THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Enthralled A story of international life setting forth the curious circumstances concerning nrd Cloden and Oswald Quain by SALTUS THE TUDOR PRESS London Paris Melbourne THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY rents fi states 1894 Agents for The I nited States and Canada ENTHRALLED BY MR. SALTUS IMPERIAL PURPLE MARY MAGDALEN THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT MADAM SAPPHIRA A TRANSACTION IN HEARTS MR. INCOULS MISADVENTURE EDEN A TRANSIENT GUEST THE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTREM VARICK A STORY WITHOUT A NAME THE PACE THAT KILLS LOVE AND LORE THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION IN PREPARATION DAUGHTERS OF DREAM ENTHRALLED A STORY OF INTERNATIONAL LIFE SETTING FORTH THE CURIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES CONCERNING LORD CLODEN AND OSWALD Q.UAIN by EDGAR SALTUS THE TUDOR PRESS LONDON PARIS MELBOURNE THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY AGENTS FOR THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA .894 COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY EDGAR SALTUS. Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York PS FOR CHERUBINA Dulcissime rerutn 853488 CONTENTS PART I CHAPTER I. A Soul with Teeth II. The Beast and the Beauty III. Twenty Million Less Ten Per Cent IV. The Hushing of It V. Coroner's Verdict " Heart Failure " VI. Exit Oswald Quain PART II CHAPTER I. The Sighting of the Earl II. His Lordship drops a Glass III. The Happiest Man Alive IV. What may be Read in the Paper V. The Room of the Gaping Chimeras VI. Mr. Bancroft has his Say PART I ENTHRALLED CHAPTER I A SOUL WITH TEETH " DEAR me, Myrrha, did you see this ? The Earl of Cloden is dead, and they can't find his son." It was Mrs. Smithwick, the Herald in one hand, a teacup in the other, addressing her niece. The girl shook her head. " No, dear aunt ; did you know him ? " " I think I have heard of him," the lady answered defiantly, at which a rude young man burst into a laugh. " Oswald," she added, " do fetch me the Peerage ; it is yonder, that big red book on the second shelf." The room, vast, high-ceiled, deluged with Enthralled sunlight, opened on grounds that leaned to the sea. In the air were the savors of bowers and brine ; from without came the boom of waves, the rustle of retreating waters ; within were the tokens and attri- butes of ease. It was at Newport, the sum- mer home of Richard Attersol. At the lady's bidding the rude young man got up. He was a dissolute-looking young fellow, blue of eye, red of hair, with features squat as a Tartar's, but he had the elastic step which athletes and panthers share. As he crossed the room the girl's eyes followed him. She was fair to see, adorably constructed, divinely blonde, fragrant of health, graceful, simple the image of sweet-and-twenty. But presently she turned again to her aunt ; for Mrs. Smithwick, in that tone which exacts attention, yet decorously as from a book of devotions, was reading from Burke : " George Sholto Cantyre, Earl of Cloden (1605), Earl of Mull, Viscount Sholto and Lord Cantyre of Ogilvy (1686), Viscount of Mull and Lord Cantyre 'A Soul with Teeth of Strathtay (1685), Lord Cantyre of Cantyre (1487). All in the peerage of Scotland. Due de Chatelerault, Prince d'l9y in France. Hereditary visitor of Jesus Coll. Oxon. Captain late Q3d High- landers ; born in London, 23 May, 1837 ; married, 1864, Lady Cicely Manners, 5th daughter of James, 1 3th Marquis of Carlingford ; she died 8 December, 1870, leaving an only son, Arthur Henry Charles Francis Dunbar, Viscount Sholto, born I4th Novem- ber, 1865." " And it is the viscount they can't find ? " Myrrha asked with a pretty show of interest. " The earl," her aunt corrected. " He has succeeded to his noble father's titles and estates. Listen : "Arms, Or three bars wavy gu. " Crest. Out of a ducal coronet a sinister cubit arm in bend dexter versted vert cuffed erm. charged with a cross-crosslet on the hand ppr. pointing with forefinger to an estoile. "Motto. Je ne pense plus." " No, I don't believe he did," that rude young man remarked. " None of those chaps are much given to thinking. Where did you say the son is ? " Enthralled " They don't know," Mrs. Smithwick with great pathos replied. " They don't know at all. The Herald says he started a year ago on a botanizing tour through the upper reaches of the Amazon, and, save a letter announcing his arrival at Rio, he has not been heard from since. Isn't it sad ? " " It may be," the young man suggested, " that somewhere in those upper reaches he is engaged in rearing a dusky race, in which case " " Oswald Quain, how can you ! " Mrs. Smithwick was very small, elaborately garbed, perhaps fifty. She had a perfect mania for going to the dentist's, for going to church, for titles, for gossip. But if feather-headed, she was not unlovable. And now, as she spoke, she started indig- nantly ; but almost at once, in a complete change of key, she added, with that look the pensive have : " Wouldn't it be nice, though, if he were to come this way, meet Myrrha, and marry her ? " A Soul with Teeth " Yes, wouldn't it ? " and Quain mim- icked the old lady to her face. He turned to the girl. " What do you say to that, Myrrha ? " She had moved to a window that gave on the lawn, and stood gazing at the miracle of blue above, at the satin and stripes of the sea. But as the question reached her she passed out with it to the grounds. " It would be a perfectly suitable match," Mrs. Smithwick continued. " Perfectly suit- able. Myrfha's father is a pillar of the church, universally respected, a gentleman of the old school ; and Myrrha is, I have always felt, destined to grace a title. I have, I admit, been just a little worried by the attentions which that man Bancroft has been showing her, but " And Mrs. Southwick waved her hand at an invisible fly " Myrrha doesn't care that for him." Quain scowled. His lip was curled, and his teeth, prominent and pointed as a jack- al's, glistened. Enthralled " The only title she will ever have is that of my wife. As for Bancroft " For a second he paused, and then, ab- sently, his thoughts afar, he added : " I don't see why you want her to marry every foreigner you hear of. You know as well as I do where nine-tenths of such mar- riages end in the divorce court." " I know nothing of the