CONTENTS

1

AINSLEE’S

The Maintenance of Jane
By MARGARET G. FAWCETT

CHAPTER I.

THE total,” began
Jacob Willoughby,
adjusting his
pince-nez and
regarding with
near-sighted
attention the
scrap of paper he had selected
from a little white heap on the
table in front of him—“the total
is just four thousand five
hundred and seventy-six dollars
and ninety-seven cents.”

The figures froze the features
of the Willoughby connection
into immobility for a second,
but only for a second.

“I agreed to buy her wraps,”
spoke up crisply Miss Willoughby,
a maiden lady of vinegary
aspect, who sat on the extreme
edge of the horsehair and mahogany
chair and glowered at the white heap
on the table. “Read the bill, Jacob.”

Obediently Jacob searched through
the heap and extracted another scrap.
“Total, one thousand five hundred and
forty-three dollars and eighty-three
cents,” he announced, ponderously.

If she hadn’t been a Willoughby, one
would have said that the lady of vinegary
aspect snorted. All the Willoughbys,
however, prided themselves on
never doing anything low. “That for
wraps,” muttered this one, acidulously.
“And she wheedled a set of
sables out of Jacob at Christmas
time.”

Mr. Willoughby coughed
deprecatingly and avoided the
eye of his wife, a woman with
an appallingly firm chin who
sat opposite him. She now
spoke sharply. “It’s Jacob’s
ridiculous lack of backbone
that’s to blame for all this foolish
extravagance,” she declared.
“Why did he consent in the first
place to Jane’s furnishing that
expensive flat? Why did he
get us to agree to divide the expense
of her clothes among us,
and make us the victim of her
spendthrift habits? For what
she calls lingerie”—Mrs. Jacob
Willoughby pronounced the
French word with ineffable
scorn, as though it suggested a
multitude of moral lapses—“she has run
up a bill of—— What’s the amount,
Jacob?”

Her husband, who was beginning to
look crushed, searched with pathetic
haste through the white drift of papers,
selected another slip and readjusted his
pince-nez. Suddenly a wave of red
swept over his distressed features.

“Well?” queried his wife, sharply.

“She’s—she’s itemized it!” murmured
the unresourceful Jacob, faintly.

Thomas Willoughby, bachelor, who
was a trifle hard of hearing, but whose
other faculties were very sharp, leaned2
forward and put his hand behind his
ear. “What say?” he demanded, querulously.
“Speak up louder, man, can’t
you?” Thomas, who was sixty, regretted
his affliction chiefly because it
so frequently prevented his hearing the
recital of some fresh deviltry of Jane’s.

Mrs. Jacob now interposed. “The total’s
on the other side,” she said, eying
her husband suspiciously, and, with a
guilty air, he hastily reversed the paper.
“The amount is eight hundred and seventeen
dollars and sixteen cents,” he informed
his auditors, lifelessly.

“And just for one season,” supplemented
Mrs. Willoughby. “It’s more
than I spend—it’s more, I’m sure, than
any of us spend”—she surveyed the
Willoughby connection virtuously—“in
five years.”

“Oh, well,” gurgled the youngest
and most attractive of the Willoughbys
that were present, a placid, fair-haired
woman, to whom any account of Jane
and her doings always read like a page
out of a thrilling novel, “she’s only
twenty-four, you know, and it costs
more to live in New York than in the
country.” The lady sighed. Her country
home was luxurious, but in her soul
she longed for the flesh pots represented
by a New York season. Her husband,
however, devoted to his Alderney cows,
his Berkshire hogs and his fancy fowls,
put his foot down firmly whenever the
subject of a town house, or even a brief
month at one of the quieter hotels, was
mentioned.

“Of course it costs more to live in
New York,” snapped Miss Willoughby,
“and I’ve contended all along that Jane
has no business keeping up that flat
in town. In the first place, ’tisn’t proper.
A young woman with her flighty
ideas and without a chaperon or any
female relation to give her countenance!
Mark my words”—with acrid
emphasis—“Jane will yet trail the Willoughby
name in the dust.”

“Why doesn’t she marry again?”
queried the Willoughby bachelor, impatiently.
“Deuce take it, De Mille’s
been dead a year and six months. Is
the girl determined to wear widow’s
weeds forever. Gad!” he chuckled,
shrilly, “I’d marry her myself to-morrow
if I wasn’t sixty and her uncle.
Not,” he added, hastily, for he, like most
of the Willoughbys, was notoriously
close-fisted, “that I countenance her extravagance.
But she needs a husband’s
discipline.”

The depressed Jacob Willoughby
here saw an opportunity to put in a
word in vindication of himself.

“You all know perfectly well,” he began,
with dignity, “that when De Mille
up and died, just when his affairs were
in the most critical condition, and when
a little firmness on his part would have
kept him alive long enough to save
something out of the wreck for his widow,
Jane declared that she wouldn’t be
bored with another husband, and that if
the connection couldn’t support her in
the style to which she was accustomed,
she would go on the stage. When I
said she might spend her time with us,
visiting each of us in turn, you know
she flatly refused, and insisted upon an
apartment. She said that, though He
was a Willoughby Himself”—Jacob repeated
this Janeism with peculiar relish—“God
never intended relations to
be lived with, that they were generally
people you’d have nothing to do with
if the accident of birth hadn’t made
them cousins, uncles and aunts.” As
a matter of fact, when Jane had uttered
this impertinence, she had excepted
Jacob, but the senior Willoughby was
too wise to hint at the exception in the
presence of his wife, who was also a
Willoughby.

“You should have been firm,” she observed,
witheringly. “That threat about
her going on the stage was all nonsense.”

“It was not nonsense,” retorted her
husband, with unexpected spirit, “and
I had to think of the bishop.”

Jacob’s retort told as he meant that
it should, and a painful pause ensued.
It was the bachelor Willoughby who
broke it. “Well,” he exclaimed, pettishly,
drawing out his watch, “Jane will
be here in five minutes, and dinner in
half an hour. The question is, what
are we going to do?”

“We are going to tell her,” snapped3
Miss Willoughby, “that the apartment
must be given up, and that she must
live with each of us in turn. Since she’s
here—or will soon be here—she can
remain a while with you, Susan, and
then she can come to me. In the meantime,
Jacob can see about subletting
her apartment. Hark! There’s wheels!
Now”—turning to her brother—“be
firm, Jacob. Let us”—encouragingly,
and glancing in turn at each of the
Willoughbys, who, strange to relate,
looked ill at ease, if not frightened—“let
us all be firm.”

The door opened and everybody
started. But it was only the butler.

“A telegram for you, sir,” he said to
Mr. Jacob Willoughby, extending a
yellow slip. The latter took it and
hastily opened it. “It’s from Jane,” he
announced, glancing up. Did the other
Willoughbys imagine it or did his voice
express relief?

“Read it,” commanded his wife,
crisply.

You dear, good people, I’m the biggest
wretch on earth. Did so want to get to you
before the house party broke up, but there’s
the Reffolds’ dinner for to-night which I
had entirely forgotten. Hope to get down
for a week end later. Love to all.

Jane.

For fully half a minute not a sound
was heard in the stuffily furnished Willoughby
library. Then Miss Willoughby,
in a voice ominously calm, asked:
“Will you kindly tell us the number of
words in that telegram, Jacob?”

“Total, fifty,” murmured Jacob, reluctantly,
dropping the yellow slip on
the white heap and surveying it ruefully.

