VANISHING POINTS 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
VANISHING POINTS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALICE BROWN 
 II 
 
 " You cannot see beyond the vanishing point. 
 True. But take one step and you see more. 
 And so on to Infinity." 
 
 ECKERMANN 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1922 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
 BY HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1906, 
 BY HARPER & BROTHERS AND BY THE RIDGEWAY COMPANY. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1908, 
 BY HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 
 
 BY HARPER & BROTHERS, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS AND BY THB ATLAJmo 
 MONTHLY COMPANY. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1910, 
 BY HARPER & BROTHERS AND BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1911, 
 BY HARPER & BROTHERS AND BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913, 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1913. 
 
 FERRIC 
 
 PRINTING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HE MAN IN THE CLOISTER . * . t . . . 3 
 
 . . , i / 
 
 \AlOTHER . . k . . . . . i 27 
 
 ^THE STORY OF ABE .48 
 
 JA GUARDED SHRINE' 69 
 
 4 /THE DISCOVERY . , . . 87 
 
 V/THE MASTER . . . . . . . 105 
 
 ^THE INTERPRETER ...... 124 
 
 S/THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL . . . .141 
 
 VJTHE WIZARD'S TOUCH 161 
 
 \/A MAN OF FEELING . . . . ^ . . 181 
 
 -Arw, LANTERN 205 
 
 E PRIVATE SOLDIER . . . . . . 227 
 
 CLUE . 251 
 
 GOLDEN BABY ....... 275 
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE ..... 296 
 
 THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 322 
 
 928565 
 
VANISHING POINTS 
 
VANISHING POINTS 
 
 THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 
 
 THE Littletons had an evening at home, because 
 Aunt Harriet Webb, from Overland, was mak- 
 ing her annual winter visit, and it became not 
 only a point of honor to stand by and entertain a com- 
 fortable old lady to whom all city amusements were not 
 plain sailing, but a privilege as dearly prized as a new 
 form of vaudeville. 
 
 Aunt Harriet had kept a boarding-house at Overland 
 in the middle years which were now slipping past her, 
 and it was there the Littletons, being then persons of a 
 modest income, had spent several summers and formed 
 for her an attachment which they never, in their present 
 flourishing days, permitted to languish. Mr. Littleton, 
 who was now a white-haired autocrat of civic affairs, 
 and his wife, a faithful patroness of music and the 
 kindred arts whenever her name was sought, had not 
 changed with the gilding of then" responsibilities, except 
 perhaps to be more kind, more constant in remembering 
 their leaner time and the companions who had helped 
 to make it fruitful. When Aunt Harriet came, they 
 always felt they were returning to a delightful state of 
 indolence, because their engagements were immediately 
 curtailed, save such as Aunt Harriet liked to share. 
 
 3 
 
4 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Mr. Littleton 1 jread his evening paper and sometimes 
 sat by with a volume of Dickens until he yawningly con- 
 o-uded it was time to go to bed, and his wife crocheted 
 or even knitted faithfully to the tune of their old friend's 
 chat. To-night the unvaried programme was contin- 
 uing, except that Ruth Nutter, Mr. Littleton's private 
 secretary, was established there, smiling now and then 
 as she was addressed, and pasting book-plates into a 
 pile of volumes from England; and Sedgwick, the Little- 
 tons' grandson, corrugated with reflection on social 
 problems, was frowning into the fire and contributing 
 nothing whatever to conversational interchange. 
 
 Aunt Harriet, a short, stout, very neat old lady with 
 smooth hair dressed in the fashion of the sixties and a 
 cashmere dress she had made herself according to a 
 never-dying ideal, looked benevolently up from her 
 knitting one or twice, in a lapse of conversation, to 
 consider the younger man and woman and wonder over 
 them in a voiceless way. It seemed to her splendid to 
 be of an age which is no age at all, and that these two 
 were apparently ignoring their dowry. They ought to 
 be laughing and sparkling at each other. The pretty 
 girl, with her sweet, pale face, blue eyes, and soft black 
 hair, and the distinction of her white hands against her 
 black dress artfully subdued in style to the precise 
 shade of her calling, ought to be conscious of her heredi- 
 tary right as accorder of happiness, and the gaunt 
 young man, with his brown eyes and working, sensitive 
 mouth, should be gayly or even humbly suppliant. 
 But no! These two inheritors of the world's promises 
 might as well have been creatures of withered eld for 
 all the battle of merry life between them. Once Sedg- 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 5 
 
 wick did say something about the Fabian Society, and 
 Ruth lifted a quick, earnest glance and asked him if 
 he had read a certain pamphlet on the plight of mil- 
 lionaires, and they went on talking about Shavianism, 
 with a conjecture from Sedgwick as to the likelihood 
 of Shaw's loving his fellow man. Aunt Harriet could 
 make nothing of it all. It seemed to her " dreadful 
 foolish talk". She sometimes had quick poetic fancies 
 sprung from reminiscent glimpses at the pictures life 
 had hung in her mind, and she suddenly laughed out. 
 Littleton looked up from his volume of Dickens and 
 smiled, out of a general benevolence, and his wife asked 
 cozily: 
 
 " What is it?" 
 
 "I was kinder thinkin', that's all," said Aunt Harriet, 
 in a tone subdued to her understanding of courtship's 
 thraldom, " about them two over there. I was won- 
 derin' if they'd ever been sleigh-ridin' together or 
 mayflowerin'." 
 
 Mrs. Littleton shook her head and smiled. She 
 wished Sedgwick would marry Ruth, exquisite, in the 
 eyes of them all, as the highest imagined type of girl- 
 hood, and sometimes it seemed to her he did look wist- 
 fully that way. But she had never entered his inner 
 mind far enough to guess how little determined he was 
 in his line of work, and consequently in the trend of 
 settled affections. Sometimes it seemed to him it would 
 be necessary to devote himself to the study of social 
 conditions, and even to live among the poor. That, 
 when he thought of Ruth, drew a black line through 
 any hope he might have of the equable happiness of a 
 wife and home. The world seemed to him so bad that 
 
6 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 he dared not stretch out a hand toward the good of 
 it for his own possession, and Ruth was, he knew, 
 supremely good. But he was a poetic sort of fellow, 
 with a real inner passion for writing, and when that 
 came over him which he scathingly called individualism, 
 he wrote by the ream and destroyed. 
 
 "I wonder what Shaw's done with all the money he 
 got out of his plays?" Ruth was saying, with a little 
 defiant lift of her head, knowing how unpopular her 
 implication was destined to be. 
 
 "What business is it of ours?" Sedgwick inquired, 
 frowning. 
 
 "It's our business, when a man sets himself up to 
 teach and preach and jeer about money, to know 
 whether he begins at home." 
 
 She darted a glance at him. Aunt Harriet, continu- 
 ing her benevolent watch, decided, though the conver- 
 sation was hidden from her, that Ruth was being a 
 little naughtier than she usually dared, trying the 
 ground as she went. 
 
 "What's he put it into?" 
 
 "Consols," said Mr. Littleton, sonorously, without 
 looking up, and Ruth nodded gayly at the young man. 
 
 ' ' Your grandfather knows, ' ' said she. ' ' There ! ' ' 
 
 At that moment a visitor was announced. He came 
 in hastily and shook hands all round with the lack of 
 ceremony indicating frequent and informal meetings. 
 He was a robust young curate with an ascetic mouth 
 and eyes of a violet blue constituting his help and 
 hindrance, because they induced large numbers of per- 
 sons to accord him requests he seemed to have made, 
 and generally involved him in the complexity of things. 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 7 
 
 He had, through these years of his energetic priest- 
 hood, kept his hand in Mr. Littleton's pocket, pulling 
 it out, when occasion bade, to scatter the largess it 
 extracted. 
 
 "I really had to come in," said he, in his rapid way. 
 "The most extraordinary thing has happened." 
 
 Littleton laid down his glasses and ostentatiously 
 brought out a pencil. He searched then in his pockets, 
 the unlikely ones with the others, because that pro- 
 longed the pantomime. 
 
 "Where's my check-book?" he mused. "I wasn't 
 ready for you, Bond. Do overlook it this once. I 
 'most always run to get it when I hear you in the hall, 
 but you came in too quiet." 
 
 The curate could not smile over the obvious old 
 joke, slight tax as it was on a certainty of largess. What 
 he had been experiencing moved him too acutely. He 
 could only repeat: 
 
 "The most extraordinary thing has happened." 
 
 "Do sit down, Mr. Bond," counselled his hostess, 
 in her mollifying way. She had lowered her needle and 
 wool, and crossed her pretty ringed hands upon them. 
 
 Bond obeyed her, but immediately rose again and 
 stood leaning against the mantel. He evidently could 
 not allow himself the semblance of comfort. 
 
 "It didn't seem such an exceptional case at first," 
 he said, as if he began the story to the fire below him 
 and not to them. "You know how cold it's been." 
 
 "Unheard of," supplied Littleton. "Zero for a 
 week." 
 
 "Yes. Keep that in your mind while I tell you. A 
 man has been sleeping all the week in the cloister." 
 
8 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "In the cloister?" Sedgwick demanded, in a loud 
 voice, and Ruth looked up and lifted her eyebrows as 
 a general interrogation. 
 
 "The cloister of the church," Mrs Littleton ex- 
 plained quietly to Aunt Harriet, who was regarding 
 them in turn from a bemused wonderment. 
 
 "Ain't they allowed to?" she asked. 
 
 "It's a cold place," Sedgwick explained, rapidly, so 
 that they might get on. "It's really like sleeping out- 
 doors, on a piazza, on a porch. How did you find it out? " 
 
 This was to Bond, who continued, in the same 
 strained way: "I came on him myself. I was going 
 past. I stepped in there to " he paused, seemed to 
 sweep aside his momentary confusion over a betrayal, 
 as a thing of no moment, and went on. "I went in to 
 look at Orion through that fretwork. I stumbled on 
 the fellow. There he was huddled up. I thought it 
 was a dog." 
 
 "What did you do?" Ruth asked this. She and 
 Sedgwick were estimating to the full the artistic value 
 of the scene. 
 
 "Why," said Bond, as if he scorned himself, "I 
 thought the man was drunk. I telephoned the police." 
 
 "Well, he was, wasn't he?" Littleton inquired, out 
 of cool experience with a baffling world. 
 
 "Was what?" 
 
 "Drunk." 
 
 "No. He was done up, with hunger, cold, tramping 
 about for days in search of work, and the hideousness 
 of not getting it." 
 
 "Yes," said Sedgwick, in a quick staccato. "Yes! 
 yes!" 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 9 
 
 Aunt Harriet looked at him in that perplexed way 
 of hers, as if he with the rest of them but he more 
 than all the rest because he lived in a turmoil of theory 
 from which he did not even briefly escape made a 
 new social condition for which Overland had not fitted 
 her understanding. 
 
 "He'd come from the country/' Bond was continu- 
 ing to Littleton rather than to Sedgwick, since the 
 older man seemed to be listening to the story as a 
 story, with no preconceived idea that it might help 
 or mar any social theory of his own. "He'd been in a 
 chair factory." 
 
 "They get real good wages there," Aunt Harriet inter- 
 polated, as a simple item she was fitted to contribute. 
 
 Then Bond included her in the circle of his more 
 direct gaze. "Yes," he agreed, "so he told me. But 
 this winter they shut down work." 
 
 "It seems odd he shouldn't have had a nest-egg to 
 fall back upon," Littleton advanced, from the shrewd- 
 ness of his own ordered life. 
 
 "I dunno why," Aunt Harriet objected. "Mebbe 
 he had a large family. Mebbe his wife's extravagant. 
 You can't tell." 
 
 "He hasn't any family," said Bond. "His only 
 brother and his brother's wife died last year. He's 
 been turning in his wages to pay off the debts they 
 left. They had long illnesses." 
 
 "Sounds like a man I used to know, lived down 
 through the Gorge," said Aunt Harriet. "But there! 
 he never 'd been such a fool as to leave old New Hamp- 
 shire to come pokin' off here where he'd be as lone- 
 some as an owl in a bucket." 
 
10 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Well," said Littleton, tapping his hand on the 
 closed volume of Dickens, "what have you done for 
 him? What do you propose doing?" 
 
 Bond looked at once as if he were hardening his 
 heart, with a determination to lead the scientific life. 
 He turned to Sedgwick, as being the one best fitted to 
 uphold him in it. 
 
 "I've given him ten cents a night for lodging at the 
 Relief Camp," he said, "and fifteen cents a day for 
 food. I've done that for a week." 
 
 "Fifteen cents a day!" Aunt Harriet repeated, 
 innocently. "I should ha' said produce was higher, 
 city prices so." 
 
 "Food is higher," Sedgwick was repeating, hotly. 
 "Ask grandfather what his month's bills amount to. 
 Ask him how much he probably paid for the dinner 
 we ate to-night. Oh!" The last seemed the cry, if 
 not of the hungry, at least of their champion. 
 
 Littleton frowned. ' ' There, Sedgwick, ' ' he entreated, 
 "don't you begin on that." He was conscious of a 
 warm heart and a perpetually depleted pocket, and he 
 wished Sedgwick would let him alone to grow old in 
 a well-earned peace, not poisoning his food and drink 
 with the ill-judged reminder that some folks hadn't 
 any. 
 
 Ruth's hands were trembling a little, and the pupils 
 of her eyes dilated. It was not easy to see on what side 
 she ranged herself, but wherever she was, it was in a 
 pulsating excitement of mind. 
 
 "I can't saddle the church with him," Bond was 
 asserting. "It has done all it ought to in the way of 
 temporary relief." 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 11 
 
 "Ain't you got any rich folks in it?" Aunt Harriet 
 inquired, with a genuine simplicity. 
 
 "The question is," said Sedgwick, in rapid explana- 
 tion, then to sweep her aside for the immediate issue, 
 "whether the church would have a right to take him 
 in as a regular pensioner when it has so many already 
 for whom it can't find work." 
 
 "Mercy!" said Aunt Harriet. "Seems if there was 
 work enough in the world, only anybody's willin' to 
 do it." Then she began to realize that the coil was 
 getting too complicated for her, and withdrew into 
 silence. 
 
 "I suppose you wrote to his old home to find out 
 whether his story is true?" Sedgwick was asking. 
 
 "Yes," said Bond. "I got the answer to-day. It's 
 all perfectly straight. He's a man of good character. 
 The factory did shut down. He's honestly out of 
 work." 
 
 "Won't they give him relief? " 
 
 "He won't take it." 
 
 "But he'll take it from you!" 
 
 "There's something queer about that. He appears 
 to consider it in the nature of a loan till he gets a job. 
 He seems to feel it's different coming through the 
 church." 
 
 "So it is," Ruth put in, quickly, adding then, when 
 Sedgwick looked at her as if to demand her reasons, 
 "so it ought to be." 
 
 Bond immediately went back to his old perplexity 
 of visage, the expression he had worn in entering. 
 "That's exactly it," he said. "There's something 
 awfully moving about his drifting down here and mak- 
 
12 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 ing no appeal, but just going to the church, to sleep, 
 and freeze if he had to. It's as if he had a right to 
 because it was the church." 
 
 "Pooh! pooh!" said Littleton. It would have been 
 a simpler thing to make out a check in the begin- 
 ning than to see his evening dissipated in the fruitless 
 speculating he had for daily meat when Sedgwick was 
 at home. "He went there because it was a shelter and 
 he wasn't likely to be disturbed. He'd have gone just 
 the same if it had been a stock exchange." 
 
 "No," said Bond, "I don't agree with you. He 
 went because it was the church. 
 
 "Yes," said Ruth, softly, "I think it was because it 
 was the church." 
 
 "Oh, unquestionably," said Sedgwick, "it was the 
 church." 
 
 "Yes, dear," echoed Mrs. Littleton, in a gentle 
 reproof of her husband's cruder solution. "I guess it 
 seemed different to him because 'twas a church." 
 
 "Well," said Littleton, crisply, "what you going to 
 do with him?" 
 
 "I don't know," Bond offered, droopingly. 
 
 "Pay his fare back to the country?" 
 
 "He won't go." 
 
 "What does he propose doing?" 
 
 "Says he shall find work." 
 
 "Have you told him how the unemployed are march- 
 ing up and down these streets?" Sedgwick inquired, 
 "and if he joins them he'll only be one more?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What does he say then?" 
 
 "Says he never heard of such a thing." 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 13 
 
 "Well, I never did either," Aunt Harriet ventured. 
 "That's the sensiblest word I've heard this night." 
 
 "Well," said Littleton, conclusively. He dived into 
 his pocket and brought out a five-dollar bill. "Anyway, 
 Bond, you better use that for him till you can ship him. 
 He's got to live." 
 
 Bond took it, as it seemed, reluctantly. "Neverthe- 
 less," he demurred, "we can't have other towns pour- 
 ing their unemployed in on us." 
 
 "Of course we can't," said Sedgwick. "The problem's 
 got to be met and faced on the spot." 
 
 "Seems terrible queer to me," Aunt Harriet mur- 
 mured, as she went back to her knitting, "it should be 
 so hard to come by work. Most of us see more ahead 
 of us than we can stagger under. If anybody ain't 
 got anything to do, they might be gettin' the bugs off'n 
 the trees." 
 
 But this brought on the question of meagre appro- 
 priations, and that led to the destruction of the forests, 
 and in the whiff and wind of it all Aunt Harriet felt 
 with bewilderment that she lived in a world "not 
 realized". When Bond took his leave the question 
 went temporarily back to the man in the cloister. 
 
 "When shall you see him again?" Sedgwick asked, 
 with no particular purpose. 
 
 Bond looked shamefaced. "Why, I might see him 
 any minute," he owned. "He's taken to following me 
 round when he isn't looking for work. He seems to 
 think because I found him there that I've got some 
 power of life and death he seems to feel easy with me." 
 
 "That's the church again," Ruth declared, and Bond 
 saw assent in all the other faces. 
 
14 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 When he had gone, Littleton returned to his book, 
 feeling that immunity was cheaply bought for a five- 
 dollar note, and Sedgwick followed Ruth into the recess 
 of the window, where she had gone to put away her 
 work in the little carved chest under the sill. Aunt 
 Harriet glanced at them contentedly. Now, she 
 thought, they were to have some of the golden con- 
 fidences suited to their time. But Sedgwick was saying, 
 with a passion in no way less forceful than the passion 
 of love: 
 
 " Think of it! While we've been at the theatre, or 
 sitting here by an open fire and then going to bed in 
 luxury, that man has been lying there or tramping 
 up and down, more likely in the cold cloister. " 
 
 "Yes-," said she, "it's dreadful. But, Sedgwick" 
 
 "Well?" asked he. Then when she seemed timid 
 about continuing, he recalled himself from somewhere 
 and interrogated her again. 
 
 "You know," she said, "when you were at the 
 theatre, maybe you were learning how to write your 
 play. When you sat there by the fire, you were reading 
 a book to teach you how to write other books." 
 
 "That's another of my luxuries," he fulminated. 
 "That's what I call the intellectual life. And I can 
 pursue it, and another man has to sleep in the cloister." 
 
 "But it's your work," she reminded him. "We 
 both know it's your work." 
 
 He was caught up in a cloud of rapt imaginings, and 
 she knew her recall, no matter how clear she made it, 
 would be inaudible to him. Thus it was, day after 
 day. The spirit, she thought, said unto him, Write, 
 but he was too deafened by the clangor of the world 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 15 
 
 to listen or obey. The spirit might, she knew, have 
 also said unto him, Love, but the homespun way of 
 youth and ardor seemed to him too complex, perhaps 
 also too flowery while others walked on thorns, and he 
 turned from it. 
 
 By and by the older people went up to bed and left 
 them still talking in their corner. Then Ruth rose and 
 yet lingered a minute, casting wistful glances about 
 the room, its dying fire, the fitful light on books and 
 ceiling transforming it all, at each leap, into one or 
 another shape of domestic peace. She was seeing its 
 beauty as a refuge and an abiding-place, and with an 
 intensity that gave her an ache in the throat and a 
 constriction of tears. But he was thinking of the man 
 in the cloister. 
 
 While he was getting his hat in the hall she was half- 
 way up the stairs. She turned to look at him. "Good 
 night," she said; and then, irrepressibly, seeing that his 
 hand was on the door, "Why, you haven't your over- 
 coat." 
 
 "No," said Sedgwick. "Good night." 
 
 "Then you're coming back?" 
 
 "No, not to-night." 
 
 He went out into the cold and left her wondering. 
 She even went down and sought out his coat in the 
 closet under the stairs. There it was, opulent in fur, 
 and her hand curled endearingly over it. When she 
 went up-stairs again, rather slowly and pondering, 
 Mrs. Littleton opened a door above and put out her 
 pink face, funny and dear hi its border of blue-ribboned 
 curl papers. 
 
 "Isn't he going to stay to-night?" she asked. 
 
16 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "No," Ruth told her, waking to accord a smile out 
 of the desire not to pass on her own perplexity. 
 
 "Gone to the Settlement?" 
 
 There was nothing to do but to say he was not to be 
 back that night, and then she kissed the pink old face 
 and patted the curl papers and went on. Mrs. Littleton 
 withdrew to her room, sighing a little, to tell her hus- 
 band she did wish Sedgwick could see how much like 
 a daughter Ruth was, and how perfectly ridiculous it 
 was to pay her wages when she might be But she 
 paused because, when she got as far as that, her hus- 
 band always told her Ruth was a dear good girl, but 
 match-makers were meddlers and she'd better shut up. 
 
 The next day Sedgwick did not appear, and it was 
 assumed that he was at the Settlement and busy. Once 
 Ruth telephoned him to know whether he knew he had 
 left his coat, but he seemed obtuse to the conventional 
 idea that he might have use for it. But at the end of 
 the message, when she was about to hang up the 
 receiver, wishing he would add a word to prove he was 
 in a sane mind, he called her back. 
 
 "Oh," said he, "the coat! If Bond comes in, give 
 it to him. Tell him to hand it over to the man." 
 
 "What man?" she asked. 
 
 "Have you forgotten him? The man in the cloister." 
 
 "Oh ; but he isn't sleeping in the cloister now," she 
 reminded him. 
 
 " No, I know he isn't. Good-by." 
 
 Then there were other days, and at the end of them 
 Bond came in, looking uncontrolledly aghast, as if he 
 had more to communicate than he could possibly pre- 
 pare suitably for normal ears. It was about the time 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 17 
 
 of night that he had appeared before, and the scene 
 was the same. Littleton was reading Dickens, twenty 
 pages farther on he always owned to being a slow 
 reader Aunt Harriet was knitting, and Mrs. Littleton 
 wound yarn. Only Ruth sat by in an unwonted idle- 
 ness, inwardly chiding herself for finding the moment 
 dull and wishing it could be shivered into sparkling 
 atoms by an entering presence. Bond looked at them 
 as if he really did not know how to prepare them for 
 what was coming. 
 
 "It's the man in the cloister over again," he blurted 
 out. 
 
 "Has that fool gone back there?" Littleton inquired, 
 slipping his book-mark over the edge. He looked his 
 boredom. "Well, I'll pay him to get out and go to 
 Palm Beach. Why can't he take himself home and 
 hibernate like the woodchucks? That's all the sense 
 he's got." 
 
 Ruth had risen, as if something dragged her to her 
 feet : she stood holding her breath down, and her hands 
 tight. 
 
 "It's another man," said Bond, also breathless. 
 
 "Then you've allowed it to get into the papers. If 
 there's one suicide, there's always a half-dozen." 
 
 "Where is he?" Ruth asked, chokingly. 
 
 Bond turned to her who had understood. "I've 
 wrapped him up and telephoned for the ambulance." 
 
 "You haven't left him alone?" 
 
 " Whittaker's with him." 
 
 Aunt Harriet looked up. " Whittaker," she repeated. 
 "That's the name of mother's cousins down through 
 the Gorge. Seems real homey to hear that name." 
 
18 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Whittaker's the man in the cloister, the first one," 
 Bond explained to Ruth, in a swift aside. 
 
 "I'll go and open his room," she said, with the instant 
 air of absorption in an exacting task. 
 
 "You'd better." 
 
 By the time she was out at the door they were on 
 their feet. Now Mrs. Littleton was trembling. She 
 put a plump ringed hand on the clergyman's arm. 
 
 "Mr. Bond," she said, "what's happened? Who is 
 the man? Are they bringing him here? " 
 
 He took the hand in his young strong one. "It's 
 your grandson, Mrs. Littleton," he said/ in a tone 
 calculated to dominate her. ' ' It's Sedgwick." 
 
 "Sedgwick!" fulminated Littleton. "What's he 
 been doing in the cloister?" 
 
 "Sleeping there," said Bond, patiently. "He's been 
 doing it for a week." 
 
 Littleton gasped at him. "What for?" he entreated. 
 "What, in the name of all created, /or?" 
 
 "To see how it seems," Bond was explaining, from 
 no special wonder of his own, "not to be more fortunate 
 than the other man." 
 
 Littleton recovered his breath. "Well, then," he 
 roared, "damn philanthropy! Dann socialism! that's 
 what I say." 
 
 "It isn't philanthropy exactly," offered Bond. "It 
 isn't socialism. It's poetry. There he is. I'll open the 
 door." 
 
 Sedgwick was not himself, shivering and chattering 
 in the clutches of a chill calculated to teach him what 
 cold could be. Aunt Harriet had sped up to her own 
 room to change her best henrietta and tie on an apron, 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 19 
 
 judging that she might be needed to nurse. The others 
 got him to bed and the doctor was sent for, and Bond 
 and Whittaker went away, rather hurriedly because 
 Bond judged from the expression of Littleton's face, 
 as he regarded Whittaker, that short shrift would be 
 allowed in that house to a man who had set the fashion 
 of sleeping in cloisters. And yet Whittaker was not a 
 person to be suspected of insurrectionary theory. He 
 was a lean, shrewd-looking New Englander with a long 
 irregular face and sparse locks. An air of extreme mild- 
 ness enveloped him, and only when one noted the out- 
 line and set of his jaw did it seem as if he might unex- 
 pectedly show the flag of a wilful obstinacy. His light 
 eyes were rather dull, but they had, it could be seen even 
 in the short interval of his stay, an almost worshipful 
 intensity whenever they encountered Bond, who had 
 become, it was evident, the god of a masterless man. 
 But no one save Littleton, in the extremity of his impa- 
 tience, had eyes for him that night. Sedgwick, Aunt 
 Harriet said positively, when she appeared, wearing 
 her work-apron, without which she never travelled, 
 was going to be sick. 
 
 In the next week he did go through all the hateful 
 stages of it. A nurse came and ruled the household, 
 except Aunt Harriet, who stood by to watch her deft 
 ways with an open-mouthed admiration and won the 
 potentate's regard. 
 
 " We'll pull him out," the doctor said, when Mrs. 
 Littleton approached him from the retreat where she 
 hovered at the head of the stairs, and Ruth, lingering 
 in the shadow of the hall, also heard, and ran quickly 
 back into her room. He was pulled out; and Littleton, 
 
20 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 when his grandson was convalescent, had to be bound 
 with thongs of remonstrance lest he inquire of Sedgwick 
 why he'd been a blatant fool. 
 
 "I can't live unless I know why he's such a fool," 
 he raged, almost weepingly, to Ruth, who was found 
 to be the only one to soothe him. " What does he think 
 he put us through all this for sleeping in cloisters 
 till he froze himself and living in Settlement houses till 
 he got pneumonia? What's he think it's /or?" 
 
 "He wants to share the common lot," she soothed 
 him. 
 
 "The common lot! Why don't he go to work, then, 
 and do something to make the common lot easier, in- 
 stead of upsetting a whole household and worrying his 
 grandmother to death?" 
 
 "Dear Mr. Littleton," said Ruth, mollifying him 
 with her prettiest smile, "the great reformers have 
 always done it the great, great ones." 
 
 "Done what?" 
 
 "Shared the common lot." 
 
 "Well," said Littleton. He drew his volume of 
 Dickens toward him and grudgingly noted how few 
 pages he had read throughout that anxious interval. 
 ' ' Sedgwick ain't a reformer. He's just a boy that writes 
 poetry for the magazines. And it's good poetry, too. 
 But he can take it from me that he's got to stop sleeping 
 round in cloisters or I shall be disgusted with him 
 disgusted! I'm pretty near that now." 
 
 Another night Sedgwick was downstairs after dinner. 
 He was very pale and handsome, and insisted that he 
 was in no danger of feeling a draught. It was Ruth 
 who showed the strain of the last weeks. Yet she 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 21 
 
 looked her lightheartedness. While they all sat there 
 in their recovered quiet, Bond came in, and Aunt 
 Harriet innocently tossed the apple of discord again 
 among them. 
 
 " Whatever become o' that man?" she asked, guile- 
 lessly, "the one that slep' in the cloister?" 
 
 Littleton groaned ostentatiously. Bond looked guilty. 
 "Well," said he, "nothing has become of him really. 
 He's living on tuppence a day and going downhill on 
 it. He won't take any money from me, because he 
 says he's able to earn it. He gets a job now and then, 
 a little shovelling or something of that sort, a few cents 
 for carrying bags at the station. He's immovably 
 obstinate." 
 
 "You say his name's Whittaker?" Aunt Harriet 
 inquired. "They're all set. Why, I had a kind of a 
 third cousin named Whittaker that gran'ther left my 
 little place to. One day gran'ther got mad with me 
 because I'd bored my ears an' threaded in green silk, 
 an' I wouldn't take it out to please him, an' he made his 
 will all complete, an' this far-away kind of a cousin he 
 said 'twa'n't fair, I was a girl so, an' he up an' 
 refused the whole of it. That's what the Whittakers 
 be." 
 
 "There's a lot he might do if he were stronger," said 
 Bond, reflectively, "but he isn't altogether fit. He had 
 a broken arm years ago and it was badly set " 
 
 Aunt Harriet was on her feet. She spoke loudly, and 
 they all looked amazement at her excited face. "Why 
 didn't you tell me that before? " she inquired. "What's 
 his given name?" 
 
 "Silas. His name is Silas." 
 
22 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Why, that's my own third cousin as ever was. I 
 should think you'd ha' had sense enough to told me. 
 Where am I goin' to find him straight off before I take 
 the train to-morrer mornin'?" 
 
 Bond took on his look of shamefaced impatience at 
 having to confess himself the victim of an attachment. 
 
 "You might find him outside there at this present 
 minute/' he owned. "He walked here with me. It 
 really isn't so bad as it seems/' he explained to Little- 
 ton. "He's always asking me questions about the 
 Second Advent. He has an idea the world is coming 
 to an end presently." 
 
 "The fool! course he has!" Aunt Harriet cried. 
 She was at the window and now she threw it wide. 
 "You stan' one side, out o' the draught," she bade 
 Sedgwick over her shoulder. "I won't keep it up but a 
 second. Silas! Silas Whittaker, you step yourself in 
 here." The window came down again with a run, and 
 Aunt Harriet took her resolute way to the front door. 
 "Well, here you be," they heard her saying. "Now 
 ain't you ashamed o' yourself makin' all this to-do 
 when you might ha' wrote to me an' there' d been the 
 endon't?" 
 
 Upon that Silas Whittaker followed her in. He was 
 neither surprised nor abashed, only most unaffectedly 
 delighted to find one of his own blood. Aunt Harriet 
 had no idea of naming him to them. The man in the 
 cloister had become too familiar a conception for that. 
 
 "You stretch out your arms," she bade him, and 
 when he did it, regarded the worn sleeves affectionately. 
 "Yes, you be Si Whittaker an' no mistake. Your arm 
 trouble you now? Well, 'tain't so much shorter 'n 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 23 
 
 t'other, an' I guess you can do a day's work with the 
 heft of 'em." 
 
 "Glad to see ye, Harriet, glad to see ye," he re- 
 sponded, with a shining face. ' ' You down here nursin' ? ' 
 
 "I'm goin' home to-morrer," said Aunt Harriet. 
 "I'm goin' by the nine o'clock. Now you be down 
 there to the station, an' you come right up along with 
 me, an' stay till the chair factory opens." 
 
 His eyes narrowed with the immovable look the 
 Reverend Arthur Bond had learned to venerate. "I 
 ain't no hand for visitin', Harriet," he told her. 
 "Much obliged to you" 
 
 Aunt Harriet also was a Whittaker, and she knew 
 what medicine agreed with them. 
 
 "I've got plenty o' jobs for ye," she cunningly en- 
 treated. "There's the house to open an' wood to chop 
 an', soon's the snow's off, the fencin' to do. If I can't 
 depend on my own flesh an' blood, I dunno who I 
 can turn to." 
 
 "That so?" Silas inquired, in a dash of eagerness. 
 "Well, I'll be there." 
 
 She was following him to the door. "Nine o'clock," 
 she reminded him. "Better be ahead o' time. I got 
 the money for the tickets. We'll have a real nice 
 ride." 
 
 When she returned, the others were glowing at her 
 in various fashions. 
 
 "So that," said the curate, in a moved voice, "that's 
 your solution." 
 
 "What?" asked Aunt Harriet, but not as if the 
 answer concerned her vitally. She was moving about 
 the room with an absorbed look, to be sure none of her 
 
24 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 little belongings had escaped her in the afternoon's 
 packing. 
 
 " That's the direct, simple, human thing," Sedgwick 
 was saying to her, warmly, as if she were to be com- 
 mended. 
 
 "What is?" Aunt Harriet inquired. "There!" she 
 closed in triumph, pouncing on a small article lurking 
 on the table in the shadow of the books. "There's my 
 spe'tacle-case. Seems if 'twould ruther hide away than 
 eat. Well, good night all. I've got to be up early." 
 
 At the door Ruth, ardent as the rest of them, de- 
 tained her. "They think you're splendid, Aunt Har- 
 riet," she cried. "Nobody's seen how to help your 
 cousin Silas in the right way," she threw in as a con- 
 cession to scientific charity. "But you've done it. 
 You've taken him into your own house." 
 
 Aunt Harriet stared at her. ' ' Well, ' ' she said, ' ' I just 
 happened to have a house, that's all. If you've got a 
 toof, you might's well call folks under it. An' he's my 
 cousin, ain't he? third cousin, that is. He ain't no- 
 body else's cousin that I know of. Well, good night all." 
 
 "Did she mean," Sedgwick began, out of the silence 
 resultant on her going, "that that's what the rest of 
 us ought to do?" 
 
 Ruth burst into a lovely laugh. "Why, bless you," 
 she said, "Aunt Harriet doesn't mean a thing. She 
 hasn't a theory to her name. She's got a house and a 
 third cousin, and the third cousin's got a stiff arm, and 
 she's just decent, that's all and human and kind. 
 Oh, I'm awfully tired of having things so complicated. 
 I'm glad there are two or three people left that live in 
 the country and carry jelly to the neighbors when 
 
THE MAN IN THE CLOISTER 25 
 
 they're sick, and don't have to wonder whether elee- 
 mosynary jelly can hurt 'em. Oh, I don't mean you're 
 wrong, Sedgwick," she added, hastily. "I don't mean 
 you're wrong, Mr. Bond. You just have to be intelli- 
 gent. I know that. If you weren't, some of you, the whole 
 scheme would go to smash. Only I'm glad some folks 
 Aunt Harriet, you know I'm glad they don't have to." 
 
 Thereupon she retired to the window in confusion 
 and Bond thoughtfully rose to go. "I fancy Whit- 
 taker's waiting out there to say good-by," he explained. 
 "Well, I shall miss him I dare say more than he 
 misses me." 
 
 Littleton and his wife followed him into the hall 
 and said good night; then the wife laid a guiding hand 
 on her husband's arm. 
 
 "I guess we might's well go up-stairs now," she said, 
 softly. "Ruth feels kind of excited, speaking out so. 
 I guess she'll want to make it up with Sedgwick be- 
 fore she sleeps." 
 
 "What?" said Littleton, staring. "Oh!" 
 
 Sedgwick had gone to Ruth. He wore an eager look 
 of wishing to be the one to "make it up". "See," he 
 said stepping past her to the window. "Orion! " 
 
 She turned with him. "Yes," she said, and then she 
 added irrepressibly, "Sedgwick, before we've finished 
 with him " 
 
 "The man in the cloister?" 
 
 "Yes. Tell me what you got out of it." 
 
 "Out of sleeping there? Trying to sleep?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He smiled with a whimsical gravity. She was watch- 
 ing his face, all eagerness herself, and it seemed to her 
 
26 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 she had never seen him look so dear, so like an earlier 
 boyish self. "Why," said he, "I went there to share 
 the other fellow's lot. It wasn't a pose. I really wanted 
 to. But I found all I could think of when I wasn't 
 too cold to think was the stars. I hadn't seen so much 
 of them since we lived in the country. I planned a 
 poem. I thought so hard about it I couldn't think of 
 the man in the cloister at all. It's to be f A Drama of 
 Stars'. It's what the morning stars thought, and 
 Adam and Eve come in. And Eve is you." 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " Yes, every time. Adam was I and Eve was you." 
 
 She was trembling, he saw, but she turned away 
 with dignity enough. 
 
 "Then to-night," he said, through an awkwardness 
 fitted to his detaining touch upon her arm, "she finished 
 it." 
 
 "Aunt Harriet?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Ruth nodded. She felt that also, though she won- 
 dered whether he, any more than she, could chart the 
 course of Aunt Harriet's influence. But he was ready 
 to essay it. 
 
 "She's such a brick!" he said, groping. "She's so 
 warm, so quick somehow. She darts through while 
 the rest of us are laying out the road, and you look up 
 and she's there. When she said that about roofs, she 
 seemed to be drawing pictures for us. She made me 
 see little houses in the country, sheltering roofs, doors 
 always open. I wanted one. I wanted just a house, 
 Ruth, where I could see the stars and then go in and 
 write about 'em. I want it now with you." 
 
MOTHER 
 
 BUT, Lilian/ ' said Mrs. Hall, "stay here and have 
 your tea with me." 
 They were in the sombrely furnished drawing- 
 room of the city house, a monument to good taste be- 
 fore the sixties two middle-aged women who had been 
 schoolmates together and who had seen each other at 
 long intervals for forty years. The hostess, Mrs. Hall, 
 had the advantage of a year or two over her friend, but 
 she had so ignored any amenity time might show her, 
 and had walked so steadfastly and patiently toward 
 the acquiescence of age, at the same time adopting, 
 almost lovingly, the insignia, in cut and fabric, once 
 belonging to it, that now she seemed much the elder. 
 This was all in her general effect when one noted her 
 black dress, the soft line of white at neck and wrist, 
 and the little triangle of lace on her frosted waves of 
 hair. She was a beautiful creature given almost in- 
 dulgently over to Age, as if he could not hurt her and 
 might as well throw his trappings round her if that had 
 been judged to be the custom; her blue eyes were alive 
 with a light which is the love of everything created, 
 the dark brows over them never frowning, but only 
 strengthening a face that promised to be too gentle, 
 and her mouth smiling most sweetly. Artists had 
 loved and painted and praised her, until she privately 
 declared to her son her one confidant that she could- 
 
 27 
 
28 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 n't see what possessed them. She had been accounted 
 plain in her youth. This must be a form of kindly 
 modern homage to old age. 
 
 Mrs. Kimball, her friend, was young with a differ- 
 ence. She had grown portly and fought that infliction 
 by every means known to modern theory, save relin- 
 quishing the indulgences of the table. She was so 
 massaged and creamed and powdered, so alight with 
 barbaric chains on a broad lace-bound bosom, and so 
 evidently sworn not to be cajoled out of youth into 
 the next territory, that Mrs. Hall sat looking at her 
 with a kind of pain. She was wondering uneasily 
 whether she herself had changed so visibly as Lilian, 
 and then, with an undercurrent of amusement and a 
 little frown, remembered the artists and their praise, 
 and gave the riddle up. 
 
 "I want you to go with me," Mrs. Kimball was 
 insisting. "Just for a cup of tea at Hervier's. You 
 know Hervier's, don't you?" 
 
 Mrs. Hall frowned again, in recollecting. 
 
 "Why, yes," she said. "It's that very fashionable 
 place, isn't it, where people drop in after the matinees? 
 And there's music, and oh, I don't know what all!" 
 
 "Yes, and you've heard of it and never wanted to 
 go. Isn't that like you, Rebecca?" 
 
 "I have my tea at home," said Rebecca, smiling at 
 her, with a recognition of human differences. "You 
 know, really, Lil, I've lived in the country so long I 
 don't care much for afternoon tea. And I turn my 
 dinner into a kind of supper, and have my tea with it. 
 There!" 
 
 "What does your son say?" 
 
MOTHER 29 
 
 "Oh, he just laughs and goes on with his dinner. I 
 have some toast, extra, you know, and a little preserve 
 and a mite of cake. I never did care much about eating 
 at night." 
 
 "It's a part of your country habits." Mrs. Kimball 
 was twisting her soft wrist with difficulty to consult 
 the watch strapped to it by gilded chains. "Haven't 
 you ever regretted living out of the world so long?" 
 
 "Never. I wish I were out of it now." 
 
 "Why aren't you?" 
 
 "Well, you see I came away when Gil went to college, 
 and now he has his studio here. Oh, no, I couldn't be 
 happy away from him. He wouldn't like it either." 
 
 "But you let him go abroad alone." 
 
 Mrs. Hall gave way to sudden merriment. 
 
 "I made him. I was afraid he'd get to feeling he was 
 mother's pet." 
 
 Mrs. Kimball always sat very straight to obviate 
 the effect of her rotundities, but now she lifted herself 
 higher with the access of a difficult resolve. 
 
 "Well, you know, Rebecca," she said, "I came home 
 on the steamer with Gilbert." 
 
 Mrs. Hall nodded, in approval of so pleasant a con- 
 junction. 
 
 "Yes, I know," she said. "He was so glad to find 
 you were sailing." 
 
 "Well, he took precious little pains to gladden him- 
 self further when we had sailed." 
 
 Mrs. Hall flushed and her brows came together in 
 concern. 
 
 "Oh, I'm sorry, Lil. He wasn't rude to you?" 
 
 "He wasn't rude, but he was cloistered. Nobody 
 
30 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 could get near him. Everybody wanted to. He's hand- 
 some as a god." 
 
 The mother drew a little satisfied breath. 
 
 " Isn't he a giant?" she said, though her eyes com- 
 mitted her to more. "Yes, people do notice him, of 
 course. He's so big, for one thing. They can't help 
 seeing him." 
 
 "I was sorry he was so much in evidence. He seems 
 to be a curiously unworldly kind of boy. Not self- 
 conscious at all. Not in the least prudent about being 
 looked at. He doesn't know the first principles of cau- 
 tion." 
 
 Mrs. Hall drew her brows together again in their 
 look of perplexity. This all sounded like commenda- 
 tion, and yet she was perfectly conscious that it was 
 not : that it was, in some sort, flaunted before her like 
 a danger signal. 
 
 "What is it, Lilian?" she asked, with the quietude 
 of one in an assured position toward life and what it 
 can do or threaten. "What do you want to tell me 
 about Gil? You haven't come here to praise him." 
 
 Mrs. Kimball laughed with an accented robustness. 
 
 "I haven't come to do the other thing," she declared, 
 in a lively tone that sought to carry reassurance with 
 it. "I admired him, I can assure you, quite particu- 
 larly. But I was hardly ever so surprised in my life 
 that a boy of his look of well, you know his kind of 
 look. You're perfectly well aware that he looks as if 
 he'd been born to things and had them all his life, as 
 he has. I was surprised, Beck, to find he was so 
 simple." 
 
 Rebecca was gazing straight at her out of blue, un- 
 
MOTHER 31 
 
 smiling eyes, yet not sternly, but as if the sincere eyes 
 meant to challenge the same clarity in the glance they 
 met. 
 
 " How is he simple, Lilian?" she asked. 
 
 "Why, he's so unworldly. He takes such frightful 
 risks." 
 
 "I wish," said Mrs. Hall, patiently, "you'd tell me 
 what you mean. You're complaining of Gil. I can see 
 that." 
 
 Her friend's high color began to intensify itself un- 
 necessarily. It had exceeded the bounds devoted to 
 good health or beauty, and seemed to be the signal of 
 embarrassment. 
 
 "I hope you know how interested I am in every- 
 thing that concerns you, Rebecca," she began, awk- 
 wardly. "I never forget old times." 
 
 "No," said Rebecca. She was leaning a little now 
 on her chair back, as if she needed it to support her, 
 and had folded her hands with a gentle grace in her 
 lap. "I'm sure you don't forget old times, Lily. We 
 don't either of us. You've been a faithful 
 friend." 
 
 "I mean to be a friend still. That's why I've come. 
 Rebecca, do you happen to know anything about 
 Vivian Bruce?" 
 
 Mrs. Hall shook her head. She could not yet see 
 how the inquiry pertained, and yet Lilian's continued 
 fluster made it evident that it did. 
 
 "That's just like you, Beck. I'd have been willing 
 to bet you didn't." 
 
 Mrs. Hall smiled a little as at something she had 
 heard before. 
 
32 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Well, you needn't scold me if I don't!" she depre- 
 cated, prettily. "I'm willing to know about her 
 
 now." 
 
 "I'm afraid you'll have to. Now think, Rebecca, 
 think back a minute. Haven't you read a word about 
 her? Two divorce suits, one husband that shot him- 
 self, one that went to India and got killed, everybody 
 says because he couldn't bear to live and lose her 
 haven't you read that?" 
 
 Mrs. Hall shook her head definitively. 
 
 "Well, I've no patience with you." 
 
 "I don't read much in the daily papers. Gil keeps 
 me posted about things I ought to know. All this 
 winter I've been reading about the tune of Queen 
 Elizabeth." 
 
 "Queen Elizabeth! And here's your son well, all 
 I can say is, Vivian Bruce's life is as absorbing as 
 Queen Elizabeth's and all the rest of them in any novel 
 or any history why, it is history. You'd better leave 
 your Queen Elizabeths and see what's doing in New 
 York under your nose this very day." 
 
 "I sha'n't need to, Lil. You'll tell me." 
 
 Mrs. Kimball smiled perfunctorily with her friend, 
 and again consulted her watch. 
 
 "Well, the long and short of it is," she continued, 
 somewhat in haste, "Vivian is a charmer. She's beauti- 
 ful and she's got that particular way with her, and 
 she's an adventuress, straight. If you turned her into 
 the Garden of Eden, she wouldn't stay there. She'd 
 get the Serpent to let her out, and he'd do it, and he 
 wouldn't be satisfied with that. He'd go with her. 
 She's a woman that likes the drama, something doing, 
 
MOTHER 33 
 
 and it's always emotional. Don't you see? She sticks 
 at nothing. She's dangerous." 
 
 "Dear me!" said Mrs. Hall, pleasantly. A light had 
 risen in her eyes. She looked, for the first time, slightly 
 on guard. " She sounds like history herself . Seems to 
 me I've read something like that, 'way back in Egypt, 
 or Troy." 
 
 Mrs. Kimball made an impatient movement of her 
 hand in its constricting glove. 
 
 "I don't know anything about that. I don't have 
 time to read. But I suppose they've always existed, 
 and we've got to make the best of it. Well, she crossed 
 with us." 
 
 "With you?" 
 
 "With all of us. Particularly with your Gilbert." 
 
 Mrs. Hall did not move by an instant of trembling, 
 and her eyes, with their look of observant interest, 
 remained quietly upon her friend's. 
 
 "You mean Gilbert met her?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes, for the first time. I fully believe it was the 
 first time. But she selected him it's her custom to 
 fix upon one man or another and through the whole 
 voyage he didn't leave her side." 
 
 "She must be very attractive," murmured the 
 mother. 
 
 "Attractive? Don't I tell you she's a serpent? We 
 don't know anything about such women, you and I. 
 We don't see how they do it. We may wish we did" 
 she stopped for an instant, dashed by that cool 
 attention in the other face "well, we don't, 
 that's all. Only it's something they're born with. 
 And when a man finds himself up against it, par- 
 
34 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 ticularly a young man, it spells ruin, Beck, just 
 ruin." " 
 
 "Do you mean," asked her friend evenly, "that 
 Gilbert wishes to marry her?" 
 
 Mrs. Kimball gave a little shriek and threw up her 
 hands. 
 
 " Marry! Good gracious, child, men don't marry 
 Vivian Bruce!" 
 
 "But you tell me she's been married twice already." 
 
 "That's precisely why she can't be again, to any- 
 body who doesn't want to damn himself. It isn't 
 marriage I'm afraid of, Beck. It's seeing your boy 
 lying dead with a hole in his forehead, like that young 
 Simpson at Monte Carlo. He got tangled up with 
 precisely that kind of creature only not so fetching. 
 Heavens, no! But just as unscrupulous." 
 
 "Did you see young Simpson?" asked Rebecca, 
 with an amiable interest that might have been exercised 
 to draw the line of thought away from this particular 
 phase. Lilian suspected it at once, and sat looking at 
 her with an arrested wonder, as if she had begun to 
 accuse her friend of more cleverness than had been 
 apparent in forty years. 
 
 "Of course I didn't see him," she said, impatiently. 
 1 ' But other people did. It was in the papers. And your 
 Gilbert, if I read him at all, is exactly the same sort of 
 fellow quick, mettlesome, ready to dare everything 
 he has for a passion. Why, his brazen absorption in 
 her on board ship shows what he'd do. And the boy 
 has a good look, Beck. It went to my heart. It wasn't 
 only because he's your boy. I felt he ought to be 
 saved." 
 
MOTHER 35 
 
 Mrs. Hall bent suddenly forward and laid a hand on 
 her friend's knee. 
 
 "You're a dear, Lilian," she said, in a voice quite 
 caressing in its affectionate gratitude. "Now I'm really 
 going to give you some tea." 
 
 Mrs. Kimball drew a breath, since the worst of the 
 interview was over. Yet she did look worried still, 
 having more to venture and finding she must brace 
 herself to press it. 
 
 "No," she said; "you're coming with me to Her- 
 
 vier's. ' 
 
 Mrs. Hall rose with her, and stood for a moment, 
 her delicate hand on the chair back as if she needed it 
 to stay her. 
 
 "Very well," she said. "I will." There was a certi- 
 tude of calm in her voice; she seemed to be accepting a 
 test of her own courage or endurance, and after that 
 moment of halting by the chair as if she might demand 
 continued support, she turned and walked to the door 
 with a dignified precision of step and the grace of her 
 erect slenderness. 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Kimball to herself, with a breath, 
 "that's over;" and then she became aware that 
 in her haste she had said it while her friend could 
 hear. 
 
 Mrs. Hall was presently back again, gloved and 
 ready, in her little bonnet and its long veil, and Mrs. 
 Kimball noted that the swift preparation she had made 
 allowed no time for the slightest breakdown. When 
 they went out together she was wondering whether 
 Rebecca had a marvellous endurance or whether she 
 were really ignorant of the color of certain things. Her 
 
36 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 own courage was wavering, and they drove away to 
 Hervier's talking of the day with its flavor of later 
 summer, and once, for quite five minutes, of a magical 
 conserve Mrs. Hall had been making of raspberries 
 and ginger and lemon and a set of as unlikely potmates. 
 When it came to the conserve, Mrs. Kimball listened to 
 her with a frank astonishment. She had no tune for 
 affairs of the household, and it filled her with unstinted 
 wonder to hear a woman who had been asked to ap- 
 proach a coming blur on her son's fame talking gently 
 of quantities and periods of boiling. 
 
 At Hervier's it was the chosen time of day for idle- 
 ness and fashion. In the long room with its little white 
 tables, shadowed and flickered upon by the green of 
 moving leaves, with the subdued liquid dropping of 
 harp music, there were men and women everywhere, 
 childishly busy in the hunt for pleasure. It seemed 
 to be a show of the elect in costume and the soft sweep 
 of feathers, the waving and glossing of hair. Mrs. 
 Kimball looked about her in an anxiously scrutinizing 
 way, and after rejecting the offer of two or three tables, 
 finally selected one overlooking the entire room. There 
 she placed her friend, and instead of taking the opposite 
 seat, had her own chair moved to the end of the table 
 so that she also could approximately command the 
 scene. Then, her order given, she leaned back and 
 looked. Mrs. Hall gazed also, with a child-like curios- 
 ity. She could only compare it, drawing upon the simple 
 images of a sober lif e like hers, to the opera, where she 
 was accustomed to see raiment of incredible splendor. 
 The comparison was not inapt, for this was the over- 
 flow from a brilliant matine'e. 
 
MOTHER 37 
 
 "This is very pretty," she kept saying "very pretty. 
 I'm so indebted to you." 
 
 Mrs. Kimball watched and did not answer; but pres- 
 ently her pose relaxed and she gave a little exclamation 
 and laid her hand on her friend's wrist. Mrs. Hall 
 glanced at her, followed her look, and started slightly. 
 Two persons were walking down the room, a man and 
 woman, he equipped with a comely strength, the inno- 
 cent bravery of youth and she in the studied insolence 
 which meets the world's contumely with a hard con- 
 sciousness of its own endowment, the army of charms 
 it has to fight with, and the certainty that in all tune 
 that soldiery will never be without power in the field. 
 
 "There!" breathed Mrs. Kimball. 
 
 "Oh," said her friend, with a cool and pretty in- 
 terest, "there's Gilbert. Is that his friend?" 
 
 "Yes. It's Vivian Bruce." 
 
 Mrs. Hall lifted her eye-glasses hanging by their; 
 thread of a chain and set them on her nose. She fol- 
 lowed the two superb figures down the room to their 
 conspicuous seat by a fountain at the end. "What 
 lovely hair!" she said, in quite an unaffected interest. 
 "And what a gorgeous dress!" 
 
 Lilian Kimball looked at her now in a puzzled ques- 
 tioning. She had dismissed Gilbert and his drama to 
 wonder again whether Rebecca was not more of a 
 woman of the world than she had thought. Or was she 
 too simple to read the import of these things? Or was 
 she, under her saint's guise, too worldly to balk at 
 them? That, though it might prove venial in some 
 women, would be monstrous in her. But Rebecca was 
 speaking, with a pretty, gracious uplift of the voice. 
 
38 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 ^l < 
 
 " Lilian, it's very rude I wouldn't do it if the cir- 
 cumstances weren't exactly as they are but I'm going 
 to ask you to drink your tea alone and let me go to 
 them." 
 
 " Go to them! Have tea with them? " 
 
 Mrs. Hall nodded, smilingly shutting up her eye- 
 glass as she spoke and tucking it into its accustomed 
 nest of folds. 
 
 " Rebecca, you can't have tea with her. She's no- 
 torious." 
 
 Mrs. Hall laughed a little in an amused, sweet way. 
 "Well, I'm not notorious. Gil isn't either." 
 
 Her friend laid an anxious hand on her arm. 
 
 "Rebecca," she breathed, "you won't make a scene?" 
 
 Rebecca laughed outright. 
 
 "You're a goose, Lil," she said. 
 
 "You see," Mrs. Kimball went on, in a distracted 
 whisper, "they're the most conspicuous people in the 
 room. She is always, everywhere she goes, and she's 
 been here with him two days running, to my knowledge. 
 They were here yesterday and here the day before. 
 She likes to bring him, to display him. I made up my 
 mind to get you here. I knew they'd be here after 
 Tristan" 
 
 "There, you see! you've brought me, and I've spied 
 the lady and I want to know her." 
 
 "Don't you see people looking at them?" 
 
 "Yes. No wonder. They're very handsome." 
 
 "Well, they'll look at you, too, if you go down there." 
 
 "I've got on my best bonnet and good gloves. Don't 
 I look nice enough?" There was a pretty moment of 
 intent query in her look, and then she went sailing 
 
MOTHER 39 
 
 away with her indeterminate grace, which was a girl's 
 endowment, after all, down the long room with couples 
 and athwart them, and made her way directly to the 
 table. 
 
 Gil was talking when she got there. He had a flushed 
 face and ardent eyes, and her heart leaped at the sight 
 of him, his beauty and the strange look he always 
 wore, in a sophisticated crowd, of being one set apart 
 by healthier living, or, in some form, a more sound 
 inheritance. He glanced up at her as she halted, black- 
 robed, beside him, and his lips stayed parted with the 
 words they meant to utter. The woman, too, looked 
 up at her, and Rebecca Hall felt another pang, an 
 especial and choking one, over her, her airy supple 
 grace, the distinction of her bright hair and beautiful 
 hands, and the challenge in the great gray eyes and the 
 mobile lips, not full, but curved until the heart might 
 faint in following them. Then Gilbert was on his feet, 
 and his mother had said with her unabashed simplicity: 
 
 "Tin going to have my tea with you. Introduce us, 
 won't you?" 
 
 He did it, blunderingly, out of a rash certainty that 
 in some way he should have, as well, to terminate the 
 combination; but his mother had waived all possibili- 
 ties but that of her coming tea, and was seated between 
 him and Vivian Bruce, telling how she had seen them 
 by chance and left her own table because theirs seemed 
 cozier. Vivian Bruce was looking at her with distended 
 eyes. At first she was slightly on her guard, a little 
 sharp from furtive seeking for motives behind the ap- 
 parent one; but as the older woman went on with her 
 harmless flow of commonplace she broke in and joined 
 
40 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 them. She was the first to gather up her gloves and 
 make a move to go. 
 
 "I shall have to leave you," she said, sweetly. "My 
 car is at the door. I'm going to drive myself. No," 
 she added, definitively, as Gilbert rose with her, "I 
 don't want you, please." 
 
 His mother, too, had risen. 
 
 "I wish you wanted me," she said to Vivian. "I 
 wish you'd take me home." 
 
 "Mother!" Gilbert was evidently warning her, but 
 she did not look at him. Her eyes were on the other 
 face, suddenly alive with pleasure. 
 
 "Would you really let me?" said Vivian Bruce. 
 " I'd be so glad." 
 
 So they went up the room together past Lilian Kim- 
 ball, whom Mrs. Hall somehow failed to see until the 
 last instant for squeezing in a bow, and Gilbert had 
 put them into the car, and stood bareheaded on the 
 sidewalk looking at them. His mother knew that look. 
 It was his beseeching yet confident gaze, as of a dog 
 who hardly likes to bark for what he wants, yet knows 
 he is too popular to run much risk of losing it. But 
 that one tune he was going to lose it. 
 
 "Run along, Gil," said his mother. "Call at Aunt 
 Josephine's on the way, will you, and tell her I want to 
 know about her cold?" Then the two women were 
 driving off together between the lights coming out to 
 meet the western flare, and she went on, still cozily: "I 
 made up that errand. Really, I didn't want him. 
 Three can't get acquainted. Two can, I think; don't 
 you?" 
 
 Vivian Bruce stiffened a little under her furs. 
 
MOTHER 41 
 
 "It isn't accident, then?" she said. "You came to 
 Hervier's to see me?" 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Hall. "But when I saw you I knew 
 I'd got to know you. Somebody told me my boy was 
 getting acquainted with you." 
 
 Vivian sat looking straight ahead, watching ab- 
 sorbedly and driving fast. She smiled a little. 
 
 "They are very precious, aren't they," she said, 
 ' ' these boys? Your boys, all boys? " 
 
 "Oh yes," said the mother, simply. "It isn't only 
 because they're ours; but they're men, you see. They 
 belong to us a little, but they belong to other things 
 a hundred times more their country, the wives they're 
 going to marry." 
 
 They did not speak again until the car drew up at 
 Mrs. Hall's door, and then Vivian sprang gallantly 
 out, and gave her charge a sustaining hand. 
 
 "Come in," said Mrs. Hall, impulsively. "I don't 
 know you any better than I did at the tea table. I 
 never shall, if we go motoring together. I've got to 
 see you by my own fire. Please." 
 
 Vivian, who was the taller, looked down at her a 
 moment, and then acquiesced bluffly like a charming 
 boy. 
 
 "Well," said she, "I will." 
 
 So they went up the steps, and Mrs. Hall, without 
 ringing for service, made her put off her fur coat and 
 sit down at the hearth. Then she mended the fire 
 with her own hands and much skill, and suddenly from 
 her own chair looked across at her visitor. 
 
 "Well," she said, "isn't this funny?" 
 
 Vivian Bruce, too, laughed. Then she sobered. 
 
42 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Mrs. Hall," she said, "you'd heard of me. You've 
 brought me here to talk to me. Now haven't you?" 
 
 "I've brought you because I'm simply so curious 
 about you I couldn't let you go. That's the truth. 
 Believe me." 
 
 "Why were you curious?" 
 
 "Because you were with Gil. And because he hadn't 
 spoken about you." 
 
 Vivian laughed a little, in a hard way. 
 
 "Does he always speak about people?" she inquired. 
 
 "'Most always," said his mother. "When he thinks 
 of it, I'm sure." 
 
 "Then maybe he hasn't thought of it?" 
 
 Vivian was questioning her now with the full power 
 of the gray eyes intensified by a light in them. 
 
 "Oh yes," said Mrs. Hall, still quietly. "He's 
 thought of you. Anybody would, that saw you once." 
 
 A flush crept into the woman's face and awakened 
 it to a wistful life. She gave the interview an unex- 
 pected turn. 
 
 "Do you think I'm so horrid?" she inquired. 
 
 "Horrid? My child!" 
 
 "You think I'm conspicuous." 
 
 Mrs. Hall looked at her with a frank and challenging 
 scrutiny. It was not sharp. It was at once direct and 
 firm. 
 
 "I think you're very handsome," she said. "You're 
 the handsomest woman I ever saw." 
 
 "But you find a lot of fault with me. I'm not even 
 handsome your way." 
 
 The humble voice was not, her listener felt sure, 
 assumed to meet the peculiarities of the situation, or 
 
MOTHER 43 
 
 to reconcile in any manner their standards of the beau- 
 tiful. It came from something alive and glowing under 
 all this bravery and glitter. 
 
 "No," she said, steadily, "I don't find any fault 
 with you. But I want to know you." 
 
 "So you can find fault if you have to?" 
 
 "Yes. Or" the kindly voice warmed into a thrill 
 of whimsical protest against wholesale relegation to a 
 world of feminine prejudice "so I can admire you all 
 I want to." 
 
 The other woman frankly stared at her. Then she 
 put out one small, exquisite foot to the blaze, drawing 
 her skirt away from it and regarding it imper- 
 sonally. 
 
 "No," she said, gloomily, after a pause, "you won't 
 admire me. You can't." 
 
 "Oh," cried the mother, quite unaffectedly, "I'm 
 sorry. For I'm pretty exacting, after all. If I can't, 
 I don't want Gil to." 
 
 Then they were both silent, and presently Vivian 
 looked up. She gave a little sigh. 
 
 "He doesn't yet. Not as you're afraid. He truly 
 hasn't begun to." 
 
 "Were you " the mother began, gently, and 
 stopped. 
 
 "Was I going to make him? Yes, I was." 
 
 "Are you going to now?" 
 
 "I don't know. Yes, if I want to." 
 
 Again they sat with their own separate musings, the 
 younger running bitterly back over the unfriendliness 
 of woman warring against woman for the possession 
 of the other element that did not seem to her so valu- 
 
44 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 able, after all. Sometimes she wished she could live 
 with women alone, breathing their affectionate, cool 
 companionship. Yet she knew it was not possible. 
 They wouldn't have her with a perfect trust, and even 
 if they would, the old call must come sounding to her 
 out of the necessities of things, and she would go forth 
 from any haven to find her mate that was also, each 
 tune, her prey, as she was his. 
 
 "No," she said, heavily, as if she sulked under dis- 
 cipline, "I suppose I sha'n't. I suppose you think 
 you've earned him by being faithful and self-sacrificing 
 and wearing little black bonnets ' ' Her voice broke, 
 and she added, out of an impatience savage in its sud- 
 denness and her own inability to master it: "Oh, you're 
 a darling thing. Take your boy. Take him and be 
 done with it." 
 
 It was like an assault on the decorous shyness which 
 had wrapped the other woman all her life, to find her 
 son, whom she could not help wanting to encase in 
 a privacy like her own, tossed back to her, a chattel 
 another woman did not keep. But it was only a little 
 hurt on the outer skin of her pride. She had long ago 
 learned that life is a process of bruises on vulnerable 
 organs, and that she had been tremendously fortunate 
 in her seclusion and her protected state. She had been 
 schooling herself all these years to remember that Gil- 
 bert was in the stress of things, and that, if she meant 
 to share his life at all, she must meet crude miseries 
 without wincing. So it was out of these old resolves 
 that she spoke, with a gentle brevity. 
 
