John 
 Cave 
 
 BY 
 W. B. TRITE S
 
 JOHN CAVE
 
 JOHN CAVE 
 
 BY 
 
 W. B. TRITES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 19*3
 
 Copyright, 1909, by 
 
 W. B. TRITES 
 
 Copyright, 1913, by 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY
 
 BOOK I 
 
 2138510
 
 JOHN CAVE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HAVING, through drunkenness, at the age of 
 twenty- four, lost his place as a reporter on one of 
 the newspapers of Chicago, John Cave returned to 
 the East. 
 
 On a cold and starry evening in November he 
 arrived. His luggage a station attendant piled on 
 the roof of a hansom, and the driver drove him to 
 our most fashionable hotel, to our small, red-brick 
 hotel down town. 
 
 At great expense engaging there a bedroom with 
 a bath, he bathed and put on fresh clothes that one 
 of the hotel valets had unpacked and pressed for 
 him. Then he counted, thoughtfully, his money. 
 There was a lot of it. He smiled. 
 
 He lighted a cigarette, and leaned his elbow on 
 the white mantel of the bedroom, crossing his feet. 
 He would not, he told himself, look for work for 
 two or three days : there was no need : and from his 
 lips the smoke shot forward in a straight, thin line 
 until, its momentum lost, it floated in the air before 
 
 3
 
 John Cave 
 
 him, a little, swirling cloud. He saw in the smoke 
 the life of the theatres and cafes that he insatiably 
 loved . . . and he smiled because he was young, 
 because his cold bath and careful toilet had given 
 him a sense of exquisite freshness and purity and 
 strength, and because he expected much amuse- 
 ment to-night from a participation in the gaieties of 
 our venerable city. 
 
 In the mood of a huntsman, his money being, as 
 it were, his fowling piece, he descended to the palm- 
 room of the restaurant, a room pleasant with the 
 music of violins and flutes; and choosing a little 
 table in a corner, he began to dine with a good ap- 
 petite. He had finished his oysters and was await- 
 ing the soup when . . . 
 
 She entered gaily. Her beautiful eyes, sweeping 
 the room, met his almost at once. And they 
 lingered in his, as, attended by obsequious waiters, 
 she advanced with gallant and joyous air. A man 
 of middle age was with her, but she gave to Cave 
 the friendliest look as she sat down. 
 
 He was flattered, for she appeared to be the 
 daughter of a rich and distinguished house ; but at 
 the same time, too, he was alarmed. Perhaps she 
 thought him an acquaintance: it seemed incredible 
 that a girl like her should flirt. Nevertheless he 
 resolved, by hook or by crook, to know her. It 
 would be horrible, though, if she should rebuff him 
 
 4
 
 John Cave 
 
 before the people in the palm-room. He grew 
 nervous at the thought. 
 
 Champagne was served with her dinner, and she 
 drank to him prettily. Afterwards she made for 
 his benefit a grimace of amused and tolerant dis- 
 dain at her companion. He now had no more fear. 
 
 His only care was how best to approach her, and 
 to the waiter, when his fish was brought, he said: 
 
 " Can you tell me who that young girl is over 
 there?" 
 
 The grave waiter answered: 
 
 " No, sir. But I'll try to find out for you. I'll 
 ask some of the other waiters." 
 
 And he went here and there solemnly, whisper- 
 ing to this man and to that. The one interrogated, 
 without interrupting his work, would cast at the 
 young girl a swift, cautious glance and shake his 
 head. Discretion, even dignity, marked the con- 
 duct of this investigation. 
 
 " No one knows her, sir. She has never been 
 here before," the waiter said on his return. 
 
 Then John perceived he must be bold, or other- 
 wise he might never see the young girl again, and 
 the memory of having lost her friendship through 
 cowardice would in the future grieve him. So the 
 next time he met her smile he formed with his lips 
 the question, "May I come over?" and she an- 
 swered, " Yes." 
 
 5
 
 John Cave 
 
 Thereupon he turned pale, and rose and hastened 
 to her table with a terror-stricken look. 
 
 " How do you do ? How do you do ? I haven't 
 seen you for a long time, have I ? " he said in a 
 tremulous voice. 
 
 " Not for a long time," said the girl, and her 
 slim hand gave to his a pressure swift, delicate, 
 enigmatic. " Your name is Wilson, isn't it ? " she 
 said. 
 
 " Yes, my name is Wilson," he agreed. 
 
 She introduced him to her companion. 
 
 The man of middle age had a diamond button 
 in the bosom of his coloured shirt, and with his 
 dinner he was drinking cafe-au-lait out of a big 
 cup. Cave shook him by the hand. 
 
 " Sit down here with us a little while," said the 
 girl. 
 
 " Yes, pull up a chair," urged her companion. 
 
 " Thank you," said John, and the waiter 
 brought his coffee over. 
 
 " Now you must have a glass of champagne." 
 Her elbows on the table, her chin upon her inter- 
 locked white fingers, the young girl gave him the 
 invitation with an arch and tender smile. 
 
 But he hesitated, for on his discharge from the 
 Western newspaper he had resolved never to drink 
 again. 
 
 " No ... I don't believe, thanks. . . . The fact 
 6
 
 John Cave 
 
 is, I ... Oh, yes, I will, too." He laughed a weak 
 laugh, and sipped the icy wine. 
 
 The others also laughed. 
 
 " You had sworn off, hadn't you ? " murmured 
 the girl, her voice a little sad, a little reproachful. 
 
 "Yes, but what of that?" said he. "I am al- 
 ways swearing off." 
 
 She murmured : " So am I." 
 
 " I never swore off in my life," the man inter- 
 jected, in a superior tone. 
 
 They began to tell of the harm that alcoholic 
 drinks had done to them and to persons whom they 
 knew. The dinner ended ; they ordered another 
 bottle of champagne; their conversation became 
 brilliant, humorous, profound. The violins and 
 flutes made a soft and pleasant music. The walls, 
 lemon-coloured, shone like gold behind the green 
 of the palms. The people about them looked opu- 
 lent and distinguished, and they also, they felt, had 
 an opulent and distinguished look. 
 
 But the young girl became too tender in her man- 
 ner towards Cave, and for long intervals forgot 
 the man of middle age. He tried to make it seem 
 that he did not mind this, but he could not shake 
 off the gloom that settled settled like cold rain 
 upon him, and finally his animated face changed to 
 a stony and forbidding mask. 
 
 He began to look repeatedly at a thick watch. 
 7
 
 John Cave 
 
 " It's time to be going," he announced. 
 
 " I don't want to go yet," said the girl. 
 
 " Yes. Get ready if you're coming with me. 
 I've got to make the nine-fifteen train." 
 
 " And I'll be left alone in my rooms all the rest 
 of the evening! I think I'll stay here. I think 
 I'll stay with Mr. . . . Mr. Brown." 
 
 She smiled a delicate, tormenting smile. 
 
 " Mr. who ? " said her companion. 
 
 " Oh, never mind ! " She frowned. 
 
 " Well, you said his name was Wilson." 
 
 " Wilson's my name ; you have forgotten," John 
 interposed. 
 
 " Come on," said the man. He had risen now. 
 " Come on if you're coming." 
 
 The young girl looked at Cave. " I want some 
 more champagne," she said. 
 
 " Come on ; you've had enough." 
 
 She addressed herself to Cave : " If I stay, will 
 you get me some more champagne? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed," he answered. 
 
 " Then I'll stay." 
 
 The man withdrew. He did not say good-bye, 
 nor did he, as it afterwards developed, pay his bill. 
 John paid it. It was huge. 
 
 When they were left alone, the young man and 
 the girl, their elbows on the table, their chins on 
 
 8
 
 John Cave 
 
 their hands, looked at one another, admiring one 
 another with their clear, frank, youthful eyes. 
 
 " What is your name ? " she said. 
 
 " John Cave. What is yours? " 
 
 " Prudence." 
 
 " That is an interesting name. It sounds like a 
 little country girl's name." 
 
 " I am a country girl. My people all live in the 
 country." 
 
 " And what are you doing here in the city alone ? " 
 
 " Father thinks I'm a manicurist. ... I was a 
 manicurist. But I gave it up. Father is down on 
 me. He thinks I'm bad." 
 
 " I'm sure Prudence isn't bad," said John, and 
 he laughed heartily. He lifted his glass. " Here," 
 he murmured, " is to Prudence." 
 
 There was a little space of silence. The young 
 girl said : 
 
 " Tell me about yourself. Do you live here? " 
 
 " I come from the East," he answered. " I come 
 from a little country place, like you, but lately I 
 have been working in Chicago. I lost my job there. 
 ... I drank too much. . . . I'm here now looking 
 for another job." 
 
 " Were you ever here before ? " 
 
 " Never before." 
 
 " Then I'll show you the town," she cried. 
 
 9
 
 John Cave 
 
 In a hansom they set out to see the town. 
 
 The hansom rolled smoothly over the asphalted 
 streets. Many fiery stars throbbed in the cold sky, 
 and the frosty air was pleasant in their flushed faces. 
 
 " Isn't it jolly?" said Prudence. 
 
 " Isn't it? " he murmured. 
 
 She drew nearer to him. She was beautiful in 
 the starlight. Her mouth was close to his. 
 
 10
 
 IT was three o'clock in the morning before he 
 fell asleep, but he awoke groaning at nine and 
 turned hurriedly, as though to escape something, 
 to the other side of the bed. He was frightened; 
 a misfortune seemed about to happen; and with an 
 oath he arose as one flees. 
 
 It was the inevitable seesaw of drunkenness. As 
 high as he had been lifted last night into a heaven 
 of illusory happiness, so low was he now sunk in a 
 hell of illusory despair. 
 
 Standing on his feet, he lurched a little. He 
 felt quite helpless, as though he had lost all weight, 
 as though the winds could blow him hither and 
 thither like fluff. He floated, rather than walked, 
 to the pitcher, and tremulously, the ice tinkling, he 
 lifted it with both hands and drank for a long while. 
 
 Already he felt better, and the cold water of the 
 bath proved a delight. He slipped into it luxuri- 
 ously, letting it close over his head, and then he 
 leaped up with a great splash, his flesh glowing, his 
 eyes brilliant. 
 
 But the exhilaration of the bath passed off while 
 II
 
 John Cave 
 
 he was dressing. Therefore a cocktail was need- 
 ful, and he took it in the cafe downstairs, at a seat 
 from which he could regard the people hurrying 
 through the cold, bright, windy weather out of 
 doors. A second cocktail made him quite happy 
 and comfortable, and he gazed forth into the sun- 
 shine dreamily, thinking of last night 
 
 They had driven in their hansom from this 
 cafe to that, and he had a confused memory of 
 the cafes: a memory of lofty, pale-hued rooms, 
 where musicians played from balconies, and where 
 he and Prudence, at small white tables, drank cham- 
 pagne and conversed with vivacity, bending for- 
 ward towards each other. It had been pleasant, 
 only Prudence had flirted a little with some young 
 men. . . . She had promised to meet him here at 
 eleven for breakfast . . There she was now. 
 Very critically he regarded her approaching. 
 
 She hurried. The ends of the veil bound round 
 her hat fluttered out in the great wind, and her 
 skirt clung to her. She had to lean forward a lit- 
 tle to advance, and this apparently amused her, for 
 she bit her lip, as though to keep from laughing. 
 When she saw him she waved her hand, then sud- 
 denly put up the other hand to her hat to keep it 
 from blowing off. 
 
 He hastened out to meet her, and they paused 
 beside the entrance to the hotel. 
 
 12
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Oh," she said, laughing breathlessly, " isn't it 
 nice this morning ? " 
 
 She panted, her lips parted, her clear eyes shin- 
 ing softly; and as she stood before him her hair 
 and her apparel streamed out in the wind in a 
 charming, fluttering disorder. 
 
 " How do you feel ? " he said. 
 
 " All right. Do I look all right? " 
 
 " You are beautiful," he answered. 
 
 Thereupon she put her feet together and bowed 
 low; and this bow, gallant, boyish, gay, had the 
 charm which characterised all her movements, the 
 charm of an unconscious and free grace. 
 
 " I am hungry," she said, and they went in to 
 breakfast. 
 
 They had a French breakfast, with fresh straw- 
 berries and an amber-coloured wine, and with their 
 coffee they drank a little Tarragone. The room 
 was empty, and sitting by a window, they laughed 
 and talked as though they were at home. But the 
 people hurrying by without had the most unpleasant 
 expressions. 
 
 " I suppose," said Prudence, " that those people 
 out there all have to work to-day." 
 
 " Yes, but we don't. We only have to play," said 
 her companion. 
 
 They agreed, after breakfast, to take a drive in an 
 automobile, and their waiter telephoned for them
 
 John Cave 
 
 to one of the electric cab companies, and soon a 
 tremendous hansom came on its broad rubber tyres 
 down the street, and drew up by their window. 
 
 Prudence clapped her hands. " Hurry ! " she 
 said, " hurry ! " She tugged gaily at her gloves, 
 and while John waited for his change she paced the 
 floor. " That waiter ! Why doesn't he hurry ? " 
 she cried. 
 
 They seated themselves on the comfortable cush- 
 ions of the hansom, and it started smoothly, and 
 was soon gliding at a great rate of speed over the 
 asphalt. And without abating its speed it curved 
 in and out very marvellously among the horse 
 vehicles, which seemed lumbering beside it. 
 
 " Don't the people stare at us ? " said Prudence. 
 
 " They envy me," John answered. 
 
 " No ; they envy me," said the young girl. She 
 pressed his hand lightly beneath the rug, looked up 
 in his eyes and laughed. " There," she resumed, 
 nodding towards a grey building, " there is the girls' 
 high school. That is where I ought to be." 
 
 " But this is nicer," said the young man. 
 
 " Well, I should say it was," she cried. 
 
 In a little while they were in the Park. The 
 broad, white drive, deserted save for a lonely 
 horseman or horsewoman here and there, had 
 wooded hills upon the right, and on the left the 
 river, which lay in the wind and sunshine rough and
 
 John Cave 
 
 glittering. The speed of the hansom increased. 
 The cold streamed in their faces. Leaves of yellow 
 and red fluttered through the clear air and lay in 
 myriads on the ground ; then rose upon their stems, 
 when a gust came suddenly, and scurried dancing 
 together down the drive like gay little beings that 
 had life. 
 
 " You promised me last night," said John, " that 
 you would tell me all about yourself when you 
 knew me better." 
 
 " Well, so I will," Prudence answered. 
 
 " Tell me now," he said, desiring to hear some- 
 thing extraordinary and pathetic, hoping to be 
 deeply moved. 
 
 " You are inquisitive." 
 
 " Tell me," he urged. 
 
 " You can guess," she said, in a low voice. 
 
 A roadside inn appeared, and he directed the 
 driver to stop at it. " We'll go in there," he said, 
 " and drink a glass of champagne." 
 
 " That suits me," she answered, and she leaped 
 gaily from the hansom. 
 
 But John, seated in the inn parlour, became silent 
 and gloomy. For the desire to get drunk, which had 
 been troubling him a little all the morning, pos- 
 sessed him now, and he was unhappy to perceive 
 that he was going to yield to it. 
 
 15
 
 John Cave 
 
 He asked himself feebly why he should yield, 
 and all the molecules of his being answered in a 
 chorus : 
 
 " You feel a febrile restlessness and a febrile dis- 
 content. This feeling permeates and possesses you. 
 Therefore you cannot think of Prudence's beauty. 
 You can only think that to be so wretched is not to 
 be borne. And you know there is a remedy for 
 your wretchedness. Hurry, then, to take the 
 remedy. Hurry to drink yourself into a stupor, 
 for there is now no other way for you to be at 
 peace." 
 
 He emptied his glass, refilled it, emptied it again. 
 
 " Don't ! " cried Prudence, trying to snatch the 
 bottle away. 
 
 "Here, stop that!" he snarled. 
 
 He drank on and on until the figure of the young 
 girl became indistinct, and the world, grown vague 
 and immaterial, rocked slightly. ... It seemed that 
 Prudence was alarmed, that she was angry, that 
 there were tears in her beautiful eyes. . . . She 
 said good-bye to him, she disappeared. That was 
 well, for he wished to be alone. 
 
 For three days his debauch lasted. They turned 
 him out of his hotel because he could not settle his 
 bill there, and they said they would hold his lug- 
 gage until he should return and pay them. He 
 drank beer and whisky. He scarcely slept or ate. 
 
 16
 
 John Cave 
 
 He pawned his watch and rings. He neither shaved 
 nor changed his linen. And at the end, with his 
 last quarter-dollar, he got a bed in a cheap lodging- 
 house, lay down without undressing, and, a vaga- 
 bond among other vagabonds, slept fitfully, tor- 
 mented by horrible dreams.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IT rained, and it was dark and cold: a sodden 
 morning. But John, without an umbrella, without 
 an overcoat, without a cent, walked the streets be- 
 cause he had no place of shelter. 
 
 And he looked forlorn. Wet, unshaven, in 
 soiled linen, his coat collar turned up, his hands in 
 his pockets, his back bowed submissively, he 
 plodded on. And from his hat brim, when he bent 
 his head, there descended on him a little, chilly 
 waterfall. 
 
 Musing on his case, he laughed a little. In five 
 days he had fallen to a tramp's level, and he could 
 not now try to uplift himself by applying anywhere 
 for work because his appearance was a tramp's. 
 He did not know how, in the future, he was to eat, 
 nor where he was to sleep. There was not a soul 
 in the world from whom he had the right to ask 
 help. 
 
 He had eaten nothing since the morning of the 
 day before, but he had no hunger, the absence of 
 appetite being the natural sequence of his debauch. 
 He had, though, the sense of an abnormal interior 
 emptiness and lightness, and there were also oc- 
 
 18
 
 John Cave 
 
 casional interior gripings, as though an impertinent 
 hand squeezed some tender inner organ. 
 
 He walked very fast. That kept him warm. It 
 also kept his thoughts upon the surface of his 
 plight, kept them from plumbing its black depths, 
 wherein, perhaps, drowsed, easily to be awakened, 
 monstrous shapes of fear and despair. 
 
 Coming on a public library, he entered, selected 
 a magazine, and tried to read. But his drenched 
 trousers, when he was seated, glued themselves to 
 his knees, wetting and chilling the flesh; and be- 
 sides, to sit still brought on him an intolerable nerv- 
 ous depression. So he soon hurried out into the 
 rain again. 
 
 Steam-coloured vapours sagged low in the sky. 
 The world seemed hopeless, listless. But the rain- 
 drops gave to the storm an effect of gaiety, for, as 
 they broke upon the black sidewalks with their tiny 
 silver splash, they resembled a host of little jack- 
 stones spinning and leaping merrily together. 
 
 He approached a policeman on a corner, hesi- 
 tated a moment, and said: 
 
 " I beg your pardon, but I am broke." He 
 smiled miserably. " I have no friends here, and 
 no money, and no place to sleep. Isn't there in this 
 town some sort of a society that feeds and gives 
 you a night's lodging in return for work that you 
 do at wood-chopping ? "
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Yes. Here's one of their cards. You go up 
 there at five o'clock," said the policeman. 
 
 As it was not yet noon, he returned to the public 
 library to await the opening of the Wayfarers' 
 Lodge, for that was the name, according to the 
 card, of the institution that was to shelter him. 
 He sat by a steam radiator, and sometimes he read, 
 sometimes he mused. A young girl, pretty and 
 bold, passed him, carrying a book. Her eyes ig- 
 nored the unkempt figure, her eyes that a week ago 
 would have caressed him. . . . And now thirst, 
 followed by hunger, told him his stomach was re- 
 covering from the disorder occasioned in it by his 
 intemperance, and set him to glancing very fre- 
 quently at the clock. At last the hour he desired 
 came, and John departed. 
 
 But it was cold out! Never before had the cold 
 so tortured him. It trickled icily through his flesh, 
 and like a man with palsy he could not restrain his 
 continual and violent shivering. The twilight had 
 come on. The fine rain rolled through the twilight 
 its misty billows, and the street lamps shot lines of 
 gold across the bluish dusk. 
 
 He knew the Wayfarers' Lodge a long way off, 
 for about it there stood a crowd of sixty or seventy 
 men without overcoats and without umbrellas. He 
 approached them, he became one of them, and his 
 heart sickened with disgust of his new brothers. 
 
 20
 
 John Cave 
 
 Their dull eyes looked at nothing gloomily. 
 Their collars were turned up, their hands were in 
 their pockets, their backs were bowed submissively 
 to the weather. Very red and lustrous from ex- 
 posure were their noses, and the fine rain had coated 
 their moustaches with a silvery powder. 
 
 The door of the lodge opened, a bar of 
 yellow light divided the darkness, and down this 
 bar of light a fat man came running. 
 
 " Get in line," he shouted, and he rushed here 
 and there, pushing and pulling the men, while the 
 rain fell on his bald head. 
 
 After the formation of the line he hurried back 
 into the lodge again, and, from a desk near the 
 door, admitted his pensioners and interrogated 
 them, one at a time. 
 
 John in his turn entered. He gave his name, his 
 last address, and his last occupation ; and in a loud 
 voice full of surprise and indignation the superin- 
 tendent said he ought to be ashamed, with his ad- 
 vantages, to have fallen so low. 
 
 The unhappy young man passed down the room. 
 It was clean and bare. There were two dining- 
 tables in it and a bookcase, and on the white wall 
 these texts were painted in red letters : 
 
 " Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging," and 
 " I will return to my Father." 
 
 He descended slowly a dark staircase, approach- 
 
 21
 
 John Cave 
 
 ing a great light from which, as from a megaphone, 
 there issued the genial roar of a multitude of males 
 conversing in close quarters. The light was an 
 open doorway. He went through it, and found 
 himself in a low-ceiled basement room crowded 
 with his brothers. 
 
 In the illumination and the warmth their red 
 and shining faces smiled. They smoked, con- 
 versed, laughed, bustled here and there with an air 
 of absorption and importance. A heavy odour 
 arose from their old, wet clothes. 
 
 Upon the benches that ran the length of each of 
 the four walls they sat erect and close together; 
 and they sat on the ledges of the three bath-tubs of 
 rusty iron that stood in the middle of the room ; and 
 they sat on the floor. On a hanging shelf lay a dis- 
 ordered heap of magazines and works of fiction 
 from which they were always tearing, in a preoc- 
 cupied way, pages to light their pipes with. 
 
 In a corner two -very old, tall, gaunt men kept 
 to themselves. In another corner, a little apart, 
 three negroes conversed in low voices with polite 
 smiles. The rest made one family, one herd. 
 
 Now a little, thin old man near John took out of 
 his pocket something wrapped in a square of news- 
 paper. He unfolded the wrapping, and there was 
 in his hand a piece of soap. He turned on the 
 water in one of the bath-tubs. He washed, ab- 
 
 22
 
 John Cave 
 
 sorbed in his task, his handkerchief, and, when it 
 was clean, he put it to dry upon a line hung near 
 the furnace. 
 
 Then a youth took off his stockings, replaced his 
 shoes on his bare feet, and washed and hung his 
 stockings up. The line soon was filled in this man- 
 ner with drying handkerchiefs and drying stock- 
 ings. 
 
 A bell rang, and an attendant led upstairs to the 
 dining-room a squad that included John. At his 
 plate he found a bowl of weak soup, a half-loaf of 
 bread, and a cup of weak tea. He ate heartily. 
 
 His companions bartered their food with one an- 
 other, some disliking soup, others disliking tea. 
 What bread they had remaining at the meal's end 
 they carried down to the basement with them in 
 their pockets. 
 
 And down there it was gayer than ever after sup- 
 per. Everybody smoked and conversed. All the 
 faces, slightly flushed, smiled. The three negroes, 
 withdrawn behind the furnace, shook with sup- 
 pressed laughter. 
 
 But in their corner, side by side, aloof, the two 
 tall, gaunt, old men sat silent and motionless, their 
 aspect stern, sad, disdainful, their backs straight, 
 their feet set firmly on the floor, their old hands on 
 their bony knees. 
 
 An attendant put in the stoppers and turned on 
 23
 
 John Cave 
 
 the spigots of the three rusty tubs. Instantly the 
 men began to undress; but John did not follow 
 them there. For he reasoned that, since there 
 were over sixty compulsory baths to be taken, the 
 filling and emptying of th< lubs over sixty times 
 would occasion for the majority a great deal of 
 waiting. He, for his part, did not care to wait so 
 long. 
 
 But the others disrobed with frantic haste, and 
 were all naked in a moment. Sixty naked men, so 
 closely crowded about the tubs that the soft white 
 flesh of their shoulders and legs touched. 
 
 And as the tubs gradually filled they struggled 
 for precedence. That mass of interlocked flesh, re- 
 volving slowly, squirmed, pushed, and gave out an 
 angry murmur, a murmur of subdued remonstrances 
 and objurgations. 
 
 " All right ! " cried the attendant. 
 
 And they leaped, three and four at a time, into 
 the water, where they touched themselves daintily 
 here and there with their wetted palms, and then 
 got out, and others took their places. 
 
 John, perceiving how the land lay, began now in 
 his turn to throw off his clothes with frantic haste. 
 For there was to be, it seemed, no change of the 
 water, and it behooved him who desired a cleansing 
 rather than a pollution to be one of the first to 
 bathe. 
 
 24
 
 John Cave 
 
 He undressed. With very long strides he tip- 
 toed, shuddering, across the horrible floor, and he 
 stepped into one of the tubs. . . . 
 
 But the three negroes waited until all the white 
 men had finished before they got into the water in 
 their turn. They waited naked in a corner ; they 
 looked tall and straight ; they were silent ; they had 
 an air of proud humility.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN the morning, after they had chopped wood 
 three hours in payment for their food and shelter, 
 the men threw down their tools at the sound of a 
 gong, and hurried gravely away, like business men 
 hurrying to their offices. 
 
 But John departed slowly. More than ever he 
 resembled a tramp now. Therefore he decided 
 that he would take for the present some kind of 
 manual work. He walked on with his eyes open 
 for a building operation where he might ask for a 
 place as a hod-carrier. 
 
 There was no warmth in the bright, hard sunshine, 
 and the wind was cold. It seemed to pierce his 
 chest, and a pain shot through his left side. Sud- 
 denly he was seized with a fit of coughing so violent 
 that he had to stop and support himself while it 
 racked and shook him. The street was a fash- 
 ionable one, and many well-dressed persons, as 
 they passed, regarded him, coughing in that way, 
 with disapproval. 
 
 "Well! . . . John Cave!" 
 
 It was Prudence. 
 
 26
 
 John Cave 
 
 He restrained, as well as he could, his cough, 
 and, taking off his dusty hat, he addressed the young 
 girl humbly. 
 
 " You are kind," he said, " to speak to me." 
 
 " What is the matter? " she said sadly. 
 
 " I have gone to pieces," he answered. 
 
 " Are you down altogether down ? " 
 
 He frowned. The stares of the passers-by em- 
 barrassed and angered him. In silence he regarded 
 the pavement. 
 
 " Tell me I want to know " 
 
 " But I can't tell you anything here." 
 
 " Will you come and see me, then ? Soon ? . . . 
 This afternoon ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Yes, thank you. Good- 
 bye." 
 
 " This is my address," said Prudence. She put a 
 card in his hand. " Good-bye." 
 
 He did not intend, for shame, to go and see her, 
 but at three places he failed to get a hod-carrier's 
 job, and as the afternoon wore on the pain in his 
 side increased. His cough hurt his chest. He was 
 miserable with fatigue and cold. Just to warm 
 himself, just to rest. . . . 
 
 And Prudence was awaiting him. Her rooms, 
 in a subdued light, had an air of good taste, of 
 luxury, of intimacy. 
 
 " By Jove," he said, " it is pleasant here." 
 27
 
 John Cave 
 
 He warmed himself before the fire flaming in the 
 grate. He rested in a deep, soft chair. 
 
 " I'm tired and sick," he said. 
 
 She put on a little table beside him a syphon and 
 a spirit case. He drank, and immediately he was 
 comfortable and happy. 
 
 " How in the world," said Prudence, " did you 
 get in this condition ? " 
 
 He lighted one of her Egyptian cigarettes, and, 
 smoking and sipping his whisky and soda, he told 
 her. 
 
 She was sympathetic, scornful, a little amused. 
 
 " You are a funny fellow," she said. 
 
 " I am a funny fellow," he agreed. " When I 
 am at work, I long only for amusement. In the 
 midst of amusement only work seems worth while." 
 
 " When you work, do you get on well ? " 
 
 " Yes, I do," he answered ; and, as the whisky 
 magnified his good opinion of himself, he praised 
 his talent as a reporter. In the pleasant room, be- 
 fore the bright fire, lounging in the big chair, a 
 cigarette in one hand, the other toying with a 
 whisky glass, he lauded himself extravagantly. 
 And he would have kept on, perhaps, an hour, but 
 he happened to catch sight of his reflection in a 
 mirror, and that picture halted him. His look of 
 happiness changed to one of disgust. 
 
 28
 
 John Cave 
 
 " By Jove," he said, " I never thought I'd come 
 to this." 
 
 He rubbed the brown bristles on his unshaven 
 chin. 
 
 Prudence laughed. " Cheer up," she said. 
 " We'll put you on your feet again." 
 
 She declared that they would dine together in her 
 rooms. She telephoned to a fashionable restaurant, 
 and in a little while their dinner arrived. She drew 
 the heavy green curtains, and she set white candles 
 on the table. 
 
 " Now," she said, " we'll have a jolly evening." 
 
 "Won't we?" said he. 
 
 He ate slowly, regarding with approval her Per- 
 sian rugs, her pictures, and her chests and arm- 
 chairs of carved wood. 
 
 " These things of yours," he said, " are fine. 
 What is that black piece over there a cupboard, 
 a sideboard ? " 
 
 " It is a lit clos," Prudence answered. She 
 helped him to a quail and filled his glass. 
 
 "But aren't you going to drink anything?" he 
 said. 
 
 "No." She looked at him strangely. "You 
 can drink to-night. I'll do something else." 
 
 "What else?" 
 
 " Never mind." 
 
 29
 
 John Cave 
 
 And after dinner, regarding him curiously, 
 timidly, she brought forth a small, ornate silver 
 tray whereon there lay a number of little, glitter- 
 ing instruments of strange form. 
 
 "You 'smoke,' eh?" he cried. 
 
 " Only now and then," said Prudence. 
 
 She made him draw the dinner-table and his 
 chair nearer to the couch, and beside the couch, 
 upon a tabouret, she laid the silver tray. She put 
 out several of the candles in order to make the 
 light softer, and, after a moment's withdrawal, she 
 appeared in a flowing Eastern gown of yellow silk. 
 
 " We'll have a jolly evening," she repeated. " I'll 
 lie on the couch and smoke. You'll sit here be- 
 side me with your champagne and your cigarettes." 
 
 She filled a tiny lamp with oil. Then she lay 
 down. Her look was happy and absorbed and ani- 
 mal. She was enjoying in imagination a pleasure 
 profound and degrading. 
 
 " This is peanut oil in my lamp," she said. 
 
 " I know," said he. 
 
 The opium, like black molasses, lay in a thick 
 smear on a playing card. She took up a little on a 
 long needle, and held it over the flame of the lamp. 
 It cooked, boiling and bubbling and swelling; it 
 changed from black to golden brown. 
 
 Prudence, reclining on the couch, rolled the cooked 
 opium with her thumb and finger into a round pill. 
 
 30
 
 John Cave 
 
 She put the pill upon her pipe, and she held the 
 pipe in the flame, at the same time inhaling, with an 
 ugly, bubbling, spluttering sound, the smoke of the 
 burning drug. 
 
 " Do you like that? " said John. 
 
 "Yes, now and then, for a change." 
 
 And in the soft light, incessantly busy, like one 
 who sews or knits, she cooked and rolled and 
 smoked the opium pellets, absorbed and grave. 
 
 Her flesh had the fine texture and the pure, clear 
 colour of the petal of a flower. Her lips were 
 scarlet. Her dark eyes gleamed like moonlit water. 
 She lay on her side, her hand supported her head, 
 and when, now and then, she turned to look at him, 
 he saw beneath her disarranged skirt the flash of 
 thin ankles in stockings of amber-coloured silk. 
 
 " Haven't you any fear of getting the opium 
 habit?" he asked. 
 
 " No," said Prudence. " I don't believe all those 
 horrible stories that we hear about the opium habit." 
 
 " I suppose they are exaggerated." 
 
 " Yes, they are." 
 
 He rose and stirred the fire. Then, for a while, 
 he paced the room. 
 
 " After I return to work," he said, " I'll look you 
 up whenever I am going to take a day off. What 
 jolly days we'll have together." 
 
 " When do you go to work? " 
 31
 
 John Cave 
 
 " As soon as I have saved enough money to get 
 my clothes back. I am going to work first as a hod- 
 carrier, to save the money for my clothes." 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " Oh, that is nonsense. I'll lend you the money 
 you need." 
 
 " Thank you, but I couldn't think of borrowing 
 from you." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Oh, on account of pride." 
 
 " But it was on me you spent all your money. 
 You might as well let me help you. Then you can 
 go to work to-morrow." 
 
 " But I tell you . . ." 
 
 He bent over and groaned, placing his hand to 
 his side. A sudden and overwhelming pain had 
 seized him. His hands, his body, his head, his 
 whole being were drawn, as by a magnet, towards 
 that intense pain. He crouched on the seat of the 
 lit clos, contorted into a small knot : a small, shabby 
 knot, writhing, grunting. . . . 
 
 " It is only pleurisy," said the physician. " He'll 
 be himself again in a few days."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LIKE messenger boys the reporters of The Press 
 sat in the dusty local room, awaiting the errands 
 upon which the city editor would send them forth. 
 
 It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and the re- 
 porters should have gone forth long ago; but the 
 city editor had not come down to the office until 
 one, and now he was reading the papers: a task 
 he ought to have finished before twelve. 
 
 Unshaven and stale-looking, the city editor read 
 listlessly, a pencil held in his mouth crosswise. The 
 reporters two boys of twenty and a half-dozen 
 men of middle age lounged in their chairs with 
 their untidy feet on the desks; they held news- 
 papers open at arm's length before them, and, smok- 
 ing cigars or pipes, they vilified the various per- 
 sons of eminence who figured in the news. A group 
 of incompetents, of failures, of coarse and jealous 
 minds, they abused everything successful because 
 they were unsuccessful themselves. 
 
 John Cave entered, fresh and clean again, a 
 flower in his buttonhole, a stick in his well-gloved 
 hand. 
 
 33
 
 John Cave 
 
 " The city editor ? " he said, in a loud, pleasant 
 voice. 
 
 " I am the city editor." 
 
 Collier had taken the pencil from his mouth. 
 He looked at John with his hard, bright eyes, 
 cocking to one side his small head with its tuft 
 of stiff hair, and in this position he resembled a 
 parrot. 
 
 " I want to get a place as a reporter," said John. 
 " At The Sun office they told me to try here." 
 
 Collier yawned, stretching out his arms to their 
 full length. 
 
 " We do need a man," he said. " I'll talk to you 
 in a little while. Sit down." 
 
 John took up a copy of The Press, and while he 
 waited he studied the paper's character. 
 
 The paper seemed to him too big. There was 
 too much matter in it, and all this matter was dull. 
 Nowhere did earnestness, nowhere did humour 
 manifest itself upon those huge and dreary pages. 
 Every article he read appeared to have been writ- 
 ten by a stupid man half asleep. 
 
 He took note of the assignments that the city 
 editor gave to the reporters. The assignments all 
 pertained to dull and heavy things to business, 
 politics, prosaic meetings and conventions. And 
 yet, properly considered, the news was replete with 
 things strange and interesting, with sad things, 
 
 34
 
 John Cave 
 
 humorous things, things of an amazing and in- 
 credible oddity. These the city editor ignored. 
 
 When all the men had been sent forth, Collier 
 turned to John, asked him a few questions, and 
 engaged him. 
 
 " You can begin now," he said. " There isn't 
 anything in the way of an assignment, though " 
 
 But the other interrupted with respectful ardour : 
 he would suggest an assignment. 
 
 " Very well," said Collier, in a resigned voice. 
 
 Then John pointed out in that day's paper a 
 brief paragraph wherein there lay, he claimed, the 
 root of a novel and ludicrous story. 
 
 But the editor, who had been putting on his coat, 
 said in reply to the 'enthusiastic and eager young 
 man: 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. That story is not in our 
 line. By the way, here is something for you, after 
 all. There is a corner-stone laying this afternoon. 
 It is six miles up town. There is the address. Get 
 us something about it." 
 
 Collier sauntered out, and John swore in a low 
 voice, for it disgusted him to be assigned to an 
 unimportant corner-stone laying. That was leg 
 work, not head work. Had The Press no novices, 
 
 
 
 no boy reporters, to do such work as that? 
 
 Nevertheless he attended the laying of the corner- 
 stone, and an aged bishop revived his enthusiasm 
 
 35
 
 John Cave 
 
 by giving him, at the end of the ceremony, an im- 
 portant piece of news. 
 
 The bishop, an authority upon mine labour, ac- 
 cidentally let slip the news that Fipps, the great 
 millionaire, would open his new house formally in 
 two days with a dinner to the President, and at 
 this dinner the President and a half-dozen Amer- 
 icans of almost equal eminence would discuss a 
 new policy for their party on the Labour ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Nothing about the dinner had been printed. No 
 one knew anything about it save Fipps and his six 
 or seven guests. Therefore to publish, to-morrow, 
 the first and only announcement of the dinner would 
 be a great honour; but the day after, undoubtedly, 
 the whole story would be public property. 
 
 John hastened to Fipps's office. The secretary 
 kept him waiting in the anteroom an hour, then led 
 him in. Fipps, seated at his great, neat desk, a 
 rosewood desk as big and lustrous as a piano, looked 
 up to see if his visitor's face was familiar, and 
 then looked away again with the cold aloofness of 
 age in his eyes. 
 
 " Well, what do you want ? " 
 
 John gazed with profound interest at this old 
 man who, once a butcher, had climbed to the top- 
 most heights of power and wealth because he had 
 been first to foresee the marvellous future of the 
 
 36
 
 John Cave 
 
 electric car, and first to introduce this car upon 
 street railways. 
 
 " I want to ask you, Mr. Fipps," he said, " about 
 the dinner you are giving to the President." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 Fipps frowned down at his polished desk. John 
 stood beside him, looking at his beautiful linen, 
 at his alert, resolute and hard face. 
 
 " Your dinner to the President, sir. I want to 
 write an article about it." 
 
 " I have nothing to say." 
 
 Those words made John unhappy, and yet they 
 were the words he had expected. He wanted (and 
 Fipps knew it) a menu of the dinner, a statement of 
 its purpose, a description of the dining-room, the 
 cost of the gold plate all those things, really and 
 naturally interesting, which nevertheless were in 
 bad taste. Indeed, an article such as John hoped 
 to write would be apt, if it appeared, to keep the 
 President away from Fipps's dinner. 
 
 "If you will tell me " 
 
 " I have nothing to say." 
 
 John moved round the great desk until he faced 
 the millionaire. Fipps looked up at him, and he, 
 smiling down, said : 
 
 " Mr. Fipps, my paper wants a description of 
 this dinner. If I can't get it, another man will be 
 sent out for it. I must get it. If you won't help 
 
 37
 
 John Cave 
 
 me, I'll have to patch the story together out of 
 pieces of gossip your friends' gossip." 
 
 " Don't print anything. I am not going to give a 
 dinner," said the old man, and, still frowning, he 
 took up a letter as a sign for John to go. 
 
 " But Bishop Blany told me " 
 
 " I don't care what Bishop Blany told you." 
 
 John, confused, dismayed, for the moment utterly 
 at a loss, departed in silence. 
 
 He went out to Fipps's great house of white 
 marble in the country. As he had expected, the 
 preparations for the dinner went on busily there. 
 The gardeners were carrying plants from the green- 
 houses. The waggons of grocers and fruiterers 
 were coming and going. At the station he even 
 learned the hour of the special train's arrival. 
 
 And thus, by dusk, he had obtained enough facts 
 for a two-column story. He went home, and in 
 the quietude of his little room he wrote the story 
 swiftly and carefully. Putting it in his pocket, he 
 hurried out to a restaurant, ate a sandwich, and at 
 last returned to The Press office. 
 
 The city editor had departed, and the night city 
 editor was now in charge. 
 
 " My name is Cave," John said. " I was taken 
 on this afternoon." 
 
 " You are about three hours late. You ought to 
 have been back by six o'clock," said the night city 
 
 38
 
 John Cave 
 
 editor. " There is a church meeting up town you 
 ought to have gone to two hours ago." 
 
 This reproof was administered in a loud and 
 threatening tone, and a copy reader and three or 
 four reporters looked up with interest from their 
 work. 
 
 " Yes," said John, " I know I am late, but I have 
 a good excuse to offer you." He took the Fipps 
 story from his pocket and laid it before the night 
 city editor. " This is a story about a dinner Mr. 
 Fipps is going to give the President. The dinner 
 will have political importance, for all the leaders 
 of the President's party will attend it, and Bishop 
 Blany will talk about the Labour question." 
 