“Fifty!” echoed the Willoughby
connection, feebly.

Susan Willoughby, Jacob’s wife, was
the first to regain her mental equilibrium.
“You will write this evening,
Jacob?” she questioned, with stony
composure.

“I will write this evening,” responded
her husband, firmly.

The bachelor Willoughby suddenly
chuckled. The outraged connection
stared at him in astonishment. “I—I
was just thinking,” he giggled, “that
economy doesn’t seem to be Jane’s
strong point.”

At its best, the Willoughby connection’s
sense of humor was the reverse
of keen, and the situation was not one,
in their opinion, that invited levity. But
whatever crushing blow threatened the
frivolous member—and Mrs. Susan
Willoughby and Miss Willoughby both
looked primed—was happily averted by
the opportune reappearance of the butler.

“Dinner is served,” he announced,
solemnly, and Jacob Willoughby sprang
with alacrity to offer his arm to the
most attractive of the female Willoughbys.

“I will summon the bishop to wrestle
with Jane,” announced Susan, magisterially,
as she led the way to the dining
room. And the connection realized
that Jane had, indeed, become a problem.

CHAPTER II.

Jane balanced her spoon on the brim
of the shell-like cup and smiled at Mr.
Scott.

“Yesterday, Billie, I received another
of those Willoughby epistles—about my
extravagance, you know.”

“The idea of anybody thinking you
extravagant,” murmured Mr. Scott,
with an adoring glance.

“Oh, as to that,” observed Jane,
airily, “I admit I’m extravagant, but
I’m purposely so. Listen, my child, and
I’ll tell you the story of my life. But
first let me put a drop more rum in your
tea.” Mr. Scott held out his cup.

“It does taste of tea,” he admitted.
“And you know I’ve always cracked up
the flavor of your—er—tea, Jane.” She
dropped the rum out of a silver filigree
bottle with an amethyst in the stopper.

“You see,” she continued, thoughtfully,
“before my eyes were opened or
my teeth cut, those Willoughby relations
of mine married me to De Mille
because he had money. He was—oh,
well, Billie, he was the biggest bore I
ever met. However, I saw as little of
him as possible, but you can imagine4
that I did my best to make life miserable
for those Willoughbys who blighted
my youth. What are you laughing at,
Billie? Well, De Mille got into financial
difficulties, and selfishly took to his
bed. I got the best nurse in town, and
went to see him every day. Yes, I did.
It was good for me, of course!”—Jane’s
conversation usually took the
form of a monologue. “Finally, he had
the good taste to die. When one of
the Willoughbys, who came up to town
to help me bear my grief, came in and
told me that he had passed to a better
land, I said: ‘Well, God knows best.’”
Mr. Scott tittered. “Aunt Susan—that
was the Willoughby—assured the family
that I was showing a beautiful spirit.
As a matter of fact, I really could have
danced up and down, I was so relieved.
You see, Billie, if the man had ever pretended
to love me, I should not have
been such a wretch. But he just wanted
a good-looking woman to preside over
his house, and he wanted to marry into
the Willoughby family, and the Willoughby
family wanted to get me married
to money and off their hands, so
it was just a disgraceful bargain, about
which your humble servant had no
more to say than the dress goods on a
bargain counter. When it was discovered
that De Mille had left me nothing
but debts, I refused to worry, and informed
my beloved relations that my
support was their business. Otherwise,
the stage for Jane, and the Willoughbys’
view of the stage is very similar
to the devil’s view of holy water.”

“Well, they’ve got plenty of this
world’s goods,” commented Mr. Scott,
who was quite content to have Jane do
most of the talking, an arrangement
that suited her to perfection.

“They’re rolling in wealth!” she exclaimed,
filling her own cup. “But
they’re as close as bark on a tree, and
how to bring them to time after De
Mille’s death kept me awake nights. I
made up my mind to get even with
them for marrying me off like a slave,
and the first thing I did was to order
the most expensive mourning New
York affords. I still cling to it, for
black is so becoming to me.”

“I should think it was,” said Mr.
Scott, fervently. “You are simply ravishing
in that cap.”

“The cap was my own idea,” observed
Jane, sweetly. “The real lace
ones are so stunning and so—er—expensive.
But where was I? Oh, yes.
The Willoughbys held a mass meeting,
or convocation, or something, to talk
me over. Finally it was decided that
they would pay my bills among them—if
I was not too extravagant—and
that I should spend my time with each
of them in turn, handed around from
house to house like a poor relation. But
it was at that point in their proceedings
that Jane rose and gave them an
ultimatum.”

“I put my money on Jane,” spoke up
Mr. Scott, promptly.

“You won’t lose,” answered that
young woman. “I rose, wiped my eyes
with a handkerchief—black border, two
inches; price, three dollars—and spoke
my mind. I said that I had married to
suit them, and that henceforth I would
live to suit myself; that I was perfectly
willing they should pay my
bills, but that I intended to take an
apartment in town and go on living as
before. I said it was not my fault that
my poor, dear husband—I shed a tear
or two—had met with financial reverses
and was not able to leave me anything.
I said, further, that I would not be dictated
to about the size of my bills, that
everyone knew I was not extravagant—yes,
Billie, I said that with a straight
face—and that I was in deep grief, and
could not bear any more discussion of
my affairs, and so I would just take my
leave and send in the bills.”

“Bet they were paralyzed,” observed
Billie.

“That’s not the word for it. I left
them gasping for breath. But they hate
gossip, and that’s where I had them.
They hate to be called mean, though
being mean doesn’t worry them. That’s
the way with some people, you know.
So I rented this apartment, moved my
things in, drew a few checks on uncle
Jacob—the best of the lot, by the way—and
here I have lived in my deep
grief.”

5
Jane smiled at Mr. Scott and leaned
back in her chair.

“That’s the first chapter,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, “and yesterday’s
letter, which I’m coming to, is the
beginning of the second. This letter
informed me that my bills were becoming
outrageously large, that I
needed a chaperon—fancy a widow in
her first grief needing a chaperon, Billie—and
the long and short of it is that
I must give up this apartment and go
and live among them as originally proposed.

“Well?” queried Mr. Scott.

“Well, what?” demanded Jane. “You
certainly didn’t for a moment think I
would do it?”

“No,” he responded. “There’s a
very simple way out, you know. Marry
me and let the Willoughbys go to——”

“Thunder,” finished Jane. “Oh, Billie,
I do appreciate the fact that you
love me and want me. And if I loved
you, I’d live in a cottage with you—though
I hate cottages—and work like
a slave. But the awful fact must be
faced that I do not love you. I am
horribly fond of you, though, Billie, and
I wish I could marry you, but I never
could make you understand how I hate
being married. I was knocked down
to the highest bidder, and the experience
was too disagreeable to permit me
to marry again or to fall in love with
anyone.”

“But you’re flirting awfully with
Kingston and Maitland—and there’s
Dick Thomas—oh, Jane, it’s pretty
tough on me!” The boy—for Mr. Scott
wasn’t much more—looked as though
he were going to cry.

“Fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Jane, contemptuously.
“Nothing in the world
would induce me to marry one of those
men—or any other. Freedom is the
breath of life to me, Billie, but I must
have my little recreations. You can’t
understand—no man can—how flirting
to a woman is a justifiable evening up
of the sufferings that some women have
to endure. Why, I’m leading Jack
Maitland an awful existence because
he flirted desperately with Betty Lockwood,
who loves him to distraction.
I’m doing it for Betty’s sake, and it’s
good for him. Betty married Maurice
just out of pique.” Jane put down her
cup. “I’m really trying to do good, in
my own way, Billie.”

