The Adventures of a Modest Man
by Robert W. Chambers · English · Gutenberg #43702 · 380,504 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Adventures of a Modest Man
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Illustrator: Edmund Frederick
Release date: September 12, 2013 [eBook #43702]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN ***
[Illustration: Book Cover]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_The_ ADVENTURES _of_
A MODEST MAN
[Illustration]
Works of Robert W. Chambers
* * * * *
The Adventures of a Modest Man
Ailsa Paige
The Danger Mark
Special Messenger
The Firing Line
The Younger Set
The Fighting Chance
Some Ladies in Haste
The Tree of Heaven
The Tracer of Lost Persons
A Young Man in a Hurry
Lorraine
Maids of Paradise
Ashes of Empire
The Red Republic
Outsiders
The Green Mouse
Iole
The Reckoning
The Maid-at-Arms
Cardigan
The Haunts of Men
The Mystery of Choice
The Cambric Mask
The Maker of Moons
The King in Yellow
In Search of the Unknown
The Conspirators
A King and a Few Dukes
In the Quarter
* * * * *
For Children
Garden-Land
Forest-Land
River-Land
Mountain-Land
Orchard-Land
Outdoorland
Hide and Seek in Forest-Land
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHT, 1900, 1911, BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
* * * * *
Copyright, 1904, by Harper & Brothers
Copyright, 1904, 1905, 1910, by The Curtis Publishing Company
_The_ ADVENTURES _of_
A MODEST MAN
_By_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY
EDMUND FREDERICK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON: MCMXI
[Illustration: "'I realised that I was going to kiss her if she didn't
move.... And--she didn't.'"--[Page 276.]]
TO
MR. AND MRS. C. WHEATON VAUGHAN
This volume packed with bric-à-brac
I offer you with my affection,--
The story halts, the rhymes are slack--
Poor stuff to add to your collection.
Gems you possess from ages back:
It is the modern junk you lack.
We three once moused through marble halls,
Immersed in Art and deep dejection,
Mid golden thrones and choir-stalls
And gems beyond my recollection--
Yet soft!--my memory recalls
Red labels pasted on the walls!
And so, perhaps, _my_ bric-à-brac
May pass the test of your inspection;
Perhaps you will not send it back,
But place it--if you've no objection--
Under some nick-nack laden rack
Where platters dangle on a tack.
So if you'll take this book from me
And hide it in your cupboards laden
Beside some Dresden filigree
And frivolously fetching maiden--
Who knows?--that Dresden maid may see
My book--and read it through pardie!
R. W. C.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
"Senilis stultitia quae deliratio appellari
solet, senum levium est, non omnium."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CONCERNING TWO GENTLEMEN FROM LONG ISLAND, DESTINY, AND A
POT OF BLACK PAINT 1
II. A CHAPTER DEPICTING A RATHER GARRULOUS REUNION 14
III. TROUBLE FOR TWO 25
IV. WHEREIN A MODEST MAN IS BULLIED AND A LITERARY MAN
PRACTICES STYLE 42
V. DREAMLAND 58
VI. SOUL AND BODY 74
VII. THE BITER, THE BITTEN, AND THE UN-BITTEN 85
VIII. A MATTER OF PRONUNCIATION 98
IX. FATE 104
X. CHANCE 117
XI. DESTINY 129
XII. IN WHICH A MODEST MAN MAUNDERS 143
XIII. A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 154
XIV. A STATE OF MIND 168
XV. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 181
XVI. THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION OF AN ANCIENT PROBLEM 194
XVII. SHOWING HOW IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO MAKE OF
HIMSELF A CHUMP 208
XVIII. THE MASTER KNOT OF HUMAN FATE 221
XIX. THE TIME AND THE PLACE 234
XX. DOWN THE SEINE 242
XXI. IN A BELGIAN GARDEN 269
XXII. A YOUTHFUL PATRIOT 287
XXIII. ON THE WALL 292
XXIV. A JOURNEY TO THE MOON 303
XXV. THE ARMY OF PARIS 316
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
"'I realised that I was going to kiss her if she didn't
move.... And--she didn't'" _Frontispiece_
"'Give up my dead!' she whispered. 'Give up my dead!'" 40
"Christmas Eve she knelt, crying, before the pedestal" 80
"'Only one person in the world can ever matter to me--now'" 140
"Beyond, rocking wildly in a gilded boat, sat two people and a
placid swan" 190
"'I--I don't know,' she stammered; 'my shoe seems tied to yours'" 214
[Illustration]
AN INADVERTENT POEM
_There is a little flow-urr_
_In our yard it does grow_
_Where many a happy hou-urr_
_I watch our rooster crow;_
_While clothes hang on the clothes-line_
_And plowing has began_
--_And the name they call this lit-tul vine_
_Is just "Old Man."_
_Old Man, Old Man_
_A-growing in our yard,_
_Every spring a-coming up_
_While yet the ground is har-rrd;_
_Pottering 'round the chickens' pan,_
_Creeping low and slow,_
_And why they call it Old Man_
_I never asked to know._
_I never want to know._
_Crawling through the chick-weed,_
_Dragging through the quack,_
_Pussly, tansy, tick-weed_
_Almost break his back._
_Catnip, cockle, dock prevent_
_His travelling all they can,_
_But still he goes the ways he's went,_
_Poor Old Man!_
_Old Man, Old Man,_
_What's the use of you?_
_No one wants to see you, like_
_As if you hadn't grew._
_You ain't no good to nothing_
_So far as I can see,_
_Unless some maiden fair will sing_
_These lines I've wrote to thee._
_And sing 'em soft to me._
_Some maiden fa-hair_
_With_ { _ra-haven_ } _hair_
{ _go-holden_ }
_Will si-hing this so-hong_
_To me-hee-ee!_
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
CONCERNING TWO GENTLEMEN FROM LONG ISLAND, DESTINY, AND A POT OF BLACK
PAINT
"Hello, old man!" he began.
"Gillian," I said, "don't call me 'Old Man.' At twenty, it flattered me;
at thirty, it was all right; at forty, I suspected _double entendre_;
and now I don't like it."
"Of course, if you feel that way," he protested, smiling.
"Well, I do, dammit!"--the last a German phrase. I am rather strong on
languages.
Now another thing that is irritating-- I've got ahead of my story,
partly, perhaps, because I hesitate to come to the point.
For I have a certain delicacy in admitting that my second visit abroad,
after twenty years, was due to a pig. So now that the secret is out--the
pig also--I'll begin properly.
* * * * *
I purchased the porker at a Long Island cattle show; why, I don't know,
except that my neighbor, Gillian Schuyler Van Dieman, put me up to it.
We are an inoffensive community maintaining a hunt club and the
traditions of a by-gone generation. To the latter our children refuse to
subscribe.
Our houses are what are popularly known as "fine old Colonial mansions."
They were built recently. So was the pig. You see, I can never get away
from that pig, although--but the paradox might injure the story. It has
sufficiently injured me--the pig and the story, both.
The architecture of the pig was a kind of degenerate Chippendale,
modified by Louis XVI and traces of Bavarian baroque. And his squeal
resembled the atmospheric preliminaries for a Texas norther.
Van Dieman said I ought to buy him. I bought him. My men built him a
chaste bower to leeward of an edifice dedicated to cows.
Here I sometimes came to contemplate him while my horse was being
saddled.
That particular morning, when Van Dieman saluted me so suspiciously at
the country club, I had been gazing at the pig.
And now, as we settled down to our morning game of chess, I said:
"Van, that pig of mine seems to be in nowise remarkable. Why the devil
do you suppose I bought him?"
"How do I know?"
"You ought to. You suggested that I buy him. Why did you?"
"To see whether you would."
I said rather warmly: "Did you think me weak-minded enough to do
whatever you suggested?"
"The fact remains that you did," he said calmly, pushing the king's
knight to queen's bishop six.
"Did what?" I snapped.
"What you didn't really want to do."
"Buy the pig?"
"Exactly."
I thought a moment, took a pawn with satisfaction, considered.
"Van," I said, "why do you suppose I bought that pig?"
"_Ennui._"
"A man doesn't buy pigs to escape from _ennui_!"
"You can't predict what a man will do to escape it," he said, smiling.
"The trouble with you is that you're been here too long; you're in a
rut; you're gone stale. Year in, year out, you do the same things in the
same way, rise at the same time, retire at the same hour, see the same
people, drive, motor, ride, potter about your lawns and gardens, come
here to the club--and it's enough to petrify anybody's intellect."
"Do you mean to say that _mine_----"
"Partly. Don't get mad. No man who lives year after year in a Long
Island community could escape it. What you need is to go abroad. What
you require is a good dose of Paris."
"For twenty odd years I have avoided Paris," I said, restlessly. "Why
should I go back there?"
"Haven't you been there in twenty years?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Well, for one thing, to avoid meeting the entire United States."
"All right," said Van Dieman, "if you want to become an old uncle
foozle, continue to take root in Long Island." He announced mate in two
moves. After I had silently conceded it, he leaned back in his chair and
lighted a cigarette.
"It's my opinion," he said, "that you've already gone too stale to take
care of your own pig."
Even years of intimacy scarcely justified this.
"When the day comes," said I, "that I find myself no longer competent to
look after my own affairs, I'll take your advice and get out of Long
Island."
He looked up with a smile. "Suppose somebody stole that pig, for
instance."
"They couldn't."
"Suppose they did, under your very nose."
"If anything happens to that pig," I said--"anything untoward, due to
any negligence or stupidity of mine, I'll admit that I need waking
up.... Now get that pig if you can!"
"Will you promise to go to Paris for a jolly little jaunt if anything
does happen to your pig?" he asked.
"Why the devil do _you_ want _me_ to go to Paris?"
"Do you good, intellectually."
Then I got mad.
"Van," I said, "if anybody can get that pig away from me, I'll do
anything you suggest for the next six months."
"_À nous deux, alors!_" he said. He speaks French too fast for me to
translate. It's a foolish way to talk a foreign language. But he has
never yet been able to put it over me.
"_À la guerre comme à la guerre_," I replied carelessly. It's a phrase
one can use in reply to any remark that was ever uttered in French. I
use it constantly.
* * * * *
That afternoon I went and took a good look at my pig. Later, as I was
walking on the main street of Oyster Bay, a man touched his hat and
asked me for a job. Instantly it occurred to me to hire him as night
watchman for the pig. He had excellent references, and his countenance
expressed a capacity for honest and faithful service. That night before
I went to bed, I walked around to the sty. My man was there on duty.
"That," thought I, "will hold Van Dieman for a while."
When my daughters had retired and all the servants were abed, I did a
thing I have not done in years--not since I was a freshman at Harvard: I
sat up with my pipe and an unexpurged translation of Henry James until
nearly eleven o'clock. However, by midnight I was asleep.
It was full starlight when I awoke and jumped softly out of bed.
Somebody was tapping at the front door. I put on a dressing-gown and
slippers and waited; but no servants were aroused by the persistent
rapping.
After a moment I went to the window, raised it gently and looked out. A
farmer with a lantern stood below.
"Say, squire," he said, when he beheld my head, "I guess I'll have to
ask for help. I'm on my way to market and my pig broke loose and I can't
ketch him nohow."
"Hush!" I whispered; "I'll come down."
Very cautiously I unbarred the front door and stepped out into the
lovely April starlight. In the road beyond my hedge stood a farm-wagon
containing an empty crate. Near it moved the farmer, and just beyond his
outstretched hands sported a playful pig. He was a black pig. Mine was
white. Besides I went around to the pen and saw, in the darkness, my
Oyster Bay retainer still on guard. So, it being a genuine case, I
returned to the road.
The farmer's dilemma touched me. What in the world was so utterly
hopeless to pursue, unaided, as a coy pig at midnight.
"If you will just stand there, squire, and sorter spread out your
skirts, I'll git him in a jiffy," said the panting farmer.
I did as I was bidden. The farmer approached; the pig pranced between
his legs.
"By gum!" exclaimed the protected of Ceres.
But, after half an hour, the pig became over-confident, and the tiller
of phosphites seized him and bore him, shrieking, to the wooden crate in
the wagon, there depositing him, fastening the door, and climbing into
his seat with warm thanks to me for my aid.
I told the Brother to the Ox that he was welcome. Then, with heart
serenely warmed by brotherly love and a knowledge of my own
condescension, I retired to sleep soundly until Higgins came to shave me
at eight o'clock next morning.
"Beg pardon, sir," said Higgins, stirring his lather as I returned from
the bath to submit my chin to his razor--"beg pardon, sir, but--but the
pig, sir----"
"What pig?" I asked sharply. Had Higgins beheld me pursuing that
midnight porker? And if he had, was he going to tell about it?
"What pig, sir? Why, THE pig, sir."
"I do not understand you, Higgins," I said coldly.
"Beg pardon, sir, but Miss Alida asked me to tell you, that the pig----"
"WHAT PIG?" I repeated exasperated.
"Why--why--OURS, sir."
I turned to stare at him. "MY pig?" I asked.
"Yes, sir--he's gone, sir----"
"Gone!" I thundered.
"Stolen, sir, out o' the pen last night."
Stunned, I could only stare at Higgins. Stolen? My pig? Last night?
"Some one," said Higgins, "went and opened that lovely fancy sty, sir;
and the pig he bolted. It takes a handy thief to stop and steal a pig,
sir. There must ha' been two on 'em to catch that pig!"
"Where's that miserable ruffian I hired to watch the sty?" I demanded
hotly.
"He has gone back to work for Mr. Van Dieman, sir. His hands was all
over black paint, and I see him a-wipin' of 'em onto your white picket
fence."
The calmness of despair came over me. I saw it, now. I had been called
out of bed to help catch my own pig. For nearly half an hour I had
dodged about there in front of my own house, too stupid to suspect, too
stupid even to recognize my own pig in the disguised and capricious
porker shying and caracolling about in the moonlight. Good heavens! Van
Dieman was right. A man who helps to steal his own pig is fit for
nothing but Paris or a sanitarium.
"Shave me speedily, Higgins," I said. "I am not very well, and it is
difficult for me to preserve sufficient composure to sit still. And,
Higgins, it is not at all necessary for you to refer to that pig
hereafter. You understand? Very well. Go to the telephone and call up
the Cunard office."
Presently I was in communication with Bowling Green.
That morning in the breakfast-room, when I had kissed my daughter Alida,
aged eighteen, and my daughter Dulcima, aged nineteen, the younger said:
"Papa, do you know that our pig has been stolen?"
"Alida," I replied, "I myself disposed of him"--which was the dreadful
truth.
"You sold him?" asked Dulcima in surprise.
"N--not exactly. These grape-fruit are too sour!"
"You gave him away?" inquired Alida.
"Yes--after a fashion. Is this the same coffee we have been using? It
has a peculiar----"
"Who did you give him to?" persisted my younger child.
"A--man."
"What man?"
"Nobody you know, child."
"But----"
"Stop!" said I firmly. "It is a subject too complicated to discuss."
"Oh, pooh!" said Dulcima; "everybody discusses everything in Oyster Bay.
And besides I want to know----"
"About the pig!" broke in Alida.
"And that man to whom you gave the pig----"
"Alida," said I, with misleading mildness, "how would you like to go to
Paris?"
"Oh! papa----"
"And you, Dulcima?"
"Darling papa!"
"When?" cried Alida.
"Wednesday," I replied with false urbanity.
"Oh! The darling!" they cried in rapture, and made toward me.
"Wait!" I said with a hideous smile. "We have not yet left Sandy Hook!
And I solemnly promise you both that if either of you ever again ask me
one question concerning that pig--nay, if you so much as look askance at
me over the breakfast bacon--neither you nor I will ever leave Sandy
Hook alive!"
They have kept their promises--or I should never have trodden the deck
of the _S. S. Cambodia_, the pride of the great Cunard Line, with my
daughter Dulcima on one side and my daughter Alida on the other side of
me, and my old friend Van Dieman waving me adieu from a crowded pier,
where hundreds of handkerchiefs flutter in the breeze.
"_Au revoir et bon voyage!_" he called up to me.
"_Toujours la politesse_," I muttered, nodding sagely.
"That was a funny reply to make, papa," said Dulcima.
"Not at all," I replied, with animation; "to know a language is to know
when to use its idioms." They both looked a little blank, but continued
to wave their handkerchiefs.
"_À bien-tôt!_" called Alida softly, as the towering black sides of the
steamer slipped along the wooden wharf.
Van Dieman raised his hat on the pier below, and answered: "_À bien-tôt?
C'est la mort, jusqu'à bien-tôt! Donc, vîve la vie, Mademoiselle!_"
"There is no necessity in chattering like a Frenchman when you talk
French," I observed to Alida. "Could you make out what Van Dieman said
to you?"
"Y--yes," she admitted, with a slight blush.
I glanced at Dulcima. There was a mischievous light in her blue eyes.
"Pooh!" I thought; "Van Dieman is forty if he's a day."
While the ship slid on past Castle William and poked her nose toward the
forts at the Narrows, I watched the distant pier which we had left. It
was still black with people, moving like ants. And, as I looked, I
muttered ever: "Pooh! Van Dieman's forty. There's nothing in it, nothing
in it, nothing whatever."
Off Fort Hamilton I noticed that Alida had a tear in one of her brown
eyes. "There's nothing in it," I repeated obstinately.
Off Sandy Hook we ran into a sea-storm. In a few minutes many of the
passengers went below; in a few more minutes the remainder of the
passengers went below; and I was on the way below with my daughter Alida
on one arm and my daughter Dulcima on the other.
"There is nothing in it," I reflected, as the ship shuddered, pitched,
and we involuntarily began running down a toboggan slide, taking little
timorous steps. Then the deck flew up and caught the soles of our shoes
before we were ready to put our feet down. "Alida," I said, "do you feel
bored?"
There was no mistaking the tears in her eyes now. "There's nothing in
it. There's nothing in anything," I muttered faintly. And I was right as
far as it concerned the passengers on the pitching _Cambodia_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II
A CHAPTER DEPICTING A RATHER GARRULOUS REUNION
The second day we ran out of the storm. I remember on that day that I
wore a rather doggy suit of gray--a trifle too doggy for a man of my
years. In my button-hole reposed a white carnation, and as I strolled
into the smoking-room I was humming under my breath an air from "Miss
Helyet"--a thing I had not thought of in twenty years.
"Well, upon my word!" exclaimed a man who looked up from his novel as I
entered the doorway. "Gad! You haven't changed in twenty years!--except
that your moustache is----"
"Sure! And my temples, Williams! Besides, I have two grown-up daughters
aboard! How are you, anyway, you Latin Quarter come-back?"
We settled ourselves, hands still warmly clasped.
"You're not going back to Paris?" I asked.
"Why, man, I live there."
"By George, so you do! I forgot."
There was a silence--that smiling, retrospective silence which ends
inevitably in a sigh not entirely painful.
"Are any of the old men left there?" I asked.
"Some."
"I--I suppose the city has changed a lot. Men who've been over since,
say so."
"It hasn't changed, radically."
"Hasn't it, Williams?" I asked wistfully.
"No. The old café is exactly the same. The Luxembourg Quarter will seem
familiar to you----"
"I'm not going there," I said hastily.
He smiled; I could see him doing it, askance. But my features remained
dignified and my attitude detached.
"I wonder," I began carelessly, "whether----"
"She got married," he said casually; "I'm glad. She was a sweet little
thing."
"She was exceedingly charming," I said, selecting a cigar. "And the
other?"
"Which?"
"I forget her name."
"Oh, you mean Delancy's?"
"Yes."
"I don't know whatever became of her," he said.
"Whatever became of Delancy?"
"Oh, he did what we all usually do--he came back, married, and spent the
better part of his life in trying to keep his daughter from marrying
that young Harroll."
"Sir Peter's son?"
"Yes. I was a guest at the Delancy's at the time, and I nearly died.
Harroll confided in me, Catharine Delancy confided in me, John Delancy
told me his woes. It's an amusing story. Do you want to hear it?"
"Go ahead," I said. "My sympathies are already with Delancy. I've a pair
of daughters myself, and I'm trying to shoo away every sort of man and
keep 'em for myself a little longer."
Williams smiled:
"Well, you listen to what those two did to John Delancy. It was some."
I lit my cigar; he lit his; and I settled back, looking at him
attentively as he began with a wave of his gloved hand, a story of
peculiar interest to a man with two unusually attractive daughters:
* * * * *
Now, although Harroll had been refused a dozen times--not by Miss
Delancy, but by her father--the young man's naturally optimistic spirits
suffered only temporary depression; and a few evenings later he asked
for her again, making it a bakers' dozen--an uncanny record.
"No," said Mr. Delancy.
"Won't you let me have her when I become tenth vice-president of the
Half-Moon Title Guarantee and Trust----"
"No, I won't."
"When will you let me try for her?"
There was no reply.
"Well, sir," said the young man cheerfully, "there must be some way, of
course."
"Really, Jim, I don't see what way," said Mr. Delancy, without emotion.
"I don't want you for a son-in-law, and I'm not going to have you.
That's one of the reasons I allow you the run of the house. My daughter
sees too much of you to care for you. It's a theory of my own, and a
good one, too."
"Why don't you want me for a son-in-law?" asked the young man, for the
hundredth time.
"Can you give me one single reason why I should want you?" asked Mr.
Delancy wearily.
Harroll stood buried in meditation for a few moments. "No," he said, "I
can't recall any important reasons at the moment."
"I can supply you with one--your sense of honor--but it doesn't count in
this case, because you wouldn't be in my house if you didn't have any."
Harroll looked at the fire.
"I've told you a hundred times that when my little girl marries, she
marries one of her own kind. I don't like Englishmen. And that is all
there is to it, Jim."
"Don't you like me?"
"I'm not infatuated with you."
"Well," said Harroll, slowly pacing the rug in front of the fire, "it's
curious, isn't it?--but, do you know, I think that I am going to marry
Catharine one of these days?"