kind ; my hus- band was a foreigner, and we lived together four and twenty years and never quarrelled once. Besides " The scowl on Quain's face had gone, but a sneer had come. " Didn't you find it rather dull ? " he asked with a civil air of feigned interest. Mrs. Smithwick put the Peerage among the teacups and visibly primed herself with repartee. Before she could take aim the enemy escaped, and she rose from her seat, eying him suspiciously as he joined her niece on the lawn beyond. The girl was not for him, she knew. And with the idea that the insertion of a certain insect in the ear A Soul with Teeth of the girl's father would be both timely and appropriate, she too turned and left the room. Among those who had been brought in contact with that gentleman, it was a matter of general agreement that he liked to have his own way. He had made it too, so suc- cessfully even that at the period contempo- raneous to the initial episode of the drama with which these pages have to do, Richard Attersol was rated at not a dollar less than twenty million. Wealth accumulated in such proportions is not an incentive to low- liness of spirit, and in his case it had served to put an accent on a disposition naturally stubborn. It was through sheer determina- tion that he had made himself rich, the power to want the thing that he wanted more than all others that wanted it too the ability to will. But other gifts had been helpful: forethought in stocks, prescience in the value of land, vigilance, assiduity, promptitude, and, strange as it may seem, square dealing. Oh, as to that, such was the shibboleth and guarantee of his name, 2 Enthralled that it had twice given him occasion to refuse the Secretaryship of the Treasury. But no man can be universal. For political preferment he had no taste, but then his tastes were simple. He could have lived on three hundred and sixty-five dollars a year and saved money. He lunched on an apple, his breakfast was biscuit and milk, wine he never touched, and he did not care to be amused. He had one vice the egotism of the altruistic charity ; and one virtue belief. The vice he concealed, the virtue was apparent. He looked like a good man, and he was, but he was good in the worst sense bigotedly good. Respectability was written all over him. In the Presbyterian Church of which he was trustee, he was a pillar, but a pillar manifestly in process of decay : in knee and shoulder Time had bent that frame of iron ; and though his eyes could yet pierce like knives, and his straight thin lips were firm as a recorder's, the trem- ulous hand and swaying head told their tale of palsy and encroaching age. A Soul with Teeth That afternoon, though the sun was eager, he was crouching over a fire. The room gave, not on the sea, but to the west. In a corner was a safe, the door ajar ; opposite was a table. There was a small bed, a wide lounge, capacious chairs, chintz hangings, and roses in profusion. From the blue and amber flames into which he peered, mem- ories were issuing, perhaps regrets. As Mrs. Smithwick entered, he started, but then he had been far away. " Oswald is with her again, Richard. What shall I do ? " The chromatic silks, the anxious eyes, the small shrill voice, these things gave to the little lady something of the color and trepidation of a bird. As she spoke she swayed and reached a hand to a panel for support. Though it was ten years since the death of her sister had brought her in contact with that sister's husband, she was not, as the phrase goes, at home with him yet. " Send him to me." Mrs. Smithwick turned to obey. Enthralled " And when Bancroft gets here," he called after her, "send him too." His eyes had gone back to the fire, but presently he stood up, went to the safe, closed and locked it. On the lawn without, meanwhile, Quain had caught up with the girl. " Oswald, how did you dare " At his approach she had turned and stood, a hand half raised the hand of a princess, royally beautiful, slender yet strong, delicate and colorful ; a hand made for gracious gestures, for kisses and fal- cons ; a hand that matched the beauty of her features, and belonged to them as wholly as the petal belongs to the rose. He caught it and clasped it. " And what is there that I would not dare for you ? " In the glancing sun he looked both bold and brave. Surely he was not one to fear an old man's anger. And, having said as much, he began at once on the business that had brought him there. A Soul with Teeth " Myrrha, I can wait no longer. I am sick with love ; I am haunted by your eyes and lips. You are to be my wife some day, why not to-night ? No one can love you as I do. No one shall. If you love me, come "- " But, Oswald " " There are no buts. I will listen to none. You have promised. I hold you to your word. Myrrha, come with me ; and as there is a God above us, never shall you regret it a moment's space. You shall be a church, and I the worshipper." " It would kill him, Oswald. Have you not seen the change ? He may yet con- sent. You should not urge me to go with you like this." Of the remonstrance he detained but one phrase, the possibility of consent. " Has he said anything ? Have you asked him ? Has he intimated in any way " The girl shook her head. " No ; but who can tell " Enthralled " I can ; he never will, unless Myrrha, let us go. In an hour there is a train for Boston. When he finds that you have gone with me, that you love me well enough for that, he will consent at once. Otherwise he never will. And just out of obstinacy, too. For he hasn't another reason to refuse, not one, except indeed that I was poor. But I have plenty of money now oh, enough to last us both for years ! Come ! " He had but one power over her, mag- netism. And that force he was exert- ing, by speech, by contact, by the fulgura- tions of his eyes. As he stared into her own, the girl shrank, fascinated and vacil- lant. " I can't," she almost gasped. " He made me swear I would not." " And I swear you shall." " Oswald ! " He turned. From the house Mrs. Smith- wick was calling to him. "Oswald ! Mr. Attersol wants you." The girl touched him. " O Oswald, go A Soul with Teeth to him, do. And be be different, be gentle " "If I go, will you wait?" "Yes, yes, anything." " Then wait ; or, rather, get some things together. If he consents, well and good ; if not, we must go. But be quick." He crossed the lawn, reached the house. In a