 " You're not to give up anything that's right for you 
 both to have. If he likes you specially " Her voice 
 
MOTHER 45 
 
 failed her, and Vivian could see that at last one delicate 
 hand was trembling. 
 
 "I've told you he doesn't care for me ' specially '," 
 she said, with a bluff kindliness. "And I don't care 
 for him. But suppose I did suppose we did what 
 would you have done then?" 
 
 The mother's face looked wan in sudden pallor. 
 Her certainties, her quietness, seemed suddenly washed 
 away from it. One could see it in the utmost pathos 
 of an undefended age. 
 
 "Why," she said, "I should want you to let me be 
 in it with you." 
 
 "In it? He couldn't marry me. I'm not free to 
 marry." 
 
 Mrs. Hall was looking at her with eyes that implored 
 her to spare them both the cruder tests. 
 
 "I haven't thought any farther," she said. "Only 
 I have always wanted I always meant if my son 
 had attachments, to be as friendly as understand- 
 ing " Her voice failed her. She really had no idea 
 how to put her pure purpose into words. 
 
 "You mean, whatever woman he got attached to, 
 you intended to know her to like her if you could?" 
 
 "Yes." The mother spoke with relief now that her 
 intent was being elaborated for her. 
 
 "You'd know her socially. You'd have her here in 
 your house." 
 
 "I should want to." 
 
 "Any woman, you mean, any kind of woman?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 1 ' Good God ! ' ' This was under her breath, an exclama- 
 tion not of blasphemy, but of wonder. She was looking 
 
46 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 at the pale face now, still under its veil of prophetic 
 age, with a frank incredulity. Suddenly, while her eyes 
 met that other wistful gaze which seemed to implore her 
 out of her worldly cunning to tell another woman how 
 to be as wise, tears came blindingly. They hurt her, 
 and she pressed them back again with closed lids and 
 an impatient hand. "Well," she said, "I hope you 
 won't come to grief, that's all. If you do, I hope I sha'n't 
 know it. But you won't. Your boy's a good boy. 
 He's got an iron kind of a will in him too. See here." 
 She laughed a little in that mocking self-communion 
 of hers. "I can drop him; but do you want him to 
 drop me? Would that save your pride? " 
 
 The other shook her head. Bigger things than pride 
 were involved, and she did not quite know the phrases 
 for explaining how poor a trapping she considered pride 
 to be. 
 
 "I can tell him," Vivian went on "I can tell him 
 I couldn't stand his mother. I can jeer at you, a little, 
 only a little. He'd take off his hat and leave me." 
 
 "Oh no," she breathed, "you mustn't do that." 
 
 "Why mustn't I?" 
 
 "He wouldn't like it. He wouldn't like you." 
 
 "Don't I tell you he wouldn't like it? Don't we both 
 want him not to like me?" 
 
 "Oh, I do want him to like you," said the other 
 woman, impetuously. "I want him to respect you." 
 
 Vivian seemed for an instant to be staring her down; 
 but her own lids fell first, and again she pressed them 
 with angry fingers. 
 
 "That's a hard saying," she returned. "There's 
 something about a camel and the eye of a needle." She 
 
MOTHER 47 
 
 had risen now and stood with one foot on the head of 
 the fire-dog. "Well," she said, gravely, "perhaps he 
 can. He's as queer as you in some ways. Perhaps he can. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, he does!" the mother declared, tumultuously. 
 
 "Does respect me? How do you know?" 
 
 " Oh, I know Gil. He wouldn't like you if he didn't." 
 
 There they stood staring at each other, the mother 
 with such boundless belief in all possibilities openly 
 written in her face that Vivian for one bewildering mo- 
 ment felt as she sometimes did on a spring morning, 
 at her first waking, as if the world were new and she 
 with it. 
 
 "I'm going abroad," she said, abruptly, when the 
 dream snapped. "He sha'n't mope about me. I'll leave 
 him free as free as you want me to. He sha'n't sulk. 
 He'll be a little cockier, that's all. He'll think he's proved 
 a model of chivalry and found I was a good fellow." 
 
 She was on her way to the door, without an offered 
 hand-shake, and Mrs. Hall hastened after her. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "that's good that's wonderful 
 but I want you to be free too. You're not you could 
 tell me, you know you won't miss him " 
 
 A child's mirth had run over the woman's face and 
 chased away certain lines that aged and hardened it. 
 She laid her hands on her friend's shoulders, held them 
 there a moment, and then, stooping, kissed both the 
 soft pale cheeks. 
 
 "Am I in love with him, you mean? No. I'd got 
 done being what you call in love when he was fifteen. 
 I sha'n't ever see you again, madonna. Give me one 
 more kiss. In love? You needn't worry. Why, bless 
 you! I'm in love with you!" 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 
 
 THERE is something that all dogs know and a 
 few men. It is what gives the dog that look 
 in the eyes, of unconquerable love, of hope 
 even against the fact of abuse." 
 
 This was what the lean gray-headed man with the 
 army button said to the rest of us smoking with him 
 on the hotel veranda. Then he took out his big worn 
 wallet and selected from it a yellowed paper, put on 
 his eye-glasses, and scanned it frowningly. "Yes," 
 said he, "I've got that right. I wrote it down some 
 years ago. I've tried to get a little further with it, 
 but I never did." 
 
 One of the men had just given a dog his own dog 
 a cuff, as he thought righteously. Mac was a sober 
 collie, a one-man dog, with no eye for any but his 
 master, and he had, apparently without provocation, 
 assaulted a nervous fox-terrier and sent him away 
 yapping, with a salutary memory of rough-shod teeth. 
 And then his master had roared out and cuffed him, 
 and he had taken his dose with a faultless bearing and 
 lain down in a pretence at the degage "flump" of a 
 dog with nothing to do of a shiny afternoon but snap 
 at flies and dream of battles won. He seemed not to 
 recognize in the least that his dignity had been assailed; 
 but he did give his master, in the one moment of accept- 
 ing the cuff, a look, half remonstrance and half a divine 
 
 48 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 49 
 
 reproach. Even then there was no resentment in it. 
 We who had seen the foregoing provocation his 
 master had been back to it rushed in to say that 
 Mac hadn't been the offender. Foxy had nagged him 
 and taken unwarrantable liberties such as no high-bred 
 person could suffer. Therefore Mac had done justly 
 in his brief reproof. The master upon that bent down 
 and gave MacGregor's forehead an apologetic smooth, 
 and Mac looked up with that same clear faith in the 
 mirror of his eyes f orgetfulness, too : yet he had more 
 brain, we knew, than half of us, with cells in it for 
 memory. Then it was that the lean old man who 
 always looked an-hungered and not able to tell of it, 
 as if all his heart's dearest had gone to Kingdom Come 
 and he was too busy deferring the desire of them to have 
 any present wants, made that remark I have remem- 
 bered. 
 
 " What is it?" asked Mac's master, quickly. "What 
 is it dogs know and we don't? " 
 
 He was an artist with slim brown hands and a sensi- 
 tive face. I think he was nettled at having shown him- 
 self impulsive and not having kept the code with Mac, 
 and he wanted to find out as much as possible about 
 dogs, as soon as possible. 
 
 "Did I ever tell you," said the old gentleman, "about 
 Colonel Annerly's dog?" 
 
 He never had. We lit up again, those of us who had 
 let our pipes cool, and thought commiseratingly of 
 the expectation the ladies cherished, flitting white- 
 skirted down to the summer-house, of seeing us pres- 
 ently at afternoon tea. There was a decided antici- 
 pation of something to come : for the nice old gentleman 
 
50 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 with the patient face hadn't talked much up to now, 
 and we shared the feeling that he wouldn't take the 
 trouble to embark if it wasn't worth while. He looked 
 like the sort of person who would ticket his recollections 
 and keep only the ones that had some assured value. 
 His mind was, I am convinced, so constantly on the 
 certainty of active life's being over that he wouldn't 
 be apt to clutter up his pigeonholes with extraneous 
 truck. His will, perhaps, and a few, a very few, in- 
 evitable and sacred memories, were all he would be 
 likely to concern himself with now. 
 
 " Colonel Annerly," said he, in the grave manner 
 of one bringing out something exceedingly precious, 
 and letting us note that it would have to be seriously 
 regarded, "went all through the war." 
 
 He said it as they do who made a part of the 
 Rebellion, as if there were but one war known to 
 history. 
 
 "We saw a good deal of each other. I was a private 
 when he was a lieutenant. But we had friends in com- 
 mon. He was a Virginian: good blood, very good 
 blood. By the way, Annerly wasn't his name. I 
 shouldn't take the liberty Annerly's my name." 
 
 "After the war was over," he went on, "I didn't 
 see him again for maybe twenty years; and then one 
 summer I went up with my people" he made a 
 little pause here, a reverent pause, and it was evident 
 that his people were dead "to a little town in Vermont 
 near Mansfield. Nice little town it was, a good 
 hotel. Burned since. And Mansfield is a very beautiful 
 mountain. The sunrises there ah, well!" 
 
 He lost himself a moment, patently in memory, and 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 51 
 
 then Mac got up, snapped at a fly, and threw himself 
 down again. That recalled him. 
 
 "Ah!" he brightened. "What was I saying? That 
 summer in Vermont. Well, Colonel Annerly was there. 
 The first sight I had of him was one morning when I 
 was setting out for a little walk. It was market day; 
 country folks brought in calves and pigs, and there was 
 a prodigious roaring and squalling and cackling all 
 the forenoon long, and about three they set off home 
 again without the calves and pigs, with plugs of tobacco, 
 and tea and sugar, and flat bottles, and the misses had 
 their ribbons, I suppose. Well, this day nobody 
 seemed to be buying anything for a minute, but they 
 all stood knotted in a crowd and everybody was 
 laughing. And I looked up where they were looking, 
 up in a balcony of a little tavern there not my hotel ; 
 that was bigger but a very little tavern indeed and 
 there was Colonel Annerly making a speech, and he 
 was drunk, gentleman, drunk as a lord. I stopped. 
 I couldn't believe my eyes. ' Who's that?' I says to a 
 man he looked like an ostler with a rope in his hand. 
 He was going from stable to pump, and stopped to listen 
 and grin. 'That's Colonel Annerly/ says he. 'What's 
 he doing here?' says I. 'He lives here/ says he. 'No, 
 be doesn't/ says I. I was pretty stupid over it all, but 
 I never imagined the Colonel outside his State. 'He's 
 a Virginian/ I guess I'd thought of him in 'marble 
 halls' and all that sort of thing. I'm only a plain 
 New-Englander myself. 'Oh,' says the man, 'his 
 mother was a Vermont girl, and after the war the 
 Colonel and Miss Sally that's his sister they come 
 up here. I guess they were burnt out o' house and 
 
52 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 home, and 'twas all they could do.' He went along 
 to the pump, and I stared at the Colonel and listened 
 to him, and while I listened I got pretty hot." 
 
 He looked it then. His blue eyes were sharp as the 
 flash on steel. His nervous hand, with the little gnarls 
 at the joints, began beating on the veranda rail. 
 
 "He was making a speech about the war. It was 
 a good speech. It would have been if he'd been sober; 
 but he was drunk, and every tomfool among 'em 
 laughed : not because he said anything to laugh at, but 
 because he was drunk. And while I looked at him I 
 realized he'd changed, the Colonel had. 'Twas more 
 than middle age. He was a handsome man, a very 
 personable man. But his face had got a little bloated, 
 and his hair had whitened and he'd let it grow well, 
 it made me sick. You see, I'd seen him on a horse." 
 
 His mouth flickered into a spasm of the pain it had 
 all given him, but he went quickly on like a man who 
 has undertaken a dolorous task that must, he being 
 methodical and stout-willed, be finished. 
 
 "Then he stopped. The Colonel stopped. He'd 
 looked up the street, and there walking along, from 
 the post-office, I knew I went there myself every 
 day was an old lady, about as old as he was, and thin 
 and white-haired and dressed in black silk, and I 
 guessed who it was Miss Sally. The Colonel took 
 off his hat he wore a big gray felt and just at that 
 minute out tumbles a dog, a kind of a nice, good-sized 
 yellowish mongrel, part collie, too the kind you re- 
 spect from the window behind him and began to 
 bark like all possessed. The Colonel yelled at him and 
 the tomfools began to clap it seemed to be a terrible 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 53 
 
 funny joke that the dog was making a speech, too 
 and when the Colonel couldn't stop the creature by 
 yelling, he struck at him with his hat, and then, I 
 believe, he kicked him" this he offered delicately, 
 as if it were ticklish business to remember with an 
 unjustly disgraced person like Mac at hand "and 
 finally the Colonel sat down in a chair on the balcony 
 and fanned himself with his hat, and the dog lay down 
 beside him at once, gentlemen, and dropped his head 
 for a snooze, as if there hadn't the least thing in the 
 world happened. And the old lady kept her head up 
 in the air and walked by as if it was nothing in the 
 world to her. But I knew it was Miss Sally. Well, 
 I didn't let many hours slip before I went round to see 
 the Colonel. Not that day. I gave him time " 
 Here he paused, rather at a loss, and a younger man 
 of the company, too young to remember other years 
 and manners when there were simpler if cruder names 
 for things, supplied a flippant modernism for getting 
 over a jag and the old gentleman instantly frowned 
 at him. We frowned too, all of us, partly in sympathy 
 and partly because we were afraid, if the serene current 
 of his intent were broken, he might not go on with the 
 story at all. But it was still a task undertaken and, 
 like everything in his dutiful life, to be completed. 
 
 "He was glad to see me. We had a good deal to 
 talk about. All through that call we lived over old 
 times. It wasn't for several other visits that we got 
 round to the present and the tavern and the dog. 
 For my story's about the dog, gentlemen, really about 
 the dog." 
 
 "What was his name?" the young man pelted in. 
 
54 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Annerly answered him with perhaps a wilfully con- 
 trasting dignity. 
 
 "Abe. He'd named him for the President. It may 
 have been disrespectful; if he'd done it in his sober 
 minutes maybe he'd have felt it so, but the Colonel 
 wasn't very often sober, and he called the dog by that 
 name. You know, gentlemen, as soon as you begin 
 to think about a person or a particular thing, every- 
 thing else seems to bring you news of 'em. It's just 
 as if your mind was out inquiring about 'em all day 
 long. Well, I didn't ask any questions about the 
 Colonel of course I didn't but it wasn't a week 
 before I had a lot of data about him. He was an inter- 
 esting figure, and folks talked. It seemed, though 
 he'd fought for our side, Miss Sally was red-hot Secesh. 
 But that hadn't made any material difference between 
 'em. They'd put their little money together and they 
 had little less than nothing when all's said and done 
 and come up North, as the ostler had told me, to live 
 in the old house. But I suppose they lived pretty 
 nigh the wind I'm country-bred, gentlemen; the 
 old sayings cling to me and the Colonel felt he had 
 to take a little nip now and then I told you he'd 
 been pretty seriously wounded, didn't I? Well, besides 
 that he had a troublesome heart; and there was no 
 proper society in the place for a man of his calibre. 
 So you see he took to drinking very naturally, very 
 naturally indeed, and that just about broke Miss 
 Sally's heart and her pride. Nobody ever told me these 
 reasons for their tiff. They just told me the Colonel 
 went to the tavern and got noisy drunk and then blind 
 drunk. But I was very much attached to him, very 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 55 
 
 much indeed, and I gave a good deal of time to think- 
 ing about it. And it didn't take me long to see it was 
 very natural, could hardly have been helped, you 
 might say, with things as they were. Miss Sally wasn't 
 a gentle person, as some women are. She didn't suffer 
 and say nothing. She was high as ninety, I've under- 
 stood; and one day the Colonel just packed up his trunk 
 and came over to the tavern and took a room, and they 
 hadn't spoken since. He brought the dog with him. 
 The dog had come to them. He'd walked into town 
 one day with a drunken tramp, and the tramp had got 
 full, if he wasn't before, and that night broke through 
 the railing down at the horse-pond, and the dog had 
 run back to town for help as rationally as a man would 
 have done, and when the tramp was fished out dead 
 the dog sat down on his haunches and looked round, 
 they said the Colonel said; he was there as if he 
 was asking: 'Well, what next? What's my next in- 
 carnation going to be?' the Colonel said he seemed to 
 be asking the Colonel had quite a clever habit of 
 words and when the crowd dispersed and the body 
 was carried off, the dog just got up and trotted after 
 the Colonel. He'd picked him out, and he trotted 
 home with him. That tickled the Colonel, flattered 
 him maybe. It would flatter any of us but it seemed 
 to him a kind of human thing to do. So he told Miss 
 Sally that the dog was going to live with them and 
 he wouldn't take a hundred dollars for him. And 
 when he and Miss Sally had their flare-up and he left, 
 there was no question but the dog must go with him. 
 Well, sirs, that dog was a queer dog. Everybody saw 
 it. I believe the other dogs saw it, too, for they never 
 
56 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 seemed to cock an ear at him even, when he went by. 
 I don't believe they were afraid of him. He was as 
 goodnatured a creature as ever lived; but he always 
 seemed to be on business of his own trot, trot, head 
 up, nose alive, eyes bright and a little anxious. Yes, 
 he had business, and it wasn't long before I found out 
 what it was. I'm particularly fond of dogs, but I 
 never've had one of late years, never been stationary 
 enough, and I should be sorry to leave a dog " the 
 other look came into his eyes, the one that must have 
 meant long journeyings to those he called his folks, at 
 the end. He recalled himself, but not until he had 
 bent and given Mac a little touch on the ear. The dog 
 knew what it was not a fly, but a friend, though it 
 was so soft, and he lifted his head a moment to see 
 who knew him so well, and then dropped it with a bump. 
 
 "Yes," said Annerly, "he'd built up a business, and 
 he had to give his whole time to it and his whole mind. 
 It was taking care of the Colonel." 
 
 "When he was slewed?" the young man of no diffi- 
 dences inquired. 
 
 Annerly did not hear him. He had sent his mind 
 back to scrutinize that map of the long past, perhaps 
 not altogether refreshing his memory, but because he 
 himself may not have understood it as well as he could 
 wish. 
 
 "The amount of it was," said he, "the dog was on the 
 watch. When the Colonel was himself, the dog took 
 his naps, kept himself to himself, and actually seemed 
 to be saving up for the next bout. And the Colonel 
 wasn't a finger-deep in whiskey before the dog was on 
 to it, ears up, nose quivering, tail going whenever the 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 57 
 
 Colonel looked at him, as if he was beseeching him to 
 remember they were up against it again, and for the 
 Lord's sake to see if they couldn't look sharp and come 
 out of it this tune with a whole skin." 
 
 He was talking more easily as he got warmed up to 
 it. Evidently the matter meant a good deal to him, the 
 more, perhaps, as tune gave him perspective. 
 
 "You see," he continued, rather feeling his way 
 now, as if this chapter of it hardly concerned us, and 
 could only be opened with the utmost delicacy of ma- 
 nipulation, "when the Colonel had had a drop too 
 much, he was possessed to talk. And there's no doubt 
 talking to the kind of people he did ready to laugh 
 and slap their legs he made himself ridiculous. That 
 was the thing that had been wormwood to Miss Sally 
 stump oratory, you know, kind of old-fashioned Amer- 
 ican-eagle business. I'm told there's something of the 
 sort in Biglow Papers. I never read them myself. I 
 like my English spelled right, and pronounced right, 
 when it comes to that. Well, the dog seemed to hate 
 it as much as Miss Sally did, and the queer part of it 
 was, he knew what was coming. The Colonel would 
 get up, sometimes in the balcony off his room, and 
 sometimes on the old tree stump in the square, some- 
 times on the band stand anywhere he happened to 
 be and strike out and ram down the long words and 
 saw the air, and the dog wouldn't let him get in more 
 than two sentences deep before he'd break up the meet- 
 ing. It's curious to me now to remember the ways he 
 took to do it. Sometimes he'd run at the Colonel's 
 legs and snap and a better-behaved dog there never 
 was, common days. Sometimes he'd pitch on another 
 
58 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 dog, hammer and tongs, and they'd roll over and yell, 
 and you couldn't see 'em for the dust. I got to think 
 the other dog understood the scheme himself; for when 
 they'd distracted the Colonel and he'd fallen on 'em 
 with whatever came handy, the two dogs would leap 
 apart, and the second one would go about his business 
 and leave the Colonel's to the thrashing he was sure 
 to get. Yes, he got it every time. 'That dog of mine,' 
 the Colonel would say, 'he's getting quarrelsome; he's 
 getting unmanageable. I'll break him of it, or I'll 
 break every bone in his body.' And you'd have thought 
 the dog's bones might have been pretty well broken, 
 he was so cut and kicked. But he took it all like well, 
 as I've understood the English schoolboy takes his 
 lickings. I won't say our schoolboys, because I under- 
 stand they're not allowed to be licked. Great mistake! 
 I was mellowed well in my time, and I was the better 
 for it. But the dog never ki-yi-ed. He never yelped 
 a syllable. He'd stand there and be hammered like 
 a moth-eaten old yellow rock carved out like a dog, 
 and he'd look absent-minded a little, as if he really 
 didn't exactly know what was going on and certainly 
 didn't want anybody else to. And when it was over, 
 he'd give himself a kind of a shake and a frisk as if he 
 meant to say: 'Splendid, Colonel. That was just 
 splendid. Think you could do it again?'" 
 
 "Well, what's your theory of it?" the prompt young 
 man inserted here. "Why was he so mighty fond of 
 being biffed?" 
 
 "I don't say that he was fond of it," the old gentle- 
 man resumed, with dignity. "I say he intentionally 
 appeared to be fond of it." 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 59 
 
 "Oh, come now," said the other. "You mean he 
 was putting up a bluff. Why, man alive, you're talkin' 
 about a four-footed beast! You're talking about a dog. 
 You might as well say this dog here " with his half- 
 smoked cigarette he indicated Mac, twitching in a 
 dream of sheep-herding. 
 
 "Yes," said the old gentleman, solemnly and stiffly, 
 "you might say this dog here. Only it didn't happen 
 to be this dog. It was another one." 
 
 "But you don't mean to say you imagine dogs are 
 trotting round treeing psychologic moments " he 
 was rather a clever young man with his tongue and his 
 trick of remembered phrases. We'd all thought so 
 until now he interrupted the story. "Well," he per- 
 sisted, "how do you account for it?" 
 
 "How do you account for it? " inquired the old gentle- 
 man, and his "it" seemed to embrace a large concep- 
 tion of the uncharted world dogs live in, from which 
 they emerge mysteriously for their adventures and 
 their benevolences in the equally obscure domain of 
 man. 
 
 "Read us that paragraph you had," said the young 
 man. He was frowning over an effort to capture an 
 illusory possibility. 
 
 Annerly did it. 
 
 " Where'd you get it? " asked the ruthless one. "Did 
 you say you wrote it?" 
 
 "I did," said Annerly. "It was the beginning of 
 the account I meant to write of this dog and what he 
 had to do and what he taught me." 
 
 "Ever write it?" 
 
 "No. I couldn't make it clear enough. I never' ve 
 
60 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 spoken of it to any one until to-day. I suppose I 
 shouldn't now, but he" here, by a gesture, he seemed 
 to include Mac in the circle "he brought it up, and 
 well, I felt rather more like it." 
 
 "But we haven't had all the story," said a timid- 
 spoken man whose flamboyant wife, from a green be- 
 yond, was waving him to tea. 
 
 "It's very short," said Annerly, as if he'd rather get 
 it over. "It's soon told. One day in the beginning of 
 September I took a walk up the mountain road, and 
 when I was coming back into town I met a lot of chil- 
 dren, a whole Pied Piper crowd of 'em, and though 
 I'm not specially given to noticing children I did no- 
 tice these, they looked so pretty. Then* hats were over 
 their eyes or falling down their backs, and their hair 
 was anyhow, and their faces red, as if they'd run a 
 race, and you could see well enough why. It was what 
 they carried. They were weighted down, every one 
 of 'em, with corn, sweet corn, big armfuls of it, and two 
 little girls between 'em tugged a kettle, three-quarters 
 full of water that slopped every step. When I saw the 
 kettle, I called a halt and asked 'em to let me carry it. 
 But they wouldn't stop more than a minute. They 
 distrusted me, off on some child's spree as they were, 
 like a dog's sheep-killing, and they were afraid I'd cut 
 in and spoil it somehow. So 'twas, 'No, sir,' and, 
 'Thank you, sir,' and on they went. In a minute or 
 two I overtook the Colonel and the dog, and knew he'd 
 met 'em; but he was too far along to take much account 
 of them, or any other pretty, innocent sight. I knew 
 where he'd been. There was a one-armed man along 
 the road, and he kept a choice brand of whiskey for the 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 61 
 
 fellows that didn't like to drink as much as they wanted 
 at the hotel. The Colonel was in one of his grand 
 moods. First thing he said was to inform me he was 
 on his way to deliver a short account of the battle of 
 Gettysburg, deliver it in the square. Then I knew 
 what was coming. I knew the dog would try to quash 
 it, and the Colonel would cut into the dog, and if I'd 
 had a cask or something, I'd have turned it over the 
 dog and kept him in it, breathing through the bung- 
 hole, and saved his hide that tune. 
 
 "When we got into the square I was a little easier. 
 There was nobody there but a tin-peddler, and he'd 
 opened a bag of hay for his horses and sat up in his 
 cart and leaned back, having a pipe. But for all the 
 Colonel knew, he was as good as twenty, and the Colo- 
 nel got up on the band stand and opened fire on him. 
 I guess the tin-peddler thought he was crazed. He 
 took his pipe out of his mouth, and left his mouth 
 open and stared a spell, and then he seemed to think 
 it wouldn't strike that time, and leaned himself back 
 again and went to sleep, mouth still open. I can see 
 that picture to this day. Well, the Colonel kept on 
 spouting, and the dog sat still, grave as a judge; seemed 
 to think it didn't make any particular difference, long 
 as there wasn't anybody there but a tin-peddler and 
 me. It was a pretty hot day, and I sat down on the 
 steps of the stand and took off my hat and hoped the 
 Colonel thought I was listening. Far as I was con- 
 cerned he might as well work off his load that way 
 as any other, long as there was nobody to be mortified 
 but me, and Miss Sally was indoors. It was a day full 
 of haze, over the mountain everywhere, and I smelt 
 
62 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 smoke and liked it. Seemed as if every man was 
 burning up the rubbish in his own dooryard, and as if 
 the world was going to be the cleaner for it. In an- 
 other minute I might have been as fast asleep as the 
 tin-peddler, but the dog lifted his head and gave a howl, 
 an awful howl. If you'd heard it at night on a lonesome 
 road you'd have put for cover. It was so awful some- 
 how it even stopped the Colonel. And then the dog 
 started to run, and stopped and howled again, and 
 looked back at the Colonel, and gave that howl over 
 and over and over, and at last we judged, both at the 
 same time, that something had hurt him and he was in 
 pain. The Colonel got down over the steps as quick as 
 his legs would let him, and made for the dog, and I 
 followed on. Not very fast. I'm lame, gentlemen, 
 maybe you've observed. ' Something stung him? ' the 
 Colonel called back to me. 'It's more than a sting/ 
 I said, and I knew he knew so, too. Of course the one 
 stupid commonplace about a dog beside himself with 
 a trouble you can't understand is that he's mad. I did 
 think that, too, but only from a kind of reflex, caught 
 from our dull habits of reason. Every time I saw the 
 dog's face when he'd look round to find out if the Colo- 
 nel was following, I knew it was just earnestness there. 
 He'd got something to do and he was taking the Colonel 
 on to help do it. And suddenly, in a second, both of 
 us together, we knew. We smelled smoke, more and 
 more we smelt it, and when we rounded the curve of 
 the road we could see French's old barn, chiefly beams 
 and rafters and a roof with shingles curled up like 
 lichens, they were so old just a storage-place for a 
 good many years and 'twas afire. I don't know what 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 63 
 
 there was in it: anything the wet would hurt and French 
 couldn't bring himself to throw away old sleighs, 
 paint-pots, rolls of matting. I went over it once when 
 I felt lazy, for it was all open to the light. I used to 
 like to understand folks then. 'Twas in the days be- 
 fore I learned you can't understand 'em. I knew French 
 had the reputation of being close, and I wanted to see 
 what road it took. As a young man I'd had a good 
 deal of ambition to become a writer. Well, well!" 
 He dropped into blank musing for a moment here and 
 then caught himself up. 
 
 " There was one upper window left in the place, 
 and what do you think was framed in it, the smoke 
 behind her? A little girl, gentlemen, and she was 
 stretching out her hands to us and screaming, piercing, 
 needle screams. I never heard anything like those 
 screams. The Colonel started to run. He'd forgotten 
 the dog, as well he might, for the minute the dog saw 
 he'd got us far enough so we knew what we'd come 
 for, he stopped howling and loped on ahead. The 
 Colonel was a good second. You wouldn't know he'd 
 a glass of liquor to carry. He ran like a boy. And we 
 got nearer, and the heat of the fire struck us in the face, 
 and the smoke came to meet us and choke our running. 
 'There's an old stairway,' I called to the Colonel. He 
 was getting there first. I knew he'd have to. 'I've 
 seen it;' and he didn't answer me, but he pelted on, 
 and when I got to the runway and saw nothing but 
 smoke and fire inside, he'd disappeared. I thought the 
 dog had too, but, by George! he hadn't. He flew back 
 at me out of the smoke and bit at my trousers and 
 worried 'em a second; and you may call me crazy if 
 
64 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 you like, but I knew why. He saw there was a big 
 deed doing in there, and he meant the Colonel to be 
 the one to do it." 
 
 "Oh, come now " the young man pushed in, but 
 we couldn't stop to hear him. The quiet man brought 
 a hand down on his shoulder, and he stopped. 
 
 "Then," said Annerly, "the dog left me as quick 
 as he had come, as if he hoped he'd given me a good 
 broad hint but hadn't time to stop to see, other things 
 were so pressing, and he, too, scurried into the smoke 
 where the Colonel had gone. I was just setting my 
 foot on the runway to go in, when I heard a voice 
 above. It was the Colonel's. There'd been noise 
 enough before, with the crackling of the fire and the 
 crying of children, but the children seemed to have 
 stopped. The Colonel had done that. He'd got up 
 there among 'em, and they were sobbing a little, I 
 suppose, somehow, as you do when help comes and 
 you know, tough as things look, they can't be quite 
 so bad now. But he was yelling at me, ordering me 
 to look up, and I never hesitated any more than I 
 should if I'd been in the ranks. I ran round to the side, 
 and there he was at the one window, and the fire was 
 behind him and beside him, and the smoke was thick 
 and gray, bright-colored, too, here and there from the 
 paint. But it blew away from him, so I could see every- 
 thing for ten feet or so back. I don't know how to tell 
 it, gentlemen. I haven't the words. I used to try 
 to think how I'd write it if I was on a paper and had 
 got to, but I couldn't think, and I can't think now. 
 You see, the side of the barn was mostly gone. There 
 was just the flooring of the mow, and up there was the 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 65 
 
 old stove the children had tried to light. And besides 
 the window there were a dozen vertical gaps to right 
 and left of it, where boards were gone, and through them 
 I could see what went on. 
 
 "'Here,' said the Colonel. 'Here!' He lifted up 
 a little girl by her shoulders and swung her out of the 
 window. ' Catch I' said he, and I screamed out as the 
 children were screaming, as a woman might. 'I can't/ 
 I said. 'My God, I can't.' But in a second I knew he 
 wasn't drunk any longer, and it was sober sense working 
 in him, and that was the only way. And as I said 
 I couldn't, I held up my arms, and he gave her another 
 swing and let her go, and she dropped, screaming. But 
 I got her, and got her safe and right side up, and the 
 minute I had my hands on her tight little body I 
 smelt my courage and I knew I could do it again. And 
 I set her on the ground, and I had time to see, before 
 I looked up for another, that she wasn't crying any 
 more, and, if you will believe me, she'd put up her hands 
 and was braiding her little yellow pigtail. Yes, I 
 looked up, but the Colonel wasn't ready for me. He 
 was in trouble up there. The children had got into a 
 panic when they saw one thrown out; they were more 
 afraid of being thrown than they were of the fire, and 
 same time they'd got a sudden idea of the safety outside, 
 and they were crowding forward to the cracks, and 
 I knew they meant to jump. The Colonel was roaring 
 at 'em as if they were a company in the thick of battle; 
 but they couldn't mind, they couldn't even hear. 
 That's where the dog came in. Suddenly, as sudden 
 as the thought must have sprung up in his mind, he 
 leaped at 'em and began to herd 'em as if they were 
 
66 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 sheep. The Colonel saw what he was at, and yelled at 
 him and told him to go ahead and blessed him and 
 swore like a pirate, and the children got more scared 
 of the dog than they'd been of the leap, and he ran 
 back and forth before 'em, and if one made a dash 
 he was too quick for her and sprung at her clothes and 
 tore at 'em, and she was mighty glad to slink away. 
 So there they were corralled, the dog in front and the 
 fire behind and the fire wasn't idle, mind you and 
 the Colonel snatched another and I caught her, and 
 another; and I'm blest if he didn't get the whole 
 thirteen down safe, all but little Annie Dill, and she 
 only broke her ankle, and she's a spry, sound woman 
 to-day, and walks as well as any of you. And when 
 the last one was crying in mother's apron for by now 
 the whole village was turning out there was the 
 Colonel, straight and tall like a Bible prophet, and 
 the fire was behind him, and he'd no place to go unless 
 he jumped the same way. I saw two men running 
 with a long ladder, and an old woman that was grand- 
 mother to one of the children kept screaming: 'Why 
 don't you get a feather bed? Why don't you get a 
 feather bed, so's that dear man can jump? ' And there 
 was a little puff toward us, and the wind had changed, 
 and the ladder hadn't come, and the Colonel was in 
 the midst of the fire and smoke. And so he leaped 
 for there was no other way and the dog leaped after 
 him. He fell straight forward on his face, the Colonel 
 did, but we had him up in a second, and there he stood, 
 pretty dazed, pretty well scorched; and the first thing he 
 said was, 'All there?' He meant the children. 'All 
 there, sir/ said I, but I don't know as he heard me, 
 
THE STORY OF ABE 67 
 
 for Miss Sally came walking through the crowd 
 I suppose she was too dignified for anything but a 
 walk, but she came so fast she might as well have run 
 and she put her two hands on the Colonel's shoulders, 
 and she said as well as she could for crying, ' Brother, 
 I'm proud of you.' The Colonel was a very courtly 
 man. He took one of her hands down from his shoulder 
 and kissed it and said to her, 'Why, Sally, old girl, 
 that's nothing.' But as he said it he clapped his hand 
 and hers in it to his side, and we caught him and laid 
 him down, and every one of us knew he never 'd get 
 up again. And he never did. He never even opened 
 his eyes. And we carried him to Miss Sally's house, 
 and the mothers and fathers and children followed 
 after. But the dog trotted along by Miss Sally, head 
 down, tail dropped, and if we could have known what 
 he was thinking we should be wiser men to-day." 
 
 "Now I gather," said the omnivorous young man, 
 "that you not only believe the dog scented out the 
 danger the children were in, but you think he led the 
 Colonel to save 'em " Then he hesitated a moment, 
 as if he knew the pregnant fact was farther yet behind. 
 
 "Yes, sir," Annerly said, with almost a snap of his 
 decisive jaws, as if he'd have no questioning of such 
 matters, "I do." 
 
 "I understand, too, I gather," said the young man, 
 frowning over the travail of his own cleverness, "you 
 think the dog wanted the Colonel to to retrieve his 
 shortcomings, as it were, by that kind of a deed." 
 
 "I think so, sir," said Annerly, as if defying him to 
 challenge it. "I think I may say, after all the years 
 I have given to reasoning it out, that I know so. That's 
 
68 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 why, as I told you, the dog didn't propose I should 
 have part nor lot in it. He meant it to be the Colonel's 
 stunt, as it was. That dog had as clear an idea as I 
 had of old Virginia and her pride. He meant to set 
 her flags waving, and he did." 
 
 "What became of the dog?" hesitated the quiet 
 man, rising. His wife had gone to the length of sending 
 him a pencilled line by a boy. 
 
 "He lived with Miss Sally. They grew old together. 
 And when Miss Sally died, he lived with me, and I 
 buried him with my own hands." 
 
 Annerly rose now, and the rest of us, as if by an 
 instinctive deference, got up with him. The young 
 man did not find his intellectual curiosity sated. 
 
 "But what do you mean," he prosed, going back 
 to the beginning, "by saying there's something dogs 
 know and men don't? What is it they know? " 
 
 Annerly stood for a moment looking down, and, it 
 was apparent, thinking. It was not easy to see whether 
 he considered this an incommunicable secret, or whether 
 he was wondering if it could even be approached in 
 words. His face grew more and more gentle. Suddenly 
 it flushed over in a lovely smile and he looked up. 
 
 "It's this, gentlemen," said he, "I think it's this. 
 In some unexplained way dogs know that cruelty 
 rendered unto them will be paid by suffering rendered 
 unto man. When you hurt them they rush upon you 
 with their divine forgiveness at once, pellmell, because 
 they don't want the God of all the One that holds 
 punishment in His hand they don't want Him to 
 know they're hurt. They want to save us who have 
 hurt them. That's the way I reason it," 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 
 
 CONSTANCE BURTON, on her way down to 
 Wilbraham, leaned her head against the car 
 window and tried to clarify her problem, lest, 
 on arriving, the solution should be at once required of 
 her. She was a beautiful woman, judged by the canons 
 fitted to human living. Her face had an alluring 
 irregularity; there were complex meanings in it, veiled, 
 some of them, by memories. Soft, loose hair drooped 
 above her delicate brows, and her mouth had the en- 
 chanting line made by a piquant upper lip. She looked 
 like a woman of instinctive sympathies whom life had 
 steadily enriched. She knew the wholesome meanings 
 of things, and she had learned them through experience. 
 Her black clothes were plain, yet lovely; but they did 
 not seem to be the conventional mourning. There was 
 a plume hi her soft hat, and her cloak was held by a 
 silver clasp. She was but two months widowed, and she 
 was going down to see her husband 's mother, a stranger 
 to her, and tell her some hard facts. How should the facts 
 be told? To her, the wife, they brought only an exalted 
 loyalty, an added reason for living, in that she had to 
 complete something her husband had begun. She sat 
 there, not letting her mind wander, but driving it relent- 
 lessly back over the six years of her married life, culling 
 thence the portions that would fit that life as she under- 
 stood it, and as his mother must be made to understand. 
 
70 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 She had met Blaise Burton in Italy when he was 
 studying there, and they had married after a three 
 months' courtship. Then came his illness and the 
 break that sent him to Davos, and the long imprison- 
 ment there with her at hand, never farther away than 
 his voice could reach. They had been entirely happy 
 in their snowy exile, he with but one regret: that his 
 mother should be living out her days untended in 
 New England. But in every letter Madam Burton 
 begged him not to come. She would go to him, she 
 promised, as soon as she was free. Now she had her 
 freedom, after the death of her sister, whose illness 
 matched his own; but at that very time had come his 
 high-hearted rush to the valley, to be with his old chum 
 stricken by fever, his illness there and death. 
 
 What could his wife say to illuminate those obituary 
 notices that must have torn his mother's heart anew, 
 adding the pang of failure to that of grief? She re- 
 membered one of the summaries from a paper that had 
 been swift to hail him when he went into print ten 
 years before. It was a type of all the rest. Blaise Bur- 
 ton was, it said, a one-book man. His earliest attempt, 
 the Italian sketches, fine spun as gossamer, made his 
 sole title to remembrance. The work that followed 
 later was a futile incursion into fields where giants only 
 are strong enough to tread. He had made an unwise 
 choice. He had belied the promise of his early days. 
 
 That concurrent testimony roused her to hot loyalty. 
 She knew the dreams and longings out of which that 
 work was born. She had met, hand in hand with him, 
 the visions that stirred him to his rapt interest in the 
 soul of things, his passion to depict it justly. While he 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 71 
 
 lived, they walked, they two, amid the shows of life, 
 oblivious of them, their eyes upon the dawn. They 
 had forgotten, in their devotion to what shall be, their 
 lack of recognition from the things that are. But to 
 his mother in her New England solitude, he must 
 have been a man of fame; or rather, he had been, until 
 these chilling estimates enlightened her. How could 
 she be made to understand how his life transcended all 
 he seemed to do, and that his rush toward light blew 
 back the flame he carried? How was it possible to 
 show her on what solid ground his name might yet be set? 
 
 Constance descended at the station hi the light of 
 the later afternoon. Wilbraham, a college town, had 
 a curious blending of life in its elm-shaded streets. 
 There was the quiet of an ancient spot where tradition 
 had been transmitted unchanged from generation to 
 generation, and flickering about it, like sunlight on 
 still water, the life of youth. Ample houses slept there 
 in colonial calm, and boys went trotting past them, 
 eyes set forward and hands clenched. There was a 
 placid river between two lines of trees, and bare-armed 
 athletes strained upon it, to the beat of oars. 
 
 Constance took one glance at the wide horizon 
 before she found herself invited by a bony, white- 
 haired woman leaning from a chaise. 
 
 "I won't leave the hoss," the woman called. " Should 
 you just as soon hand your check to Timothy Peters? 
 Timothy, you take this check, an' bring her trunk 
 along next time you come." 
 
 Timothy, a lank denizen, accepted the check, and 
 eyed the traveller with an air of just appraisement. 
 Constance knew at once that she was "Blaise's widder" 
 
72 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 to the village. Blaise had told her all its little annals, 
 how they were sown and garnered. 
 
 "You git right in here," said the woman, and when 
 Constance complied, old White rocked sleepily away. 
 
 "You must be Mary King," said Constance. 
 
 "How'd you know?" asked Mary, in quick delight. 
 "I guess he must ha' told ye." 
 
 " Yes, he told me. He told me about making candy 
 in the kitchen." 
 
 "Way over there in Europe, he told you that?" 
 
 "Yes; and how you hid him under the eight-legged 
 table when he didn't want to go to school." 
 
 Mary chuckled in proud retrospect. Then her face 
 clouded. "We had high times," she said, "high times 
 in them days." 
 
 They loitered along the High Street, with its spacious 
 houses, none better than another, and turned in at the 
 driveway of one great place. Constance leaned far 
 out of the carriage to look. It seemed as if he might 
 be by to welcome her, so often had they taken this 
 journey hand in hand and rejoiced at their home- 
 coming. 
 
 "There's the big lilac," she said to herself. 
 
 But Mary heard, and her old eyes were dimmed. 
 
 "And the horse-block and the mulberry-tree," said 
 Constance. "I believe that's the path to the goose- 
 berry patch and the old well." 
 
 "There's Mis' Burton on the door-step," said Mary, 
 and dropped the reins. Old John was coming from the 
 stable, his thin face keen with interest. Constance 
 smiled her recognition at him, and immediately there 
 were tears in his eyes, too. 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 73 
 
 Madam Burton stood there on the steps, framed by 
 the honeysuckle trellis. She was a stately woman, 
 with the beauty born of a large-featured significance 
 veiled by the placidity of age. She made no pretence 
 at dressing in a modern way. Her black silk was even 
 severe in its plain waist and the fall of the gathered 
 skirt. She wore a lawn kerchief and a cap. Constance, 
 seeing Blaise's look in her, was shaken. Tears were 
 rare visitants with her, but when she stepped to the 
 door-stone where the old lady was awaiting her, they 
 were running down her cheeks. The mother took her 
 hands and seemed to steady her. 
 
 " There, dear, there!" she said. "Come right in." 
 
 Constance followed her. The moment was poignant 
 and yet comforting. There was pain in it, and a homely 
 pleasure she had not felt since Blaise had died. Every 
 corner of the house, as it saluted her, brought its pang 
 of welcome. It had stood unchanged since he saw it, 
 and now she almost heard his laugh and touched the 
 bitter memory of his talk about it. She was comforted 
 in that she seemed about to come upon him, and yet 
 smitten by a keen, new heat of pain because, amid 
 so many voices, his was still. 
 
 She sank on the sofa in the great living room, and 
 drew Madam Burton down beside her. There they 
 sat for a moment with clasped hands, the mother 
 recognizing the tension of this homecoming, and 
 visibly soothing her through an attitude of mind. Con- 
 stance caught her breath once or twice, and then con- 
 trolled herself. 
 
 "No, Mary, I'll take her up myself," said Madam 
 Burton, when Mary King appeared expectantly. 
 
74 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Constance rose with her, and they went slowly up 
 the stairs. 
 
 "This is his room," said Madam Burton, pausing 
 at the east-chamber door. There was no question 
 whether Constance was to occupy it, though no small 
 adornments had been added to fit her needs. She 
 stepped in, and Madam Burton followed her. Con- 
 stance looked about in a recognition of it as a part of 
 him, and the older woman's mind seemed to accompany 
 hers, gently and with an unspoken but always reassuring 
 commentary. There were his boyish trophies on the 
 wall, the hunting-crop, snow-shoes, the photographs 
 of his mates, and the big portrait of the dog that died. 
 
 " Supper will be at six," said Madam Burton, "but 
 there's no hurry, if you'd rather lie down a while." 
 
 Then she went away, closing the door behind her, 
 and leaving Constance, as the wife subtly felt, alone 
 with a most dear possession: the boy whom she had 
 never known, save through his own careless testimony. 
 But she avoided any impulsive survey of the room, lest 
 she should exhaust her legacy too quickly, and in half 
 an hour she was down-stairs again, telling Madam 
 Burton about her voyage. Then there was supper, 
 exquisitely served in a quiet room where the light 
 struck through the grape-vine trellis, and a little later 
 Constance found herself sitting on the veranda with 
 Madame Burton, conscious that the moment had come 
 for them to talk, and, most probably, for her own 
 justification of the dead against the tongues of men. 
 
 The place, growing old in an honored security, had a 
 peacefulness as mellow as the foreign lands she knew. 
 The sounds of temperate life were sweet to her. She 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 75 
 
 heard the subdued clink of Mary's dishes from the 
 kitchen, and the intermittent murmur of her voice 
 talking to the other maid. John was pottering about 
 the stable, going back and forth with a pail, and, she 
 noticed, with a responsive liking, taking wistful glances 
 at her now and then, as something most immediate 
 to the house. Indeed, the place, even after his years 
 of absence, seemed haunted by the young master still. 
 
 "I must take you into the attic to-morrow," said 
 Madam Burton, suddenly. She had thrown a white 
 shawl about her shoulders, and now she drew the corner 
 up over her head. So draped, she was majestic in a 
 gentle way, and Constance, turning to answer her, 
 felt the wonder awakened by old age that sees its road 
 and yearns not backward. 
 
 "I want to go everywhere," she answered. 
 
 " All his little things are there," said Madam Burton. 
 ' ' I began to look them over a week ago. Then I thought 
 I'd let them be till you came, and we'd do it together." 
 
 " His baby things?" 
 
 "Yes; and some he wore when he was a boy. He 
 had a braided jacket " 
 
 "I know. That was the time the other boys called 
 him Mary Ann, and he came home and chopped his 
 curls off." 
 
 Madam Burton laughed. "Yes," said she, "that was 
 the time. I never shall forget his poor little freckled 
 face, all over tears. He took the kitchen knife and 
 made a slash across the braid. I have always kept the 
 jacket. He felt so bad. I felt bad, too." 
 
 "But you took him up to town next morning," 
 said Constance, justifyingly, "and had his hair shingled, 
 
76 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 and brought him a real boy's suit with trouser pock- 
 ets." 
 
 The erring mother smiled. "Yes, I did/' said she. 
 "I made up as soon as I could." 
 
 "What else is in the attic?" asked Constance, softly. 
 
 "A good many of his clothes, dear. I never could 
 seem to throw away his clothes till he grew so big they 
 looked like other folk's. He had a little raglan. You 
 don't know what a raglan was? They were old-fashioned 
 even then." 
 
 " A kind of outside garment, wasn't it? " 
 
 "Yes; a queer little coat. This was checked, with 
 lots of buttons. That was when he was a mite of a thing. 
 And one day we walked it's a mile beyond here 
 to the place where old Silas Edes took daguerreotypes. 
 Silas never believed in newfangled things. If you 
 mentioned photographs to him, he'd swear most 
 distressingly." 
 
 "So you walked there " 
 
 "Yes, my dear. Blaise had his picture taken in 
 his raglan, and he was so proud you can't think. When 
 we came away, nothing would do but he must carry 
 it. So I let him; but it fell out of the little pocket, 
 and we had to go back half the way for it. He didn't 
 cry that time. His lips quivered, but he held them 
 tight." 
 
 Old John came out of the barn and advanced to the 
 veranda rail. He spoke to Madam Burton, but he 
 looked at Constance. 
 
 "Maybe I'd better have old Hornblende up from 
 the pastur' to-morrer," he said. "Maybe she'd like 
 to see him." 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 77 
 
 "Yes," said Madam Burton, "have him up." 
 
 "Horse he rode constant, last year he was to home," 
 John explained, rather chokingly. "Horse seemed to 
 understand every word was said to him. I'll have him 
 up." 
 
 Constance rose and leaned upon the rail. She 
 spoke eagerly. 
 
 "No," said she. "Let me go down. I want to see 
 the brook where the spearmint grows. I've got to 
 drink out of the spring." 
 
 John's face grew fuller with the moving blood. 
 "There!" said he to Madam Burton, and she nodded 
 at him. "We'll go down 'long about ten," he said 
 to Constance, and turned away toward the stable again, 
 shaking his head and carrying on a commendatory 
 dialogue with himself. 
 
 At once Constance felt that the young master's 
 house had accepted her. But instead of settling down 
 into its peace, she had still her task to do, and she broke 
 into it with the haste sprung from enforced delay. 
 
 " Have you read what the papers say of him? " 
 she asked, abruptly. 
 
 The older woman inclined her head. "Some of 
 them," she answered. "Yes, a good many. You know 
 he subscribed to quite a number of foreign ones for me." 
 
 Constance dared her plunge. "They say he failed," 
 she said, with a note of bitterness. 
 
 "Yes," returned the mother, gently. "I know." 
 
 The young wife's mind supplied the counter-question, 
 "And don't you care?" But she did not put it. In- 
 stead, she began her prearranged defence with one of 
 the commonplaces that she had thought might serve. 
 
78 ^VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "I don't know whether you were prepared for 
 it?" 
 
 " My dear," said the other woman, still with that com- 
 pliant dignity, "when people are as old as I am, they 
 don't prepare. They take things as they come." Then, 
 answering the baffled look on the young wife's face, 
 she continued, as if she refrained from directing the 
 talk into ways it was not meant to take: "He worked 
 quite hard these last years?" 
 
 It was a question, and Constance returned hotly: 
 "It was not so much work. It was a fight. You know, 
 dear " She paused, and remembering she had lost 
 her own mother too early to make the transference of 
 the word a disloyalty, wondered if she might adventure 
 it. 
 
 "I wish you would," said Madam Burton. 
 
 Constance thanked her with a look. "I don't believe 
 you guessed how he changed, how the whole bent of his 
 mind altered up there in the last years. His letters 
 didn't tell you. They were too personal. Don't you 
 know how he used to fill them with every-day gossip, 
 what we were doing, how the latest patient behaved, 
 and those marginal drawings, enough to make a mummy 
 laugh?" 
 
 "They were good letters," said the mother. 
 
 "Yes; but you had to find the intimate part of him 
 in his work. And his work was scattered, in America, 
 in England, everywhere. He besieged the journals with 
 poems, essays; but what he wrote was too unpopular 
 ever to be collected. So no one can sit down to turn 
 his pages, volume after volume, and say, 'He was 
 this or that.' We can't prove anything about him. 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 79 
 
 They won't let us." Her face kindled with heat en- 
 gendered by her fighting spirit. 
 
 "What do you want to prove, my dear?" asked 
 the other woman. 
 
 "I want to prove that he was not a man of one book, 
 but many, not judging by quantity, mind you. No! 
 By actual achievement. Just think! This was what 
 he did. He went to Italy and wrote those color sketches. 
 If he had pinned himself down to that kind of work, 
 nobody would have had enough of him. There would 
 have been sets of him in boxes, and people would be 
 babbling about his style. But no ! he went up there into 
 the mountains and began to live. He dealt with nations 
 then, not individuals. It was England's Eastern 
 policy that inflamed him first; he poured his blood 
 into those sonnets. He saw America forswearing her 
 old aloofness, and pitched in. More sonnets, and the 
 essays called 'The Lost Atlantis'. Well, they hated 
 him. The people that spoke his own tongue abjured 
 him. It was a literary ostracism. England was too hot 
 with the heat of battle to hear reproof without calling 
 it traitorous in any man of English speech. America 
 was too fat with money and crude, hurtling power " 
 
 She choked, and thoughts came faster than her 
 words. This was as she had imagined herself speaking 
 before audiences that were willing to see him rehabili- 
 tated. But great as was the tide within her, it found 
 itself stilled by the extreme quiet of his mother, whom 
 she had meant to comfort. It seemed at the moment 
 as if the other woman had not felt the popular dumbness 
 as she had done. It might even be that she had not 
 felt it at all. But she was speaking: 
 
80 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "He had a following, I think?" 
 
 "Oh yes, he had a following of the malcontents 
 that are always on the other side. They liked to call 
 him 'one of us'. But don't you see, mother, his own 
 people, the men of letters, they didn't take the trouble 
 to find out what he was doing. They sat down and 
 bemoaned those little cameos because there weren't 
 more of them. They wouldn't take the trouble to 
 understand him. They clogged his way with their 
 numbing silence, their foolish laughter ." 
 
 "You feel this very keenly," said Madam Burton. 
 
 This time Constance dared her question: "Don't 
 you feel it?" 
 
 But Madam Burton hardly seemed to hear. 
 
 "You think," she pursued, "he was unpopular be- 
 cause he spoke the truth?" 
 
 "Because he spoke the honest truth, as he saw it 
 hour by hour. He wasn't always right. No! But his 
 intention was colossal. He should have been judged by 
 that. But they didn't want to be flagellated and 
 scorched and scarred. They wanted little pocket 
 volumes they could read on the train. People are 
 shy of big intentions. They don't tolerate them, 
 except in the standard classics." 
 
 Madam Burton had another question to put, and 
 she essayed it apprehensively. "Did he " she hesi- 
 tated. "Do you think he felt this deeply? " 
 
 "Not for a moment. He was too big. He was 
 only what shall I say? a little wistful over it. Once 
 he did say: 'They mustn't make me self-conscious. 
 They mustn't weaken my sword-arm.' No! he was 
 above the clouds. But I I wasn't, though it's only 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 81 
 
 since he since it happened, that I've grown so hot 
 about it. You see, up there with him, it didn't seem 
 to matter. Besides, I'd always had a hope they would 
 recognize him at last. When the notices came out, 
 I turned to them for the only comfort life could give 
 me. But I didn't get it. He was a man who had at 
 one tune shown promise. That was what they 
 said." 
 
 Madam Burton rose and drew her shawl about her. 
 "Let us take a step in the garden/' she suggested, and 
 Constance followed her. They went down the path 
 to the long, sweet-smelling enclosure, and paced gravely 
 between borders rich with flowers, the mother leaning 
 on her daughter's arm. Down by the gnarled apple- 
 tree at the foot Madam Burton stopped and pointed 
 out a patch of ladies'-delights in the enfolding sward. 
 "That's Timmie's grave," she said. 
 
 "The spaniel?" 
 
 "Yes. Blaise buried him himself, and then stole 
 into the house and asked me to come and sing { Sister, 
 thou wast mild and lovely.' I did it. He piped up too, 
 with his little, clear voice. We never spoke of it after- 
 wards, even when he was grown up. It had gone too 
 deep." 
 
 They turned back again, and then Madam Burton 
 suddenly continued, with a bright rallying of spirit 
 that illumined her: "Well, daughter, what are we 
 going to do about it?" 
 
 "About him? His memory?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "There is but one thing for me to do. Write his 
 life, collect his papers, publish them at my own expense. 
 
82 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Say to the world, 'This was the man you shut your 
 ears to.' " 
 
 " Would he want you to?" 
 
 Constance halted at a spot where the fragrance 
 of honeysuckle scented the air and great red poppies 
 lay around, bursting with bloom. 
 
 "No," she said, in frank avowal; "he'd laugh at 
 me. He never took back tracks in his life. He never 
 reconsidered what was done. He only pressed on to 
 the goal that was before him." 
 
 "Yes," said the mother, quietly, "I know." 
 
 "But don't you see, mother," the girl cried, with 
 an added passion, "what the goal proved to be? An 
 unlamented death, an obscure grave." 
 
 "Not lamented?" 
 
 At that moment John, having finished his work, 
 came out upon the back veranda, and Mary followed 
 him. They took chairs there, and sat in quiet talk 
 together. The two women in the garden knew their 
 minds were busy over this homecoming and the absent 
 master of the house. 
 
 "Yet," said Constance, after they had exchanged 
 a glance over- that pregnant byplay, "I want to build 
 a monument to him. You wrote me you had put up a 
 stone to him in the churchyard here. I want this to be 
 my stone." 
 
 "Yes, I put up the stone; but Blaise doesn't lie there. 
 
 No matter where the real man lies. And as for the goal 
 
 " she looked inevitably up at the sky where a star 
 
 was shining. "Well " she said, and could not finish. 
 
 "You want I should bring you somethin' thicker 
 to put on?" called Mary from the porch. 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 83 
 
 Madam Burton smiled. "No," said she, adding 
 to Constance: "That is Mary's way of ordering me 
 in. I do get stiff. It's a silly piece of business, this 
 growing old." 
 
 "Let us go in," said Constance, with quick solicitude. 
 
 "We might as well. I want to take you up to my 
 room. There are one or two things there you'd like to see. 
 I'll go up first, my dear, and get a light." But while 
 Constance lingered in the hall, Mary King came through 
 the dining-room and beckoned. Constance followed 
 her back to the kitchen, and there Mary took from her 
 pocket a little worn card, and held it solicitously out 
 between her thumb and finger. 
 
 "I didn't want her to see it," she whispered. "She 
 never knew there was such a thing. It's just as well 
 not." 
 
 Constance took the card and bent over it by the 
 light of the candle. When she looked up, Mary King 
 nodded triumphantly and smiled. 
 
 "It's a reward of merit," said she. "The first he 
 ever got." 
 
 Constance looked again at the glazed surface, where, 
 under a moss rosebud, was her husband's name, with 
 the date of a long-past year. 
 
 "He wa'n't no bigger'n a pint o' cider," continued 
 Mary King, in swelling chronicle, "when he come home 
 that afternoon with this held out in his hand, as budge 
 as you please. 'Here, Mary,' says he, 'here's my 
 reward of merit. You can have it if you want to. 
 Where's the cookies?" ; Mary chuckled. "'Where's 
 the cookies?'" she repeated, as if the words were 
 golden gram. "If I hadn't kep' over the rollin'- 
 
84 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 pin pretty stiddy, he'd ha' eat us out o' house an' 
 home." 
 
 "So he gave it to you!" said Constance. Her eyes 
 were wet and her mouth trembled. 
 
 "Yes. His mother was in York State makin' a 
 visit, an' when she come back he never thought on't 
 again. But I kept it nice, in among my things." 
 
 "Coming, Constance? " Madam Burton called. 
 
 "Thank you, Mary," said the girl, giving back the 
 card. "I'm glad you showed it to me." 
 
 Mary nodded, and holding it in one careful hand, 
 took her way toward the kitchen, while Constance ran 
 up-stairs. 
 
 Madam Burton was in the west chamber, where 
 there was provision for all weathers: a great fireplace 
 for the cold, with chintz-covered furniture and floating 
 curtains to fit the summer. There were a few old- 
 fashioned pictures, a Landseer, a Reynolds, and pea- 
 cock feathers drooped over the glass. The room 
 offered an impression of unconsidered furnishing, as 
 if things not wanted in the rest of the house had drifted 
 there for refuge. Yet it had an air of comfort. It 
 was a mother's room. There were two lighted candles 
 on the dressing-table, and Madam Burton, standing 
 before them in her graceful slenderness, the shawl 
 dropping from her shoulders, turned with an inviting 
 gesture. Constance joined her there, and the other 
 woman laughed in a sweet deprecation. 
 
 "It's so silly, dear," she said, "but I came across 
 it to-day. It's a valentine he made for me when he was 
 only ten. He cut the letters out of an old label that 
 came on some sort of fancy goods. See! ' Mother 
 
A GUARDED SHRINE 85 
 
 Pure sole.' He couldn't spell it right, poor dear. 
 The letters didn't run to it." 
 
 The two women looked at each other and smiled 
 with that whimsical mirth which is not merriment, 
 but love. The mother in them was alive. At that 
 moment they both felt in the room the presence of the 
 shadowy third the little boy grown up so long ago. 
 Then they sat down together by the table. Madam 
 Burton began abruptly: 
 
 "It isn't that I don't sympathize with what you 
 intend to do. It's only that I don't want you to be 
 disappointed if it doesn't come out the way you expect." 
 
 "You think people may not read his papers if I get 
 them together?" 
 
 "They may not. At least, not with your eyes. You 
 see, my dear, we have to learn that there are two parties 
 to what we say the one that speaks, the one that 
 hears. Well, Blaise may never have found any one to 
 hear." 
 
 "I don't believe you care whether they listen or not," 
 said Constance, with an illuminating comprehension. 
 
 Madam Burton laid one delicate hand on hers. 
 
 "Not much, dear," she answered, lightly. "Not 
 very much." 
 
 "You think he did his work!" 
 
 "I know he did. We both know it." 
 
 "And that is enough!" 
 
 Madam Burton rose and put out the candles with 
 a charming motion full of her gentlewoman's grace. 
 
 "It seems a pity to have a light, these summer 
 nights," she said. "Come to the window. We can 
 talk better there." 
 
86 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 They stepped up into the recess made by the curving 
 glass, and stood a moment before sitting down on the 
 cushioned seat. For Constance there was suddenly 
 a sense of richness and of peace. She was here in his 
 home, hung with countless memories of him like a wall 
 curtained with pictures. The child was here, the little 
 boy who had grown into the man she loved. In the 
 almost tangible presence of his memory, bounded 
 achievement fell away from him and left him mother- 
 naked, a creature of exquisite mortality, on his way 
 from world to world, lightly scorning to give the victor's 
 hail to frame. He had become a citizen of the universe, 
 not of one exacting spot where names are writ in water 
 or in brass, but still in an imperfect script that may 
 or may not fit the universal tongue. It was not so 
 much that he was reft from earth as released from it, 
 and dowered with swifter wings for love and worship. 
 She was warm at the heart with the nearness of him. 
 Recalled by the passing of an emotion too poignant 
 to be long continued, she glanced at his mother, who 
 stood there, hands clasped in front of her and head 
 thrown back, her eyes upon a star. 
 
 "I wonder," said the older woman, thrillingly 
 "I wonder what he is doing now!"^ 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 THE young man and woman, both of them jour- 
 nalists, met at the station that April morning, 
 on their way out of town. The day was 
 wonderful even in the city, all nebulous prophecy, and 
 they two, though they were going on urgent business, 
 had the eager holiday look of those who are called to 
 green fields. They met with the nod of casual friendship 
 common to workmen in kindred paths, and yet each 
 face brightened for an instant and reflected pleasure 
 from the other. An observer would have called them 
 a couple in the old, intimate sense of the word, very 
 handsome, full to the brim of purpose, and with some 
 deed before them. It was only when they were seated 
 in the car that Hallett, the young man, began to 
 talk. 
 
 "It's really a discovery, Lucy? Your note wasn't 
 explicit." 
 
 "It's a discovery. I found it out by the slightest 
 chance, and I'm so proud. I met Tommy Atwood. 
 He asked me if it was true that you were doing a mono- 
 graph on Cecil Milner. I said 'yes.' ' : 
 
 "Tommy couldn't even imagine doing it. He'd 
 rather report a fireman's ball." 
 
 "So he implied. ' Better a living personal than a 
 dead author/ he said. 'Milner, too, of all the swells! 
 Hallett'll have to read a complete set, won't he?' " 
 
 87 
 
88 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "I suppose you didn't mention it was the biggest 
 thing that ever happened to me?" 
 
 "Oh no! Tommy couldn't take that in. He hasn't 
 room. But he said, 'I was in the same town with 
 Milner once, little country place where he was spend- 
 ing the summer.'" 
 
 "Road End!" 
 
 "Yes. And then he went on: e Queer, wasn't it, that 
 he should go down there to a house party and elect 
 to stay in that little cottage at the turn of the lane?" 
 
 "What! he didn't stay at the Taylors' at all?" 
 
