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The Lost Road

by Richard Harding Davis · English · Gutenberg #2283 · 436,281 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lost Road

Author: Richard Harding Davis


        
Release date: August 1, 2000 [eBook #2283]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2283

Credits: Produced by Marleen Hugo.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST ROAD ***




Produced by Marleen Hugo.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE LOST ROAD


THE NOVELS AND STORIES OF

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS




TO

MY WIFE




Contains:

  THE LOST ROAD
  THE MIRACLE OF LAS PALMAS
  EVIL TO HIM WHO EVIL THINKS
  THE MEN OF ZANZIBAR
  THE LONG ARM
  THE GOD OF COINCIDENCE
  THE BURIED TREASURE OF COBRE
  THE BOY SCOUT
  SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
  THE DESERTER




AN INTRODUCTION BY

JOHN T. McCUTCHEON


WITH DAVIS IN VERA CRUZ, BRUSSELS, AND SALONIKA

In common with many others who have been with Richard Harding Davis as
correspondents, I find it difficult to realize that he has covered his
last story and that he will not be seen again with the men who follow
the war game, rushing to distant places upon which the spotlight of
news interest suddenly centres.

It seems a sort of bitter irony that he who had covered so many big
events of world importance in the past twenty years should be abruptly
torn away in the midst of the greatest event of them all, while the
story is still unfinished and its outcome undetermined.  If there is a
compensating thought, it lies in the reflection that he had a life of
almost unparalleled fulness, crowded to the brim, up to the last
moment, with those experiences and achievements which he particularly
aspired to have.  He left while the tide was at its flood, and while he
still held supreme his place as the best reporter in his country.  He
escaped the bitterness of seeing the ebb set in, when the youth to
which he clung had slipped away, and when he would have to sit
impatient in the audience, while younger men were in the thick of
great, world-stirring dramas on the stage.

This would have been a real tragedy in "Dick" Davis's case, for, while
his body would have aged, it is doubtful if his spirit ever would have
lost its youthful freshness or boyish enthusiasm.

It was my privilege to see a good deal of Davis in the last two years.

He arrived in Vera Cruz among the first of the sixty or seventy
correspondents who flocked to that news centre when the situation was
so full of sensational possibilities.  It was a time when the American
newspaper-reading public was eager for thrills, and the ingenuity and
resourcefulness of the correspondents in Vera Cruz were tried to the
uttermost to supply the demand.

In the face of the fiercest competition it fell to Davis's lot to land
the biggest story of those days of marking time.

The story "broke" when it became known that Davis, Medill McCormick,
and Frederick Palmer had gone through the Mexican lines in an effort to
reach Mexico City.  Davis and McCormick, with letters to the Brazilian
and British ministers, got through and reached the capital on the
strength of those letters, but Palmer, having only an American
passport, was turned back.

After an ominous silence which furnished American newspapers with a
lively period of suspense, the two men returned safely with wonderful
stories of their experiences while under arrest in the hands of the
Mexican authorities.  McCormick, in recently speaking of Davis at that
time, said that, "as a correspondent in difficult and dangerous
situations, he was incomparable--cheerful, ingenious, and
undiscouraged.  When the time came to choose between safety and leaving
his companion he stuck by his fellow captive even though, as they both
said, a firing-squad and a blank wall were by no means a remote
possibility."

This Mexico City adventure was a spectacular achievement which gave
Davis and McCormick a distinction which no other correspondents of all
the ambitious and able corps had managed to attain.

Davis usually "hunted" alone.  He depended entirely upon his own
ingenuity and wonderful instinct for news situations.  He had the
energy and enthusiasm of a beginner, with the experience and training
of a veteran.  His interest in things remained as keen as though he had
not been years at a game which often leaves a man jaded and blase.  His
acquaintanceship in the American army and navy was wide, and for this
reason, as well as for the prestige which his fame and position as a
national character gave him, he found it easy to establish valuable
connections in the channels from which news emanates.  And yet, in
spite of the fact that he was "on his own" instead of having a working
partnership with other men, he was generous in helping at times when he
was able to do so.

Davis was a conspicuous figure in Vera Cruz, as he inevitably had been
in all such situations.  Wherever he went, he was pointed out.  His
distinction of appearance, together with a distinction in dress, which,
whether from habit or policy, was a valuable asset in his work, made
him a marked man.  He dressed and looked the "war correspondent," such
a one as he would describe in one of his stories.  He fulfilled the
popular ideal of what a member of that fascinating profession should
look like.  His code of life and habits was as fixed as that of the
Briton who takes his habits and customs and games and tea wherever he
goes, no matter how benighted or remote the spot may be.

He was just as loyal to his code as is the Briton.  He carried his
bath-tub, his immaculate linen, his evening clothes, his war
equipment--in which he had the pride of a connoisseur--wherever he
went, and, what is more, he had the courage to use the evening clothes
at times when their use was conspicuous.  He was the only man who wore
a dinner coat in Vera Cruz, and each night, at his particular table in
the crowded "Portales," at the Hotel Diligencia, he was to be seen, as
fresh and clean as though he were in a New York or London restaurant.

Each day he was up early to take the train out to the "gap," across
which came arrivals from Mexico City.  Sometimes a good "story" would
come down, as when the long-heralded and long-expected arrival of
Consul Silliman gave a first-page "feature" to all the American papers.

In the afternoon he would play water polo over at the navy aviation
camp, and always at a certain time of the day his "striker" would bring
him his horse and for an hour or more he would ride out along the beach
roads within the American lines. After the first few days it was
difficult to extract real thrills from the Vera Cruz situation, but we
used to ride out to El Tejar with the cavalry patrol and imagine that
we might be fired on at some point in the long ride through unoccupied
territory; or else go out to the "front," at Legarto, where a little
American force occupied a sun-baked row of freight-cars, surrounded by
malarial swamps.  From the top of the railroad water-tank, we could
look across to the Mexican outposts a mile or so away.  It was not very
exciting, and what thrills we got lay chiefly in our imagination.

Before my acquaintanceship with Davis at Vera Cruz I had not known him
well.  Our trails didn't cross while I was in Japan in the
Japanese-Russian War, and in the Transvaal I missed him by a few days,
but in Vera Cruz I had many enjoyable opportunities of becoming well
acquainted with him.

The privilege was a pleasant one, for it served to dispel a
preconceived and not an entirely favorable impression of his character.
For years I had heard stories about Richard Harding Davis--stories
which emphasized an egotism and self-assertiveness which, if they ever
existed, had happily ceased to be obtrusive by the time I got to know
him.

He was a different Davis from the Davis whom I had expected to find;
and I can imagine no more charming and delightful companion than he was
in Vera Cruz.  There was no evidence of those qualities which I feared
to find, and his attitude was one of unfailing kindness,
considerateness, and generosity.

In the many talks I had with him, I was always struck by his evident
devotion to a fixed code of personal conduct.  In his writings he was
the interpreter of chivalrous, well-bred youth, and his heroes were
young, clean-thinking college men, heroic big-game hunters, war
correspondents, and idealized men about town, who always did the noble
thing, disdaining the unworthy in act or motive.  It seemed to me that
he was modelling his own life, perhaps unconsciously, after the favored
types which his imagination had created for his stories.  In a certain
sense he was living a life of make-believe, wherein he was the hero of
the story, and in which he was bound by his ideals always to act as he
would have the hero of his story act.  It was a quality which only one
could have who had preserved a fresh youthfulness of outlook in spite
of the hardening processes of maturity.

His power of observation was extraordinarily keen, and he not only had
the rare gift of sensing the vital elements of a situation, but also
had, to an unrivalled degree, the ability to describe them vividly.  I
don't know how many of those men at Verz Cruz tried to describe the
kaleidoscopic life of the city during the American occupation, but I
know that Davis's story was far and away the most faithful and
satisfying picture.  The story was photographic, even to the sounds and
smells.

The last I saw of him in Vera Cruz was when, on the Utah, he steamed
past the flagship Wyoming, upon which I was quartered, and started for
New York.  The Battenberg cup race had just been rowed, and the Utah
and Florida crews had tied.  As the Utah was sailing immediately after
the race, there was no time in which to row off the tie.  So it was
decided that the names of both ships should be engraved on the cup, and
that the Florida crew should defend the title against a challenging
crew from the British Admiral Craddock's flagship.

By the end of June, the public interest in Vera Cruz had waned, and the
corps of correspondents dwindled until there were only a few left.

Frederick Palmer and I went up to join Carranza and Villa, and on the
26th of July we were in Monterey waiting to start with the triumphal
march of Carranza's army toward Mexico City.  There was no sign of
serious trouble abroad.  That night ominous telegrams came, and at ten
o'clock on the following morning we were on a train headed for the
States.

Palmer and Davis caught the Lusitania, sailing August 4 from New York,
and I followed on the Saint Paul, leaving three days later. On the 17th
of August I reached Brussels, and it seemed the most natural thing in
the world to find Davis already there.  He was at the Palace Hotel,
where a number of American and English correspondents were quartered.

Things moved quickly.  On the 19th Irvin Cobb, Will Irwin, Arno Dosch,
and I were caught between the Belgian and German lines in Louvain; our
retreat to Brussels was cut, and for three days, while the vast German
army moved through the city, we were detained.  Then, the army having
passed, we were allowed to go back to the capital.

In the meantime Davis was in Brussels.  The Germans reached the
outskirts of the city on the morning of the 20th, and the
correspondents who had remained in Brussels were feverishly writing
despatches describing the imminent fall of the city.  One of them,
Harry Hansen, of the Chicago Daily News, tells the following story,
which I give in his words:

"While we were writing," says Hansen, "Richard Harding Davis walked
into the writing-room of the Palace Hotel with a bunch of manuscript in
his hand.  With an amused expression he surveyed the three
correspondents filling white paper.

"'I say, men,' said Davis, 'do you know when the next train leaves?'

"'There is one at three o'clock,' said a correspondent, looking up.

"'That looks like our only chance to get a story out,' said Davis.
'Well, we'll trust to that.'

"The story was the German invasion of Brussels, and the train mentioned
was considered the forlorn hope of the correspondents to connect with
the outside world--that is, every correspondent thought it to be the
other man's hope.  Secretly each had prepared to outwit the other, and
secretly Davis had already sent his story to Ostend.  He meant to
emulate Archibald Forbes, who despatched a courier with his real
manuscript, and next day publicly dropped a bulky package in the
mail-bag.

"Davis had sensed the news in the occupation of Brussels long before it
happened.  With dawn he went out to the Louvain road, where the German
army stood, prepared to smash the capital if negotiations failed.  His
observant eye took in all the details. Before noon he had written a
comprehensive sketch of the occupation, and when word was received that
it was under way, he trusted his copy to an old Flemish woman, who
spoke not a word of English, and saw her safely on board the train that
pulled out under Belgian auspices for Ostend."

With passes which the German commandant in Brussels gave us the
correspondents immediately started out to see how far those passes
would carry us.  A number of us left on the afternoon of August 23 for
Waterloo, where it was expected that the great clash between the German
and the Anglo-French forces would occur. We had planned to be back the
same evening, and went prepared only for an afternoon's drive in a
couple of hired street carriages.  It was seven weeks before we again
saw Brussels.

On the following day (August 24) Davis started for Mons.  He wore the
khaki uniform which he had worn in many campaigns.  Across his breast
was a narrow bar of silk ribbon indicating the campaigns in which he
had served as a correspondent.  He so much resembled a British officer
that he was arrested as a British derelict and was informed that he
would be shot at once.

He escaped only by offering to walk to Brand Whitlock, in Brussels,
reporting to each officer he met on the way.  His plan was approved,
and as a hostage on parole he appeared before the American minister,
who quickly established his identity as an American of good standing,
to the satisfaction of the Germans.

In the following few months our trails were widely separated.  I read
of his arrest by German officers on the road to Mons; later I read the
story of his departure from Brussels by train to Holland--a trip which
carried him through Louvain while the town still was burning; and still
later I read that he was with the few lucky men who were in Rheims
during one of the early bombardments that damaged the cathedral.  By
amazing luck, combined with a natural news sense which drew him
instinctively to critical places at the psychological moment, he had
been a witness of the two most widely featured stories of the early
weeks of the war.

Arrested by the Germans in Belgium, and later by the French in France,
he was convinced that the restrictions on correspondents were too great
to permit of good work.

So he left the European war zone with the widely quoted remark: "The
day of the war correspondent is over."

And yet I was not surprised when, one evening, late in November of last
year, he suddenly walked into the room in Salonika where William G.
Shepherd, of the United Press, "Jimmy Hare," the veteran war
photographer, and I had established ourselves several weeks before.

The hotel was jammed, and the city, with a normal capacity of about one
hundred and seventy-five thousand, was struggling to accommodate at
least a hundred thousand more.  There was not a room to be had in any
of the better hotels, and for several days we lodged Davis in our room,
a vast chamber which formerly had been the main dining-room of the
establishment, and which now was converted into a bedroom.  There was
room for a dozen men, if necessary, and whenever stranded Americans
arrived and could find no hotel accommodations we simply rigged up
emergency cots for their temporary use.

The weather in Salonika at this time, late November, was penetratingly
cold.  In the mornings the steam coils struggled feebly to dispel the
chill in the room.

Early in the morning after Davis had arrived, we were aroused by the
sound of violent splashing, accompanied by shuddering gasps, and we
looked out from the snug warmth of our beds to see Davis standing in
his portable bath-tub and drenching himself with ice-cold water.  As an
exhibition of courageous devotion to an established custom of life it
was admirable, but I'm not sure that it was prudent.

For some reason, perhaps a defective circulation or a weakened heart,
his system failed to react from these cold-water baths. All through the
days he complained of feeling chilled.  He never seemed to get
thoroughly warmed, and of us all he was the one who suffered most
keenly from the cold.  It was all the more surprising, for his
appearance was always that of a man in the pink of athletic
fitness--ruddy-faced, clear-eyed, and full of tireless energy.

On one occasion we returned from the French front in Serbia to Salonika
in a box car lighted only by candles, bitterly cold, and frightfully
exhausting.  We were seven hours in travelling fifty-five miles, and we
arrived at our destination at three o'clock in the morning.  Several of
the men contracted desperate colds, which clung to them for weeks.
Davis was chilled through, and said that of all the cold he had ever
experienced that which swept across the Macedonian plain from the
Balkan highlands was the most penetrating.  Even his heavy clothing
could not afford him adequate protection.

When he was settled in his own room in our hotel he installed an
oil-stove which burned beside him as he sat at his desk and wrote his
stories.  The room was like an oven, but even then he still complained
of the cold.

When he left he gave us the stove, and when we left, some time later,
it was presented to one of our doctor friends out in a British
hospital, where I'm sure it is doing its best to thaw the Balkan chill
out of sick and wounded soldiers.

Davis was always up early, and his energy and interest were as keen as
a boy's.  We had our meals together, sometimes in the crowded and
rather smart Bastasini's, but more often in the maelstrom of humanity
that nightly packed the Olympos Palace restaurant.  Davis, Shepherd,
Hare, and I, with sometimes Mr. and Mrs. John Bass, made up these
parties, which, for a period of about two weeks or so, were the most
enjoyable daily events of our lives.

Under the glaring lights of the restaurant, and surrounded by British,
French, Greek, and Serbian officers, German, Austrian, and Bulgarian
civilians, with a sprinkling of American, English, and Scotch nurses
and doctors, packed so solidly in the huge, high-ceilinged room that
the waiters could barely pick their way among the tables, we hung for
hours over our dinners, and left only when the landlord and his
Austrian wife counted the day's receipts and paid the waiters at the
end of the evening.

One could not imagine a more charming and delightful companion than
Davis during these days.  While he always asserted that he could not
make a speech, and was terrified at the thought of standing up at a
banquet-table, yet, sitting at a dinner-table with a few friends who
were only too eager to listen rather than to talk, his stories,
covering personal experiences in all parts of the world, were intensely
vivid, with that remarkable "holding" quality of description which
characterizes his writings.

He brought his own bread--a coarse, brown sort, which he preferred to
the better white bread--and with it he ate great quantities of butter.
As we sat down at the table his first demand was for "Mastika," a
peculiar Greek drink distilled from mastic gum, and his second demand
invariably was "Du beurre!" with the "r's" as silent as the stars; and
if it failed to come at once the waiter was made to feel the enormity
of his tardiness.

The reminiscences ranged from his early newspaper days in Philadelphia,
and skipping from Manchuria to Cuba and Central America, to his early
Sun days under Arthur Brisbane; they ranged through an endless variety
of personal experiences which very nearly covered the whole course of
American history in the past twenty years.

Perhaps to him it was pleasant to go over his remarkable adventures,
but it could not have been half as pleasant as it was to hear them,
told as they were with a keenness of description and brilliancy of
humorous comment that made them gems of narrative.

At times, in our work, we all tried our hands at describing the
Salonika of those early days of the Allied occupation, for it was
really what one widely travelled British officer called it--"the most
amazingly interesting situation I've ever seen"---but Davis's
description was far and away the best, just as his description of Vera
Cruz was the best, and his wonderful story of the entry of the German
army into Brussels was matchless as one of the great pieces of
reporting in the present war.

In thinking of Davis, I shall always remember him for the delightful
qualities which he showed in Salonika.  He was unfailingly considerate
and thoughtful.  Through his narratives one could see the pride which
he took in the width and breadth of his personal relation to the great
events of the past twenty years.  His vast scope of experiences and
equally wide acquaintanceship with the big figures of our time, were
amazing, and it was equally amazing that one of such a rich and
interesting history could tell his stories in such a simple way that
the personal element was never obtrusive.

When he left Salonika he endeavored to obtain permission from the
British staff to visit Moudros, but, failing in this, he booked his
passage on a crowded little Greek steamer, where the only obtainable
accommodation was a lounge in the dining saloon. We gave him a farewell
dinner, at which the American consul and his family, with all the other
Americans then in Salonika, were present, and after the dinner we rowed
out to his ship and saw him very uncomfortably installed for his voyage.

He came down the sea ladder and waved his hand as we rowed away. That
was the last I saw of Richard Harding Davis.

JOHN T. MCCUTCHEON.





THE LOST ROAD


During the war with Spain, Colton Lee came into the service as a
volunteer.  For a young man, he always had taken life almost too
seriously, and when, after the campaign in Cuba, he elected to make
soldiering his profession, the seriousness with which he attacked his
new work surprised no one.  Finding they had lost him forever, his
former intimates were bored, but his colonel was enthusiastic, and the
men of his troop not only loved, but respected him.

From the start he determined in his new life women should have no
part--a determination that puzzled no one so much as the women, for to
Lee no woman, old or young, had found cause to be unfriendly.  But he
had read that the army is a jealous mistress who brooks no rival, that
"red lips tarnish the scabbard steel," that "he travels the fastest who
travels alone."

So, when white hands beckoned and pretty eyes signalled, he did not
look.  For five years, until just before he sailed for his three years
of duty in the Philippines, he succeeded not only in not looking, but
in building up for himself such a fine reputation as a woman-hater that
all women were crazy about him. Had he not been ordered to Agawamsett
that fact would not have affected him.  But at the Officers' School he
had indulged in hard study rather than in hard riding, had overworked,
had brought back his Cuban fever, and was in poor shape to face the
tropics. So, for two months before the transport was to sail, they
ordered him to Cape Cod to fill his lungs with the bracing air of a New
England autumn.

He selected Agawamsett, because, when at Harvard, it was there he had
spent his summer vacations, and he knew he would find sailboats and
tennis and, through the pine woods back of the little whaling village,
many miles of untravelled roads.  He promised himself that over these
he would gallop an imaginary troop in route marches, would manoeuvre it
against possible ambush, and, in combat patrols, ground scouts, and
cossack outposts, charge with it "as foragers."  But he did none of
these things.  For at Agawamsett he met Frances Gardner, and his
experience with her was so disastrous that, in his determination to
avoid all women, he was convinced he was right.

When later he reached Manila he vowed no other woman would ever again
find a place in his thoughts.  No other woman did. Not because he had
the strength to keep his vow, but because he so continually thought of
Frances Gardner that no other woman had a chance.

Miss Gardner was a remarkable girl.  Her charm appealed to all kinds of
men, and, unfortunately for Lee, several kinds of men appealed to her.
Her fortune and her relations were bound up in the person of a rich
aunt with whom she lived, and who, it was understood, some day would
leave her all the money in the world. But, in spite of her charm,
certainly in spite of the rich aunt, Lee, true to his determination,
might not have noticed the girl had not she ridden so extremely well.