"Oh, I think not," replied Mr. Delancy amiably. "And perhaps this is a
good opportunity to say good-by for a while. You know we go to Palm
Beach to-morrow?"
"Catharine told me," said the young man, placidly. "So I've wired for
quarters at The Breakers--for two weeks."
The two men smiled at one another.
"You take your vacation late," said Mr. Delancy.
"Not too late, I trust."
"You think you can afford Palm Beach, Jim?"
"No; but I'm going."
Mr. Delancy rose and stood thoughtfully twirling his monocle by the
string. Then he threw away his cigar, concealed a yawn, and glanced
gravely at the clock on the mantel.
"May I go in and say good-night to Catharine, sir?" asked young Harroll.
Mr. Delancy looked bored, but nodded civilly enough.
"And, Jim," he drawled, as the young man started toward the
drawing-room, "I wouldn't go to Palm Beach if I were you."
"Yes, you would, sir--if you were I."
"Young man," said Mr. Delancy, mildly, "I'm damned if I have you for a
son-in-law! Good-night."
They shook hands. Harroll walked into the drawing-room and found it
empty. The music-room, however, was lighted, and Catharine Delancy sat
tucked up in a deep window-seat, studying a map of southern Florida and
feeding bonbons to an enormous white Persian cat.
"Jim," she said, raising her dark eyes as he sauntered up, "you and
father have lately fallen into the disreputable habit of sitting behind
closed doors and gossiping. You have done it thirteen times in three
months. Don't be such pigs; scandal, like other pleasures, was meant to
be shared."
At a gesture of invitation he seated himself beside her and lifted the
Persian pussy to his lap.
"Well," she inquired, "are you really going with us?"
"I can't go when you do, but I'm going to The Breakers for a week or
two--solely to keep an eye on your behavior."
"That is jolly!" she said, flushing with pleasure. "Was father pleased
when you told him?"
"He didn't say he was pleased."
"He is always reticent," she said, quickly. "But won't it be too jolly
for words! We'll travel miles and miles together in bicycle-chairs, and
we'll yacht and bathe and ride and golf, and catch amber-jack and
sharks, and--you'll persuade father to let me gamble just once at the
club--won't you?"
"Not much! Where did you hear that sort of talk, Catharine?"
"Don't tweak Omar's tail and I'll tell you--there! you've done it again,
and I won't tell you."
He fell to stroking the cat's fur, gazing the while into space with an
absent eye that piqued her curiosity. For a year now he had acquired
that trick of suddenly detaching himself from earth and gazing
speculatively toward heaven, lost in a revery far from flattering to the
ignored onlooker. And now he was doing it again under her very nose.
What was he thinking about? He seemed, all at once, a thousand miles
removed from her. Where were his thoughts?
Touched in her _amour propre_, she quietly resumed the map of southern
Florida; but even the rustle of the paper did not disturb his
self-centred and provoking meditation.
She looked at him, looked at the map, considered him again, and finally
watched him.
Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she thought him dangerously
attractive. Surprised and interested, she regarded him in this new
light, impersonally for the moment. So far away had he apparently
drifted in his meditation that it seemed to her as though she were
observing a stranger--a most interesting and most unusual young man.
He turned and looked her straight in the eyes.
Twenty-two, and her first season half over, and to be caught blushing
like a school-girl!
There was no constraint; her self-possession cooled her cheeks--and he
was not looking at her, after all: he was looking through her, at
something his fancy focused far, far beyond her.
Never had she thought any man half as attractive as this old friend in a
new light--this handsome, well-built, careless young fellow absorbed in
thoughts which excluded her. No doubt he was so habituated to herself in
all her moods that nothing except the friendliest indifference could
ever----
To her consternation another tint of warm color slowly spread over neck
and cheek. He rose at the same moment, dropped the cat back among the
cushions, and smiling down at her, held out his hand. She took it, met
his eyes with an effort; but what message she divined in them Heaven
alone knows, for all at once her heart stood still and a strange thrill
left her fingers nerveless in his hand.
He was saying slowly, "Then I shall see you at Palm Beach next week?"
"Yes.... You will come, won't you?"
"Yes, I will come."
"But if you--change your mind?"
"I never change. May I write you?"
"Good-night.... You may write me if you wish."
"I will write, every day--if you don't mind."
"No--I don't mind," she said thoughtfully.
She withdrew her hand and stood perfectly still as he left the room. She
heard a servant open the door, she heard Harroll's quick step echo on
the stoop, then the door closed.
A second later Mr. Delancy in the library was aroused from complacent
meditation by the swish of a silken skirt, and glancing up, beheld a
tall, prettily formed girl looking at him with a sober and rather
colorless face.
"Father," she said, "I'm in love with Jim Harroll!"
Mr. Delancy groped for his monocle, screwed it into his left eye, and
examined his daughter.
"It's true, and I thought I'd better tell you," she said.
"Yes," he agreed, "it's as well to let me know. Ah--er--when and how did
it occur?"
"I don't know, father. I was feeding Omar bonbons and looking over the
map of South Florida, and thinking about nothing in particular, when Jim
came in. He said he was going to Palm Beach, and I said, 'How jolly!'
and he sat down and picked up Omar, and--I don't know how it was, but I
began to think him very attractive, and the first thing I
knew--it--happened!"
"Oh! So that's the way it happened?"
"I think it was, father."
"No doubt you'll outgrow it."
"Do you think so?"
"I haven't a doubt of it, little daughter."
"I have."
Mr. Delancy dropped his monocle and looked at the fire. The fire was all
right.
"Do you--do you suppose that Jim is--does--thinks--knows----"
"I never speculate on what Jim is, does, thinks, or knows," said her
father, thoughtfully, stirring the embers and spoiling a perfectly good
fire. When he looked up again she had gone.
"One theory smashed!" observed Mr. Delancy. "I'll try another, with
separation as the main ingredient."
He sat down before the fire and lighted a fresh cigar, which wasn't good
for him.
"Must avoid making a martyr of Jim or there will be trouble," he mused.
"There remains another way--make a martyr of myself."
He sat swinging his monocle around his forefinger, gazing vacantly at
the pattern the shadows cast across the hearth.
"Avalon!" he said, abruptly. "Avalon! The 'back-to-nature' business,
'grass-cure' and all. It can't harm either Catharine or me, I fancy--or
any other pair of donkeys!"
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III
TROUBLE FOR TWO
_A Note Found by Young Harroll on his Dresser the Evening of his Arrival
at Palm Beach._
"11.30 A.M.
"DEAR JIM--Everything is spoiled, after all! Father's failing health
has suddenly become a serious matter, and we are going to try the
'nature cure,' or whatever they call it, at Avalon Island. I had no
idea he was really ill. Evidently he is alarmed, for we have only
been here six days, and in a few minutes we are to start for
Avalon. Isn't it perfectly horrid? And to think that you are
coming this evening and expecting to find us here!
"Father says you can't come to Avalon; that only invalids are
received (I didn't know I was one, but it seems I'm to take the
treatment, too!), and he says that nobody is received for less
than a month's treatment, so I suppose that bars you even if you
were self-sacrificing enough to endure a 'nature cure' for the
pleasure of spending two weeks with [_me_, crossed out] us.
"I'm actually on the verge of tears when I think of all we had
planned to do together! And there's my maid at the door, knocking.
Good-by. You will write, won't you?
"CATHARINE DELANCY."
* * * * *
_Mr. James Harroll to Miss Catharine Delancy, Avalon, Balboa County,
Florida._
"HOLY CROSS LIGHT, FEBRUARY 15.
"DEAR CATHARINE--Your father was right: they refuse to take me at
Avalon. As soon as I found your note I telegraphed to Avalon for
accommodations. It seems Avalon is an island, and they have to wait
for the steamers to carry telegrams over from the mainland. So the
reply has just reached me that they won't take me for less than a
month; and my limit from business is two weeks or give up my
position with your father.
"Yesterday I came out here to Holy Cross Spring to shoot ducks.
I'd scarcely begun shooting, at dawn, when along came a couple of
men through the fog, rowing like the mischief plump into my
decoys, and I shouted out, 'What the deuce are you about?' and
they begged my pardon, and said they had thought the point
unoccupied, and that the fog was thicker than several
things--which was true.
"So I invited them into the blind to--oh, the usual ceremony--and
they came, and they turned out to be Jack Selden--the chap I told
you about who was so decent to me in Paris--and his guide.
"So we had--ceremonies--several of them--and Selden stayed to
shoot with me over my decoys, and our bag was fifty-three, all big
duck except fifteen bluebills.
"Selden is a godsend to me. We're going to stay out here to-night
at the lighthouse, and shoot all to-morrow if it doesn't blow too
hard. It's blowing great guns now. I'm here in the lighthouse,
writing in the glow of a lamp in the keeper's living-room, with
his good little wife sewing by the fire and a half-dozen of his
kids tumbling about on the floor. It's a pretty sight; I love
children and firesides and that sort of thing. They've got hold of
Selden now, and are making him tell stories of adventure. He's
been all over the world, and is perfectly crazy to get married.
Says he would prefer a widow with yellow hair and blue eyes. Do
you know any? He's a nice chap."
"Catharine, I wish I were in Avalon. They could put me in a
strait-jacket and I wouldn't care as long as [_you were_, crossed
out] I could be with [_you_, crossed out] your father and you in
Avalon.
"It's growing late, and Selden and I should be on the
ducking-grounds to-morrow before dawn. The keeper's wife says it
will blow too hard, but Selden only smiles. He's a cool one, and
if he has the nerve to go out I'll go, too.
"With sincere regards to your father and every wish for his speedy
recovery, I remain
"Yours faithfully,
"JAMES HARROLL."
* * * * *
_Lines Scribbled on the Leaf of a Note-book and Found in a Bottle in the
Pocket of an old Shooting-coat a Year Later._
"ATLANTIC OCEAN,
"MILES SOUTH OF HOLY CROSS LIGHT,
"FEBRUARY 16.
"CATHARINE--I think this is the end. Selden and I have been blown
out to sea in a rowboat, and it's leaking. I only want to say
good-by. Telegraph Selden's mother, Lenox, Massachusetts. I have
nobody to notify. Good-by.
"JAMES HARROLL."
* * * * *
_Telegram to James Harroll, Received and Opened by the Keeper while
Search-boats Were still Out after Mr. Harroll and Mr. Selden, Two Days
Missing._
"JAMES HARROLL, HOLY CROSS LIGHT, FLORIDA, EAST COAST:
"Don't run any risks. Be careful for our sakes. Terrible storm on
the coast reported here. Wire me that you are safe.
"CATHARINE DELANCY,
"Avalon, Florida."
* * * * *
_Telegrams Addressed to Young Harroll, and Opened by the Keeper of the
Lighthouse after the Search-boats Had Returned._
No. 1.
"Why don't you telegraph us? Your silence and the reports of the
storm alarm us. Reply at once.
"CATHARINE."
No. 2.
"Wire Catharine, Jim. You surely were not ass enough to go out in
such a storm.
"S. DELANCY."
No. 3.
"For pity's sake telegraph to me that you are safe. I cannot sleep.
"CATHARINE."
* * * * *
_Telegram to Miss Catharine Delancy, Avalon, Florida._
"HOLY CROSS LIGHT.
"MISS CATHARINE DELANCY:
"Rowboat containing Mr. Harroll and Mr. Selden blown out to sea.
Search-boats returned without finding any trace of them.
"CASWELL, _Keeper_."
* * * * *
_Telegram from Mr. Delancy to Keeper of Holy Cross Light._
"CASWELL:
"Charter a fast ocean-going tug and as many launches as necessary.
Don't give up the search. Spare no expense. Check mailed to you
to-day.
"I will give ten thousand dollars to the man who rescues James
Harroll. You may draw on me for any amount necessary. Keep me
constantly informed of your progress by wire.
"STEPHEN DELANCY."
* * * * *
In from the open sea drifted the castaways, the sun rising in tropic
splendor behind them, before them a far strip of snowy surf edging green
shores.
Selden sat in the bow, bailing; Harroll dug vigorously into the Atlantic
with both oars; a heavy flood-tide was doing the rest. Presently Selden
picked up the ducking-glass and examined the shore.
Harroll rested his oars, took a pull at the mineral water, and sighed
deeply. "Except for the scare and the confounded leak it's been rather
amusing, hasn't it?" he said.
"It's all right.... Hope you didn't set that farewell message afloat."
"What message?"
"Oh--I thought I saw you scribbling in your notebook and----"
"And what?"
"And stick the leaf into the bottle of gun-oil. If I was mistaken,
kindly give me my bottle of gun-oil."
"Pooh!" said Harroll. "The storm was magnificent. Can't a man jot down
impressions? Open a can of sardines, will you? And pass me the bread,
you idiot!"
Selden constructed a sandwich and passed it aft. "When we near those
ducks," he said, "we'd better give them a broadside--our larder's
getting low. I'll load for us both."
He fished about among the cartridge-sacks for some dry shells, loaded
the guns, and laid them ready.
"Bluebills," observed Harroll, as the boat drew near. "How tame they
are! Look, Selden! It would be murder to shoot."
The boat, drifting rapidly, passed in among the raft of ducks; here and
there a glistening silver-breasted bird paddled lazily out of the way,
but the bulk of the flock floated serenely on either side, riding the
swell, bright golden eyes fearlessly observing the intruders.
"Oh, a man can't shoot at things that act like that!" exclaimed Selden
petulantly. "Shoo! Shoo--o!" he cried, waving his gun in hopes that a
scurry and rise might justify assassination. But the birds only watched
him in perfect confidence. The boat drove on; the young men sat staring
across the waves, guns idly balanced across their knees. Presently
Harroll finished his sandwich and resumed the oars.
"Better bail some more," he said. "What are you looking at?"--for
Selden, using the ducking-glass, had begun to chuckle.
"Well, upon my word!" he said slowly--"of all luck! Where do you suppose
we are?"
"Well, where the devil are we?"
"Off Avalon!"
"Avalon!" repeated Harroll, stupidly. "Why, man, it's a hundred miles
south of Holy Cross!"
"Well, we've made it, I tell you. I can see one of their dinky little
temples shining among the trees. Hark! There go the bells ringing for
meditation!"
A mellow chime came across the water.
"It can't be Avalon," repeated Harroll, not daring to hope for such
fortune. "What do you know about Avalon, anyway?"
"What I've heard."
"What's that?"
"Why, it's a resort for played-out people who've gone the pace. When a
girl dances herself into the fidgets, or a Newport matron goes to
pieces, or a Wall Street man begins to talk to himself, hither they
toddle. It's the fashionable round-up for smashed nerves and
wibbly-wobbly intellects--a sort of "back-to-nature" enterprise run by a
"doctor." He makes 'em all wear garments cut in the style of the humble
bed-sheet, and then he turns 'em out to grass; and they may roll on it
or frisk on it or eat it if they like. Incidentally, I believe, they're
obliged to wallow in the ocean several times a day, run races afoot,
chuck the classic discus, go barefooted and sandal-shod, wear wreaths of
flowers instead of hats, meditate in silence when the temple bells
ring, eat grain and fruit and drink milk, and pay enormous bills to the
quack who runs the place. It must be a merry life, Harroll. No tobacco,
no billiards, no bridge. And hit the downy at nine-thirty by the
curfew!"
"Good Lord!" muttered Harroll.
"That's Avalon," repeated Selden. "And we're almost there. Look sharp!
Stand by for a ducking! This surf means trouble ahead!"
It certainly did; the boat soared skyward on the crest of the swell; a
smashing roller hurled it into the surf, smothering craft and crew in
hissing foam. A second later two heads appeared, and two half-suffocated
young men floundered up the beach and dropped, dripping and speechless,
on the sand.
They lay inert for a while, salt water oozing at every pore. Harroll was
the first to sit up.
"Right?" he inquired.
"All right. Where's the boat?"
"Ashore below us." He rose, dripping, and made off toward the battered
boat, which lay in the shoals, heeled over. Selden followed; together
they dragged the wreck up high and dry; then they sat down on the sand,
eying one another.
"It's a fine day," said Selden, with a vacant grin. He rolled over on
his back, clutching handfuls of hot sand. "Isn't this immense?" he
said. "My! how nice and dry and solid everything is! Roll on your back,
Harroll! You'll enjoy it more that way."
But Harroll got up and began dragging the guns and cartridge-sacks from
the boat.
"I've some friends here," he said briefly. "Come on."
"Are your friends hospitably inclined to the shipwrecked? I'm about
ready to be killed with hospitality," observed Selden, shouldering gun
and sack and slopping along in his wet boots.
They entered a thicket of sweet-bay and palmetto, breast-high, and
forced a path through toward a bit of vivid green lawn, which gave
underfoot like velvet.
"There's a patient now--in his toga," said Selden, in a low voice.
"Better hit him with a piteous tale of shipwreck, hadn't we?"
The patient was seated on a carved bench of marble under the shade of a
live oak. His attitude suggested _ennui_; he yawned at intervals; at
intervals he dug in the turf with idle bare toes.
"The back of that gentleman's head," said Harroll, "resembles the back
of a head I know."
"Oh! One of those friends you mentioned?"
"Well--I never saw him in toga and sandals, wearing a wreath of flowers
on his head. Let's take a front view."
The squeaky, sloppy sound of Selden's hip boots aroused the gentleman in
the toga from his attitude of bored meditation.
"How do you do, sir?" said Harroll, blandly, "I thought I'd come to
Avalon."
The old gentleman fumbled in his toga, found a monocle, screwed it
firmly into his eye, and inspected Harroll from head to heel.
"You're rather wet, Jim," he said, steadying his voice.
Harroll admitted it. "This is my old friend, Jack Selden--the Lenox
Seldens, you know, sir." And, to Selden, he reverently named Mr.
Delancy.
"How do?" said Mr. Delancy. "You're wet, too."
There was a silence. Mr. Delancy executed a facial contortion which
released the monocle. Then he touched his faded eyes with the hem of his
handkerchief. The lashes and furrowed cheeks were moist.
"You're so devilish abrupt, Jim," he said. "Did you get any telegrams
from us?"
"Telegrams? No, sir. When?"
"No matter," said Mr. Delancy.
Another silence, and Harroll said: "Fact is, sir, we were blown out to
sea, and that's how we came here. I fancy Selden wouldn't mind an
invitation to dinner and a chance to dry his clothes."
Selden smiled hopefully and modestly as Mr. Delancy surveyed him.
"Pray accept my hospitality, gentlemen," said Mr. Delancy, with a grim
smile. "I've been ass enough to take a villa in this forsaken place. The
food I have to offer you might be relished by squirrels, perhaps; the
clothing resembles my own, and can be furnished you by the simple
process of removing the sheets from your beds."
He rose, flung the flap of his toga over one shoulder, and passed his
arm through Harroll's.
"Don't you like it here?" asked Harroll.
"_Like_ it!" repeated Mr. Delancy.
"But--why did you come?"
"I came," said Mr. Delancy slowly, "because I desired to be rid of you."
Selden instinctively fell back out of earshot. Harroll reddened.
"I thought your theory was----"
"You smashed that theory--now you've shattered this--you and Catharine
between you."
Harroll looked thoughtfully at Selden, who stood watching two pretty
girls playing handball on the green.
"Young man," said Mr. Delancy, "do you realize what I've been through in
one week? I have been obliged to wear this unspeakable garment, I've
been obliged to endure every species of tomfoolery, I've been fed on
bird seed, deprived of cigars, and sent to bed at half past nine. And
I'm as sound in limb and body as you are. And all because I desired to
be rid of you. I had two theories! both are smashed. I refuse to
entertain any more theories concerning anything!"
Harroll laughed; then his attention became concentrated on the exquisite
landscape, where amid green foliage white villas of Georgia marble
glimmered, buried in blossoming thickets of oleander, wistaria, and
Cherokee roses--where through the trees a placid lake lay reflecting the
violet sky--where fallow-deer wandered, lipping young maple buds--where
beneath a pergola heavily draped with golden jasmine a white-robed
figure moved in the shade--a still, sunny world of green and gold and
violet exhaling incense under a cloudless sky.
"I would like to see Catharine," he said, slowly, "with your
permission--and in view of the fate of the theories."
"Jim," said Mr. Delancy, "you are doubtless unconscious of the trouble
you have created in my family."
"Trouble, sir?" repeated the young man, flushing up.
"Trouble for two. My daughter and I believed you drowned."
Harroll stood perfectly still. Mr. Delancy took a step or two forward,
turned, and came back across the lawn. "She is sitting under that
pergola yonder, looking out to sea, and I'm afraid she's crying her eyes
out for something she wants. It's probably not good for her, either.
But--such as it is--she may have it."
The two men looked at one another steadily.
"I'm rather glad you were not drowned," said Mr. Delancy, "but I'm not
infatuated with you."
They shook hands solemnly, then Mr. Delancy walked over and joined
Selden, who appeared to be fascinated by an attractive girl in Greek
robes and sandals who was playing handball on the green.
"Young man," said Mr. Delancy, "there's always trouble for two in this
world. That young woman with yellow hair and violet eyes who is playing
handball with her sister, and who appears to hypnotize you, is here to
recuperate from the loss of an elderly husband."
"A widow with yellow hair and blue eyes!" murmured Selden, entranced.
"Precisely. Your train, however, leaves to-night--unless you mean to
remain here on a diet of bird-seed."
Selden smiled absently. Bird-seed had no terror for him.
"Besides," he said, "I'm rather good at handball."
A moment later he looked around, presumably for Harroll. That young man
was already half-way to the jasmine-covered arbor, where a young girl
sat, dry-eyed, deathly pale, staring out to sea.
The sea was blue and smiling; the soft thunder of the surf came up to
her. She heard the gulls mewing in the sky and the hum of bees in the
wind-stirred blossoms; she saw a crested osprey plunge into the shallows
and a great tarpon fling its mass of silver into the sun. Paroquets
gleaming like living jewels rustled and preened in the china-trees;
black and gold butterflies, covered with pollen, crawled over and over
the massed orange bloom. Ah, the mask of youth that the sly world wore
to mock her! Ah, the living lie of the sky, and the false, smooth sea
fawning at her feet!