 The night city editor, a dark, handsome man, 
 listened with a sneer, and he turned over the pages 
 of John's voluminous manuscript disdainfully. 
 
 " This is all right, if it's true," he said. " Have 
 you seen Fipps ? " 
 
 "Yes, but " 
 
 " Well, what does he say? " 
 
 " Fipps denies it, but " 
 
 The other handed the manuscript back to John. 
 " That settles it. If Fipps denies it " 
 
 " But I am not a fool," John cried. " There are 
 a hundred confirmations of this story. I've seen 
 the bishop. I've seen the fruiterers. I've seen the 
 chef. I know all about the special train that will 
 
 39
 
 John Cave 
 
 bring the President." Indignation and disgust over- 
 came his prudence. " Here I bring you a good 
 story, and you treat me as though I came to borrow 
 money," he said. 
 
 " You had better hurry up town to that meet- 
 ing." 
 
 " Won't you read my manuscript ? I don't be- 
 lieve I have made the interest of the story clear to 
 you. Listen," John persisted. " The leading pol- 
 iticians and financiers of America will attend this 
 dinner. It is probable that they will agree on a 
 new policy for the next presidential campaign. Be- 
 sides, Fipps is spending money on the dinner with 
 a lavishness passing belief. He has cabled to Lon- 
 don, to Covent Garden Market, for peaches that 
 will cost him four dollars apiece." 
 
 But the night city editor turned away with an 
 inarticulate sound like a snarl nd John set out for 
 the up-town meeting, carrying in his hand the re- 
 jected story a bulky yellow packet of which he 
 now felt ashamed. 
 
 But afterwards, the more he thought of the story, 
 the better it seemed to him. 
 
 " By Jove, I won't be beaten like this. I'll sell 
 the thing somewhere else," he said. 
 
 And in a few minutes he was conversing over the 
 long-distance telephone with the managing editor 
 of the most successful newspaper in America, The 
 
 40
 
 John Cave 
 
 Dispatch. The managing editor heard him out in 
 silence. Then he said : 
 
 " That is a good story. Wire it over to me 
 personally at once. We'll use it in full to-mor- 
 row morning, and if no other paper has it we will 
 give you a special rate of fifteen dollars a column." 
 
 Comforted, delighted, John consigned his manu- 
 script to a telegraph operator and hastened up town 
 to his church meeting. 
 
 The story, the next morning, appeared duly. 
 Printed in big type and illustrated with photographs 
 of Fipps's house and guests, it covered half The 
 Dispatch's front page. More fully illustrated, aug- 
 mented besides with interviews with the guests, it 
 covered half the front page of the afternoon papers. 
 And it appeared all over America the following day. 
 It even appeared in The Press.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE Fipps matter did John no good in The Press 
 office. It rather did him harm. The reporters 
 shunned him, and the night city editor sneered at 
 him, and made remarks intended to insult him. 
 But the night city editor would not meet the young 
 man's eye when he sneereci, nor were his offensive 
 remarks ever direct enough to be taken up. 
 
 Altogether John had a hard time of it. After his 
 long debauch, by way of revulsion, he was filled 
 with the most virtuous sentiments, with the greatest 
 eagerness for work. Yet here, day after day, he 
 did nothing but attend church meetings and corner- 
 stone layings; but gather and write items of news 
 that never required more than a paragraph; but 
 hurry ten miles north or six miles west on tasks a 
 little child could have accomplished as well as he. 
 
 His hours were from one in the afternoon till 
 midnight. In the superb autumnal mornings he 
 walked, after his ten o'clock breakfast, in the Park. 
 He walked beside the river. And as he paced the 
 sunlit paths, as he breathed the cold and pure air, 
 he felt clean in body and in spirit. The thought 
 of wine revolted him. The thought of tobacco re- 
 
 42
 
 John Cave 
 
 volted him. Sluggishness and vice seemed impos- 
 sible. He wanted nothing but work. 
 
 Fresh from the open air, overflowing, like a fiery 
 horse, with vigour and energy and ambition, he 
 would enter The Press office at one, only to sit 
 there like a messenger boy for two full hours the 
 first, best hours of the reporter's day awaiting 
 the work that the city editor, always behindhand, 
 should have had ready for him on his arrival. And 
 as he waited, all his hopeful, cheery energy de- 
 parted, till, by the time he got his assignment, he 
 was dispirited and limp, and, taking his task from 
 Collier with a faint sneer, he walked out swearing. 
 
 Thus three weeks passed. It was certainly dis- 
 couraging. . . . 
 
 Collier rose one afternoon from his chair. Tak- 
 ing the blue pencil from between his teeth, he gave 
 one of those tremendous yawns that extended his 
 arms to their full length, that opened his mouth 
 wide, that lifted him up on the tips of his toes. 
 Then, in his high, nasal drawl, he said: 
 
 " Cave, look here." 
 
 "Well?" said John. 
 
 " I want you to go to a meeting of the Emerson 
 Club to-night. The Emerson Club is literary. 
 Some verses are to be read before it in competition 
 for a prize, and Gates, the Irish poet, is to speak." 
 
 John went to the Emerson Club. Its meeting- 
 43
 
 John Cave 
 
 place was a fashionable theatre, and its members 
 resembled a fashionable theatre's audience, the 
 women in pale gowns, with bare arms and shoulders, 
 and the men in the lustrous black and white of even- 
 ing dress, with white waistcoats and white gloves. 
 Everywhere huge diamonds glittered icily, and 
 those long strings of large, pure pearls surely rep- 
 resented a great outlay of magazine sonnets. 
 
 A row of seats was reserved for reporters, and 
 here, in their dusty clothes and muddy boots, a half- 
 dozen reporters sat huddled together, as unpleas- 
 antly conspicuous, amid all that shimmering ele- 
 gance, as a blot on a white page. 
 
 Behind the reporters was a young man with grey 
 hair. He beckoned to John. 
 
 " You are on The Press, aren't you ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes," said John. " Haven't I seen you at The 
 Press office, too ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. I am a Press man." He smiled pleas- 
 antly. " Sit down." 
 
 John, seating himself, looked about. " Litera- 
 ture," he said, " must be picking up. Among lit- 
 erary persons such splendour as this is unusual, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " Oh, these persons aren't literary exclusively. 
 They are ladies and gentlemen first, literary persons 
 afterwards. Banker-poets. That sort of thing. 
 You know the type," said the young man. 
 
 44
 
 John Cave 
 
 " And do they all write ? All of them ? " 
 
 " Yes, they all write, I am afraid." 
 
 " What do they write ? " 
 
 " They write what is called magazine poetry. 
 You see their work at the bottoms of the pages of 
 the duller and more expensive magazines. ' Con- 
 solation,' a couplet, by Mary Greeley Stewart 
 Stevens. ' Restitution,' a quatrain, by Jethro 
 Howard Wilson. Tiny things, tinier almost than 
 their authors' names, they are rhymed correctly, 
 and there is even a thought in them ; but they lack 
 life, music. They are conventional, mechanical 
 little poems, as correct and commonplace and dead 
 as the essay of an intelligent schoolgirl." 
 
 The white-gloved hands of the members of the 
 Emerson Club beat together gently. A faint, polite 
 applause filled the air. A little man appeared at 
 the back of the stage, and advanced towards the 
 footlights with a quick, awkward waddle. He was 
 thin, and he bent forward from the waist affectedly. 
 His hair and his draggled moustache had a faded, 
 parched colour. He looked as dry as the Sahara, 
 as dry as a dried fish. 
 
 " Who is that dried-up little chap ? " said John. 
 
 " That is Morrison Melvil, the president of the 
 club," said his companion. 
 
 " And behind him ... is that Gates ? " 
 
 " Yes, that is Gates. How young he looks." 
 45
 
 John Cave 
 
 The poet, tall and slim and dark, stood in the 
 shadow, glancing to right and left with timid in- 
 terest. He did indeed look young. He looked no 
 more than twenty. Yet he was far older than 
 twenty. But the dreams among which he lived had 
 shed over him something of their imperishable 
 beauty, and to him the world would always be as 
 fresh and strange as it is to a child. He would 
 never, perhaps, look old. He would never feel old. 
 
 Morrison Melvil introduced him, saying stupid 
 and obvious things with a vivacious manner. He 
 praised the work of Gates a little, but he condemned 
 with prim severity certain tendencies in it, certain 
 departures. . . . 
 
 " The little ass," said John's companion. " He 
 is condemning the very things Gates will live by. 
 The new things, the original things. ... I knew 
 they were what he would condemn." 
 
 There was a burst of applause, and the poet 
 advanced to the front of the stage. He looked like 
 a slim and diffident youth. He bowed, he ran his 
 hand through his dark hair, and he began to speak 
 in a musical voice. He spoke in simple phrases. He 
 tried very hard, it was evident, to make his thoughts 
 quite clear. About him there was nothing of pose, 
 nothing of affectation. He was as absorbed and as 
 unconscious as a child at play alone. 
 
 Many beautiful women, as they listened, regarded 
 46
 
 John Cave 
 
 him with an air of delicate and tender sympathy. 
 But the men smiled quizzically at one another. 
 They had come to see a charlatan; that, therefore, 
 was what they saw. For these literary men took 
 their literary opinions, ready-made, from such 
 sources as they deemed trustworthy. For fear of 
 error they never dared to form opinions of their 
 own. 
 
 Gates spoke on the drama. He said he thought the 
 play the highest form of literary art. He told how 
 he and certain friends of his were devoting them- 
 selves to the writing of plays, some writing in verse, 
 others writing in prose, and he described the themes 
 of his friends' plays, and he read from them pas- 
 sages powerful and beautiful. Then he took up 
 certain popular plays, and showed how false and 
 shallow and tawdry they were. He showed how 
 they depended altogether for their success upon 
 crude, false sentimentality, upon sumptuous scenery. 
 In conclusion he advocated simpler stage settings: 
 then, since the success or failure of a play would 
 not involve a fortune, many more plays would be 
 produced And the result would be a more varied 
 and a better drama. He was working, he said, for 
 a better drama. That was all. 
 
 That was all, and now, one at a time, the three 
 leading lights of the Emerson Club replied to Gates* 
 A reply must be a contradiction. Each of the three, 
 
 47
 
 John Cave 
 
 therefore, contradicted, and each used towards the 
 poet a tone of mocking condescension. 
 
 The first speaker said it was impossible to return 
 to simpler stage settings. He had seen a Greek 
 play the night before where the settings had been 
 superlatively simple, and yet this play had been a 
 failure; there had hardly been a hundred people 
 in the house. Thus it was proved that simple stage 
 settings would mean empty theatres. 
 
 The second speaker was ironical. He used the 
 phrase " to elevate the stage " with excellent comic 
 effect; he had only to utter it to send a roar of 
 laughter through the hall. And somehow, in his 
 auditors' minds, even in his wiser auditors' minds, 
 the mere repetition of this contemptuous phrase 
 turned all who wished to " elevate the stage " into 
 a pack of silly and conceited fools. 
 
 The third speaker had once collaborated with an 
 actor-manager on a Japanese play that had had a 
 long run. He spoke, therefore, with authority. 
 What he said was that those who condemned the 
 modern drama were only sore and bitter because 
 they could not write money-making plays them- 
 selves. 
 
 Gates, during these speeches, looked bewildered, 
 dismayed. When they asked him to make a few 
 concluding remarks, he rose and faltered: 
 
 " I am afraid I did not make my meaning suf- 
 48
 
 John Cave 
 
 ficiently clear to you. I am afraid you did not 
 understand me. All I meant to say was that we 
 want the best plays we can get. I am sure you all 
 agree with me in your hearts, but I have not per- 
 haps the gift of expression, of oral expression." 
 
 He made a little hopeless gesture and sat down. 
 They laughed and applauded him indulgently. It 
 had been a bad rout for him, they said. 
 
 Morrison Melvil, smiling, rose again, and held 
 up his hand to quiet the mocking mirth. He said 
 in a good-natured voice that, having heard both 
 sides of the question, the audience perhaps agreed 
 that the poet's ideas were neither wise nor prac- 
 tical. . . . The reading of the prize poems was now 
 in order. This year's prize, said Mr. Melvil, would 
 be ten dollars in gold. 
 
 The competing poets numbered seven. They 
 were all males, they all wore white gloves, and one 
 had his manuscript rolled in a slender cylinder and 
 tied with a pale blue ribbon. Each poet, before he 
 began to read, made three profound bows, the first 
 to the president, the second to the judges, the third 
 to the audience. The competition was conducted 
 in a solemn and stately manner. 
 
 The poems were like all poems that are written 
 for a prize. One was a threnody, one was an ode, 
 one was a lyric . . . but at this point John and his 
 new friend departed. 
 
 49
 
 John Cave 
 
 In the street they laughed a little as they lighted 
 their cigarettes. 
 
 " Threnodies, odes, lyrics," said the young man 
 with grey hair, " written in competition for a prize 
 of ten dollars, and read with white gloves on the 
 hands." 
 
 " This is the most provincial city I ever saw," said 
 John. " It is not yet ten o'clock, and already Pea- 
 nut Street is deserted. Everybody is in bed. This 
 isn't a city ; it is an overgrown village." 
 
 " How do you like The Press? " said the young 
 man, frowning. 
 
 " Not at all." 
 
 A motor car stood before a silent hotel. Sud- 
 denly, with an abundance of gay laughter, a young 
 girl and two young men came down the white 
 marble steps, between two rows of electric lamps 
 that flooded them with light. The young girl wore 
 no covering on her dark hair, her gown and cloak 
 were white, and her white shoes could be seen as 
 she descended the steps of marble. 
 
 The chauffeur leaped from his seat, and began to 
 arrange the robes in the car. Suddenly the young 
 girl cried in a clear voice : 
 
 "Well, John Cave!" 
 
 " Prudence," he said confusedly. 
 
 She gave him her hand. 
 5P
 
 John Cave 
 
 " You might have called," she said. " You 
 might have written." 
 
 " I know," said he. " I am working on The 
 Press." 
 
 " Do you like The Press f " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then I am going to introduce you to Mr. Miles." 
 
 She turned to the taller of her companions, who 
 was talking to the chauffeur. 
 
 " Harry," she said, " come here." 
 
 "Well, what is it?" he said. "We haven't 
 much time, you know." 
 
 Prudence, smiling, took his arm. 
 
 " I am going to introduce Mr. Cave to you. Mr. 
 Cave," she explained, " is a friend of mine, and I 
 want you to take him on your paper." 
 
 The two young men laughed. 
 
 " Are you ah the Mr. Miles ? " John asked. 
 
 " I suppose so," said the other. " I run The Dis- 
 patch." 
 
 He took a card from his pocket. " Here is my 
 card," he said. " Do you really want a job ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," John answered. " I am on 
 The Press now." 
 
 " Well, come and see me some time in New 
 York," said Mr. Miles. And he took back the card 
 and scrawled a line on it. " This," he explained, 
 " will get you in to me at any time." 
 51
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " Be sure and come," said Mr. Miles. He 
 laughed. " Any friend of Prudence's is a friend of 
 mine." 
 
 John took leave, a little awed, for Miles, a young 
 millionaire from the South, had recently established 
 in New York a newspaper that in expenditure and 
 brilliance and vulgarity left its neighbours far be- 
 hind. 
 
 " Do you know who that young man was ? " he 
 said to his companion. " It was Miles." 
 
 "Henry Miles?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The automobile sped away with a musical drone, 
 and Prudence waved her white hand. 
 
 " Come and see me, John Cave," she called. 
 
 "So you don't like The Press?" resumed the 
 young man with grey hair. 
 
 " I certainly don't." 
 
 " But you appear to be getting on well. That 
 murder story on the front page this morning was 
 yours, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " No. The story of the corner-stone laying on 
 the ninth page was mine. Perhaps you overlooked 
 it. It was only seven lines long." 
 
 The young man's manner suddenly changed. 
 He regarded John sternly. 
 
 " Oh," he said, " you are Cave, eh? " 
 52
 
 John Cave 
 
 John, hurt and puzzled, returned his angry 
 stare. 
 
 " Yes, I'm Cave. What of it ? " 
 
 " Well, if you are Cave, I don't wonder you dis- 
 like The Press. You have made a bad start there 
 with that Fipps matter." 
 
 " What the deuce do you know about the Fipps 
 matter?" 
 
 " I know all about it." 
 
 " Do you ? " said John. " Then what did I do 
 wrong? " 
 
 " You should have given the Fipps story to your 
 own paper instead of selling it to New York." 
 
 " By Jove, is that what they say ? " John cried. 
 " The cowardly liars." 
 
 "Isn't it true?" 
 
 " Of course it isn't true. The Press refused to 
 print the Fipps story." 
 
 The young man's manner changed again. 
 
 " Oh," he said. " Then I was misinformed. 
 Tell me your side." 
 
 But John was sore and angry. " I'll leave The 
 Press to-morrow," he said. " I'd rather starve 
 than work with such contemptible liars." 
 
 " Tell me your side of it," the young man re- 
 peated. 
 
 " Oh, what is the use? I am sick of the whole 
 business." 
 
 53
 
 John Cave 
 
 " But if you are being treated unjustly I can 
 help you." 
 
 "You? How?" 
 
 " Don't you know who I am ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " I am Norris." 
 
 " The managing editor ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 John, halting, gave a loud laugh. " I am meeting 
 all sorts of celebrities to-night," he said. 
 
 And then, as they walked onward, he narrated 
 slowly and carefully the story of the Fipps dinner. 
 
 " Well ? " he said, at the end. 
 
 " They told me," said Norris, " that you sold the 
 story without offering it to The Press." 
 
 " The liars. If I did that, why didn't they dis- 
 charge me ? " 
 
 " You were to be discharged to-morrow." 
 
 " Am I to stay now ? " 
 
 " Yes, of course." 
 
 The old Press building appeared. They went up 
 together in the old, slow elevator. 
 
 " Good-night," said the managing editor. " I'll 
 see you get better work to do." 
 
 " No more corner-stone layings ? " 
 
 " No more corner-stone layings." Norris smiled 
 and tugged at his white gloves. " Good-night." 
 
 54
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 JOHN'S bedroom, on the fifth floor of an apart- 
 ment house, fronted a fashionable street, and from 
 his window he often studied a girl across the way. 
 
 Sometimes, with an elderly woman, she came 
 forth to drive in the Park. Her departure made 
 a stately and splendid picture. On the box of the 
 glittering victoria, restraining easily his restive 
 horses, the coachman sat erect and still. The foot- 
 man stood by the curbstone, a folded laprobe on 
 his arm. The butler opened the huge doors; the 
 two women entered the victoria modestly ; and John, 
 from his lofty window, peered down with admi- 
 ration and awe. 
 
 Sometimes the girl came forth to walk, dressed 
 trimly, like a boy, in rough cloth, and holding in 
 leash a Russian deerhound. 
 
 In the evening, descending the marble stairs in 
 the clear twilight, she was like a fairy princess in 
 her pale splendour. Then she was clad from head 
 to foot in white. She wore a long white cloak. 
 There were white flowers in her yellow hair. 
 
 From his window John admired her, and one 
 55
 
 John Cave 
 
 day, as she was entering her brougham, he thought 
 her eyelids fluttered, and her dark blue eyes met 
 his. Of this, however, he could not be sure. 
 
 He had good work to do now on The Press. He 
 reported murder trials and the launching of great 
 ships; he interviewed statesmen poets, princes, all 
 the .city's distinguished visitor' , and nearly every 
 morning he had a column of matter on the front 
 page. To his salary, moreover, five dollars had 
 been added. 
 
 His demeanour in the office changed with success. 
 Diffidence, in the beginning, had caused him to ap- 
 pear a quiet and modest youth, a sympathetic, ap- 
 preciative youth, and the reporters had liked him 
 in a condescending way, feeling indulgently that 
 here was one who realised, who even perhaps exag- 
 gerated, his immense inferiority to themselves. 
 
 But with success his tongue was loosened, and he 
 criticised everybody freely. He meant no harm, 
 he never dreamed his words might be repeated. 
 But the attitude of reporter after reporter changed 
 from friendship to bitter enmity, and at each change 
 he remembered something harsh and cruel that he 
 had said, and, shocked, he resolved to be more pru- 
 dent. The resolve, however, soon passed. 
 
 Always, at breakfast, he read eagerly his story in 
 The Press. If it had been edited by the night city 
 editor it appeared unaltered, but if Gray, the copy 
 
 56
 
 John Cave 
 
 reader, had handled it, he hardly knew it for his 
 own. 
 
 Gray was sometimes called the rubber stamp man. 
 For eighteen years he had been reading copy on 
 The Press, and certain dog-eared phrases for cer- 
 tain commonplace things had written themselves on 
 his mind ineradicably. Hence, when one of these 
 things came up, its appropriate phrase must always 
 go with it, and if the reporter had not used the 
 phrase, Gray, in editing the young man's matter, 
 put it in. 
 
 According to Gray's creed, an article concerning 
 a public square must always term the square a 
 " breathing spot." A kiss must be called an " oscu- 
 lation." An oyster was a " succulent bivalve." A 
 disease was never caused, or brought on it was 
 always " superinduced." Any place or edifice over 
 fifty years of age must be dubbed " historic old " 
 " historic old Christ Church," or " historic old 
 Strawberry Mansion." 
 
 And because in every story he handled Gray in- 
 serted, " breathing spot," or " osculation," or " his- 
 toric old," or " succulent bivalve," or " superin- 
 duced," the men said that he had a rubber stamp 
 for each of these phrases, and that he would, when 
 one of them was needed, stamp it in instead of 
 bothering to write it. 
 
 Gray destroyed everything original, everything 
 57
 
 John Cave 
 
 picturesque, in the stories he edited. He made 
 them all read as if they had been written by him- 
 self, by a stupid, commonplace man of forty-five. 
 
 His work began at four in the afternoon, and did 
 not end till three the next morning, and, since he 
 lived out of town, he was obliged to return home 
 on the street railway's night line : a ride of ninety 
 minutes. The night line ran irregularly, and Gray 
 sometimes stood an hour on a corner awaiting his 
 car. In winter, in the dreary hours before the 
 dawn, the cold tortured him unspeakably as he 
 waited for the infernal night line at some deserted, 
 wind-swept crossing, leaning, muffled in his coat, 
 against a lamp-post; the loneliest of figures, often 
 obscured in a swirl of snow. 
 
 He had worked on The Press twenty years, and 
 during the eighteen years he had been reading copy 
 his low salary had not once been raised. He was 
 fat and silent, saying, when he did speak, mean and 
 cruel things that he accompanied with a sour 
 laugh. 
 
 He and the city editor sat at their desks one day, 
 and John awaited his afternoon assignment at the 
 other end of the local room. The city editor took 
 the pencil from his mouth and drawled : 
 
 " The Maharajah of Kapurtha has reached town. 
 I think I'll send Cave out to interview him." 
 
 "Cave!" said Gray. "Oh, Lord!" 
 58
 
 John Cave 
 
 The two men were speaking in low tones, but 
 John's ears were sharp. 
 
 "Why, what's the matter with Cave?" said the 
 city editor. 
 
 " He's no good. He doesn't know how to get a 
 story, and he doesn't know how to write one." 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha ! " laughed Collier, and he mused a 
 moment, smiling; then he summoned John, and 
 gave him the Maharajah interview. 
 
 " We want a good story, mind," he said. 
 
 " I'll try to get you a good story," the young man 
 answered. He glanced at Gray, and his heart over- 
 flowed with rage and bitterness. 
 
 " You won't edit my copy, though, Mr. Gray," he 
 said. 
 
 Gray looked perplexed, angered. 
 
 " Uh what do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean you don't know how to edit copy. You 
 spoil every story you handle. But you'll spoil no 
 more of my stories." 
 
 " I won't, eh ? We'll see about that." 
 
 John, beside himself, leaned over Gray's table, 
 shook his forefinger at the fat, elderly man, and 
 shouted : 
 
 " You'll never read another line of my copy, 
 Gray. You are not fit for a copy desk. You are 
 a stupid and illiterate ass." 
 
 Gray rose. 
 
 59
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Damn you," he cried shrilly. 
 
 But Collier, who had been listening, intensely 
 amused, now interfered. 
 
 " Go get your story, Cave," he said. " Sit down, 
 Gray. Don't be a fool." 
 
 John found the Maharajah, and had no difficulty 
 in obtaining an interview. As a topic for discussion 
 he suggested polygamy, and on this topic the prince 
 was quite willing to talk. He said many ingenuous 
 and amusing things in polygamy's praise, and by 
 the way he attacked monogamy in strong terms. 
 
 John returned to the office and wrote three 
 quarters of a column, taking great pains. By the 
 time he had finished his story the city editor was 
 gone. The night city editor and Gray were reading 
 copy. Their desks were side by side. 
 
 John crossed the room, lighted a cigarette, and 
 laid his copy on the night city editor's desk. 
 
 Gray looked up. 
 
 " I'll take that copy," he said ; and he held out his 
 hand for it. 
 
 John glared at him. Then he turned to the night 
 city editor. 
 
 " Will you read this copy, Mr. Jones ? " he said. 
 
 The night city editor, bent over his work, an- 
 swered : 
 
 " Oh, Gray will handle it." 
 
 " No, I'll be hanged if he will." 
 60
 
 John Cave 
 
 There came from the reporters a chorus of loud 
 laughter. The night city editor swung round in his 
 chair and frowned at John. 
 
 " What is the matter with you ? " he growled. 
 
 John put his left hand in his pocket because it 
 was trembling. His trembling right hand, which 
 held his cigarette, he steadied on a desk. The re- 
 porters' mocking laughter, the inimical looks of 
 Jones and Gray, depressed him, extinguished the 
 fire of rage in his heart, and he asked himself if 
 this ludicrous squabbling was worth while. But he 
 could not retreat now. And so he said, loud enough 
 for all to hear : 
 
 " Mr. Gray rewrites every story of mine he 
 handles. Now I work hard on my stories : if they 
 have to be rewritten, then I am no good, and I 
 ought to be fired. I claim they don't have to be 
 rewritten. I won't have them rewritten. Either 
 they'll be printed as I write them, or I'll leave The 
 Press." 
 
 Jones, restraining one of his rare smiles, said 
 querulously : 
 
 " Oh, don't make a fuss over nothing. You don't 
 write literature for a newspaper." 
 
 " His stuff is rot," said Gray. 
 
 The room rang with laughter again. 
 
 " That's all right if it's rot," John stammered. 
 
 " You bet it's all right," said Gray. 
 61
 
 John Cave 
 
 The young man turned again to the night city 
 editor. 
 
 " Is Mr. Gray to handle my copy ? " he asked. 
 
 " I can't make any exception in your case. I 
 have no authority to treat you differently from the 
 other men," the night city editor answered. " The 
 fact is, you've become a nuisance around here 
 lately." 
 
 " Very well," said John, and he left the room, 
 laughter pursuing him, cruel laughter, which stung 
 like a whip-lash. 
 
 He found the managing editor in his office alone. 
 
 " Mr. Norris," he began, " I believe you are a 
 friend of mine." 
 
 The other looked in surprise at this pale young 
 man with twitching lips and wild eyes. 
 
 " I believe so," he answered. 
 
 " You are the only friend I have succeeded in 
 making on The Press. I appear to have made only 
 enemies here." 
 
 Norris smiled. 
 
 " Calm yourself," he said. 
 
 John in a ghastly way smiled back. Then he 
 resumed : 
 
 " I have had some trouble in the local room. It 
 is like this. When Mr. Gray reads my copy, he re- 
 writes it, he spoils it, invariably. I have put up 
 with this. To-day, though, I heard him say I was 
 
 62
 
 John Cave 
 
 no good, and I determined then to put up with it 
 no longer. I told him he should never read another 
 line of my copy. But Mr. Jones won't back me up : 
 he says he has no authority. So now I appeal to 
 you. I have just turned in an interview with the 
 Maharajah of Kapurtha that I wrote very carefully, 
 and if Gray handles it, I well, I am going to 
 leave The Press to-night. Now you say you are a 
 friend of mine, and ' 
 
 John hesitated, looking at Norris wistfully. 
 
 Norris, in a muse, regarded his polished nails. 
 Then he jumped up and paced the floor with quick 
 steps. 
 
 " Cave," he said, " I know quite well Gray's limi- 
 tations. But we all have our limitations, haven't 
 we ? Even you and I we have our limitations, 
 eh ? And we must remember that Gray has worked 
 for The Press twenty years. He has given his 
 youth to The Press. And now he is getting old. 
 And I don't want him to think us ungrateful. How- 
 ever " 
 
 Norris paused before John, and looked at him 
 with a sudden, friendly smile. 
 
 " Go and get your Maharajah story," he said. 
 " I'll edit it. And to-morrow I'll see what can be 
 done." 
 
 John, a little sorry now for Gray, returned to the 
 local room. 
 
 63
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Mr. Jones," he said, " I am to take my story to 
 Mr. Norris." 
 
 " Gray has it," Jones answered. 
 
 Gray gave the young man a malevolent glance, 
 and pushed a mass of yellow manuscript towards 
 him. The first two pages of this manuscript were 
 in Gray's handwriting: John's first two pages were 
 missing. He looked in the waste-paper basket be- 
 side the copy desk, and, seeing them there, he 
 picked them out. Then he returned to Norris with 
 his story. 
 
 " You see ? " he said excitedly. " He had al- 
 ready rewritten two pages, and here are mine I 
 found them in his waste-paper basket. Now you 
 can judge between us." 
 
 " Very well," said Mr. Norris. " Come and see 
 me here to-morrow at two." 
 
 And he bent over the yellow manuscript busily. 
 
 John's story, unchanged in any way, was on the 
 front page of The Press the next morning, and 
 in the afternoon Norris promoted him from the 
 local to the editorial department. 
 
 He now wrote brief leaders on odd topics, and 
 went out, under Norris's direction, to prepare spe- 
 cial articles for the Sunday edition. Occasionally 
 these articles were signed a great honour. 
 
 And five dollars more was added to his salary. 
 
 John found that on The Press the editors, like 
 64
 
 John Cave 
 
 the reporters, were in a rut. Each editor had held 
 the same post for twelve or fifteen years ; his work 
 had become mere dull routine to him, like brick- 
 laying or street-sweeping; and he drowsed the day 
 away at his desk, writing a column of matter me- 
 chanical and dead, while in his head the unused 
 brain dried and shrivelled. 
 
 " How does The Press maintain its circulation ? " 
 John said one night to the managing editor. 
 
 " It doesn't maintain it," the other answered. 
 " For two years the circulation has declined at the 
 rate of five hundred a month." 
 
 He rose suddenly. It was midnight, and they 
 were supping after the day's work. 
 
 " There is Gates," he said. " I'll bring him 
 over." 
 
 And he zigzagged, napkin in hand, amongst the 
 small white tables towards a tall figure in black. 
 He disappeared behind a palm. Then, in a little 
 while, he and Gates returned together. 
 
 The poet was not hungry, but he would be glad, 
 he said, to smoke a cigarette, and drink a cafe 
 verre. And sitting beside John, he looked about 
 him with childlike interest, and he began to talk 
 in his timid, gentle and simple manner. 
 
 John had read two years ago his blank verse 
 drama of The Shadowy Waters, and the deep, 
 strange music of the lines had enraptured him. 
 65
 
 John Cave 
 
 He thought the poem a great work of art, a great 
 work of genius; and here beside him sat the poet, 
 modest, simple, kindly; interested, like a child, in 
 everything. 
 
 " We were talking," said the managing editor, 
 " about The Press. We were telling one another 
 how bad it is." 
 
 " I hope you'll keep on," said Gates. " American 
 journalism amuses me." 
 
 " We were saying that The Press had been fall- 
 ing in circulation at the rate of five hundred copies 
 a month." 
 
 "What is the trouble?" said Gates. 
 
 " The trouble," said the managing editor, " is that 
 The Press has grown old." 
 
 For a moment he was silent and a little sad. 
 Then he resumed: 
 
 " A paper ages as a man ages. When it is young 
 it makes its success. Why? Because, then, its 
 owners and editors work together with enthusiasm, 
 sincerity, and fear of failure; because, diffidently, 
 tremulously, they do their best. That is what it is 
 to be young. That is how youth works." 
 
 He lighted at one of the candles a long cigarette. 
 
 " The Press worked like that," he said. " The 
 Press was the first one-cent newspaper in America. 
 It was enterprising, brave, in its youth. 
 
 " And success came to it, as success comes to all 
 66
 
 John Cave 
 
 hard and sincere and modest work, and success 
 had a bad effect on it. The work became less hard, 
 less modest. The Press drifted into old age." 
 
 He sighed philosophically over the coffee and 
 tobacco. 
 
 " Rejuvenate it," said Gates. 
 
 "If I only could!" he murmured. "But that 
 would mean a clean sweep of all hands an im- 
 possibility. For the owner would never consent 
 to the dismissal of all those old fellows who worked 
 their hardest for him in their youth ; and, if he 
 would consent, I could never discharge them, for I 
 have known them ten years, twenty years, since I 
 was a boy fresh from school ; and I could no more 
 turn them out than I could turn out my own father." 
 
 " And I suppose they hold," said Gates, " all the 
 good places, eh ? " 
 
 " All, all," said the managing editor. 
 
 " You and your owner are in a strange position," 
 mused the poet. " To do right, to make your paper 
 good and worthy again, it is needful to discharge 
 all your old men to ruin all your old friends." 
 
 " Yes," the other agreed. " The head of a news- 
 paper, if he would do his best, must be as cruel as 
 death. He must be always on the watch, and at 
 the least sign of weariness or of age in a man, the 
 man must go." 
 
 " He must drain the first fine youthful enthusiasm 
 
 67
 
 John Cave 
 
 from his men," said Gates, " and when that is gone, 
 he must throw them aside. To do the best for his 
 paper, he must do the worst for his men. To do 
 well, he must do ill." 
 
 " That is true of journalism," said the managing 
 editor. He added, " It is true of other things, I 
 fancy." 
 
 " It is true of no good thing," said Gates. 
 
 Excitedly the poet pushed back his slender glass 
 of coffee. 
 
 " When I work hard," he said, " no pain results. 
 The harder I work, the happier I am, and the better 
 I am. And my work harms no one. On the con- 
 trary, if it is work well done, it makes the world 
 happier and better." 
 
 " True," said the managing editor. 
 
 " I love my work," said Gates. 
 
 " But you are poor. You can't make a living 
 from your work." 
 
 " No matter. I love it. It rewards me. To 
 achieve in a line a certain slow and mournful music 
 . . . that is worth striving for ... it is happi- 
 ness." 
 
 John walked home that night discontented. He 
 wished that he, too, was a faithful servant of art, 
 like Gates. A great distaste for his newspaper 
 work seized him. 
 
 " What is it? " he said to the stars. " Why, it is 
 68
 
 John Cave 
 
 nothing but gossip. I am wasting my life writing 
 gossip." And, still discontented, he did not go to 
 the office the next morning ; but buying a book, he 
 spent the day in this cafe and that, seated in a 
 quiet corner, reading, musing, smoking. 
 
 He wanted to do something worth while. He 
 was tired of writing gossip. Only he did not know 
 just what he wanted to do. 
 
 The day passed, a golden alcoholic dream, and 
 he asked himself if this was what he wanted to do 
 to shirk always the task at hand, and, hidden in a 
 tavern from the taskmaster, to drink his life 
 away? 
 
 " I am unreliable," he murmured as, late at night, 
 he walked homeward, his book under his arm. " I 
 lack stability," he said. " I lack ambition." 
 
 For a while, in his lonely room, he sat by the 
 window in the dark. " I'll come to a bad end," 
 he said. 
 
 A carriage halted across the way. The doors of 
 the great house were flung open. The girl has- 
 tened in her white garments up the steps; he saw 
 her for a moment in the clear light of the hall; 
 she stood before a mirror, laughing, her white 
 hands uplifted to her yellow hair. Then the doors 
 swung to again, shutting him out in the dark. 
 
 " If I knew a girl like that . . ." he said. " If 
 I could tell my fears and troubles to a girl like 
 
 69
 
 John Cave 
 
 that. ... If she would give me a little sympathy, 
 a little counsel . . ." 
 
 He sighed. He was lonely and sad. He was 
 afraid. 
 
 "What will become of me?"
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE lake was ten miles long, and up from the 
 water on every side the mountains rose. The moun- 
 tains were covered with hemlocks, birches, sweet- 
 smelling pines forests clean and perfumed where- 
 in dwelt multitudes of deer. Sometimes a deer, 
 venturing forth, would be seen upon a quiet lane. 
 John, yesterday, had found one swimming far out, 
 and he had followed it in his canoe. He had drawn 
 near it, despite its terrified zigzagging. He could 
 have touched the beautiful, frantic creature with his 
 paddle. 
 
 About the lake there was something mysterious 
 and frightening. Shut in by all those lofty moun- 
 tains, it lay at their feet too still, too deep, too 
 cold, too clear. The young man, skimming in his 
 canoe over its surface of glass, would grow dizzy 
 if he looked down, for through the transparent 
 water he could see the bottom to a depth of thirty 
 or forty feet, and he would feel as though there 
 were nothing at all between him and the granite 
 rocks, grey striped with white, below he would 
 feel as though he were looking over a precipice. 
 
 71
 
 John Cave 
 
 But only in a few places the bottom of the lake 
 could thus be seen, for nearly everywhere were 
 incredible depths, and down there, it was said, in 
 water incredibly cold, lived fish that, if they ven- 
 tured to the surface, died. 
 
 He had come here for his vacation because he 
 had heard the girl came here. A week was now 
 past, but, though he saw her every day, he had not 
 yet met her. He was a little timid about meeting 
 her. He feared she would be disappointed in him. 
 
 Sometimes, on blazing August afternoons, she 
 passed him in her white launch, erect at the wheel, 
 her hair and her apparel blown backward by the 
 wind, he* eyes intent on something far off. Some- 
 times, in the still splendour of the sunset, she passed 
 him in her shining canoe of sapphire blue, pad- 
 dling with the lightest, deftest touch through 
 water like liquid gold. Sometimes she passed him 
 walking in the quiet lanes; +!-r birch-trees bent in 
 an arch above her head, the sunlight filtered through 
 the leaves, and, her spaniel capering beside her, 
 she came in her white dress down a path dappled 
 with yellow and blue. She was always dressed in 
 white, and she never seemed to see him till the 
 last moment. At the last moment, lifting her pale 
 lids, she would meet roguishly the gaze wherein he 
 tried to express the most respectful admiration, and 
 the suspicion of a smile would flit across her lips. 
 
 72
 
 John Cave 
 
 He met her at last. 
 
 He sat on the porch of the post-office, waiting 
 for the mail. On the lake below a launch appeared, 
 hers. She reached the landing, disembarked with 
 her spaniel, ascended the hill, and giving him a 
 fluttering glance, perhaps smiling faintly he could 
 never be quite sure she entered the post-office, a 
 mail bag of brown leather in her hand. 
 
 Two canoes, one red, the other yellow, rounded 
 Garnet Point and glided shoreward in the great 
 sunshine with the quiet grace of swans. From 
 them a girl and three young men disembarked, 
 each carrying a brown leather mail bag. 
 
 Four launches, a noisy motor boat, half-a-dozen 
 canoes and a yawl one by one discharged at the 
 pier young men and girls: a hatless, bare-armed, 
 white-clad crew that ascended the hill with noisy 
 laughter, swinging mail bags of brown leather. 
 
 These young people filled the office and the 
 porch. Rich cottagers' sons and daughters, comely 
 and brown in their white dress, they liked to come 
 for the mail: they made this hour the gayest of 
 their day : and though the mail they got was usually 
 small and unimportant, all carried large, handsome 
 bags, in which it was odd to see them locking the 
 most trivial things a newspaper, a post card, an 
 advertisement. But it was de rigueur at Sunapee 
 to carry a mail bag, just as it is de rigueur at Cape 
 
 73
 
 John Cave 
 
 May for the young men, after the bath, to dry the 
 girls' hair in the sun. 
 
 Lonely amongst that gay band, John Cave sat on 
 a soap box reading. The young girl's gentle 
 spaniel dozed at his feet. A superb electric launch 
 appeared off Garnet Point, and everyone exclaimed : 
 
 " It's Hogan." ..." The diamond king is com- 
 ing." ..." Look at Hogan, the liver pill man." 
 ..." Hogan, the diamond king." 
 
 And soon, blazing with diamonds, a short, stout 
 young man ascended the hill, a white bull terrier 
 at his heels. 
 
 The spaniel awoke. Running forth, it frisked 
 and gambolled about the terrier, eager for a frolic. 
 The terrier stopped and stiffened. And suddenly 
 the peace of the midsummer morning was shattered 
 with hideous cries. 
 
 All conversation ceased, and all, in startled si- 
 lence, turned in unison towards that formidable up- 
 roar. 
 
 The two dogs writhed together. They did not 
 fight. The terrier only tried to get a grip. The 
 spaniel only held its head very high and howled. 
 
 Smiling nervously, the young people crowded 
 about the dogs. They were rather amused, for they 
 had never seen a bull terrier fighting. 
 