moment he was at Mr. Attersol's door ; entering, he closed it. " You wished to see me, sir, I believe." He looked rough as an oath, but in voice and manner there was a deference, or at least the assumption of it. Mr. Attersol crossed the room ; from the table he picked up a letter, put it down again, resumed his seat, and eyed the young man. " How much did you borrow on the strength of that lie about Myrrha ? " he asked, and without waiting an answer added, with a motion at the safe : " There are those cheques. You have your choice go away or go to jail. You are warned for the Enthralled last time. Myrrha shall never be your wife. Never. Do you hear me ? I shall tie up my property for it is that you want I shall tie it so that not a penny is hers. Independent of that, there are the cheques. You will leave Newport to-night, or I will have you under arrest." " You are hard, Mr. Attersol, very. You brought us up together, you " " Hold your tongue. When your father put you in my care, I supposed that you would take after him. Your father was a gentleman, and what are you ? A gambler, a liar, a thief. If ever a young man had an opportunity, you did. When you left school I put you in my office. I let you live in my house. Had you been my brother's son, I could not have done more. You would have succeeded me. You had nothing to do but to comport yourself decently, and you wouldn't. I gave you money, yet you stole. I forgave you, and you forged my name. Because of the debt I owed your father I condoned even that ; and as a rec- A Soul with Teeth ompense you try to beguile my daughter, and borrow money on the pretence that she is to be your wife. Your wife ! Hear me, I would shoot her if I thought such a thing could be." Quain apparently had heard, but he manifested no abashment. He met the stern, inquisitorial eyes that looked him through, with a scowl, and stood under the fire of the arraignment, bolt upright, his arms crossed on the breast. " You are very hard," he repeated ; but the deference in his voice had gone he spoke now as man to man. " Very. And you forget. You brought me up with your daughter, in luxury as well. That was your doing, not mine. I never stole from you. You said I did; I protested; you showed me the door. I had to live. Long ago you told me my father left funds for me. I asked for an accounting, you refused to render one. The cheques you speak of were drafts on my estate. Admitting that I forged, Tartuffe, have not you embezzled ? " Enthralled Mr. Attersol had risen. His hands were trembling, his head shook, and so tall was he, so great the menace of his attitude, that at the moment he seemed a tottering tower about to fall and crush. Before he could speak there was a rap, the door opened, and a young man strode in. Quain turned, the arms still crossed on his breast, but instantly one shot out. " As for Myrrha," he shouted, " try to marry her to that cadging attorney there, and I will kill him though I swing for it." He had moved as he spoke ; there was a curse in his eyes, in their stare a blight, his voice was hoarse with violence, and the words that he almost tore from his throat seemed to have a life that vibrated and filled the room. " Bancroft, there are souls that have teeth ; don't wake their hunger " A gesture completed the sentence. For a second, with jaw set and muscles contracted, he looked a defiance that was the more A Soul with Teeth hideous in that it was mute. Then with a wrench at the door he passed out, slamming it after him with a crash in which there was the clatter of musketry and the din of oaths. CHAPTER II THE BEAST AND THE BEAUTY WHEN Quain reached the sitting-room again, it was untenanted. He looked out on the lawn ; there was no one. But the sky had changed. The miracle of blue had gone ; in its place was another of dead rose and apple green. Dusk was encroaching silently. The boom of waves had ceased ; there was but the lap and gurgle of waters fawning against the bluff, the hush of lo- custs, and the bark of a dog, caught up and repeated on the road beyond. The air too was still, and through the house, which a moment before had shook with his fury, the echoes had subsided. He was furious still ; his eyes were dilated, his features convulsed. But he had work to do yet, and running a hand through the red The Beast and the Beauty tangles of his hair, for a moment he stood reminiscent. His earliest recollections were of that old man whom he had so grievously insulted the memory of a big and silent room through which he came and went unceasingly. Through it, too, others passed ; but these but came and wept and vanished. It was the old man that always returned, for to Quain old he had always seemed. Yet this was in a past -dim as a dream, too vague and shadowy to be localized and calendared. Then there was the school life ; and here memory found its first sure footing and paraded him through the nine uneventful years which he passed in the home of a country pedagogue, and during which, on the third day of each month, invariably, from that old man he had received a letter of good counsel and advice. He was fifteen when the nine years had gone, and it was then for the first time he saw New York. Oh, the wonder of that city, the wonder of the great house on Fifth Avenue, the won- Enthralled der of Mrs. Smithwick's surprises in silk ! Before the wonder subsided there were other tutors, masters of different arts and tongues, until his eighteenth year had come, and he saw himself on a high stool in a Wall Street bank. To that stool for some time he was not unfaithful ; but other things intervened the curve of the race-track, the green baize of the faro-table, the cocktails of the Calumet. But for social functions he manifested no enthusiasm. Whether or not it be true, as psychologists aver, that tastes are influenced and directed by physical con- formations, it is at least indubitable that Quain was not constructed to be a joy in a ball-room. It was not that he was ugly for the majority of dancing men are he was hideous, and his hideousness was accent- uated by his grace which was that of a lemur an attribute which, in conjunction with his appearance, made you think him a survival, the type of primeval man. He had the long arms of the troglodyte, the stoop of the cave-dweller, the muscular The Beast and the Beauty thighs of the savage ; while his features all, indeed, save the chin which