Little persuasive breezes came whispering, plucking at the white hem of
her robe to curry favor; the ingratiating surf purred, blinking with a
million iridescent bubbles. The smug smile of nature appalled her; its
hypocrisy sickened her; and she bent her dark eyes fiercely on the sea
and clinched her little hands.
[Illustration: "'Give up my dead!' she whispered. 'Give up my dead!'"]
"Give up my dead!" she whispered. "Give up my dead!"
"Catharine!"
Dazed, she rose to her sandalled feet, the white folds of her robe
falling straight and slim.
"Catharine!"
Her voiceless lips repeated his name; she swayed, steadying herself by
the arm around her waist.
Then trouble for two began.
* * * * *
As Williams ended, I looked at him with indignation.
"As far as I can see," I said, "you are acting as attorney for the
defense. That's a fine story to tell a father of two attractive
daughters. You needn't repeat it to them."
"But it happened, old man----"
"Don't call me 'old man,' either. I'll explain to you why." And I did,
peevishly.
After that I saw less of Williams, from choice. He has a literary way
with him in telling a story--and I didn't wish Alida and Dulcima to
sympathize with young Harroll and that little ninny, Catharine Delancy.
So I kept clear of Williams until we arrived in Paris.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV
WHEREIN A MODEST MAN IS BULLIED AND A LITERARY MAN PRACTICES STYLE
"What was your first impression of Paris, Mr. Van Twiller?" inquired the
young man from East Boston, as I was lighting my cigar in the corridor
of the Hôtel des Michetons after breakfast.
"The first thing I noticed," said I, "was the entire United States
walking down the Boulevard des Italiens."
"And your second impression, sir?" he asked somewhat uncertainly.
"The entire United States walking back again." He lighted a cigarette
and tried to appear cheerful. He knew I possessed two daughters. A man
in possession of such knowledge will endure much.
Presently the stout young man from Chicago came up to request a light
for his cigar. "See Paris and die, eh?" he observed with odious
affability.
"I doubt that the city can be as unhealthy as that," I said coldly.
Defeated, he joined forces with the young man from East Boston, and they
retired to the terrace to sit and hate me.
My daughter Alida, my daughter Dulcima, and I spent our first day in
Paris "_ong voitoor_" as the denizen of East Boston informed me later.
"What is your first impression, Alida?" I asked, as our taxi rolled
smoothly down the Avenue de l'Opera.
"Paris? An enormous blossom carved out of stone!--a huge architectural
Renaissance rose with white stone petals!"
I looked at my pretty daughter with pride.
"That is what Mr. Van Dieman says," she added conscientiously.
My enthusiasm cooled at once.
"Van Dieman exaggerates," I said. "Dulcima, what do you find to
characterize Paris?"
"The gowns!" she cried. "Oh, papa! did you see that girl driving past
just now?"
I opened my guidebook in silence. I _had_ seen her.
The sunshine flooded everything; the scent of flowers filled the soft
air; the city was a garden, sweet with green leaves, embroidered with
green grass--a garden, too, in architecture, carved out in silvery gray
foliage of stone. The streets are as smooth and clean as a steamer's
deck, with little clear rivulets running in gutters that seem as
inviting as country brooks. It did not resemble Manhattan.
Paris!
Paris is a big city full of red-legged soldiers.
Paris is a forest of pink and white chestnut blossoms under which the
inhabitants sit without their hats.
Paris is a collection of vistas; at the end of every vista is a misty
masterpiece of architecture; on the summit of every _monument_ is a
masterpiece of sculpture.
Paris is a city of several millions of inhabitants, every inhabitant
holding both hands out to you for a tip.
Paris is a park, smothered in foliage, under which asphalted streets
lead to Paradise.
Paris is a sanitarium so skillfully conducted that nobody can tell the
patients from the physicians; and all the inmates are firmly convinced
that the outside world is mad.
I looked back at the gilded mass of the Opera--that great pile of stone
set lightly there as the toe of a ballet-girl's satin slipper----
"What are you thinking, papa?" asked Alida.
"Nothing," I said hastily, amazed at my own frivolity. "Notice," said I,
"the exquisite harmony of the sky-line. Here in Paris the Government
regulates the height of buildings. Nothing inharmonious can be built;
the selfishness and indifference of private ownership which in New York
erects skyscrapers around our loveliest architectural remains, the City
Hall, would not be tolerated here, where artistic _ensemble_ is as
necessary to people as the bread they eat."
"Dear me, where have I read that?" exclaimed Alida innocently.
I said nothing more.
We were now passing through that wing of the Louvre which faces the
Carousal, and we turned sharply to the right under the little arc, and
straight past the Tuileries Gardens, all blooming with tulips and
hyacinths, past the quaint weather-stained statues of an epoch as dead
as its own sculptors, past the long arcades of the Rivoli, under which
human spiders lurk for the tourist of Cook, and out into the Place de la
Concorde--the finest square in the world.
The sun glittered on the brass inlaid base on which towered the
monolyth. The splashing of the great fountains filled the air with a
fresh sweet sound. Round us, in a vast circle, sat the "Cities of
France," with "Strasburg" smothered in crêpe and funeral wreaths, each
still stone figure crowned with battlemented crowns and bearing the
carved symbols of their ancient power on time-indented escutcheons, all
of stone.
The fresh wet pavement blazed in the sunshine; men wheeled handcarts
filled with violets or piled high with yellow jonquils and silvery
hyacinths.
Violet, white, and yellow--these are the colors which Paris wears in
springtime, twined in her chaplet of tender green.
I said this aloud to Dulcima, who replied that they were wearing blue in
Paris this spring, and that she would like to know how soon we were
going to the dressmakers.
Now at last we were rolling up the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de
Triomphe, a bridge of pearl at the end of the finest vista in the world.
Past us galloped gay cavalry officers, out for a morning canter in the
Bois de Boulogne; past us whizzed automobiles of every hue, shape and
species.
Past us, too, trotted shoals of people well diluted by our fellow
countrymen, yet a truly Parisian crowd for all that. Hundreds of
uniforms dotted the throngs; cuirassiers in short blue stable jackets,
sabres hooked under their left elbows, little _piou-piou_ lads, in baggy
red trousers and shakos bound with yellow; hussars jingling along,
wearing jackets of robin's-egg blue faced with white; chasseurs à
Cheval, wearing turquoise blue braided with black; then came the priests
in black, well groomed as jackdaws in April; policemen in sombre
uniforms, wearing sword bayonets; gendarmes off duty--for the Republican
Guard takes the place of the Gendarmerie within the walls of Paris;
smart officers from the Fontainebleau artillery school, in cherry-red
and black; Saint-Cyr soldiers in crude blues and reds, with the blue
shako smothered under plumes; then Sisters, in their dark habits and
white coifs, with sweet, serene faces looking out on the sinful world
they spend their lives in praying for.
"Dulcima," I said, "what particular characteristic strikes you when you
watch these passing throngs of women?"
"Their necks; every Parisienne is a beauty from behind--such exquisite
necks and hair."
"Their ankles," added Alida innocently; "they are the best-shod women in
the world!"
I had noticed something of the sort; in fact, there is no escape for a
man's eyes in Paris. Look where he will, he is bound to bring up against
two neat little shoes trotting along demurely about their own frivolous
business. One cannot help wondering what that business may be or where
those little polished shoes are going so lightly, tap! tap! across the
polished asphalt. And there are thousands on thousands of such shoes,
passing, repassing, twinkling everywhere, exquisite, shapely, gay little
shoes of Paris, pattering through boulevard and avenue, square, and
street until the whole city takes the cadence, keeping time, day and
night, to the little tripping feet of the Parisienne--bless her, heart
and sole!
"Of what are you thinking, papa?" asked Alida.
"Nothing, child, nothing," I muttered.
We left our taxi and mounted to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The
world around us was bathed in a delicate haze; silver-gray and emerald
the view stretched on every side from the great Basilica on Montmârtre
to the silent Fortress of Mont-Valerien; from the vast dome of the
Pantheon, springing up like a silver bubble in the sky, to the dull
golden dome of the Invalides, and the dome of the Val-de-Grâce.
Spite of the Sainte Chapel, with its gilded lace-work, spite of the
bizarre Tour Saint-Jacques, spite of the lean monster raised by Monsieur
Eiffel, straddling the vase Esplanade in the west, the solid twin towers
of Nôtre-Dame dominated the spreading city by their sheer
majesty--dominated Saint-Sulpice, dominated the Trocadero, dominated
even the Pantheon.
"From those towers," said I, "Quasimodo looked down and saw the slim
body of Esmeralda hanging on the gibbet."
"What became of her goat?" asked Alida, who was fond of pets.
"That reminds me," began Dulcima, "that now we are safely in Paris we
might be allowed to ask papa about that----"
"There is a steamer which sails for New York to-morrow," I said calmly.
"Any mention of that pig will ensure us staterooms in half an hour."
Considerably subdued, the girls meekly opened their Baedekers and
patronized the view, while I lighted a cigar and mused.
It was my second cigar that morning. Certainly I was a changed man--but
was it a change for the better? Within me I felt something stirring--I
knew not what.
It was that long-buried germ of gayety, that latent uncultivated and
embryotic germ which lies dormant in all Anglo-Saxons; and usually dies
dormant or is drowned in solitary cocktails at a solemn club.
Certainly I was changing. Van Dieman was right. Doubtless any change
could not be the worse for a man who has not sufficient intelligence to
take care of his own pig.
"There is," said Dulcima, referring to her guidebook, "a café near here
in the Bois de Boulogne, called the Café des Fleurs de Chine. I should
so love to breakfast at a Chinese café."
"With chopsticks!" added Alida, soulfully clasping her gloved hands.
"Your Café Chinois is doubtless a rendezvous for Apaches," I said, "but
we'll try it if you wish."
I am wondering, now, just what sort of a place that café is, set like a
jewel among the green trees of the Bois. I know it is expensive, but not
very expensive; I know, also, that the dainty young persons who sipped
mint on the terrace appeared to disregard certain conventionalities
which I had been led to believe were never disregarded in France.
The safest way was to pretend a grave abstraction when their bright eyes
wandered toward one; and I did this, without exactly knowing why I did.
"I wish," said I to Dulcima, "that Van Dieman were here. He understands
all this surface life one sees in the parks and streets."
"Do you really wish that Mr. Van Dieman were here?" asked Alida, softly
coloring.
I looked at her gravely.
"Because," she said, "I believe he is coming about the middle of May."
"Oh, he is, is he?" I said, without enthusiasm. "Well, we shall
doubtless be in the Rhine by the middle of May."
"My gowns couldn't be finished until June any way," said Dulcima, laying
her gloved fingers on Alida's chair.
So they were allies, then.
"I didn't know you had ordered any gowns," I said superciliously.
"I haven't--yet," she said coolly.
"Neither have I," began Alida; but I refused to hear any more.
"When you are at your modistes you may talk gowns until you faint away,"
said I; "but now let us try to take an intelligent interest in this
famous and ancient capital of European civilization and liberty----"
"Did you notice that girl's gown?" motioned Alida to Dulcima.
I also looked. But it was not the beauty of the gown that I found so
remarkable.
"I wonder," thought I--"but no matter. I wish that idiot Van Dieman were
here."
* * * * *
That evening, after my daughters had retired, I determined to sit up
later than I ought to. The reckless ideas which Paris inspired in me,
alarmed me now and then. But I was game.
So I seated myself in the moonlit court of the hotel and lighted an
unwise cigar and ordered what concerns nobody except the man who
swallowed it, and, crossing my legs, looked amiably around.
Williams sat at the next table.
"Hello, old sport," he said affably.
"Williams," I said, "guess who I was thinking about a moment ago."
"A girl?"
"No, of course not. I was thinking of Jim Landon. What ever became of
him?"
"Jim? Oh, he's all right."
"Successful?"
"Very. You ought to have heard of him over there; but I suppose you
don't keep up with art news."
"No," I admitted, ashamed--"it's rather difficult to keep up with
anything on Long Island. Does Jim Landon live here?"
"In Normandy, with his wife."
"Oh, he got married. Was it that wealthy St. Louis girl who----"
"No; she married into the British Peerage. No, Landon didn't do anything
of that sort. Quite the contrary."
"He--he didn't marry his model, did he?"
"Yes--in a way."
"In a way?"
Williams summoned a waiter who shifted his equipment to my table.
"It's rather an unusual story," he said. "Would you care to hear it?"
"Does it portray, with your well known literary skill, the confusion of
a parent?" I inquired cautiously. "If it does, don't tell it."
"It doesn't."
"Oh. Nobody puts it all over the old man?"
"No, not in this particular instance. Shall I begin?"
"Shoot," I said.
He began with his usual graceful gesture:
* * * * *
Landon was dead broke.
As it had not been convenient for him to breakfast that morning, he was
irritable. The mockery of handsome hangings and antique furniture in the
outer studio increased his irritation as he walked through it into the
rough, inner workshop, which was hung with dusty casts and dreary with
clay and plaster.
Here Ellis found him, an hour later, smoking a cigarette to deceive his
appetite, and sulkily wetting down the clay bust of a sheep-faced old
lady--an order of the post-mortem variety which he was executing from a
gruesome photograph.
"How," inquired Ellis, "is the coy Muse treating you these palmy, balmy
days?"
Landon swore and squirted a spongeful of water over the old lady's side
curls.
"My! my! As bad as that?" commented Ellis, raising his eyebrows. "I
thought you expected to be paid for that tombstone."
"Man, I've been eating, drinking, and sleeping on that tombstone all
winter. Last night I gnawed off the 'Hic Jacet' and washed it down with
the date. There's nothing left."
"You've--ah--breakfasted, dear friend?"
"That's all right----"
"_Have_ you?"
"No. But there's a man from Fourth Avenue coming to buy some of that
superfluous magnificence in the show studio. Besides, I'll be paid for
this old lady in a day or two-- Where are you going?"
"Out," said Ellis, briefly.
Landon, left alone, threw a bit of wet clay at the doorknob, stood
irresolutely, first on one foot, then on the other; then with a hearty
scowl at the sheep-faced old lady washed her complacent face with a
dripping sponge.
* * * * *
"Williams!" I interrupted violently, "how do you know all those
details?"
"My Lord, man!" he retorted; "I write for a living. I've got to know
them."
"Go on, then," I said.
He went on:
* * * * *
A few moments later Ellis came in with rolls, milk and fruit.
"That's very decent of you," said Landon, but the other cut him short,
excitedly.
"Jim, who is the divinity I just met in your hallway? Yours?"
"What divinity?"
"Her hair," said Ellis, a little wildly, "is the color of Tuscan gold;
her eyes, ultra marine; and the skin of her is just pure snow with a
brushful of carmine across the lips--and the Great Sculptor Himself must
have moulded her body----"
Landon shrugged and buttered a roll. "You let her alone," he said.
"Reveal to me instantly her name, titles, and quality!" shouted Ellis,
unsheathing a Japanese sword.
"Her name," said Landon, "is O'Connor; her quality is that of a
shopgirl. She is motherless and alone, and inhabits a kennel across the
hall. Don't make eyes at her. She'll probably believe whatever the first
gentlemanly blackguard tells her."
Ellis said: "Why may I not--in a delicately detached and gayly
impersonal, yet delightfully and evasively irrational manner, calculated
to deceive nobody----"
"That would sound very funny in the Latin Quarter. This is New York." He
rose, frowning. Presently he picked up the sponge. "Better let a lonely
heart alone, unless you're in earnest," he said, and flung the sponge
back into a bucket of water, dried his hands, and looked around.
"Have you sold any pictures yet?"
"Not one. I thought I had a Copper King nailed to the easel, but Fate
separated us on a clinch and he got away and disappeared behind the bars
of his safe deposit. How goes the market with you?"
"Dead. I can live on my furniture for a while."
"I thought you were going in on that competition for the Department of
Peace at Washington."
"I am, if I have enough money left to hire a model."
Ellis rose, twirled his walking-stick meditatively, glanced at his
carefully brushed hat, and placed it gravely on his head.
"Soon," he said cheerfully, "it will be time for straw hats. But where
I'm going to get one I don't know. Poverty used to be considered funny
in the Quarter; but it's no idle jest in this town. Well--I'll let your
best girl alone, Jim, if you feel that way about it."
They laughed and shook hands.
In the corridor Ellis looked hard at the closed door opposite, and his
volatile heart gave a tortured thump; he twirled his stick and sauntered
out into Stuyvesant Square.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V
DREAMLAND
As winter faded into spring the first tracery of green fringed the
branches in Stuyvesant Square. The municipal authorities decorated the
grass with tulips and later with geraniums. Later still, cannas and
foliage plants were planted, over which two fountains spurted aqua
Crotonis.
But in spite of tasteless horticulture it is a quaint old square, a
little sad and shabby, perhaps, yet mercifully green inside its two
iron-railed parallelograms. Above the great sycamores and elms the
truncated towers of St. George's brood heavily; along the short, leafy
reach of Rutherford Place an old-time Quaker meeting-house keeps gentle
vigil; northward, aged mansions peer at the square through time-dimmed
windows; south, above the Sisters of The Assumption, a painted Virgin
clasps her stone hands and looks down on the little children of the
poor.
Along the east side of the square runs Livingston Place; behind it an
elevated railroad roars; in front lies the square, shabby, unkempt, but
lovely always, when night lends to it her mystery. For at night the
trees loom gigantic; lights sparkle over lawn and fountain; the
illuminated dial of St. George's hangs yellow as a harvest moon above
the foliage; and the pleasant bell sounds from the towers, changing, for
a moment, the streets' incessant monotone to a harmony.
Into this square went Landon; oftener, as the summer grew hotter and
work grew scarcer.
Once, at the close of a scorching afternoon, his pretty neighbour from
across the corridor came slowly into the square and rested for a few
moments on the same bench he occupied.
So lovely and fresh and sweet she seemed in the early dusk that he, for
an instant, was tempted from his parched loneliness to speak to her; but
before he could bring himself to it she turned, recognized him, rose and
went back to the house without a second glance.
"We've been neighbours for a year," he thought, "and she has never been
civil enough to look at me yet--and I've been too civil to look at her.
I was an ass."
He was wrong; she had looked at him often, when unafraid that his eyes
might surprise her.
He was amusingly wrong. Waking, she remembered him; during the long day
she thought of him; at night, when she returned from business, the
radiance from his studio lamp streaming through the transom had for her
all the thrilling fascination that a lighted shop window, at Christmas,
has for a lonesome child passing in darkness.
From the dim monotony of her own life she had, at times, caught glimpses
through his open door of splendours scarcely guessed. In her eyes an
enchanted world lay just beyond his studio's threshold; a bright, warm,
mellow wonderland, indistinct in the golden lamplight, where only a
detail here and there half revealed a figured tapestry or carved
foliation--perhaps some soft miracle of ancient Eastern weaving on the
floor, perhaps a mysterious marble shape veiled in ruddy shadow--enough
to set her youthful imagination on fire, enough to check her breath and
start the pulses racing as she turned the key in her own door and
reëntered the white dusk of her own life once more.
The three most important events of her brief career had occurred within
the twelvemonth--her mother's death, her coming here to live--and love.
That also had happened. But she did not call it love; it did not occur
to her to consider him in any possible, tangible relation to herself.
She never even expected to know him, to speak to him, or that he could
possibly care to speak to her. As far as the east is from the west, so
far apart were their two worlds. For them the gusty corridor was wider
than interstellar voids; she had not even a thought that a miracle might
bridge the infinite from her tiny world to his, which seemed to her so
bright and splendid; she had never advanced farther than the happiness
of lying still after the day's work, and thinking, innocently, of what
she knew about him and what she timidly divined.
At such times, stretched across her bed, the backs of her hands resting
on her closed lids, she pondered on that alluring wonderland, his
studio--of the mystery that so fittingly surrounded his artist's life.
She saw him always amid the tints and hues of ancient textiles,
sometimes dreaming, sometimes achieving with fiery inspiration--but
precisely how or what he achieved remained to her part of his mystery.
She cherished only the confused vision of the youth of him, and its
glorious energy and wisdom.
He could be very human, too, she thought; and often the smile curved her
lips and cheeks at the recollection of the noisy gayety coming in gusts
through his transom on those nights when his friends were gathered
there--laughter and song--the incense of tobacco drifting into her own
white room from the corridor. She loved it; the odor seemed spicy with a
delicate hint of sweet-brier, and she opened her transom wider to let it
in.
Usually she fell asleep, the distant uproar of gayety lulling her into
happier slumbers. And for days and nights afterward its recollection
made life easier and pleasanter, as though she lived with amusing
memories of events in which she herself had participated.
All day long, in a fashionable dry-goods shop, she sold cobweb finery
and frail, intimate, lacy stuffs to very fine ladies, who usually drew a
surprised breath at her beauty, and sometimes dealt with her as though
they were dealing with one of their own caste.
At night, tired, she looked forward to her return, when, behind her own
closed door, she could rest or read a little, or lie still and think of
Landon. But even in the daring magic of waking dreams she had scarcely
ventured any acquaintance with him; in dreamland they were as yet only
just aware of one another. He had lately--oh, breathless and audacious
imagination of hers!--smiled at her in the corridors of dreamland; and
she had been a good many days trying to decide what she was going to do
about it. In her phantom world matters were going well with her.
Meanwhile, except for the stupefying heat, the actual world was also
going well with her. She had saved a little money, enough to give her
ten days of luxury and fresh air when the time came. She needed it; the
city had been hard on her. Yet the pleasure of going was not unmixed;
for, as the day of her release drew nearer, she realized how, within the
year, he had, in her dreams, insensibly become to her a part of her real
life, and that she would miss him sorely. Which gave her courage to
hasten their acquaintance in dreamland; and so it came about that he
spoke to her one night as she lay dreaming, awake on her pillow; and she
felt her cheeks burn in the dark as though it had all been real.
