. Julia sighed again. Presently Jim burst out: "I'm affected by a casual remark, yes, I admit it. But my God, doesn't it mean anything to you that I have my pride, that when I think of my wife I want to feel that she is more perfect in every way--in _every_ way--than all the other women in the world?" He stopped, breathing hard, and resumed, a little less violently: "All I ask is, Julia, that you let such subjects _alone_. You're not called upon to defend such girls! Surely that's not too much to ask!" Julia did not answer; she sat silent and sick. And as Jim did not speak again, except to mutter "My God!" once or twice, they reached the house in silence, and separated with a brief "Good-night." Ellie was waiting for Julia, eager to hear what Miss Jane wore, and Miss Constance wore, and how "Miss Teddy" looked. "I am absolutely done, Ellie," said the mistress, when the filmy lace gown was back in its box, and she was comfortably settled on her pillows, "so don't come in until I ring." "And I hope you'll get a long sleep," Ellie said approvingly, "you've got to take care of yourself now!" Julia's little daughter was born on a June day in the lovely Ross Valley house the Studdifords had taken for the summer. They had moved into the house in April, because Julia's hopes made a later move unwise, and, delighted to get into the sweet green country so early in the year, and to have the best of excuses for leading the quiet life she loved, she bloomed like a rose. She was in splendid health and in continual good spirits; her exultant confidence indeed lasted until the very day of the baby's birth. The day was late, and the pretty nurse, Miss Wheaton, had been in the house for nearly two weeks before Julia herself came to her door, in the first pearl dawning to say, still laughingly, that the hour had come. A swift, well--ordered period of excitement ensued; the maids were silent, awed, efficient; Miss Wheaton authoritative, crisp, ready with technical terms; and Jim as nervous and upset as if he were absolutely ignorant of all things physiological, utterly dependent upon the skill and knowledge of the nurse, humbly obedient to her will. The telephone rang and rang. Julia, the centre of this whole thrilling drama, wandered about in her great plum-coloured silk dressing-gown, commenting cheerfully enough upon the various rapid changes that were being made in her room. She picked up the little pink blanket that had been hung upon a white-enamelled clothes-horse, by the fire, and pressed it to her cheek. But now and then she stopped walking, and put her hand out toward the back of a chair as if she needed support, and then an expression crossed her face that made Jim's soul sicken within him: an expression of fear and wonderment and childish surprise. At nine o'clock Miss Toland came in, a little pale, but very cheerful and reassuring. "I'm afraid--my nerve--will give out, Aunt Sanna!" Julia said, beginning her restless march again, after a hot quick kiss. "Hear her!" said the nurse, with a laugh of bright scorn. "Don't talk any nonsense like that, Mrs. Studdiford. Why, she's the coolest of us all!" "Oh, no--I'm not--oh, no--I'm not!" Julia moaned. "Your doctor says you're doing splendidly, and that another two hours ought to see everything well over!" Miss Toland said, trying to keep the acute distress she felt out of her tone. "I feel so--nauseated!" Julia complained. "So--uncertain!" "Yes, I know," the nurse said soothingly, whisking out of the room. Miss Toland followed her into the hall. "She's in great pain, she won't have much of this?" asked the older woman anxiously. "She's not suffering much," the nurse said brightly, after a cautious glance at Julia's closed door. "This isn't much--yet. She's a little scared, that's all!" Hating the nurse from the depth of her heart, Miss Toland went downstairs to see the doctor. Jim was sitting with a newspaper on the porch, trying to smoke. He jumped up nervously. "Where's Doctor Lippincott?" demanded Miss Toland. "He ran in to San Rafael. Back directly." "Ran in to San Rafael? And you let him! Why, I don't see how he dared, Jim!" "Oh, I guess he knows his business, Aunt Sanna!" Jim said miserably. "Do you suppose I can go up for a while?" "Yes, go," said Miss Toland. "I think she wants you, God bless her!" But Julia wanted nobody and nothing. Jim's presence, his concerned voice and sympathetic eyes, only vaguely added to her distress. She was frightened now, terrified at the recurring paroxysms of pain; she recoiled from the breezy matter-of-factness of the doctor and the nurse; the elaborate preparations for the crisis offended every delicate instinct of her nature. She felt that the room was hot, and complained of the fire; but a few moments later her teeth chattered with a chill, and Miss Wheaton closed the wide windows through which a June breeze was wandering. The day dragged on. The doctor came back, talked to Jim and Miss Toland during luncheon about mushroom-raising, went upstairs to send Miss Wheaton down to her lunch, and to watch the patient a little while for himself. Jim went up, too, but was sent down to reassure Mrs. Toland, who had arrived, and with Miss Sanna was holding a vigil in the pretty cretonne-hung drawing-room. He was crossing the hall to go upstairs again, when a sound from above held him rigid and cold. A long low moan of utter weariness and anguish drifted through the pleasant silence of the house, died away, and rose again. Slowly the sense of tragedy deepened about them. Mrs. Toland was white; Miss Toland's face was streaked with tears. The moaning was almost incessant now, but Jim in the hall could hear the nurse murmur above it, and now and then the doctor's voice, short and sharp. "I wonder if you could come in and give her a little chloroform, Jim?" said Doctor Lippincott, a pleasant, middle-aged man in a white linen suit and cap, appearing suddenly in the door of Julia's room. "I think we can ease her along a little now, and I need Miss Wheaton." Jim pushed his hair back with a wet hand; cleared his throat. "Sure. D'you want me to scrub up?" he asked huskily. "Oh, no--no, my dear boy! Everything's going splendidly." The doctor beckoned him in, and shut the door. "Now, Mrs. Studdiford," said he, "we'll be all right here in no time!" Julia did not answer; she did not open her eyes even when Jim took her moist hot hand in one of his, and brushed back the lovely tumbled hair from her wet forehead. She was breathing deep and violently, as if she had been running. Presently she beat upon the bed with one clenched fist, and began to toss her head from side to side. Then the stifled moan began to escape from her bitten lips again, her face worked pitifully, and she began to cry. "Now, crowd it on, Jim!" Doctor Lippincott said, nodding toward the chloroform. "Breathe deep, breathe it in, my darling!" Jim urged, pouring the sweet, choking stuff upon the little mask he held above the tortured face. "You aren't--helping me--at all!" Julia muttered, in a deep hoarse voice. But her shrill thin cry sank to a moan again; she stammered incoherent words. So struggling and sobbing, now quieter under the anaesthetic, now crying aloud, the next long hour somehow passed for the helpless, suffering little animal that was Julia. A climax came, and the kindly chloroform smothered the last terrible cry. Julia awoke to a realization that something was snapping brightly, like wood on a fire; that the cottony fumes in her head were breaking, drifting away; that commonplace cheerful voices were saying things very near her. She seemed to have fallen from infinite space to this wretchedly uncomfortable bed and this wretchedly uncomfortable position. She wanted a pillow; her head was rocking with pain, and her forehead was sticky with moisture. Yet under and over all other sensations was the heavenly relief from the familiar agonies of the day. She felt so tired that the mere thought of beginning to rest distressed her; she would not open her eyes; her lids seemed sealed. She felt faintly worried because she could not seem to intelligently grasp the subject of Honolulu. "Honolulu? Honolulu?" This was the doctor's pleasant drawl. "No. I haven't. Mrs. Lippincott's people live in New York, so our junketings are usually in that direction." "Ah, well, you'd like Honolulu," Miss Wheaton's voice answered. A pause. Then she said, "I put some wood on. It's not so warm to-day as it was yesterday." Julia strove in vain to pierce the meaning of these cryptic words. Presently the doctor said, "Perfectly normal?" more as a statement than a question, and Miss Wheaton answered in a matter-of-fact voice, "Oh, absolutely." Julia opened her eyes, looked up into the nurse's face, and with returning consciousness came self-pity. "I couldn't do it, Miss Wheaton," she whispered pitifully, with trembling lips. "Hello, little girlie, you're beginning to feel better, aren't you?" Miss Wheaton said. "Here she is, Doctor, as fine as silk." Julia's languid eyes found the doctor's kindly face. "But the baby?" she faltered, with a rush of tears. "The baby is a very noisy young woman," said Doctor Lippincott cheerfully. "I wrapped her in her pink thingamagig, and she's right here in Jim's room, getting her first bath from her granny." "Really?" Julia whispered. "You wouldn't--fool me?" "Listen to her!" Miss Wheaton said. "Now, my dear, don't you be nervous. You've got a perfectly lovely little girl, and you've come through _splendidly_, and everything's fine. If you want to go look at that baby, Doctor," she added, "ask Doctor Studdiford to send Ellie in here to me and we'll straighten this all out. Then we can let him in here to see this young lady!" Presently Jim came in, to kneel beside Julia's bed, and gather her little limp hands to his lips, and murmur incoherent praise of his brave girl, his darling little mother, his little old sweetheart, dearer than a thousand babies. Julia heard him dreamily, raised languid eyes, and after a little while stroked his hair. She was spent, exhausted, hammered by the agony of a few short hours into this pale ghost of herself, and he was strong and well, the red blood running confident and audacious in his veins. Their spirits could not meet to-night. But she loved his praise, loved to feel his cheek wet against her hand, and she began to be glad it was all over, that peace at last had found the big pleasant room, where firelight and the last soft brightness of the June day mingled so pleasantly on rosy wall paper and rosy curtains. "She's a little darling," said Jim. "Mother says she's the prettiest tiny baby she ever saw. Poor Aunt Sanna and Mother had a great old cry together!" "Ah!" said Julia hungrily. For Miss Toland had come stepping carefully in, the precious pink blanket in her arms. "I'm to bring her to say 'Good-night' to her mother!" said Miss Toland. "How are you, dear? All forgotten now?" The pink miracle was laid beside Julia; she shifted her sore body just a trifle to make room, and spread weak fingers to raise the blanket from the baby's face. A little crumpled rose leaf of a face, a shock of soft black hair, and two tiny hands that curved warmly against Julia's investigating finger. All the rest was delicate lawn and soft wool. The baby wrinkled her little countenance, her tiny mouth opened, and Julia heard for the first time her daughter's rasping, despairing, bitter little cry. A passion of ecstasy flooded her heart; she dropped her soft pale cheek close to the little creased one. "Oh, my darling, my _darling_!" she breathed. "Oh, you little perfect, helpless, innocent thing! Oh, Jim, she's crying, the angel! Oh, I do thank God for her!" she ended softly. "I thank God you're so well," said Miss Toland. "Here, you can't keep her!" "Anna, go with Aunt Sanna," Julia said weakly. "Anna, eh?" Miss Toland said, wrapping up the pink blanket. "Anna Toland Studdiford," Jim answered. "Julia had that all fixed up weeks ago!" "Well--now--you children!" Miss Toland said, looking from one to the other, with her half-vexed and half-approving laugh. "What do you want to name her that for?" "_I_ know what for," Julia smiled, as she watched the pink blanket out of sight. A little later Mrs. Toland crept in, just for a kiss, and a whimpered, "And now you must forget all the pain, dear, and just be happy!" Then Julia was left to her own thoughts. She watched Miss Wheaton come and go in the soft twilight. A shaded light bloomed suddenly, where it would not distress her eyes. The curtains were drawn, and Ellie came softly in with a pitcher of hot milk on a tray. Now and then the baby's piercing little "Oo-wah-wah!" came in from the next room, and when she heard it, Julia smiled and said faintly, "The darling!" And as a ship that has been blown seaward, to meet the gales and to be battered upon rocks, might be caught at last by friendlier tides and carried safely home, so Julia felt herself carried, a helpless little wreck, too tired to care if the waves flung her far up on shore or drew her out to their mad embraces again. "All forgotten?" Miss Toland had asked, from her fifty years of ignorance, and "Now you must forget all the pain," Mrs. Toland had said, with her motherly smile. Queer, drifting thoughts came and went in her active brain during these quiet days of convalescence. She thought of girls she had known at The Alexander, girls who had cried, and who had been blamed and ostracised, girls who had gone to the City and County Hospital for their bitter hour, and had afterward put the babies in the Asylum! Julia's thoughts went by the baby in the next room, and at the picture of that tender helplessness, wronged and abandoned, her heart seemed to close like a closing hand. Anna Toland Studdiford would never be abandoned, no fear of that. Never was baby more closely surrounded with love and the means of protection. But the other babies, just as dear to other women, what of them? What of mother hearts that must go through life knowing that there are little cries they will never hear, tears they may never dry, tired little bodies that will never know the restfulness of gentle arms? The terrible sum of unnecessary human suffering rose up like a black cloud all about her; she seemed to see long hospital wards, with silent forms filling them day and night, night and day, the long years through; she had glimpses of the crowded homes of the poor, the sick and helpless mothers, the crying babies. She suddenly knew sickness and helplessness to be two of the greatest factors in human life. "What if Heaven is only this earth, clean and right at last," mused Julia, "and Hell only the realization of what we might have done, and didn't do--for each other!" And to Jim she said, smiling, "This experience has not only given me a baby, and given me my own motherhood, but it seems to have given me all the mothers and the babies in the world as well! I wish you were a baby doctor, Jim--the preservation of babies is the most important thing in the world!" Slowly the kindly tides brought her back to life, and against her own belief that it would ever be so, she found herself walking again, essaying the stairs, taking her place at the table. Miss Wheaton went away, the capable Caroline took her place, and Julia was well. Caroline was a silent, nice-looking, efficient woman of forty. She knew everything there was to know about babies, and had more than one book to consult when she forgot anything. She had been married, and had two handsome sturdy little girls of her own, so that little Anna's rashes and colics, her crying days and the days in which she seemed to Julia alarmingly good, presented no problems to Caroline. There was nothing Julia could tell her about sterilizing, or talcum powder, or keeping light out of the baby's eyes, or turning her over in her crib from time to time so that she shouldn't develop one-sidedly. More than this, Anna was a good baby; she seemed to have something of her mother's silent sweetness. She ran through her limited repertory of eating, sleeping, bathing, and blinking at her friends with absolute regularity. "I'd just like you to leave the door open so that if she _should_ cry at night--" Julia said. "But she never _does_ cry at night!" Caroline smiled. Julia persisted for some time that she wanted to bathe the baby every day, but before Anna was two months old she had to give up the idea. It became too difficult to do what nobody in the house wanted her to do, and what Caroline was only too anxious to perform in her stead. Jim liked to loiter over his breakfast, and showed a certain impatience when Julia became restive. "What is it, dear? What's Lizzie say? Caroline wants you?" "It's just that--it's ten o'clock, Jim, and Caroline sent down to know if I am going to give Anna her bath this morning!" "Oh, bath--nothing! Let Caroline wait--what's the rush?" "It's only that baby gets so cross, Jim!" Julia would plead. "Well, let her. You know you mustn't spoil her, Julie. If there's one thing that's awful it's a house run by a spoiled kid! Do let's have our breakfast in peace!" Julia might here gracefully concede the point, and send a message to Caroline to go on without her. Or she might make the message a promise to perform the disputed duty herself, "in just a few minutes." She would run into the nursery breathlessly, and take the baby in her arms. Everything would be in readiness, the water twinkling in the little bathtub, soap and powder, fresh little clothes, and woolly bath apron all in order. "But _hush_, Sweetest! How cross she is this morning, Caroline!" "Yes, Mrs. Studdiford. You see she ought to be having her bottle now, it's nearly eleven! Dear little thing, she was _so_ good and patient." "Well, darling, Mudder'll be as quick as she can," Julia might console the baby, and under Caroline's cool eye, and with Anna screaming until she was scarlet from her little black crown to the soles of her feet, the bath would somehow proceed. Ellie might put her head in the door. "Well--oh, the poor baby, were they 'busing Ellie's baby?" she would croon, coming in. "Don't you care, because Ellie's going to beat 'em all with sticks!" Caroline anticipated Julia's every need on these occasions: the little heap of discarded apparel was whisked away, band and powder were promptly presented, the bath vanished, the clothes-rack with its tiny hangers was gone, and Julia had a moment in which to hug the weary, sleepy, hungry, fragrant little lump of girlhood in her arms. "Bottle ready, Caroline?" "Yes, Mrs. Studdiford. She goes out on the porch now, for her nap. Come to Caroline, darling, and get something goody-good." And so Julia had no choice but to go, wandering a little disconsolately to her own room, and wishing the baby took her nap at another hour and could be played with now. Presently outside interests began to claim her again, dressmakers and manicures, shopping and the essential letter writing filled the mornings, luncheons kept her late into the afternoons, there were calls and card playing and teas. Julia would have only a few minutes in the nursery before it was time to dress for dinner; sometimes Jim came in to feast his eyes on the beautiful, serene little Anna, in her beautiful mother's arms; more often he was late, and Julia, trailing her evening gown behind her, would fly for studs, and pull the boot-trees from Jim's shining pumps. In September they went to Burlingame for the polo tournament, and here, on an unseasonably hot day, Jim had an ugly little touch of the sun, and for two or three days was very ill. They were terrible days to Julia. Richie came to her at once, and they took possession of the house of a friend, where Jim had chanced to be carried, and sent to San Rafael for Julia's servants; but two splendid nurses kept her out of the sickroom, and the baby was in San Rafael, so that Julia wandered about utterly at a loss to occupy heart or hands. On the third day the fever dropped, and Julia crept in to laugh and cry over her big boy. Jim got well very quickly, and just a week from the day of the accident he and Julia went home to the enchanting Anna, and began to plan for a speedy removal to the Pacific Avenue house, so that the little episode was apparently quite forgotten by the time they were back in the city and the season opened. But looking back, months later, Julia knew that she could date a definite change in their lives from that time. Whether his slight sunstroke had really given Jim's mind a little twist, or whether the shock left him unable to throw off oppressing thoughts with his old buoyancy, his wife did not know. But she knew that a certain sullen, unresponsive mood possessed him. He brooded, he looked upon her with a heavy eye, he sighed deeply when she drew his attention to the lovely little Anna. Julia knew by this time that marriage was not all happiness, all irresponsible joy. She had often wondered why the women she knew did not settle themselves seriously to a study of its phases, when the cloudless days inevitably gave place to something incomprehensible and disturbing. Even lovers like Kennedy and her husband had their times of being wholly out of sympathy with each other, she knew, and she and Jim were not angels; they must only try to be patient and forbearing until the dark hour went by. With a sense of unbearable weight at her heart she resigned herself to the hard task of endurance. Sometimes with a bitter rush would come the memory of how they had loved each other, and then Julia surrendered herself to long paroxysms of tears; it was so hard, so bewildering, to have Jim cold and quiet, to live in this painful alternation of hope and fear. But she never let Jim see her tears, and told herself bravely that life held some secret agony for every one, and that she must bear her share of the world's burden. How had it all come about, she wondered. Her thoughts went back to the honeymoon, and she had an aching memory of Central Park in its fresh green, of Jim laughing at her when she tried to be very matronly, in her kimono, over their breakfast tray. Oh, the exquisite happy days, the cloudless, wonderful time! She left the thought of it for the winter that followed. That had been happy, too. Not like the New York months, not without its grave misgivings, not without its hours of bitter pain, yet happy on the whole. Then Honolulu, all so bright a memory until that hour on the ship--that first horrible premonition of so much misery that was to follow. The San Mateo summer had somehow widened the wordless, mysterious gap between them, and the winter! Julia shuddered as she thought of the winter. Where was her soul while her body danced and dressed and dined and slept through those hot hours? Where was any one's soul in that desperate whirl of amusement? But she had found her soul again, on the June day of Anna's coming. And with Anna had come to her what new hopes and fears, what new potentialities and new sensibilities! She had always been silent, reserved, stoical by nature, accepting what life brought her uncomprehendingly, only instinctively and steadily fighting toward that ideal that had so long ago inspired her girlhood. Now she was awake, quivering with exquisite emotions, trembling with eagerness to adjust her life, and taste its full delicious savour. Now she wanted to laugh and to talk, to sit singing to her baby in the firelight, to run to meet her husband and fling herself into his arms for pure joy in life, and joy that she was beautiful and young and mother of the dearest baby in the world, and wife of the wisest and best of men. The past was blotted out for Julia now; her place in society was undisputed, not only as the wife of the rich young consulting surgeon, but for herself as well, and she could make as little or as much as she pleased of society's claim. From her sickness she felt as if she had learned that there is suffering and sorrow enough in the world without the need of deliberately sustaining the old and long-atoned wrongs. More than that, she had come to regard her own fine sense of right as a safer guide than any other, and by this she was absolved of the shadowy sin of her girlhood: the years, the hours she had prayed, the long interval, absolved her. Julia felt as if she had been born again. In this mood Jim did not join her. As the weeks went by his aspect grew darker and more dark, and life in the Pacific Avenue house became a thing of long silences and rare and stilted phrases, and for the brief time daily that they were alone together, husband and wife were wretchedly unhappy, Jim watching his wife gloomily, Julia feeling that his look could chill her happiest mood. She had sometimes suspected that this state of affairs existed between other husbands and wives, and marvelled that life went smoothly on; there were dinners and dances, there were laughter and light speech. Jim might merely answer her half-timid, half-confident "Good-morning" with only a jerk of his head; he might eat his breakfast in silence, and accord to Julia's brief outline of dinner or evening engagements only a scowling monosyllable. Yet the day proceeded, there was the baby to visit, a dressmaker's appointment to keep, luncheon and the afternoon's plans to be gotten through, and then there was the evening again, and Jim and herself dressing in adjoining rooms in utter silence, silently descending to welcome their guests, or silently whirling off in the limousine. Sometimes she fancied that when she resolutely assumed a cheerful tone, and determined to fight this unwholesome atmosphere with honest bravery, she merely succeeded in making Jim's mood uglier than ever. Often she tried a shy tenderness, but with no success. One day when Miss Toland was lunching with her Julia made some allusion to the subject, in answer to the older woman's comment that she did not look very well. "I'm _not_ very well, Aunt Sanna," said Julia, pushing her plate away, and resting both slim elbows on the table. "I'm worried." "Not about Anna?" Miss Toland asked quickly. "No-o! Anna, God bless her, is simply six-months-old perfection!" Julia said, with a brief smile. "No--about myself and Jim." Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance. "Quarrelled, eh?" she said simply. "Oh, no!" Julia felt her eyes watering. "No. I almost wish we had. Because then I could go to him, and say 'I'm sorry!'" she stammered. "Sorry for what?" demanded Miss Toland. "For whatever I'd done!" elucidated Julia, with her April smile. "Yes, but suppose he'd done it, what then?" Miss Toland asked. "Ah, well," Julia hesitated. "Jim doesn't do things!" she said vaguely. "Jim's in one of his awful moods, I suppose?" his adopted aunt asked, after a pause. "Oh, in a dreadful one!" Julia confessed. "How long--days?" "Weeks, Aunt Sanna!" "Weeks? For the Lord's sake, that's awful!" Miss Toland frowned and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What gets into the boy?" she said impatiently. "You don't know what it's about, I suppose?" Julia hesitated. "I think it's that he gets to thinking of my old life, when I was a little nobody, south of Market Street," she hazarded with as much truth as she could. "Oh, _really_!" Miss Toland said, in a tone of cold satire. But her look fell with infinite tenderness and pity upon the drooping little figure opposite. "Yet there's nothing of the snob about Jim," she mused unhappily. "Oh, _no_!" Julia breathed earnestly. "There isn't, eh?" Miss Toland said. "I'm not so sure. I'm not at all sure. He isn't working too hard, is he?" "He isn't working hard at all," Julia said. "Jim doesn't have a case, to worry over, twice a year. You see it's either City and County cases, that he just goes ahead and _does_, or else it's rich, rich people who have one of the older doctors, and just call Jim in to assist or consult. He was a little nervous over a demonstration before the students the other day, but at the very last second," Julia's quick smile flitted over her face, "at the very last second the assisting nurse dropped the cold bone--as they call it--that Jim was going to transplant. Doctor Chapman told him he'd bet Jim bribed the girl to do it!" "H'm!" Miss Toland said absently. "But his father was just another such moody fellow, queer as Dick's hatband!" she added, suddenly, after a pause. "Jim's father? I didn't know you knew him!" "Knew him? Indeed I did! We all lived in Honolulu in those days. Charming, charming fellow, George Studdiford, but queer. He was very musical, you know; he'd look daggers at you if you happened to sneeze in the middle of one of his Beethoven sonatas. Tim's mother was very sweet, beautiful, too, but spoiled, Julia, spoiled!" "Too much money!" Julia said, shaking her head. "Exactly--there you have it!" Miss Toland assented triumphantly. "I've seen too much of it not to know it. There's a sort of dry rot about it; even a fine fellow like Jim can't escape. But, my dear"--her tone became reassuring--"don't let it worry you. He'll get over it. Just bide your time!" "Well, that's just what I _am_ doing," Julia said, with a rueful laugh. "But it's like being in a bad dream. There is sorrow that you have to bear, don't you know, Aunt Sanna, like crippled children, or somebody's death, or being poor; and then there are these other unnatural trials, that you just _rebel_ against! I say to myself that I'll just be patient and sweet, and go on filling my time with Anna and calls and dinner parties, until Jim comes to his senses and tells me what an angel I am, but it's awfully hard to do it! Sometimes the house seems like a vault to me, in the mornings, even the sunshine"--Julia's eyes watered, but she went steadily on--"even the sunshine doesn't seem right, and I feel as if I were eating ashes and cotton! I go about looking at other houses, and thinking, 'I wonder what men and women are being wretchedly unhappy behind _your_ plate-glass windows!' I watch other men and their wives together," pursued Julia, smiling through tears, "and when women say those casual things they are always saying, about not loving your husband after the first few months, and being disillusioned, and meaning less and less to each other, I feel as if it would break my heart!" "Well," Miss Toland said, somewhat distressed, "of course, I'd rather walk into a bull fight than advise--" "I know you would," Julia hastened to assure her. "That's why I've been talking," she added, "and it's been a real relief! Don't think I'm complaining, Aunt Sanna--" "No, my dear," Miss Toland said. "I'll never think anything that isn't good of you, Julie," she went on. "If Jim Studdiford is so selfish as to--to make his wife unhappy for those very facts that made him first love her and choose her, well, I think the less of Jim, that's all! Now give me a kiss, and we'll go and pick out something for Barbara's boy!" "Well, it may be a pretty safe general rule not to discuss your husband with your women friends," Julia said gayly. "But I feel as if this talk had taken a load off my heart! In books, of course," she went on, "the little governess can marry the young earl, and step right into noble, not to say royal, circles, with perfect calm. But in real life, she has an occasional misgiving. I never can quite forget that Jim was a ten-year-old princeling, with a pony and a tutor and little velvet suits, and brushes with his little initials on them, when I was born in an O'Farrell Street flat!" "Well, if you remember it," said Miss Toland, in affectionate disapproval, "you're the only person who does!" Either the confidential chat with Miss Toland had favourably affected Julia's point of view, or the state of affairs between Jim and herself actually brightened from that day. Julia noticed in his manner that night a certain awkward hint of reconciliation, and with it a flood of tenderness and generosity rose in her own heart, and she knew that, deeply as he had hurt her, she was ready to forgive him and to be friends again. So a not unhappy week passed, and Julia, with more zest than she had shown in some months, began to plan a real family reunion for Thanksgiving, now only some ten days off. She wrote to the Doctor and Mrs. Toland, to the Carletons and Aunt Sanna, and to Richie, who had established himself in a little cottage on Mount Tamalpais, and who was somewhat philanthropically practising his profession there. She very carefully ordered special favours for the occasion, and selected two eligible and homeless young men from her list of acquaintances to fill out the table and to amuse Constance and Jane. Jim had to go to Sacramento on the Saturday before Thanksgiving for an important operation, but would be home again on Tuesday or Wednesday to take the head of his own table on the holiday. Julia offered, when the Friday night before his departure came, to help him with packing. They had dined very quietly with friends that night, and found themselves at home again not very long after ten o'clock. But Jim, sinking into a chair beside the library fire, with an assortment of new magazines at his elbow, politely declined. "Oh, no, thank you! Plenty of time for that in the morning. I don't go until nine." "Let Chadwick do it, anyway, Jim. Shall I tell Ellie to send him up at eight?" "If you will. Thank you! Good-night!" "Good-night!" And Julia trailed her satins and laces slowly upstairs, unfastening her jewels as she went. A little sense of discouragement was fighting for possession; she fought it consciously as she had fought such waves of despondency a hundred times before. She propped herself comfortably in pillows, turned on a light, and began to read. Ellie fussed about the room for a few minutes, and then was gone. The big house was very still. Eleven o'clock struck from the little mahogany clock on her mantel, midnight struck, and still Jim's footstep did not come up the stairs, and there was no welcome sound of occupancy in the room adjoining her own. Suddenly terror smote Julia; she flung her book aside and sat up erect in bed. Her heart was thundering with fear; the silence of the house was like that that follows an explosion. For a few dreadful seconds she sat motionless; then she thrust her bare feet in the slippers of warm white fox that Ellie had put out, and caught up a Japanese robe of black crepe, in which her figure was quite lost. Fastening the wide obi with trembling fingers, she slipped out into the hall, dimly lighted and very still. Then she ran quickly downstairs. What sight of horror she expected to find in the library she did not know, but the shock of revulsion, when the opened door showed her nothing more terrible than Jim, musing in the firelight, was almost as bad as a fright could have been. "Oh, Jim!" she panted, coming in, one hand pressed against her heart, "I thought something--I got frightened!" Jim looked up with his old, tender, whimsical smile, the smile for which she had hungered so long, and held out a reassuring hand. "Why, no, you poor kid!" he said. "I've been sitting right here!" "I thought--and it was so still--and you didn't come up!" Julia said, beginning to sob. And in a moment she was in his arms, clinging to him in an ecstasy of love and relief. For a long blissful time they remained so, the soft curve of Julia's cheek against Jim's face, her heart beating quick above his own, her warm little figure, in its loose, soft robe, gathered closely to him. "Feeling better now, old lady?" "Oh, fine!" But Julia's face quivered with tears again at the tone. "Well, then, what's this for?" He showed her a drop on the back of his hand. "Be--because I love you so, Jim!" "Well, you needn't cry over it!" said Jim gently. "I'm the one that ought to do the crying, Judy," he added, with a significant glance at her lovely flushed face and tear-bright blue eyes. Julia leaned against him with a long, happy sigh. "Oh, I'm so glad I came down!" she breathed contentedly. "'Glad!'" Jim echoed soberly. "God! You don't know what it meant to me to look up and see my little Geisha coming in. I was going crazy, I think!" "Ah, Jimmy, why do you?" she coaxed, one slender arm about his neck. "I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "Made that way, I guess!" For a while they were silent again, then Julia said softly: "After all, nothing matters as long as we love each other!" "No, no! You're right, Julie," he agreed seriously. "That's the only thing that counts. And you do love me, don't you?" "Love you!" Julia said, with a shaky laugh. "I get crazy notions. I nearly go mad, sometimes," Jim confessed. "I get to brooding--I know how rotten it is!" He fell silent, staring into the fire. "Happy?" he asked presently, glancing down at her as she rested quietly in his arms. "Oh, _happy_!" Julia said, a break in her voice. "I wish I could die here, Jim. I wish I could go to sleep here and never wake up!" "Like me as much as that baby, eh?" he asked, in a peculiar tone. Julia sat up to face him, her cheeks bright under loosening films of hair, her eyes starry in the firelight. "Jimmy, you couldn't be jealous of your own baby?" "Oh, couldn't I? I can be jealous of anything and everything, sometimes." He fixed troubled eyes on the fire. "I've been unhappy, Julie," he confessed. "Unhappy? I've just been _sick_ about it," Julia said. "I can't believe that we're talking about it, and it's all over!" She sighed luxuriously. "There's no use of _my_ doing anything when you're this way, Jim--I can't even remember that you love me," she went on after a silence. "Everything seems changed and queer. Sometimes I think you hate me, sometimes you give me such cold looks--oh, you _do_, Jimmy!--they just make me feel sick and queer all over, if you know what I mean! And oh," she sank back again with her head on his shoulder, "oh, if _only_ then I could dare just come down to you here like this, and make you take me in your arms, and talk to me this way!" "Don't!" Jim said briefly, kissing the top of her hair. "It just seems to _smoulder_ in my heart!" Julia said. "I can't bear it!'; "Don't!" he said again. "Ah, but what makes you do it, Jim?" she asked, sitting erect to rest both wrists on his shoulders, and bring her blue eyes very near his own. Jim's glance did not meet hers, he looked sombrely past her at the fire. Suddenly she felt his arms tighten about her with a force that almost hurt her. "Oh, it's this!" he said harshly, "I love you--you're mine! You're the thing I live for, the thing I'm proudest of! I can't bear to think there was a time when I didn't know you, my little innocent girl! I can't bear--my God!--to think that you cared for some one else--!" And with swift force he got to his feet, and put her in his chair. Julia sat motionless while he took a restless brief turn about the room. He snatched a little jade god from the table, examined it closely, and put it down again, to come and stand with his back to the fire, one arm flung across the mantel, and his gloomy eyes fixed on her. Julia met the rushing, engulfing wave of her own emotion bravely. "Jim," she said bravely, "does it mean nothing to you that there were other women in _your_ life before you knew me?" "Dearest," he answered seriously and quickly, "God knows that I would cut my hand off to be able to blot that all out of my boyhood. Those things mean nothing to a man, Ju, and they meant less to me than to most men. Women can't understand that, but if you knew how men regard it, you would realize that very few can bring their wives as clean a record as mine!" He had said this much before, never anything more. Julia, looking at him now with all the tragic sorrow of her life in her magnificent eyes, felt the utter impossibility of convincing him that this accusation on her part, and bravely boyish and honest confession on his, had any logical or possible connection with the momentous conversation that they were having to-night. Her heart recoiled in sick terror from any word that would hurt or estrange him now, but she might have found that word, and might have said it, could she have hoped that it would convey her meaning to him. But Jim's standard of morals, for himself, was, like that of most men, still the college standard. It was too bad to have clouded the bright mirror, but it was inevitable, given youth and red blood. And it was admirable to regret it all now. Any fresh attempt on Julia's part to bring to his realization the parallel in their situations, would have elicited from him only fresh, youthful acknowledgments, until that second when anger and astonishment at her bold effort to reduce the two distinct codes to one would end this talk--like so many others!--with new coldnesses and silences. Julia abandoned this line of argument once and for all. "I never cared for any one but you in my life, Jim," she said, with dry lips. "I know," he muttered, brushing his hair back with an impatient hand. A second later he came to kneel penitently before her. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said pleadingly. "You're a little angel of forgiveness to me--I don't deserve it! I know how I make you suffer!" "Jim," she said, feeling old, and tired, and cold to her heart's core, "do you think you do?" "I know how _I_ suffer!" he answered bitterly. "Jim, suppose it was something you had done long ago that _I_ couldn't forgive?" "It isn't a question of forgiveness," he answered quickly. "Forgiveness--when you are the sweetest and best wife a man ever had! No, darling," he caught both her hands in his own, "you must never think that, it's never that! It's only my mad, crazy jealousy. I tell you I'm ashamed of it, and I _am_! Just be patient with me, Julia!" Julia stared at him a few moments silently, her hands locked about his neck. "Ah, but you _worry_ me so when you're like this, Jim," she said presently, in the gentle, troubled tone a mother might use. "There seems to be nothing I can do. I can only worry and wait!" "I know, I know," he said hastily. "Don't remind me of it! My father was like that, you know. My father shot at a man once because he was rude to my mother when he was drunk--shot him right through the shoulder! It raised the very deuce of a scandal down there in Honolulu! He took Mother to Europe to get away from the fuss, and paid the man the Lord knows what to quiet the thing!" "Yes, but life isn't like that, Jim," Julia protested. "Life isn't so simple! Shooting at somebody, and buying his silence, and rushing off to Europe! Why can't you just say to yourself reasonably--" "'Reasonably,' dearest!" he echoed cheerfully, with a kiss. "When was a jealous man ever reasonable!" "But think how wonderfully happy we are, Jim," she persisted wistfully. "Suppose there _is_ one part trouble, one part of your life that you don't like, why can't you be happy because ninety-nine parts of it are perfect?" "I don't know; talking with you here, I can't understand it," he said. "But I get thinking--I get thinking, and my heart begins to hammer, and I lie awake nights, and I'd like to get up and strangle someone--" His vehemence died into abashed silence before her grave eyes. "I ought to be the one to stamp and rave over this," Julia said. "I ought to remind you that you knew my history when you married me; and you know life, too--you were ten years older than I, and how much more experienced! All I knew was learned at the settlement house, or from books. And the reason I _don't_ rave and stamp, Jim," she went on, "is because I am different from you. I realize that that doesn't help matters. We must make the best of it now, we must help each other! You see I have no pride about it. I know I am better than many--than most--of these society women all about us, but I don't force you to admit that. They break every other commandment of God, yes, and that one, too, and they commit every one of the deadly sins! It seems to me sometimes as if 'gluttony, envy, and sloth' were the very foundation on which the lives of some of these people rest, and as for pride and anger and lust, why, we take them for granted! Yet, whoever thinks seriously of saying so?" "You make me ashamed, Julie," Jim said, after a pause, during which his eyes had not moved from her face. "I can only say I'm sorry. I'm very sorry! Sometimes I think you're a good deal bigger man than I am; but I can't help it. However, I'm going to try. From to-night on I'm going to try." "We'll both try," Julia said, and they kissed each other. CHAPTER V Miss Toland, who had accepted Julia's invitation for Thanksgiving, arrived unexpectedly on the afternoon before the holiday, to spend the night with the Studdifords. It was a wild, wet day, settling down to heavy rain as the early darkness closed in, and the Pacific Avenue house presented a gloomy if magnificent aspect to the guest as she came in. But Ellie beamingly directed her to the nursery, and here she found enough brightness to flood the house. Caroline, it appeared, had gone to her own family for the afternoon, and Julia, looking like a child in her short white dress and buckled slippers, was sitting in a low chair with little Anna in her arms. The room was bright with firelight and the soft light from the subdued nursery lamps, and warm russet curtains shut out the dull and dying afternoon. Dolls and blocks were scattered on the hearth rug, and Julia sat her daughter down among them, and jumped up with a radiant face to greet the newcomer. "Aunt Sanna--you darling! And you're going to spend the night?" Julia cried out joyfully, with her first kisses. "What a dear thing for you to do! But you're wet?" "No, I dropped everything in my room," Miss Toland said. "Things were very quiet at The Alexander--that new woman isn't going to do at all, by the way, too fussy--so I suddenly thought of coming into town!" "Oh, I'm _so_ glad you did!" Julia exulted. Miss Toland rested firm hands on her shoulders, and looked at her keenly. "How goes it?" "Oh, splendidly!" The younger woman's bright eyes shone. "No more blues, eh?" "Oh, _no_!" "Ah, well, that's a good thing!" Miss Toland sat down by the fire, and stretched sturdy shoes to the blaze. "Hello, Beautiful!" she said to the baby. Julia dropped to the rug, and smothered the soft whiteness and fragrance of little Anna in a wild hug. "She has her good days and her bad days," said Julia, biting ecstatic little kisses from the top of the downy little head, "and to-day she has simply been an _angel_! Wait--see if she'll do it! See, Bunny," Julia caught up a white woolly doll. "Oh, see poor dolly--Mother's going to put her in the fire!" "Da!" said Anna agitatedly, and Julia tumbled her in another mad embrace. "Isn't that _darling_, not six months old yet?" demanded the mother. "Here, take her, Aunt Sanna, and see if you ever got hold of anything nicer than that! Come, baby, give Aunt Sanna a little butterfly kiss!" And Julia swept the soft little face and unresponsive mouth across the older woman's face before she deposited the baby in her lap. "She's like you, Julie," Miss Toland said, extending a ringed finger for her namesake's amusement. "Yes, I think she is; every one says so. You see her hair's coming to be the same ashy yaller as mine. And see the fat sweet little knees, and don't miss our new slippers with wosettes on 'em!" "She's really exquisite," Miss Toland said, kissing the tawny little crown as Julia had done, and watching the deep-lashed blue eyes that were so much absorbed by the rings. "Watching her, Ju, we'll see just what sort of a little girl you were." "Oh, heavens, Aunt Sanna," Julia protested, with a rather sad little smile, "I was an awful little person with stringy hair, and colds in my nose, and no hankies! I never had baths, and never had regular meal hours, or regular diet, for that matter! Anna'll be very different from what I was." "Your mother was to blame, Ju," Miss Toland said, gravely shaking her head. "Oh, I don't know, perhaps _her_ mother was," Julia suggested. "Yet my Grandmother Cox is a sweet little old woman," she went on, smiling, "always afraid we're hungry, and anxious to feed us, tremendously loyal to us all. I went out there to-day, to take Mama some special little things for Thanksgiving, and see if their turkey had gotten there, and so on, and my heart quite ached for Grandma--Mama's very exacting now, and the girls--my aunt, Mrs. Torney's girls--seemed so apathetic and dull. The house was very dirty, as it always is, and the halls icy, and the kitchen hot--I just wanted to pitch in and _clean_! Mama was cross at me for not bringing Anna, in this rain, and staying to dinner to-morrow; but Grandmother was so pleased to have the things, and she got to telling me of old times, poor thing, and how she had to work and scheme to get up a Thanksgiving dinner, and how my grandfather would worry her by promising that he'd only have one drink, and then disappearing for hours--" "Does it ever occur to you that you are an unusual woman, Julia?" Miss Toland asked, holding her watch to the baby's ear. Julia flushed and laughed. "Well, no, I don't believe it ever did!" "Not so much in climbing up in the world as you have," pursued the older woman, "but in not despising the people you left behind you! That's very fine, Julie. I can't tell you how fine it seems to me!" "There's nothing fine about it," Julia said simply. "It's just that I like that sort of people as well as I do--Jim's sort. I used to think that to work my way into a world where everything was fine and fragrant and costly would mean to be happy, but of course it doesn't, and I've come more and more to feel that I like the class where joys are real, and sorrows are real, and the goodness means more, and there's more excuse for the badness!" "Did you ever think of writing, Julia?" Miss Toland asked. "Stories, I mean?" "Everybody does nowadays, I suppose," Julia laughed. "Sometimes I think what good material The Alexander stuff would be, Aunt Sanna. But the truth is, Jim doesn't like the idea." "Doesn't? Bless us all, why not?" "Oh!" Julia dimpled demurely. "The great Mrs. Studdiford writing, like a mere ordinary person?" she asked. "Oh, that's it? Where is Jim, by the way?" "Sacramento. But the operation was on Sunday, so he should have been here yesterday, at latest," Julia said. "However, he'll rush in to-night or to-morrow; he knows you're all going to be here. Give her to me, Aunt Sanna, she's getting hungry, bless her little old heart! Ah, here's Ellie with something for Mother's girl!" "And tea for you in the library," Ellie said in an aside, receiving the baby into her arms with a rapturous look. "Tea, doesn't tea sound good!" Julia caught Miss Toland by the hand. "Come and have some tea, Aunt Sanna!" said she. "I'm starving!" They were loitering over their teacups half an hour later when Lizzie came into the library with a special delivery letter. "For me?" Julia smiled, reaching for it. "It's Jimmy!" she added ruefully, for Miss Toland's benefit, as she took it. "This means he can't get here!" "Drat the lad!" his aunt said mildly. "What has he got to say?" Julia pulled out a hairpin to open the letter, her face a little puzzled. She unfolded three pages of large paper closely written. "Why, I don't understand this," said she. "Jimmy writes such short letters!" And immediately fear, like cold iron, entered her heart, and she felt a chill of distaste for the letter; she did not want to read it, she wished she might fling it on the ere, and rid her hands of the horrible thing. "It _is_ Jim, isn't it?" Miss Toland said, with a sharp look. "Is he coming?" "I don't know," Julia said, hardly above a whisper. "Anything wrong?" Miss Toland asked, instantly alert. "No, I don't suppose so!" Julia said, trying to laugh. "But--but I hate him to just send a letter when I expected _him_!" she added childishly. She picked it up, and began slowly to read it. Miss Toland, watching her, saw the muscles of her face harden, and her eyes turn to steel. The blood rushed to her face, and then receded quickly. She read to the last word, and then looked up to meet the other woman's eyes. "What _is_ it?" Miss Toland demanded, aghast at Julia's look. "It's Jim," said Julia. Her face was blazing again, and she seemed to be choking. "He's going to Europe," she went on, in a bewildered tone, "he's not coming back." "_What_!" said Miss Toland sharply. "D'you mean to tell me he's simply walked off--" Julia's colour was ghastly; her eyes looked sick and heavy. "No, no, he can't mean that!" she said quickly. She crushed the pages of the letter together convulsively. "I can't--" she began, and stopped. Suddenly she rose to her feet, muttered something about coming back, and was gone. She ran up to her room, and alone there, it seemed for a few moments as if she must suffocate. She put the letter on her desk, where its folded sheets instantly looked hideously familiar. She went into the bathroom, and found herself holding her fingers under the hot-water tap, vaguely waiting for hot water. Like a hunted creature she went through the luxurious rooms, the mortal wound in her heart widening every instant; finally she came back to her desk, and sat down, and read the letter again. "Dear Julia," wrote Jim, "I have been thinking and thinking about this affair, and I cannot stand it. I am going away. Atkins is going to Berlin for a three months' course under Hofner and Braun, and I am going with him. I only made up my mind to-night, but I have thought of something like this a long, long time. I cannot bear it any longer. I think and think about things--that another man loved you and you loved him--and I nearly go mad. Even when people meet me and ask how you are, I am reminded of it; for weeks now I haven't thought of anything else; it just seems to rise up wherever I go. "I think it will be better when I don't see you. "I have been sitting here with my head in my hands, wondering if there is any way in which I can spare you the pain of reading this letter, but it's no use, it's impossible to go back and bluff about it. "Collins spoke to me about the change in me; he said he thought it was that touch of the sun in September. I wish to God it was! "I will take the course with Atkins, and then let you know. He wants to go to Benares for some reason or another, and perhaps I will go with him, or perhaps come home to you. But I don't think I will come back under a year. "You hear of men all your life who do this, but I feel as if it was killing me, and you, too. I wish there was some other way. "I have written Harry at the Crocker; my account there is to be transferred to your name. I don't know exactly what it is, but the money from the San Mateo lots went in there, and so there is plenty. For God's sake spend it, don't hesitate about getting anything you want. Why shouldn't you keep the house, until April anyway; some one would stay with you, and then you could go to San Rafael. "I'm not going to try to tell you how I feel about all this, because you know. It all seems to me a bad dream. Every little while I try to make myself think that after a while it will all come right, but it seemed to me all dead and buried after that time on the steamer, and of course it wasn't! "Tell people what you please, I leave all that to you. "Chadwick will sell the car, and send you the bill of sale and the money. He knows what I want sent; he'll do all that. "I've written and rewritten this ten times; my head is splitting. It seems strange to think it is you and me. "God bless you always, and our little girl. "_Jim_." Julia finished it with a little grinding sound, like a groan, heard herself make a dramatic exclamation, an "Ah!" of agonized unbelief. She sat down, got up again to take a few irresolute steps toward her desk, and finally went to her bedside telephone, and took down the receiver. There was a delay; Julia rapped an impatient slipper on the floor, and rattled the hook. "Western Union, please," she said, a moment later; "I want to send a telegram." An interval of silence followed. Julia sat staring blankly at the wall. Then she rattled the hook again. "No matter about that number, Central; I've changed my mind," she said. She walked irresolutely into the middle of the room, stood there a moment frowning, and then turned, to go back and fling herself on her bed, staring up into the dark, the letter crackling as it dropped beside her. After a while she began to say, "Oh, oh, oh!" quietly and quickly under her breath. The cry grew too much for her, she twisted on her face to stifle it, and after a few moments it stopped. Then she turned on her back again, and said something sharply to herself in a whisper once or twice, and after that the moaning "Oh, oh, oh!" began again. So Miss Toland found her, when she came into the room without knocking, a little later. "Julia," Miss Toland said sharply, sitting down on the edge of the bed and possessing herself of one of Julia's limp, cold hands, "Ellie told me you--she came to the door and heard you! My child, this won't do! You mustn't make mountains out of molehills. If Jim Studdiford has had the senseless cruelty to go off to Europe in this fashion, why, he ought to be horsewhipped, that's all! But I don't believe he'll get any farther than New York, myself; I don't believe he'll get that far!" She paused, but Julia was silent. After a moment the older woman spoke again. "What does he say in the letter?" she asked. "One would really like to know just how this delightful piece of work is explained." "Aunt Sanna!" Julia said, in a difficult half whisper. She took Miss Toland's hand and pressed it against her heart. Her lips were shut tight, and against the white pillow there was a little negative movement of her head. "Well, of course you don't want to talk about it," Miss Toland said soothingly. "But was there a quarrel?" "Oh, no--no!" Julia said quickly, briefly, with another convulsive pressure of Miss Toland's hand, and another jerk of her head. "It was something--that distressed Jim--something I couldn't change," she added with difficulty. "H'm!" said the other, and the evidence for both sides was in, as far as Miss Toland was concerned, and the case closed. She sat beside Julia in the dark for a long time, patting her hand without speaking. After a while Ellie brought a glass of hot milk, and Julia docilely drank it, and submitted to being put to bed, raising a face as sweet as a child's for Miss Toland's good-night kiss, and promising to sleep well. The pleasant winter sunlight was streaming into the older woman's room when Julia came in the next morning, although all San Francisco echoed to the sombre constant call of the foghorn, and the air was cool enough to make Miss Toland's fire delightful. Julia had Anna with her, a delightful little armful in her tumbled nightwear, and she smiled at the picture of Miss Toland, comfortably enjoying her breakfast in bed. But it was evident that she had not slept: deep shadows lay under her blue eyes, and she was very pale. She put the baby down on the bed with a silver buttonhook and a bracelet, and sat down. "Sleep any?" Miss Toland asked. "Yes, I think I did!" Julia said, with an effort at brightness. She seemed nervous and restless, but showed no tendency to break down. "I've just been talking to Caroline," she went on. "I told her that Doctor Studdiford had been called away, and implied that there would be changes. Then I spoke to Foo Ting at breakfast--Mrs. Pope is crazy to get him--so that will be all right--" "Julia--of course I've not read Jim's letter," Miss Toland said earnestly, "but aren't you taking this too much to heart--aren't you acting rather quickly?" Julia looked down at her laced fingers for a few moments without speaking. "Jim isn't coming back," she said soberly. "But what makes you _say_ so, dear? How do you know?" "Well, I just know it," Julia said, raising heavy-lidded eyes. They looked at each other. "But you aren't telling me seriously, my child, that you two--the most devoted couple I ever _saw_--why, Julia, show a little courage, child! Jim must be brought to his senses, that's all. We must think what's wisest to do, and do it. But, my dear, there'd be no marriages left in the world if people flew off the handle--" "I _have_ been thinking, all night," Julia said patiently, "and this is what I thought. I want"--she glanced restlessly about the room--"I want to get away from here! That'll take some little while." "Go away by all means, dear, if you want to, but don't dismantle your house--don't make it impossible for the whole thing to blow over----" "He won't come back," Julia repeated quietly. "You don't think so?" Miss Toland said uncomfortably. "H'm!" "No one must know, not even Doctor and Mother," pursued Julia. "No newspapers, _nobody_!" "Well, in any case, that's wise!" the older woman assented. "And where will you go--to Sally?" "No!" Julia said with a quick shudder. "Not anywhere near here! No, I should rather like to give the impression that I will be with Jim, or near Jim," she added slowly. "Following him abroad with the baby, that's quite natural!" Miss Toland approved. "But why not stay a week or two in Sausalito, just to keep them from guessing?" "Oh, I couldn't!" Julia said, in a quick breath. "And where'll you go--New York?" "Oh, no!" Julia leaned back and shut her eyes. The muscles of her throat worked. "We were so happy in New York," she said, with a sudden quivering of her lips. But a moment's struggle brought back her composure. "I thought--some little French village, or England," she hazarded. "England," Miss Toland said promptly. "This is no time of the year to take a child to France; besides, you get better milk in England, and if Anna was sick, there's London, full of doctors who speak your own language." "So long as it's quiet," Julia said, "and we see nobody--that's all I care about. Then if Jim should--But I couldn't wait here, with everybody asking, and inviting me places, and spying on me!" "We'll take some sort of little place in Oxfordshire," Miss Toland said, "and then we can run up to London--" "'We?'" Julia echoed. She gazed bewilderedly at the other woman for a moment, then put her hands over her face and burst into tears. A month like a nightmare followed. Julia had never grown to care for the Pacific Avenue house; now it came to have an absolute horror for her. She seemed to see it through a veil of darkness; she seemed to move under the burden of an intolerable weight. Sometimes she found herself panting as if for air, as she went from silent room to silent room, and sometimes a memory unbearably poignant and dear smote her as with physical violence, and her face worked for a few moments, and she fought with tears. There were other times, when life seemed less sad than dull. Julia grew sick of loneliness, sick of silence; she stared at her face in the mirror, when she was slowly dressing in the morning; stared at herself again at night--as if marvelling at this woman who was a wife, and a mother, and deserted in her young bloom. Deserted--her husband had gone away from her, and she knew no way to bring him back. A weary flatness of spirit descended upon her; it seemed a part of the howling winter storms, the dark and heavy weather. For the servants other positions were quickly found, the furniture was stored, the motor car sold. On the last day on which the last was at her disposal, Julia, with Ellie and the baby, drove about downtown, and disposed of several odds and ends of business. She left the keys of the Pacific Avenue house at the agent's office, not without an agonized memory of the day she had first called for them, more than two years ago. She went to the bank, and was instantly invited into the manager's office and given a luxurious chair. "Well, Mrs. Studdiford," said Mr. Perry pleasantly, "what brings you out in this dreadful weather?" "Good-byes," Julia said, flinging back her veil, and laying her muff aside. "Miss Toland and I will probably leave for New York on the seventh, and sail as soon as we can after we get there. I want to take a letter of credit, and I want to know just how I stand here." Mr. Perry touched a button, the letter of credit was duly made out, a clerk came in with a little slip, which he handed to Mr. Perry. "Ah, yes, yes, indeed! And where is Doctor Studdiford now? In Berlin? Lovely city. You'll like Berlin," said Mr. Perry. He glanced at the slip. "Thirty-seven thousand, two hundred and twenty dollars, Mrs. Studdiford," said he. "Transferred to your name a month ago. "I had no idea it was so much!" Julia said, her heart turning to lead. Why had he given her so much? Mr. Perry, bowing her out, laughed that that was a fault on the right side, and Julia left the bank, with its brightly lighted warm atmosphere tinged with the odour of ink and polished wood and rubber flooring, and its windows streaming with rain. She got into the motor car again, and took little Anna on her lap. "Now I think we'll drop you at the hotel, Ellie," said she, "and I'll take the baby out to say good-bye to my mother." "Oh, Mrs. Studdiford, it's raining something terrible!" protested the maid. "Yes, I know," Julia agreed, looking a little vaguely out of the blurred window. "But you see to-morrow may be just as bad, and we've got her all dressed and out now. So you go home and pack, and I'll just fly out there and fly back. Day after to-morrow I've promised to take her to Sausalito, and the day after that we start!" The city streets looked dark and gloomy under the steady onslaught of the rain, as the car rolled along. Julia stared sombrely through the drenched glass, now and then kissing the perfumed top of the little silk cap that covered the drowsy head on her breast. It was a long trip to Shotwell Street; for all her family's peculiarities, it was rather a sad trip to-day. She let her thoughts drift on to the coming changes in her life. She thought of New York, of the great unknown ocean, of London--London to Julia meant fog, hansom cabs, and crossings that must be swept. It was not, she felt, with a certain baffled resentment, what she wanted to do. London was full of Miss Toland's friends, and Julia was too sick in spirit to wish to meet them now. To be alone--to be alone--to be alone--some gasping inner spirit prayed continually. They would go to Oxfordshire, of course. But Miss Toland would be miserable in the country, she was always miserable in the country. They were passing Eighteenth Street, passing St. Charles's shabby little church. Julia stopped the motor. She got out and carried the baby up the stairs, and went up the echoing aisle to a front pew, where Anna could sit and stare about her. Julia, panting, dropped on her knees. The big edifice was empty, and smelled of damp plaster, rain rattled the high windows. The afternoon was so dark that the sanctuary light sent a little pool of quivering red to the floor below. After a while a very plain young woman came out of the vestry, and walking up the steps to the main altar, carried away one of the great candlesticks. She was presently joined by a little nun; the two whispered unsmilingly together, came and went fifty times with flowers, with candles, with fresh altar linen. Julia could not pray. Her thoughts would not settle themselves; they drifted back and forth like rippling breezes over grass. She felt that if she might kneel here an hour she could begin to pray. Now a thousand little things distracted her: the odour of the church, the crisping feet of some one entering the church far behind her, the odour of the damp glove upon which she rested her cheek. Life troubled her; she was afraid. She had thought it lay plain and straight before her; now all her guide posts were gone, and all her pathways led into deeper and deeper uncertainty. The utter confusion into which she had been thrown made even her own identity indefinite to her; she suffered less for this bewilderment. If by the mere raising of her hand she might have brought Jim back to her, she would not have raised that hand; not now, not until some rule that would adjust their relationship was found. Her marriage seemed a dream, their love as strange and remote as their separation. Only Anna seemed real, and as much a sorrow as a joy just now. To what heritage would the beautiful, mysterious little personality unfold? What of the swiftly coming time when she would ask questions? Julia turned to the little white-capped, white-coated figure. Anna had chewed a bonnet string to damp limpness; now she was saying "Da!" in an alluring and provocative tone to a lady praying nearby. The lady regarded her with an unmoved eye, however, and Julia gathered her small daughter in her arms and went down to the motor car. At her mother's door she dismissed Chadwick for an hour or two of warmth and shelter, and, sighing, went into the unaired dark hallway that smelled to-day of wet woollens and of a smoky kerosene wick, and retained as well its old faint odour of carbolic acid. CHAPTER VI Julia found the family as usual in the kitchen, and the kitchen as usual dirty and close. Her old grandmother, a little bent figure in a loose calico wrapper, was rocking in a chair by the stove. Julia's mother was helpless in a great wheeled chair, with blankets and pillows carelessly disposed about her, and her eager eyes bright in a face chiselled by pain. Sitting at the table was a heavy, sad-faced woman, with several front teeth missing, in whom Julia recognized her aunt, Mrs. Torney. A girl of thirteen, with her somewhat colourless hair in untidy braids, and a flannel bandage high about her throat, came downstairs at the sound of Julia's entrance. This was Regina Torney. "Well, it's Julia!" Mrs. Cox said. "And the darlin' sweetie--you oughtn't to bring her out such weather, Julie! How's them little hands?" She took the baby, and Julia kissed her mother and aunt, expecting to draw from the former the usual long complaints when she said: "How are you, dear? How does the chair go?" But Mrs. Page surprised her by some new quality in her look and tone, something poignantly touching and admirable. She was a thin little shadow of her former self now, the skin drawn tight and shining over her cheek bones, her almost useless hands resting on a pillow in her lap. She wore a soiled dark wrapper, her dark hair, still without a touch of gray, was in disorder, and her blankets and pillows were not clean. She smiled at her daughter. "I declare, Ju, you do seem to bring the good fresh air in with you whenever you come! Don't her cheeks look pretty, Regina? Why, I'm just about the same, Ju. To-day's a real bad day, on account of the rain, but I had a good night." "She's had an awful week, Julia. She don't seem to get no better," Mrs. Torney said heavily. "I was just saying that it almost seems like she isn't going to get well; it just seems like it had got hold of her!" Julia sat down next to her mother, and laid her own warm young hand over the hand on the pillow. "What does the doctor say?" she asked, looking from one discouraging face to another. "Oh, I don't know!" Mrs. Page said, sighing, and old Mrs. Cox cackled out a shrill "Doctors don't know nothing, anyway!" "Emeline sent for me," Mrs. Torney said in a sad, droning voice. "Mamma just couldn't manage it, Julia; she's getting on; she can't do everything. So me and Regina gave up the Oakland house, and we've been here three weeks. We didn't want to do it, Julia, but you couldn't blame us if you'd read your Mamma's letter. Regina's going to work as soon as she can, and help out!" Julia understood a certain deprecatory and apologetic note in her aunt's voice to refer to the fact that the Shotwell Street house was largely supported by Jim's generous monthly cheque, and that in establishing herself and her youngest daughter there she more or less avowedly added one more burden to Julia's shoulders. "I'm glad you did, Auntie," she answered cheerfully. "How's Muriel? And where's Geraldine?" "Geraldine's at school," Mrs. Torney said mournfully. "But Regina's not going to start in here. She done awfully well in school, too, Julia, but, as I say, she feels she ought to get to work now. She's got an awful sore throat, too. Muriel's started the nursing course, but I don't believe she can go on with it, it's something fierce. All my children have weak stomachs; she says the smell in the hospital makes her awfully sick. I don't feel real well myself; every time I stand up--my God! I feel as if my back was going to split in two, and yet with poor Em this way I felt as if I had ter come. Not that I can do anything for Emeline, but I was losing money on my boarders. I wish't you'd come out Sunday, Julia, I cooked a real good dinner, didn't I, Ma?" Mrs. Cox did not hear, and Julia turned to her mother. "Made up your mind really to go, Ju?" Mrs. Page asked. "Oh, really! We leave on the seventh." "I've always wanted to go somewheres on a ship," Emeline said. "Didn't care so much what it was when I got there, but wanted to go!" "So have I," contributed Mrs. Torney. "I was real like you at your age, Julia, and I used to think I'd do this and that when the children was big. Well, some of us are lucky and some of us aren't--ain't that it, Ma? I was talking to a priest about it once," she pursued, "and he said, 'Well, Mrs. Torney, if there was no sorrow and suffering in the world, there wouldn't be no saints!' 'Oh, Father,' I says, 'there isn't much of the saint in me! But,' I says, 'I've been a faithful wife and mother, if I say it; seven children I've raised and two I've buried; I've worked my hands to the bone,' I says, 'and the Lord has sent me nothing but trouble!'" "Ma, ain't you going to put your clothes on and go to the store?" Regina said. "I was going to," Mrs. Torney said, sighing, "but I think maybe now I'll wait, and let Geraldine go--she'll have her things on." "I suppose you haven't got any milk?" Mrs. Page said. "I declare I get to feeling awfully gone about this time!" "We haven't a drop, Em," Mrs. Torney said, after investigating a small back porch, from which Julia got a strong whiff of wet ashes and decaying cabbage leaves. "How much milk do you get regularly?" Julia asked, looking worried. "Oh, my dear," Mrs. Torney said, from the sink, where she was attacking a greasy frying pan with cold water and a gray rag worn into holes, "you forget we ain't rich people here. We don't have him leave milk, but if we want it we put a bottle out on the back steps." "You ought to have plenty of milk, Mama, taking those strong, depressing medicines!" Julia said. "Well, I ain't got much appetite, Julie," her mother answered, with that new and touching smile. "Now, last night the girls had cabbage and corn beef cooking--I used to be real fond of that dinner, but it almost made me sick, just smelling it! So Geraldine fried me an egg, yet that didn't taste good, either! Gettin' old and fussy, I guess!" Julia felt the tears press suddenly behind her eyes as she answered the patient smile. "Mama, I think you are terribly patient!" said she. "I guess you can get used to anything!" Emeline said. Regina coughed, and huddled herself in her chair. "But I thought since we had the air-tight stove put in the other room you were going to use it more?" said Julia, as Mrs. Torney shook down the cooking stove with a violence that filled the air with the acrid taste of ashes. "Well, we do sometimes. I meant to clean it to-day and get it started again," her aunt said. "I'm sure I don't know what we're going to do for dinner, Ma," she added. "Here it is getting round to five, and Geraldine hasn't come in. I don't know what on earth she does with herself--weather like this!" Mrs. Cox made no response; she was nodding in the twilight over the little relaxed figure of the baby; a fat little white-clad leg rolled on her knee as she rocked. A moment later Geraldine, a heavy, highly coloured girl, much what her sister Marguerite had been ten years before, burst in, cold, wet, and tired, with a strapful of wet books which she flung on the table. "My Lord, what do you keep this place so dark for, Ma!" said Geraldine. "It's something awful! Hello, Julia!" She kissed her cousin, picked Julia's big muff from a chair, and pressed the soft sables for a moment to her face. "Well, the little old darling, she's asleep, isn't she?" she murmured over the baby. "Say, Mamma," she went on more briskly, "I've got company coming to-night--" "_You_!" said Julia, smiling, and laying an affectionate hand on her young cousin's shoulder, as she stood beside her. "Why, how old are you, child?" "I'm sixteen--nearly," Geraldine said stoutly. "Didn't you have beaus when you were sixteen?" "I suppose I did!" Julia admitted, smiling. "But you seem awfully young!" "I thought--maybe you'd go to the store for me," said Mrs. Torney. Geraldine glared at her. "Oh, my God! haven't the things come?" she demanded, in shrill disgust. "I can't, Mamma, I'm sopping wet, and I've got to clean the parlour. It's all over ashes, and mud, and the Lord knows what!" "Well, I couldn't get out to-day, that's all there is to that," Mrs. Torney defended herself sharply. "My back's been like it was on fire. I've jest been resting all day. And when you go upstairs you won't find a thing straightened, so don't get mad about that--I haven't been able to do one thing! Regina's been real sick, too; she may have made the beds--she was upstairs a while--" "She didn't!" supplied Regina herself, speaking over her shoulder as she lighted the gas. They all blinked in the harsh sudden light. "Oh, Lord!" Geraldine was beginning, when Julia interrupted soothingly: "See here, I have the car here; Chadwick was to come back at five. Let me send him for the things! What do we want?" "Well, we don't want to keep you, lovey," her mother began. But Julia was already writing a list. "Indeed I'm going to stay and have some with you, Mrs. Page," she said cheerfully. "Chops for the family--aren't those quickest? And a quart of oysters for Mama, and cake and cheese and jam and eggs--tell me anything you think of, Aunt May, because he might as well do it thoroughly! "Mama and Regina are going to have oyster soup and toast because they are the invalids!" she announced cheerfully, coming back from the door a little later, "You like oysters, don't you, Mama?" "Oh, Julia, I like 'em _so_ much!" Mrs. Page said, with grateful fervour. "You can have other things, too, you know, Madam," Julia assured her playfully. "And why don't you let me push you, so--" She wheeled the chair across the kitchen as she spoke. "Over here, you see, you're out of the crowd," she said. She presently put a coaxing arm about Regina. "Do go up and brush your hair and change, dear, you'll feel so much better," she urged. "I feel rotten," Regina said, dragging herself stairward nevertheless. Poor Mrs. Page cried when the moment for parting came. It was still early in the evening when Julia bundled up the sleeping Anna, and sent her to the motor car by Chester, a gentle gray-haired man, who had been extremely appreciative of a good dinner, and who had been sitting with his wet socks in the oven, and his stupid kindly eyes contentedly fixed upon Julia and her mother. "I may not see you again, Julie," Mrs. Page said with trembling lips. "Mama ain't strong like she once was, dear. And I declare I don't know what I _shall_ do, when day after day goes by and you don't come in--always so sweet!" The tears began to flow, and she twisted her head, and slowly and painfully raised her handkerchief in a crippled hand to dry her eyes. Julia knelt down to kiss her, her young face very sober. "Listen, Mama--don't cry! Please don't cry!" said she. "Listen! I'll _promise_ you to see you again before I go!" Her mother brightened visibly at this, and Julia kissed her again, and ran out in the dripping rain to her car. She took the baby into her arms, and settled back in the darkness for the long trip to her hotel. And for the first time in many months her thoughts were not of her own troubles. She thought of the Shotwell Street house, and wondered what had attracted her grandfather and grandmother to it, forty years ago. She tried to see her mother there, a slender, dark-haired child; tried to imagine her aunt as young and fresh and hopeful. Had the rooms been dark and dirty even then? Julia feared so; in none of her mother's reminiscences was there ever any tenderness or affection for early memories of Shotwell Street. Four young people had gone out from that house, nearly thirty years ago, how badly equipped to meet life! Julia's own earliest recollections centred in it. She remembered herself as an elaborately dressed little child, shaking out her little flounces for her grandmother's admiration, and having large hats tied over her flushed sticky face and tumbled curls. She remembered that, instead of the row of cheap two-story flats that now faced it, there had been a vacant lot across the street then, where horses sometimes galloped. She remembered the Chester of those days, a pimply, constantly smoking youth, who gave her little pictures of actresses from his cigarette boxes, and other little pictures that, being held to a strong light, developed additional figures and lettering. He called her "Miss O'Farrell of Page Street" sometimes, and liked to poke her plump little person until she giggled herself almost into hysterics. Still dreaming of the old times, she reached her hotel, and while Ellie settled the baby into her waiting crib, Julia sat down before a fire, her slippered feet to the comfortable coals, her loose mandarin robe deliciously warm and restful after the tiring day. "You want the lights, Mrs. Studdiford?" asked Ellie, tiptoeing in from the next room. "Oh, no, thank you!" Julia said. "I'll just sit here for a while, and then go to bed." Ellie went softly out; the clock struck nine--ten--eleven. Against the closely curtained windows the rain still fell with a softened hiss, the coals broke, flamed up, died down to a rosy glow. Still Julia sat, sunk in her deep chair, musing. She saw the Shotwell Street house changed, and made, for the first time in its years of tenancy, into a home. There must be paint outside, clean paint, there must be a garden, with a brick path and rose bushes, where a little girl might take her first stumbling steps, and where spring would make a brave showing in green and white for the eyes of tired homegoers. Indoors there should be a cool little orderly dining-room, with blue china on its shelves, and a blue rug under the round table, and there should be a drawing-room papered in clean tans and curtained in cream colour, with an upright piano and comfortable chairs. The ugly old storeroom off the kitchen must be her mother's; it must have new windows cut, and nothing but what was new and pretty must go in there. And the kitchen should have blue-and-white linoleum, with curtains and shining tinware; there must be the gleam of scrubbed white woodwork, the shine of polished metal. It was a big kitchen, the invalid might still like to have her chair there. The basement's big, unused front room must be finished in durable burlaps and grass matting for Uncle Chester; there must be a bath upstairs; two rooms for Aunt May and the girls, one for Grandma, one for Julia and little Anna. So much for externals. But what of changing the tenants to suit the house? Would time and patience ever transform Mrs. Torney into a busy, useful woman? Would Geraldine and Regina develop into hopeless incompetents like Marguerite, or pay Julia for all her trouble by becoming happy and helpful and contented? Time must show. Only the days and the years would answer the question that Julia asked of the fire. There must be patience, there must be endless effort, there would be times of bitterest discouragement and depression. And in the end? In the end there would only be, at best, one family, out of millions of other families, saved from unnecessary suffering. There would be only one household lifted from the weight of incompetence and wretchedness that burdened the world. There would be no miracle, no appreciation, no gratitude. "But--who knows?" mused Julia. "It may save Geraldine and Regina from lives like Rita's, and bitterness like Muriel's and Evelyn's. It may save them from clouding their lives as I did mine. Rita's children, too, who knows what a clean and sweet ideal--held before them, may do for them? And poor Chess, who has been wronged all his life, and my poor little grandmother, and Mama--" It was the thought of her mother that turned the scale. Julia thought of the dirty blankets and the soggy pillow that furnished the invalid's chair, of the treat that a simple bowl of oyster soup seemed to the failing appetite. "And I can do it!" she said to herself. "It will be hard for months and months, and it will be hard now to make Aunt Sanna see that I am right; but I can do it!" She looked about the luxurious room, and smiled a little sadly. "No more of this!" she thought. And then longing for her husband came with a sick rush. "Oh, Jimmy!" she whispered, with filling eyes. "If it was only you and me, my darling! If we were going _anywhere_ together, to the poorest neighbourhood and the meanest cabin in the world--how blessed I would be! How we could work and laugh and plan together, for Anna and the others!" But presently the tears dried on her cheeks. "Never mind, it will keep me from thinking too hard," she thought. "I shall be needed, I shall be busy, and nothing else matters much!" She got up, and went to one of the great windows that looked down across the city. The rain was over, dark masses of cloud were breaking and stirring overhead; through their rifts she caught the silver glimmer of the troubled moon. Across the shadowy band that was the bay a ferryboat, pricked with hundreds of tiny lights, was moving toward the glittering chain of Oakland. There was a light on Alcatraz, and other nearer lights scattered through the dark masts and dim hulks of the vessels in the harbour below her. "It will be bright to-morrow!" Julia thought, resting her forehead against the glass. She was weary and spent; a measureless exhaustion seemed to enfold her. Yet under it all there glowed some new spark of warm reassurance and certainty. "Thank God, I see my way clear at last!" she said softly. CHAPTER VII The kitchen in the old Cox house formed a sort of one-story annex behind the building, and had windows on three sides, so that on a certain exquisite morning in March, four years later, sunlight flooded the two eastern windows and fell in clear squares of brightness on the checkered blue-and-white linoleum on the floor. There were thin muslin sash curtains at these windows, and white shades had been drawn down to meet them. Some trailing English ivy made a delicate tracery in dark green beside one window, and two or three potted begonias on the sill lifted transparent trembling blooms to the sun. The rest of the large room was in keeping with this cheerful bit of detail. There was a shining gas stove beside the shining coal range, and a picturesque bit of colour in the blue kettles and copper casseroles that stood in a row on the shelves above the range. A pine cupboard had been painted white, and held orderly rows of blue plates and cups; there were several white-painted chairs, and two tables. One of these was pushed against the west wall, and was of pine wood white from scrubbing; the other stood on a blue rag rug by the eastern windows, and was covered by a fringed tablecloth in white and blue. Near the outer door, with a window above it, was a white-enamelled sink in a bright frame of hanging small utensils. The sunlight twinkled here and there on a polished surface, and flung a trembling bright reflection on the ceiling from the brass faucets of the sink. A clock on the wall struck seven. As the last stroke sounded, Julia Studdiford quietly opened the hall door and stepped into the kitchen. She softly closed the door behind her, and went to another door, at which she paused for a few seconds with her head bent as if listening. Evidently satisfied that no one stirred in the bedroom beyond the door, she set briskly if noiselessly about her preparations for breakfast. These involved the tying on of a crisp checked apron, and various negotiations with a large enamelled coffee pot, an egg, and the dark grounds that sent a heartening odour of coffee through the room. Bread was sliced and trimmed for toast with delightful evenness and swiftness, a double boiler of oatmeal was lifted from the fireless cooker, and the ice box made to furnish more eggs and a jar of damp, firm butter. It was while making a little journey to the back porch for milk and cream that the housekeeper first wavered in her swift routine. Below the back steps lay a little city garden, so lovely in the strengthening March sunlight that she must set her bottles down on the step, and run down for a whiff of the fragrance of climbing roses, just beginning to bloom, of bridal-wreath and white lilac. Cobwebs, caught from bush to wet bush, sparkled with jewels; a band of brown sparrows flew away from a dripping faucet, and a black cat, crouching on the crosspieces of the low fence, rose, yawned, and vanished silently. The wall was almost entirely hidden by vines, principally rose vines, which flung long arms in the air. Presently a woman in the next yard parted these vines, to look over and say pleasantly: "Good-mornin', Mis' Studdiford! I's just looking over an' _dee_-spairin' of ever gettin' my backyard to look like yours! It does smell like one big bo'quet mornin's like this!" "Oh, well, there are so many of us to fuss with it," said the young woman addressed, cheerfully. "My aunt and my cousins are nearly as crazy about flowers as I am, and the other day--that warm day, you know, when we had my mother out here--she was just as absorbed as the rest of us!" She put a friendly head over the wall. "But I don't see what you've got to complain of, Mrs. Calhoun," said she, "especially as you're just beginning! I see your geraniums all took hold!" "Every one but the white Lady Washington," the woman said. "How is your mother?" she added. "Pretty comfortable, thank you!" said the other. "I imagine she may have had a restless night, for both she and my aunt seem to be asleep, so I'm getting breakfast for my cousins and uncle myself! And I'm not supposed to be out here at all!" she added, with a farewell laugh and nod, as she turned back to the steps. "But I just couldn't resist the garden!" She picked up the milk bottles and reentered the kitchen just as a trimly dressed young woman came into it from the hall. The newcomer was tall, and if not quite pretty was at least a fresh-looking, pleasant-faced girl. She wore a tailor-made skirt and white shirt waist, and a round hat covered with flowers, and laid her jacket over the back of a chair. "Julie, where's Ma?" said she, in surprise. "Have you been doing everything?" "Not everything!" Julia smiled. "But Aunt May must have overslept herself; there hasn't been a sound from their room this morning. Your suit looks lovely," she added admiringly. "Oh, do you think so?" asked the younger woman eagerly. She interrupted her task of putting plates and cups on the table, to come close and turn toward Julia the back of her head for inspection. "Like it?" asked she. Julia seriously inspected the rhinestone comb that glittered there. "Why, I don't utterly dislike it," she said, in her pleasant voice. "But you don't think it's in good taste, Julie?" "Well no, not exactly. Not for the office, anyway." "All right, then--that settles it!" the young woman assured her. "I'll run upstairs after breakfast and change. We had a glorious time last night!" she went on, putting her head on one side to give the table a critical glance. "I'll tell you about it. This has boiled up, hasn't it--it can be settled?" "Yes, settle it." said Julia, buttering toast, "and tell me!" But at this moment the hall door opened again, and a little girl of four and a half appeared in the doorway. She was so lovely a vision, with her trailing wrapper and white nightgown bunched up to be out of her way, curls tumbled about her face, and eyes big with reproach, that both women laughed with pleasure at the sight of her. "Mother," said she, with that lingering on the last consonant that marks the hurt pride of a child, "why diddunt you wake me?" "Because you were sleeping so nicely, Pussy!" Julia laughed, on her knees by this time, with both arms about the little figure. "Give me a thousand kisses and say 'I love my mother!'" "I love my mother!" said Anna, her eyes roving the room over her mother's shoulder. "I guess you don't know how hard you're squeezing me, Mother!" she added. "Can I come out here in my wrapper, and have breakfast with Regina?" "Yes, let her, Julia!" Regina urged. "Come on, darling! Bring your bowl up here to my end. Do sit down and eat something yourself, Julia." "This is the way to enjoy breakfast; not twenty feet from the stove!" Julia said, pouring the cream into her coffee. "Was Geraldine stirring when you got up, Regina?" "Not a stir!" Regina said cheerfully. "She and Morgan were talking last night until two--I looked at the clock when she came upstairs! What they have to talk about gets me!" "Oh, my dear, engaged people could talk forever," Julia said leniently. "They were househunting yesterday, there's always so much to talk about!" "It seems to me that the people who don't marry have the most fun," Regina said. "Look at Muriel and Evvy, the money they make! Evvy going East for the firm every year, and Muriel getting her little twenty-five a week. And then look at Rita, with four children to slave for--" "Ah, well, Rita's husband doesn't work steadily, and she hates housework--she admits it!" Julia protested swiftly. "Rita could do a good deal, if she would." "Rita gives me a great big pain," said her younger sister absently. "A boy named Willis had a sword, and he hit a little boy with it, and Mrs. Calhoun said it was a wonder he wasn't killed!" contributed Anna suddenly, her eyes luminous from some thrilling recollection. "Fancy!" Julia said. "Eat your oatmeal, Baby, and run upstairs and get some clothes on!" she added briskly. "You'll catch cold!" But there was no severity in the glance she turned upon her daughter. Indeed, it would have been a stern heart that little Anna Studdiford's first friendly glance did not melt. She had been exquisite from her babyhood, she was so lovely now, as she emerged from irresponsible infancy to thoughtful little girlhood, that Julia sometimes wondered how she could preserve so much charm and beauty unspoiled. Anna had her mother's ash-gold hair, but where Julia's rose firm and winglike from her forehead, and was held in place by its own smooth, thick braids, the little girl's fell in rich, shining waves, sprayed in fine mist across her eyes, glittered, a golden mop in the sunlight, and even in the shade threw out an occasional gleam of gold. Anna's eyes were blue, with curled thick lashes like her mother's, but in the firm little mouth and the poise of her head, in the quick smile and quicker frown, Julia saw her father a hundred times a day. Her skin had the transparent porcelain beauty of babyhood, there was a suggestion of violet shadow about her eyes, and on her cheeks there glowed the warm colour of a ripe apricot. Even the gingham aprons and sturdy little shoes which she customarily wore did not disguise Anna's beauty. Julia trusted more to the child's wise little head than to the faint hope that her own precautions could ward off flattery and adulation. The two had been constant companions for more than four years: Anna's little bed close to her mother's at night, Anna's bright head never out of Julia's sight by day. If Anna showed any interest in what her mother was reading, Julia gave her a grave review of the story; if Julia went to market, Anna trotted beside her, deeply concerned as to cuts of meat and choices among vegetables; and when baking was afoot, Anna had a tiny moulding board on a chair, and cut cookies or scalloped tarts with the deep enjoyment of the born cook. Once or twice the child had asked for her father, accepting quietly enough the explanation that he was in Germany, and very busy. "Aren't we going to see him some time, Mother?" "Not while Grandma needs Mother so much, dear!" Julia would answer easily. Easily, because the busy months with their pain and joy, their problems and their successes, had seemed to seal away in a deep crypt her memories of her husband. Julia had been afraid to think of him at first; she could not make herself think of him now; his image drifted vaguely away from her, as unreal as a dream. He was as much a name as if she had never seen him, never loved him, never suffered those exquisite agonies of grief and shame with which the first year of their separation was full. Jim's child had taken his place; the purity and sweetness of the child's love filled Julia's heart; she wanted only Anna, and Anna was her interpreter for all the relationships of life. Anna first made her draw close to her own mother; Anna was at once her spur and her reward during the first hard years at Shotwell Street. Anna had gone upstairs, and Regina was finishing her breakfast when Chester came downstairs, followed by the still sleepy yet shining-eyed Geraldine. Geraldine was to be married in a few weeks now, and had given up her position in an office, to devote all her time to house-furnishing and sewing. "I'm awfully sorry to be so late," smiled Geraldine, "but we talked until I don't know when last night!" She poured herself a cup of coffee; the meal went cheerfully on. Presently the bedroom door opened, and a stout, handsome, middle-aged woman came into the kitchen. Julia was used, by now, to the transformation that had come to house and garden, that had affected every member of her mother's family in the past four years. But to the change in her aunt, Mrs. Torney, she never became quite accustomed. It had been slow in coming; it had come all at once. There had been weeks when Julia felt that nothing would ever silence the whining voice, or make useful the idle hands. There had been a wretched time when the young woman had warned the older that matters could not continue as they were. There had been agitated decisions on Mrs. Torney's part to go away, with Regina, to starve and struggle again; there had been a scene when Regina coolly refused to leave the new comforts of Julia's rule. And then, suddenly, there was a new woman in the family, in Aunt May's place. Julia always dated the change from a certain Thanksgiving Day, when Mrs. Torney, who was an excellent cook, had prepared a really fine dinner. Julia and the girls put the dining-room in order, a wood fire roared in the air-tight stove, another in the sitting-room grate. Julia dressed prettily; she put a late rose in her mother's hair, draped the invalid's prettiest shawl about the thin shoulders, arrayed the toddling baby in her daintiest finery. She coaxed her aunt to go upstairs to make herself fresh and neat just before dinner, and during the whole evening Mrs. Torney's sons and daughters, Julia and Evelyn, Chester and Mrs. Page and little old Mrs. Cox united to praise the dinner and the cook. It was as if poor Aunt May had come into her own, had been given at last the role to which she had always been suited. Handsome in her fresh shirt waist and black skirt, with her gray hair coiled above a shining face, she beamed over turkey dressing and cranberry sauce; she laughed until she cried, when Elmer, who had come from Oakland for the feast, solemnly prefaced a request for more mince pie with a reckless: "Come on, Lloyd, let's die together; it's worth it!" From that day hers was the happy part of the bustling housewife. No New England matron ever took more pride in cup cakes or apple pies, no kitchen in the world gave forth more savoury odours of roast meats and new-baked bread. Mrs. Torney's heavy tread on the kitchen floor was usually the first thing Julia heard in the morning, and late at night the infatuated housekeeper would slip out to the warm, clean, fragrant place for a last peep at rising dough or simmering soup. Aunt May read the magazines now only to seek out new combinations of meats and vegetables. Julia would smile, to glance across the dining-room to her aunt's chair beneath the lamp, and see the big, kindly face pucker over some startling discovery. "Em!" Mrs. Torney would remove her glasses, she would address her sister in shocked tones. "Here they've got a sour-cream salad dressing. Did you ever hear of such a thing!" "For heaven's sake!" Mrs. Page would look up from her absorbed watching of Chester's solitaire, drop her emaciated little head back against the waiting pillow. "Try it some time, Aunt May, you could make anything taste good!" Julia might suggest. But Mrs. Torney would shake a doubtful head and, with a muttered "Sour cream!" resume her glasses and her magazine. Now she was tying a crisp apron over her blue cotton dress, and ready with a smiling explanation for Julia. "I declare, Ju, I don't know what's got into my alarm. I never woke up at all until quarter to eight o'clock! Don't start those dishes, lovey, there's no hurry!" "I was afraid that Mama'd had a bad night," Julia said, smiling a good-morning from the sink. "Sit. down, Aunt May, I'll bring you your coffee!" "No, Emeline had a real good night. She was reading a while, about three, but she's sound asleep now." "I lighted a fire in the dining-room," said Chester, "just to take the chill off, if Em wants to go in there!" "Then I'll bring my sewing down, after the beds are made," Geraldine said. "You go to market if you want to, Julie; I'll do your room." "Well," Julia agreed, "perhaps I can get back before Mama wakes. I'll go up and see what Anna is doing." Regina and Chester presently went off to their work, Mrs. Torney and Geraldine fell upon the breakfast dishes, and Julia went upstairs. She found the little Anna dreaming by a sunny window, one stocking on, one leg still bare, and her little petticoat hanging unbuttoned. "Come, Infant, this won't do!" Julia's practised hands made quick work of the small girl's dressing. A stiff blue gingham garment went on over Anna's head, the tumbled curls were subjugated by a blue ribbon. When it was left to Anna merely to lace her shoes, Julia began to go about the room, humming as she busied herself with bureau and bed. She presently paused at the mirror to pin on a wide hat, and her eye fell upon the oval-framed picture of Jim that she had carried away with her from the Pacific Avenue house. It had been taken by some clever amateur; had always been a favourite with her. She studied it dispassionately for a moment. Jim had been taken in tennis clothes; his racket was still in his hand, his thin shirt opened to show the splendid line of throat and chin. His thick hair was rumpled, the sunlight struck across his smiling face. Julia's memory could supply the twinkle in his eye; she could hear him call to Alan Gregory: "For the Lord's sake, cut this short, Greg! It's roasting out here!" Beside this picture hung another, smaller, and also a snapshot. This was of a man, too, a tall, thin, ungainly man, sitting on a roadside rock, with a battered old hat in his hand. Behind him rose a sharp spur of rough mountainside, and so sharply did the ground fall away at his feet that far below him was a glimpse of the level surface of the Pacific. Julia smiled at this picture, and the picture smiled back. "Come, Mouse!" said she, rousing herself from a reverie a moment later. "Get on your hat! You and I have to go to market!" The morning wore on; it was like a thousand other happy mornings. Julia and Anna loitered in the cool odorous fish stalls at the market, welcomed asparagus back to its place in the pleasant cycle of the year's events, inspected glowing oranges and damp crisp heads of lettuce; stopped at the hardware store for Aunt May's new meat chopper, stopped at the stationer's for Anna's St. Nicholas, stopped at the florist's to breathe deep breaths of the damp fragrant air, and to get some buttercups for Grandma. Julia's mother was in the kitchen when she and Anna got home, her dark hair still damp from brushing, her thin wrists no whiter than her snowy ruffles. Presently they all moved into the dining-room, where Geraldine's sewing machine was temporarily established, and where Anna's blocks had a corner to themselves. The invalid, between intervals of knitting, watched them all with her luminous and sympathetic smile. "A letter for you, Julie, and four for me," said the bride-elect, coming back from the door after the postman's ring. "_Four_ for you--Gerry! You lucky thing!" "Well--two are from Morgan," admitted Geraldine, smiling, and there was a laugh as Julia opened her own letter. "It's from Dr. Richard Toland," she announced a moment later. "He says Mill Valley is too beautiful for words just now. How'd you like to go over and see Uncle Richie to-morrow, Anna?" "I'd love it," said Anna unhesitatingly. "We've not been for weeks," Julia said, "I'd love it, too, if my Marmer doesn't mind?" She turned her bright smile to her mother. "Regina says she has an engagement with the O'Briens for Sunday," said she, "and if Gerry goes off with Morgan, will that leave things too quiet?" "Indeed it won't!" said Mrs. Torney, looking up from the tissue-paper pattern over which she had hung in profound bewilderment for almost half an hour. "Rita may bring some of the children in, or Lloyd and Elmer may come over. Go along with you!" Richie, much stronger in these days, and without his crutch, though still limping a little, met Julia and the dancing Anna on the following afternoon, and the three crossed the ferry together. It was a day bursting with summer's promise, the air was pure and warm, and the sky cloudless. Getting out of the train at Mill Valley, Julia drew an ecstatic breath. "Oh, Richie, what heavenly freshness! Doesn't it just smooth your forehead down like a cool hand!" There was a poignant sweetness to the mountain air, washed clear by the late rains, and warmed and invigorated by the sunshine of the lengthening March day. The country roads were dark and muddy and churned by wheel tracks, but fringed with emerald grass. Even at four o'clock the little valley was plunged in early shadow, but sunshine lay still upon the hills that framed it, and long lines of light threw the grim heights of Tamalpais into bold relief. The watching tiers of the redwoods looked refreshed, their spreading dark fans were tipped with the jade-green sprays of the year's new growth. The first pale smoke of wild lilac bloom lay over the hills. "It makes you think of delicious words," said Julia, as Richie's rusty white mare plodded up and up the mountain road. "Ozone--and aromatic--and exhilarating! In town it was a little oppressive to-day--Anna and I were quite wilted!" "You don't look wilted!" Richie smiled at his goddaughter, who was in her mother's arms. "Look, Ju--there's columbine! Loads of it up near my place!" "And the wild currant, with that delicious pungent smell!" sighed Julia blissfully. "What's new with you, Richie?" she asked presently. "Oh, nothing much! Cable from Bab yesterday, but you must have had one, too?" "Yes, I did. A third boy!" Julia laughed. "Poor Bab--when she wanted a girl so badly!" "I suppose she did," grinned Richard. "Oh, of course she did! Who wouldn't?" Julia hugged her own girl. "And isn't it glorious about Keith?" she added, with sudden enthusiasm. "Is it? I suppose it is," Richie said. "But then those old guys in Germany called him a genius long before New York did, and you girls didn't make so much fuss!" "Oh, but Richie, there's so much money in this American tour; three concerts in New York alone, think of it!" Julia protested eagerly. "And Sally's letter sounded so gay; they were having a perfectly glorious time. I hope they come to San Francisco!" "Well, she deserves it," Richie observed, flicking the rusty mare with a whip she superbly ignored. "Sally's had a pretty rotten time of it for seven or eight years--paying his lesson bills when she didn't have enough to eat or shoes to wear--and losing the baby----" "I don't believe all that meant as much to Sally as you think," Julia said sagely. "Her entire heart was set upon Keith's success, and that has come along pretty steadily. Her letter to me about the baby wasn't the sort I should have written; indeed, I couldn't have written at all! And then that was four years ago, Richie, and four years is a long time!" "It is!" Richie agreed. "Keith's about all the baby she'll ever want; those fellows take an awful lot of spoiling. But I get more pleasure from Mother's and Dad's pleasure than for Sally herself," he added. "Mother saves up newspaper accounts, and has this translated from the German and that from the French--it's sort of pathetic to see! Dad and Janey are in New York now; something was said last night about their going over to see Bab." "Ted and your mother are alone, then? How's Ted?" "Oh, driving Mother crazy, as usual. She'd flirt with the Portuguese milkman if she had a chance. She can't seem to understand that because she wants to be free she _isn't_ free! Talks about 'if I marry again,' and so on. Of course Carleton's marrying again has made her wild." "But, good heavens, Richie, Ted ought to have some _sense_!" "Well, she hasn't. She stretched a point to marry him, d'you see? Carleton had been baptized as a child, and his first wife hadn't, and they were married by a Justice of the Peace, or something of that sort. So Ted claimed that in the eyes of the Church he hadn't been married at all, and she married him. Then----" "But if she loved him, Richie--and Ted was so young!" "All true, of course, only if you're going to push things to the point of taking advantage of a quibble like that, your chance of happiness is more or less slim! So three years ago Carleton proved that he hadn't cared a whoop about the legal or religious aspects of the case, and left Ted. And now Ted can't see herself, at twenty-seven, tied to another woman's husband!" "She has her boy," Julia said severely. "Yep, but that doesn't seem to count." "Well, it's funny, Richie, take us all in all, what a mess we've made of marrying!" Julia mused. "Ned gives me the impression, every time I see him, of being a sulky martyr in his own home; Sally's managed to drag happiness out of a most hopeless situation; Ted, of course, will never be happy again, like Jim and me; and Connie, although she made an exemplary marriage, either has to leave her husband or bring her baby up in Manila, which she says positively isn't safe! Bab is the only shining success among us all!" "Oh, I don't know," Richie said, stopping the horse, and flinging the reins to the Portuguese who came out of a small barn to meet them. "Here we are, Ju--take your time! I've always considered you rather successful," he resumed. "Oh, me!" Julia laughed as she jumped down like a girl. She followed Anna across a little hollow filled with buttercups and long grasses, and they mounted the little rise to Richie's tiny cabin. The little house had Mount Tamalpais for a background, and its wide unroofed porch faced across the valley, and commanded a view of the wooded ridges, and the marshes, and the distant bay, and of San Francisco twelve miles away. Scrub oaks and bay trees grew in a tangle all about it, even a few young redwoods and an occasional bronze and white madrona tree. Wild roses and field flowers crowded against its very walls, and under the trees there were iris and brown lilies, and a dense undergrowth of manzanita and hazelnut bushes, wild currant and wild lilac trees. The big room that Julia entered first was dim with pleasant twilight, and full of the sweet odours of a dying wood fire. It had nothing of distinction in it: a few shabby chairs, an old square piano, an unpainted floor crossed here and there by rugs, books in cases and out of them, candlesticks along the brick mantel, a green-shaded student's lamp on a long table, and several wide windows, dim and opaque now in the fast-gathering darkness, but usually framing each a picture of matchless mountain scenery. A door at one side of the fireplace led into a tiny kitchen whose windows looked out into oak branches; and another door, on the other side, gave access to a little cement-floored bathroom with a shower, and two small bedrooms, each with two beds built in tiers like bunks. This was Richie's whole domain, and whether it was really saturated with the care-free atmosphere of childhood, and fragrant with the good breath of the countryside all about it, or whether Julia only imagined it to be so, she found it perfect, and was never so happy in these days as when she and Anna were there. She was always busy, and satisfied in her work, but there were needs of heart and mind that her own people could not meet, and when these rose strong within her she found no company as bracing and as welcome as Richard's. "No Aunt Sanna?" said she cheerfully, when she had taken off her hat and the small girl's, and was in her favourite chair by the fire. "No, darn it!" said Richie, struggling with a refractory lamp wick. "Oh, don't be so blue, Rich! She'll be here on the seven." "No, she won't--she said the four--I expected to find her here," Richie said, settling the glass chimney into place, as the light crept round the wick. A little odour of hot kerosene floated on the air, and was lost in other odours from the kitchen, where a Chinese boy was padding about in the poor light of one lamp. He began to come and go, setting the table, the ecstatic Anna at his heels. Whenever the outer door was opened, a cool rush of sweet country air came in. Richie began to stamp back and forth with great logs for the fireplace. "Wonderful what millions of miles away from every one we seem, Rich!" Julia said contentedly. "Was there ever anything like the quiet of this mountain?" "I'm terribly sorry about Aunt Sanna," Richie said. "I feel like an ass--getting you way up here!" "Why, my dear boy, it's not _your_ fault!" Julia said, round eyed. "She said she would positively be here," Richie pursued. "I suppose there's no earthly reason--" he added uncomfortably. "Why you and I shouldn't stay here alone? I should hope not!" Julia reassured him roundly. "And she may come on the seven, anyway!" "These are the times I wish I had a telephone," said Richie. "Aw leddy," contributed the Chinese boy. They took their places at the table, and dinner was eaten by the light of the lamp. But after dinner, when Julia had tucked Anna into bed, she came back and put out the lamp. She lighted two candles on the mantelpiece that sent a brave flicker over the dull walls and up to the ceiling. "There!" said she, with an energetic stirring of the fire, as she took her chair again, "that's the way I like this room to look!" Richard disposed of his awkward length in an opposite chair, his big bony hands interlocked. In the fire and candlelight Julia looked very young, her loosened hair glimmering against the back of her chair, her thin white skirts spreading in a soft circle above her slipper buckles. The man noticed the serene rise and fall of her breast under her thin blouse, the content in her half-shut blue eyes. He let his thoughts play for a moment with the perilous dream that she belonged here at his hearth, that her sweetness, her demure happiness, her earnest interest in everything that concerned him, were all his by right. "I don't quite know what to do about this!" he said gruffly. "What--our being here?" Julia looked surprised. "Why, Richie, what can we do? Do you think it matters, one night? After all, we're brother and sister-in-law!" "Almost," said Richie, with a laugh. "Why, Rich, I would never give it one moment's thought; not if I stayed here a month!" Julia assured him. "And neither would any one else. Don't be so silly!" "It's not me; but it isn't fair to you!" Richard said. Julia had grown a little red. Now she stared into the fire. "This sort of fuss isn't like you, Rich," she said presently, with an uncomfortable laugh. "You--you don't usually talk about such things!" "No, I know I don't," Richard admitted, untouched by her reproach. "I could go up to Porter's and try to get Aunt Sanna by telephone!" he muttered. Julia was displeased, and made no answer, and presently he got up and went out. She sat there listening to the rattle of dishes in the kitchen, until a splash announced the dishpan emptied under the oak trees, and the Chinese through with his work for the night. After a while she went to the doorway, and stared out at the starry sky and the dark on darkness that marked masses of trees and long spurs of the mountain. The air was sweet and chilly, frogs were peeping, from somewhere near came the steady rush of a swollen creek. While Julia stood on the porch a livery hack from the village creaked up, and stopped ten feet away. The horses were blowing on the steep grade, and a strong odour from the animals and their sweated harness smote the pure night air. The carriage lanterns sent a wavering brightness across the muddy road, the grass looked artificial in the yellow light. Miss Toland, vociferating apology and explanation, emerged from the carriage. When Richard came back from his fruitless errand he found both women enjoying the fire, Miss Toland's skirt folded over her knees, her veil pushed up on her forehead. In his enormous relief, Richie felt that he could have danced and sung. He busied himself brewing a hot drink for the older woman. "Richie," said Julia, with a pleasant childish note of triumphant reproach in her voice, "was worried to _death_ because I was here alone with Anna! Don't you think he's crazy, Aunt Sanna?" "Why, you two have been here alone?" Miss Toland asked, stirring her chocolate. "No, we haven't!" Julia answered cheerfully. "I never thought of it before; but this dear old maid either has you here, or Janey, or Doctor Brice's Mary from the village--isn't he queer?" "It isn't as if you weren't practically brother and sister, Richie," Miss Toland said moderately. "Not too much butter, dear!" she interpolated, in reference to the toast her nephew was making, adding a moment later, "Still, I don't know--a pretty woman in your position can't be too careful, Julia!" "Oh, Lord, you're an appreciative pair!" Richard said disgustedly, going out to the kitchen for more bread. Presently Miss Toland complained of fatigue, and left them to the fire. And sitting there, almost silent, Julia thought that she had never found her host so charming before. His rambling discourse amused her, touched her; she loved his occasional shy introduction of a line of poetry, his eager snatching of a book now and then to illuminate some point with half a page of prose. "Pleasant, isn't this, Rich?" she asked lazily, in a quiet interval. "Oh, _pleasant_!" He cleared his throat. "Yes--it's very pleasant!" "And why couldn't you and I have done this just as well without Aunt Sanna?" Julia asked triumphantly. Richard gave her a look full of all-dignified endurance, a look that wondered a little that she could like to give him pain. "No reason at all," said he. And a sudden suspicion flamed in Julia's heart with all the surety of an inspiration. The revelation came in absolute completeness; she had never even suspected Richie's little tragedy before. For a few moments Julia sat stunned, then she said seriously: "I always feel myself so much Jim's wife, Rich; I suppose it's a sort of protection to me. It never occurs to me that any one could think me less bound than I think myself." "Sure you do!" Richard said, struggling with the back log. "But other people might not! And it would be rotten to have him come back and hear anything." "I suppose he'll come back," Julia said, dreamily, almost in a whisper. "I don't think of it much, now! I used to think of it a good deal at first; I used to cry all night long sometimes, and write him long letters that I never sent. It seemed as if the longing for him was burning me up, like a fire!" "Damn him!" Richard muttered. "Oh, no, Richie, don't say that!" Julia protested. Richard, still on one knee, with the poker in his hand, turned to her almost roughly. "For God's sake, Julie, don't defend him! I'll hold my tongue about him, I suppose, as I always have done, but don't pretend he has any excuse for treating you this way! You--the best and sweetest and bravest woman that ever lived, bringing happiness and decency wherever you go--" "Richie, Richie, stop!" Julia protested, between laughter and tears. "Don't talk so! I _will_ defend Jim," she added gravely, "and he _did_ have an excuse. It seems unfair to me that he should have all the blame." She held her hand out, fingers spread to the reviving flame, rosy and transparent in the glow. "Rich, no one knows this but Jim and me; not Aunt Sanna, not my own mother," she presently resumed. "But it makes what he did a little clearer, and I'm going to tell you." "Don't tell me anything," said Richard gruffly, eyes on the fire. "Yes, I want to," Julia answered. But she was silent for a while, a look of infinite sadness on her musing face. "I made a serious mistake when I was a girl, Rich," she went on, after an interval. "I had no reason for it--not great love, or great need. I had no excuse. Or, yes, I did have this excuse: I had been spoiled; I had been told that I was unusual, independent, responsible to nobody. I knew that this thing existed all about me, and if I thought of it at all, I suppose I thought that there could be nothing so very dreadful about what men did as a matter of course! Perhaps that's the best explanation; my mind was like a young boy's. I didn't particularly seek out this thing, or want this thing; but I was curious, and it came my way-- "Don't misunderstand me, Richie. I wasn't 'betrayed.' I'd had, I suppose, as little good instruction, as little example, and watching and guarding as any girl in the world. But I knew better! Just as every boy knows better, and is taken, sooner or later, unawares. Of course, if I'd been a boy--all this would be only a memory now, hardly shameful or regrettable even, dim and far away! Especially as it lasted only a few weeks, before I was sixteen! "And, of course, people would say that I haven't paid the full penalty, being a girl instead of a boy! Look at poor Tess, and Trilby, and Hetty in 'Adam Bede!' I never let any one know it; even your aunt never would have overlooked _that_, whatever she might say now. No; even Jim protected me--and yet," Julia put her head back, shut her eyes, "and yet I've paid a thousand times!" said she. There was a long silence, and then Richard said: "I've thought sometimes this might be it, Ju. Being alone so much, and reading and thinking--I've worked it out in my own mind. Aunt Sanna saw Jim in Berlin two years ago, you know, and gave him a horrible raking over the coals, and just from what she quoted, it seemed as if there was some secret about it, and that it lay with you. Then, of course," Richie eased his lame leg by stretching it at full length before him, sinking down in his chair, finger tips meeting, "of course I knew Jim," he resumed. "Jim's pride is his weak point. He's like a boy in that: he wants everything or nothing. He's like all my mother's children," said Richie, comfortably analytical, "undisciplined. Chill penury never repressed our noble rages; we never knew the sweet uses of adversity. I did, of course, but here I am, a childless getting on in years, not apt to leave a deep impression on the coming generation. It's a funny world, Julie! It's a strange sort of civilization to pose under the name of Christ. Christ had no double standard of morals; Christ forgave. Law is all very well, society has its uses, I have no doubt, but there are higher standards than either!" "Well, that has come to me forcibly during the past few years," Julia said thoughtfully. "I wasn't a praying small girl; how could I be? But after I went to The Alexander, being physically clean and respectable made me long to be clean all over, I suppose, and I began to go to church, and after a while I went to confession, Rich, and I felt made over, as if all the stain of it had slipped away! And then Jim came, and I told him all about it--" "Before you were married?" "Oh, Richie, of course!" "Well, then, what--if he knew--" "Oh, Richie, that's the terrible part. For I thought it was all dead and gone, and it _was_ all dead and gone as far as I was concerned! But we couldn't forget it--it suddenly seemed a live issue all over again; it just rose and stood between us, and I felt so helpless, and poor Jim, I think he was helpless, too!" Richard made no comment, and there was a silence. "You know Jim wasn't a--wasn't exactly a saint, Ju," Richard said awkwardly after a while. "I know," she answered with a quick nod. "I believe he was an exceptionally decent fellow, as fellows go," pursued Richie. "But, of