was correct and strong, and the eyes which were large and phosphorescently blue were those of a Kal- muk. At first sight he frightened, at second he repelled. And this clown, for he had all of a clown's agility and powers of mimicry too, had, in the leisures of duty and pastime, found nothing less surprising to do than to discover that the bit of lignum vitae which served him for heart could beat almost as well as another's. The discovery, after the fashion of such things, came about in a circuitous if commonplace manner. During the school- days in Connecticut the little girls of the village had excited in him no larger feeling than that of contempt, than which be it said no debt is ever more faithfully acquitted. Moreover, as one little girl seemed to differ from another only in degrees of disagree- ability, he did not in his initial encounter with Myrrha Attersol take to her in the least. She was in the way, to begin with, Enthralled and then she disliked him. " Toad " was the word he had heard her use to her aunt in the presumable summing up of her first impressions of him. " Toad, am I ? " he repeated ragingly to himself. " Toad, eh ? I'll show her." And then, in that chaste language which is best acquired in family schools and Puri- tan villages, he blessed her in a series of images which would have thrown a coster- monger into stupors of admiration. But the blessing was delivered under the breath ; he glared merely, and to do the girl justice she glared back. Myrrha was. twelve then. She had the pink and white skin of a Psyche of the Bouguereau clique, a complexion so ideally peach that the boy, in spite of his dislike, experienced a haunting desire to learn whether it were real. One day he did. He ran the point of a forefinger across her cheek and then held that forefinger to the light. But the slur was too grievous even for a maid of twelve to endure. She threw The Beast and tJu Beauty a book at him, which he caught on the fly, and fled, weeping torrentially, to her aunt. It was in process of such amenities that acquaintance was made. But it was an acquaintance which the primitiveness of children only know, one in which conver- sation is made up of taunts, greetings of gibes. Their enmity was not alone appar- ent, it was irritating ; they tortured each other out of wantonness, for the mere pleas- ure of being cruel, and with a continuity of hostilities which was splendid in its persist- ence one which outlasted a year, and waned, if at all, only through lassitude and higher conceptions of decorum. Then, where animosity had been, indifference came. They affected to ignore each other, treating one another reciprocally as though part of a landscape which it were idle to note. But on the day that Quain was first seated on that stool in Wall Street, Myrrha and Mrs. Smithwick took ship and sailed for other shores. And abroad for four years they remained, returning only when the 3 Enthralled girl's education was regarded as practically complete. Quain, meanwhile, comported himself with sufficient propriety. He was regular enough in his hours, faithful too in the observance of his duties, and, if bad at all, it was in that negative way which is, perhaps, the worst of all, in that it is the resultant not alone of temperamental indifference, but of moral disorganization. He was opposed to prejudices, and at table aired that opposi- tion as young men will. " But you confound prejudices with prin- ciples," Melanchthon Stitt, the novelist, said to him one night when Quain was celebrat- ing his majority. "Patriotism isn't a prej- udice." " It is an accident," Quain interrupted. " An accident when it does not happen to be a vendetta." " And do you object to it ? " " Naturally I do. Every one but a fool must. It is part of the old baggage that has come down from the time when men The Beast and the Beauty fought for ideas they did not understand, for kings they had never seen, for gods more helpless than themselves." u Admitting all that, your objection to it is in itself a prejudice. You should read Sextus Empiricus in the original. Trans- lations lead one astray." Quain did. He read vEnesidemus too ; he would have read Pyrrho also, had that ataraxist left anything to read, and under the novelist's advice followed them up with incursions to the granaries of German thought. When he was done, even the prejudice of a prejudice had gone. He was unable to take anything seriously, least of all himself. He was fin de sihle, last train, and hurrah for the hindmost. These gymnastics, however disintegrat- ing and joyous, interfered not in the least with his duties at the bank. But then, to be a consistent ataraxist, to maintain an entire suspension of judgment, a constant shoulder shrugging, presupposes what it did not when philosophers were content with an Enthralled obolus a day wealth. The salary which Quain received was not generous the salary of what clerk in Wall Street is ? but, such as it was, he knew it to be dependent on good behavior and assiduity. In Fifth Avenue Mr. Attersol treated him as he might have treated a son, had he had one, with a frosty kindness, a benign reserve. But in Wall Street, though the frostiness and reserve were there, they were absolutely untem- pered. Quain was a clerk and nothing more. One morning that clerk's attention was attracted by the office boy. On the tip of his snub nose was a smear of red ink, and he was sawing his throat with his hand. "You're wanted," he croaked hoarsely. " Look out for your head. Ford's is chopped." Ford was the cashier, an elderly man with a tired manner, who never spoke, and to whom by his brother clerks, in the expan- sive five minutes which are the successors of lunch, Heliogabalian propensities were ascribed. The Beast and the Beauty " Ah ! " Quain felt his own head safe enough, and would have said as much had he thought it worth while, but he obeyed the bidding at once. " Oswald," said Mr. Attersol, when Quain entered the room where that gentleman sat, "I have been obliged to thank Mr. Ford for his services. You are to take his place." With this the banker looked down and away. But presently he raised his eyes : "You are to take his salary, of course. And " Quain was about to speak, but he checked him. " Myrrha and Mrs. Smithwick return to- morrow. Perhaps you -will find it conven- ient to get rooms elsewhere. I shall expect you at dinner on Sunday on every