Yet he was very gentle with her in dreamland--quite wonderful--indeed,
all that the most stilted vision of a young girl could desire.
Less unquiet, now that they knew each other, she looked forward to the
real separation with comparative resignation.
Then came that unexpected episode when she seated herself on the same
bench with him, unintentionally braving him in the flesh.
All that night she thought about it in consternation--piteously
explaining it to him in dreamland. He understood--in dreamland--but did
he understand in real life? Would he think she had meant to give him a
chance to speak--horror of crimson dismay! Would he think her absurd to
leave so abruptly when he caught her eye? And oh, she cared so much what
he might think, so much more than she supposed she dared care!
All day long it made her miserable as she moved listlessly behind the
counter; at night the heated pavements almost stunned her as she walked
home to save the pennies.
She saw no light in his studio as she slipped through the corridor into
her stifling room. Later, she bathed and dressed in a thinner gown, but
it, also, was in black, in memory of her mother, and seemed to sere her
body. The room grew hotter; she went out to the passage; no light
threatened her from his transom, so she ventured to leave her door open.
But even this brought no relief; the heat became unendurable; and she
rose at last, pinned on her big black hat of straw, and went out into
the dusk.
Through the gates of the square she saw the poor surging into the park.
The police had opened the scant bits of lawn to them. Men, women,
children, lay half-naked on the grass, fighting for breath. And, after
a little while, she crossed the street and went in among them.
The splash of the fountain was refreshing. She wandered at random, past
the illuminated façade of the Lying-in Hospital, past the painted
Virgin, then crossed Second Avenue, entered the gates again, and turned
aimlessly by the second fountain. There seemed to be no resting-place
for her on the crowded benches.
Beyond the fountain a shadowy sycamore stood in the centre of a strip of
lawn. She went toward it, hesitated, glancing at the motionless,
recumbent figures near by, then ventured to seat herself on the grass
and lean back against the tree. Presently, she unpinned her hat, lifted
a white face to the night, and closed her eyes.
How long she sat there she did not know when again she opened her tired
lids.
A figure stood near her. For a moment she confused dream and reality and
smiled at him; then sat up, rigid, breathless, as the figure stirred and
came forward.
She remembered attempting to rise, remembered nothing else very
distinctly--not even his first words, though his voice was gentle and
pleasant, just as it was in dreamland.
"Do you mind my speaking to you?" he was asking now.
"No," she said faintly.
He raised his head and looked out across the feverish city, passing one
thin hand across his eyes. Then, with a slight movement of his
shoulders, he seated himself on the ground at her feet.
"We have been neighbours so long," he said, "that I thought perhaps I
might dare to speak to you to-night. My name is Landon--James Landon. I
think I know your last name."
"O'Connor--Ellie O'Connor--Eleanor, I mean," she added, unafraid. A
curious peace seemed to possess her at the sound of his voice. There was
a stillness in it that reassured.
The silence between them was ringed with the distant roar of the city.
He looked around him at the shadowy forms flung across bench and lawn;
his absent glance swept the surrounding walls of masonry and iron, all
a-glitter with tiny, lighted windows. Overhead a tarnished moon looked
down into the vast trap where five million souls lay caught, gasping for
air--he among the others--and this young girl beside him--trapped,
helpless, foredoomed. The city had got them all! But he sat up the
straighter, giving the same slightly-impatient shake to his shoulders.
"I came," he said, "to ask you one or two questions--if I may."
"Ask them," she answered, as in a dream.
"Then--you go to business, do you not?"
"Yes."
He nodded: "And now I'm going to venture another question which may
sound impertinent, but I do not mean it so. May I?"
"Yes," she said in a low, hushed voice, as though a clearer tone might
break some spell.
"It is about your salary. I do not suppose it is very large."
"My wages? Shall I tell you?" she asked, so innocently that he flushed
up.
"No, no!--I merely wish to--to find out from you whether you might care
to take a chance of increasing your salary."
"I don't think I know what you mean," she said, looking at him.
"I know you don't," he said, patiently; "let me begin a little farther
back. I am a sculptor. You know, of course, what that is----"
"Yes. I am educated." She even found courage to smile at him.
His answering smile covered both confusion and surprise; then perplexity
etched a crease between his brows.
"That makes it rather harder for me"--he hesitated--"or easier; I don't
know which."
"What makes it harder?" she asked.
"Your being--I don't know--different--from what I imagined----"
"Educated?"
"Y-yes----"
She laughed deliciously in her new-born confidence.
"What is it you wish to ask?"
"I'll tell you," he said. "I need a model--and I'm too poor to pay for
one. I've pledged everything in my studio. A chance has come to me. It's
only a chance, however. But I can't take it because I cannot afford a
model."
There was a silence; then she inquired what he meant by a model. And he
told her--not everything, not clearly.
"You mean that you wish me to sit for my portrait in marble?"
"There are two figures to be executed for the new Department of Peace in
Washington," he explained, "and they are to be called 'Soul' and 'Body.'
Six sculptors have been invited to compete. I am one. We have a year
before us."
She remained silent.
"It is perfectly apparent, of course, that you are exquis--admirably
fitted"--he stammered under her direct gaze, then went on; "I scarcely
dared dream of such a model even if I had the means to afford--" He
could get no further.
"Are you really poor?" she asked in gentle wonder.
"At present--yes."
"I never dreamed it," she said. "I thought--otherwise."
"Oh, it is nothing; some day things will come out right. Only--I have a
chance now--if you--if you would help me.... I _could_ win with you; I
know it. And if I do win--with your aid--I will double your present
salary. And that is what I've come here to say. Is that fair?"
He waited, watching her intently. She had dropped her eyes, sitting
there very silent at the foot of the tree, cradling the big straw hat in
her lap.
"Whatever you decide to be fair--" he began again, but she looked up
wistfully.
"I was not thinking of that," she said; "I was only--sorry."
"Sorry?"
"That you are poor."
He misunderstood her. "I know; I wish I could offer you something beside
a chance----"
"Oh-h," she whispered, but so low that he heard only a long, indrawn
breath.
She sat motionless, eyes on the grass. When again she lifted them their
pure beauty held him.
"What is it you wish?" she asked. "That I should be your model for
the--this prize which you desire to strive for?"
"Yes; for that."
"How can I? I work all day."
"I could use you at night and on Saturday afternoons, and all day
Sunday. And--have you had your yearly vacation?"
She drew a quietly tired breath. "No," she said.
"Then--I will give you two hundred dollars extra for those ten days," he
went on eagerly--so eagerly that he forgot the contingency on which hung
any payment at all. As for her, payment was not even in her thoughts.
Through the deep, sweet content which came to her with the chance of
serving him, ran an undercurrent of confused pain that he could so
blindly misunderstand her. If she thought at all of the amazing
possibility of such a fortune as he offered, she knew that she would not
accept it from him. But this, and the pain of his misunderstanding,
scarcely stirred the current of a strange, new happiness that flowed
through every vein.
"Do you think I could really help you?"
"If you will." His voice trembled.
"Are you sure--quite sure? If you are--I will do what you wish."
He sprang up buoyant, transfigured.
"If I win it will be _you_!" he said. "Could you come into the studio a
moment? I'll show you the two sketches I have made for 'Soul' and
'Body'."
On the prospect of a chance--the chance that had come at last--he was
completely forgetting that she must be prepared to comprehend what he
required of her; he forgot that she could know nothing of a sculptor's
ways and methods of production. On the way to the studio, however, he
tardily remembered, and it rather scared him.
"Do you know any painters or sculptors?" he asked, keeping impatient
pace beside her.
"I know a woman who makes casts of hands and arms," she said shyly. "She
stopped me in the street once and asked permission to cast my hands.
Would you call her a sculptor?"
"N--well, perhaps she may be. We sculptors often use casts of the human
body." He plunged into it more frankly: "You know, of course, that to
become a sculptor or a painter, one has to model and paint from living
people."
"Yes," she said, undisturbed.
"And," he continued, "it would be impossible for a sculptor to produce
the beautiful marbles you have seen--er--around--unless he could pose a
living model to copy from."
An unquiet little pulse began to beat in her breast; she looked up at
him, but he was smiling so amiably that she smiled, too.
Mortally afraid of frightening her, he could not exactly estimate how
much she divined of what was to be required of her.
He continued patiently: "Unless a student dissects he can never become a
surgeon. It is the same with us; our inspiration and originality must be
founded on a solid study of the human body. That is why we must always
have before us as perfect a living model as we can find."
"Do--do you think--" she stopped, pink and confused.
"I think," he said, quietly impersonal, "that, speaking as a sculptor,
you are as perfect and as beautiful a model as ever the old Greek
masters saw, alive or in their dreams."
"I--did not--know it," she faltered, thrilling from head to foot.
They entered the corridor together. Her breath came faster as he
unlocked his door and, turning up a lamp, invited her to enter.
At last in the magic world! And with _him_!
Figured tapestries hung from the golden mystery of the ceiling; ancient
dyes glowed in the soft rugs under foot; the mellow light glimmered on
dull foliations. She stood still, looking about her as in a trance.
"All this I will buy back again with your help," he said, laughingly;
but his unsteady voice betrayed the tension to which he was keyed. A
slow excitement was gaining on her, too.
"I will redeem all these things, never fear," he said, gayly.
"Oh--if you only can.... It is too cruel to take such things from you."
The emotion in her eyes and voice surprised him for one troubled moment.
Then the selfishness of the artist ignored all else save the work and
the opportunity.
"You _will_ help me, won't you?" he asked. "It is a promise?"
"Yes--I will."
"Is it a _promise_?"
"Yes," she said, wondering.
"Then please sit here. I will bring the sketches. They merely represent
my first idea; they are done without a living model." He was off,
lighting a match as he hastened. A tapestry fell back into place; she
lifted her blue eyes to the faded figures of saints and seraphim
stirring when the fabric moved.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI
SOUL AND BODY
As in a blessed vision, doubting the reality of it all, she sat looking
upward until his step on some outer floor aroused her to the wondrous
reality.
He came, holding two clay figures. The first was an exquisite winged
shape, standing with delicate limbs parallel, arms extended, palms
outward. The head was lifted a little, poised exquisitely on the perfect
neck. Its loveliness thrilled her.
"Is it an angel?" she asked, innocently.
"No.... I thought you understood--this is only a sketch I made. And this
is the other." And he placed on a table the second figure, a smooth,
youthful, sensuous shape, looking aside and down at her own white
fingers playing with her hair.
"Is it Eve?" she inquired, wondering.
"These," he said slowly, "are the first two sketches, done without a
model, for my two figures 'Soul' and 'Body'."
She looked at him, not comprehending.
"I--I must have a _living_ model--for these," he stammered. "Didn't you
understand? I want _you_ to work from."
From brow to throat the scarlet stain deepened and spread. She turned,
laid one small hand on the back of the chair, faltered, sank onto it,
covering her face.
"I thought you understood," he repeated stupidly. "Forgive me--I thought
you understood what sort of help I needed." He dropped on one knee
beside her. "I am so sorry. Try to reason a little. You--you must know I
meant no offense--that I never could wish to offend you. Look at me,
please; I am not that sort of a man. Can't you realize how desperate I
was--how I dared hazard the chance that you might help me?"
She rose, her face still covered.
"_Can't_ you comprehend?" he pleaded, "that I meant no offense?"
"Y-yes. Let me go."
"Can you forgive me?"
"I--yes."
"And you cannot--help me?"
"H-help you?... Oh, no, no, no!" She broke down, sobbing in the chair,
her golden head buried in her arms.
Confused, miserable, he watched her. Already the old helpless feeling
had come surging back, that there was to be no chance for him in the
world, no hope of all he had dared to believe in, no future. Watching
her he felt his own courage falling with her tears, his own will
drooping as she drooped there--slender and white in her thin, black
gown.
Again he spoke, for the moment forgetting himself.
"Don't cry, because there is nothing to cry about. You know I did not
mean to hurt you; I know that you would help me if you could. Isn't it
true?"
"Y-yes," she sobbed.
"It was only a sculptor who asked you, not a man at all. You understand
what I mean?--only a poor devil of a sculptor, carried away by the
glamour of a chance for better fortune that seemed to open before him
for a moment. So you must not feel distressed or sensitive or
ashamed----"
She sat up, wet eyed, cheeks aflame.
"I am thinking of _you_!" she cried, almost fiercely, "not of myself;
and you don't understand! Do you think I would cry over myself? I--it is
because I cannot help _you_!"
He found no words to answer as she rose and moved toward the door. She
crossed the threshold, turned and looked at him. Then she entered her
own doorway.
* * * * *
And the world went badly for her that night, and, after that, day and
night, the world went badly.
Always the confusion of shame and dread returned to burn her; but that
was the least; for in the long hours, lying amid the fragments of her
shattered dreams, the knowledge that he needed her and that she could
not respond, overwhelmed her.
The house, the corridor, her room became unendurable; she desired to
go--anywhere--and try to forget. But she could not; she could not leave,
she could not forget, she could not go to him and offer the only aid he
desired, she could not forgive herself.
In vain, in vain, white with the agony of courage, she strove to teach
herself that she was nothing, her body nothing, that the cost was
nothing, compared to the terrible importance of his necessity. She knew
in her heart that she could have died for him; but--but--her courage
could go no further.
In terrible silence she walked her room, thinking of him as one in
peril, as one ruined for lack of the aid she withheld. Sometimes she
passed hours on her knees, tearless, wordless; sometimes sheerest fear
set her creeping to the door to peer out, dreading lest his closed door
concealed a tragedy.
And always, burning like twin gray flames before her eyes, she saw the
figures he had made, 'Soul' and 'Body.' Every detail remained clear;
their terrible beauty haunted her. Night after night, rigid on her bed's
edge, she stretched her bared, white arms, staring at them, then flung
them hopelessly across her eyes, whispering, "I cannot--O God--I
cannot--even for him."
And there came a day--a Saturday--when the silence of the house, of her
room, the silence in her soul, became insupportable.
All day she walked in the icy, roaring streets, driving herself forward
toward the phantom of forgetfulness which fled before her like her
shadow. And at the edge of noon she found herself--where she knew she
must come one day--seeking the woman who made plaster casts of hands and
arms and shapely feet.
For a little while they talked together. The woman surprised, smiling
sometimes, but always very gentle; the girl flushed, stammering,
distressed in forming her naïve questions.
Yes, it could be done; it had been done. But it was a long process; it
must be executed in sections, then set together limb by limb, for there
were many difficulties--and it was not pleasant to endure, even
sometimes painful.
"I do not mind the pain," said the girl. "Will it scar me?"
"No, not that.... But, another thing; it would be expensive."
"I have my vacation money, and a little more." She named the sum
timidly.
Yes, it was enough. And when could she come for the first casts to be
taken?
She was ready now.
A little later, turning a lovely, flushed face over her bare shoulder:
"One figure stood like this," and, after a pause, "the other this
way.... If you make them from me, can a sculptor work from life casts
such as these?"
A sculptor could.
About dusk she crept home, trembling in every nerve. Her vacation had
begun.
She had been promoted to a position as expert lace buyer, which
permitted larger liberty. From choice she had taken no vacation during
the summer. Now her vacation, which she requested for December, lasted
ten days; and at the end of it her last penny had been spent, but in a
manner so wonderful, so strange, that no maid ever dreamed such things
might be.
[Illustration: "Christmas Eve she knelt, crying, before the pedestal."]
And on the last evening of it, which was Christmas Eve, she knelt,
crying, before two pedestals from which rose her body and soul as white
as death.
An hour later the snowy twins stood in his empty studio, swathed in
their corpse-white winding-sheets--unstained cerements, sealing beneath
their folds her dead pride, dead hope--all that was delicate and
intimate and subtle and sweet--slain and in cerements, for his sake.
And now she must go before he returned. Her small trunk was ready; her
small account settled. With strangely weak and unsteady hands she stood
before the glass knotting her veil.
Since that night together last summer she had not spoken to him, merely
returning his low greeting in the corridor with a silent little
inclination of her head. But, although she had had no speech with him,
she had learned that he was teaching at the League now, and she knew his
hours and his movements well enough to time her own by them.
He was not due for another hour; she looked out into the snowy darkness,
drawing on her gloves and buttoning the scant fur collar close about her
throat.
The old janitor came to say good-by.
"An' God be with you, miss, this Christmas Eve"--taking the coin
irresolutely, but pocketing it for fear of hurting her.
His fingers, numbed and aged, fumbling in the pocket encountered another
object.
"Musha, thin, I'm afther forgettin' phwat I'm here f'r to tell ye,
miss," he rambled on. "Misther Landon wishes ye f'r to know that he do
be lavin' the house"--the old man moistened his lips in an effort to
remember with all the elegance required of him--"an' Misther Landon is
wishful f'r to say a genteel good luck to ye, miss."
The girl shook her head.
"Tell Mr. Landon good-by for me, Patrick. Say--from me--God bless
him.... Will you remember?... And a--a happy Christmas."
"I will, Miss."
She touched her eyes with her handkerchief hastily, and held out her
hand to the old man.
"I think that is all," she whispered.
She was mistaken; the janitor was holding out a note to her.
"In case ye found it onconvaynient f'r to see Misther Landon, I was to
projooce the letter, Miss."
She took it; a shiver passed over her.
When the old man had shambled off down the passage she reëntered her
room, held the envelope a moment close under the lighted lamp, then
nervously tore it wide.
"_You will read this in case you refuse to say good-by to me. But I
only wanted to offer you a little gift at Christmastide--not in
reparation, for I meant no injury--but in deepest respect for you. And
so I ask you once more to wait for me. Will you?_"
Minute after minute she sat there, dumb, confused, nerves at the
breaking point, her heart and soul crying out for him. Then the memory
of what was awaiting him in his studio choked her with fright. She
sprang to her feet, and at the same moment the outer gate clanged.
Terror froze her; then she remembered that it was too early for him; it
must be the expressman for her trunk. And she went to the door and
opened it.
"Oh-h!" she breathed, shrinking back; but Landon had seen his letter in
her hand, and he followed her into the room.
He was paler than she: his voice was failing him, too, as he laid his
gift on the bare table--only a little book, prettily bound.
"Will you take it?" he asked in a colorless voice; but she could not
answer, could not move.
"I wish you a happy Christmas," he whispered. "Good-by."
She strove to meet his eyes, strove to speak, lifted her slim hand to
stay him. It fell, strength spent, in both of his.
Suddenly Time went all wrong, reeling off centuries in seconds. And
through the endless interstellar space that stretched between her world
and his she heard his voice bridging it: "I love you--I love you
dearly.... Once more I am the beggar--a beggar at Christmastide, asking
your mercy--asking more, your love. Dear, is it plain this time? Is all
clear, dearest among women?"
She looked up into his eyes; his hands tightened over hers.
"Can you love me?" he said.
"Yes," answered her eyes and the fragrant mouth assented, quivering
under his lips.
Then, without will or effort of her own, from very far away, her voice
stole back to her faintly.
"Is all this true? I have dreamed so long--so long--of loving you----"
He drew her closer; she laid both hands against his coat and hid her
face between them.
He whispered:
"It was your unselfishness, your sweetness, and--_you_--all of
you--yes--your beauty--the loveliness of you, too! I could not put it
from me; I knew that night that I loved you--and to-day they said you
were going--so I came with my Christmas gift--the sorry, sorry
gift--myself----"
"Ah!" she whispered, clinging closer. "And what of my gift--my twin
gifts--there, in your studio! Oh, you don't know, you don't know----"
"Dearest!"
"No--you can never know how much easier it had been for me to die than
to love--as I have loved a man this day."
* * * * *
"Confound you, Williams," I said, blinking.
But he did not hear me, sitting there in a literary revery, mentally
repolishing the carefully considered paragraphs with which he had just
regaled me.
"Williams?"
"What?"
"So--they're living in Normandy."
"Who?"
"Jim Landon and that girl, dammit!" I said, crossly.
"Yes--oh, yes, of course. Children--bunches of 'em--and all that."
"Williams?"
"What?"
"_Was_ she so pretty?"
"Certainly," he said, absently. "Don't bother me now; I've got an idea
for another story."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII
THE BITER, THE BITTEN, AND THE UN-BITTEN
"Mais tout le monde," began the chasseur of the Hôtel des
Michetons--"mais, monsieur, tout le grand monde----"
"Exactly," said I, complacently. "Le grand monde means the great world;
and," I added, "the world is a planet of no unusual magnitude, inhabited
by bipeds whose entire existence is passed in attempting to get
something for nothing."
The chasseur of the Hôtel des Michetons bowed, doubtfully.
"You request me," I continued, "not to forget you when I go away. Why
should I not forget you? Are you historical, are you antique, are you
rococo, are you a Rosacrucian?"
The chasseur, amiably perplexed, twirled his gold-banded cap between his
fingers.
"Have you," I asked, "ever done one solitary thing for me besides
touching your expensive cap?"
The chasseur touched his cap, smiled, and hopefully held out his large
empty hand.
"Go to the devil," I said gently; "it is not for what you have done but
for what you have not done that I give you this silver piece," and I
paid the tribute which I despised myself for paying. Still, his gay
smile and prompt salute are certainly worth something to see, but what
their precise value may be you can only determine when, on returning to
New York, you hear a gripman curse a woman for crossing the sacred
tracks of the Metropolitan Street Railroad Company. So, with my daughter
Dulcima and my daughter Alida, and with a wagon-load of baggage, I left
the gorgeously gilded Hôtel des Michetons--for these three reasons:
Number one: it was full of Americans.
Number two: that entire section of Paris resembled a slice of the
Waldorf-Astoria.
Number three: I wanted to be rid of the New York _Herald_. Surely
somewhere in Paris there existed French newspapers, French people, and
French speech. I meant to discover them or write and complain to the
_Outlook_.