“You should join the Humane Society,”
observed Mr. Scott, sarcastically.

“The Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children will rescue you
from my clutches if you persist in coming
here all the time,” she retorted, severely.
“I’ll tell you what I am going
to do”—changing the subject, swiftly.
“I’ll answer the Willoughby epistle in
person. I’ll go down to Rosemount
to-morrow and tell them things that I
hope will do them good. I do not intend
to reduce my bills, or live with
them. Whenever I get a letter from
them like this last one, I go out and
buy something.”

“What did you buy yesterday?”
queried Mr. Scott, with lively interest.

“A pair of high-boys—genuine colonials!
I’ve no place for them here, of
course, but the Willoughbys needed
them for a lesson.”

“Let me drive you down to Rosemount
in my car,” said Mr. Scott, with
sudden inspiration.

“Um—I’d like the car and the chauffeur,
but you, Billie, cannot come. It
might cause gossip.”

“Let ’em talk, who cares?” exclaimed
Mr. Scott, defiantly.

“I do,” said Jane, decidedly. “No,
you can’t come, Billie, but if you’ll have
the car here to-morrow, at ten, I’ll drive
down in it, stay all night, and come
back the next day.”

“I’m afraid they’ll persuade you to
live with them,” murmured Mr. Scott,
miserably.

“To think that you would say that to
me,” said Jane, reproachfully. “I intend
to live alone from this time on. I
hate living with anybody.”

“Wait until you’re in love!” warned
Billie.

“Yes, I’ll wait,” responded his hostess,
briskly. “A woman who has had
my luck would be an ungrateful wretch
if she permitted herself to become entangled
again. Why, it isn’t one woman6
in ten who marries for money whose
husband dies in two years. No wonder
I’ve clung to deep mourning. It’s an
expression of thankfulness—of the
warmest gratitude on my part. No one
can say of me, Billie, that I do not
realize my blessings!”

Mr. Scott rose and tried to kiss
Jane’s hand, but she put it determinedly
behind her.

“Respect my mourning, my child,”
she said, rebukingly.

After Mr. Scott had taken his departure,
she ordered two suit cases
packed, gave orders to her two servants
about the care of the apartment
during her absence, and telegraphed a
lengthy message to the Willoughbys.

CHAPTER III.

It was a glorious May day. Jane,
whose sound digestion and general superlatively
good health enabled her always
to front life genially, even when
she was most convinced that it was
nothing but a heartless farce, was in
rollicking spirits. She let Johnson, Billie’s
chauffeur, take full charge of the
car, while she lay back luxuriously,
humming snatches of gay song or planning
fresh audacities that would humble
the proud spirit of the Willoughbys.
But silence for any length of time when
there was somebody to talk to was always
irksome to Jane.

“You have heard of Elijah, of
course?” she observed, presently, to the
smug-faced driver.

“Mrs. Carruth’s man, mum?” he
asked, stolidly.

“Goodness, no, Johnson!” exclaimed
Jane, in a horrified voice. “Though,
really”—judiciously—“if Polly insists
on his keeping up that awful pace with
her car, I think he, too, will go to
heaven in a chariot of fire. But”—this
to the chauffeur—“I was not referring
to Mrs. Carruth’s man, Elihu, but to
Elijah, a Bible character. Don’t you”—severely—“read
your Bible, Johnson?”

“Well, mum,” began Johnson, cautiously,
“seeing as how I didn’t take
much to books when I was a kid, and
seeing as how big words always kind
of floor me now, I don’t go in much for
readin’, ’cept about the sports in the
papers.”

“They should publish the Bible in
words of one syllable,” reflected Jane.
“I must speak to the bishop about it.
Elijah, Johnson, was a prophet who
went to heaven in a chariot of fire.
I’ve always liked to think that it was
a kind of superior motor car, and that
it took Elijah several days to reach his
destination, and that he had a perfectly
delicious time whizzing up through the
air, past the stars and the moon, and I
wouldn’t be a bit surprised, Johnson,
if he leaned out and jabbed at the moon
as he passed, just to see what it was
really made of. Personally, I take no
stock in what the scientists tell us, and
I’ve often thought that if Elijah had
come back and told about his ride, they
wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Now,
it’s my private opinion, Johnson, that
the world is flat, as flat as a—goodness
gracious, what’s that!”

“It’s somethin’ gone wrong, mum,”
said Johnson, resignedly. “There was
a bolt I was suspectin’ of this morning,
but Mr. Scott said that on no account
was you to be kept waitin’, and that,
bolt or no bolt, I was to be at your door
at ten sharp. An’ you’ll remember,
mum”—reproachfully—“that I waited
in front of those steps one hour by th’
watch Mr. Scott gave me Christmas,
and if it wasn’t for the fact that every
minute I was expectin’ to see you come
runnin’ down them, I could have put
in a new bolt——”

“Of course it’s all my fault, Johnson,”
interrupted Jane, “but I never
was on time in my life, and I’m too old
to begin now. Here’s a nice secluded
bit of road where you can overhaul the
car, and I’ll just walk about a bit for
exercise. But don’t let it take long,
Johnson, for I’m simply famished, and
we have to go ten miles yet before we
get any luncheon.”

By this time the driver was under the
car, and only a pair of tremendous boots
was visible. After giving them an
amused look, Jane divested herself of
her motor rig, shook out her skirts, and,7
with a parting warning to Johnson to
blow the horn when he was ready,
sauntered slowly down the country
road, which reminded her of one of the
picturesque lanes in English Surrey.

“It’s a queer thing,” she communed
with herself, as she walked along, “that
the first day I’m in the country I adore
it, and resolve firmly never, never to
leave it again; and the second day I
begin to pick flaws in it, and take notice
of all the hideous little creeping things,
and the third I loathe it, and feel that
I will die instantly if I can’t get back
to where there are lots of people and a
great deal of noise and plenty of dirt.
I suppose I——”

Jane’s saunter and reflections both
came to an abrupt end, for a turn in
the lane had disclosed to her a man sitting
on a log by the roadside, munching
hungrily at an appetizing-looking
sandwich, the most appetizing one, the
hungry Mrs. De Mille instantly decided,
that she had ever seen. Beside the man
was a small hamper of straw, and leaning
against the log was a bottle. He
was reading out of a small book, and
utterly oblivious, apparently, to his surroundings.
He finished in a few bites
the sandwich, and, without lifting his
eyes, thrust his hand in the hamper,
drew forth another, and proceeded deliberately
to devour that, too. More
and more envious grew Jane’s eyes as
she watched the rapid shrinking of the
thing she most coveted just then. The
second sandwich disappeared like its
predecessor, and once more the long,
brown hand sought the hamper. Another
sandwich was drawn forth, it was
raised to the man’s mouth, but before
he had a chance to take a bite Jane
cried out, impulsively: “Oh, please don’t
eat them all!”

The man looked up, bewildered, and
then, catching sight of Jane, sprang to
his feet and pulled off his cap. “I—beg
your pardon,” he began, uncertainly;
“did you speak?”

“Yes,” calmly answered Mrs. De
Mille, who was always prepared to back
her own imprudent impulses. “I asked
you to please not eat that other sandwich.
I’m terribly hungry!”