Sunday. That will do. Telephone to Mr. Bancroft. I would like a word with him." Mr. Attersol's private office had looked very bright to Quain when he entered it ; there was sunlight everywhere, and some of Enthralled that sunlight accompanied his return. For the advancement was not only unexpected but unprecedented. It sent him careering over four of his seniors. One may indeed be an ataraxist, the recognition of one's abilities is pleasurable, after all. And be- sides, though the house on Fifth Avenue was sufficiently luxurious and exceedingly well appointed, through some strange over- sight no latchkeys had been provided, which perhaps was as well, for Mr. Attersol was very rigorous in his insistence that every one in that house should be present at morn- ing prayers. Then, too, a release from the presence of that little vixen and her feather- headed aunt was a matter which Quain could contemplate with entire equanimity. On the whole, then, as he re-straddled his stool, he was on such good terms with the world at large, that a half-hour passed before he remembered the message to Mr. Bancroft. If bored at all, it was merely at the prospect of these Sunday dinners. " I wonder," he mused, " I wonder if The Beast and the Beauty that little catamount is any beastlier than she was before she went away." And for a moment he pictured her as he had seen her last the eyes half closed, the chin upraised, the mouth drawn in diligent disdain. " She couldn't be," he ultimately decided, and, consoled by the reflection, settled down to work. But the Sunday which followed was fer- tile in surprises. Who was this that looked like a willis in a ballad, and who, as he entered the drawing-room, came forward with an enchanted smile ? Surely this could not be Myrrha. And what was she saying to him ? When had he heard such melody before ? Her hand was in his ; about her mobile lips a smile was fluttering, one that mounted to her eyes, danced in them, and played again in the curves of her mouth. No, never had he seen that mouth before, nor yet in all the world any mouth that for sweetness resembled it. And that hand! Enthralled Why was it in his ? And that face ? Surely this was some princess stepping from an idyl in a dream ! " Is it you ? " he asked grotesquely, and for countenance' sake ran his fingers through the tangles of his hair. The phantasmagoria had lasted but a second ; the sound of his voice awoke him ; he was on earth again. It is true, the hand had gone. " I am glad to see you," he added civilly enough, and in a moment he was hobnob- bing with Mrs. Smithwick, congratulating her on her safe return. During the meal that followed you might have mistaken him for your own cousin, so nicely did he behave. The girl, too, was bright and debonair ; Mrs. Smith wick's tongue ran till it seemed as though it must fall from her mouth ; and, though it was Sunday, even Mr. Attersol seemed pleased and content. In short, the dinner was so little unsuccessful that when Quain got back to the lodgings in the lower Thirties The Beast and the Beauty which he had selected for his use, he smiled a trifle grimly at himself. " That little catamount has improved," he reflected. " Well, there was room for it. Improved ? " he repeated after a moment. " Improved ? It isn't the same girl at all. They have done her all over and set her up anew. I wonder, though" He hesitated, bolting mentally at the eccentricity of his own thought; but it must have pursued him, for when he awoke in the morning it was with him still. For weaknesses of this kind there is no such tonic as the matter-of-factness of the open air. Quain had not stepped into the Elevated before all memory of the girl had gone ; and, his new duties aiding, it was not until the following Sunday he remem- bered that she lived. But as the weeks succeeded he became less oblivious. Once he discovered himself daintily occupied in tracing on a blotter the letters of her name. And once on the avenue, as he caught sight of her returning with Mrs. Smithwick from Enthralled the park, he saluted the carriage with quick- ening pulse. But these things, however sig- nificant, were as nothing in comparison to an incident which presently occurred. It was in October that the girl had reached New York, and after that first Sunday she treated Quain as though in reality he were one of the family ; interesting herself in his pur- suits, questioning him in regard to himself, and when the cloth was gone and they had all moved to the drawing-room, telling him tales of Europe, adventurous episodes of schoolgirl career, the gemiithlichkeit of the Dresden court, the sauciness of Paris, the fatuousness of the Florentines, interrupted, if at all, but now and then by interludes from her aunt, or some comment that issued from behind the periodical in which Mr. Attersol was supposed to be absorbed. Then Mrs. Smithwick would vanish like a wraith, Mr. Attersol, too, would disappear, and there would be more tales, punctuated by interchange of confidences, until the clock struck the eleventh hour and Quain knew it The Beast and the Beauty was time to go. During these sessions, when the girl was occupied with the impres- sions which foreign lands had supplied, it was a pleasure to watch her. Her voice was resonant as a bell, delightfully modulated ; it charmed the ear. But the mobility of her features, the varying expressions which her face took on at the situations which she saw before describing, and which she made her auditor expect, were a caress to the eye. There were quivers in her mouth, flushes that would come and go, inclinations and poises of the head, and particularly a little trick she had, when hesitating for the word she wanted, of drawing breath, her lips half parted, the tip of her tongue just visible, that gave her a grace too ambient to be portrayed. But when it was Quain, in turn, who led the talk, she exhibited an assenting, imper- sonal interest, which in the lengthening interviews changed almost into perplexity, as though her thoughts were occupied less with what he said than with what he sug- Enthralled gested ; as though she had become doubly receptive, attentive at once to him and to some other, invisible to them both. Now, it so happened that Mrs. Smithwick, who had more fancies than a composer of ballets, conceived, in an entirely painless manner, an idea that Myrrha should "come out." Her own people had been