The new hotel I had selected was called the Hôtel de l'Univers. I had
noticed it while wandering out of the Luxembourg Gardens. It appeared to
be a well situated, modest, clean hotel, and not only thoroughly
respectable--which the great gilded Hôtel des Michetons was not--but
also typically and thoroughly French. So I took an apartment on the
first floor and laid my plans to dine out every evening with my
daughters.
They were naturally not favourably impressed with the Hôtel de
l'Univers, but I insisted on trying it for a week, desiring that my
daughters should have at least a brief experience in a typical French
hotel.
On the third day of our stay my daughters asked me why the guests at the
Hôtel de l'Univers all appeared to be afflicted in one way or another. I
myself had noticed that many of the guests wore court-plaster on hands
and faces, and some even had their hands bandaged in slings.
I thought, too, that the passers-by in the street eyed the modest hotel
with an interest somewhat out of proportion to its importance. But I set
that down to French alertness and inbred curiosity, and dismissed the
subject from my mind. The hotel was pretty clean and highly
respectable. Titled names were not wanting among the guests, and the
perfect courtesy of the proprietor, his servants, and of the guests was
most refreshing after the carelessness and bad manners of the crowds at
the Hôtel des Michetons.
"Can it be possible?" said Alida, as we three strolled out of our hotel
into the Boulevard St. Michel.
"What?" I asked.
"That we are in the Latin Quarter? Why this boulevard is beautiful, and
I had always pictured the Latin Quarter as very dreadful."
"It's the inhabitants that are dreadful," said I with a shudder as a
black-eyed young girl, in passing, gave me an amused and exceedingly
saucy smile.
The "Quarter!" It is beautiful--one of the most beautiful portions of
Paris. The Luxembourg Gardens are the centre and heart of the Latin
Quarter--these ancient gardens, with their groves of swaying chestnuts
all in bloom, quaint weather-beaten statues in a grim semicircle looking
out over the flowering almonds on the terrace to the great blue basin of
the fountain where toy yachts battle with waves almost an inch high.
Here the big drab-colored pigeons strut and coo in the sunshine, here
the carp splash in the mossy fountain of Marie de Medici, here come the
nursemaids with their squalling charges, to sit on the marble benches
and coquette with the red-trousered soldiers, who are the proper and
natural prey of all nursemaids in all climes.
"What is that banging and squeaking?" asked Alida, as we entered the
foliage of the southern terrace. "Not Punch and Judy--oh, I haven't seen
Punch since I was centuries younger! Do let us go, papa!"
Around the painted puppet box children sat, open-mouthed. Back of them
crowded parents and nurses and pretty girls and gay young officers,
while, from the pulpit, Punch held forth amid screams of infantile
delight, or banged his friends with his stick in the same old fashion
that delighted us all--centuries since.
"Such a handsome officer," said Alida under her breath.
The officer in question, a dragoon, was looking at Dulcima in that
slightly mischievous yet well-bred manner peculiar to European officers.
Dulcima did not appear to observe him.
"Why--why, that is Monsieur de Barsac, who came over on our ship!" said
Alida, plucking me by the sleeve. "Don't you remember how nice he was
when we were so--so sea--miserable? You really ought to bow to him,
papa. If you don't, I will."
I looked at the dragoon and caught his eye--such a bright, intelligent,
mischievous eye!--and I could not avoid bowing.
Up he came, sword clanking, white-gloved hand glued to the polished
visor of his crimson cap, and--the girls were delighted.
Now what do you suppose that Frenchman did? He gave up his entire day to
showing us the beauties of the Rive Gauche.
Under his generous guidance my daughters saw what few tourists see
intelligently--the New Sorbonne, with its magnificent mural decorations
by Puvis de Chavannes; we saw the great white-domed Observatory, piled
up in the sky like an Eastern temple, and the beautiful old palace of
the Luxembourg. Also, we beheld the Republican Guards, _à cheval_,
marching out of their barracks on the Rue de Tournon; and a splendid
glittering company of cavalry they were, with their silver helmets,
orange-red facings, white gauntlets, and high, polished boots--the
picked men of all the French forces, as far as physique is concerned.
In the late afternoon haze the dome of the Pantheon, towering over the
Latin Quarter, turned to purest cobalt in the sky. Under its majestic
shadow the Boulevard St. Michel ran all green and gold with gas-jets
already lighted in lamps and restaurants and the scores of students'
cafés which line the main artery of the "Quartier Latin."
"I wish," said Alida, "that it were perfectly proper for us to walk
along those terraces."
Captain de Barsac appeared extremely doubtful, but entirely at our
disposal.
"You know what our students are, monsieur," he said, twisting his short
blond moustache; "however--if monsieur wishes----?"
So, with my daughters in the centre, and Captain de Barsac and myself
thrown out in strong flanking parties, we began our march.
The famous cafés of the Latin Quarter were all ablaze with electricity
and gas and colored incandescent globes. On the terraces hundreds of
tables and chairs stood, occupied by students in every imaginable
civilian costume, although the straight-brimmed stovepipe and the
_béret_ appeared to be the favorite headgear. At least a third of the
throng was made up of military students from the Polytechnic, from
Fontainebleau, and from Saint-Cyr. Set in the crowded terraces like
bunches of blossoms were chattering groups of girls--bright-eyed,
vivacious, beribboned and befrilled young persons, sipping the
petit-verre or Amer-Picon, gossiping, babbling, laughing like dainty
exotic birds. To and fro sped the bald-headed, white-aproned waiters,
balancing trays full of glasses brimming with red and blue and amber
liquids.
Here was the Café d'Harcourt, all a-glitter, with music playing
somewhere inside--the favorite resort of the medical students from the
Sorbonne, according to Captain de Barsac. Here was the Café de la
Source, with its cascade of falling water and its miniature mill-wheel
turning under a crimson glow of light; here was the famous Café
Vachette, celebrated as the centre of all Latin Quarter mischief; and,
opposite to it, blazed the lights of the "CAFÉ DES BLEAUS," so called
because haunted almost exclusively by artillery officers from the great
school of Fontainebleau.
Up the boulevard and down the boulevard moved the big double-decked
tram-cars, horns sounding incessantly; cabs dashed up to the cafés,
deposited their loads of students or pretty women, then darted away
toward the river, their lamps shining like stars.
It was truly a fairy scene, with the electric lights playing on the
foliage of the trees, turning the warm tender green of the chestnut
leaves to a wonderful pale bluish tint, and etching the pavements
underfoot with exquisite Chinese shadows.
"It is a shame that this lovely scene should not be entirely
respectable," said Alida, resentfully.
"Vice," murmured de Barsac to me, "could not exist unless it were made
attractive."
As far as the surface of the life before us was concerned, there was
nothing visible to shock anybody; and, under escort, there is no earthly
reason why decent women of any age should not enjoy the spectacle of the
"BOUL' MICH." on a night in springtime.
An innocent woman, married or unmarried, ought not to detect anything
unpleasant in the St. Michel district; but, alas! what is known as
"Smart Society" is so preternaturally wise in these piping times o'
wisdom, that the child is not only truly the father of the man, but also
his instructor and interpreter--to that same man's astonishment and
horror. It may always have been so--even before the days when our
theatres were first licensed to instruct our children in object lessons
of the seven deadly sins--but I cannot recollect the time when, as a
youngster, I was tolerantly familiar with the scenes now nightly offered
to our children through the courtesy of our New York theatre managers.
Slowly we turned to retrace our steps, strolling up the boulevard
through the fragrant May evening, until we came to the gilded railing
which encircles the Luxembourg Gardens from the School of Mines to the
Palais-du-Sénat.
Here Captain De Barsac took leave of us with all the delightful and
engaging courtesy of a well-bred Frenchman; and he seemed to be grateful
for the privilege of showing us about over a district as tiresomely
familiar to him as his own barracks.
I could do no less than ask him to call on us, though his devotion to
Dulcima both on shipboard and here made me a trifle wary.
"We are stopping," said I, "at the Hôtel de l'Univers----"
He started and gazed at me so earnestly that I asked him why he did so.
"The--the Hôtel de l'Univers?" he repeated, looking from me to Dulcima
and from Dulcima to Alida.
"Is it not respectable?" I demanded, somewhat alarmed.
"--But--but perfectly, monsieur. It is, of course, the very best hotel
of _that_ kind----"
"_What_ kind?" I asked.
"Why--for the purpose. Ah, monsieur, I had no idea that you came to
Paris for _that_. I am so sorry, so deeply grieved to hear it. But of
course all will be well----"
He stopped and gazed earnestly at Dulcima.
"It is not--not _you_, mademoiselle, is it?"
My children and I stared at each other in consternation.
"What in heaven's name is the matter with that hotel?" I asked.
Captain de Barsac looked startled.
"Is there anything wrong with the guests there?" asked Dulcima, faintly.
"No--oh, no--only, of course, they are all under treatment----"
"Under treatment!" I cried nervously. "For what!!!"
"Is it possible," muttered the captain, "that you went to that hotel not
knowing? Did you not notice anything peculiar about the guests there?"
"They all seem to wear court-plaster or carry their arms in slings,"
faltered Dulcima.
"And they come from all over the world--Russia, Belgium, Spain,"
murmured Alida nervously. "What do they want?"
"Thank heaven!" cried De Barsac, radiantly; "then you are not there for
the treatment!"
"Treatment for what?" I groaned.
"Hydrophobia!"
I wound my arms around my shrinking children.
"It is the hotel where all the best people go who come to Paris for
Pasteur's treatment," he said, trying to look grave; but Dulcima threw
back her pretty head and burst into an uncontrollable gale of laughter;
and there we stood on the sidewalk, laughing and laughing while passing
students grinned in sympathy and a cloaked policeman on the corner
smiled discreetly and rubbed his chin.
That evening, after my progeny were safely asleep, casting a furtive
glance around me I slunk off to my old café--the Café Jaune. I hadn't
been there in over twenty years; I passed among crowded tables, skulked
through the entrance, and slid into my old corner as though I had never
missed an evening there.
They brought me a Bock. As I lifted the icy glass to my lips, over the
foam I beheld Williams, smiling.
"Eh bien, mon vieux?" he said, pleasantly.
"By gad, Williams, this seems natural--especially with you sitting
next."
"It sure does," he said.
I pointed toward a leather settee. "Archie used to sit over there with
his best girl. Do you remember? And that was Dillon's seat--and Smithy
and Palmyre--Oh, Lord!--And Seabury always had that other corner."... I
paused, lost in happy reminiscences. "What has become of Jack Seabury?"
I inquired.
"The usual."
"Married?"
"Oh, very much."
"Where does he live."
"In Philadelphia."
I mused for a while.
"So he's married, too," I said, thoughtfully. "Well--it's a funny life,
isn't it, Williams."
"I've never seen a funnier. Seabury's marriage was funny too--I mean his
courtship."
I looked up at Williams, suspiciously.
"Is this one of your professional literary stories?"
"It's a true one. What's the harm in my enveloping it in a professional
glamour?"
"None," I said, resignedly; "go ahead."
"All right, mon vieux."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII
A MATTER OF PRONUNCIATION
This is a story of the Mystic Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny; and what
happens to people who trifle with them.
It begins with a young man running after a train. He had to run.
The connection at Westport Junction was normally a close one, but now,
even before the incoming train had entirely stopped, the local on the
other line began to move out, while the engineers of the two
locomotives, leaning from their cab windows, exchanged sooty grins. It
was none of their business--this squabble between the two roads which
was making the term, "Junction," as applied to Westport, a snare and a
derision.
So the roads squabbled, and young Seabury ran. Other passengers ran,
too, amid the gibes of newsboys and the patronizing applause of station
loafers.
He heard them; he also heard squeaks emitted by females whose highest
speed was a dignified and scuttering waddle. Meanwhile he was running,
and running hard through the falling snow; the ice under foot did not
aid him; his overcoat and suit-case handicapped him; the passengers on
the moving train smiled at him behind frosty windows.
One very thin man smoking a cigar rubbed his thumb on the pane in order
to see better; he was laughing, and Seabury wished him evil.
There were only two cars, and the last one was already rolling by him.
And at one of the windows of this car he saw a pretty girl in chinchilla
furs watching him curiously. Then she also smiled.
It may have been the frank amusement of a pretty woman, and it may have
been the sorrowful apathy of a red-nosed brakeman tying the loose end of
the signal rope on the rear platform; doubtless one or the other spurred
him to a desperate flying leap which landed him and his suit-case on the
rear platform of the last car. And there he stuck, too mad to speak,
until a whirlwind of snow and cinders drove him to shelter inside.
The choice of cars was limited to a combination baggage and smoker and a
more fragrant passenger coach. He selected a place in the latter across
the aisle from the attractive girl in chinchilla furs who had smiled at
his misfortunes--not very maliciously. Now, as he seated himself, she
glanced up at him without the slightest visible interest, and returned
to her study of the winter landscape.
The car was hot; he was hot. Burning thoughts concerning the insolence
of railroads made him hotter; the knowledge that he had furnished
amusement for the passengers of two trains did not cool him.
Meanwhile everybody in the car had become tired of staring at him; a
little boy across the aisle giggled his last giggle; several men resumed
their newspapers; a shopgirl remembered her gum and began chewing it
again.
A large mottled man with a damp moustache, seated opposite him, said:
"Vell, Mister, you runned pooty quvick alretty py dot Vestport train!"
"It seems to me," observed Seabury, touching his heated face with his
handkerchief, "that the public ought to do something."
"Yaw; der bublic it runs," said the large man, resuming his eyeglasses
and holding his newspaper nearer to the window in the fading light.
Seabury smiled to himself and ventured to glance across the aisle in
time to see the dawning smile in the blue eyes of his neighbor die out
instantly as he turned. It was the second smile he had extinguished
since his appearance aboard the train.
The conductor, a fat, unbuttoned, untidy official, wearing spectacles
and a walrus moustache, came straddling down the aisle. He looked over
the tops of his spectacles at Seabury doubtfully.
"I managed to jump aboard," explained the young man, smiling.
"Tickuts!" returned the conductor without interest.
"I haven't a ticket; I'll pay----"
"Sure," said the conductor; "vere you ged owid?"
"What?"
"Vere do you ged _owid_?"
"Oh, where do I get _out_? I'm going to Beverly----"
"Peverly? Sefenty-vive cends."
"Not to Peverly, to Beverly----"
"Yaw, Peverly----"
"No, no; Beverly! not Peverly----"
"Aind I said Peverly alretty? Sefenty-vive----"
"Look here; there's a Beverly and a Peverly on this line, and I don't
want to go to Peverly and I do want to go to Beverly----"
"You go py Peverly und you don'd go py Beverly alretty! Sure!
Sefenty-vive ce----"
The young man cast an exasperated glance across the aisle in time to
catch a glimpse of two deliciously blue eyes suffused with mirth. And
instantly, as before, the mirth died out. As an extinguisher of smiles
he was a success, anyway; and he turned again to the placid conductor
who was in the act of punching a ticket.
"Wait! Hold on! Don't do that until I get this matter straight! Now, do
you understand where I wish to go?"
"You go py Peverly----"
"No, Beverly! Beverly! _Beverly_," he repeated in patiently studied
accents.
The large mottled man with the damp moustache looked up gravely over his
newspaper: "Yaw, der gonductor he also says Peverly."
"But Peverly isn't Beverly----"
"Aind I said it blenty enough dimes?" demanded the conductor, becoming
irritable.
"But you haven't said it right yet!" insisted Seabury.
The conductor was growing madder and madder. "Peverly! Peverly!!
_Peverly!!!_ In Gottes Himmel, don'd you English yet alretty
understandt? Sefenty-vive cends! Und"--here he jammed a seat check into
the rattling windows-sill--"Und ven I sez Peverly it iss Peverly, und
ven I sez Beverly it iss Beverly, und ven I sez sefenty-vive cends so
iss it sefenty-vi----"
Seabury thrust three silver quarters at him; it was impossible to pursue
the subject; madness lay in that direction. And when the affronted
conductor, mumbling muffled indignation, had straddled off down the
aisle, the young man took a cautious glance at the check in the
window-sill. But on it was printed only, "Please show this to the
conductor," so he got no satisfaction there. He had mislaid his
time-table, too, and the large mottled man opposite had none, and began
an endless and patient explanation which naturally resulted in nothing,
as his labials were similar to the conductor's; even more so.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX
FATE
Turning to the man behind him Seabury attempted to extract a little
information, and the man was very affable and anxious to be of help, but
all he could do was to nod and utter Teutonic gutturals through a bushy
beard with a deep, buzzing sound, and Seabury sank back, beaten and
dejected.
"Good Lord!" he muttered to himself, "is the entire Fatherland
travelling on this accursed car! I--I've half a mind----"
He stole a doubtful sidelong glance at his blue-eyed neighbor across the
aisle, but she was looking out of her own window this time, her cheeks
buried in the fur of her chinchilla muff.
"And after all," he reflected, "if I ask her, she might turn out to be
of the same nationality." But it was not exactly that which prevented
him.
The train was slowing down; sundry hoarse toots from the locomotive
indicated a station somewhere in the vicinity.
"Plue Pirt Lake! Change heraus für Bleasant Falley!" shouted the
conductor, opening the forward door. He lingered long enough to glare
balefully at Seabury, then, as nobody apparently cared either to get out
at Blue Bird Lake or change for Pleasant Valley, he slammed the door and
jerked the signal rope; the locomotive emitted a scornful Teutonic
grunt; the train moved forward into the deepening twilight of the
December night.
The snow was now falling more heavily--it was light enough to see
that--a fine gray powder sifting down out of obscurity, blowing past the
windows in misty streamers.
The bulky man opposite breathed on the pane, rubbed it with a thumb like
a pincushion, and peered out.
"Der next station iss Beverly," he said.
"The next is Peverly?"
"No, der next iss _B_everly; und der nextest iss Peverly.
"Then, if I am going to Beverly, I get out at the next station, don't
I?" stammered the perplexed young fellow, trying to be polite.
The man became peevish. "Nun, wass ist es?" he growled. "I dell you
Peverly und you say Beverly. Don'd I know vat it iss I say alretty?"
"Yes--but _I_ don't----"
"Also, you ged owid vere you tam blease!" retorted the incensed
passenger, and resumed his newspaper, hunching himself around to present
nothing to Seabury except a vast expanse of neck and shoulder.
Seabury, painfully embarrassed, let it go at that. Probably the poor man
_had_ managed to enunciate the name of the station properly; no doubt
the next stop was Beverly, after all. He was due there at 6.17. He
looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six already. The next stop
_must_ be Beverly--supposing the train to be on time.
And already the guttural warning of the locomotive sounded from the
darkness ahead; already he sensed the gritting resistance of the brakes.
Permitting himself a farewell and perfectly inoffensive glance across
the aisle, he perceived her of the blue eyes and chinchilla furs
preparing for departure; and, what he had not before noticed, her maid
in the seat behind her, gathering a dainty satchel, umbrella, and
suit-case marked C. G.
So she was going to Beverly, too! He hoped she might be bound for the
Christmas Eve frolic at the Austins'. It was perfectly possible--in
fact, probable.
He was a young man whose optimism colored his personal wishes so vividly
that sometimes what he desired became presently, in his imagination, a
charming and delightful probability. And already his misgivings
concerning the proper name of the next station had vanished. He _wanted_
Beverly to be the next station, and already it was, for him. Also, he
had quite made up his mind that she of the chinchillas was bound for the
Austins'.
A cynical blast from the locomotive; a jerking pull of brakes, and, from
the forward smoker, entered the fat conductor.
"Beverly! Beverly!" he shouted.
So he, too, had managed to master his _P's_ and _B's_, concluded the
young man, smiling to himself as he rose, invested himself with his
heavy coat, and picked up his suit-case.
The young lady of the chinchillas had already left the car, followed by
her maid, before he stepped into the aisle ready for departure.
A shadow of misgiving fell upon him when, glancing politely at his
fellow-passenger, he encountered only a huge sneer, and concluded that
the nod of courtesy was superfluous.
Also he hesitated as he passed the fat conductor, who was glaring at
him, mouth agape--hesitated a moment only, then, realizing the dreadful
possibilities of reopening the subject, swallowed his question in
silence.
"It's _got_ to be Beverly, now," he thought, making his way to the snowy
platform and looking about him for some sign of a conveyance which might
be destined for him. There were several sleighs and depot-wagons
there--a number of footmen bustling about in furs.
"I'll just glance at the name of the station to be sure," he thought to
himself, peering up through the thickly descending snow where the name
of the station ought to be. And, as he stepped out to get a good view,
he backed into a fur-robed footman, who touched his hat in hasty
apology.
"Oh, Bailey! Is that you?" said Seabury, relieved to encounter one of
Mrs. Austin's men.
"Yes, sir. Mr. Seabury, sir! Were you expected----?"
"Certainly," nodded the young man gayly, abandoning his suit-case to the
footman and following him to a big depot-sleigh.
And there, sure enough, was his lady of the chinchillas, nestling under
the robes to her pretty chin, and her maid on the box with the
coachman--a strangely fat coachman--no doubt a new one to replace old
Martin.
When Seabury came up the young lady turned and looked at him, and he
took off his hat politely, and she acknowledged his presence very
gravely and he seated himself decorously, and the footman swung to the
rumble.
Then the chiming silver sleigh-bells rang out through the snow, the
magnificent pair of plumed horses swung around the circle under the
bleared lights of the station and away they speeded into snowy darkness.
A decent interval of silence elapsed before he considered himself at
liberty to use a traveller's privilege. Then he said something
sufficiently commonplace to permit her the choice of conversing or
remaining silent. She hesitated; she had never been particularly wedded
to silence. Besides, she was scarcely twenty--much too young to be
wedded to anything. So she said something, with perfect composure, which
left the choice to him. And his choice was obvious.
"I have no idea how far it is; have you?" he asked.
"Yes," she said coolly.
