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Thirteenth] Routledge's Railway Library Advertiser. [Issue.
THE HOMEY OF WISDOM!
WE GATHER THE HONEY OF WISDOM FROM THORNS, NOT FROM FLOWERS.
NOBILITY OF LIFE.
" Who best can suffer, best can do."—Milton.
What alone enables us to draw a just moral from
the tale of life ?
" Were I asked what best dignifies the present and
consecrates the pas*; what alone enables us to draw
a just moral from the Tale of Life; what sheds the
purest light upon our reason ; what gives the firmest
strength to our religion; what is best fitted to soften
the heart of man and elevate his soul—I would
answer with Lassues, it is 'EXPERIENCE.' "
Lobd Lytton.
'Queen's Head Hotel. Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
day allow me to presei.t you wlU
Poem on ENO'S justly celebrated
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More prioeless than the richest gold,
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Prom the late Rev. J. W. NEIL, Holy
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"dear Sir,—As an Illustration of the bensficlal effects
of your ' FRUIT SALT,' I have no hesit. tiou in giving
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QMALL POX, SCARLET FEVER, PYJEMIA, ERYSIPELAS, MEASLES, GANGRENE,
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been ill myself for a single day, and this I attribute in a great measure to the use of EN O'S
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" April 21st, 1894. "A Professional Nurse."
TINO'S "FRUIT SALT" assists the functions of the LIVER, BOWELS. SKIN,
XU and KIDNEYS by Natural Means ; thus the blood is freed from POISONOUS or
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"Without snch a simple precaution the JEOPARDY OF LIFE IS IMMENSELY
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CAUTION.—Examine each Bottle, and see the Capsule is marked ENO'S "FRUIT SALT,"
Withoufit, you have been imposed on by a worthless imitation. Sold by all Chemists.
Prepared only at ENO'S " FRUIT SALT" WORKS, LONDON, S.E.
[By J. C. Eno's Patent.]
Thirteenth] Routledge's Railway Library Advertiser. [IssML
BEECHAMS
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Sold by all Druggists and Patent Medicine Dealers everywhere.
100,000, S. & B., Ltd., 25/3/95.
POP PJE A
POP PT: A
by
JULIEN GORDON
(Mrs. VAN RENSSELAER CRUGER)
author of
"a diplomat's diary," "a successful man," "vampires,*
"a puritan pagan," "his letters," etc.
f
COPYRIGHT
LONDON
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Broadway, Ludgate Hill
MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK
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Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
POPPsEA
CHAPTER I.
IVAY Poppaea was not a heathen empress who shod
* ' * her mules with gold. At least, if there were
gold-shod mules among her followers, they were not
there at her bidding. She was not preceded, in her
journeyings, by a thousand slaves, or followed by five
hundred she-asses, who provided her with her daily
cosmetic in the luxury of her bath of milk. That hybrid
multitude of the circus and of the street, which owed no
fealty to the forum or the camp, did not rise to proclaim
her beauty or mock at her in their fury when she passed
in her gilded chariot. They did not acclaim her a god-
dess with one breath and crown her rival's statue in the
next with blossoms. She was not the daughter of a
moribund republic, albeit the child of a republican
child.
My Poppaea did not wed an Otho whose misguided
spirit aspired to the purple of royalty, and who con-
ceded her to a Nero. Inasmuch, however, as in her
character there lay possibilities of sorrow, in that she
was ambitious, superstitious, surrounded by parasites ;
in that she had dreams of philanthropy which narrower
and more selfish interests thwarted ; in that she had
soft, voluptuous features, wherein lay a suggestion of
5
6
POPPPEA
weakness ; in that she suffered, wept, laughed, feasted,
and loved, she resembled her Roman prototype. Of
her, as of Gaspara Stampa, it might have been uttered,
"She was given the perilous gift of love. In it she
found the seeds of death."
The weapons which conquer do not always rule.
Poppaea found this out to her grief.
In her feastings she liked dignity and such Hellenic
spectacles as excluded low buffoonery. Her humor
was delicate. But, as I have said, she was no Roman
empress : she was a little American girl whose odd name
was bestowed upon her by a romantic young mother.
She first saw the light in a tumble-down old manor-
house .perched among the great trees that border the
upper Hudson. There she grew up as wild as the
young lambs and heifers that ran in the pasture lots
across the meadow land, as careless and as happy.
With few companions except her six unruly brothers,
and none of the feminine advantages which turn out
accomplished young women.
A savage once saw the picture of an angel in the
crowded hall of a great art gallery. He smiled.
" That is one of my genus," he said, dreamily.
I lately beheld the portrait of an Indian chief. He
had the fiery, deep eye of a falcon, wind-swept locks,
firm and noble mouth. Over his shoulder he wore a
drapery that sat upon him as if he were a god. Adown
his neck were strange and costly amulets. He looked
to be swift-footed as a deer; freshly fed upon the forces
of nature, his breath must have been like that of cows
and of young bulls that play in the fields.
I saw another portrait of the same child of earth,
tamed, civilized, improved. His hair was cropped, he
wore loose black trousers, a brown linen duster, a pot
POPPJEA
1
hat, and was playing at tennis . . . with the smile of
hypocrisy upon his lips. I could have wept!
So Poppaea, running wild at her old home, would
ever be an enchanting picture, which her later and more
dazzling prosperity could not eclipse. What was the
secret of the poor child's material splendor and spiritual
poverty ? What evil balance of her nature, what trick
of fate, what impotence of destiny? And why is it
that the unspoken words of this young girl haunt the
memory more than the loquacity of others—seem more
distinguished and more eloquent ?
Above all things Poppaea had charm,—that charm to
which the vision of a Ptolemais might well have prophe-
sied vicissitude. An astrologer, who once told her for-
tune, called her a proud flame which should consume
itself.
But I go too quickly. Harry Dalton was forty-five
when he married, and thus brought to an end a some-
what chequered career of the heart. It is an age when
vanity awakens strongest in man. There may have
been a drop of it in his determination to carry off a
beauty and heiress from younger and more desirable
suitors. He was a bold wooer. After a courtship of
respectful, almost mute homage, of months passed in
following about the girl he admired, with the eyes and
the tenacity of a sheep-dog, he had one day suddenly
seized her slender fingers in his own and kissed them,
and after this she could never collect her scattered
senses to remember what had happened. Her relatives
thought them lost for all time when she ran away with
the scapegrace two days later after a ball.
Like Desdemona's father, they wondered what spells
he had used. To her his methods had seemed simple.
An ingenuous woman is often impressed with the
8
POPPJEA
simplicity of a man of the world; an honest woman,
with his boyishness. This wife of twenty took on ma-
ternal airs with her new husband. It seemed absurd.
But they fascinated each other. This time Dalton's
escapade had had serious consequences, but Veronica—
this was young Mrs. Dalton's name—proved herself
fearless of consequences.
Fear of consequence is frequently mistaken for virtue
and discretion. Dalton carried his bride up to his eyry
manor-home up the river. Her father raged and fumed,
and cut her off from his will, and refused to give her
even a pittance for her trousseau. But her mother sent
her some gowns and furs and pocket-money, and a
black lace scarf and a diamond pin, and some sweet-
smelling fine lingeries surreptitiously, at dead of night.
By and by, when came five little boys, and then Pop-
paea, and finally another boy, Mrs. Dalton's mother was
reconciled to her wilful one, and the good lady ,died in
her daughter's arms. But the father never forgave
what he called his daughter's deceit, and the money all
went . . . elsewhere. He so tied and hampered and
fastened it up that even the Dalton children should
never, never, never see a ducat of it.
In the mean while, Harry, himself, whose youth had
principally been passed in sowing the whirlwind, seemed,
by some curious haphazard of fortune, to have sud-
denly reaped a harvest of peace. He became mere
and more charmed by his beautiful wife as the years
rolled on, and these two wayward characters suited
each other so admirably that their life was one long
delight. What did they care if the brambles grew
across the road, so that the disgusted visitors stopped,
stared, and turned away; that the garden was full of
weeds, the porch columns rickety, and the piazza roof
POPPLE A
0
leaked in the last rain. They looked into one another's
blue eyes and laughed and kissed. Once a month,
when the bills came in, they were a trifle gloomy, but
when they had paid half of them and pigeon-holed the
other half, Harry lit a cigarette and Veronica sang him
a song, and the horizon was "clear, for a while again at
least.
Veronica was very much pleased when her girl baby
was born. She and Harry read aloud together in the
long winter nights. She who would, no doubt, have
graced so well banquet and ball and rout, nestled on
her husband's shoulder while he recited or read.
Strange to say, Harry Dalton, in his wild days, had had
cultivated tastes, and would have done well in college
had it not been for his mad pranks. It was character-
istic of him, that while rusticating for a misdemeanor,
he had taken a prize for a Latin essay.
They, read one snowy winter certain classic histories,
and when Dalton came to the sad, short history of
Poppsea, slain by the cruelty of the man who neverthe-
less loved her,—
"That is a pretty name," quoth Veronica. " I shall
give it to my girl."
" It is a heathen name, my sweet," said Dalton, laugh-
ing; " they'll say I named her."
He was still very handsome and very distinguished,
and so Veronica told him twenty times a day.
"Well, let people say we are queer and pagans; it
won't be the first time. Do you care what people
think ?"
"Do you?"
'' Why, you know people never say or think what
you want them to," said Mrs. Dalton, who was clever.
" Naturally."
10
POPPALA
" Have I not proved to you I don't care?"
Then he took her hands, and his touch seemed de-
licious to her as the first time, years before, when it had
sealed her his. She shivered with sudden terror.
'' Oh, God, Dalton, if I should die and have to leave
you!"
Then he held her close. But she did not die when
Poppsea came.
But, oh ! it was a pretty, pretty little baby, and there
was a welcome this time indeed. Less welcome seven
years later was Rudolph, last of the Daltons, except
indeed by his only sister, who was enraptured, and
adopted him on the spot, with many hugs and dove-
like cooings and muffled cries of satisfaction.
It was very soon after his advent that his father died.
They had few visitors at the manor during Poppsea's
early childhood. The sound of wheels brought the
children scampering from every part of the grounds.
Poppsea would stand in her soiled gingham frock, suck-
ing her brown thumb, her big eyes open wide, between
her father's knees. Sometimes it was a creditor. He
would be treated with peculiar courtesy, to ale and
cake and cigars, and invariably went away pacified.
Mr. Dalton had a grand air and a knack at the soft
answer when it suited his purposes. Then he was so
princely, civil, and elegant. The tradespeople had
always felt honored that he should condescend to buy
their wares at all. Politeness imposes. Once a year
regularly Progress came rolling up in a high-wheeled
buggy. The children knew it; they signalled to each
other from branch to branch in the trees, where they were
picking cherries. Mr. Humm generally came at cherry-
time. He amused them. Mr. Dalton would look up
from his morning paper, where he sat on the piazza,
POPPsEA
II
with a glass of whiskey and soda at his elbow, and a
cigar between his teeth.
"Ah, Mr. Humm, good-day, good-day."
"Well, sir, here I am; I am glad to see, sir, the
storms have spared the old house. Only a question of
time!"
He was a genial person, with a bright skin and
unctuous urbanity of tone, a full voice and dramatic
gesture. He sat erect in his wagon, now and then
flicking his horse's tail with a short stump of a whip.
"Well, Mr. Humm, the poor old manor isn't burned
up yet."
" Now, sir, you have been here long enough to count
costs. Perhaps you said, ' Here is that damned fool
Humm come again.' "... Mr. Dalton waved a
courtly denial.
" No money to spare, Mr. Humm."
'' Why, bless me, sir, it is a gift, the Humm & Ginn
lightning-rod. I look at it different. I look at it this
way : lightning strikes your home. If a man's rich, he
hasn't no excuse ; if a man's poor, he's crippled ; terrible
damage, no coin for repairs. Here we are sir, twenty-
-four year, no casualties, demonstration proof, new
style. Iron and copper old rod no good, inefficient;
here we give you platina points. This rod of mine is a
circuit,—a circuit. We reach moisture by artificial
means. Charcoal is a sponge ; yes, sir-ee, a sponge. I
guarantee it never will be dry.''
'' Have a glass of whiskey and water, Mr. Humm ?''
"Well, sir, I am sort of dry, if the rod ain't." And
Mr. Humm gave out his large, sweet smile.
A servant, summoned, brought out a tray.
"No, sir, . . . scientists say three-foot joints get
separated with age ; but this patent is A No. i ; no
12
POPP.PA
separation—no separation possible. Mr. Pugh . . .
know him ? Rich insurance man ; bought Livingston
Hall. Don't know him, eh ? No? Well, new people,
sir; they've got to come up ; the old families is all
dying out; they ain't progressive, bless you. Well,
the storm struck them amidships, but my rod just
whistled it over their heads, and Mrs. Pugh she just sot
at the pianey and played a sympony of Beetofen's while
the lightning frolicked on the lawn with the children
. . . Here, Miss Dalton, can you catch?"
Little Poppaea screamed delight; a pretty brush with
a scarlet handle was hurled into her fat little arms.
"There, little miss, there; Humm & Ginn's patent
horse-polisher for you ; it will make your pony shine
like butter and oil. Bless me, you could pass it over
him yourself. Just shove it over his flank when he is
in a sweat . .
"Another time, Mr. Humm," said Veronica Dalton,
coming to the window, smiling ; "we can't afford any-
thing new this year."
"Well, madam, I hope Miss Dalton will accept the
brush with the compliments of Humm & Ginn. I
hope I see you well. If you'll try a patent shawl-pin
my wife got out, which kind of unhooks with a spring,
I'd be glad to have you see it." And with a whoop-la
to his nag, Mr. Humm drove down the woody drive
and out into the broad avenue.
"Good-day, good-day."
"Good-day, Mr. Humm."
When Poppsea was six years old she went to a
funeral with her mother. It was the first time she had
ever seen death or even heard much about it. Of birth
she had already been told, in answer to her odd in-
quiries. Children were laid upon the window-sill among
POPPAZA
13
the rose-vines by some unseen fairy hands, and there
the nurse found them and brought them to nestle upon
their mother's breast. Of death she had, no doubt,
some vague conception, since at four years, watching a
candle flicker to its socket and sputter into blackness,
she had cried out, "The candle is dead," to the surprise
of the listeners.
But on the day of this funeral she saw Mrs. Winslow
lying in her coffin. Her mother had often taken her
across the fields to the white cottage close to the hill,
where the invalid sat all day, propped up by pillows, wan
and waiting. And so now that the summons had come
at last, Veronica had driven over with her little girl,
first to the house, and then to the church, a mile farther
away. When they reached the house, the brother-
in-law of the dead woman was doing the honors. He
received the Daltons with a certain pomposity.
"We had her embalmed," he said. "Don't she
look natural?"
Then Veronica had lifted her veil and murmured a
word of assent, which, to her own ears, sounded like a
word of protest. She was not a philanthropist, and
rarely went to the houses of the poor; these people
were hardly poor : they were very comfortable. She
disliked sickness and feared death, but she was easily
moved by affection, and this woman had loved her and
pined between her visits, wilting till she came again,
bringing in her grace, her beauty, and "that elegance
of which cramped means and a life of seclusion had
never robbed her.
"They look like queen's children," Mrs. Winslow
had said of Mrs. Dalton and her daughter.
To-day there were some men and women sitting
about the empty room. Plain, common, simple folk,
14
POPPAZA
in black dresses and coats, with serious faces. At the
head of the coffin on a camp-stool sat a stout, showy
person, expensively dressed. The brother-in-law, a
short, awkward man with an anxious eye, explained
these relatives to Mrs. Dalton, in a husky whisper.
" My sister-in-law's brother and his wife, from New
Vienna; her niece, Miss Mamie Wemyss ; that lady
near her is her mother; she is Mrs. Annie Wemyss, a
widow. Over there at the head of the coffin, the
blonde stoutish lady—do you see her, with the ear-
rings, in the seal-skin cape—fine-looking woman—Mrs.
Evelina Franks, of Valley Farms—divorced . . ."
It was evident that Mrs. Franks and Mrs. Dalton
were the heroines of the occasion. The former might
have been considered by the other ladies present as a
somewhat passZe person, disagreeably inclined to vaga-
bond experiences, or as an ill-used romantic heroine.
All these things depend upon the point of view. At
any rate, she occupied much thought and attention,
particularly among the younger members of the sorrow-
ing group. She divided the honors with the corpse and
with Mrs. Dalton, whose movements and costume were
eagerly analyzed.
The clergyman came in and prayed and made an
address. It seemed very long to Poppsea, wedged in
on a hard bench with no back, between her mother
and Mrs. Wemyss, and her feet not reaching the floor.
She was trying to catch a glimpse of the dead face,
with a certain frightened curiosity. She wondered if
it were wicked to want to look. At the church every
one did. There was much loud weeping. One sister
cried out so that the minister had to stop the service
for a moment. When he had finished, people went
up by twos and threes. Veronica did not desire this
POPPAEA
1 5
painful and close inspection, and remained quietly in
her seat, while they sang a mournful hymn, and the
procession filed in front of the open coffin, beneath the
poor pine pulpit where the minister stood. She had
hoped to escape attention, but the sexton was disap-
pointed. He hadn't had the body enbalmed for noth-
ing; it had cost a lot of money and was unusual.
"If any one wants to see the remains," he said,
'' now is their last chance ; would Mrs. Dalton and her
little daughter like to step up ?''
Veronica flushed and shook her head. Poppaea was
rather sorry. The lid was lowered.
The next dead face she gazed upon was eight years
later,—her father's.
CHAPTER II.
F high life the Daltons saw very little. Of a Sun-
day they drove nine miles to the Episcopal Church
at Craven. Harry might have a short larder and owe
money to his tailor, but there was always good wine on
his table and one pair at least of fine horses in his
stable. Behind these, in a high, light trap, with yellow
wheels, he installed Mrs. Dalton, and off they dashed
gayly, the dew of the woods splashing the lady's eye-
lashes. Behind came the elder boys and a maid or two,
driven in an old-fashioned vehicle they called the sun-
down, with the strong farm horses, and William, the
old coachman, in his shabby, rusty livery. At the
church Mr. Dalton assisted his wife to the ground, lifted
his hat to two or three of his fair neighbors, who were
hurrying down the path to the church porch, in high-
heeled shoes, under bright parasols, and then him-
self drove on to the low, wide door of the village inn.
Here a bachelor friend of his spent his summers, occu-
pying with his valet the entire lower floor; and here the
gentlemen smoked cigarettes, read the Sunday news-
papers, sipped cocktails when it was very hot, or even
engaged in a game of cribbage. Eventually, after the
services, he lifted his wife again to her perch, and they
bowled home over the gleaming iron-ore road which
overhung the great river.
She had had time to chat a moment under the trees
with her friends, and possibly an invitation to breakfast
or to afternoon tea had been exchanged. These enter-
16
POPPj&A
17
tainments were usually at the Cravens', although some-
times Mrs. Dalton herself received company. The
Cravens were second cousins of Harry Dalton's, and
their children played with Poppaea and her brothers.
General Dalton, Harry's ancestor, had been granted
the lands on which his manor-house, a French chateau
in style and architecture, stood, by his government in
reward for certain important services before the Revo-
lutionary War. At the same time his friend, Mont-
gomery Craven, had bought property and had built up
Craven village. The families had intermarried. The
present Montgomery Craven was a boy about Poppaea's
age, but he was older than she in experience. When
she was taking a last lingering look at her dolls he was
preparing for college. His father was an invalid; there
were several sisters; there was not much money; all
looked to the lad. He would have to go into business
as soon as his collegiate course was over. He was wild
to go to Oxford, but it was too expensive, and in fact,
when his father died, a year later than Harry Dalton,
he was forced to leave his university and go to work.
He had to help his mother and sisters. They could not
keep up their old home, to which they were attached,
without his assistance. He made the sacrifice. We
will hear more of Montgomery anon.
One night in the great city there was a dinner-party
at Mrs. Langton's. The Frederick Daltons were bid-
den. They were always bidden to important banquets.
Frederick, or Fred, as he was called, was Harry's
younger brother; but whereas Harry had been a scape-
grace, Fred had been virtuous, and he had, in a meas-
ure, reaped the rewards of his conservative behavior.
He had married the daughter of the gentleman in
whose great banking house he had in early youth filled
B
>3
POPPMA
an important position. She had brought him a large
fortune.
Mrs. Frederick was reputed to be a person of great
social tact. She was now a juicy, well-preserved,
showily-attired matron with white teeth, an agreeable
smile, and a pleasant intonation. She had a teasing
streak in her, which liked to torment and even perse-
cute persons who thought they could do without her.
But to those who confessed dependence, or acknowl-
edged defeat, she could be kindly. She loved the
world and its pleasures, and disapproved of people who
flouted it. She had disapproved of Harry Dalton.
She thought him selfish to hide his pretty wife in the
woods, and deplored the fact that Poppsea was '' coming
on" without proper training. She did not see very
well, however, what she could do about it. Harry had
been given the manor because no one else wanted it.
Nevertheless she rather envied him its aristocratic pres-
tige. She had a splendid house at Newport, but she
would have liked her only son to inherit the entire
Hudson, if such an event might have been arranged.
She had once offered to buy out "the Harrys,"—as
she called them,—but, to her amazement, they had
refused to part with their home,—refused a little
haughtily. She was good-natured, however, and bore
them no grudge for this; in fact, she secretly admired
her sister-in-law's pluck. She rarely saw her.
There was still another brother to Harry Dalton,—
Craven Dalton. He was a lawyer, and also a married
man. His wife was said by her friends to be an ex-
Gellent woman, given to good works. She had once
been handsome, but was so no longer. Her enemies in-
sisted that she terrorized her husband into a meek and
cowardly submissiveness. Others, again, whispered
POPPsEA
19
that Craven Dalton was not as meek and certainly not
as harmless as he appeared. Outwardly, however, his
conduct was very correct. He always went to church
of a Sunday morning, and sat with his wife in her pew.
Mrs. Craven Dalton had been a widow when she married
into the Dalton family. She was one of those women
to whom, through some coarseness of organization,
through some defect of temperament, a love caress is
odious; nevertheless, she had twice married. Such
animalism as she possessed had crystallized into a fierce
form of conjugal jealousy which never slept, and was
untiring. Her first husband had drunk himself to death.
There were those who said that the second deceived her.
He was considered, however, the most solid and serious
member of the Dalton family. He had attained some
success in his profession. He had good manners and
was a fluent conversationalist.
It so happened that these two ladies were dining at
Mrs. Langton's on this particular night, when a hurried
message was brought to their hostess. She sat at the
head of her long dinner-table, waving her plumes and
her withered visage at her guests, across the gilded
epergnes filled with Jacqueminot roses. The missive
proved to be a telegram. It was directed to Mr. Fred-
erick Dalton, and having been marked on the outside
with some portentous and ominous sign, the old lady
turned it about helplessly for a moment in her dark,
thin, bejewelled fingers.
She was quick in an emergency, however, and, beck-
oning to her butler, whispered to him that he should
allure Mr. Dalton into the picture-gallery as soon as
they should rise from the table, and there deliver the
yellow marplot.
It was shortly after this that the Dalton ladies were
20
POPPMA
hurried into their opera-cloaks, and followed by their
husbands into their respective broughams. At midnight
the entire party was huddled together into the last com-
partment of the Montreal and Quebec sleeping-car, the
superintendent of the company having consented to
'' slow up'' at Craven.
The message had conveyed the tidings that Harry
Dalton was dying and had asked to see his brethren.
It had been added that there was no time to lose.
Mrs. Frederick Dalton had concluded to accompany
her husband, partly from the love of excitement and
partly from a vague sense of self-reproach ; Mrs. Craven
Dalton, from a sentiment which might have been formu-
lated thus :
'' This man was a leper ; I am Christ-like, and go to
leprosy.'' ^
Tacitus, who seems to have been possessed of a strong
sense of justice, recognizes some good in the monstrous
reign of Tiberius. Mrs. Craven Dalton, who had read
history, wondered what good could have come out of
Harry Dalton's misspent, misguided career, and de-
cided that the ways of Providence were past finding out.
And now this family! with a mother foolish and im-
provident! no woman in her right wits would ever have
given herself into Harry Dalton's keeping.
When they reached Craven, cold and tired, William
was there with the sundown. The men sat in front,
talking in low voices. The women behind, wrapped in
their fur coats, shivering and silent. There was not
much sympathy between the two, but there had been
no quarrels. They were on what the world calls terms
of politeness.
Mrs. Frederick Dalton thought her sister-in-law a
dowdy and something of a bore. Mrs. Craven Dalton
POPPJEA
21
considered Mrs. Frederick Dalton deplorably frivolous
for a woman of her years. The charges were permis-
sible, and not entirely unjust.
They found Veronica at her husband's side, little
Poppsea leaning against her. She hardly noticed the
others when they arrived ; but when her husband mo-
tioned to her to leave him alone with his brothers, she
rose and came out with haggard cheeks, into the hall,
with her sisters-in-law.
"Yes," she replied to their inquiries, "it was very
sudden ; something of the heart; there has been a con-
gestive chill; there is great danger.''
Her despairing face awed the others. Mrs. Frederick
Dalton took the young Poppaea's cold hands into hers
and squeezed them kindly, but Poppaea went back to
her mother. 'A
" Lean on me, darling," the child whispered.
'' Have you thought about a clergyman ?'' said Mrs.
Craven Dalton.
As Veronica did not seem to hear her, she stepped to
the sick man's door and motioned to her husband. She
whispered a word to him. Harry Dalton opened one
eye and bowed to his sister-in-law, smiling.
" How do you do," he said, courteously.
Craven returned and spoke low to the sick man.
" How about salvation, eh ?" asked Harry, speaking
with quick, short breaths.
Craven nodded. He opened the other eye, that
laughing orb that had charmed women and held them
captive.
"I don't object to a prayer," he said, "if it will
please the ladies.''
Craven was deputed to find a prayer-book. It took
a little while, but it was brought at last.
22
POPPJEA
"Craven was always the most religious of us," said
Frederick, apologetically to Veronica, in the hall-way.
She went back and knelt and held those dear hands,
and joined fervently in the Amen.
A few hours later Veronica's dream of love was over.
He had desired to see his brothers to commend his wife
and children to their car^p, He knew his affairs to be in
hopeless confusion. They were.
The place was sold to Frederick ; so Frederick, Jr.,
would be its owner, after all, one of these days.
When all the creditors were paid there was hardly
anything left. The two brothers made an allowance.
The elder boys were put to school and college. Ve-
ronica was so heart-broken that they feared she would
sink into a decline. She went abroad finally with Pop-
paea and little Rudolph for change of scene. She was
glad to go, as she could be glad of anything now.
" I can live for less in France," she said.
" When Poppaea comes out I will 'undertake' her,"
said Mrs. Frederick Dalton, impulsively.
Whether she would have her hands full or not in
this "undertaking" may be surmised by a perusal of
the following letter which eighteen months after their
arrival in Tours little Rudolph penned to one of his
brothers :
"Tours, April 10.
" My dear Brother,—" I have had a dul time since
I got here. I suppose you have heard about the Vie
Count in Tours. If you have not, I will tell you.
Sister will be very angry if you tell her that I told you
this.
"Private—One day when sister went to tea at a
friend's house, she met a Vie Count. He was very nice
and had adopt the fashion of one eye-glass from the
POPPsEA
23
English, had a straw hat with a white and red stripe rib-
bon, ruff trousers and woollen stockings,—all from the
English, you no. Well I suppose that he fell in love
with sister ; but sister did not fall in love with him* He
was very attentive to her all the time. Sister is a young
lady now. He was looking out for a rich wife. He was
attach to a Miss Smith, but found out that she had no
money and dropped her. Sister told a Miss (I have
forgotten her last name), to tell the Count that sister
was worth a million. His eyes grew big at the sound of
so large an amount of money. Sister and mother went
to Blois, and the Count asked me to go a little hafter.
He was very polite to me. But I could not go, so he
went to Blois after them alone. And there he asked for
her hand, but like a good sister that she is, she did not
except. The Count was so sure to get her by his title
that he enquired about our religion, and he took one or
two hours a day for learning English. He was very
angry and never bowed to mother or sister again.
" Your affectionate brother,
" Rudolph Dalton.
" P. S.—Love to all. I like America best. If you'-11
send me a dollar I'l sel you my kid. Cousin Fred has
it at Dalton."
CHAPTER III.
DACON tells us, "Truth is the daughter of Time."
There are, however, few spirits courageous enough
to wait; just as there are few courageous enough to
venture into a new field. Hence no exploits. Lepropre
de certaines prunelles ardentes est de franchir du regard
les intervalles et de les siipprimer. But the majority
are near-sighted, and what shall be said of tear-stained
eyes?
Such were Veronica's : dimmed, spiritless. Then, she
was a woman.
Women are prone to sacrifice impending to present
utility. This trait is the one which most easily impov-
erishes character, cripples effort, paralyzes endeavor.
They have generally more finesse than foresight.
In spite of French counts it would probably have
been better to keep the spoiled, imaginative, untamed
Poppaea in France a little longer, tightening the reins,
forcing closer attention to study, controlling and
shaping. Veronica took fright. There came . . .
other counts. One was generous, insistent, despised
dots; threw them to the winds ; would become a re-
publican, an American ; anything that was required of
him. This seemed hardly feasible. Poppaea looked at
him. She did so wonderingly from under her wide
straw hat with its black ribbons and jaunty feather. The
mother's alarm became anguish.
POPPAEA
2S
The young man was a most undesirable suitor : hot-
headed, extravagant, penniless. There was a chateau
... in the future. Poppaea expressed herself vaguely
as admiring the architecture of the sixteenth century,
and asked questions about it.
Veronica engaged passage. The decision had taken
some months. They had been absent three years.
The return was not entirely satisfactory to Miss Dal-
ton's aunts and uncles. They thought the absence
should have been prolonged at least another year.
Poor Veronica was in that hideous condition of de-
pendence where every movement is subjected to critical
comment.
Mrs. Frederick had certainly pledged herself to "un-
dertake" and launch her niece; but time gives such
warm promises often refreshment if not an ice bath. On
a father's grave it seems so safe to talk of dancing and
dinners. Mrs. Craven Dalton thought very little about
the girl. She remembered that her sister-in-law was
still a beautiful woman with a poetic personality, and
that for certain complications of property her husband
would enjoy occasional Ute-a-tHes with her. Even the
determination that these should be few, curtailed, per-
haps prohibited, did not relieve her breast of a certain
poignant uneasiness. A serpent's tooth stung her and
poisoned her peace. She laid traps for him.
"Poor Veronica, she looked so worn, so faded, so
peaked."
'' That will be over now with this change,'' said the
unsuspecting Craven. He had not yet fully fathomed
his consort, whose motives of action were still at times
hidden, and a surprise to him. Possibly this was to
his credit. She could still catch him in unguarded
moments.
26
POPPMA
'' Over ? Why, she pretended to adore her husband.''
" He adored her, I should think."
'' Do you consider her so very attractive ?''
"Yes, very."
She sank a new shaft.
"Ah ! Then, who knows, she may marry again."
Craven did not answer at once. Men dislike this
summary disposition of their good-looking, dependent
female relatives. Mrs. Craven Dalton took fire.
'' I am sure I hope she will. Anything is preferable
to a frisky widow.''
"Frisky? She seems crushed enough, the poor
woman."
'' Why not say at once she has every perfection ?
I consider her a foolish, silly woman. Harry made a
doll of her."
Such words have not always the contemplated effect.
Craven smiled. He almost wished there were more
dolls of this description for men to play with,
" Lucky dog, Harry !" He murmured.
Mrs. Craven trembled.
"You are vulgar," she said, and left the room. She
came to the door again in a moment.
"What do you think of her calling her girl Poppsea?
Was that not ridiculous?"
Craven looked up from his book.
" An odd name," he said, "surely."
This time the door was closed with a loud report.
Mrs. Craven' Dalton had good qualities. She was cer-
tainly a pure woman. She was kind to the poor. She
was generous to her inferiors. Her houses were ad-
mirably ordered. Her husband thought now over these
gifts and graces of hers, not without a little compunc-
tion. He had the American's wholesome terror of his
POPPAlA
27
wife. There are women absolutely indifferent to their
husbands. No man of honor is so to his wife. There
is a protecting sentiment which may coexist with in-
fidelity and apparent coldness. No man, who is a gen-
tleman, gives more punctilious attention to his wife than
he who is weary of her. Craven Dalton's contempla-
tions awoke no glow. He found his effort at admira-
tion fatiguing, and impatient wicked thoughts crossed
his mind.
Upon landing Veronica went to New England to be
near her dear boys at their schooling for a month.
Poppaea was left at the Frederick Dalton's, in their
big city house. Their only son occupied one wing all
to himself, with his guns, his fishing-tackle, his boxing-
gloves, his riding-whips, his canes> and his photographs
of fashionable actresses. He was a thick-lidded youth,
with a fretful voice and very long finger-nails.
"Hello !" Poppaea cried to him when she met him
the first time.
"Shocking form," he said to his mother afterwards,
"but devilish fine-looking girl,—a regular trainer."
Mrs. Frederick Dalton began at once to give sound
and worldly counsel to her niece.
" I hope, my dear,"—Poppaea was perched upon the
bedpost in her aunt's spacious sleeping-apartment, per-
fectly equipoised, her slender limbs dangling floorward,
one arm akimbo, the other behind her back. Mrs.
Dalton was reclining on an ottoman near the fireplace,
—"I hope, my dear, while .with us, you will not em
courage the attentions of undesirable young men. Your
mamma tells me you behaved very badly about a certain
French gentleman."
"Which one?" asked Poppaea, eagerly.
"Which one? Why, my dear, were there two?"
26
POPPALA
"Lots of them," said Poppaea, showing her teeth.
She threw back her head and lost a slipper in the move-
ment.
"Tante," she said, "please kick my slipper this
way."
Mrs. Dalton hesitated.
"I can ring for the maid to hand you your shoe,"
she said, severely.
" Oh, don't bother," said Poppaea, suavely ; "it can
stay there until I get down. Go on."
"I was saying," continued Mrs. Dalton, unbending,
'' that here as there you will find plenty of impecuni-
ous young men who ask nothing better than to ruin a
girl's prospects of a better alliance by being always
under her feet, keeping off others.''
" Mamma never understood about d'Artagnac," said
Poppaea. "She could not see. It was revenge."
'' Revenge ?'' Mrs. Dalton opened wide practical
nineteenth-century pupils.
" Yes ; I did it all for Marie Smith's sake. She is a
poor meek, spiritless sort of a girl, and he played her
a nasty trick, and so . . ."
"Marie Smith !"
"Yes, an intimate friend of mine over there; Eng-
lish. They'll put up with anything from men. Well,
when he found she had no money he just marched off,
planted her ; so /played my game."
"My dear !"
'' I gave out I had billions, trillions ; made him in
love with me, too, and then threw him off like this."
Poppaea made a second lunge forward, snapped her
fingers, and lost her other slipper. '' And Marie was
avenged!"
" It was most imprudent," said her aunt.
POPPMA
29
" He got punished, if that's what you mean."
" Frenchmen are fiery; they fight about such things."
"Fight! There wasn't anybody to fight but Ru-
dolph. He couldn't call him out," said Poppaea.
" It worried your mamma."
" Not half as much as de la Roche."
De la Roche had not been spoken of. Mrs. Dalton,
interested, pricked up her ears.
"Eh?"
'' He was really a nice sort of fellow, he would have
taken a girl without a sou. We first met him at the
Le Moynes' at Bretauche."
Madame Le Moyne had been a Miss Breckenridge,
and her mother a Craven, distantly related to the Cra-
vens and Daltons ; she was the widow of a French
marquis.
'' Had he plenty of sous ?'' asked Mrs. Dalton.
"I don't fancy he was overburdened," said Poppaea,
smiling. " But don't worry about me, Tante. I have
been thinking."
'' And what have your reflections taught you ?'' said
her aunt. '' Whoever you marry, my dear, you are
fairly sure to regret it; you might as well regret it on a
private coach as in an omnibus, on a yacht as in a
public ferry."
'' That is exactly,'' said Poppaea, '' what I have de-
cided. I intend to marry rich."
Mrs. Dalton might give youth cynical advice, but
she had hardly expected this prompt acquiescence.
She was shocked.
'' She is a queer girl,'' she said to her husband later.
'' Ambitious, material, and yet so innocent.''
But Poppaea was not material ; she was imaginative.
'' I intend,'' said Poppaea from the bedpost, '' to
3°
POPPJEA
have money, because without it everybody is miserable.
It was papa's creditors that killed him."
Mrs. Dalton could hardly conceal a smile. Harry
Dalton dying of debt seemed so incredible ! He had
flourished upon his liabilities as a seal does in brackish
waters.
Poppsea, who was extremely observing, saw the twitch
of her aunt's lip. Her eyes filled with tears.
"You may laugh, Mrs. Dalton," she said, hotly,
'' but what I tell you is the truth.''
"My child, I have not laughed. How can you
accuse me of such things?"
"Nobody knows how good papa was to us," the
dew still glistened from the lashes of her flashing flower-
like eyes. "Why he educated us, he fitted Junior for
college. Don't you know how easily he entered? He
taught me Latin and French, and, oh, so many things ;
and what I say is true. Two horrid creditors came;
they wanted money; they spoke rudely, even to mamma;
I was in the other room. I heard. Then papa got up
and walked upon them and threw up one arm, and it was
then his dear, darling face got so white, and the attack
came on him. Oh ! oh !" And Poppaea began to cry.
"There, there, my dear," said Mrs. Dalton, kindly.
" He loved us," sobbed the girl.
It was an April rain.
"Yes," went on Poppaea, now sitting on a stool at
her aunt's feet, " I must have money. If Marie Smith
had been well off .that man would never have abandoned
her."
"And how about love?" asked Mrs. Dalton, enter-
tained and amused in spite of herself.
"Love," said Poppaea, sententiously, "is a chimera,
a trick of the fancy ; I read so in a book Aunt Craven
POPPJEA
31
lent mamma, and I think it told the truth. If papa
had not loved us so dreadfully he wouldn't be dead.
Marie ! Well! I never saw a girl in such a plight.
It was positively piteous. I'll keep clear of that, but
... I must have money, heaps of it. Mamma can't
manage. She wasn't brought up to skimp. My
brothers want everything. You have all been good, so
good, too good ! It kills mamma to accept it. No, I
must make my family independent.''
" My dear child, these colossal fortunes don't grow on
every bush. There are only a dozen or two in every great
town, and their owners may be very ordinary men."
"And I must marry a distinguished person," said
Poppaea.
"She certainly has self-appreciation," thought her
aunt. "I am glad you are fastidious. To marry a
man who is insignificant and unsuccessful means to a
woman much more than mere privation. These can be
borne if one has courage. In a country like ours, where
a man of very mediocre activity and force can get on,
to live with a disappointed and embittered person is
stifling and requires fortitude." Mrs. Dalton sighed,
and looked down comfortably at the heavy folds of her
superb morning gown.
"That is just it, Tante," said Poppaea, very seri-
ously, fixing her aunt with her sad, candid gaze. '' As
I must marry a man who is rich and distinguished, and
as you know everything, I want you to tell me how it is
done."
" Poor girls must make themselves agreeable."
" Humph !" said Poppaea.
"You are nice-looking,"—Mrs. Dalton belonged to
a generation that did not flatter,—" well-born, passably
educated ; you have chic,—too much, perhaps."
32
POPPsHA
Poppaea stared anxiously.
" How do you like my name ?"
''I do not object to your name ; it will do you 110
harm ; it has a certain charm."
'' Aunt Craven told mamma it was a terrible disad-
vantage.''
"Aunt Craven is a goose! No, 'Poppaea' has a
strangeness which awakens curiosity, and . . . but,
now, my dear, I promised your mamma that you should
read French with Mile. Raymond for an hour every
morning; so, run away and be punctual at breakfast;
your uncle will be with us to-day.''
Thus admonished, the girl arose, and with her swift,
graceful movement, swept from the room.
For the next two weeks Poppaea did not engage in
that active pursuit of a wealthy husband which she had
so emphatically declared the end of her existence. In
fact, she plunged that very afternoon into a flirtation
with a young man who was eminently unsuited to her
plans and projects.
Her cousin Montgomery Craven called at tea-time.
He continued to call with praiseworthy regularity at
tea-time for the next fortnight, after which he disap-
peared for a time. He was a handsome youth with a
sunny, radiant face. He was always scrupulously neat
in his dress. Sometimes he brought Mrs. Dalton and
Poppaea each a rose. It seemed somewhat incongru-
ous, however, with his distinctly expressed poetic taste
for flowers, that he had such a voracious appetite. He
had an undying thirst for tea, and fairly devoured the
bread and butter and little cakes which were passed
around at five o' clock. He once quaffed six cups at a
sitting and ate half a loaf of ba-ba.
The ladies laughed about it afterwards. They could
POPPMA
33
not know that the boy was dining. He had advanced
his month's salary to his mother, who lived up at Cra-
ven with her three daughters, and who could only keep
her home at the cost of terrible sacrifices on her son's
part. He went to bed at eight o'clock that night to save
his dinner. The next evening he was whirling a young
woman of fashion through the cotillon. This time the
supper filled the gnawing void. These dramas are less
infrequent than the favored ones of fortune suppose.
Montgomery was at once full of fine hope and self-
reliant. He owed no man anything. He would have
scorned to ask a farthing from a friend. Few knew his
address. He was secretive. He spoke of '' his rooms.''
He lived in a poor place under a roof, where he froze in
winter and roasted in summer. But then in summer he
was frequently invited to visit at country places, and there
was Craven, of a Sunday, to refresh and sustain him.
When his courage sank, he went up to his mother's.
They had sold all but the old house and three acres of
land about it. This had found no purchaser, and he
was glad, for it was a home for the women. Of a Mon-
day at dawn he would come back to town and to his
desk, refreshed and cheerful. He was very young. He
preferred hunger to indebtedness or shabbiness. He
remembered Lord Beaconsfield's injunction, ''Avoid
the shabby genteel." He dressed as well as the best,
for pity would have broken the boy's proud spirit.
c
CHAPTER IV.
TT was the season. Balls, dinners, routs, recitations,
* musicales ; concerts in the name of Charity's sweet
sake ; private plays in Vanity's dear name, these god-
esses which preside over the hurried, breathless swing
of the social rotation. Waltzers touched each other's
fingers, whisperers each other's brains or hearts. They
danced at Mrs. Heathcote's ; they supped at Mrs. Jack
Gresham's ; there were tableaux at the Horace Eus-
tises', and a thb dans ant at the Norwoods' up on the
Riverside. There was the girl to be married, the neg-
lected one, and the beauty ; there was the stout dowa-
ger and the slender bride ; complaisant royalty on a
pleasure trip ; the man of letters on the lookout for
types or sensations ; the banker, the merchant prince,
the lawyer in white cravat, yawning while he waited for
his debutante. All these seeking assuagement for ennui
or for suffering, craving amusement, or the prizes of
ambition. At the opera the orchestra blew its blasts,
while lovely women sat in the boxes and men smoked
cigarettes in the lobbies. There was music everywhere.
Above all, the violins. Ah, the violins! Carrying
away the souls of the new generation in their veiled
sobs and cries of melancholy and of tenderness.
Mrs. Frederick Dalton went out every night. Pop-
paea, in her high-necked dark gown, sat at home like
Cinderella by the fire in the red drawing-room. Her
34
POPPAZA
35
outfit was not yet quite ready. But, ah, the violins !
the violins ! They penetrated the massive walls of the
Daltons' beautiful house ; they resounded in the girl's
whirling brain, and set her feet to tingling restlessly;
they robbed her of her peace ; and Fate all the time
spinning her thread, had willed it that Poppaea should
never go to but one ball as '' Poppaea Dalton.''
I have said before that Mrs. Frederick Dalton was a
very clever woman ; she knew the value of elegantly
concealed reclame. She had not been idle during these
weeks that her niece sat at home in her sombre dress.
Poppaea took the world by storm on the first night that
she was produced. She had been announced, heralded,
waited for. Curiosity had been piqued. The very day
after her one night's triumph Mrs. Dalton spirited her
off to Washington. In their train there were some
women and several gentlemen. Of one of these I will
speak more particularly.
The Ceylon Observer had much to say of him. The
American papers were not more reticent.
Adam upon leaving Paradise rested one foot in Cey-
Ion, the other upon the island of Ramisseram, using
the bowlders which obstruct the Manaar passage as
stepping-stones to the mainland. No less a feat had
made Mr. Hazelwood's "conquest of Ceylon," as it
was called.
Of excellent New England origin, he had developed
nomadic tastes after his collegiate experiences. He had
travelled extensively and had lingered on the Malabar
and Coromandee coast. Later he had wandered among
the mountain ranges of Ceylon.
Oh, enchanted island ! Like Prospero's unknown
world. Green and golden, rising from out thy watery
waste of ocean ! Hesperian garden famed of old. Thy
3*
POPPAZA
people, thy soil, thy climate, all give unlimited scope to
the winged fancy of the speculator or the dreamer.
Mr. Hazelwood had looked up at Piduru-Tallagalla ;
at Kirigalpotta, at Totapelakanda, and Adam's Peak ;
had flirted in Candy, canoed on Mahavelly-ganga, ad-
mired the cinnamon soil of Colombo, sat under palms
by artificial lakes, and been fired with the speculative
mania which has ruined many and made a few.
Leigh Hazelwood was one of the latter. He bor-
rowed a little money and bought a tract of land. It
was a venture ; it was found to contain not only salt-
beds, but quicksilver-mines. He added to his posses-
sions. He purchased to the shore. He invested in the
search for gems. The ruby, sapphire, amethyst, cat's-
eye, carbuncle, are found here.
Vast temporary towns are founded upon the coast by
speculators in pearls. He helped form one of these
transient dream cities. He attempted the culture of
rice, cotton, tobacco, pepper. Everything he touched
succeeded. The people laughed. He finally settled
down upon coffee. Here was wealth. Everybody
doesn't wear pearl necklaces, but everybody drinks
coffee. Some of the British houses became afraid of
him. They concluded to make an ally of him. He
was good-natured and popular. The natives liked him.
The Candian Ceylonese are a mild race. They are
not combative ; they make poor warriors. Their talents
are for agriculture and for peace ; hence the supremacy
of England in Ceylon. But then the Briton has the
genius of colonization. If he wants a thing, he takes it.
Remorse gives him no trouble. He sees the Koh-i-noor
and steals it. A Frenchman's honor would make him
uneasy. An American's conscience might be trouble-
some ; the Briton is not so easily arrested. He comes
POPPsEA
37
and settles himself; takes everything he can get, assimi-
lates it to himself; wears English stuffs, plays tennis in
the shadow of palms, drinks port, gets congestion of
the liver,—a mere trifle. He imports his own immorali-
ties, and forces them on the astounded sons of the soil;
builds an Anglican chapel, brings out his curate. In
one word, stands upon his own legs, with that stubborn
unscrupulousness in which lies his strength. The
Frenchman at first dies of homesickness, then quickly
becorfies acclimated, makes love to the native women,
eats rice, smokes opium, lies in hammocks, dresses in
Oriental garb, helps St. Francis Xavier to preach in
the sixteenth century to the Cingalese, then gives it
up as a bad job, becomes a Buddhist, and goes to
pieces. The nation he has come to conquer has con-
quered him.
All this is an unpardonable digression.
Leigh Hazel wood's last fad was coffee. He found
coffee, as I have said, the best investment. He came
back from Ceylon one day, sick of exile, with a very
large income. He left his interests in what he thought
good hands, and set sail one bright afternoon for his
native shores.
" Bless me," he thought, " how the time has flown !"
He had been away, save for one short visit, many
years. He had never married. He now occupied him-
self building a house in New York ; a palace, people
said. It stood at the corner of a fine avenue. It was
to have a garden, conservatories, an interior court. It
amused him. There was a flutter among the petticoats
at his advent. What was he like ? He was . . . well,
... we will say, forty-nine. That is a safe landmark
which may last. He was a tall man and broad-chested,
with thick gray hair. He had a prominent aquiline
38
POPPsEA
nose, a high, retreating forehead, a keen eye. His chin,
like his forehead, retreated and was somewhat insignifi-
cant. He was fairly well-educated, well-mannered ;
gentlemanly, without any superlative distinction. Self-
satisfied, but not arrogant, conservative, he accepted,
unquestioned, ready-made beliefs,—the sure insignia of
secondary minds. His brain was not wide enough to
probe large truths. He had the complacency of the
man of success, but he was not offensive. He talked
well and fluently, generally about himself. He had a
certain ostentation, which, say what one will, impresses
the masses, even though it wins the disdain of a few;
but his ostentation hardly reached vulgarity.
I have said that he talked a good deal, but he could
also listen.
At Poppsea's first ball, he did more listening than
talking. He was asked suddenly and somewhat anx-
iously, by a lady who professed to admire him, if he had
seen Miss Dalton. This lady was a married woman
who had left her husband and was now suing him for
divorce. She gave as her reason that he could only
play one tune upon the zither, and that she liked a
variety.
When asked if he had seen Miss Dalton, Mr. Hazel-
wood naturally answered in the negative, and this lady
adroitly managed, for an hour, that he should not.
He did finally effect his escape, however, and stood
in a door-way, and watched Poppaea where she sat on a
blue-and-gold sofa, surrounded. She was resting from
the dance, and was fanning herself. She was quite
composed. She was dressed in white. Very simply.
Now and then she smiled. Her lips were a little too
thick for perfect beauty; they opened slowly over her
pretty teeth. She had a low forehead, on which her
POPPMA
39
light-brown hair fell in little circlets. Where she sat
he could see her foot in its white satin shoe. It was
prettily and lightly poised on the parquet floor, like a
bird about to wing its flight. It was long, slender,
arched, aristocratic. The unconscious position of the
foot is a sure test of grace.
He knew about the Daltons ; he was glad now that
they were poor. He was not vain where women were
concerned. He realized exactly what he could offer.
He was not vain,—he was even a little intimidated
before this fresh young beauty,—doubting his own
attractions, as forty-nine will.
Nevertheless he made a resolve before he left that
door-way.
A half-hour later he was conducting Miss Dalton to
supper.
Mr. Hazelwood, this winter, was decidedly the mode.
He had a good dog-cart and fine horses. He gave
dinners at his charming rooms. He owned an opera-
box. He knew how to convey two pretty married
women to the theatre when their husbands were absent.
How to provide them with impeccable and lynx-eyed
duennas for the foreground, and with favorite cavaliers
for the background. He had the flair of the man of
the world.
Mrs. Frederick Dalton did not exhibit her cards.
'' Play your game ; never show your hand,'' was this
lady's motto. She almost sighed because her own had
needed no great scheming. She thought to play a
poor hand skilfully was the greatest triumph of wit.
She had much superfluous knowledge, energy, and a
natural aptitude at intrigue. She concluded that Pop-
psea was not altogether a poor hand on this evening
of the girl's d&but. In fact, she was doing very well
4o
POPPMA
for a beginner. Later, she spoke of the impending
Washington trip behind her fan to Mr. Hazelwood.
"I am going there myself in a couple of days,'' he
responded. '' Perhaps we shall meet. I wish to hear
the debate upon the international monetary conference."
Mrs. Dalton smiled agreeably and murmured,—
" What a pleasant coincidence !"
They remained in the capital two weeks. Mr. Hazel-
wood heard the debates ; so did Poppaea.
When they came back, she was engaged to be mar-
ried to the gentleman from Ceylon. She found him a
respectful and considerate adorer. His wooing was
largely defined with chocolate caramels and breast-
plates of roses. She crackled the sweets with gusto
and adjusted the breast-plates upon her maidenly bust,
while he kissed her finger-nails and once the tip of her
left ear. She thought it funny and not particularly dis-
agreeable. He was not handsome, but he was clean.
On the whole she was excited and pleased. Everybody
was so awed. She felt herself important.
She overheard a lady, with that "pardon frankness"
which heralds insult, say to her aunt,—
" And no fuss or gowns, or going out, or anything ;
it is wonderful luck."
"For him, yes," said Mrs. Dalton, "I agree with
you. The disparity of years made us very doubtful.
Her mother's consent is hardly yet obtained."
" Old hypocrite !" thought the first speaker.
When Veronica came rushing to the hurried sum-
mons from the snow-bound village where she was pass-
ing a week with her third son, she was full of apprehen-
sion. She had upon her a sense of desolateness, of
chilliness and gloom. But Poppaea's serenity soothed
while it alarmed.
POPPASA
4*
Anything to gain or anything to lose cripples charm.
Poppaea had already acquired the calm of the creature
who has attained. She was on a height; all were tip-
toeing for a sight of her.
"Darling," said Poppaea almost immediately to her
mother, '' he says he will buy back Dalton and give it
to me. I shall leave it to Ru in my will."
'' My dear !'' said her mother.
"Yes, it is all arranged."
Veronica was agitated. Feeling took the place of
accident and tore her heart like a blow of destiny.
"You needn't worry about it, you know," said
Poppaea. " He has heaps of money."
"I hope you are attached to him," said the
mother; "he was delightful with me, so kind and
courteous."
She had already had one brief interview with her
future son-in-law ; it had passed off admirably.
" He is very nice," said Poppaea.
" He is so much older," said her mother, with solici-
tude.
" Papa was as much older than you, mamma." This
was unanswerable.
" I am afraid, my child, that you were thinking of us.
I know your heart. Mine was more selfish. I made
my parents unhappy."
"No, really," said Poppaea, "not entirely. I shall
like the splendor myself.''
" Splendor ?"
"Oh, yes, mamma, a beautiful life; exquisite things
about me and Dalton for Ru."
"Especially the last?" said Veronica, through her
tears. "Dear love, do you care for this man? You
know him so little."
42
POPPAZA
"He is well spoken of," said Poppaea, growing seri-
ous ; " if he were not, I shouldn't marry him."
'' How different my girlish madness !'' thought her
mother. 4' I would have married Harry although an
angel warned me. How unreasonable we parents are !
Mine were crazy at my infatuation. I am anxious lest
Poppaea be indifferent. We are inconsequent. In love,
we seek wisdom ; in reason, for the inspirations of love.
It is evident the child's heart has not spoken. The
man has pressed his suit too rapidly."
She sought her sister-in-law.
" She hasn't an idea of what she is going into," she
said, tearfully.
" My dear, I hope you are not fretting over Poppaea's
exceptional good fortune," said Mrs. Frederick Dalton.
" He seems gentlemanly."