course, it is the accepted thing. On Jim's first vacation, after he entered college, he told me he didn't care much for that sort of thing--we had a long talk about it. But a year or two later there was a young woman--he used to call her 'the little girl'--I don't know exactly--Anyway, Dad went East, there was some sort of a fuss, and I know Jim treated her awfully well--there never was any question of that--she never felt anything but gratitude to him, whatever grievances she had about any one else--" His voice dropped. "But it's not the same thing," Julia said with a sigh. "No, I suppose not," Richard agreed. "Life has been too violent and too swift with me," Julia resumed, after a while. "If I had the past fifteen years to live over again, I would live them very differently. I made an idol of Jim; he could do no wrong. He wanted more bracing treatment than that; he should have been boldly faced down. If I had been wiser, I would have treated all my marriage differently. If I had been very wise, I should not have married at all, should have kept my own secret. Perhaps, marrying, I should not have told him the truth; I don't know. Anyway, I have mixed things up hopelessly, given other people and myself an enormous amount of pain, and wrecked my life and Jim's. And now, when I am thirty, I feel as if I could begin to see light, begin to live--as if now, when nothing on earth seems really important, I knew how to meet life!" "Well, that's been my attitude for some years," Richie said, shifting his lame leg again. "Of course I started in handicapped, which is a great advantage--" "Advantage? Oh, Richie!" Julia protested. "Yes, it is, from one point of view," he insisted whimsically. "'Who loses his life,' you know. Most boys and girls start off into life like kites in a high wind without tails. There's a glorious dipping and plunging and sailing for a little while, and then down they come in a tangle of string and paper and broken wood. I had a tail to start with, some humiliating deficiency to keep me balanced. No football and tennis for me, no flirting and dancing and private theatricals. When Bab and Ned were in one whirl of good times, I was working out chess problems to make myself forget my hip, and reading Carlyle and Thoreau and Emerson. Nobody is born content, Ju, and nobody has it thrust upon him; just a few achieve it. I worked over the secret of happiness as if it was the multiplication table. Happiness is the best thing in the world. It's only a habit, and I've got it." "_Is_ happiness the best thing in the world, Rich?" Julia asked wistfully. "I think it is; real happiness, which doesn't necessarily mean a box at the Metropolitan and a touring car," Richie said, smiling. "It seems to me, to have a little house up here on the mountain, and to have people here like me, and let me take care of them--" "For nothing?" interposed Julia. "Don't you believe it! I didn't write a cheque last month! Anyway, it suits me. I have books, and letters, and a fire, and now and then a friend or two--and now and then Julia and Anna to amuse me!" "I'm happy, too," Julia said thoughtfully. "I realized it some time ago--oh, a year ago! I feel just as you might feel, Rich, if you had left some critical operation unfinished, or done in a wrong way, and then gone back to do it over. I feel as if, in going back to first principles, and doing what I could for my own people, I had 'trued' a part of my life, if you can understand that! I had gone climbing and blundering on, and reached a point where I couldn't help myself, but they were just where they started, and I _could_ help them!" "It was probably the best thing you could have done for yourself, at the same time," Richard interpolated, with a swift glance. "Oh, absolutely!" Julia laughed a little sadly. "I was like an animal that goes out and eats a weed: I had a wild instinct that if I rushed into my grandmother's house, and bullied everybody there, and simply shrieked and stamped on the dirt and laziness and complaining, on the whole wretched system that I grew up under, in short, that it would be a heavenly relief! My dear Richie," and Julia laughed again, and more naturally, "I wonder they didn't tar and feather me, and throw me out of the house! I scoured and burned and scolded and bossed them all like a madwoman. I told them that we had enough money to keep the house decently, and always had had, but, my dear! I never dreamed the whole crowd would fall in line so soon!" "But, my Lord, Julie, what else could they do? You were paying all the expenses, I suppose?" "No, indeed I wasn't! Chester has a pretty fair salary now, and my aunt's boys are awfully good about helping out. And then Muriel has a position, and Evelyn is in a fair way to be a rich woman. Besides, the mere question of where money is coming from never worried my people! They managed as well with almost nothing at all, as with a really adequate amount--which is to say that they don't know in the least what the word manage means! Jim left me an immense sum, Rich, but I've never touched anything but the interest. When we shingled or carpeted or gardened out there, we paid for it by degrees, and it cost, I must admit, only about one third of what it would have been on the other side of town. I look back now at those first months, more than four years ago," went on Julia, smiling as she leaned forward in her low chair, her hands locked about her knees, her thoughtful eyes on the flickering logs, "and I wonder we didn't all rise up in the night and kill each other. I was like a person with a death wound, struggling madly through the little time left me, absolutely indifferent to what any one thought. I simply wanted to die fighting, to register one furious protest against all the things I'd hated, and suffered, too! I remember reporters coming, at first, wild with curiosity to know what took Doctor Studdiford abroad, and why Mrs. Studdiford was living in a labourer's house in the Mission. What impression they got I haven't the faintest idea. Once or twice women called, just curious of course, Mrs. Hunter and Miss Saunders--but that soon stopped. I was better hidden on Shotwell Street than I would have been in the heart of India! Miss Saunders came in, and met Mama and Grandma; we were having the kitchen calcimined, the place was pretty well upset, I remember. Dear me, how little what they thought or did or said seemed to count, when my whole life was one blazing, agonizing cry for Jim!" "That got better?" Richard asked huskily, after a pause. "Rich, I think the past two, well, three years, have been the happiest in my life," Julia said soberly. "My feet have been on solid ground. I not only seem to understand my life better as it is, but all the past seems clearer, too. I thought Jim was like myself, Richie, but he wasn't; his whole viewpoint was different; perhaps that's why we loved each other so!" "And suppose he comes back?" Richard asked. Julia frowned thoughtfully. "Oh, Richie, how do I know! It's all so mixed up. Everybody, even Aunt Sanna, thinks that he will! Everybody thinks I am a patient, much-enduring wife, waiting for the end of an inexplicable situation. Aunt Sanna thinks it's temporary aberration. Your father thinks there's another woman in it. Your mother confided to Aunt Sanna that it is her opinion that Bab refused Jim, and Jim married from pique." "That sounds like Mother!" Richie said with a dry laugh. "Doesn't it?" Julia smiled. "But the truth is," she added, "Jim has no preconcerted plan. He's made a very close man friend or two in Germany, belongs to a doctors' club. I know him so well! He lets the days, and the weeks, and the years go by, forgetting me and everything that concerns me as much as he can, and getting into a slow, dull rage whenever he remembers that fate hit him, of all men in the world, such a blow!" "And the baby?" said Richie. "Don't you suppose she counts? Oh, Lord, to have a kid of one's own," he added slowly, with the half-smiling sigh Julia knew so well. "I imagine she would count if he had seen her lately," Julia suggested. "But she was such a tiny scrap! And Jim, as men go, isn't a lover of children." "You wouldn't divorce him, Julie?" Richard asked, after a silence. "Oh, never!" she answered quickly. "No, I won't do that." She smiled. "Yet, Rich," she added presently, "it's a strange thing to me that really my one dread is that he will come back. I _think_ he means nothing to me, yet, if I saw him--I don't know! Sometimes I worry for fear that he might want Anna, and of course I wouldn't give her up if it meant a dozen divorces." Richard sat staring into the fire for a few moments; then he roused himself to ask smilingly: "How'd we get started on this little heart to heart, anyway?" "Well, I don't know," Julia said, smiling, too. "I couldn't talk of it for a long while. I can't now, to any one but you. But it all means less to me than it did. Jim never could hurt me now as he did then." She straightened up in her chair. "It's been a wonderful talk!" she said, with shining eyes. "And you're a friend in a million, Richie, dear! And now," very practically, "where are you going to sleep, my dear? Aunt Sanna has your room." "This couch out here is made up!" Richard said, with a backward jerk of his head toward the room behind him. "Ah, then you're all right!" Julia rose, and stopped behind his chair for a moment, to lay a light kiss on his hair. "Good-night, Little Brother!" she said affectionately. Instantly one of the bony hands shot out, and Julia felt her wrist caught as in a vise. Richard swiftly twisted about and got on his own feet, and for a minute their eyes glittered not many inches apart. Julia tried to laugh, but she was breathing fast. "_Richard_!" she said in a sharp whisper. "What is it?" "Julia!" he choked, breathing hard. For a long moment they remained motionless, staring at each other. Then Richard's grip on her wrists relaxed, and he sank into his deep chair, dropped his elbows on his knees, and put his hands over his face. Julia stood watching him for a second. "Good-night, Richie!" she said then, almost inaudibly. "Good-night!" he whispered through his shut fingers. Julia slipped softly away, closing the door of her bedroom noiselessly behind her. Anna was asleep in the upper bed, lying flat on her back, with her lovely hair falling loosely about her flushed little face. The little cabin bedroom was as sweet as the surrounding woodland, wide-open windows admitted the fragrant coolness of the spring night. There was no moon, but the sky that arched high above the little valley was thickly spattered with stars. Richie's cat, a shadow among paler shadows, leaped swiftly over the new grass. Julia got the milky odour of buttercups, the breath of the little Persian lilac that flanked one end of the porch. Her heart was beating thickly and excitedly, she did not want to think why. Through her brain swept a confusion of thoughts, thoughts disconnected and chaotic. She tried to remember just what words on her part--on Richard's--had led to that strange mad moment of revelation, but the memory of the moment itself overleaped all those preceding it. Julia knelt, her elbows on the window sill, and felt merely that she never wanted to move again. She wanted just to kneel here, hugging to her heart the thrilling emotion of the moment, realizing afresh that life was not dead in her; youth and love were not dead in her; she could still tremble and laugh and cry in the exquisite joy of being beloved. And it was Richie, so weak in body, so powerful in spirit; so humble in little things, so bold and sure in the things that are great; not rich in money, but rich in wisdom and goodness; Richie, who knew all her pitiful history now, and had long suspected it, who loved her! Julia knew even now that it was an ill-fated love; she knew that deep under this first strangely thrilling current of pride and joy ran the cold waters of renunciation. But cool reason had little to do with this mood; she was as mad as any girl whose senses are suddenly, blindly, set free by a lover's first kiss. After a while she began mechanically to undress, brushed her hair, moved about softly in the uncertain candlelight. And as she did so she became more and more unable to resist the temptation to say "Good-night" to Richie again. Neither brain nor heart was deeply involved in this desire, but some influence, stronger than either, urged her irresistibly toward its fulfilment. She would not do it, of course! Not that there was harm in it; what possible harm could there be in her putting her head into the sitting-room and simply saying "Good-night?" Still, she would not do it. A glance at herself in the dimly lighted mirror set her pulses to leaping again. Surely candlelight had never fallen on a more exquisite face, framed in so shining and soft an aureole of bright hair. The long loose braid fell over her shoulder, a fine ruffle of thin linen lay at the round firm base of her throat. She was still young--still beautiful-- Anna stirred, sighed in her sleep. And instantly Julia had extinguished the candle, and was bending tenderly over the child. "It's only Mother, Sweet! Are you warm enough, dear? You _feel_ beautifully warm! Let Mother turn you over--so!" "Is it morning, Mother?" murmured Anna. "No, my heart! Mother's just going to bed." And ten minutes later Julia was asleep, her face as serene as the child's own. The morning brought her only a shamed memory of the night before and its moods, and as Richie was quite his natural self, Julia determined to dismiss the matter as a passing moment of misinterpreted sentiment on both their parts. To-day was a Sunday, so perfect that they had breakfast on the porch, and in the afternoon took a long climb on the mountainside, across patches of blossoming manzanita, and through meadows sweet with the liquid note of rising larks. They came back in the twilight: Anna limp and drowsy on Richard's shoulders, Miss Toland admitting to fatigue, but all three ready to agree with Julia's estimate that it had been a wonderful Sunday. But night brought to two of them that new and strange self-consciousness that each had been secretly dreading all day. Julia fought it as she might have fought the oncoming of a physical ill, yet inexorably it arrived. Supper was an ordeal, she found speech difficult, she could hardly raise her eyes. "Julie, you're as rosy as a little gipsy," said Miss Toland approvingly. "Doesn't colour become her, Rich?" "She looks fine," Richard muttered, almost inarticulately. Julia looked up only long enough to give Miss Toland a pained and fluttering smile. She was glad of an excuse to disappear with Anna, when the little girl's bedtime arrived, and lingered so long in the bedroom that Miss Toland came and rapped on the door. "Julia! What _are_ you doing?" called the older woman impatiently. Julia came to the door. "Why, I'm so tired, Aunt Sanna," she began smilingly. "Tired, nonsense!" Miss Toland said roundly. "Come sit on the porch with Richie and me. It's like summer out of doors, and there'll be a moon!" So Julia went to take her place on the porch steps, with a great curved branch of the white rose arching over her head, and the fragrant stretch of the grassy hilltop sloping away, at her feet, to the valley far below. Miss Toland dozed, and the younger people talked a little, and were silent for long spaces between the little casual sentences that to-night seemed so full of meaning. The next day Julia went home, to Miss Toland's disgust and to little Anna's sorrow. Richie drove Julia and the little girl to the train; there was no explanation needed between them; at parting they looked straight into each other's eyes. "Ask us to come again some day," Julia said. "Not too soon, but as soon as you can. And don't let us ever feel that we've done anything that will hurt or distress you, Richie." "You and Anna are both angels," Richard answered. "Only tell me that you forgive me, Julie; that things after this will be just as they were before?" Julia smiled, and bit a thoughtful under lip. "This is March," she said. "We'll come and see you, let me see--in July, and everything shall be just as it was before! Perhaps I am really getting old," she said to herself, half laughing and half sad, when she was in her own kitchen an hour or two later. "But, while home is not exciting, somehow I'd rather be here than philandering on the mountain in the moonlight with Richie!" "What you smiling about, Julie?" her mother asked, from the peaceful east side of the kitchen where her chair frequently stood while Julia and Mrs. Torney were busy in that cheerful apartment. "Just thinking it was nice to be home again, Mama!" "I don't hold much with visiting, myself," said Mrs. Torney, who was becoming something of a philosopher as she went into old age. "But you can't get that through a young one's skull!" she added, trimming the dangling pastry from a pie with masterly strokes of her knife. "Either you have such a good time that your own home is spoiled for you, for dear knows how long, or else you set around wondering why on earth you ever come. And then you've got to have the folks back to visit you, and wear yourself all out talking like all possessed while you cook for 'em and make their beds. I don't never feel clean when I've washed my face away from home anyway, and I like my own bed under me. You couldn't get me to visit anywheres now, if it was the Queen of Spain ast me!" Julia laughed out merrily, and agreed with her aunt, glad to have left the episode with Richie behind her. But it haunted her for many days, nevertheless, rising like a disturbing mist between her and her calm self-confidence, and shaking her contented conviction that the renunciations necessary to her peace of mind had all been made. She found fresh reason to gird herself in circumspection and silence, and brooded, a little in discouragement, upon the incessantly recurring problems of her life. She went to visit the cabin on Tamalpais earlier even than she had promised, however, for in June Barbara came home for a visit, bringing two splendid little boys, with whom Anna fell instantly in love, and a tiny baby in the care of a nurse. Julia spent a good deal of her time in Sausalito during the visit, and more than once she and Barbara took the four children to Mill Valley, and spent a few days with Richie, quite as happy as the boys and Anna were in the free country life. Five years of marriage had somewhat changed Barbara; she was thinner, and freckled rather than rosy, and she wore her thick dark hair in a fashion Julia did not very much admire. Also she seemed to care less for dress than she once had done, even though what she wore was always the handsomest of its kind. But she was an eagerly admiring and most devoted wife, calmly assuming that the bronzed and silent "Francis" could do no wrong, and Julia thought she had never seen a more charming and conscientious mother. Barbara, whose husband's uncle was a lord, who had been presented at the English court, and whose mail was peppered with coats-of-arms, nursed her infant proudly and publicly, and was heard to mention to old friends--not always women either--social events that had occurred "just before Geordie came" or "when I was expecting Arthur." Her rather thin face would brighten to its old beauty when Geordie and Arthur, stamping in, bare kneed and glowing, recounted to her the joys of Sausalito, and in evening dress she was quite magnificent, and somehow seemed more at ease than American women ever do. Her efficiency left even the capable Julia gasping and outdistanced. Barbara was equal to every claim husband, children, family, and friends could make. She came down to an eight o'clock breakfast, a chattering little son on each side of her, announcing briskly that the tiny Malcolm had already had his bath. She started the little people on the day's orderly round of work and play while opening letters and chatting with her father; earned the housemaid's eternal affection by personally dusting the big drawing-room and replacing the flowers; answered the telephone in her pleasantly modulated voice; faced her husband during his ten o'clock breakfast, and discussed the foreign news with him in a manner Julia thought extraordinarily clever; and at eleven came with the baby into her mother's sunny morning-room for a little feminine gossip over Malcolm's second breakfast. Barbara never left a note unanswered, no old friend was neglected; tea hour always found the shady side porch full of callers, children strayed from the candy on the centre table to the cakes near the teapot, the doctor's collie lay panting in the doorway. Barbara's rich soft laugh, the new tones that her voice had gained in the past years, somehow dominated everything. Julia felt a vague new restlessness and discontent assail her at this contact with Barbara's full and happy life. Perhaps Barbara suspected it, for her generous inclusion of Julia, when plans of any sort were afoot, knew no limit. She won Anna's little heart with a thousand affectionate advances; loved to have the glowing beauty of the little girl as a foil for her own dark-haired boys. "You're so busy--and necessary--and unself-conscious, Barbara," Julia said, "you make other women seem such fools!" It was a heavenly July afternoon, and the two were following Richie and the children down one of the mountain roads above Mill Valley. Barbara, who had acquired an Englishwoman's love of nursery picnics, had lured her husband to join them to-day, and Julia had been pleasantly surprised to see how fatherly the Captain was with his small boys, how willing to go for water and tie dragging little shoe laces. But presently the soldier grew restless, stared about him for a few moments, and finally decided to leave the ladies and children to Richie's escort, and walk to the summit of the mountain and back, as a means of working off some excess of energy and gaining an appetite for dinner. He apparently did not hear Barbara's warning not to be late, and her entreaty to be careful, merely giving her a stolid glance in answer to these eager suggestions, and remarking to the boys, who begged to accompany him a little way: "Naow, naow, I tell you you carn't, so don't make little arsses of yourselves blabbering abaout it!" This, however, was taken in good part by his family; there was much waving of hands and many shouted good wishes as he walked rapidly out of hearing. "Poor Francis, I hope he's going to enjoy his walk," Barbara said, as they started homeward. "He gets so bored out here in California!" "I wonder why?" Julia said, hiding a Californian's resentment. "Oh, well, it _is_ different, Ju--you can't deny it! One wants to be loyal, and all that," Barbara said, "but in England there's a _purpose_--there's a recognized order to life! They're not eternally experimenting; they don't want to be idle and ignorant like our women--they've got better things to do. There's a finish and a pleasantness about life in London; men have more leisure to take an interest in women's work; why, you've no idea how many interesting, clever, charming men I know in London! How many does one know here? And as for the _women_--" It was then Julia said: "Ah, well, you're different from other women. You're so busy--and necessary--and unself-conscious, Barbara. You make other women seem such fools!" "Not necessarily," said Barbara, smiling. "And don't think I'm horribly conceited, Julia, talking this way. It's only to you!" They walked a little way without speaking, and then Barbara sat down on a low bank, some quarter of a mile above Richie's cabin, and added: "Do sit down, Ju. You and I are never alone, and I want to talk to you. Julie, don't be angry--it's about Jim." Julia's eyes immediately widened, her lips met firmly, she grew a little pale. "Go ahead," she said steadily. "Have you seen him?" Barbara answered the question with another. "You knew he was in London?" "No," said Julia, "I didn't know it." She had remained standing, and now Barbara urged her again to sit down. But Julia would not, pleading that she would rather walk, and in the end Barbara got up, and they began slowly to walk down the road together. "Tell me," Julia commanded then. "Now, dearest girl," Barbara pleaded, "_Please_ don't get excited over nothing. Jim's been in London nearly a year; in fact, he's settled there. He's associated with one of the biggest consulting surgeons we have, old Sir Peveril McCann. They met in Berlin. I didn't know it until this spring--March it was. We'd just come up from the country to meet Francis, home on a year's leave; it was just before Malcolm arrived. Somebody spoke of this Doctor Studdiford, and I said at once that it must be my foster brother. I explained as well as I could that since Francis and I had been travelling so much, Jim and I had fallen out of touch, and so on." "Who told you about him?" Julia asked. "A Mrs. Chancellor. She's quite a character," Barbara said. "Some people like her; some don't. I don't--much. She's rich, and a widow; she studies art, and she loves to get hold of interesting people." Julia winced at the vision of a plump, forty-year-old siren sending coquettish side glances at an admiring Jim. Anger stirred dully within her. "Pretty?" she asked, in as nonchalant a voice as she could command. "Ivy Chancellor? No--she's really plain," Barbara said, "a sandy, excitable little chatterbox, that's what _she_ is! She's Lady Violet Dray's daughter; Lady Violet's quite lovely. How much Jim admires Ivy I can't say; she took him about with her everywhere; he was always at the house." This was too much. Julia felt the friendly earth sway under her, a dry salty taste was in her mouth, a very hurricane of resentment shook her heart. "Oh, Barbara, do you see how he _can_?" she asked, in a stricken voice. "No, I don't!" Barbara answered, with a concerned glance at Julia's white face. "Well, as I know him, I can't believe it's the same Jim!" "I wish you had seen him," Julia said, after an interval of thought. Barbara said nothing for a few moments, then she confessed suddenly: "I _did_ see him, Julie." "You did? Oh, Bab, and you never told me all this time!" "Well, Mother and Aunt Sanna begged me not to, Ju, and Francis was most emphatic about it," Barbara pleaded. "Aunt Sanna--and Francis! But--" Julia's keen eyes read Barbara's face like an open page. "Then there was more to it!" she declared. "For they couldn't have minded my knowing just this!" "I wish I had never mentioned Jim," Barbara said heartily. "It's none of my business, anyway, only--only--it makes me so unhappy I just can't bear it! I simply can't bear it!" And to Julia's astonishment, Barbara, who rarely showed emotion, fumbled for her handkerchief and began to cry. "I love Jim," pursued Barbara, with that refreshed vehemence that follows a brief interval of tears. "And you're just as dear to me as my own sisters--dearer! And I can't _bear_ to have you and that _darling_ baby here alone, and Jim off in trailing around after a little _fool_ like Ivy Chancellor! I can't bear it," said Barbara, drying her eyes, which threatened to overflow again. "It's monstrous! You're--you're wonderful, of course, Julie, but you can't make me think you're happy! And Jim is _wretched_. I've known him since I was a baby, and he can't fool _me_! He can bluff about his work and his club and all that as long as he pleases! But he can't fool _me_; I know he's utterly miserable." "And you saw him?" Julia asked. They were in a little strip of woods just above Richard's cabin now, and Julia seated herself on the low-hanging branch of an oak. Her face, as she turned to Barbara, was full of resolute command. "Sit down, Bab," she said, indicating a thick fallen log a few feet away. "Tell me all about it." "Francis would strangle me," Barbara murmured, seating herself nevertheless. "And there isn't very much to it, anyway," she added, with a bright air of candour. "I wrote Jim a line, and he came to our house in Ludbroke Road, and we had a little talk. He's fatter. He was awfully interested in some knee-cap operation--" "Babbie!" Julia reproached her. "And we talked about everything," Barbara hastened to say. "Me?" Julia asked flatly. "A little," Barbara admitted. "I had nurse bring the boys in--" "Oh, Barbara, for God's sake tell me!" Julia said, in an agonized burst. "Oh, Julie--if only I'm doing the right thing!" Barbara answered in distress. "This _is_ the right thing," Julia assured her. "This is my affair." "Francis and Mother--" Barbara began again, hesitatingly. But immediately she dismissed the doubts with a shake of her head, and suddenly assuming a confident air, she began: "I'll tell you exactly what happened, Ju. Jim came one afternoon; I was all alone, and we had tea. He's very much changed, Ju. He's harder, in some way, and--well, changed. Jim never used to be able to conceal his feelings, you know, but now--why, one feels that he's dissembling all the time! He was so friendly, and cheerful, and interested--and yet--There was something all wrong. He didn't exactly _evade_ the subject of you and Anna, but he just said 'Yes?' or 'No?' when I talked of you--" "I know exactly how," Julia said, wincing at some memory. "I touched him on the quick finally," Barbara pursued; "something I said about you made him colour up, that brick-red colour of his--" "I know!" Julia said quickly again. "But, Julia," Barbara added earnestly, "you've no _idea_ how hard it was! I told him how grieved and troubled we all were by this silence between you, and I went and got that snapshot Rich took of Anna, you know, the one with the collies. Well, way in the back of that picture you were snapped, too, the tiniest little figure, for you were way down by the road, and Anna close to the porch. But, my dear, he hardly glanced at Anna; he said in a quick, hushed sort of voice, 'What's she in black for?' Then I saw your picture for the first time, and said, 'Why, that must be Julia!' 'Certainly, it's Julia,' he said. I told him your grandmother had died, and he said, 'But she's still needed there, is she?' That was the first sign of _anything_ like naturalness. And, oh, Ju, if only it had happened that Francis didn't come in then! But he did, starving for his tea, and wondering who on earth the man that I was sitting in the dark with was--it was so unfortunate! You know Francis thinks we've all spoiled Jim, always, and he looked right over him. I said, 'Francis, you remember my brother?' and Francis said, with a really insulting accent, 'Perfectly!' Jim said something about liking London and hoping to settle there, and Francis said, 'Studdiford, I'm glad you've come to see my wife, and I hope the affection you two have felt for years won't be hurt by what I say. But I admire your own wife very deeply, and you've put her in a most equivocal and humiliating position. I can't pretend that I hope you'll settle here; you've caused the people who love you sufficient distress as it is. I don't see that your staying here is going to make anything any easier, while things are as they are in California!' My dear," said Barbara with a sigh, "Francis gets that way sometimes; English people do--there seems to be a sort of moral obligation upon them to say what's true, no matter how outrageously rude it sounds!" "I had no idea Captain Fox felt that way," Julia said, touched. "Oh, my dear! He's one of your warmest admirers. Well," Barbara went on, "of course Jim ruffled up like a turkey cock. I didn't dare say anything, and Francis, having done his worst, was really pretty fair. Luckily, some other people came in, and later I went with Jim to the nursery. Then he said to me, 'Do you think Julia's position is equivocal, Bab?' And I said, 'Jim, I never knew any one to care so little for public opinion as Julia. But all the rumour and gossip, the unexplained mystery of it, are very, very hard for her.' I said, 'Jim, aren't you going back?' and he said, 'Never.' Then he said, 'I think Francis is right. This way is neither one thing nor the other. It ought to be settled. Not,' he said, 'that I want to marry again!' I said, 'Jim, you _couldn't_ marry again, don't talk that way!' He said something about my clinging to old ideas, and I said, 'Jim, don't tell me you have given up your faith?' He said, very airily, 'I'm not telling you anything, my dear girl, but if the law will set me free, perhaps that's the best way of silencing Francis's remarks about Julia's equivocal position!'" Julia was silent for a while, staring beyond Barbara, her eyes like those of a sick person, her face ashen. Barbara began to feel frightened. "So that's it," Julia said finally, in a tired, cold voice. "Ju--it's too dreadful to hurt you this way!" Barbara said. "But that's not all. The only reason I told you all this was because Jim may be coming home; he may come on in October, and want to see you. Francis thinks--But it seems too cruel to let him come on and take you by surprise!" "Oh, my God!" said Julia, in a low, tense tone, "what utter wreck I have made of my life! Why is it," she said, springing up and beginning to walk again, "why is it that I am so helpless, why must I sit still and let the soul be torn out of my body! My child must grow up fatherless--under a cloud--" "Julie! Julie!" Barbara begged, wild with anxiety, as she kept pace beside Julia on the dry brown grass. "Dearest, don't, or you'll make me feel terribly for having told you!" "Oh, no--no," Julia said, suddenly calm and weary. "You had to tell me!" The two walked slowly on for a moment, in silence, then Julia added passionately: "Oh, what a wretched, miserable business! Oh, Bab, why do I simply have to go from one agony to another? I'm so tired of being unhappy; I'm so wretched!" Her voice fell, the fire went out of her tone. "I'm tired," she said, in a voice that seemed to Barbara curiously in keeping with the flat, toneless summer twilight, the dull brown hills, the darkening sky, the dry slippery grass over which a cool swift breeze was beginning to wander. "If Anna and I could only run away from it all!" said Julia sombrely. "Julie, just one thing." Barbara hesitated. "Shall you see Jim?" Julia paused, and their eyes met in the gloom. Barbara thought she had never seen anything more marked than the tragic intensity of the other woman's face. Julia might have been a young priestess, the problems of the world on her shoulders. "That I can't say, Bab," she answered thoughtfully. And a moment later they reached the cabin, and were welcomed by Richie and the children. CHAPTER VIII It was in late September that the mail brought her a note from Jim. Julia's heart felt a second of paralyzing cramp as she put her hand on the letter; she read its dozen lines in a haze of dancing light; the letters seemed to swim together. Jim wrote that he was at home for a few days, and was most anxious to see her, and to have a talk that would be of advantage to them both. For obvious reasons, her home was not suitable; would she suggest a time and place? He was always hers faithfully, James Studdiford. Anna, glowing and delicious, was leaning against Julia's shoulder as Julia read and reread the little document. The mother looked down obliquely at the little rose-leaf face, the blue, blue eyes, the fresh, firm, baby mouth. "When I am a grown-up girl," Anna said, with her sweet, mysterious smile, "I shall have letters, and I will write answers, and write the envelopes, too! And I'll write you letters, Mother, when you go 'way and leave me with Grandma!" "Will you?" asked Julia, rubbing the child's soft cheek with her own. "Every day!" Anna said. "Who's writing you with that cunning little owl on the paper, Mother?" "That's the Bohemian Club owl," Julia evaded, giving Anna only one fair look at him before she closed the letter. She went to her desk, and swiftly, unhesitatingly, wrote her reply. Jim must excuse her, she could not see the advantage of their meeting, she would much prefer not to see him. Briskly rubbing her blotter over the flap of the sealed envelope, she had a vision of him, interrupting his evening of talk with old friends to scratch off the note to her, and felt that she detested him. An unhappy week followed, in which Julia had time to feel that almost any consequences would have been easier to bear than the unassailable wall of silence and misgiving and doubt that hemmed her in. Constant nervous terrors weakened her spiritually and bodily, and she could not bear to have Anna for one moment out of her sight. Mrs. Page and Mrs. Torney saw notice in the papers of Jim's return, and suspected the cause of this new agitation in Julia, but neither dared attempt to force her confidence. "Men are the limit!" said Mrs. Torney to her sister, one day when they were sitting together in the kitchen. "As I've said before, it's a great pity there ain't nothing else to do but marry, and nothing to marry but men! It's awful to think of the hundreds of women who spend their happiest hours going about doing the housework, and planning just what they'd do if their husbands was to be taken off suddenly! Some girls can set around until they're blue moulded, and never a feller to ask 'em, and others the boys'll fret and pleg until they're fit to be tied, with nerves! Evvy you couldn't marry off if she was Cleopatra on the Nile, and poor Julia could hang smallpox flags all over her, and every man in the place'd want her jest the same! He wants her back, you see if he doesn't!" "I don't know that he does," said Emeline, knitting needles flashing slowly in her crippled fingers. "Maybe that's the trouble." "What'd he come on for, then?" demanded Mrs. Torney. "Jest showing off, is he? Or is it another woman? The only difference between men reely seems to be that some wear baggy pants and own up to being sultans, and others don't!" She spread her fingers inside the stocking she was darning, and eyed it severely. "The idea of a man with a five-year-old girl sashaying round the country this way is ridiculous, to begin with," said she indignantly. "Has Ju seen him?" asked Mrs. Page. "No, I'm pretty sure she hasn't," Mrs. Torney answered. "She acks more like she was afraid to, than like she ackshally had. She'd be real relieved to start fighting, but just now she's like a hen that gets its chickens under its wings, and looks up and round and about, and don't know whether it's a hawk or a fox or a man with a knife that's after her!" "I don't believe Julie hates him," said her mother. "I think she'd go back to him, if only for Anna's sake--if it seemed best for Anna." "For that matter, she'd go keep house for the gorilla at the Chutes if it seemed best for Anna!" Mrs. Torney concluded sagely. It was only a day or two later that the telephone rang, and Julia, answering it, as she always did now, with chill foreboding in her heart, heard Barbara's voice. "Julie, dear, is it you? Darling, we want you right away. It's Dad, Julie--he's terribly ill!" Barbara's voice broke. "He's terribly ill!" "What is it?" Julia asked, tense and pale. "Oh, we don't know!" Barbara gasped. "Julie--we--and Mother's quite wonderful! Con's coming right away, Janey's here, and we've wired Ted." "Barbara, is it as bad as that?" "I'm afraid so!" And again tears choked Barbara. "Of course we don't know. He fell, right here in the garden. Think if he'd been on the road, Julie, or in the street. That was the first thing Mother said. Mother's too wonderful! Richie was here, they carried him in. And he wrote Con's and Ted's and your name on a piece of paper. We saw he was trying to say something, and gave him the paper, and that's what he wrote! And Aunt Sanna in New York!" Stricken, and beginning to realize for the first time what an empty place would be left in the Sausalito group when the kindly old doctor was gone, Julia hastily dressed herself for the hurried trip. She must see Jim now; there was a sort of dramatic satisfaction in the thought that he must know the accident of their meeting at last to be none of her contriving. And she would see Richie, too; her heart fluttered at the thought. She sat on the boat, dreamily watching the gray water rush by, dreamily ready for whatever might come. The day was dull and soft; boat whistles droned all about them on the bay; from Alcatraz, shouldering through an enveloping fog, came the steady ringing of a brass gong. Long drifts of fog had crept under the trees in the Toland garden, the rose bushes were beaded with fine mist, the eaves dripped steadily. Julia began to be shaken with nervous anticipation of the moment when she must meet Jim. Would he meet her at the door, or would they deliberately arrange--these loyal brothers and sisters--that the dreaded moment should not come until they were all about her? She gave a quick nervous glance about the big hallway when a tearful maid admitted her. But it was only Barbara who came forward, and Barbara's first word was that Jim and Richie were not there; Dad had sent both on errands. "His mind is absolutely clear," said Barbara shakenly. She herself was waiting for an important telephone call, and occasionally pressing a folded handkerchief to her eyes. The two women kissed, with sudden tears on both sides, before Julia went noiselessly upstairs. Constance and Theodora were in their mother's room, Mrs. Toland with them. The mother had been crying, and was now only trying to muster sufficient self-control to reenter the sickroom without giving the beloved patient alarm. Julia's entrance was the signal for fresh tears; but they all presently brightened a little, too, and Julia persuaded Mrs. Toland to drink a cup of hot soup, "the very first thing she's touched all day!" said all the girls fondly. Only Janey was with the invalid when Julia went into the sickroom, a silent, white-faced Janey, who stared at Julia with sombre eyes. The doctor lay high in pillows, looking oddly boyish in his white nightgown in spite of his gray hair. A fire flickered in the old-fashioned polished iron grate; outside the window twilight and the fog were mingling. The room had some unfamiliar quality of ordered emptiness already, as if life's highway must be cleared for the coming of the great Destroyer. Julia knelt down by the bed and laid her hand over the old man's hand. To her surprise he opened his eyes. They moved from her face to the clock on the mantel, as if he had lost count of time, and had not expected her so soon. "How are you, Dad?" she said, with infinite tenderness. "He's better," Janey answered. "Aren't you, darling? You _look_ better!" The doctor's look, with its old benevolent twinkle, went from one girl's face to the other. "Know--too--much!" he said, with difficulty, in his eyes the innocent triumph of the child who will not be deceived. Quite unexpectedly, Julia felt her lip tremble, tears brimmed her eyes. The invalid saw them, felt one drop hot on his hand. "No--no--no!" he said, with pitying gentleness. And, with great effort, he added, "Seen--Jimmy?" "Not yet," stammered Julia, shaken to her very soul. The doctor shut his eyes, his fingers still clinging to Julia's. After perhaps two full minutes of silence, he whispered: "Be good to Jimmy, Julia! Be good to him." Julia could not answer. Barbara found her, in her own room, half an hour later, crying bitterly. It was then quite dark. The two had a long talk, ended only when Constance came flying in. Dad seemed better, much brighter, was asking for Richie, wanted to know if Ned had come. Constance and Barbara went back to the sickroom, and Julia went downstairs to find them. She entered the almost dark library, where Richie and Ned were sitting before the fire. There was some one with them; Julia knew in an instant who it was. Her heart began to hammer, her breath failed her. A murmur of friendly low voices ended with her entrance; the three dim forms rose in the gloom. "Con?" asked Richie. Julia touched a wall switch, and the great lamp on the centre table bloomed into sudden light. "No, it's Julia--they want you, Rich," she said, "and you, too, Ned. Con says he's much brighter. He asked for you both." "Hello, dear, I didn't know you were here," Richie said affectionately, kindly eyes on her face. "But you mustn't cry, Ju!" he added gently. "I--I saw him," Julia said, mingled emotions making speech almost impossible. "Isn't there _any_ hope, Richie?" "None at all," Jim said, leaving the fireplace to quietly join Julia and Richie at the centre table. The unforgotten voice! Every fibre in Julia's body thrilled to mortal shock. She rallied her courage and endurance sternly; she must not betray herself. Anger helped her, for she knew him well enough to know that the situation for him was not devoid of a certain artistic enjoyment. "Yes, it may come to-night, it may come to-morrow," Richie assented sorrowfully. "But it's the end, I'm afraid!" Julia clung to his arm; never had Richie seemed so dear and good to her. "Your mother will die of it, Rich," she said, to say something. The room seemed to her shouting with Jim's presence; she kept her eyes on Richie's face. Ned, never more than an overgrown boy, put his face in his hands and began to sob. "Sh--h!" Jim warned them. Mrs. Toland came in. "He's better--he wants to see you boys!" she said, tremulously happy. Her eyes went from face to face. "Why, what's the matter?" she demanded. "You don't think it's--do you, Richie? Do you, Jim?" Richie merely flung up his head and set his lips. Jim put one arm around her. "He's pretty ill, dear," he said gently, and Julia found his smooth tenderness infinitely less bearable than Richie's bluntness. "Why, but what are you talking about--what do you mean--I don't know what you mean!" Mrs. Toland said bewilderedly. "Doctor Barr has gone home, Richie; he said he wouldn't come back unless we sent for him!" No one answered her, and as her pitiful look went from Julia's grave face to Richard's sorrowful one, from Ned's despairing figure by the fire to Jim's troubled look, terror seemed to seize her. Her pretty middle-aged face wrinkled; she began to cry bitterly. Julia put her in a deep chair, knelt before her, trying rather to calm than to comfort her, and after a while so far succeeded that she could take the poor shaken old lady upstairs. She did not glance again at Jim, although he opened the door for them, and tried his best to catch her eye. Between five and six o'clock he was summoned to the sickroom. They were all there: the girls on their knees, Richard kneeling by his father, his fingers on the failing pulse. Mrs. Toland was seated, Julia kneeling beside her, holding both her cold hands. A sound of subdued sobbing filled the air; no sound came from the dying man except when a fluttering breath raised his chest. His eyes were shut; he appeared to be sleeping. The clock on the mantel struck six, and as if roused, Doctor Toland stirred a little, and whispered, "Janey!" Poor Janey's head went down against the white counterpane; she never dreamed that the little-girl aunt, dead fifty years ago, with apple cheeks under a slatted sun-bonnet, and more apples in her lunch bag, had come in a vision of old orchard and sun-bathed river, to put her warm little hand in her brother's again, and lead him home. And before the clock struck again, Robert Toland, with not even a twitch of his kind old face, went smiling away from earth in a dream of childhood, and Richie, with a finger on the silent pulse, and Jim, with a hand on the silent heart, had said together: "Gone!" An hour later Jim, standing thoughtful at an upper window, looked down to see Richie bring the runabout to the front door. Down the steps came Barbara, bare headed, and Julia, in her wide black hat and flying veil. The three talked for a few moments together, the light from the open hall door falling on their faces; then Julia got into the car. She leaned out to say some last word to Barbara, her face composed and sweetly grave, then turned to Richie, and they were gone. Jim would have found it difficult to analyze his own emotion. Something in that look toward Barbara, so brave and quiet, so bright with some inward serenity, stirred his heart. He went downstairs to meet Barbara in the hall. "Where's Rich?" asked Jim, in the hushed voice that had supplanted all the usual noise and gayety of the house. "He'll be right back," Barbara said apathetically. "He's driving Julie to the boat." For some reason Jim's heart sank. He had supposed them as performing only some village errand, at the florist's, the drug store, or the post office. A certain blank fell upon his spirits; Julia had her grievance, of course, but she seemed singularly indifferent to the--well, the appearances of things! But Julia, alone on the boat, could have laughed in the joy of escape, in the new sense of freedom on which she seemed to float. Above all her sympathy for the family she so deeply loved, and above the sorrow of her own very real personal loss, rose the intoxicating conviction that Jim's sway over heart and soul was gone; he was no longer godlike; no longer mysteriously powerful to hurt or to enchant her; he was just a handsome man nearing forty, not particularly interesting, not noticeably magnetic, not remarkable in any way. She caught the welcoming Anna to her heart when she reached the Shotwell Street house, telling her sad news to the others over the child's little shoulder. But the kisses she gave her daughter were inspired by joy instead of sorrow, and Julia lay down to sleep that night with a new content, and slept as she had not slept for months. With a confidence amounting almost to indifference she faced Jim on the day of the old doctor's funeral, her beauty absolutely startling in its setting of demure black veil and trailing sombre garments. Jim watched her, some curious emotion that was compounded of resentment and jealousy and astonishment darkening his face. So dignified, so poised, so strangely, hauntingly lovely she seemed, so much in demand and so quietly equal to all demands. Jim flattered his vanity for a while with the assurance that she was trying to impress as well as evade him, but could not long preserve the illusion; there was no acting there. "Julia," he said, when they were all at home again after the funeral, "I want to see you alone for a few moments, if I may?" Julia was in the dining-room, busy with a great sheaf of letters. She gave a quick glance at the chair which Barbara had filled only a moment ago, as if realizing for the first time that she had been left alone. "What is it?" she asked, dryly and unencouragingly. Jim sat down, leaned back, folded his arms, and looked at her steadily, in a manner that might have been confusing. But Julia went on serenely opening, reading, and listing her letters. "I want to ask how you are getting on, Julie," said Jim at last, in a hurt tone. "I want to know if there is anything in the world I can do for you?" "Nothing, thank you!" Julia said pleasantly. "Financially, I am very comfortable. You left me I don't know how many thousands in the Crocker. I've never had one second's worry on that score, even though I've never touched the capital--as you can easily find out." "My dear girl, do you think for one second I doubt you!" Jim said uncomfortably. "You've been perfectly wonderful to do it, only you must have scrimped yourself! But it wasn't about that. Surely, Julia, you and I have things more important to say to each other," he added reproachfully. "I don't know what's more important than money," she assured him whimsically. "Of course I didn't want to use it at all; I should have preferred to be self-supporting at any cost," she went on. "But there was Anna and Mama to consider. And more than that, there was your name, Jim; I didn't want to start every one talking of the straits to which your wife had been reduced." "Oh, for God's sake!" Jim growled. "Don't let's talk of money." "That was all I meant to say," Julia said politely. "Is Mother lying down?" she added naturally. Jim jerked his whole body impatiently. "I think she is!" he snapped. Julia opened a letter. "Isn't that a pretty hand?" she asked. "English--it's Mrs. Lawrence, the Consul's wife. What pretty hands English people write!" "You've changed very much," Jim observed, after a sulphurous silence. "I have?" Julia asked naively. "In what way?" "Why didn't you want to see me?" "Oh--" Julia laid the letter down, and for the first time gave him her full attention. "I've changed my mind about that, Jim," she said frankly. "I thought at first that it was an unwise thing, but I feel differently now. Of course you know," continued Julia, with pretty childish gravity, "that for me there can be no consideration of divorce; I shall never be any other man's wife, and never be free. But if, as Bab says, you have come to feel that you want something different, and if you have drifted so far from your religion as to feel that a legal document can undo what was solemnly done in the name of God, why then I shan't oppose it. You can call it desertion or incompatibility, I don't care." "Who said I wanted a divorce?" Jim demanded, in his ugliest tone. His face was a dull, heavy red, and veins swelled on his forehead. "My life is full and happy," Julia pursued contentedly, paying no attention to his question. "I'm not very exacting, as you know. Mama needs me, and I have everything I want." "You talk very easily of divorce," Jim said, in an injured tone, after a pause. "But is it fair to have it all arranged before I say a word?" Julia's answer was only a look--a full, clear, level look that scorched him like a flame; her cheeks above the black of her gown burned scarlet; she was growing angry. Jim played with an empty envelope for a few minutes, fitting a ringer tip to each corner and lifting it stiffly. Presently he dropped it, folded his arms, and rested them on the table. "This is a serious matter," he said gravely. "And we must think about it. But you must forgive me for saying that it is a great shock to come home and find you talking that way, Julie. I--God knows I'm bad enough, but I _don't_ think I deserve quite this!" added Jim gently. A long interval of silence, for Julia a busy interval, followed. "When am I going to see Anna?" Jim asked, ending it. "Whenever you want to," Julia said pleasantly. "I've familiarized her with your picture; she'll be friendly at once; she always is. Some day, when you are going to be here, I'll send her over for the day. She loves Sausalito, and I really believe she'd do poor Mother good." "And when shall I come and see you--to talk about things?" Jim asked humbly. "My dear Jim," Julia answered briskly, "I cannot see the need of our meeting again; I think it is most unwise--just a nervous strain on both sides. What have we to discuss? I tell you that I am perfectly willing to let you have your way. It's too bad, it's a thing I detest--divorce; but the whole situation is unfortunate, and we must make the best of it!" Jim's stunned amazement showed in a return of his sullen colour and the fixed glassy look in his eyes. "What will people think of this, Ju? Every one will have to know it--it will make a deuce of a lot of talk!" he said, trying to scare her. Julia shook her head, with just a suggestion of a smile. "Much less than you think, Jim," she answered sensibly. "Society long ago suspected that something was wrong; the announcement of a divorce will only confirm it." "We'll have the whole crowd of them buzzing about our heads," Jim said, determined to touch her serenity by one phase or another. "Oh, no, we won't!" Julia returned placidly. "The only circumstances under which there would have been buzzing would have been if I had tried to keep my place in society. I dropped out, and they let me go without a murmur. No buzzing from San Francisco society ever reaches Shotwell Street, and as for you, you'll be in London." "How do you know I'll be in London?" Jim growled, utterly nonplussed. Julia gave him a bright look over a letter, but did not answer, and the man fell to worrying an envelope again. Moments passed, the autumn twilight fell, Julia began to stack her letters in neat piles. Presently she quietly rose, and quietly left the room, without a word, without a backward glance. Jim sat on in the dusk, staring moodily ahead of him, his eyes half shut, the fingers of one big hand drumming gently on the table. A few days later he went out to Shotwell Street to see her. Julia met him very quietly, and presented the little Anna with the solicitous interest in the child's manner that she would have shown had Jim been any casual friend. Anna, who was lovely in a pale pink cotton garment a little too small for her, looked seriously at her father, submitted to his kisses, her wondering eyes never moving from his face, and wriggled out of his arms as soon as she could. "My God! She's beautiful, isn't she?" said Jim, under his breath. "She looks very nice when she's clean and good," Julia agreed practically, kissing Anna herself. "'My God's' a bad word," Anna said gravely to her father, "isn't it, Mother?" "I wouldn't like to hear you say it," Julia answered. "Now trot out to Aunt Regina, dear, and ask her to give you your lunch. Mother'll be there immediately. "She's exquisite," Jim said, when the child was gone. "You all over again, Ju!" "She's smarter than I was." Julia smiled dispassionately. "I've taught her to read--simple things, of course; she writes a little, and does wonders with her numerical chart. She's very cunning, she has an unusual little mind, and occasionally says something that proves she thinks!" A silence followed. Sunshine was streaming into the sitting-room; nasturtiums bloomed in Julia's window boxes; the net curtains fanned softly to and fro in the soft autumn air. In the city, a hundred whistles shrilled for noon. "I hardly knew the place," Jim said, searching for something to say. "You've made it over--the whole block looks better!" "Gardens have come into fashion," Julia explained; "the Mission is a wonderful place for gardens. And the change in my mother is more marked," she went on, with perfunctory pleasantness; "you would hardly know her. She is much thinner, of course, but so bright and contented, and so brave!" "I am going to meet her, I hope?" Jim suggested. Julia looked troubled. "I hardly see how," she said regretfully. "As things are I can't exactly ask you to lunch, Jim. It would be most unnatural, and they--they look to me for a certain principle," she went on. "They know what these four years have meant for me; I couldn't begin now to treat the whole thing casually and cheerfully." "I don't expect you to," Jim said quickly. "I'm not taking this lightly. I only want to think the thing well over before any step is taken that we might regret." Again Julia answered him with only a tolerant, bright look. She stood up and busied herself with the potted fern that stood on the centre table, breaking off dead leaves and gathering them into the palm of her hand. Jim, feeling clumsy and helpless, stood up, too. And as he watched her, a sudden agony of admiration broke out in his heart. Her head was bent a little to one side, as if the weight of the glorious braids bowed it; her thick lashes hid her eyes; her sweet, firm mouth moved a little as she broke and straightened the fern. Where the wide collar of her checked gown was turned back at her throat, a triangle of her soft skin showed, as white and pure as the white of daisy petals; her firm young breast moved regularly under the fresh crisp gingham; the folds of her skirt were short enough to show her slender ankles and square-toed sensible low shoes tied with wide bows. "You used not to be so cold, Julie," Jim said, baffled and uncomfortable. "I am not cold," she answered mildly. "I never was a very demonstrative--never a very emotional person, I think. Three years ago--two years ago, even--I would have gone on my knees to you, Jim, begged you to come back, for Anna's sake as well as my own. But that time has gone by. This life, I've come to see, is far better for Anna than any child in our old set leads, and for me--well, I'm happy. I never was so happy, or busy, or necessary, in my life, as I am now." "Do you mean that there's _no_ chance of a reconciliation?" Jim asked huskily. Julia gave him a glance of honest surprise. "Jim," she asked crisply, "do you mean that you came on with the hope of a reconciliation? I thought you told Barbara something very different from that!" "I don't know what I came on for. I wish Barbara would mind her own business," said Jim, feeling himself at a disadvantage. "My dear Jim," Julia said with motherly kindness, "I know you so well! You came on here determined to get a divorce, you want to be free, you may already have in mind some other woman! But I've hurt your feelings by making it all easy for you--by coming over to your side. You wanted a fuss, tears, protests, a convulsion among your old friends. And you find, instead, that all San Francisco takes the situation for granted, and that I do, too. I've made my own life, I have Anna, and more than enough money to live on; you have your freedom; every one's satisfied." "That's nonsense and you know it!" Jim exclaimed angrily. "There's not one word of truth in it!" He began to pull on his gloves, a handsome figure in his irreproachable trim black sack suit with low oxfords showing a glimpse of gray hose, and an opal winking in his gray silk scarf. "There's absolutely no reason in the world why you should consider yourself as more or less than my wife," he said. "There's no object in this sort of reckless talk. We've been separated for a few years; it's no one's business but our own to know why!" "Oh, Jim--Jim!" Julia said, shaking her head. "Don't talk that way to me!" he said fiercely. "I tell you I'm serious! It's all nonsense--this talk of divorce! Why," he came so near, and spoke in so menacing a tone, that Julia perforce lifted her eyes to his, "this situation isn't all of my making," he said. "I've not been ungenerous to you! Can't you be generous in your turn, and talk the whole thing over reasonably?" "I can't see the advantage of _talking_!" Julia answered in faint impatience. "No, because you want it your own way," said Jim. "You expect me to give up my child completely, you refuse me even a hearing, you won't discuss it!" "But what do you want to discuss?" protested Julia. "The whole situation is perfectly clear--we shall only quarrel!" How well she knew the look he gave her, the hurt look of one whose sentiment is dashed by cool reason! He suddenly caught her by the shoulders. "Look here, Julia!" "Ah, Jim, please don't!" She twisted in a vain attempt to escape his grip. "Please don't what?" "Don't--touch me!" Jim dropped his hands at once, stepped back, with a look of one mortally hurt. "Certainly not--I beg your pardon!" he said punctiliously. He took up his hat. "When do I see you again, Julia? Will you dine with me to-morrow? Then we can talk." "No, I don't think so," Julia said, after reflection. "Have you another engagement?" "Certainly not!" There was almost a flash of amusement in her face; her glance toward the kitchen spoke volumes for the nature of her engagements. "Why do you say no, then?" asked Jim. "Because I prefer not to do so," Julia answered, with sudden spirit. "We look at this thing very differently, Jim," she added roundly. "To me it is a tragedy--the saddest thing that ever happened in my life; that you and I should have loved each other, and should be less than nothing to each other now! It's like a sorrow, something shameful, to hide and to forget. For years I was haunted by the horror of a divorce, Jim; I never wrote to you, I never begged you to come back, just because I was afraid of it! I used to say to myself in the first awful weeks in this house: 'Never mind--it isn't as if we were divorced; we may be separated, we may be estranged, but we are still man and wife!'" Tears came to Julia's eyes, she shook her head as if to shake them away. "I've hungered for you, Jim, until it seemed as if I must go mad!" she went on, looking far beyond him now, and speaking in a low, rapt voice as if to herself. "I've felt," she said, "as if I'd die for just one more kiss from you, die just to have you take my big coat off once more, and catch me in your arms, as you used to do when we came back from dinner or the theatre! But one can't go on suffering that way," said Julia, giving him a swift, uncertain smile, "and gradually the pain goes, and the fever dies away, and nothing is left but the cold, white scar!" Jim had been staring at her like a man in a trance. Now he took a step toward her, lightly caught her in one big arm. "Ah, but Julia, wouldn't the love come back?" he asked tenderly, his face close to her own. "Couldn't it all be forgotten and forgiven? You've suffered, dear, but I've suffered, too. Can't we comfort each other?" "Please don't do that," Julia said coldly, wrenching herself free. "This is no whim with me; I'm not following a certain line of conduct because it's most effective. I've changed. I don't want to analyze and dissect and discuss it; as I say, it seems to me too sacred, too sad, to enjoy talking about!" "You've not changed!" Jim asserted. "Women don't change that way." "Then I'm not like other women," Julia said hotly. "Do believe me, Jim. It's all just gone out of my life. You don't seem like the man I loved, who was so sweet and generous to me. I've not forgotten that old wonderful time; I just don't connect you with it. You could kiss me a thousand times now, and it would only seem like--well, like any one else! I look at you as one might look on some old school friend, and wonder if I ever really loved you!" She stopped, looking at him almost in appeal. Jim stood quite still, staring fixedly at her; they remained so for a long minute. "I see," he said then, very quietly. "I'm sorry." And without another word he turned to the hall door and was gone. Julia stood still in the hall for a few minutes, curiously numb. All this was very terrible, very far reaching in its results, very important, but she could not feel it now. She did feel very tired, exhausted in every fibre of her body, confused and weary in mind. She put her head in the kitchen door only long enough to say that she was not hungry, and went upstairs to fling herself on her bed, grateful for silence and solitude at last. To Jim the world was turned upside down. He could hardly credit his senses. His was not a quick brain; processes of thought with him were slow and ruminative; he liked to be alone while he was thinking. When he left Julia he went down to his club, found a chair by a library window, and brooded over this unexpected and unwelcome turn of events, viewing from all angles this new blow to his pride. He did not believe her protestations of a change of heart, nothing in his life tended to make such a belief easy. But her coldness and stubbornness hurt him and upset the plans he had been allowing to form of late in his mind. All his life he had been following, with sunny adaptability, the line of the least resistance. Thrown out of his groove by the jealousy and resentment of the dark time in his married life, Jim had realized himself as fairly cornered by Fate, and had run away from the whole situation rather than own himself beaten. Rather than admit that he must patiently accept what was so galling to his pride, he had seized upon any alternative, paid any price. And Germany had not been at all unpleasant. There was novelty in every phase of his home and public life; there was his work; and, for at least the first year, there was the balm for his conscience that he would soon be going home to Julia. He had allowed himself the luxury of moods, was angry with her, was scornful, was forgiving. He showed new friends her beautiful pictures--told them that she was prettier than that, no picture could do justice to her colour. Among the new friends there had been two sweet plain Englishwomen: the widowed Lady Eileen Hungerford, and her sister, the Honourable Phyllis. These had found the rich young American doctor charming, and without a definite word or look had managed to convey to him the assurance of their warmest sympathy. They could only guess at his domestic troubles, but a hundred little half allusions and significant looks lent spice to the friendship, and Jim became a great favourite in the delightful circle the Englishwomen had drawn about them. The midsummer vacation was spent, with another doctor, in Norway, and in September Jim went for a week or two to London, where Eileen and Phyllis, delicately considerate of the possible claims of the unknown wife, nevertheless persuaded him that he would be mad to decline the offer of the big German hospital. So back to Berlin he went, and in this second winter met old Professor Sturmer, and Senta, his wife. Senta was a Russian, the tiniest of women, wild, beautiful, nineteen. She was a most dramatic and appealing little figure, and she knew it well. She smoked and drank just as the young men of her set did, she danced like a madwoman, she sang and rode and skated with the fury of a witch. She was like a child, over-dressed, overjewelled, her black hair fantastically arranged; always talking, always unhappy, a perfect type of the young female egotist. She liked to use reckless expressions, to curl herself up on a couch, in a room dimly lighted, and scented with burning pastilles, and discuss her marriage, her age, her appearance, her effect upon other women. Senta's was an almost pathetic and very obvious desire to be considered daring, pantherine, seductive, dangerous. Jim, fancying he understood her perfectly, played into her hand. He would not flirt with her, but he took her at her own valuation, and they saw a good deal of each other. Senta confessed to him, read him love letters, wrote him dashing, penitent little notes, and Jim scolded her in a brotherly way, laughed at her, and sometimes delighted her by forbidding her to do this or that, or by masterfully flinging some cherished note or photograph of hers into the fire. He loved to hear her scold her maid in Russian; it seemed to him very cunning when this stately gipsy of a child took her seat in her box at the opera, or flung herself into the carriage, later, all the more a madcap because of three hours of playing the lady. He exchanged smiling looks over her little dark head with her husband, when he dined at the Sturmers'; the good professor was far more observing than was usually supposed; he knew more of Jim's character, it is probable, than Jim did himself; he knew that Senta was quite safe with the young American, and he liked him. But Senta, who was quite unscrupulous, was slow to realize it. She found this brotherly petting and scolding very well for a time, but months went by, a whole year went by, and there was no change in their relationship. Senta was only precocious, she was neither clever nor well educated; she based her campaign on the trashy novels she read, and deliberately set herself to shake Jim from his calm pleasure in her society. Then, suddenly, Jim was bored. Charm dropped from her like a rich, enveloping cloak, and left only the pitiful little nude personality, a bundle of childish egotisms and shallow pretences. Once he had been proud to escort her everywhere, now her complacent assumption that he should do so annoyed him; once he had laughed out heartily at her constant interruption of the old professor, her naive contention that she was never to be for one second ignored; now she only worried him, and made him impatient. Her invitations poured upon him, her affectedly deep voice, reproachful or alluring, haunted his telephone. She challenged him daringly, wickedly, across dinner tables, or from the centre of a tea-table group, to say "why he didn't like her any more?" Jim went to Italy, and Senta, chaperoned by her sister-in-law, a gaunt woman of sixty, went, too, turning up at his hotels with the naughty grace of a spoiled child, sure to be welcome. She eyed him obliquely, while telling him that "people were beginning to talk." She laughed, with a delight that Jim found maddening, when they chanced to meet some friends from Berlin in a quiet side street in Rome. Jim cut his vacation short, and went back to work. This angered Senta for the first time, and perhaps began to enlighten her. She came sulkily back to Berlin, and began to spread abroad elaborate accounts of a quarrel between Jim and herself. Jim so dreaded meeting her that he quite gave up everything but men's society, but he could not quite escape from the knowledge that the affair was discussed and criticised. And at this most untimely moment old Professor Stunner died, leaving a somewhat smaller fortune to his little widow than she had expected, and naming his esteemed young friend, Herr Doctor Studdiford, as her guardian and his executor. This again gave Senta the prominence and picturesqueness she loved; to Jim it was a most deplorable mischance; it was with difficulty that he acquitted himself of his bare duty in the matter, his distaste for his young ward growing stronger every moment. For weeks there was no hour in which he was not made exquisitely uncomfortable by her attitude of chastened devotion; eventually the hour came in which he had to stab her pride, and stab deep. It was an ugly, humiliating, exasperating business, and when at last it was over, Jim found himself sick of Berlin, and yet sullenly unready to go home to California, as if he had failed, as if he were under even so faint a cloud. Just then came a letter from Eileen, another from Phyllis. Wasn't he ever coming to London any more? London was waiting to welcome him. They had opened their little house in Prince's Gate, the season was beginning, it was really extraordinarily jolly. Did he know anything of the surgeon, Sir Peveril McCann? He had said such charming things of Doctor Studdiford. He had said--but no, one wasn't going to tell him anything that might, untold, make him curious enough to come! Jim went to London, revelling in clear English speech after years of Teutonic gutturals, and rejoicing in the clean, clear-cut personalities with which he came in contact. He loved the wonderful London drawing-rooms, the well-ordered lives, the atmosphere of the smart clubs and hotels, the plays and pictures and books that were discussed and analyzed so inexhaustibly. He found Eileen and Phyllis more charming than ever; and he very much admired their aunt, stately Lady Violet Dray, and their bright, clever, friendly cousin Ivy, who was as fresh and breezy as the winds that blew over her native heather. Ivy was slender and vivacious; her face was thin and a little freckled, and covered with a fine blond down, which merged on her forehead into the straight rise of her carrot-coloured hair. Her eyes were sharply blue, set in thick, short, tawny lashes. She was an enthusiastic sportswoman, well informed on all topics of the day, assured of her position and sure of herself, equally at home in her riding tweeds and mud-splashed derby, and the trailing satin evening gowns that left her bony little shoulders bare, and were embellished by matchless diamonds or pearls. There was no sentiment in her, her best friends were of both sexes and all ages, but she attached Jim to her train, patronized and bullied him, and they became good friends. Mrs. Chancellor talked well, and talked a great deal, and she stimulated Jim to talk, too. Never in his life had so constant a demand been made upon his conversational powers; and every hour with her increased his admiration for Ivy and lessened his valuation of his own wisdom. She was a thorough Englishwoman, considering everything in life desirable only inasmuch as it was British. Toward America her attitude was one of generous laughter touched with impatience. She never for one moment considered seriously anything American. Mrs. Chancellor thought all of it really too funny-"rarely too fenny," as she pronounced it. Only one thing made her more angry than the defence of anything American, and that was dispraise of anything British. The history of England was sacred to her: London was the crown and flower of the world's civilization; English children, English servants, English law, were all alike perfect, and she also had her country's reverence for English slang, quoting and repeating it with fondest appreciation and laughter. Nothing pleased her more than to find Jim unfamiliar with some bit of slang that had been used in England for twenty years; her laughter was fresh and genuine as she explained it, and for days afterward she would tell her friends of his unfamiliarity with what was an accepted part of their language. She took him to picture galleries, bewildering him with her swift decisions. Jim might come to a stand before a portrait by Sargent. "Isn't this wonderful, Ivy Green?" It was his own name for her, and she liked it. "That?" A sweeping glance would appraise it. "Yes, of course, it's quite too extraordinary," she would concede briskly. "An impossible creature, of course; one feels that he was laughing at her all the time--it's not his best work, rarely!" And she would drag Jim past forty interesting canvases to pounce upon some obscure, small painting in a dark corner. "There!" she would say triumphantly, "isn't that astonishing! So kyawiously frank, if you know what I mean? It's most amazing--his sense of depth, if you know what I mean? Rarely, to splash things on in that way, and to grasp it." A clawed little hand would illustrate grasping. "It's astonishing!" Jim, staring at a picture of some sky, some beach, and a face of rock, would murmur a somewhat bewildered appreciation, looking out of the corner of his eye, at the same time, at the attractive gondolier singing to his pretty lady passengers, on the right, or the nice young peasant nursing her baby in a sunny window while her mother peeled apples, on the left. "Of course, it's the only thing here, this year, absolutely the only one," Mrs. Chancellor would conclude. "The rest is just one huge joke. I know Artie Holloway--Sir Arthur, he is--quite well, and I told him so! He's a director." "But I don't see how you know so much about it!" Jim would say admiringly. "One must know about such things, my dear boy," she always answered serenely. "One isn't an oyster, after all!" It was this dashing lady and not Barbara who first brought Jim's mind to a sense of his own injustice to Julia, or rather to a realization that the situation, as it stood, was fair to neither Julia nor himself. Not that he ever mentioned Julia to Ivy; but she knew, of course, of Julia's existence, and being a shrewd and experienced woman she drew her own conclusions. One day she expressed herself very frankly on the subject. "You've taken the rooms above Sir Peveril's, eh?" she asked him. "Well, yes," Jim answered, after a second's pause. "They're bully rooms!" "Oh, rather--they're quite the nicest in town," she stated. "But, I say, my dear boy, wasn't the rent rather steep?" "Not terrible." He mentioned it. "And I've taken 'em for five years," he added. "For--eh?" She brought her sandy lashes together and studied him through them. "You're rarely going to stay then, you nice child?" "Yes, Grandmother dear. Sir Peveril wants me. I've taken his hospital work; people are really extraordinarily kind to me!" Jim summarized. "Oh, you've been vetted, there's no question of that," she agreed thoughtfully. They were at tea in her own drawing-room, which was crowded with articles handsome and hideous, Victorian lace tidies holding their own with really fine old furniture, and exquisite bits of oil or water colour sharing the walls with old steel engravings in cumbersome frames. Now Ivy leaned back in her chair, and stirred her tea, not speaking for a few minutes. "There's just one thing," she said presently. "Before you come here to stay, put your house in order. Don't leave everything at haome in a narsty mess that'll have to be straightened aout later, if you know what I mean? Get that all straight, and have it understood, d'ye see?" The colour came into Jim's face at so unexpected an attack, yet speech was a relief, too. "I don't know whether I _can_ straighten it out," he confessed, with a nervous laugh. "It's not a divorce, eh?" "No--not exactly." "The gell's gone home to her people?" "Yes." Jim cleared his throat. "Yes, she has." "And there's a kiddie?" "Anna--yes." "Well, now." Mrs. Chancellor straightened in her chair, set her cup down on a nearby table. "I take it the gell was the injured one, eh?" said she. Jim was a little surprised to find himself enjoying this cross-examination immensely. "Well--no. She had no definite cause to feel injured," he said. "We quarrelled, and I came away in a hurry--" "What, after a first quarrel?" "No--o. It had been going on a long time." "Is the cause of it still existing?" Mrs. Chancellor asked in a businesslike way, after a pause. "Well--yes." "Can't be removed, eh? It's not religion?" "It's an old love affair of hers," Jim admitted. The lady's eyes twinkled. "And you're jealous?" she smiled. But immediately her face grew sober. "I see--she still cares for him, or imagines she does," she said. Jim felt it safest to let this guess stand. "Of course, if she won't she won't," pursued Mrs. Chancellor comfortably. "But the best thing you could do would be to bring her on here!" Jim shook his head sullenly and set his jaw. "She won't, eh?" asked the lady, watching him thoughtfully. "I don't want to do that," Jim persisted stubbornly. "_You_ don't want to?" She meditated this. "Yet she's young, and beautiful, and presentable?" she asked, nodding her own head slowly as he nodded affirmatives. "Yes, of course. Well, it's too bad. One would have liked to meet her, take her about a bit. And it would help you more than any one thing, my dear boy. Oh, don't shake your head! Indeed it would. However, you must be definite, one way or the other. You must either admit outright that you're divorced, or you must tell an acceptable story. As it is--one doesn't know what to say--whether she's impossible in some way--just what the matter is, if you know what I mean?" "I see," Jim said heavily. "Go have a talk with her," commanded Mrs. Chancellor brightly. "Finish it up, one way or another. You're doing her an injustice, as it is, and you're not just to yourself. One can't shut a marriage up in a box, you know, and forget it. There's always leakage somewhere--much better make a clean breast of the whole thing! You're not the first person who's made an unfortunate early marriage, you know!" "I loved my wife," said Jim, in vague, resentful self-defence. "I'm naturally a domestic man. I loved my little girl--" "Certainly you did," Mrs. Chancellor interrupted crisply. "And perhaps she did, too! The details are all the same, you know. Some people make a success of the thing, some people fail. I've been married. I'm a little older than you are in years, and ages older in experience--I know all about it. In every marriage there are the elements of success, and in every one the makings of a perfectly justifiable divorce. Some women couldn't live with a saint who was a king and a Rothschild into the bargain; others marry scamps and are perfectly happy whether they're being totally ignored or being pulled around by the hair! But if you've made a failure, admit it. Don't sulk. You'll find that doing something definite about it is like cleaning the poison out of a wound; you'll feel better! There, now, you've had your scolding, and you've taken it very nicely. Ring for some hot water, and we'll talk of something else!" On just this casual, kindly advice Jim really did go home, prepared to be very dignified with Julia; and to make the separation definite and final, if not legal, or to bring her back, however formally, as his wife, exactly as he saw fit. And then came the meeting in the Toland library, when in one stunning flash he saw her as she was: beautiful, dignified, and charming, a woman to whom all eyes turned naturally and admiringly, grave, sweet, and wise in a world full of pretence and ignorance, selfishness and shallowness. She spoke, and her voice went through him like a sword, a mist rose before his eyes. He tried to remember that bitter resentment upon which his pride had fed for more than four long years; he battled with a mad desire to catch her in his arms, and to cry to her and to all the world, "After all, you are still mine!" He watched her, her beauty as fresh to him as if he had never seen it before. Had those serious eyes, turned to Richie with such sisterly concern, and so exquisitely blue in the soft lamplight, ever met his with love and laughter brightening them? Had the kindly arms that went so quickly about his mother, in her trouble, ever answered the pressure of his own? She could look at him dispassionately, entirely forgetful of herself in the presence of death, but in the very sickroom his eyes could not leave her little kneeling figure; whenever she spoke, he felt his heart contract with a spasm of pain. It seemed to him that if he could kneel before her, and feel the light pressure of her linked hands about his neck, and have her lay that soft, sweet cheek of hers against his, in heavenly token of forgiveness, he would be ready to die of joy. How far Julia was from this mood he was soon to learn, and no phase of their courtship eight years ago had roused in him such agonies of jealousy and longing as beset him now, when Julia, quiet of pulse and level eyed, convinced him that she could very contentedly exist without him. All these things went confusedly through Jim's mind, as he sat at his club window, staring blankly down at the dreary summer twilight in the street. The club was a temporary wooden building, roomy and comfortable enough, but facing on all four sides the devastation of the great earthquake. Here and there a small brick building stood in the ashy waste, and on the top of Nob Hill the outline of the big Fairmont Hotel rose boldly against the gloom. But, for the most part, the rising hills showed only one ruined brick foundation after another, broken flights of stone steps leading down to broken sidewalks, twisted, discoloured railings smothered in rank, dry grass. Through this wreckage cable cars moved, brightly lighted, and loaded with passengers, and to-night, in the dusk, a steady wind was blowing, raising clouds of fine, blinding dust. Jim stared at it all heavily, his mind strangely attuned to the dreary prospect. He felt puzzled and confused; he wanted to see Julia again, to have her forgive and comfort him. When he thought of the old times, of the devotion and tenderness he had taken so much for granted, a sort of sickness seized him; he could have groaned aloud. Only one thought was intolerable: that she would not forgive him, and let him make up to her for the lost years, and show her how deeply he loved her still! He mused upon the exactions she might make, the advantages that would appeal to her. Not jewels--she must have more jewels now than she would ever wear, safely stored away somewhere. He remembered giving her a certain chain of pearls, with a blinding vision of the white young throat they encircled, and the kiss he had set there with the gift. No, jewels were for such as Senta, not for grave, stately Julia. Nor would position tempt her. She was too wise to long for it; the glory of a London season meant nothing to her; position was only a word. She was happier in the Shotwell Street house, clipping roses on a foggy morning; she was happier far when she scrambled over the rough trails of the mountain with Richie than ever London could make her. Position and wealth might have their value for Ivy, but Julia cared as little as a bird for either. And now it came to him that she was infinitely more fine, more beautiful, and more clever than Senta, and that her pure and fragrant freshness, her simple directness, her candid likes and dislikes, would make Ivy seem no more than a jaded sophist, a quoter of mere words, a worshipper of empty form. To have Julia in London! To take her about, her bright face dimpling in the shadow of a flowered hat, or framed in furs, or to see her at the tea table, a shining slipper showing under the flowing lines of her gown, the lovely child beside her, at once enhancing and rivalling the mother's beauty--Jim's heart ached with the pain and rapture of the dream. He was roused by Richie, who came limping into the club library, and over whose tired face came a bright smile at the sight of Jim. "Hello!" said Richie, taking an opposite chair. His expression grew solicitous at the sight of Jim's haggard face. "Headache, old boy?" he asked sympathetically. Jim shook his head. The big room was almost dark now, and they had it quite to themselves. "Thinking what a rotten mess I've made of everything, Rich," Jim said desperately. Richie took out a handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands, but did not answer. "She'll never forgive me, I know that," Jim presently said. And as Richie was again silent, he added: "Do you think she ever will?" "I don't know," poor Richie said hesitatingly. "She's awfully kind--Julia." "She's an angel!" Jim agreed fervently. He sat with his head in his hands for a few moments. Then he cleared his throat and said huskily: "Look here, you know, Rich, I'm not such an utter damn fool as I seem in this whole business. I can't explain, and, looking back now, it all seems different; but I had a grievance, or thought I had--God knows it wasn't awfully pleasant for me to go away. But I _had_ a reason." "It wasn't anything you didn't know about before you were married, I suppose?" asked Richie, with what Jim thought unearthly prescience. "No," Jim answered, with a startled look. "Nor anything you'd particularly care to have the world know or suspect?" pursued Richie. "Not anything Julia could change?" "No," Jim said again. Richard leaned back in his chair. "Some scrap with her people, or some old friends she wanted to hang on to," he mused. Jim did not speak. "Well," said Richie, "there would be plenty of people glad to be near Julia on any terms." "Oh, I know that," Jim said. And after a moment he burst out again: "Richie, am I all wrong? Is it _all_ on my side?" "Lord, don't ask me," Richie said hastily. "The older I grow the less I think I know about anything." There was a silence. Richard clamped the arms of his chair with big bony fingers and frowned thoughtfully at the floor. "I wish to God I did know what to advise you, Jim," he said presently. "I'd die for her--she knows that. But she's rare, Julia; it's like trying to deal with some delicate frail little lady out of Cranford, like trying to guess what Emily Bronte might like, or Eugenie de Guerin! Julia's got life sized up, she likes it--I don't know whether this conveys anything to you or not!--but she likes it as much as if it was part of a play. You don't matter to her any more; I don't; she sees things too big. She's quite extraordinary; the most extraordinary person I ever knew, I think. There's a completeness, a _finish_ about her. She's not waiting for any self-defence from you, Jim. It won't do you any good to tell her why you did this or that. You thought this was justified, you thought that was--certainly, she isn't disputing it. You did what you did; now she's going to abide by it. You never dreamed thus and so--very well, the worse for you! You want to hark back to something that's long dead and gone; all right, only abide by your decision. And afterward, when you realize that she's a thousand times finer than the women you compare her to, and try to make her like, then don't come crying to _her_!" A long silence, then Jim stood up. "Well, I've made an utter mess of it, as I began by saying!" he said, with a grim laugh. "Going to dine here, Rich? Let's eat together. Here"--one big clever hand gave Richard just the help he needed--"let me help you, old boy!" "I thought I'd go home to Mill Valley," Richard said. "I can't catch anything before the six-forty, but the horse is in the village, and my boy will scare me up some soup and a salad. I'd rather go. I like to wake in my own place." "I wish you'd let me go with you, Rich," Jim said, with a gentleness new to him. "I'm so sick of everything. I can't think of anything I'd like so well." "Sure, come along," Richard said, touched. "Everything's pretty simple, you know, but I'll telephone Bruce and have him--" "Cut out the telephoning," Jim interrupted. "Bread and coffee'll do. And a fire, huh?" "Sure," Richard said again, "there's always a fire." "Great!" Jim approved. "We can smoke, and talk about--" "About Ju," Richie supplied, with a gruff little laugh, as he paused. "About Ju," Jim repeated, with a long sigh. Two days later he went to see her, to beg her to be his wife again. He asked her to forget and forgive the past, to trust him once more, to give him another chance to make her happy. He spoke of the Harley Street house, of the new friends she would find, of Barbara's nearness with the boys that Julia loved so well. He spoke of Anna; for Anna's sake they must be together; their little girl must not be sacrificed. Anna should have the prettiest nursery in London, and in summer they would go down to Barbara, and the cousins should play together. Julia listened attentively, her head a little on one side, her eyes following the movements of Anna herself, who was digging about under the rose bushes in the backyard. Julia and Jim sat on the steps that ran down from the kitchen porch. It was a soft, hazy afternoon, with filmy streaks of white crossing the pale blue sky, and sunshine, thin and golden, lying like a spell over Julia's garden. "I was a fool," said Jim. "There--I can't say more than that, Ju. And I've paid for my folly. And, dearest, I'm so bitterly sorry! I can't explain it. I don't understand it myself--I only know that I'd give ten years off the end of my life to have the past five to live over again. Forgive me, Ju. It's all gone out of my heart now, all that old misery, and I never could hurt you again on that score. It _doesn't exist_, any more, for me. Say that you'll forgive me, and let me be the happiest and proudest man in the world--how happy and proud--taking my wife and baby to England!" The hint of a frown wrinkled Julia's forehead, her eyes were sombre with her own thoughts. "Think what it would mean to Mother, and to Bab, and to all of us," Jim pursued, as she did not speak. "They've been so worried about it--they care so much!" "Yes, I know!" Julia said quickly, and fell silent again. "Is it your own mother's need of you?" the man asked after a pause. "No." Julia gave a cautious glance at the kitchen door behind her. "No--Aunt May is wonderful with her. Muriel's at home a good deal, and Geraldine very near," she said. "And more than that, this separation between you and me worries Mother terribly; she doesn't understand it. She's very different in these days, Jim, so gentle and good and brave--I never saw such a change! No, she'd love to have me go if it was the best thing to do--it's not that--" Her voice dropped on a note of fatigue. Her eyes continued to dwell on the child in the garden. "I've done all I can do," Jim said. "Don't punish me any more!" Julia laughed in a worried fashion, not meeting his eyes. "There you are," she said, faintly impatient, "assuming that I am aggrieved about it, assuming that I am sitting back, sulking, and waiting for you to humiliate yourself! My dear Jim, I'm not doing anything of the kind. I don't hold you as wholly responsible for all this--how could I? I know too well that I myself am--or was--to blame. All these years, when people have been blaming you and pitying me, I've longed to burst out with the truth, to tell them what you were too chivalrous to tell! For your sake and Anna's I couldn't do it, of course, but you may imagine that it's made me a silent champion of yours, just the same! But our marriage was a mistake, Jim," she went on slowly and thoughtfully. "It was all very well for me to try to make myself over; I couldn't make you! I never should have tried. Theoretically, I had made a clean breast of it, and was forgiven; but actually, the law was too strong. It's hard and strange that it should be so, isn't it? I don't understand it; I never shall. For still it seems as if the punishment followed, not so much the fact, as the fact's being made known. If I had robbed some one fifteen years ago, or taken the name of the Lord in vain, I wonder if it would have been the same? As for keeping holy the seventh day, and honouring your father and mother, and not coveting your neighbour's goods, how little they seem to count! Even the most virtuous and rigid people would forgive and forget fast enough in _those_ cases. It's all a puzzle." Julia's voice and look, which had grown dreamy, now brightened suddenly. "And so the best thing to do about it," she went on, "seems to me to make your own conscience your moral law, and feel that what you have repented truly, is truly forgiven. So much for me." She met his eyes. "But, my dear Jim, I never could take it for granted again that _you_ felt so about it!" "Then you do me an injustice," said Jim, "for I swear--" "Oh, don't swear!" she interrupted. "I know you believe that now, as you did once before. But I know you better than you do yourself, Jim. Your attitude to me is always generous, but it's always conventional, too. You never would remind me of all this, I know that very well, but always, in your own heart, the reservation would be there, the regret and the pity! I know that I am a better woman and a stronger woman for all this thinking and suffering; you never will believe that. Let us suppose that we began again. Don't you know that the day would come when my opinion would clash with that of some other woman in society, and you, knowing what you know of me, would feel that I was not qualified to judge in these things as other women are? Let us suppose that I wanted to befriend a maid who had got herself into trouble, or to take some wayward girl into my house for a trial; how patient would you be with me, under the circumstances?" "Of course, you can always think up perfectly hypothetical circumstances!" Jim said impatiently. "Marriage is difficult enough," Julia pursued. "But marriage with a handicap is impossible! To feel that there is something you can't change, that never will change, and that stands eternally between you! No, marriage isn't for us, Jim, and we can only make the best of it, having made the original mistake!" "Don't ever say that again--it's not true!" Jim said, with a sort of masterful anger. "Now, listen a moment. That isn't true, and you don't believe it. I've told you what I think of myself. I was blind, I was a fool. But that's past. Give me another chance. I'll make you the happiest woman in the world, Julia. I love you. I'll be so proud of you! You can have a dozen girls under your wing all the time; you can answer the Queen back, and I'll never have even a _thought_ but what you're the finest and sweetest woman in the world!" The preposterous picture brought a shaky smile to Julia's lips and a hint of tears to her eyes. She suddenly rose from her seat and went down to the garden. "Our talking it over does no good, Jim," she said, as he followed her, and stood looking at her and at Anna. "It's all too fresh--it's been too terrible for me--getting adjusted! I stand firm here, I feel the ground under my feet. I don't want to go back to feeling all wrong, all out of key, helpless to straighten matters!" "But we were happy!" he said, a passionate regret in his voice. "Think of our day in Chicago, Ju, and the day we took a hansom cab through Central Park--and were afraid the driver wasn't sober! And do you remember the blue hat that _would_ catch on the electric light, and the day the elevator stuck?" "I think of it all so often, Jim," Julia answered, with a smile as sad as tears could have been, and in the tender voice she might have used in speaking of the dead. "Sometimes I fit whole days together, just thinking of those old times. 'Then what did we do after that lunch?' I think, or 'Where were we going that night that we were in such a hurry?' and then by degrees it all comes back." Julia drew a rose toward her on a tall bush, studied its leaves critically. "That was the happiest time, wasn't it, Jim?" she asked, with her April smile. Jim felt as if a weight of inevitable sorrow were weighing him to the ground. Julia's quiet assurance, her regretful firmness, seemed to be breaking his heart. She was in white to-day, and in the thin September sunlight, among the blossoming roses, she somehow suggested the calm placidity of a nun who looks back at her days in the world with a tender, smiling pity. The child had left her play, and stood close to her mother's side, one of Julia's hands caught in both her own. "Anna," Jim said desperately, "won't you ask Mother to come to London with Dad?" Anna regarded him gravely. She did not understand the situation, but she answered, with a child's curious instinct for the obvious excuse: "But Grandmother needs her!" "I never asked you to give her up, Julie," Jim said, as if trying to remind her that he had not been so merciless as she. Julia's eyes widened with a quick alarm, her breast rose, but she answered composedly: "That I would have fought." "And you have always had as much money--" Jim began again, trying to rally the arguments with which he had felt sure to overwhelm her. "I spent that as much for your sake as for mine," Julia said soberly. "She is a Studdiford. I wanted to be fair to Anna. But I could do without it now, Jim; there are a thousand things--" "Yes, I know!" he said in quick shame. A silence fell, there seemed nothing else to be said. A great space widened between them. Jim felt at the mercy of lonely and desolate winds; he felt as if all colour had faded out of the world, leaving it gray and cold. With the sickness of utter defeat he dropped on one knee and kissed the wondering child, and then turned to go. "You won't--change your mind, Ju?" he asked huskily. Julia was conscious of a strange weakening and loosening of bonds throughout her entire system. Vague chills shook her, she felt that tears were near, she had a hideous misgiving as to her power to keep from fainting. "I will let you know, Jim," she heard her own voice answer, very low. A moment later she and Anna were alone in the garden. "What _is_ it, Mother?" Anna asked curiously, a dozen times. Julia stood staring at the child blindly. One hand was about Anna's neck, the loose curls falling soft and warm upon it, the other Julia had pressed tight above her heart. She stood still as if listening. "What _is_ it, Mother?" asked the little girl again. "Nothing!" Julia said then, in a sort of shallow whisper, with a caught breath. A second later she kissed the child hastily, and went quietly out of the green gate which had so lately closed upon Jim. She went as unquestioningly as an automaton moved by some irresistible power; not only was all doubt gone from her mind, but all responsibility seemed also shed. The street was almost deserted, but Julia saw Jim instantly, a full block away, and walking resolutely, if slowly. She drifted silently after him, not knowing why she followed, nor what she would say when they met, but conscious that she must follow and that they would meet. Jim walked to Eighteenth Street, turned north, and Julia, reaching the corner, was in time to see him entering the shabby old church where they had been married eight years ago. And instantly a blinding vertigo, a suffocating rush of blood to her heart, made her feel weak and cold with the sudden revelation that the hour of change had come. She climbed the dreary, well-remembered stairs slowly, and slipped into one of the last pews, in the shadow of a gallery pillar. Jim was kneeling, far up toward the altar, his head in his hands. In all the big church, which was bleak and bare in the cold afternoon light, there was no one else. The red altar light flickered in its hanging glass cup; a dozen lighted candles, in a great frame that held sockets for five times as many, guttered and flared at the rail. Minutes slipped by, and still the man knelt there motionless, and still the woman sat watching him, her eyes brilliant and tender, her heart flooded with a poignant happiness that carried before it all the bitterness of the years. Julia felt born again. Like a person long deaf, upon whose unsealed ears the roar of life bursts suddenly again, she shrank away from the rush of emotion that shook her. It was overpowering--dizzying--exhausting. When Jim presently passed her she shrank into the shadow of her pillar, but his face was sadder and more grave than Julia had ever seen it, and he did not raise his eyes. She listened until his echoing footsteps died away on the stairs; then the smile on her face faded, and she sank on her knees and burst into tears. But they were not tears of sorrow; instead, they seemed to Julia infinitely soothing and refreshing. They seemed to carry her along with the restful sweep of a river. She cried, hardly knowing that she cried, and with no effort to stop the steady current of tears. And when she presently sat back and dried her eyes, a delicious ease and relaxation permeated her whole body. Like a convalescent, weak and trembling, she drew great breaths of air, rejoicing that the devastating fever and the burning illusions were gone, and only the quiet weeks of getting well lay before her. She sat in the church a long time, staring dreamily before her. Odd thoughts and memories drifted through her mind now: she was again a little girl of eight, slipping into the delicatessen store in O'Farrell Street for pickles and pork sausage; now she was a bride, with Jim in New York, moving through the dappled spring sunlight of Fifth Avenue, on the top of a rocking omnibus. She thought of the settlement house: winter rain streaming down its windows, and she and Miss Toland dining on chops and apple pie, each deep in a book as she ate; and she remembered Mark, poor Mark, who had crossed her life only to bring himself bitter unhappiness, and to leave her the sorrow of an ineffaceable stain! Only thirty, yet what a long, long road already lay behind her, how much sorrow, how much joy! What mistakes and cross purposes had been tangled into her life and Jim's, Mark's and Richie's, Barbara's and Sally's and Ted's--into all their lives! "Perhaps that _is_ life," mused Julia, kneeling down to say one more little prayer before she went away. "Perhaps my ideal of a clean-swept, austere little cottage, and a few books, and a few friends, and sunrises and sunsets--isn't life! It's all a tangle and a struggle, ingratitude and poverty and dispute all mixed in with love and joy and growth, and every one of us has to take his share! I have one sort of trouble to bear, and Mother another, and Jim, I suppose, a third; we can't choose them for ourselves any more than we could choose the colour of our eyes! But loving each other--loving each other, as I love Anna, makes everything easy; it's the cure for it all--it makes everything easier to bear!" And in a whisper, with a new appreciation of their meaning, she repeated the familiar words, "Love fulfils the law!" The next evening, just as the autumn twilight was giving way to dusk, Julia opened the lower green gate of the Tolands' garden in Sausalito, and went quietly up the steep path. Roses made dim spots of colour here and there; under the trees it was almost dark, though a soft light still lingered on the surface of the bay just below. From the drawing-room windows pale lamplight fell in clear bars across the gravel, but the hall was unlighted, the door wide open. Julia stepped softly inside, her heart beating fast. She had got no farther than this minute, in her hastily made plans; now she did not quite know what to do. She knew that Barbara and the boys had gone back to Richie in Mill Valley. Captain Fox was duck shooting in Novato, and Constance had returned to her own home. But Ted and her little son should be here, Janey, Jim, and the widowed mother. Presently she found Mrs. Toland in the study, seated alone before a dying fire. Julia kissed the shrivelled soft old cheek, catching as she did so the faint odour of perfumed powder and fresh crepe. "Where are the girls, darling, that you're here all alone?" she asked affectionately. "Oh, Julie dear! Isn't it nice to see you," Mrs. Toland said, "and so fresh and rosy, like a breath of fresh air! Where are the girls? Bab's with Richie, you know, and she took her boys and Ted's Georgie with her, and Connie had to go home again. I think Ted and Janey went out for a little walk before dinner." "And haven't you been out, dear?" Ready tears came to poor Mrs. Toland's eyes at the tender tone. She began to beat lightly on Julia's hand with her own. "I don't seem to want to, dearie," she said with difficulty; "the girls keep telling me to, but--I don't know! I don't seem to want to. Papa and I used to like to walk up and down in the garden--" Speech became too difficult, and she stopped abruptly. "I know," Julia said sorrowfully. "It would have been thirty-five years this November," Mrs. Toland presently said. "We were engaged in August and married in November. Marriage is a wonderful thing, Julia--it's a wonderful thing! Papa was very much smarter than I am--I always knew that! But after a while people come to love each other partly for just that--the differences between them! And you look back so differently on the mistakes you have made. I've always been too easy on the girls, and Ned, too, and Papa knew it, but he never reproached me!" She wiped her eyes quietly. "You must have had a sensible mother, Julie," she added, after a moment; "you're such a wise little thing!" "I don't believe she was very wise," Julia said, smiling, "any more than I am! I may not make the mistakes with Anna that Mama made with me, but I'll make others! It's a sort of miracle to see her now, so brave and good and contented, after all the storms I remember." Mrs. Toland did not speak for a few moments, then she said: "Julie, Jim's like a son of my own to me. You'll forgive a fussy old woman, who loves her children, if she talks frankly to you? Don't throw away all the future, dear. Not to-day--not to-morrow, perhaps, but some time, when you can, forgive him! He's changed; he's not what he used to be--" Tears were in Julia's eyes now; she slipped to her knees beside Mrs. Toland's chair, and they cried a little together. "I came to see him," whispered Julia. "Where is he?" "He came in about fifteen minutes ago. He's packing. You know his room--" Julia mounted the stairs slowly, noiselessly. It was quite dark now throughout the airy, fragrant big halls, but a crack of light came from under Jim's door. She stood outside for a few long minutes, thrilling like a bride with the realization that she had the right to enter here; where Jim was, was her sanctuary against the world and its storms. She knocked, and Jim shouted "Come in!" Julia opened the door and faced him across a room full of the disorder of packing. Jim was in his shirt sleeves, his hair rumpled and wild. She slipped inside the door, and shut it behind her, a most appealing figure in her black gown, with her uncovered bright hair loosened and softly framing her April face. "Jim," she said, her heart choking her, "will you take Anna and me with you? I love you--" There was time for no more. They were in each other's arms, laughing, crying, murmuring now and then an incoherent word. Julia clung to her husband like a storm-driven bird; it seemed to her that her heart would burst in its ecstasy of content; if the big arms about her had crushed breath from her body she would have died uncaring. Jim kissed her wet cheeks, her tumbled hair, her red lips that so willingly met his own. And when at last the tears were dry, and they could speak and could look at each other, there was no need for words. Jim sat on the couch, and Julia sat on his knee, with one arm laid loosely about his neck in a fashion they had loved years ago, and what they said depended chiefly upon their eyes and the tones of their voice. "Oh, Jim--Jim!" Julia rested her cheek against his, "I have needed you so!" Jim tightened an arm about her. "I adore you," he said simply, unashamed of his wet eyes. "Do you love me?" To this Julia made no answer but a long sigh of utter content. "Do you?" repeated Jim, after an interval. "Does this _look_ as if I did?" Julia murmured, not moving. Silence again, and then Jim said, with a great sigh: "Oh, Petty, what a long, long time!" "Thank God it's over!" said Julia softly. "What made you do it, dear?" Jim asked presently, in the course of a long rambling talk. At that Julia did straighten up, so that her eyes might meet his. "Just seeing you--pray about it, Jim," she said, her eyes filling again, although her lips were smiling. "I thought that, this time, we would both pray, and that--even if there are troubles, Jim--we'd remember that hour in St. Charles's, and think how we longed for each other!" And resting her cheek against his, Julia began to cry with joy, and Jim clung to her, his own eyes brimming, and they were very happy. CHAPTER IX September daylight, watery and uncertain, and very different from the golden purity of California's September sunshine, fell in pale oblongs upon the polished floor of a certain London drawing-room, and battled with the dancing radiance of a coal fire that sent cheering gleams and flashes of gold into the duskiest corners of the room. It was a beautiful room, and a part of a beautiful house, for the American doctor and his wife, deciding to make the English capital their home, had searched and waited patiently until in Camden Hill Road they had discovered a house possessed of just the irresistible combination of bigness and coziness, beauty and simplicity, for which they had hoped. In the soft tones of the rugs, the plain and comfortable chairs, the warm glow of a lamp shade, or the gleam of a leather-bound book, there was at once a suggestion of discrimination and of informal ease. And informal yet strangely exhilarating the friends of Doctor and Mrs. Studdiford found it. Very famous folk liked to sit in these deep chairs, and talk on and on beside this friendly fire, while London slept, and the big clock in the hall turned night into morning. No hosts in London were more popular than the big, genial doctor, and his clever, silent, and most beautiful wife. Mrs. Studdiford was an essentially genuine person; the flowers in her drawing-room, like the fruit on her table, were sure to be sensibly in season; her clothes and her children's clothes were extraordinarily simple, and her new English friends, simple and domestic as they were, whatever their rank, found her to be one of themselves in these things, and took her to their hearts. Julia herself was sitting before the fire now, one slippered foot to the blaze. Four years in London life had left her as lovely as ever; perhaps there was even an increase of beauty in the lines of her closed lips, a certain accentuation of the old spiritual sweetness in her look. Her bright hair was still wound about her head in loose braids, and her severely simple gown of Quaker gray was relieved at the wrists and throat by transparent frills of white. In her arms lay a baby less than a year old, a splendid boy, whose eyes, through half-closed lids, were lazily studying the fire. His little smocked white frock showed sturdy bare knees, and the fine web of his yellow hair blew like a gold mist against his mother's breast. The room's only other occupant, a tall, handsome woman, in a tan cloth suit, with rich furs, presently turned from the deep curtained arch of a window. This was Barbara Fox, Lady Curriel now, still thin, and still with a hint of sharpness and fatigue in her browned face, yet with rare content and satisfaction written there, too. Barbara's life was full, and every hour brought its demand on her time, but she was a very happy woman, devoted to her husband and her three small sons, and idolizing her baby daughter. Her winters were devoted to the social and political interests that played so large a part in her husband's life and her own, but Julia knew that she was far more happy in the summers, when her brood ran wild over the old manor house at High Darmley, and every cottager stopped to salute the donkey cart and the shouting heirs of "the big family." "Not a sign of them!" said Barbara now, coming from the window to the fire, and loosening her furs as she sat down opposite Julia. "Is he asleep?" she added in a cautious undertone. "Not he!" answered Julia, with a kiss for her son. "He's just lying here and finking 'bout fings! I don't know where the others can be," she went on, in evident reference to Barbara's vigil at the window. "Jim said lunch, and it's nearly one o'clock now! Take your things off, Babbie, and lunch with us?" "Positively I mustn't, dear. I must be at home. I've to see the paperers at two o'clock, and to-morrow morning early, you know, we go back to the kiddies at the seaside." "And they're all well?" "Oh, splendid. Even Mary's out of doors all day, and digging in the sand! We think Jim's right about Geordie's throat, by the way; it ought to be done, I suppose, but it doesn't seem to trouble him at all, and it can wait! Julie dear, why _don't_ you and the boy and Anna come down, if only for four or five days? Bring nurse, and some old cottons, and a parasol, and we'll have a lovely, comfy time!" "But we're just home!" Julia protested laughingly. "I've hardly got straightened out yet! However, I'll speak to Jim," she went on. "This gentleman thinks he would like it, and Anna is frantic to see the boys." "And we must talk!" Barbara added coaxingly. "Is California lovely?" "Oh--" Julia raised her brows, with her grave smile. "Home is home, Bab." "And Mother looks well?" "Your mother looks _very_ well. But when she and Janey come on in January you'll see for yourself. Janey's so pretty; I wish she'd marry, but she never sees any one but Rich! Rich is simply adorable; he had Con and her husband and little girl with him this summer. Con's getting very fat--she's great fun! And Ted's very much improved, Bab, very much more gentle and sweet. She told me about Bob Carleton's death, poor fellow! She went to see him and took George, and do you know, I don't think Ted will marry again, although she's handsomer than ever!" "And Sally's the perfect celebrity's wife?" Barbara asked, with a smile. "Sally? But I wrote you that," Julia laughed. "Yes, Keith was giving a concert in Philadelphia when we went through at Easter. So Jim and I made a special trip down to hear it, and, my dear! The hall was packed, the women went simply crazy over him, and he's really quite poetical looking, long hair and all that. And Sally---I saw her at the hotel the next morning, and such a manner! Protecting the privacy of the genius, don't you know, and seeing reporters, and answering requests for autographs, and declining invitations, here, there, and everywhere! I think she has more fun than Keith does! He's quite helpless without her; won't see a manager or answer a note, or even order a luncheon! 'Sally,' he says, handing her a card, 'what do I like? Tell them not to ask me!' He worships her, and, of course, she worships him; she even said to me that it was lucky there were no children--Keith hated children!" "Funny life!" Barbara mused, half laughing. "And your people are well, Ju?" "Splendidly," Julia smiled. "Mama looks just the same; she was simply wild about our Georgie--saw him nearly every day, for if I couldn't go I sent nurse with him. My cousin Marguerite is dead, you know, and her husband is really a very clever fellow, a tailor, making lots of money. He and the three children have come to live with Aunt May; Regina manages the whole crowd; it's really the happiest sort of a home! Anna had beautiful times there; she remembered it all, and Aunt May and Mama nearly spoiled her!" "You couldn't spoil her," Barbara said affectionately. "She is really the dearest and most precious! Are you going to let La Franz paint her?" "No." Julia's motherly pride showed only in a sudden brightness in her blue eyes. "And I hope no one will tell her that he asked! Even at ten, Bab, they are quite sufficiently aware of admiration. She had on a sort of greeny-yallery velvet gown the day we met him, and really she was quite toothsome, if you ask an unprejudiced observer. But Jim and I were wondering if it's wise to make her _quite_ so picturesque!" "You can't help it," Barbara said. "She's just as lovely in a Holland pinny, or a nightie, or a bathing suit! I declare she was too lovely on the sands last year, with her straw-coloured hair, and a straw-coloured hat, and her pink cheeks matching a pink apron! She's going to be prettier than you are, Ju!" "Well, at that she won't set the Thames afire!" Julia smiled. "I don't know! You ought to be an absolutely happy woman, Julie." Julia settled the baby's head more comfortably against her arm, and raised earnest eyes. "Is any one, Bab? Are you?" "Well, yes, I think I am!" Lady Curriel said thoughtfully. "Of course those months before Francis's uncle died were awfully hard on us all, and then before Mary came I was wretched; but now--there's really nothing, except that we do _not_ live within our income when we're in the town house, and that frets Francis a good deal. Of course I try to economize in summer, and we catch up, but it's an ever-present worry! And then our Geordie's throat, you know, and being so far from Mother and Rich and the girls, of course! But those things really don't count, Ju. And in the main I'm absolutely happy and satisfied. I'm pleased with the way my life has gone!" "Pleased is mild," Julia agreed. "I'd be an utter ingrate to be anything but pleased, looking back. Jim is exceptional, of course, and Anna and this young person seem to me pretty nice in their little ways! And when we went home this year it was really pleasant and touching, I thought; all San Francisco was gracious; we could have had five times as long a visit and not worn our welcome out!" "So much for having been presented," laughed Barbara. "Well, I suppose so. Mama was wild with interest about it; she has my photograph, in the gown I wore to the drawing-room, framed on the wall. But Aunt May was dubious, isn't at all sure that she admires the British royal family. She's a most delightful person!" Julia laughed out gayly. "If ever I happen to speak of the Duchess of This or Lady That, Mama's eyes fairly dance, but Aunt May isn't going to be hoodwinked by any title. 'Ha!' she says. 'Do you think they're one bit better in the sight of God than I am?' And I like nothing better than to regale her on their silliness, tell her how one has forty wigs, and another is so afraid of losing her diamonds she has a man sit and watch them every night. Long afterward I hear her exclaiming to herself, 'Wigs, indeed!' or 'Diamonds! Well, did you ever!'" "When you come to think of it, Ju, _isn't_ it odd to think of your own people doing their own work, 'way out there on the very edge of the western world, and you here, in a fair way to become a London f'yvourite!" "Doing their own work, indeed!" laughed Julia. "My good lady, you forget Carrie. Carrie comes in every night to do the dishes, and because she's coloured, my Aunt May has always felt that she stole sugar and tea. However, we all laughed at Aunt May this year, when it came to suspecting Carrie of stealing Regina's face powder! No, but you're quite right, Bab," she went on more seriously. "It's all very strange and dramatic. Saturday, when the Duchess came in to welcome us, and flowers came from all sides, and the Penniscots came to carry us off to dinner, I really felt, 'Lawk a mussy on me, this can't be I!'" "Well, then, where _is_ the pill in the jelly?" asked Barbara solicitously. Julia had flung back her head and was listening intently. Footsteps and voices were unmistakably coming up the hall stairs. "No pills--all jelly!" she had time to say smilingly, before the door opened and three persons came into the room: Doctor Studdiford, handsomer and more boyishly radiant than ever; Miss Toland, quite gray, but erect and vigorous still; and little Anna, a splendid, glowing ten-year-old, in the blue serge sailor suit and round straw hat made popular by the little English princess. Babel followed. Every one must kiss Barbara; little George must come in for his full share of attention. Presently the beaming Ellie was summoned, and the children went away with her; Barbara carried off her aunt for a makeshift luncheon in the dismantled Curriel mansion, and the Studdifords were left alone. "We picked Aunt Sanna up at the corner," said Jim, one arm about his wife as they stood in the window looking down at the departing visitors, "and of course Anna must drag her along with us to see the baby lion! I stopped at Lord Essels's, by the way, and it's a perfect knit--can't tell where one bone stops and the other begins!" "Oh, Jimmy, you old miracle worker! Aren't you pleased?" "Well, rath-_er_! And young Lady Essels wants to call on you, Ju; says you were the loveliest thing at the New Year's ball last year! Remember when we rushed home to feed Georgie, and rushed back again?" "Oh, perfectly. I hope she will come; she looked sweet. And every one's coming to our Tuesday dinner, Jim, except Ivy; notes from them all. Ivy says Lady Violet is so ill that she can't promise, but Phyllis is coming with the new husband. She wrote such a cunning note! And--I'll see Ivy this afternoon, and I think I'll tell her that I'm going to leave her place open; if she can't come, why we'll just have to have a man over, that's all! It won't be awfully formal anyway, Jimmy, at this time of the year!" "Whatever you say, old lady!" Jim was thinking of something else. "How do you feel about leaving the kids and going off for a little run with the Parkes to-morrow night?" he asked. "He's found some new place in which he wants us to dine and sleep. Home the next morning." "Well, I could do that," Julia said thoughtfully. "You're terribly decent about leaving 'em," said Jim, who knew how Julia hated to be away from Anna and George at night, "but, really, I think this'll be fun--cards, you know, and a good dinner." "That's to-morrow?" "To-morrow." Jim hesitated. "I know you're not crazy about them," he said. "I don't _dislike_ them," Julia said brightly. "She's really lots of fun, but of course he's the Honourable and he's a little spoiled. But I'm really glad to go. Was Anna nice this morning?" "Oh, she was lovely--held her little head up and trotted along, asking _intelligent_ questions, don't you know--not like a chattering kid. She pitched right into me on the governess question; she's all for Miss Percival's school, won't hear of a governess for a minute!" "And the stern parent compromised on Miss Percival?" smiled Julia. "Well, I only promised for a year," Jim said, shamefaced. "And you were against the governess proposition, too," he added accusingly. "Absolutely," she assured him soothingly. "I love to have Anna with me in the afternoons, and when Bab's in town we can send her over there--she's no trouble!" Julia turned her face up for a kiss. "Run and wash your hands, Doctor dear!" said she. "Yes--and what are you going to do?" Jim asked jealously. "I'm going to wait for you right here, and we'll go down together," she said pacifically. Jim took another kiss. "Happy?" he asked. Just as he had asked her a thousand times in the past four years. And always she had answered him, as she did now: "Happiest woman in the world, Jim!" The happiest woman in the world! Julia, left alone, still stood dreaming in the curtained window, her eyes idly following the quiet life of the sunny street below. A hansom clattered by, an open carriage in which an old, old couple were taking an airing. Half a square away she could see the Park, with gray-clad nurses chatting over their racing charges or the tops of perambulators. But Julia's thoughts were not with these. A little frown shaded her eyes, and her mouth was curved by a smile more sad than sweet. The happiest woman in the world! Yet, as she stood there, she felt an utter disenchantment with life seize upon her; she felt an overwhelming weariness in the battle that was not yet over. For Julia knew now that life to her must be a battle; whatever the years to come might hold for her, they could not hold more than an occasional heavenly interval of peace. Peace for Jim, peace for her mother, peace for her children and for all those whom she loved; but for herself there must be times of an increasing burden, an increasing weariness, and the gnawing of an undying fight with utter discouragement. Her secret must never be anything but a secret; and yet, to Julia, it sometimes seemed that her only happiness in life would be to shout it to the whole world. Not always, for there were, of course, serene long stretches of happiness, confident times in which she was really what she seemed to be, only beautiful, young, exceptionally fortunate and beloved. But it was into these very placid intervals that the word or look would enter, to bring her house of cards crashing about her head once more. Sometimes, not often, it was a mere casual acquaintance whose chance remark set the old, old wound to throbbing; or sometimes it was Barbara's or Miss Toland's praise: "You're so sweet and fine, Ju--if only we'd all done with our opportunities as you have!" Oftener it was Jim's voice that consciously or unconsciously on his part stabbed Julia to the very soul. For him, the sting was gone, because, at the first prick, Julia was there to take it and bear it. No need to conceal from her now the bitterness of his moods; she would meet him halfway. He was worrying about that old affair? Ah, he mustn't do that--here were Julia's arms about him, her lovely face close to his, her sweet and earnest sympathy ready to probe bravely into his darkest thought, and find him some balm. Still gowned from a ball, perhaps, jewelled, perfumed, dragging her satin train after her, she would come straight into his arms, with: "Something's worrying you, dearest, tell me what it is? I _love_ you so--" No resentment on Jim's part could live for a moment in this atmosphere. He only wanted to tell her about it, to be soothed like a small boy, to catch his beautiful wife in his arms, and win from her lips again and again the assurance that she loved him and him alone. What these scenes cost Julia's own fine sense of delicacy and dignity, only Julia knew. They left her with a vague feeling of shame, a consciousness of compromise. For a day or two after such an episode a new hesitancy would mark her manner, a certain lack of confidence lend pathos to the sweetness of her voice. But no outside influence ever could bring home to her the realization of the shadow on her life as forcibly as did her own inner musings, the testimony of her own soul. If she had but been innocent, how easy to bear Jim's scorn, or the scorn of the whole world! It was the bitter knowledge that she had taken her life in her own hands nearly twenty years ago, and wrecked it more surely than if she had torn out her own eyes, that made her heart sick within her now. She, who loved dignity, who loved purity, who loved strength, must carry to her grave the knowledge of her own detestable weakness! She must instruct her daughter, guarding the blue eyes and the active mind from even the knowledge of life's ugly side, she must hold the highest standard of purity before her son, knowing, as she knew, that far back at her life's beginning, were those few hideous weeks that, in the eyes of the world, could utterly undo the work of twenty strong and steadfast years! She must be silent when she longed to cry aloud, she must train herself to cry aloud at the thing that she had been. And she must silently endure the terrible fact that her husband knew, and that he would never forget. Over and over again her spirit shrank at some new evidence of the fact that, with all his love for her, his admiration, his loyalty, there was a reservation in her husband's heart, a conviction--of which he was perhaps not conscious himself--that Julia was not quite as other women. Her criticism of others must be more gentle, her opinion less confidently offered. Others might find in her exceptional charms, rare strength, and rare wisdom--not Jim. For him she was always the exquisite penitent, who had so royally earned a perpetually renewed forgiveness, the little crippled playfellow whom it was his delight to carry in his arms. His judgment for what concerned his children was the wiser, and for her, too, when she longed to throw herself into this work of reform or that--to expose herself, in other words, to the very element from which a kind Providence had seen fit to remove her. Obviously, on certain subjects there must not be two opinions, in any house, and, whatever the usual custom, obviously he was the person to decide in his own. "Rich says you were not a saint yourself when you were in college, Jim!" she had burst out once, long years ago, before their separation. But only once. After all, the laws were not of Jim's making; whatever he had done, he was a respecter of convention, a keeper of the law of man. Julia had broken God's law, had repented, and had been forgiven. But she had also broken the law of man, for which no woman ever is forgiven. And though this exquisite and finished woman, with her well-stored brain and ripened mind, her position and her charm, was not the little Julia Page of the old O'Farrell Street days, she must pay the price of that other Julia's childish pride and ignorance still. She must go on, listening, with her wise, wistful smile, to the chatter of other women, wincing at a thousand little pricks that even her husband could not see, winning him from his ugly moods with that mixture of the child and the woman that his love never could resist. His love! After all he did love her and his children, and she loved the three with every fibre of heart and soul. Julia ended her reverie, as she always ended her reveries, with a new glow of hope in her heart and a half smile on her lips. Their love would save them all--love fulfilled the law. "Julia!" said Jim, at the door, "where are you?" She turned in her window recess. "Not escaped, O Sultan!" "Well"--he had his arm about her, his air was that of a humoured child--"I didn't suppose you had! But I hate you to go down without me!" "Well, the poor abused boy!" Julia laughed. "Come, we'll go down together!" "What were you thinking of, standing there all that time?" he asked. "You principally, Doctor Studdiford!" Julia gave him a quick sidewise glance. "Glad I came out to the Mission to fix the Daley kid's arm?" Jim asked. "Glad!" said Julia softly, with a great sigh that belied her smile. They took each other's hands, like children, and went down the broad stairway together. THE END 