It was to the captain of cavalry she first appealed.  But even a
cavalry captain, whose duty in life is to instruct sixty men in the art
of taking the life of as many other men as possible, may turn his head
in the direction of a good-looking girl.  And when for weeks a man
rides at the side of one through pine forests as dim and mysterious as
the aisles of a great cathedral, when he guides her across the wet
marshes when the sun is setting crimson in the pools and the wind blows
salt from the sea, when he loses them both by moonlight in wood-roads
where the hoofs of the horses sink silently into dusty pine needles, he
thinks more frequently of the girl at his side than of the faithful
troopers waiting for him in San Francisco.  The girl at his side
thought frequently of him.

With the "surface indications" of a young man about to ask her to marry
him she was painfully familiar; but this time the possibility was the
reverse of painful.  What she meant to do about it she did not know,
but she did know that she was strangely happy.  Between living on as
the dependent of a somewhat exacting relative and becoming the full
partner of this young stranger, who with men had proved himself so
masterful, and who with her was so gentle, there seemed but little
choice.  But she did not as yet wish to make the choice.  She preferred
to believe she was not certain.  She assured him that before his leave
of absence was over she would tell him whether she would remain on duty
with the querulous aunt, who had befriended her, or as his wife
accompany him to the Philippines.

It was not the answer he wanted; but in her happiness, which was
evident to every one, he could not help but take hope.  And in the
questions she put to him of life in the tropics, of the life of the
"officers' ladies," he saw that what was in her mind was a possible
life with him, and he was content.

She became to him a wonderful, glorious person, and each day she grew
in loveliness.  It had been five years of soldiering in Cuba, China,
and on the Mexican border since he had talked to a woman with interest,
and now in all she said, in all her thoughts and words and delights, he
found fresher and stronger reasons for discarding his determination to
remain wedded only to the United States Army.  He did not need reasons.
He was far too much in love to see in any word or act of hers anything
that was not fine and beautiful.

In their rides they had one day stumbled upon a long-lost and
long-forgotten road through the woods, which she had claimed as their
own by right of discovery, and, no matter to what point they set forth
each day, they always returned by it.  Their way through the woods
stretched for miles.  It was concealed in a forest of stunted oaks and
black pines, with no sign of human habitation, save here and there a
clearing now long neglected and alive only with goldenrod.  Trunks of
trees, moss-grown and crumbling beneath the touch of the ponies' hoofs,
lay in their path, and above it the branches of a younger generation
had clasped hands.  At their approach squirrels raced for shelter,
woodcock and partridge shot deeper into the network of vines and
saplings, and the click of the steel as the ponies tossed their bits,
and their own whispers, alone disturbed the silence.

"It is an enchanted road," said the girl; "or maybe we are enchanted."

"Not I," cried the young man loyally.  "I was never so sane, never so
sure, never so happy in knowing just what I wanted! If only you could
be as sure!"

One day she came to him in high excitement with a book of verse. "He
has written a poem," she cried, "about our own woods, about our lost
road! Listen" she commanded, and she read to him:

"'They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and
rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once
a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is
underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the
keeper sees That, where the ringdove broods, And the badgers roll at
ease, There was once a road through the woods.

"'Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night
air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods Because they see so few), You will hear
the beat of a horse's feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they
perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods.... But there is
no road through the woods.'"


"I don't like that at all," cried the soldierman.  "It's too--too
sad--it doesn't give you any encouragement.  The way it ends, I mean:
'But there is no road through the woods.'  Of course there's a road!
For us there always will be.  I'm going to make sure.  I'm going to buy
those woods, and keep the lost road where we can always find it."

"I don't think," said the girl, "that he means a real road."

"I know what he means," cried the lover, "and he's wrong! There is a
road, and you and I have found it, and we are going to follow it for
always."

The girl shook her head, but her eyes were smiling happily.

The "season" at Agawamsett closed with the tennis tournament, and it
was generally conceded fit and proper, from every point of view, that
in mixed doubles Lee and Miss Gardner should be partners.  Young
Stedman, the Boston artist, was the only one who made objection.  Up in
the sail-loft that he had turned into a studio he was painting a
portrait of the lovely Miss Gardner, and he protested that the three
days' tournament would sadly interrupt his work.  And Frances, who was
very much interested in the portrait, was inclined to agree.

But Lee beat down her objections.  He was not at all interested in the
portrait.  He disapproved of it entirely.  For the sittings robbed him
of Frances during the better part of each morning, and he urged that
when he must so soon leave her, between the man who wanted her portrait
and the man who wanted her, it would be kind to give her time to the
latter.

"But I had no idea," protested Frances, "he would take so long. He told
me he'd finish it in three sittings.  But he's so critical of his own
work that he goes over it again and again.  He says that I am a most
difficult subject, but that I inspire him.  And he says, if I will only
give him time, he believes this will be the best thing he has done."

"That's an awful thought," said the cavalry officer.

"You don't like him," reproved Miss Gardner.  "He is always very polite
to you."

"He's polite to everybody," said Lee; "that's why I don't like him.
He's not a real artist.  He's a courtier.  God gave him a talent, and
he makes a mean use of it.  Uses it to flatter people. He's like these
long-haired violinists who play anything you ask them to in the lobster
palaces."

Miss Gardner looked away from him.  Her color was high and her eyes
very bright.

"I think," she said steadily, "that Mr. Stedman is a great artist, and
some day all the world will think so, too!"

Lee made no answer.  Not because he disagreed with her estimate of Mr.
Stedman's genius-he made no pretense of being an art critic--but
because her vehement admiration had filled him with sudden panic.  He
was not jealous.  For that he was far too humble. Indeed, he thought
himself so utterly unworthy of Frances Gardner that the fact that to
him she might prefer some one else was in no way a surprise.  He only
knew that if she should prefer some one else not all his troop horses
nor all his men could put Humpty Dumpty back again.

But if, in regard to Mr. Stedman, Miss Gardner had for a moment been at
odds with the man who loved her, she made up for it the day following
on the tennis court.  There she was in accord with him in heart, soul,
and body, and her sharp "Well played, partner!" thrilled him like one
of his own bugle calls.  For two days against visiting and local teams
they fought their way through the tournament, and the struggle with her
at his side filled Lee with a great happiness.  Not that the
championship of Agawamsett counted greatly to one exiled for three
years to live among the Moros.  He wanted to win because she wanted to
win. But his happiness came in doing something in common with her, in
helping her and in having her help him, in being, if only in play, if
only for three days, her "partner."

After they won they walked home together, each swinging a fat, heavy
loving-cup.  On each was engraved:

"Mixed doubles, Agawamsett, 1910."

Lee held his up so that the setting sun flashed on the silver.

"I am going to keep that," he said, "as long as I live.  It means you
were once my 'partner.'  It's a sign that once we two worked together
for something and won."  In the words the man showed such feeling that
the girl said soberly:

"Mine means that to me, too.  I will never part with mine, either."

Lee turned to her and smiled, appealing wistfully.

"It seems a pity to separate them," he said.  "They'd look well
together over an open fireplace."

The girl frowned unhappily.  "I don't know," she protested.  "I don't
know."

The next day Lee received from the War Department a telegram directing
him to "proceed without delay" to San Francisco, and there to embark
for the Philippines.

That night he put the question to her directly, but again she shook her
head unhappily; again she said: "I don't know!"

So he sailed without her, and each evening at sunset, as the great
transport heaved her way across the swell of the Pacific, he stood at
the rail and looked back.  With the aid of the first officer he
calculated the difference in time between a whaling village situated at
forty-four degrees north and an army transport dropping rapidly toward
the equator, and so, each day, kept in step with the girl he loved.

"Now," he would tell himself, "she is in her cart in front of the
post-office, and while they sort the morning mail she gossips with the
fisher folks, the summer folks, the grooms, and chauffeurs.  Now she is
sitting for her portrait to Stedman" (he did not dwell long on that
part of her day), "and now she is at tennis, or, as she promised,
riding alone at sunset down our lost road through the woods."

But that part of her day from which Lee hurried was that part over
which the girl herself lingered.  As he turned his eyes from his canvas
to meet hers, Stedman, the charming, the deferential, the adroit, who
never allowed his painting to interrupt his talk, told her of what he
was pleased to call his dreams and ambitions, of the great and
beautiful ladies who had sat before his easel, and of the only one of
them who had given him inspiration. Especially of the only one who had
given him inspiration.  With her always to uplift him, he could become
one of the world's most famous artists, and she would go down into
history as the beautiful woman who had helped him, as the wife of
Rembrandt had inspired Rembrandt, as "Mona Lisa" had made Leonardo.

Gilbert wrote: "It is not the lover who comes to woo, but the lover's
way of wooing!" His successful lover was the one who threw the girl
across his saddle and rode away with her.  But one kind of woman does
not like to have her lover approach shouting: "At the gallop! Charge!"

She prefers a man not because he is masterful, but because he is not.
She likes to believe the man needs her more than she needs him, that
she, and only she, can steady him, cheer him, keep him true to the work
he is in the world to perform.  It is called the "mothering" instinct.

Frances felt this mothering instinct toward the sensitive, imaginative,
charming Stedman.  She believed he had but two thoughts, his art and
herself.  She was content to place his art first. She could not guess
that to one so unworldly, to one so wrapped up in his art, the fortune
of a rich aunt might prove alluring.

When the transport finally picked up the landfalls of Cavite Harbor,
Lee, with the instinct of a soldier, did not exclaim: "This is where
Dewey ran the forts and sank the Spanish fleet!" On the contrary, he
was saying: "When she comes to join me, it will be here I will first
see her steamer.  I will be waiting with a field-glass on the end of
that wharf.  No, I will be out here in a shore-boat waving my hat.  And
of all those along the rail, my heart will tell me which is she!"

Then a barefooted Filipino boy handed him an unsigned cablegram. It
read: "If I wrote a thousand words I could not make it easier for
either of us.  I am to marry Arthur Stedman in December."

Lee was grateful for the fact that he was not permitted to linger in
Manila.  Instead, he was at once ordered up-country, where at a
one-troop post he administered the affairs of a somewhat hectic
province, and under the guidance of the local constabulary chased
will-o'-the-wisp brigands.  On a shelf in his quarters he placed the
silver loving-cup, and at night, when the village slept, he would sit
facing it, filling one pipe after another, and through the smoke
staring at the evidence to the fact that once Frances Gardner and he
had been partners.

In these post-mortems he saw nothing morbid.  With his present
activities they in no way interfered, and in thinking of the days when
they had been together, in thinking of what he had lost, he found deep
content.  Another man, having lost the woman he loved, would have tried
to forget her and all she meant to him.  But Lee was far too honest
with himself to substitute other thoughts for those that were glorious,
that still thrilled him.  The girl could take herself from him, but she
could not take his love for her from him.  And for that he was
grateful.  He never had considered himself worthy, and so could not
believe he had been ill used.  In his thoughts of her there was no
bitterness: for that also he was grateful.  And, as he knew he would
not care for any other woman in the way he cared for her, he preferred
to care in that way, even for one who was lost, than in a lesser way
for a possible she who some day might greatly care for him.  So she
still remained in his thoughts, and was so constantly with him that he
led a dual existence, in which by day he directed the affairs of an
alien and hostile people and by night again lived through the wonderful
moments when she had thought she loved him, when he first had learned
to love her.  At times she seemed actually at his side, and he could
not tell whether he was pretending that this were so or whether the
force of his love had projected her image half around the world.

Often, when in single file he led the men through the forest, he seemed
again to be back on Cape Cod picking his way over their own lost road
through the wood, and he heard "the beat of a horse's feet and the
swish of a skirt in the dew."  And then a carbine would rattle, or a
horse would stumble and a trooper swear, and he was again in the
sweating jungle, where men, intent upon his life, crouched in ambush.

She spared him the mockery of wedding-cards; but the announcement of
the wedding came to him in a three-months-old newspaper.  Hoping they
would speak of her in their letters, he kept up a somewhat one-sided
correspondence with friends of Mrs. Stedman's in Boston, where she now
lived.  But for a year in none of their letters did her name appear.
When a mutual friend did write of her Lee understood the silence.

From the first, the mutual friend wrote, the life of Mrs. Stedman and
her husband was thoroughly miserable.  Stedman blamed her because she
came to him penniless.  The rich aunt, who had heartily disapproved of
the artist, had spoken of him so frankly that Frances had quarrelled
with her, and from her no longer would accept money.  In his anger at
this Stedman showed himself to Frances as he was.  And only two months
after their marriage she was further enlightened.

An irate husband made him the central figure in a scandal that filled
the friends of Frances with disgust, and that for her was an awakening
cruel and humiliating.  Men no longer permitted their womenfolk to sit
to Stedman for a portrait, and the need of money grew imperative.  He
the more blamed Frances for having quarrelled with her aunt, told her
it was for her money he had married her, that she had ruined his
career, and that she was to blame for his ostracism--a condition that
his own misconduct had brought upon him.  Finally, after twelve months
of this, one morning he left a note saying he no longer would allow her
to be a drag upon him, and sailed for Europe.

They learned that, in Paris, he had returned to that life which before
his marriage, even in that easy-going city, had made him notorious.
"And Frances," continued Lee's correspondent, "has left Boston, and now
lives in New York.  She wouldn't let any of us help her, nor even know
where she is.  The last we heard of her she was in charge of the
complaint department of a millinery shop, for which work she was
receiving about the same wages I give my cook."

Lee did not stop to wonder why the same woman, who to one man was a
"drag," was to another, even though separated from her by half the
world, a joy and a blessing.  Instead, he promptly wrote his lawyers to
find Mrs. Stedman, and, in such a way as to keep her ignorant of their
good offices, see that she obtained a position more congenial than her
present one, and one that would pay her as much as, without arousing
her suspicions, they found it possible to give.

Three months had passed, and this letter had not been answered, when in
Manila, where he had been ordered to make a report, he heard of her
again.  One evening, when the band played on the Luneta, he met a newly
married couple who had known him in Agawamsett.  They now were on a
ninety-day cruise around the world.  Close friends of Frances Gardner,
they remembered him as one of her many devotees and at once spoke of
her.

"That blackguard she married," the bridegroom told him, "was killed
three months ago racing with another car from Versailles back to Paris
after a dinner at which, it seems, all present drank 'burgundy out of
the fingerbowls.'  Coming down that steep hill into Saint Cloud, the
cars collided, and Stedman and a woman, whose husband thought she was
somewhere else, were killed. He couldn't even die without making a
scandal of it."

"But the worst," added the bride, "is that, in spite of the way the
little beast treated her, I believe Frances still cares for him, and
always will.  That's the worst of it, isn't it?" she demanded.

In words, Lee did not answer, but in his heart he agreed that was much
the worst of it.  The fact that Frances was free filled him with hope;
but that she still cared for the man she had married, and would
continue to think only of him, made him ill with despair.

He cabled his lawyers for her address.  He determined that, at once, on
learning it, he would tell her that with him nothing was changed.  He
had forgotten nothing, and had learned much.  He had learned that his
love for her was a splendid and inspiring passion, that even without
her it had lifted him up, helped and cheered him, made the whole world
kind and beautiful.  With her he could not picture a world so complete
with happiness.

Since entering the army he had never taken a leave of absence, and he
was sure, if now he asked for one, it would not be refused.  He
determined, if the answer to his cable gave him the address, he would
return at once, and again offer her his love, which he now knew was
deeper, finer, and infinitely more tender than the love he first had
felt for her.  But the cable balked him.  "Address unknown," it read;
"believed to have gone abroad in capacity of governess.  Have employed
foreign agents.  Will cable their report."

Whether to wait for and be guided by the report of the detectives, or
to proceed to Europe and search for her himself, Lee did not know.  He
finally determined that to seek for her with no clew to her whereabouts
would be but a waste of precious moments, while, if in their search the
agents were successful, he would be able to go directly to her.
Meanwhile, by cable, he asked for protracted leave of absence and,
while waiting for his answer, returned to his post.  There, within a
week, he received his leave of absence, but in a fashion that
threatened to remove him forever from the army.

The constabulary had located the will-o'-the-wisp brigands behind a
stockade built about an extinct volcano, and Lee and his troop and a
mountain battery attempted to dislodge them.  In the fight that
followed Lee covered his brows with laurel wreaths and received two
bullet wounds in his body.

For a month death stood at the side of his cot; and then, still weak
and at times delirious with fever, by slow stages he was removed to the
hospital in Manila.  In one of his sane moments a cable was shown him.
It read: "Whereabouts still unknown."  Lee at once rebelled against his
doctors.  He must rise, he declared, and proceed to Europe.  It was
upon a matter of life and death.  The surgeons assured him his
remaining exactly where he was also was a matter of as great
consequence.  Lee's knowledge of his own lack of strength told him they
were right.

Then, from headquarters, he was informed that, as a reward for his
services and in recognition of his approaching convalescence, he was
ordered to return to his own climate and that an easy billet had been
found for him as a recruiting officer in New York City.  Believing the
woman he loved to be in Europe, this plan for his comfort only
succeeded in bringing on a relapse.  But the day following there came
another cablegram.  It put an abrupt end to his mutiny, and brought him
and the War Department into complete accord.

"She is in New York," it read, "acting as agent for a charitable
institution, which one not known, but hope in a few days to cable
correct address."

In all the world there was no man so happy. The next morning a
transport was sailing, and, probably because they had read the
cablegram, the surgeons agreed with Lee that a sea voyage would do him
no harm.  He was carried on board, and when the propellers first
churned the water and he knew he was moving toward her, the hero of the
fight around the crater shed unmanly tears.  He would see her again,
hear her voice; the same great city would shelter them.  It was worth a
dozen bullets.

He reached New York in a snow-storm, a week before Christmas, and went
straight to the office of his lawyers.  They received him with
embarrassment.  Six weeks before, on the very day they had cabled him
that Mrs. Stedman was in New York, she had left the charitable
institution where she had been employed, and had again disappeared.

Lee sent his trunks to the Army and Navy Club, which was immediately
around the corner from the recruiting office in Sixth Avenue, and began
discharging telegrams at every one who had ever known Frances Gardner.
The net result was discouraging.  In the year and a half in which he
had been absent every friend of the girl he sought had temporarily
changed his place of residence or was permanently dead.

Meanwhile his arrival by the transport was announced in the afternoon
papers.  At the wharf an admiring trooper had told a fine tale of his
conduct at the battle of the crater, and reporters called at the club
to see him.  He did not discourage them, as he hoped through them the
fact of his return might be made known to Frances.  She might send him
a line of welcome, and he would discover her whereabouts.  But, though
many others sent him hearty greetings, from her there was no word.

On the second day after his arrival one of the telegrams was answered
in person by a friend of Mrs. Stedman.  He knew only that she had been
in New York, that she was very poor and in ill health, that she shunned
all of her friends, and was earning her living as the matron of some
sort of a club for working girls.  He did not know the name of it.

On the third day there still was no news.  On the fourth Lee decided
that the next morning he would advertise.  He would say only: "Will
Mrs. Arthur Stedman communicate with Messrs. Fuller & Fuller?" Fuller &
Fuller were his lawyers.  That afternoon he remained until six o'clock
at the recruiting office, and when he left it the electric street
lights were burning brightly.  A heavy damp snow was falling, and the
lights and the falling flakes and the shouts of drivers and the toots
of taxicabs made for the man from the tropics a welcome homecoming.

Instead of returning at once to his club, he slackened his steps. The
shop windows of Sixth Avenue hung with Christmas garlands, and colored
lamps glowed like open fireplaces.  Lee passed slowly before them, glad
that he had been able to get back at such a season.  For the moment he
had forgotten the woman he sought, and was conscious only of his
surroundings.  He had paused in front of the window of a pawn-shop.
Over the array of cheap jewelry, of banjos, shot-guns, and razors, his
eyes moved idly.  And then they became transfixed and staring.  In the
very front of the window, directly under his nose, was a tarnished
silver loving-cup.  On it was engraved, "Mixed Doubles. Agawamsett,
1910."  In all the world there were only two such cups, and as though
he were dodging the slash of a bolo, Lee leaped into the shop.  Many
precious seconds were wasted in persuading Mrs. Cohen that he did not
believe the cup had been stolen; that he was not from the Central
Office; that he believed the lady who had pawned the cup had come by it
honestly; that he meant no harm to the lady; that he meant no harm to
Mrs. Cohen; that, much as the young lady may have needed the money Mrs.
Cohen had loaned her on the cup, he needed the address of the young
lady still more.

Mrs. Cohen retired behind a screen, and Lee was conscious that from the
other side of it the whole family of Cohens were taking his
measurements.  He approved of their efforts to protect the owner of the
cup, but not from him.

He offered, if one of the younger Cohens would take him to the young
lady, to let him first ask her if she would receive Captain Lee, and
for his service he would give the young Cohen untold gold. He exhibited
the untold gold.  The young Cohen choked at the sight and sprang into
the seat beside the driver of a taxicab.

"To the Working Girls' Home, on Tenth Street!" he commanded.


Through the falling snow and the flashing lights they slid, skidded,
and leaped.  Inside the cab Lee shivered with excitement, with cold,
with fear that it might not be true.  He could not realize she was
near.  It was easier to imagine himself still in the jungle, with
months of time and sixteen thousand miles of land and water separating
them; or in the hospital, on a white-enamel cot, watching the shadow
creep across the whitewashed wall; or lying beneath an awning that did
not move, staring at a burning, brazen sea that did not move, on a
transport that, timed by the beating of his heart, stood still.

Those days were within the radius of his experience.  Separation,
absence, the immutable giants of time and space, he knew.  With them he
had fought and could withstand them.  But to be near her, to hear her
voice, to bring his love into her actual presence, that was an attack
upon his feelings which found him without weapons.  That for a very few
dollars she had traded the cup from which she had sworn never to part
did not concern him.  Having parted from him, what she did with a
silver mug was of little consequence.  It was of significance only in
that it meant she was poor.  And that she was either an inmate or a
matron of a lodging-house for working girls also showed she was poor.

He had been told that was her condition, and that she was in ill
health, and that from all who loved her she had refused to accept help.
At the thought his jaws locked pugnaciously.  There was one who loved
her, who, should she refuse his aid, was prepared to make her life
intolerable. He planned in succession at lightning speed all he might
do for her.  Among other things he would make this Christmas the
happiest she or he would ever know.  Not for an instant did he question
that she who had refused help from all who loved her could refuse
anything he offered.  For he knew it was offered with a love that
demanded nothing in return, with a love that asked only to be allowed
to love, and to serve.  To refuse help inspired by such a feeling as
his would be morbid, wicked, ridiculous, as though a flower refused to
turn its face to the sun, and shut its lips to the dew.

The cab stopped in front of a brick building adorned with many
fire-escapes.  Afterward he remembered a bare, brilliantly lit hall
hung with photographs of the Acropolis, and a stout, capable woman in a
cap, who looked him over and said:

"You will find Mrs. Stedman in the writing-room."

And he remembered entering a room filled with Mission furniture and
reading-lamps under green shades.  It was empty, except for a young
girl in deep black, who was seated facing him, her head bent above a
writing-desk.  As he came into the circle of the lamps the girl raised
her eyes and as though lifted to her feet by what she saw, and through
no effort of her own, stood erect.

And the young man who had persuaded himself his love demanded nothing,
who asked only to worship at her gate, found his arms reaching out, and
heard his voice as though it came from a great distance, cry, "Frances!"

And the girl who had refused the help of all who loved her, like a
homing pigeon walked straight into the outstretched arms.

After five minutes, when he was almost able to believe it was true, he
said in his commanding, masterful way: "And now I'm going to take you
out of here.  I'm going to buy you a ring, and a sable coat, and a
house to live in, and a dinner.  Which shall we buy first?"

"First," said Frances, frowning happily, "I am afraid we must go to the
Ritz, to tell Aunt Emily.  She always loved you, and it will make her
so happy."

"To the Ritz!" stammered the young man.  "To Aunt Emily! I thought they
told me your aunt and-you-"

"We quarrelled, yes," said Frances, "and she has forgiven me; but she
has not forgiven herself, so she spoils me, and already I have a house
to live in, and several sable coats, and, oh! everything, everything
but the ring."

"I am so sorry!" cried Lee.  "I thought you were poor.  I hoped you
were poor.  But you are joking!" he exclaimed delightedly.  "You are
here in a working girls' home-"

"It is one of Aunt Emily's charities.  She built it," said Frances.  "I
come here to talk to the girls."

"But," persisted Lee triumphantly, "if you are not poor, why did you
pawn our silver loving-cup?"

The face of the girl became a lovely crimson, and tears rose to her
eyes. As though at a confessional, she lifted her hands penitently.

"Try to understand," she begged; "I wanted you to love me, not for my
money-"

"But you knew!" cried Lee.

"I had to be sure," begged the girl; "and I wanted to believe you loved
me even if I did not love you.  When it was too late I knew you loved
me as no woman ever deserved to be loved; and I wanted that love.  I
could not live without it.  So when I read in the papers you had
returned I wouldn't let myself write you; I wouldn't let myself beg you
to come to see me.  I set a test for you.  I knew from the papers you
were at the Army and Navy Club, and that around the corner was the
recruiting office.  I'd often seen the sergeant there, in uniform, at
the door.  I knew you must pass from your club to the office many times
each day, so I thought of the loving-cup and the pawn-shop.  I planted
it there.  It was a trick, a test.  I thought if you saw it in a
pawn-shop you would believe I no longer cared for you, and that I was
very poor.  If you passed it by, then I would know you yourself had
stopped caring, but if you asked about it, if you inquired for me, then
I would know you came to me of your own wish, because you-"

Lee shook his head.

"You don't have to tell me," he said gently, "why I came.  I've a cab
outside.  You will get in it," he commanded, "and we will rescue our
cup.  I always told you they would look well together over an open
fireplace."





THE MIRACLE OF LAS PALMAS


This is the story of a gallant officer who loved his profession, his
regiment, his country, but above all, whiskey; of his miraculous
conversion to total abstinence, and of the humble instrument that
worked the miracle.  At the time it was worked, a battalion of the
Thirty-third Infantry had been left behind to guard the Zone, and was
occupying impromptu barracks on the hill above Las Palmas.  That was
when Las Palmas was one of the four thousand stations along the forty
miles of the Panama Railroad. When the railroad was "reconstructed" the
name of Las Palmas did not appear on the new time-table, and when this
story appears Las Palmas will be eighty feet under water.  So if any
one wishes to dispute the miracle he will have to conduct his
investigation in a diving-bell.

On this particular evening young Major Aintree, in command of the
battalion, had gone up the line to Panama to dine at the Hotel Tivoli,
and had dined well.  To prevent his doing this a paternal government
had ordered that at the Tivoli no alcoholic liquors may be sold; but
only two hundred yards from the hotel, outside the zone of temperance,
lies Panama and Angelina's, and during the dinner, between the Tivoli
and Angelina's, the Jamaican waiter-boys ran relay races.

After the dinner, the Jamaican waiter-boys proving too slow, the
dinner-party in a body adjourned to Angelina's, and when later, Major
Aintree moved across the street to the night train to Las Palmas, he
moved unsteadily.

Young Standish of the Canal Zone police, who, though but twenty-six,
was a full corporal, was for that night on duty as "train guard," and
was waiting at the rear steps of the last car.  As Aintree approached
the steps he saw indistinctly a boyish figure in khaki, and, mistaking
it for one of his own men, he clasped the handrail for support, and
halted frowning.

Observing the condition of the officer the policeman also frowned, but
in deference to the uniform, slowly and with reluctance raised his hand
to his sombrero.  The reluctance was more apparent than the salute.  It
was less of a salute than an impertinence.

Partly out of regard for his rank, partly from temper, chiefly from
whiskey, Aintree saw scarlet.

"When you s'lute your s'perior officer," he shouted, "you s'lute him
quick.  You unnerstan', you s'lute him quick! S'lute me again," he
commanded, "and s'lute me damn quick."

Standish remained motionless.  As is the habit of policemen over all
the world, his thumbs were stuck in his belt.  He answered without
offense, in tones matter-of-fact and calm.

"You are not my superior officer," he said.

It was the calmness that irritated Aintree.  His eyes sought for the
infantryman's cap and found a sombrero.

"You damned leatherneck," he began, "I'll report--"

"I'm not a marine, either," interrupted Standish.  "I'm a policeman.
Move on," he ordered, "you're keeping these people waiting."

Others of the dinner-party formed a flying wedge around Aintree and
crowded him up the steps and into a seat and sat upon him. Ten minutes
later, when Standish made his rounds of the cars, Aintree saw him
approaching.  He had a vague recollection that he had been insulted,
and by a policeman.

"You!" he called, and so loudly that all in the car turned, "I'm going
to report you, going to report you for insolence.  What's your name?"

Looking neither at Aintree nor at the faces turned toward him, Standish
replied as though Aintree had asked him what time it was.

"Standish," he said, "corporal, shield number 226, on train guard."  He
continued down the aisle.

"I'll remember you," Aintree shouted.

But in the hot, glaring dawn of the morning after, Aintree forgot. It
was Standish who remembered.

The men of the Zone police are hand-picked.  They have been soldiers,
marines, cowboys, sheriffs, "Black Hussars" of the Pennsylvania State
constabulary, rough riders with Roosevelt, mounted police in Canada,
irregular horse in South Africa; they form one of the best-organized,
best-disciplined, most efficient, most picturesque semi-military bodies
in the world.  Standish joined them from the Philippine constabulary in
which he had been a second lieutenant.  There are several like him in
the Zone police, and in England they would be called gentlemen rankers.
On the Isthmus, because of his youth, his fellow policemen called
Standish "Kid."  And smart as each of them was, each of them admitted
the Kid wore his uniform with a difference. With him it always looked
as though it had come freshly ironed from the Colon laundry;  his
leather leggings shone like meerschaum pipes; the brim of his sombrero
rested impudently on the bridge of his nose.

"He's been an officer," they used to say in extenuation.  "You can tell
when he salutes.  He shows the back of his hand."  Secretly, they were
proud of him.  Standish came of a long chain of soldiers, and that the
weakest link in the chain had proved to be himself was a sorrow no one
else but himself could fathom.  Since he was three years old he had
been trained to be a soldier, as carefully, with the same singleness of
purpose, as the crown prince is trained to be a king.  And when, after
three happy, glorious years at West Point, he was found not clever
enough to pass the examinations and was dropped, he did not curse the
gods and die, but began again to work his way up.  He was determined he
still would wear shoulder-straps. He owed it to his ancestors.  It was
the tradition of his family, the one thing he wanted; it was his
religion.  He would get into the army even if by the side door, if only
after many years of rough and patient service.  He knew that some day,
through his record, through the opportunity of a war, he would come
into his inheritance.  Meanwhile he officered his soul, disciplined his
body, and daily tried to learn the lesson that he who hopes to control
others must first control himself.

He allowed himself but one dissipation, one excess.  That was to hate
Major Aintree, commanding the Thirty-third Infantry.  Of all the world
could give, Aintree possessed everything that Standish considered the
most to be desired.  He was a graduate of West Point, he had seen
service in Cuba, in the Boxer business, and in the Philippines.  For an
act of conspicuous courage at Batangas, he had received the medal of
honor.  He had had the luck of the devil.  Wherever he held command
turned out to be the place where things broke loose.  And Aintree
always attacked and routed them, always was the man on the job.  It was
his name that appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed
the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct.
Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was
without taint of envy or detraction.  He gloried in Aintree, he
delighted to know the army held such a man.  He was grateful to Aintree
for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave
all the devotion of a fanatic.  He made a god of him.  This was the
attitude of mind toward Aintree before he came to the Isthmus.  Up to
that time he had never seen his idol.  Aintree had been only a name
signed to brilliant articles in the service magazines, a man of whom
those who had served with him or under him, when asked concerning him,
spoke with loyalty and awe, the man the newspapers called "the hero of
Batangas." And when at last he saw his hero, he believed his worship
was justified.  For Aintree looked the part.  He was built like a
greyhound with the shoulders of a stevedore.  His chin was as
projecting, and as hard, as the pointed end of a flat-iron.  His every
movement showed physical fitness, and his every glance and tone a
confidence in himself that approached insolence.  He was thirty-eight,
twelve years older than the youth who had failed to make his
commission, and who, as Aintree strode past, looked after him with
wistful, hero-worshipping eyes.  The revulsion, when it came, was
extreme.  The hero-worship gave way to contempt, to indignant
condemnation, in which there was no pity, no excuse.  That one upon
whom so much had been lavished, who for himself had accomplished such
good things, should bring disgrace upon his profession, should by his
example demoralize his men, should risk losing all he had attained, all
that had been given, was intolerable.  When Standish learned his hero
was a drunkard, when day after day Aintree furnished visible evidences
of that fact, Standish felt Aintree had betrayed him and the army and
the government that had educated, trained, clothed, and fed him.  He
regarded Aintree as worse than Benedict Arnold, because Arnold had
turned traitor for power and money; Aintree was a traitor through mere
weakness, because he could not say "no" to a bottle.

Only in secret Standish railed against Aintree.  When his brother
policemen gossiped and jested about him, out of loyalty to the army he
remained silent.  But in his heart he could not forgive. The man he had
so generously envied, the man after whose career he had wished to model
his own, had voluntarily stepped from his pedestal and made a swine of
himself.  And not only could he not forgive, but as day after day
Aintree furnished fresh food for his indignation he felt a fierce
desire to punish.

Meanwhile, of the conduct of Aintree, men older and wiser, if less
intolerant than Standish, were beginning to take notice.  It was after
a dinner on Ancon Hill, and the women had left the men to themselves.
They were the men who were placing the Panama Canal on the map.  They
were officers of the army who for five years had not worn a uniform.
But for five years they had been at war with an enemy that never slept.
Daily they had engaged in battle with mountains, rivers, swamps, two
oceans, and disease.  Where Aintree commanded five hundred soldiers,
they commanded a body of men better drilled, better disciplined, and in
number half as many as those who formed the entire army of the United
States.  The mind of each was occupied with a world problem.  They
thought and talked in millions--of millions of cubic yards of dirt, of
millions of barrels of cement, of millions of tons of steel, of
hundreds of millions of dollars, of which latter each received enough
to keep himself and his family just beyond the reach of necessity.  To
these men with the world waiting upon the outcome of their endeavor,
with responsibilities that never relaxed, Aintree's behavior was an
incident, an annoyance of less importance than an overturned dirt train
that for five minutes dared to block the completion of their work.  But
they were human and loyal to the army, and in such an infrequent moment
as this, over the coffee and cigars, they could afford to remember the
junior officer, to feel sorry for him, for the sake of the army, to
save him from himself.

"He takes his orders direct from the War Department," said the chief.
"I've no authority over him.  If he'd been one of my workmen I'd have
shipped him north three months ago."

"That's it," said the surgeon, "he's not a workman.  He has nothing to
do, and idleness is the curse of the army.  And in this climate--"

"Nothing to do!" snorted the civil administrator.  "Keeping his men in
hand is what he has to do! They're running amuck all over Panama,
getting into fights with the Spiggoty police, bringing the uniform into
contempt.  As for the climate, it's the same climate for all of us.
Look at Butler's marines and Barber's Zone police.  The climate hasn't
hurt them.  They're as smart men as ever wore khaki.  It's not the
climate or lack of work that ails the Thirty-third, it's their
commanding officer.  'So the colonel, so the regiment.'  That's as old
as the hills.  Until Aintree takes a brace, his men won't.  Some one
ought to talk to him.  It's a shame to see a fine fellow like that
going to the dogs because no one has the courage to tell him the truth."

The chief smiled mockingly.

"Then why don't you?" he asked.

"I'm a civilian," protested the administrator.  "If I told him he was
going to the dogs he'd tell me to go to the devil.  No, one of you army
men must do it.  He'll listen to you."

Young Captain Haldane of the cavalry was at the table; he was visiting
Panama on leave as a tourist.  The chief turned to him.

"Haldane's the man," he said.  "You're his friend and you're his junior
in rank, so what you say won't sound official.  Tell him people are
talking; tell him it won't be long before they'll be talking in
Washington.  Scare him!"

The captain of cavalry smiled dubiously.

"Aintree's a hard man to scare," he said.  "But if it's as bad as you
all seem to think, I'll risk it.  But, why is it," he complained, "that
whenever a man has to be told anything particularly unpleasant they
always pick on his best friend to tell him? It makes them both
miserable.  Why not let his bitterest enemy try it? The enemy at least
would have a fine time."

"Because," said the chief, "Aintree hasn't an enemy in the
world--except Aintree."

The next morning, as he had promised, Haldane called upon his friend.
When he arrived at Las Palmas, although the morning was well advanced
toward noon, he found Aintree still under his mosquito bars and awake
only to command a drink.  The situation furnished Haldane with his
text.  He expressed his opinion of any individual, friend or no friend,
officer or civilian, who on the Zone, where all men begin work at
sunrise, could be found at noon still in his pajamas and preparing to
face the duties of the day on an absinth cocktail.  He said further
that since he had arrived on the isthmus he had heard only of Aintree's
misconduct, that soon the War Department would hear of it, that Aintree
would lose his commission, would break the backbone of a splendid
career.

"It's a friend talking," continued Haldane, "and you know it! It's
because I am your friend that I've risked losing your friendship! And,
whether you like it or not, it's the truth.  You're going down-hill,
going fast, going like a motor-bus running away, and unless you put on
the brakes you'll smash!"

Aintree was not even annoyed.

"That's good advice for the right man," he granted, "but why waste it
on me? I can do things other men can't.  I can stop drinking this
minute, and it will mean so little to me that I won't know I've
stopped."

"Then stop," said Haldane.

"Why?" demanded Aintree.  "I like it. Why should I stop anything I
like? Because a lot of old women are gossiping? Because old men who
can't drink green mint without dancing turkey-trots think I'm going to
the devil because I can drink whiskey? I'm not afraid of whiskey," he
laughed tolerantly.  "It amuses me, that's all it does to me; it amuses
me."  He pulled back the coat of his pajamas and showed his giant chest
and shoulder.  With his fist he struck his bare flesh and it glowed
instantly a healthy, splendid pink.

"See that!" commanded Aintree.  "If there's a man on the isthmus in any
better physical shape than I am, I'll--"  He interrupted himself to
begin again eagerly.  "I'll make you a sporting proposition," he
announced  "I'll fight any man on the isthmus ten rounds--no matter who
he is, a wop laborer, shovel man, Barbadian nigger, marine,
anybody--and if he can knock me out I'll stop drinking.  You see," he
explained patiently, "I'm no mollycoddle or jelly-fish.  I can afford a
headache.  And besides, it's my own head.  If I don't give anybody else
a headache, I don't see that it's anybody else's damned business."

"But you do," retorted Haldane steadily.  "You're giving your own men
worse than a headache, you're setting them a rotten example, you're
giving the Thirty-third a bad name-"

Aintree vaulted off his cot and shook his fist at his friend. "You
can't say that to me," he cried.

"I do say it," protested Haldane.  "When you were in Manila your men
were models; here they're unshaven, sloppy, undisciplined. They look
like bell-hops.  And it's your fault.  And everybody thinks so."

Slowly and carefully Aintree snapped his fingers.

"And you can tell everybody, from me," he cried, "that's all I care
what they think! And now," he continued, smiling hospitably, "let me
congratulate you on your success as a missionary, and, to show you
there's not a trace of hard feeling, we will have a drink."

Informally Haldane reported back to the commission, and the wife of one
of them must have talked, for it was soon known that a brother officer
had appealed to Aintree to reform, and Aintree had refused to listen.

When she heard this, Grace Carter, the wife of Major Carter, one of the
surgeons at the Ancon Hospital, was greatly perturbed. Aintree was
engaged to be married to Helen Scott, who was her best friend and who
was arriving by the next steamer to spend the winter.  When she had
Helen safely under her roof, Mrs. Carter had planned to marry off the
young couple out of hand on the isthmus. But she had begun to wonder if
it would not be better they should delay, or best that they should
never marry.

"The awakening is going to be a terrible blow to Helen," she said to
her husband.  "She is so proud of him."

"On the contrary," he protested, "it will be the awakening of
Aintree--if Helen will stand for the way he's acting, she is not the
girl I know.  And when he finds she won't, and that he may lose her,
he'll pull up short.  He's talked Helen to me night after night until
he's bored me so I could strangle him.  He cares more for her than he
does for anything, for the army, or for himself, and that's saying a
great deal.  One word from her will be enough."

Helen spoke the word three weeks after she arrived.  It had not been
necessary to tell her of the manner in which her lover was
misconducting himself.  At various dinners given in their honor he had
made a nuisance of himself; on another occasion, while in uniform, he
had created a scene in the dining-room of the Tivoli under the prying
eyes of three hundred seeing-the-Canal tourists; and one night he had
so badly beaten up a cabman who had laughed at his condition that the
man went to the hospital.  Major Carter, largely with money, had healed
the injuries of the cabman, but Helen, who had witnessed the assault,
had suffered an injury that money could not heal.

She sent for Aintree, and at the home of her friend delivered her
ultimatum.

"I hit him because he was offensive to you," said Aintree.  "That's why
I hit him.  If I'd not had a drink in a year, I'd have hit him just as
quick and just as hard."

"Can't you see," said the girl, "that in being not yourself when I was
in your care you were much more insulting to me than any cabman could
possibly be? When you are like that you have no respect for me, or for
yourself.  Part of my pride in you is that you are so strong, that you
control yourself, that common pleasures never get a hold on you.  If
you couldn't control your temper I wouldn't blame you, because you've a
villainous temper and you were born with it.  But you weren't born with
a taste for liquor.  None of your people drank.  You never drank until
you went into the army.  If I were a man," declared the girl, "I'd be
ashamed to admit anything was stronger than I was.  You never let pain
beat you.  I've seen you play polo with a broken arm, but in this you
give pain to others, you shame and humiliate the one you pretend to
love, just because you are weak, just because you can't say 'no.'"

Aintree laughed angrily.

"Drink has no hold on me," he protested.  "It affects me as much as the
lights and the music affect a girl at her first dance, and no more.
But, if you ask me to stop--"

"I do not!" said the girl.  "If you stop, you'll stop not because I
have any influence over you, but because you don't need my influence.
If it's wrong, if it's hurting you, if it's taking away your usefulness
and your power for good, that's why you'll stop. Not because a girl
begs you.  Or you're not the man I think you."

Aintree retorted warmly.  "I'm enough of a man for this," he protested:
"I'm enough of a man not to confess I can't drink without making a
beast of myself.  It's easy not to drink at all. But to stop altogether
is a confession of weakness.  I'd look on my doing that as cowardly.  I
give you my word--not that I'll swear off, that I'll never do--but I
promise you you'll have no further reason to be what you call
humiliated, or ashamed.  You have my word for it."

A week later Aintree rode his pony into a railway cutting and rolled
with it to the tracks below, and, if at the time he had not been
extremely drunk, would have been killed.  The pony, being quite sober,
broke a leg and was destroyed.

When word of this came to Helen she was too sick at heart to see
Aintree, and by others it was made known to him that on the first
steamer Miss Scott would return North.  Aintree knew why she was going,
knew she had lost faith and patience, knew the woman he loved had
broken with him and put him out of her life.  Appalled at this
calamity, he proceeded to get drunk in earnest.


The night was very hot and the humidity very heavy, and at Las Palmas
inside the bungalow that served as a police-station the lamps on either
side of the lieutenant's desk burned like tiny furnaces.  Between them,
panting in the moist heat and with the sweat from his forehead and hand
dripping upon an otherwise immaculate report, sat Standish.  Two weeks
before, the chief had made him one of his six lieutenants.  With the
force the promotion had been most popular.

Since his promotion Standish had been in charge of the police-station
at Las Palmas and daily had seen Aintree as, on his way down the hill
from the barracks to the railroad, the hero of Batangas passed the door
of the station-house.  Also, on the morning Aintree had jumped his
horse over the embankment, Standish had seen him carried up the hill on
a stretcher.  At the sight the lieutenant of police had taken from his
pocket a notebook, and on a flyleaf made a cross.  On the flyleaf were
many other dates and opposite each a cross.  It was Aintree's record
and as the number of black crosses grew, the greater had grown the
resentment of Standish, the more greatly it had increased his anger
against the man who had put this affront upon the army, the greater
became his desire to punish.

In police circles the night had been quiet, the cells in the yard were
empty, the telephone at his elbow had remained silent, and Standish,
alone in the station-house, had employed himself in cramming "Moss's
Manual for Subalterns."  He found it a fascinating exercise.  The hope
that soon he might himself be a subaltern always burned brightly, and
to be prepared seemed to make the coming of that day more certain.  It
was ten o'clock and Las Palmas lay sunk in slumber, and after the down
train which was now due had passed, there was nothing likely to disturb
her slumber until at sunrise the great army of dirt-diggers with
shrieks of whistles, with roars of dynamite, with the rumbling of
dirt-trains and steam-shovels, again sprang to the attack.  Down the
hill, a hundred yards below Standish, the night train halted at the
station, with creakings and groanings continued toward Colon, and again
Las Palmas returned to sleep.

And, then, quickly and viciously, like the crack of a mule-whip, came
the reports of a pistol; and once more the hot and dripping silence.

On post at the railroad-station, whence the shots came, was Meehan, one
of the Zone police, an ex-sergeant of marines.  On top of the hill,
outside the infantry barracks, was another policeman, Bullard, once a
cowboy.

Standish ran to the veranda and heard the pebbles scattering as Bullard
leaped down the hill, and when, in the light from the open door, he
passed, the lieutenant shouted at him to find Meehan and report back.
Then the desk telephone rang, and Standish returned to his chair.

"This is Meehan," said a voice.  "Those shots just now were fired by
Major Aintree.  He came down on the night train and jumped off after
the train was pulling out and stumbled into a negro, and fell.  He's
been drinking and he swore the nigger pushed him; and the man called
Aintree a liar.  Aintree pulled his gun and the nigger ran.  Aintree
fired twice; then I got to him and knocked the gun out of his hand with
my nightstick."

There was a pause.  Until he was sure his voice would be steady and
official, the boy lieutenant did not speak.

"Did he hit the negro?" he asked.

"I don't know," Meehan answered.  "The man jumped for the darkest spot
he could find."  The voice of Meehan lost its professional calm and
became personal and aggrieved.

"Aintree's on his way to see you now, lieutenant.  He's going to report
me."

"For what?"

The voice over the telephone rose indignantly.

"For knocking the gun out of his hand.  He says it's an assault. He's
going to break me!"

Standish made no comment.

"Report here," he ordered.

He heard Bullard hurrying up the hill and met him at the foot of the
steps.

"There's a nigger," began Bullard, "lying under some bushes--"

"Hush!" commanded Standish.

From the path below came the sound of footsteps approaching unsteadily,
and the voice of a man swearing and muttering to himself.  Standish
pulled the ex-cowboy into the shadow of the darkness and spoke in eager
whispers.

"You understand," he concluded, "you will not report until you see me
pick up a cigar from the desk and light it.  You will wait out here in
the darkness.  When you see me light the cigar, you will come in and
report."

The cowboy policeman nodded, but without enthusiasm.  "I understand,
lieutenant," he said, "but," he shook his head doubtfully, "it sizes up
to me like what those police up in New York call a 'frame-up.'"

Standish exclaimed impatiently.

"It's not my frame-up!" he said.  "The man's framed himself up. All I'm
going to do is to nail him to the wall!"

Standish had only time to return to his desk when Aintree stumbled up
the path and into the station-house.  He was "fighting drunk," ugly,
offensive, all but incoherent with anger.

"You in charge?" he demanded.  He did not wait for an answer. "I've
been 'saulted!" he shouted.  "'Saulted by one of your damned policemen.
He struck me--struck me when I was protecting myself. He had a nigger
with him.  First the nigger tripped me; then, when I tried to protect
myself, this thug of yours hits me, clubs me, you unnerstan', clubs me!
I want him--"

He was interrupted by the entrance of Meehan, who moved into the light
from the lamps and saluted his lieutenant.

"That's the man!" roared Aintree.  The sight of Meehan whipped him into
greater fury.

"I want that man broke.  I want to see you strip his shield off
him--now, you unnerstan', now--for 'saulting me, for 'saulting an
officer in the United States army.  And, if you don't," he threw
himself into a position of the prize-ring, "I'll beat him up and you,
too."  Through want of breath, he stopped, and panted.  Again his voice
broke forth hysterically.  "I'm not afraid of your damned
night-sticks," he taunted.  "I got five hundred men on top this hill,
all I've got to do is to say the word, and they'll rough-house this
place and throw it into the cut--and you with it."

Standish rose to his feet, and across the desk looked steadily at
Aintree.  To Aintree the steadiness of his eyes and the quietness of
his voice were an added aggravation.

"Suppose you did," said Standish, "that would not save you."

"From what?" roared Aintree.  "Think I'm afraid of your night-sticks?"

"From arrest!"

"Arrest me!" yelled Aintree.  "Do you know who's talking to you? Do you
know who I am? I'm Major Aintree, damn you, commanding the infantry.
An' I'm here to charge that thug--"

"You are here because you are under arrest," said Standish.  "You are
arrested for threatening the police, drunkenness, and assaulting a
citizen with intent to kill--"  The voice of the young man turned
shrill and rasping.  "And if the man should die--"

Aintree burst into a bellow of mocking laughter.

Standish struck the desk with his open palm.

"Silence!" he commanded.

"Silence to me!" roared Aintree, "you impertinent pup!" He flung
himself forward, shaking his fist.  "I'm Major Aintree.  I'm your
superior officer.  I'm an officer an' a gentleman--"

"You are not!" replied Standish.  "You are a drunken loafer!"

Aintree could not break the silence.  Amazement, rage, stupefaction
held him in incredulous wonder.  Even Meehan moved uneasily. Between
the officer commanding the infantry and an officer of police, he feared
the lieutenant would not survive.

But he heard the voice of his lieutenant continuing, evenly, coldly,
like the voice of a judge delivering sentence.

"You are a drunken loafer," repeated the boy.  "And you know it. And I
mean that to-morrow morning every one on the Zone shall know it.  And I
mean to-morrow night every one in the States shall know it.  You've
killed a man, or tried to, and I'm going to break you." With his arm he
pointed to Meehan.  "Break that man?" he demanded. "For doing his duty,
for trying to stop a murder? Strip him of his shield?" The boy laughed
savagely.  "It's you I am going to strip, Aintree," he cried, "you
'hero of Batangas'; I'm going to strip you naked.  I'm going to 'cut
the buttons off your coat, and tear the stripes away.'  I'm going to
degrade you and disgrace you, and drive you out of the army!" He threw
his note-book on the table.  "There's your dossier, Aintree," he said.
"For three months you've been drunk, and there's your record.  The
police got it for me; it's written there with dates and the names of
witnesses.  I'll swear to it. I've been after you to get you, and I've
got you.  With that book, with what you did to-night, you'll leave the
army.  You may resign, you may be court-martialled, you may be hung.  I
don't give a damn what they do to you, but you will leave the army!"

He turned to Meehan, and with a jerk of the hand signified Aintree.

"Put him in a cell," he said.  "If he resists--"

Aintree gave no sign of resisting.  He stood motionless, his arms
hanging limp, his eyes protruding.  The liquor had died in him, and his
anger had turned chill.  He tried to moisten his lips to speak, but his
throat was baked, and no sound issued.  He tried to focus his eyes upon
the menacing little figure behind the desk, but between the two lamps
it swayed, and shrank and swelled.  Of one thing only was he sure, that
some grave disaster had overtaken him, something that when he came
fully to his senses still would overwhelm him, something he could not
conquer with his fists. His brain, even befuddled as it was, told him
he had been caught by the heels, that he was in a trap, that smashing
this boy who threatened him could not set him free.  He recognized, and
it was this knowledge that stirred him with alarm, that this was no
ordinary officer of justice, but a personal enemy, an avenging spirit
who, for some unknown reason, had spread a trap; who, for some private
purpose of revenge, would drag him down.

Frowning painfully, he waved Meehan from him.

"Wait," he commanded.  "I don' unnerstan'.  What good's it goin' to do
you to lock me up an' disgrace me?  What harm have I done you? Who
asked you to run the army, anyway? Who are you?"

"My name is Standish," said the lieutenant.  "My father was colonel of
the Thirty-third when you first joined it from the Academy."

Aintree exclaimed with surprise and enlightenment.  He broke into
hurried speech, but Standish cut him short.

"And General Standish of the Mexican War," he continued, "was my
grandfather.  Since Washington all my people have been officers of the
regular army, and I'd been one, too, if I'd been bright enough. That's
why I respect the army.  That's why I'm going to throw you out of it.
You've done harm fifty men as good as you can't undo. You've made
drunkards of a whole battalion.  You've taught boys who looked up to
you, as I looked up to you once, to laugh at discipline, to make swine
of themselves.  You've set them an example. I'm going to make an
example of you.  That's all there is to this.  I've got no grudge
against you.  I'm not vindictive; I'm sorry for you.  But," he paused
and pointed his hand at Aintree as though it held a gun, "you are going
to leave the army!"

Like a man coming out of an ugly dream, Aintree opened and shut his
eyes, shivered, and stretched his great muscles.  They watched him with
an effort of the will force himself back to consciousness. When again
he spoke, his tone was sane.

"See here, Standish," he began, "I'll not beg of you or any man. I only
ask you to think what you're doing.  This means my finish. If you force
this through to-night it means court-martial, it means I lose my
commission, I lose--lose things you know nothing about. And, if I've
got a record for drinking, I've got a record for other things, too.
Don't forget that!"

Standish shook his head.  "I didn't forget it," he said.

"Well, suppose I did," demanded Aintree.  "Suppose I did go on the
loose, just to pass the time, just because I'm sick of this damned
ditch? Is it fair to wipe out all that went before, for that? I'm the
youngest major in the army, I served in three campaigns, I'm a
medal-of-honor man, I've got a career ahead of me, and--and I'm going
to be married.  If you give me a chance-"

Standish struck the table with his fist.

"I will give you a chance," he cried.  "If you'll give your word to
this man and to me, that, so help you God, you'll never drink
again--I'll let you go."

If what Standish proposed had been something base, Aintree could not
have accepted it with more contempt.

"I'll see you in hell first," he said.

As though the interview was at an end, Standish dropped into his chair
and leaning forward, from the table picked up a cigar.  As he lit it,
he motioned Meehan toward his prisoner, but before the policeman could
advance the sound of footsteps halted him.

Bullard, his eyes filled with concern, leaped up the steps, and ran to
the desk.

"Lieutenant!" he stammered, "that man--the nigger that officer
shot--he's dead!"

Aintree gave a gasp that was partly a groan, partly a cry of protest,
and Bullard, as though for the first time aware of his presence, sprang
back to the open door and placed himself between it and Aintree.

"It's murder!" he said.

None of the three men spoke; and when Meehan crossed to where Aintree
stood, staring fearfully at nothing, he had only to touch his sleeve,
and Aintree, still staring, fell into step beside him.

From the yard outside Standish heard the iron door of the cell swing
shut, heard the key grate in the lock, and the footsteps of Meehan
returning.

Meehan laid the key upon the desk, and with Bullard stood at attention,
waiting.

"Give him time," whispered Standish.  "Let it sink in!"

At the end of half an hour Standish heard Aintree calling, and, with
Meehan carrying a lantern, stepped into the yard and stopped at the
cell door.

Aintree was quite sober.  His face was set and white, his voice was
dull with suffering.  He stood erect, clasping the bars in his hands.

"Standish," he said, "you gave me a chance a while ago, and I refused
it.  I was rough about it.  I'm sorry.  It made me hot because I
thought you were forcing my hand, blackmailing me into doing something
I ought to do as a free agent.  Now, I am a free agent.  You couldn't
give me a chance now, you couldn't let me go now, not if I swore on a
thousand Bibles.  I don't know what they'll give me--Leavenworth for
life, or hanging, or just dismissal. But, you've got what you
wanted--I'm leaving the army!"  Between the bars he stretched out his
arms and held a hand toward Meehan and Standish.  In the same dull,
numbed voice he continued.

"So, now," he went on, "that I've nothing to gain by it, I want to
swear to you and to this man here, that whether I hang, or go to jail,
or am turned loose, I will never, so help me God, take another drink."

Standish was holding the hand of the man who once had been his hero.
He clutched it tight.

"Aintree," he cried, "suppose I could work a miracle; suppose I've
played a trick on you, to show you your danger, to show you what might
come to you any day--does that oath still stand?"

The hand that held his ground the bones together.

"I've given my word!" cried Aintree.  "For the love of God, don't
torture me.  Is the man alive?"

As Standish swung open the cell door, the hero of Batangas, he who
could thrash any man on the isthmus, crumpled up like a child upon his
shoulder.

And Meehan, as he ran for water, shouted joyfully.

"That nigger," he called to Bullard, "can go home now.  The lieutenant
don't want him no more."





EVIL TO HIM WHO EVIL THINKS


As a rule, the instant the season closed Aline Proctor sailed on the
first steamer for London, where awaited her many friends, both English
and American--and to Paris, where she selected those gowns that on and
off the stage helped to make her famous.  But this particular summer
she had spent with the Endicotts at Bar Harbor, and it was at their
house Herbert Nelson met her.  After Herbert met her very few other men
enjoyed that privilege.  This was her wish as well as his.

They behaved disgracefully.  Every morning after breakfast they
disappeared and spent the day at opposite ends of a canoe.  She,
knowing nothing of a canoe, was happy in stabbing the waters with her
paddle while he told her how he loved her and at the same time, with
anxious eyes on his own paddle, skilfully frustrated her efforts to
drown them both.  While the affair lasted it was ideal and beautiful,
but unfortunately it lasted only two months.

Then Lord Albany, temporarily in America as honorary attache to the
British embassy, his adoring glances, his accent, and the way he
brushed his hair, proved too much for the susceptible heart of Aline,
and she chucked Herbert and asked herself how a woman of her age could
have seriously considered marrying a youth just out of Harvard! At that
time she was a woman of nineteen; but, as she had been before the
public ever since she was eleven, the women declared she was not a day
under twenty-six; and the men knew she could not possibly be over
sixteen!

Aline's own idea of herself was that without some one in love with her
she could not exist--that, unless she knew some man cared for her and
for her alone, she would wither and die.  As a matter of fact, whether
any one loved her or not did not in the least interest her.  There were
several dozen men who could testify to that.  They knew! What she
really wanted was to be head over ears in love--to adore some one, to
worship him, to imagine herself starving for him and making sacrifice
hits for him; but when the moment came to make the sacrifice hit and
marry the man, she invariably found that a greater, truer love had
arisen--for some one else.

This greater and truer love always made her behave abominably to the
youth she had just jilted.  She wasted no time on post-mortems. She was
so eager to show her absolute loyalty to the new monarch that she
grudged every thought she ever had given the one she had cast into
exile.  She resented him bitterly.  She could not forgive him for
having allowed her to be desperately in love with him.  He should have
known he was not worthy of such a love as hers.  He should have known
that the real prince was waiting only just round the corner.

As a rule the rejected ones behaved well.  Each decided Aline was much
too wonderful a creature for him, and continued to love her cautiously
and from a distance.  None of them ever spoke or thought ill of her and
would gladly have punched any one who did.  It was only the women whose
young men Aline had temporarily confiscated, and then returned saddened
and chastened, who were spiteful.  And they dared say no more than that
Aline would probably have known her mind better if she had had a mother
to look after her.  This, coming to the ears of Aline, caused her to
reply that a girl who could not keep straight herself, but needed a
mother to help her, would not keep straight had she a dozen mothers.
As she put it cheerfully, a girl who goes wrong and then pleads "no
mother to guide her" is like a jockey who pulls a race and then blames
the horse.

Each of the young men Aline rejected married some one else and, except
when the name of Aline Proctor in the theatrical advertisements or in
electric lights on Broadway gave him a start, forgot that for a month
her name and his own had been linked together from Portland to San
Francisco.  But the girl he married did not forget.  She never
understood what the public saw in Aline Proctor.  That Aline was the
queen of musical comedy she attributed to the fact that Aline knew the
right people and got herself written about in the right way.  But that
she could sing, dance, act; that she possessed compelling charm; that
she "got across" not only to the tired business man, the wine agent,
the college boy, but also to the children and the old ladies, was to
her never apparent.

Just as Aline could not forgive the rejected suitor for allowing her to
love him, so the girl he married never forgave Aline for having loved
her husband.  Least of all could Sally Winthrop, who two years after
the summer at Bar Harbor married Herbert Nelson, forgive her.  And she
let Herbert know it.  Herbert was properly in love with Sally Winthrop,
but he liked to think that his engagement to Aline, though brief and
abruptly terminated, had proved him to be a man fatally attractive to
all women.  And though he was hypnotizing himself into believing that
his feeling for Aline had been the grand passion, the truth was that
all that kept her in his thoughts was his own vanity.  He was not
discontented with his lot--his lot being Sally Winthrop, her millions,
and her estate of three hundred acres near Westbury. Nor was he still
longing for Aline.  It was only that his vanity was flattered by the
recollection that one of the young women most beloved by the public had
once loved him.

"I once was a king in Babylon," he used to misquote to himself, "and
she was a Christian slave."

He was as young as that.

Had he been content in secret to assure himself that he once had been a
reigning monarch, his vanity would have harmed no one; but,
unfortunately, he possessed certain documentary evidence to that fact.
And he was sufficiently foolish not to wish to destroy it.  The
evidence consisted of a dozen photographs he had snapped of Aline
during the happy days at Bar Harbor, and on which she had written
phrases somewhat exuberant and sentimental.

From these photographs Nelson was loath to part--especially with one
that showed Aline seated on a rock that ran into the waters of the
harbor, and on which she had written: "As long as this rock lasts!"
Each time she was in love Aline believed it would last. That in the
past it never had lasted did not discourage her.

What to do with these photographs that so vividly recalled the most
tumultuous period of his life Nelson could not decide.  If he hid them
away and Sally found them, he knew she would make his life miserable.
If he died and Sally then found them, when he no longer was able to
explain that they meant nothing to him, she would believe he always had
loved the other woman, and it would make her miserable.  He felt he
could not safely keep them in his own house; his vanity did not permit
him to burn them, and, accordingly, he decided to unload them on some
one else.

The young man to whom he confided his collection was Charles Cochran.
Cochran was a charming person from the West.  He had studied in the
Beaux Arts and on foot had travelled over England and Europe, preparing
himself to try his fortune in New York as an architect.  He was now in
the office of the architects Post & Constant, and lived alone in a tiny
farmhouse he had made over for himself near Herbert Nelson, at
Westbury, Long Island.

Post & Constant were a fashionable firm and were responsible for many
of the French chateaux and English country houses that were rising near
Westbury, Hempstead, and Roslyn; and it was Cochran's duty to drive
over that territory in his runabout, keep an eye on the contractors,
and dissuade clients from grafting mansard roofs on Italian villas.  He
had built the summer home of the Herbert Nelsons, and Herbert and
Charles were very warm friends.  Charles was of the same lack of years
as was Herbert, of an enthusiastic and sentimental nature; and, like
many other young men, the story of his life also was the lovely and
much-desired Aline Proctor. It was this coincidence that had made them
friends and that had led Herbert to select Charles as the custodian of
his treasure. As a custodian and confidant Charles especially appealed
to his new friend, because, except upon the stage and in restaurants,
Charles had never seen Aline Proctor, did not know her--and considered
her so far above him, so unattainable, that he had no wish to seek her
out.  Unknown, he preferred to worship at a distance.  In this
determination Herbert strongly encouraged him.

When he turned over the pictures to Charles, Herbert could not resist
showing them to him.  They were in many ways charming. They presented
the queen of musical comedy in several new roles. In one she was in a
sailor suit, giving an imitation of a girl paddling a canoe.  In
another she was in a riding-habit mounted upon a pony of which she
seemed very much afraid.

In some she sat like a siren among the rocks with the waves and seaweed
snatching at her feet, and in another she crouched beneath the wheel of
Herbert's touring car.  All of the photographs were unprofessional and
intimate, and the legends scrawled across them were even more intimate.

"'As long as this rock lasts!'" read Herbert.  At arm's length he held
the picture for Cochran to see, and laughed bitterly and unmirthfully
as he had heard leading men laugh in problem plays.

"That is what she wrote," he mocked--"but how long did it last? Until
she saw that little red-headed Albany playing polo.  That lasted until
his mother heard of it.  She thought her precious lamb was in the
clutches of a designing actress, and made the Foreign Office cable him
home.  Then Aline took up one of those army aviators, and chucked him
for that fellow who painted her portrait, and threw him over for the
lawn-tennis champion.  Now she's engaged to Chester Griswold, and
Heaven pity her! Of course he's the greatest catch in America; but he's
a prig and a snob, and he's so generous with his money that he'll give
you five pennies for a nickel any time you ask him.  He's got a heart
like the metre of a taxicab, and he's jealous as a cat.  Aline will
have a fine time with Chester! I knew him at St. Paul's and at Harvard,
and he's got as much red blood in him as an eel!"

Cochran sprang to the defense of the lady of his dreams.

"There must be some good in the man," he protested, "or Miss Proctor-"

"Oh, those solemn snobs," declared Herbert, "impress women by just
keeping still.  Griswold pretends the reason he doesn't speak to you is
because he's too superior, but the real reason is that he knows
whenever he opens his mouth he shows he is an ass."

Reluctantly Herbert turned over to Charles the precious pictures. "It
would be a sin to destroy them, wouldn't it?" he prompted.

Cochran agreed heartily.

"You might even," suggested Herbert, "leave one or two of them about.
You have so many of Aline already that one more wouldn't be noticed.
Then when I drop in I could see it."  He smiled ingratiatingly.

"But those I have I bought," Cochran pointed out.  "Anybody can buy
them, but yours are personal.  And they're signed."

"No one will notice that but me," protested Herbert.  "Just one or
two," he coaxed-"stuck round among the others.  They'd give me a heap
of melancholy pleasure."

Charles shook his head doubtfully.

"Your wife often comes here with you," he said.  "I don't believe
they'd give her melancholy pleasure.  The question is, are you married
to Sally or to Aline Proctor?"

"Oh, of course," exclaimed Herbert--"if you refuse!"

With suspicious haste Charles surrendered.

"I don't refuse," he explained; "I only ask if it's wise.  Sally knows
you were once very fond of Miss Proctor--knows you were engaged to her."

"But," protested Herbert, "Sally sees your photographs of Aline. What
difference can a few more make? After she's seen a dozen she gets used
to them."

No sooner had Herbert left him than the custodian of the treasure
himself selected the photographs he would display.  In them the young
woman he had--from the front row of the orchestra--so ardently admired
appeared in a new light.  To Cochran they seemed at once to render her
more kindly, more approachable; to show her as she really was, the sort
of girl any youth would find it extremely difficult not to love.
Cochran found it extremely easy.  The photographs gave his imagination
all the room it wanted.  He believed they also gave him an insight into
her real character that was denied to anybody else. He had always
credited her with all the virtues; he now endowed her with every charm
of mind and body.  In a week to the two photographs he had selected
from the loan collection for purposes of display and to give Herbert
melancholy pleasure he had added three more.  In two weeks there were
half a dozen.  In a month, nobly framed in silver, in leather of red,
green, and blue, the entire collection smiled upon him from every part
of his bedroom.  For he now kept them where no one but himself could
see them.  No longer was he of a mind to share his borrowed treasure
with others--not even with the rightful owner.

Chester Griswold, spurred on by Aline Proctor, who wanted to build a
summer home on Long Island, was motoring with Post, of Post & Constant,
in the neighborhood of Westbury.  Post had pointed out several houses
designed by his firm, which he hoped might assist Griswold in making up
his mind as to the kind of house he wanted; but none they had seen had
satisfied his client.

"What I want is a cheap house," explained the young millionaire. "I
don't really want a house at all," he complained.  "It's Miss Proctor's
idea.  When we are married I intend to move into my mother's town
house, but Miss Proctor wants one for herself in the country.  I've
agreed to that; but it must be small and it must be cheap."

"Cheap" was a word that the clients of Post & Constant never used; but
Post knew the weaknesses of some of the truly rich, and he knew also
that no house ever built cost only what the architect said it would
cost.

"I know the very house you want!" he exclaimed.  "One of our young men
owns it.  He made it over from an old farmhouse.  It's very well
arranged; we've used his ground-plan several times and it works out
splendidly.  If he's not at home, I'll show you over the place myself.
And if you like the house he's the man to build you one."

When they reached Cochran's home he was at Garden City playing golf,
but the servant knew Mr. Post, and to him and his client threw open
every room in the house.

"Now, this," exclaimed the architect enthusiastically, "is the master's
bedroom.  In your case it would probably be your wife's room and you
would occupy the one adjoining, which Cochran now uses as a guest-room.
As you see, they are entirely cut off from-"

Mr. Griswold did not see.  Up to that moment he had given every
appearance of being both bored and sulky.  Now his attention was
entirely engaged--but not upon the admirable simplicity of Mr.
Cochran's ground-plan, as Mr. Post had hoped.  Instead, the eyes of the
greatest catch in America were intently regarding a display of
photographs that smiled back at him from every corner of the room.  Not
only did he regard these photographs with a savage glare, but he
approached them and carefully studied the inscriptions scrawled across
the face of each.

Post himself cast a glance at the nearest photographs, and then hastily
manoeuvred his client into the hall and closed the door.

"We will now," he exclaimed, "visit the butler's pantry, which opens
upon the dining-room and kitchen, thus saving--"

But Griswold did not hear him.  Without giving another glance at the
house he stamped out of it and, plumping himself down in the motor-car,
banged the door.  Not until Post had driven him well into New York did
he make any comment.

"What did you say," he then demanded, "is the name of the man who owns
that last house we saw?"

Post told him.

"I never heard of him!" said Griswold as though he were delivering
young Cochran's death sentence.  "Who is he?"

"He's an architect in our office," said Post.  "We think a lot of him.
He'll leave us soon, of course.  The best ones always do.  His work is
very popular.  So is he."

"I never heard of him," repeated Griswold.  Then, with sudden heat, he
added savagely: "But I mean to to-night."

When Griswold had first persuaded Aline Proctor to engage herself to
him he had suggested that, to avoid embarrassment, she should tell him
the names of the other men to whom she had been engaged.

"What kind of embarrassment would that avoid?"

"If I am talking to a man," said Griswold, "and he knows the woman I'm
going to marry was engaged to him and I don't know that, he has me at a
disadvantage."

"I don't see that he has," said Aline.  "If we suppose, for the sake of
argument, that to marry me is desirable, I would say that the man who
was going to marry me had the advantage over the one I had declined to
marry."

"I want to know who those men are," explained Griswold, "because I want
to avoid them.  I don't want to talk to them.  I don't want even to
know them."

"I don't see how I can help you," said Aline.  "I haven't the slightest
objection to telling you the names of the men I have cared for, if I
can remember them, but I certainly do not intend to tell you the name
of any man who cared for me enough to ask me to marry him.  That's his
secret, not mine--certainly not yours."

Griswold thought he was very proud.  He really was very vain; and as
jealousy is only vanity in its nastiest development he was extremely
jealous.  So he persisted.

"Will you do this?" he demanded.  "If I ever ask you, 'Is that one of
the men you cared for?' will you tell me?"

"If you wish it," said Aline; "but I can't see any health in it. It
will only make you uncomfortable.  So long as you know I have given you
the greatest and truest love I am capable of, why should you concern
yourself with my mistakes?"

"So that I can avoid meeting what you call your mistakes," said
Griswold--"and being friendly with them."

"I assure you," laughed Aline, "it wouldn't hurt you a bit to be as
friendly with them as they'd let you.  Maybe they weren't as proud of
their families as you are, but they made up for that by being a darned
sight prouder of me!"

Later, undismayed by this and unashamed, on two occasions Griswold
actually did demand of Aline if a genial youth she had just greeted
joyfully was one of those for whom she once had cared.

And Aline had replied promptly and truthfully that he was.  But in the
case of Charles Cochran, Griswold did not ask Aline if he was one of
those for whom she once had cared.  He considered the affair with
Cochran so serious that, in regard to that man, he adopted a different
course.

In digging rivals out of the past his jealousy had made him
indefatigable, but in all his researches he never had heard the name of
Charles Cochran.  That fact and the added circumstance that Aline
herself never had mentioned the man was in his eyes so suspicious as to
be almost a damning evidence of deception.  And he argued that if in
the past Aline had deceived him as to Charles Cochran she would
continue to do so.  Accordingly, instead of asking her frankly for the
truth he proceeded to lay traps for it.  And if there is one thing
Truth cannot abide, it is being hunted by traps.

That evening Aline and he were invited to a supper in her honor, and as
he drove her from the theatre to the home of their hostess he told her
of his search earlier in the day.

The electric light in the limousine showed Aline's face as clearly as
though it were held in a spotlight, and as he prepared his trap
Griswold regarded her jealously.

"Post tells me," he said, "he has the very man you want for your
architect.  He's sure you'll find him most understanding
and--and--sympathetic.  He's a young man who is just coming to the
front, and he's very popular, especially with women."

"What's his being popular with women," asked Aline, "got to do with his
carrying out my ideas of a house?"

"That's just it," said Griswold--"it's the woman who generally has the
most to say as to how her house shall be built, and this man
understands woman.  I have reasons for believing he will certainly
understand you!"

"If he understands me well enough to give me all the linen-closets I
want," said Aline, "he will be perfectly satisfactory."

Before delivering his blow Griswold sank back into his corner of the
car, drew his hat brim over his forehead, and fixed spying eyes upon
the very lovely face of the girl he had asked to marry him.

"His name," he said in fateful tones, "is Charles Cochran!"

It was supposed to be a body blow; but, to his distress, Aline neither
started nor turned pale.  Neither, for trying to trick her, did she
turn upon him in reproof and anger.  Instead, with alert eyes, she
continued to peer out of the window at the electric-light
advertisements and her beloved Broadway.

"Well?" demanded Griswold; his tone was hoarse and heavy with meaning.

"Well what?" asked Aline pleasantly.

"How," demanded Griswold, "do you like Charles Cochran for an
architect?"

"How should I know?" asked Aline.  "I've not met him yet!"

She had said it! And she had said it without the waver of one of her
lovely eyelashes.  No wonder the public already hailed her as a
finished actress! Griswold felt that his worst fears were justified.
She had lied to him.  And, as he knew she had never before lied to him,
that now she did so proved beyond hope of doubt that the reason for it
was vital, imperative, and compelling. But of his suspicions Griswold
gave no sign.  He would not at once expose her.  He had trapped her,
but as yet she must not know that.  He would wait until he had still
further entangled her--until she could not escape; and then, with
complete proof of her deceit, he would confront and overwhelm her.

With this amiable purpose in mind he called early the next morning upon
Post & Constant and asked to see Mr. Cochran.  He wished, he said, to
consult him about the new house.  Post had not yet reached the office,
and of Griswold's visit with Post to his house Cochran was still
ignorant.  He received Griswold most courteously. He felt that the man
who was loved by the girl he also had long and hopelessly worshipped
was deserving of the highest consideration. Griswold was less
magnanimous.  When he found his rival--for as such he beheld him--was
of charming manners and gallant appearance he considered that fact an
additional injury; but he concealed his resentment, for he was going to
trap Cochran, too.

He found the architect at work leaning over a drawing-board, and as
they talked Cochran continued to stand.  He was in his shirt-sleeves,
which were rolled to his shoulders; and the breadth of those shoulders
and the muscles of his sunburned arms were much in evidence. Griswold
considered it a vulgar exhibition.

For over ten minutes they talked solely of the proposed house, but not
once did Griswold expose the fact that he had seen any more of it than
any one might see from the public road.  When he rose to take his leave
he said:

"How would it do if I motored out Sunday and showed your house to Miss
Proctor? Sunday is the only day she has off, and if it would not
inconvenience you--"

The tender heart of Cochran leaped in wild tumult; he could not conceal
his delight, nor did he attempt to do so; and his expression made it
entirely unnecessary for him to assure Griswold that such a visit would
be entirely welcome and that they might count on finding him at home.
As though it were an afterthought, Griswold halted at the door and said:

"I believe you are already acquainted with Miss Proctor."

Cochran, conscious of five years of devotion, found that he was
blushing, and longed to strangle himself.  Nor was the blush lost upon
Griswold.

"I'm sorry," said Cochran, "but I've not had that honor.  On the stage,
of course--"

He shrugged the broad shoulders deprecatingly, as though to suggest
that not to know Miss Proctor as an artist argues oneself unknown.

Griswold pretended to be puzzled.  As though endeavoring to recall a
past conversation he frowned.

"But Aline," he said, "told me she had met you-met you at Bar Harbor."
In the fatal photographs the familiar landfalls of Bar Harbor had been
easily recognized.

The young architect shook his head.

"It must be another Cochran," he suggested.  "I have never been in Bar
Harbor."

With the evidence of the photographs before him this last statement was
a verdict of guilty, and Griswold, not with the idea of giving Cochran
a last chance to be honest, but to cause him to dig the pit still
deeper, continued to lead him on.  "Maybe she meant York Harbor?"

Again Cochran shook his head and laughed.

"Believe me," he said, "if I'd ever met Miss Proctor anywhere I
wouldn't forget it!"

Ten minutes later Griswold was talking to Aline over the telephone. He
intended to force matters.  He would show Aline she could neither
trifle with nor deceive Chester Griswold; but the thought that he had
been deceived was not what most hurt him.  What hurt him was to think
that Aline had preferred a man who looked like an advertisement for
ready-made clothes and who worked in his shirt-sleeves.

Griswold took it for granted that any woman would be glad to marry him.
So many had been willing to do so that he was convinced, when one of
them was not, it was not because there was anything wrong with him, but
because the girl herself lacked taste and perception.

That the others had been in any degree moved by his many millions had
never suggested itself.  He was convinced each had loved him for
himself alone; and if Aline, after meeting him, would still consider
any one else, it was evident something was very wrong with Aline.  He
was determined that she must be chastened--must be brought to a proper
appreciation of her good fortune and of his condescension.

On being called to the telephone at ten in the morning, Aline demanded
to know what could excuse Griswold for rousing her in the middle of the
night!

Griswold replied that, though the day was young, it also was charming;
that on Sunday there might be rain; and that if she desired to see the
house he and Post thought would most suit her, he and his car would be
delighted to convey her to it.  They could make the run in an hour,
lunch with friends at Westbury, and return in plenty of time for the
theatre.  Aline was delighted at the sudden interest Griswold was
showing in the new house. Without a moment's hesitation she walked into
the trap.  She would go, she declared, with pleasure.  In an hour he
should call for her.

Exactly an hour later Post arrived at his office.  He went directly to
Cochran.

"Charles," he said, "I'm afraid I got you into trouble yesterday. I
took a client to see your house.  You have often let us do it before;
but since I was there last you've made some changes.  In your
bedroom--" Post stopped.

Cochran's naive habit of blushing told him it was not necessary to
proceed.  In tones of rage and mortification Cochran swore explosively;
Post was relieved to find he was swearing at himself.

"I ought to be horsewhipped!" roared Cochran.  "I'll never forgive
myself! Who," he demanded, "saw the pictures? Was it a man or a woman?"

Post laughed unhappily.

"It was Chester Griswold."

A remarkable change came over Cochran.  Instead of sobering him, as
Post supposed it would, the information made him even more angry--only
now his anger was transferred from himself to Griswold.

"The blankety-blank bounder!" yelled Cochran.  "That was what he
wanted! That's why he came here!"

"Here!" demanded Post.

"Not an hour ago," cried Cochran.  "He asked me about Bar Harbor. He
saw those pictures were taken at Bar Harbor!"

"I think," said Post soothingly, "he'd a right to ask questions. There
were so many pictures, and they were very--well--very!"

"I'd have answered his questions," roared Cochran, "if he'd asked them
like a man, but he came snooping down here to spy on me. He tried to
trick me.  He insulted me! He insulted her!" He emitted a howl of
dismay.  "And I told him I'd never been to Bar Harbor--that I'd never
met Aline Proctor!"

Cochran seized his coat and hat.  He shouted to one of the office boys
to telephone the garage for his car.

"What are you--where are you going?" demanded Post.

"I'm going home first," cried Cochran, "to put those pictures in a
safe, as I should have done three months ago.  And then I'm going to
find Chester Griswold and tell him he's an ass and a puppy!"

"If you do that," protested Post, "you're likely to lose us a very
valuable client."

"And your client," roared Charles, "is likely to lose some very
valuable teeth!"

As Charles whirled into the country road in which stood his house he
saw drawn up in front of it the long gray car in which, that morning,
Chester Griswold had called at the office.  Cochran emitted a howl of
anger.  Was his home again to be invaded? And again while he was
absent? To what extreme would Griswold's jealousy next lead him? He
fell out of his own car while it still moved, and leaped up the garden
walk.  The front rooms of the house were empty, but from his bedroom he
heard, raised in excited tones, the voice of Griswold.  The audacity of
the man was so surprising, and his own delight at catching him
red-handed so satisfying, that no longer was Cochran angry.  The Lord
had delivered his enemy into his hands! And, as he advanced toward his
bedroom, not only was he calm, but, at the thought of his revenge,
distinctly jubilant.  In the passageway a frightened maid servant, who,
at his unexpected arrival, was now even more frightened, endeavored to
give him an explanation; but he waved her into silence, and, striding
before her, entered his bedroom.

He found confronting him a tall and beautiful young woman.  It was not
the Aline Proctor he knew.  It was not the well-poised, gracious, and
distinguished beauty he had seen gliding among the tables at Sherry's
or throwing smiles over the footlights.  This Aline Proctor was a very
indignant young person, with flashing eyes, tossing head, and a
stamping foot.  Extended from her at arm's length, she held a
photograph of herself in a heavy silver frame; and, as though it were a
weapon, she was brandishing it in the face of Chester Griswold. As
Cochran, in amazement, halted in the doorway she was exclaiming:

"I told you I didn't know Charles Cochran! I tell you so now! If you
can't believe me-"

Out of the corner of her flashing eyes the angry lady caught sight of
Cochran in the doorway.  She turned upon the intruder as though she
meant forcibly to eject him.

"Who are you?" she demanded.  Her manner and tone seemed to add: "And
what the deuce are you doing here?"

Charles answered her tone.

"I am Charles Cochran," he said.  "I live here.  This is my house!"

These words had no other effect upon Miss Proctor than to switch her
indignation down another track.  She now turned upon Charles.

"Then, if this is your house," cried that angry young person, "why have
you filled it with photographs of me that belong to some one else?"

Charles saw that his hour had come.  His sin had found him out.  He
felt that to prevaricate would be only stupid.

Griswold had tried devious methods--and look where his devious methods
had dumped him! Griswold certainly was in wrong.  Charles quickly
determined to adopt a course directly opposite.  Griswold had shown an
utter lack of confidence in Aline.  Charles decided that he would give
her his entire confidence, would throw himself upon the mercy of the
court.

"I have those photographs in my house, Miss Proctor," he said, "because
I have admired you a long time.  They were more like you than those I
could buy.  Having them here has helped me a lot, and it hasn't done
you any harm.  You know very well you have anonymous admirers all over
this country.  I'm only one of them.  If I have offended, I have
offended with many, many thousands."

Already it has been related that Cochran was very good to look upon.
At the present moment, as he spoke in respectful, even soulful accents,
meekly and penitently proclaiming his long-concealed admiration, Miss
Proctor found her indignation melting like an icicle in the sun.

Still, she did not hold herself cheaply.  She was accustomed to such
open flattery.  She would not at once capitulate.

"But these pictures," she protested, "I gave to a man I knew.  You have
no right to them.  They are not at all the sort of picture I would give
to an utter stranger!"  With anxiety the lovely lady paused for a
reply.  She hoped that the reply the tall young man with appealing eyes
would make would be such as to make it possible for her to forgive him.

He was not given time to reply.  With a mocking snort Griswold
interrupted.  Aline and Charles had entirely forgotten him.

"An utter stranger!" mimicked Griswold.  "Oh, yes; he's an utter
stranger! You're pretty good actors, both of you; but you can't keep
that up long, and you'd better stop it now."

"Stop what?" asked Miss Proctor.  Her tone was cold and calm, but in
her eyes was a strange light.  It should have warned Griswold that he
would have been safer under the bed.

"Stop pretending!" cried Griswold.  "I won't have it!"

"I don't understand," said Miss Proctor.  She spoke in the same cold
voice, only now it had dropped several degrees nearer freezing. "I
don't think you understand yourself.  You won't have what?"

Griswold now was frightened, and that made him reckless.  Instead of
withdrawing he plunged deeper.

"I won't have you two pretending you don't know each other," he
blustered.  "I won't stand being fooled! If you're going to deceive me
before we're married, what will you do after we're married?"

Charles emitted a howl.  It was made up of disgust, amazement, and
rage.  Fiercely he turned upon Miss Proctor.

"Let me have him!" he begged.

"No!" almost shouted Miss Proctor.  Her tone was no longer cold--it was
volcanic.  Her eyes, flashing beautifully, were fixed upon Griswold.
She made a gesture as though to sweep Charles out of the room. "Please
go!" she demanded.  "This does not concern you."

Her tone was one not lightly to be disregarded.  Charles disregarded it.

"It does concern me," he said briskly.  "Nobody can insult a woman in
my house--you, least of all!"  He turned upon the greatest catch in
America.  "Griswold," he said, "I never met this lady until I came into
this room; but I know her, understand her, value her better than you'd
understand her if you knew her a thousand years!"

Griswold allowed him to go no farther.

"I know this much," he roared: "she was in love with the man who took
those photographs, and that man was in love with her! And you're that
man!"

"What if I am!" roared back Charles.  "Men always have loved her; men
always will--because she's a fine, big, wonderful woman! You can't see
that, and you never will.  You insulted her! Now I'll give you time to
apologize for that, and then I'll order you out of this house! And if
Miss Proctor is the sort of girl I think she is, she'll order you out
of it, too!"

Both men swung toward Miss Proctor.  Her eyes were now smiling
excitedly.  She first turned them upon Charles, blushing most
becomingly.

"Miss Proctor," she said, "hopes she is the sort of girl Mr. Cochran
thinks she is."  She then turned upon the greatest catch in America.
"You needn't wait, Chester," she said, "not even to apologize."

Chester Griswold, alone in his car, was driven back to New York. On the
way he invented a story to explain why, at the eleventh hour, he had
jilted Aline Proctor; but when his thoughts reverted to the young man
he had seen working with his sleeves rolled up he decided it would be
safer to let Miss Proctor tell of the broken engagement in her own way.

Charles would not consent to drive his fair guest back to New York
until she had first honored him with her presence at luncheon.  It was
served for two, on his veranda, under the climbing honeysuckles.
During the luncheon he told her all.

Miss Proctor, in the light of his five years of devotion, magnanimously
forgave him.

"Such a pretty house!" she exclaimed as they drove away from it. "When
Griswold selected it for our honeymoon he showed his first appreciation
of what I really like."

"It is still at your service!" said Charles.

Miss Proctor's eyes smiled with a strange light, but she did not speak.
It was a happy ride; but when Charles left her at the door of her
apartment-house he regarded sadly and with regret the bundle of
retrieved photographs that she carried away.

"What is it?" she asked kindly.

"I'm thinking of going back to those empty frames," said Charles, and
blushed deeply.  Miss Proctor blushed also.  With delighted and guilty
eyes she hastily scanned the photographs.  Snatching one from the
collection, she gave it to him and then ran up the steps.

In the light of the spring sunset the eyes of Charles devoured the
photograph of which, at last, he was the rightful owner.  On it was
written: "As long as this rock lasts!"

As Charles walked to his car his expression was distinctly thoughtful.





THE MEN OF ZANZIBAR


When his hunting trip in Uganda was over, Hemingway shipped his
specimens and weapons direct from Mombasa to New York, but he himself
journeyed south over the few miles that stretched to Zanzibar.

On the outward trip the steamer had touched there, and the little he
saw of the place had so charmed him that all the time he was on safari
he promised himself he would not return home without revisiting it.  On
the morning he arrived he had called upon Harris, his consul, to
inquire about the hotel; and that evening Harris had returned his call
and introduced him at the club.

One of the men there asked Hemingway what brought him to Africa, and
when he answered simply and truthfully that he had come to shoot big
game, it was as though he had said something clever, and every one
smiled.  On the way back to the hotel, as they felt their way through
the narrow slits in the wall that served as streets, he asked the
consul why every one had smiled.

The consul laughed evasively.

"It's a local joke," he explained.  "A lot of men come here for reasons
best kept to themselves, and they all say what you said, that they've
come to shoot big game.  It's grown to be a polite way of telling a man
it is none of his business."

"But I didn't mean it that way," protested Hemingway.  "I really have
been after big game for the last eight months."

In the tone one uses to quiet a drunken man or a child, the consul
answered soothingly.

"Of course," he assented--"of course you have."  But to show he was not
hopelessly credulous, and to keep Hemingway from involving himself
deeper, he hinted tactfully:  "Maybe they noticed you came ashore with
only one steamer trunk and no gun-cases."

"Oh, that's easily explained," laughed Hemingway.  "My heavy luggage--"

The consul had reached his house and his "boy" was pounding upon it
with his heavy staff.

"Please don't explain to me," he begged.  "It's quite unnecessary. Down
here we're so darned glad to see any white man that we don't ask
anything of him except that he won't hurry away.  We judge them as they
behave themselves here; we don't care what they are at home or why they
left it."

Hemingway was highly amused.  To find that he, a respectable,
sport-loving Hemingway of Massachusetts, should be mistaken for a
gun-runner, slave-dealer, or escaping cashier greatly delighted him.

"All right!" he exclaimed.  "I'll promise not to bore you with my past,
and I agree to be judged by Zanzibar standards.  I only hope I can live
up to them, for I see I am going to like the place very much."

Hemingway kept his promise.  He bored no one with confidences as to his
ancestors.  Of his past he made a point never to speak.  He preferred
that the little community into which he had dropped should remain
unenlightened, should take him as they found him. Of the fact that a
college was named after his grandfather and that on his father's
railroad he could travel through many States, he was discreetly silent.

The men of Zanzibar asked no questions.  That Hemingway could play a
stiff game of tennis, a stiffer game of poker, and, on the piano, songs
from home was to them sufficient recommendation.  In a week he had
become one of the most popular members of Zanzibar society.  It was as
though he had lived there always.  Hemingway found himself reaching out
to grasp the warmth of the place as a flower turns to the sun.  He
discovered that for thirty years something in him had been cheated. For
thirty years he had believed that completely to satisfy his soul all he
needed was the gray stone walls and the gray-shingled cabins under the
gray skies of New England, that what in nature he most loved was the
pine forests and the fields of goldenrod on the rock-bound coast of the
North Shore.  But now, like a man escaped from prison, he leaped and
danced in the glaring sunlight of the equator, he revelled in the
reckless generosity of nature, in the glorious confusion of colors, in
the "blooming blue" of the Indian Ocean, in the Arabian nights spent
upon the housetops under the purple sky, and beneath silver stars so
near that he could touch them with his hand.

He found it like being perpetually in a comic opera and playing a part
in one.  For only the scenic artist would dare to paint houses in such
yellow, pink, and cobalt-blue; only a "producer" who had never ventured
farther from Broadway than the Atlantic City boardwalk would have
conceived costumes so mad and so magnificent.  Instinctively he cast
the people of Zanzibar in the conventional roles of musical comedy.

His choruses were already in waiting.  There was the Sultan's
body-guard in gold-laced turbans, the merchants of the bazaars in red
fezzes and gowns of flowing silk, the Malay sailors in blue, the black
native police in scarlet, the ladies of the harems closely veiled and
cloaked, the market women in a single garment of orange, or scarlet, or
purple, or of all three, and the happy, hilarious Zanzibari boys in the
color God gave them.

For hours he would sit under the yellow-and-green awning of the Greek
hotel and watch the procession pass, or he would lie under an umbrella
on the beach and laugh as the boatmen lifted their passengers to their
shoulders and with them splash through the breakers, or in the bazaars
for hours he would bargain with the Indian merchants, or in the great
mahogany hall of the Ivory House, to the whisper of a punka and the
tinkle of ice in a tall glass, listen to tales of Arab raids, of
elephant poachers, of the trade in white and black ivory, of the great
explorers who had sat in that same room--of Emin Pasha, of Livingstone,
of Stanley.  His comic opera lacked only a heroine and the love
interest.

When he met Mrs. Adair he found both.  Polly Adair, as every one who
dared to do so preferred to call her, was, like himself, an American
and, though absurdly young, a widow.  In the States she would have been
called an extremely pretty girl.  In a community where the few dozen
white women had wilted and faded in the fierce sun of the equator, and
where the rest of the women were jet black except their teeth, which
were dyed an alluring purple, Polly Adair was as beautiful as a June
morning.  At least, so Hemingway thought the first time he saw her, and
each succeeding time he thought her more beautiful, more lovely, more
to be loved.

He met her, three days after his arrival, at the residence of the
British agent and consul-general, where Lady Firth was giving tea to
the six nurses from the English hospital and to all the other
respectable members of Zanzibar society.

"My husband's typist," said her ladyship as she helped Hemingway to
tea, "is a copatriot of yours.  She's such a nice gell; not a bit like
an American.  I don't know what I'd do in this awful place without her.
Promise me," she begged tragically, "you will not ask her to marry you."

Unconscious of his fate, Hemingway promised.

"Because all the men do," sighed Lady Firth, "and I never know what
morning one of the wretches won't carry her off to a home of her own.
And then what would become of me? Men are so selfish! If you must fall
in love," suggested her ladyship, "promise me you will fall in love
with"--she paused innocently and raised baby-blue eyes, in a baby-like
stare--"with some one else."

Again Hemingway promised.  He bowed gallantly.  "That will be quite
easy," he said.

Her ladyship smiled, but Hemingway did not see the smile.  He was
looking past her at a girl from home, who came across the terrace
carrying in her hand a stenographer's note-book.

Lady Firth followed the direction of his eyes and saw the look in them.
She exclaimed with dismay:

"Already! Already he deserts me, even before the ink is dry on the
paper."

She drew the note-book from Mrs. Adair's fingers and dropped it under
the tea-table.

"Letters must wait, my child," she declared.

"But Sir George--" protested the girl.

"Sir George must wait, too," continued his wife; "the Foreign Office
must wait, the British Empire must wait until you have had your tea."

The girl laughed helplessly.  As though assured her fellow countryman
would comprehend, she turned to him.

"They're so exactly like what you want them to be," she said--"I mean
about their tea!"

Hemingway smiled back with such intimate understanding that Lady Firth
glanced up inquiringly.

"Have you met Mrs. Adair already?" she asked.

"No," said Hemingway, "but I have been trying to meet her for thirty
years."

Perplexed, the Englishwoman frowned, and then, with delight at her own
perspicuity, laughed aloud.

"I know," she cried, "in your country you are what they call a
'hustler'! Is that right?" She waved them away.  "Take Mrs. Adair over
there," she commanded, "and tell her all the news from home. Tell her
about the railroad accidents and 'washouts' and the latest thing in
lynching."

The young people stretched out in long wicker chairs in the shade of a
tree covered with purple flowers.  On a perch at one side of them an
orang-outang in a steel belt was combing the whiskers of her infant
daughter; at their feet what looked like two chow puppies, but which
happened to be Lady Firth's pet lions, were chewing each other's
toothless gums; and in the immediate foreground the hospital nurses
were defying the sun at tennis while the Sultan's band played
selections from a Gaiety success of many years in the past.  With these
surroundings it was difficult to talk of home.  Nor on any later
occasions, except through inadvertence, did they talk of home.

For the reasons already stated, it amused Hemingway to volunteer no
confidences.  On account of what that same evening Harris told him of
Mrs. Adair, he asked none.

Harris himself was a young man in no way inclined to withhold
confidences.  He enjoyed giving out information.  He enjoyed talking
about himself, his duties, the other consuls, the Zanzibaris, and his
native State of Iowa.  So long as he was permitted to talk, the
listener could select the subject.  But, combined with his loquacity,
Hemingway had found him kind-hearted, intelligent, observing, and the
call of a common country had got them quickly together.

Hemingway was quite conscious that the girl he had seen but once had
impressed him out of all proportion to what he knew of her. She seemed
too good to be true.  And he tried to persuade himself that after eight
months in the hinterland among hippos and zebras any reasonably
attractive girl would have proved equally disturbing.

But he was not convinced.  He did not wish to be convinced.  He assured
himself that had he met Mrs. Adair at home among hundreds of others he
would have recognized her as a woman of exceptional character, as one
especially charming.  He wanted to justify this idea of her; he wanted
to talk of Mrs. Adair to Harris, not to learn more concerning her, but
just for the pleasure of speaking her name.

He was much upset at that, and the discovery that on meeting a woman
for the first time he still could be so boyishly and ingenuously moved
greatly pleased him.  It was a most delightful secret.  So he acted on
the principle that when a man immensely admires a woman and wishes to
conceal that fact from every one else he can best do so by declaring
his admiration in the frankest and most open manner.  After the
tea-party, as Harris and himself sat in the consulate, he so expressed
himself.

"What an extraordinary nice girl," he exclaimed, "is that Mrs. Adair! I
had a long talk with her.  She is most charming.  However did a woman
like that come to be in a place like this?"

Judging from his manner, it seemed to Hemingway that at the mention of
Mrs. Adair's name he had found Harris mentally on guard, as though the
consul had guessed the question would come and had prepared for it.

"She just dropped in here one day," said Harris, "from no place in
particular.  Personally, I always have thought from heaven."

"It's a good address," said Hemingway.

"It seems to suit her," the consul agreed.  "Anyway, if she doesn't
come from there, that's where she's going--just on account of the good
she's done us while she's been here.  She arrived four months ago with
a typewriting-machine and letters to me from our consuls in Cape Town
and Durban.  She had done some typewriting for them.  It seems that
after her husband died, which was a few months after they were married,
she learned to make her living by typewriting.  She worked too hard and
broke down, and the doctor said she must go to hot countries, the
'hotter the better.'  So she's worked her way half around the world
typewriting.  She worked chiefly for her own consuls or for the
American commission houses.  Sometimes she stayed a month, sometimes
only over one steamer day.  But when she got here Lady Firth took such
a fancy to her that she made Sir George engage her as his private
secretary, and she's been here ever since."

In a community so small as was that of Zanzibar the white residents saw
one another every day, and within a week Hemingway had met Mrs. Adair
many times.  He met her at dinner, at the British agency; he met her in
the country club, where the white exiles gathered for tea and tennis.
He hired a launch and in her honor gave a picnic on the north coast of
the island, and on three glorious and memorable nights, after different
dinner-parties had ascended to the roof, he sat at her side and across
the white level of the housetops looked down into the moonlit harbor.

What interest the two young people felt in each other was in no way
discouraged by their surroundings.  In the tropics the tender emotions
are not winter killed.  Had they met at home, the conventions, his own
work, her social duties would have kept the progress of their interest
within a certain speed limit.  But they were in a place free of
conventions, and the preceding eight months which Hemingway had spent
in the jungle and on the plain had made the society of his fellow man,
and of Mrs. Adair in particular, especially attractive.

Hemingway had no work to occupy his time, and he placed it unreservedly
at the disposition of his countrywoman.  In doing so it could not be
said that Mrs. Adair encouraged him.  Hemingway himself would have been
the first to acknowledge this.  From the day he met her he was
conscious that always there was an intangible barrier between them.
Even before she possibly could have guessed that his interest in her
was more than even she, attractive as she was, had the right to expect,
she had wrapped around herself an invisible mantle of defense.

There were certain speeches of his which she never heard, certain tones
to which she never responded.  At moments when he was complimenting
himself that at last she was content to be in his company, she would
suddenly rise and join the others, and he would be left wondering in
what way he could possibly have offended.

He assured himself that a woman, young and attractive, in a strange
land in her dependent position must of necessity be discreet, but in
his conduct there certainly had been nothing that was not considerate,
courteous, and straightforward.

When he appreciated that he cared for her seriously, that he was
gloriously happy in caring, and proud of the way in which he cared, the
fact that she persistently held him at arm's length puzzled and hurt.
At first when he had deliberately set to work to make her like him he
was glad to think that, owing to his reticence about himself, if she
did like him it would be for himself alone and not for his worldly
goods.  But when he knew her better he understood that if once Mrs.
Adair made up her mind to take a second husband, the fact that he was a
social and financial somebody, and not, as many in Zanzibar supposed
Hemingway to be, a social outcast, would make but little difference.

Nor was her manner to be explained by the fact that the majority of
women found him unattractive.  As to that, the pleasant burden of his
experience was to the contrary.  He at last wondered if there was some
one else, if he had come into her life too late. He set about looking
for the man and so, he believed, he soon found him.

Of the little colony, Arthur Fearing was the man of whom Hemingway had
seen the least.  That was so because Fearing wished it.  Like himself,
Fearing was an American, young, and a bachelor, but, very much unlike
Hemingway, a hermit and a recluse.

Two years before he had come to Zanzibar looking for an investment for
his money.  In Zanzibar there were gentlemen adventurers of every
country, who were welcome to live in any country save their own.

To them Mr. Fearing seemed a heaven-sent victim.  But to him their
alluring tales of the fortunes that were to rise from buried treasures,
lost mines, and pearl beds did not appeal.  Instead he conferred with
the consuls, the responsible merchants, the partners in the prosperous
trading houses.  After a month of "looking around" he had purchased
outright the goodwill and stock of one of the oldest of the commission
houses, and soon showed himself to be a most capable man of business.
But, except as a man of business, no one knew him.  From the dim
recesses of his warehouse he passed each day to the seclusion of his
bungalow in the country.  And, although every one was friendly to him,
he made no friends.

It was only after the arrival of Mrs. Adair that he consented to show
himself, and it was soon noted that it was only when she was invited
that he would appear, and that on these occasions he devoted himself
entirely to her.  In the presence of others, he still was shy, gravely
polite, and speaking but little, and never of himself; but with Mrs.
Adair his shyness seemed to leave him, and when with her he was seen to
talk easily and eagerly.  And, on her part, to what he said, Polly
Adair listened with serious interest.

Lady Firth, who, at home, was a trained and successful match-maker, and
who, in Zanzibar, had found but a limited field for her activities,
decided that if her companion and protegee must marry, she should marry
Fearing.

Fearing was no gentleman adventurer, remittance-man, or humble clerk
serving his apprenticeship to a steamship line or an ivory house.  He
was one of the pillars of Zanzibar society.  The trading house he had
purchased had had its beginnings in the slave-trade, and now under his
alert direction was making a turnover equal to that of any of its
ancient rivals.  Personally, Fearing was a most desirable catch.  He
was well-mannered, well-read, of good appearance, steady, and, in a
latitude only six degrees removed from the equator, of impeccable
morals.

It is said that it is the person who is in love who always is the first
to discover his successful rival.  It is either an instinct or because
his concern is deeper than that of others.

And so, when Hemingway sought for the influence that separated him from
Polly Adair, the trail led to Fearing.  To find that the obstacle in
the path of his true love was a man greatly relieved him.  He had
feared that what was in the thoughts of Mrs. Adair was the memory of
her dead husband.  He had no desire to cross swords with a ghost.  But
to a living rival he could afford to be generous.

For he was sure no one could care for Polly Adair as he cared, and,
like every other man in love, he believed that he alone had discovered
in her beauties of soul and character that to the rest of mankind were
hidden.  This knowledge, he assured himself, had aroused in him a depth
of devotion no one else could hope to imitate, and this depth of
devotion would in time so impress her, would become so necessary to her
existence, that it would force her at last into the arms of the only
man who could offer it.

Having satisfied himself in this fashion, he continued cheerfully on
his way, and the presence of a rival in no way discouraged him.  It
only was Polly Adair who discouraged him.  And this, in spite of the
fact that every hour of the day he tried to bring himself pleasantly to
her notice.  All that an idle young man in love, aided and abetted by
imagination and an unlimited letter of credit, could do, Hemingway did.
But to no end.

The treasures he dug out of the bazaars and presented to her, under
false pretenses as trinkets he happened at that moment to find in his
pockets, were admired by her at their own great value, and returned
also under false pretenses, as having been offered her only to examine.

"It is for your sister at home, I suppose," she prompted.  "It's quite
lovely.  Thank you for letting me see it."

After having been several times severely snubbed in this fashion,
Hemingway remarked grimly as he put a black pearl back into his pocket:

"At this rate sister will be mighty glad to see me when I get home.  It
seems almost a pity I haven't got a sister."

The girl answered this only with a grave smile.

On another occasion she admired a polo pony that had been imported for
the stable of the boy Sultan.  But next morning Hemingway, after much
diplomacy, became the owner of it and proudly rode it to the agency.
Lady Firth and Polly Adair walked out to meet him arm in arm, but at
sight of the pony there came into the eyes of the secretary a look that
caused Hemingway to wish himself and his mount many miles in the
jungle.  He saw that before it had been proffered, his gift-horse had
been rejected. He acted promptly.

"Lady Firth," he said, "you've been so awfully kind to me, made this
place so like a home to me, that I want you to put this mare in your
stable.  The Sultan wanted her, but when he learned I meant to turn her
over to you, he let her go.  We both hope you'll accept."

Lady Firth had no scruples.  In five minutes she had accepted, had
clapped a side-saddle on her rich gift, and was cantering joyously down
the Pearl Road.

Polly Adair looked after her with an expression that was distinctly
wistful.  Thus encouraged, Hemingway said:

"I'm glad you are sorry.  I hope every time you see that pony you'll be
sorry."

"Why should I be sorry?" asked the girl.

"Because you have been unkind," said Hemingway, "and it is not your
character to be unkind.  And that you have shown lack of character
ought to make you sorry."

"But you know perfectly well," said Mrs. Adair, "that if I were to take
any one of these wonderful things you bring me, I wouldn't have any
character left."

She smiled at him reassuringly.  "And you know," she added, "that that
is not why I do not take them.  It isn't because I can't afford to, or
because I don't want them, because I do; but it's because I don't
deserve them, because I can give you nothing in return."

"As the copy-book says," returned Hemingway, "'the pleasure is in the
giving.'  If the copy-book don't say that, I do.  And to pretend that
you give me nothing, that is ridiculous!"

It was so ridiculous that he rushed on vehemently.  "Why, every minute
you give me something," he exclaimed.  "Just to see you, just to know
you are alive, just to be certain when I turn in at night that when the
world wakes up again you will still be a part of it; that is what you
give me.  And its name is--Happiness!"

He had begun quite innocently; he had had no idea that it would come.
But he had said it.  As clearly as though he had dropped upon one knee,
laid his hand over his heart and exclaimed: "Most beautiful of your
sex, I love you! Will you marry me?"  His eyes and the tone of his
voice had said it.  And he knew that he had said it, and that she knew.

Her eyes were filled with sudden tears, and so wonderful was the light
in them that for one mad moment Hemingway thought they were tears of
happiness.  But the light died, and what had been tears became only wet
drops of water, and he saw to his dismay that she was most miserable.

The girl moved ahead of him to the cliff on which the agency stood, and
which overhung the harbor and the Indian Ocean.  Her eyes were filled
with trouble.  As she raised them to his they begged of him to be kind.

"I am glad you told me," she said.  "I have been afraid it was coming.
But until you told me I could not say anything.  I tried to stop you.
I was rude and unkind--"

"You certainly were," Hemingway agreed cheerfully.  "And the more you
would have nothing to do with me, the more I admired you.  And then I
learned to admire you more, and then to love you.  It seems now as
though I had always known and always loved you.  And now this is what
we are going to do."

He wouldn't let her speak; he rushed on precipitately.

"We are first going up to the house to get your typewriting-machine,
and we will bring it back here and hurl it as far as we can off this
cliff. I want to see the splash! I want to hear it smash when it hits
that rock. It has been my worst enemy, because it helped you to be
independent of me, because it kept you from me.  Time after time, on
the veranda, when I was pretending to listen to Lady Firth, I was
listening to that damned machine banging and complaining and tiring
your pretty fingers and your dear eyes.  So first it has got to go.
You have been its slave, now I am going to be your slave.  You have
only to rub the lamp and things will happen.  And because I've told you
nothing about myself, you mustn't think that the money that helps to
make them happen is 'tainted.'  It isn't.  Nor am I, nor my father, nor
my father's father.  I am asking you to marry a perfectly respectable
young man.  And, when you do--"

Again he gave her no opportunity to interrupt, but rushed on
impetuously:  "We will sail away across that ocean to wherever you will
take me.  To Ceylon and Tokio and San Francisco, to Naples and New
York, to Greece and Athens.  They are all near.  They are all yours.
Will you accept them and me?"  He smiled appealingly, but most
miserably.  For though he had spoken lightly and with confidence, it
was to conceal the fact that he was not at all confident. As he had
read in her eyes her refusal of his pony, he had read, even as he
spoke, her refusal of himself.  When he ceased speaking the girl
answered:

"If I say that what you tell me makes me proud, I am saying too
little." She shook her head firmly, with an air of finality that
frightened Hemingway.  "But what you ask--what you suggest is
impossible."

"You don't like me?" said Hemingway.

"I like you very much," returned the girl, "and, if I don't seem
unhappy that it can't be, it is because I always have known it can't
be--"

"Why can't it be?" rebelled Hemingway.  "I don't mean that I can't
understand your not wanting to marry me, but if I knew your objection,
maybe, I could beat it down."

Again, with the same air of finality, the girl moved her head slowly,
as though considering each word; she began cautiously.

"I cannot tell you the reason," she said, "because it does not concern
only myself."

"If you mean you care for some one else," pleaded Hemingway, "that does
not frighten me at all."  It did frighten him extremely, but, believing
that a faint heart never won anything, he pretended to be brave.

"For you," he boasted, "I would go down into the grave as deep as any
man.  He that hath more let him give.  I know what I offer.  I know I
love you as no other man--"

The girl backed away from him as though he had struck her.  "You must
not say that," she commanded.

For the first time he saw that she was moved, that the fingers she
laced and unlaced were trembling.  "It is final!" exclaimed the girl.
"I cannot marry--you, or any one.  I--I have promised. I am not free."

"Nothing in the world is final," returned Hemingway sharply, "except
death."  He raised his hat and, as though to leave her, moved away.
Not because he admitted defeat, but because he felt that for the
present to continue might lose him the chance to fight again.  But, to
deliver an ultimatum, he turned back.

"As long as you are alive, and I am alive," he told her, "all things
are possible.  I don't give up hope.  I don't give up you."

The girl exclaimed with a gesture of despair.  "He won't understand!"
she cried.

Hemingway advanced eagerly.

"Help me to understand," he begged.

"You won't understand," explained the girl, "that I am speaking the
truth.  You are right that things can change in the future, but nothing
can change the past.  Can't you understand that?"

"What do I care for the past?" cried the young man scornfully.  "I know
you as well as though I had known you for a thousand years and I love
you."

The girl flushed crimson.

"Not my past," she gasped.  "I meant--"

"I don't care what you meant," said Hemingway.  "I'm not prying into
your little secrets.  I know only one thing--two things, that I love
you and that, until you love me, I am going to make your life hell!"

He caught at her hands, and for an instant she let him clasp them in
both of his, while she looked at him.

Something in her face, other than distress and pity, caused his heart
to leap.  But he was too wise to speak, and, that she might not read
the hope in his eyes, turned quickly and left her.  He had not crossed
the grounds of the agency before he had made up his mind as to the
reason for her repelling him.

"She is engaged to Fearing!" he told himself.  "She has promised to
marry Fearing! She thinks that it is too late to consider another man!"
The prospect of a fight for the woman he loved thrilled him greatly.
His lower jaw set pugnaciously.

"I'll show her it's not too late," he promised himself.  "I'll show her
which of us is the man to make her happy.  And, if I am not the man,
I'll take the first outbound steamer and trouble them no more. But
before that happens," he also promised himself, "Fearing must show he
is the better man."

In spite of his brave words, in spite of his determination, within the
day Hemingway had withdrawn in favor of his rival, and, on the Crown
Prince Eitel, bound for Genoa and New York, had booked his passage home.

On the afternoon of the same day he had spoken to Polly Adair,
Hemingway at the sunset hour betook himself to the consulate.  At that
hour it had become his custom to visit his fellow countryman and with
him share the gossip of the day and such a cocktail as only a fellow
countryman could compose.  Later he was to dine at the house of the
Ivory Company and, as his heart never ceased telling him, Mrs. Adair
also was to be present.

"It will be a very pleasant party," said Harris.  "They gave me a bid,
too, but it's steamer day to-morrow, and I've got to get my mail ready
for the Crown Prince Eitel.  Mrs. Adair is to be there."

Hemingway nodded, and with pleasant anticipation waited.  Of Mrs.
Adair, Harris always spoke with reverent enthusiasm, and the man who
loved her delighted to listen.  But this time Harris disappointed him.

"And Fearing, too," he added.

Again Hemingway nodded.  The conjunction of the two names surprised
him, but he made no sign.  Loquacious as he knew Harris to be, he never
before had heard his friend even suggest the subject that to Zanzibar
had become of acute interest.

Harris filled the two glasses, and began to pace the room.  When he
spoke it was in the aggrieved tone of one who feels himself placed in a
false position.

"There's no one," he complained suddenly, "so popularly unpopular as
the man who butts in.  I know that, but still I've always taken his
side.  I've always been for him."  He halted, straddling with legs
apart and hands deep in his trousers pockets, and frowned down upon his
guest.

"Suppose," he began aggressively, "I see a man driving his car over a
cliff.  If I tell him that road will take him over a cliff, the worst
that can happen to me is to be told to mind my own business, and I can
always answer back: 'I was only trying to help you.'  If I don't speak,
the man breaks his neck.  Between the two, it seems to me, sooner than
have any one's life on my hands, I'd rather be told to mind my own
business."

Hemingway stared into his glass.  His expression was distinctly
disapproving, but, undismayed, the consul continued.

"Now, we all know that this morning you gave that polo pony to Lady
Firth, and one of us guesses that you first offered it to some one
else, who refused it.  One of us thinks that very soon, to-morrow, or
even to-night, at this party you may offer that same person something
else, something worth more than a polo pony, and that if she refuses
that, it is going to break you all up, is going to hurt you for the
rest of your life."

Lifting his eyes from his glass, Hemingway shot at his friend a glance
of warning.  In haste, Harris continued:

"I know," he protested, answering the look, "I know that this is where
Mr. Buttinsky is told to mind his business.  But I'm going right on.
I'm going to state a hypothetical case with no names mentioned and no
questions asked, or answered.  I'm going to state a theory, and let you
draw your own deductions."

He slid into a chair, and across the table fastened his eyes on those
of his friend.  Confidently and undisturbed, but with a wry smile of
dislike, Hemingway stared fixedly back at him.

"What," demanded Harris, "is the first rule in detective work?"

Hemingway started.  He was prepared for something unpleasant, but not
for that particular form of unpleasantness.  But his faith was
unshaken, and he smiled confidently.  He let the consul answer his own
question.

"It is to follow the woman," declared Harris.  "And, accordingly, what
should be the first precaution of a man making his get-away? To see
that the woman does not follow.  But suppose we are dealing with a
fugitive of especial intelligence, with a criminal who has imagination
and brains? He might fix it so that the woman could follow him without
giving him away, he might plan it so that no one would suspect.  She
might arrive at his hiding-place only after many months, only after
each had made separately a long circuit of the globe, only after a
journey with a plausible and legitimate object. She would arrive
disguised in every way, and they would meet as total strangers.  And,
as strangers under the eyes of others, they would become acquainted,
would gradually grow more friendly, would be seen more frequently
together, until at last people would say: 'Those two mean to make a
match of it.'  And then, one day, openly, in the sight of all men, with
the aid of the law and the church, they would resume those relations
that existed before the man ran away and the woman followed."

There was a short silence.

Hemingway broke it in a tone that would accept no denial.

"You can't talk like that to me," he cried.  "What do you mean?"

Without resentment, the consul regarded him with grave solicitude. His
look was one of real affection, and, although his tone held the
absolute finality of the family physician who delivers a sentence of
death, he spoke with gentleness and regret.

"I mean," he said, "that Mrs. Adair is not a widow, that the man she
speaks of as her late husband is not dead; that that man is Fearing!"

Hemingway felt afraid.  A month before a rhinoceros had charged him and
had dropped at his feet.  At another time a wounded lioness had leaped
into his path and crouched to spring.  Then he had not been afraid.
Then he had aimed as confidently as though he were firing at a straw
target.  But now he felt real fear: fear of something he did not
comprehend, of a situation he could not master, of an adversary as
strong as Fate.  By a word something had been snatched from him that he
now knew was as dear to him as life, that was life, that was what made
it worth continuing.  And he could do nothing to prevent it; he could
not help himself.  He was as impotent as the prisoner who hears the
judge banish him into exile.  He tried to adjust his mind to the
calamity.  But his mind refused.  As easily as with his finger a man
can block the swing of a pendulum and halt the progress of the clock,
Harris with a word had brought the entire world to a full stop.

And then, above his head, Hemingway heard the lazy whisper of the
punka, and from the harbor the raucous whistle of the Crown Prince
Eitel, signalling her entrance.  The world had not stopped; for the
punka-boy, for the captain of the German steamer, for Harris seated
with face averted, the world was still going gayly and busily forward.
Only for him had it stopped.

In spite of the confident tone in which Harris had spoken, in spite of
the fact that unless he knew it was the truth, he would not have
spoken, Hemingway tried to urge himself to believe there had been some
hideous, absurd error.  But in answer came back to him snatches of talk
or phrases the girl had last addressed to him: "You can command the
future, but you cannot change the past.  I cannot marry you, or any
one! I am not free!"

And then to comfort himself, he called up the look he had surprised in
her eyes when he stood holding her hands in his.  He clung to it, as a
drowning man will clutch even at a piece of floating seaweed.

When he tried to speak he found his voice choked and stifled, and that
his distress was evident, he knew from the pity he read in the eyes of
Harris.

In a voice strange to him, he heard himself saying: "Why do you think
that? You've got to tell me.  I have a right to know.  This morning I
asked Mrs. Adair to marry me."

The consul exclaimed with dismay and squirmed unhappily.  "I didn't
know," he protested.  "I thought I was in time.  I ought to have told
you days ago, but--"

"Tell me now," commanded Hemingway.

"I know it in a thousand ways," began Harris.

Hemingway raised his eyes hopefully.

But the consul shook his head.  "But to convince you," he went on, "I
need tell you only one.  The thousand other proofs are looks they have
exchanged, sentences I have chanced to overhear, and that each of them
unknown to the other has told me of little happenings and incidents
which I found were common to both.  Each has described the house in
which he or she lived, and it was the same house.  They claim to come
from different cities in New England, they came from the same city.
They claim--"

"That is no proof," cried Hemingway, "either that they are married, or
that the man is a criminal."

For a moment Harris regarded the other in silence.  Then he said:
"You're making it very hard for me.  I see I've got to show you. It's
kindest, after all, to cut quick."  He leaned farther forward, and his
voice dropped.  Speaking quickly, he said:

"Last summer I lived outside the town in a bungalow on the Pearl Road.
Fearing's house was next to mine.  This was before Mrs. Adair went to
live at the agency, and while she was alone in another bungalow farther
down the road.  I was ill that summer; my nerves went back on me.  I
couldn't sleep.  I used to sit all night on my veranda and pray for the
sun to rise.  From where I sat it was dark and no one could see me, but
I could see the veranda of Fearing's house and into his garden.  And
night after night I saw Mrs. Adair creep out of Fearing's house, saw
him walk with her to the gate, saw him in the shadow of the bushes take
her in his arms, and saw them kiss."  The voice of the consul rose
sharply.  "No one knows that but you and I, and," he cried defiantly,
"it is impossible for us to believe ill of Polly Adair.  The easy
explanation we refuse.  It is intolerable. And so you must believe as I
believe; that when she visited Fearing by night she went to him because
she had the right to go to him, because already she was his wife.  And
now when every one here believes they met for the first time in
Zanzibar, when no one will be surprised if they should marry, they will
go through the ceremony again, and live as man and wife, as they are,
as they were before he fled from America!"

Hemingway was seated with his elbows on the table and his face in his
hands.  He was so long silent that Harris struck the table roughly with
his palm.

"Well," he demanded, "why don't you speak? Do you doubt her? Don't you
believe she is his wife?"

"I refuse to believe anything else!" said Hemingway.  He rose, and
slowly and heavily moved toward the door.  "And I will not trouble them
any more," he added.  "I'll leave at sunrise on the Eitel."

Harris exclaimed in dismay, but Hemingway did not hear him.  In the
doorway he halted and turned back.  From his voice all trace of emotion
had departed.  "Why," he asked dully, "do you think Fearing is a
fugitive? Not that it matters to her, since she loves him, or that it
matters to me.  Only I would like to think you were wrong.  I want her
to have only the best."

Again the consul moved unhappily.

"I oughtn't to tell you," he protested, "and if I do I ought to tell
the State Department, and a detective agency first.  They have the
call. They want him, or a man damned like him."  His voice dropped to a
whisper.  "The man wanted is Henry Brownell, a cashier of a bank in
Waltham, Mass., thirty-five years of age, smooth-shaven, college-bred,
speaking with a marked New England accent, and--and with other marks
that fit Fearing like the cover on a book.  The department and the
Pinkertons have been devilling the life out of me about it for nine
months.  They are positive he is on the coast of Africa.  I put them
off. I wasn't sure."

"You've been protecting them," said Hemingway.

"I wasn't sure," reiterated Harris.  "And if I were, the Pinkertons can
do their own sleuthing.  The man's living honestly now, anyway, isn't
he?" he demanded; "and she loves him.  At least she's stuck by him.
Why should I punish her?"

His tone seemed to challenge and upbraid.

"Good God!" cried the other, "I'm not blaming you! I'd be proud of the
chance to do as much.  I asked because I'd like to go away thinking
she's content, thinking she's happy with him."

"Doesn't it look as though she were?" Harris protested.  "She's
followed him--followed him half around the globe.  If she'd been
happier away from him, she'd have stayed away from him."

So intent had been the men upon their talk that neither had noted the
passing of the minutes or, what at other times was an event of moment,
that the mail steamer had distributed her mail and passengers; and when
a servant entered bearing lamps, and from the office the consul's clerk
appeared with a bundle of letters from the Eitel, both were taken by
surprise.

"So late?" exclaimed Hemingway.  "I must go.  If I'm to sail with the
Eitel at daybreak, I've little time!"

But he did not go.

As he advanced toward Harris with his hand outstretched in adieu, the
face of the consul halted him.  With the letters, the clerk had placed
upon the table a visiting-card, and as it lay in the circle of light
from the lamp the consul, as though it were alive and menacing, stared
at it in fascination.  Moving stiffly, he turned it so that Hemingway
could see.  On it Hemingway read, "George S. Sheyer," and, on a lower
line, "Representing William L. Pinkerton."

To the woman he loved the calamity they dreaded had come, and
Hemingway, with a groan of dismay, exclaimed aloud:

"It is the end!"

From the darkness of the outer office a man stepped softly into the
circle of the lamp.  They could see his figure only from the waist
down; the rest of him was blurred in shadows.

"'It is the end'?" he repeated inquiringly.  He spoke the phrase with
peculiar emphasis, as though to impress it upon the memory of the two
others.  His voice was cool, alert, authoritative.  "The end of what?"
he demanded sharply.

The question was most difficult.  In the silence the detective moved
into the light.  He was tall and strongly built, his face was shrewd
and intelligent.  He might have been a prosperous man of business.