 "No, sir! he stayed by himself in a little house in- 
 habited by a ' widow lady,' Tommy says, a widow 
 lady named Pratt. Tommy remembers the name be- 
 cause, though he had only an hour or so there that 
 summer, he tried to get an interview with Milner, and 
 failed." 
 
 Hallett looked at her in a frank disgust over his own 
 density, and she returned the glance from as candid a 
 pleasure at her own chance for supplementing his wits. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "we were stupid, both of us. But 
 how could we think he went down for a house party and 
 didn't stay at the house? How could we dream that 
 when Mrs. Taylor and everybody connected with that 
 summer seem to have died or gone mad how could 
 we dream there was a widow lady named Pratt living 
 down there to enlighten us?" 
 
 "You don't know she's living?" 
 
 "No. I haven't dared look that in the face. She 
 must be living. No All- Wise Providence would flaunt 
 such a chance as this and then say it's only irony." 
 
 Hallett relapsed into astonishment. 
 
THE DISCOVERY 89 
 
 "Well," he said, at length, as the train ran out into 
 the open country, all a green mist of leaves, "nobody 
 could have thought it. Nobody would have thought 
 it," he added, frowningly, as if he justified his own 
 laggard wits. "Everybody who might reasonably have 
 been connected with that summer is dead " 
 
 "Except Felicia May. And she's married and swal- 
 lowed up in India. You couldn't say to her, anyway: 
 * You that were Felicia May, I gather that Cecil Milner 
 was in love with you. Kindly tell me what he said, 
 and what broke it off, and whether that hastened his 
 death.' No; Tommy Atwood could say that, but not 
 you. There are limits." 
 
 Thereafter until they reached the sweet-smelling 
 little country town they both meditated, each in a 
 different key. Lucy, who pursued every line to a 
 finish, who from mere curiosity over life turned all 
 the stones she saw, sat upright, her hazel eyes dark 
 with the excitement of a fortunate issue. Hallett, 
 long, lank, with sallow cheek, and dark eyes shrouded 
 in a melancholy of inherited temperament, brooded 
 on the misfortune of his own nature, which always 
 led him into meditation over the abstract to the neg- 
 lect of the obvious. But he, too, was aglow, and with 
 a warm gratitude to her because she had again, as she 
 so often did in their fraternal pursuits, turned him 
 into the channel of evident values. Thinking that, he 
 spoke suddenly and with fervor: 
 
 "Lucy, you're a dear!" 
 
 She flashed round on him her own look of personal 
 gratitude. She was like a trusty comrade, always 
 retrieving for him morsels of the practical advantage 
 
90 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 he was not quite equipped to hunt alone. But for his 
 own talent she had a vivid glow of admiration. She 
 could pounce on the incidents of Milner's life. Hallett 
 could reproduce, with clear, faithful touches, the com- 
 plexion of Milner's genius, perhaps even his soul before 
 they had done with him; and by dint of such wonder- 
 fully shaded paths, shaded and watered if she could 
 manage it, he would one day leap out of journalism 
 into a recognized success, and, before he was fifty, the 
 world might find in him another Milner. For a moment 
 she lost herself in her dream, and then Road End was 
 called, and they alighted at the lonely station, where 
 there were sky, a horizon line amply removed, and 
 sweet air to breathe. Mrs. Pratt was living, though 
 they did not put their question in that form, and not 
 so far away, the station-master told them. Did they 
 see the big house on the hill? It was impossible to 
 ignore its audacity, all stuccoed towers. Well, Mrs. 
 Pratt lived about half a mile farther along on the little 
 cross-road under the knoll. Then they stepped out 
 on their quest. They had both been born in the coun- 
 try, and the day and the year were young enough to 
 convey them into the happy illusion that they were on 
 their way to school, dinner pail in hand and the fearful 
 gleam of examination day before them. Even in their 
 kindred daily pursuits they had never felt so at one. 
 Perhaps it was Hallett who suddenly came upon a 
 recognition of it, thrown back, with this pleasant little 
 jolt, into a simple life where to love a girl as he loved 
 Lucy was to act upon it. Lucy did not need to recog- 
 nize their bond. She had always felt it, only it suited 
 her humble acceptance of him to translate the one 
 
THE DISCOVERY 91 
 
 great fact that held them with a silent potency into 
 any kind of service. He looked at her from time to 
 time in a puzzled way, as if he were beginning to 
 realize her; but she did not look at him. Her mind 
 was practically on Cecil Milner. At an imposing fool- 
 ish gateway leading to a tree-bordered avenue^ the 
 curve of which denied the eye any real vista, they 
 stopped. This was the avenue to Mrs. Taylor's great 
 house, where, though Cecil Milner had not stayed, he 
 had at least been every day or many times a day, all 
 through that final summer. Hallett laid his hand on 
 the gate and glanced at her. 
 
 "We must go in, I suppose? " he said. 
 
 "Yes." Her face, as well as her assenting tone, 
 showed that this had been one of her purposes for him. 
 "I suppose there are invisible portraits of him now all 
 along here where he used to pass." 
 
 That gave Hallett at once, with his sensitiveness to 
 suggestion, a feeling that Milner was there with them, 
 and lent the place something solemn and austere. The 
 avenue in its ample sweep, where the lateral shrubbery 
 had encroached and the tree tops had met overhead, 
 began to seem to them both like a jungle or an en- 
 chanted wood where they were penetrating, breathless, 
 to some unknown end. At length, with a sharper curve, 
 they came out on the house, remarkable for its pomp 
 and the amount of building material put into use with 
 a consistent wrongheadedness almost admirable. It 
 told one tale money, money everywhere, and the 
 personal bodily comfort which had fatuously dared to 
 reign without allowing the eye one glorious right. The 
 two young pilgrims looked at each other. 
 
92 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "How could he?" Hallett exclaimed, with an in- 
 tensity of wonder she echoed. 
 
 "Visit here, you mean?" 
 
 "Visit a woman who could stand for a pile like this." 
 
 "Felicia May was here." 
 
 "You think that was the bid he made for her?" 
 
 "I know it." She spoke with entire conviction. 
 
 ' ' And lost ! Poor chap ! poor chap ! " At once Milner 
 seemed more pathetically human to them. After they 
 had regarded the uncouth blunder of architecture for 
 some tune in a helpless languor, Hallett said feebly, 
 "Well, we might as well be getting along." 
 
 "Yes. Mrs. Pratt can't have this to offer." 
 
 They found Mrs. Pratt in her garden, a little square 
 enclosure bounded by the neatest picket fence of 
 yellow. She was a slim, bright-eyed old lady with a 
 cap such as Lucy had seen in her childhood and never 
 since, even as a picturesque survival, a lace affair 
 fitted to the head and trimmed with narrow ribbon in 
 zigzag tracks, culminating in two plump rosettes well 
 over the ears. She came forward to the gate almost 
 as soon as they were in view, and waited, trowel in 
 hand and a smile on her keen old face. 
 
 "I ain't surprised," she called, in a triumphant 
 quaver. "I dropped my dishcloth, and the cat was 
 washin' her face the land! so it ain't you, after all." 
 
 This was so patent a downfall that Lucy began 
 to hurry, as if she might allay disappointment by being 
 there the sooner. She looked into the old woman's 
 face with her pretty, sympathetic smile. 
 
 "But we came to see you," she said, engagingly. 
 "Who did you think we were?" 
 
THE DISCOVERY 93 
 
 Mrs. Pratt's face relaxed, and she seemed to accept 
 the good-will of the exchange. 
 
 "Why, I thought you was sister Mary's Charlie and 
 Adelaide. How far have you travelled, dear?" 
 
 Hallett stood in the background, poking at the 
 bouncing-bet outside the fence, and wishing for a mo- 
 ment he had the entry to some of Lucy's easy and direct 
 ways of meeting men and women. But then he found 
 his cheek suddenly warm, and looked at her with a 
 little smile. It seemed quite as well that she should 
 use her aptness for them both. Lucy was speaking, 
 telling their errand without a single hesitating flourish. 
 
 " We came to find you because you knew Mr. Cecil 
 Milner. He stayed with you one summer." 
 
 The old lady was holding open the gate. 
 
 " Come right in," she said, and in a moment they 
 were walking up the path, where a cat, with her tail 
 mast high, was walking down to meet them. "Get 
 away, Trotty," said Mrs. Pratt. "There! I don't 
 suppose you'd turn out for the queen." She brushed 
 Trot aside with a gentle firmness and a manifest pride 
 in her feline will, and when they had reached the porch, 
 where jessamine grew in waving garlands, looked in- 
 quiringly at the two inviting chairs. 
 
 "Yes," said Lucy at once, "let's sit here. It's such 
 a splendid day." 
 
 Hallett took the step and began acquaintance with 
 Trot, who was wiping fur off her sleek sides by a back 
 and forth weaving against his trouser-leg, purring her 
 satisfaction meantime. 
 
 'You set right down," said Mrs. Pratt. "I've got 
 some nice root beer." 
 
94 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Presently Lucy had off her hat, and they were all, 
 except Trot, drinking beer very happily. The old 
 lady set down her glass. 
 
 t ' You friends of his? " she asked. There was a sudden 
 added keenness in her eyes. Lucy wondered if the 
 reporter had haunted her door. 
 
 " We never saw him, either of us," she said, with an 
 instant candor. "But we admire, we love what he has 
 written almost more than anything else. Just think! 
 you had him a whole summer!" 
 
 The suddenness of that sympathetic onslaught found 
 its response. The old lady's face brightened. It took 
 on a dry, shrewd smile. 
 
 " "Twas a kind of a pleasant summer," she said. 
 
 "I suppose he used to sit here on this very porch and 
 talk," said Lucy, cleverly. 
 
 Hallett looked at the ground, and felt as if a crystal 
 were forming and as if he, moving, might jar the atoms. 
 
 "Oftentimes," said Mrs. Pratt. 
 
 "Now, if I were you, I suppose I should remember 
 every word he said. You see, I like him so." 
 
 Mrs. Pratt took off her spectacles and held them in 
 one hand. It seemed as if in the resultant haze she 
 could think better. 
 
 "Some things I remember," she said, "I used to plan 
 to set out everything in the spring, but he was pos- 
 sessed to have me do it in the fall." 
 
 "Oh, in the garden?" 
 
 "Yes. Twas all about the gardin." Mrs. Pratt 
 looked a mild surprise. "You see, 'twas summer time 
 when he was here, and that made it natural to think 
 about the gardin. He started that poppy bed." 
 
THE DISCOVERY 95 
 
 "That poppy bed!" Lucy was looking at it with 
 instant reverence a neat oblong where light-green 
 leaves were showing. 
 
 "No, no, dear," said Mrs. Pratt. "Not them same 
 plants, though they did come from the seed I saved 
 from his. He sowed it in that very place the fall he 
 was here, not long before he went away." 
 
 Lucy feared lest the thin trickle of reminiscence 
 might find a boulder or choke itself in sand. 
 
 "Was Trot here that summer? " she asked, idiotically, 
 because Trot at that moment essayed a paw on her 
 knee. 
 
 "Oh yes, Trot was a kitten then. Nice kitten as 
 ever you see." 
 
 "Did he like her?" 
 
 "Well, I don't recollect," said Mrs. Pratt, musingly, 
 and they could see that she was considering Trot's 
 past to the exclusion of Cecil Milner's. "I guess so. 
 Most folks do like a nice kitten same as Trot was." 
 
 Lucy had cast a daring eye backward into the entry. 
 
 "Mrs. Pratt," she ventured, "where did he sleep? 
 Which was his room?" 
 
 Mrs. Pratt began to laugh noiselessly. 
 
 "Well," said she, "seems funny to tell, but he slept 
 in the shed chamber." 
 
 "The shed chamber!" 
 
 "Yes. 'Twas a cool summer that year, and when 
 he see the shed chamber nothin' would do but he must 
 have it. 'Tis kind of long and low, an old ancient sort 
 of a place. I offered to move out my wheel and the 
 little flax-wheel, but he wouldn't hear to't. So he had 
 his trunk in there and a good big table we fetched 
 
96 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 that up out o' the shed, he and me, and he seemed to 
 think 'twas fixed complete." 
 
 "Is it just as it was?" Lucy asked, in a throbbing 
 haste. "Oh, Mrs. Pratt, you haven't changed it!" 
 
 Mrs. Pratt nodded her head in what looked like a 
 slow-coming triumph. It seemed evident that she had 
 a set of feelings neatly concealed, but that she kept 
 them burnished to a state of great intensity, and that 
 when she did bring them out they might really dazzle. 
 She went on: 
 
 "Up in the cupboard is his papers " 
 
 "His papers?" Lucy gasped. 
 
 Mrs. Pratt nodded. 
 
 "There's some he was workhV on the very day he 
 went away. Them pages were on the floor. I picked 
 'em up and saved 'em." 
 
 "Where are they?" asked Lucy, sharply. 
 
 Mrs. Pratt regarded her with mildness. 
 
 "Why," said she, "they're up there in the corner 
 cupboard." 
 
 Lucy half rose from her seat. She found herself 
 breathless. 
 
 "Why, yes," said Mrs. Pratt, with a sympathetic 
 gentleness. "Why, yes, dear, you can see 'em if you 
 want." 
 
 Now Hallett was on his feet, and in a dazed way 
 he and Lucy followed through the kitchen and up to the 
 shed chamber. Mrs. Pratt opened the door and went 
 bustling in, as if there might be deeds to do before it 
 was fit to welcome them, and they stood at the sill with 
 an according reverence, Hallett looking over Lucy's 
 shoulder, her hand in his. It was a shadowy room full 
 
THE DISCOVERY 97 
 
 of beautiful shapes, from the old-fashioned bed, a carved 
 four-poster, to the spinning-wheel in the corner and the 
 little flax-wheel under the eaves. Mrs. Pratt, looking 
 from the room to them with some apologetic sense of 
 its having been dusted at least a week ago, became 
 newly aware of the measure the place meant to 
 them. 
 
 "Why!" she said. "Why, there! Well, come in. 
 You set here, if you want, and I'll run down and see 
 about dinner. I'm goin' to have you stop." But before 
 she went she threw open the door of the narrow corner 
 cupboard. "They're in there," she said, "the papers. 
 You can look at 'em if you want. You'll know how to 
 treat 'em; but I guess they ain't of value to anybody 
 but me. Now, Trot, you come along downstairs. You 
 needn't think you're goin' to poke your nose into every- 
 thing that's goin'." But again, after one of her futile 
 starts, she stopped to say, "That bundle in there di- 
 rected to him is what come after he went away." 
 
 Lucy made a noiseless rush to the cupboard and 
 took out an oblong package done up in brown paper 
 and addressed, in a woman's hand, to Cecil Milner, 
 Esquire. 
 
 "You never sent it to him!" she cried. 
 
 "He said not to," Mrs. Pratt returned. "He left 
 kind of sudden. I always thought he had news from 
 somewhere, bad news maybe, and he says, 'Mrs. Pratt, 
 you send on the letters if the postmaster lets any slip 
 by him, but there's a bundle of proof comin',' he says, 
 'any minute, and you needn't bother about that.' He 
 said he should see 'em at the office on the way, and 
 he'd have 'em strike off some more " 
 
98 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Yes! yes!" the two listeners found themselves say- 
 ing together. "Yes ! " 
 
 "So it come, and I've always kep' it up here. I 
 kinder liked to see his name on the bundle." Again 
 she returned to add: "Seems if I was rememberin' 
 more and more of what he used to talk about. One 
 thing we used to thresh out by the hour. I tell you we 
 had it hot and heavy." 
 
 "What was it?" Lucy asked. 
 
 "Tongues and sounds. He never could abide 'em. 
 I made him as good a butter sauce as ever you see, but 
 he said they were well, I dunno' exactly what he 
 did say. But he made it up on beet greens." 
 
 She was really gone. Lucy and Hallett looked at 
 each other a full minute. He was pale and she was 
 flaming red. Then, together, they went forward to the 
 corner cupboard and she waited for him to take down 
 a sheet of paper covered with the beautiful precise 
 hand they knew. He pored over it a moment. She 
 could wait no longer. 
 
 "What is it!" she asked. 
 
 "The 'Gate of Horn'. The middle of the story, 
 where she goes to France." 
 
 "Ah! then he'd copied it. That package, Hallett! 
 That's not proof." 
 
 "What is it?" asked Hallett, stupidly. 
 
 "Proof never was sent like that. Look at the hand- 
 writing. Look at the seal." As she spoke, her clever 
 audacious fingers were slipping the string. 
 
 He was aghast. 
 
 "You're not going to open it?" 
 
 "Why shouldn't I? He hasn't a relation on earth. 
 
THE DISCOVERY 99 
 
 As for his friends if we're not friends, adorers!" The 
 edge of the seal cracked neatly upward. She put in a 
 testing thumb and finger and drew forth a letter. 
 Hallett stood apart, watching her. It seemed to him, as 
 to her, as if they were in some strange new world where 
 property rights were logical, and he who could estimate 
 a thing like this was the one to own it. 
 
 "It's his handwriting," he offered, his voice choking 
 with the thought. 
 
 "Yes. And there's no postmark. These letters 
 weren't mailed. They were put under a stone in the 
 Taylor grounds, in the foolish old way, or they were 
 slipped into a hand " 
 
 "Is that her name on the envelope?" 
 
 "Yes. And it begins," said Lucy hi a clear, high 
 voice, "the letter begins, ' Dearest.' Read it." She 
 spread it before him, and together they read. Here 
 Cecil Milner had poured out his heart to a woman he 
 loved. This was the first letter, the beginning of his 
 revelation to her. He told her, in swift, clear phrases, 
 what it had been to him to find her. It had been first 
 a flood of light. The light had illuminated his poor 
 house of life. How plain a place it was for her to enter! 
 But she must enter, be its architect and builder, or the 
 house itself would fall. His way of telling it all, quite 
 simply as he did it, was perhaps like a description of 
 sunrise by a poet who had only just seen the sun. He 
 had been writing about love all his life, he told her, 
 writing and thinking about it, and he had awaited it, 
 too, for himself, in an expectation not so very calm. 
 Now here she was, the figure in his dream. She stood 
 there with that sun flooding her; and she was real. 
 
100 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 They finished reading together, like race-horses fly- 
 ing and coming neck and neck to the end, his dear name 
 signed after a protestation their eyes blinded to see. 
 Hallett had been holding the sheet. He put it carefully 
 into its folds and laid it down, his hands trembling. 
 
 " Lucy ! " he whispered. " Lucy ! " 
 
 She was in his arms and their lips had touched. It 
 was Hallett, always before this the unpractical, dream- 
 ing one, who thought first of possibilities. 
 
 "A house couldn't cost much if it's no bigger than 
 this," he said, with certainty. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You don't want to live in town?" 
 
 She shook her head, and then mutely dropped it to 
 his shoulder. But in a moment she remembered Cecil 
 Milner. She withdrew from her lover and took up the 
 letter from the table, holding it delicately, as if its right 
 to be guarded gave it new fragility. 
 
 "What shall we do about it? " she asked. 
 
 His eyes had travelled to the package, open at the 
 end now and showing the torn edges of other envelopes. 
 
 "There are twelve, at least," he answered. "What 
 a haul for Tommy Atwood!" 
 
 "What a haul for anybody!" 
 
 "But he's the only one with the infernal cleverness 
 to get them." 
 
 "Mrs. Pratt won't let him. Can't you see she adored 
 Cecil Milner?" 
 
 "Ah, well, he'd find arguments even for her. Let 
 him once smell it out and he'd have some specious 
 reason, for needing it all for Milner's good, his name 
 or fame or something." 
 
THE DISCOVERY 101 
 
 ', >>,''' * ' ' * > 
 
 " Perhaps you need thenu.BM*. 
 
 " I do need them. ' ' He m^ant it, fijrioiusj J.i f l ; I- need 
 his heart, the core of his heart, if I'm to write a life of 
 him." 
 
 "Hallett, you're not going to print them?" 
 
 She hung upon his answer, as if it might weld them 
 or part them forever. Hallett looked at her with his 
 wide, unworldly gaze. It held surprise that she could 
 ask. 
 
 "No," he said. "Why, no!" 
 
 She gave a little nod, all satisfaction. 
 
 "They're not safe here," he added, frowningly. 
 
 "Shall we have her up and tell her what we've done? " 
 
 "Yes. We've got to." 
 
 Lucy stepped to the head of the stairs. 
 
 "Mrs. Pratt!" she called. 
 
 They heard her moving about the kitchen with a 
 brisk lightness. Presently she answered the call and 
 came up, a kitchen knife in her hand, her face bearing 
 some signs of vexation. But it was not for them. 
 
 "Sometimes seems to me, I never'll try to use an old 
 potato," she declared. "But what's anybody going 
 to do new ones not come and old ones as they be? 
 It's betwixt hay and grass with them, as 'tis with every- 
 thing else." 
 
 Hallett began, and Lucy admired the crisp decision 
 of his tone. 
 
 "Mrs. Pratt, we opened that package." 
 
 The old lady's eyes snapped once, whether in anger 
 or not it was impossible to say. 
 
 "Well!" she remarked, and waited. Lucy rushed 
 tumultuously in. 
 
102 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "We couldn't Help it, Mrs. Pratt. There isn't a 
 person -speaking, the English language to-day that could 
 have helped it, knowing that package belonged to 
 Mr. Milner." Mrs. Pratt compressed her lips slightly. 
 Her shrewd eyes were plainly satirical. "Oh, I know 
 it," Lucy answered, reading the glance. "You are 
 thinking you didn't open it. But then you thought it 
 was proof. It's not proof." 
 
 "What is it, then?" 
 
 "It's letters, his own letters written to some one he 
 dearly loved. They were returned to him." 
 
 "'Twas that woman," said Mrs. Pratt, in a quick 
 self-betrayal. 
 
 Hallett and Lucy exchanged a glance. Then it was 
 known there that summer. Felicia May had bound 
 the giant to her car, and everybody saw. 
 
 "We have read one of the letters," Lucy continued. 
 
 Mrs. Pratt's eyes were on the package in Hallett's 
 hand. 
 
 "So now you want to print 'em," she commented, 
 slowly, in a tone betraying nothing. 
 
 "We want them," Lucy went on, swiftly. "We 
 want them to burn. Nobody has any right to these 
 letters now, have they, Mrs. Pratt?" 
 
 The old woman slowly shook her head. A dimness 
 suffused her eyes. Her lips moved. "Poor boy!" she 
 seemed to be saying. Again they had a glimpse into 
 her understanding of what had gone before. It seemed 
 to make that summer, the last one he had had, an in- 
 tolerable one for him to have borne, for them to re- 
 member. Even this woman who served him with the 
 needful things of life must have seen him sometimes 
 
THE DISCOVERY 103 
 
 off his guard, pallid, distraught, if the siren flouted him. 
 Perhaps she had watched him in Felicia's train, when 
 that young beauty trailed her splendor across New Eng- 
 land, thence to return to India, its suns and mysteries. 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Pratt, "you want to burn 'em 
 now?" 
 
 "Now," said Hallett. He was still holding them with 
 a firmness that indicated his intention not to relinquish 
 them save for a purpose he approved. The room was 
 very still. Bees hummed loudly outside the window, 
 and leaves stirring there made their soft sound audible. 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Pratt again, at length. Her voice 
 moved in an eloquent, still way, as if younger mother- 
 hood cried in her. "I guess we might as well go down 
 to the fireplace. You fetch 'em, if you feel to." 
 
 She led the way, and Hallett, with the letters, fol- 
 lowed next. They went through the kitchen, where 
 dinner was beginning, and the pot, waiting for the 
 unworthy potatoes, boiled merrily, and so on into the 
 guarded quiet of the parlor, where the closed blinds 
 gave a green seclusion, and the air between their slats 
 stirred dried grasses and the peacock feathers over the 
 glass. Mrs. Pratt led them to the hearth. 
 
 "I had the stove took out in the early fall when he 
 was here," she said. "He was terrible set against air- 
 tights. There! here's the fireplace just as 'twas." 
 
 Hallett gave the package over to Lucy, and then 
 walked away to regard the portrait of General Grant. 
 Lucy turned to Mrs. Pratt. 
 
 "Don't you think you'd better do it?" she asked. 
 
 "No, dear," said Mrs. Pratt. "You see to it, just 
 as you feel to, same as if I wasn't here." 
 
104 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Lucy unfolded the first letter and laid it fluttering 
 on the andirons. She lighted it, and one after another 
 drew forth the rest and burned them at the flame. 
 Hallett still had his back turned, and Mrs. Pratt gazed 
 at the mantel, evidently at the picture of a stern-looking 
 man with long hair and a dickey. Once she lifted it 
 from the shelf and ran her apron hem along the top of 
 the case, to remove an imagined grain of dust. 
 
 "There!" said Lucy, at length. "There!" She 
 wanted to add, "There is Cecil Milner's heart," but 
 the event had passed too quietly to admit of fervid 
 comment. 
 
 "There!" said Mrs. Pratt, in echo. "Now 111 see 
 about dinner. You go where you're a mind to, out in 
 the garden, or set right here. Ill call you when it's 
 ready." 
 
 After she had gone, Hallett turned abruptly and came 
 back to the fireplace, where Lucy stood as if distraught 
 over a sacrifice that had cost. He put his arm about 
 her, and she turned to him. 
 
 "We've burned up what the world can't duplicate," 
 he said, passionately. She nodded. "Rossetti, Keats 
 there they are, blossoming, flaming to eternity. His 
 letters" ' 
 
 She drew herself away and faced him. 
 
 "Wasn't it right?" 
 
 "Yes, it was right; but it's bitter, bitter." 
 
 "You're not sorry?" 
 
 "Oh, I can't be sorry. Somehow they were ours, 
 his and ours. They've passed on something to us. He 
 could only dream it. We'll live it for him, dearest- 
 dearest!" 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 STILLMAN, senior editor of that magazine which 
 might have been called The Pride of America, 
 was walking rapidly away from his office through 
 the November sleet. He was a tall, thin-cheeked man 
 with deep-set eyes, and stiff hair standing straight up 
 from his forehead; and this latter was so expressive a 
 part of his outline that those who were accustomed to 
 his indoor look were apt to cry out upon any hat he might 
 wear, as an unwelcome disguise. At the corner another 
 man, slightly bent, and the more so to-night because he 
 was holding his coat close and scudding under the blast, 
 almost ran into him and stopped an instant in per- 
 functory apology. But Stillman knew him and held 
 out his hand. 
 
 "Why, it's not you, Brainerd!" he said, warmly 
 against the icy wind. "I didn't know you were in 
 town. Going to the office, were you?" 
 
 "I knew I shouldn't find you so late," said the other, 
 "but I was near and thought I'd venture it. On your 
 way home? I'll walk a step with you." 
 
 He turned, and they went on together, Stillman with 
 a hand on his friend's arm now in affectionate solicitude. 
 Brainerd meant a great deal to him, not only as the 
 writer of the new serial the magazine had in its safe, but 
 as primary agent in the best part of the literary lifo 
 signalizing the last quarter-century. Younger men 
 
 105 
 
106 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 might not prize that life to the exclusion of the active 
 present, Stillman sometimes thought; but though he 
 was editor of a magazine that had got to keep itself 
 up to date, if it meant to live, he was almost sure he 
 did. It was too dark in these down-town byways to 
 show him exactly what manner of look Brainerd was 
 wearing to-night; but he knew, from old contemplation 
 of it in their confabs running through the years when 
 they had found each in the other the nearest approach 
 to some of the answers life had to give. There was the 
 great forehead, the statesman face with its sensitive 
 mouth and burning eyes, the signs of indomitable will 
 that had, so Stillman believed, wrecked his friend so 
 far as all the chances of a paltry success were concerned, 
 but wrecked him to cast him on what headland of 
 austere achievement only the immortals knew. Brain- 
 erd was speaking, still holding his coat tight with one 
 hand and ready to chase his soft hat with the other. 
 
 "About your letter, Stillman; I had to come. I 
 really had to. It's wormwood to me to refuse anything 
 you ask, but that I simply couldn't do. Why, that's 
 the crux of the story, the nub of the whole thing. Don't 
 ask me to leave it out. I can't. I won't." 
 
 Stillman burst into a delighted laugh. It sounded 
 as if he were glad to be denied. 
 
 " Bless you, old man!" he said. "I didn't ask you 
 to leave it out, not in propria persona. It was three of 
 the young cockerels in the office. They guided my 
 pen. I told 'em you wouldn't do it, but I was perfectly 
 willing to let them have a try. Don't you worry your 
 head about that. The thing's going in as you wrote it, 
 never fear!" 
 
THE MASTER 107 
 
 He had paused before the door of a dingy building, 
 competing in no way with the city's brilliance except in 
 a modest candleshine from its windows. 
 
 "See here, Brainerd," he continued, in some hesita- 
 tion, as if he asked a dubitable thing, "come along in. 
 It's a dinner of the Tribunal, the club I told you about 
 where we pitch into art and letters, and slang one an- 
 other to beat the band. Come in." 
 
 Brainerd shook his head and tried to clutch his collar 
 tighter. 
 
 ' ' No," he said, " oh no ! I'm not the man for dinners. 
 I've nothing in particular to say, unless I've got my pen 
 in hand, and I'm an awful damper on the flow of others. 
 I get thinking about things other things a mile away. 
 That palsies the mirth." 
 
 "But they'd feel flattered," Stillman urged weakly, 
 as one who would fain believe in the argument he him- 
 self advanced. " They're mostly young men, and it's an 
 honor to have you sit down with them. They ought 
 to have the sense to know it." 
 
 "Ought to!" Brainerd jeered, yet with a perfect 
 candor. "Well, so they ought, if it's a question of 
 years, like reverencing your Chinese grandmother be- 
 cause she's weather-worn. But for anything else! No, 
 no, Stillman, no! you're well aware they don't think 
 anything about me except as an old duffer that's 
 elected to write in a lingo they can't abide. That's 
 some of them. They're the ones that have helped 
 compile a neat little biographical sketch of me tucked 
 away in the editorial pigeonhole somewhere. The rest 
 are the humorists. They wake up once in a while in 
 the silly season or when the mother-in-law joke palls, 
 
108 BANISHING POINTS 
 
 to give an imitation of me, more or less clever. But 
 tolerate me at dinner! They wouldn't, they couldn't. 
 Good night, old chap. I'm staying at the Pennsylvania 
 over there. To-morrow I'll drop in to see you." 
 
 Stillman put out his hand. 
 
 "Anything on to-night?" he asked. "You wouldn't 
 let me come round after the dinner? We break up 
 early. Some of the fellows have a night shift, and I 
 can get away with the first." 
 
 "Let you! guess I would. My grate is heaped and 
 there's a modest coal-hod hard by. We'll have a 
 pipe." 
 
 So they parted; and Stillman, pausing at the shabby 
 door before he rang the bell, watched his friend away 
 through the storm and wondered, as he did at every 
 sight of Brainerd and every syllable from him, over the 
 fatuity of things here below. Have men, he mused, 
 so veiled their eyes that the vision has to be hung 
 before them in every possible light before they bow to 
 it? He had hoped to see in his own tune the sufficient 
 recognition of Brainerd, but the years were going fast 
 and little pewter gods were being set up on every shelf. 
 This meant a great deal to Stillman. He was, in a way, 
 a controller of destinies. Many a writer of poten- 
 tial power had he heartened and welcomed gladly to 
 the august portals of his magazine, and to many a man 
 of mark, undeservedly exploited, had he refused ad- 
 mittance. Yet on Brainerd's standing he had been 
 able to cast no illuminating glow. He could crown 
 him, but he had to go out and pluck the laurels for it 
 himself. The stubborn public refused to help him. 
 Out of his discouragement he heaved a sigh and went 
 
THE MASTER 109 
 
 pondering into the low-studded room with its long 
 table, where the talk was just beginning. 
 
 When they sat down there were an even twenty of 
 them. The laurel wreath, silent reminder of the meed 
 the world accords, stern, reproachful token no one 
 of them might inherit, lay on the table, its only decora- 
 tion; thus it was always, the one ceremonial it involved 
 being its burning, in a circle of silence, at the close. 
 
 This dinner, though its date was that of a regular 
 meeting, was understood to be especially in honor of 
 Jerry Burton, on the eve of sailing for " abroad' '. Jerry 
 had, unaffectedly to his own surprise, made a modest 
 pile of money out of a novel his colleagues regarded 
 slightingly, and he, on his part, scored as no good at all; 
 and he now, he as frankly stated, having propitiated the 
 lesser gods and got what he could out of them, meant 
 to take their largess, and live as long as possible in the 
 classic seclusion of Cambridge or Oxford, write essays 
 and sacrifice to the high gods only. He was a little 
 fellow with a weazened face drawn to the point of an 
 ineffectual chin, and sitting beside big Flynn, the 
 dramatic critic of the Scatterbrain, he looked even more 
 inconsiderable, and so Flynn told him, though in terms 
 less crudely fitted to the basis of their relative deserts. 
 
 " What kind of an emissary are you, anyway, to send 
 over to the United Kingdom? " said he, after the fashion 
 he found suited to his acquiescent chum, "you that have 
 faked up a bally book out of nothing?" 
 
 "Not out of nothing/ ' said Jerry, peering through 
 his wine as if it were a crystal ball and he meant to see 
 the future of more ten-strikes in it. "Out of reminis- 
 cences of other books I didn't fake." 
 
110 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 " Right you are. And you're on Easy Street, and 
 look at me! I've done my three columns a day reg'lar 
 for the last eight years, and there's no Oxford in mine." 
 
 " There is something reminiscent in your book, 
 Jerry, and that's a fact," said Glendon Springs, a 
 freckle-faced young fellow farther down the table. He 
 drew his pale brows together over his pale eyes and 
 scrutinized the statement, having made it. "It's a 
 bad book, infernally bad. You know I said so in my 
 review, so I've a right to say it here. It's bad as they 
 make 'em, but it's reminiscent of something good." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," said Jerry, with a genuine 
 carelessness. The book had never markedly interested 
 him, except as matter for wonder that so much money 
 had been snatched out of it. "Don't ask me." 
 
 Stillman looked quickly up at the moment. Some- 
 thing they did not say, and certainly had not even 
 recognized themselves, seemed to suggest to him im- 
 plications of vital importance. 
 
 "You know we've been negotiating with Brainerd 
 for a serial," he mentioned to the man next him, but 
 in a tone to be heard accurately over the small area of 
 talk. "I've been looking it through." 
 
 "Same old sixpence?" called a little man, like a 
 beetle, marked off by stiff black hairs and hard black 
 eyes. "Fog so thick you can't see your hand before 
 you? Style twisted into double bow-knots, till you 
 think you're untying macrame lace?" 
 
 "What in the blazes is macrame lace?" inquired a 
 rosy, globular man who was eating his dinner almost 
 worshipfully if he chanced on a toothsome morsel, and 
 profanely when his expectations were balked. He 
 
THE MASTER 111 
 
 wrote poetry of a most delicate and crystalline type- 
 like hoar frost and snow wreaths, said his following. 
 That question was allowed to pale into obscurity, for 
 the editor was continuing in the path his reflections 
 had evidently decreed. 
 
 "I'm not so sure it's obscure. I'm not sure but it's 
 devilish clear, if only you've the tune to unravel 
 it." 
 
 "Trouble is with our day and generation, we haven't 
 time," snapped out a little red-haired man, all spec- 
 tacles and trembling upper lip. He got his living by 
 dramatic notes, and was in a perpetual state of truculent 
 honesty, defending his point of view with a passionate 
 haste even before it had been assaulted. He was 
 perennially angry and fitted out for the fray by a stiff 
 taste in adjectives. "We haven't time for anything 
 but skimming surfaces. It's damnable, positively 
 damnable. It's stultifying and corrupting, and the 
 punishment for it is that we're condemned to live in 
 the pit of our own fatuity." 
 
 Harrison Brisbane, a slow, grave man, who did hack- 
 work on half a dozen dailies, had been looking down 
 at his untouched plate with an air of detachment both 
 from the food and the circle it gave pretext for. He 
 never ate much at these meetings. He never talked 
 much. But when he did speak, the men, even the ones 
 outside easy earshot, listened. 
 
 "Speaking of failures " but nobody had been 
 speaking of them. Only each individual had been 
 conscious, down in the midst of bitter acquiescences and 
 old sick desires, that if failure was to be cited, the 
 finger of life would point to him, saying inexorably, 
 
112 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Thou art the man." "Speaking of failures, should 
 you say Brainerd was a failure?" 
 
 The question seemed to hang there in air for them to 
 scrutinize, perhaps to pelt with answers. But for a 
 good many minutes nobody took a shot at it. Every- 
 body got thoughtful, but all the faces looked the same 
 complexion. Brainerd most evidently was a failure. 
 
 "Haven't you a word to say for him, any of you?" 
 Stillman inquired pleasantly, with a little smile on his 
 lips. "Am I the only one to take a hand? If I do, 
 you'll say it's because I've got his serial." 
 
 Jerry, with one of his hasty turns of speech, as if he 
 were jumping into a ring, broke in on the heels of this. 
 
 "Trial!" he called. "Trial! John Brainerd to be 
 tried by a jury of his peers!" 
 
 "It's an off night. We weren't to try anybody to- 
 night," the globular man objected. He was lifting 
 some bits of mushroom on his fork, and looking as if, 
 before they were irrevocably eaten, he might like to 
 photograph them and so preserve their sacred memory. 
 
 "No," said the little man like a beetle, in his quick, 
 hard voice, "but we can do it informally. Let it be 
 informally. Go on, Brisbane. Bring your accusation." 
 
 The slow, grave man seemed to wait for a moment 
 upon his own words, in the sincere determination that 
 they should be of proper weight. 
 
 "I was thinking of Brainerd to-day," he said. "I 
 had occasion to review his life briefly for a biographical 
 sketch, the facts of it, and I found myself afterward 
 coloring up the facts so I could see what they meant 
 just as you might put a dye in clear water to define the 
 shape of the bottle to see what they meant to the 
 
THE MASTER 113 
 
 man himself. These are the facts, as I get them. 
 Brainerd began by writing faithful, likable stuff better 
 than any of its day in America. He promised to be 
 one of the immortals our little two-for-a-cent immor- 
 tals, best we make. Well, all of a sudden he changed. 
 I don't know whether he got big head or whether he 
 grew up and overtopped us so we can't look up to him 
 without a stiff neck. I don't know what happened to 
 him. But the stuff changed. In the beginning, as 
 they say about the last new machine, any child could 
 run it. Any creature capable of reading English could 
 take up Brainerd's books and understand 'em. Now " 
 
 " Why, now," said the little man like a beetle "now 
 he's not only obscure, he's a maze, a labyrinth. He 
 that runs can't read it. If it's an honest runner, he 
 makes faces at it, it gets him so mad." 
 
 "I wonder what they think about it, the ones that 
 don't run," said the editor, slowly, out of the pains- 
 taking consideration he gave every detail of the pa- 
 geant passing before him, "the old maids in country 
 towns that get a book out of the library, and, if they 
 haven't read it in two weeks, only say they 'haven't 
 quite finished it/ and keep on at their job of half a 
 page a day? I wonder what a ranchman would think 
 out there on the plains " 
 
 "Have to be a college graduate," snapped the red- 
 haired, spectacled fellow. 
 
 "Well, let him be a college graduate. Plenty of 
 university among the cattlemen. I wonder what any- 
 body with time and silence about him like a wide 
 horizon why, boys, we haven't any time, we haven't 
 any silence. We're hung in a cage like the kind old 
 
114 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Balue invented for Louis XI., and every time Wall 
 Street or a spectacular murder case or a new theatre 
 or any other blasted madness of events comes by us, 
 it gives us a twirl. But what would any clear-minded 
 fellow with brains under his scalp say to John Brain- 
 erd's stuff if he sat down to it in the stillness the kind 
 of stillness where you can hear pine-needles dropping 
 round you, or withered leaves?' 7 
 
 There was stillness of that sort at the table for an 
 instant. Every man's mind returned to some moment of 
 its own, when the quiet of life had made itself felt be- 
 nignly. The little man like a beetle spoke first, in a testy 
 fashion, because the challenge had savored too much of 
 sentiment. 
 
 "Well, what's the matter with being clear, anyway? 
 What's the advantage or the special chrism of adver- 
 tising you're too obscure for the masses grammar 
 school masses? They're a good fair average. Let the 
 grammar school throw a vote now and then. If I find 
 a spring of water in the wilderness, I don't want to 
 stop and analyze it, do I? No, by George! I want to 
 drink." 
 
 "I think, you know, he did a fine thing," said a young 
 fellow with thin light-brown hair and a delicate cheek 
 like a girl's. He wrote such drastic comment and 
 criticism that men had often threatened, in good set 
 terms, to lick him, and then, meeting him, had burst 
 into hoots of laughter at his inconsiderable equipment. 
 "I think Brainerd did a mighty fine thing when he 
 slipped out of the race and retired to that gloomy old 
 place of his down in the country." 
 
 " Gloomy!" cried the red-haired man. "I guess 
 
THE MASTER 115 
 
 you'd be gloomy, and so would your hall bedroom, 
 if you made as little as Brainerd makes in the course 
 of a year. Why, his sales are almost invisible to the 
 naked eye. His half-yearly statement must be a 'per- 
 fect and absolute blank V 
 
 "Yet here's Stillman got him for another serial. 
 Stillman pays don't you, old boy?" 
 
 "Yes," said Stillman, seriously, "we pay, but we 
 can't do it often for Brainerd. The circulation wouldn't 
 warrant it." 
 
 "Then what in the name of Jupiter and all his 
 satellites do you have him at all for?" squeaked the 
 red-haired little man. 
 
 Stillman smiled and said nothing. 
 
 "Now don't you put on that inscrutable look," 
 the little man bade him. ' ' That ' I could-an'-if-I-would' 
 sort of a phiz! If you know anything to the advantage 
 of Brainerd, tell it, right here and now. He needs it 
 bad enough." 
 
 "Bless you," said the globular man, "we know 
 what Stillman has him for. He has him to keep up the 
 tone of the magazine. He's trying to cater to the 
 octogenarians who remember there were giants in 
 New England in those days, and the giants wrote for 
 the magazine he's inherited. He knows the magazine's 
 no such matter now, but he wants to give the octogen- 
 arians a solemn feast day once in a while, and hypnotize 
 'em into thinking the wind's in the same quarter." 
 
 But Stillman, though he vouchsafed another smile 
 to indicate he took no offence, still said nothing. 
 
 "I've been down there to that dismal hole Brainerd's 
 retired to," said the beetle. "It was an early spring 
 
116 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 day, and there were puddles in the road and ducks 
 drabbling in 'em and a general smell of mud and 
 nastiness. And there was Brainerd in his big bare 
 library I don't know whether there was another 
 furnished room in the house, but he had a stack of 
 books there he was, doing proof and lining and inter- 
 lining, and making a job the compositor must have 
 cursed him for. I bet it looked like half a dozen tem- 
 perature charts woven into one when he got through 
 with it." 
 
 "You know," said the red-haired man, incisively, 
 as if he bit off the words, "I think myself that was 
 rather splendid of Brainerd, going off down there. 
 He's the only man of us all that's had the nerve to 
 give up the whole bloomin' show of things and retire 
 to a corner to do the work he means to do." 
 
 "He's consecrated to it," said Stillman, quietly, 
 "Brainerd is." 
 
 But because it was so big a word they stared at 
 him a moment, and said nothing, even to challenge 
 it. 
 
 "Now," said Brisbane, in his manner of weighing 
 what he had to offer, "I've wondered a good deal if 
 the peculiar thing about Brainerd isn't that he's obscure. 
 It's that he's clear. But we're so infernally dull we 
 don't catch on. Don't you know the wireless fellows 
 and their instrument I don't understand really the 
 smallest thing about it, so if I get it all wrong, don't 
 blame me they say the thing is tuned to a certain 
 note G, it may be, or A. And if they don't get a 
 response, they change their tune. Now, we don't 
 get Brainerd really, any of us, but it's because he isn't 
 
THE MASTER 117 
 
 tuned to our pitch, and he's so so inevitable, he won't 
 change his tune." 
 
 "Well, then, he may as well be writing his runic 
 rhymes on a piece of brick and tucking them into the 
 sand," said the red-haired man, "for all the good they 
 do." 
 
 "Yes, that's pretty much it: for if they're tucked 
 into the sand, Man Friday's foot'll stumble over 'em 
 some day, and they'll be fished out and Crusoe'll 
 read 'em." 
 
 "Well, I like that/' said Jerry. "You assume 
 Crusoe's going to be so much cleverer than we are, 
 do you?" 
 
 "Oh, by all odds," said Brisbane. "I think he's 
 going to be clever enough to understand how particu- 
 larly important it is to sit still and translate the little 
 pen scratches Brainerd's been making all these years, 
 down in his dim old nest." 
 
 "Oh, Brainerd isn't great," said the black beetle, 
 decisively. "That's the thing you'd say about a chap 
 that was great, posterity and all that. No he isn't 
 great." 
 
 "I'm not prepared to say he is," Brisbane retorted. 
 "Only, you ask Stillman. I'll abide by what he tells 
 you." 
 
 But Stillman would not speak. He only smiled 
 again his smile of a tolerant obscurity and then vouch- 
 safed the same excuse : 
 
 "Oh, I can't exploit Brainerd. You'd think I was 
 pushing the serial. Some of you fellows that write 
 notices would say I was working you. Besides, I like 
 him too well." 
 
118 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Glendon Springs took a leap here from Brainerd, the 
 unsung, to Jerry Burton, sitting with "all his blushing 
 honors thick upon him". 
 
 "I know who it is your book's reminiscent of, Burton," 
 he called, in the shrill delight of discovery, so loudly 
 that all of them turned that way. "What a fool I 
 was not to spot it earlier! Wish I'd said it in my column. 
 Why, it's Brainerd." 
 
 "The deuce it is!" said Jerry, placidly eating his 
 roast. ' ' How do you make that out? ' ' 
 
 "Why, it's his very fist put to another purpose 
 than he uses it for. It's Brainerd cheapened, to sell." 
 
 "Yes," said the globular man, dreamily regarding 
 a crackly bit of fat and then deciding what cubic 
 measure of bread would fit it. "I see that. It's the 
 use of the adjective, it's that trick of tacking your 
 preposition on to the end instead of minding the gram- 
 marians. It's the cadence of the sentence, too. You're 
 a nice little boy, Glendon, a nice clever little boy to 
 think that out." 
 
 Jerry was undisturbed. 
 
 "Well," he said, with philosophy, "don't lay it up 
 against me. If I did, I didn't know it." 
 
 "Why, of course you don't know it," the red-haired 
 man declaimed, piercingly. "We don't any of us 
 know it; but we have to sit up nights to keep from 
 falling into Brainerd's pesky style. If you've once 
 read him it clings to you; if you keep on reading him 
 you get saturated and you're lost." 
 
 "We find that in the office," said Stillman, unobtru- 
 sively. "I couldn't tell you the number of stories that 
 are flung aside every week without further considera- 
 
THE MASTER 119 
 
 tion because they're flagrant imitations of Brainerd. 
 And yet, not imitations. It's unconscious, all of it, 
 I'm willing to swear." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know what's imitation and what isn't," 
 said the beetle man, gloomily. "Or rather, I know, 
 but it wouldn't be popular to tell. Look at that fellow 
 Out West that took a prize from the Flittermouse. 
 That story was Brainerd, nothing but Brainerd, in 
 the form of it. I'm not prepared to say the fellow didn't 
 know what he was doing. I think he did." 
 
 "Little Jerry, didn't know, though," said Burton, 
 with an unmoved front. "He wrote his little book 
 just as nice and careful out of his own head; and the 
 public, they bought it and bought it and bought it, 
 and paid down their good money, and look at little 
 Jerry to-day! Here he sits, the cynosure of every eye, 
 and his steamer ticket's at home pinned on to a cushion 
 embroidered for him by an unknown girl that said 
 she liked his book." 
 
 But nobody could laugh. They were all thinking 
 too hard. Only Stillman looked a little breathless, 
 like one running a race and seeing the goal before him. 
 
 "But why," said Brisbane, slowly, hi his manner of 
 always asking why and cogitating profoundly on the 
 conclusion he meant to make when the data were all 
 in, "if Brainerd's so unpopular if he can't make his 
 pile like Jerry here, if he can't rake in kudos, if the 
 judicious grieve and the ribald laugh why are they 
 all imitating him?" 
 
 "Because they don't know they are imitating him," 
 said Glendon Springs, eagerly, as if he had made the 
 best of discoveries. "They've caught it." 
 
120 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "You don't know you've got typhoid till the germ 
 develops and the doctor tells you so," said the red- 
 haired man. 
 
 "Oh, no, they don't know it." 
 
 "Well, why are they praised? Why do they make 
 money?" Stillman offered slowly, as if the answer were 
 of the greatest importance and he was trying their 
 pulse and noting every beat, "when he's so far from 
 any sort of worldly stunt?" 
 
 "Because they've translated it into the language 
 the market understands," said Glendon Springs. He 
 answered quietly, but his eyes shone. "He's dug out 
 the gold. They've minted it. They've put it into 
 circulation." 
 
 "I shouldn't say his was the virgin gold, the ingot," 
 said Brisbane. "I should say Brainerd had put it into 
 a statue into a whole gallery of statues and nobody's 
 rich enough to buy such statuary. Nobody's got the 
 eye to want it, maybe, or the great gallery to put it in." 
 
 "If we're going to talk in figures," said Jerry, "I'll 
 have a hack at it and say, if his statues are gold, the 
 rest of us have made ours out of base metal. But they 
 sell. Don't forget my steamer ticket pinned to that 
 cushion. They sell." 
 
 "There seems to be the biggest sort of injustice in 
 that," said Brisbane. "Is Brainerd going to die the 
 death of the failure while little folks like our Jerry here 
 go down to posterity?" 
 
 "Oh, posterity!" the red-haired man flung in, "pos- 
 terity! that's another pair of sleeves. If you talk about 
 posterity " 
 
 "When you go into a picture-gallery Over There," 
 
THE MASTER 121 
 
 said Stillman, indicating the continent of Europe 
 with a generous sweep of his thumb, "how much 
 time do you spend on the pictures labelled ' School 
 of Raphael/ 'School of Perugino'?" 
 
 "Yes," said Jerry, sunnily, "tell us, you fellows, 
 that have made the grand tour. I want to know, so 
 I can remember what to do myself." 
 
 "Don't you," said Stillman, with an unmoved 
 gravity, "turn to Raphael and Perugino themselves?" 
 
 The red-haired man was leaning over the table and 
 scowling at Stillman, but, it seemed, in pure curiosity 
 and the effort of thought. 
 
 "Well, then," said he, hi a burst of appeal, "will 
 you tell me why in thunder Brainerd takes such a lot 
 of reading to get at what he's going to say?" 
 
 Stillman seemed to feel that this was the moment 
 for a direct statement he had never made before. 
 
 "Because he's got more to say than anybody else." 
 
 "What's he wrap it round for in so many coils? 
 What's he weave it so fine for, too fine for the naked 
 eye?" 
 
 "Count the threads in the widest tapestry ever made/ 
 said Stillman, "the tapestry crowded with the biggest 
 figures. You'll find they're multitudinous. Then 
 pick up the old cushion at home, the one on the rocking- 
 chair in great-aunt's parlor. Got a watch-dog on it, 
 or maybe a stag's head. Count your threads there. 
 Any child could do it." 
 
 Every man looked at his plate or studied the face 
 of his opposite neighbor, absorbed like his own. The 
 red-haired man broke the stillness. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I gather that the sense of the 
 
122 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 meeting points to the idea that Brainerd's misunder- 
 stood, not appreciated. " 
 
 "Oh, no," said Stillman, "not that. Only referred 
 he wouldn't appeal himself, but some of us can appeal 
 for him to the higher tribunal." 
 
 "What's that, Stillman?" Brisbane asked. 
 
 "The future." After a moment, Stillman went on. 
 A light had broken out upon his face, and he talked 
 eagerly as one who had something of incredible value 
 to share with them. "Why, don't you see what you've 
 said here to-night? You've owned Brainerd works 
 a spell you can't escape. You scoff at his style, but 
 you tear off samples from it and go and have waist- 
 coats made of it as much like it as you can manage. 
 Why, boys, he's our master." 
 
 It was by one impulse, it seemed, that they were on 
 their feet. Jerry, perhaps, it was who led Jerry, 
 whose dinner this had been, and who had seen it con- 
 verted into a ceremonial before an actual shrine. He 
 at any rate proposed the toast: "The Master." 
 
 They drank it in silence. No such meeting of the 
 Tribunal had seen them so moved, all of them in pre- 
 cisely the same way. Something hi the talk, the 
 recurrence to ineffable ideals, the martyrdom of ob- 
 scurity decreed to genius in its lifetime, appealed to 
 that old self each man had believed in, at one stage, 
 as his own indubitable possession, seeing it pierce the 
 darkness of contemporary dulness like a star. For a 
 moment it seemed possible to attain, not the world's 
 suffrages, but a foothold on that steep where climbing 
 is its own present reward. Chairs were pushed back 
 then, and the meeting was understood to be over. No 
 
THE MASTER 123 
 
 man felt like dropping into the familiarity of an in- 
 formal conclave as it had been on other nights. But 
 Stillman's voice recalled them. 
 
 "Brainerd is here hi town. Shall I tell him we well, 
 I'll tell him we drank to him, at least." 
 
 His eyes sought Brisbane's with perhaps a suggestion 
 in them, almost a prayer, and Brisbane leaned over 
 and lifted the laurel wreath in both his hands. 
 
 "Take him" he halted for the confirmation he 
 did not need, and challenged the other acquiescent 
 faces "take him, this." 
 
THE INTERPRETER 
 
 THE city was gasping under a moist, intolerable 
 heat. The general mind was given over to 
 temperature and that overworked term hu- 
 midity, dwelling at last, with enfeebled but inborn 
 necessity, on a consideration of dear Me, that now 
 seemed held in the balance, to be clung to blindly until 
 the springing of a breeze. 
 
 Nina Castro languished on a wicker couch, with 
 cool drinks at hand, and a maid to fan her and divine 
 new wants. The couch had been demanded when the 
 temperature ran up, and was as hastily produced by a 
 hotel management bound to propitiate a star so cogni- 
 zant of her rights. Half the blind had been left cleverly 
 open, so that a sun-shaft, obliquely thrown, accented 
 her yellow hah- and brightened her white dress. The 
 maid tiptoed about with a solemn and ostentatious 
 zeal, and the secretary, a hardheaded young person, 
 who knew Nina through and through, and had no 
 opinion of her, half in satirical policy preserved the 
 same expectant attitude at the desk where she awaited 
 orders. The maid and the secretary and the actress 
 were all acting, each hi her degree. There was a knock 
 at the door, and the maid fled to meet it in a horrified 
 haste, testifying to the profanity of invading lightly a 
 shrine like this. She came back bearing a card, and the 
 actress took it in a languid hand. But instantly a 
 
 124 
 
THE INTERPRETER 125 
 
 thrill ran through her. She rose, with a charming sweep 
 of draperies, and spoke in the voice trained so untiringly 
 to the curves of beauty that now its artifice simulated 
 all the freedom of nature: 
 
 "Send him up. Miss Melcher, you may go." 
 Miss Melcher bestirred herself with a careful cour- 
 tesy, and placed her pen and paper in order on the desk. 
 After that was done, she paused a moment before 
 leaving, and considered Nina's beautiful back, as the 
 actress stood, in a trance of some emotion or its counter- 
 feit, still musing over the card. Miss Melcher's look 
 was an illuminating commentary on the woman she 
 had served for many years contempt for the beautiful 
 back and envy of it, a bitter worship of charms not her 
 own and the clear-sighted scorn, instinct with sex itself, 
 of cheap goods not yet marked down by Time. Then, 
 as Nina turned, with a little frown and a recalled at- 
 tention, Miss Melcher gave the desk another hasty 
 touch and slipped out of the room. The man was 
 entering. Miss Melcher threw him a comprehensive, 
 half satirical look in passing, as if to say: " You're here 
 again. You haven't changed. No more has she." 
 
 He recognized her as an unconsidered personality 
 he had been used to before his three months' absence 
 in Europe, and held out his hand. But the girl ap- 
 parently failed to see it, and immediately he was in 
 the room, before the dangerous reefs of Nina's beauty 
 and her unsparingly administered charm. His eyes 
 rested upon her in a half unwilling pleasure, as hers 
 sought him sweetly with no withdrawal in them. She 
 extended both her hands, and he took them. She 
 brightened more and more. To her mind, he had not 
 
126 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 changed. He was still handsome, incalculably virile 
 and hers. How worn he had been growing in the last 
 years, how dulled his eyes were now from some flagging 
 of the spirit, she did not see. 
 
 " Tired?" she asked him fondly, leading him to a 
 chair, and he remembered, with his old amused com- 
 mentary on her, that this was the full-throated voice 
 she had built up from crude beginnings and used now 
 too indiscriminately. 
 
 "No," he said, "we had a smooth passage. Not a 
 ripple. I slept most of the time. How are you?" 
 
 He threw into his tone the caressing anxiety she 
 challenged and, in one form or another, always re- 
 ceived. She had sunk again on the couch, and crossed 
 her feet with an unerring grace. Her face became a 
 page of sweet contradictions where the brows frowned 
 while the mouth was smiling. She answered gently, 
 with a childlike pettishness calculated to augment the 
 charm. 
 
 'I am worn to the bone, dear, simply worn to the 
 bone. The new play won't go." 
 
 "Seems to me I've heard that before, or something 
 like it!" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "No," she denied, "nothing so bad as this. It's a 
 flat failure. I haven't even rehearsed it." 
 
 "It's Mary Gale's, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes. I had great faith in her. But she can't do it. 
 She's no good." 
 
 "Told her so?" 
 
 "Yes. I told her yesterday." 
 
 "How did she take it?" 
 
THE INTERPRETER 127 
 
 "Take it? Why, I don't know. How should she 
 take it?" 
 
 He looked at her for a moment, still smiling in a 
 way destined always to arouse in her a vague discom- 
 fort. It suggested pastures where she never fed. 
 
 "You know," he explained, "I used to see Mary 
 Gale when I was a boy. We went to school together." 
 
 "Yes, you said so. But let's not talk of her. I've 
 lost tune over it, and I'm disappointed. That's all 
 there is about it." 
 
 "Have you a copy of it?" 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 "Forty thousand in that desk. We've gone over it 
 until stale! Well, I should think so. The lines don't 
 mean any more to me now than so much Esperanto. I 
 ought to have Melcher pack these up and send them to 
 her. I don't want them." 
 
 He rose and went over to the desk. 
 
 "I'll take them," he said. "I'll see that she has 
 them." 
 
 "You can't do one blessed thing with it," she warned 
 him. "It's awfully sweet of you but the thing's no 
 good. I might have seen it sooner, and saved my 
 pains." 
 
 He was quietly pulling out neat acts of typewritten 
 manuscript, and arranging them in a pile on the desk. 
 Then he placed his gloves upon it, as if to fix his claim. 
 
 "I suppose you told her your part didn't suit you?" 
 he said incidentally, returning to his seat. 
 
 "Yes, that was it. It didn't suit me. Not a bit." 
 
 "You told her she had great emotional power, but 
 she must learn construction." 
 
'128 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then you said play-writing and book-writing were 
 two entirely different matters. In the play, there must 
 be no mystery for the audience. In a book the mystery 
 must be preserved. In a play, every line must count. 
 In a book, you may digress, explain. Didn't you tell 
 her that?" 
 
 "Why, yes! but what's the use now, when I've 
 found she can't do it?" 
 
 "You told her to observe the effects you got in 'The 
 Lost Fiddler', and asked her if she couldn't learn some- 
 thing from that. Now didn't you? " 
 
 "How do you know?" she asked, again wrinkling 
 her brows delightfully. 
 
 "Bless you, child, it's what you said to me, seven 
 years ago, when I went to you with my first play. It's 
 what you all say. You learn it from one another. It's 
 your form of polite farewell. Half the time you don't 
 know what you mean by it. You never happen to 
 think, any of you, that the poor devils of authors may 
 know all those platitudes, pat as print. They can't 
 do the trick, but aphorisms won't make them any 
 for'arder. What's the use of saying to a man with no 
 legs, 'My dear fellow, in walking one uses legs.' He 
 knows that as well as you do. That's where the shoe 
 pinches." 
 
 "I don't believe I said those things to you," she ob- 
 jected, with that fascinating good-nature which is one 
 step toward supremacy, when the way is lost. "I 
 recognized you from the first." 
 
 "You did!" He lost his tired look and roared with 
 ironic laughter. "I should rather say you did. You 
 
THE INTERPRETER 129 
 
 kept me hanging round for other purposes; but recog- 
 nized my " Then he sobered. "My dear child," 
 he said, "it was all a lucky fluke. You didn't recognize 
 me. Somehow I clambered on, and when the house 
 got a laugh out of me, I stayed. But 111 see that Mary 
 Gale has these things. Pardon me." He was looking 
 at his watch. 
 
 "No! no! you'll stay to luncheon. Then we'll drive 
 out into the country, and do something this evening." 
 
 "I've got " he hesitated, and ended gravely, "I've 
 got to run down to Doctor Tarbell's." 
 
 "What!" The frown meant heavy weather. She 
 sat up, and there were lightnings on her brow. "She 
 doesn't know you are home?" she suggested, in a de- 
 termined quiet. 
 
 "No," he answered, "but I am home." 
 
 "Have you been writing to her?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Once a week?" 
 
 "Twice." 
 
 She mused a moment, her delicate hands trembling 
 in her lap. Then she rose, and with a little soft rush, 
 sank at his feet and laid the hands upon his. She looked 
 up at him movingly. 
 
 "Sidney," she said, in a broken voice, one he knew 
 also from the stage, "why aren't you sensible? Why 
 aren't you firm?" 
 
 He was looking down at her in a grave kindliness, as 
 at a child who expects too much, and yet must not be 
 disappointed. 
 
 "Perhaps I'm too firm, Nina," he said. "Perhaps 
 that's what you don't like." 
 
130 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "It means either one thing or the other. Either you 
 are fond of her, or you are not. She's half out of her 
 mind. She has been for years. Doesn't that release 
 you from her?" 
 
 He stroked her hands tenderly. 
 
 "I rather think I must go, Nina," he said. 
 
 She bent her head and cried a few silent tears. Sud- 
 denly she began laughing through them. 
 
 "She ought to know this, too, " she interjected. 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Mary Gale. She thinks you're a hero. She gave you 
 the leading part in the play." 
 
 "Your play?" 
 
 "Yes. I had to keep cutting you out." She rose, 
 with the suppleness of her craft, and went back to her 
 seat, giving herself, when she got there, little reestab- 
 lishing touches patting her hair with a pretty grace, 
 and pressing her handkerchief to her eyes with the art 
 that aids without havoc. 
 
 "What do you mean, Nina? What has Mary Gale 
 done?" 
 
 "Why, the man in the play was an all-round angel. 
 I told her he'd have to be cut, and she said he made 
 the play. That's all she knew." 
 
 "But what about him?" 
 
 "Why, he was meant for you. She owned it said 
 she'd followed your career for years. Said she knew 
 about you from old friends of you both, and they told 
 her about it, about your faithfulness to your wife." 
 A quick breath came with the word, as if she felt re- 
 pugnance to it. 
 
 Sidney was not looking at her. 
 
THE INTERPRETER 131 
 
 "Well," he said at last, "that's odd. And it's doubly 
 odd it should come now." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 He turned to her then with the air of making an 
 intemperate confession to which she had a claim. 
 
 "You mustn't use it against me, Nina. You mustn't 
 remind me of it when I feel another way. But it's true 
 that I've had moments, especially coming home on the 
 steamer, when I've wondered whether you mightn't be 
 right." 
 
 "Yes!" She bent forward now in a restrained eager- 
 ness, hands clasped on her knees, her eyes blazing. 
 
 He spoke with difficulty, aiming at absolute fairness 
 and at the same time painstakingly translating his 
 habit of thought into hers. 
 
 "I found I had to mull over it all the tune on the 
 boat. It had made a break, going away. Coming home 
 would be starting over again, so to speak. For the 
 first time I wondered whether I should start in another 
 fashion." 
 
 "Yes," she breathed. "Yes, Sidney, yes." 
 
 "I've wondered I wonder, too " he broke his 
 speech with a little bitter laugh "I wonder, too, if 
 I'm a cad for saying it whether you are right and I 
 have taken needless pains." 
 