27925	----	THE ART OF DISAPPEARING _By_ John Talbot Smith _AUTHOR:_ "SARANAC" "HIS HONOR THE MAYOR," "A WOMAN OF CULTURE," "SOLITARY ISLAND," "TRAINING OF A PRIEST," ETC., ETC. NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO: BENZIGER BROTHERS PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE. COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY JOHN TALBOT SMITH _All Rights Reserved_ CONTENTS. DISAPPEARANCE. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Holy Oils 1 II. The Night at the Tavern 7 III. The Abysses of Pain 16 IV. The Road to Nothingness 25 V. The Door is Closed 33 AMONG THE EXILES. VI. Another Man's Shoes 40 VII. The Dillon Clan 55 VIII. The Wearin' o' the Green 68 IX. The Villa at Coney Island 77 X. The Humors of Election 87 XI. An Endicott Heir 100 THE GREEN AGAINST THE RED. XII. The Hate of Hannibal 107 XIII. Anne Dillon's Felicity 119 XIV. Aboard the "Arrow" 128 XV. The Invasion of Ireland 137 XVI. Castle Moyna 147 XVII. The Ambassador 158 AN ESCAPED NUN. XVIII. Judy Visits the Pope 170 XIX. La Belle Colette 177 XX. The Escaped Nun 190 XXI. An Anxious Night 199 XXII. The End of a Melodrama 208 XXIII. The First Blow 218 XXIV. Anne Makes History 227 XXV. The Cathedral 236 XXVI. The Fall of Livingstone 248 THE TEST OF DISAPPEARANCE. XXVII. A Problem of Disappearance 258 XXVIII. A First Test 266 XXIX. The Nerve of Anne 274 XXX. Under the Eyes of Hate 283 XXXI. The Heart of Honora 296 XXXII. The Pauline Privilege 304 XXXIII. Love is Blind 312 XXXIV. A Harpy at the Feast 320 XXXV. Sonia Consults Livingstone 327 XXXVI. Arthur's Appeal 335 XXXVII. The End of Mischief 344 XXXVIII. A Tale Well Told 351 XXXIX. Three Scenes 360 DISAPPEARANCE. THE ART OF DISAPPEARING. CHAPTER I. THE HOLY OILS. Horace Endicott once believed that life began for him the day he married Sonia Westfield. The ten months spent with the young wife were of a hue so roseate as to render discussion of the point foolish. His youth had been a happy one, of the roystering, innocent kind: noisy with yachting, baseball, and a moderate quantity of college beer, but clean, as if his mother had supervised it; yet he had never really lived in his twenty-five years, until the blessed experience of a long honeymoon and a little housekeeping with Sonia had woven into his life the light of sun and moon and stars together. However, as he admitted long afterwards, his mistake was as terrible as convincing. Life began for him that day he sat in the railway carriage across the aisle from distinguished Monsignor O'Donnell, prelate of the Pope's household, doctor in theology, and vicar-general of the New York diocese. The train being on its way to Boston, and the journey dull, Horace whiled away a slow hour watching the Monsignor, and wondering what motives govern the activity of the priests of Rome. The priest was a handsome man of fifty, dark-haired, of an ascetic pallor, but undoubtedly practical, as his quick and business-like movements testified. His dark eyes were of fine color and expression, and his manners showed the gentleman. "Some years ago," thought Horace, "I would have studied his person for indications of hoofs and horns--so strangely was I brought up. He is just a poor fellow like myself--it is as great a mistake to make these men demi-gods as to make them demi-devils--and he denies himself a wife as a Prohibitionist denies himself a drink. He goes through his mummeries as honestly as a parson through his sermons or a dervish through his dances--it's all one, and we must allow for it in the make-up of human nature. One man has his parson, another his priest, a third his dervish--and I have Sonia." This satisfactory conclusion he dwelt upon lovingly, unconscious that the Monsignor was now observing him in turn. "A fine boy," the priest thought, "with _man_ written all over him. Honest face, virtuous expression, daring too, loving-hearted, lovable, clever, I'm sure, and his life has been too easy to develop any marked character. Too young to have been in the war, but you may be sure he wanted to go, and his mother had to exercise her authority to keep him at home. He has been enjoying me for an hour.... I'm as pleasant as a puzzle to him ... he preferred to read me rather than Dickens, and I gather from his expression that he has solved me. By this time I am rated in his mind as an impostor. Oh, the children of the Mayflower, how hard for them to see anything in life except through the portholes of that ship." With a sigh the priest returned to his book, and the two gentlemen, having had their fill of speculation, forgot each other directly and forever. At this point the accident occurred. The slow train ran into a train ahead, which should have been farther on at that moment. All the passengers rose up suddenly, without any ceremony, quite speechless, and flew up the car like sparrows. Then the car turned on its left side, and Horace rolled into the outstretched arms and elevated legs of Monsignor O'Donnell. He was kicked and embraced at the same moment, receiving these attentions in speechless awe, as he could not recall who was to blame for the introduction and the attitude. For a moment he reasoned that they had become the object of most outrageous ridicule from the other passengers; for these latter had suddenly set up a shouting and screeching very scandalous. Horace wondered if the priest would help him to resent this storm of insult, and he raised himself off the Monsignor's face, and removed the rest of his person from the Monsignor's body, in order the more politely to invite him to the battle. Then he discovered the state of things in general. The overthrown car was at a stand-still. That no one was hurt seemed happily clear from the vigorous yells of everybody, and the fine scramble through the car-windows. The priest got up leisurely and felt himself. Next he seized his satchel eagerly. "Now it was more than an accident that I brought the holy oils along," said he to Horace. "I was vexed to find them where they shouldn't be, yet see how soon I find use for them. Someone must be badly hurt in this disaster, and of course it'll be one of my own." "I hope," said the other politely, "that I did you no harm in falling on you. I could not very well help it." "Fortune was kinder to you than if the train rolled over the other way. Don't mention it, my son. I'll forgive you, if you will find me the way out, and learn if any have been injured." The window was too small for a man of the Monsignor's girth, but through the rear door the two crawled out comfortably, Monsignor dragging the satchel and murmuring cheerfully: "How lucky! the holy oils!" It was just sundown, and the wrecked train lay in a meadow, with a pretty stream running by, whose placid ripplings mocked the tumult of the mortals examining their injuries in the field. Yet no one had been seriously injured. Bruises and cuts were plentiful, some fainted from shock, but each was able to do for himself, not so much as a bone having been broken. For a few minutes the Monsignor rejoiced that he would have no use for what he called the holy oils. Then a trainman came running, white and broken-tongued, crying out: "There was a priest on the train--who has seen him?" It turned out that the fireman had been caught in the wrecked locomotive, and crushed to death. "And it's a priest he's cryin' for, sir," groaned the trainman, as he came up to the Monsignor. The dying man lay in the shade of some trees beside the stream, and a lovely woman had his head in her lap, and wept silently while the poor boy gasped every now and then "mother" and "the priest." She wiped the death-dew from his face, from which the soot had been washed with water from the stream, and moistened his lips with a cordial. He was a youth, of the kind that should not die too early, so vigorous was his young body, so manly and true his dear face; but it was only a matter of ten minutes stay beside the little stream for Tim Hurley. The group about him made way for Monsignor, who sank on his knees beside him, and held up the boy's face to the fading light. "The priest is here, Tim," he said gently, and Endicott saw the receding life rush back with joy into the agonized features. With something like a laugh he raised his inert hands, and seized the hands of the priest, which he covered with kisses. "I shall die happy, thanks be to God," he said weakly; "and, father, don't forget to tell my mother. It's her last consolation, poor dear." "And I have the holy oils, Tim," said Monsignor softly. Another rush of light to the darkening face! "Tell her that, too, father dear," said Tim. "With my own lips," answered Monsignor. The bystanders moved away a little distance, and the lady resigned her place, while Tim made his last confession. Endicott stood and wondered at the sight; the priest holding the boy's head with his left arm, close to his bosom and Tim grasping lovingly the hand of his friend, while he whispered in little gasps his sins and his repentance; briefly, for time was pressing. Then Monsignor called Horace and bade him support the lad's head; and also the lovely lady and gave her directions "for his mother's sake." She was woman and mother both, no doubt, by the way she served another woman's son in his fatal distress. The men brought her water from the stream. With her own hands she bared his feet, bathed and wiped them, washed his hands, and cried tenderly all the time. Horace shuddered as he dried the boy's sweating forehead, and felt the chill of that death which had never yet come near him. He saw now what the priest meant by the holy oils. Out of his satchel Monsignor took a golden cylinder, unscrewed the top, dipped his thumb in what appeared to be an oily substance, and applied it to Tim's eyes, to his ears, his nose, his mouth, the palms of his hands, and the soles of his feet, distinctly repeating certain Latin invocations as he worked. Then he read for some time from a little book, and finished by wiping his fingers in cotton and returning all to the satchel again. There was a look of supreme satisfaction on his face. "You are all right now, Tim," he said cheerfully. "All right, father," repeated the lad faintly, "and don't forget to tell mother everything, and say I died happy, praising God, and that she won't be long after me. And let Harry Cutler"--the engineer came forward and knelt by his side--"tell her everything. She knew how he liked me and a word from him was more----" His voice faded away. "I'll tell her," murmured the engineer brokenly, and slipped away in unbearable distress. The priest looked closer into Tim's face. "He's going fast," he said, "and I'll ask you all to kneel and say amen to the last prayers for the boy." The crowd knelt by the stream in profound silence, and the voice of the priest rose like splendid music, touching, sad, yet to Horace unutterably pathetic and grand. "Go forth, O Christian soul," the Monsignor read, "in the name of God the Father Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who was poured forth upon thee; in the name of the Angels and Archangels; in the name of the Thrones and Dominations; in the name of the Principalities and Powers; in the name of the Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs and Prophets; in the name of the holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name of the holy Martyrs and Confessors; in the name of the holy Monks and Hermits; in the name of the holy Virgins and of all the Saints of God; may thy place be this day in peace, and thy abode in holy Sion. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Then came a pause and the heavy sigh of the dying one shook all hearts. Endicott did not dare to look down at the mournful face of the fireman, for a terror of death had come upon him, that he should be holding the head of one condemned to the last penalty of nature; at the same moment he could not help thinking that a king might not have been more nobly sent forth on his journey to judgment than humble Tim Hurley. Monsignor took another look at the lad's face, then closed his book, and took off the purple ribbon which had hung about his neck. "It's over. The man's dead," he announced to the silent crowd. There was a general stir, and a movement to get a closer look at the quiet body lying on the grass. Endicott laid the head down and rose to his feet. The woman who had ministered to the dying so sweetly tied up his chin and covered his face, murmuring with tears, "His poor mother." "Ah, there is the heart to be pitied," sighed the Monsignor. "This heart aches no more, but the mother's will ache and not die for many a year perhaps." Endicott heard his voice break, and looking saw that the tears were falling from his eyes, he wiping them away in the same matter-of-fact fashion which had marked his ministrations to the unfortunate fireman. "Death is terrible only to those who love," he added, and the words sent a pang into the heart of Horace. It had never occurred to him that death was love's most dreaded enemy,--that Sonia might die while love was young. CHAPTER II. THE NIGHT AT THE TAVERN. The travelers of the wrecked train spent the night at the nearest village, whither all went on foot before darkness came on. Monsignor took possession of Horace, also of the affections of the tavern-keeper, and of the best things which belonged to that yokel and his hostelry. It was prosperity in the midst of disaster that he and Endicott should have a room on the first floor, and find themselves comfortable in ten minutes after their arrival. By the time they had enjoyed a refreshing meal, and discussed the accident to the roots, Horace Endicott felt that his soul was at ease with the Monsignor, who at no time had displayed any other feeling than might arise from a long acquaintance with the young man. One would have pronounced the two men, as they settled down into the comfort of their room, two collegians who had traveled much together. "It was an excellent thing that I brought the holy oils along," Monsignor said, as if Endicott had no other interest in life than this particular form of excellence. To a polite inquiry he explained the history, nature, and use of the mysterious oils. "I can understand how a ceremony of that kind would soothe the last hours of Tim Hurley," said the pagan Endicott, "but I am curious, if you will pardon me, to know if the holy oils would have a similar effect on Monsignor O'Donnell." "The same old supposition," chuckled the priest, "that there is one law for the crowd, the mob, the diggers, and another for the illuminati. Now, let me tell you, Mr. Endicott, that with all his faith Tim Hurley could not have welcomed priest and oils more than I shall when I need them. The anguish of death is very bitter, which you are too young to know, and it is a blessed thing to have a sovereign ready for that anguish in the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. The Holy Oils are the thing which Macbeth desired when he demanded so bitterly of the physician. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow? That is my conviction. So if you are near when I am going to judgment, come in and see how emphatically I shall demand the holy oils, even before a priest be willing to bring them." "It seems strange," Horace commented, "very strange. I cannot get at your point of view at all." Then he went on to ask questions rapidly, and Monsignor had to explain the meaning of his title, a hundred things connected with his priesthood, and to answer many objections to his explanations; until the night had worn on to bedtime, and the crowd of guests began to depart from the verandahs. It was all so interesting to Horace. In the priest and his conversation he had caught a glimpse of a new world both strange and fascinating. Curious too was the profound indifference of men like himself--college men--to its existence. It did not seem possible that the Roman idea could grow into proportions under the bilious eyes of the omniscient Saxon, and not a soul be aware of its growth! However, Monsignor was a pleasant man, a true college lad, an interesting talker, with music in his voice, and a sincere eye. He was not a controversialist, but a critic, and he did not seem to mind when Horace went off into a dream of Sonia, and asked questions far from the subject. Long afterwards Endicott recalled a peculiarity of this night, which escaped his notice at the time: his sensitiveness to every detail of their surroundings, to the colors of the room, to the shades of meaning in the words of the Monsignor, to his tricks of speech and tone, quite unusual in Horace's habit. Sonia complained that he never could tell her anything clear or significant of places he had seen. The room which had been secured from the landlord was the parlor of the tavern; long and low, colonial in the very smell of the tapestry carpet, with doors and mantel that made one think of John Adams and General Washington. The walls had a certain terror in them, a kind of suspense, as when a jury sits petrified while their foreman announces a verdict of death. A long line of portraits in oil produced this impression. The faces of ancient neighbors, of the Adams, the Endicotts, the Bradburys, severe Puritans, for whom the name of priest meant a momentary stoppage of the heart, looked coldly and precisely straight out from their frames on the Monsignor. Horace fancied that they exchanged glances. What fun it would have been to see the entire party move out from their frames, and put the wearer of the Roman purple to shameful flight. "I'll bet they don't let you sleep to-night," he said to the priest, who laughed at the conceit. A cricket came out on the window-sill, chirped at Horace's elbow, and fled at the sound of near voices. Through the thick foliage of the chestnut trees outside he could see stars at times that made him think of Sonia's eyes. The wind shook the branches gently, and made little moans and whispers in the corners, as if the ghosts of the portraits were discussing the sacrilege of the Monsignor's presence. Horace thought at the time his nerves were strung tight by the incidents of the day, and his interest deeply stirred by the conversation of the priest; since hitherto he had always thought of wind as a thing that blew disagreeably except at sea, noisy insects as public nuisances to be caught and slain, and family portraits the last praiseworthy attempt of ancestors to disturb the sleep of their remote heirs. When he had somewhat tired of asking his companion questions, it occurred to him that the Monsignor had asked none in return, and might waive his right to this privilege of good-fellowship. He mentioned the matter. "Thank you," said Monsignor, "but I know all about you. See now if I give you a good account of your life and descent." He was promenading the room before the picture-jury frowning on him. He looked at them a moment solemnly. "Indeed I know what I would have to expect from you," he said to the portraits, "if you were to sit upon my case to-night. Your descendant here is more merciful." They laughed together. "Well," to Horace, "you asked me many questions, because you know nothing about me or mine, although we have been on the soil this half century. The statesmen of your blood disdain me. This scorn is in the air of New England, and is part of your marrow. Here is an example of it. Once on a vacation I spent a few weeks in the house of a Puritan lady, who learned of my faith and blood only a week before my leaving. She had been very kind, and when I bade her good-by I assured her that I would remember her in my prayers. 'You needn't mind,' she replied, 'my own prayers are much better than any you can say.' This temper explains why you have to ask questions about me, and I have none to ask concerning you." Horace had to admit the contention. "Life began for you near the river that turned the wheel of the old sawmill. Ah, that river! It was the beginning of history, of time, of life! It came from the beyond and it went over the rim of the wonderful horizon, singing and laughing like a child. How often you dreamed of following it to its end, where you were certain a glory, felt only in your dreams, filled the land. The fishes only could do that, for they had no feet to be tired by walking. Your first mystery was that wheel which the water turned: a monstrous thing, a giant, ugly and deadly, whose first movement sent you off in terror. How could it be that the gentle, smiling, yielding water, which took any shape from a baby hand, had power to speed that giant! The time came when you bathed in the stream, mastered it, in spite of the terror which it gave you one day when it swallowed the life of a comrade. Do you remember this?" Monsignor held up his hand with two fingers stretched out beyond the others, and gave a gentle war-whoop. Horace laughed. "I suppose every boy in the country invited his chums to a swim that way," he said. "Just so. The sign language was universal. The old school on the village green succeeded the river and the mill in your history. Miss Primby taught it, dear old soul, gentler than a mother even, and you laughed at her curls, and her funny ways, which hid from child's eyes a noble heart. It was she who bound up your black eye after the battle with Bouncer, the bully, whose face and reputation you wrecked in the same hour for his oppression of the most helpless boy in school. That feat made you the leader of the secret society which met at awful hours in the deserted shanty just below the sawmill. What a creep went up and down your spine as in the chill of the evening the boys came stealing out of the undergrowth one by one, and greeted their chief with the password, known by every parent in town. The stars looked down upon you as they must have looked upon all the great conspirators of time since the world began. You felt that the life of the government hung by a thread, when such desperate characters took the risk of conspiring against it. What a day was July the Fourth--what wretches were the British--what a hero was General Washington! What land was like this country of the West? Its form on the globe was a promontory while all others lay very low on the plane." "In that spirit you went to Harvard and ran full against some great questions of life. The war was on, and your father was at the front. Only your age, your father's orders, and your mother's need held you back from the fight. You were your mother's son. It is written all over you,--and me. And your father loved you doubly that you were his son and owned her nature. He fell in battle, and she was slain by a crueller foe, the grief that, seizing us, will not let us live even for those we love. God rest the faithful dead, give peace to their souls, and complete their love and their labors! My father and mother are living yet--the sweetest of blessings at my time of life. You grieved as youth grieves, but life had its compensations. You are a married man, and you love as your parents loved, with the fire and tenderness of both. Happy man! Fortunate woman!" He stopped before the nearest portrait, and stared at it. "Well, what do you think of my acquaintance with your history?" he asked. "Very clever, Monsignor," answered Horace impressed. "It is like necromancy, though I see how the trick is done." "Precisely. It is my own story. It is the story of thousands of boys whom your set will not regard as American boys, unless when they are looking for fighting material. Everything and anything that could carry a gun in the recent war was American with a vengeance. The Boston Coriolanus kissed such an one and swore that he must have come over in the Mayflower. But enough--I am not holding a brief for anybody. The description I have just given you of your life and mine is also----" "One moment--pardon me," said Horace, "how did you know I was married?" "And happy?" said Monsignor. "Well, that was easy. When we were talking to-night at tea about the hanging of Howard Tims, what disgust in your tone when you cried out, there should be no pity for the wretch that kills his wife." "And there should not." "Of course. But I knew Tims. I met him for an hour, and I did not feel like hanging him." "You are a celibate." "Therefore unprejudiced. But he was condemned by a jury of unmarried men. A clever fellow he is, and yet he made some curious blunders in his attempt to escape the other night. I would like to have helped him. I have a theory of disappearing from the sight of men, which would help the desperate much. This Tims was a lad of your own appearance, disposition, history even. I had a feeling that he ought not to die. What a pity we are too wise to yield always to our feelings." "But about your theory, Monsignor?" said Horace. "A theory of disappearing?" "A few nights ago some friends of mine were discussing the possible methods by which such a man as Tims might make his escape sure. You know that the influences at his command were great, and tremendous efforts were made to spare his family the disgrace of the gallows. The officers of the law were quite determined that he should not escape. If he had escaped, the pursuit would have been relentless and able. He would have been caught. And as I maintained, simply because he would never think of using his slight acquaintance with me. You smile at that. So did my friends. I have been reading up the escapes of famous criminals--it is quite a literature. I learned therein one thing: that they were all caught again because they could not give up connection with their past: with the people, the scenes, the habits to which they had been accustomed. So they left a little path from their hiding-place to the past, and the clever detectives always found it. Thinking over this matter I discovered that there is an art of disappearing, a real art, which many have used to advantage. The principle by which this art may be formulated is simple: the person disappearing must cut himself off from his past as completely as if he had been secretly drowned in mid-ocean." "They all seem to do that," said Horace, "and yet they are caught as easily as rats with traps and cheese." "I see you think this art means running away to Brazil in a wig and blue spectacles, as they do in a play. Let me show some of the consequences a poor devil takes upon himself who follows the art like an artist. He must escape, not only from his pursuers--that's easy--but from his friends--not so easy--and chiefly from himself--there's the rub. He who flies from the relentless pursuit of the law must practically die. He must change his country, never meet friend or relative again, get a new language, a new trade, a new place in society; in fact a new past, peopled with parents and relatives, a new habit of body and life, a new appearance; the color of hair, eyes, skin must be changed; and he must eat and drink, walk, sleep, think, and speak differently. He must become another man almost as if he had changed his nature for another's." "I understand," said Horace, interested; "but the theory is impossible. No one could do that even if they desired." "Tims would have desired it and accomplished it had I thought of suggesting it to him. Here is what would have happened. He escapes from the prison, which is easy enough, and comes straight to me. We never met but once. Therefore not a man in the world would have thought of looking for him at my house. A week later he is transferred to the house of Judy Trainor, who has been expecting a sick son from California, a boy who disappeared ten years previous and is probably dead. I arrange her expectation, and the neighbors are invited to rejoice with her over the finding of her son. He spends a month or two in the house recovering from his illness, and when he appears in public he knows as much about the past of Tommy Trainor as Tommy ever knew. He is welcomed by his old friends. They recognize him from his resemblance to his father, old Micky Trainor. He slips into his position comfortably, and in five years the whole neighborhood would go to court and swear Tims into a lunatic asylum if he ever tried to resume his own personality." The two men set up a shout at this sound conclusion. "After all, there are consequences as dark as the gallows," said Horace. "For instance," said the priest with a wave of his hand, "sleeping under the eyes of these painted ghosts." "Poor Tim Hurley," said Horace, "little he thought he'd be a ghost to-night." "He's not to be regretted," replied the other, "except for the heart that suffers by his absence. He is with God. Death is the one moment of our career when we throw ourselves absolutely into the arms of God." The two were getting ready to slip between the sheets of the pompous colonial bed, when Horace began to laugh softly to himself. He kept up the chuckling until they were lying side by side in the darkened room. "I am sure, I have a share in that chuckle," said Monsignor. "Shades of my ancestors," murmured Horace, "forgive this insult to your pious memory--that I should occupy one bed with an idolatrous priest." "They have got over all that. In eternity there is no bigotry. But what a pity that two fine boys like us should be kept apart by that awful spirit which prompts men to hate one another for the love of God, and to lie like slaves for the pure love of truth." "I am cured," said Horace, placing his hand on the Monsignor's arm. "I shall never again overlook the human in a man. Let me thank you, Monsignor, for this opening of my eyes. I shall never forget it. This night has been Arabian in its enchantment. I don't like the idea of to-morrow." "No more do I. Life is tiresome in a way. For me it is an everlasting job of beating the air with truth, because others beat it with lies. We can't help but rejoice when the time comes to breathe the eternal airs, where nothing but truth can live." Horace sighed, and fell asleep thinking of Sonia rather than the delights of eternity. The priest slept as soundly. No protest against this charming and manly companionship stirred the silence of the room. The ghosts of the portraits did not disturb the bold cricket of the window-sill. He chirped proudly, pausing now and then to catch the breathing of the sleepers, and to interpret their unconscious movings. The trained and spiritual ear might have caught the faint sighs and velvet footsteps of long-departed souls, or interpreted them out of the sighing and whispering of the leaves outside the window, and the tread of nervous mice in the fireplace. The dawn came and lighted up the faces of the men, faces rising out of the heavy dark like a revelation of another world; the veil of melancholy, which Sleep borrows from its brother Death, resting on the head which Sonia loved, and deepening the shadows on the serious countenance of the priest. They lay there like brothers of the same womb, and one might fancy the great mother Eve stealing in between the two lights of dawn and day to kiss and bless her just-united children. When they were parting after breakfast, Monsignor said gayly. "If at any time you wish to disappear, command me." "Thanks, but I would rather you had to do the act, that I might see you carry out your theory. Where do you go now?" "To tell Tim Hurley's mother he's dead, and thus break her heart," he replied sadly, "and then to mend it by telling her how like a saint he died." "Add to that," said Horace, with a sudden rush of tears, which for his life he could not explain, "the comfort of a sure support from me for the rest of her life." They clasped hands with feeling, and their eyes expressed the same thought and resolution to meet again. CHAPTER III. THE ABYSSES OF PAIN. Horace Endicott, though not a youth of deep sentiment, had capacities in that direction. Life so far had been chiefly of the surface for him. Happiness had hidden the deep and dangerous meanings of things. He was a child yet in his unconcern for the future, and the child, alone of mortals, enjoys a foretaste of immortality, in his belief that happiness is everlasting. The shadow of death clouding the pinched face of Tim Hurley was his first glimpse of the real. He had not seen his father and mother die. The thought that followed, Sonia's beloved face lying under that shadow, had terrified him. It was the uplifting of the veil of illusion that enwraps childhood. The thought stayed his foot that night as he turned into the avenue leading up to his own house, and he paused to consider this new dread. The old colonial house greeted his eyes, solemn and sweet in the moonlight, with a few lights of human comfort in its windows. He had never thought so before, but now it came straight to his heart that this was his home, his old friend, steadfast and unchanging, which had welcomed him into the world, and had never changed its look to him, never closed its doors against him; all that remained of the dear, but almost forgotten past; the beautiful stage from which all the ancient actors had made irrevocable exit. What beauty had graced it for a century back! What honors its children had brought to it from councils of state and of war! What true human worth had sanctified it! Last and the least of the splendid throng, he felt his own unworthiness sadly; but he was young yet, only a boy, and he said to himself that Sonia had crowned the glory of the old house with her beauty, her innocence, her devoted love. In making her its mistress he had not wronged its former rulers, nor broken the traditions of beauty. He stood a long time looking at the old place, wondering at the charm which it had so suddenly flung upon him. Then he shook off the new and weird feeling and flew to embrace his Sonia of the starry eyes. Alas, poor boy! He stood for a moment on the threshold. He could hear the faint voices of servants, the shutting of distant doors, and a hundred sweet sounds within; and around him lay the calmness of the night, with a drowsy moon overhead lolling on lazy clouds. Nothing warned him that he stood on the threshold of pain. No instinct hinted at the horror within. The house that sheltered his holy mother and received her last breath, that covered for a few hours the body of his heroic father, the house of so many honorable memories, had become the habitation of sinners, whose shame was to be everlasting. He stole in on tiptoe, with love stirring his young pulses. For thirty minutes there was no break in the silence. Then he came out as he entered, on tiptoe, and no one knew that he had seen with his own eyes into the deeps of hell. For thirty minutes, that seemed to have the power of as many centuries, he had looked on sin, shame, disgrace, with what seemed to be the eyes of God; so did the horror shock eye and heart, yet leave him sight and life to look again and again. In that time he tasted with his own lips the bitterness which makes the most wretched death sweeter by comparison than bread and honey to the hungry. At the end of it, when he stole away a madman, he felt within his own soul the cracking and upheaving of some immensity, and saw or felt the opening of abysses from which rose fearful exhalations of crime, shapes of corruption, things without shape that provoked to rage, pain and madness. He was not without cunning, since he closed the doors softly, stole away in the shadows of the house and the avenue, and escaped to a distant wood unseen. From his withered face all feeling except horror had faded. Once deep in the wood, he fell under the trees like an epileptic, turned on his face, and dug the earth with hands and feet and face in convulsions of pain. The frightened wood-life, sleeping or waking, fled from the great creature in its agony. In the darkness he seemed some monster, which in dreadful silence, writhed and fought down a slow road to death. He was hardly conscious of his own behavior, poor innocent, crushed by the sins of others. He lived, and every moment was a dying. He gasped as with the last breath, yet each breath came back with new torture. He shivered to the root of nature, like one struck fatally, and the convulsion revived life and thought and horror. After long hours a dreadful sleep bound his senses, and he lay still, face downward, arms outstretched, breathing like a child, a pitiful sight. Death must indeed be a binding thing, that father and mother did not leave the grave to soothe and strengthen their wretched son. He lay there on his face till dawn. The crowing of the cock, which once warned Peter of his shame, waked him. He turned over, stared at the branches above, sat up puzzled, and showed his face to the dim light. His arms gathered in his knees, and he made an effort to recollect himself. But no one would have mistaken that sorrowful, questioning face; it was Adam looking toward the lost Eden with his arms about the dead body of his son. A desolate and unconscious face, wretched and vacant as a lone shore strewn with wreckage. He struggled to his feet after a time, wondering at his weakness. The effort roused and steadied him, his mind cleared as he walked to the edge of the wood and stared at the old house, which now in the mist of morning had the fixed, still, reproachful look of the dead. As if a spirit had leaped upon him, memory brought back his personality and his grief together. Men told afterwards, early laborers in the fields, of a cry from the Endicott woods, so strange and woful that their hearts beat fast and their frightened ears strained for its repetition. Sonia heard it in her adulterous dreams. It was not repeated. The very horror of it terrified the man who uttered it. He stood by a tree trembling, for a double terror fell upon him, terror of her no less than of himself. He staggered through the woods, and sought far-away places in the hills, where none might see him. When the sun drifted in through dark boughs he cursed it, the emblem of joy. The singing of the birds sounded to his ears like the shriek of madmen. When he could think and reason somewhat, he called up the vision of Sonia to wonder over it. The childlike eyes, the beautiful, lovable face, the modest glance, the innocent blushes--had nature such masks for her vilest offspring? The mere animal senses should have recognized at the first this deadly thing, as animals recognize their foes; and he had lived with the viper, believing her the peer of his spotless mother. She was his wife! Even at that moment the passionate love of yesterday stirred in his veins and moved him to deeper horror. He doubted that he was Horace Endicott. Every one knew that boy to be the sanest of young men, husband to the loveliest of women, a happy, careless, wealthy fellow, almost beside himself with the joy of life. The madman who ran about the desolate wilds uttering strange and terrible things, who was wrapped within and without in torments of flame, who refrained from crime and death only because vengeance would thus be cheaply satisfied, could hardly be the boy of yesterday. Was sin such a magician that in a day it could evolve out of merry Horace and innocent Sonia two such wretches? The wretch Sonia had proved her capacity for evil; the wretch Horace felt his capabilities for crime and rejoiced in them. He must live to punish. A sudden fear came upon him that his grief and rage might bring death or madness, and leave him incapable of vengeance. _They_ would wish nothing better. No, he must live, and think rationally, and not give way. But the mind worked on in spite of the will. It sat like Penelope over the loom, weaving terrible fancies in blood and flame! the days that had been, the days that were passing; the scenes of love and marriage; the old house and its latest sinners; and the days that were to come, crimson-dyed, shameful; the dreadful loom worked as if by enchantment, scene following scene, the web endless, and the woven stuff flying into the sky like smoke from a flying engine, darkening all the blue. The days and nights passed while he wandered about in the open air. Hunger assailed him, distances wearied him, he did not sleep; but these hardships rather cooled the inward fire, and did not harm him. One day he came to a pool, clear as a spring to its sandy bottom, embowered in trees, except on one side where the sun shone. He took off his clothes and plunged in. The waters closed over him sweet and cool as the embrace of death. The loom ceased its working a while, and the thought rose up, is vengeance worth the trouble? He sank to the sandy bed, and oh, it was restful! A grip on a root held him there, and a song of his boyhood soothed his ears until it died away in heavenly music, far off, enticing, welcoming him to happier shores. He had found all at once forgetfulness and happiness, and he would remain. Then his grip loosened, and he came to the surface, swimming mechanically about, debating with himself another descent into the enchanted region beneath. Some happy change had touched him. He felt the velvety waters grasp his body and rejoiced in it; the little waves which he sent to the reedy bank made him smile with their huddling and back-rushing and laughing; he held up his arm as he swam to see the sun flash through the drops of water from his hand. What a sweet bed of death! No hard-eyed nurses and physicians with their array of bottles, no hypocrites snuffling sympathy while dreaming of fat legacies, no pious mummeries, only the innocent things direct from the hand of God, unstained by human sin and training, trees and bushes and flowers, the tender living things about, the voiceless and passionless music of lonely nature, the hearty sun, and the maternal embrace of the sweet waters. It was dying as the wild animals die, without ceremony; as the flowers die, a gentle weakening of the stem, a rush of perfume to the soft earth, and the caressing winds to do the rest. Yes, down to the bottom again! Who would have looked for so pleasant a door to death in that lonely and lovely pool! He slipped his foot under the root so that it would hold him if he struggled, put his arms under his head like one about to sleep, and yielded his senses to that far-off, divine music, enticing, welcoming.... It ceased, but not until he had forgotten all his sorrows and was speeding toward death. Sorrow rescued sorrow, and gave him back to the torturers. The old woman who passed by the pond that morning gathering flowers, and smiling as if she felt the delight of a child--the smile of a child on the mask of grief-worn age--saw his clothes and then his body floating upward helpless from the bottom. She seized his arm, and pulled him up on the low bank. He gasped a little and was able to thank her. "If I hadn't come along just then," she said placidly, as she covered him decently with his coat, "you'd have been drownded. Took a cramp, I reckon?" "All I remember is taking a swim and sinking, mother. I am very much obliged to you, and can get along very well, I think." "If you want any help, just say so," she answered. "When you get dressed my house is a mile up the road, and the road is a mile from here. I can give you a cup of tea or warm milk, and welcome." "I'll go after a while," said he, "and then I'll be able to thank you still better for a very great service, mother." She smiled at the affectionate title, and went her way. He became weak all at once, and for a while could not dress. The long bath had soothed his mind, and now distressed nature could make her wants known. Hunger, soreness of body, drowsiness, attacked him together. He found it pleasant to lie there and look at the sun, and feel too happy to curse it as before. The loom had done working, Penelope was asleep. The door seemed forever shut on the woman known as Sonia, who had tormented him long ago. The dead should trouble no one living. He was utterly weary, sore in every spot, crushed by torment as poor Tim Hurley had been broken by his engine. This recollection, and his lying beside the pool as Tim lay beside the running river, recalled the Monsignor and the holy oils. As he fell asleep the fancy struck him that his need at that moment was the holy oils; some balm for sick eyes and ears, for tired hands and soiled feet, like his mother's kisses long ago, that would soothe the aching, and steal from the limbs into the heart afterwards; a heavenly dew that would aid sleep in restoring the stiffened sinews and distracted nerves. The old woman came back to him later, and found him in his sleep of exhaustion. Like a mother, she pillowed his head, covered him with his clothes, and her own shawl, and made sure that his rest would be safe and comfortable. She studied the noble young head, and smoothed it tenderly. The pitiful face, a terrible face for those who could read, so bitterly had grief written age on the curved dimpled surface of youth, stirred some convulsion in her, for she threw up her arms in despair as she walked away homeward, and wild sobs choked her for minutes. He sat on the kitchen porch of her poor home that afternoon, quite free from pain. A wonderful relief had come to him. He seemed lifted into an upper region of peace like one just returned from infernal levels. The golden air tasted like old wine. The scenes about him were marvelous to his eyes. His own personality redeemed from recent horror became a delightful thing. "It is terrible to suffer," he said to Martha Willis. "In the last five days I have suffered." "As all men must suffer," said the woman resignedly. "Then you have suffered too? How did you ever get over it, mother?" She did not tell him, after a look at his face, that some sorrows are indelible. "We have to get over everything, son. And it is lucky we can do it, without running into an insane asylum." "Were your troubles very great, mother?" "Lots of people about say I deserved them, so they couldn't be very great," she answered, and he laughed at her queer way of putting it, then checked himself. "Sorrow is sorrow to him who suffers," he said, "no matter what people say about it. And I would not wish a beast to endure what I did. I would help the poor devil who suffered, no matter how much he deserved his pain." "Only those who suffered feel that way. I am alone now, but this house was crowded thirty years ago. There was Lucy, and John, and Oliver, and Henry, and my husband, and we were very happy." "And they are all gone?" "I shall never see them again here. Lucy died when I needed her most, and Henry, such a fine boy, followed her before he was twenty. They are safe in the churchyard, and that makes me happy, for they are mine still, they will always be mine. John was like his father, and both were drunkards. They beat me in turn, and I was glad when they took to tramping. They're tramping yet, as I hear, but I haven't seen them in years. And Oliver, the cleverest boy in the school, and very headstrong, he went to Boston, and from there he went to jail for cheating a bank, and in jail he died. It was best for him and for me. I took him back to lie beside his brother and sister, though some said it was a shame. But what can a mother do? Her children are hers no matter if they turn out wrong." "And you lived through it all, mother?" said the listener with his face working. "Once I thought different, but now I know it was for the best," she answered calmly, and chiefly for his benefit. "I had my days and years even, when I thought some other woman had taken Martha Willis' place, a poor miserable creature, more like the dead than the live. But I often thought, since my own self came back, how lucky it was Lucy had her mother to close her eyes, and the same for poor Henry. And Oliver, he was pretty miserable dying in jail, but I never forgot what he said to me. 'Mother,' he said, 'it's like dying at home to have you with me here.' He was very proud, and it cut him that the cleverest of the family should die in jail. And he said, 'you'll put me beside the others, and take care of the grave, and not be ashamed of me, mother.' It was the money he left me, that kept this house and me ever since. Now just think of the way he'd have died if I had not been about to see to him. And I suppose the two tramps'll come marching in some day to die, or to be buried, and they'll be lucky to find me living. But anyway I've arranged it with the minister to see to them, and give them a place with their own, if I'm not here to look after them." "And you lived through it all!" repeated Horace in wonder. Her story gave him hope. He must put off thinking until grief had loosened its grip on his nerves, and the old self had come uppermost. He was determined that the old self should return, as Martha had proved it could return. He enjoyed its presence at that very moment, though with a dread of its impending departure. The old woman readily accepted him as a boarder for a few days or longer, and treated him like a son. He slept that night in a bed, the bed of Oliver and Henry,--their portraits hanging over the bureau--and slept as deeply as a wearied child. A blessed sleep was followed by a bitter waking. Something gripped him the moment he rose and looked out at the summer sun; a cruel hand seized his breast, and weighted it with vague pain. Deep sighs shook him, and the loom of Penelope began its dreadful weaving of bloody visions, while the restful pool in the woods tempted him to its cool rest. For a moment he gave way to the thought that all had ended for him on earth. Then he braced himself for his fight, went down to chat cheerfully with Martha, and ate her tasty breakfast with relish. He saw that his manner pleased the simple heart, the strong, heroic mother, the guardian of so many graves. CHAPTER IV. THE ROAD TO NOTHINGNESS. "Whatever trouble you're a-sufferin' from," said Martha, as he was going, "I can tell you one sure thing about it. Time changes it so's you wouldn't think it was the same trouble a year afterwards. Now, if you wait, and have patience, and don't do anything one way or another for a month, you'll be real glad you waited. Once I would have been glad to die the minute after sorrow came. Now I'm glad I didn't die, for I've learned to see things different somehow." His heart was being gnawed at that moment by horrible pain, but he caught the force of her words and took his resolve against the seduction of the pool, that lay now in his vision, as beautiful as a window of heaven. "I've come to the same thought," he answered. "I'll not do anything for a month anyway, unless it's something very wise and good. But I'm going now to think the matter over by myself, and I know that you have done me great service in helping me to look at my sorrows rightly." She smiled her thanks and watched him as he struck out for the hills two miles away. Often had her dear sons left the door for the same walk, and she had watched them with such love and pride. Oh, life, life! By the pool which tempted him so strongly Horace sat down to study the problem of his future. "You are one solution of it," he thought, as he smiled on its beautiful waters. "All others failing to please, you are here, sure, definite, soft as a bed, tender as Martha, lovely as a dream. There will be no vulgar outcry when you untie the knot of woe. And because I am sure of you, and have such confidence in you, I can sit here and defy your present charm." He felt indeed that he was strong again in spite of pain. As one in darkness, longing for the light, might see afar the faint glint of the dawn, he had caught a glimpse of hope in the peace which came to him in Martha's cottage. It could come again. In its light he knew that he could look upon the past with calmness, and feel no terror even at the name of Sonia. He would encourage its return. It was necessary for him to fix the present status of the woman whom he had once called his wife. He could reason from that point logically. She had never been his wife except by the forms of law. Her treason had begun with his love, and her uncleanness was part of her nature; so much had he learned on that fearful night which revealed her to him. His wealth and his name were the prizes which made her traitor to lover and husband. What folly is there in man, or what enchantment in beauty, or what madness in love, that he could have taken to his arms the thing that hated him and hated goodness? Should not love, the best of God's gifts, be wisdom too? Or do men ever really love the object of passion? Oh, he had loved her! Not a doubt but that he loved her still! Sonia, Sonia! The pool wrinkled at the sound of her name, as he shrieked it in anguish across the water. There was nothing in the world so beautiful as she. Her figure rose before him more entrancing than this fairy lake with its ever-changing loveliness. Its shadows under the trees were in her eyes, its luster under the sun was the luster of her body! Oh, there was nothing of beauty in it, perfume, grace, color, its singing and murmuring on the shore, that this perfect sinner had not in her body! He steadied himself with the thought of old Martha. A dread caught him that the image of this foul beauty would haunt him thus forever, and be able at any time to drive joy out of him and madness into him. Some part of him clung to her, and wove a thousand fancies about her beauty. When the pain of his desolation gripped him the result was invariable: she rose out of the mist of pain, not like a fury, or the harpy she was, but beautiful as the morning, far above him, with glorious eyes fixed on the heavens. He thought it rather the vision of his lost happiness than of her. If she were present then, he would have held her under the water with his hands squeezing her throat, and so doubly killed her. But what a terror if this vision were to become permanent, and he should never know ease or the joy of living again! And for a thing so worthless and so foul! He steadied himself again with the thought of old Martha, and fixed his mind on the first fact, the starting-point of his reasoning. She had never been his wife. Her own lips had uttered that sentence. The law had bound them, and the law protected her now. But she enjoyed a stronger guard even: his name. It menaced him in each solution of the problem of his future life. He could do little without smirching that honored name. He might take his own life. But that would be to punish the innocent and to reward the guilty. His wealth would become the gilding of adultery, and her joy would become perfect in his death. Imagine him asleep in the grave, while she laughed over his ashes, crying to herself: always a fool. He might kill her, or him, or both; a short punishment for a long treason, and then the trail of viperous blood over the name of Endicott forever; not blood but slime; not a tragedy, but the killing of rats in a cellar; and perhaps a place for himself in a padded cell, legally mad. He might desert her, go away without explanation, and never see her again. That would be putting the burden of shame on his own shoulders, in exile and a branded man for her sake. She would still have his name, his income, her lover, her place in society, her right to explain his absence at her pleasure. He could ruin her ruined life by exposing her. Then would come the divorce court, the publicity, the leer of the mob, the pointed fingers of scorn. Impossible! Why could he not leave the matter untouched and keep up appearances before the world? Least endurable of any scheme. He knew that he could never meet her again without killing her, unless this problem was settled. When he had determined on what he should do, he might get courage to look on her face once more. He wore the day out in vain thought, varying the dulness by stamping about the pond, by swimming across it, by studying its pleasant features. There was magic in it. When he stripped off his clothes and flung them on the bank part of his grief went with them. When he plunged into the lovable water, not only did grief leave him, but Horace Endicott returned; that Horace who once swam a boy in such lakes, and went hilarious with the wild joy of living. He dashed about the pool in a gay frenzy, revelling in the sensation that tragedy had no part in his life, that sorrow and shame had not yet once come nigh him. The shore and the donning of his garments were like clouds pouring themselves out on the sunlit earth. He could hardly bear it, and hung about listlessly before he could persuade himself to dress. "Surely you are my one friend," he said to the quiet water. "Is it that you feel certain of giving me my last sleep, my last kiss as you steal the breath from me? None would do it gentlier. You give me release from pain, you alone. And you promise everlasting release. I will remember you if it comes to that." The pool looked up to him out of deep evening shadows cast upon it by the woods. There was something human in the variety of its expression. As if a chained soul, silenced forever as to speech, condemned to a garment of water, struggled to reach a human heart by infinite shades of beauty, and endless variations of sound. The thought woke his pity, and he looked down at the water as one looks into the face of a suffering friend. Here were two castaways, cut off from the highway of life, imprisoned in circumstances as firmly as if behind prison grills. For him there was hope, for the pool nothing. At this moment its calm face pictured profound sadness. The black shadow of the woods lay deep on the west bank, but its remotest edge showed a brilliant green, where the sun lingered on the top fringes of the foliage. Along the east bank, among the reeds, the sun showed crimson, and all the tender colors of the water plants faded in a glare of blood. This savage brilliance would soon give way to the gray mist of twilight, and then to the darkness of night. Even this poor dumb beauty reflected in its helplessly beautiful way the tragedies of mankind. As before with the evening came peace and release from pain. Again he sat on Martha's porch after supper, and thought nothing so beautiful as life; and as he listened to further details of her life-story, imparted with the wise intention of binding him to life more securely, he felt that all was not yet lost for him. In his little room while the night was still young, he opened an old volume at the play of Hamlet and read the story through. Surely he had never read this play before? He recalled vaguely that it had been studied in college, that some great actor had played it for him, that he had believed it a wonderful thing; memories now less real than dreams. For in reading it this night he entered into the very soul of Hamlet, lived his tortures over again, wept and raved in dumb show with the wretched prince, and flung himself and his book to the floor in grief at the pitiful ending. He was the Hamlet; youth with a problem of the horrible; called to solve that which shook the brains of statesmen; dying in utter failure with that most pathetic dread of a wounded name. Oh, good Horatio, what a wounded name. Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. For a little he had thought there could not be in the world such suffering as his; how clear now that his peculiar sorrow was strange to no hour of unfortunate time; an old story, innocence and virtue--God knew he had no pride in his own virtue--preyed upon by cunning vice. He read Hamlet again. Oh, what depth of anguish! What a portrayal of grief and madness! Horace shook with the sobs that nearly choked him. Like the sleek murderer and his plump queen, the two creatures hatefulest to him lived their meanly prosperous lives on his bounty. What conscience flamed so dimly in the Danish prince that he could hesitate before his opportunity? Long ago, had Horace been in his place, the guilty pair would have paid in blood for their lust and ambition. Hamlet would not kill himself because the Almighty had "fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter;" or because in the sleep of death might rise strange dreams; he would not kill his uncle because he caught him praying; and he was content with preaching to his mother. Conscience! God! The two words had not reached his heart or mind once since that awful night. No scruples of the Lord Hamlet obscured his view or delayed his action. He had been brought up to a vague respect of religious things. He had even wondered where his father and mother might now inhabit, as one might wonder of the sea-drowned where their bodies might be floating; but no nearer than this had heaven come to him. He had never felt any special influence of religion in his life. In what circumstances had Hamlet been brought up, that religious feeling should have so serious an effect upon him? Doubtless the prince had been a Catholic like his recent acquaintance the Monsignor. Ah, he had forgotten that interesting man, who had told him much worth remembrance. In particular his last words ... what were those last words? The effort to remember gave him mixed dreams of Hamlet and the Monsignor that night. In the morning he went off to the pool with the book of Hamlet and the echo of those important but forgotten words. The lonely water seemed to welcome him when he emerged from the path through the woods; the underbrush rustled, living things scurried away into bush and wave, the weeds on the far bank set up a rustling, and little waves leaped on the shore. He smiled as if getting a friend's morning salute, and began to talk aloud. "I have brought you another unfortunate," he said, "and I am going to read his thoughts to you." He opened the book and very tenderly, as if reciting a funeral service, murmured the words of the soliloquy on suicide. How solemnly sounded in that solitude the fateful phrase "but that the dread of something after death!" That was indeed the rub! After death there can be anything; and were it little and slender as a spider's web, it might be too much for the sleep that is supposed to know no waking and no dreams. After all, he thought, how much are men alike; for the quandary of Hamlet is mine; I know not what to do. He laid aside the book and gave himself to idle watching of the pool. A bird dipped his wing into it midway, and set a circle of wavelets tripping to the shore. One by one they died among the sedges, and there was no trace of them more. "That is the thing for which I am looking," he said; "disappearance without consequences ... just to fade away as if into water or air ... to separate on the spot into original elements ... to be no more what I am, either to myself or others ... then no inquest, no search, no funeral, no tears ... nothing. And after such a death, perhaps, something might renew the personality in conditions so far from these, so different, that _now_ and _then_ would never come into contact." He sighed. What a disappearance that would be. And at that moment the words of the Monsignor came back to him: "_If at any time you wish to disappear, command me._" A thrill leaped through his dead veins, as of one rising from the dead, but he lay motionless observing the pool. Before him passed the details of that night at the tavern; the portraits, the chirping cricket, the vines at the window, the strange theory of the priest about disappearing. He reviewed that theory as a judge might review a case, so he thought; but in fact his mind was swinging at headlong speed over the possibilities, and his pulses were bounding. It was possible, even in this world, to disappear more thoroughly behind the veil of life than under the veil of death. If one only had the will! He rose brimming with exultant joy. An intoxication seized him that lifted him at once over all his sorrow, and placed him almost in that very spot wherein he stood ten days ago; gay, debonair, light of heart as a boy, untouched by grief or the dread of grief. It was a divine madness. He threw off his clothes, admired his shapely body for a moment as he poised on the bank, and flung himself in headlong with a shout. He felt as he slipped through the water but he did not utter the thought, that if this intoxication did not last he would never leave the pool. It endured and increased. He swam about like a demented fish. On that far shore where the reeds grew he paddled through the mud and thrust his head among the sedges kissing them with laughter. In another place he reached up to the high bank and pulled out a bunch of ferns which he carried about with him. He roamed about the sandy bottom in one corner, and thrust his nose and his hands into it, laying his cheek on the smooth surface. He swallowed mouthfuls of the cool water, and felt that he tasted joy for the first time. He tired his body with divings, racings, leapings, and shouting. When he leaped ashore and flung himself in the shade of the wood, the intoxication had increased. So, not for nothing had he met the priest. That encounter, the delay in the journey, the stay in the village, the peculiar character of the man, his odd theory, were like elements of an antidote, compounded to meet that venom which the vicious had injected into his life. Wonderful! He looked at the open book beside him, and then rose to his knees, with the water dripping from his limbs. In a loud voice he made a profession of faith. "I believe in God forever." CHAPTER V. THE DOOR IS CLOSED. Even Martha was startled by the change in him. She had hoped and prayed for it, but had not looked for it so soon, and did not expect blithe spirits after such despair. In deep joy he poured out his soul to her all the evening, but never mentioned deeds or names in his tragedy. Martha hardly thought of them. She knew from the first that this man's soul had been nearly wrecked by some shocking deviltry, and that the best medicine for him was complete forgetfulness. Horace felt as a life-prisoner, suddenly set free from the loathsomest dungeon in Turkestan, might feel on greeting again the day and life's sweet activities. The first thought which surged in upon him was the glory of that life which had been his up to the moment when sorrow engulfed him. "My God," he cried to Martha, "is it possible that men can hold such a treasure, and prize it as lightly as I did once." He had thought almost nothing of it, had been glad to get rid of each period as it passed, and of many persons and scenes connected with childhood, youth, and manhood. Now they looked to him, these despised years, persons, and scenes, like jewels set in fine gold, priceless jewels of human love fixed forever in the adamant of God's memory. They were his no more. Happily God would not forget them, but would treasure them, and reward time and place and human love according to their deserving. He was full of scorn for himself, who could take and enjoy so much of happiness with no thought of its value, and no other acknowledgment than the formal and hasty word of thanks, as each soul laid its offering of love and service at his feet. "You're no worse than the rest of us," said Martha, "I didn't know, and very few of my friends ever seemed to know, what good things they had till they lost 'em. It may be that God would not have us put too high a price on 'em at first, fearin' we'd get selfish about 'em. Then when they're gone, it turns our thoughts more to heaven, which is the only place where we have any chance to get 'em back." When he had got over his self-scorn, the abyss of pain and horror out of which God had lifted him--this was his belief--showed itself mighty and terrible to his normal vision. Never would he have believed that a man could fall so far and so awfully, had he not been in those dark depths and mounted to the sun again. He had read of such pits as exaggerations. He had seen sorrow and always thought its expression too fantastic for reality. Looking down now into the noisome tunnel of his own tragedy, he could only wonder that its wretched walls and exit did not carry the red current of blood mingled with its own foul streaks. Nothing that he had done in his grief expressed more than a syllable of the pain he had endured. The only full voice to such grief would have been the wrecking of the world. Strange that he could now look calmly into this abyss, without the temptation to go mad. But its very ghastliness turned his thought into another channel. The woman who had led him into the pit, what of her? Free from the tyranny of her beauty, he saw her with all her loveliness, merely the witch of the abyss, the flower and fruit of that loathsome depth, in whose bosom filthy things took their natural shape of horror, and put on beauty only to entrap the innocent of the upper world. Yes, he was entirely freed from her. Her name sounded to his ears like a name from hell, but it brought no paleness to his cheeks, no shock to his nerves, no stirring of his pulses. The loom of Penelope was broken, and forever, he hoped. "I am free," he said to Martha the next morning, after he had tested himself in various ways. "The one devil that remained with me is gone, and I feel sure she will never trouble me again." "It is good to be free," said Martha, "if the thing is evil. I am free from all that worried me most. I am free from the old fear of death. But sometimes I get sad thinking how little we need those we thought we could not do without." "How true that sounds, mother. There is a pity in it. We are not necessary to one another, though we think so. Every one we love dies, we lose all things as time goes on, and when we come to old age nothing remains of the past; but just the same we enjoy what we have, and forget what we had. There is one thing necessary, and that is true life." "And where can we get that?" said Martha. "Only from God, I think," he replied. She smiled her satisfaction with his thought, and he went off to the pool for the last time, singing in his heart with joy. He would have raised his voice too, but, feeling himself in the presence of a stupendous thing, he refrained out of reverence. If suffering Hamlet had only encountered the idea of disappearing, his whole life would have been set right in a twinkling of the eye. The Dane had an inkling of the solution of his problem when in anguish he cried out, Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! But he had not followed his thought to its natural consequence, seeing only death at the end of reasoning. Horace saw disappearance, and he had now to consider the idea of complete disappearance with all its effects upon him and others. What would be the effect upon himself? He would vanish into thin air as far as others were concerned. Whatever of his past the present held would turn into ashes. There would be no further connection with it. An impassable void would be created across which neither he nor those he loved could go. He went over in his mind what he had to give up, and trembled before his chum and his father's sister, two souls that loved him. Death would not be more terrible. For him, no; but for them? Death would leave them his last word, look, sigh, his ashes, his resting-place; disappearance would rob them of all knowledge, and clothe his exit with everlasting sadness. There was no help for it. Many souls more loving suffered a similar anguish, and survived it. It astonished and even appalled him, if anything could now appal him, that only two out of the group of his close friends and near acquaintances seemed near enough in affection and intimacy to mourn his loss. Not one of twenty others would lose a dinner or a fraction of appetite because he had vanished so pitifully. How rarer than diamonds is that jewel of friendship! He had thought once that a hundred friends would have wept bitter tears over his sorrow; of the number there were left only two! It was easy for him to leave the old life, now become so hateful; but there was terror in putting on the new, to which he must ally himself as if born into it, like a tree uprooted from its native soil and planted far from its congenial elements in the secret, dark, sympathetic places of the earth. He must cut himself off more thoroughly than by death. The disappearance must be eternal, unless death removed Sonia Westfield before circumstances made return practically impossible; his experience of life showed that disagreeable people rarely die while the microbe of disagreeableness thrives in them. What would be the effect of his disappearance on Sonia and her lover? The question brought a smile to his wan face. She had married his name and his money, and would lose both advantages. He would take his property into exile to the last penny. His name without his income would be a burden to her. His disappearance would cast upon her a reproach, unspoken, unseen, a mere mist enwrapping her fatally, but not to be dispelled. Her mouth would be shut tight; no chance for innuendoes, lest hint might add suspicion to mystery. She would be forced to observe the proprieties to the letter, and the law would not grant her a divorce for years. In time she would learn that her only income was the modest revenue from her own small estate; that he had taken all with him into darkness; and still she would not dare to tell the damaging fact to her friends. She would be forced to keep up appearances, to spend money in a vain search for him, or his wealth; suspecting much yet knowing nothing, miserably certain that he was living somewhere in luxury, and enjoying his vengeance. He no longer thought of vengeance. He did not desire it. The mills of the gods grind out vengeance enough to glut any appetite. By the mere exercise of his right to disappear he gave the gods many lashes with which to arm the furies against her. He was satisfied with being beyond her reach forever. Now that he knew just what to do, now that with his plan had come release from depression, now that he was himself again almost, he felt that he could meet Sonia Westfield and act the part of a busy husband without being tempted to strangle her. In her very presence he would put in motion the machinery which would strip her of luxury and himself of his present place in the world. The process took about two months. The first step was a visit to Monsignor O'Donnell, a single visit, and the first result was a single letter, promptly committed to the flames. Then he went home with a story of illness, of a business enterprise which had won his fancy, of necessary visits to the far west; which were all true, but not in the sense in which Sonia took these details. They not only explained his absence, but also excused the oddity of his present behavior. He hardly knew how he behaved with her. He did not act, nor lose self-confidence. He had no desire to harm her. He was simply indifferent, as if from sickness. As the circumstances fell in with her inclinations, though she could not help noticing his new habits and peculiarities, she made no protest and very little comment. He saw her rarely, and in time carried himself with a sardonic good humor as surprising to him as inexplicable to her. She seemed as far from him as if she had suddenly turned Eskimo. Once or twice a sense of loathing invaded him, a flame of hatred blazed up, soon suppressed. He was complete master of himself, and his reward was that he could be her judge, with the indifference of a dignitary of the law. The disposal of his property was accomplished with perfect secrecy, his wife consenting on the plea of a better investment. So the two months came to an end in peace, and he stood at last before that door which he himself had opened into the new future. Once closed no other hand but his could open it. A time might come when even to his hand the hinge would not respond. Two persons knew his secret in part, the Monsignor and a woman; but they knew nothing more than that he did not belong to them from the beginning, and more than that they would never know, if he carried out his plan of disappearance perfectly. Whatever the result, he felt now that the crisis of his life had come. At the last moment, however, doubts worried him about thus cutting himself off from his past so utterly, and adopting another personality. Some deep-lying repugnance stirred him against the double process. Would it not be better to live under his own name in remote countries, and thus be ready, if fate allowed, to return home at the proper time? Perhaps. In that case he must be prepared for her pursuit, her letters, her chicanery, which he could not bear. Her safety and his own, if the stain of blood was to be kept off the name of Endicott, demanded the absolute cessation of all relationship between them. Yet that did not contain the whole reason. Lurking somewhere in those dark depths of the soul, where the lead never penetrates, he found the thought of vengeance. After all he did wish to punish her and to see her punishment. He had thought to leave all to the gods, but feared the gods would not do all their duty. If they needed spurring, he would be near to provide new whips and fresher scorpions. He shook off hesitation when the last day of his old life came, and made his farewells with decision. A letter to his aunt and to his friend, bidding each find no wonder and no worry about him in the events of the next month, and lose no time in searching for him; a quiet talk with old Martha on her little verandah; a visit to the pool on a soft August night; and an evening spent alone in his father's house; these were his leave-takings. They would never find a place in his life again, and he would never dare to return to them; since the return of the criminal over the path by which he escaped into secrecy gave him into the hands of his pursuers. The old house had become the property of strangers. The offset to this grief was the fact that Sonia would never dishonor it again with her presence. Just now dabbling in her sins down by the summer sea, she was probably reading the letter which he had sent her about business in Wisconsin. Later a second letter would bear her the sentence of a living death. The upright judge had made her the executioner. What a long tragedy that would be! He thought of it as he wandered about the lovely rooms of his old home; what long days of doubt before certainty would come; what horror when bit by bit the scheme of his vengeance unfolded: what vain, bitter, furious struggling to find and devour him; and then the miserable ending when time had proved his disappearance absolute and perfect! At midnight, after a pilgrimage to every loved spot in the household shrine, he slipped away unseen and struck out on foot over the fields for a distant railway station. For two months he lived here and there in California, while his beard grew and his thoughts devoured him. Then one evening he stepped somewhat feebly from the train in New York, crawled into a cab, and drove to No. 127 Mulberry Street. The cabman helped him up the steps and handed him in the door to a brisk old woman, who must have been an actress in her day; for she gave a screech at the sight of him, and threw her arms about him crying out, so that the cabman heard, "Artie, alanna, back from the dead, back from the dead, acushla machree." Then the door closed, and Arthur Dillon was alone with his mother; Arthur Dillon who had run away to California ten years before, and died there, it was supposed; but he had not died, for behold him returned to his mother miraculously. She knew him in spite of the changes, in spite of thin face, wild eyes, and strong beard. The mother-love is not to be deceived by the disguise of time. So Anne Dillon hugged her Arthur with a fervor that surprised him, and wept copious tears; thinking more of the boy that might have come back to her than of this stranger. He lay in his lonely, unknown grave, and the caresses meant for him had been bought by another. RESURRECTION. CHAPTER VI. ANOTHER MAN'S SHOES. As he laid aside his outer garments, Horace felt the joy of the exhausted sailor, entering port after a dangerous voyage. He was in another man's shoes; would they fit him? He accepted the new house and the new mother with scarcely a comment. Mrs. Anne Dillon knew him only as a respectable young man of wealth, whom misfortune had driven into hiding. His name and his history she might never learn. So Monsignor had arranged it. In return for a mother's care and name she was to receive a handsome income. A slim and well-fashioned woman, dignified, severe of feature, her light hair and fair complexion took away ten from her fifty years; a brisk manner and a low voice matched her sharp blue eyes and calm face; her speech had a slight brogue; fate had ordained that an Endicott should be Irish in his new environment. As she flew about getting ready a little supper, he dozed in the rocker, thinking of that dear mother who had illumined his youth like a vision, beautiful, refined, ever delightful; then of old Martha, rough, plain, and sad, but with the spirit and wit of the true mother, to cherish the sorrowful. In love for the child these mothers were all alike. He felt at home, and admired the quickness and skill with which Anne Dillon took up her new office. He noted everything, even his own shifting emotions. This was one phase of the melancholy change in him: the man he had cast off rarely saw more than pleased him, but the new Arthur Dillon had an alert eye for trifles. "Son dear," said his mother, when they sat down to tea, "we'll have the evenin' to ourselves, because I didn't tell a soul what time you were comin', though of course they all knew it, for I couldn't keep back such good news; that after all of us thinkin' you dead, you should turn out to be alive an' well, thank God. So we can spend the evenin' decidin' jist what to do an' say to-morrow. The first thing in the mornin' Louis Everard will be over to see you. Since he heard of your comin', he's been jist wild, for he was your favorite; you taught him to swim, an' to play ball, an' to skate, an' carried him around with you, though he's six years younger than you. He's goin' to be a priest in time with the blessin' o' God. Then his mother an' sister, perhaps Sister Mary Magdalen, too; an' your uncle Dan Dillon, on your father's side, he's the only relative you have. My folks are all dead. He's a senator, an' a leader in Tammany Hall, an' he'll be proud of you. You were very fond of him, because he was a prize-fighter in his day, though I never thought much of that, an' was glad when he left the business for politics." "And how am I to know all these people, mother?" "You've come home sick," she said placidly, "an' you'll stay in bed for the next week, or a month if you like. As each one comes I'll let you know jist who they are. You needn't talk any more than you like, an' any mistakes will be excused, you've been away so long, an' come home so sick." They smiled frankly at each other, and after tea she showed him his room, a plain chamber with sacred pictures on the walls and a photograph of Arthur Dillon over the bureau. "Jist as you left it ten years ago," she said with a sob. "An' your picture as you looked a month before you went away." The portrait showed a good-looking and pugnacious boy of sixteen, dark-haired and large-eyed like himself; but the likeness between the new and the old Arthur was not striking; yet any one who wished or thought to find a resemblance might have succeeded. As to disposition, Horace Endicott would not have deserted his mother under any temptation. "What sort of a boy was--was I at that age, mother?" "The best in the world," she answered mildly but promptly, feeling the doubt in the question. "An' no one was able to understan' why you ran away as you did. I wonder now my heart didn't break over it. The neighbors jist adored you: the best dancer an' singer, the gayest boy in the parish, an' the Monsignor thought there was no other like you." "I have forgotten how to sing an' dance, mother. I think these accomplishments can be easily learned again. Does the Monsignor still hold his interest in me?" "More than ever, I think, but he's a quiet man that says little when he means a good deal." At nine o'clock an old woman came in with an evening paper, and gave a cry of joy at sight of him. Having been instructed between the opening of the outer door and the woman's appearance, Arthur took the old lady in his arms and kissed her. She was the servant of the house, more companion than servant, wrinkled like an autumn leaf that has felt the heat, but blithe and active. "So you knew me, Judy, in spite of the whiskers and the long absence?" "Knew you, is it?" cried Judy, laughing, and crying, and talking at once, in a way quite wonderful to one who had never witnessed this feat. "An' why shouldn't I know you? Didn't I hould ye in me own two arrums the night you were born? An' was there a day afther that I didn't have something to do wid ye? Oh, ye little spalpeen, to give us all the fright ye did, runnin' away to Californy. Now if ye had run away to Ireland, there'd be some sinse in it. Musha thin, but it was fond o' goold ye wor, an' ye hardly sixteen. I hope ye brought a pile of it back wid ye." She rattled on in her joy until weariness took them all at the same moment, and they withdrew to bed. He was awakened in the morning by a cautious whispering in the room outside his door. "Pon me sowl," Judy was saying angrily, "ye take it like anny ould Yankee. Ye're as dull as if 'twas his body on'y, an' not body an' sowl together, that kem home to ye. Jist like ould Mrs. Wilcox the night her son died, sittin' in her room, an' crowshayin' away, whin a dacint woman 'ud be howlin' wid sorra like a banshee." "To tell the truth," Anne replied, "I can't quite forgive him for the way he left me, an' it's so long since I saw him, Judy, an' he's so thin an' miserable lookin', that I feel as if he was only a fairy child." "Mother, you're talking too loud to your neighbors," he cried out then in a cheery and familiar voice, for he saw at once the necessity of removing the very natural constraint indicated by his mother's words; and there was a sudden cry from the women, Judy flying to the kitchen while Anne came to his door. "It's true the walls have ears," she said with a kindly smile. "But you and I, son, will have to make many's the explanation of that kind before you are well settled in your old home." He arose for breakfast with the satisfaction of having enjoyed a perfect sleep, and with a delightful interest in what the day had in store for him. Judy bantered and petted him. His mother carried him over difficult allusions in her speech. The sun looked in on him pleasantly, he took a sniff of air from a brickish garden, saw the brown walls of the cathedral not far away, and then went back to bed. A sudden and overpowering weakness came upon him which made the bed agreeable. Here he was to receive such friends as would call upon him that day. Anne Dillon looked somewhat anxious over the ordeal, and his own interest grew sharper each moment, until the street-door at last opened with decision, and his mother whispered quickly: "Louis Everard! Make much of him." She went out to check the brisk and excited student who wished to enter with a shout, warning him that the returned wanderer was a sick man. There was silence for a moment, and then the young fellow appeared in the doorway. "Will you have a fit if I come any nearer?" he said roguishly. In the soft, clear light from the window Arthur saw a slim, manly figure, a lovable face lighted by keen blue eyes, a white and frank forehead crowned by light hair, and an expression of face that won him on the instant. This was his chum, whom he had loved, and trained, and tyrannized over long ago. For the first time since his sorrow he felt the inrushing need of love's sympathy, and with tear-dimmed eyes he mutely held out his arms. Louis flew into the proffered embrace, and kissed him twice with the ardor of a boy. The affectionate touch of his lips quite unmanned Arthur, who was silent while the young fellow sat on the side of the bed with one arm about him, and began to ply him with questions. "Tell me first of all," he said, "how you had the heart to do it, to run away from so many that loved the ground you walked on. I cried my eyes out night after night ... and your poor mother ... and indeed all of us ... how could you do it? What had we done?" "Drop it," said Arthur. "At that time I could have done anything. It was pure thoughtlessness, regretted many a time since. I did it, and there's the end of it, except that I am suffering now and must suffer more for the folly." "One thing, remember," said Louis, "you must let them all see that your heart is in the right place. I'm not going to tell you all that was said about you. But you must let every one see that you are as good as when you left us." "That would be too little, dear heart. Any man that has been through my experiences and did not show himself ten times better than ever he was before, ought to stay in the desert." "That sounds like you," said Louis, gently pulling his beard. "Tell me, partner," said Arthur lightly, "would you recognize me with whiskers?" "Never. There is nothing about you that reminds me of that boy who ran away. Just think, it's ten years, and how we all change in ten years. But say, what adventures you must have had! I've got to hear the whole story, mind, from the first chapter to the last. You are to come over to the house two nights in a week, to the old room, you remember, and unfold the secrets of ten years. Haven't you had a lot of them?" "A car-load, and of every kind. In the mines and forests, on the desert, lost in the mountains, hunting and fishing and prospecting; not to mention love adventures of the tenderest sort. I feel pleasant to think of telling you my latest adventures in the old room, where I used to curl you up with fright----" "Over stories of witches and fairies," cried Louis, "when I would crawl up your back as we lay in bed, and shiver while I begged you to go on. And the room is just the same, for all the new things have the old pattern. I felt you would come back some day with a bag of real stories to be told in the same dear old place." "Real enough surely," said Arthur with a deep sigh, "and I hope they may not tire you in the telling. Mother ... tells me that you are going to be a priest. Is that true?" "As far as I can see now, yes. But one is never certain." "Then I hope you will be one of the Monsignor's stamp. That man is surely a man of God." "Not a doubt of it," said Louis, taking his hat to go. "One thing," said Arthur as he took his hand and detained him. He was hungry for loving intimacy with this fine lad, and stammered in his words. "We are to be the same ... brothers ... that we were long ago!" "That's for you to say, old man," replied Louis, who was pleased and even flattered, and petted Arthur's hands. "I always had to do as you said, and was glad to be your slave. I have been the faithful one all these years. It is your turn now." After that Arthur cared little who came to see him. He was no longer alone. This youth loved him with the love of fidelity and gratitude, to which he had no claim except by adoption from Mrs. Anne Dillon; but it warmed his heart and cheered his spirit so much that he did not discuss with himself the propriety of owning and enjoying it. He looked with delight on Louis' mother when she came later in the day, and welcomed him as a mother would a dear son. A nun accompanied her, whose costume gave him great surprise and some irritation. She was a frank-faced but homely woman, who wore her religious habit with distinction. Arthur felt as if he were in a chapel while she sat by him and studied his face. His mother did the talking for him, compared his features with the portrait on the wall, and recalled the mischievous pranks of his wild boyhood, indirectly giving him much information as to his former relationships with the visitors. Mrs. Everard had been fond of him, and Sister Mary Magdalen had prepared him for his first communion. This fact the nun emphasized by whispering to him as she was about to leave: "I hope you have not neglected your religious duties?" "Monsignor will tell you," he said with an amused smile. He found no great difficulty in dealing with the visitors that came and went during the first week. Thanks to his mother's tactful management no hitches occurred more serious than the real Arthur Dillon might have encountered after a long absence. The sick man learned very speedily how high his uncle stood in the city, for the last polite inquiry of each visitor was whether the Senator had called to welcome his nephew. In the narrow world of the Endicotts the average mind had not strength enough to conceive of a personality which embraced in itself a prize-fighter and a state senator. The terms were contradictory. True, Nero had been actor and gladiator, and the inference was just that an American might achieve equal distinction; but the Endicott mind refused to consider such an inference. Arthur Dillon no longer found anything absurd or impossible. The surprises of his new position charmed him. Three months earlier and the wildest libeller could not have accused him of an uncle lower in rank than a governor of the state. Sonorous names, senator and gladiator, brimful of the ferocity and dignity of old Rome! near as they had been in the days of Cæsar, one would have thought the march of civilization might have widened the interval. Here was a rogue's march indeed! Judy gave the Senator a remarkable character. "The Senator, is it?" said she when asked for an opinion. "Divil a finer man from here to himself! There isn't a sowl in the city that doesn't bless his name. He's a great man bekase he was born so. He began life with his two fishts, thumpin' other boys wid the gloves, as they call 'em. Thin he wint to the war, an' began fightin' wid powdher an' guns, so they med him a colonel. Thin he kem home an' wint fightin' the boss o' the town, so they med him a senator. It was all fightin' wid him, an' they say he's at it yet, though he luks so pleasant all the time, he must find it healthy. I don't suppose thim he's fightin' wid finds it as agreeable. Somewan must git the batin', ye know. There's jist the differ betune men. I've been usin' me fists all me life, beltin' the washboord, an' I'm nowhere yet. An' Tommy Kilbride the baker, he's been poundin' at the dough for thirty years, an' he's no better off than I am. But me noble Dan Dillon that began wid punchin' the heads of his neighbors, see where he is to-day. But he's worthy of it, an' I'd be the last to begrudge him his luck." In the Endicott circle the appearance of a senator as great as Sumner had not been an event to flutter the heart, though the honor was unquestioned; but never in his life had the young man felt a keener interest than in the visit of his new uncle. He came at last, a splendid figure, too ample in outline and too rich in color for the simple room. The first impression he made was that of the man. The powerful and subtle essence of the man breathed from him. His face and figure had that boldness of line and depth of color which rightly belong to the well-bred peasant. He was well dressed, and handsome, with eyes as soft and bright as a Spaniard's. Arthur was overcome with delight. In Louis he had found sympathy and love, and in the Senator he felt sure that he would find ideal strength and ideal manhood, things for the weak to lean upon. The young patrician seized his uncle's hand and pressed it hard between his own. At this affectionate greeting the Senator's voice failed him, and he had difficulty in keeping back his tears. "If your father were only here now, God rest his soul this day," he said. "How he loved you. Often an' often he said to me that his happiness would be complete if he lived to see you a man. He died, but I live to see it, an' to welcome you back to your own. The Dillons are dying out. You're the only one of our family with the family name. What's the use o' tellin' you how glad we are that Californy didn't swallow you up forever." Arthur thanked him fervently, and complimented him on his political honors. The Senator beamed with the delight of a man who finds the value of honors in the joy which they give his friends. "Yes, I've mounted, Artie, an' I came by everything I have honest. You'll not be ashamed of me, boy, when you see where I stand outside. But there's one thing about politics very hard, the enemy don't spare you. If you were to believe all that's said of me by opponents I'm afraid you wouldn't shake hands with me in public." "I suppose they bring up the prize-fighting," said Arthur. "You ought to have told them that no one need be ashamed to do what many a Roman emperor did." "Ah," cried the Senator, "there's where a man feels the loss of an education. I never knew the emperors did any ring business. What a sockdologer it would have been to compare myself with the Roman emperors." "Then you've done with fighting, uncle?" There was regret in his tone, for he felt the situation would have been improved if the Senator were still before the public as a gladiator. "I see you ain't lost none o' your old time deviltry, Artie," he replied good-naturedly. "I gave that up long ago, an' lots o' things with it. But givin' up has nothin' to do with politics, an' regular all my sins are retailed in the papers. But one thing they can never say: that I was a liar or a thief. An' they can't say that I ever broke my word, or broke faith with the people that elected me, or did anything that was not becoming in a senator. I respect that position an' the honor for all they're worth." "And they can never say," added Arthur, "that you were afraid of any man on earth, or that you ever hurt the helpless, or ever deserted a friend or a soul that was in need." The Senator flushed at the unexpected praise and the sincerity of the tone. He was anxious to justify himself even before this sinner, because his dead brother and his sister-in-law had been too severe on his former occupations to recognize the virtues which Arthur complimented. "Whatever I have been," said the Senator, pressing the hand which still held his, "I was never less than a square man." "That's easy to believe, uncle, and I'll willingly punch the head of the first man that denies it." "Same old spirit," said the delighted Senator. "Why, you little rogue, d'ye remember when you used to go round gettin' all the pictures o' me in me fightin' days, an' makin' your dear mother mad by threatenin' to go into the ring yourself? Why; you had your own fightin' gear, gloves an' clubs an' all that, an' you trained young Everard in the business, till his old ... his father put a head ... put a stop to it." "Fine boy, that Louis, but I never thought he'd turn to the Church." "He never had any thin' else in him," said the Senator earnestly. "It was born in him as fightin' an' general wildness was born in you an' me. Look into his face an' you'll see it. Fine? The boy hasn't his like in the city or the land. I'll back him for any sum--I'll stand to it that he'll be archbishop some day." "Which I'll never be," said Arthur with a grin. "Every man in his place, Artie. I've brought you yours, if you want to take it. How would politics in New York suit you?" "I'm ripe for anything with fun in it." "Then you won't find fault, Artie, if I ask how things stood with you--you see it's this way, Artie----" "Now, hold on, old man," said Arthur. "If you are going to get embarrassed in trying to do something for me, then I withdraw. Speak right out what you have to say, and leave me to make any reply that suits me." "Then, if you'll pardon me, did you leave things in Californy straight an' square, so that nothin' could be said about you in the papers as to your record?" "Straight as a die, uncle." "An' would you take the position of secretary to the chief an' so get acquainted with everything an' everybody?" "On the spot, and thank you, if you can wait till I am able to move about decently." "Then it's done, an' I'm the proudest man in the state to see another Dillon enterin'----" "The ring," said Arthur. "No, the arena of politics," corrected the Senator. "An' I can tell from your talk that you have education an' sand. In time we'll make you mayor of the town." When he was going after a most affectionate conversation with his nephew the Senator made a polite suggestion to Mrs. Dillon. "His friends an' my friends an' the friends of his father, an' the rank an' file generally want to see an' to hear this young man, just as the matter stands. Still more will they wish to give him the right hand of fellowship when they learn that he is about to enter on a political career. Now, why not save time and trouble by just giving a reception some day about the end of the month, invite the whole ga--the whole multitude, do the thing handsome, an' wind it up forever?" The Senator had an evident dread of his sister-in-law, and spoke to her with senatorial dignity. She meekly accepted his suggestion, and humbly attended him to the door. His good sense had cleared the situation. Preparation for a reception would set a current going in the quiet house, and relieve the awkwardness of the new relationships; and it would save time in the business of renewing old acquaintance. They took up the work eagerly. The old house had to be refitted for the occasion, his mother had to replenish a scanty wardrobe, and he had to dress himself in the fashion proper to Arthur Dillon. Anne's taste was good, inclined to rich but simple coloring, and he helped her in the selection of materials, insisting on expenditures which awed and delighted her. Judy Haskell came in for her share of raiment, and carried out some dread designs on her own person with conviction. It was pure pleasure to help these simple souls who loved him. After a three weeks' stay in the house he went about the city at his ease, and busied himself with the study and practise of his new personality. In secret, even from Louis who spent much of his leisure with him, he began to acquire the well-known accomplishments of the real Arthur Dillon, who had sung and danced his way into the hearts of his friends, who had been a wit for a boy, bubbling over with good spirits, an athlete, a manager of amateur minstrels, a precocious gallant among the girls, a fighter ever ready to defend the weak, a tireless leader in any enterprise, and of a bright mind, but indifferent to study. The part was difficult for him to play, since his nature was staidness itself beside the spontaneity and variety of Arthur Dillon: but his spirits rose in the effort, some feeling within responded to the dash and daring of this lost boy, so much loved and so deeply mourned. Louis helped him in preparing his wardrobe, very unlike anything an Endicott had ever worn. Lacking the elegance and correctness of earlier days, and of a different character, it was in itself a disguise. He wore his hair long and thick in the Byronic fashion, and a curly beard shadowed his lower face. Standing at the glass on the afternoon of the reception he felt confident that Horace Endicott had fairly disappeared beneath the new man Dillon. His figure had filled out slightly, and had lost its mournful stoop; his face was no longer wolfish in its leanness, and his color had returned, though melancholy eyes marked by deep circles still betrayed the sick heart. Yet the figure in the glass looked as unlike Horace Endicott as Louis Everard. He compared it with the accurate portrait sent out by his pursuers through the press. Only the day before had the story of his mysterious disappearance been made public. For months they had sought him quietly but vainly. It was a sign of their despair that the journals should have his story, his portrait, and a reward for his discovery. No man sees his face as others see it, but the difference between the printed portrait and the reflection of Arthur Dillon in the mirror was so startling that he felt humbled and pained, and had to remind himself that this was the unlikeness he so desired. The plump and muscular figure of Horace Endicott, dressed perfectly, posed affectively, expressed the self-confidence of the aristocrat. His smooth face was insolent with happiness and prosperity, with that spirit called the pride of life. But for what he knew of this man, he could have laughed at his self-sufficiency. The mirror gave back a shrunken, sickly figure, somewhat concealed by new garments, and the eyes betrayed a poor soul, cracked and seamed by grief and wrong; no longer Horace Endicott, broken by sickness of mind and heart, and disguised by circumstance, but another man entirely. What a mill is sorrow, thus to grind up an Endicott and from the dust remold a Dillon! The young aristocrat, plump, insolent, shallow, and self-poised, looked commonplace in his pride beside this broken man, who had walked through the abyss of hell, and nevertheless saved his soul. He discovered as he gazed alternately on portrait and mirror that a singular feeling had taken hold of him. Horace Endicott all at once seemed remote, like a close friend swallowed and obliterated years ago by the sea; while within himself, whoever he might be, some one seemed struggling for release, or expression, or dominion. He interpreted it promptly. Outwardly, he was living the life of Arthur Dillon, and inwardly that Arthur was making war on Horace Endicott, taking possession as an enemy seizes a stubborn land, reaching out for those remote citadels wherein the essence of personality resides. He did not object. He was rather pleased, though he shivered with a not unwelcome dread. The reception turned out a marvelous affair for him who had always been bored by such ceremonies. His mother, resplendent in a silk dress of changeable hue, seemed to walk on air. Mrs. Everard and her daughter Mona assisted Anne in receiving the guests. The elder women he knew were Irish peasants, who in childhood had run barefoot to school on a breakfast of oatmeal porridge, and had since done their own washing and baking for a time. Only a practised eye could have distinguished them from their sisters born in the purple. Mona was a beauty, who earned her own living as a teacher, and had the little virtues of the profession well marked; truly a daughter of the gods, tall for a woman, with a mocking face all sparkle and bloom, small eyes that flashed like gems, a sharp tongue, and a head of silken hair, now known as the Titian red, but at that time despised by all except artists and herself. She was a witch, an enchantress, who thought no man as good as her brother, and showed other men only the regard which irritates them. And Arthur loved her and her mother because they belonged to Louis. "I don't know how you'll like the arrangements," Louis said to him, when all things were ready. "This is not a society affair. It's an affair of the clan. The Dillons and their friends have a right to attend. So you must be prepared for hodcarriers as well as aristocrats." At three o'clock the house and the garden were thrown open to the stream of guests. Arthur gazed in wonder. First came old men and women of all conditions, laborers, servants, small shopkeepers, who had known his father and been neighbors and clients for years. Dressed in their best, and joyful over his return to life and home and friends, they wrung his hands, wept over him, and blessed him until their warm delight and sincerity nearly overcame him, who had never known the deep love of the humble for the head of the clan. The Senator was their benefactor, their bulwark and their glory; but Arthur was the heir, the hope of the promising future. They went through the ceremony of felicitation and congratulation, chatted for a while, and then took their leave as calmly and properly as the dames and gallants of a court; and one and all bowed to the earth with moist and delighted eyes before the Everards. "How like a queen she looks," they said of the mother. "The blessin' o' God on him," they said of Louis, "for priest is written all over him, an' how could he help it wid such a mother." "She's fit for a king," they said of Mona. "Wirra, an' to think she'd look at a plain man like Doyle Grahame." But of Anne Dillon and her son they said nothing, so much were they overcome by surprise at the splendor of the mother and the son, and the beauty of the old house made over new. After dark the Senator arrived, which was the signal for a change in the character of the guests. "You'll get the aristocracy now, the high Irish," said Louis. Arthur recognized it by its airs, its superciliousness, and several other bad qualities. It was a budding aristocracy at the ugliest moment of its development; city officials and their families, lawyers, merchants, physicians, journalists, clever and green and bibulous, who ran in with a grin and ran out with a witticism, out of respect for the chief, and who were abashed and surprised at the superior insolence of the returned Dillon. Reminded of the story that he had returned a wealthy man, many of them lingered. With these visitors however came the pillars of Irish society, solid men and dignified women, whom the Senator introduced as they passed. There were three emphatic moments which impressed Arthur Dillon. A hush fell upon the chattering crowd one instant, and people made way for Monsignor O'Donnell, who looked very gorgeous to Arthur in his purple-trimmed soutane, and purple cloak falling over his broad shoulders. The politicians bent low, the flippant grew serious, the faithful few became reverent. A successful leader was passing, and they struggled to touch his garments. Arthur's heart swelled at the silent tribute, for he loved this man. "His little finger," said the Senator in a whisper, "is worth more to them than my whole body." A second time this wave of feeling invaded the crowd, when a strong-faced, quiet-mannered man entered the room, and paid his respects to the Dillons. Again the lane was made, and hearts fluttered and many hands were outstretched in greeting to the political leader, Hon. John Sullivan, the head of Tammany, the passing idol of the hour, to whom Arthur was soon to be private secretary. He would have left at once but that the Senator whispered something in his ear; and presently the two went into the hall to receive the third personage of the evening, and came back with him, deeply impressed by the honor of his presence. He was a short, stocky man, of a military bearing, with a face so strongly marked as to indicate a certain ferocity of temperament; his deep and sparkling eyes had eyebrows aslant after the fashion of Mephisto; the expression a little cynical, all determination, but at that moment good-natured. The assembly fell into an ecstasy at the sight and the touch of their hero, for no one failed to recognize the dashing General Sheridan. They needed only a slight excuse to fall at his feet and adore him. Arthur was impressed indeed, but his mother had fallen into a state of heavenly trance over the greatness which had honored their festival. She recovered only when the celebrities had departed and the stream of guests had come to an end. Then came a dance in the garden for the young people, and the school-friends of Arthur Dillon made demands upon him for the entertainment of which his boyhood had given such promise; so he sang his songs with nerve and success, and danced strange dances with graceful foot, until the common voice declared that he had changed only in appearance, which was natural, and had kept the promise of his boyhood for gayety of spirits, sweet singing, and fine dancing. "I feel more than ever to-night," said Louis at parting, "that all of you has come home." Reviewing the events of the day in his own room after midnight, he felt like an actor whose first appearance has been a success. None of the guests seemed to have any doubt of his personality, or to feel any surprise at his appearance. For them Arthur Dillon had come home again after an adventurous life, and changes were accepted as the natural result of growth. They took him to their heart without question. He was loved. What Horace Endicott could not command with all his wealth, the love of his own kin, a poor, broken adventurer, Arthur Dillon, enjoyed in plenty. Well, thank God for the good fortune which followed so unexpectedly his exit from the past. He had a secure place in tender hearts for the first time since father and mother died. What is life without love and loving? What are love and loving without God? He could say again, as on the shore of the little pool, I believe in God forever. CHAPTER VII. THE DILLON CLAN. After the reception Arthur Dillon fell easily into the good graces of the clan, and found his place quite naturally; but like the suspicious intruder his ears and eyes remained wide open to catch the general sentiment about himself, and the varying opinions as to his manners and character. He began to perceive by degrees the magnitude of the task which he had imposed upon himself; the act of disappearing was but a trifle compared with the relationships crowding upon him in his new environment. He would be forced to maintain them all with some likeness to the method which would have come naturally to the real Dillon. The clan made it easy for him. Since allowance had to be conceded to his sickly condition, they formed no decisive opinions about him, accepting pleasantly, until health and humor would urge him to speak of his own accord, Anne's cloudy story of his adventures, of luck in the mines, and of excuses for his long silence. All observed the new element in his disposition; the boy who had been too heedless and headlong to notice anything but what pleased him, now saw everything; and kept at the same time a careful reserve about his past and present experiences, which impressed his friends and filled Judy Haskell with dread. "Tommy Higgins," she said, to Anne in an interval of housework, "kem home from Texas pritty much the same, with a face an him as long as yer arm, an' his mouth shut up like an old door. Even himself cudn't open it. He spint money free, an' av coorse that talked for him. But wan day, whin his mother was thryin' an a velvet sack he bought for her, an' fightin' him bekase there was no fur collar to id, in walked his wife an' three childher to him an' her, an' shtayed wid her ever afther. Begob, she never said another word about fur collars, an' she never got another velvet sack till she died. Tommy had money, enough to kape them all decent, bud not enough for velvet and silk an' joolry. From that minnit he got back his tongue, an' he talked himself almost to death about what he didn't do, an' what he did do in Californy. So they med him a tax-collecthor an' a shtump-speaker right away, an' that saved his neighbors from dyin' o' fatague lishtenin' to his lies. Take care, Anne Dillon, that this b'y o' yours hastn't a wife somewhere." Anne was in the precise attitude of old Mrs. Higgins when her son's wife arrived, fitting a winter cloak to her trim figure. At the sudden suggestion she sat down overcome. "Oh, God forgive you, Judy," said she, "even to mention such a thing. I forbid you ever to speak of it again. I don't care what woman came in the door, I'd turn her out like a thramp. He's mine, I've been widout him ten years, and I'm going to hold him now against every schemin' woman in the world." "Faith," said Judy, "I don't want to see another woman in the house anny more than yerself. I'm on'y warnin' yez. It 'ud jist break my heart to lose the grandher he's afther puttin' on yez." The two women looked about them with mournful admiration. The house, perfect in its furnishings, delighted the womanly taste. In Anne's wardrobe hung such a collection of millinery, dresses, ornaments, that the mere thought of losing it saddened their hearts. And the loss of that future which Anne Dillon had seen in her own day-dreams ... she turned savagely on Judy. "You were born wid an evil eye, Judy Haskell," cried she, "to see things no wan but you would ever think of. Never mention them again." "Lemme tell ye thin that there's others who have somethin' to say besides meself. If they're in a wondher over Artie, they're in a greater wondher over Artie's mother, buyin' silks, an' satins, an' jools like an acthress, an' dhressin' as gay as a greenhorn jist over from Ireland." "They're jealous, an' I'm goin' to make them more so," said Anne with a gleeful laugh, as she flung away care and turned to the mirror. For the first time since her youth she had become a scandal to her friends. Judy kept Arthur well informed of the general feeling and the common opinion, and he took pains not only to soothe his mother's fright but also to explain the little matters which irritated her friends. Mrs. Everard did not regard the change in Anne with complacency. "Arthur is changed for the better, but his mother for the worse," she said to Judy, certain that the old lady would retail it to her mistress. "A woman of fifty, that always dressed in dark colors, sensibly, to take all at once to red, and yellow, and blue, and to order bonnets like the Empress Eugenie's ... well, one can't call her crazy, but she's on the way." "She has the money," sighed Mona, who had none. "Sure she always had that kind of taste," said Judy in defence, "an' whin her eyes was blue an' her hair yalla, I dunno but high colors wint well enough. Her father always dhressed her well. Anyhow she's goin' to make up for all the years she had to dhress like an undertaker. Yistherday it was a gran' opery-cloak, as soon as Artie tould her he had taken four opery sates for the season." The ladies gasped, and Mona clapped her hands at the prospect of unlimited opera, for Anne had always been kind to her in such matters. "But all that's nawthin'," Judy went on demurely, "to what's comin' next week. It's a secret o' coorse, an' I wudn't have yez mintion it for the world, though yez'll hear it soon enough. Micksheen has a new cage all silver an' goold, an' Artie says he has a piddygree, which manes that they kep' thrack of him as far back as Adam an' Eve, as they do for lords an' ladies; though how anny of 'em can get beyant Noah an' the ark bates me. Now they're puttin' Micksheen in condition, which manes all sorts of nonsense, an' plenty o' throuble for the poor cat, that does be bawlin' all over the house night an' day wid the dhread of it, an' lukkin' up at me pitiful to save him from what's comin'. Artie has enthered his name at the polis headquarthers somewhere, that he's a prize cat, an' he's to be sint in the cage to the cat show to win a prize over fifty thousand other cats wid piddygrees. They wanted me to attind on Micksheen, but I sed no, an' so they've hired a darky in a uniform to luk after him. An' wanst a day Anne is goin' to march up to the show in a different dhress, an' luk in at Micksheen." At this point Judy's demureness gave way and she laughed till the tears came. The others could not but join. "Well, that's the top of the hill," said Mrs. Everard. "Surely Arthur ought to know enough to stop that tomfoolery. If he doesn't I will, I declare." Arthur however gave the affair a very different complexion when she mentioned it. "Micksheen is a blooded cat," said he, "for Vandervelt presented it to the Senator, who gave it to mother. And I suggested the cat-show for two reasons: mother's life has not been any too bright, and I had a big share in darkening it; so I'm going to crowd as much fun into it as she is willing to stand. Then I want to see how Micksheen stands in the community. His looks are finer than his pedigree, which is very good. And I want every one to know that there's nothing too good in New York for mother, and that she's going to have a share in all the fun that's going." "That's just like you, and I wish you luck," said Mary Everard. Not only did he go about explaining, and mollifying public sentiment himself, he also secured the services of Sister Mary Magdalen for the same useful end. The nun was a puzzle to him. Encased in her religious habit like a knight in armor, her face framed in the white gamp and black veil, her hands hidden in her long sleeves, she seemed to him a fine automaton, with a sweet voice and some surprising movements; for he could not measure her, nor form any impression of her, nor see a line of her natural disposition. Her human side appeared very clearly in her influence with the clan, her sincere and affectionate interest in himself, and her appetite for news in detail. Had she not made him live over again the late reception by her questions as to what was done, what everybody said, and what the ladies wore? Unwearied in aiding the needy, she brought him people of all sorts and conditions, in whom he took not the slightest interest, and besought his charity for them. He gave it in exchange for her good will, making her clearly understand that the change in his mother's habits must not lead to anything like annoyance from her old friends and neighbors. "Oh, dear, no," she exclaimed, "for annoyance would only remove you from our midst, and deprive us of a great benefactor, for I am sure you will prove to be that. May I introduce to you my friend, Miss Edith Conyngham?" He bowed to the apparition which came forward, seized his hands, held them and patted them affectionately, despite his efforts to release them. "We all seem to have known you since childhood," was her apology. The small, dark woman, pale as a dying nun, irritated him. Blue glasses concealed her eyes, and an ugly costume concealed her figure; she came out of an obscure corner behind the nun, and fell back into it noiselessly, but her voice and manner had the smoothness of velvet. He looked at her hands patting his own, and found them very soft, white, untouched by age, and a curious contrast to her gray hair. Interest touching him faintly he responded to her warmth, and looked closely into the blue glasses with a smile. Immediately the little woman sank back into her corner. Long after he settled the doubt which assailed him at that moment, if there were not significance in her look and words and manner. Sister Magdalen bored him ten minutes with her history. He must surely take an interest in her ... great friend of his father's ... and indeed of his friends ... her whole life devoted to religion and the poor ... the recklessness of others had driven her from a convent where she had been highly esteemed ... she had to be vindicated ... her case was well on the way to trial ... nothing should be left undone to make it a triumph. Rather dryly he promised his aid, wondering if he had really caught the true meaning of the little woman's behavior. He gave up suspicion when Judy provided Miss Conyngham with a character. "This is the way of it," said Judy, "an' it's aisy to undhershtan' ... thin agin I dinno as it's so aisy ... but annyway she was a sisther in a convent out west, an' widout lave or license they put her out, bekase she wudn't do what the head wan ordhered her to do. So now she's in New York, an' Sisther Mary Mag Dillon is lukkin afther her, an' says she must be righted if the Pope himself has to do it. We all have pity an her, knowin' her people as we did. A smarter girl never opened a book in Ameriky. An' I'm her godmother." "Then we must do something for her," said the master kindly in compliment to Judy. After his mother and Judy none appealed to him like the women of the Everard home. The motherly grace of Mary and the youthful charm of beautiful Mona attracted him naturally; from them he picked up stray features of Arthur Dillon's character; but that which drew him to them utterly was his love for Louis. Never had any boy, he believed, so profoundly the love of mother and sister. The sun rose and set with him for the Everards, and beautiful eyes deepened in beauty and flashed with joy when they rested on him. Arthur found no difficulty in learning from them the simple story of the lad's childhood and youth. "How did it happen," he inquired of Mary, "that he took up the idea of being a priest? It was not in his mind ten years back?" "He was the priest from his birth," she answered proudly. "Just seven months old he was when a first cousin of mine paid us a visit. He was a young man, ordained about a week, ... we had waited and prayed for that sight ten years ... he sang the Mass for us and blessed us all. It was beautiful to see, the boy we had known all his life, to come among us a priest, and to say Mass in front of Father O'Donnell--I never can call him Monsignor--with the sweetest voice you ever heard. Well, the first thing he did when he came to my house and Louis was a fat, hearty baby in the cradle, was to take him in his arms, look into his face a little while, and then kiss him. And I'll never forget the words he said." Her dark eyes were moist, but a smile lighted up her calm face. "Mary," he said to me, "this boy should be the first priest of the next generation. I'll bless him to that end, and do you offer him to God. And I did. He was the roughest child of all mine, and showed very little of the spirit of piety as he grew up. But he was always the best boy to his own. He had the heart for us all, and never took his play till he was sure the house was well served. Nothing was said to him about being a priest. That was left to God. One winter he began to keep a little diary, and I saw in it that he was going often to Mass on week days, and often to confession. He was working then with his father in the office, since he did not care much for school. Then the next thing I knew he came to me one night and put his arms about me to say that he wished to be a priest, to go to college, and that this very cousin who had blessed him in the cradle had urged him to make known the wish that was in him, for it seems he discovered what we only hoped for. And so he has been coming and going ever since, a blessing to the house, and sure I don't know how I shall get along without him when he goes to the seminary next year." "Nor I," said Arthur with a start. "How can you ever think of giving him up?" "That's the first thing we have to learn," she replied with a smile at his passion. "The children all leave the house in time one way or another. It's only a question of giving him to God's service or to the service of another woman. I could never be jealous of God." He laughed at this suggestion of jealousy in a mother. Of course she must hate the woman who robs her of her son, and secures a greater love than a mother ever knew. The ways of nature, or God, are indeed hard to the flesh. He thought of this as he sat in the attic room with his light-hearted chum. He envied him the love and reverence of these good women, envied him that he had been offered to God in his infancy; and in his envy felt a satisfaction that very soon these affectionate souls would soon have to give Louis up to Another. To him this small room was like a shrine, sacred, undefiled, the enclosure of a young creature specially called to the service of man, perfumed by innocence, cared for by angels, let down from heaven into a house on Cherry Street. Louis had no such fancies, but flung aside his books, shoved his chum into a chair, placed his feet on a stool, put a cigar in his mouth and lighted it for him, pulled his whiskers, and ordered the latest instalment of Dillon's Dark Doings in Dugout. Then the legends of life in California began. Sometimes, after supper, a knock was heard at the door, and there entered two little sisters, who must hear a bear-story from Arthur, and kiss the big brother good-night; two delicate flowers on the rough stem of life, that filled Horace Endicott with bitterness and joy when he gathered them into his embrace; the bitterness of hate, the joy of escape from paternity. What softness, what beauty, what fragrance in the cherubs! _Trumps_, their big brother called them, but the world knew them as Marguerite and Constance, and they shared the human repugnance to an early bed. "You ought to be glad to go to bed," Arthur said, "when you go to sleep so fast, and dream beautiful dreams about angels." "But I don't dream of angels," said Marguerite sadly. "Night before last I dreamed a big black man came out of a cellar, and took baby away," casting a look of love at Constance in her brother's arms. "And I dreamed," said Constance, with a queer little pucker of her mouth, "that she was all on fire, in her dress, and----" This was the limit of her language, for the thought of her sister on fire overwhelmed the words at her command. "And baby woke up," the elder continued--for she was a second mother to Constance, and pieced out all her deficiencies and did penance for her sins--"and she said to mother, 'throw water on Marguerite to put her out.'" "What sad dreams," Arthur said. "Tell Father O'Donnell about them." "She has other things to tell him," Louis said with a grin. "I have no doubt you could help her, Artie. She must go to confession sometime, and she has no sins to tell. The other day when I was setting out for confession she asked me not to tell all my sins to the priest, but to hold back a few and give them to her for her confession. Now you have enough to spare for that honest use, I think." "Oh, please, dear cousin Artie," said the child, thrilling his heart with the touch of her tender lips on his cheek. "There's no doubt I have enough," he cried with a secret groan. "When you are ready to go, Marguerite, I will give you all you want." The history of Arthur's stay in California was drawn entirely from his travels on the Pacific slope, tedious to the narrator, but interesting because of the lad's interest, and because of the picture which the rapt listener made. His study-desk near by, strewn with papers and books, the white bed and bookcase farther off, pictures and mottoes of his own selection on the white walls, a little altar in the depths of the dormer-window; and the lord of the little domain in the foreground, hands on knees, lips parted, cheeks flushed, eyes fixed and dreamy, seeing the rich colors and varied action as soon as words conveyed the story to the ear; a perfect picture of the listening boy, to whom experience like a wandering minstrel sings the glory of the future in the happenings of the past. Arthur invariably closed his story with a fit of sighing. That happy past made his present fate heavy indeed. Horace Endicott rose strong in him then and protested bitterly against Arthur Dillon as a usurper; but sure there never was a gentler usurper, for he surrendered so willingly and promptly that Endicott fled again into his voluntary obscurity. Louis comforted those heavy moments with soft word and gentle touch, pulling his beard lovingly, smoothing his hair, lighting for him a fresh cigar, asking no questions, and, when the dark humor deepened, exorcising the evil spirit with a sprinkling of holy water. Prayers were said together--an overpowering moment for the man who rarely prayed to see this faith and its devotion in the boy--and then to bed, where Louis invariably woke to the incidents of the day and retailed them for an hour to his amused ear; and with the last word fell into instant and balmy sleep. Oh, this wonder of unconscious boyhood! Had this sad-hearted man ever known that blissful state? He lay there listening to the soft and regular breathing of the child, who knew so little of life and evil. At last he fell asleep moaning. It was Louis who woke with a sense of fright, felt that his bedfellow was gone, and heard his voice at the other side of the room, an agonized voice that chilled him. "To go back would be to kill her ... but I must go back ... and then the trail of blood over all...." Louis leaped out of bed, and lit the night-candle. Arthur stood beside the altar in the dormer-window, motionless, with pallid face and open eyes that saw nothing. "Why should such a wretch live and I be suffering?