A smile lighted up the man’s serious
face. “Oh, there are more in the hamper,”
he answered. “My appetite is big
enough, but it is not as big as Mrs.
Moore thinks it is. Please help yourself.”
He held out the hamper.

“Thanks,” said Jane, taking a sandwich
and beginning to devour it hungrily.
“If Mrs. Moore made these,” she
observed, presently, “I think she has
very good taste—in sandwiches.”

“It’s her specialty,” he responded.
“Everybody, you know, has a specialty.
But won’t you be seated?” With a
gesture he indicated the log, and Jane,
frankly delighted with her adventure,
seated herself.

“Have they?” she queried, helping
herself to another sandwich. “Now, I
wonder what mine is?”

The man regarded her with interest.
“If you have just fallen from the
sky——” he began.

“No, it was a motor car,” interrupted
Jane. “That is, I didn’t fall from it,
but something happened to a bolt. The
chauffeur is working at it down the
road a bit. I didn’t stay to examine it,
for I always get a smudge on my nose
when I look at the works of a motor
car. Perhaps that’s my specialty—getting
smudges on my nose.” She looked
at the man and smiled. “It isn’t a very
useful one, is it?”

“There are practical specialties and
ornamental specialties,” he observed,
“and it’s——”

“Oh, well, you know getting a
smudge on one’s nose is neither ornamental
nor practical,” broke in Jane,
with a laugh. Then, changing the subject
quickly: “It’s awfully good of you
to feed the hungry.”

“Pray let me give drink to the thirsty,
too,” he said. Picking up a small silver
cup, he walked over to a brook that
purled behind them, rinsed it out and,
coming back, filled it from the bottle of
wine that rested against the log.

Jane drank it gratefully. “I never
in my life had a more delicious meal,”
she said, quite truthfully. Then she
looked at him inquisitively. “Do you
live some place around here, or did your
car break down, too?” she asked.

8
“I’m not so lucky as to own a car.
I’m stopping for a time at Rosemount—the
village, you know.”

“Oh, then, perhaps you know the
Willoughbys,” said Jane. “The Willoughbys,
of Willoughby Hall.”

“Do they live in an ugly mass of
architecture on a hill, and does the lady
look like a grenadier and the man like
a drummer boy in his first engagement?”

Jane threw back her head and
laughed. “That’s Aunt Susan and Uncle
Jacob to a T,” she exclaimed. The
man flushed with embarrassment.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Of
course I had no idea they were relatives
of yours.”

“You haven’t offended me,” Jane
hastened to assure him. “I know they’re
impossible, though Uncle Jacob really
means well. I’m on my way down
there now.”

“For a visit?” queried the man, who
was staring at her in an impersonal
sort of way that rather piqued her.

“Not if I know myself, and I flatter
myself I do,” she responded, decidedly.
“No, I’m going down to give them—Aunt
Susan particularly—a piece of my
mind.”

“Lucky Aunt Susan!” commented
the man, still regarding her with that
air of detached interest.

“You say that because you’ve never
had a piece of my mind,” observed
Jane, darkly. “Because I’m desperately
poor——”

“Poor!” exclaimed the man, disbelievingly,
as his eye took in the details
of her exceedingly smart get-up.

“As poor as a church mouse,” said
Jane, impressively. “I’m supported by
contributions made by the Willoughby
connection, and because my bills for
the past season have been a—a trifle
large, they wrote me an abusive letter.
Fancy!”

“Fancy!” echoed the man, absent-mindedly.
“Why don’t you——”

But an explosive blast on a horn interrupted
him. Jane rose hastily.
“That’s Johnson,” she said. “I must
go. But how are you going to get back
to Rosemount?” she demanded.

“Oh, I’ll pick up one of the market
gardeners along the road,” he answered,
indifferently. “Besides, I came out on
a quest, and I can’t return until it is
successfully consummated.”

“A quest!” echoed Jane, and promptly
sat down again. “It sounds interesting,”
she said; “tell me about it.”

“I’m looking for a heroine,” he explained.

“A heroine!” repeated Mrs. De Mille,
blankly, wondering for the first time if
he was as sane as he looked.

“Yes, for a book, you know,” he said,
in a matter-of-fact way. “I scribble
for a living, and lately my publishers
have complained that I never draw a
real flesh-and-blood woman. I’ve determined
to put one in the new book
I’m writing.”

“So you’re strolling around the country
in search of one,” mused Jane. “I
should think you’d stand a better
chance of finding one in town.” There
was another blast on the horn, short
and angry this time, but Mrs. De Mille
waved it airily aside.

“I can’t work in town,” he answered.
“I’ve just come back from Alaska, and
it seems so shut-in there.” He nodded
in the direction of the skyscrapers of
New York.

“What would a heroine have to do?”
queried Jane. “I mean a model heroine?”

“Oh, just give me a chance to study
her, and let me pay her for it,” he answered,
coolly. “I work in a small
bungalow, and if she’d give me some
sittings——” But once more the voice
of the horn broke in—a long, reproachful,
plaintive note this time. Mrs. De
Mille rose, reluctantly. “I really must
go, or Johnson will ruin his voice,” she
said. Then she had a sudden inspiration.
“You’re going to Rosemount,”
she said to the man. “Why can’t we
take you there? I’d like to do something
to pay for that delicious meal.”

“You’ve paid me a thousandfold by
accepting it,” he answered, quickly. “I
couldn’t think of putting you to any
trouble.”

“It isn’t any trouble,” she answered,
positively. “There’s plenty of room in9
the car.” The man’s face showed signs
of yielding.

“Come,” she commanded, imperiously;
and he stooped and gathered up the
hamper and his book and followed her
down the road.

“Johnson,” Mrs. De Mille called to
the chauffeur, who was sitting in the
car like patience on a monument, but
without the smile, “this gentleman has
saved me from starvation, and he’s now
going to save you; for in this hamper,
Johnson, are three of the most delicious
sandwiches you ever ate. Hustle them
down as quickly as you can, and then
we’ll repay his generosity by giving him
a lift to Rosemount.”

When the car was well under way,
Jane turned impressively to her new
acquaintance. “And now I want to ask
you,” she said, “if you think I’d do for
the heroine?”

“It’s been my wish ever since I first
set eyes on you,” he answered, calmly.
“I’m in great luck.”

“And the Willoughbys,” said Jane,
cheerfully, “will be in a rage, so it’s a
delightful arrangement all around.”

CHAPTER IV.

Mrs. Willoughby and Miss Willoughby—the
latter had driven over from her
country home to discuss Jane—sat in
the library listening to the shrieks of
laughter that floated across the hall
from the music room, laughter interspersed
with the sharp yelping of a dog
and bars of music.

“They’ve kept that up,” said Mrs.
Willoughby, crisply, “since luncheon.”

“What did you say his name was?”
asked Miss Willoughby, whose patent
disgust made her look more vinegary
than ever.

“She calls him Dick,” said aunt
Susan, disdainfully. “His last name is
Thomas. A flighty idiot, who talks
with a lisp.”

“Where’s the bishop?” demanded the
guest, suddenly.

“He’s packing,” answered her sister-in-law,
with an air of repressed anger.
“Jane took him out in a motor car,
some man’s motor car that she came
down in, and he came back looking
much upset, and said he had to pack
and return to town immediately. And
he had promised to stay two days!”

“Must have been her doings,” commented
Miss Willoughby.