 "It's only " she spoke in a full, sweet voice, with 
 that indescribable nobility of mien which was also, he 
 recognized, a part of her outfit, "it's only, Sidney, the 
 effect on you. It drains you. Don't you see it does?" 
 He was not listening, save apparently to his own inner 
 voice. "Your work, too," she breathed. "If you were 
 free, you'd be another man." 
 
132 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Now he got up and looked for his hat in a vague 
 way he had when he was thinking, and Nina also arose. 
 She confronted him, superb and challenging. "Well?" 
 she said. 
 
 He recalled himself with a start. 
 
 "I'll come in to-morrow/' he promised, adding 
 winningly, with the smile that always earned him 
 pardon, "shall I?" 
 
 "Not this afternoon?" 
 
 "No, dear, not this afternoon." 
 
 A flush came to her cheeks. Her eyes grew dark. 
 
 "Sidney," she said, "you deserve to be told to come 
 this afternoon or " unfailing tact forbade her to go 
 on. 
 
 He was looking at her seriously. 
 
 " Nina," he said, " I don't please you, do I? " 
 
 She answered quickly. 
 
 "You please me when you please me!" 
 
 He laughed a little, and at that her eyebrows began 
 to go up whimsically. He put out both hands. 
 
 "Come, Nina," he entreated, "be friends with me." 
 
 At the moment of laying her hands in his, she snatched 
 them back and raised them to his shoulders. There 
 she held them while she talked rapidly into his face. 
 
 "She's half insane, Sidney. You know it. She 
 doesn't miss you. She can't. The doctors say so. 
 You've been gone long enough for her to forget all 
 about you. Now you mean to go down there and re- 
 mind her again. I wouldn't say a word if it did her any 
 good; but it only takes it out of you. You know that. 
 O Sidney, give it up! Give it up, dear please." 
 
 He was bending toward her vivid face, the flush 
 
THE INTERPRETER 133 
 
 upon it, the eyes wet with tears, when she laughed, in 
 a bubble of coming triumph. 
 
 "Mary Gale said you were a hero. Be a hero, if 
 you want to, but don't be this kind. Rule things. 
 Don't let them rule you." 
 
 He raised his head, with an air of hearing a recall. 
 
 "Mary Gale!" he echoed. "Well, let's see what 
 Mary Gale's got to say on the subject. I'll read the 
 play." 
 
 Her hands slipped from his shoulders, but he took 
 them, with a quick pressure, and let them go again. 
 "I'm sorry I bother you," he said honestly. "Let me 
 come round to-morrow." When he reached the door, 
 she was still looking at him silently, what judgments 
 forming behind the jewels of her eyes he could not guess. 
 But he had been accustomed to ignore the cruder ele- 
 ments in her, and now he nodded, in a frank goodf ellow- 
 ship, and went out. 
 
 That night, after his two hours at Dr. Tarbell's, he 
 took dinner in his own room, and then drew a chair to 
 the window, to read Mary Gale's play. A little kind 
 wind had crept in from the east and was cooling the 
 city. It touched his face, and he was grateful to it. 
 He would not think of the afternoon yet, or the choice 
 it had gravely offered him, and, rather to defer debate 
 he opened the first act and began to read. He read 
 carefully, and presently with a flush upon his forehead 
 and the knitted brows of sharp consideration. He fin- 
 ished the act, the play, and then, before the summer 
 light had failed, went back to read it here and there 
 again. At last he put the acts together, got his hat, 
 and ran downstairs. There he called a hansom and 
 
134 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 ordered the man to drive him to the address penciled 
 on a corner of the manuscript. 
 
 It was a dull street, with dressmaking advertised on 
 windows old in dust. Women, in brazen challenge 
 to the breeze, were sitting upon doorsteps, exchanging 
 summer repartee with coatless men, and down the 
 street a group of ragged children danced happily to a 
 hurdy-gurdy, and passed an adored and lessening bit 
 of ice from hand to hand. A panting maid, summoned 
 by his ring from some ashy depth, bade him "go right 
 up", and when he hesitatingly complied, he found 
 Mary Gale, warned by another bell from below, stand- 
 ing in the attic hall. He knew her at once, the gaunt, 
 clean look, the good gray eyes and general testimony 
 to shyness and New England virtues, the way of wear- 
 ing her dull clothes as if they were for use, not plumage, 
 and as if no one had ever praised her for them. She 
 was overwhelmed at seeing him. That was plain at 
 once. 
 
 "Why!" she said, and then seemed lost in the depth 
 of her own wonder. ' ' Why ! ' ' 
 
 He had reached the top stair and given her his 
 hand. 
 
 "Hello, Mary!" he remarked, in the language of 
 their school days. "Awfully glad to find you." 
 
 Flushed with a kind of rapturous recognition, she 
 led him in and established him in a rocking chair under 
 her one dormer window. 
 
 "I never expected such a thing," she declared, and 
 then he understood that she really thought him a good 
 deal of a personage. It amused him, but it touched him 
 also. 
 
THE INTERPRETER 135 
 
 "It's only queer I haven't looked you up before/' he 
 said. "I know your work." 
 
 Mary shook her head and laughed. 
 
 "Not all of it," she demurred. "You've seen the 
 stories not my fashion notes, and my current items, 
 and my pearls of thought." 
 
 "Is it as bad as that, Mary?" he asked, with a 
 solemnity she loved. 
 
 "Worse," she laughed back at him. "I edit the 
 Girls' Letter-Box. " Her eyes had fallen on the manu- 
 script in his hand, and he noted the quick change in 
 her. It was pathetically compounded of hope and 
 terror. The play might have been an old misery 
 she had fought so long that she expected it at 
 every turning. u Why," she faltered, "how did 
 you?" 
 
 "How did I come across this? Miss Castro entrusted 
 me with it." 
 
 "I never wanted to see it again," she burst forth, 
 eying it as if, having done strange things to hurt her, 
 it might unexpectedly do more. 
 
 He laid it down on the little table, and there was 
 silence between them of the sort that preludes candor. 
 He wished she would ask him what he thought of the 
 play. She was hoping he would tell her. 
 
 "Want to do it awfully, Mary?" he was asking, in 
 his kindest tone. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Write a play." 
 
 "You know I do. Don't we, all of us? I don't 
 know whether it's the money no, it isn't. It's creating 
 life, and seeing it breathe and walk. Well?" She 
 
136 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 looked at him a moment, and ventured breathlessly: 
 "You don't believe Fve got it in me!" 
 
 He touched the manuscript with a gentle finger. 
 
 " It isn't in this, Mary." 
 
 Something faded out of her face. 
 
 "It's queer, isn't it?" she mused. "I took the 
 biggest story I knew. I knew it, mind you. I didn't 
 imagine it and hang garlands on it. I had watched it 
 growing. The man was a hero, the only hero I've seen. 
 To be sure, I had to make him subservient to her that 
 foolish woman." 
 
 "She isn't foolish, Mary," he reminded her. "She's 
 very charming after her own kind." 
 
 "I dare say. She seemed foolish to me, the more I 
 saw of her. I don't care much for exotics. I like to 
 find a good, wholesome weed even, growing out of a 
 crack and nourishing itself on air, and still grow- 
 ing." 
 
 He spoke in a low tone. 
 
 "That was the way your hero seemed to you?" 
 
 "Just the way. It seemed to me he fed on nothing 
 and still grew tall. Oh, what a funny world it is!" 
 She threw herself back in a little gale of laughter, and 
 her eyes were wet. "I suppose if I told you how my 
 hero looked to me, you'd never recognize him. You'd 
 never think you'd seen him even." 
 
 "Maybe not, Mary." He had a hungry desire to 
 urge her on. He was even willing to entrap her. She 
 seemed to be illuminating page after page of his life, 
 with a rapid brush. 
 
 "Fancy," she said, "a man that might have been 
 spoiled by praise, and yet worked on, doing the same 
 
THE INTERPRETER 137 
 
 sweet, sane things he began by doing a man that 
 might have had the blare of trumpets announcing him 
 all the time, and scorned them. No, he didn't even 
 scorn them. He never seemed to hear. He was too 
 busy being faithful to the old humble ties of his life. 
 Some candles go out, you know, some we depend on 
 to light us along to bed. He never seemed to flicker 
 
 even." 
 
 The warmth had come into his face, and his eyes 
 were lustrous. 
 
 " Nevertheless/ ' he warned her, "that isn't neces- 
 sarily drama." 
 
 "I suppose it isn't. I'd got so used to seeing it 
 march in my own mind, I fancied it would move of 
 itself anywhere. But that woman! She's as thin as 
 an eggshell. I bungled it. She spoiled it. I can't do 
 anything for her. Maybe I couldn't anyway." 
 
 "It's a tough job," he said, feeling about for phrases. 
 
 Mary's eyes brimmed with laughing tears. 
 
 "Now, don't tell me it's a separate art," she said, 
 "and that it's got to be concentrated, and there mustn't 
 be a word too much, and " 
 
 "Have they said all that to you?" 
 
 "Law, chile, yes! over and over! There must be an 
 actor's commonplace book, like the key to the arith- 
 metic. Well, never mind. I had one beautiful story, 
 and I've written it and that's the end of it." 
 
 "I'm not sure that it's the end of it," said Sidney sud- 
 denly, in a sharp assertiveness that made her wonder. 
 "Mary, when have you seen her? " 
 
 "Your wife?" 
 
 "Yes. You knew her pretty well." 
 
138 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 " She was in the class below/ 7 said Mary. She looked 
 away from him briefly, and flushed a little, speaking. 
 "I saw her while you were abroad." 
 
 He bent keen eyes upon her. 
 
 "What made you do that?" 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 "I knew you had to be away," she said at last. "I 
 knew you had arranged every thing perfectly, but yet 
 it seemed as if somebody ought to look in, hi your 
 place, and keep an eye on her." 
 
 "So I've had a friend I never thought of! That was 
 mighty good of you." 
 
 "No," she said frankly, "it was gratitude. You've 
 meant a lot to me, right along. You've been a sort of 
 beacon. And when you couldn't be on the spot well, 
 your care of her has been something so wonderful it 
 seems as if we all ought to stand by and help a 
 little*" 
 
 He thrust his hands into his pockets, and sat there 
 a moment, musing. 
 
 "She was glad to see me to-day," he said, irrelevantly. 
 
 "Yes," answered Mary. 
 
 "She " Until now he had not spoken voluntarily 
 of his wife to any one except the doctors and nurses 
 who had charge of her. The unaccustomed relief made 
 him assert almost with an eager passion: "She's really 
 different, Mary. They all say so. She was glad to 
 see me. She was quite herself." 
 
 "It's beautiful," said Mary. 
 
 "There's one thing" he hesitated. "I believe I'll 
 tell you. Tarbell thinks I might take her away just 
 she and I to the sea, perhaps, and find out how it 
 
THE INTERPRETER 139 
 
 works. She doesn't know about it. I didn't want her 
 to know until it's decided." 
 
 " Until Doctor Tarbell decides?" 
 
 "Until I decide." 
 
 "Oh!" Then she said tentatively, "I suppose it 
 would be wonderful to her." 
 
 ' ' I suppose it would. ' ' He spoke in a heavy brooding. 
 "Really, Mary, I did get the idea, as I was talking 
 with her he had told me before I saw her that she 
 would be quite wild with happiness. And in a good 
 way, too, a good, wholesome way." 
 
 Mary was smiling at him. 
 
 "That settles it," she said. 
 
 "No," he owned, "it didn't settle it then. Some- 
 thing has settled it since. At first I was afraid. Not 
 of her, of course. She has never been violent. But of 
 the outcome." 
 
 She was smiling now, in a skepticism half scorn. 
 
 "Oh, no," she said, "you're not afraid. You couldn't 
 be." 
 
 He had got upon his feet. 
 
 "Yes, I could, Mary," he said lightly. "But I'm 
 not afraid now,' at any rate. Yes, I think we'll do it. 
 I'll look out some little place, and we'll go there with 
 that good maid of hers and see what comes of it. Good- 
 by, Mary. You're a dear." 
 
 She stood at the stair-head and watched him 
 down. He knew what thoughts were following 
 him. 
 
 He walked home by roundabout ways that took him 
 past Nina's hotel. Under her window he halted a 
 moment, listening to the trained sweetness of her voice 
 
140 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 crowning the perfection of a song. Other voices rose in 
 commendation and light laughter when the song had 
 ceased. He waited a moment, as if in ceremonious 
 farewell, and then, taking off his hat to the greatening 
 breeze, walked quickly on. 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 
 
 NO," he said to the florist, " don't do them up. 
 I'll take them as they are." 
 He walked out into the May sunshine with 
 the pink roses, vaguely feeling that they ought to add 
 something to the richness of the day. It was, hi his 
 weak state, that of a man just recovering from illness, 
 as if he craved some stimulant to waken hi him a zest 
 for that joy of life which had for the time escaped him. 
 This, he told himself, must be a moment of great 
 happiness. He had met death and been reprieved, 
 he was engaged to Rose Cameron, and he was going 
 to see her for the first tune after her return from that 
 unavoidable absence in Europe, an interval covering 
 very accurately the period of his illness. He was 
 glad she had been away. No comfort her presence 
 could have lent him would have compensated for the 
 irritation of knowing she saw him at his worst. At 
 forty-six one needed all the small bravery of life to keep 
 him in countenance. Last, in reviewing his reasons 
 for present jubilation, he was a great author, a European 
 review had lately told him, and before his illness the 
 scene of another novel had flamed before him, the map 
 of a country yet to be explored. 
 
 And after rehearsing all his pretexts for throbbing 
 veins and high anticipation, the day still found him 
 cold. 
 
 141 
 
142 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 There was one strange feature of this walk, the 
 goal of his desire: step by step went with him the 
 memory of Anne De Lisle, the woman he had loved in 
 youth, and whose death had not, so he had felt for 
 years, left him free to love again. In that early rela- 
 tion there had been, as later knowledge tested it, 
 something pathetically unfulfilled. He had loved her, 
 but he had loved himself more. His own hopes, his 
 prospects, his discouragements those were what they 
 had both dwelt on, and he sometimes wondered, in the 
 silence left by her loss, if she had missed a compre- 
 hension or a tenderness he might have given. They 
 had been absorbed in the book of his life; but there was 
 her book also to read, and of that, until her death, 
 he hardly turned a page. After that blinding moment, 
 it was different. The pages then were sodden with 
 his tears. He adored the memory of her, and out of a 
 passionate ideal constructed a new loyalty. She had 
 made him, this absent woman; she had bent his life. 
 For out of his failure to her he had awakened to a 
 poignant sense of the imperious rights of souls. Even 
 his work stood secondary to that. He valued it, he 
 had great zest in doing it; but always it slipped down 
 a step in the scale compared with human needs and 
 services. This conviction went so far that when his own 
 command of the written word seemed most precious, 
 something within him was sure to rise and blast the 
 brave assurance in favor of the great give and take of 
 actual life. Though a great author, he lacked the com- 
 fort of it, the bravado another man, not maimed by 
 failure at the start, might have taken for a cordial. 
 The world, too, was more his admirer than his friend. 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 143 
 
 It had wearied of his persistent seclusion, his refusal 
 to consider his work more awe-inspiring than that of 
 the man who builds a bridge or digs a garden-bed. 
 He had weighed its platitudes and knew, he thought, 
 how exactly its interest in his intentions shrank be- 
 side its vanity in exploiting him. He would have none 
 of it; and so, having for twenty years advertised him- 
 self as a recluse, the world had grown tired and had 
 run after rushlights that were at least willing to burn. 
 Through all this he and the woman had seemed to be 
 living alone and together working out a daily task; 
 but when Rose Cameron dawned upon him like a sun- 
 rise in her young splendor, he wondered, with a force 
 amounting to conviction, if he had waited only for 
 that. The interval between loving and loving again 
 seemed, by a fertile inspiration, to be not alone an 
 observance due the woman who had gone. It was a 
 part of a consistent faithfulness, and in it partook also 
 the woman who had come. Not only had these clois- 
 tered years been given to mourning: they seemed now 
 a germinative pause before new bloom. 
 
 To-day, as Anne De Lisle still paced beside him, 
 he pondered a little at the still presence. He had been 
 accustomed to think she came when there were arduous 
 things to bear; but this was joy before him. Yet she had 
 come and he wondered with awe whether some things, 
 begun as this was, had to be eternal. Then he mounted 
 the steps and was directed, with a flattering haste 
 showing he was expected, up the stairs and into the 
 library, where Rose awaited him. She was standing 
 by the window where she must have watched his 
 coming a slender shape in white, her girl face pro- 
 
144 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 vocative of tender interest as when he saw it first. 
 The round contour of her cheek and chin, the shadow- 
 ing of the soft dark hair, the eyes with their frank 
 challenge veiled by lavish fringes, he looked at her, 
 and forbore to speak. He had forgotten, questioning 
 his own wasted face in the mirror, these last months, 
 what youth was like. Between them the roses were 
 laid on the table, he had touched her hands and found 
 them cold, and still, as he remembered a moment after, 
 when they sat looking at each other, he had not kissed 
 her. He broke into his little humorous laugh. 
 
 " Perhaps it's because you seem too precious," he 
 said. 
 
 "What?" she asked. 
 
 He leaned forward and laid a hand over hers lying 
 on the table a living model on the dark wood. "You 
 don't seem to belong to me yet," he added, in a kind 
 of tender apology. "I must get used to it again." 
 
 A great blush rose and overwhelmed her, brow and 
 all. The first thrill of life he had known for months 
 surged up responsive, as he felt his power to move 
 her. She spoke with what seemed a careful tenderness 
 to match his own. 
 
 "You have been very ill?" 
 
 "Forget it," he admonished her, smiling at the phrase. 
 "I mean to." 
 
 She raised her brows in a pretty begging for indul- 
 gence. 
 
 "I couldn't come. You knew that." 
 
 "Indeed I did," he answered heartily. "And it 
 was better not. I didn't know I had so much vanity; 
 but I'm afraid I couldn't have stood seeing you or 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 145 
 
 having you see me while I was being oiled up to run 
 again." 
 
 "That's not right," she said, gently, adding with an 
 anxious note he liked: "But you are running again?" 
 
 "Oh yes! Walking, rather." Then he said more 
 gravely, with a wistful tenderness suited to her youth 
 so generously pledged to him: "I'm afraid I shall only 
 walk, now, Rosamond. I'm going to be an old fellow 
 presently. I hadn't thought of it before this knock- 
 down, I give you my word. If I had I hope I should 
 have raised the courage to keep away from you." 
 
 She spoke with passionate reassurance. 
 
 ' ' It doesn't alter you. It's you you we care about 
 all of us." 
 
 He rose and came a step nearer her, holding out his 
 hands. 
 
 "Come, Rose," he said, smiling at her with eyes 
 softened at her tone. "Come. I told you I must get 
 used to you." 
 
 She had risen also with his movement, and upon 
 the echo of his words came her sudden backward step, 
 the repelling motion of her hands, involuntarily out- 
 stretched, and her sudden cry, "No, no!" 
 
 In that instant she had changed. Her girlish sweet- 
 ness had given place to a woman's passion. It was as 
 if he had seen the bud of maidenhood flame suddenly 
 into bloom. But it was a strange new flower, not, his 
 senses told him, for him to gather. He stood there 
 with his hands outstretched, in the involuntary hope 
 of soothing her through patience. 
 
 "Come, dear," he said again. "Don't be cruel 
 to me." 
 
146 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Am I cruel? " she said, in swift self -blame. "Yes, 
 you think so, too. You are right. I am cruel." 
 
 He had tune, even in that moment of bewilderment, 
 for a little side-track of wonder over the new tones in 
 her voice. He had known her sweet, bewildering, 
 gently mocking, but not thus a woman with the notes 
 of life at her command, and all life's challenges flashing 
 in her eyes and fixed in the curves of her grief -shadowed 
 mouth. His hands dropped at his side. 
 
 "What is it, Rose?" he asked, with the grave gentle- 
 ness that had brought about their intimacy. "You've 
 got something to tell me." 
 
 "No!" she cried "no!" and then she added slowly, 
 "You force the truth from me." 
 
 "No," he assured her; "believe me, no. There's 
 nothing you need tell me." 
 
 "Yes," she returned. She had paled, and the dark- 
 ness of her hair had given her face a tragic outline. 
 "You don't mean to; but there's something in you 
 that demands the truth. I came home meaning not to 
 tell you to live it out alone." 
 
 He felt a sudden sickness, and accepted it with the 
 patience of those who have often entertained the pangs 
 of life. 
 
 "Sit down, dear," he said, grasping at some practical 
 ease for both of them. "We can talk better so." 
 
 He took his own chair as he spoke, without waiting 
 for her, because the weakness of his state reminded 
 him anew how ill-equipped he was for any shock. She 
 came slowly forward and stood by the mantel, resting 
 her arm upon it and bowing her head upon her hands. 
 Her shoulders trembled. 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 147 
 
 "Don't," he whispered. 
 
 After a moment she raised her head again and turned 
 upon him the dry passion of a face forbidden tears. 
 
 "No," she answered, with a determined quiet, "I 
 won't. Do you think I forget how weak you are? 
 I seem to, but I don't." 
 
 He made an impatient gesture of the hand. 
 
 "Drop that," he commanded, frowning. "We must 
 get at the sense of this. What is the matter?" 
 
 Her lips noiselessly formed the answer, "Nothing," 
 and left the word unsaid. 
 
 "Don't tell me that," he insisted, with a calculated 
 sternness. "Something happened to you while you 
 were abroad." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Don't, child. I shall find you out. What hap- 
 pened? " 
 
 "We mustn't talk of these things," she burst forth. 
 "Can't you see how shocking this is to see you pale 
 and miserable, and to know not to have self-control 
 enough to keep from troubling you?" 
 
 He sat regarding her in deep consideration, his brows 
 drawn together over the problem of her misery. Sud- 
 denly his face cleared. A smile illumined it. 
 
 "Why, child," he said, "I know. You don't care 
 about me any more. You've found it out, and you're 
 afraid to tell me." 
 
 She bent her face to her hands and broke into tears. 
 In that moment of her veiled vision he braced himself 
 against the blow of a surprise that seemed incredible. 
 In spite of all his disadvantages, once she had 
 loved him he had never reflected that she could do any- 
 
148 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 thing else. Indeed, it came to him now that until 
 this shock of illness, reminding him that he was mortal, 
 he had never thought of life or any of its possibilities 
 as weakening for years to come. Yet in a moment 
 he saw youth on one side of the world and himself, 
 very much alone, on the other. There was a barrier 
 between. 
 
 " Don't cry, child," he counselled, when he could 
 summon voice and felt the victory of finding it would 
 serve. " You mustn't cry." 
 
 "No," she choked into her handkerchief, and he 
 cursed his state anew, knowing what pity moved her. 
 
 "Now," said he, "let's talk it over. It's a simple 
 matter. You make it terribly complex." 
 
 She turned on him her sodden face, quivering in 
 its determination not to break again. 
 
 "I can't think of anything worse," she said, "now, 
 when you're ill, to make a scene " 
 
 "If you say anything more or think anything more 
 about my being ill, you will compel me to damn my 
 illness. I've done that quite frequently of late. How- 
 ever, I shall bless it if it causes you to estimate me 
 better, or brings about a fuller understanding between 
 us. I think you rather want to take off the little ring, 
 dear, don't you?" 
 
 She looked at the blue stone where it shone dark 
 against her finger. She could not answer. 
 
 "Want me to?" he asked. "Just be sure you don't 
 care, dear, won't regret it. Then pull it off and you'll 
 feel better." 
 
 Involuntarily she obeyed him, and held it, hesitating, 
 in the hollow of her hand. 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 149 
 
 "I wish you needn't give it back to me," he said, 
 tentatively. " Can't you wear it on another finger? 
 No, I suppose not. Or keep it in your trinket-box 
 among other things? Can't you, dear?" 
 
 "I'll send it to you," she said, almost inaudibly, and 
 laid it on the table between them. 
 
 He laughed. "Bless you, child, no! I can't let you 
 play sense to my sensibility. There!" He took the 
 ring and dropped it in his waistcoat pocket, where it 
 seemed to burn him. Then he turned to her, and spoke 
 with a beguiling warmth. "Who is he, Rose? Don't 
 you want to tell me? " 
 
 Imperious life had flooded back into her face. "It 
 isn't possible," she said, in a tone where hope struggled 
 unwillingly against beautiful desire. 
 
 "What isn't possible?" 
 
 "That things should seem so tragic and yet be so 
 sweet." 
 
 The last word was almost a pathetic prayer to him 
 to let them be sweet in spite of all. 
 
 "My dear Rose," he said, didactically, "I have a 
 clever friend who tells me there wouldn't be any trage- 
 dies if everybody had common sense. I have common 
 sense. I reek with it. You just play my way. Now" 
 he leaned forward, coaxing her "who is he?" 
 
 Her lips opened, against preconceived resolve. To 
 her, also, the incredible was happening. Here was a 
 dear confidant miraculously made out of anticipated 
 grief. 
 
 "I used to know him here," she breathed. "We 
 met at dancing-school when we were children." 
 
 "SaxeKing!" 
 
150 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Yes. He is studying in Germany. We saw a lot 
 of each other at the pension. I told him about you, I 
 was so proud. He was kind to me kinder because 
 you were sick and I was worried. Then, one night 
 her voice faltered. 
 
 "Don't tell me, child/' he said, compassionately. 
 
 "Yes, I must tell you." Again her cheeks were 
 flaming. "I want you to know what kind of girl I am. 
 He kissed me. He wasn't to blame. He forgot. I 
 forgot, too. Then I knew there was nothing like it 
 like him. But I was a traitor." 
 
 "Dear child!" he said. "Don't spoil it thinking 
 foolish thoughts. Why, it's morning with you! You're 
 Juliet at the casement. Write to him, dear. Tell him 
 the balcony'll be ready by the time he comes. Tell 
 him we've put up the staging to-day, and the vines and 
 things will be set out to-morrow." 
 
 He rose, steadying himself, as he did so, by the table. 
 She crossed the space between them swiftly. 
 
 "Oh," she cried, "how good you are! How good! 
 how good!" Then a shade of bew : lderment mingled 
 with her hope. "Why," she said, "I never thought. 
 You don't mind a bit. Perhaps you didn't care for me. 
 Didn't you care at all?" 
 
 He was looking at her gravely, but in her wonder she 
 forgot to note how pale he was. A smile touched his 
 lips and eyes a smile she had perhaps never seen there. 
 
 "Dear," he said, "I care for you very much. But 
 there are a great many things I can't tell you and that 
 you can't see perhaps until you 'come to forty year'. 
 Things are harder then and they are easier. But you 
 write to him, child, you write to him." 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 151 
 
 She gave him both hands impetuously, and he raised 
 them together to his lips. Then he got out of the room, 
 knowing that she was standing there quite still, his 
 roses forgotten almost beneath her hand. He went 
 down-stairs and out into the street, and remembering 
 suddenly that she had watched his coming and might 
 also see him go, he straightened his shoulders and 
 walked off buoyantly. Once round a shielding corner, 
 he faltered, rested a moment for breath, and then 
 turned down to the wider thoroughfare where he could 
 take a car. Thereafter all he could remember of the 
 ride was that the car was crowded, and that a woman 
 holding a baby an angelic-looking child sat next 
 him, and that he, vaguely irritated and compassionate 
 because the child's legs hung uncomfortably, put his 
 hand down at his side and gathered up the little feet, 
 supporting them. At his own corner he released them 
 gently and got out, and no one saw his service. 
 
 It was in his own library that he sat down to think, 
 and realize that he had nothing left for action, only for 
 the reflections that are like broken shards, vivid and 
 keen-edged, but not to be cemented into any whole. 
 At first he could scarcely tell how deep his wound was 
 or whether it bled too much. It must bleed a little, 
 he told himself. He must be hurt. Yet how much 
 he hardly knew, or whether the crimson flow was 
 weakening his heart. That night, with the habit of 
 those whom life has tutored, he was able to sweep his 
 mind clear of harassment and to sleep, and the next 
 morning dawned with the fiat that a new phase of life 
 must enter. Holiday was over; now he must work, 
 and accepting the decree, he sat down at his table for 
 
152 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 the first time since his illness and tried to begin his 
 beautiful book. An hour's futile phrasing, and he 
 dropped his pen and tore the page. He knew, he 
 thought, his doom, and desolation fell upon him. The 
 genius, whatever it was, that had brooded over him 
 and moved his pen to action, had left him. 
 
 Thereafter for days he took himself to the library 
 with a regularity which lulled his good attendant into 
 the belief that he had assumed the old habit of work, 
 too soon, perhaps, and yet not dangerously, since at 
 night it left him calm. But he was not writing as of 
 old; he was taking an inventory of his life. The long 
 nights were not renewals; they were still, lucent exposi- 
 tions of what he had experienced and felt. He went 
 back to the beginning, to the day of Anne De Lisle, 
 and now, with a quickened sense of his own abortive 
 deeds, he confirmed that older certainty that his relation 
 to her, cut short by death, had been his first significant 
 failure. He even nursed a pang at wondering how 
 much sooner she had died because he had not under- 
 stood and answered her in the vague stirrings of her 
 virgin life. Then his work: whatever it had been, the 
 human intention in it had not told. It was neither 
 great enough to bear him to the zone of admirations 
 outside criticism, nor, he told himself, did it reach the 
 heart. If it had reached the heart as warm as it had 
 left his own, there would be signs of it : flowers growing 
 along the way, a bird in the thicket, the sound of mov- 
 ing streams. The universe had closed to him. He felt 
 muffled, condemned to dwell forever in one spot of 
 mental aridness, while other younger feet could press 
 through other portals to the dawn. 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 153 
 
 Then he came to what had seemed speciously the 
 crown of his whole life: Rose Cameron. He stripped 
 the mantle from that dream and flayed it to the bone. 
 At first he had been drawn to her by her dewy worship 
 of what she called his genius, and then some light in 
 her pure eyes had hinted at a worship of himself. Again 
 he saw the dawn. Sleeping germs rose up in him and 
 flowered; it was like youth, multiplied a thousandfold 
 in the rich soil of manhood, and he believed in miracles. 
 The miracle was that one could lose youth and have it, 
 see love go and then recall it in another form, mourn 
 and be gloriously comforted. Now in his pitiless self- 
 scrutiny he saw that, too, for what it was. What she 
 called his genius had overdazzled her. To find it at 
 her feet and not accept it would have been disloyalty 
 to the sum of great things as she saw them. He was 
 a hero, and she longed to gird him with the sword. But 
 at a quicker footfall, a young voice calling, she had 
 broken these slight loyalties and fled. That, too, was 
 failure. 
 
 He seemed to be the victim of some great reaction, 
 unguessed in its inexorable poise and swing until to-day. 
 In his youth he had chosen life, as he saw it through the 
 medium of ambition, and real life, in the woman who 
 might have made it for him, had escaped him. Then 
 he had chosen the life of love, and his work, mysteriously 
 his through some divine decree, had also fled away and 
 left him poor. 
 
 All through these days of dumbness, when he was not 
 slipping the beads of remembered folly, he was sitting 
 in his muffled stillness listening to the closing of the 
 doors of life, or, as it seemed to him at times, stumbling 
 
154 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 about like a child, shut up for reasons, and reaching up 
 to try one door after another, to find them fast. He 
 took an inventory of what was left him. There was 
 very little. The house where the doors had closed in 
 upon him he had furnished himself, and he had a dull 
 sense that he should get no comfort out of it. And 
 outside life was going on, bourgeoning and swelling, 
 and somehow, for no reason he knew, save that these 
 were his waning years, hereafter he was not going to 
 be able to smell or gather. The game was over before 
 he fairly knew it had begun. 
 
 There one evening at his table Doctor Gardner 
 found him, and after glancing at the untouched 
 paper and dry pen, said, in what seemed an inci- 
 dental kindliness, "Maynard, why didn't you send 
 for me? " 
 
 Maynard roused himself out of his mental swoon. He 
 performed the usual small hospitable offices to the 
 extent of a pipe and a glass. But Doctor Gardner 
 pushed them away and continued looking at him. 
 
 "Why didn't you?" he reiterated. 
 
 "I've been very well," said Maynard. At last he was 
 patient with his state, because it no longer moved 
 him. "I'm weak, that's all." 
 
 "Put away your writing and come into the air," 
 said the doctor, again in the voice of one who found 
 something fragile before him, a bubble of life, ready 
 to escape him at a touch. 
 
 Maynard shook his head. 
 
 "I don't seem to want to. Too much trouble," he 
 continued, looking neutrally before him. 
 
 "You've had some kind of a setback," said Gardner 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 155 
 
 at last, in his impersonal voice. "Don't you think 
 you'd better tell me?" 
 
 Then Maynard did look up, with a smile, languid 
 enough but warmed by something of his old sunshine. 
 
 "Hands off, old man," he said. "You've got a 
 streak of woman in you. That's why your sympathy 
 is so beguiling. But don't you let me tell. I can't 
 stand it." 
 
 At that moment the man came in and laid a stack of 
 letters down before him. There were so many that 
 some of them fell almost into his hand, and he drew 
 it away to give them room. He looked at them idly. 
 
 "What an extraordinary mail!" he commented. 
 
 "Have you seen the papers lately? " asked Gardner, 
 with a quickening in his voice. The color had risen 
 to his face with the potential wisdom of the message 
 he had brought. 
 
 "No; I don't read, these days." 
 
 "The amount of it is, some busybody has found out 
 about your illness, garnished it up, and sent it to the 
 papers. They're full of it." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Maynard, whimsically, "not that, I 
 guess. I'm not so important as all that." 
 
 "You'd better read them. Or look at your mail. 
 Read that." 
 
 Maynard put out his hand and with a random choice 
 took up a letter. It was a poor little letter, in a feeble 
 script. There was no signature, but it was a woman's 
 hand, formed in country schools in older days. She 
 had seen the news of his illness in the paper. It had 
 been a shock to her, and she wanted to express, though 
 late, her gratitude for all he had given her. She was 
 
156 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 thankful he was better. Yet, when he should die, 
 "they will meet you and praise you," she wrote, " those 
 who have come through much tribulation. " 
 
 He laid down the letter. There was a blur before 
 his eyes. 
 
 1 ' Those who have come through much tribulation/ ' 
 he repeated. " That's a good line, Gardner." Sud- 
 denly with a sweep of the hand he pushed the letters 
 over to his friend. "Open them, will you?" he begged, 
 in a fever. "Are there more like that? " 
 
 Gardner began with a subdued haste, as if they were 
 medicinal, reading a line here, a name there. They 
 were of all sorts, from the almost forgotten schoolmate, 
 separated from his fellow in the throng, to the critic 
 of a later day, but they were, as if by an amazing in- 
 tention, in one key. The world was sorry because he 
 had been so near the leaving of it. And like those who, 
 tongue-tied in daily life are yet shaken into outcry by 
 a common danger, these men and women voiced their 
 gratitude, and it might be, Maynard dared to think, 
 their love. This was the fellowship he had created for 
 himself, or that God, through giving him a gift, had 
 created for him. He sat there with a hand shading his 
 eyes, while Gardner, reading, glanced up, from time to 
 time, to see if there had been enough. Maynard spoke 
 at last. 
 
 "That'll do. I'll go through the rest to-morrow. 
 They're curiously alike, Gardner." 
 
 "Yes, curiously. It seems to be affection. I won't 
 say gratitude, because you don't like that. But it's a 
 thing so foreign to this modern world that it's a miracle. 
 It seems as if these people had been standing apart 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 157 
 
 from you to give you breathing-room, not crowding, 
 as if to let your arm have play. Doesn't it seem so, 
 Maynard?" 
 
 Maynard nodded, his hand before his eyes. The 
 doctor went on slowly, partly as if he sought out the 
 right word to fit his patient, and partly because the 
 moment really seemed to him amazing. "I never saw 
 anything of the kind. It looks as if you had been, not 
 ignored, but hedged about because you were so precious 
 a seed in a garden-bed, when there's no other seed 
 exactly like it. I never heard of such a thing, in these 
 days of hounding men to death because they have a 
 gift. Usually, you know, it's well, it's as if nature 
 gave some of you a present and shut it up in your hand, 
 and then the crowd runs after you and tumbles over 
 you and tries to get a sight of it, as hens chase down one 
 that's got a bug too big to swallow. But they've stood 
 back. They've given you air. And now, when they 
 think you've stumbled, they can't be quick enough 
 with the glad hand." 
 
 Maynard had risen and walked to the window. He 
 stood there with his back to his friend, and Gardner 
 had a vague reflection of what he must be thinking, 
 though not with the clarified vision that tingled over 
 Maynard's nerves. He knew that Maynard in that 
 instant saw himself, not as a suffering atom, but a cit- 
 izen of worlds. The man had been sitting at his loom in 
 darkness, and now a wind had risen and turned the 
 fabric to the sun. 
 
 Maynard was speaking. 
 
 "Did you ever think we get to a place sometimes 
 where we we can't live unless somebody lives for us? 
 
158 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 We haven't breath enough. Som^bMy's got to pump 
 it in. We haven't blood enough oomebody's got to 
 open a vein." 
 
 " Precisely." 
 
 "In the beginning our mothers live for us. We're 
 fed. Then we think we feed ourselves. We get arro- 
 gant, and it isn't till we stumble that we know how 
 weak we are, and then we find God, man! it's fellow- 
 ship. With their hands they bear us up " 
 
 He stopped, and Gardner, watching him, did not 
 speak. Maynard walked back to the table with a 
 firmer step than he had taken for many days. He stood 
 there, resting a hand on the blank pages at his place. 
 
 "I've got to get to work," he said, imperatively. 
 
 "You shall." 
 
 "You must police me a little, see that I don't go 
 too fast " 
 
 "I will. You've had some knockdown. I don't 
 know what it is, and it isn't necessary I should. But it's 
 bruised you. That's temporary, however. Mind me, 
 and you shall sit here at your desk " 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "To-morrow, for ten minutes. The next day, ten. 
 In six months, your old four hours. Now you'll take 
 some drops I have here and go to bed." 
 
 Before the sedative got its grip, Maynard, lying, 
 hands crossed and will quiescent, was conscious of 
 thoughts so comforting that they seemed like actual 
 visitants men and women who wished him well. They 
 gave him a smiling sense that the world was richly 
 peopled. When he had been most bereft, they made it 
 apparent to him that he had been still qqinpanioned. 
 
THE HANDS OF THE FAITHFUL 159 
 
 When he had seemed to himself too poor a thing to be 
 cast outside on the refuse-heap of abortive life, they 
 had wrapped him in a mantle woven, they told him, 
 by his own hands, and led him forth with pseans and 
 rejoicing. Mysteriously among them was Anne De 
 Lisle. She had been with him through it all, when 
 his will swung from attainment to the human and back 
 again to his dear task. Some beautiful poise had been 
 kept because her hands had steadied it. That the 
 slender threads of his own life had penetrated the life 
 outside him was because she had helped to make them 
 hold. It had ended by being her most beneficent gift 
 to die that he might live, and she had been glad to offer 
 it. 
 
 Then as the soothing drug laid firmer fingers on him, 
 he saw himself as if for the moment he were detached 
 from all his old desires. He seemed to be marching 
 in a procession, the innumerable throng of silent and 
 absorbed artificers. They were on their way to a 
 temple what temple he did not know; but as he tried 
 to fix it, his drowsy mind insisted upon abstract defini- 
 tion in the words "one far-off divine event", and he 
 accepted it as quite satisfactory to know that and no 
 more. Each one of the workmen carried something, 
 as if it were a gift entrusted to him to bear safely to 
 the temple. At first it seemed to him that only the 
 favored ones had gifts; and then he knew that all created 
 things held something precious, and must guard it, 
 whether it was the mother who must shield her child 
 or the poet who must keep the rhythm of his song, or 
 the beetle that had sheen upon its wings. He did not 
 clearly see how, but it was apparent to him, in the way 
 
160 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 of the vision, that there was more than this: for every- 
 body was guarding not only his own gift, but the gift 
 of everybody else. It was a web of service, a harmony 
 of multitudinous notes, and all mysteriously for the 
 temple. 
 
 And through the surge of deepening peace was the 
 certainty that in the morning he should begin his 
 beautiful book. 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 
 
 JEROME WILMER sat in the garden, painting 
 in a background, with the carelessness of ease. 
 He seemed to be dabbing little touches at the 
 canvas, as a spontaneous kind of fun not likely to 
 result in anything serious, save, perhaps, the necessity 
 of scrubbing them off afterward, like a too adventurous 
 child. Mary Brinsley, in her lilac print, stood a few 
 paces away, the sun on her hair, and watched him. 
 
 " Paris is very becoming to you," she said, at last. 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Wilmer, glancing up, 
 and then beginning to consider her so particularly 
 that she stepped aside, her brows knitted, with an 
 admonishing, 
 
 "Look out! you'll get me into the landscape." 
 
 "You're always in the landscape. What do you 
 mean about Paris?" 
 
 "You look so so travelled, so equal to any place, 
 and Paris in particular because it's the finest." 
 
 Other people also had said that, in their various ways. 
 He had the distinction set by nature upon a muscular 
 body and a rather small head, well poised. His hah-, 
 now turning gray, grew delightfully about the temples, 
 and though it was brushed back in the style of a man 
 who never looks at himself twice when once will do, 
 it had a way of seeming entirely right. His brows were 
 firm, his mouth determined, and the close pointed 
 
 161 
 
162 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 beard brought his face to a delicate finish. Even his 
 clothes, of the kind that never look new, had fallen 
 into lines of easy use. 
 
 " You needn't guy me," he said, and went on painting. 
 But he flashed his sudden smile at her. "Isn't New 
 England becoming to me, too?" 
 
 "Yes, for the summer. It's overpowered. In the 
 winter Aunt Celia calls you 'Jerry Wilmer'. She's 
 quite topping then. But the minute you appear with 
 European labels on your trunks and that air of speaking 
 foreign lingo, she gives out completely. Every time 
 she sees your name in the paper she forgets you went 
 to school at the Academy and built the fires. She 
 calls you 'our boarder' then, for as much as a week and 
 a half." 
 
 "Quit it, Mary," said he, smiling at her again. 
 
 "Well," said Mary, yet without turning, "I must go 
 and weed a while." 
 
 "No," put in Wilmer innocently; "he won't be over 
 yet. He had a big mail. I brought it to him." 
 
 Mary blushed, and made as if to go. She was a 
 woman of thirty-five, well poised, and sweet through 
 wholesomeness. Her face had been cut on a regular 
 pattern, and then some natural influence had touched 
 it up beguilingly with contradictions. She swung back, 
 after her one tentative step, and sobered. 
 
 "How do you think he is looking?" she asked. 
 
 "Prime." 
 
 "Not so " 
 
 "Not so morbid as when I was here last summer," 
 he helped her out. "Not by any means. Are you 
 going to marry him, Mary?" The question had only a 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 168 
 
 civil emphasis, but a warmer tone informed it. Mary 
 grew pink under the morning light, and Jerome went 
 on: "Yes, I have a perfect right to talk about it. I 
 don't travel three thousand miles every summer to 
 ask you to marry me without earning some claim to 
 frankness. I mentioned that to Marshby himself. 
 We met at the station, you remember, the day I came. 
 We walked down together. He spoke about my sketch- 
 ing, and I told him I had come on my annual pilgrimage, 
 to ask Mary Brinsley to marry me." 
 
 "Jerome!" 
 
 "Yes, I did. This is my tenth pilgrimage. Mary, 
 will you marry me?" 
 
 "No," said Mary softly, but as if she liked him very 
 much. "No, Jerome." 
 
 Wilmer squeezed a tube on his palette and re- 
 garded the color, frowningly. "Might as well, Mary," 
 said he. "You'd have an awfully good time in 
 Paris." 
 
 She was perfectly still, watching him, and he went 
 on: 
 
 "Now you're thinking if Marshby gets the consulate 
 you'll be across the water anyway, and you could run 
 down to Paris and see the sights. But it wouldn't 
 be the same thing. It's Marshby you like, but you'd 
 have a better time with me." 
 
 "It's a foregone conclusion that the consulship will 
 be offered him," said Mary. Her eyes were now on the 
 path leading through the garden and over the wall to 
 the neighboring house where Marshby lived. 
 
 "Then you will marry and go with him. Ah, well, 
 that's finished. I needn't come another summer. 
 
164 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 When you are in Paris, I can show you the boulevards 
 and cafes." 
 
 "It is more than probable he won't accept the consul- 
 ship." 
 
 "Why?" He held his palette arrested in mid-air 
 and stared at her. 
 
 "He is doubtful of himself doubtful whether he is 
 equal to so responsible a place." 
 
 "Bah! it's not an embassy." 
 
 "No; but he fancies he has not the address, the social 
 gifts in fact, he shrinks from it." Her face had taken 
 on a soft distress; her eyes appealed to him. She 
 seemed to be confessing, for the other man, something 
 that might well be misunderstood. Jerome, ignoring 
 the flag of her discomfort, went on painting, to give her 
 room for confidence. 
 
 "Is it that old plague-spot?" he asked, with a whole- 
 some candor. "Why not talk freely about it? Just 
 what aspect does it bear to him?" 
 
 "It is the old remorse. He misunderstood his 
 brother when they two were left alone in the world. 
 He forced the boy out of evil associations when he 
 ought to have led him. You know the rest of it. The 
 boy was desperate. He killed himself." 
 
 ' ' When he was drunk. Marshby wasn't responsible. ' ' 
 
 "No, not directly. But you know that kind of mind. 
 It follows hidden causes. That's why his essays are so 
 good. Anyway, it has crippled him. It came when he 
 was too young, and it marked him for life. He has 
 an inveterate self -distrust." 
 
 "Ah, well," said Wilmer, including the summer 
 landscape in a wave of his brush, "give up the consul- 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 165 
 
 ship. Let him give it up. It isn't as if he hadn't a 
 roof. Settle down in his house there, you two, and let 
 him write his essays, and you just be happy." 
 
 She ignored her own part in the prophecy completely 
 and finally. " It isn't the consulship as the consulship," 
 she responded. "It is the life abroad I want for him. 
 It would give him well, it would give him what it has 
 given you. His work would show it." She spoke hotly, 
 and at once Jerome saw himself envied for his brilliant 
 cosmopolitan life, the bounty of his success fairly 
 coveted for the other man. It gave him a curious pang. 
 He felt, somehow, impoverished, and drew his breath 
 more meagrely. But the actual thought in his mind 
 grew too big to be suppressed, and he stayed his hand 
 to look at her. 
 
 "That's not all," he said. 
 
 "All what?" 
 
 "That's not the main reason why you want him to 
 go. You think if he really asserted himself, really 
 knocked down the spectre of his old distrust and 
 stamped on it, he would be a different man. If he 
 had once proved himself, as we say of younger chaps, 
 he could go on proving." 
 
 "No," she declared, in nervous loyalty. She was 
 like a bird fluttering to save her nest. "No! You 
 are wrong. I ought not to have talked about him at 
 all. I shouldn't to anybody else. Only, you are so 
 kind." 
 
 "It's easy to be kind," said Jerome, gently, "when 
 there's nothing else left us." 
 
 She stood wilfully swaying a branch of the tendrilled 
 arbor, and, he subtly felt, so dissatisfied with herself 
 
166 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 for her temporary disloyalty that she felt alien to them 
 both: Marshby because she had wronged him by ad- 
 mitting another man to this intimate knowledge of him, 
 and the other man for being her accomplice. 
 
 " Don't be sorry," he said, softly. "You haven't 
 been naughty." 
 
 But she had swung round to some comprehension 
 of what he had a right to feel. 
 
 "It makes one very selfish," she said, waveringly, 
 "to want to want things to come out right." 
 
 "I know. Well, can't we make them come out right? 
 He is sure of the consulship?" 
 
 "Practically." 
 
 "You want to be assured of his taking it." 
 
 She did not answer; but her face lighted, as if to a 
 new appeal. Jerome followed her look along the path. 
 Marshby himself was coming. He was no weakling. 
 He swung along easily with the stride of a man accus- 
 tomed to using his body well. He had not, perhaps, 
 the urban air, and yet there was nothing about him 
 which would not have responded at once to a more 
 exacting civilization. Jerome knew his face, knew 
 it from their college days together and through these 
 annual visits of his own; but now, as Marshby ap- 
 proached, the artist rated him not so much by the 
 friendly as the professional eye. He saw a man who 
 looked the scholar and the gentleman, keen though 
 not imperious of glance. His visage, mature even for 
 its years, had suffered more from emotion than from 
 deeds or the assaults of fortune. Marshby had lived 
 the life of thought, and, exaggerating action, had 
 failed to fit himself to any form of it. Wilmer glanced 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 167 
 
 at his hands, too, as they swung with his walk, and then 
 remembered that the professional eye had already 
 noted them and laid their lines away for some suggestive 
 use. As he looked, Marshby stopped in his approach, 
 caught by the singularity of a gnarled tree limb. It 
 awoke in him a cognizance of nature's processes, and 
 his face lighted with the pleasure of it. 
 
 "So you won't marry me?'* asked Wilmer, softly, 
 in that pause. 
 
 "Don't!" said Mary. 
 
 "Why not, when you won't tell whether you're 
 engaged to him or not? Why not, anyway? If I were 
 sure you'd be happier with me, Fd snatch you out of 
 his very maw. Yes, I would. Are you sure you like 
 him, Mary?" 
 
 The girl did not answer, for Marshby had started 
 again. Jerome got the look in her face, and smiled 
 a little, sadly. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "you're sure." 
 
 Mary immediately felt unable to encounter them 
 together. She gave Marshby a good-morning, and, to 
 his bewilderment, made some excuse about her weeding, 
 and flitted past him on the path. His eyes followed her, 
 and when they came back to Wilmer the artist nodded 
 brightly. 
 
 "I've just asked her," he said. 
 
 "Asked her?" Marshby was about to pass him, 
 pulling out his glasses and at the same time peering 
 at the picture with the impatience of his nearsighted 
 look. 
 
 "There, don't you do that!" cried Jerome, stopping 
 with his brush in air. "Don't you come round and 
 
168 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 stare over my shoulder. It makes me nervous as the 
 devil. Step back there there by that mullein. So! 
 I've got to face my protagonist. Yes, I've been asking 
 her to marry me." 
 
 Marshby stiffened. His head went up, his jaw 
 tightened. He looked the jealous ire of the male. 
 
 "What do you want me to stand here for?" he asked, 
 irritably. 
 
 "But she refused me," said Wilmer, cheerfully. 
 "Stand still, that's a good fellow. I'm using you." 
 
 Marshby had by an effort pulled himself together. 
 He dismissed Mary from his mind, as he wished to 
 drive her from the other man's speech. 
 
 " I've been reading the morning paper on your 
 exhibition," he said, bringing out the journal from his 
 pocket. " They can't say enough about you." 
 
 " Oh, can't they! Well, the better for me. What 
 are they pleased to discover?" 
 
 " They say you see round corners and through deal 
 boards. Listen." He struck open the paper and read: 
 ; ' A man with a hidden crime upon his soul will do well 
 to elude this greatest of modern magicians. The man 
 with a secret tells it the instant he sits down before 
 Jerome Wilmer. Wilmer does not paint faces, brows, 
 hands. He paints hopes, fears, and longings. If we 
 could, in our turn, get to the heart of his mystery! 
 If we could learn whether he says to himself: "I see 
 hate in that face, hypocrisy, greed. I will paint them. 
 That man is not man, but cur. He shall fawn on my 
 canvas." Or does he paint through a kind of inspired 
 carelessness, and as the line obeys the eye and hand, so 
 does the emotion live in the line? ' " 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 169 
 
 "Oh, gammon!" snapped Wilmer. 
 
 "Well, do you?" said Marshby, tossing the paper 
 to the little table where Mary's work-box stood. 
 
 "Do I what? Spy and then paint, or paint and find 
 I've spied? Oh, I guess I plug along like any other 
 decent workman. When it comes to that, how do you 
 write your essays?" 
 
 "I! Oh!" Marshby's face clouded. "That's 
 another pair of sleeves. Your work is colossal. I'm 
 still on cherry-stones." 
 
 "Well," said Wilmer, with slow incisiveness, "you've 
 accomplished one thing I'd sell my name for. You've 
 got Mary Brinsley bound to you so fast that neither 
 lure not lash can stir her. I've tried it tried Paris 
 even, the crudest bribe there is. No good! She won't 
 have me." 
 
 At her name Marshby straightened again and there 
 was fire in his eye. Wilmer, sketching him in, seemed to 
 gain distinct impulse from the pose, and worked the faster. 
 
 "Don't move," he ordered. "There, that's right. 
 So, you see, you're the successful chap. I'm the failure. 
 She won't have me." There was such feeling in his 
 tone that Marshby's expression softened compre- 
 hendingly. He understood a pain that prompted such 
 a man to rash avowal. 
 
 "I don't believe we'd better speak of her," he said, 
 in awkward kindliness. 
 
 "I want to," returned Wilmer. "I want to tell you 
 how lucky you are." 
 
 Again that shade of introspective bitterness clouded 
 Marshby's face. "Yes," said he, involuntarily. "But 
 how about her? Is she lucky? " 
 
170 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Yes," replied Jerome, steadily. "She's got what 
 she wants. She won't worship you any the less be- 
 cause you don't worship yourself. That's the mad way 
 they have women. It's an awful challenge. You've 
 got a fight before you, if you don't refuse it." 
 
 "God!" groaned Marshby to himself, "it is a fight. 
 I can't refuse it." 
 
 Wilmer put his question without mercy. "Do you 
 want to?" 
 
 "I want her to be happy," said Marshby, with a 
 simple humility afar from cowardice. "I want her 
 to be safe. I don't see how anybody could be safe 
 with me." 
 
 "Well," pursued Wilmer, recklessly, "would she 
 be safe with me? " 
 
 "I think so," said Marshby, keeping an unblemished 
 dignity. "I have thought that for a good many years." 
 
 "But not happy?" 
 
 "No, not happy. She would We have been together 
 so long." 
 
 "Yes, she'd miss you. She's die of homesickness. 
 Well!" He sat contemplating Marshby with his pro- 
 fessional stare; but really his mind was opened for 
 the first time to the full reason for Mary's unchang- 
 ing love. Marshby stood there so quiet, so oblivious 
 of himself in comparison with unseen things, so much 
 a man from head to foot, that he justified the woman's 
 loyal passion as nothing had before. "Shall you accept 
 the consulate?" Wilmer asked, abruptly. 
 
 Brought face to face with fact, Marshby's pose 
 slackened. He drooped perceptibly. "Probably not," 
 he said. "No, decidedly not." 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 171 
 
 Wilmer swore under his breath, and sat, brows bent, 
 marvelling at the change in him. The man's infirmity 
 of will had blighted him. He was so truly another 
 creature that not even a woman's unreasoning cham- 
 pionship could pull him into shape again. 
 
 Mary Brinsley came swiftly down the path, trowel 
 in one hand and her basket of weeds in the other. 
 Wilmer wondered if she had been glancing up from some 
 flowery screen and read the story of that altered posture. 
 She looked sharply anxious, like a mother whose child 
 is threatened. Jerome shrewdly knew that Marshby's 
 telltale attitude was no unfamiliar one. 
 
 "What have you been saying?" she asked, in laugh- 
 ing challenge, yet with anxiety underneath. 
 
 "I'm painting him in," said Wilmer; but as she came 
 toward him he turned the canvas dexterously. "No," 
 said he, "no. I've got my idea from this. To-morrow 
 Marshby's going to sit." 
 
 That was all he would say, and Mary put it aside 
 as one of his pleasantries made to fit the hour. But 
 next day he set up a big canvas in the barn that served 
 him as workroom, and summoned Marshby from his 
 books. He came dressed exactly right, in his every- 
 day clothes that had comfortable wrinkles hi them, 
 and easily took his pose. For all his concern over the 
 inefficiency of his life, as a life, he was entirely without 
 self-consciousness in his personal habit. Jerome liked 
 that, and began to like him better as he knew him more. 
 A strange illuminative process went on in his mind 
 toward the man as Mary saw him, and more and more 
 he nursed a fretful sympathy with her desire to see 
 Marshby tuned up to some pitch that should make 
 
172 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 him livable to himself. It seemed a cruelty of nature 
 that any man should so scorn his own company and yet 
 be forced to keep it through an allotted span. In that 
 sitting Marshby was at first serious and absent-minded. 
 Though his body was obediently there, the spirit 
 seemed to be busy somewhere else. 
 
 "Head up!" cried Jerome at last, brutally. "Heav- 
 ens, man, don't skulk!" 
 
 Marshby straightened under the blow. It hit harder, 
 as Jerome meant it should, than any verbal rallying. 
 It sent the man back over his own life to the first 
 stumble in it. 
 
 "I want you to look as if you heard drums and fife," 
 Jerome explained, with one of his quick smiles, that 
 always wiped out former injury. 
 
 But the flush was not yet out of Marshby's face, 
 and he answered, bitterly, "I might run." 
 
 "I don't mind your looking as if you'd like to run 
 and knew you couldn't," said Jerome, dashing in 
 strokes now in a happy certainty. 
 
 "Why couldn't I?" asked Marshby, still from that 
 abiding scorn of his own ways. 
 
 "Because you can't, that's all. Partly because you 
 get the habit of facing the music. I should like 
 Wilmer had an unconsidered way of entertaining his 
 sitters, without much expenditure to himself; he pur- 
 sued a fantastic habit of talk to keep their blood mov- 
 ing, and did it with the eye of the mind unswervingly on 
 his work. "If I were you, I'd do it. I'd write an essay 
 on the muscular habit of courage. Your coward is born 
 weak-kneed. He shouldn't spill himself all over the 
 p ] ace trying to put on the spiritual make-up of a hero. 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 173 
 
 He must simply strengthen his knees. When they'll 
 take him anywhere he requests, without buckling, he 
 wakes up and finds himself a field-marshal. Voild!" 
 
 "It isn't bad," said Marshby, unconsciously straight- 
 ening. "Go ahead, Jerome. Turn us all into field- 
 marshals." 
 
 "Not all," objected Wilmer, seeming to dash his 
 brush at the canvas with the large carelessness that 
 promised his best work. "The jobs wouldn't go round. 
 But I don't feel the worse for it when I see the recruity 
 stepping out, promotion in his eye." 
 
 After the sitting, Wilmer went yawning forward, 
 and with a hand on Marshby's shoulder, took him to 
 the door. 
 
 "Can't let you look at the thing," he said, as Marshby 
 gave one backward glance. "That's against the code. 
 Till it's done, no eye touches it but mine and the light 
 of heaven." 
 
 Marshby had no curiosity. He smiled, and there- 
 after left the picture alone, even to the extent of in- 
 terested speculation. Mary had scrupulously absented 
 herself from that first sitting; but after it was over and 
 Marshby had gone home, Wilmer found her in the 
 garden, under an apple-tree, shelling pease. He lay 
 down on the ground, at a little distance, and watched 
 her. He noted the quick, capable turn of her 
 wrist and the dexterous motion of the brown 
 hands as they snapped out the pease, and he thought 
 how eminently sweet and comfortable it would be 
 to take this bit of his youth back to France with 
 him, or even to give up France and grow old with 
 her at home 
 
174 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Mary," said he, "I sha'n't paint any picture of 
 you this summer." 
 
 Mary laughed, and brushed back a yellow lock with 
 the back of her hand. "No," said she, "I suppose not. 
 Aunt Celia spoke of it yesterday. She told me the 
 
 reason." 
 
 "What is Aunt Celia's most excellent theory?" 
 
 "She said I'm not so likely as I used to be." 
 
 "No," said Jerome, not answering her smile in the 
 community of mirth they always had over Aunt Celia's 
 simple speech. He rolled over on the grass and began 
 to make a dandelion curl. "No, that's not it. You're 
 a good deal likelier than you used to be. You're all 
 possibilities now. I could make a Madonna out of 
 you, quick as a wink. No, it's because I've decided to 
 paint Marshby instead." 
 
 Mary's hands stilled themselves, and she looked at 
 him anxiously. "Why are you doing that?" she asked. 
 
 "Don't you want the picture? " 
 
 "What are you going to do with it?" 
 
 "Give it to you, I guess. For a wedding-present, 
 Mary." 
 
 "You mustn't say those things," said Mary, gravely. 
 She went on working, but her face was serious. 
 
 "It's queer, isn't it," remarked Wilmer, after a 
 pause, "this notion you've got that Marshby's the only 
 one that could possibly do? I began asking you first." 
 
 "Please!" said Mary. Her eyes were full of tears. 
 That was rare for her, and Wilmer saw it meant a 
 shaken poise. She was less certain to-day of her own 
 fate. It made her more responsively tender toward 
 his. He sat up and looked at her. 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 175 
 
 "No," he said. "No. I won't ask you again. I 
 never meant to. Only I have to speak of it once in a 
 while. We should have such a tremendously good 
 tune together." 
 
 "We have a tremendously good time now," said 
 Mary, the smile coming while she again put up the back 
 of her hand and brushed her eyes. ' ' When you're good/ ' 
 
 "When I help all the other little boys at the table, 
 and don't look at the nice heart-shaped cake I want 
 myself? It's frosted, and got little pink things all 
 over the top. There! don't drop the corners of your 
 mouth. If I were asked what kind of a world I'd like 
 to live in, I'd say one where the corners of Mary's 
 mouth keep quirked up all the time. Let's talk about 
 Marshby's picture. It's going to be your Marshby." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Not Marshby's Marshby yours." 
 
 "You're not going to play some dreadful joke on 
 him? " Her eyes were blazing under knotted brows. 
 
 "Mary!" Wilmer spoke gently, and though the 
 tone recalled her, she could not forbear at once, in her 
 hurt pride and loyalty. 
 
 "You're not going to put him into any masquerade? 
 to make him anything but what he is?" 
 
 "Mary, don't you think that's a little hard on an 
 old chum?" 
 
 "I can't help it." Her cheeks were hot, though 
 now it was with shame. "Yes, I am mean, jealous, 
 envious. I see you with everything at your feet " 
 
 "Not quite everything," said Jerome. "Not quite. 
 I know it makes you hate me." 
 
 "No! no!" The real woman had awakened in her, 
 
176 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 and she turned to him in a whole-hearted honesty. 
 "Only, they say you do such wizard things when you 
 paint. I never saw any of your pictures, you know, 
 except the ones you did of me. And they're not me. 
 They're lovely angels with women's clothes on. Aunt 
 Celia says if I looked like that I'd carry all before me. 
 But, you see, you've always been partial to me." 
 
 "And you think I'm not partial to Marshby?" 
 
 "It isn't that. It's only that they say you look in- 
 side people and drag out what is there. And inside 
 him oh, you'd see his hatred of himself!" The tears 
 were rolling unregarded down her face. 
 
 "This is dreadful," said Winner, chiefly to himself. 
 "Dreadful." 
 
 "There ! " said Mary, drearily, emptying the pods from 
 her apron into the basket at her side. "I suppose I've 
 done it now. I've spoiled the picture." . 
 
 "No," returned Jerome, thoughtfully, "you haven't 
 spoiled the picture. Really I began it with a very 
 definite conception of what I was going to do. It will 
 be done in that way or not at all." 
 
 "You're very kind," said Mary humbly. "I didn't 
 mean to act like this." 
 
 "No," he spoke out of a maze of reflection, not 
 looking at her. "You have an idea he's under the 
 microscope. It makes you nervous." 
 
 She nodded and then caught herself up. 
 
 "There's nothing you mightn't see," she said, proudly, 
 ignoring her previous outburst. "You or anybody else, 
 even with a microscope." 
 
 "No, of course not. Only you'd say microscopes 
 aren't fair. Well, perhaps they're not. And portrait- 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 177 
 
 painting is a very simple matter. It's not the black 
 art. But if I go on with this, you are to let me do it in 
 my own way. You're not to look at it." 
 
 " Not even when you're not at work? " 
 
 "Not once, morning, noon, or night, till I invite 
 you to. You were always a good fellow, Mary. You'll 
 keep your word." 
 
 "No, I won't look at it," said Mary. 
 
 Thereafter she stayed away from the barn, not only 
 when he was painting, but at other times, and Wilmer 
 missed her. He worked very fast, and made his plans 
 for sailing, and Aunt Celia loudly bemoaned his stingi- 
 ness in cutting short the summer. One day, after 
 breakfast, he sought out Mary again in the garden. 
 She was snipping coreopsis for the dinner table, but 
 she did it absently, and Jerome noted the heaviness 
 of her eyes. 
 