--she suffers too ... but not enough ... the child ... oh, that was the worst ... the child ... my child...." The low voice gave out the words distinctly and without passion, as of one repeating what was told to him. Rid of fear Louis slapped him on the shoulder and shook him, laughing into his astonished face when sense came back to him. "It's like a scene, or a skene from Macbeth," he said. "Say, Artie, you had better make open confession of your sins. Why should you want to kill her, and put the trail of blood over it all?" "I said that, did I?" He thought a moment, then put his arms about Louis. They were sitting on the side of the bed. "You must know it sometime, Louis. It is only for your ear now. I had a wife ... she was worthless ... she lives ... that is all." "And your child? you spoke of a child?" Arthur shook with a chill and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "No," he groaned, "no ... thank God for that ... I had no child." After a little they went back to bed, and Louis made light of everything with stories of his own sleep-walking until he fell asleep again. The candle was left burning. Misfortune rose and sat looking at the boy curiously. With the luck of the average man, he might have been father to a boy like this, a girl like Mona with beautiful hair and a golden heart, soft sweet babies like the Trumps. He leaned over and studied the sleeping face, so sweetly mournful, so like death, yet more spiritual, for the soul was there still. In this face the senses had lost their daylight influence, had withdrawn into the shadows; and now the light of innocence, the light of a beautiful soul, the light that never was on land or sea, shone out of the still features. A feeling which had never touched his nature before took fierce possession of him, and shook him as a tiger shakes his prey. He had to writhe in silence, to beat his head with his hands, to stifle words of rage and hate and despair. At last exhausted he resigned himself, he took the boy's hand in his, remembering that this innocent heart loved him, and fell into a dreamless sleep. The charm and the pain of mystery hung about the new life, attracting him, yet baffling him at every step. He could not fathom or grasp the people with whom he lived intimately, they seemed beyond him, and yet he dared ask no questions, dared not go even to Monsignor for explanations. With the prelate his relations had to take that character which suited their individual standing. When etiquette allowed him to visit the rector, Monsignor provided him with the philosophy of the environment, explained the difficulties, and soothed him with the sympathy of a generous heart acquainted with his calamities. "It would have been better to have launched you elsewhere," he said, "but I knew no other place well enough to get the right people. And then I have the hope that the necessity for this episode will not continue." "Death only will end it, Monsignor. Death for one or the other. It should come soon, for the charm of this life is overpowering me. I shall never wish to go back if the charm holds me. My uncle, the Senator, is about to place me in politics." "I knew he would launch you on that stormy sea," Monsignor answered reflectively, "but you are not bound to accept the enterprise." "It will give me distraction, and I need distraction from this intolerable pain," tapping his breast with a gesture of anguish. "It will surely counter-irritate. It has entranced men like the Senator, and your chief; even men like Birmingham. They have the ambition which runs with great ability. It's a pity that the great prizes are beyond them." "Why beyond them?" "High office is closed to Catholics in this country." "Here I run up against the mysterious again," he complained. "Go down into your memory," Monsignor said after a little reflection, "and recall the first feeling which obscurely stirred your heart when the ideas of _Irish_ and _Catholic_ were presented to you. See if it was not distrust, dislike, irritation, or even hate; something different from the feeling aroused by such ideas as _Turk_ and _atheist_." "Dislike, irritation, perhaps contempt, with a hint of amusement," Arthur replied thoughtfully. "How came that feeling there touching people of whom you knew next to nothing?" "Another mystery." "Let me tell you. Hatred and contempt of the Irish Catholic has been the mark of English history for four centuries, and the same feelings have become a part of English character. It is in the English blood, and therefore it is in yours. It keeps such men as Sullivan and Birmingham out of high office, and now it will act against you, strangely enough." "I understand. Queer things, rum things in this world. I am such a mystery to myself, however, that I ought not be surprised at outside mysteries." "I often regret that I helped you to your present enterprise," said the priest, "on that very account. Life is harsh enough without adding to its harshness." "Never regret that you saved a poor fellow's life, reason, fortune, family name from shame and blood," Arthur answered hotly. "I told you the consequences that were coming--you averted them--there's no use to talk of gratitude--and through you I came to believe in God again, as my mother taught me. No regret, for God's sake." His voice broke for a moment, and he walked to the window. Outside he saw the gray-white walls which would some day be the grand cathedral. The space about it looked like the studio of a giant artist; piles of marble scattered here and there gave the half-formed temple the air of a frowsy, ill-dressed child; and the mass rising to the sky resembled a cloud that might suddenly melt into the ether. He had seen the great temples of the world, yet found in this humbler, but still magnificent structure an element of wonder. From the old world, ancient, rich in tradition, one expected all things; centaurs might spring from its soil unnoticed. That the prosaic rocks of Manhattan should heave for this sublimity stirred the sense of admiring wonder. "This is your child?" said Arthur abruptly. "I saw the foundation laid when I was a youth, great boulders of half-hewn rock, imbedded in cement, to endure with the ages, able to support whatever man may pile upon them. This building is part of my life--you may call it my child--for it seems to have sprung from me, although a greater planned it." "What a people to attempt this miracle," said Arthur. "Now you have said it," cried the priest proudly. "The poor people to whom you now belong, moved by the spirit which raised the great shrines of Europe, are building out of their poverty and their faith the first really great temple on this continent. The country waited for them. This temple will express more than a desire to have protection from bad weather, and to cover the preacher's pulpit. Here you will have in stone faith, hope, love, sacrifice. What blessings it will pour out upon the city, and upon the people who built it. For them it will be a great glory many centuries perhaps." "I shall have my share in the work," Arthur said with feeling. "I feel that I am here to stay, and I shall be a stranger to no work in which my friends are engaged. I'll not let the mysteries trouble me. I begin to see what you are, and a little of what you mean. Command me, for no other in this world to-day has any right to command me--none with a right like yours, father and friend." "Thanks and amen, Arthur. Having no claim upon you we shall be all the more grateful. But in good time. For the present look to yourself, closely, mind; and draw upon me, upon Louis, upon your mother, they have the warmest hearts, for sympathy and consolation." Not long before and Arthur Dillon would have received with the polite indifference of proud and prosperous youth this generous offer of sympathy and love; but now it shook him to the center, for he had learned, at what a fearful price! how precious, how necessary, how rare is the jewel of human love. CHAPTER VIII. THE WEARIN' O' THE GREEN. By degrees the effervescence of little Ireland, in which strange land his fortune had been cast, began to steal into his blood. Mirth ruled the East side, working in each soul according to his limitations. It was a wink, a smile, a drink, a passing gossoon, a sly girl, a light trick, among the unspoken things; or a biting epigram, the phrase felicitous, a story gilt with humor, a witticism swift and fatal as lightning; in addition varied activity, a dance informal, a ceremonious ball, a party, a wake, a political meeting, the visit of the district leader; and with all, as Judy expressed it, "lashins an' lavins, an' divil a thought of to-morrow." Indeed this gay clan kept Yesterday so deeply and tenderly in mind that To-day's house had no room for the uncertain morrow. He abandoned himself to the spirit of the place. The demon of reckless fun caught him by the heels and sharpened his tongue, so that his wit and his dancing became tonics for eyes and ears dusty with commonplace. His mother and his chum had to admonish him, and it was very sweet to get this sign of their love for him. Reproof from our beloved is sweeter than praise from an enemy. They all watched over him as if he were heir to a throne. The Senator, busy with his approaching entrance into local politics, had already introduced him to the leaders, who formed a rather mixed circle of intelligence and power. He had met its kind before on the frontier, where the common denominator in politics was manhood, not blue blood, previous good character, wealth, nor the stamp of Harvard. A member held his place by virtue of courage, popularity, and ability. Arthur made no inquiries, but took everything as it came. All was novelty, all surprise, and to his decorous and orderly disposition, all ferment. The clan seemed to him to be rushing onward like a torrent night and day, from the dance to the ward-meeting, from business to church, interested and yet careless. The Senator informed him with pride that his début would take place at the banquet on St. Patrick's Day, when he should make a speech. "Do you think you can do it, me boy?" said the Senator. "If you think you can, why you can." "I know I can," said the reckless Dillon, who had never made a speech in his life. "An' lemme give you a subject," said Judy. They were all together in the sitting-room, where the Senator had surprised them in a game of cards. "Give a bastin' to Mare Livingstone," said Judy seriously. "I read in the _Sun_ how he won't inspect the parade on St. Patrick's Day, nor let the green flag fly on the city hall. There must be an Orange dhrop in his blood, for no dacint Yankee 'ud have anny hathred for the blessed green. Sure two years ago Mare Jones dressed himself up in a lovely green uniform, like an Irish prince, an' lukked at the parade from a platform. It brought the tears to me eyes, he lukked so lovely. They ought to have kep' him Mare for the rest of his life. An' for Mare Livingstone, may never a blade o' grass or a green leaf grow on his grave." The Senator beamed with secret pleasure, while the others began to talk together with a bitterness beyond Arthur's comprehension. "He ought to have kept his feelings to himself," said quiet Anne. "If he didn't like the green, there was no need of insultin' us." "And that wasn't the worst," Louis hotly added. "He gave a talk to the papers the next day, and told how many Irish paupers were in the poorhouse, and said how there must be an end to favoring the Irish." "I saw that too," said Judy, "an' I sez to meself, sez I, he's wan o' the snakes St. Pathrick dhruv out of Ireland." "No need for surprise," Mona remarked, studying her cards, "for the man has only one thought: to keep the Irish in the gutter. Do you suppose I would have been a teacher to-day if he could have kept me out of it, with all his pretended friendship for papa." "If you baste the Mayor like this now, there won't be much left for me to do at the banquet," said Arthur with a laugh for their fierceness. "Ay, there it is," said Judy. "Yez young Americans have no love for the green, except for the fun yez get out of it; barrin' dacint Louis here, who read the history of Ireland whin he was tin years old, an' niver got over it. Oh, yez may laugh away! Ye are all for the red, white, an' blue, till the Mare belts yez wid the red, white, an' blue, for he says he does everythin' in honor o' thim colors, though I don't see how it honors thim to insult the green. He may be a Livingshtone in name, but he's a dead wan for me." The Senator grew more cheerful as this talk grew warmer, and then, seeing Arthur's wonderment, he made an explanation. "Livingstone is a good fellow, but he's not a politician, Artie. He thinks he can ru--manage the affairs of this vil--metropolis without the Irish and especially without the Catholics. Oh, he's death on them, except as boot-blacks, cooks, and ditch-diggers. He'd let them ru--manage all the saloons. He's as mad--as indignant as a hornet that he could not boo--get rid of them entirely during his term of office, and he had to speak out his feelings or bu--die. And he has put his foot in it artistically. He has challenged the Irish and their friends, and he goes out of office forever next fall. No party wants a man that lets go of his mouth at critical moments. It might be a neat thing for you to touch him up in your speech at the banquet." The Senator spoke with unctuousness and delight, and Arthur saw that the politicians rejoiced at the loquacity and bad temper of the Honorable Quincy Livingstone, whom the Endicotts included among their distant relatives. "I'll take your subject, Judy," said he. "Then rade up the histhory of Ireland," replied the old lady flattered. Close observation of the present proved more interesting and amusing than the study of the past. Quincy Livingstone's strictures on the exiles of Erin stirred them to the depths, and his refusal to float the green flag from the city hall brought a blossoming of green ribbon on St. Patrick's Day which only Spring could surpass in her decorations of the hills. The merchants blessed the sour spirit which had provoked this display to the benefit of their treasuries. The hard streets seemed to be sprouting as the crowds moved about, and even the steps and corridors of the mayor's office glistened with the proscribed color. The cathedral on Mott Street was the center of attraction, and a regiment which had done duty in the late war the center of interest. Arthur wondered at the enthusiasm of the crowd as the veterans carrying their torn battle-flags marched down the street and under the arched entrance of the church to take their places for the solemn Mass. All eyes grew moist, and sobs burst forth at sight of them. "If they were only marching for Ireland!" one man cried hoarsely. "They'll do it yet," said another more hopeful. Within the cathedral a multitude sat in order, reverently quiet, but charged with emotion. With burning eyes they watched the soldiers in front and the priests in the sanctuary, and some beat their breasts in pain, or writhed with sudden stress of feeling. Arthur felt thrilled by the power of an emotion but vaguely understood. These exiles were living over in this moment the scenes which had attended their expulsion from home and country, as he often repeated the horrid scenes of his own tragedy. Under the reverence and decorum due to the temple hearts were bursting with passion and grief. In a little while resignation would bring them relief and peace. It was like enchantment for Arthur Dillon. He knew the vested priest for his faithful friend; but on the altar, in his mystic robes, uplifted, holding the reverent gaze of these thousands, in an atmosphere clouded by incense and vocal with pathetic harmonies, the priest seemed as far away as heaven; he knew in his strength and his weakness the boy beside him, but this enwrapped attitude, this eloquent, still, unconscious face, which spoke of thoughts and feelings familiar only to the eye of God, seemed to lift Louis into another sphere; he knew the people kneeling about, the headlong, improvident, roystering crowd, but knew them not in this outpouring of deeper emotions than spring from the daily chase for bread and pleasure. A single incident fixed this scene in his mind and heart forever. Just in front of him sat a young woman with her father, whom she covertly watched with some anxiety. He was a man of big frame and wasted body, too nervous to remain quiet a moment, and deeply moved by the pageant, for he twisted his hands and beat his breast as if in anguish. Once she touched his arm caressingly. And the face which he turned towards her was stained with the unwiped tears; but when he stood up at the close of the Mass to see the regiment march down the grand aisle, his pale face showed so bitter an agony that Arthur recalled with horror his own sufferings. The young woman clung to her father until the last soldier had passed, and the man had sunk into his seat with a half-uttered groan. No one noticed them, and Arthur as he left with the ladies saw her patting the father's hand and whispering to him softly. Outside the cathedral a joyous uproar attended the beginning of that parade which the Mayor had declined to review. As his party was to enjoy it at some point of Fifth Avenue he did not tarry to witness the surprising scenes about the church, but with Louis took a car uptown. Everywhere they heard hearty denunciations of the Mayor. At one street, their car being detained by the passing of a single division of the parade, the passengers crowded about the front door and the driver, and an anxious traveler asked the cause of the delay, and the probable length of it. The driver looked at him curiously. "About five minutes," he said. "Don't you know who's paradin' to-day?" "No." "See the green plumes an' ribbons?" "I do," vacantly. "Know what day o' the month it is?" "March seventeenth, of course." "Live near New York?" "About twenty miles out." "Gee whiz!" exclaimed the driver with a gasp. "I've bin a-drivin' o' this car for twenty years, an' I never met anythin' quite so innercent. Well, it's St. Patrick's Day, an' them's the wild Irish." The traveler seemed but little enlightened. An emphatic man in black, with a mouth so wide that its opening suggested the wonderful, seized the hand of the innocent and shook it cordially. "I'm glad to meet one uncontaminated American citizen in this city," he said. "I hope there are millions like you in the land." The uncontaminated looked puzzled, and might have spoken but for a violent interruption. A man had entered the car with an orange ribbon in his buttonhole. "You'll have to take that off," said the conductor in alarm, pointing to the ribbon, "or leave the car." "I won't do either," said the man. "And I stand by you in that refusal," said the emphatic gentleman. "It's an outrage that we must submit to the domination of foreigners." "It's the order of the company," said the conductor. "First thing we know a wild Irishman comes along, he goes for that orange ribbon, there's a fight, the women are frightened, and perhaps the car is smashed." "An' besides," said the deliberate driver as he tied up his reins and took off his gloves, "it's a darn sight easier an' cheaper for us to put you off than to keep an Irishman from tryin' to murder you." The uncontaminated citizen and two ladies fled to the street, while the driver and the conductor stood over the offending passenger. "Goin' to take off the ribbon?" asked the conductor. "You will be guilty of a cowardly surrender of principle if you do," said the emphatic gentleman. "May I suggest," said Arthur blandly, "that you wear it in his stead?" "I am not interested either way," returned the emphatic one, with a snap of the terrible jaws, "but maintain that for the sake of principle----" A long speech was cut off at that moment by a war-cry from a simple lad who had just entered the car, spied the ribbon, and launched himself like a catapult upon the Orange champion. A lively scramble followed, but the scene speedily resolved itself into its proper elements. The procession had passed, the car moved on its way, and the passengers through the rear door saw the simple lad grinding the ribbon in the dust with triumphant heel, while its late wearer flew toward the horizon pursued by an imaginary mob. Louis sat down and glared at the emphatic man. "Who is he?" said Arthur with interest, drawing his breath with joy over the delights of this day. "He's a child-stealer," said Louis with distinctness. "He kidnaps Catholic children and finds them Protestant homes where their faith is stolen from them. He's the most hated man in the city." The man accepted this scornful description of himself in silence. Except for the emphasis which nature had given to his features, he was a presentable person. Flying side-whiskers made his mouth appear grotesquely wide, and the play of strong feelings had produced vicious wrinkles on his spare face. He appeared to be a man of energy, vivacity and vulgarity, reminding one of a dinner of pork and cabbage. He was soon forgotten in the excitement of a delightful day, whose glories came to a brilliant end in that banquet which introduced the nephew of Senator Dillon into political life. Standing before the guests, he found himself no longer that silent and disdainful Horace Endicott, who on such an occasion would have cooly stuttered and stammered through fifty sentences of dull congratulation and platitude. Feeling aroused him, illumined him, on the instant, almost without wish of his own, at the contrast between two pictures which traced themselves on his imagination as he rose in his place: the wrecked man who had fled from Sonia Westfield, what would he have been to-night but for the friendly hands outstretched to save him? Behold him in honor, in health, in hope, sure of love and some kind of happiness, standing before the people who had rescued him. The thousand impressions of the past six months sparkled into life; the sublime, pathetic, and amusing scenes of that day rose up like stars in his fancy; and against his lips, like water against a dam, rushed vigorous sentences from the great deeps opened in his soul by grief and change, and then leaped over in a beautiful, glittering flood. He wondered vaguely at his vehemence and fluency, at the silence in the hall, that these great people should listen to him at all. They heard him with astonishment, the leaders with interest, the Senator with tears; and Monsignor looked once towards the gallery where Anne Dillon sat literally frozen with terror and pride. The long and sincere applause which followed the speech warned him that he had impressed a rather callous crowd of notables, and an exaltation seized him. The guests lost no time in congratulating him, and every tongue wagged in his favor. "You have the gift of eloquence," said Sullivan. "It will be a pleasure to hear you again," said Vandervelt, the literary and social light of the Tammany circle. "You have cleared your own road," Birmingham the financier remarked, and he stayed long to praise the young orator. "There's nothin' too good for you after to-night," cried the Senator brokenly. "I simply can't--cannot talk about it." "Your uncle," said Doyle Grahame, the young journalist who was bent on marrying Mona Everard, "as usual closes the delicate sparring of his peers with a knockdown blow; there's nothing too good for you." "It's embarrassing." "I wish I had your embarrassment. Shall I translate the praises of these great men for you? Sullivan meant, I must have the use of your eloquence; the lion Vandervelt, when you speak in my favor; Birmingham, please stump for me when I run for office; and the Senator, I will make you governor. You may use your uncle; the others hope to use you." "I am willing to be of service," said Arthur severely. "A good-nature thrown away, unless you are asked to serve. They have all congratulated you on your speech. Let me congratulate you on your uncle. They marvel at your eloquence; I, at your luck. Give me such an uncle rather than the gift of poesy. Do not neglect oratory, but cultivate thy uncle, boy." Arthur laughed, Monsignor came up then, and heaped him with praise. "Were you blessed with fluency in--your earlier years?" he said. "Therein lies the surprise, and the joke. I never had an accomplishment except for making an uproar in a crowd. It seems ridiculous to show signs of the orator now, without desire, ambition, study, or preparation." "Your California experiences," said the priest casually, "may have something to do with it. But let me warn you," and he looked about to make sure no one heard, "that early distinction in your case may attract the attention you wish to escape." "I feel that it will help me," Arthur answered. "Who that knew Horace Endicott would look for him in a popular Tammany orator? The mantle of an Irish Cicero would disguise even a Livingstone." The surprise and pleasure of the leaders were cold beside the wild delight of the Dillon clan when the news went around that Arthur had overshadowed the great speakers of the banquet. His speech was read in every gathering, its sarcastic description of the offensive Livingstone filled the Celts with joy, and threw Anne and Judy into an ecstasy. "Faith, Mare Livingstone'll see green on St. Patrick's Day for the rest of his life," said Judy. "It' ud be a proper punishment if the bread he ate, an' everythin' he touched on that day, shud turn greener than ould Ireland, the land he insulted." "There's curse enough on him," Anne replied sharply, ever careful to take Arthur's side, as she thought, "and I won't have you spoiling Arthur's luck be cursing any wan. I'm too glad to have an orator in the family. I can now put my orator against Mary Everard's priest, and be as proud as she is." "The pride was born in ye," said Judy. "You won't have to earn it. Indade, ye'll have a new flirt to yer tail, an' a new toss to yer head, every day from now to his next speech." "Why shouldn't I? I'm his mother," with emphasis. CHAPTER IX. THE VILLA AT CONEY ISLAND. The awkwardness of his relations with Anne Dillon wore away speedily, until he began to think as well as speak of her as his mother; for she proved with time to be a humorous and delightful mother. Her love for rich colors and gay scenes, her ability to play gracefully the awkward part which he had chosen for her, her affectionate and discreet reserve, her delicate tact and fine wit, and her half-humorous determination to invade society, showed her as a woman of parts. He indulged her fancies, in particular her dream of entering the charmed circle of New York society. How this success should be won, and what was the circle, he did not know, nor care. The pleasure for him lay in her bliss as she exhausted one pleasure after another, and ever sought for higher things: Micksheen at the cat show attended by the liveried mulatto; the opera and the dog show, with bonnets and costumes to match the occasion; then her own carriage, used so discreetly as not to lose the respect of the parish; and finally the renting of the third pew from the front in the middle aisle of the cathedral, a step forward in the social world. How he had enjoyed these events in her upward progress! As a closing event for the first year of his new life, he suggested a villa by the sea for the summer, with Mona and Louis as guests for the season, with as many others as pleased her convenience. The light which broke over her face at this suggestion came not from within, but direct from heaven! She sent him modestly to a country of the Philistines known as Coney Island, where he found the common herd enjoying a dish called chowder amid much spontaneity and dirt, and mingling their uproarious bathing with foaming beer; a picture framed in white sand and sounding sea, more than pleasant to the jaded taste of an Endicott. The roar of the surf drowned the mean uproar of discordant man. The details of life there were too cheap to be looked at closely; but at a distance the surface had sufficient color and movement. He found an exception to this judgment. La Belle Colette danced with artistic power, though in surroundings unsuited to her skill. He called it genius. In an open pavilion, whose roughness the white sand and the white-green surf helped to condone, on a tawdry stage, she appeared, a slight, pale, winsome beauty, clad in green and white gauze, looking like a sprite of the near-by sea. The witchery of her dancing showed rare art, which was lost altogether on the simple crowd. She danced carelessly, as if mocking the rustics, and made her exit without applause. "Where did you get your artiste, August?" he said to a waiter. "You saw how well she dances, hey? Poor Colette! The best creature in the world ... opens more wine than five, and gives too much away. But for the drink she might dance at the opera." Arthur went often to see her dance, with pity for the talent thrown away, and brought his mother under protest from that cautious lady, who would have nothing to do with so common a place. The villa stood in respectable, even aristocratic, quiet at the far end of the island, and Anne regarded it almost with reverence, moving about as if in a temple. He found, however, that she had made it a stage for a continuous drama, in which she played the leading part, and the Dillon clan with all its ramifications played minor characters and the audience. Her motives and her methods he could not fathom and did not try; the house filled rapidly, that was enough; the round of dinners, suppers, receptions, dances, and whatnots had the regularity of the tides. Everybody came down from Judy's remotest cousin up to His Grace the archbishop. Even Edith Conyngham, apparently too timid to leave the shadow of Sister Magdalen, stole into a back room with Judy, and haunted the beach for a few days. For Judy's sake he turned aside to entertain her, and with the perversity which seems to follow certain actions he told her the pathetic incident of the dancer. Why he should have chosen this poor nun to hear this tale, embellished as if to torture her, he could never make out. Often in after years, when events had given the story significance, he sought for his own motives in vain. It might have been the gray hair, the rusty dress, the depressed manner, so painful a contrast to the sea-green sprite, all youth, and grace, and beauty, which provoked him. "I shall pray for the poor thing," said rusty Edith, fingering her beads, and then she made to grasp his hand, which he thrust into his pockets. "Not a second time," he told Louis. "I'd rather get the claw of a boiled lobster." The young men did not like Miss Conyngham, but Louis pitied her sad state. The leading characters on Anne's stage, at least the persons whom she permitted occasionally to fill its center, were the anxious lovers Mona and Doyle Grahame. He was a poet to his finger-tips, dark-haired, ruddy, manly, with clear wit, and the tenderest and bravest of dark eyes; and she, red-tressed, lovely, candid, simple, loved him with her whole heart while submitting to the decree of a sour father who forbade the banns. Friends like Anne gave them the opportunity to woo, and the Dillon clan stood as one to blind the father as to what was going on. The sight of this beauty and faith and love feeding on mutual confidence beside the sunlit surf and the moonlight waters gave Arthur profound sadness, steeped his heart in bitterness. Such scenes had been the prelude to his tragedy. Despair looked out of his eyes and frightened Louis. "Why should you mind it so, after a year?" the lad pleaded. "Time was when I minded nothing. I thought love and friendship, goodness and happiness, grew on every bush, and that When we were far from the lips that we loved, We had but to make love to the lips that were near. I am wiser now." "Away with that look," Louis protested. "You have love in plenty with us, and you must not let yourself go like that. It's frightful." "It's gone," Arthur answered rousing himself. "The feeling will never go farther than a look. She was not worth it--but the sight of these two--I suppose Adam must have grieved looking back at paradise." "They have their troubles also," Louis said to distract his mind. "Father is unkind and harsh with Irish patriots, and because Grahame went through the mill, conspiracy, arrest, jail, prison, escape, and all the rest of it, he won't hear of marriage for Mona with him. Of course he'll have to come down in time. Grahame is the best fellow, and clever too." One day seemed much the same as another to Arthur, but his mother's calendar had the dates marked in various colors, according to the rank of her visitors. The visit of the archbishop shone in figures of gold, but the day and hour which saw Lord Constantine cross her threshold and sit at her table stood out on the calendar in letters of flame. The Ledwiths who brought him were of little account, except as the friends of His Lordship. Anne informed the household the day before of the honor which heaven was sending them, and gave minute instructions as to the etiquette to be observed; and if Arthur wished to laugh the blissful light in her face forbade. The rules of etiquette did not include the Ledwiths, who could put up with ordinary politeness and be grateful. "I can see from the expression of Mona," Arthur observed to the other gentlemen, "that the etiquette of to-morrow puts us out of her sight. And who is Lord Constantine? I ought to know, so I did not dare ask." "A young English noble, son and heir of a Marquis," said Grahame with mock solemnity, "who is devoted to the cause of bringing London and Washington closer together in brotherly love and financial, that is rogues' sympathy--no, roguish sympathy--that's better. He would like an alliance between England and us. Therefore he cultivates the Irish. And he'd marry Honora Ledwith to-morrow if she'd have him. That's part of the scheme." "And who are the Ledwiths?" said Arthur incautiously, but no one noticed the slip at the moment. "People with ideas, strange weird ideas," Louis made answer. "Oh, perfectly sane, of course, but so devoted to each other, and the cause of Ireland, that they can get along with none, and few can get along with them. That's why Pop thinks so much of 'em. They are forever running about the world, deep in conspiracies for freedom, and so on, but they never get anywhere to stay. Outside of that they're the loveliest souls the sun ever shone on, and I adore Honora." "And if Mona takes to His Lordship," said Grahame, "I'll worship Miss Ledwith." "Very confusing," Arthur muttered. "English noble,--alliance between two countries--cultivates Irish--wants to marry Irish girl--conspirators and all that--why, there's no head or tail to the thing." "Well, you keep your eye on Honora Ledwith and me, and you'll get the key. She's the sun of the system. And, by the way, don't you remember old Ledwith, the red-hot lecturer on the woes of Ireland? Didn't you play on her doorstep in Madison street, and treat her to Washington pie?" When the party arrived next day Arthur saw a handsome, vigorous, blond young man, hearty in his manner, and hesitating in his speech, whom he forgot directly in his surprise over the Ledwiths; for he recognized in them the father and daughter whom he had observed in so passionate a scene in the cathedral on St. Patrick's Day. He had their history by heart, the father being a journalist and the daughter a singer; they had traveled half the world; and while every one loved them none favored their roseate schemes for the freedom of Ireland. Perhaps this had made them peculiar. At the first glance one would have detected oddity as well as distinction in them. Tall, lean, vivacious, Owen Ledwith moved about restlessly, talked much, and with considerable temper. The daughter sat placid and watchful, quite used to playing audience to his entertainments; though her eyes never seemed to look at him, Arthur saw that she missed none of his movements, never failed to catch his words and to smile her approval. The whiteness of her face was like cream, and her dark blue eyes were pencilled by lashes so black that at the first glance they seemed of a lighter shade. Impressed to a degree by what at that instant could not be put into words, he named her in his own mind the White Lady. No trace of disdain spoiled her lofty manner, yet he thought she looked at people as if they were minor instruments in her own scheme. She made herself at home like one accustomed to quick changes of scene. A woman of that sort travels round the globe with a satchel, and dresses for the play with a ribbon and a comb, never finding the horizon too large for personal comfort. Clearly she was beloved in the Dillon circle, for they made much of her; but of course that day not even the master of the house was a good second to Lord Constantine. Anne moved about like herself in a dream. She was heavenly, and Arthur enjoyed it, offering incense to His Lordship, and provoking him into very English utterances. The young man's fault was that he rode his hobby too hard. "It's a shame, doncheknow," he cried as soon as he could decently get at his favorite theme, "that the English-speaking peoples should be so hopelessly divided just now----" "Hold on, Lord Conny," interrupted Grahame, "you're talking Greek to Dillon. Arthur, m'lud has a theory that the English-speaking peoples should do something together, doncheknow, and the devil of it is to get 'em together, doncheknow." They all laughed save Anne, who looked awful at this scandalous mimicry of a personage, until His Lordship laughed too. "You are only a journalist," said he gayly, "and talk like your journal. As I was saying, we are divided at home, and here it is much worse. The Irish here hate us worse than their brethren at home hate us, doncheknow--thank you, Miss Ledwith, I really will not use that word again--and all the races settled with you seem to dislike one another extremely. In Canada it's no better, and sometimes I would despair altogether, only a beginning must be made sometime; and I am really doing very well among the Irish." He looked towards Honora who smiled and turned again to Arthur with those gracious eyes. "I knew you would not forget it," she said. "The Washington pie in itself would keep it in your mind. How I loved that pie, and every one who gave me some. Your coming home must have been very wonderful to your dear mother." "More wonderful than I could make you understand," murmured Arthur. "Do you know the old house is still in Madison street, where we played and ate the pie?" Louis put his head between them slyly and whispered: "I can run over to the baker's if you wish and get a chunk of that identical pie, if you're so in love with it, and we'll have the whole scene over again." No persuasion could induce the party to remain over night at the villa, because of important engagements in the city touching the alliance and the freedom of Erin; and the same tremendous interests would take them far away the next morning to be absent for months; but the winter would find them in the city and, when they would be fairly settled, Arthur was bid to come and dine with them often. On the last boat the White Lady sailed away with her lord and father, and Anne watched the boat out of sight, sighing like one who has been ravished to the third heaven, and finds it a distressing job to get a grip on earth again. Arthur noticed that his mother dressed particularly well for the visits of the politicians, and entertained them sumptuously. Was she planning for his career? Delicious thought! But no, the web was weaving for the Senator. When the last knot was tied, she threw it over his head in perfect style. He complimented her on her latest costume. She swung about the room with mock airs and graces to display it more perfectly, and the men applauded. Good fortune had brought her back a likeness of her former beauty, angles and wrinkles had vanished, there was luster in her hair, and her melting eyes shone clear blue, a trifle faded. In her old age the coquette of twenty years back was returning with a charm which caught brother and son. "I shall wear one like it at your inauguration, Senator," said she brightly. "For President? Thank you. But the dress reminds me, Anne," the Senator added with feeling, "of what you were twenty years ago: the sweetest and prettiest girl in the city." "Oh, you always have the golden word," said she, "and thank you. But you'll not be elected president, only mayor of our own city." "It might come--in time," the Senator thought. "And now is the time," cried she so emphatically that he jumped. "Vandervelt told me that no man could be elected unless you said the word. Why shouldn't you say it for yourself? He told me in the same breath he'd like to see you in the place afore any friend he had, because you were a man o' your word, and no wan could lose be your election." "Did he say all that?" "Every word, and twice as much," she declared with eagerness. "Now think it over with all your clever brains, Senator dear, and lift up the Dillon name to the first place in the city. Oh, I'd give me life to see that glory." "And to win it," Arthur added under his breath. The Senator was impressed, and Arthur had a feeling akin to awe. Who can follow the way of the world? The thread of destiny for the great city up the bay lay between the fingers of this sweet, ambitious house-mother, and of the popular gladiator. Even though she should lead the Senator by the nose to humiliation, the scene was wonderfully picturesque, and her thought daring. He did not know enough history to be aware that this same scene had happened several hundred times in past centuries; but he went out to take another look at the house which sheltered a woman of pluck and genius. The secret of the villa was known. Anne had used it to help in the selection of the next Mayor. He laughed from the depths of his being as he walked along the shore. The Everard children returned home early in September to enjoy the preparations for the entrance of Louis into the seminary. The time had arrived for him to take up the special studies of the priesthood, and this meant his separation from the home circle forever. He would come and go for years perhaps, but alas! only as a visitor. The soul of Arthur was knit with the lad's as Jonathan with David. He had never known a youth so gracious and so strange, whose heart was like a sanctuary where Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chants resound between. It was with him as with Sir Galahad. But all my heart is drawn above. My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. Parting with him was a calamity. "How can you let him go?" he said to Mary Everard, busy with the preparations. "I am a happy woman that God calls my boy to His service," she answered cheerfully. "The children go anyway ... it's nature. I left father and mother for my own home. How good it is to think he is going to the sanctuary. I know that he is going forever ... he is mine no more ... he will come back often, but he is mine no more. I am heart-broken ... I am keeping a gay face while he is here, for the child must not be worried with our grief ... time enough for that when he is gone ... and he is so happy. My heart is leaving me to go with him. Twenty years since he was born, and in all that time not a moment's pain on his account ... all his life has been ours ... as if he were the father of the family. What shall I be for the rest of my life, listening for his step and his voice, and never a sight or sound of him for months at a time. God give me strength to bear it. If I live to see him on the altar, I shall thank God and die...." Twenty years she had served him, yet here came the inevitable end, as if such love had never been. "Oh, you people of faith! I believe you never suffer, nor know what suffering is!" "Not your kind of suffering, surely, or we would die. Our hope is always with us, and fortunately does not depend on our moods for its power." Mona teased him into good humor. That was a great moment when in presence of the family the lad put on the dress of the seminary, Arthur's gift. Feeling like a prince who clothes his favorite knight in his new armor, Arthur helped him to don the black cassock, tied the ribbons of the surplice, and fixed the three-cornered cap properly on the brown, curly head. A pallor spread over the mother's face. Mona talked much to keep back her tears, and the father declared it a shame to make a priest of so fine a fellow, since there were too many priests in the world for its good. The boy walked about as proud as a young soldier dressed for his first parade. The Trumps, enraptured at the sight, clapped their hands with joy. "Why, he's a priest," cried Constance, with a twist of her pretty mouth. "Louis is a priest." "No, Baby," corrected Marguerite, the little mother, "but he is going to be one sometime." The wonderful garments enchanted them, they feared to touch him, and protested when he swung them high and kissed them on the return flight. The boy's departure for the seminary stirred the region of Cherry Hill. The old neighbors came and went in a steady procession for two days to take their leave of him, to bless his parents, and to wish them the joy of seeing him one day at the altar as a priest of God. They bowed to him with that reverence which belonged to Monsignor, only more familiar and loquacious, and each brought his gift of respect or affection. Even the Senator and the Boss appeared to say a parting word. "I wish you luck, Louis," the Senator said in his resonant voice, and with the speaker's chair before his eyes, "and I know you'll get it, because you have deserved it, sir. I've seen you grow up, and I've always been proud to know you, and I want to know you as long as I live. If ever you should need a hand like mine in the ga ... I mean, if ever my assistance is of any use to you, you know where to call." "You have a hard road to travel," the genial Sullivan said at the close of his visit, "but your training has prepared you for it, and we all hope you will walk it honorably to the end. Remember we all take an interest in you, and what happens to you for good or ill will be felt in this parish." Then the moment of parting came, and Arthur thought less of his own grief than of the revelation it contained for him. Was this the feeling which prompted the tears of his mother, and the tender, speechless embrace of his dear father in the far-off days when he set out for school? Was this the grief which made the parting moment terrible? Then he had thought it nothing that for months of the year they should be without his beloved presence! He shivered at the last embraces of Mary and Mona, at the tears of the children; he saw behind the father's mask of calmness; he wondered no more at himself as he stood looking after the train which bore the boy away. The city seemed as vacant all at once as if turned into a desert. The room in the attic, with its bed, its desk, and its altar, suddenly became a terrible place, like a body from which the soul has fled. Every feature of it gave him pain, and he hurried back with Mona to the frivolity of Anne in her villa by the sea. CHAPTER X. THE HUMORS OF ELECTION. When the villa closed the Senator was hopelessly enmeshed in the golden net which had been so skilfully and genially woven by Anne during the summer. He believed himself to be the coming man, all his natural shrewdness and rich experience going for naught before the witchery of his sister's imagination. In her mind the climax of the drama was a Dillon at the top of the heap in the City Hall. Alas, the very first orders of the chief to his secretary swept away the fine-spun dreams of the Dillons, as the broom brushes into obscure dirt the wondrous cobweb. The Hon. John Sullivan spoke in short sentences, used each man according to that man's nature, stood above and ahead of his cleverest lieutenants, had few prejudices, and these noble, and was truly a hero on the battle-ground of social forces, where no artillery roars, no uniforms glare, and no trumpets sound for the poets. The time having come for action he gave Arthur his orders on the supposition that he understood the political situation, which he did in some degree, but not seriously. The Endicotts looked upon elections as the concern of the rabble, and this Endicott thought it perhaps an occasion for uproarious fun. His orders partly sobered him. "Go to your uncle," said Sullivan, "and tell him he's not in the race. I don't know where he got that bee in his bonnet. Then arrange with Everard to call on Livingstone. Do what you can to straighten the Mayor out. He ought to be the candidate." This dealing with men inspired him. Hitherto he had been playing with children in the garden of life; now he stood with the fighters in the terrible arena. And his first task was to extinguish the roseate dreams of Anne and her gladiator, to destroy that exquisite fabric woven of moonlit seas, enchanting dinners, and Parisian millinery. Never! Let the chief commit that sacrilege! He would not say the word whose utterance might wound the hearts that loved him. The Senator and Anne should have a clear field. High time for the very respectable citizens of the metropolis to secure a novelty for mayor, to get a taste of Roman liberty, when a distinguished member of the arena could wear the purple if he had the mind. Birmingham forced him to change his attitude. The man of money was both good-hearted and large-minded, and had departed from the ways of commerce to seek distinction in politics. Stolid, without enthusiasm or dash, he could be stubbornly great in defence of principle. Success and a few millions had not changed his early theories of life. Pride in his race, delight in his religion, devotion to his party, increased in him as he rose to honor and fame. Arthur Dillon felt still more the seriousness of the position when this man came to ask his aid in securing the nomination. "There never was a time in the history of the city," said Birmingham, "when a Catholic had such a chance to become mayor as now. Protestants would not have him, if he were a saint. But prejudice has abated, and confidence in us has increased since the war. Sullivan can have the position if he wants it. So can many others. All of them can afford to wait, while I cannot. I am not a politician, only a candidate. At any moment, by the merest accident, I may become one of the impossibles. I am anxious, therefore, to secure the nomination this year. I would like to get your influence. Where the balance is often turned by the weight of a hair one cannot be too alert." "Do you think I have influence?" said Arthur humbly. "You are the secretary," Birmingham answered, surprised. "I shall have to use it in behalf of my uncle then." "And if your uncle should not run?" "I should be happy to give you my support." Birmingham looked as blank as one before whom a door opens unexpectedly. "You understand," continued Arthur, "that I have been absent too long to grasp the situation clearly. I think my uncle aspires...." "A very worthy man," murmured Birmingham. "You seem to think he has not much of a chance...." "I know something of Sullivan's mind," Birmingham ventured, "and you know it still better. The exploits of the Senator in his youth--really it would be well for him not to expose himself to public ridicule...." "I had not thought of that," said Arthur, when the other paused delicately. "You are quite right. He should not expose himself. As no other has done me the honor to ask my help, I am free to help you." "You are more than kind. This nomination means election, and election means the opening of a fine career for me. Beyond lie the governorship, the senate, and perhaps higher things. To us these high offices have been closed as firmly as if they were in Sweden. I want the honor of breaking down the barriers." "It is time. I hope you will get the honor," said Arthur gravely. He felt sadly about the Senator, and the shining ambition of his mother. How could he shatter their dreams? Yet in very pity the task had to be done, and when next he heard them vaporing on the glory of the future, he said casually: "I know what your enemies will say if you come into contrast with Livingstone." "I've heard it often enough," answered the Senator gayly. "If I'd listened to them I'd be still in the ring." Then a suspicion overcame him, and he cried out bitterly: "Do you say the same, Artie?" "Rot. There isn't another like you in the whole world, uncle. If my vote could do it you'd go into the White House to-morrow. If you're in earnest in this business of the nomination, then I'm with you to the last ditch. Now when you become mayor of the first city in the land"--Oh, the smile which flashed on the faces of Anne and the Senator at this phrase!--"you become also the target of every journal in the country, of every comic paper, of every cartoonist. All your little faults, your blunders, past and present, are magnified. They sing of you in the music-halls. Oh, there would be no end to it! Ridicule is worse than abuse. It would hurt your friends more than you. You could not escape it, and no one could answer it. Is the prize worth the pain?" Then he looked out of the window to escape seeing the pain in his mother's face, and the bitterness in the Senator's. He did not illustrate his contention with examples, for with these the Senator and his friends were familiar. A light arose on the poor man's horizon. Looking timidly at Anne, after a moment's pause, he said: "I never thought of all that. You've put me on the right track, Artie. I thank you." "What can I do," he whispered to Anne, "since it's plain he wants me to give in--no, to avoid the comic papers?" "Whatever he wishes must be done," she replied with a gesture of despair. "The boy is a wonder," thought the Senator. "He has us all under that little California thumb." "I was a fool to think of the nomination," he said aloud as Arthur turned from the window. "Of course there'd be no end to the ridicule. Didn't the chap on Harper's, when I was elected for the Senate, rig me out as a gladiator, without a stitch on me, actually, Artie, not a stitch--most indecent thing--and show old Cicero in the same picture looking at me like John Everard, with a sneer, and singing to himself: a senator! No, I couldn't stand it. I give up. I've got as high as my kind can go. But there's one thing, if I can't be mayor myself, I can say who's goin' to be." "Then make it Birmingham, uncle," Arthur suggested. "I would like to see him in that place next to you." "And Birmingham it is, unless"--he looked at Anne limp with disappointment--"unless I take it into my head to name you for the place." She gave a little cry of joy and sat up straight. "Now God bless you for that word, Senator. It'll be a Dillon anyway." "In that case I make Birmingham second choice," Arthur said seriously, accepting the hint as a happy ending to a rather painful scene. The second part of the Chief's order proved more entertaining. To visit the Mayor and sound him on the question of his own renomination appeared to Arthur amusing rather than important; because of his own rawness for such a mission, and also because of their relationship. Livingstone was his kinsman. Of course John Everard gave the embassy character, but his reputation reflected on its usefulness. Nature had not yet provided a key to the character of Louis' father. Arthur endured him because Louis loved him, quoted him admiringly, and seemed to understand him most of the time; but he could not understand an Irishman who maintained, as a principle of history, the inferiority of his race to the English, traced its miseries to its silly pride, opposed all schemes of progress until his principle was accepted, and placed the salvation of his people in that moment when they should have admitted the inferiority imposed by nature, and laid aside their wretched conceit. This perverse nature had a sociable, even humorous side, and in a sardonic way loved its own. "I have often wondered," Arthur said, when they were discussing the details of the mission to Livingstone, "how your tough fiber ever generated beings so tender and beautiful as Mona, and Louis, and the Trumps. And now I'm wondering why Sullivan associates you and me in this business. Is it his plan to sink the Mayor deeper in his own mud?" "Whatever his plan I'd like to know what he means in sending with me to the noblest official in the city and the land, for that matter, the notorious orator of a cheap banquet." "I think it means that Quincy must apologize to the Irish, or nominate himself," said Arthur slowly. A lively emotion touched him when he first entered the room where the Mayor sat stately and gracious. In him the Endicott features were emphatic and beautiful. Tall, ruddy, perfectly dressed, with white hair and moustache shining like silver, and dark blue eyes full of fire, the aristocrat breathed from him like a perfume. His greeting both for Everard and Dillon had a graciousness tinged with contempt; a contempt never yet perceived by Everard, but perceived and promptly answered on Arthur's part with equal scorn. "Mr. Dillon comes from Sullivan," said Everard, "to ask you, as a condition of renomination, that you take back your remarks on the Irish last winter. You did them good. They are so soaked in flattery, the flattery of budding orators, that your talk wakes them to the truth." "I take nothing back," said the Mayor in a calm, sweet voice to which feeling gave an edge. "Then you do not desire the nomination of Tammany Hall?" Arthur said with a placid drawl, which usually exasperated Everard and other people. "But I do," the Mayor answered quickly, comprehending on the instant the quality of this antagonist, feeling his own insolence in the tone. "I merely decline the conditions." "Then you must nominate yourself, for the Irish won't vote for you," cried Everard. "The leaders would like to give you the nomination, Mr. Livingstone. You may have it, if you can find the means to placate offended voters for your behavior and your utterances on St. Patrick's Day." "Go down on your knees at once, Mayor," sneered Everard. "I hope Your Honor does not pay too much attention to the opinions of this gentleman," said Arthur with a gesture for his companion. "He's a Crusoe in politics. There's no one else on his island. You have a history, sir, which is often told in the Irish colony here. I have heard it often since my return home----" "This is the gentleman who spoke of your policy at the Donnybrook banquet," Everard interrupted. Livingstone made a sign for silence, and took a closer look at Arthur. "The Irish do not like you, they have no faith in you as a fair man, they say that you are always planning against them, that you are responsible for the deviltries practised upon them through gospel missions, soup kitchens, kidnapping industries, and political intrigues. Whether these things be true, it seems to me that a candidate ought to go far out of his way to destroy such fancies." "A very good word, fancies! Are you going to make your famous speech over again?" said Everard with the ready sneer. "Can you deny that what I have spoken is the truth?" "It is not necessary that he should," Livingstone answered quietly. "I am not interested in what some people say of me. Tell Mr. Sullivan I am ready to accept the nomination, but that I never retract, never desert a position." This young man nettled and irritated the Mayor. His insolence, the insolence of his own class, was so subtly and politely expressed, that no fault could be found; and, though his inexperience was evident, he handled a ready blade and made no secret of his disdain. Arthur did not know to what point of the compass the short conversation had carried them, but he took a boy's foolish delight in teasing the irritated men. "It all comes to this: you must nominate yourself," said Everard. "And divide the party?" "I am not sure it would divide the party," Livingstone condescended to say, for he was amused at the simple horror of Dillon. "It might unite it under different circumstances." "That's the remark of a statesman. And it would rid us, Arthur Dillon, of Sullivan and his kind, who should be running a gin-mill in Hester street." "If he didn't have a finer experience in politics, and a bigger brain for managing men than any three in the city," retorted Arthur icily. "He is too wise to bring the prejudices of race and creed into city politics. If Your Honor runs on an independent ticket, the Irish will vote against you to a man. One would think that far-seeing men, interested in the city and careful of the future, would hesitate to make dangerous rivalries of this sort. Is there not enough bigotry now?" "Not that I know," said the Mayor with a pretence of indifference. "We are all eager to keep the races in good humor, but at the same time to prevent the ascendancy of a particular race, except the native. It is the Irish to-day. It will be the Germans to-morrow. Once checked thoroughly, there will be no trouble in the future." The interview ended with these words. By that time Arthur had gone beyond his political depth, and was glad to make his adieu to the great man. He retained one honest conclusion from the interview. "Birmingham can thank this pig-headed gentleman," said he to Everard, "for making him mayor of New York." John snorted his contempt of the statement and its abettors. The report of Arthur disquieted the Chief and his counselors, who assembled to hear and discuss it. "It's regrettable," was Sullivan's opinion. "Livingstone makes a fine figure in a campaign. He has an attractive name. His independence is popular, and does no harm. He hasn't the interests of the party at heart though. The question now is, can we persuade the Irish to overlook his peculiarities about the green and St. Patrick's Day?" "A more pertinent question," Vandervelt said after a respectful silence, "would be as to the next available man. I favor Birmingham." "And I," echoed the Senator. Arthur listened to the amicable discussion that followed with thoughts not for the candidate, but for the three men who thus determined the history of the city for the next two years. The triumvirs! Cloudy scenes of half-forgotten history rose before him, strange names uttered themselves. Mark Antony and young Octavius and weak Lepidus! He felt suddenly the seriousness of life, and wonder at the ways of men; for he had never stood so near the little gods that harness society to their policies, never till now had he seen with his own eyes how the world is steered. The upshot of endless talk and trickery was the nomination of Birmingham, and the placing of an independent ticket in the field with the Mayor at its head. "Now for the fun," said Grahame. "It's going to be a big fight. If you want to see the working out of principles keep close to me while the fight is on, and I'll explain things." The explanation was intricate and long. What did not matter he forgot, but the picturesque things, which touched his own life afterwards very closely, he kept in mind. Trotting about with the journalist they encountered one day a cleric of distinguished appearance. "Take a good look at him. He's the man that steers Livingstone." "I thought it was John Everard." "John doesn't even steer himself," said Grahame savagely. "But take a view of the bishop." Arthur saw a face whose fine features were shaded by melancholy, tinged with jaundice, gloomy in expression; the mouth drooped at the corners, and the eyes were heavy; one could hardly picture that face lighted by humor or fancy. "We refuse to discuss certain things in political circles here," Grahame continued. "One of them is the muddle made of politics every little while by dragging in religion. The bishop, Bishop Bradford is his name, never loses a chance to make a mud pie. The independent ticket is his pie this year. He secured Livingstone to bake it, for he's no baker himself. He believes in God, but still more does he believe that the Catholics of this city should be kept in the backyard of society. If they eat his pie, their only ambition will be to live in an American backyard. No word of this ever finds its way into the journals, but it is the secret element in New York politics." "I thought everything got into the newspapers," Arthur complained. "Blamed if I can get hold of the thing." "You're right, everything goes into the sewers, but not in a formal way. What's the reason for the independent ticket? Printed: revolt against a domineering boss. Private: to shake the Irish in politics. Do you see? Now, here is a campaign going on. It began last week. It ends in November. But the other campaign has neither beginning nor end. I'll give you object-lessons. There's where the fun comes in." The first object-lesson brought Arthur to the gospel-hall managed by a gentleman whom he had not seen or thought of since the pleasant celebration of St. Patrick's day. Rev. Mr. McMeeter, evangelist of the expansive countenance, was warming up his gathering of sinners that night with a twofold theme: hell for sinners, and the same, embroidered intensely, for Rome. "He handles it as Laocoon did the serpents," whispered Grahame. In a very clerical costume, on a small platform, the earnest man writhed, twisted, and sweated, with every muscle in strain, his face working in convulsions, his lungs beating heaven with sound. He outdid the Trojan hero in the leaps across the platform, the sinuous gestures, the rendings of the enemy; until that moment when he drew the bars of hell for the unrepentant, and flung Rome into the abyss. This effective performance, inartistic and almost grotesque, never fell to the level of the ridiculous, for native power was strong in the man. The peroration raised Livingstone to the skies, chained Sullivan in the lowest depths of the Inferno, and introduced as a terrible example a brand just rescued from the burning. "Study her, observe her," said Grahame. "These brands have had curious burnings." She spoke with ease, a little woman in widow's weeds, coquettishly displaying silken brown hair under the ruching of a demure bonnet. Taking her own account--"Which some reporter wrote for her no doubt," Grahame commented--she had been a sinner, a slave of Rome, a castaway bound hand and foot to degrading superstition, until rescued by the noblest of men and led by spirit into the great work of rescuing others from the grinding slavery of the Church of Rome. Very tenderly she appealed to the audience to help her. The prayers of the saints were about to be answered. God had raised up a leader who would strike the shackles off the limbs of the children. The leader, of course, was Mayor Livingstone. "You see how the spirit works," said Grahame. Then came an interruption. The Brand introduced a girl of twelve as an illustration of her work of rescue among the dreadful hirelings of Rome. A feeble and ragged woman in the audience rose and cried out that the child was her lost Ellen. The little girl made a leap from the platform but was caught dexterously by the Brand and flung behind the scenes. A stout woman shook her fist in the Brand's face and called her out of her name; and also gave the evangelist a slap in the stomach which taught him a new kind of convulsion. His aids fell upon the stout woman, the tough men of the audience fell upon the aids, the mother of Ellen began shrieking, and some respectable people ran to the door to call the police. A single policeman entered cooly, and laid about him with his stick so as to hit the evangelists with frequency. For a few minutes all things turned to dust, confusion, and bad language. The policeman restored order, dismissed Ellen with her mother, calmed the stout woman, and cautioned the host. The Brand had watched the scene calmly and probably enjoyed it. When Arthur left with Grahame Mr. McMeeter had just begun an address which described the policeman as a satellite, a janizary, and a pretorian of Rome. "They're doing a very neat job for Livingstone," said Grahame. "Maybe there are fifty such places about the town. Little Ellen was lucky to see her mother again. Most of these stolen children are shipped off to the west, and turned into very good Protestants, while their mothers grieve to death." "Livingstone ought to be above such work." "He is. He has nothing in common with a kidnapper like McMeeter. He just accepts what is thrown at him. McMeeter throws his support at him. Only high-class methods attract a man like Livingstone. Sister Claire, the Escaped Nun, is one of his methods. We'll go and see her too. She lectures at Chickering Hall to-night ... comes on about half after nine--tells all about her escape from a prison in a convent ... how she was enslaved ... How sin thrives in convents ... and appeals for help for other nuns not yet escaped ... with reference to the coming election and the great deliverer, Livingstone ... makes a pile of money." "You seem envious," Arthur hinted. "Who wouldn't? I can't make a superfluous cent being virtuous, and Sister Claire clears thousands by lying about her neighbors." They took a seat among the reporters, in front of a decorous, severe, even godly audience, who awaited the coming of the Escaped Nun with religious interest. Amid a profound stillness, she came upon the stage from a rear door, ushered in by an impressive clergyman; and walked forward, a startling figure, to the speaker's place, where she stood with the dignity and modesty of her profession, and a self-possession all her own. "Stunning," Grahame whispered. "Costume incorrect, but dramatic." Her dress and veil were of pale yellow, some woolen stuff, the coif and gamp were of white linen, and a red cross marked the entire front of her dress, the arms of the cross resting on her bosom. Arthur stared. Her face of a sickly pallor had deep circles under the eyes, but seemed plump enough for her years. For a moment she stood quietly, with drooping head and uplifted eyes, her hands clasped, a picture of beauty. After a gasp and a pause the audience broke into warm applause long continued. In a sweet and sonorous voice she made her speech, and told her story. It sounded like the _Lady of the Lake_ at times. Grahame yawned--he had heard it so often. Arthur gathered that she had somewhere suffered the tortures of the Inquisition, that innocent girls were enjoying the same experience in the convents of the country, that they were deserted both of God and man, and that she alone had taken up their cause. She was a devoted Catholic, and could never change her faith; if she appealed to her audience, it was only to interest them in behalf of her suffering sisters. "That's the artistic touch," Grahame whispered again. "But it won't pay. Her revelations must get more salaciousness after election." Arthur hardly heard him. Where had he seen and heard this woman before? Though he could not recall a feature of her face, form, dress, manner, yet he had the puzzling sense of having met her long ago, that her personality was not unfamiliar. Still her features baffled the sense. He studied her in vain. When her lecture ended, with drooping head and clasped hands, she modestly withdrew amid fervid acclamations. Strange and bewildering were the currents of intrigue that made up a campaign in the great city; not to mention the hidden forces whose current no human could discern. Arthur went about exercising his talent for oratory in behalf of Birmingham, and found consolation in the sincere applause of humble men, and of boys subdued by the charm of his manner. He learned that the true orator expresses not only his own convictions and emotions, but also the unspoken thoughts, the mute feelings, the cloudy convictions of the simple multitude. He is their interpreter to themselves. The thought gave him reverence for that power which had lain long dormant in him until sorrow waked its noble harmonies. The ferment in the city astonished him. The very boys fought in the vacant lots, and reveled in the strategy of crooked streets and blind alleys. Kindly women, suddenly reminded that the Irish were a race of slaves, banged their doors, and flirted their skirts in scorn. Workmen lost their job here and there, mates fought at the workbench, the bully found his excuse to beat the weak, all in the name of Livingstone. The small business men, whose profits came from both sides, did severe penance for their sins of sanded sugar and deficient weight. The police found their nerves overstrained. To him the entire drama of the campaign had the interest of an impossible romance. It was a struggle between a poor people, cast out by one nation, fighting for a footing on new soil, and a successful few, who had forgotten the sufferings, the similar struggle of their fathers. He rejoiced when Birmingham won. He had not a single regret for the defeat of Livingstone, though it hurt him that a bad cause should have found its leader in his kinsman. CHAPTER XI. AN ENDICOTT HEIR. Meanwhile what of the world and the woman he had left behind? A year had passed, his new personality had begun to fit, and no word or sign direct from the Endicott circle had reached him. Time seemed to have created a profound silence between him and them. Indirectly, however, through the journals, he caught fleeting glimpses of that rage which had filled Sonia with hatred and despair. A description of his person appeared as an advertisement, with a reward of five thousand dollars for information that would lead to the discovery of his whereabouts, or to a certainty of his death. At another time the journals which printed both reward and notice, had a carefully worded plea from his Aunt Lois for letter or visit to soothe the anxieties of her last days. He shook over this reminder of her faithful love until he analyzed the circumstances which had probably led to this burst of publicity. Early in July a letter had informed Sonia of his visit to Wisconsin; two months later a second letter described, in one word, her character, and in six her sentence: adulteress, you shall never see me again. A week's work by her lawyers would have laid bare the fact that the Endicott estate had vanished, and that her own small income was her sole possession. A careful study of his motives would have revealed in part his plans, and a detective had probably spent a month in a vain pursuit. The detective's report must have startled even the lawyers. All clues led to nothing. Sonia had no money to throw away, nor would she dare to appeal too strongly to Aunt Lois and Horace Endicott's friends, who might learn too much, if she were too candid. The two who loved him were not yet really worried by his disappearance, since they had his significant letter. In time their confidence would give place to anxiety, and heaven and earth would be moved to uncover his hiding-place. This loving notice was a trap set by Sonia. On the road which led from Mulberry Street to Cambridge, from the home of Anne Dillon to the home of Lois Endicott, Sonia's detective lay in wait for the returning steps of the lost husband, and Sonia's eyes devoured the shadows, her ears drank in every sound. He laughed, he grew warm with the feeling of triumph. She would watch and listen in vain. The judgment-seat of God was the appointment he had made for her. He began now to wonder at the completeness of his own disappearance. His former self seemed utterly beyond the reach of men. The detectives had not only failed to find him, they had not even fallen upon his track by accident. How singular that an Irish colony in the metropolis should be so far in fact and sympathy from the aristocracy. Sonia and her detectives would have thought of Greenland and the Eskimos, Ashanti, Alaska, the court of China, as possible refuges, but never of Cherry Street and the children of Erin, who were farther off from the Endicotts and the Livingstones than the head-hunters of Borneo. Had her detectives by any chance met him on the road, prepared for any disguise, how dumb and deaf and sightless would they become when his position as the nephew of Senator Dillon, the secretary of Sullivan, the orator of Tammany Hall, and the pride of Cherry Hill, shone upon them. This triumph he would have enjoyed the more could he have seen the effect which the gradual change in his personality had produced on Monsignor O'Donnell, for whom the Endicott episode proved the most curious experience of his career. Its interest was discounted by the responsibility imposed upon him. His only comfort lay in the thought that at any moment he could wash his hands of the affair, before annoying or dangerous consequences began to threaten. He suffered from constant misgivings. The drama of a change in personality went on daily under his eyes, and almost frightened him by its climaxes, which were more distinct to him than to Endicott. First, the pale, worn, savage, and blood-haunted boy who came to him in his first agony; then the melancholy, bearded, yet serene invalid who lay in Anne Dillon's house and was welcomed as her son; next, the young citizen of the Irish colony, known as a wealthy and lucky Californian, bidding for honors as the nephew of Senator Dillon; and last the surprising orator, the idol of the Irish people, their devoted friend, who spared neither labor nor money in serving them. The awesome things in this process were the fading away of the Endicott and the growing distinctness of the Dillon. At first the old personality lay concealed under the new as under a mask; but something like absorption by degrees obliterated the outlines of Endicott and developed the Dillon. Daily he noticed the new features which sprang into sight between sunrise and sunrise. It was not only the fashion of dress, of body, and of speech, which mimics may adopt; but also a change of countenance, a turn of mind which remained permanent, change of gesture, a deeper color of skin, greater decision in movement; in fact, so many and so minute mutations that he could not recall one-tenth the number. Endicott for instance had possessed an eloquent, lustrous, round eye, with an expression delightfully indolent; in Dillon the roundness and indolence gave way to a malicious wrinkle at the outside corners, which gave his glance a touch of bitterness. Endicott had been gracefully slow in his movement; Dillon was nervous and alert. A fascination of terror held Monsignor as Arthur Dillon grew like his namesake more and more. Out of what depths had this new personality been conjured up? What would be the end of it? He said to himself that a single incident, the death of Sonia, would be enough to destroy on the instant this Dillon and resurrect the Endicott. Still he was not sure, and the longer this terrible process continued the less likely a change back to the normal. Morbid introspection had become a part of the young man's pain. The study of the changes in himself proved more pleasant than painful. His mind swung between bitter depression, and warm, natural joy. His moments of deepest joy were coincident with an interesting condition of mind. On certain days he completely forgot the Endicott and became the Dillon almost perfectly. Then he no longer acted a part, but was absorbed in it. Most of the time he was Endicott playing the rôle of Dillon, without effort and with much pleasure, indeed, but still an actor. When memory and grief fled from him together, as on St. Patrick's Day, his new personality dominated each instant of consciousness, and banished thought of the old. Then a new spirit rose in him; not merely a feeling of relief from pain, but a positive influence which led him to do surprising and audacious things, like the speech at the banquet. It was a divine forgetfulness, which he prayed might be continuous. He loved to think that some years of his life would see the new personality in full possession of him, while the old would be but a feeble memory, a mere dream of an impossible past. Wonderful, if the little things of the day, small but innumerable, should wipe out in the end an entire youth that took twenty years in building. What is the past after all but a vague horizon made emphatic by the peaks of memory? What is the future but a bare plain with no emphasis at all? Man lives only in the present, like the God whose spirit breathes in him. Sonia was bent on his not forgetting, however. His heart died within him when he read in the journals the prominent announcement of the birth of a son to the lost Horace Endicott, whose woful fate still troubled the short memory of editors. A son! He crushed the paper in his anguish and fell again into the old depression. Oh, how thoroughly had God punished the hidden crimes of this lost woman! A child would have saved her, and in her hatred of him she had ... he always refused to utter to himself the thought which here rose before his mind. His head bent in agony. This child was not his, perhaps not even hers. She had invented it as a trap for him. Were it really his little one, his flesh and blood, how eagerly he would have thrown off his present life and flown to its rescue from such a mother! Sonia did not hope for such a result. It was her fraudulent mortgage on the future and its possibilities. The child would be heir to his property; would have the sympathy and inherit the possessions of his Aunt Lois; would lull the suspicions concerning its mother, and conciliate the gossips; and might win him back from hiding, if only to expose the fraud and take shame from the Endicotts. What a clever and daring criminal was this woman! With a cleverness always at fault because of her rare unscrupulousness. Even wickedness has its delicacy, its modesty, its propriety, which a criminal respects in proportion to his genius for crime. Sonia offended all in her daring, and lost at every turn. This trap would catch her own feet. A child! A son! He shuddered at the thought, and thanked God that he had escaped a new dishonor. His blood would never mingle with the puddle in Sonia's veins. He would not permit her to work this iniquity, and to check her he must risk final success in his plan of disappearance by violating the first principle of the art: that there be no further connection with the past. The detectives were watching the path by which he would return, counting perhaps upon his rage over this fraudulent heir. He must give them their opportunity, if he would destroy Sonia's schemes against Aunt Lois, but felt sure that they would be unprepared to seize it, even if they dreamed it at hand. He had a plan which might accomplish his object without endangering his position; and one night he slipped away from the city on a train for Boston, got off at a lonely station, and plunged into the darkness without a word for a sleepy station-master. At dawn after two hours' walk he passed the pond which had once seemed to him the door of escape. Poor old friend! Its gray face lay under the morning sky like the face of a dead saint, luminous in its outlines, as if the glory of heaven shone through; still, oh, so still, and deep as if it mirrored immensity. Little complaining murmurs, like the whimperings of a sleepy child, rose up from the reeds, sweeter than any songs. He paused an instant to compare the _then_ and _now_, but fled with a groan as the old sorrow, the old madness, suddenly seized him with the powerful grip of that horrid time. In fact, every step of the way to Martha's house was torture. He saw that for him there were other dangers than Sonia and her detectives, in leaving the refuge which God had provided for him. Oh, never could he be too grateful for the blessing, never could he love enough the holy man who had suggested it, never could he repay the dear souls whose love had made it beautiful. They rose up before him as he hurried down the road, the lovable, humorous, rollicking, faulty clan; and he would not have exchanged them for the glories of a court, for the joys of Arcady. The sun and he found Martha busy with household duties. She did not know him and he said not a word to enlighten her; he was a messenger from a friend who asked of her a service, the carrying of a letter to a certain woman in Boston; and no one should see her deliver the letter, or learn her name, or know her coming and going; for her friend, in hiding, and pursued, must not be discovered. Then she knew that he came from Horace, and shed tears that he lived well and happy, but could not believe, when he had made himself known, that this was the same man of a year before. They spent a happy day together in perfecting the details of her visit to Aunt Lois, which had to be accomplished with great care and secrecy. There was to be no correspondence between them. In two weeks he would come again to hear a report of her success or failure. If she were not at home, he would come two weeks later. She could tell Aunt Lois whatever the old lady desired to hear about him, and assure her that nothing would induce him ever to return to his former life. The letter said as much. When night came they went off over the hills together to the nearest railway station, where he left her to find her way to the city, while he went on to a different station and took a late train to New York. By these methods he felt hopeful that his violation of the rules of disappearing would have no evil results for him, beyond that momentary return of the old anguish which had frightened him more than Sonia's detectives. In four weeks old Martha returned from her mission, and told this story as they sat in the pleasant kitchen near a cheery fire. "I rented a room in the neighborhood of your Aunt Lois' house, and settled myself to wait for the most natural opportunity to meet her. It was long in coming, for she had been sick; but when she got better I saw her going out to ride, and a little later she took to walking in the park with her maid. There she often sat, and chatted with passing children, or with old women like herself, poor old things trying to get life from the air. The maid is a spy. She noted every soul about, and had an extra glance for me when your aunt spoke to me, after I had waited three weeks for a word. I told her my story, as I told it to you. She was interested, and I must go to her house to take lunch with her. I refused. I was not used to such invitations, but I would call on her at other times. And the maid listened the more. She was never out of hearing, nor out of sight, until Aunt Lois would get into a rage, and bid her take a walk. It was then I handed her the letter under my shawl. The maid's eyes could not see through the shawl. I told her what you bid me: that you would never return again, no more than if you were dead, that she must burn the letter so that none would know a letter had been received and burned, and that she would understand many things when she had read it; most particular that she was surrounded by spies, and that she must go right on as if nothing had happened, and deceive as she had been deceived. "I met her only twice after that. I told her my plan to deceive the maid. I was a shrewd beggar studying to get money out of her, with a story about going to my son in Washington. She bid the maid secretly find out if I was worthy, and I saw the maid in private, and begged her to report of me favorably, and she might have half the money, and then I would go away. And the maid was deceived, for she brought me fifty dollars from your aunt, and kept thirty. She would not give even the twenty until I had promised to go away without complaint. So I went away, and stayed with a friend in Worcester. Since I came home I have not seen or heard of any stranger in this neighborhood. So that it is likely I have not been suspected or followed. And the letter was burned. And at the first fair chance your Aunt will go to Europe, taking with her her two dearest relatives. She called them Sonia Endicott and her child Horace, and she would keep them with her while she lived. At the last she sent you her love, though she could not understand some of the things you were doing, but that was your own business. And she never shed a tear, but kept smiling, and her smile was terrible." He could believe that. Sonia might as well have lived in the glare of Vesuvius as in the enlightened smile of Aunt Lois. The schemer was now in her own toils, and only at the death of the brave old woman would she know her failure. Oh, how sweet and great is even human justice! "If I do not see you again, Martha," said Arthur as he kissed the dear old mother farewell, "remember that I am happy, and that you made me so." THE GREEN AGAINST THE RED. CHAPTER XII. THE HATE OF HANNIBAL. Owen Ledwith had a theory concerning the invasion of Ireland, which he began to expound that winter. Since few know much more about the military art than the firing of a shotgun, he won the scorn of all except his daughter and Arthur Dillon. In order to demonstrate his theory Ledwith was willing to desert journalism, to fit out a small ship, and to sail into an Irish harbor from New York and back, without asking leave from any government; if only the money were supplied by the patriots to buy the ship and pay the sailors. His theory held that a fleet of many ships might sail unquestioned from the unused harbors of the American coast, and land one hundred thousand armed men in Ireland, where a blow might be struck such as never had been yet in the good cause. Military critics denied the possibility of such an invasion. He would have liked to perform the feat with a single ship, to convince them. "I have a suspicion," he said one night to his daughter, "that this young Dillon would give me five thousand dollars for the asking. He is a Fenian now." "Is it possible?" Honora cried in astonishment. "Well, I don't see any reason for wonder, Nora. He has been listening to me for three months, vaporing over the wrongs of Ireland; he's of Celtic blood; he has been an adventurer in California; he has the money, it would seem. Why, the wonder would be if he did not do what all the young fellows are doing." "I have not quite made up my mind about him yet, father," the young woman said thoughtfully. "He's all man," said the father. "True, but a man who is playing a part." He laid down his pipe in his surprise, but she smiled assuringly. "Well, it's fine acting, if you call it so, my love. In a little over a year he has made himself the pride of Cherry Hill. Your great friend,"--this with a sniff--"Monsignor O'Donnell, is his sponsor. He speaks like the orator born and with sincerity, though he knows little of politics. But he has ideas. Then did you ever meet a merrier lad? Such a singer and dancer, such a favorite among boys and girls! He seems to be as lovable as his uncle the Senator, and the proof of it is that all confide in him. However, I have faith in your instincts, Nora. What do they say?" "He looks at us all like a spectator sitting in front of a stage. Of course I have heard the people talk about him. He is a popular idol, except to his mother who seems to be afraid of him. He has moods of sadness, gloom, and Miss Conyngham told me she would wager he left a wife in California. While all like him, each one has a curious thing to tell about him. They all say it is the sickness which he had on coming home, and that the queer things are leaving him. The impression he gives me is that of one acting a part. I must say it is fading every day, but it hinders me from feeling quite satisfied about him." "Well, one thing is in his favor: he listens to me," said Ledwith. "He is one of the few men to whom I am not a crazy dreamer, crazy with love of Erin and hate of her shameless foe." "And I love him for that, father," she said tenderly. "There is no acting in his regard and esteem for you, nothing insincere in his liking for us, even if we cannot quite understand it. For we _are_ queer, Daddy," putting her arms about him. "Much love for our old home and much thinking how to help it, and more despair and worry, have shut us off from the normal life, until we have forgotten the qualities which make people liked. Poor Daddy!" "Better that than doing nothing," he said sadly. "To struggle and fight once in a while mean living; to sit still would be to die." Arthur was ushered in just then by the servant, and took his place comfortably before the fire. One could see the regard which they felt for him; on the part of Ledwith it was almost affection. Deeply and sincerely he returned their kindly feeling. He had a host of reasons for his regard. Their position seemed as strange to the humdrum world as his own. They were looked on as queer people, who lived outside the ruts for the sake of an enslaved nation. The idea of losing three meals a day and a fixed home for a hopeless cause tickled the humor of the practical. Their devotion to an idea hardly surpassed their devotion to each other. He mourned for her isolation, she mourned over his failures to free his native land. "I have almost given the cause up," he said once to Arthur, "because I feel my helplessness. I cannot agree with the leaders nor they with me. But if I gave up she would worry herself to death over my loss of hope. I keep on, half on her account, half in the hope of striking the real thing at the end." "It seems to be also the breath of her life," said Arthur. "No, it is not," the father replied. "Have you not heard her talk of your friend, Louis Everard? How she dwells on his calling, and the happiness of it! My poor child, her whole heart yearns for the cloister. She loves all such things. I have urged her to follow her inclinations, though I know it would be the stroke of death for me, but she will not leave me until I die." "You must not take us too seriously," she had once said, "in this matter of Irish liberties. My father is hopelessly out of the current, for his health is only fair, and he has quarreled with his leaders. I have given up hope of achieving anything. But if he gives up he dies. So, I encourage him and keep marching on, in spite of the bitterest disappointments. Perhaps something may come of it in the end." "Not a doubt of it," said Arthur, uttering a great thought. "Every tear, every thought, every heart-throb, every drop of sweat and blood, expended for human liberty, must be gathered up by God and laid away in the treasury of heaven. The despots of time shall pay the interest of that fund here or there." A woman whose ideals embraced the freedom of an oppressed people, devotion to her father, and love for the things of God, would naturally have a strong title to the respect of Arthur Dillon; and she was, besides, a beautiful woman, who spoke great things in a voice so sweetly responsive to her emotions that father and friend listened as to music. The Ledwiths had a comfortable income, when they set to work, earned by his clever pen and her exquisite voice. The young man missed none of her public appearances, though he kept the fact to himself. She was on those occasions the White Lady in earnest. Her art had warmth indeed, but the coldness and aloofness of exalted purity put her beyond the zone of desire; a snowy peak, distinct to the eye, but inaccessible. When they were done with greetings Arthur brought up a specific subject. "It has gone about that I have become a Fenian," he said, "and I have been called on to explain to many what chance the movement has of succeeding. There was nothing in the initiation which gave me that information." "You can say: none," Ledwith answered bitterly. "And if you quote me as your authority there will be many new members in the brotherhood." "Then why keep up the movement, if nothing is to come of it?" "The fighting must go on," Ledwith replied, "from generation to generation in spite of failure. The Fenian movement will fail like all its predecessors. The only reason for its continuance is that its successor may succeed. Step by step! Few nations are as lucky as this to win in the first fight. Our country is the unluckiest of all. Her battle has been on seven hundred years." "But I think there must be more consolation in the fight than your words imply;" Arthur declared. "There must be a chance, a hope of winning." "The hope has never died but the chance does not yet exist, and there is no chance for the Fenians," Ledwith answered with emphasis. "The consolation lies for most of us in keeping up the fight. It is a joy to let our enemy, England, know, and to make her feel, that we hate her still, and that our hate keeps pace with her advancing greatness. It is pleasant to prove to her, even by an abortive rising, that all her crimes, rogueries, and diplomacies against us have been vain to quench our hate. We have been scattered over the world, but our hate has been intensified. It is joy to see her foam at the mouth like a wild beast, then whine to the world over the ingratitude of the Irish; to hear the representatives of her tax-payers howl in Parliament at the expense of putting down regular rebellions; to see the landlords flying out of the country they have ravaged, and the Orangemen white with the fear of slaughter. Then these movements are an education. The children are trained to a knowledge of the position, to hatred of the English power, and their generation takes up the fight where the preceding left it." "Hate is a terrible thing," said the young man. "Is England so hateful then?" Honora urged him by looks to change the subject, for her father knew no bounds in speaking of his country's enemy, but he would not lift his eyes to her face. He wished to hear Owen Ledwith express his feelings with full vent on the dearest question to his heart. The man warmed up as he spoke, fire in his eyes, his cheeks, his words, and gestures. "She is a fiend from hell," he replied, hissing the words quietly. Deep emotion brought exterior calm to Ledwith. "But that is only a feeling of mine. Let us deal with the facts. Like the fabled vampire England hangs upon the throat of Ireland, battening on her blood. Populous England, vanishing Ireland! What is the meaning of it? One people remains at home by the millions, the other flies to other lands by the millions. Because the hell-witch is good to her own. For them the trade of the world, the opening of mines, the building of factories, the use of every natural power, the coddling of every artificial power. They go abroad only to conquer and tax the foreigner for the benefit of those at home. Their harbors are filled with ships, and their treasury with the gold of the world. For our people, there is only permission to work the soil, for the benefit of absentee landlords, or encouragement to depart to America. No mines, no factories, no commerce, no harbors, no ships, in a word no future. So the Irish do not stay at home. The laws of England accomplished this destruction of trade, of art, of education, oh, say it at once, of life. Damnable laws, fashioned by the horrid greed of a rich people, that could not bear to see a poor people grow comfortable. They called over to their departments of trade, of war, of art, to court, camp, and studio, our geniuses, gave them fame, and dubbed them Englishmen; the castaways, the Irish in America and elsewhere are known as 'the mere Irish.'" "It is very bitter," said Arthur, seeing the unshed tears in Honora's eyes. "I wonder how we bear it," Ledwith continued. "We have not the American spirit, you may be sure. I can fancy the colonists of a hundred years back meeting an Irish situation; the men who faced the Indian risings, and, worse, the subduing of the wilderness. For them it would have been equal rights and privileges and chances, or the bottom of the sea for one of the countries. But we are poetic and religious, and murderous only when a Cromwell or a Castlereagh opens hell for us. However, the past is nothing; it is the present which galls us. The gilding of the gold and the painting of the lily are symbols of our present sufferings. After stripping and roasting us at home, this England, this hell-witch sends abroad into all countries her lies and slanders about us. Her spies, her professors, her gospellers, her agents, her sympathizers everywhere, can tell you by the yard of our natural inferiority to the Chinese. Was it not an American bishop who protested in behalf of the Chinese of San Francisco that they were more desirable immigrants than the sodden Irish? God! this clean, patient, laborious race, whose chastity is notorious, whose Christianity has withstood the desertion of Christ----" Honora gave a half scream at the blasphemy, but at once controlled herself. "I take that back, child--it was only madness," Ledwith said. "You see, Dillon, how scarred my soul is with this sorrow. But the bishop and the Chinese! Not a word against that unfortunate people, whose miseries are greater even than ours, and spring from the same sources. At least _they_ are not lied about, and a bishop, forsooth! can compare them, pagans in thought and act and habit though they be, with the most moral and religious people in the world, to his own shame. It is the English lie working. The Irish are inferior, and of a low, groveling, filthy nature; they are buried both in ignorance and superstition; their ignorance can be seen in their hatred of British rule, and their refusal to accept the British religion; wherever they go in the wide world, they reduce the average of decency and intelligence and virtue; for twenty years these lies have been sung in the ears of the nations, until only the enemies of England have a welcome for us. Behold our position in this country. Just tolerated. No place open to us except that of cleaning the sewers. Every soul of us compelled to fight, as Birmingham did the other day, for a career, and to fight against men like Livingstone, who should be our friends. And in the hearts of the common people a hatred for us, a disgust, even a horror, not inspired by the leprous Chinese. We have earned all this hatred and scorn and opposition from England, because in fighting with her we have observed the laws of humanity, when we should have wiped her people off the face of the earth as Saul smote Agag and his corrupt people, as Cromwell treated us. Do you wonder that I hate this England far more than I hate sin, or the devil, or any monstrous creature which feeds upon man." "I do not wonder," said Arthur. "With you there is always an increasing hatred of England?" "Until death," cried Ledwith, leaping from his seat, as if the fire of hate tortured him, and striding about the room. "To fight every minute against this monster, to fight in every fashion, to irritate her, to destroy a grain of her influence, in a single mind, in a little community, to expose her pretense, her sham virtues, her splendid hypocrisy, these are the breath of my life. That hate will never perish until----" He paused as if in painful thought, and passed his hand over his forehead. "Until the wrongs of centuries have been avenged," said Arthur. Ledwith sat down with a scornful laugh. "That's a sentence from the orations of our patriotic orators," he sneered. "What have we to do with the past? It is dead. The oppressed and injured are dead. God has settled their cause long ago. It would be a pretty and consoling sight to look at the present difference between the English Dives and the Irish Lazarus! The vengeance of God is a terrible thing. No! my hate is of the present. It will not die until we have shaken the hold of this vampire, until we have humiliated and disgraced it, and finally destroyed it. I don't speak of retaliation. The sufferings of the innocent and oppressed are not atoned for by the sufferings of other innocents and other oppressed. The people are blameless. The leaders, the accursed aristocracy of blood, of place, of money, these make the corporate vampire, which battens upon the weak and ignorant poor; only in England they give them a trifle more, flatter them with skill, while the Irish are kicked out like beggars." He looked at Dillon with haggard eyes. Honora sat like a statue, as if waiting for the storm to pass. "I have not sworn an oath like Hannibal," he said, "because God cannot be called as a witness to hate. But the great foe of Rome never observed his oath more faithfully than I shall that compact which I have made with myself and the powers of my nature: to turn all my strength and time and capacity into the channel of hate against England. Oh, how poor are words and looks and acts to express that fire which rages in the weakest and saddest of men." He sank back with a gesture of weariness, and found Honora's hand resting on his tenderly. "The other fire you have not mentioned, Daddy," she said wistfully, "the fire of a love which has done more for Erin than the fire of hate. For love is more than hate, Daddy." "Ay, indeed," he admitted. "Much as I hate England, what is it to my love for her victim? Love is more than hate. One destroys, the other builds." Ledwith, quite exhausted by emotion, became silent. The maid entered with a letter, which Honora opened, read silently, and handed to her father without comment. His face flushed with pleasure. "Doyle Grahame writes me," he explained to Arthur, "that a friend, who wishes to remain unknown, has contributed five thousand dollars to testing my theory of an invasion of Ireland. That makes the expedition a certainty--for May." "Then let me volunteer the first for this enterprise," said Arthur blithely. "And me the second," cried Honora with enthusiasm. "Accepted both," said Ledwith, with a proud smile, new life stealing into his veins. Not for a moment did he suspect the identity of his benefactor, until Monsignor, worried over the risk for Arthur came to protest some days later. The priest had no faith in the military enterprise of the Fenians, and, if he smiled at Arthur's interest in conspiracy, saw no good reasons why he should waste his money and expose his life and liberty in a feeble and useless undertaking. His protest both to Arthur and others was vigorous. "If you have had anything to do with making young Dillon a Fenian," he said, "and bringing him into this scheme of invasion, Owen, I would like you to undo the business, and persuade him to stay at home." "Which I shall not do, you may be sure, Monsignor," replied the patriot politely. "I want such men. The enemy we fight sacrifices the flower of English youth to maintain its despotism; why should we shrink from sacrifice?" "I do not speak of sacrifice," said Monsignor. "One man is the same as another. But there are grave reasons which demand the presence of this young man in America, and graver reasons why he should not spend his money incautiously." "Well, he has not spent any money yet, so far as I know," Ledwith said. The priest hesitated a moment, while the other looked at him curiously. "You are not aware, then, that he has provided the money for your enterprise?" Honora uttered a cry, and Ledwith sprang from his chair in delighted surprise. "Do you tell me that?" he shouted. "Honora, Honora, we have found the right man at last! Oh, I felt a hundred times that this young fellow was destined to work immense good for me and mine. God bless him forever and ever." "Amen," said Honora, rejoicing in her father's joy. "You know my opinion on these matters, Owen," said Monsignor. "Ay, indeed, and of all the priests for that matter. Had we no religion the question of Irish freedom would have been settled long ago. Better for us had we been pagans or savages. Religion teaches us only how to suffer and be slaves." "And what has patriotism done for you?" Monsignor replied without irritation. "Little enough, to be sure." "Now, since I have told you how necessary it is that Dillon should remain in America, and that his money should not be expended----" "Monsignor," Ledwith broke in impatiently, "let me say at once you are asking what you shall not get. I swear to you that if the faith which you preach depended on getting this young fellow to take back his money and to desert this enterprise, that faith would die. I want men, and I shall take the widow's only son, the father of the family, the last hope of a broken heart. I want money, and I shall take the crust from the mouth of the starving, the pennies from the poor-box, the last cent of the poor, the vessels of the altar, anything and everything, for my cause. How many times has our struggle gone down in blood and shame because we let our foolish hearts, with their humanity, their faith, their sense of honor, their ridiculous pride, rule us. I want this man and his money. I did not seek them, and I shall not play tricks to keep them. But now that they are mine, no man shall take them from me." Honora made peace between them, for these were stubborn men, unwilling to make compromises. Monsignor could give only general reasons. Ledwith thought God had answered his prayers at last. They parted with equal determination. What a welcome Arthur Dillon received from the Ledwiths on his next visit! The two innocents had been explaining their ideas for years, and traveling the earth to put them into action; and in all that time had not met a single soul with confidence enough to invest a dollar in them. They had spent their spare ducats in attempting what required a bank to maintain. They had endured the ridicule of the hard-hearted and the silent pity of the friends who believed them foolish dreamers. And behold a man of money appears to endow their enterprise, and to show his faith in it by shipping as a common member of the expedition. Was there ever such luck? They thanked him brokenly, and looked at him with eyes so full of tenderness and admiration and confidence, that Arthur swore to himself he would hereafter go about the earth, hunting up just such tender creatures, and providing the money to make their beautiful, heroic, and foolish dreams come true. He began to feel the truth of a philosopher's saying: the dreams of the innocent are the last reasoning of sages. "And to this joy is added another," said Ledwith, when he could speak steadily. "General Sheridan has promised to lead a Fenian army the moment the Irish government can show it in the field." "What does that mean?" said Arthur. "What does it mean that an Irish army on Irish soil should have for its leader a brilliant general like Sheridan?" cried Ledwith. A new emotion overpowered him. His eyes filled with tears. "It means victory for a forlorn cause. Napoleon himself never led more devoted troops than will follow that hero to battle. Washington never received such love and veneration as he will from the poor Irish, sick with longing for a true leader. Oh, God grant the day may come, and that we may see it, when that man will lead us to victory." His eyes flashed fire. He saw that far-off future, the war with its glories, the final triumph, the crowning of Sheridan with everlasting fame. And then without warning he suddenly fell over into a chair. Arthur lifted up his head in a fright, and saw a pallid face and lusterless eyes. Honora bathed his temples, with the coolness and patience of habit. "It is nothing, nothing," he said feebly after a moment. "Only the foolishness of it all ... I can forget like a boy ... the thing will never come to pass ... never, never, never! There stands the hero, splendid with success, rich in experience, eager, willing, a demigod whom the Irish could worship ... his word would destroy faction, wipe out treason, weed out fools, hold the clans in solid union ... if we could give him an army, back him with a government, provide him with money! We shall never have the army ... nothing. Treason breeding faction, faction inviting treason ... there's our story. O, God, ruling in heaven, but not on earth, why do you torture us so? To give us such a man, and leave us without the opportunity or the means of using him!" He burst into violent, silent weeping. Dillon felt the stab of that hopeless grief, which for the moment revived his own, although he could not quite understand it. Ledwith dashed away the tears after a little and spoke calmly. "You see how I can yield to dreams like a foolish child. I felt for a little as if the thing had come to pass, and gave in to the fascination. This is the awaking. All the joy and sorrow of my life have come mostly from dreams." CHAPTER XIII. ANNE DILLON'S FELICITY. Monsignor was not discouraged by his failure to detach Arthur from the romantic expedition to the Irish coast. With a view to save him from an adventure so hurtful to his welfare, he went to see Anne Dillon. Her home, no longer on Mulberry Street, but on the confines of Washington Square, in a modest enough dwelling, enjoyed that exclusiveness which is like the atmosphere of a great painting. One feels by instinct that the master hand has been here. Although aware that good fortune had wrought a marked change in Anne, Monsignor was utterly taken aback by a transformation as remarkable in its way as the metamorphosis of Horace Endicott. Judy Haskell admitted him, and with a reverence showed him into the parlor; the same Judy Haskell as of yore, ornamented with a lace cap, a collar, deep cuffs, and an apron; through which her homeliness shone as defiantly as the face of a rough mountain through the fog. She had been instructed in the delicate art of receiving visitors with whom her intimacy had formerly been marked; but for Monsignor she made an exception, and the glint in her eye, the smile just born in the corner of her emphatic mouth, warned him that she knew of the astonishment which his good breeding concealed. "We're mountin' the laddher o' glory," she said, after the usual questions. "Luk at me in me ould age, dhressed out like a Frinch sportin' maid. If there was a baby in the house ye'd see me, Father Phil, galivantin' behind a baby-carriage up an' down the Square. Faith, she does it well, the climbin', if we don't get dizzy whin we're halfway up, an' come to earth afore all the neighbors, flatter nor pancakes." "Tut, tut," said Monsignor, "are you not as good as the best, with the blood of the Montgomerys and the Haskells in your veins? Are you to make strange with all this magnificence, as if you were Indians seeing it for the first time?" "That's what I've been sayin' to meself since it began," she replied. "Since what began?" "Why, the changin' from Mulberry Sthreet Irish to Washington Square Yankees," Judy said with a shade of asperity. "It began wid the dog-show an' the opera. Oh, but I thought I'd die wid laughin', whin I had to shtan' at the doors o' wan place or the other, waitin' on Micksheen, or listenin' to the craziest music that ever was played or sung. After that kem politics, an' nothin' wud do her but she'd bate ould Livingstone for Mare all by herself. Thin it was Vandervelt for imbassador to England, an' she gev the Senator an' the Boss no pace till they tuk it up. An' now it's the Countess o' Skibbereen mornin', noon, an' night. I'm sick o' that ould woman. But she owns the soul of Anne Dillon." "Well, her son can afford it," said Monsignor affably. "Why shouldn't she enjoy herself in her own way?" "Thrue for you, Father Phil; I ought to call you Morrisania, but the ould names are always the shweetest. He has the money, and he knows how to spind it, an' if he didn't she'd show him. Oh, but he's the fine b'y! Did ye ever see annywan grow more an' more like his father, pace to his ashes. Whin he first kem it wasn't so plain, but now it seems to me he's the very spit o' Pat Dillon. The turn of his head is very like him." At this point in a chat, which interested Monsignor deeply, a soft voice floated down from the upper distance, calling, "Judy! Judy!" in a delicate and perfect French accent. "D'ye hear that, Father Phil?" whispered Judy with a grin. "It's nothin' now but Frinch an' a Frinch masther. Wait till yez hear me at it." She hastened to the hall and cried out, "Oui, oui, Madame," with a murmured aside to the priest, "It's all I know." "Venez en haut, Judy," said the voice. "Oui, oui, Madame," answered Judy. "That manes come up, Father Phil," and Judy walked off upright, with folded arms, swinging her garments, actions belied by the broad grin on her face, and the sarcastic motion of her lips, which kept forming the French words with great scorn. A few minutes afterward Anne glided into the room. The Montgomery girls had all been famous for their beauty in the earlier history of Cherry Hill, and Anne had been the belle of her time. He remembered her thirty years back, on the day of her marriage, when he served as altar-boy at her wedding; and recalled a sweet-faced girl, with light brown silken hair, languorous blue eyes, rose-pink skin, the loveliest mouth, the most provoking chin. Time and sorrow had dealt harshly with her, and changed her, as the fairies might, into a thin-faced, gray-haired, severe woman, whose dim eyes were hidden by glasses. She had retained only her grace and dignity of manner. He recalled all this, and drew his breath; for before him stood Anne Montgomery, as she had stood before him at the altar; allowing that thirty years had artistically removed the youthful brilliance of youth, but left all else untouched. The brown hair waved above her forehead, from her plump face most of the wrinkles had disappeared, her eyes gleamed with the old time radiance, spectacles had been banished, a subdued color tinted her smiling face. "Your son is not the only one to astound me," said Monsignor. "Anne, you have brought back your youth again. What a magician is prosperity." "It's the light-heartedness, Monsignor. To have as much money as one can use wisely and well, to be done with scrimpin' forever, gives wan a new heart, or a new soul. I feel as I felt the day I was married." She might have added some information as to the share which modiste and beautifier might claim in her rejuvenation, but Monsignor, very strict and happily ignorant of the details of the toilet, as an ecclesiastic should be, was lost in admiration of her. It took him ten minutes to come to the object of his visit. "He has long been ahead of you," she said, referring to Arthur. "I asked him for leave to visit Ireland, and he gave it on two conditions: that I would take Louis and Mona wid me, and refuse to interfere with this Fenian business, no matter who asked me. I was so pleased that I promised, and of course I can't go back on me word." "This is a very clever young man," said Monsignor, admiring Anne's skill in extinguishing her beautiful brogue, which, however, broke out sweetly at times. "Did you ever see the like of him?" she exclaimed. "I'm afraid of him. He begins to look like himself and like his father ... glory be to God ... just from looking at the pictures of the two and thinkin' about them. He's good and generous, but I have never got over being afeared of him. It was only when he went back on his uncle ... on Senator Dillon ... that I plucked up courage to face him. I had the Senator all ready to take the place which Mr. Birmingham has to-day, when Arthur called him off." "He never could have been elected, Anne." "I never could see why. The people that said that didn't think Mr. Vandervelt could be made ambassador to England, at least this time. But he kem so near it that Quincy Livingstone complimented me on my interest for Mr. Vandervelt. And just the same, Dan Dillon would have won had he run for the office. It was with him a case of not wantin' to be de trop." "Your French is três propos, Anne," said Monsignor with a laugh. "If you want to hear an opinion of it," said the clever woman, laughing, too, "go and hear the complaints of Mary and Sister Magdalen. Mais je suis capable de parler Français tout de même." "And are you still afraid of Arthur? Wouldn't you venture on a little protest against his exposing himself to needless danger?" "I can do that, certainement, but no more. I love him, he's so fine a boy, and I wish I could make free wid him; but he terrifies me when I think of everything and look at him. More than wanst have I seen Arthur Dillon looking out at me from his eyes; and sometimes I feel that Pat is in the room with me when he is around. As I said, I got courage to face him, and he was grieved that I had to. For he went right into the contest over Vandervelt, and worked beautifully for the Countess of Skibbereen. I'm to dine with her at the Vandervelts' next week, the farewell dinner." Her tones had a velvet tenderness in uttering this last sentence. She had touched one of the peaks of her ambition. "I shall meet you there," said Monsignor, taking a pinch of snuff. "Anne, you're a wonderful woman. How have all these wonders come about?" "It would take a head like your own to tell," she answered, with a meaning look at her handsome afternoon costume. "But I know some of the points of the game. I met Mr. Vandervelt at a reception, and told him he should not miss his chance to be ambassador, even if Livingstone lost the election and wanted to go to England himself. Then he whispered to me the loveliest whisper. Says he, 'Mrs. Dillon, they think it will be a good way to get rid of Mr. Livingstone if he's defeated,' says he; 'but if he wins I'll never get the high place, says he, 'for Tammany will be of no account for years.'" Anne smiled to herself with simple delight over that whispered confidence of a Vandervelt, and Monsignor sat admiring this dawning cleverness. He noticed for the first time that her taste in dress was striking and perfect, as far as he could judge. "'Then' says I, 'Mr. Vandervelt,' says I, 'there's only wan thing to be done, wan thing to be done,' says I. 