“I don’t know,” said Aunt Susan,
drearily. “He did say something about
fleeing temptation.”

“The hussy!” Miss Willoughby’s
voice expressed virtuous scorn. “Wait
until she comes to me.” She closed her
lips, grimly.

“I was going to tell you about that,”
said her hostess. “Jane has what she
calls a job.”

“A—a job!” echoed Miss Willoughby,
faintly.

Susan Willoughby nodded her head,
vigorously. “That’s what she calls it,”
she said, indignation revealed in every
monosyllable. “She’s hired out as a
model!”

Miss Willoughby shrieked and fumbled
feebly for her smelling salts.

“Oh, I don’t mean the—er—Trilby
kind, you know,” said Mrs. Willoughby,
hastily. “Some wretched creature
whom she picked up with on her way
down here is writing a book, and he’s
offered to pay her if she’ll let him study
her in order to get material for his heroine.”

“I never heard of such a thing!”
gasped Miss Willoughby. “It isn’t respectable,
and you don’t need to try to
convince me that it is. What does Jacob
say?”

“Jacob!” There was indescribable
contempt expressed in Mrs. Willoughby’s
voice as she uttered the name.
“Jane simply twists him around her little
finger.”

Miss Willoughby rose suddenly, with
the air of one having made up her mind
to perform an unpleasant task.

“Where are you going?” demanded
her hostess.

“To tell Jane what I think of her
conduct and to warn——”

But before the spinster had a chance
to finish her sentence, the door across
the hall was flung open suddenly, and
Jane, laughter in her eyes and on her10
lips, her hair disheveled, emerged. Under
her arm was tucked a yelping skye
terrier, and close behind her followed
an immaculately attired and rather
good-looking young man, who appeared
to be thoroughly enjoying himself. As
usual, Jane was talking.

“You’re not musical, Bijou, and it’s a
waste of time trying to make you musical!
Here Mr. Thomas and I have
spent the greater part of an hour trying
to impress upon you the difference between
Wagner and ragtime, but it’s been
a miserable failure. I want to think
you have a soul, Bijou, though the bishop
doesn’t believe you have, but after
the painful lack of discrimination you
have just shown—Aunt Mary! When
in the world did you come, and what
a delightful surprise!”

Jane, who had suddenly espied her
two aunts, unceremoniously dropped
the skye terrier and darted into the library,
leaving the young man hovering
uncertainly in the doorway. She seized
the spinster’s two mitt-clad hands and
kissed her heartily on each withered
cheek. Then she stood back a pace or
two and surveyed her with rapt admiration.

“I’m terribly jealous of you, Aunt
Mary,” she exclaimed. “Look at your
complexion! Peaches and cream!”—as
a matter of fact, it more closely resembled
sole leather, but Miss Willoughby
brightened up, nevertheless. “And
your figure! What in the world have
you been doing to your figure? Such
curves!”

The spinster, conscious of the strange
young man in the doorway, blushed
painfully.

“My dear——” she began, in a stage
whisper, motioning stealthily in the direction
of Mr. Thomas.

“Oh, pardon me,” said Jane, willfully
misunderstanding her aunt’s meaning.
“Aunt Mary, this is Mr. Thomas. I
shall have to ask you to entertain him
for a while, for I have a business engagement.”
She pulled out a tiny,
jeweled watch and gave an exclamation.
“Half an hour late! Dick, what is
it they do to working people when they
are half an hour late? Though why,
indeed, I should ask you I don’t know,
for I’m sure you never did half an
hour’s real work in your life! Oh, yes,
dock them—that’s it, isn’t it? I
thought of yacht, for I knew the term
was nautical, and then I instantly
thought of ‘docked’”—triumphantly;
Jane was always intensely interested in
her mental processes. “Did you know
I had become a working person, Aunt
Mary? Earning my living by the sweat
of my brow, and that sort of thing?”
Miss Willoughby smiled, weakly.
“Well, ta, ta,” continued Jane. “Remember”—shaking
a warning finger at
the spinster—“Mr. Thomas is young
and unsophisticated, and I’ll not have
his young affections trifled with.”

“Oh, I thay——” began Mr. Thomas,
protestingly, and making a motion as
though he were bent on accompanying
Mrs. De Mille.

“No, Dickie,” she said, firmly, “bosses
don’t like to have young men a-followin’
of their gells.” This was said with
an inimitable cockney accent that caused
Mr. Thomas to grin appreciatively.
Jane made a wicked moue at him,
nodded to her aunts and hurried away,
leaving the two ladies speechless, and
the guest she had thrust upon them
looking decidedly uncomfortable.

As she sauntered down the road that
led past the bungalow which had been
erected in the rear of the Moore cottage,
and which her new acquaintance
had pointed out as his workshop, Jane
looked as though she hadn’t a care in
the world. As a matter of fact, however,
she was not without her misgivings
in regard to the outcome of the
engagement she had entered into. She
had done it chiefly to torment the Willoughbys,
but she was honest enough
to admit to herself, as she walked leisurely
on, that the man himself had
aroused her curiosity, and that this had
something to do with her obeying that
reckless impulse to offer herself as a
model.

“He’s doubtless a counterfeiter or a
gentleman burglar who’s planning to
steal the Willoughby spoons,” she communed
with herself, cheerfully, “and
it’s very likely that he’ll insist on my11
becoming his accomplice, and then
Aunt Mary will have a chance to say:
‘Didn’t I tell you Jane would come to
a bad end.’ I really believe they’d——”

But the quaint-looking bungalow
had suddenly loomed up in Mrs. De
Mille’s path, and put an end to her reflections.
Half hesitatingly she knocked
on the door, and it was instantly thrown
open by the man whom she chose to
call her employer.

“Please don’t tell me I’m late,” she
said, as she gave him her hand and
stepped across the threshold. “Being
late, you know, is a weakness one is
born with, I think, like not being able
to spell, or having a thirst for strong
drink. In town they call me ‘the late
Mrs. De Mille.’ The only occasion I
was ever known to be on time was at
poor De Mille’s funeral. Billie Scott
said—— But how delightfully cozy
it is here!”

Jane paused and surveyed the room
with interest. It was simply furnished
with some good rugs, several well-filled
bookcases, two or three comfortable-looking
chairs, and a long table that
apparently served for a desk, for it was
covered with papers; but there was a
cheerful fire in the great fireplace—a
comfort that Mrs. De Mille appreciated,
for the day, though bright, was chilly—and
in front of this was a tea table, on
which a copper kettle was singing merrily
over a blue, alcohol flame.

“I’m glad you like it,” said the man,
gravely. “Can I take your hat and
jacket?”

“Oh, I’ll just toss them over this
chair,” said Jane, carelessly, suiting the
action to her words. “I hope you’re not
one of those people who must have everything
just so. De Mille was like
that. He found me a terrible trial. His
idea of a well-ordered existence was a
place for everything and everything in
its place. I don’t mind having a place
for everything, you know, but I think
having everything in its place robs life
of a great deal of uncertainty, and it’s
the uncertainty that makes it fascinating,
don’t you think?”

“When I was a little chap,” said the
man, pulling forward a chair for Jane
and taking one himself near the table,
“I had to look out not only for myself,
but also for my mother, who sewed
when she could, to support herself and
me, but who was crippled with rheumatism
most of the time. Our next meal
was always a matter of uncertainty.
My idea of heaven then was a place
where the future was absolutely certain.
No”—reflectively, as he leaned over to
poke the fire—“I don’t believe I want
any more uncertainties in mine.”