 "What's the trouble?" he asked, abruptly, and she 
 was shaken out of her late constraint. She looked up 
 at him with a piteous smile. 
 
 "Nothing much," she said. "It doesn't matter. 
 I suppose it's fate. He has written his letter." 
 
 "Marshby?" 
 
 "You knew he got his appointment?" 
 
 "No; I saw something had him by the heels, but he's 
 been still as a fish." 
 
 "It came three days ago. He has decided not to take 
 it. And it will break his heart." 
 
 "It will break your heart," Wilmer opened his lips 
 to say; but he dared not jostle her mood of unconsidered 
 frankness. 
 
 "I suppose I expected it," she went on. "I did 
 
178 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 expect it. Yet he's been so different lately, it gave me 
 a kind of hope." 
 
 Jerome started. "How has he been different?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "More confident, less doubtful of himself. It's not 
 anything he has said. It's in his speech, his walk. He 
 even carries his head differently, as if he had a right to. 
 Well, we talked half the night last night, and he went 
 home to write the letter. He promised me not to mail 
 it till he'd seen me once more; but nothing will make 
 any difference." 
 
 "You won't beseech him?" 
 
 "No. He is a man. He must decide." 
 
 "You won't tell him what depends on it?" 
 
 ' l Nothing depends on it , " said Mary, calmly. ' l Noth- 
 ing except his own happiness. I shall find mine in 
 letting him accept his life according to his own free 
 will." 
 
 There was something majestic in her mental attitude. 
 Wilmer felt how noble her full maturity was to be, and 
 told himself, with a thrill of pride, that he had done 
 well to love her. 
 
 "Marshby is coming," he said. "I want to show you 
 both the picture." 
 
 Mary shook her head. "Not this morning," she 
 told him, and he could see how meagre canvas and 
 paint must seem to her after her vision of the body of 
 life. But he took her hand. 
 
 "Come," he said, gently; "you must." 
 
 Still holding her flowers, she went with him, though 
 her mind abode with her lost cause. Marshby halted 
 when he saw them coming, and Jerome had time to 
 
THE WIZARD'S TOUCH 179 
 
 look at him. The man held himself wilfully erect, but 
 his face betrayed him. It was haggard, smitten. He 
 had not only met defeat; he had accepted it. Jerome 
 nodded to him and went on before them to the barn. 
 The picture stood there in a favoring light. Mary 
 caught her breath sharply, and then all three were 
 silent. Jerome stood there forgetful of them, his eyes 
 on his completed work, and for the moment he had in 
 it the triumph of one who sees intention brought to 
 fruitage under perfect auspices. It meant more to 
 him, that recognition, than any glowing moment of 
 his youth. The scroll of his life unrolled before him, 
 and he saw his past, as other men acclaimed it, running 
 into the future ready for his hand to make. A great 
 illumination touched the days to come. Brilliant in 
 promise, they were yet barren of hope. For as surely 
 as he had been able to set this seal on Mary's present, 
 he saw how the thing itself would separate them. He 
 had painted her ideal of Marshby; but whenever in 
 the future she should nurse the man through the mental 
 sickness bound always to delay his march, she would 
 remember this moment with a pang, as something 
 Jerome had dowered him with, not something he had 
 attained unaided. Marshby faced them from the 
 canvas, erect, undaunted, a soldier fronting the dawn, 
 expectant of battle, yet with no dread of its event. 
 He was not in any sense alien to himself. He dominated 
 not by crude force, but through the sustained inward 
 strength of him. It was not youth Jerome had given 
 him. There was maturity in the face. It had its lines 
 the lines that are the scars of battle; but somehow 
 not one suggested, even to the doubtful mind, a battle 
 
180 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 lost. Jerome turned from the picture to the man him- 
 self, and had his own surprise. Marshby was trans- 
 figured. He breathed humility and hope. He stirred 
 at Wilmer's motion. 
 
 "Am I" he glowed " could I have looked like 
 that?" Then in the poignancy of the moment he saw 
 how disloyal to the moment it was even to hint at what 
 should have been, without snapping the link now into 
 the welding present. He straightened himself and 
 spoke brusquely, but to Mary: 
 
 "I'll go back and write that letter. Here is the one 
 I wrote last night." 
 
 He took it from his pocket, tore it in two, and gave 
 it to her. Then he turned away and walked with the 
 soldier's step home through the garden. Jerome could 
 not look at her. He began moving back the picture. 
 
 "There!" he said, "it's finished. Better make up 
 your mind where you'll have it put. I shall be picking 
 up my traps this morning." 
 
 Then Mary gave him his other surprise. Her hands 
 were on his shoulders. Her eyes, full of the welling 
 gratitude that is one kind of love, spoke like her lips. 
 
 "Oh!" said she, "do you think I don't know what 
 you've done? I couldn't take it from anybody else. 
 I couldn't let him take it. It's like standing beside 
 him in battle; like lending him your horse, your sword. 
 It's being a comrade. It's helping him fight. And he 
 will fight. That's the glory of it ! " 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 
 
 JOHN SETON, speaking his concluding words on 
 the lecture platform of the Club, was an in- 
 spiring sight to the ladies there before him, he 
 looked so strong, so fit in every way for the struggle 
 he had predicted. He was a young man who believed 
 intensely in the validity of his subject, though he had 
 to put it tentatively, because he was still modest enough 
 to wonder sometimes whether, after all, he had found 
 the very clearest window into the future. So he had 
 announced himself under the wavering interrogation 
 "Am I a socialist?" That seemed to throw the burden 
 of proof on the ladies; and they, gazing at him from 
 under furrowed brows, thought they knew: he looked 
 too honest and impulsive not to take a stand, too 
 significant, with that face made for tenderness and 
 laughter. 
 
 "Won't you come home with us, Mr. Seton?" asked 
 a matron, in the congratulatory crowd about him. 
 "Come and have a cup of tea." 
 
 He was about to answer with the perfunctory cour- 
 tesy of the man used to shunting social tributes, when 
 something arrested his glance and held it for a second, 
 inappreciable but significant. Mrs. Underhill was a 
 lady of middle height and of a certain luxuriance of 
 type which she had subdued to the note of the perfect 
 dress she wore, a smoky gray with all the concomitants 
 
 181 
 
182 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 of exquisite finishing, fur, and the gleam of the neces- 
 sary chain that held her lorgnon. Her color was high, 
 though not in the least coarsely so, and, wholesome as 
 she was, she breathed out an inexplicable hint of being 
 at the mercy of her own emotions. Seton, looking at 
 her in the instant of her invitation, thought absently, 
 with that part of his mind that was always commenting 
 on the byplay of life, that he had seen precisely her 
 type that morning at a tenement-house door: a woman 
 fresh from easy battling at the tub, her face shining 
 with health and a consciousness of warm benevolence 
 toward her man, her children, and beyond them such 
 of the world as did not interfere with their well-being. 
 Two Underhill daughters, easily recognized as of the 
 mother's blood, but of a reduced type warm-hearted, 
 small-brained, affectionate creatures waiting to do their 
 duty to the world through some form of child-nurture 
 stood at her right side, their hands already in their 
 muffs, an attitude of waiting with the patient symbolism 
 of wrists in fetters. But at that instant of looking, 
 Seton caught something like a message that did not 
 mean to be a message: a ray from the blue eyes of the 
 other daughter, standing at the left. She was younger 
 than these two plump summoners to the dance of Me, 
 taller and slender, yet with every implication of strength, 
 of a clear pink and white skin, hair light yellow, and 
 gray eyes that told overmuch of themselves, and a 
 nature that, without certainty of response, meant to 
 tell nothing at all. Then Seton surprised himself. 
 
 " Thank you very much," he said, to the mother. 
 "I will." 
 
 At once he seemed to have shuffled off his answers 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 183 
 
 to the interrogative clamor that might not have been 
 needed if anybody had really listened to his talk, and 
 made way for the ladies through the perplexed and 
 surgent throng. He nearly always, after speaking, 
 left the room unless the audience had been of those 
 whose beliefs, like his own, were partly crystallized 
 with an impression of frowning faces, brows tense under 
 the impact of his revelations; and it was tiring. To- 
 day he hardly cared at all. He was able to throw off 
 the aura of the listening ladies, as his lungs got rid of 
 the bad air, and presently he was in the car, being 
 driven away. 
 
 Their progress itself offered a glimpse into the exuber- 
 ant benevolence of his hostess. Her conversation, 
 made up, at this juncture, of delight in Seton's lecture 
 and wonder how any one could possibly live in the 
 world and ignore its ill condition, was punctuated with 
 little shrieks of caution to the chauffeur not to run 
 over this man or that dog. Her attitude of mind 
 seemed to be that of one who, almost alone in her 
 perspicacity, has discovered how wilfully determined 
 everybody is to run over everybody else, and that the 
 only possible office for a well-wishing person is that of 
 the voluble censor, the champion of plain decencies. 
 Seton gathered that she was a lady of great emotional 
 leisure, because she pounced upon the evidences of 
 want or abuse, and waved and objurgated at things 
 piteously commonplace in the every-day economy, 
 things he had learned not to score his mind with, lest 
 he should go really mad. But Mrs. Underbill had 
 plenty of indignation and ruth to pour into the channel 
 of mere noise. Before they reached the stately front 
 
184 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 that walled her home, Seton had learned that she 
 abominated persons who docked the tails of horses 
 and dogs, used an overhead check, ground down the 
 working-man, and did not remember that the apple- 
 woman and the roasted-chestnut man had human 
 rights. He, too, hated the sight of clipped animals, 
 and was pretty sure his brother was his brother; but 
 he had no more temptation to shriek about it than to 
 go into a library where he might study the causes of 
 things, and insist on chanting: "This is a. This is b. 
 This is c." To all the mother's gush of warning and 
 partisanship and robust solace of kindness, two of the 
 daughters added little agreeing cries; but the golden- 
 haired girl sat straight and said nothing. Seton saw 
 that, for some reason, she could not by nature add her 
 comment to the ever-springing leafage of benevolence 
 beside her. She could not keep telling how she loved 
 everybody and hated to have them hurt. For some 
 reason, she could not. 
 
 When they had entered the rather dark hall, sombre 
 with the hue of old wood, they were met by an ava- 
 lanche of dogs three only, but dogs so glad that they 
 hurled themselves into a miniature exposition of all 
 dogdom. Seton was presented to them, and given 
 instantly an impression that they were far more im- 
 portant than he, and would continue to be, unless he 
 should have the ill fortune to lose a hand or a job. 
 Then the benevolence of the ladies might shift tempo- 
 rarily to the human side. The dogs two Irish terriers, 
 very fat, Nick and Con, and a bull, Elizabeth had 
 been out nearly all the afternoon, Mrs. Underhill was 
 assured by the maid; but she detected disappointment 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 185 
 
 in their air, and called upon some daughter to give them 
 one more run. The two reproductions of the mother 
 type were immediately glad to go, and Annette, she 
 who seemed to be a sort of odd one hi the family at- 
 mosphere, went with Seton and her mother into the 
 library, sumptuous in all conventional furnishings, and 
 gravely made the tea. Here Mrs. Underbill told him, 
 as if the confidence were his by right because he was 
 studying the reform of the social structure, how very 
 painful it was to her that everybody was not quite 
 happy. She did not seem a lady who cared much about 
 facts, or to have an urgent tendency toward their ac- 
 quisition. She seemed only to be living in a kind of 
 emotional glow generated by her own expression of 
 kindliness, and to be sensuously alive to the pleasures 
 of being sorry for people. Seton found impossible 
 questions popping into his head as he followed her lead, 
 questions as crude as if he asked her what her income 
 was, or whether her glossy puffs were the growth of 
 her own scalp or that of another. His unmanageable 
 mind wanted to pelt her with inquiries as to how she 
 could look so cheerful in particular when she felt so 
 low about the general scheme, how she could dwell upon 
 the prevailing gloom with such roseate unction. And 
 having rattled off a series of impudent inquiries like 
 these, his mind confided to him, as if it were a conclu- 
 sion anybody might come to, that she had acquired 
 her benevolence only after her children had grown up. 
 This special sort of exuberant well-wishing might easily 
 be another form of the natural passion hovering over 
 a child's cot, and when the child no longer needed 
 nurture, seeking another outlet. While these extraneous 
 
186 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 conclusions amused themselves together in his mind, 
 and he replied mechanically to offers of sugar and 
 cream, he heard the maid, leaving the room, recalled 
 by his hostess with a requisition for some special sand- 
 wich. 
 
 "Cut them, Susan," she was specifying, "very thin." 
 
 Susan's neat skirt was no sooner across the threshold 
 than Mrs. Underhill turned to him with one of her 
 smiles, half indulgent of herself as a woman of feeling, 
 and not in the least concerned lest you find her so. 
 
 "I never/' said she, "call them without wondering 
 at the injustice of it all." 
 
 Seton's quick brown eyes asked for him exactly what 
 it was she so deplored, and she answered at once: 
 
 "Susan, you know. I called her by her Christian 
 name. We must, of course but the injustice of it! 
 Why isn't she calling me by my Christian name? Why 
 am I not calling her Miss Well, I don't remember 
 what her surname is. But really isn't it unjust?" 
 
 Seton said, in a rather dazed way, that it didn't seem 
 to him material. 
 
 "Oh, but it is material," said Mrs. Underhill. "I 
 wonder you can talk as you have this afternoon, I 
 wonder you can grasp the situation as you do, and not 
 see how material it is." 
 
 Seton only thought her rather queer; but what he 
 chiefly wanted was to get the young Annette to himself 
 in some corner of the drawing-room or universe, it 
 didn't matter where, and talk to her for a long time. 
 He was frankly conscious of this: that there had never 
 been anybody with such an appeal to him, such a trick 
 of direct glances and grave sudden hidings of the eyes, 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 187 
 
 with such an implication of having her own serious 
 thoughts and nobody to help her out when they grew 
 too troublesome. He even had a desire to tell Mrs. 
 Underbill that, if she had this degree of longing to 
 spend her sympathy on a world in need, she might first 
 lavish a little of it on her young daughter. How, he 
 could not have told. Only he was conscious of her as a 
 cause. But now Mrs. Underhill was telling him how 
 impossible she found it to accept the world as it is, 
 and how she was almost sure she was a socialist. One 
 could hardly help being who had any eyes or ears; yet 
 her husband wouldn't sympathize in the least. He 
 never had sympathized. 
 
 "Mother!" said the girl, in a low, reminding voice. 
 
 Yet when her mother turned at the sound of it, 
 Annette proffered only a request for more bread, or 
 sugar, or some of the necessaries of the tea table, where 
 she had ceased to preside when the tea was ready. 
 Still, the tone had been a reminder. He knew it. And 
 now Mrs. Underhill, summoned to a telephone inter- 
 view, left them, as the sandwiches came in, and Seton 
 felt that his chance had come, and turned to the girl 
 with such bright eagerness that she, turning to him 
 with just such an involuntary appeal, yet sat with lips 
 parted, not speaking, and evidently surprised by the 
 ardency of his challenge. Now Seton had nothing to 
 say. The trouble was he had everything to say. The 
 girl herself, that was his instant concern. What was she? 
 What was there underneath her calm that clamored 
 to be heard, to be heard by him especially? She was 
 the one to begin. 
 
 "My father " she burst forth, with an instant 
 
188 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 brightening of the eyes "he's not you mustn't think 
 he isn't sympathetic." 
 
 "No," said Seton, irrationally, bent only on reassur- 
 ing her. "I'm sure he is." 
 
 "It's only that" she seemed to seek about for some- 
 thing sufficiently illuminating and yet not overdrawn 
 "he can't express himself. I understand him per- 
 fectly." 
 
 "It's a mighty big question for men men of affairs." 
 Seton tried his way. "It has a good many bearings. 
 Those of us that talk well, we can make a very pretty 
 scheme of a reconstructed world; but I wouldn't be the 
 one to undertake to govern it. You upset so many 
 balances." 
 
 But she was not listening at all. Her eyes had taken 
 on a grave solemnity. They questioned him as if they 
 asked one thing only: whether she might trust him. 
 Then, having drawn her conclusion, she spoke. 
 
 "My father has gone away." It sounded like the 
 statement of a calamity. "We don't know where." 
 
 There seemed to be nothing he could answer. 
 Strangely, for all his slight knowledge of her, it was 
 apparent to him that there was something she wanted 
 him to do, and this was why she had spoken. That 
 was the point he answered. 
 
 "You want to know," he hazarded, "you want to 
 know where he is?" 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears, so slowly, with such a 
 contraction, that he knew how it hurt. She nodded 
 slightly. 
 
 "First his dog went, his old dog Pat. Then father 
 had a talk with me. He said he was going to be 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 189 
 
 away a good deal now; not for always, but simply a 
 good deal. I asked if he was going to Europe, and he 
 said he might go, but not at once. If he did go, he'd 
 let us know, so we might know where to find him; but 
 at present he should simply not be living at home." 
 
 "But surely " Then Seton changed this, from a 
 certainty that surely the man's wife would know where 
 he was, to the more gracious supposition, "And your 
 mother of course knows no more than this?" 
 
 "He told her she was not to worry. If we needed 
 him, he'd be here. So that makes me think he isn't 
 so far away." 
 
 Her slender, ringless hands were in her lap now, 
 interlacing painfully, and by their grip on each other 
 counselling her to keep emotion curbed. Seton was 
 bitterly, extravagantly sorry for her. And he was not 
 astonished at this challenge of his help and sympathy, 
 because, as strong as his certainty that she would not 
 for worlds have bared her heart to chance confidence, 
 was his feeling that it had been perfectly sane and nat- 
 ural to do it now. But he was throwing his mind into 
 the channel of practical conjecture. 
 
 "May I ask you" it seemed possible to ask any- 
 thing "if your father is in business of any sort?" 
 
 He had inevitably gone there for the secret, and she 
 answered him at once. 
 
 "No; papa's retired. He made a lot of money 
 Underhill and Green cloth, you know, cotton-mills 
 and he went out three years ago. No, he isn't worried 
 about money. He's just gone away." 
 
 Had she been less immediate to his concern, he would 
 have wanted to reply: "Yes, but people don't disappear 
 
190 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 for nothing. Don't look any further. You'll find some- 
 thing you'd rather not hear." But she had thrown 
 over him the spell of her sincere belief, and he answered 
 reflectively, "I see," though really he saw nothing at 
 all but her candid eyes. Now she was gathering at once 
 and casting at him the real burden of her argument. 
 
 " And what I wanted is this: you go about in all sorts 
 of places " 
 
 "I have to, you know," he put in, because it seemed 
 for the first time unusual to choose to go about in diverse 
 places. "If you're on a newspaper you have to." 
 
 "Oh,. I know. And if you hadn't gone to the town 
 where they had the prize-fight you wouldn't have been 
 there to look into the strike. Well, you're likely to 
 go anywhere, aren't you?" 
 
 "To the ends of the earth," said Seton gravely. He 
 took a solemn pleasure in meaning he would go to the 
 ends of the earth for her, and knowing she could not 
 by any possibility guess he meant it. 
 
 "And so," said she, in the accelerated tone that 
 would have been less distinguishable than a whisper 
 even to any one just outside the sill, "if you should 
 see my father he's not very tall, and he's got a scar 
 right across his face here he got it in Germany I 
 want' you to tell him to write, to please, please 
 write." 
 
 Seton accepted it, the extravagant romance of it, 
 the remote possibility that he should come by chance 
 upon a father not very tall, with a scar across his face, 
 and bowed gravely, as if such nebulous commissions 
 were part of every day's work. 
 
 "You want to see him like the dickens," he hazarded, 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 191 
 
 and she hastened to correct him, with a quick loyalty 
 to the absent. 
 
 " No, no. That isn't it. If he needs to be away, why, 
 he has to be. I feel that. Only if I could know if I 
 could know just where if anything should happen to 
 him ' Here her face was suffused again, and the 
 like of those other painful tears came and gave her 
 eyes a sombre pathos. 
 
 Seton hardly knew what he was to think of a father 
 who could wilfully ignore such grief. Then all at once 
 Mrs. Underhill had done with her interview and the 
 dogs with their walk, and daughters, mother, and 
 dogs came in together, all a voluble interchange of 
 comment on a world made for the comfort of dogs. 
 Mrs. Underhill distributed lumps of sugar, and confided 
 to Seton, while the dogs crunched with dripping jaws, 
 that it was of no use in that house to think dogs could 
 be brought up as dogs. She knew it all, the whole 
 horrid formula: one meal a day and dog-biscuit at 
 night, and how did we think we should like to be 
 treated like that? Then she conveyed a terrier up her 
 silken and very sloping lap, and Seton had an absurd 
 feeling that she was going to ask in a minute whether 
 he didn't think it a wrong to call dogs by then* first 
 names. And while the other daughters had their tea 
 and the dogs were crowded with sippets and lumps, 
 Annette sat still, her grave eyes not regarding what was 
 evidently the accustomed scene, but looking very tired. 
 
 When Seton rose to take his leave, Mrs. Underhill 
 at once invited him to dinner for the following night. 
 She was very selfish, she said. She had a thousand 
 things to ask him that he hadn't so much as touched on 
 
192 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 in his lecture. She supposed the upshot would be that 
 when he really told her all the reasons why he was a 
 socialist, she should be able to find out whether she was 
 one, too. Seton had an engagement for the next even- 
 ing the theatre, with another man; but he promptly 
 cancelled it and expressed his great pleasure in coming 
 here to dine. When he left the house he felt like shak- 
 ing himself like a dog running out of the water; the 
 'saccharine benevolences dripping from that hospitable 
 roof seemed to have drenched him through and through, 
 and his accustomed habit of thought felt cold and 
 slippery. It was enough, he said, with a rueful head- 
 shake at the moon, looking so incongruous there at the 
 end of the street, to make you forswear brotherly love, 
 heroic doses were so weakening. Then his mind leaped 
 to Annette, so vivid in her appeal to him while they 
 were alone, so pathetic in her lassitude when she gave 
 him a hand at parting, and he knew he could breast 
 even those tumultuous seas of fraternity to find her. 
 
 He sat more than once at Mrs. UnderhnTs table; but 
 the impression of that first hour was only intensified. 
 Annette's confidence was not repeated. Her face never 
 even seemed to interrogate him for news. She had ap- 
 parently given the conduct of his adventure, his task of 
 finding a man with a scar across the face, into his own 
 hand, and was waiting with & hopeful confidence until 
 he should have done something with it. He saw that, 
 and saw also, with a compassionate wonder whether it 
 might be hard for her, how foreign she was to the at- 
 mosphere of the house, how gently passive in it. For 
 once inside the door, he felt as if he had embarked in 
 a tossing sea of violent kindliness, throwing him from 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 193 
 
 one wave to another of pity for this and indignation 
 over that. Annette, in her little boat on the same sea, 
 had the air of riding passively and gracefully over the 
 waves, the exhilaration of being so exceedingly warm- 
 hearted, which prevailed with Mrs. Underhill, and the 
 depression because other people were not warm-hearted 
 enough. This idea of the boat got such hold on him 
 that hi the midst of his most breathless tasks, when he 
 had scant time to think of extraneous things and Ann- 
 ette least of all, she was so moving to him, he would 
 suddenly have the vision of her in the tossing skiff, her 
 hands folded, her lips a little apart, her eyes fixed un- 
 fadingly on some point: perhaps the indeterminate 
 shore where walked a man with a scar across his face. 
 He wondered if she were unhappy beyond the reaches 
 of that longing for her father. He knew he should have 
 been wretched to the point of breaking amid that chorus 
 of love to humanity, in which, though all his mind had 
 been travelling for the last three years toward more 
 just conditions for the race, he could not join. He was 
 a stanch lover of dogs; but the Underhill dogs he hated 
 with the nervous aloofness you feel toward the inno- 
 cent cause of any electric storm. They had all the 
 silken cushions they chose to take, chairs were sacred 
 to them, their least preference was consulted hi the 
 matter of food, and a fusillade of endearment rang 
 through the house. Yet they were not inordinately 
 spoiled. They were good, self-respecting dogs at heart, 
 placed hi a ridiculous position. He had an idea that if 
 he could take them into the open for a walk, with a 
 camp-fire, and a bone to gnaw, and a cuff here and an 
 ear-rubbing there, they would get back to dogdom once 
 
194 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 more and he could like them. But with their pottering 
 strolls and leashed security, their pampered instincts, 
 they were getting "soft", and he felt a disproportionate 
 rage over the wrong done them by idle womankind. 
 And then he would chide himself and ask what could 
 you do with a dog in the city? You had to guard and 
 leash him. But nevertheless, whenever he saw them 
 in their cloistered ease, he found himself saying, "Poor 
 devils", and wishing they could smell a little life. 
 
 He had not been lecturing for some time now. That 
 was an intermittent affair, wedged in where he could 
 place it, between stunts of journalism. It had come 
 about from the book he had written, wherein he had 
 tried to formulate his own miserable certainty that 
 industrial conditions are all wrong in some such way 
 as would make the acquiescent stop to wonder, as he 
 had, and then perhaps give a push to the old chariot of 
 privilege. The book had been well written, and it 
 had somehow, by that mysterious law we call luck, 
 found its way, like a text-book of a sort, into the hands 
 of women who want the latest thing in brains. There- 
 fore it was to clubs chiefly he had spoken. 
 
 And now one day he was summoned, by a letter 
 written in a small, rather cramped hand and expressed 
 in the phraseology of business, to a street he knew in a 
 clean, philistine slab of the city, where lodging-houses 
 abounded, and all occupations jostled one another and 
 let one another live in peace, because there was no 
 time to be inordinately curious or particular. With all 
 these people, the fight was on: with the landladies for 
 the renting of their rooms, with the lodgers to keep 
 the place, whatever it was, that gave them the money 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 195 
 
 to hire the rooms. When you got into this quarter of 
 the city you were "up against" the hand-to-hand 
 struggle for bed and board with no luxuries. These 
 were not the submerged and hopeless. They were the 
 decent working men and women who see no prospect 
 but work, and ask no favors but an honest wage. At 
 any other moment Seton might not have regarded the 
 letter, though it carried an intimate authority of its 
 own, as some letters do; but the times were drab-colored 
 and had been for a week. Annette had been away at 
 a country house, and he had somehow fancied that his 
 welcome with Mrs. Underhill had paled its lustre by a 
 degree. He wondered if the sum of benevolence was 
 not to shine on him with its full continued radiance, 
 and that made him nervous. For there was Annette. 
 
 And having an hour at the end of the day, he took 
 his stick and walked briskly down to the brick house, 
 like its neighbors in the dull street, rang the bell, and 
 asked for Mr. C. T. Charles. There was no hesitation. 
 He was in, the bewigged, enormous landlady said, and 
 would Seton "go right up". That seemed to be the 
 custom of the house, and it was also a manifest cruelty 
 to expect any landlady of that bulk to essay even two 
 flights in heralding; so Seton thanked her, ascended the 
 stairs not too briskly, lest he remind her of her own quies- 
 cence, and knocked at a yellowed door. It was not 
 opened at once, and he had time to observe how exactly 
 the gilt-scrolled paper patterned all the other paper of 
 such houses, when there was a stirring within, the door 
 opened, and he found himself confronting a thin, gray- 
 haired man with a scar from his cheek-bone nearly to 
 the corner of his mouth. But that was not so significant. 
 
196 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 He had, under bushy, unkempt brows, withdrawn as 
 if by the shrinking of age, Annette's eyes. That settled 
 it. Altogether it was what could be called a lovable 
 face. All the lines in its thin dry ness were kind, and 
 the mouth, not really hidden by a short gray mustache, 
 was tenderness itself. So instantly grounded was 
 Seton' s conviction that this was the man with the 
 precise scar that he would not have been surprised if 
 his summoner's first question had been, " How's An- 
 nette? " But the man only opened the door wider, and 
 said in a gentle voice that had fallen into a nervous 
 habit of haste: 
 
 "Mr. Seton, this is very obliging of you. Come in." 
 
 So Seton went in, and they sat down in two horribly 
 constructed oak chairs, upholstered in a plush that was 
 much indebted to time for fading it. And as if he had 
 been summoned by Annette's old reference to him, a 
 gaunt Irish terrier poked forward from some corner, 
 smelled at Seton's trousers, suffered his touch, and then 
 cast himself, with a sigh, at his master's feet. Seton 
 was aware that his host was regarding him with a scru- 
 tiny that momentarily banished the lustre of his eyes 
 and drew them to a glittering smallness. 
 
 "I've never seen you so close," said the man, in im- 
 mediate explanation, as if he knew he was staring and 
 formulating. "I've heard you lecture." 
 
 "We haven't met?" said Seton, interrogatively. He 
 knew they hadn't, because Annette's sparse description 
 had now become the most valid evidence. 
 
 "No. I've read your book, too. You're a young 
 man." 
 
 Seton had had that fact handed him in various forms: 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 197 
 
 sometimes, when it concerned his reactionary theories, 
 as damaging to him; once or twice, when he wanted 
 promotion, as something in his favor. But this man 
 stated it very neutrally, and he felt bound for some 
 reason to tell him. 
 
 " Twenty-six." 
 
 "Ah! You've got it all before you." 
 
 This seemed to be neither commiseration nor envy. 
 It was merely the weighing of chances, Seton saw, and 
 he nodded in answer. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "I hope there's a good deal before 
 
 me." 
 
 "I might as well come to the point," said the other. 
 He was holding the corrugated arms of his chair tightly 
 with slender hands, as if that were a form of controlled 
 nervousness he might allow himself. "You're a busy 
 man. Are you attached to your profession?" 
 "Journalism?" 
 
 "Yes. Are you attached to it? " 
 "Why!" said Seton, doubtfully, "why!" 
 That was all he could say for the moment. It was 
 so complex a thing. He liked the strain and "go" of 
 it, the scant praise and sudden rough commendation 
 when he had handed in a good story. On the other 
 hand, he was conscious of an undercurrent of deter- 
 mination to write other things when he should have 
 learned to write better and of assuaging that soft spot 
 in him by seeing if the world need be so stupid in ar- 
 ranging its affairs. As he still kept his puzzled silence, 
 the other spoke again, with the air of putting down 
 a second card, not having perhaps played quite 
 fairly. 
 
198 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "I ought to explain myself a little. You can't be 
 expected to act in the dark. Now, you're a socialist." 
 
 Seton said nothing. His book told that, he knew; 
 and his spoken utterances implied it. 
 
 "So'm I," said the host, "so'm I. I don't say you 
 made me one, but you helped me along. Your book 
 was so simple. It's elementary. That's what I need. 
 And it's all so puzzling." 
 
 He looked at Seton with a frank implication of not 
 being wise, not being able to think out anything, but 
 just of suffering. That was the last thing he meant 
 to imply. He would, Seton knew, not only because he 
 was manly, but because he was sensitive to the verge 
 of lost control, have realized that to obtrude your own 
 sense of the wretchedness of the world on a world that 
 has as much as it can bear, is only to inject another 
 drop of ink into waters already murky. His delicate 
 face, ready, it might be, to quiver, told that, yet the 
 line of his mouth added the balancing determination 
 that something must be done. Seton had many a time, 
 in moments of low vitality, cursed his own futile 
 wretchedness over the suffering of the world; but the 
 strength of his youth prevailed, and he had, in another 
 day, with a whiff of air, overborne it and started again 
 with no less irrational courage on the path to better- 
 ment. But here was a man, he saw, who had suffered, 
 in a life more than twice as long as his, an equal misery, 
 and had now no compensatory youth to help him 
 through. 
 
 " Things are in a bad way," the man was saying, 
 as if he didn't really know how to put into words the 
 enormity of what rested upon him, and had to make it 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 199 
 
 as simple as possible. "It used to hound me down. 
 Always hounded me. I thought one time 'twould hound 
 me out of life." 
 
 "That's the way," Seton confirmed him. "That's 
 the way it takes us." 
 
 "I thought then 'twas something we'd got to bear. 
 I thought 'twas the state of the world. Folks said 
 'twas the will of God. I never thought that, I guess. 
 If I had, I shouldn't have been able to serve under a 
 God like that. Well, sir, if there's a remedy- 
 He paused and his eyes came out of their hiding and 
 besought Seton to say again that there was one. 
 
 "There's got to be," said Seton. It was all he could 
 honestly swear. 
 
 The other man nodded, as if he thanked him for 
 even so small a grace. 
 
 "Of course I don't altogether see it," he owned. 
 "I'm old-fashioned. I've spent my brains, what I had 
 of 'em, in making the thing go. Business, you know, 
 that sort of thing. Of course I don't see how you're 
 going to reckon with human nature. Seems to me the 
 man we're throttling now, when we give him the chance 
 to live and breathe and get some blood into him seems 
 to me he's just as like as not to turn into the kind that 
 throttles the man under him. I don't know. I have a 
 kind of a theory that the Napoleons and the robbers 
 and the grafters, rich or poor, are going to keep on 
 being born for quite a spell Well, well, we won't talk 
 of that. Tires my head. I try not to think of 'em." 
 
 His harassment over the unequal burdens of life 
 came out suddenly all over him in the rigidity of his 
 controlled figure, the appeal almost articulate of 
 
200 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 his glance, and Seton had an answering pang of wretched 
 fellowship, a savage desire to forbid his making them 
 irretrievably miserable together. But by a big effort 
 the man had evidently pulled himself up out of the 
 slough where they both knew they must not flounder. 
 
 'So," said he, "I've come to a conclusion. I can't 
 do anything. Don't see what there is to be done that 
 won't upset the kettle of fish on the other side. But 
 your book makes it pretty plain to me that it's the 
 System we've got to fight. That's what's the matter 
 the System." 
 
 "Yes," said Seton, emerging into the clearer light 
 of the few certainties he had, "it's the System." 
 
 ' ' Now we're getting somewhere. ' ' He was, outwardly 
 at least, unshaken by his sense of horror at the vision 
 of temporary wrong. "Now, I've made my money 
 by the System. I'm going to spend it what I don't 
 owe to other people I'm going to spend it fighting the 
 System I made it by." 
 
 Was Annette one of the other people? Was it the 
 exuberant trio, the satiated dogs, that were to have had 
 the spending of it? Seton made no answer, nor did the 
 other man seem to expect one. 
 
 "So," he began again, in exactly the same fragmen- 
 tary fashion, "when I saw you, I saw you knew there 
 was a remedy. You were cocksure. Now I want to 
 buy your time. You can put it in as you like, lectures, 
 books, research I don't confine you to this country: 
 go where you please. Only I'll back you to do what I 
 haven't the youth, the strength brains, too, sir, the 
 brains to do for myself. How's that? What do you 
 say?" 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 201 
 
 He was regarding Seton now with a sudden smile that 
 illuminated his face into an unmistakable beauty. 
 Seton was silent for a moment from the inability to 
 get hold of it all. Yet it seemed very reasonable, the 
 man himself was so simple, so frank, so true. 
 
 "To fight the System?" Seton repeated, stupidly. 
 
 The other man nodded, with a look of almost savage 
 will in the compression of his lips. 
 
 "The System/' said he, as if he were toasting it. 
 "That's what's the matter. Stamp it out. I'm back- 
 ing you." 
 
 Then suddenly Seton's wits came with a rush, and 
 he knew one only question had to be answered first. 
 
 "I have a message for you," said he. "It's from 
 Annette." 
 
 The other man sprang up so violently that the dog 
 at his feet, thrown as suddenly out of his dream, sprang 
 also and sat down a yard away, fixing his master with 
 reproachful eyes. Seton went on at once in a swift 
 flow of narrative. He told what had led him to that 
 house. He made no secret that it was not the mother's 
 invitation, but the unconscious call of Annette's face. 
 And ending, he threw at the other man the question he 
 thought he had the necessity if not the right to ask. 
 They couldn't give him so many keys unless they gave 
 him the key to the house itself. 
 
 "What made you come down here?" 
 
 Underhill took the question in a perfectly good part, 
 but the answer seemed to be beyond him. He had 
 stepped thoughtfully back to his chair; and the dog, 
 waiting for that only, dropped again, his head at his 
 master's toe, as if to say if there were further mobiliza- 
 
202 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 tion he should at least know it as soon as anybody. 
 Underbill seemed to be thinking. He looked at Seton 
 and his face worked. 
 
 "I can't! I can't!" 
 
 That was all he seemed able to say. 
 
 "Your daughter wants you tremendously/' Seton 
 ventured. 
 
 "Yes." This came in a quick burst of what might 
 have been longing for her, a confident pride in her affec- 
 tion for him, and an accepted grief that things had to 
 be as they were. " If it was Annette alone, I could take 
 Annette to live with me!" There he paused, looked 
 most hopelessly at Seton, and shook his head. "No," 
 he said, "you can't understand it. Nobody could. 
 I'm a queer Dick. What's the use? " 
 
 But Seton was bound to understand. For the sake of 
 Annette and her beseeching eyes he meant to push his 
 way at once inside this defended pale. The phrase of 
 Mrs. Underhill herself leaped into his mind. 
 
 "I see," he said; "you have to get away by yourself. 
 It's not not sympathetic." 
 
 Underhill clutched at the word, but in a special sense. 
 
 "That's it," said he, "it's too damned sympathetic. 
 I can't stand it, Seton. Can't stand the outcry. That's 
 what it is all the time, outcry. It's about everything. 
 If you've got a wound you bandage it up, don't you? 
 You try to forget it. Well, they don't. They can't. 
 My wife's a good woman two girls just like her 
 well, they're always seeing where folks bleed and telling 
 you of it, and I can't stand it, Seton, can't, to save my 
 life I can't. So Pat and I came off down here." 
 
 Seton understood so poignantly that he had nothing 
 
A MAN OF FEELING 203 
 
 to say. The father of the family had not been able to 
 endure the tossing of the boat on the emotional waves. 
 And in a moment Underhill seemed to pass him an- 
 other key a smaller one, but of use. 
 
 "You won't understand it, but I actually got to 
 hating the dogs. Then I saw 'twas time to go, Pat 
 and I. I'm very fond of dogs, but I can't stand outcry. 
 Can't, can't. Don't you see, when folks are as extreme 
 as that, they don't leave you anything. You've got to 
 scream as loud as they do. I've often felt it about 
 the children. My wife lavished things on 'em so she 
 didn't leave me anything to do. I should have had 
 to gild 'em all over, or bellow, if I wanted to tell 'em 
 they were good girls. All but Annette. Annette's 
 the one. She'd understand. Always has. Well!" 
 
 His eyes, like Annette's own, were appealing for 
 something. Was it, Seton wondered, that he should 
 not leave him to the loneliness of being queer and old, 
 of having no valid ground to stand on because custom 
 and ethics themselves might be warning him back to 
 the tossing boat? And Seton laughed. That seemed to 
 be the best thing he could do, to confirm the other 
 man's title to this poor little refuge he had snatched. 
 
 "They're terribly kind ladies," said he. "I guess 
 we're reactions, you and I." 
 
 Underhill's worn face looked pathetically grateful; 
 but he threw off even that appeal in a trembling haste. 
 
 "How is it," said he, "about the other thing? Going 
 to let me back you?" 
 
 Seton shook his head. He was sure of that, and yet 
 he couldn't stop to talk about it. 
 
 "I don't know how to put it," said he, "but a chap's 
 
20* VANISHING POINTS 
 
 got to stand on his own feet. If I were a little more 
 stuck on myself! No, I can't do it. I should get punky 
 in a year. What shall I tell Annette? " 
 
 Her father considered. 
 
 "You tell Annette/' said he, "tell her I'm all right. 
 She's a good girl. I miss her like the Old Harry. But 
 I don't see how I can let her in. It's a queer position 
 making her keep a secret from her mother. When she's 
 a little older she can choose. Maybe she might choose 
 to come to me. Or if she married, maybe she'd marry 
 a good chap and I'd drop in." 
 
 Seton got out of his chair with a bound, disconcerting 
 to Pat, the lover of ordered ways. 
 
 "I'll tell you this," said he: "You won't drop in. 
 You'll come and stay for good. I'll tell you that right 
 
 now." 
 
THE LANTERN 
 
 MARSHALL BRUCE and his wife, Janie, lived 
 in a flat ingeniously contrived to be hot in 
 summer and, by a defective system of heating, 
 very cold in winter. They had perched there for three 
 years during the weaving of their fortunes, sometimes 
 hilariously intent on the uncouth advantages of the 
 place, overlooking, as it did, a corner of life far removed 
 from their own, except in anxious work and vagueness 
 in regard to the next month's rent. That was like hav- 
 ing an uncomfortable seat at a dreary realistic play. 
 Or again when the fount of hope got choked and ceased 
 temporarily to bubble, they recoiled from the tawdri- 
 ness of it all, and wondered whether it would not have 
 been better for Marshall to keep his professional post 
 in the little academy, and for Janie to go on teaching 
 literature under him, rather than to vault the cruel 
 barbed wire into journalism, there to throw and be 
 overthrown. 
 
 On this July evening, the flat was feeling the heat. 
 Janie sat in the kitchen commanding the court where 
 her neighbors had settled themselves for prolonged 
 hours of unreserved revel, challenging their own jaded 
 inner forces to counteract the atmospheric enemy 
 without. They laughed loudly at intervals, in momen- 
 tary uplift when some one of them, Janie knew through 
 previous observation, made a foray upon a neighboring 
 
 205 
 
206 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 drug store, and returned with dishes of ice cream the 
 mind shuddered to contemplate. She knew exactly 
 how they looked, the men coatless, the women slat- 
 ternly in lingerie waists profusely trellised with a 
 "letting-in" of cheap lace, and the children, innocent 
 of the dictum that boys and girls should be in retreat 
 by the time it is dark under the table, alternating the 
 wail of fretfulness with the shriek of an unlovely mirth. 
 This was not one of the times when Janie could regard 
 them all joyously as a picture of life, or warmly as a 
 part of the great family wherein they seemed to be 
 workers of a degree only less humble than her own. 
 She was affronted by the city summer, tired of pro- 
 longed care, and she could but think of a circle in an 
 ingeniously contrived inferno where lost spirits suffered 
 not only the torture of their own habitat but that of 
 the outcry from the one below. In a street not far 
 away a talking machine started on its interminable 
 jargon, chiming in terrifying commentary with her 
 own mental lamentations. She would not have been 
 surprised if the talking machine had broken suddenly 
 into Brocken cries. 
 
 Proofs of a modest story long ago paid for and the 
 proceeds eaten up, lay on the table before her, ready 
 to be stamped and mailed, and she knew Marshall, in 
 the front room, was poring over the last of his masterly 
 series, a more exacting task, and therefore to be carried 
 on in the fractionally less torrid portion of the house. 
 Janie always insisted that she preferred the kitchen for 
 her work because it seemed more secluded, and Marshall 
 innocently agreed. He had not even known how she 
 had held her breath and guarded him through the year 
 
THE LANTERN 207 
 
 when he was getting his material for this set of maga- 
 zine articles on Elisha Porson, the bogy of all com- 
 mercial circles, execrated by thousands who had served 
 him and then gone under when they attempted to 
 seek out the sources of the golden flood for which they 
 dug the channel. There was to be no overflow, they 
 found. The drops were all to run swiftly to one hoard. 
 So the articles, now appearing, had proved. They 
 were in effect an attack on Porson, his methods and 
 his personal integrity, and through him, an onslaught 
 upon modern business. 
 
 Marshall, when he had been asked to ride forth for 
 the slaying of Porson, had felt a high commercial 
 triumph of his own, and with that the righteous valor 
 of the knight-errant. Janie had known he was the 
 man commissioned to do a big deed. That first flame 
 of eagerness had lighted her through three-quarters 
 of the task. What Marshall felt about it now, what 
 immediate force was hurrying him, she did not know. 
 Of one thing she was sure: he thought with her of the 
 tangible reward if the articles ultimately "made good". 
 For they were lifting an obscure magazine to an amaz- 
 ing circulation, and the publishers were just men. They 
 would double and treble what he had been promised 
 in advance, and that would mean a move from the 
 flat overlooking the court, even a month in England 
 benignly beckoning them, and, most of all, more work. 
 But of these palliations to the task Janie was not think- 
 ing to-night as she leaned back in her chair, one arm 
 lying along the table, her fingers holding the pen. She 
 was thinking of life itself, the web embroidered by 
 figures, Porson and these uncouth creatures in the 
 
208 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 court, though it looked less to her like a fabric than it 
 sometimes did, a fabric stirred by a battling wind so 
 that the figures themselves moved purposely. It was 
 in some manner alive, though formless, a savage power 
 bent on ruin. 
 
 Marshall, in the other room, pushed back his chair, 
 and she came to herself with an instant call upon her 
 every-day look of watchful sympathy. She was on 
 guard, ready to do him service from filling his pen or 
 pipe to speeding off on desperate foraging flights for 
 the material he might suddenly lack. She heard his 
 slippered feet along the corridor, and then saw him 
 before her, strong, flushed, splendid to her gaze with 
 the distinctions she loved in him: the kind gray eyes 
 set wide apart, the warm hair tumbling over his fore- 
 head and his comprehensive look of youth and power. 
 Tired as he was, he looked for the moment instinct 
 with triumph. 
 
 "Well," said he, "it's done." 
 
 "Done!" The echo was not interrogative. It 
 seemed rather a wondering comment on such a fact. 
 
 He began a tattoo on the oven of the gas stove, and 
 she noted idly how fine his hand was, used to athletic 
 tasks and fitted to hold the pen. 
 
 "They'll set it up at once," she said, languidly. 
 
 "Yes. I shall have the proof this week. Then we've 
 done with Porson done with him, done with him. 
 Vakj Elisha Porson! Avaunt! Get out! You have 
 served your turn. The tale of your iniquities is com- 
 plete, and it now remains for you to get the monopoly 
 of sackcloth and ashes, and we will hie us from your 
 crumbling ruins to other jobs." He was fantastically 
 
THE LANTERN 209 
 
 gesticulating over the sink where, in a moment, he 
 proposed to let the water run through the filter pre- 
 paratory to a cooling draught, when he turned to her 
 for a responsive glance. He noted her pallor, the dark 
 circles on her cheek, and sprang to her with dismay. 
 "Why, old girl," said he, "you're done up." 
 
 Tears were squeezing themselves out under her 
 dropped eyelids. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "I've known myself to be ruggeder. 
 Don't hug me here, Marsh. The court '11 see us. There ! 
 I told you. Hear them yell. Come off into the den, 
 and we can talk." 
 
 His arm about her, they did go, and in the den, lit- 
 tered still with his cast-off manuscript, he turned the 
 light up to see if she really looked as alarmingly bad 
 as he feared. She was on the sofa now, her head thrown 
 back against her lifted arms. He took his own chair 
 and watched her, a frown between his anxious eyes. 
 In a minute she laughed. 
 
 "I'll tell you what it is, Marsh," she said. "It's 
 Porson. This is his revenge." 
 
 "You got too tired over him. You've let down, 
 now the race is over. Take it as I do. Don't say, what 
 a devil of a time we've had with him. Say, we've done 
 with him." 
 
 "I feel as if we never should be done with him." 
 She opened her eyes heavily for a moment, and closed 
 them again because they had fallen on his completed 
 work. Something had to remind her at every turn of 
 Elisha Porson, the adversary of mankind as she had 
 grown to think him, and so her adversary, also. But 
 with her husband's anxious eyes upon her she was 
 
210 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 bound to help him. " Don't you find yourself crushed 
 by all this investigation, Marsh?" she asked. " Some- 
 how sapped depleted?" 
 
 He was frowning at the effort to understand. 
 
 "No," he said, at once. "I feel as a lawyer does 
 after he's won a nasty case. He hasn't enjoyed the 
 evidence; but it's means to an end. It buys conviction. 
 It serves justice. And for him it spells triumph." 
 
 "I can't think of the triumph just this minute. I'm 
 certain we've learned things we wish we hadn't known." 
 
 "Nonsense! The things are. If they exist, why not 
 know them? " 
 
 "It seems as if what we call business is a fight a 
 terrible fight, too terrible to look on at." 
 
 "It is." The man's confirming dictum came quick 
 and sharp on the heels of her wavering commentary. 
 
 "I feel as if money were evil." 
 
 "So the preacher says," Marshall echoed gayly, 
 "the root of all evil or is it the love of it? I bet we 
 could use a pocketful of it, allee samee. 
 
 "Do you know what Person has made me see?" 
 
 "He's made me see a number of things. One is, 
 that he'll be the better for a taste of brimstone. I 
 could wish he'd had it years ago." 
 
 "He's made the world hideous." 
 
 "Oh, come, Janie! not the world." 
 
 "Yes, the world, because it wants to get on. And we 
 shall be just like him the minute we begin to fight for 
 money to lift us above other people well, the people 
 out there." She did not need to indicate the court, 
 even with a glance. The discord of acclamation was 
 floating toward them through the flat, and both of 
 
THE LANTERN 211 
 
 them thought absently that it was hailing a new con- 
 signment of ice-cream. "I'm convinced that Person 
 hasn't one decent humane impulse left." 
 
 "Well, if he has, I've failed to spot it. However, 
 let's be charitable. Let's say he never had any to 
 begin with." 
 
 "He can't have been a monster. Remember, he 
 supported his mother " 
 
 "'From that date/" Marshall quoted, rhetorically, 
 "'the date of his obtaining a position hi the shoe- 
 store, his mother ceased sewing for a living, and young 
 Elisha supported her in a modest way, always better- 
 ing with his rising fortunes. " : 
 
 "That's it," said Janie. "He was human to start 
 with, but now he's made himself into a machine. It 
 goes whirling over the green grass of the world, cutting 
 off heads." 
 
 "Can't put that in," said Marshall, who had cocked 
 his head with an air of listening toward business ends. 
 "Too flowery!" 
 
 "And the worst of it is, he's made me see he's not 
 an exception. He's only noteworthy because he's got 
 more brain than the others more of that hideous 
 power of tending money and making it breed. The 
 men that fought him they're the same kind, only 
 they didn't win." 
 
 "The fierce light that beats upon a financier," re- 
 marked Marshall. 
 
 But she was moving him. He might stave her off, 
 yet he, too, felt a decent recoil after the bad company 
 they had been keeping. He, too, was morally jaded, 
 though he would not own it. He, as became a man, 
 
212 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 was taking "the world but as the world", and yet his 
 longings clove to the green hills of peace. His homesick 
 eyes could not discern them in the distance. The world 
 seemed suddenly turned into a great industrial battle- 
 field where homely virtues were trodden out under the 
 foot of the mercenaries hired to fight for some Napoleon 
 no more greedy then they, but more masterful. 
 
 " We've got our punishment for meddling with him," 
 said Janie, bitterly. " We've painted a portrait, and 
 the picture is going to stay with us. It's hanging right 
 here on our wall. You see it. I see it. The eyes follow 
 us, even when we aren't looking at it." 
 
 " Don't," said Marshall, involuntarily. 
 
 "Oh, it's a true portrait. I own that. We've caught 
 the exact likeness of a man who isn't a man any 
 more. He's a horribly intelligent force. He can make 
 me believe all the other men that copy him and fight 
 him are hideous forces, too. We shall be, Marsh, if we 
 try to keep on our feet in this awful scramble and rush. 
 Why, I don't dare to wish we could go to Europe or 
 even move out of here, because it means fighting for 
 money " 
 
 The bell in the hall rang with a jarring dissonance. 
 Janie started to her feet, and Marshall threw down his 
 paper knife and went to the tube. 
 
 "Yes," she heard him say. "Who is it? Come up. 
 Fifth floor." 
 
 Almost immediately he had returned to her and 
 arrested her flight to the dark back parlor where, re- 
 membering her disarray, she was betaking herself. 
 His face itself stopped her. It was blazing, with what 
 emotion she could not yet tell, wonder, perhaps bitter- 
 
THE LANTERN 213 
 
 ness, an ironic gayety. His hand was heavy on her 
 wrist. 
 
 "Who do you think it is?" he asked, rapidly. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Porson himself." 
 
 "Elisha Porson?" 
 
 He nodded, the sparkling commentary of his face 
 intensifying. 
 
 " The fool! "he breathed. 
 
 Slow, rather cautious steps were nearing on the stairs. 
 
 "What have I told you about the cleverest of men? 
 Take them out of their own grooves and they go to 
 pieces. He knows leather, he knows the market; but 
 here he is walking straight into my mouth to lie down 
 in it." 
 
 "What does he want, Marsh?" she whispered. All 
 her own acumen had deserted her. She asked the ques- 
 tion as simply as a child. 
 
 "Want?" Marshall repeated, savagely. A terrible 
 anticipatory triumph was in his look. "He's read the 
 first number, perhaps the second, and he wants to 
 buy me off the fool!" 
 
 The steps halted at the door. Janie fled into the 
 back room and sank on a chair. She was effectually 
 awakened, as if by a piercing call from some emergency. 
 It was reasonable to her, as to her husband, that Porson 
 should want to bribe them, and even that he should 
 innocently try it. She saw her husband with the hoard 
 of gold laid open before him, and knew proudly he 
 would refuse to look. 
 
 Marshall threw open the door. 
 
 "Come in, Mr. Porson," she heard him say. 
 
214 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Then the door closed and the varying steps, Person's 
 shuffling slightly as those of an old man not very pains- 
 takingly shod, and her husband's decisive, as if all his 
 youth and scorn of paltering found expression there, 
 came in together. 
 
 "Sit here," said Marshall, again abruptly, and took 
 his own place at the desk. 
 
 The gas, whether by Marshall's intention or not, 
 shone full on Person's face, and Janie, bending forward 
 there in the dark, trembled at it, seeing it with an added 
 significance in the light of her own home. She had 
 studied his portrait in its various stages of development; 
 the boy in the daguerreotype, with the inconsequent 
 mouth and smooth hair, the youth beginning to show 
 the peering shrewdness of his later years as he realized 
 where accumulation might place him, the middle-aged 
 man with the mean lines of greed and the rigorous ones 
 of mastery about his eyes and mouth, and the man 
 himself as he footed it down town in the morning, his 
 only walk for the day before his task of incubating 
 the eggs of riches and fighting off the others who would 
 steal his nest. She and Marshall had worked so long 
 over that composite portrait that Person's features had 
 acquired for them an exaggerated significance, and 
 now that he had walked into their very presence, her 
 heart beat hard at the thought that, despite hospitable 
 honor, they might enrich the image by one line more. 
 He laid his battered hat on the table, the tile that fig- 
 ured invariably in the caricatures of him, and passed a 
 knotted hand wearily through his thin hair with the 
 gesture fitted to locks that had begun by being thick. 
 He started a little, and lifted his head alertly. 
 
THE LANTERN 215 
 
 "Who's in there?" he asked, pointing a thumb at 
 the back room. 
 
 "My wife," said Marshall, at once. 
 
 "I prefer to see you alone," Porson announced, with 
 the ah* of one who is accustomed to getting what he 
 asks for. It was not the full, noble note of command. 
 His high querulous voice would never compass that. 
 It bespoke rather the habit of a dominance tedious but 
 necessary. 
 
 At once Janie, from no considered impulse except 
 as the result of the directness of her own nature, bent 
 always on the straightest path, rose and came forward 
 into the circle of light. Marshall got up and with a 
 somewhat accented courtesy to mark his tenderness 
 for her and insure her against rebuff, drew forward a 
 chair. She stood still in the illuminated radius, a small 
 figure, her pale golden hair drooping about her child- 
 like face, and looked at Porson, half with an inevitable 
 aversion and half appealingly because she wanted very 
 much to stay. Porson regarded her for a moment, 
 not, Marshall angrily noted, as if he saw her distinctive 
 charm, but as if she were a figure in the path. He got 
 up then, as if by an afterthought, not grudgingly, 
 but because he seemed to be remembering that rising 
 to greet a woman was a custom mysteriously decreed, 
 and one that, leading to unknown ends, he might not 
 neglect. 
 
 "How do you do?" he conceded, in his rasping voice. 
 But he looked at Marshall immediately with the un- 
 altered requirement that the figure should be removed. 
 
 "My wife is my literary partner," said Marshall, 
 answering the glance. "She helps me collect my 
 
216 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 / 
 
 material and pronounces on the stuff. It's as much 
 her work as mine." 
 
 Janie, who knew him so well, read in his air, rather 
 than his voice, the uneasiness of thinking it would be 
 incalculable disappointment if Porson should refuse 
 the gauge thrown down and say he would not speak 
 at all. She took the matter into her own hands. 
 
 'Til go out, Marshall," she said quickly. "Mr. 
 Porson won't mind my being in the next room, even if 
 I do hear. Our flat is so tiny," she explained to the 
 visitor, with an unwilling smile it came before she 
 had time to think how she hated Porson " we hear from 
 one end of it to the other." 
 
 At that Porson turned his small eyes on her and 
 seemed, for purposes of his own, to estimate and accept 
 her. 
 
 "Well! well!" he said, with an impatient movement 
 of the hands. "Well! well! But" he raised the dis- 
 cordant voice a little "this interview is confiden- 
 tial." 
 
 "Certainly," said Janie, with dignity. "That is 
 understood." 
 
 She withdrew again into her solitude of the back 
 room and sat there in a palpitating intentness. 
 
 "I don't know," Marshall was saying, obstinately. 
 "I don't know whether it's confidential. It depends 
 on the sort of thing you've got to say." 
 
 Porson stopped him by another of those rather un- 
 certain gestures of the hands that, wavering as they 
 were, certainly had the effect of power. He leaned 
 forward in his chair now and let the dramatic hands 
 drop between his knees, while he reflected. 
 
THE LANTERN 217 
 
 "You " he began slowly, "you've printed two 
 numbers. " 
 
 "Yes/' said Marshall. 
 
 There was an ugly frown between his brows. Janie, 
 seeing it spring there and knit itself, thrilled with 
 admiration of him and eagerness of sympathy with 
 what he would say. Porson would propose some 
 unworthy pact, and her husband would repudiate it. 
 She was glad to be before the stage of that fine drama. 
 
 Porson looked up at Marshall with one of his quick 
 glances that, however much they shifted, seemed to 
 gather whatever they needed in their course. 
 
 "How much you got in type now?" he asked. 
 
 Marshall laughed a little with that ironic note fitted 
 to his scornful look. 
 
 "Mr. Porson/' said he, "what have you come to 
 ask?" 
 
 Porson straightened now and gazed at him. To 
 Janie, from her oblique vantage ground, he looked like 
 a shambling old man. Marshall, confronting the direct 
 beam of the small eyes, found it a holding power. 
 
 "The question's here," said Porson. He opened his 
 mouth slightly, tightened the skin of his cheek and 
 rubbed it with a forefinger, a trick Marshall knew in 
 sundry farmers of his acquaintance. He saw at once 
 that it was a characteristic gesture, and put it down in 
 his mental notebook. "I took up your two first num- 
 bers," said Porson, simply, "the first of the evening, 
 and read 'em through. I thought I'd drop in before 
 it went any further." 
 
 "Anything wrong with my facts?" asked Marshall 
 incisively. 
 
218 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Person seemed about to answer, but he drew himself 
 back as if with a tardy recognition that this was a 
 species of tribunal, and that he was not obliged to 
 incriminate himself. 
 
 "Well," he said, with deliberation, "I don't know's 
 I've got anything to say on that score. What I pitched 
 upon " 
 
 Marshall involuntarily glanced toward the inner 
 room, and Janie, though she knew he could not see her, 
 nodded at him in a community of delighted interest 
 at Person's way of expressing himself. They had 
 both known he had a vocabulary of country phrases. 
 He was confirming their cleverness with every 
 word. 
 
 "What I pitched upon was this. You say towards 
 the end of number two that later you'll go into partic- 
 ulars about the Blackstone Avenue land grab, and how 
 Person's head clerk got ahead of him for once. Now I 
 take it you make quite a handle of that?" 
 
 Marshall nodded, watching him. 
 
 "I go into it rather fully," he said. 
 
 "What article's it come in?" 
 
 "Number four." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Bruce," said Porson, looking him in the 
 face, "I want you to cut that out." 
 
 Marshall laughed. Janie knew what he thought he 
 had discovered. She, too, had hit upon it. Old Porson 
 must have a very human foible at the bottom of his 
 bag of tricks. He was not only a money king, avid of 
 accumulation and the spread of his base regnancy; 
 he was vain. He could not endure to have the world 
 told that any man had got ahead of him. 
 
THE LANTERN 219 
 
 "I should be much obliged/ 1 he was continuing, 
 "if you'd tell me how you went into that." 
 
 " Delighted," said Marshall, dryly. "I've got the 
 article right here." He opened a drawer, and after a 
 frowning search brought out several crumpled galleys 
 of proof. These he whirled into order, and gave them 
 to Person, pointing out the significant paragraphs. 
 Person read slowly and painstakingly. Marshall, 
 watching him, felt convinced that if these had been 
 columns of figures, he could have run over them lightly 
 with an accustomed ease; but even the plainest litera- 
 ture was dubitable ground. 
 
 "Yes," he said, at last. "Yes. I thought that's 
 the way you'd fix it. Well, Mr. Bruce, you've got 
 your facts pretty clear." 
 
 Marshall nodded. 
 
 "Yes," he echoed. "I've got my data. You see, 
 Mr. Porson, men in your occupation keep leaving 
 documentary evidence behind them. There aren't 
 any suppositions in these articles of mine. They're 
 columns of cold facts. You've furnished the incidents 
 yourself. I've only trailed along after you and picked 
 'em up." 
 
 But Porson did not seem to hear. He was considering, 
 thinking out the best move to make. Finally he nodded 
 slightly, as if in confirmation to himself, and sat up. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I guess I'll have to tell you the 
 story of that deal." 
 
 Marshall smiled a little. The amended story would 
 mean that Porson was explaining himself. That was an 
 immense triumph touching a man who, whatever the 
 popular outcry, never answered. To explain meant to 
 
220 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 excuse himself, in a way to beg for milder verdicts. 
 If a man had wrought that upon old Porson, he had 
 done well. 
 
 Porson was drumming noiselessly now upon the 
 desk, keeping time as he talked, and Marshall watched 
 the knotted fingers. Janie, out of her cage, never 
 turned her eyes from the old man's face. 
 
 "You say he" Porson touched the bundle of 
 disordered proof lightly with a species of disparagement 
 not superb enough for scorn "you say here my clerk, 
 Luther Tileston, got ahead of me. You say he found 
 out before I did that Blackstone Avenue was going 
 through the old Dumping Fields, and he cut in ahead of 
 me and bought up that land. Well, Mr. Marshall, 
 you're wrong. I bought that land." 
 
 "Oh, no, you didn't," said Marshall, his mind on the 
 trapping of vanity. ' ' The deeds stood in his name. He 
 made a fortune. His wife and daughter are living on 
 it to-day." 
 
 "Yes," said Porson, mildly, as if in tolerance of in- 
 complete methods. "But I furnished the money. 
 I bought in Tileston's name." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "It didn't do for me to go into it unless I did it some 
 such way. I'd begun to be a marked man " a slight 
 assertiveness animated his voice. "If I'd gone into it 
 in the light of day, there' d have been a hundred others 
 ready to jump and pick up all the land near by. I 
 wanted that, too, but I hadn't the means I have now. 
 I wasn't prepared to take it till I knew whether they 
 were going to extend the avenue to the river front and 
 make the drive." 
 
THE LANTERN 221 
 
 "The rest was sold later/' said Marshall, vaguely. 
 He was not yet sensitized. "You did buy that. But 
 Tileston bought the first lot. He got the Dumping 
 Fields." 
 
 "Don't I tell you I bought in his name?" inquired 
 Porson. 
 
 "Well," said Marshall, unwillingly convinced, "so 
 you want me to make the correction? " 
 
 "1 want you to drop the whole matter." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 There was a long pause, and Janie, watching, saw 
 Person's face concentrate as if he were travelling a 
 difficult way, bordered by sadder or more serious things. 
 Suddenly he came back. 
 
 "Tileston," said he, "was an honest man." 
 
 "Why, yes," Marshall returned, "nobody's ever 
 known anything against Tileston. Except that land 
 coup, of course. But I suppose he had a friend in the 
 city council. I suppose he knew pretty well which way 
 the boom was going, and it seemed to him venial to 
 snap something up." 
 
 "He didn't have any friend in the city council," 
 said Porson, patiently. "I had the friend more than 
 one of 'em. I sent Tileston abroad on business at the 
 time of that deal. He knew no more about it than 
 the dead. And a week after he got home he died him- 
 self." 
 
 "So, if you bought for him, as you say you did, he 
 never knew it?" 
 