"This is a jolly sleigh," he continued with unimpaired cheerfulness.
She thought it comfortable. And for a while the conversation clung so
closely around the sleigh that it might have been run over had not he
dragged it into another path.
"Isn't it amazing how indifferent railroads are to the convenience of
their passengers?"
She turned her blue eyes on him; there was the faintest glimmer in their
depths.
"I know you saw me running after that train," he said, laughingly
attempting to break the ice.
"I?"
"Certainly. And it amused you, I think."
She raised her eyebrows a trifle. "What is there amusing about that?"
"But you _did_ smile--at least I thought so."
Evidently she had no comment to offer. She _was_ hard to talk to. But he
tried again.
"The fact is, I never expected to catch your--that train. It was only
when I saw--saw"--he floundered on the verge of saying "you," but veered
off hastily--"when I saw that brakeman's expression of tired contempt, I
simply sailed through the air like a--a--like a--one of those--er you
know----"
"Do you mean kangaroos?" she ventured so listlessly that the quick flush
of chagrin on his face died out again; because it was quite impossible
that such infantine coldness and candour could be secretly trifling with
his dignity.
"It was a long jump," he concluded gayly, "but I did some jumping at
Harvard and I made it and managed to hold on."
"You were very fortunate," she said, smiling for the first time.
And, looking at her, he thought he was; and he admitted it so blandly
that he overdid the part. But he didn't know that.
"I fancy," he continued, "that everybody on that train except you and I
were Germans. Such a type as sat opposite me----"
"Which car were you in?" she asked simply.
"Why--in your car----"
"In _my_ car?"
"Why--er--yes," he explained; "you were sitting across the aisle, you
know."
"Was I?" she asked with pleasant surprise; "across the aisle from you?"
He grew red; he had certainly supposed that she had noticed him enough
to identify him again. Evidently she had not. Mistakes like that are
annoying. Every man instinctively supposes himself enough of an entity
to be noticed by a pretty woman.
"I had no end of trouble of finding out where Beverly was," he said
after a minute.
"Oh! And how did you find out?"
"I didn't until I backed into Bailey, yonder.... Do you know that I had
a curious sort of presentiment that I should find you in this sleigh?"
"That is strange," she said. "When did you have it?"
"In the car--long before you got off."
She thought it most remarkable--rather listlessly.
"Those things happen, you know," he went on; "like thinking of a person
you don't expect to see, and looking up and suddenly seeing that very
person walking along."
"How does that resemble your case?" she asked.
It didn't. He realised it even before he began to try to explain the
similarity. It really didn't matter one way or the other; it was nothing
to turn red about, but he was turning. Somehow or other she managed to
say things that never permitted that easy, graceful flow of language
which characterised him in his normal state. Somehow or other, he felt
that he was not doing himself justice. He could converse well enough
with people as a rule. Something in that topsy-turvy and maddeningly
foolish colloquy with those Germans must have twisted his tongue or
unbalanced his logic.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "there's no similarity between the two
cases except the basic idea of premonition."
She had been watching him disentangle himself with bright eyes in which
something was sparkling--perhaps sympathy and perhaps not. It may have
been the glimmer of malice. Perhaps she thought him just a trifle too
ornamental--for he certainly was a very good-looking youth--perhaps
something in the entire episode appealed to her sense of mischief.
Probably even she herself could not explain just why she had thought it
funny to see him running for his train, and later entangling himself in
a futile word-fest with the conductor and the large mottled man.
"So," she said thoughtfully, "you were obsessed by a premonition."
"Not--er--exactly obsessed," he said suspiciously. Then his face
cleared. How could anybody be suspicious of such sweetly inquiring
frankness? "You see," he admitted, "that I--well, I rather hoped you
would be going to the Austins'."
"The _Austins'_!" she repeated.
"Yes. I--I couldn't help speculating----"
"About me?" she asked. "Why should you?"
"I--there was no reason, of course, only I k-kept seeing you without
trying to----"
"Me?"
"Certainly. I couldn't help seeing you, could I?"
"Not if you were looking at me," she murmured, pressing her muff to her
face. Perhaps she was cold.
Again it occurred to him that there was something foolish in her reply.
Certainly she was a little difficult to talk to. But then she was
young--very young and--close enough to being a beauty to excuse herself
from any overstrenuous claim to intellectuality.
"Yes," he said kindly and patiently, "I did see you, and I did hope that
you were going to the Austins'. And then I bumped into somebody and
there you were. I don't mean," as she raised her pretty eyebrows--"mean
that you were Bailey. Good Lord, _what_ is the matter with my tongue!"
he said, flushing with annoyance. "I don't talk this way usually."
"Don't you?" she managed to whisper behind her muff.
"No, I don't. That conductor's jargon seems to have inoculated me. You
will probably not believe it, but I _can_ talk the English tongue
sometimes----"
She was laughing now--a clear, delicious, irrepressible little peal that
rang sweetly in the frosty air, harmonising with the chiming
sleigh-bells. And he laughed, too, still uncomfortably flushed.
"Do you think it would help if we began all over again?" she asked,
looking wickedly at him over her muff. "Let me see--you had an obsession
which turned into a premonition that bumped Bailey and you found it
wasn't Bailey at all, but a stranger in chinchillas who was going
to--_where_ did you say she was going? Oh, to the Austins'! _That_ is
clear, isn't it?"
"About as clear as anything that's happened to me to-night," he said.
"A snowy night does make a difference," she reflected.
"A--a difference?"
"Yes--doesn't it?" she asked innocently.
"I--in _what_?"
"In clearness. Things are clearer by daylight?"
"I don't see--I--exactly how--as a matter of fact I don't follow you at
all," he said desperately. "You say things--and they sound all
right--but somehow my answers seem queer. _Do_ you suppose that German
conversation has mentally twisted me?"
Her eyes above the fluffy fur of her muff were bright as stars, but she
did not laugh.
"Suppose," she said, demurely, "that _you_ choose a subject of
conversation and try to make sense of it. If you _are_ mentally twisted
it will be good practice."
"And you will--you won't say things--I mean things not germane to the
subject?"
"Did you say German?"
"No, germane."
"Oh! Have _I_ been irrelevant, too?"
"Well, you mixed up mental clarity with snowy nights. Of course it was a
little joke--I saw that soon enough; I'd have seen it at once, only I
_am_ rather upset and nervous after that German experience."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X
CHANCE
She considered him with guileless eyes. He was _too_ good-looking, too
attractive, too young, and far too much pleased with himself. That was
the impression he gave her. And, as he was, in addition, plainly one of
her own sort, a man she was likely to meet anywhere--a well-bred,
well-mannered and agreeable young fellow, probably a recent
undergraduate, which might account for his really inoffensive
breeziness--she felt perfectly at ease with him and safe enough to
continue imprudently her mischief.
"If you are going to begin at the beginning," she said, "perhaps it
might steady your nerves to repeat your own name very slowly and
distinctly. Physicians recommend it sometimes," she added seriously.
"My name is John Seabury," he said, laughing. "Am I lucid?"
"Lucid so far," she said gravely. "I knew a Lily Seabury----"
"My sister. She's in Paris."
"Yes, I knew that, too," mused the girl, looking at him in a different
light--different in this way that his credentials were now
unquestionable, and she could be as mischievous as she pleased with the
minimum of imprudence.
"Do you ever take the advice of physicians," he asked naïvely, "about
repeating names?"
"Seldom," she said. "I don't require the treatment."
"I was only wondering----"
"You were wondering what C. G. stood for on my satchel? I will be very
glad to tell you, Mr. Seabury. _C_ stands for Cecil, and _G_ for Gay;
Cecil Gay. Is that lucid?"
"Cecil!" he said; "that's a man's name."
"How rude! It is _my_ name. Now, do you think your mental calibre
requires any more re-boring?"
"Oh, you know about calibres and things. Do you shoot? I _can_ talk
about dogs and guns. Listen to me, Miss Gay." The subject shifted from
shooting to fishing, and from hunting to driving four-in-hand, and
eventually came back to the horses and the quaint depot-sleigh which was
whirling them so swiftly toward their destination.
"Jack Austin and I were in Paris," he observed.
"Oh--recently?"
"Last year."
"I thought so."
"Why?" he asked.
"Oh, I suppose it was one of those obsessed premonitions----"
"You are laughing at me, Miss Gay."
"Am I? Why?"
"Why? How on earth is a man to know why? _I_ don't know why you do it,
but you do--all the time."
"Not _all_ the time, Mr. Seabury, because I don't know you well enough."
"But you know my sister!"
"Yes. She is a dear."
"Won't that introduce me? And, besides, you know Jack Austin----"
"No, I don't."
"Isn't that odd?" he said. "You don't know Jack Austin and I don't know
Mrs. Austin. It was nice of her to ask me. They say she is one of the
best ever."
"It was certainly nice of her to ask you," said the girl, eyes
brightening over her muff.
"I was in Europe when they were married," he said. "I suppose you were
there."
"No, I wasn't. That sounds rather strange, doesn't it?"
"Why, yes, rather!" he replied, looking up at her in his boyish,
perplexed way. And for a moment her heart failed her; he _was_ nice, but
also he was a living temptation. Never before in all her brief life had
she been tempted to do to anybody what she was doing to him. She had
often been imprudent in a circumspect way--conventionally unconventional
at times--even a little daring. At sheer audacity she had drawn the
line, and now the impulse to cross that line had been too much for her.
But even she did not know exactly why temptation had overcome her.
There was something that she ought to tell him--and tell him at once.
Yet, after all, it was really already too late to tell him--had been too
late from the first. Fate, Chance and Destiny, the Mystic Three,
disguised, as usual, one as a German conductor; one as a large mottled
man; the other as a furry footman had been bumped by Seabury and jeered
at by a girl wearing dark blue eyes and chinchillas. And now the
affronted Three were taking exclusive charge of John Seabury and Cecil
Gay. She was partly aware of this; she did not feel inclined to
interfere where interference could do no good. And that being the case,
why not extract amusement from matters as they stood? Alas, it is not
well to laugh at the Mystic Three! But Cecil Gay didn't know that. You
see, even _she_ didn't know everything.
* * * * *
"You will like Jack Austin," he asserted.
"Really?"
"I'm willing to bet----"
"Oh, wait till we know one another officially before we begin to make
wagers.... Still, I might, perhaps safely wager that I shall not find
your friend Jack Austin very agreeable to-night."
So they settled the terms of the wager; cigarettes versus the inevitable
bonbons.
"Everybody likes Jack Austin on sight," he said triumphantly, "so you
may as well send the cigarettes when you are ready;" and he mentioned
the brand.
"You will never smoke those cigarettes," she mused aloud, looking
dreamily at him, her muff pressed alongside of her pretty cheek. "Tell
me, Mr. Seabury, are you vindictive?"
"Not very."
"Revengeful?"
"Well--no, I don't think so," he replied. "Why?"
"I'm much relieved," she said, simply.
"Why?"
"Because I've done a dreadful thing--perfectly dreadful."
"To me?"
She nodded.
Perplexed and curious, he attempted to learn what she meant, but she
parried everything smiling. And now, the faster the horses sped, the
faster her pulses beat, and the more uncertain and repentant she became
until her uncertainty increased to a miniature panic, and, thoroughly
scared, she relapsed into a silence from which he found it beyond his
powers to lure her.
For already a bright light was streaming out toward them from somewhere
ahead. In its rays the falling snow turned golden, every separate flake
distinct as they passed a great gate with the lodge beside it and went
spinning away along a splendid wooded avenue and then straight up toward
a great house, every window ablaze with light.
John Seabury jumped out and offered his aid to Cecil Gay as several
servants appeared under the porte-cochère.
"I had no idea that Jack Austin lived so splendidly," he whispered to
Miss Gay, as they entered the big hall.
But she was past speech now--a thoroughly scared girl; and she lost no
time in following a maid into the elevator, whither Seabury presently
followed her in tow of a man-servant.
"Luxury! Great Scott," thought Seabury. "This dubbing a palace a cottage
is the worse sort of affectation, and I'll tell Jack Austin so, too."
The elevator stopped; the doors clicked open; Seabury turned smilingly
to Cecil Gay, but she hurried past him, crimson-cheeked, head bent, and
he followed his pilot to his room.
"Dinner is hannounced at 'awf awfter height, sir," announced the man
with dignity.
"Thank you," said Seabury, watching a valet do sleight-of-hand tricks
with the contents of his suit-case. And when he was alone he hopped
nimbly out of his apparel and into a bath and out again in a high state
of excitement, talking to himself all the while he was dressing.
"Good old Jack! The Mrs. must have had the means to do this sort of
thing so well. I'm delighted!--de--lighted!... If ever a man deserved
affluence, it's Jack Austin! It suits him. It will do him good. It
becomes him.... Plucky fellow to go on grinding at the law!... Only
thing to do, of course--decent thing to do--self-respect and all
that.... But, by jingo!"--he looked about him as he stood buttoning his
collar. "Hah!" stepping to the wall and examining a picture--"Great
Jenkins!--why, here's a real Fortuny--in a _bedroom_!"
He cared for good pictures, and he stood before the exquisite aquarelle
as long as he dared. Then, glancing at his watch, he completed his
toilet, opened his door, and, scorning the lift, fled blithely down the
great staircase on pleasing bent--and on being pleased.
A big drawing-room, charmingly lighted, and gay already with the chatter
and laughter of a very jolly throng--this is what confronted him as a
servant offered him a tray containing cards.
"I don't see my name here," he said, examining the slim envelopes.
"Beg pardon, sir--what name, sir?"
"Mr. Seabury."
The servant looked and Seabury looked in vain.
"An oversight," commented the young fellow, coolly. "I'll ask Mrs.
Austin about it." And he walked in, and, singling out the hostess,
advanced with smiling confidence, thinking to himself: "She _is_ pretty;
Jack's right. But--but, by George!--she looks like Cecil Gay!"
His hostess received him very charmingly, saying that it was so good of
him to come; and he said it was so good of her to have asked him, and
then they said several similar things. He spoke of Jack--mentioning him
and continuing to another subject; and she smiled a trifle uncertainly.
Her smile was still more vague and uncertain when he laughingly
mentioned the dinner-cards; and she said it was a vexing oversight and
would be immediately arranged--glancing rather sharply at an amiable
gentleman standing near her. And this amiable gentleman came up to
Seabury and shook hands very cordially, and said several agreeable
things to which Seabury responded, until new arrivals separated him from
his hostess and the amiable gentleman, and he fell back and glanced
about him. And, after a little while an odd expression came into his
eyes; he stood very still; a slight flush slowly spread over his face
which had grown firmer. In a few moments the color went as it had come,
slowly; the faint glitter died out in his eyes.
There were several people he knew among the guests; he nodded quietly to
young Van Guilder, to Brimwell and others, then crossed to speak to
Catherine Hyland and Dorothy Minster. He was very agreeable, but a
little distrait. He seemed to have something on his mind.
Meanwhile his hostess was saying to her husband: "Who _is_ that, Jim?"
And her husband said: "You can search me. Didn't you ask him?" And his
wife responded: "He's talking to nearly everybody. It's curious, isn't
it?" Here she was interrupted by the flushed entrance of her unmarried
sister, Cecil Gay.
Meanwhile, Seabury was saying coolly: "I haven't seen Jack yet."
"Jack?" repeated Dorothy Minster. "Which Jack?"
"Jack Austin."
"Oh," said Miss Minster, who did not know him; "is he to be here?"
But Seabury only smiled vaguely. His mind, his eyes, his attention were
fixed upon a vision of loveliness in the foreground--a charmingly
flushed young girl who knew everybody and was evidently a tremendous
favorite, judging from the gay greetings, the little volleys of
laughter, and the animated stirring of groups among which she passed.
Watching her, quite oblivious to his surroundings, the servant at his
elbow was obliged to cough discreetly half a dozen times and repeat "Beg
pardon, sir," before he turned to notice the silver salver extended.
"Oh--thank you," he said, picking up an envelope directed, "Mr.
Seabury," and opening it. Then a trifle surprised but smiling, he turned
to find the girl whose name was written on the card. She was speaking to
the hostess and the amiable man who had first greeted him. And this is
what he didn't hear as he watched her, waiting grimly for a chance at
her:
"Cecil! _Who_ is that very young man?"
"Betty, how should _I_ know----"
"Look here, Cis," from the amiable gentleman; "this is some of your
deviltry----"
"Oh, _thank_ you, Jim!"
"Yes, it is. Who is he and where did you rope him?"
"Jim!"
"Cecil! What nonsense is this?" demanded her hostess and elder sister.
"How did he get here and who is he?"
"I did _not_ bring him, Betty. He simply came?"
"How?"
"In the depot-sleigh, of course----"
"With _you_?"
"Certainly. He wanted to come. He _would_ come! I couldn't turn him out,
could I--after he climbed in?"
Host and hostess glared at their flushed and defiant relative, who tried
to look saucy, but only looked scared. "_He_ doesn't know he's made a
mistake," she faltered; "and there's no need to tell him yet--is
there?... I put my name down on his card; he'll take me in.... Jim,
don't, for Heaven's sake, say anything if he calls Betty Mrs. Austin.
Oh, Jim, be decent, please! I _was_ a fool to do it; I don't know what
possessed me! Wait until to-morrow before you say anything! Besides, he
may be furious! Please wait until I'm out of the house. He'll breakfast
late, I hope; and I promise you I'll be up early and off by the seven
o'clock train----"
"In Heaven's name, who _is_ he?" broke in the amiable man so fiercely
that Cecil jumped.
"He's only Lily Seabury's brother," she said, meekly, "and he thinks
he's at the Austins'--and he might as well be, because he knows half the
people here, and I've simply _got_ to keep him out of their way so that
nobody can tell him where he is. Oh, Betty--I've spoiled my own
Christmas fun, and his, too! _Is_ there any way to get him to the
Austins' now?'
"The Jack Austins' of Beverly!" exclaimed her sister, incredulously. "Of
course not!"
"And you _let_ him think he was on his way there?" demanded her
brother-in-law. "Well--you--are--the--limit!"
"So is _he_," murmured the abashed maid, slinking back to give place to
a new and last arrival. Then she turned her guilty face in a sort of
panic of premonition. She was a true prophetess; Seabury had seen his
chance and was coming. And _that's_ what comes of mocking the Mystic
Three and cutting capers before High Heaven.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XI
DESTINY
He had taken her in and was apparently climbing rapidly through the
seven Heavens of rapture--having arrived as far as the third unchecked
and without mishap. It is not probable that she kept pace with him: she
had other things to think of.
Dinner was served at small tables; and it required all her will, all her
limited experience, every atom of her intelligence, to keep him from
talking about things that meant exposure for her. Never apparently had
he been so flattered by any individual girl's attention; she was gay,
witty, audacious, charming, leading and carrying every theme to a
scintillating conclusion.
The other four people at their table he had not before met--she had seen
to that--and it proved to be a very jolly group, and there was a steady,
gay tumult of voices around it, swept by little gusts of laughter; and
he knew perfectly well that he had never had such a good time as he was
having--had never been so clever, so interesting, so quick with his wit,
so amusing. He had never seen such a girl as had been allotted to
him--never! Besides, something else had nerved him to do his best. And
he was doing it.
"It's a curious thing," he said, with that odd new smile of his, "what a
resemblance there is between you and Mrs. Austin."
"What Mrs. Austin?" began the girl opposite; but got no further, for
Cecil Gay was appealing to him to act as arbiter in a disputed Bridge
question; and he did so with nice discrimination and a logical
explanation which tided matters over that time. But it was a close call;
and the color had not all returned to Cecil's cheeks when he finished,
with great credit to his own reputation as a Bridge expert.
But the very deuce seemed to possess him to talk on subjects from which
she strove to lead him.
These are the other breaks he made, and as far as he got with each
break--stopped neatly every time in time:
"Curious I haven't seen Jack Aus----"
"Mrs. Austin _does_ resemble----"
"This is the first time I have ever been in Bev----"
And each time she managed to repair the break unnoticed. But it was
telling on her; she couldn't last another round--she knew that. Only the
figurative bell could save her now. And she could almost _hear_ it as
her sister rose.
Saved! But--but--_what_ might some of these men say to him if he
lingered here for coffee and cigarettes?
"You won't, will you?" she said desperately, as all rose.
"Won't--what?" he asked.
"Stay--_long_."
He rapidly made his way from the third into the fourth Heaven. She
watched him.
"No, indeed," he said under his breath.
She lingered, fascinated by her own peril. _Could_ she get him away at
once?
"I--I wonder, Mr. Seabury, what you would think if I--if I suggested
that you smoke--smoke--on the stairs--now--with me?"
He hastily scrambled out of the fourth Heaven into the fifth. She saw
him do it.
"I'd rather smoke there than anywhere in the world----"
"Quick, then! Saunter over to the door--stroll about a little first--no,
don't do even that!--I--I mean--you'd better hurry. _Please!_" She cast
a rapid look about her; she could not linger another moment. Then,
concentrating all the sweetness and audacity in her, and turning to him,
she gave him one last look. It was sufficient to send him in one wild,
flying leap from the fifth Heaven plump into the sixth. The sixth Heaven
was on the stairs; and his legs carried him thither at a slow and
indifferent saunter, though it required every scrap of his self-control
to prevent his legs from breaking into a triumphant trot. Yet all the
while that odd smile flickered, went out, and flickered in his eyes.
She was there, very fluffy, very brilliant, and flustered and adorable,
the light from the sconces playing over her bare arms and shoulders and
spinning all sorts of aureoles around her bright hair. Hah! She had him
alone now. She was safe; she could breathe again. And he might harp on
the Austins all he chose. Let him!
"No, _I_ can't have cigarettes," she explained, "because it isn't good
for my voice. I'm supposed to possess a voice, you know."
"It's about the sweetest voice I ever heard," he said so sincerely that
the bright tint in her cheeks deepened.
"That is nicer than a compliment," she said, looking at him with a
little laugh of pleasure. He nodded, watching the smoke rings drifting
through the hall.