 John Cave stood on his soap box. The spaniel 
 angered him. He thought it held its head high in 
 
 74
 
 John Cave 
 
 air because it was beside itself with fear. He did 
 not know that the poor, clamouring little dog, wiser 
 than he, threw back its head so oddly, even rearing 
 up at times on its hind legs, in order to prevent 
 the terrier from getting a throat grip. He did not 
 know that the spaniel's life, that throat grip once 
 secured, would not have been worth a pinch of 
 roadside dust. 
 
 Suddenly the hideous din redoubled. It took on 
 a tragic note. And lo, both dogs were red with 
 blood. 
 
 A young girl ran staggering from the throng, 
 her hands over her ears, and sank in a soft white 
 heap on the porch floor. 
 
 The terrier had got now a firm hold on the 
 spaniel's foreleg near the shoulder, and, all the 
 muscles of its powerful little body taut, it gnawed 
 and shook the flesh with revolting and incredible 
 ferocity. Blood dripped from the corners of its 
 mouth on to the white road. Already the spaniel's 
 leg was like a piece of raw beef. 
 
 Young women ran to and fro frantically. " Oh, 
 stop it ! Stop it ! " they cried. 
 
 Young men hurried here and there in a helpless 
 way. They demanded pepper, ammonia, lighted 
 cigars. One of them charily took the terrier by 
 the collar and tried to drag it off; but it held fast, 
 gnawing and shaking the wounded leg the harder, 
 
 75
 
 John Cave 
 
 and, drag it where he would, it always drew th 
 hapless spaniel with it. 
 
 His hands red and wet, the young man desisted. 
 His face was pale, and as he rose he smiled sadly. 
 " It's no use," he said. " The sooner it's all over 
 now the better." 
 
 Another young man appeared with a stout oaken 
 stick. He had a confident air. " Stand back ! " he 
 cried. And he gripped the stick with both hands 
 and knitted his brows in a capable way, like* a bats- 
 man. A sigh of relief, of hope, went up. 
 
 Then bang, bang, bang a rain of blows de- 
 scended. 
 
 " Don't kill him ! " cried a voice. " He's a reg- 
 istered dog." 
 
 Bang, bang, bang the blows fell all the harder. 
 But it was difficult to hit the writhing terrier. As 
 often as not the stick lighted on the spaniel or on 
 the ground. And, when it did strike true, it had 
 no other effect than to cause the terrier to gnaw 
 and shake with redoubled fury the leg that now 
 resembled a ragged bone. 
 
 The spaniel seemed to have grown faint and 
 limp. Still, though, it continued to hold its head 
 high, and whenever the alert terrier dropped for 
 an instant the leg to essay the throat, it still es- 
 caped by rearing up. 
 
 This spaniel, whilst slowly being killed on that 
 76
 
 John Cave 
 
 beautiful midsummer morning, wore a grotesque 
 air of amazement and reproach as it was flung 
 and tossed about. And continually it directed to- 
 wards the delicious, tender and gay blue of the 
 sky its horrid cries, its sorrowful and tragic prayer. 
 
 The oaken stick broke, and John Cave ran into 
 the post-office for pepper. Hither, in their hor- 
 ror, the young women had all retreated. They 
 crouched in strained attitudes, weeping hysterically, 
 their fingers in their ears; and in answer to their 
 looks of inquiry he shook his head. 
 
 " I want some pepper," he said. 
 
 But the pepper was useless. It only stimulated 
 the bull terrier. And as the young man rose from 
 his kneeling posture, Hogan, scowling in his face, 
 cried : 
 
 " Do you want to blind him ? " 
 
 " I'd kill him if I had a gun," Cave retorted. 
 And suddenly, inflamed with rage, he clutched 
 Hogan's shoulders with both hands and shook him, 
 shouting : 
 
 " Pull off that dog of yours ! " 
 
 Hogan jerked loose. " Well, give us a chance," 
 he said sullenly. 
 
 He stooped and took his indomitable terrier by 
 the tail. He dragged it, and the spaniel with it, 
 up and down the road. He lifted it high in air, 
 and the spaniel, too, was lifted up. He swung 
 
 77.
 
 John Cave 
 
 to and fro that hideous, writhing, howling pen- 
 dulum, from which dripped blood. 
 
 " No use," he said at the end. There was al- 
 most a note of satisfaction in his voice. 
 
 The druggist pushed through the crowd with a 
 quart bottle of ammonia under his arm. 
 
 "Don't use that stuff," cried Hogan. 
 
 The druggist hesitated, but John Cave seized 
 Hogan and flung him back into the crowd. 
 
 " Get the hell out of the way ! " 
 
 "Who's got a gun?" 
 
 " What kind of a brute are you, any way, to 
 keep such a dog? " 
 
 Amid all that hostility Hogan became silent, and 
 the druggist, kneeling, poured his ammonia on the 
 terrier. He poured the entire quart on its head, 
 into its mouth, into its eyes. All gasped, so pow- 
 erful were the fumes, and yet their sole effect on 
 the bulldog was to make it gnaw and shake the 
 spaniel's leg more savagely than ever. 
 
 " There's no hope," said a voice. 
 
 " Bernard's gone for a gun," said another voice. 
 
 " The sooner it's over the better," said a third 
 voice. 
 
 "The spaniel began it," shouted Hogan. 
 
 Without cessation the spaniel uttered its sickening 
 cries. Without cessation the terrier gnawed and 
 shook it. The crowd about the dogs increased con- 
 
 78
 
 John Cave 
 
 tinually. The air was harsh with ammonia fumes. 
 
 The spaniel's luckless owner had come forth 
 again. She stood, very pale, with her back to the 
 hideous struggle, her eyes closed, and her fingers 
 stopping her ears. The postmistress patted her 
 shoulder, then cried fiercely: 
 
 " Isn't there one of you that's man enough to stop 
 this?" 
 
 " It was the spaniel's fault," retorted Hogan. 
 
 John took up a block of granite bigger than his 
 head. He knelt beside the dogs, balancing the 
 stone with both hands opposite his face. He 
 waited, watched his chance, and suddenly brought 
 down the heavy granite block on the terrier's back 
 with all his might. 
 
 The little dog fell on its side at once. Death 
 was instant. 
 
 Congratulations were showered on the young 
 man, but Hogan, stooping to take up the dead 
 dog, cursed him roundly. 
 
 " You brute," he said, " I'll get even with you." 
 He put the little white terrier under his arm and 
 set off down the hill. " What a brute," he mut- 
 tered, in a bitter and sad tone. 
 
 All the way down the hill he kept looking back 
 and shouting curses at John Cave, while he ab- 
 sently hitched up higher the little, limp, white bur- 
 den under his arm. 
 
 79
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Please let me thank you," said a deep voice. 
 
 He turned, bowing, and she gave him her hand. 
 
 " My name is Diana Scarlett," she said. " But 
 where is poor Peter?" 
 
 "Peter?" 
 
 "Yes, Peter my spaniel." 
 
 The druggist had seen Peter starting homeward : 
 a small, black object on the long white road, limp- 
 ing slowly, and emitting with each limp a little 
 howl. 
 
 80
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 DIANA had told him that he must not fail to go 
 salmon fishing with Jake, an old man who lived 
 alone in the forest by the lakeside. 
 
 He found Jake in the evening at his cabin door, 
 seated on a wooden chair, fanning himself vigor- 
 ously with a palm-leaf fan. When he heard foot- 
 steps, the old man cocked his head in a woodland, 
 deerlike way, and through the leaves his eyes met 
 John's in a friendly look. 
 
 " Good evenin'," he said, in a powerful and ener- 
 getic voice. 
 
 " Good evening," said John. " I'd like to go 
 salmon fishing with you." 
 
 " Well, I guess ye kin," said Jake. " But I start 
 out mighty early. I start, b'gorry, at four o'clock. 
 How does that time suit yee ? " 
 
 "Very well," said John. "Suppose I go to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " All right," said Jake. 
 
 In the morning at four, though the sun was al- 
 ready up, in the shadow of the mountains the lake 
 lay dark and still. It was cold. Everything slept.
 
 John Cave 
 
 The dew-drenched pine forests exhaled an incred- 
 ible fragrance. 
 
 Jake's boat was heavy, wide, flat-bottomed, as 
 comfortable and safe as a parlour. The old man 
 put John in the stern, took the oars, and, robust as 
 a youth, rowed out through the still, dark water to 
 the Hedgehog. 
 
 " This here's my buoy," he said, as he fastened 
 the boat to a ramshackle buoy of rotten wood. 
 " It's a good one, I tell yee." 
 
 He bustled about, brisk and hopeful, overhauling 
 the rods, examining the worms that wriggled in 
 their box of clean moss. 
 
 " The wind's right," he said. " The moon's right 
 
 it's the new of the moon. There's just enough 
 ripple. As like as not ye'll ketch a salmon to- 
 day." 
 
 He took up a tiny hook, smaller than a bent pin, 
 baited it with a shred of worm, and lowered it 
 
 down, down, down ninety feet, a hundred 
 feet. 
 
 Holding the line, he sat expectantly a moment. 
 Then: 
 
 " I've got him," he said. " I've got him. My 
 first smelt. I'll give him to you." 
 
 Up from those cold depths Jake drew a fish the 
 size of his finger, a fish as silvery as a new half- 
 dollar, and he fastened it, alive, on John's hook. 
 
 82
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Hurry," he said. " Get it down forty or fifty 
 feet. It will die in the warm water up here." 
 
 John, with a live smelt on the end of his line, 
 now began to fish for salmon in fifty feet of water. 
 
 " Does Miss Scarlett ever fish with you ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Does she ? " said Jake, in his powerful, em- 
 phatic voice. " Well, I guess she does. B'gorry, 
 she's a good friend of mine. She netted a ten- 
 pound salmon for me once. We had a circus with 
 that feller, I tell yee. It took us two hours to land 
 him. He pulled us from the harbour all the way 
 to Split Rock." 
 
 "Will Miss Scarlett be out to-day?" 
 
 " B'gorry," said Jake, " it's hard to tell." 
 
 The old man sat in the middle of the boat in an 
 arm-chair. His smelt rod was on his left, his sal- 
 mon rod on his right. A pail of eggshells stood 
 between his legs, and every little while he would 
 crush a handful of the shells and throw them on 
 the water. They sank slowly, white and sparkling. 
 He said they attracted the fish. 
 
 The sun rose in the blue sky. The lake was gay. 
 
 " Come, little fishes, come nibble my hook, 
 I'll be captain and you may be cook," 
 
 Jake sang. He was an ardent fisherman. When 
 he caught two smelt in succession, he said : " I 
 
 83
 
 John Cave 
 
 tell yee, where there's smelt there's bound to be 
 salmon." And then, when he got no smelt for an 
 hour or more " There's salmon below here," he 
 said. " That's what has scared the smelt away." 
 
 " Do you work in the winter ? " said John. 
 
 " Well, I guess I do," the old man answered. 
 " I'm janitor of the Newport town hall. B'gorry, 
 I've been janitor there for twenty-seven years. I 
 understand janitorship, I tell yee. I could go to 
 Boston or New York and make big money." 
 
 " How long have you been fishing here ? " 
 
 "Here in this lake?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, sir, I've been a-fishin' here in this lake 
 forty-seven years." 
 
 Suddenly the old man became rigid. He frowned 
 intently at his lancewood rod, the tip of which 
 moved up and down in a slow, odd way, and his 
 tongue protruded. 
 
 The tip bobbed smartly, and with a mighty jerk 
 Jake rose to his feet. The reel hummed. The 
 rod bent in a circle. With the spry movements of 
 a boy the old man hastened to the bow and set the 
 boat loose from its fastening. 
 
 The boat moved southward, towed by the fish 
 upon Jake's line. This fish, for two hours, keeping 
 deep down, fought. It carried the boat three miles. 
 Then, exhausted, it came to the surface, big-
 
 John Cave 
 
 shouldered, bull-like, sulky, and finally Jake netted 
 it a fifteen-pound salmon. 
 
 John caught a salmon late in the afternoon. His 
 was a smaller fish. It came to the surface at once, 
 and the warm water there soon tired it. In twenty 
 minutes it was landed. 
 
 " When they come up, ye see," said Jake, " they're 
 done for. It's too hot for 'em. For, b'gorry, 
 they're used to water of thirty degrees. It's colder 
 than ice down there. I tell yee, it's so cold that 
 when a drowned person once sinks down the body 
 don't never rise ag'in." 
 
 " Is this land-locked salmon good eating ? " 
 
 " Good-eatin' ? Well, I guess 'tis. It's rich as 
 an old Jew." 
 
 The sky was unspeakably brilliant. The world 
 was as clean and sweet as a flower. Here and 
 there vast shadows, the shadows of great moun- 
 tains, lay upon the sun-drenched landscape. 
 
 A canoe rounded the point, guided by a girl in 
 white. It drew near in a light and silent way; 
 and the girl waved her hand and called: 
 
 "What luck?" 
 
 " Two salmon," John shouted. 
 
 She ran the canoe alongside skilfully, and John 
 took hold of the gunwale. He asked her if he might 
 get in. She laughed and assented, and he boarded 
 the slim craft clumsily, taking the bow seat. 
 
 85
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Good-bye," he said to Jake. 
 
 " Good-bye," Jake answered, in a sullen voice. 
 
 The canoe swam shoreward, gliding slowly 
 through the crystal water, over a bottom of snow- 
 white sand. 
 
 " How is Peter ? " said the young man. 
 
 " He will pull through," Diana answered. " His 
 eyes are hurt, and he is horribly torn in a half- 
 dozen places. But the doctor says he will pull 
 through." 
 
 "You paddle beautifully." 
 
 " Do you think so ? But then I have canoed on 
 Sunapee ever since I was a little child. How do 
 you like it here ? " 
 
 " I love it here," said he. " It is such a clean 
 country such a wild, clean, pure country." 
 
 " You will be sorry to go back, then ? " 
 
 "Sorry? Rather!" 
 
 " You like your work, though ? " 
 
 "Like it? I hate it." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because I don't get on well, I suppose." 
 
 " Are you lazy ? " she asked gravely. 
 
 He laughed. " Dear knows ! " 
 
 The canoe floated out of the shade into an open 
 space. A cool air was blowing. Sunbeams, strik- 
 ing through the shallows, danced on the bottom of 
 white sand like gold coins. The water rippled over 
 
 86
 
 John Cave 
 
 this dimpled, snowy sand. The canoe bobbed gaily 
 on the little waves. 
 
 " I must go in," said Diana. 
 
 " Oh, must you go in ? " 
 
 They drew near her landing slowly. 
 
 " It was odd to meet you here," she said. 
 
 " Do you remember seeing me in town ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well," he said, in a low voice, " it isn't odd 
 that I am here. I came here because I knew that 
 you were here." 
 
 She made an exclamation. Was it of annoyance? 
 Was it of surprise? He could not tell. 
 
 " One of the maids where I live told me that 
 you came here in the summer," he said. " So I 
 came here in the hope of meeting you." 
 
 His tone was a little bitter. He feared that she 
 did not like him, that it displeased her to hear him 
 speak in this way. 
 
 But after he had helped her out of the canoe 
 she looked in his face for a moment, and her 
 beautiful eyes met his in a timid questioning. 
 
 " I hope you will come and see me," she said. 
 
 " To come will make me happy," said the young 
 man.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 As he sat on the hotel piazza with his cigarette 
 that night, delicate sensations of delight rippled 
 through his being. He frit again upon him Diana's 
 timid and questioning glance. Her glance had suf- 
 fused him with a languid, poetic, somewhat mourn- 
 ful happiness. How pathetically humble, pathetic- 
 ally in his power, the young girl had seemed. And 
 afterwards there had ensued a long silence. Then, 
 when she invited him to come and see her, she had 
 heaved a little sigh. 
 
 Lighting a fresh cigarette, he smiled. He looked 
 up at the soft splendour of the starry August sky, 
 and his smile was the complacent smile, the silly 
 and despicable smile, of the male who has made a 
 conquest. He perceived that he would have a 
 pleasant time here from now on. 
 
 He came down beaming the next morning, clad 
 for the first time in his new white flannels. He ate 
 an even heartier breakfast than usual straw- 
 berries, porridge, ham and eggs, buckwheat cakes, 
 coffee, and, to conclude, two doughnuts, huge and 
 light and hot, which he dipped in a sauce of melted 
 
 88
 
 John Cave 
 
 maple sugar. At the end, puffing a little, he rose, 
 loosened his belt, boarded his canoe, and paddled 
 gaily, if a little heavily, in the direction of Diana's 
 cottage. 
 
 But a mile this side of her cottage he passed the 
 young girl. She sat in a handsome launch that, 
 under the direction of a gigantic youth in white, 
 shot by him like the wind. John examined the 
 youth in white carefully. With rolled-up sleeves 
 and shirt open at the neck he stood bareheaded at 
 the wheel, his wind-tossed yellow hair glittering 
 in the sun. He was a cross between a Hercules 
 and an Apollo, and as John, paddling awkwardly, 
 studied him, no vestige of last night's conquering 
 and complacent smile lingered on the journalist's 
 compressed lips. 
 
 He returned to the hotel. He bought a news- 
 paper, and passed the morning on the piazza, sur- 
 rounded by old ladies in rocking-chairs. He read 
 but little. For the most part he gazed, lost in 
 thought, at the mountains, a gloomy and perplexed 
 look on his face. 
 
 In the afternoon, with a magazine, he resumed 
 his place among the old ladies again. Suddenly 
 he heard a clatter of hoofs, and Diana and the 
 yellow-haired youth cantered by on beautiful horses, 
 in superb riding clothes, a groom in the rear accent- 
 ing all that elegance. 
 
 89
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Shirley Brooke," he heard an old lady say. 
 " The broker's son, you know. Rich ? Well ! " 
 
 Behind his magazine he sneered at his folly. " I 
 have been a fool," he thought. " What did I hope 
 for? Why did I come here? Fool, fool, fool! " 
 
 90
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " You should have good luck to-day, miss," said 
 the coachman. " Rain always brings the animals 
 down." 
 
 And Diana turned and explained to John that 
 visitors to the great preserve sometimes failed to 
 see a single head of game. Her manner was ex- 
 traordinarily kind and gentle. She seemed vaguely 
 to know that he was hurt and sore; she seemed 
 to want to console him for something. And smil- 
 ing back at the young man, she said that though 
 there were thousands of buffalo, deer, elk and wild 
 boar, the preserve was many miles in extent, and 
 the herds in dry weather kept to the distant forests 
 of the mountain heights, where they were inaccessi- 
 ble to the casual visitor. The casual visitor could 
 only hope to see them when they descended, as 
 they did after rain, to the meadows that lay on 
 either side the creek. 
 
 She sat on the front seat with the coachman; 
 John was with Mrs. Scarlett behind her, and 
 Shirley Brooke and her cousin, young Reverdy 
 Scarlett, occupied the rear seat of the long buck- 
 board. 
 
 91
 
 John Cave 
 
 It had rained all night, but the morning was 
 brilliant. The sky seemed to have been washed, 
 it sparkled with so fresh and pure a blue. The 
 sweet air was almost frosty, the damp pine woods 
 exhaled in the August sun an odour exquisite and 
 exhilarating, and, focussed to the last detail, the 
 grey mountain peaks and crags stood out with an 
 amazing sharpness. 
 
 The buckboard rocked on the rough" mountain 
 road. The landscape grew wilder and lonelier. 
 Not more than twice or thrice in an hour would 
 they see a house, and these rare houses looked 
 ridiculously small, smaller than toys, amid the 
 tumbled chaos of giant mountains. It was noon 
 before they gained the park. 
 
 The park, from without, was nothing but a 
 mountain forest. There was a wooden gate in 
 the tall fence of barbed wire, and beside the gate 
 stood a little frame farmhouse. 
 
 A woman from the farm admitted them, and 
 they took a rough forest road. Hardly a minute 
 had passed before Mrs. Scarlett cried, " Oh, look ! " 
 and three beautiful deer, yellow as gold, burst 
 from the green gloom of the thicket, crossed the 
 road with incredibly long, light leaps, and in an 
 instant disappeared in the thicket on the other side. 
 
 The road turned, passing a dead pine wood. 
 The slender and denuded trees stood erect and still 
 
 92
 
 John Cave 
 
 and grey. The ground was covered with a grey 
 carpet of pine needles. Through the interlaced and 
 bare boughs not a breath of air, not a ray of sun- 
 light, ever penetrated. Strangely beautiful in its 
 clean, sad silence was this pine wood, dead and 
 grey, with its innumerable slim, straight trunks 
 ascending like columns in a dim cathedral. 
 
 The road turned again, and in a green and sun- 
 drenched meadow, in the shadow of a birch, they 
 saw a doe standing with two little fawns. The 
 animals, in a pose of wild and timid grace, allowed 
 the carriage to come so near that the excursionists 
 saw their soft, frightened eyes, their sleek coats of 
 pale yellow, their tails, mere tufts of white cotton : 
 then, with great, free leaps, they fled. 
 
 Diana turned to John and smiled. 
 
 " How clean and sweet they are," she said. 
 
 The buckboard drew up beside a spring, and, 
 seated on the perfumed grass of a wind-swept 
 knoll, their lunch spread on a granite boulder, they 
 ate and drank with a good appetite. Then the 
 ladies went for a little walk, and the young men, 
 lighting their cigarettes, sprawled on the turf, and 
 boasted and argued. 
 
 The ladies returned, the coachman brought up 
 the buckboard, and the excursionists followed once 
 more the rough forest trail. Reverdy and Shirley 
 continued to argue and boast on the back seat, but 
 
 93
 
 John Cave 
 
 John, seated now beside Diana, listened no 
 longer. 
 
 The buckboard made a sharp turn, and the horses 
 reared and halted. A little more, and they would 
 have fallen on a huge buffalo cow that lay in the 
 road. On all sides were buffaloes, a herd of a 
 hundred or more. The meadow was black with 
 them. And they were not at all afraid. They 
 looked at the carriage with dull eyes, and the cow 
 in the road rose lazily. 
 
 " Isn't it dangerous ? " said Mrs. Scarlett. 
 
 The coachman laughed. " Oh, no, ma'am ; 
 there's no danger," he said. 
 
 The buckboard advanced slowly. The herd, for 
 some reason, closed in behind and followed it. 
 
 " Faster, please," said Mrs. Scarlett. " These 
 brutes make me nervous." 
 
 But there was another turn, and again the horses 
 stopped and reared, and Mrs. Scarlett screamed 
 faintly. This time the road was blocked by some 
 twenty or thirty buffaloes, standing and lying, huge, 
 stolid, formidable brutes. 
 
 " We'd better turn back," said Reverdy Scarlett, 
 in a strange voice. 
 
 " I'm going to jump out," said Mrs. Scarlett, 
 clasping the coachman's arm. 
 
 " Sit still, madam," said the coachman. He was 
 smiling, a puzzled smile. The buffaloes, not more 
 
 94
 
 John Cave 
 
 than a dozen feet ahead, made no movement to 
 clear the way; they did not even deign to look at 
 the excursionists. 
 
 " Turn back," repeated Reverdy. And then, 
 glancing behind him, the young man muttered: 
 " Heavens, we can't turn back ! " 
 
 For the buffaloes that they had passed had closed 
 in on them more closely, blocking the roadway in 
 the rear. The buffaloes in front continued motion- 
 less. And from behind, now and then, a great 
 beast swaggered past with sullen looks. 
 
 They were surrounded by buffaloes. They could 
 reach out on every side and touch a buffalo. It 
 was a novel experience. It was even alarming. 
 
 " I hardly know . . ." said the coachman, smiling 
 his puzzled smile. " They ain't supposed to be 
 dangerous except in the spring." He flicked the 
 horses, but they backed and reared, refusing to ad- 
 vance. 
 
 And there they sat, surrounded by buffaloes. 
 
 " Well," said Diana, " what are we to do ? " 
 
 The coachman, busy with his frightened horses, 
 stammered : 
 
 " I hardly know if . . ." 
 
 " Shall we get out and go for them ? " asked 
 Shirley Brooke tremulously. 
 
 " You don't want to make 'em mad," said the 
 coachman. 
 
 95
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Oh, dear, we must do something," whimpered 
 Mrs. Scarlett. 
 
 John Cave, pale and silent, sat beside Diana, lost 
 in thought. Here was a superb chance for him 
 to distinguish himself in the eyes of the girl he 
 loved ; but had he the courage to grasp this chance ? 
 He pondered the question cautiously. Would the 
 buffaloes, if he rushed upon them yelling, disperse? 
 . . . Suppose, instead of dispersing, they attacked 
 him, gored and trampled him to death? Well, it 
 would be better to die like that than to turn and 
 run. . . . But he knew that he would turn and run 
 at the first sign of opposition on the buffaloes' part. 
 Yes, in fancy he saw himself running frantically, 
 his coat-tails streamed out level in the wind, and 
 with a sad and contemptuous smile Diana watched 
 him disappear over the hill. 
 
 Suddenly he leaped from the buckboard and 
 rushed at the buffaloes as an angry gardener rushes 
 at a flock of trespassing hens. 
 
 " Hi ! " he shouted, at the top of his lungs, waving 
 his arms, darting this way and that. " Hi ! Gzt 
 out! Scoot!" 
 
 He was utterly terrified. But he advanced 
 bravely. 
 
 "Hi! Hi!" 
 
 The sleepy brutes in front, rising slowly, lum- 
 bered off at a heavy trot. A black bull glared at 
 
 96
 
 John Cave 
 
 the young man, lowered his head, pawed the ground ; 
 but John rushed at him with a wild yell, and he, 
 too, sullenly took to his heels. 
 
 " Hi ! Scoot ! " they all shouted together from 
 the buckboard. And faster and faster the buffaloes 
 retreated. Soon not one was to be seen. 
 
 Diana and John, on the return, got out at the 
 foot of the Newport hill to relieve the tired horses. 
 Alone at last, they both were silent. But they 
 walked slowly, and the carriage forged ahead. 
 
 " I am going back to town to-morrow," said the 
 young man. 
 
 " You must come and see me in town," said she. 
 
 Her walk had a free and gentle grace. Her 
 hair glittered in the sunshine like gold thread. The 
 delicate regularity of her profile gave her a proud, 
 contemptuous air. 
 
 At a steep place carpeted with pine needles he 
 took her hand to help her. Afterwards, the car- 
 riage having turned a bend, he did not release her 
 hand. 
 
 She made no effort to withdraw it. She con- 
 tinued to advance in silence, an inscrutable look 
 in her clear eyes. 
 
 " Diana," he said, in a tremulous voice, " I have 
 told you why I came to Sunapee." 
 
 97,
 
 John Cave 
 
 She gave him a swift, timid glance. " Are you 
 glad you came ? " 
 
 " Yes, if you are. Are you? " 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 He halted before her. " Dearest, dearest," he 
 murmured. Bending over her, he took her face 
 in his hands. 
 
 As frankly as a child she gave him her fresh lips. 
 
 He was profoundly moved. He felt vile and 
 coarse beside this beautiful girl. How strange, how 
 sad, that she should stoop to one like him. 
 
 But in the soil of his polluted youth such cred- 
 itable thoughts soon died. His humble look was 
 succeeded by the complacent smile of conquest. 
 Then, as he walked on beside Diana again, he be- 
 gan to find the silence awkward. He held her 
 hand. Should he release it? ... or what? And 
 he began to wonder if he should go further. . . . 
 Did she desire him to go further? ... He directed 
 on the pure, grave profile of the young girl a side- 
 long glance of vile suspicion. 
 
 And Diana, without looking at him, said, as if 
 in answer to his thoughts: 
 
 " No one ever kissed me before." 
 
 His face cleared. The absurdity of his sus- 
 picions! As though one should suspect a lily or a 
 rose ! Releasing her hand, he stammered : 
 
 " Some things are very difficult to say. . . . But 
 98
 
 John Cave 
 
 when one has a salary so small that it will hardly 
 support one's self, and when one must sleep all day 
 and work all night . . . why, one is hardly . . . 
 hardly in a position to ... a position to . . ." 
 
 As he faltered, blushing furiously, the young 
 girl turned to him with a serene smile. 
 
 " But there is always hope," she said. 
 
 She smiled serenely, but on her cheek glistened 
 a tear. Not thus, perhaps, had she dreamed her 
 lover would come to her: a youth with polluted 
 eyes, extending empty hands too weak for her sup- 
 port, and at the same time searching her with 
 glances of vile suspicion. 
 
 99
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PETER TO JOHN CAVE 
 
 MY DEAR BENEFACTOR, I know you will be 
 pleased to hear that my wounds are nearly healed. 
 Even from the foreleg, which suffered most, the 
 soreness is now gone. But the limp remains. 
 
 I send you an ash-tray of birch bark that my 
 mistress made for you at my request. 
 
 Hoping to see you often on my return to town, 
 I will now close. PETER. 
 
 (Dictated.) 
 
 JOHN CAVE TO DIANA SCARLETT 
 
 I am sitting by the window from which, so often, 
 I saw you last winter. I did not dare to hope then 
 that you would ever be my friend. 
 
 You ask me what I do and what I think. Such 
 questions are difficult to answer. However 
 
 My breakfast is not over till eleven. After 
 breakfast, with newspapers and a book, I sit in the 
 Park an hour or two. 
 
 At one, a little nervous, I go to the office. 
 
 I am always worried over my coming assignment. 
 100
 
 John Cave 
 
 Will it be a good, amusing assignment, or a stwpid 
 one? Usually, thanks to the managing editor, it is 
 good, and in gathering my facts and in writing a 
 column or a column and a half of copy the afternoon 
 and evening pass. 
 
 Pleasantly and swiftly they pass, and at half-past 
 nine or ten my work is done. Now, till midnight, I 
 am idle. But what is there to do? It is too late 
 for the theatres, too late to go and see anyone (if I 
 knew anyone to go and see), and so, since I must be 
 amused, I do the thing that is cheapest, handiest; 
 and with two or three other men from the office I 
 sit in a cafe, smoking, talking, drinking. 
 
 We have a good time in the cafe. We talk of 
 serious things the books we like, the plays we 
 like, our future work, our ambitions and, our 
 brains stimulated by alcohol, we think and speak 
 freely and profoundly or, at least, we fancy we 
 do though to an outsider it might seem that we 
 are only noisy braggarts. 
 
 As to that I can't say, but at any rate our long 
 hours in the cafe would do us no harm were it not 
 that, the next morning, we awake unref reshed. The 
 head aches a little, the eyes smart, the mind is 
 fatigued and sad: one is really fit for nothing but 
 to spend the day in bed. 
 
 And sometimes that is what I do. The morning 
 after one of these splendid evenings, evenings that 
 101
 
 John Cave 
 
 we end almost reverently, with deep stirrings of joy 
 and gratitude, separating as priests separate at the 
 close of a successful rite, I send word to the office 
 that I am ill, and all day I doze in my room. It is 
 shameful I am paid for this idleness I am a 
 thief. 
 
 And like a thief I hide in my room, afraid to go 
 out lest some Press man see me. And the next day, 
 when I report for work again, I am hideously 
 frightened and abased; I am convinced that, if the 
 cause of my absence is not known, it is at least sus- 
 pected. 
 
 Sometimes, too, our evenings at the cafe do not 
 terminate in a quiet dispersal at one o'clock; but 
 from weak we turn to strong drinks, and the night 
 grows wild and confused, and one awakes in the 
 morning, as like as not, with only thirty or forty 
 cents to see one through the balance of the week. 
 Then, day after day, borrowing from this man to 
 buy one's luncheon, from that man to buy one's din- 
 ner, obliged to tell various small creditors that one 
 has not the dollar or two necessary to settle their 
 trifling accounts. . . . Oh, how can I still continue 
 in this life when I suffer so horribly the humiliation 
 of it? 
 
 Now, perhaps, you know me better. I want you, 
 if you wish it, to know me thoroughly. But maybe, 
 
 102
 
 John Cave 
 
 after this frank letter, you will decide that you do 
 not want to know me at all. J. C. 
 
 DIANA! SCARLETT TO JOHN CAVE 
 
 MY DEAR JOHN, I have thought about your let- 
 ter a great deal. You tell me that you are some- 
 times happy and sometimes wretched. You are 
 wretched when you are doing things that are wrong 
 drinking and all that and you are happy when 
 you are doing what is right: you are happy when 
 you are at work. 
 
 I am sure you could be always happy. 
 
 At night, after you are done at The Press, instead 
 of talking about your future and your ambitions, 
 why don't you go home and work ? 
 
 Good-bye. Shirley is whistling for me from his 
 launch. DIANA SCARLETT. 
 
 JOHN CAVE TO DIANA SCARLETT 
 
 DEAR DIANA, For a month I have drunk noth- 
 ing, and delightful is the sense of freedom that this 
 abstinence gives. I am like a prisoner released 
 from his chains. 
 
 Drinking: the infernal practice was always on 
 my mind. Every morning, from the moment I left 
 home, I worried over how much I would drink be- 
 fore returning, when I would take my first drink, 
 103
 
 John Cave 
 
 whether or no I might get through the day without 
 drinking at all. Like a chain, the habit continually 
 galled me. And now I am free. 
 
 Mentally I have this delightful sense of freedom, 
 and physically I abound in health and high spirits, 
 like an animal. I eat so well, I sleep so well, I get 
 up in the morning so refreshed and happy thanks 
 to you. 
 
 Assuredly I don't hope to continue a journalist 
 for ever. I want to write plays. How many plays 
 I have commenced! But I have never so much as 
 finished a one-act curtain raiser. 
 
 But now I am back again at a play I began three 
 years ago. I worked two mornings and two even- 
 ings on it this week. A playwright will sometimes 
 make a quarter of a million dollars from one suc- 
 cess. 
 
 When I was a boy at school I continually distin- 
 guished myself. As soon a I became a young man, 
 I continually disgraced myself. 
 
 You see, as a boy, I lived in intimate relation- 
 ship with my teachers. I liked and respected these 
 teachers ; they liked and respected me ; and in order 
 to please them, in order to retain their good opinion, 
 I worked hard. I hated work, but it was neces- 
 sary : otherwise my teachers would be grieved. 
 
 But as a young man I have had no friends of this 
 kind. My friends have been young like me, and 
 104
 
 John Cave 
 
 their influence has led me towards dissipation rather 
 than towards work. Because no one cared whether 
 I worked or not, I stopped working. 
 
 You now stand in the place of one of those teach- 
 ers of my boyhood. If I can but be sure that you 
 care, I will work my very hardest. To please you, 
 I will work as I did when a little chap. But do you 
 care? J. C. 
 
 DIANA SCARLETT TO JOHN CAVE 
 
 DEAR JOHN, This is regatta week, and you 
 mustn't expect a letter from me. But of course I 
 care. Now I must dress for the canoe tilts. 
 
 DIANA. 
 
 105
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 PRUDENCE, the maid told him, was at home. He 
 had not seen her for two months, and, seated in a 
 low praying-chair from a chapel of Finistere, he 
 dreamily regarded the beauty of her library. 
 
 The walls were panelled to the ceiling in time- 
 blackened oak carved in a Gothic pattern. The 
 chairs, all old, all of dark wood richly sculptured, 
 were upholstered in cherry-coloured satin. In the 
 well-waxed floor one could see one's face as in the 
 rosewood surface of a grand piano, and beautiful 
 beyond words on this dark floor were the pale 
 Persian rugs with their blended hues of cream, old 
 rose, jade green. 
 
 " It was time you came to see me," said a clear 
 young voice, and Prudence, in street dress, gave him 
 her hand gaily. 
 
 " Oh, well," said he. He noted absently her pal- 
 lor. 
 
 "'Oh, well'! Well, what?" 
 
 " You didn't care." 
 
 " Of course I cared." 
 
 " When you wrote and asked me for those stories, 
 you didn't press me very hard to come." 
 106
 
 John Cave 
 
 " I wanted to surprise you," she said softly. She 
 put her hands to her hat, withdrawing the long gold 
 pins, and in this charming attitude she paused and 
 smiled. 
 
 " A surprise, eh ? " He concealed a yawn behind 
 his hand. 
 
 " Yes. A surprise." 
 
 She set a huge tin case of cigarettes before him, 
 Egyptian cigarettes, gold-tipped, aromatic, and as 
 large as small cigars. 
 
 " Would you mind," he faltered, " giving me a 
 drink, too?" 
 
 Silently, a little reproachfully, she got out the 
 whisky and soda-water. He drank of the ex- 
 hilarating mixture, and a warm wave of physical 
 well-being, almost of happiness, flowed through his 
 veins sluggish and foul from a week's drunkenness. 
 He fell into a muse. . . . 
 
 Diana had broken with him on account of his 
 jealousy. He had suspected that she took an actual 
 delight in making him jealous. But he had been 
 wrong there. No girl, she had assured him, was 
 cruel enough to delight in making her lover jealous. 
 True, perhaps. . . . But he could not banish his 
 morbid and ignoble doubts, they turned his happi- 
 ness to despair, and therefore she had broken with' 
 him sorrowfully. . . . Drink, after his long absti- 
 nence, had had a strange, revolting taste. . . . 
 107
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Wake up," said Prudence. 
 
 He looked at her and smiled. " How about that 
 surprise ? " 
 
 She knelt upon the opposite praying-chair, resting 
 her elbows on the sculptured bar that topped the 
 back. Her air was quaintly serious and business- 
 like. 
 
 "You don't like The Press, do you?" she be- 
 gan. 
 
 " I loathe the hole," said he. 
 
 " How would you like to go to New York ? " 
 
 "And starve?" 
 
 " Would you go if you could get a good place? " 
 
 " Oh, I suppose so." 
 
 She rose and stood before him. 
 
 " Well, I've got you a good place." 
 
 " You ? How ? " He looked incredulous, amazed, 
 pleased. 
 
 " Those stories of yours ... I sent them over to 
 Miles." 
 
 John paced the room. " What did he say ? " 
 
 She laughed at his excitement: a sweet and 
 sympathetic laugh. 
 
 " He said they were fine. He wants a man like 
 you for his Sunday magazine. He wants you to 
 come over and see his Sunday editor next week." 
 
 " Why," said John, " that would mean a hun- 
 dred a week. Prudence! . . ." 
 108
 
 John Cave 
 
 He strode to the table, drained his glass, and 
 lighted a cigarette, chuckling. 
 
 " Prudence ! " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 He took her hands. " How pretty and good you 
 are." 
 
 " Good ? I ? " She laughed oddly. 
 
 " I have always known that you were good." 
 
 He regarded her with tender pity. Then, sud- 
 denly, he turned away, forgetting her in his own 
 affairs again, and with his back to her he mixed 
 himself another whisky and soda, laughing, making 
 little joyous exclamations. 
 
 "Of course you'll take the place, won't you?" 
 she said. 
 
 He approached her, the glass in his hand. 
 
 "Your health," he said. "How can I thank 
 you?" 
 
 " Have I really helped you ? " 
 
 "Helped me? . . . Show me Miles's letter, will 
 you?" 
 
 " I'll run and get it. Then we'll take a walk. 
 Would you like that?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed." 
 
 She brought him the letter, and he read it while 
 she put on her hat and gloves. It was flattering 
 enough; it seemed sincere enough. . . . 
 
 " Give me a cigarette," said Prudence suddenly. 
 109
 
 John Cave 
 
 And she sank into a chair. She was yawning in the 
 oddest way: great yawns that succeeded one an- 
 other with scarcely an intermission. And amid 
 these yawns she smoked her cigarette ravenously; 
 not as women usually do, taking the smoke into the 
 mouth and blowing it forth again at once, but with 
 profound inhalations, drawing it deep down into her 
 lungs. And still the yawns continued. 
 
 " How pale you are," said John suspiciously. 
 
 "Ami?" 
 
 " Yes. I noticed it from the first." 
 
 Flushing beneath his unkind look, she rose hur- 
 riedly. 
 
 " You must excuse me a few minutes," she said, 
 and yawning, smiling, in an embarrassment that was 
 rather pitiable, she hastened from the room. As the 
 door closed he shouted after her in a portentous 
 voice : 
 
 " I know what you are going to do." 
 
 Then, awaiting her return, he mused, the letter 
 open before him, his glass and cigarette at hand. 
 . . . This help was strangely opportune, for he had 
 not worked since the night Diana broke with him, 
 and his place on The Press was doubtless lost for 
 good. . . . How low, but for this help, might he 
 not have fallen? . . . 
 
 In New York it would be easier to forget. He 
 seemed to be forgetting. In the end he would for- 
 110
 
 John Cave 
 
 get. But there were times when the memory of 
 Diana caused him intolerable pain. . . . 
 
 He sniffed. A peculiar odour floated in little 
 puffs into the room: a bitter, acrid odour. He 
 frowned. Then his troubled glance fell upon the 
 letter, and reading it again, he smiled. 
 
 But that acrid odour, billowing in noiselessly, filled 
 the room now, and, sniffing and frowning, he went 
 to Prudence's door and called: 
 
 " Hurry up ! I can't wait here all day ! " 
 
 When she rejoined him, beautiful in her sables, 
 neither spoke of her odd seizure. They went out 
 at once into the bright sunshine and the dry, cold 
 air of a November day. 
 
 They walked up and down Peanut Street, regard- 
 ing the shop-windows' meagre display, regarding 
 the costumes, too coarse and cumbersome, of the 
 women, regarding the young men with their un- 
 shaven faces, their untidy boots, and their dusty 
 coats ridiculously padded. 
 