notable at a time when Union Square was a suburb ; and though the fair precinct in which she now resided was largely inhabited by ladies and gentlemen whose names had never, in those less complex days, appeared on any visiting list of which she had cognizance, still among them were offshoots and lin- eages which she could recognize. Then, too, there was the wide, the wealthy, and the fabulously respectable contingent adher- ent to the Presbyterian Church, of which, as already noted, Mr. Attersol was a pillar. And inevitably the flying squadron of acquaintances and friends encountered and recruited among the penal colonies on the Seine, on the Arno, and the Riviera ladies The Beast and the Beauty of a certain age, whose conception of morality appeared to consist in the improper thoughts they had of other people ; and stately gentlemen of suave address, without an enemy in the world or an idea in their heads. Where was the obstacle that should pre- vent these representatives of fashion from becoming aware that Miss Attersol was to enter society ? Mrs. Smithwick saw but one Miss Attersol's father. To her sur- prise, however, and more to her content, the suggestion made, there was no veto from him ; a protest merely from Myrrha, to which Mrs. Smithwick paid no attention at all, but promptly consulted with Sherry and ordered the cards. To this function Quain was duly bidden. It needed some urging, though, before he consented to come. Oh, not much ! He balked ; he was not a society man, he insisted ; he would not know what not to do, nor what not to say. But Myrrha brushed his objections aside like cob- Enthralled webs. " I want you," she told him, and he came. But the visit was brief. " I'm off," he muttered to her the first chance he got. The drawing-room, the great dining-room beyond, the reception-rooms, the hall, the stairway too, were pervaded and possessed by a set of people as well sent out as any capital of the globe could produce. At the time being Myrrha was engaged in talk with Arthur Bancroft, a lawyer still young yet already famous, a man with the look of an athlete that had taken honors, one in whom her father reposed great trust, as well he might, for he was frank as a sword and just as keen. " I feel like a pike in a tank of goldfish," Quain added. The girl looked up. " Nonsense ! " she exclaimed. "I won't have you go." But as he nodded merely, a flush mounted to her cheek, she turned away. A moment, and he had gone. The Beast and the Beauty " What rights has she over me ? " he queried indignantly. There was no one to reply. That night the question haunted him, and in the morning it greeted him anew. " What is her ill-humor to me ?" he asked himself. "Haven't I provoked and expe- rienced it a thousand times before ? I thought her changed : she isn't. Since her return she has done nothing but try to get me under her thumb. It's absurd." But in spite of the irritation Myrrha in- habited his thoughts. Yet not the Myrrha whom he had known. Another had come, a new one, so to speak, made up of beauties and imperfections, perversities and charms, that fused into a unity, adorable, gracious, sincere. The form, invisible and undefined, which surely accompanies the thoughts of the adolescent, and which is but the un- incarnated soul of her that is destined to reside therein, abruptly took substance. As a weed of the sea, loosened and detached, rises slowly, stayed by one eddy, then by Enthralled another, before achieving its gradual yet sure ascent, a revelation, arrested now by an objection, again by a query, yet ever nearer the surface, rose from the depths of his being and suddenly surged before him. " But I love her," he cried. There is a magic in those words. No sooner were they uttered than an exterior force seemed to lift him from himself. His mind became a rendezvous of apparitions. Myrrha reappeared in countless phases, as he had seen her first, as he had seen her last, in all the different changes of the years ; and a shudder seized him at the perception of this love which had not existed the day before, and which had revealed itself, causelessly, after a night of dream, after too many glasses of cham- pagne, perhaps. " I love her," he repeated. " But but she is not for such as I. She would be amused indeed could she suspect." He drew breath, went to the dressing- table, shut his eyes, waited a moment, The Beast and the Beauty opened them, and stared at the thing which was there. " Never," he muttered, as he turned away, " never could she care for that" During the rest of the day that weariness which succeeds a long journey oppressed him. He had travelled far indeed into that loveliest of lands where the flowers distil the reason of love, where the unknown and the divine saunter familiarly like the gods of old, through mornings mellower than August nights, through dusks more languid than the moon. But he returned, outwearied ; and, as the day waned, a vision retreated. His heart was lighter ; he felt that his love was decreasing, that it would last but a few hours yet, that with sleep perhaps it would fade and be lost in the penumbra of the past. As he lay down, a face seemed pressed to his, lips were seeking his own. Myrrha was with him still. The morrow happened to be Sunday. He would see her as a matter of course, and, 4 Enthralled perhaps, through that clairvoyant intuition which girls possess, she would divine and jest. As he told himself this, it occurred to him that he might parry any possible thrust by the announcement that he was to leave town. After all, never yet had he asked for a holiday ; there was not an imaginable reason why he should not demand and obtain leave for an outing in Florida. But fate, that uncertain force which we recog- nize secretly and openly deny, willed other- wise. He was not destined to mingle with the magnolias that year no, nor on any other. " I think," he began, when the soup had gone, " I think, if Mr. Attersol don't mind, that I will take a run out of town to-morrow. What do you say, Myrrha ? Wouldn't it be a good idea for me to go to St. Augustine, or somewhere? These gayeties, you know, are upsetting." The girl shrugged a shoulder indiffer- ently. " A good idea yes, if you want to." Quain bit his lip. There had been a fail- The Beast and the Beauty ure in the street, others were imminent. A political job, a triumph in trickery had been unearthed. The papers were