"Of course he is gentlemanly, and your Poppaea is
peculiar. The absolutely ' smart woman' who is just
that and nothing else belongs to an especial class which
Poppaea will never fill. Women of that type are not
too handsome, not too clever, above all, not too fasci-
nating. Now, Poppaea is all of these ; a woman of her
sort must develop into a great lady or into a Bohemian ;
she would never be merely a commonplace haus-frau,
or only a little woman of fashion. Now, I consider Bo-
hernia a dangerous country for well-bred women to pene-
trate, and particularly for your daughter. Why, I can't
keep the men off her ! Now she will at least be safe."
'' My girl is proud; that would always be a safe-
guard."
" Yes, and generous." Mrs. Dalton laughed. "She
prattles away and doesn't know what it is all about.
I was talking of it to Frederick last night."
4 4 Ought I to speak to her ?''
POPPJEA
43
"What about ? "
"About marriage."
"Pshaw!"
" It seems so wicked."
" Shall I say a word to her ? "
" Oh, I wish you would; she is absolutely ignorant."
"Very well; send her to me."
CHAPTER V.
•fc TV/l Y child," said Mrs. Frederick Dalton,—she
cleared her throat. "This is a solemn mo-
ment of your life."
"You think I will be frightened in the church?" said
Poppaea. "Not a bit; I am always composed when
the moment comes."
"The ceremony," said her aunt, " is but the thresh-
old of marriage."
"It does seem the principal thing, though ; so much
trouble and fuss," said Poppaea, reflectively.
" Hem ! hem !" Mrs. Dalton became bolder. "A
girl has to give up a great deal to her husband."
'' Mr. Hazelwood says I can do everything I like,''
said Poppaea, positively.
" Within limits, my dear. A husband isn't a
lover."
Mrs. Dalton delivered herself of this platitude as a
preliminary, with the praiseworthy fidelity of custom.
"Why?"
Now here was her chance. But Mrs. Dalton hesi-
tated to seize it; she was growing very uncomfortable.
Upon her were those wide, melancholy eyes,—eyes
which seldom smiled with the lips, and which had
in their depths a capacity for suffering deep as the
pain portrayed in those of Guido's thorn-crowned
Christ. Now they were simply opened in wonder-
ment and question, and were as untroubled as a sleep-
ing lake.
44
k POPPJSA
45
"Why ?"
*' Why ?'' Mrs. Dalton repeated the word a trifle
impatiently. 4' Why, because life has phases. One
cannot stay always on the same plane."
44 Ah ! I see ; of course,'' said Poppaea, with puzzled
brows.
"You may, for instance, have children," said her
aunt, decisively.
44 Mamma did . . . quantities."
44 And children change the entire aspect of exist-
ence."
4 41 know mamma had a lot of bother bringing us
up," said Poppaea.
"Yes," said her aunt, 441 daresay, and they are
sometimes delicate as well as naughty."
4 41 hope I shan't have any,'' said Poppaea. 4 4 You've
only got one."
44 And I nearly died when Freddy was born."
"I wouldn't mind a couple of sons like that picture
of Mrs. Heathcote's boys when they were little," said
Poppaea, dismissing lightly her aunt's depressing an-
nouncement, 4 4 in black velvet, with their hair fluffy,
and those big embroidered collars. Ouida describes
children so beautifully. I would like that kind."
44 Ouida is poor reading for you." Mrs. Dalton
shook her head. This was becoming a task, and she
hated to be bored. 4 4 Ouida has no humor,'' she added,
"and often doesn't appreciate how ridiculous are her
descriptions of life."
"I adore her books," said Poppaea; "but I have
only read three.''
4 4 When one has children,'' said her aunt, desperately,
returning to the charge, 4 4 one is sometimes very ill.
Ouida doesn't speak of that. I was."
46
POPPJE.A
" Dear me," said Poppaea.
"But," added her aunt, hurriedly, "the Bible says
"a woman remembers no more the anguish for joy
that ' Bless me, I never could quote ..."
" 'That a man is born into the world,' " said Poppaea,
reverently.
"Yes, that's it."
There seemed nothing more to be said. The two
women stared at each other. The elder one blushed.
To conceal her unwarranted embarrassment she did an
unusually effusive thing for her. She was not by nature
demonstrative. She rose, approached Poppaea, took
her hands and patted them.
" Dear Tante, you are so kind to me."
"I simply can't," murmured Mrs. Dalton.
'' I told her everything that was necessary,'' she said
later to the expectant Veronica. "She took it very
well."
Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Hazelwood went westward for
their honeymoon, in a special train, with cooks and
servants and maids to do their bidding.
If Poppaea had desired a splendid life, it surely opened
splendidly. They rushed over hills and through val-
leys ; they alighted at night in crude, black cities where
people entertained them. They were driven about in
open carriages, sat in opera-boxes and listened to divas
and tenors bleating of Amor.
They went far, far together. They walked in the
alfalfa-fields, which her husband explained to her gave
two crops a year in altitudes and three in the low coun-
tries. He told her of new methods of irrigation which
he had tried in Ceylon with satisfactory results. He
did all that he could for her amusement. He was pa-
thetically fearful lest she should be dull. At last, one
POPPAZA
47
evening, having* suggested the theatre, after a long
railway journey,—
" Oh, let me rest," she sighed. " Take me home ; I
am tired."
He was in despair. He ran out and bought her a
jewelled watch. They were in a town that day. She
took it, thanked him, and smiled faintly.
"Thank you," she said. " It is very pretty."
She wore it all of the next day, and he was satisfied.
Veronica wondered why Poppsea didn't write.
Mr. Hazelwood penned all the letters. Poppaea would
add a line, '' with love,'' would scratch in a tender word
to her pet Rudolph, a kiss to the absent brothers, a
message to her aunt, adding always that she was well.
Then suddenly one day they came home. Their
house on the avenue was not quite ready for them ;
could not be for a month or more. They '' descended,''
therefore, as the French have it, at a hotel. They took
a floor with windows that opened on balconies ; and
Mr. Hazelwood had seen to it that they should be wel-
corned in rooms well filled with plants and flowers,
sweet-smelling reminders of nature's loveliness.
Veronica first, then the Frederick and Craven Dal-
tons drove around that night to receive the wanderers.
Uncle Craven kissed Poppaea heartily, for which his wife
rebuked him on the way home.
'' She is no longer a child now,'' she said to him. "It
is absurd, this habit of kissing in your family. I hope
you will give it up. Mr. Hazelwood looked annoyed."
The thing which struck Veronica most strongly about
her daughter was a certain coldness, an elusiveness,
a remoteness. She spoke words of affection to her
mother, and allowed herself to be fondled and caressed,
but there was little response. There was a shade of
48
POPPMA
hauteur, of unapproachableness about the young woman
which had never existed before. Veronica, to her own
mortification, felt almost ill at ease with this handsome
creature, in her elegant travelling costume. Was this
her own little girl ? The mother's heart contracted with
a pang. She turned to the window to hide tears whose
source she hardly understood.
They were left alone for a moment. Veronica prof-
ited by the opportunity.
"And are you happy, my dear," she asked, anx-
iously, pressing Mrs. Hazelwood's hand in her own
convulsively.
'' Can you doubt it ?'' asked Poppsea.
The words were simple and dignified, spoken in her
own low and composed tone ; but somehow they sent a
little shiver through Veronica's heart. She sought her
daughter's glance. In her own there was a piteous
appeal. She found her girl's regard inscrutable. If
hidden in its depths she fancied a new world of re-
proach or disdain, who can say that she was deceived ?
Poppsea's eyelids were lowered in an instant. She
turned to laugh at something her aunt, Mrs. Dalton,
was saying to her, and the laugh was musical and
natural. But that night in her loneliness Veronica
passed the bitterest moments of her life.
"She is lost to me. Oh, my little one, my little
one !" she cried. " Oh, my little Poppaea, who has lain
in my bosom, with her pretty brown head so close, and
her soft pink feet which I used to fondle in my bosom !"
Then, as one woe awakens all the others,—
" Oh, Harry, my love, my love, my love," she cried,
"why, why did you leave me desolate !"
And the sorrows of the years closed over her as she
stretched out her arms to clasp emptiness.
POPPsEA
49
If Poppaea's advent was, for some occult reason, to
cause sorrow to her mother's sensitive soul, there was
another scene, no less painful, enacted at this time,
which in the chances of life, however, might have more
ephemeral consequence. It seemed peculiar, however,
if not ominous, that this brilliant bride's return should
thus be heralded with tears.
Up the river at Craven, Mrs. Craven's room was
near to her only son's. A narrow passage divided their
doors. The mother's was frequently left open at night.
On the Sunday after Poppaea's arrival Montgomery
Craven had gone up to pass twenty-four hours at home.
His mother had noticed nothing unwonted in his man-
ner, unless an unusual hilarity. He had romped with
his young sisters, played a practical joke upon the
youngest, little Rose, frightened the cat, pulled the
dog's ears until he howled, and altogether brought into
the house the vivifying atmosphere of masculinity which
it lacked. Usually of a quiet turn, Mrs. Craven was
rather pleased to see him, upon whom the cares of life
had come so early, throw them off and be a boy again.
At midnight, she heard peculiar muffled sounds from
her son's bedroom. She sat up in the darkness, listen-
ing. It might have been laughter. At regular inter-
vals there came, as it were, a smothered murmur.
"He is still in a gale of merriment," she thought,
smiling, "and is laughing himself to sleep."
She fell back upon her pillow, but a louder, more
prolonged note startled her; this time it had sounded
like a plaint. She sprang from her bed, lighted her
candle, slipped into her dressing-gown, and hurried
hastily to her son's door. Finding it unlocked, she
pushed it open before he could answer her summons.
He was lying on his bed, with his head just visible,
D
5°
POPPMA
buried on his arm. His mother recognized at once
that it was sobs and not laughter that shook his frame.
"My son ! my son !" she said, thoroughly alarmed,
"what has happened?" Terrible visions, of sin, of
shame, of possible disgrace, shot through her brain and
paralyzed her.
'' If you have done anything wrong, my beloved, tell
your mother; she will help you; she will comfort you.''
She leaned to him.
" Oh, mother ! oh, mother !" cried the young man.
"What is it, my Monte?" said Mrs. Craven, holding
her son's hands against her shoulder and smoothing his
damp curls tremblingly. "Tell your mother."
But he resolutely shook his head. She had but one
terror.
" Have you done anything wrong?"
"No."
The relief was almost too violent. She gasped. He
remained mute. Her hand closed on his.
"Won't you tell me ?''
" I could have borne to wait for years, for years," he
said.
"Wait?"
'' Ah, if she had known, if she had known. But 1
could not, could not speak."
"It is some woman, then," thought the mother.
"How could I? I am not too vain to own myself
beaten. Haven't I had to cringe for a place ? Did I not
have to give up college and all my hopes and all I cared
for? Am I not a slave for the little I have, but, oh, I was
too proud to ask her to share my poverty !—she, a
queen like that.''
'' Did she encourage you ?'' asked the mother, already
sure that '' the woman'' was unworthy.
POPPAlA
51
" I was a fool. I thought so at first, and now, oh, my
God! . . . polluted!"
'' Polluted ! Is she a bad woman ?'' whispered his
mother.
"No, no, no !" shouted Montgomery, angrily. "She
is an angel. They have ruined her with their wicked
worldly talk."
Mrs. Craven found the riddle past reading.
'' If you will not tell me her name how can I help
you ?'' she said, a little coldly. There was a note as of
a wound in her voice.
But although she stayed with him half of the night,
stayed with him until he slept, he did not speak the
name.
She herself never once thought of the Daltons. Her
friend Veronica's daughter remained to her imagina-
tion the little wild-haired thing who had led her own
more timid girls to climb unsafe boughs, to bathe in ice-
cold brooks, and to play such pranks that her coming
had always been met with a certain dismay. She could
not yet dream of her as of a woman, a woman alluring
and dangerous to male eyes and senses.
Poppaea's odd charm, which had, even in those early
days, arrested the attention of strangers, had not
touched Mrs. Craven's fancy. She had thought her
on the whole a rather undesirable young person. She
rejoiced to hear that she was to be safely and wisely
wedded, and had written to Veronica a conservative
note of felicitation, whose other moiety was devoted to
the pressing details of her own hard lot.
She went back to her room now, anxious and sad.
She told herself with as much philosophy as she could
muster that her children were growing up and that the
season of love-affairs was imminent; nay, it seemed had
52
POPPAEA
already arrived, and was to be added to her other vex-
ations. With a sigh she concluded that, of course, they
would all be unfortunate ones. It was only a part of
that stern discipline with which now for many years
Providence had relentlessly pursued her.
"I suppose," she moaned on her pillow, "it is a
mother's province to sympathize, to show tact, to listen
patiently, and above all to show no animosity against
the . . . the object."
It was very difficult. What were croup, teething,
nay, the measles, and possible chicken-pox, as com-
pared with these moral ailments, these more serious
problems which required such subtle and intelligent
handling ? She groaned in spirit and tossed upon her
bed. "To see one's children miserable and to be
powerless," thought this poor mother, distraught and
helpless. She felt angry with Montgomery. Youth is
hopeless. Middle age, which has conquered much,
waxes impatient at its extremes of woe.
CHAPTER VI.
HE taking possession of a new home is no light in-
vestiture, unless, indeed, to light natures. It has
its significance and its obligations. If Poppaea was too
young to take in all its seriousness, she was not too
young to appreciate its importance.
Will it be an unwelcome shock to my readers if I
admit that she was interested and somewhat dazzled ?
Her home was magnificent. When she found upon
her breakfast tray one morning a check for what
seemed to her modest vision an untold fortune, with a
line from her husband bidding her go forth and gratify
every whim in the arrangement of her own apartments,
she felt for a moment a very natural and childlike pleas-
ure. She had been brought up on an empty purse.
Frederick Dalton, Jr., who preferred his hunting-box
on the Hempstead Plains to his manorial acres on the
Hudson, who was rather hard up from some unfortunate
speculation in horseflesh, had, at the moment of Pop-
paea's marriage, gladly resold Dalton manor to his
relative, notwithstanding the indignant protest of his
parents. Veronica and Rudolph were now installed
there, Poppaea declaring that it should be their home,
and that she would only be its mistress during short in-
tervals of the spring and autumn.
There was to be another house built at Newport for
the '' season,'' but at present the city palace was the
favorite toy. There was a conservatory which opened
53
54
poppjea
from the large drawing-room, running half-way around
the inner court, which was the young mistress's es-
pecial delight. It was filled with rare exotics ; a foun-
tain played amid its palm-trees ; cushioned ottomans
surrounded its leafy borders. There was a picture-gal-
lery filled with the best works the modern art schools
can produce. One went up to it by a flight of marble
stairs. There was a dance-room, a music-room, a
breakfast-room, a banqueting-hall. Poppaea's special
apartment consisted of a large bedroom, a bath-room,
a sitting-room, and a boudoir. The young woman
fitted these up with almost fantastic luxury. Her bou-
doir was floored with onyx ; it was hung in white bro-
caded satins ; its windows were draped in rich laces.
She covered the mosaic floor of her sleeping-apartment
with dark furs into which the feet sank. The walls
were hung with arras; its antique chairs and sofas
were covered with quaint tapestries. It was a some-
what austere apartment, severe and a trifle sombre,—
chapel-like.
It was not very full. Poppaea thought a large room
should be scarcely furnished, a small one filled to over-
flowing. The bath-room, upon which the bedchamber
opened, might have been the impluvium of a Venus.
Here the goddess might well have tripped on rosy feet
to lave white limbs in the gleaming water, to which one
descended by marble steps. The walls were surrounded
with mirrors upon which a skilled hand had painted
bunches of snow-drops which obscured reflection, lest,
no doubt, the divinity, at the sight of her own loveli-
ness, should blush. The sitting-room was a bright,
gay, and sunny place, where she had gathered all her
young girl's belongings. Her desk, her books, her bat
and tennis-balls, some old rifles of her brother's, the
POPPALA
55
fishing-tackle she had made for little Ru out of a piece
of string and a pin, and which she looked at sometimes
with a queer lump in her throat. She had here such
favorite bits of bric-^-brac and such pet ornaments as
had been hers at Dalton in her childhood. Her little
dog lay here all day in front of the fire. Her canary,
in a gilded cage, swung singing in the sunshine.
Flowers in profusion everywhere. In her bedroom she
might be* a chatelaine of the fifteenth century working at
her embroidery among her handmaidens, while they
told tales of jousts and tourneys, of hair-breadth es-
capes and knightly exploits. In her boudoir, as she
lay resting on her soft, white cushions, she was a modern
woman, restless or languid, weary or amused, as the
mood might be ; but in her sitting-room she was a girl
once more. Here she sometimes sat on the floor in
her short walking-dress, reading by the firelight with
one hand on her dog's furry ear, one cheek aflame,
crimson from the petulant flame, as she had done when
she was Poppsea Dalton. Here she forgot that she was
a married woman.
For this she reproached herself. Her husband was
so kind to her, and what was more important, she
thought, so kind to her mother. She had hated mar-
riage, but she had not hated him. He had not, if he
lacked that which enthralls and impels, the temperament
that rouses horror in a woman. He was, at least, not
repulsive. There is a power that rules the heart's in-
most chambers, a force which marches straight to vie-
tory over dead armies and broken hearts, perhaps, but
at last . . . conquers. This is genius. It may exist
in love as in warfare. Where the senses really hold as
well as win, retain as well as vanquish, intellect must
be their weapon. Leigh Hazelwood was intelligent,
56
POPPMA
but this genius he had not. But, as I have said, he
was not repulsive. He had that coquetry of the per-
son which delays youth ; he was a gentleman ; was
esteemed a man of honor, and possessed an amiable
temper. When he stood in the door-way at the first
ball, he met with an experience singular in his career.
He was invaded by that sense of unreality which laughs
at danger; at the evils of chance and its possible hos-
tilities. The phantom of his lost youth had appeared
to him. He had not been satisfied to let it pass. He
was not one who accepted chimeras ; he wished to clasp
and make them his.
If Veronica had noted a distance in Poppsea's man-
ner, which, however, had been gradually lost sight of in
their resumed intercourse, a hundred times a day Mr.
Hazelwood told himself that such ardors as the young
woman might possess would never profit him. She re-
mained a phantom. He was not stupid enough to at
once decide that she was cold because he knew that
for him her pulses did not throb. No. And although
he was not happy, he cannot be said to have been en-
tirely miserable. He had hardly expected to inspire
transport, and he had now begun, in his humility, to feel
at least thankful that he had not inspired aversion.
Quiet affection seemed to him the most probable and
natural outcome of a marriage such as his. He admired
his young wife excessively. Her grace of gesture, that
sure revelation of a graceful mind, enchanted him.
Her rich voice, her ingenuousness, charmed him. Yet
he was hardly enslaved. He was one of those men to
whom love would always be an incident of existence,
not its lever.
Had he been enslaved, Poppaea would doubtless have
resented it. There is a slavery that is too exacting.
POPPAZA
57
There was one aspect of his new position which piqued
him somewhat, although he hardly owned it to him-
self.
The man about town, free to come and go, giving,
not receiving, ready to do women's bidding, well placed,
presentable, is always welcomed, petted, and flattered.
Now, when this man weds the whole aspect of things
is changed, and when he weds a creature whose chrysa-
lis suggests butterfly propensities, his doom is well-nigh
sealed. From being the bachelor of wealth, the possible
parti, Mr. Hazelwood found himself suddenly trans-
formed into the husband of a very pretty woman. This
means, in some respects, a servant. Habits of gallantry
can surely not play him false here. He becomes an
escort, a convoy. He is relegated to stand in draughts
behind door-ways ; to watch for her late and early as
she dances and pirouettes ; to pilot the forgotten dow-
ager into supper while the young wife trips in upon the
arm of a foreign prince, or of some curled and pampered
pet of fashion. People invite him to dine because he
brings her. Women who liked to sit near him ask
each other if marriage has not strangely tamed him.
"Has not Belinda noticed how old he looks? how
dull his eye ? how heavy-weighted his tongue ?''
" Will Elise explain what the girl could see in him to
catch her fancy ?''
"Ah, well, there was an island called Ceylon . . ."
And Poppsea in diaphanous garments and her ad-
mirable diamonds would flutter in, and behind her the
gentleman, in no wise older, duller, than before, but
become a social bore. The undesirable half of an apple,
red only on one side.
Hazelwood, who was in fact rather quick-witted, saw
all this, and it made him suffer. His jaw fell a little, and
POPP&A
hung down on his shirt-collar limply. He began to
distrust himself; to feel shy with young women who
smiled at him too civilly now, never flouted him any
more, as they had in the days when he was worth
while. He noticed that at dinner hostesses always
carried him in to their right. That he shared this
doubtful compliment conferred on the poor relative, the
man who has brought letters, on the Portuguese who
is too dusky, the Swede who is too blond, the stray
ambassador who speaks no English, and is flanked by
madame and that convenient scape-goat, Mrs. Some-
body, who "likes strangers and celebrities." In other
words, he is placed between two ladies who are willing
to put up with tiresome husbands, equivocal foreigners,
and voiceless country cousins, without complaint.
He was too much of a gentleman to vent ill-humor
on his young wife ; nevertheless, an occasional ominous
silence on the way home from entertainments had once
or twice caused Poppsea to ask him hurriedly, '' Have
I done anything you don't like?" with that vague sense
of criminality which haunts the woman who is not in
love with her husband.
'' Nothing, my dear,'' he would say, '' only you dance
so late. Why, it is four o' clock ; you will be pale to-
morrow.'' Or else he would, for all answer, kiss her
cheek and smile. She accepted his kisses passively
always. She was generally, when she accorded any
such favors, thinking of something else.
What were her thoughts ? I fear me not those of a
heroine, and, therefore, perhaps not best recorded.
She was filled just now with a certain joy of living,
an animal satisfaction in moving, breathing, in social
distraction, in her pretty horses, her early rides and
well-fitting habits, her luxurious home, her absolute
POPPJEA
59
freedom from care. It was the joy of the filly frolicking
in green pastures. There was little heart in it; but if
not high, it was at least harmless. She accepted her
marriage and its claims, which were hardly exacting
ones, as necessities ; a part of the general queerness of
the arrangement of things.
After the first revolt she had bowed to fate. She was
agitated with little details, like a newly-fledged bird
watching insects. The young filly, as I have said, in a
pasture, kicking up its heels and flicking at flies.
As yet there was no social ambition ; all she asked
was to be amused, to have attention, plenty of partners;
to be admired, within bounds. Shall I say it of her ?—
to " have fun."
Her aunt, Mrs. Frederick Dalton, was rather disap-
pointed in her niece. Poppaea did not yet assume the
attitude of exclusiveness that had been expected of her.
She went to a reception at Mrs. Mount Cuthbert's,—
rather a detrimental person,—and was advertised as
having been there the next day in all the newspapers.
She was seen at the play with the Arthur Cunlifles, new
people who had not yet scaled the walls they were essay-
ing to leap over.
"I don't understand what Hazelwood is thinking
about," said Mrs. Frederick Dalton to her husband.
Perhaps Mr. Hazelwood felt less his new insignificance
with the Mount Cuthberts and the Arthur Cunlifles than
in his own coterie. They were not in a position to accen-
tuate it Their tremulous delight at having the Hazel-
woods at their entertainment at all made matters of sex,
age, and beauty indistinct and valueless. When Mrs.
Frederick Dalton asked her niece why she associated
with the Mount Cuthberts and Cunlifles, the girl replied,
"Oh, they are nice enough; they make me laugh."
6o
POPPAEA
This reply seemed insufficient. Then there were
other matters.
Not satisfied with the simple, tasteful girl's trousseau
which Veronica, with much art, skill, and thrift, had
selected for her darling, Poppaea had sallied forth one
day, purchased and ordered for herself some very ex-
traordinary clothes. She had appeared at a ball, shortly
after her return from her wedding-trip, in a black satin
heavily draped with rich laces, her neck and arms covered
with diamonds, and with her head plentifully befeathered
with black waving plumes. The costume would have
been entirely suitable for one of Queen Victoria's age
and position during the early period of a court mourn-
ing. Poppaea had looked particularly handsome in this
dowager-like accoutrement. It is needless to say that it
had been more than severely criticised.
" My trousseau isn't married looking enough," she
had said to her aunt, on being rebuked in the dressing-
room for her toilette. Another time Mrs. Dalton had
caught sight of her niece walking down a shopping
thoroughfare, at an hour when elegant women were in
the park or visiting. Mrs. Hazelwood was accom-
panied by a young man whose principal occupation
was the leading of cotillons at insignificant houses, and
she had worn a hat—well! . . , Mrs. Dalton was
simply dumfounded.
When Mrs. Hazelwood stopped in her brougham, a
few days later, to ask her aunt to drive, this lady,
coming down the steps of her Fifth Avenue mansion,
made a rapid resolve. '' My dear,'' she said, '' where did
you get that hat ?'' She still stood upon the sidewalk
lifting up her skirts from contact with a mud-puddle.
"At Christine's, Tante." Christine was a favorite
milliner.
POPPMA
61
"My child, you will oblige me by going home and
changing your head-gear. I refuse to be seen with
you at Mrs. Heathcote's, where we must stop this after-
noon, in that mushroom !"
44 Isn't it becoming?" asked Poppsea, leaning forward
to catch a glimpse of herself in the side-crystal of the
carriage mirror, and in a tone of concentrated anxiety.
"Yes, it is becoming."
"Then?"
Mrs. Dalton got in and sat down by her niece. " Go
back to Mrs. Hazelwood's," she ordered the footman.
The man touched his hat, the door closed with a snap,
the brougham rolled away.
"Why, what . . . ?"
"My dear, I must speak ; you simply cannot go on
like this."
"Go on?"
"Yes, that black satin the other night, most unsuit-
able, and now this thing on your head, and walking
with that absurd little Smith Harrington at five o' clock,
in that vulgar crowd !"
"We were going to look at a picture."
" Oh, it's all very well to go and look at pictures, but I
want you to be elegant.'' Poppaea flushed. Her lip trem-
bled. " Don't you desire to be . . . er . . . elegant?"
4' I desire to be free,'' said Poppaea, dramatically.
"Well, you can't."
"Everyone seems dissatisfied with me." The girl
sighed.
This was a point of vantage : 44 Mr. Hazelwood can-
not approve of this hat, and of the Mount Cuthberts
and the Cunlififes, and Smith Harrington ; all are exe-
crable form. You don't seem to appreciate, my dear,
the exigencies of your position." Poppaea was silent.
62
POPPjEA
She had not yet discovered wherein she did not satisfy
Mr. Hazelwood, but dimly felt that there was a want
somewhere. Probably it was the hat. "Your mamma
had always excellent taste in dress. Be guided by her
and by me.''
"Mamma is at Dalton all the time. She rarely
comes to me." A tear trembled on Poppaea's eyelash.
"She says married people must be left to themselves."
"Wear the charming outfit she provided for you.
You can't do better. Don't wear black feathers and
too much jewelry, and above all give up this hat."
Now Poppaea adored the hat, which was, in fact, rav-
ishingly becoming, but she nodded her head at her aunt
in sign of acquiescence. '' I can put it on sometimes
in the house with a tea-gown,'' she thought to herself,
"for men. They don't notice details if one looks well."
She, however, made the graceful sacrifice to her aunt's
superior wisdom, tripped up to her room, donned a tiny
bonnet, and they started once more upon their social
pilgrimage.
"All eyes are upon you," said Mrs. Dalton, as they
jolted over the pavement. "Women are horrid."
"Have they said nasty things of me?" asked Poppaea.
"Mrs. Gresham spoke of your costume at the ball."
" To you ?"
"No, not to me. Indirectly; I heard." Now
Poppaea admired this Mrs. Gresham, who was very
pretty and a queen of the mode, and she desired her
good opinion.
"What did she say?"
"She thinks you attractive, but says you make mis-
takes."
Poppaea winced. " I don't care what she thinks."
"Then you ought."
POPPJEA
63
" Is she such a model ? I thought there were stories
about her."
"We are not now discussing morals; we are on
form."
"And Mrs. Gresham thinks I am bad form."
"She didn't say that."
'' But thinks it all the same.''
When her niece spoke again it was on quite another
subject, and Mrs. Dalton feared her words had not
taken effect, but in this she was mistaken.
In the first few months of her married life Mont-
gomery Craven did not come to see Mrs. Hazelwood.
She at last wrote him a reproachful note, and sent it by
a messenger to his office. He came up late that very
afternoon. He was quiet and composed, friendly, a
trifle constrained in manner. The servant asked him
to go up to his mistress's sitting-room. He found his
cousin in street-dress, with walking-boots and hat on,
but this time it was a hat that even the fastidious hyper-
criticism of Mrs. Jack' Gresham would have approved.
She and Montgomery had an agreeable talk, principally
of childhood's reminiscences; but somehow she showed
him none of her possessions, not even giving him a
peep through the tempting portieres of her onyx bou-
doir. They chatted of old times, Dalton Manor, the
boys, their childish romps and madcap practices. Then
remembering how he used to devour little pastries at
her Aunt Dalton's, she rang for these and tea. To her
surprise he declined all dainties, rose and beat a hasty
retreat when the tray was brought in. He came, after
this, now and then, to see her, but never would accept
a cup of tea at her hands, and to her invitations to dine
always replied with a negative. Finally this vexed her.
"Are you afraid our food is poisoned !" she asked him
64
POPP^EA
suddenly, not without an admixture of asperity in her
voice.
" Your Roman namesake was not averse to such
methods of disposing of undesirable guests, I fancy,"
said Montgomery in a light tone under which lurked a
tremor of feeling.
" Don't be a goose."
It is difficult, when one is very young and very lonely,
to remain on heights forever. One can step down from
some altitudes as well as fall from them. Montgomery
shifted his position and came down. He occasionally
dined with the Hazelwoods after this. Mr. Hazelwood
took a great fancy to him.
CHAPTER VIL
1M0TWITHSTANDING certain strictures upon her
1 ^ new acquaintance, Mrs. Jack Gresham invited
Poppsea to a breakfast; and perhaps because of them,
young Mrs. Hazelwood accepted. We respect criticism
where malice has no motive. The note, which was
written on faintly perfumed paper and bore a silver
crest, was informal and friendly, fixed a Tuesday at
half-past twelve, and assured the bride, for such she
was still called, that there would be only a few choice
spirits present, " quite without ceremony."
When, on the day appointed, Poppaea entered Mrs.
Gresham's drawing-room, she found that there were in
fact but eight or ten ladies present.
She had hardly yet come into close contact with the
coterie over which Mrs. Gresham reigned supreme, but
she felt no embarrassment, and crossed the threshold
with the languid calmness of a veteran. The glances
of approval, not unmixed with a certain uneasiness,
which greeted her arrival assured Poppsea that this
time at least she had made no mistake as to costume.
In fact, it may be here said, that after the first few irra-
tional weeks of her married life she became a model in
such matters. The women were all speaking at once
and volubly. There was at this moment a topic of
absorbing interest upon the carpet, so that even the
dazzling prospects of young Mrs. Leigh Hazelwood
had been momentarily eclipsed. A handsome married
woman, a leader of the world, one of their own number,
e 65
66
POPPALA
had been found dead in her bed under peculiarly tragic
circumstances. She had given a ball, had looked su-
perbly, had bidden her guests farewell in the first flush
of dawn, and then at eleven o'clock of the following
morning had been found by her frightened maid stretched
lifeless upon her couch. Her funeral had taken place
the day before, and its details were just being discussed.
"It seemed rather incongruous, did it not," said
Mrs. Gresham, " that Odenried and Milly should follow
Mrs. Odenried's coffin together? What will become
of Mrs. Odenried's step-daughter now?" Odenried was
the husband of the dead woman, and Milly was the step-
daughter by a first marriage.
"Poor, dear Lollia !" said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert.
" Poor Lollia !" said Mrs. Larremore.
'' Poor sweet Lollia 1'' echoed Mrs. Arthur Cunliffe.
These three ladies were not precisely of that inner sister-
hood which might have mourned for the departed with-
out inconsequence, and their ejaculations seemed now
somewhat forced and overdone. It was to be noticed
that Mrs. Heathcote, Mrs. Eustis, Mrs. Ayrault, Mrs.
Gresham, and Mrs. Milburn Maury spoke of the dead
woman as Mrs. Odenried, but that Mrs. Mount Cuth-
bert, who had never entered her house except upon
sufferance,—as she had entered this, and would many
more,—and the two other speakers, who only knew her
by sight, used her Christian name. In sieges even
corpses may be used as stepping-stones. The art of
war knows no restraints.
'' Do you ever think,'' said Mrs. Eustis in Mrs.
Ayrault's ear, "did it ever occur to you, Arden, that
she . . ."
"Killed herself? There are those who insinuate it."
"The darling laced," said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert.
POPPjEA
67
"Her heart was doubtless impaired in its action by a
constant pressure of steel.''
"The physicians said it was angina pectoris," said
Mrs. Heathcote.
"Some say it was an overdose of morphia," said
Mrs. Larremore ; "that she had contracted the habit."
"I am quite sure that is untrue," said the hostess;
'' people will stop at nothing.''
"Well, but my dear Mrs. Gresham," said Mrs.
Mount Cuthbert, '' when one suffers the tortures from
neuralgia that devastated—yes, actually devastated our
dear Lollia, one must find relief somewhere. You, with
your magnificent health, can form no conception of what
we invalids suffer."
'' Milly seemed to feel terribly,'' said Mrs. Cunliffe.
"Well she may ! Who will saddle themselves with
the odious girl now ?" said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert.
'' One cannot expect Geoffrey Odenried to shoulder
her," said Mrs. Ayrault.
"Hardly," said Mrs. Heathcote; "he was kind to
keep her at all."
"Oh, she has relatives," said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert,
"and pots of money."
"And Is really almost pretty sometimes," said Mrs.
Larremore. '' Do you remember her at the ball in
that white chiffon and her hair in a simple knot?"
"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert; "and I
thought her hideous."
"What object could Mrs. Odenried have in making
away with herself?" murmured Mrs. Eustis, for whom
the idea of suicide seemed to hold peculiar fascination.
She was a twilight woman with a picturesque distinction.
"She was unhappy probably," said Mrs. Gresham,
shortly.
68
P0PP2EA
"She seemed the picture of strength and vigor to
me," said fragile little Mrs. Cunliffe.
"Health means violent emotions," said Mrs. Heath-
cote. '' The invalids never kill themselves, they have
their medicine-chests to amuse them."
'' Odenried must feel it he looked so set and
pale.''
"Oh, bah !" said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert.
"Why do you say 'bah' like that?" ventured Pop-
paea. She was listening, deeply interested, to this
melodrama thrown about so carelessly over the broid-
ered table-cloth, across the gay roses and the golden
dishes of Mrs. Jack Gresham's exquisite little feast.
"I say bah," said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert, who had
waited for a pause that all might hear, and who was
secretly delighted at what she had to divulge, '' be-
cause Odenried is in love with another woman.''
A slight tremor of excitement shook the company.
'' That makes not the slightest difference,'' said Mrs.
Larremore. "He will whimper over his wife's death
just the same. I know married men. They are all
like that. Women are more consistent."
"What does that prove,—that men are better or
wickeder than women ?''
"It doesn't prove anything unless that they are
weaker. It is simply a fact. A man abandoned his
frau, the other day, for another woman, but when the
latter instigated some unpleasant man to say a nasty
word about the wife, he, the faithless one, out with his
pistol and shoots the offender dead."
"That was human nature," said Mrs. Heathcote.
"Human nature? Nonsense! He had broken his
wife's heart. What was a word.after that? He had
compromised the other one j I say he owed everything
POPPjEA
69
to her. She had been abused and pelted, and thrown
dirt at, and had borne it all valiantly enough. But
man-like he couldn't be loyal to either of them."
"That is true."
'' And now, if he is hung, the woman who threw away
her reputation for him hasn't even the pleasure and
compensation of knowing that it was for her sake !
Oh, my dear, they are a poor lot!"
" Of course if one's lover was to be hung one would
desire to know that it was not for another woman," said
Mrs. Milburn Maury, reflectively.
"Naturally," said Mrs. Ayrault, energetically, "one
would like, as it were, to pull the rope one's self."
" I can understand you," said Mrs. Eustis, dreamily.
"Well, in this case," said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert,
"Odenried's in love and nobody will have to be
shot."
"She means the Marquise Le Moyne," whispered
Mrs. Ayrault to her friend Norah Eustis. " I heard he
was not impervious to her charms that summer she
passed in America."
"You have guessed,'' said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert.
"Madame Le Moyne is a connection of mine," said
Poppaea. '' I stopped at her chateau when I was a
little girl."
"Well, Mrs. Hazelwood, Odenried is in love with
her. I saw him speak to her in a box at Vienna, where
I went with poor dear Lollia ; I had an excellent opera-
glass ; and if I had not been sure of the thing, the
summer that the Marquise passed at Breckenridge
Hall, I should have been enlightened then."
"Ah !"
Mrs. Mount Cuthbert had not hoped for such im-
portance; she trembled. "Now he will just dump
7o
POPPMA
Milly and sail, and they will be married before you can
turn round."
"Don't you think it would be a little premature?"
said the hostess, with frigidity, "and that the subject of
his remarriage had best be put off for at least ten days ?
I knew Mrs. Odenried very well.''
"What a charming costume you have on, Mrs. Ay-
rault!" said Mrs. Larremore, coming to the rescue.
"Hash !"
"What, really? Don't tell it, then. I thought it
the newest thing out.''
" Not in the least. It is last year's made over by my
maid."
" Your maid must be a genius."
"Yes, she has talent. I will tell her ; it will encourage
her."
"She is like me if she craves applause," said Mrs.
Larremore. " I cannot do without it; I wilt."
"You have every cause for satisfaction then," said
Mrs. Heathcote, politely, but with a faint sarcasm
which did not escape Poppaea.
'' Those modest flowers which only grow to blush un-
seen," said Mrs. Ayrault, "are not in your and my
line, are they, Mrs. Larremore ?''
"To be alone with nature wouldn't suit us," said
Mrs. Larremore, glad of the partnership.
"'When I found,' said Emerson, 'that the young
man did not seek an audience, I doubted his genius.'
You see, mesdames, you have excellent precedent,"
murmured Mrs. Gresham, rising.
After Poppaea left, which she did early, Mrs. Oden-
ried's melancholy fate was dismissed. The new-comer
became the surface ripple. '' What did you think of
her ?'' The question passed from one to the other.
POPPALA
"She is not ordinary," said Mrs. Heathcote.
" She is not insignificant; she has quite an air," said
Mrs. Milburn Maury.
"She is not commonplace," said Mrs. Ayrault. 1
'' She was well turned out,'' said Mrs. Larremore.
"Her face has the lines of passion," said Mrs.
Gresham.
'' What lines are those ?'' ventured Mrs. Cunliffe.
"Those two lines from the nose running towards the
outer curve of the lips."
'' Why, you are quite a physiognomist !''
" Yes, I am."
" It must be interesting." ,
'' I think the study of physiognomy will become a
science," said Mrs. Heathcote, "although Lavater could
not make it so. At present we are sadly deficient in its
knowledge. One must, no doubt, have aptitudes,—be
judicious and cool in judgment like Mrs. Gresham."
"Am I these? It would have wide utility." Mrs.
Gresham sighed.
'' But how terrible to fathom some one we love, and
find them wanting, simply at a glance !" said Mrs.
Eustis. "The receipt for that has not yet been dis-
covered, I fancy." There was a tear in Norah's voice.
"My physician, who has much studied features, tells
me," said Mrs. Mount Cuthbert, "that the angel faces
often belong to the perverted, and the sensual ones to
the most pure."
"He lacked insight; it is the bony, not the fleshy
parts of the face which are indicative.''
"Well," said Mrs. Larremore, "from what I see in
that girl's face who has just vanished, if I were her
husband I would never have a moment's peace,—so
much older than she, too ! I also study . . . lines."
72
POPPjEA
" Fancy !"
"I'd put her at once in a strait-waistcoat."
"That lovely child? Don't you know," said Mrs.
Heathcote, smiling, '' the result of repression or intoler-
ance is to create first revolt and then hypocrisy ? to
control would be to spoil her."
'' She' 11 never be a hypocrite !'' said Mrs. Eustis,
under her breath.
"She hardly opened her lips," said Mrs. Ayrault,
"and one would think we knew all about her."
" I know all about her," said Constance Gresham.
"Tell us, Mrs. Gresham!" But Constance shook
her head.
'' I can tell you one thing that I know about her, my
ladies," said Mrs. Ayrault, and she raised one hand in
comic warning, "look out for your men! . . . And
now, dear Constance, I must run on to my singing
lesson.''
On the whole, young Mrs. Hazelwood had been
leniently dealt with. Where all were charming and
successful there was room for justice. In twenty min-
utes, after a flutter of fine feathers and farewells in the
hall, the little party had disbanded. The intellectually
ambitious to some class in literature, art, or science, to
some symposium or debate, to some conference where
a long-suffering professor would essay to enlighten them
between gossip and cups of tea ; the practical into the
city, to order favors for their next dance, a gown for
their debutante, to stop at Tiffany's and price jewelry,
or on the Avenue, to view Oriental stuffs ; the conscien-
tious and dutiful to see some sufferer at the hospital, to
carry some dainty to the hungry, to leave some roses
at the house of mourning; the imaginative and poetic
to the Park or Riverside, whose loneliness in the early
POPPjEA
73
afternoon tempts dreams and fancies. So would be
filled that hour of leisure which lies between a noon
breakfast and the afternoon visiting-list.. Mrs. Leigh
Hazelwood took the latter course. In her high-swung
victoria, behind her spanking ponies, leaning back
luxuriously, lapped to her eyes in furs, she sought
the river-bank. The late autumn lay damp on the
landscape in its penetrating sombreness. The sun
was pale and cold, hiding its heart of fire in flitting
vapors. Of fashion and its votaries at this hour there
was no trace. From under her long lids with their
curled lashes the young woman looked out at the
wintry scene hidden in its haze. Haze is dust. She
looked out. She felt that she could not understand.
She was possessed by a sadness that she could not
shake off. The talk of those women at the breakfast
had disturbed her serenity, had made her restless, she
could not have said why. Its flippancy, its cynicism,
had vaguely distressed her, for in these days her
worldliness was a word,—no more. The drive was de-
serted. Now and then a cab with a slouchy driver and
long-tailed horse passed her ; a cavalier ill-dressed and
ill-mounted cantered slowly up the ride, a pair of lovers
leaning on the parapet turned at her approach, annoyed
at the disturbance. She gazed at the water and the
sky, and remembered warm, sultry days of summer
when she had bathed or rowed across the river's sunlit
breast. She recalled her old home and her dead father,
and the sweet tender mother whom she had left; the
rare visits of neighbors, and Mr. Humm with his offers
of safety, and Mrs. Winslow's rose-hidden cottage.
Those silent summer days ! The lofty elms, the moving
grass, the murmur of the bees, the hum of wings, the
tall maize meadows behind the house, the scorching
74
POPPAZA
glare on the piazza steps, how distant now ! How
she used to delight to lie under the trees for hours
watching the clouds, invoking the spirits of air to
breathe on her hot cheeks coolness and life ! Then lo !
they would come, down from the pines and hills, to calm
and ease the panting earth. She thought of the twitter
of birds and the fragrance of wild flowers. She remem-
bered a French song her mother used to sing . . . How
the refrain would be wafted through the lace curtains of
the drawing-room and reach her childish ears where she
lay on the mossy turf.
" Entends, ma chere, entends la douce nuit qui marche !"
And so thinking, suddenly, a moisture rose into
Poppaea's eyes.
CHAPTER VIII.
Y\ 7HEN Christmas came, Veronica and the boys—one
* * of whom had just won laurels in his classes—and
the eldest Craven girl all came to pass a week with the
Hazelwoods. On Christmas-eve there was a frolic.
Hospitality is the crown of wealth. Let those who
think it a light one to wear adjust it to their brows.
Veronica, with her sisters-in-law, their husbands, and
Mr. Hazelwood, sat on a raised dais at one end of the
picture-gallery, while the young people—there had
been some outsiders bidden—danced and played games
and romped over its slippery floor. Poppaea had impru-
dently hung mistletoe between each apartment, and this
treacherous bough, when once discovered, was the cause
of much merriment, shy attack, and bold defence.
Veronica was kindly attentive to the frightened Craven
girl who knew no one, and was found, notwithstanding
a fresh, pansy face, to be gawky and partnerless. The
she-wolf cruelty of motherhood had not awakened in
Mrs. Harry Dalton's gentle breast. Is the much-
vaunted fetichism of maternity, with its useless sacri-
flees, more than the savage instinct of idolatry ? Will
it be tender to the marred and broken-winged child of
a less fortunate parent, or, what is still more difficult,
just to the beauty, exultant at the strength, take pleas-
ure in the flight of another's offspring? When it has
done all this we will be ready to twine an immortal
wreath about its temples. The day may come perhaps.
75
76
POPP&A
Patriotism will then be extinct, and the love of humanity
reign in its stead. Immolation of self will have a deeper
meaning than our present narrow standards convey.
The inspiration of mother-love will spring from a God-
like perception, not an animal instinct.
"What will you have ?" said Mrs. Frederick Dalton,
shrugging her shoulders, one day when some one com-
plained to her of the treachery and disloyalty of an old
friend. '' What will you have ? She has a grown-up
daughter!"
Poppaea had never looked more charming than on
this night. Her cheeks, habitually pale, were flushed
into a deep rose tint, her hair was a trifle disarranged,
she was imperiously marshalling the guests, giving her
orders to the dancers,—mere children in years,—joining
them in their play, a mere child herself. Her mother's
lovely face radiated pleasure as she watched her be-
loved. She missed no movement of her daughter's
strong, rhythmic, and unconscious poses. Poppaea had
the form of the youngest of Thurman's Fates, that
slightness of bust, breadth between the breasts, and
rounded outline which are the acknowledged insignia
of beautiful proportion. This unveiled figure suggests
no immodesty. The Puritans, who considered it im-
modest to show the ear, pushed up the bosom almost
to the neck, distorting those gracious curves which are
the joy of the sculptor.
Poppaea's form started out in bold relief against the
background of fine pictures like the animated statue of
some Greek divinity. Now Venice gleamed behind her,
with its nocturne of blue and silver skies, its irregular,
dark files of architecture, eaten away at their base by
the advance and retreat of tides. Now it was a gray
ocean, mysterious, distant, pallid, and still, against
POPPAEA
11
which her pretty head detached itself. A startling
study of Carolus; a " Morning in the Fields" of Maurice
Eliot, with its debauch of purpling grasses ; a great pa-
cific cathedral, full of serenity and of peace ; a tremulous
landscape of Meunier's ; two Spanish dancers of Dan-
nat; or an etude of the street by Norbert-Gceneutte.
Veronica was proud and pleased. " Such an individu-
ality, she was thinking, "could not be crushed, it
needed elbow-room, the beautiful. Imagine stifling
such a creature in obscurity and poverty !" These
things she said to herself, over and over, to quell the
secret uneasiness that her daughter's marriage had
awakened in her soul. Was Veronica's anxiety pro-
phetic ?
Mr. Hazelwood was entertaining them about Christ-
mas in Ceylon. '' If the habits of all nations resembled
each other how dull travelling would be !'' he was
saying.
" This is exactly what I was telling a French diplo-
mat, yesterday," laughed Mrs. Frederick Dalton from
the dais, '' when he complained that our dinners were
poor, our men rude and slovenly, and our women
cold."
" It seems to me the gentleman was not very polite,"
said Veronica.
"Oh, my dear, it is a traveller's privilege to make
himself disagreeable !"
" Only another way," said Mrs. Craven Dalton, " for
expressing pique and injured vanity at finding them-
selves neglected and unimportant.''
"A pretty sight indeed!" said Mr. Hazelwood,
answering an exclamation of Veronica's, as he leaned
back complacently by the side of his mother-in-law.
There was in his tone that pleasure in possession born
PoppAla
of one ot his few faults,—a certain ostentation and love
of display which had not escaped the notice of his girl-
wife during the period of their brief honeymoon. She
had judged it severely, as is the custom of intolerant
youth, which holds a microscope to virtue, a magnify-
ing-glass to vice. She had, indeed, judged this defect
more severely than was quite fair.
But what a woman may pardon in herself as a weak-
ness she deprecates in her husband, disliking even that
he should approve it. Women are not more logical
than this. Poppaea, however, had little love of display
for itself. She liked the pomp of life because it ap-
pealed to what was poetic in her temperament.
Through all their talk the music poured out its notes,
and Poppaea and Montgomery Craven were just joining
hands in a quickly improvised reel.
The young man was flushed. His pleasant laugh
vibrated once or twice, and pealed through the room.
Now, as he grasped his cousin's hands in his, he sud-
denly and without warning encircled her waist, made a
rapid gallopade with her resting almost in his arms
through the drawing-room which led into the hall, and
there, under a myriad eyes, under the lights, under the
mistletoe, he stooped a little wildly and kissed her sud-
denly upon the lips. Poppaea disengaged herself in-
stantly from his embrace. She was frowning. '' It was
for the children,'' she said, haughtily, 4' I hung the mis-
tletoe ; not for the men and women."
" Cugina mia," he whispered to her, "forgive!
The dance is in my blood like wine to-night. Let me
be a child for an hour.''
But still frowning and not looking at him she left the
games, and came and sat between her husband and her
mother. <fTired, eh, little one?" said Mr. Hazelwood,
POPP^A
19
laughing. '' I told you you would get kissed before the
night was over.''
"I hate horse-play!" said Poppaea. "Yes, I am
weary."
The fun began to languish a little ; breathless couples
left the dancers and hid in embrasures and behind
flower-pots, giggling and flirting after the manner of
American boys and girls, than which nothing can be at
once more inane and more innocent.
Montgomery Craven had grown suddenly serious.
He whispered a word to his young sister, and then
advanced to say his farewells. His laughter was quelled,
his manner punctilious and reserved. '' Let me thank
you, Mrs. Hazelwood," he said, bowing perfunctorily
over his hostess's fingers, " for a very pleasant evening.
I have enjoyed the fun immensely."
"Or the iced champagne, eh, which, my cousin?"
asked Poppaea, with a gleam of her white teeth.
"You can be as cruel as the Roman empress," he
said, coldly, and bowed himself out.
When Poppaea had dismissed her women that night
she did not as summarily extinguish her candles, but
sat listlessly with her hands clasped across her knees,
gazing into her wood-fire, rapt in deep reflection. She
had donned a dressing-gown of warmly-lined satin tipped
with soft swan's-down, and thrust her bare feet into
fur-lined mules. Her light-brown hair with its auburn
streaks lay on her shoulders ; her large eyes were intent
upon the flame.
She sat thus immovable for a half-hour, so immovable,
indeed, that had it not been for those widely-open orbs,
one spying upon her might have thought that so sitting
sleep had caught her. But Poppaea was not asleep.
By and by she rose, and, taking up one of the tall can-
8o
POPPJEA
dies in its heavy silver candlestick, she walked leisurely
to her dressing-table. She stopped to push away its
lace curtains, still holding the light in one hand. She
now began to scrutinize the reflection of her face as it
gleamed back at her from the mirror, and to examine
herself curiously. All at once, after some moments of
this mute contemplation, she seized a handkerchief that
lay near and began furiously to wipe her mouth. When
she ceased its usual crimson was turned to an almost
purple hue. What stain did the young woman think had
been left upon its purity ? "I hated it!'' she murmured.
Poppaea was a married woman, yet no suspicion of
love's power had ever touched her. To her the mean-
ing of what life may bring to women was unguessed.
The male fire of her cousin's kiss had waked in her
with a strange shock a presage of its possibility. On
the whole it had been intensely disagreeable to her.
She had been angry with him, and still more with her-
self, that the kiss had meant more for her than that of
her little brother Rudolph. She was angry that it had
meant. . . anything. That it had she confessed to her-
self, being no hypocrite. The kiss had taught her that
her cousin thought of her as of a beautiful woman, and
such thought seemed to her an indignity. Those
women, the other day at the breakfast, had spoken
lightly of marriage ties, and evidently in the world there
were those whom they chafed and fretted. A sudden
fear to-night possessed her. What if some day—some
time in an unguarded hour words should be spoken,
not by Montgomery, but by some other one—some
dark-eyed prince, some necromancer fateful and dan-
gerous ! Would she, too, chafe and flutter at her
chain ? Her cousin had simply burned her senses for a
moment through the impulse of his own, and a whole
POPPAlA
81
world of questioning, of a new portentous knowledge
of good and evil, had whirled in an instant through her
brain. Her virgin soul seemed cleared to gaze into a
far horizon which leaned upon some dark and ominous
abyss. Of any possible bliss this abyss might conceal
she read no sign. Her husband's quiet caresses had at
first frightened, then left her cold. At the protestations
of her boy admirers, at the declarations of the fortune-
hunting viscount, she had laughed ; but to-night she
could not laugh, not with this man's touch upon her.
The first thrill of sense for her had meant pain, well-nigh
disgust.
" I suppose I am a great fool," she thought at last,
4' to care because a great hobbledehoy has dared to kiss
me. And it was all my fault for hanging up that stupid,
silly thing."
It was a few moments later that Mr. Hazelwood heard
a faint sound at his door. A glass of iced tea, into which,
before retiring, he poured some warmer cordial, was
nightly deposited in his dressing-room. There was a
little maid who alone knew how to sweeten and sour it
with a squeeze of lemon-juice and two lumps of sugar
exactly to the master's palate, and she, and not his
valet, was in the habit of leaving it upon his table as she
wended her way to her room. Now he presumed it
was this maiden at his door, so different was the timid
rap from his wife's usual impatient summoning. '' Come
in, Mary Ann !'' he cried, looking up from the evening
paper he was perusing under the lamp at a table drawn
up close to a fire of half-extinct coals. There is nothing
less redoubtable than a man in dressing-gown and slip-
pers, but it is hardly the costume we should recommend
to one about to meet any serious problem, particularly
one closely connected with the imagination of a very
F
82
POPPJEA
young woman. Mr. Hazelwood's large, sharp profile
rose above the collar of his robe de chambre with that
baffled helplessness of the man of the world whose
armor has been laid aside. It may be just possible
that his young wife's somewhat tragic mental condition
felt the incongruity. If so, her humor got the better"
of her discomfiture, for, as she entered, the first thing
that greeted her husband's ears was a nervous peal of
laughter. "Poor dear," said Mrs. Hazelwood, check-
ing herself, '' are you cold ?''
He looked up at her over his glasses, his small light
eye somewhat dazed in expression, then quickly gather-
ing his loose garment about him with such dignity as he
could muster, he rose. In so doing he lost one of his
slippers ; in shuffling to find it his eye-glasses fell upon
the rug. '' Blank my awkwardness !'' said Mr. Hazel-
wood. In the mean time Poppaea was standing irreso-
lute, looking at him. "I thought it was Mary Ann
with the tea," murmured Mr. Hazelwood. " Well, my
dear, were you satisfied with your party ?''