 "No." A curious expression came over Person's 
 face and crumpled it into another sort of document. 
 It bespoke remembrance of the uphill paths he had 
 
222 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 travelled to his gilded cell. "Tileston never knew 
 anything about the matter. We had a kind of an 
 unpleasantness at that time. He got hold of some 
 things he didn't understand." Janie, with a light 
 vault into the saddle of intuition, thought he had been 
 about to say, " stand for", and on that hint coursed 
 along after him. "In regard to the business, that is. 
 He meant to leave me. We talked that out a day or 
 two before he died." 
 
 "What made you let the other matter rest? Wasn't 
 it of a sort to be settled on the dot? You couldn't have 
 meant to leave it that way, at loose ends. The avenue 
 was voted on in less than a month." 
 
 Person's mouth worked a little. "I did mean to 
 clinch it," he said. " I put it off." 
 
 Instantly Janie felt she was running back over the 
 difficult path, her mind with his, and she thought she 
 saw exactly how it had been. Person was younger 
 then, less toughened to the world's assaults, and momen- 
 tarily he had found himself unable to stand before the 
 temperamental onslaught of Tileston's scorn. Marshall 
 too, had his conclusions. 
 
 "He would have repudiated it? " he put in irresistibly. 
 
 Person did riot seem to hear. 
 
 "I'd only to tell him and the transfer would have 
 been made," he averred. "Tileston was an honest 
 man." And then, with no implication of the sequence, 
 "He was no sort of a clerk for me. I shouldn't have 
 taken him in the first place but we were boys to- 
 gether." 
 
 "Then, when he died, the property stood in his 
 name. You got left, so to speak." 
 
THE LANTERN 223 
 
 "It stood in his name," said Porson, briefly. 
 
 "Mr. Porson," said Marshall, "I wish you'd let me 
 use this as an interview. It's magnificent copy." 
 
 "No," said Porson, immovably, "I don't want you 
 to use it and I don't want you to speak of the land. 
 Tileston left a widow and a crippled daughter. That 
 property appreciated." 
 
 "I should say it did!" 
 
 "They're living on it to-day. If they knew how it 
 come well, I don't feel sure what they'd do about it. 
 I rather guess it wouldn't be safe." 
 
 "What makes you think so?" 
 
 "You see the widow come to me after Tileston's 
 death. She was a kind of a high-spirited woman. 
 Interested in charities. Wanted to reform the city 
 government. Nice pleasant woman, too. Well, 
 somebody 'd got hold of her and told her Tileston was, 
 smart as a trap to fall in with the city government and 
 pick up that land before the deal went through, and she 
 come to me with tears in her eyes. Said her husband 
 couldn't do a thing like that. If he could, she'd throw 
 the money into the sea. Said she only hoped the firm 
 had been doing it through him. Ready to sign it over 
 to us. Seemed as if she couldn't do it soon enough." 
 
 ' ' What did you say? ' ' Marshall asked it breathlessly. 
 
 The ghost of a relaxation that might have served 
 Porson for a smile, was wrinkling his lean face. 
 
 "I told her Tileston would have cut off his right hand 
 before he'd have dickered with the city government." 
 
 "Did that convince her?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. She never liked me very well. Said she 
 could trust me to tell her the worst, because if there was 
 
224 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 a chance of the property's comin' to the firm she knew 
 I'd be eager and ready. Oh, no! She never liked me." 
 
 " And you think if she knew now 
 
 "I've watched that woman a good many years. 
 She ain't the kind of a woman you care so very much 
 about " he made that slight motion of his toward the 
 darkness where Janie sat, and she at least knew, with 
 a cognizance purely feminine, that he was remembering 
 her as something to be valued "but you'd know she'd 
 shell out in a second if she thought the money didn't 
 come the straight road." 
 
 " You think she'd do it now?" 
 
 "I know she would." 
 
 " And she and the crippled daughter " 
 
 " They'd go to the wall." 
 
 The two men sat for a minute or two in silence, 
 Person not even beating his impatient fingers upon the 
 table. Janie, hearing her own hurried heart, hardly 
 dared watch them now. When her husband spoke, 
 hot tears came into her eyes. The tone was the one of 
 infinite softness he was accustomed to use for her only. 
 
 "Now, you see I've mentioned the deal already. 
 I can't take that back. I've got to speak of it again. 
 How would it do if I should refer to it as one of those 
 curious strokes of chance by which an honest man, 
 not especially fitted for business, should have picked 
 up some land nobody wanted picked it up at the 
 crucial moment just as the tide turned its way?" 
 
 "That's it," said Person, with an evident relief. 
 "But this " he pointed to the proof which he evidently 
 regarded with the deference of unaccustomed eyes, 
 "this is printed." 
 
THE LANTERN 225 
 
 "It hasn't gone into the magazine. I can arrange 
 that. I can elaborate the stock transaction toward 
 the close and cut this for space." 
 
 Porson picked up the proof and began reading the 
 concluding paragraphs. Janie slipped out into the 
 kitchen and Marshall heard water running through the 
 filter. He watched Porson now with a softened, even 
 an eager, curiosity. What would it mean to the man 
 to read the record of this other transaction, perhaps 
 the most disgraceful, and yet legally the safest of his 
 whole career. Porson laid the paper down, a veiled yet 
 retrospective look upon his face. 
 
 "Have I" Marshall hesitated "Mr. Porson, do 
 you challenge that?" 
 
 But Porson, taking his hat to go, looked merely 
 inscrutable. 
 
 " I see you've put it in 71," he answered. 
 
 "Yes, April, 71. I believe that's the right date." 
 
 Janie was flying in to them with a tray, two glasses 
 and a pitcher. Her eyes held points of light. She 
 flushed all over her face, as if at some extraordinary 
 event. 
 
 "I made you some lemonade, Mr. Porson," she said. 
 "Won't you try it, please?" 
 
 The request was even urgent, as if Porson could do 
 her the most distinct favor. He accepted a glass 
 gravely, and drank without pause. Marshall, tasting, 
 stopped and threw Janie a whimsical, terrified look, 
 because she had left out the ice. Then he remembered 
 that a part of their personal data was to the effect 
 that Porson's elected beverage was unchilled lemon- 
 
226 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 ade, and smiled over the drink at Janie, who had 
 scored. 
 
 Person set down his glass. 
 
 "I'll bid you good evening," he said. He was going 
 out, veiled again in his poor inscrutability. But Janie 
 dashed at him, in a warm impulsive hurry. 
 
 "Good-by, Mr. Porson," she said. "Won't you 
 shake hands?" 
 
 He looked briefly surprised; the gnarled old hand 
 enveloped hers, and again he said good-night. They 
 heard the shambling, undignified tread lessening down 
 the stairs. Then they looked at each other. There 
 were tears in Janie's eyes, and Marshall frankly swore. 
 
 "He's made it over," she said, tumultuously, "the 
 world I saw to-night. It was dark with evil, and Per- 
 son's hung a light in it." 
 
 Marshall was looking toward the door, closed upon 
 the meagre figure. His hand lay upon the proofs where 
 he had put all that his clever mind had been able to 
 gather concerning another man. 
 
 "So that," he said, in a curious tone, "is Porson. 
 That's the man himself." 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 
 
 ONSLOW PERRY sat in the dusty, booklined 
 office of the Flywheel Publishing Company, 
 his hand half-con cealingly, half-protectingly 
 on a letter he had just finished, and looked across the 
 table at the soft-coal fire burning in the rusted grate. 
 The Flywheel had selected an old house, falling into 
 decay, in a quarter of the town forsaken by the sort 
 of residents that had built it up grandly more than a 
 hundred and fifty years ago. The mantels were so 
 good, both sponsors of the Flywheel said gravely when 
 they were chaffed about gravitating to the slums. 
 So they put the house into fitting repair, and ceased 
 to take any after-notice of it so far as dust and cobwebs 
 went; they affected the attitude of leaving it to itself, 
 to grow ancient again. There Dickerman, the editor 
 and publisher, and Perry, his subordinate, received 
 manuscript and made up the magazine. They had 
 swallowed the house whole, it was said, for they also 
 lived there and skirmished about, from inconsiderable 
 eating-houses on their lean days to gilded cafe's when 
 their pockets ran over. 
 
 It was matter for amazement in a time when new 
 magazines spring up and flourish briefly, that the 
 Flywheel in particular should have sold; but even at 
 first it did, and the wise declared they knew the reason. 
 Dickerman was buying the most expensive and splendid 
 
 227 
 
228 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 contributors with his father's money, though he had the 
 whim of making them publish anonymously. Dicker- 
 man himself, known in college as Crazy Ike, Dotty Dick, 
 and half a dozen titles to the same shading and effect 
 could scarcely contain himself when the circulation ran 
 unhaltingly up. It was, he felt, a personal tribute. He 
 had planned the whole thing, and it was true that 
 he had put his father's money into it, after coaxings 
 colored by sanguine prophecies absurdly contrasted 
 with his resultant surprise at their fulfillment. But 
 there, at a good figure, the circulation hung. It could not 
 be whipped or spurred, nor did it drop very startlingly 
 below that first buoyant figure. 
 
 Dickerman was a favorite among his mates, and he 
 had an enormous acquaintance. Perry, too, owned a 
 vogue of another sort. Men who were not of their 
 own kind, brokers, grave professional workers, or 
 gamblers on the scent of money, having met the two 
 at clubs and laughed at their stories, their wild play 
 of imagination, and antiphonal abuse of each other, 
 cherished a lively curiosity to see what they would say 
 when they really had a medium like the Flywheel. The 
 two men together were possessed of a trick of augment- 
 ing each other, to the general mirth; and the absent, 
 who happened not to be creditors, always thought of 
 them to the accompaniment of a smile. 
 
 Perry, who sat at the table, arms relaxed and face 
 wistfully puckered, hardly looked like a ministrant to 
 gayety. He was sinewy, and light of hair and eyes, 
 six feet tall, with good broad shoulders and a swing and 
 dash that made the ladies look at him demurely. His 
 thick hair tumbled over his forehead in a blowzy way, 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 229 
 
 because he rumpled it when the world went ill. To 
 the casual eye, he was a handsome, virile animal, with 
 no lines permanent enough as yet to tell careless tales. 
 The time would come when, unless he hardened his 
 face by the repeated hammer-strokes that mould and 
 change, some one would see a blenching of the eye, 
 when his more decided intimates called upon him to do 
 or leave undone, a sensitive quiver of the mouth. 
 
 The door from the inner office opened, and Dicker- 
 man came in. He was shortlegged, and cushiony in the 
 shoulders, absurdly fat, with round eyes staring behind 
 large horn-bowed spectacles. His hair stood straight 
 up from his forehead in bristles aggressively cultivated. 
 The frown also was a part of his equipment, lest the 
 world should misprize him for the plumpness thrust 
 upon hmi. He threw a manuscript on the table. 
 
 " Read that, " said he. 
 
 "When I have time," Perry answered, as if he did 
 not propose to use the time he had, at call. 
 
 "You've got time now. It's only four thousand 
 words. Want to talk to you about it." 
 
 Perry only leaned back in his chair, and gazed 
 thoughtfully at Dickerman, who, knowing this mood in 
 him, affected not to recognize it, and sought about 
 among the effects on the table, whistling cheerily. But 
 he was of the nature that, having something to say, 
 cannot defer it. 
 
 "I'm going to just electrify you, Perry," he burst 
 forth. "They 're on to us." 
 
 "Who are?" 
 
 "Everybody. They will be by day after to-morrow. 
 I met Hunkins on the ferry, and he couldn't contain 
 
230 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 himself. Said he'd discovered how we made the Fly- 
 wheel so distinctive. Said he found five or six old num- 
 bers on the hotel table where he'd been to interview the 
 mill-hands. Said he read 'em consecutively. Said he 
 guessed the whole thing." 
 
 Perry was looking at him with a gravity that seemed 
 to indicate an issue very bad indeed. 
 
 "What did you say?" he inquired. 
 
 "Asked him what he meant." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Said he wouldn't tell. We could buy the Wednes- 
 day's Trumpet and find out." 
 
 "He has a weekly column." 
 
 "Yes. And when he'd said that, he just couldn't 
 hold in, and came back and sputtered and laughed 
 the way he does, and said he was going to write the 
 history of the magazine and name it the Echo. Then 
 he called me a clever fellow." 
 
 "What did you call him?" 
 
 "An ass. Because that was the answer to it." 
 
 "Well," said Perry. He took up a pencil and began 
 drawing whorls and circles with a clever hand. He had 
 a certain facility in everything. At one time, when 
 he was an intimate of an artistic set in college, there had 
 been an impression that he was going to work miracles 
 as a draughtsman of some sort. 
 
 Dickie began to grin. He had a wide mouth and 
 beautiful teeth. 
 
 "I almost told him how I did it," he said, with a 
 chuckling appreciation of his own folly. 
 
 "Told him how you invented the Flywheel?" 
 
 "Yes. It tickled me so I thought I'd have to." 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 231 
 
 "Fool," said Perry, indulgently. 
 
 "I saw myself lying there I was in bed, you know 
 and thinking how it's only discovery that counts. 
 After anybody's found a new way of doing something 
 or other, there'll be plenty of fellows that can do the 
 trick as well as he can, or better. But he caught it 
 while it was rushing by, and labeled it, and it stands in 
 the museum in his name." 
 
 "Yes, I know all that. You said that when you 
 came to rope me in. You reeled it off, and I knew it was 
 a monologue you'd got up for the boys; and then you 
 sprung it on me that you were going to start a mag- 
 azine." 
 
 "With anonymous contributions." 
 
 "Which I was to write." 
 
 "Because you could write 'em. If I could have done 
 it, do you s'pose I'd have summoned anybody else from 
 the vasty deep? " 
 
 "Never mind whether you would or wouldn't. 
 Anyhow, I've done it. I've ground you out an imita- 
 tion of Kipling and an imitation of Shaw, and all the 
 whole blooming push, and when you've given 'em a 
 good plausible title and put 'em in without a name, 
 blessed if the wise can tell whether it isn't Kipling and 
 Shaw." 
 
 "No, they can't. But here's that prattler's article 
 coming out, and it gives the whole thing away. I do 
 hate an incontinent blabber. If a fellow's got something 
 to say, why can't he keep his mouth shut? " 
 
 That sounded to them both like the verbal tricks 
 they used to delight the groundlings, and it made them 
 melancholy. Perry often declared that nothing so 
 
232 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 blighted them as the particular character of each other's 
 babble. 
 
 "It might boom the Flywheel" he said, after a 
 time. 
 
 "Why, it's putting a knife into it! Poor little Fly- 
 wheel. Poor 'itty sing." 
 
 "You can't tell. When it comes to advertising, 
 attack's as good as reinforcement. As a matter of 
 fact, you really never can tell." 
 
 Dickerman stretched out his short legs and regarded 
 them with disfavor. After a period of incubation, he 
 glanced up brightly. 
 
 "You know my system," he said. 
 
 Perry spoke brutally, out of the affectionate derision 
 that counts itself exempt from casuistry. ' ' You haven't 
 any system except the one you're riddling with high- 
 balls and cigarettes." 
 
 "What do you mean by saying I've got no system? 
 I live by the inner light." 
 
 "Inner grandmother!" 
 
 "No, inner light. I'm a very intuitive person. I 
 take up the morning paper. I turn to the market. 
 If my inner light sends a long shaft of radiance, 'mystic, 
 wonderful', to any particular name, I buy that stock." 
 
 "You never made enough in stocks in the whole 
 course of your life to buy your shoe-strings with, and 
 have 'em charged." 
 
 "What's that got to do with it? The inner light goes 
 on shining just the same. It's like the death of Paul 
 Dombey. 'The light is shining on me as I go.' Well, 
 it's shining on me now." 
 
 "Oh, you 'go' fast enough," commented Perry, 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 233 
 
 gloomily. "The bait isn't dug that you wouldn't 
 nibble at." 
 
 "Now here we come to the Flywheel. When Hunkins 
 told me he proposed showing up our methods, the inner 
 light just coruscated, and I saw with my subconscious 
 vision, ' Change your methods.' That's what we're going 
 to do, my boy. We're going to change our methods." 
 
 "Then it happens at the right time," said Perry 
 quickly, as if he found himself lacking in impetus to 
 speak at all. 
 
 " 'Psychological moment!' Have we got that on the 
 Flywheel's taboo list? I must put down 'anent' and 
 'Frankenstein'. I thought of them this morning." 
 
 "It happens just right for me," Perry continued, 
 "because you won't need me." 
 
 "Need you! Great Caesar! you're the jelly in the 
 tart. You're^/" 
 
 Perry played with his pencil, using it, by adroit 
 touches, to thrust the stamped letter before him into a 
 series of quick changes of place, as if it were a game. 
 He glanced up from moment to moment, in a desultory 
 way, to watch his friend. 
 
 "I've had an offer, Dickie," he said, "to go on the 
 Civilian at fifteen per." 
 
 "Shameful! you sha'n't!" 
 
 Perry did not fight out that purely financial issue. 
 
 "I've written them I'd go," he said. "The letter's 
 here." 
 
 Dickie made a dive for it, but Perry, by a ready 
 counter-movement, as if this also were the game, caught 
 it up and dropped it into a drawer. 
 
 "Don't you mail that letter," Dickie blustered. 
 
234 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Maybe I shan't. Honest, I don't know whether 
 I shall or not. But it's written. I thought I'd like to 
 see how it would sound." 
 
 Dickerman was staring at him with eyes ridiculously 
 distended. He was white with surprised apprehension, 
 white in patches that, beside the adjacent pink of 
 his skin, had a droll distinctness. 
 
 "I never heard of such a thing," he declared. " Never! 
 You know you can do what no other fellow can, and 
 you propose to lock up your capital, refuse to let it 
 earn anything for you, and go out hod-carrying for so 
 much a day." 
 
 Perry was returning his gaze with the rather appeal- 
 ing smile that made him younger than his years, the 
 air of the boy that asks sweetly, unassumingly, foi 
 something he might easily be denied. 
 
 "The fact is, Dick, it's awfully bad for me to do your 
 kind of thing. You see, it's a sort of high-class forgery." 
 
 "Bad for you? What do you mean? Bad for your 
 brains, or your pocket, or what? " 
 
 Now Perry looked absurdly conscious. His shame- 
 faced mien said that he might be about to say something 
 which could be used as a perennial text for jeering. 
 
 "It resolves itself," he deprecated, "into that ques- 
 tion of the inner light." 
 
 But although Dickerman had himself introduced 
 the inner light as a factor of illumination, somehow it 
 became immediately different when Perry turned it 
 on. It had ceased to disclose the merely humorous. 
 It laid bare, with a most embarrassing distinctness, 
 that earnest which is likely to be comedy's next neigh- 
 bor. He shook his head. 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 235 
 
 "I haven't the least idea what you're driving at," 
 he averred. 
 
 "No," said Perry. "I know you haven't. Did 
 it ever occur to you that I'm a queer sort of chap?" 
 
 " You're as clever as they make 'em," Dickie flashed 
 back, as if he were bidding for him. 
 
 "That's it. But it isn't my cleverness. It's the 
 cleverness of the other man, the one that makes me 
 talk, or write, the author of the book I imitate. I'm 
 a kind of a mirror. You hold up things to me and I 
 reflect 'em." His face betrayed a keen mortification, 
 the flush and quiver that might have sprung from some 
 definite slight or indignity of the moment. 
 
 Dickie saw no way of following him, and frankly 
 abjured the trouble of attempting it. 
 
 "Oh, pshaw!" said he. "You're dotty. Come back! 
 The Flywheel 's got to be adjusted. I told you I meant 
 to change the system. I'm going to have some clever 
 original work. What we want is to discover somebody. ' ' 
 
 "Count me out. You can't discover me." 
 
 Dickie pointed dramatically at the manuscript he 
 had brought in with him. 
 
 "He's discovered," he remarked, with oracular 
 certainty. "Behold!" 
 
 Perry stretched out his hand. 
 
 * ' Give it here, ' ' he bade him. " Let me see." 
 
 He took the paper and read it fast, frowning over it, 
 and once he broke out: 
 
 "Good! oh, good!" 
 
 Dickie, nodding from time to tune as he saw recogni- 
 tion of this or that distinction he remembered, smiled 
 triumphantly. Perry turned back to the beginning 
 
236 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 and ran swiftly over it again. Then he slapped it 
 down on the table and left it there, regarding it with a 
 mixture of affection and abusive rallying, as one might 
 a newly discovered and most bewildering person who 
 is really so consummate that the finder shrinks from 
 disclosing the full measure of his own extravagant 
 approval. 
 
 "And the whole thing has been waiting round the 
 corner ever since New York has had a foreign popula- 
 tion," he said, in wonder. "One man does the Ghetto 
 and another Little Italy, and just these people in here 
 have been toting their bundles and marrying and 
 burying, and nobody 's photographed them. We're 
 as dense as our cloud-capp'd granite hills." 
 
 "Well, we needn't be dense any longer," said Dickie. 
 His eyes had that peculiar gleam that gathered when 
 he came in after a particularly good night's sleep and 
 declared the world looked so bright to him, and he 
 found morning was so exactly at seven, that he'd 
 bought five hundred shares of some stock with a pic- 
 turesque name, because the sound of it invited him. 
 "I want a series six stories like that." 
 
 "Well, you've got the first. Going to order five 
 others?" 
 
 "I'm going to order six others of you." 
 
 "Me? What have I got to do with it? " 
 
 "My boy, you're the great and only imitator. You've 
 read one story and you've seen how the trick was done. 
 I'll bet a shoe-button you could tell me on the dot the 
 names of the others that jumped into your brain since 
 you read this." 
 
 Perry stirred uncomfortably in his chair. 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 237 
 
 "What's the use of talking like that?" he inquired, 
 testily. "You don't know what's in my brain, nor 
 whether I've got a brain at all." 
 
 "Three thousand for six," Dickie was bidding. The 
 color, a girlish rose flush, had overspread his cheeks. 
 His eyes gained in light until they glittered with the 
 gambling zest. "Daddy '11 stand for it. He made 
 golcondas in sugar last week. Three thousand! You 
 can go abroad and tell Chesterton he's a paradox. 
 You can go to China and drop a tear on the grave of 
 Tsi-hsi. What do you say? " 
 
 The enemy within was beguiling Perry more in- 
 sidiously than the persuader without. The six stories 
 with the same complexion, every intimate touch to the 
 life like this, were lined up beckoning to him. He put 
 out his hand rather uncertainly toward the manuscript. 
 He hated to dismiss them into oblivion, pretty, in- 
 genuous, unborn children. His vague seeking for con- 
 trol and guidance was only stronger than his lack of 
 personal initiative. Give him the right sort of captain, 
 he had always known, and he could have made a 
 faithful soldier. 
 
 "How about this girl?" he asked. 
 
 "Girl? That isn't a girl. It's a middle-aged man, 
 knocked into shape by all the devilish things we know 
 competition and work and worry. Don't you see how 
 middle-aged it is?" 
 
 "Don't you see how ideal it is?" Perry did lay his 
 hand on the paper now, almost caressingly. 
 
 "I rather guess you can recall your ideals when you're 
 middle-aged. They loom, too, you're so far in the 
 ditch below them. Oh, no, Perry, no! This is mellow. 
 
238 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 There's practice in it, disappointment. Nobody under 
 thirty ever said a thing like that." He drew the man- 
 uscript from Perry's unwilling fingers and whirled 
 the pages to a halt. " Read that." 
 
 Perry evidently did not propose recurring to it. The 
 impression made on him at the start needed no aug- 
 menting. 
 
 "What are you going to do with it?" he asked. 
 
 "Return it," Dickie responded, in a tone as conclu- 
 sive as the words. 
 
 "Pick her brains of their secret and then chuck the 
 shell of it back to her? Talk about the inner light! 
 Dick, you're defeated. You're killed, but you don't 
 know it." 
 
 "Fiddlededum!" said Dickerman, looking at his 
 watch. "I've got to be up town in less time than I can 
 get there. You must see the author. He's coming in 
 this morning for his manuscript." 
 
 "This author? This manuscript? " 
 
 "Yes, he wrote he'd call. I fancied he had to con- 
 sider the difference between one stamp or two, poor 
 beggar! I depute to you the task of telling him we 
 don't want the manuscript, and offering him a cigar. 
 You'll see for yourself he's a man of forty." 
 
 Dickie was out of his chair, giving a characteristic 
 hunch to his clothes, to adapt them the more graciously 
 to his hateful chubbiness. Perry looked his helpless 
 discomfort over the job thrust upon him, and asked 
 rather bitterly, 
 
 "Shall I tell her you are returning the manuscript 
 because I can write you six of the same pattern, now 
 I've learned the way?" 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 239 
 
 "Tell him I refuse it, that's all. I do, lock, stock, and 
 barrel, prologue and epilogue. I don't want it. No 
 printee. Finis." 
 
 "Why not ask her to write you five more like it?" 
 
 "Because I don't want her to. Because" he halted 
 at the door and diffused the sunniest smile "because 
 you'll do the same thing better. You always improve 
 on your pattern. That's why you're the man to do it. 
 * We needs must love the highest,' mustn't we? I rather 
 guess we must. If you can do a better job than this 
 codger that's happened to stumble on a gold mine, 
 aren't you the chap to do it? Bet you'll have three of 
 'em written before to-morrow morning. And don't 
 you mail that letter." 
 
 He whistled cheerily down the stairs, and Perry 
 condemned him picturesquely. He pounced on a big 
 envelope, as if it could help him, and dipped his pen. 
 The story should be mailed to the author whose literary 
 domain was threatened with invasion. It should be out 
 of the office on the instant, so that it could tempt 
 him no more with its beguiling limpidity, its human 
 warmth, the perfection of form that might well be the 
 despair of even a master imitator. 
 
 But when he returned to the manuscript for the 
 address, he had the setback of finding none. Then he 
 pushed it away from him, and, because his angry im- 
 pulse had spent itself and he lacked even the spirit to 
 go into the inner room to find a record of the story, he 
 lay back in his chair with one idle hand hanging over 
 the arm, and tried to fight down the certainty that this 
 was destiny and that he was about to do the job of his 
 nefarious imitating. Pen and ink seemed calling him 
 
240 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 with the force of a spell. Arguments began to chase 
 through his mind, not for earning the money, but for 
 proving to himself that he could do work as good as 
 this, and better. He went back over the genesis of 
 literature and reminded himself that one man could 
 hardly do whatever he did save in the light cast over 
 his shoulder by the other man who had gone before. 
 Who except the scholar, reading certain verse, remem- 
 bered who first made that metre his own and sealed 
 it, as he had thought, with a golden seal of his recog- 
 nized distinction? One man had opened the orient to 
 western eyes by the talisman of his quick sight and 
 hurrying pen, and the west had rushed into what had 
 looked at first like preempted ground, and staked out 
 splendid claims. 
 
 First, there is the discoverer. Then, when the trees 
 are blazed by the pioneer axe, paths have to be made to 
 river and spring. He remembered a poem that told, 
 with a dignified but hurt emphasis, this same tale of the 
 pioneer's sharing his discovery with after-invaders 
 deputed, by the unvarying law of leveling, to develop 
 the land. Once, in the midst of this inner colloquy, he 
 paused, with a whimsical flirt of the mind, to wonder 
 whether Dickerman, on his way up town, was sending 
 these arguments back to him by wireless; it was a part 
 of his morbid self -consciousness, at this time, to regard 
 Dickie, when he was not in the room offering his pink- 
 iness and gayety for testimony to the wholesomeness 
 of things, as mysteriously equipped with necromantic 
 powers. 
 
 Now, he felt, his mind was almost reconciled to the 
 feat of leaping into the field and sowing magic seed of 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 241 
 
 the plant that comes up in an hour, where the other 
 mind had ploughed and furrowed and raised the stock 
 that bore the bright new bloom : almost reconciled, but 
 not quite. There was something within him, an un- 
 named personality, something more august than any 
 mind, and either royal or timid, because it walked al- 
 ways veiled. On this inner person he was now laying 
 a mandatory and beseeching finger, bidding it come out 
 into the daylight and tell what it really had to say, 
 when the door opened and the girl stepped in. That 
 was what he called her at once, because he had proph- 
 esied her in relation to the story the girl. She was 
 dark and slender, very neat and yet not at first sight 
 significant, because she looked like many other women 
 dressed trigly for their work. But Perry, as he got out 
 of his chair, noted distinctive things about her: a pallor 
 that was yet wholesome, dark shining hair, and sincere 
 gray eyes under a lovely line of brow. She was not 
 timid, he saw, for she advanced to his table at once, 
 and said, 
 
 "My name is Hartwell. I came to ask about a 
 manuscript I sent in." 
 
 "G. Hartwell?" he inquired. He went round the 
 table, and pulled out Dickie's chair. " Won't you sit 
 down, Miss Hartwell? I have the manuscript here." 
 
 She took the chair with a quiet acceptance of its 
 being the thing to do; but her eye did light when it 
 followed his to the little pile of paper there on the table. 
 
 "I hope," she began, and then dropped into a form 
 of speech that should make it easier for him: "I'm 
 afraid you're not going to take it." 
 
 "Have you been writing long?" 
 
242 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 He had gone back to his seat, and now reproved 
 himself for the futility of his beginning when it was so 
 evident that she was too young to have been doing 
 anything long. 
 
 "I don't write. I teach school. But I want to leave 
 it, and do writing altogether." 
 
 " Journalism, or this?" He touched the manu- 
 script again with a kind of approving intimacy. 
 
 "I've already done some journalism, book-notices 
 and reading manuscript. But this," her eyes, too, 
 sought the story, "this is what I really want to do." 
 
 At once he saw that it stood for exactly what it did 
 in his own longings, one of the free, splendid mas- 
 teries, a craft to be studied with devotion for a lifetime 
 perhaps, if only one could say at the close, "I have 
 served one thing well." He wanted to have his brutal 
 task over as soon as possible. 
 
 "He's not going to take it," he threw at her. 
 
 A look of almost terrified surprise shot into her face, 
 to be quelled as swiftly under a patience that looked as 
 if it had been learned through much rebuff. 
 
 "Then you're not Mr. Dickerman?" she asked. 
 
 "No." He sacrificed Dickie without an instant's 
 scruple. " He doesn't think he can use it. He believes 
 he may have more of the same kind." 
 
 She made a movement to take the story, but he 
 closed his hand upon it. Thereupon she waited for 
 anything further he might have to say. His inexplicable 
 mortification impressed itself upon her then, and she 
 tried to help him. 
 
 "I can't wonder," she said. "It's presumption in 
 me to jump into a pool where there are such big fish. 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 243 
 
 Of course nobody'd see me. The other tails and fins 
 are flashing so!" Her big, sweet mouth broadened into 
 a smile. "No magazine has such a list of contributors 
 as yours. And they do their best work for you. You 
 must offer them big bribes, to publish such good stuff 
 anonymously." 
 
 Perry felt his face crimsoning with pleasure. He 
 could hardly help rising to make her a bow, and mur- 
 mur his delighted appreciation. 
 
 "You like it then?" he speciously inquired. "You 
 like the Flywheel?" 
 
 She answered without an instant's pause. 
 
 "Oh, it's superb! But I can't help thinking you'll 
 pardon me, won't you? it's a mistake to keep the con- 
 tributors anonymous. Folks are so stupid, most of 
 them. They don't recognize the master hand unless 
 it signs its name. Some of us do, and it makes us fear- 
 fully conceited. But you can't build up a circulation 
 out of the elect, now can you? There aren't enough 
 of us." 
 
 Then she laughed unaffectedly over her cockiness, 
 and he joined her, taking up the current number of the 
 Flywheel, and asking, with a shamefacedness she could 
 not penetrate, 
 
 "Run over the contents, will you, and name the con- 
 tributors?" 
 
 She did it without reflection. There were a dozen 
 names, four of them as significant as the modern list 
 affords, and the others of the well-known best in an 
 inferior circle. As she ran them rapidly through, Perry 
 felt himself tingling with the pleasure of it. This he 
 had done; if he could not create, he could at least dupli- 
 
244 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 cate the best makers so that fine eyes and fine ears 
 could hardly tell the difference, which might, after all, 
 be sometimes in his favor. 
 
 " Thank you," he said soberly at the end, but she 
 could not know exactly what his gratitude was for. 
 Suddenly he found he was throwing prudence and a 
 dozen lesser bits of ballast overboard, and admitting 
 her to the inside of his mind where he conceived and 
 plotted. "See here," he said, "do you want me to 
 tell you what I should do with this story?" His hand 
 had not left her manuscript. Now it beat upon it 
 with an indicating finger. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "I should give it to the Councillor." 
 
 " The Councillor! I shouldn't dare. It isn't for the 
 likes of me." 
 
 "The Councillor will jump at it." 
 
 "But you didn't jump." 
 
 He temporized. "It's a bully story," he said. 
 "There's been nothing like it in a year's issue of all the 
 magazines, the whole posse of them." 
 
 "But there's an out about it or you'd take it your- 
 self." 
 
 "I don't say there isn't for the Flywheel. But you 
 try the Councillor. And " he looked her straight in 
 the eye, to make her, if he could, share his conviction 
 "and not alone. With five others like it." 
 
 "A series?" 
 
 "Yes. The minute I'd read this I saw what they 
 could be. Don't you see, you could take the sixteen- 
 year old girl and put her into the shop, to substitute 
 for her sister, so the sister can make her wedding-clothes. 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 245 
 
 The family need never know who it was the sister was 
 engaged to, but when Rosa gets into the shop she finds 
 it's that frightful Lecorescor " 
 
 One by one they went over them, from the grand- 
 father to the child, and stabbed the tragedy of each. 
 Now the girl talked faster than he. Color came into 
 her face; she flashed and charmed unconsciously. 
 
 "Of course I can," she kept saying. "Of course! 
 Why, it's the story of the family. This little sketch 
 only begins it. How stupid I was ! ' ' 
 
 Then only did he give her back her manuscript. 
 
 "Got any more in your head?" he asked, with a 
 misleading lightness. It covered an almost fatherly 
 anxiety. He wanted her to succeed. It seemed worth 
 any sacrifice. 
 
 She laughed back at him out of that new brilliancy. 
 
 " Lots! " she said almost defiantly, as if she challenged 
 him to dispute it. "If I could only get time, I should 
 glut the market. The supervisors keep us frightfully 
 busy doing fool things. But " she lifted her head to 
 its little willful pose "I shall get time. I'm deter- 
 mined."^ 
 
 Perry was looking at her narrowly, partly because 
 it was evident that she would soon go and it seemed 
 desirable to learn her face by heart, and also to come 
 to some understanding of a will so secure that it pre- 
 dicted what must be. 
 
 "Do you always do what you determine on?" he 
 asked, so seriously that she answered, not out of her 
 whimsical mood of the previous moment, but with a 
 soft earnestness, 
 
 "I try to, when it's right." 
 
246 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Then, as his face continued to interrogate her with 
 its painful appeal, she saw that more was required of 
 her. "We must," she ventured, from the shyness of 
 the unaccustomed preacher. "We must, mustn't we? " 
 
 "Must what?" 
 
 "We must determine on things and then just do 
 them." 
 
 He stared down at his hand playing with the paper- 
 cutter, and did not look up even though he knew, by 
 the little preparatory rustle, that in an instant she would 
 
 go. 
 
 "Sit still," he said. "I want to ask you something." 
 
 So she kept her seat and was very quiet, watching 
 his face grow graver than the moment seemed to 
 warrant. 
 
 "It's about a story," he began. "I want you to tell 
 me what you think could be done with it." 
 
 "You want me to do it?" she asked alertly. 
 
 "I don't know. Maybe I do. Maybe I want you to 
 collaborate. I fancy I've got to have a hand in it my- 
 self. We might call it 'The Mirror', or something of 
 that sort. It's the story of a man who found he could 
 only reflect things. He couldn't give out any light of 
 his own. Understand?" 
 
 "No," she answered frankly. 
 
 "Well, to illustrate, here are you, writing stories. 
 You think of 'em " 
 
 "They come to me." 
 
 "It's all one. But so far as you know, the story 
 springs, in the form you finally use, from your own 
 brain. Of course you're indebted to previous observa- 
 tion, a million hints from without. But you take those 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 247 
 
 million hints and fuse and color and shape in your own 
 private workshop your brain. That's what you do, 
 or think you do: for after all none of us knows really 
 much about it." 
 
 " That's what I think I do." 
 
 "Now take another kind of brain, the brain of the 
 man we spoke of. That's a workshop too, but it's dif- 
 ferent. The tools are about the same, for he turns out 
 the brand of article you do; but the beginning, the 
 inception, is different. You work or you think you 
 work without a pattern." 
 
 She had fallen in with the fancy. 
 
 "I make my own pattern," she said quickly. "But 
 I do it only because I've seen so many thousand pat- 
 terns cut by master workmen before me. Still I think 
 my pattern is my own." 
 
 "Exactly! but the man we're dealing with can't make 
 his pattern. He can only work after somebody has 
 given him a model. He can do it then, stunning stuff, 
 you know, but it's never anything but a copy. It's 
 the difference between Cellini and a clever silversmith 
 who is merely clever. You take him a vase of Cellini 
 and he can copy it exquisitely, but he couldn't have 
 designed it." 
 
 "Isn't that the difference between an artisan and 
 an artist?" 
 
 "I fancy so. Well, now, an artisan may be honest, 
 usually is. But if he stole patterns whenever he got a 
 chance, and said, ' They 're mine. They're the real 
 thing/ he wouldn't be honest, now, would he?" 
 
 "Oh, no. He'd be a scamp." 
 
 "He might do it at first as a kind of joke, and be- 
 
248 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 cause he was really rather vain and it tickled him to 
 see he could do the trick as well as anybody, only show 
 him how. But one day it might occur to him that he 
 was too much of a copyist. It had ceased to be a ques- 
 tion of filling orders in the intellectual workshop. It 
 was everything now." 
 
 "It had gone into his life." 
 
 "Yes; he was getting to be obedient to the chaps 
 that were stronger than he. I don't know that they're 
 stronger. Only they have such an infernal way of 
 seeming original and bossing from that side of things. 
 And he's made only to reflect, and he can't help re- 
 flecting. What's he going to do?" 
 
 He looked up at her now, and found she was resting 
 both elbows on the table and had propped her chin on 
 her hands, in the attitude of deep deliberation. She did 
 not answer him with a glance. The hypothetical man 
 evidently seemed of enormous importance to her, suf- 
 ficient to demand the most earnest thought; but her 
 air also said that she found no definite personal issue 
 in the case. 
 
 "He was meant to be a private soldier," she half- 
 declared, half-inquired for confirmation. 
 
 "It would seem so." 
 
 "Nothing but his own will would make him a leader? " 
 
 "I doubt if his will could do it. I told you he wasn't 
 altogether weak, at least, he doesn't seem so to me, 
 but he's no initiative. He's simply got to copy, in his 
 work, and, I almost think, he's got to obey in his life. 
 Now what's going to prevent him from sagging more 
 and more, leaning on other wills, coming at call, even 
 doing the things he knows ought not to be done? There's 
 
THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 249 
 
 a kind of a dry rot in it. That's what I'm asking you 
 to save him from." 
 
 She took her elbows off the table and sat up straight, 
 looking at him now as he looked at her. Their eyes 
 met, and each recognized the spirit behind the darken- 
 ing pupils. 
 
 "He mustn't do the things that ought not to be 
 done/' she said, concisely. "He simply mustn't." 
 
 "But he's a private soldier. We began with that." 
 
 "He mustn't serve under any captain that isn't 
 oh, isn't perfectly splendid! He mustn't fight in any 
 cause that isn't just." 
 
 "Then it's the question of the captain?" 
 
 "Yes. At first, until he's trained and trained, and 
 fought and fought, until he's got his will tempered oh, 
 well, then, you know, I think he'd be promoted." 
 
 "You do?" 
 
 She nodded. The laughter ran into his face, and hers 
 answered it. 
 
 "Do you know," he said, confidentially, "I'm not 
 sure he'd want to be promoted. I think it would scare 
 him." 
 
 "It's my opinion half of them are scared," she an- 
 swered, "the leaders. That's why they are so big. 
 They're brave enough to fight the foe within at the 
 same time they're fighting the one without." 
 
 She had risen now, and he did not try to keep her. 
 
 "I wonder," he was musing, "whether it is a ques- 
 tion of captains! Strong-willed " He looked at her 
 as if he inventoried her qualities, and she gazed inno- 
 cently back at him, waiting to say good-by. "Strong- 
 willed, sound-hearted, kind and beautiful." 
 
250 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Then he seemed impatiently to put that by, as if he 
 were talking foolishness she could not yet be trusted 
 with. He came back to his every-day look of accessible, 
 charming good humor. 
 
 " Would you mind," he asked, in an off-hand fashion, 
 " leaving me your address? I have an idea I shall want 
 to see you again about this or something." 
 
 She wrote the address in a firm hand, putting the 
 sheet of yellow paper he gave her flat against the wall. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, and she responded, at the 
 door, with a kind little smile and a good-by. She was 
 over the sill, when he bent quickly, opened the drawer, 
 and took out the letter he had tossed there an hour 
 ago. He strode after her, holding it outstretched. 
 
 " Would you mind," he asked, in a laughing earnest, 
 " would you mind mailing this?" 
 
 She took it with no appearance of surprise. 
 
 "Delighted," she sai<J. "Good-by again." 
 
 He was at the head of the stairs looking down at her 
 nodding plume. 
 
 "I had a fancy," he called, in an exhilaration she 
 did not understand, "to have you mail it. It's for 
 luck." 
 
THE CLUE 
 
 THE one detective story I have seen worked 
 out through the inevitable lines converging to 
 disclosure had forced itself on Ralph Master- 
 man and me, and the end touched us vitally, as it did its 
 principals. At least it opened our eyes to some of the 
 causes of things, strained our skulls to the point of 
 dangerously cracking the sutures, and probably in- 
 duced a multiplicity of convolutions in the sensitive 
 matter inside. 
 
 We had come home from exploring in Peru, our minds 
 full of mountain chains and lakes and tamed volcanoes, 
 and we unreasonably hoped or said we did that 
 now we were going to settle down, perhaps to jour- 
 nalism. But great winds were blowing through our 
 memories, big challenges to dominate the earth and 
 open up more of her hidden passes, so that when our 
 names were heard, in fifty years or so, men would 
 say: "They? Oh, they did the last exploring left to 
 do. Yes, they wrote finis on the geographical earth, 
 and shut the book." Still the aunts each of us pos- 
 sessed a fostering, doting aunt thought we were going 
 to stay at home. 
 
 It was the first day of our return when we were con- 
 fronted with our riddle. The town itself, a topping 
 suburb thinking no end of itself and refusing to be 
 annexed, we found unchanged. Citizens, men and 
 
 251 
 
252 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 women, were still telephoning one another about the 
 advisability of a pleasure drive along the lake, the only 
 stone of stumbling being the name. Should it be Elm 
 Road or Laurel Drive? They were still acutely anxious 
 over the dark doings of milkmen, and the consequent 
 jeopardy of babies, and they almost prayed for par- 
 asites to feed on forest pests. It was all a kind of 
 beloved, exasperating heaven on earth to us, who 
 had now known the winds in then* birthplace, and en- 
 tered into the secret places of the snow. But one thing 
 had lamentably changed. Rose Red was married. 
 That we knew, for the imminence of it had been one 
 among the determining whips of fate to start us off to 
 Peru, two men children afire with youth, and vibrating 
 the chords of hearts denied. She was married to a man 
 overweeningly rich, and of no occupation but to look 
 " stunning", and she was not happy. We came home 
 from that first " evening" given in our honor, an evening 
 marked by the sponge lady-fingers we knew and the 
 old conscientious fruit punch, and mounted, with one 
 mind, to the loft, that had served as our youthful 
 playground and tophet of confusion. There we lighted 
 up and smoked madly in silence. Then : 
 
 " She's not Rose Red any more," said Ralph, jerking 
 out the words as if somehow I had done it all, and he 
 were angry. 
 
 "No," said I. "She's Snow White. She's not 
 happy." 
 
 ' ' She never knew a day's unhappiness. He's brought 
 it on her somehow." 
 
 ' l Oh, yes. He's brought it on her." 
 
 "Well," said Masterman, fractiously, throwing the 
 
THE CLUE 253 
 
 ball to me as he always did when there was a doubt of 
 the game, "are you going to do anything about it?" 
 
 That was the way he had snapped at me when I gave 
 out at twenty-three thousand feet altitude, and he was 
 in mortal fear lest he shouldn't get me down. It had 
 nearly done for me that tune, because I wasted breath 
 in a thin hoot of a laugh, and I had no breath to spare. 
 But to-day I didn't feel like laughing. 
 
 "He's a good-looking chap," I meditated. 
 
 " Six foot one," said Masterman, in bitter disparage- 
 ment. Masterman is stocky, and not over five feet 
 eleven, a Norse giant of a hero. 
 
 "I mean he's got no tricks. He looks you in the eye. 
 He takes his fruit punch like a man, and not as if he 
 couldn't wait for the whiskey at home on the side- 
 board. Look as if the whiskey wouldn't phase him, 
 either." 
 
 "Oh, no, he ain't a soaker, if that's what you mean. 
 He's all right, very fit, clean, fond enough of his tailor, 
 not too fond. No, whatever's wrong, his shop ain't 
 going to hang out a sign. We've got to go in and 
 examine the goods." 
 
 "We've no license," said I, ruefully. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Rose Red didn't marry us individually or collec- 
 tively." 
 
 "No," said Masterman, setting his mouth in its 
 implication of bedrock. "But I don't see Rose Red 
 fade out to Snow White without knowing the reason 
 why. And if I find out the reason why, and any man's 
 guilty " Here he paused, and we smoked on. 
 
 The houses our aunts had inherited were side by side, 
 
254 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 with a little gate in the garden fence between, so that 
 Masterman and I practically lived together as we al- 
 ways had. The aunts, each in a morning muslin or an 
 afternoon silk, made according to an extinct ideal, sat 
 each on her own veranda and knitted rhythmically 
 and widened aristocratic old nostrils to the honey- 
 suckles. We had lost no time in pumping these ladies 
 about the standing and habits of the husband of that 
 dear perfection known once in the loft as Rose Red. 
 
 "What's the fellow's name?" I inquired over my 
 third egg, while Aunt Celesta beamed at me, a light 
 blue beam out of faded eyes behind a rim of gold, "the 
 one Rose married? " 
 
 "Why, you met him last night," said Aunt Celesta, 
 pained at somebody's lack of observance in not having 
 made the presentation clear. "Weren't you intro- 
 duced?" 
 
 "I dare say," said I, seeing I might have jumped 
 more dexterously into the heart of the puzzle. "Ham- 
 Hn, isn't it? Good fellow?" 
 
 "Admirable," said Aunt Celesta, warmly. She was 
 now rescuing a fly from the cream jug, and I read in 
 her face the conflict between ruth over insect life un- 
 timely ended, horrified estimate of the fly's culpability, 
 based on the propaganda of modern theories touching 
 disease, disgust at her task, and the query of her fight- 
 ing soul whether she must really sacrifice the cream, 
 though the kitchen supply wasn't at its maximum. 
 She had very little testimony to contribute. 
 
 "Yes, a nice young man," she said, raising the screen 
 and conveying the fly into a wider world to dry his 
 wings. ' ' Very nice, indeed. ' ' 
 
THE CLUE 255 
 
 Of her last scruple I relieved her, pouring myself 
 cream with a dashing hand, and offering her the cup 
 to fill. 
 
 " He's got money, hasn't he? " I plunged. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Aunt Celesta. " They 're rich, really. 
 Quite the wealthiest people in town." 
 
 "Live well?" 
 
 That question, Aunt Celesta, I could see, considered 
 coarse. She answered rather stiffly and to no purpose, 
 and I drank the coffee I didn't want and went through 
 the little gate to find Ralph. He was coming toward 
 the little gate to meet me, and as by one consent Aunt 
 Clara and Aunt Celesta pottered out on their verandas, 
 exchanged a beaming smile indicating their community 
 of blessedness in the possession of nephews, and 
 settled to the forenoon's task of keeping moderately 
 alive. 
 
 "I can't find out a damned thing," said Masterman, 
 incautiously. 
 
 At the qualifying word each aunt jerked her head 
 galvanically, but settled it again, knowing she could 
 not, as the older novelists had it, have heard 
 aright. 
 
 "There's nothing to find out " said I, drearily. "What 
 do you suppose two aunts" we always spoke of them 
 generically as if the relationship made a type "what 
 would they know of a chap of thirty-three that walked 
 right, and talked right, and dressed right? Nothing, 
 old man, and you know it." 
 
 Masterman hit my foot with his. 
 
 "There he is," said he. "There's the fellow now." 
 
 It was Frederick Hamlin, and he was coming in at 
 
256 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Aunt Clara's gate. He looked very well in the morning 
 light, slightly older, rather faded about the eyes, and 
 he walked in haste, as if he came for an end. We 
 turned with an absurd eagerness considering the 
 slightness of our acquaintance, and met him midway of 
 the yard. Masterman almost stammered in his desire to 
 shunt him away from the aunts and get him to our- 
 selves. 
 
 "Come on up in the loft," said he, with what seemed 
 an exaggerated cordiality. "Unless you were coming 
 to call." 
 
 "No," said Hamlin, in his rather grave voice. He 
 stopped half-way up the path and adjusted his eye- 
 glasses. That led my eyes to his, and I saw what I 
 had not the night before, in our stiff encounter, that 
 they looked very tired, slightly apprehensive and that 
 there were wrinkles about them not accordant with his 
 comparative youth. "No," he repeated, lifting his 
 hat to one aunt and making a comprehensive bow to 
 both. "I came to see you two." 
 
 So we went up, by its crazy outside stairs, to the loft. 
 He looked about him curiously while Masterman cleared 
 a seat; he seemed pleased to find himself there. Noth- 
 ing could adequately describe the loft, even an inven- 
 tory. You'd have gone daft over the collection of 
 things, the chronological sequence of them, from tops 
 and Happy Jacks and fairy books to the electrical 
 apparatus of our college days, and the textbooks of no 
 use to us now, though we were grateful to them: for on 
 them we had built our degrees. 
 
 "I didn't know there was such a place in town," 
 said Hamlin. 
 
THE CLUE 257 
 
 " There isn't another," said Masterman. "This 
 grew. We couldn't make it. Nobody could." 
 
 He had got out tobacco, and Hamlin accepted with 
 an air of not caring very much whether he had it or 
 not. We smoked, and Masterman deliberately began 
 trying to turn him inside out. He asked him questions 
 even: what did he think of this, of that, current topics 
 all; and I could see he meant to get at the back of 
 Hamlin's mind, to roll it over and see what it could 
 mean as it affected Rose Red. But Masterman wasn't 
 clever at that kind of thing. He was too simple-honest, 
 too impetuous, too much off his guard, with his bright 
 eyes telling how much he wanted to know. Nor was 
 I up to it myself. He and I were sons of the earth, 
 made to serve her, and even on occasion dominate her. 
 We didn't belong in lawyers' pens. But Hamlin an- 
 swered him patiently, candidly, it was evident, and 
 with no particular interest in his own tastes as he was 
 called upon to map them out. Yes, he had travelled 
 extensively in Europe, not beyond. No, he wasn't a 
 socialist. Some very good fellows were, he believed. 
 He understood there was a lot to complain of in the 
 system of things. And so on, a tepid answer bearing 
 testimony to his preference for the middle course, but 
 always curving back the talk, when he could manage 
 it, to our own exploits in Peru. He persisted in re- 
 garding them as exploits; and when we decried them 
 slightly, he said, with a conclusiveness he evidently 
 thought unanswerable: 
 
 "Well, but they've been written up, you know." 
 
 We laughed rather shamefacedly, just because we 
 were so ingenuously pleased to have them written up. 
 
258 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 He gave us no time to deny our just sentiments, but 
 plumped at us a question that had mysteriously, as 
 he saw it, some tremendous weight. 
 
 " Where are you going next?" 
 
 We looked at each other guiltily. Our talk together, 
 up to this time, had always been prefaced by "ifs". 
 // we should cut stick again! We knew pretty well 
 geographically what we should do, but hardly what we 
 had a right to do, with two age-foundered aunts in 
 harbor. 
 
 "The aunts think we're going to settle down," I 
 temporized, and Hamlin answered me almost passion- 
 ately: 
 
 "Settle down! You! after all you've done? You 
 won't. You can't. I say, you two " His voice 
 dropped here. It became the pleading of a boy who has 
 no right to the secret passion he is begging you to 
 appease "whatever it is, let me let me go with you." 
 
 Masterman grew white with the pure surprise of it. 
 I lost my breath for a second, and perhaps I, too, looked 
 white; but I picked up in time to blurt out: 
 
 "But you can't, you know. You " Here I stopped, 
 but they both knew perfectly well what my intemperate 
 tongue would have added: "You're married to Rose 
 Red. You're bound with gold chains to the heavenly 
 chariot of heart's content. You've got to make her 
 happiness. You can't go off climbing peaks, and freez- 
 ing and starving and fighting the horrible goddess 
 life. You've got to stay here and cherish life, make a 
 warm nest for it. You're the husband of Rose Red." 
 
 And while we stared at one another in an extremity 
 of feeling that seemed to have no adequate cause, a 
 
THE CLUE 259 
 
 voice came from below, flute-like, a voice we 
 knew. 
 
 " You boys up there?" 
 
 Masterman was out of his seat and, with one bound, 
 at the door. I drew forward a little rocking-chair I 
 knew. It had been sitting in a corner ever since we 
 went away, covered with the flag Masterman and I had 
 worked two summers to buy. (Masterman used to say 
 we worked for it till nobody would have us, and then 
 we worked the aunts.) 
 
 "Why," said Hamlin, in a tone of wonder, " that's 
 Rose." 
 
 "Yes," said I, in excitement and a momentary base 
 willingness he should see there were more roses than 
 one. There was his Rose, but there might be ours 
 too. "That's Rose." 
 
 And meantime her light step had brought her up the 
 stair, and Masterman was conducting her in this with 
 a tender, blundering haste, as if nothing so precious as 
 this visit had ever happened, and yet nothing could 
 have been so surely expected, because it tailed on to 
 the visits of long ago. She was over the sill, a wraith 
 of a thing, with her shadowy hair and pale cheeks that 
 used to be so bright, and Hamlin was the first she 
 saw. Her eyes fell upon him before ever her smiling 
 at Masterman had done, and as she saw him she shrank 
 and withered. It was a horrible sight, that first instinc- 
 tive recoil from the man she should have welcomed. 
 Hamlin saw it as I did, and he too shrank and paled ; and 
 for that second the two stood there, the width of the 
 room between them, as if it were some awful, unseen 
 gulf. She recovered herself instantly, the woman's way. 
 
260 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Fred!" she said, with a pretty intonation of affec- 
 tionate surprise. "I didn't know you were here." 
 
 "No," said he, awkwardly, "I knew you didn't." 
 
 He, too, had risen, and we all seemed, in a foolish 
 rivalry, to be offering her a seat. In smiling control 
 of herself now, she took the little chair; but Hamlin did 
 not return to his. 
 
 "I've got to go on up to the Branch," he said, in 
 quite a commonplace tone, "to see if my saddle's 
 mended. Shall I drop in for you on the way back? " 
 
 "You needn't, dear," said she, in her nicest manner. 
 "I shall be home long before you." 
 
 Then Hamlin went, and Ralph and I stood at the 
 stairhead and called down robust good-bys, the more 
 scrupulous in that it somehow seemed to us his stock 
 was very patently depreciated; and we returned to 
 Rose who, with her hand on the old brown volume of 
 Grimm to which her chair was neighbor, was, for the 
 first time since our coming, Rose Red again. I could 
 have cried Ralph says he did feel his throat balling 
 up to see how swiftly and pathetically she had taken 
 on her own look, the look of one undaunted by any 
 aspect of life because life had always been so kind to 
 her. 
 
 "Now, boys, talk," said she, and though we under- 
 stood this meant Peru, we had for the moment nothing 
 to tell. But she questioned us skilfully, avowed her 
 ignorance of high places, wanted to learn what posies 
 grew wild there, and before we knew it, we were talk- 
 ing fourteen to the dozen, and had forgotten such a 
 chap as Hamlin ever lived. She, too, forgot all about 
 her pact of being home before him, and one o'clock 
 
THE CLUE 261 
 
 struck the hour when our suburb dines the year round, 
 before she remembered that this was New England, 
 and not Peru. Then she rose in a gayety of haste, and 
 Masterman, foolishly prolonging old time cheer, broke 
 our moment into bits. 
 
 " We're nothing but blooming rattletraps," said he. 
 "How about you, Rose? We haven't said a word 
 about you." 
 
 She paled. The smitten look came back. Some 
 physical blow might well have struck all eagerness 
 from her face. , 
 
 "I?" she maundered. "Oh, you know all about me. 
 I haven't been to Peru." 
 
 And she smiled at us in the old dear way, and took 
 her parasol and was gone. We had no conclusions to 
 exchange, Masterman and I. She had not been married 
 two years, and she was at bitter odds with something. 
 Why? 
 
 "Do you know," said Ralph that night, as we sat in 
 the silence that served us for great companionship, 
 "it's occurred to me that the detective stories are all 
 rotten." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because they puddle over what happened. They 
 don't care a hang what made it happen. A man is 
 killed. We try to guess who killed him. If we had 
 any effective force, we should find out why he was 
 likely to be killed, and find out before it happened. 
 Then likely it wouldn't happen at all." 
 
 "You mean, if Hamlin poisoned Rose Red " 
 
 "Don't!" 
 
 "Or she poisoned him, we should be all agog bring- 
 
262 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 ing somebody to justice. But now, when they look 
 infernally tragic, and yet haven't broken the law, we 
 still ought to find out what's doing?" 
 
 "Yes. Something is the matter. If we don't find 
 out, we can't quash it." 
 
 "Maybe," I suggested, "it isn't our business. There's 
 something peculiarly offensive and defensive about the 
 marriage bond." 
 
 "It's my business," said he briefly, "whether it's 
 yours or not." 
 
 And whether I owned to it as crudely, I was watching 
 and speculating for all I was worth. We watched her 
 and we studied him. All our conclusions agreed. She 
 spoke to him sweetly from what seemed even a com- 
 passionate regard, she fulfilled toward him all the out- 
 ward observances of courtesy. But she was either 
 afraid of him or she had for him some degree of that 
 repulsion which is scorn. He, too, was afraid, not of 
 her, it might be, but of some unspoken inner judgment, 
 whereof he caught the savor. He did not propitiate 
 her. He was, we began dimly to see, too reasonably 
 constituted, grounded by birth and tradition in the 
 rules of living as they obtain between woman and 
 man. Yet plainly there was an inner judgment of 
 hers, and it did set them irremediably apart. And at 
 this stage, seeing it was something between the two that 
 in no manner concerned any one outside their little 
 kingdom of revolt, we gave up the job. It was all very 
 well for Masterman to argue it was his business be- 
 cause it affected Rose. It simply wasn't, and he knew 
 it. Nobody could help. We must leave Rose Red to 
 her imprisonment in the dungeon she had found, by 
 
THE CLUE 263 
 
 ill chance, within her castle of delight. We would go 
 away. If Rose had been afraid of her husband we 
 couldn't have gone; but it was apparent that both of 
 them were afraid of some trap between them. And 
 whoever had set it, the trap was theirs. 
 
 "But," said Masterman, when we owned our com- 
 mon aversion to the case as a case, "something, some- 
 time, will chuck the clue into our hands." 
 
 "Why will it?" 
 
 "Because that's the way things are. I don't believe 
 your Burns or your Sherlock really braids the rope 
 that hangs a man. No, he braids and braids, and gets 
 infernally stale over it, and then suddenly some little 
 kobold leaps out of the bush and twists all the strands 
 he's just made up his mind to drop. No, you do the 
 work, your part of it, and because you've done it, 
 something passes you the clue." 
 
 "Your rhetoric's mixed," said I. 
 
 "No matter. I know what I mean and it's so." 
 
 Then the incredible happened. The aunts, of all 
 rooted creatures in the world, they who had been 
 wedded to one spot through all the years of our trouble- 
 some nurture, the aunts disclosed to us their intention of 
 going abroad. We were mightily pleased, chiefly be- 
 cause that proved they still had the spirit to conceive 
 it, and instantly offered to put them in the way of a 
 fair start and a luxurious progress. But what fell upon 
 us then was the implication that we were to take them. 
 We who had dragged ourselves over unkindly heights, 
 and snatched breath out of rarefied air, were to potter 
 round the beaten ways of Europe with two darling 
 spinsters, who might we were rather galled under 
 
264 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 that suspicion have concocted the scheme for our 
 sole benefit. We were wanderers by nature. It drove 
 them to a mild distraction to see us mulling over maps, 
 picking out the insufficiently charted spots to travel 
 in. Our immediate safety was assured, so they be- 
 nevolently reasoned, by going abroad with them. Thus 
 were we to satisfy our gypsy cravings while sticking 
 strictly to the spots whereof picture postals are made. 
 If we were taking a funicular to Fiesole, we couldn't, 
 at the same time, be rampaging up savage cliffs. 
 
 "Allee samee, we've got to go with them," said 
 Masterman, gloomily, when we met in the loft to con- 
 sider it. 
 
 "We owe it to them," I responded in the old phrase, 
 from as inexorable a certainty that certain debts had to 
 be paid. 
 
 "Sure! But what if we didn't? If two such infernal 
 old trumps want to go abroad again, why, they've got 
 to do it, that's all, and go the way they like." 
 
 This was in September, and actually in October we 
 sailed, each of us the rather awkward convoy of an 
 aunt, but resolved to show ourselves good and grateful 
 wards. Hamlin was the last man to bid us good-by. 
 He came to the station where Aunt Clara was adjust- 
 ing a lavender ribbon on her trunk, having removed 
 the red one she had affixed the previous week this 
 because red began to seem to her the color of universal 
 choice. He shook hands, with an air of liking us very 
 much, and feeling sure we could have helped him. 
 
 "I say, you know," he volunteered, just as Rose 
 came up and offered to tie Aunt Clara's ribbon, "you 
 won't forget?" 
 
THE CLUE 265 
 
 There was nothing we were aware of having promised 
 to remember; and he continued instantly, with the 
 implication of suddenly recalling that his request was 
 more important to him than to us. 
 
 "If you find you're going on any sort of exploring 
 trip, just count me in." 
 
 Masterman, with a rueful look, indicated the aunts 
 where they stood, frail, and yet undaunted in their 
 determination to carry the traditions of the suburb 
 into a foreign continent. 
 
 "We're hardly likely to do much batting round," he 
 suggested. 
 
 "I know, I know/ 7 Hamlin concurred, with his 
 nervous conclusiveness. "But after this any time, 
 you know." 
 
 And then Rose had turned to us and said: "Good-by, 
 boys. Good luck." The smoke of the train was casting 
 its cloud behind, and for the first time we thought the 
 aunts trembled before their venture, and we snatched 
 in wild joyousness at the hope that they might give 
 it up. We should have lain down at their feet, I be- 
 lieve, if they had, and begged them to walk on us to 
 ways of security and peace. But they called on the 
 unchanging fibre within them, doubtless for our sakes, 
 and we dutifully supported them on board. 
 
 The winter passed in a conventional progress, under 
 which the aunts throve and Masterman and I sank. 
 We learned to know the capitals of Europe in all their 
 capacity for giving pain pain of boredom, wet and 
 cold. He and I hated pensions. The aunts loved them, 
 because they afforded social intercourse. We hated 
 the promenades of southern watering-places, and were 
 
266 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 made indescribably wretched by being expected to 
 flaner before shop windows, where the aunts expressed 
 the most persistent interest in what they had no idea 
 of buying. But what could you do? They were dar- 
 ling aunts, and we owed them everything. One re- 
 ward we had : they seemed to grow more indestructible 
 every day, and we knew at last that, if they had kept 
 the life in our young bodies by strenuous coddling when 
 our pretty mothers died, at least we were pumping a 
 few extraneous years of vitality into them by abetting 
 them in sheer fun as they saw it. But at Lugano, one 
 languorous day in the early summer, we gave out. It 
 came upon us simultaneously, and the expression of it, 
 uttered while we sat under an oleander, sorting picture 
 cards so that the aunts should send them in the order 
 of topographical lucidity, was my saying, out of no 
 voluntary choice, and hardly knowing why I said it: 
 
 "We could climb the Matterhorn." 
 