Mrs. De Mille stared at him with
lively curiosity in her eyes, and noted
approvingly the strong, clean contour
of his jaw, and his long, lean, brown
hands. “He may have been born poor,
but he was also born a gentleman,” she
reflected, shrewdly. Aloud she said:

“Do you know that I haven’t the remotest
idea what your name is?”

“How very remiss of me!” he exclaimed,
looking up from the fire. “It’s
John Ormsby.”

“Oh,” said Jane, “you’re the man
who writes men’s books. Why,” she
continued, severely, “have you ignored
my sex?”

He smiled. “I have already told
you,” he said, “that I don’t know
enough about you to put you in a
book.”

“You’ve chosen a bad specimen to
study,” she retorted. “I give you fair
warning.”

“As to that,” he answered, with an
indifference that nettled Jane, “I’m not
at all particular about the type. My
publishers demand a real flesh-and-blood
creation, but they didn’t specify
the type.”

“He’s downright brutal,” said Jane,
to herself, but rather enjoying the novelty
of seeing an opportunity for a
pretty speech to her ignored. “You’ll
have to instruct me in my duties,” she
said, smilingly. “Now, if there was
only such a thing as a Handy Manual
for authors’ models that I could get and
read up in, my course would be plain
sailing. As it is, I’m all at sea.”

“Oh, all you have to do is to talk,”
said the man, encouragingly. “I’m going
to make you a cup of tea.” He began
to handle the tea things deftly.

12
“Talk and tea,” commented Jane,
thoughtfully. “It sounds easy. I believe
I’ve got what Billie Scott would
call a ‘snap.’”

CHAPTER V.

My dear Deneen: The Labrador
trip sounds good to me, and as soon as
the book is off my hands, which will
be about the time you fellows are ready
to start, I reckon I’ll be wid ye. The
old spring fever has again seized hold
of me, and I’m fairly sweating for a
whiff of the open. I wrote you a squib
shortly after I arrived, and the ragged
kid to whom I gave it to post swears
by all that’s unholy—he knows nothing
holy—that he posted it, but I suppose
it represented too promising spitball
material to be wasted on a village
post office. This is the worst place to
get anything done. Every villager regards
himself as an American from
“wayback,” and scorns to turn an honest
penny by running or walking an
errand. But it’s a jolly place to write
in. I’m boarding with a queer old
couple by the name of Moore, who take
summer boarders during July and
August, and who, for the convenience
of the town folk, have built a bungalow
a short distance from the house.
It’s quite decently furnished with books
and rugs and a fireplace, and my credentials
were so good that the Moores
have turned it over to me for a workroom.
The book I’m at work on is a
deliberate attempt to pander to the depraved
taste of hoi polloi. Yet, I confess
it without shame, I’m tremendously
interested in it. I find myself reading
over and over again parts I’ve written—not
with a view to improving
them, but because I think they’re so
good. Sounds maudlin, doesn’t it? But
it’s the gospel truth. And the book is
all about a woman! Smoke that in your
pipe, old man! I, who have heretofore
scorned all feminine frumperies, find
myself dissecting frills and analyzing
chiffons. Whence cometh this superior
knowledge? do I hear you ask with a
suspicious leer? Whisper! I have a
model, and I’m learning about women
from her. Kipling’s idea, you see, but
put into respectable and strictly business-like
practice. For an hour or so
every afternoon she gives me “sittings”
in the bungalow. She’s no ordinary
paid hireling, mind you, but a fine New
York lady, who seems to have accepted
the job partly because she desired a
new experience, and partly to displease
some rich but close-fisted relatives upon
whom she’s dependent, but whom she
appears to be leading a life. I was
tramping about the country one day
shortly after I came down here, and
while I was having a bite by the roadside,
a tailor-made vision with hungry
eyes and a wistful air suddenly appeared
out of the nowhere and demanded
a sandwich. She accepted my
invitation to sit down and share what
I had, and then she insisted on giving
me a lift, and on the way to Rosemount
artlessly discussed her deceased
husband and her relatives—in short,
told me several chapters out of the
story of her life. I suppose she’s about
the most frivolous specimen of the frivolous
sex. Her male admirers are numerous,
and some of them trail down
from town every day. The morning
after she arrived—she came down in a
motor car, and it is to a lost bolt that
I owe my introduction—I met her out
in the car gazing soulfully into the eyes
of an elderly party with a clerical collar
and an Episcopal air. She told me
afterward it was Bishop ——, and informed
me quite calmly that he had
fled to town to save his immortal soul,
his wife being in Europe. Said her
relatives were scandalized, a fact that
seemed to please her very much. Last
night I walked down to the village to
get some medicine for my landlord,
who had eaten something that disagreed
with him and was in a rather bad way.
It was as dark as pitch, and I had a
lantern. I flashed it as I came around
a turn in the road, and found myself
face to face with my model and two
young men. Each had hold of one of
her hands, and each looked idiotically
blissful. She seemed the least confused
of the bunch, and said “good-13evening”
quite calmly. I don’t suppose
there’s another bundle of such contradictions
in the universe. She has all
the aplomb of a woman of the world,
and all of the naïveté of an unspoiled
child. No sort of companion for a man,
you understand, but vastly amusing.
She speaks of her deceased husband
with the most brutal frankness, and
makes no pretense of regarding his
passing as anything but a happy release
for her. For all her apparent
spontaneity, I’ve an idea that at heart
this model of mine is as hard as rocks.
But as I’ve already told you, she’s
teaching me a lot, and the book is progressing,
and if it’s a success, half the
royalties go to her. That is only fair.

Keep me posted about arrangements
for your trip. I’m writing now at white
heat, and should have the book ready
for my publishers within a fortnight.
And then, old pal, for Labrador and the
open and real, real life.

Yours,
John Ormsby.

CHAPTER VI.

Dear Betty: I’m inclosing that cold-cream
recipe you asked for. It’s warranted
to give you a perfect complexion,
keep your hair in curls, your hat on
straight and your temper amiable. I’m
glad to hear that you and Maurice have
had an understanding, and that everything
is all serene. If you have to be
in love with somebody, I honestly think
it’s much better to be in love with your
husband. De Mille, of course, was out
of the question, but fortunately I’ve
never felt the necessity of being in love
with anyone, and, now that I’ve reached
the age of twenty-four, it’s not probable
that I ever will. Confidentially, Betty,
I never could see what you saw in Maitland.
His eyes are good, I grant you,
but he’s so terribly sentimental. I’ve
flirted with him, so I know him. Next
to living with a man, there’s nothing
like a good flirtation to put you on to
all his good and bad qualities. Your
husband is worth a hundred of him. I
know.