"It went off very well," said Poppaea, moving for-
ward and seating herself in a low arm-chair.
" I was just looking at the rates of import," continued
her husband, flinging away his paper and pushing his
own chair from the table. '' But how is it, my child,
that you are not in bed and asleep long ago ?"
'' I have been reflecting,'' said Poppaea, making a
valiant effort. She wished he had kept on his dress-
suit. How can one be serious with one's husband in
such a guise ?
'' Reflecting ! Dear me, what about, pray, at this
hour of the night?" He spoke as one might to a
spoiled child or kitten, with a half-amused inflection.
He was a man who felt the femininity of women as one
POPPAEA
83
does the purring of soft young animals. What men
call their helplessness—which is in fact their strength—
awoke in him a protective sentiment.
"It is not very late," said Mrs. Hazelwood. There
was a pause. " Hazelwood," said Poppaea, in a tremu-
lous voice, " are you happy ?" Now this is at all times
a puzzling question to have thrown upon one's revery,
and when a man has had an excellent dinner, several
capital glasses of wine, is fond of his wife, is at peace
with the world, gets on with his mother-in-law, he is in
no mood to argue the degree and intensity of his joyful
emotion. -It may here be said that the slight sting of
pique which Mr. Hazelwood had felt during the first
months of his marriage at being relegated to the trivial
part of husband of a very pretty woman had given way
to a healthful reaction. He had, through that chivalry to
women which was inherent in him, concluded to accept
the position which, after all, had been of his own seek-
ing, with philosophy, and he was readjusting himself to
his new conditions. Men of thought are often taciturn
and morose. Men of action divert and interest them-
selves. Mr. Hazelwood, eminently a man of action,
had little time for broodings and introspections.
While Poppaea felt again the incongruities of the situ-
ation, and once more was shaken by a spasmodic desire
to laugh, perhaps to weep, she knew not which, Mr.
Hazelwood was feeling the necessity of making some
answer to her unexpected query. '' Happiness, my
dear," he began, and then stopped,—" happiness is so
much a question of mood."
"Why don't you say of digestion?" said Poppaea,
contemptuously ; but she had not come to be con-
temptuous, and with one of those sudden changes which
made her eventually a woman of such rare fascination,
84
POPPJEA
she now came and leaned against her husband's shoul-
der. He looked up, and took her hand in his affec-
tionately. "Because," she said, hurriedly, "if. . .
if ... I don't make you happy, quite happy ; do you
hear, Leigh?"—she rarely called him this,—"tell me
where I fail; tell me, and I will try and do better.''
He began himself to wish he had retarded his un-
dressing. Pajamas even veiled were not created for the
role of tenor. He felt that for this occasion a man
should warble like a bird, not speak ; should wear a
plume, a sword, perhaps a casque. It was evident that
it would be fatal not to rise to the exigencies of the mo-
ment; but he was ill at ease, and the fear of again losing
a shoe kept him pinned to his seat. He had a vague
idea that at such a juncture a man must fall upon his
knees ; but he had to content himself with another
squeeze of her palm.
"You have been so good to me,—so good,—so
very, very gentlemanly. I never said anything about
it before,—I never can say much. I wanted you to
know ... to be sure that I appreciate it . . . that
we . . . that mamma . . Then Poppaea burst into
tears.
'' Dear me ! Dear me !'' said Mr. Hazelwood, greatly
distressed, "you are overdone, my dear ! Here, take a
sip of my tea ; this dance has been too much for you.''
He groped into his dressing-room and found the tray
Mary Ann had left there. He poured out and gave his
wife some spoonfuls himself. She choked and laughed
again, and after a few more words they said "good-
night." As Poppaea neared the door her husband
called out after her, 4' By the way, Craven Dalton was
telling me to-night that Montgomery is miserably paid
in the hole they have got him into, that the poor boy is
POPPAlA
85
often at his wits' end for money, with his mother and
the girls on his hands. Now I have got an opening he
might like. We need an agent here for our Boston
house. He will get good pay, and if he proves capable,
who knows but I might give him an interest in the busi-
ness. Wouldn't you like to ask him yourself, my dear ?
Invite him to dine ; then, when you have sounded him,
turn him over to me for a talk.'' Poppaea murmured
her inaudible gratitude, and with this new benefit weigh-
ing upon her spirit she returned slowly to her own
apartment. Mr. Hazelwood sought his bed, there to
sleep, presumably, the sleep of the just.
CHAPTER IX.
T T is deplorable that conscience often goads us when
*■ by our own folly we have made action impracticable.
Poppaea felt this on the next morning. Her maid asked
permission early to admit Miss Violet Craven to her
mistress's boudoir. Poppaea cast a furtive glance at her-
self in her long mirror. She wished her little country
cousin to be duly impressed with her married air. Her
desire to be impressive rose from the fact that she had
some excellent worldly counsel to tender this alarmed
visitor; but the interview was not such as she had
anticipated, and it was Miss Violet who talked, and not
her hostess. The young girl had taken her courage by
both hands, and had sought Mrs. Hazelwood with a
purpose. She consumed nearly an hour stammering
forth her errand; we will give it in two words. • She
asked Mrs. Hazelwood if it would not be possible,
with her great influence, to secure some better place for
her brother Montgomery. She painted the slender-
ness of their means, the delicate health of their mother,
the terrible sacrifices Montgomery had been forced to
make. Finally, clasping her hands, "Dear Cousin
Poppaea," she said, "try and get Mr. Hazelwood to
find a better position for my brother." All this was
said haltingly. Listening to this story of Montgomery's
unselfishness and poverty, Poppaea despised herself, as
does a fine soul which has been capable of meanness.
Her arrogance of the night before seemed to her paltry
in the extreme,—a base revenge for a petty offence,
80
POPPAEA
87
From her lofty ground of vantage she had inflicted a
sting upon a heart she not only knew to be proud and
sensitive, but which her woman's unerring instinct had
also told her to be all her own. She felt the act grossly
unworthy of a woman and a great lady. She could so
easily have taught the boy a lesson at less cost! She
kissed Violet, promised to do her utmost, and above
all, vowed a hundred times that the young man should
never guess his sister's mission ; for upon this the girl
insisted with the importance childhood gives to such
detail.
'' He must help himself too,'' said Poppaea, at last
given a chance to air her Socratic wisdom. " No one
succeeds without push and energy. To seize oppor-
tunity—that is everything ; to see clearly and largely ;
to have wide horizons. The more one contemplates
these the less rebellion at fate is there in the heart.
Men are selfish. 'Each for himself,' my child, is their
motto, and the indolent and the dreamers have no
place." Poppaea delivered herself of this dithyramb,
oratorically, and Violet was deeply interested. She
did not tell the girl that her husband had already
spoken, that the whole thing was in Montgomery's
grasp. A vague fear that he might refuse all offers of
assistance kept her tongue tied. How indeed could
she have explained ? She did not write to Montgomery
at once, as her sex's impatience at delay would have
dictated, but waited for a week. At the end of that
time she sent him a line asking him to call upon her.
The answer was short, pleading a vague engagement.
To this she replied playfully, peremptorily, " Don't be
silly. Come up this afternoon." He neither came nor
answered. Much offended, she now requested her hus-
band to seek an interview. Two days later Mr, Hazel-
88
POPPALA
wood told his wife that he had offered a position of trust
to her cousin, that it had been declined somewhat
curtly. Nothing more could be done. In a few weeks
they met again in the world, and by and by Mont-
gomery resumed his visits ; but of favors to give or
take no more was said. There were no more kisses
under mistletoe boughs. The boughs were wilted and
dry, and Montgomery's heart felt a little shrivelled too.
Poppaea determined in these days that her education
was incomplete, and that she was insufficiently culti-
vated. She was indeed a good French and Latin
scholar, but she concluded that she must master many
tongues and arts to become an accomplished woman.
She asked her Aunt and Uncle Craven Dalton, who
were supposed to be the intellectual members of the
family, their advice. She sought her Aunt Craven,
one morning, and found her in her library engaged in
dismissing a house-maid. This young woman's chief
fault had been that of extreme good looks. A tactless
gentleman, when calling at the house one day, having
caught sight of her in the hall, had expressed admira-
tion of her physique. In so doing he had sealed the
girl's doom. She was now standing in front of Mrs.
Craven Dalton, with a flare of her hat-ribbon and an
aggressive twist to her jacket. Bridget was a very
sharp young woman. She knew her mistress's weak-
nesses, after the manner of domestics of her sex, and
she did not intend to depart without planting a farewell
shaft. How could she barb her arrow more surely than
by expatiating upon her master's perfections? "He
was as kindly and sweet-spoken a gentleman as ever I
saw," said Bridget. It's a real sorrow to me, ma'am,
to be leavin' his house, but as long as I don't suit you,
ma'am, that's all there is in it."
POPPJEA
89
"I didn't call you to discuss Mr. Dalton's good
qualities," said Mrs. Craven, in a voice white with
anger. She had conceived for this servant the silent
antagonism which has no other foundation than some
nervous idiosyncrasy, but which makes life under the
same roof unendurable. '' Here are your wages and a
trifle over. I hope that you will get a very good place.''
" I hope you too will be suited, ma'am," said Bridget,
courtesying and pouncing upon her money. Which
exchange of amenities might be translated exactly thus :
'' I hope you will be out of place for at least a month,
and then find a hard mistress, and what you deserve.''
On Bridget's part, "I hope you will get a drunken
slut to wait upon you, and know what you lost when
you put me out!''
This domestic squall adjusted, Mrs. Craven Dalton
had the leisure to receive her niece, which she did with
considerable affection. She recommended to her num-
berless teachers,—Signora Fulvia, who would lecture to
her upon the modern Italian poets. There was Prati,
Aleardi, Giuseppe Giacosa,—an enlightening course.
Mrs. Craven Dalton, who belonged to an Italian class,
had them at her finger's ends. She recommended a
German professor, a dreamy Northern, for philosophic
study, and Signor Leonardi to train Poppsea's sweet
though not powerful voice. For the exigencies of the
drawing-room and dress-coat concert he found it ade-
quate. So Poppaea's mornings were occupied. She
screamed twice a week roulades and ditties, straining
her larynx to a pitch of agony ; she dipped into the
poets and philosophies, and took painting-lessons of a
rising American artist; and, having decided she would
do portraits, covered innumerable quires of paper with
the ears and noses of her acquaintances.
9°
POPPAEA
To these occupations were added her early rides in
the park, her walks and her drives. These, with her
social duties, filled every moment.
There was still, indeed, one early afternoon unoccu-
pied. Poppaea decided to devote it to charity. Her
bringing up had not been of the kind to foster the de-
cent aspirations of sentimental Sunday-school teachers.
The ethics of Dalton Manor had, I regret to say, found
no vent in Sunday evening hymns. Yet Poppaea was not
irreligious and she wished to do some good in the world.
She had herself carried, therefore, to an asylum for in-
digent old women, of which she was patroness. Here
she volunteered to read aloud to the inmates for two
hours of every Thursday afternoon. For this first some-
what formidable stance Poppaea brought in her carriage
one volume of Plutarch's " Morals," Volney's " Ruins,"
a novel of Ouida's, "The Pilgrim's Progress," and Bret
Harte's last story. It must be confessed that when the
old women were called and came down straggling to
gather about her, they did not seem particularly desirous
to be read aloud to. They were more interested in
eying her, and asking her questions, than in her praise-
worthy attempts at literature. She found the choice of
books extremely puzzling. Some of the old women had
a distinct preference for a novel. Others didn't care
whether it were fiction or something else', so long as it
was '' comical.'' Others asked for a sermon, while some
closed their lips tightly, and gazed at her distrustfully,
as if they thought she was making game of them.
She finally compromised on Bret Harte's tale; but
the portrayal of hair-breadth adventure in mountain
passes, the tender pathos and palpitant humanity in
which this master excels, failed to awaken any due ap-
preciation in her dispirited and listless audience.
POPPAEA
91
About twelve women usually came to these readings.
They eagerly waited for a pause in Poppaea's rapid,
breathless utterances to talk to or of her, or to or of
each other, thus testing to the utmost her powers of
patience and of distinctness.
'' Have you got a baby.'' cried an excitable and pre-
sumably unworldly Irishwoman, just as Harte's hero's
head disappeared in the jaws of a grizzly bear; but
whether in the form of exclamation, interjection, or
query, the inflection gave no clue. Poppaea looked up
helpless.
" Can't you keep still," said Mrs. Marsh, " and not
worry her? — Dear," she added, "you read so fast.
When Mrs. Michel comes, she's a little deaf, she won't
be able to hear. Give me the book and let me show
you." Mrs. Marsh had a shock of short gray curls, an
eagle nose, a suave manner.
"She can read like . . . like . . . anything!" said
the Irishwoman. " She's a poetess, she is. Ask her !"
"Ain't you got 'The Devil's Vision' to recite to the
lady ?'' said Miranda. Miranda was a dropsical person
with a drawn, seamless skin and swollen finger-joints.
As Poppaea gazed at her she felt as if the devil's vision
had taken on human shape, nay, was here beside her,
livid and sad.
Mrs. Marsh simpered coyly. "It is a trifle I wrote
in my youth," she said. "Perhaps I could find a
copy for Mrs. Hazelwood. They can't understand my
verses," she whispered to Poppaea, with a note of
superiority in her voice. Her English and a certain
refinement of aspect certainly marked her as a person
of education.
"She used to ride in her carriage," said the Irish-
woman,
92
POPPJEA
" She ain't the only one, then !" said Miranda, snap-
pishly.
" If here ain't Mrs. Michel !" exclaimed the daughter
of Erin, as a little old creature in a mob-cap hobbled in
on a crutch, and sat down in an empty chair with a
sudden lurch. Her limbs stuck out before her like two
bent sticks stacked against a drum's hide. " How
art thou, pretty dear?" she mumbled softly, as she
passed her withered palm fondlingly over Poppaea's
muff and tippet. She tried to take possession of the
young woman's hand and to stroke her soft hair.
"She ain't quite right in the upper story, Mrs.
Michel ain't," said Miranda, shaking her head.
"She ain't got a beau like Mrs. Miranda," said the
Irishwoman ; '' but that ain't no reason for tellin' tales
on her, the poor old crater !" This caused a general
ripple of laughter, a feeble echo of merriment, joyless,
sterile. It shook Poppaea strangely with its tragedy.
'' Been to the party last night, eh ?'' asked the Irish-
woman.
'' How did you know there was a party ?'' asked Mrs.
Hazelwood, smiling.
" Miss Michel gets a paper ; we seen you in it."
"Saw," said the poet, closing her eyes. "They
are so illiterate !" she whispered to Poppaea.
"See-saw !" said the Irishwoman, "it's all one. I
ain't a poetess like some as is proud and concaited and
highty-tighty, with their airs and freaks ; but I don't
take a bottle of whiskey to bed with me of a Sunday
night, where Miss Lawkins can find it, atween the
sheet and the blanket; no, I don't, the saints save us !"
This revelation caused another shiverous laugh, in
which, however, the poet did not join.
'' May I go on with the story ?'' asked Poppaea.
POPPAEA
93
" Yes ; and kindly pronounce each word distinctly,"
said Mrs. Marsh, "orwe cannot follow you.''
'' She taught eclusion once,'' said the irrepressible
Hibernian. " Ye'd better mind yer manners with such
as her, I tell ye !"
"Elocution!" Mrs. Marsh turned upon her perse-
cutor angrily. " If you don't hold your tongue, Mrs.
O'Harrity, I'll have Mrs. Lawkins here to keep you in
order."
" That she-cat never caught me napping yet !" said
the militant O'Harrity; " and I could tell her more than
ever'11 get tellt of me. Let her come on !" And one
hand went to her hip, while the fingers of the other
closed belligerently over her red thumb.
The name of the matron seemed, however, to produce
a momentary lull and even consternation. An armed
neutrality was established, and before the dreaded Law-
kins really appeared upon the scene with her forced,
hard smile, Bret Harte's grizzly had been shot through
the heart, and lay with his face to the moon upon the
lonely mountain's breast. But oh, when Mrs. Lawkins
was gone again, and Poppsea wandered about the cor-
ridors to say a gentle word to the inmates whose age
and infirmities pinned them to their rooms or beds, how
endless were the complaints against this jailer whose
duty it was to see that these unfortunates were made
happy ! With a sense of her own absolute impotence,
Poppaea listened to their tales of Mrs. Lawkins's in-
credible unkindnesses. A half-hour later the accused
janitress waylaid her in the passage, pregnant with her
own lurid dissatisfactions. The crimes of these old
women were duly recounted in a harsh monotone, dwelt
upon, turned over: Mrs. O'Harrity's vulgarity, Mi-
randa's untidiness, Mrs. Marsh's intemperance, Mrs.
94
POPPAEA
Michel's insanity, which gave endless trouble and made
her a subject for a lunatic asylum, not for an old ladies'
peaceable refuge.
At the monthly meeting of patronesses Poppaea en-
deavored to advance the topic of this mutual criticism
and dislike. But the formidable smug matrons who pre-
sided over the conclave met her timid suggestion with
a smile of incredulity and of disapproval. They were
discussing the number of carriages which should follow
the hearse in case of a death.
" Mrs. Sanders had two," said a pleasant, florid per-
son in a comfortable seal-skin coat. " It isn't too many
when there are relatives, and one or two of the old
ladies like to accompany ; it's a treat for them.''
" Let the relatives pay for it, then, Mrs. Sedgwick,"
said an acerbitous maiden of sixty, in a high bonnet
and dingy bombazine. " We provide shelter and ex-
cellent food. We can't undertake to pay for their
amusements. The funds won't meet their exactions.
It's only encouraging worthless children to dump their
'aged relatives on the society."
"The treasury's very low," said a third dame in
diamond ear-rings and a superb sable pelisse. '' I
should think one carriage quite sufficient, if not super-
fluous. I disapproved of the show and fuss at Mrs. San-
ders's funeral. It was most unsuitable and extravagant.''
"She was such a sweet old woman !" said the florid
lady. "I wanted to send my brougham, but Mrs.
Lawkins said it would cause jealousy."
"They don't like Mrs. Lawkins much," ventured
Poppaea.
All the patronesses turned to look at the speaker.
Mrs. Hazelwood was a new-comer. They were some-
what surprised at her presumption, They glanced over
POPPjEA
95
her elegant, slender figure, and then at each other. In
their eyes she read her sentence, " Flippant!"
"My dear," said the lady in the diamonds and the
cape, with considerable emphasis, '' unfortunately one
cannot believe half of what the poor old creatures say.
They are not in their right minds, and age and suffering
make them fretful. We who have been running the
society for years know what we are about, and how
valuable is the matron to the institution."
"I am sure Mrs. Hazelwood is very kind to read to
the old ladies every Thursday," said Mrs. Sedgwick,
with urbanity, eager to placate, smiling and nodding at
Poppaea, "very kind !'r
"Most kind'"
'' Most!'' echoed the convention in polite but per-
functory unison.
"Attractive, but utterly out of place here !" Poppaea
heard the maiden of sixty say under her breath, as she
herself neared the door.
'' What we need is practical help,'' said the diamonded
one.
"Mrs. Lawkins tells me young Mrs. Hazelwood
pampers Mrs. Marsh and makes her quite ungovern-
able, which we cannot but deplore, seeing all the diffi-
culties poor Lawkins has to encounter."
"Mrs. Hazelwood has subscribed a very handsome
sum yearly," said the lady who presided over the de-
pleted treasury. "If it amuses her to come, even if
inefficient ..."
"Amuses !" Poppaea, whose quick ears had caught
this dialogue, turned the parting shot over in her grace-
ful little head as she drove homeward, for this once, at
least, diverted.
Although somewhat dampened, her zeal was still
96 POPPAA
burning when she reached home. She told herself that
it was a part of all philanthropy to treat inferiors with
affability. She was, therefore, most friendly to the
milliner's young woman, whom she found in the hall,
surrounded by boxes. She told the servant to admit
her to her apartments. The girl had been there once
before ; she was very pretty, with a fresh skin, bright
eyes, and that self-possession which labelled her Amer-
ican.
"How old are you, little one?" Poppsea asked, as
she surveyed the wares.
"I am eighteen, ma'am."
" You look younger."
" I keep short skirts on me, ma'am ; it's better for
me of an evening, going home in the cars ; I live in
Brooklyn ; sometimes it's late."
" I don't understand."
" Well, I look like a child that way, so I don't get
molested."
" Ah, I see. And whom have you at home?"
"Mother's dead ; there's father and three of us girls ;
I'm the middle one."
" And what is your father's occupation ?"
"He's a sexton, ma'am, at St. Mary's, in South
Street."
"Ah, and so you have a comfortable home."
"Well, we ain't exactly what's called well-off, but we
don't want for anything. Father's real kind to us; he
gave me a coming-out party."
"I am sure that was very good ; and did you enjoy
yourselves ?''
" No, ma'am, we was too fixed up—kind of formal;
I'm for a few friends, sort of sociable,—just a half-
dozen boys and girls, so we can laugh and carry on.
POPPAlA
97
There's a man just been run over, a block above here,
by a car," she went on glibly. ''Did you hear of
it?"
'' What did he look like ?'' asked Poppaea, with that
vague anxiety accident awakens in every breast.
"Well, I guess he was real wealthy."
"Yes, but his age, his face?"
'' He had on a sapphire pin and a diamond ring, and
was an elegant gentleman.''
Poppaea could not ward off a smile. "His wealth
and elegance did not save him, apparently, poor fellow;
was he much hurt ?''
" I guess he was just about expiring," said the girl,
cheerfully.
" How dreadful!"
"He looked awful,—and then to leave all he
had . . ."
'' How do you know, child, what he had ? Perhaps
he was unhappy.''
The girl looked at her steadfastly for a moment, and
then, " That's so," she said ; " money ain't everything.
You've got a lot, now, haven't you ? Ain't you
happy ? " Mrs. Hazelwood remembered having once
asked the same question of her husband.
" I have nothing to complain of," she answered,
gently.
"Well, I guess not. I guess there's many as would
envy you."
"No doubt," said Poppaea, with a smothered sigh.
"Here, take these boxes; I will keep three of the
hats." And as she spoke she made a movement to
slip a gold coin into the girl's palm.
"I don't want the money, ma'am," said the girl,
putting her hand quickly behind her ; "but I'm thankful
G
POPP&A
to you, all the same. You're a beautiful lady. Good-
by, ma'am."
"Very well, as you like," said Poppaea. "Good-
by."
When all these things were done, Mrs. Hazelwood
found she had little time for contemplation. Possibly
it was as well. Idle revery is the narcotic of youth,
also its snare.
CHAPTER X.
GREAT musician has lately published a symphony
for orchestra, chorus, and soli, whose motif is the
eternal drama of a poet's life. Why, one asks one's self,
should not the heart of a woman be as fair a field for a
whole gamut of sensation and of experience ? So, me-
thinks, we might divide this story, which is but the
record of one woman's-lot, like the harmonious chords
of the artist, into three parts. The joy of living. The
desire of action—ambition. The worship of the ideal
History's record of the nations may be but a portrayal
of the drama played in each human soul, where princi-
palities and powers war and jar like the clash of cymbals
in continued and heightened conflict. It is these forces
which waken the storms of the heart, which shake the
foundations of existence.
Nine short chapters have brought Poppsea to the
threshold of the second part of her career. There
will still be crisp spring mornings when the fresh breeze
will woo her lungs, and she will tell herself that every
breath is joy. There will still be moments when the
wild carelessness of childhood will bubble up within
her, when her young limbs will feel swift for the race,
her young heart glow with an unreasoning pleasure in
the contact with light and air. But there will be new
incentives to her actions and to her words, and the first
motiveless unconcern of the lamb in the meadow, of
kittenish creatures toying with balls of worsted, of colts
—love.
99
IOO
POPP&A
kicking up their slender heels in pasture lands, will
gradually subside. Interior voices will whisper, sum-
mon, arraign. There will be rivalries, revenges ; the
intricacies and instigations of vanity, with its fears ; for-
tune to foster; a line of campaign to plan and order.
Victory and defeat. Exultation and disenchantment.
Poppaea saw the world ; she went down into it. She
was a proud creature, and not much of its slime clung to
her garments,—not much—not much, but yet a little.
Her husband accepted, one day, a foreign diplomatic
post. She walked haughtily through courts, she sat
with kings in palaces. She grew discreet and wise in
counsel. She was reputed a person of charm. They
said she had somewhat mediaeval about her in spite of
her modernity. Homage was pleasant to her. When
overbold she laughed at it, and told her husband; so
she made enemies as well as friends. She saw more men
than women. Yet women were not all against her. In
some she woke a frank, cordial liking, in a few a romantic
devotion. They learned that although she could de-
fend herself when attacked, with a swift, telling stroke,
she was never the aggressor, and they learned to like
her for this. " If they will let me alone," she used to
say, '' they are safe from my weapons." She was not a
jealous woman or envious,—at least not yet. She was
not petty. If her loveliness enslaved men, sometimes
her ridicule invigorated them. She pointed out to them
their selfish aims, and they blushed. She smiled at
monarchical institutions, and dared be herself and not a
poor imitation of European models. She never spoke
ill of her own country and its vast resources ; when
others found fault with it, she told them they were sadly
provincial.
She tasted of the world, and liked it well enough;
POPPAEA
IOI
perhaps because it liked her. Those who hate the
world are those which it hates. She was not a genius,
and did not ask for the moon. She did some good and
some evil, as is the manner of mortals, but through
all the emotion she inspired, of elevated adoration or
coarse desire, she walked coldly. She wasted no loves
and hates. Hers was to be the singleness of purpose
and of memory of the women who know but one
passion.
One day she and her husband grew tired of Europe.
He sent in his demission; they came home. They
boarded their yacht, large as an ocean steamer, and
sailed for America. He had constructed for her a beau-
tiful granite castle on the cliffs of Newport. Here she
throned for a summer, giving great entertainments,
banquets whose splendors gained a transatlantic repu-
tation, and fetes delicate and exclusive. In the autumn
she came back to New York. Mr. Hazelwood, I have
said earlier, was not free from a slight ostentation of
wealth. His wife did not share this. In her there had
remained a certain pride of simplicity. She had excellent
taste. The hot breath of European scandal had not
scorched her. In the milder one of our new civiliza-
tion, which has retained a certain good-humored faith,
she was, if much talked of and criticised, not condemned.
Hardly popular,—she awoke too many rivalries for this,
—she was, on the whole, admired. When strangers
came from other lands, they were frequently asked by the
tireless querists of the newly-arrived, '' Have you seen
Mrs. Hazelwood? Have you letters to the Leigh
Hazelwoods ?'' When they answered in the negative,
there seemed to descend a slight cloud upon their social
prospects. This last question was put to a gentleman
as he drove up from the steamer '' Arcadia'' with a
102
POPPJEA
friend one chilly afternoon in January. " They will be
useful acquaintances to you ; but if you have no letter
of course I can manage it."
The man addressed took his cigar from between
his lips and gave his interlocutor a stare through the
eye-glasses that rested upon his nose. "I've got a lot
of letters somewhere in my trunk to some of your fair
women,'' he answered, laconically. '' I didn't look at the
names." He spoke English perfectly ; yet there was the
faintest suspicion of a foreign accent in his pronunciation
of the letter r ; it rolled in his throat. One knew France,
not England or America, had been his earliest nurse.
"You had better not let them hear you say that.
Your life wouldn't be worth two sous."
'' Oh, my life ! They are welcome to it, the darlings !
I presume your pretty Puritans would think it immoral
enough.''
'' And you think this would antagonize them ?''
"The errors of the weak endear; the errors of the
strong antagonize. Mine are repulsive. I was meant
to be a serious man."
'' Ah, well ! life is usually a choice between two blun-
ders. The sins committed for love or liberty are par-
donable, perhaps. Mme. de Valfonte once said to me
of you . . ."
The face of the man addressed suddenly grew grave.
"For heaven's sake let us avoid personalities," he said,
with quiet iciness. Immediately his friend felt a pecu-
liar shiver run down his spine, as if at the contact of
something chill. To this was added a sense of the
other's power. He murmured some incoherent apology,
flushing at the same time with mortification. In a few
moments, however, they were chatting agreeably upon
other topics.
POPPALA 103
"That is a wonderful play, the 'La Chaine' of
Scribe,"said he of the eye-glasses. "Rachel thought
it his masterpiece. He had rare talent of construction.
In this lay his art. It touches well on the subject you
lately broached, about the stagnation of our dead selves.
Obstinate, combative people never learn anything. One
must encourage a hospitable and flexible mind."
"What you must suffer in the faubourg !" said his
friend tentatively, as if returning to dangerous ground.
The other smiled inscrutably. His indomitable will
had brought even the faubourg to terms. As this gen-
tleman is to play a rather important rdle in this narra-
tive, it may not be amiss to describe him here. Yet he
was one of those persons one felt sure would quickly
falsify a first scrutiny, one for whom superficial analysis
would not suffice. He was tall and spare, with quick,
nervous movements, whose undoubted grace was more
a matter of some interior force than a very marked ex-
terior superiority. His shoulders were a little high, his
arms sinewy, giving an impression of muscular strength.
His hands had slender, fine fingers, with long, pointed,
cared-for nails. A woman who hated him had once
said they were like the talons of an eagle ; but then she
was prejudiced. They certainly looked as if they might
close suddenly on an enemy or a victim with a grip of
steel. Expression they certainly possessed, both of in-
tention and of character. His feet, like the hands,
were slender. They were always faultlessly shod ; in
fact, the man's whole dress, while too unobtrusive in
cut and color to be dandyish, was invariably elegant.
His clothes did not fit too well. His hat was not too
new. He gave the impression of adorning his clothes,
not they him. He could not be properly called hand-
some, although he had an air of extreme manliness,
104 POPPMA
which is in itself a form of beauty. The hair, already
thin above the forehead and at the temples, was of
a dull red-brown, silky as a woman's. It had a natural
wave, but was cut short. A moustache cropped Henri
III. adorned the upper lip. The brow was low, broad,
somewhat prominent. It overhung two deep-set eyes
of a purple blue. These had the peculiar abstracted
unreadableness which the habitual wearing of glasses
gives to the near-sighted. They could mask themselves
absolutely, becoming rayless and opaque, or else sud-
denly shoot forth flame. The nose was finely modelled
almost to spirituality, as were also the lips, giving the
profile the pure and chiselled delicacy of an antique
cameo. The chin was forceful, well-cut, and with the
forehead redeemed the face from exiguity. The cheeks
were thin and lined, the complexion pallid. The prin-
cipal attributes of this enigmatic countenance were those
of a high and piercing intellectuality, hypercritical re-
finement, sensitiveness to impressions, hauteur, and a
certain coldness. This last quality was dissipated, how-
ever, when the lips smiled ; for they became then as in-
dulgent and as sweet as they had been forbidding and
severe.
Of coldness women as well as men had frequently ac-
cused him. This amused him, as he knew himself to
be a man of masterful and ardent passions. Yet he had
strange powers of concealment, which may have sprung
from perfidy or from a natural reserve. It is certain
that he did not invite confidence. He had always
frightened people a little. He had known all manner
of women, some very well indeed,—too well. Yet the
coarsest had never ventured twice to utter vulgar words
in his presence ; and with him the most immodest af-
fected a certain modesty. Their tendency would have
POPPMA
been not to unveil their real selves to him ; rather to
hide and to cover. Highly sympathetic, he often won-
dered why spontaneous gayety was somewhat damped
at his approach. Yet it remained undubitable that with
him both men. and women were more apt to be con-
strained than natural. He had once discussed this
curious phenomenon with a male friend,—I say once,
for he was not prone to speak of himself; they had
reached no conclusion.
" Hang it! mon cher," he had said, " if I had been
one of the judges at Phryne's trial, Hyperides would
never have persuaded her to expose her bosom."
'' She would have been afraid you would find a flaw
in its perfections," laughed his companion.
"Pshaw! with my near-sighted eyes? and I don't
pose to be a Xenocrates."
"You see better through your glasses than most of
us with the telescope," answered his friend.
'' And you fancy that the dear creatures think I look
for blemishes in them ?''
"You don't look for them ; you long not to see them.
You are deathly afraid of disillusion. Women are quick-
witted ; they feel this."
" That they are. How they must hate me !"
His friend looked at him with a quizzical smile.
"Humph ! Some of us wouldn't mind trying a trifle
of such hatred. How do you do it, eh?"
" I don't go about saying 41 love you,' " he answered,
deprecatingly.
"You let them say it."
" I have no fatuity."
"No, you haven't, that's a fact, Grafton, in spite of
your reputed successes with the fair sex.
" Successes ! You make me sick."
io6
POPPMA
" Call them what you will, then, what is your recipe?"
"Women, my dear fellow, like to be told they are
good-looking, and to be treated with infinite respect.
Sometimes I tell them they are nice-looking, and some-
times I am very respectful to them."
" Do you respect them ?"
" I like women ; I pity them."
" I asked you a direct question ; you evaded it."
'' Do you mean do I believe in their virtue or their
sincerity ?"
" Either will do."
" I don't always believe in their sincerity. Our own
insincerity makes us doubt theirs. But then, what is
sincerity ? Any change of course or of opinion is
dubbed insincerity. It may be, after all, but a fresh
lease of living, progress. One cannot be tied down to
the corpses of old emotions and far-gone beliefs."
" How about women's virtue?"
'' What will you have ?—there are so many crude ap-
plications of misunderstood moral standards. Isn't
woman's chastity often the outgrowth of man's selfish-
ness, which says, ' Oh, my white slave, mine and none
other's !' the mere repetition of the Oriental's lock and
ferrule ? A woman's misdeed is always looked upon as
an offence against some one who owns her; while to
my mind it is, in fact, only a sin against herself, for
which she is accountable to herself only."
" Come, old fellow, stick to the point."
"Very well, I believe in the virtue of every woman
until she loves," said Grafton, laughing.
"Then?" ■
"Then she becomes the most merciless, pernicious,
immoral, irrepressible, dangerous little animal ever
invented."
CHAPTER XI.
'T'HAT very night Alford Grafton dined at Mrs. Mil-
* burn Maury's. He was given the seat of honor
not, on this occasion, because he was supposed to be
a bore, but because he was an important personage
enough to have his presence emphasized. There were
a half-dozen young married women present, two or
three of their husbands, and some convenient bachelors
as extras.
And here again, at this cosey dinner, with the dulcet
melody of a string quartette issuing from the palm-em-
bowered atrium, he was to hear the name of Hazel-
wood frequently bandied about between the serving of
the fish and fruit. " Do you know them?" asked his
hostess, while she motioned to a servant to lower a
smoking satin candle-shade.
'' I have not that pleasure.''
"One fancies everybody must have known them
abroad."
'' I have heard of him in diplomatic circles.''
"No doubt. He did very well; he is not brilliant."
'' Who is not brilliant ?'' said an old gentleman with
a projecting chin, helping himself to an olive.
"Leigh Hazelwood."
" The mare's the winning horse in that team," whis-
pered a young man with heavy eyes and a weak voice.
'' Eh ?'' said the old gentleman.
'' He says Poppsea is the winning horse in that race.''
Mrs. Ayrault swept the table with her firm, assured
107
io8
POPPAlA
glance. Grafton leaned back in his chair, and gave
vent to a short, decided laugh. '' He laughs like a
gentleman," thought Mrs. Ayrault. " There is a culti-
vated sound in his tones that I like." And she allowed
her superb velvet eyes to dwell upon his for a moment.
Only for a moment. They fell under the direct response
of his.
'' What amuses you ?'' asked his hostess, smiling.
'' The name of this lady; it is so absurdly inconse-
quent."
"What, Poppsea?"
'' The two in conjunction : Poppaea! haunting, stormy,
inciting to mysterious visions of poison and daggers;
and the sudden drop to Hazelwood, with its pleasant
suggestion of hawthorn hedgerows, landed gentry, and
peaceful fox-hunting.''
'' The last name in fact springs from a property in
the north of Ireland. The Hazelwoods were very fine
folk over there, it seems ; owned half their county. A
third son—perhaps an eleventh, they have such large
families—drifted hitherward, after a foolish marriage
with some impoverished beauty, I believe.''
" It's a ridiculous name," said the old gentleman.
'' Hazelwood ? and why ?"
"No; Mrs. Hazelwood's name I mean,—Poppaea.
Ridiculous ! and it belongs to a ridiculous person."
'' Mr. Renshaw !'' This cry was unanimous ; re-
proachful from the men, a trifle less so from the ladies.
In fact, one of them, who sat on Grafton's left, laughed
outright and leaned forward eagerly. She was a young
woman who looked as if she would like to amuse her-
self. This desire became accentuated every time Grafton
glanced at her.
"Yes," continued Mr. Renshaw, "I say ridiculous.
POPPsEA 109
Such pretensions in our frugal republic"—he helped
himself to another olive and emptied his glass of cham-
bery—"are out of place, harmful, deplorable."
"You think Mrs. Hazelwood . . ." The lady who
had leaned forward flushed. Her hand trembled. She
hated Poppaea.
" Has done and is doing a great deal of harm. Her
vaunted exclusiveness, her frivolity, her extravagance
are . . ."
'' A bad example,'' said the young woman, egging
him on.
'' Criminal, criminal, worse than criminal! When I
see those flaunting equipages, in these days of strikes
and discontent, calmly inviting attack and danger ''
'' Flaunting is a strong word, Mr. Renshaw,'' said
Mrs. Milburn Maury. "One may like Poppaea or not.
I am one of those who do. But I consider her horses
and traps in perfect taste; I wish mine were half so
nice."
'' What the devil has this Mrs. Hazelwood done to
the old satyr?" thought Grafton. He was beginning
to feel a vague championship that a man who '' likes''
women—the term was his own—feels in hearing one of
them attacked in absence. She had simply shown dis-
gust at the ancient beau's assiduities on one occasion
when he had made hot love to her, and had resented
them ; but of this he did not now speak.
"Poppaea always sounds to me like the name of a
cook or of a nigger," said Grafton's neighbor in a low
voice meant for him alone. She was afraid of showing
her hand to the table, but in this stranger's ear she
might vent her spite.
'' What ! Is that all it says to you ?'' Alford Grafton
took off his glasses with a swift gesture, and turning,
110
POPPJEA
fixed the speaker, half amused, half contemptuous. His
eyes pierced and paralyzed her as they had Mrs. Ayrault.
It seemed as if, in that rapid survey, he had taken a
comprehensive inventory of her value. " Poppaea
he lingered almost lovingly on the syllables. "How
odd that persons feel so differently about proper names !
To me this particular one holds strange possibilities of
charm and of tragedy ; and for this no doubt you think
me an idiot." He had addressed one person, but in a
tone so distinct and forcible that all had listened and
heard. There was a moment's embarrassed silence.
"She is certainly a handsome woman," said Mr.
Renshaw.
'' She has taken the wind out of my sails; I know
that," sighed Arden Ayrault. "And the funniest
thing is I have forgiven her."
"You can afford it," said Mrs. Maury. "Mr. Graf-
ton, you must surely see this sphinx and judge for your-
self. Have you brought them letters j*"
" I have not looked at my letters yet." A dream of
melody wafted in through the dining-room portieres.
" In beauty we seek for faults, in ugliness for beauty,"
said Mrs. Maury. "Mrs. Hazelwood is very lovely;
not quite beautiful, but certainly fascinating; a little
spoilt—not much—by all the adulation she receives."
This eulogium evoked to his fancy a beauty, a pro-
fessional beauty, which type he heartily disliked. His
attention began to flag and grow perfunctory.
'' I never knew before,'' continued Mrs. Maury,
'' that Mr. Renshaw posed for a reformer. He seems
to take kindly enough to the loaves and fishes. I
cannot see how Mrs. Hazelwood's equipages, which
really help the harness and carriage-maker, the up-
holsterer, the men and grooms employed, can affect
POPPALA
III
labor mischievously. I suppose I am dreadfully stupid.
Direct inculcation of morals always seems so depress-
ingly futile, particularly when it takes the form of shafts
directed against others.''
"I am with you, I fear, Mrs. Maury," said Grafton.
" Whatever stimulates fancy, enlivens the imagination,
awakens curiosity, and hence meditation, seems moral
enough for me, whether in life or art. In story-books
I want subtlety of motif \ and care little if the situation
be intense and uncommon, or commonplace and re-
aiistic. In poetry my taste, strange as it may seem, is
growing rather in the direction of Theocritean robust-
ness. We are debilitated on this regime of pastorals
and idyls. I was once completely under the thrall of
our modern singers, but I am growing sick of them."
" Are you not one who sees defects very clearly ?"
" Not too clearly, I hope. I once dined with a man
of genius. A friend of mine who was present saw
nothing but a spot upon his tablecloth. He harped
upon it all the way home ; and all the time we had been
drinking in such draughts of eloquence !"
'' What was the matter with your friend ?''
'' That sort of thing simply proves a lack of high
sensibility, a poverty in artistic development."
'' Do you know, I think you will like Mrs. Hazel-
wood," said Mrs. Ayrault.
'' Is she clever ?''
" I don't know. Yes, no. She is not like any one
here," said Mrs. Maury.
"Don't look up at me like that!" said Grafton.
"You have no conception how distracting it is. What
queer eyes you have ! They are green like a naiad's.
While you talk with me about Mrs. Hazelwood, don't
you know, I would much rather hear about .yourself ?"
112
POPPsEA
This was said in the most natural tone in the world, but
it sent the blood surging through Nellie Maury's veins
with a shock of pleasure. "Take care," she laughed
and blushed. "You know the Germans say, ' Griine
Augen sind hasslich ; . . . aber unvergesslich"
In the mean while his left-hand neighbor, whose wound
was bleeding internally, so that she was still suffocating
with surprised anger, was devoting herself to the gentle-
man on her other side. As she did so, she was thinking
all the while, " I drew it on myself. I was a fool. A
woman would give her life to conquer that man. He is
most detestable and most interesting." But the im-
passive mask beside her remained in the province of
inscrutable and unconquered things. "Are you here
for long ?'' she ventured, finally, indignant that it was
she, not he, who resumed their now long-interrupted
discourse.
"Ah, all that is vague. I come for an enterprise. I
was in want of money,—not a little, I have a little,—
but a great deal. I have joined a venture, a trans-
atlantic one I mean. We want to purchase the Mes-
senger. A lot of us have gone into it, the Due de
Beaumont and Valfonte and Athenais Marcos, a celeb-
rity, you know, on the Paris turf, and two or three
Americans like myself. I have come out to organize.
There will be the usual daily here, and then it will be
issued over there, too. I wanted to see to it, so—1
came over."
"Your first visit?"
" No ; I was over here once when I was a boy."
'' Are you a Frenchman ? Was not your father an
American ?"
"Yes; he was a Philadelphian, but he married in
France, and lived always there."
POPP^A
" Are your parents dead ?"
"Yes; but I assure you," he said, smiling, "there
are no family secrets."
" I heard . . ."
"What did you hear?"
"Oh, a lot of romantic things !"
"And you won't tell them ?"
" Not now."
'' Another time, perhaps, then ; I am not always so
disagreeable."
"Really?"
"Really. A propos of my family, there is nothing.
My parents are dead. I am alone. We lived in a
chateau in the south of France. I came to Paris.
There was some fortune, but not enough. They put
me in the Jockey. I suppose they liked my impending
baldness or my eye-glasses. They once black-balled a
man, you know, because his eyelashes were too long.
Now I want more money, and besides "
" Besides ?"
He laughed again the low laugh Mrs. Ayrault ap-
proved. "Oh, you will hear the rest! There were
positive reasons for my leaving. Pardon me for so long
talking of myself; it is not my habit. But I detest
playing the troubadour and adventurer almost as much
as I detest sport."
"You detest sport? Why, I heard you were un
homme de sport, and you look so . . . so . . . other-
wise.''
" I am sick of it. If we make a hit of this thing we
have in hand adieu to the track ! I'll settle down and
marry, I suppose, and become a fat country gentle-
man."
" In France?"
H
U4
POPPJEA
" I have always lived there."
'' How do you speak such admirable English ?''
"I spoke with my father. Then I had an English
governess in childhood, and I passed three years daw-
dling at an English university."
" Do you know, I think you look literary."
'' I have written.''
"Have you! Tell me, under your own name, or
under a nom de plume f Was it successful?" This
was most absorbing.
"Oh, yes; well enough. My articles attracted at-
tention, I believe. They said so. My play ran for a
winter, but my nom de plume veils my identity com-
pletely, and few of my friends even know or suspect
anything about it. But what a Lorelei you are ! you
draw men in a net to confide their secrets to you."
Flattered and placated, the young woman begged him
to come and see her, and tell her more about his life.
"And do let me know the name of the play," she said
to him when they parted. He thanked her. She had
in fact heard that Alford Grafton had come to Paris
unknown and unheralded, and that without fortune,
influence, or any visible effort, he had penetrated into the
most difficult salons, been admitted to the most fastidi-
ous club, become a fashionable fad alike with great
ladies, curled coxcombs, serious men, and sporting
gentlemen ; but that through all this he had remained
often indifferent, sometimes impertinent, managing to
turn the heads of other people, but not his own. At
any rate everything he had essayed had succeeded.
What force of action lay in the man none could ex-
plain. The flash of meteors has an element of murki-
ness in it. There were stories—of his birth. Some
said his mother had been an adventuress. There were
POPPJEA
Graftons, however, in Philadelphia, very good, solid
people, who acknowledged the relationship, and insisted
there was nothing apochryphal in their cousin's marriage
to a French widow of undoubted social position in her
own dtpartement where she owned an estate, and whom
he had met in his travels. One thing, however, had not
yet reached her ears. It was this : Alford Grafton was
engaged to be married to Eliane de Valfonte, the
daughter of the Marquis de Valfonte, the representative
of a noble French house. Her mother, the Marquise
de Valfonte, was a leader of Parisian elegance.
CHAPTER XII.
CLIANE DE VALFONTE was the only daughter
■1—' of Ernest Alphonse Jules Maxime de Lanascol,
Marquis de Valfonte, and of E16onore Marthe Mar-
guerite Marie de Villiers, Marquise de Valfonte, his wife.
She had been '' elevated'' at the convent of Saint
Barbe, an aristocratic sisterhood. Her brief apparitions
at home had been made happy with much petting and
fondling, kisses, sugar-plums, pretty gowns, and festivi-
ties. She returned to the simplicity of the cloister ener-
vated, irritable, with the distinct determination to make
up for lost opportunities when she should definitely leave
its hated enclosure. When she did come forth finally,
pining for liberty, she looked like a hot-house flower.
She was an exquisite, dainty, nervous, exaltie little
person, a trifle hysterical, blonde as a saint, with trans-
parent uplifted eyes, thin pink lips, rose-leaf ears,
tremulous, narrow nostrils. She looked as if a breath
of wind would fell her to earth, a harsh word crucify
her, disappointment prostrate or kill. She had, in fact,
a will of iron, inflexible and positive ; a gift at stratagem;
the finesse and coolness of an old diplomat, and a con-
siderable power of aggression.
The Marquise had been one of the last women of her
world to hold out against foreign invasion, and she still
waged a valiant warfare against the encroachments of
strangers. She affected not to know America from
Polynesia, thought Rio Janeiro and New York about
116
POPPAZA 1I7
the same thing, looked upon all transatlantics as ca-
naille with the possibility of negro blood under their
finger-nails, and was pleased to reflect that in another
world all these distinctions would be more definitely
established, being in the hands of a higher intelligence.
She was conservative to her finger-tips, as became a
lady upon whose maternal escutcheon there was a faint
fleck of grape-juice. This blot had, in fact, made pos-
sible her alliance with the potent, although somewhat
impoverished house of the de Lanascols de Valfonte.
Upon the Marquis's own arms and name no recalcitrant
vintage had plashed its mark of the wine-press, no
gross labor, no honest trade had ever left its indelible
stain. When Mademoiselle de Villiers assumed this
great name, she felt that she was shouldering grave
responsibilities, the first of which was that her children
should be utterly ignorant of the world outside of her
narrow one ; narrow in its religion, its politics, and its
morals. When her son Max asked her, one day, to in-
vite his friend Alford Grafton to Valfonte, with a party,
"she refused. '' Where, my son, do you pick up these
odd friends ? Who is this M. Grafton ? I hear of him
everywhere, but nobody seems to know anything about
him." She had never asked him to her hotel in Paris.
"Pick him up, ma mere? There's a good joke!
Why, he picked me up. It was through him that I got
into the Jockey at all."
'' Peste /'' said the Marquis, coming in from the li-
brary ; "a sorry lot you are there too !'' But Mme.
de Valfonte, who was twenty-five years younger than
her husband, did not echo this sentiment. " It is im-
payable /'' she murmured under her breath.
" Ma mere" said young Max, lighting a cigarette,
"we are two hundred years behind the times. If my
118
POPPJEA
friend cannot be received here, why, I will spend the
holidays at Ath6nai's Marcos's ; I have done it before."
His mother was frightened. Marcos, a billionaire
Hebrew baron, was her bugbear. "Bring him," she
said, heaving a deep sigh. She wrote a cordial invita-
tion to Mr. Grafton, at her son's dictation, secretly
conscious of the great honor she was paying him.
Imagine her surprise when it was declined with bare
civility, but with no expressions of gratefulness. She
heard afterwards that Marcos's house-party was an im-
mense success, and that Alfred Grafton had been, for
some occult reason, the most welcome and courted of
his guests.
Mademoiselle Eliane, who also had heard of Grafton,
was vexed. Whenever his name was mentioned in her
presence she pricked up her pretty little ears. Six
months later, when he did bring himself and his man-
servant to Valfonte, she was in a state of febrile agita-
tion. The sight of him did not calm her. Before he
left the foolish child was writing him silly love-letters,
which were passed under his door by her maid. He
did not answer them ; but one fell by chance, one fine
morning, into her brother's hands. There was talk of
a duel between the two friends. Grafton was an accom-
plished swordsman, and, moreover, noted for feats of
prowess and great personal courage. It was at this
juncture that Madame de Valfonte hated him so bitterly
that she said his finger-nails were like those of a dan-
gerous bird of prey. Would he destroy both her chil-
dren ! But when it had been proved that the man
had behaved with the highest honor under extraor-
dinary provocation, when Eliane had confessed herself
the only culprit, with tears and sobs of humiliation, while
he maintained a godlike silence, it had been decided
POPPsEA
HQ
to hush the matter up. Grafton insisted that the whole
affair was a child's freak and no more, which it would
have been ridiculous for a man of his age and experi-
ence to take seriously for an instant. But the excitable,
hysterical girl was hopelessly eprise. In vain they hur-
ried her to Italy ; the journey seemed only to hasten a
decline into which she appeared to be sinking. With
furious tears Madame de Valfonte was forced to yield
to the instances of her daughter and her daughter's
physician. Alford Grafton was hastily summoned to
the apparently dying girl's couch. It was then that
they were formally betrothed. In less than two weeks
the roses were beginning to bloom again in Made-
moiselle de Valfonte's cheeks, so rapidly indeed that it
almost seemed as if the wretchedness, lassitude, loss of
appetite, of sleep, and consequent anaemia might have
been a parti pris on the part of the wilful girl. Her
brother was delighted. He had become Grafton's
henchman. The Marquis grumbled, grimaced, but
bowed to fate, and to his daughter, whose servant he
was.
Madame de Valfonte swallowed her vexation and ac-
cepted her son-in-law with as high-bred a grace as
possible. He certainly bore himself admirably, even
if he felt some natural triumph at the discomfiture of
the woman who had essayed more than once to tram-
pie upon him. There were indeed wicked persons who
said she had been a little in love with him herself,—
that "the proud Marquise chafed at feeling the force of
one whom she had intended to enslave, and who instead
would make of her a grandmother. But there are evil
minds everywhere to suspect, and evil tongues to cavil
and tattle. Nowhere are they bitterer in gall than
among the idlers of the Parisian capital. It could
120
POPPAEA
hardly be expected that Madame de Valfonte would be
overjoyed at bestowing her daughter, a fresh young
beauty with an ample dot, upon a man almost unknown
and without fortune. It was rather a surprise to the
Marquis when his future son-in-law announced to him
his intention of embarking upon the enterprise of which
he had spoken at Mrs. Milburn Maury's dinner-table.
It was horrible to the Marquis. A part of the general
horribleness of all modern ideas. He knew Grafton
would at least be in good company ; this syndicate had
become the fashion. " I haven't got money enough,"
Grafton had said to him one day after dinner. " I must
make my fortune before I claim Mademoiselle Eliane's
hand. There is money in this."
'' She will have enough,'' said the father, impatiently.
"I don't exploit women," said Grafton, shortly,
lighting a cigar.
The Marquis opened his eyes. His wife had paid his
debts when she had married him, and how many times
since ! '' Hi f'
'' I believe you heard me.''
A terrible occurrence hastened matters. A few days
later Mademoiselle de Valfonte, who was an accom-
plished horsewoman, was thrown from her horse. ' She
was taken up for dead. When she recovered conscious-
ness it was found that her lower limbs were paralyzed.
The physician assured her parents and Alford—who
showed her much devotion at the time—that it was a
concussion of the spine which would leave but tempo-
rary results. His patient, however, must have freedom
from all excitement of brain. This was a necessity to
her recovery. She must live in temporary but absolute
seclusion, seeing no one but her nurses and himself.
The accident had occurred at Valfonte. The agonized
POPP/EA
T 21
parents, therefore, remained there. After a brief parley
it was decided that Alford should sail for America.
He had done so with mixed sentiments. He was a man.
The sight of this lovely child who adored him, so help-
less and afflicted, played upon the very best and high-
est chords of his nature. Moved always more by sen-
timent than by principle, Grafton rose, as is the case with
certain characters, to the occasion. The short-winded,
who run on a level creditably enough, fail in ascending
heights. There are persons who are to be relied on
every day who stumble in emergency,—smooth-water
sailors who lose their heads upon the rocks. We are
often surprised to find those we depended upon as ex-
cellent and wise, show pettiness, selfishness, and even
meanness in the great tests of life. This may arise
from lack of largeness, from a certain vulgarity of
mind as well as from perversity. For the first time,
when he saw her lying so marred and broken and help-
less, Grafton felt within him a stirring of something like
true affection for his young fiancee. This did him
honor, for she had never been less physically alluring.
Bandaged brows, medicine-chests, darkened rooms,
invalidism, do not add to charm. The engagement had
been almost thrust upon him. He had been brought
up to no romantic views of marriage ; he had none. It
seemed to him at once the most absurd thing in the
world, and the most diverting, that this haughty family
should be suitors to him. Yet he had felt but little
vanity. The whole circumstances had been puzzling,
peculiar, extravagant, breathless. Alford himself hardly
deemed it romantic. Nothing is romantic to us except
it appeal to our immediate emotion, when at once the
most trivial incident becomes pregnant with poetry and
meaning. Eliane and her school-girl fervency had
122
POPPALA
failed to aiouse in Grafton anything more than that
vague curiosity with which men of the world view the
development of that strange creature, the young girl.
He had known a few American girls, with whom his in-
tercourse had been extremely discreet. They had not
fallen in love with him, and they had never written to
him imprudent letters. To Mademoiselle Eliane's efifu-
sions he had not replied. He had told his friend but
the truth when he had said, '' I never say to them that
I love them." He had certainly not said so in so many
words to his fiancee. He felt no need to say it, and no
enthusiasm. He may have said to her that her hair was
of a soft quality and bright color, and that she had very
pretty little pink ears. Eliane, being vain, believed
him, and was in heaven.
Now his feelings underwent a certain change. The
pitiable plight of his betrothed awakened in him, as I
have said, the best and purest sentiments of which he
was capable. The idea of forsaking her at this crisis
would have seemed to him the height of disloyalty. A
protecting tenderness, such as she had never roused
in him when she was the spoiled child of fashion and
he the envied of all Paris, took the place of passion,
and of his former passive acquiescence in an arrange-
ment which saved him a good deal of trouble, and which
seemed to make everybody but himself supremely happy.
To Eliane's brother, Maxime, he was sincerely at-
tached.
It was in this disposition of mind and heart that he
sailed for America. He found himself, the first week,
awaiting news from the other side, if not with a lover's
ardor, at least with a becoming solicitude; and he
almost wheedled himself into believing that he was fall-
ing into love in earnest,
POPPALA
I23
While awaiting further developments there was
nothing better to do than to devote the first fortnight
after his arrival to the project that had been the object
of his journey. This project, which had become a de-
cision, was now taking the form of a conspiracy. Now,
no one was better fitted by temperament than Alford
Grafton for those subtler forms of diplomatic conflict
which lead to revolutions. The question was not only
of the purchase and enfranchisement of the great daily
which was to be simultaneously printed upon two con-
tinents, but the routing and crippling, in so doing, of
its rivals and natural enemies in one if not in two great
cities ; the undermining by dangerous rivalry of those
gigantic journals which give a living to many hundreds
and colossal wealth to a few. Those who were inter-
viewed by Grafton during these days of his preliminary
inquiries and exertions, and who, if they had heard of him
at all, had done so as of a man of pleasure, were astounded
at the shrewd business ability, the practical common
sense, joined to a certain boldness of initiative which
characterized him. They did not know exactly what to
make of him, so clear, concise, and forcible was he in
the plans he laid before them, and so prompt in their
execution when once accepted. To plant his standard
where malcontents, groaning under the pressure of
sordid payment, impatient with the routine of old ruts,
would see it fluttering and be attracted, became the
method of this modern Caesar. His scheme advanced
with a rapidity far beyond his most sanguine hopes.
Three or four capitalists, which was all that was re-
quired, since already a company had been formed in
Paris, were ready to enter into the syndicate. A man
who procured a hundred and fifty thousand dollars'
worth of advertisements yearly for a long-established
124
POPPMA
and powerful newspaper, the Planet, and whose abili-
ties were recognized by a miserable stipend of fifteen
hundred dollars a year, allured by a handsome offer, ex-
pressed his willingness to desert his employer. He was
a person of no education, dull of eye, illiterate, un-
couth, slovenly. He ate with his knife, and could not
speak his own language properly ; but in his own line
he was a genius. He could allure advertising matter
out of the Gentile, and above all the Jew, with a cer-
tainty and perspicacity and directness that made his aid
invaluable to Grafton. To the Planet the loss of him
was incalculable.
There was a sparkling ''funnyman" to catch. He
was invited to dinner, dazzled by the prospect of a
handsome income, and of a midsummer holiday, during
which he might be funny for his own entertainment.
A reviewer of no common acumen was drawn away
in the general exodus ; and Montgomery Craven, who
had become a journalist, was approached with the prof-
fered position of city editor. In journalism our friend
Montgomery had found a vent for such talents as he
might possess. Discouraged by his ineffectual struggle
against absolute penury with a family dependent upon
him, in an office where the partners had sons to super-
sede him, he, in a moment of despair, had seized his
pen and written at random two articles on the subject
of city improvements. He had sent them to the editor
of the Planet. They were accepted and published
within twenty-four hours. A check of moderate but
fair proportions was sent to him upon the following day.
Pleased and encouraged, he supposed, however, that
the matter would end here. What was his amazement
when, a few days after the appearance of these articles,
—they had been widely commended for their practi-
POPPAZA
!25
cality,—the editor of the Planet, a man of acute dis-
cernment and large experience, sent for him to his
office. "Have you ever written on such subjects be-
fore ?'' he asked, looking at Montgomery from between
his gray beard and spectacles.
" Never," said Montgomery. " I have had no time
since I left college, where I did not complete my
course.''
'' What was the matter, eh ?'' asked the editor,
smiling.
'' Private reasons,'' answered the young man,
coldly.
'' I guess them,'' said the editor, with an accent of
kindliness. "If they still exist, perhaps you would
like a place on our paper. Our finance man was
drowned last week while bathing in a creek in Wis-
consin. He was always swimming in too deep waters,
and they have submerged him. Poor Falkner, it was
hard he should meet his death at last in a puddle !
How would you like to try his place ?'' he added, after
a moment's pause, scanning Montgomery narrowly.
"What will the work demand of me? What will
you give me, sir ?''
The editor replied at some length, and finally named
the remuneration. It was a slight increase upon what
Montgomery now earned in a distasteful calling. '' I
accept,'' said Montgomery. '' Is there any hope of
a larger salary, of promotion of any kind ?'' he asked.
'' The Planet, sir,'' said the editor, frowning, '' has
never failed to recognize talent or industry and to
recompense both."
With him, at least, the man had kept his word.
Montgomery had had no right to complain. He had
to work very hard. He liked his task. Montgomery
126
POPPJEA
had done well, and had, on the whole, been well treated.
His was a grateful heart. He liked Mr. Fechet, and
regarded him somewhat in the light of a benefactor.
Always quixotic in his conscience and honor, he de-
murred at the magnificent emolument which the new
Messenger now danced before his eyes.
'' Who is the man with the boyish face, the face of
a young crusader?" Alford Grafton had asked, one
night at the opera, of a lady in whose box he was
sitting.
"His name is Craven," said Mrs. Milburn Maury.
" He is a young journalist."
'' Ah, yes, I have heard the name. He is on the
Planet, is he not ?''
" Fancy your knowing !"
"I have seen none but newspaper people since- I
landed,'' said Grafton. '' I have an extraordinary
memory both for names and faces."
"A useful gift."
'' How did he manage to retain that delightful in-
genuousness of mien on the Planet f' asked Grafton,
a trifle sarcastically.
"He is Mrs. Hazelwood's dme damneeP said Mrs.
Milburn Maury, laughing. "The fair Poppsea has kept
him out of mischief, no doubt."
"Mrs. Hazelwood again !" thought Alford Grafton.
"This is a small world."—"And where does this pre-
server of male innocence keep herself?" , he asked,
rather mockingly. '' I have been here a fortnight, and
have not yet caught a glimpse of her." He leaned
forward as he spoke to scan the audience.
'4 Mrs. Hazelwood is still in Florida, is she not, Mil-
burn?" asked Mrs. Maury, languidly, addressing a
man who entered the box. '' Let me present my "cousin,
POPPAZA
121
Mr. Milburn, to you, Mr. Grafton." The men shook
hands.
"At the last account," said the new arrival, settling
himself comfortably at Mrs. Maury's elbow, "the fair
Poppsea was harpooning in Southern waters."
'' What will she bring us back ?''
"Oh, no smelts or minnows, I'll wager. Some
fine new specimens of fish ten feet long, to be served
up with special condiments."
'' She will also bring a pelican from the pine wilder-
ness, a rare pink flamingo with a fan for a tail, and
some squawky wild ducks to pluck for her winter hat.''
'' Montgomery Craven is ingenuous-looking,'' said
Mrs. Ayrault, who was the only other feminine occu-
pant of Mrs. Maury's box. "He belongs to that
type of old-fashioned man who invite women to go
with them to the south Pacific. What do men propose
to do, I wonder, with one of us, after the south Pacific
is reached ? I have often wanted to find out, but those
who take their knights-errant at their word never seem
to return to tell any tales.''
"So you think Montgomery Craven is astonished
that the fair Poppaea will not leave her excellent husband
and her comfortable quarters and go with him to the
south Pacific? Eh, Mrs. Ayrault?" said Mr. Milburn
over the speaker's creamy shoulder, adding some whis-
pered word at which she laughed, tossing back her head
and glancing at him coquettishly.
A little later Grafton had asked to be introduced to
Montgomery Craven. The men took a liking to each
other. There is a strange, electric sympathy which
beats in the blood and tells us, '' This man, this woman
is one of thine or warns us that here we shall find no
foothold for intercourse. These two were mutually
128
POPPAlA
attracted. Craven walked home with Grafton. Before
they parted he had promised to think over a proposition
made to him.
As I have said, an almost quixotic sense of honor
had over and over again stood in Montgomery's way.
It stood in it now. If he was a crusader it was in the
capacity of cross-bearer. To-night he felt that longing
for freedom which the hope of a sudden increase of in-
come sends into the veins with a jet of expectant de-
light. Money to him meant so much; relief from cark-
ing and dwarfing cares, happy respite from petty and
ignoble make-shifts, release from endless humiliation,
added personal dignity. Only the independent can be
patient.
The assurance, however, that Fechet must not know
until all was matured, since all might thus be jeopardized,
filled him with a secret sense of guilt. A superlative
sensibility does not often interfere with the activities of
giants. High mental balance keeps such introspection
in command. Montgomery was clever, but lacked
the initiative quality, inventiveness and adroitness.
He could never have been a leader. A leader does not
weigh risks ; he recognizes that supineness is risk as
well as aggression. Grafton saw his hesitation and
rather liked it. He knew that in himself lay possibili-
ties of mercilessness, but it is only the mean or the in-
significant who do not appreciate what is delicate. He
understood those minor notes of the heart which waste
the energies, as well as those major ones which incite
and rouse. The elusiveness of sentiment had always
held more attraction for his imagination than the clear-
ness of duty. He looked upon the necessities and lim-
itations of character as replacing to us moderns the
destiny of Greek tragedy. There was something ideal
POPP/EA
to him in Montgomery's demurrance to accept an offer
which he evidently coveted, at which so many would
have sprung with avidity. It at once amused and in-
terestedhim. "In America, too," he thought, "where
we are told the ducat is the only form of aristocracy.
This fellow's got bone and sinew enough, but it's cov-
ered with the thin skin of several generations of gentle-
men, that is clear."
i
CHAPTER XIII.
T T was noon on Fifth Avenue. A few early-risers were
returning from their matutinal drive in the park.
At the windows of the closed broughams childish faces
in white hats half hidden in fluffs of fragrant laces were
peeping out into the sunny street. A nourrice in cap and
streamers dandled her charge at the pane, exchanging
a nod of recognition with a French nurse who trundled
a baby-carriage upon the crossing. Now and then a
young mother walked close to her infant's wagonette,
leaning lovingly to steal a glance at the tiny face em-
bowered in its canopy of muslin and ribbons. A man
hastening to an up-town wedding, with a large white
flower in his coat lapel, swung himself up the sidewalk.
An old beggar woman in a tattered bonnet turned
.to look at his lank figure in inarticulate admiration, for-
getful of the unasked coin. The florists' windows were
gay with dewy blossoms. Great bunches of violets, of
hyacinths, of gardenias, were tendering to the passer-by
their messages of beauty. A tall woman, with a large
face and heavy, monotonous features, draped in a loose
empire coat, led two little boys by the hand. One of
them was driving in a leash two cocker spaniels; the
other spurred them on with the cravache he whirled
over their long ears.
Mrs. Heathcote bowed to Mrs. Leigh Hazelwood
from her open victoria, watching the latter as she
turned her horse's head down the side street which led
to her dwelling. Poppaea's horse had been restive.
130
POPPsEA
Once or twice she had been forced to call her groom to
her side. He had dismounted to tighten a girth or
stirrup-strap. Now, as she sprang to the ground at her
door, '' Pollard, you are a very good-natured fellow,''
she said to the man, shimmering a smile at him from
under her Derby hat, when for a moment her soft face
came near to his rugged one.
"Thank you, madam," said Pollard, purpling with
pleasure.
She came into the hall, paused a moment to pick up
some notes, and grasping these in one hand, and the
folds of her scant short habit in the other, she tripped
up the stairs, the spur of her riding-boot catching in the
skirt.
"Is that you at last, Mrs. Hazelwood?" said Mrs.
Ayrault, emerging from the boudoir.
"Have you waited long?" asked Mrs. Hazelwood,
pulling off her gloves and removing her hat, which she
threw upon a chair with her riding-crop.
" Twenty minutes. You said twelve o'clock."
" Dacus was awfully wicked. I had to let him out
for a good gallop. I went much farther than I intended.''
Poppsea smoothed a recreant curl with her hand.
'' I feel depressed. I want a chat with you. If, as
Diogenes tells us, every day is a feast to a good man,
a feminine sinner like myself finds many heavy hours ;
but don't you want to get out of your boots ? I have
a nice book here ; I am just in a thrilling moment.
The hero's indiscretions have been discovered by the
heroine. She is tearing her clothes and biting the furni-
ture a la Sara Bernhardt; it suits my mood, I can
await you."
'' Thanks ; I will call my women, and run into my
room for ten minutes." She reappeared presently in a
132
POPPrEA
loose house-garment which enveloped her from neck to
heel, and with her hair quaintly caught up on top of
her head in a blonde tortoise-shell spear.
" Didn't you find it cold ?" asked Arden.
"It's always cold or hot in America. Ours is a
shocking climate for riding; one is either crimson or
blue. Yes, a little." Mrs. Hazelwood drew to the
flame, towards which she held out fingers a trifle red-
dened by the wind.
'' What a splendid Orchis mascula you have here !''
said Mrs. Ayrault, examining the spike of purple flowers
which stood in a vase upon an angle of the mantel-
shelf.
'' I read once, in an old folio, that there was some-
thing in the root of this flower that could make one's
heart beat faster. The modern botanies say nothing
about it; they are always dry and dull, mere lists of
petals and pistils, and difficult unpronounceable names.
Yes, really, from this plant the love-philters of the an-
cients were made."
" Heigh-ho! I wish I could drink of its juice, then."
'' Surely the lovely Arden needs no philters to give
or to take," said Poppaea, sinking upon a cushion by
the fire, and resting her head upon the edge of the sofa.
"Emotion must be the key-note of her life. Now, if it
were me . .
"You!"
" Yes ; say it. You will be believed."
"Ah, but / am sincere. Yet I am one of those
cowards that fear pain. I am a mere passer-by in love,
and I have felt it so. Tears are such an inseparable
accompaniment to love." Love to Mrs. Ayrault had
meant but a few hours of fevered youth. She looked
back upon it now as upon a simpleton's paradise, with
POPPAZA
133
that shade of bitterness of the woman whose record has
not been without a breath of scandal. '' How charm-
ing your house is !'' she went on more lightly. '' Such
a contrast to Mrs. Cunliffe's. Have you seen it?—it
is like a coarse beauty. It dazzles at first, but cannot
bear close inspection."
'' She will learn,'' said Poppaea.
'' My dear, never.''
"She is very amiable about taking advice."
"Advice? And who ever did anything splendid
from advice,—intellectual, spiritual, or even . . . taste-
ful ? Now Mrs. Larremore, I will admit to you, is a
born social genius ?''
'' She certainly has success, in spite of the Knicker-
bockers, who wanted to trample on her."
" Knickerbockers ! They had better try ! Why, all
the blue-blooded, excellently bred frumps in the world
could not cope with one woman of her wit."
" They say it's all money."
" It isn't money ; it's talent."
'' They say it's her clothes.''
"Taste is useful, if that is what they mean."
"You don't like the Knickerbockers ?"
" No, dear ; my husband is one of them."
"Yes."
'' And since we separated, through his misconduct,
they treat me like a possible adulteress, who can be
asked to a general reception, but not to a dinner.''
"Arden !"
'' But the fact is, their dinners are so ill-cooked I
don't care to eat them."
" Mrs. Cunliffe's a nice little thing."
'' So-so, but she hasn't tact. And he—what a
pill!"
134
POPPALA
" Not exactly a staff to lean upon."
"Now in this you are so fortunate. You, for in-
stance, are tied to such a pillar of respectability that you
can stretch your rope and browse where you will and
be quite safe."
'' Such pillars have at last sometimes grown rotten at
the base and fallen prone to be browsed upon them-
selves," said Poppsea, laughing.
" Mr. Hazelwood—fancy ! that decent man !"
" I would cry, ' Lord have mercy on me a sinner,' for
such a naughty word,'' said Poppsea, '' if even this
prayer of the publican had not lost its unconsciousness."
She sighed through her smiling.
'' I wish some clear beliefs and enthusiasms had been
left to us poor moderns,'' said Arden ; '' but everything
has been done and said over and over, so that even our
petitions have lost their simplicity.''
" Dear me, how pessimistic you are to-day!"
" I am sick of it all."
'5 What, of conquests ?''
'' Conquests, bah ! As one gets on one distrusts
applause and loses ardor to win it.''
"You have many friends."
"Oh, yes ! call them so. My friends belong to the
delightfully impartial class who pass their time in
making excuses for my enemies."
"Why don't you marry ?"
"You forget my husband is alive."
"Not to you."
" I never could feel free. No ; one husband is quite
enough for me. I have no taste for making a collec-
tion."
"And poor de Beaumont!" said Poppaea, mis-
chievously.
POPPAEA
135
" Do you call that a man ?"
" Why, what is he ? An idea?!'
"Yes, my dear, and an antiquated one. He is so
wearisome with his old regime and his aristocratic pre-
tensions representing the republic of a Constans and a
de Freycinet."
" He says he has sacrificed his entire life to you."
"What folly ! He had better brag of it! I have
always noticed that men sacrifice their lives and make a
general mess of them for women who are not in the
least worth while, and whom they don't really love
after all."
" To be really loved has its inconvenience. You are
spoiled. I am afraid I am very frivolous. I still like
pleasure and to be admired well enough, and to meet
new people."
'' Why, then, sweet Poppaea, you must meet the new
man."
"A new man, really? It seems incredible. I have
had the same old body-guard for twelve years at least.
Has he come to stay ?''
"This winter, he tells me." Mrs. Ayrault stopped
wandering about the room and drew near the fire.
She sat down upon the small Louis Treize sofa, while
Poppaea, still curled upon the cushion on the hearth-rug,
leaned her head lightly against her friend's knees.
"I only arrived, you know, from St. Augustine day
before yesterday. Mr. Hazelwood stopped to go to
Tampa with the Norwood Norwoods and their party.
Hazelwood has a project for a road and grove down
there. I got bored, and came back in a day and night.
I have heard nothing—seen nobody."
"Well, there is a new man," repeated Mrs.
Ayrault.
i35
POPPsEA
"What is he like?" Poppaea threw back her head.
"Mr. Grafton."
"Oh !" Poppaea's voice had a note of distinct dis-
appointment, as if one should say, " Is that all ?"
'' Why such a discouraging inflection ?''
'' I have heard of him. I thought this was some one
absolutely new."
'' There is nothing new under the sun. But what
have you heard ?''
"That he was a meteor-like creature who took the
Paris world by storm, through conceit, or perhaps push.
I confess I did not like what I heard, although it has
become somewhat indistinct."
" I sat in a box with him the other night."
"Ah ! what opinion did you form?"
" He has . . . something ..."
" Something?"
" Yes ; there is a certain undeniable power."
" How odd ! What sort of power ?"
" I don't know."
" Do you mean charm ?"
" Yes ; no—not exactly. He did not try to subjugate
me.'' She laughed.
"And if he had tried?"
" I think if he tried it might be fairly efficacious."
"What is he like ? Is he good-looking ?"
'' He is not pink and white, if that is what you
mean."
" How old is he?"
"His age is elusive. He might be twenty-eight or
fifty-eight."
" How absurd !"
"When you think of Julius Caesar, how old does he
appear to you ?"
POPP^A
13;
" I don't know ; middle-aged ; about forty. Yet he
must have been older and younger."
"Well, Mr. Grafton is a Julius Caesar, older or
younger. He is not unlike the portraits."
'' Intellectual, then.''
"Yes."
" What sort of manner ?"
"Perfect. Polished, impassive, impertinent."
"Oh, that has been so done! The rude veiling
tenderness, the reposeful tumult,—that only takes with
very young, ingenuous women."
" I didn't say he was rude. He is not."
"You said impertinent."
" One feels he could be. One feels he might fill the
described ideal: affable to inferiors, indifferent to equals,
haughty to superiors. You must ask him to dine. He
was talking about you."
'' What did you tell him ?''
'' That you were a good little haus-frau who kept
everything in excellent order."
"That is just about the truth."
" No doubt he took me at my word."
'' I knew a woman once who admired him exces-
sively."
'' Who was she ?''
"An odd fish,—the Princess Tamara."
"What! the one they call the Shah's daughter?"
"Yes."
'' Where did you meet her ?''
'' At court, at Petersburg ; and afterwards in two or
three Russian houses."
" Is she attractive?"
" Yes, very, in a way, and eccentric."
" And she admired Alford Grafton?"
138
POPPALA
" Talked of him incessantly."
'' Where is she now ?''
"In Paris, I believe, economizing."
" Poor thing !"
'' She is always in money difficulties, bewailing her
husband's extravagance, or quarrelling with the Czar."
'' Is there a husband ?''
" Tamara is more or less mythical; but I am told he
does exist."
" Where does she keep him ?"
" On the Bosporus. They have a place there."
" Fancy ! how delicious !"
" She is entertaining."
" So she raved about Mr. Grafton?"
'' It was the fashion.''
'' Perhaps he had victimized her.''
'' Victimized Leocadia Zamora Tamara ? Oh, my
dear !"
" Heavens, what a name !"
'' Hers, nevertheless.''
" Is she really the Shah's daughter?"
'' People say so, and that her mother, the Countess
Zamora, was secretly married to him by an Armenian
priest."
"What a tale !"
"Oh, it just suits her looks and general style ! It
posed her in London."
'' Has she adorers ?''
'' I really do not know much about her. I always
think all I hear false, and that only what we do not even
guess about people is true of them. Peut-Hre, you
know, is my motto." Here breakfast was announced.
It was at five o'clock that afternoon that Mrs. Hazel-
wood received a card and note, which the butler in-
POPPj&A
139
formed her had been left at her door by a gentleman.
" Did he not ask for me?" she said, a trifle piqued, and
yet with a certain sense of relief.
"No, madam ; he just said, ' Is this Mrs. Hazelwood's
house ?' and left the card and letter, madam, and drove
away."
"Say I am out, Fletcher, to every one."
"Very good, madam." And Fletcher's rubicund
visage disappeared between the tapestries.
The note was from the wife of the American minister
in Paris to Mrs. Hazelwood. It begged Mrs. Hazel-
wood's courtesies for Mr. Alford Grafton, "a compa-
triot, very well known, and a delightful fellow."
Poppaea turned the letter over in her palm. Why
did not a spark kindle from its contact to warn her of
impending conflagration ? Why did no secret mis-
giving spring from those written words and penetrate
that little head tormented by ideals, tortured by secret
struggles ? Poppaea had known all manner of men,
princes, diplomats and artists, magnificent seigneurs
and commercial bourgeois. She had told herself that
at best they were the same.
Among all the men she had met one figure detached
itself to claim her respect: it was that of the " young
crusader," who she knew had given her his life.
"Montgomery is a good boy," however, is all that
she had found to accord to one who had poured out at
her feet for years a respectful and devoted homage.
On the following day Mrs. Hazelwood went with Mrs.
Ayrault to see a fortune-teller who had set the whole
town crazy. Her love of the marvellous had sent her
before to the lair of soothsayers, and she had once or
twice brought them to her houses as an amusement for
her guests. On this occasion the woman proved to be
140
POPPMA
eminently unsatisfactory. Very little could be extracted
from her. She looked closely at Poppsea, covering her
dark eyes with her bony hand. "You are a proud
flame," she said, " that will consume itself."
"Quite too expensive at a dollar and a half," said
Poppaea, getting into her carriage. On the following
Saturday, in answer to a word that she sent to him, Mr.
Grafton came again.
This time he asked for the mistress of the house.
She was at home.
CHAPTER XIV.
A l\ R. GRAFTON had arrived a half-hour in advance
1 ^ * of the ordinary male visitor, who in our com-
mercial centre is hardly free to go from toil to pleasure
before the lighting of the twilight lamp. His Euro-
pean habits had not prepared him to find the altar-fires,
at a little before four o'clock, still in process of illumi-
nation. The goddess herself had not yet descended
from above. Through an open door which led from
one apartment to another he could hear scraps of talk
between Mademoiselle Olympe, the first lady's maid,
and one of the footmen. In listening to their chatter
he could not divest himself of the idea that he was as-
sisting at the first act of a modern comedy, and that
this lever de rideau between soubrette and valet was
but the introduction to dramatic complication. Men
have guessed worse.
The maid was taking from the footman's hands some
regal roses which her mistress had sent down to be
disposed in vases, and as she conveyed them to and
fro, she continued her blithe gossip, quite unconscious
that a gentleman had been admitted to the drawing-
room.
"What hi can't understand," the youth Pritchard
was saying, '' is the ladies here a-receivin' daily. Lady
'Arrington 'ad 'er day, and there was a 'orrid crush,
and the rooms got terrible 'ot. When royalty came
there was a awful fuss. Lady ' Arrington's sister she
was lady-in-waitin' to the Princess Christian, and when
141
142
POPPMA
the Princess came to town she sometimes stopped over
to breakfast."
"Princesses—bah!" said Olympe, who was demo-
cratic. " They are all ugly. J'en a>i vues dans mon
temps, de grosses boulottes ! Va /''
"Hi must say," continued Pritchard, pricking, as
he spoke, large Rothschild roses into various recepta-
cles and jardinieres, "that the 'igh haristocracy ain't
halways what we could, as one might say, be prepared
to hexpect. There was the Duchess of Montclair : hi was
buttons with 'er when hi begun to live hout. Hi never
see such a lady. She 'ad a face like the risin' sun,
it 'ould 'a' frightened you in the night,—red like a apple,
and one eye gone, and a yellow wig a-waggin'. She
was on the track all day, and keen after sport as any
young buck. But hi must say as 'er diamonds was
hinormous. She was quite splendid at dinner. 'Er 'us-
band was a nice gentleman, Mr. Cecil 'Ope. 'E was
forty years younger 'n 'er,—slim and heligant, a nice
figger. ' E and me was good friends halways, and hi
'elped 'im out on many a little prank when the old
lady lay a-sleepin' in ' er bed.''
"Hem! En voila du propre /'' murmured Made-
moiselle Olympe, shrugging her shoulders. She under-
stood English perfectly, but would never condescend to
speak a word with the servants. ' lLa vieille va tourner
V ceil, un de ces jours, et il sera mis a la porte, comme
un petit toutou—votre Monsieur Hope''
Pritchard, who had learned enough French to follow
her, dropped a rose and looked at her. "That's so ;
and 'asn't a sovereign, and only debt to meet when the
Duchess is gone. 'E don't dare tell 'er the 'alf 'e
owes. Not the'alf. She gets in the awfullest tantrums.
She's dead in love with 'im as hi'm standin' 'ere."
POPPALA
143
"Vive l'Am^rique !" said Olympe.
"Well, it isn't to say that Ham erica is hall hi himag-
ined before hi came; but Mrs. 'Azelwood's a perfect
lady, and the first time hi seen 'er, hi thought to myself
she looked like a queen."
" Like yours?" asked Olympe, with a grin.
" Hi ain't one of them as thinks 'ighly of the queen's
looks," continued Pritchard. "Tho' there is them as
thinks 'er a 'andsome woman. At the most 'orrible
disaster that takes place in Great Britain she don't give
more than a 'undred pounds, and 'er subjects is gettin'
restless hunder it, as is to be hunderstood. Now, the
Prince 'ould give more hif 'e 'ad it, but the fact of it is
'e 'asn't got it. 'E's been pretty rackety, but 'is 'art's
good."
" Humph !" said Olympe, " if I was his wife, I'd fix
his good heart for him !"
'' The fact is,'' continued Pritchard, '' the royalties
ain't reasonable. Now . . ." The butler came to the
hall door, and peremptorily ordered "silence," inti-
mating that there was a visitor behind the curtain. A
sudden hush fell; the lamps and candles were noise-
lessly lit, the fire replenished with genial logs. Five
minutes later every vestige of domestics and of service
had vanished. In a moment the hostess had herself
crossed the threshold. She gave Grafton a courteous
bow of welcome, but not her hand. She came and settled
herself on a low sgat beside the fireplace ; he opposite
to her upon a higher one, with his cane and hat across
his knee. As these two so sat facing each other they
formed a picture which would have delighted Toul-
mouche in his best days. He in his long frock-coat
and light trousers, his simple well-fitting dress of man-
of-the-world, with the superb single stone which pierced
144
POPPJEA
the wine-colored severity of his necktie ; his large bouton-
nftre of some white scented blossom, and his air of
perfect ease ; she, wrapped in the soft folds of her pale
gray and rose tea-gown, from whose creamy laces
peeped here and there a touch of gold. Her hair
caught high in a golden band tiny curls escaping be-
hind her ears, where the cut of a deft artist had left
uncovered a throat of unusual beauty.
They naturally first spoke of people they both knew,
of mutual acquaintances, among these of the Princess
Tamara. "Ah, the Princess," said Grafton, "she is a
good friend, a bad enemy, an interesting personality."
'' And where is she now ?'' asked Poppaea, smiling.
"She has once again paid Tamara's debts," said
Grafton, "and is living obscurely at this moment in
Paris."
Mrs. Ayrault was next touched upon. "Fancy a
man's letting any one else rob him of such a creature !"
said Poppaea.
"I admire the lady's sincerity," said Grafton, laugh-
ing. " In a box, the other night, she was handling her
adorers anything but gently, and spoke some spicy
truths to them."
" Do men like sincerity in women?" asked Poppaea,
a little ironically.
" When it is genuine, yes."
" It is so difficult to know !"
"Probably," said Grafton, astutely, "the brutal sin-
cerity of the habitually insincere is the most absolutely
to be relied upon."
'' What do you mean ?"
'' I mean when one whose life has been an enforced
lie—generally the case with women—suddenly declares
for the truth."
POPPMA
145
"Ah, yes, I understand you. I have heard that
clarion cry of revolt!"
" It is as inconsequent as the moment's ignobleness
of the noble. But these inconsistencies are the key
to character. You women must know them better
than we do."
'' Really ? I did not think inconsistency was all on
our side.''
"So," he said, looking at her, and then glancing
about the room curiously, to bring his eyes back in a
moment upon hers again, "you distrust men?"
There was a note as of immense amusement in his
voice.
She was piqued. " There is one man in the world I
trust," she said, lightly. She was thinking of Mont-
gomery. "But then," she added, reflectively, "of
course I am not in love with him."
" Your distrust would be kept for one you loved?"
"What is the use of distrusting a man if one isn't in
love with him ?'' she asked, looking up at him with eyes
which shone like two stars out of a tragic night.
'' Is she really naive or acting a part ?'' he thought.
"But that means pain,—to distrust those who care
about you, and I don't think you have known much
pain yet," he said.
She frowned. "Don't let us discuss . . . myself.
I am not worth while,'' she said, impatiently.
"No?"
'' I am naturally reserved ; and then you are quite
right, I have had no experience—no storm, which would
make it piquant.''
'' Secretiveness in ingenuous hands is sometimes a
limitation ; in clever hands it becomes a tool."
"I am not clever."
K
146
POPPJEA
"To tell you the truth, on this question I have heard
a variety of opinions.''
Being a woman, Poppaea was dying to ask him what
he had heard. She was still more desirous of discover-
ing what was his judgment of her ; but she contented
herself with ringing for tea.
Accustomed to incessant flattery, she was secretly
surprised and a little vexed that he had not paid her
any compliment, and that even his expression had
betrayed no admiration. '' He is an intolerable person,''
she thought. Yet instead of feeling that secret resent-
ment which such an attitude rouses in the hearts of
vain and sensitive women, Poppaea, who was more
sensitive than vain, only realized a sense of personal
unworthiness, a humility quite unusual with her. An
eager wish to please him at all costs possessed her.
To please had been so light a task to her that this self-
distrust was a new emotion to her pride, and one not
entirely devoid of sweetness.
The tea was brought. She rose and walked across the
room to the table, raising her skirts not to trip over a
tiger-skin whose lurid head loomed across her way. In
so doing she displayed the heel of her satin shoe, and
just one glimpse of the white skin below her ankle,
where it shone through the web-like meshes of her
gray silk stocking. Grafton, following her with his eyes,
also saw; but when she turned to offer him his cup,
with serious lips, he was himself grave and abstracted,
looking not at her, but at the flame. '' Thanks,'' he said.
He took the shell-like cup from her hand, swallowed
a mouthful, made a grimace, and put it on the mantel.
"Would you rather have wine?" she asked, meekly.
She felt hurt that the tea was distasteful to him. "You
don't seem to like my tea very much."
POPPMA
147
" In fact, I am not a tea-drinker. I am too much of
a Frenchman for that. No, no wine, thanks."
She sipped her tea, toying with her spoon, and they
wandered back to the sincerity of the insincere.
" Napoleon had it."
"Brutally, yes."
"You mean to his first empress."
" First and foremost."
"What was a Josephine weighed against an empire?
We can do him justice now; we are far enough
from that contemporary hate which always follows the
great."
Her heart contracted with some unexplained pang.
The fingers of her left hand closed on the arm of her
chair. Two pink spots burned suddenly on her
cheeks. The nervous movement and flush did not
escape Grafton. "You approve, then," she said, "of
that frightful cruelty which whips one's heart and
oppresses it, when one thinks of it, like a hideous night-
mare. He was a ruffian to her to whom he owed so
much !"
' '.Approve is a strong word. What is the approval
of a pigmy like myself to a man of genius and his
methods ?''
"You think," she persisted, "that a mere woman
must be pushed aside when she comes in the way of a
man's ambition?"
"Men's ambitions are rarely worth such sacrifices.
Napoleon's were."
'' He proved himself small in this.''
'' Perhaps you are right; it certainly brought him no
luck, if one should weigh things by rewards and pun-
ishments."
An intense mental excitement took Poppsea and
148
POPPjEA
shook her; whence did it spring? She was to ask
herself this so often. Now she remained silent, only
conscious of a complex sentiment that embarrassed her
speech. Were they too much alike—not complements?
Or was this palpitant expectancy mixed with a vague
disappointment really an overflow of sympathy between
them ? Has not the theory of the necessity of comple-
mentary qualities for mutual understanding been ex-
aggerated ? The horse and ass breed the mule. The two
thoroughbreds the steed that shall ride the race to
victory. Must not mind match mind to light the spark
of life ?
"We triflers," went on Grafton, "who are content
with the crumbs, with our pretty Eden of good
dinners, material luxuries, or, at best, gratified human
affections, can hardly grasp the workings of the master-
minds to whom greatness is preferable to comfortable-
ness.''
'' I remember,'' said Poppsea, still with that strange
tremor upon her,—a sort of fear of the man she could
not account for,—"the sensations aroused in me by a
perusal of Alfieri's life. He passed his youth in de-
bauchery and dissipation, with the young nobles, his
riotous companions. One night, weary and oppressed,
he took up Plutarch's Lives ; he read until the dawn.
It found him pacing his floor, ringing his hands, weep-
ing in agony. The careers of these great men had
roused the better aspirations of his nature ; he cursed
his misspent years, and from that day he was a changed
man."
'' I am glad to see,'' said Grafton, '' that after all you
agree with me ; the road to fame leaves no room for
effeminacy and vacillation."
"Ah, but poor Josephine!" said Poppaea, shaking
POPP^EA
149
her head. Grafton noticed a soft yielding expression of
her mouth which he had not perceived before. 44 Of
course he was a brute if you think so !'' She found his
sudden smile enlightening.
"Oh, thank you!" The least vain man could
hardly have failed to be inundated with the flattery
of her tone ; but if Grafton recognized the incense
and breathed it with avidity, he made no outward
sign.
"Trouble is inseparable from the life of ambition.
Tears must be shed from the eyes of others or our own,"
said Grafton, 4' and upon this melancholy conclusion
which we have reached, Mrs. Hazelwood, I will bid
you good-afternoon. Depend upon it," he added,
44 you lovely women who choose the better part of
peaceful contentment, with luxury as your background,
are the wiser." Was there a suspicion of contempt in
his voice? For such surmise Poppaea had no time;
simultaneously with Grafton's departure Lady Stock-
ton, young Mrs. Ordway, and Prince von Armath were
announced.
Lady Stockton was an Englishwoman of moderate
fortunes who was "doing the States," which meant
getting as much amusement for as little money as was
possible. She was fifty or more. She had a thick-set
figure, short limbs, a high brow, and red hands. She
was '4 doing the States'' and doing the people she met
with considerable spirit, vigor, and enterprise. Her
face, whose complexion resembled that of a Spitzenberg
apple after the frost has touched it, beamed with good
humor and an intelligent curiosity. Her sharp hazel
eyes seemed to snap with a mixture of amiability and
mischief. Her prominent nose, with its open nostrils,
appeared to draw from the outer world, as it were, an
POPPALA
inquisitorial inhalation. Her large, flat feet were con-
cealed by black velvet boots which she explained she
found warm and useful in the cold climate of our north-
ern country. Her hands were thrust into buckskin
gloves, whose one button seemed strained to hold their
fat, round wrists. Her long, white teeth forever '' in
the wind," as the French have it, shone from under the
half-raised folds of her fish-net veil. She was making
the most of her freedom. She was taking a respite of
six months from the care of a cross old- husband, whose
principal occupation for twenty years had been to have
. the gout and bid her " go to the devil." It was, never-
theless, said that she was extremely attached to him,
giving as her reason that she believed in Sir John's
absolute fidelity, and that, after all, this was the vital
question between the sexes. A slight slovenliness in
speech between married persons being, after all, of tri-
fling import. However this may have been, she bore
the separation with jovial philosophy. She had danced
every cotillon through the Newport season, panting
and heated, whenever she could capture a partner, old,
young, or middle-aged. At every entertainment she
was always the first to arrive and the last to depart.
Her excellent appetite, her gaucheries, her grotesque
toilettes, her occasional sallies of real wit, had afforded
endless entertainment to the blasb ending of a languid
season.
Prince von Armath was the hereditary sovereign of a
small German province. He was a youth of medium
height, with brown hair and pleasant eyes.
He dressed well, and had that gentlemanly appear-
ance produced by early association with the best
society. He had also an entire absence of pretension.
He had come to America presumably in quest of a
POPPjEA
rich wife. For although he had eight castles (and this
he felt called upon to state), he had very few marks
indeed with which to maintain them, poor fellow ! Of
mediocre intellect, naturally extremely conservative,
shy with women,—of a certain world, at least,—he had
been told that none but bold methods could succeed in
a land of push and progress, where the timid and deli-
cate were sure to be trodden to the wall and quickly
made into pulp. Now, the prince had not come to
America to be made into pulp. He had, therefore, since
his arrival, done violence to every instinct of his heart,
every tradition of his education. '' What are weapons
without skill, strength without courage ?'' he asked
himself. He had forced himself, therefore, to brag in-
cessantly of his possessions, titles, and decorations,
feeling, as he did so, that he was execrably vulgar, if
not hopelessly degraded. He had pushed himself into
the drawing-rooms of all the mothers of marriageable
daughters with an effrontery at which he himself
blushed, and which made havoc of his self-respect.
Ten days after his arrival he had offered himself to
the only daughter of a railroad king, insisting upon
a large marriage portion before the young lady had
seen him twice. Her prompt refusal and her father's
severe rebuke to him had left him angry, sore, but
unabashed. He had come prepared for emergency.
He therefore sharpened his broken lance and readjusted
his helmet to meet the exigencies of a barbarous war-
fare with a barbarous people. Persuaded that the age
of a country's shooting up was not remarkable for
amenity, he had made the sacrifice of his own taste.
But the poor prince, being a blunderer, was inclined to
overdo matters. Finding that love was required of him,
his next move was to declare himself hopelessly enam-
152
poppala
oured with the pretty daughter of a certain millionaire,
who had lately erected a granite castle on the cliffs of a
favorite watering-place. He rolled his eyes, heaved
sighs in a minor key, assumed the air of a troubadour,
peeping over the palace walls to watch the gambols of
Miss Gwendolen when she scampered on the lawn with
her nurse and her ugly little poodle-dog.
" She is very young," Mrs. Ayrault had said to him.
With shakings of the head and portentous moans he
had spoken to this lady of his incipient passion.
"She is fourteen," said the Prince; "in two year,
that will be time. There is none like her—so simple—
innocent!"
"Well, I hope so!" And then Mrs. Ayrault had
smiled . . . audibly. In the mean while his matrimonial
projects and his attachment to this demoiselle in her
teens and behind bars did not prevent him from a less
admissible but yet hot pursuit of the married ladies.
There was one, indeed, whom he followed about
wherever she went with a persistent and dogged tenacity.
Mrs. Ordway had christened him her Prince Dodder,—
that gilded fop of marsh and meadow, that supercres-
cence which lives upon the juice of growing plants.
But the balance of nature has allotted the quid pro
quo, and perhaps the handsome Mrs. Ordway found her
Dodder's flectuous grip gave her a tingle of distraction
from never-sleeping regrets. She was a lovely Southern
girl, of good birth and breeding, who, to mend her
family's broken fortunes and to gratify her own ambi-
tions, had married a rich Western bachelor of no birth,
no breeding, but of whose business capacity and gen-
erous proclivities there could be no doubt. They had
come, as everybody comes, to pitch their tent in the
great Northern metropolis. Here she met Mrs. Hazel-
POPPALA
153
wood, for whom she at once conceived a romantic adora-
tion. Fearful of intruding upon an existence which she
knew to be full of occupation and of pleasure, she rarely
spoke of this culte of hers to its object or to others.
It was sufficient to her that it should exist, born as
it was of a certain analogy in their destinies, and of
a longing on her part for companionship of heart and
brain.
To marry her husband she had left a blue-eyed lover
in the South, a lazy, good-for-nothing lover, whom
every day and every night that she dressed and danced
and sang and flirted she thought of with a longing that
no time could assuage, no distraction could obliterate.
His image haunted her every dream, as does the
memory of lost delight. Her wide gray Irish eyes,
with their thick, dark lashes, the black curly locks
that clustered on her snow-white neck, the turn of
her head, the touch of her hand, might charm and
enthrall; but every night and every morning she cried
to him whom she had forsaken, " I am thine, thine,
thine !"
The lover himself, it must be confessed, had made
but a faint effort to retain her ; and yet she blamed her-
self for her own inconstancy.
Poppsea had found her attractive, but not being given
to women's friendships, and having herself little to con-
fide, she had not invited confidence in Mrs. Ordway,
and the young women's intercourse had thus far re-
mained prudent, reserved, and superficial, notwith-
standing its undercurrent of sympathy.
*' I was on Long Island, last summer for a bit, at
Mrs. Ordway's," Lady Stockton was saying. She
was flushed and had found a fan, which she used with
energy.
Q
154
POPPAlA
'' I am sure you liked that lovely spot!'' said Mrs.
Hazelwood.
" I was almost eat up by the mosquitoes, my dear,"
said Lady Stockton ; "they were quite shockin'."
" It's such a dear old house,'' said Mrs. Hazelwood.
" Its quaintness must have pleased you."
"Modern houses are quite good enough for me,"
said Lady Stockton, decidedly. '' I like your baths.
You wash a great deal over here, don't you?"
'' Why, Lady Stockton !'' said Mrs. Ordway, pro-
testingly, '' we have baths' at our place.''
"Yes, my dear," said Lady Stockton, "but I
thought your house very damp and musty and not up
to the modern ones at Newport."
"It belonged to an ancestor of my mother's," said
Mrs. Ordway, '' and so I persuaded Mr. Ordway, when
I married him, to buy the place and give it to me,
dampness, mustiness, mosquitoes, and all."
"Well, I didn't like it," said Lady Stockton. "I
cannot imagine, my dear, why you do not get Ord-
way to buy at Newport. You ought to go there, and
not mope yourself; it is terrible for one's spirits. I
get so down when I have to stop six weeks at my
father-in-law's, up in the moors. He is ninety-two,
and they don't have much company, and it's horridly
dull."
" The mosquitoes," said the Prince, "they are cruel.
I got one at Newport. He did lie buzzing in the curtain.
I never sleep again."
"You could think of Gwendolen," said Mrs. Ord-
way, turning on him.
"A school-girl—ah, bah !" said the Prince, who was
beginning to be seriously enamoured of Gertrude, and to
have a vague fancy that she might, with some other
POPPALA
155
mocking ladies he had encountered here, be secretly
laughing at him. For the moment, at any rate, he felt
inclined to let his hopes of matrimony have rest.
"You kept a very good table, my dear, I must say,"
said Lady Stockton, evidently anxious to make amends
for her former frankness ; '' and we English think a lot
about eating, you know."
Mrs. Ordway, to whom the incessant concealment of
suffering had given keen perceptions, noticed that, in
spite of her civility and courtesy, their hostess was dis-
traite and evidently bored. She tactfully suggested a
lift in her carriage to Lady Stockton, and offered the
Prince the tiny front seat. " Certainly, my dear," said
Lady Stockton, glad of the opportunity to save a shil-
ling. '' Certainly ; that is a capital idea. I will get
your man to dismiss my cab, after paying my cabman
his exorbitant demands." They made their adieux and
left Mrs. Hazelwood alone.
CHAPTER XV.
MANZONI, who looked only for the moral of life,
would not treat of love, because there was more
than was necessary in the world. Who shall say that
he was not right? Yet the modern God is so incisive,
so subtle, and so fine, that while we dabble in a super-
ficial study of manners, behold, in a trice, the winged
child has bent his bow, touched our pen to his mysteri-
ous forehead, and, lo ! we are inditing a poem of the
heart ! Even Manzoni's queasy, monkish conscience
would perhaps absolve us of all intent of evil if in this
material century we linger not altogether unwillingly
upon the curious phenomenon of modern love,—a senti-
ment which if few human hearts have altogether es-
caped, as few have fully understood. Before its fateful
reckonings we pause, frightened perhaps, as the an-
cients would have paused astonished !
Grafton knew that women unaccustomed to flattery
succumb to it. In young Mrs. Hazelwood's proud face
he had seen something which instantly deterred him
from employing with her those common weapons which
allure and cheat the less pampered of her sex. He told
himself that of flattery she had doubtless had her fill.
Yet, while he left her piqued by a sense that she had
failed to impress a very obdurate and scornful gentle-
man, as he wheeled away, he racked his brains to
imagine in what manner he could most speedily renew
an intercourse which promised so much. Not content to
leave to the act of destiny the uncertain hazard of social
encounter, he pondered now on some immediate per-
156
POPPj&A
157
formance which should rivet her attention, and place
him in the rank of a deferential but declared admirer.
For the first time in his life it may also be said that his
wits seemed to desert him. With that curious half hal-
lucination which sometimes possesses us in our moments
of acute mental activity, he found himself remembering
the virtues and attractions of his poor little French
fiancee, and almost angrily resenting the influence with
which this unknown lady had so enveloped and beguiled
him. Somewhat ill-versed himself in trifling, he had a
deep contempt for that species of refined profligacy
which is the daily pabulum of the grande coquette. He
asked himself if this woman, whose every gesture and
attitude were so modest,—the very fall of her draperies
was significant of reserve,—might not belong to this
type of monster, perverted in spirit, while still remaining
pure physically. He dwelt, almost with pleasure, upon
the exaggerated accounts of her flirtations with which
frivolous women had already entertained him.
Somewhat inconsistently, however, his reveries cul-
minated in a very commonplace resolve. This was to
stop at the first book-shop that he passed and there to
find a short sketch or monograph of Napoleon, lately
published, and which had cast some original light upon
the career of the doughty little corporal. He who hated
to write notes now blessed this author for thus affording
him an opportunity to write a note to Mrs. Hazelwood.
In this brief message, while recommending the short
sketch to her indulgent perusal, he found perfidious oc-
casion to pose a question or two to which she could
hardly fail to reply.
The maid Olympe was marvelling that her mistress
did not come up-stairs, for she knew that she was dining
POPPMA
out. She was hurrying from her lady's bedchamber to
her dressing-room, shifting first here and then there the
tenuously-woven silken hosiery; the high-heeled slippers
with their embroidery of pearls ; the satin petticoat with
its costly Venetian laces ; the rich festoonings of the
exquisite gown ; the antique fan in its brocaded box ;
the diamond stars for the hair; the jewels for throat
and bosom ; the evening cloak, lined with its perfumed
furs, and its M6dici collar of feathers and of gold.
When all was done she stood by the fire, looking im-
patiently at the clock. Her mistress seemed quite ob-
livious that the dinner hour was approaching. She had
indeed forgotten ! After her guests departed Mrs.
Hazelwood stood uncertainly for a moment in the
centre of the room. Her last visitors vanished from
her thought as from her vision. She felt that on that
particular afternoon there had been but one. She
moved towards the mantel-piece, and, standing on tip-
toe, pushed the leaves of an encumbering vine away,
which trailed drooping from a silver vase. She could
see, dimly reflected in the mirror, the sombre aure-
ole of her soft brown hair. Her eyes gleamed back
at her with a species of curious, bewildered wonder-
ment. '' What has happened to me ?'' she thought.
It was her custom every day at five o'clock to receive
her friends ; among them there were often strangers.
Sometimes men of distinction, or at least of some
importance, came full of curiosity, eager to meet a
woman of whom much had been said for good or ill.
Why, then, did this visit of Alford Grafton's awake in
her so peculiar, palpitant, piquant an interest ? As she
gazed at herself a scowl crossed her features, but it
presently melted into a tender sadness. Was it some
old woe that woke again, to start into tumult the young
POPPAEA
*59
woman's beating heart ? Was it the germ of some new
and unexplained emotion, which brimmed the cup of
life with a deep yet impalpable melancholy ? She sud-
denly felt like one standing upon the borders of a wild
menacing and pathless sea. And she felt humbled ;
for she knew that as he left her his eyes had told her
own they gauged the hidden struggle, poverty, and
emptiness of her splendid life.
Mrs. Hazelwood was just remembering her dinner-
party when her husband entered the room. He came
over to where she stood, and, stooping, touched her
cheek with his lips.
"Well," said Mrs. Hazelwood, looking up and pass-
ing her hand over her forehead as if to dismiss some
undesired thought, '' and what news from Ceylon to-
day, my dear ?''
'' Disgusting news,'' said Mr. Hazelwood, seizing the
poker and administering an energetic chastisement to a
log of flaring wood. " Why doesn't that infernal lazy
dog Fletcher do his work and keep the fires going ?
The house is as cold as the poles !"
'' How ? disgusting ?'' asked Poppaea, leaning back
with her hands clasped behind her head.
"Just that and nothing else," continued Mr. Hazel-
wood. '' Have you got any tea there, my dear ?''
While he sipped his tea he told her he was dissatisfied
with his manager at Ceylon, and feared he might have
to run down there himself. He then talked to her about
the coffee plantations, told her how in 1836 the virgin
soil of this earthly paradise yielded to the grower mag-
nificent incomes. When, lo ! a fungus growth suddenly
appeared upon the leaves, nipping and turning the
beautiful lucrative berry black in the bud; and how
i6o
POPPAZA
those temperate uplands, those celestial tracts of earth,
had been filled with lamentation, distress, and sorrow-
ing. She accented his long somewhat wandering tirade
with a variety of exclamatory '' ohs'' and '' ahs,'' and
that vague wonder of the American woman, to whom
her husband's affairs are usually as unintelligible as his
income is unknowable. She had seen a picture which
had pleased her that very morning, but told him now
with becoming abnegation that its price was very high,
and that if he felt any solicitude about his "affairs,"
she had better at any rate delay its purchase. This
seemed to throw Mr. Hazelwood into a state of unusual
irritability. He chided her for not having bought the
picture, suggested to her the propriety of her sending
at once to France and England for some new costumes,
and finally produced from his overcoat pocket a jewel-
case containing a magnificent sapphire which he had
purchased for her on his way up-town. Then telling
her that they would both be late to dinner, he hurried
her to her own apartments. Yet the man was in the
throes of a terrible anxiety of which but a minimum
might have been epitomized in one dark and startling
Word,—THE BLIGHT.
Had it crossed Leigh Hazelwood's threshold? To
precipitate and culminate calamity ?
CHAPTER XVI.
AFTER this they met many times—Mrs. Hazelwood
and Grafton—in the world, at dinner-tables, at
dances, and ever and again in her own drawing-rooms,
where sometimes he lingered both after the tea-hour or
the late dinner, lingered to be left, for a half-hour, with
this lady of the sorrowing eyes, who at once dazzled and
distanced, fascinated and repelled him.
She had thanked him for the book about Napoleon
and for his little note, which had been a matter of ex-
treme surprise to her. The weeks had flown on since
then, and they spoke together of many things. Once
or twice he opened his heart to her about the new
career, which seemed to be widening before him in
vistas of hope and of attainment far beyond his first
ambitions. In his hands the Messenger had at once
become an extraordinary and unlooked-for success.
Tithes were filling its treasury, while subscriptions were
daily trebling. One day he spoke to her of the learn-
ing, tact, discretion, progressiveness, which must char-
acterize and perforce wield the pen of the journalist.
'' He who pens the leaders of a great daily is a teacher
of thousands," he would say to her with enthusiasm.
"He tells them how to think, believe, and act. De-
pend upon it, professions which make of men specialists
dwarf and belittle them. A great lawyer, a friend and
college chum of mine, who has made a fortune, sighed
to me the other day that he had not opened a serious
book on any subject but his profession since we parted
L 161
POPPALA
as boys. In what could he feel interest ? In very few
things, I found. No ; one should have the wisdom and
scholarship of an Alcuin to address a world every morn-
ing. One must grasp a hundred topics, be in touch
with a thousand opinions, meet a million demands.
Like the scene-shifter, one cannot sleep at one's post
or the play fails.''
"I shall be afraid of you," said Mrs. Hazelwood,
smiling faintly.
"It is I that am afraid," said Grafton, under his
breath.
"Ah, but I know so little !"
"Women's keen insight teaches them what our
coarse natures only learn through the grosser contacts
of life."
Then she thanked him again for tthe brochure on
Napoleon.
"You were not angry, then, that I wrote to you so
soon?"
"No; I received your letter with two others, and
discarded them and opened it first.''
"What were the others? To know that would be
desirable."
"Worth's last bills."
"Thank you!"
Another time he carried war into his fair enemy's
camp. More for amusement than through conviction
he challenged the flirt, praised the Italian woman, whose
love-contract is signed in three days, with a stiletto
dipped in blood.
" Pshaw !" said Poppaea, leaning back amid her cush-
ions, interested. '' Italian women, forsooth ! That is
my only quarrel with them,—that they fail in this one
art, while they excel in all the others."
POPPj&A
163
" An art?"
"Why, yes. Read Beaconsfield, dear sir, on the
coquette. Watch her in the world, where those queer
animals, men and women, go to study each other. Mark
well her tactics, and see if she does not rule society.''
"At what cost, dio mio ! what expenditure of wasted
talent ! If talent it be to throw away and dissipate the
heart in aimless nothings, false sentiment, and mockery
of loving."
" Yes ; I say an art." Poppaea leaned forward, her
face on her hand. '' But only an art where two artists
play. Of course children can be quieted by a game of
solitaire ; but that is not what I mean. That is why
you foreigners—I mean—yes, foreigners, are liked by
our women. They bring something to the partie which,
depend upon it, can be most exhilarating, elegant, in-
tricate, with a hundred savors and shades of feeling."
" Feeling !" he protested.
"Call it what you may,—it is intangible enough, I
admit,—the woman who can make a man pass in an
hour through every gamut of hope, fear, enthusiasm,
anxiety, possesses that form of power which will pres-
ently sway an empire."
" Still, a poor empire."
"Ah, do not look so at me ! I do not possess that
power," as he smiled, incredulous. "No, I swear to
you I do not. But Arden Ayrault, there's a coquette
for you !"
'' And you, then, have no coquetry ?''
" Not a bit. To be sure, here there is little incentive,
with our jaded men of business. It is unfair not to be
earnest with them. If the game be worth the playing,
there must be a certain mutuality of skill, and above
all, no weariness."
164
POPPASA
"I can believe that at the game you speak of most
of the men I meet here are about as fitted as the Yankee
school-teacher who indites an erotic sonnet while she
blows on her oolong tea and wraps herself in her damp
waterproof. You are either very rus£e or very ingenu-
ous, Mrs. Hazelwood, if you still insist you are not a
coquette, while you . . ."
" I thought you despised them ?"
There was a moment's pause, broken by a short laugh
from the man.
4' I have thought, in fact, that you were above your
role.''
"I have no rtle," she said, a little coldly.
" I find you very lovely, you know."
4' Greatly obliged.''
"Yes, really, I had not in the least expected to
admire you."
4 4 And why, if you please ?''
4 4 When I first arrived everybody was talking about
you. Everywhere I went I heard you praised, yes,
even on the steps, at a reception at the Vice-President's,
when I ran on to the capital for a day. A lady and
gentleman who were coming in were discussing you."
44 You expect me to swallow all that?"
"You pursued me everywhere."
4 4 And what did they say ?''
"That you were different from other people."
"What! you heard that even on the Vice-President's
front steps ?''
44 Yes ; there, too."
44 What else did they say?"
44 That you were a success."
"And that made you envious and spiteful," said
Poppaea, with a quizzical dimple on one side of her lip.
POPP^EA
"Why," I asked myself, "should this Mrs. Hazel-
wood be attractive because she is unique ? Why are
unusual things necessarily excellent? I wasn't going
to be harried into liking you.''
'' So you viewed my so-called eccentricities and ' sue-
cesses' with doubt ?''
" Call them dark suspicions, if you will."
'' When were they first lulled ?''
" Not the first time I saw you."
"Indeed!"
"No, not until the Larremores' dance; do you re-
member it ?''
'' Let me see ; yes, I think so—a little. That was the
second time we met.''
"You are mistaken ; it was the third. I saw you
for a moment at Mrs. Ayrault's, one afternoon."
" Oh, only a nod."
'' There are nods and nods.''
" Yes ; that dance ; I had not seen you in evening
dress. Men look nice that way."
"Is that meant for a compliment?"
" As you like."
'' I was studying anatomy, chemistry, philosophy,
psychology, flattened against the wall, when you entered.
There was a lot of white ... I mean a long train and
some pearls."
"Ah !"
"And you took me off my feet."
'' So that you dropped science and became instantly
flippant. I remember I thought you quite silly."
" Nevertheless, you did talk with me; you cannot
deny it. You dismissed Singleton Ackley."
'' That dear old fellow ?''
"Yes, old perhaps ; but, after all, one is grateful."
i66
POPPjEA
*' Do you like balls ?''
" What a question ! Why, of course not; do you?"
'' I adore them. I am sorry you think it vulgar. I
have been reproached with preferring them to dinners."
'' Dinner-parties might be amusing and highly
flavored."
'' And they are -usually without savor or excuse.
People give dinners for every possible reason except to
confer pleasure on their guests. They have some axe
to grind,—this man has political influence ; he must be
fed in view of a son's career. This old fellow will make
a codicil, some day, to his testament. Lobster a la
Newburg is his favorite dish, and may hasten the
disposition of his property. This lady of fashion may
take an interest in Maria, who is coming out, and may
require her patronage and opera-box."
"Ah," sighed Grafton; "then there are the blun-
derers who put the wrong people side by side, lovers
who quarrelled a half-hour before dinner, and treat the
company to many a hollow and bitter jest against hu-
manity and each other. The rival financiers who frown
and glare and spoil everybody else's appetite ..."
"One entire winter,"-said Poppaea, "I was placed
next to an old gentleman who, for some occult reason,
society was propitiating,—as the ancients did their ma
levolent deities,—because I agreed with his digestion
Yes. He said so. I was the human sacrifice. Now,
to be a digester may be a respectable career; it is
hardly one I would care to accept seriously; would
you?"
'' I think if I were Mrs. Hazelwood I would prefer
the ball, because there would be more people to look
at me.''
'' At least at a ball there is space and the chance of
POPPJEA
167
dismissing the importunate and alluring the impregna-
ble," said Poppaea, lightly, ignoring the fire with which
the last words had been spoken. "No ; society was
meant for pastime, and is not eleemosynary. It should
be neither a payment for past favors nor a solicitation
for more. I sincerely hope, since I rebelled and refused
to speak to him, that that old gentleman has died. He
went away somewhere, and I never saw him again."
'' Happy old man ! I wish you desired my death
and would abet it!''
"And why, pray? I wish, on the contrary, above
all things, that you should be well and happy."
"I thought as much. It is the decisive proof of a
woman's indifference when she desires one to be well
and happy."
Poppaea laughed. "And why shouldn't I be in-
different ?''
"Ah, why, indeed, Mrs. Hazelwood?" he said, a
little sadly.
'' And all this to say that coquetry is an honest and
natural trait, since it exists in feminine animals, and is
fresh and vital as the love of adornment, the desire for
approbation, which even you poor ugly masculine
creatures are not devoid of."
"Who wants the praise of people whose good
opinion is worthless ? "
111 hope, Mr. Grafton, you don't intend this as a
personal onslaught ? "
So in badinage the hour of twilight would slip into
the night, and he would rise to leave and she would
give him her hand. When she gave him her hand
there was something in the touch of hers at once timid
and haughty. She seemed to thrust him away. After
leaving her he fell, one day, to thinking of this custom
i68
POPPsEA
of hand-shaking. "There is the hand," he thought,
'' that in giving itself, takes ; one that invites ; another
that retains. One hand grasps our own interrogatively ;
another with puissant assertion. Here are the fingers
which cast one into an icy abyss of self-torment. Here
are those which seal possession. Ah, to feel her soft
palm nestle for a moment against mine, as women's do
when they surrender !"
There is a form of agitation which precludes the
study of another's features. Sometimes when they
parted it was as if they had been struck with blindness ;
they could not remember each other's faces. At other
times they remembered every detail, pondering over
each line and expression. '' Life will refine her face ;
it will never harden it," he thought. "It is infinitely
soft. But it would be easier to win a heart like hers
than to satisfy it. Such natures are not made for
happiness."
CHAPTER XVII.
DUT they had never seen or known each other until
■®—' one evening when they both went to the opera.
Early in the evening Mr. Hazelwood had taken him-
self off to a man's dinner at his club. Mrs. Hazelwood
was bidden to dine at her friend's Mrs. Heathcote's.
There was to be, on this particular evening, an unusually
fine performance of "Tristan und Isolde." Besides the
ladies there were only two gentlemen, Colonel Heath-
cote and Singleton Ackley. Prince von Armath was to
join the party later, in their box. Grafton had been
invited, but had declined. He told Mrs. Heathcote
that this was a favorite opera of his, and that he should
be in the stalls, hidden away behind some column,
where his friends of the upper world would not see him
that night. Poppsea, who had expected to meet him,
felt an unaccountable sense of disappointment, not to
say of pique, when Mrs. Heathcote announced at the
table the excuse which Mr. Grafton had sent: " He is
going to put us all to the blush, with the score in his
hand and contempt upon his intellectual forehead, while
we chatter above him, my dear," she said, to Mrs.
Hazelwood.
"Mere affectation," said Mr. Ackley. "One can
get an artistic impression in a box as well as in the or-
chestra, if one only chooses one's company. I don't
think with us Mr. Grafton need have feared his Wag-
nerian frenzy would be disturbed.'' The old bachelor
was not over-fond of this male meteor, whose rapid pas-
169
170
POPPMA
sage across the new world's horizon was, he thought,
heralded by a trifle too much enthusiasm on the part of
the feminine community.
As they were leaving the dining-room, a servant
brought in on a silver platter a magnificent nosegay of
lilies-of-the-vafley. He presented it to Mrs. Hazelwood.
It had followed her from her own house. It was unac-
companied by note or card, and only bore her address
illegibly scrawled by an unknown hand. To a woman,
however, nothing is ever anonymous. Had the name
of the donor been written upon each pure petal, it could
not have started out more vividly to Poppaea's illumi-
nated vision. It was indelibly traced there, and crying
out to her, knocking at that passionless mystery of
silence which she called her heart. That heart had well
guarded its secrets under its satin and its laces through
the cold outward life of the woman of the world. She
took up the fragrant blossoms lightly, with a toss of
her small head, and was, a moment later, draped in her
great fur coat. In a half-hour she was ascending the
steps of the opera-house in Mrs. Heathcote's wake.
It was a gala night. Boxes, orchestra, galleries, were
thronged with an overflowing multitude. The Prince
was already there. He met them at the door, with his
polite ineffectual smile, said a few empty words about
the cantatrice, her beauty, talent, and costumes, and
then leaned forward behind Mrs. Hazelwood's chair,
with his habitual vacant stare. Mrs. Heathcote adjusted
her lorgnette, and swept the house in a half-disdainful
survey ; while Mr. Ackley, near her imperial shoulders,
gave himself up to the entrancement of sound and
sense, and perhaps to the perfume of his hostess's near
presence.
Mrs. Hazelwood, meanwhile, had also scanned with
POPPJEA
171
her far-seeing eyes the upturned faces of the glittering
crowd below. With a pang she recognized the almost
hopeless task which it would be to attempt to distin-
guish one particular physiognomy amid this swaying
sea of humanity. With a curious sense of impotence
and impatience she now resolutely bent her eyes upon
the stage and prepared herself to listen. She had
placed her flowers in front of her, upon a red velvet
cushion which stretched across the low ridge of the
box. They sent a whiff of fragrance over the heads of
the audience beneath. To this audience she now almost
turned her back, opening her fan to shield herself from
the glare, and riveting her eyes across the foot-lights.
Eyes and ears were centred, engrossed, and she was
therefore entirely at a loss to understand an extraordi-
nary experience which shortly befell her. Exactly as it
affected her I will endeavor to describe. Suddenly,
without cause or apparent explanation, in a pause of
song, during a subdued recitative, something like a
shock seemed to pierce to the very core of her being.
A curious physical sensation sent the blood to her brow
and cheeks. She felt herself obliged to turn. As she
did so, and her glance fell upon the ocean of uplifted
faces, it dwelt not for a moment in doubtfulness, but
straight as an arrow shot from a skilful bow met a pair
of eyes which, from a dimly-distant corner of the vast
building, held and enveloped her in poignant contem-
plation. Her first sense, in this mutual recognition,
was one of intoxicating enchantment not devoid of a
note of pain. It was as if her soul had been cut through
by an illuminating rapier, which had laid it shivering,
palpitating, bare, to the cadence of the magnificent
love-poem to which she was hearkening. In one
wild minute she felt a sense of emancipation, as if the
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POPPJEA
thralls of custom, the chains of earth, had fallen from
her. With their eyes thus plunged into one another's,
Grafton and Poppaea gave themselves up to each other
in delicious reciprocity of delight. In that moment
they belonged to each other absolutely, without reserve,
remorse, or shame. Time and tide receded where ebb
and flow are no more. Alone in some vast desert,
together under the dome of some primeval forest, never
were savage man and woman drawn by that afflatus
that holds the secret of the end of life more entirely
than were in this hour these beings of an exquisite
and almost morbid civilization. They continued to
gaze at one another breathlessly, held as though by a
bond which neither had the will or capability to dispel.
Upon new wings of fancy they seemed to soar and
mount to the very altars of the gods. Her beautiful
bosom rose above the rich bodice of her gown, and a
rosy tint flushed it where his eyes fell and lingered, as
with the contact of tongues of flame. On his forehead,
lit by the flaring chandelier, while the lower part of his
face lay still in shadow, she could even at this distance
guess the divine pallor of his passion.
By and by, trembling from this strange abandonment
of her intimate self, which she knew that he too must
have guessed, she suddenly arose, seized his flowers,
and for one moment, like a bird about to take its flight,
like Aphrodite wounded, when she found the fleck of
ichor on her palm, she paused uncertain. She thought
that she must cry out to him, own herself vanquished,
stretch forth her arms, and fall weeping upon his breast.
The next moment she had vanished through the dark
curtains of the enshrouding portiere which hid the
dainty recess where Mrs. Heathcote was wont to dis-
pense tea during the entr'actes to her guests, A Rus-
POPPMA
173
sian samovar was always kept here, and as the long
evening wore to its close, this lady would treat her in-
timates to the refection of smoking souchong, delicate
pastries, and dainty bonbons.
" Did you feel faint, little dear ? You are pale."
"Am I ? The heat; nothing more." Ah, Poppaea !
"The artificial heat in your country, I find it ter-
rible !'' said von Armath, fanning himself with his crush
hat while he aired his new grievance. "In the train
the other day, going to Tuxedo, I find it horrible. But
an old lady, she had the grippe, and so she would have
no ventilation. When I open the window she tell me
I was a wicked man ; and what I suffer,—ah, suffer !"
"Yes, thanks, a little lemon;" and Poppsea leaned
across von Armath and seized almost with avidity
the golden cup, which she drained quickly with thirsty
lips. But she could not conquer an irresistible restless-
ness. Unsatisfied, she longed to return to her place in
the loge. Would he be there ? Had he gone ? Yes—
no—ah, surely not yet, not yet! Her heart almost
broke with its anguished questioning. Would he be
angry that she had left him ? When she did seek her
seat again the curtain had not yet risen. The doors of
the lobbies were banging to and fro, letting in late-
comers, or gentlemen who preferred a cigarette to the
conversation of fair maid or matron. The first violin
was chatting with the 'cello. The leader was mopping
his hot, damp brow with a silk handkerchief. A girl's
shrill laugh rings through the gallery. A man's loud
protest arises in the passage. She thinks, "If he is
gone I shall die here, among all these people. Why
did I ever leave him ? Will he forgive me?" Ah, no!
he has not gone. He is there still. And now he has
risen, and once more they are alone together. But a
*74
POPPJ&A
change has come over him. '' I thought I had lost
you !" he is saying to her, reproachfully ; "cruel one !"
It is their first quarrel.
" I left you because I fear you, do you not know it?"
she answers him. And, indeed, a chill of fear has fallen
upon Poppaea,—a fear unknown before, and which his
presence cannot ease. He still stands, this tall, dis-
tinguished stranger, his figure now bathed in light, a
little less her own than a moment before, more self-
possessed, virile, strong, . a trifle cynical. His eyes
again seek hers eagerly, devouringly ; but she turns
from his glance, cowering, raising her fan that he shall
look on her no more. As she does so she thinks,
" What do I know of this man to whom I have thus
given myself? Where will he lead me ? How can I do
aught now and forever except his bidding ?'' Is it a
marvel, then, that she shrinks terrified ?
It was thus that poor Poppsea entered the torture
gates of loving.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TT was on the next day that Mr. Hazelwood told his
wife that business complications demanded his im-
mediate presence in Ceylon, where the coffee blight
threatened his plantation, and that he should sail in
twenty-four hours. He was somewhat surprised when
she begged earnestly to be allowed to accompany him.
She was not fond of such voyages. She had long sus-
pected that his presence there was necessary. She
asked him now very seriously if he was concealing any-
thing from her as to the real condition of his affairs,
begging him if they were in any way involved to be ab-
solutely frank with her. He denied all serious solici-
tude, only repeating to her that the capability and
sagacity of a certain superintendent of his affairs had
been the subject of discussion between two of his head
employees who were now in charge of the Ceylon house,
and that he thought that his own arrival upon the scene
would be a wise move and settle all doubts. He ex-
plained to her that she would greatly retard and hamper
him, and while grateful for her suggestion, he strongly
deprecated her undertaking a journey which to her
would be only exhausting.
It is possible that these contingencies would have been
clearer to her had he, not she, proposed the trip. She
yielded, however, with a sigh of mixed relief and com-
punction to what seemed superior wisdom. He went
laden with messages of affection and with presents for
*75
17 6
POPP^EA
two of her brothers, for whom he had found occupation
upon his Ceylon plantation.
On the same evening Mrs Hazelwood wrote and
asked her mother, who was to start for the West in a
few days, if she might go with her. The answer came
promptly. It was on this wise:
'' My Darling,—Mamma would have been too happy
to have her dear daughter with her, but really she
doesn't think it will do. Ru and his little wife live very
simply, you know, my child, and now with the baby
expected, I think it would be upsetting to receive you
as well as me. Dear Mary seems fond of me. She
has no mother of her own j she really wants me for
the ordeal; so far away as they are, poor things, even
from the army post, and no woman near of her own class!
Even if you would come without Olympe, in a travelling
kirtle, and with one pair of boots for all luggage,—so
uncomfortable,—I know that Mary would be agitated
and alarmed. She is a shy girl. How many questions
she has asked me about the unknown sister ! The
papers, her letters—I know not what—give her such
absurd accounts. Were you Caterina Cornaro or Cleo-
patra herself away on a holiday, I think she could not
feel more terrified at the idea of your invasion of the
ranch and their little lodge.
"So, my love, 1 shall go on alone, with Mr. Travis,
and Ru will meet me at the fort for the final horse-
back-ride. Fancy mamma in the saddle again ! 1
will luncheon with you on Monday, and you can
drive me to the train, where Mr. Travis will pick
me up.
"When Mary is well again, and my grandbaby here
—God bless him !—I know it's a boy—and their big
POPPsEA
177
house is done, we will go on together for a family
gathering.
"In haste, dearest love, your affectionate
"Mother."
For Ru had grown to be a man, a man and a married
one. He had gone to seek his fortune in the wilds of
a Western ranch. He had stopped on his way long
enough to fall in love with and marry a fair Kentucky
maiden, who was said to have all the beauty, tact, and
grace for which the daughters of that redoubtable State
are justly celebrated.
The occupations of this double departure absorbed
Mrs. Hazelwood's mind, or at least her energies.
It was a few days after she found herself once more
at leisure and alone that she, one morning, decided to
take one of those lonely walks which continued to be
her habit, and in which she found rest and charm.
She ordered her men to deposit her near the wide
portals of the Lenox Library, whose comfortable wings
loomed across the sunny background of a harshly bril-
liant American morning. Here she alighted. Bidding
her footman see that the brougham followed her, she
slowly crossed the avenue, and was soon advancing
rapidly under the rows of trees which border the
eastern confines of the Central Park. As she went she
glanced over her left shoulder at the shaft of the obelisk,
which glittered as if dusted with tiny flecks of gold.
Poppaea found herself wondering if the eyes of Christ
might, some day in Alexandria, have rested upon this
strange and mystic message from an ancient world. She
picked her way across one of the low-cut roads, on
whose gray wall lay the shadow of the Hebrew temple's
dome. Some ragged children were quarrelling over a
M
i78
POPPAlA
pair of broken roller-skates, each one in turn eager to
try the rush and tumble, and all wrangling over their
wretched toy. A horseman's figure started out against
the railing of the reservoir, half hidden again, in a
moment, from sight, by a thin blue smoke which
rose from piles of burning brush, whose pungent smell
made Mrs. Hazelwood draw short quick breaths of
pleasure. A crippled old gentleman, supported by
his valet, was sunning himself on the opposite side-
walk, in front of his spacious granite domain ; while a
swarthy, bright-eyed Italian was pushing his ash-cart
and its bony horse up the avenue. The cart bore the
half-effaced words, '' Old Reliable,'' while underneath,
in smarter paint was daubed somewhat incongruously,
the present owner's name, Agostino Pucci.
A pair of pale lovers leaned close against each other's
shoulders in a shabby light wagon, or rather " buggy,"
—that rickety haven of American love-making. They
looked like a shop-girl and a tired city clerk off on an
escapade ; going to visit friends or relatives perhaps at
Mott Haven, or at the farther breezier junction of West
Farms. Poppaea followed them with her eyes half
wistfully as they jogged past the forcing-houses of the
sunken gardens of Mount St. Vincent, away towards
the sluggish waters of the upper lake. But her thoughts
were not of these ; they were of Him. For the first
time, yes, the first time in all these years, a sentiment
deeper than caprice was wrestling in her for mastery.
She found the struggle delicious. Its balancement
rocked her this crisp morning. It seemed to have
breathed into her a new motive for existence. Her
fine, ardent, and restless spirit, always until now un-
satisfied, unfilled, was overflowing to-day with an in-
effable happiness. She felt light as air; free under the
POPPMA
179
heavens. More and more in all these years she had
drawn into herself, lived her own life.
Of late her husband's reckless extravagance, his
fevered love of display, coupled with anxieties which
she had guessed in him, had irritated while they had
pained her.
Now she thought of Grafton and wished she could
tell him all that he had brought to her. When a little
later, therefore, she heard a step behind her and he
overtook her, she was hardly startled. He was but the
realization of her revery. He had been with her all of
the day.
His own surprise at finding her was not expressed.
Indeed, he admitted that he had walked frequently thus
early hoping to meet her, some of her friends having
told him of her predilection for early rambles here. He
had first seen and recognized her carriage, and then
had followed her, until, hearing his step, she turned
in her soft elegance and spoke her greeting.
'' I have been denied at your door thrice in a fort-
night,'' he said, '' and the world sees you no more. I
took this chance of finding you ; I am more than for-
tunate."
She looked up at him with a strange joy on her face.
" Only tell me," he said, hardly able to conceal the
tumult of his own thought, '' tell me that it does not
bore you to have me join you."
" No," she said to him, " it does not bore me."
" May I walk by your side a little way, then?"
They had not much to say that was important. They
seemed to have entered the zone of silences ; it sur-
rounded them with its portentous calm, that quiet which
presages storm. They spoke of the pleasure of the
fresh morning, of the sweet promises of early spring,
i8o
POPP^A
of the mere animal gratification of breathing in the light
and air. But under their words there lay another note,
which slowly but surely did its deadly work upon their
senses and their hearts ; and when, by and by, they
retraced their steps, and she bade him call to her man,
they hardly knew, these two, where they had walked,
if upon earth or amid the filmy realms of Avalon. He
helped her to her carriage, while the discreet Pollard
stood with his back towards them, close to the horses'
heads. Grafton leaned for a moment at the window,
his face not very far from hers,—nay, not so far but that
a sudden madness seized him at this proximity, and
before she could defend herself he had for one wild
moment seized her fingers in his own and crushed them
against his breast.
In the next instant he was standing, hat in hand, in
the sunshine, upon the sidewalk, and her carriage was
rolling away from him, bearing from his sight her hidden
and fragrant loveliness. He stood immovable for fully
five minutes, straining his eyes to follow the thin cloud
of light yellow sand that the wheels tossed up from the
hard, unwatered street. "Fool!" he said to himself,
angrily, as he walked back rapidly into the town.
" Blind fool once more, and dupe to my imagination !"
But Poppsea said no such word to herself. To her
the anguish of the scene just enacted was the anguish
of ecstasy. Leaning back upon her cushioned seat,
there was no room in her, as there had been none at the
opera, for regret or dismay. She knew now the mean-
ing of everything. All was clear, unravelled, unveiled.
She had at last tasted of good and of evil. Serpent-
stung, the fruit of the tree of knowledge had touched
her lips, and left upon them only tenderest juices. Its
bitter flavor was to come to her only an hour later.
POPPAEA
181
Upon her way to a wedding breakfast, Mrs. Mount
Cuthbert fluttered into Mrs. Hazelwood's drawing-
rooms. "Ah, by the way, do you see much of Mr.
Grafton ?'' said she. '' All the world seems to be talk-
ing about him."
'' Of course I meet him occasionally, in the world,
with others," said Poppaea, a little tremulously.
Mrs. Mount Cuthbert eyed her narrowly. '' I hear
that he is such an admirer of yours.''
" Oh, not at all. You are quite mistaken," said Pop-
paea, with the feminine instinct to deny the truth.
" Well, as he is to be married shortly, it is as prudent
for us not to burn our fingers.''
" Indeed, I had not heard."
"Fancy! The fact remains that it is the most ro-
mantic affair. Of late all has been in abeyance, as it
were, and hushed up more or less.''
'' Hushed up ?'' Mrs. Hazelwood tried to stifle a
vibrating contempt.
'' I mean the poor girl being paralyzed, or something
of that sort. He came here either to break off or give
her a chance to recover ; and then if she does, you see,
they will be married directly. It has already been drag-
ging along for some time.''
"That is too bad," said Poppsea. "We must all
make pilgrimages to some saint's shrine for her re-
covery."
" I hear she is a little beauty ; French, of course ; the
daughter of very great people. You must have met or
heard of them,—the de Valfontes."
'' I know the name.''
"Well, the poor little girl fell from her horse. She
is now on her back. He is so devoted to her that her
suffering made him ill. He had to come to America."
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POPPMA
*' How very touching !''
" And now adieu, dear Mrs. Hazelwood. I find you
looking a little pulled. How is your good husband?
He has gone to Ceylon or somewhere out of our uni-
verse, has he not? Well, rest those pretty eyes of
yours. They look just a wee bit big and wan. Too
much dancing, eh? Adieu !"
"Adieu !"
"I don't think she took very kindly to my news,"
thought Mrs. Mount Cuthbert, as she tripped down the
stairs. '' What was his game, I wonder, in not having
enlightened her ?'' It was agreeable to her to know that
even the proud Poppaea had perhaps a weak spot in her
shield through which winged shafts could be thrust to
probe, excite, and tingle. A man she knew well, and
whom Mrs. Hazelwood ignored, had passed them an
hour before, and had already spoken of Mrs. Hazel-
wood's and Grafton's matutinal promenade. He was
one of those men who are favorites with certain women
because their gossip is accurate. The type is rare,
fortunately, in our active land ; but the male scandal-
monger exists, like the noxious worm or noisome weed,
in all countries and in both hemispheres.
Mrs. Hazelwood went up to her room. She began
to take off her things. She could not sit down. Well,
what? He was not free. How many men are free?
men one meets casually, in the world ? What does one
know of their condition, their motives, their secrets?
And this was no secret. All the world knew it,—had
known it,—all but herself. And, after all, she was but
one insignificant person. It had, no doubt, been men-
tioned in her presence; but somehow, in one of the
odd chances of the drawing-room, it had escaped her.
Self-absorbed as she had lately been, steeped in the
POPPsEA
strangeness of a new experience, her natural absence
of curiosity, her reserve, had prevented her discovering
what all might hear. Perhaps she had feared to know ;
love had closed her ears. For time had already taught
Poppaea the futility of inquiry. Is not curiosity about
those who interest us always repaid with a wound?
Now she understood. Engaged to be married ! Why
should a married woman, an old married woman like
herself, despise and execrate a man because he was en-
gaged to be married ? Why, everybody got married !
It was not usual to write it on one's coat-sleeve. Some
men had mistresses ; they paid women to love them.
She had been told this. Now, in comparison this was
cleaniy. "A little beauty," "a demoiselle de Val-
fonte," the very name seemed to express something
nice and dainty.
Then suddenly she turned against him as if a snake
had stung her. '' How dared he ?• How dared he ?
How dared he ?'' she thought with anger. Her eyes
burned and smarted ; her heart felt scorched. By and
by she struck her hands together two or three times,
pacing the floor, pushing from her with ejaculatory im-
patience all obstacles to her progress. '' Ah, Mademoi-
selle de Valfonte !" she cried, " that is a loyal love that
you have found,—a loyal, noble lover, who leaves you
paralyzed upon your couch, and crushes other women's
hands upon his breast!''
She came and leaned upon the mantel-piece, which
was a trick of hers. Then suddenly some one who
should have watched her would have seen that she
faltered. She swayed for a moment from side to side,
then with a harsh cry fell forward upon her face, rolling
helplessly in a heap upon the parquet floor.
Her maid, hearing the scream, ran in from across the
POPPALA
hall. She found her mistress in a dead swoon. The
frightened woman gave the alarm, and in a few moments
Poppsea had been carried to her bed by the hurrying
domestics. A neighboring physician was summoned.
Before he arrived, however, Mrs. Hazelwood had en-
tirely recovered her consciousness. He found her sit-
ting up upon her sofa, and propped upon a pillow.
The doctor, a stranger, examined her eyes, touched
her pulse, held his ear against her breast. '' My heart
is all right, I believe," said Poppsea.
" I find no organic weakness," said the doctor, tap-
ping her chest, '' only a slight irregularity in the action.
This may be engendered by over-fatigue, indiges-
tion ..."
"But I have eaten nothing."
" Have you had any shock to your nerves?"
"No," said Mrs. Hazelwood.
" I will leave you some digitalis," said the physician,
"until your regular attendant arrives. I advise repose
at present. In the future avoid all emotions."
"That is so easy!" thought Poppsea, with a faint
smile. But she said, "Yes, certainly," to the physician,
with an accent of decision and energy.
CHAPTER XIX.
DUT Grafton found that this time at least he was not
J-* the dupe of his imagination. He was forced to
realize that he had fallen a victim to a very real and
tangible malady of the soul, and he could no longer
deceive himself as to the violence of the infatuation
which Mrs. Hazelwood had awakened in him. After
the manner of men in the first throes of an attachment
which they have cause to dread, he tried to avoid her.
This was made somewhat painfully easy to him by the
young woman's own defiant attitude. After a fortnight,
however, of anxious hide-and-seek, Poppaea, with the in-
comprehensible complexity of her sex, relaxed suddenly
from her position of strained hauteur, and half timidly
made an advance in Grafton's direction. A woman's
coldness may but whet the blatant vanity of extreme
youth. The self-distrust of maturity requires encour-
agement. Grafton had gauged the depth of his wound
by its pain. Hopeless love is a paradox. Love is hope.
It dies when hope is slain. She invited him to her box
at the opera. He should know she did not care. It is
needless to say that he came. From this evening, when
some explanation undoubtedly took place between them,
he entered that curious phase of a man's life when he be-
comes by his own volition the plaything of a wayward
and nervous woman's caprices. Deny the charge of
coquetry as best she might, certain it is that in these
early days of her wilful dalliance with the sentiment that
185
186
POPPJEA
now possessed her, Mrs. Hazelwood was both passion-
ately coquettish and capricious.
Grafton undoubtedly drank a philter of strange charm
from this new elixir. Accustomed to mastery, there was
an ineffable voluptuousness in becoming the slave of
this gentle, pettish, cold, warm, glad, sad, tender, ter-
rible tyrant. A prey to overpowering enchantment, it
may be said of him that no plan or project of seduction
disturbed the unconsciousness of these first weeks in
which the past was blotted out and the future forgotten.
But every passion has its Nemesis, and all tend to the
same bourne. Very gradually, as time rolled on, that
of Alford Grafton began to take on a more precise and
positive aspect. The thought of separation is the first
insidious warning which precipitates climax.
With a delicacy which she respected, while it angered
her, he had never told her in words of the manner in
which he had become entangled in the meshes of that
bright but now broken-winged little creature—insect,
Poppsea thought—who had crept into his destiny. But
Mrs. Hazelwood was sufficiently clever to have soon
fathomed with keen perspicacity the exact degree of
ardor which he had brought to his wooing. Her nice
appreciation was strengthened by such reports friendly
to Grafton as occasionally reached her ears, amid that
general murmur of censure and dispraise that buzzes
discredit about successful people. While she herself
desired that he should instantly put an end to a false
and impossible situation, she shrank from urging him to
a step which she knew nothing but his honor delayed.
It was tacitly understood between them that should
Eliane recover, Grafton would unhesitatingly reclaim
his jeopardized freedom. Of her own bonds she as
yet thought little. Now for many years estranged from
POPPJEA
187
her husband, save by the superficial kindliness of mu-
tual interests, the chains of her marriage had weighed
upon her lightly, and her husband's prolonged absence
rocked her in a mischievous lethargy. She shrank from
facing the problems of her immediate future, and lapped
herself for the moment in a dangerous paradise of
illusion.
Mr. Hazelwood, still lingering in Ceylon, wrote cheer-
fully that all things prospered. At this Poppsea mar-
veiled, for ever and anon the papers spoke of some new
failure caused by the threatening blight; the collapse of
some well-known coffee house. Once, indeed, she had
read that the firm of Hazelwood was in danger. She
had cabled a question, and for all answer had received
the words, "All is well." This prolonged absence, the
absolute independence which permitted her at any mo-
ment to summon Grafton to her side, the freedom of a
written correspondence which every hour grew more
reckless, rocked her in that delusive dream of all proud
womanly natures,—the dream of all such pleasant pas-
time,—enjoyment without transgression, such transgres-
sion, at least, as state and priest decry.
About this time Grafton received news from Paris that
his unfortunate fiancee was to submit to a dangerous
operation, whose result would mean absolute cure or
possible death. He was asked to write an encouraging
and tender letter to the young girl before this hour of
her ordeal. Hating himself that his expressed anxiety
must perforce seem perfunctory and cold, he penned
the lines, brief and half-hearted. Eliane and all that
pertained to her had become to Alford Grafton mere
shadows, shapes haunting a past with which he thought
he had forever done.
We must be fair in stating that in these days Mrs.
i88
POPPMA
Hazelwood urged him to no step which could add a
drop of sorrow to the cup of one already so afflicted.
She bade him, on the contrary, write often and kindly
to Eliane. The sufferings of a rival, however, fail to
quicken and touch a woman's imagination. And when
by and by came the news that the trial was over, that
the results were beyond the most sanguine hopes of
Mademoiselle de Valfonte's parents and her physicians,
that in a few months, at the worst, she would be con-
valescent, there awoke in Mrs. Hazelwood's breast that
furious reaction of a long pent-up and controlled hos-
tility. The rocked ideals of self-sacrifice trembled and
fell. She now pictured to herself Grafton summoned
to the side of his betrothed,—did she already guess the
less virile, the more vacillating side of his dual and im-
pressionable nature ?—She saw the girl's touching help-
lessness and youth, the force of custom and conven-
tion, of an honorable man's fidelity to a plighted word,
and an unutterable jealousy filled her. The mere name
of Eliane mentioned in her presence chilled her blood
and sent it from her heart. The mere thought of her
made her hands of ice and her cheek pale. At the
idea that Grafton would see her again misery rent her
soul. At all costs, at all perils, she would chain him to
her side. He should stay in America, in America!
Then she remembered that soon she would not be alone,
that she would be leaving the big town where in the
rush and impetus of many conflicting interests indi-
viduals slip about unobserved, or at the best insignifi-
cant. And that in the new conditions which the season
of removal would bring, she and Alford would neces-
sarily be much less together.
About Grafton's past she now developed the eager
curiosity which expressed itself in many childish and
POPPJEA
ingenuous ways. Poppsea was frequently heard to ask
irrelevant questions about the lives of men. How could
a man be dissipated, she would say, when it meant dis-
gusting publicity ? Were not all men of character re-
served ? She waited for an answer with painful tension.
The mind haunts and touches on what it is full of, as
the murderer returns to the spot of his dark deed. A
man's past lives forever in the heart of the woman who
loves him, and tortures it. Elizabeth of Thuringia dies
of her lover's lightness. Justice meted by the prince
of this world.
" Fast men,"—that vague word to honest women,—
what were the relations of such men to her sex ? Was
it possible that men, refined, cultured, polished, could
ever have found delectation in the company of women
coarse and unrefined ? And why ? Did they not shrink
at the contact as she herself would shrink at that of
anything that was low or impure ? Was not decency an
attitude of grace ? How could one love what was un-
graceful, then? For the thought of anything impure
in the magnificent emotion that swayed her did not once
cross her imagining. She had read the lives of great
men and knew that only a few of them had lived their
youth in absolute sobriety and wisdom. Why should
she, thenl exact these things from the man whom she
loved? Yet the thought that others had been before
her in his life filled her with despair. Of him she asked
no questions. Of his past he never spoke. But she
was not grateful, grateful as she should have been, for
there are things it is best should never be revealed to
a sensitive and loving woman.
When others spoke ill of him she told herself, "To
be popular is to be trivial." When they praised him
she was ravished.
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POPPMA
Out of his sight she grew restless and impatient, near
him alone finding a sort of calm,—she who had thus
far lived to charm and draw hearts to her chariot wheels
at last made unto herself an idol. How many gods of
wood and stone, when closely handled, do not leave
their gold upon the hand? How many can bear the
intimacy of worship ?
A man will often sigh for peace and repose in an af-
fection which fills a woman's desire for danger and mys-
tery. Grafton was often more restless than Poppaea in
that he longed to claim and make her his forever. In
the light of her presence he was in constant fear of loss,
of betrayal, of disaster. He knew that this time his
love was serious. Ah, he thought, fair sorceress, from
the trance in which thou plungest men they wake not!
And this he would whisper to Poppaea, leaning over her
hands in her boudoir, or of an evening in her drawing-
rooms. One day he found her eyes could not sup-
port what they read in his own, her lids fell, and a
lovely confusion covered her face with blushes. "I
love you so much," she said simply to him ; "I must
not tell you how much." This was her first absolute
avowal. Then he .closed her beautiful lips with his
own.
CHAPTER XX.
DOPPAiA had spoken the truth when she had told
* Grafton that she was not a coquette. The first caress
had sealed her doom. She would never, never consent to
eat her husband's bread and to dishonor him ; never.
Their fate seemed sealed in that first kiss, and on his
lips she told her lover that she would follow him to the
ends of the world. Pretty talk this of lovers, "the
end of the world"—as if it was easily reached ! As if
one could escape the world even by reaching the other
end of it { It is safe to suppose that there was a small
world which during these weeks and months had not
been quite blind, that while March had blasted itself to
silence in April's showery breath, and even this moist
month had melted into May—ay, and sweet, warm
June was nigh, eyes and tongues had not been all veiled
or hushed to see and chatter of these imprudent ones.
There was one heart which at every foolish word or un-
kind jest throbbed with an inexpressible sorrow, and
this was the heart of the "Young Crusader." Mont-
gomery Craven was now certainly no longer a boy, and
yet he had retained a strangely boyish appearance. He
was very little changed. He had the same sunny smile,
the same curly brown locks, the same directness of
gaze and of speech as when he used to dine off tea
and little cakes at Mrs. Frederick Dalton's, sitting
gazing with wondering admiration at his cousin, Pop-
paea Dalton. He still dropped in sometimes of a Sun-
day afternoon at the former lady's. And there he
191
192
POPPALA
sometimes still met his Cousin Poppsea, for Mrs.
Frederick Dalton and her niece had remained fast
friends.
Mrs. Dalton too was little changed. Her hair had
turned quite white, and she affected somewhat more
neutral tints, but she still blossomed out at times in
startlingly brilliant plumage. She held her own as a
leader and guide of the social folds, and her husband
followed her with exemplary constancy to routs and
balls and dinner-parties. He had an occasional attack
of rheumatism and of ill-humor ; but on the whole she
kept him amused and therefore contented. Dulness is
the most sure destroyer of the conjugal tie. Mrs.
Frederick Dalton was never dull. Although her gossip
was at times spicy and caustic, it was generally fairly
good-natured. She was now a little prone to reminis-
cence,—to regret that the new-rich were wiping out old
customs and manners with their flaunting pretentious-
ness and tasteless display. Yet she thought it wise to
be progressive, and managed to keep up to the tides of
time, admitting that a society into which no new blood
flowed and no freshly minted ducats were admitted
might in time grow stagnant and impuissant.
Sometimes, but much more rarely. Craven would
drop in at his cousins' the Craven Daltons, and here
he found old fogyism rampant indeed. Mrs. Craven
Dalton sat in her colorless, stately, old-fashioned salon,
with its gilt Zpergnes and pale-blue hangings, into which
no lamps had ever penetrated, no candles had ever been
lit, but where the prismatic light of crystal alone veiled
the glare of the flaring gas. There was no fern or palm
or flower in this cheerless apartment. The very bric-a-
brae seemed heavy and severe. There was no fire upon
the hearth. No tea was brought in to cheer and in-
POPP/EA
193
vigorate. Mrs. Craven Dalton, in a high-necked black
frock, with a large cameo pin at her throat, sat warming
her feet over a raging register, while the unlighted log
on a clean, cold, glistening hearth smiled defiance at
such undesirable things as ashes and soot. Here she
held forth upon the ideals of society as conducted in
her youth—forty years ago. How lovely were the
maidens then, how gallant the men, how dignified the
matrons and above all reproach ! Ay, and how faithful
the husbands ! What a change had come over New
York ! No rational enjoyments, no elegance, and no
reserve ; a madcap gallop after money and show, and
general collapse of all that was desirable and delectable.
Mrs. Hazelwood would come in for her share of blame,
and was not dismissed without that degree of comment
as to the details of her career which seemed to betray
in Mrs. Craven Dalton an illogical curiosity.
'' Poppaea Dalton rarely deigns to come and see us
any more,'' she would say, with some bitterness. '' She
is too much occupied with all her new friends." Then
Montgomery would murmur some apology for his
cousin.
'' I read of her banquet in the Times. It must have
been a grand affair, but most injudicious, most ruinous.
Mr. Hazelwood seems very patient, poor man, under
the strain, the trials her frivolity and extravagance must
cause him."
"But Mr. Hazelwood himself is something of a
sybarite, my cousin," Montgomery would reply, depre-
catingly.
'' He used to be a very nice man, a very nice and ex-
cellent person, when my niece married him," the old
lady would say, shaking her head. " Her wild methods
of squandering money may have demoralized his finer
N .
POPPMA
perceptions. I have not seen him for a year, but of
Poppaea I cannot approve."
Then a head would be thrust in at the door ; it was
that of our old friend Mr. Craven Dalton. '' Ah, Mont-
gomery, how are you, how are you, my boy? When
you have finished your visit to madame," and he waved
his hand to his wife in playful courtesy, "come into
my library. We will have a glass of wine together."
"I didn't know you had come," said his wife, with
some asperity. '' I have been alone since three o'clock.
Where have you been all the afternoon ?''
Mr. Dalton would then cautiously enter the folding
doors, and stand with his back to the mantel on tiptoe.
" How's your neuralgia, my dear?"
"Very severe, thank you. Did you stop for the
electrician ?''
'' Bless me, did you ask me to stop ? I thought you
had sent Mary."
"You thought nothing of the kind."
"My memory has, in fact, grown lamentable."
"Oh, your memory is good enough for anything
which interests you !" In this Mrs. Dalton was right.
Loss of memory is only loss of interest.
" My dear!"
" Where have you been since luncheon-time? You
told me you were not going down to your offices to-
day."
"Why, at the club for an hour," replied' Mr. Dalton,
evasively.
"Which club?"
"The Union . . . that is . . . first . . . and then
. . . " hurriedly.
" Where were you going down Twenty-third Street
at two o'clock when Mary saw you ? "
POPPALA
195
"To my tailor's to try on the new overcoat that you
told me I so sorely needed, my dear." Mr. Dalton
smiled blandly.
'' Since when does your tailor have his place in
Twenty-third Street? Mary says you were not alone,"
and Mrs. Dalton frowned darkly.
'' Dickey was with me.''
"Dickey!" Mrs. Dalton's voice revealed volumes
of unspoken scorn, but she decided to keep in her
wrath until Craven should have departed. Needless to
say that his stay, after this internecine encounter was not
prolonged. " Since when does. Dickey wear women's
skirts ? Mary told me she saw you with a lady.''
"Mary was mistaken," said Mr. Dalton, shortly and
decidedly, "and I think your methods of questioning
your maids about my movements in doubtful taste, my
dear.''
"You think so because you fear such questions ; you
put evil constructions upon things which are innocent,
and which are quite natural, quite."
" I do not like that Mary."
" It is not necessary that you should like the females
in my service."
"My dear!" .
" Oh, don't my dear me ! I haven't forgotten Miss
Simpson . . ."
This flying allusion was met with a downcast resigna-
tion. '' I have.''
'' Oh, I dare say. You were never famed for fidelity.''
"Are you joking ?"
"Do I look as if I were joking?" Ah, indeed, she
did not, with her peaked chin, her harsh cruel teeth,
her hard, round eye, and her thin, yellow fingers clasp-
ing and unclasping themselves in the excitement of her
196
POPP&A
monomania. He did manage, after a while, to turn the
subject, when his wife became a lady once more, intel-
ligent and at least rational. Those who force us to
hypocrisy do us incalculable injury. Why did he bear
it ? What bound him to this creature who for twenty-
five years had made his life a hell to him? Was it
possible that under such conditions marriage could be
acceptable to God or man ? Was this espionage of his
every movement, this enforced deceitfulness which he
felt to be cowardly, honeycombing his best moral im-
pulses, which he told himself was her work and hers
alone, really the highest form of human companion-
ship ? What did he fear when he hid from her? What
evil, after all, could she do him, what revenge wreak
that would be worse than this present bondage, this
despicable servitude ? How many hundred times had
he asked himself these questions before ? '' Why do I
bear it?" There was neuralgia always in readiness, the
pain in the chest, the cough, the nerve spasm, the hollow
eye and thinness of the hair, a slight feebleness of gait,
and Craven Dalton's heart, which was of gold, was
penetrated by these signs, and would contract from hate
to pity. And she knew it. On this pity, the last re-
source of the unloved, undesired woman, she played a
thousand times a day. She knew how to bait it, awaken
it from torpor, nurture, and then torture it. It was her
form of sensuality. It gave her sensations. It had its
flavor, its gusto, as has the putrid game and cheese to
the tired palate of the epicure. To see him flinch and
falter when he would reply angrily to a taunt or insult,
lower his voice in gentleness to meet her fretful sally,
was a semblance of that old affection she had won and
held for so brief a period twice in her life ; which she
had on both occasions found hateful, and had thrown
POPPAEA
197
from her, but whose remembrance haunted her woman's
vanity with a sense of irrevocable privation. Why has
not the lenten litany an invocation against such woes
as these ? People laugh at the hen-pecked husband, he
is the jest of fiction and of drama ; do they know what
it means ? what daily, hourly abasement, what hideous
mockery ? what degradation, not only of victim, but of
executioner ? And it is perhaps the best and highest
who give themselves to suffer thus. For Mrs. Craven
Dalton had nothing with which to chain or charm. She
did not know that when woman loses the sensuous she
must gain the spiritual attraction, that possessing neither
there is nothing left.
It was after his short call upon this unhappy pair that
Montgomery Craven wended his way to Mrs. Hazel-
wood's. He had gone thither with a purpose, and
when told his cousin was indisposed, he got out his
card and asked the butler to say to his mistress that
if her illness was not a serious one, he begged she
would allow him to come for a few moments to her
boudoir. When he was presently admitted he found
Poppaea stretched out at full length upon a lounge,
in her robe de chambre. Her head rested on a lace
cushion; she was deathly pale, and her eyes were
closed. Something about her on this day he never
forgot,—something in her face which we see on the faces
of those who die young, or at least who die before the
sands in their brief hour-glass have run their course,—a
sunken look revealing internal devastation.
'' Pig !'' said Poppaea, opening her eyes. The apos-
trophe was certainly not alarming. The impression of
tragedy dwindled in a moment to the comic.
"Why such an affectionate greeting, ma cousinef
Take care, you will turn my head !" He drew a light
198
POPPsEA
chair close to her sofa, and sat himself squarely into
it.
'' Pig !'' Poppaea now raised her head and rested it
upon one hand. Her slender feet protruded from the
lacy films of her skirt upon the carved, gilded foot-
stool which Craven had deftly pushed under them.
'' Pig for not having been to see a fellow for a whole
long month !"
'' Such a lonely fellow, too ?'' said Montgomery, with
a very slight interrogative inflection.
A faint flush rose to Poppaea's brow. "A lonely
fellow too.''
"My cousin," said Montgomery Craven, gravely,
"I am, I know, very indiscreet to intrude upon you
when you are ill.''
"Your apologies, my cousin," said Poppaea, imi-
tating his tones, "are, methinks, a trifle tardy. All I
ask of you, now that you have forced my door, is to
stay a long time, and make yourself as agreeable as pos-
sible."
"Ah, but if I camd to make myself disagreeable?"
" Even then it is better than napping."
"Were you asleep ?"
"No."
" I thought not."
"Why?"
"You had not the expression of rest."
Poppaea was silent. She moved a little uneasily
under his glance ; it nevertheless held her with pene-
trating fixity. His dark eyes glowed like forge fires
on winter nights. "Yes, this time, as perhaps often
before, I have come to make myself disagreeable to you."
"Make haste, then." Poppaea clasped her hands.
Montgomery noticed that they trembled.
POPPALA
199
" May I speak very seriously to you, without circum-
locution, without masquerading? It is time, between
you and me, that such empty folly should cease.''
His voice was so earnest and so penetrating that the
young woman became very grave. "You may so
speak."
"Very well; are you determined to lose yourself?
Yes? don't trifle with me any more ! Poppaea, I have
come to try and save you.''
There was no sleep now certainly in her widely-
opened eyes. "It is too late !" she cried.
"Poppaea!" He started from his seat, seizing one
of her hands below the wrist.
She wrenched it from him impatiently. '' Peace, boy ;
I tell you my fate is sealed !"
He had come to tell her what people were saying,
and she had met him with defiance. For a moment he
was paralyzed. "You love the man, then ?''
" I love him."
'' And you dare to say this to me ?''
" I dare," she faltered.
" Oh, my God !" said Montgomery. There was such
a hopelessness in this cry that Poppaea was moved.
"There, there !" she said, softly. " It is not as you
suppose."
He had covered his face with one of his hands ; it
was of ashy hue. He took her outstretched fingers in
his for a moment and examined them. '' Ah, little
hand," he said, "that deals in death-thrusts, how often
have you pitilessly torn my heart!"
" My poor boy !"
"You may say it,—I am most poor,—poor in spirit,
Poppaea, which is the worst of all poverties."
"Ah, Young Crusader ! that is what he called you."
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POPPrEA
" Don't!"
" I know it seems cruel because you liked him,—and
now, associated together as you are . . ."
"Yes, I liked him. I liked him."
'' And this forfeits your friendship ?''
" Poppaea, don't let us talk of him. I cannot trust
myself. Our scores, his and mine, are not for to-day.
To-day I think only of you. I know you, Poppaea.
You could not cringe as I have done,—I who have
stayed and watched the only woman I have ever adored
drift farther and farther away from me. Yours will be
bold measures ; your heart is a strong one. Once
given, it will be forever. You will face the world or
else seek death."
" Oh, I don't want to die now that I love !" said the
young woman.
'' I wish that you were dead.''
"Dear Montgomery, I, too, have wished it in my
lonely past, but not now."
'' Ah, if it had not been for those women who depend
upon me—my poor mother and the girls, do you think
I could have lived? Ah!" he continued, his whole
face transfigured into an exultant beauty, '' it has been
a great love I have had for you, Poppaea !"
She bowed her head.
" I do not blame you in the least,—God forbid ! never
for a minute. Because you laughed at and with me
when you were sixteen, it was no reason that I should
love you. But you see I did, and it has never left me
—the pain And it has seemed to me that such a love
—such a great love, which means so much in a young
man's life—more than women know—might perhaps be
useful to you, might enfold you, guard you from evil
. . . Ah, Poppaea, use it !"
POPPJEA
201
She was sobbing now, her head on his arm. He
remained with her nearly an hour. When he left her,
her passion for Grafton was elevated, purified, spiritual-
ized, had the swift wings and feet of an angel. She
had promised Montgomery to do nothing rashly, to
pause, reflect, weigh. It all seemed easy, so exalted
had been the hour spent with this man in the gloaming.
A decisive incident occurred to shape her course.
She had written to Grafton not to come to her on the
day of her interview with Montgomery, whose influence
had wrapped her in an aureole of good resolutions.
But at four o'clock of that afternoon she received a
letter which made it imperative that she should see him
directly. There was not a moment to be lost. She
wrapped herself in a dark cloak, drew a thick veil over
her hat and face, and sallied forth on foot, as far as a
neighboring square. Here, unobserved, save by a sad,
thin-faced little boy who was selling evening papers and
in whose hand she slipped a half-dollar, with a gentle
word, she found and ensconced herself in a cab. The
child opened and closed the door for her, touching his
greasy cap. 'Til shut the door for ye's, ma'am," he
said, with a sort of compunctious gratitude which as-
sumed this habit of courtesy. His lip trembled with
pleasure as he looked at her gift with a sort of terror
lest she should repent and tear it from him. His forlorn
figure with its aspect of one unused to kindness haunted
her as she drove away. To the driver she gave the
address of Grafton's apartments. She felt she could
not submit to the delay of a note sent to his club or
rooms. Action in her present condition seemed the
only bearable course.
CHAPTER XXI.
HERE was a cold moisture on her forehead and a
band of ice upon her heart as she alighted at the
vast apartment house where Grafton had his chambers,
or rather occupied a spacious floor to himself. Having
dismissed her conveyance she entered boldly, asking
the negro janitor, who stood in a species of cage on the
ground floor, if Mr. Grafton was at home and alone.
After a whispered colloquy with the elevator boy, the
latter undertook to carry the message ; it was to the
effect that a lady wished to see Mr. Grafton on impor-
tant business, and particularly to know if he was free
from visitors. After what seemed an interminable delay,
the youth returned to the waiting-room where Poppaea
had found temporary refuge, and told her that Mr.
Grafton was at home and alone. '' A lady," to a lover
who is more than half a lover, can mean but one, and
only one, the beloved, always desired, always possible,
always awaited.
There had been some talk of an entertainment at
Grafton's rooms, at which one or two young married
women had promised to do the honors. His apartments
were not only comfortable, but spacious, and eminently
luxurious. In the last mad weeks, however, of their
loving they had shrunk, he and Poppaea, from meeting
prying and critical eyes. It was, therefore, naturally,
the first time that Mrs. Hazelwood had crossed his
threshold. Upon it he himself met her, and carried
more than led her into his library. "Angel!" he
POPPMA
203
whispered to her, "I felt it to be you. What blessed
luck brought you to-day, when both my men are out
on errands for the rest of the afternoon, and I am sole
possessor of my den?" So saying, and throwing away
his cigarette, he drew her towards the fire, helping her
rapidly to disengage herself from her encumbering
cloak. He seemed almost afraid to speak lest she
might be some evanescent wraith that one warm breath
of his would cause to vanish into mist.
He was dressed in a short velvet smoking-jacket and
a somewhat unconventional necktie. Its color, of'a
warmer tint than he usually selected, cast a glow into
his habitually pale face which was distinctly becoming.
His tall, straight figure in its semi-undress looked pecu-
liarly graceful. Poppaea thought she had never seen
him so attractive ; and the respectful and almost timid
homage of his attitude filled her troubled soul with
gratitude and admiration. " I should not have minded
your servants," she said. "I have come to see you
for such grave reasons that the conventionalities may
well be discarded. It is only for a moment I will detain
you." She spoke in her usual slow and quiet tones,
but there was in the droop of her whole person some-
thing so despairing that the half-formed smile her first
words had brought to his lips—it was but three days
since she had told him that she would follow him to the
ends of earth—died, and an anxious frown knit his
brows. "When I told you that I loved you, Alford,"
she continued, in the same dull, spiritless voice, " I
told you the truth. I have found no force to resist the
torrent of your pleading. Robust, rich, self-satisfied,
surrounded by henchmen and parasites, with some few
true friends—truer and better than I—I could have
found enough perfidy"—she stopped—"nay, let me
204
POPPSEA
say courage, for it does need some courage, to face dis-
honor with you—to leave—I think I have never spoken
of him to you before ... I could not. To-day he . . .
we . . . yes, we—are ruined. Not only ruined, but
there is a blot upon a name which heretofore has at
least been honest. Well,—it seems," she smiled mourn-
fully, " that after all it was poor Hazelwood, not I, that
was to drag it to the dust. It seems—here—read this
letter—but no, I can more briefly tell you all. Alford,
since three years—more perhaps—he, my husband, has
known that he was bankrupt. He knew it when he
urged me to extravagances which were wrecking not
only ourselves—that was nothing—but others. Hun-
dreds, it seems, will suffer in the catastrophe which, if
he could not avert for us, he could at least have softened
to them. The blight which has visited his plantations
has only hastened impending downfall. And after this
letter just now received I have another here, a tele-
gram." She drew the yellow envelope from her breast.
"He is alone, broken-hearted, very ill. My brother
cables me to cross at once. I came to ask you—Al-
ford—'' She rose as she spoke ; she stood before him.
There was something majestic in her figure as she raised
her large eyes and scanned his features. '41 came to
ask you, would you have me forsake him . . . now ?''
They stood immovable, facing each other, white as
two spectres in the growing gloom. A shiver swept
the man. He drew in his breath quickly, with an
ejaculation she could not catch. He stepped backward
and put out his hands before him, as one does stum-
bling, groping, and fearful in a dark night. There was
a moment's pause. " No," he said.
" My king ! my king !" she cried, and fell at his feet.
She threw her arms about his knees and clasped them.
POPPMA
205
He raised her quickly ; his manner was almost cold.
" Of course you will start immediately," he said, in a
dry, calculating accent. '' How can I serve you ? There
is a steamer to-morrow, I think. I can find out all de-
tails. Stay ! I will send Craven—Montgomery Craven
to you directly. It is more fit he should do these things
for you than I. He is a relative ; I am nothing to you.
I don't wish to harm you. Have you some woman be-
sides your servant to accompany you? It is a long
journey alone, as you will be." His voice broke a
little. She clung to his hand. " Don't dear," he said.
"Help me !"
"Oh," she cried, "Alford! Alford! Is this fare-
well?"
" I am yours body and soul," said the man.
"Iam yours body and soul," said Poppsea, solemnly;
and with these words she left him.
The world knew all in less than twenty-four hours,—
knew that the house of Hazelwood had fallen with an
awful, overwhelming crash, and that Mrs. Hazelwood
had sailed at once to join her husband.
When she reached, at last, the bedside of the pitiable
wreck he had become, there was no room left in her for
any sentiment, nay, any memory, for aught but inex-
haustible compassion. The drain upon her sympathies
was not to be a very prolonged one, for very soon Leigh
Hazelwood went down and sank into the darksome
valley. His head pillowed upon her shoulder, his
glazing eyes in speechless misery seeming to ask for-
giveness for the sad plight in which he left her to con-
tend alone. The fever which had killed him had half
done its fatal work upon his nurse, and, a week after
she was widowed, Poppaea was raving in the clutches of
the malady—an epidemic in Ceylon that year—which
2O6
POPPALA
had prostrated and destroyed her husband. She was
cared for at the house of a married brother of hers who
had settled in Ceylon, and whose English wife tended
her with every loving kindness. This brother's all had
been swept away in the general cyclone. He decided,
nevertheless, to remain in Ceylon, to pick up the frag-
ments of his broken hopes.
Veronica had wished to come to her daughter, but
had been peremptorily dissuaded from doing so. The
folly of undertaking so long and expensive a journey
was explained to her. It was decided that she should
remain in America, and make her home permanently
with Rudolph in the West.
Poppaea awoke from her delirium to find herself as-
sailed by creditors. Her very name, once so proudly
borne, seemed suddenly to have become a herald of
contumely. Broken in health, dispirited, powerless,
nearly a year had passed before she found the vigor
needed to return to her native shores. Here she
put at once everything she owned under the hammer.
Her summer and winter homes were invaded by a curi-
ous idle throng of sight-seers. Her pictures, her brie-
£i-brac, even her laces and jewels, were exposed to care-
less eyes, in the marts of art and commerce, and as
quickly bought at the paltry quarter of their pristine
values. The proceeds were at once liquidated towards
meeting the dead man's liabilities.
She had reached New York late one afternoon, and
had by invitation been driven at once to her Uncle
Frederick Dalton's house. Here both her aunts re-
ceived her with that perfunctory dejection of mien the
circumstances enjoined. It was deplorable that on this
very first evening of her home-coming Mrs, Hazel-
POPP&A
207
\yood overheard by accident a conversation between
these two ladies. In the small sitting-room, whose doors
had imprudently been left ajar, and which communi-
cated with the apartments assigned to her, she was made
an unwilling listener to some comments which confirmed
in her an already half-formulated resolve.
'' It will come very hard upon her uncle now,'' Mrs.
Craven Dalton was saying in a plaintive voice, '' to have
to assist Poppaea. We are really very much cramped.
She was always extravagant and more or less unreason-
able, and I think is much to blame in this whole miser-
able business. Craven will not see it thus, but . . ."
"Of course you cannot expect Frederick to do
everything," said Mrs. Frederick Dalton, with height-
ened voice. "He has already advanced money to the
boys, and gives an income to Veronica. It was simply
criminal in Hazelwood to make this entire family so de-
pendent upon him, and then plant them upon their
relatives in this way. I don't blame Poppaea the least
in the world. She cannot help having married a scamp,
poor girl! so young as she was !"
"You made the match, Flora," said Mrs. Craven
Dalton.
"I did nothing of the kind. Hazelwood fell head
over heels in love with her. How could I help that ?
It was considered an excellent thing. So you and
Craven thought, too, at the time."
" I never approved," said Mrs. Craven Dalton. This
was possible, for disapproval was the key-note of this
lady's character.
"The question is what your husband will join Fred-
erick in doing. The burden must be divided. Mont-
gomery Craven has been most generous in offering
assistance, but we cannot, of course, hear of it. He is
2o8
POPPMA
only just independent, and has his mother and those
girls on his hands, poor fellow ! They are very unat-
tractive and will never get husbands, that's plain to see.
It would never do at all, people would talk. Poppaea
cannot be too circumspect. After all, we can only fur-
nish the two women with a mere subsistence, since
everything superfluous would instantly be claimed by
creditors. Montgomery Craven is attending to the
assignment. I hope there can be a peaceful, decent
settlement for the family's sake."
" All this talk is so unpleasant!"
"Of course it's unpleasant, much more for us who
have children and grandchildren than for you and
Craven who have nobody but yourselves.'' The only
son, Freddie, had married a Boston maiden who wore
her smooth hair nailed upon one hairpin, drawn back
indeed so tightly that one wondered if she could close
her eyes even in sleep. She wore no heels to her shoes,
belonged to home-culture classes, had earnest convic-
tions on many unpronounceable subjects, ate griddle-
cakes for breakfast, read Browning aloud to her slum-
brous young lord, and bored her gay mother-in-law
passably.
" No, thank God ! I have brought no children into
the world to make unhappy,'' said Mrs. Craven Dalton,
with meaning.
"I echo your ejaculation," said Poppaea, appearing
in her mourning garments just within the door-way.
She advanced slowly into the room. "My dear aunts,"
she said, with the old lightning gleam of her bewitching
smile, in which there lurked a touch of mischief, "I
wish to tell you, for I think it honorable,"—she em-
phasized the word, — "that I have heard every syllable
that you have been uttering.''
POPPMA
209
" Nothing very terrible, then," said Mrs. Frederick
Dalton, a little defiantly.
"My dear? . . ." Mrs. Craven Dalton had flushed
with consternation.
" Nothing at all terrible," said Poppaea, "and it will
be far less so when I assure you that for to-day and to-
morrow, and for as many years as I survive, I will—so
help me God !—never accept any favor from you or
from my uncles. To you, Aunt Flora, I owe much
kindness. When I was a child you were very good to
me. I am grateful to you for the past; and for a few
thoughtless words inadvertently uttered and overheard,
I bear you no ill-will, no grudge whatever. We shall, I
trust, remain the best of friends. To you, Aunt Car-
oline, I owe much less. You have often in words been
extremely unkind to me, and I know that you have
frequently maligned and traduced me. But I forgive
you, because yours has always seemed to me an em-
bittered and unhappy soul. And now, mesdames,
Olympe and I"—Olympe had clung to her mistress—
"will take ourselves and our modest belongings to a
neighboring hotel to-night, and from henceforth Poppaea
Hazelwood will not be your incubus or your debtor."
There were many protests, but Poppaea remained firm.
She left the Frederick Daltons' house within an hour.
Although such breaks as these may be patched and
pieced, they are very rarely effaced. The ladies Dalton
had been humiliated. We do not quickly forgive one
who discovers our smallness. Then they were both
roundly scolded by their respective husbands, which
did not tend to soften them towards their niece. " The
poor child has had enough wounds without her near
relatives adding a drop of gall," said Craven Dalton
to his wife, for once the aggressor.
o
2IO
POPP^EA
"We said nothing but what was most natural," re-
plied Mrs. Dalton, with unusual meekness.
"It was most imprudent, and servants about too,
my dear. She was generous to us when she was
wealthy. Look at that clock and vases ; those black
pearl studs she sent me from Paris ; the magnificent
gifts of flowers that never failed upon your birthdays,
and at Christmas and Easter, and all the money she
gave to your hospital. This thing has made me sick."
Then Mrs. Craven Dalton looked up at the clock, a
gift of Poppsea's, and remembering the flowers and
the hundred presents to her and to her husband, she
winced.
"It was all Caroline's fault," Mrs. Frederick Dalton
was saying to her spouse ; '' she is a nasty old thing,
and I owe it all to her.''
" Why, then, did my niece leave my house?" asked
Mr. Frederick Dalton, sternly.
"Why, of course I deplored the situation."
"Women's tongues ought to be cut out!" Mr.
Frederick Dalton glared, terrible. "I wouldn't have
had this happen to my poor brother Harry's daughter
for anything in the world.''
Then Mrs. Frederick Dalton began to weep. "You
ought to take my part after all my sweetness to that
girl. Didn't I make her marriage for her, and has
she had no fun out of it, will you tell me,"—she was
glad her sister-in-law was out of hearing,—"with all
the splendor she has had for years? She_is an un-
grateful minx."
Frederick Dalton, being tenderly attached to his wife,
and by nature averse to ruffled placidity, concluded to
kiss and forgive, mentally deciding that Poppaea had
been indiscreet, hasty, and wilful,
POPPMA
211
Poppsea sent for Montgomery; he arranged every-
thing. A few hundreds of income were wrested for her
from the rental of the manor at Dalton and its adjacent
farms. She herself found a home and seclusion in the
gardener's cottage. "I might teach the village girls
music," she said, trying to be cheerful. But this was
not found to be a necessity.
Olympe, as I have said, had clung to her mistress,—
clung with that tenacity and faithfulness which is some-
times found in the Gallic servitor. She may have had
a drop of the stanch Breton blood in her veins, to
which the "seigneur" was more than democratic
equality. With hot tears of indignation she refused to
accept more than the quarter of her former wages, and
through wit and thrift managed to look neat and pre-
sentable, while herself manufacturing all of her mis-
tress's wardrobe. To this mistress she was absolutely
devoted. What it was in Poppsea which aroused this
passionate loyalty in many hearts the records do not
tell us. Perhaps these impelling forces are not nameable.
CHAPTER XXII.
A ND Grafton ? had he alone forgotten her ? But to
explain or grasp the misunderstandings of lovers
is to play at a game to which we bring neither intuition
or knowledge. Endless question which baffles acumen.
Amor—what means it if not the blind god, who un-
hinges all accepted standards of action ? The irrational
enlargement or belittlement of causes and effects. To
the critical onlooker what more absurd than this es-
trangement between lovers ? Of all things we may say
with Crates, 4' What I have learned is mine,'' but what
Amor teaches us to-day we must unlearn to-morrow.
His lessons are of the quality of Lucian's man, who
milked his goat into a sieve.
Why did she not write ? Why did he not speak ?
Why did they not meet ? Why ? Ah ... ! is it not
at once the rapture and the torture of this master that
he is unreasoning when he should be wise, hot when he
should be cold, timorous when he should be bold, cap-
tious when he should be indulgent, courageous when he
should be prudent! If Grafton seems to us to have been
strangely perfidious, do not let us judge him too harshly.
The story of his delinquency may lie in Poppaea's mind
or character, not in his own.
To judge them both we must return to those first
weeks of her recovery in far-away Ceylon, when all her
destiny lay in the balance. " Was this the landmark ? "
Futile query that many a saddened human creature asks
looking back on time's warnings. When Poppaea rose
212
POPPJEA
213
from her bed of illness, it was not the Poppaeawho had
said to Alford Grafton, with all the fire of youth in her
veins, " In body and soul I am thine." No. It was a
languid, bloodless being, whose pulses fluttered feebly,
whose feet tottered, whose heart beat low. His letters
were brought to her. The first, written just after their
parting, and which she had but glanced at in those days
of her husband's illness, were guarded, as was delicate,
and did not jar upon her mood. Then came brief
messages at the time of her husband's death, offers of
service, manly, with no hypocrisies and no affectations.
She read them now for the first time. Following
these, carefully worded but conclusive, were offers of
pecuniary assistance in the entanglements of her terrible
position. All, save for one or two bleak, brief, vague
telegrams directed in lucid moments of fever or in the
flaccid restlessness of convalescence, had remained un-
answered.
Then there had come others, earnest, pleading,
sharply imploring to be allowed to come to Ceylon.
The mere thought alarmed her; robbed her of her
first vestige of returning strength. It sent her back for
a week to her couch, hugging her pillow, wretched,
cowering. She did not love him any more. Nobody
loved anybody any more. Did Grace,—Grace was the
English sister-in-law,—did Grace love Henry? Pshaw!
she pretended to. All was shadow. There was nothing
real in life except the cup of chicken soup that came to
her at twelve, and the cooling lemonade of the after-
noon. These were real; her thin dry fingers clutched
them. These eased her parched thirst and febrile
hunger a little ... a little. Alford Grafton ! Ah,
yes, the man,—the terrible one, the avenging spirit
who had so tortured,—yes, he had tortured her.
POPPALA
Pleasure? How much? What was pleasure? A
pretty word,—nothing else. She remembered that he
was engaged to be married. Well, why not? To a
French girl called Eliane. Well, why not? Why not
marry her? If people wanted to marry, why not?
Then she drew up the sheet over her neck, and half
over her hair, and dozed; she was so tired. All she
wanted was to be left in peace. His letters? Here
they were ; she read them ; she could count them.
Sentences which once would have shivered through her
from head to heel left her absolutely calm. Sometimes
her sister-in-law would play and sing: she was a fine
artist. Poppaea had loved music. Her sister's songs
sounded to her now like a foolish droning, which awoke
no echo in the corridors of her breast.
Her little niece's pet dog died,—a dear dog full of
playful tricks,—and there were tears. They bored
Poppaea. Why did people cry for a dead dog ? How
silly! Pathetic ? What was there of pathos in such
things? She fretfully told the nurse not to let the
young girl come into her room ; she feared she might
tell her she was glad the dog was dead. He was ugly,
hideous ; she hated him !
Yes, Eliane,—that was the girl's name,—a pretty
enough name. Well; let them marry, so she heard
of them no more.
She was simply suffering from exhaustion of the
nervous centres,—that was all,—an exhaustion common
after mental shocks, still more so after such accompany-
ing physical disorders. There was nobody to write
Grafton the truth,—nobody but herself. Worn out by
his more frequent, urgent, and ardent letters, terrified
at the vision of his possible arrival, not only in Ceylon,
but at her brother's house,—where his presence would
POPPALA
215
be as unwelcome as it would be unexplainable,—Pop-
paea wrote to him ... at last. It was an irritable, an
irritated letter; almost an angry one. There lay in it
none of that atmosphere of love and languor which had
for him pervaded her every gesture, her every word,
and had been her most winsome charm. Was this
pettish, hysteric creature, who dismissed all his helpful
suggestions with a cold " I have brothers," and who
seemed to fear,—actually to fear to meet him again,—
his Poppaea ? that splendid white swan by whose side
he had sailed a summer's night through strange glad
waters to such sterile shores? she who had dwelt in
his memory with an infinite hope and promise ? And
this after months of racking anxiety and of silence;
or at best of brief messages, incomprehensible to a man
impatiently waiting the summons that never came. It
is not too much to say that this last letter was to
Alford as a death-thrust. He knew that she had been
ill, but, manlike, reflected that were he ill it was she and
she alone that he would wish beside his couch,—she,
the godlike creature whom he had so worshipped.
Experience had taught Grafton distrust; that distrust
which when it has once entered the mind is never more
dispelled. Too intelligent for fatuity, he fancied now
that he saw the truth. The romantic prestige that
environed him when he was the lover, the forbidden
lover whom women adore, had with her own freedom
vanished to nothingness. With the liberty to bestow
herself, she had discovered that she did not care for him
after all. " In her first passion woman loves her lover;
in all the others what she loves is love," and a husband
she certainly did not want, and this he would be to her
now, or nothing. No doubt she had lied to him ; all
women lied. He soiled her in his thought, accusing
POPPALA
her of monstrous turpitude. He had been no first love
of hers. Had he not heard of her former love-affairs,
even here in Paris ? In his restlessness he had crossed
the seas to be nearer her. Even here they were spoken
of and dwelt upon. How could he be sure that they
were exaggerated ? Close his ears as he might to every
word breathed upon her name, there were now myriads
who had suffered at her husband's hands, who, once
jealous of her elegance and her beauty, were not loath
now to dwell upon her fancied faults. And in her
silence and indifference these trifles grew. One more
wild letter he wrote, asking her the direct question,—
had he been duped ? Did she desire henceforth to be
rid of him ? yes or no ? He demanded absolute frank-
ness. To this no answer came.
Two months later, wounded and outraged, he led
Mademoiselle Eliane de Valfonte to the altar.
For Eliane had not duped him ; Eliane seemed to
care for him still. Radiant with renewed health, her
fair, fine beauty enhanced rather than marred by the
long confinement from light and air and sun, it was a
firm little hand with which she bade him welcome, a
firm will with which she riveted once more the chain
which her keen girlish insight had well seen was loosen-
ing. For there had been a breach between them ; then
a re-knitting of the tie. Eliane had heard of Mrs.
Hazelwood. Eliane had felt that here was a dangerous
rival. Is there not always some one to enlighten us in
such suspicions ? some kind Samaritan to pour, not oil
and balm, but vinegar and gall into our sores? Eliane
knew something, therefore, and guessed more. Sleep-
less, inventive, adroit, this child-woman baffled the
man of the world. It was she who managed that he
should hear those tales of Mrs. Hazelwood, to which
POPPsEA
2l7
he gave no credence, but which Poppaea's own action
seemed finally to verify.
Here at least was youth and innocence. For clever
as he was, Alford Grafton did not know his fiancee very
well. What a contrast was her affection to the torment
that this cruel coquette had inflicted upon him,—nay,
the insults ! for she had insulted him. Had there been
some kindly and gentle woman near to open his eyes
to the truth, he might have been more patient. He
had made no confidences. There was none. He
entered, like all philosophic minds, into that phase of
feeling which throws balance into chaos. After all,
what did it all matter? Was not anything preferable
to this hell of uncertainty? Why sacrifice Eliane, to
whom in honor he owed himself, to a mere chimera,—
she, the courageous child, she whom no illness, no
absence, had weaned from her allegiance, from her ex-
cessive, her only love,—she whom every one else
wanted? No man is quite devoid of vanity. They
were married.
His letter had reached Ceylon after Poppsea's de-
parture. It followed her for many weeks, delayed, re-
posted, returned ; and finally, readdressed, restamped,
almost unrecognizable, it lay in the little post-office at
Craven, whence it was sent to Dalton Manor. Strangely
enough, this letter brought to Mrs. Hazelwood the first
awakening from her torpor. She had heard of his
marriage. Save for a dull thud and ache at her heart,
it had left her almost indifferent. This letter called her
back to earth,—not from paradise, poor Poppaea ! but
from the purgatory in which she had been wandering
misunderstood, aimless and alone. Science reveals
itself slowly. Nervelessness is often mistaken for
heartlessness.
2l8
POPPJEA
That very morning there had been a first premonition;
perhaps Grafton's letter was on the air. There are
those who tell us such things to be possible,—such
warnings, such presentiments. The trill of the morn-
ing birds had shaken her strangely; their song had
entered her blood. They were twittering to each other
under the vines. She sprang from her bed and came
to her window to look at them. Two little brown robins
were at their love-making; they were rubbing their
heads, chattering, as it were, with soft gurgles in their
full throats. A curious sensation ran through Poppaea,
like the sap in a young tree. She drew in her head
quickly, and came back and threw herself across her
bed. Olympe at this moment came in at the door.
Her coarse black-cloth frock was pinned up ; she wore
thick country shoes ; her arms were full of apple bios-
soms. They were bright with moisture; she threw
them upon her mistress's bed. They fell over Poppaea,
wetting her face, her hands, her hair. "More!
more !'' she cried, gleefully crushing the tender things
against her nose and mouth. Their petals rained upon
her. Their perfume thrilled. Outside the birdlings
were busy building their nests.
"How beautiful you are, madame !" said Olympe.
'' Beautiful ?'' said Poppaea, dreamily. '' That is
what Alford used to say to me,'' she thought, and she
trembled. She had remembered him well with her
intellect; this was the first time since her illness that
she remembered him with her heart. The tides of
woman's fitful nature, ebbing and flowing with mystic
moons and waves, welled up and flowed once more
within her. Once more she became a sentient creature,
not a statue, an automaton, a puppet, a being clad in
widow's garments, speaking to expectation, set on
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219
springs, apathetic, with empty hands and an emptier
heart. Beautiful,—was it possible ? Beautiful,—and for
what?
And now that this chapter is half written, we who
read know that it has told us nothing. How can one
enter into those hidden months,—those terrible months
which divided them ? If such things be,—and we know
they occur daily,—this parting of ways, this snapping
of ties,—why stone the one who recalls them, as of old
they stoned the prophets of evil? The ancients slew
an ox for stratagem, and only a cock for courage, and
my hero has lacked both. A sorry hero indeed, but
yet a man, and hence inscrutable. "What fools," in
sooth !
It was that night that she received his letter. She
straightway sent a message to Gertrude Ordway. Mrs.
Ordway had been kind to her in her troubles. Her
friendship had become valuable. She felt weary of her
loneliness. Her cousins, the Cravens, indeed, came to
her now and then. Their colorless converse had seemed
good enough,—had suited her mood. She had books,
a piano for solace, and she went about among her old
neighbors, bearing fruits and flowers and such things
as were left to her to give. For Poppaea had always
been a generous giver. In this her Uncle Craven
Dalton had been right.
But now these things wearied her, and so she sent
for Gertrude. Montgomery Craven just now was away.
Ah, there was one who was always the same, and how
dear ! What a strong heart was his !
When Montgomery had found that his cousin and
Alford were forever separated, he told himself that he
had misunderstood the degree and tenacity of their
mutual attachment, What indeed could one not expect
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POPPMA
of her mobile and variable nature ? So it had come
about that a first impulse to sever all relations with
Grafton had given place to calmer decision. He had
not felt it incumbent upon him to cast away his great
hope and promise, now fast becoming a solid rock of
footing.
The Messenger had flourished. There were those
who said that much of its success was due to the patient
industry of him who early and late sat in its offices.
As yet, to be sure, he was only city editor, directing
local items ; sifting the work of the reporters ; killing
this personal slander; giving wide place to this glaring
and remediable wrong. But in the future there were
golden possibilities !
And what a world was here ! what activity ! what
movement! Here were the latest inventions ; appliances
for the speedy transmission of news ; pneumatic tubes
and telephones ; direct telegraph wires ; long-distance
telephones, bringing far-away cities close to the offices.
From early morning until midnight tumultuous mes-
sages thundered in from all quarters of the globe, plying
the cable, borne on the wings of seas and winds. Swift-
footed messengers running in and about and from all
directions, 'mid the click of the telegraph and the steady
throb of the type-writer.
Here the American editor-in-chief—Alford had as-
sumed the personal supervision of the European branch
of The Messenger—sat at his desk wide awake, vigi-
lant; kept duly informed of matters of moment; regu-
lating editorial notice; suggesting the methods of treat-
ment and of argument; guiding the general policy of
the paper ; sweating, smiling, genial, angry, as the case
might be ; with a nod for one, a stare for another ; dis-
cussing, accepting, ruling out; his hand directing some
POPPjEA
221
cunning defence or covert attack, or sending hurried
messages to the head of the general news department.
Then there was the "making up" of the paper,—the
'' form'' which he or his assistants superintended ; the
hurrying of couriers and special correspondents; rep-
resentatives rushing on secret missions, to points from
which special despatches were required.
What a staff is needed! The compositors, the proof-
readers, the reporters seated at their long table pre-
paring their '' stories ' the editorial writers pungent
and alert, men of scholarship and talent; the literary
editor, who reviews the new books ; the art editor,
whose duty it is to notice this or that picture exhibition,
to announce the victories of the impressionist reaction,
to forecast the triumph of the plein air school; the
musical critic, who damns an opera or lauds an oratorio;
the financial editor, who heralds each breath from Wall
Street; the sporting editor, who furnishes to a palpitant
crowd the description of the last horse-race, or expati-
ates upon the intricacies of foot-ball; the society editor,
who devotes his column to the kaleidoscopic movements
and inscrutable whims of fashion ! A world indeed !
A great power, whose pulses beat in Montgomery's
veins a rhythm of satisfaction.
CHAPTER XXIII.
HTHE reawakening of her spirit had come to her in
* early May. She soothed its demands with nature's
caresses ; she steeped herself in nature. She revelled
in its silence, the mystery of its dark nights, the glory
of its stars. And the Yogi, the Gnani, the Guru adepts
tell us that to those who thus gaze fixedly upon the
firmament the vaunted progress of our Eastern man-
ners shrivel to grotesque comedy, while before them are
unrolled the secrets of the eternal infinite. She plunged
into the bosom of its peace. In the entire absence of
all worldly interests, ambitions, aims, the more poetic
side of her temper had time and space to blossom and
expand. Nothing could be purer, gentler, than the
days that she thus spent at Dalton, more healthful.
Frugal, simple, monotonous, passed the hours. She
hardly counted them, so speedily did their dawn glide
into noontide, their twilight into dusk.
A walk with Olympe of a morning in the meadows,
another at evening alone with her dog, a rest beside
some haystack in the sunshine, sometimes a row upon
the moonlit river with Montgomery. He came to pass
a night now and then at the farm-house about a mile
from the cottage, presumably to see his cousin, Mrs.
Hazelwood, on business. A visit to a needy cottager,
a call from Mrs. Craven and her daughters, a cup of
tea in Poppaea's tiny drawing-room to the ripple of
their mild talk. She had fitted up two rooms for her
222
POPPj&A
223
own uses in the gardener's home, and had made them
sweet with a few relics of former luxury and a pro-
fusion of wild flowers. Her books, her letters, a little
music, absolute repose. Now and then Gertrude Ord-
way, whom she had sent for after Grafton's letter, came
and passed a Sunday with her. Upon this first visit
there had been some confidences between the two
friends. Poppaea had felt a curious sudden longing for
human sympathy,—that form of neutral sympathy that
no handsome woman can ever find in one of the other
sex. "You care for him still," Gertrude had said to
her. This Poppaea had denied. To formulate a send-
ment is a danger. She remembered her friend's words
afterwards. By and by Mrs. Ordway's visits began to
awaken restlessness in her. She brought, as it were,
a whiff of another life. The Stoic philosophers admitted
the difficulty encountered by their disciples in the chat-
ter of outsiders. Such a one vaunts the success of this
man who has married an heiress, of this other, who is
well seen at court. '' Mark you, Alexander has been
made ambassador; Francis has gained a fortune ; Harold
is running for high office; Margaret is loved by a prince;
Elizabeth has danced at a fancy ball, and all went mad
at her grace ; Eleanor's pranks and antics are the talk of
the city,—but what will you have? She is charming."
These things unsettle : "Ah, I, too, was once in it all;
I, too, reigned !" and the listener sighs.
Poppaea began to ask questions, first civilly, at last
interested. Finally one day a tear crept from under
her eyelashes and fell upon her hand. How alone she
was ! Which proves that to the Hindu sage Poppaea
would have appeared but an idle scholar !
The winter came on apace, an icy, pitiless winter.
She stanchly declined all invitations. She never went
224
POPPAA
into the great city,—never once. Olympe travelled
down two or three times at most to make her mistress's
few purchases. Dalton was very cold and far. Even
Gertrude Ordway, devoted as she was, came only twice.
They sat over the fire, and talked late into the night.
Poppaea's eyes sunk into the flame. " You are still the
loveliest,'' Mrs. Ordway said to her, kissing her cheek
at parting. "No one takes your place; they dare
not !"
Now crept in ennui, with its inflexible tyranny,—
ennui, whose rebound is tempest. Through that white
winter, under its pall, the old sorrows, the old raptures,
the old emotions were only smouldering. One morn-
ing in January she woke palpitating, eager. She had
had a strange, wild, fitful dream ; she had seen Alford.
Ah, that dream ! It never left her again. Gertrude
was right,—she loved him still. After this she had but
one thought, not acknowledged but never dormant,—
to see him again !
March opened inexpressibly triste ; patches of snow,
hard, black roads, a sky of steel, high, harsh winds.
Poppaea caught cold ; she began to cough. She would
go out alone, under the bare boughs, a mortal sadness
upon her, an infinite isolation. She now thought of
Grafton incessantly, as one thinks of lost romance and
gayety and sweetest folly, of summer days, of youth.
She remembered that morning near the Lenox Library,
when they had walked together, and he had crushed
her hands upon his breast; and then of other mornings
and other scenes. She smelt again, almost with physi-
cal distinctness, the roses and violets and the hyacinths
he used to send to her. She thought of the night at
the opera, with the Heathcotes, and its overmastering
excitement; then of all that had followed ; her intended
POPPMA
225
flight; her husband's death and ruin, his disgrace and
hers ,• her illness and the hideous blank that followed;
that extraordinary lassitude and apathy that had stifled
her energies, crushed her will, and lost her Alford
Grafton forever. He was right : she had insulted him.
She now saw clearly what he had suffered and believed.
She had destroyed all his letters but the last. This she
now read over and over and over, until she knew its
every line by rote. Ah ! even then, she thought, he
was still mine. Now, too late ! too late 1 She thought,
" If I saw him at this moment by my side, I should
have no force to reproach him. There is no room for
revolt in my soul to-day. I am not only unhappy, but
I know now that happiness is impossible. He and I
must forgive each other. He must forgive me as I do
him, face to face, before I die !"
In such moments she loved him with complete gen-
erosity, asking nothing. She felt that knowing him
infamous, unworthy, she would love him still. She
would creep in with the shadows, leaving, as it were,
her heart's blood out there under the desolate trees.
At the end of March she sent for Montgomery Craven,
unfolded to him her decision, made some necessary
arrangements, and sailed for Europe. All her relatives
disapproved. Even Veronica, from the far Western
home, wrote strongly advising her against this step.
She had come eastward to meet Poppsea upon her
return from Ceylon, but was now living quietly with
her son Rudolph. She was getting old ; her health
was delicate. There were some sharp letters between
brothers and sister, and from aunts and cousins. Be-
fore she sailed she had managed to quarrel with nearly
all of her relations. They declared her unmanageable.
Poppaea insisted upon her independence of action.
p
22D
POPPALA
44 It will be cheaper living in Paris than here," she
said to Montgomery Craven.
4 4 You are too good-looking to go there and live by
yourself," was his expiring protest. He had managed
her affairs very well; he had saved a few hundreds of
income for her from the general wreck.
Mrs. Hazelwood sailed. Olympe, the faithful, fol-
lowed her. When she stepped upon the steamer she
felt like a caged bird set free. She had written to her
old friend, the Princess Tamara, to secure for her, if
possible, a modest apartment in some good quarter of
the town. She had too much pride to apply to one of
her own compatriots. 4 41 am very poor,'' she wrote
the princess, "and intend to live in great seclusion."
Until now her poverty had not weighed upon her, only
her obligations. She had paid to the uttermost
farthing; her conduct in this had been superb.
441 am so proud of you !" Montgomery had said to
her once.
441 am not a thief," she had replied.
"You gave up more than could be expected,—all
your personal property."
44It kills me that I have no more to give them."
Then she would add, with her old touch of fun, '41
don't say I like poverty. I look too horribly in 4 little
dresses they are not my style. I am not the white
muslin and blue sash type !"
Then he had whispered a word to her, but she had
hushed him. 44 All that I have is thine," he had said.
It was with heaviness of soul that he saw her depart.
Never had she been so near to him as during her sojourn
at Dalton ; she had depended upon him, looked to him
for guidance. He told himself that he had exaggerated
the strength of her infatuation for Grafton. Had she
POPPLE A
227
really loved him she would never have let him marry.
Grafton, whom for a brief season he had hated, he now
felt a returning friendship for. There was something in
the man's personality that had always fascinated him.
He could forgive him now because he felt that his love
had not reached the measure of his own. We never
forgive another for loving better than ourselves. Even
that splendid virtue, constancy, has its egoism. They
had felt a caprice for each other,—nothing more.
Nevertheless he foresaw her possible—nay, probable—
meeting with him not without uneasiness. With his
usual immense abnegation, however, he was the only
one of her friends who did not dissuade her from this
step. He had heard her cough. 44 Dalton is cold in
the winters and too dull," he thought, "for a woman
accustomed to queenship." If he had had a throne or
empire to bestow, he would have placed them under
her feet.
CHAPTER XXIV.
'T'HE Princess Leocadia Zamora Tamara was a woman
* of forty-three,—she acknowledged herself thirty-
seven. She looked tall when seated in a drawing-room
or at dinner; her shoulders were broad, her bust full.
When she rose it was found that her limbs were short.
This misfortune was compensated by the beauty.of her
foot, which seemed too small to carry her very decided
weight. This .short arched foot had a somewhat vacil-
lating tread. Her head was rather large, surrounded
by an aureole of red hair, which had in it streaks of
orange. This hair was fine, silky, wavy, very beautiful.
She made much of it; it was combed and brushed for
hours daily, and dressed more loosely than was the
fashion of the moment. Her forehead was extremely
low and broad ; her eyebrows had the arch of imagina-
tion. They, and her short thick lashes, were of a bright
brown. Her drooping eyelids concealed two red-brown
pupils, with orange flecks in them, whose principal ex-
pression was one of extreme distrust. Her short nose
was aquiline, with fervid nostrils touched to pink. Her
mouth—of which the lips were always open, revealing
her upper teeth—was small, red, and juicy. Her chin
had at its base a deep dimple. It fell rapidly, and re-
ceded into a throat whose roundness was pronounced,
presenting the two indentures which are called in com-
mon parlance a double chin. But. if her throat was too
short and thick for beauty, her shoulders and her arms
were handsome, Her hands—she had small wrists—
223
POPPJEA
229
were fat, rosy, dimpled, melting at the touch. Her
movements, indolent, a trifle heavy, were never un-
graceful. She had the attitudes of a lioness couchant.
Her complexion was florid, inclined to flushing ; its
shadows were purple rather than bistre. Her hips were
large; she did not "lace," as women have it, but
allowed herself room to breathe and move with ease.
Her manners were dignified and reposeful. She gave
the impression of an apprehensive thoughtfulness. The
Princess Tamara was never nervous. A clever man
has said that he can distinguish the women who are
addicted to overmuch tea by their garrulity and volu-
bility. The Princess Tamara did not impress one as
having a brain overheated by stimulant.
Her life had been more or less eventful, and more
than less brilliant. There had been, however, one in-
cessant drag upon her faculties and her aspirations.
She attributed this to that tendency to profligate ex-
penditure which the ever-absent and apochryphal
Tamara had inflicted upon her resources. He had, she
insisted, ruined his and her life, and had not loved her,
because she alone, of all women, had refused to believe
in him. There is, in fact, a degree of inability at being
duped which is offensive. The Princess was not easily
deceived. Tamara was one of those persons ingenious
or ingenuous enough—the words here are synonymes—
to attribute all his successes to his talents, his disasters
to evil chance. With this shuffling trait of character
his wife had no patience. She cared little for his in-
fidelities and less for his idleness ; they both seemed to
her gentlemanly enough offences. But she despised
his cowardice; she also thought it advisable that liars
should have good memories.
She was now nursing her ill fortune with such phi-
230
POPPALA
losophy as she could muster. She had lost an only
child, a son, whom she had adored, and she was a dis-
appointed and more or less cynical woman ; but she
was not waspish. There was a certain width in her
nature. The only things she had really cared for,—
except, indeed, this child,—the homage of men and the
intrigues of their politics, in which she sometimes dab-
bled, were slipping from her. She did not take women
seriously, and to them was usually indifferent. There
were two or three women, however, whom she respected
for their cleverness and disliked cordially. She envied
youth and loveliness less than entourage. She was not
jealous. She was a luxurious person. She disliked
stuffy apartments and cheap laces. She chafed at having
to accept them ; for her credit in Paris was none of the
best. She had lived in courts, and was the possessor
of a fastidious taste. Like Agesilaus, she would have
answered one who invited her to listen to the imita-
tion of nightingales, "I have heard the birds them-
selves." She had a fine scorn for the pis-aller. It
must be confessed, however, that her critical quality
was iconoclastic. Of that form which destroys rather
than creates. The possessors of this quality remain
forever ineffectual. Their cleverness is sterile. They
act but do not perform. Viewed largely the Princess
had been a failure. What she liked best, I say, was
slipping from her. She was beginning to surround
herself with that gilded Bohemia, that exotic colony of
Paris, where she had once danced in the most exclusive
circles. Her present apartment, a tiny entre-sol near
the Pare de Monceau, was the rendezvous of people
whom she tolerated rather than desired. Society is a
school-room. It had been hers. She could no more
live without it than a scholar without his books. Ob-
POPPJEA
231
serving minds make amusement a study. To a salon
in the old sense she did not aspire. She would have
found it a terrible bore, as it probably was, even to the
patient souls who met at Mme. Geoffrin's to exchange
epigrams and recite feeble verses. But without any
society she could not have existed. Among the fre-
quenters of her drawing-room were a distinguished
poet, an actor of talent, a musician of genius, two or
three diplomats from extremely distant courts, a marquis,
a duke, a few sporadic Americans. On Sunday nights
she had music ; but as she could not afford to pay the
greatest artists, its quality was not always of the best.
And while her guests rolled out their "Delicious!"
"Exquisite!" "Adorable!" their hostess often kept
a smile of contempt upon her half-opened lips. Then
champagne and cigarettes were passed around ; there
would be a little conversation ; more music, and by one
o'clock she was once more alone.
I have said she disliked some women cordially.
There was indeed one whom she fiercely hated, and this
one was Eliane Grafton, n£e de Valfonte. The world
had at one time whispered that the Princess entertained
a sentimental penchant for the man whom Eliane had
married. The world had been mistaken. She had
simply gauged his intelligence, and had valued it; as
she would have preferred the architect who builds a
capitol to the carpenter who puts up your shelves. To
the acumen of average critics the jay in peacock's
plumes is indistinguishable from the bird himself. But
the Princess knew the difference. She had marked him
from many who surrounded him. They had become
excellent friends,—no more. In those days she had
been on the crest of the wave. Now that she was not
quite there any longer, and that there was a slight shrug
232
POPPAEA
of the shoulders when she was named, a smile of doubt
and of question, Alford Grafton still continued to visit
her, and to approach her, when he met her abroad,
with studied respect. His young wife contented her-
self with a cold and distant nod. Her card had only
been left once upon the Princess, and on this occasion
by a footman. The slight had never been forgiven.
There lay in Leocadia's character a distinct capacity for
resentment. "I have time !" she had said to herself,
with a quiver of her heavy lids, drawing her draperies
about her as if they had been an armor of defence, with
that slowness of gesture so admirable in women of the
world whose dignity is never ridiculous. "That little
hornet must be taught her lesson," and Madame
Tamara laughed softly.
For Poppaea she entertained a genuine and frank
friendliness. They had known each other first at the
court of the Czar. Mrs. Leigh Hazelwood had seemed
to her as charming a woman as desirable an ally. They
had met frequently in Russia, and had ever since kept
up a desultory correspondence. As nothing escaped
the Princess's acute perceptions, she had marked the
ill-disguised agitation which the mention of Mrs. Hazel-
wood's name, falling hap-hazard across the talk of
drawing-rooms, brought to Alford Grafton's usual in-
scrutableness. She had marked this, I say, and then
she had heard things. But it was her own observation
that she always trusted. Long ago she had also con-
eluded that Madame Grafton's limpid blondeness, which
gave to this little lady the transparency of a dewdrop
on a rose, hid a soul preyed upon by the torments of
envy and of doubt. And who knew doubt better than
the Princess,—doubt, that fevered child of final revo-
lution ? It was with peculiar warmth that she read Mrs.
POPP^EA
233
Hazelwood's letter asking her kind offices in securing
a small apartment in a healthful and refined quarter of
Paris, where she might be safely harbored for a season.
With perfect clearness and perspicuity the Princess
saw, in a lightning-flash, a whole horizon of startling
possibility. "When I knew her in Petersburg," she
thought, with that generous acknowledgment of an-
other's power which women of her type accord, "she
could have snapped her fingers at the world. She was
not one of those that a few years more of life effaces,—
no—on the contrary, I will wager that she is doubly
attractive to-day, with that troubling charm which ex-
perience brings. She is one of those women who have
no age," and Leocadia sighed. So she wrote at once
to Poppaea, telling her that the apartment just above
her own—which was in fact vacant—was at her disposal
for moderate payment. It had been prettily furnished
by a newly-married pair whom a sudden caprice had
taken to the Nile, and who had hurriedly offered their
little home, upon tempting and advantageous terms, to
an unhoped-for tenant.
When all is said, it is probable that no move of Mrs.
Leigh Hazelwood's checkered career was more fraught
with portentous peril than the one which the Princess's
enthusiastic note of welcoming sealed forever. It is
certain that, had she looked the whole world over, she
could not have selected a more dangerous guide to her
undisciplined nature.
CHAPTER XXV.
N the very night of Mrs. Hazelwood's arrival in
Paris, the Princess Tamara managed to sound her
on a particular subject which had largely of late occu-
pied this lady's reveries. Having asked Poppsea to dinner
in the entre-sol, while Olympe unpacked her boxes and
superciliously directed the " bonne" whom the Prin-
cess had secured to manage Poppsea's general house-
work, she suddenly said, " The most a la mode woman
of the moment in Paris to-day is little Madame Grafton,
the Marquise de Valfonte's daughter. I think you
know her husband. She met him first through her
brother Max, a good boy, albeit a trifle wild. They
have sent him to hunt elephants in India. Have you
ever seen her ?''
Poppaea's wistful eyes dilated at the pupil. She paled.
" That will do," thought the Princess. " We shall see,
we shall see.''
On the following morning Mrs. Hazelwood made her
first public appearance; she drove in the Bois, in
Madame Tamara's victoria.
Here for the first time she felt overwhelmed by the
change in her condition. In her black frock and simple
toque, reclining in her friend's carriage, she looked
out upon the splendors of the European capital; its
pageant, its crowd, its movement, seemed to strike a
chill into her. Once more that thought, " I too once
reigned !" crossed her brain. A poignant homesick-
ness, a wish that she had followed advice,—had kept
POPPALA
235
away from what could be hers no more,—a longing to fly
back to Dalton and be hidden forever under its leafy
shadows, contracted the young woman's heart. It was
at this crisis of reflection that a momentary blockade
brought them to a stand-still. A high tilbury of extreme
elegance, drawn by a single superb black horse, which
its occupant, a lady in a Derby hat and a stiff collar, was
herself driving, drew up for a moment at a few feet from
them. "That is Madame Grafton," said Leocadia.
Poppaea leaned forward. Eliane bowed to the Princess,
whipped forward her horse, her groom rocking behind
her, and was lost to sight.
"Well, what do you think of her?"
"She is a very pretty woman," said Poppaea, with
effort. Eliane at present was something of an Anglo-
maniac. She had in dress and person that mannish
'' smartness,'' which gives a certain air of insolent self-
assurance.
" Poor Afford !"
"And why poor?"
" Did you look at her well ?"
"I think so."
"And you are observing?"
'1 Passably.''
" Et bien f But Poppaea was mute. " I believe him
to be supremely miserable," said Leocadia, after a pause.
" That would indeed be unfortunate," said Poppaea,
inundated by a violent joy.
"Yes, miserable ; she married a chimera. Grafton is
a man of extraordinary magnetism. He appealed to
some unwholesome, hysteric emotion of the girl's which
she mistook for love. If report tells the truth, the mar-
riage is not a success. He is indifferent and she disap-
pointed."
236
POPPJEA
"Are any marriages a success?"
" Why, certainly, most marriages are !"
" Show them to me."
"I could, a hundred. Here, for instance, among
the bourgeoisie, where the woman is indeed the man's
helpmeet in the broadest sense. Then in the provinces,
even among the aristocracy, there are beautiful unions,
where the tie is honorable, binding, happy."
'' I believe there are many such with us in America,''
said Poppaea, '' where people marry young and for love.''
"That has little to do with it," replied Leocadia.
" If the heart is free and unoccupied, it soon attaches
itself. O my dear ! there is nothing less flattering to
vanity than to realize that the number of marriages de-
pends on the price of corn ; but it is the truth."
A few nights later, Leocadia persuaded Poppaea to
accompany her to the theatre.
In the meanwhile, Mrs. Hazelwood's arrival had been
already heralded, and a few old friends had called. She
had lost some of her prestige, of course. It was con-
ceded, however, that she might be all the more pic-
turesque. To the sleepy American colony her advent
was something to talk about, possibly piquant.
She went to the theatre.
Leocadia had planned everything. It being a warm
night, she had insisted that Mrs. Hazelwood should
wear white. It was the first time she had done so
since her widowhood. Olympe was called to the cau-
cus. She deftly arranged a garment of soft crepe de
chine, with gold Greek bands about it. A tiny white
bonnet crowned with its aigrette Poppaea's hair. There
was not much to be seen of this head-dress save the
aigrette and the hair. It resembled a diadem. "You
look like a queen," Leocadia had said to her,—she
POPPAEA
237
herself wore black lace,—"I shall be an excellent foil."
She smiled, retouching her magnificent chevelure.
She had secured on this occasion two of the most de-
sirable young men of Paris for her box, holding out as
an inducement " a beautiful American.'' They were the
young Due de Portes and his cousin de Lansac. They
were in the box when the ladies entered it. Opposite,
in an avant-scene, sat Madame Grafton ; there was an-
other lady with her. Behind this lady, leaning back, his
lorgnette in one hand, lounged Alford Grafton. At the
movement across the foot-lights, he raised his glass and
gazed over with a certain weariness; but in a moment
there was no weariness, for his glance had. found hers.
Her eyes fell into his proudly, like an avalanche of snow.
He trembled from head to foot. Their first impression
was one of change. "He looks ill," she thought.
" She looks older," he thought. Such impressions are
extremely common after separation, always—when pro-
longed—a danger for lovers. Gradual change is not
perceivable in daily intercourse. This is probably the
cause of illusion between aged couples, who fail to mark
each other's decay. His eyes seemed veiled by un-
known suffering, paled by lassitude ; the temples were
more caved and worn. The complexion had fatigued
tints in it,—leaden. The strong muscular body was
thinner and more angular. The smile was indeed the
same, at once spiritual and mocking, but less frequent.
The fine forehead, higher than of yore, for the hair had
yet more receded, was oppressed and frowning.
When he said to himself, however, "She is older!"
his word held no suggestion of lost charm. On the
contrary, the marks of sorrow which he saw upon her
features swept his consciousness with an immense ten-
derness. Yes, he had tried to hate her,—had hated
238
POPPAEA
her, as we hate the hand that strikes us dumb with
pain. Poppaea ! Poppaea in Paris . . .! at a few feet
of him ! What did she here ? Had he not heard that
she was living in seclusion at her old home ? All the
poem of his brief past with her—brief but haunting—
welled within the man to choke and paralyze.
In one instant Poppaea had become once more light,
air, liberty, the unknown, all that man dreams and
covets. Poppaea with Leocadia ! Why had the latter
not warned him ? But Leocadia was a clever woman.
This he knew. A premonition of her perfidy only sent
through him a feverish hope. She would help him then
to see her again !
Poppaea's toilette seemed to clothe her with divine
harmonies. A man feels that one who can render her-
self so lovely must indeed have infinite resources in
sentiment. "How could I ever, ever leave her?" he
asked himself, racked by memories.
"Who is the lady with Madame Tamara ?" Eliane
spoke in a dry tone. '' I saw them driving together
last week."
"Mrs. Leigh Hazelwood," replied her husband. His
voice was neither husky nor muffled ; nevertheless, it
had lost its usual sonority. This shade of difference did
not escape his wife.
"Ah ! a striking person," said Eliane, coldly.
"They have de Portes and Lansac with them," said
her neighbor. "The Princess has managed to be well
attended to-night. It was not for her that they came, I
imagine."
"So that is Mrs. Hazelwood," said Eliane to her
husband, as they were whirled to their hotel on the
Champs Elysees. There was a note as of brooding
storm in her voice,
POPPsEA
239
"Yes; Lansac, whom I met in the foyer, tells me
she has come to remain some time in Paris ; has an
apartment over the Princess. Yon will call upon her."
Now it is possible that Madame Tamara had guessed
the truth when she had said that Eliane's marriage was
a disappointment. What we obtain with struggle is
apt to be so, except, indeed, to certain sane strong
souls, to whom an obstacle overcome is in itself suf-
ficient reward. As a brilliant writer has said, however,
marriage to a young girl means much more than . . .
marriage. In Eliane's case it had come as freedom
after parental displeasure, fears, anxieties, and illness.
And it had come with dazzling gifts of fortune. Even
the marquis had invested in the journal now, admitting
that a venture which brought an income of over five
million francs^ could hardly be despised, and accepting
this modern key to the unlocking of many sore diffi-
culties, with considerable satisfaction. Trade is only a
blot when it fails of its ends. An ink-spot on the finger
which turns to gold is not a stain, but a jewelled ring.
Eliane, with a superficial nervousness of temperament
which took the place of imagination, was in reality,
like the average French woman, extremely positive
and practical. If her early love-dream had met some
effectual checks, she thoroughly appreciated much
which her marriage had brought to her. She also was
intelligent enough to understand the value of a man
whose own wit and judiciousness could convert a sheet
of paper into a mine. She honored her husband's
force of intellect. There was something else she did
more involuntarily,—she feared him. Yes, spoiled, wil-
ful, naturally tyrannical, she was afraid of him ; afraid of
a certain contemptuous curl of his lip ; afraid of the un-
spoken yet permeating disapproval whLh once or twice
240
POPPsEA
had crossed her path and checked her wishes like an
iron bar. She knew well that to him her pride of birth
was a subject of amusement, and, while this attitude
angered her, she respected it. Now, at his tone when
he uttered a phrase so innocent and usual as "You will
call upon her," an instant rebellion awoke in her, be-
cause she secretly felt, '' This is not a request; it is a
command." Lately her will had clashed with his in a
trifle and had met that wall of adamant against which
she knew it might beat in vain. To-night she was
invaded with a desire, in this thing at least, come what
might, to make no mistake, no blunder, to be wary
and circumspect. She told herself that if the relations
between Alford and Mrs. Hazelwood had been such as
she suspected, he would be less anxious to bring them
face to face, to force her to an acquaintance which could
only be painful for them all. "There can have been
little, if anything, apres tout" she thought. So to his
words, "You will call," she replied, looking up at him
with a certain playfulness, '' Shall you ?''
A gleam of Alford's teeth revealed a laugh which
broke out in a moment into sound, was checked and
broke forth once again, short and agitated. By a gesture
most uncommon to him, to whom familiarity in any
form was distasteful, he took in his thumb and forefinger
the lobe of his wife's pink ear and pinched it. "You
are a sharp little puss,'' he said.