'Arthur and the Senator and Doyle Grahame and Monsignor must tell Mr. Sullivan along wid Mr. Birmingham that you should go to England this year. 'Oh,' said he, 'if you can get such influence to work, nothing will stop me but the ill-will of the President.' 'And even there,' said I, 'it will be paving the way for the next time, if you make a good showing this time.' 'You see very far and well,' said he. That settled it. I've been dinin' and lunching with the Vandervelts ever since. You know yourself, Monsignor, how I started every notable man in town to tell Mr. Sullivan that Vandervelt must go to England. We failed, but it was the President did it; but he gave Mr. Vandervelt his choice of any other first-class mission. Then next, along came the old Countess of Skibbereen, and she was on the hands of the Vandervelts with her scheme of getting knitting-machines for the poor people of Galway. She wasn't getting on a bit, for she was old and queer in her ways, and the Vandervelts were worried over it. Then I said: 'why not get up a concert, and have Honora sing and let Tammany take up one end and society the other, and send home the Countess with ten thousand dollars?' My dear, they jumped at it, and the Countess jumped at me. Will you ever forget it, Monsignor dear, the night that Honora sang as the Genius of Erin? If that girl could only get over her craziness for Ireland and her father--but that's not what I was talking about. Well, the Countess has her ten thousand dollars, and says I'm the best-dressed woman in New York. So, that's the way I come to dine with the Vandervelts at the farewell dinner to the Countess, and when it comes off New York will be ringing with the name of Mrs. Montgomery Dillon." "Is that the present name?" said Monsignor. "Anne, if you go to Ireland you'll return with a title. Your son should be proud of you." "I'll give him better reason before I'm done, Monsignor." The prelate rose to go, then hesitated a moment. "Do you think there is anything?--do you think there could be anything with regard to Honora Ledwith?" She stopped him with a gesture. "I have watched all that. Not a thing could happen. Her thoughts are in heaven, poor child, and his are busy with some woman that bothered him long ago, and may have a claim on him. No wan told me, but my seein' and hearing are sharp as ever." "Good-by, Mrs. Montgomery Dillon," he said, bowing at the door. "Au plaisir, Monseigneur," she replied with a curtsey, and Judy opened the outer door, face and mien like an Egyptian statue of the twelfth dynasty. Anne Dillon watched him go with a sigh of deep contentment. How often she had dreamed of men as distinguished leaving her presence and her house in this fashion; and the dream had come true. All her life she had dreamed of the elegance and importance, which had come to her through her strange son, partly through her own ambition and ability. She now believed that if one only dreams hard enough fortune will bring dreams true. As the life which is past fades, for all its reality, into the mist-substance of dreams, why should not the reverse action occur? Had she been without the rich-colored visions which illuminated her idle hours, opportunity might have found her a spiritless creature, content to take a salary from her son and to lay it by for the miserable days of old age. Out upon such tameness! She had found life in her dreams, and the two highest expressions of that life were Mrs. Montgomery Dillon and the Dowager Countess of Skibbereen. As a pagan priestess might have arrayed herself for appearance in the sanctuary, she clothed herself in purple and gold on the evening of the farewell dinner. Arthur escorted his mother and Honora to the Vandervelt residence. As the trio made their bows, the aspirant for diplomatic honors rejoiced that his gratitude for real favors reflected itself in objects so distinguished. He was a grateful man, this Vandervelt, and broad-minded, willing to gild the steps by which he mounted, and to honor the humblest who honored him: an aristocrat in the American sense of the term, believing that those who wished should be encouraged to climb as high as natural capacity and opportunity permitted. The party sat down slightly bored, they had gone through it so often; but for Anne Dillon each moment and each circumstance shone with celestial beauty. She floated in the ether. The mellow lights, the glitter of silver and glass, the perfume of flowers, the soft voices, all sights and sounds, made up a harmony which lifted her body from the ground as on wings, more like a dream than her richest dreams. For conversation, some one started Lord Constantine on his hobby, and said Arthur was a Fenian, bent on destroying the hobby forever. In the discussion the Countess appealed to Anne. "We are a fighting race," said she, with admirable caution picking her steps through a long paragraph. "There's--there are times when no one can hold us. This is such a time. A few months back the Fenian trouble could have been settled in one week. Now it will take a year." "But how?" said Vandervelt. "If you had the making of the scheme, I'm sure it would be a success." "In this way," she answered, bowing and smiling to his sincere compliment, "by making all the Irish Fenians, that is, those in Ireland, policemen." The gentlemen laughed with one accord. "Mr. Sullivan manages his troublesome people that way," she observed triumphantly. "You are a student of the leader," said Vandervelt. "Everybody should study him, if they want to win," said Anne. "And that's wisdom," cried Lord Constantine. The conversation turned on opera, and the hostess wondered why Honora did not study for the operatic stage. Then they all urged her to think of the scheme. "I hope," said Anne gently, "that she will never try to spoil her voice with opera. The great singers give me the chills, and the creeps, and the shivers, the most terrible feeling, which I never had since the day Monsignor preached his first sermon, and broke down." "Oh, you dear creature," cried the Countess, "what a long memory you have." Monsignor had to explain his first sermon. So it went on throughout the dinner. The haze of perfect happiness gathered about Anne, and her speech became inspired. A crown of glory descended upon her head when the Dowager, hearing of her summer visit to Ireland with Mona and Louis in her care, exacted a solemn promise from her that the party should spend one month with her at Castle Moyna, her dower home. "That lovely boy and girl," said the Countess, "will find the place pleasant, and will make it pleasant for me; where usually I can induce not even my son's children to come, they find it so dull." It did not matter much to Anne what happened thereafter. The farewells, the compliments, the joy of walking down to the coach on the arm of Vandervelt, were as dust to this invitation of the Dowager Countess of Skibbereen. The glory of the dinner faded away. She looked down on the Vandervelts from the heights of Castle Moyna. She lost all at once her fear of her son. From that moment the earth became as a rose-colored flame. She almost ignored the adulation of Cherry Hill, and the astonished reverence of her friends over her success. Her success was told in awesome whispers in the church as she walked to the third pew of the middle aisle. A series of legends grew about it, over which the experienced gossips disputed in vain; her own description of the dinner was carried to the four quarters of the world by Sister Magdalen, Miss Conyngham, Senator Dillon, and Judy; the skeptical and envious pretended to doubt even the paragraph in the journals. At last they were struck dumb with the rest when it was announced that on Saturday last Mrs. Montgomery Dillon, Miss Mona Everard, and Mr. Louis Everard had sailed on the City of London for a tour of Europe, the first month of which would be spent at Castle Moyna, Ireland, as guests of the Dowager Countess of Skibbereen! CHAPTER XIV. ABOARD THE "ARROW." One month later sailed another ship. In the depth of night the _Arrow_ slipped her anchor, and stole away from the suspicious eyes of harbor officials into the Atlantic; a stout vessel, sailed with discretion, her trick being to avoid no encounters on the high seas and to seek none. Love and hope steered her course. Her bowsprit pointed, like the lance of a knight, at the power of England. Her north star was the freedom of a nation. War had nothing to do with her, however, though her mission was warlike: to prove that one hundred similar vessels might sail from various parts to the Irish coast, and land an army and its supplies without serious interference from the enemy. The crew was a select body of men, whose souls ever sought the danger of hopeless missions, as others seek a holiday. In spite of fine weather and bracing seas, the cloud of a lonely fate hung over the ship. Arthur alone was enthusiastic. Ledwith, feverish over slight success, because it roused the dormant appetite for complete success, and Honora, fed upon disappointment, feared that this expedition would prove ashen bread as usual; but the improvement in her father's health kept her cheerful. Doyle Grahame, always in high spirits, devoted his leisure to writing the book which was to bring him fame and much money. He described its motive and aim to his companions. "It calls a halt," he said "on the senseless haste of Christians to take up such pagans as Matthew Arnold, and raises a warning cry against surrender to the pagan spirit which is abroad." "And do you think that the critics will read it and be overcome?" asked Arthur. "It will convince the critics, not that they are pagans, but that I am. They will review it, therefore, just to annoy me." "You reason just like a critic, from anywhere to nowhere." "The book will make a stir, nevertheless," and Doyle showed his confidence. "It's to be a loud protest, and will tangle the supple legs of Henry Ward Beecher and other semi-pagans like a lasso." "How about the legs of the publishers?" "That's their lookout. I have nothing against them, and I hope at the close of the sale they will have nothing against me." "When, where, with what title, binding and so forth?" "Speak not overmuch to thy dentist," said Grahame slyly. "Already he knoweth too many of thy mouth's secrets." The young men kept the little company alive with their pranks and their badinage. Grahame discovered in the Captain a rare personality, who had seen the globe in its entirety, particularly the underside, as a detective and secret service agent for various governments. He was a tall, slender man, rather like a New England deacon than a daring adventurer, with a refined face, a handsome beard, and a speaking, languid gray eye. He spent the first week in strict devotion to his duties, and in close observation of his passengers. In the second week Grahame had him telling stories after dinner for the sole purpose of diverting the sad and anxious thoughts of Honora, although Arthur hardly gave her time to think by the multiplied services which he rendered her. There came an afternoon of storm, followed by a nasty night, which kept all the passengers in the cabin; and after tea there, a demand was made upon Captain Richard Curran for the best and longest story in his repertory. The men lit pipes and cigars, and Honora brought her crotcheting. The rolling and tossing of the ship, the beating of the rain, and the roar of the wind, gave them a sense of comfort. The ship, in her element, proudly and smoothly rode the rough waves, showing her strength like a racer. "Let us have a choice, Captain," said Grahame, as the officer settled himself in his chair. "You detectives always set forth your successes. Give us now a story of complete failure, something that remains a mystery till now." "Mystery is the word," said Honora. "This is a night of mystery. But a story without an end to it----" "Like the history of Ireland," said Ledwith dryly. "Is the very one to keep us thinking and talking for a month," said Grahame. "Captain, if you will oblige us, a story of failure and of mystery." "Such a one is fresh in my mind, for I fled from my ill-success to take charge of this expedition," said the Captain, whose voice was singularly pleasant. "The detective grows stale sometimes, as singers and musicians do, makes a failure of his simplest work, and has to go off and sharpen his wits at another trade. I am in that condition. For twenty months I sought the track of a man, who disappeared as if the air absorbed him where he last breathed. I did not find him. The search gave me a touch of monomania. For two months I have not been able to rest upon meeting a new face until satisfied its owner was not--let us say, Tom Jones." "Are you satisfied, then," said Arthur, "that we are all right?" "He was not an Irishman, but a Puritan," replied the Captain, "and would not be found in a place like this. I admit I studied your faces an hour or so, and asked about you among the men, but under protest. I have given up the pursuit of Tom Jones, and I wish he would give up the pursuit of me. I had to quiet my mind with some inquiries." "Was there any money awaiting Tom? If so, I might be induced to be discovered," Grahame said anxiously. "You are all hopeless, Mr. Grahame. I have known you and Mr. Ledwith long enough, and Mr. Dillon has his place secure in New York----" "With a weak spot in my history," said Arthur. "I was off in California, playing bad boy for ten years." The Captain waved his hand as admitting Dillon's right to his personality. "In October nearly two years ago the case of Tom Jones was placed in my care with orders to report at once to Mrs. Tom. The problem of finding a lost man is in itself very simple, if he is simply lost or in hiding. You follow his track from the place where he was last seen to his new abode. But around this simple fact of disappearance are often grouped the interests of many persons, which make a tangle worse than a poor fisherman's line. A proper detective will make no start in his search until the line is as straight and taut as if a black bass were sporting at the other end of it." All the men exchanged delighted glances at this simile. "I could spin this story for three hours straight talking of the characters who tangled me at the start. But I did not budge until I had unraveled them every one. Mrs. Jones declared there was no reason for the disappearance of Tom; his aunt Quincy said her flightiness had driven him to it; and Cousin Jack, Mrs. Tom's adviser, thought it just a freak after much dissipation, for Tom had been acting queerly for months before he did the vanishing act. The three were talking either from spleen or the wish to hide the truth. When there was no trace of Tom after a month of ordinary searching much of the truth came out, and I discovered the rest. Plain speech with Mrs. Tom brought her to the half-truth. She was told that her husband would never be found if the detective had to work in the dark. She was a clever woman, and very much worried, for reasons, over her husband's disappearance. It was something to have her declare that he had suspected her fidelity, but chiefly out of spleen, because she had discovered his infidelity. A little sifting of many statements, which took a long time, for I was on the case nearly two years, as I said, revealed Mrs. Tom as a remarkable woman. In viciousness she must have been something of a monster, though she was beautiful enough to have posed for an angel. Her corruption was of the marrow. She breathed crime and bred it. But her blade was too keen. She wounded herself too often. Grit and ferocity were her strong points. We meet such women occasionally. When she learned that I knew as much about her as need be, she threw off hypocrisy, and made me an offer of ten thousand dollars to find her husband." "I felt sure then of the money. Disappearance, for a living man, if clever people are looking for him, is impossible nowadays. I can admit the case of a man being secretly killed or self-buried, say, for instance, his wandering into a swamp and there perishing: these cases of disappearance are common. But if he is alive he can be found." "Why are you so sure of that?" said Arthur. "Because no man can escape from his past, which is more a part of him than his heart or his liver," said Curran. "That past is the pathway which leads to him. If you have it, it's only a matter of time when you will have him." "Yet you failed to find Tom Jones." "For the time, yes," said the Captain with an eloquent smile. "Then, I had an antagonist of the noblest quality. Tom Jones was a bud of the Mayflower stock. All his set agreed that he was an exceptional man: a clean, honest, upright chap, the son of a soldier and a peerless mother, apparently an every-day lad, but really as fine a piece of manhood as the world turns out. Anyhow, I came to that conclusion about him when I had studied him through the documents. What luck threw him between the foul jaws of his wife I can't say. She was a----" The detective coughed before uttering the word, and looked at the men as he changed the form of his sentence. "She was a cruel creature. He adored her, and she hated him, and when he was gone slandered him with a laugh, and defiled his honest name." "Oh," cried Honora with a gasp of pain, "can there be such women now? I have read of them in history, but I always felt they were far off----" "I hope they are not many," said the Captain politely, "but in my profession I have met them. Here was a case where the best of men was the victim of an Agrippina." "Poor, dear lad," sighed she, "and of course he fled from her in horror." "He was a wonder, Miss Ledwith. Think what he did. Such a man is more than a match for such a woman. He discovered her unfaithfulness months before he disappeared. Then he sold all his property, turning all he owned into money, and transferred it beyond any reach but his own, leaving his wife just what she brought him--an income from her parents of fifteen hundred a year: a mere drop to a woman whom he had dowered with a share in one hundred thousand. Though I could not follow the tracks of his feet, I saw the traces of his thoughts as he executed his scheme of vengeance. He discovered her villainy, he would have no scandal, he was disgusted with life, so he dropped out of it with the prize for which she had married him, and left her like a famished wolf in the desert. It would have satisfied him to have seen her rage and dismay, but he was not one of the kind that enjoys torture." "I watched Mrs. Tom for months, and felt she was the nearest thing to a demon I had ever met. Well, I worked hard to find Tom. We tried many tricks to lure him from his hiding-place, if it were near by, and we followed many a false trail into foreign lands. The result was dreadful to me. We found nothing. When a child was born to him, and the fact advertised, and still he did not appear, or give the faintest sign, I surrendered. It would be tedious to describe for you how I followed the sales of his property, how I examined his last traces, how I pursued all clues, how I wore myself out with study. At the last I gave out altogether and cut the whole business. I was beginning to have Tom on the brain. He came to live on my nerves, and to haunt my dreams, and to raise ghosts for me. He is gone two years, and Mrs. Tom is in Europe with her baby and Tom's aunt Quincy. When I get over my present trouble, and get back a clear brain, I shall take up the search. I shall find him yet. I'd like to show some of the documents, but the matter is still confidential, and I must keep quiet, though I don't suppose you know any of the parties. When I find him I shall finish the story for you." "You will never find him," said Honora with emphasis. "That fearful woman shattered his very soul. I know the sort of a man he was. He will never go back. If he can bear to live, it will be because in his obscurity God gave him new faith and hope in human nature, and in the woman's part of it." "I shall find him," said the detective. "You won't," said Grahame. "I'll wager he has been so close to you all this time, that you cannot recognize him. That man is living within your horizon, if he's living at all. Probably he has aided you in your search. You wouldn't be the first detective fooled in that game." The Captain made no reply, but went off to see how his ship was bearing the storm. The little company fell silent, perhaps depressed by the sounds of tempest without and the thought of the poor soul whose departure from life had been so strange. Arthur sat thinking of many things. He remembered the teaching that to God the past, present, and future are as one living present. Here was an illustration: the old past and the new present side by side to-night in the person of this detective. What a giant hand was that which could touch him, and fail to seize only because the fingers did not know their natural prey. No doubt that the past is more a part of a man than his heart, for here was every nerve of his body tingling to turn traitor to his will. Horace Endicott, so long stilled that he thought him dead, rose from his sleep at the bidding of the detective, and fought to betray Arthur Dillon. The blush, the trembling of the hands, the tension of the muscles, the misty eye, the pallor of the cheek, the tremulous lip, the writhing tongue, seemed to put themselves at the service of Endicott, and to fight for the chance to betray the secret to Curran. He sat motionless, fighting, fighting; until after a little he felt a delightful consciousness of the strength of Dillon, as of a rampart which the Endicott could not overclimb. Then his spirits rose, and he listened without dread to the story. How pitiful! What a fate for that splendid boy, the son of a brave soldier and a peerless mother! A human being allied with a beast! Oh, tender heart of Honora that sighed for him so pitifully! Oh, true spirit that recognized how impossible for Horace Endicott ever to return! Down, out of sight forever, husband of Agrippina! The furies lie in wait for thee, wretched husband of their daughter! Have shame enough to keep in thy grave until thou goest to meet Sonia at the judgment seat! Captain Curran was not at all flattered by the deep interest which Arthur took for the next two days in the case of Tom Jones; but the young man nettled him by his emphatic assertions that the detective had adopted a wrong theory as to the mysterious disappearance. They went over the question of motives and of methods. The shrewd objections of Dillon gave him favor in Curran's eyes. Before long the secret documents in the Captain's possession were laid before him under obligations of secrecy. He saw various photographs of Endicott, and wondered at the blindness of man; for here side by side were the man sought and his portrait, yet the detective could not see the truth. Was it possible that the exterior man had changed so thoroughly to match the inner personality which had grown up in him? He was conscious of such a change. The mirror which reflected Arthur Dillon displayed a figure in no way related to the portrait. "It seems to me," said Arthur, after a study of the photograph, "that I would be able to reach that man, no matter what his disguise." "Disguises are mere veils," said Curran, "which the trained eye of the detective can pierce easily. But the great difficulty lies in a natural disguise, in the case where the man's appearance changes without artificial aids. Here are two photographs which will illustrate my meaning. Look at this." Arthur saw a young and well-dressed fellow who might have been a student of good birth and training. "Now look at this," said the Captain, "and discover that they picture one and the same individual, with a difference in age of two years." The second portrait was a vigorous, rudely-dressed, bearded adventurer, as much like the first as Dillon was like Grahame. Knowing that the portraits stood for the same youth, Arthur could trace a resemblance in the separate features, but in the ensemble there was no likeness. "The young fellow went from college to Africa," said Curran, "where he explored the wilderness for two years. This photograph was taken on his return from an expedition. His father and mother, his relatives and friends, saw that picture without recognizing him. When told who it was, they were wholly astonished, and after a second study still failed to recognize their friend. What are you going to do in a case of that kind? You or Grahame or Ledwith might be Tom Jones, and how could I pierce such perfect and natural disguises." "Let me see," said Arthur, as he stood with Endicott's photograph in his hand and studied the detective, "if I can see this young man in you." Having compared the features of the portrait and of the detective, he had to admit the absence of a likeness. Handing the photograph to the Captain he said, "You do the same for me." "There is more likelihood in your case," said Curran, "for your age is nearer that of Tom Jones, and youth has resemblances of color and feature." He studied the photograph and compared it with the grave face before him. "I have done this before," said Curran, "with the same result. You are ten years older than Tom Jones, and you are as clearly Arthur Dillon as he was Tom Jones." The young man and the Captain sighed together. "Oh, I brought in others, clever and experienced," said Curran, "to try what a fresh mind could do to help me, but in vain." "There must have been something hard about Tom Jones," said Arthur, "when he was able to stay away and make no sign after his child was born." The Captain burst into a mocking laugh, which escaped him before he could repress the inclination. "He may never have heard of it, and if he did his wife's reputation----" "I see," said Arthur Dillon smiling, convinced that Captain Curran knew more of Sonia Westfield than he cared to tell. At the detective's request the matter was dropped as one that did him harm; but he complimented Arthur on the shrewdness of his suggestions, which indeed had given him new views without changing his former opinions. CHAPTER XV. THE INVASION OF IRELAND. One lovely morning the good ship sailed into the harbor of Foreskillen, an obscure fishing port on the lonely coast of Donegal. The _Arrow_ had been in sight of land all the day before. A hush had fallen on the spirits of the adventurers. The two innocents, Honora and her father, had sat on deck with eyes fixed on the land of their love, scarcely able to speak, and unwilling to eat, in spite of Arthur's coaxing. Half the night they sat there, mostly silent, talking reverently, every one touched and afraid to disturb them; after a short sleep they were on deck again to see the ship enter the harbor in the gray dawn. The sun was still behind the brown hills. Arthur saw a silver bay, a mournful shore with a few houses huddled miserably in the distance, and bare hills without verdure or life. It was an indifferent part of the earth to him; but revealed in the hearts of Owen Ledwith and his daughter, no jewel of the mines could have shone more resplendent. He did not understand the love called patriotism, any more than the love of a parent for his child. These affections have to be experienced to be known. He loved his country and was ready to die for it; but to have bled for it, to have writhed under tortures for it, to have groaned in unison with its mortal anguish, to have passed through the fire of death and yet lived for it, these were not his glories. In the cool, sad morning the father and daughter stood glorified in his eyes, for if they loved each other much, they loved this strange land more. The white lady, whiter now than lilies, stood with her arm about her father, her eyes shining; and he, poor man, trembled in an ague of love and pity and despair and triumph, with a rapt, grief-stricken face, his shoulders heaving to the repressed sob, as if nature would there make an end of him under this torrent of delight and pain. Arthur writhed in secret humiliation. To love like this was of the gods, and he had never loved anything so but Agrippina. As the ship glided to her anchorage the crew stood about the deck in absolute silence, every man's heart in his face, the watch at its post, the others leaning on the bulwarks. Like statues they gazed on the shore. It seemed a phantom ship, blown from ghostly shores by the strength of hatred against the enemy, and love for the land of Eire; for no hope shone in their eyes, or in the eyes of Ledwith and his daughter, only triumph at their own light success. What a pity, thought Dillon, that at this hour of time men should have reason to look so at the power of England. He knew there were millions of them scattered over the earth, studying in just hate to shake the English grip on stolen lands, to pay back the robberies of years in English blood. The ship came to anchor amid profound silence, save for the orders of the Captain and the movements of the men. Ledwith was speaking to himself more than to Honora, a lament in the Irish fashion over the loved and lost, in a way to break the heart. The tears rolled down Honora's cheek, for the agony was beginning. "Land of love ... land of despair ... without a friend except among thy own children ... here am I back again with just a grain of hope ... I love thee, I love thee, I love thee! Let them neglect thee ... die every moment under the knife ... live in rags ... in scorn ... and hatred too ... they have spared thee nothing ... I love thee ... I am faithful ... God strike me that day when I forget thee! Here is the first gift I have ever given thee besides my heart and my daughter ... a ship ... no freight but hope ... no guns alas! for thy torturers ... they are still free to tear thee, these wolves, and to lie about thee to the whole world ... blood and lies are their feast ... and how sweet are thy shores ... after all ... because thou art everlasting! Thy children are gone, but they shall come back ... the dead are dead, but the living are in many lands, and they will return ... perhaps soon ... I am the messenger ... helpless as ever, but I bring thee news ... good news ... my beautiful Ireland! Poorer than ever I return ... I shall never see thee free----" He was working himself into a fever of grief when Honora spoke to him. "You are forgetting, father, that this is the moment to thank Mr. Dillon in the name of our country----" "I forget everything when I am here," said Ledwith, breaking into cheerful smiles, and seizing Arthur's hand. "I would be ashamed to say 'thank you,' Arthur, for what you have done. Let this dear land herself welcome you to her shores. Never a foot stepped on them worthier of respect and love than you." They went ashore in silence, having determined on their course the night previous. They must learn first what had happened since their departure from New York, where there had been rumors of a rising, which Ledwith distrusted. It was too soon for the Fenians to rise; but as the movement had gotten partly beyond the control of the leaders, anything might have happened. If the country was still undisturbed, they might enjoy a ride through wild Donegal; if otherwise, it was safer, having accomplished the purpose of the trip, to sail back to the West. The miserable village at the head of the bay showed a few dwellers when they landed on the beach, but little could be learned from them, save directions to a distant cotter who owned an ass and a cart, and always kept information and mountain dew for travelers and the gentry. The young men visited the cotter, and returned with the cart and the news. The rising was said to have begun, but farther east and south, and the cotter had seen soldiers and police and squads of men hurrying over the country; but so remote was the storm that the whole party agreed a ride over the bare hills threatened no danger. They mounted the cart in high spirits, now that emotion had subsided. All matters had been arranged with Captain Curran, who was not to expect them earlier than the next day at evening, and had his instructions for all contingencies. They set out for a village to the north, expressly to avoid encounters possible southward. The morning was glorious. Arthur wondered at the miles of uninhabited land stretching away on either side of the road, at the lack of population in a territory so small. He had heard of these things before, but the sight of them proved stranger than the hearing. Perhaps they had gone five miles on the road to Cruarig, when Grahame, driving, pulled up the donkey with suddenness, and cried out in horror. Eight men had suddenly come in sight on the road, armed with muskets, and as suddenly fled up the nearest timbered hill and disappeared. "I'll wager something," said Grahame, "that these men are being pursued by the police, or--which would be worse for us--by soldiers. There is nothing to do but retreat in good order, and send out a scout to make sure of the ground. We ought to have done that the very first thing." No one gainsaid him, but Arthur thought that they might go on a bit further cautiously, and if nothing suspicious occurred reach the town. Dubiously Grahame whipped up the donkey, and drove with eyes alert past the wooded hill, which on its north side dropped into a little glen watered by the sweetest singing brook. They paused to look at the brook and the glen. The road stretched away above and below like a ribbon. A body of soldiers suddenly brightened the north end of the ribbon two miles off. "Now by all the evil gods," said Grahame, "but we have dropped into the very midst of the insurrection." He was about to turn the donkey, when Honora cried out in alarm and pointed back over the road which they had just traveled. Another scarlet troop was moving upon them from that direction. Without a word Grahame turned the cart into the glen, and drove as far as the limits would permit within the shade. They alighted. "This is our only chance," he said. "The eight men with muskets are rebels whom the troops have cornered. There may be a large force in the vicinity, ready to give the soldiers of Her Majesty a stiff battle. The soldiers will be looking for rebels and not for harmless tourists, and we may escape comfortably by keeping quiet until the two divisions marching towards each other have met and had an explanation. If we are discovered, I shall do the talking, and explain our embarrassment at meeting so many armed men first, and then so many soldiers. We are in for it, I know." No one seemed to mind particularly. Honora stole an anxious glance at her father, while she pulled a little bunch of shamrock and handed it to Arthur. He felt like saying it would yet be stained by his blood in defense of her country, but knew at the same moment how foolish and weak the words would sound in her ears. He offered himself as a scout to examine the top of the hill, and discover if the rebels were there, and was permitted to go under cautions from Grahame, to return within fifteen minutes. He returned promptly full of enthusiasm. The eight men were holding the top of the hill, almost over their heads, and would have it out with the two hundred soldiers from the town. They had expected a body of one hundred insurgents at this point, but the party had not turned up. Eager to have a brush with the enemy, they intended to hold the hill as long as possible, and then scatter in different directions, sure that pursuit could not catch them. "The thing for them to do is to save us," said Grahame. "Let them move on to another hill northward, and while they fight the soldiers we may be able to slip back to the ship." The suggestion came too late. The troops were in full sight. Their scouts had met in front of the glen, evidently acting upon information received earlier, and seemed disappointed at finding no trace of a body of insurgents large enough to match their own battalion. The boys on the top of the hill put an end to speculations as to the next move by firing a volley into them. A great scattering followed, and the bid for a fight was cheerfully answered by the officer in command of the troops. Having joined his companies, examined the position and made sure that its defenders were few and badly armed, he ordered a charge. In five minutes the troops were in possession of the hilltop, and the insurgents had fled; but on the hillside lay a score of men wounded and dead. The rebels were good marksmen, and fleet-footed. The scouts beat the bushes and scoured the wood in vain. The report to the commanding officer was the wounding of two men, who were just then dying in a little glen close by, and the discovery of a party of tourists in the glen, who had evidently turned aside to escape the trouble, and were now ministering to the dying rebels. Captain Sydenham went up to investigate. Before he arrived the little drama of death had passed, and the two insurgents lay side by side at the margin of the brook like brothers asleep. When the insurgents fled from their position, the two wounded ones dropped into the glen in the hope of escaping notice for the time; but they were far spent when they fell headlong among the party in hiding below. Grahame and Ledwith picked them up and laid them near the brook, Honora pillowed their heads with coats, Arthur brought water to bathe their hands and faces, grimy with dust of travel and sweat of death; for an examination of the wounds showed Ledwith that they were speedily mortal. He dipped his handkerchief in the flowing blood of each, and placed it reverently in his breast. There was nothing to do but bathe the faces and moisten the lips of the dying and unconscious men. They were young, one rugged and hard, the other delicate in shape and color; the same grace of youth belonged to both, and showed all the more beautifully at this moment through the heavy veil of death. Arthur gazed at them with eager curiosity, and at the red blood bubbling from their wounds. For their country they were dying, as his father had died, on the field of battle. This blood, of which he had so often read, was the price which man pays for liberty, which redeems the slave; richer than molten gold, than sun and stars, priceless. Oh, sweet and glorious, unutterably sweet to die like this for men! "Do you recognize him?" said Ledwith to Grahame, pointing to the elder of the two. Grahame bent forward, startled that he should know either unfortunate. "It is young Devin, the poet," cried Ledwith with a burst of tears. Honora moaned, and Grahame threw up his hands in despair. "We must give the best to our mother," said Ledwith, "but I would prefer blood so rich to be scattered over a larger soil." He took the poet's hand in his own, and stroked it gently; Honora wiped the face of the other; Grahame on his knees said the prayers he remembered for sinners and passing souls; secretly Arthur put in his pocket a rag stained with death-sweat and life-blood. Almost in silence, without painful struggle, the boys died. Devin opened his eyes one moment on the clear blue sky and made an effort to sing. He chanted a single phrase, which summed up his life and its ideals: "Mother, always the best for Ireland." Then his eyes closed and his heart stopped. The little party remained silent, until Honora, looking at the still faces, so young and tender, thought of the mothers sitting in her place, and began to weep aloud. At this moment Captain Sydenham marched up the glen with clinking spur. He stopped at a distance and took off his hat with the courtesy of a gentleman and the sympathy of a soldier. Grahame went forward to meet him, and made his explanations. "It is perfectly clear," said the Captain, "that you are tourists and free from all suspicion. However, it will be necessary for you to accompany me to the town and make your declarations to the magistrate as well. As you were going there anyhow it will be no hardship, and I shall be glad to make matters as pleasant as possible for the young lady." Grahame thanked him, and introduced him to the party. He bowed very low over the hand which Honora gave him. "A rather unfortunate scene for you to witness," he said. Yet she had borne it like one accustomed to scenes of horror. Her training in Ledwith's school bred calmness, and above all silence, amid anxiety, disappointment and calamity. "I was glad to be here," she replied, the tears still coursing down her face, "to take their mother's place." "Two beautiful boys," said the Captain, looking into the dead faces. "Killing men is a bad business anywhere, but when we have to kill our own, and such as these, it is so much worse." Ledwith flashed the officer a look of gratitude. "I shall have the bodies carried to the town along with our own dead, and let the authorities take care of them. And now if you will have the goodness to take your places, I shall do myself the pleasure of riding with you as far as the magistrate's." Honora knelt and kissed the pale cheeks of the dead boys, and then accepted Captain Sydenham's arm in the march out of the glen. The men followed sadly. Ledwith looked wild for a while. The tears pressed against Arthur's eyes. What honor gilded these dead heroes! The procession moved along the road splendidly, the soldiers in front and the cart in the rear, while a detail still farther off carried the wounded and dead. Captain Sydenham devoted himself to Honora, which gave Grahame the chance to talk matters over with Ledwith on the other side of the car. "Did you ever dream in all your rainbow dreams," said Grahame, "of marching thus into Cruarig with escort of Her Majesty? It's damfunny. But the question now is, what are we to do with the magistrate? Any sort of an inquiry will prove that we are more than suspicious characters. If they run across the ship we shall go to jail. If they discover you and me, death or Botany Bay will be our destination." "It is simply a case of luck," Ledwith replied. "Scheming won't save us. If Lord Constantine were in London now----" "Great God!" cried Grahame in a whisper, "there's the luck. Say no more. I'll work that fine name as it was never worked before." He called out to Captain Sydenham to come around to his side of the car for a moment. "I am afraid," he said, "that we have fallen upon evil conditions, and that, before we get through with the magistrates, delays will be many and vexatious. I feel that we shall need some of our English friends of last winter in New York. Do you know Lord Constantine?" "Are you friends of Lord Leverett?" cried the Captain. "Well, then, that settles it. A telegram from him will smooth the magistrate to the silkiness of oil. But I do not apprehend any annoyance. I shall be happy to explain the circumstances, and you can get away to Dublin, or any port where you hope to meet your ship." The Captain went back to Honora, and talked Lord Constantine until they arrived in the town and proceeded to the home of the magistrate. Unfortunately there was little cordiality between Captain Sydenham and Folsom, the civil ruler of the district; and because the gallant Captain made little of the episode therefore Folsom must make much of it. "I can easily believe in the circumstances which threw tourists into so unpleasant a situation," said Folsom, "but at the same time I am compelled to observe all the formalities. Of course the young lady is free. Messrs. Dillon and Grahame may settle themselves comfortably in the town, on their word not to depart without permission. Mr. Ledwith has a name which my memory connects with treasonable doings and sayings. He must remain for a few hours at least in the jail." "This is not at all pleasant," said Captain Sydenham pugnaciously. "I could have let these friends of my friends go without troubling you about them. I wished to make it easier for them to travel to Dublin by bringing them before you, and here is my reward." "I wish you had, Captain," said the magistrate. "But now you've done it, neither is free to do more than follow the routine. We have enough real work without annoying honest travelers. However, it's only a matter of a few hours." "Then you had better telegraph to Lord Constantine," said Sydenham to Grahame. Folsom started at the name and looked at the party with a puzzled frown. Grahame wrote on a sheet of paper the legend: "A telegram from you to the authorities here will get Honora and her party out of much trouble." "Is it as warm as that?" said the Captain with a smile, as he read the lines and handed the paper to Folsom with a broad grin. "I'm in for it now," groaned Folsom to himself as he read. "Wish I'd let the Captain alone and tended to strict business." While the wires were humming between Dublin and Cruarig, Captain Sydenham spent his spare time in atoning for his blunders against the comfort of the party. Ledwith having been put in jail most honorably, the Captain led the others to the inn and located them sumptuously. He arranged for lunch, at which he was to join them, and then left them to their ease while he transacted his own affairs. "One of the men you read about," said Grahame, as the three looked at one another dolorously. "Sorry I didn't confide in him from the start. Now it's a dead certainty that your father stays in jail, Honora, and I may be with him." "I really can't see any reason for such despair," said Arthur. "Of course not," replied Grahame. "But even Lord Constantine could not save Owen Ledwith from prison in times like these, if the authorities learn his identity." "What is to be done?" inquired Honora. "You will stay with your father of course?" Honora nodded. "I'm going to make a run for it at the first opportunity," said Grahame. "I can be of no use here, and we must get back the ship safe and sound. Arthur, if they hold Ledwith you will have the honor of working for his freedom. Owen is an American citizen. He ought to have all the rights and privileges of a British subject in his trial, if it comes to that. He won't get them unless the American minister to the court of St. James insists upon it. Said minister, being a doughhead, will not insist. He will even help to punish him. It will be your business to go up to London and make Livingstone do his duty if you have to choke him black in the face. If the American minister interferes in this case Lord Constantine will be a power. If the said minister hangs back, or says, hang the idiot, my Lord will not amount to a hill of beans." "If it comes to a trial," said Arthur, "won't Ledwith get the same chance as any other lawbreaker?" Honora and Grahame looked at each other as much as to say: "Poor innocent!" "When there's a rising on, my dear boy, there is no trial for Irishmen. Arrest means condemnation, and all that follows is only form. Go ahead now and do your best." Before lunch the telegrams had done their best and worst. The party was free to go as they came with the exception of Ledwith. They had a merry lunch, enlivened by a telegram from Lord Constantine, and by Folsom's discomfiture. Then Grahame drove away to the ship, Arthur set out for Dublin, and Honora was left alone with her dread and her sorrows, which Captain Sydenham swore would be the shortest of her life. CHAPTER XVI. CASTLE MOYNA. The Dillon party took possession of Castle Moyna, its mistress, and Captain Sydenham, who had a fondness for Americans. Mona Everard owned any human being who looked at her the second time, as the oriole catches the eye with its color and then the heart with its song; and Louis had the same magnetism in a lesser degree. Life at the castle was not of the liveliest, but with the Captain's aid it became as rapid as the neighboring gentry could have desired. Anne cared little, so that her children had their triumph. Wrapped in her dreams of amethyst, the exquisiteness of this new world kept her in ecstasy. Its smallest details seemed priceless. She performed each function as if it were the last of her life. While rebuffs were not lacking, she parried them easily, and even the refusal of the parish priest to accept her aid in his bazaar did not diminish the delight of her happy situation. She knew the meaning of his refusal: she, an upstart, having got within the gates of Castle Moyna by some servility, when her proper place was a _shebeen_ in Cruarig, offered him charity from a low motive. She felt a rebuke from a priest as a courtier a blow from his king; but keeping her temper, she made many excuses for him in her own mind, without losing the firm will to teach him better manners in her own reverent way. The Countess heard of it, and made a sharp complaint to Captain Sydenham. The old dowager had a short temper, and a deep gratitude for Anne's remarkable services in New York. Nor did she care to see her guests slighted. "Father Roslyn has treated her shabbily. She suggested a booth at his bazaar, offered to fit it up herself and to bring the gentry to buy. She was snubbed: 'neither your money nor your company.' You must set that right, Sydenham," said she. "He shall weep tears of brine for it," answered the Captain cheerfully. "Tell him," said the Dowager, "the whole story, if your priest can appreciate it, which I doubt. A Cavan peasant, who can teach the fine ladies of Dublin how to dress and how to behave; whose people are half the brains of New York; the prize-fighter turned senator, the Boss of Tammany, the son with a gold mine. Above all, don't forget to tell how she may name the next ambassador to England." They laughed in sheer delight at her accomplishments and her triumphs. "Gad, but she's the finest woman," the Captain declared. "At first I thought it was acting, deuced fine acting. But it's only her nature finding expression. What d'ye think she's planning now? An audience with the Pope, begad, special, to present an American flag and a thousand pounds. And she laid out Lady Cruikshank yesterday, stone cold. Said her ladyship: 'Quite a compliment to Ireland, Mrs. Dillon, that you kept the Cavan brogue so well.' Said Mrs. Dillon: 'It was all I ever got from Ireland, and a brogue in New York is always a recommendation to mercy from the court; then abroad it marks one off from the common English and their common Irish imitators.' Did she know of Lady Cruikshank's effort to file off the Dublin brogue?" "Likely. She seems to know the right thing at the right minute." Evidently Anne's footing among the nobility was fairly secure in spite of difficulties. There were difficulties below stairs also, and Judy Haskell had the task of solving them, which she did with a success quite equal to Anne's. She made no delay in seizing the position of arbiter in the servants' hall, not only of questions touching the Dillons, and their present relations with the Irish nobility, but also on such vital topics as the rising, the Fenians, the comparative rank of the Irish at home and those in America, and the standing of the domestics in Castle Moyna from the point of experience and travel. Inwardly Judy had a profound respect for domestics in the service of a countess, and looked to find them as far above herself as a countess is above the rest of the world. She would have behaved humbly among the servants of Castle Moyna, had not their airs betrayed them for an inferior grade. "These Americans," said the butler with his nose in the air. "As if ye knew anythin' about Americans," said Judy promptly. "Have ye ever thraveled beyant Donegal, me good little man?" "It wasn't necessary, me good woman." "Faith, it's yerself 'ud be blowin' about it if ye had. An' d'ye think people that thraveled five thousan' miles to spind a few dollars on yer miserable country wud luk at the likes o' ye? Keep yer criticisms on these Americans in yer own buzzum. It's not becomin' that an ould gossoon shud make remarks on Mrs. Dillon, the finest lady in New York, an' the best dhressed at this minnit in all Ireland. Whin ye've thraveled as much as I have ye can have me permission to talk on what ye have seen." "The impidence o' some people," said the cook with a loud and scornful laugh. "If ye laughed that way in New York," said Judy, "ye'd be sint to the Island for breaking the public peace. A laugh like that manes no increase o' wages." "The Irish in New York are allowed to live there I belave," said a pert housemaid with a simper. "Oh, yes, ma'am, an' they are also allowed to sind home the rint o' their houses to kape the poor Irish from starvin', an' to help the lords an' ladies of yer fine castles to kape the likes o' yees in a job." "'Twas always a wondher to me," said the cook to the housemaid, as if no other was present, "how these American bigbugs wid their inilligant ways ever got as far as the front door o' the Countess." "I can tell ye how Mrs. Dillon got in so far that her fut is on the neck of all o' yez this minnit," said Judy. "If she crooked her finger at ye this hour, ye'd take yer pack on yer back an' fut it over to yer father's shanty, wid no more chance for another place than if ye wor in Timbuctoo. The Countess o' Skibbereen kem over to New York to hould a concert, an' to raise money for the cooks an' housemaids an' butlers that were out of places in Donegal. Well, she cudn't get a singer, nor she couldn't get a hall, nor she cudn't sell a ticket, till Mrs. Dillon gathered around her the Boss of Tammany Hall, an' Senator Dillon, an' Mayor Birmingham, an' Mayor Livingstone, an' says to thim, 'let the Countess o' Skibbereen have a concert an' let Tammany Hall buy every ticket she has for sale, an' do yeez turn out the town to make the concert a success.' An' thin she got the greatest singer in the world, Honora Ledwith, that ye cudn't buy to sing in Ireland for all the little money there's in it, to do the singin', an' so the Countess med enough money to buy shirts for the whole of Ireland. But not a door wud have opened to her if Mrs. Dillon hadn't opened them all be wan word. That's why Castle Moyna is open to her to the back door. For me I wondher she shtays in the poor little place, whin the palace o' the American ambassador in London expects her." The audience, awed at Judy's assurance, was urged by pride to laugh haughtily at this last statement. "An' why wudn't his palace be open to her," Judy continued with equal scorn. "He's afraid of her. She kem widin an ace o' spoilin' his chances o' goin' to London an' bowin' to the Queen. An, bedad, he's not sure of his futtin' while she's in it, for she has her mind on the place for Mr. Vandervelt, the finest man in New York wid a family that goes back to the first Dutchman that ever was, a little fellow that sat fishin' in the say the day St. Pathrick sailed for Ireland. Now Mr. Livingstone sez to Mrs. Dillon whin he was leavin' for London, 'Come over,' sez he, 'an' shtay at me palace as long as I'm in it.' She's goin' there whin she laves here, but I don't see why she shtays in this miserable place, whin she cud be among her aquils, runnin' in an out to visit the Queen like wan o' thimselves." By degrees, as Judy's influence invaded the audience, alarm spread among them for their own interests. They had not been over polite to the Americans, since it was not their habit to treat any but the nobility with more than surface respect. New York most of them hoped to visit and dwell within some day. What if they had offended the most influential of the great ladies of the western city! Judy saw their fear and guessed its motive. "Me last word to the whole o' yez is, get down an yer knees to Mrs. Dillon afore she l'aves, if she'll let yez. I hear that some o' ye think of immigratin' to New York. Are yez fit for that great city? What are yer wages here? Mebbe a pound a month. In our city the girls get four pounds for doin' next to nothin'. An' to see the dhress an' the shtyle o' thim fine girls! Why, yez cudn't tell them from their own misthresses. What wud yez be doin' in New York, wid yer clothes thrun on yez be a pitchfork, an' lukkin' as if they were made in the ark? But if ye wor as smart as the lady that waits on the Queen, not wan fut will ye set in New York if Mrs. Dillon says no. Yez may go to Hartford or Newark, or some other little place, an' yez'll be mighty lucky if ye're not sint sthraight on to quarantine wid the smallpox patients an' the Turks." The cook gave a gasp, and Judy saw that she had won the day. One more struggle, however, remained before her triumph was complete. The housekeeper and the butler formed an alliance against her, and refused to be awed by the stories of Mrs. Dillon's power and greatness; but as became their station their opposition was not expressed in mere language. They did not condescend to bandy words with inferiors. The butler fought his battle with Judy by simply tilting his nose toward the sky on meeting her. Judy thereupon tilted her nose in the same fashion, so that the servants' hall was convulsed at the sight, and the butler had to surrender or lose his dignity. The housekeeper carried on the battle by an attempt to stare Judy out of countenance with a formidable eye; and the greatest staring-match on the part of rival servants in Castle Moyna took place between the representative of the Skibbereens and the maid of New York. The former may have thought her eye as good as that of the basilisk, but found the eye of Miss Haskell much harder. The housekeeper one day met Judy descending the back stairs. She fixed her eyes upon her with the clear design of transfixing and paralyzing this brazen American. Judy folded her arms and turned her glance upon her foe. The nearest onlookers held their breaths. Overcome by the calm majesty of Judy's iron glance, which pressed against her face like a spear, the housekeeper smiled scornfully and began to ascend the stairs with scornful air. Judy stood on the last step and turned her neck round and her eyes upward until she resembled the Gorgon. She had the advantage of the housekeeper, who in mounting the stairs had to watch her steps; but in any event the latter was foredoomed to defeat. The eyes that had not blinked before Anne Dillon, or the Senator, or Mayor Livingstone, or John Everard, or the Countess of Skibbereen, or the great Sullivan, and had modestly held their own under the charming glance of the Monsignor, were not to be dazzled by the fiercest glance of a mere Donegal housekeeper. The contempt in Judy's eyes proved too much for the poor creature, and at the top of the stairs, with a hysterical shriek, she burst into tears and fled humbled. "I knew you'd do it," said Jerry the third butler. "It's not in thim wake craythurs to take the luk from you, Miss Haskell." "Ye're the wan dacint boy in the place," said Judy, remembering many attentions from the shrewd lad. "An' as soon as iver ye come to New York, an' shtay long enough to become an American, I'll get ye a place on the polls." From that day the position of the Dillon party became something celestial as far as the servants were concerned, while Judy, as arbiter in the servants' hall, settled all questions of history, science, politics, dress, and gossip, by judgments from which there was no present appeal. All these details floated to the ears of Captain Sydenham, who was a favorite with Judy and shared her confidence; and the Captain saw to it that the gossip of Castle Moyna also floated into the parish residence daily. Some of it was so alarming that Father Roslyn questioned his friend Captain Sydenham, who dropped in for a quiet smoke now and then. "Who are these people, these Americans, do you know, Captain? I mean those just now stopping with the Countess of Skibbereen?" "That reminds me," replied the Captain. "Didn't you tell me Father William was going to America this winter on a collecting tour? Well, if you get him the interest of Mrs. Dillon his tour is assured of success before he begins it." A horrible fear smote the heart of the priest, nor did he see the peculiar smile on the Captain's face. Had he made the dreadful mistake of losing a grand opportunity for his brother, soon to undertake a laborious mission? "Why do you think so?" he inquired. "You would have to be in New York to understand it," replied the Captain. "But the Countess of Skibbereen is not a patch in this county compared to what Mrs. Dillon is in New York!" "Oh, dear me! Do you tell me!" "Her people are all in politics, and in the church, and in business. Her son is a--well, he owns a gold mine, I think, and he is in politics, too. In fact, it seems pretty clear that if you want anything in New York Mrs. Dillon is the woman to get it, as the Countess found it. And if you are not wanted in New York by Mrs. Dillon, then you must go west as far as Chicago." "Oh, how unfortunate! I am afraid, Captain, that I have made a blunder. Mrs. Dillon came to me--most kindly of course--and made an offer to take care of a booth at the bazaar, and I refused her. You know my feeling against giving these Americans any foothold amongst us----" "Don't tell that to Father William, or he will never forgive you," said the Captain. "But Mrs. Dillon is forgiving as well as generous. Do the handsome thing by her. Go up to the castle and explain matters, and she will forget your----" "Oh, call it foolishness at once," said the priest. "I'm afraid I'm too late, but for the sake of charity I'll do what you say." A velvety welcome Anne gave him. Before all others she loved the priest, and but that she had to teach Father Roslyn a lesson he would have seen her falling at his feet for his blessing. In some fashion he made explanation and apology. "Father dear, don't mention it. Really, it is my place to make explanations and not yours. I was hurt, of course, that you refused the little I can give you, but I knew other places would be the richer by it, and charity is good everywhere." "A very just thought, madam. It would give us all great pleasure if you could renew your suggestion to take a booth at the bazaar. We are all very fond of Americans here--that is, when we understand them----" "Only that I'm going up to London, father dear, I'd be only too happy. It was not the booth I was thinking of, you see, but the bringing of all the nobility to spend a few pounds with you." "Oh, my dear, you could never have done it," cried he in astonishment; "they are all Protestants, and very dark." "We do it in America, and why not here? I used to get more money from Protestant friends than from me own. When I told them of my scheme here they all promised to come for the enjoyment of it. Now, I'm so sorry I have to go to London. I must present my letters to the ambassador before he leaves town, and then we are in a hurry to get to Rome before the end of August. Cardinal Simeoni has promised us already a private audience with the Pope. Now, father dear, if there is anything I can do for you in Rome--of course the booth must go up at the bazaar just the same, only the nobility will not be there--but at Rome, now, if you wanted anything." "My dear Mrs. Dillon you overwhelm me. There is nothing I want for myself, but my brother, Father William----" "Oh, to be sure, your brother," cried Anne, when the priest paused in confusion; "let him call on us in Rome, and I will take him to the private audience." "Oh, thank you, thank you, my dear madam, but my brother is not going to Rome. It is to America I refer. His bishop has selected him from among many eminent priests of the diocese to make a collecting tour in America this winter. And I feel sure that if a lady of your rank took an interest in him, it would save him much labor, and, what I fear is unavoidable, hardship." Anne rose up delighted and came toward Father Roslyn with a smile. She placed her hand lightly on his shoulder. "Father dear, whisper." He bent forward. There was not a soul within hearing distance, but Anne loved a dramatic effect. "He need never leave New York. I'll see that Father William has the _entrée_ into the diocese, and I'll take care of him until he leaves for home." She tapped him on the shoulder with her jeweled finger, and gave him a most expressive look of assurance. "Oh, how you overwhelm me," cried Father Roslyn. "I thank you a hundred times, but I won't accept so kind an offer unless you promise me that you will preside at a booth in the bazaar." Of course she promised, much as the delay might embarrass the American minister in London, and the Cardinal who awaited with impatience her arrival in Rome. The bazaar became a splendid legend in the parish of Cruarig; how its glory was of heaven; how Mrs. Dillon seemed to hover over it like an angel or a queen; how Father Roslyn could hardly keep out of her booth long enough to praise the others; how the nobility flocked about it every night of three, and ate wonderful dishes at fancy prices, and were dressed like princes; and how Judy Haskell ruled the establishment with a rod of iron from two to ten each day, devoting her leisure to the explanation and description of the booths once presided over by her mistress in the great city over seas. All these incidents and others as great passed out of mind before the happenings which shadowed the last days at Castle Moyna with anxiety and dread. The Dowager gave a fête in honor of her guests one afternoon, and all the county came. As a rule the gentry sneered at the American guests of the Countess, and found half their enjoyment at a garden fête in making fun of the hostess and her friends in a harmless way. There might not have been so much ridicule on this occasion for two reasons: the children were liked, and their guardian was dreaded. Anne had met and vanquished her critics in the lists of wit and polite insolence. Then a few other Americans, discovered by Captain Sydenham, were present, and bore half the brunt of public attention. The Dillons met their countrymen for a moment and forgot them, even forgot the beautiful woman whose appearance held the eyes of the guests a long time. Captain Sydenham was interesting them in a pathetic story of battle and death which had just happened only a few miles away. When the two boys were dead beside the stream in the glen, and the tourists had met their fate before the magistrate in Cruarig, he closed the story by saying, "And now down in the hotel is the loveliest Irish girl you ever saw, waiting with the most patient grief for the help which will release her father from jail. Am I not right, Mrs. Endicott?" The beautiful American looked up with a smile. "Yes, indeed," she replied in a clear, rich voice. "It is long since I met a woman that impressed me more than this lonely creature. The Captain was kind enough to take me to see her, that I might comfort her a little. But she seemed to need little comfort. Very self-possessed you know. Used to that sort of thing." "The others got scot free, no thanks to old Folsom," said the Captain, "and one went off to their yacht and the other intended to start for Dublin to interest the secretary. The Countess should interest herself in her. Egad, don't you know, it's worth the trouble to take an interest in such a girl as Honora Ledwith." "Honora Ledwith," said the Dowager at a little distance. "What do you know of my lovely Honora?" Already in the course of the story a suspicion had been shaping itself in Anne's mind. The ship must have arrived, it was time to hear from Arthur and his party; the story warned her that a similar fate might have overtaken her friends. Then she braced herself for the shock which came with Honora's name; and at the same moment, as in a dream, she saw Arthur swinging up the lawn towards her group; whereupon she gave a faint shriek, and rose up with a face so pale that all stretched out hands to her assistance; but Arthur was before them, as she tottered to him, and caught her in his arms. After a moment of silence, Mona and Louis ran to his side, Captain Sydenham said some words, and then the little group marched off the lawn to the house, leaving the Captain to explain matters, and to wonder at the stupidity which had made him overlook the similarity in names. "Why, don't you know," said he to Mrs. Endicott, "her son was one of the party of tourists that Folsom sent to jail, and I never once connected the names. Absurd and stupid on my part." "Charming young man," said the lady, as she excused herself and went off. Up in one of the rooms of Castle Moyna, when the excitement was over and the explanations briefly made, Mona at the window described to Arthur the people of distinction, as they made their adieus to their hostess and expressed sympathy with the sudden and very proper indisposition of Mrs. Dillon. He could not help thinking how small the world is, what a puzzle is the human heart, how weird is the life of man. "There she is now," cried Mona, pointing to Mrs. Endicott and an old lady, who were bidding adieu to the Countess of Skibbereen. "A perfectly lovely face, a striking figure--oh, why should Captain Sydenham say our Honora was the loveliest girl he ever saw?--and he saw them together you know----" "Saw whom together?" said Arthur. "Why, Mrs. Endicott called on Honora at the hotel, you know." "Oh!" He leaned out of the window and took a long look at her with scarcely an extra beat of the heart, except for the triumph of having met her face to face and remained unknown. His longest look was for Aunt Lois, who loved him, and was now helping to avenge him. Strange, strange, strange! "Well?" cried Mona eagerly. "The old lady is a very sweet-looking woman," he answered. "On the whole I think Captain Sydenham was right." CHAPTER XVII. THE AMBASSADOR. After the happy reunion at Castle Moyna there followed a council of war. Captain Sydenham treasonably presided, and Honora sat enthroned amid the silent homage of her friends, who had but one thought, to lift the sorrow from her heart, and banish the pallor of anxiety from her lovely face. Her violet eyes burned with fever. The Captain drew his breath when he looked at her. "And she sings as she looks," whispered the Countess noting his gasp. "It's a bad time to do anything for Mr. Ledwith," the Captain said to the little assembly. "The Fenian movement has turned out a complete failure here in Ireland, and abroad too. As its stronghold was the United States, you can see that the power of the American Minister will be much diminished. It is very important to approach him in the right way, and count every inch of the road that leads to him. We must not make any mistakes, ye know, if only for Miss Ledwith's sake." His reward was a melting glance from the wonderful eyes. "I know the Minister well, and I feel sure he will help for the asking," said Anne. "Glad you're so hopeful, mother, but some of us are not," Arthur interjected. "Then if you fail with His Excellency, Artie," she replied composedly, "I shall go to see him myself." Captain and Dowager exchanged glances of admiration. "Now, there are peculiarities in our trials here, trials of rebels I mean ... I haven't time to explain them ..." Arthur grinned ... "but they make imperative a certain way of acting, d'ye see? If I were in Mr. Dillon's place I should try to get one of two things from the American Minister: either that the Minister notify Her Majesty's government that he will have his representative at the trial of Ledwith; or, if the trial is begun ... they are very summary at times ... that the same gentleman inform the government that he will insist on all the forms being observed." "What effect would these notifications have?" Arthur asked. "Gad, most wonderful," replied the Captain. "If the Minister got in his warning before the trial began, there wouldn't be any trial; and if later, the trial would end in acquittal." Every one looked impressed, so much so that the Captain had to explain. "I don't know how to explain it to strangers--we all know it here, doncheknow--but in these cases the different governments always have some kind of an understanding. Ledwith is an American citizen, for example; he is arrested as an insurgent, no one is interested in him, the government is in a hurry, a few witnesses heard him talk against the government, and off he goes to jail. It's a troublesome time, d'ye see? But suppose the other case. A powerful friend interests the American Minister. That official notifies the proper officials that he is going to watch the trial. This means that the Minister is satisfied of the man's innocence. Government isn't going to waste time so, when there are hundreds to be tried and deported. So he goes free. Same thing if the Minister comes in while the trial is going on, and threatens to review all the testimony, the procedure, the character of the witnesses. He simply knocks the bottom out of the case, and the prisoner goes free." "I see your points," said Arthur, smiling. "I appreciate them. Just the same, we must have every one working on the case, and if I should fail the others must be ready to play their parts." "Command us all," said the Captain with spirit. "You have Lord Constantine in London. He's a host. But remember we are in the midst of the trouble, and home influence won't be a snap of my finger compared with the word of the Minister." "Then the Minister's our man," said Anne with decision. "If Arthur fails with him, then every soul of us must move on London like an Irish army, and win or die. So, my dear Honora, take the puckers out of your face, and keep your heart light. I know a way to make Quincy Livingstone dance to any music I play." The smiles came back to Honora's face, hearts grew lighter, and Arthur started for London, with little confidence in the good-will of Livingstone, but more in his own ability to force the gentleman to do his duty. He ran up against a dead wall in his mission, however, for the question of interference on behalf of American citizens in English jails had been settled months before in a conference between Livingstone and the Premier, although feeling was cold and almost hostile between the two governments. Lord Constantine described the position with the accuracy of a theorist in despair. "There's just a chance of doing something for Ledwith," he said dolorously. "By your looks a pretty poor one, I think," Arthur commented. "Oh, it's got to be done, doncheknow," he said irritably. "But that da--that fool, Livingstone, is spoiling the stew with his rot. And I've been watching this pot boil for five years at least." "What's wrong with our representative?" affecting innocence. "What's right with him would be the proper question," growled his lordship. "In Ledwith's case the wrong is that he's gone and given assurances to the government. He will not interfere with their disposition of Fenian prisoners, when these prisoners are American citizen. In other words, he has given the government a free hand. He will not be inclined to show Ledwith any favor." "A free hand," repeated Arthur, fishing for information. "And what is a free hand?" "Well, he could hamper the government very much when it is trying an American citizen for crimes committed on British soil. Such a prisoner must get all the privileges of a native. He must be tried fairly, as he would be at home, say." "Well, surely that strong instinct of fair play, that sense of justice so peculiarly British, of which we have all heard in the school-books, would----" "Drop it," said Lord Constantine fiercely. "In war there's nothing but the brute left. The Fenians--may the plague take them ... will be hung, shipped to Botany Bay, and left to rot in the home prisons, without respect to law, privilege, decency. Rebels must be wiped out, doncheknow. I don't mind that. They've done me enough harm ... put back the alliance ten years at least ... and left me howling in the wilderness. Livingstone will let every Fenian of American citizenship be tried like his British mates ... that is, they will get no trial at all, except inform. They will not benefit by their American ties." "Why should he neglect them like that?" "He has theories, of course. I heard him spout them at some beastly reception somewhere. Too many Irish in America--too strong--too popish--must be kept down--alliance between England and the United States to keep them down----" "I remember he was one of your alliance men," provokingly. "Alas, yes," mourned his lordship. "The Fenians threatened to make mince-meat of it, but they're done up and knocked down. Now, this Livingstone proposes a new form of mincing, worse than the Fenians a thousand times, begad." "Begad," murmured Arthur. "Surely you're getting excited." "The alliance is now to be argued on the plea of defense against popish aggressions, Arthur. This is the unkind cut. Before, we had to reunite the Irish and the English. Now, we must soothe the prejudices of bigots besides. Oh, but you should see the programme of His Excellency for the alliance in his mind. You'll feel it when you get back home. A regular programme, doncheknow. The first number has the boards now: general indignation of the hired press at the criminal recklessness of the Irish in rebelling against our benign rule. When that chorus is ended, there comes a solo by an escaped nun. Did you ever hear of Sister Claire Thingamy----" "Saw her--know her--at a distance. What is she to sing?" "A book--confessions and all that thing--revelations of the horrors of papist life. It's to be printed by thousands and scattered over the world. After that Fritters, our home historian at Oxford, is to travel in your county and lecture to the cream of society on the beauty of British rule over the Irish. He is to affect the classes. The nun and the press are to affect the masses. Between them what becomes of the alliance? Am I not patient? My pan demanded harmonious and brotherly feelings among all parties. Isn't that what an alliance must depend on? But Livingstone takes the other tack. To bring about his scheme we shall all be at each other's throats. Talk of the Kilkenny cats and Donnybrook fair, begad!" "I don't wonder you feel so badly," Arthur said, laughing. "But see here: we're not afraid of Livingstone. We've knocked him out before, and we can do it again. It will be interesting to go back home, and help to undo that programme. If you can manage him here, rely on Grahame and me and a few others in New York, to take the starch out of him at home. What's all this to do with Ledwith?" "Nothing," said his lordship with an apology. "But my own trouble seems bigger than his. We'll get him out, of course. Go and see Livingstone, and talk to him on the uppish plan. Demand the rights and privileges of the British subject for our man. You won't get any satisfaction, but a stiff talk will pave the way for my share in the scheme. You take the American ground, and I come in on the British ground. We ought to make him ashamed between us, doncheknow." Arthur had doubts of that, but no doubt at all that Lord Constantine owned the finest heart that ever beat in a man. He felt very cheerful at the thought of shaking up the Minister. Half hopeful of success, curious to test the strings which move an American Minister at the court of St. James, anxious about Honora and Owen, he presented himself at Livingstone's residence by appointment, and received a gracious welcome. Unknown to themselves, the two men had an attraction for each other. Fate opposed them strangely. This hour Arthur Dillon stood forth as the knight of a despised and desperate race, in a bloody turmoil at home, fighting for a little space on American soil, hopeful but spent with the labor of upholding its ideals; and Livingstone represented a triumphant faction in both countries, which, having long made life bitter and bloody for the Irish, still kept before them the choice of final destruction or the acceptance of the Puritan gods. To Arthur the struggle so far seemed but a clever game whose excitement kept sorrow from eating out his heart. He saw the irony rather than the tragedy of the contest. It tickled him immensely just now that Puritan faced Puritan; the new striking at the old for decency's sake; a Protestant fighting a Protestant in behalf of the religious ideals of Papists. He had an advantage over his kinsman beyond the latter's ken; since to him the humor of the situation seemed more vital than the tragedy, a mistake quite easy to youth. Arthur stated Ledwith's case beautifully, and asked him to notify the British officials that the American Minister would send his representative to watch the trial. "Impossible," said Livingstone. "I am content with the ordinary course for all these cases." "We are not," replied Arthur as decisively, "and we call upon our government to protect its citizens against the packed juries and other injustices of these Irish trials." "And what good would my interference do?" said Livingstone. Arthur grinned. "Your Excellency, such a notification would open the doors of the jail to Ledwith to-morrow. There would be no trial." "My instructions from the President are precise in this matter. We are satisfied that American citizens will get as fair a trial as Englishmen themselves. There will be no interference until I am satisfied that things are not going properly." "Can you tell me, then, how I am to satisfy you in Ledwith's case?" said the young man good-naturedly. "I don't think you or any one else can, Mr. Dillon. I know Ledwith, a conspirator from his youth. He is found in Ireland in a time of insurrection. That's quite enough." "You forget that I have given you my word he was not concerned with the insurrection, and did not know it was so imminent; that he went to Ireland with his daughter on a business matter." "All which can be shown at the trial, and will secure his acquittal." "Neither I nor his daughter will ever be called as witnesses. Instead, a pack of ready informers will swear to anything necessary to hurry him off to life imprisonment." "That is your opinion." "Do you know who sent me here, your Excellency, with the request for your aid?" Livingstone stared his interrogation. "An English officer with whom you are acquainted, friendly to Ledwith for some one else's sake. In plain words, he gave me to understand that there is no hope for Ledwith unless you interfere. If he goes to trial, he hangs or goes to Botany Bay." "You are pessimistic," mocked Livingstone. "It is the fault of the Irish that they have no faith in any government, because they cannot establish one of their own." "Outside of New York," corrected Arthur, with delightful malice. "Amendment accepted." "Would you be able to interfere in behalf of my friend while the trial was on, say, just before the summing up, when the informers had sworn to one thing, and the witnesses for the defense to another, if they are not shut out altogether?" "Impossible. I might as well interfere now." "Then on the score of sentiment. Ledwith is failing into age. Even a brief term in prison may kill him." "He took the risk in returning to Ireland at this time. I would be willing to aid him on that score, but it would open the door to a thousand others, and we are unwilling to embarrass the English government at a trying moment." "Were they so considerate when our moments were trying and they could embarrass us?" "That is an Irish argument." "What they said of your Excellency in New York was true, I am inclined to believe: that you accepted the English mission to be of use to the English in the present insurrection." "Well," said the Minister, laughing in spite of himself at the audacity of Arthur, "you will admit that I have a right to pay back the Irish for my defeat at the polls." "You are our representative and defender," replied Arthur gravely, "and yet you leave us no alternative but to appeal to the English themselves." Livingstone began to look bored, because irritation scorched him and had to be concealed. Arthur rose. "We are to understand, then, the friends of Ledwith, that you will do nothing beyond what is absolutely required by the law, and after all formalities are complied with?" he said. "Precisely." "We shall have to depend on his English friends, then. It will look queer to see Englishmen take up your duty where you deserted it." The Minister waved his hand to signify that he had enough of that topic, but the provoking quality of Arthur's smile, for he did not seem chagrined, reminded him of a question. "Who are the people interested in Ledwith, may I ask?" "All your old friends of New York," said Arthur, "Birmingham, Sullivan, and so on." "Of course. And the English friends who are to take up my duties where I desert them?" "You must know some of them," and Arthur grinned again, so that the Minister slightly winced. "Captain Sydenham, commanding in Donegal----" "I met him in New York one winter--younger brother to Lord Groton." "The Dowager Countess of Skibbereen." "Very fine woman. Ledwith is in luck." "And Lord Constantine of Essex." "I see you know the value of a climax, Mr. Dillon. Well, good-night. I hope the friends of Mr. Ledwith will be able to do everything for him." It irritated him that Arthur carried off the honors of the occasion, for the young man's smiling face betrayed his belief that the mention of these noble names, and the fact that their owners were working for Ledwith, would sorely trouble the pillow of Livingstone that night. The contrast between the generosity of kindly Englishmen and his own harshness was too violent. He foresaw that to any determined attempt on the part of Ledwith's English friends he must surrender as gracefully as might be; and the problem was to make that surrender harmless. He had solved it by the time Anne Dillon reached London, and had composed that music sure to make the Minister dance whether he would or no. In taking charge of the case Anne briefly expressed her opinion of her son's methods. "You did the best you could, Arthur," she said sweetly. He could not but laugh and admire. Her instincts for the game were far surer than his own, and her methods infallible. She made the road easy for Livingstone, but he had to walk it briskly. How could the poor man help himself? She hurled at him an army of nobles, headed by the Countess and Lord Constantine; she brought him letters from his friends at home; there was a dinner at the hotel, the Dowager being the hostess; and he was almost awed by the second generation of Anne's audacious race: Mona, red-lipped, jewel-eyed, sweeter than wild honey; Louis, whose lovely nature and high purpose shone in his face; and Arthur, sad-eyed, impudent, cynical, who seemed ready to shake dice with the devil, and had no fear of mortals because he had no respect for them. These outcasts of a few years back were able now to seize the threads of intrigue, and shake up two governments with a single pull! He mourned while he described what he had done for them. There would be no trial for Ledwith. He would be released at once and sent home at government expense. It was a great favor, a very great favor. Even Arthur thanked him, though he had difficulty in suppressing the grin which stole to his face whenever he looked at his kinsman. The Minister saw the grin peeping from his eyes, but forgave him. Arthur had the joy of bringing the good news down to Donegal. Anne bade him farewell with a sly smile of triumph. Admirable woman! she floated above them all in the celestial airs. But she was gracious to her son. The poor boy had been so long in California that he did not know how to go about things. She urged him to join them in Rome for the visit to the Pope, and sent her love to Honora and a bit of advice to Owen. When Arthur arrived in Cruarig, whither a telegram had preceded him, he was surprised to find Honora Ledwith in no way relieved of anxiety. "You have nothing to do but pack your trunk and get away," he said. "There is to be no trial, you know. Your father will go straight to the steamer, and the government will pay his expenses. It ought to pay more for the outrage." She thanked him, but did not seem to be comforted. She made no comment, and he went off to get an explanation from Captain Sydenham. "I meant to have written you about it," said the Captain, "but hoped that it would have come out all right without writing. Ledwith maintains, and I think he's quite right, that he must be permitted to go free without conditions, or be tried as a Fenian conspirator. The case is simple: an American citizen traveling in Ireland is arrested on a charge of complicity in the present rebellion; the government must prove its case in a public trial, or, unable to do that, must release him as an innocent man; but it does neither, for it leads him from jail to the steamer as a suspect, ordering him out of the country. Ledwith demands either a trial or the freedom of an innocent man. He will not help the government out of the hole in which accident, his Excellency the Minister, and your admirable mother have placed it. Of course it's hard on that adorable Miss Ledwith, and it may kill Ledwith himself, if not the two of them. Did you ever in your life see such a daughter and such a father?" "Well, all we can do is to make the trial as warm as possible for the government," said Arthur. "Counsel, witnesses, publicity, telegrams to the Minister, cablegrams to our Secretary of State, and all the rest of it." "Of no use," said the Captain moodily. "You have no idea of an Irish court and an Irish judge in times of revolt. I didn't till I came here. If Ledwith stands trial, nothing can save him from some kind of a sentence." "Then for his daughter's sake I must persuade him to get away." "Hope you can. All's fair in war, you know, but Ledwith is the worst kind of patriot, a visionary one, exalted, as the French say." Ledwith thanked Arthur warmly when he called upon him in jail, and made his explanation as the Captain had outlined it. "Don't think me a fool," he said. "I'm eager to get away. I have no relish for English prison life. But I am not going to promote Livingstone's trickery. I am an American citizen. I have had no part, direct or indirect, in this futile insurrection. I can prove it in a fair trial. It must be either trial or honorable release to do as any American citizen would do under the circumstances. If I go to prison I shall rely on my friends to expose Livingstone, and to warm up the officials at home who connive with him." Nor would he be moved from this position, and the trial came off with a speed more than creditable when justice deals with pirates, but otherwise scandalous. It ended in a morning, in spite of counsel, quibbles, and other ornamental obstacles, with a sentence of twenty years at hard labor in an English prison. To this prison Ledwith went the next day at noon. There had not been much time for work, but Arthur had played his part to his own satisfaction; the Irish and American journals buzzed with the items which he provided, and the denunciations of the American Minister were vivid, biting, and widespread; yet how puerile it all seemed before the brief, half contemptuous sentence of the hired judge, who thus roughly shoved another irritating patriot out of the way. The farewell to Ledwith was not without hope. Arthur had declared his purpose to go straight to New York and set every influence to work that could reach the President. Honora was to live near the prison, support herself by her singing, and use her great friends to secure a mitigation of his sentence, and access to him at intervals. "I am going in joy," he said to her and Arthur. "Death is the lightest suffering of the true patriot. Nora and I long ago offered our lives for Ireland. Perhaps they are the only useful things we could offer, for we haven't done much. Poor old country! I wish our record of service had some brighter spots in it." "At the expense of my modesty," said Arthur, "can't I mention myself as one of the brighter spots? But for you I would never have raised a finger for my mother's land. Now, I am enlisted, not only in the cause of Erin, but pledged to do what I can for any race that withers like yours under the rule of the slave-master. And that means my money, my time and thought and labor, and my life." "It is the right spirit," said Ledwith, trembling. "I knew it was in you. Not only for Ireland, but for the enslaved and outraged everywhere. God be thanked, if we poor creatures have stirred this spirit in you, lighted the flame--it's enough." "I have sworn it," cried Arthur, betrayed by his secret rage into eloquence. "I did not dream the world was so full of injustice. I could not understand the divine sorrow which tore your hearts for the wronged everywhere. I saw you suffer. I saw later what caused your suffering, and I felt ashamed that I had been so long idle and blind. Now I have sworn to myself that my life and my wealth shall be at the service of the enslaved forever." They went their different ways, the father to prison, Honora to the prison village, and Arthur with all speed to New York, burning with hatred of Livingstone. The great man had simply tricked them, had studied the matter over with his English friends, and had found a way to satisfy the friends of Ledwith and the government at the same time. Well, it was a long lane that had no turning, and Arthur swore that he would find the turning which would undo Quincy Livingstone. AN ESCAPED NUN. CHAPTER XVIII. JUDY VISITS THE POPE. He used the leisure of the voyage to review recent events, and to measure his own progress. For the first time since his calamity he had lost sight of himself in this poetic enterprise of Ledwith's, successful beyond all expectation. In this life of intrigue against the injustice of power, this endless struggle to shake the grip of the master on the slave, he found an intoxication. Though many plans had come to nothing, and the prison had swallowed a thousand victims, the game was worth the danger and the failure. In the Fenian uprising the proud rulers had lost sleep and comfort, and the world had raised its languid eyes for a moment to study events in Ireland. Even the slave can stir the selfish to interest by a determined blow at his masters. In his former existence very far had been from him this glorious career, though honors lay in wait for an Endicott who took to statecraft. Shallow Horace, sprung from statesman, had found public life a bore. This feeling had saved him perhaps from the fate of Livingstone, who in his snail-shell could see no other America than a monstrous reproduction of Plymouth colony. He had learned at last that his dear country was made for the human race. God had guided the little ones of the nations, wretched but hardy, to the land, the only land on earth, where dreams so often come true. Like the waves they surged upon the American shore. With ax and shovel and plow, with sweat of labor and pain, they fought the wilderness and bought a foothold in the new commonwealth. What great luck that his exit from the old life should prove to be his entrance into the very heart of a simple multitude flying from the greed and stupidity of the decadent aristocracy of Europe! What fitness that he, child of a race which had triumphantly fought injustice, poverty, Indian, and wilderness, should now be leader for a people who had fled from injustice at home only to begin a new struggle with plotters like Livingstone, foolish representative of the caste-system of the old world. Sonia Westfield, by strange fatality, was aboard with her child and Aunt Lois. Her presence, when first they came face to face, startled him; not the event, but the littleness of the great earth; that his hatred and her crime could not keep them farther apart. The Endicott in him rose up for a moment at the sight of her, and to his horror even sighed for her: this Endicott, who for a twelvemonth had been so submerged under the new personality that Dillon had hardly thought of him. He sighed for her! Her beauty still pinched him, and the memory of the first enchantment had not faded from the mind of the poor ghost. It mouthed in anger at the master who had destroyed it, who mocked at it now bitterly: you are the husband of Sonia Westfield, and the father of her fraudulent child; go to them as you desire. But the phantom fled humiliated, while Dillon remained horror-shaken by that passing fancy of the Endicott to take up the dream of youth again. Could he by any fatality descend to this shame? Her presence did not arouse his anger or his dread, hardly his curiosity. He kept out of her way as much as possible, yet more than once they met; but only at the last did the vague inquiry in her face indicate that memory had impressions of him. Often he studied her from afar, when she sat deep in thought with her lovely eyes ... how he had loved them ... melting, damnable, false eyes fixed on the sea. He wondered how she bore her misery, of which not a sign showed on the velvet face. Did she rage at the depths of that sea which in an instant had engulfed her fool-husband and his fortune? The same sea now mocked her, laughed at her rage, bearing on its bosom the mystery which she struggled to steal from time. No one could punish this creature like herself. She bore her executioner about with her, Aunt Lois, evidently returning home to die. That death would complete the ruin of Sonia, and over the grave she would learn once for all how well her iniquity had been known, how the lost husband had risen from his darkness to accuse her, how little her latest crime would avail her. What a dull fool Horace Endicott had been over a woman suspected of her own world! Her beauty would have kept him a fool forever, had she been less beastly in her pleasures. And this Endicott, down in the depths, sighed for her still! But Arthur Dillon saw her in another light, as an unclean beast from sin's wilderness, in the light that shone from Honora Ledwith. Messalina cowered under the halo of Beatrice! When that light shone full upon her, Sonia looked to his eye like a painted Phryne surprised by the daylight. Her corruption showed through her beauty. Honora! Incomparable woman! dear lady of whiteness! pure heart that shut out earthly love, while God was to be served, or men suffered, or her country bled, or her father lived! The thought of her purified him. He had not truly known his dear mother till now; when he knew her in Honora, in old Martha, in charming Mona, in Mary Everard, in clever Anne Dillon. These women would bless his life hereafter. They refreshed him in mind and heart. It began to dawn upon him that his place in life was fixed, that he would never go back even though he might do so with honor, his shame remaining unknown. It was mere justice that the wretched past should be in a grave, doomed never to see the light of resurrection. His mother and her party shared the journey with him. The delay of Ledwith's trial had enabled them to make the short tour on the Continent, and catch his steamer. Anne was utterly vexed with him that Ledwith had not escaped the prison. Her plain irritation gave Judy deep content. "She needs something to pull her down," was her comment to Arthur, "or she'll fly off the earth with the lightness of her head. My, my, but the airs of her since she laid out the ambassador, an' talked to the Pope! She can hardly spake at all now wid the grandher! Whin Father Phil ... I never can call him Mounsinnyory ... an', be the way, for years wasn't I callin' him Morrisania be mistake, an' the dear man never corrected me wanst ... but I learned the difference over in Rome ... where was I?... whin Father Phil kem back from Rome he gev us a grand lecther on what he saw, an' he talked for two hours like an angel. But Anne Dillon can on'y shut her eyes, an' dhrop her head whin ye ask her a single question about it. Faith, I dinno if she'll ever get over it. Isn't that quare now?" "Very," Arthur answered, "but give her time. So you saw the Pope?" "Faith, I did, an' it surprised me a gra'dale to find out that he was a dago, God forgi' me for sayin' as much. I was tould be wan o' the Mounsinnyory that he was pure Italian. 'No,' sez I, 'the Pope may be Rooshin or German, though I don't belave he's aither, but he's not Italian. If he wor, he'd have the blessed sinse to hide it, for fear the Irish 'ud lave the Church whin they found it out.'" "What blood do you think there's in him?" said Arthur. "He looked so lovely sittin' there whin we wint in that me sivin sinses left me, an' I cudn't rightly mek up me mind afterwards. Thin I was so taken up wid Mrs. Dillon," and Judy laughed softly, "that I was bothered. But I know the Pope's not a dago, anny more than he's a naygur. I put him down in me own mind as a Roman, no more an' no less." "That's a safe guess," said Arthur; "and you still have the choice of his being a Sicilian, a Venetian, or a Neapolitan." "Unless," said the old lady cautiously, "he comes of the same stock as Our Lord Himself." "Which would make him a Jew," Arthur smoothly remarked. "God forgive ye, Artie! G'long wid ye! If Our Lord was a Jew he was the first an' last an' on'y wan of his kind." "And that's true too. And how did you come to see the Pope so easy, and it in the summer time?" The expressive grin covered Judy's face as with comic sunshine. "I dunno," she answered. "If Anne Dillon made up her mind to be Impress of France, I dunno annythin' nor anny wan that cud hould her back; an' perhaps the on'y thing that kep' her from tryin' to be Impress was that the Frinch had an Impress already. I know they had, because I heard her ladyship lamentin', whin we wor in Paris, that she didn't get a letther of introduction to the Impress from Lady Skibbereen. She had anny number of letthers to the Pope. I suppose that's how we all got in, for I wint too, an' the three of us looked like sisters of mercy, dhressed in black wid veils on our heads. Whin we dhruv up to the palace, her ladyship gev a screech. 'Mother of heaven,' says she, 'but I forgot me permit, an' we can't get in to see his Holiness.' We sarched all her pockets, but found on'y the square bit o' paper, a milliner's bill, that she tuk for the permit be mistake. 'Well, this'll have to do,' says she. Says I, 'Wud ye insult the Pope be shakin' a milliner's bill in his face as ye go in the dure?' She never answered me, but walked in an' presented her bill to a Mounsinnyory----" "What's that?" Arthur asked. "I was never in Rome." "Somethin' like the man that takes the tickets at the theayter, ou'y he's a priest, an' looks like a bishop, but he cuts more capers than ten bishops in wan. He never opened the paper--faith, if he had, there'd be the fine surprise--so we wint in. I knew the Pope the minnit I set eyes on him, the heavenly man. Oh, but I'd like to be as sure o' savin' me soul as that darlin' saint. His eyes looked as if they saw heaven every night an' mornin'. We dhropped on our knees, while the talkin' was goin' on, an' if I wasn't so frikened at bein' near heaven itself, I'd a died listenin' to her ladyship tellin' the Pope in French--in French, d'ye mind?--how much she thought of him an' how much she was goin' to spind on him while she was in Rome. 'God forgive ye, Anne Dillon,' says I to meself, 'but ye might betther spind yer money an' never let an.' She med quite free wid him, an' he talked back like a father, an' blessed us twinty times. I dinno how I wint in or how I kem out. I was like a top, spinnin' an' spinnin'. Things went round all the way home, so that I didn't dar say a word for fear herself might think I had been drinkin'. So that's how we saw the Pope. Ye can see now the terrible determination of Anne Dillon, though she was the weeniest wan o' the family." In the early morning the steamer entered the lower bay, picking up Doyle Grahame from a tug which had wandered about for hours, not in search of news, but on the scent for beautiful Mona. He routed out the Dillon party in short order. "What's up?" Arthur asked sleepily. "Are you here as a reporter----" "As a lover," Grahame corrected, with heaving chest and flashing eyes. "The crowd that will gather to receive you on the dock may have many dignitaries, but I am the only lover. That's why I am here. If I stayed with the crowd, Everard, who hates me almost, would have taken pains to shut me out from even a plain how-de-do with my goddess." "I see. It's rather early for a goddess, but no doubt she will oblige. You mentioned a crowd on the dock to receive us. What crowd?" "Your mother," said Doyle, "is a wonderful woman. I have often speculated on the absence of a like ability in her son." "Nature is kind. Wait till I'm as old as she is," said the son. "The crowd awaits her to do her honor. The common travelers _will land_ this morning, glad to set foot on solid ground again. Mrs. Montgomery Dillon and her party are the only personages that _will arrive from Europe_. The crowd gathers to meet, not the passengers who merely land, but the personages who arrive from Europe." "Nice distinction. And who is the crowd?" "Monsignor O'Donnell----" "A very old and dear friend----" "Who hopes to build his cathedral with her help. The Senator----" "Representing the Dillon clan." "Who did not dare absent himself, and hopes for more inspiration like that which took him out of the ring and made him a great man. Vandervelt." "Well, he, of course, is purely disinterested." "Didn't she inform him of her triumph over Livingstone in London? And isn't he to be the next ambassador, and more power to him?" "And John Everard of course." "To greet his daughter, and to prevent your humble servant from kissing the same," and he sighed with pleasure and triumph. "Where is she? Shall I have long to wait? Is she changed?" "Ask her brother," with a nod for the upper berth where Louis slept serenely. "And of course you have news?" "Loads of it. I have arranged for a breakfast and a talk after the arrival is finished. There'll be more to eat than the steak." The steamer swung to the pier some hours later, and Arthur walked ashore to the music of a band which played decorously the popular strains for a popular hero returning crowned with glory. His mother arrived as became the late guest of the Irish nobility. Grahame handed Mona into her father's arms with an exasperating gesture, and then plunged into his note-book, as if he did not care. The surprised passengers wondered what hidden greatness had traveled with them across the sea. On the deck Sonia watched the scene with dull interest, for some one had murmured something about a notorious Fenian getting back home to his kind. Arthur saw her get into a cab with her party a few minutes later and drive away. A sadness fell upon him, the bitterness which follows the fading of our human dreams before the strong light of day. CHAPTER XIX. LA BELLE COLETTE. After the situation had been discussed over the breakfast for ten minutes Arthur understood the mournful expression of the Senator, whose gaiety lapsed at intervals when bitterness got the better of him. "The boys--the whole town is raving about you, Artie," said he with pride, "over the way you managed that affair of Ledwith's. There'll be nothing too good for you this year, if you work all the points of the game--if you follow good advice, I mean. You've got Livingstone in a corner. When this cruel war is over, and it is over for the Fenians--they've had enough, God knows--it ought to be commencing for the Honorable Quincy Livingstone." "You make too much of it, Senator," Grahame responded. "We know what's back of these attacks on you and others. It's this way, Arthur: the Senator and I have been working hard for the American citizens in English jails, Fenians of course, and the Livingstone crowd have hit back at us hard. The Senator, as the biggest man in sight, got hit hardest." "What they say of me is true, though. That's what hurts." "Except that they leave out the man whom every one admires for his good sense, generous heart, and great success," Arthur said to console him. "Of course one doesn't like to have the sins of his youth advertised for two civilizations," Grahame continued. "One must consider the source of this abuse however. They are clever men who write against us, but to know them is not to admire them. Bitterkin of the _Post_ has his brain, stomach, and heart stowed away in a single sack under his liver, which is very torpid, and his stomach is always sour. His blood is three parts water from the Boyne, his food is English, his clothes are a very bad fit, and his whiskers are so hard they dull the scissors. He loves America when he can forget that Irish and other foreign vermin inhabit it, otherwise he detests it. He loves England until he remembers that he can't live in it. The other fellow, Smallish, writes beautiful English, and lives on the old clothes of the nobility. Now who would mourn over the diatribes of such cats?" The Senator had to laugh at the description despite his sadness. "This is only one symptom of the trouble that's brewing. There's no use in hiding the fact that things are looking bad. Since the Fenian scheme went to pieces, the rats have left their holes. The Irish are demoralized everywhere, fighting themselves as usual after a collapse, and their enemies are quoting them against one another. Here in New York the hired bravos of the press are in the pay of the Livingstone crowd, or of the British secret service. What can you expect?" "How long will it last? What is doing against it?" said Arthur. "Ask me easier questions. Anyway, I'm only consoling the Senator for the hard knocks he's getting for the sake of old Ireland. Cheer up, Senator." "Even when Fritters made his bow," said the mournful Senator, "they made game of me," and the tears rose to his eyes. Arthur felt a secret rage at this grief. "You heard of Fritters?" and Arthur nodded. "He arrived, and the Columbia College crowd started him off with a grand banquet. He's an Oxford historian with a new recipe for cooking history. The Columbia professor who stood sponsor for him at the banquet told the world that Fritters would show how English government worked among the Irish, and how impossible is the Anglo-Saxon idea among peoples in whom barbarism does not die with the appearance and advance of civilization. He touched up the elegant parades and genial shindys of St. Patrick's Day as 'inexplicable dumb shows and noise,'--see Hamlet's address to the players--and hoped the banks of our glorious Hudson would never witness the bloody rows peculiar to the banks of the immortal Boyne. Then he dragged in the Senator." "What's his little game?" Arthur asked. "Scientific ridicule ... the press plays to the galleries, and Fritters to the boxes ... it's a part of the general scheme ... I tell you there's going to be fun galore this winter ... and the man in London is at the root of the deviltry." "What's to be done?" "If we only knew," the Senator groaned. "If we could only get them under our fists, in a fair and square tussle!" "I think the hinge of the Livingstone plan is Sister Claire, the escaped nun," Grahame said thoughtfully. "She's the star of the combination, appeals to the true blue church-member with descriptions of the horrors of convents. Her book is out, and you'll find a copy waiting for you at home. Dime novels are prayer-books beside it. French novels are virtuous compared with it. It is raising an awful row. On the strength of it McMeeter has begun an enterprise for the relief of imprisoned nuns--to rescue them--house them for a time, and see them safely married. Sister Claire is to be matron of the house of escaped nuns. No one doubts her experience. Now isn't that McMeeter all over? But see the book, the _Confessions of an Escaped Nun_." "You think she's the hinge of the great scheme?" "She has the public eye and ear," said Grahame, thinking out his own theory as he talked. "Her book is the book of the hour ... reviewed by the press ... the theme of pulpits ... the text of speeches galore ... common workmen thump one another over it at the bench. Now all the others, Bradford, Fritters, the Columbia professors, Bitterkin and his followers, seem to play second to her book. They keep away from her society, yet her strongest backing is from them. You know what I mean. It has occurred to me that if we got her history ... it must be pretty savory ... and printed it ... traced her connection with the Livingstone crowd ... it would be quite a black eye for the Honorable Quincy." "By George, but you've struck it," cried Arthur waking up to the situation. "If she's the hinge, she's the party to strike at. Tell me, what became of Curran?" "Lucky thought," shouted Grahame. "He's in town yet. The very man for us." "I'm going to have it out with Livingstone," said Arthur, with a clear vision of an English prison and the patient woman who watched its walls from a window in the town. "In fact, I _must_ have it out with Livingstone. He's good game, and I'd like to bring him back from England in a bag. Perhaps Sister Claire may be able to provide the bag." "Hands on it," said Grahame, and they touched palms over the table, while the Senator broke into smiles. He had unlimited faith in his nephew. "Lord Conny gave me an outline of Livingstone's program before I left. He's worried over the effect it's going to have on his alliance scheme, and he cursed the Minister sincerely. He'll help us. Let's begin with Sister Claire in the hope of bagging the whole crowd. Let Curran hunt up her history. Above all let him get evidence that Livingstone provides the money for her enterprise." Having come to a conclusion on this important matter, they dropped into more personal topics. "Strangely enough," said Grahame cheerfully, "my own destiny is mixed up with this whole business. The bulwark of Livingstone in one quarter is John Everard. I am wooing, in the hope of winning, my future father-in-law." "He's very dead," the Senator thought. "The art of wooing a father-in-law!