dripping with scandals social, financial, ecclesiastic. A wave of corruption seemed to be crossing the continent. Mr. Attersol touched on the subject, but distantly, with his finger-tips. Quain picked it up bodily. Never had he appeared so intractable. You would have said that everything which was occurring was a matter of personal import. The ataraxia had gone. "At this rate," he declared, by way of conclusion, " the hour is near when this globe of ours, in whirling through space, will poison the universe with the fetidity of its exhalations." " My ! " exclaimed Mrs. Smithwick, whom the prospect startled. " My ! my ! ! " But Quain had turned to Myrrha. There was a violence in his eyes, a bitterness, an unreasoning anger, a light as well, which suddenly inundated her. A flush flamed to her face, she could have cried aloud ; she Enthralled wished herself anywhere save where she was ; she was smitten by emotion as by a blow. "He loves me," she reflected. "He is angry because I have not seen it and I have." Mr. Attersol leaned from his seat : " What is the matter with you ? You are scarlet." The girl muttered something, but what ? The words were inaudible. She stood up and left the room. " Gayeties are upsetting," Mr. Attersol announced significantly. " Adelaide," he continued to Mrs. Smithwick, " see to it that she goes nowhere this week." As quickly as he could Quain got from the house. On the steps he reeled. He, too, had seen. He was blinded. It was unreal, he kept telling himself. It was impossible. He was the toy of an illusion. But the ex- pression which her face had taken on in answer to the reproach on his was voluble. " She knows that I love her," he muttered. "She knows it, and if I read her eyes aright The Beast and the Beauty dear God, if I have, life is as fair as a dream." On the morrow he was irresolute, vacillant still. By four he left the office. An hour later he was at the house, determined if at all but as to one thing to know. " Yes, Miss Attersol was at home," he learned from the servant ; and from coats in the hall, that Miss Attersol was not alone. How he entered the room he could not after- ward recall. He was conscious merely that Melanchthon Stitt spoke to him, Bancroft as well, that he hated them both, and that for a second he held Myrrha's hand in his. "Yes, it was most odd," Stitt was saying. " Have you heard, Quain ? " the novelist in- terrupted himself to ask. " That little rival of mine, Mrs. Fordyce, has committed sui- cide. I was just telling Miss Attersol. Sui- cide always seems to me such a poor climax, particularly as life is well enough, agreeable even, if you let it have its own way. Of course, if you try to oppose it with all sorts of ideas you have got you don't know how, Enthralled you make a mess of the whole thing. Life is a current. Of your conceptions of right or wrong, of your likes and dislikes, it takes no account at all. Drift with it, don't op- pose it. It is a guide that won't be guided ; you must yield to it or drown." The novelist stood up. The little speech was just so much " copy " which he pro- posed to amplify at leisure. " But how did she do it ? " Myrrha asked. "Who? Mrs. Fordyce? How did she kill herself, do you mean ? Oh, she just threw a glance out of the window and fol- lowed it. By the way, I wanted to tell you, Miss Attersol, how much I enjoyed your en- tirely charming affair the other day." And the novelist smiled and bowed. "Bancroft," he added, for the lawyer had also risen, " if you are going my way, you can give me a lift." A moment, and Quain and the girl were alone. "Myrrha," he began at once, "that idiot gave you his views of life, at second-hand, The Beast and the Beauty too, I dare say. What are your views of love ? " He must have looked a very fierce wooer as he spoke, for the girl shrank ; he saw it and moved closer. " Shall I tell you his, Bancroft's, all the world's ? To them love is the affection of some one else. But to you, what is it to you ? What does it imply ? Answer me. You must tell me." He was staring into her eyes ; there was a pathos in them, a dread, a wonder too. But they were not in his ; they looked rapt yet startled. When a girl first stands face to face with love, it may allure, but always it alarms. " Tell me," he repeated ; and at the mo- ment, awkwardly, as men will do such things, he attempted to take her hand.. But she freed herself and moved a little. The effort presumably aroused her. " I do not know that I know what love is ; but if the feeling which I have experienced since yesterday be that, then then" Enthralled She hesitated and paused. Her eyes now seemed set on some vista visible only to herself, and she added slowly, with the air of one returning from some inordinate dis- tance : " Then it is the sweetest shape of pain." As she said this, for the first time she turned to him and she smiled. Yet was it a smile ? On her lips there was a gladness, but in her eyes were the phantoms of twin tears. She ran a hand across them, and for a moment held it so. "Oswald," she continued, the hand still raised, " let me tell you, or rather let me try to tell, for as yet I myself do not under- stand. Perhaps you can make it clear. I think I love you " and at the avowal she blushed divinely "yet again, in some way which I cannot explain to myself, I think it may not be love at all. For love should bring happiness, should it not ? And it is not happiness that I feel, it is a dread and of what ? Of myself or of you ? " The hand dropped to her side, the flush The Beast and the Beauty had gone, her face was pale, and she turned to him again. " Shall I tell you? How shall I? Os- wald, I am as one bewitched ; you fascinate and repel." As she said this there came to him the look of a beaten dog that crouches, fearing another blow. She divined his thought at once and shook her head almost angrily. " No, no ; no, no," she cried. " Not that, Oswald, it is your soul I fear " " My soul ! Myrrha, I did not know I had one till I saw it mirrored in your eyes. I used to deny that such a thing could be. I was as an idiot at the sea-shore ; the infinite was before me, and I was uncon- scious of it. My soul ! But, Myrrha, it is you that have created it " " I do not know, perhaps it is your heart I fear, perhaps my own ; it may be that it is you." " My heart is yours ; will you take it, Myrrha, or will you put it aside, a thing for- ever dead ? " Enthralled His hand again had sought her own, and for a moment now she let it lie in his. " Myrrha," he whispered, " this is the birthday of my life." The girl made no reply, nor even did she attempt to frame one ; she made no revolt either, and for a while hand in hand they sat, silent, op- pressed by that melancholy which is the woof of love, interrogating the future, mar- velling at the past. " I am frightened," the girl murmured at last, but so faintly that he barely heard. " And I ! I, too, am frightened. Myrrha, joy affrights." She shook her head. " Perhaps it is that in love there are three ; the third is the Unknown. Oswald, I know now, it is that I fear." She had stood up. What vision had she seen ? She had been pale before, but now she was white. She reached to a chair for support. " Children, what are you up to ? " In the doorway was Mrs. Smithwick. " Snuff, I suppose," she added flightily. " Well, even The Beast and the Beauty so ! Oswald, I thought you were shooting crocodiles. And Myrrha ! Do you know it is seven ? Do you know the Wentworths are coming ? Do you know why, what is the matter with her ? " On the chair, her head on her shoulder, Myrrha seemed to have sunk in a heap. Quain sprang at her. " She's fainted," he almost yelped. " Be still, you great booby. Ring the bell, can't you ? Call Antoinette." Already Mrs. Smithwick had raised the girl and was beating her hands with hers, but instantly almost she opened her eyes. " There, it's over now." She straightened herself, and for a moment sat, Quain and Mrs. Smithwick on either side, unconscious of them, uncon- scious perhaps of herself, in that attitude which Diirer gave to Melancholy. Mrs. Smithwick, however, had no intention of experiencing any such emotion without enjoying the due reward. " It is your stays, Myrrha," she began Enthralled severely. " Don't tell me it isn't. It's always the same thing. I don't know what gets into girls." And looking over at Quain she added in a shrill aside, " The devil, I think." Myrrha nodded, but to which solution was by no means clear. Then with that motion a swan has, she turned to Quain : " Come to-morrow, won't you ? " Yes, indeed he would. And when he found himself in the street he repeated that promise aloud. He was vexed, nervous too, distraught by the episodes of the afternoon, which had left him little wiser than before. Her attitude, too, filled him with surmises. He asked himself a dozen questions in as many seconds, and let them pass unanswered. There was but one that he detained of what was she afraid ? Was it his face ? Surely that were enough to frighten a braver and stronger one yet than she. But had she not insisted, angrily almost, that it was not that? And yet, admitting that in her heart of hearts she really loved, was it The Beast and the Beauty not less himself for whom she cared than for some illusion of her fancy ? It is the corollary of love to doubt, to doubt always, to doubt in certainty, in con- viction ; and though such shrewd people as you and I could have told at a glance that the girl was not illusionized in the least, yet Quain was in the toils. Love may frighten, but it blinds as well. He had reached a club where, latterly, he had dined, and entered querying still. In the main room Stitt was seated, his back to the door. About him were a group of men in evening dress. Quain's entrance was unnoticed. He picked up the Post and glanced at a leader. But the sound of his own name caused him, as involuntarily it will cause the best of us, to listen. It was Stitt that was speaking. "You are wrong, dear boy. Men such as he have opportunities the rest of us never enjoy. Women must be loved, yes, though it be by monsters, perhaps particularly by monsters " Enthralled The paper Quain held fell from him. It was as though a veil had been rent. Light poured in upon him. He turned to go, but another phrase from the novelist, the answer to some objection, no doubt, followed after and caught him on the way. " Psychology ! But what is psychology but common sense with the gas turned on ? " "And what is a paradox? " he asked him- self as he reached the street. " What is it but the commonplace in fancy dress ? For once, and by accident, that idiot is right. If Myrrha loves me it is because I differ from all other men, because I am a monster, because outside of Patagonia and Sing Sing I am the ugliest being on earth. Because I am unique. But what is it that she fears ? Is my nature as hideous as my face ? " The man who has followed the old world recommendation, the man who has taken cognizance of himself, is rare. Quain was no exception. The philosophy of the Athe- nians had disorganized him admirably ; it had divested him of the incessant preoccu- The Beast and the Beauty pation of what Stitt might have termed the cant-dira-t-on. The opinion of the third person had lost its value. But what philos- ophy had not taught him, and that for the reason that only life can, was that in the depths of every man, however intellectual, however refined, are the same possibilities for evil that bandits share. Only with the former the dregs do not get to the surface. Yet now, as he asked himself that simple little question, he stared at the abysses which he discovered. The man who divests himself of prejudices divests himself of prin- ciples as well. And as Quain looked the closer, there was not one that he could call his own, nothing at all, in fact, save the flick- er and flame of a passion, the lawlessness of one desire, a determination fixed and reso- lute to possess that girl. " She is right to be afraid," he muttered. It had begun to snow; the cool flakes were grateful, exhilarating too, and as he strode on up the avenue again there came to him a sense of larger life, the freedom that eagles Enthralled know; his lungs expanded with fresh odors ; beyond was a new horizon, brutally beauti- ful, wholly solid, dreamless and real, and in it, fairer than the desire of a fallen god, was Myrrha aglow with gold. At once he understood himself. Other men had infirmities, he was sound no gas- tritis called good taste, none of that obesity of the mind which is known as decorum, no rheumatism of the nerves, none of the an- chylosis of rectitude. He was an ambition animated, one with which nothing should interfere. No, nothing ; and as he repeated those two words, unconsciously yet surely the old world recommendation, Tv&Qi