 " A village," said John. " An overgrown village. 
 I'll be glad to get out of here." 
 
 " There isn't much life here," said the young girl 
 listlessly. 
 
 They took tea at an empty cafe, they dined at an- 
 other empty cafe, and after dinner they visited a 
 vaudeville theatre a long and dreary performance, 
 nineteen numbers, seventeen of them bad. 
 in
 
 John Cave 
 
 At last they were on Peanut Street again. 
 
 " Now what shall we do ? ' 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 It was eleven, and Peanut Street was as gloomy 
 and still as a cemetery path. The voices of the 
 young couple resounded strangely in the silent night, 
 and when a rare pedestrian approached, the thunder 
 of his footfalls, augmenting as he drew near, dying 
 as he departed, was audible a square away. Now 
 and then, when they passed a police officer, the 
 man regarded them suspiciously. 
 
 " Come to the Westminster," said John, " and 
 we'll drink a bottle of champagne to my new job." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Prudence, fretfully. " You drink 
 too much." 
 
 " Don't you talk ! " said he. He gave her a sour 
 look. She seemed uneasy and cold, seemed to want 
 to be rid of him. " Have you an appointment ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "What is it for?" 
 
 " I'm going to take supper at twelve o'clock in 
 Chinatown." 
 
 " I'll go with you," he said gruffly. 
 
 " You may if you like." 
 
 " You need looking after." 
 
 His tone was gruff, but its significance was clear 
 to her, and she said meekly, gratefully : 
 112
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Yes, do come." 
 
 They went to the Westminster after all. From a 
 little corner table they stared through the smoke at 
 the energetic orchestra and the handful of languid 
 listeners. They sipped their icy and sharp wine. 
 
 " I told you that you'd get the habit," said John. 
 
 With downcast eyes she played with the stem of 
 her glass. There was a long silence. She made a 
 little grimace. " It's not much of a habit," she 
 said. 
 
 " You're very pale." 
 
 " I wasn't well all summer." 
 
 " Of course you weren't. And you know why." 
 
 He threw back his head to drain the last drop of 
 his wine. She regarded him with a sneer, and, as 
 he wiped his wet mouth, she said : 
 
 " My habit is no worse than yours." 
 
 "Oh, isn't it?" he retorted. "Oh, but it is, 
 though. I can stop. You can't." 
 
 A frown, worried and frightened, ruffled the 
 serenity of her pale and beautiful brow, and she 
 faltered : 
 
 " Maybe, when you go to New York, I'll come 
 over there, too . . . and you'll help me, and I'll 
 help you ... to give up . . ." 
 
 " I'll be glad to help you, dear," he said. He laid 
 his hand on hers. " We'll help one another." 
 
 There followed a space of serious silence. Each 
 "3
 
 John Cave 
 
 debated whether or no the appointment should be 
 kept in Chinatown. Each felt, after that little talk, 
 extremely virtuous and solemn. At the same 
 time . . . 
 
 " Shall we go to Chinatown or not ? " said he. 
 
 She hesitated, smiling. Then, " Suppose we do," 
 she said impulsively. " And to-morrow, a new 
 leaf." 
 
 114
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE Chinese restaurant had a dingy exterior. 
 The dark, bare hall reeked with unpleasant odours. 
 The stairway they ascended was drab with dirt. 
 
 But at the top of the stairway a wide door opened 
 upon a clean and spacious kitchen brilliantly lighted, 
 and there, over huge fires, over great pans of gleam- 
 ing copper, four or five neat Chinese cooks worked 
 quickly and quietly at marble tables piled with white 
 or red or green mounds of food. 
 
 " In every Chinese restaurant," John explained, 
 " the kitchen is placed in full view, like this. You 
 inspect the kitchen before you go into the dining- 
 room. You ascertain for yourself the food's quality 
 and the cooks' cleanliness." 
 
 " I know," said Prudence. 
 
 In the restaurant her friends sat waiting : a half- 
 dozen young men and girls, smoking cigarettes and 
 drinking tea, leaning forward, their sleek heads 
 close together, conversing quietly and earnestly. 
 Pale and thin, with a look of extreme poverty de- 
 spite the neatness of their dress and the gaiety of 
 their ties and ribbons, they were always to be found
 
 John Cave 
 
 conversing excitedly in low tones, for they were al- 
 ways in trouble with the police. 
 
 They rose and greeted the new-comers with gentle 
 courtesy, pressing on them superb China tea and 
 execrable Virginia cigarettes. They were profuse 
 with polite attentions, gentle murmurs of welcome, 
 intelligent and sympathetic smiles. 
 
 The room was uncarpeted, the tables were with- 
 out cloths, and here and there a silent Chinaman, his 
 shoes kicked off for comfort's sake, and his feet, in 
 their immaculate white stockings, on the rungs of 
 his stool, ate duck or chicken and tossed the bones 
 beneath him. 
 
 The food was good. Bowls of steamed rice as 
 light as foam, served with a rich and highly-seasoned 
 sauce from Shanghai, cold chicken in moist and 
 tender white cubes, ragouts of duck, mushrooms, 
 ham and such-like savoury substances altogether 
 it made an appetising midnight supper. 
 
 And after they had eaten, the little party, leaning 
 back in their chairs, lighted cigarettes and drank 
 more of the delicious tea. Prudence's friends talked 
 of their wrongs. In low and bitter tones they told 
 of the extortions of their landlords, the extortions of 
 the police, the extortions of the detectives of the 
 various leagues for the suppression of vice. 
 
 John, knowing that they were regarded by so- 
 ciety as a particularly degraded and dangerous 
 116
 
 John Cave 
 
 criminal type, marvelled at their youth ; for the old- 
 est of these girls was not more than eighteen or 
 nineteen, the oldest of these young men was not 
 more than twenty-two or twenty-three. It was sad 
 to see such mere children chained to a horrible 
 vice. . . . But what was the girl in red saying ? 
 
 " They gave me three months," she said. " I 
 swore I hadn't touched his glasses, but what did 
 my word count for? And it was not till I had 
 served thirty days of my time that I remembered 
 how, in his drunkenness, the glasses had kept fall- 
 ing off his nose, and I had put them out of harm's 
 way in his overcoat pocket. I sent him word to 
 look there for them, and he got me out last Wednes- 
 day. He was sorry, oh, very sorry . . . and I had 
 been almost two months in jail." 
 
 " Sue him." 
 
 But she shook her head. " What's he got? " she 
 said scornfully. 
 
 One of the pale young men began to yawn. He 
 yawned and yawned. His friends regarded him 
 with sympathy. 
 
 " Have you got your habit on ? " said Prudence. 
 
 The pale young man smiled apologetically. " I've 
 got my habit." 
 
 They prepared at once to depart. They went in 
 sections, fearing to go together on account of the 
 police. Two by two, at intervals of five minutes 
 "7.
 
 John Cave 
 
 or so, they passed out. John, as he sped with Pru- 
 dence through the squalid streets, said with a sneer : 
 
 " What a lot ! " 
 
 She frowned impatiently. " Oh, well ! " 
 
 " Do you see them often ? " 
 
 " No ; not very often." 
 
 And she paused before a mean little house, looked 
 up and down the street, then opened the door and 
 hurriedly drew John in with her. Through a dark 
 hall they stumbled, and, ascending a dark stairway, 
 they entered a room that a gas jet dimly lighted. 
 
 The room was hung with flimsy Oriental hang- 
 ings of yellow and red. There were rickety divans, 
 spears, torn paper parasols, hanging lamps of cop- 
 per set with stones of coloured glass, stained cush- 
 ions. Here, at five dollars a head, sightseers from 
 the country occasionally came to watch with awed 
 eyes the smoking of a few pipes. 
 
 The young people, talking in low tones, set on the 
 floor in the middle of the room a glittering opium 
 lay-out in a large brass tray. They placed nearby 
 cigarettes, matches, and a basket of fruit. About 
 all that they piled in a great circle the gaudy cush- 
 ions from the divans. Then, with happy smiles, 
 with little sighs, with low, contented laughter, they 
 lay down. 
 
 They lay on the left side, with the right hand and 
 arm free, forming a circle of alternate male and 
 118
 
 John Cave 
 
 female figures. Each young man's head rested on 
 the breast of a girl, while on his own breast in turn 
 a girl's head was pillowed. 
 
 John, who had declined to smoke, was bidden 
 to turn off the gas. He did so, and the little lamp 
 of peanut oil cast a faint light, strangely clear, 
 upon the circle of pallid faces. 
 
 A girl of seventeen began to cook the pills. She 
 cooked them very quickly she was famed for her 
 dexterity rolling them with an odd, skilful move- 
 ment on the ball of her thumb, which long usage 
 had hardened and stained. 
 
 First she served the yawning youth. Tremulous 
 with desire, he smoked six pills in succession. 
 Then, with a tranquil sigh, he lay back on his com- 
 panion's breast, smiled, lighted a cigarette, and be- 
 gan to talk fluently in subdued tones. 
 
 The pipe passed from hand to hand. The 
 smokers each got about four pills an hour. In the 
 intervals of waiting they occupied themselves with 
 fruit and with cigarettes. And like a hive the 
 room hummed with the murmur of their contented 
 voices. 
 
 But they grew silent when the cook announced 
 that another pill was ready. They watched with 
 sympathy the youth or girl whose turn it was. The 
 pipe in the stillness emitted its ugly gurgle as the 
 bitter fumes were inhaled. The smoker, satisfied, 
 119
 
 John Cave 
 
 fell back languidly. Then once more the murmured 
 conversation was resumed. 
 
 John was ignored utterly. Sullen and drowsy, 
 he sat in the shadow. It annoyed him to see the 
 intimacy that had sprung up between Prudence and 
 one of the young men. . . . 
 
 He must have dozed. He started awake as the 
 State House clock struck three. He looked about 
 him wearily. The little lamp of peanut oil threw 
 its clear, faint light on the circle of smokers. The 
 young girl cook rolled the opium pills swiftly. The 
 pipe passed from hand to hand. The low hum of 
 conversation was incessant. Prudence and the pale 
 youth exchanged the tenderest smiles. 
 
 Seized with a sudden resolution, he arose. 
 
 " My God," he said, in a disdainful and sad voice, 
 " what do you all see in this ? " 
 
 They smiled without looking up, and Prudence 
 answered drowsily: 
 
 " What do you see in getting drunk ? " 
 
 He gave a mournful laugh. Vice for vice, opium 
 smoking was truly comelier than drunkenness. 
 l But it destroyed too swiftly. . . . These young 
 outcasts would lie here, passing the pipe from hand 
 to hand, till, at nine or ten o'clock in the morning, 
 sleep overcame them. They would awake late in the 
 afternoon, take some strong coffee and some fruit, 
 and then begin to smoke again. So, but for the 
 1 20
 
 John Cave 
 
 lack of money, they would keep on a week, two 
 weeks till they became yellow skeletons with 
 burning eyes. Yellow skeletons, too weak to rise, 
 lying on the gaudy cushions, extending tremulously 
 for the drug a pipestem arm and a hand like a 
 claw, murmuring tenderly to one another absurd 
 and meaningless phrases such as one hears in 
 dreams. 
 
 He hastened to the nearest telephone booth and 
 called up The Press, asking for the managing editor, 
 who was apt, at this hour, to be in his office alone. 
 Norris's voice came to him over the wire. 
 
 " Mr. Norris," said the young man, " this is 
 Cave." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Is my place still open for me? " 
 
 Norris laughed. " Do you think it's best to come 
 back?" 
 
 " I have had an offer from Miles," John said. 
 " He likes my stuff. He is willing to try me as a 
 feature writer." 
 
 " Good," said Norris. 
 
 " But I'd rather come back to you." 
 
 Norris laughed again. " All right. Come back," 
 said he. 
 
 John returned to Prudence. The youth whose head 
 lay on her breast looked up at her in a childlike way, 
 and interminably his voice flowed on in a monoto- 
 
 121
 
 John Cave 
 
 nous murmur. With a dreamy smile she listened, 
 her slim fingers moving gently in his dark curls. 
 
 John laid his hand on her arm. She started, and 
 her eyes met his in a meaningless stare. 
 
 " I am not going to New York," he said. 
 
 "New York?" 
 
 A shadow of perplexity that came and vanished, 
 and her face regained at once its aspect of exalted 
 and calm joy. 
 
 " No ; I am not going to New York." 
 
 " Well, what is that to me? " 
 
 He hastened out into the dreary night. Tired, ill, 
 unkempt, he seemed to be struggling painfully forth 
 from a morass of mental and physical rottenness 
 wherein he had wallowed a long while. 
 
 " Diana," he murmured, " save me ! I love you, 
 dear Diana. You are my salvation. Come, or I 
 will soon strangle in the foul ooze. . . ." 
 
 Feverish and weak, he smiled to hear himself 
 speaking aloud in the empty street. 
 
 " No priest loathes pollution more than I, yet at 
 the first failure or sorrow I sink back into the morass 
 as into a warm, soft bed. That is how I am made, 
 and you alone, dear, can save me." 
 
 Denied a God, he worshipped a girl. Robbed of 
 a God by modern thought, he prayed to a girl with 
 implicit faith in her goodness and her power to 
 save him. 
 
 122
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 " I AM a practical person," Diana said. " It is 
 clear, from what you tell me, that these men at The 
 Press are your inferiors in talent." 
 
 " I should hope so," he interjected. 
 
 " But talent," she went on, " isn't everything. 
 There is diplomacy. You despise these men. You 
 abominate their commonplace minds. Well, maybe 
 they dislike you because you have shown them this." 
 
 He laughed. " Indeed I have shown them ! " 
 
 " Of course you can't succeed," said Diana, frown- 
 ing, " in a nest of enemies." 
 
 They were walking in a forest. Dead leaves were 
 falling softly. A scarlet oak leaf caught in her 
 gilt hair. 
 
 He stepped behind her, fastened the leaf more 
 firmly in its glistening place, and pressed his lips 
 upon the smooth white flesh of her neck. The flesh 
 of her neck was warm and sweet to his lips. Her 
 hair had a keen and thrilling odour. He closed his 
 eyes. . . . But she drew away gently. 
 
 " You can't succeed," Diana repeated, " in a nest 
 of enemies." 
 
 "Well, what am I to do?" 
 123
 
 John Cave 
 
 "Do? Make friends." 
 
 " It is an ignoble way to succeed," he muttered 
 moodily. 
 
 "Why ignoble?" 
 
 " Because one wants to succeed through good 
 work alone." He paused, recalling his career at 
 The Press. " And yet," he said, " it has not been 
 good work, but complaints about the other men, 
 boasts about myself, that have advanced me so 
 far." 
 
 " I am practical," said Diana. " I see clearly 
 that, to succeed, you must work hard in many ways. 
 It will not be enough to do your best over your 
 stories : you must also do your best to make power- 
 ful friends and to convince these friends of your ex- 
 traordinary ability." 
 
 Her smile was delicate and arch. How beautiful, 
 how wise she was. Their reconciliation made him 
 incredibly happy. And floating in happiness, as 
 birds float in the perfumed air, the soft, silent, rose- 
 coloured air of a midsummer sunset, he told himself 
 with profound emotion that after their marriage he 
 would be always as happy as this, always, every mo- 
 ment, as happy as this, until death. What would he 
 not do, then, to speed their marriage ? 
 
 "I'll make friends," he cried. "I'll make the 
 fools worship me." 
 
 124
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 HE had on The Press but one friend, the managing 
 editor, and sometimes he fancied that he saw in 
 the managing editor's manner a certain coldness. 
 Norris could not but be influenced by the hatred 
 that raged and beat about John Cave's name. 
 
 Yes, decidedly, he must make friends. 
 
 Collier, the city editor, had seemed to dislike him 
 for a long time. Collier must now be won over. 
 Impossible task ! 
 
 John, whenever a good idea for a local story 
 came to him, hastened to Collier with it. Collier, a 
 day's grey stubble on his face, a pencil held cross- 
 wise in his mouth like a bit, lay back in his re- 
 volving chair as in a bed, his unpolished boots on 
 his desk and a journal open at arm's length before 
 him; and in that reclining attitude he would look 
 up at John, lowering a little his wall of newspaper, 
 and he would listen to the young man's suggestion 
 with his small head, with its crest of stiff hair, 
 cocked, like a parrot's, on one side. 
 
 " Well ? " John would conclude anxiously. 
 " Well, what do you think of it ? It's a good local 
 story, isn't it?"
 
 John Cave 
 
 The other's hard blue eyes would glitter with 
 malevolence. He would give a harsh, cackling 
 laugh. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! No, Cave. No, I don't think so. I 
 don't see any story in that. Ha, ha ! " 
 
 And he would rise slowly. Spreading out his 
 arms to their full length, he would yawn with a vio- 
 lence that lifted him up on tiptoe. "A a ah 
 h-h-g-g-h-h " 
 
 Then, sinking back into his chair, he would take 
 up languidly again one of the newspapers over 
 which he mooned his life away. 
 
 Intelligent, learned, the best of husbands, tem- 
 perate, regular, Collier as a journalist was worth- 
 less for the reason that he disliked his work, which 
 he deemed little better than old women's gossip. 
 Year after year he had hoped to make a change, 
 but the years had flown too fast for him ten 
 years, twenty years and while he waited for some 
 pleasanter work, some work worthy of his powers, 
 some work really fitted to his cultivated and fas- 
 tidious mind, life had passed like a dream. Already 
 he was an elderly man, clinging to his post as a 
 wrecked sailor, alone on a wide sea, clings to a spar. 
 Collier felt himself very much alone, and on the 
 bleak, grey sea he saw no other spars. 
 
 It was not strange that he disliked Cave. Cave's 
 ingratitude had hurt him. He had opened the doors 
 126
 
 John Cave 
 
 of The Press to Cave, yet the young man had got 
 himself transferred from Collier's to a better, a rival, 
 department ; and furthermore he had told a brother 
 reporter, Lawson, that he considered Collier a 
 worthless workman, and Lawson had repeated to 
 Collier those cruel words. 
 
 Suspecting something of all this, but hopeful on 
 the whole, John came week after week to the local 
 room with his ideas, which week after week Collier 
 laughed to scorn. 
 
 He tried to make friends with the editor-in- 
 chief. 
 
 Thirty years ago the editor-in-chief had been a 
 typesetter. He owed his success to a bluff toady- 
 ism, almost a bullying toadyism. 
 
 " Damn you," he would growl, striking the owner 
 on the back, " you're a soft-hearted fool." 
 
 And then he would suggest some niggardly re- 
 trenchment, the discharge of this man, the doubling 
 of that man's work, which suited but too well the 
 owner's economical mind. 
 
 He kept in his desk the dog-eared grammar, 
 written by an unknown ignoramus, that he had 
 conned in the intervals of typesetting in his am- 
 bitious youth. That the obscure author of this 
 grammar was without authority meant nothing to 
 127
 
 John Cave 
 
 him; he deemed all grammars, like all Bibles, in- 
 fallible : and imposing on The Press the book's ab- 
 surd rules, he made it impossible to write there, for 
 example, " When summer comes," but one had to 
 write, " When summer shall have come." 
 
 Strange almost to insanity were the ideas of the 
 self-taught old man. At The Press's expense he 
 imported from London yearly a dream book and an 
 almanac. The dream book showed the grave sig- 
 nificance inherent in every sort of dream the 
 significance of dreaming of the loss of a tooth, the 
 significance of dreaming of a fall from a high 
 place and each morning he consulted the volume 
 surreptitiously. The almanac foretold the future, 
 giving lucky and unlucky days, predicting hurri- 
 canes and earthquakes; he would undertake no 
 journey or piece of business without going to it 
 secretly for guidance. 
 
 John often came to him, often, standing respect- 
 fully before his desk, recounted flattering things 
 that had been said of him by the great men of the 
 city; but, though the editor-in-chief would perhaps 
 be pleased, he would glare at his informant sus- 
 piciously, and in the silence John, conscious of the 
 dislike and mistrust in the grey, fat, stupid face 
 with its dull and bulging eyes, would withdraw, em- 
 barrassed, disappointed. Alas, he had often ridi- 
 culed the grammar, the dream book and the 
 128
 
 John Cave 
 
 almanac, and Lawson had hinted something of all 
 that ridicule to the very sensitive old man. 
 
 The editor-in-chief's son was the Sunday editor, 
 and the eccentricity that Clayton had inherited 
 from his father spent itself on dress on red 
 waistcoats, on great pearl-coloured sombreros, on 
 lace stockings through which the flesh of instep and 
 ankle gleamed. 
 
 Little, thin, sallow, Clayton strutted ridiculously 
 in his gay and outlandish garb. And in his love 
 of changing embellishment, of strange and striking 
 ornament, he even brought his beard into service, 
 wearing now the mild, neat side-whiskers of a 
 clergyman, now a fierce military moustache, and 
 once he was seen with the delicate chin-tuft of a 
 romantic Spanish portrait, and once with the great, 
 fan-shaped beard of a Norse sea-robber spreading 
 superbly over his narrow chest. 
 
 Twice a week he visited a manicure parlour 
 where, at a small table opposite a pretty girl, he 
 sat with one thin, yellow, knotted hand in a bowl 
 of rosewater, while the nails of the other hand the 
 young girl trimmed and polished and tinted and 
 perfumed. During that pleasant hour he con- 
 versed languidly, his eye roving over the spacious 
 and gay room. There were as many little tables 
 there as in a restaurant, and at each table a young 
 129
 
 John Cave 
 
 man, pale and perfumed, held one hand in a bowl 
 of tepid rosewater, while the pretty operator bent 
 busily over the other, with intimate laughter and 
 coquettish murmurings. . . . 
 
 Though he wore an anti-rheumatic ring of iron 
 on his thumb, he suffered not a little from rheuma- 
 tism of the ankles, and in December, when he lay 
 bed-ridden, John, to win his friendship, visited him, 
 praised his taste, and suggested a half-dozen Sun- 
 day stories. 
 
 Clayton, unshaven and dishevelled, listened 
 haughtily. He lay on his back in the great bed, a 
 little yellow skeleton in pyjamas of pink silk. The 
 air was heavily scented by a huge bowl of artificial 
 violets, and Clayton's haughty look changed to one 
 of gratification when his sister entered and sprayed 
 the paper flowers with cologne. 
 
 " A good idea, that," said John. " Better in 
 some ways than the real thing." 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 " Well, can you use any of those stories ? " 
 
 Clayton frowned. He meditated deeply. Then 
 he shook his head. 
 
 " No," he said. 
 
 And he grew haughtier than ever, suddenly re- 
 calling how, in Lawson's hearing, John had ridiculed 
 his brown frock-coat. 
 
 130
 
 John Cave 
 
 For the literary and dramatic editor he occasion- 
 ally reviewed a play or a book. Williams accepted 
 that help gladly, but mentioned it to nobody. On 
 the contrary, when he liked one of John's reviews 
 particularly well, he signed his own name to it. 
 
 Williams had read everything in the world, and 
 had forgotten nothing of his reading. His fluency 
 was prodigious ; words gushed from his tongue and 
 his pen as water gushes from a hose. His articles, 
 which were regarded as works of genius in the 
 office, abounded in such phrases as " quintessential 
 unctuousness." 
 
 Williams would have liked to help John, but, as 
 the mainstay of nine children, a wife and two mis- 
 tresses, he felt that it was his duty to help no one 
 but himself. 
 
 Williams's assistant, labouring bitterly at his 
 desk, reviewing a dozen novels a day, writing on 
 Monday night criticisms of twenty plays that he 
 had never seen, often looked up from his manu- 
 script to curse his chief. 
 
 Thrilled with John's sympathy, he narrated his 
 wrongs. They were the usual wrongs of the un- 
 derling; he did all the work, Williams got all the 
 pay and all the glory. 
 
 But there was more than this, the assistant hinted 
 darkly, and he lighted a cigarette and put his foot
 
 John Cave 
 
 on his desk, prepared for a comfortable chat. 
 There was more than this. Williams was a grafter. 
 He was paid by the managers to write favourable 
 reviews of poor plays, and he was paid by the pub- 
 lishers to write favourable reviews of poor books. 
 The thing was certain, and the assistant was piling 
 proof on proof. A Peanut Street tobacconist . . . 
 But it would be unwise, at this stage, to go into de- 
 tails. . . , However . . . and a pink flush ap- 
 peared in the cheeks of the excited young man, and, 
 swearing a tremendous oath, he struck the desk a 
 crashing blow with his small, pale fist. 
 
 But just then Williams entered. His look was 
 stern. Had he heard anything? John bent over 
 his manuscript in confusion, and Williams began 
 to dictate slowly for the assistant did not write 
 shorthand a criticism studded with such words 
 as " artistry," " stellar," and " smutty." 
 
 On his departure the young men smiled at one 
 another with relief. Williams had heard nothing. 
 Then they put their feet on their desks again, 
 lighted fresh cigarettes, and resumed their scandal- 
 ous gossip. 
 
 The desperate assistant had been betrothed for 
 
 three years. People were continually asking him 
 
 when the marriage would take place, and he always 
 
 answered cheerily, " In the spring," or " In the 
 
 132
 
 John Cave 
 
 fall." It was, of course, impossible for him to 
 marry; on his salary of eighteen dollars he could 
 scarcely keep himself. But if he succeeded in oust- 
 ing Williams. . . . 
 
 He tried to make friends with the leader writers, 
 a half-dozen old men, silent and grim, who wrote 
 interminable leaders on bimetallism, the tariff, the 
 gold reserve. 
 
 The leader writers were willing to be flattered, 
 they were willing to talk about themselves; but 
 John soon learned that not one of them was willing 
 to give him a friendly upward push. For some had 
 heard from Lawson his opinion of their dry lead- 
 ers, while the rest thought that, for his age and 
 ability, he had already climbed higher on The Press 
 than he deserved. 
 
 The rubber stamp man, Gray, he did not attempt 
 to placate. Gray loathed him too profoundly. 
 When the dark eyes of the fat copy reader rested 
 on the youth, they glittered with maniacal hatred; 
 and, as John left the local room, Gray always made 
 some remark in a low voice to the shabby and mid- 
 dle-aged reporters grouped about him, and a shout 
 of mocking laughter would arise. 
 
 *33
 
 John Cave 
 
 The Press, he mused, had grown old. The old 
 men held all the posts of value ; and in order to keep 
 these posts, they fought against the advancement 
 of the young men as desperately as kings fight 
 against usurpers. 
 
 134
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THEY were walking again in the forest. The 
 day was grey and cold. A humid wind rattled the 
 bare boughs with a dismal sound, and now and 
 then, out of a sky as sordid and cheerless as a slum, 
 a few white snowflakes fell. 
 
 " Are you discouraged ? " said Diana sadly. 
 
 " Yes, damn it," said he. 
 
 " I am sorry," she faltered. 
 
 " All your time is passed with other men," he 
 growled. " Your people have stopped speaking to 
 me. My prospects are hopeless." 
 
 " Hopeless at The Press, perhaps, but " 
 
 " Hopeless everywhere," he interrupted. " I'm 
 no good." 
 
 " You are fine," she said ; " fine, if you'd work 
 hard, and not get discouraged." 
 
 She looked at him earnestly. His brow cleared, 
 he laughed. Her faith filled him again with hope 
 and energy. 
 
 " If I could only," he said, " strike out for myself 
 somehow." 
 
 A snowflake lighted softly on her cheek, and he 
 watched the delicate and airy thing melt on the 
 warm, pink flesh. 
 
 135
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Do it," she said. 
 
 And she took his arm, and they walked gaily 
 over the frozen ground, between the bare trees, 
 while from the grey, cold sky the snow fell gently. 
 
 " I might syndicate," he mused. 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " To syndicate," he explained, " is to print a story 
 simultaneously in different cities. For a low price 
 you allow a dozen papers, one in each city, to print 
 the same story on the same day." 
 
 "That sounds good," said Diana. "Try it." 
 
 " But I fear the field is overcrowded. I was 
 talking to Alden about it, and he told me there was 
 no money in syndicating any more. Still " 
 
 " Try it," said Diana. " Franklin's mother, you 
 know, told him the field was overcrowded when he 
 wanted to start a newspaper in Philadelphia. She 
 pointed out that there were already two newspapers 
 in America." 
 
 "I will try it!" he said. 
 
 " It will be fun," said she. " Even if you fail, 
 it will be fun." 
 
 The storm was increasing. The snow lay on her 
 sable stole, it clung in white burrs to her yellow 
 hair; and smiling, panting, flushed, she looked at 
 him with shining violet eyes through a pale flurry 
 of flakes. 
 
 "Won't it be f un ?" she said. 
 136
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 AND fun it was, fun from the very start. 
 
 The first thing he would syndicate, he decided, 
 would be a Sunday story, one of those news stories, 
 illustrated with photographs, that the Sunday mag- 
 zine sections used. He searched his mind, he 
 searched the papers, for a good story, and in a day 
 or two he had a dozen ideas. 
 
 He went over them with Diana in a quiet little 
 restaurant in Locust Street. 
 
 " They are all good," said the young girl thought- 
 fully. " I don't know which to choose." 
 
 " The story of medicines made from snake venom 
 would illustrate well," said he. " Or how about 
 the young millionaire who lived for a year as a 
 tramp? If he'd pose in his tramp disguise . . ." 
 
 " Last night," said Diana, " I thought of a story 
 for you myself." 
 
 "Did you? What was it?" 
 
 But she frowned. She could not remember. 
 
 " I got out some old magazines and newspapers," 
 she said, " and the idea came to me while I was 
 looking them over. But it wasn't very good. You 
 would have laughed at it, I'm sure." 
 137
 
 John Cave 
 
 It pleased and touched him, the picture of this 
 beautiful girl, with magazines and journals about 
 her, bending over her desk in the lamplit silence, 
 trying to help him. . . . 
 
 " Well," he said, turning to the list again, " what 
 do you think? Shall we take the story of the fish 
 doctor, the story of the beauty parlour for men, 
 or " 
 
 " Oh," said Diana, " I remember my story now. 
 That idol factory." 
 
 "Fine!" he cried. 
 
 And he congratulated her enthusiastically. He 
 declared that she was a superb journalist. This 
 idol factory story, he said, was better than all the 
 stories that he had thought of put together. 
 
 It seemed truly that he could not have hit upon 
 a better story wherewith to begin to syndicate. If 
 there was any money to be made in syndicating, 
 this story would gain some of it. If this story 
 failed, then syndicating, as Alden had said, was 
 indeed an overcrowded field. 
 
 The idol factory story for a week had been float- 
 ing, like a lump of ambergris whose value no one 
 perceives, in the currents of the news. Every day 
 or so there had appeared an idol factory paragraph 
 in the thousands of newspapers composing the 
 American press ; but only a brief paragraph, noth- 
 ing more. Diana had been the first person to per- 
 138
 
 John Cave 
 
 ceive how much more than a paragraph such a 
 story was worth, the first person to recognise that 
 this unclaimed object afloat in the news currents 
 was true ambergris. 
 
 A Corean had come to America to buy idols for 
 his people. Idols, he said, were made in America 
 by machinery much more cheaply than they could 
 be made by hand at home. For some years an idol 
 factory in the Eastern States had been running 
 overtime in order to meet the demands of the 
 Corean trade. 
 
 Here in this city, the Corean declared, the idol 
 factory was situated, and he was travelling hither 
 from Seattle. A ten-line interview with him, dated 
 at Denver, appeared in Monday's Press, a twelve- 
 line interview, dated at Chicago, in Wednesday's, 
 and so on. 
 
 But for a week or more nothing had been heard 
 of the Corean. Nevertheless, with boundless energy 
 and perseverance, John set out to find the idol fac- 
 tory. 
 
 His search was vain. 
 
 " There may be an idol factory here," he said, 
 " but I am not a good enough detective to discover 
 it." 
 
 " Does our story fall through, then ? " said Diana, 
 as she handed him his tea. 
 
 " I am afraid so." 
 
 139
 
 John Cave 
 
 "Isn't that too bad?" 
 
 " Cheer up, pard," said he. " We'll ' f ako ' the 
 story." 
 
 " But would you dare to fake it ? u 
 
 " Why not ? It would harm no one. I believe 
 those interviews with the Corean were fakes them- 
 selves. And we sha'n't need to give the address 
 of the factory nor the name of its owner: we'll re- 
 peat what the Corean said that such things must 
 be kept hidden, lest the religious element in the 
 community rise up and wreck the plant." 
 
 The one difficulty about the fake was the photo- 
 graphs. But that was no great difficulty. Since 
 the story would not appear in any local paper, Diana 
 and her cousin agreed to pose for it, and the two 
 girls met John and a photographer the next day in 
 a secluded museum that contained a huge collection 
 of idols. 
 
 They had the museum to themselves, and, with 
 a few such " properties " as a chisel, a hammer and 
 some old paint brushes, they set to work. Four 
 photographs were made. In the first the girls knelt 
 and painted a great Buddha. In the second the 
 elderly photographer, whose skull cap gave him the 
 true artist look, hacked with mallet and chisel at 
 a Ganesh that happened to have an unfinished as- 
 pect. John, in the third, made with clay a model 
 of the monkey god Hanuman. The fourth was a 
 
 140
 
 John Cave 
 
 dozen idols in a row on a shelf, each tagged with 
 a big price-card. 
 
 The pictures all were good. They illustrated tha 
 fake well. An idol factory, if such a place had 
 existed, would probably have looked like this. 
 John ordered twenty prints from each negative, 
 and, having written his story, had twenty type- 
 written copies of it made. 
 
 All that cost something. The photographs cost 
 twelve dollars, the manifolding eight. He realised 
 that, if he had had his own camera, his own type- 
 writer and his own copying machine, the cost would 
 not have been more than five dollars altogether. 
 
 Finally everything was ready, and the twenty 
 stories with their photographs were mailed to th 
 chief papers in the twenty largest American cities, 
 to be used, if accepted, on a Sunday three weeks 
 hence. Ignorant of the prices that were paid for 
 syndicated matter, the young man wrote at the top 
 of each story, "At your usual rates." 
 
 Three of the twenty were returned in the week's 
 course, and he sent them off again, each to a second 
 paper in the city whence it had come back. After 
 that he heard nothing more. 
 
 Whether it was good or bad luck to have only 
 three of his twenty stories returned to him he could 
 not tell. 
 
 " It looks like good luck to me," said Diana. 
 141
 
 John Cave 
 
 " You can't tell," he replied. " I didn't enclose 
 stamps. Perhaps the waste-paper basket " 
 
 " Won't you be glad when the fourteenth 
 comes ? " 
 
 The fourteenth at last arrived. He awoke early 
 and leaped out of bed with a sudden grunt of con- 
 sternation, muttering, " This is the fourteenth." 
 He dressed in a frantic hurry, frowning and shaking 
 his head. He could hardly shave, his hand trembled 
 so. " I mustn't hope. There's no use hoping," he 
 muttered. 
 
 The nearest news-stand was at the railway sta- 
 tion, and he reached it, breathless. 
 
 " The Call," he said. 
 
 But the vendor, smiling pleasantly, shook his 
 head. " Calls just out, brother." 
 
 With an oath he went on to the next news-stand. 
 There they had The Call, and opening the enor- 
 mous paper with awkward haste, he came at last 
 upon the magazine section, and gave a gasp of joy. 
 
 There was Diana, there were the idols, there was 
 De Witt in -his skull cap; and these familiar pho- 
 tographs were surrounded with drawings In colour, 
 great drawings that filled the page, of the idol fac- 
 tory's exterior, of the factory girls coming to work, 
 and of many Coreans in devout attitudes beneath 
 palms, kneeling and offering sacrifice to machine- 
 made gods with price-tags about their necks. 
 142
 
 John Cave 
 
 As he walked slowly homeward, he studied first 
 the photographs and sketches, then he read the 
 story, of which not one word had been altered ; and 
 inhaling with a deep breath the cold, sweet air of 
 the winter morning, he murmured gratefully, " Well, 
 well, well ! Incredible ! " 
 
 This little success, the first in his rather dreary, 
 hopeless life, filled him with joy. For the first 
 time he tasted the bracing joy that comes from suc- 
 cessful work. 
 
 He got a Pittsburg and a Newark paper in the 
 afternoon, and found that they too had used the 
 story. And the next day the Western papers be- 
 gan to come in. From Chicago, from Detroit, from 
 St. Louis, from Cincinnati they came, and the story 
 was in all. The Southern papers had used it as 
 well Louisville, New Orleans, Memphis, At- 
 lanta and the papers of the Far West, Kansas 
 City, Los Angeles, San Francisco. By the end of 
 the week, in fine, he found that sixteen of his twenty 
 stories had been printed. 
 
 Then came the cheques : twenty dollars from New 
 York, eighteen from Chicago, ten from San Fran- 
 cisco, ten from Philadelphia, five from New Or- 
 leans, fifteen from Los Angeles, and so on. The 
 cheques altogether amounted to a hundred and 
 thirty dollars. This, less the expense, made his 
 gain a hundred and ten dollars on the one story. 
 
 143
 
 John Cave 
 
 A hundred and ten dollars! And it had hardly 
 meant two days' work. He now perceived the as- 
 tounding difference between working for one's self 
 and working for someone else, the difference be- 
 tween keeping the profit of one's work and selling 
 that profit, for a pittance, to some shrewder per- 
 son. 
 
 And the joy of it ! After certain anxious delib- 
 erations with Diana, he bought a big and expensive 
 camera, a good typewriter, and a good copying ma- 
 chine, and at once began to send out other stories, 
 doing all the work of them himself. 
 
 The work at first was slow and difficult. The 
 camera embarrassed him most. Setting it up in 
 public, he often lost his head: the tripod slipped, 
 the great box overbalanced, and seizing in both arms 
 the towering apparatus as it fell, he staggered about 
 with it in an uncouth dance, while a little circle of 
 bystanders strove to repress their smiles. 
 
 Yes, the work was difficult and slow at first ; but 
 it was always interesting, his skill grew apace, and 
 on the cost of each story some fifteen or twenty dol- 
 lars were saved. 
 
 He had plenty of time to syndicate one and even 
 two stories a week without neglecting The Press. 
 These stories succeeded. To him, accustomed to 
 work at a salary no greater than a typesetter's, their 
 success appeared tremendous. But none of them 
 144
 
 John Cave 
 
 succeeded like the idol factory. On the average 
 they only succeeded half as well. 
 
 But even that meant an income from syndicating 
 twice and often three and four times greater than 
 his salary. He opened a bank account, and his 
 balance rose with incredible rapidity. His clothes, 
 cut by a good tailor, caused him to be treated every- 
 where with deference. He drank nothing, took 
 plenty of sleep and plenty of open-air exercise, and 
 in consequence improved in looks. Among the 
 shabby, stale, unshaven Press men, loafing their 
 lives away, John, with his clear eyes, his ruddy 
 brown colour, his fresh and elegant apparel, worked 
 indefatigably. He ignored everybody. He no 
 longer felt the need of making friends. 
 
 And lo, now that he had no need of friends, thei 
 whole office was turning friendly. It was pleasant, 
 in lieu of looks of hatred, to encounter looks of re- 
 spect ; in lieu of jeers, compliments ; in lieu of mock- 
 ing laughter, appreciative smiles. But the pleasure 
 turned to pain later on. 
 
 " Cave," said Gray, the rubber stamp man, " I 
 hear you are syndicating." 
 
 " Yes, a little." 
 
 They were alone in the local room. Gray, having 
 finished the editing of a local story, impaled the half- 
 dozen sheets of yellow copy-paper on a hook, and 
 leaning back, gave the young man a calm survey. 
 145
 
 John Cave 
 
 But there was in his approving gaze a certain . . . 
 and John looked away, vaguely conscious that some- 
 thing disagreeable impended. 
 
 " It pays pretty well, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, thank you ; pretty well." 
 
 " How would you like to take a partner ? " 
 
 "I hadn't thought. . . . Why do you ask?" he 
 faltered. 
 
 Gray spoke with condescension. " I'd like to go 
 in with you." 
 
 " Would you ? " John moved vaguely about the 
 room. Strange that this interview, so painful to 
 him, pained Gray not at all. 
 
 " My wife and I," the fat copy reader resumed, 
 " have been talking it over. My future here is 
 not . . ." He made an angry gesture, and his black 
 eyes suddenly glittered with malice. " But I have 
 twenty-five hundred dollars I shouldn't mind put- 
 ting in. ... Well, what do you say ? " 
 
 " Capital isn't needed," John stammered. And 
 in the effort to harden his heart, he recalled all 
 Gray's insults, slights, venomous hatred; but re- 
 fusing to harden, his heart softened with pity for 
 this shabby, elderly man whom he was going to 
 wound. 
 
 " Oh, there's nothing like capital," said Gray 
 easily. 
 
 " Well, I'll think it over." As John hastened to- 
 146
 
 John Cave 
 
 wards the door, he saw an angry, astounded look 
 spread over Gray's plump face. " I'll let you know, 
 Gray, if 
 
 "All right," said Gray coldly, and he relighted 
 the stub of his cigar with a hand that had all of a 
 sudden become tremulous. . . . 
 