My dear, I’m earning my own living,
and, according to the Willoughbys, it’s
the most extravagant thing I’ve done
in the whole course of my extravagant
career. You see, every time I remember
I’m a working woman, I feel independent,
and order a lot of new things,
and the bills have been rather stiff, I’ll
admit. But you know how miserly the
Willoughbys are! Aunt Susan suggested
that I figure up how much I’m
going to get and try to live on it, but I
declined most emphatically. I never
was good at doing sums, and I don’t
propose to begin to subtract and add at
this late day. Besides, I haven’t the
remotest idea how much I’m going to
receive, for I refuse to let Mr. Ormsby
mention the matter. Money matters
are so tiresome. But I’m forgetting
that you know nothing about my job.
I’m a model—a literary man’s model.
You’re in with that literary set, so I
suppose you’ve read his books. I read
one—Billie Scott raved so about it that
I simply had to—but there wasn’t a
woman in it, just a lot of horrid men,
that smoked and swore when they
weren’t fighting, and that fought when
they weren’t swearing and smoking.
It seems that Mr. Ormsby’s publishers
have insisted upon his turning over
a new leaf and writing something about
women, and, knowing nothing about
our sex, Betty, he conceived the strictly
original idea of employing a model. I
came down to Rosemount in Billie’s
motor car, and picked him—Mr. Ormsby—up
and took him along with me.
We had quite a romantic meeting. I
found him eating his luncheon by the
roadside, and insisted on his sharing it
with me. I give him “sittings” every
afternoon in an adorable bungalow that
he’s fitted up as a workshop. He explained
to me, in the beginning, that he
might have picked out some woman of
his acquaintance and studied her, but
that he considered it wouldn’t be honorable—that
with a hired model he felt
absolutely independent. I really can’t
endure him, but I’ve resolved to stick
this out to the bitter end. I feel like a
little wiggly bug pinned to a piece of
cardboard, with a pair of sharp, cold,14
gray eyes analyzing every wiggle. This
Ormsby is shockingly lacking in savoir
faire, and so far as flirting is concerned,
he doesn’t know the a, b, c’s of the
game.

I began this letter yesterday afternoon,
before dinner, with the hope of
getting it out in the evening mail, but
Billie and Ernie Francis came down
from town and stopped to dinner. I’m
sure the Willoughbys have never been
so gay in their lives—we’ve had company
every day since I’ve been down
here—but I can’t see that it has improved
Aunt Susan’s disposition much.
Something occurred last night that I
suppose has shoved me a peg further
down in Mr. Ormsby’s estimation. Not
that I care! After dinner, Billie and
Ernie and I went for a walk down to
the village. It was very dark coming
back, and, walking between them, naturally
I didn’t resent it when each took
one of my hands. There’s something
so comforting about the grasp of a
strong man’s hand. Haven’t you often
thought so, Betty? If I ever marry
again, I intend to pick out a man who
will be able to hold my hand in a nice
way when I’m dying.

Unfortunately, as we came around
a bend in the road, a lantern was flashed
at us. It was Ormsby, and you can’t
imagine the look of disgust on his face
when he took in the situation. As
though it were any business of his! I
had a wretched evening, for Billie and
Ernie were furious because I permitted
each to hold my hand. They have such
queer ideas of propriety! How little
real pleasure one gets out of life, Betty!
Louise has sent me down one of
those bébé hats—a perfect dream. I
intend to wear it to church to-morrow
morning and give the villagers a treat.

By the way, dear, if you’ve any old
clothes to dispose of, send them down
here. I’ve discovered a poor family—father
out of work, mother sick, baby
three days old. They are absolutely
destitute. I’ve ordered a beautiful
christening robe for the baby, and have
had the bill sent to Uncle Jacob. I intend
to be its godmother. But why will
those people insist on having so many
children, Betty? Six in this family!
Fancy! I’ve a good mind to write to
the President, and insist on his providing
for them. This man, even when
he works, doesn’t make enough to support
two—to say nothing of six. The
baby is quite pretty, except that its nose
is inclined to spread. I’ve explained to
the mother how, by pinching it every
day, she can get it into quite a respectable
shape. You see, the baby’s a girl,
and much will depend upon its nose.
If mine were Roman instead of retroussé,
I would probably have been a
bluestocking and respected by Mr.
Ormsby. Not that I care, though!

Lovingly,
Jane.

P. S.—I wish you’d leave an order
at a bookstand to have all his books
sent down. Have them sent c. o. d. to
Uncle Jacob.

CHAPTER VII.

There were three things in the culinary
line that the sum of Jane’s accomplishments
included—nut salad,
rarebit and tea. After her first visit to
the bungalow she had taken upon herself
the task of brewing the cup that
cheers, an arrangement that suited
Ormsby perfectly, for she looked very
pretty fussing with the tea things, and
he was not above taking what he called
an “academic interest” in her attractiveness.

“If one can only do a few things,
naturally, all one’s vanity is centered in
them,” she was observing to him now,
by way of explaining her fondness for
tea making. “I fancy I regard my talent
as a mother regards her only child.
If she has a number of children, she’s
uncertain, of course, whether Ann’s
blue eyes are the most beautiful in the
world or Jimmie’s brown ones, and she
can’t decide whether to thrust Susie
upon the attention of visitors, that they
may admire her golden curls, or whether
to give raven-locked Lucy the center of
the stage. With one child or one accomplishment
it’s different; you simply
have to concentrate your admiration on
that. You won’t take two lumps?”

15
Ormsby shook his head firmly, and
Jane handed him his tea. “It’s just tea
with one lump; it’s nectar with two,”
she observed, regretfully. “Speaking
of children,” she continued, as she
poured herself out a cup, “have you
seen the new Larson baby?”

“I’m sorry to say I have not,” said
Ormsby, gravely.

“It’s a dear,” observed Jane, enthusiastically.
“I think it will be the beauty
of the Larson family.”

“If the Larson family occupy that
cottage near the grove, and if all the
children who play about there are Larson
children, I fancy the baby wouldn’t
require much in the way of looks to be
the beauty of the Larson family,” he
commented, dryly.

“What a nasty remark!” exclaimed
Jane, indignantly. “They all have their
good points when you come to study
them. And you can’t imagine how
amusing they are. I’ve been helping
them along a bit lately, and between
their extravagant gratitude and the
Willoughbys’ indignation at the size of
the bills, I’ve been having no end of a
good time.” Jane leaned back and
smiled. Ormsby frowned. A good
time! That apparently was the aim and
end of her existence. Aloud he said:

“Are you never serious, Mrs. De
Mille?”

“Not very often; what’s the use?”
responded Jane, promptly.

“I should imagine that a woman who
has had the”—he hesitated for an instant—“the
sad experience you have
had would show the effect of it.”
Ormsby was really ashamed of this remark,
but Jane’s flippancy frequently
goaded him on to say things he regretted.
But she did not look offended.

“Sad experience?” she repeated, puzzled.
“Oh, you mean the Willoughbys?”

Her employer smiled in spite of himself.
He quickly regained his air of
grave composure, however. “No, I
don’t mean the Willoughbys; I mean
the death of your husband,” he said,
rebukingly.

“Oh, that!” exclaimed Jane, smiling
sweetly. “Why, you see, that’s really
the reason why I’m so gay now. When
De Mille was alive, I was always so
solemn. He had no sense of humor—it
really takes two to see a joke, you
know—and consequently I was depressed
most of the time. Since his
passing away”—Jane thought this
sounded well—“I laugh most of the
time—the reaction, I suppose.”

Ormsby handed his cup for some
more tea. “No sugar this time,” he
said, coldly. Jane looked at him wistfully.

“I suppose I’m a disappointment to
you—as a heroine, I mean,” she remarked,
almost humbly. “Perhaps”—regarding
him tentatively—“if you had
known I was not serious you would
not have engaged me.”

Ormsby shrugged his shoulders.
“You answer my purpose very well,”
he answered, indifferently, blissfully
unaware that Jane’s fingers were itching
just then to box his ears. “But you
know,” he went on, determinedly,
“woman should take some things seriously.”