--what an art!" murmured Grahame. "The mother-in-law is easy. She wishes her daughter married. Papa doesn't. At least in this case, with a girl like Mona." "Has Everard anything against you?" "A whole litany of crimes." "What's wrong with Everard?" "He was born the night of the first big wind, and he has had it in for the whole world ever since. He's perverse. Nothing but another big wind will turn him round." Seeing Arthur puzzled over these allusions, Grahame explained. "Think of such a man having children like the twins, little lumps of sweetness ... like Louis ... heavens! if I live to be the father of such a boy, life will be complete ... like my Mona ... oh!" He stalked about the room throwing himself into poses of ecstasy and adoration before an imaginary goddess to the delight of the Senator. "I've been there myself," Arthur commented unmoved. "To the question: how do you hope to woo and win Everard?" "First, by my book. It's the story of just such a fool as he: a chap who wears the American flag in bed and waves it at his meals, as a nightgown and a napkin; then, he is a religious man of the kind that finds no religion to his liking, and would start one of his own if he thought it would pay; finally, he is a purist in politics, believes in blue glass, drinks ten glasses of filtered water a day, which makes him as blue as the glass, wears paper collars, and won't let his son be a monk because there are too many in the world. Now, Everard will laugh himself weak over this character. He's so perverse that he will never see himself in the mirror which I have provided." "Rather risky, I should think." "But that's not all," Grahame went on, "since you are kind enough to listen. I'm going to wave the American flag, eat it, sing it, for the next year, myself. Attend: the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers are going to sit on what is left of Plymouth Rock next spring, and make speeches and read poems, and eat banquets. I am to be invited to sing, to read the poem. Vandervelt is to see to that. Think of it, a wild Irishman, an exile, a conspirator against the British Crown, a subject of the Pope, reading or singing the praises of the pilgrims, the grim pilgrims. Turn in your grave, Cotton Mather, as my melodious verses harrow your ears." "Will that impress John Everard?" "Or give him a fatal fit. The book and the poem ought to do the business. He can't resist. 'Never was Everard in this humor wooed, never was Everard in this humor won.' Oh, that Shakespeare had known an Everard, and embalmed him like a fly in the everlasting amber of his verse. But should these things fail, I have another matter. While Everard rips up Church and priest and doctrine at his pleasure, he has one devotion which none may take liberties with. He swears by the nuns. He is foaming at the mouth over the injury and insult offered them by the _Confessions_ of Sister Claire. We expose this clever woman. Picture me, then, the despised suitor, after having pleased him by my book, and astounded him with my poem, and mesmerized him with the exposure of Claire, standing before him with silent lips but eyes speaking: I want your daughter. Can even this perverse man deny me? Don't you think I have a chance?" "Not with Everard," said the Senator solemnly. "He's simply coke." "You should write a book, Doyle, on the art of wooing a father-in-law, and explain what you have left out here: how to get away with the dog." "Before marriage," said the ready wit, "the girl looks after the dog; after marriage the dog can be trained to bite the father-in-law." Arthur found the _Confessions of an Escaped Nun_ interesting reading from many points of view, and spent the next three days analyzing the book of the hour. His sympathy for convent life equaled his understanding of it. He had come to understand and like Sister Mary Magdalene, in spite of a prejudice against her costume; but the motive and spirit of the life she led were as yet beyond him. Nevertheless, he could see how earnestly the _Confessions_ lied about what it pretended to expose. The smell of the indecent and venal informer exhaled from the pages. The vital feature, however, lay in the revelation of Sister Claire's character, between the lines. Beneath the vulgarity and obscenity, poorly veiled in a mock-modest verbiage, pulsated a burning sensuality reaching the horror of mania. A well-set trap would have easy work in catching the feet of a woman related to the nymphs. Small wonder that the Livingstone party kept her afar off from their perfumed and reputable society while she did her nasty work. The book must have been oil to that conflagration raging among the Irish. The abuse of the press, the criticism of their friends, the reproaches of their own, the hostility of the government, the rage and grief at the failure of their hopes, the plans to annoy and cripple them, scorched indeed their sensitive natures; but the book of the Escaped Nun, defiling their holy ones so shamelessly, ate like acid into their hearts. Louis came in, when he had completed his analysis of the volume, and begun to think up a plan of action. The lad fingered the book gingerly, and said timidly: "I'm going to see ... I have an appointment with this terrible woman for to-morrow afternoon. In fact, I saw her this morning. I went to her office with Sister Mary Magdalen." "Of course the good Sister has a scheme to convert the poor thing!" Arthur said lightly, concealing his delight and surprise under a pretense of indifference. "Well, yes," and the lad laughed and blushed. "And she may succeed too. The greater the sin the deeper the repentance. The unfortunate woman----" "Who is making a fortune on her book by the way----" "----received us very kindly. Sister Magdalen had been corresponding with her. She wept in admitting that her fall seemed beyond hope. She felt so tangled in her own sins that she knew no way to get out of them. Really, she _was_ so sincere. When we were leaving she begged me to call again, and as I have to return to the seminary Monday I named to-morrow afternoon." "You may then have the honor of converting her." "It would be an honor," Louis replied stoutly. "Try it," said Arthur after thinking the matter over. "I know what force _your_ arguments will have with her. And if you don't object I'll stay ... by the way, where is her office?" "In a quiet business building on Bleecker Street, near Broadway." "If you don't mind I'll stay outside in the hall, and rush in to act as altar-boy, when she agrees to 'vert." "I'm going for all your ridicule, Arthur." "No objection, but keep a cool head, and bear in mind that I am in the hall outside." He suspected the motive of Sister Claire, both in making this appointment, and in playing at conversion with Sister Magdalen. Perhaps it might prove the right sort of trap for her cunning feet. He doubted the propriety of exposing Louis to the fangs of the beast, and for a moment he thought to warn him of the danger. But he had no right to interfere in Sister Magdalen's affair, and if a beginning had to be made this adventure could be used effectively. He forgot the affair within the hour, in the business of hunting up Curran. He had a double reason for seeking the detective. Besides the task of ferreting out the record of Sister Claire, he wished to get news of the Endicotts. Aunt Lois had slipped out of life two days after her return from Europe. The one heart that loved him truly beat for him no more. By this time her vengeance must have fallen, and Sonia, learning the full extent of her punishment, must now be writhing under a second humiliation and disappointment. He did not care to see her anguish, but he did care to hear of the new effort that would undoubtedly be made to find the lost husband. Curran would know. He met him that afternoon on the street near his own house. "Yes, I'm back in the old business," he said proudly; "the trip home so freshened me that I feel like myself again. Besides, I have my own home, here it is, and my wife lives with me. Perhaps you have heard of her, La Belle Colette." "And seen her too ... a beautiful and artistic dancer." "You must come in now and meet her. She is a trifle wild, you know, and once she took to drink; but she's a fine girl, a real good fellow, and worth twenty like me. Come right in, and we'll talk business later." La Belle Colette! The dancer at a cheap seaside resort! The wild creature who drank and did things! This shrewd, hard fellow, who faced death as others faced a wind, was deeply in love and happy in her companionship. What standard of womanhood and wifehood remained to such men? However, his wonder ceased when he had bowed to La Belle Colette in her own parlor, heard her sweet voice, and looked into the most entrancing eyes ever owned by a woman, soft, fiery, tender, glad, candid eyes. He recalled the dancer, leaping like a flame about the stage. In the plainer home garments he recognized the grace, quickness, and gaiety of the artist. Her charm won him at once, the spell which her rare kind have ever been able to cast about the hearts of men. He understood why the flinty detective should be in love with his wife at times, but not why he should continue in that state. She served them with wine and cigars, rolled a cigarette for herself, chatted with the ease and chumminess of a good fellow, and treated Arthur with tenderness. "Richard has told me so much of you," she explained. "I have so admired your exquisite art," he replied, "that we are already friends." "Que vous êtes bien gentil," she murmured, and her tone would have caressed the wrinkles out of the heart of old age. "Yes, I'm back at the old game," said Curran, when they got away from pleasantry. "I'm chasing after Tom Jones. It's more desperate than ever. His old aunt died some days back, and left Tom's wife a dollar, and Tom's son another dollar." "I can fancy her," said Colette with a laugh, "repeating to herself that magic phrase, two dollars, for hours and hours. Hereafter she will get weak at sight of the figure two, and things that go in twos, like married people, she will hate." "How easy to see that you are French, Colette," said Arthur, as a compliment. She threw him a kiss from her pretty fingers, and gave a sidelong look at Curran. "There's a devil in her," Arthur thought. "The will was very correct and very sound," resumed the detective. "No hope in a contest if they thought of such a thing among the West ... the Jones'. The heirs took pity on her, and gave her a lump for consolation. She took it and cursed them for their kindness. Her rage was something to see. She is going to use that lump, somewhere about twenty-five thousand, I think, to find her accursed Tom. How do I know? That's part of the prize for me if I catch up with Tom Jones within three years. And I draw a salary and expenses all the time. You should have seen Mrs. Tom the day I went to see her. Colette," with a smile for his wife, "your worst trouble with a manager was a summer breeze to it. You're a white-winged angel in your tempers compared with Mrs. Tom Jones. Her language concerning the aunt and the vanished nephew was wonderful. I tried to remember it, and I couldn't." "I can see her, I can feel with her," cried La Belle Colette, jumping to her feet, and rushing through a pantomime of fiendish rage, which made the men laugh to exhaustion. As she sat down she said with emphasis, "She must find him, and through you. I shall help, and so will our friend Dillon. It's an outrage for any man to leave a woman in such a scrape ... for a mere trifle." "She has her consolations," said the detective; "but the devil in her is not good-natured like the devil in you, Colette. She wants to get hold of Tom and cut him in little bits for what he has made her suffer." "Did you get out any plans?" said Arthur. "One. Look for him between here and Boston. That's my wife's idea. Tom Jones was not clever, but she says ... Say it yourself, my dear." "Rage and disappointment, or any other strong feeling," said the woman sharply, with strong puffs at her cigarette, "turns a fool into a wise man for a minute. It would be just like this fool to have a brilliant interval while he dreamed of murdering his clever wife. Then he hit upon a scheme to cheat the detectives. It's easy, if you know how stupid they are, except Dick. Tom Jones is here, on his own soil. He was not going to run away with a million and try to spend it in the desert of Sahara. He's here, or in Boston, enjoying the sight of his wife stewing in poverty. It would be just like the sneak to do her that turn." She looked wickedly at Arthur. What a face! Thin, broad, yet finely proportioned, with short, flaxen locks framing it, delicate eyebrows marking the brow and emphasizing the beautiful eyes. A woman to be feared, an evil spirit in some of her moods. "You tried the same plan," Arthur began---- "But he had no partner to sharpen his wits," she interrupted. Arthur bowed. "That makes all the difference in the world," he said sincerely. "Let me hope that you will give your husband some hints in a case which I am going to give him." He described the career of Sister Claire briefly, and expressed the wish to learn as much as possible of her earlier history. The Currans laughed. "I had that job before," said the detective. "If the Jones case were only half a hundred times harder I might be happy. Her past is unknown except that she has been put out of many convents. I never looked up her birthplace or her relatives. Her name is Kate Kerrigan along with ten other names. She drinks a little, and just now holds a fine stake in New York ... There's the whole of it." "Not much to build upon, if one wished to worry Claire, or other people." "Depend upon it," Colette broke in, "that Kate Kerrigan has a pretty history behind her. I'll bet she was an actress once. I've seen her stage poses ... then her name, catchy ... and the way she rolls her eyes and looks at that congregation of elders, and deacons and female saints, when she sets them shivering over the nastiness that's coming." Curran glanced at her with a look of inquiry. She sat on the window-sill like a bird, watching the street without, half listening to the men within. Arthur made a close study of the weird creature, sure that a strain of madness ran in her blood. Her looks and acts had the grace of a wild nature, which purrs, and kills, and purrs again. Quiet and dreamy this hour, in her dances she seemed half mad with vitality. "Tell him what you learned about her," said Curran, and then to Arthur, "She can do a little work herself, and likes it." "To hunt a poor soul down, never!" she cried. "But when a mean thing is hiding what every one has a right to know, I like to tear the truth out of her ... like your case of Tom Jones. Sister Claire is downright mean. Maybe she can't help it. But I know the nuns, and they're God's own children. She knows it too, but, just for the sake of money, she's lying night and day against them, and against her own conscience. There's a devil in her. I could do a thing like that for deviltry, and I could pull a load of money out of her backers, not for the money, but for deviltry too, to skin a miser like McMeeter, and a dandy like Bradford. And she's just skinning them, to the last cent." She took a fit of laughing, then, over the embarrassment of Sister Claire's chief supporters. "Here's what I know about her," she went on. "The museum fakirs are worshiping her as a wonderful success. They seem to feel by instinct that she's one of themselves, but a genius. They have a lot of fairy stories about her, but here's the truth: Bishop Bradford and Erastus McMeeter are her backers. The Bishop plays high society for her, and the bawler looks after the mob. She gets fifty per cent. of everything, and they take all the risks. Her book, I know you read it, chock-full of lies, thrilling lies, for the brothers and the sisters who can't read French novels in public--well, she owns the whole thing and gets all the receipts except a beggar's ten per cent., thrown to the publishers ... and they're the crack publishers of the town, the Hoppertons ... but all the same they dassent let their names go on the title-page ... they had that much shame ... so old Johnson, whom nobody knows, is printer and publisher. The book is selling like peanuts. There's more than one way of selling your soul to the devil." After this surprising remark, uttered without a smile, she looked out of the window sadly, while Curran chuckled with delight. "It takes the woman to measure the woman," he said. Arthur was delighted at this information. "I wish you would learn some more about her, Mrs. Curran." She mimicked the formal name in dumb show. "Well, La Belle Colette, then," he said laughing. She came over to him and sat on the arm of his chair, her beautiful eyes fixed on his with an expression well understood by both the men. "You are going to hunt that dreadful creature down," said she. "I won't help you. What do you know about her motives? She may have good reason for playing the part ... she may have suffered?" "One must protect his own," replied Arthur grimly. "What are we all but wolves that eat one another?--lambs by day, wolves in the night. We all play our part----" "All the world's a stage, of course----" "Even you are playing a part," with sudden violence. "I have studied you, young man, since you came in. Lemme read your palm, and tell you." She held his hand long, then tossed it aside with petulance, parted his hair and peered into his face, passed her hands lightly over his head for the prominences, dashed unexpected tears from her eyes, and then said with decision: "There are two of you in there," tapping his chest. "I can't tell why, but I can read, or feel one man, and outside I see another." "Your instinct is correct," said Arthur seriously. "I have long been aware of the same fact, peculiar and painful. But for a long time the outside man has had the advantage. Now with regard to this Sister Claire, not to change the subject too suddenly----" Colette deserted his chair, and went to her husband. She had lost interest in the matter and would not open her lips again. The men discussed the search for Endicott, and the inquiry into the history of Sister Claire, while the dancer grew drowsy after the fashion of a child, her eyes became misty, her red lips pouted, her voice drawled faint and complaining music in whispers, and Curran looked often and long at her while he talked. Arthur went away debating with himself. His mind had developed the habit of reminiscence. Colette reminded him of a face, which he had seen ... no, not a face but a voice ... or was it a manner?... or was it her look, which seemed intimate, as of earlier acquaintance?... what was it? It eluded him however. He felt happy and satisfied, now that he had set Curran on the track of the unclean beast. CHAPTER XX. THE ESCAPED NUN. Sister Claire sat in her office the next afternoon awaiting Louis as the gorged spider awaits the fly, with desire indeed, but without anxiety. Her office consisted of three rooms, opening into one another within, each connected by doors with the hall without. A solemn youth kept guard in the antechamber, a bilious lad whose feverish imagination enshrined Sister Claire and McMeeter on the same altar, and fed its fires on the promises of the worthy pair some day to send him on a mission as glorious as their own. The furnishings had the severe simplicity of the convent. The brilliant costume of the woman riveted the eye by the very dulness of her surroundings. At close view her beauty seemed more spiritual than in her public appearances. The heavy eyebrows were a blemish indeed, but like a beauty-spot emphasized the melting eyes and the peachy skin. The creamy habit of the nun and the white coif about her head left only her oval face and her lovely hands visible; but what a revelation were these of loveliness and grace! One glance at her tender face and the little hands would have scattered to the winds the slanders of Colette. Success had thrilled but not coarsened the escaped nun. As Grahame had surmised, she was now the hinge of Livingstone's scheme. The success of her book and the popularity of her lectures, together with her discreet behavior, had given her immense influence with her supporters and with the leaders. Their money poured into her lap. She did not need it while her book sold and her lectures were crowded. The office saw come and go the most distinguished visitors. Even the English historian did not begin to compare with her in glory, and so far his lectures had not been well attended. Thinking of many things with deep pride, she remembered that adversity had divided the leisure of her table with prosperity. Hence, she could not help wondering how long this fine success would last. Her peculiar fate demanded an end to it sometime. As if in answer to her question, the solemn youth in the antechamber knocked at her door, and announced with decorum Mr. Richard Curran. "I have made the inquiries you wanted," Curran said, as he took a chair at her bidding. "Young Everard is a special pet of Dillon. This boy is the apple of his eye. And Everard, the father, is an ardent supporter of Livingstone. I think you had better drop this affair, if you would escape a tangle--a nasty tangle." "If the boy is willing, where's the tangle, Mr. Curran?" she answered placidly. "Well, you know more about the thing than I can tell you," he said, as if worried. "You know them all. But I can't help warning you against this Dillon. If you lay your hand on anything of his, I'm of opinion that this country will not be big enough for you and him at the same time." "I shall get him also, and that'll put an end to his enmity. He's a fine fellow. He's on my track, but you'll see how enchantment will put him off it. Now, don't grumble. I'll be as tender and sweet with the boy as a siren. You will come in only when I feel that the spell doesn't work. Rely on me to do the prudent thing." That he did not rely on her his expression showed clearly. "You have made a great hit in this city, Sister Claire," he began---- "And you think I am about to ruin my chances of a fortune?" she interrupted. "Well, I am willing to take the risk, and you have nothing to say about it. You know your part. Go into the next room, and wait for your cue. I'll bet any sum that you'll never get the cue. If you do, be sure to make a quick entrance." He looked long at her and sighed, but made no pretense to move. She rose, and pointed to the third room of the suite. Sheepishly, moodily, in silent protest, he obeyed the gesture and went out humbly. Before that look the brave detective surrendered like a slave to his chains. The door had hardly closed behind him, when the office-boy solemnly announced Louis, and at a sign from Sister Claire ushered in the friend of Arthur Dillon. She received him with downcast eyes, standing at a little distance. With a whispered welcome and a drooping head, she pointed to a seat. Louis sat down nervous and overawed, wishing that he had never undertaken this impossible and depressing task. Who was he to be dealing with such a character as this dubious and disreputable woman? "I feared you would not come," she began in a very low tone. "I feared you would misunderstand ... what can one like you understand of sin and misery?... but thank Heaven for your courage ... I may yet owe to you my salvation!" "I was afraid," said the lad frankly, gladdened by her cunning words. "I don't know of what ... but I suppose it was distrust of myself. If I can be of any service to you how glad I shall be!" "Oh, you can, you can," she murmured, turning her beautiful eyes on him. Her voice failed her, and she had to struggle with her sobs. "What do you think I can do for you?" he asked, to relieve the suspense. "I shall tell you that later," she replied, and almost burst out laughing. "It will be simple and easy for you, but no one else can satisfy me. We are alone. I must tell you my story, that you may be the better able to understand the service which I shall ask of you. It is a short story, but terrible ... especially to one like you ... promise me that you will not shrink, that you will not despise me----" "I have no right to despise you," said Louis, catching his breath. She bowed her head to hide a smile, and appeared to be irresolute for a moment. Then with sudden, and even violent, resolve, she drew a chair to his side, and began the history of her wretched career. Her position was such, that to see her face he had to turn his head; but her delicate hands rested on the arm of his chair, clasped now, and again twisted with anguish, and then stretched out with upward palms appealing for pity, or drooping in despair. She could see his profile, and watch the growing uneasiness, the shame of innocence brought face to face with dirt unspeakable, the mortal terror of a pure boy in the presence of Phryne. With this sport Sister Claire had been long familiar. Her caressing voice and deep sorrow stripped the tale of half its vileness. At times her voice fell to a breath. Then she bent towards him humbly, and a perfume swept over him like a breeze from the tropics. The tale turned him to stone. Sister Claire undoubtedly drew upon her imagination and her reading for the facts, since it rarely falls to the lot of one woman to sound all the depths of depravity. Louis had little nonsense in his character. At first his horror urged him to fly from the place, but whenever the tale aroused this feeling in him, the cunning creature broke forth into a strain of penitence so sweet and touching that he had not the heart to desert her. At the last she fell upon her knees and buried her face in his lap, crying out: "If you do not hate me now ... after all this ... then take pity on me." * * * * * Arthur sauntered into the hall outside the office of Sister Claire about half-past four. He had forgotten the momentous interview which bid so fair to end in the conversion of the escaped nun; also his declaration to be within hailing distance in case of necessity. In a lucky moment, however, the thought of Sister Mary Magdalen and her rainbow enterprise, so foolish, so incredible, came to his mind, and sent him in haste to the rescue of his friend. Had Louis kept his engagement and received the vows and the confession of the audacious tool of Livingstone? No sound came from the office. It would hardly do for him to make inquiry. He observed that Sister Claire's office formed a suite of three rooms. The door of the first looked like the main entrance. It had the appearance of use, and within he heard the cough of the solemn office-boy. A faint murmur came from the second room. This must be the private sanctum of the spider; this murmur might be the spider's enchantment over the fly. What should the third room be? The trap? He turned the knob and entered swiftly and silently, much to the detective's surprise and his own. "I had no idea that door was unlocked," said Curran helplessly. "Nor I. Who's within? My friend, young Everard?" "Don't know. She shoved me in here to wait until some visitor departed. Then we are to consider a proposition I made her," said the calm detective. "So you have made a beginning? That's good. Don't stir. Perhaps it is as well that you are here. Let me discover who is in here with the good sister." "I can go to the first room, the front office, and inquire," said Curran. "Never mind." He could hear no words, only the low tones of the woman speaking; until of a sudden the strong, manly voice of Louis, but subdued by emotion, husky and uncertain, rose in answer to her passionate outburst. "He's inside ... my young man ... hopes to convert her," Arthur whispered to Curran, and they laughed together in silence. "Now I have my own suspicion as to her motive in luring the boy here. If he goes as he came, why I'm wrong perhaps. If there's a rumpus, I may have her little feet in the right sort of a trap, and so save you labor, and the rest of us money. If anything happens, Curran, leave the situation to me. I'm anxious for a close acquaintance with Sister Claire." Curran sat as comfortably, to the eye, as if in his own house entertaining his friend Dillon. The latter occasionally made the very natural reflection that this brave and skilful man lay in the trap of just such a creature as Sister Claire. Suddenly there came a burst of sound from the next room, exclamations, the hurrying of feet, the crash of a chair, and the trying of the doors. A frenzied hand shook the knob of the door at which Arthur was looking with a satisfied smile. "Locked in?" he said to Curran, who nodded in a dazed way. Then some kind of a struggle began on the other side of that door. Arthur stood there like a cat ready to pounce on the foolish mouse, and the detective glared at him like a surly dog eager to rend him, but afraid. They could hear smothered calls for help in a woman's voice. "If she knew how near the cat is," Arthur remarked patiently. At last the key clicked in the lock, the door half opened, and as Arthur pushed it inwards Sister Claire flung herself away from it, and gasped feebly for help. She was hanging like a tiger to Louis, who in a gentle way tried to shake her hands and arms from his neck. The young fellow's face bore the frightful look of a terrified child struggling for life against hopeless odds--mingled despair and pain. Arthur remained quietly in the entrance, and the detective glared over his shoulder warningly at Claire. At sight of the man who stood there, she would have shrieked in her horror and fright, but that sound died away in her throat. She loosened her grip, and stood staring a moment, then swiftly and meaningly began to arrange her disordered clothing. Louis made a dash for the door, seeing only a way of escape and not recognizing his friend. Arthur shook him. "Ah, you will go converting before your time," he said gayly. "Oh, Arthur, thank God----" the lad stammered. "Seize him," Claire began to shriek, very cautiously however. "Hold him, gentlemen. Get the police. He is an emissary of the papists----" "Let me go," Louis cried in anguish. "Steady all round," Arthur answered with a laugh. "Sister Claire, if you want the police raise your voice. One harlot more on the Island will not matter. Louis, get your nerve, man. Did I not tell you I would be in the hall? Go home, and leave me to deal with this perfect lady. Look after him," he flung at Curran, and closed the door on them, quite happy at the result of Sister Magdalen's scheme of conversion. He did not see the gesture from Curran which warned Sister Claire to make terms in a hurry with this dangerous young man. The fury stood at the far end of the office, burning with rage and uncertainty. Having fallen into her own trap, she knew not what to do. The situation had found its master. Arthur Dillon evidently took great pleasure in this climax of her making. He looked at her for a moment as one might at a wild animal of a new species. The room had been darkened so that one could not see distinctly. He knew that trick too. Her beauty improved upon acquaintance. For the second time her face reminded him that they had met before, and he considered the point for an instant. What did it matter just then? She had fallen into his hands, and must be disposed of. Pointing to a chair he sat down affably, his manner making his thought quite plain. She remained standing. "You may be very tired before our little talk is concluded----" "Am I to receive your insults as well as your agent's?" she interrupted. "Now, now, Sister Claire, this will never do. You have been acting" ... he looked at his watch ... "since four o'clock. The play is over. We are in real life again. Talk sense. Since Everard failed to convert you, and you to convert Everard, try the arts of Cleopatra on me. Or, let me convince you that you have made a blunder----" "I do not wish to listen you," she snapped. "I will not be insulted a second time." "Who could insult the author of the _Confessions_? You are beyond insult, Claire. I have read your book with the deepest interest. I have read you between every line, which cannot be said of most of your readers. I am not going to waste any words on you. I am going to give you an alternative, which will do duty until I find rope enough to hang you as high as Jack Sheppard. You know what you are, and so do I. The friends of this young man who fell so nicely into your claws will be anxious to keep his adventure with you very quiet." A light leaped into her eyes. She had feared that outside, in the hall, this man might have his hirelings ready to do her mischief, that some dreadful plot had come to a head which meant her ruin. Light began to dawn upon her. He laughed at her thoughts. "One does not care to make public an adventure with such a woman as you," said he affably. "A young man like that too. It would be fatal for him. Therefore, you are to say nothing about it. You are not eager to talk about your failure ... Cleopatra blushes for your failure ... but a heedless tongue and a bitter feeling often get the better of sense. If you remain silent, so shall I." "Very generous," she answered calmly, coming back to her natural coolness and audacity. "As you have all to lose, and I have all to gain by a description of the trap set for me by your unclean emissary, your proposition won't go. I shall place the matter before my friends, and before the public, when I find it agreeable." "When!" he mocked. "You know by this time that you are playing a losing game, Claire. If you don't know it, then you are not smart enough for the game. Apart from that, remember one thing: when you speak I shall whisper the truth to the excitable people whom your dirty book is harrying now." "I am not afraid of whispers, quite used to them in fact," she drawled, as if mimicking him. "I see you are not smart enough for the game," and the remark startled her. "You can see no possible results from that whisper. Did you ever hear of Jezebel and her fate? Oh, you recall how the dogs worried her bones, do you? So far your evil work has been confined to glittering generalities. To-day you took a new tack. Now you must answer to me. Let it once become known that you tried to defile the innocent, to work harm to one of mine, and you may suffer the fate of the unclean things to which you belong by nature. The mob kills without delicacy. It will tear you as the dogs tore the painted Jezebel." "You are threatening me," she stammered with a show of pride. "No. That would be a waste of time. I am warning you. You have still the form of a woman, therefore I give you a chance. You are at the end of your rope. Stretch it further, and it may become the noose to hang you. You have defiled with your touch one whom I love. He kept his innocence, so I let it pass. But a rat like you must be destroyed. Very soon too. We are not going to stand your abominations, even if men like Livingstone and Bradford encourage you. I am giving you a chance. What do you say? Have I your promise to be silent?" "You have," she replied brokenly. He looked at her surprised. The mask of her brazen audacity remained, but some feeling had overpowered her, and she began to weep like any woman in silent humiliation. He left her without a word, knowing enough of her sex to respect this inexplicable grief, and to wait for a more favorable time to improve his acquaintance. "Sonia's mate," he said to himself as he reached the street. The phrase never left him from that day, and became a prophecy of woe afterwards. He writhed as he saw how nearly the honor and happiness of Louis had fallen into the hands of this wretch. Protected by the great, she could fling her dirt upon the clean, and go unpunished. Sonia's mate! He had punished one creature of her kind, and with God's help he would yet lash the backs of Sister Claire and her supporters. CHAPTER XXI. AN ANXIOUS NIGHT. Curran caught up with him as he turned into Broadway. He had waited to learn if Arthur had any instructions, as he was now to return to Sister Claire's office and explain as he might the astounding appearance of Dillon at a critical moment. "She's a ripe one," Arthur said, smiling at thought of her collapse, but the next moment he frowned. "She's a devil, Curran, a handsome devil, and we must deal with her accordingly--stamp her out like a snake. Did you notice her?" "No doubt she's a bad one," Curran answered thickly, but Arthur's bitter words gave him a shiver, and he seemed to choke in his utterance. "Make any explanation you like, Curran. She will accuse you of letting me in perhaps. It looks like a trap, doesn't it? By the way, what became of the boy?" "He seemed pretty well broken up," the detective answered, "and sent me off as soon as he learned that I had him in charge. I told him that you had the whole business nicely in hand, and not to worry. He muttered something about going home. Anyway, he would have no more of me, and he went off quite steady, but looking rather queer, I thought." Arthur, with sudden anxiety, recalled that pitiful, hopeless look of the terrified child in Louis' face. Perhaps he had been too dazed to understand how completely Arthur had rescued him in the nick of time. To the lad's inexperience this cheap attempt of Claire to overcome his innocence by a modified badger game might have the aspect of a tragedy. Moreover, he remained ignorant of the farce into which it had been turned. "I am sorry you left him," he said, thoughtfully weighing the circumstances. "This creature threatened him, of course, with publicity, an attack on her honor by a papist emissary. He doesn't know how little she would dare such adventure now. He may run away in his fright, thinking that his shame may be printed in the papers, and that the police may be watching for him. Public disgrace means ruin for him, for, as you know, he is studying to be a priest." "I didn't know," Curran answered stupidly, a greenish pallor spreading over his face. "That kind of work won't bring her much luck." "It occurs to me now that he was too frightened to understand what my appearance meant, and what your words meant," Arthur resumed. "He may feel an added shame that we know about it. I must find him. Do you go at once to Sister Claire and settle your business with her. Then ride over to the Everards, and tell the lad, if he be there, that I wish to see him at once. If he has not yet got back, leave word with his mother ... keep a straight face while you talk with her ... to send him over to me as soon as he gets home. And tell her that if I meet him before he does get home, that I shall keep him with me all night. Do you see the point? If he has gone off in his fright, we have sixteen hours to find him. No one must know of his trouble, in that house at least, until he is safe. Do you think we can get on his trail right away, Curran?" "We must," Curran said harshly, "we must. Has he any money?" "Not enough to carry him far." "Then ten hours' search ought to capture him." "Report then to me at my residence within an hour. I have hopes that this search will not be needed, that you will find him at home. But be quicker than ever you were in your life, Curran. I'd go over to Cherry Street myself, but my inquiries would frighten the Everards. There must be no scandal." Strange that he had not foreseen this possibility. For him the escapade with the escaped nun would have been a joke, and he had not thought how differently Louis must have regarded it. If the lad had really fled, and his friends must learn of it, Sister Claire's share in the matter would have to remain a profound secret. With all their great love for this boy, his clan would rather have seen him borne to the grave than living under the shadow of scandal in connection with this vicious woman. Her perfidy would add disgrace to grief, and deepen their woe beyond time's power to heal. For with this people the prejudice against impurity was so nobly unreasonable that mere suspicion became equal to crime. This feeling intensified itself in regard to the priesthood. The innocence of Louis would not save him from lifelong reproach should his recent adventure finds its way into the sneering journals. Within the hour Curran, more anxious than Arthur himself, brought word that the lad had not yet reached home. His people were not worried, and promised to send him with speed to Arthur. "Begin your search then," said Arthur, "and report here every hour. I have an idea he may have gone to see an aunt of his, and I'll go there to find out. What is your plan?" "He has no money, and he'll want to go as far as he can, and where he won't be easily got at. He'll ship on an Indiaman. I'll set a few men to look after the outgoing ships as a beginning." "Secrecy above all things, understand," was the last admonition. Darkness had come on, and the clocks struck the hour of seven as Arthur set out for a visit to Sister Mary Magdalen. Possibly Louis had sought her to tell the story of failure and shame, the sad result of her foolish enterprise; and she had kept him to console him, to put him in shape before his return home, so that none might mark the traces of his frightful emotion. Alas, the good nun had not seen him since their visit to Claire's office in Bleecker Street the day before. He concealed from her the situation. "How in the name of Heaven," said he, "did you conceive this scheme of converting this woman?" "She has a soul to be saved, and it's quite saveable," answered the nun tartly. "The more hopeless from man's view, the more likely from God's. I have a taste for hopeless enterprises." "I wish you had left Louis out of this one," Arthur thought. "But to deal with a wretch like her, so notorious, so fallen," he said aloud, "you must have risked too much. Suppose, after you had entered her office, she had sent for a reporter to see you there, to see you leaving after kissing her, to hear a pretty story of an embassy from the archbishop to coax her back to religion; and the next morning a long account of this attempt on her resolution should appear in the papers? What would your superiors say?" "That could happen," she admitted with a shiver, "but I had her word that my visit was to be kept a secret." "Her word!" and he raised his hands. "Oh, I assure you the affair was arranged beforehand to the smallest detail," she declared. "Of course no one can trust a woman like that absolutely. But, as you see, in this case everything went off smoothly." "I see indeed," said Arthur too worried to smile. "I arranged the meeting through Miss Conyngham," the nun continued, "a very clever person for such work. I knew the danger of the enterprise, but the woman has a soul, and I thought if some one had the courage to take her by the hand and lead her out of her wicked life, she might do penance, and even become a saint. She received Miss Conyngham quite nicely indeed; and also my message that a helping hand was ready for her at any moment. She was afraid too of a trap; but at the last she begged to see me, and I went, with the consent of my superior." "And how did you come to mix Louis up in the thing?" "He happened to drop in as I was going, and I took him along. He was very much edified, we all were." "And he has been more edified since," observed Arthur, but the good nun missed the sarcasm. "She made open confession before the three of us," warming up at the memory of that scene. "With tears in her eyes she described her fall, her present remorse, her despair of the future, and her hope in us. Most remarkable scene I ever witnessed. I arranged for her to call at this convent whenever she could to plan for her return. She may be here any time. Oh, yes, I forgot. The most touching moment of all came at the last. When we were leaving she took Louis' hand, pressed it to her heart, kissed it with respect, and cried out: 'You happy soul, oh, keep the grace of God in your heart, hold to your high vocation through any torment: to lose it, to destroy it, as I destroyed mine, is to open wide the soul to devils.' Wasn't that beautiful now? Then she asked him in the name of God to call on her the next day, and he promised. He may be here to-night to tell me about it." "You say three. Was Edith Conyngham the third?" "Oh, no, only a sister of our community." He burst out laughing at the thought of the fox acting so cleverly before the three geese. Claire must have laughed herself into a fit when they had gone. He had now to put the Sister on her guard at the expense of her self-esteem. He tried to do so gently and considerately, fearing hysterics. "You put the boy in the grasp of the devil, I fear," he said. "Convert Sister Claire! You would better have turned your prayers on Satan! She got him alone this afternoon in her office, as you permitted, and made him a proposition, which she had in her mind from the minute she first saw him. I arrived in time to give her a shock, and to rescue him. Now we are looking for him to tell him he need not fear Sister Claire's threats to publish how he made an attack upon her virtue." "I do not quite understand," gasped Sister Magdalen stupefied. What Arthur thought considerate others might have named differently. Exasperation at the downright folly of the scheme, and its threatened results, may have actuated him. His explanation satisfied the nun, and her fine nerve resisted hysterics and tears. "It is horrible," she said at the last word. "But we acted honestly, and God will not desert us. You will find Louis before morning, and I shall spend the night in prayer until you have found him ... for him and you ... and for that poor wretch, that dreadful woman, more to be pitied than any one." His confidence did not encourage him. Hour by hour the messengers of Curran appeared with the one hopeless phrase: no news. He walked about the park until midnight, and then posted himself in the basement with cigar and journal to while away the long hours. Sinister thoughts troubled him, and painful fancies. He could see the poor lad hiding in the slums, or at the mercy of wretches as vile as Claire; wandering about the city, perhaps, in anguish over his ruined life, horrified at what his friends must read in the morning papers, planning helplessly to escape from a danger which did not exist, except in his own mind. Oh, no doubt Curran would find him! Why, he _must_ find him! Across the sea in London, Minister Livingstone slept, full fed with the flatteries of a day, dreaming of the pleasures and honors sure to come with the morning. Down in the prison town lived Honora, with her eyes dulled from watching the jail and her heart sore with longing. For Owen the prison, for Louis the pavement, for Honora and himself the sleepless hours of the aching heart; but for the responsible Minister and his responsible tool sweet sleep, gilded comfort, overwhelming honors. Such things could be only because men of his sort were craven idiots. What a wretched twist in all things human! Why not, if nothing else could be done, go and set fire to Claire's office, the bishop's house, and the Livingstone mansion? However, joy came at the end of the night, for the messenger brought word that the lad had been found, sound as a bell, having just shipped as a common sailor on an Indiaman. Since Curran could not persuade him to leave his ship, the detective had remained on the vessel to await Arthur's arrival. A cab took him down to the wharf, and a man led him along the dock to the gang-plank, thence across the deck to a space near the forecastle, where Curran sat with Louis in the starlight. "Then it's all true ... what he has been telling me?" Louis cried as he leaped to his feet and took the hearty grasp of his friend. "As true as gospel," said Arthur, using Judy's phrase. "Let's get out of this without delay. We can talk about it at home. Curran, do you settle with the captain." They hurried away to the cab in silence. Before entering Arthur wrung the hand of the detective warmly. "It would take more than I own to pay you for this night's work, Curran. I want you to know how I feel about it, and when the time comes ask your own reward." "What you have just said is half of it," the man answered in a strange tone. "When the time comes I shall not be bashful." "It would have been the greatest blunder of your life," Arthur said, as they drove homeward, "if you had succeeded in getting away. It cannot be denied, Louis, that from five o'clock this afternoon till now you made a fool of yourself. Don't reply. Don't worry about it. Just think of this gold-plate fact: no one knows anything about it. You are supposed to be sleeping sweetly at my house. I settled Claire beautifully. And Sister Magdalen, too. By the way, I must send her word by the cabby ... better let her do penance on her knees till sunrise ... she's praying for you ... but the suspense might kill her ... no, I'll send word. As I was saying, everything is as it was at four o'clock this afternoon." He chattered for the lad's benefit, noting that at times Louis shivered as with ague, and that his hands were cold. He has tasted calamity, Arthur thought with resignation, and life will never be quite the same thing again. In the comfortable room the marks of suffering became painfully evident. Even joy failed to rouse his old self. Pale, wrinkled like age, shrunken, almost lean, he presented a woful spectacle. Arthur mixed a warm punch for him, and spread a substantial lunch. "The sauce for this feast," said he, "is not appetite, but this fact: that your troubles are over. Now eat." Louis made a pretense of eating, and later, under the influence of the punch, found a little appetite. By degrees his mind became clearer as his body rested, the wrinkles began to disappear, his body seemed to fill out while the comfort of the situation invaded him. Arthur, puffing his cigar and describing his interview with Claire, looked so stanch and solid, so sure of himself, so at ease with his neighbors, that one could scarcely fail to catch his happy complaint. "She has begun her descent into hell," he said placidly, "but since you are with us still, I shall give her plenty of time to make it. What I am surprised at is that you did not understand what my entrance meant. She understood it. She thought Curran was due as her witness of the assault. What surprises me still more is that you so completely forgot my advice: no matter what the trouble and the shame, come straight to me. Here was a grand chance to try it." "I never thought of this kind of trouble," said Louis dully. "Anyway, I got such a fright that I understood nothing rightly up to midnight. The terrible feeling of public disgrace eat into me. I saw and heard people crying over me as at a funeral, you know that hopeless crying. The road ahead looked to be full of black clouds. I wanted to die. Then I wanted to get away. When I found a ship they took me for a half-drunk sailor, and hustled me into the forecastle in lively shape. When Curran found me and hauled me out of the bunk, I had been asleep enjoying the awfullest dreams. I took him for a trickster, who wanted to get me ashore and jail me. I feel better. I think I can sleep now." "Experience maybe has given you a better grip on the meaning of that wise advice which I repeat now: no matter what the trouble, come to me." "I shall come," said the lad with a show of spirit that delighted Arthur. "Even if you should see me hanged the next day." "That's a fine sentiment to sleep on, so we'll go to bed. However, remind yourself that a little good sense when you resume business ... by the way, it's morning ... no super-sensitiveness, no grieving, for you were straight all through ... go right on as if nothing had happened ... and in fact nothing has happened yet ... I can see that you understand." They went to bed, and slept comfortably until noon. After breakfast Louis looked passably well, yet miserable enough to make explanations necessary for his alarmed parents. Arthur undertook the disagreeable office, which seemed to him delightful by comparison with that other story of a runaway son _en route_ in fancied disgrace for India. All's well that ends well. Mary Everard wept with grief, joy, and gratitude, and took her jewel to her arms without complaint or question. The crotchety father was disposed to have it out with either the knaves or the fools in the game, did not Arthur reduce him to quiet by his little indictment. "There is only one to quarrel with about this sad affair, John Everard," said he smoothly, "and that only one is your friend and well wisher, Quincy Livingstone. I want you to remember that, when we set out to take his scalp. It's a judgment on you that you are the first to suffer directly by this man's plotting. You needn't talk back. The boy is going to be ill, and you'll need all your epithets for your chief and yourself before you see comfort again." Recalling his son's appearance the father remained silent. Arthur's prevision came true. The physician ordered Louis to bed for an indefinite time, having found him suffering from shock, and threatened with some form of fever. The danger did not daunt his mother. Whatever of suffering yet remained, her boy would endure it in the shelter of her arms. "If he died this night," she said to Arthur, "I would still thank God that sent him back to die among his own; and after God, you, son dear, who have been more than a brother to him." Thus the items in his account with kinsman Livingstone kept mounting daily. CHAPTER XXII. THE END OF A MELODRAMA. Louis kept his bed for some weeks, and suffered a slow convalescence. Private grief must give way to public necessity. In this case the private grief developed a public necessity. Arthur took pains to tell his story to the leaders. It gave point to the general onslaught now being made on the Irish by the hired journals, the escaped nun, and, as some named him, the escaped historian. A plan was formulated to deal with all three. Grahame entered the lists against Bitterkin and Smallish, Vandervelt denounced the _Confessions_ and its author at a banquet _vis-à-vis_ with Bradford, and Monsignor pursued the escaped historian by lecturing in the same cities, and often on the same platform. Arthur held to Sister Claire as his specialty, as the hinge of the Livingstone scheme, a very rotten hinge on which to depend. Nevertheless, she kept her footing for months after her interview with him. Curran had laid bare her life and exposed her present methods nicely; but neither afforded a grip which might shake her, except inasmuch as it gave him an unexpected clue to the Claire labyrinth. Her history showed that she had often played two parts in the same drama. Without doubt a similar trick served her now, not only to indulge her riotous passions, but to glean advantages from her enemies and useful criticism from her friends. He cast about among his casual acquaintance for characters that Claire might play. Edith Conyngham? Not impossible! The Brand who held forth at the gospel hall? Here was a find indeed! Comparing the impressions left upon him by these women, as a result he gave Curran the commission to watch and study the daily living of Edith Conyngham. Even this man's nerve shook at a stroke so luckily apt. "I don't know much about the ways of escaped nuns," said Arthur, "but I am going to study them. I'll wager you find Claire behind the rusty garments of this obscure, muddy, slimy little woman. They have the same appetite anyway." This choice bit of news, carried at once to the escaped nun, sounded in Sister Claire's ear like the crack of doom, and she stared at Curran, standing humbly in her office, with distorted face. "Is this the result of your clever story-telling, Dick Curran?" she gasped. "It's the result of your affair with young Everard," he replied sadly. "That was a mistake altogether. It waked up Arthur Dillon." "The mistake was to wake that man," she said sourly. "I fear him. There's something hiding in him, something terrible, that looks out of his eyes like a ghost in hell. The dogs ... Jezebel ... that was his threat ... ugh!" "He has waked up the whole crowd against you and frightened your friends. If ever he tells the Clan-na-Gael about young Everard, your life won't be worth a pin." "With you to defend me?" ironically. "I could only die with you ... against that crowd." "And you would," she said with conviction, tears in her eyes. "My one friend." His cheeks flushed and his eyes sparkled at the fervent praise of his fidelity. "Well, it's all up with me," changing to a mood of gaiety. "The Escaped Nun must escape once more. They will all turn their coldest shoulders to me, absolutely frightened by this Irish crowd, to which we belong after all, Dick. I'm not sorry they can stand up for themselves, are you? So, there's nothing to do but take up the play, and begin work on it in dead earnest." "It's a bad time," Curran ventured, as she took a manuscript from a desk. "But you know how to manage such things, you are so clever," he hastened to add, catching a fiery glance from her eye. "Only you must go with caution." "It's a fine play," she said, turning the pages of the manuscript. "Dick, you are little short of a genius. If I had not liked the real play so well, playing to the big world this rôle of escaped nun, I would have taken it up long ago. The little stage of the theater is nothing to the grand stage of the world, where a whole nation applauds; and men like the Bishop take it for the real thing, this impersonation of mine. But since I am shut out ... and my curse on this Arthur Dillon ... no, no, I take that back ... he's a fine fellow, working according to his nature ... since he will shut me out I must take to the imitation stage. Ah, but the part is fine! First act: the convent garden, the novice reading her love in the flowers, the hateful old mother superior choking her to get her lover's note from her, the reading of the note, and the dragging of the novice to her prison cell, down in the depths of the earth. How that will draw the tears from the old maids of Methodism all over the country!" She burst into hearty laughter. "Second act: the dungeon, the tortures, old superior again, and the hateful hag who is in love with the hero and would like to wreak her jealousy on me, poor thing, all tears and determination. I loathe the two women. I denounce the creed which invents such tortures. I lie down to die in the dungeon while the music moans and the deacons and their families in the audience groan. Don't you think, Dicky dear, I can do the dying act to perfection?" "On the stage perfectly." "You're a wretch," she shrieked with sudden rage. "You hint at the night I took a colic and howled for the priest, when you know it was only the whisky and the delirium. How dare you!" "It slipped on me," he said humbly. "The third act is simply beautiful: chapel of the convent, a fat priest at the altar, all the nuns gathered about to hear the charges against me, I am brought in bound, pale, starved, but determined; the trial, the sentence, the curse ... oh, that scene is sublime, I can see Booth in it ... pity we can't have him ... then the inrush of my lover, the terror, the shrieks, the confusion, as I am carried off the stage with the curtain going down. At last the serene fourth act: another garden, the villains all punished, my lover's arms about me, and we two reading the flowers as the curtain descends. Well," with a sigh of pleasure, "if that doesn't take among the Methodists and the general public out West and down South, what will?" "I can see the fire with which you will act it," said Curran eagerly. "You are a born actress. Who but you could play so many parts at once?" "And yet," she answered dreamily, giving an expressive kick with unconscious grace, "this is what I like best. If it could be introduced into the last act ... but of course the audiences wouldn't tolerate it, dancing. Well," waking up suddenly to business, "are you all ready for the _grand coup_--press, manager, all details?" "Ready long ago." "Here then is the program, Dicky dear. To-morrow I seek the seclusion of the convent at Park Square--isn't _seclusion_ good? To-night letters go out to all my friends, warning them of my utter loneliness, and dread of impending abduction. In two or three days you get a notice in the papers about these letters, and secure interviews with the Bishop if possible, with McMeeter anyway ... oh, he'll begin to howl as soon as he gets his letter. Whenever you think the public interest, or excitement, is at its height, then you bring your little ladder to the convent, and wait outside for a racket which will wake the neighborhood. In the midst of it, as the people are gathering, up with the ladder, and down with me in your triumphant arms. Pity we can't have a calcium light for that scene. If there should be any failure ... of course there can't be ... then a note of warning will reach me, with any instructions you may wish to give me ... to the old address of course." Both laughed heartily at this allusion. "It has been great fun," she said, "fooling them all right and left. That Dillon is suspicious though ... fine fellow ... I like him. Dicky, ... you're not jealous. What a wonder you are, dear old faithful Dicky, my playwright, manager, lover, detective, everything to me. Well, run along to your work. We strike for fortune this time--for fortune and for fame. You will not see me again until you carry me down the ladder from the convent window. What a lark! And there's money in it for you and me." He dared not discourage her, being too completely her slave, like wax in her hands; and he believed, too, that her scheme of advertising the drama of _The Escaped Nun_ would lead to splendid and profitable notoriety. A real escape, from a city convent, before the very eyes of respectable citizens, would ring through the country like an alarm, and set the entire Protestant community in motion. While he feared, he was also dazzled by the brilliancy of the scheme. It began very well. The journals one morning announced the disappearance of Sister Claire, and described the alarm of her friends at her failure to return. Thereupon McMeeter raised his wonderful voice over the letter sent him on the eve of her flight, and printed the pathetic epistle along with his denunciation of the cowardice which had given her over to her enemies. Later Bishop Bradford, expressing his sympathy in a speech to the Dorcas' Society, referred to the walling up of escaped nuns during the dark ages. A little tide of paragraphs flowed from the papers, plaintively murmuring the one sad strain: the dear sister could not be far distant; she might be in the city, deep in a convent dungeon; she had belonged to the community of the Good Shepherd, whose convent stood in Morris Street, large enough, sufficiently barred with iron to suggest dungeons; the escaped one had often expressed her dread of abduction; the convents ought to be examined suddenly and secretly; and so on without end. "What is the meaning of it?" said Monsignor. "I thought you had extinguished her, Arthur." "Another scheme of course. I was too merciful with her, I imagine. All this noise seems to have one aim: to direct attention to these convents. Now if she were hidden in any of them, and a committee should visit that convent and find her forcibly detained, as she would call it; or if she could sound a fire alarm and make a spectacular escape at two in the morning, before the whole world, what could be said about it?" "Isn't it rather late in history for such things?" said Monsignor. "A good trick is as good to-day as a thousand years ago. I can picture you explaining to the American citizen, amid the howls of McMeeter and the purring speeches of the Bishop, how Sister Claire came to be in the convent from which her friends rescued her." "It would be awkward enough I admit. You think, then, that she ... but what could be her motive?" "Notoriety, and the sympathy of the people. I would like to trip her up in this scheme, and hurl her once for all into the hell which she seems anxious to prepare for other people. You Catholics are altogether too easy with the Claires and the McMeeters. Hence the tears of the Everards." "We are so used to it," said the priest in apology. "It would be foolish, however, not to heed your warning. Go to the convents of the city from me, and put them on their guard. Let them dismiss all strangers and keep out newcomers until the danger appears to be over." The most careful search failed to reveal a trace of Sister Claire's hiding-place among the various communities, who were thrown into a fever of dread by the warning. The journals kept up their crescendo of inquiry and information. One must look for that snake, Arthur thought, not with the eyes, but through inspiration. She hid neither in the clouds nor in Arizona, but in the grass at their feet. Seeking for inspiration, he went over the ground a second time with Sister Magdalen, who had lost flesh over the shame of her dealings with Claire, the Everard troubles, and the dread of what was still to come. She burned to atone for her holy indiscretions. The Park Square convent, however, held no strangers. In the home attached to it were many poor women, but all of them known. Edith Conyngham the obscure, the mute, the humble, was just then occupying a room in the place, making a retreat of ten days in charge of Sister Magdalen. At this fact Arthur was seized by his inspiration. "She must give up her retreat and leave the place," he said quietly, though his pulse was bounding. "Make no objection. It's only a case of being too careful. Leave the whole matter to me. Say nothing to her about it. To-night the good creature will have slipped away without noise, and she can finish her retreat later. It's absurd, but better be absurd than sorry." And Sister Magdalen, thinking of the long penance she must undergo for her folly, made only a polite objection. He wrote out a note at once in a disguised hand, giving it no signature: "The game is up. You cannot get out of the convent too quick or too soon. At ten o'clock a cab will be at the southwest corner of Park Square. Take it and drive to the office. Before ten I shall be with you. Don't delay an instant. State prison is in sight. Dillon is on your track." "At eight o'clock this evening where will Miss Conyngham be, Sister?" "In her room," said the nun, unhappy over the treatment intended for her client, "preparing her meditation for the morning. She has a great love for meditation on the profound mysteries of religion." "Glad to know it," he said dryly. "Well, slip this note under her door, make no noise, let no one see you, give her no hint of your presence. Then go to bed and pray for us poor sinners out in the wicked world." One must do a crazy thing now and then, under cover of the proprieties, if only to test one's sanity. Edith and Claire, as he had suggested to Curran, might be the same person. What if Claire appeared tall, portly, resonant, youthful, abounding in life, while Edith seemed mute, old, thin, feeble? The art of the actor can work miracles in personal appearance. A dual life provided perfect security in carrying out Claire's plans, and it matched the daring of the Escaped Nun to live as Edith in the very hearts of the people she sought to destroy. Good sense opposed his theory of course, but he made out a satisfactory argument for himself. How often had Sister Claire puzzled him by her resemblance to some one whom he could not force out of the shadows of memory! Even now, with the key of the mystery in his hands, he could see no likeness between them. Yet no doubt remained in his mind that a dual life would explain and expose Sister Claire. That night he sat on the seat of a cab in proper costume, at the southwest corner of Park Square. The convent, diagonally opposite, was dark and silent at nine o'clock; and far in the rear, facing the side street, stood the home of the indigent, whose door would open for the exit of a clever actress at ten o'clock, or, well closed, reproach him for his stupidity. The great front of the convent, dominating the Square, would have been a fine stage for the scene contemplated by Sister Claire, and he laughed at the spectacle of the escaped one leaping from a window into her lover's arms, or sliding down a rope amid the cheers of the mob and the shrieks of the disgraced poor souls within. Then he gritted his teeth at the thought of Louis, and Mary his mother, and Mona his sister. His breath came short. Claire was a woman, but some women are not dishonored by the fate of Jezebel. Shortly after ten o'clock a small, well-wrapped figure turned the remote corner of the Home, came out to the Square, saw the cab, and coming forward with confidence opened the door and stepped in. As Arthur drove off the blood surged to his head and his heart in a way that made his ears sing. It seemed impossible that the absurd should turn out wisdom at the first jump. As he drove along he wondered over the capacities of art. No two individuals could have been more unlike in essentials than Edith Conyngham and Sister Claire. Now it would appear that high-heeled shoes, padded clothes, heavy eyebrows, paint, a loud and confident voice, a bold manner, and her beautiful costume had made Sister Claire; while shoes without heels, rusty clothes, a gray wig, a weak voice, and timid manner, had given form to Edith Conyngham. A soul is betrayed by its sins. The common feature of the two characters was the sensuality which, neither in the nun nor in her double, would be repressed or disguised. Looking back, Arthur could see some points of resemblance which might have betrayed the wretch to a clever detective. Well, he would settle all accounts with her presently, and he debated only one point, the flinging of her to the dogs. In twenty minutes they reached the office of the Escaped Nun. He opened the door of the cab and she stepped out nervously, but walked with decision into the building, for which she had the keys. "Anything more, mum?" he said respectfully. "Come right in, and light up for me," she said ungraciously, in a towering rage. He found his way to the gas jets and flooded the office with the light from four. She pulled down the curtains, and flung aside her rusty shawl. At the same moment he flung an arm about her, and with his free hand tore the gray wig from her head, and shook free the mass of yellow hair which lay beneath it. Then he flung her limp into the nearest chair, and stood gazing at her, frozen with amaze. She cowered, pale with the sudden fright of the attack. It was not Sister Claire who stood revealed, but the charming and lovely La Belle Colette. The next instant he laughed like a hysterical woman. "By heavens, but that _was_ an inspiration!" he exclaimed. "Don't be frightened, beautiful Colette. I was prepared for a tragedy, but this discovery reveals a farce." Her terror gave way to stupefaction when she recognized him. "So it's three instead of two," he went on. "The lovely dancer is also the Escaped Nun and the late Edith Conyngham. And Curran knew it of course, who was our detective. That's bad. But Judy Haskell claims you as a goddaughter. You are Curran's wife. You are Sister Magdalen's poor friend. You are Katharine Kerrigan. You are Sister Claire. You are Messalina. La Belle Colette, you are the very devil." She recovered from her fright at his laugh, in which some amusement tinkled, and also something terrible. They were in a lonely place, he had made the situation, and she felt miserably helpless. "You need not blame Curran," she said decisively. "He knew the game, but he has no control over me. I want to go home, and I want to know right away your terms. It's all up with me. I confess. But let me know what you are going to do with me." "Take you home to your husband," said Arthur. "Come." They drove to the little apartment where Curran lay peacefully sleeping, and where he received his erratic wife with stupor. The three sat down in the parlor to discuss the situation, which was serious enough, though Arthur now professed to take it lightly. Colette stared at him like a fascinated bird and answered his questions humbly. "It's all very simple," said she. "I am truly Edith Conyngham, and Judy Haskell is my godmother, and I was in a convent out West. I was expelled for a love caper, and came back to my friends much older in appearance than I had need to be. The Escaped-Nun-racket was a money-maker. What I really am, you see. I am the dancer, La Belle Colette. All the rest is disguise." Curran asked no questions and accepted the situation composedly. "She is in your hands," he said. "I place her in yours for the present," Arthur replied, glowering as he thought of Louis. "Detectives will shadow you both until I come to a decision what to do with you. Any move to escape and you will be nipped. Then the law takes its course. As for you, La Belle Colette, say your prayers. I am still tempted to send you after Jezebel." "You are a terrible man," she whimpered, as he walked out and left them to their sins. CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST BLOW. Mayor Birmingham and Grahame, summoned by messengers, met him in the forever-deserted offices of Sister Claire. He made ready for them by turning on all the lights, setting forth a cheerful bottle and some soda from Claire's hidden ice-box, and lighting a cigar. Delight ran through his blood like fire. At last he had his man on the hip, and the vision of that toss which he meant to give him made his body tingle from the roots of his hair to the points of his toes. However, the case was not for him to deal with alone. Birmingham, the man of weight, prudence, fairness, the true leader, really owned the situation. Grahame, experienced journalist, had the right to manage the publicity department of this delicious scandal. His own task would be to hold Claire in the traces, and drive her round the track, show the world her paces, past the judge's stand. Ah, to see the face of the Minister as he read the story of exposure--her exposure and his own shame! The two men stared at his comfortable attitude in that strange inn, and fairly gasped at the climax of his story. "The devil's in you. No one but you would have thought out such a scheme," said Grahame, recalling the audacity, the cleverness, the surprises of his friend's career from the California episode to the invasion of Ireland. "Great heavens! but you have the knack of seizing the hinge of things." "I think we have Livingstone and his enterprise in the proper sort of hole," Arthur answered. "The question is how to use our advantage?" The young men turned to Birmingham with deference. "The most thorough way," said the Mayor, after complimenting Arthur on his astonishing success, "would be to hale Claire before the courts for fraud, and subpoena all our distinguished enemies. That course has some disagreeable consequences, however." "I think we had better keep out of court," Arthur said quickly. His companions looked surprised at his hesitation. He did not understand it himself. For Edith Conyngham he felt only disgust, and for Sister Claire an amused contempt; but sparkling Colette, so clever, bright, and amiable, so charmingly conscienceless, so gracefully wicked, inspired him with pity almost. He could not crush the pretty reptile, or thrust her into prison. "Of course I want publicity," he hastened to add, "the very widest, to reach as far as London, and strike the Minister. How can that be got, and keep away from the courts?" "An investigating committee is what you are thinking of," said the Mayor. "I can call such a body together at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, our most distinguished citizens. They could receive the confession of this woman, and report to the public on her character." "That's the plan," Arthur interrupted with joy. "That _must_ be carried out. I'll see that Claire appears before that committee and confesses her frauds. But mark this: on that committee you should have the agents of Livingstone: Bradford, Bitterkin ... I owe him one for his meanness to the Senator ... Smallish in particular, and McMeeter for the fun of the thing." "Wild horses wouldn't drag them to it," Grahame thought. "I have something better than wild horses, the proofs of their conspiracy, of their league with this woman," and Arthur pointed to the locked drawers of the office. "How will our minister to England like to have his name connected with this scandal openly. Now, if these people refuse to serve, by heavens, I'll take the whole case to court, and give it an exposure as wide as the earth. If they're agreeable, I'll keep away from the courts, and the rougher part of the scandal." "There's your weapon," said the Mayor, "the alternative of committee or court. I'll see to that part of the business. Do you get the escaped nun ready for her confession, and I'll guarantee the committee, let us say inside of ten days. Your part, Grahame, will be to write up a story for the morning papers, covering dramatically the details of this very remarkable episode." They sat long discussing the various features of the scheme. Next morning Curran and Arthur sat down to talk over the terms of surrender in the detective's house. Colette still kept her bed, distracted with grief, and wild with apprehension over the sensational articles in the morning papers. Curran saw little hope for himself and his wife in the stern face of Dillon. "At the start I would like to hear your explanation," Arthur began coldly. "You were in my employ and in hers." "In hers only to hinder what evil I could, and to protect her from herself," the detective answered steadily and frankly. "I make no excuse, because there isn't any to make. But if I didn't live up to my contract with you, I can say honestly that I never betrayed your interest. You can guess the helplessness of a man in my fix. I have no influence over Colette. She played her game against my wish and prayer. Most particular did I warn her against annoying you and yours. I was going to break up her designs on young Everard, when you did it yourself. I hope you----" In his nervous apprehension for Colette's fate the strong-willed man broke down. He remained silent, struggling for his vanishing self-control. "I understand, and I excuse you. The position was nasty. I have always trusted you without knowing why exactly," and he reflected a moment on that interesting fact. "You did me unforgettable service in saving Louis Everard." "How glad I am you remember that service," Curran gasped, like one who grasping at a straw finds it a plank. "I foresaw this moment when I said to you that night, 'I shall not be bashful about reminding you of it and asking a reward at the right time.' I ask it now. For the boy's sake be merciful with her. Don't hand her over to the courts. Deal with her yourself, and I'll help you." For the boy's sake, for that service so aptly rendered, for the joy it brought and the grief it averted, he could forget justice and crown Colette with diamonds! Curran trembled with eagerness and suspense. He loved her,--this wretch, witch, fiend of a woman! "The question is, can I deal with her myself? She is intractable." "You ought to know by this time that she will do anything for you ... and still more when she has to choose between your wish and jail." "I shall require a good deal of her, not for my own sake, but to undo the evil work----" "How I have tried to keep her out of that evil work," Curran cried fiercely. "We are bad enough as it is without playing traitors to our own, and throwing mud on holy things. There can be no luck in it, and she knows it. When one gets as low as she has, it's time for the funeral. Hell is more respectable." Arthur did not understand this feeling in Curran. The man's degradation seemed so complete to him that not even sacrilege could intensify it; yet clearly the hardened sinner saw some depths below his own which excited his horror and loathing. "If you think I can deal with her, I shall not invoke the aid of the law." The detective thanked him in a breaking voice. He had enjoyed a very bad night speculating on the probable course of events. Colette came in shortly, and greeted Arthur as brazenly as usual, but with extreme sadness, which became her well; so sweet, so delicate, so fragile, that he felt pleased to have forgiven her so early in the struggle. He had persecuted her, treated her with violence, and printed her history for the scornful pleasure of the world; he had come to offer her the alternative of public shame or public trial and jail; yet she had a patient smile for him, a dignified submission that touched him. After all, he thought with emotion, she is of the same nature with myself; a poor castaway from conventional life playing one part or another by caprice, for gain or sport or notoriety; only the devil has entered into her, while I have been lucky enough to cast my lot with the exorcists of the race. He almost regretted his duty. "I have taken possession of your office and papers, Colette," said he with the dignity of the master. "I dismissed the office-boy with his wages, and notified the owner that you would need the rooms no more after the end of the month." "Thanks," she murmured with downcast eyes. "I am ready now to lay before you the conditions----" "Are you going to send me to jail?" "I leave that to you," he answered softly. "You must withdraw your book from circulation. You must get an injunction from the courts to restrain the publishers, if they won't stop printing at your request, and you must bring suit against them for your share of the profits. I want them to be exposed. My lawyer is at your service for such work." "This for the beginning?" she said in despair. "You must write for me a confession next, describing your career, and the parts which you played in this city; also naming your accomplices, your supporters, and what money they put up for your enterprise." "You will find all that in my papers." "Is Mr. Livingstone's name among your papers?" "He was the ringleader. Of course." "Finally you must appear before a committee of gentlemen at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and show how you disguised yourself for the three parts of Edith Conyngham, Sister Claire, and the Brand of the gospel-hall." She burst out crying then, looking from one man to the other with the tears streaming down her lovely face. Curran squirmed in anguish. Arthur studied her with interest. Who could tell when she was not acting? "Ah, you wretch! I am bad. Sometimes I can't bear myself. But you are worse, utterly without heart. You think I don't feel my position." Her sobbing touched him by its pathos and its cleverness. "You are beyond feeling, but you _must_ talk about feeling," was his hard reply. "Probably I shall make you feel before the end of this adventure." "As if you hadn't done it already," she fairly bawled like a hurt child. "For months I have not left the house without seeing everywhere the dogs that tore Jezebel." "You might also have seen that poor child whom you nearly drove to death," he retorted, "and the mother whose heart you might have broken." "Poor child!" she sneered, and burst out laughing while the tears still lingered on her cheek. "He was a milksop, not a man. I thought he was a man, or I never would have offered him pleasure. And you want me to make a show of myself before...." "Your old friends and well-wishers, McMeeter, Bradford and Co." "Never, never, never," she screamed, and fell to weeping again. "I'll die first." "You won't be asked to die, madam. You'll go to jail the minute I leave this house, and stand trial on fifty different charges. I'll keep you in jail for the rest of your life. If by any trick you escape me, I'll deliver you to the dogs." "Can he do this?" she said scornfully to Curran, who nodded. "And if I agree to it, what do I get?" turning again to Dillon. "You can live in peace as La Belle Colette the dancer, practise your profession, and enjoy the embraces of your devoted husband. I let you off lightly. Your private life, your stage name, will be kept from the public, and, by consequence, from the dogs." She shivered at the phrase. Shame was not in her, but fear could grip her heart vigorously. Her nerve did not exclude cowardice. This man she had always feared, perceiving in him not only a strength beyond the common, but a mysterious power not to be analyzed and named. Her flimsy rage would break hopelessly on this rock. Still before surrendering, her crooked nature forced her to the petty arts in which she excelled. Very clearly in this acting appeared the various strokes of character peculiar to Edith, Claire, and the Brand. She wheedled and whined one moment in the husky tones of Sister Magdalen's late favorite; when dignity was required she became the escaped nun; and in her rage she would burst into the melodramatic frenzy dear to the McMeeter audiences; but Colette, the heedless, irresponsible, half-mad butterfly, dominated these various parts, and to this charming personality she returned. Through his own sad experience this spectacle interested him. He subdued her finally by a precise description of consequences. "You have done the Catholics of this city harm that will last a long time, Colette," said he. "That vile book of yours ... you ought to be hung for it. It will live to do its miserable work when you are in hell howling. I really don't know why I should be merciful to you. Did you ever show mercy to any one? The court would do this for you and for us: the facts, figures, and personages of your career would be dragged into the light of day ... what a background that would be ... not a bad company either ... not a fact would escape ... you would be painted as you are. I'll not tell you what you are, but I know that you would die of your own colors ... you would go to jail, and rot there ... every time you came out I'd have a new charge on which to send you back. Your infamy would be printed by columns in the papers ... and the dogs would be put on your trail ... ah, there's the rub ... if the law let you go free, what a meal you'd make for the people who think you ought to be torn limb from limb, and who would do it with joy. I really do not understand why I offer you an alternative. Perhaps it's for the sake of this man who loves you ... for the great service he did me." He paused to decide this point, while she gazed like a fascinated bird. "What I want is this really," he went on. "I want to let the city see just what tools Livingstone, your employer, is willing to do his dirty work with. I want this committee to assemble with pomp and circumstance ... those are the right words ... and to see you, in your very cleverest way, act the parts through which you fooled the wise. I want them to hear you say in that sweetest of voices, how you lied to them to get their dollars ... how you lied about us, your own people, threw mud on us, as Curran says, to get their dollars ... how your life, and your book, and your lectures, are all lies ... invented and printed because the crowd that devoured them were eager to believe us the horrible creatures you described. When you have done that, you can go free. No one will know your husband, or your name, or your profession. I don't see why you hesitate. I don't know why I should offer you this chance. When Birmingham hears your story he will not approve of my action. But if you agree to follow my directions to the letter I'll promise that the law will not seize you." What could she do but accept his terms, protesting that death was preferable? The risk of losing her just as the committee would be ready to meet, for her fickleness verged on insanity, he had to accept. He trusted in his own watchfulness, and in the fidelity of Curran to keep her in humor. Even now she forgot her disasters in the memory of her success as an impersonator, and entertained the men with scenes from her masquerade as Edith, Claire, and the Brand. From such a creature, so illy balanced, one might expect anything. However, by judicious coddling and terrorizing, her courage and spirit were kept alive to the very moment when she stood before Birmingham and his committee, heard her confession of imposture read, signed it with perfect sang-froid, and illustrated for the scandalized members her method of impersonation. So had Arthur worked upon her conceit that she took a real pride in displaying her costumes, and in explaining how skilfully she had led three lives in that city. Grim, bitter, sickened with disappointment, yet masked in smiles, part of the committee watched her performance to the end. They felt the completeness of Arthur's triumph. With the little airs and graces peculiar to a stage artiste, Edith put on the dusty costume of Edith Conyngham, and limped feebly across the floor; then the decorous garments of the Brand, and whispered tenderly in McMeeter's ear; last, the brilliant habit of the escaped nun, the curious eyebrows, the pallid face; curtseying at the close of the performance with her bold eyes on her audience, as if beseeching the merited applause. In the dead silence afterwards, Arthur mercifully led her away. The journals naturally gave the affair large attention, and the net results were surprisingly fine. The house of cards so lovingly built up by Livingstone and his friends tumbled in a morning never to rise again. All the little plans failed like kites snipped of their tails. Fritters went home, because the public lost interest in his lectures. The book of the escaped nun fell flat and disappeared from the market. McMeeter gave up his scheme of rescuing the inmates of convents and housing them until married. The hired press ignored the Paddies and their island for a whole year. Best of all, suddenly, on the plea of dying among his friends, Ledwith was set free, mainly through the representations of Lord Constantine in London and Arthur in Washington. These rebuffs told upon the Minister severely. He knew from whose strong hand they came, and that the same hand would not soon tire of striking. CHAPTER XXIV. ANNE MAKES HISTORY. In the months that followed Anne Dillon lived as near to perfect felicity as earthly conditions permit. A countess and a lord breathed under her roof, ate at her table, and talked prose and poetry with her as freely as Judy Haskell. The Countess of Skibbereen and Lord Constantine had accompanied the Ledwiths to America, after Owen's liberation from jail, and fallen victims to the wiles of this clever woman. Arthur might look after the insignificant Ledwiths. Anne would have none of them. She belonged henceforth to the nobility. His lordship was bent on utilizing his popularity with the Irish to further the cause of the Anglo-American Alliance. As the friend who had stood by the Fenian prisoners, not only against embittered England, but against indifferent Livingstone, he was welcomed; and if he wanted an alliance, or an heiress, or the freedom of the city, or anything which the Irish could buy for him, he had only to ask in order to receive. Anne sweetly took the responsibility off his shoulders, after he had outlined his plans. "Leave it all to me," said she. "You shall win the support of all these people without turning your hand over." "You may be sure she'll do it much better than you will," was the opinion of the Countess, and the young man was of the same mind. She relied chiefly on Doyle Grahame for one part of her program, but that effervescent youth had fallen into a state of discouragement which threatened to leave him quite useless. He shook his head to her demand for a column in next morning's _Herald_. "Same old story ... the Countess and you ... lovely costumes ... visits ... it won't go. The editors are wondering why there's so much of you." "Hasn't it all been good?" "Of course, or it would not have been printed. But there must come an end sometime. What's your aim anyway?" "I want a share in making history," she said slyly. "Take a share in making mine," he answered morosely, and thereupon she landed him. "Oh, run away with Mona, if you're thinking of marrying." "Thinking of it! Talking of it! That's as near as I can get to it," he groaned. "John Everard is going to drive a desperate bargain with me. I wrote a book, I helped to expose Edith Conyngham, I drove Fritters out of the country with my ridicule, I shocked Bradford, and silenced McMeeter; and I have failed to move that wretch. All I got out of my labors was permission to sit beside Mona in her own house with her father present." "You humor the man too much," Anne said with a laugh. "I can twist John Everard about my finger, only----" "There it is," cried Grahame. "Behold it in its naked simplicity! Only! Well, if anything short of the divine can get around, over, under, through, or by his sweet, little 'only,' he's fit to be the next king of Ireland. What have I not done to do away with it? Once I thought, I hoped, that the invitation to read the poem on the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, coming as a climax to multitudinous services, would surely have fetched him. Now, with the invitation in my pocket, I'm afraid to mention it. What if he should scorn it?" "He won't if I say the word. Give me the column to-morrow, and any time I want it for a month or two, and I'll guarantee that John Everard will do the right thing by you." "You can have the column. What do you want it for?" "The alliance, of course. I'm in the business of making history, as I told you. Don't open your mouth quite so wide, please. There's to be a meeting of the wise in this house, after a dinner, to express favorable opinions about the alliance. Then in a month or two a distinguished peer, member of the British Cabinet, is coming over to sound the great men on the question.... What are you whistling for?" "You've got a fine thing, Mrs. Dillon," said he. "By Jove, but I'll help you spread this for all it's worth." "Understand," she said, tapping the table with emphasis, "the alliance must go through as far as we can make it go. Now, do your best. When you go over to see John Everard next, go with a mind to kill him if he doesn't take your offer to marry his daughter. I'll see to it that the poem on the Pilgrims does the trick for you." "I'd have killed him long ago, if I thought it worth the trouble," he said. He felt that the crisis had come for him and Mona. That charming girl, in spite of his entreaties, of his threats to go exploring Africa, remained as rigidly faithful to her ideas of duty as her father to his obstinacy. She would not marry without his consent. With all his confidence in Anne's cleverness, how could he expect her to do the impossible? To change the unchangeable? John Everard showed no sign of the influence which had brought Livingstone to his knees, when Grahame and Mona stood before him, and the lover placed in her father's hands the document of honor. "Really, this is wonderful," said Everard, impressed to the point of violence. "You are to compose and to read the poem on the Pilgrim Fathers?" "That's the prize," said Grahame severely. He might be squaring off at this man the next moment, and could not carry his honors lightly. "And now that it has come I want my reward. We must be married two weeks before I read that poem, and the whole world must see and admire the source of my inspiration." He drew his beloved into his arms and kissed her pale cheek. "Very well. That will be appropriate," the father said placidly, clearing his throat to read the invitation aloud. He read pompously, quite indifferent to the emotion of his children, proud that they were to be prominent figures in a splendid gathering. They, beatified, pale, unstrung by this calm acceptance of what he had opposed bitterly two years, sat down foolishly, and listened to the pompous utterance of pompous phrases in praise of dead heroes and a living poet. Thought and speech failed together. If only some desperado would break in upon him and try to kill him! if the house would take fire, or a riot begin in the street! The old man finished his reading, congratulated the poet, blessed the pair in the old-fashioned style, informed his wife of the date of the wedding, and marched off to bed. After pulling at that door for years it was maddening to have the very frame-work come out as if cemented with butter. What an outrage to come prepared for heroic action, and to find the enemy turned friend! Oh, admirable enchantress was this Anne Dillon! The enchantress, having brought Grahame into line and finally into good humor, took up the more difficult task of muzzling her stubborn son. To win him to the good cause, she had no hope; sufficient, if he could be won to silence while diplomacy shaped the course of destiny. "Better let me be on that point," Arthur said when she made her attack. "I'm hostile only when disturbed. Lord Conny owns us for the present. I won't say a word to shake his title. Neither will I lift my eyebrows to help this enterprise." "If you only will keep quiet," she suggested. "Well, I'm trying to. I'm set against alliance with England, until we have knocked the devil out of her, begging your pardon for my frankness. I must speak plainly now so that we may not fall out afterwards. But I'll be quiet. I'll not say a word to influence a soul. I'll do just as Ledwith does." He laughed at the light which suddenly shone in her face. "That's a fair promise," she said smoothly, and fled before he could add conditions. Her aim and her methods alike remained hidden from him. He knew only that she was leading them all by the nose to some brilliant climax of her own devising. He was willing to be led. The climax turned out to be a dinner. Anne had long ago discovered the secret influence of a fine dinner on the politics of the world. The halo of a saint pales before the golden nimbus which well-fed guests see radiating from their hostess after dinner. A good man may possess a few robust virtues, but the dinner-giver has them all. Therefore, the manager of the alliance gathered about her table one memorable evening the leaders whose good opinion and hearty support Lord Constantine valued in his task of winning the Irish to neutrality or favor for his enterprise. Arthur recognized the climax only when Lord Constantine, after the champagne had sparkled in the glasses, began to explain his dream to Sullivan. "What do you think of it?" said he. "It sounds as harmless as a popgun, and looks like a vision. I don't see any details in your scheme," said the blunt leader graciously. "We can leave the details to the framers of the alliance," said His Lordship, uneasy at Arthur's laugh. "What we want first is a large, generous feeling in its favor, to encourage the leaders." "Well, in general," said the Boss, "it is a good thing for all countries to live in harmony. When they speak the same language, it's still better. I have no feeling one way or the other. I left Ireland young, and would hardly have remembered I'm Irish but for Livingstone. What do you think of it, Senator?" "An alliance with England!" cried he with contempt. "Fancy me walking down to a district meeting with such an auctioneer's tag hanging on my back. Why, I'd be sold out on the spot. Those people haven't forgot how they were thrown down and thrown out of Ireland. No, sir. Leave us out of an alliance." "That's the popular feeling, I think," Sullivan said to His Lordship. "I can understand the Senator's feelings," the Englishman replied softly. "But if, before the alliance came to pass, the Irish question should be well settled, how would that affect your attitude, Senator?" "My attitude," replied the Senator, posing as he reflected that a budding statesman made the inquiry, "would be entirely in your favor." "Thank you. What more could I ask?" Lord Constantine replied with a fierce look at Arthur. "I say myself, until the Irish get their rights, no alliance." "Then we are with you cordially. We want to do all we can for a man who has been so fair to our people," the Boss remarked with the flush of good wine in his cheek. "Champagne sentiments," murmured Arthur. Monsignor, prompted by Anne, came to the rescue of the young nobleman. "There would be a row, if the matter came up for discussion just now," he said. "Ten years hence may see a change. There's one thing in favor of Irish ... well, call it neutrality. Speaking as a churchman, Catholics have a happier lot in English-speaking lands than in other countries. They have the natural opportunity to develop, they are not hampered in speech and action as in Italy and France." "How good of you to say so," murmured His Lordship. "Then again," continued Monsignor, with a sly glance at Arthur, "it seems to me inevitable that the English-speaking peoples must come into closer communion, not merely for their own good, or for selfish aims, but to spread among less fortunate nations their fine political principles. There's the force, the strength, of the whole scheme. Put poor Ireland on her feet, and I vote for an alliance." "Truly, a Daniel come to judgment," murmured Arthur. "It's a fine view to take of it," the Boss thought. "Are you afraid to ask Ledwith for an opinion?" Arthur suggested. "What's he got to do with it?" Everard snapped, unsoftened by the mellow atmosphere of the feast. "It is no longer a practical question with me," Owen said cheerfully. "I have always said that if the common people of the British Isles got an understanding of each other, and a better liking for each other, the end of oppression would come very soon. They are kept apart by the artificial hindrances raised by the aristocracy of birth and money. The common people easily fraternize, if they are permitted. See them in this country, living, working, intermarrying, side by side." "How will that sound among the brethren?" said Arthur disappointed. His mother flashed him a look of triumph, and Lord Constantine looked foolishly happy. "As the utterance of a maniac, of course. Have they ever regarded me as sane?" he answered easily. "And what becomes of your dream?" Arthur persisted. "I have myself become a dream," he answered sadly. "I am passing into the land of dreams, of shadows. My dream was Ireland; a principle that would bring forth its own flower, fruit, and seed; not a department of an empire. Who knows what is best in this world of change? Some day men may realize the poet's dream: "The parliament of man, the federation of the world." Arthur surrendered with bad grace. He had expected from Ledwith the last, grand, fiery denunciation which would have swept the room as a broadside sweeps a deck, and hurled the schemes of his mother and Lord Constantine into the sea. Sad, sad, to see how champagne can undo such a patriot! For that matter the golden wine had undone the entire party. Judy declared to her dying day that the alliance was toasted amid cheers before the close of the banquet; that Lord Constantine in his delight kissed Anne as she left the room; with many other circumstances too improbable to find a place in a veracious history. It is a fact, however, that the great scheme which still agitates the peoples interested, had its success depended on the guests of Anne Dillon, would have been adopted that night. The dinner was a real triumph. Unfortunately, dinners do not make treaties; and, as Arthur declared, one dinner is good enough until a better is eaten. When the member of the British Cabinet came to sit at Anne's table, if one might say so, the tables were turned. Birmingham instead of Monsignor played the lead; the man whose practical temperament, financial and political influence, could soothe and propitiate his own people and interest the moneyed men in the alliance. It was admitted no scheme of this kind could progress without his aid. He had been reserved for the Cabinet Minister. No one thought much about the dinner except the hostess, who felt, as she looked down the beautiful table, that her glory had reached its brilliant meridian. A cabinet minister, a lord, a countess, a leading Knickerbocker, the head of Tammany, and a few others who did not matter; what a long distance from the famous cat-show and Mulberry Street! Arthur also looked up the table with satisfaction. If his part in the play had not been dumb show (by his mother's orders), he would have quoted the famous grind of the mills of the gods. The two races, so unequally matched at home, here faced each other on equal ground. Birmingham knew what he had to do. "I am sure," he said to the cabinet minister, "that in a matter so serious you want absolute sincerity?" "Absolute, and thank you," replied the great man. "Then let me begin with myself. Personally I would not lift my littlest finger to help this scheme. I might not go out of my way to hinder it, but I am that far Irish in feeling, not to aid England so finely. For a nation that will soon be without a friend in the world, an alliance with us would be of immense benefit. No man of Irish blood, knowing what his race has endured and still endures from the English, can keep his self-respect and back the scheme." Arthur was sorry for his lordship, who sat utterly astounded and cast down wofully at this expression of feeling from such a man. "The main question can be answered in this way," Birmingham continued. "Were I willing to take part in this business, my influence with the Irish and their descendants, whatever it may be, would not be able to bring a corporal's guard into line in its behalf." Lord Constantine opened his mouth, Everard snorted his contempt, but the great man signaled silence. Birmingham paid no attention. "In this country the Irish have learned much more than saving money and acquiring power; they have learned the unredeemed blackness of the injustice done them at home, just as I learned it. What would Grahame here, Sullivan, Senator Dillon, or myself have been at this moment had we remained in Ireland? Therefore the Irish in this country are more bitter against the English government than their brethren at home. I am certain that no man can rally even a minority of the Irish to the support of the alliance. I am sure I could not. I am certain the formal proposal of the scheme would rouse them to fiery opposition." "Remember," Arthur whispered to Everard, raging to speak, "that the Cabinet Minister doesn't care to hear anyone but Birmingham." "I'm sorry for you, Conny," he whispered to his lordship, "but it's the truth." "Never enjoyed anything so much," said Grahame _sotto voce_, his eyes on Everard. "However, let us leave the Irish out of the question," the speaker went on. "Or, better, let us suppose them favorable, and myself able to win them over. What chance has the alliance of success? None." "Fudge!" cried Everard, unabashed by the beautiful English stare of the C. M. "The measure is one-sided commercially. This country has nothing to gain from a scheme, which would be a mine to England; therefore the moneyed men will not touch it, will not listen to it. Their time is too valuable. What remains? An appeal to the people on the score of humanity, brotherhood, progress, what you please? My opinion is that the dead weight there could not be moved. The late war and the English share in it are too fresh in the public mind. The outlook to me is utterly against your scheme." "It might be objected to your view that feeling is too strong an element of it," said the Cabinet Minister. "Feeling has only to do with my share in the scheme," Birmingham replied. "As an Irishman I would not further it, yet I might be glad to see it succeed. My opinion is concerned with the actual conditions as I see them." With this remark the formal discussion ended. Mortified at this outcome of his plans, Lord Constantine could not be consoled. "As long as Livingstone is on your side, Conny," said Arthur, "you are foredoomed." "I am not so sure," His Lordship answered with some bitterness. "The Chief Justice of the United States is a good friend to have." A thrill shot through Dillon at this emphasis to a rumor hitherto too light for printing. The present incumbent of the high office mentioned by Lord Constantine lay dying. Livingstone coveted few places, and this would be one. In so exalted a station he would be "enskied and sainted." Even his proud soul would not disdain to step from the throne-room of Windsor to the dais of the Supreme Court of his country. And to strike him in the very moment of his triumph, to snatch away the prize, to close his career like a broken sentence with a dash and a mark of interrogation, to bring him home like any dead game in a bag: here would be magnificent justice! "Have I found thee, O mine enemy?" Arthur cried in his delight. CHAPTER XXV. THE CATHEDRAL. Ledwith was dying in profound depression, like most brave souls, whose success has been partial, or whose failure has been absolute. This mournful ending to a brave, unselfish life seemed to Arthur pitiful and monstrous. A mere breathing-machine like himself had enjoyed a stimulating vengeance for the failure of one part of his life. Oh, how sweet had been that vengeance! The draught had not yet reached the bottom of the cup! His cause for the moment a ruin, dragged down with Fenianism; his great enemy stronger, more glorious, and more pitiless than when he had first raised his hand against her injustice; now the night had closed in upon Ledwith, not merely the bitter night of sickness and death and failure, but that more savage night of despondency, which steeps all human sorrow in the black, polluted atmosphere of hell. For such a sufferer the heart of Arthur Dillon opened as wide as the gates of heaven. Oh, had he not known what it is to suffer so, without consolation! He was like a son to Owen Ledwith. Every plan born in the poetic and fertile brain of the patriot he took oath to carry out; he vowed his whole life to the cause of Ireland; and he consoled Owen for apparent failure by showing him that he had not altogether failed, since a man, young, earnest, determined, and wealthy should take up the great work just where he dropped it. Could any worker ask more of life? A hero should go to his eternity with lofty joy, leaving his noble example to the mean world, a reproach to the despicable among rulers, a star in the night to the warriors of justice. In Honora her father did not find the greatest comfort. His soul was of the earth and human liberty was his day-star; her soul rose above that great human good to the freedom of heaven. Her heart ached for him, that he should be going out of life with only human consolation. The father stood in awe of an affection, which at the same time humbled and exalted him; she had never loved man or woman like him; he was next to God in that virginal heart, for with all her love of country, the father had the stronger hold on her. Too spiritual for him, her sublime faith did not cheer him. Yet when they looked straight into each other's eyes with the consciousness of what was coming, mutual anguish terribly probed their love. He had no worry for her. "She has the best of friends," he said to Arthur, "she is capable, and trained to take care of herself handsomely; but these things will not be of any use. She will go to the convent." "Not if Lord Constantine can hinder it," Arthur said bluntly. "I would like to see her in so exalted and happy a sphere as Lord Constantine could give her. But I am convinced that the man is not born who can win the love of this child of mine. Sir Galahad might, but not the stuff of which you and I are made." "I believe you," said Arthur. Honora herself told him of her future plans, as they sat with the sick man after a trying evening, when for some hours the end seemed near. The hour invited confidences, and like brother and sister at the sick-bed of a beloved parent they exchanged them. When she had finished telling him how she had tried to do her duty to her father, and to her country, and how she had laid aside her idea of the convent for their sake, but would now take up her whole duty to God by entering a sisterhood, he said casually: "It seems to me these three duties work together; and when you were busiest with your father and your country, then were you most faithful to God." "Very true," she replied, looking up with surprise. "Obedience is better than sacrifice." "Take care that you are not deceiving yourself, Honora. Which would cause more pain, to give up your art and your cause, or to give up the convent?" "To give up the convent," she replied promptly. "That looks to me like selfishness," he said gently. "There are many nuns in the convents working for the wretched and helping the poor and praying for the oppressed, while only a few women are devoted directly to the cause of freedom. It strikes me that you descend when you retire from a field of larger scope to one which narrows your circle and diminishes your opportunities. I am not criticizing the nun's life, but simply your personal scheme." "And you think I descend?" she murmured with a little gasp of pain. "Why, how can that be?" "You are giving up the work, the necessary work, which few women are doing, to take up a work in which many women are engaged," he answered, uncertain of his argument, but quite sure of his intention. "You lose great opportunities to gain small ones, purely personal. That's the way it looks to me." With wonderful cunning he unfolded his arguments in the next few weeks. He appealed to her love for her father, her wish to see his work continued; he described his own helplessness, very vaguely though, in carrying out schemes with which he was unacquainted, and to which he was vowed; he mourned over the helpless peoples of the world, for whom a new community was needed to fight, as the Knights of St. John fought for Christendom; and he painted with delicate satire that love of ease which leads heroes to desert the greater work for the lesser on the plea of the higher life. Selfishly she sought rest, relief for the taxing labors, anxieties, and journeys of fifteen years, and not the will of God, as she imagined. Was he conscious of his own motives? Did he discover therein any selfishness? Who can say? He discoursed at the same time to Owen, and in the same fashion. Ledwith felt that his dreams were patch work beside the rainbow visions of this California miner, who had the mines which make the wildest dreams come true sometimes. The wealthy enthusiast might fall, however, into the hands of the professional patriot, who would bleed him to death in behalf of paper schemes. To whom could he confide him? Honora! It had always been Honora with him, who could do nothing without her. He did not wish to hamper her in the last moment, as he had hampered her since she had first planned her own life. It was even a pleasant thought for him, to think of his faithful child living her beautiful, quiet, convent life, after the fatigues and pilgrimages of years, devoted to his memory, mingling his name with her prayers, innocent of any other love than for him and her Creator. Yes, she must be free as the air after he died. However, the sick are not masters of their emotions. A great dread and a great anguish filled him. Would it be his fate to lose Arthur to Ireland by consideration for others? But he loved her so! How could he bind her in bonds at the very moment of their bitter separation? He would not do it! He would not do it! He fought down his own longing until he woke up in a sweat of terror one night, and called to her loudly, fearing that he would die before he exacted from her the last promise. He must sacrifice all for his country, even the freedom of his child. "Honora," he cried, "was I ever faithless to Erin? Did I ever hesitate when it was a question of money, or life, or danger, or suffering for her sake?" "Never, father dear," she said, soothing him like a child. "I have sinned now, then. For your sake I have sinned. I wished to leave you free when I am gone, although I saw you were still necessary to Eire. Promise me, my child, that you will delay a little after I am gone, before entering the convent; that you will make sure beforehand that Erin has no great need of you ... just a month or a year ... any delay----" "As long as you please, father," she said quietly. "Make it five years if you will----" "No, no," he interrupted with anguish in his throat. "I shall never demand again from you the sacrifices of the past. What may seem just to you will be enough. I die almost happy in leaving Arthur Dillon to carry on with his talent and his money the schemes of which I only dreamed. But I fear the money patriots will get hold of him and cheat him of his enthusiasm and his money together. If you were by to let him know what was best to be done--that is all I ask of you----" "A year at least then, father dear! What is time to you and me that we should be stingy of the only thing we ever really possessed." "And now I lose even that," with a long sigh. Thus gently and naturally Arthur gained his point. Monsignor came often, and then oftener when Owen's strength began to fail rapidly. The two friends in Irish politics had little agreement, but in the gloom of approaching death they remembered only their friendship. The priest worked vainly to put Owen into a proper frame of mind before his departure for judgment. He had made his peace with the Church, and received the last rites like a believer, but with the coldness of him who receives necessities from one who has wronged him. He was dying, not like a Christian, but like the pagan patriot who has failed: only the shades awaited him when he fled from the darkness of earthly shame. They sat together one March afternoon facing the window and the declining sun. To the right another window gave them a good view of the beautiful cathedral, whose twin spires, many turrets, and noble walls shone blue and golden in the brilliant light. "I love to look at it from this elevation," said Monsignor, who had just been discoursing on the work of his life. "In two years, just think, the most beautiful temple in the western continent will be dedicated." "The money that has gone into it would have struck a great blow for Erin," said Ledwith with a bitter sigh. "So much of it as escaped the yawning pockets of the numberless patriots," retorted Monsignor dispassionately. "The money would not have been lost in so good a cause, but its present use has done more for your people than a score of the blows which you aim at England." "Claim everything in sight while you are at it," said Owen. "In God's name what connection has your gorgeous cathedral with any one's freedom?" "Father dear, you are exciting yourself," Honora broke in, but neither heeded her. "Christ brought us true freedom," said Monsignor, "and the Church alone teaches, practises, and maintains it." "A fine example is provided by Ireland, where to a dead certainty freedom was lost because the Church had too unnatural a hold upon the people." "What was lost on account of the faith will be given back again with compound interest. Political and military movements have done much for Ireland in fifty years; but the only real triumphs, universal, brilliant, enduring, significant, leading surely up to greater things, have been won by the Irish faith, of which that cathedral, shining so gloriously in the sun this afternoon, is both a result and a symbol." "I believe you will die with that conviction," Ledwith said in wonder. "I wish you could die with the same, Owen," replied Monsignor tenderly. They fell silent for a little under the stress of sudden feeling. "How do men reason themselves into such absurdities?" Owen asked himself. "You ought to know. You have done it often enough," said the priest tartly. Then both laughed together, as they always did when the argument became personal. "Do you know what Livingstone and Bradford and the people whom they represent think of that temple?" said Monsignor impressively. "Oh, their opinions!" Owen snorted. "They are significant," replied the priest. "These two leaders would give the price of the building to have kept down or destroyed the spirit which undertook and carried out the scheme. They have said to themselves many times in the last twenty years, while that temple rose slowly but gloriously into being, what sort of a race is this, so despised and ill-treated, so poor and ignorant, that in a brief time on our shores can build the finest temple to God which this country has yet seen? What will the people, to whom we have described this race as sunk in papistical stupidity, debased, unenterprising, think, when they gaze on this absolute proof of our mendacity?" Ledwith, in silence, took a second look at the shining walls and towers. "Owen, your generous but short-sighted crowd have fought England briefly and unsuccessfully a few times on the soil of Ireland ... but the children of the faith have fought her with church, and school, and catechism around the globe. Their banner, around which they fought, was not the banner of the Fenians but the banner of Christ. What did you do for the scattered children of the household? Nothing, but collect their moneys. While the great Church followed them everywhere with her priests, centered them about the temple, and made them the bulwark of the faith, the advance-guard, in many lands. Here in America, and in all the colonies of England, in Scotland, even in England itself, wherever the Irish settled, the faith took root and flourished; the faith which means death to the English heresy, and to English power as far as it rests upon the heresy." "The faith kept the people together, scattered all over the world. It organized them, it trained them, it kept them true to the Christ preached by St. Patrick; it built the fortress of the temple, and the rampart of the school; it kept them a people apart, it kept them civilized, saved them from inevitable apostasy, and founded a force from which you collect your revenues for battle with your enemies; a force which fights England all over the earth night and day, in legislatures, in literature and journalism, in social and commercial life ... why, man, you are a fragment, a mere fragment, you and your warriors, of that great fight which has the