"Which of you is the consul?" he asked.  But he did not take his eyes
from Hemingway.

"I am the consul," said Harris.  But still the detective did not turn
from Hemingway.

"Why," he asked, "did this gentleman, when he read my card, say, 'It is
the end'? The end of what? Has anything been going on here that came to
an end when he saw my card?"

Disconcerted, in deep embarrassment, Harris struggled for a word. But
his distress was not observed by the detective.  His eyes, suspicious
and accusing, still were fixed upon Hemingway, and under their scrutiny
Harris saw his friend slowly retreat, slowly crumple up into a chair,
slowly raise his hands to cover his face.  As though in a nightmare, he
heard him saying savagely:

"It is the end of two years of hell, it is the end of two years of fear
and agony! Now I shall have peace.  Now I shall sleep! I thank God
you've come! I thank God I can go back!"

Harris broke the spell by leaping to his feet.  He sprang between the
two men.

"What does this mean?" he commanded.

Hemingway raised his eyes and surveyed him steadily.

"It means," he said, "that I have deceived you, Harris--that I am the
man you told me of, I am the man they want."  He turned to the officer.

"I fooled him for four months," he said.  "I couldn't fool you for five
minutes."

The eyes of the detective danced with sudden excitement, joy, and
triumph.  He shot an eager glance from Hemingway to the consul.

"This man," he demanded; "who is he?"

With an impatient gesture Hemingway signified Harris.

"He doesn't know who I am," he said.  "He knows me as Hemingway. I am
Henry Brownell, of Waltham, Mass."  Again his face sank into the palms
of his hands.  "And I'm tired--tired," he moaned.  "I am sick of not
knowing, sick of running away.  I give myself up."

The detective breathed a sigh of relief that seemed to issue from his
soul.

"My God," he sighed, "you've given me a long chase! I've had eleven
months of you, and I'm as sick of this as you are."  He recovered
himself sharply.  As though reciting an incantation, he addressed
Hemingway in crisp, emotionless notes.

"Henry Brownell," he chanted, "I arrest you in the name of the
commonwealth of Massachusetts for the robbery, on October the eleventh,
nineteen hundred and nine, of the Waltham Title and Trust Company.  I
understand," he added, "you waive extradition and return with me of
your own free will?"

With his face still in his hands, Hemingway murmured assent.  The
detective stepped briskly and uninvited to the table and seated
himself. He was beaming with triumph, with pleasurable excitement.

"I want to send a message home, Mr. Consul," he said.  "May I use your
cable blanks?"

Harris was still standing in the centre of the room looking down upon
the bowed head and shoulders of Hemingway.  Since, in amazement, he had
sprung toward him, he had not spoken.  And he was still silent.

Inside the skull of Wilbur Harris, of Iowa, U. S. A., American consul
to Zanzibar, East Africa, there was going forward a mighty struggle
that was not fit to put into words.  For Harris and his conscience had
met and were at odds.  One way or the other the fight must be settled
at once, and whatever he decided must be for all time.  This he
understood, and as his sympathies and conscience struggled for the
mastery the pen of the detective, scratching at racing speed across the
paper, warned him that only a few seconds were left him in which to
protest or else to forever after hold his peace.

So realistic had been the acting of Hemingway that for an instant
Harris himself had been deceived.  But only for an instant.  With his
knowledge of the circumstances he saw that Hemingway was not confessing
to a crime of his own, but drawing across the trail of the real
criminal the convenient and useful red herring.  He knew that already
Hemingway had determined to sail the next morning.  In leaving Zanzibar
he was making no sacrifice.  He merely was carrying out his original
plan, and by taking away with him the detective was giving Brownell and
his wife at least a month in which to again lose themselves.

What was his own duty he could not determine.  That of Hemingway he
knew nothing, he could truthfully testify.  And if now Hemingway
claimed to be Henry Brownell, he had no certain knowledge to the
contrary.  That through his adventure Hemingway would come to harm did
not greatly disturb him.  He foresaw that his friend need only send a
wireless from Nantucket and at the wharf witnesses would swarm to
establish his identity and make it evident the detective had blundered.
And in the meanwhile Brownell and his wife, in some settlement still
further removed from observation, would for the second time have
fortified themselves against pursuit and capture.  He saw the eyes of
Hemingway fixed upon him in appeal and warning.

The brisk voice of the detective broke the silence.

"You will testify, if need be, Mr. Consul," he said, "that you heard
the prisoner admit he was Henry Brownell and that he surrendered
himself of his own free will?"

For an instant the consul hesitated, then he nodded stiffly.

"I heard him," he said.

Three hours later, at ten o' clock of the same evening, the detective
and Hemingway leaned together on the rail of the Crown Prince Eitel.
Forward, in the glare of her cargo lights, to the puffing and creaking
of derricks and donkey engines, bundles of beeswax, of rawhides, and
precious tusks of ivory were being hurled into the hold; from the
shore-boats clinging to the ship's sides came the shrieks of the
Zanzibar boys, from the smoking-room the blare of the steward's band
and the clink of glasses.  Those of the youth of Zanzibar who were on
board, the German and English clerks and agents, saw in the presence of
Hemingway only a purpose similar to their own; the desire of a homesick
exile to gaze upon the mirrored glories of the Eitel's saloon, at the
faces of white men and women, to listen to home-made music, to drink
home-brewed beer.  As he passed the smoking-room they called to him,
and to the stranger at his elbow, but he only nodded smiling and,
avoiding them, ascended to the shadow of the deserted boat-deck.

"You are sure," he said, "you told no one?"

"No one," the detective answered.  "Of course your hotel proprietor
knows you're sailing, but he doesn't know why.  And, by sunrise, we'll
be well out at sea."

The words caught Hemingway by the throat.  He turned his eyes to the
town lying like a field of snow in the moonlight.  Somewhere on one of
its flat roofs a merry dinner-party was laughing, drinking, perhaps
regretting his absence, wondering at his excuse of sudden illness.  She
was there, and he with the detective like a shadow at his elbow, was
sailing out of her life forever.  He had seen her for the last time:
that morning for the last time had looked into her eyes, had held her
hands in his.  He saw the white beach, the white fortress-like walls,
the hanging gardens, the courtesying palms, dimly.  It was among those
that he who had thought himself content, had found happiness, and had
then seen it desert him and take out of his life pleasure in all other
things.  With a pain that seemed impossible to support, he turned his
back upon Zanzibar and all it meant to him. And, as he turned, he
faced, coming toward him, across the moonlit deck, Fearing.

His instinct was to cry out to the man in warning, but his second
thought showed him that through his very effort to protect the other,
he might bring about his undoing.  So, helpless to prevent, in
agitation and alarm, he waited in silence.  Of the two men, Fearing
appeared the least disturbed.  With a polite but authoritative gesture
he turned to the detective.  "I have something to say to this gentleman
before he sails," he said; "would you kindly stand over there?"

He pointed across the empty deck at the other rail.

In the alert, confident young man in the English mess-jacket,
clean-shaven and bronzed by the suns of the equator, the detective saw
no likeness to the pale, bearded bank clerk of the New England city.
This, he guessed, must be some English official, some friend of
Brownell's who generously had come to bid the unfortunate fugitive
Godspeed.

Assured of this, the detective also bowed politely, and, out of
hearing, but with his prisoner in full view, took up a position against
the rail opposite.

Turning his back upon the detective, and facing Hemingway with his eyes
close to his, Fearing began abruptly.  His voice was sunk to a whisper,
but he spoke without the slightest sign of trepidation, without the
hesitation of an instant.

"Two years ago, when I was indicted," he whispered, "and ran away,
Polly paid back half of the sum I stole.  That left her without a
penny; that's why she took to this typewriting.  Since then, I have
paid back nearly all the rest.  But Polly was not satisfied.  She
wanted me to take my punishment and start fresh. She knew they were
watching her so she couldn't write this to me, but she came to me by a
roundabout way, taking a year to get here.  And all the time she's been
here, she's been begging me to go back and give myself up.  I couldn't
see it.  I knew in a few months I'd have paid back all I took, and I
thought that was enough. I wanted to keep out of jail.  But she said I
must take my medicine in our own country, and start square with a clean
slate.  She's done a lot for me, and whether I'd have done that for her
or not, I don't know.  But now, I must! What you did to-night to save
me, leaves me no choice.  So, I'll sail--"

With an exclamation of anger, Hemingway caught the other by the
shoulder and dragged him closer.

"To save you!" he whispered.  "No one's thinking of you.  I didn't do
it for you.  I did it, that you both could escape together, to give you
time--"

"But I tell you," protested Fearing, "she doesn't want me to escape.
And maybe she's right.  Anyway, we're sailing with you at--"

"We?" echoed Hemingway.

That again he was to see the woman he loved, that for six weeks through
summer seas he would travel in her company, filled him with alarm, with
distress, with a wonderful happiness.

"We?" he whispered, steadying his voice.  "Then--then your wife is
going with you?"

Fearing gazed at him as though the other had suddenly gone mad.

"My wife!" he exclaimed.  "I haven't got a wife!  If you mean
Polly--Mrs. Adair, she is my sister! And she wants to thank you. She's
below--"

He was not allowed to finish.  Hemingway had flung him to one side, and
was racing down the deck.

The detective sprang in pursuit.

"One moment, there!" he shouted.

But the man in the white mess-jacket barred his way.

In the moonlight the detective saw that the alert, bronzed young man
was smiling.

"That's all right," said Fearing.  "He'll be back in a minute.
Besides, you don't want him.  I'm the man you want."





THE LONG ARM


The safe was an old one that opened with a key.  As adjutant, Captain
Swanson had charge of certain funds of the regiment and kept in the
safe about five thousand dollars.  No one but himself and Rueff, his
first sergeant, had access to it.  And as Rueff proved an alibi, the
money might have been removed by an outsider.  The court-martial gave
Swanson the benefit of the doubt, and a reprimand for not taking
greater care of the keys, and Swanson made good the five thousand.

Swanson did not think it was a burglar who had robbed the safe. He
thought Rueff had robbed it, but he could not possibly prove that.  At
the time of the robbery Rueff was outside the Presidio, in uniform, at
a moving-picture show in San Francisco.  A dozen people saw him there.
Besides, Rueff held an excellent record. He was a silent, clerk-like
young man, better at "paper work" than campaigning, but even as a
soldier he had never come upon the books. And he had seen service in
two campaigns, and was supposed to cherish ambitions toward a
commission.  But, as he kept much to himself, his fellow non-coms could
only guess that.

On his captain's account he was loyally distressed over the
court-martial, and in his testimony tried to shield Swanson, by
agreeing heartily that through his own carelessness the keys might have
fallen into the hands of some one outside the post. But his loyalty
could not save his superior officer from what was a verdict virtually
of "not proven."

It was a most distressing affair, and, on account of the social
prominence of Swanson's people, his own popularity, and the name he had
made at Batangas and in the Boxer business, was much commented upon,
not only in the services, but by the newspapers all over the United
States.


Every one who knew Swanson knew the court-martial was only a matter of
form.  Even his enemies ventured only to suggest that overnight he
might have borrowed the money, meaning to replace it the next morning.
And the only reason for considering this explanation was that Swanson
was known to be in debt.  For he was a persistent gambler.  Just as at
Pekin he had gambled with death for his number, in times of peace he
gambled for money.  It was always his own money.

From the start Swanson's own attitude toward the affair was one of
blind, unreasoning rage.  In it he saw no necessary routine of
discipline, only crass, ignorant stupidity.  That any one should
suspect him was so preposterous, so unintelligent, as to be nearly
comic.  And when, instantly, he demanded a court of inquiry, he could
not believe it when he was summoned before a court-martial. It
sickened, wounded, deeply affronted him; turned him quite savage.

On his stand his attitude and answers were so insolent that his old
friend and classmate, Captain Copley, who was acting as his counsel,
would gladly have kicked him.  The findings of the court-martial, that
neither cleared nor condemned, and the reprimand, were an intolerable
insult to his feelings, and, in a fit of bitter disgust with the
service and every one in it, Swanson resigned.  Of course, the moment
he had done so he was sorry. Swanson's thought was that he could no
longer associate with any one who could believe him capable of theft.
It was his idea of showing his own opinion of himself and the army.

But no one saw it in that light.  On the contrary, people said:
"Swanson has been allowed to resign." In the army, voluntarily
resigning and being "allowed to resign" lest greater evils befall, are
two vastly different things.  And when it was too late no one than
Swanson saw that more clearly.  His anger gave way to extreme
morbidness.  He believed that in resigning he had assured every one of
his guilt.  In every friend and stranger he saw a man who doubted him.
He imagined snubs, rebuffs, and coldnesses.  His morbidness fastened
upon his mind like a parasite upon a tree, and the brain sickened.
When men and women glanced at his alert, well-set-up figure and
shoulders, that even when he wore "cits" seemed to support epaulets,
and smiled approvingly, Swanson thought they sneered.  In a week he
longed to be back in the army with a homesickness that made every one
who belonged to it his enemy.

He left San Francisco, where he was known to all, and travelled south
through Texas, and then to New Orleans and Florida.  He never could
recall this period with clearness.  He remembered changing from one
train to another, from one hotel to the next. Nothing impressed itself
upon him.  For what he had lost nothing could give consolation.
Without honor life held no charm.  And he believed that in the eyes of
all men he was a thief, a pariah, and an outcast.

He had been in Cuba with the Army of Occupation, and of that beautiful
island had grown foolishly fond.  He was familiar with every part of
it, and he believed in one or another of its pretty ports he could so
completely hide himself that no one could intrude upon his misery.  In
the States, in the newspapers he seemed to read only of those places
where he had seen service, of those places and friends and associates
he most loved.  In the little Cuban village in which he would bury
himself he would cut himself off from all newspapers, from all who knew
him; from those who had been his friends, and those who knew his name
only to connect it with a scandal.

On his way from Port Tampa to Cuba the boat stopped at Key West, and
for the hour in which she discharged cargo Swanson went ashore and
wandered aimlessly.  The little town, reared on a flat island of coral
and limestone, did not long detain him.  The main street of shops,
eating-houses, and saloons, the pretty residences with overhanging
balconies, set among gardens and magnolia-trees, were soon explored,
and he was returning to the boat when the martial music of a band
caused him to halt.  A side street led to a great gateway surmounted by
an anchor.  Beyond it Swanson saw lawns of well-kept grass, regular
paths, pretty cottages, the two-starred flag of an admiral, and, rising
high above these, like four Eiffel towers, the gigantic masts of a
wireless.  He recognized that he was at the entrance to the Key West
naval station, and turned quickly away.

He walked a few feet, the music of the band still in his ears.  In an
hour he would be steaming toward Cuba, and, should he hold to his
present purpose, in many years this would be the last time he would
stand on American soil, would see the uniform of his country, would
hear a military band lull the sun to sleep.  It would hurt, but he
wondered if it were not worth the hurt.  A smart sergeant of marines,
in passing, cast one glance at the man who seemed always to wear
epaulets, and brought his hand sharply to salute.  The act determined
Swanson.  He had obtained the salute under false pretenses, but it had
pleased, not hurt him.  He turned back and passed into the gate of the
naval station.

From the gate a grass-lined carriage drive led to the waters of the
harbor and the wharfs.  At its extreme end was the band-stand, flanked
on one side by the cottage of the admiral, on the other by a sail-loft
with iron-barred windows and whitewashed walls. Upon the turf were
pyramids of cannon-balls and, laid out in rows as though awaiting
burial, old-time muzzle-loading guns.  Across the harbor the sun was
sinking into the coral reefs, and the spring air, still warm from its
caresses, was stirred by the music of the band into gentle, rhythmic
waves.  The scene was one of peace, order, and content.

But as Swanson advanced, the measure of the music was instantly
shattered by a fierce volley of explosions.  They came so suddenly and
sharply as to make him start.  It was as though from his flank a
quick-firing gun in ambush had opened upon him.  Swanson smiled at
having been taken unawares.  For in San Francisco he often had heard
the roar and rattle of the wireless.  But never before had he listened
to an attack like this.

From a tiny white-and-green cottage, squatting among the four giant
masts, came the roar of a forest fire.  One could hear the crackle of
the flames, the crash of the falling tree-trunks.  The air about the
cottage was torn into threads; beneath the shocks of the electricity
the lawn seemed to heave and tremble.  It was like some giant monster,
bound and fettered, struggling to be free.  Now it growled sullenly,
now in impotent rage it spat and spluttered, now it lashed about with
crashing, stunning blows.  It seemed as though the wooden walls of the
station could not contain it.

From the road Swanson watched, through the open windows of the cottage,
the electric bolts flash and flare and disappear.  The thing appealed
to his imagination.  Its power, its capabilities fascinated him.  In it
he saw a hungry monster reaching out to every corner of the continent
and devouring the news of the world; feeding upon tales of shipwreck
and disaster, lingering over some dainty morsel of scandal, snatching
from ships and cities two thousand miles away the thrice-told tale of a
conflagration, the score of a baseball match, the fall of a cabinet,
the assassination of a king.

In a sudden access of fierceness, as though in an ecstasy over some
fresh horror just received, it shrieked and chortled.  And then, as
suddenly as it had broken forth, it sank to silence, and from the end
of the carriage drive again rose, undisturbed, the music of the band.

The musicians were playing to a select audience.  On benches around the
band-stand sat a half dozen nurse-maids with knitting in their hands,
the baby-carriages within arm's length.  On the turf older children of
the officers were at play, and up and down the paths bareheaded girls,
and matrons, and officers in uniform strolled leisurely.  From the
vine-covered cottage of Admiral Preble, set in a garden of flowering
plants and bending palmettos, came the tinkle of tea-cups and the
ripple of laughter, and at a respectful distance, seated on the
dismantled cannon, were marines in khaki and bluejackets in glistening
white.

It was a family group, and had not Swanson recognized among the little
audience others of the passengers from the steamer and natives of the
town who, like himself, had been attracted by the music, he would have
felt that he intruded.  He now wished to remain.  He wanted to carry
with him into his exile a memory of the men in uniform, of the music,
and pretty women, of the gorgeous crimson sunset.  But, though he
wished to remain, he did not wish to be recognized.

From the glances already turned toward him, he saw that in this little
family gathering the presence of a stranger was an event, and he was
aware that during the trial the newspapers had made his face
conspicuous.  Also it might be that stationed at the post was some
officer or enlisted man who had served with him in Cuba, China, or the
Philippines, and who might point him out to others. Fearing this,
Swanson made a detour and approached the band-stand from the wharf, and
with his back to a hawser-post seated himself upon the string-piece.

He was overcome with an intolerable melancholy.  From where he sat he
could see, softened into shadows by the wire screens of the veranda,
Admiral Preble and his wife and their guests at tea.  A month before,
he would have reported to the admiral as the commandant of the station,
and paid his respects.  Now he could not do that; at least not without
inviting a rebuff.  A month before, he need only have shown his card to
the admiral's orderly, and the orderly and the guard and the officers'
mess and the admiral himself would have turned the post upside down to
do him honor.  But of what avail now was his record in three campaigns?
Of what avail now was his medal of honor? They now knew him as Swanson,
who had been court-martialled, who had been allowed to resign, who had
left the army for the army's good; they knew him as a civilian without
rank or authority, as an ex-officer who had robbed his brother
officers, as an outcast.

His position, as his morbid mind thus distorted it, tempted Swanson no
longer.  For being in this plight he did not feel that in any way he
was to blame.  But with a flaming anger he still blamed his brother
officers of the court-martial who had not cleared his name and with a
clean bill of health restored him to duty.  Those were the men he
blamed; not Rueff, the sergeant, who he believed had robbed him, nor
himself, who, in a passion of wounded pride, had resigned and so had
given reason for gossip; but the men who had not in tones like a
bugle-call proclaimed his innocence, who, when they had handed him back
his sword, had given it grudgingly, not with congratulation.


As he saw it, he stood in a perpetual pillory.  When they had robbed
him of his honor they had left him naked, and life without honor had
lost its flavor.  He could eat, he could drink, he could exist.  He
knew that in many corners of the world white arms would reach out to
him and men would beckon him to a place at table.

But he could not cross that little strip of turf between him and the
chattering group on the veranda and hand his card to the admiral's
orderly.  Swanson loved life.  He loved it so that without help, money,
or affection he could each morning have greeted it with a smile.  But
life without honor! He felt a sudden hot nausea of disgust.  Why was he
still clinging to what had lost its purpose, to what lacked the one
thing needful?


"If life be an ill thing," he thought, "I can lay it down!"

The thought was not new to him, and during the two past weeks of
aimless wandering he had carried with him his service automatic. To
reassure himself he laid his fingers on its cold smooth surface. He
would wait, he determined, until the musicians had finished their
concert and the 

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