"Do you know something?" he said.
"Not very much. What?"
"If I were a great matrimonial prize----"
"You are, aren't you?"
"_If_ I was," he continued, ignoring her, "like a king or a grand
duke----"
"Exactly."
"I'd invite a grand competition for my hand and heart----"
"We'd all go, Mr. Seabury----"
"----And then I'd stroll about among them all----"
"Certainly--among the competing millions."
"Among the millions--blindfolded----"
"Blinfo----"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"----Blindfolded!" he repeated with emphasis. "I would choose a
_voice_!--before everything else in the world."
"Oh," she said, rather faintly.
"A voice," he mused, looking hard at the end of his cigarette which had
gone out: and the odd smile began to flicker in his eyes again.
Mischief prompting, she began: "I wonder what chance I should have in
your competition? First prize I couldn't aspire to, but--there would be
a sort of booby prize--wouldn't there, Mr. Seabury?"
"There would be only one prize----"
"Oh!"
"And that would be the booby prize; the prize booby." And he smiled his
odd smile and laid his hand rather gracefully over his heart. "You have
won him, Miss Gay."
She looked at him prepared to laugh, but, curiously enough, there was
less of the booby about him as she saw him there than she had
expected--a tall, clean-cut, attractive young fellow, with a well-shaped
head and nice ears--a man, not a boy, after all--pleasant, amiably
self-possessed, and of her own sort, as far as breeding showed.
Gone was the indescribably indefinite suggestion of _too_ good looks, of
latent self-sufficiency. He no longer struck her as being pleased with
himself, of being a shade--just a shade--too sure of himself. A change,
certainly; and to his advantage. Kindness, sympathy, recognition make
wonderful changes in some people.
"I'll tell you what I'd do if I were queen, and"--she glanced at him--"a
matrimonial prize.... Shall I?"
"Why be both?" he asked.
"That rings hollow, Mr. Seabury, after your tribute to my voice!...
Suppose I were queen. _I'd_ hold a caucus, too. Please say you'd come."
"Oh, I am already there!"
"_That_ won't help you; it isn't first come, first served at _my_
caucus!... So, suppose millions of suitors were all sitting around
twisting their fingers in abashed hopeful silence."
"Exactly."
"_What_ do you think I'd do, Mr. Seabury?"
"Run. _I_ should."
"No; I should make them a speech--a long one--oh, dreadfully long and
wearisome. I should talk and talk and talk, and repeat myself, and pile
platitude on platitude, and maunder on and on and on. And about
luncheon-time I should have a delicious repast served me, and I'd
continue my speech as I ate. And after that I'd ramble on and on until
dinner-time. And I should dine magnificently up there on the dais, and,
between courses, I'd continue my speech----"
"You'd choose the last man to go to sleep," he said simply.
"_How_ did you guess it!" she exclaimed, vexed. "I--it's too bad for you
to know _everything_, Mr. Seabury."
"I thought you were convinced that I didn't know _anything_?" he said,
looking up at her. His voice was quiet--too quiet; his face grave,
unsmiling, firm.
"I? Mr. Seabury, I don't understand you."
He folded his hands and rested his chin on the knuckles. "But I
understand you, Miss Gay. Tell me"--the odd smile flickered and went
out--"_Tell me, in whose house am I?_"
Sheer shame paralyzed her; wave on wave of it crimsoned her to the hair.
She sat there in deathly silence; he coolly lighted another cigarette,
dropped one elbow on his knee, propping his chin in his open palm.
"I'm curious to know--if you don't mind," he added pleasantly.
"Oh--h!" she breathed, covering her eyes suddenly with both hands. She
pressed the lids for a moment steadily, then her hands fell to her lap,
and she faced him, cheeks aflame.
"I--I have no excuse," she stammered--"nothing to say for myself ...
except I did not understand what a--a common--dreadful--insulting thing
I was doing----"
He waited; then: "I am not angry, Miss Gay."
"N-not angry? You are! You must be! It was too mean--too
contemptible----"
"Please don't. Besides, I took possession of your sleigh. Bailey did the
business for me. I didn't know he had left the Austins, of course."
She looked up quickly; there was a dimness in her eyes, partly from
earnestness; "I did not know you had made a mistake until you spoke of
the Austins," she said. "And then something whispered to me not to tell
you--to let you go on--something possessed me to commit this folly----"
"Oh, no; _I_ committed it. Besides, we were more than half-way here,
were we not?"
"Ye-yes."
"And there's only one more train for Beverly, and I couldn't possibly
have made that, even if we had turned back!"
"Y-yes. Mr. Seabury, _are_ you trying to defend me?"
"You need no defense. You were involved through no fault of your own in
a rather ridiculous situation. And you simply, and like a philosopher,
extracted what amusement there was in it."
"Mr. Seabury! You shall not be so--so generous. I have cut a wretchedly
undignified figure----"
"You couldn't!"
"I could--I have--I'm doing it!"
"You are doing something else, Miss Gay."
"W-what?"
"Making it very, very hard for me to go."
"But you can't go! You mustn't! Do you think I'd let you go--_now_? Not
if the Austins lived next door! I mean it, Mr. Seabury. I--I simply must
make amends--all I can----"
"Amends? You have."
"I? How?"
"By being here with me."
"Th-that is--is very sweet of you, Mr. Seabury, but I--but they--but
you--Oh! I don't know what I'm trying to say, except that I like
you--_they_ will like you--and everybody knows Lily Seabury. Please,
please forgive----"
"I'm going to telephone to Beverly.... Will you wait--_here_?"
"Ye-yes. Wh-what are you going to telephone? You can't go, you know.
Please don't try--will you?"
"No," he said, looking down at her.
Things were happening swiftly--everything was happening in an
instant--life, youth, time, all were whirling and spinning around her in
bewildering rapidity; and her pulses, too, leaping responsive, drummed
cadence to her throbbing brain.
She saw him mount the stairs and disappear--no doubt to his room, for
there was a telephone there. Then, before she realized the lapse of
time, he was back again, seating himself quietly beside her on the broad
stair.
"Shall I tell you what I am going to do?" he said after a silence
through which the confused sense of rushing unreality had held her mute.
"Wh-what are you going to do?"
"Walk to Beverly."
"Mr. Seabury! You promised----"
"Did I?"
"You did! It is snowing terribly.... It is miles and miles and the snow
is already too deep. Besides, do you think I--we would let you _walk_!
But you shall not go--and there are horses enough, too! No, no, no! I--I
wish you would let me try to make up _something_ to you--if I--all that
I can possibly make up."
"At the end of the hall above there's a window," he said slowly. "Prove
to me that the snow is too deep."
"Prove it?" She sprang up, gathering her silken skirts and was on the
landing above before he could rise.
He found her, smiling, triumphant, beside the big casement at the end of
the hallway.
"Now are you convinced?" she said. "Just look at the snowdrifts. Are you
satisfied?"
"No," he said, quietly--too quietly by far. She looked up at him, a
quick protest framed on her red lips. Something--perhaps the odd glimmer
in his eyes--committed her to silence. From silence the stillness grew
into tension; and again the rushing sense of unreality surged over them
both, leaving their senses swimming.
"There is only one thing in the world I care for now," he said.
"Ye-yes."
"And that is to have you think well of me."
"I--I do."
"--And each day--think better of me."
"I--will--probably----"
"And in the end----"
She neither stirred nor turned her eyes.
"--In the end--_Listen_ to me."
"I am wi-willing to."
[Illustration: "'Only one person in the world can ever matter to
me--now.'"]
"Because it will be then as it is now; as it was when even I didn't know
it--as it must be always, for me. Only one person in the world can ever
matter to me--now.... There's no escape from it for me."
"Do--do you wish to--escape?"
"Cecil!" he said under his breath.
* * * * *
"They're dancing, below," she said leaning over the gallery, one soft
white hand on the polished rail, the other abandoned to
him--carelessly--as though she were quite unconscious where it lay.
"They are dancing," she repeated, turning toward him--which brought them
face to face, both her hands resting listlessly in his.
A silence, then:
"Do you know," she said, "that this is a very serious matter?"
"I know."
"And that it's probably one of those dreadful, terrible and sudden
strokes of Fate?"
"I know."
"And that--that it serves me right?"
He was smiling; and she smiled back at him, the starry beauty of her
eyes dimming a trifle.
"You say that you have chosen a 'Voice,'" she said; "and--do you think
that you would be the last man to go to sleep?"
"The very last."
"Then--I suppose I must make my choice.... I will ... some day.... And,
are you going to dance with me?"
He raised her hands, joining them together between his; and she watched
him gravely, a tremor touching her lips. In silence their hands fell
apart; he stepped nearer; she lifted her head a little--a very
little--closing her lids; he bent and kissed her lips, very lightly.
That was all; they opened their eyes upon one another, somewhat dazed. A
bell, very far off, was sounding faintly through the falling
snow--faintly, persistently, the first bell for Christmas morning.
Then she took the edges of her silken gown between thumb and forefinger,
and slowly, very slowly, sank low with flushed cheeks, sweeping him an
old-time curtsey.
"I--I wish you a Merry Christmas," she said.... "And thank you for
_your_ wish.... And you may take me down, now"--rising to her slim and
lovely height--"and I think we had better dance as hard as we can and
try to forget what our families are likely to think of what we've
done.... Don't you?"
"Yes," he said seriously, "I do."
* * * * *
"And _that's_ what comes of running after trains, and talking to fat
conductors, and wearing chinchilla furs, and flouting the Mystic Three!"
added Williams throwing away his cigar.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH A MODEST MAN MAUNDERS
"In my opinion," said I, "a man who comes to see Paris in three months is
a fool, and kin to that celebrated ass who circum-perambulated the globe
in eighty days. See all, see nothing. A man might camp a lifetime in the
Louvre and learn little about it before he left for Père Lachaise. Yet
here comes the United States in a gigantic "_mônome_" to see the city in
three weeks, when three years is too short a time in which to appreciate
the Carnavalet Museum alone! I'm going home."
"Oh, papa!" said Alida.
"Yes, I am," I snapped. "I'd rather be tried and convicted in Oyster Bay
on the charge of stealing my own pig than confess I had 'seen Paris' in
three months."
We had driven out to the Trocadero that day, and were now comfortably
seated in the tower of that somewhat shabby "palace," for the purpose of
obtaining a bird's eye view of the "Rive Droite" or right bank of the
Seine.
Elegant, modern, spotless, the Rive Droite spread out at our feet,
silver-gray squares of Renaissance architecture inlaid with the delicate
green of parks, circles, squares, and those endless double and quadruple
lines of trees which make Paris slums more attractive than Fifth Avenue.
Far as the eye could see stretched the exquisite monotony of the Rive
Droite, discreetly and artistically broken by domes and spires of
uncatalogued "monuments," in virgin territory, unknown and unsuspected
to those spiritual vandals whose hordes raged through the boulevards,
waving ten thousand blood-red Baedekers at the paralyzed Parisians.
"Well," said I, "now that we have 'seen' the Rive Droite, let's cast a
bird's-eye glance over Europe and Asia and go back to the hotel for
luncheon."
My sarcasm was lost on my daughters because they had moved out of
earshot. Alida was looking through a telescope held for her by a friend
of Captain de Barsac, an officer of artillery named Captain Vicômte
Torchon de Cluny. He was all over scarlet and black and gold; when he
walked his sabre made noises, and his ringing spurs reminded me of the
sound of sleigh-bells in Oyster Bay.
My daughter Dulcima was observing the fortress of Mont-Valerien through
a tiny pair of jewelled opera-glasses, held for her by Captain de
Barsac. It was astonishing to see how tirelessly De Barsac held those
opera-glasses, which must have weighed at least an ounce. But French
officers are inured to hardships and fatigue.
"Is _that_ a fortress?" asked Dulcima ironically. "I see nothing but
some low stone houses."
"Next to Gibraltar," said De Barsac, "it is the most powerful fortress
in the world, mademoiselle. It garrisons thousands of men; its stores
are enormous; it dominates not only Paris, but all France."
"But where are the cannon?" asked Dulcima.
"Ah--exactly--where? That is what other nations pay millions to find
out--and cannot. Will you take my word for it that there are one or two
cannon there--and permit me to avoid particulars?"
"You might tell me where just one little unimportant cannon is?" said my
daughter, with the naïve curiosity which amuses the opposite and still
more curious sex.
"And endanger France?" asked De Barsac, with owl-like solemnity.
"Thank you," pouted Dulcima, perfectly aware that he was laughing.
Their voices became low, and relapsed into that buzzing murmur which
always defeats its own ends by arousing parental vigilance.
"Let us visit the aquarium," said I in a distinct and disagreeable
voice. Doubtless the "voice from the wilderness" was gratuitously
unwelcome to Messieurs De Barsac and Torchon de Cluny, but they appeared
to welcome the idea with a conciliatory alacrity noticeable in young men
when intruded upon by the parent of pretty daughters. Dear me, how fond
they appeared to be of me; what delightful information they volunteered
concerning the Trocadero, the Alexander Bridge, the Champ de Mars.
* * * * *
The aquarium of the Trocadero is underground. To reach it you simply
walk down a hole in France and find yourself under the earth, listening
to the silvery prattle of a little brook which runs over its bed of
pebbles _above your head_, pouring down little waterfalls into endless
basins of glass which line the damp arcades as far as you can see. The
arcades themselves are dim, the tanks, set in the solid rock, are
illuminated from above by holes in the ground, through which pours the
yellow sunshine of France.
Looking upward through the glass faces of the tanks you can see the
surface of the water with bubbles afloat, you can see the waterfall
tumbling in; you can catch glimpses of green grass and bushes, and a bit
of blue sky.
Into the tanks fall insects from the world above, and the fish sail up
to the surface and lazily suck in the hapless fly or spider that tumbles
onto the surface of the water.
It is a fresh-water aquarium. All the fresh-water fish of France are
represented here by fine specimens--pike, barbels, tench, dace, perch,
gudgeons, sea-trout, salmon, brown-trout, and that lovely delicate
trout-like fish called _l'Ombre de Chevallier_. What it is I do not
know, but it resembles our beautiful American brook-trout in shape and
marking; and is probably a hybrid, cultivated by these clever French
specialists in fish-propagation.
Coming to a long crystal-clear tank, I touched the glass with my
finger-tip, and a slender, delicate fish, colored like mother-of-pearl,
slowly turned to stare at me.
"This," said I, "is that aristocrat of the waters called the 'Grayling.'
Notice its huge dorsal fin, its tender and diminutive mouth. It takes a
fly like a trout, but the angler who would bring it to net must work
gently and patiently, else the tender mouth tears and the fish is lost.
Is it not the most beautiful of all fishes?
"'Here and there a lusty trout;
Here and there a Grayling--'
"Ah, Tennyson knew. And that reminds me, Alida," I continued, preparing
to recount a personal adventure with a grayling in Austria--"that
reminds me----"
I turned around to find I had been addressing the empty and somewhat
humid atmosphere. My daughter Alida stood some distance away, gazing
absently at a tank full of small fry; and Captain Vicômte Torchon de
Cluny stood beside her, talking. Perhaps he was explaining the habits of
the fish in the tank.
My daughter Dulcima and Captain de Barsac I beheld far down the arcades,
strolling along without the faintest pretence of looking at anything but
each other.
"Very well," thought I to myself, "this aquarium is exactly the place I
expect to avoid in future--" And I cheerfully joined my daughters as
though they and their escorts had long missed me.
Now, of course, they all expressed an enthusiastic desire to visit
every tank and hear me explain the nature of their contents; but it was
too late.
"No," said I, "it is damp enough here to float all the fishes in the
Seine. And besides, as we are to 'see' the Rive Droite, we should
hasten, so that we may have at least half an hour to devote to the
remainder of France."
From the bowels of the earth we emerged into the sunshine, to partake of
an exceedingly modest luncheon in the Trocadero restaurant, under the
great waterfall.
Across the river a regiment of red-legged infantry marched, drums and
bugles sounding.
"All that territory over there," said De Barsac, "is given up to
barracks. It is an entire quarter of the city, occupied almost
exclusively by the military. There the streets run between miles of
monotonous barracks, through miles of arid parade grounds, where all day
long the _piou-pious_ drill in the dust; where the cavalry exercise;
where the field-artillery go clanking along the dreary streets toward
their own exercise ground beyond the Usine de Gaz. All day long that
quarter of the city echoes with drums beating and trumpets sounding, and
the trample of passing cavalry, and the clank and rattle of cannon.
Truly, in the midst of peace we prepare for--something else--we
French."
"It is strange," said I, "that you have time to be the greatest
sculptors, architects, and painters in the world."
"In France, monsieur, we never lack time. It is only in America that you
corner time and dispense it at a profit."
"Time," said I, "is at once our most valuable and valueless commodity.
Our millionaires seldom have sufficient time to avoid indigestion. Yet,
although time is apparently so precious, there are among us men who
spend it in reading the New York _Herald_ editorials. I myself am often
short of time, yet I take a Long Island newspaper and sometimes even
read it."
We had been walking through the gardens, while speaking, toward a large
crowd of people which had collected along the river. In the centre of
the crowd stood a taxicab, on the box of which danced the cabby,
gesticulating.
When we arrived at the scene of disturbance the first person I saw
distinctly was our acquaintance, the young man from East Boston,
hatless, dishevelled, all over dust, in the grasp of two agents de
police.
"He has been run over by a taxi," observed De Barsac. "They are going to
arrest him."
"Well, why don't they do it?" I said, indignantly, supposing that De
Barsac meant the chauffeur was to be arrested.
"They have done so."
"No, they haven't! They are holding the man who has been run over!"
"Exactly. He has been run over and they are arresting him."
"Who?" I demanded, bewildered.
"Why, the man who has been run over!"
"But why, in Heaven's name!"
"Why? Because he allowed himself to be run over!"
"What!" I cried. "They arrest the man who has been run over, and not the
man who ran over him?"
"It is the law," said De Barsac, coolly.
"Do you mean to tell me that the _runner_ is left free, while the
_runnee_ is arrested?" I asked in deadly calmness, reducing my question
to legal and laconic language impossible to misinterpret.
"Exactly. The person who permits a vehicle to run over him in defiance
of the French law, which says that nobody ought to let himself be run
over, is liable to arrest, imprisonment, and fine--unless, of course, so
badly injured that recovery is impossible."
Now at last I understood the Dreyfus Affaire. Now I began to comprehend
the laws of the Bandarlog. Now I could follow the subtle logic of the
philosophy embodied in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the
Looking-Glass!"
This was the country for me! Why, certainly; these people here could
understand a man who was guilty of stealing his own pig.
"I think I should like to live in Paris again," I said to my daughters;
then I approached the young man from East Boston and bade him cheer up.
He was not hurt; he was only rumpled and dusty and hopping mad.
"I shall pay their darned fine," he said. "Then I'm going to hire a cab
and drive it myself, and hunt up that cabman who ran over me, by Judas!"
* * * * *
That night I met Williams at the Café Jaune by previous and crafty
agreement; and it certainly was nice to be together after all these
years in the same old seats in the same café, and discuss the days that
we never could live again--and wouldn't want to if we could--alas!
The talk fell on Ellis and Jones, and immediately I perceived that
Williams had skillfully steered the conversation toward those two young
men--and I knew devilish well he had a story to tell me about them.
So I cut short his side-stepping and circling, and told him to be about
it as I wanted to devote one or two hours that night to a matter which I
had recently neglected--Sleep.
"That Jones," he said, "was a funny fellow. He and Ellis didn't meet
over here; Ellis was before his time. But they became excellent friends
under rather unusual circumstances.
"Ellis, you know, was always getting some trout fishing when he was over
here. He was a good deal of a general sportsman. As for Jones--well, you
remember that he had no use for anything more strenuous than a motor
tour."
"I remember," I said.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIII
A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE
Well, then, the way that Ellis and Jones met each other--and several
other things--was this. It chanced to be in the northern forests, I
believe--both were fishing, neither knew the other nor was even aware of
their mutual proximity.
Then the wind changed abruptly, blowing now from the south; and with the
change of wind Ellis fancied that he smelled green wood burning. A few
minutes later he was sure of it; he stood knee-deep in the stream
sniffing uneasily, then he lifted his trout-rod, reeled in his line, and
waded silently shoreward, his keen nose twitching.
Ah! There it was--that misty bluish bloom belting a clump of hemlocks.
And the acrid odor grew, impregnating the filtered forest air. He
listened, restless eyes searching. The noise of the stream filled his
ears; he tightened the straps of his pack, shortened his trout rod,
leaving line and cast on, and crawled up the ravine, shoulder-deep in
fragrant undergrowth, until the dull clash of flashing spray and the
tumult of the falls were almost lost in the leafy depths behind.
Ranker, stronger, came the pungent odor of smoke; halting to listen he
heard the hissing whisper of green wood afire; then, crawling up over an
enormous boulder, he saw, just beyond and below, a man in tweeds,
squatting on his haunches, and attempting to toss a flapjack over a
badly constructed camp-fire.
The two young men caught sight of one another at the same instant;
alert, mistrustful, each stared at the other in questioning silence
while the first instinct of unpleasant surprise lasted.
"How are you?" said the man, cautiously.
"Good-morning," replied Ellis. "When the wind turned I scented your fire
down the stream. Thought I'd see what was burning."
"Are you up here fishing?" inquired he of the tweeds.
"Yes; came here by canoe to the forks below. I am out for a week by
myself. The Caranay water is my old-time trail.... Looks like a storm,
doesn't it?"
"Anything doing with the trout?"
"Not much; two in the falls pool that come an ounce short of the pound.
I should be glad to divide--if you are shy on trout."
Again they regarded one another carefully.
"My name," said the man by the fire, "is Jones--but that can't be helped
now. So if you'll overlook such matters I'll be glad of a trout if you
can spare one."
"My name is Ellis; help yourself."