world for an audience and the English earths for its stage." "When did you evolve this new fallacy?" said Ledwith hoarsely. "You have all been affected with the spirit of the anti-Catholic revolution in Europe, whose cry is that the Church is the enemy of liberty; yours, that it has been no friend to Irish liberty. Take another look at that cathedral. When you are dead, and many others that will live longer, that church will deliver its message to the people who pass: 'I am the child of the Catholic faith and the Irish; the broad shoulders of America waited for a simple, poor, cast-out people, to dig me from the earth and shape me into a thing of beauty, a glory of the new continent; I myself am not new; I am of that race which in Europe speaks in divine language to you pigmies of the giants that lived in ancient days; I am a new bond between the old continent and the new, between the old order and the new; I speak for the faith of the past; I voice the faith of the hour; the hands that raised me are not unskilled and untrained; from what I am judge, ye people, of what stuff my builders are made.' And around the world, in all the capitals, in the great cities, of the English-speaking peoples, temples of lesser worth and beauty, are speaking in the same strain." Honora anxiously watched her father. A new light shone upon him, a new emotion disturbed him; perhaps that old hardness within was giving way. Ledwith had the poetic temperament, and the philosopher's power of generalization. A hint could open a grand horizon before him, and the cathedral in its solemn beauty was the hint. Of course, he could see it all, blind as he had been before. The Irish revolution worked fitfully, and exploded in a night, its achievement measured by the period of a month; but this temple and its thousand sisters lived on doing their good work in silence, fighting for the truth without noise or conspiracy. "And this is the glory of the Irish," Monsignor continued, "this is the fact which fills me with pride, American as I am, in the race whose blood I own; they have preserved the faith for the great English-speaking world. Already the new principle peculiar to that faith has begun its work in literature, in art, in education, in social life. Heresy allowed the Christ to be banished from all the departments of human activity, except the home and the temple. Christ is not in the schools of the children, nor in the books we read, nor in the pictures and sculptures of our studios, nor in our architecture, even of the churches, nor in our journalism, any more than in the market-place and in the government. These things are purely pagan, or worthless composites. It looks as if the historian of these times, a century or two hence, will have hard work to fitly describe the Gesta Hibernicorum, when this principle of Christianity will have conquered the American world as it conquered ancient Europe. I tell you, Owen," and he strode to the window with hands outstretched to the great building, "in spite of all the shame and suffering endured for His sake, God has been very good to your people, He is heaping them with honors. As wide as is the power of England, it is no wider than the influence of the Irish faith. Stubborn heresy is doomed to fall before the truth which alone can set men free and keep them so." Ledwith had begun to tremble, but he said never a word. "I am prouder to have had a share in the building of that temple," Monsignor continued, "than to have won a campaign against the English. This is a victory, not of one race over another, but of the faith over heresy, truth over untruth. It will be the Christ-like glory of Ireland to give back to England one day the faith which a corrupt king destroyed, for which we have suffered crucifixion. No soul ever loses by climbing the cross with Christ." Ledwith gave a sudden cry, and raised his hands to heaven, but grew quiet at once. The priest watched contentedly the spires of his cathedral. "You have touched heart and reason together," Honora whispered. Ledwith remained a long time silent, struggling with a new spirit. At last he turned the wide, frank eyes on his friend and victor. "I am conquered, Monsignor." "Not wholly yet, Owen." "I have been a fool, a foolish fool,--not to have seen and understood." "And your folly is not yet dead. You are dying in sadness and despair almost, when you should go to eternity in triumph." "I go in triumph! Alas! if I could only be blotted out with my last breath, and leave neither grave nor memory, it would be happiness. Why do you say, 'triumph'?" "Because you have been true to your country with the fidelity of a saint. That's enough. Besides you leave behind you the son born of your fidelity to carry on your work----" "God bless that noble son," Owen cried. "And a daughter whose prayers will mount from the nun's cell, to bless your cause. If you could but go from her resigned!" "How I wish that I might. I ought to be happy, just for leaving two such heirs, two noble hostages to Ireland. I see my error. Christ is the King, and no man can better His plans for men. I surrender to Him." "But your submission is only in part. You are not wholly conquered." "Twice have you said that," Owen complained, raising his heavy eyes in reproach. "Love of country is not the greatest love." "No, love of the race, of humanity, is more." "And the love of God is more than either. With all their beauty, what do these abstract loves bring us? The country we love can give us a grave and a stone. Humanity crucifies its redeemers. Wolsey summed up the matter: 'Had I but served my God with half the zeal with which I served my king, He would not in mine age, have left me naked to mine enemies.'" He paused to let his words sink into Ledwith's mind. "Owen, you are leaving the world oppressed by the hate of a lifetime, the hate ingrained in your nature, the fatal gift of persecutor and persecuted from the past." "And I shall never give that up," Owen declared, sitting up and fixing his hardest look on the priest. "I shall never forget Erin's wrongs, nor Albion's crimes. I shall carry that just and honorable hate beyond the grave. Oh, you priests!" "I said you were not conquered. You may hate injustice, but not the unjust. You will find no hate in heaven, only justice. The persecutors and their victims have long been dead, and judged. The welcome of the wretched into heaven, the home of justice and love, wiped out all memory of suffering here, as it will for us all. The justice measured out to their tyrants even you would be satisfied with. Can your hate add anything to the joy of the blessed, or the woe of the lost?" "Nothing," murmured Owen from the pillow, as his eyes looked afar, wondering at that justice so soon to be measured out to him. "You are again right. Oh, but we are feeble ... but we are foolish ... to think it. What is our hate any more than our justice ... both impotent and ridiculous." There followed a long pause, then, for Monsignor had finished his argument, and only waited to control his own emotion before saying good-by. "I die content," said Ledwith with a long restful sigh, coming back to earth, after a deep look into divine power and human littleness. "Bring me to-morrow, and often, the Lord of Justice. I never knew till now that in desiring Justice so ardently, it was He I desired. Monsignor, I die content, without hate, and without despair." If ever a human creature had a foretaste of heaven it was Honora during the few weeks that followed this happy day. The bitterness in the soul of Owen vanished like a dream, and with it went regret, and vain longing, and the madness which at odd moments sprang from these emotions. His martyrdom, so long and ferocious, would end in the glory of a beautiful sunset, the light of heaven in his heart, shining in his face. He lay forever beyond the fire of time and injustice. Every morning Honora prepared the little altar in the sick-room, and Monsignor brought the Blessed Sacrament. Arthur answered the prayers and gazed with awe upon the glorified face of the father, with something like anger upon the exalted face of the daughter; for the two were gone suddenly beyond him. Every day certain books provided by Monsignor were read to the dying man by the daughter or the son; describing the migration of the Irish all over the English-speaking world, their growth to consequence and power. Owen had to hear the figures of this growth, see and touch the journals printed by the scattered race, and to hear the editorials which spoke their success, their assurance, their convictions, their pride. Then he laughed so sweetly, so naturally, chuckled so mirthfully that Honora had to weep and thank God for this holy mirthfulness, which sounded like the spontaneous, careless, healthy mirth of a boy. Monsignor came evenings to explain, interpret, put flesh and life into the reading of the day with his vivid and pointed comment. Ledwith walked in wonderland. "The hand of God is surely there," was his one saying. The last day of his pilgrimage he had a long private talk with Arthur. They had indeed become father and son, and their mutual tenderness was deep. Honora knew from the expression of the two men that a new element had entered into her father's happiness. "I free you from your promise, my child," said Ledwith, "my most faithful, most tender child. It is the glory of men that the race is never without such children as you. You are free from any bond. It is my wish that you accept your release." She accepted smiling, to save him from the stress of emotion. Then he wished to see the cathedral in the light of the afternoon sun, and Arthur opened the door of the sick-room. The dying man could see from his pillow the golden spires, and the shining roof, that spoke to him so wonderfully of the triumph of his race in a new land, the triumph which had been built up in the night, unseen, uncared for, unnoticed. "God alone has the future," he said. Once he looked at Honora, once more, with burning eyes, that never could look enough on that loved child. With his eyes on the great temple, smiling, he died. They thought he had fallen asleep in his weakness. Honora took his head in her arms, and Arthur Dillon stood beside her and wept. CHAPTER XXVI. THE FALL OF LIVINGSTONE. The ending of Quincy Livingstone's career in England promised to be like the setting of the sun: his glory fading on the hills of Albion only to burn with greater splendor in his native land: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court! He needed the elevation. True, his career at court had been delightful, from the English point of view even brilliant; the nobility had made much of him, if not as much as he had made of the nobility; the members of the government had seriously praised him, far as they stood from Lord Constantine's theory of American friendship. However pleasant these things looked to the Minister, of what account could they be to a mere citizen returning to private life in New York? Could they make up for the failures of the past year at home, the utter destruction of his pet schemes for the restraint of the Irish in the land of the Puritans? What disasters! The alliance thrust out of consideration by the strong hand of Birmingham; the learned Fritters chased from the platform by cold audiences, and then from the country by relentless ridicule; Sister Claire reduced to the rank of a tolerated criminal, a ticket-of-leave girl; and the whole movement discredited! Fortunately these calamities remained unknown in London. The new honors, however, would hide the failure and the shame. His elevation was certain. The President had made known his intention, and had asked Minister Livingstone to be ready within a short time to sail for home for final consultation. His departure from the court of St. James would be glorious, and his welcome home significant; afterwards his place would be amongst the stars. He owned the honorable pride that loves power and place, when these are worthy, but does not seek them. From the beginning the Livingstones had no need to run after office. It always sought them, receiving as rich a lustre as it gave in the recognition of their worth. His heart grew warm that fortune had singled him out for the loftiest place in his country's gift. To die chief-justice atoned for life's shortcomings. Life itself was at once steeped in the color and perfume of the rose. Felicitations poured in from the great. The simplicities of life suddenly put on a new charm, the commonplaces a new emphasis. My Lord Tomnoddy's 'how-de-do' was uttered with feeling, men took a second look at him, the friends of a season felt a warmth about their language, if not about the heart, in telling of his coming dignity. The government people shook off their natural drowsiness to measure the facts, to understand that emotion should have a share in uttering the words of farewell. "Oh, my _dear_, DEAR Livingstone!" cried the Premier as he pressed his hand vigorously at their first meeting after the news had been given out. Society sang after the same fashion. Who could resist the delight of these things? His family and friends exulted. Lovable and deep-hearted with them, harsh as he might be with opponents, their gladness gave him joy. The news spread among the inner circles with due reserve, since no one forgot the distance between the cup and the lip; but to intimates the appointment was said to be a certainty, and confirmation by the Senate as sure as anything mortal. Of course the Irish would raise a clamor, but no arm among them had length or strength enough to snatch away the prize. Not in many years had Livingstone dipped so deeply into the waters of joy as in the weeks that followed the advice from the President. Arthur Dillon knew that mere opposition would not affect Livingstone's chances. His position was too strong to be stormed, he learned upon inquiry in Washington. The political world was quiet to drowsiness, and the President so determined in his choice that candidates would not come forward to embarrass his nominee. The public accepted the rumor of the appointment with indifference, which remained undisturbed when a second rumor told of Irish opposition. But for Arthur's determination the selection of a chief-justice would have been as dull as the naming of a consul to Algiers. "We can make a good fight," was Grahame's conclusion, "but the field belongs to Livingstone." "Chance is always kind to the unfit," said Arthur, "because the Irish are good-natured." "I don't see the connection." "I should have said, because mankind is so. In this case Quincy gets the prize, because the Irish think he will get it." "You speak like the oracle," said Grahame. "Well, the fight must be made, a stiff one, to the last cartridge. But it won't be enough, mere opposition. There must be another candidate. We can take Quincy in front; the candidate can take him in the rear. It must not be seen, only said, that the President surrendered to Irish pressure. There's the plan: well-managed opposition, and another candidate. We can see to the first, who will be the other?" They were discussing that point without fruit when Anne knocked at the door of the study, and entered in some anxiety. "Is it true, what I heard whispered," said she, "that they will soon be looking for a minister to England, that Livingstone is coming back?" "True, mother dear," and he rose to seat her comfortably. "But if you can find us a chief-justice the good man will not need to come back. He can remain to help keep patriots in English prisons." "Why I want to make sure, you know, is that Vandervelt should get the English mission this time without fail. I wouldn't have him miss it for the whole world." "There's your man," said Grahame. "Better than the English mission, mother," Arthur said quickly, "would be the chief-justiceship for so good a man as Vandervelt. If you can get him to tell his friends he wants to be chief-justice, I can swear that he will get one place or the other. I know which one he would prefer. No, not the mission. That's for a few years, forgotten honors. The other's for life, lasting honor. Oh, how Vandervelt must sigh for that noble dais, the only throne in the Republic, the throne of American justice. Think, how Livingstone would defile it! The hater and persecutor of a wronged and hounded race, who begrudges us all but the honors of slavery, how could he understand and administer justice, even among his own?" "What are you raving about, Artie?" she complained. "I'll get Vandervelt to do anything if it's the right thing for him to do; only explain to me what you want done." He explained so clearly that she was filled with delight. With a quickness which astonished him, she picked up the threads of the intrigue; some had their beginning five years back, and she had not forgotten. Suddenly the root of the affair bared itself to her: this son of hers was doing battle for his own. She had forgotten Livingstone long ago, and therefore had forgiven him. Arthur had remembered. Her fine spirit stirred dubious Grahame. "Lave Vandervelt to me," she said, for her brogue came back and gently tripped her at times, "and do you young men look after Livingstone. I have no hard feelings against him, but, God forgive me, when I think of Louis Everard, and all that Mary suffered, and Honora, and the shame put upon us by Sister Claire, something like hate burns me. Anyway we're not worth bein' tramped upon, if we let the like of him get so high, when we can hinder it." "Hurrah for the Irish!" cried Grahame, and the two cheered her as she left the room to prepare for her share of the labor. The weight of the work lay in the swift and easy formation of an opposition whose strength and temper would be concealed except from the President, and whose action would be impressive, consistent, and dramatic. The press was to know only what it wished to know, without provocation. The main effort should convince the President of the unfitness of one candidate and the fitness of the other. There were to be no public meetings or loud denunciations. What cared the officials for mere cries of rage? Arthur found his task delightful, and he worked like a smith at the forge, heating, hammering, and shaping his engine of war. When ready for action, his mother had won Vandervelt, convinced him that his bid for the greater office would inevitably land him in either place. He had faith in her, and she had prophesied his future glory! Languidly the journals gave out in due time the advent of another candidate for the chief-justiceship, and also cloudy reports of Irish opposition to Livingstone. No one was interested but John Everard, still faithful to the Livingstone interest in spite of the gibes of Dillon and Grahame. The scheme worked so effectively that Arthur did not care to have any interruptions from this source. The leaders talked to the President singly, in the order of their importance, against his nominee, on the score of party peace. What need to disturb the Irish by naming a man who had always irritated and even insulted them? The representation in the House would surely suffer by his action, because in this way only could the offended people retaliate. They detested Livingstone. Day after day this testimony fairly rained upon the President, unanimous, consistent, and increasing in dignity with time, each protester seeming more important than he who just went out the door. Inquiries among the indifferent proved that the Irish would give much to see Livingstone lose the honors. And always in the foreground of the picture of protest stood the popular and dignified Vandervelt surrounded by admiring friends! Everard had the knack of ferreting out obscure movements. When this intrigue was laid bare he found Arthur Dillon at his throat on the morning he had chosen for a visit to the President. To promise the executive support from a strong Irish group in the appointment of Livingstone would have been fatal to the opposition. Hence the look which Arthur bestowed on Everard was as ugly as his determination to put the marplot in a retreat for the insane, if no other plan kept him at home. "I want to defeat Livingstone," said Arthur, "and I think I have him defeated. You had better stay at home. You are hurting a good cause." "I am going to destroy that good cause," John boasted gayly. "You thought you had the field to yourself. And you had, only that I discovered your game." "It's a thing to be proud of," Arthur replied sadly, "this steady support of the man who would have ruined your boy. Keep quiet. You've got to have the truth rammed down your throat, since you will take it in no other way. This Livingstone has been plotting against your race for twenty years. It may not matter to a disposition as crooked as yours, that he opened the eyes of English government people to the meaning of Irish advance in America, that he is responsible for Fritters, for the alliance, for McMeeter, for the escaped nun, for her vile _Confessions_, for the kidnapping societies here. You are cantankerous enough to forget that he used his position in London to do us harm, and you won't see that he will do as much with the justiceship. Let these things pass. If you were a good Catholic one might excuse your devotion to Livingstone on the score that you were eager to return good for evil. But you're a half-cooked Catholic, John. Let that pass too. Have you no manhood left in you? Are you short on self-respect? This man brought out and backed the woman who sought to ruin your son, to break your wife's heart, to destroy your own happiness. With his permission she slandered the poor nuns with tongue and pen, a vile woman hired to defile the innocent. And for this man you throw dirt on your own, for this man you are going to fight your own that he may get honors which he will shame. Isn't it fair to think that you are going mad, Everard?" "Don't attempt," said the other in a fury, "to work off your oratory on me. I am going to Washington to expose your intrigues against a gentleman. What! am I to tremble at your frown----?" "Rot, man! Who asked you to tremble? I saved your boy from Livingstone, and I shall save you from yourself, even if I have to put you in an asylum for the harmless insane. Don't you believe that Livingstone is the patron of Sister Claire? that he is indirectly responsible for that scandal?" "I never did, and I never shall," with vehemence. "You are one of those that can prove anything----" "If you were sure of his responsibility, would you go to Washington?" "Haven't I the evidence of my own senses? Were not all Livingstone's friends on the committee which exposed Sister Claire?" "Because we insisted on that or a public trial, and they came with sour stomachs," said Arthur, glad that he had begun to discuss the point. "Would you go to Washington if you were sure he backed the woman?" "Enough, young man. I'm off for the train. Here, Mary, my satchel----" Two strong bands were laid on his shoulders, he was pushed back into his chair, and the face which glowered on him after this astonishing violence for the moment stilled his rage and astonishment. "Would you go to Washington if you were sure Livingstone backed Sister Claire?" came the relentless question. "No, I wouldn't," he answered vacantly. "Do you wish to be made sure of it?" He began to turn purple and to bluster. "Not a word," said his master, "not a cry. Just answer that question. Do you wish to be made sure of this man's atrocious guilt and your own folly?" "I want to know what is the meaning of this," Everard sputtered, "this violence? In my own house, in broad day, like a burglar." "Answer the question." Alarm began to steal over Everard, who was by no means a brave man. Had Arthur Dillon, always a strange fellow, gone mad? Or was this scene a hint of murder? The desperate societies to which Dillon was said to belong often indulged in violence. It had never occurred to him before that these secret forces must be fighting Livingstone through Dillon. They would never permit him to use his influence at Washington in the Minister's behalf. Dreadful! He must dissemble. "If you can make me sure, I am willing," he said meekly. "Read that, then," and Arthur placed his winning card, as he thought, in his hands; the private confession of Sister Claire as to the persons who had assisted her in her outrageous schemes; and the chief, of course, was Livingstone. Everard read it with contempt. "Legally you know what her testimony is worth," said he. "You accepted her testimony as to her own frauds, and so did the whole committee." "We had to accept the evidence of our own senses." Obstinate to the last was Everard. "You will not be convinced," said Arthur rudely, "but you can be muzzled. I say again: keep away from Washington, and keep your hands off my enterprise. You have some idea of what happens to men like you for interfering. If I meet you in Washington, or find any trace of your meddling in the matter, here is what I shall do; this whole scandal of the escaped nun shall be reopened, this confession shall be printed, and the story of Louis' adventure, from that notable afternoon at four o'clock until his return, word for word, with portraits of his interesting family, of Sister Claire, all the details, will be given to the journals. Do you understand? Meanwhile, study this problem in psychology: how long will John Everard be able to endure life after I tell the Irish how he helped to enthrone their bitterest enemy?" He did not wait for an answer, but left the baffled man to wrestle with the situation, which must have worsted him, for his hand did not appear in the game at Washington. Very smoothly the plans of Arthur worked to their climax. The friends of Vandervelt pressed his cause as urgently and politely as might be, and with increasing energy as the embarrassment of the President grew. The inherent weakness of Vandervelt's case appeared to the tireless Dillon more appalling in the last moments than at the beginning: the situation had no logical outcome. It was merely a question whether the President would risk a passing unpopularity. He felt the absence of Birmingham keenly, the one man who could say to the executive with authority, this appointment would be a blunder. Birmingham being somewhere on the continent, out of reach of appeals for help, his place was honorably filled by the General of the Army, with an influence, however, purely sentimental. Arthur accompanied him for the last interview with the President. Only two days intervened before the invitation would be sent to Livingstone to return home. The great man listened with sympathy to the head of the army making his protest, but would promise nothing; he had fixed an hour however for the settlement of the irritating problem; if they would call the next morning at ten, he would give them his unalterable decision. Feeling that the decision must be against his hopes, Arthur passed a miserable night prowling with Grahame about the hotel. Had he omitted any point in the fight? Was there any straw afloat which could be of service? Doyle used his gift of poetry to picture for him the return of Livingstone, and his induction into office; the serenity of mind, the sense of virtue and patriotism rewarded, his cold contempt of the defeated opposition and their candidate, the matchless dignity, which would exalt Livingstone to the skies as the Chief-Justice. Their only consolation was the fight itself, which had shaken for a moment the edifice of the Minister's fame. The details went to London from friends close to the President, and enabled Livingstone to measure the full strength of a young man's hatred. The young man should be attended to after the struggle. There was no reason to lose confidence. While the factions were still worrying, the cablegram came with the request that he sail on Saturday for home, the equivalent of appointment. When reading it at the Savage Club, whither a special messenger had followed him, the heavy mustache and very round spectacles of Birmingham rose up suddenly before him, and they exchanged greetings with the heartiness of exiles from the same land. The Minister remembered that his former rival had no share in the attempt to deprive him of his coming honors, and Birmingham recalled the rumor picked up that day in the city. "I suppose there's no truth in it," he said. The Minister handed him the cablegram. "Within ten days," making a mental calculation, "I should be on my way back to London, with the confirmation of the Senate practically secured." "When it comes I shall be pleased to offer my congratulations," Birmingham replied, and the remark slightly irritated Livingstone. Could he have seen what happened during the next few hours his sleep would have lost its sweetness. Birmingham went straight to the telegraph office, and sent a cipher despatch to his man of business, ordering him to see the President that night in Washington, and to declare in his name, with all the earnestness demanded by the situation, that the appointment of Livingstone would mean political death to him and immense embarrassment to his party for years. As it would be three in the morning before a reply would reach London, Birmingham went to bed with a good conscience. Thus, while the two young men babbled all night in the hotel, and thought with dread of the fatal hour next morning, wire, and train, and business man flew into the capital and out of it, carrying one man's word in and another man's glory out, fleet, silent, unrecognized, unhonored, and unknown. At breakfast Birmingham read the reply from his business man with profound satisfaction. At breakfast the Minister read a second cablegram with a sudden recollection of Birmingham's ominous words the night before. He knew that he would need no congratulations, for the prize had been snatched away forever. The cablegram informed him that he should not sail on Saturday, and that explanations would follow. For a moment his proud heart failed him. Bitterness flowed in on him, so that the food in his mouth became tasteless. What did he care that his enemies had triumphed? Or, that he had been overthrown? The loss of the vision which had crowned his life, and made a hard struggle for what he thought the fit and right less sordid, even beautiful; that was a calamity. He had indulged it in spite of mental protests against the dangerous folly. The swift imagination, prompted by all that was Livingstone in him, had gone over the many glories of the expected dignity; the departure from beautiful and flattering England, the distinction of the return to his beloved native land, the splendid interval before the glorious day, the crowning honors amid the applause of his own, and the long sweet afternoon of life, when each day would bring its own distinction! He had had his glimpse of Paradise. Oh, never, never would life be the same for him! He began to study the reasons for his ill-success.... At ten o'clock that day the President informed the General of the Army in Mr. Dillon's presence that he had sent the name of Hon. Van Rensselaer Vandervelt to the Senate for the position of Chief-Justice! THE TEST OF DISAPPEARANCE. CHAPTER XXVII. A PROBLEM OF DISAPPEARANCE. After patient study of the disappearance of Horace Endicott, for five years, Richard Curran decided to give up the problem. All clues had come to nothing. Not the faintest trace of the missing man had been found. His experience knew nothing like it. The money earned in the pursuit would never repay him for the loss of self-confidence and of nerve, due to study and to ill success. But for his wife he would have withdrawn long ago from the search. "Since you have failed," she said, "take up my theory. You will find that man in Arthur Dillon." "That's the strongest reason for giving up," he replied. "Once before I felt my mind going from insane eagerness to solve the problem. It would not do to have us both in the asylum at once." "I made more money in following my instincts, Dick, than you have made in chasing your theories. Instinct warned me years ago that Arthur Dillon is another than what he pretends. It warns me now that he is Horace Endicott. At least before you give up for good, have a shy at my theory." "Instinct! Theory! It is pure hatred. And the hate of a woman can make her take an ass for Apollo." "No doubt I hate him. Oh, how I hate that man ... and young Everard...." "Or any man that escapes you," he filled in with sly malice. "Be careful, Dick," she screamed at him, and he apologized. "That hate is more to me than my child. It will grow big enough to kill him yet. But apart from hate, Arthur Dillon is not the man he seems. I could swear he is Horace Endicott. Remember all I have told you about his return. He came back from California about the time Endicott disappeared. I was playing Edith Conyngham then with great success, though not to crowded houses." She laughed heartily at the recollection. "I remarked to myself even then that Anne Dillon ... she's the choice hypocrite ... did not seem easy in showing the letter which told of his coming back, how sorry he was for his conduct, how happy he would make her with the fortune he had earned." "All pure inference," said Curran. "Twenty men arrived home in New York about the same time with fortunes from the mines, and some without fortunes from the war." "Then how do you account for this, smart one? Never a word of his life in California from that day to this. Mind that. No one knows, or seems to know, just where he had been, just how he got his money ... you understand ... all the little bits o' things that are told, and guessed, and leak out in a year. I asked fifty people, I suppose, and all they knew was: California. You'd think Judy Haskell knew, and she told me everything. What had she to tell? that no one dared to ask him about such matters." "Dillon is a very close man." "Endicott had to be among that long-tongued Irish crowd. I watched him. He was stupid at first ... stuck to the house ... no one saw him for weeks ... except the few. He listened and watched ... I saw him ... his eyes and his ears ought to be as big as a donkey's from it ... and he said nothing. They made excuses for a thing that everyone saw and talked about. He was ill. I say he wanted to make no mistakes; he was learning his part; there was nothing of the Irish in him, only the sharp Yankee. It made me wonder for weeks what was wrong. He looked as much like the boy that ran away as you do. And then I had no suspicions, mind you. I believed Anne Dillon's boy had come back with a fortune, and I was thinking how I could get a good slice of it." "And you didn't get a cent," Curran remarked. "He hated me from the beginning. It takes one that is playing a part to catch another in the same business. After a while he began to bloom. He got more Irish than the Irish. There's no Yankee living, no Englishman, can play the Irishman. He can give a good imitation maybe, d'ye hear? That's what Dillon gave. He did everything that young Dillon used to do before he left home ... a scamp he was too. He danced jigs, flattered the girls, chummed with the ditch-diggers and barkeepers ... and he hated them all, women and men. The Yankees hate the Irish as easy as they breathe. I tell you he had forgotten nothing that he used to do as a boy. And the fools that looked on said, oh, it's easy to see he was sick, for now that he is well we can all recognize our old dare-devil, Arthur." "He's dare-devil clear enough," commented her husband. "First point you've scored," she said with contempt. "Horace Endicott was a milksop: to run away when he should have killed the two idiots. Dillon is a devil, as I ought to know. But the funniest thing was his dealings with his mother. She was afraid of him ... as much as I am ... she is till this minute. Haven't I seen her look at him, when she dared to say a sharp thing? And she's a good actress, mind you. It took her years to act as a mother can act with a son." "Quite natural, I think. He went away a boy, came back a rich man, and was able to boss things, having the cash." "You think! You! I've seen ten years of your thinking! Well, I thought too. I saw a chance for cash, where I smelled a mystery. Do you know that he isn't a Catholic? Do you know that he's strange to all Catholic ways? that he doesn't know how to hear Mass, to kneel when he enters a pew, to bless himself when he takes the holy water at the door? Do you know that he never goes to communion? And therefore he never goes to confession. Didn't I watch for years, so that I might find out what was wrong with him, and make some money?" "All that's very plausible," said her husband. "Only, there are many Catholics in this town, and in particular the Californians, that forgot as much as he forgot about their religion, and more." "But he is not a Catholic," she persisted. "There's an understanding between him and Monsignor O'Donnell. They exchange looks when they meet. He visits the priest when he feels like it, but in public they keep apart. Oh, all round, that Arthur Dillon is the strangest fellow; but he plays his part so well that fools like you, Dick, are tricked." "You put a case well, Dearie. But it doesn't convince me. However," for he knew her whim must be obeyed, "I don't mind trying again to find Horace Endicott in this Arthur Dillon." "And of course," with a sneer, "you'll begin with the certainty that there's nothing in the theory. What can the cleverest man discover, when he's sure beforehand that there's nothing to discover?" "My word, Colette, if I take up the matter, I'll convince you that you're wrong, or myself that you're right. And I'll begin right here this minute. I believe with you that we have found Endicott at last. Then the first question I ask myself is: who helped Horace Endicott to become Arthur Dillon?" "Monsignor O'Donnell of course," she answered. "Then Endicott must have known the priest before he disappeared: known him so as to trust him, and to get a great favor from him? Now, Sonia didn't know that fact." "That fool of a woman knows nothing, never did, never will," she snapped. "Well, for the sake of peace let us say he was helped by Monsignor, and knew the priest a little before he went away. Monsignor helped him to find his present hiding-place; quite naturally he knew Mrs. Dillon, how her son had gone and never been heard of: and he knew it would be a great thing for her to have a son with an income like Endicott's. The next question is: how many people know at this moment who Dillon really is?" "Just two, sir. He's a fox ... they're three foxes ... Monsignor, Anne Dillon, and Arthur himself. I know, for I watched 'em all, his uncle, his friends, his old chums ... the fellows he played with before he ran away ... and no one knows but the two that had to know ... sly Anne and smooth Monsignor. They made the money that I wasn't smart enough to get hold of." "Then the next question is: is it worth while to make inquiries among the Irish, his friends and neighbors, the people that knew the real Dillon?" "You won't find out any more than I've told you, but you may prove how little reason they have for accepting him as the boy that ran away." "After that it would be necessary to search California." "Poor Dick," she interrupted with compassion, smoothing his beard. "You are really losing your old cleverness. Search California! Can't you see yet the wonderful 'cuteness of this man, Endicott? He settled all that before he wrote the letter to Anne Dillon, saying that her son was coming home. He found out the career of Arthur Dillon in California. If he found that runaway he sent him off to Australia with a lump of money, to keep out of sight for twenty years. Did the scamp need much persuading? I reckon not. He had been doing it for nothing ten years. Or, perhaps the boy was dead: then he had only to make the proper connections with his history up to the time of his death. Or he may have disappeared forever, and that made the matter all the simpler for Endicott. Oh, you're not clever, Dick," and she kissed him to sweeten the bitterness of the opinion. "I'm not convinced," he said cheerfully. "Then tell me what to do." "I don't know myself. Endicott took his money with him. Where does Arthur Dillon keep his money? How did it get there? Where was it kept before that? How is he spending it just now? Does he talk in his sleep? Are there any mementoes of his past in his private boxes? Could he be surprised into admissions of his real character by some trick, such as bringing him face to face on a sudden with Sonia? Wouldn't that be worth seeing? Just like the end of a drama. You know the marks on Endicott's body, birthmarks and the like ... are they on Dillon's body? The boy that ran away must have had some marks.... Judy Haskell would know ... are they on Endicott's body?" "You've got the map of the business in that pretty head perfect," said Curran in mock admiration. "But don't you see, my pet, that if this man is as clever as you would have him he has already seen to these things? He has removed the birthmarks and peculiarities of Horace, and adopted those of Arthur? You'll find it a tangled business the deeper you dive into it." "Well, it's your business to dive deeper than the tangle," she answered crossly. "If I had your practice----" "You would leave me miles behind, of course. Here's the way I would reason about this thing: Horace Endicott is now known as Arthur Dillon; he has left no track by which Endicott can be traced to his present locality; but there must be a very poor connection between the Dillon at home and the real Dillon in California, in Australia, or in his grave; if we can trace the real Arthur Dillon then we take away the foundations of his counterfeit. Do you see? I say a trip to California and a clean examination there, after we have done our best here to pick flaws in the position of the gentleman who has been so cruel to my pet. He must get his punishment for that, I swear." "Ah, there's the rub," she whimpered in her childish way. "I hate him, and I love him. He's the finest fellow in the world. He has the strength of ten. See how he fought the battles of the Irish against his own. One minute I could tear him like a wolf, and now I could let him tear me to pieces. You are fond of him too, Dick." "I would follow him to the end of the world, through fire and flood and fighting," said the detective with feeling. "He loves Ireland, he loves and pities our poor people, he is spending his money for them. But I could kill him just the same for his cruelty to you. He's a hard man, Colette." "Now I know what you are trying to do," she said sharply. "You think you can frighten me by telling me what I know already. Well, you can't." "No, no," he protested, "I was thinking of another thing. We'll come to the danger part later. There is one test of this man that ought to be tried before all others. When I have sounded the people about Arthur Dillon, and am ready for California, Sonia Endicott should be brought here to have a good look at him in secret first; and then, perhaps, in the open, if you thought well of it." "Why shouldn't I think well of it? But will it do any good, and mayn't it do harm? Sonia has no brains. If you can't see any resemblance between Arthur and the pictures of Horace Endicott, what can Sonia see?" "The eyes of hate, and the eyes of love," said he sagely. "Then I'd be afraid to bring them together," she admitted whispering again, and cowering into his arms. "If he suspects I am hunting him down, he will have no pity." "No doubt of it," he said thoughtfully. "I have always felt the devil in him. Endicott was a fat, gay, lazy sport, that never so much as rode after the hounds. Now Arthur Dillon has had his training in the mines. That explains his dare-devil nature." "And Horace Endicott was betrayed by the woman he loved," she cried with sudden fierceness. "That turns a man sour quicker than all the mining-camps in the world. That made him lean and terrible like a wolf. That sharpened his teeth, and gave him a taste for woman's blood. That's why he hates me." "You're wrong again, my pet. He has a liking for you, but you spoil it by laying hands on his own. You saw his looks when he was hunting for young Everard." "Oh, how he frightens me," and she began to walk the room in a rage. "How I would like to throw off this fear and face him and fight him, as I face you. I'll do it if the terror kills me. I shall not be terrified by any man. You shall hunt him down, Dick Curran. Begin at once. When you are ready send for Sonia. I'll bring them together myself, and take the responsibility. What can he do but kill me?" Sadness came over the detective as she returned to her seat on his knee. "He is not the kind, little girl," said he, "that lays hands on a woman or a man outside of fair, free, open fight before the whole world." "What do you mean?" knowing very well what he meant. "If he found you on his trail," with cunning deliberation, so that every word beat heart and brain like a hammer, "and if he is really Horace Endicott, he would only have to give your character and your address----" "To the dogs," she shrieked in a sudden access of horror. Then she lay very still in his arms, and the man laughed quietly to himself, sure that he had subdued her and driven her crazy scheme into limbo. The wild creature had one dread and by reason of it one master. Never had she been so amenable to discipline as under Dillon's remote and affable authority. Curran had no fear of consequences in studying the secret years of Arthur Dillon's existence. The study might reveal things which a young man preferred to leave in the shadows, but would not deliver up to Sonia her lost Horace; and even if Arthur came to know what they were doing, he could smile at Edith's vagaries. "What shall we do?" he ventured to say at last. "Find Horace Endicott in Arthur Dillon," was the unexpected answer, energetic, but sighed rather than spoken. "I fear him, I love him, I hate him, and I'm going to destroy him before he destroys me. Begin to-night." CHAPTER XXVIII. A FIRST TEST. Curran could not study the Endicott problem. His mind had lost edge in the vain process, getting as confused over details as the experimenter in perpetual motion after an hundred failures. In favor of Edith he said to himself that her instincts had always been remarkable, always helpful; and her theory compared well with the twenty upon which he had worked years to no purpose. Since he could not think the matter out, he went straight on in the fashion which fancy had suggested. Taking it for granted that Dillon and Endicott were the same man, he must establish the connection; that is, discover the moment when Horace Endicott passed from his own into the character of Arthur Dillon. Two persons would know the fact: Anne Dillon and her son. Four others might have knowledge of it; Judy, the Senator, Louis, and Monsignor. A fifth might be added, if the real Arthur Dillon were still living in obscurity, held there by the price paid him for following his own whim. Others would hardly be in the secret. The theory was charming in itself, and only a woman like Edith, whose fancy had always been sportive, would have dreamed it. The detective recalled Arthur's interest in his pursuit of Endicott; then the little scenes on board the _Arrow_; and grew dizzy to think of the man pursued comparing his own photograph with his present likeness, under the eyes of the detective who had grown stale in the chase of him. He knew of incidents quite as remarkable, which had a decent explanation afterwards, however. He went about among the common people of Cherry Hill, who had known Arthur Dillon from his baptism, had petted him every week until he disappeared, and now adored him in his success. He renewed acquaintance with them, and heaped them with favors. Loitering about in their idling places, he threw out the questions; hints, surmises, which might bring to the surface their faith in Arthur Dillon. He reported the result to Edith. "Not one of them" said he, "but would go to court and swear a bushel of oaths that Arthur Dillon is the boy who ran away. They have their reasons too; how he dances, and sings, and plays the fiddle, and teases the girls, just as he did when a mere strip of a lad; how the devil was always in him for doing the thing that no one looked for; how he had no fear of even the priest, or of the wildest horse; and sought out terrible things to do and to dare, just as now he shakes up your late backers, bishops, ministers, ambassadors, editors, or plots against England; all as if he earned a living that way." She sneered at this bias, and bade him search deeper. It was necessary to approach the Senator on the matter. He secured from him a promise that their talk would remain a secret, not only because the matter touched one very dear to the Senator, but also because publicity might ruin the detective himself. If the Senator did not care to give his word, there would be no talk, but his relative might also be exposed to danger. The Senator was always gracious with Curran. "Do you know anything about Arthur's history in California?" and his lazy eyes noted every change in the ruddy, handsome face. "Never asked him but one question about it. He answered that straight, and never spoke since about it. Nothing wrong, I hope?" the Senator answered with alarm. "Lots, I guess, but I don't know for sure. Here are the circumstances. Think them out for yourself. A crowd of sharp speculators in California mines bought a mine from Arthur Dillon when he was settling up his accounts to come home to his mother. As trouble arose lately about that mine, they had to hunt up Arthur Dillon. They send their agent to New York, he comes to Arthur, and has a talk with him. Then he goes back to his speculators, and declares to them that this Arthur Dillon is not the man who sold the mine. So the company, full of suspicion, offers me the job of looking up the character of Arthur, and what he had been doing these ten years. They say straight out that the real Arthur Dillon has been put out of the way, and that the man who is holding the name and the stakes here in New York is a fraud." This bit of fiction relieved the Senator's mind. "A regular cock-and-bull story," said he with indignation. "What's their game? Did you tell them what we think of Artie? Would his own mother mistake him? Or even his uncle? If they're looking for hurt, tell them they're on the right road." "No, no," said Curran, "these are straight men. But if doubt is cast on a business transaction, they intend to clear it away. It would be just like them to bring suit to establish the identity of Arthur with the Arthur Dillon who sold them the mine. Now, Senator, could you go into court and swear positively that the young man who came back from California five years ago is the nephew who ran away from home at the age of fifteen?" "Swear it till I turned blue; why, it's foolish, simply foolish. And every man, woman, and child in the district would do the same. Why don't you go and talk with Artie about it?" "Because the company doesn't wish to make a fuss until they have some ground to walk on," replied Curran easily. "When I tell them how sure the relatives and friends of Arthur are about his identity, they may drop the affair. But now, Senator, just discussing the thing as friends, you know, if you were asked in court why you were so sure Arthur is your nephew, what could you tell the court?" "If the court asked me how I knew my mother was my mother----" "That's well enough, I know. But in this case Arthur was absent ten years, in which time you never saw him, heard of him, or from him." "Good point," said the Senator musingly. "When Artie came home from California, he was sick, and I went to see him. He was in bed. Say, I'll never forget it, Curran. I saw Pat sick once at the same age ... Pat was his father, d'ye see?... and here was Pat lying before me in the bed. I tell you it shook me. I never thought he'd grow so much like his father, though he has the family features. Know him to be Pat's son? Why, if he told me himself he was any one else, I wouldn't believe him." Evidently the Senator knew nothing of Horace Endicott and recognised Arthur Dillon as his brother's son. The detective was not surprised; neither was Edith at the daily report. "There isn't another like him on earth," she said with the pride of a discoverer. "Keep on until you find his tracks, here or in California." Curran had an interesting chat with Judy Haskell on a similar theme, but with a different excuse from that which roused the Senator. The old lady knew the detective only as Arthur's friend. He approached her mysteriously, with a story of a gold mine awaiting Arthur in California, as soon as he could prove to the courts that he was really Arthur Dillon. Judy began to laugh. "Prove that he's Arthur Dillon! Faith, an' long I'd wait for a gold mine if I had to prove I was Judy Haskell. How can any one prove themselves to be themselves, Misther Curran? Are the courts goin' crazy?" The detective explained what evidence a court would accept as proof of personality. "Well, Arthur can give that aisy enough," said she. "But he won't touch the thing at all, Mrs. Haskell. He was absent ten years, and maybe he doesn't want that period ripped up in a court. It might appear that he had a wife, you know, or some other disagreeable thing might leak out. When the lawyers get one on the witness stand, they make hares of him." "Sure enough," said Judy thoughtfully. Had she not suggested this very suspicion to Anne? The young are wild, and even Arthur could have slipped from grace in that interval of his life. Curran hoped that Arthur could prove his identity without exposing the secrets of the past. "For example," said he smoothly, with an eye for Judy's expression, "could you go to court to-morrow and swear that Arthur is the same lad that ran away from his mother fifteen years ago?" "I cud swear as manny oaths on that point as there are hairs in yer head," said Judy. "And what would you say, Mrs. Haskell, if the judge said to you: Now, madam, it's very easy for you to say you know the young man to be the same person as the runaway boy; but how do you know it? what makes you think you know it?" "I'd say he was purty sassy, indade. Of coorse I'd say that to meself, for ye can't talk to a judge as aisy an' free as to a lawyer. Well, I'd say manny pleasant things. Arthur was gone tin years, but I knew him an' he knew me the minute we set eyes on aich other. Then, agin, I knew him out of his father. He doesn't favor the mother at all, for she's light an' he's dark. There's a dale o' the Dillon in him. Then, agin, how manny things he tould me of the times we had together, an' he even asked me if Teresa Flynn, his sweetheart afore he wint off, was livin' still. Oh, as thrue as ye're sittin' there! Poor thing, she was married. An' he remembered how fond he was o' rice puddin' ice cold. An' he knew Louis Everard the minute he shtud forninst him in the door. But what's the use o' talkin'? I cud tell ye for hours all the things he said an' did to show he was Arthur Dillon." "Has he any marks on his body that would help to identify him, if he undertook to get the gold mine that belongs to him?" "Artie had only wan mark on him as a boy ... he was the most spotless child I ever saw ... an' that was a mole on his right shoulder. He tuk it wid him to California, an' he brought it back, for I saw it meself in the same spot while he was sick, an' I called his attintion to it, an' he was much surprised, for he had never thought of it wanst." "It's my opinion," said Curran solemnly, "that he can prove his identity without exposing his life in the west. I hope to persuade him to it. Maybe the photographs of himself and his father would help. Have you any copies of them?" "There's jist two. I wudn't dare to take thim out of his room, but if ye care to walk up-stairs, Mr. Curran, an' luk at thim there, ye're welcome. He an' his mother are away the night to a gran' ball." They entered Arthur's apartments together, and Judy showed the pictures of Arthur Dillon as a boy of fourteen, and of his youthful father; old daguerreotypes, but faithful and clear as a likeness. Judy rattled on for an hour, but the detective had achieved his object. She had no share in the secret. Arthur Dillon was his father's son, for her. He studied the pictures, and carefully examined the rooms, his admiration provoking Judy into a display of their beauties. With the skill and satisfaction of an artist in man-hunting, he observed how thoroughly the character of the young man displayed itself in the trifles of decoration and furnishing. The wooden crucifix with the pathetic figure in bronze on the wall over the desk, the holy water stoup at the door, carved figures of the Holy Family, a charming group, on the desk, exquisite etchings of the Christ and the Madonna after the masters, a _prie-dieu_ in the inner room with a group of works of devotion: and Edith had declared him no Catholic. Here was the refutation. "He is a pious man," Curran said. "And no wan sees it but God and himself. So much the betther, I say," Judy remarked. "Only thim that had sorra knows how to pray, an' he prays like wan that had his fill of it." The tears came into the man's eyes at the indications of Arthur's love for poor Erin. Hardness was the mark of Curran, and sin had been his lifelong delight; but for his country he had kept a tenderness and devotion that softened and elevated his nature at times. Of little use and less honor to his native land, he felt humbled in this room, whose books, pictures, and ornaments revealed thought and study in behalf of a harried and wretched people, yet the student was not a native of Ireland. It seemed profane to set foot here, to spy upon its holy privacy. He felt glad that its details gave the lie so emphatically to Edith's instincts. The astonishing thing was the absence of Californian relics and mementoes. Some photographs and water colors, whose names Curran mentally copied for future use, pictured popular scenes on the Pacific slope; but they could be bought at any art store. Surely his life in the mines, with all the luck that had come to him, must have held some great bitterness, that he never spoke of it casually, and banished all remembrances. That would come up later, but Curran had made up his mind that no secret of Arthur's life should ever see the light because he found it. Not even vengeful Edith, and she had the right to hate her enemy, should wring from him any disagreeable facts in the lad's career. So deeply the detective respected him! In the place of honor, at the foot of his bed, where his eyes rested on them earliest and latest, hung a group of portraits in oil, in the same frame, of Louis the beloved, from his babyhood to the present time: on the side wall hung a painting of Anne in her first glory as mistress of the new home in Washington Square; opposite, Monsignor smiled down in purple splendor; two miniatures contained the grave, sweet, motherly face of Mary Everard and the auburn hair and lovely face of Mona. "There are the people he loves," said Curran with emotion. "Ay, indade," Judy said tenderly, "an' did ever a wild boy like him love his own more? Night an' day his wan thought is of them. The sun rises an' sets for him behind that picther there," pointing to Louis' portraits. "If annythin' had happened to that lovely child last Spring he'd a-choked the life out o' wan woman wid his own two hands. He's aisy enough, God knows, but I'd rather jump into the say than face him when the anger is in him." "He's a terrible man," said Curran, repeating Edith's phrase. He examined some manuscript in Arthur's handwriting. How different from the careless scrawl of Horace Endicott this clear, bold, dashing script, which ran full speed across the page, yet turned with ease and leisurely from the margin. What a pity Edith could not see with her own eyes these silent witnesses to the truth. Beyond the study was a music-room, where hung his violin over some scattered music. Horace Endicott hated the practising of the art, much as he loved the opera. It was all very sweet, just what the detective would have looked for, beautiful to see. He could have lingered in the rooms and speculated on that secret and manly life, whose currents were so feebly but shiningly indicated in little things. It occurred to him that copies of the daguerreotypes, Arthur at fourteen and his father at twenty-five, would be of service in the search through California. He spoke of it to Judy. "Sure that was done years ago," said Judy cautiously. "Anne Dillon wouldn't have it known for the world, ye see, but I know that she sint a thousand o' thim to the polis in California; an' that's the way she kem across the lad. Whin he found his mother shtill mournin' him, he wrote to her that he had made his pile an' was comin' home. Anne has the pride in her, an' she wants all the world to believe he kem home of himself, d'ye see? Now kape that a secret, mind." "And do you never let on what I've been telling you," said Curran gravely. "It may come to nothing, and it may come to much, but we must be silent." She had given her word, and Judy's word was like the laws of the Medes and Persians. Curran rejoiced at the incident of the daguerreotypes, which anticipated his proposed search in California. Vainly however did he describe the result of his inquiry for Edith. She would have none of his inferences. He must try to entrap Anne Dillon and the priest, and afterwards he might scrape the surface of California. CHAPTER XXIX. THE NERVE OF ANNE. Curran laid emphasis in his account to his wife on the details of Arthur's rooms, and on the photographs which had helped to discover the lost boy in California. Edith laughed at him. "Horace Endicott invented that scheme of the photographs," said she. "The dear clever boy! If he had been the detective, not a stupid like you! I saw Arthur Dillon in church many times in four years, and I tell you he is not a Catholic born, no matter what you saw in his rooms. He's playing the part of Arthur Dillon to the last letter. Don't look at me that way, Dick or I'll scratch your face. You want to say that I am crazy over this theory, and that I have an explanation ready for all your objections." "I have nothing to say, I am just working on your lines, dearie," he replied humbly. "Just now your game is busy with an affair of the heart. He won't be too watchful, unless, as I think, he's on our tracks all the time. You ought to get at his papers." "A love affair! Our tracks!" Curran repeated in confusion. "Do you think you can catch a man like Arthur napping?" she sneered. "Is there a moment in the last four years that he has been asleep? See to it that you are not reported to him every night. But if he is in love with Honora Ledwith, there's a chance that he won't see or care to see what you are doing. She's a lovely girl. A hint of another woman would settle his chances of winning her. I can give her that. I'd like to. A woman of her stamp has no business marrying." She mused a few minutes over her own statements, while Curran stared. He began to feel that the threads of this game were not all in his hands. "You must now go to the priest and Anne Dillon," she resumed, "and say to them plump ... take the priest first ... say to them plump before they can hold their faces in shape: do you know Horace Endicott? Then watch the faces, and get what you can out of them." "That means you will have Arthur down on you next day." "Sure," catching her breath. "But it is now near the end of the season. When he comes to have it out with me, he will find himself face to face with Sonia. If it's to be a fight, he'll find a tiger. Then we can run away to California, if Sonia says so." "You are going to bring Sonia down, then?" "You suggested it. Lemme tell you what you're going to find out to-day. You're going to find out that Monsignor knew Horace Endicott. After that I think it would be all right to bring down Sonia." Little use to argue with her, or with any woman for that matter, once an idea lodged so deep in her brain. He went to see Monsignor, with the intention of being candid with him: in fact there was no other way of dealing with the priest. In his experience Curran had found no class so difficult to deal with as the clergy. They were used to keeping other people's secrets as well as their own. He did not reveal his plan to Edith, because he feared her criticism, and could not honestly follow her methods. He had not, with all his skill and cunning, her genius for ferreting. Monsignor, acquainted with him, received him coldly. Edith's instructions were, ask the question plump, watch his face, and then run to Anne Dillon before she can be warned by the Monsignor's messenger. Looking into the calm, well-drilled countenance of the priest, Curran found it impossible to surprise him so uncourteously. Anyway the detective felt sure that there would be no surprise, except at the mere question. "I would like to ask you a question, Monsignor," said Curran smoothly, "which I have no right to ask perhaps. I am looking for a man who disappeared some time ago, and the parties interested hope that you can give some information. You can tell me if the question is at all impertinent, and I will go. Do you know Horace Endicott?" There was no change in the priest's expression or manner, no starting, no betrayal of feeling. Keeping his eyes on the detective's face, he repeated the name as one utters a half-forgotten thing. "Why has that name a familiar sound?" he asked himself. "You may have read it frequently in the papers at the time Horace Endicott disappeared," Curran suggested. "Possibly, but I do not read the journals so carefully," Monsignor answered musingly. "Endicott, Endicott ... I have it ... and it brings to my mind the incident of the only railroad wreck in which I have ever had the misfortune to be ... only this time it was good fortune for one poor man." Very deliberately he told the story of the collision and of his slight acquaintance with the young fellow whose name, as well as he could remember, was Endicott. The detective handed him a photograph of the young man. "How clearly this picture calls up the whole scene," said Monsignor much pleased. "This is the very boy. Have you a copy of this? Do send me one." "You can keep that," said Curran, delighted at his progress, astonished that Edith's prophecy should have come true. Naturally the next question would be, have you seen the young man since that time? and Curran would have asked it had not the priest broken in with a request for the story of his disappearance. It was told. "Of course I shall be delighted to give what information I possess," said Monsignor. "There was no secret about him then ... many others saw him ... of course this must have been some time before he disappeared. But let me ask a question before we go any further. How did you suspect my acquaintance with a man whom I met so casually? The incident had almost faded from my mind. In fact I have never mentioned it to a soul." "It was a mere guess on the part of those interested in finding him." "Still the guess must have been prompted by some theory of the search." "I am almost ashamed to tell it," Curran said uneasily. "The truth is that my employers suspect that Horace Endicott has been hiding for years under the character of Arthur Dillon." Monsignor looked amazed for a moment and then laughed. "Interesting for Mr. Dillon and his friends, particularly if this Endicott is wanted for any crime...." "Oh, no, no," cried the detective. "It is his wife who is seeking him, a perfectly respectable man, you know ... it's a long story. We have chased many a man supposed to be Endicott, and Mr. Dillon is the latest. I don't accept the theory myself. I know Dillon is Dillon, but a detective must sift the theories of his employers. In fact my work up to this moment proves very clearly that of all our wrong chases this is the worst." "It looks absurd at first sight. I remember the time poor Mrs. Dillon sent out her photographs, scattered a few hundred of them among the police and the miners of California, in the hope of finding her lost son. That was done with my advice. She had her first response, a letter from her son, about the very time that I met young Endicott. For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone should suppose Arthur Dillon...." He picked up the photograph of Endicott again. "The two men look as much alike as I look like you. I'm glad you mentioned the connection which Dillon has with the matter. You will kindly leave me out of it until you have made inquiries of Mr. Dillon himself. It would not do, you understand, for a priest in my position to give out any details in a matter which may yet give trouble. I fear that in telling you of my meeting with Endicott I have already overstepped the limits of prudence. However, that was my fault, as you warned me. Thanks for the photograph, a very nice souvenir of a tragedy. Poor young fellow! Better had he perished in the smash-up than to go out of life in so dreary a way." "If I might venture another----" "Pardon, not another word. In any official and public way I am always ready to tell what the law requires, or charity demands." "You would be willing then to declare that Arthur Dillon----" "Is Mrs. Dillon's son? Certainly ... at any time, under proper conditions. Good morning. Don't mention it," and Curran was outside the door before his thoughts took good shape; so lost in wonder over the discovery of Monsignor's acquaintance with Endicott, that he forgot to visit Anne Dillon. Instead he hurried home with the news to Edith, and blushed with shame when she asked if he had called on Anne. She forgave his stupidity in her delight, and put him through his catechism on all that had been said and seen in the interview with Monsignor. "You are a poor stick," was her comment, and for the first time in years he approved of her opinion. "The priest steered you about and out with his little finger, and the corner of his eye. He did not give you a chance to ask if he had ever seen Horace Endicott since. Monsignor will not lie for any man. He simply refuses to answer on the ground that his position will not permit it. You will never see the priest again on this matter. Arthur Dillon will bid you stand off. Well, you see what my instinct is now! Are you more willing to believe in it when it says: Arthur Dillon is Horace Endicott?" "Not a bit, sweetheart." "I won't fight with you, since you are doing as I order. Go to Anne Dillon now. Mind, she's already prepared by this time for your visit. You may run against Arthur instead of her. While you are gone I shall write to Sonia that we have at last found a clue, and ask her to come on at once. Dillon may not give us a week to make our escape after he learns what we have been doing. We must be quick. Go, my dear old stupid, and bear in mind that Anne Dillon is the cunningest cat you've had to do with yet." She gave an imitation of the lady that was funny to a degree, and sent the detective off laughing, but not at all convinced that there was any significance in his recent discovery. He felt mortified to learn again for the hundredth time how a prejudice takes the edge off intellect. Though certain Edith's theory was wrong, why should he act like a donkey in disproving it? On the contrary his finest skill was required, and methods as safe as if Dillon were sure to turn out Endicott. He sharpened his blade for the coming duel with Anne, whom Monsignor had warned, without doubt. However, Anne had received no warning and she met Curran with her usual reserve. He was smoothly brutal. "I would like to know if you are acquainted with Mr. Horace Endicott?" said he. Anne's face remained as blank as the wall, and her manner tranquil. She had never heard the name before, for in the transactions between herself and her son only the name of Arthur Dillon had been mentioned, while of his previous life she knew not a single detail. Curran not disappointed, hastened, after a pause, to explain his own rudeness. "I never heard the name," said Anne coldly. "Nor do I see by what right you come here and ask questions." "Pardon my abruptness," said the detective. "I am searching for a young man who disappeared some years ago, and his friends are still hunting for him, still anxious, so that they follow the most absurd clues. I am forced to ask this question of all sorts of people, only to get the answer which you have given. I trust you will pardon me for my presumption for the sake of people who are suffering." His speech warned her that she had heard her son's name for the first time, that she stood on the verge of exposure; and her heart failed her, she felt that her voice would break if she ventured to speak, her knees give way if she resented this man's manner by leaving the room. Yet the weakness was only for a moment, and when it passed a wild curiosity to hear something of that past which had been a sealed book to her, to know the real personality of Arthur Dillon, burned her like a flame, and steadied her nerves. For two years she had been resenting his secrecy, not understanding his reasons. He was guarding against the very situation of this moment. "Horace Endicott," she repeated with interest. "There is no one of that name in my little circle, and I have never heard the name before. Who was he? And how did he come to be lost?" And she rose to indicate that his reply must be brief. Curran told with eloquence of the disappearance and the long search, and gave a history of Endicott's life in nice detail, pleased with the unaffected interest of this severe but elegant woman. As he spoke his eye took in every mark of feeling, every gesture, every expression. Her self-command, if she knew Horace Endicott, remained perfect; if she knew him not, her manner seemed natural. "God pity his poor people," was her fervent comment as she took her seat again. "I was angry with you at first, sir," looking at his card, "and of a mind to send you away for what looked like impertinence. But it's I would be only too glad to give you help if I could. I never even heard the young man's name. And it puzzles me, why you should come to me." "For this reason, Mrs. Dillon," he said with sincere disgust. "The people who are hunting for Horace Endicott think that Arthur Dillon is the man; or to put it in another way, that you were deceived when you welcomed back your son from California. Horace Endicott and not Arthur Dillon returned." "My God!" cried she, and sat staring at him; then rose up and began to move towards the door backwards, keeping an eye upon him. Her thought showed clear to the detective: she had been entertaining a lunatic. He laughed. "Don't go," he said. "I know what you imagine, but I'm no lunatic. I don't believe that your son is an impostor. He is a friend of mine, and I know that he is Arthur Dillon. But a man in my business must do as he is ordered by his employers. I am a detective." For a minute she hesitated with hand outstretched to the bell-rope. Her mind acted with speed; she had nothing to fear, the man was friendly, his purpose had failed, whatever it was, the more he talked the more she would learn, and it might be in her power to avert danger by policy. She went back to her seat, having left it only to act her part. Taking the hint provided by Curran, she pretended belief in his insanity, and passed to indignation at this attempt upon her happiness, her motherhood. This rage became real, when she reflected that the Aladdin palace of her life was really threatened by Curran's employers. To her the prosperity and luxury of the past five years had always been dream-like in its fabric, woven of the mists of morning, a fairy enchantment, which might vanish in an hour and leave poor Cinderella sitting on a pumpkin by the roadside, the sport of enemies, the burden of friends. How near she had been to this public humiliation! What wretches, these people who employed the detective! "My dear boy was absent ten years," she said, "and I suffered agony all that time. What hearts must some people have to wish to put me through another time like that! Couldn't any wan see that I accepted him as my son? that all the neighbors accepted him? What could a man want to deceive a poor mother so? I had nothing to give him but the love of a mother, and men care little for that, wild boys care nothing for it. He brought me a fortune, and has made my life beautiful ever since he came back. I had nothing to give him. Who is at the bottom of this thing?" The detective explained the existence and motives of a deserted, poverty-stricken wife and child. "I knew a woman would be at the bottom of it," she exclaimed viciously, feeling against Sonia a hatred which she knew to be unjust. "Well, isn't she able to recognize her own husband? If I could tell my son after ten years, when he had grown to be a man, can't she tell her own husband after a few years? Could it be that my boy played Horace Endicott in Boston and married that woman, and then came back to me?" "Oh, my dear Mrs. Dillon," cried the detective in alarm, "do not excite yourself over so trifling a thing. Your son is your son no matter what our theories may be. This Endicott was born and brought up in the vicinity of Boston, and came from a very old family. Your suspicion is baseless. Forget the whole matter I beg of you." "Have you a picture of the young man?" He handed her the inevitable photograph reluctantly, quite sure that she would have hysterics before he left, so sincere was her excitement. Anne studied the portrait with keen interest, it may be imagined, astonished to find it so different from Arthur Dillon. Had she blundered as well as the detective? Between this portrait and any of the recent photographs of Arthur there seemed no apparent resemblance in any feature. She had been exciting herself for nothing. "Wonderful are the ways of men," was her comment. "How any one ..." her brogue had left her ... "could take Arthur Dillon for this man, even supposing he was disguised now, is strange and shameful. What is to be the end of it?" "Just this, dear madam," said Curran, delighted at her returning calmness. "I shall tell them what you have said, what every one says, and they'll drop the inquiry as they have dropped about one hundred others. If they are persistent, I shall add that you are ready to go into any court in the land and swear positively that you know your own son." "Into twenty courts," she replied with fervor, and the tears, real tears came into her eyes; then, at sight of Aladdin's palace as firm as ever on its frail foundations, the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Precisely. And now if you would be kind enough to keep this matter from the ears of Mr. Dillon ... he's a great friend of mine ... I admire him ... I was with him in the little expedition to Ireland, you know ... and it was to save him pain that I came to you first ... if it could be kept quiet----" "I want it kept quiet," she said with decision, "but at the same time Arthur must know of these cruel suspicions. Oh, how my heart beats when I think of it! Without him ten years, and then to have strangers plan to take him from me altogether ... forever ... forever ... oh!" Curran perspired freely at the prospect of violent hysterics. No man could deal more rudely with the weak and helpless with right on his side, or if his plans demanded it. Before a situation like this he felt lost and foolish. "Certainly he must know in time. I shall tell him myself, as soon as I make my report of the failure of this clue to my employers. I would take it as a very great favor if you would permit me to tell him. It must come very bitter to a mother to tell her son that he is suspected of not being her son. Let me spare you that anguish." Anne played with him delightfully, knowing that she had him at her mercy, not forgetting however that the sport was with tigers. Persuaded to wait a few days while Curran made his report, in return he promised to inform her of the finding of poor Endicott at the proper moment. The detective bowed himself out, the lady smiled. A fair day's work! She had learned the name and the history of the young man known as Arthur Dillon in a most delightful way. The doubt attached to this conclusion did not disturb her. Wonderful, that Arthur Dillon should look so little like the portrait of Horace Endicott! More wonderful still that she, knowing Arthur was not her son, had come to think of him, to feel towards him, and to act accordingly, as her son! Her rage over this attempt upon the truth and the fact of their relationship grew to proportions. CHAPTER XXX. UNDER THE EYES OF HATE. Edith's inference from the interviews with the Monsignor and Anne did justice to her acuteness. The priest alone knew the true personality of Arthur. From Anne all but the fact of his disappearance had been kept, probably to guard against just such attempts as Curran's. The detective reminded her that her theory stood only because of her method of selection from his investigations. Nine facts opposed and one favored her contention: therefore nine were shelved, leaving one to support the edifice of her instincts or her suspicions. She stuck out her tongue at him. "It shows how you are failing when nine out of ten facts, gathered in a whole day's work, are worthless. Isn't that one fact, that the priest knew Horace Endicott, worth all your foolish reasonings? Who discovered it? Now, will you coax Sonia Endicott down here to have a look at this Arthur Dillon? Before we start for California?" He admitted humbly that the lady would not accept his invitation, without stern evidence of a valuable clue. The detectives had given her many a useless journey. "She'll be at the Everett House to-morrow early in the morning," said Edith proudly. "Want to know why, stupid? I sent her a message that her game had been treed at last ... by me." He waved his hands in despair. "Then you'll do the talking, Madam Mischief." "And you'll never say a word, even when asked. What! would I let you mesmerize her at the start by telling her how little you think of my idea and my plans? She would think as little of them as you do, when you got through. No! I shall tell her, I shall plan for her, I shall lead her to the point of feeling where that long experience with Horace Endicott will become of some use in piercing the disguise of Arthur Dillon. You would convince her she was not to see Horace Endicott, and of course she would see only Arthur Dillon. I'll convince her she is to see her runaway husband, and then if she doesn't I'll confess defeat." "There's a good deal in your method," he admitted in a hopeless way. "We are in for it now," she went on, scorning the compliment. "By this time Arthur Dillon knows, if he did not before, that I am up to mischief. He may fall on us any minute. He will not suffer this interference: not because he cares two cents one way or the other, but because he will not have us frightening his relatives and friends, telling every one that he is two. Keep out of his way so that he shall have to come here, and to send word first that he is coming. I'll arrange a scene for him with his Sonia. It may be sublime, and again it may be a fizzle. One way or the other, if Sonia says so, we'll fly to the west out of his way. The dear, dear boy!" "He'll _dear_ you after that scene!" "Now, do you make what attempts you may to find out where he keeps his money, he must have piles of it, and search his papers, his safe...." "He has nothing of the kind ... everything about him is as open as the day ... it's an impertinence to bother him so ... well, he can manage you, I think ... no need for me to interfere or get irritated." Then she had a tantrum, which galled the soul of Curran, except that it ended as usual in her soft whimpering, her childish murmuring, her sweet complaint against the world, and her falling asleep in his arms. Thus was he regularly conquered and led captive. They went next day at noon to visit Sonia Endicott at the Everett House, where she had established herself with her little boy and his nurse. Her reception of the Currans, while supercilious in expression, was really sincere. They represented her hope in that long search of five years, which only a vigorous hate had kept going. Marked with the characteristics of the cat, velvety to eye and touch, insolent and elusive in her glance, undisciplined, she could act a part for a time. To Horace Endicott she had played the rôle of a child of light, an elf, a goddess, for which nature had dressed her with golden hair, melting eyes of celestial blue, and exquisite form. The years had brought out the animal in her. She found it more and more difficult to repress the spite, rage, hatred, against Horace and fate, which consumed her within, and violated the external beauty with unholy touches, wrinkles, grimaces, tricks of sneering, distortions of rage. Her dreams of hatred had only one scene: a tiger in her own form rending the body of the man who had discovered and punished her with a power like omnipotence; rending him but not killing him, leaving his heart to beat and his face unmarked, that he might feel his agony and show it. "If _you_ had sent me the telegram," she remarked to Curran, "I would not have come. But this dear Colette, she is to be my good angel and lead me to success, aren't you, little devil? Ever since she took up the matter I have had my beautiful dreams once more, oh, such thrilling dreams! Like the novels of Eugene Sue, just splendid. Well, why don't you speak?" He pointed to Edith with a gesture of submission. She was hugging the little boy before the nurse took him away, teasing him into baby talk, kissing him decorously but lavishly, as if she could not get enough of him. "He's not to speak until asked," she cried. "And then only say what she thinks," he added. "La! are you fighting over it already? That's not a good sign." With a final embrace which brought a howl from young Horace, Edith gave the boy to the nurse and began her story of finding Horace Endicott in the son of Anne Dillon. She acted the story, admirably keeping back the points which would have grated on Sonia's instincts, or rather expectations. The lady, impressed, evidently felt a lack of something when Curran refused his interest and his concurrence to the description. "What do you wish me to do?" said she. "To see this Dillon and to study him, as one would a problem. The man's been playing this part, living it indeed, nearly five years. Can any one expect that the first glance will pierce his disguise? He must be watched and studied for days, and if that fetches nothing, then you must meet him suddenly, and say to him tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' If that fetches nothing, then we must go to California, and work until we get the evidence which will force him to acknowledge himself and give up his money. But by that time, if we can make sure it is he, and if we can get his money, then I would recommend one thing! Kill him!" Sonia's eyes sparkled at the thought of that sweet murder. "And wait another five years for all this," was her cynical remark. "If the question is not settled this Fall, then let it go forever," said Edith with energy. "The scheme is well enough," Sonia said lazily. "Is this Arthur Dillon handsome, a dashing blade?" "Better," murmured Edith with a smack of her lips, "a virtuous sport, who despises the sex in a way, and can master woman by a look. He is my master. And I hate him! It will be worth your time to see him and meet him." "And now you," to Curran. Sonia did not know, nor care why Edith hated Dillon. "I protest, Sonia. He will put a spell on you, and spoil our chances. Let him talk later when we have succeeded or failed." "Nonsense, you fool. I must hear both sides, but I declare now that I submit myself to you wholly. What do you say, Curran?" "Just this, madam: if this man Arthur Dillon is really your husband, then he's too clever to be caught by any power in this world. Any way you choose to take it, you will end as this search has always ended." "Why do you think him so clever? My Horace was anything but clever ... at least we thought so ... until now." "Until he has foiled every attempt to find him," said Curran. "Colette has her own ideas, but she has kept back all the details that make or unmake a case. She is so sure of her instincts! No doubt they are good." "But not everything, hey?" said the lady tenderly. "Ah, a woman's instincts lead her too far sometimes...." they all laughed. "Well, give me the details Colette left out. No winking at each other. I won't raise a hand in this matter until I have heard both sides." "This Arthur Dillon is Irish, and lives among the Irish in the old-fashioned Irish way, half in the slums, and half in the swell places...." "_Mon Dieu_, what is this I hear! The Irish! My Horace live among the Irish! That's not the man. He could live anywhere, among the Chinese, the Indians, the niggers, but with that low class of people, never!" and she threw up her hands in despair. "Did I come from Boston to pursue a low Irishman!" "You see," cried Edith. "Already he has cast his spell on you. He doesn't believe I have found your man, and he won't let you believe it. Can't you see that this Horace went to the very place where you were sure he would not go?" "You cannot tell him now from an Irishman," continued the detective. "He has an Irish mother, he is a member of Tammany Hall, he is a politician who depends on Irish voters, he joined the Irish revolutionists and went over the sea to fight England, and he's in love with an Irish girl." "Shocking! Horace never had any taste or any sense, but I know he detested the Irish around Boston. I can't believe it of him. But, as Colette says truly, he would hide himself in the very place where we least think of looking for him." "Theories have come to nothing," screamed Edith, until the lady placed her hands on her ears. "Skill and training and coolness and all that rot have come to nothing. Because I hate Arthur Dillon I have discovered Horace Endicott. Now I want to see your eyes looking at this man, eyes with hate in them, and with murder in them. They will discover more than all the stupid detectives in the country. See what hate did for Horace Endicott. He hated you, and instead of murdering you he learned to torture you. He hated you, and it made him clever. Oh, hate is a great teacher! This fool of mine loves Arthur Dillon, because he is a patriot and hates England. Hate breeds cleverness, it breeds love, it opens the mind, it will dig out Horace Endicott and his fortune, and enrich us all." "La, but you are strenuous," said the lady placidly, but impressed. She was a shallow creature in the main, and Curran compared his little wife, eloquent, glowing with feeling, dainty as a flame, to the slower-witted beauty, with plain admiration in his gaze. She deserves to succeed, he thought. Sonia came to a conclusion, languidly. "We must try the eyes of hate," was her decision. The pursuit of Arthur proved very interesting. The detective knew his habits of labor and amusement, his public haunts and loitering-places. Sonia saw him first at the opera, modestly occupying a front seat in the balcony. "Horace would never do that when he could get a box," and she leveled her glass at him. Edith mentally dubbed her a fool. However, her study of the face and figure and behavior of the man showed care and intelligence. Edith's preparation had helped her. She saw a lean, nervous young man, whose flowing black hair and full beard were streaked with gray. His dark face, hollow in the cheeks and not too well-colored with the glow of health, seemed to get light and vivacity from his melancholy eyes. Seriousness was the characteristic expression. Once he laughed, in the whole evening. Once he looked straight into her face, with so fixed, so intense an expression, so near a gaze, so intimate and penetrating, that she gave a low cry. "You have recognized him?" Edith whispered mad with joy. "No, indeed," she answered sadly, "That is not Horace Endicott. Not a feature that I recall, certainly no resemblance. I was startled because I saw just now in his look, ... he looked towards me into the glass ... an expression that seemed familiar ... as if I had seen it before, and it had hurt me then as it hurts me now." "There's a beginning," said Edith with triumph. "Next time for a nearer look." "Oh, he could never have changed so," Sonia cried with bitterness of heart. Curran secured tickets for a ball to be held by a political association in the Cherry Hill district, and placed the ladies in a quiet corner of the gallery of the hall. Arthur Dillon, as a leading spirit in the society, delighted to mingle with the homely, sincere, warm-hearted, and simple people for whom this occasion was a high festival; and nowhere did his sorrow rest so lightly on his soul, nowhere did he feel so keenly the delight of life, or give freer expression to it. Edith kept Sonia at the highest pitch of excitement and interest. "Remember," she said now, "that he probably knows you are in town, that you are here watching him; but not once will he look this way, nor do a thing other than if you were miles away. My God, to be an actor like that!" The actor played his part to perfection and to the utter disappointment of the women. The serious face shone now with smiles and color, with the flash of wit and the play of humor. Horace Endicott had been a merry fellow, but a Quaker compared with the butterfly swiftness and gaiety of this young man, who led the grand march, flirted with the damsels and chatted with the dames, danced as often as possible, joked with the men, found partners for the unlucky, and touched the heart of every rollicking moment. The old ladies danced jigs with him, proud to their marrow of the honor, and he allowed himself ... Sonia gasped at the sight ... to execute a wild Irish _pas seul_ amid the thunderous applause of the hearty and adoring company. "That man Horace Endicott!" she exclaimed with contempt. "Bah! But it's interesting, of course." "What a compliment! what acting! oh, incomparable man!" said Edith, enraged at his success before such an audience. Her husband smiled behind his hand. "You have a fine imagination, Colette, but I would not give a penny for your instinct," said Sonia. "My instinct will win just the same, but I fear we shall have to go to California. This man is too clever for commonplace people." "Arthur Dillon is a fine orator," said Curran mischievously, "and to-morrow night you shall hear him at his best on the sorrows of Ireland." Sonia laughed heartily and mockingly. Were not these same sorrows, from their constancy and from repetition, become the joke of the world? Curran could have struck her evil face for the laugh. "Was your husband a speaker?" he asked. "Horace would not demean himself to talk in public, and he couldn't make a speech to save his life. But to talk on the sorrows of Ireland ... oh, it's too absurd." "And why not Ireland's sorrows as well as those of America, or any other country?" he replied savagely. "Oh, I quite forgot that you were Irish ... a thousand pardons," she said with sneering civility. "Of course, I shall be glad to hear his description of the sorrows. An orator! It's very interesting." The occasion for the display of Arthur's powers was one of the numerous meetings for which the talking Irish are famous all over the world, and in which their clever speakers have received fine training. Even Sonia, impressed by the enthusiasm of the gathering, and its esteem for Dillon, could not withhold her admiration. Alas, it was not her Horace who poured out a volume of musical tone, vigorous English, elegant rhetoric, with the expression, the abandonment, the picturesqueness of a great actor. She shuddered at his descriptions, her heart melted and her eyes moistened at his pathos, she became filled with wonder. It was not Horace! Her husband might have developed powers of eloquence, but would have to be remade to talk in that fashion of any land. This Dillon had terrible passion, and her Horace was only a a handsome fool. She could have loved Dillon. "So you will have to arrange the little scene where I shall stand before him without warning, and murmur tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' And it must be done without delay," was her command to Edith. "It can be done perhaps to-morrow night," Edith said in a secret rage, wondering what Arthur Dillon could have seen in Sonia. "But bear in mind why I am doing this scene, with the prospects of a furious time afterwards with Dillon. I want you to see him asleep, just for ten minutes, in the light of a strong lamp. In sleep there is no disguise. When he is dressed for a part and playing it, the sharpest eyes, even the eyes of hate, may not be able to escape the glamour of the disguise. The actor asleep is more like himself. You shall look into his face, and turn it from side to side with your own hands. If you do not catch some feeling from that, strike a resemblance, I shall feel like giving up." "La, but you are an audacious creature," said Sonia, and the triviality of the remark sent Edith into wild laughter. She would like to have bitten the beauty. The detective consented to Edith's plans, in his anxiety to bring the farce to an end before the element of danger grew. Up to this point they might appeal to Arthur for mercy. Later the dogs would be upon them. As yet no sign of irritation on Arthur's part had appeared. The day after the oration on the sorrows of Erin he sent a note to Curran announcing his intention to call the same evening. Edith, amazed at her own courage in playing with the fire which in an instant could destroy her, against the warning of her husband, was bent on carrying out the scene. Dearly she loved the dramatic off the stage, spending thought and time in its arrangement. How delicious the thought of this man and his wife meeting under circumstances so wondrous after five years of separation. Though death reached her the next moment she would see it. The weakness of the plot lay in Sonia's skepticism and Arthur's knowledge that a trap was preparing. He would brush her machinery aside like a cobweb, but that did not affect the chance of his recognition by Sonia. Dillon had never lost his interest in the dancer and her husband. They attracted him. In their lives ran the same strain of madness, the madness of the furies, as in his own. Their lovable qualities were not few. Occasionally he dropped in to tease Edith over her lack of conscience, or her failures, and to discuss the cause of freedom with the smooth and flinty Curran. Wild humans have the charm of their wilderness. One must not forget their teeth and their claws. This night the two men sat alone. Curran filled the glasses and passed the cigars. Arthur made no comment on the absence of Edith. He might have been aware that the curtains within three feet of his chair, hiding the room beyond, concealed the two women, whose eyes, peering through small glasses fixed in the curtains, studied his face. He might even have guessed that his easy chair had been so placed as to let the light fall upon him while Curran sat in the dim light beyond. The young man gave no sign, spoke freely with Curran on the business of the night, and acted as usual. "Of course it must be stopped at once," he said. "Very much flattered of course that I should be taken for Horace Endicott ... you gave away Tom Jones' name at last ... but these things, so trifling to you, jar the nerves of women. Then it would never do for me, with my little career in California unexplained, to have stories of a double identity ... is that what you call it?... running around. Of course I know it's that devil Edith, presuming always on good nature ... that's _her_ nature ... but if you don't stop it, why I must." "You'll have to do it, I think," the detective replied maliciously. "I can do only what she orders. I had to satisfy her by running to the priest, and your mother, and the Senator----" "What! even my poor uncle! Oh, Curran!" "The whole town, for that matter, Mr. Dillon. It was done in such a way, of course, that none of them suspected anything wrong, and we talked under promise of secrecy. I saw that the thing had to be done to satisfy her and to bring you down on us. Now you're down and the trouble's over as far as I am concerned." "And Tom Jones was Horace Endicott," Arthur mused, "I knew it of course all along, but I respected your confidence. I had known Endicott." "You knew Horace Endicott?" said Curran, horrified by a sudden vision of his own stupidity. "And his lady, a lovely, a superb creature, but just a shade too sharp for her husband, don't you know. He was a fool in love, wasn't he? judging from your story of him. Has she become reconciled to her small income, I wonder? She was not that kind, but when one has to, that's the end of it. _And there are consolations._ How the past month has tired me. I could go to sleep right in the chair, only I want to settle this matter to-night, and I must say a kind word to the little devil----" His voice faded away, and he slept, quite overpowered by the drug placed in his wine. After perfect silence for a minute, Curran beckoned to the women, who came noiseless into the room, and bent over the sleeping face. In his contempt for them, the detective neither spoke nor left his seat. Harpies brooding over the dead! Even he knew that! Arthur's face lay in profile, its lines all visible, owing to the strong light, through the disguise of the beard. The melancholy which marks the face of any sleeper, a foreshadow of the eternal sleep, had become on this sleeper's countenance a profound sadness. From his seat Curran could see the pitiful droop of the mouth, the hollowness of the eyes, the shadows under the cheek-bones; marks of a sadness too deep for tears. Sonia took his face in her soft hands and turned the right profile to the light. She looked at the full face, smoothed his hair as if trying to recall an ancient memory. "The eyes of hate," murmured Edith between tears and rage. She pitied while she hated him, understanding the sorrow that could mark a man's face so deeply, admiring the courage which could wear the mask so well. Sonia was deeply moved in spite of disappointment. At one moment she caught a fleeting glimpse of her Horace, but too elusive to hold and analyze. Something pinched her feelings and the great tears fell from her soft eyes. Emotion merely pinched her. Only in hate could she writhe and foam and exhaust nature. She studied his hands, observed the fingers, with the despairing conviction that this was not the man; too lean and too coarse and too hard; and her rage began to burn against destiny. Oh, to have Horace as helpless under her hands! How she could rend him! "Do you see any likeness?" whispered Edith. "None," was the despairing answer. "Be careful," hissed Curran. "In this sleep words are heard and remembered sometimes." Edith swore the great oaths which relieved her anger. But what use to curse, to look and curse again? At the last moment Curran signalled them away, and began talking about his surprise that Arthur should have known the lost man. "Because you might have given me a clue," Arthur heard him saying as he came back from what he thought had been a minute's doze, "and saved me a year's search, not to mention the money I could have made." "I'll tell you about it some other time," said Arthur with a yawn, as he lit a fresh cigar. "Ask madam to step in here, will you. I must warn her in a wholesome way." "I think she is entertaining a friend," Curran said, hinting plainly at a surprise. "Let her bring the friend along," was the careless answer. The two women entered presently, and Edith made the introduction. The husband and wife stood face to face at last. Her voice failed in her throat from nervousness, so sure was she that the Endicotts had met again! They had the center of the stage, and the interest of the audience, but acted not one whit like the people in a play. "Delighted," said Arthur in his usual drawling way on these occasions. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Endicott before." "Indeed," cried the lady. "I regret that my memory...." "At Castle Moyna, a little fête, mother fainted because she saw me running across the lawn ... of course you remember...." "Why, certainly ... we all felt so sorry for the young singer ... her father...." "He was in jail and died since, poor man. Then I saw you coming across on the steamer with a dear, sweet, old lady...." "My husband's aunt," Sonia gasped at the thought of Aunt Lois. "Oh, but he's letter-perfect," murmured Edith in admiration. "And you might remember me," said the heartless fellow, "but of course on a wedding-tour no one can expect the parties to remember anything, as the guide for a whole week to your party in California." "Of course there was a guide," she admitted, very pleasant to meet him again, and so on to the empty end. Edith, stunned by her defeat, sat crushed, for this man no more minded the presence of his wife than did Curran. It was true. Arthur had often thought that a meeting like this in the far-off years would rock his nature as an earthquake rocks the solid plain. Though not surprised at her appearance, for Edith's schemes had all been foreseen, he felt surprise at his own indifference. So utterly had she gone out of his thought, that her sudden appearance, lovely and seductive as of old, gave him no twinge of hate, fear, repugnance, disgust, horror, shame, or pain. He took no credit to himself for a self-control, which he had not been called upon by any stress of feeling to exercise. He was only Arthur Dillon, encountering a lady with a past; a fact in itself more or less amusing. Once she might have been a danger to be kept out like a pest, or barricaded in quarantine. That time had gone by. His indifference for the moment appalled him, since it showed the hopeless depth of Endicott's grave. After chatting honestly ten minutes, he went away light of heart, without venturing to warn Edith. Another day, he told her, and be good meanwhile. Curran became thoughtful, and the women irritable after he had gone. Edith felt that her instincts had no longer a value in the market. In this wretched Endicott affair striking disappointment met the most brilliant endeavors. Sonia made ready to return to her hotel. Dolorously the Currans paid her the last courtesies, waiting for the word which would end the famous search for her Horace. "I have been thinking the matter over," she said sweetly, "and I have thought out a plan, not in your line of course, which I shall see to at once. I think it worth while to look through California for points in the life of this interesting young man, Mr. Dillon." When the door closed on her, Edith began to shriek in hysterical laughter. CHAPTER XXXI. THE HEART OF HONORA. While Edith urged the search for Endicott, the little world to be horrified by her success enjoyed itself north and south as the season suggested, and the laws of fashion permitted. At the beginning of June, Anne settled herself comfortably for the summer in a roomy farmhouse, overlooking Lake Champlain and that particular island of Valcour, which once witnessed the plucky sea-fight and defeat of dare-devil Arnold. Only Honora accompanied her, but at the close of the month Louis, the deacon, and Mrs. Doyle Grahame joined them; and after that the whole world came at odd times, with quiet to-day and riot to-morrow. Honora, the center of interest, the storm-center, as we call it in these days, turned every eye in her direction with speculative interest. Would she retire to the convent, or find her vocation in the world? She had more than fulfilled her father's wish that she remain in secular life for a year. Almost two years had passed. He could not reproach her from his grave. One divine morning she came upon the natural stage which had been the scene of a heart-drama more bitter to her than any sorrow. Walking alone in the solemn woods along the lake shore, the path suddenly ended on a rocky terrace, unshaded by trees, and directly over the water. Raspberry bushes made an enclosure there, in the center of which the stumps of two trees held a rough plank to make a seat. A stony beach curved inward from this point, the dark woods rose behind, and the soft waters made music in the hollows of the rock beneath her feet. Delightful with the perfume of the forest, the placid shores of Valcour, sun, and flower, and bird filling eye and ear with beauty, the sight of the spot chilled her heart. Here Lord Constantine had offered her his love and his life the year before. To her it had been a frightful scene, this strong, handsome, clever man, born to the highest things of mind, heart, talent and rank, kneeling before her, pleading with pallid face for her love, ... and all the rest of it! She would have sunk down with shame but for his kindness in accepting the situation, and carrying her through it. Why his proposal shocked her his lordship could not see at first. He understood before his mournful interview and ended. Honora was of that class, to whom marriage does not present itself as a personal concern. She had the true feminine interest in the marriage of her friends, and had vaguely dreamed of her own march to the altar, an adoring lover, a happy home and household cares. Happy in the love of a charming mother and a high-hearted father, she had devoted her youthful days to them and to music. They stood between her and importunate lovers, whose intentions she had never divined. With the years came trouble, the death of the mother, the earning of her living by her art, the care of her father, and the work for her native land. Lovers could not pursue this busy woman, occupied with father and native land, and daily necessity. The eternal round of travel, conspiracy, scheming, planning, spending, with its invariable ending of disappointment and weariness of heart, brought forth a longing for the peace of rest, routine, satisfied aspirations; and from a dream the convent became a passion, longed for as the oasis by the traveler in the sands. Simple and sincere as light, the hollow pretence of the world disgusted her. Her temperament was of that unhappy fiber which sees the end almost as speedily as the beginning; change and death and satiety treading on the heels of the noblest enterprise. For her there seemed no happiness but in the possession of the everlasting, the unchangeable, the divinely beautiful. Out of these feelings and her pious habits rose the longing for the convent, for what seemed to be permanent, fixed, proportioned, without dust and dirt and ragged edges, and wholly devoted to God. After a little Lord Constantine understood her astonishment, her humiliation, her fright. He had a wretched satisfaction in knowing that no other man would snatch this prize; but oh, how bitter to give her up even to God! The one woman in all time for him, more could be said in her praise still; her like was not outside heaven. How much this splendid lake, with sapphire sky and green shores, lacked of true beauty until she stepped like light into view; then, as for the first time, one saw the green woods glisten, the waters sparkle anew, the sky deepen in richness! One had to know her heart, her nature, so nobly dowered, to see this lighting up of nature's finest work at her coming. She was beautiful, white as milk, with eyes like jewels, framed in lashes of silken black, so dark, so dark! Honora wept at the sight of his face as he went away. She had seen that despair in her father's face. And she wept to-day as she sat on the rough bench. Had she been to blame? Why had she delayed her entrance into the convent a year beyond the time? Arthur had declared his work could not get on without her for at least an extra half year. She was lingering still? Had present comfort shaken her resolution? A cry roused her from her mournful thoughts, and she looked up to see Mona rounding the point at the other end of the stony beach, laboring at the heavy oars. Honora smiled and waved her handkerchief. Here was one woman for whom life had no problems, only solid contentment, and perennial interest; and who thought her husband the finest thing in the world. She beached her boat and found her way up to the top of the rock. To look at her no one would dream, Honora certainly did not, that she had any other purpose than breathing the air. Mrs. Doyle Grahame enjoyed the conviction that marriage settles all difficulties, if one goes about it rightly. She had gone about it rightly, with marvellous results. That charming bear her father had put his neck in her yoke, and now traveled about in her interest as mild as a clam. All men gasped at the sight of his meekness. When John Everard Grahame arrived on this planet, his grandfather fell on his knees before him and his parents, and never afterwards departed from that attitude. Doyle Grahame laid it to his art of winning a father-in-law. Mona found the explanation simply in the marriage, which to her, from the making of the trousseau to the christening of the boy, had been wonderful enough to have changed the face of the earth. The delicate face, a trifle fuller, had increased in dignity. Her hair flamed more glorious than ever. As a young matron she patronized Honora now an old maid. "You've been crying," said she, with a glance around, "and I don't wonder. This is the place where you broke a good man's heart. It will remain bewitched until you accept some other man in the same spot. How did we know, Miss Cleverly? Do you think Conny was as secret as you? And didn't I witness the whole scene from the point yonder? I couldn't hear the words, but there wasn't any need of it. Heavens, the expression of you two!" "Mona, do you mean to tell me that every one knew it?" "Every soul, my dear ostrich with your head in the sand. The hope is that you will not repeat the refusal when the next lover comes along. And if you can arrange to have the scene come off here, as you arranged for the last one ... I have always maintained that the lady with a convent vocation is by nature the foxiest of all women. I don't know why, but she shows it." The usual fashion of teasing Honora attributed to her qualities opposed to a religious vocation. "Well, I have made up my mind to fly at once to the convent," she said, "with my foxiness and other evil qualities. If it was my fault that one man proposed to me----" "It was your fault, of course. Why do you throw doubt upon it?" "It will not be my fault that the second man proposes. So, this place may remain accursed forever. Oh, my poor Lord Constantine! After all his kindness to father and me, to be forced to inflict such suffering on him! Why do men care for us poor creatures so much, Mona?" "Because we care so much for them ..." Honora laughed ... "and because we are necessary to their happiness. You should go round the stations on your knees once a day for the rest of your life, for having rejected Lord Conny. It wasn't mere ingratitude ... that was bad enough; but to throw over a career so splendid, to desert Ireland so outrageously," this was mere pretence ... "to lose all importance in life for the sake of a dream, for the sake of a convent." "You have a prejudice against convents, Mona." "No, dear, I believe in convents for those who are made that way. I have noticed, perhaps you have too, that many people who should go to a convent will not, and many people at present in the cloisters ought to have stayed where nature put them first." "It's pleasant on a day like this for you to feel that you are just where nature intended you to be, isn't it? How did you leave the baby?" Mona leaped into a rhapsody on the wonderful child, who was just then filling the time of Anne, and at the same time filling the air with howlings, but returned speedily to her purpose. "Did you say you had fixed the day, Honora?" "In September, any day before the end of the month." "You were never made for the convent," with seriousness. "Too fond of the running about in life, and your training is all against it." "My training!" said Honora. "All your days you were devoted to one man, weren't you? And to the cause of a nation, weren't you? And to the applause of the crowd, weren't you? Now, my dear, when you find it necessary to make a change in your habits, the changes should be in line with those habits. Otherwise you may get a jolt that you won't forget. In a convent, there will be no man, no Ireland, and no crowd, will there? What you should have done was to marry Lord Conny, and to keep right on doing what you had done before, only with more success. Now when the next man comes along, do not let the grand opportunity go." "I'll risk the jolt," Honora replied. "But this next man about whom you have been hinting since you came up here? Is this the man?" She pointed to the path leading into the woods. Louis came towards them in a hurry, having promised them a trip to the rocks of Valcour. The young deacon was in fighting trim after a month on the farm, the pallor of hard study and confinement had fled, and the merry prospect ahead made his life an enchantment. Only his own could see the slight but ineffaceable mark of his experience with Sister Claire. "Take care," whispered Mona. "He is not the man, but the man's agent." Louis bounced into the raspberry enclosure and flung himself at their feet. "Tell me," said Honora mischievously. "Is there any man in love with me, and planning to steal away my convent from me? Tell me true, Louis." The deacon sat up and cast an indignant look on his sister. "Shake not thy gory locks at me," she began cooly.... "There it is," he burst out. "Do you know, Honora, I think marriage turns certain kinds of people, the redheads in particular, quite daft. This one is never done talking about her husband, her baby, her experience, her theory, her friends who are about to marry, or who want to marry, or who can't marry. She can't see two persons together without patching up a union for them...." "Everybody should get married," said Mona serenely, "except priests and nuns. Mona is not a nun, therefore she should get married." "The reasoning is all right," replied the deacon, "but it doesn't apply here. Don't you worry, Honora. There's no man about here that will worry you, and even if there was, hold fast to that which is given thee...." "Don't quote Scripture, Reverend Sir," cried Mona angrily. "The besotted world is not worth the pother this foolish young married woman makes over it." The foolish young woman received a warning from her brother when Mona went into the woods to gather an armful of wild blossoms for the boat. "Don't you know," said he with the positiveness of a young theologian, "that Arthur will probably never marry? Has he looked at a girl in that way since he came back from California? He's giddy enough, I know, but one that studies him can see he has no intention of marrying. Now why do you trouble this poor girl, after her scene with the Englishman, with hints of Arthur? I tell you he will never marry." "You may know more about him than I do," his sister placidly answered, "but I have seen him looking at Honora for the last five years, and working for her, and thinking about her. His look changed recently. Perhaps you know why. There's something in the air. I can feel it. You can't. None of you celibates can. And you can't see beyond your books in matters of love and marriage. That's quite right. We can manage such things better. And if Arthur makes up his mind to win her, I'm bound she shall have him." "We can manage! I'm bound!" he mimicked. "Well, remember that I warned you. It isn't so much that your fingers may be burned ... that's what you need, you married minx. You may do harm to those two. They seem to be at peace. Let 'em alone." "What was the baby doing when you left the house?" said she for answer. "Tearing the nurse's hair out in handfuls," said the proud uncle, as he plunged into a list of the doings of the wonderful child, who fitted into any conversation as neatly as a preposition. Mona, grew sad at heart. Her brother evidently knew of some obstacle to this union, something in Arthur's past life which made his marriage with any woman impossible. She recalled his silence about the California episode, his indifference to women, his lack of enthusiasm as to marriage. They rowed away over the lake, with the boat half buried in wild bushes, sprinkled with dandelion flowers and the tender blossoms of the apple trees. Honora was happy, at peace. She put the scene with Lord Constantine away from her, and forgot the light words of Mona. Whoever the suitor might be, Arthur did not appear to her as a lover. So careful had he been in his behavior, that Louis would have as much place in her thought as Arthur, who had never discouraged her hope of the convent, except by pleading for Ireland. The delay in keeping her own resolution had been pleasant. Now that the date was fixed, the grateful enclosure of the cloister seemed to shut her in from all this dust and clamor of men, from the noisome sights and sounds of world-living, from the endless coming and going and running about, concerning trifles, from the injustice and meanness and hopeless crimes of men. In the shade of the altar, in the restful gloom of Calvary, she could look up with untired eyes to the calm glow of the celestial life, unchanging, orderly, beautiful with its satisfied aspiration, and rich in perfect love and holy companionship. Such a longing came over her to walk into this perfect peace that moment! Mona well knew this mood, and Louis in triumph signalled his sister to look. Her eyes, turned to the rocky shore of Valcour, saw far beyond. On her perfect face lay a shadow, the shadow of her longing, and from her lips came now and then the perfume of a sigh. In silence these two watched her, Louis recognizing the borderland of holy ecstasy, Mona hopeful that the vision was only a mirage. The boat floated close to the perpendicular rocks and reflected itself in the deep waters; far away the farmhouse lay against the green woods; to the north rose the highest point of the bluff, dark with pines; farther on was the sweep of the curved shore, and still farther the red walls of the town. Never boat carried freight so beautiful as this which bore along the island the young mother, the young deacon, and deep-hearted Honora, who was blessing God. CHAPTER XXXII. THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE. For a week at the end of July Arthur had been in the city closing up the Curran episode. On his return every one felt that change of marked and mysterious kind had touched him. His face shone with joy. The brooding shadow, acquired in his exile, had disappeared. Light played about his face, emanated from it, as from moonlit water, a phosphorescence of the daylight. His mother studied him with anxiety, without which she had not been since the surprising visit of Curran. The old shadow seemed to have fled forever. One night on the lake, as Louis and he floated lazily towards the island, he told the story. After enjoying a moonlight swim at the foot of the bluff, they were preparing to row over to Valcour when Honora's glorious voice rang out from the farmhouse on the hill above, singing to Mona's accompaniment. The two sat in delight. A full moon stood in the sky, and radiance silvered the bosom of the lake, the mystic shores, the far-off horizon. This singer was the voice of the night, whose mystic beauty and voiceless feeling surged into the woman's song like waters escaping through a ravine. Dillon was utterly oppressed by happiness. When the song had ceased, he stretched out his arms towards her. "Dearest and best of women! By God's grace I shall soon call you mine!" Louis took up the oars and pulled with energy in the direction of Valcour. "Is that the meaning of the look on your face since your return?" said he. "That's the meaning. I saw you all watching me in surprise. My mother told me of it in her anxiety. If my face matched my feelings the moon there would look sickly besides its brightness. I have been in jail for five years, and to-day I am free." "And how about that other woman ...?" "Dead as far as I am concerned, the poor wretch! Yesterday I could curse her. I pity her to-day. She has gone her way and I go mine. Monsignor has declared me free. Isn't that enough?" "That's enough," cried Louis, dropping the oars in his excitement. "But is it enough to give you Honora? I'm so glad you think of her that way. Mona told her only yesterday that some lover was