 Masterman did not even answer with any directness. 
 He merely shuffled the cards together and tucked them 
 into their envelope. 
 
 "I'll go in and tell them," he said, and go he did. 
 
 They were as surprised by the suddenness of it as I, 
 and chiefly on that account they yielded. Or had they 
 anticipated some divagation of the sort, and now ac- 
 cepted it as less serious than they had feared? Also 
 the sense of lightness, of variety, bound to uplift the 
 traveller abroad, whispered them that it would be no 
 ill matter, but rather a novelty the more, to be left 
 at Lugano in charge of their own fate. They merely 
 specified that we were to take care of ourselves and come 
 back soon. Of course we said nothing about the Matter- 
 
THE CLUE 267 
 
 horn. That grim entity never once punctuated the 
 discussion. We merely said we were going, with their 
 accord, up to Zermatt for a breath of mountain air. 
 
 To Zermatt we went, gayer with every inch of alti- 
 tude, more like boys released from tasks that yesterday 
 had looked perennial. We went up by train, and also 
 from Zermatt on, because we had to be back with the 
 aunts in a reasonable time. We got into fits of laughter 
 over it all, our dash for exhilaration, and a little red- 
 headed English parson across the aisle watched us with 
 a tolerant interest. Finally he threw us a comment on 
 the day, and we gathered that he, too, though uncon- 
 sciously, was a little drunk on air. He was enchanted 
 with the idea of climbing the Matterhorn, of our doing 
 it, while he offered sage suggestion. He seemed, at 
 that altitude, to think it a mere question of vim and 
 go, and as to a guide, he scouted it. Our forethought 
 and our shoes he alike despised, intimating that he 
 could climb the Matterhorn in his ecclesiastical garb. 
 
 "Even," Masterman told him, "the apron and 
 gaiters of your future." 
 
 He smiled at that, but insisted that the precursors, 
 Tyndall and the rest, had robbed the adventure of ita 
 quality by their "ropes and things". 
 
 In a pause of this descriptive fluency, while he was 
 temporarily engaged with the bleak world beside the 
 track, I turned to Masterman. 
 
 "I've been thinking," I said, "about Rose." 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "So have I," said he, "all night. As if she were 
 
 near." 
 
 An unaccountable prescience came over me. 
 
268 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 " Ralph," I said, "if it hadn't been Hamlin, it ought 
 to have been you. 7 ' 
 
 He said nothing; but I knew he could not resent the 
 baldness of it. I saw how he had cherished the idea 
 of her, not in the least as I had, as an unattainable 
 dream, but a present necessity of his life. A height 
 always affected me foolishly. It made Masterman 
 melancholy and silent, but it loosed my thoughts and 
 tongue. 
 
 "I'm out of it," I said. "I'd do anything for her, 
 anything. But you're the man." 
 
 Still he said nothing, and we came to the land of 
 thin ah* and snow, and little black pools and ominously 
 dark birds hovering over them, and there we stayed all 
 night, the Englishman with us, rather more respectful 
 of our respect for mountains, the colder he grew and 
 the tighter the air bound his feet with invisible chains 
 the night had ready. And in the morning, overlooking 
 that icy edge of the world, we bade him good-by, and 
 with Max Stiege, prince of guides, began our climb. 
 As a feat, it was climbing made easy, after our un- 
 attended forays in the south. But the Matterhorn 
 hadn't made it easy. You could fancy it frozen there 
 in a rage at the chains put upon it by the dauntlessness 
 of man. 
 
 Not three hours up that cruel inaccessibility, we came 
 on a black figure prone across a jag of rock, as if he 
 had fallen and the rock impaled him. Stiege put his 
 great hands to the man, and turned him face upward 
 to the day, and we got brandy into him. A lone man, 
 a fool climbing without a guide. We swore over him 
 while we used the oxygen, and when he opened his 
 
THE CLUE 269 
 
 eyes we swore again to another note. For this was 
 Hamlin. As soon as he got hold of himself he struck 
 our ministrants away, not, as I thought, from deliberate 
 purpose to die, but because the hostility of the outer 
 world had crazed him. There was left within him only 
 an instinct of resistance, a mad determination not to 
 endure defeat. But we turned brandy into him, we 
 covered him with our jackets, and he lay looking at us, 
 the agonized stare of the departing soul that has much 
 to say, and finds, instead of ordered words, confusion. 
 That look of his eyes had heartbreak in it, too, from 
 a foolish reason, but a very real one. They were near- 
 sighted eyes, and without their glasses they wore a 
 pleading softness. Mastermen bent over him. He, 
 with a more direct cognition than mine, understood 
 what must be asked. 
 
 " Where is she?" 
 
 The eyes seemed to make a sign, the slightest quiver^ 
 of the lid to the invisible safety below. 
 
 "Zermatt?" Masterman prompted. 
 
 The eyes said, "Yes." Then Hamlin seemed to 
 gather himself for the last disastrous leap, that wild 
 expenditure of breath whereby he must reach bank-' 
 ruptcy the sooner. 
 
 "Tell her "he stopped. 
 
 "Tell her " Masterman repeated. 
 
 "I don't understand about London. I never did." 
 
 And then, as we began the oxygen again, he died, 
 as if he willed it, in the face of science. 
 
 Masterman could not believe it. He was wild with an- 
 guish, and long after the moment of hope was over, he 
 kept up the fight. But Max Stiege and I knew it, and so 
 
270 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 did Masterman at last, and that the only thing to do for 
 Hamlin was to carry him down to Zermatt to his waiting 
 wife; and when Masterman admitted it, he gave a big 
 sob like a woman and helped us readily. I believe at 
 the instant Hamlin seemed dearer to him than I, dearer 
 than Rose, perhaps for whatever the mischance be- 
 tween them the man belonged to Rose, and he was 
 dead. 
 
 When we had made our difficult way to the Corner 
 Grat, there was the Englishman ready to chaff us be- 
 cause we had retreated; but finding what wreckage 
 we bore, he sobered and helped us greatly. He had 
 really lingered at the Corner Grat out of some kindli- 
 ness for us, to see how we liked that needle of the 
 upper sleet, and now, with Stiege, took charge of our 
 miserable departing. 
 
 "Does anybody know the man?" he asked Stiege, 
 and we left Stiege to answer, " No." Then, in the course 
 of our terrible preparations, he did see Hamlin's face. 
 That was his clue, the clue he didn't seek, the clue 
 he tossed to us. 
 
 "My God!" he breathed, at first in awe, and then 
 reverently, as if appalled by the ordered paths of life. 
 "That's my man." 
 
 "What man?" Masterman demanded savagely. 
 
 At last we were to know Hamlin. At the same in- 
 stant we were sure of it. The Englishman, in that instant, 
 could no more help telling than we could help ask- 
 ing. 
 
 "It was two years ago," said he, "in London, near 
 the Strand. There was a runaway. This man was there, 
 a lady with him. There was the runaway. This man 
 
THE CLUE 271 
 
 leaped aside. He pushed a woman, to get free. She 
 was killed, the woman. It was over in an instant. 
 Nobody seemed to see how it was, nobody but 
 
 me." 
 
 "Did she see it?" Masterman asked, steadily. "His 
 wife the lady, I should say?" 
 
 "I don't know. I hope not. That would have been 
 infernal. And I don't know whether she was his wife. 
 She was frightened, for she fell, fainted, perhaps, and 
 I saw her put into a cab." 
 
 I saw Masterman rejecting the clue as I rejected it. 
 Now we had it, we didn't want the horrible thing. 
 We would have given worlds not to have had it. Mas- 
 terman laughed rather foolishly, in the feint of tearing 
 up the clue. 
 
 "You wouldn't know him again," he said, "a live 
 man in the Strand and this dead man here." 
 
 The Englishman faced him down indignantly. 
 
 "Rather," said he immovably, in the tone of those 
 who have set their empire beyond the seas. "I'll tell 
 you how I know. In the instant after the woman 
 dropped, this fellow reeled back, he shut his eyes for 
 one second only, and he looked as if he were already 
 dead. He saw what he'd done, d'ye see? He saw 
 what he'd done. And he looked as he does now." 
 
 "We must get rid of him," I said to Ralph, on the 
 safe way down to Zermatt. "He mustn't see her. 
 He's got too keen an eye." 
 
 He nodded. But chance was good to us there, for 
 our helpful Englishman found a telegram at the hotel, 
 and it hurried him away. I felt dazed with the strange- 
 ness, the intention of it all. Had we two come up 
 
272 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 here to the Matterhorn because we had desired the clue, 
 and that was where the clue could be given us? I 
 turned drunkenly to Ralph. 
 
 "I don't understand it," I babbled. " I can't." 
 
 "You mean you won't," he said doggedly. "It's 
 plain enough." 
 
 "Was he a coward? Had she seen that in the 
 Strand? Was he forever after trying to reinstate him- 
 self with her? Did he climb the Matterhorn for that 
 like a desperate fool, alone, with not even a flask in his 
 pocket, and in my God! in those shoes? Do you 
 remember his shoes?" 
 
 "Yes," said Masterman, dryly, "I saw his shoes." 
 
 And because his voice sounded as if it might break 
 and curse or sob, I gave over baiting him. 
 
 I was the one to tell Rose Red. Masterman said I 
 was, and I couldn't dispute it for a moment. There 
 were things to be said that Masterman mustn't say, 
 because his faith to her must not be violated; yet he 
 must hear them lest he afterward deny them to her. 
 We went up to her sitting-room, and she came forward 
 to meet us, dear Rose Red, all surprise and joy in us. 
 But she was not happy even yet: more of a woman, 
 perhaps, with a wistful pathos between her brows. 
 She looked at us, first one and then the other. 
 
 "What is it? "she asked. 
 
 Then I did my big deed, the one I am prouder of than 
 all the quiet honest ways I have lived since. 
 
 "Your husband " said I. 
 
 "Yes," she prompted. 
 
 "Your husband was on that devil of a Matterhorn. 
 He found a chap cast away there. He gave him his 
 
THE CLUE 273 
 
 brandy, gave him his clothes. The other man came 
 down. Hamlin 
 
 Her eyes shone with a terrible anguish of exultation. 
 
 "He died," she said. 
 
 "Of exhaustion," I told her. 
 
 "Where is the man he saved? I must see him. I 
 must hear " She was all a passionate haste. 
 
 It was leading me further than I had stopped to 
 consider. That is the revenge of lies. They laugh at 
 us and take us centuries out of our way; for they, too, 
 are on the side of God, and would gladly die for him 
 and for his worlds. But I couldn't flinch. 
 
 "The man we lost in the flurry," I told her. "He'd 
 been through too much. His head wasn't quite right, 
 either, nor Ralph's. I'm the only one that got the story 
 straight. Ralph came up later. He never saw the man 
 at all. But he was the one to ease Hamlin for that few 
 minutes before " 
 
 She turned from one to the other of us in a dumb 
 inquiry it was terrible to see. Was there no more, 
 it said? Could the man she had loved slip away from 
 her into everlasting silence and leave not the thinnest 
 whisper on the air. 
 
 "There was the message, Ralph," I said, roughly. 
 My lie had made a different man of me. I clung to it 
 doggedly as a criminal to a misbegotten deed; but I was 
 suddenly furious with circumstance for having forced 
 me to that ill companionship. 
 
 "A message?" Her look of hunger wrung my heart 
 to bleeding, and I loved my lie. 
 
 "'Tell her/ said Ralph, 'I don't understand about 
 London. I never did.'" This he said grimly, as if 
 
274 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 it saved his reason to have something to bring her that 
 was true. I knew Ralph. He hated and loved my lie 
 as I did. But he loved me for telling it. 
 
 Rose, incredulous joy upon her face, thanked God, 
 and let her tears flow, and told us God had sent us 
 to Hamlin and to her. 
 
 "We mustn't speak of this," I assured her, fencing 
 my lie with all the guile I had. "The man he saved 
 when he comes to himself he'll feel like a cur for going. 
 There'll be inquiries talk talk. We want to get 
 you away, to the aunts down there. We'll say we found 
 him dying of exhaustion. You'd be willing? He 
 doesn't need credit with the world, if he's got his credit 
 mark from you." 
 
 She put her hand on my arm, partly in agreement, 
 partly to help her weakness. 
 
 "It shall be everything shall be as you think best," 
 she said. "No matter whether anybody knows he 
 died gloriously, if we know it, we three " 
 
 "Yes," said Masterman, and his hand was on my 
 shoulder. He was comforting me for my lie, blessing 
 me for it, old Masterman, "we know." 
 
GOLDEN BABY 
 
 WE were in the Sycorax smoking-room, within 
 an hour of turning the lights out for the night. 
 The air was gray with smoke, and everybody, 
 even the men that made it, looked dulled by it. The 
 scion of one of our oldest families, who had seized the 
 occasion of an ocean voyage for extravagant over- 
 indulgence, sat at a little table, monotonously repeat- 
 ing, "She was the fairest of all the country round/' 
 in a tone of eccentric rhetorical emphasis. Nobody 
 took any notice of him, because we had ceased doing 
 that when he introduced us, one by one, to the aura of 
 his ancestor who had "preceded Sir Philip Sidney at 
 the battle of Zutphen." What he meant by that 
 initiatory phrase we never knew. We were merely con- 
 vinced, one after another, by the sound of it, that we 
 weren't strong enough to hear it again. The man who 
 was travelling round the globe on his own private 
 fortune to discover a parasite for hostile bugs was ab- 
 sorbedly making diagrams of larvae and what he called 
 winged coleoptera for a buyer of seersucker, who was 
 not listening to him, and the big fellow with the grizzled 
 beard and the William Morris look of the eyes was 
 sunk in some private reverie of his own. Suddenly 
 the clerical young fellow opposite him asked him a 
 question, whereupon he leaned back in his chair, gripped 
 
 275 
 
276 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 the beer glass before him as if he might sling it, and 
 began, in a voice like a bell: 
 
 "Logic is a fool. The mystery your calling is founded 
 on is no more a mystery than a million others. You 
 simply fail to get the connections. I could tell you a 
 dozen tales more unaccountable than that, because 
 they're just ripped out of the air and made manifest. 
 It's as if you should go out there on deck and see a 
 film of some kind of impalpable parchment hanging 
 from the topmast. You'd send up a man, he'd bring it 
 down to you, and you'd find on it characters you could 
 seem to read; but the story they made would say noth- 
 ing whatever to you. I mean, it couldn't be hitched 
 on to the general course of things. Now I'll give you a 
 case in point." 
 
 He had given us no cases in point throughout the 
 voyage. He had simply rowed about labor and capital, 
 and said one was as bad as the other, capital being only 
 labor reversed, and we thought we had discovered his 
 pet nursling of a fad and just what road it was leading 
 him. Now two or three other men looked up, and then 
 moved a little nearer. They scented story as you do 
 when you buy the new magazine and are lotting on 
 having it to go to bed on. The scion of the noble 
 family leaned back in his chair, regarded us haughtily, 
 and said, " What's all this?" in a loud tone nobody 
 noticed except discouragingly because he was making 
 more noise. We left him to the solace of it, and drew 
 up in a circle about the William Morris man. He had 
 put the tip of his blunt finger the kind of digit artisans 
 work wonders with delicately into a little pond of 
 beer on the table and drawn out a line from it like a 
 
GOLDEN BABY 277 
 
 peninsula. Then he dabbled his finger again and put it 
 down in another place, to make an island, and another. 
 A merchant of many sorts of goods, who sailed all seas, 
 burst out there, with a sudden recognition: 
 
 "Why, you're making islands !" 
 
 A white-faced young man of no breadth and incon- 
 siderable stature, who, we understood, had some 
 reputation as a poet of the minor variety, bent over the 
 table and put on his large horn-bowed spectacles to 
 look. He, too, spoke with an irrational quickness, as 
 if everything the William Morris man did suddenly 
 bore a meaning. It seemed as if the man had turned 
 on his battery and we had become aware of his voltage. 
 
 "Do you suppose that's how God did it?" asked the 
 little poet. ' ' Before He ' came to the making of man ' ? " 
 
 But the William Morris man never answered him. 
 He did look up at the merchant. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "it's the West Indies." Then 
 he hunched his big frame back in his chair and 
 began speaking, rather slowly and in a quiet voice, as 
 if what he had to tell bore for him a significance of a 
 particular and really a solemn nature. 
 
 "It was a week before Christmas when we sailed. 
 Some company it was a bum company and went to 
 pieces afterward when its unseaworthy boats had all 
 gone cranky, one way or another, and the public had 
 turned back to the old standbys that rule the wave and 
 sap the pocket this company I forget the name 
 had bought an old boat for a song and a promise, 
 knocked out bulkheads, furbished up some dog-holes 
 for new staterooms, put in red velvet and gilding, 
 called her the Siren, and advertised a grand excursion 
 
278 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 to the West Indies. Somehow the idea took. It had 
 been a nasty winter, there was easy money, and without 
 much delay the Siren's list was full. I was among the 
 first to take passage. I was done up that winter with 
 statistics and the deviltry of the rich and, besides, I'd 
 always wanted a sniff of sugar, rum and spices on their 
 own ground. When I went on board there was a great 
 copper sunset; it looked as if it belonged to the land 
 exclusively and we might never have a whack at such 
 another when we'd left New York behind us. I turned 
 to look at it, as I'd been turning all the way along, and 
 I stood there till the splendors and banners of it blinded 
 me. So when I went aboard things were dark before 
 me momentarily, in queer shapes, the outlines of 
 warehouses and such, and I didn't feel that I'd really 
 seen anything, until, on the deck at the end of the 
 gangplank, I came face to face with a coolie woman, 
 the thinnest of her sort, with bare feet and legs, bare 
 arms, the slightest possible garment, and a weight of 
 silver bangles on her wrists and collars round her neck. 
 She stood there holding a child, a baby with a queer 
 expression of maturity, and her eyes as she looked at 
 me were black and solemn. They seemed to talk in a 
 language of their own, to sing things maybe, chant 'em 
 talking wasn't good enough and they made me 
 shiver. The child sat there supported on the crook of 
 her arm and looked at me as seriously as she did, but 
 with a kind of well-wishing, too, as if he said: 
 
 "'Old man, you're tired, aren't you? Everybody's 
 tired. Glad you're shut of little old New York for a 
 spell. Wish all of 'em could do the same.' 
 
 "What came into my mind I don't see why was 
 
GOLDEN BABY 279 
 
 that he was a kind of golden baby. Maybe it was 
 because he had bright hair an image to be worshipped 
 and my mind said inside, as plain as your lips might 
 speak it, ' Golden Baby! 7 I felt I liked him, too, better 
 than any piece of littleness I'd ever seen. And then, 
 in the same minute for it all passed as quickly as you 
 might set your foot on deck and lift the other foot to 
 keep it company the coolie woman and the golden 
 baby were gone, and there was a spot of blackness 
 where he'd been. 
 
 A sailor was passing me with an end of a rope. 
 
 '" Where's the woman?' I asked, before I could stop 
 myself. 
 
 He gave me a glance, and said, 'Sir?' without 
 stopping, because he was evidently on business of 
 the ship. 
 
 "'The woman and the child/ I called after him. 
 
 "I felt I'd got to know. But he shook his head and 
 went along, and I felt disappointed, as if I'd lost some- 
 thing. But there was one queer thing. A darkness in 
 the outline of the child stood before my eyes until I'd 
 got into my stateroom and after. I couldn't rub it 
 away. 
 
 "Well, gentlemen, that voyage was a corker for 
 sheer madness of the human creature let loose. We 
 hadn't been a day out before I knew what we'd got 
 aboard mothers that regarded the boat as a summer 
 hotel and had fitted out their daughters with every rag 
 known to milliners, to sell 'em in the market of some 
 rich man's desire. That was the first exhibit A. Then 
 there were copper kings whose copper queens hadn't 
 any chance to show off their diamonds and pearls and 
 
280 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 loot of the earth and sea in the regulation manner, and 
 brought it all on board to flout the moon and stars, I 
 guess, and the Creator of the moon and stars, and the 
 other folks He'd made that had more or hadn't so 
 many, each in a different way. It was all money and 
 class hatred and scorn and contumely." 
 
 Here the scion of a noble stock broke in, his dreary 
 drone addressed to none of us in particular: 
 
 "Sir Philip Sidney, let me inform you. Sir Philip 
 Sidney! Battle of Zutphen!" 
 
 " That's it," said the William Morris man, quietly. 
 "That just it. There were a few of 'em on board 
 just like him. They'd had ancestors at Zutphen, and 
 they wouldn't speak to the Semitic walking diamond- 
 shops, nor me because I said I'd been in a foundry, 
 nor the captain even, because he wasn't a von. Inter- 
 course was restricted because they could only speak to 
 one another, and they'd trodden that ground so long 
 that they had only common recollections to go on, and 
 I felt they were the best bored set on the boat. But in 
 spite of all the hatreds and mildew of exclusiveness, 
 the same old farce obtained that they were all enjoying 
 themselves immensely. The decks were canvassed in 
 nearly every night and the stars shut out, so that those 
 apes of various degrees could put on their gimcracks 
 borrowed from the earth and sea, and dance and strut 
 under the light of electric bulbs with backgrounds of 
 flags and paper garlands. Great Israel! I wonder the 
 Lord of all don't turn His face away from the whole 
 bloomin' show sometimes and say, 'I'm sick of vaude- 
 ville.' 
 
 "Well, as days went on, I can't tell you how or why, 
 
GOLDEN BABY 281 
 
 I began to be conscious of hate, hate everywhere. 
 Whether it was the heat and madness of the tropics 
 that got into our blood and set it seething, I don't 
 know, or whether it was the revenge of big nature 
 rising up against fool civilization we were separated 
 into as many little cliques and parties as the factions 
 in a South-American state. I was out of the whole 
 thing, not because I was better, but because I was 
 worse. They hated one another, and I hated them all 
 with a glorious impartiality. We'd gone due south, 
 struck Jamaica, steamed on to the Isthmus, and then 
 skirted the coast to Trinidad and dipped down beyond 
 the mouth of the Orinoco, with the Southern Cross 
 dominant now and the Dipper selling short. And 
 suddenly one night about eleven, when the band was 
 whanging away at a popular waltz and girls were 
 swishing their muslins and laces round the deck in 
 time, the boat stopped. You know there's always an 
 underconsciousness of danger at sea, in the thickest- 
 hided. No man forgets he's over an unplumbed abyss, 
 except maybe he's in his cups and taking the return 
 trip to Zutphen. So when the motion there wasn't 
 much of it on that sea when it fell into a calm, the 
 dancing grigs stopped, I suppose as the dancers did 
 in ' Belgium's capital' when George Osborne got his 
 summons to go and be killed, and wondered what the 
 god of the machinery was going to do to them. We 
 stopped, and we stayed so. I was on the hurricane- 
 deck, and I came down with that same premonition 
 of panic in me I'm an old sailor, but I did feel actual 
 panic and the first man I met, making his thirty-six- 
 inch strides along the deck, was the second officer. 
 
282 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 He was a good fellow; I hadn't hated him. We'd 
 chummed together quite a lot on the voyage. I've 
 grinned since to think how I greeted him inanely. 
 
 "' We've stopped,' said I. 
 
 "'Yes/ said he, two paces away from me. 
 
 "'What for?' I called, knowing I shouldn't be told. 
 
 "' Don't know, sir/ he returned. I knew he was 
 entrenched in official reserve and not the accessible 
 fellow I'd smoked my pipe with. 
 
 "Well, gentlemen, we had stopped, and there we 
 hung all that night, and the next morning we were there 
 still, a little motion under us, the very least, like the 
 sound, so far as motion might be, of tiny ripples lapping 
 on the beach. Everybody came haggard to breakfast. 
 Nobody had slept, except some of the rummies who 
 were in that condition of tissue where you might call 'em 
 permanently asleep. The crew, such of them as I 
 saw at intervals, seemed also to be in a state of ten- 
 sion. Then the questions began, fired by the broad- 
 side and popping like guerrilla warfare, always to the 
 same tune: What was the matter? The answer re- 
 assured us briefly. It was no longer, 'We don't know.' 
 'Some trouble with the engine/ we were assured. 
 'The engineer's at it now.' So we went on eating, and 
 fault-finding when our toast varied in brownness, and 
 hating one another; but the day, the sulky, burning 
 tropical day, went by, and the tropical night with its 
 quick onrush of stars, and still we hadn't moved. 
 That next morning I met the wireless man at the rail, 
 where he's gone to lean both arms and, it seemed, 
 throw some problem of his own at the bright horizon- 
 line. He was a little, round, oily, dark fellow with 
 
GOLDEN BABY 283 
 
 curly hair, and in spite of his fatness his face looked 
 funnily tragic with anxiety, as if he were going to cry. 
 At once I felt he was pretty well shaken, and he'd tell 
 me what's the matter. 
 
 "'Have you tried wireless?' I asked, in the fatuous 
 way we have of baiting with a commonplace when we 
 mean to fish up something that might dart and elude 
 us unless it thought it was snapping at the same old 
 fly. He shook his head as if he shook me off. I'd 
 thought he knew nothing but wireless, but it was 
 evident he sized me up for the ass I was. 
 
 "'Tried it? 'he said. 'What else?' 
 
 "'Well, don't you get anything?' 
 
 He shook his head again. 
 
 "'Why don't you keep on trying? There must be 
 stations down here there must be ships ' 
 
 "'They don't answer,' he said. It was almost as 
 if with another word he might break down actually. 
 'I've changed my tune, and changed it changed it. 
 I can't get them.' 
 
 "He turned abruptly as if he were really concealing 
 tears now, and ran up the ladder to his post. Then I 
 went away to think. I was afraid, sheer afraid, and 
 wondered at myself. You see, I've no more pluck 
 than any man of my inches, but I'd been about a good 
 bit. I'd seen adventure and heard other fellows talk 
 it over, and I knew you're pretty sure to get out of 
 everything with a whole skin till that last particular 
 time when you don't so what's the use of grizzling? 
 But this time there was panic in my left waistcoat 
 pocket, neatly sewed in to stay, and I knew it and 
 hated it for being there. There was foul weather all 
 
284 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 over the ship. Nobody sang, nobody strummed the 
 light guitar as one girl had been doing till we wished 
 she was at home in the kitchen with a consignment of 
 pots and pans to wash. New York hated Jerusalem 
 more frankly than ever, and Jerusalem wagged its fat 
 chin and openly put up its beak at New York. Hate! 
 Talk about the wars of nations! If that ship couldn't 
 have made use of a whole Hague conference all to 
 herself, it wasn't because she wasn't sick for it and only 
 needed diagnosis to have it prescribed. Toward night 
 I climbed up to the door of the little wireless cage, 
 and stopped there, hat in hand, if you'll believe me. 
 I don't know what kind of besetment made me feel 
 as if every Jack on board that ship was in as tight a 
 place as he could breathe in, and that every lubber 
 that spoke to them had got to walk Spanish. He 
 looked up at me. His tired little eyes were set in a 
 bed of wrinkles. It hadn't been long, this universal 
 panic of the ship, but it had had time to eat into him 
 and change him, from a fat little manipulator who'd 
 learned to do a certain thing, to a crying, hungering 
 soul in trouble, beseeching maybe with no voice, only 
 with those eyes and that quiver of a mouth beseech- 
 ing the Lord of things big and little to lift him out 
 of the pit he's stumbled into. I don't know whether 
 the wireless chap ever heard of the Psalmist, but if he 
 had, I bet he was tuning his own little pipe to him that 
 minute. 
 
 "'Go down/ said he, looking at me as if I were in 
 pinafores. 
 
 "That was all. But I felt I must speak. I had an 
 ass's desire to bray and a meddler's insane push to 
 
GOLDEN BABY 285 
 
 help on somehow. I'd got to help the ship on. We all 
 felt so. One man in the smoking-room we kept it 
 all of a cloud now, we smoked so hard and universally 
 he told me he felt as if he must get out and push, even 
 if he drowned in doing it. He gave a queer little catch 
 in his throat when he said it. If it had been a woman 
 that gave that sound, you'd have said it was a sob. 
 'That's it/ two or three other men had said, and looked 
 the same way, and it was ten to one that, give them a 
 lead, they'd have sobbed, too. It was then I had lighted 
 out. I was afraid we should all be in hysterics together 
 like a girl's boarding-school. But the wireless man: 
 
 " 'I beg pardon, ' I said to him. 
 
 '"Go down,' said he. 
 
 '"I beg your pardon,' I said again, 'but mightn't 
 there be isn't there some sort of magnetic field, and 
 mightn't we be inside it? ' 
 
 "He laughed a little a shrill hoot all scorn and 
 tiredness. 
 
 " 'Magnetic grandmother!' said he. 'Go down.' 
 
 "Then I went. 
 
 "Well, whatever it was that stopped stayed stopped. 
 Life hung fire. Electricity hadn't played us false. 
 There were plenty of lights, as faithful as the night. 
 It wasn't true that according to the old tune it ran 
 in my head all the time then 'water wouldn't quench 
 fire, fire wouldn't burn axe/ and the rest of it. Fire 
 was faithful and cooked us three no, by George! 
 six times a day the most elaborate and embroidered 
 and sinful meals for richness the tropics ever saw. 
 But we simply didn't move, and now the mischief was 
 so patent, the whole thing grew so upsetting and queer, 
 
286 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 that the usual disciplinary silence cracked and broke. 
 The captain made no secret of it. The mate made none, 
 nor the chief engineer. He, I found out, was spending 
 his time digging into his engine, prying into her heart 
 to find out whether she'd got some deadly secret he 
 hadn't shared. At last he was crying over her, the chief 
 electrician told me afterward. But they made no secret, 
 any of them. There was nothing the matter anywhere. 
 The engine simply would not go. And we saw no ship 
 and we saw no land, and wireless wouldn't talk. The 
 only creatures on the ship that showed any animation 
 because they hadn't time to break, were the stewards 
 and I suppose the chef, though I never saw him, and 
 the band. For according to the notion that you can 
 ensure a man against panic by making a noise or stuffing 
 him, they kept the band playing the last comic-opera 
 airs, and the stewards brought on more food, food, 
 food, and offered it up to the god that's in every man's 
 belly. I'll say right here that I never knew stewards 
 so overworked as those poor devils had been from the 
 start, and by now they were so pasty-pale it made you 
 ashamed of yourself, if you were an able-bodied man, 
 to ring a bell and see 'em totter out and start into that 
 perfunctory sprightliness you know it. See it here 
 on this very ship; but these boys look better, a heap 
 better. The stewards on the Siren made you want to 
 say, 'For God's sake, give me the key of the pantry 
 and I'll get it myself.' 
 
 "Well, one night, as if a great bubble burst in the 
 air, something happened. Don't you know how it 
 feels when your head's sort of muffled and woozy, and 
 suddenly something clicks in your ear, and everything 
 
GOLDEN BABY 287 
 
 clears and lightens, and you find yourself out in the 
 open? This was exactly that way. We were all on 
 deck, packed into our rows of steamer chairs I believe 
 we were afraid of going below, and besides it was hot 
 and the band was dashing along from: 
 
 '"Oh, I am the King of Gold, 
 And I made it all myself; 
 My heart and brain I sold 
 In accumulating pelf/ 
 
 to the Sylvia ballet music, when a man down the line 
 of chairs somewhere I never knew who he was burst 
 out into a kind of screech: 'Stop that band! For God's 
 sake, stop that band!' 
 
 "We didn't have to. The band stopped. I believe 
 it knew, instruments and all, that we had had every 
 hair's weight we could endure, and that it had blared 
 out all the breath it could spare, and had got either 
 to scream or die dead from tiredness and fear. And 
 then I turned my head a little I don't know why: 
 I felt as if I had been called and in a veil of darkness 
 by the rail pretty well aft I saw them, the coolie woman 
 and the baby. 'Golden Baby!' I caught myself saying, 
 under my breath, 'Golden Baby!' 
 
 "And at once my fear passed away from me as the 
 shadow passes when the cloud moves on. Something 
 snapped that same lightening like a bubble's breaking 
 and something came up in me that was like summer 
 mornings and being young. I felt it going all over the 
 ship, as if there'd been long breaths what the stories 
 call breaths of relief and I knew I was in the midst 
 
288 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 of a flood of the same kind of sudden happiness. I had 
 time to ask myself why, why, and to wonder a little, 
 because the ship hadn't started and we were in exactly 
 as bad case as before. But that I couldn't stop to think 
 of, for my eyes were on the Golden Baby, and I seemed 
 to be wanting to learn everything I could about him by 
 heart, for fear I should never see him again. You 
 know some minutes warn you they're going to be mighty 
 short and you'd better take a snapshot of 'em while 
 you can. The coolie woman stood there exactly as she'd 
 stood on deck the first minute I saw her. She had on 
 the same scanty, dignified garment down to her bare 
 knees and thin legs, and the silver round her neck and 
 on her arms shone out there in the dark. It seemed to 
 shine like moonlight. The electric lights didn't touch 
 her or the child. They were there in a darkness of their 
 own, and it seemed as if they made their own light. The 
 child sat on her arm and looked toward us and smiled. 
 His hair was bright. His face was bright. After- 
 ward I had a kind of feeling that he stretched out his 
 arms toward us, but that I couldn't swear to. His 
 smile was queer, too. Or, no, it wasn't queer. It 
 was pretty much what you'd see in any baby, only more 
 so. It wasn't well, it wasn't benignant, you know; 
 spiritual, you might call it, same as it is in pictures 
 of " He hesitated here, being, we thought, diffident 
 about matters of accepted religion. 
 
 " Madonnas," said the little poet, raptly. He had 
 hung on every word. 
 
 " Exactly, Madonnas. No, it was the way you'd 
 like to have your own baby look, if he'd come in from 
 play with his hands full of flowers. But the coolie 
 
GOLDEN BABY 289 
 
 woman smiled. She held out her arms toward us, and 
 him in them. And all along the line I knew women 
 were holding out their arms toward the child; and 
 the men well, I guess they did what I did. I brought 
 my feet down to the deck and sat up straight and bent 
 forward. That's all the way I know how to express 
 it. I wanted to get there, somewhere near the baby, 
 and same time I knew I mustn't go any nearer, not a 
 step. And the only relief I had was muttering, just 
 as you'd breathe hard, ' Golden Baby!' Then the 
 woman spoke. It was a kind of voice well, I don't 
 know exactly, a cool voice, smooth, kind of like a 
 silver horn. Something shaking in it, too, something 
 that trembled and yet had a power of its own, a vibra- 
 tion I've never been able to describe it to myself, 
 all the tunes I've tried, and I'm not having any better 
 luck now. But there wasn't any mistake about what 
 she said. 'You're keeping him back, and he's got to be 
 there. Oh, don't ! You mustn't keep him back. ' ' 
 
 "What language did she speak in?" asked the man 
 that sought the parasites. He'd been listening very 
 seriously, not in any spirit of unbelief, I could see, but 
 with the gravity due a marvel. 
 
 The William Morris man nodded at him. 
 
 "I knew that would come," he said. "It came that 
 very night, before we turned in. 'What language did 
 she speak? ' says the wireless man to me, and I carried 
 the question on to the first mate. 'God, man, I don't 
 know,' says he. 'She spoke, that's all I can say.' 
 
 "And a Frenchman that was going to write up 
 Martinique as he saw it from the deck swore she spoke 
 in French, and the German that played the trombone 
 
290 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 said it was the best Hanoverian German. I knew well 
 enough it wasn't either, but I didn't know what it was, 
 and I didn't care. I only know she spoke and we 
 understood. I didn't have much eyesight to spare 
 from looking at the baby; but somehow I did realize 
 that everything round me was different, and different 
 all over the ship. Mrs. I forget her condemned and 
 sacred name she was one of your Boston Apocalypse 
 people, the kind that got transfigured on some mount 
 or other and haven't spoken to anybody since why, 
 up to now she hadn't accepted anybody's being on that 
 boat but herself and her two long-footed daughters 
 and their following. And now she sat there with her 
 hand on a bedizened Jewess's fat knee, and her daugh- 
 ters had hold of a school-teacher from the West not 
 with a ten-foot pole and a hook on the end of it, mind 
 you, but as if they were constrained to hug somebody 
 and it didn't matter whom. It was the same all over 
 the ship. Something had lubricated us. Something 
 had washed us clean. I understood, and at the same 
 minute I knew they all understood, too. Hate had 
 passed away, and in its place was the other word that's 
 just as big. ' Golden Baby!' I says to myself. I saw 
 he had done it, though I didn't know how. That didn't 
 concern us somehow. 
 
 "The coolie woman seemed to come forward. I say 
 seemed, though she didn't move a step, but we all 
 knew she was nearer, every one of us, and that it 
 wasn't important except as she brought the child. 
 Anyhow, he seemed nearer, and if everybody felt as 
 I did it was as if the child was warm and bright right 
 in the midst of us. She spoke again. 
 
GOLDEN BABY 291 
 
 '" That's it/ she said. 'That's good. When you 
 feel like this it doesn't keep him back. Don't keep 
 him back. He's needed so/ 
 
 "And then something happened. It was so gradual 
 and so natural that at first we didn't realize what it was, 
 only that everything in general was all right, and the 
 sun would rise to-morrow on the good old practical 
 world with no fear in it, and God was up there in His 
 heavens wishing us well and not playing tricks on us. 
 The ship was moving, that's what it was. There was 
 the beat of the engine and the little heaving motion 
 of a ship that begins to feel herself, though on smooth 
 water. Then somebody began to cry and somebody 
 else laughed, and we hugged each other, I guess, nobody 
 particularly anxious to know whether he was hugging 
 out of his class or not, and somehow or other the 
 coolie woman and the Golden Baby were gone. But 
 that night it seemed no more incredible to have them 
 go than it did to have them come. And the engine 
 was beating and the wireless man suddenly appeared 
 among us, his flabby round face all puffed out again 
 with satisfaction in his box of tricks, and he says : 
 ' There's a revolution in Haiti!' 
 
 "And we laughed louder and more foolishly, not 
 because there was a revolution, but because it was 
 such a joyful thing to have wireless say anything at all. 
 
 "' Let's have something to eat/ says somebody 
 then, because we'd got used to eating as a kind of 
 expression of emotion of any sort; but somebody else 
 roared out: 'Let the stewards rest, can't you? Poor 
 devils!' 
 
 "'Poor devils!' said somebody else, and then I 
 
292 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 understood, and I guess everybody else did, that we 
 not only impossibly loved one another, but we loved 
 the pasty stewards, too. 
 
 "And we bunked down quietly that night, and there 
 was no eating or drinking, only a kind of prayerful 
 yearning over the engine that kept beating on, and 
 thoughts we didn't dare to put into words about the 
 Baby. And next day the engines were still going, and 
 there was a breeze, and in some queer way we were a 
 quiet, happy crew of people. And everybody spoke to 
 everybody else." 
 
 "Where were the woman and the baby?" asked the 
 parasite man. He was frowning a good deal and beating 
 a forefinger silently on the table. 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Don't know? Didn't you ask for them?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Didn't anybody?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why didn't you ask?" 
 
 The William Morris man paused a long time here, 
 and seemed to study the question in many aspects. 
 Then he answered slowly: 
 
 "We knew we were not to ask. We knew they'd 
 come for a special purpose. What it was didn't concern 
 us, and we felt we felt a loyalty to the child, a loyalty 
 bigger than anything I'd ever felt before. I guess it 
 was so with all of 'em." 
 
 "Did you ever see them again?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. We sailed north, touching at an island 
 now and then, contented as you please, but solemn, 
 changed in a way. I was changed. I guess they all 
 
GOLDEN BABY 293 
 
 were. I haven't been the same man since. It was the 
 pasty stewards on that trip that set me thinking labor 
 and capital wasn't an institution to be sworn over. 
 There was something to be done about it. Well, we 
 kept our course north, and then we slid along the coast 
 of Haiti, and the wireless man picked up more about 
 the revolution. Hot as pepper it was, black as ink. 
 And then one night off that coast I never knew 
 whether there was a harbor or not the engines slowed 
 down and we stopped. But queer as it was to stop again 
 we didn't feel a breath of our old panic, only a solemn 
 expectation. And we heard a stroke of oars, and before 
 I knew what was doing there was the coolie woman, 
 Golden Baby in her arms, going over the side. They 
 seemed to make their own light the child did. His 
 hair was bright almost like flame. His face I never 
 saw " 
 
 Here he stopped a moment, as if the memory were 
 too blinding to be borne. 
 
 " I heard a woman say it wasn't as if she was afraid, 
 but only awed and wondering l Don't let them go 
 there into that island in the dark. Don't let them go ! ' 
 And somebody else said: 
 
 "'Hush!' 
 
 "I jumped to the rail and looked over, and I got a 
 glimpse I swear I did of a boat full of blacks and 
 the stern seat vacant for a passenger. And the boat 
 moved away, and there was a light in it there hadn't 
 been before. It was bright, like the baby's hair. We 
 put on steam again, and that was all." 
 
 Nobody spoke for a while, and the steward, perking 
 out the curtains at the port-holes, to give himself 
 
294 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 pretence for lingering while our talk shut down, ven- 
 tured to look at us imploringly, like a tired clock strik- 
 ing the hour. The parasite man began to feel his way 
 cautiously through a sentence, evidently not knowing 
 where he was to come out. 
 
 "It's your theory, is it, that that the spirit of those 
 on board ship delayed well, it's absurd to say it 
 stopped the machinery?" 
 
 The William Morris man nodded. 
 
 "When you put in that way/' he owned, "of course 
 there's nothing for it but to laugh. But there were evil 
 passions aboard that ship, envy, pride, covetousness, 
 lust, hate chiefly hate. Now if you should ask me 
 if hate could stop an engine, I should say, 'No, it can't,' 
 and so would you. Still, the hate was there and the 
 engine stopped." 
 
 "Ah!" This was a breath in unison from us all, 
 not a breath of understanding, but of concurrence. 
 The scion of a noble stock, who'd been cooling off a little, 
 got on his wobbly pins and stretched himself cautiously, 
 with regard to equipoise. 
 
 "Look here, old chap," said he, "I've heard that 
 story before." 
 
 The William Morris man was too much absorbed 
 in the after-tang of his renewed memory of it to notice 
 who spoke, or he wouldn't have answered. Nobody 
 answered the Sidney man. 
 
 "Not likely," said he. He spoke briefly, absently. 
 "None of us who were there were likely to tell it. I 
 never told it before in my life." 
 
 "But I've heard it," said the little poet. 
 
 "Have you?'" asked the William Morris man. 
 
GOLDEN BABY 295 
 
 He looked up at him and spoke as if in that quarter 
 something might be doing. "Have you?" 
 
 "Yes," said the little poet. His eyes shone. His 
 hair seemed to bristle and come alive with some new 
 excitement under his poll. "Oh yes, I've heard it." 
 
 "When d' you hear it?" 
 
 "Long ago oh, long ago!" 
 
 "Who told you?" . 
 
 "A man named Coleridge. He called it l The Ancient 
 Mariner 7 ". 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 
 
 WE were at Darjheeling, Harry Chiltern and I, 
 he doing some heavy sentimentalizing because 
 that was indicated by the social atmosphere, 
 and fancying he was about to rake in an occasional order 
 for a portrait, and I, as a newspaper man temporarily 
 retired, snuffing round for material. I had a theory 
 that some of these too civilized and much worn quarters 
 of the globe were not explored to exhaustion by the 
 fellows who had already made their bold rubricated 
 mark, and I thought there might even be a pocket or 
 two at Darjheeling where a cleverish penman could 
 strike it rich. Besides, I wanted to write an article on 
 Kipling's India, and I never can ogle any place to 
 advantage if I just go out with my hands in my pock- 
 ets and saunter over it. I need to have an ostensi- 
 ble purpose, like the ladies who can't walk a brisk mile 
 without a hank of embroidery cotton at the end of it, 
 and then they can foot it all day. 
 
 We were a little bored at last, Chiltern and I, he with 
 the discovery that Mrs. Hauksbee is no better than her 
 type (and the type is common enough, none older), 
 once the gilding wears off, and I discerning that I 
 wasn't squeezing very much juice out of an orange 
 that had been punctured before, when Florence De 
 Lisle came up from Calcutta with her most respectable 
 uncle and aunt, and the very best of introductions to 
 
 296 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 297 
 
 the reigning dames. Florence De Lisle wasn't her name. 
 It was a New England name that has considered itself 
 sacred for a long time, as measured by New England, 
 and wouldn't have allowed Krishna or a drove of 
 sacred cows to take precedence of it. But we soon had 
 no use for her name, because we at once christened her, 
 at a mess dinner, where she was mentioned with re- 
 spectful anticipation, the Mouse, and the Mouse she 
 continued to be among the entirely idolizing circle 
 where, in the teeth of Mrs. Hauksbee, she took up 
 an innocent reign. She was very beautiful, slender as a 
 wand, with a hand like a lily, a pale face inside the 
 particular oval that makes you think of unattainable 
 things, the pointed chin of a Reynolds angel, great 
 brown eyes, and coils of the palest fine blonde hair. 
 It was by chance that any of us knew the color of her 
 eyes. We weren't allowed to see them, for she had, for 
 purposes of mysterious concealment, full white lids, the 
 kind Raphael set the fashion of, and a set of eyelashes 
 long enough to fringe a cloak. There got to be bets, at 
 last, as to the actual color of her eyes, and the number 
 of times a fellow could wile them out of covert. She 
 wasn't using them for their legitimate purpose of hiding 
 and seeking. She looked just innocence, plain inno- 
 cence and shyness, as if she actually hadn't the grit to 
 meet a world as coarse and head-strong as she'd found 
 everything beyond the shrine of her white arms. As 
 soon as we saw her we knew she was the Mouse, though 
 some drivelled awhile, after St. Bottle had passed, about 
 moonbeams and angels; and we set about wondering 
 what, beyond maiden meditation, had so suppressed 
 her. In spite of her slenderness, she looked athletic, a 
 
298 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 girl who had some go in her and, to me, the once or 
 twice when I dashed into the bower of her shaded 
 eyes, perhaps unrecognized, untamed desires. Some- 
 thing had subdued her, something kept her veiled. 
 
 "I know," said Chiltern one night after he had 
 danced with her twice and been ready to square off 
 at the rest of us for a third, until her uncle came up with 
 reinforcements of orders from the aunt (called ir- 
 reverently and universally "Bellona"), and took her 
 away, "it's that kangaroo of an uncle. It's that am- 
 bling pad of an aunt." 
 
 Now no terms could have been less accurately se- 
 lected. The uncle and aunt were simply two very 
 large, slow-moving persons, bounded on the north, 
 east, south and west by prejudice of various colors. 
 They were rather terrible, on the score of insularity, 
 but they looked in no sense like tyrants. 
 
 "Oh, rot!" said I. The Indian night was irritating 
 to me with its little circle of safety where we sat and 
 cooled ourselves, and the jungles of manifold sorts 
 beyond, jungles of hatred and tyranny and caprice, 
 and a losing game where good Englishmen think they're 
 dying for civilization, and are really the goods delivered 
 to serve imperial greed. I was tired of it all. "Do you 
 think they abuse her? Is that your idea? " 
 
 "I think they've built a little fence of privilege round 
 her, and nobody's coming in unless he's got the mun." 
 
 "Well," said I, hatefully, "you haven't got it, Chilly, 
 my boy. So don't do any more fluttering round the 
 candle than you feel actually obliged to. It's hot, and 
 oh, what's the use!" 
 
 Chiltern got up and plunged across the room and 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 299 
 
 made himself hotter. I had the sense to keep still, 
 and felt superior to him. 
 
 "It isn't all money/' he growled out. "They're 
 prospecting for family trees." 
 
 I was yawning my head off. 
 
 "I guess it's money fast enough," I said. "Don't 
 get Fitch up here, that's all I say. And if he comes, 
 don't tell me I haven't warned you." 
 
 "Fitch!" scoffed Chiltern. "Fitch!" And that 
 was all he would say until two days afterward when 
 Fitch actually came. 
 
 Now Fitch was a large, middle-aged bachelor of 
 American birth, who wore a watch-chain draped in 
 twin festoons across his semi-circular front, and looked, 
 at every point, as though, if you should cut into him, 
 you'd find cold suet. He was, I think, the most pestif- 
 erous bore, the most ponderous, untrammelled bore, 
 that ever took it upon himself, in a massive way, to 
 disgrace his country abroad. And he was incredibly 
 rich. Chiltern had painted his portrait, turned him 
 out a pompous ass in a style that seemed to please 
 Fitch very well, and Fitch had rewarded him for it, 
 and me because I happened to be chumming with 
 Chiltern, by pursuing us, in a pathetic way (if you had 
 any human feeling for such a semblance of life as he 
 was), eating with us, drinking all round us, densely 
 trying to make it worth our while by offering us a more 
 luxurious line of travel than we could afford ourselves, 
 or accept from any man, and most misguidedly gobbling 
 up our jokes and laughing in the wrong key. We had 
 escaped him at Calcutta, told him we were going to 
 Benares, and fled, hot-foot, remis velisque, for Darj- 
 
300 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 heeling. But we were never without a shudder at his 
 approaching aura, and two days after we had evoked 
 him by meddling with his name, he appeared like a 
 fattened ghost at our sides literally that, because he 
 stepped in between us as we were entering the club. 
 
 "I began to have an idea you fellows were here," 
 said he. "Been everywhere for you. Come along in 
 and have tiffin with me." 
 
 We didn't want his precious tiffin; but seeing him 
 there, we did find it necessary to talk to him. Chiltern 
 began. He told him Darjheeling was infested with 
 snakes and suttee. The suttees were being shot by the 
 dozen with nine-inch maharajahs, and no man was safe. 
 There was more to the same end, and Fitch stood and 
 gazed at him out of his little pale eyes, and at the end 
 remarked : 
 
 " Actually! When are you fellows going down?" ( 
 
 Chiltern told him gloomily that we meant to stay' 
 and die on the spot, because we were poor men and 
 Darjheeling offered a field for our professional abilities; ; 
 but he shouldn't advise any valued citizen with a 
 bank account to do anything so absolutely suicidal and 
 deadly. Fitch listened to him, with the unwinking 
 stare that, as I always felt, meant an effort to under- 
 stand which would, if measured in static units, have 
 been sufficient to blow St. Peter's into the air and waft 
 it over the Nile, and he said : 
 
 "Well, I guess I'm safe so long as you fellows are here. 
 You know the ropes pretty well. When you think it's 
 time to cut I'll go with you." 
 
 Chiltern groaned. 
 
 "Got a stitch?" old Proser asked him sympathet- 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 301 
 
 ically. "I've had a twinge or two myself, spite of the 
 devilish heat." 
 
 "No," Chiltern told him, it wasn't rheumatism. 
 It was snake-bite or a forerunner of cholera, he didn't 
 know which. He thought he'd go back to the hotel and 
 turn in. But just as he was getting off, and Fitch was 
 handing him an affectionate good-by, Fitch happened 
 to say, quite by chance it was : 
 
 " I see there are some folks here I know. I'll look 'em 
 up, I guess the De Lisles." 
 
 "The De Lisles!" Chiltern turned into a statue and 
 glared at him, open-mouthed, and I felt I was glaring, 
 too. We were humble with curiosity. 
 
 "Oh, yes," Fitch said. De Lisle and he were old 
 acquaintances. Started in the cotton-mill together, 
 and had a good many dealings, keeping prices on a 
 level and hedging on strikes. Then he gave us his 
 benignant, flat smile, like the dramatic effort of a 
 garnished ham, and pottered away with that walk of 
 his, as if both his feet were tender. Chiltern looked at 
 me and I at him. 
 
 "Well," I said, "cheer up. He knows the Mouse 
 already. He won't marry her, for if he was going fco he 
 could have done it before." 
 
 "Marry her!" hooted Chiltern. "He? Marry 
 that- 
 
 " Mouse," said I. 
 
 But the next day it looked as if nobody were going 
 to marry the Mouse if Bellona and Bellona's bride- 
 groom, as we quite seriously called them, could pre- 
 vent it nobody but one : for William Norman Pilking- 
 ton Hare had arrived, an Englishman of long descent, 
 
302 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 with manners, money, everything in his pocket, six- 
 foot two, military carriage, fine blonde head, and a 
 hand and foot to charm, and we saw, actually saw 
 Bellona draw bead on him. It was at one of those 
 foolish afternoon teas where the six young ladies then in 
 Darj heeling who hunted in half-dozens, were displayed 
 for sale, suitably chaperoned, and the mother of one of 
 them came in towing young Hare, doubtless for home 
 consumption. He took his cup of tea like a man, 
 gazed all round with his clear blue eyes, and saw the 
 Mouse. She wasn't one of the six, but her precious 
 uncle and aunt contrived to have her look, as they 
 always did, some way or other, as if she were sitting in a 
 special coronation chair and as if her muslin dress had 
 been made out of something mystic, wonderful. Hare's 
 eyes dwelt on her for an instant, as the novels have it, 
 and then he found Bellona at his elbow, saying in that 
 cultivated patois of hers, half middle-class English, 
 half Bostonese, that she'd met his aunt, Lady Sample- 
 ton, and how did Lady Sampleton do? Hare answered 
 civilly, though without showing any warmth as, 
 indeed, how could he, for Chiltern, who had painted 
 Lady Sampleton's portrait, said afterward she looked 
 like a hickory nut dressed up in the show-feathers of a 
 purple ostrich and then presently he was being pre- 
 sented to the Mouse, and she was working all sorts of 
 havoc with us who watched, by simply not looking at 
 him. Then he was invited to dinner we heard that 
 on the count of Lady Sampleton, and accepted, with 
 some neutrality perhaps, but still he accepted; and Chil- 
 tern and I went away among the first, sulking like 
 mad. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 303 
 
 "At least," I said, when we were half-way back to 
 the hotel, "it isn't Fitch. " 
 
 "There are worse things than Fitch," said Chiltern, 
 gloomily. 
 
 Whereupon I ventured to ask what they were. 
 
 "This Johnnie's worse," was his very elaborate 
 reasoning, "because Fitch couldn't get her, and this 
 fellow can." 
 
 I felt enamored of justice. 
 
 "He isn't a Johnnie," said I, "and it would be in- 
 correct to call him a fellow. He is a very dukelike piece 
 of handiwork, and we're nowhere beside him." 
 
 "You're right," said Chiltern, to my surprise. 
 "We're nowhere beside him, especially in the eyes of 
 Bellona." 
 
 The Psalmist says he has never seen the righteous 
 forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. In that regard 
 I am more correctly informed than the Psalmist, for 
 I have seen both; but the thing I have not seen is a 
 campaign conducted with more circumspection and 
 invincible purpose than the one whereby the De Lisles 
 set a gin for the feet of the dukelike Hare, and limed his 
 pathway, and threw salt upon his shining feathers. 
 Every device known to the hunter of men they used 
 simultaneously and in due order, and it would have 
 been strange if such a mobilization of force had come 
 to naught. One ally was lacking to them the Mouse 
 herself. She grew every day paler, more spiritualized, 
 and sometimes we went mad with the impulse to 
 champion her, and again we dashed our impotent heads 
 against the walls of impalpable authority wherein she 
 lived. 
 
304 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 " Would you marry her, Chiltern?" I cried. 
 " Would you do it?" ' 
 
 " Would I?" he roared at me. "Would I drink up 
 Eisel when I've got an immortal thirst on me? Would 
 I?" 
 
 "Then why don't you dash in and marry her out of 
 hand?" 
 
 "Why don't I? Because I can't get within sight of 
 her eyelashes with that brace of watch-dogs guarding 
 her. I can't find out whether she's ever seen me, even. 
 Sometimes I think she isn't a real girl. She's a wraith, a 
 mist maiden. She'll melt if you touch her. Only we 
 can't touch her, and she never'll melt. Why don't I 
 dash in? Why don't I dash into the czar's bedchamber 
 and clap him on the back and offer him a dimitrino? 
 Why don't I dash into the jungle and pull the tiger 
 king's tail?" 
 
 This was, of course, hysteria, but at the same time 
 truth. It was also true that we all looked on at the 
 game, and we all, I think, understood. So far as 
 matrimonial desirability went, Hare was a prince of the 
 blood. He brought his reputation with him. All the 
 dowagers knew about him in some mysterious way, as 
 news filters about among savages. They haven't the 
 telephone, but all the same they get hold of things. 
 You can't say how it goes, but information and as a 
 rule very accurate is simply there. So it was with 
 these Amazons of a thousand ballrooms. They even 
 knew what advances he'd resisted, not like a cad, but 
 through honest flight once he'd felt the lariat flinging 
 nearer, and they all smiled when they saw America, 
 within the brocaded surface of this New England 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 305 
 
 dame, walk into the arena, throw down the same old 
 glove, and dare him to the immemorial combat. Only 
 it was apparently not the same challenge at all. Bellona 
 was clever, infernally. After that one invitation to 
 dine, instead of pursuing, she kept her ground. And 
 she absolutely seemed to be defending the Mouse, 
 defending her from him, so that whoever took the girl 
 out to dinner, he never did. There were always reams 
 of table linen between them. And once when the 
 Mouse had promised him a dance, Bellona actually 
 sailed down on them and quashed it with the fiat that 
 dear Florence was already overtired. The English- 
 man's eyes flashed I saw that and next day two 
 matrons, by actual count, told Chiltern, who groaned 
 it out to me, that Hare had applied for an interview 
 with Bellona' s bridegroom, and got it. And that very 
 night the news swept over us like a special kind of plague 
 that Hare had, in proper form, asked for the Mouse in 
 marriage and been accepted. It was added that the 
 marriage would be hastened, because he had had news 
 that his elder brother, Lord Ormsby, was likely to 
 be at Simla, by way of Bombay, and that Hare had 
 been expected to join him. And then the date was 
 actually set. They were to be married at Calcutta, 
 invited there by Lady Sampleton's foster-niece. 
 
 When we heard that, Chiltern and I, we were at the 
 club, trying to resist the culinary attentions of Fitch. 
 The man who told us walked away, and Chiltern looked 
 at me in a manner he has when one of his grand pas- 
 sions finds the earth caving in under it. His lip twitched 
 as if it had been denied some draught, and he said: 
 
 "Well, it's over. Let's go home." 
 
306 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 I was sorry for him in a measure, but I knew time 
 and change would paint him a cheerful scarlet. 
 
 "Do you mean it?" I asked. "Home?" 
 
 "To America," said Chiltern. 
 
 We both forgot Fitch, who stood there, his little 
 eyes fixed on us with that fatuous acquiescence he felt 
 in our most commonplace acts, and especially our 
 prowess in talking fool talk as he couldn't. 
 
 "Actually?" said Fitch. "I'll go with you." 
 
 Chiltern turned upon him with what I have heard 
 called the courage of desperation. 
 
 "By the way," Fitch continued, "Flossie De Lisle's 
 going to be married Wednesday. You wouldn't want 
 to sail that same day, would you?" 
 
 Chiltern was looking him through, thinking. 
 
 "No," he said. "Put it off a couple of weeks, Fitch. 
 Take the next boat." 
 
 "I'll engage passage," said Fitch, with alacrity. 
 There was no porter's errand he wasn't anxious to do 
 for the reward of being cheek by jowl with such bully 
 boys as we. 
 
 "No," said Chiltern, "you engage your own passage, 
 and I'll attend to ours. By-by, Fitch, see you soon. 
 Got some painting to finish now." 
 
 "Painting?" said Fitch, abominably and offensively 
 interested. ' ' Got an order? ' ' 
 
 "Yes," said Chiltern, "a group a rajah and his 
 brandy paunee." 
 
 "Sho!" said Fitch, who retained traces of his country 
 breeding. "Actually! Well, do 'em justice, Chiltern, 
 do 'em justice. By the way, Flossie De Lisle and her 
 husband are going up to Simla." 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 307 
 
 11 She hasn't any husband/' growled Chiltern, "yet." 
 
 "No/' said Fitch, with the cheerfulness of the adipose, 
 "not yet." 
 
 It was Saturday, and I was on pins to go. I felt it 
 was time to cut the whole connection, Fitch because 
 we couldn't thole him, and the Mouse because Chiltern 
 was motononously cherishing that idea of loving her. 
 And because he cherished it, and because it was fighting 
 in his system to a horrible extent, I was going to do 
 exactly what he said about time and place, and let 
 his sick fancy go wherever it felt it could heal itself. 
 
 "But it's not America, Pete," he said, as we turned 
 away and knew Fitch was gingerly trotting off, as if the 
 pavement scorched him, to engage his passage. "It's 
 Egypt." 
 
 "Egypt? We stop in Egypt? " 
 
 ' ' We do. We take next Wednesday's boat. We go to 
 Cairo. We interrogate the Sphinx. We ask her what 
 the devil she thinks of this business of upsetting a fel- 
 low's nerves because a girl's got a pale face and bright 
 hair. Maybe we go on into the desert. And in two 
 weeks Fitch takes the next boat and steams by us to 
 England." 
 
 "Maybe he'll stop at Egypt, too." 
 
 "No, he won't. The day we leave here, we'll post 
 him a passionate letter, saying I'm summoned to paint 
 the Lord Mayor of London, and charge him, an he 
 loves us, to meet us at the Mansion House six weeks 
 ahead." 
 
 So he engaged passage under some fictitious name or 
 other, I forgot what now, and we were to sail the very 
 day of the marriage. 
 
308 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Go on board at the last minute," I said. I had a 
 foolish fear Fitch would lime us, and we should see 
 him behind us on the deck. Chiltern's spirits were 
 coming up. Blue water was calling him, and I saw he 
 wasn't going to spend his precious tears on any in- 
 comparable she who could commit that last, worst 
 solecism of accepting Another. He burst into his 
 hoot of laughter. I hadn't heard it since he saw the 
 Mouse first and began to wear a lover's melancholy. 
 
 "Fitch won't see us," he remarked, as if he had a 
 pretty secret. "If he does, he won't know us. I've 
 laid in some Mohammedan togs, for his sweet sake, and 
 we're going on board in 'em and keep 'em on till she's 
 under way." 
 
 "How do you know they'll let us? How do you know 
 there isn't a prejudice against nagurs on the P. & O.?" 
 
 "Do you know who's captain of our boat?" asked 
 Chiltern, with the air of delivering a clincher. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Tommy Ridgway." 
 
 "Good! Will he stand for it?" 
 
 "Stand for anything we take it into our noddles to 
 do." 
 
 So the day of the sailing we were on board early, 
 each in a fancy-ball costume where I felt extremely 
 foolish and somewhat parasitic, though Chiltern as- 
 sured me he'd had the togs put through some cleans- 
 ing process and strictly sterilized. We were on deck, 
 he in a high state of enjoyment, and I contemplating 
 going below and changing for Western wear, when he 
 quieted suddenly, as if a thought had him by the throat. 
 
 "Well," he said, "it's over." 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 309 
 
 I stared at him from under my turban. 
 
 " Over? "I said. 
 
 "Yes. She's married." 
 
 "Oh, the Mouse! Yes," I said with philosophy, 
 " she's married." 
 
 And then as I watched the turmoil of the shore, I 
 saw a carriage drive up and two women get out, one 
 of them veiled. The other was Florence De Lisle's 
 rawboned, sallow maid. The first I knew her through 
 her gauze, knew her walk, her height, her slenderness 
 was Florence De Lisle herself. They ran up the gang- 
 way with the unmistakable air of flight and came on 
 board. They were near enough to touch us. I grabbed 
 Chiltern's arm, but there was no need. He was looking 
 at her, shocked into silence. The two of them, mistress 
 and maid, went to the rail and stood there. We swung 
 off, and still they stood as if Calcutta held something 
 they feared or loved to leave. I touched Chiltern again 
 on the arm, and he followed me to our cabin. There 
 we looked at each other. 
 
 "He must be on board," said Chiltern, voicing the 
 thought of both of us. 
 
 "He's not. A bridegroom come on board and let his 
 bride come after?" 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "She's run away?" I asked, almost, I believe, 
 piteously in the extremity of my wonder. 
 
 "Yes. She hates him." 
 
 "Run away before the ceremony!" 
 
 "Yes. Good God! Peter, here she is on board with 
 us for sixteen days of solitude and the open sea." 
 
 "Come back, Chiltern," I charged him. "Think 
 
310 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 what you're saying. If she's run away from him, 
 there'll be the devil's own row. There'd be row enough 
 if she went alone. But we two are on board, and the 
 world's wife will say she went with us." 
 
 He opened his mouth and looked at me as if he 
 could roar down the hatefulness of it all. 
 