The man by the fire glanced at the burnt flapjack, scraped it free from
the pan, tossed it into the bushes, and straightened to his full height.
"Come into camp, Mr. Ellis," he said, politely. The freemasonry of caste
operates very quickly in the wilderness; Ellis slid down the boulder on
the re-enforced seat of his knickerbockers, landing, with hob-nailed
shoes foremost, almost at the edge of the fire. Then he laid his rod
aside, slipped the pack to the ground, unslung his creel, and, fishing
out a handkerchief, mopped his sunburnt countenance.
"Anything else you're short of, Mr. Jones?" he asked, pleasantly. "I'm
just in from the settlements, and I can let you have a pinch of almost
anything."
"Have you plenty of salt?" inquired Jones, wistfully.
"Plenty; isn't there anything else? Bacon? Sugar?"
"Matches?"
Ellis looked at him keenly; good woodsmen don't run short of matches;
good woodsmen don't build such fires.
"Certainly," he said. "Did you have an accident?"
"No--that is, several boxes got wet, and I've been obliged to sit around
this confounded fire for fear it might go out--didn't dare fish very far
from it."
He looked gloomily around, rubbed his forehead as though trying to
recollect something, and finally sat down on a log.
"Fact is," he said, "I don't know very much about the woods. Do you?
Everything's gone wrong; I tore my canoe in the Ledge Rapids yesterday.
I'm in a fix."
Ellis laughed; and his laugh was so pleasant, so entirely without
offence, that young Jones laughed, too, for a while, then checked
himself to adjust his eyeglasses, which his mirth had displaced.
"Can you cook?" he asked, so seriously that Ellis only nodded, still
laughing.
"Then, for Heaven's love, would you, when you cook your own breakfast
over that fire, cook enough for two?"
"Why, man, I believe you're hungry," said Ellis, sharply.
"Hungry? Well, I don't know whether you would call it exactly hunger,
because I have eaten several things which I cooked. I ought not to be
hungry; I tried to toss a flapjack, but it got stuck to the pan. Fact
is, I'm a rotten cook, and I guess it's simply that I'm half starved for
a decent meal."
"Why, see here," said Ellis, rising to his feet, "I can fix up something
pretty quick if you like."
"I _do_ like. Yonder is my cornmeal, coffee, some damp sugar, flour, and
what's left of the pork. You see I left it in a corner of the lean-to,
and while I was asleep a porcupine got busy with it; then I hung it on a
tree, and some more porcupines invited their relatives, and they all
climbed up and nearly finished it. Did you suppose that a porcupine
could climb a tree?"
"I've heard so," said Ellis, gravely, busy with the stores which he was
unrolling from his own blanket. The guilelessness of this stray brother
appalled him. Here was a babe in the woods. A new sort of babe, too,
for, in the experience of Ellis, the incompetent woodsman is ever the
loudest-mouthed, the tyro, the most conceited. But this forest-squatting
innocent not only knew nothing of the elements of woodcraft, but had
called a stranger's attention to his ignorance with a simplicity that
silenced mirth, forestalled contempt, and aroused a curious respect for
the unfortunate.
"He is no liar, anyway," thought Ellis, placing a back-log, mending the
fire, emptying the coffee pot, and settling the kettle to boil. And
while he went about culinary matters with a method born of habit, Jones
watched him, aided when he saw a chance; and they chatted on most
animatedly together as the preparations for breakfast advanced.
"The very first day I arrived in the woods," said Jones, "I fell into
the stream and got most of my matches wet. I've had a devil of a time
since."
"It's a good idea to keep reserve matches in a water-tight glass
bottle," observed Ellis, carelessly, and without appearing to instruct
anybody about anything.
"I'll remember that. What is a good way to keep pork from porcupines?"
Ellis mentioned several popular methods, stirred the batter, shoved a
hot plate nearer the ashes, and presently began the manufacture of
flapjacks.
"Don't you toss 'em?" inquired Jones, watching the process intently.
"Oh, they can be tossed--like this! But it is easier for me to turn them
with a knife--like this. I have an idea that they toss flapjacks less
often in the woods than they do in fiction."
"I gathered my idea from a book," said Jones, bitterly; "it told how to
build a fire without matches. Some day I shall destroy the author."
Presently Jones remarked in a low, intense voice: "Oh, the fragrance of
that coffee and bacon!" which was all he said, but its significance was
pathetically unmistakable.
"Pitch in, man," urged Ellis, looking back over his shoulder. "I'll be
with you in a second." But when his tower of browned and smoking
flapjacks was ready, and he came over to the log, he found that his
host, being his host, had waited. That settled his convictions
concerning Jones; and that was doubtless why, inside of half an hour, he
found himself calling him Jones and not Mr. Jones, and Jones calling him
Ellis. They were a pair of well knit, clean-limbed young men, throat and
face burnt deeply by wind and sun. Jones did not have much hair; Ellis's
was thick and short, and wavy at the temples. They were agreeable to
look at.
"Have another batch of flapjacks?" inquired Ellis, persuasively.
Jones groaned with satisfaction at the prospect, and applied himself to
a crisp trout garnished with bacon.
"I've tried and tried," he said, "but I cannot catch any trout. When I
found that I could not I was horrified, Ellis, because, you see, I had
supposed that the forest and stream were going to furnish me with
subsistence. Nature hasn't done a thing to me since I've tried to shake
hands with her."
"I wonder," said Ellis, "why you came into the woods alone?"
Jones coyly pounced upon another flapjack, folded it neatly and inserted
one end of it into his mouth. This he chewed reflectively; and when it
had vanished according to Fletcher, he said:
"If I tell you why I came here I'll begin to get angry. This breakfast
is too heavenly to spoil. Pass the bacon and help yourself."
Ellis, however, had already satisfied his hunger. He set the kettle on
the coals again, dumped into it cup and plate and fork, wiped his
sheath-knife carefully, and, curling up at the foot of a hemlock,
lighted his pipe, returning the flaming branch to the back-log.
Jones munched on; smile after smile spread placidly over his youthful
face, dislodging his eyeglasses every time. He resumed them, and ate
flapjacks.
"The first time my canoe upset," he said, "I lost my book of artificial
flies. I brought a box of angle-worms with me, too, but they fell into
the stream the second time I upset. So I have been trying to snare one
of those big trout under the ledge below----"
Ellis's horrified glance cut him short; he shrugged his shoulders.
"My friend, I know it's dead low-down, but it was a matter of pure
hunger with me. At all events, it's just as well that I caught nothing;
I couldn't have cooked it if I had."
He sighed at the last flapjack, decided he did not require it, and
settling down with his back against the log blissfully lighted his pipe.
For ten minutes they smoked without speaking, dreamily gazing at the
blue sky through the trees. Friendly little forest birds came around,
dropping from twig to branch; two chipmunks crept into the case of eggs
to fill their pouched chops with the oats that the eggs were packed in.
The young men watched them lazily.
"The simpler life is the true existence," commented Ellis, drawing a
long, deep breath.
"What the devil is the simpler life?" demanded Jones, with so much
energy that the chipmunks raced away in mad abandon, and the flock of
black-capped birds scattered to neigbouring branches, remarking in
unison, "_Chick-a-dee-dee-dee_."
"Why, you're leading the simpler life now," said Ellis, laughing, "are
you not?"
"Am I? No, I'm not. I'm not leading a simple life; I'm leading a
pace-killing, nerve-racking, complex one. I tell you, Ellis, that it has
taken just one week in the woods to reveal to me the complexity of
simplicity!"
"Oh, you don't like the life?"
"I like it all right, but it's too complex. Listen to me. You asked me
why anybody ever let me escape into the woods. I'll tell you.... You're
a New Yorker, are you not?"
Ellis nodded.
"All right. First look on this picture: I live in the Sixties, near
enough to the Park to see it. It's green, and I like it. Besides, there
are geraniums and other posies in my back yard, and I can see them when
the laundress isn't too busy with the clothes-line. So much for the
_mise en scène_; me in a twenty-by-one-hundred house, perfectly
contented; Park a stone's toss west, back yard a few feet north. My
habits? Simple enough to draw tears from a lambkin! I breakfast at
nine--an egg, fruit, coffee and--I hate to admit it--the _Sun_. At
eleven I go down-town to see if there's anything doing. There never is,
so I smoke one cigar with my partner and then we lunch together. I then
walk uptown--_walk_, mind you. At the club I look at the ticker, or out
of the window. Later I play cowboy or billiards for an hour. I take one
cocktail--_one_, if you please. I converse." He waved his pipe; Ellis
nodded solemnly.
"Then," continued Jones, "what do I do?"
"I don't know," replied Ellis.
"I'll tell you. I call a cab--one taxi, or one hansom, as the state of
the weather may suggest--I drive through the Park, pleasantly aware of
the verdure, the squirrels, and the babies; I arrive at my home; I mount
to the library and there I select from my limited collection some
accursed book I've always heard of but have never read--not fiction, but
something stupefying and worth while. This I read for exactly one hour.
I then need a drink. I then dress; and if I'm dining out, out I go--if
not, I dine at home. Twice a week I attend the theatre, but I neutralise
that by doing penance at the opera every Monday during the season....
There, Ellis, is the story of a simple life! Look on _that_ picture. Now
look on _this_: Me in the backwoods, fly-bitten, smoke-choked, a
half-charred flapjack in my fist, a porcupine-gnawed rind of pork on a
stick, attempting to broil the same at a fire, the smoke of which blinds
me. Me, again, belly down, peering hungrily over the bank of a stream,
attempting to snatch a trout with a bare hook, my glasses slipping off
repeatedly, the spectre of starvation scourging on me. Me, once more,
frantic with indigestion and mosquitoes, lurking under a blanket, the
root of a tree bruising my backbone; me in the morning, done up, shaving
in icy water and cutting my chin; me, half shaved, searching for a scrap
of nourishment, gauntly prowling among cold and greasy fry-pans! Ellis!
_Which_ is the simpler life, in Heaven's name?"
Ellis's laughter was the laughter of a woodsman, full, infectious, but
almost noiseless. The birds came back and teetered on adjacent twigs,
cheeping in friendly unison; a chipmunk, chops distended, popped up from
the case of eggs like a striped jack-in-a-box, not at all afraid of a
man who laughed that way.
"_How_ did you ever come into the woods?" he asked at length.
"Lunatic friends and fool books persuaded me I was missing something. I
read all about how to tell a woodcock from a peacock; how to dig holes
in the ground and raise little pea vines, and how to make two blades of
grass grow where the laundress had set a devastating shoe. Then I tired
of it. But friends urged me on, and one idiot said that I looked like
the victim of a rare disease and gave me a shotgun--whether to shoot
myself or the dicky birds I'm not perfectly certain yet. Besides, as I
have a perfect hatred of taking life, I had no temptation to shoot
guides in Maine or niggers in South Carolina, where the quail come from.
Still, I was awake to the new idea. I read more books on bats and
woodchucks; I smelled every flower I saw; I tried to keep up," he said,
earnestly; "by Heaven, I did my best! And now, look at me! Nature hands
me the frozen mitt!"
Ellis could only laugh, cradling his knees in his clasped and sun-tanned
hands.
"I am fond of Nature; I admire the geraniums in my backyard," continued
Jones, excitedly. "I like a simple life, too; but I don't wish to pursue
a live thing and eat it for my dinner. The idea is perfectly obnoxious
to me. I like flowers on a table or in the Park, but I don't want to
know their names, or the names of the creatures that buzz and crawl over
them, or the names of the birds that feed on the buzzy things! I don't;
I know I don't, and I won't! Nature has strung me; I shall knock Nature
hereafter. This is all for mine. I'll lock up and leave the key of the
fields to the next Come-on lured into the good green goods by that most
accomplished steerer, Mrs. Nature. I've got my gilt brick, Ellis--I'm
going home to buy a card to hang over my desk; and on it will be the
wisest words ever written:
"'Who's Loony Now?'"
"But, my dear fellow----"
"No, you don't. You're an accomplice of this Nature dame; I can tell by
the way you cook and catch trout and keep your matches in bottles. One
large and brilliant brick is enough for one New York man. The asphalt
for mine--and a Turkish bath."
After a grinning silence, Ellis arose, stretched, tapped his pipe
against a tree trunk, and sauntered over to where his rod lay. "Come on;
I'll guarantee you a trout in the first reach," he said, affably,
slipping ferrule into socket, disentangling the cast and setting the
line free.
So they strolled off toward the long amber reach which lay a few yards
below the camp, Jones explaining that he didn't wish to take life from
anything except a mosquito.
"We've got to eat; we'd better stock up while we can, because it's going
to rain," observed Ellis.
"Going to rain? How do you know?"
"I smell it. Besides, look there--yonder above the mountains. Do you see
the sky behind the Golden Dome?"
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIV
A STATE OF MIND
Up the narrow valley, over the unbroken sweep of treetops, arose tumbled
peaks; and above the Golden Dome, pushing straight upward into the
flawless blue of heaven, towered a cloud, its inky convolutions edged
with silver.
Jones inspected the thunderhead with disapproval; Ellis offered his rod,
and, being refused, began some clever casting, the artistic beauty of
which was lost upon Jones.
One trout only investigated the red-and-white fly; and, that fish safely
creeled, Ellis turned to his companion:
"Three years ago, when I last came here, this reach was more prolific.
But there's a pool above that I'll warrant. Shall we move?"
As they passed on upstream Jones said: "There's no pool above, only a
rapid."
"You're in error," said Ellis, confidently. "I've known every pool on
the Caranay for years."
"But there is no pool above--unless you mean to trespass."
"Trespass!" repeated Ellis, aghast. "_Trespass_ in the free Caranay
forests! You--you don't mean to say that any preserve has been
established on the Caranay! I haven't been here for three years.... _Do_
you?"
"Look there," said Jones, pointing to a high fence of netted wire which
rose above the undergrowth and cut the banks of the stream in two with a
barrier eight feet high; "that's what stopped me. There's their
home-designed trespass notice hanging to the fence. Read it; it's worth
perusal."
Speechless, but still incredulous, Ellis strode to the barrier and
looked up. And this is what he read printed in mincing "Art Nouveau"
type upon a swinging zinc sign fashioned to imitate something or other
which was no doubt very precious:
OYEZ!
Ye simple livers of ye simpler life have raised thys barrier
against ye World, ye Flesh and ye Devyl. Turn back in Peace and
leave us to our Nunnery.
YE MAIDS AND DAMES OF VASSAR.
"What the devil is that nonsense?" demanded Ellis hoarsely.
"Explained on our next tree," remarked Jones, wiping his eyeglasses
indifferently.
An ordinary trespass notice printed on white linen was nailed to the
flank of a great pine; and, below this, a special warning, done in red
on a white board:
NOTICE!
This property belongs to the Vassar College Summer School.
Fishing, shooting, trapping, the felling of trees, the picking of
wild flowers, and every form of trespass, being strictly
forbidden, all violators of this ordinance under the law will be
prosecuted. One hundred dollars reward is offered for evidence
leading to the detection and conviction of any trespasser upon
this property.
THE DIRECTORS OF THE VASSAR SUMMER SCHOOL.
"Well?" inquired Jones, as Ellis stood motionless, staring at the sign.
The latter slowly turned an enraged visage toward his companion.
"What are you going to do?" repeated Jones, curiously.
"Do? I'm going to fish the Caranay. Come on."
"Trespass on Vassar?" asked Jones.
"I'm going to fish the Caranay, my old and favorite and beloved
stream," retorted Ellis, doggedly. "Do you suppose a dinky zinc
sign in this forest can stop me? Come on, Jones. I'll show you a
trout worth tossing this Caranay Belle to." And he looped on a
silver-and-salmon-tinted fly and waded out into the rapids.
Jones lighted his pipe and followed him, giving his views of several
matters in a voice pitched above the whispering rush of the ripples:
"That's all very well, Ellis, but suppose we are pinched and fined? A
nice place, these forests, for a simple liver to lead a simple life in!
Simple life! What? And some of these writers define the 'simple life' as
merely a 'state of mind.' That's right, too; I was in a state of mind
until I met you, let me tell you! They're perfectly correct; it is a
state of mind."
He muttered to himself, casting an anxious eye on the thundercloud which
stretched almost to the zenith over the Golden Dome and shadowed Lynx
Peak like a pall.
"Rain, too," he commented, wading in Ellis's wake. "There's a most
devilish look about that cloud. I wish I were a woodchuck--or a shiner,
or an earnest young thing from Vassar. What are we to do if pinched with
the goods on us, Ellis?"
The other laughed a disagreeable laugh and splashed forward.
"Because," continued Jones, wiping the spray from his glasses, "the
woods yonder may be teeming with these same young things from Vassar.
Old 'uns, too--there's a faculty for that Summer School. You can never
tell what a member of a ladies' Summer School faculty would do to you. I
dare say they might run after you and frisk you for a kiss--out here in
the backwoods."
"Do you know anything about this absurd Summer School?" asked Ellis,
halting to wait for his companion.
"Only what the newspapers print."
"And what's that? I've not noticed anything about it."
"Why, they all tell about the scope of the Vassar Summer School. It's
founded"--and he grinned maliciously--"on the simple life."
"How?" snapped Ellis, clambering up out of the water to the flat, sandy
shore of an exquisite pool some forty rods in length.
"Why, this way: The Vassar undergraduates, who formerly, after
commencement, scattered into all the complexities of a silly,
unprofitable, good old summer time, now have a chance to acquire
simplicity and a taste for the rudimentary pleasures and pursuits they
have overlooked in their twentieth-century gallop after the complex."
Ellis sullenly freed his line and glanced up at the clouds. It was
already raining on the Golden Dome.
"So," continued Jones, "the Summer School took to the woods along with
the rest of the simple-minded. I hear they have a library; doubtless it
contains the _Outlook_ and the Rollo books. They have courses in the
earlier and simpler languages--the dead 'uns--Sanskrit, Greek, Latin;
English, too, before it grew pin-feathers. They have a grand-stand built
of logs out yonder where the mosquito hummeth; and some trees and a pond
which they call a theatre devoted to the portrayal of the great
primitive and simple passions and emotions. They have also dammed up the
stream to make a real lake when they give tank-dramas like Lohengrin and
the Rheingold; and the papers say they have a pair of live swans hitched
to a boat--that is, a yellow reporter swears they have, but he was
discovered taking snapshots at some Rhine-wine daughters, and hustled
out of the woods----"
He paused to watch Ellis hook and play and presently land a splendid
trout weighing close to two pounds.
"It's an outrage, an infernal outrage, for such people to dam the
Caranay and invade this God-given forest with their unspeakable tin
signs!" said Ellis, casting again.
"But they're only looking for a simpler life--just like you."
Ellis said something.
"That," replied Jones, "is a simple and ancient word expressing tersely
one of the simplest and most primitive passions. You know, the simple
life is merely a "state of mind"; you're acquiring it; I recognize the
symptoms."
Ellis made another observation, more or less mandatory.
"Yes, that is a locality purely mythical, according to our later
exponents of theology; therefore I cannot accept the suggestion to go
there----"
"Confound it!" exclaimed Ellis, laughing, as he landed a trout, "let up
on your joking. I'm mad all through, and it's beginning to rain. When
that thunder comes nearer it will end the fishing, too. Look at Lynx
Peak! Did you see that play of lightning? There's a corker of a storm
brewing. I hope," he added, savagely, "it will carry away their
confounded dam and their ridiculous lake. The nerve of women to dam a
trout stream like the Caranay.... What was that you said?"
"I said," hissed Jones in a weird whisper, "that there are two girls
standing behind us and taking our pictures with a kodak! Don't look
around, man! They'll snap-shoot us for evidence!"
But the caution was too late; Ellis had turned. There came a click of a
kodak shutter; Jones turned in spite of himself; another click sounded.
"Stang!" breathed Jones as two young girls stepped from the shelter of a
juniper brush and calmly confronted the astonished trespassers.
"I am very sorry to trouble you," said the taller one severely, "but
this is private property."
Ellis took off his cap; Jones did the same.
"I saw your signs," said Ellis, pleasantly. Jones whispered to him: "The
taller one is a corker!" and Ellis replied under his breath: "The other
is attractive, too."
"You admit that you deliberately trespassed?" inquired the shorter girl
very gravely.
"Not upon you--only upon what you call your property," said Ellis,
gaily. "You see, we really need the trout in our business--which is to
keep soul and body on friendly terms."
No answering smile touched the pretty grey eyes fixed on his. She said
gravely: "I am very sorry that this has happened."
"We're sorry, too," smiled Jones, "although we can scarcely regret the
charming accident which permits us----"
But it wouldn't do; the taller girl stared at him coldly from a pair of
ornamental brown eyes.
Presently she said: "We students are supposed to report cases like this.
If you have deliberately chosen to test the law governing the protection
of private property no doubt our Summer School authorities will be
willing to gratify you before a proper tribunal.... May I ask your
names?" She drew a notebook from the pocket of her kilted skirt,
standing gracefully with pencil poised, dark eyes focused upon Jones.
And, as she waited, the thunder boomed behind the Golden Dome.
"It's going to rain cats and dogs," said Jones, anxiously "and you
haven't an umbrella----"
The dark-eyed girl gazed at him scornfully. "Do you refuse your name?"
"No--oh, not at all!" said Jones hastily; "my name is Jones----"
The scorn deepened. "And--is this Mr. Smith?" she inquired, looking at
Ellis.
"My name _is_ Jones," said Jones so earnestly that his glasses fell off.
"And what's worse, it's John Jones."
Something in his eye engaged her attention--perhaps the unwinking
innocence of it. She wrote "John Jones" on her pad, noted his town
address, and turned to Ellis, who was looking fixedly, but not
offensively, at the girl with the expressive grey eyes.
"If you have a pad I'll surrender to you," he said, amiably. "There is
glory enough for all here, as our admiral once remarked."
The grey eyes glimmered; a quiver touched the scarlet mouth. But a crash
of nearer thunder whitened the
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