pursuing her, not mentioning your name. I assured her on the contrary that the road to the convent would have no obstacles. And I rebuked Mona for her interference." "You were right, and she was right," said Arthur sadly. "I never dared to show her my love, because I was not free. But now I shall declare it. What did she think of Mona's remarks?" "She took them lightly. I am afraid that your freedom comes at a poor time, Arthur; that you may be too late. I have had many talks with her. Her heart is set on the convent, she has fixed the date for September, and she does not seem to have love in her mind at all." "Love begets love. How could she think of love when I never gave any sign, except what sharp-eyed Mona saw. You can conceal nothing from a woman. Wait until I have wooed her ... but apart from all that you must hear how I came to be free ... oh, my God, I can hardly believe it even now after three days ... I have been so happy that the old anguish which tore my soul years ago seemed easier to bear than this exquisite pain. I must get used to it. Listen now to the story of my escape, and row gently while you listen so as to miss not a word." Arthur did not tell his chum more than half of the tale, chiefly because Louis was never to know the story of Horace Endicott. He had gone to New York at the invitation of Livingstone. This surprising incident began a series of surprises. The Currans had returned from California, and made their report to Sonia; and to Livingstone of all men the wife of Horace Endicott had gone for advice in so delicate an affair as forcing Arthur Dillon to prove and defend his identity. After two or three interviews with Livingstone Arthur carried his report to Monsignor. "All this looks to me," said the priest, "as if the time for a return to your own proper personality had come. You know how I have feared the consequences of this scheme. The more I look into it, the more terrible it seems." "And why should I give up now of all times? when I am a success?" cried the young fellow. "Do I fear Livingstone and the lawyers? Curran and his wife have done their best, and failed. Will the lawyers do any better?" "It is not that," said the priest. "But you will always be annoyed in this way. The sharks and blackmailers will get after you later...." "No, no, no, Monsignor. This effort of the Currans and Mrs. Endicott will be the last. I won't permit it. There will be no result from Livingstone's interference. He can go as far as interviews with me, but not one step beyond. And I can guarantee that no one will ever take up the case after him." "You are not reasonable," urged the priest. "The very fact that these people suspect you to be Horace Endicott is enough; it proves that you have been discovered." "I am only the twentieth whom they pursued for Horace," he laughed. "Curran knows I am not Endicott. He has proved to the satisfaction of Livingstone that I am Arthur Dillon. But the two women are pertinacious, and urge the men on. Since these are well paid for their trouble, why should they not keep on?" "They are not the only pertinacious ones," the priest replied. "You may claim a little of the virtue yourself," Arthur slyly remarked. "You have urged me to betray myself into the hands of enemies once a month for the last five years." "In this case would it not be better to get an advantage by declaring yourself, before Livingstone can bring suit against you?" "There will be no suit," he answered positively. "I hold the winning cards in this game. There is no advantage in my returning to a life which for me holds nothing but horror. Do you not see, Monsignor, that the same reasons which sent me out of it hold good to keep me out of it?" "Very true," said Monsignor reluctantly, as he viewed the situation. "And new reasons, not to be controverted, have sprung up around Arthur Dillon. For Horace Endicott there is nothing in that old life but public disgrace. Do you know that I hate that fat fool, that wretched cuckold who had not sense enough to discover what the uninterested knew about that woman? I would not wear his name, nor go back to his circle, if the man and woman were dead, and the secret buried forever." "He was young and innocent," said the priest with a pitiful glance at Arthur. "And selfish and sensual too. I despise him. He would never have been more than an empty-headed pleasure-seeker. With that wife he could have become anything you please. The best thing he did was his flight into everlasting obscurity, and that he owed to the simple, upright, strong-hearted woman who nourished him in his despair. Monsignor," and he laid his firm hand on the knee of the priest and looked at him with terrible eyes, "I would choose death rather than go back to what I was. I shall never go back. I get hot with shame when I think of the part an Endicott played as Sonia Westfield's fool." "And the reason not to be controverted?" "In what a position my departure would leave my mother. Have you thought of that? After all her kindness, her real affection, as if I had been her own son. She thinks now that I am her son, and I feel that she is my mother. And what would induce me to expose her to the public gaze as the chief victim, or the chief plotter in a fraud? If it had to be done, I would wait in any event until my mother was dead. But beyond all these minor reasons is one that overshadows everything. I am Arthur Dillon. That other man is not only dead, he is as unreal to me as the hero of any book I read in my boyhood. It was hard to give up the old personality; to give up what I am now would be impossible. I am what I seem. I feel, think, speak, dream Arthur Dillon. The roots would bleed if I were to transplant myself. I found my career among your people, and the meaning of life. There is no other career for me. These are the people I love. I will never raise between them and me so odious a barrier as the story of my disappearance would be. They could never take to Horace Endicott. Oh, I have given the matter a moment's thought, Monsignor. The more I dwell on it, the worse it seems." He considered the point for a moment, and then whispered with joyous triumph, "I have succeeded beyond my own expectations. I have disappeared even from myself. An enemy cannot find me, not even my own confession would reveal me. The people who love me would swear to a man that I am Arthur Dillon, and that only insanity could explain my own confession. At the very least they would raise such a doubt in the mind of a judge that he would insist on clean proofs from both sides. But there's the clear fact. I have escaped from myself, disappeared from the sight of Arthur Dillon. Before long I can safely testify to a dream I had of having once been a wretch named Horace Endicott. But I have a doubt even now that I was such a man." "My God, but it's weird," said Monsignor with emotion, as he rose to walk the room. "I have the same notion myself at times." "It's a matter to be left undisturbed, or some one will go crazy over it," Arthur said seriously. "And you are happy, really happy? The sight of this woman did not revive in you any regret...." "I am happy, Monsignor, beyond belief," with a contented sigh. "It would be too much to expect perfect happiness. Yet that is within my reach. If I were only free to marry Honora Ledwith." "I heard of that too," said the priest meditatively. "Has she any regard for you?" "As a brother. How could I have asked any other love? And I am rich in that. Since there is no divorce for Catholics, I could not let her see the love which burned in me. I had no hope." "And she goes into the convent, I believe. You must not stand in God's way." "I have not, though I delayed her going because I could not bear to part from her. Willingly I have resigned her to God, because I know that in His goodness, had I been free, He would have given her to me." Monsignor paused as if struck by the thought and looked at him for a moment. "It is the right spirit," was his brief comment. He loved this strange, incomprehensible man, who had stood for five years between his adopted people and their enemies in many a fight, who had sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes saw the depth of that resignation which gave to God the one jewel that would have atoned for the horrid sufferings of the past. If he were free! He thought of old Lear moaning over dead Cordelia. She lives! If it be so, It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt. "It is the right spirit," he repeated as he considered the matter. "One must not stand in the way of a soul, or in the way of God. Yet were you free, where would be the advantage? She is for the convent, and has never thought of you in the way of love." "Love begets love, father dear. I could light the flame in her heart, for I am dear to her as a brother, as her father's son." "Then her dream of the convent, which she has cherished so many years, cannot be more than a dream, if she resigned it for you." "I cannot argue with you," he said hopelessly, "and it's a sad subject. There is only the will of God to be done." "And if you were free," went on Monsignor smiling, "and tried and failed to light love in her heart, you would suffer still more." "A little more or less would not matter. I would be happy still to give her to God." "I see, I see," shaking his sage head. "To God! As long as it is not to another and luckier fellow, the resignation is perfect." Arthur broke into a laugh, and the priest said casually: "I think that by the law of the Church you are a free man." Arthur leaped to his feet with a face like death. "In the name of God!" he cried. Monsignor pushed him back into his chair. "That's my opinion. Just listen, will you. Then take your case to a doctor of the law. There is a kind of divorce in the Church known as the Pauline Privilege. Let me state the items, and do you examine if you can claim the privilege. Horatius, an infidel, that is, unbaptized, deserts his wife legally and properly, because of her crimes; later he becomes a Catholic; meeting a noble Catholic lady, Honoria, he desires to marry her; question, is he free to contract this marriage? The answer of the doctors of the law is in the affirmative, with the following conditions: that the first wife be an infidel, that is, unbaptized; that to live with her is impossible; that she has been notified of his intention to break the marriage. The two latter conditions are fulfilled in your case the moment the first wife secures the divorce which enables her to marry her paramour. Horatius is then free to marry Honoria, or any other Catholic lady, but not a heretic or a pagan. This is called the Pauline Privilege because it is described in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. My opinion is that you are free." The man, unable to speak, or move, felt his hope grow strong and violent out of the priest's words. "Mind, it's only my opinion," said Monsignor, to moderate his transports. "You must go to Dr. Bender, the theologian, to get a purely legal decision. I fear that I am only adding to your misery. What if he should decide against you? What if she should decide against you?" "Neither will happen," with painful effort. Sudden joy overcame him with that anguish of the past, and this was overwhelming, wonderful. "The essence of love is sacrifice," said Monsignor, talking to give him time for composure. "Not your good only, but the happiness of her you love must control your heart and will; and above all there must be submission to God. When He calls, the child must leave the parent, the lover his mistress, all ties must be broken." "I felt from the beginning that this would come to pass," said Arthur weakly. "Oh, I made my sacrifice long ago. The facts were all against me, of course. Easy to make the sacrifice which had to be made. I can make another sacrifice, but isn't it now her turn? Oh, Monsignor, all my joy seems to come through you! From that first moment years ago, when we met, I can date----" "All your sorrow," the priest interrupted. "And all my joy. Well, one cannot speak of these great things, only act. I'm going to the theologian. Before I sleep to-night he must settle that case. I know from your eyes it will be in my favor. I can bear disappointment. I can bear anything now. I am free from that creature, she is without a claim on me in any way, law, fact, religion, sympathy. Oh, my God!" Monsignor could not hinder the tears that poured from his eyes silently. He clasped Arthur's hand and saw him go as he wept. In his varied life he had never seen so intimately any heart, none so strange and woful in its sorrow and its history, none so pathetic. The man lived entirely on the plane of tragedy, in the ecstasy of pain; a mystery, a problem, a wonder, yet only an average, natural, simple man, that had fought destiny with strange weapons. This story Arthur whispered to Louis, floating between the moonlit shores of Champlain. He lay in the stern watching the rhythmic rise of the oar-blades, and the flashing of the water-drops falling back like diamonds into the wave. Happiness lay beside him steering the boat, a seraph worked the oars, the land ahead must be paradise. His was a lover's story, clear, yet broken with phrases of love; for was he not speaking to the heart, half his own, that beat with his in unison? The tears flowed down the deacon's cheek, tears of dread and of sympathy. What if Honora refused this gift laid so reverently at her feet? He spoke his dread. "One must take the chance," said the lover calmly. "She is free too. I would not have her bound. The very air up here will conspire with me to win her. She must learn at once that I want her for my wife. Then let the leaven work." The boat came back to the landing. The ladies sat on the veranda chatting quietly, watching the moon which rose higher and higher, and threw Valcour into shadow so deep, that it looked like a great serpent asleep on a crystal rock, nailed by a golden spike through its head to the crystal rock beneath. The lighthouse lamp burning steadily at the south point, and its long reflection in the still waters, was the golden nail. A puffing tug passed by with its procession of lumber boats, fanciful with colored lights, resounding with the roaring songs of the boatmen; and the waves recorded their protest against it in long groans on the shore. Arthur drank in the scene without misgiving, bathed in love as in moonlight. This moon would see the consummation of his joy. CHAPTER XXXIII. LOVE IS BLIND. Next morning after breakfast the house began to echo with the singing of the inmates. Mona sang to the baby in an upper room, the Deacon thrummed the piano and hummed to himself in the raucous voice peculiar to most churchmen. Judy in the kitchen meditatively crooned to her maids an ancient lamentation, and out on the lawn, Arthur sang to his mother an amorous ditty in compliment to her youthful appearance. Honora, the song-bird, silent, heard with amusement this sudden lifting up of voices, each unconscious of the other. Arthur's bawling dominated. "Has the house gone mad?" she inquired from the hallway stairs, so clearly that the singers paused to hear. "What is the meaning of all this uproar of song. Judy in the kitchen, Mona in the nursery, Louis in the parlor, Arthur on the lawn?" The criminals began to laugh at the coincidence. "I always sing to baby," Mona screamed in justification. "I wasn't singing, I never sing," Louis yelled from the parlor. "Mother drove me to it," Arthur howled through the door. "I think the singin' was betther nor the shoutin'," Judy observed leaning out of the window to display her quizzical smile. A new spirit illumined the old farmhouse. Love had entered it, and hope had followed close on his heels; hope that Honora would never get to her beloved convent. They loved her so and him that with all their faith, their love and respect for the convent life, gladly would they have seen her turn away from the holy doors into Arthur's reverential arms. With the exception of Anne. So surely had she become his mother that the thought of giving him up to any woman angered her. She looked coldly on Honora for having inspired him with a foolish passion. "Come down, celestial goddess," said Arthur gayly, "and join the Deacon and me in a walk over the bluff, through the perfumed woods, down the loud-resounding shore. Put on rubbers, for the dew has no respect for the feet of such divinity." They went off together in high spirits, and Mona came down to the veranda with the baby in her arms to look after them. Anne grieved at the sight of their intimacy. "I have half a mind," she said, "to hurry Honora off to her convent, or to bring Sister Magdalen and the Mother Superior up here to strengthen her. If that boy has his way, he'll marry her before Christmas. He has the look of it in his eye." "And why shouldn't he?" Mona asked. "If she will have him, then she has no business with the convent, and it will be a good opportunity for her to test her vocation." "And what luck will there be in it for him?" said the mother bitterly. "How would you feel if some hussy cheated Louis out of his priesthood, with blue eyes and golden hair and impudence? If Arthur wants to marry after waiting so long, let him set eyes on women that ask for marriage. He'll never have luck tempting a poor girl from the convent." "Little ye think o' the luck," said Judy, who had come out to have her morning word with the mistress. "Weren't ye goin' into a convent yerself whin Pat Dillon kem along, an' wid a wink tuk ye to church undher his arm. An' is there a woman in the whole world that's had greater luck than yerself?" "Oh, I know you are all working for the same thing, all against me," Anne said pettishly. "Faith we are, and may the angels guide him and her to each other. Can't a blind man see they wor made to be man an' wife? An' I say it, knowin' that the convent is the best place in the world for anny girl. I wish every girl that was born wint there. If they knew what is lyin' in wait for thim whin they take up wid a man, there wouldn't be convents enough to hould all that wud be runnin' to thim. But ye know as well as I do that the girls are not med for the convent, except the blessed few...." Anne fled from the stream of Judy's eloquence, and the old lady looked expressively at Mona. "She's afraid she's goin' to lose her Artie. Oh, these Irish mothers! they'd kape a boy till his hairs were gray, an' mek him belave it too, if they cud. I never saw but wan mother crazy to marry her son. That was Biddy Brady, that wint to school wid yer mother, an' poor Micksheen was a born ijit, wid a lip hangin' like a sign, so's ye cud hang an auction notice on it. Sure, the poor boy wudn't lave his mother for Vanus herself, an' the mother batin' him out o' the house every day, an' he bawlin' for fear the women wud get hould of him." Honora had observed the happy change in Arthur, her knight of service, who had stood between her and danger, and had fought her battles with chivalry; asking no reward, hinting at none, because she had already given him all, a sister's love. What tenderness, what adoration, what service had he lavished on her, unmarred by act, or word, or hint! God would surely reward him for his consideration. Walking through the scented woods she found it easy to tell them of the date fixed for her entrance into the convent. Grand trees were marshalled along the path, supporting a roof of gold and green, where the sun fell strong on the heavy foliage. "September," said Arthur making a calculation. "Why not wait until October and then shed your colors with the trees. I can see her," he went on humorously, "decorously arranging the black dress so that it will hang well, and not make her a fright altogether before the other women; and getting a right tilt to the black bonnet and enough lace in it to set off her complexion." "Six months later," said the Deacon taking up the strain, "she will do better than that. Discarding the plain robes of the postulant, she will get herself into the robes of a bride...." "Oh, sooner than that," said Arthur with a meaning which escaped her. "No, six months is the period," she corrected seriously. "In wedding finery she will prance before her delighted friends for a few minutes, and then march out to shed white silk and fleecy tulle. A vengeful nun, whose hair has long been worn away, will then clip with one snip of the scissors her brown locks from her head...." "Horror!" cried Arthur. "Sure, straight across the neck, you know, like the women's-rights people. Then the murder of the hair has to be concealed, so they put on a nightcap, and hide that with a veil, and then bring her into the bishop to tell him it's all right, and that she's satisfied." "And what do they make of the hair?" said Arthur. "That's one of the things yet to be revealed." "And after that she is set at chasing the rule, or being chased by the rule for two years. She studies striking examples of observing the rule, and of the contrary. She has a shy at observing it herself, and the contrary. The rule is it when she observes it; she's it when she doesn't. At this point the mother superior comes into the game." "Where do the frowsy children come in?" "At meals usually. Honora cuts the bread and her fingers, butters it, and passes it round; the frowsy butter themselves, and Honora; this is an act of mortification, which is intensified when the mistress of novices discovers the butter on her habit." "Finally the last stage is worse than the first, I suppose. Having acquired the habit she gets into it so deeply...." "She sheds it once more, Arthur. Then she's tied to the frowsy children forever, and is known as Sister Mary of the Cold Shoulder to the world." "This is a case of rescue," said Arthur with determination, "I move we rescue her this minute. Help, help!" The woods echoed with his mocking cries. Honora had not spoken, the smile had died away, and she was plainly offended. Louis observant passed a hint to Arthur, who made the apology. "We shall be there," he said humbly, "with our hearts bleeding because we must surrender you. And who are we that you need care? It is poor Ireland that will mourn for the child that bathed and bound her wounds, that watched by her in the dark night, and kept the lamp of hope and comfort burning, that stirred hearts to pity and service, that woke up Lord Constantine and me, and strangers and enemies like us, to render service; the child whose face and voice and word and song made the meanest listen to a story of injustice; all shut out, concealed, put away where the mother may never see or hear her more." His voice broke, his eyes filled with tears at the vividness of the vision called up in the heart of the woods; and he walked ahead to conceal his emotion. Honora stopped dead and looked inquiringly at the Deacon, who switched the flowers with downcast eyes. "What is the meaning of it, Louis?" He knew not how to make answer, thinking that Arthur should be the first to tell his story. "Do you think that we can let you go easily?" he said. "If we tease you as we did just now it is to hide what we really suffer. His feeling got the better of him, I think." The explanation sounded harmless. For an instant a horrid fear that these woods must witness another scene like Lord Constantine's chilled her heart. She comforted Arthur like a sister. "Do not feel my going too deeply. Change must come. Let us be glad it is not death, or a journey into distant lands with no return. I shall be among you still, and meanwhile God will surely comfort you." "Oh, if we could walk straight on like this," Arthur answered, "through the blessed, free, scented forest, just as we are, forever! And walking on for years, content with one another, you, Louis, and I, come out at last, as we shall soon come out here on the lake, on the shore of eternity, just as life's sun sets, and the moon of the immortal life rises; and then without change, or the anguish of separation and dying, if we could pass over the waters, and enter the land of eternity, taking our place with God and His children, our friends, that have been there so long!" "Is not that just what we are to do, not after your fashion, but after the will of God, Arthur? Louis at the altar, I in the convent before the altar, and you in the field of battle fighting for us both. Aaron, Miriam, Moses, here are the three in the woods of Champlain, as once in the desert of Arabia," and she smiled at the young men. Louis returned the smile, and Arthur gave her a look of adoration, so tender, so bold, that she trembled. The next moment, when the broad space through which they were walking ended in a berry-patch, he plunged among the bushes with eagerness, to gather for her black raspberries in his drinking-cup. Her attempt to discuss her departure amiably had failed. "I am tired already," said she to Louis helplessly. "I shall go back to the house, and leave you to go on together." "Don't blame him," the Deacon pleaded, perceiving how useless was concealment. "If you knew how that man has suffered in his life, and how you opened heaven to him ..." she made a gesture of pain ... "remember all his goodness and be gentle with him. He must speak before you go. He will take anything from you, and you alone can teach him patience and submission." "How long...." she began. He divined what she would have asked. "Mona has known it more than a year, but no one else, for he gave no sign. I know it only a short time. After all it is not to be wondered at. He has been near you, working with you for years. His life has been lonely somehow, and you seemed to fill it. Do not be hasty with him. Let him come to his avowal and his refusal in his own way. It is all you can do for him. Knowing you so well he probably knows what he has to receive." Arthur came back with his berries and poured them out on a leaf for her to eat. Seated for a little on a rock, while he lay on the ground at her feet, she ate to please him; but her soul in terror saw only the white face of Lord Constantine, and thought only of the pain in store for this most faithful friend. Oh, to have it out with him that moment! Yet it seemed too cruel. But how go on for a month in dread of what was to come? She loved him in her own beautiful way. Her tears fell that night as she sat in her room by the window watching the high moon, deep crimson, rising through the mist over the far-off islands. How bitter to leave her beloved even for God, when the leaving brought woe to them! So long she had waited for the hour of freedom, and always a tangle at the supreme moment! How could she be happy and he suffering without the convent gates? This pity was to be the last temptation, her greatest trial. Its great strength did not disarm her. If twenty broke their hearts on that day, she would not give up her loved design. Let God comfort them, since she could not. But the vision of a peaceful entrance into the convent faded. She would have to enter, as she had passed through life, carrying the burden of another's woe, in tears. She could see that he never lost heart. The days passed delightfully, and somehow his adoration pleased her. Having known him in many lights, there was novelty in seeing him illumined by candid love. How could he keep so high a courage with the end so dark and so near? Honora had no experience of love, romantic love, and she had always smiled at its expression in the novels of the time. If Arthur only knew the task he had set for himself! She loved him truly, but marriage repelled her almost, except in others. Therefore, having endured the uncertainty of the position a week, she had it out with Arthur. Sitting on the rocks of an ancient quarry, high above the surface of the lake, they watched the waters rough and white from the strong south wind. The household had adjourned that day for lunch to this wild spot, and the members were scattered about, leaving them, as they always did now, by common consent alone. "Perhaps," she said calmly, "this would be a good time to talk to you, Arthur, as sister to brother ... can't we talk as brother and sister?" For a change came over his face that sickened her. The next moment he was ready for the struggle. "I fear not, Honora," said he humbly. "I fear we can never do that again." "Then you are to stand in my way too?" with bitterness. "No, but I am not going to stand in my own way," he replied boldly. "Have I ever stood in your way, Honora?" "You have always helped me. Do not fail me at the last, I beg of you." "I shall never fail you, nor stand in your way. You are free now as your father wished you to be. You shall go to the convent on the date which you have named. Neither Ireland, nor anything but your heart shall hinder you. You have seen my heart for a week as you never saw it before. Do not let what you saw disturb or detain you. I told your father of it the last day of his life, and he was glad. He said it was like ... he was satisfied. Both he and I were of one mind that you should be free. And you are." Ideas and words fled from her. The situation of her own making she knew not how to manage. What could be more sensible than his speech? "Very well, thank you," she said helplessly. He had perfect control of himself, but his attitude expressed his uneasiness, his face only just concealed his pain. All his life in moments like this, Arthur Dillon would suffer from his earliest sorrow. "I hope you will all let me go with resignation," she began again. "I give you to God freely," was his astonishing answer, "but I may tell you it is my hope He will give you back to me. I have nothing, and He is the Lord of all. He has permitted my heart to be turned to ashes, and yet gave it life again through you. I have confidence in Him. To you I am nothing; in the future I shall be only a memory to be prayed for. If we had not God to lift us up, and repay us for our suffering, to what would we come? I could not make my heart clear to you, show you its depths of feeling, frightful depths, I think sometimes, and secure your pity. God alone, the master of hearts, can do that. I have been generous to the last farthing. He will not be outdone by me." "Oh, my God!" she murmured, looking at him in wonder, for his words sounded insanely to her ear. "I love you, Honora," he went on, with a flush on his cheek, and so humble that he kept his eyes on the ground. "Go, in spite of that, if God demands it. If you can, knowing that I shall be alone, how much alone no one may know, go nevertheless. Only bear it in mind, that I shall wait for you outside the convent gate. If you cannot remain thinking of me, I shall be ready for you. If not here, then hereafter, as God wills. But you are free, and I love you. Before you go, God's beloved," and he looked at her then with eyes so beautiful that her heart went out to him, "you must let me tell you what I have been. You will pray for me better, when you have learned how far a man can sink into hell, and yet by God's grace reach heaven again." CHAPTER XXXIV. A HARPY AT THE FEAST. Honora now saw that suffering was not to be avoided. Experience had taught her how to economize with it. In the wood one day she watched for minutes two robins hopping about in harmony, feeding, singing now and then low notes of content from a bough, and always together. A third robin made appearance on the scene, and their content vanished. Irritated and uneasy, even angered, they dashed at the intruder, who stood his ground, confident of his strength. For a long time he fought them, leaving only at his own pleasure. Longer still the pair remained unquiet, distressed by the struggle rather than wearied, complaining to each other tenderly. Behold a picture of her own mind, its order upset by the entrance of a new idea. That life of the mind, which is our true life, had to change its point of view in order to meet and cope with the newcomer. Arthur's love had the fiber of tragedy. She felt rather than knew its nature. For years it had been growing in his strong heart, disciplined by steady buffeting, by her indifference, by his own hard circumstances; no passion of an hour like Romeo's; more like her father's love for Erin. Former ideas began to shift position, and to struggle against the intruder vainly. Some fought in his favor. The vision of convent peace grew dim. She must take it with tears, and his sorrow would cloud its beauty. Marriage, always so remote from her life, came near, and tried to prove the lightness of its yoke with Arthur as the mate. The passion of her father's life awoke. Dear Erin cried out to her for the help which such a union would bring. Her fixed resolve to depart for her convent in September kept the process from tangle. Sweet indeed was the thought of how nobly he loved her. She was free. God alone was the arbiter. None would hinder her going, if her heart did not bid her stay for his sake. Her father had needed her. She would never have forgiven herself had she left him to carry his sorrow alone. Perhaps this poor soul needed her more. With delight one moment and shame the next, she saw herself drifting towards him. Nevertheless she did not waver, nor change the date of her departure. Arthur continued to adore at her shrine as he had done for years, and she studied him with the one thought: how will he bear new sorrow? No man bore the mark of sorrow more terribly when he let himself go, and at times his mask fell off in spite of resolve. As a lover Honora, with all her distaste for marriage, found him more lovable than ever, and had to admit that companionship with her hero would not be irritating. The conspiracy in his favor flourished within and without the citadel. Knowing that he adored her, she liked the adoration. To any goddess the smell of the incense is sweet, the sight of the flowers, the humid eyes, the leaping heart delightful. Yet she put it one side when the day over, and she knelt in her room for prayer. Like a dream the meanings of the day faded, and the vision of her convent cell, its long desired peace and rest, returned with fresher coloring. The men and women of her little world, the passions and interests of the daylight, so faded, that they seemed to belong to another age. While this comedy went on the farmhouse and its happy life were keenly and bitterly watched by the wretched wife of Curran. It was her luck, like Sonia's, to spoil her own feast in defiling her enemy's banquet. Having been routed at all points and all but sent to Jezebel's fate by Arthur Dillon, she had stolen into this paradise to do what mischief she could. Thus it happened, at the moment most favorable for Arthur's hopes, when Honora inclined towards him out of sisterly love and pity, that the two women met in a favorite haunt of Honora's, in the woods near the lake shore. To reach it one took a wild path through the woods, over the bluff, and along the foot of the hill, coming out on a small plateau some fifteen feet above the lake. Behind rose a rocky wall, covered with slender pines and cedars; noble trees shaded the plateau, leaving a clearing towards the lake; so that one looked out as from a frame of foliage on the blue waters, the islet of St. Michel, and the wooded cape known as Cumberland Head. As Honora entered this lovely place, Edith sat on a stone near the edge of the precipice, enjoying the view. She faced the newcomer with unfailing impertinence, and coolly studied the woman whom Arthur Dillon loved. Sickness of heart filled her with rage. The evil beauty of Sonia and herself showed purely animal beside the pale spiritual luster that shone from this noble, sad-hearted maid. Honora bowed distantly and passed on. Edith began to glow with delight of torturing her presently, and would not speak lest her pleasure be hurried. The instinct of the wild beast, to worry the living game, overpowered her. What business had Honora with so much luck? The love of Arthur, fame as a singer, beauty, and a passion for the perfect life? God had endowed herself with three of these gifts. Having dragged them through the mud, she hated the woman who had used them with honor. What delight that in a moment she could torture her with death's anguish! "I came here in the hope of meeting you, madam," she began suddenly, "if you are Miss Ledwith. I come to warn you." "I do not need warnings from strangers," Honora replied easily, studying the other for an instant with indifferent eyes, "and if you wished me to see on proper matters you should have called at the house." "For a scene with the man who ran away from his wife before he deceived me, and then made love to you? I could hardly do that," said she as demure and soft as a purring cat. Honora's calm look plainly spoke her thought: the creature was mad. "I am not mad. Miss Ledwith, and your looks will not prevent me warning you. Arthur Dillon is not the man he pretends----" "Please go away," Honora interrupted. "He is not the son of Anne Dillon----" "Then I shall go," said Honora, but Edith barred the only way out of the place, her eyes blazing with the insane pleasure of torturing the innocent. Honora turned her back on her and walked down to the edge of the cliff, where she remained until the end. "I know Arthur Dillon better than you know him," Edith went on, "and I know you better than you think. Once I had the honor of your acquaintance. That doesn't matter. Neither does it matter just who Arthur Dillon is. He's a fraud from cover to cover. His deserted wife is living, poor as well as neglected. The wretched woman has sought him long----" "Why don't you put her on the track?" Honora asked, relieved that the lunatic wished only to talk. "He makes love to you now as he has done for years, and he hopes to marry you soon. I can tell that by his behavior. I warn you that he is not free to marry. His wife lives. If you marry him I shall put her on his track, and give you a honeymoon of scandal. It was enough for him to have wrecked my life and broken my heart. I shall not permit him to repeat that work on any other unfortunate." "Is that all?" Edith, wholly astonished at the feeble impression made by her story, saw that her usual form had been lacking. Her scorn for Honora suggested that acting would be wasted on her; that the mere news of the living wife would be sufficient to plunge her into anguish. But here was no delight of pallid face and trembling limbs. Her tale would have gone just as well with the trees. "I have risked my life to tell you this," said she throwing in the note of pathos. "If Arthur Dillon, or whoever he is, hears of it, he will kill me." "Don't worry then," and Honora turned about with benign face and manner, quite suited to the need of a crazy patient escaped from her keepers, "I shall never tell him. But please go, for some one is coming. It may be he." Edith turned about swiftly and saw a form approaching through the trees. She had her choice of two paths a little beyond, and fled by the upper one. Her fear of Arthur had become mortal. As it was she rushed into the arms of Louis, who had seen the fleeing form, and thought to play a joke upon Mona or Honora. He dropped the stranger and made apologies for his rudeness. She curtsied mockingly, and murmured: "Possibly we have met before." The blood rose hot to his face as he recognized her, and her face paled as he seized her by the wrist with scant courtesy. "I scarcely hoped for the honor of meeting you again, Sister Claire. Of course you are here only for mischief, and Arthur Dillon must see you and settle with you. I'll trouble you to come with me." "You have not improved," she snarled. "You would attack my honor again." Then she screamed for help once, not the second time, which might have brought Arthur to the scene; but Honora came running to her assistance. "Ah, this was your prey, wolf?" said Louis coolly. "Honora, has she been lying to you, this fox, Sister Claire, Edith Conyngham, with a string of other names not to be remembered? Didn't you know her?" Honora recoiled. Edith stood in shame, with the mortified expression of the wild beast, the intelligent fox, trapped by an inferior boy. "Oh, let her go, Louis," she pleaded. "Not till she has seen Arthur. The mischief she can do is beyond counting. Arthur knows how to deal with her." "I insist," said Honora. "Come away, Louis, please, come away." He flung away her wrist with contempt, and pointed out her path. In a short time she had disappeared. "And what had she to tell you, may I ask?" said the Deacon. "Like the banshee her appearance brings misfortune to us." "You have always been my confidant, Louis," she answered after some thought. "Do you know anything about the earlier years of Arthur Dillon?" "Much. Was that her theme?" "That he was married and his wife still lives." "He will tell you about that business himself no doubt. I know nothing clear or certain ... some hasty expressions of feeling ... part of a dream ... the declaration that all was well now ... and so on. But I shall tell him. Don't object, I must. The woman is persistent and diabolical in her attempts to injure us. He must know at least that she is in the vicinity. He will guess what she's after without any further hint. But you mustn't credit her, Honora. As you know...." "Oh, I know," she answered with a smile. "The wretched creature is not to be believed under any circumstances. Poor soul!" Nevertheless she felt the truth of Edith's story. It mattered little whether Arthur was Anne Dillon's son, he would always be the faithful, strong friend, and benefactor. That he had a wife living, the living witness of the weakness of his career in the mines, shocked her for the moment. The fact carried comfort too. Doubt fled, and the weighing of inclinations, the process kept up by her mind apart from her will, ceased of a sudden. The great pity for Arthur, which had welled up in her heart like a new spring, dried up at its source. For the first time she felt the sin in him, the absence of the ideal. He had tripped and fallen like all his kind in the wild days of youth; and according to his nature had been repeating with her the drama enacted with his first love. She respected his first love. She respected the method of nature, but did not feel forced to admire it. Her distaste for the intimacy of marriage returned with tenfold strength. One might have become submissive and companionable with a virgin nature; to marry another woman's lover seemed ridiculous. This storm cleared the air beautifully. Her own point of view became plainer, and she saw how far inclination had hurried her. For some hours she had been near to falling in love with Arthur, had been willing to yield to tender persuasion. The woman guilty of such weakness did not seem at this moment to have been Honora Ledwith; only a poor soul, like a little ship in a big wind, borne away by the tempest of emotion. She had no blame for Arthur. His life was his own concern. Part of it had brought her much happiness. Edith's scandalous story did not shake her confidence in him. Undoubtedly he was free to marry, or he would not have approached her. His freedom from a terrible bond must have been recent, since his manner towards herself had changed only that summer, within the month in fact. The reserve of years had been prompted by hard conditions. In honor he could not woo. Ah, in him ran the fibre of the hero, no matter what might have been his mistakes! He had resisted every natural temptation to show his love. Once more they were brother and sister, children of the dear father whose last moments they had consoled. Who would regret the sorrow which led to such a revealing of hearts? The vision of her convent rose again to her pleased eye, fresh and beautiful as of old, and dearer because of the passing darkness which had concealed it for a time; the light from the chapel windows falling upon the dark robes in the choir, the voices of the reader, chanter, and singer, and the solemn music of the organ; the procession filing silently from one duty to another, the quiet cell when the day was over, and the gracious intimacy with God night and day. Could her belief and her delight in that holy life have been dim for an instant? Ah, weakness of the heart! The mountain is none the less firm because clouds obscure its lofty form. She had been wrapped in the clouds of feeling, but never once had her determination failed. CHAPTER XXXV. SONIA CONSULTS LIVINGSTONE. Edith's visit, so futile, so unlike her, had been prompted by the hatefulness of her nature. The expedition to California had failed, her effort to prove her instincts true had come to nothing, and Arthur Dillon had at last put his foot down and extinguished her and Sonia together. Free to snarl and spit if they chose, the two cats could never plot seriously against him more. Curran triumphed in the end. Tracking Arthur Dillon through California had all the features of a chase through the clouds after a bird. The scene changed with every step, and the ground just gone over faded like a dream. They found Dillons, a few named Arthur, some coincidences, several mysteries, and nothing beyond. The police still had the photographs sent out by Anne Dillon, and a record that the man sought for had been found and returned to his mother. The town where the search ended had only a ruined tavern and one inhabitant, who vaguely remembered the close of the incident. Edith surrendered the search in a violent temper, and all but scratched out the eyes of her devoted slave. To Sonia the detective put the net result very sensibly. "Arthur Dillon did not live in California under his own name," said he, "and things have so changed there in five years that his tracks have been wiped out as if by rain. All that has been done so far proves this man to be just what he appears. We never had a worse case, and never took up a more foolish pursuit. We have proved just one sure thing: that if this man be Horace, then he can't be found. He is too clever to be caught, until he is willing to reveal himself. If you pursue him to the point which might result in his capture, there'll be murder or worse waiting for you at that point. It might be better for you two not to find him." This suggestion, clever and terrifying, Sonia could not understand as clearly as Curran. She thought the soft nature of Horace quite manageable, and if murder were to be done her knife should do it. Oh, to seize his throat with her beautiful hands, to press and squeeze and dig until the blood gorged his face, and to see him die by inches, gasping! He had lied like a coward! Nothing easier to destroy than such a wretch! "Don't give up, Sonia," was Edith's comment on the wise words of Curran. "Get a good lawyer, and by some trick drag Dillon and his mother and the priest to court, put them on oath as to who the man is; they won't perjure themselves, I'll wager." "That is my thought," said Sonia tenderly nursing the idea. "There seems to be nothing more to do. I have thought the matter over very carefully. We are at the end. If this fails I mean to abandon the matter. But for his money I would have let him go as far as he wanted, and I would let this man pass too but for the hope of getting at his money. It is the only way to punish Horace, as he punished me. I feel like you, that the mystery is with this Arthur Dillon. Since I saw you last, he has filled my dreams, and always in the dreams he has been so like Horace that I now see more of a likeness in Arthur Dillon. I have a relative in the city, a very successful lawyer, Quincy Livingstone. I shall consult him. Perhaps it would be well for you to accompany me, Edith. You explain this case so well." "No, she'll keep out of it, by your leave," the detective answered for her. "Dillon has had patience with this woman, but he will resent interference so annoying." Edith made a face at him. "As if I could be bossed by either you or Arthur. Sonia, you have the right stuff in you, clear grit. This trick will land your man." "You'll find an alligator who will eat the legs off you both before you can run away," said Curran. "Do you know what I think, Dick Curran?" she snapped at him. "That you have been playing the traitor to us, telling Arthur Dillon all we've been doing. Oh, if I could prove that, you wretch!" "You have a high opinion of his softness, if you think he would throw away money to learn what any schoolboy might learn by himself. How much did you, with all your cleverness, get out of him in the last five years?" He laughed joyfully at her wicked face. "Let me tell you this," he added. "You have been teasing that boy as a monkey might a lion. Now you will set on him the man that he likes least in this world, Livingstone. What a pretty mouthful you will be when he makes up his mind that you've done enough." Nevertheless the two women called on Livingstone. The great man, no longer great, no longer in the eye of the world, out of politics because the charmed circle had closed, and no more named for high places because his record had made him impossible, had returned to the practice of law. Eminent by his ability, his achievement, and his blood, but only a private citizen, the shadow of his failure lay heavy on his life and showed clearly in his handsome face. That noble position which he had missed, so dear to heart and imagination, haunted his moments of leisure and mocked his dreams. He had borne the disappointment bravely, had lightly called it the luck of politics. Now that the past lay in clear perspective, he recognized his own madness. He had fought with destiny like a fool, had stood in the path of a people to whom God had given the chance which the rulers of the earth denied them; and this people, through a youth carrying the sling of David, had ruined him. He had no feeling against Birmingham, nor against Arthur Dillon. The torrent, not the men, had destroyed him. Yet he had learned nothing. With a fair chance he would have built another dam the next morning. He was out of the race forever. In the English mission he had touched the highest mark of his success. He mourned in quiet. Life had still enough for him, but oh! the keenness of his regret. Sonia's story he had heard before, at the beginning of the search, as a member of the Endicott family. The details had never reached him. The cause of Horace Endicott's flight he had forgotten. Edith in her present costume remained unknown, nor did she enlighten him. Her thought as she studied him was of Dillon's luck in his enterprises. Behold three of his victims. Sonia repeated for the lawyer the story of her husband's disappearance, and of the efforts to find him. "At last I think that I have found him," was her conclusion, "in the person of a man known in this city as Arthur Dillon." Livingstone started slightly. However, there must be many Arthur Dillons, the Irish being so numerous, and tasteless in the matter of names. When she described her particular Arthur his astonishment became boundless at the absurdity of the supposition. "You have fair evidence I suppose that he is Horace Endicott, madam?" "I am sorry to tell you that I have none, because the statement makes one feel so foolish. On the contrary the search of a clever detective ... he's really clever, isn't he, Edith?... shows that Dillon is just what he appears to be, the son of Mrs. Anne Dillon. The whole town believes he is her son. The people who knew him since he was born declare him to be the very image of his father. Still, I think that he is Horace Endicott. Why I think so, ... Edith, my dear, it is your turn now. Do explain to the lawyer." Livingstone wondered as the dancer spoke where that beautiful voice and fluent English had become familiar. Sister Claire had passed from his mind with all the minor episodes of his political intrigues. He could not find her place in his memory. Her story won him against his judgment. The case, well put, found strength in the contention that the last move had not been made, since the three most important characters in the play had not been put to the question. His mind ran over the chief incidents in that remarkable fight which Arthur Dillon had waged in behalf of his people: the interview before the election of Birmingham, ... the intrigues in London, the dexterous maneuvers which had wrecked the campaign against the Irish, had silenced McMeeter, stunned the Bishop, banished Fritters, ruined Sister Claire, tumbled him from his lofty position, and cut off his shining future. How frightful the thought that this wide ruin might have been wrought by an Endicott, one of his own blood! "A woman's instincts are admirable," he said, politely and gravely, "and they have led you admirably in this case. But in face of three facts, the failure of the detective, the declaration of Mr. Dillon, and your failure to recognize your husband after five years, it would be absurd to persist in the belief that this young man is your husband. Moreover there are intrinsic difficulties, which would tell even if you had made out a good case for the theory. No Endicott would take up intimate connection with the Irish. He would not know enough about them, he could not endure them; his essence would make the scheme, even if it were presented to him by others, impossible. One has only to think of two or three main difficulties to feel and see the utter absurdity of the whole thing." "No doubt," replied Sonia sweetly. "Yet I am determined not to miss this last opportunity to find my husband. If it fails I shall get my divorce, and ... bother with the matter no more." Edith smiled faintly at the suggestive pause, and murmured the intended phrase, "marry Quincy Lenox." "Very well," said the lawyer. "You have only to begin divorce proceedings here, issue a summons for the real Horace Endicott, and serve the papers on Mr. Arthur Dillon. You must be prepared for many events however. The whole business will be ventilated in the journals. The disappearance will come up again, and be described in the light of this new sensation. Mr. Dillon is eminent among his people, and well known in this city. It will be a year's wonder to have him sued in a divorce case, to have it made known that he is supposed to be Horace Endicott." "That is unavoidable," Edith prompted, seeing a sudden shrinking on the part of Sonia. "Do not forget, sir, that all Mrs. Endicott wants is the sworn declaration of Arthur Dillon that he is not Horace Endicott, of his mother that he is her son, of Father O'Donnell that he knows nothing of Horace Endicott since his disappearance." "You would not like the case to come to trial?" said the lawyer to Sonia. "I must get my divorce," she answered coolly, "whether this is the right man or no." "Let me tell you what may happen after the summons, or notice, is served on Mr. Dillon," said the lawyer. "The serving can be done so quietly that for some time no others but those concerned need know about it. I shall assume that Mr. Dillon is not Horace Endicott. In that case he can ignore the summons, which is not for him, but for another man. He need never appear. If you insisted on his appearance, you would have to offer some evidence that he is really Horace Endicott. This you cannot do. He could make affidavit that he is not the man. By that time the matter would be public property, and he could strike back at you for the scandal, the annoyance, and the damage done to his good name." "What I want is to have his declaration under oath that he is not Horace. If he is Horace he will never swear to anything but the truth." For the first time Sonia showed emotion, tears dropped from her lovely eyes, and the lawyer wondered what folly had lost to her husband so sweet a creature. Evidently she admired one of Horace's good qualities. "You can get the declaration in that way. To please you, he might at my request make affidavit without publicity and scenes at court." "I would prefer the court," said Sonia firmly. "She's afeared the lawyer suspects her virtue," Edith said to herself. "Let me now assume that Arthur Dillon is really Horace Endicott," continued Livingstone. "He must be a consummate actor to play his part so well and so long. He can play the part in this matter also, by ignoring the summons, and declaring simply that he is not the man. In that case he leaves himself open to punishment, for if he should thereafter be proved to be Horace Endicott, the court could punish him for contempt. Or, he can answer the summons by his lawyer, denying the fact, and stating his readiness to swear that he is not any other than Arthur Dillon. You would then have to prove that he is Horace Endicott, which you cannot do." "All I want is the declaration under oath," Sonia repeated. "And you are ready for any ill consequences, the resentment and suit of Mr. Dillon, for instance? Understand, my dear lady, that suit for divorce is not a trifling matter for Mr. Dillon, if he is not Endicott." "Particularly as he is about to marry a very handsome woman," Edith interjected, heedless of the withering glance from Sonia. "Ah, indeed!" "Then I think some way ought to be planned to get Anne Dillon and the priest into court," Edith suggested. "Under oath they might give us some hint of the way to find Horace Endicott. The priest knows something about him." "I shall be satisfied if Arthur Dillon swears that he is not Horace," Sonia said, "and then I shall get my divorce and wash my hands of the tiresome case. It has cost me too much money and worry." "Was there any reason alleged for the remarkable disappearance of the young man? I knew his father and mother very well, and admired them. I saw the boy in his schooldays, never afterwards. You have a child, I understand." Edith lowered her eyes and looked out of the window on the busy street. "It is for my child's sake that I have kept up the search," Sonia answered with maternal tenderness. "Insanity is supposed to be the cause. Horace acted strangely for three months before his disappearance, he grew quite thin, and was absent most of the time. As it was summer, which I spent at the shore with friends, I hardly noticed his condition. It was only when he had gone, without warning, taking considerable money with him, that I recalled his queer behavior. Since then not a scrap of information, not a trace, nor a hint of him, has ever come back to me. The detectives did their best until this moment. All has failed." "Very sad," Livingstone said, touched by the hopeless tone. "Well, as you wish it then, I shall bring suit for divorce and alimony against Horace Endicott, and have the papers served on Arthur Dillon. He can ignore them or make his reply. In either case he must be brought to make affidavit that he is not the man you look for." "And the others? The priest and Mrs. Dillon?" asked Edith. "They are of no consequence," was Sonia's opinion. After settling unimportant details the two women departed. Livingstone found the problem which they had brought to his notice fascinating. He had always marked Arthur Dillon among his associates, as an able and peculiar young man, he had been attracted by him, and had listened to his speeches with more consideration than most young men deserved. His amazing success in dealing with a Livingstone, his audacity and nerve in attacking the policy which he brought to nothing, were more wonderful to the lawyer than to the friends of Dillon, who had not seen the task in its entirety. And this peculiar fellow was thought to be an Endicott, of his own family, of the English blood, more Irish than the Irish, bitterer towards him than the priests had been. The very impossibility of the thing made it charming. What course of thought, what set of circumstances, could turn the Puritan mind in the Celtic direction? Was there such genius in man to convert one personality into another so neatly that the process remained undiscoverable, not to be detected by the closest observation? He shook off the fascination. These two women believed it, but he knew that no Endicott could ever be converted. CHAPTER XXXVI. ARTHUR'S APPEAL. Suit was promptly begun by Livingstone on behalf of Sonia for a divorce from Horace Endicott. Before the papers had been fully made out, even before the officer had been instructed to serve them on Arthur Dillon, the lawyer received an evening visit from the defendant himself. As a suspicious act he welcomed it; but a single glance at the frank face and easy manner, when one knew the young man's ability, disarmed suspicion. The lawyer studied closely, for the first time with interest, the man who might yet prove to be his kinsman. He saw a form inclined to leanness, a face that might have been handsome but for the sunken cheeks, dark and expressive eyes whose natural beauty faded in the dark circles around them, a fine head with dead black hair, and a handsome beard, streaked with gray. His dress, gentleman-like but of a strange fashion, the lawyer did not recognize as the bachelor costume of Cherry Hill prepared by his own tailor. Nothing of the Endicott in face or manner, nothing tragical, the expression decorous and formal, perhaps a trifle quizzical, as this was their first meeting since the interview in London. "I have called to enter a protest," Arthur began primly, "against the serving of the papers in the coming Endicott divorce case on your humble servant." "As the papers are to be served only on Horace Endicott, I fail to see how you have any right or reason to protest," was the suave answer. "I know all about the matter, sir, for very good reasons. For some months the movements of the two women concerned in this affair have been watched in my interest. Not long after they left you a few days ago, the result of their visit was made known to me. To anticipate the disagreeable consequences of serving the papers on me, I have not waited. I appeal to you not only as the lawyer of Mrs. Endicott, but also as one much to blame for the new persecution which is about to fall upon me." "I recognize the touch," said Livingstone, unable to resist a smile. "Mr. Dillon must be audacious or nothing." "I am quite serious," Arthur replied. "You know part of the story, what Mrs. Endicott chose to tell you, but I can enlighten you still more. I appeal to you, as the lady's lawyer, to hinder her from doing mischief; and again I appeal to you as one to blame in part for the threatened annoyances. But for the lady who accompanied Mrs. Endicott, I would not be suspected of relationship with your honored family. But for the discipline which I helped to procure for that lady, she would have left me in peace. But for your encouragement of the lady, I would not have been forced to subject a woman to discipline. You may remember the effective Sister Claire?" So true was the surprise that Livingstone blushed with sudden violence. "That woman was the so-called escaped nun?" he exclaimed. "Now Mrs. Curran, wife of the detective employed by Mrs. Endicott for five years to discover her lost husband. She satisfies her noblest aspirations by dancing in the theaters, ... and a very fine dancer she is. Her leisure is devoted to plotting vengeance on me. She pretends to believe that I am Horace Endicott; perhaps she does believe it. Anyway she knows that persecution will result, and she has persuaded Mrs. Endicott to inaugurate it. I do not know if you were her selection to manage the case." This time Livingstone did not blush, being prepared for any turn of mood and speech from this singular young man. "As the matter was described to me," he said, "only a sentimental reason included you in the divorce proceedings. I can understand Mrs. Curran's feelings, and to what they would urge a woman of that character. Still, her statements here were very plausible." "Undoubtedly. She made her career up to this moment on the plausible. Let me tell you, if it is not too tedious, how she has pursued this theory in the face of all good sense." The lawyer bowed his permission. "I am of opinion that the creature is half mad, or subject to fits of insanity. Her husband had talked much of the Endicott case, which was not good for a woman of her peculiarities. By inspiration, insane suggestion, she assumed that I was the man sought for, and built up the theory as you have heard. First, she persuaded her good-natured husband, with whom I am acquainted, to investigate among my acquaintances for the merest suspicion, doubt, of my real personality. A long and minute inquiry, the details of which are in writing in my possession, was made by the detective with one result: that no one doubted me to be what I was born." Livingstone cast a look at him to see the expression which backed that natural and happy phrase. Arthur Dillon might have borne it. "She kept at her husband, however, until he had tried to surprise my relatives, my friends, my nurse, and my mother, ... yes, even my confessor, into admissions favorable to her mad dream. My rooms, my papers, my habits, my secrets were turned inside out; Mrs. Endicott was brought on from Boston to study me in my daily life; for days I was watched by the three. In the detective's house I was drugged into a profound sleep, and for ten minutes the two women examined my sleeping face for signs of Horace Endicott. When all these things failed, Sister Claire dragged her unwilling husband to California, where I had spent ten years of my life, and tried hard to find another Arthur Dillon, or to disconnect me with myself. She proved to her own satisfaction that these things could not be done. But there is a devil of perversity in her. She is like a boa constrictor ... I think that's the snake which cannot let go its prey once it has seized it. She can't let go. In desperation she is risking her own safety and happiness to make public her belief that I am Horace Endicott. In spite of the overwhelming proofs against the theory, and in favor of me, she is bent on bringing the case into court." "Risking her own safety and happiness?" Livingstone repeated. "If the wild geese among the Irish could locate Sister Claire, who is supposed to have fled the town long ago, her life would be taken. If this suit continues she will have to leave the city forever. Knowing this the devil in her urges her to her own ruin." "You have kept close track of her," said Livingstone. "You left me no choice," was the reply, "having sprung the creature on us, and then thrown her off when you found out her character. If she had only turned on her abettors and wracked them I wouldn't have cared." "You protest then against the serving of these papers on you. Would it not be better to settle forever the last doubts in so peculiar a matter?" "What have I to do with the doubts of an escaped nun, and of Mrs. Endicott? Must I go to court and stand the odium of a shameful imputation to settle the doubts of a lunatic criminal and a woman whose husband fled from her with his entire fortune?" "It is regrettable," the lawyer admitted with surprise. "As Mrs. Endicott is perhaps the most deeply interested, I fear that the case must go on." "I have come to show you that it will not be to the interest of the two women that it should go on. In fact I feel quite certain that you will not serve those papers on me after I have laid a few facts before you." "I shall be glad to examine them in the interest of my client." "Having utterly failed to prove me other than I am," Arthur said easily, while the lawyer watched with increasing interest the expressive face, "these women have accepted your suggestion to put me under oath as to my own personality. I would not take affidavit," and his contempt was evident. "I am not going to permit any public or official attempt to cast doubt on my good name. You can understand the feeling. My mother and my friends are not accustomed to the atmosphere of courts, nor of scandal. It would mean severe suffering for them to be dragged into so sensational a trial. The consequences one cannot measure beforehand. The unpleasantness lives after all the parties are dead. Since I can prevent it I am going to do it. As far as I am concerned Mrs. Endicott must be content with a simple denial, or a simple affirmation rather, that I am Arthur Dillon, and therefore not her husband. It is more than she deserves, because there is not a shred of evidence to warrant her making a single move against me. She has not been able to find in me a feature resembling her husband." "Then, you are prepared to convince Mrs. Endicott that she has more to lose than to gain by bringing you into her divorce suit?" "Precisely. Here is the point for her to consider: if the papers in this suit are served upon me, then there will be no letting-up afterward. Her affairs, the affairs of this woman Curran, the lives of both to the last detail, will be served up to the court and the public. You know how that can be done. I would rather not have it done, but I proffer Mrs. Endicott the alternative." "I do not know how strong an argument that would be with Mrs. Endicott," said Livingstone with interest. "She is too shallow a woman to perceive its strength, unless you, as her lawyer and kinsman, make it plain to her," was the guileless answer. "Mrs. Curran knows nothing of court procedure, but she is clever enough to foresee consequences, and her history before her New York fiasco includes bits of romance from the lives of important people." Livingstone resisted the inclination to laugh, and then to get angry. "You think then, that if Mrs. Endicott could be made to see the possibilities of a desperate trial, the possible exposures of her sins and the sins of others, that she would not risk it?" "She has family pride," said Arthur seriously, "and would not care to expose her own to scorn. I presume you know something about the Endicott disappearance?" "Nothing more than the fact, and the failure to find the young man?" "His wife employed the detective Curran to make the search for Endicott, and Curran is a Fenian, as interested as myself in such matters. He was with me in the little enterprise which ended so fatally for Ledwith and ... others." Livingstone was too sore on this subject to smile at the pause and the word. "Curran told me the details after he had left the pursuit of Endicott. They are known now to Mrs. Endicott's family in part. It is understood that she will marry her cousin Quincy Lenox when she gets a divorce. He was devoted to her before her marriage and is faithful still, I am told." Not a sign of feeling in the utterance of these significant words! "It is not affection, then, which prompts the actions of my client? She wishes to make sure of the existence or non-existence of her husband before entering upon this other marriage?" "Of course I can tell you only what the detective and one other told us," Arthur said. "When Horace Endicott disappeared, it is said, he took with him his entire fortune, something over a million, leaving not one cent to his wife. He had converted his property into cash secretly. Her anxiety to find him is very properly to get her lawful share in that property, that is, alimony with her divorce?" "I see," said Livingstone, and he began to understand the lines and shadows on this young man's face. "A peculiar, and I suppose thorough, revenge." "If the papers are served on me, you understand, then in one fashion or another Mrs. Endicott shall be brought to court, and Quincy Lenox too, with the detective and his wife, and a few others. It is almost too much that you have been made acquainted with the doubts of these people. I bear with it, but I shall not endure one degree more of publicity. Once it is known that I am thought to be Horace Endicott, then the whole world must know quite as thoroughly that I am Arthur Dillon; and also who these people are that so foolishly pursue me. It cannot but appear to the average crowd that this new form of persecution is no more than an outgrowth of the old." Then they glared at each other mildly, for the passions of yesterday were still warm. Livingstone's mood had changed, however. He felt speculatively certain that Horace Endicott sat before him, and he knew Sonia to be a guilty woman. As his mind flew over the humiliating events which connected him with Dillon, consolation soothed his wounded heart that he had been overthrown perhaps by one of his own, rather than by the Irish. The unknown element in the contest had given victory to the lucky side. He recalled his sense of this young fellow's superiority to his environment. He tried to fathom Arthur's motive in this visit, but failed. As a matter of fact Arthur was merely testing the thoroughness of his own disappearance. His visit to Livingstone the real Dillon would have made. It would lead the lawyer to believe that Sonia, in giving up her design, had been moved by his advice and not by a quiet, secret conversation with her husband. Livingstone quickly made up his mind that the divorce suit would have to be won by default, but he wished to learn more of this daring and interesting kinsman. "The decision must remain with Mrs. Endicott," he said after a pause. "I shall tell her, before your name is mixed up with the matter, just what she must expect. If she has anything to fear from a public trial you are undoubtedly the man to bring it out." "Thank you." "I might even use persuasion ..." "It would be a service to the Endicott family," Arthur said earnestly, "for I can swear to you that the truth will come out, the scandal which Horace Endicott fled to avoid and conceal forever." "Did you know Endicott?" "Very well indeed. I was his guide in California every time he made a trip to that country." "I might persuade Mrs. Endicott," said the lawyer with deeper interest, "for the sake of the family name, to surrender her foolish theory. It is quite clear to any one with unbiased judgment that you are not Horace Endicott, even if you are not Arthur Dillon. I knew the young man slightly, and his family very well. I can see myself playing the part which you have presented to us for the past five years, quite as naturally as Horace Endicott would have played it. It was not in Horace's nature, nor in the Endicott nature to turn Irish so completely." Arthur felt all the bitterness and the interest which this shot implied. "I had the pleasure of knowing Endicott well, much better than you, sir," he returned warmly, "and while I know he was something of a good-natured butterfly, I can say something for his fairness and courage. If he had known what I know of the Irish, of their treatment by their enemies at home and here, of English hypocrisy and American meanness, of their banishment from the land God gave them and your attempt to drive them out of New York or to keep them in the gutter, he would have taken up their cause as honestly as I have done." "You are always the orator, Mr. Endi ... Dillon." "I have feeling, which is rare in the world," said Arthur smiling. "Do you know what this passion for justice has done for me, Mr. Livingstone? It has brought out in me the eloquence which you have praised, and inspired the energy, the deviltry, the trickery, the courage, that were used so finely at your expense. "I was like Endicott, a wild irresponsible creature, thinking only of my own pleasure. Out of my love for one country which is not mine, out of a study of the wrongs heaped upon the Irish by a civilized people, I have secured the key to the conditions of the time. I have learned to despise and pity the littleness of your party, to recognize the shams of the time everywhere, the utter hypocrisy of those in power. "I have pledged myself to make war on them as I made war on you; on the power that, mouthing liberty, holds Ireland in slavery; on the powers that, mouthing order and peace, hold down Poland, maintain Turkey, rob and starve India, loot the helpless wherever they may. I was a harmless hypocrite and mostly a fool once. Time and hardship and other things, chiefly Irish and English, have given me a fresh start in the life of thought. You hardly understand this, being thoroughly English in your make-up. "You love good Protestants, pagans who hate the Pope, all who bow to England, and that part of America which is English. You can blow about their rights and liberties, and denounce their persecutors, if these happen to be French or Dutch or Russian. For a Pole or an Irishman you have no sympathy, and you would deny him any place on the earth but a grave. Liberty is not for him unless he becomes a good English Protestant at the same time. In other words liberty may be the proper sauce for the English goose but not for the Irish gander." "I suppose it appears that way to you," said Livingstone, who had listened closely, not merely to the sentiments, but to the words, the tone, the idiom. Could Horace Endicott have ever descended to this view of his world, this rawness of thought, sentiment, and expression? So peculiarly Irish, anti-English, rich with the flavor of the Fourth Ward, and nevertheless most interesting. "I shall not argue the point," he continued. "I judge from your earnestness that you have a well-marked ambition in life, and that you will follow it." "My present ambition is to see our grand cathedral completed and dedicated as soon as possible, as the loudest word we can speak to you about our future. But I fear I am detaining you. If during the next few days the papers in the divorce case are not served on me, I may feel certain that Mrs. Endicott has given up the idea of including me in the suit?" "I shall advise her to leave you in peace for the sake of the Endicott name," said Livingstone politely. Arthur thanked him and departed, while the lawyer spent an hour enjoying his impressions and vainly trying to disentangle the Endicott from the Dillon in this extraordinary man. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE END OF MISCHIEF. Arthur set out for the Curran household, where he was awaited with anxiety. Quite cheerful over his command of the situation, and inclined to laugh at the mixed feelings of Livingstone, he felt only reverence and awe before the human mind as seen in the light of his own experience. His particular mind had once been Horace Endicott's, but now represented the more intense and emotional personality of Arthur Dillon. He was neither Horace, nor the boy who had disappeared; but a new being fashioned after the ideal Arthur Dillon, as Horace Endicott had conceived him. What he had been seemed no more a part of his past, but a memory attached to another man. All his actions proved it. The test of his disappearance delighted him. He had gone through its various scenes with little emotion, with less than Edith had displayed; far less than Arthur Dillon would have felt and shown. Who can measure the mind? Itself the measure of man's knowledge, the judge in the court of human destiny, how feeble its power over itself! A few years back this mind directed Horace Endicott; to-day it cheerfully served the conscience of Arthur Dillon! Edith and her husband awaited their executioner. The detective suffered for her rather than himself. From Dillon he had nothing to fear, and for his sake, also for the strange regard he had always kept for Curran's wife, Arthur had been kind when harshness would have done more good. Now the end had come for her and Sonia. As the unexpected usually came from this young man, they had reason to feel apprehension. He took his seat comfortably in the familiar chair, and lit his cigar while chaffing her. "They who love the danger shall perish in it," he said for a beginning. "You court it, Colette, and not very wisely." "How, not wisely?" she asked with a pretence of boldness. "You count on the good will of the people whom you annoy and wrong, and yet you have never any good will to give them in return. You have hated me and pursued me on the strength of my good will for you. It seems never to have occurred to you to do me a good turn for the many I have done for you. You are a bud of incarnate evil, Colette." How she hated him when he talked in that fashion! "Well, it's all settled. I have had the last talk with Livingstone, and spoiled your last trick against the comfort of Arthur Dillon. There will be no dragging to court of the Dillon clan. Mr. Livingstone believes with me that the publicity would be too severe for Mrs. Endicott and her family, not to mention the minor revelations connected with yourself. So there's the end of your precious tomfoolery, Colette." She burst into vehement tears. "But you weep too soon," he protested. "I have saved you as usual from yourself, but only to inflict my own punishment. Don't weep those crocodile diamonds until you have heard your own sentence. Of course you know that I have followed every step you took in this matter. You are clever enough to have guessed that. You discovered all that was to be discovered, of course. But you are too keen. If this trial had come to pass you would have been on the witness stand, and the dogs would have caught the scent then never to lose it. You would have ruined your husband as well as yourself." "Why do you let him talk to me so?" she screamed at Curran. "Because it is for your good," Arthur answered. "But here's briefness. You must leave New York at once, and forever. Get as far from it as you can, and stay there while I am alive. And for consolation in your exile take your child with you, your little boy, whom Mrs. Endicott parades as her little son, the heir of her beloved Horace." A frightful stillness fell in the room with this terrific declaration. But for pity he could have laughed at the paralysis which seized both the detective and his wife. Edith sat like a statue, white-faced, pouting at him, her hands clasped in her lap. "Well, are you surprised? You, the clever one? If I am Horace Endicott, as you pretend to believe, do I not know the difference between my own child and another's? I am Arthur Dillon only, and yet I know how you conspired with Mrs. Endicott to provide her with an heir for the Endicott money. You did this in spite of your husband, who has never been able to control you, not even when you chose to commit so grave a crime. Now, it is absolutely necessary for the child's sake that you save him from Mrs. Endicott's neglect, when he is of no further use to her. She loves children, as you know." "Who are you, anyway?" Curran burst out hoarsely after a while. "Not half as good a detective as you are, but I happen in this matter to be on the inside," Arthur answered cheerfully. "I knew Horace Endicott much better than his wife or his friends. The poor fellow is dead and gone, and yet he left enough information behind him to trouble the clever people. Are you satisfied, Colette, that this time everything must be done as I have ordered?" "You have proved yourself Horace Endicott," she gasped in her rage, burning with hate, mortification, shame, fifty tigerish feelings that could not find expression. "Fie, fie, Colette! You have proved that I am Arthur Dillon. Why go back on your own work? If you had known Horace Endicott as I did, you would not compare the meek and civilized Dillon with the howling demon into which his wife turned him. That fellow would not have sat in your presence ten minutes knowing that you had palmed off your child as his, without taking your throat in his hands for a death squeeze. His wife would not have escaped death from the madman had he ever encountered her. Here are your orders now; it is late and I must not keep you from your beauty sleep; take the child as soon as the Endicott woman sends him to you, and leave New York one hundred miles behind you. If you are found in this city any time after the month of September, you take all the risks. I shall not stand between you and justice again. You are the most ungrateful sinner that I have ever dealt with. Now go and weep for yourself. Don't waste any tears on Mrs. Endicott." Sobbing like an angry and humiliated child, Edith rushed out of the room. Curran felt excessively foolish. Though partly in league with Arthur, the present situation went beyond him. "Be hanged if I don't feel like demanding an explanation," he said awkwardly. "You don't need it," said Arthur as he proceeded to make it. "Can't you see that Horace Endicott is acting through me, and has been from the first, to secure the things I have secured. He is dead as I told you. How he got away, kept himself hid, and all that, you are as good an authority as I. While he was alive you could have found him as easily as I could, but he was beyond search always, though I guess not beyond betrayal. Well, let me congratulate you on getting your little family together again. Don't worry over what has happened to-night. Drop the Endicott case. You can see there's no luck in it for any one." Certainly there had been no luck in it for the Currans. Arthur went to his club in the best humor, shaking with laughter over the complete crushing of Edith, with whom he felt himself quite even in the contest that had endured so long. Next morning it would be Sonia's turn. Ah, what a despicable thing is man's love, how unstable and profitless! No wonder Honora valued it so lightly. How Horace Endicott had raved over this whited sepulcher five years ago, believed in her, sworn by her virtue and truth! And to-day he regarded her without feeling, neither love nor hate, perfect indifference only marking his mental attitude in her regard. Somehow one liked to feel that love is unchangeable, as with the mother, the father; as with God also, for whom sin does not change relationship with the sinner. When he stood before her the next day in the hotel parlor, she reminded him in her exquisite beauty of a play seen from the back of the stage; the illusion so successful with the audience is there an exposed sham, without coherence, and without beauty. Her eyes had a scared look. She had to say to herself, if this is Horace then my time has come, if it is Arthur Dillon I have nothing to worry about, before her hate came to her aid and gave her courage. She murmured the usual formula of unexpected pleasure. He bowed, finding no pleasure in this part of his revenge. Arthur Dillon could not have been more considerate of Messalina. "It is certainly a privilege and an honor," said he, "to be suspected of so charming a relationship with Mrs. Endicott. Nevertheless I have persuaded your lawyer, Mr. Livingstone, that it would be unprofitable and imprudent to bring me into the suit for divorce. He will so advise you I think to-day." She smiled at the compliment and felt reassured. "There were some things which I could not tell the lawyer," he went on, "and so I made bold to call on you personally. It is disagreeable, what I must tell you. My only apology is that you yourself have made this visit necessary by bringing my name into the case." Her smile died away, and her face hardened. She prepared herself for trouble. "I told your lawyer that if the papers were served on me, and a public and official doubt thrown on my right to the name of Arthur Dillon, I would not let the business drop until the Endicott-Curran-Dillon mystery had been thoroughly ventilated in the courts. He agreed with me that this would expose the Endicott name to scandal." "We have been perhaps too careful from the beginning about the Endicott name," she said severely. "Which is the reason why no advance has been made in the search for my dear husband." "That may be true, Mrs. Endicott. You must not forget, however, that you will be a witness, and Mrs. Curran, and her husband, and Mr. Quincy Lenox, and others besides. How do you think these people would stand questioning as to who your little boy, called Horace Endicott, really is?" She sat prepared for a dangerous surprise, but not for this horror; and the life left her on the spot, for the poor weed was as soft and cowardly as any other product of the swamp. He rang for restoratives and sent for her maid. In ten minutes, somewhat restored, she faced the ordeal, if only to learn what this terrible man knew. "Who are you?" she asked feebly, the same question asked by Curran in his surprise. "A friend of Horace Endicott," he answered quietly. "And what do you know of us?" "All that Horace knew." She could not summon courage to put a third question. He came to her aid. "Perhaps you are not sure about what Horace knew? Shall I tell you? I did not tell your lawyer. I only hinted that the truth would be brought out if my name was dragged into the case against my protest. Shall I tell you what Horace knew?" With closed eyes she made a sign of acquiescence. "He knew of your relations with Quincy Lenox. He saw you together on a certain night, when he arrived home after a few days' absence. He also heard your conversation. In this you admitted that out of hatred for your husband you had destroyed his heir before the child was born. He knew your plan of retrieving that blunder by adopting the child of Edith Curran, and palming him off as your own. He knew of your plan to secure the good will of his Aunt Lois for the impostor, and found the means to inform his aunt of the fraud. All that he knew will be brought out at any trial in which my name shall be included. Your lawyer will tell you that it cannot be avoided. Therefore, when your lawyer advises you to get a divorce from your former husband without including me as that husband, yon had better accept that advice." She opened her eyes and stared at him with insane fright. Who but Horace Endicott could know her crimes? All but the crime which he had named her blunder. Could this passionless stranger, this Irish politician, looking at her as indifferently as the judge on the bench, be Horace? No, surely no! Because that fool, dolt though he was, would never have seen this wretched confession of her crimes, and not slain her the next minute. Into this ambuscade had she been led by the crazy wife of Curran, whose sound advice she herself had thrown aside to follow the instincts of Edith. Recovering her nerve quickly, she began her retreat as well as one might after so disastrous a field. "It was a mistake to have disturbed you, Mr. Dillon," she said. "You may rest assured that no further attempt will be made on your good name. Since you pretend to such intimacy with my unfortunate husband I would like to ask you...." "That was the extent of my intimacy, Mrs. Endicott, and I would never have revealed it except to defend myself," he interrupted suavely. "Of course the revelation brings consequences. You must arrange to have your little Horace die properly in some remote country, surround his funeral with all the legal formalities, and so on. That will be easy. Meanwhile you can return the boy to his mother, who is ready to receive him. Then your suit for divorce must continue, and you will win it by default, that is, by the failure of Horace Endicott to defend his side. When these things are done, it would be well for your future happiness to lay aside further meddling with the mystery of your husband's disappearance." "I have learned a lesson," she said more composedly. "I shall do as you command, because I feel sure it is a command. I have some curiosity however about the life which Horace led after he disappeared. Since you must have known him a little, would it be asking too much from you...." She lost her courage at sight of his expression. Her voice faded. Oh, shallow as any frog-pond, indecently shallow, to ask such a question of the judge who had just ordered her to execution. His contempt silenced her. With a formal apology for having caused her so much pain, he bowed and withdrew. Some emotion had stirred him during the interview, but he had kept himself well under control. Later he found it was horror, ever to have been linked with a monster; and dread too that in a sudden access of passion he might have done her to death. It seemed natural and righteous to strike and destroy the reptile. CHAPTER XXXVIII. A TALE WELL TOLD. Of these strange and stirring events no one knew but Arthur himself; nor of the swift consequences, the divorce of Sonia from her lost husband, her marriage to Quincy Lenox, the death and burial of her little boy in England, and the establishment of La Belle Colette and her son Horace in Chicago, where the temptation to annoy her enemies disappeared, and the risk to herself was practically removed forever. Thus faded the old life out of Arthur's view, its sin-stained personages frightened off the scene by his well-used knowledge of their crimes. Whatever doubt they held about his real character, self-interest accepted him as Arthur Dillon. He was free. Honora saw the delight of that freedom in his loving and candid expression. He repressed his feelings no more, no longer bound. He was gayer than ever before, with the gaiety of his nature, not of the part which he had played. Honora knew how deeply she loved him, from her very dread of inflicting on him that pain which was bound to come. The convent would be her rich possession; but he who had given her and her father all that man could give, he would have only bitter remembrance. How bitter that could be experience with her father informed her. The mystery of his life attracted her. If not Arthur Dillon, who was he? What tragedy had driven him from one life into another? Did it explain that suffering so clearly marked on his face? To which she must add, as part of the return to be made for all his goodness! Her pity for him grew, and prompted deeper tenderness; and how could she know, who had been without experience, that pity is often akin to love? The heavenly days flew by like swift swallows. September came with its splendid warnings of change. The trees were suddenly bordered in gold yellow and dotted with fire-red. The nights began to be haunted by cool winds. Louis packed his trunk early in the month. His long vacations had ended, ordination was at hand, and his life-work would begin in the month of October. The household went down to the city for the grand ceremony. Mona and her baby remained in the city then, while the others returned to the lake for a final week, Anne with perfect content, Honora in calmness of spirit, but also in dread for Arthur's sake. He seemed to have no misgivings. Her determination continued, and the situation therefore remained as clear as the cold September mornings. Yet some tie bound them, elusive, beyond description, but so much in evidence that every incident of the waiting time seemed to strengthen it. Delay did not abate her resolution, but it favored his hope. "Were you disturbed by the revelations of Mrs. Curran?" he said as they sat, for the last time indeed, on the terrace so fatal to Lord Constantine. Anne read the morning newspaper in the shadow of the grove behind them, with Judy to comment on the news. The day, perfect, comfortable, without the perfume of August, sparkled with the snap of September. "My curiosity was disturbed," she admitted frankly, and her heart beat, for the terrible hour had come. "I felt that your life had some sadness and mystery in it, but it was a surprise to hear that you were not Anne Dillon's long-lost son." "That was pure guess-work on Colette's part, you know. She's a born devil, if there are such things among us humans. I'll tell you about her some time. Then the fact of my wife's existence did not disturb you at all?" "On the contrary, it soothed me, I think," she said with a blush. "I know why. Well, it will take my story to explain hers. She told the truth in part, poor Colette. Once I had a wife, before I became Anne Dillon's son. Will it be too painful for you to hear the story? It is mournful. To no one have I ever told it complete; in fact I could not, only to you. How I have burned to tell it from beginning to end to the true heart. I could not shock Louis, the dear innocent, and it was necessary to keep most of it from my mother, for legal reasons. Monsignor has heard the greater part, but not all. And I have been like the Ancient Mariner. Since then at an uncertain hour That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, The heart within me burns. * * * * * That moment that his face I see I know the man that must hear me; To him my tale I teach." "I am the man," said she, "with a woman's curiosity. How can I help but listen?" He holds him with his glittering eye-- The wedding-guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The mariner hath his will. The wedding-guest sat on a stone, He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, That bright-eyed mariner. "Do you remember how we read and re-read it on the _Arrow_ years ago? Somehow it has rung in my ears ever since, Honora. My life had a horror like it. Had it not passed I could not speak of it even to you. Long ago I was an innocent fool whom men knew in the neighborhood of Cambridge as Horace Endicott. I was an orphan, without guides, or real friends. I felt no need of them, for was I not rich, and happily married? Good nature and luck had carried me along lazily like that pine-stick floating down there. What a banging it would get on this rocky shore if a good south wind sprang up. For a long time I escaped the winds. When they came.... I'll tell you who I was and what she was. Do you remember on the _Arrow_ Captain Curran's story of Tom Jones?" He looked up at her interested face, and saw the violet eyes widen with sudden horror. "I remember," she cried with astonishment and pain. "You, Arthur, you the victim of that shameful story?" "Do you remember what you said then, Honora, when Curran declared he would one day find Tom Jones?" She knew by the softness of his speech that her saying had penetrated the lad's heart, and had been treasured till this day, would be treasured forever. "And you were sitting there, in the cabin, not ten feet off, listening to him and me?" she said with a gasp of pleasure. "'You will never find him, Captain Curran ... that fearful woman shattered his very soul ... I know the sort of man he was ... he will never go back ... if he can bear to live, it will be because in his obscurity God gave him new faith and hope in human nature, and in the woman's part of it.' Those are your words, Honora." She blushed with pleasure and murmured: "I hope they came true!" "They were true at that moment," he said reflectively. "Oh, indeed God guided me, placed me in the hands of Monsignor, of my mother, of such people as Judy and the Senator and Louis, and of you all." "Oh, my God, what suffering!" she exclaimed suddenly as her tears began to fall. "Louis told me, I saw it in your face as every one did, but now I know. And we never gave you the pity you needed!" "Then you must give it to me now," said he with boldness. "But don't waste any pity on Endicott. He is dead, and I look at him across these five years as at a stranger. Suffer? The poor devil went mad with suffering. He raved for days in the wilderness, after he discovered his shame, dreaming dreams of murder for the guilty, of suicide for himself----" She clasped her hands in anguish and turned toward him as if to protect him. "It was a good woman who saved him, and she was an old mother who had tasted death. Some day I shall show you the pool where this old woman found him, after he had overcome the temptation to die. She took him to her home and her heart, nourished him, gave him courage, sent him on a new mission of life. What a life! He had a scheme of vengeance, and to execute it he had to return to the old scenes, where he was more alone---- Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. * * * * * O wedding-guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide, wide sea; So lonely 'twas that God Himself Scarce seemed there to be." The wonder to Honora, as he described himself, was the indifference of his tone. It had no more than the sympathy one might show toward a stranger whose suffering had been succeeded by great joy. "Oh, God grant," he broke in with vehemence, "that no soul suffers as did this Endicott, poor wretch, during the time of his vengeance. Honora, I would not inflict on that terrible woman the suffering of that man for a year after his discovery of her sin. I doubted long the mercy of God. Rather I knew nothing about His mercy. I had no religion, no understanding of it, except in a vague, unpractical way. You know now that I am of the Puritan race ... Livingstone is of my family ... the race which dislikes the Irish and the Catholic as the English dislike them ... the race that persecuted yours! But you cannot say that I have not atoned for them as nearly as one man can?" Trembling with emotion, she simply raised her hands in a gesture that said a thousand things too beautiful for words. "My vengeance on the guilty was to disappear. I took with me all my property, and I left Messalina with her own small dower to enjoy her freedom in poverty. She sought for me, hired that detective and others to hound me to my hiding-place, and so far has failed to make sure of me. But to have you understand the story clearly, I shall stick to the order of events. I had known Monsignor a few days before calamity overtook me, and to him I turned for aid. It was he who found a mother for me, a place among 'the mere Irish,' a career which has turned out very well. You know how Anne Dillon lost her son. What no one knows is this: three months before she was asked to take part in the scheme of disappearance she sent a thousand photographs of her dead husband and her lost son to the police of California, and offered a reward for his discovery living or dead. Monsignor helped her to that. I acknowledged that advertisement from one of the most obscure and ephemeral of the mining-camps, and came home as her son." "And the real Arthur Dillon? He was never found?" "Oh, yes, he answered it too, indirectly. While I was loitering riotously about, awaiting the proper moment to make myself known, I heard that one Arthur Dillon was dying in another mining-camp some thirty miles to the north of us. He claimed to be the real thing, but he was dying of consumption, and was too feeble, and of too little consequence, to be taken notice of. I looked after him till he died, and made sure of his identity. He was Anne Dillon's son and he lies in the family lot in Calvary beside his father. No one knows this but his mother, Monsignor, and ourselves. Colette stumbled on the fact in her search of California, but the fates have been against that clever woman." He laughed heartily at the complete overthrow of the escaped nun. Honora looked at him in astonishment. Arthur Dillon laughed, quite forgetful of the tragedy of Horace Endicott. "Since my return you know what I have been, Honora. I can appeal to you as did Augustus to his friends on his dying-bed: have I not played well the part?" "I am lost in wonder," she said. "Then give me your applause as I depart," he answered sadly, and her eyes fell before his eloquent glance. "In those early days rage and hate, and the maddest desire for justice, sustained me. That woman had only one wish in life: to find, rob, and murder the man who had befooled her worse than she had tricked him. I made war on that man. I hated Horace Endicott as a weak fool. He had fallen lowest of all his honest, able, stern race. I beat him first into hiding, then into slavery, and at last into annihilation. I studied to annihilate him, and I did it by raising Arthur Dillon in his place. I am now Arthur Dillon. I think, feel, act, speak, dream like that Arthur Dillon which I first imagined. When you knew me first, Honora, I was playing a part. I am no longer acting. I am the man whom the world knows as Arthur Dillon." "I can see that, and it seems more wonderful than any dream of romance. You a Puritan are more Irish than the Irish, more Catholic than the Catholics, more Dillon than the Dillons. Oh, how can this be?" "Don't let it worry you," he said grimly. "Just accept the fact and me. I never lived until Horace Endicott disappeared. He was a child of fortune and a lover of ease and pleasure. His greatest pain had been a toothache. His view of life had been a boy's. When I stepped on this great stage I found myself for the first time in the very current of life. Suffering ate my heart out, and I plunged into that current to deaden the agony. I found myself by accident a leader of a poor people who had fled from injustice at home to suffer a mean persecution here. I was thrown in with the great men of the hour, and found a splendid opponent in a member of the Endicott family, Livingstone. I saw the very heart of great things, and the look enchanted me. "You know how I worked for my friends, for your father, for the people, for every one and everything that needed help. For the first time I saw into the heart of a true friend. Monsignor helped me, carried me through, stood by me, directed me. For the first time I saw into the heart of innocence and sanctity, deep down, the heart of that blessed boy, Louis. For the first time I looked into the heart of a patriot, and learned of the love which can endure, not merely failure, but absolute and final disappointment, and still be faithful. I became an orator, an adventurer, an enthusiast. The Endicott who could not speak ten words before a crowd, the empty-headed stroller who classed patriots with pickles, became what you know me to be. I learned what love is, the love of one's own; of mother, and friend, and clan. Let me not boast, but I learned to know God and perhaps to love Him, at least since I am resigned to His will. But I am talking too much, since it is for the last time." "You have not ended," said she beseechingly. "It would take a lifetime," and he looked to see if she would give him that time, but her eyes watched the lake. "The latest events in my history took place this summer, and you had a little share in them. By guess-work Colette arrived at the belief that I am Horace Endicott, and she set her detective-husband to discover the link between Endicott and Dillon. I helped him, because I was curious to see how Arthur Dillon would stand the test of direct pursuit. They could discover nothing. As fast as a trace of me showed it vanished into thin air. There was nothing to do but invent a suit which would bring my mother, Monsignor, and myself into court, and have us declare under oath who is Arthur Dillon. I blocked that game perfectly. Messalina has her divorce from Horace Endicott, and is married to her lover. There will be no further search for the man who disappeared. And I am free, Monsignor declares. No ties bind me to that shameful past. I have had my vengeance without publicity or shame to anyone. I have punished as I had the right to punish. I have a noble place in life, which no one can take from me." "And did you meet her since you left her ... that woman?" Honora said in a low voice half ashamed of the question. "At Castle Moyna ..." he began and stopped dead at a sudden recollection. "I met her," cried Honora with a stifled scream, "I met her." "I met her again on the steamer returning," he said after a pause. "She did not recognize me, nor has she ever. We met for the last time in July. At that meeting Arthur Dillon pronounced sentence on her in the name of Horace Endicott. She will never wish to see me or her lost husband again." "Oh, how you must have suffered, Arthur, how you must have suffered!" She had grown pale alarmingly, but he did not perceive it. The critical moment had come for him, and he was praying silently against the expected blow. Her resolution had left her, and the road had vanished in the obscurity of night. She no longer saw her way clear. Her nerves had been shaken by this wonderful story, and the surges of feeling that rose before it like waves before the wind. "And I must suffer still," he went on half to himself. "I was sure that God would give me that which I most desired, because I had given Him all that belonged to me. I kept back nothing except as Monsignor ordered. Through you, Honora, my faith in woman came back, as you said it would when you answered the detective in my behalf. When Monsignor told me I was free, that I could speak to you as an honorable man, I took it as a sign from heaven that the greatest of God's gifts was for me. I love you so, Honora, that your wish is my only happiness. Since you must go, if it is the will of God, do not mind my suffering, which is also His will...." He arose from his place and his knees were shaking. "There is consolation for us all somewhere. Mine is not to be here. The road to heaven is sometimes long. Not here, Honora?" The hope in him was not yet dead. She rose too and put her arms about him, drawing his head to her bosom with sudden and overpowering affection. "Here and hereafter," she whispered, as they sat down on the bench again. * * * * * "Judy," said Anne in the shade of the trees, "is Arthur hugging Honora, or...." "Glory be," whispered Judy with tears streaming down her face, "it's Honora that's hugging Arthur ... no, it's both o' them at wanst, thanks be to God." And the two old ladies stole away home through the happy woods. CHAPTER XXXIX. THREE SCENES. Anne might have been the bitterest critic of Honora for her descent from the higher to the lesser life, but she loved the girl too well even to look displeasure. Having come to believe that Arthur would be hers alone forever, she regarded Honora's decision as a mistake. The whole world rejoiced at the union of these ideal creatures, even Sister Magdalen, from whom Arthur had snatched a prize. Honora was her own severest critic. How she had let herself go in pity for a sufferer to whom her people, her faith, her father, her friends, and herself owed much, she knew not. His explanation was simple: God gave you to me. The process of surrender really began at Louis' ordination. Arthur watched his boy, the center of the august ceremony, with wet eyes. This innocent heart, with its solemn aspirations, its spiritual beauty, had always been for him a wonder and a delight; and it seemed fitting that a life so mysteriously beautiful should end its novitiate and begin its career with a ceremony so touching. The September sun streamed through the venerable windows of the cathedral, the music soared among the arches, the altar glowed with lights and flowers; the venerable archbishop and his priests and attendants filled the sanctuary, an adoring crowd breathed with reverence in the nave; but the center of the scene, its heart of beauty, was the pale, sanctified son of Mary Everard. For him were all these glories! Happy, happy, youth! Blessed mother! There were no two like them in the whole world, he said in his emotion. Her glorified face often shone on him in the pauses of the ceremony. Her look repeated the words she had uttered the night before: "Under God my happiness is owing to you, Arthur Dillon: like the happiness of so many others; and that I am not to-day dead of sorrow and grief is also owing to you; now may God grant you the dearest wish of your heart, as He has granted mine this day through you; for there is nothing too good for a man with a heart and a hand like yours." How his heart had like to burst under that blessing! He thought of Honora, not yet his own. The entire Irishry was present, with their friends of every race. In deference to his faithful adherent, the great Livingstone sat in the very front pew, seriously attentive to the rite, and studious of its significance. Around him were grouped the well-beloved of Arthur Dillon, the souls knit to his with the strength of heaven; the Senator, high-colored, richly-dressed, resplendent, sincere; the Boss, dark and taciturn, keen, full of emotion, sighing from the depths of his rich nature over the meaning of life, as it leaped into the light of this scene; Birmingham, impressive and dignified, rejoicing at the splendor so powerful with the world that reckons everything by the outward show; and all the friends of the new life, to whom this ceremony was dear as the breath of their bodies. For this people the sanctuary signified the highest honor, the noblest service, the loftiest glory. Beside it the honors of the secular life, no matter how esteemed, looked like dead flowers. At times his emotion seemed to slip from the rein, threatening to unman him. This child, whose innocent hands were anointed with the Holy Oil, who was bound and led away, who read the mass with the bishop and received the Sacred Elements with him, upon whom the prelate breathed solemn powers, who lay prostrate on the floor, whose head was blessed by the hands of the assembled priests: this child God had given him to replace the innocent so cruelly destroyed long ago! Honora's eyes hardly left Arthur's transfigured face, which held her, charmed her, frightened her by its ever-changing expression. Light and shadow flew across it as over the depths of the sea. The mask off, the habit of repression laid aside, his severe features responded to the inner emotions. She saw his great eyes fill with tears, his breast heave at times. As yet she had not heard his story. The power of that story came less from the tale than the recollection of scenes like this, which she unthinking had witnessed in the years of their companionship. What made this strange man so unlike all other men? At the close of the ordination the blessing from the new priest began. Flushed, dewy-eyed, calm, and white, Louis stood at the railing to lay his anointed hands on each in turn; first the mother, and the father. Then came a little pause, while Mona made way for him dearest to all hearts that day, Arthur. He held back until he saw that his delay retarded the ceremony, when he accepted the honor. He felt the blessed hands on his head, and a thrill leaped through him as the palms, odorous of the balmy chrism, touched his lips. Mona held up her baby with the secret prayer that he too would be found worthy of the sanctuary; then followed her husband and her sisters. Honora did not see as she knelt how Arthur's heart leaped into his eyes, and shot a burning glance at Louis to remind him of a request uttered long ago: when you bless Honora, bless her for me! Thus all conspired against her. Was it wonderful that she left the cathedral drawn to her hero as never before? The next day Arthur told her with pride and tenderness, as they drove to the church where Father Louis was to sing his first Mass, that every vestment of the young priest came from him. Sister Magdalen had made the entire set, with her own hands embroidered them, and he had borne the expense. Honora found her heart melting under these beautiful details of an affection, without limit. The depth of this man's heart seemed incredible, deeper than her father's, as if more savage sorrow had dug depths in what was deep enough by nature. Long afterward she recognized how deeply the ordination had affected her. It roused the feeling that such a heart should not be lightly rejected. * * * * * Desolation seized her, as the vision of the convent vanished like some lovely vale which one leaves forever. Very simply he banished the desolation. "I have been computing," he said, as they sat on the veranda after breakfast, "what you might have been worth to the Church as a nun ... hear me, hear me ... wait for the end of the story ... it is charming. You are now about twenty-seven, I won't venture any nearer your age. I don't know my mother's age." "And no man will ever know it," said Anne. "Men have no discretion about ages." "Let me suppose," Arthur continued, "that fifty years of service would be the limit of your active life. You would then be seventy-seven, and there is no woman alive as old as that. The oldest is under sixty." "Unless the newspapers want to say that she's a hundred," said Anne slyly. "For the sake of notoriety she is willing to have the truth told about her age." "As a school-teacher, a music-teacher, or a nurse, let me say that your services might be valued at one thousand a year for the fifty years, Honora. Do you think that a fair average?" "Very fair," said she indifferently. "Well, I am going to give that sum to the convent for having deprived them of your pleasant company," said he. "Hear me, hear me, ... I'm not done yet. I must be generous, and I know your conscience will be tender a long time, if something is not done to toughen it. I want to be married in the new cathedral, which another year will see dedicated. But a good round sum would advance the date. We owe much to Monsignor. In your name and mine I am going to give him enough to put the great church in the way to be dedicated by November." He knew the suffering which burned her heart that morning, himself past master in the art of sorrow. That she had come down from the heights to the common level would be her grief forever; thus to console her would be his everlasting joy. "What do you think of it? Isn't it a fair release?" "Only I am not worth it," she said. "But so much the better, if every one gains more than I lose by my ... infatuation." "Are you as much in love as that?" said Anne with malice. They were married with becoming splendor in January. A quiet ceremony suggested by Honora had been promptly overruled by Anne Dillon, who saw in this wedding a social opportunity beyond any of her previous triumphs. Mrs. Dillon was not your mere aristocrat, who keeps exclusive her ceremonious march through life. At that early date she had perceived the usefulness to the aristocracy of the press, of general popularity, and of mixed assemblies; things freely and openly sought for by society to-day. Therefore the great cathedral of the western continent never witnessed a more splendid ceremony than the wedding of Honora and Arthur; and no event in the career of Anne Dillon bore stronger testimony to her genius. The Chief Justice of the nation headed the _élite_, among whom shone like a constellation the Countess of Skibbereen; the Senator brought in the whole political circle of the city and the state; Grahame marshaled the journalists and the conspirators against the peace of England; the profession of music came forward to honor the bride; the common people of Cherry Hill went to cheer their hero; Monsignor drew to the sanctuary the clerics of rank to honor the benefactor of the cathedral; and high above all, enthroned in beauty, the Cardinal of that year presided as the dispenser of the Sacrament. As at the ordination of Louis the admirable Livingstone sat among the attendant princes. For the third time within a few months had he been witness to the splendors of Rome now budding on the American landscape. He did not know what share this Arthur Dillon had in the life of Louis and in the building of the beautiful temple. But he knew the strength of his leadership among his people; and he felt curious to see with his own eyes, to feel with his own heart, the charm, the enchantment, which had worked a spell so fatal on the richly endowed Endicott nature. For enchantment there must have been. The treachery and unworthiness of Sonia, detestable beyond thought, could not alone work so strange and weird a transformation. Half cynic always, and still more cynical since his late misfortunes, he could not withhold his approbation from the cleverness which grouped about this young man and his bride the great ones of the hour. The scene wholly depressed him. Not the grandeur, nor the presence of the powers of society, but the sight of this Endicott, of the mould of heroes, of the blood of the English Puritan, acting as sponsor of a new order of things in his beloved country, the order which he had hoped, still hoped, to destroy. His heart bled as he watched him. The lovely mother, the high-hearted father, lay in their grave. Here stood their beloved, a prince among men, bowing before the idols of Rome, receiving for himself and his bride the blessing of the archpriest of Romanism, a cardinal in his ferocious scarlet. All his courage and skill would be forever at the service of the new order. Who was to blame? Was it not the rotten reed which he had leaned upon, the woman Sonia, rather than these? True it is, true it always will be, that a man's enemies are they of his own household. * * * * * A grand content filled the heart of Arthur. The bitterness of his fight had passed. So long had he struggled that fighting had become a part of his dreams, as necessary as daily bread. He had not laid aside his armor even for his marriage. Yet there had been an armistice, quite unperceived, from the day of the cathedral's dedication. He had lonely possession of the battle-field. His enemies had fled. All was well with his people. They had reached and passed the frontier, as it were, on that day when the great temple opened its sanctuary to God and its portals to the nation. The building he regarded as a witness to the daring of Monsignor; for Honora's sake he had given to it a third of his fortune; the day of the dedication crowned Monsignor's triumph. When he had seen the spectacle, he learned how little men have to do with the great things of history. God alone makes history; man is the tide which rushes in and out at His command, at the great hours set by Him, and knows only the fact, not the reason. In the building that day gathered a multitude representing every form of human activity and success. They stood for the triumph of a whole race, which, starved out of its native seat, had clung desperately to the land of Columbia in spite of persecution. Soldiers sat in the assembly, witnesses for the dead of the southern battle-fields, for all who had given life and love, who had sacrificed their dearest, to the new land in its hour of calamity. Men rich in the honors of commerce, of the professions, of the schools, artists, journalists, leaders, bore witness to the native power of a people, who had been written down in the books of the hour as idle, inferior, incapable by their very nature. In the sanctuary sat priests and prelate, a brilliant gathering, surrounding the delicate-featured Cardinal, in gleaming red, high on his beautiful throne. From the organ rolled the wonderful harmonies born of faith and genius; from the pulpit came in sonorous English the interpretation of the scene as a gifted mind perceived it; about the altar the ancient ritual enacted the holy drama, whose sublime enchantment holds every age. Around rose the towering arches, the steady columns, the broad walls, lighted from the storied windows, of the first really great temple of the western continent! Whose hands raised it? Arthur discovered in the answer the charm which had worked upon dying Ledwith, turned his failure into triumph, and his sadness into joy. What a witness, an eternal witness, to the energy and faith of a poor, simple, despised people, would be this temple! Looking upon its majestic beauty, who could doubt their powers, though the books printed English slanders in letters of gold? Out of these great doors would march ideas to strengthen and refresh the poor; ideas once rejected, once thought destructible by the air of the American wilderness. A conspiracy of centuries had been unable to destroy them. Into these great portals for long years would a whole people march for their own sanctification and glory! Thereafter the temple became for him a symbol, as for the faithful priest; the symbol of his own life as that of his people. He saw it in the early dawn, whiter than the mist which broke against it, a great angel whose beautiful feet the longing earth had imprisoned! red with the flush of morning, rosy with the tints of sunrise, as if heaven were smiling upon it from open gates! clear, majestic, commanding in the broad day, like a leader of the people, drawing all eyes to itself, provoking the question, the denial, the prayer from every passer, as tributes to its power! in the sunset, as dying Ledwith had seen it, flushed with the fever of life, but paling like the day, tender, beseeching, appealing to the flying crowd for a last turning to God before the day be done forever! in the twilight, calm, restful, submissive to the darkness, which had no power over it, because of the Presence within! terrible when night falls and sin goes forth in purple and fine linen, a giant which had heaved the earth and raised itself from the dead stone to rebuke and threaten the erring children of God! He described all this for Honora, and, strangely enough, for Livingstone, who never recovered from the spell cast over him by this strange man. The old gentleman loved his race with the fervor of an ancient clansman. For this lost sheep of the house of Endicott he developed in time an interest which Arthur foresaw would lead agreeably one day to a review of the art of disappearing. He was willing to satisfy his curiosity. Meanwhile, airing his ideas on the providential mission of the country, and of its missionary races, and combatting his exclusiveness, they became excellent friends. Livingstone fell deeply in love with Honora, as it was the fashion in regard to that charming woman. For Arthur the circle of life had its beginning in her, and with her would have its end. THE END.