 " With you, at least," I said. " And that I stood by 
 you, or indecently followed on." 
 
 Chiltern halted there looking down on his perfectly 
 cleansed costume. Then his eye travelled over mine. 
 
 " We've got to keep these on," he said. 
 
 "The whole voyage?" 
 
 "Yes. I'll go and see Bidgway. I'll tell him we 
 consider it a kind of a joke Ridgway knows we're a 
 pah* of fools oh, damn, Peter, damn!" 
 
 "You won't mention her?" I called after him. 
 
 "Mention her? I'm going to save her from being 
 mentioned." 
 
 He was gone perhaps half an hour, and I sat on my 
 bunk and meditated. I felt like a fool in my disguise 
 which seemed well enough on shore, and in for an 
 adventure all primary school folly and neither fun nor 
 glory in it. When Chiltern came back he took his place 
 beside me and also meditated. Then he came to him- 
 self. 
 
 "Well," said he, "how do you suppose they're reg- 
 istered?" 
 
 I couldn't guess, and he added, as if it capped the 
 top of wonder: 
 
 "Mrs. Hare and maid." 
 
 "Then she's married." That was all that occurred 
 to me to say. "Married and he's not here. Well," 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 311 
 
 I mused, after another soggy moment, " she's run away. 
 As you say, she hates him." 
 
 And I could see through the thin veil of Chiltern's 
 quiet, moved only by a breathing like a racing tug, 
 that he was wondering by chance whether there was a 
 man she did not hate. 
 
 The tension of that sixteen days' voyage tires me 
 now to think of. Mrs. Hare the Mouse no longer 
 was going on to England; then, ten days out, she 
 changed her mind, Ridgway said, and was going to stop 
 off in Egypt. Chiltern and I kept our staterooms 
 except after dark, and we made the deck our own for 
 the greater part of the night. Even to Ridgway, we 
 didn't own why we wanted our identities sealed as the 
 grave. It was a bet, we told him, and then, in an 
 exuberance of bitter fancy, a bet with Fitch, whom he 
 also knew, that we couldn't or wouldn't travel incog, 
 to Cairo. 
 
 Chiltern was torn in two by the aching wonder of it 
 all. He pondered whether she perhaps guessed he was 
 on board nobody thought of the possibility of her 
 loving me or whether she was just flying for terror of 
 what she'd left behind. He felt himself in the midst of 
 an adventure beside which the tales of Scheherezade 
 are as the babblings of Tupper, and yet, like a clear 
 blue sky above his tragedy stage, was the unalterable 
 determination in us both that a good girl should not be 
 compromised. More than that, she should not fall into 
 dangers unguessed by her, as they were as yet by us. 
 Sometimes we didn't more than half trust the maid. 
 She looked like a locked black morocco bag, for silence. 
 What did she know, we wondered, or had she planned 
 
312 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 the flight? Was the Mouse somehow in her power, and 
 where was the Portmanteau taking her? They stayed 
 in their own cabin a good deal, we found by chance from 
 Ridgway, and it's safe to say the voyage was the 
 stuffiest one the four of us had ever had. Then at last 
 Cairo, and we followed them to Shepheard's and heard 
 them make their bargain, with a good deal of dignity 
 on the part of the Mouse, and saw them going to their 
 rooms. We turned out incontinently upon that, 
 though we had apparently been waiting till the English 
 ladies should be served, went to a trustworthy dive 
 Chiltern knew about, and there washed our faces and 
 got into the dress of American men of respectable 
 degree. Then we took rooms at the Hotel de Londres, 
 opposite Shepheard's, and again forswore the air of 
 heaven to sit at our windows and note whether or when 
 our mysterious dames came forth. They did, and we 
 followed them at a distance. The Mouse seemed 
 interested in shops, timid about bargaining, but 
 spirited and even happy. She walked differently, 
 with her head up and a certain swing and go amazing 
 to us. Her cheeks, so pale when we had watched her at 
 Darj heeling, had the slightest flush. Whether she ever 
 saw us or not, we could not tell. By that time we were 
 worn and fractious with the queerness of it all, and 
 sometimes there seemed to be no reason why she 
 shouldn't see us. Only, if she did, there was a per- 
 fectly understood compact between us that no one 
 should be recognized. But the growing change in her! 
 Every day she seemed to be more buoyant, more 
 intoxicated with something that looked like expecta- 
 tion. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 313 
 
 "If this keeps on," said Chiltern one night from the 
 darkness of his chamber where we sat together, "we 
 shall forget she was the Mouse." 
 
 "So I thought/' I answered, "though it's beyond 
 me what to call her now." 
 
 "Me, too," he said, "unless it's the leopard." 
 
 "No, the leopard's cruel, when she likes. This 
 girl's not cruel. Only she's alive at last and wonder- 
 ful." 
 
 "Yes," said Chiltern, sucking at his pipe. "She's 
 wonderful." 
 
 So it went on for three weeks, a month, and then 
 another night Chiltern came in to me with business 
 written over him. 
 
 "Stir your stumps," he said. "They're going to the 
 Pyramids by moonlight." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "Heard the order given. Walked into Shepheard's 
 to ask fool questions and see whether they were in the 
 garden, saw the maid come down, heard the carriage 
 ordered." 
 
 "They're going in a carriage'?' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "By themselves?" 
 
 "Apparently." 
 
 "I don't like that. They're safer in the tram." 
 
 "Well, you're going too, so you might as well like it." 
 
 "Oh, yes," I said absently, "of course I'm going 
 myself, but I don't like that either. I wish we were 
 all at Coney Island seeing the moving pictures or 
 down at Cuttyhunk." 
 
 So when the carriage came round to take the Mouse 
 
314 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 and the Portmanteau out to the Pyramids the ancient 
 kings seemed to have builded for the special purpose of a 
 scene setting for all that was to do, two saddle- 
 horses were waiting at our door, and after a suitable 
 interval, Ghiltern and I mounted and followed on 
 behind like a particularly asinine branch of special 
 police. 
 
 "I'm thinking," I said, while the leather creaked. 
 
 "What?" Chiltern flung at me. 
 
 "That somehow this night 's the night that settles 
 it." 
 
 "Yes." He bit the word off sharp. "It is." 
 
 "And I'm thinking if she does recognize you, and you 
 forget Hare, you'll tell her how we've followed her. 
 You'll tell her a good many things." 
 
 "I sha'n't forget Hare," said he savagely. 
 
 "Don't," I recommended. 
 
 If you're going to be in love, which, I contend, is a 
 special curse only ameliorated by the inevitable oblivion 
 at the end, there's no place to be in love like the country 
 where Cleopatra wooed her Antony. Moonlight and 
 the Pyramids, the avenue of lebbek trees, the Libyan 
 hills beyond where we could see, and holding it all, like 
 a sorceress with her lap full of sleepy runes, Egypt. 
 Whole reams of poetry, stuff I hadn't thought of since 
 I was twenty, came rushing into my head, and I swear 
 I don't know to this day whether it was mine or Shake- 
 speare's. 
 
 "If I speak," I said, and I knew I said it drunkenly, 
 "I shall speak in verse." 
 
 Chiltern understood. He answered with a perfect 
 gravity: 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 315 
 
 "Yes. Don't do it, though. We couldn't any of us 
 bear it." 
 
 By that "any of us" I saw he included in our possible 
 meeting, the woman in the carriage ahead. 
 
 We were riding slowly to keep well away, and sud- 
 denly we became aware, at the same moment, I think, 
 of a mad rhythm of hoofs behind us. There was one 
 man riding, riding like the wild huntsman at least. 
 
 "That's business," said Chiltern. 
 
 "Let him pass us," I threw back at him. "We can 
 keep an eye on him and ride him down." 
 
 The rhythm of hoofs came nearer. The man rode 
 with a reckless haste, and no eye for us, save to turn 
 out. He was abreast of us. He passed, and we, by one 
 impulse, started our horses into the same wild gallop 
 and kept on with him. 
 
 "You saw!" Chiltern cried out to me. 
 
 "I saw," I answered, with, I think, as savage em- 
 phasis. 
 
 The man was Hare. He was still ahead of us, going 
 like all possessed, and we doubled our pace. We were 
 twenty feet behind him, and he at least twenty-five 
 feet behind the carriage, and he now, as if this were 
 exactly the distance he had determined upon, dropped 
 into an easy trot, and we did the same. So there we 
 were at an even pace, not to meet, it seemed, until we 
 reached some point tacitly decreed, which was pre- 
 sumably the Pyramids. And now the Pyramid was 
 looming up before us, a black bulk of velvet in the dark. 
 Once only I spoke to Chiltern. I reined in beside 
 him. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" I asked. 
 
316 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 He turned his head to me and I saw, or thought I saw, 
 in the moonlight, that his eyes were bloodshot. 
 
 "It depends/' he said. He was breathing short and 
 hard. "If she hates him, kill him." 
 
 But I knew he wasn't armed or thought I knew 
 it and wondered, in a dull way, what he would find 
 to do the deed, and thought with distaste of the whole 
 embroilment; and by and by we were there, and the 
 monument of ages was looking majestically down on us 
 and our midget passions. The Bedouins were wrangling 
 for a big party of English that had come to see the 
 Pyramids by moonlight, so that they forgot briefly to 
 wrangle for us, and the English mamma was so exercised 
 over finding at the last minute that Baedeker had im- 
 plied the young ladies should wear divided skirts 
 (which they had not provided), that she was forbidding 
 them stridently to ascend at all, and that gave the 
 Bedouins matter for more entreaty. In the little out- 
 side swirl of peace beside these tempestuous forces, the 
 Mouse had alighted, given her driver an order, and with 
 the Black Portmanteau turned aside to a remoter space 
 where, it was evident, she meant to observe the Pyra- 
 mids and the heavens for a moment by " the world for- 
 got". While they did this, Hare sat his horse like a 
 statue, watching them; but when it was fairly evident 
 that this was what she meant to do, he flung himself 
 out of the saddle, gave a Bedouin the bridle to hold, the 
 act accompanied by a few terse words wherein I de- 
 tected the name of the Prophet and "bakshish", and 
 strode off after the Mouse. Chiltern threw himself 
 off his horse, selected another Bedouin, repeated Hare's 
 promise and potential curse, and gave him the bridle. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 317 
 
 Then I did the same, nailing another son of Egypt, and 
 Chiltern followed Hare and I followed Chiltern. And 
 by the time we reached the man and woman, and 
 halted at a distance of perhaps five paces, we both saw 
 at the same instant that Hare had put out his hands and 
 the Mouse had, with the quickest gesture of entire 
 abandon, gripped them with hers. There they stood 
 looking in each other's faces with a tense, drawn, 
 spiritualized, perfectly happy look, and the moon 
 Cleopatra saw when she fed upon Antony's face was 
 shining on there in the old way, and the desert was 
 whispering outside, and the goddess Hathor walked 
 the sands that night and drenched us all, each with the 
 particular philter conducing to his own especial mad- 
 ness. I had time for a look at the maid, the Black 
 Portmanteau, and I saw she had really withdrawn her- 
 self, as if somehow this climax were what she had been 
 expecting all along, and had prepared herself for as 
 something it would be a part of her correct training to 
 ignore. So she looked at the moon, and looked at the 
 Pyramid, and thought, I doubted not, of some glorious 
 maitre d'hotel who had enslaved her heart in the course 
 of her wanderings, and whom she would see no more. 
 What was the odds, maitre d'hotel or Chiltern, Hare or 
 Antony? The moon knew all about it equally. While 
 I thought these gibbering thoughts, Hare looked at his 
 wife oh, I knew it now! and she looked straight at 
 him. No more veiling of lids, no more retreating into 
 the sanctuary of maidens-all-alone. They looked, and 
 as if they adored each other and were sustained, exalted 
 by what they saw. He spoke, in a rough, broken way 
 that might have made you cry, if you were not, like 
 
318 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 Chiltern, framed of jealous wonder and, like me, 
 curiosity made man. 
 
 "Why?" the Englishman kept saying. "Why? 
 Why?" 
 
 Then she answered him, in a voice all passionate 
 pride. 
 
 "Why? Because I'd been thrown at you. They'd 
 hunted you down and snared you." 
 
 "Why not have told me?" he raged. "If you were 
 so proud, I'd have been humbler." 
 
 "I couldn't tell you," she said, and there she gave a 
 sob . "I was ashamed . ' ' 
 
 "Ashamed?" That he said as if it broke his heart, 
 too, that he should have to think it of her. 
 
 "Of my people, my country, myself. They'd kept 
 me close till I'd died of cold. I'd withered into some- 
 thing I'm afraid to think of. They'd tried to sell me to 
 other men with money, and one with a title, and I'd 
 frozen them out, but you " 
 
 She couldn't go on. No more could she look at him 
 now. Her face turned away a little, and I thought, 
 if it had been dawn instead of moonlight, he might have 
 seen her forehead, even, deep with red. But this was 
 the moment when he understood. 
 
 "Dearest," he said, just that one word, and she 
 began to cry, softly, with no sobs or whimpering, only 
 I was perfectly sure the tears were flowing down her 
 cheeks. 
 
 "You ran away!" said Hare. He spoke as a very 
 loving person does to a naughty child; and then the 
 Mouse did something no one ever saw her do in the 
 past days of her frozen girlhood. She laughed out long 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 319 
 
 and gay, a warm, bright flood, in the very face of the 
 Pyramid and Egypt. 
 
 "I ran away," she said. 
 
 "What for?" asked Hare. 
 
 "For you to follow." This she said brazenly. 
 
 "What for? Why was I to follow? " 
 
 "Don't you know? So I could be courted and per- 
 suaded as girls ought to be, as an American girl has 
 got to be. Oh, you don't know me yet! Wait till you 
 know me, Englishman!" 
 
 We had none of us known her, I saw that; I heard it 
 in her thrilling voice, the strength and will and passion 
 it flung for all the airs of Egypt to carry to whatever 
 ears they would. The Englishman straightened; a 
 quiver ran through him. He accepted, I saw, all her 
 unspoken challenges. 
 
 "Was I to meet you here?" he asked. That same 
 dauntless thrill was in his voice, the one we heard in 
 hers. "Was this intended? Does this content you?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because if it doesn't I'll leave you here. You shall 
 go on alone, and I'll follow for as long as you like, and 
 as far as you like. And I'll kiss your footprints all the 
 way." 
 
 That was doing pretty well for an Englishman, I 
 thought, and then I remembered that Shakespeare 
 wrote in English, and, for the matter of that, a man 
 named Rossetti. She was answering. 
 
 "You were not to meet me here. It was to be longer, 
 England, America, perhaps. But I got tired of wait- 
 ing." 
 
 Her voice dropped. She had waited for him over one 
 
320 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 steamer, and she was tired of waiting. And then Hare 
 bent toward her in the face of Egypt and the haggling 
 Bedouins, the skirted English daughters, the Pyramids 
 and the moon, and she made haste to meet him, and 
 they kissed each other, and Hare drew her into his 
 arms and they may have kissed again. But I missed 
 Chiltern from my side, and looked about for him. He 
 was back there by the ruffling tourists, mounting his 
 horse, and the Bedouin was examining the bakshish 
 given him, and apparently thinking it a plenty, for he 
 called upon the Prophet to rain honey upon Chiltern 
 while at the same time, begging him to stay and climb 
 the Pyramid, accompanying his remarks with some 
 grotesque adjuration about Mark Twain. But Chiltern 
 was riding off, and I got my horse in haste and rode 
 after him, though to the tune of curses because my coin 
 had been less abounding. Through the long, sluggish 
 ride back to the hotel we did not speak; but that night 
 I did gather from Chiltern that we were to leave Cairo 
 next morning. 
 
 Next morning we did leave; and as we were going 
 down the steps of the Hotel de Londres for the last 
 time that trip, we came full upon a man and woman, 
 she in the most beautiful clothes even an American 
 bride ever clothed herself withal, yet simple as the 
 sheath round a flower, and he with a bridegroom's 
 proudest sovereignty written on him. This the Mouse? 
 It was a creature with rose-mantled cheek and eyes 
 that looked straight at you, rejoiceful, shining, with 
 things promised in their depths that would take the 
 happy bridegroom a thousand years to learn. She 
 stopped, put out her hand to Chiltern, then to me. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOUSE 321 
 
 She looked at us both, half tenderly, even half in 
 whimsical confession, the sort where the mouth smiles 
 and the brows are rueful. 
 
 " You've been awfully good," she said. 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 
 
 HE was one of the most intrepid of our war corre- 
 spondents, and his name was Mitchell. Some- 
 thing was being said about the creation of 
 little imaginary kingdoms since the Prisoner of Zenda 
 showed the way. One of us had smiled at the poverty of 
 imagination visible in the efflorescence of multiple 
 kingdoms, but it was somebody who had no more 
 conception of the richness of cerebral life involved in 
 even daring to infringe the Zenda copyright than he 
 had of the force that goes to the bursting of buds in 
 the spring. 
 
 "But you know/' said Mitchell, " there really are 
 those little kingdoms, rafts of 'em, if you're clever 
 enough to hunt 'em down." 
 
 "You don't mean to tell me," said I, "that any inch 
 of Europe lies there uncharted, waiting for your swash- 
 buckling pen? That you can put out a careless finger, 
 to the east presumably, somewhere round Bulgaria 
 or Roumania, and hit a kingdom made to your hand? " 
 
 "Oh, but they exist," said he, with the irritating 
 dogmatism of the man who has in his pocket the very 
 fact that will floor you, meaning to conclude later 
 whether to bring it out. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "Oh, lots of places: men's minds, if you like." 
 
 My triumph this, but I was not allowed to score. 
 
 322 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 323 
 
 "I could tell you what happened in one of these 
 same kingdoms." 
 
 "Same latitude, I dare say, round the corner from 
 Roumania? " 
 
 "Not so far away. We'll call it the kingdom of 
 Arcady. Good old name. Stands for illogical content, 
 makes you lubricated and expectant at the start. I 
 dropped in there because for five years there' d been the 
 most eccentric goings on. King Solon I'm making 
 up names he'd died, and his wife, Queen Ismia, in 
 the minority of the young prince, Belphcebus, had 
 been acting regent. The things that woman had done! 
 To begin with, the king, some time before his death, 
 had got up a report that a few of his former subjects 
 living in the little province of Flos, nominally under 
 the protection of the King of Altaria, were unjustly 
 treated there. They were allowed to naturalize only 
 after a residence of seven years. During that seven 
 years they were ineligible for public office, and he called 
 it a sin and a shame to leave them unchampioned. So 
 he proposed to annex Flos for purely philanthropic 
 reasons, mind you, and he did it. The Florians didn't 
 make any resistance. They'd been indifferently miser- 
 able under the Altarians, and couldn't do much worse 
 here." 
 
 "What did the King of Altaria say to it?" 
 
 "Oh, he did what a pig does at crucial points of pig 
 history. He squealed. Because, you see, he knew the 
 true inwardness." 
 
 "Paternal feeling?" 
 
 "Not for a minute. That was the second reason, 
 made to wear outside. There's always a serviceable 
 
324 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 reason hidden by the other, like a flannel petticoat under 
 mother's black silk. The real reason was that the 
 Florians had discovered quicksilver to an astounding 
 extent. It was a good time to annex 'em. Also because 
 Altaria was busy with a boundary war on her other 
 border, with the Tellurians. I never felt sure Arcady 
 and old Telluria hadn't hatched up the whole thing 
 between themselves and shared the loot. Briefly, then, 
 Flos became Arcadian." 
 
 "Wasn't there any row?" said I. "Didn't it stir 
 up the tribunal at The Hague? I never heard " 
 
 "You make me tired," said Mitchell. "When I 
 tell you these things happened, if you're a polite person 
 you won't pin me down and ask me fool questions. It 
 hurts my professional feelings. Well, the first thing 
 Queen Ismia did was to ask the Florians if they wanted 
 to be given back. They deliberated. They'd developed 
 a caution bump after untold experiences of frying-pan 
 and fire, and they implied they'd wait and see how the 
 regent behaved herself, and whether the prince was a 
 good provider and the old ship of state didn't seem 
 likely to careen too far. The queen was all there from 
 the start. She shortened the hours of work for the silk 
 spinners, and she built up the national theatre. And 
 on Lady Day the girls from the silk mill would come to 
 the palace, bales in hand, and present them toward 
 the support of the theatre. They came crowned with 
 garlands and sang national songs, old ones dug out of 
 the past by a poet they had, and altogether it was a 
 proud little festival. It brought tears to the eyes, if 
 you'll permit the banality. And so it was with all 
 trades. If workers wanted to give a little bit of extra 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 325 
 
 time, they were furnished with raw material, and they 
 threw in the finished product toward the national 
 theatre. So it was their theatre. See? " 
 
 I was irritating enough to ask here if he were a so- 
 cialist, and he brought his complex capable hand down 
 on the table. 
 
 "Now," said he, "don't accuse me of propaganda. 
 I'm telling you what happened, that's all. And it 
 happened. You'd better believe it. It was always my 
 impression that the queen had shown all a woman's 
 guile a woman's in addition to a queen's, and you 
 know a queen must have some instinct of statecraft 
 even if she's only expected to bear princes. She's 
 neighbor to it, so to speak, and snuffed it in with her 
 breath. She had used her arsenal of persuasive weapons 
 to convince the kingdom it wasn't she that brought 
 about the kind, pretty, sanitary ways of government, 
 but the prince. All through his minority she was weav- 
 ing a magic carpet for him to ride straight into the 
 affections of his people. And he had done that very 
 thing. He was a fine upstanding fellow with honest 
 eyes, but not tried at all as yet, not forced up against 
 circumstance and made to take his leap or die in the 
 ditch. My first sight of him was the day I pottered into 
 the kingdom. I was in no particular hurry, and I 
 wanted to go in just that way, walking, rucksack for 
 luggage, to test the democratic feel of the place. I'd 
 heard a lot about it, and if there was plenty of material 
 lying round loose, I was going to write a book. Just 
 as I was sitting down by the road side there was an 
 oleander hedge at my back to eat my cheese sandwich, 
 to give me heart to storm the castle, a young man went 
 
326 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 by, clattery-bing, on a big gray horse. Two old road- 
 menders saluted, and he returned it in a kind of gayety 
 I liked; and then the road-menders, as if they couldn't 
 contain their pride in him, turned to me and clacked, 
 That's our prince/" 
 
 "'Oh/ said I, blowing my sandwich (for microbes 
 are no respecters of the dust of princes), 'where's his 
 retinue? '" 
 
 "One of the old men was bent like a sickle, but he 
 straightened up to something rather magnificent. 
 
 "' That's our prince/ said he. 'Our prince has no 
 call for guards. We're Arcadians. He's Prince of 
 Arcady.' 
 
 "But I turned, by the chance that is the inner direc- 
 tion of the mind, and saw in the field a running figure. 
 It leaped ditches. It ran like a scarecrow made of 
 sticks, and I even fancied scarecrow's rags were flut- 
 tering from its thin, swift legs. 
 
 "'Look at that/ said I. ' Is that going to head off 
 your prince? ' 
 
 "But the gaffer had gone back to his chronic apathy, 
 and looked, open-mouthed, for a minute, and then fell 
 to work at his stones. And I finished my sandwich, and 
 tramped on into the town and up to the open castle 
 gates. I had understood that in Arcady you might 
 have free access to the prince and Queen Ismia, and 
 indeed might claim shelter there so long as the bedrooms 
 held out. There was a soldier at the gate, a sympathetic 
 sort of fellow, and finding by my own word that I was 
 an American on my travels, with a great desire to pay 
 my respects, he passed me on, and another official did 
 the same; and I was actually, toil-stained as I was from 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 327 
 
 my tramp and the prince's passing, led into the morning- 
 room where the prince and his mother were at table 
 like any simple folk. The signs of grandeur were in the 
 hall itself, the wonderful lancet-windows, the cedars 
 outside with centuries since Lebanon in then: bones, 
 and, too, in the prince and his mother, the very cut of 
 them. They looked mighty nice to me, that mother 
 and son. She was a slim, small woman yes, really 
 little; there wasn't much to her except her royal man- 
 ners with lots of white hair, and he was the big lad 
 I told you about. They wore the ancient costume of 
 the country, and it fitted the lancet-windows like a 
 glove. I was prepared for that. It had been one of her 
 astounding clevernesses, though ascribed, of course, 
 to the prince. They had thought it encouraging to 
 national feeling, national industries, to return to the 
 national dress. No head waiter's swallow-tail in his. 
 No Parisian latest agony for the lady. The clothes 
 were ready for a picture gallery, for grand opera. And 
 they looked indestructible. I could believe they'd been 
 laid away in cedar chests for longer than the prince 
 had lived. 
 
 "The queen had my card beside her plate. She 
 smiled at me and she looked very charming. I could 
 see at once she was the sort of woman you want to 
 pick a nosegay for, or lay down your cloak in the mud. 
 
 "'You have come on a gala day/ said she. 'We are 
 going on pilgrimage. Will you join us? ' 
 
 "The man had brought another plate there was 
 very informal service and the prince motioned me 
 to his right hand. And I sat down as I was, and wished 
 I had not eaten the cheese sandwich." 
 
328 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "What language do they speak?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, any language. There's an Arcadian patois 
 something like German, but often they speak French." 
 
 "They knew who you were, ' ' said I . " They had your 
 card. They wouldn't admit any obscure man to break- 
 fast . You know that, Mitchell . ' ' 
 
 "Oh, go 'way," said Mitchell. "Go 'way wid yer 
 blarney. Anyhow, I was there, and the queen was 
 good to me. Well, I asked lots about Arcady, hinted 
 at my book, and they were as right down cosey and 
 sensible as you please. She, the queen, came to business 
 at once, straight as a string. She told me what the 
 prince had done to touch up the government and trim 
 it with gimp and fancy lace, and how they'd gone a 
 long way on the road before anybody got wind of it. 
 They're such an inconsiderable kingdom, you see, in 
 point of territory. Even you never heard of 'em." 
 
 "Mrs. Prig never did either," said I. "We 'don't 
 believer there's no sich a person.' ' : 
 
 "Well, you pack your grip next summer, and I'll 
 buy you a ticket and give you an elementary phrase- 
 book and you see. But when the outlying continents 
 did hear of the changes in Arcady, first they got gay. 
 They said, ' Arcady's looking up.' Then they said it 
 was comic opera. Then when they began to run over 
 the tax list it made 'em sit up. But I'm giving you only 
 the retail side of it. When breakfast was over, we three, 
 the prince and the queen and me, plain American, we 
 went out to walk on the terrace, and there was a sunken 
 garden and a peacock strutting back and forth through 
 a pleached alley, and there were flags on the towers. 
 And the queen began to tell me what a festival it was 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 329 
 
 to-day: for you see, by luck, it was the day for the silk- 
 weavers to come and bring their bales; and by George 
 they did come, and a mighty pretty sight it was, girls 
 walking two and two, holding up their bales as if they 
 were shields with heroes on 'em, and everybody gar- 
 landed. And the girls sang: and the songs were all 
 gentle, simple songs of sowing seed and reaping grain 
 and blessing the apple-trees and thanking the good 
 God. And then the queen asked me if I had ever heard 
 of Erdreich, the poet, and I said I had, and knew a lot 
 of his stuff by heart. You see Erdreich was one of those 
 destined chaps that aren't perhaps discovered when 
 the curtain goes up, but have an entrance that deter- 
 mines the course of the play. With all this revival of 
 the ancient humble life, here was Erdreich, by God's 
 luck, ready to snatch the old ballads out of time for- 
 got, and put them in modern dress, just as simple, 
 just as pure; and there were those, scholars and such, 
 that said the revival of the ancient spirit of Arcady 
 was just because Erdreich had taught the populace to 
 sing peace and kindliness into themselves, and there 
 was great bandying about of the old saw about caring 
 not who made the history of the nation so somebody 
 might make the songs. And this day, said the queen, 
 she and the prince and certain of the royal household 
 were going to ride to the home of Erdreich, perhaps 
 ten miles out in the valley of the Area, and pay their 
 respects. His crowning would come later, and that 
 would be official and the kingdom would take part. 
 But this was only to show in what love they held him. 
 The prince always the prince! had judged it best. 
 "While we were talking about Erdreich, a man came 
 
330 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 out: I hesitate to say lackey. You see everybody had 
 the same look of intentness on the business in hand 
 and, if I may make a very subtle thing so definite, 
 of love for Arcady. This man came out and gave the 
 queen a written message, and she read it, and without 
 changing a shade of expression, except that the red 
 came into her cheeks, she gave it to the prince. 
 
 "'The King of Telluria!' said he, speaking out as 
 impulsively as you might if you'd got a wire to say Aunt 
 Sophy was imminent and you knew there was no cus- 
 tard pie. l Coming here. Coming to-day, with a small 
 retinue. What does it mean? 7 
 
 "They were both troubled. I could see royalty 
 wasn't in the habit of bearing down on 'em, even 
 neighboring royalty. But the queen said quite sweetly, 
 like a housekeeper caught making jam and putting a 
 good face on her stained fingers, that the visit to Erd- 
 reich should be given up. And then, if you will believe 
 me, I was offered a room at the palace, and they would 
 send for my luggage." 
 
 "Because you were the distinguished Mitchell." 
 
 "Distinguished nothing. Because I was going to 
 write a book about Arcady, and they wanted most 
 tremendously to have it done. Already I thought I'd 
 discovered something: that the queen prized Arcady 
 almost as much as she prized the prince. As for him, 
 I didn't know. He hadn't had his test. 
 
 "Now the rest of his story I am going to tell you as 
 I had it afterward when I could braid the strands to- 
 gether. If you ask me why I knew this or that, or how 
 I could have been in the room or in three places at 
 once, I can't and sha'n't tell you. Ask a weaver how 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 331 
 
 he got that little thread of blue, when his blue had given 
 out. Maybe he walked forty miles for it. Maybe he 
 wrenched a flower off its stem and made a dye. My 
 weaving is life, and you've got to accept the web as 
 I toss it to you done." 
 
 " That's a bargain/ ' said I. "Give us the web. All 
 I ask is to see and handle." 
 
 "Good for you! Some things you've always got to 
 take on trust, as that the doctor won't poison you, 
 though he knows how, and that there isn't a bull in 
 the pasture mixed up with the huckleberries. Well, 
 the King of Telluria came, he and all his knights riding 
 on fierce horses as if they'd been statues come to life. 
 They'd taken train to the border and ridden the rest. 
 I give you my word I could see just how they'd look 
 if I'd had the formula for stiffening 'em into equestrian 
 statues to be sold for public squares. The king was 
 the regular old sort. If you'd painted him up, you could 
 have tucked him into a pack of cards and nobody'd 
 have known the difference. Now, I am an attentive 
 student of modern affairs, and I knew what that quick 
 breath of the prince meant when he heard they were 
 coming. There had been newspaper nods and whispers 
 about a match between the prince and the Princess Eda 
 of Telluria, and if the prince had been a common 
 Johnnie like you or me, he would have said, 'Mother, 
 do you 'spose she's coming, too?' But living under 
 the freeze of royal etiquette, all he could do was simply 
 to say nothing and kick his princely self for a fool for 
 hoping even for a minute that princesses could go round 
 calling with their fathers unannounced. 
 
 "And the next entrance was the incredible one of 
 
332 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 the Princess Eda herself. The king and his suit had 
 been taken off to their rooms, and the prince had gone 
 after them, and while the queen stood in the great 
 hall thinking hard perhaps about how she should 
 guide the ship of state with these buccaneers bearing 
 down on it a slim young girl, with her yellow hair 
 tied up tight under a veil, and her eyes obscured behind 
 goggles, ran in and up to her, as if she knew just where 
 she meant to go. And the queen started, and being a 
 queen, though in Arcady, perhaps wondered whose head 
 had got to come off for allowing even this butterfly 
 invasion; but the princess held up a hand and said, 
 'Hush! hush!' and kissed her. And the Queen started 
 and said, 'Eda, Eda! Why, Eda!' Then, just like any 
 other mother, 'How glad he'll be!' But Eda made her 
 understand at once that there was no man in it at all. 
 She had come as wildly as the storm comes out of the 
 north. She had to come. Why? She didn't know. All 
 a girl's vague, wistful wonder under driving impulse 
 shone out in her here. At least she wanted to set foot 
 in Arcady. And she could never run away from home 
 save when her father, too, was absent; and how often 
 could you hope to find a king out of his kingdom? And 
 she had impressed, kidnapped, terrorized old Bertelius, 
 the librarian and her friend, and he and she had mo- 
 tored by the mountain road in terror of their lives, by 
 cliff and chasm; because, you see (here her mouth 
 smiled enchantingly), Bertelius was all afire about the 
 young poet Erdreich. He had never hoped to see him; 
 and now, if he was game, here was the chance. 
 
 "'You shall see Erdreich, both of you/ said the 
 queen. 'It will be safest. If you stayed here you would 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 333 
 
 have to lie in hiding, and that's not She stopped and 
 smiled, but the princess knew she meant not royal 
 nor possible, and blushed a little because her adventure 
 had perhaps proven her too bold. 'You shall go at 
 once to Erdreich,' said the queen. 'His grandmother 
 will be good to you/ 
 
 "'But' said the princess. She looked most im- 
 ploring. Queen Ismia understood. What the princess 
 had really come for was not any wholesale adventure, 
 not to let Bertelius meet the young poet, but to see 
 the prince. Adventure, indeed, the adventure of 
 meeting the prince, from the wings as you might say, 
 while he was neither throwing over her the irised 
 glamour of the spring pigeon nor carolh'ng serenades. 
 At this the queen kissed her. She smiled, too, and the 
 princess blushed. 'Listen to me/ said the queen. 
 'We are going to-morrow at latest to pay our respects 
 to Erdreich and his grandmother. You can be the 
 little maid about the cottage. You can see and not be 
 looked at, not be spoken to. Will that please you?' 
 
 "'But my father!' said the princess. Her eyes now 
 were full of light and courage. 
 
 "'Would our good King of Telluria be likely to con- 
 cern himself with kitchen wenches in cottages?' said 
 the queen. 'No, child, he won't look at you.' 
 
 "So they kissed fervently like women in the armed 
 truce of conspiracy, and the princess and old Bertelius 
 set off, something to his disgust, on foot and the lady in 
 borrowed clothes, for the poet's valley. 
 
 "Now that night it was apparent that something was 
 happening in Arcady, a thing that never happened 
 before. The king had come as his own envoy. He 
 
334 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 wanted to talk it over, this business of privilege and 
 land jobbings and the like, and he and the prince and 
 Queen Ismia sat together on the terrace and looked at 
 the moon. Enough to set you crazy, the moon of 
 Arcady is. There are a great many lovers there. And 
 the prince fixed his eyes on the black line of the Tel- 
 lurian mountains over in the east, and remembered 
 they were snow-covered and so a symbol of Eda and 
 her cold virginity, and he sighed. But something waked 
 him like a bomb that scatters and doesn't strike. 
 
 "' You're ridiculous, if you will permit me to say so/ 
 old Telluria was remarking. 'You've got no army.' 
 
 "'Oh, yes, pardon me/ said the queen, precisely and 
 bitingly. 'Every man in Arcady is prepared to defend 
 her to the death.' 
 
 "'What with? pitchforks, spades, and rakes?' 
 
 "'Pitchforks, if that's what they happen to have 
 in their hands at the minute. Spades and rakes? 
 Yes. They keep her men well fed.' 
 
 "'You've made no appropriation for the army since 
 the late king died.' 
 
 "There was an implication here, and the queen heard 
 it and broke two sticks of her fan in the good old way, 
 and the prince, very wide awake now, felt his face grow 
 hot. The implication was that this had been a sort of 
 hand-to-mouth housekeeping woman's work, and not 
 the old slam-bang immemorial style at all. 
 
 "'We have made appropriations/ said the queen. 
 She sounded icier than the snow on the Tellurian moun- 
 tains. 'But not for war. Do you know what we have 
 done with our money?' 
 
 "He did know, but he grunted out a wholesale 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 335 
 
 repudiation of anything she could or might have 
 done. 
 
 "'We've brought down the water from the moun- 
 tains. It's in every man's dooryard. It flows through 
 every man's vineyard, if he wants it. There are no 
 droughts any more in Arcady: none that hurt us. 
 Piping from the mountains costs a good bit, Cousin 
 Telluria. Piping on the mountains used to be the 
 fashion; but now we can do that with a good heart, 
 because we've done the other piping, too.' 
 
 "She was rather a gay little queen, you see, and 
 she'd got her blood up. She could afford to jolly him. 
 After all, he was only old Telluria out of a pack of 
 cards. But he was a man, too, and he knew the secret 
 springs of man's vanity and cowardice better even 
 than she, though she was wiser than women are. All 
 through this talk he had the air of setting her aside 
 because she was a woman and calling on the prince to 
 support him in man's tradition. You know the recipe. 
 When a woman cuts straight to the heart of things, 
 you say to her in a fagged way, as if you'd been on deck 
 since Adam, 'My dear, it isn't done that gait.' If 
 she's bright and saucy she says, 'But it could be, and 
 save the cost of miles of tape.' The queen knew her 
 son was being inducted into the axioms of kingship, 
 and her heart swelled and her throat choked and she 
 could say nothing. 
 
 "'Did you know,' said the king, he was addressing 
 the prince openly now 'did you know those damned 
 Florians had discovered gold?' 
 
 "Now there is no reason why the Florians should be 
 damned except that they live in a rocky, ungrateful 
 
336 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 spot where they are likely to come on metals that make 
 them work very hard, sometimes underground, and 
 rouse ill passions in the folks that don't have to work, 
 but live in the light, necessarily, you see, so it can set 
 off the Florian diamonds. That's what the sun is for. 
 The prince said No, he hadn't known it. His port was 
 beginning to swell perceptibly and he, too, left his 
 mother out of the talk. He'd begun to wonder whether 
 he'd been breeched sufficiently early. 
 
 "'I knew it,' said the queen. But nobody listened. 
 
 "'I have a few fellows stationed there,' said the 
 king, 'workmen ostensibly. They keep me informed, 
 in cipher.' 
 
 "'I have some very good friends among the Florian 
 workmen,' said the queen. 'They tell me what has 
 happened without reserve.' 
 
 "' They 're very close-mouthed/ said the king to the 
 prince. 
 
 "'They talk to me very freely/ said the queen, 
 'because they know I shall keep their confidence/ 
 
 "'I don't care for those fellows,' said the king. 
 'They've given us all a good deal of trouble, first and 
 last. Of course,' he went on, still to the prince, ' if it 
 should happen that we formed any sort of alliance ' 
 Here he stopped, and it was evident what alliance he 
 meant. He meant Eda. 
 
 "The prince got very hot and choked a little, but he 
 answered straight off, with a becoming dignity, 'As to 
 that, sir, it is in your hands and in hers.' 
 
 ' In that case,' said the king, ' I should feel that we 
 might work together in our ideas of Flos. But if you 
 hand it back to Altaria ' Here he broke out and 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 337 
 
 wasn't kingly for a minute 'By the Lord, I never 
 heard of such a thing. Passing a province over to 
 to ' He was so mad he sputtered. 
 
 '"To the power you filched it from/ said the queen. 
 'The chances are it will never happen, sir. We have 
 left it to their option, and they are very loyal to us, very 
 grateful.' 
 
 " 'But in case it did go back to Altaria/ said the king, 
 'I might feel obliged to put out a restraining hand. 
 You see, my subjects there don't have all the privileges 
 I could wish ' 
 
 "'Years ago/ said the queen, 'when the late king 
 annexed Flos, he used those very arguments. Yet, as 
 everybody remembers, to our shame, that was the year 
 the quicksilver was discovered/ 
 
 "'Ah!' said the king, suavely. He was stroking his 
 kingly beard, and if it had been daylight it could prob- 
 ably have been seen that he looked greedy and very 
 ugly. 'Ah, so it was.' 
 
 '"And this year/ said the queen, 'they have dis- 
 covered gold. And this year you think of annexing 
 Flos.' 
 
 "'They're troublesome neighbors/ said the king. 
 
 " 'They're rich neighbors/ said the queen. 
 
 "'Well/ said the king to Belphcebus, as if this was a 
 bargain between two. 'Think it over.' 
 
 "So they went to their royal couches, the king 
 scornful of Arcady and its housekeeping, the prince in a 
 state of aggrieved dignity toward his mother because 
 she had been such a thriftless regent, and Queen Ismia 
 holding her head so high you'd have thought she'd 
 hardly see over her nose. 
 
338 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "Now the real part of my story is to come, so I'll 
 scamp a little here and tell how the queen, in spite of 
 this complication of her royal guest, pouring innuendo 
 into the prince's ear about the good old ways of govern- 
 ment, kept pressing the question of going to pay Er- 
 dreich, the poet, the royal respects. She had to, you 
 see, it being a pact she'd made with Eda, who was 
 probably at the cottage Erdreich, sweeping and dusting 
 with strange implements, when she'd only been accus- 
 tomed to riding-whips and golf-sticks. And perhaps, 
 too, Eda was falling in love with the poet; for a poet 
 in the hand is worth twoscore princes in the bush. 
 So they set out on horseback, the queen very sweet and 
 smiling because she'd got her way, and the king quite 
 grumpy because this trailing of poets seemed to him 
 a waste of time, and the prince also grumpy now he was 
 making a point of doing everything the king did : just as 
 a little boy at school copies the big boy, or even swag- 
 gers and smokes like father. It was a pretty ride down 
 a cliff road into a green valley with the sound of water 
 all the way." 
 
 "Did you go, too?" I asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes. On a very good nag the queen had ordered 
 out for me. There wasn't much talk, and that of an 
 incidental sort. But once I thought I caught a glimpse, 
 in a path alongside ours, of the scarecrow I'd seen run- 
 ning that morning to head off the prince. And the old 
 king saw him too, and reined up and called to every- 
 body indiscriminately: 
 
 '" Secure that fellow!' 
 
 "But here the prince suddenly took a stand and was 
 very princely. 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 339 
 
 " ' I beg your pardon/ said he. 'I think I'd let him go. 
 He's only a poor fellow just out of prison. He runs 
 extraordinarily. He ran me down the other day I 
 was on horseback, too to tell me how glad he was 
 to get back to Arcady.' 
 
 "'Where'd he been?' fumed the king. I can see his 
 old walrus mustaches bristling now. 'Where'd the 
 fellow been? ' 
 
 "The prince looked at him modestly, as if he'd really 
 rather not say. Then he did answer, in a very low tone. 
 
 "'He was a Florian, sir, imprisoned for his attempt 
 on the life of my father.' 
 
 "'And he's out!' The old walrus needed an ice- 
 floe to cool him now. 'You've let him out ! ' 
 
 "The prince was three-quarters turning to his mother. 
 But she wouldn't help him. She wouldn't even te^r- 
 
 "'We judged it best,' said the prince. He dion't 
 stutter. He was clear and cool. I fancied he was 
 thinking what mother would wish him to say. 'What 
 he did, he did from his sense of awful injustice. We'd 
 treated the Florians like the deuce, you know. And 
 so well, mother and I just let those prisoners out.' 
 
 " ' Very well,' said the king. It was the way a Mauser 
 would have spoken, if it could. ' If you and your 
 mother are not blown up for your pains, it isn't because 
 you don't deserve to be. And if I'm in it with you, sir, 
 I'll never forgive you, by God, never.' 
 
 "But now the figure wasn't to be seen any more 
 among the trees. I rather debated with myself whether 
 I'd seen it at all. 
 
 "After we had ridden some nine miles, the valley 
 opened out into a place that smiled, a circle of green a 
 
340 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 good many acres wide, a place to be happy in, and there 
 on the edge of the forest was a thatched cottage, all 
 roses and pinks, and on the door-step, in a brown frock, 
 and looking as if she had caught an enchanted dream 
 by the tail-feather and couldn't believe in it yet, sat the 
 Princess Eda, her hair braided in a pigtail down her 
 back. We had been going softly on the green, but when 
 she saw us she looked up frightened and stood there, 
 held by the royal instinct not to fly, and yet with the 
 fear of her father written all over her face. But he'd 
 no thought of her, and the queen gave her a careless 
 cold glance and said to her: 
 
 '"Go in, my good girl, and tell Erdreich and his 
 mother their friends have come to visit them.' 
 
 "With that we dismounted, and the grooms that 
 rode with us led the horses away to the shade; and out of 
 the cottage came a beautiful old woman in the peasant 
 dress of Arcady. Her hair was snow white, but thick 
 and fine, as if it wasn't old at all, but some special 
 kind of beautiful hair a young person as well might be 
 glad to have. And she had pink cheeks and eyes bluer 
 than anything, even blue flowers : for they've a surface, 
 if it's only velvet, and here was liquid of a depth not to 
 be plumbed. The old woman's eyes met the eyes of the 
 queen. It was a strange look for a peasant and a queen 
 to blend and take again. It seemed to ask and answer 
 a question. 'Is all well? ' asked the eyes of each, and the 
 answer was, 'Not so very well.' But the queen did her 
 part with a royal courtesy. They had come, she said, 
 to see Erdreich. Was he at home? No, the old dame 
 answered, with a careful deference, Erdreich was 
 away on one of his stays in the forest. The queen knew 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 341 
 
 how he withdrew himself, from time to time, and sought 
 out the foresters and, old men too feeble now to do 
 anything but tend cattle on the mountainside, and took 
 down from their lips the stories and ballads of ancient 
 Arcady. But the grandmother had heard his horn 
 from the glade a mile farther on, by the brookside, and 
 this was where he often lingered to make his poems 
 to the sound of falling water. Now, before anybody 
 else could get a chance, I very humbly and, I hope, 
 not discourteously bowed before the queen she was 
 queen and woman, too, as well as regent; she liked the 
 old customs of the bent knee and beseeching eyes 
 and asked permission to ride over to the glade and 
 tell the poet he had guests at home. You see, I was 
 dying to be in it, and I knew pretty well what the royal 
 crowd here was likely to do : the queen to talk nicely to 
 the old woman, the king to yawn his head off, because 
 he didn't care a hoot for poetry, and the prince to hit 
 his leg with his riding crop and wish he was at home 
 trying on the crown. The queen gave me a smile. 
 I have that smile now. I keep it by me. 
 
 " 'By all means, go/ said she. 'We shall be indebted 
 to you/ 
 
 " And I got my horse and rode away, and if I'd heard 
 a jingle of any sort, even a couple of nickels in my 
 pocket, I should have known I was a knight off on a 
 quest to be remembered 'way through the twentieth 
 century. The road roughened to a cart path, and the 
 cart path ran impetuously into the forest, and got 
 timid and narrowed until now the undergrowth brushed 
 my horse's nose and closed against his flanks. And then 
 it opened again, and there was daylight before me, 
 
342 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 green between trunks of trees. And I rode on at a 
 trot and came out on a clearing, all bluebells, and there 
 was a woodman's hut, and Erdreich and Bertelius sat 
 on a bench by the door, deep in talk. How did I know 
 them? By their mugs, man. Bertelius is one of the 
 most celebrated Dryasdusts in the world. His nose for 
 a first edition is longer than Cyrano's, and more sensi- 
 tive than Rover's. And don't you s'pose I'd seen a 
 photograph of Erdreich, the poet, in the translated 
 volumn of Miss de Smith, of Phoenix, Arizona? I 
 halted, and tied my horse to a little beech-tree, and 
 made myself known in rather more mediaeval language 
 than I use every day, as a messenger from the queen. 
 Would Erdreich be pleased to come home and let 
 royalty show him how inferior royalty thought itself, 
 at this stage of the world's progress? I expected him 
 to jump up, beg me to mount my horse, and let him, 
 hand on flank, trot after me back again and so go 
 tailing into notoriety. Nothing of the sort. He was 
 very courteous, this young poet, very grave and un- 
 affected, but he'd got some other bee in his bonnet 
 besides the plaudits of royalty. It buzzed most horribly 
 and scared the other one away. Bertelius took no man- 
 ner of notice of me. In his eyes I was probably an 
 outlander speaking indifferent Arcadian and not likely 
 to understand a tithe of what he began to pour out in a 
 rush, all of it adjurations to Erdreich to 'remember, 
 remember/ ' 
 
 "How did he look? Was he really an old man?" 
 "Is he, you mean. He's not dead yet. Bertelius 
 well, he looks absolutely and entirely as if you had 
 made up a recipe for a librarian and had the finishing 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 343 
 
 touches put on by a costumer: long beard, eyes per- 
 manently in hiding, little cap, and a sort of monkish 
 habit. And Erdreich was a very spectacular young 
 person, handsomer than the prince, oh, far handsomer. 
 I was glad Eda hadn't seen him first. He was all 
 yellow hair and blue eyes, and strong as a forester: 
 which he was, indeed, before he dropped into poetry. 
 Now I took the cue old Bertelius thrust on me, and I 
 stood there by my horse dull and dumb as a groom, 
 and listening. (Do you ever think how much listening 
 is done by the chaps that are hanging round to do things, 
 the ones the novelists give ' impassive faces' to? You'd 
 think their ears would grow by cocking.) And it's 
 my long suit that I can understand any language you'll 
 mention better than I speak it. So there you are. 
 Bertelius and I might have been hobnobbing at a 
 coffee klatsch, and he giving me his entire confidence 
 and attention for all I lost. 
 
 "'You are a young man, Erdreich/ said he. 'Heed 
 an old one. ' 
 
 " Erdreich looked at him much as the prince had been 
 looking at the King of Telluria, with the worship of 
 the ignorant for the seasoned, the wistful gleam in the 
 eye that says, 'If I knew what you do, how much 
 better I could use it. I don't hanker after being you; 
 but oh, how I want to know!' It's precisely like the 
 puppy trotting round after the old sheep-killer. 'I 
 won't kill sheep,' says the puppy's eye. 'Oh, no! but 
 just let me come into the pasture and see you nab 'em.' 
 
 "'Your genius is buried here,' said Bertelius, and 
 I could see he was Bertelius the tempter. ' All the best 
 years of your life when you should have been writing 
 
344 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 your splendid dramas, you have been wandering round 
 the forest reviving old ballads/ 
 
 "'You know why/ said the poet. He looked, in 
 spite of his fresh color, worn and worried, as if his day's 
 excursion with Bertelius had been a sort of debauch. 
 'I wanted to write my dramas, but my grandmother 
 told me begged me to collect the folk-songs first, 
 because in a little time all the people that know them 
 will be dead/ 
 
 "'Your grandmother I' said the man of books. It 
 was pity in his tone; it was implication. 'Think/ it 
 seemed to say, 'think, young poet, what you are telling 
 me. You are saying that you allow the mammal 
 who brought your mother and incidentally you into 
 the world and provided you with food for a few years 
 after, to settle the status of your most admirable and 
 unusual brain. Think what you are saying. It is 
 absurd/ Bertelius spoke significantly. 'This is a 
 country/ said he, 'governed by women. Telluria is 
 governed by a man/ 
 
 "The poet had flushed up a deep girlish pink. He 
 began to justify his grandmother, justify himself. 
 
 "'She knew the way my genius my tastes went. 
 My dramas were all for war. ' 
 
 "'War/ said Bertelius, gravely, 'is a necessity, an 
 ill necessity/ 
 
 "The poet's eyes began to glow. 
 
 "'But she says/ he began, and then apologized. 
 'Grandmother is very wise/ Bertelius bowed be- 
 nignantly. 'She says the mind of the people inflames 
 so easily. They can't bear dramas of war, she says. 
 Give them the old legends of honor, of reaping and 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 345 
 
 sowing, of hunger and thirst that the children may be 
 fed. Give them those, she says, and teach them to 
 look on war as an insane fury.' 
 
 "Bertelius bowed again. His delicate mouth curled 
 up a little at the corners. 
 
 "'Very amiable/ said he, 'very feminine and sweet. 
 Ladies are temperamentally timid. We won't discuss 
 that. But let me urge you again to come to Telluria 
 and revive our ballads for us.' 
 
 "'You said it was wasted time/ the poet fished up 
 out of their talk. 
 
 "'Not if other things go with it. But in Telluria 
 you would have time for the other things, your dramas, 
 your glorious plays/ 
 
 "I saw the game. Dryasdust wanted the ballads 
 of his own country dug out of oblivion, and this boy 
 had the antiquary nose. The drama business was 
 lagnappe, thrown in. It was time for me to fling a stone 
 and make a ripple. I stepped forward. I spoke with 
 the deepest respect. 
 
 "'Am I to tell her majesty/ I said, 'that her poet 
 declines to come? ' 
 
 "Erdreich was on his feet. He was pale now, white 
 as Bertelius's beard. It was not the custom in Ar- 
 cady, I could see, for Queen Ismia to be told it wasn't 
 convenient. 
 
 '"I'll come/ said he, ' I'll come at once/ He turned 
 to Bertelius. ' Shall I leave you, sir? Or will you come?' 
 
 "Old Bertelius had got out a black book and a pair 
 of horn spectacles. The fire had died down in him, 
 and he was fractious and hungry for the seclusion of 
 the printed page. 
 
346 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "'Ay, ay/ said he. 'Go. Think it over. I'll come 
 by and by/ 
 
 "So we left him there, and I, leading my horse for 
 the poet had refused to take it and let me follow we 
 made short work of the distance, and, quite silent 
 and rather hot, came out on the cottage again. And 
 there I could read at once the history of the time 
 since I'd been gone, and read it from the two pictures 
 there before me. The king and the prince were together 
 pacing up and down before the door, the king soliloquiz- 
 ing and the prince giving ear. Just inside, by a window 
 of plants, were the queen and the peasant grandmother, 
 standing face to face, eye to eye, and very grave. The 
 two groups were like hostile armies during truce. When 
 we came up, the tension snapped, and the prince spoke 
 to Erdreich very prettily as if he were a brother, 
 telling him the queen was within. Would he go in and 
 greet her? Erdreich, all a timid propriety, went in, 
 and the other two followed, but I stood outside by the 
 little window. I began to feel I was out of the picture, 
 and I'd better be content with listening. Well, there 
 were fine speeches, and the queen told Erdreich what 
 a loyal subject he was, and told the king how valuable 
 Erdreich was, and talked with her eyelids and brows 
 to the prince to the effect that he was to say so too. 
 But the old grandmother, if you please, without a 
 look at anybody, got out a wheel and pulled it into the 
 middle of the room and began to spin. Erdreich looked 
 at her for a minute as if she had committed treason. 
 The King of Telluria frowned; he seemed to challenge 
 everybody to tell why he should have the impression 
 that a peasant woman, almost invisible from her insig- 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 347 
 
 nificance, should be presuming to go on with sordid 
 occupations under his royal eyes. Only Queen Ismia 
 wasn't upset. She kept on talking to Erdreich and he 
 looked flattered and dazed, and in a minute or two, 
 as if they were going to play stagecoach, everybody 
 sat down in a circle about the grandmother, and I 
 saw Queen Ismia touch the old woman's glittering 
 headdress. It was the ancient headgear of the Arcadian 
 women, handed down from generation to generation, 
 and worn on gala days. I could have sworn she didn't 
 have it on when we came. Now the queen touched it 
 and said in a kind of lulling, soothing cradle tone, 
 ' It's very bright.' 
 
 "Well, I saw it was bright. And I grew abnormally 
 conscious of the hum of the wheel, and something inside 
 my ears kept saying, 'It's very bright. It's very 
 bright.' But then something else further inside me 
 said, 'You fool, you're a war correspondent, and you 
 were at the explosion in Spain, and you've been 'most 
 destroyed by a destroyer, and you didn't turn a hair. 
 And you're outside the window, and what has got them 
 hasn't got you. So keep your eye peeled, my boy, 
 and you'll begin to understand something about the 
 ins and outs of sovereignty. ' 
 
 "For something had got 'em all, all but the two 
 women. I began to think of them as the two queens 
 now: for though Queen Ismia had on the plainest of 
 black habits, she looked most awfully regal. And when 
 I glanced at the old peasant woman and saw how 
 inscrutable she was, as if she'd got some sort of power 
 under her hand and was turning it on, bit by bit, bit 
 by bit, but not too fast for fear the sheathing would 
 
348 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 break, I could only think of her crown and how she, 
 too, must be a kind of queen." 
 
 "What were the others doing, the three men?" 
 
 "They were asleep, and the old king was making 
 horrible faces. It was the prince I watched most. I had 
 an idea from the way the two queens looked at him 
 that he was the centre of the play. He began to writhe 
 and then to talk, wonderingly sometimes as if he spelled 
 a lesson from a book too hard for him and sometimes 
 violently. 
 
 "'We're not prepared.' That's what he called 
 out first. l We're not prepared.' Then he stopped a 
 minute, as if he saw things and they told their story. 
 'But we couldn't be prepared,' said he. 'Nobody 
 could be prepared for that. They're dropping on 
 us from the clouds. They're dropping bombs. My 
 God! my God! there's the theatre gone. There's the 
 silk factory. The girls in there! Why, mother, they were 
 girls, nothing but girls. And that's then- blood.' 
 
 "The poet sat stark on a little stool, staring at the 
 whirring wheel. 
 
 "'Do you think,' said he it was the Lady Macbeth 
 tone 'do you think roses would grow out of such 
 blood as that?' 
 
 "The old king was seeing things. I've never made 
 up my mind whether they all saw the same things, 
 or different ones adapted to their grade and textbook. 
 The old king gave a groan. 
 
 "'She need not have died,' said he. 'Eda needn't 
 have died, she and her little son!' 
 
 "The peasant woman spoke. 
 
 "'It will happen,' said she, in a kind of monotonous 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 349 
 
 voice, as if she'd set it to the tune of the wheel. 'II 
 will happen if you open the door. Your hand is on 
 the latch. Shall you open the door? ' 
 
 "And now it was Erdreich talking. He, too, sat 
 under the same paralysis of horror, but his horror 
 was at himself. 
 
 "'I called it doughty deeds/ said he, 'but it was 
 blood. This war? This is the butcher's trade. Oh, 
 horrible ! blood ! blood ! ' 
 
 "But after all it was the prince that told us most. 
 
 "'What do you see, Prince?' said the old peasant 
 woman, in a steady tone, as if she was afraid to speak 
 too loud. He might have been the watcher on the tower 
 and she the soldier down below. The prince was 
 trembling. I got uneasy as I looked at him. He 
 behaved like a horse I'd seen shuddering with sunstroke. 
 
 "'It's all destroyed,' said he. 'The palace is de- 
 stroyed. That wouldn't matter, though we did like the 
 windows mother, didn't we like the windows looking 
 toward the west? But the little houses down by the 
 river, where the workmen went every night and played 
 on their fiddles and dug in their gardens, they're all 
 gone. They dropped explosives on them, and then the 
 fire -' 
 
 "The old king roared out, 'Who's that?' and whether 
 he meant he saw the same thing or not, I shall never 
 know, but the prince answered him: 
 
 "The prisoner! the prisoner that runs fast with 
 something in his hand. That's an automatic rifle in 
 his hand. He's coming to us us us he'll blow us 
 into powder. ' 
 
 "I began to have a sensation in my head as if every- 
 
350 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 body was a fool, and yet we'd been caught in a net 
 and couldn't help it. And then the wheel stopped and 
 the old woman got quietly up and set it aside and lifted 
 off her head-dress and laid it on a shelf behind a curtain, 
 and Queen Ismia was saying in an even, unhurried 
 way, as if she'd been talking for the last half-hour, 
 'And so, Erdreich, we came to tell you how dear you are 
 to the kingdom and to us.' 
 
 "And Erdreich opened his eyes and blinked them 
 like a baby, and found at the same minute the queen 
 was talking to him and he was sitting while she stood; 
 and he got on his feet like lightning, stumbling a little, 
 and stood there all afire with devotion and ready to get 
 her the moon and seven stars if she wanted 'em. And 
 the prince, too, opened his eyes, and he cried out in a 
 wild voice: 
 
 '" Mother, mother! God save ArcadyP And then 
 he looked straight to where Eda stood in the doorway 
 in her borrowed dress. And he got up and made three 
 steps across the room and said her name, 'Eda! Eda!' 
 twice, with a kind of sob. And she sobbed, too, It was 
 the prettiest sight I ever saw, those two young things 
 all afire with love and youth, holding each other's hands 
 and forgetting they weren't invisible. 
 
 " ' How did you know me? ' said Eda. 
 
 "'Of course I knew you, Eda/ said he. 'How did 
 you know me? ' 
 
 " 'Oh, I've been peeping through the crack. ' 
 
 "And they both laughed, and the king came awake, 
 and gave a roaring 'Haw! haw!' Nobody seemed to 
 wonder how anybody had got anywhere. They were 
 just there, that's all. 
 
THE QUEENS OF ARCADY 351 
 
 " ' Cousin, ' said the old king. He was speaking to 
 Queen Ismia. ' I like your way of doing things. You're 
 a mighty fine housekeeper. You're a mighty fine 
 mother. Why, a kingdom's only a bigger sort of 
 household, after all. I believe if you and Altaria and 
 I agreed on a sort of iron-clad treaty, we could all 
 turn our war tax into something practical, as you've 
 done. Roads we need, roads and schools. What say, 
 cousin? ' 
 
 "'We must consult the prince,' said she, as if state- 
 craft wasn't a stitch she knew. 'And now shall we ride 
 home again? There's a horse and a habit for Eda. 
 I had them brought along.' And even then, if you'll 
 believe me, nobody thought to say, 'How did Eda 
 come here? And where's Bertelius? And is he going 
 to sit a thousand years, like Merlin in the forest, with 
 horn spectacles, and a black book?' You see, when 
 you're happy because you've found the road to happi- 
 ness, you're in a dream, and in a dream you don't 
 need to know how anything is. It is, that's all. 
 
 "Oh, there's one other thing. I almost forgot it. 
 When we were all on our horses, out between the trees 
 comes the scarecrow man, like a slanting bamboo pole 
 shot from a sling. And he'd something in his hand. 
 It was a little thing: a flower, a blue flower, the Cam- 
 panula Arcadinensis. Do you know where it grows 
 in Arcady? It's at the feet of inaccessible cliffs in 
 gorges it makes you dizzy to look into. And now it's 
 Arcady's national flower. He pressed himself close 
 to us, and held it up to the queen. She put out her 
 hand to take it. I wish you could have seen her face. 
 That was a queen. 
 
352 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "'For you, madam/ said he. His eyes were sad, 
 wild, lonesome eyes the eyes of a prisoner but they 
 were full of light. 'All the gems are yours, and all the 
 flowers.' 
 
 "And she not only took the flower, that queen, she 
 laid her hand on his ragged shoulder, and her eyes were 
 full of tears." 
 
 He stopped. 
 
 "Well," said I, "what happened?" 
 
 "That's all." 
 
 "Did the prince marry Eda?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "Did the powers go to war?" 
 
 "Oh, dear me, no! Nobody went to war ever, after 
 what they'd seen." 
 
 "Is Arcady in actual existence now?" 
 
 "Course it is, much as ever it was." 
 
 "What's the use, Mitchell," said I, "what is the use? 
 You know this whole story is a part of your bluff." 
 
 "No, 'tisn't either. It's a part of my busy past. 
 Didn't I tell you I saw it myself, pars-magna-fuied it? 
 Well, if I didn't somebody told me. Who was it, now? 
 Who was it told me? Come to think of it, was it the 
 German Emperor, that day he said he'd written a 
 comic opera and didn't know how to get his third act? 
 You ask him, some tune when it comes hi just right." 
 
352 VANISHING POINTS 
 
 "'For you, madam/ said he. His eyes were sad, 
 wild, lonesome eyes the eyes of a prisoner but they 
 were full of light. 'All the gems are yours, and all the 
 flowers/ 
 
 "And she not only took the flower, that queen, she 
 laid her hand on his ragged shoulder, and her eyes were 
 full of tears." 
 
 He stopped. 
 
 "Well," said I, "what happened?" 
 
 "That's all." 
 
 "Did the prince marry Eda?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "Did the powers go to war?" 
 
 "Oh, dear me, no! Nobody went to war ever, after 
 what they'd seen." 
 
 "Is Arcady in actual existence now?" 
 
 "Course it is, much as ever it was." 
 
 "What's the use, Mitchell," said I, "what is the use? 
 You know this whole story is a part of your bluff." 
 
 "No, 'tisn't either. It's a part of my busy past. 
 Didn't I tell you I saw it myself, pars-magna-fuied it? 
 Well, if I didn't somebody told me. Who was it, now? 
 Who was it told me? Come to think of it, was it the 
 German Emperor, that day he said he'd written a 
 comic opera and didn't know how to get his third act? 
 You ask him, some tune when it comes in just right." 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY