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Vandover and the Brute

by Frank Norris · English · Gutenberg #14712 · 575,615 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Vandover and the Brute

Author: Frank Norris


        
Release date: January 17, 2005 [eBook #14712]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VANDOVER AND THE BRUTE ***

VANDOVER AND THE BRUTE

By

Frank Norris

1914







Chapter One


It was always a matter of wonder to Vandover that he was able to recall
so little of his past life. With the exception of the most recent events
he could remember nothing connectedly. What he at first imagined to be
the story of his life, on closer inspection turned out to be but a few
disconnected incidents that his memory had preserved with the greatest
capriciousness, absolutely independent of their importance. One of these
incidents might be a great sorrow, a tragedy, a death in his family; and
another, recalled with the same vividness, the same accuracy of detail,
might be a matter of the least moment.

A certain one of these wilful fillips of memory would always bring
before him a particular scene during the migration of his family from
Boston to their new home in San Francisco, at a time when Vandover was
about eight years old.

It was in the depot of one of the larger towns in western New York. The
day had been hot and after the long ride on the crowded day coach the
cool shadow under the curved roof of the immense iron vaulted depot
seemed very pleasant. The porter, the brakeman and Vandover's father
very carefully lifted his mother from the car. She was lying back on
pillows in a long steamer chair. The three men let the chair slowly
down, the brakeman went away, but the porter remained, taking off his
cap and wiping his forehead with the back of his left hand, which in
turn he wiped against the pink palm of his right. The other train, the
train to which they were to change, had not yet arrived. It was rather
still; at the far end of the depot a locomotive, sitting back on its
motionless drivers like some huge sphinx crouching along the rails, was
steaming quietly, drawing long breaths. The repair gang in greasy caps
and spotted blue overalls were inspecting the train, pottering about the
trucks, opening and closing the journal-boxes, striking clear notes on
the wheels with long-handled hammers.

Vandover stood close to his father, his thin legs wide apart, holding in
both his hands the satchel he had been permitted to carry. He looked
about him continually, rolling his big eyes vaguely, watching now the
repair-gang, now a huge white cat dozing on an empty baggage truck.

Several passengers were walking up and down the platform, staring
curiously at the invalid lying back in the steamer chair.

The journey was too much for her. She was very weak and very pale, her
eyelids were heavy, the skin of her forehead looked blue and tightly
drawn, and tiny beads of perspiration gathered around the corners of her
mouth. Vandover's father put his hand and arm along the back of the
chair and his sick wife rested against him, leaning her head on his
waistcoat over the pocket where he kept his cigars and pocket-comb. They
were all silent.

By and by she drew a long sigh, her face became the face of an imbecile,
stupid, without expression, her eyes half-closed, her mouth half-open.
Her head rolled forward as though she were nodding in her sleep, while a
long drip of saliva trailed from her lower lip. Vandover's father bent
over her quickly, crying out sharply, "Hallie!--what is it?" All at once
the train for which they were waiting charged into the depot, filling
the place with a hideous clangor and with the smell of steam and of hot
oil.

This scene of her death was the only thing that Vandover could remember
of his mother.

As he looked back over his life he could recall nothing after this for
nearly five years. Even after that lapse of time the only scene he could
picture with any degree of clearness was one of the greatest triviality
in which he saw himself, a rank thirteen-year-old boy, sitting on a bit
of carpet in the back yard of the San Francisco house playing with his
guinea-pigs.

In order to get at his life during his teens, Vandover would have been
obliged to collect these scattered memory pictures as best he could,
rearrange them in some more orderly sequence, piece out what he could
imperfectly recall and fill in the many gaps by mere guesswork and
conjecture.

It was the summer of 1880 that they had come to San Francisco. Once
settled there, Vandover's father began to build small residence houses
and cheap flats which he rented at various prices, the cheapest at ten
dollars, the more expensive at thirty-five and forty. He had closed out
his business in the East, coming out to California on account of his
wife's ill health. He had made his money in Boston and had intended to
retire.

But he soon found that he could not do this. At this time he was an old
man, nearly sixty. He had given his entire life to his business to the
exclusion of everything else, and now when his fortune had been made and
when he could afford to enjoy it, discovered that he had lost the
capacity for enjoying anything but the business itself. Nothing else
could interest him. He was not what would be called in America a rich
man, but he had made money enough to travel, to allow himself any
reasonable relaxation, to cultivate a taste for art, music, literature
or the drama, to indulge in any harmless fad, such as collecting
etchings, china or bric-à-brac, or even to permit himself the luxury of
horses. In the place of all these he found himself, at nearly sixty
years of age, forced again into the sordid round of business as the only
escape from the mortal _ennui_ and weariness of the spirit that preyed
upon him during every leisure hour of the day.

Early and late he went about the city, personally superintending the
building of his little houses and cheap flats, sitting on saw-horses and
piles of lumber, watching the carpenters at work. In the evening he came
home to a late supper, completely fagged, bringing with him the smell of
mortar and of pine shavings.

On the first of each month when his agents turned over the rents to him
he was in great spirits. He would bring home the little canvas sack of
coin with him before banking it, and call his son's attention to the
amount, never failing to stick a twenty-dollar gold-piece in each eye,
monocle fashion, exclaiming, "Good for the masses," a meaningless jest
that had been one of the family's household words for years.

His plan of building was peculiar. His credit was good, and having
chosen his lot he would find out from the banks how much they would loan
him upon it in case he should become the owner. If this amount suited
him, he would buy the lot, making one large payment outright and giving
his note for the balance. The lot once his, the banks loaned him the
desired amount. With this money and with money of his own he would make
the final payment on the lot and would begin the building itself,
paying his labour on the nail, but getting his material, lumber, brick
and fittings on time. When the building was half-way up he would
negotiate a second loan from the banks in order to complete it and in
order to meet the notes he had given to his contractors for material.

He believed this to be a shrewd business operation, since the rents as
they returned to him were equal to the interest on a far larger sum than
that which he had originally invested. He said little about the double
mortgage on each piece of property "improved" after this fashion and
which often represented a full two-thirds of its entire value. The
interest on each loan was far more than covered by the rents; he chose
his neighbourhoods with great discrimination; real estate was
flourishing in the rapidly growing city, and the new houses, although
built so cheaply that they were mere shells of lath and plaster, were
nevertheless made gay and brave with varnish and cheap mill-work. They
rented well at first, scarcely a one was ever vacant. People spoke of
the Old Gentleman as one of the most successful realty owners in the
city. So pleased did he become with the success of his new venture that
in course of time all his money was reinvested after this fashion.

At the time of his father's greatest prosperity Vandover himself began
to draw toward his fifteenth year, entering upon that period of change
when the first raw elements of character began to assert themselves and
when, if ever, there was a crying need for the influence of his mother.
Any feminine influence would have been well for him at this time: that
of an older sister, even that of a hired governess. The housekeeper
looked after him a little, mended his clothes, saw that he took his bath
Saturday nights, and that he did not dig tunnels under the garden walks.
But her influence was entirely negative and prohibitory and the two were
constantly at war. Vandover grew in a haphazard way and after school
hours ran about the streets almost at will.

At fifteen he put on long trousers, and the fall of the same year
entered the High School. He had grown too fast and at this time was tall
and very lean; his limbs were straight, angular, out of all proportion,
with huge articulations at the elbows and knees. His neck was long and
thin and his head large, his face was sallow and covered with pimples,
his ears were big, red and stuck out stiff from either side of his head.
His hair he wore "pompadour."

Within a month after his entry of the High School he had a nickname. The
boys called him "Skinny-seldom-fed," to his infinite humiliation.

Little by little the crude virility of the young man began to develop in
him. It was a distressing, uncanny period. Had Vandover been a girl he
would at this time have been subject to all sorts of abnormal vagaries,
such as eating his slate pencil, nibbling bits of chalk, wishing he were
dead, and drifting into states of unreasoned melancholy. As it was, his
voice began to change, a little golden down appeared on his cheeks and
upon the nape of his neck, while his first summer vacation was
altogether spoiled by a long spell of mumps.

His appetite was enormous. He ate heavy meat three times a day, but took
little or no exercise. The pimples on his face became worse and worse.
He grew peevish and nervous. He hated girls, and when in their society
was a very bull-calf for bashfulness and awkward self-consciousness. At
times the strangest and most morbid fancies took possession of him,
chief of which was that every one was looking at him while he was
walking in the street.

Vandover was a good little boy. Every night he said his prayers, going
down upon his huge knees at the side of his bed. To the Lord's Prayer he
added various petitions of his own. He prayed that he might be a good
boy and live a long time and go to Heaven when he died and see his
mother; that the next Saturday might be sunny all day long, and that the
end of the world might not come while he was alive.

It was during Vandover's first year at the High School that his eyes
were opened and that he acquired the knowledge of good and evil. Till
very late he kept his innocence, the crude raw innocence of the boy,
like that of a young animal, at once charming and absurd. But by and by
he became very curious, stirred with a blind unreasoned instinct. In the
Bible which he read Sunday afternoons, because his father gave him a
quarter for doing so, he came across a great many things that filled him
with vague and strange ideas; and one Sunday at church, when the
minister was intoning the Litany, he remarked for the first time the
words, "all women in the perils of child-birth."

He puzzled over this for a long time, smelling out a mystery beneath the
words, feeling the presence of something hidden, with the instinct of a
young brute. He could get no satisfaction from his father and by and by
began to be ashamed to ask him; why, he did not know. Although he could
not help hearing the abominable talk of the High School boys, he at
first refused to believe that part of it which he could understand. For
all that he was ashamed of his innocence and ignorance and affected to
appreciate their stories nevertheless.

At length one day he heard the terse and brutal truth. In an instant he
believed it, some lower, animal intuition in him reiterating and
confirming the fact. But even then he hated to think that people were so
low, so vile. One day, however, he was looking through the volumes of
the old Encyclopædia Britannica in his father's library, hoping that he
might find a dollar bill which the Old Gentleman told him had been at
one time misplaced between the leaves of some one of the great tomes.
All at once he came upon the long article "Obstetrics," profusely
illustrated with old-fashioned plates and steel engravings. He read it
from beginning to end.

It was the end of all his childish ideals, the destruction of all his
first illusions. The whole of his rude little standard of morality was
lowered immediately. Even his mother, whom he had always believed to be
some kind of an angel, fell at once in his estimation. She could never
be the same to him after this, never so sweet, so good and so pure as he
had hitherto imagined her.

It was very cruel, the whole thing was a grief to him, a blow, a great
shock; he hated to think of it. Then little by little the first taint
crept in, the innate vice stirred in him, the brute began to make itself
felt, and a multitude of perverse and vicious ideas commenced to buzz
about him like a swarm of nasty flies.

A certain word, the blunt Anglo-Saxon name for a lost woman, that he
heard on one occasion among the boys at school, opened to him a vista of
incredible wickedness, but now after the first moment of revolt the
thing began to seem less horrible. There was even a certain attraction
about it. Vandover soon became filled with an overwhelming curiosity,
the eager evil curiosity of the schoolboy, the perverse craving for the
knowledge of vice. He listened with all his ears to everything that was
said and went about through the great city with eyes open only to its
foulness. He even looked up in the dictionary the meanings of the new
words, finding in the cold, scientific definitions some strange sort of
satisfaction.

There was no feminine influence about Vandover at this critical time to
help him see the world in the right light and to gauge things correctly,
and he might have been totally corrupted while in his earliest teens had
it not been for another side of his character that began to develop
about the same time.

This was his artistic side. He seemed to be a born artist. At first he
only showed bent for all general art. He drew well, he made curious
little modellings in clayey mud; he had a capital ear for music and
managed in some unknown way of his own to pick out certain tunes on the
piano. At one time he gave evidence of a genuine talent for the stage.
For days he would pretend to be some dreadful sort of character, he did
not know whom, talking to himself, stamping and shaking his fists; then
he would dress himself in an old smoking-cap, a red table-cloth and one
of his father's discarded Templar swords, and pose before the long
mirrors ranting and scowling. At another time he would devote his
attention to literature, making up endless stories with which he
terrified himself, telling them to himself in a low voice for hours
after he had got into bed. Sometimes he would write out these stories
and read them to his father after supper, standing up between the
folding doors of the library, acting out the whole narrative with
furious gestures. Once he even wrote a little poem which seriously
disturbed the Old Gentleman, filling him with formless ideas and vague
hopes for the future.

In a suitable environment Vandover might easily have become an author,
actor or musician, since it was evident that he possessed the
fundamental _afflatus_ that underlies all branches of art. As it was,
the merest chance decided his career.

In the same library where he had found the famous encyclopædia article
was "A Home Book of Art," one of those showily bound gift books one sees
lying about conspicuously on parlour centre tables. It was an English
publication calculated to meet popular and general demand. There were a
great many full-page pictures of lonely women, called "Reveries" or
"Idylls," ideal "Heads" of gipsy girls, of coquettes, and heads of
little girls crowned with cherries and illustrative of such titles as
"Spring," "Youth," "Innocence." Besides these were sentimental pictures,
as, for instance, one entitled "It Might Have Been," a sad-eyed girl,
with long hair, musing over a miniature portrait, and another especially
impressive which represented a handsomely dressed woman flung upon a
_Louis Quinze_ sofa, weeping, her hands clasped over her head. She was
alone; it was twilight; on the floor was a heap of opened letters. The
picture was called "Memories."

Vandover thought this last a wonderful work of art and made a hideous
copy of it with very soft pencils. He was so pleased with it that he
copied another one of the pictures and then another. By and by he had
copied almost all of them. His father gave him a dollar and Vandover
began to add to his usual evening petition the prayer that he might
become a great artist. Thus it was that his career was decided upon.

He was allowed to have a drawing teacher. This was an elderly German, an
immense old fellow, who wore a wig and breathed loudly through his nose.
His voice was like a trumpet and he walked with a great striding gait
like a colonel of cavalry. Besides drawing he taught ornamental writing
and engrossing. With a dozen curved and flowing strokes of an ordinary
writing pen he could draw upon a calling card a conventionalized
outline-picture of some kind of dove or bird of paradise, all curves and
curlicues, flying very gracefully and carrying in its beak a half-open
scroll upon which could be inscribed such sentiments as "From a Friend"
or "With Fond Regards," or even one's own name.

His system of drawing was of his own invention. Over the picture to be
copied he would paste a great sheet of paper, ruling off the same into
spaces of about an inch square. He would cut out one of these squares
and Vandover would copy the portion of the picture thus disclosed. When
he had copied the whole picture in this fashion the teacher would go
over it himself, retouching it here and there, labouring to obviate the
checker-board effect which the process invariably produced.

At other times Vandover copied into his sketch-book, with hard crayons,
those lithographed studies on buff paper which are published by the firm
in Berlin. He began with ladders, wheel-barrows and water barrels,
working up in course of time to rustic buildings set in a bit of
landscape; stone bridges and rural mills, overhung by some sort of
linden tree, with ends of broken fences in a corner of the foreground to
complete the composition. From these he went on to bunches of grapes,
vases of fruit and at length to more "Ideal heads." The climax was
reached with a life-sized Head, crowned with honeysuckles and entitled
_"Flora."_ He was three weeks upon it. It was an achievement, a
veritable _chef-d'oeuvre._ Vandover gave it to his father upon Christmas
morning, having signed his name to it with a great ornamental flourish.
The Old Gentleman was astounded, the housekeeper was called in and
exclaimed over it, raising her hands to Heaven. Vandover's father gave
him a five-dollar gold-piece, fresh from the mint, had the picture
framed in gilt and hung it up in his smoking-room over the clock.

Never for a moment did the Old Gentleman oppose Vandover's wish to
become an artist and it was he himself who first spoke about Paris to
the young man. Vandover was delighted; the Latin Quarter became his
dream. Between the two it was arranged that he should go over as soon as
he had finished his course at the High School. The Old Gentleman was to
take him across, returning only when he was well established in some
suitable studio.

At length Vandover graduated, and within three weeks of that event was
on his way to Europe with his father. He never got farther than Boston.

At the last moment the Old Gentleman wavered. Vandover was still very
young and would be entirely alone in Paris, ignorant of the language,
exposed to every temptation. Besides this, his education would stop
where it was. Somehow he could not make it seem right to him to cut the
young man adrift in this fashion. On the other hand, the Old Gentleman
had a great many old-time friends and business acquaintances in Boston
who could be trusted with a nominal supervision of his son for four
years. He had no college education himself, but in some vague way he
felt convinced that Vandover would be a better artist for a four years'
course at Harvard.

Vandover took his father's decision hardly. He had never thought of
being a college-man and nothing in that life appealed to him. He urged
upon his father the loss of time that the course would entail, but his
father met this objection by offering to pay for any artistic tuition
that would not interfere with the regular college work.

Little by little the idea of college life became more attractive to
Vandover; at the worst, it was only postponing the Paris trip, not
abandoning it. Besides this, two of his chums from the High School were
expecting to enter Harvard that fall, and he could look forward to a
very pleasant four years spent in their company.

Out at Cambridge the term was just closing. The Old Gentleman's friends
procured him tickets to several of the more important functions. From
the gallery of Memorial Hall Vandover and his father saw some of the
great dinners; they went up to New London for the boat-race; they gained
admittance to the historic Yard on Class-day, and saw the strange
football rush for flowers around the "Tree." They heard the seniors sing
"Fair Harvard" for the last time, and later saw them receive their
diplomas at Sander's Theatre.

The great ceremonies of the place, the picturesqueness of the elm-shaded
Yard, the old red dormitories covered with ivy, the associations and
traditions of the buildings, the venerable pump, Longfellow's room, the
lecture hall where the minute-men had barracked, all of these things, in
the end, appealed strongly to Vandover's imagination. Instead of passing
the summer months in an ocean voyage and a continental journey, he at
last became content to settle down to work under a tutor, "boning up"
for the examinations. His father returned to San Francisco in July.

Vandover matriculated the September of the same year; on the first of
October he signed the college rolls and became a Harvard freshman. At
that time he was eighteen years old.




Chapter Two


There was little of the stubborn or unyielding about Vandover, his
personality was not strong, his nature pliable and he rearranged himself
to suit his new environment at Harvard very rapidly. Before the end of
the first semester he had become to all outward appearances a typical
Harvardian. He wore corduroy vests and a gray felt hat, the brim turned
down over his eyes. He smoked a pipe and bought himself a brindled
bull-terrier. He cut his lectures as often as he dared, "ragged" signs
and barber-poles, and was in continual evidence about Foster's and among
Leavitt and Pierce's billiard-tables. When the great football games came
off he worked himself into a frenzy of excitement over them and even
tried to make several of his class teams, though without success.

He chummed with Charlie Geary and with young Dolliver Haight, the two
San Francisco boys. The three were continually together. They took the
same courses, dined at the same table in Memorial Hall and would have
shared the same room if it had been possible. Vandover and Charlie Geary
were fortunate enough to get a room in Matthew's on the lower floor
looking out upon the Yard; young Haight was obliged to put up with an
outside room in a boarding house.

Vandover had grown up with these fellows and during all his life was
thrown in their company. Haight was a well-bred young boy of good
family, very quiet; almost every morning he went to Chapel. He was
always polite, even to his two friends. He invariably tried to be
pleasant and agreeable and had a way of making people like him.
Otherwise, his character was not strongly marked.

Geary was quite different. He never could forget himself. He was
incessantly talking about what he had done or was going to do. In the
morning he would inform Vandover of how many hours he had slept and of
the dreams he had dreamed. In the evening he would tell him everything
he had done that day; the things he had said, how many lectures he had
cut, what brilliant recitations he had made, and even what food he had
eaten at Memorial. He was pushing, self-confident, very shrewd and
clever, devoured with an inordinate ambition and particularly pleased
when he could get the better of anybody, even of Vandover or of young
Haight. He delighted to assume the management of things. Vandover, he
made his protégé, taking over the charge of such business as the two had
in common. It was he who had found the room in Matthew's, getting it
away from all other applicants, securing it at the eleventh hour. He put
Vandover's name on the waiting list at Memorial, saw that he filled out
his blanks at the proper time, helped him balance his accounts, guided
him in the choice of his courses and in the making out of his
study-card.

"Look here, Charlie," Vandover would exclaim, throwing down the
Announcement of Courses, "I can't make this thing out. It's all in a
tangle. See here, I've got to fill up my hours some way or other; _you_
straighten this thing out for me. Find me some nice little course, two
hours a week, say, that comes late in the morning, a good hour after
breakfast; something easy, all lectures, no outside reading, nice
instructor and all that." And Geary would glance over the complicated
schedule, cleverly untangling it at once and would find two or three
such courses as Vandover desired.

Vandover's yielding disposition led him to submit to Geary's
dictatorship and he thus early began to contract easy, irresponsible
habits, becoming indolent, shirking his duty whenever he could, sure
that Geary would think for the two and pull him out of any difficulty
into which he might drift.

Otherwise the three freshmen were very much alike. They were hardly more
than boys and full of boyish spirits and activity. They began to see
"college life." Vandover was already smoking; pretty soon he began to
drink. He affected beer, whisky he loathed, and such wine as was not too
expensive was either too sweet or too sour. It became a custom for the
three to go into town two or three nights in the week and have beer and
Welsh rabbits at Billy Park's. On these occasions, however, young Haight
drank only beer, he never touched wine or spirits.

It was in Billy Park's the evening after the football game between the
Yale and Harvard freshmen that Vandover was drunk for the first time. He
was not so drunk but that he knew he was, and the knowledge of the fact
so terrified him that it kept him from getting very bad. The first
sensation soon wore off, and by the time that Geary took charge of him
and brought him back to Cambridge he was disposed to treat the affair
less seriously. Nevertheless when he got to his room he looked at
himself in the mirror a long time, saying to himself over and over
again, "I'm drunk--just regularly drunk. Good Heavens! what _would_ the
governor say to _this_?"

In the morning he was surprised to find that he felt so little ashamed.
Geary and young Haight treated the matter as a huge joke and told him of
certain funny things he had said and done and which he had entirely
forgotten. It was impossible for him to take the matter seriously even
if he had wished to, and within a few weeks he was drunk again. He found
that he was not an exception; Geary was often drunk with him, fully a
third of all the Harvard men he knew were intoxicated at different
times. It was out of the question for Vandover to consider them as
drunkards. Certainly, neither he nor any of the others drank because
they liked the beer; after the fifth or sixth glass it was all they
could do to force down another. Such being the case, Vandover often
asked himself why he got drunk at all. This question he was never able
to answer.

It was the same with gambling. At first the idea of playing cards for
money shocked him beyond all expression. But soon he found that a great
many of the fellows, fellows like young Haight, beyond question steady,
sensible and even worthy of emulation in other ways, "went in for that
sort of thing." Every now and then Vandover's "crowd" got together in
his room in Matthew's, and played Van John "for keeps," as they said,
until far into the night. Vandover joined them. The stakes were small,
he lost as often as he won, but the habit of the cards never grew upon
him. It was like the beer, he "went in for it" because the others did,
without knowing why. Geary, however, drew his line at gambling; he never
talked against it or tried to influence Vandover, but he never could be
induced to play "for keeps" himself.

One very warm Sunday afternoon in the first days of April, when the last
snows were melting, Vandover and Geary were in their room, sitting at
opposite ends of their window-seat, Geary translating his Monday's
"Horace" by the help of a Bonn's translation, Vandover making a pen and
ink drawing for the next _Lampoon_. A couple of young women passed down
the walk, going across the Yard toward the Square. They were cheaply and
showily dressed. One of them wore a mannish shirtwaist, with a high
collar and scarf. The other had taken off her gloves and was swinging a
bright red cape in one of her bare hands. As the couple passed they
stared calmly at the two young fellows in the window; Vandover lowered
his eyes over his work, blushing, he could not tell why. Geary stared
back at them, following them with his eyes until they had gone by.

All at once he began laughing and pounding on the window.

"Oh, for goodness sake, quit!" exclaimed Vandover in great alarm,
twisting off the window-seat and shrinking back out of sight into the
room. "Quit, Charlie; you don't want to insult a girl that way." Geary
looked at him over his shoulder in some surprise, and was about to
answer when he turned to the window again and exclaimed, grinning and
waving his hand:

"Oh, just come here, Skinny; get on to this, will you? Ah, come here and
look, you old chump! Do you think they're nice girls? Just take a _look_
at them." Vandover peered timidly around Geary's head and saw that the
two girls were looking back and laughing, and that the one with the red
cape was waving it at them.

At supper that night they saw the girls in the gallery of Memorial. They
pointed them out to young Haight, and Geary at length managed to attract
their attention. After supper the three freshmen, together with two of
their sophomore acquaintances, strolled slowly over toward the Yard,
lighting their pipes and cigarettes. All at once, as they turned into
the lower gate, they came full upon the same pair of girls. They were
walking fast, talking and laughing very loudly.

"Track!" called out one of the sophomores, and the group of young
fellows parted to let them pass. The sophomore exclaimed in a tone of
regret, "Don't be in such a hurry, girls." Vandover became scarlet and
turned his face away, but the girls looked back and laughed
good-naturedly. "Come on," said the sophomore. The group closed around
the girls and brought them to a standstill; they were not in the least
embarrassed at this, but laughed more than ever. Neither of them was
pretty, but there was a certain attraction about them that pleased
Vandover immensely. He was very excited.

Then there was a very embarrassing pause. No one knew what to say. Geary
alone regained his assurance at length, and began a lively interchange
of chaff with one of them. The others could only stand about and smile.

"Well," cried the other girl after a while, "I ain't going to stand here
in the snow all _night_. Let's take a walk; come along. I choose _you_."
Before Vandover knew it she had taken his arm. The sophomore managed in
some way to pair off with the other girl; Haight had already left the
group; the two couples started off, while Geary and the other sophomore
who were left out followed awkwardly in the rear for a little way and
then disappeared.

Vandover was so excited that he could scarcely speak. This was a new
experience. At first it attracted him, but the hopeless vulgarity of the
girl at his side, her tawdry clothes, her sordid, petty talk, her slang,
her miserable profanity, soon began to revolt him. He felt that he could
not keep his self-respect while such a girl hung upon his arm.

"Say," said the girl at length, "didn't I see you in town the other
afternoon on Washington Street?"

"Maybe you did," answered Vandover, trying to be polite. "I'm down there
pretty often."

"Well, I guess yes," she answered. "You Harvard sports make a regular
promenade out o' Washington Street Saturday afternoons. I suppose I've
seen you down there pretty often, but didn't notice. Do you stand or
walk?"

Vandover's gorge rose with disgust. He stopped abruptly and pulled away
from the girl. Not only did she disgust him, but he felt sorry for her;
he felt ashamed and pitiful for a woman who had fallen so low. Still he
tried to be polite to her; he did not know how to be rude with any kind
of woman.

"You'll have to excuse me," he said, taking off his hat. "I don't
believe I can take a walk with you to-night. I--you see--I've got a good
deal of work to do; I think I'll have to leave you." Then he bowed to
her with his hat in his hand, hurrying away before she could answer him
a word.

He found Geary alone in their room, cribbing "'Horace" again.

"Ah, you bet," Geary said. "I shook those chippies. I sized them up
right away. I was clever enough for that. They were no good. I thought
you would get enough of it."

"Oh, I don't know," said Vandover after a while, as he settled to his
drawing. "She was pretty common, but anyhow I don't want to help bring
down a poor girl like that any lower than she is already." This saying
struck Vandover as being very good and noble, and he found occasion to
repeat it to young Haight the next day.

But within three days of this, at the time when Vandover would have
fancied himself farthest from such a thing, he underwent a curious
reaction. On a certain evening, moved by an unreasoned instinct, he
sought out the girl who had just filled him with such deep pity and such
violent disgust, and that night did not come back to the room in
Matthew's. The thing was done almost before he knew it. He could not
tell why he had acted as he did, and he certainly would not have
believed himself capable of it.

He passed the next few days in a veritable agony of repentance,
overwhelmed by a sense of shame and dishonour that were almost feminine
in their bitterness and intensity. He felt himself lost, unworthy, and
as if he could never again look a pure woman in the eyes unless with an
abominable hypocrisy. He was ashamed even before Geary and young Haight,
and went so far as to send a long letter to his father acknowledging and
deploring what he had done, asking for his forgiveness and reiterating
his resolve to shun such a thing forever after.

What had been bashfulness in the boy developed in the young man to a
profound respect and an instinctive regard for women. This stood him in
good stead throughout all his four years of Harvard life. In general, he
kept himself pretty straight. There were plenty of fast girls and lost
women about Cambridge, but Vandover found that he could not associate
with them to any degree of satisfaction. He never knew how to take them,
never could rid himself of the idea that they were to be treated as
ladies. They, on their part, did not like him; he was too diffident, too
courteous, too "slow." They preferred the rough self-assertion and easy
confidence of Geary, who never took "no" as an answer and who could
chaff with them on their own ground.

Vandover did poor work at Harvard and only graduated, as Geary said, "by
a squeak." Besides his regular studies he took time to pass three
afternoons a week in the studio of a Boston artist, where he studied
anatomy and composition and drew figures from the nude. In the summer
vacations he did not return home, but accompanied this artist on
sketching tours along the coast of Maine. His style improved immensely
the moment he abandoned flat studies and began to work directly from
Nature. He drew figures well, showed a feeling for desolate landscapes,
and even gave promise of a good eye for colour. But he allowed his
fondness for art to interfere constantly with his college work. By the
middle of his senior year he was so loaded with conditions that it was
only Geary's unwearied coaching that pulled him through at all--as
Vandover knew it would, for that matter.

Vandover returned to San Francisco when he was twenty-two. It was
astonishing; he had gone away a pimply, overgrown boy, raw and callow as
a fledgling, constrained in society, diffident, awkward. Now he
returned, a tall, well-formed Harvardian, as careful as a woman in the
matter of dress, very refined in his manners. Besides, he was a
delightful conversationalist. His father was rejoiced; every one
declared he was a charming fellow.

They were right. Vandover was at his best at this time; it was
undeniable that he had great talent, but he was so modest about it that
few knew how clever he really was.

He went out to dinners and receptions and began to move a little in
society. He became very popular: the men liked him because he was so
unaffected, so straightforward, and the women because he was so
respectful and so deferential.

He had no vices. He had gone through the ordeal of college life and had
come out without contracting any habit more serious than a vague
distaste for responsibility, and an inclination to shirk disagreeable
duties. Cards he never thought of. It was rare that he drank so much as
a glass of beer.

However, he had come back to a great disappointment. Business in San
Francisco had entered upon a long period of decline, and values were
decreasing; for ten years rents had been sagging lower and lower. At the
same time the interest on loans and insurances had increased, and real
estate was brought to a standstill; one spoke bitterly of a certain
great monopoly that was ruining both the city and state. Vandover's
father had suffered with the rest, and now told his son that he could
not at this time afford to send him to Paris. He would have to wait for
better times.

At first this was a sharp grief to Vandover; for years he had looked
forward to an artist's life in the Quarter. For a time he was
inconsolable, then at length readjusted himself good-naturedly to suit
the new order of things with as little compunction as before, when he
had entered Harvard. He found that he could be contented in almost any
environment, the weakness, the certain pliability of his character
easily fitting itself into new grooves, reshaping itself to suit new
circumstances. He prevailed upon his father to allow him to have a
downtown studio. In a little while he was perfectly happy again.

Vandover's love for his art was keen. On the whole he kept pretty
steadily to his work, spending a good six hours at his easel every day,
very absorbed over the picture in hand. He was working up into large
canvases the sketches he had made along the Maine coast, great, empty
expanses of sea, sky, and sand-dune, full of wind and sun. They were
really admirable. He even sold one of them. The Old Gentleman was
delighted, signed him a check for twenty dollars, and told him that in
three years he could afford to send him abroad.

In the meanwhile Vandover set himself to enjoy the new life. Little by
little his "set" formed around him; Geary and young Haight, of course,
and some half dozen young men of the city: young lawyers, medical
students, and clerks in insurance offices. As Vandover thus began to see
the different phases of that life which lay beyond the limits of the
college, he perceived more and more clearly that he was an exception
among men for his temperance, his purity, and his clean living.

At their clubs and in their smoking-rooms he heard certain practices,
which he had always believed to be degrading and abominable, discussed
with shouts of laughter. Those matters which until now he had regarded
with an almost sacred veneration were subjects for immense jokes. A few
years ago he would have been horrified at it all, but the fine quality
of this first sensitiveness had been blunted since his experience at
college. He tolerated these things in his friends now.

Gradually Vandover allowed his ideas and tastes to be moulded by this
new order of things. He assumed the manners of these young men of the
city, very curious to see for himself the other lower side of their life
that began after midnight in the private rooms of fast cafés and that
was continued in the heavy musk-laden air of certain parlours amid the
rustle of heavy silks.

Slowly the fascination of this thing grew upon him until it mounted to a
veritable passion. His strong artist's imagination began to be filled
with a world of charming sensuous pictures.

He commenced to chafe under his innate respect and deference for women,
to resent and to despise it. As the desire of vice, the blind, reckless
desire of the male, grew upon him, he set himself to destroy this
barrier that had so long stood in his way. He knew that it was the
wilful and deliberate corruption of part of that which was best in him;
he was sorry for it, but persevered, nevertheless, ashamed of his
old-time timidity, his ignorance, his boyish purity.

For a second time the animal in him, the perverse evil brute, awoke and
stirred. The idea of resistance hardly occurred to Vandover; it would be
hard, it would be disagreeable to resist, and Vandover had not
accustomed himself to the performance of hard, disagreeable duties. They
were among the unpleasant things that he shirked. He told himself that
later on, when he had grown older and steadier and had profited by
experience and knowledge of the world, when he was stronger, in a word,
he would curb the thing and restrain it. He saw no danger in such a
course. It was what other men did with impunity.

In company with Geary and young Haight he had come to frequent a certain
one of the fast cafés of the city. Here he met and became acquainted
with a girl called Flossie. It was the opportunity for which he was
waiting, and he seized it at once.

This time there was no recoil of conscience, no shame, no remorse; he
even felt a better estimation of himself, that self-respect that comes
with wider experiences and with larger views of life. He told himself
that all men should at one time see certain phases of the world; it
rounded out one's life. After all, one had to be a man of the world.
Those men only were perverted who allowed themselves to be corrupted by
such vice.

Thus it was that Vandover, by degrees, drifted into the life of a
certain class of the young men of the city. Vice had no hold on him. The
brute had grown larger in him, but he knew that he had the creature in
hand. He was its master, and only on rare occasions did he permit
himself to gratify its demands, feeding its abominable hunger from that
part of him which he knew to be the purest, the cleanest, and the best.

Three years passed in this fashion.




Chapter Three


Vandover had decided at lunch that day that he would not go back to work
at his studio in the afternoon, but would stay at home instead and read
a very interesting story about two men who had bought a wrecked opium
ship for fifty thousand dollars, and had afterward discovered that she
contained only a few tins of the drug. He was curious to see how it
turned out; the studio was a long way downtown, the day was a little
cold, and he felt that he would enjoy a little relaxation. Anyhow, he
meant to stay at home and put in the whole afternoon on a good novel.

But even when he had made up his mind to do this he did not immediately
get out his book and settle down to it. After lunch he loitered about
the house while his meal digested, feeling very comfortable and
contented. He strummed his banjo a little and played over upon the piano
the three pieces he had picked up: two were polkas, and the third, the
air of a topical song; he always played the three together and in the
same sequence. Then he strolled up to his room, and brushed his hair for
a while, trying to make it lie very flat and smooth. After this he went
out to look at Mr. Corkle, the terrier, and let him run a bit in the
garden; then he felt as though he must have a smoke, and so went back to
his room and filled his pipe. When it was going well, he took down his
book and threw himself into a deep leather chair, only to jump up again
to put on his smoking-jacket. All at once he became convinced that he
must have something to eat while he read, and so went to the kitchen and
got himself some apples and a huge slice of fresh bread. Ever since
Vandover was a little boy he had loved fresh bread and apples. Through
the windows of the dining-room he saw Mr. Corkle digging up great holes
in the geranium beds. He went out and abused him and finally let him
come back into the house and took him upstairs with him.

Then at last he settled down to his novel, in the very comfortable
leather chair, before a little fire, for the last half of August is cold
in San Francisco. The room was warm and snug, the fresh bread and apples
were delicious, the good tobacco in his pipe purred like a sleeping
kitten, and his novel was interesting and well written. He felt calm and
soothed and perfectly content, and took in the pleasure of the occasion
with the lazy complacency of a drowsing cat.

Vandover was self-indulgent--he loved these sensuous pleasures, he loved
to eat good things, he loved to be warm, he loved to sleep. He hated to
be bored and worried--he liked to have a good time.

At about half-past four o'clock he came to a good stopping-place in his
book; the two men had got to quarrelling, and his interest flagged a
little. He pushed Mr. Corkle off his lap and got up yawning and went to
the window.

Vandover's home was on California Street not far from Franklin. It was a
large frame house of two stories; all the windows in the front were bay.
The front door was directly in the middle between the windows of the
parlour and those of the library, while over the vestibule was a sort of
balcony that no one ever thought of using. The house was set in a large
well-kept yard. The lawn was pretty; an enormous eucalyptus tree grew at
one corner. Nearer to the house were magnolia and banana trees growing
side by side with pines and firs. Humming-birds built in these, and one
could hear their curious little warbling mingling with the hoarse chirp
of the English sparrows which nested under the eaves. The back yard was
separated from the lawn by a high fence of green lattice-work. The hens
and chickens were kept here and two roosters, one of which crowed every
time a cable-car passed the house. On the door cut through the
lattice-fence was a sign, "Look Out for the Dog." Close to the unused
barn stood an immense windmill with enormous arms; when the wind blew in
the afternoon the sails whirled about at a surprising speed, pumping up
water from the artesian well sunk beneath. There was a small
conservatory where the orchids were kept. Altogether, it was a charming
place. However, adjoining it was a huge vacant lot with cows in it. It
was full of dry weeds and heaps of ashes, while around it was an
enormous fence painted with signs of cigars, patent bitters, and soap.

Vandover stood at a front window and looked out on a rather dreary
prospect. The inevitable afternoon trades had been blowing hard since
three, strong and brisk from the ocean, driving hard through the Golden
Gate and filling the city with a taint of salt. Now the fog was coming
in; Vandover could see great patches of it sweeping along between him
and the opposite houses. All the eucalyptus trees were dripping, and
occasionally there came the faint moan of the fog-horn out at the heads.
He could see up the street for nearly two miles as it climbed over Nob
Hill. It was almost deserted; a cable-car now and then crawled up and
down its length, and at times a delivery wagon rattled across it; but
that was about all. On the opposite sidewalk two boys and a girl were
coasting downhill on their roller-skates and their brake-wagons. The
cable in its slot kept up an incessant burr and clack. The whole view
was rather forlorn, and Vandover turned his back on it, taking up his
book again.

About five o'clock his father came home from his office. "Hello!" said
he, looking into the room; "aren't you home a little early to-day? Ah, I
thought you weren't going to bring that dog into the house any more. I
wish you wouldn't, son; he gets hair and fleas about everywhere."

"All right, governor," answered Vandover. "I'll take him out. Come
along, Cork."

"But aren't you home earlier than usual to-day?" persisted his father as
Vandover got up.

"Yes," said Vandover, "I guess I am, a little."

After supper the same evening when Vandover came downstairs, drawing on
his gloves, his father looked over his paper, saying pleasantly:

"Well, where are you going to-night?"

"I'm going to see my girl," said Vandover, smiling; then foreseeing the
usual question, he added, "I'll be home about eleven, I guess."

"Got your latch-key?" asked the Old Gentleman, as he always did when
Vandover went out.

"Yep," called back Vandover as he opened the door. "I'll not forget it
again. Good-night, governor."

Vandover used to call on Turner Ravis about twice a week; people said
they were engaged. This was not so.

Vandover had met Miss Ravis some two years before. For a time the two
had been sincerely in love with each other, and though there was never
any talk of marriage between them, they seemed to have some sort of
tacit understanding. But by this time Vandover had somehow outgrown the
idea of marrying Turner. He still kept up the fiction, persuaded that
Turner must understand the way things had come to be. However, he was
still very fond of her; she was a frank, sweet-tempered girl and very
pretty, and it was delightful to have her care for him.

Vandover could not shut his eyes to the fact that young Haight was very
seriously in love with Turner. But he was sure that Turner preferred him
to his chum. She was too sincere, too frank, too conscientious to
practise any deception on him.

There was quite a party at the Ravises' house that evening when Vandover
arrived. Young Haight was there, of course, and Charlie Geary. Besides
Turner herself there was Henrietta Vance, a stout, pretty girl, with pop
eyes and a little nose, who laughed all the time and who was very
popular. These were all part of Vandover's set; they called each other
by their first names and went everywhere together. Almost every Saturday
evening they got together at Turner's house and played whist, or euchre,
or sometimes even poker. "Just for love," as Turner said.

When Vandover came in they were all talking at the same time, disputing
about a little earthquake that had occurred the night before. Henrietta
Vance declared that it had happened early in the morning.

"_Wasn't_ it just about midnight, Van?" cried Turner.

"I don't know," answered Vandover. "It didn't wake me up. I didn't even
know there was one."

"Well, I know I heard our clock strike two just about half an hour
afterward," protested young Haight.

"Oh, it was almost five o'clock when it came," cried Henrietta Vance.

"Well, now, you're _all_ off," said Charlie Geary. "I know just when she
quaked to the fraction of a minute, because it stopped our hall clock at
just a little after three."

They were silent. It was an argument which was hard to contradict. By
and by, young Haight declared, "There must have been two of them then,
because--"

"How about whist or euchre or whatever it is to be?" said Charlie
Geary, addressing Turner and interrupting in an annoying way that was
peculiar to him. "Can't we start in now that Van has come?" They played
euchre for a while, but Geary did not like the game, and by and by
suggested poker.

"Well--if it's only just for love," said Turner, "because, you know,
mamma doesn't like it any other way."

At ten o'clock Geary said, "Let's quit after this hand round--what do
you say?" The rest were willing and so they all took account of their
chips after the next deal. Geary was protesting against his poor luck.
Honestly he hadn't held better than three tens more than twice during
the evening. It was Henrietta Vance who took in everything; did one ever
_see_ anything to beat her luck? "the funniest thing!"

They began to do tricks with the cards. Young Haight showed them a very
good trick by which he could make the pack break every time at the ace
of clubs. Vandover exclaimed: "Lend me a silk hat and ninety dollars and
I'll show you the queerest trick you ever saw," which sent Henrietta
Vance off into shrieks of laughter. Then Geary took the cards out of
young Haight's hands, asking them if they knew _this_ trick.

Turner said yes, she knew it, but the others did not, and Geary showed
it to them. It was interminable. Henrietta Vance chose a card and put it
back into the deck. Then the deck was shuffled and divided into three
piles. After this Geary made a mental calculation, selected one of these
piles, shuffled it, and gave it back to her, asking her if she saw her
card in it; then more shuffling and dividing until their interest and
patience were quite exhausted. When Geary finally produced a jack of
hearts and demanded triumphantly if that was her card, Henrietta began
to laugh and declared she had forgotten _what_ card she chose. Geary
said he would do the trick all over for her. At this, however, they all
cried out, and he had to give it up, very irritated at Henrietta's
stupidity.

Vexed at the ill success of this first trick, he retired a little from
their conversation, puzzling over the cards, thinking out new tricks.
Every now and then he came back among them, going about from one to
another, holding out the deck and exclaiming, "Choose any card--choose
any card."

After a while they all adjourned to the dining-room and Turner and
Vandover went out into the kitchen, foraging among the drawers and
shelves. They came back bringing with them a box of sardines, a tin of
_paté_, three quart bottles of blue-ribbon beer, and what Vandover
called "devilish-ham" sandwiches.

"Now do we want _tamales_ to go with these?" said Turner, as she spread
the lunch on the table. Henrietta Vance cried out joyfully at this, and
young Haight volunteered to go out to get them. "Get six," Turner cried
out after him. "Henrietta can always eat two. Hurry up, and we won't eat
till you get back."

While he was gone Turner got out some half-dozen glasses for their beer.
"Do you know," she said as she set the glasses on the table, "the
funniest thing happened this morning to mamma. It was at breakfast; she
had just drunk a glass of water and was holding the glass in her hand
like this"--Turner took one of the thin beer glasses in her hand to show
them how--"and was talking to pa, when all at once the glass broke right
straight around a ring, just below the brim, you know, and fell all--"
On a sudden Turner uttered a shrill exclamation; the others started up;
the very glass she held in her hand at the moment cracked and broke in
precisely the manner she was describing. A narrow ring snapped from the
top, dropping on the floor, breaking into a hundred bits.

Turner drew in a long breath, open-mouthed, her hand in the air still
holding the body of the glass that remained in her fingers. They all
began to exclaim over the wonder.

"Well, did you ever in all your _life_?" shouted Miss Vance, breaking
into a peal of laughter. Geary cried out, "Cæsar's ghost!" and Vandover
swore under his breath.

"If that isn't the strangest thing I ever saw!" cried Turner. "_Isn't_
that funny--why--oh! I'm going _to try it with another glass_!" But the
second glass remained intact. Geary recovered from his surprise and
tried to explain how it could happen.

"It was the heat from your fingers and the glass was cold, you know," he
said again and again.

But the strangeness of the thing still held them. Turner set down the
glass with the others and dropped into a chair, letting her hands fall
in her lap, looking into their faces, nodding her head and shutting her
lips:

"Ah, _no_," she said after a while. "That _is_ funny. It kind of scares
one." She was actually pale.

"Oh, there's Dolly Haight!" cried Henrietta Vance as the door bell rang.
They all rushed to the door, running and scrambling, eager to tell the
news. Young Haight stood bewildered on the door mat in the vestibule,
his arms full of brown-paper packages, while they recounted the marvel.
They all spoke at once, holding imaginary beer glasses toward him in
their outstretched hands. Geary, however, refused to be carried away by
their excitement, and one heard him from time to time repeating, between
their ejaculations, "It was the heat from her fingers, you know, and the
glass was cold."

Young Haight was confused, incredulous; he could not at first make out
what _had_ happened.

"Well, just come and _look_ at the broken _glass_ on the _floor_,"
shouted Turner decisively, dragging him into the dining-room. They
waited, breathless, to hear what he would say. He looked at the broken
glass and then into their faces. Then he suddenly exclaimed:

"Ah, you're joking me."

"No, honestly," protested Vandover, "that was just the way it happened."

It was some little time before they could get over their impression of
queerness, but by and by Geary cried out that the _tamales_ were getting
cold. They settled down to their lunch, and the first thing young Haight
did was to cut his lip on the edge of the broken glass. Turner had set
it down with the others and he had inadvertently filled it for himself.

It was a trifling cut. Turner fetched some court-plaster, and his lip
was patched up. For all that, it bled quite a little. He was very
embarrassed; he kept his handkerchief to his mouth and told them
repeatedly to go on with their lunch and not to mind him.

As soon as they were eating and drinking they began to be very jolly,
and Vandover was especially good-humoured and entertaining. He made
Henrietta Vance shout with laughter by pretending that the olive in his
_tamale_ was a green hen's egg.

About half-past ten young Haight rose from the table saying he thought
it was about time to say good-night. "Don't be in a hurry," said
Turner. "It's early yet." After that, however, they broke up very
quickly.

Before he left Vandover saw Turner in the dining-room alone for a
minute.

"Will I see you at church to-morrow?" he asked, as she held his overcoat
for him.

"I don't know, Van," she answered. "You know Henrietta is going to stay
all night with me, and I think she will want me to go home with her
to-morrow morning and then stay to dinner with her. But I'm going to
early communion to-morrow morning; why can't you meet me there?"

"Why, I can," answered Vandover, settling his collar. "I should like to
very much."

"Well, then," she replied, "you can meet me in front of the church at
half-past seven o'clock."

"Hey, break away there!" cried Geary from the front door. "Come along,
Van, if you are going with us."

Turner let Vandover kiss her before they joined the others. "I'll see
you at seven-thirty to-morrow morning," he said as he went away.

The three young men went off down the street, arm in arm, smoking their
cigars and cigarettes. As soon as they were alone, Charlie Geary began
to tell the other two of everything he had been doing since he had last
seen them.

"Well, sir," he said as he took an arm of each, "well, sir, I had a fine
sleep last night; went to bed at ten and never woke up till half-past
eight this morning. Ah, you bet I needed it, though. I've been working
like a slave this week. You know I take my law-examinations in about ten
days. I'll pass all right. I'm right up to the handle in everything. I
don't believe the judge could stick me anywhere in the subject of
torts."

"Say, boys," said Vandover, pausing and looking at his watch, "it isn't
very late; let's go downtown and have some oysters."

"That's a good idea," answered young Haight. "How about you, Charlie?"

Geary said he was willing. "Ah," he added, "you ought to have seen the
beefsteak I had this evening at the Grillroom." And as they rode
downtown he told them of the steak in question. "I had a little mug of
ale with it, too, and a dish of salad. Ah, it went great."

They decided after some discussion that they would go to the Imperial.




Chapter Four


The Imperial was a resort not far from the corner of Sutter and Kearney
streets, a few doors below a certain well-known drug store, in one
window of which was a showcase full of live snakes.

The front of the Imperial was painted white, and there was a cigar-stand
in the vestibule of the main entrance. At the right of this main
entrance was another smaller one, a ladies' entrance, on the frosted
pane of which one read, "Oyster Cafe."

The main entrance opened directly into the barroom. It was a handsome
room, paved with marble flags. To the left was the bar, whose counter
was a single slab of polished redwood. Behind it was a huge, plate-glass
mirror, balanced on one side by the cash-register and on the other by a
statuette of the Diving Girl in tinted bisque. Between the two were
pyramids of glasses and bottles, liqueur flasks in wicker cases, and a
great bouquet of sweet-peas.

The three bartenders, in clean linen coats and aprons, moved about here
and there, opening bottles, mixing drinks, and occasionally turning to
punch the indicator of the register.

On the other side of the room, facing the bar, hung a large copy of a
French picture representing a _Sabbath_, witches, goats, and naked girls
whirling through the air. Underneath it was the lunch counter, where
clam-fritters, the specialty of the place, could be had four afternoons
in the week.

Elsewhere were nickel-in-the-slot machines, cigar-lighters, a vase of
wax flowers under glass, and a racing chart setting forth the day's
odds, weights, and entries. On the end wall over the pantry-slides was a
second "barroom" picture, representing the ladies of a harem at their
bath.

But its "private rooms" were the chief attraction of the Imperial. These
were reached by going in through the smaller door to the right of the
main vestibule. Any one coming in through this entrance found himself in
a long and narrow passage. On the right of this passage were eight
private rooms, very small, and open at the top as the law required.
Half-way down its length the passage grew wider. Here the rooms were on
both sides and were much larger than those in front.

It was this part of the Imperial that was most frequented, and that had
made its reputation. In the smaller rooms in front one had beer and
Welsh rabbits; in the larger rooms, champagne and terrapin.

Vandover, Haight, and Geary came in through the ladies' entrance of the
Imperial at about eleven o'clock, going slowly down the passage, looking
into each of the little rooms, searching for one that was empty. All at
once Vandover, who was in the lead, cried out:

"Well, if here isn't that man Ellis, drinking whisky by himself. Bah! a
man that will drink whisky all _alone_! Glad to see you just the same,
Bandy; move along, will you--give a man some room."

"Hello, hello, Bandy!" cried Geary and young Haight, hitting him in the
back, while Geary added: "How long have you been down here? _I've_ just
come from making a call with the boys. Had a fine time; what are you
drinking, whisky? _I'm_ going to have something to eat. Didn't have much
of a lunch to-day, but you ought to have seen the steak I had at the
Grillroom--as thick as that, and tender! Oh, it went great! Here, hang
my coat up there on that side, will you?"

Bancroft Ellis was one of the young men of the city with whom the three
fellows had become acquainted just after their return from college. For
the most part, they met him at downtown restaurants, in the foyers and
vestibules of the theatres, on Kearney Street of a Saturday afternoon,
or, as now, in the little rooms of the Imperial, where he was a
recognized habitué and where he invariably called for whisky, finishing
from three to five "ponies" at every sitting. On very rare occasions
they saw him in society, at the houses where their "set" was received.
At these functions Ellis could never be persuaded to remain in the
parlours; he slipped up to the gentlemen's dressing-rooms at the
earliest opportunity, and spent the evening silently smoking the cigars
and cigarettes furnished by the host. When Vandover and his friends came
up between dances, to brush their hair or to rearrange their neckties,
they found him enveloped in a blue haze of smoke, his feet on a chair,
his shirt bosom broken, and his waistcoat unbuttoned. He would tell them
that he was bored and thirsty and ask how much longer they were going to
stay. He knew but few of their friends; his home was in a little town in
the interior and he prided himself on being a "Native Son of the Golden
West." He was a clerk in an insurance office on California Street, and
had never been out of the state.

For the rest he was a good enough fellow and the three others liked him
very much. He had a curious passion for facts and statistics, and his
pockets were full of little books and cards to which he was constantly
referring. He had one of those impossible pocket-diaries, the first half
dozen pages loaded with information of every kind printed in blinding
type, postal rates to every country in the world, statistics as to
population and rates of death, weights and measures, the highest
mountains in the world, the greatest depths of the ocean. He kept a
little book in his left-hand vest pocket that gave the plan and seating
capacity of every theatre in the city, while in the right-hand pocket
was a tiny Webster's dictionary which was his especial pride. The
calendar for the current year was pasted in the lining of his hat,
together with the means to be employed in the resuscitation of a
half-drowned person. He also carried about a "Vest Pocket Edition of
Popular Information," which had never been of the slightest use to him.

The room in which they were now seated was very small and opened
directly upon the passage. On either side of the table was a seat that
would hold two, and on the wall opposite the door hung a mirror, its
gilt frame enclosed in pink netting. The table itself was covered with a
tolerably clean cloth, though it was of coarse linen and rather damp.

There were the usual bottles of olives and pepper sauce, a plate of
broken crackers, and a ribbed match-safe of china. The sugar bowl was of
plated ware and on it were scratched numberless dates together with the
first names of a great many girls, "Nannie," "Ida," "Flossie."

Between the castor bottles was the bill of fare, held by a thin string
between two immense leather covers which were stamped with wine
merchants' advertisements. Geary reached for this before any of the
others, saying at the same time, "Well, what are you going to have?
_I'm_ going to have a Welsh rabbit and a pint of ale." He looked from
one to the other as if demanding whether or no they approved of his
choice. He assumed the management of what was going on, advising the
others what to have, telling Vandover not to order certain dishes that
he liked because it took so long to cook them. He had young Haight ring
for the waiter, and when he had come, Geary read off the entire order to
him twice over, making sure that he had taken it correctly. "That's what
we want all right, all right--isn't it?" he said, looking around at the
rest.

The waiter, whose eyes were red from lack of sleep, put down before them
a plate of limp, soft shrimps.

"Hello, Toby!" said Vandover.

"Good evening, gentlemen," answered Toby. "Why, good evening, Mr.
Vandover; haven't seen you 'round here for some time." He took their
order, and as he was going away, Vandover called him back:

"Say, Toby," said he, "has Flossie been around to-night?"

"No," answered Toby, "she hasn't shown up yet. Her running-mate was in
about nine, but she went out again right away."

"Well," said Vandover, smiling, "if Flossie comes 'round show her in
here, will you?"

The others laughed, and joked him about this, and Vandover settled back
in his seat, easing his position.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "I like it in here. It's always pleasant and warm
and quiet and the service is good and you get such good things to eat."

Now that the young fellows were by themselves, and could relax that
restraint, that good breeding and delicacy which had been natural to
them in the early part of the evening at the Ravises', their manners
changed: they lounged clumsily upon their seats, their legs stretched
out, their waistcoats unbuttoned, caring only to be at their ease. Their
talk and manners became blunt, rude, unconstrained, the coarser
masculine fibre reasserting itself. With the exception of young Haight
they were all profane enough, and it was not very long before their
conversation became obscene.

Geary told them how he had spent the afternoon promenading Kearney and
Market streets and just where he had gone to get his cocktail and his
cigar. "Ah," he added, "you ought to have seen Ida Wade and Bessie
Laguna. Oh, Ida was rigged up to beat the band; honestly her _hat_ was
as broad across as that. You know there's no use talking, she's an
awfully handsome girl."

A discussion arose over the girl's virtue. Ellis, Geary, and young
Haight maintained that Ida was only fast; Vandover, however, had his
doubts.

"For that matter," said Ellis after a while, "I like Bessie Laguna a
good deal better than I do Ida."

"Ah, yes," retorted young Haight, "you like Bessie Laguna too much
anyhow."

Young Haight had a theory that one should never care in any way for that
kind of a girl nor become at all intimate with her.

"The matter of liking her or not liking her," he said, "ought not to
enter into the question at all. You are both of you out for a good time
and that's all; you have a jolly flirtation with her for an hour or two,
and you never see her again. That's the way it ought to be! This idea of
getting intimate with that sort of a piece, and trying to get her to
care for you, is all wrong."

"Oh," said Vandover deprecatingly, "you take all the pleasure out of it;
where does your good time come in if you don't at least pretend that you
like the girl and try to make her like you?"

"But don't you see," answered Haight, "what a dreadful thing it would be
if a girl like that came to care for you seriously? It isn't the same as
if it were a girl of your own class."

"Ah, Dolly, you've got a bean," muttered Ellis, sipping his whisky.

Meanwhile, the Imperial had been filling up; at about eleven the
theatres were over, and now the barroom was full of men. They came in by
twos and threes and sometimes even by noisy parties of a half dozen or
more. The white swing doors of the main entrance flapped back and forth
continually, letting out into the street puffs of tepid air tainted with
the smell of alcohol. The men entered and ordered their drinks, and
leaning their elbows upon the bar continued the conversation they had
begun outside. Afterward they passed over to the lunch counter and
helped themselves to a plate of stewed tripe or potato salad, eating it
in a secluded corner, leaning over so as not to stain their coats. There
was a continual clinking of glasses and popping of corks, and at every
instant the cash-register clucked and rang its bell.

Between the barroom and the other part of the house was a door hung with
blue plush curtains, looped back; the waiters constantly passed back and
forth through this, carrying plates of oysters, smoking rarebits, tiny
glasses of liqueurs, and goblets of cigars.

All the private rooms opening from either passage were full; the men
came in, walking slowly, looking for their friends; but more often, the
women and girls passed up and down with a chatter of conversation, a
rattle of stiff skirts and petticoats, and a heavy whiff of musk. There
was a continual going and coming, a monotonous shuffle of feet and hum
of talk. A heavy odorous warmth in which were mingled the smells of
sweetened whisky, tobacco, the fumes of cooking, and the scent of
perfume, exhaled into the air. A gay and noisy party developed in one of
the large back rooms; at every moment one could hear gales of laughter,
the rattle of chairs and glassware, mingled with the sounds of men's
voices and the little screams and cries of women. Every time the waiter
opened the door to deliver an order he let out a momentary torrent of
noises.

Girls, habitués of the place, continued to pass the door of the room
where Vandover and his friends were seated. Each time a particularly
handsome one went by, the four looked out after her, shutting their lips
and eyes and nodding their heads.

Young Haight had called for more drinks, ordering, however, mineral
water for himself, and Vandover was just telling about posing the female
models in a certain life-class to which he belonged, when he looked up
and broke off, exclaiming:

"Well, well, here we are at last! How are you, Flossie? Come right in."

Flossie stood in the doorway smiling good-humouredly at them, without a
trace of embarrassment or of confusion in her manner. She was an immense
girl, quite six feet tall, broad and well-made, in proportion. She was
very handsome, full-throated, heavy-eyed, and slow in her movements.
Her eyes and mouth, like everything about her, were large, but each time
she spoke or smiled, she disclosed her teeth, which were as white, as
well-set, and as regular as the rows of kernels on an ear of green corn.
In her ears were small yellow diamonds, the only jewellery she wore.
There was no perceptible cosmetic on her face, which had a clean and
healthy look as though she had just given it a vigorous washing.

She wore a black hat with a great flare to the brim on one side. It was
trimmed very dashingly with black feathers, imitation jet, and a little
puff of plush--robin's-egg blue. Her dress was of rough, black camel's
hair, tailor-made, and but for the immense balloon sleeves, absolutely
plain. It was cut in such a way that from neck to waist there was no
break, the buttons being on the shoulder and under the arm. The skirt
was full and stiff, and without the least trimming. Everything was
black--hat, dress, gloves--and the effect was of a simplicity and
severity so pronounced as to be very striking.

However, around her waist she wore as a belt a thick rope of oxidized
silver, while her shoes, or rather walking slippers, were of white
canvas.

She belonged to that class of women who are not to know one's last name
or address, and whose hate and love are equally to be dreaded. There was
upon her face the unmistakable traces of a ruined virtue and a vanished
innocence. Her slightest action suggested her profession; as soon as she
removed her veil and gloves it was as though she were partially
undressed, and her uncovered face and hands seemed to be only portions
of her nudity.

The general conception of women of her class is a painted and broken
wreck. Flossie radiated health; her eyes were clear, her nerves steady,
her flesh hard and even as a child's. There hung about her an air of
cleanliness, of freshness, of good nature, of fine, high spirits, while
with every movement she exhaled a delicious perfume that was not only
musk, but that seemed to come alike from her dress, her hair, her neck,
her very flesh and body.

Vandover was no longer the same as he had been during his college days.
He was familiar now with this odour of abandoned women, this foul sweet
savour of the great city's vice, that quickened his breath and that sent
his heart knocking at his throat. It was the sensitive artist nature in
him that responded instantly to anything sensuously attractive. Each
kind and class of beautiful women could arouse in Vandover passions of
equal force, though of far different kind. Turner Ravis influenced him
upon his best side, calling out in him all that was cleanest, finest,
and most delicate. Flossie appealed only to the animal and the beast in
him, the evil, hideous brute that made instant answer.

"What will you take, Flossie?" asked Vandover, as she settled herself
among them. "We are all drinking beer except Ellis. He's filling up with
whisky." But Flossie never drank. It was one of the peculiarities for
which she was well known.

"I don't want either," she answered, and turning to the waiter, she
added, "You can bring me some Apollinaris water, Toby."

Flossie betrayed herself as soon as she spoke, the effect of her
appearance was spoiled. Her voice was hoarse, a low-pitched rasp, husky,
throaty, and full of brutal, vulgar modulations.

"Smoke, Flossie?" said Geary, pushing his cigarette case across to her.
Flossie took a cigarette, rolled it to make it loose, and smoked it
while she told them how she had once tried to draw up the smoke through
her nose as it came out between her lips.

"And honestly, boys," she growled, "it made me that sick that I just had
to go to bed."

"Who is the crowd out back?" asked Geary for the sake of saying
something. Flossie embarrassed them all a little, and conversation with
girls of her class was difficult.

"Oh, that's May and Nannie with some men from a banquet at the Palace
Hotel," she answered.

The talk dragged along little by little and Flossie began badgering
young Haight. "Say, you over there," she exclaimed, "what's the matter
with you? You don't say anything."

Young Haight blushed and answered very much embarrassed: "Oh, I'm just
listening." He was anxious to get away. He got up and reached for his
hat and coat, saying with a good-natured smile: "Well, boys and girls,
I think I shall have to leave you."

"Don't let me frighten you away," said Flossie, laughing.

"Oh, no," he answered, trying to hide his embarrassment, "I have to go
anyhow."

While the others were saying good night to him and asking when they
should see him again, Flossie leaned over to him, crying out, "Good
night!" All at once, and before he knew what she was about, she kissed
him full on the mouth. He started sharply at this, but was not angry,
simply pulling away from her, blushing, very embarrassed, and more and
more anxious to get away. Toby, the waiter, appeared at their door.

"That last was on me, you know," said young Haight, intercepting
Vandover and settling for the round of drinks.

"Hello!" exclaimed Toby, "what's the matter with your lip?"

"I cut it a little while ago on a broken glass," answered young Haight.
"Is it bleeding again?" he added, putting two fingers on his lips.

"It is sure enough," said Geary. "Here," he went on, wetting the corner
of a napkin from the water bottle, "hold that on it."

The others began to laugh. "Flossie did that," Vandover explained to
Toby. Ellis was hastily looking through his pockets, fumbling about
among his little books.

"I had something here," he kept muttering, "if I can only _find_ it,
that told just what to do when you cut yourself with glass. There may be
glass _in_ it, you know."

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right," exclaimed young Haight, now
altogether disconcerted. "It don't amount to anything."

"I tell you what," observed Geary; "get some court-plaster at the snake
doctor's just above here."

"No, no, that's all right," returned young Haight, moving off. "Good
night. I'll see you again pretty soon."

He went away. Ellis, who was still searching through his little books,
suddenly uttered an exclamation. He leaned out into the passage, crying:
"The half of a hot onion; tie it right on the cut." But Haight had
already gone. "You see," explained Ellis, "that draws out any little
particles of glass. Look at this," he added, reading an item just below
the one he had found. "You can use cigar ashes for eczema."

Flossie nodded her head at him, smiling and saying: "Well, the next time
I have eczema I will remember that."

Flossie left them a little after this, joining Nannie and May in the
larger room that held the noisy party. The three fellows had another
round of drinks.

All the evening Ellis had been drinking whisky. Now he astonished the
others by suddenly calling for beer. He persisted in drinking it out of
the celery glass, which he emptied at a single pull. Then Vandover had
claret-punches all round, protesting that his mouth felt dry as a
dust-bin. Geary at length declared that he felt pretty far gone, adding
that he was in the humour for having "a high old time."

"Say, boys," he exclaimed, bringing his hand down on the table, "what do
you say that we all go to every joint in town, and wind up at the
Turkish baths? We'll have a regular _time_. Let's see now how much money
I have."

Thereat they all took account of their money. Vandover had fourteen
dollars, but he owed for materials at his art dealer's, and so put away
eight of it in an inside pocket. The others followed his example, each
one reserving five dollars for immediate use.

"That will be one dollar for the Hammam," said Geary, "and four dollars
apiece for drinks. You can get all we want on four dollars." They had a
last claret-punch and, having settled with Toby, went out.

Coming out into the cold night air from the warm interior of the
Imperial affected Vandover and Geary in a few minutes. But apparently
nothing could affect Ellis, neither whisky, claret-punch nor beer. He
walked steadily between Vandover and Geary, linking an arm in each of
theirs.

These two became very drunk almost at once. At every minute Vandover
would cry out, "Yee-ee-_ow_! Thash way I feel, jush like that." Geary
made a "Josh" that was a masterpiece, the success of the occasion. It
consisted in exclaiming from time to time, "Cherries are ripe!" This was
funny. It seemed to have some ludicrous, hidden double-meaning that was
irresistible. It stuck to them all the evening; when a girl passed them
on Kearney Street and Geary cried out at her that "Cherries were ripe!"
it threw them all into spasms of laughter.

They went first to the Palace Garden near the Tivoli Theatre, where
Geary and Vandover had beer and Ellis a whisky cocktail. The performance
was just finishing, and they voted that they were not at all amused at a
lean, overworked girl whom they saw performing a song and dance through
a blue haze of tobacco smoke; so they all exclaimed, "Cherries are
ripe!" and tramped out again to visit the Luxembourg. The beer began to
go against Vandover's stomach by this time, but he forced it down his
throat, shutting his eyes. Then they said they would go to the toughest
place in town, "Steve Casey's"; this was on a side-street. The walls
were covered with yellowed photographs of once-famous pugilists and
old-time concert-hall singers. There was sand on the floor, and in the
dancing room at the back, where nobody danced, a jaded young man was
banging out polkas and quick-steps at a cheap piano.

At the Crystal Palace, where they all had shandy-gaff, they met one of
Ellis's friends, a young fellow of about twenty. He was stone deaf, and
in consequence had become dumb; but for all that he was very eager to
associate with the young men of the city and would not hear of being
separated and set apart with the other deaf mutes. He was very pleased
to meet them and joined them at once. They all knew him pretty well and
called him the "Dummy."

In the course of the evening the patty was seen at nearly every bar and
saloon in the neighbourhood of Market and Kearney streets. Geary and
Vandover were very drunk indeed. Vandover was having a glorious time; he
was not silent a minute, talking, laughing, and singing, and crying out
continually, "Cherries are ripe!" When he could think of nothing else to
say he would exclaim, "Yee-ee-_ow_! Thash way I feel."

For two hours they drank steadily. Vandover was in a dreadful condition;
the Dummy got so drunk that he could talk, a peculiarity which at times
had been known to occur to him. As will sometimes happen, Geary sobered
up a little and at the "Grotto" bathed his head and face in the
washroom. After this he became pretty steady, he stopped drinking, and
tried to assume the management of the party, ordering their drinks for
them, and casting up the amount of the check.

About two o'clock they returned toward the Luxembourg, staggering and
swaying. The Luxembourg was a sort of German restaurant under a theatre
where one could get some very good German dishes. There Vandover had
beer and sauerkraut, but Ellis took more whisky. The Dummy continued to
make peculiar sounds in his throat, half-noise, half-speech, and Geary
gravely informed the waiter that cherries were ripe.

All at once Ellis was drunk, collapsing in a moment. The skin around his
eyes was purple and swollen, the pupils themselves were contracted, and
their range of vision seemed to stop at about a yard in front of his
face. Suddenly he swept glasses, plates, castor, knives, forks, and all
from off the table with a single movement of his arm.

They all jumped up, sober in a minute, knowing that a scene was at hand.
The waiter rushed at Ellis, but Ellis knocked him down and tried to
stamp on his face. Vandover and the Dummy tried to hold his arms and
pull him off. He turned on the Dummy in a silent frenzy of rage and
brought his knuckles down upon his head again and again. For the moment
Ellis could neither hear, nor see, nor speak; he was blind, dumb,
fighting drunk, and his fighting was not the fighting of Vandover.

"Get in here and help, will you?" panted Vandover to Geary, as he
struggled with Ellis. "He can kill people when he's like this. Oh, damn
the whisky anyhow! Look out--don't let him get that knife! Grab his
other arm, there! now, kick his feet from under him! Oh, kick hard! Sit
on his legs; there now. Ah! Hell! he's bitten me! Look out! here comes
the bouncer!"

The bouncer and three other waiters charged into them while they were
struggling on the floor. Vandover was twice knocked down and the Dummy
had his lip split. Ellis struggled to his feet again and, still silent,
fought them all alike, a fine line of froth gathering at the corners of
his lips.

When they were finally ejected, and pulled themselves together in the
street outside, Geary had disappeared. He had left them during the
struggle with Ellis and had gone home. Ah, you bet he wasn't going to
stay any longer with the crowd when they got like that. If Ellis was
fool enough to get as drunk as that it was his own lookout. _He_ wasn't
going to stay and get thrown out of any saloon; ah, no, you bet he was
too clever for that. He was sober enough now and would go home to bed
and get a good sleep.

The fight in the saloon had completely sobered the rest of them. Ellis
was tractable enough again, and very sorry for having got them into such
a row. Vandover was horribly sick at his stomach.

The three locked arms and started slowly toward the Turkish baths. On
their way they stopped at an all-night drug store and had some seltzer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Vandover had about three hours' sleep that night. He was awakened by the
attendant shaking his arm and crying:

"Half-past six, sir."

"Huh!" he exclaimed, starting up. "What about half-past six? I don't
want to get up."

"Told me to call you, sir, at half-past six; quarter to seven now."

"Oh, all right, very well," answered Vandover. He turned away his face
on the pillow, while a wretched feeling of nausea crept over him; every
movement of his head made it ache to bursting. Behind his temples the
blood throbbed and pumped like the knocking of hammers. His mouth would
have been dry but for a thick slime that filled it and that tasted of
oil. He felt weak, his hands trembled, his forehead was cold and seemed
wet and sticky.

He could recall hardly anything of the previous night. He remembered,
however, of going to the Imperial and of seeing Flossie, and he _did_
remember at last of leaving word to be called at half-past six.

He got up without waking the other two fellows and took a plunge in the
cold tank, dressed very slowly, and went out. The stores were all
closed, the streets were almost deserted. He walked to the nearest
uptown car-line and took an outside seat, feeling better and steadier
for every moment of the sharp morning air.

Van Ness Avenue was very still. It was about half-past seven. The
curtains were down in all the houses; here and there a servant could be
seen washing down the front steps. In the vestibules of some of the
smaller houses were loaves of French bread and glass jars of cream,
while near them lay the damp twisted roll of the morning's paper. There
was everywhere a great chittering of sparrows, and the cable-cars, as
yet empty, trundled down the cross streets, the conductors cleaning the
windows and metal work. From far down at one end of the avenue came the
bells of the Catholic Cathedral ringing for early mass; and a
respectable-looking second girl hurried past him carrying her
prayer-book. At the other end of the avenue was a blue vista of the bay,
the great bulk of Mount Tamalpais rearing itself out of the water like a
waking lion.

In front of the little church Turner was waiting for him. She was
dressed very prettily and the cold morning air had given her a fine
colour.

"You don't look more than half awake," she said, as Vandover came up.
"It was awfully good of you to come. Oh, Van, you look dreadfully. It is
too bad to make you get up so early."

"No, no," protested Vandover. "I was only too glad to come. I didn't
sleep well last night. I hope I haven't kept you waiting."

"I've only just come," answered Turner. "But I think it is time to go
in."

The little organ was muttering softly to itself as they entered. It was
very still otherwise. The morning sun struck through the stained windows
and made pretty lights about the altar; besides themselves there were
some half dozen other worshippers. The little organ ceased with a long
droning sigh, and the minister in his white robes turned about, facing
his auditors, and in the midst of a great silence opened the communion
service with the words: "Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of
your sins and are in love and charity with your neighbours--"

As Vandover rose with the rest the blood rushed to his head and a
feeling of nausea and exhaustion, the dregs of his previous night's
debauch, came over him again for a moment, so that he took hold of the
back of the pew in front of him to steady himself.




Chapter Five


In the afternoons Vandover worked in his studio, which was on Sacramento
Street, but in the mornings he was accustomed to study in the life-class
at the School of Design.

This was on California Street over the Market, an immense room
partitioned by enormous wooden screens into alcoves, where the
still-life classes worked, painting carrots, grapes, and dusty brown
stone-jugs.

All about were a multitude of casts, the fighting gladiator, the
discobulus, the Venus of Milo, and hundreds of smaller pieces, masks,
torsos, and the heads of the Parthenon horses. Flattened paint-tubes and
broken bits of charcoal littered the floor and cluttered the chairs and
shelves. A strong odour of turpentine and fixative was in the air,
mingled with the stronger odours of linseed oil and sour, stale French
bread.

Every afternoon a portrait class of some thirty-odd assembled in one of
the larger alcoves near the door. Several of the well-known street
characters of the city had posed for this class, and at one time Father
Elphick, the white-haired, bare-headed vegetarian, with his crooked
stick and white clothes, had sat to it for his head.

Vandover was probably the most promising member of the school. His style
was sketchy, conscientious, and full of strength and decision. He worked
in large lines, broad surfaces and masses of light or shade. His colour
was good, running to purples, reds, and admirable greens, full of
bitumen and raw sienna.

Though he had no idea of composition, he was clever enough to
acknowledge it. His finished pictures were broad reaches of landscape,
deserts, shores, and moors in which he placed solitary figures of men or
animals in a way that was very effective--as, for instance, a great
strip of shore and in the foreground the body of a drowned sailor; a
lion drinking in the midst of an immense Sahara; or, one that he called
"The Remnant of an Army," a dying war horse wandering on an empty plain,
the saddle turned under his belly, his mane and tail snarled with burrs.

Some time before there had come to him the idea for a great picture. It
was to be his first masterpiece, his salon picture when he should get to
Paris. A British cavalryman and his horse, both dying of thirst and
wounds, were to be lost on a Soudanese desert, and in the middle
distance on a ridge of sand a lion should be drawing in upon them,
crouched on his belly, his tail stiff, his lower jaw hanging. The
melodrama of the old English "Home Book of Art" still influenced
Vandover. He was in love with this idea for a picture and had determined
to call it "The Last Enemy." The effects he wished to produce were
isolation and intense heat; as to the soldier, he was as yet undecided
whether to represent him facing death resignedly, calmly, or grasping
the barrel of his useless rifle, determined to fight to the last.

Vandover loved to paint and to draw. He was perfectly contented when his
picture was "coming right," and when he felt sure he was doing good
work. He often did better than he thought he would, but never so well as
he thought he _could_.

However, it bored him to work very hard, and when he did not enjoy his
work he stopped it at once. He would tell himself on these occasions
that one had to be in the mood and that he should wait for the
inspiration, although he knew very well how absurd such excuses were,
how false and how pernicious.

That certain little weakness of Vandover's character, his
self-indulgence, _had_ brought him to such a point that he thought he
had to be amused. If his painting amused him, very good; if not, he
found something else that would.

On the following Monday as he worked in the life-class, Vandover was
thinking, or, rather, trying not to think, of what he had done the
Sunday morning previous when he had gone to communion with Turner Ravis.
For a long time he evaded the thought because he knew that if he allowed
it to come into his mind it would worry and harass him. But by and by
the effort of dodging the enemy became itself too disagreeable, so he
gave it up and allowed himself to look the matter squarely in the face.

Ah, yes; it was an ugly thing he had done there, a really awful thing.
He must have been still drunk when he had knelt in the chancel. Vandover
shuddered as he thought of this, and told himself that one could hardly
commit a worse sacrilege, and that some time he would surely be called
to account for it. But here he checked himself suddenly, not daring to
go further. One would have no peace of mind left if one went on brooding
over such things in this fashion. He realized the enormity of what he
had done. He had tried to be sorry for it. It was perhaps the worst
thing he had ever done, but now he had reached the lowest point. He
would take care never to do such a thing again. After this he would be
better.

But this was not so. Unconsciously, Vandover had shut a door behind him;
he would never again be exactly the same, and the keeping of his
appointment with Turner Ravis that Sunday morning was, as it were, a
long step onward in his progress of ruin and pollution.

He shook himself as though relieving his shoulders of a weight. The
model in the life-class had just been posed for the week, and the others
had begun work. The model for that week was a woman, a fact that pleased
Vandover, for he drew these nude women better than any one in the
school, perhaps better than any one in the city. Portrait work and the
power to catch subtle intellectual distinctions in a face were sometimes
beyond him, but his feeling for the flesh, and for the movement and
character of a pose, was admirable.

He set himself to work. Holding his stick of charcoal toward the model
at arm's-length, he measured off the heads, five in all, and laid off an
equal number of spaces upon his paper. After this, by aid of his mirror,
he studied the general character of the pose for nearly half an hour.
Then, with a few strokes of his charcoal he laid off his larger
construction lines with a freedom and a precision that were excellent.
Upon these lines he made a second drawing a little more detailed, though
as yet everything was blocked in, angularly and roughly. Then, putting a
thin flat edge upon his charcoal, he started the careful and finished
outline.

By the end of an hour the first sketch of his drawing was complete. It
was astonishingly good, vigorous and solid; better than all, it had that
feeling for form that makes just the difference between the amateur and
the genuine artist.

By this time Vandover's interest began to flag. Four times he had drawn
and redrawn the articulation of the model's left shoulder. As she stood,
turned sideways to him, one hand on her hip, the deltoid muscle was at
once contracted and foreshortened. It was a difficult bit of anatomy to
draw. Vandover was annoyed at his ill success--such close attention and
continued effort wearied him a little--the room was overheated and
close, and the gas stove, which was placed near the throne to warm the
model, leaked and filled the room with a nasty brassy smell. Vandover
remembered that the previous week he had been looking over some old
bound copies of _l'Art_ in the Mechanics Library and had found them of
absorbing interest. There was a pleasant corner and a huge comfortable
chair near where they were in the reading-room, and from the window one
could occasionally look out upon the street. It was a quiet spot, and he
would not be disturbed all the morning. The idea was so attractive that
he put away his portfolio and drawing things and went out.

For an hour he gave himself up to the enjoyment of _l'Art_, excusing his
indolence by telling himself that it was all in his profession and was
not time lost. A reproduction of a picture by Gérome gave him some
suggestions for the "Last Enemy," which he noted very carefully.

He was interrupted by a rustle of starched skirts and a voice that said:

"Why, hello, Van!"

He looked up quickly to see a young girl of about twenty dressed in a
black close-fitting bolero jacket of imitation astrakhan with big
leg-of-mutton sleeves, a striped silk skirt, and a very broad hat tilted
to one side. Her hair was very blond, though coarse and dry from being
bleached, and a little flat curl of it lay very low on her forehead. She
was marvellously pretty. Vandover was delighted.

"Why, _Ida_!" he exclaimed, holding her hand; "_it's_ awfully nice to
see you here; won't you sit down?" and he pushed his chair toward her.

But Ida Wade said no, she had just come in after a new book, and of
course it had to be out. But where had he kept himself so long? That was
the way he threw off on her; ah, yes, he was going with Miss Ravis now
and wouldn't look at any one else.

Vandover protested against this, and Ida Wade went on to ask him why he
couldn't come up to call on her that very night, adding:

"We might go to the Tivoli or somewhere." All at once she interrupted
herself, laughing, "Oh, I heard all about you the other night.
_'Cherries are ripe_!' You and the boys painted the town red, didn't
you? Ah, Van, I'm right on to _you_!"

She would not tell him how she heard, but took herself off, laughing and
reminding him to come up early.

Ida Wade belonged to a certain type of young girl that was very common
in the city. She was what men, among each other, called "gay," though
that was the worst that could be said of her. She was virtuous, but the
very fact that it was necessary to say so was enough to cause the
statement to be doubted. When she was younger and had been a pupil at
the Girls' High School, she had known and had even been the companion of
such girls as Turner Ravis and Henrietta Vance, but since that time
girls of that class had ignored her. Now, almost all of her
acquaintances were men, and to half of these she had never been
introduced. They had managed to get acquainted with her on Kearney
Street, at theatres, at the Mechanics' Fair, and at baseball games. She
loved to have a "gay" time, which for her meant to drink California
champagne, to smoke cigarettes, and to kick at the chandelier. She was
still virtuous and meant to stay so; there was nothing vicious about
her, and she was as far removed from Flossie's class as from that of
Turner Ravis.

She was very clever; half of her acquaintances, even the men, did not
know how very "gay" she was. Only those--like Vandover--who knew her
best, knew her for what she was, for Ida was morbidly careful of
appearances, and as jealous of her reputation as only fast girls are.

Bessie Laguna was her counterpart. Bessie was "the girl she went with,"
just as Henrietta Vance was Turner's "chum" and Nannie was Flossie's
"running-mate."

Ida lived with her people on Golden Gate Avenue not far from Larkin
Street. Her father had a three-fourths interest in a carpet-cleaning
establishment on Howard Street, and her mother gave lessons in painting
on china and on velvet. Ida had just been graduated from the normal
school, and often substituted at various kindergartens in the city. She
hoped soon to get a permanent place.

Vandover arrived at Ida's house that night at about eight o'clock in the
midst of a drenching fog. The parlour and front room on the second floor
were furnished with bay windows decorated with some meaningless sort of
millwork. The front door stood at the right of the parlour windows. Two
Corinthian pillars on either side of the vestibule supported a balcony;
these pillars had iron capitals which were painted to imitate the wood
of the house, which in its turn was painted to imitate stone. The house
was but two stories high, and the roof was topped with an iron cresting.
There was a microscopical front yard in which one saw a tiny gravel
walk, two steps long, that led to a door under the front steps, where
the gas-meter was kept. A few dusty and straggling calla-lilies grew
about.

Ida opened the door for Vandover almost as soon as he rang, and pulled
him into the entry, exclaiming: "Come in out of the wet, as the whale
said to Jonah. _Isn't_ it a nasty night?" Vandover noticed as he came in
that the house smelt of upholstery, cooking, and turpentine. He did not
take off his overcoat, but went with her into the parlour.

The parlour was a little room with tinted plaster walls shut off from
the "back-parlour" by sliding doors. A ply carpet covered the floor, a
cheap piano stood across one corner of the room, and a greenish sofa
across another. The mantelpiece was of white marble with gray spots; on
one side of it stood an Alaskan "grass basket" full of photographs, and
on the other an inverted section of a sewer-pipe painted with daisies
and full of gilded cat-tails tied with a blue ribbon. Near the piano
straddled a huge easel of imitation brass up-holding the crayon picture
of Ida's baby sister enlarged from a photograph. Across one corner of
this picture was a yellow "drape." There were a great many of these
"drapes" all about the room, hanging over the corners of the chairs,
upon an edge of the mantelpiece, and even twisted about the chandelier.
In the exact middle of the mantelpiece itself was the clock, one of the
chief ornaments of the room, almost the first thing one saw upon
entering; it was a round-faced timepiece perversely set in one corner of
an immense red plush palette; the palette itself was tilted to one
side, and was upheld by an easel of twisted brass wire. Out of the
thumb-hole stuck half a dozen brushes wired together in a round bunch
and covered with gilt paint. The clock never was wound. It went so fast
that it was useless as a timepiece. Over it, however, hung a large and
striking picture, a species of cheap photogravure, a lion lying in his
cage, looking mildly at the spectator over his shoulder. In front of the
picture were real iron bars, with real straw tucked in behind them.

Ida sat down on the piano stool, twisting back and forth, leaning her
elbows on the keys.

"All the folks have gone out to a whist-party, and I'm left all alone in
the house with Maggie," she said. Then she added: "Bessie and Bandy
Ellis said they would come down to-night, and I thought we could all go
downtown to the Tivoli or somewhere, in the open-air boxes, you know,
way up at the top." Hardly had she spoken the words when Bessie and
Ellis arrived.

Ida went upstairs to get on her hat at once, because it was so late, and
Bessie went with her.

Ellis and Vandover laughed as soon as they saw each other, and Ellis
exclaimed mockingly, "Ye-e-ow, thash jush way I feel." Vandover grinned:

"That's so," he answered. "I _do_ remember now of having made that
remark several times. But _you_--oh, you were fearful. Do you remember
the row in the Luxembourg? Look there where you bit me."

Ellis was incensed with Geary because he had forsaken their party.

"Oh, that's Charlie Geary, all over," answered Vandover.

As they were speaking there came a sudden outburst of bells in various
parts of the city and simultaneously they heard the hoarse croaking of a
whistle down by the waterfront.

"Fire," said Vandover indifferently.

Ellis was already fumbling in his pockets, keeping count of the strokes.

"That's one," he exclaimed, pulling out and studying his list of
alarm-boxes, "and one-two-three, that's three and one-two-three-_four_,
one thirty-four. Let's see now! That's Bush and Hyde streets, not very
far off," and he returned his card to the inside pocket of his coat as
though he had accomplished a duty.

He lit a cigar. "I wonder now," he said, hesitating. "I guess I better
not smoke in here. I'll go outside and get a mouthful of smoke before
the girls come down." He went out and Vandover sat down to the cheap
piano and played his three inevitable pieces, the two polkas and the air
of the topical song; but he was interrupted by Ellis, who opened the
door, crying out:

"Oh, come out here and see the _fire_, will you? Devil of a blaze!"
Vandover ran out and saw a great fan-shaped haze of red through the fog
over the roofs of the houses.

"Oh, say, girls," he shouted, jumping back to the foot of the stairs;
"Ida, Bessie, there's a fire. Just look out of your windows. Hark, there
go the engines."

Bessie came tearing down the stairs and out on the front steps, where
the two fellows were standing hatless.

"Where? Oh, show me where! O-o-oh, sure enough! That's a _big_ fire.
Just hear the engines. _Oh, let's go_!"

"Sure; come on, let's go!" exclaimed Vandover. "Tell Ida to hurry up."

"Oh, Ida," cried Bessie up the stairs, "there's an awful big fire right
near here, and we're going."

"Oh, wait!" shouted Ida, her mouth full of pins. "I had to change my
waist. Oh, _do_ wait for me. Where is it _at_? Please wait; I'm coming
right down in just a minute."

"Hurry up, hurry up!" cried Vandover. "It will be all out by the time we
get there. I'm coming up to help."

"No, no, no!" she screamed. "Don't; you rattle me. I'm all mixed up. Oh,
_darn_ it, I can't find my czarina!"

But at last she came running down, breathless, shrugging herself into
her bolero jacket. They all hurried into the street and turned in the
direction of the blaze. Other people were walking rapidly in the same
direction, and there was an opening and shutting of windows and front
doors. A steamer thundered past, clanging and smoking, followed by a
score of half-exhausted boys. It took them longer to reach the fire than
they expected, and by the time they had come within two blocks of it
they were quite out of breath. Here the excitement was lively; the
sidewalks were full of people going in the same direction; on all sides
there were guesses as to where the fire was. On the front steps of many
houses stood middle-aged gentlemen, still holding their evening papers
and cigars, very amused and interested in watching the crowd go past.
One heard them from time to time calling to their little sons, who were
dancing on the sidewalks, forbidding them to go; in the open windows
above could be seen the other members of the family, their faces faintly
tinged with the glow, looking and pointing, or calling across the street
to their friends in the opposite houses. Every one was in good humour;
it was an event, a fête for the entire neighbourhood.

Vandover and his party came at last to the first engines violently
pumping and coughing, the huge gray horses standing near by, already
unhitched and blanketed, indifferently feeding in their nosebags. Some
of the crowd preferred to watch the engines rather than the fire, and
there were even some who were coming away from it, exclaiming "false
alarm" or "all out now."

The party had come up quite close; they could smell the burning wood and
could see the roofs of the nearer houses beginning to stand out sharp
and black against the red glow beyond. It was a barn behind a huge frame
house that was afire, the dry hay burning like powder, and by the time
they reached it the flames were already dwindling. The hose was lying
like a python all about the streets, while upon the neighbouring roofs
were groups of firemen with helmets and axes; some were shouting into
the street below, and others were holding the spouting nozzles of the
hose. "Ah," exclaimed an old man, standing near to Ida and Vandover,
"ah, _I_ was here when it first broke out; you ought to have seen the
flames then! Look, there's a tree catching!"

The crowd became denser; policemen pushed it back and stretched a rope
across the street. There was a world of tumbling yellow smoke that made
one's eyes smart, and a great crackling and snapping of flames. Terribly
excited little boys were about everywhere whistling and calling for each
other as the crowd separated them.

They watched the fire for some time, standing on a pile of boards in
front of a half-built house, but as it dwindled they wearied of it.

"Want to go?" asked Vandover at last.

"Yes," answered Ida, "we might as well. Oh, where's Bessie and Ellis?"
They were nowhere to be seen. Vandover whistled and Ida even called, but
in vain. The little boys in the crowd mimicked Ida, crying back, "Hey!
Bessie! Oh, _Bes-see_, mommer wants you!" The men who stood near laughed
at this, but it annoyed Vandover much more than it did Ida.

"Ah, well, never mind," she said at length. "Let them go. Now shall _we_
go?"

It was too late for the theatre, but to return home was out of the
question. They started off aimlessly downtown.

While he talked Vandover was perplexed. Ida was gayly dressed and was
one of those girls who cannot open their mouths nor raise a finger in
the street without attracting attention. Vandover was not at all certain
that he cared to be seen on Kearney Street as Ida Wade's escort; one
never knew who one was going to meet. Ida was not a bad girl, she was
not notorious, but, confound it, it would look queer; and at the same
time, while Ida was the kind of girl that one did not want to be seen
with, she was not the kind of girl that could be told so. In an upper
box at the Tivoli it would have been different--one could keep in the
background; but to appear on Kearney Street with a girl who wore a hat
like that and who would not put on her gloves--ah, no, it was out of the
question.

Ida was talking away endlessly about a kindergarten in which she had
substituted the last week.

She told him about the funny little nigger girl, and about the games and
songs and how they played birds and hopped around and cried, "Twit,
twit," and the game of the butterflies visiting the flowers. She even
sang part of a song about the waves.

    "Every little wave had its night-cap on;
    Its white-cap, night-cap, white-cap on."

"It's more _fun_ than enough," she said.

"Say, Ida," interrupted Vandover at length, "I'm pretty hungry. Can't we
go somewhere and eat something? I'd like a Welsh rabbit."

"All right," she answered. "Where do you want to go?"

"Well," replied Vandover, running over in his mind the places he might
reach by unfrequented streets. "There's Marchand's or Tortoni's or the
Poodle Dog."

"Suits _me_," she answered, "any one you like. Say, Van," she added,
"weren't you boys at the Imperial the other night? What kind of a place
is that?"

On the instant Vandover wondered what she could mean. Was it possible
that Ida would go to a place like that with him?

"The Imperial?" he answered. "Oh, I don't know; the Imperial is a sort
of a nice place. It has private rooms, like all of these places. The
cooking is simply out of sight. I think there is a bar connected with
it." Then he went on to talk indifferently about the kindergarten,
though his pulse was beating fast, and his nerves were strung taut. By
and by Ida said:

"I didn't know there was a bar at the Imperial. I thought it was just
some kind of an oyster joint. Why, I heard of a very nice girl, a swell
girl, going in there."

"Oh, yes," said Vandover, "they do. I say, Ida," he went on, "what's the
matter with going down _there_?"

"The _Imperial_?" exclaimed Ida. "Well, I guess _not_!"

"Why, it's all right, if I'm with you," retorted Vandover, "but if you
don't like it we can go anywhere else."

"Well, I guess we _will_ go anywhere else," returned Ida, and for the
time the subject was dropped.

They took a Sutter Street car and got off at Grant Avenue, having
decided to go to Marchand's.

"That's the Imperial down there, isn't it?" asked Ida as they reached
the sidewalk. Vandover made a last attempt:

"I say, Ida, come on, let's go there. It's all right if I'm with you.
Ah, come along; what's the odds?"

"_No_--_no_--NO," she answered decisively. "What kind of a girl do you
think I am, anyway?"

"Well, I tell you what," answered Vandover, "just come down _by_ the
place, and if you don't like the looks of it you needn't go in. I want
to get some cigarettes, anyhow. You can walk down with me till I do
_that_."

"I'll walk down with you," replied Ida, "but I shan't go in."

They drew near to the Imperial. The street about was deserted, even the
usual hacks that had their stand there were gone.

"You see," explained Vandover as they passed slowly in front of the
doors, "this is all quiet enough. If you pulled down your veil no one
would know the difference, and here's the ladies' entrance, you see,
right at the side."

"All right, come along, let's go in," exclaimed Ida suddenly, and before
he knew it they had swung open the little door of the ladies' entrance
with its frosted pane of glass and had stepped inside.

It was between nine and ten o'clock, and the Imperial was quiet as yet;
a few men were drinking in the barroom outside, and Toby, the red-eyed
waiter, was talking in low tones to a girl under one of the electric
lights.

Vandover and Ida went into one of the larger rooms in the rear passage
and shut the door. Ida pushed her bolero jacket from her shoulders,
saying, "This seems nice and quiet enough."

"Well, of course," answered Vandover, as though dismissing the question
for good. "Now, what are we going to have? I say we have champagne and
oysters."

"Let's have Cliquot, then," exclaimed Ida, which was the only champagne
she had ever heard of besides the California brands.

She was very excited. This was the kind of "gay" time she delighted in,
tête-à-tête champagne suppers with men late at night. She had never been
in such a place as the Imperial before, and the daring and novelty of
what she had done, the whiff of the great city's vice caught in this
manner, sent a little tremor of pleasure and excitement over all her
nerves.

They did not hurry over their little supper, but ate and drank slowly,
and had more oysters to go with the last half of their bottle. Ida's
face was ablaze, her eyes flashing, her blond hair disordered and
falling about her cheeks.

Vandover put his arm about her neck and drew her toward him, and as she
sank down upon him, smiling and complaisant, her hair tumbling upon her
shoulders and her head and throat bent back, he leaned his cheek against
hers, speaking in a low voice.

"No--no," she murmured, smiling; "never--ah, if I hadn't come--no,
Van--please--" And then with a long breath she abandoned herself.

About midnight he left her at the door of her house on Golden Gate
Avenue. On their way home Ida had grown more serious than he had ever
known her to be. Now she began to cry softly to herself. "Oh, Van," she
said, putting her head down upon his shoulder, "oh, I am so _sorry_. You
don't think any less of me, do you? Oh, Van, you must be true to me
now!"




Chapter Six


Everybody in San Francisco knew of the Ravises and always made it a
point to speak of them as one of the best families of the city. They
were not new and they were not particularly rich. They had lived in the
same house on California Street for nearly twenty years and had always
been comfortably well off. As things go in San Francisco, they were
old-fashioned. They had family traditions and usages and time-worn
customs. Their library had been in process of collection for the past
half century and the pictures on the walls were oil paintings of steel
engravings and genuine old-fashioned chromos, beyond price to-day.

Their furniture and ornaments were of the preceding generation, solid,
conservative. They were not chosen with reference to any one style, nor
all bought at the same time. Each separate piece had an individuality of
its own. The Ravises kept their old things, long after the fashion had
gone out, preferring them to the smarter "art" objects on account of
their associations.

There were six in the family, Mr. and Mrs. Ravis, Turner, and her older
brother, Stanley, Yale '88, a very serious young gentleman of
twenty-seven, continually professing an interest in economics and
finance. Besides these were the two children, Howard, nine years old,
and his sister, aged fourteen, who had been christened Virginia.

They were a home-loving race. Mr. Ravis, senior, belonged to the
Bohemian Club, but was seldom seen there. Stanley was absorbed in his
law business, and Turner went out but little. They much preferred each
other's society to that of three fourths of their acquaintances, most of
their friends being "friends of the family," who came to dinner three or
four times a year.

It was a custom of theirs to spend the evenings in the big dining-room
at the back of the house, after the table had been cleared away, Mr.
Ravis and Stanley reading the papers, the one smoking his cigar, the
other his pipe; Mrs. Ravis, with the magazines and Turner with the
_Chautauquan_. Howard and Virginia appropriated the table to themselves
where they played with their soldiers and backgammon board.

The family kept two servants, June the "China boy," who had been with
them since the beginning of things, and Delphine the cook, a more recent
acquisition. June was, in a way, butler and second boy combined; he did
all the downstairs work and the heavy sweeping, but it was another
time-worn custom for Mrs. Ravis and Turner to spend part of every
morning in putting the bedrooms to rights, dusting and making up the
beds. Besides this, Turner exercised a sort of supervision over Howard
and Virginia, who were too old for a nurse but too young to take care of
themselves. She had them to bed at nine, mended some of their clothes,
made them take their baths regularly, reëstablished peace between them
in their hourly quarrels, and, most arduous task of all, saw that Howard
properly washed himself every morning, and on Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons that he was suitably dressed in time for dancing school.

It was Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Ravis was reading to her husband, who lay
on the sofa in the back-parlour smoking a cigar. Stanley had gone out to
make a call, while Howard and Virginia had forgathered in the bathroom
to sail their boats and cigar boxes in the tub. Toward half-past three,
as Turner was in her room writing letters, the door-bell rang. She
stopped, with her pen in the air, wondering if it might be Vandover. It
was June's afternoon out. In a few minutes the bell rang again, and
Turner ran down to answer it herself, intercepting Delphine, who took
June's place on these occasions, but who was hopelessly stupid.

Mrs. Ravis had peered out through the curtains of the parlour window to
see who it was, and Turner met her and Mr. Ravis coming upstairs,
abandoning the parlour to Turner's caller.

"Mamma and I are going upstairs to read," explained Mr. Ravis. "It's
some one of your young men. You can bring him right in the parlour."

"I think it's Mr. Haight," said Turner's mother. "Ask him to stay to
tea."

"Well," said Turner doubtfully, as she paused at the foot of the stairs,
"I will, but you know we never have anything to speak of for Sunday
evening tea. June is out, and you know how clumsy and stupid Delphine is
when she waits on the table."

It _was_ young Haight. Turner was very glad to see him, for next to
Vandover she liked him better than any of the others. She was never
bored by being obliged to entertain him, and he always had something to
say and some clever way of saying it.

About half-past five, as they were talking about amateur photography,
Mrs. Ravis came in and called them to tea.

Tea with the Ravises was the old-fashioned tea of twenty years ago. One
never saw any of the modern "delicacies" on their Sunday evening table,
no enticing cold lunch, no spices, not even catsups or pepper sauces.
The turkey or chicken they had had for dinner was served cold in slices;
there was canned fruit, preserves, tea, crackers, bread and butter, a
large dish of cold pork and beans, and a huge glass pitcher of
ice-water.

In the absence of June, Delphine the cook went through the agony of
waiting on the table, very nervous and embarrassed in her clean calico
gown and starched apron. Her hands were red and knotty, smelling of
soap, and they touched the chinaware with an over-zealous and
constraining tenderness as if the plates and dishes had been delicate
glass butterflies. She stood off at a distance from the table making
sudden and awkward dabs at it. When it came to passing the plates, she
passed them on the wrong side and remembered herself at the wrong moment
with a stammering apology. In her excess of politeness she kept up a
constant murmur as she attended to their wants. Another fork? Yes, sir.
She'd get it right away, sir. Did Mrs. Ravis want another cuppa tea? No?
No more tea? Well, she'd pass the bread. Some bread, Master Howard? Nice
French bread, he always liked that. Some more preserved pears, Miss
Ravis? Yes, miss, she'd get them right away; they were just over here on
the sideboard. Yes, here they were. No more? Now she'd go and put them
back. And at last when she had set the nerves of all of them in a
jangle, was dismissed to the kitchen and retired with a gasp of
unspeakable relief.

Somewhat later in the evening young Haight was alone with Turner, and
their conversation had taken a very unusual and personal turn. All at
once Turner exclaimed:

"I often wonder what good I am in the world to anybody. I don't _know_ a
thing, I can't _do_ a thing. I couldn't cook the plainest kind of a meal
to _save_ me, and it took me all of two hours yesterday to do just a
little buttonhole stitching. I'm not good for anything. I'm not a help
to anybody."

Young Haight looked into the blue flame of the gas-log, almost the only
modern innovation throughout the entire house, and was silent for a
moment; then he leaned his elbows on his knees and, still looking at the
flame, replied:

"I don't know about that. You have been a considerable help to _me_."

"To _you_!" exclaimed Turner, surprised. "A help to _you_? Why, how do
you mean?"

"Well," he answered, still without looking at her, "one always has one's
influence, you know."

"Ah, lots of influence _I_ have over anybody," retorted Turner,
incredulously.

"Yes, you have," he insisted. "You have plenty of influence over the
people that care for you. You have plenty of influence over me."

Turner, very much embarrassed, and not knowing how to answer, bent down
to the side of the mantelpiece and turned up the flame of the gas-log a
little. Young Haight continued, almost as embarrassed as she:

"I suppose I'm a bad lot, perhaps a little worse than most others, but I
think--I hope--there's some good in me. I know all this sounds absurd
and affected, but _really_ I'm not posing; you won't mind if I speak
just as I think, for this once. I promise," he went on with a half
smile, "not to do it again. You know my mother died when I was little
and I have lived mostly with men. You have been to me what the society
of women has been to other fellows. You see, you are the only girl I
ever knew very well--the only one I ever wanted to know. I have cared
for you the way other men have cared for the different women that come
into their lives; as they have cared for their mothers, their
sisters--and their wives. You have already influenced me as a mother or
sister should have done; what if I should ever ask you to be--to be the
_other_ to me, the one that's best of all?"

Young Haight turned toward her as he finished and looked at her for the
first time. Turner was still very much embarrassed.

"Oh, I'm very glad if I've been a help to--to anybody--to you," she
said, confusedly. "But I never knew that you cared--that you thought
about me--in that way. But you mustn't, you know, you mustn't care for
me in that way. I ought to tell you right away that I never could care
for you more than--I always have done; I mean care for you only as a
very, very good friend. You don't know, Dolly," she went on eagerly,
"how it hurts me to tell you so, because I care so much for you in every
other way that I wouldn't hurt your feelings for anything; but then you
know at the same time it would hurt you a great deal more if I
_shouldn't_ tell you, but encourage you, and let you go on thinking that
perhaps I liked you more than any one else, when I _didn't_. Now
wouldn't that be wrong? You don't know how glad it makes me feel that I
have been of some good to you, and that is just why I want to be sincere
_now_ and not make you think any less of me--think any worse of me."

"Oh, I know," answered young Haight. "I know I shouldn't have said
anything about it. I knew beforehand, or thought I knew, that you didn't
care in that way."

"Maybe I have been wrong," she replied, "in not seeing that you cared so
much, and have given you a wrong impression. I thought you knew how it
was all the time."

"Knew how what was?" he asked, looking up.

"Why," she said, "knew how Van and I were."

"I knew that Van cared for you a great deal."

"Yes, but you know," she went on, hesitating and confused, "you know we
are engaged. We have been engaged for nearly two years."

"But _he_ don't consider himself as engaged!" The words were almost out
of Haight's mouth, but he shut his teeth against them and kept
silence--he hardly knew why.

"Suppose Vandover were out of the question," he said, getting up and
smiling in order not to seem as serious as he really was.

"Ah," she said, smiling back at him. "I don't know; that's a hard
question to answer. I've never _asked_ myself _that_ question."

"Well, I'm saving you the trouble, you see," he answered, still smiling.
"I am asking it _for_ you."

"But I don't want to answer such a question off-hand like that; how can
I tell? It would only be _perhaps_, just now."

Young Haight answered quickly that "just now" he would be contented with
that "perhaps"; but Turner did not hear this. She had spoken at the same
time as he, exclaiming, "But what is the good of talking of that?
Because no matter what happened I feel as though I could not break my
promise to Van, even if I should want to. Because I have talked like
this, Dolly," she went on more seriously, "you must not be deceived or
get a wrong impression. You understand how things are, don't you?"

"Oh, yes," he answered, still trying to carry it off with a laugh. "I
know, I know. But now I hope you won't let anything I have said bother
you, and that things will go on just as if I hadn't spoken, just as if
nothing had happened."

"Why, of course," she said, laughing with him again. "Of _course_, why
shouldn't they?"

They were both at their ease again by the time young Haight stood at the
door with his hat in his hand ready to go.

He raised his free hand over her head, and said, with burlesque,
dramatic effect, trying to keep down a smile:

"Bless you both; go, go marry Vandover and be happy; I forgive you."

"Ah--don't be so _utterly_ absurd," she cried, beginning to laugh.




Chapter Seven


On a certain evening about four months later Ellis and Vandover had a
"date" with Ida Wade and Bessie Laguna at the Mechanics' Fair. Ellis,
Bessie, and Ida were to meet Vandover there in the Art Gallery, as he
had to make a call with his father, and could not get there until
half-past nine. They were all to walk about the Fair until ten, after
which the two men proposed to take the girls out to the Cliff House in
separate coupés. The whole thing had been arranged by Ellis and Bessie,
and Vandover was irritated. Ellis ought to have had more sense; rushing
the girls was all very well, but everybody went to the Mechanics' Fair,
and he didn't like to have nice girls like Turner or Henrietta Vance see
him with chippies like that. It was all very well for Ellis, who had no
social position, but for _him_, Vandover, it would look too confounded
queer. Of course he was in for it now, and would have to face the music.
You can't tell a girl like that that you're ashamed to be seen with her,
but very likely he would get himself into a regular box with it all.

When he arrived at the Mechanics' Pavilion, it was about twenty minutes
of ten, and as he pushed through the wicket he let himself into a huge
amphitheatre full of colour and movement.

There was a vast shuffling of thousands of feet and a subdued roar of
conversation like the noise of a great mill; mingled with these were the
purring of distant machinery, the splashing of a temporary fountain and
the rhythmic clamour of a brass band, while in the piano exhibit the
hired performer was playing a concert-grand with a great flourish.
Nearer at hand one could catch ends of conversation and notes of
laughter, the creaking of boots, and the rustle of moving dresses and
stiff skirts. Here and there groups of school children elbowed their way
through the crowd, crying shrilly, their hands full of advertisement
pamphlets, fans, picture cards, and toy whips with pewter whistles on
the butts, while the air itself was full of the smell of fresh popcorn.

Ellis and Bessie were in the Art Gallery upstairs. Mrs. Wade, Ida's
mother, who gave lessons in hand painting, had an exhibit there which
they were interested to find; a bunch of yellow poppies painted on
velvet and framed in gilt. They stood before it some little time
hazarding their opinions and then moved on from one picture to another;
Ellis bought a catalogue and made it a duty to find the title of every
picture. Bessie professed to be very fond of painting; she had 'taken it
up' at one time and had abandoned it, only because the oil or turpentine
or something was unhealthy for her. "Of course," she said, "I'm no
critic, I only know what I like. Now that one over there, I like _that_.
I think those ideal heads like that are lovely, don't you, Bandy? Oh,
there's Van!"

"Hello!" said Vandover, coming up. "Where's Ida?"

"Hello, Van!" answered Bessie. "Ida wouldn't come. Isn't it too mean?
She said she couldn't come because she had a cold, but she was just
talking through her face, I know. She's just got kind of a streak on and
you can't get anything out of her. You two haven't had a row, have you?
Well, I didn't _think_ you had. But she's worried about something or
other. I don't believe she's been out of the house this week. But isn't
it mean of her to throw cold water on the procession like this? She's
been giving me a lecture, too, and says she's going to reform."

"Well," said Vandover, greatly relieved, "that's too bad. We could have
had a lot of fun to-night. I'm awfully sorry. Well, what are you two
going to do?"

"Oh, I guess we'll follow out our part of the programme," said Ellis.
"You are kind of left out, though."

"I don't know," answered Vandover. "Maybe I'll go downtown, and see if I
can find some of the boys."

"Oh, Dolly Haight is around here somewheres," said Ellis. "We saw him
just now over by the chess machine."

"I guess I'll try and find him, then," responded Vandover. "Well, I hope
you two enjoy yourselves." As he was turning away Bessie Laguna came
running back, and taking him a little to one side said:

"You'd better go round and see Ida pretty soon if you can. She's all
broke up about something, I'm sure. I think she'd like to see you pretty
well. Honestly," she said, suddenly very grave, "I never saw Ida so cut
up in my life. She's been taking on over something in a dreadful way,
and I think she'd like to see you. She won't tell _me_ anything. You go
around and see her."

"All right," answered Vandover smiling, "I'll go."

As he was going down the stairs on his way to find young Haight it
occurred to him what Ida's trouble might be. He was all at once struck
with a great fear, so that for an instant he turned cold and weak, and
reached out his hand to steady himself against the railing of the
stairs. Ah, what a calamity that would be! What a calamity! What a
dreadful responsibility! What a crime! He could not keep the thought out
of his mind. He tried to tell himself that Ida had practically given her
consent by going into such a place; that he was not the only one, after
all; that there was nothing certain as yet. He stood on the stairway,
empty for that moment, biting the end of his thumb, saying to himself in
a low voice:

"What a calamity, what a horrible calamity that would be! Ah, you
scoundrel! You damned fool, not to have thought!" A couple of girls, the
counter girls at one of the candy booths, came down the stairs behind
him with a great babble of talk. Vandover gave an irritated shrug of his
shoulders as if freeing himself from the disagreeable subject and went
on.

He could not find young Haight down stairs and so went up into the
gallery again. After a long time he came upon him sitting on an empty
bench nursing his cane and watching the crowd go past.

"Hello, old man!" he exclaimed. "Ellis told me I would find you around
somewhere. I was just going to give you up." He sat down beside his
chum, and the two began to talk about the people as they passed. "Ah,
get on to the red hat!" exclaimed Vandover on a sudden. "That's the
third time she's passed."

"Has Ellis gone off with Bessie Laguna?" asked young Haight.

"Yes," answered Vandover. "They're going to have a time at the Cliff
House."

"That's too bad," young Haight replied. "Ellis has just thrown himself
away with that girl. He might have known some very nice people when he
first came here. Between that girl and his whisky he has managed to
spoil every chance he might have had."

"There's Charlie Geary," Vandover exclaimed suddenly, whistling and
beckoning. "Hey, there, Charlie! where you going? Oh," he cried on a
sudden as Geary came up, "oh, get on to his new store clothes, will
you?" They both pretended to be overwhelmed by the elegance of Geary's
new suit.

"O-oh!" cried young Haight. "The bloody, bloomin', bloated swell. Just
let me _touch_ them!"

Vandover shaded his eyes and turned away as though dazzled. "This is
_too_ much," he gasped. "Such magnificence, such purple and fine linen."
Then suddenly he shouted, "Oh, _oh! look_ at the crease in those
trousers. No; it's too much, I can't stand it."

"Oh, shut up," said Geary, irritated, as they had intended he should be.
"Yes," he went on, "I thought I'd blow myself. I've been working like a
dog the whole month. I'm trying to get in Beale's office. Beale and
Storey, you know. I got the promise of a berth last week, so I thought
I'd blow myself for some rags. I've been over to San Rafael all day
visiting my cousins; had a great time; went out to row. Oh, and had a
great feed: lettuce sandwiches with mayonnaise. Simply out of sight. I
came back on the four o'clock boat and held down the 'line' on Kearney
Street for an hour or two."

"Yes?" young Haight said perfunctorily, adding after a moment, "Isn't
this a gay crowd, a typical San Francisco crowd and--"

"I had a cocktail in the Imperial at about quarter of five," said Geary,
"and got a cigar at the Elite; then I went around to get my clothes. Oh,
you ought to have heard the blowing up I gave my tailor! I let him have
it right straight."

Geary paused a moment, and Vandover said: "Come on, let's walk around a
little; don't you want to? We might run on to the red hat again."

"I told him," continued Geary without moving, "that if he wanted to do
any more work for me, he'd have to get in front of himself in a hurry,
and that _I_ wasn't full of bubbles, if _he_ was. 'Why,' says he, 'why,
Mr. Geary, I've never had a customer talk like this to me before since
I've been in the business!' 'Well, Mr. Allen,' says I, 'it's time you
_had_! Oh, sure, I gave it to him straight."

"Vandover has gone daft over a girl in a red hat," said young Haight,
as they got up and began to walk. "Have you noticed her up here?"

"I went to the Grillroom after I left the tailor's," continued Geary,
"and had supper downtown. Ah, you ought to have seen the steak they gave
me! Just about as thick as it was wide. I gave the slavey a four-bit
tip. Oh, it's just as well, you know, to keep in with them, if you go
there often. I lunch there four or five times a week."

They descended to the ground floor and promenaded the central aisle
watching for pretty girls. In front of a candy-counter, where there was
a soda fountain, they saw the red hat again. Vandover looked her
squarely in the face and laughed a little. When he had passed he looked
back; the girl caught his eye and turned away with a droll smile.
Vandover paused, grinning, and raising his hat; "I guess that's mine,"
he said.

"You are not going, are you?" exclaimed young Haight, as Vandover
stopped. "Oh, for goodness' sake, Van, do leave the girls alone for one
hour in the day. Come on! Come on downtown with us."

"No, no," answered Vandover. "I'm going to chase it up. Good-bye. I may
see you fellows later," and he turned back and went up to the girl.

"Look at that!" said young Haight, exasperated. "He knows he's liable to
meet his acquaintances here, and yet there he goes, almost arm in arm
with a girl like that. It's too bad; why _can't_ a fellow keep straight
when there are such a lot of _nice_ girls?"

Geary never liked to see anything done better than he could do it
himself. Just now he was vexed because Vandover had got in ahead of him.
He looked after the girl a moment and muttered scornfully:

"Cheap meat!" adding, "Ah, you bet _I_ wouldn't do that. I flatter
myself that I'm a little too clever to cut my own throat in that
fashion. I look out after my interests better than that. Well, Dolly,"
he concluded, "_I've_ got a thirst on. Van and Ellis have gone off with
their girls; let's you and I go somewhere and have something wet."

"All right. What's the matter with the Luxembourg?" answered young
Haight.

"Luxembourg goes, then," assented Geary, and they turned about and
started for the door. As they were passing out some one came running up
behind them and took an arm of each: it was Vandover.

"Hello," cried Geary, delighted, "your girl shook you, didn't she?"

"Not a bit of it," answered Vandover. "Oh, but say, she is out of sight!
Says her name is Grace Irving. No, she didn't shake me. I made a date
with her for next Wednesday night. I didn't want to be seen around here
with her, you know."

"Of _course_ she will keep that date!" said Geary.

"Well, now, I think she will," protested Vandover.

"Well, come along," interrupted young Haight. "We'll all go down to the
Luxembourg and have something cold and wet."

"Ah, make it the Imperial instead," objected Vandover. "We may find
Flossie."

"Say," cried Geary, "can't you _live_ without trailing around after some
kind of petticoats?"

"You're right," admitted Vandover, "I can't," but he persuaded them to
go to the Imperial for all that.

At the Imperial, Toby, the red-eyed waiter, came to take their order.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "Haven't seen you around here for
some time."

"No, no," said Geary. "I've been too busy. I've been working like a dog
lately to get into a certain office. You bet I'll make it all right--all
right. Bring me a stringy rabbit and a pint of dog's-head."

"You bet I've been working," he continued after they had settled down to
their beer and rabbits, "working like a dog. A man's got to rustle if
he's going to make a success at law. _I'm_ going to make it go, by
George, or I'll know the reason why. I'll make my way in this town and
my pile. There's money to be made here and _I_ might just as well make
it as the next man. Every man for himself, that's what _I_ say; that's
the way to get along. It may be selfish, but you've got to do it. By
God! it's human nature. Isn't that right, hey? Isn't that right?"

"Oh, that's right," admitted young Haight, trying to be polite. After
this the conversation lagged a little. Young Haight drank his
Apollinaris lemonade through a straw, Geary sipped his ale, and Vandover
fed himself Welsh rabbit and Spanish olives with the silent enjoyment of
a glutton. By and by, when they had finished and had lighted their
cigars and cigarettes, they began to talk about the last Cotillon, to
which Vandover and Haight belonged.

"Say, Van," said young Haight, tilting his head to one side and shutting
one eye to avoid the smoke from his cigar, "say, didn't I see you
dancing with Mrs. Doane after supper?"

"Yes," said Vandover laughing; "all the men were trying to get a dance
with her. She had an edge on."

"No?" exclaimed Geary, incredulously.

"That's a fact," admitted young Haight. "Van is right."

"She was opposite to me at table," said Vandover, "and _I_ saw her empty
a whole bottle of champagne."

"Why, I didn't know they got drunk like that at the Cotillons," said
Geary. "I thought they were very swell."

"Well, of course, they don't as a rule," returned Vandover. "Of course
there are girls like--like Henrietta Vance who belong to the Cotillon
and make it what it is, and what it ought to be. But there are other
girls like Mrs. Doane and Lilly Stannard and the Trafford girls that
like their champagne pretty well now, and don't you forget it! Oh, you
know, I wouldn't call it getting drunk, though."

"Well, why not?" exclaimed young Haight impatiently. "Why not call it
'getting drunk?' Why not call things by their right name? You can see
just how bad they are then; and I think it's shameful that such things
can go on in an organization that is supposed to contain the very best
people in the city. Now, I just want to tell you what I saw at one of
these same Cotillons in the first part of the season. Lilly Stannard
disappeared after supper and people said she was sick and was going
home, but I knew exactly what was the matter, because I had seen her at
the supper table. Well, I had gone outside on the steps to get a
mouthful of smoke, and my little cousin, Hetty, who has just come out
and who is only nineteen, was out there with me because it was so warm
inside, and _she_ had seen Lilly Stannard filling up with champagne at
supper, and didn't know what to make of it. Well, we were just talking
about it, and I was trying to make her believe too that Lilly Stannard
was sick, when here comes Lilly herself out to her carriage. Her maid
was supporting her, just about half-carrying her. Lilly's face was so
pale that the powder on it looked like ashes, her hair was all coming
down, and she was hiccoughing. Now," continued young Haight, his eyes
snapping, and his voice raised so as to make itself heard above the
exclamations of his two friends, "now, that's a _fact_; I give you my
word of honour that it actually happened. It's not hearsay; I saw it
myself. It's fine, isn't it?" he went on, wrathfully. "It sounds well,
don't it, when it's told _just as it happened_? The girl was dead drunk.
Oh, she may have made a mistake; it may have been the first time; but
the fact remains that she always drinks a lot of champagne at the
Cotillons, and other girls have been drunk there, too. Mrs. Doane, that
Van tells about, was _drunk_; that's the word for it. She was dead drunk
that night, and there was my little cousin, Hetty, who had never seen
even a man the worse for his liquor, standing there and taking it all
in. Of course, every one hushed the thing up or else said the poor girl
was sick; but Hetty knew, and what effect do you suppose it had upon a
little girl like that, who had always been told what nice,
irreproachable people went to the Cotillons? Hetty will never be the
same little girl now that she was before. Oh, it makes me damned tired."

"Well, I don't see," said Geary, "why the girls should make such a fuss
about the men keeping straight. I daresay now that this Stannard girl
would cut us all dead if she knew how drunk we were that night about
four months ago--that night that you fellows got thrown out of the
Luxembourg."

"No, I don't believe she would at all," said young Haight.

"She'd think better of you for it," put in Vandover. "Look here," he
went on, "all this talk of women demanding the same moral standard for
men as men do for women is fine on paper, but how does it work in real
life? The women don't demand it at all. Take the average society girl in
a big city like this. The girls that we meet at teas and receptions and
functions--don't you suppose they know the life we men lead? Of course
they do. They may not know it in detail, but they know in a general way
that we get drunk a good deal and go to disreputable houses and that
sort of thing, and do they ever cut us for that? No, sir; not much.
Why, I tell you, they even have a little more respect for us. They like
a man to know things, to be experienced. A man that keeps himself
straight and clean and never goes around with fast women, they think is
ridiculous. Of course, a girl don't want to know the particulars of a
man's vice; what they want is that a man should have the knowledge of
good and evil, yes, and lots of evil. To a large extent I really believe
it's the women's fault that the men are what they are. If they demanded
a higher moral standard the men would come up to it; they encourage a
man to go to the devil and then--and then when he's rotten with disease
and ruins his wife and has children--what is it--_'spotted
toads'_--_then_ there's a great cry raised against the men, and women
write books and all, when half the time the woman has only encouraged
him to be what he is."

"Oh, well now," retorted young Haight, "you know that all the girls are
not like that."

"Most of them that you meet in society are."

"But they are the best people, aren't they?" demanded Geary.

"No," answered Vandover and young Haight in a breath, and young Haight
continued:

"No; I believe that very few of what you would call the 'best people' go
out in society--people like the Ravises, who have good principles, and
keep up old-fashioned virtues and all that. You know," he added, "they
have family prayers down there every morning after breakfast."

Geary began to smile.

"Well, now, I don't care," retorted young Haight, "I like that sort of
thing."

"So do I," said Vandover. "Up home, now, the governor asks a blessing at
each meal, and somehow I wouldn't like to see him leave it off. But you
can't tell me," he went on, going back to the original subject of their
discussion, "you can't tell me that American society girls, city-bred,
and living at the end of the nineteenth century, don't know about
things. Why, man alive, how can they help but know? Look at those that
have brothers--don't you suppose they know, and if they know, why don't
they use their influence to stop it? I tell you if any one were to write
up the lives that we young men of the city lead after dark, people
wouldn't believe it. At that party that Henrietta Vance gave last month
there were about twenty fellows there and I knew every one, and I was
looking around the supper-table and wondering how many of those young
fellows had never been inside of a disreputable house, and there was
only _one_ beside Dolly Haight!"

Young Haight exclaimed at this, laughing good-naturedly, twirling his
thumbs, and casting down his eyes with mock-modesty.

"Well, that's the truth just the same," Vandover went on. "We young men
of the cities are a fine lot. I'm not doing the baby act. I'm not laying
the blame on the girls altogether, but I say that in a measure the girls
are responsible. They want a man to be a _man_, to be up to date, to be
a man of the world and to go in for that sort of vice, but they don't
know, they don't dream, how rotten and disgusting it is. Oh, I'm not
preaching. I know I'm just as bad as the rest, and I'm going to have a
good time while I can, but sometimes when you stop and think, and as
Dolly says 'call things by their right names,' why you feel, don't you
know--_queer_."

"I don't believe, Van," responded young Haight, "that it's _quite_ as
bad as you say. But it's even wrong, I think, that a good girl should
know anything about vice at all."

"Oh, that's nonsense," broke in Geary; "you can't expect nowadays that a
girl, an American girl, can live twenty years in a city and not know
things. Do you think the average modern girl is going to be the
absolutely pure and innocent girl of, say, fifty years ago? Not much;
they are right on to things to-day. You can't tell them much. And it's
all right, too; they know how to look out for themselves, then. It's
part of their education; and I think if they haven't the knowledge of
evil, and don't know what sort of life the average young man leads, that
their mothers ought to tell them."

"Well, I don't agree with you," retorted young Haight. "There's
something revolting in the idea that it's necessary a young girl should
be instructed in that sort of nastiness."

"Why, not at all," answered Geary. "Without it she might be ruined by
the first man that came along. It's a protection to her virtue."

"Oh, pshaw! I don't believe it at all," cried young Haight,
impatiently. "I believe that a girl is born with a natural intuitive
purity that will lead her to protect her virtue just as instinctively as
she would dodge a blow; if she wants to go wrong she will have to make
an effort herself to overcome that instinct."

"And if she don't," cried Vandover eagerly, "if she don't--if she don't
protect her virtue, I say a man has a right to go as far with her as he
can."

"If _he_ don't, some one else will," said Geary.

"Ah, you can't get around it that way," answered young Haight, smiling.
"It's a man's duty to protect a girl, even if he has to protect her
against herself."

When he got home that night Vandover thought over this remark of young
Haight's and in its light reviewed what had occurred in the room at the
Imperial. He felt aroused, nervous, miserably anxious. At length he
tried to dismiss the subject from his mind; he woke up his drowsing
grate fire, punching it with the poker, talking to it, saying, "Wake up
there, you!" When he was undressed, he sat down before it in his
bathrobe, absorbing its heat luxuriously, musing into the coals,
scratching himself as was his custom. But for all that he fretted
nervously and did not sleep well that night.

Next morning he took his bath. Vandover enjoyed his bath and usually
spent two or three hours over it. When the water was very warm he got
into it with his novel on a rack in front of him and a box of chocolates
conveniently near. Here he stayed, for over an hour, eating and reading,
and occasionally smoking a cigarette, until at length the enervating
heat of the steam gradually overcame him and he dropped off to sleep.

On this particular morning between nine and ten Geary called, and as was
his custom came right up to Vandover's room. Mr. Corkle, lying on the
wolfskin in the bay window, jumped up with a gruff bark, but,
recognizing him, came up wiggling his short tail. Geary saw Vandover's
clothes thrown about the floor and the closed door of the bathroom.

"Hey, Van!" he called. "It's Charlie Geary. Are you taking a bath?"

"Hello! What? Who is it?" came from behind the door. "Oh, is that you,
Charlie? Hello! how are you? Yes, I'm taking a bath. I must have been
asleep. Wait a minute; I'll be out."

"No, I can't stop," answered Geary. "I've an appointment downtown;
overslept myself, and had to go without my breakfast; makes me feel all
broke up. I'll get something at the Grillroom about eleven; a steak, I
guess. But that isn't what I came to say. Ida Wade has killed herself!
Isn't it fearful? I thought I'd drop in on my way downtown and speak to
you about it. It's dreadful! It's all in the morning papers. She must
have been out of her head."

"What is it--what has she done?" came back Vandover's voice. "Papers--I
haven't seen--what has she done? Tell me--what has she done?"

"Why, she committed suicide last night by taking laudanum," answered
Geary, "and nobody knows why. She didn't leave any message or letter or
anything of the kind. It's a fearful thing to happen so suddenly, but it
seems she has been very despondent and broke up about something or other
for a week or two. They found her in her room last night about ten
o'clock lying across her table with only her wrapper on. She was
unconscious then, and between one and two she died. She was unconscious
all the time. Well, I can't stop any longer, Van; I've an appointment
downtown. I was just going past the house and I thought I would run up
and speak to you about Ida. I'll see you again pretty soon and we'll
talk this over."

Mr. Corkle politely attended Geary to the head of the stairs, then went
back to Vandover's room, and after blowing under the crack of the
bathroom door to see if his master was still there returned to the
wolfskin and sat down on his short tail and yawned. He was impatient to
see Vandover and thought he stayed in his bath an unnecessarily long
time. He went up to the door again and listened. It was very still
inside; he could not hear the slightest sound, and he wondered again
what could keep Vandover in there so long. He had too much self-respect
to whine, so he went back to the wolfskin and curled up in the sun, but
did not go to sleep.

By and by, after a very long time, the bathroom door swung open, and
Vandover came out. He had not dried himself and was naked and wet. He
went directly to the table in the centre of the room and picked up the
morning paper, looking for the article of which Geary had spoken. At
first he could not find it, and then it suddenly jumped into prominence
from out the gray blur of the print on an inside page beside an
advertisement of a charity concert for the benefit of a home for
incurable children. There was a picture of Ida taken from a photograph
like one that she had given him, and which even then was thrust between
the frame and glass of his mirror. He read the article through; it
sketched her life and character and the circumstances of her death with
the relentless terseness of the writer cramped for space. According to
this view, the causes of her death were unknown. It had been remarked
that she had of late been despondent and in ill health.

Vandover threw the paper down and straightened up, naked and dripping,
putting both hands to his head. In a low voice under his breath he said:

"What have I done? What have I done now?"

Like the sudden unrolling of a great scroll he saw his responsibility
for her death and for the ruin of that something in her which was more
than life. What would become of her now? And what would become of him?
For a single brief instant he tried to persuade himself that Ida had
consented after all. But he knew that this was not so. She had
consented, but he had forced her consent; he was none the less guilty.
And then in that dreadful moment when he saw things in their true light,
all the screens of conventionality and sophistry torn away, the words
that young Haight had spoken came back to him. No matter if she had
consented, it was his duty to have protected her, even against herself.

He walked the floor with great strides, steaming with the warm water,
striking his head with his hands and crying out, "Oh, this is fearful,
fearful! What have I done now? I have killed her; yes, and worse!"

He could think of nothing worse that could have happened to him. What a
weight of responsibility to carry--he who hated responsibility of any
kind, who had always tried to escape from anything that was even
irksome, who loved his ease, his comfort, his peace of mind!

At every moment now he saw the different consequences of what he had
done. Now, it was that his life was ruined, and that all through its
course this crime would hang like a millstone about his neck. There
could be no more enjoyment of anything for him; all the little pleasures
and little self-indulgences which till now had delighted him were
spoiled and rendered impossible. The rest of his life would have to be
one long penitence; any pleasure he might take would only make his crime
seem more abominable.

Now, it was a furious revolt against his mistake that had led him to
such a fearful misunderstanding of Ida; a silent impotent rage against
himself and against the brute in him that he had permitted to drag him
to this thing.

Now, it was a wave of an immense pity for the dead girl that overcame
him, and he saw himself as another person, destroying what she most
cherished for the sake of gratifying an unclean passion.

Now, it was a terror for himself. What would they do to him? His part in
the affair was sure to be found out. He tried to think what the
punishment for such crime would be; but would he not be considered a
murderer as well? Could he not hang for this? His imagination was never
more active; his fear never more keen. At once a thousand plans of
concealment or escape were tossed up in his mind.

But worse than all was the thought of that punishment from which there
was absolutely no escape, and of that strange other place where his
crime would assume right proportions and receive right judgment, no
matter how it was palliated or evaded here. Then for an instant it was
as if a gulf without bottom had opened under him, and he had to fight
himself back from its edge for sheer self-preservation. To look too long
in that direction was simple insanity beyond any doubt.

And all this time he threw himself to and fro in his room, his long
white arms agitated and shaking, his wet and shining hair streaming far
over his face, and the sparse long fell upon his legs and ankles, all
straight and trickling with moisture. At times an immense unreasoning
terror would come upon him all of a sudden, horrible, crushing, so that
he rolled upon the bed groaning and sobbing, digging his nails into his
scalp, shutting his teeth against a desire to scream out, writhing in
the throes of terrible mental agony.

That day and the next were fearful. To Vandover everything in his world
was changed. All that had happened before the morning of Geary's visit
appeared to him to have occurred in another phase of his life, years and
years ago. He lay awake all night long, listening to the creaking of the
house and the drip of the water faucets. He turned from his food with
repugnance, told his father that he was sick, and kept indoors as much
as he could, reading all the papers to see if he had been found out. To
his great surprise and relief, a theory gained ground that Ida was
subject to spells of ill-health, to long fits of despondency, and that
her suicide had occurred during one of these. If Ida's family knew
anything of the truth, it was apparent that they were doing their best
to cover up their disgrace. Vandover was too thoroughly terrified for
his own safety to feel humiliated at this possible explanation of his
security. There was as yet not even a guess that implicated him.

He thought that he was bearing up under the strain well enough, but on
the evening of the second day, as he was pretending to eat his supper,
his father sent the servant out and turning to him, said kindly:

"What is it, Van? Aren't you well nowadays?"

"Not very, sir," answered Vandover. "My throat is troubling me again."

"You look deathly pale," returned his father. "Your eyes are sunken and
you don't eat."

"Yes, I know," said Vandover. "I'm not feeling well at all. I think I'll
go to bed early to-night. I don't know"--he continued, after a pause,
feeling a desire to escape from his father's observation--"I don't know
but what I'll go up now. Will you tell the cook to feed Mr. Corkle for
me?"

His father looked at him as he pushed back from the table.

"What's the matter, Van?" he said. "Is there anything wrong?"

"Oh, I'll be all right in the morning," he replied nervously. "I feel a
little under the weather just now."

"Don't you think you had better tell me what the trouble is?" said his
father, kindly.

"There _isn't_ any trouble, sir," insisted Vandover. "I just feel a
little under the weather."

But as he was starting to undress in his room a sudden impulse took
possession of him, an overwhelming childish desire to tell his father
all about it. It was beginning to be more than he was able to bear
alone. He did not allow himself to stop and reason with this impulse,
but slipped on his vest again and went downstairs. He found his father
in the smoking-room, sitting unoccupied in the huge leather chair before
the fireplace.

As Vandover came in the Old Gentleman rose and without a word, as if he
had been expecting him, went to the door and shut and locked it. He came
back and stood before the fireplace watching Vandover as he approached
and took the chair he had just vacated. Vandover told him of the affair
in two or three phrases, without choosing his words, repeating the same
expressions over and over again, moved only with the desire to have it
over and done with.

It was like a burst of thunder. The worst his father had feared was not
as bad as this. He had expected some rather serious boyish trouble, but
this was the crime of a man. Still watching his son, he put out his
hand, groping for the edge of the mantelpiece, and took hold of it with
a firm grasp. For a moment he said nothing; then:

"And--and you say you seduced her."

Without looking up, Vandover answered, "Yes, sir," and then he added,
"It is horrible; when I think of it I sometimes feel as though I should
go off my head. I--"

But the Old Gentleman interrupted him, putting out his hand:

"Don't," he said quickly, "don't say anything now--please."

They were both silent for a long time, Vandover gazing stupidly at a
little blue and red vase on the table, wondering how his father would
take the news, what next he would say; the Old Gentleman drawing his
breath short, occasionally clearing his throat, his eyes wandering
vaguely about the walls of the room, his fingers dancing upon the edge
of the mantelpiece. Then at last he put his hand to his neck as though
loosening his collar and said, looking away from Vandover:

"Won't you--won't you please go out--go away for a little while--leave
me alone for a little while."

When Vandover closed the door, he shut the edge of a rug between it and
the sill; as he reopened it to push the rug out of the way he saw his
father sink into the chair and, resting his arm upon the table, bow his
head upon it.

He did not see his father again that night, and at breakfast next
morning not a word was exchanged between them, but his father did not go
downtown to his office that forenoon, as was his custom. Vandover went
up to his room immediately after breakfast and sat down before the
window that overlooked the little garden in the rear of the house.

He was utterly miserable, his nerves were gone, and at times he would
feel again a touch of that hysterical, unreasoning terror that had come
upon him so suddenly the other morning.

Now there was a new trouble: the blow he had given his father. He could
see that the Old Gentleman was crushed under it, and that he had never
imagined that his son could have been so base as this. Vandover wondered
what he was going to do. It would seem as if he had destroyed all of his
father's affection for him, and he trembled lest the Old Gentleman
should cast him off, everything. Even if his father did not disown him,
he did not see how they could ever be the same. They might go on living
together in the same house, but as far apart from each other as
strangers. This, however, did not seem natural; it was much more likely
that his father would send him away, anywhere out of his sight,
forwarding, perhaps through his lawyer or agents, enough money to keep
him alive. The more Vandover thought of this, the more he became
convinced that such would be his father's decision. The Old Gentleman
had spent the night over it, time enough to make up his mind, and the
fact that he had neither spoken to him nor looked at him that morning
was only an indication of what Vandover was to expect. He fancied he
knew his father well enough to foresee how this decision would be
carried out, not with any imprecations or bursts of rage, but calmly,
sadly, inevitably.

Toward noon his father came into the room, and Vandover turned to face
him and to hear what he had to say as best he could. He knew he should
not break down under it, for he felt as though his misery had reached
its limit, and that nothing could touch or affect him much now.

His father had a decanter of port in one hand and a glass in the other;
he filled the glass and held it toward Vandover, saying gently:

"I think you had better take some of this: you've hardly eaten anything
in three days. Do you feel pretty bad, Van?"

Vandover put the glass down and got upon his feet. All at once a great
sob shook him.

"Oh, governor!" he cried.

It was as if it had been a mother or a dear sister. The prodigal son put
his arms about his father's neck for the first time since he had been a
little boy, and clung to him and wept as though his heart were breaking.




Chapter Eight


"We will begin all over again, Van," his father said later that same
day. "We will start in again and try to forget all this, not as much as
we _can_, but as much as we _ought_, and live it down, and from now on
we'll try to do the thing that is right and brave and good."

"Just try me, sir!" cried Vandover.

That was it, begin all over again. He had never seen more clearly than
now that other life which it was possible for him to live, a life that
was above the level of self-indulgence and animal pleasures, a life that
was not made up of the society of lost women or fast girls, but yet a
life of keen enjoyment.

Whenever he had been deeply moved about anything, the power and desire
of art had grown big within him, and he turned to it now, instinctively
and ardently.

It was all the better half of him that was aroused--the better half that
he had kept in check ever since his college days, the better half that
could respond to the influences of his father and of Turner Ravis, that
other Vandover whom he felt was his real self, Vandover the true man,
Vandover the artist, not Vandover the easy-going, the self-indulgent,
not Vandover the lover of women.

From this time forward he was resolved to give up the world that he had
hitherto known, and devote himself with all his strength to his art. In
the first glow of that resolution he thought that he had never been
happier; he wondered how he could have been blind so long; what was all
that life worth compared with the life of a great artist, compared even
with a life of sturdy, virile effort and patient labour even though
barren of achievement?

And then something very curious happened: The little picture of Turner
Ravis that hung over his mantelpiece caught his glance, looking out at
him with her honest eyes and sweet smile. In an instant he seemed to
love her as he had never imagined he could love any one. All that was
best in him went out toward her in a wave of immense tenderness; the
tears came to his eyes, he could not tell why. Ah, he was not good
enough for her now, but he would love her so well that he would grow
better, and between her and his good father and his art, the better
Vandover, the real Vandover, would grow so large and strong within him
that there should be no room for the other Vandover, the Vandover of
Flossie and of the Imperial, the Vandover of the brute.

During the course of talk that day between himself and his father, it
was decided that Vandover should go away for a little while. He was in a
fair way to be sick from worry and nervous exhaustion, and a sea trip to
San Diego and back seemed to be what he stood most in need of. Besides
this, his father told him, it was inevitable that his share in Ida's
death would soon be known; in any case it would be better for him to be
away from the city.

"You take whatever steamer sails next," said his father, "and! go down
to Coronado and stay there as long as you like, three weeks anyway; stay
there until you get well, and when you get back, Van, we'll have a talk
about Paris again. Perhaps you would like to get away this winter, maybe
as soon as next month. You think it over while you are away, and when
you want to go, why, we'll go over together, Van. What do you think?
Would you like to have your old governor along for a little while?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Santa Rosa_ cast off the company's docks the next day about noon in
the midst of a thick, cold mist that was half rain. The Old Gentleman
came to see Vandover off.

The steamer, which seemed gigantic, was roped and cabled to the piers,
feeling the water occasionally with her screw to keep the hawsers taut.
About the forward gangway a band of overworked stevedores were stowing
in the last of the cargo, aided by a donkey engine, which every now and
then broke out into a spasm of sputtering coughs. At the passenger
gangway a great crowd was gathered, laughing and exchanging remarks with
the other crowd that leaned over the railings of the decks.

There was a smell of pitch and bilge in the air mingled with the reek of
hot oil from the engines. About twelve o'clock an odour of cooking
arose, and the steward went about the decks drumming upon a snoring gong
for dinner.

Half an hour later the great whistle roared interminably, drowning out
the chorus of "good-byes" that rose on all sides. Long before it had
ceased, the huge bulk had stirred, almost imperceptibly at first, then,
gathering headway, swung out into the stream and headed for the Golden
Gate.

Vandover was in the stern upon the hurricane deck, shaking his hat
toward his father, who had tied his handkerchief to his cane and was
waving it at him as he stood upon an empty packing-case. As the throng
of those who were left behind dwindled away, one by one, Vandover could
see him standing there, almost the last of all, and long after the
figure itself was lost in the blur of the background he still saw the
tiny white dot of the handkerchief moving back and forth, as if spelling
out a signal to him across the water.

The fog drew a little higher as they passed down the bay. To the left
was the city swarming upon its hills, a dull gray mass, cut in parallel
furrows by the streets; straggling and uneven where it approached the
sand-dunes in the direction of the Presidio. To the right the long slope
of Tamalpais climbed up and was lost in the fog, while directly in front
of them was the Golden Gate, a bleak prospect of fog-drenched headlands
on either side of a narrow strip of yellow, frothy water. Beyond that,
the open Pacific.

A brisk cannonade was going on from the Presidio and from Black Point,
and both forts were hidden behind a great curtain of tumbling white
smoke that rolled up to mingle with the fog. Everybody was on that side
of the deck watching and making guesses as to the reason of it. It was
perhaps target practice. Ah, it was a good thing that the steamer was
not in line with the target. Perhaps, though, that was the safest place
to be. Some one told about a derelict that was anchored as a target off
the heads, and shot at for fifteen hours without being touched once. Oh,
they were great gunners at the Presidio! But just the same the sound of
cannon was a fine thing to hear; it excited one. A noisy party of
gentlemen already installed in the smoking-room came out on deck for a
moment with their cards in their hands, and declared laughingly that the
whole thing was only a salute in the _Santa Rosa's_ honour.

By the middle of the afternoon, Vandover began to see that for him the
trip was going to be tedious. He knew no one on board and had come away
so hurriedly that he had neglected to get himself any interesting books.
He spent an hour or two promenading the upper deck until the cold wind
that was blowing drove him to the smoking-room, where he tried to
interest himself in watching some of the whist games that were in
progress.

It surprised him that he could find occasion to be bored so soon after
what had happened; but he no longer wished to occupy his mind by
brooding over anything so disagreeable and wanted some sort of amusement
to divert and entertain him. Vandover had so accustomed himself to that
kind of self-indulgence that he could not go long without it. It had
become a simple necessity for him to be amused, and just now he thought
himself justified in seeking it in order to forget about Ida's death. He
had dwelt upon this now for nearly four days, until it had come to be
some sort of a formless horror that it was necessary to avoid. He could
get little present enjoyment by looking forward to the new life that he
was going to begin and in which his father, his art, and Turner Ravis
were to be the chief influences. The thought of this prospect did give
him pleasure, but he had for so long a time fed his mind upon the more
tangible and concrete enjoyments of the hour and minute that it demanded
them now continually.

He sat for a long time upon the slippery leather cushions of the
smoking-room trying desperately to become interested in the whist game,
or gazing awestruck at the man at his elbow who was smoking black
Perrique in a pipe, inhaling the smoke and blowing it out through his
nose. After a while he returned to the deck.

There it was cold and wet and a strong wind was blowing from the ocean.
Four miles to the east an endless procession of brown, bare hills filed
slowly past under the fog. The sky was a dreary brown and the leagues of
shifting water a melancholy desert of gray. Besides these there was
nothing but the bleached hills and the drifting fog; the wind blew
continually, passing between the immense reaches of sea and sky with
prolonged sighs of infinite sadness.

Three seagulls followed the vessel, now in a long line, now abreast, and
now in a triangle. They sailed slowly about, dipping and rising in the
vast hollows between the waves, turning their heads constantly from side
to side.

Vandover went to the stern and for a time found amusement in watching
the indicator of the patent log, and listening for its bell. But his
interest in this was soon exhausted, and he returned to the smoking-room
again, reflecting that this was only the first afternoon and that there
still remained two days that somehow had to be gone through with.

About five o'clock, as he was on his way to get a glass of seltzer, he
saw Grace Irving, the girl of the red hat whom he had met at the
Mechanics' Fair, sitting on a camp-stool just inside of her stateroom
eating a banana. The sight of her startled him out of all composure for
the minute. His first impulse was to speak to her, but he reflected that
he was done with all that now and that it was better for him to pass on
as though he had not seen her, but as he came in front of her she looked
up quickly and nodded to him very pleasantly in such a way that it was
evident she had already known he was on board. It was impossible for
Vandover to ignore her, and though he did not stop, he looked back at
her and smiled as he took off his hat.

He went down to supper in considerable agitation, marvelling at the
coincidence that had brought them together again. He wondered, too, how
she could be so pleasant to him now, for as a matter of course he had
not kept the engagement he had made with her at the Fair. At the same
time, he felt that she must think him a great fool not to have stopped
and spoken to her; either he should have done that or else have ignored
her little bow entirely. He was firmly resolved to have nothing to do
with her, yet it chafed him to feel that she thought him diffident. It
seemed now as though he owed it to himself to speak to her if only for a
minute and make some sort of an excuse. By the time he had finished his
supper, he had made up his mind to do this, and then to avoid her for
the rest of the trip.

As he was leaving the dining saloon he met her coming down the stairs
alone, dressed very prettily in a checked travelling ulster with a gray
velvet collar, and a little fore and aft cap to match. He stopped her
and made his excuses; she did not say much in reply and seemed a little
offended, so that Vandover could not refrain from adding that he was
very glad to see her on board.

"Ah, you don't seem as if you were, very," she said, putting out her
chin at him prettily and passing on. It was an awkward and embarrassing
little scene and Vandover was glad that it was over. But the thing had
been done now, he had managed to show the girl that he did not wish to
keep up the acquaintance begun at the Fair, and from now on she would
keep out of his way.

He took a few turns on the upper deck, smoking his pipe, walking about
fast, while his dinner digested. The sun went down behind the black
horizon in an immense blood-red nebula of mist, the sea turned from gray
to dull green and then to a lifeless brown, and the _Santa Rosa's_
lights began to glow at her quarters and at her masthead; in her stern
the screw drummed and threshed monotonously, a puff of warm air reeking
with the smell of hot oil came from the engine hatch, and in an instant
Vandover saw again the curved roof of the immense iron-vaulted depot,
the passengers on the platform staring curiously at the group around the
invalid's chair, the repair gang in spotted blue overalls, and the huge
white cat dozing on an empty baggage truck.

The wind freshened and he returned to the smoking-room to get warm. The
same game of whist was going on, and the man with the Perrique tobacco
had filled another pipe and continued to blow the smoke through his
nose.

After a while Vandover went back to the main deck and wandered aft,
where he stood a long time looking over the stern, interested in
watching the receding water. It was dark by this time, the wind had
increased and had blown the fog to landward, and the ocean had changed
to a deep blue, the blue of the sky at night; here and there a wave
broke, leaving a line of white on the sea like the trail of a falling
star across the heavens, while the white haze of the steamer's wake
wandered vaguely across the intense blue like the milky way across the
zenith.

Vandover was horribly bored. There seemed to be absolutely nothing to
amuse him, unless, indeed, he should decide to renew his acquaintance
with Grace Irving. But this was out of the question now, for he knew
what it would lead to. Even if he should yield to the temptation, he
did not see how he could take any great pleasure in that sort of thing
again, after what had happened.

Of all the consequences of what he had done, the one which had come to
afflict him the most poignantly was that his enjoyment of life was
spoiled. At first he had thought that he never could take pleasure in
anything again so long as he should live, that his good times were gone.
But as his pliable character rearranged itself to suit the new
environment, he began to see that there would come a time when he would
grow accustomed to Ida's death and when his grief would lose its
sharpness. He had even commenced to look forward to this time and to
long for it as a sort of respite and relief. He believed at first that
it would not be for a great many years; but even so soon after the
suicide as this, he saw with a little thrill of comfort that it would be
but a matter of months. At the same time Vandover was surprised and even
troubled at the ease with which he was recovering from the first shock.
He wondered at himself, because he knew he had been sincere in his talk
with his father. Vandover was not given to self-analysis, but now for a
minute he was wondering if this reaction were due to his youth, his good
health and his good spirits, or whether there was something wrong with
him. However, he dismissed these thoughts with a shrug of his shoulders
as though freeing himself from some disagreeable burden. Ah, he was no
worse than the average; one could get accustomed to almost anything; it
was only in the books that people had their lives ruined; and to brood
over such things was unnatural and morbid. Ah! what a dreadful thing to
become morbid! He could not bring Ida back, or mitigate what he had
done, or be any more sorry for it by making himself miserable. Well,
then! Only he would let that sort of thing alone after this, the lesson
had been too terrible; he would try and enjoy himself again, only it
should be in other ways.

Later in the evening, about nine o'clock, when nearly all the passengers
were in bed, and Vandover was leaning over the side of the boat
finishing his pipe before turning in himself, Grace Irving came out of
her stateroom and sat down at a little distance from him, looking out
over the water, humming a little song. She and Vandover were the only
people to be seen on the deserted promenade.

Vandover saw her without moving, only closing his teeth tighter on his
pipe. It was evident that Grace expected him to speak to her and had
given him a chance for an admirable little tête-à-tête. For a moment
Vandover's heart knocked at his throat; he drew his breath once or twice
sharply through his nose. In an instant all the old evil instincts were
back again, urging and clamouring never so strong, never so insistent.
But Vandover set his face against them, honestly, recalling his
resolution, telling himself that he was done with that life. As he had
said, the lesson had been too terrible.

He turned about resolutely, and walked slowly away from her. The girl
looked after him a moment, surprised, and then called out:

"Oh, Mr. Vandover!"

Vandover paused a moment, looking back.

"Where are you going?" she went on. "Didn't you see me here? Don't you
want to come and talk to me?"

"No," answered Vandover, smiling good-humouredly, trying to be as polite
as was possible. "No, I don't." Then he took a sudden resolution, and
added gravely, "I don't want to have anything to do with you."

In his stateroom, as he sat on the edge of his berth winding his watch
before going to bed, he thought over what he had said. "That was a mean
way to talk to a girl," he told himself, "but," he added, "it's the only
thing to do. I simply couldn't start in again after all that's happened.
Oh, yes, that was the right thing to do!"

He felt a glow of self-respect for his firmness and his decision, a
pride in the unexpected strength, the fine moral rigour that he had
developed at the critical moment. He _could_ turn sharp around when he
wanted to, after all. Ah, yes, that was the only thing to do if one was
to begin all over again and live down what had happened. He wished that
the governor might know how well he had acted.




Chapter Nine


Vandover stayed for two weeks at Coronado Beach and managed to pass the
time very pleasantly. He was fortunate enough to find a party at the
hotel whom he knew very well. In the morning they bathed or sailed on
the bay, and in the afternoon rode out with a pack of greyhounds and
coursed jack-rabbits on the lower end of the island. Vandover's good
spirits began to come back to him, his appetite returned, his nerves
steadied themselves, he slept eight hours every night. But for all that
he did not think that things were the same with him. He said to himself
that he was a changed man; that he was older, more serious.

During this time he received several letters from his father which he
answered very promptly. In the course of their correspondence it was
arranged that they should both leave for Europe on the twenty-fifth of
that month, and that consequently, Vandover should return to the city
not later than the fifteenth. Vandover was having such a good time,
however, that he stayed over the regular steamer in order to go upon a
moonlight picnic down on the beach. The next afternoon he took passage
for San Francisco on a second-class boat.

This homeward passage turned out to be one long misery for Vandover. He
had never been upon a second-class boat before and had never imagined
that anything could be so horribly uncomfortable or disagreeable. The
_Mazatlan_ was overcrowded, improperly ballasted, and rolled
continually. The table was bad, the accommodations inadequate, the
passengers hopelessly uncongenial. Cold and foggy weather accompanied
the boat continually. The same endless procession of bleached hills
still filed past under the mist, going now in the opposite direction,
and the same interminable game of whist was played in the smoking-room,
only with greasier, second-class cards, amidst the acrid smoke of
second-class tobacco. At supper, the first day out, a little Jew who sat
next to Vandover, and who invariably wore a plush skull-cap with
ear-laps, tried to sell him two flawed and yellow diamonds.

The evening after leaving Port Hartford the _Mazatlan_ ran into dirty
weather. It was not stormy--simply rough, disagreeable, the wind and sea
directly ahead. Half an hour after supper Vandover began to be sick. For
a long time he sat on the slippery leather cushions in the nasty
smoking-room, sucking limes, drinking seltzer, and trying to be
interested in the card games. He dozed a little and awoke, feeling
wretched, covered with a cold sweat, racked by a pain in the back of his
head, and tortured by an abominable nausea. He groped his way out upon
the swaying, gusty deck, descended to his cabin, and went to bed.

The _Mazatlan_ had booked more passengers than could be accommodated,
the steward being obliged to make up beds on the floor of the dining
saloon and even upon some of the tables. Vandover had not been able to
get a stateroom, and so had put up with a bunk in the common cabin at
the stern of the vessel.

About two o'clock in the morning he woke up in this place frightfully
sick at the stomach and wretched in body and mind. He had an upper bunk,
and for a long time he lay on his back rolling about with the rolling of
the steamer, vaguely staring straight above him at the roof of the
cabin, hardly a hand's-breadth above his face. The roof was iron,
painted with a white paint very thick and shiny, and was studded with
innumerable bolt-heads and enormous nuts. By and by, for no particular
reason, he rose on his elbow and, leaning over the side of his berth,
looked about him.

The light streaming from two strong-smelling ship's lanterns showed the
cabin, long and narrow. There were two cramped passageways, on either
side of which the tiers of bunks, mere open racks filled with bedding,
rose to the roof, those occupied by women hung with spotted turkey-red
calico.

The cabin was two decks below the open air and every berth was occupied,
the only ventilation being through the door. The air was foul with the
stench of bilge, the reek of the untrimmed lamps, the exhalation of so
many breaths, and the close, stale smell of warm bedding.

A vague murmur rose in the air, the sound of deep breathing, the moving
of restless bodies between the coarse sheets, the momentary noise of the
scratching of blunt finger-tips, a subdued cough, the moan of a sleeping
child. All the while the shaft of the screw, seemingly close beneath
the floor, pounded and rumbled without a moment's stop.

Immediately underneath Vandover two men, saloonkeepers, awoke and lit
their cigars and began a long discussion on the question of license. Two
or three bunks distant, a woman, a Salvation Army lassie, one of a large
party of Salvationists who were on board, began to cough violently,
choking for breath. Across the aisle the little Jew of the plush
skull-cap with ear-laps snored monotonously in alternate keys, one a
guttural bass, the other a rasping treble. The _Mazatlan_ was rolling
worse than ever, now up and down, now from side to side, and now with
long forward lurches that combined the other two motions. During one of
these latter the little Jew was half awakened. He stopped snoring,
leaving an abrupt silence in the air. Then Vandover could hear him
threshing about uneasily; still half asleep he began to mutter and
swear: "Dat's it, r-roll; I woult if I were you; r-roll, dat's
righd--dhere, soh--ah, geep it oop--r-roll, you damnt ole tub, yust
_r-r-roll_."

The continued pitching, the foul air, and the bitter smoke from the
saloonkeepers' cigars became more than Vandover could stand. His stomach
turned, at every instant he gagged and choked. He suddenly made up his
mind that he could stand it no longer, and determined to go on deck,
preferring to walk the night out rather than spend it in the cabin. He
drew on his shoes without lacing them, and dressed himself hurriedly,
omitting his collar and scarf; he put his hat on his tumbled hair, swung
into his overcoat, and, wrapping his travelling-rug around him, started
up toward the deck. On the stairs he was seized with such a nausea that
he could hardly keep from vomiting where he stood, but he rushed out
upon the lower deck, gaining the rail with a swimming head.

He sank back upon an iron capstan with a groan, weak and trembling, his
eyes full of tears, a bursting feeling in his head. He was utterly
miserable.

It was about half-past two in the morning, and a cold raw wind was
whistling through the cordage and flinging the steamer's smoke down upon
the decks and upon the water like a great veil of crêpe. A sickly
half-light was spread out between the sea and the heavens. By its means
he could barely distinguish great, livid blotches of fog or cloud
whirling across the black sky, and the unnumbered multitude of
white-topped waves rushing past, plunging and rising like a vast herd of
black horses galloping on with shaking white manes. Low in the northeast
horizon lay a long pale blur of light against which the bow of the
steamer, inky black, rose and fell and heaved and sank incessantly. To
the landward side and very near at hand, so near that he could hear the
surf at their feet, the long procession of hills continually defiled,
vague and formless masses between the sea and sky. The wind, the noise
of the waves rushing past, the roll of the breakers and the groaning of
the cordage all blended together and filled the air with a prolonged
minor note, lamentable beyond words. The atmosphere was cold and damp,
the spray flying like icy bullets. The sombre light that hung over the
sea reflected itself in long blurred streaks upon the wet decks and
slippery iron rods. Here and there about the rigging a tremulous ball of
orange haze showed where the ship's lanterns were swung. Directly under
him in the stern the screw snarled incessantly in a vortex of boiling
water that forever swirled away and was lost in the darkness. From time
to time the indicator of the patent log, just beside him, rang its tiny
bell.

Vandover drew his rug about him and went up to the main deck, dragging
his shoelaces after him. The wind was stronger here, but he bent his
head against it and went on toward the smoking-room, for the idea had
occurred to him that he could shut himself in there and pass the rest of
the night upon the cushions; anything was better than returning to the
cabin downstairs.

The deck was jerked away from beneath his feet, and he was hurled
forward, many times his own length, against a companionway, breaking his
thumb as he fell. A second shock threw him down again as he rose;
everything about him shook and danced like glassware upon a jarred
table. Then the whole ship rose under his feet as no wave had ever
lifted it, and fell again, not into yielding water, but upon something
that drove through its sides as if they had been paper. A deafening,
crashing noise split the mournful howl of the wind, and far underneath
him Vandover heard a rapid series of blows, a dreadful rumbling and
pounding that thrilled and quivered through all the vessel's framework
up to her very mast-tips. On all fours upon the deck, holding to a cleat
with one hand, he braced himself, watching and listening, his senses all
alive, his muscles tense. In the direction of the engine-room he heard
the furious ringing of a bell. The screw stopped. The _Mazatlan_
wallowed helplessly in the trough of the sea.

Vandover's very first impulse was a wild desire of saving himself; he
had not the least thought for any one else. Every soul on board might
drown, so only he should be saved. It was the primitive animal instinct,
the blind adherence to the first great law, an impulse that in this
first moment of excitement could not be resisted. He ran forward and
snatched a life-preserver from the pile that was stored beneath the
bridge.

As he was fastening it about him, the passengers began to pour out upon
the deck, from their staterooms, from the companionways, and from the
dining saloon. In an instant the deck was crowded. Men and women ran
about in all directions, pushing and elbowing each other, calling
shrilly over one another's heads. Near to Vandover a woman, clothed only
in her night-dress, clung to the arm of a half-dressed man, crying again
and again for a certain "August." She wrung her hands in her excitement;
at times the man shouted "August!" in a quavering bass voice. "August,
here we are over _here_!" "Oh, where _is_ Gussie?" wailed the woman.
"Here, here I am," another voice answered at length; "here I am, I'm all
right." "Oh," exclaimed the woman with a sob of relief, "here's Gussie;
now let's all keep together whatever happens."

All about the decks just such scenes were going on; most of the women
wore only their night-gowns or dressing-gowns, their hair tumbling down
and blowing about their cheeks, their bare feet slipping and sliding on
the heaving wet decks. The men were in shirt and drawers, standing in
the centre of their family groups, silent, excited, very watchful;
others of them ran about searching for life-preservers, shouting
hoarsely, talking to themselves, speaking all their thoughts aloud.

But there was no panic; there was excitement, confusion, bewilderment,
but no excess of fear, no unreasoning terror, deaf, blind, utterly
reckless.

All at once a man parted the crowd with shoulders and elbows, passing
along the deck with great strides. It was the captain. The next instant
Vandover saw him on the bridge, hatless, without his vest or his coat,
just as he had sprung from his berth. From time to time he shouted his
orders, leaning over the rail, gesturing with his arm. The crew ran
about, carrying out his directions, jostling the men out of the way,
knocking over women and children, speaking to no one, intent only upon
their work.

In a few moments the deck steward and one of the officers appeared amid
the crowd of passengers. They were very calm, and at every instant
shouted, "There is no danger; every one go back to his berth; clear the
deck, please; no danger, gentlemen; everybody be quiet; go back to your
berths!" The steward even came up to Vandover and pulled at the straps
of his life-preserver, exclaiming, "Take this off! There is no danger;
you're only exciting the other passengers. Come on, take it off and go
back to your berth."

Vandover obeyed him, slowly loosening the buckles, looking around him,
bewildered, but still holding the preserver in his hands.

Best of all, however, was the example of a huge old fellow wearing the
cap and clothes of a boatswain's mate of a United States battleship; he
seemed to dominate the excited throng in a moment, going about from
group to group, quieting them all, spreading a feeling of confidence and
courage throughout the whole ship. He was an inspiration to Vandover,
who began to be ashamed of having yielded to the first selfish instinct
of preservation.

Just as the boatswain's mate was offering his flask to the woman whom
Vandover had heard calling for "August," the _Mazatlan_ lurched heavily
once or twice, and then slowly listed to the port side, going over
farther and farther every instant. Vandover heard a renewed rumbling and
smashing noise far beneath him, and in some way knew that the cargo was
shifting. Instead of righting herself, the ship began to heave over more
and more. The whole sea on the port side seemed to rise up to meet the
rail; under Vandover's feet the incline of the deck grew steeper and
steeper. All at once his excitement came back upon him with the
sharpness of a blow, and he caught at the brass grating of a skylight
exclaiming: "By God! We're going _over_." The women screamed with
terror; one heard the men shouting, "Look out! hold on! catch hold
there!" An old man, wearing only a gray flannel shirt, lost his footing;
he fell, and rolled over and over down the deck stupidly, inertly,
without making the slightest effort t

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