Eliane was astonished. What overpowering interior
excitement must it be which pushed her husband to
such an unexpected action ? The paucity of his caresses,
the absence of all jealousy, the entire liberty which he
accorded his young wife,—Eliane had but recently in-
dulged in a flirtation which her husband seemed not to
remark, — were significant of a lack of ardor, a grievance
POPPMA
241
and a wound to Eliane's very pronounced vanity. Now
her lips quivered. He saw them. What more natural
than that he should have sealed them with a kiss ? But
he did not! he did not! And the rest of their home-
ward drive, whatever inward tumult might distract them
both, was accomplished in absolute silence.
'' Did you notice how Eliane Grafton examined us ?''
said the Princess, on the next afternoon, over a cup of
tea in Poppaea's drawing-room.
" No," said Poppaea.
'' She felt anxious,'' said the Princess.
"Ah ?"
"You are very good-looking."
"Still?"
"Still. What folly! More than ever! I believe
Madame Grafton thinks she has reason to be anxious."
" He married her," said Poppaea, with a littleunjusti-
fiable bitterness.
" He married her," said the Princess, boldly, opening
her curious orange-flecked eyes, "he married her be-
cause you would have none of him, and she was there,
my dear, and voila les homm.es."
'' I have no fault to find with him,'' said Poppaea. She
longed to tell it all,—to pour into one kindly ear at least
the story of her love, her sorrow, her long torpor, and
of the reawakening which had come too late—too late.
It is to be supposed that she did tell the Princess some-
thing,—something, if not all; and Madame Tamara,
who was a good listener, listened on this occasion with
extreme attention. She said nothing, contenting herself
with pressing Mrs. Hazelwood's hands in her own. She
had, however, been genuinely interested, and seemed
moved. She, did not care, as I have said, for women.
The strong personal bias which tinges their opinions
Q
242
POPPAtA
making these appear to her valueless. As to American
women in general, she thought them clever,—the pos-
sessors of a sort of brightness which gives out light,
not heat, and therefore fails to warm. But in Poppaea's
face there was a softness and a fervency that marked her
as unlike her sisters. '' There is something ingenuous
about her,'' she thought. '' Elle est tres liante.'' And
then the love-affairs of distinguished people were at
least worth while. Alford and Poppaea were not com-
monplace. Her detestation of Eliane piqued her appe-
tite for further development.
For Alford she had always felt a strong sympathy.
"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt."
His was a character at any rate, whether for good or
for ill. His extraordinary power of bending others to
himself had always impressed her. An egotist in the
sense of leading her own life in her own fashion, the
Princess had not that poor and stifling selfishness which
narrows and crowds out any deep concern in the human
drama played before us. The failings and weaknesses
of others awoke in her much beside a tendency to blame.
Now resting with half-closed eyes on her sofa, she pon-
dered over the shifts and shams of the scene. Success ?
What was it? How should a man weigh or measure it?
How gauge its worth with ever-shifting standards ? His
riches is another man's poverty, his fame the mere idle
talk of contemporary chatterers. His strength weakness
to a Hercules. His mountain an insect's mole-hill to
dwellers in distant planets, whose satellites are wider than
worlds. To an Achilles, swift-footedness seems indolence.
Then the keen critical analysis of the dying century,—
call it philosophy, if you will. What is it but a foolish
POPPALA
213
good nature devoid of enthusiasm and high aims. You
shall say and do what you prefer now, and all are satis-
fied. There is no principle to commend, no action to
defend. The blood of indignation has ceased to rise
from the heart to the brow. Slights are accepted with
complacency. Insult with a shrug of the shoulders,
possibly a lawyer's fee. Yet all this supineness is hardly
based on the doctrine of turning the other cheek. Ex-
tremes meet, and Christian meekness is curiously exem-
plified in the long suffering of fashion-plates. _ Exaltation
and perversity sometimes speak the same language.
Remorse is out of date. The sinner sins and feels very
comfortable afterwards. Vindictiveness is for sale. She
laughed as she remembered the newspaper man in New
York of whom Alford Grafton had once told her.
'' What is your particular province ?'' he had asked.
" Invective," replied the applicant.
"But what kind of invective, and directed against
whom ?''
"Oh, any kind, directed against any one. I ain't
particular as to the object," was the reply.
What was sacrifice worth, if it did not enlarge and ele-
vate the character ? Of what use performance, if it did
not make brain and muscle more rugged ! It is in the
loss of all beliefs that people listen to the solicitations of
a self-indulgence which borders upon poltroonery.
And then, being herself extremely modern, the Prin-
cess did not .light a taper, fast, and pray, but, sighing,
turned over her cushion and sank to sleep.
CHAPTER XXVI.
RAFTON knew it would be quite impossible that
* he should not .meet Mrs. Hazelwood, unless,
indeed, she should develop a special inclination for
avoiding him. He decided that a chance encounter
under observing eyes, possibly those of his young wife,
would be intolerable. He persuaded himself that there
could exist no reason why he should not call upon her.
Was she not alone and unprotected in Paris ? Might
he not render her some practical service? He was
devoured with the wish to make her in some sense
his debtor. It galled him to recollect that in the days
of her prosperity he had broken her bread and dawdled
in her drawing-rooms. Should she come now to his
very door and be neglected—ignored? The past was
over, well over, wiped out, buried five fathom deep in a
bottomless ocean. She had herself so willed. He had,
moreover, a respect for plighted faith. He had plighted
his to Eliane. He was no silly boy. He and Mrs. Ha-
zelwood could now meet, after the lapse of years,
as old friends. His wife's suspicions, which irritated
him and might do harm to Mrs. Hazelwood, would be
far more quickly allayed by open and frank intercourse
than by mutual avoidance and its embarrassments. So
he told himself, with that readiness of the sentimentalist
to order his doing according to his desire. He opened
this campaign of guilelessness and frankness by calling
upon Mrs. Hazelwood, alone, and he did not mention
244
POPPMA
245
the fact to his wife afterwards. He climbed her stairs a
very few days after his first sight of her at the theatre.
The small hotel which Poppsea inhabited, once owned
by a man of title and wealth, had a pretty garden at its
back, and, although not modern or convenient,—hence
its moderate rentals,—had an air, if not of opulence, at
least of extreme respectability. The stairs were covered
with a carpet of cheerful hue. The niches at the head
of each flight, which had once held a statue, were now
filled with flowering plants.
Olympe introduced him into the drawing-room, which
was empty. He spoke a friendly word with her as she
smiled her recognition. Grafton was one of those men
whom inferiors at once respect and adore. For they
that serve, like the dog, recognize a friend, and also
know who shall kick them behind the door when the
master's eye is away.
The couple who had deserted their apartment had
left it freshly and neatly furnished. Poppaea's unpacked
boxes had added her individual grace, that grace with
which some women stamp the places they inhabit.
A half-cut magazine lay on a chair, a handkerchief, a
glove, a lace parasol. She kept him waiting a few mo-
ments, and he went up to the table where lay the hand-
kerchief. He took it between his fingers. It was a
gossamer thing, tiny and delicate. In its corner in
black letters was woven the word "Popptza." Sud-
denly the man buried his face in its fabric, which ex-
haled that long-lost, long-remembered faintest of per-
fumes which years ago he had first breathed when Mrs.
Hazelwood had crossed her threshold at his earliest
visit. Ah, cruel sea ! Even thy salt and bitter water
had failed to wash out and efface that half-forgotten
scent. At its first inspiration Grafton's spirit was
246
POPPALA
brushed as with a rush of wings. How well he remem-
bered her voice on that far-distant day ! her gestures,
the nonchalant movement of her head, and of her
hand. No woman, none, had ever shaken him like
this. There was a touch upon the door; he dropped
the handkerchief. Mrs. Hazelwood entered. Did she
notice the overwhelming agitation that possessed him?
There burned upon her cheeks that rare rose-color
which only some inner emotion or physical exertion
brought to blaze there for an hour. Her greeting was
dignified and calm. So these two were together once
again ! What passed between them we may not know ;
but this is certain, much as Eliane might have depre-
cated the fact of such a tete-a-tite, had she been con-
cealed behind a curtain she could have heard no word
which would have left her in doubt of the purity of
their intentions, the elevation of their resolves. Of
her no word was spoken. There was not place in
either of their souls to-day for reproaches, anger,
jealousy, recrimination. Whatever fault of theirs or
destiny had robbed them of a happiness which more
propitious chances might have granted, to-day at least
they stood as quits. Was all explained? Was all
forgiven? Poppaea spoke in a slow monotone, sitting
in front of him on a low chair, with the old clasp of
her hands across her knees. No doubt she told him
of that inexorable torpor of her faculties which had
succeeded her husband's death and clouded her own
illness; no doubt he cursed his blindness. In the
strange peace of once more listening to her accents,
of once more steeping himself in the joy of her sweet
presence, he forgot everything except that at last,—at
last all was made clear, and that she had not been
unworthy. He once again believed, and only such as
POPPALA
241
have lost faith in a beloved one, and so all faith, can
half surmise the wondrous alchemy of restored confi-
dence. Together they walked the azure, they pene-
trated through the veil of mundane perversities, leaving
these far beneath them. They told themselves there
was a possible salvation even of their problematic love.
Older, wiser than formerly, through suffering and de-
nial, theirs should be a happiness that none should wrest
from them, for renunciation should be its key.
He would not harm her ; to this he pledged himself.
Never, never, through any fault of his, should whispered
word add venomous sting to Poppaea's already full cup
of misfortune.
It was a serious, earnest interview ; they rose from it
strengthened, ennobled. They thought that they had
vanquished themselves, and in so doing life. But the
exaltation which transfigures, which gave to Grafton's
forehead the aureole of the beatified, to Poppaea's up-
lifted eyes the glories of a Saint Cecilia's, was perhaps
as vain as the fantasies which sleep brings to the mind
of dreaming mortals. The garden of Eden has its
mirage and its rude dispelment. They should have
remembered that perhaps others would feel only de-
rision at what filled them with exaltation ; that there
are always hands and tongues ready to drag down, de-
stroy, and wither ; that the gods of this world are sav-
age and furious deities, who have no time to waste on
idle dreamers ; that they whisper to the earth-born that,
being but dust, they, like others, must learn to creep and
crawl if they would attain. Strangely enough, still
under the influence of Poppaea's vivifying charm, within
the next few days, Afford, whose pen had long lain idle,
wrote two magnificent articles treating of serious ques-
tions of the hour. They swept a clarion note across
248
POPPJEA
two continents and crowned him with laurels. " They
are yours," he whispered to Poppaea, when he met her in
the world, where people babbled of their eloquence and
pressed his hand in compliment. " I am so proud," she
said to him.
CHAPTER XXVII.
IT was quite a year after the interview recorded in the
* last chapter that exceedingly ugly rumors began to
be gossipped over in New York restaurants and cafes,
in drawing-rooms and in club windows. In the latter,
as behooves the reputable members of manly organiza-
tions, the lady's name was not openly mentioned, but
there were overt hints and covert innuendoes, half-spoken
allusions, smiles and nods, and even occasional jeers.
The latter were peculiarly distinct among such men of
affairs as had been quasi ruined by Leigh Hazelwood's
unscrupulous financial methods some years previously,
to whom the man's very name, even borne by his
widow, was an offence. Among others, Montgomery
Craven was not the last to hear these whisperings.
Montgomery was now sole managing editor, under
Grafton and his company, of course, of the New York
Messenger. He was paid a handsome income, was con-
sidered a prosperous and fortunate man. His mother
was still living, as well as three sisters,—Mrs. Frederick
Dalton's prophecy had been fulfilled, they had not mar-
ried,—at their country home at Craven. He was himself
looked upon as a settled bachelor. Matrons and moth-
ers had ceased to angle for him. Even in these days of
his increasing weight of importance and of purse, he
was relegated to the company of confirmed '' club-
men." His apparitions in society were rare. He
passed the greater part of his idle moments at Craven,
when he was not fishing or yachting with his friends,
249
2S°
POPPMA
shooting rail in Connecticut, or angling for trout in
Canada. In winter he played whist every afternoon
at his club, and worked hard all of his mornings at
the offices of his newspaper. He liked his work.
He enjoyed its power, and was reaping the fruits of a
healthful, industrious youth. There were those who
said that Mrs. Hazelwood had been the evil genius of
that youth ; that his infatuation for a woman who had
the fatal faculty of dazzling others had so preoccupied
him as to preclude all other attachments. She had
probably prevented marriage. But it would have been
difficult to persuade the gentleman himself that his
cousin had been the worst influence of his early years.
In his strong Northern nature, in which tenderness
played a more potent part than passion, there was no
injustice and no hatred. He attributed the cleanliness
and purity of his early days to that transcendent admira-
tion which had made it impossible for him to look be-
neath it. He fancied he detected how salutary had been
the lessons of self-control and self-repression that this
hopeless and ethereal affection had wrought into his
being. The half-sad playfulness, the gentle courtesy of
his intercourse with Mrs. Hazelwood in her more pros-
perous years, the devotion and loyalty he had given her
broken ones, seemed to him among the most refining
processes which go to form character.
However this may. have been, he had never lost faith
in Poppsea. Even her own confession of her love for
Grafton, when it would have been deemed sin for her to
love him, had been rather admirable to him,—an ex-
pression of that lack of hypocrisy which he recognized
in her, and for which the fine ladies whom she frequented
were not pre-eminent.
Now as he heard with unwilling ears, but yet heard,
POPPjEA
251
these new tales against his absent relative, a little chill
crept up on him, leaving in its wake a sensation of cold.
It was not only Poppaea. Grafton, to whom in a meas-
ure he owed his fortune, was implicated in this prating
which promised to become a sensational scandal. At
Montgomery's approach, indeed, the chatter was some-
what hushed, the smiles concealed. Men blew their
noses, cleared their throats to hide laughter ; women
fluttered the fan. Nevertheless he heard, and so did his
mother and Violet and the younger sisters, who all had
a word to say on the subject. "Poppaea had always
been eccentric." Violet, who had a grateful heart, re-
membering only her past kindness, gave her the benefit
of lenient doubt. "People were so wicked!" The
others were less indulgent. A few days later, in one of
the minor papers a blatant paragraph dwelt at length
upon the spicy piece of gossip. Mrs. H (only
the initials being outlined), widow of L H , the
bankrupt and dead millionaire, had been grossly in
suited by Madame A. G , nee de V , at a
dance of the Baroness de R 's. All the beau
monde of Paris were on the qui vive over this piquant
denouement of a probably reprehensible intrigue. Sides
were being taken ; there were opposite camps. Some
took the part of the angry French wife, others of the
beautiful American widow, etc., etc., etc.
The truth of these reports could no longer be doubted
when a lady who had been present at the dance swung
at anchor, one fine morning, in the North River, landed
at the foot of one of the city's narrow streets, and cor-
roborated all the facts. Gertrude Ordway and Mrs.
Ayrault took up the plea for their old friend at a small
dinner at Mrs. Larremore's. They were drowned in a
general hubbub of disaffection. Patriotism broke out
252
POPPAEA
loudly. It was a shame that an American woman
should throw discredit thus upon her nation. So once
more the name of the almost forgotten Mrs. Hazelwood
was on every tongue, served up at every repast. Surely
the dead die not. Foreigners passing through the town,
people lately admitted to society's portals, made inqui-
ries as to this meteoric creature's vagaries past and pres-
ent. The story held romantic elements. They listened
breathless and expectant.
This was exactly what had happened.
During this year Grafton and Poppaea had kept their
high resolves. Only their hearts had been guilty of
treachery. They loved, and they had said it to each
other. No more.
Forced to be content with a rare meeting in the world,
or in the Princess's and Mrs. Hazelwood's drawing-
rooms, where Poppaea arranged that they should be
seldom or briefly alone, separated during a part of the
summer, there would have been little in their intercourse
to arouse Eliane's sleepless watchfulness, had not cer-
tain circumstances conspired to confirm her in the
belief that her husband was not heart-free. She had
herself called once or twice on Mrs. Hazelwood, who had
returned the visits at the hour of Eliane's drive. They
had touched one another's cold fingers grudgingly ex-
tended, and here had begun and ended their acquaint-
ance. They smiled at each other, to be sure, when they
met, with that contraction of the facial angles which
society exacts, and they bent their heads simultaneously
in a nervous and rigid protest.
Since Mrs. Hazelwood's arrival in Paris, still scrupu-
lously courteous in his manner towards his wife, gener-
ous to folly towards her expenditures, always absolutely
gentlemanly in his address to her, more and more had
POPPAlA
he withdrawn into himself. He still accompanied her
sometimes to dinners and larger entertainments, but
with a lack of interest which was not inspiring—as it
were from a sense of propriety, not to please himself
More and more frequently did he now plead indisposi-
tion or occupation to emancipate himself from his con-
jugal duties of escort. Now there were others ready to
tell Eliane that she was very charming, and she was
beginning to detest her husband's calm eye when it
rested upon her. It irritated her insatiable vanity. She
began to tell herself that he was much too old for her.
She went so far once as to send this searching thrust
full into his breast. He laughed, and told her good-
humoredly that the day before some one had in fact
taken her for his daughter, so that the intended slight
missed its mark. Once or twice she had permitted
herself some criticism of Mrs. Hazelwood, of her face,
figure, toilet; some word which, under honeyed flattery,
hid a poisonous sting. These had been met with an icy
silence which disarmed while it exasperated. Once only
had Grafton turned upon her with a look of wrath. She
had never forgotten it. Mrs. Hazelwood had been bid-
den to a dinner at the American minister's, and, as fate
would have it, had sat within the ray of Eliane's un-
friendly vision. Grafton, himself, was not present. She
had worn a simple white gown, in which she had ap-
peared before several times that winter, and which a
sudden change of mode had left a little behind the new-
est fashion. Its classic clinging folds, however, were
nobly becoming to her, detaching her, as it were, from
the other women present, whose fresh dresses were be-
ruffled and beflounced to meet the demands of the latest
models. Strangely enough, there was something in
Eliane's crisp, clear beauty—or was it a matter of tern-
254
POPP&A
peramental influence—which always gave to Poppsea a
sense of her rival's power, made her uneasy as to her
own. Her peculiar poetic grace seemed to her to
wither into heaviness in the superficial contact of Eliane's
energetic slimness ; her silences to become mere slug-
gishness by the side of the other's shrill self-assertion.
But, somehow, to-night she felt instinctively that she
might be at rest. The men, always slow to accept inno-
vation in the matter of feminine costume, commended
loudly the taste in cut of Mrs. Hazelwood's frock. Their
eyes told her that she was lovely. '' There is a woman
who has the wit to avoid the fashion ! she makes her
own," said de Lansac, with enthusiasm.
'' And so she manages never to look like anybody
else," said de Portes. Eliane, magnificent in a diapha-
nous marvel of lace and ribbons, worn for the first time,
made with much skill and phenomenal intricacy, bit her
lip with vexation. She liked de Lansac and she prized
de Portes's opinions. "Are they, too, in love with
her?" she thought, angrily. That de Lansac was so
seemed indeed possible. It may have been the secret
of his expressed approval of Mrs. Hazelwood's severity
of dress.
That evening on her way to her boudoir, as she
passed her husband's open library door, Eliane stopped,
looked in, and entered. He was reading a paper, but
at her approach threw it down and looked up at her.
'' What are you reading ?'' she said to him, lightly. Then
he told her that he was examining the latest American
issue of The Messenger, that it did not thoroughly sat-
isfy him. '' I shall cable to Craven about this to-mor-
row," he said to her. "This attitude upon the tariff is
much too lukewarm, too supine. I will have to send
them an article myself."
POPPJEA
255
"Your last did you great credit," murmured his
wife.
He rose and came to the mantel-piece, leaning against
it. " Why, you are superb !" he said, glancing at her
fineries ; '' and those opals suit your complexion better
than your diamonds. Did you enjoy yourself?"
; Eliane drew to the fire, and pulling up her skirt dis-
played her infantile foot in its tiny slipper, on whose tip
opal buckles shimmered. "Oh, yes, very well,—well
enough. They are old-fashioned people, your Georgian
minister and his wife, but fortunately there were others
more modern and more amusing.''
"Ah, who did you have?" Alford lit a cigarette
and smiled.
'' There were the Heathcotes, who are here en passant,
and to whom the dinner was given; Lansac, de Portes,
the Baroness de R., Mrs. Mount Cuthbert, a fat blonde,
who says she knew you in New York ; the Princess
Tamara, Theodore de Montreuil and his wife, the
Freysnes "
"I'll wager none were so smartly turned out as my
wife." He spoke kindly and with that certain pride
which he felt in her perfect elegance. If her taste was
somewhat hard, it was at least distinguished.
Thus encouraged, Eliane lost her head. Vanity had
always been her Charybdis. '' I am pleased you like
this thing. I felt rather discouraged. Some of the
others preferred Mrs. Hazelwood's dirty white frock."
She looked at him boldly.
Grafton's brow darkened. He took off his eye-
glasses, holding them against his temple, between his
thumb and index, with a gesture common to him when
puzzled or annoyed. '' What word did you use ?''
The sentence fell upon his wife's ears like the cut of
POPPJEA
some sharp instrument. '' I said that Mrs. Hazel-
wood's dress was chiffonnee. You need not take me
up so."
'' Ah, I misunderstood you, it seems. I thought you
had used ... a meaner word." His eyes were the
color of steel in the fire's glow, his lips were but a line.
" It cannot well help being so," continued Eliane,
with a laugh which sounded discordantly through the
silent house. '' She has dragged it about half the
winter.''
"No human being has ever seen Mrs. Hazelwood in
anything but the daintiest of toilettes," said Grafton,
slowly and very distinctly. " If it were otherwise, how-
ever, you should be the last to taunt her."
'' And why, pray ?'' said Eliane, defiantly. '' What
is Mrs. Hazelwood to me or to ... to you?"
"She is just this," said Grafton, advancing a step
towards his wife's fauteuil, and still looking down into
her face. He noticed almost for the first time its sharp-
ness, the absence of suavity in the lines of its contour,
the savagery of expression which for the moment dis-
torted the features. '' She is the woman who has lost
. . . everything, while you are rich and powerful, as
once she was."
He spoke quietly but with a suppressed heat which
did not escape her. "Of course she is poor.; they
robbed everybody."
'' Who do you mean by they f"
" I mean ..." she floundered under his glance.
'' Mrs. Hazelwood was not one of those who robbed
any one," he said, with a sudden lowering and faltering
of his voice. '' She gave up everything to meet her hus-
band's debts. His harshest censors have admitted the
magnificence of her sacrifice."
POPPALA
257
"You are an enthusiastic advocate," she said, with
growing anger.
'' I heard the word that you used ; it was contempti-
ble."
She was silent.
"You should remember, madame," he continued,
'' that all our friends' bank accounts are not equal to
our own, and not value them the less for this. Leave
such judgments to the wife of an Athenais Marcos ; they
are unworthy of a . . . deValfonte,—they are . . . vul-
gar. Good-night." And turning on his heel he left her.
Disconcerted and humiliated, she determined, never-
theless, to be more tactful in the future. After this her
husband met her with an exaggerated politeness, which
seemed to separate them more absolutely than aggres-
sive warfare. This punctilious rigidity on his part
snapped the last link of her expiring attachment.
From this evening he also relaxed a little his attitude
of prudence towards Mrs. Hazelwood, over whose good
name, it must be said for him, he had kept a careful
guard. He went more frequently and openly to the Prin-
cess Tamara's than formerly, and at the theatre, the
opera, and one or two private reunions, he gave her more
marked homage. His passion burned now with a fiercer
flame, touched at the same time by chivalrous ardor,
for Eliane's careless words had wrung his heart. This
change was of course observed by his wife, commented
upon by her friends, and it was under the sting of its
annoyance that Madame Grafton permitted herself to
tell an intimate friend that she considered Mrs. Hazel-
wood, whatever she might once have been, nothing
better now than an adventuress ; to which she added
that she knew that her husband had been called upon
to help her through pecuniary embarrassments, as well
R
258
POPPjGA
as her friend, the odious Tamara. Not exactly sure
in what light her husband would view this lie, should it
be repeated to him, and what measures he might adopt
to refute it when traced to her own door, she flatly
denied the report when it rolled back to her on the fol-
lowing week, thus easing an uneasy conscience and re-
lieving her terror of consequence. She had especial
reasons of her own ior not desiring a scandal at present,
but the seed had taken root, and, like all noisome weeds,
grew up rank and flourishing. There were already
those who whispered that Grafton paid Mrs. Hazel-
wood's rent and furnished her with her clothes, when
the decisive moment came that precipitated the crisis.
One afternoon Poppaea consented, for the first time in
many months, to take a walk with Grafton. He had
often implored her for a tUe-cL-tUe in her own apart-
ment, but the increasing tumultuousness of their senti-
ments made her dread an occasion upon which they
should be untrammelled. She feared that Grafton would
lose his self-possession and urge her to some further
avowal,—to some step which for a long year she had so
skilfully averted. She found no courage, however, at last,
to resist his pleading for a walk together, and finally com-
promised upon the promise of a pilgrimage, which they
had long projected, across the Seine to Notre Dame.
They concluded not to attract attention by going to-
gether, but decided that they would meet at the portals
of the ancient church. They both felt, after months of
constrained intercourse, the urgent necessity of quell-
ing, in each other's presence, that fevered unrest from
which they suffered when apart. What better spot than
this, in which for years criminals and outcasts had found
sanctuary, nay, refuge from revenge or justice, in which
to hide for a short hour their unhappy love ?
CHAPTER XXVIII.
TTERE free, as they supposed, for an hour, from
1 * inquisitorial curiosity, they could at last give
way, unfettered, to that melancholy which possessed
them. They walked about the dark straight aisles,
she leaning lightly against him, her draperies touch-
ing him, he half supporting her, silent, almost stern.
The church hushed their voices into sighs, embracing
them in its kindly umbrage. The stained glass of
the rose over the lateral portals gleamed upon them,
flecking their faces with mystic traceries. Some one
touched the organ, that splendid instrument restored
by Cavaill6 Coll, with its five thousand two hun-
dred pipes. In its strains they stilled their long-
ings. They viewed Coustou's PietS. and his marble
kings, halted by the rails of the sanctuary, gazed
into the choir chapels at the monuments of the arch-
bishops. Debay, Dubois, Bonnassieux, Dechaume in
order held them with their genius. Poppsea rested
for a moment at the tomb of the beautiful Ren6e du
Bec-Crepin, wife of the doughty Marshal Guebriant.
Grafton reminded her that the high altar had been dese-
crated in the terrible November of 1793, when the Vir-
gin was replaced by a statue of Liberty, while the dancer
Maillard posed for the enthroned figure of Reason. They
spoke of it in whispers, these sinners who were yet not
all unspiritual; Grafton swayed as are men of imagina-
tion by those impressions which the gloom of the pointed
259
26o
POPPAEA
arch, the dark red of the glowing windows, the smell of
incense, the mellowness of antiquity, the dignity and
grandeur which dwell in old cathedrals leave upon the
brain. He had been brought up a Roman Catholic.
He had long since ceased to believe actively in any-
thing. Yet there remained with him a certain indefina-
ble aspiration, a hope of the immortal—peculiarly poig-
nant when in the companionship of the exquisite
creature who now walked beside him. A mere de-
bauchery of the mind probably, if it hold no talisman
for the accomplishment of duty. Yet who shall say that
such celestial moments, even if they be but fitful, may
not have their uses and their meanings ?
Poppaea was less impressed than he by her surround-
ings.
All that she felt and knew was " He is near !" This
was enough. Less imaginative than he, in a spiritual
sense at least, she welcomed the silence because she
might hear his heart beat, the glowing windows because
they touched with beauty the brow of her beloved, the
darkness because it hid from him the tears that slowly
dropped now and then from her long lashes. Such a
phenomenon is not uncommon. The love that elevates
a man loses a woman. The significance of this may lie
in the difference of their past standards. It is a question
for psychologists. By and by they came and knelt
together behind a column, close to each other, prayer-
less, yet with uplifted foreheads, and in a moment
Poppaea's wandering hand was clasped in his out-reach-
ing palm. When they prepared finally to leave the
church its ineffable quietude filled them. They arose
from their knees strengthened and refreshed.
Poppaea almost had gained the courage to leave Paris
forever. She would bid him see her less and less. She
POPPAEA
261
could live now upon the memory of this moment. So
she said to herself when they parted.
She had dismissed her carriage, trusting to hail a
passing cab for the return. Alford declared his inten-
tion of crossing the quays on foot. A fiacre did in fact
linger in the Place du Parvis-Notre Dame, under the
equestrian Charlemagne, done in bronze by Rochet,
pedestalled by Viollet-le-Duc. They could almost hear
the splash of the fountain on the other side of the cathe-
dral, whose waters spout from the mouths of dragons
ridden by angels ; fit emblem of a battle won.
Alford hailed the fiacre. As he ensconced Mrs.
Hazelwood in its rickety back seat she saw him raise
his hat. A carriage had driven up to the steps above
them. Poppsea, leaning forward, caught sight of its oc-
cupants,—Mr. and Mrs. Mount Cuthbert and Monsieur
de Freysne, the latter a frequenter of the American
coterie, an inveterate flaneur and gossip. They were
evidently out on a sight-seeing excursion. He was show-
ing Paris to his lately arrived acquaintances. Poppaea
could see his white brushed-up hair, his curled dark
moustache. Also his look of amused surprise.
Grafton hoped that Mrs. Mount Cuthbert had not
recognized Mrs. Hazelwood, but she had done so.
Two evenings later there was a small dance at the
Baroness de R 's. Poppaea was bidden. With that
weakness which lay in her nature she accepted, although
she knew that not only Grafton, but de Freysne would
surely be present, and Eliane.
When Mrs. Hazelwood entered the room a quadrille
was in process of formation. The first scrape of the
fiddles struck her ears.
" Quick! quick!" said de Lansac, running up to
meet her. '' There is a place in this set. Take my arm;
262
POPPsEA
dance in it with me !'' Poppaea, pleased and smiling-,
laid her gray-gloved hand on the young man's arm and
slipped into the place indicated. She looked up.
Eliane was her vis-a-vis. She hardlv knew how it was,
or what took place; she hardly heard the insolence of
the words. She saw Eliane raise, and as suddenly
lower, her lorgnon, give her the cut direct, and turning
leave the startled dancers. She caught the last word,
"mistresses." But de Lansac had heard, and so had
others, and a murmur of astonishment and of indigna-
tion ran through the little knot of people. The Due de
Portes, who was piloting a very young girl upon his
arm, responded instantly to de Lansac's peremptory
summons. He and his shy partner slipped into Madame
Grafton's place. The quadrille was danced ; Poppaea
pale as death, with sudden sunken shadows circling hef
starlike eyes, which seemed to glow like those of the
deer who hears the bugle of its doom. By and by every
one in the room, Poppaea included, had heard the
words, " I do not care to dance so near to my husband's
discarded mistresseswords of a jealous, furious
woman, of little significance or importance, but words
which, to one or two at least, were dealing a blow of
incalculable portent. The revolt born of them, like the
ripples on deep lakes wherein a stone falls, was to widen
and widen in ever-recurring currents with ebb and flow
of evil tides. The hostess held herself aggrieved. Her
husband felt called upon to demand satisfaction at
Grafton's hands, for his wife's insult to their guest. A
few days afterwards a duel was in the wind. But Eliane
consented to apologize to the Baroness, and so this ab-
surd result—for such it seemed to many—was avoided.
Grafton himself deprecated anything which would further
injure Mrs. Hazelwood. He had been just mount-
POPPASA
263
ing the stairs when all this had occurred, having come
from his club and arrived late at the de R s's. He
met his wife flushed and agitated, draped in her opera
cloak, upon de Montreuil's arm. De Montreuil took
him apart, and in two words told him all. '' Madame
de R is indignant," he said to him. " If you have
further difficulties, send for me. You may count upon
my devotion and discretion." He himself thought
Grafton had been a rare fool to let himself be found out.
He felt sorry for Mrs. Hazelwood, who was a pretty
woman ; but if it were true that she took money . . .
he was glad his young wife did not know her; it was
such a bore to have to drop people.
It was in great despair that Alford Grafton got into
the carriage with his wife. He blamed himself merci-
lessly now for the folly which had led to so cruel a
result. Looking back, he could not hold himself
without fault, and he scourged himself all the way home,
tormented and oppressed. What! and this after his oath,
his solemn pledge that at least he would do her no
harm ? Ah, the poor broken angel, whose white wings
he had sullied and dragged into the mud, and she . . .
innocent ! At least Eliane should know her innocent.
When they reached their door—they had not exchanged
a word during the homeward drive—he was surprised
to find that, when he asked his wife for a moment's in-
terview, she met his demand with an '' I have nothing to
say to you." She made a move as if she would pass
from his presence, stopping a moment at the drawing-
room door to disencumber herself of her wraps ; but he
barred her passage. '' But I have something to say to
you, Eliane," he said.
"I shall not listen," she said, doggedly, placing her
hands over her ears.
264
POPPALA
In a moment he had her by the wrists. "You will
listen," he said, "and you will speak. Mrs. Hazel-
wood is innocent. Repeat it after me, and I swear to
you I will never look upon her face again. I have
wrought her too much hurt already."
"I refuse." Eliane threw back her head, speaking
in a staccato, piercing tone.
He dropped her hands wearily. "You are excited,"
he said, in a tired voice. "You will come to see it all
to-morrow. You will tell me you know her pure. You
will beg her forgiveness, as you hope for that of the
heaven you and your mother invoke.''
" I will not beg her forgiveness !"
'' She was never my mistress, never in the past and
never in the present. You have done yourself more
harm than to her.'' A shock of satisfaction shot through
Eliane's slight frame. Alford's words had in them the
ring of truth. She believed them. Her vanity, if not
her- heart, knew a rebound of triumph, such poor tri-
umph as it might be. But of this security she would
impart no inkling to her husband. " Let them suffer,"
she thought. "They have not spared me."
"I beg no one's forgiveness," she said, defiantly, and
sought her rooms, leaving Grafton baffled and shamed,
as a man perforce is always in an encounter with a
woman towards whom he is not blameless.
Nevertheless, of her own free will, Eliane, after a par-
ley with de Montreuil and two intimate friends, penned
a note to the Baroness, regretting her coup de tele,
based, she explained, upon a report which she had since
found had no foundation, but which, having been
brought to her ears just before the Baroness's dance,
had resulted in an exalte condition of the nerves, for
which she was hardly responsible, etc., etc., etc.
POPPA? A
265
The Baroness replied promptly, albeit a little coldly,
that she trusted Madame Grafton would extend her
apology to Mrs. Hazelwood, who had visibly suffered
from the attack upon her honor in her, the Baroness's,
house, and who, being alone, etc., etc., etc., a stranger,
ete., etc., etc., a widow, etc., etc., etc.
The men, after this exchange of letters, were fain to
patch up their quarrel. But the scandal was too delicious
a morsel to be allowed to die an easy death. Society
took sides. Eliane and Mrs. Hazelwood became hero-
ines ; each had adherents. The talk grew in wildness
as the story in improbabilities. It was finally announced
in the American papers and trumpeted with due exag-
geration.
For a week Grafton knocked in vain at Mrs. Hazel-
wood's door. To him Poppsea remained invisible. The
Princess, however, received him. "I think your wife
should ask her pardon,'' she said, decidedly.
'' What can I do ?" said Grafton.
"Ah, yes, of course," said the Princess, "she re-
fuses.''
" I gave her my ultimatum to-day," said Grafton,
gloomily. '' I refused to appear in the world with her,
or to address her in private, until she has made the only
possible amends left to her."
"And of course she declines," said the Princess, not
without a measure of satisfaction. To her the whole
affair was a lamentable mess, and she felt vexed with
him. It was simple idiocy. Here were two people
hopelessly compromised, and for what ?
'' I cannot see the pleasure you American women
find in this playing with temptation. If there was no
liaison, why in the world run about together ?'' she had
said to Poppaea, impatiently, for the hundredth time.
266
POPPALA
"We only went to the church just this once," said
Poppaea, apologetically.
"To church ! Will you tell me the object in going
to church ? What in the world could you do in church ?
Mais c est insertse!'' cried Madame Tamara, greatly
distraught.
Poppaea hung her head. She felt mortified at her
own ingenuousness ; before the superior wisdom of her
friend she blushed. There ought to have been a cause
for all this misery—she knew it now. "We thought,"
she murmured, "we would find consolation, assistance
... we were unhappy.''
"Consolation! Bah! You got it—your consola-
tion. With this little viper spitting her spite on you,
and all of her friends ranged against you ! I confess I
cannot understand how two clever people can make
such asses of themselves, and all for nothing at all!"
The absence of positive misdoing rankled Leocadia's
sense of the fitness of things. She disliked the idea
that her enemy, Eliane, after all had the best of it. '' It
has been mere child's play," she said to her friends, to
de Portes, de Lansac, and the others; "mere child's
nonsense. A little bit of silly American flirtation, and
all the fuss for nothing at all! Non . . . pas ga," she
said, pointing off the end of her little finger-nail, '' and
all Paris by the ears !"
One afternoon Poppaea came in from a walk and found
Grafton awaiting her. Olympe liked Mr. Grafton.
Contrary to her mistress's orders, she had admitted
him.
The woman suspected complication, in which he
played some part, something unusual in that terrible
attack of the heart, accompanied with loss of conscious-
ness, which once or twice before, after great emotion,
POPPJEA
267
had prostrated her mistress, and from which she had
suffered for hours after her return from the Baroness de
R 's.
Mrs. Hazelwood crossed the threshold with her most
composed manner, saying lightly, "Ah, is it you?"
very much as she would have greeted an indifferent but
expected acquaintance. "The weather is delightful,"
she added. "I have had a long and delicious drive
with de Lansac in his rally-cart."
De Lansac ! She saw him then, and other men,
while he alone was excluded, disgraced. '' It must in-
deed have been delicious in such company!" he said,
with piqued childishness.
"Why not?"
" De Lansac is a fop and a fool!" he murmured.
"He has one excellent quality," said Mrs. Hazel-
wood, smiling with her lips but not with her eyes.
" And that is ?"
" Only a negative one."
" I believe you."
" He is not married !"
"Mrs. Hazelwocd," said Grafton, "since I am not
free, as your more fortunate cavalier, let me remind you
that I am married by speaking my wife's name for the
first and last time between us. I have come to plead
for her—to beseech your forgiveness for her. She is
young—unwise ..."
" Did she send you ?" said Poppsea, coldly. Grafton
remained silent. '' Did she send you ?'' she repeated.
" She did not send me," said Grafton ; "but I intend
to tell her to-night that I have been here, have seen you
alone, and have plead for her pardon,—that I have abased
myself before you, and have implored you to forget the
ins . . . the harm that she . . . through me . . . that
268
POPPsEA
I . . . have brought . . . J' He rose suddenly and
walked to the window. He leaned his face against it.
In a moment a strange sound filled the room. Poppaea
sprang forward and touched his shoulder. He turned.
His head fell upon his hands. She saw that he was
weeping. She tore his fingers from before his face. As
she did so the great drops plashed upon her own. In
a moment her arms were tightly wound about his throat.
Was this siren the seraphim of the church aisles ? or the
proud lady who had just treated him so haughtily?
Half hiding on his breast, she wooed him with low bab-
blings, soft words of love and comforting. '' At least it
shall not be a cast-off mistress,'' she cried, '' my love,
my love, my lover, my darling !"
CHAPTER XXIX.
T T was at this time that Poppaea threw everything to
-*• the winds. Grafton might in vain try to protect
her, to lecture her on her wayward and reckless impru-
dences. She answered him by a finger laid shyly across
his lip ; and Poppaea's breath upon the cheek was of
a sorcery, her touch held that mysterious witchcraft
before which man becomes besotted and undone. A
true daughter of Eve, she seemed to have drawn
from her first parent a philter which tempts but to
destroy.
One day she stationed herself in front of his club for
an hour, in the twilight, barely a few feet from its
open portals, up and down whose steps men whom she
knew—others whom she knew not, but who had fre-
quently seen and heard of her—were hurrying. Once
she walked to the porter's lodge of the Salle d' Armes,
where he was taking his exercise with gloves and swords
—at an early hour of the morning—and sent him a
message. Once again, which was far worse for her, she
drove to his newspaper offices, forced their doors, and
ascended to his very desk. " I just wanted to see your
face for a moment," she said, wistfully ; and having so
said she tripped away. To Grafton this attitude of the
young woman's was a constant torment. He was most
happy and most miserable. It was now that he be-
sought her to return to America, promising to imme-
diately follow her. There in some far Western town,
where such things were easily and quickly done, no
269
2 "JO
POPPLE A
doubt the shackles that bound him could be loosened,
and he could at least give her his name to bear.
To this, to his amazement, Poppaea lent a restless and
unwilling attention. "Do you think me a criminal
because I love you?" she would say to him, sadly; "a
criminal who needs to be reinstated ? You can see me
often here. I want to give you my whole life. You
think I feel remorse. I do not. Not the remorse that
would find any assuagement in the words of some easily-
bribed judge or some impecunious dissenting minister
mumbled over me. I am at least no hypocrite."
"I wish never to leave you," he would answer,
pained.
" And you send me away?"
"In a few days I would follow you. This talk of
you will kill me."
But she would shake her head reproachfully. " Was
that why you neglected me last night at the opera ?" she
would ask. " How I detest your prudence !"
" And de Freysne for a half-hour with his lorgnetie on
your box !"
" And you cared more for his opinion than for the
bliss of sitting by my side during that exquisite music,"
said Poppaea, pouting, and with that deep glance of
hers which never failed to send the blood to his brain
from his heart, never failed to bring him to his knees
before her.
Possibly Poppaea had gauged Eliane better than had
her husband. She realized that they would not here
have to deal with one of those amiable persons who abet
the faithless husband by instantly freeing him, and
throwing him thus into the arms of the desired rival.
She had read on Eliane's thin mouth, in the grip of her
bony, nervous fingers, an energy and decision that
POPPAEA
271
would lend themselves to no such treaties. Besides,
Mademoiselle de Valfonte and her mother were ardently
bigoted Roman Catholics, and to them the new codes
of Naquet's fashioning were malodorous and mal vus.
No, come what might, Eliane could never be repudiated.
Poppsea had lost the hope, as well as the courage, to
make her tie with Alford legal. She felt herself more
ill than she acknowledged. '' It will not be for long,'' she
thought to herself. To him she never said this, although
she knew that, hide it as well as she might, something
had snapped within her on the night of Eliane's open
cut of her. Her poor heart fluttered in her breast like a
caged bird beating for space.
To Grafton, her increased thinness, the wideness of
her pupils, the frequent whiteness of her lips, which
would suddenly change to a brilliant crimson, her moods
as fluctuating as her color, threw over her a veil of in-
tangible loveliness. He did not attribute them to ilfr
ness.
The Princess, however, thought him strangely blind.
She and Olympe watched these symptoms with anxiety.
To the former—lonely, childless, warm-hearted in spite
of a hundred faults—Poppaea had become very dear.
Unprincipled as she was in many things, she now be-
gan to realize how her own petty dream of vengeance
on Eliane shrank to a miserable comedy before the
tragedy she dimly foresaw. Ah ! Poppaea was not one
of those women who can lightly love or gayly give them-
selves. She saw the daily ravages of the fever which
was consuming the young woman, and so seeing she
trembled. A curious remorse at having lent her influ-
ence in the wrong balance, at having encouraged
Grafton's visits and Poppaea's infatuation, began to
weigh on her. Like the Italian bandit who crosses
272
POPPMA
himself after he murders, she knelt before her sacred
icons in troubled perplexity, seeking for wisdom, pos-
sibly for pardon.
One morning Poppaea stepped upon the balcony of
her little drawing-room. It overhung the street. The
sidewalk here was narrow, and, hidden behind some
orange-trees, a gift of Grafton's, she could see the light
spring gowns and hear the conversation of two ladies who
had just stopped before the house in an open carriage.
The young couple from whom Poppaea had rented
her apartment had concluded to pass a year in Italy,
and so Mrs. Hazelwood had been able to retain the
small domain which suited so admirably her taste and
her means. What was her surprise, to-day, at recog-
nizing Violet Craven as one of the occupants of the
low victoria. She had not known of the arrival of her
relatives in France. The other lady was the married
daughter of a well-known American banker, who had
bestowed her hand and her ducats upon a Frenchman
of rank.
She called back to Olympe, through the open window,
to say to the concierge that Mrs. Hazelwood was "not
at home," and then returned to her place of vantage
behind her orange-boughs.
As she leaned forward, watching Violet with that in-
definite curiosity born of her cousin's unexpected appa-
rition, she heard the following dialogue. The ladies
had sent up their cards ; there seemed to be a note
too; they were waiting. "You know," said the
banker's daughter, now Madame la Comtesse, "that
there are many who consider her quite declasste."
'' I shall never, never believe there is any foundation
for such wicked slanders," replied Violet, so hotly that
her words came to Poppaea's ears with peculiar distinct-
POPPJEA
273
ness. '' A few years ago, when she was rich and adored,
no one would have dared so malign her.''
"You knew her, then, in her palmy days?"
"She was an angel to me—to us all," said Violet.
'' She was very, very lovely.''
'1 Oh, she is attractive enough. The gentlemen are
wild about her. Why even my husband will hear noth-
ing. But of course when she put herself with the Ta-
mara ..."
"Is Madame Tamara so undesirable?"
The Comtesse shrugged her shoulders : "A little in
the order of the over-ripe peach, with its rotten side,"
she answered, laughing ; '' although she does manage
to get some nice people to her Sundays."
Violet answered something that Poppaea could not
hear. Then the footman came back. There was some
incumberment in the porte-cochere ; they must turn the
carriage lower down the street; the court was ob-
structed. Having been told that Mrs. Hazelwood was
out, and parleyed a moment about a letter they had left,
they settled their wraps, threw an order to the coach-
man, and were driven off.
Poppaea came back into the room. " Olympe !" she
cried, '' give me my medicine.'' She poured a few drops
into a glass tremblingly, and quaffed them quickly. Her
other hand was at her heart. " My heart is just begin-
ning to pound again," she said to her maid, smiling,
"but this quiets me. Here, wait." She took a pencil
and wrote a word on a blank card, and sealed it into an
envelope. '' Go to the pharmacy at the corner and get
me this quickly." She was ashamed to give her maid
the order. In fifteen minutes at the most Olympe
returned with a tiny package. Mrs. Hazelwood dis-
missed her. "You may go to your dress-making now,
s
274
POPPJEA
my poor Olympe," she said. "I will need you no
more until afternoon."
After her maid had left her she moved to the mirror,
untying the parcel languidly as she went. It proved to
be a box of rouge de theatre approved by the Faculty
of Medicine and fabricated by the great Dorin. She
dipped her slender index into the mixture and proceeded
to plentifully besmear each of her blanched cheeks with
it. Her appearance thus modified underwent an odd
metamorphosis. She grew into a brazen demon, such
as one meets to avoid on summer nights haunting the
back streets of London. That will never do, she
thought to herself, and began to laugh. She made a
grimace at her reflection. It is evident I have got on
too much ; I have made myself look like a fiend this
way. This cannot be the way the ladies do it.
She took up her handkerchief and began to rub her
cheeks. "There, that will do," she thought, as the
powder sank and amalgamated into the waxen ivory of
her skin; " I am inexperienced—only a beginner. This
is better. Declasseef I must straightway paint my
face, and I must buy a hat that fits the situation too.
Very well, very well, I must go the whole figure." She
used the slang she had learned from her boy brothers in
childhood, and which still sprang to her lips at times,
when in a mood of mischief.
At this moment the bell of her apartment rang vio-
lently. "It is Monsieur de Lansac," said the bonne
opening the door.
Monsieur de Lansac was admitted. He found Mrs.
Hazelwood in a gay humor ; she teased him, she laughed
a great deal, she was altogether delightful, and looking,
too, most extraordinarily handsome.
'' What a bloom to-day !'' he said, gallantly.
POPP^EA
275
Poppaea gave a little grin behind her glove. " The
effect of the elements,—sunburn," she said. " I was at
Fontainebleau all day yesterday, in the forest. The wind
was so high it turned the leaves inside out, so that the
woods looked white ; and there was a hot sunshine
where we breakfasted alfresco. Are you at leisure ?''
she asked him.
'' I cannot answer ' God forbid that it should ever
befall me,' as did the Greek," laughed de Lansac. " I
am always at leisure when you want me.''
"Very well then, I want you. I want you to take
me for a walk." She had on her costume and toque ;
she was all ready. They sallied forth. He suggested
the Champs Elys£es, a long tramp up towards the Bois.
But she was determined to go into the town. '' I feel
exactly like looking in at the shops," she said. De
Lansac, a true Latin, did not deprecate being seen in
her company. It flattered his vanity. He adored her,
and thought her the most ill-used of her sex, but the
fact that she was talked about added to her charm. He
readily agreed with her that the shops were the haven
into which he would most willingly drift at her bidding.
Having mercilessly dragged him under arcades and
through boulevards, she finally brought up in the rue de
la Paix, in front of a plate-glass window which spread
its wares for the passer-by to examine.
Here were displayed some marvels of the milliner's
art. Upon one side were gowns, peignoirs, and wraps ;
upon the other hats and bonnets. There was one poppy-
crowned thing such as Terpander might have worn when
out of windy instruments he first drew melting melodies,
or some dancing bacchante, diademed with mandragora
and grape-leaves.
"Before you judge American women," de Lansac
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POPP&A
had said oracularly to a friend the night before, "you
must sweep the mind, clean it out, empty it of all
preconceived prejudices and ideas. This done, they
are clear to us." He was to remember the words
now.
'' What a perfect, perfect morning gown, and what an
ideal hat!" Poppsea was saying, flattening her little
nose against the pane.
'' Why not go in and buy them ?'' said de Lansac.
"You see," said Poppsea, "I am horribly hard up.
I've spent my last sou,—and no remittance from Amer-
ica until the nineteenth, and we are now only the
seventh."
And those snakes, vermin, who said she took
Grafton's money !—out upon them !
" I know this shop of old," she sighed. "It's hor-
ribly expensive."
'' Let's go in at any rate, and try on the hat,'' said
de Lansac. "I'm dying to see you under it."
'' But if it is becoming, how can I ever part from it ?'1
said Poppsea, plaintively.
'' Could I not advance the money ?'' said de Lansac,
timidly, " if they are stiff as to immediate payment ?"
"I'll tell you what would be far more simple. You
can give me the hat and dress as a birthday present. I
never borrow because I never pay." She was acting
her part to perfection. This must be the way declassed,
women behaved. They got men to buy and pay for
their clothes. Yes, this was the method.
They entered the shop. " I will take this gown," she
said to the woman, "without trying it on, for my maid
can alter it; and this little cape which matches it. And
let me see " she drew off her veil. " Hand me that
hat—the one with the poppies and the grapes." She
POPPMA
277
put it on, then turned with a dazzling glance towards
de Lansac.
'' Pretty, eh ? You can send the bill to monsieur,'' she
said to the woman, indicating de Lansac with a sweep
of her hand. " He will pay." She gave her own name
and address in full and moved away, while de Lansac
murmured his, almost inaudible. They came out again
into the bright day. "Now," said Poppsea, "take me
to one of the little restaurants on the Champs Elys6es.
I am hungry as a wolf, and thirsty as a little fish.'' They
went to the restaurant and breakfasted together. Under
the searching glare of its white dining-room de Lansac
could see her more distinctly. There was a fixity in the
bloom he had so admired that had in it something
apocryphal. He concluded that she was feverish. '' I
have never seen her painted," he thought; "she is
certainly en beauti; but there is a glitter, a hardness, I
had not noticed before."
On their way back, as they crossed the Rond Point, a
smart brougham with spirited horses and men in tan
liveries crossed their track. In it were Eliane and her
mother, the Marquise de Valfonte. Poppaea met the
younger woman's eyes with a haughty stare, yet not
without a pang at being seen in such fashion.
" She has even lost her air of distinction," said Eliane.
'' She is all far dee and looks old.''
Her mother raised the curtain from the narrow glass
behind their heads, looking back. '' She walks well,''
she said.
She had been vexed at her daughter's action, consid-
ering it most ill advised. No man had ever been re-
claimed or retained by heaping insult upon a rival,—none.
There was also the latent satisfaction of the " I told you
so." She had never entirely forgiven her daughter's
278
POPPMA
childish wilfulness. 4' When she chose to marry a rStu-
riery what could she expect?" she said to the Marquis.
He, the Marquis, was inclined to view his daughter too
as entttee and unreasonable. She had admitted to him
that Alford denied all the charges, and that she be-
lieved him guiltless. The Marquis was now completely
under the charm of his son-in-law. '' A little flirtation,"
he said, "perhaps, as they do such things in America—
no more, no more. A pretty little widow,—what will
you have ? Eliane dances all night; Grafton is bored.
He is un homme serieux—gets tired of the cotillon—has
a little conversation with this lady. No harm—no
harm . . . our child was too precipitate—too soon
emballee." So Eliane's parents had given her scant
sympathy. They had even begged her to break the
constraint and ask Mrs. Hazelwood's pardon ; but this
she would never, never consent to—never. She pre-
ferred that her husband should desert her, as he was
now doing, forever. Although piqued at his continued
severity, she did not suffer from it as she once would ;
she was learning to do without him. She reigned queen
over a large coterie, in which she was fawned upon, flat-
tered, and amused. The slight she had put upon Mrs.
Hazelwood she knew to have borne fruits. She knew
that this lady's social ostracism from many houses was
her work. This sense of power secretly delighted her.
The rest could wait.
In the meanwhile de Lansac had been made a little
uncomfortable by the shopping episode ; but he parted
from Mrs. Hazelwood more her champion than ever.
He felt now that such a championship had become less
an impulse of instinct than a necessity of will.
CHAPTER XXX.
"CARLY that evening Poppaea dressed herself up in
' her new finery,—Olympe having already altered
its fit—and even donned the hat. Thus accoutred she
ran down to knock at the Princess's door. She had
not washed the fictitious color from her face. She was
very handsome.
"If Mr. Grafton calls," she said to her maid, "you
can tell him I am with Madame Tamara." He did call,
and was admitted almost simultaneously with the Prin-
cess to the latter's boudoir, where they found Poppaea
awaiting them.
'' I was changing my gown when you were an-
nounced," said Leocadia in apology.
" What do you think of this frock and of my hat ?"
cried Poppaea as they settled themselves.
" That is very chic," said the Princess, adjusting her
monocle.
"The hat is marvellously becoming to you," said
Grafton, kissing her hand in greeting.
" I am so glad you think so," said Poppaea in a dis-
engaged voice, '' because they are frightful robbers in
that shop, and I wouldn't wish Monsieur de Lansac to
be cheated."
" Monsieur de Lansac?" said Leocadia.
"You see," said Poppaea, throwing off her hat and
resting her head against the sofa cushion, '' he gave
them to me."
Leocadia caught her breath ; there was a long silence.
279
2 8o
POPPsEA
Grafton made an ejaculation : "You will kill me !" he
said, advancing towards her. "Or do you wish that I
shall kill him—which will it be?"
She laughed, tossing back her head. He was going
on, furious, outraged, but the Princess suddenly laid a
hand on his wrist, pointing to Poppsea. The young
woman was looking out at them piteously. A convul-
sive movement agitated her limbs, and her hand clutched
her left side. " Quick—quick—call Olympe—quick !"
said the Princess. '' This is one of her attacks—we
have learned to know them." In a moment he was at
her side imploring pardon, mute with sorrow, while the
women loosened her garments, ministering to her as
they knew best. Those spots of color upon her cheeks,
through the deadly faint that followed, burnt themselves
into Alford's consciousness ; they tore him with infinite
compassion. " She wished to deceive me," he thought,
" to hide under this false semblance of health her suffer-
ing. O my poor darling, have I driven you to this?"
So even Alford failed to understand—and in fact, how
could he ?
The next morning Poppsea threw her pot of rouge out
of the window ; she had no further use for it. It fell
upon the head of a workman going to lay asphalt in an
adjacent avenue. He picked up the unusual missile,
turned it over, examined it, and with true French thrift
put it in his pocket. He knew a dealer who took . . .
everything.
After Mrs. Hazelwood's fainting fit, and when she had
gone to her room and to her bed, Grafton and Leocadia
sat together far into the night. The gravity of the
scene just enacted, the quaint persistence of her ca-
prices, the inconsequences of her conduct, were dis-
cussed between these two who loved her, with anxiety,
POPPMA
281
almost with terror. To Leocadia, Alford had never ad-
mitted that there was aught between them except an
element of ardent friendship. But to-night, while mak-
ing no confession, he spoke of his devotion and of his
eager desire for a marriage. He implored the Princess
to use every persuasion to induce Poppsea to put an
end to a situation which was fast becoming untenable.
While appreciating that Madame Tamara was not the
best companion for a young and ingenuous woman,—
and what lover does not believe in his mistress's ingen-
uousness ?—he felt now that minor considerations must
give way to immediate danger. Since Leocadia was
genuinely attached to Poppsea, she might yet do much
for her—for them both. Of her health, too, they spoke.
"It is this false position," he kept repeating, "that
hurts her; this cruel talk which she treats carelessly,
but from which her delicacy shrinks as would her soft
flesh from hot iron !"
" I think you have guessed," said Madame Tamara,
lighting a fresh cigarette, and with her queer orange
eyes on the ceiling, '' I think you have divined the
secret of her waywardness."
'' I have seen it with dismay. She has not the force
that women need who brave opinion. In other words,
she is a woman from head to heel —pauvrepetite !''
"I think," said the Princess, with that keen percep-
tion born of her Slav origin, '' that you Americans in-
herit as a nation, from your Puritan ancestry, an ina-
bility to be content in complicated situations. You
have a healthful, rugged side to you that is ill fitted
for intrigue, and makes you blunderers where the Latins
are consummate masters," she sighed. " I find in you
conscience and a natural honesty. When you trans-
gress, you are miserable. Stratagem will never be your
282
POPPMA
strongest weapon in either love or war.'' After he left
her she pondered over many things. Among others on
the fact that this love which was making Poppaea so per-
verse, which might perhaps degrade and belittle her,
was on the contrary enlarging, widening Alford's
nature. Of this phenomenon I have already spoken.
It had not escaped the Princess's sharp diagnosis.
There was no harshness, no cynicism left in him, or
even in the expression of his countenance. She had once
thought him something of a poseur ; he was now gentle,
manly, natural. Whatever labyrinth of evil forces had
brought him to so perilous a pass, he was now eager to
be guided—to see the right. His humility touched her.
"It is extraordinary," she said to herself as she blew
out her candle ; '' but I always liked him ; there is some-
thing princely about the man in spite of all."
CHAPTER XXXI.
HTO a man approaching middle life there is nothing
* more appalling than a sudden realization that he
is not independent. Montgomery Craven had saved
enough from his now ample income to provide at least
shelter and raiment for himself and his women ; but
in their increasing demands and his own innate and
thoroughly American open-handedness, he knew that,
should he suddenly throw up his position as editor of
The Messenger, they and he would be sorely pinched
and straightened. Lavish to a fault towards those whom
he cared for/Mrs. Hazel wood herself little knew how
often her cousin had eked out a deficit in her slender
revenues with his own. And there were others, many
others, whom he succored,—indigent clerks in the office ;
land-poor neighbors at Craven, burdened with families ;
possibly shiftless, certainly helpless.
When he first heard of the scandal in which his cous-
in's fair name was involved with Grafton's, of the insult
which Grafton's foreign wife had put upon her, anger
filled him. The old animosity so long latent and sleep-
ing against the commander of the forces he marshalled
awoke within him once again. His first impulse was to
cable the resignation of his position. This step at the
present juncture he knew would greatly embarrass the
company ; and in so far would be an exquisite vengeance.
The policy of the paper was at present a matter of mo-
ment. Impending elections, personal pledges made
283
284
POPPALA
to candidates whose platforms he had promised by voice
and pen to support; secrets known only to himself—for,
if Montgomery had not the genius of organization, he
had the industry and patience which master and hold
—all these things made his immediate demission not
only a grave problem for The Messenger, but almost a
breach of faith. A large public formed its opinions upon
this journal. The innocent would suffer. Like all great
enterprises, it had its hangers-on,—employes who were
its especial proteges ; women who owed their daily bread
to the ramifications of its huge machinery, and who were
Craven's individual care.
While he was thus conscientiously debating with him
self, as chance would have it, his quarterly salary became
due, and Grafton's check fell on his desk, one morning,
like a blow upon the cheek. It is hard to accept money
from one you would like to horsewhip. Montgomery
is probably not the first or last who has shrunk under
this ignominy. There are those, no doubt, who enjoy
the chink of an enemy's ducats in their own pockets.
They think the balance just. They are such as have
outlived impulse. Montgomery was not of these ; he had
kept pure aims before glittering prizes. This is difficult.
Justice is not generosity.
Men of a certain age watch the thinness of their hair
upon the brow, the grayness of its wave upon their
temples, the lines which laminate their cheeks, the
opaqueness of tired eyes, with a certain sadness.—Not
daily—not always, when they are wise and philosophic,
but now and again, in one of those unguarded moments
of the closet, when we put off our armor, with all sub-
terfuge.
Middle age—that graceless and ugly thing, which
has lost the suppleness of youth, and has not gained the
POPPjEA
285
dignity of age—faces them. They tell themselves that
never again for them will the lovely smile of romance
glow. In this they may make a mistake. There is, in
fact, a middle-aged heart, but it is not of the hair or
eyes. Its wrinkles are made up of shabby compromise,
of paresis of will, aspiration, and ambition. Its beliefs
have shrivelled and its standards grown base. It is this
which makes men accept a low comfortableness, grow
greedy of gain, eat to excess, neglect their persons, wear
soiled cravats, snore in railway trains, flirt with kitchen
maids, or marry the cook on their death-beds. It is
this which makes women lose sweetness and pride, bow
to the sordid fetichism of social struggle, of which fine
raiment and fat living are the prizes, cackling and
screaming at empty altars. It is this middle age from
which one well may shrink, knowing that, if its acts be
too trivial for remorse, its influence on character is never-
theless sure and deadly. Those who escape this inner
corruption of the midway, with its animalism and selfish-
ness, its makeshifts born after all of a form of hopeless-
ness, sometimes startle the world with a tale of tardy con-
quest, and go to their graves in a blast, not of contempt
but of glory.
It may be said here that to persons who are not well-
bred middle life is a revealing danger. Innate vulgarity,
which the envelope of youth has concealed with its rose-
bloom glamour, which the white hairs and helplessness of
age may sometimes reclothe with a tithe of lost beauty,
stands stripped bare. The outline of form and of feature
thickens and coarsens. The soul is hidden. To the
truly refined, on the contrary, this period is some-
times marked by increasing delicacy and distinction.
Coquetry of the person should be assumed at the age
when it is frequently discarded. It was of Vandyke's
286
POPPAZA
portrait of James Duke of Richmond that an observant
man exclaimed, "the very wrinkles in his stockings
look the gentleman !"
The child of tested and sanctified affection, Montgom-
ery Craven had sucked in with the milk of his gentle
mother an unflinching rectitude, a robust morality.
There lurked in his blood not one drop of that poi-
son which it was fair to imagine the disobedient Ve-
ronica and the turbulent Harry Dalton might well have
poured into their offspring's veins. Here stands hered-
ity, bristling dragon with claws of brass and with breast
of steel, a Nemesis that none may fully gauge, as none
may quite escape. Montgomery was not effeminate.
He had little of the modern analytic turn, with its vacil-
lations and its anodynes. He was wholesomely severe.
He looked upon Alford Grafton's offences as heinous in
the extreme. Quixotically lenient towards women, he
thought it but natural that the young wife should have
been goaded on by her husband's treachery. Poppaea
he considered as a victim. How monstrous must be the
egotism, how stupendous the self-love of a man who
could not better protect a lonely woman ! What abysses
of vanity did this whole miserable affair reveal! In her
powerful days Poppaea had received Grafton at her
houses ; he had broken of her bread, and drunk of her
wine-cup. Poor and desolate, he failed to repay the
debt of gratitude by an infinite respect. Of the details
of the heart-drama that had been played between these
two Montgomery was ignorant. Had he known them,
it is still probable he would have judged the man with
no more leniency. Conduct to him was simple enough.
Duty a great word, a greater fact. No parley, no jug-
glery ; the hands on the table ; a plain game ; a single
throw of the dice. Had he known all he would not
POPPAlA
287
have absolved Grafton ; he would still have held him in
contempt, if not in derision.
For almost the first time in his life now, a complex
problem faced him. After mature deliberation he forced
himself to wait. To desert the helm to-day meant the
forsaking of a crew by its captain on the eve of storm.
The elections once over, his pledges redeemed, all else
would be clear from mists of sultry doubt. Justice
should be done to all—to her—to himself. In the
meanwhile he urged his mother and his sister Violet,
who were talking of a trip to Europe, to hasten their
departure, although he did not then mention the mo-
tive of this insistence. He begged them earnestly, how-
ever, to find Mrs. Hazelwood in Paris ; to give her their
women's hands in cordial fellowship ; to heed and
hearken to no word against her honor, and, if possible,
to persuade her to return to her own country. Should
they fail to convince her of the wisdom of this step, he
decided that he would himself run across the water. He
somewhat enigmatically bade Violet tell her to take no
steps of importance of any sort until she had seen and
spoken with him.
He reminded his mother and sister of her kindnesses
in the past, and they promised to do his bidding. They
would not have belonged to their sex had they not felt
a certain pleasurable curiosity at the thought of seeing
Mrs. Hazelwood in Paris.
Several times in the course of existence we are called
upon to make acquaintance again with our old friends.
The separations of prolonged absence, marriage, a death
that touches nearly, any profound experience which
reaches to the roots of being, seem to create a nimbus
between us and our friends which must be pierced if we
would recognize them. We expect to find their feat-
288
POPP&A
ures altered,—some new inflexion in their voices ; and,
if we fail to mark this brand of change, we are a trifle
amazed, if not disappointed.
When, therefore, Mrs. Hazelwood answered the note
Violet had left for her with a warm welcoming one,
asking her relatives to come upon the following Tues-
day to breakfast, they accepted with alacrity. She
went to their hotel, but missed them ; so that when they
arrived at her apartment it was the first time they had
met her. They felt she had become almost a stranger.
Upon the morning of their visit an unfortunate oc-
currence had thrown Poppsea into that perverse mood
of hers which the Princess and Alford Grafton so dep-
recated. If perforce less daring than her shopping
excursion with de Lansac, its results were at least as
puzzling to her guests. The occurrence was this : With
her mail had come, post-marked "New York," a copy
of a weekly American newspaper, a paper noted for its
infamous onslaughts upon private character ; a sheet of
no wit or value, yet still not all without the power to
harm and hurt. The unkind hand which had so care-
fully arranged that this should reach her had disguised
its pen. The writing on the margin was unknown.
Here she read her printed name in bold, large type—
her name and his, not even veiled this time—their names
together, so all might read and see.
She had lately moved—so ran the paragraph—into a
sumptuous hotel near the Bois. Her fine gowns and
equipages were the marvel of the Parisian capital.
Whence came all this new splendor ? Had she struck
oil? Forced a bonanza mine? A blank divided this
announcement from a sentence which congratulated
Grafton upon the fact that he was as lucky a dog in love
as in affairs.
POPPMA
289
When the Craven ladies rang at Mrs. Hazlewood's
door they waited at least fifteen minutes before response
came to their repeated summons. Finally, after a muf-
fled sound within, a voice heard in command and one in
protest, the door was opened. A wild-haired girl in
torn and dirty pinafore blocked the passage. When
they asked for Mrs. Hazelwood, she hesitatingly, after
a suspicious survey, bade them enter. They found
Poppsea in her drawing-room, which presented a pe-
culiarly bare and poor appearance. There was no rug
before the hearth, no cushion on the lounge. Upon the
centre-table a single lamp. No books, no bric-^-brac, no
flowers. The balcony was unswept and barren of its
orange blooms. Mrs. Hazelwood herself was dressed
in a short, ill-fitting black serge, which had seen better
days. It was rusty and scant about the sleeve, and
bore evidences of washed-off mud-stains at the hem,
washed-off, yet mud-stains. She wore no collar. About
her creamy throat was knotted a tumbled handkerchief.
Upon her hands there were.no rings. Her hair was
scratched back harshly from her temples and caught in
atighFknot by a comb which had lost some of its teeth.
On her feet were walking-boots, buttonless, seamy, white
at the toes.
She rose to meet them with outstretched hands and
her old enchanting manner. Her smile at first so dazzled
them they could not note the change in her appearance.
But when it died and they had looked again, they ex-
changed rapid glances which seemed to say, '' Can this
indeed be she?" So pallid, worn, and ill did she appear
to them.
She spoke to them of all at home with affectionate
solicitude, quoted letters just received from Rudolph and
her mother, asked them a hundred questions about dear
T
290
POPPALA
Dalton and their own country home ; told them the
news of Paris, but this indifferently, as of one who far
distant hears murmurs from the throng. After what
seemed an endless waiting, filled, however, with ani-
mated conversation, the young girl who had opened the
door for them, wilder, redder than before, announced
with a certain frightened pomp that the breakfast was
served.
At the best, Poppaea's dining-room was the least cosy
corner of her French home. It was sunless, looking
out on a species of well, dark and sparely furnished.
Now it was shorn of all which made it habitable—no
silver on the side-board, no candles on the etageres, no
potted plants in the windows—it looked forlorn and
cheerless. The mahogany was clothless. In the mid-
die of the table was a cracked china dish, upon which
rested two oranges, and this was all the visible refection !
First soup was served. It was a trifle thin. Then
there was a pause. Poppsea fidgeted ; she got up and
called twice. The girl appeared. Three tiny chops
stood up against a rampart of potato. The ladies
Craven helped themselves. Poppaea shook her head,
took some potato, crumbled bread, tasted reddened
water.
After this the crumbs were swept off". Another pause.
"Well?" asked Poppaea, of the servant.
" There is nothing else, madame," said the girl, crim-
soning.
" Serve the fruit then," said Poppaea, with a majestic
gesture.
The woman bore the oranges to the buffet, and there
carved them deftly into eight quarters. These were
passed round. Each lady took . . . two quarters.
So there was '' fruit'' ... to spare.
POPPJEA
291
They then had, after another long delay, some finger
bowls, and once again adjourned to the salon.
When seated safely in their carriage, mother and
daughter looked at each other in mute question. They
knew not if to laugh or weep. They finally divided.
Mrs. Craven laughed and Violet wept. They had for-
gotten to deliver Montgomery's messages. They had
forgotten . . . everything. "She looks so ill!" said
Violet, sobbing.
"How many orange quarters did you get?" said
her mother, with hysteric laughter.
" But she cannot be so poverty-struck as all that!"
said Violet, still weeping. " It was squalor."
Mrs. Craven had suddenly become grave. "Poor
Poppaea !'' she said. '' When one remembers the past,
it is indeed pitiful. If she was acting a part . . . But
what could her object be ? But she was always queer."
They lost themselves in conjecture.
Poppaea had gone to dress herself. Olympe was out
on distant errands, from which she had been told not to
return before late afternoon. Her neatness would have
spoiled all. The cook had been sent out of town to see
her child, who was en nourrice at a farm near St. Cloud.
The little slavey who had performed their service was
borrowed for the occasion from the concierge's wife.
"They shall not say I take his money," said Poppaea,
throwing back her head. Then she opened a closet
door. Out of it fell such curious medleys,—pictures,
books, flowers, silver !
She shook herself slowly free of Olympe's old dress.
She was just kicking off the boots when Mademoiselle
Olympe herself appeared at the door.
" What! Madame in my shoes !" she cried in amaze-
ment. " Mon Dieu, what happens !"
292
POPPASA
Her surprise was to continue when her mistress or-
dered her to replace the bric-cL-brac and to generally
reorganize the establishment.
She vouchsafed no explanation.
. That evening she told Alford all about it, and he loved
and pitied her. Less and less could she do without him
now. There was nothing else left.
CHAPTER XXXII.
HERE is a cogent enmity which exists between all
lovers,—that enmity of sex which separates while
it allures. The thrall of the flesh creates spiritual re-
volt. All slaveries culminate in rebellion. The spirit's
protest is the drop of bitterness hidden in all joys of
sense. Hence warfare. Often they wounded each
other. How could it be otherwise? What angelic
patience needs the man, what intellect the woman, who
would brave a cynic world ? When every nerve-cell
tingles, acutely sensitive to each impression ; when one
passes quickly every hour from hope and rapture to fear
and dismay ; when a woman shrinks like the mimosa
flower from brutal touch, coarse jest, or enigmatic in-
sinuation, is it a marvel that there grow strange irrita-
bilities and exactions? Much of this intellect, nearly
all this patience had Alford now, and yet he suffered.
Sometimes he would regret that Eliane still refused to
bend to his wish, declined to come to her.
'' And can you really want it now ?'' she would ask,
flushing. " What object could there be ? It is too late.
There can be no forgiveness hereafter between her and
me."
"It rankles within me," he would answer, stirring
uneasily in his seat.
" Do you wish to make it all up with her?" Poppaea
would ask, a little ironically, " be at peace with us both ?''
" Is it possible you can still do me such injustice?"
294
POPPMA
"What injustice? You seem to want the world to
think you hers !''
" Poppaea !"
Then she would exclaim, '' Why did you marry her,
since I was free ?''
To this he had no answer, and that he had none
angered her.
" Speak !" she would say. "Speak some vrovd—Jind
one to comfort me !"
"You misunderstand—it is difficult—the present po-
sition. It is hateful to live under the roof with another,
and exchange words only before our servants. ..."
"Ah ! is it her conversation you want?" she would
ask, mockingly. Then she would dismiss him. " Go !"
she would say. '' Leave me ! I shrivel and crawl to-
day—my soul is dark ! Leave me until I am in a hap-
pier mood." She regretted afterwards her cruelty to
him. Nearly all the men she had known pretended to
admire women for their virtues, but loved them she
knew well for other things. Alford Grafton she thought
capable of loving a woman for her character.
Once he came in with an anxious, preoccupied man-
ner, answered absently some word of hers, begged her
to repeat it, but when she did so had not yet heard
aright. " What is it?" she asked, piqued and wounded,
'' which fills your thought ? May I not know ?''
He would not tell her. Then she made herself a
sorceress, as women who are loved can do, drawing
out the life-secrets of those who are enamoured.
The Marquise had sent for him. A gentleman must
needs obey a lady's summons. He had gone. She
was tactful and adroit, while she offered him a cup of
tea from her wonderful service, fashioned by Wen-
zel Janmitzer, greatest silversmith of the Renaissance.
FOPPjEA
295
What further humiliations, she asked herself, was she
to quaff at the hands of this American she had once
delighted in ignoring ! She told herself she had found
her match in her son-in-law. The man was terrible !
She spoke lightly of what she called her daughter's
entetement. '' Une enfant gdtee—que voulez-vous f'
she said, and smiled a smile that hid a pointed blade.
A little time, a little affection, gentleness, would bring
Eliane to acknowledge her rashness in making this
Mrs. Haze . . . Phaze . . . Daze—what was the
name? Her memory was getting poor for names—
yes, even for faces—yes, in making them all the talk
of Paris.
Grafton listened in courteous silence, hat in hand, his
cane between his knees, his glasses on his nose, with a
certain mordaunt mien of distinguished weariness. In
the meanwhile, could not her dear Grafton—dear Alford
—see to it that this lady—this Mrs. Hazelwood—ah,
there, she had it at last!—could be induced to leave
Paris ? the country ? She knew there was nothing . . .
but the town was wicked, and . . .
'' What did you say ?'' panted Poppaea, eagerly.
'' I asked her, should some one make a similar re-
quest of her and of my . . . my . . . wife,—that they
should leave Paris, because their beauty gave umbrage
to some other woman, what would they think?"
Poppaea smiled. She liked this well enough, this astute
reply which had brought the thin uplifted hand of the
Marquise to fall with a thud upon her lap. " I said,"
continued Alford, '' that I saw you rarely ; that few had
the privilege ; you were not often visible."
"You said you saw me rarely
"Yes, that you would not often receive visitors,"
said Grafton, a trifle impatiently.
zg 6
POPPjEA
"You dared tell her you saw me rarely ? I will go and
see her, and tell her you live here !'' A hot flush scorched
her cheek ; she pushed his hand away, where it had rested
for an instant, upon the cushion near her shoulder.
"Poppaea," said Grafton, mournfully, "if a woman
bids a man to murder her, must he obey ?''
But she was untamable now. Was he ashamed to
say that he came often ? Was it himself or her he was
protecting ?
At this outrageous injustice, Alford's long suppressed
ire broke forth. By God ! let her remember that he
too had a hot temper. There were words that even she
should never dare to speak to him. Would she leave
Paris and let him follow her; or was she fooling him
now, as she had in the past ? . . .
So the days passed unrestful amid the rapture and the
tears that are inseparable from the life of passion. Of
the nights she did not speak ; but Olympe knew that
she could not lie upon her pillows, for that breathless-
ness which craved air, light, cushions behind her!
There came a drawn expression on those too full lips of
hers, which some compatriots seeing one day and
noting said, "She has grown hardened looking," and
turning their heads passed by on the other side. Yet
Poppaea had not forgotten how to laugh her old sweet
laughter; and one day had her fill of merriment, for
who should come and see her but Lady Stockton ! She
wore the same defiant bonnet, the same mousquetaire
gloves, out at the finger-tips, the same dusty velvet
boots, with satin bows upon them. " Laws, my dear !"
said she, "You have got a pretty nasty cropper since
those days over in New York when you were so splen-
did ! But I am not one of those who forsake people be-
cause they are down."
POPPsEA
297
'' I suppose you have been hearing dreadful things
about me, Lady Stockton?" said Poppsea.
'' My dear, to show you how much stress I lay on
such things, I want you to come up and take a look at
my place in Scotland. Sir John would be delighted to
see you. He is getting old, but he still knows a hand-
some woman when he sees her. You can take a hand
at cribbage with him in the evenings. It will relieve
me, for I do get sleepy. I was always fond of gayety,
and it gets a bit dull those long nights. I find you
looking a little peaked ; but our bracing air will tonic
you." She looked about, "What do they make you
pay for this apartment, eh?"
Poppsea named the price.
"That is twice as much as it's worth. It's pretty but
stuffy, and the eating-room is as black as pitch too, I
see," said the old lady, rising and peering into.Mrs.
Hazelwood's small dining-room. "Horrid! You are
cheated ! Why do you pay them such a price ? Why,
I could get you lodgings in London for a quarter as
much, and light and fire thrown in !"
"I should die of desolation alone in London !" said
Poppaea, faintly.
"Well, well, my dear, and how is Mr. Grafton?"
"I believe he is alive," said Poppaea, who had not
carried into execution her threat of announcing to his
mother-in-law the number of Grafton's visits, and did
not now propose to make confidences.
''I have heard all the talk, my dear, and I take your
part. I know the family he has married into from neck
to heel. A nastier, slyer minx than that Eliane, and a
wickeder creature than her mother never drew breath.
My niece married into the family, and I know what I am
talking about. I had to clash with them once, and I
298
POPPMA
tell you they are bad enemies !" The old woman
wagged her head with a shrewd yet kindly glance from
her small round eyes.
"And what has become of Von Armath ?" asked
Poppsea, anxious to turn the subject from painful per-
sonality.
Lady Stockton threw back her head and indulged in
a lengthy and uproarious guffaw. '' Bless you, my
dear ! he has married a fat German widow of sixty,—
a Princess somebody who got a big jointure from her
first husband. They say she beats her servants soundly,
and her husband too, for that matter, now and then,
when she has her nerves."
'' I heard he failed to get the pretty Gwendolen ; so
Mrs. Ordway wrote me."
'' Gwendolen ! American parents know what they
are about. Armath was a nice boy enough, but my !
he's got no sense—not a grain. He'd squander the
fortune of any girl he married, and break her heart when
he'd eaten her money. He's got no head and no gump-
tion. Gwendolen's papa was a pretty long-headed
Yankee, it struck me. The mother felt her oats, as was
but natural when one gets up into the trillions.'' Lady
Stockton sighed.. " His old German widow'11 keep him
in order, it's much better. By the way, my dear, could
you give me a cutlet and a fillip of something ? Dry
champagne will do. I'm monstrous hungry, most
starvin'. " Under the influence of the god of wine,
loosener of cares and leader of dances, the old lady's
wit waxed warm and garrulous, and Poppaea enjoyed
her long call, promising to consider her reiterated invi-
tation to her Scottish moors. Lady Stockton had made
her laugh. Theodorus, the tragedian, told Satyrus that
it is easier to make men laugh than weep ; but one who
POPPAEA
299
stood by commended the comedian who could purge
in wholesome laughter, for a moment at least, memory
of its sorrows.
She saw few women now. She shrank from those who
were still faithful. Their overtures had a certain forced
flavor, as of a duty done, which seemed odious to
Poppaea's strained and morbid sensitiveness. She would
not go into the world any more, although the Princess
told her it was an admission of defeat. But there was
something that she feared more than the world's verdicts.
She could not meet Alford before others. Polished as
steel, elegant, composed—he who only a moment earlier
had knelt at her feet—the very thought of him thus
chilled her like a hand of iron at her heart. She could
bring no such calm to the conflict, and the self-control
to which he forced himself for her sake appeared to her
unnecessary, almost insincere. His fine spirit, fine in
spite of error, would have deemed it contemptible if
any word or look of his should further stain the repu-
tation she so willingly sacrificed.
Mrs. Craven and Violet had left the day after the
famous breakfast—famous, for in a letter to Mont-
gomery it had been elaborately described. They had
gone to Switzerland. Indirectly, no doubt, it had
brought to Mrs. Hazelwood an unexpected letter from
her aunt, Mrs. Frederick Dalton. This was the
letter :
"My dear Niece,—Montgomery tells me your cous-
ins, Helen and her girl—poor Violet is hardly a girl
now, but she is not likely to change her name, I fancy !
—saw you in Paris. They feared you were not par-
ticularly comfortable, and found you looking a little
overdone. I know that the Parisian climate never
3°°
PGPPALA
agrees with me ; I daresay it doesn't with you ; it's
dreary and damp enough.
"Montgomery and I have been talking about you,
my dear child, and we both feel it would be much, much
wiser for you to come back and live among your own
people. Whatever you may think, they would all be de-
voted to you and your interests. I wish indeed, my
dear niece, you would let bygones be bygones, and at
least come over and pay us a long visit. Your uncle is
getting along, and we are rather lonely. I will tell you
privately, in the strictest confidence, that Freddy's wife,
although an admirable person, is not sympathetic to me.
I always did like women who had a little larkiness about
them. She quite sits in judgment on your poor old
aunt. I know she thinks me foolish because I enjoy
going about. Fred and she get on capitally, for which
God be praised ! But I must say for a young woman
she is terribly strong-minded. She won't wear heels or
stays, and she doesn't do her hair decently—yes, I must
speak—decently ! and she disapproves of mourning and
wore pink to her mother's funeral. She's very advanced.
It seems astonishing, with all this, that she should be so
afraid of burglars that poor Fred never can leave her
after dark for a half-hour, not even to run up and dine
with us in town, when there is an evening train back to
the Plains. She herself says she cannot come because of
the new baby. As to fireworks on the Fourth of July, at
Newport—she went to bed in the middle of the day,
with cotton in both ears, they alarm her so much.
Her nerves seem all to have gone to fiddle-strings.
She would not go over to the Heathcote's display,
which was simply phenomenal. I sometimes think
these Puritans can bear stoically other people's woes
and tribulations, and even deaths, but a pin-prick to
POPPMA
301
themselves, and, lo ! they cry out as loudly as any of
us !
"Well, as I was saying, we are lonely. Your uncle
doesn't care to dine out more than twice a week ; and
we always were fond of you, dear Poppsea ! Yes, I was,
though you were only my niece by marriage. I always
thought you fascinating, and I daresay you are so still.
If I can do anything to prove my affection, call upon
me, and think about the visit that I propose.
" Your affectionate aunt,
"Flora Dalton.
"Your Aunt and Uncle Craven are just the same.
Caroline always exacting. I wonder how he puts up
with her.
"Your mother writes me that she is very comfortable
with the Rudolphs. I think, however, she misses you.
You must come home. She complained of sciatica in
her last letter, but I daresay you hear from her every
week."
Poppaea cried over this letter—sad tears. She was
touched. Her broken pride held no more room for re-
sentment.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
ONE morning Poppaea awoke, and all the tumult of
existence seemed to Have fallen from her. All
that had harassed and humiliated seemed to be hidden
away in one of those dark and sunless bogs of memory,
where light penetrates no more.
As she dressed herself, Alford's image, no doubt, was
before her, but perceived through a mist and dimmed.
She found that she could dwell on Eliane's affront
with critical calmness, even with meekness. She told
herself that it had been invited. Yes,—she could now
do her rival justice, that rival whom she had so hated
that the mere dream of her sent the blood from heart to
brain, and startled her awake from fevered slumbers with
moisture on her forehead.
She felt to-day that the future held something untold.
Between it and her there sprang up suddenly an im-
penetrable wall. It was rather a relief; the wall seemed
like one of those facts which alleviate anxiety. Anxiety
kills, but fact resuscitates.
She had frequently accompanied the Princess Tamara
of a Sunday to the Eglise Russe of the Rue Daru.
She liked it. She liked its quaint services, with their
plaintive chants, rising as from the depths of some
great and pitying heart. She liked to look up at
its ikonostas, with its Christ and its Virgin and the
Russian saints painted by Bronnikoff and the Sorokine
brothers.
Once she had gone there, and a grand duke, just
302
POPPJEA
3°3
arrived from Petersburg, with his grand duchess and
their respective suites, had entered noiselessly through
the side, portals into the glow of the southern aisle.
The men in their rich uniforms, the women—as is the
custom of the Russian ladies—in light garments, half
concealed by their shubas bordered with zibeline furs.
The small head of the beautiful Marie Pavlovna rose
into relief against the stained-glass window, whose
violent color threw upon the whole group an aureole of
unreality. After the service the faithful subjects of the
royal pair had crowded about them, to kiss their hands
in warmest welcoming. The scene had left upon Mrs.
Hazelwood's mind an impression of something at once
patriarchal and poetic.
Perhaps one reason that she liked this church was-the
fact that she rarely here met any one she had ever
known. Its loneliness lulled. Remembering that it
was a Thursday, and that the portals would be open all
of the day, she sallied forth this morning, keeping in
view the golden domes. The church, built in 1859 in
the Byzanto-Muscovite style, from Kouzmine's design,
is in the form of the Greek cross. To the young woman
it seemed to-day to hover in mid-air like a mystic sign
of benediction and of peace. The door yielded to her
pressure. She entered. The edifice was empty ; it
penetrated her with its repose. She sank upon her
knees for a moment. She did not pray, but more and
more her passion seemed to drop from her and leave
her . . . free. It was there, near her,—at hand, a thing
to touch, to walk beside her,—a reflection, but no longer
within her. She felt it a relief. After a while of silent
contemplation she came out into the Avenue Hoche,
and wandered through its gate into the Pare Mon-
ceaux.
304
POPPLE A
This park, once a famous resort of fashion, celebrated
for its balls, f£tes, and plays, later the private property
of the Chancellor Cambaceres, since it has become
national property is a secluded and at certain hours a
lonely retreat. Of its past glory little remains, unless,
indeed, the Naumachie, with its oval of stagnant water,
its Corinthian colonnade, and its statue of Hylas,—that
fair youth whom the nymphs of Mysia loved too well.
"The selfsame lay
Which melted in music the night before,
From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet,
And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet,"
murmured Poppaea dreamily, as she paused beside the
fountain. The air was heavy, the sky of a dull gray,
with violet tones. The trees were beginning to leave,
throwing out light green shoots. The female robins
were twittering in the branches overhead, bustling and
quarrelling like busy housewives, doubtless discussing
the building of their nests. Beneath this '' birth of
shadow'' Poppaea found a seat, with a little muripur of
contentment. She felt, as I have said, strangely secure,
almost happy. A momentary respite from physical and
mental pain had come to her,—she knew not whence,
she asked not why. She accepted it thankfully, glad to
rest. She sat now watching the vain efforts of the sun
to penetrate the gloomy sky ; the little ripples born of
a fallen leaf or a darting insect in the pool; and her
mind clung to these details and went no further. The
hum of Paris sounded afar and meaningless. The nearer
cries of children at play in a neighboring alley did not
jar upon her. A curious drowsiness seemed to over-
power her, and she might herself at last have been one
of the statues of the place, so immovable did she remain,
POPPMA
3C5
with nerveless hands upon her knees. By and by the
sun forced its way through murky clouds, and Poppsea
became conscious, through her lethargic revery, that a
shadow had fallen across her feet. She shook herself.
'' I think I was asleep.'' She spoke aloud. She looked
up.
'' I have been here fully fifteen minutes,'' said Mont-
gorriery Craven.
'' Why—why ! where am I ?"
"The simplest matter in the world," replied Mont-
gomery, laughing. " I went to see you. Olympe told
me when you ventured out at this hour you usually came
into this garden. I followed you, and here I caught
you napping under the boughs, in the heart of Paris,
exactly as you used to do at Dalton long ago."
Poppaea's face of smiling greeting darkened. " Let
us forget the past, and what I used to do," she said, a
trifle coldly. " It is well over.'' They had moved away
a little as they talked, but now retraced their steps, and
came back and sat together, once again, near the water
and the boy Hylas of the curly locks.
"I landed yesterday," Montgomery was saying to
her. " I came here on ... on business. I jumped
into the night train from Calais, and here am I."
"You are looking well," said Poppsea.
'' I am well, I thank you.''
" I suppose you find me a perfect wreck?" she asked,
faintly.
"You are beautiful to me—always," said Mont-
gomery, after a pause.
'' That is evasive.''
"And I have not come to be evasive," he continued,
stolidly.
" No ?" The tone was slightly mocking.
u
3°6
POPPMA
" No ; I have come to find out when this farce you
are playing is going to cease. I am not one to beat
round the bush very long, Poppaea."
"You are not."
'' I want a plain answer to a plain question. More
depends upon it than even you know."
The calm was broken. Here was once more the surge
of the tempest. Poppaea sighed. "I am not worth a
thought from you," she said, sadly.
" That is my affair."
"Not a thought—you don't know, Montgomery, to
whom you speak. The old Poppaea is dead."
"Be still," he said; "you have wrung my heart
often enough in the past. I want no details. You are
to return to America next Wednesday—do you hear
me ? I shall be on the ship. I will see to everything—
you and Olympe. You will go straight to Dalton, where
your mother will shortly come and visit you. The farm-
house is being prepared to receive you.''
Poppaea laughed, but it was tremulously. '' This is
summary," she said.
"Yes, it is summary. The play is played out, the
curtain rung down, the patience of your audience ex-
hausted."
"You called it a farce,'' said Poppaea, bitterly. '' The
play, therefore, has not yet commenced ; the tragedy,
if you will, is yet to come."
"There are farces," said Montgomery, sternly,
" which take on the color of tragedy."
"Ah, you speak truly." Then all of a sudden the
tension between these two strained and snapped ; he
seized her hand:
"Listen," he said; "to save you from further ruin
I will do anything—make any sacrifice you may ask.
POPPAlA
I always meant this in the past. The word is a shabby
one—there is no sacrifice, only joy to an affection like
mine. I knew the day would come when it might save
you—save you from yourself. Take my name—it is an
honest one ; it is yours. Marry me to-night—you shall
be my sister. Perhaps long hence in the future you
will learn to understand what my love for you meant.
You have held it cheaply enough thus far. Take my
name—it will choke off all further slanders. Let them
dare insult my wife ! Thus only can I protect you."
The extraordinary Quixotism of this speech shot
through Poppaea's soul with all its pathetic significance.
In one moment she saw a being in whom self had been
forever conquered. She saw—and egotist though she
was—she was profoundly moved. She rose and stood
before him, while he still sat upon the bench with his
eyes upon her. She touched his shoulder almost timidly.
'' Montgomery,'' she said simply, '' I have no words to
say to one like you. I only wish that at this minute
you could see into my heart—see the reverence that
wells up into it for you. No, dear, I will never, never
link my fate with yours ; but I will leave all here for
your sake—not my own—and I will promise ... to
come home."
" Swear it to me, Poppsea !" said Montgomery, spring-
ing to his feet and grasping her wrist.
'' I swear it,'' said the young woman, solemnly, with
white lips.
'' Are you ill ?'' he asked her after a pause.
" I look ill, do I not ?"
"Not exactly robust," he said, kindly, trying to con-
ceal the anguish of pity for her,—yea, and of that old
undying tenderness that filled him at the sight of her
sweet wan face, which still impressed the thoughtful with
3o8
POPP/EA
its haunting mystery. It was now strangely spiritualized
by experiences that should have coarsened.
" Well, Montgomery," she said, slowly, " I am ill—
very ill."
" Dalton will set you right. All you want is the
fresh air of your own land," he said, still speaking cheer-
fully
" Nothing will ever set me right," said Poppaea, with
melancholy.
'' That is not like you ; you were once noted for
courage. Nothing is irrevocable. You are young;
forget the past; begin a new ..."
But she shook her head. " Montgomery," she said,
"did you ever read Helen de Kroyft's story of ' Little
Jakey' ?"
" No ; why?" he asked, smiling.
" Because, my dear, I am like poor little blind Jakey.
Oh ! I, too, can cry, 'In ze night, when I awake, I
have ze pain in my life.' It is the sort of pain, Mont-
gomery, that nothing cures.''
He remained silent, walking beside her, down one of
the alleys which the noon-hour had left deserted, and so
out of the park gate towards her home. When they
spoke again it was of other things.
That afternoon she sent for Alford Grafton. An
enforced absence from Paris had kept him from her for
some days. The wellspring of his devotion welled
hot within him. He thirsted for her presence. It had
become to him the light of life, its breath. He could
hardly contain his impatience. She had commanded
him not to come to her before three o'clock. The
early hours of the day he spent in the vain restless-
ness of baffled expectancy. He wrote to her. He went
to her florist to select some of her favorite flowers. He
POPPMA
looked up a book she had expressed a wish to read,
a song she had desired to learn. At last, full of hope
and with joyous steps, he reached her door. In a
moment he had bent one knee before her ; but when
she bade him rise he saw, with the clear perspicacity
of love, that there was something unusual in her—
something intangible but terrible, which chilled his
blood. "What is it?" he asked, huskily. "What
has happened ?''
Then she told him gently and firmly of her de-
cision.
He laughed it to scorn. "What !" he said, "after
the delirium to which you have brought me you forsake
me thus ?—push me away from you, as you did before ?"
As he spoke his lips of fire wandered in her hair. For
a moment it seemed as if she would yield to his en-
treaties—take back her words—promise him all he
asked.
'' Alford ! Alford !'' she implored, '' let me go, let
me go !"
" Never, never, never,—you shall never escape me !"
he cried. '' Ah, my captive bird—mine still, whatever
comes. Why, my beloved ! do you think you can go
to America, and I not follow you ? Did she believe—
the dear little one—to fly from me so easily ?'' His
breath burned her cheeks. "You are mine. Never,
never again shall you leave me !''
"For God's sake, Alford, say you will not follow
me !" she faltered, her hands pressed against her breast.
'' Are you tired of me ?'' he asked, hoarsely.
But she was speechless, for in his arms she knew she
was not tired. The old fever had welled into her veins
once more.
" Nothing else, then, can separate us. Our lives are
POPPJEA
bound together, now and forever. Tell Craven so—tell
him the truth. Who is he to come between us ?''
She laid her finger on his lip, "We are not worthy,"
she said, '' to speak of him.'' Her voice was but a gasp.
She was standing by his side, his strong arm thrown
about her lithe figure, leaning against him, a mere
feather's weight now.
'' I am worthy as none is worthy, because I adore you.
Would I dispute you to another ? Ah, that is pale, pale
love ! No, I would kill another who dared desire you—
then kill myself. Ah !" he said, with a note of exulting
triumph in his voice, '' my empress, love me, love me,
and defy the world. You are mine forever. You cannot
escape ..."
As he uttered the last word a shudder passed through
the young woman's delicate frame. She staggered for-
ward with a stifled cry ; her head rolled upon his breast.
As he raised it, in his terror, a purple flood oozed from
between her lips, dyeing his hand in its crimson tide.
When, in a moment, his ear had pressed her pulseless
heart, he knew that it was stilled forever.
So Montgomery had been right. The play is done ;
the curtain has fallen ; no doubt the listeners are weary.
The masks are off and turned to the wall. The mime
is over, with its dance and its jest, its empty laughter,
its hollow merriment. The tear-streaked faces of the
bedizened players have slunk into shadow for another
night. They sleep in merciful oblivion of the parts they
played but yesterday. The blunted foil is in its scab-
bard. The battered ermine and pinchbeck crown are
put away. The lictor has cast away his fasces. The
torch-bearer has put out his link. The feasters have
gone to the banquet; but with frightened faces they nod
POPPjEA
and murmur, leaving the viands untasted, for before
them lies the pale ghost of their dead queen. Yea, she
is heedless, quiet, cold. Upon the stage of mighty
and glorious action she has failed ; already her triumphs
and defeats are things of yesterday—at best her role was
poor and narrow.
"Imperatrix et Serva."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
WO days later Alford Grafton was sitting alone in
his library. He was the sole possessor of his
sumptuous hotel. A week earlier, his wife, with a large
party of gay friends, had crossed the Channel. She
had gone to join a brilliant house-party in England, at
the Countess of Brownlow's. The Countess had been
that lovely Muriel Hatch, an American girl of no for-
tune, who had captured the earl in his salad days, and
was now the leader of her own elegant, though report
said, somewhat "emancipated" cbterie.
A card was brought to him by his valet, the only one
of his domestics permitted access to his master during
the hours which had intervened since Mrs. Hazelwood's
sudden death. He glanced at it. It was that of Mont-
gomery Craven. "Bid the gentleman come up," he
said, in a dry, hard voice to his servant.
Here he had sat for hours, hardly taking food, never
taking rest. His servant, who was not stupider than
most of his class, had his ideas and surmises on the sub-
ject. He suspected some marital complications. His
master, always so scrupulous as to his person and habits,
had not even changed his clothes ; they were disar-
ranged ; he had a two-days' beard ; his hair was in dis-
order ; his eyes bloodshot and uncertain. The gentle-
man who was now ushered in presented a great contrast
to these conditions of his host. He was well-dressed,
his face bore no outward marks of unusual agitation;
POPPJEA
it was freshly shaven, ruddy, and the step with which he
crossed the threshold was alert and vigorous.
In the great crisis of existence the practical temper
has the advantage over the poetic. The man of imagi-
nation, whose keen sight sweeps the whole horizon,
grasps in an instant the full possibilities of suffering.
He suffers, as it were, in one and the same mo-
ment the present and the future. The duller per-
ceptions of the unimaginative in concentring their
vision does them a service. To them the hour is suf-
ficient. They are at least spared the entire revealment
of loss.
Grafton rose as he entered and extended his hand, but,
the room being dark, possibly Craven did not perceive
it; at any rate, he only nodded his greeting. Grafton's
arm fell to his side.
" Can I speak to you alone for a moment?"
"I am quite alone, as you see," said Grafton.
"I would have been here before, but have been, as
you must know, much occupied ..."
Grafton cleared his throat as if to speak, and then did
not.
" I take Mrs. Hazelwood's body home on Wednesday
in a sailing-vessel; there will be less fuss and publicity.
The steamers make some objections—you understand.
I want everything done as quietly as possible.'' Craven
spoke in a matter-of-fact, business-like tone. Grafton's
head fell forward on his breast. The steely Parisian
twilight came in at the window ; it shone upon his face.
It was livid.
"Before I sail for America," continued Craven, "I
wish to tell you that I resign my position as managing
editor of The Messenger. I think it well to settle this
matter at once."
3i4
POPPAZA
Grafton raised his head suddenly, piercing Montgom-
ery with his eagle glance. " Why?" he asked.
" Do you want to know?" Montgomery took up a
paper-knife that lay on the table with his left hand, whose
empty glove he clutched with the fingers of his right.
He toyed a moment with the knife, then tossed it from
him with an impatient gesture.
" Yes," said Grafton, " I want to know."
"Well, then," said Montgomery, "I will tell you.
I wish to resign because I will have nothing more to do
with you and such as you."
" On what grounds do you speak to me thus?" said
Grafton, in a stifled voice.
"I speak thus—I speak thus"—and an angry light
played on Montgomery's open countenance—"because
I will have nothing whatever to do with a . . . a
. . . man I consider a blackguard and a poltroon."
Grafton sprang to his feet; Montgomery did like-
wise. The two men stood confronting one another.
" Is it to tell me this you come into my house to-day,
uninvited?"
" It is to tell you this."
'' And have you nothing more to say ? Let me hear
. . . all."
"A blackguard and a coward ; and if you don't be-
lieve the accusation, take this to prove it." And be-
fore Grafton could defend himself, Montgomery's glove
had swept his lips.
Grafton's herculean arm struck out from his shoul-
der, but in a moment it had dropped. His blanched
lips moved as if they would utter words, but no sound
broke from them. '' The blow was too good for me,
Montgomery," he murmured at last, almost inaudibly.
"How shall I return it with the hand on which her
POPP&A
315
life-blood fell but yesterday? See, it is warm upon
it still !" He raised his fingers and examined them
curiously. Then fixing his haggard gaze upon Mont-
gomery's face. " Here, spit upon me like the man that
you are, and . . . avenge her !''
In his eyes there was an anguish which disarmed
Montgomery more than any words that he could speak.
"I cannot so dishonor one whom she has loved," he
said, huskily, falling into a chair and hiding his brow in
his hands.
" No ; you are right, Craven," said Grafton. "You
cannot so. dishonor me ; nor on her name is there a
fleck or shade ; the fault was all mine,—lay all in me.
Since these two days I have had food for thought, be-
lieve me, I have seen the whole horror of a life like
mine."
"The life of all of you men of the world," said
Montgomery, bitterly, '' to whom women are fair game,
and their lives and happiness and honor your play-
things.''
"The horror of it . . ." went on Grafton, as if not
heeding him. '' I have lived liked an animal in that I saw
all with animal eyes. What I called love was the basest
selfishness ; what I thought aspiration was brutish grov-
elling. She would have raised me, but I would not.
I sought by every means to degrade her to my level,
but you see it was not possible. Her white wings flut-
tered indeed, for a moment, in my polluted grasp ; then
' beat against their bars like a wild bird's to break their
earthly fetters, and bear her far away from me and such
as I. Do you think I do not see why she was freed ?
Do I not know her time had come. Ah ! I can be glad.
Tell me, Montgomery, shall I never, never, never reach
her again ? beg her to forgive?"
3l6
POP PAL 4
A silence fell. Montgomery was first to break it.
" Grafton," he said. " Will you take my hand?"
" No ; it was she who said I was not worthy."
"Take it," said Montgomery, with a sob. So these
two enemies clasped hands.
It was about two years after this scene that some gen-
tlemen were enjoying their cigars in Mr. Singleton
Ackley's artistically fitted up smoking-room. They
had partaken of an excellent dinner, and were in the
best of humors.
" It was an odd story all through," said one, "and
it has had an odd sequel."
'' They say,'' said another, '' that Grafton has turned
Trappist, or something of the sort; or has joined some
society of ascetics."
" Pshaw !" said the first speaker. " I don't believe
anything of the sort. I'll wager, if he has a new fad,
it won't last long. He was always an odd fish."
'' He airs his new doctrines,'' said a third speaker,
sipping his cognac, '' in the columns of a new periodi-
cal that he has started. He is using the paper to extend
his peculiar tenets. He was always a man of extremes,
with a lot of talent and power, nevertheless."
'' His has been a strange career. The women used
to admire him ; I wonder what they will think of this
new departure ?'' said Smith Harrington.
"Women only like saintly men at a distance, and if
he has turned saint ..."
" Alford Grafton a saint! I'll believe it when I see
it."
"It is a fact," said Mr. Ackley, taking his cigar
from between his lips, '' that the standards of the ladies
do not seem to be always as lofty as they should be.
POPPsEA
Women have yet to fathom their own power ; that will
be a part of their emancipation. When they find it out,
it will be all up with us, my boys. Who knows ? per-
haps when they are wiser we shall be stronger.''
"I am inclined to think, Ackley," said the first
speaker, '' that Eve eat of the wrong tree, and that this
was her gravest blunder.''
"There"was certainly one of which she did not eat.
It may hold the key of this knowledge which I predict."
'' Grafton's views, at any rate, are unique,'' continued
another. '' He considers pleasure and happiness, which
all persons so hotly pursue, as quite impracticable of
attainment.''
" In other words," said Mr. Ackley, "like our great
Russian friend, he looks at our animality as upon a bot-
tomless cask, and at our effort to fill it with satisfaction
as greatly increasing the suffering and torture which we
inflict upon others as upon ourselves."
" He's got some newfangled notion that the passion
we call love must merely mean activity for others, and
must never be coveted as a means of enjoyment for
one's self."
'' A very pretty theory,'' said a rosy youth with a
falsetto voice; "a very pretty theory, but you see it
don't carry weight. The first thing his wife did when
he developed these new views, I hear, was to scamper
off from him and get her marriage annulled. She has
now laid her pipes to marry a prince who is some dis-
tant relation of the Bourbon's. I saw her once at
the races. She was a rippin' pretty woman, and im-
mensely smart. I have read some of Grafton's stuff; I
couldn't make much of it."
" No ; I presume not," said Mr. Ackley.
"But then I don't pose to be a man of sentiment.
POPPjEA
I don't believe in anything, and yet I am pretty com-
fortable."
"Yes, I dare say. Most men are vainer of their
limitations than of their powers—brag more of them,"
said Ackley, with meaning; "but I wouldn't encour-
age it; it's bad taste. That sort of cheap, unthinking
unbelief is a drug in the market to-day. I wouldn't
indulge in it, my dear boy. Why don't you try some-
thing less hackneyed ?''
The youth's jaw fell a little, but these men were ac-
customed to their host's sarcasms ; and they liked his
wines too well, and possibly respected him too much, to
dispute with him.
'' Of course, you know it was all about a woman—
his change of heart; he was dead mashed on poor Mrs.
Hazelwood," said a good-natured person, coming to
the rescue.
"Well, I can't wonder at it," said the young gentle-
man with the falsetto, rallying ; "she was another beauty
and devilish attractive ; although she snubbed me un-
mercifully one day I met her at the Grand Prix. She
could be haughty, whew ! She was pretty festive, all
the same, wasn't she? Eh? pretty larky?"
Mr. Ackley took off his eye-glass, wiping it deftly
with his fine, fragrant handkerchief. Something in his
manner threw a slight embarrassment upon the company.
'' I knew Mrs. Hazelwood well,'' he said, after an in-
stant's silence, and in a slow, incisive voice, "in the
days of her prosperity. She died in Paris, under rather
melancholy circumstances. A cloud had fallen upon
her ; she had been forsaken by many of her old friends.
It may have been through her own fault,—I do not know.
I also was acquainted with her father; Harry Dalton
was a fascinating fellow, but totally undisciplined. The
POPP^EA
3T9
scientists would tell us Mrs. Hazelwood's errors,—if,
indeed, she committed any, which I will never acknowl-
edge of a lady,—were the direct outcome of heredity.
I, myself, think there is a great deal of dry rot gather-
ing on this heredity business. It is a capital screen for
the scoundrels to hide behind. Given an average de-
gree of will-force and a fair amount of brains, men and
women can master their destinies. As to the idiots,
society must look out for them. Everybody is born
more or less handicapped. Some people have too much
appetite ; some, too little. When you have reduced
man to the level of the brute, and then tell him he must
be moral, frightening him with the bugaboo of disease
and tainted offspring, why should he listen to you any
more than my dog would ? Now, my dog is not moral,
although the sentimentalists whine over him, and tell
me he is much better than I am. He will steal when-
ever he gets a chance, and flirt with his neighbor's sweet-
heart directly under his neighbor's nose. He is net
moral, but he is pretty healthy ; and his last wife's pups
were splendid. A man can be entirely honeycombed
morally, and yet be in excellent physical condition. If
that is all he is looking after, it is easy enough. Only a
very little prudence is needed. No, there has got to be
a higher spiritual law than applies to the beasts, and the
theologians had better be looking out for it, instead of
squabbling over the inspiration of the Song of Solomon
and making fools of themselves generally. Why ! all
these thousands of years we have been trying to get out
of the mud, and the philosophers—all honor to them for
their industry—insist we shall remain there wallowing.
I think we had better look after the present. Let the
Chinamen worship their ancestors, I for one like to for-
get mine ; I have an idea they were a poor lot, I'm a
320
POPPsEA
republican to the core. ' Wipe off the slate,' has always
been my motto. Yes, I knew her well, the fair Pop-
paea ; she was an enchantress. Fortunately we are not
her judges. We might be puzzled as to the verdict.
So, if you please, as the poor lady is no longer here to
disarm criticism with her charm, let us deal gently with
her name ; we at least can do this for her. Pass me a
light, Harrington."
THE ENU.
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh and London
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