 Then the irrepressible Lawson came and sat upon 
 the manuscript littering John's desk. 
 
 " Cave," he said, " I'm going into the syndicating 
 business. Give me some advice." 
 
 "What on?" 
 
 " Let me see. ... I want to know the kind of 
 stuff that sells best, how much to charge " 
 
 " Lawson, if you were going to open an up- 
 holstery shop in Peanut Street, would you go for 
 help to the nearest Peanut Street upholsterer ? " 
 
 " Oh, that is not the way to look at it. See 
 here " 
 
 But John was firm. He refused to help Law- 
 son in any way. Had he dreamed of asking help 
 from an established rival when he began himself to 
 syndicate ? 
 
 Syndicating now spread like a contagion through 
 The Press office. All the hours for which The 
 Press paid them the men seemed to be devoting, as 
 secretly as possible, to syndicate work. Here in a 
 quiet corner an aged reporter compiled long lists of 
 likely journals from the newspaper directory. There
 
 John Cave 
 
 Williams, the dramatic editor, wrote a syndicate 
 letter, " Personalia Litteraria et Theatricala," hiding 
 his manuscript from the inquisitive with an en- 
 circling arm. Gray examined surreptitiously in the 
 hall a gelatine duplicator that he had just bought. 
 With a guilty air the assistant dramatic editor ad- 
 dressed a pile of long envelopes. Lawson came and 
 went on tiptoe with enormous boxes of stationery. 
 
 Lawson, John discovered, was submitting a num- 
 ber of weekly columns to three or four hundred 
 newspapers a woman's column, a column of in- 
 ventions, a column of men's fashions. John saw 
 a proof of the woman's column. Its first para- 
 graph ran: 
 
 " Mary Jane Smith, washlady, Kankakee, picked 
 her ear with a rusty hairpin. Interment strictly 
 private. No flowers." 
 
 He smiled. So that was Lawson's idea of the 
 material in demand for the average journal's mag- 
 azine page. Well, he need have no fear of Law- 
 son. 
 
 Qayton took up syndicating in a large way. He 
 opened a suite of offices, named himself the " Inter- 
 national News Association," and engaged a pho- 
 tographer, a reporter and a stenographer. His 
 stories, abundantly illustrated with costly photo- 
 graphs, went broadcast over America, England, 
 France, Germany, even Russia. Some of them 
 148
 
 John Cave 
 
 sold, but Clayton's expenses were enormous, and 
 for three months his harassed, desperate face con- 
 trasted oddly with his gala attire. Then one fine 
 day his brow cleared. The International News 
 Association, bankrupt, was no more. 
 
 Collier alone escaped the syndicate fever. His 
 feet on his desk, he lay back, lazier than ever, in his 
 chair ; a newspaper hid him from the waist up ; so, 
 it seemed, his life passed. 
 
 But he knew what was going on, and with a sour 
 laugh he would say : 
 
 " Lawson, if you can spare The Press a half-hour 
 from your syndicate, do Councils to-day." 
 
 In that sarcastic and annoying manner he now 
 gave out all his assignments. 
 
 149
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THEY were brutal and cruel words, but neverthe- 
 less he meant them. 
 
 " If you go abroad with that crowd " 
 
 " But I must go, dear." 
 
 " Your aunt wants to separate us, eh ? " 
 
 " I'll say nothing about that." 
 
 " You junketing all over Europe with a lot of 
 young men, and me working here at home like a 
 slave " 
 
 " But if I must go," she said. 
 
 " Then have our engagement announced." 
 
 " It is impossible. Auntie would not consent." 
 
 It was on the tip of his tongue to demand that 
 she marry him at once, but he made no such de- 
 mand. For he was not yet ready to marry; he 
 had not yet saved enough money to furnish even 
 the smallest apartment; and, though his syndicate 
 had done well so far . . . 
 
 " I see how it is," he blurted. " I am on trial. 
 If I make a success, you'll marry me ; if not, you'll 
 throw me over." 
 
 Brutal and cruel words, and the young girl rose
 
 John Cave 
 
 from her seat on the fallen oak. There were tears 
 in her eyes, but she smiled bravely. 
 
 " Good-bye, John Cave." 
 
 And she hurried away. 
 
 Slim grey columns uprose everywhere out of the 
 snow. The setting sun floated, very red, in the 
 liquid gold of the sky. Here and there the forest's 
 white carpet glowed with a faint pink flush. 
 
 Towards the sunset, down the still aisles of slim 
 grey columns, Diana hurried over the snow. In 
 the carriage of her shoulders there was something 
 suggestive of wounds and pain.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 HE had lost her. And with her all hope, all 
 energy, all strength seemed lost. How weak he 
 was! He saw now how weak. She had propped 
 him as certain plants must be propped, and thanks 
 to her he had flourished, growing tall and vigorous, 
 bearing good fruit. But now the prop was gone. 
 He swayed uncertainly from side to side. Would 
 he fall? 
 
 He went home, and taking a manuscript from his 
 pocket, he began to copy it on the typewriter. The 
 typewriter clicked busily, and amid the sound he 
 sighed. But the machine clicked on, and, as he 
 worked, the dim curtains of the dusk were drawn 
 about him silently. He bent forward to make out 
 a word, sighed again, and rising, turned on the 
 lamp. Then he lighted a cigarette, looked at the 
 typewriter, frowned. He sauntered to the window. 
 His hands in his pockets, he gazed dreamily at the 
 wistful evening sky. Would he fall? 
 
 An hour later he sat in a cafe with a bottle of 
 champagne and a book. But the wine failed to 
 cheer him, the novel would not hold his mind, and 
 152
 
 John Cave 
 
 bidding the waiter set a telephone on the table, he 
 rang up Prudence. 
 
 " Prudence," he said, " this is John Cave." 
 
 " What does John Cave want with me? " 
 
 Her voice was hard and cold. He had not seen 
 her for months. He had not thought of her. 
 
 " I'm lonely. Will you dine with me to-night ? " 
 
 " I can't. He's coming." 
 
 " Oh, put him off." 
 
 She hesitated. Then, " All right," she said. 
 
 He hurried home and dressed, and called for her 
 in a hansom. Her maid met him at the door before 
 he could ring, and led him, her finger on her lip, 
 into a darkened anteroom. 
 
 " Wait here," she said. " He's with her." 
 
 From the library came the sound of voices, the 
 guttural, coarse notes of a man's voice, the clear 
 and silvery notes of the voice of a girl. The man, 
 enraged, stormed. The girl's replies were disdain- 
 ful and calm. Suddenly John started, shuddering 
 with disgust. The man had begun to weep. 
 
 Drawing the curtain back a little, he peered 
 cautiously into the room. 
 
 A fat man was bowed forward on the seat of the 
 lit clos, his elbows on his knees, his head in his 
 hands. Amid his hoarse sobs and sighs he made 
 heartbroken complaints : 
 
 153
 
 John Cave 
 
 "I wouldn't treat a dog so." . . . "Oh, my 
 God !".:." Have you no pity? " 
 
 Prudence sat in a great arm-chair of carved black 
 oak. She wore a crimson dressing-gown of Jap- 
 anese silk embroidered in silver with huge storks. 
 A cigarette hung from between her scarlet lips. 
 Her knees were crossed, showing her little red shoes 
 and her smooth stockings of red silk, and her hands 
 were clasped behind her head so that the loose 
 sleeves of her Japanese gown, fallen back, left her 
 beautiful white arms bare. 
 
 She regarded the man scornfully. " You had bet- 
 ter go," she said. 
 
 He continued to sob. She pressed the bell, and 
 he rose hurriedly as the maid entered. Not too 
 grief-stricken to pose before the maid, he said in a 
 blustering tone : 
 
 " It will be many a day before you see me here 
 again." 
 
 " So much the better," said she. " But I must 
 dress now." 
 
 " Be careful," he growled, " or by God, girl, I'll 
 turn you out in the street." 
 
 " Go home," she said. " Go home to your wife 
 and children." 
 
 Splendid and insolent in her dress of crimson and 
 silver, her knees crossed and her hands clasped be- 
 hind her head, Prudence sat in the great chair, a 
 154
 
 John Cave 
 
 picture of youth enthroned and reigning cruelly. 
 She laughed as the fat, bald man of middle age 
 waddled forth, and she rose and held out both 
 hands as John entered by the other door. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " you are dressed. Then I can 
 wear my new gown." And she hurried away with 
 the maid. 
 
 He mixed a whisky and soda, lighted a cigar- 
 ette, and sat before the fire with a book. But he 
 did not read. He sipped his sharp and bracing 
 drink, he inhaled the aromatic Egyptian tobacco, 
 he looked thoughtfully into the blaze. Gay voices, 
 fresh young laughter came from the other room. 
 The loss of Diana did not mean the loss of all 
 
 joy- 
 But the beautiful dreams he had had. . . . 
 Those dreams were lost. They were to have lived 
 together . . . grown old together ... he and she 
 . . . grown old together. . . . 
 " I'm ready if you are." 
 
 Prudence, drawing on her long white gloves, ad- 
 vanced in a white dinner-gown that made her look 
 very tall. At her throat a star of diamonds glit- 
 tered with hard, cold scintillations. 
 
 John praised her dress. She listened calmly, 
 taking from a gold bonbonniere a tiny morphine 
 tabloid, and the maid threw over her glistening 
 white shoulders a long cloak of ermine. 
 155
 
 John Cave 
 
 The door bell, a persistent finger on its button, 
 rang with a continuous tinkle. Marie ran to silence 
 it, and soon they heard the fat man storming at her 
 in a wild voice. The door crashed to upon him, and 
 returning, Marie said: 
 
 " He swears he'll stand before the house till he 
 gets in." 
 
 " He'll stand there all night then," said Prudence. 
 But suddenly she frowned. " Damn it, though ; 
 that prevents our going out." 
 
 They waited a half -hour, but the fat man, true 
 to his vow, kept watch on the other side of the 
 snowy street, his back against a lamp-post, his arms 
 folded, smoking. 
 
 " I suppose his fat keeps him warm," John mut- 
 tered angrily. 
 
 Not daring to venture forth, they telephoned, in- 
 stead, an order to the Westminster, and soon a 
 waiter brought their dinner to them. But it was a 
 dull dinner. Every little while the fat man's ring 
 annoyed them, and though there was champagne, 
 Prudence drank only mineral water. 
 
 " Do have a liqueur with your coffee," John said, 
 at the dinner's end, as he lighted a cigarette. 
 
 " No, thank you," she replied. She took another 
 tabloid from her bonbonniere. 
 
 He sipped the honey-laden liqueur, then the bit- 
 ter coffee, and, stimulated, he began to talk. He 
 156
 
 John Cave 
 
 told her he had been working very hard of late. 
 He had drunk nothing all winter had only 
 worked, worked. But now all that was to be 
 changed. Hereafter he would mingle a little pleas- 
 ure with his labour. One day a week was to be 
 devoted to pleasure. 
 
 "What do you mean by pleasure?" she askedi 
 gravely. 
 
 " Being with you," said he. 
 
 Her lip curled. She rose and went wearily to 
 the hall window. " He is still there," she said on 
 her return. " It is snowing again, too." 
 
 They stared at the cloth in moody silence. 
 
 " This is stupid," said he. " Where is the 
 brandy?" 
 
 Prudence laughed. " How I know you ! " 
 
 He frowned across the table at her, but her beauty 
 dispelled his frown. Above the lovely brow the 
 soft dark hair was full of shadow, perfume and 
 mystery. The scarlet lips curved, and the gaze of 
 the starry eyes was a caress. She bent towards 
 him, the delicate flesh swelled above the decollete 
 bodice, and the light ran wavering and gleaming 
 over the satinlike surface of arms and shoulders 
 and neck. 
 
 " After all," he said, " we don't want to quarrel. 
 I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll get in some cham- 
 pagne, and you will lie on the couch by the fire . . . 
 157
 
 John Cave 
 
 and smoke . . . like that other night. ... Do you 
 remember ? " 
 
 She drew forth her lay-out. " Ah," she repeated, 
 looking straight into his eyes, "how I know you, 
 John Cavel" 
 
 158
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 SHE knew him. That was what they were al- 
 ways saying. How often he had heard, heard till 
 it sickened him, the contemptuous appraisement, " I 
 know you, John Cave." 
 
 Well, he was, undoubtedly, weak; but he was 
 strong, too; in short, like other men, a mixture. 
 
 Now, to prove his strength, he tried for a month, 
 at odd moments, to get out the syndicate story that 
 he had typewritten on the afternoon of his quarrel 
 with Diana. He would mix a quart of developer, 
 put a negative in the printing-frame, turn on the 
 lamp, and begin to expose and develop prints 
 only, half an hour later, inexplicably bored, to de- 
 stroy the unfinished work and seize his hat. . . . 
 Or he would open the copying machine and com- 
 mence to copy furiously ; but a page would go 
 wrong, and with an oath he would rush out. . . . 
 Now, on fire with energy and zeal, he hastened 
 home, determined to work as of old, and at the 
 mere sight of his lonely room, aghast at the thought 
 of toiling there all by himself, he turned upon his 
 heel. . . . Again he entered briskly, saying, " I
 
 John Cave 
 
 must, must work," and throwing himself on the bed, 
 he slept for hours like a log. 
 
 He sent out no more syndicate stories. 
 
 And his appearance changed rapidly. He was no 
 longer ruddy, clear-eyed, elegant, but a pale and 
 listless sloven during working hours, and after mid- 
 night a noisy drunkard. Soon all the money that 
 he had in bank was gone. 
 
 The men again despised him. There was noth- 
 ing, they said, in syndicating, and at last Cave, too, 
 had found it out. 
 
 Then Norris, the managing editor, resigned on 
 account of ill health, and thus he lost his only friend 
 on The Press. That loss was not long in making 
 itself felt. Clayton, the new managing editor, gave 
 him nothing to do for three days, and then put in 
 his letter-box a note that said: 
 
 " MY .DEAR MR. CAVE, After a careful ex- 
 amination of your work, I find that for some time 
 past it has not been of such quality as to warrant a 
 continuation of your present salary. Therefore I 
 am compelled, in justice to the rest of our staff, to 
 reduce you five dollars, the reduction to go into 
 effect next week. Hereafter, also, you will be en- 
 rolled on the pay-sheet of the local department, and 
 will please report to Mr. Collier. Yours respect- 
 fully, H. HERBERT CLAYTON." 
 160
 
 John Cave 
 
 He read the note in the front room, standing by 
 the letter-box. As soon as he finished it, his face 
 burning with shame, he hid it in his pocket, and 
 looked quickly at the other men. But their heads 
 were turned away; perhaps they did not know. 
 
 Clayton, in a blue frock coat and a brown som- 
 brero, sat at his new desk, filling the room with a 
 sweet and powerful odour of heliotrope essence. 
 He bustled among a heap of letters and clippings 
 with a pompous air, proud of his promotion, and his 
 smooth-shaven face gave him a strange, unfamiliar 
 look, for he had recently worn a great moustache 
 and beard. 
 
 John caught his eye, approached him, and said in 
 a low voice: 
 
 " I'm sorry you had to do this, Mr. Clayton." 
 
 Clayton gave him a kindly smile of condescen- 
 sion. 
 
 " You must brace up, Cave/' he said. " Show 
 them what you're made of." 
 
 " I'll try to, sir." 
 
 Then, to pull himself together, he went out into 
 the long, empty hall, and began to pace up and 
 down. He felt hopelessly dishonoured. What was 
 he coming to? What would be his end? 
 
 Crushed, cowed as he was, he at first regarded 
 his demotion as a just punishment. But in a lit- 
 tle while his humiliation gave place to bitter, help- 
 161
 
 John Cave 
 
 less rage. After all, he had not worked badly for 
 The Press certainly he had worked better than 
 Clayton, who hardly gave the paper an hour a day. 
 But now Clayton had been made managing editor 
 because his father was the editor-in-chief, while 
 he had been reduced because Norris, his one friend, 
 was gone. 
 
 If only he had kept on syndicating, if only he 
 had not drawn all his money out of bank, he could 
 have told Clayton to go to the devil with his five- 
 dollar reduction, and left the abominable place for 
 good. He ought, of course, to leave now, but he 
 was afraid; he had no money, and, moreover, he 
 was in debt. 
 
 Wringing his hands, he paused before the door 
 of the local room. His heart beat so violently that 
 his breathing was laboured, like a runner's. He 
 swallowed a lump in his dry throat, and moistened 
 his dry lips with his tongue. But he must go in 
 some time. He opened the door and entered. 
 
 It was the same dusty local room, everybody with 
 a newspaper open at arm's length, the city editor 
 reading languidly, the reporters shouting and argu- 
 ing as, like messenger boys, they awaited their er- 
 rands for the afternoon. 
 
 He paused by the door. Collier looked up at 
 him, and then lowered his head to escape the young 
 man's salutation. The reporters exchanged know- 
 162
 
 John Cave 
 
 ing glances over the tops of their newspapers, and 
 John sat down disconsolately among the unkempt 
 band to await the assignments that in an hour or 
 two Collier would begin to give out. 
 
 Again he watched Collier yawn through his be- 
 lated reading, and again he heard the reporters, em- 
 bittered by failure, rail at the successful persons 
 who figured in the news. So an hour passed, and 
 one by one the men, their work at last allotted to 
 them, thrust some yellow copy-paper in their pock- 
 ets and departed. John and Collier were left alone. 
 
 " Mr. Collier," said the young man. 
 
 Collier gave him a frozen look. " Well ? " 
 
 " Clayton tells me I am to report to you here- 
 after." 
 
 "Yes; I know." 
 
 And Collier put back crosswise in his mouth the 
 pencil that he had withdrawn in order to speak; 
 and, lifting his paper up before his face again, he 
 resumed his reading. Nothing of him was visible 
 but his feet and legs sprawled across the desk-top 
 amid a litter of clippings, manuscript and proofs. 
 
 Another hour passed. It was now four o'clock. 
 From his suburban home Gray arrived, and the 
 city editor, leaving the local room in Gray's charge, 
 went out, not to return till seven. It was plain that 
 John would get no afternoon assignment. 
 
 He sat in the local room in idleness till eight 
 163
 
 John Cave 
 
 o'clock, when Collier, in giving out the night as- 
 signments, omitted him again. Then he hurried 
 forth for dinner, returned at nine, and sat in idle- 
 ness till midnight. And so home to his lonely room 
 with a pint of whisky. 
 
 That continued for a week. For a week he sat 
 in the local room from one o'clock in the afternoon 
 till midnight, and not one assignment was given to 
 him, and neither Collier nor his two assistants once 
 spoke to him. He ought to have resigned, but he 
 had only three dollars. 
 
 Collier on Friday allotted the afternoon assign- 
 ments, omitting him as usual, and an hour later he 
 went downstairs and drew the week's salary that 
 he had done nothing to earn. He did not return to 
 the local room. He went out and began to drink. 
 
 From one saloon to another he passed; his de- 
 pression soon gave place to hope. ... It was well 
 that he had lost Diana, for he was not worthy of 
 marriage. He would be a vile scoundrel to let any 
 girl confide her life to one so weak. ... As for 
 The Press, he would return to it no more. He 
 would begin at once to syndicate again, and he 
 would make the money in his pocket keep him till, 
 a month or so hence, the syndicate cheques began to 
 come in. 
 
 Reckless and gay, he continued to drink, meeting 
 this acquaintance and that, spending more and more 
 164
 
 John Cave 
 
 money, till finally only a few dollars remained, and 
 to leave The Press was again impossible. 
 
 At ten o'clock he walked with uncertain steps into 
 the local room, and stood blinking in the bright 
 light. His face was flushed, his eyes glazed, and his 
 breathing stertorous. The local room was crowded. 
 As through a mist he saw Collier and Gray read- 
 ing copy, and the reporters writing busily at their 
 desks. 
 
 He had not even a desk in the local room. He 
 looked about him, snorting, panting, spied a chair 
 in a corner, lurched over to it, and sat down heavily, 
 facing the busy room. 
 
 He sat there a long time. He saw Gray turn and 
 regard him, then lean over and whisper something 
 to Collier. Occasionally a reporter looked at him 
 and grinned. But he frowned at the grinning face 
 till it withdrew. 
 
 Gray got up and went out, returning in a mo- 
 ment with Clayton, the managing editor. Clayton 
 looked at him. Through a bright and confusing 
 mist he saw Clayton's face full of derision and scorn. 
 He glared ferociously at it till it, too, was with- 
 drawn. 
 
 Old man Clayton, the editor-in-chief, waddled in. 
 He regarded John stolidly. His face, huge in the 
 bright mist, oscillated a little. The young man 
 frowned it away. . . . 
 
 165
 
 John Cave 
 
 He began to feel drowsy. A doze would be 
 pleasant. 
 
 " Cave, clear out ! " 
 
 The high, nasal voice made him start. He must 
 have been asleep. With a smile he regarded Col- 
 lier, who was shouting at him from his seat on the 
 other side of the big room. 
 
 " Clear out, Cave, and don't come back ! " 
 
 " Speaking to me? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, of course. Clear out ! " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Clear out, you drunken fool ! " 
 
 A shout of mocking laughter caused him to gaze 
 in bewilderment about the room. The room was 
 full of mocking faces, and all those mocking eyes 
 gazed into his. Besides the reporters, Clayton and 
 his father were there, three or four old leader 
 writers, the dramatic editor, the assistant dramatic 
 editor. 
 
 Comprehending at last that he had been dis- 
 charged, he rose and put on his hat. What did he 
 care if he was discharged? Now was his chance. 
 He would now tell them all what he thought of 
 them them and their miserable sheet. 
 
 First he would talk to Collier. He lurched across 
 the room, now grasping a desk to steady himself, 
 now resting his hand on the bent head of a busy 
 reporter. 
 
 166
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Collier," he said. " Collier, you lazy devil 
 
 But Collier turned his back upon him, and he 
 seized the man's shoulders to swing him round in 
 his revolving chair. 
 
 " Look out ! " cried a voice. 
 
 " Collier, I want to tell you " 
 
 Collier leaped up suddenly. The young man 
 stepped back; he stumbled over something; and 
 Collier struck him a terrific blow on the cheek, and 
 he fell sidewise on a desk. 
 
 He rose to oppose the crowd that rushed upon 
 him ; but pushes, kicks and blows knocked him this 
 way and that. There were oaths and cries, the 
 crash of falling chairs and tables, and amid the 
 turmoil he heard, in a dazed way, his own voice, 
 feverish and high. He struggled, he shouted, and 
 at the same time he felt only the deepest shame, 
 the deepest humiliation. . . . 
 
 They forced him to the door. He clutched it 
 firmly, why he did not know. But a very strong 
 hand seized him by the back of the neck, and he 
 was flung out into the hall with such violence that 
 he fell on his face. Then the door banged to, and 
 he rose and began to brush the dust from his 
 trousers and coat. The door opened again, some- 
 one threw out his hat. He picked it up, and, as 
 he cleaned it with his sleeve, he heard within the 
 sound of excited voices, breathless laughter. 
 
 167,
 
 BOOK II
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HE had pawned his camera and typewriter, and 
 now, armed with twenty dollars, he was about to 
 storm New York. From the windy bow of the 
 ferry-boat he gazed sourly at New York across the 
 shabby river. 
 
 New York seemed to consist of eight or ten card- 
 board sky-scrapers, with some hundreds of low and 
 dingy buildings squatting about their feet. A paltry- 
 looking place: nevertheless it frightened him. 
 
 Landing, he walked through muddy streets in 
 search of a cheap room. Mean throngs in dark 
 clothes hurried to and fro, intent as ants. Artificial 
 rain fell in the window of a dealer in rubber goods, 
 and a young man in a waterproof coat paced amid 
 the downpour. Three youths, salesmen in a flower 
 shop, wore white flannels and white straw hats, and 
 an attendant sprinkled the sidewalk with violet per- 
 fume. A dozen men in mediaeval dress strode by, 
 advertising a new historical novel. Could he cope 
 with such enterprise as this? 
 
 Late in the afternoon he secured a small, clean 
 room up town for two dollars a week. He got his 
 171
 
 John Cave 
 
 luggage in, then dined for fifteen cents, at an oil- 
 cloth-covered table, on liver and bacon and fried 
 potatoes. It was not a bad meal. 
 
 He visited The Star office in the morning. The 
 city editor of The Star, he noted with a pang, was 
 younger than himself. 
 
 " Are you a college man, Mr. Cave? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What paper are you with now ? " 
 
 " Ah er none." 
 
 " Well, there is no opening here at present. 
 However, for a genius " 
 
 " Oh, I don't pretend to be a genius." 
 
 " No, of course not. At the same time " 
 
 " Suppose I bring some samples of my work for 
 you to see ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I wish you would." 
 
 He brought four samples, and was bidden to 
 come back the next morning. 
 
 The next morning he met at the door of the 
 outer office a boy with a long envelope in his hand. 
 
 " Mr. Cave ? " said the boy, extending the en- 
 velope. 
 
 John snatched it and tore it open hurriedly. It 
 contained his samples, nothing more. He gulped. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " The city editor says there is no opening, sir." 
 
 He found himself on a bench in a public square. 
 172
 
 John Cave 
 
 He was hot with shame, and there was a Star in 
 his hand. He read the paper through from begin- 
 ning to end. Crude, vulgar stuff, for geniuses to 
 write. . . . 
 
 Eight papers that day repulsed him. The ninth, 
 The Dispatch, took him on at once. But The Dis- 
 patch was Miles's paper, and Miles was Prudence's 
 friend. He had intended to get a New York berth 
 through his own merit solely, but to Prudence, after 
 all, his new berth was due. 
 
 He dined well that night, and after dinner, his 
 coffee and cigarette-case on the table before him, a 
 novel in his hand, he weighed life bitterly to the 
 music of a Tzigane band. 
 
 He had once thought that only merit counted. 
 Well, there was even unusual merit in his work, yet 
 it had failed to secure him a humble reporter's 
 place. But for Prudence's friendship, but for help 
 regarded generally as shameful, he might have 
 starved here in New York. 
 
 Merit, transcendent merit, counted for nothing 
 by itself, but the most ordinary merit, joined to a 
 kind of hypocritical ability to win the liking and 
 esteem of the men in the high places, counted for 
 everything. 
 
 He would acquire, he told himself, that hypo- 
 critical ability (it should be easy), and lighting a 
 fresh cigarette, he decided to flatter the men over 
 173
 
 John Cave 
 
 him on The Dispatch and at the same time to boast 
 discreetly to boast modestly, as it were point- 
 ing out all the excellences that would from time to 
 time appear in his own work. 
 
 174
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE editorial writers, the illustrators and special 
 writers of The Dispatch were the best to be found 
 in America a galaxy of stars of unexampled 
 price and glitter. And The Dispatch's editor was a 
 man of genius, like Wagner, like Velasquez. 
 
 John Cave entered Herkimer's office humbly, yet 
 with a timid hope fluttering in his heart. For he 
 had worshipped Herkimer from boyhood; his love 
 of Herkimer's work was one of the few boyish 
 loves that he had not outgrown ; and as he diffidently 
 advanced, his huge scrap-book under his arm, he 
 hoped absurdly that the editor might admire his 
 stories, might feel a little towards him as he felt 
 towards Herkimer. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Cave ? Won't you sit 
 down ? " 
 
 Herkimer, who had been standing by the win- 
 dow looking out, turned and advanced gravely. He 
 was younger than John had thought, tall, healthily 
 lean. The blue eyes were clear and frank; the 
 compressed lips could curve in a gay and charming 
 smile 
 
 Herkimer's dress seemed elegant but odd to the 
 175
 
 John Cave 
 
 young man, who did not know that it was fresh 
 from London, and that in two years, like all the 
 London fashions, it would be adopted in America 
 in a curiously exaggerated form. 
 
 John seated himself, the huge scrap-book bal- 
 anced on his knees. " Thank you, Mr. Herkimer," 
 he said. " I know your work very well." 
 
 He felt crude under Herkimer's clear gaze. And 
 the unwonted sincerity and reverence in his voice 
 gave it, he noticed, a queer, high, drawling quality, 
 a most unpleasant quality, a kind of whine. 
 
 Herkimer walked to and fro. " What would you 
 like to do for us ? " he said. 
 
 " Mr. Miles submitted some of my stories to 
 your Sunday editor," John replied, " and Mr. Ap- 
 pleton liked " 
 
 " But that must have been a long time ago," 
 Herkimer interrupted. " Mr. Miles is abroad now. 
 You are the first in his list, but Appleton is no 
 longer here." 
 
 John drew a deep, unsteady breath, and opening 
 the enormous scrap-book, he said: 
 
 " In that case, perhaps, my scrap-book will show 
 you what I am best fitted for." 
 
 His eyes sought the editor's with doglike de- 
 votion, but Herkimer did not look at him; to 
 Herkimer he was only a dissipated reporter who 
 176
 
 John Cave 
 
 owed his introduction to some worthless girl or 
 other. 
 
 " I'll run over your scrap-book. Come and see 
 me again at noon to-morrow, Mr. Cave." 
 
 The young man, in departing, had an impulse to 
 tell Herkimer how deeply he admired him. He 
 wanted to say that at college he had bought The 
 Sunday Times to read Herkimer's stories about 
 Mars, and afterwards had traced him somehow, 
 though his work was always unsigned, from The 
 Times to The Dispatch, and for years had not 
 missed one of his wonderful daily leaders. He 
 wanted to say that those leaders seemed to him 
 equal to the work of the world's greatest writers; 
 not mere written words, metaphors, ornaments and 
 flourishes, but a voice; that Herkimer had so mas- 
 tered the art of expression that his prose, instead 
 of draping, blanket fashion, his thought, or adorn- 
 ing it as with knots of ribbon, was the very thought 
 itself a voice, simple and clear, speaking from 
 the page. 
 
 And he began, " I want to say, Mr. Her- 
 kimer " 
 
 But there was the whine again, and he paused. 
 
 He paused, he laid the great scrap-book on a table 
 
 too near the edge, and it crashed to the floor. He 
 
 had to kneel to gather up the loose papers that had 
 
 177
 
 John Cave 
 
 fallen from it, and kneeling he looked helplessly up 
 into the editor's face. 
 
 Herkimer regarded him curiously. For the mo- 
 ment he saw in the young man something touching, 
 something inarticulate but very sincere. 
 
 " Yes ? " he said, gently. 
 
 " I want to say, Mr. Herkimer ... to say . . . 
 I have admired your work a long time . . . for 
 many years." 
 
 He rose. He opened the door, blushing hotly. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Cave," said Herkimer, with a 
 faint smile. 
 
 178
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IT was one of the greatest disappointments of his 
 life, on his return the next day, to find a curt note 
 bidding him report to the city editor. For he had 
 hoped, because he admired Herkimer, that Her- 
 kimer would admire him. He had hoped for a 
 post of honour on The Dispatch. 
 
 Sadly he put the huge scrap-book under his arm 
 and took the lift for the local room. 
 
 The local room was a place of hurry and flurry 
 and suspense. Typewriters clicked; messengers 
 darted in and out ; young editors, their sleeves rolled 
 up over white, thin arms, plied enormous blue 
 pencils frantically. In the local room everyone was 
 afraid of being outdone, of being tardy, of being 
 discharged. Faces were pale and anxious. Hands 
 shook. 
 
 And here John Cave was enrolled in a band of 
 thirty or forty young men who could riot write, 
 whose stories gave the intelligent actual nausea. 
 But these young men were excellent detectives, 
 they often beat the police in ferreting out a crime, 
 and in gathering their facts there was no law of 
 179
 
 John Cave 
 
 delicacy, of pity, of decency, that they hesitated to 
 break. 
 
 For Herkimer, continually trying new methods 
 to increase The Dispatch's circulation, sought at 
 this time readers of the lowest order of intellect. 
 To attract these readers he would supply them with 
 news articles treated in the most vulgar, maudlin 
 and sensational manner news articles like the 
 novels popular among them and he had recently 
 filled his local staff with young men capable of writ- 
 ing such news articles with sincerity. 
 
 And for work like that he had adjudged John 
 Cave best fitted ! 
 
 The new reporter from the beginning made sixty, 
 seventy, eighty dollars a week. But . . . 
 
 A rich man, a church pillar, fell dead late one 
 night at the residence of a widow, and at eleven 
 o'clock a sub-editor said to John, " It is rumoured 
 that the widow was his mistress. Here is the ad- 
 dress of his wife. Go to her, tell her of her hus- 
 bands' death, and find out if the rumour about the 
 widow and him is true." 
 
 A popular novelist of incredible deformity, a 
 hunchback hardly four feet in height, was to be 
 married to a tall, beautiful girl, and John was sent 
 to the wedding with a hand-camera in the hope 
 that he might get a snapshot of the bridal pair arm- 
 in-arm. He got the snapshot, but the hunchback, 
 180
 
 John Cave 
 
 hearing the click of the shutter, leaped on the young 
 man, wrenched the camera from his hands, and 
 smashed it to pieces on the sidewalk. 
 
 There is no way of turning a man out of a house 
 that he did not undergo. Sometimes a butler, dele- 
 gated to the task, would take him by the arm and 
 turn him out with a certain dignity. Sometimes a 
 woman would order him forth with angry tears. 
 Sometimes a man would push him over the lintel 
 with both hands, try even to give him a parting kick. 
 He could not get used to being turned out of 
 houses. His agony, as he silently submitted, was 
 always intense. He always felt, as the door crashed 
 to, disgraced for life. 
 
 Embittered by the ignominy daily heaped upon 
 him, he wrote his stories without pity. He handled 
 his living heroes and heroines as if they were fictions 
 his mind had created. He never dreamed in his 
 stories of holding back a sentence because it might 
 hurt. He never considered the pain, needless and 
 cruel, that his characters would suffer the next day 
 on reading what he had written. 
 
 So the summer passed. 
 
 He stood on an October afternoon with an illus- 
 trator before the show-window of a famous milliner. 
 The window was filled with beautiful furs and 
 gowns, and as the two young men worked hurriedly, 
 a Frenchman ran forth bareheaded. 
 181
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Thieves ! " he cried. " Thieves ! " 
 
 The illustrator drew John away. " We must get 
 out of this," he said. " There'll be a row." 
 
 They paused at the next corner. " He doesn't 
 want us to steal his models, eh ? " said John. 
 
 " And why should he ? " the illustrator demanded; 
 " He employs designers at tremendous salaries, and 
 as soon as these designers create some beautiful new 
 fashion, you and I appear, sketch and describe the 
 fashion steal it is the right term and in a week 
 it is common property all over the country. But 
 come, let us go back and try again." 
 
 They returned, the coast was clear, and as they 
 bent over the window, intent as ants upon their 
 work, a porter came forth suddenly and threw a 
 pail of water over them. 
 
 " What the devil " John gasped. Wiping the 
 
 water from his eyes, he turned wrath fully this way 
 and that. The porter with a chuckle had disap- 
 peared, but a crowd was gathering fast. 
 
 " Don't stand there ! " cried the illustrator. A cab 
 was at the curb, and he pushed John in before him. 
 " Thank heaven," he said, as the door closed. 
 
 The cabman's scowling face appeared at the win- 
 dow. " Don't set down on them cushions o' mine, 
 gents." 
 
 That evening, as he awaited in fresh clothes his 
 182
 
 John Cave 
 
 night assignment, John pondered The Dispatch's 
 faults. He gasped again in the icy shock of the 
 pail of water, but it was a pail of water merited by 
 his mean theft. . . .He thought of the camera 
 torn from him by the hunchback bridegroom, and he 
 remembered the trembling hands of the poor lit- 
 tle novelist, his red, enraged face, and the tears 
 starting from his eyes. . . . He thought of the 
 widow, a widow of but three hours' standing, whom 
 he had questioned about her dead husband's mis- 
 tress, and he remembered the widow's pale hor- 
 ror of him and his questions. . . . He thought of 
 this man and that who had turned him out of the 
 house. . . . They had all suffered, but he had suf- 
 fered, too, doing these revolting things to earn his 
 bread. 
 
 And he asked himself bitterly if Herkimer had 
 the right, no matter how many thousands it might 
 add to The Dispatch's circulation, to inflict all this 
 ignominy and shame. 
 
 " Mr. Cave ! " shouted a flurried young sub-editor. 
 
 He advanced to the sub-editor's desk. 
 
 " Mr. Cave," said the young man, " Addison 
 Winthrop set out on a Southern cruise in his yacht 
 last week, and it is rumoured now that he took a 
 well-known society woman along with him. Look 
 up Winthrop's clubs in the Blue Book. Maybe 
 183
 
 John Cave 
 
 some of the clubmen can give you a fact or two. 
 And go and see Mrs. Winthrop, and find out what 
 you can from her. If a divorce " 
 
 John laughed. "Oh, hell!" 
 
 The sub-editor, affronted, lo* Ued up, puzzled in- 
 quiry in his bright, excited eyes 
 
 " That's a pleasant job now, isn't it ? " John went 
 on. " To ask a young wife if it's true that her 
 husband has gone off with another woman! How 
 would you like to go and ask her that yourself, you 
 little mire-snipe ? ' 
 
 The sub-editor frowned. " This is insubordina- 
 tion," he said. 
 
 " Oh," John retorted, " insubordination be 
 damned ! " 
 
 But the sub-editor was too busy to quarrel. 
 "Really, Mr. Cave," he began, in an absent voice, 
 and his eyes roved over the room, searching another 
 man for the Winthrop story. " Really ... ah 
 . . . Mr. Carrol ! " Already John was forgotten. 
 
 He returned to his desk complacently. It was a 
 good thing to let these coarse rascals know what he 
 thought of them . . . and he had intended for some 
 time to leave The Dispatch anyway ... he had five 
 hundred dollars saved. . . . 
 
 On the way out he saw Herkimer entering his 
 office. Freedom plus five hundred dollars ntede him 
 bold, and he stopped and said: 
 184
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Good-bye, Mr. Herkimer. I am leaving to- 
 night." 
 
 " I'm sorry," Herkimer answered. " There was 
 promise in some of your stories." He smiled 
 gently. " Stop showing off," he said. " Write 
 thinking of your subject alone." 
 
 This crumb of praise from the great Herkimer 
 put him in a pleasant glow. Nevertheless he said 
 angrily : 
 
 " I had a pail of water thrown over me to-day. 
 I keep asking myself why a man like you should 
 get out a paper so unspeakably vile as The Dis- 
 patch." 
 
 Herkimer frowned, half turned away; then, 
 changing his mind, he said : 
 
 '''Why discuss it? If you have any intelligence 
 you must see the reason for yourself." 
 
 " Is the trash to get circulation ? " 
 
 " To be sure," said Herkimer impatiently. " It is 
 the bait. We catch them; then we try to teach 
 them. The Dispatch isn't all trash." 
 
 The young man's devotion surged back into his 
 heart, driving away all rancour due to the pail of 
 water. He forgot the deformed novelist and the 
 widow, and when he spoke again he was aware of 
 that unpleasant whine, caused by deep feeling, in 
 his voice : 
 
 185
 
 John Cave 
 
 " I surmised as much. They say upstairs you 
 are a hypocrite. But I know better." 
 
 " I am often misunderstood," said Herkimer. 
 " And you, a clever enough lad, owed your intro- 
 duction here to some queer girl or other, and in con- 
 sequence I set you down as rather hopeless. I 
 didn't go over your scrap-book, or I'd have made 
 you a special writer, and you'd have been spared 
 that humiliating pail of water." 
 
 " Really? " John stammered. 
 
 Herkimer nodded; his look was kind; and he 
 said, as he held out his hand : 
 
 " We must dine together some time. And if you 
 ever want to come back. . . ." 
 
 186
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 NOT needing immediate work, he got it; and the 
 day after he left The Dispatch John Cave, seated in 
 the office of Alonzo Roberts, wrote with pleased 
 smiles an advertisement of the Z. Hilary McMasters 
 method of increasing the height, a cartilage-stretch- 
 ing method whereby the height of any person un- 
 der sixty years of age could be increased from three 
 to seven inches. 
 
 Alonzo Roberts had begun business as an adver- 
 tisement writer a year ago. He had begun mod- 
 estly; his bedroom had been his office; but in six 
 months, so greatly had he prospered, the little bed- 
 room office had grown into a Tower Building suite. 
 This suite, furnished in bright yellow oak, now 
 boasted an errand boy in buttons, a pale, thin book- 
 keeper, and a beautiful typewriter girl with golden 
 hair. 
 
 Here John went to work on a profit-sharing basis 
 half profits on all the advertisements he wrote. 
 He was very successful. Roberts showed him the 
 way, and under Roberts's guidance he produced ad- 
 vertisements that were in every respect like all the 
 187.
 
 John Cave 
 
 other advertisements which overran America at 
 that time. 
 
 He advertised, for instance, Orient Tooth Pow- 
 der. Orient Tooth Powder was made of tinted 
 chalk, and it was worth about six dollars a ton ; but 
 he advertised it, at twenty-five cents an ounce, as 
 a powder made of the betel-nut of Ceylon. But 
 here he paused. Did the betel-nut come from Cey- 
 lon or from . . . No matter: he would not bother 
 to look the detail up : and dipping his pen again, he 
 said that the Ceylonese had the best teeth in the 
 world; they never suffered from toothache, and 
 when they died, no matter what their age, every 
 tooth was intact. Why? He quoted from Huxley 
 a paragraph that he made up as he went along: 
 
 " Chewers of the betel-nut have always perfect 
 teeth for the reason that the meat of the betel-nut, 
 a highly aseptic substance, is a perfect dental pre- 
 servative. Remove the colouring matter, which 
 slightly stains the enamel, and add a little chalk, 
 which whitens it, and we should have in the betel- 
 nut an ideal dentifrice a dentrifrice that would, 
 indeed, soon rid the world of dentists." 
 
 Orient Tooth Powder, he told the public, was 
 made after Huxley's recipe, and they who used it 
 had Huxley's word that their teeth would never de- 
 cay. 
 
 The powder succeeded. Its manufacturer said 
 188
 
 John Cave 
 
 that, as betel-nut powder, it sold ten times better 
 than it had sold as ordinary chalk. 
 
 " Young man," said the pleased manufacturer, 
 "you are a wonder. And now look here. I'm 
 working on a skin food made of soap fat. Can't 
 we put that out as Oriental, too? . . . call it Ab- 
 dallah Cream, and say it's made of the rich oils of 
 the Saharan date palm, or something of that kind ? 
 You know what I mean." 
 
 " Yes," said John Cave ; " I understand." 
 
 He advertised men's ready-made clothing, 
 though he never called it ready-made, deeming that 
 phrase to have a cheap sound, but ready-to-put-on, 
 or ready-built, or ready-to-wear, or, simply, ready. 
 And wonderful in these clothing advertisements was 
 his talk of hand-padded collars, false vents at sides 
 creased up, shape-retaining French canvas inter- 
 linings, concave shoulders, ripple skirts, quilted hips. 
 
 He advertised Puritea, a tea at twenty cents a 
 pound, the refuse of the warehouses. He said that 
 tea was at once a food and a stimulant. He said 
 that Englishwomen owed their rosy complexions to 
 the great quantities of tea some twelve or fifteen 
 cups that they drank daily. He said that the suc- 
 cess of Krupp, Curie, and Russell Sage had been 
 due to the tea they consumed, for tea had enabled 
 them to double their working hours. Then, out of 
 of his own head again, he quoted Darwin : 
 180
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Haggard from twenty-four hours of unceasing 
 toil over the Andaman earthworms, I drank three 
 cups of tea, and at once felt as fresh and strong 
 as if I had just risen from a good night's rest. 
 With renewed energy I set to work again, and 
 laboured on without fatigue for sixteen hours more. 
 How wonderful a thing is pure tea ! " 
 
 Chuckling, the Puritea man said : 
 
 " Rub it in that ours is the only pure one. Say 
 all the rest are drugged." 
 
 He advertised a great many oatmeals, cornmeals, 
 hominies and the like, and of course every one of 
 them was pre-digested, and the air of the rooms 
 they were made in was sterilised and filtered, and 
 the packets they were put up in were germ-proof, 
 and they all developed the muscles like football and 
 the brain like trigonometry. 
 
 He prospered, and at the height of his prosperity 
 Alonzo Roberts introduced him to Adolf Wolff. 
 
 " I've heard good reports of you, young man," 
 Mr. Wolff began. " Harrington says you doubled 
 his income with them ads about his copper mine. 
 What was the idea? A cent a share ten thou- 
 sand shares payable in dollar a week instalments! 
 Ha, ha! Good!" 
 
 " It did go good," John agreed, with a modest 
 smile. 
 
 " And Baldy Walsh says he's making twenty 
 190
 
 John Cave 
 
 thousand a year out of a hair restorer that you 
 handle." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; you mean Scalpene-Dandruffia." 
 Wolff nodded. Huge and sleek, he puffed in his 
 chair, and his great stomach made his legs look 
 strangely short, bulging out over them nearly to 
 his knees. 
 
 " Listen here," he said, in his rich, husky voice. 
 " I cleaned up fifty thousand last week, and I want 
 to take a flyer in advertisin'. I want to launch a 
 company. Everything's ready directors, charter, 
 everything ; and I'm willing to give you a fifty thou- 
 sand dollar contract to advertise the stock. What 
 do you say ? " 
 
 " Thank you. That is what I say. Thank you." 
 " All right, then. Let's get down to business." 
 " What kind of a company is it, Mr. Wolff? " 
 " It's a company with a capital of five million 
 dollars in one dollar shares, and it has been formed 
 to build and put on the market home icemakers." 
 " Home icemakers ? " 
 
 " That's what I said. Machines for everybody 
 to have in the cellar to make their own ice with. 
 Like icecream freezers, only simpler." 
 
 " By Jove, great ! " cried the young man. His 
 cheeks flushed, his eyes sparkled. " Won't that be 
 a stock to advertise ! " 
 
 "Won't it?" said Mr. Wolff, grimly. "These 
 191
 
 John Cave 
 
 home icemakers will cost from five to twenty-five 
 dollars apiece, according to their size, and they 
 will produce from ten to a hundred pounds of ice 
 a day at a cost of five cents a hundred pounds 
 twenty pounds of ice for one cent. Everybody will 
 want them." Mr. Wolff smiled. " The only thing 
 that worries me is, what will become of the poor old 
 Ice Trust?" 
 
 " Oh, don't let that worry you," John exclaimed. 
 " But who is the inventor of this wonderful 
 machine ? " 
 
 " I am," said Mr. Wolff. " We'll keep my name 
 out of it, though. We'll call the inventor Jabez 
 Sparhawk. He is my entry clerk." 
 
 " I'd like to see it working. I'd get some points 
 from it, you know some points for my ads." 
 
 " All right ; you can see it," said Mr. Wolff. He 
 frowned. " It ain't quite perfected yet. It makes 
 a good grade of ice, only the cost is sixty-seven 
 cents a pound. That's too high, eh ? " 
 
 The young man blushed. He laughed uncomfort- 
 ably. He might have known from the first that 
 the home icemaker was a fraud. Wolff, after 
 chuckling a little, resumed in his rich voice : 
 
 " We won't mention that the machine ain't per- 
 fected. We'll advertise it as making ice at a 
 twentieth of a cent a pound twenty pounds for 
 one cent is the best way to put it and we'll take 
 192
 
 John Cave 
 
 our chance on bringing down the cost to that in 
 time. We ought to do it, oughtn't we ? " 
 
 " I think so," said the young man. He mused 
 a little, smiling. " Could we exhibit the machine 
 making ice ? " 
 
 " We might," said Wolff. " That's a good idea. 
 I'll look into it." 
 
 He rose to go. " Roberts has all the facts," he 
 panted. " Get a move on now. Offer the stock at 
 a dollar a share everywhere. Everywhere." 
 
 With Wolff's capital John lied about the Jabez 
 Sparhawk home icemaker as he had never lied be- 
 fore. On all sides his lies appeared, and from all 
 sides subscriptions for the stock poured in. They 
 were small subscriptions, running from five up to 
 fifty dollars, and most of them came from dress- 
 makers, weavers, saleswomen, carpenters postal 
 notes for money earned by the hands' hard work 
 through long and weary hours. 
 
 In a basement down town the icemaker was to 
 be seen in action. It made excellent ice, and, since 
 no one knew that every pound cost sixty-seven 
 cents, its performances dazzled the spectators, send- 
 ing them home for their savings at the double 
 quick. 
 
 In every advertisement appeared a full-length 
 photograph of Jabez Sparhawk, frock coated, ear- 
 nest, striking his palm with his clenched fist; and 
 193
 
 John Cave 
 
 in capitals beneath the photograph Sparhawk 
 said: 
 
 " Come in with me on this. 
 
 " I have made millions for investors, but my Ice- 
 maker is the biggest thing I have invented yet. 
 
 " No one ever lost a cent through me. If so, 
 I will make it good. 
 
 " I invented the electric fan. 
 
 " I invented the trolley car. 
 
 " I invented the automobile (gasoline and elec- 
 tric), just as it is run all over the world to-day. 
 
 " Those were good inventions, but my Home Ice- 
 maker will break the record of all of them combined, 
 and I want you to come in with me on this deal, so 
 that we can flood the market in the spring, and put 
 the Ice Trust out of business. 
 
 " Think of it ! A HOME ICEMAKER ! Like 
 an icecream freezer, only simpler. And self-run- 
 ning no handle to turn. You just fill it up with 
 water before you go to bed, and in the morning 
 there's your cake of ice. A great big cake of 
 crystal pure ice, twenty pounds of it, for one cent. 
 
 " Remember, this stock, now one dollar a share, 
 jumps to two on Saturday night at midnight." 
 
 Half-page advertisements of the home icemaker 
 appeared day after day in every city. The public 
 194
 
 John Cave 
 
 may have wondered why the stock never jumped on 
 Saturday night ; it may have doubted that Sparhawk 
 was the inventor of the trolley car, the automobile 
 and the electric fan; but nevertheless it bought 
 eagerly. In larger and larger waves the subscrip- 
 tions rolled in. 
 
 And one night, as John Cave sat at his desk read- 
 ing and smoking, Roberts laid before him a cheque 
 for fifteen hundred dollars. 
 
 " The home icemaker campaign is over," Roberts 
 said, " and this is your share of the profits." 
 
 John took out his cheque-book. He regarded his 
 bank balance with a smile. Then he slowly added 
 the fifteen hundred dollars to it. And musing and 
 smiling over the resultant total, he murmured: 
 
 " I sjiall be going abroad soon." 
 
 195
 
 CHAPTER V 
 PRUDENCE'S telegram arrived the following week. 
 
 " In trouble please come over." 
 
 It was noon when he rang her bell, but the maid 
 said: 
 
 " She isn't up yet, sir. I'll call her." 
 
 Sniffing and frowning, he entered the library. 
 The air was bitter the bitter odour of opium 
 and the room was in disorder, with cushions piled in 
 the middle of the floor, empty coffee cups and plates 
 of half -eaten fruit on the chairs, cigarette stubs 
 everywhere. He regarded the bright cushions. 
 They were sprinkled with tiny black cinders, the 
 charred and broken pills discarded from the opium 
 pipe. 
 
 Prudence entered, walking slowly, stumbling a 
 little, with glazed eyes. Her gown of apple green 
 silk was so long that it tripped her. Stumbling 
 over a cushion, she laughed and lifted the gown 
 above her gilt shoes. She was thin and pale, and 
 the scarlet was faded from her lips. 
 
 " How well you look," she said. " I suppose I 
 196
 
 John Cave 
 
 look far from well myself. You can guess why." 
 And with a rueful smile she indicated the disorder 
 of the room, and sat down yawning. 
 
 " Poor old girl," said he. 
 
 She yawned behind her pale hand. " Oh, I don't 
 know. We had a rather jolly evening. We kept it 
 up till five." 
 
 " Till five ! " He regarded her curiously. She 
 seemed almost asleep there in her chair. Then his 
 gaze wandered to the soiled plates and cups again. 
 
 " Stop looking like that, John Cave ! " 
 
 " Does it annoy you ? " 
 
 " It doesn't gratify me." She rang the bell. 
 " Clear these things away, please ; and bring me a 
 half bottle of champagne." 
 
 Nestling in the big chair in her gown of apple 
 green silk, she waited, yawning, gazing at him 
 drowsily, smiling drowsy smiles. Her chin rested 
 on her drawn-up knees, below her knees her hands 
 were clasped, her gilt shoes on the chair seat peeped 
 from beneath embroidered folds. 
 
 When the champagne came she rose, and with 
 supple strides, still stumbling over the long gown, 
 she advanced to the table on which the bottle stood. 
 She unloosed the gold foil and the wire; with ab- 
 sorbed, considering eyes she manipulated the cork 
 delicately; all of a sudden plop the cork shot 
 out, and from the bottle mouth a kind of fume
 
 John Cave 
 
 ascended; but of the volatile champagne itself not 
 a drop escaped. 
 
 " There," she said. " Give me your glass." 
 
 He laughed awkwardly. " Thanks ; it's so early, 
 isn't k?" 
 
 Her eyes opened wide in surprise, but she said 
 nothing. She took a great goblet, poured into it 
 an inch of liqueur brandy, then filled it to the brim 
 with wine. She held the hissing, foaming, amber- 
 coloured draught high in air; she regarded it 
 sleepily. 
 
 " What a drink ! " she said, with a drowsy laugh, 
 and she drank thirstily, yet gracefully, like a stage 
 bacchante. 
 
 Then the pallor of her cheeks became rose, the 
 wonted scarlet returned to her lips, and her eyes 
 grew bright and clear. 
 
 " Now you are yourself," said he. " What is 
 this trouble you are in?" 
 
 " I am a thief," she said. " I have stolen a 
 thousand dollars." 
 
 "You? Impossible!" 
 
 "It is true." 
 
 " How on earth did it happen ? " 
 
 " He left a thousand dollars with me. He was 
 
 going West for a month, and I was to take the 
 
 money to his broker's when he telegraphed." She 
 
 paused, laughing a little. " I was interested in a 
 
 198
 
 John Cave 
 
 certain stock myself," she said. " I expected it to 
 double in two days. So I invested his thousand in 
 my stock, and it ... it was a swindle." 
 
 He paced the floor, frowning. " Why on earth 
 did you do it ? " 
 
 " Because," she answered calmly, " I expected to 
 have two thousand by the time the telegram came." 
 
 "What stock was it?" 
 
 " Home Icemaker." 
 
 " What ! " He paused before her, searching her 
 face. He could not believe it. 
 
 " Are you joking ? " he said at last. 
 
 "Joking?" She laughed, peal on peal. Could 
 she be joking, after all ? 
 
 " I wish I were joking," she said soberly. 
 
 " Why did you laugh, then? " 
 
 " You looked so queer." 
 
 "Oh! ... Has he telegraphed yet?" 
 
 " I expect a telegram to-morrow." 
 
 He sat with bowed head. " What is to be done ? " 
 he muttered. His eyes, clouded and irresolute, sent 
 shifty glances about the floor. Then, suddenly, he 
 drew himself up, his brow cleared, and he said in a 
 kind voice : 
 
 " I'll lend you the money." 
 
 "You?" 
 
 " Oh, I'm getting on." 
 
 "What are you doing?" 
 199
 
 John Cave 
 
 " I am in the advertising business." 
 
 " Then let me show you my advertisement." 
 
 She took from a book the half page of a news- 
 paper, unfolded it, and revealed one of his home 
 icemaker productions. 
 
 "Do you see that?" she said. "What do you 
 think of the liars and thieves who would write a 
 thing like that?" 
 
 " Horrible." 
 
 " That is what caught me," she said, and laughing 
 bitterly, she pointed to the line: " Remember, this 
 stock, now one dollar a share, jumps to two on 
 Saturday night at midnight." 
 
 " I'll lend you the money," muttered the young 
 man. 
 
 " Indeed you'll not," said she. " If I wanted to 
 borrow money, it wouldn't be to you I'd come. 
 Listen," she went on ; " this is what I want you to 
 do. I want you to go to the office of these people 
 in New York, and try to frighten them into giving 
 me my thousand back. Say I know they're swind- 
 lers. Say you're a newspaper man, and will ex- 
 pose them. Say I'll have them arrested. I'll sue 
 them. Will you?" 
 
 " Of course I will." He took up his hat and 
 coat. " You'll get your money back, never fear." 
 
 " But you're not going? " 
 
 "I must. There's no time to be lost" He 
 200
 
 John Cave 
 
 looked at his watch. " I can just make the one 
 o'clock train." 
 
 She rose and gave him her hand. " How good 
 
 I you are." 
 That night he telegraphed her a thousand dollars 
 with the explanation : 
 
 " Frightened them easily into disgorging." 
 
 And on Roberts's return, rising from his desk and 
 pacing the room, he said : 
 
 " I'm going to give up this business." 
 
 "What for, you ass?" 
 
 " Too many lies." 
 
 " But," said Roberts, " all advertisement writers 
 lie." 
 
 "Well, what excuse is that?" 
 
 "A good excuse. For instance, it is wrong to 
 kill; but in war, where everyone is killing, then it 
 isn't wrong." 
 
 " I wouldn't go to war," said the young man. 
 
 " You're a queer mixture. If you leave me, what 
 will you do ? " 
 
 " Return to syndicating again." 
 
 " Syndicating ! And you talk about lies t " 
 
 " Harmless lies, Alonio." 
 
 301
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HE awoke at seven, and immediately the thought 
 flashed through his mind: 
 
 " To-day I sail for Europe." 
 
 Like a catapult this joyous thought shot him 
 from the bed, and he ran and looked out of the 
 open window. How cold and pure and sparkling 
 was the air of the November morning. The roofs 
 were white with frost, the sun's gold rays slanted 
 down on the frozen grey mud of the street, and the 
 mud already, here and there, was turning soft and 
 black for the day. 
 
 " Fine weather for getting off," he murmured, 
 stropping a razor briskly. 
 
 His last American breakfast was delightful. 
 There was plenty of time, and with a newspaper 
 propped before him he lingered over the cold and 
 acid grapefruit, the delicately fresh eggs, the ham 
 grilled in sweet, crisp slices, and the coffee so 
 strong and rich that a kind of oil gleamed on its 
 surface. 
 
 Then through crowded and sunny streets he 
 strolled towards the pier, pausing now to choose 
 some magazines and books, now to buy some 
 202
 
 John Cave 
 
 cigarettes, and as soon as he got aboard the busy 
 boat he hurried with his parcels to his stateroom. 
 
 It was a bright and spacious outside room, with 
 a table, a couch, even a closet. Changing his hat 
 for a cap, he selected a novel from his store, and 
 ran up on deck again, the book under his arm. 
 
 The deck was filled with people. A bell rang, 
 seamen shouted, more than half the people disem- 
 barked, and amid a mournful blare of whistles, a 
 great fluttering of handkerchiefs, some tears, the 
 steamer was pushed slowly out into midstream. 
 Then her tug drew free, and she began to throb 
 with the rhythmical and powerful strokes of those 
 huge engines that for two weeks would not cease 
 their labour day or night. 
 
 John, leaning over the side, inhaled with delight 
 the strong, pure wind that beat upon the ship as 
 she moved down the sunlit river towards the shin- 
 ing sea. 
 
 The great sea wind. . . . The wild, pure sea 
 wind. ... He would never weary of it. To him 
 it would never be less sweet and strange than now. 
 He stood day after day bareheaded in the bow, his 
 gaze roved over the blue turmoil of restless water, 
 the sun warmed him, the sea wind beat upon his 
 face, and splendid thoughts, such as music creates, 
 rose in his heart . . . wild, beautiful thoughts. . . .
 
 John Cave 
 
 He had done pretty well at syndicating in New 
 York, and in his lofty rooms, with their white and 
 delicate woodwork and their abundance of clear 
 light, the summer had passed pleasantly while he 
 made photographs, developed negatives, type- 
 wrote and manifolded his stupendous and harmless 
 lies. 
 
 Sometimes he went to see Prudence. Though 
 still beautiful, she seemed to be growing thinner, 
 paler; and when he took her out to dine she swal- 
 lowed morphine tabloids every half-hour or so, and 
 between the courses of the dinner she withdrew 
 yawning to the women's dressing-room to smoke 
 cigarettes. 
 
 Once, on her return from the women's dressing- 
 room, he said: 
 
 " Stop hitting the pipe." 
 
 She smiled strangely. "What if I can't ?'' 
 
 " Nonsense ! " 
 
 "What if I told you I had tried and found I 
 couldn't?" 
 
 He hesitated between anxiety and disbelief. 
 Blowing a cloud of smoke, he looked gloomily 
 away. An orchestra of girls in red gowns was 
 playing the Marche Funebre. Vaguely depressed, 
 he let his head sink on his bosom. 
 
 " I was only joking," said Prudence hurriedly, 
 and she leaned forward across the table, and laid 
 204
 
 John Cave 
 
 her hand lightly on his for an instant. She 
 laughed. " I wanted to see if you'd care," she 
 said, as she withdrew her hand. 
 
 " You knew I'd care," said he. He took a long 
 breath. He was immensely relieved. " Stop it, 
 will you ? " he asked, smiling at her. 
 
 " Do you want me to ? " 
 
 " Of course I do." 
 
 " Then I will." 
 
 But she did not. He found her, the next time 
 he came over, hiding away her glistening lay-out. 
 He paused on the threshold, frowning. She looked 
 round and laughed as she knelt before the drawer. 
 
 " Caught," she said. 
 
 " Oh, well, it is none of my business, I suppose," 
 said he. " Only ..." 
 
 "Only what?" 
 
 Still kneeling, she bowed her head. Her back 
 was to him. She seemed to be intently listening, 
 waiting. 
 
 "Only what?" she whispered. 
 
 " Only," he said, " it hurts me to see a girl like 
 you ... so young and ... it hurts me . . ." 
 
 She rose, laughing. " I'll stop," she said. " I 
 mean it this time." And still laughing, she lighted 
 a cigarette, and drew the smoke deep, deep into her 
 lungs, blowing it forth in pale clouds. 
 
 But she could not stop. 
 205
 
 John Cave 
 
 " She can't stop, sir," Marie, at the door, said 
 hurriedly as she let him out. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 The trimmest of figures in her black gown, with 
 its snowy wristbands and broad white collar, Marie 
 bowed her face in her hands. 
 
 "What?" he repeated. 
 
 " She can't stop, sir. She tried and tried. It 
 was pitiable. And at last she went quite out of 
 her head. They say to stop will kill her." 
 
 "How kill her?" 
 
 " The lungs, sir. All those girls who come here 
 from Chinatown have lung trouble." 
 
 He walked soberly away. He had sometimes 
 wondered what in the end became of girls like 
 Prudence. Now, it seemed, he was to know. 
 
 But he forgot her when Diana wrote. 
 
 Diana wrote from Capri. Her letter decided 
 him at once to go abroad. 
 
 In a silent and motionless row, reclining on their 
 backs with upturned, immobile faces, the passen- 
 gers, wrapped in their bright rugs, resembled a line 
 of mummies in a museum. 
 
 From the galley puffs of warm air, laden with 
 stale odours of food, floated sluggishly about them, 
 206
 
 John Cave 
 
 and, a little seasick, they grew pale, their nostrils 
 quivered, and they gulped. 
 
 They sailed on a cold day, amid sharp winds, 
 sunshine and ice, and forty-eight hours later they 
 plunged into a strange region of blue-grey vapours. 
 Mists hid the sky. Mists rose out of the sea. In 
 the oppressive heat they panted : 
 
 " Is this the ocean ? It is more like an African 
 swamp." 
 
 " It is the Gulf Stream," said the wiseacres. 
 " It is always so in the Gulf Stream." 
 
 And since there was no wind to blow away the 
 smoke, the coal dust fell continually from it a 
 silent black snow that settled in their hair and 
 their footsteps on the black deck gave forth a 
 crunching sound. 
 
 But as soon as they drew out the Gulf Stream 
 the air became light and dry again, the coal dust 
 disappeared, and the sun shone from a sky of pure 
 and stainless blue. Soon the bright November days 
 were like June days at home. 
 
 Naples drew near, and the passengers talked only 
 of tips. Everywhere little groups debated in low 
 tones the proper tip to give the deck steward, the 
 tip for the stateroom steward, what the bath 
 steward should get, and what the boots. 
 
 At last, their tips all distributed, they disem- 
 207
 
 John Cave 
 
 barked. A whirlwind of cries and dust received 
 them. One by one, with their parcels, they were 
 swallowed up in a mob of raving Neapolitan scare- 
 crows. 
 
 As John Cave stepped on the quay, one man 
 tore his typewriter from his grasp, and a second 
 seized his copying machine and camera. He at- 
 tempted to expostulate. The men grinned and jab- 
 bered in his face, and with wild gestures turned and 
 plunged into the press. Following, he fought his 
 way to a huge and grimy building. 
 
 Here the other passengers in time arrived. 
 They had their hand luggage, but where were their 
 trunks? They loitered about for half an hour or 
 so, consulting one another with anxious smiles, and 
 finally they plunged into the mob outside once 
 more. 
 
 Old ladies, mild and frail, struggled among 
 ragged wharf-rats and scrambled over mountains 
 of boxes. Feeble greybeards, travelling for rest, 
 strained at huge crates in a desperate effort to see 
 the trunks beneath. John Cave ran to and fro 
 almost hysterically. Could his boxes have been 
 left behind? 
 
 Finally they got their belongings assembled in 
 the vast and grimy hall. Trunks and bags and 
 rugs lay everywhere in little heaps, and on each 
 208
 
 John Cave 
 
 heap sat a tourist, bedraggled and flushed, wait- 
 ing for the customs officer. 
 
 And in a circle around them porters and guides 
 and hotel runners stormed fiercely, with passionate 
 gestures, in an unknown tongue. They regarded 
 that mob in silence. A wisp of cobweb hung from 
 the shoulder of a Philadelphia clubman. The 
 mother of an English duchess had a black smear 
 across her chin. Seated in the vast grey building 
 on their luggage, helpless, bedraggled, cowed, they 
 resembled a party of immigrants in an American 
 railway station. 
 
 209
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A LITTLE steamer landed him the next evening 
 at Capri. The moon had not yet risen. The is- 
 land was dark as a cave. He stumbled up a steep, 
 black, lonely road, and at last came blinking into 
 the brilliant court of the Grand Hotel. 
 
 After dinner, guided by a boy with a lantern, he 
 set out to see Diana. 
 
 Up, always up, the road wound, changing itself, 
 where the mountain-side became precipitous, into 
 stone steps, then resuming, as a road, its upward 
 way. How steep and dark it was. He panted. 
 He stumbled continually. Was the villa among 
 the stars? 
 
 The moon rose, the blackness changed to vitre- 
 ous blue, and pointing upwards, the boy said : 
 
 " Stellamaris, signor." 
 
 And John saw, between himself and the moon, 
 many lighted windows, palm-trees dishevelled and 
 black, pale, vague architecture, uprising terraces, 
 and the faint gleam of statuary. 
 
 The boy led him in through a gateway in a 
 clipped hedge. They ascended from terrace to ter- 
 race, mounting flight after flight of worn stone 
 
 210
 
 John Cave 
 
 steps. The air was sweet with heliotrope : helio- 
 trope, luxuriant as ivy, entwined the stone balus- 
 trades, half hiding their crumbled carvings. 
 Finally they came out upon a broad piazza whose 
 floor of black and white marble shimmered like 
 ice under the moon. 
 
 A servant took his name, and Diana came to him 
 at once. Alone, dressed in white, she advanced 
 with swift, girlish grace. Her troubled eyes were 
 fixed on his timidly. 
 
 And as he went to meet her, fear, embarrass- 
 ment, doubt, all ugly thoughts died in his breast, 
 and he was conscious of a profound reverence, a 
 profound pity, for this girl who put her life con- 
 fidently in his weak hands. 
 
 "Dearest," he said. 
 
 "Dearest," she whispered tremulously. 
 
 Side by side they paced the long hall. Its floor 
 of faded and uneven mosaic was covered with Per- 
 sian rugs, and fragments of statuary from the im- 
 perial villa were set in the rose-coloured stucco of 
 the walls. Diana said that as soon as he had seen 
 her aunt they would walk in the moonlight on the 
 balcony. But he frowned, dreading her aunt. 
 
 Yet the interview was brief. " The young," 
 said Mrs. Scarlett, " think they know best." She 
 regarded him with shrewd, kind eyes. 
 
 "I am beginning to feel very old," said he. 
 211
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Marriage," she said, " is not what the young 
 ... it is a different thing. . . ." Her eyes con- 
 templated something remote, hidden and inexpli- 
 cable. She hesitated, frowning; she seemed to be 
 seeking words wherewith to tell a difficult secret; 
 then suddenly she smiled and turned to her niece. 
 " But it is pleasanter on the balcony," she said. 
 
 On the balcony the December night was mild 
 like May. Far below lay the sea, faintly lumi- 
 nous, shivering in the moonlight; and behind the 
 villa a black crag rose up into the stars. 
 
 " Tell me your plans," said Diana. 
 
 "Plans!" 
 
 He clenched his fists and shook them above his 
 head. 
 
 " Plans ! They seem hopeless now. I shall 
 add another failure to my long list, go broke, 
 and be sent home in the steerage by some charitable 
 consul." 
 
 " You are the same John Cave." 
 
 " But everything goes wrong. We'll never be 
 able to marry." 
 
 " Nonsense," she murmured tenderly. 
 
 Taking heart, he told her of the interviews, 
 illustrated wtih photographs, that he hoped to se- 
 cure with kings, with inventors, poets, aeronauts. 
 They would be difficult to secure, but he could do 
 
 212
 
 John Cave 
 
 nothing at home he had quite run out of good 
 ideas. 
 
 A turn of the porch revealed Naples, a bed of 
 golden light; and high above Naples a cluster of 
 great lamps seemed to be threaded on a slanting 
 cord. They were red, yellow, blue, green, a dozen 
 or more, strung one above the other. Suddenly 
 they united ; it was as if the cord had taken fire ; 
 a tongue of flame curled up and disappeared, and 
 a shower of sparks sifted softly down. 
 
 " Vesuvius," said Diana. 
 
 " Vesuvius," he repeated, pleased and awed. 
 
 She leaned over the balcony. The moon shone 
 on a thicket of orange-trees. The ripe fruit glim- 
 mered faintly. 
 
 " Do you see the oranges ? " she said. 
 " Lamps of gold in a green night." 
 
 " Whose place is that ? " he asked, pointing up- 
 ward. 
 
 " That is Mr. Schuyler's villa." 
 
 "Peter Schuyler's?" 
 
 " The famous Peter Schuyler's." 
 
 " I wish I had Schuyler's money. I wonder why 
 he turned Englishman ? " 
 
 "Why don't you ask him?" 
 
 The young man laughed. " Yes ; why don't I ? " 
 
 " Wouldn't that make a good story for you ? " 
 213
 
 John Cave 
 
 she persisted. " An interview with Mr. Schuyler, 
 telling why he abandoned his country ? " 
 
 " Superb," he said. " Tremendous. Such a 
 story would run over America like wildfire. It 
 would be the making of me." He laughed again. 
 "But I could never get such a story," he con- 
 cluded. 
 
 In a country of incredibly great fortunes, Peter 
 Schuyler had inherited one of the greatest. He 
 was as well known as a king. . . . John thought of 
 his strange life. For all his wealth, he had worked 
 hard. He had worked hard at college, winning 
 many prizes. He had worked hard at letters, writ- 
 ing three or four novels of undoubted merit. In 
 politics he had worked hard: he had been in turn 
 a congressman, a senator, an ambassador: and just 
 as his appointment to a cabinet office seemed as- 
 sured, he had incensed his country beyond measure 
 by turning Englishman. . . . Why had he turned 
 Englishman? The newspapers had tried to inter- 
 view him on that point in vain. Hundreds of re- 
 porters had been repulsed from his door. Why 
 had Schuyler turned Englishman? That was an 
 uncovered assignment in every correspondent's 
 notebook. To get that story was every correspon- 
 dent's golden and impossible dream. . . . 
 
 " I can't interview Schuyler," John repeated. 
 
 "Oh, you must try," said Diana. 
 214
 
 John Cave 
 
 " I'll try. It will be useless, though." 
 
 " I'll help you," said the girl. 
 
 " Do you know him? " 
 
 "Oh, very well indeed. I'll introduce you." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " To-morrow. To-morrow morning." 
 
 He took her hands, laughing excitedly. 
 
 " But we are bound to fail," he said. 
 
 215
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 " You are a distant relative o* mine, you know," 
 Mr. Peter Schuyler said to the young girl. " I 
 suppose it is my duty to help you." 
 
 He hesitated. Hope flickered in his petitioners' 
 troubled eyes. Leaning against his desk-top, he 
 nodded and smiled at them. 
 
 " Your confidence has moved me," he said. " I 
 wish you success, speedy success, a speedy mar- 
 riage." 
 
 At this they bowed slightly, but their clouded 
 brows did not yet clear. 
 
 " At the same time . . ." 
 
 " At the same time ? " breathed Diana. 
 
 Mr. Schuyler seemed a little worried, a little 
 annoyed, but he continued to smile gallantly; a 
 tall, shambling figure in loose brown clothes, forty- 
 five or so, sunburnt and ruddy, with dark hair 
 brushed till it glistened like a silk hat. 
 
 " I consent," he said suddenly, and with a sour 
 laugh he seated himself in his desk chair. 
 
 John and Diana exchanged a quick glance. Un- 
 consciously they leaned back in easier postures, and 
 they exhaled a long breath a quiet sigh of 
 216
 
 John Cave 
 
 relief, gratitude, triumph. For an hour they had 
 argued and pleaded, but the young man knew well 
 that it was to Diana, not to him, their victory was 
 due. He got out paper and pencil. 
 
 " I want to thank " 
 
 " Never mind that," said Mr. Schuyler im- 
 patiently. 
 
 Diana walked out on to the balcony. She leaned 
 her arms on the sun-warmed marble of the balus- 
 trade and looked down. The balcony overhung the 
 cliff, and like a wall the golden-brown cliff 
 dropped two thousand feet to the sea. She shud- 
 dered: she seemed to be looking down from a 
 balloon. But the colour, down there in the cool 
 shadow, the gold of the cliff, the deep, deep blue 
 of the water, was ineffably beautiful. It thrilled 
 the heart like music. ... A white gull flew by, 
 turning its head stiffly to regard her with vacant 
 eyes. 
 
 " Why," John was saying on her return, " why 
 did you renounce your American citizenship to be- 
 come an English citizen ? " 
 
 " Because England is a free country," Mr. 
 Schuyler answered, " and I love freedom." 
 
 " Isn't America a free country ? " 
 
 " No. America is a despotic country." 
 
 The pencil scrawled busily. The young man 
 said: 
 
 217
 
 John Cave 
 
 "Who is the despot?" 
 
 " The American," said Mr. Schuyler, " is not 
 oppressed by one despot, but by a hundred. He 
 is oppressed by the railroads, by the newspapers, 
 by the trusts a body of cruel and wicked men, 
 a body of anarchists." 
 
 "Anarchists?" 
 
 " Anarchists. For they have stolen the govern- 
 ment out of the people's hands, and in their own 
 ruthless and powerful hands no man's reputation 
 or life is safe." 
 
 Mr. Schuyler stretched out his long legs, and 
 clasped his long brown fingers behind his head. 
 
 " The American newspapers wrecked my uncle's 
 reputation," he said, "and they have done a good 
 deal towards wrecking mine. The railroads killed 
 one of my best friends. Embalmed beef poisoned 
 my godson in Cuba. 
 
 " The old-fashioned, considerate anarchists," he 
 went on, " kill every century two or three kings 
 whom they have grown tired of supporting. Our 
 ruthless American anarchists kill every year thou- 
 sands that have been supporting them." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " In their factories, where their hands either con- 
 tract mortal diseases because the surroundings are 
 abominably unhealthy, or are slain outright be- 
 cause proper safeguards are not set about the ma- 
 218
 
 John Cave 
 
 chines. On their railroads, which they keep 
 flimsy, antiquated, undermanned, with what slaugh- 
 ter you know. In their great food plants, where 
 they adulterate with dyes and acids the foods they 
 prepare, careless of the deaths from poison that fol- 
 low." 
 
 He ran his hands up and down the back of his 
 head, and the effect was as though the nap of a silk 
 hat had been rumpled. 
 
 " They have to choose," he said, " between re- 
 ducing the population and reducing the profit. 
 They choose to reduce the population." 
 
 " What have you got to say about our rail- 
 roads ? " John asked. 
 
 " They are a red stain on civilisation. They kill 
 and maim a hundred and twenty-five thousand peo- 
 ple a year." 
 
 Very much excited, Mr. Schuyler began to 
 pace the floor. 
 
 " Our railroads could be made safe," he said. 
 " The railroads of Europe are safe. Yes, they 
 could be made safe easily. But a safe raiload 
 costs far more to conduct than a dangerous one. A 
 safe railroad pays but a reasonable profit. 
 
 " Our railroads' profit is exorbitant. If they did 
 
 not gain this profit, they could not pay dividends 
 
 on their billions of dollars of watered stock. Run 
 
 them safely, and their exorbitant profit would fall 
 
 219
 
 John Cave 
 
 to a just one. ' Rather than suffer such a loss,' 
 the railroads say, ' we will keep on killing and 
 maiming our annual hundred and twenty-five thou- 
 sand, for no law has yet been formulated to check 
 this slaughter of ours/ ' ] 
 
 "What about our newspapers?" said the young 
 man. 
 
 " Our newspapers ! " With a loud laugh Mr. 
 Schuyler returned to his chair, and clasped his 
 hands behind his head again. " Our news- 
 papers ! " 
 
 "Well?" said Diana, frowning. 
 
 " I admit," said Mr. Schuyler, " that the literary 
 quality of the leaders in The New York Dispatch 
 is good. But taking our newspapers as a whole, I 
 think they are the cruellest, the vulgarest, the lewd- 
 est newspapers in the world. It was their treat- 
 ment of my uncle that decided me to leave America 
 for good. I'll tell you about it." 
 
 John bent over his notes, anxious not to miss a 
 word. 
 
 " Don't take this down," said Mr. Schuyler 
 sternly. 
 
 " Oh ! " The young man, with an embarrassed 
 smile, leaned back in his chair. Diana sauntered 
 out on to the balcony. Mr. Schuyler began : 
 
 " My uncle fell foul of the newspapers in his old 
 age. He had lived a good and noble life. His 
 
 220
 
 John Cave 
 
 learning and his philanthropy had made him al- 
 most famous. But at sixty-five he contracted an 
 unfortunate marriage. 
 
 " His young wife, some months after this mar- 
 riage, sailed for Cherbourg alone, and the next day 
 the reporters swooped down. 
 
 " I happened to be visiting my uncle at the time. 
 I sat in his library with him when he decided to see 
 the dozen reporters waiting below. It was horri- 
 ble, the half-hour that followed. 
 
 " The reporters crowded into the room with the 
 swagger that our colleges stamp on young men. 
 I remember their soiled boots, their cheap, pre- 
 tentious and untidy dress, and the brown bristles 
 sticking out of their thin, pale cheeks. They 
 needed bathing, shaving, shampooing, brushing, ex- 
 ercise, a dozen things. 
 
 " Those in advance hung back, those behind 
 pushed forward. They seemed a little frightened, 
 a little ashamed, a little amused. Their air sur- 
 prised me. I thought they had come merely to 
 ask my uncle something about his new hospital. 
 
 " The thin old man rose. He was exquisite with 
 his white hair, his fine linen, his orchid bouton- 
 ntire, his frock coat with its old-fashioned velvet 
 collar. Greeting the reporters, he resembled a 
 steel engraving of some famous statesman of the 
 past. But they fell on him without pity. 
 221
 
 John Cave 
 
 " ' Is it true you're going to get a divorce ? ' 
 
 " I saw an odd flush stain his white, soft cheek. 
 He rested his trembling hand on the table. He 
 said that he could not discuss with them a subject 
 of that nature. 
 
 " They nudged one another, whispered, nodded. 
 A lad with red hair spoke up : 
 
 " ' There's a scandal about you and your wife 
 we're going to print to-morrow. You had better 
 let us tell you what it is, so that you can deny it if 
 it isn't true.' 
 
 " He should have told them to go, but he was 
 dumbfounded. Slender and straight in his chair, 
 he looked at them helplessly. They took his silence 
 for consent, and began to bespatter him with vile 
 gossip, gathered heaven knows where. 
 
 " * Are you acquainted with John Mack ? ' 
 
 " ' Didn't your wife hire John Mack as a groom ? ' 
 
 " ' They say she used to take all-day drives in 
 the country with him alone. Is that true? ' 
 
 "My uncle winced and shuddered as though 
 each question had been a well-aimed handful of 
 mud. I should have interfered. It was all hap- 
 pening, though, so quickly. 
 
 " ' Did you make Mack your valet and take him 
 out of livery ? ' 
 
 " ' Did he dine with you? ' 
 
 " ' They say that once, in your private car, Mack 
 
 222
 
 John Cave 
 
 and your wife sat whispering in a corner all the 
 evening. They say you called the attention of the 
 rest of the party to what was going on ; you said, 
 "They'll both be glad when I'm dead." Is that 
 true?' 
 
 "One after another these boys hurled pitilessly 
 their vile questions at the old man. 
 
 " ' I can say nothing, gentlemen.' So he ended 
 the interview. * But I beg you,' he muttered, ' I 
 beg you not to print this scandal.' 
 
 " They trooped out chattering. With a groan 
 he sat down before the fire. He could not look at 
 me. I could not look at him. 
 
 "They printed all the scandal and more. Col- 
 umn after column, day after day, they printed their 
 filth. 
 
 " There was very little truth in it all some 
 truth, perhaps, but very little. I myself don't 
 know the history of my uncle's wretched marriage. 
 It was a subject that I, that all his friends, never 
 thought of bringing up before him. And yet those 
 reporters . . . 
 
 " They made the honourable old age of this phi- 
 lanthropist, this endower of universities, this 
 writer of learned books, a laughing-stock the coun- 
 try over. He resigned all his offices. He re- 
 tired, broken-hearted, to his house in the country. 
 There he soon died." 
 
 223
 
 John Cave 
 
 Mr. Schuyler began to pace the floor again. 
 
 " The freedom of the press," he said. " That 
 is what the freedom of the press has come to in 
 America. We regard France as vicious. And in 
 France, the other day, a duke killed his wife and 
 her paramour and then killed himself, and the 
 French press gave to the tragedy one brief para- 
 graph. And the clean French law forbids, in di- 
 vorce court reports, the publication of a single 
 name." 
 
 John mused a while. " What other objection 
 have you to America ? " 
 
 " I object to our ' spread-eagleism.' " 
 
 " Spread-eagleism ? " 
 
 " Ignorant conceit. In our ignorant conceit we 
 declare that America is the greatest country in the 
 world. ' Greatest in what ? ' someone asks us. 
 ' Greatest in everything,' we answer calmly. What 
 a lie!" 
 
 With a chuckle Mr. Schuyler rose and lighted 
 a cigarette. He pushed the box towards John, 
 and sauntered to the window. Standing there, his 
 eyes on the glittering seascape, he resumed: 
 
 " What a lie ! Are we greatest in literature, 
 in painting, in sculpture, in architecture, in music? 
 Oh, no. We admit we are not greatest, but least, 
 in the arts. But, then, you know, we incline to 
 sneer at the arts in America. We incline to re- 
 224
 
 John Cave 
 
 gard the arts as effeminate. ' Business,' we say, 
 ' business, machinery, manufactures those are 
 the important things of life, and we challenge the 
 world in them.' 
 
 " Well, the world can take up our challenge. 
 What of motor cars ? Can America produce motor 
 cars like those of France, Germany, or Italy? 
 What of watches? If you want a fine watch, don't 
 you buy a Swiss one? Take fabrics, fabrics for 
 men's clothes, say. All our fine, soft, beautiful 
 fabrics are imported from England. Take ship- 
 building. The luxurious, swift and famous ships 
 that break the records and charge the highest fares 
 are all built in England or Germany. Take furni- 
 ture. It is from France that fine furniture comes. 
 Take dressmaking and tailoring. Are not the 
 Paris dressmakers for women and the London 
 tailors for men superior to ours, setting the fash- 
 ions that we burlesque afterwards ? " 
 
 Mr. Schuyler turned from the window. His 
 glance lingered on John Cave's padded shoulders, 
 and with a smile he continued : 
 
 " So, interminably, I could go on, till at last you 
 would ask me in what, with all our spread-eagle 
 boasts, we really do excel. That question is easy 
 to answer. We excel in counterfeiting. We excel 
 in making worthless imitations of valuable and 
 beautiful things. 
 
 225
 
 John Cave 
 
 "Visit an American cloth mill. You find that 
 it is getting daily from Europe samples of new 
 ideas in cloth durable, comely cloth, woven of 
 pure wool and dyed with costly dyes. These 
 samples are hurried to a big room in the mill, and 
 a number of men pick them to pieces, study their 
 construction, and proceed to make counterfeits of 
 them. 
 
 " They take old coats, cast-off stockings, worn- 
 out underwear, all manner of filthy rags, and grind 
 them up into fluff. They soak this fluff with oil, 
 and it has then consistency enough to be spun into 
 thread. They dye the thread with cheap dyes that 
 rub off on the hand like flour. Then they weave it 
 gently, for it is as frail as cobweb, into a counterfeit 
 cloth as worthless as a counterfeit half-dollar. 
 
 " Our cloth factories are counterfeiting plants, 
 and they are typical of our other factories. They, 
 too, are counterfeiting plants, flooding the market 
 with counterfeit boots made of paper, counterfeit 
 brandy made of wood alcohol, counterfeit sausages 
 made of ground potato peelings, counterfeit drugs 
 made of flour, counterfeit life-preservers brought 
 up to standard weight by means of leaden balls 
 concealed in the cork. 
 
 " Leaded life-preservers," he slowly repeated. 
 " Leaded life-preservers. . . . The American busi- 
 ness ideal." 
 
 226
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 DESPAIR overcame him on the long ride to Rome. 
 It was preposterous that he, an unknown foreigner, 
 should dream of interviewing the Pope and the 
 King. Why not abandon everything and return 
 forthwith to America? 
 
 But he had not enough money to return. Tak- 
 ing out his wallet, he counted his packet of bank- 
 notes. There was a little more than he had 
 thought, and his spirits rose. 
 
 The Schuyler story might be a success. It had 
 been written with the utmost care. He had ex- 
 pressed all Schuyler's views without showing either 
 sympathy or antipathy for them. The story was 
 very calm. 
 
 And Schuyler had read and corrected it, and 
 had dictated a note of approval that the young 
 man used as preface: 
 
 " I certify to the accuracy of the following in- 
 terview by Mr. John Cave." 
 
 He had selected a thousand American papers to 
 which to submit the story, and he had been very 
 arrogant with these papers in his letter. 
 
 Why had he been so arrogant? Perhaps the 
 222
 
 John Cave 
 
 American press would not dare to print such a 
 strong attack upon America. But he was sure it 
 would. And he had done well to set the price of 
 the story high from twenty-five dollars down to 
 five nothing below five. 
 
 So hope returned again. He reproached him- 
 self for having thought of flight. What a cham- 
 pion, to think of flight, with his lady looking on ; 
 to strike one blow and then, his lady looking on, to 
 turn and run before even seeing the blow's ef- 
 fect. 
 
 In Rome the next morning he entered the 
 American Embassy bravely. 
 
 " I'd like to see the Ambassador," he said, pre- 
 senting his card. 
 
 " Have you a letter of introduction ? " the clerk 
 asked. 
 
 " No. I am a newspaper writer." 
 
 " Oh," said the clerk. " I guess, though, you 
 had better tell me what your business with the 
 Ambassador is." 
 
 John cleared his throat and said in a cracked 
 voice : 
 
 " I want the Ambassador to help me interview 
 the Pope and the King." 
 
 " Well, well ! " The elderly clerk was impressed. 
 " Just wait one minute." And he hobbled away. 
 
 John waited, wretchedly anxious; but soon the 
 228
 
 John Cave 
 
 door opened again and a young man of distin- 
 guished aspect advanced with the visitor's card in 
 his hand. 
 
 " Are you the Ambassador ? " 
 
 " No," said the young man. " I am the Am- 
 bassador's secretary." He drew nearer. He 
 scanned the card, then he extended it. " What can 
 I do for you ? " he said. 
 
 " I want to interview the Pope and the King," 
 John answered. " I thought our Ambassador 
 might help me with advice, or introductions 
 or " 
 
 " Oh, impossible ! " said the young man. His 
 tone was shocked. He scanned the card again, and 
 again extended it. 
 
 John took it humbly. This return of a card, this 
 action implying repudiation and scorn, had often 
 been practised on him in America. The subtle in- 
 sult was popular amongst American snobs. 
 
 He took the card in the hope of gaining the 
 secretary's favour, and thrusting it in his pocket, 
 he said : 
 
 " Don't you think I might see the Ambassador ? " 
 
 " It would be useless," answered the young 
 man. 
 
 " Can't you, then, tell me," John appealed, " how 
 one gains an audience with " 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said the other. " Oh, no! " 
 229
 
 John Cave 
 
 With a curt nod he vanished. He was a million- 
 aire, and the power that inherited wealth gave him 
 he thought was given him by mental and physical 
 superiority. He went through life scattering in- 
 sults among servants, waiters, shop assistants, 
 among all the poor with whom he came in con- 
 tact. 
 
 " Try the consul," said the old and shabby clerk, 
 as John departed. " He'll fix you up." 
 
 But the consul had gone to Tivoli, and would 
 not return till five. So John went back to his 
 hotel. 
 
 His hotel, so splendid and cheap, so pretentious 
 and unsatisfactory, bored him. In the gilded 
 magnificence of its spacious, overheated public 
 rooms, young American women lounged all day 
 long with Italian officers. The proprietor, a hand- 
 some man of fifty-five or sixty, flirted continually 
 in the halls' recesses with a Detroit spinster of 
 middle age. Insolent waiters in handsome liveries 
 served rank tea, weak coffee and adulterated 
 liqueurs to the American ladies and their Italian 
 cavaliers in the great, gilded salons, and the pro- 
 prietor's wife, an old woman in a yellow wig, 
 moved among her guests with an Italian officer al- 
 ways at her heels, ready for presentation to any 
 American girl who sat alone. 
 
 After luncheon, at a little table by a window, 
 230
 
 John Cave 
 
 John squared himself before his play resolutely. 
 But he could not fix his mind upon the play. For 
 an hour, his elbows on the manuscript, his head 
 in his hands, he brooded. Then, with an oath, he 
 rose and hurried out. 
 
 In his walk he passed palace after palace, cold, 
 massive, gloomy buildings, like jails. The Corso, 
 narrow and sunless, chilled him. How insignifi- 
 cant it was to have so great a name ! 
 
 But suddenly the aspect of the Corso changed. 
 Elegant idlers cropped up. Wardens in imposing 
 liveries, with great staves upright in their hands, 
 flung open the gates of the gloomy palaces, and 
 forth from the palace courts swung superb vic- 
 torias wherein lolled young women in pale toilets, 
 their hair dyed and curled, and their faces delicately 
 painted. 
 
 In an unending procession, in the narrow, sun- 
 less street, these sumptuous equipages dashed back 
 and forth. The wardens with their staves stood 
 erect and still before the palace gates. Their coats 
 reached their ankles, and their staves were topped 
 with gold balls. Old for the most part, ancient 
 retainers with long white beards, day after day 
 they gazed calmly upon this swift, magnificent 
 pageant, this revel of the nobility of Rome. 
 
 John in his progress came out into the sunshine 
 of a great square. A green hill bounded the
 
 John Cave 
 
 square, and looking up, he saw a splendour of sun- 
 drenched terraces, waving palms and plashing 
 fountains. And on each terrace little black figures, 
 cut sharp against the pure brilliance of the sky, 
 leaned on stone balustrades and gazed out over the 
 eternal city. 
 
 From right and left two roads wound up the hill. 
 The carriages ascended slowly. Silver harness 
 clinked. Beautiful, restive horses reared and 
 tossed back foam upon their satin coats. And of- 
 ten, so great was the press, a dead halt came. 
 Then the idlers thrust their faces almost into the 
 carriages, but the ladies lolled on their cushions, 
 calm and inscrutable under a thousand eyes. 
 
 At the top of the hill he found a little park of 
 palms and flowers. A drive encircled it, a band 
 played from a central pavilion, the carriages moved 
 slowly round and round the drive, and the idlers 
 lounged in the brilliant sunshine. 
 
 What could this place be? It was at any rate 
 amusing. He lingered in its pleasant gaiety. 
 
 The band played " Trovatore," and the young 
 women, circling slowly in their carriages, seemed 
 an incarnation of the passionate, soft music. 
 Dressed in pale hues, with their flushed, calm faces, 
 their sables and their violets, they reminded him 
 of actresses. Only among actresses had he ever 
 232
 
 John Cave 
 
 seen such splendid toilets, such lustrous hair, such 
 red lips, and such deep, clear, mysterious eyes. 
 
 But soon the sun sank, the air grew cold. Going 
 to the edge of the terrace, he leaned on the balus- 
 trade. Rome lay below, and in the west a great 
 dome floated, pale amid rosy clouds. . . . 
 
 " St. Peter's ! " he murmured. " And the Fin- 
 do ! " Pleased and surprised, he once more looked 
 about him. 
 
 But the musicians had already gone. One by 
 one the carriages departed. The Pincio lay cold 
 and lonely in the evening light. 
 
 It was nearly five, and he hastened to the Con- 
 sulate. The consul would return no more that day. 
 
 He saw the consul, however, the next morning. 
 
 " Such requests as yours are made continually to 
 us," the consul said. " We couldn't help you unless 
 you had the strongest kind of letters. You see, 
 we don't know you. You might be an anarchist 
 with a bomb." 
 
 " Give me some advice, at least," said the young 
 man. " I have come all the way to Rome to get 
 these interviews. How would you go about getting 
 them in my place ? " 
 
 The consul puffed at his cigar thoughtfully. 
 
 " Any friends here ? " he said at last. 
 
 " None." 
 
 233
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Where are you stopping? " 
 
 " At the Julio." 
 
 The consul smiled. 
 
 " Queer place, that." 
 
 " I thought it was a queer place," said the young 
 man. " Who are all those Italian officers one finda 
 up there ? " 
 
 " That's it," said the consul. " Madame Julio 
 runs a kind of matrimonial agency. She intro- 
 duces poor Italians to American girls, and if a rich 
 marriage is arranged, I believe there's a percent- 
 age." 
 
 " I thought it all very queer," said the young 
 man. " However, about my interviews " 
 
 " It all depends on yourself," said the consul. 
 " It is all a matter of influence." 
 
 " Would a letter from Peter Schuyler have any 
 influence ? " 
 
 " A great deal. Get Schuyler to say a word to 
 the Ambassador." 
 
 So he went back to the hotel and wrote to Peter 
 Schuyler. He was ashamed, after what Schuyler 
 had done for him, to ask another favour of the 
 man, but with a grim smile he told himself that it 
 was perhaps through brazen persistence such as 
 this that worldly success was won. 
 
 That night after dinner he set out to see the 
 Princess Coronia. She had been a New York girl. 
 234
 
 John Cave 
 
 Perhaps she would help a fellow-countryman. But 
 the princess had gone to the opera. 
 
 He tried to see her again the next afternoon. 
 She was then motoring. She would be back, how- 
 ever, at six. While he waited he decided to do a 
 little sightseeing. 
 
 Baedeker in hand, he climbed the Capitoline Hill, 
 and from the eminence of the Via del Campidoglio 
 looked down upon the broken marbles of the 
 Forum's raw brown hole. Those broken marbles, 
 ghastly as bones, failed to thrill him. Neverthe- 
 less, unfolding his map, he proceeded to identify 
 various arches, temples and columns. 
 
 " The Temple of Concord, sir. The Temple of 
 Castor and Pollux. The Arch of Titus." 
 
 A young Italian stood beside him, pointing to 
 right and left with a thin, ragged arm. John 
 turned away, but the young Italian followed, tak- 
 ing from beneath his cape a box of brown wood 
 with three or four drawers. 
 
 " Mosaics, sir ? Souvenir spoons ? Brooches ? " 
 
 And he opened one drawer after another, dis- 
 playing a collection of cheap mosaic jewellery. 
 
 " No, thank you." 
 
 He hurried on, but three other young Italians 
 
 intercepted him. The first offered him post-cards, 
 
 the second offered albums of Roman photographs, 
 
 the third offered old coins. All three had brown 
 
 235
 
 John Cave 
 
 wooden boxes besides, which they opened as a last 
 resort, imploring him to buy. 
 
 They annoyed him. Amid their clamour he 
 could not fix his mind on the Forum's dismal ruins. 
 So, to escape them, he made his way to the 
 Colosseum. 
 
 But at the Colosseum again he was tormented. 
 Guides, post-card vendors and the inevitable mosaic 
 salesmen with their boxes formed a noisy circle 
 about him. Wherever he went, this circle, like a 
 bodyguard, enclosed him. He could not break 
 through it. "Hell!" he said, and jumping into a 
 carriage, he drove to the Vatican, only to find it 
 closed for the day. But he saw the interior of St. 
 Peter's, and its fresh white splendour reminded 
 him of a new opera house. 
 
 The Princess Coronia had returned by six, but 
 she declined to see her fellow-countryman. 
 
 Now, for a fortnight, John doggedly visited every 
 person in Rome who might, by any chance, help 
 him to interview either the King or the Pope. He 
 saw forty persons in all ; he got many rebuffs, 
 many promises ; but the promises were less sincere 
 than the rebuffs. Still he kept up heart. He was 
 determined to make a good show of perseverance 
 before Diana and her aunt. 
 
 His funds, however, would not allow him to 
 persevere eternally ; nor could he see the advantage 
 236
 
 John Cave 
 
 of eternal perseverance in a case so hopeless as 
 this. He had heard nothing of the Schuyler story, 
 bQt then it was still too early to hear. His recent 
 letter to Schuyler had had no reply. 
 
 To Diana, who had gone to Nice, he now sent 
 reports that grew always gloomier and gloomier. 
 In reply to his last report she telegraphed : 
 
 " Why not come here and do Monte Carlo ? " 
 
 He set out for Nice that evening. A compart- 
 ment to himself, he lighted a cigarette, opened a 
 new Tauchnitz, and lay back in his seat cosily. 
 He liked travelling by night. He liked to rush all 
 night long through the unknown darkness, nestled 
 in a well-lighted carriage, a box of cigarettes at his 
 side, a good book in his hand. 
 
 Rome had defeated him, but he was retreating 
 towards a pleasant place. 
 
 If only his money were holding out a little 
 better . 
 
 237
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE sunlight sparkled on ivory-coloured villas, 
 on palms and orange-trees, on beautiful toilets, beds 
 of flowers, a turquoise sea. 
 
 " So this is the Promenade des Anglais." 
 
 They sat near the jetty in the promenade's best 
 hour, and the world's idlers strolled before them, 
 an army of men and women who spared no pains 
 to be, externally, beautiful and pure. 
 
 A gallant show. On the right a line of ivory- 
 coloured villas, hotels and restaurants ; on the left 
 the sea ; and, strolling up and down the promenade, 
 men and women dressed as for a stage garden- 
 party. 
 
 " Isn't it different," said Diana, " from a winter 
 day at home ? " 
 
 " Think of the home slush," said he, " the grey 
 sky, the ulsters spattered with mud, the cold, raw 
 winds." 
 
 They rose and sauntered on. 
 
 "Venez voir! Venes voir!" a great voice 
 shouted from the beach. 
 
 " Oh," said Diana, " look ! An octopus ! " 
 
 Two fishermen had an octopus in a tub of water 
 
 238
 
 John Cave 
 
 on the beach below. One let a tentacle fasten on 
 his finger. 
 
 " Venez voir, m'sieu' 'dame ! " 
 
 But John caught sight of a plate of coppers be- 
 side the tub. 
 
 "Don't look at that," he said. "It is top 
 horrible." 
 
 And he hurried the interested girl away. 
 
 "Venez voir I" the fishermen called after them 
 in disappointed tones. 
 
 Motor cars continually glided up to the prome- 
 nade, and from them women in white descended 
 for the morning walk. 
 
 " There is a Frenchman," said Diana. " I can 
 tell him by his elongated boots." 
 
 " Look at those tall, thin Englishmen," said 
 John. " The English are the best-dressed men in 
 the world. How clean they are. But they seem 
 cold, as if they were not quite dry from their last 
 bath." 
 
 " And that young man is an American," said 
 Diana mischievously. " Americans always have 
 padded shoulders, they always need shaving, their 
 boots are always soiled, and their clothes are always 
 unbrushed. Slap an American on the back, and 
 he'd disappear in a cloud of dust." 
 
 Noon sounded, and leaving her at her hotel, he 
 set out on a shopping tour. He bought two eggs, 
 239
 
 John Cave 
 
 a loaf, and a mutton chop. Then he went back to 
 his room and cooked his luncheon over a spirit 
 lamp. It was sad to cook and eat alone like that, 
 but it could not be helped. Financially he was 
 reduced to the worst straits. 
 
 Mrs. Scarlett had invited him to motor with 
 them in the afternoon to Monte Carlo, and in the 
 swift, luxurious car the ride in the golden weather 
 was a delight. The road skirted the sea. White 
 villas gleamed amid palm gardens. Sometimes, far 
 to the north, they saw snow glistening on blue 
 peaks. 
 
 At the Casino, strolling in halls of gilt and mar- 
 ble, under great pale paintings of nude women, 
 they admired the strangely elegant gowns of the 
 slim girls who sauntered, with lewd eyes, at the edge 
 of the gambling throngs. 
 
 Mrs. Scarlett gave an hour to roulette. She 
 won fifty francs. " Now," she said, " we'll have 
 some tea." 
 
 Assenting with a ghastly smile, John led the way 
 to a table by a window. 
 
 " Two teas." 
 
 But the ladies remonstrated. " Oh, you must 
 have some tea." 
 
 " No, no ; I never eat between meals." 
 
 " And when I'm hostess, too," cried Mrs. Scar- 
 lett. She pouted gaily. Her pretty eyes were 
 240
 
 John Cave 
 
 shining. The roulette had made a young girl of 
 her. " You might break your rule when I am 
 hostess ! " 
 
 He frowned: he had not been aware that she 
 was hostess. But it was too late now to change 
 his mind. They might suspect the reason. 
 
 Assuredly some money should soon arrive. 
 The Schuyler story would appear on Sunday. He 
 had written Roberts that he was hard up, that the 
 first fifty dollars collected was to be cabled to him. 
 How tired he was of all this solitary cooking ! 
 
 So he mused as he hastened home for dinner 
 with his hands full of packages beefsteak, po- 
 tatoes, bread, a pat of butter in a little bag. He 
 boiled the potatoes and ate them while the steak 
 cooked. The room was cold, the lamp gave but a 
 dim light, and chewing disconsolately, his overcoat 
 drawn round his shoulders, he mourned his wasted 
 life. 
 
 That evening, from Mrs. Scarlett's box, he saw 
 Madama Butterfly. His snowy shirt-front con- 
 cealed a terror-stricken heart. He was continually 
 fearful of some unforeseen expense which, with 
 his eight francs, he would be unable to meet. 
 
 Between the acts girls selling sweets and ices 
 went among the audience. To escape them he 
 hurried from the box at every curtain-fall, explain- 
 ing that he wished to smoke. He knew that this 
 241
 
 John Cave 
 
 was the wrong thing to do, and Diana's glance of 
 reproach and Mrs. Scarlett's puzzled frown de- 
 pressed him. 
 
 But the next morning he was encouraged by a 
 note from Alonzo Roberts. 
 
 "A few of the Schuyler stories have been re- 
 turned," Roberts wrote, " but I have received a 
 great many flattering letters. Altogether I think 
 you are going to do extremely well. What else 
 have you sent out ? " 
 
 The letter was encouraging but vague. And 
 that question, " What else have you sent out ? " was 
 a horrible reproach. For he had found nothing to 
 write about in Monte Carlo, and he had not a 
 single idea for any other stories. 
 
 His linen became a source of great annoyance. 
 Finally he was reduced to his last collar. He wore 
 the collar as little as possible. The moment he 
 entered his room he removed it carefully and laid 
 it away in a drawer. Nevertheless it gradually 
 grew soiled. 
 
 Every morning, before putting it on, he rubbed 
 it with a handkerchief. This seemed to bring back 
 a little of its pallor. Once he moistened the hand- 
 kerchief and essayed to wash away certain dark 
 streaks. But the moisture removed the collar's 
 gloss and raised several blisters on its surface ; and 
 with a low cry of alarm he hastily desisted. 
 242
 
 John Cave 
 
 At the end he rubbed a little powder into the 
 collar every morning. The powder undeniably was 
 an improvement. Nevertheless the collar looked 
 anything but fresh. It had a stale and sickly, a 
 kind of livid hue, and on his walks he continually 
 thought of it with pain, much as a hunchback thinks 
 of his deformity. 
 
 He spent Sunday afternoon with Mrs. Scarlett 
 and Diana at Monte Carlo again. The ladies lost 
 a thousand francs; it was embarrassing that he 
 could not play himself. On their departure the 
 chauffeur met them at the Casino door, a look of 
 distress on his face. The automobile had broken 
 down. Should he rent another to take them back? 
 
 " Oh, no," said Mrs. Scarlett. " It is not worth 
 while. Here is the electric tram. We'll return in 
 that." 
 
 And she boarded the car that stood beside the 
 Casino. John and Diana followed. 
 
 A terrible moment now ensued for the young 
 man. With only seven sous, what was he to do? 
 The car would start in a few minutes. Could he 
 endure the mortification of letting Mrs. Scarlett 
 pay his fare? 
 
 " By Jove," he said, " I forgot those post-cards." 
 He rose hastily. " There is still time." 
 
 " Don't miss the car," Diana cautioned him. 
 
 " No fear," said he. 
 
 243
 
 John Cave 
 
 He hid himself in the garden till the car was 
 gone. Biting his lip nervously, he asked himself 
 how far it was to Nice. He had a long walk before 
 him ; fifteen miles or more. 
 
 The sun sank as he left Monaco, and in passing 
 Cap d'Ail he was very nearly run over. The stars 
 came out at Eze, and the rest of the walk was in 
 the dark: a darkness illumined fitfully by the great 
 lamps of onrushing motor cars. He moved always 
 in a cloud of dust created by innumerable cars, and 
 amid the lightninglike flash of the lamps, the honk 
 and shriek of the horns, he kept darting frantically 
 from one side of the road to the other, like a moth 
 that has blundered out of the night into a lighted 
 room. At Beaulieu he finished his last cigarette. 
 At Villef ranche he lay down in despair under a tree 
 to pass the night. But the ground was cold, and 
 he soon rose and stumbled on again. A long, long 
 walk. 
 
 White with dust, at last he entered Nice. He 
 was faint with hunger and fatigue, yet what sort 
 of a dinner could he get for seven sous? 
 
 A thought struck him. He would have an Irish 
 stew. And pocketing his pride, he bought four sous' 
 worth of meat, two sous' worth of potatoes and 
 onions, and a sou's worth of bread. 
 
 The Irish stew was a success. It filled the frying- 
 pan. It gave forth a ravishing odour. In his 
 244
 
 John Cave 
 
 stocking feet the weary young man limped briskly 
 about the dim, cold room, and when the stew was 
 done, he ate it to the last mouthful, an overcoat 
 across his knees. Then he smoked two cigarette- 
 ends that he had found in the fireplace, and imme- 
 diately went to bed. 
 
 He slept well, he awoke refreshed. The sun- 
 shine streamed into the room, and as he shaved, a 
 telegram arrived. 
 
 He gave a cry of joy. It was, no doubt, the 
 money from Roberts. And opening it, he read : 
 
 " Schuyler interview excellent will you join dis- 
 patch staff two hundred a week herkimer." 
 
 He began to pace the floor. He made odd flour- 
 ishes with the open razor in his hand. " Hurrah, 
 hurrah," he kept saying mechanically. 
 
 Then he resumed his dressing with frantic haste. 
 Diana must know, Diana must share his ineffable 
 happiness. He was powdering his sallow collar 
 when he got another message, this time a notifica- 
 tion from Cook's that the money had come. 
 
 Roberts had cabled him five hundred dollars. 
 He wired his acceptance of Herkimer's offer. 
 Then he hastened to Diana and her aunt. 
 
 It was very early, a beautiful morning, and in 
 honour of his success they took an all-day motor 
 245
 
 John Cave 
 
 ride. In the evening they saw Thais at the Casino, 
 and they supped at midnight at the London House. 
 
 " So you are having great success," said Mrs. 
 Scarlett. She sat alone with him before the fire in 
 her salon. 
 
 " Great success for me," he answered. " But I 
 owe it all to Diana." 
 
 " I am glad to hear you say that." In her silver- 
 coloured gown the slim and graceful woman, with 
 her young face and grey hair, gave him a long, 
 clear look. 
 
 " It is the simple truth. Take the Schuyler in- 
 terview. Diana not only suggested it, she got it as 
 well; and the Schuyler interview is the cause of 
 everything." 
 
 " Can you keep it up, do you think? " 
 
 "With Diana's help. Her help ... her influ- 
 ence and advice. ... I can't tell you what they 
 mean to me." 
 
 She smiled rather sadly. Then she questioned 
 him about his life, and he told her his squalid story. 
 
 " But don't think I liked it down there in the 
 morass," he ended. " None of us like it down 
 there. I wanted to climb out. But the effort, the 
 great effort ... it seemed hopeless, useless . . . 
 till she came." 
 
 " Till she came," said Mrs. Scarlett, with her sad 
 smile. " She came and she will go." 
 246
 
 John Cave 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 N The girl she seems to you will go. The god- 
 dess will go. Then, desolate, will you sink back 
 into the morass again ? " 
 
 " The goddess will never go," said the young 
 man. 
 
 "Ah, youth!" She smiled and sighed. "Ah, 
 youth ! youth 1 " Her shining gaze seemed full of 
 pity. 
 
 247
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " ' WIFE ' I hate that word." 
 
 " And I hate the word ' husband.' " 
 
 " Don't ever call me ' wife.' " 
 
 " And you must never call me ' husband/ either." 
 
 In that vague manner they expressed their loath- 
 ing of the average marriage. Of the average 
 marriage? Of the universal marriage. For nei- 
 ther had ever seen one marriage that seemed 
 happy, desirable, more than endurable. A little 
 uneasily Diana resumed : 
 
 " Husband and wife. . . . But we are not to be 
 like other husbands and wives, are we ? " 
 
 " Never. Never." 
 
 " But I suppose they all say that in the begin- 
 ning, eh ? " 
 
 " It will come true in our case." 
 
 And in his firm conviction of the immortality 
 of this passion of theirs which, like alcohol or 
 hasheesh, made life a thing of perfect beauty, of 
 utter happiness, he smiled easily at her absurd fear, 
 as one smiles at a child's absurd fear of the dark. 
 
 " I wish," he said, " that we could wander over 
 the world all our lives." 
 
 248
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Ah, so do I," said she. 
 
 " We could, if the play succeeded. As for chil- 
 dren . . ." 
 
 " No children," said Diana, her gaze fixed on the 
 fire. 
 
 " No children," he repeated. He glanced at the 
 delicate and pensive profile over which the firelight 
 flowed, and his heart melted with tenderness. He 
 desired above all things to make her life happy, to 
 shield her from pain. " Children," he said, " would 
 rob us of our freedom." 
 
 " We must keep free." 
 
 An attendant knocked and entered with a tele- 
 gram. 
 
 "Oh, can auntie be ill ?" 
 
 He opened the telegram and read: 
 
 " Prudence very low wants hundred cable in- 
 structions roberts." 
 
 Prudence ... he had forgotten Prudence . . . 
 and under Diana's gaze he grew warm and uncom- 
 fortable. He could hardly look up. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Only a cable from Roberts," he said, slipping 
 the little paper into his pocket. 
 
 "What does he say?" 
 
 " Dear, don't ask me." 
 
 249
 
 John Cave 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because, because 
 
 " It is bad news," she said. " You think it will 
 make me unhappy. Has Herkimer " 
 
 " No, it is nothing like that. It is something 
 that would pain you. Something in my past, dead 
 now, but " 
 
 Her face grew cold, scornful, sad. " Let me 
 see it," she said, extending her hand. And he gave 
 it reluctantly to her. 
 
 He had put away that episode of his past; he 
 had slain and buried and forgotten it. But it had 
 burst the bonds of death, the bonds of the deep 
 grave, the bonds of oblivion, as the past has a way 
 of doing ; and now it stalked grinning into this dim 
 salon where he sat with his wife in the pure enjoy- 
 ment of a beautiful honeymoon. 
 
 "Who is Prudence?" 
 
 " I'll tell you," he answered, " for since I am 
 going to help her, you have a right to know. Other- 
 wise " 
 
 " Why should you help her? " 
 
 " Because she has helped me. When I was ill 
 she nursed me. She got me my berth on " 
 
 " Were you in love with her ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But you but she is not a good girl, is she ? " 
 
 " She doesn't pretend to be a chaste girl." 
 250
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Then you shall not help the wicked creature ! " 
 
 " She isn't a wicked creature. She is brave and 
 honourable." 
 
 "Honourable?" 
 
 " Honourable." 
 
 " But you said she was " 
 
 "Unchaste?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Chastity is nothing. There is no such thing." 
 
 He hesitated. From adolescence he had believed 
 that chastity, chastity of thought as of deed, could 
 not exist. And he still held this belief. Yet he 
 must believe, to be happy, in the chastity of Diana. 
 
 She rose, and at the threshold of her bedroom, 
 standing with her back to him, she said in a hard 
 little voice : 
 
 " Do as you please. I don't care." 
 
 The door closed behind her.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 CHASTITY, after all, he found in marriage, in the 
 husband and wife who loved one another, faithful 
 in thought as in deed, he regarding all women and 
 she regarding all men with calm eyes, cool and clear 
 as the eyes of children. 
 
 He remained abroad a year. Herkimer sent him 
 now to London, now to Vienna, now to Paris or 
 Berlin he followed the march of events literally. 
 And in the clean and beneficent ways of marriage 
 he worked well. He worked with a machinelike 
 regularity, an unflagging enthusiasm, in strange 
 contrast with the fitful work of the past. 
 
 The year sped in fashionable hotels, in trains de 
 luxe, in splendid capitals, in gay watering-places, 
 and its influence was manifest in the young couple's 
 changed appearance. Diana soon came to be taken 
 everywhere for a Parisienne, while John was taken 
 for an Englishman. This error, when it was 
 brought to their attention, caused them to smile 
 with secret delight. Then Diana, turning with re- 
 doubled disgust from her American gowns, chose 
 French apparel of a stranger elegance, a more 
 bizarre grace. He even outdid the Londoner in the 
 252
 
 John Cave 
 
 precision of his dress, invariably wearing in town 
 dark, smooth, lustrous raiment, and, out of town, 
 coloured clothes of rough, soft stuffs, with coloured 
 collars and brown boots. 
 
 Diana shared no less in his work than in his 
 pleasure. She had mastered both typewriter and 
 camera, she typed all his manuscript, and when pic- 
 tures were needed for an interview, accompanying 
 her husband, she posed the celebrity while John 
 questioned him. 
 
 Sometimes, late at night, laying down his pen, 
 the young man would rise, light a cigarette, and 
 pace the bright, still, busy room with happiness 
 thrilling in his heart like music. He gazed at the 
 slim figure at her desk, absorbed, grave and con- 
 tent ; and he asked himself how it was possible that 
 life, which he had found always ugly and sad, could 
 give him now such clean and stimulating happiness 
 as this. This must be but a brief episode in life. 
 This could not last. 
 
 Frightened a little, he bent over her, and when 
 she looked up with a tender smile, he put his arm 
 about her and murmured in a sad voice : 
 
 " Dearest, let us love one another always." 
 
 Laughing tremulously, lightly leaning for a mo- 
 ment her golden head against his breast, she sighed : 
 
 " Ah, we will, we will." 
 
 But there was fear in his voice, a fear that, as 
 253
 
 John Cave 
 
 the year waned, justified itself. He found that 
 passion was cooling. 
 
 Passion was cooling. His eyes, no longer cold 
 and pure, lingered now upon beautiful women, and 
 he perceived that in his case marital chastity of 
 thought as of deed had ceased to be involuntary, 
 like breathing, but required, like uphill walking, a 
 certain slight effort. And in Diana's case. . . . 
 But he thrust the thought aside. 
 
 He had believed that passion, the sole source of 
 perfect marital chastity, would never die. Would 
 it in his case soon be dead? Was it already dead? 
 Faithful in deed only, was he doomed to go through 
 life crushing in his heart now this desire and now 
 that ? Then marriage had duped him. 
 
 Yet, duped or not, he was happy. He would 
 be loyal. But Diana. . . . Again he thrust the 
 thought aside. 
 
 254
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LEAVING the Dispatch office early, he walked 
 home in the cold blue dusk. 
 
 The still cold of the November evening filled 
 him with an exquisite sense of youth, and he strode 
 on more buoyantly in his lustrous London garb. 
 Exhilarating thoughts rose like champagne bubbles 
 in his mind, thoughts of success, money, praise. 
 And then the memory of Mrs. Slocum caused him 
 to smile. 
 
 The Slocums were to dine with them that night. 
 Slocum he despised, but Marie Slocum was beauti- 
 ful. . . . 
 
 The odour of violets filled the air, and entering 
 the flower shop with a vague feeling of penitence, 
 of pity, he bought Diana a great bouquet of purple 
 blooms. Poor Diana ! But she should never know 
 his vagrom thoughts. 
 
 The dinner was a success. Everything appeared 
 to succeed here in New York. Slocum opened his 
 eyes at the simple pommes soufflees, and when the 
 chef came in person to prepare the caneton a la 
 presse in its big silver machine, the young million- 
 aire could not conceal his crude awe. 
 255
 
 John Cave 
 
 They returned to the drawing-room for coffee. 
 Slocum and Diana chose the ottoman near the 
 Hoyas portfolio, but Mrs. Slocum said that she was 
 cold, and seating herself before the fire, she crossed 
 her knees and smoked, one bare arm hanging list- 
 lessly over the chair-back. 
 
 Balancing his cup, he stood behind her. Hers 
 was a wan, dark beauty, a sultry beauty. Discon- 
 tent lurked in the corners of her full lips. He 
 loved to look at her. 
 
 Frowning slightly, without lifting her eyes from 
 the fire, she said : 
 
 " Don't look at me like that." 
 
 Then she smiled a strange smile, and resumed 
 her silent contemplation of the flame. 
 
 His spoon rattled noisily against his cup. A 
 little shiver ran over him. With regret and disap- 
 pointment he perceived that he did not want to be 
 unfaithful to his wife. 
 
 Diana extricated him from his confusion. " Will 
 you bring me the cigarettes ? " she called. 
 
 He hastened to her, immensely relieved. His 
 violets in her corsage consoled and strengthened 
 him. He sat; down beside her, as it were under her 
 wing. 
 
 But Mrs. Slocum wished to see the holographs. 
 He led her reluctantly to the library, and side by 
 side they studied the holographs of Lamb, Flaubert, 
 256
 
 John Cave 
 
 Dostoyeffsky. In turning a page their hands 
 touched. Her shoulder, firm and elastic, pressed 
 against his. . . . But he hurried to the cabinet for 
 another holograph. 
 
 As he was returning, he felt her gaze upon him, 
 and lifting his eyes, he met her look of amused 
 contempt. 
 
 Had she any right to scorn and ridicule him for 
 his marital loyalty? Well, he had, perhaps, made 
 an advance or two. And now, in his retreat, no 
 doubt he did look rather small. But he had not 
 realised the unspeakable falsity, the unspeakable 
 cruelty, of the amours of the married. 
 
 " Suppose we go back to the drawing-room," he 
 said in a sulky voice. 
 
 Diana and Slocum stood beside the fire, very busy 
 with something ; but on the others' appearance they 
 drew suddenly back, and Slocum thrust his hand- 
 kerchief up his cuff and sat down in an awkward 
 attitude, with one arm placed across his waistcoat, 
 like a broken arm in a sling. 
 
 Mrs. Slocum asked her husband to explain a 
 Hoyas, and John, left alone with Diana, said : 
 
 " I lunched with Miles and Herkimer to-day." 
 
 "Did you?" 
 
 " They were awfully kind. Miles talked again of 
 buying The Press." 
 
 "Did he?" 
 
 B5Z
 
 John Cave 
 
 " He asked a lot of questions. I told him all 
 about old yawning Collier, and Gray the rubber 
 stamp man, and Clayton with his brown frock coat 
 and white sombrero. He said " 
 
 "Did he?" 
 
 Puzzled at the stupid interruption, he glanced at 
 her. No, she had not been listening. Her lips 
 parted, her eyes wide, her pose strained, she gazed 
 across the room at the Slocums. His gaze followed 
 hers, and he saw that the Slocums were furiously 
 quarrelling in subdued tones. He smiled a tolerant 
 smile. 
 
 " Listen, Di," he said. " Miles may send me 
 over to The Press's sale. He " 
 
 But Diana had risen. She advanced slowly to 
 meet the advancing Slocums. 
 
 " We must be going," said Slocum. He still held 
 his arm across his waistcoat. It was his right arm, 
 and he had to withdraw it to shake hands. John 
 saw then a great stain upon his shirt-bosom. 
 
 " Good-night," said Diana, and she held out her 
 hand to Mrs. Slocum. 
 
 But Mrs. Slocum with a smile and a toss of the 
 head ignored her good-night and her proffered 
 hand. She nodded to John and passed out. 
 Slocum hurried after her, still imitating grotesquely 
 a man with a broken arm. 
 258
 
 John Cave 
 
 "What the deuce ..." Utterly bewildered, he 
 stared at Diana. " What the deuce . . ." 
 
 With a slight start he turned his back upon her, 
 and, striding to the grate, he stood and gazed down 
 into the flame. 
 
 The stain was a purple stain. It was about the 
 height of Diana's violets. Her violets were 
 crushed. . . . What a surprise! 
 
 He heard her stirring vaguely to and fro behind 
 him. 
 
 " Good-night," she whispered. 
 
 Without moving he shouted suddenly: 
 
 " Get out of my sight ! " 
 
 A long while after she was gone he stood in the 
 silent room, his hands in his pockets, his back 
 bowed, his legs wide apart, gazing down at the 
 dying fire. 
 
 She, too, then. . . . What a surprise ! 
 
 259
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 'MRS. SLOCUM, telephoning to him the next morn- 
 ing at the office, asked him to take her out to 
 luncheon. 
 
 They met in the restaurant with a feigned gaiety 
 that soon gave way to silence and gloom. He 
 ordered an expensive luncheon, and in taciturn em- 
 barrassment they bent over the hors d'ccuvres. But 
 they ate little. They were not at all like lovers. 
 They were like two mourners with a little dead 
 child upstairs. 
 
 But the champagne loosed their restraint, and 
 John, refilling her glass, said with a shamefaced 
 laugh : 
 
 " Last night was rather horrible, wasn't it? " 
 
 " Do you care ? " said Mrs. Slocum. 
 
 "Yes. Do you?" 
 
 She nodded. " In a dog in the manger way." 
 
 " When I married," said he, " I believed that my 
 passion for Diana would not die." 
 
 " We all believe that when we marry for love." 
 
 " But passion soon died," he resumed. " Mar- 
 riage duped me. Yet I was glad I had married. 
 Fool that I was, I would be loyal. And I saw in 
 260
 
 John Cave 
 
 my new theory of marriage, with its renunciations 
 and its self-denial, something noble and austere." 
 
 He pushed aside his untouched cutlet. 
 
 " I sometimes wondered," he faltered, " if Diana 
 could accept that austere view. . . . Well, she 
 couldn't, it appears. Good-bye, then, to loyalty. 
 The divorce . . ." 
 
 " Good-bye to loyalty," said Mrs. Slocum ; " but 
 why a divorce ? " 
 
 "But honour " 
 
 " No woman can stain your honour," she inter- 
 rupted. " Her actions touch no one's honour but 
 her own." 
 
 The waiter announced that Mrs. Slocum's motor 
 car had arrived, and she said carelessly, drawing 
 down her veil : 
 
 " Come with me, if you like." 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 And in her landaulet they were soon rushing 
 furiously and smoothly along a white road, between 
 two lines of bare trees that were bent in the wind 
 at a uniform angle. Mrs. Slocum leaned back in 
 her soft furs, and gazing straight before her, she 
 said bitterly : 
 
 " Overlook it all. That is what I shall do." 
 
 " Why will you overlook it ? " 
 
 She smiled sourly. 
 
 " Because marital fidelity is impossible," she said.
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Fidelity of thought is impossible," he agreed. 
 
 " Impossible." She paused. Her dark eyes 
 gazed at the western sky through a tracery of bare 
 boughs, a sky of transparent gold shining through 
 grey lace. 
 
 " When I married," she said, " I too believed 
 in the immortality of passion. It died. It always 
 dies. . . . But selfish passion was succeeded by un- 
 selfish affection. I love my husband now as I love 
 my father or my brother. And so he loves me. 
 Why, then, a divorce ? " 
 
 He frowned. " But the deceit ! You can't stand 
 the deceit. Remember last night." 
 
 " Perhaps it was the deceit's failure that angered 
 me last night," she answered slowly. " The dis- 
 covery of these things gives one, of course, horrible 
 pain. But if I don't discover them . . ." 
 
 " But the deceit," he repeated. " The life- 
 long " 
 
 She interrupted him impatiently. 
 
 " Passion is bestial," she said. " Yet we can't 
 escape it. Then, when it seizes us, let us conceal 
 its work. That isn't deceit, it is decency." 
 
 Reluctantly, because he thought she desired it, 
 he took her hand, and peeling back the glove, he 
 kissed the soft, warm palm. But she drew her hand 
 262
 
 John Cave 
 
 away. To his surprise, to his relief, she would not 
 let him kiss her mouth. And with some little irri- 
 tation she disengaged her waist from his awkward 
 arm. 
 
 263
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 " DEAR JOHN, I buy The Dispatch every day 
 because you have articles in it and I enjoy them 
 very much. Mr. Roberts told me you were mar- 
 ried and he said you were very successful. I am 
 so glad. I wonder if you would care to come and 
 see me? There could be no harm in it you will 
 know why if you come. PRUDENCE." 
 
 No harm in it: then she was ill? She gave a 
 miserable address. Perhaps she wanted money 
 again. Well, what if she did? She had not be- 
 grudged him money in his need. 
 
 The hansom hurried, and leaning forward, he 
 mused upon life. . . . And from Prudence's life 
 his thoughts turned to his own. . . . His relation- 
 ship with Diana, calm and even affectionate, em- 
 braced nothing now but their material welfare: he 
 worked his best; she, with her sincere and humble 
 and unselfish interest, kept him up to his best work. 
 Yet it was difficult to live always upon the surface 
 of their relationship, though, to sustain himself, he 
 often swore that woman really valued her chastity 
 no more than man valued his. . . . Men from the 
 264
 
 John Cave 
 
 beginning, on purely selfish grounds, had tried to 
 hypnotise women into the belief that chastity be- 
 fore marriage, fidelity after it, were the supreme 
 womanly virtues. All men preached that lie; all 
 the arts and all the creeds, being masculine, 
 preached it ; and all preached it in vain. . . . He 
 smiled grimly. Then he sighed. But why did he 
 sigh? He sighed because he wished his wife had 
 been like the Mahommedan ideal, the impossible 
 creature, devoted bod^ and soul, who in her hus- 
 band's absence would neither laugh, nor listen to 
 music, nor make her toilet, nor eat her favourite 
 dishes. . . . 
 
 The hansom stopped before a mean house, and 
 in answer to his ring the door was opened by a 
 young woman with a cigarette in her mouth. She 
 wore a loose pink gown. Her short hair, as yellow 
 and dry as straw, curled over her head in tight 
 kinks. Her face was daubed with rouge and 
 powder, and when she smiled a gold front tooth 
 shot, like a little sun, bright rays into his eyes. 
 
 " Hello, dear," she said. 
 
 " Good morning," he answered stiffly. " Does 
 Miss Pru " 
 
 " Oh, excuse me. Are you Mr. Cave? " 
 
 He nodded, and she led him down a bare hall and 
 through a bare parlour. The house seemed quite 
 unfurnished. Not a rug, not a picture, not a seat, 
 265
 
 John Cave 
 
 was to be seen. But the dining-room boasted a 
 table and a half-dozen deal chairs, and she left him 
 there with three girls. 
 
 " Just wait here a minute, Mr. Cave." 
 
 The three girls regarded him calmly. In loose 
 gowns, one of yellow, one of red, one of green, they 
 leaned their elbows on the table, amid a litter of 
 egg-stained breakfast dishes, smoking cigarettes 
 and sipping coffee from enormous cups. 
 
 " Take a seat," said the girl in red. She smiled 
 languidly, then she yawned. " I feel rotten this 
 morning," she murmured. 
 
 " My head aches fit to split," the girl in yellow 
 sighed. 
 
 " If we had stopped," whined the girl in green, 
 " when I said to . . ." 
 
 Crossing her legs and clasping her ankle with 
 nicotine-stained fingers, the girl in red struck a 
 match on the sole of her slipper and lighted a Vir- 
 ginia cigarette that smelt like burning hay. 
 
 " Maybe," she said, " Mr. Cave will treat." 
 
 They all turned to him with polite, inquiring 
 smiles. 
 
 "Yes, I'll gladly treat," said he, and he laid a 
 dollar on the table. " Tell me, is Prudence ill ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "111? Dying!" 
 
 " Nonsense ! " 
 
 266
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Wait till you see her." 
 
 And they were shaking their heads lugubriously 
 over Prudence when the girl in pink returned. 
 
 " Now, sir, if you're ready." 
 
 " Has Prudence a physician ? " he asked, as they 
 ascended the steep, dark stairway. 
 
 " Doc Capp drops in now and then. But he says 
 there is no hope." 
 
 " I suppose she's hard up ? " 
 
 " Of course. She can't walk out more than once 
 a week, if that." 
 
 " ' Walk out ' ? I don't quite grasp " 
 
 Then, in a flash, he did grasp, and the ugly 
 phrase gave him a new and sombre picture of his 
 friend. He frowned. . . . 
 
 " She was arrested last month." 
 
 They reached the door, and his guide withdrew 
 in silence. He stood a moment on the threshold. 
 
 Prudence, propped with pillows, sat in the wide 
 bed in a dream. Her dark hair lay in a thick rope 
 on her white gown. Though thin and pale beyond 
 belief, the freshness and the loveliness of youth 
 still, like a faint perfume, clung to her, and there 
 was no change in the beautiful eyes. On his ap- 
 pearance she started, she flushed, and, as she 
 extended her thin hands, her air had never been 
 gayer, more reckless, more charming. 
 
 " Dear old girl," he said. 
 267
 
 John Cave 
 
 Murmuring gentle little phrases of welcome, 
 Prudence drew her hands slowly away. 
 
 " Are you glad to see me ? " she asked. 
 
 " Am I glad to see you ! Do you think I have 
 no memory ? " 
 
 She laughed softly. 
 
 " What good times we used to have," she said. 
 " Do you remember the night we first met ? Do 
 you remember our first ride together in the han- 
 som?" 
 
 " Do I remember ! " 
 
 " You kissed me in the hansom," she resumed, 
 gazing out of the window dreamily. 
 
 Her pallid face was like a wedge between the 
 heavy masses of her unbound hair. The ghost of 
 a smile made her lips tremble. He regarded her 
 in silence a long time. . . . From the lowered lids 
 tears welled; they hung glistening in the long 
 lashes. 
 
 And suddenly she bowed her forehead on her 
 knees and wept. Her hair fell forward. Under it 
 her voice had a muffled sound. 
 
 " Oh," she moaned, " why have I spoiled my life? 
 . . . Must I die? ... I am afraid of death." 
 
 " You are not going to die," he said. 
 
 " I lie awake at night," she whispered. " I can't 
 sleep for fear." 
 
 " Well, that is all over now," said he. " I'll send 
 268
 
 John Cave 
 
 a physician here at once. And in the mountains 
 you'll soon grow strong again." 
 
 She leaned back on the pillows, shaking her head 
 incredulously. 
 
 The door opened, and a fat, elderly man ap- 
 peared. He tiptoed over to Prudence and put some 
 money in her hand. 
 
 " Two and a half was all they'd give on it," he 
 said. " I bought you a squab. It's cooking now 
 downstairs." 
 
 He seated himself in a rocking-chair, took a pipe 
 from his patched coat, and began to smoke and rock 
 vigorously. 
 
 " I think I remember you," said John. 
 
 He nodded. " Times have changed for the 
 worse with me," he said. " With her, too." And 
 he pointed his pipestem at the young girl. 
 
 " Oh, she will soon be all right now," John cried 
 heartily. " She is going to the mountains." 
 
 " Is she ? " said the other. He frowned, rocked 
 to and fro, and puffed hard at his pipe. " That's 
 good," he said, in a dismal voice. 
 
 The girl in pink returned, bringing an odour of 
 whisky with her, and when John took leave of 
 Prudence, the fat man followed him forth. 
 
 " We might have a drink, Mr. Cave," he said, as 
 they descended noisily the uncarpeted stairs. " I'll 
 walk as far as the corner with you." 
 269
 
 John Cave 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 " I guess you heard about my trouble," he went 
 on. " I pretended to Prudence I was rich. I had 
 to to hold her. She never cared anything for 
 me. Fat men have no success with women." 
 
 "Haven't they?" 
 
 " Oh, no. So, to hold her, I pretended I was 
 rich. I gave her more in a week than I earned in 
 a month. When the smash came, they let me off 
 on account of my thirty-four years' service and the 
 wife and boy. Still, my house and life insurance 
 policy partly paid " 
 
 He broke off, thrust his head in at the dining- 
 room door, and smiled and shook his red and dirty 
 forefinger roguishly at the three young women 
 seated, with a flask of whisky, at the disordered 
 table. 
 
 " Well, go on," said John. 
 
 "Where was I?" 
 
 " About your family." 
 
 " Oh, they're all right now. The boy has a fine 
 job, he brings his pay home regular. I hear he 
 wants to marry, but of course, as long as his mother 
 lives . . ." 
 
 John nodded. " And what are you doing ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " There's some bar-rooms I look after." 
 
 " You are not a bartender, are you ? " 
 270
 
 John Cave 
 
 " Oh, no. I swab out four bars at closing time. 
 It's mean, wet work, and nasty hours. But I don't 
 complain." 
 
 The fat man lingered on the doorstep. There 
 was in his demeanour a gaiety that he tried in vain 
 to hide. 
 
 "Well, are you coming?" said John impatiently. 
 
 He hesitated. " About that drink some other 
 time will do, won't it? You see, I want to keep 
 the girls in order in the dining-room." 
 
 Prudence that evening set out with a nurse for 
 the mountains of New Hampshire. 
 
 271
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 IN Miles's behalf he had bought at auction that 
 morning the moribund Press for six hundred thou- 
 sand dollars; and now, as editor-in-chief, he 
 entered the office from which he had been ejected, 
 penniless and drunken, with kicks and curses. 
 
 To his dismay the room was crowded. Before 
 that mass of men he halted in the doorway with a 
 frown. But a murmur of welcome arose, and 
 Clayton, advancing in a purple frock coat, led him 
 to a central desk. 
 
 Pale and grave, he looked about him. Here 
 and there a familiar face gazed anxiously into his. 
 He saw Gray's face, solemn, fat, white ; Collier's, 
 a little mocking, under its crest of stiff hair ; Clay- 
 ton's, fixed in a nervous smile; and haggard and 
 hopeless were the aged faces of the staff of editors 
 who wrote The Press's interminable leaders upon 
 steel rails and bimetallism. 
 
 In that moment, the climax of his career, with 
 his huge salary, his youth, his imposing office, his 
 absolute power over all these men who had kicked 
 and cursed him, John Cave felt neither triumphant, 
 nor kindly, nor revengeful. He felt only afraid. 
 272
 
 John Cave 
 
 He felt only afraid of failure in his difficult task 
 of restoring the moribund old Press to vigorous 
 youth. 
 
 The business manager swaggered forward, made 
 a gay speech full of such terms as " your auspi- 
 cious return," " our heartfelt delight " and " sure 
 success," then handed him a bouquet of red roses, 
 the gift of the staff. 
 
 All clapped and cheered. He saw Collier, Gray, 
 Clayton, even old man Clayton, clapping and cheer- 
 ing. The applause died, and he began: 
 
 " Thank you for these roses. Perhaps you re- 
 member my departure from The Press. There 
 were no roses then." 
 
 They exchanged shocked looks, but here and 
 there he saw a repressed smile, and Lawson gave 
 a loud laugh that was suddenly hushed. 
 
 " There were no roses," he repeated, " when 
 you kicked me out, a drunken wreck. But what 
 made me a drunken wreck? Your hatred. And 
 why did you hate me? Because I criticised your 
 work frankly and freely. 
 
 " Hereafter I shall criticise your work more 
 frankly and freely than ever. But please don't 
 hate me for it. Be grateful to me for it. It will 
 do you good. 
 
 " Hatreds, friendships, count here no more. 
 Nothing counts here now but work. By your 
 
 273
 
 John Cave 
 
 work alone you will stand or fall. How relieved 
 you look. Yet I am afraid some of you will fall." 
 
 He stopped. Without applause, without a smile, 
 without a whisper, they withdrew. But he asked 
 the two Claytons and Collier to remain, and the 
 four men seated themselves about a desk in a cor- 
 ner of the big room. Turning to the editor-in- 
 chief, he said: 
 
 " You know, Mr. Clayton, I am to take your 
 place." 
 
 The old man's face fell. " Then I'm to go? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " My lifelong devotion " 
 
 " counts for nothing." And John shook his 
 head and smiled. 
 
 His thirty years of office old man Clayton had 
 used for his own benefit. He had worked hard to 
 obtain all the free privileges and pleasures that are 
 an American editor's due, and, thanks to his un- 
 sleeping greed, few of these privileges and pleas- 
 ures had escaped him. He had a free box at every 
 theatre, free use of all telegraph, *elephone and ex- 
 press services, free passage on any railroad; and 
 insatiably for thirty years he had gobbled up the 
 best of the free excursions that are thrust by the 
 dozen upon newspapers, speeding, with a party 
 of capitalists or politicians, now to Florida, now to 
 the Yellowstone, now to California, in a luxurious 
 274
 
 John Cave 
 
 private train that rang with hoarse song and the 
 clear and hollow note of champagne corks. . . . 
 Yet in the retrospect they seemed to the old man, 
 those thirty swift years, years of incessant and 
 stupendous toil, and in senile rage he exploded 
 feebly : 
 
 " But it is disgraceful, after a lifetime of service, 
 to discharge me now." 
 
 " Mr. Miles asks you to accept a gift of six 
 months' salary." 
 
 "Oh, he does, does he?" 
 
 " Why, that's splendid, father," cried young 
 Clayton, with urgent nods and winks. 
 
 " I take your terms," said the old man hastily, 
 and he rose and hobbled away to pack up the dream 
 book, the almanac, the grammar, all the accumula- 
 tion of thirty years. 
 
 John turned to the son. 
 
 " Our leaders are to come from New York, 
 Bert," he said. " Herkimer's leaders, you know, 
 appear in all the Miles papers. So of course The 
 Press leader writers must go. Do you mind tell- 
 ing them ? " 
 
 " No, I don't mind," Clayton faltered. 
 
 " Miles gives each of the old fellows three 
 months' pay." 
 
 " They'll need it," said Clayton, " before they 
 find work again." 
 
 275
 
 John Cave 
 
 " And about your own post. It conflicts with 
 mine, and " 
 
 Clayton flung out his arms in a gesture of de- 
 spair, and John interjected hastily: 
 
 " But it's all right. What salary are you get- 
 ting?" 
 
 " Seventy-five dollars." 
 
 " It is none too much. You turn out a pretty 
 good story. Suppose you go back on the street 
 again be our star reporter ? " 
 
 " Well, I'll do my best," said Clayton. And he 
 set his huge sombrero on his small, bony head, and 
 in his purple frock coat and brown boots, diffusing 
 a faint odour of musk, he departed to discharge the 
 six aged leader writers. 
 
 Collier, as soon as he was left alone with John, 
 said with a harsh, mocking laugh: 
 
 "Well, am I to go?" 
 
 " It depends on yourself. There is no love lost 
 between us, Coll, but I shall treat you justly." 
 
 Collier's prominent blue eyes became bright and 
 hard. 
 
 " Now, see here, Cave," he said in his high, 
 whining voice, " you know you deserved all you 
 got from me, and " 
 
 " Oh, don't bring that up, for heaven's sake." 
 
 Collier sneered, with an air of cold conviction: 
 276
 
 John Cave 
 
 " You won't last here." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " There's no stability in you." 
 
 Very red, John mused a moment with knitted 
 brows. Then he looked up and smiled. 
 
 " Well, while I do last, this is what I expect of 
 you," he said calmly. " You are to come to the 
 office every morning at ten o'clock, and at one, 
 when your reporters arrive, their assignments are 
 all to be ready for them. Ready for them you 
 understand? And they must be good assignments, 
 too not scandalous but good." 
 
 " What do you mean by good ? " 
 
 He explained what he meant by good at great 
 length. 
 
 " And by the way," he concluded, " see that 
 Gray, with his ' breathing spots ' and his ' historic 
 olds,' handles no more copy. Is Gray interested in 
 any of your departments ? " 
 
 " Real estate." 
 
 " Well, let him do real estate, then." 
 
 Thus began the rejuvenation of The Press. 
 John read all the American papers, he wrote to 
 the authors of all such stories as he liked, and 
 continually, as Press men were discharged, he 
 brought on these other men to take their places. 
 
 With the winter's ending The Press became the 
 277
 
 John Cave 
 
 paper he had desired to make it, a paper interesting 
 and accurate from end to end, a paper written from 
 end to end in English simple and graceful. 
 
 At the same time its circulation continued 
 to fall. At the same time, too, he found it im- 
 possible to maintain a high tone in its columns, for 
 as sure as, out of delicacy, he refrained from inter- 
 viewing respondents, co-respondents and suchlike 
 persons, the most remarkable interviews appeared 
 the next morning in every other paper in town, and 
 Herkimer asked mildly over the long-distance tele- 
 phone why The Press had missed the story. 
 
 278
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " WHOM did you take to supper at the West- 
 minster last night ? " 
 
 He turned away with a frown. " Oh, leave my 
 affairs alone." 
 
 " Shirley Brooke saw you." 
 
 " What do I care who saw me ? " 
 
 She broke into high, shrill laughter. " Don't 
 humiliate me too deeply ! " she cried. 
 
 " ' Humiliate ' you ! You began it ! It is all 
 your fault, you " 
 
 And he rushed upon her with clenched fists. He 
 towered over her, his fists clenched above her head. 
 But she, motionless in her pale gown, the diamonds 
 flickering on her white, tumultuous bosom, smiled 
 at his violence with superb scorn. So he left the 
 room. 
 
 In the library he began a letter to Prudence. 
 Prudence, after regaining much of her strength 
 amid the sunlit snows of the New Hampshire 
 mountains, had returned to opium again, and now, 
 they told him, she was dying. And the dying girl 
 wished to see him, but he must write and tell her 
 that he could not come. 
 
 279
 
 John Cave 
 
 A hard letter to write. He finished a page, and 
 in the blotting of it his mind wandered, and he be- 
 gan to brood on his unhappy marriage. 
 
 Yet, since passion was ephemeral as a rose, since 
 affection endured like iron, he b .ived his marriage 
 to be in every respect right. iHut why did they 
 find it so difficult then to live up to such a mar- 
 riage? Were their natures of too low a type? 
 
 No: the whole trouble seemed to be that they 
 did not succeed in hiding from one another their 
 flirtations. 
 
 But they were continually spying on one another. 
 Therefore their flirtations were impossible to 
 hide. 
 
 He wished Diana had been true to him. Then 
 he would have been true to her. They would have 
 grown old together. And as their future dwindled 
 to nothing but two waiting graves, they would have 
 had the future of their children to absorb them, to 
 make them forget age and death, and they would 
 have been almost as happy in their children's future 
 as in the magical return of their own youth. He 
 wished they had been true to one another, their 
 loyalty the one sure thing in a world ugly and false. 
 
 Could they forget the past and start their mar- 
 ried life afresh? No; impossible. Nothing can 
 be started afresh. 
 
 He looked up, and some sulphur-coloured roses 
 280
 
 John Cave 
 
 in a blue bowl reminded him, by their beauty, f 
 the dancing girl with whom he had supped last 
 night. He smiled. 
 
 Diana, after all, had unlocked for them a very 
 beautiful garden. She had freed them from the 
 hideous prison, the cold, grey prison, of marital 
 fidelity. And now without deceit, whilst enjoying 
 the stimulus of their affection to the full, they could 
 enjoy besides all those passions which are born, 
 like flowers, continually in the heart. . . . Yes, a 
 beautiful, honourable life was theirs 
 
 But he started at the sound of a man's voice in 
 the drawing-room, and, very pale all of a sudden, 
 he tiptoed to the drawing-room door to listen. 
 
 " We'll go at once," the voice said. 
 
 In terror lest he be caught eavesdropping, he 
 darted back to the library with long, light, silent 
 leaps. He left the door open on a crack. Then 
 he stood behind it, pinching his mouth with thumb 
 and forefinger, his head cocked on one side, very 
 still, listening. 
 
 Whether the voice was Slocum's or Brooke's he 
 could not tell. He rather thought it was Brooke's. 
 Diana was dining at her aunt's, and the young man 
 had no doubt been sent to fetch her. " We'll go 
 at once," he said, meaning they would go at once 
 to Mrs. Scarlett's. 
 
 At the same time, as he listened there intently, 
 281
 
 John Cave 
 
 clasping and unclasping his mouth with tremulous 
 fingers, he felt faint with the premonition of some 
 great calamity. 
 
 The voices in the drawing-room flowed on in 
 monotonous murmurings. Suddenly Diana cried, 
 " I will ! " Then a door opened, her silk skirts 
 swished in the hall, she entered her room, for a long 
 time she made a great clatter there. What could 
 she be about? 
 
 At last she came forth again. She rejoined the 
 man. The lift bell tinkled. They were de- 
 scending. 
 
 He turned off the light, and, though safe enough 
 from detection in the darkness, he knelt before the 
 window and peeped out very cautiously, like a 
 sentinel in a rain of bullets. 
 
 A white motor car stood before the hotel. 
 Diana, wrapped in furs, entered it with Brooke. 
 An attendant gave the chauffeur a kit-bag. A 
 kit-bag . . . that was odd. The car sped away. 
 
 He turned on the light again. He stood, with 
 bowed head, in the middle of the floor, continually 
 pinching and releasing his lips with thumb and 
 forefinger in quick, regular, unconscious motion. 
 A kit-bag? Very odd. 
 
 A maid handed him upon a silver tray a note 
 wherein Diana had scrawled : 
 282
 
 John Cave 
 
 " I am going away with Shirley Brooke. You 
 will never see me again. Good-bye, John Cave." 
 
 He sank into an arm-chair in a limp posture and 
 rang at once for a bottle of whisky and some soda- 
 water. It was amazing how little he cared. He 
 cared not at all, either one way or the other. 
 
 But he felt extraordinarily limp . . . limp, weak 
 . . . even a little faint and sickish ... as though 
 by some terrible but painless operation his entire 
 backbone had just been removed. . . . 
 
 283
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 " How do you feel this morning? " 
 
 " Fine," whispered Prudence, smiling. But 
 tears, the ready tears of extreme weakness, welled 
 into her clear eyes, and to restrain them she blinked 
 rapidly. 
 
 He sat beside her, and they gazed forth at the 
 blue lake, the green mountains, and the sky's pure 
 and brilliant dome wherein, like floating specks, 
 birds circled. 
 
 A boat rounded the point, a boat almost as wide 
 as it was long. A thin old fellow rowed with 
 tremendous vigour, but the boat was too heavy 
 to be forced out of its snail's pace. A fat, elderly 
 man sat with crossed legs in an arm-chair in the 
 stern, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar. 
 
 John descended to the cottage landing as the 
 fat man disembarked with two enormous salmon. 
 
 "You had good luck?" 
 
 Jake, beside himself with excitement, shouted 
 from the boat : 
 
 " I guess we had ! There's no fishin' like spring 
 fishin'. B'gorry, look here ! " 
 284
 
 John Cave 
 
 The bottom of the boat was heaped with great, 
 silvery salmon, a dozen at least, as big as babies. 
 
 " Have a drink on the head of it." The fat man 
 took a bottle from his pocket. 
 
 " No, thank yee," said Jake. And he pushed 
 off and rowed away with vigorous strokes. But 
 suddenly he dropped his oars, put to each side of 
 his mouth a brown, lean hand, and shouted : 
 
 " Tell the young lady 'twas the best day's fishin' 
 o' forty-nine years! B'gorry, I guess 'twas the 
 best fishin' ever been done ! " 
 
 The fat man took the bottle from his mouth to 
 shout back condescendingly : 
 
 " All right, Jake." 
 
 Then, as it was mail time, he and John set off 
 together for the post-office. 
 
 " How is she, sir ? " 
 
 " About the same." 
 
 They trudged on in silence. Now and then the 
 fat man sighed. 
 
 " You don't mind my being here, sir ? " 
 
 " No, of course not." 
 
 " Pearl lent me the money to come with." 
 
 "Pearl?" 
 
 " I guess you don't remember her. The girl in 
 the red dress." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I only intended to spend the day. It was kind 
 285
 
 John Cave 
 
 of you to ask me to stay. I am making myself 
 useful, chopping wood and er so on." 
 
 " Oh, that's all right." 
 
 Under a birch they drank again from the bottle. 
 
 " Shouldn't we inform Prudence's people ? " 
 John asked. 
 
 " I have already written to her mother." 
 
 "Who are her people?" 
 
 " They come from New Jersey . . . one of 
 those New Jersey villages . . . little grey wooden 
 houses, choked with sand, lost in the pines. Her 
 father died last year of delirium tremens. Her 
 mother's a still worse lot." 
 
 " Prudence was very beautiful," John mused. 
 
 " And the mother knew it. Mr. Cave, she put 
 the girl on the stage at thirteen. Kauffman was 
 the first to take her up. He wanted to marry her. 
 Kauffman left her at his death those Persian rugs 
 and old carved chests. He'd have left her his 
 money if he had had any." 
 
 "Fond of her, eh?" 
 
 " Who wasn't fond of her ? She could have 
 married well. But she was reckless . . . somehow 
 honourable . . . but very reckless. . . . Still, if it 
 hadn't been for the opium . . ." 
 
 After luncheon the fat man ostentatiously fell 
 to woodchopping in the wild garden behind the cot- 
 tage, while John went up to Prudence again. 
 286
 
 John Cave 
 
 "Still on the mend?" 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " And do you like it here at Sunapee ? " 
 
 " I love it," she whispered. 
 
 " When you get well " 
 
 Her eyes dropped, and she frowned and shook 
 her head. 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 Still with lowered lids she whispered bitterly: 
 
 " When I get well ! " 
 
 He feigned bewilderment. "Of course : when 
 you get well." 
 
 She looked up at him piteously. Her eyes were 
 full of tears. And with a piteous smile she 
 breathed : 
 
 " I heard what the doctor told you." 
 
 Then she turned to the wall and hid her face in 
 the pillows. No sound came from her. He saw 
 her shoulder quiver a little. 
 
 She knew she was going to die. It horrified him 
 to discover that. He repeated mechanically : 
 
 " You are mistaken. I'll prove you are mis- 
 taken." 
 
 Suddenly Prudence sat erect. Her tense hands 
 clasped her cheeks. Her face, red and distorted, 
 streamed with tears. He could hardly bear the tor- 
 ture in her appealing eyes. 
 
 "Oh, why must I die?" The whisper had the 
 287
 
 John Cave 
 
 intensity of a shriek. " Don't you think it's cruel ? 
 I'm only a girl. Don't you think it's cruel ? " 
 
 The streaming eyes peered into his. Had he, 
 they asked him, any help to give? But he could 
 only repeat, " You are not dying ; it is a mistake." 
 And he saw despair deepen in her eyes. No, he 
 had no help to give. Exhausted, she turned to the 
 wall again. 
 
 " Excuse me," she breathed. 
 
 How humble, how contrite and resigned, the 
 bowed back now looked. He clasped the thin 
 hand upon the coverlet. He felt her fingers' gentle 
 pressure. . . . 
 
 The nurse entered, and thinking her patient 
 asleep, signed for him to withdraw. 
 
 He descended to the hall. From the hall's south 
 windows he saw the fat man chopping wood. 
 From the north window he saw the boats of half 
 a dozen absorbed anglers bobbing at anchor above 
 Trout Hole. He paced to and fro. 
 
 Poor Prudence! He heard again her plaint: 
 " Don't you think it's cruel ? I'm only a girl. 
 Don't you think it's cruel ? " 
 
 But abandoning Prudence, his thoughts leaped 
 towards Diana. 
 
 She had left him. Her support withdrawn, he 
 would work no more. 
 
 And a storm of rage and hatred shook him, in 
 288
 
 John Cave 
 
 its clutch he longed for the death of his faithless 
 wife, but as quickly as it had come the storm passed. 
 
 He had found it impossible to face Collier, Clay- 
 ton and Gray, but why had he fled without a word ? 
 Nobody knew where he was. What did they 
 think? Herkimer, perhaps, understood, but to 
 desert the helm without a word was the kind of 
 thing a strong soul like Herkimer could never 
 forgive. 
 
 But all that was nothing beside the loss of 
 Diana. 
 
 Her desertion caused him intolerable pain. It 
 seemed altogether unnatural, like a mother's de- 
 sertion of her child. She knew how much he 
 needed her. 
 
 He loved her more than he had ever loved any- 
 one, more than his father, more than his mother. 
 Perhaps, if he had been a little wiser, a little kinder, 
 their horrible shipwreck might have been averted. 
 But they were both so young, so inexperienced! 
 If only someone could have told them in time what 
 they now knew too late ! Alas, too late ! 
 
 He made a gesture of despair, and to escape his 
 thoughts, he summoned the fat man to a game of 
 cards. 
 
 The days passed like strange dreams. He 
 played cards, fished, took long walks over the 
 mountains, and every night in the hall, at a little 
 289
 
 John Cave 
 
 table before a fire of birch logs in the granite 
 chimney, he smoked and drank with the fat man. 
 He argued across the table. It grew very late. 
 Sometimes the nurse, appearing magically at his 
 elbow, reminded him that Prudence slept. Then, 
 abashed, he drank and smoked in silence. 
 
 A strange time. He drank as he had never done, 
 yet he slept well, his appetite was good, he even 
 took on weight. And thanks to the alcohol, all 
 his troubles, the loss of Diana, the wreck of his 
 career, poor Prudence's approaching death, seemed 
 as unreal as the thin grey wraiths of dreams. . . . 
 
 Prudence, calm in her white bed, grew always 
 weaker. Only John's presence excited her. 
 Therefore his visits became few and brief. For 
 each of his visits the toilet of the dying girl was 
 made with extreme care. 
 
 " Have I been very wicked ? " she asked one 
 morning. 
 
 "You wicked!" 
 
 Her eyes flamed. A deep flush appeared on each 
 cheek bone. She breathed convulsively. 
 
 " I have." 
 
 "No, no." 
 
 With his voice, with his smile, he tried to soothe 
 her; but her agitation increased. Trembling, 
 breathing stormily, she panted: 
 
 " The Bible says it says " 
 
 290
 
 John Cave 
 
 Then she choked, and, as she motioned distract- 
 edly for him to go, blood gushed from her mouth 
 and streamed like bright red ribbons down her 
 white gown. She glanced in despair at the bril- 
 liant disorder of those widening streaks, and with 
 both hands she waved him from the room, choking, 
 gasping: 
 
 " Oh, go ! Won't you please go ? " 
 
 The doctor was summoned in haste. He spent 
 the day at her bedside. John and the fat man 
 smoked and read in silence in the hall. 
 
 At sunset the doctor came and leaned against 
 the chimneypiece. " You may ascend, gentlemen." 
 There was in his face the abashed look which death 
 creates. 
 
 The fat man rose. He knocked his pipe noisily 
 against the andiron. Then he went to the window 
 and stood looking out. 
 
 John inhaled and blew forth quickly, one after 
 another, huge clouds of smoke. 
 
 "Is it the end? "he asked. 
 
 " A question of minutes." 
 
 He mounted the stairs. The fat man followed 
 him. As they entered the room, the eyelids of the 
 dying girl fluttered, but whether she saw them or 
 not it was impossible to say. 
 
 She was propped high with pillows. The con- 
 tour of her neck and shoulders was pure and youth- 
 291
 
 John Cave 
 
 ful. The coverlet moulded the long lines of the 
 slender limbs. Between the dark, luxuriant masses 
 of her hair, the face, pale, with closed eyes, was 
 like a face hewn in marble. Only the hands, laid 
 upon her breast, moved ; the thin fingers plucked at 
 the coverlet steadily. 
 
 There was something in that face which abased 
 and horrified the two men. In silence, side by 
 side, they stood at the foot of the bed. The hands 
 twitched on. The nurse, with a movement tender 
 and caressing, leaned over and wiped the wet brow. 
 
 Suddenly Prudence gave a faint gasp. Her 
 eyes, full of care and trouble, opened for an in- 
 stant. Then her eyelids fell, she sank a little lower 
 on the pillow, her hands ceased their movement. 
 
 292
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE nocturnal silence was profound. The house 
 slept, the world slept. Prudence, straight and 
 slim in her white bed, slept best of all. 
 
 John Cave alone was wakeful. He sat in the 
 dark, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, 
 frowning into the fire. 
 
 For the first time he saw the secret of his life 
 clearly. He was of the morass, to the morass he 
 must always return. . . . 
 
 Yet his aspiring soul loved the sunlit heights. It 
 loathed the pollution of the morass. . . . Alas, all 
 loved the heights down there. 
 
 From the hearth a wave of light flowed over 
 him, surged up the wall, and receded silently into 
 the hearth again. 
 
 He knew the secret of happiness. Work was 
 the secret. All else deceived, or failed, or perished. 
 Friends deceived, drugs failed, passion perished. 
 But work remained, kind and fair and faithful to 
 the end. And the more ardently and devotedly 
 man gave himself to work, the more ardour and 
 devotion work gave back, the richer and finer were 
 the rewards that she extended with both hands. 
 293
 
 John Cave 
 
 He knew the secret of happiness, but he also 
 knew the secret of his life. He, made for the 
 morass, could not accept the austere happiness of 
 a life of work. He wanted to, but he could not 
 could not any more than a legless man, by wanting 
 to, could run. 
 
 He saw the end of his life a succession of 
 struggles, each ending in defeat, the struggles 
 growing rarer and the defeats more hopeless as 
 time passed, till finally he lay quiet in the morass, 
 an old, grey thing that only suffered. 
 
 He heard upstairs the sound of cautious, clumsy 
 footsteps. The fat man, awake again, had sought 
 once more the bedside of the beautiful dead girl. 
 After a long silence the heavy footsteps with- 
 drew. . . . 
 
 Had he the courage to save himself from those 
 long years of ignominy? . . . Perhaps . . . 
 
 He lit the lamp. He wrote a cheque and ad- 
 dressed it to the fat man " For funeral expenses 
 etc." Then he uncorked a fresh bottle of whisky, 
 put it under his arm, extinguished the lamp, and 
 went out on tiptoe. 
 
 The night was still and very starry ; there was 
 no moon. He stood a moment on the edge of the 
 landing. The black water was deep there. One 
 step down, and all would be over. 
 
 And with a strange smile he imagined himself 
 294
 
 John Cave 
 
 taking that terrible step down. ... A splash would 
 sound loud in the silence. He would gasp sharply 
 as the cold water engulfed him. The struggle 
 would begin. 
 
 Would it last long? A minute or two, perhaps, 
 not more. . . . But how long would it seem to 
 last? 
 
 He would try to keep quite still, for, if he 
 threshed about with legs and arms, he would come 
 to the surface, breathe, prolong the struggle. . . . 
 Yes, he would keep quite still in those black depths, 
 and with closed mouth he would hold his breath as 
 long as he could. There would be no pain so long 
 as he held his breath. But to hold the breath till 
 one suffocates is impossible. Swinging to and fro, 
 fists clenched, limbs rigid, lips compressed, he would 
 find it more and more difficult to keep from breath- 
 ing. His head, despite the cold water in which it 
 was immersed, would swell and burn. And when, 
 nearly bursting, he should open his mouth at last 
 and take a deep breath of water instead of air 
 Christ, what horrible pain, what unimaginable 
 agony, as all that water rushed down, down through 
 mouth and nostrils, into his lungs! . . . 
 
 He could not stand the thought. He wrung his 
 hands. He walked up and down the landing with 
 quick strides. 
 
 A pistol shot, a dose of poison, a leap from a
 
 John Cave 
 
 precipice? No, those methods were no easier. It 
 was his cowardice alone that suggested them. 
 
 But he knew he would struggle. 
 
 He stopped short in his distracted walk and saw 
 himself clearly in the black water, under the cold 
 stars, floundering, amid foam and gurgles, like 
 some monstrous fish. 
 
 He must drink. Whisky, his old enemy, would 
 be a good friend to him in the end. He would 
 die in a stupor like those wherein surgical opera- 
 tions are performed. 
 
 He set out along the lake's rough shore. In the 
 darkness he clambered with marvelous ease over 
 granite boulders, across steeps slippery with moss. 
 Every little while he paused and drank. He pur- 
 posed at last, stupefied, to drop like a stone into the 
 water. . . . 
 
 He talked aloud, as the bottle emptied, with 
 frantic gestures. . . . 
 
 The lake's black surface glimmered faintly here 
 and there. The mountains uprose, mysterious and 
 grand, into the sky. And with their frosty scintil- 
 lations, their cold glitter, their palpitant and icy 
 light, the innumerable stars resembled a host of 
 very old men chuckling together over that little, 
 black figure which now clambered on hands and 
 knees up granite rocks, now erected itself on some 
 small eminence and gesticulated violently towards 
 296
 
 John Cave 
 
 the heavens with tiny arms, now broke the night's 
 profound and august silence with shrill, thin 
 clamour. . . . 
 
 Jake, hastening at sunrise towards the spring, 
 stumbled over a leg that protruded from a clump of 
 reeds. The young man lay amid dank growths in 
 a marsh, the empty bottle at his side, prone in the 
 alcoholic stupor of another failure. 
 
 Jake regarded him with astonishment, disgust, 
 pity. 
 
 Then the hale old fisherman, taking John Cave 
 vigorously by the shoulders, awoke again that soul 
 too timid ever to destroy itself, and too weak ever 
 to uplift from the morass its weight of flesh in 
 sustained flight. 
 
 297
 
 "John Cave." 
 
 " An author of genius there is really no 
 other word for it. ... A story of vivid 
 and palpitating human interest. . . . One 
 of the most remarkable first novels we have 
 ever read." Daily Graphic. 
 
 " A strong novel, a powerful story, a most 
 interesting and fascinating book." Daily Mail. 
 
 " The book is altogether a remarkable one." 
 Outlook. 
 
 " A remarkable work, an absorbing picture. 
 Such a book as ' John Cave ' is not easily for- 
 gotten ; its author should do great things." 
 Globe. 
 
 " The author knows his hero as one knows 
 one's most intimate friend. . . . Portrayed 
 with accuracy and conviction . . . force 
 and delicacy." Daily News. 
 
 " Though it may sound extravagant praise 
 to say that ' John Cave ' reads like the work 
 of one of the French masters, it is a judg- 
 ment which every chapter of this remarkable 
 first novel confirms." -Glasgow News.
 
 Barbara Gwynne 
 
 (LIFE) 
 
 John Cave 
 
 W. B. TRITES 
 
 Some English Reviews
 
 000 129 269