“I do,” responded Jane. “I take you
seriously.”

Ormsby ignored her and continued:
“Life is not a huge joke, you know.
It——”

“You remind me of my first husband,”
interrupted Jane, frowning. “He
talked like that.”

“First?” he queried. Jane blushed.
Then she said, defiantly: “Is it so improbable
that I shall marry again?”

“Oh, that reminds me,” he said, with
that air of impersonal interest which, in
the beginning, had secretly infuriated
Mrs. De Mille, and which now unaccountably
depressed her. “Will you
allow me to ask you a question?”

“Certainly,” she answered; “ask me
anything you like.”

“I want to know,” he said, with great
deliberation, “whether you have ever
been in love?”

Jane stared at him with wide-open
eyes. “Don’t think,” he continued, hastily,
“that I have any desire to pry into
your personal affairs, but for the sake
of my book——”

16
“Oh, the book, by all means,” she answered,
rather hardly. “No, I’ve never
been in love. However”—flippantly—“I
trust I will fall in love some day. It
will be a new experience, at least. You
see, ever since I was a very little girl I
have been jobbed out——”

“Jobbed out!” exclaimed the puzzled
Ormsby.

“Passed around from one Willoughby
to the other,” explained Jane, impatiently.
“My father was the improvident
one of the Willoughby connection,
and he married an equally improvident
but awfully pretty girl, my mother.
They died within a short time of each
other”—Jane caught her breath, but
continued without a trace of feeling in
her voice—“when I was just two years
old. The Willoughbys married me to
De Mille when I was nineteen. There
you have the story of my career in a
nutshell.” She rose abruptly. “I must
be going,” she said, picking up her hat.

“Just a minute,” interposed Ormsby,
almost pleadingly, motioning her to resume
her seat. Jane sat down again
and looked at him expectantly. His
manner seemed to have changed suddenly.
His cold gray eyes had taken
on a softer, a more human, expression,
and they fastened themselves on hers
with such an intent gaze that, though
she tried to meet it boldly, she found
her own glance wavering, and the hot
color surged up in her face.

“Supposing, Mrs. De Mille,” he began,
apparently unmindful of her confusion,
“that a chap different from the
sort you’d been accustomed to, one with
less polish and with his own way—perhaps
a most uncertain one—to make,
should come to you and tell you that
he loved you—no, wait!” Jane’s lips
had parted, as though she were about to
speak. “And supposing you felt,” he
continued, “that in spite of the man’s
uncouthness he was capable of making
you love him, if only you consented to
give him a chance, do you think——”
He paused and studied her for a second
with even a more intent gaze, but
her eyes were downcast, and her trembling
fingers were rapidly tying and
untying knots in her lace handkerchief.

“Look at me, please,” he said, authoritatively.
Reluctantly, Mrs. De
Mille raised her eyes. Her soul shone
in them.

“Do you think that if that man told
you that your life with him might be
a hard one, that the wanderlust was in
his bones, and that when it took possession
of him he had to fare forth, come
what might, you would have the courage
to put your hand in his—don’t stir.”

She had turned down, but had not
extinguished, the alcohol flame, and an
impulsive gesture had brought the lace
which hung from the sleeve of her
gown in contact with it. Before she
had the remotest inkling of what had
happened, Ormsby was at her side,
smothering the flame with his hands.
It was all over in an instant. His
quickness had saved her from even the
slightest burn, and also from a realization
of her danger until that danger
was past. She leaned back in her chair
feeling rather faint, while Ormsby
walked over to a small cabinet, took
from it a bottle and rubbed some of its
contents on his hands, afterward knotting
his handkerchief carelessly around
the right one.

“You are burnt!” exclaimed Jane,
jumping up as though to go to his assistance.

“A mere trifle,” he answered, indifferently.
“It doesn’t even sting.”

She looked at him tremulously.
“Your presence of mind saved my life,”
she said, in a voice that was not quite
steady.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he replied,
rather awkwardly.

“Perhaps not,” said Jane, smiling at
him with a suggestion of her old flippancy,
“but it’s a great deal to me, you
know. It’s the only one I have. Cats
can afford to be indifferent in the face
of peril until they have exhausted eight
of their lives, at any rate, but the rest
of us, having only one poor little life,
naturally treasure it.”

Ormsby frowned. Wouldn’t she be
serious in the face of death, even?
Then he remembered the interrupted
conversation.

“The alcohol spoiled the pretty little17
situation I had arranged for my book,”
he said, smiling.

“Your book!” echoed Jane, staring at
him.

“Yes, you know the question I was
about to ask you. Your answer was
rather important to me, but you can
give it some other time. I advise you
now to go straight home and lie down.
There must have been some nervous
shock.”

“You’re mistaken,” said Jane, who
was in truth looking very pale. “I
never felt less nervous in my life, and
we mustn’t let the book suffer. Now,
if you’ll repeat the question—I’m
afraid”—penitently—“I wasn’t paying
much attention to what you were saying.”

“Oh, well, I fancy you caught the
idea of the sort of man I sketched.
Would you give up everything for his
sake, if you loved him?”

Jane rose and deliberately pinned on
her hat, leisurely consulting a tiny chatelaine
mirror after she had done so.
Then she looked at Ormsby maliciously.

“Give up! Thank you, no! You see,
all my life I’ve been giving up things I
couldn’t wrest from the Willoughbys
or De Mille.

“Not any more in mine, if you please.
I should say to that misguided and
frightfully sentimental young man:
‘Mend your ways, become rich and famous,
and then come back and Jane
will consider you.’” She picked up her
gloves and walked toward the door of
the bungalow.

“Au revoir,” she said; “so good of
you to have saved my life.”

“At least,” observed Ormsby, sarcastically,
as he hastened to open it for
her, “nobody can accuse you of being
inconsistent.”

“Billie Scott would shriek if he heard
you say so,” observed Jane, as she
calmly nodded good-by.

CHAPTER VIII.

Billie Scott had come down for the
week end, and he and Jane were motoring.

“What’s up, Jane?” he remarked,
suddenly, breaking a lengthy pause in
the conversation. “You don’t seem
like your usual self.”

“Whom do I seem like?” she inquired,
flippantly. Then she went on,
indignantly: “Whenever I keep still
for a minute or two, or in some other
way act like a rational being, everyone
is sure there is something up.”

“I merely thought,” observed Mr.
Scott, pacifically, “that there might be
something worrying you.”

“Nothing worries me except the careless
manner in which you drive this
car,” answered Jane, sharply for her.
“Please put me down at Mrs. Larson’s,
Billie.”

“Shall I wait for you?” he asked, as
he steered the machine in the direction
of the cottage.

“No, indeed”—determinedly—“and,
by the way, I think you had better go
back to town——”

“But I came down to stay over Sunday,”
he cried, in an injured voice.

“I know,” said Jane, “but the Willoughbys
like a quiet Sunday, and so
do I.”

Mr. Scott whistled.

“Terribly considerate of the Willoughbys’
feelings,” he commented, sarcastically.
“I suppose I may stop at
the house for my bag?”

The car had pulled up in front of the
Larson cottage, and Jane jumped lightly
out. She was instantly surrounded
by a troop of dirty, noisy children, but
she turned from them and smiled sweetly
up at the sulky Mr. Scott. “Dear old
Billie,” she said, sweetly; “don’t mind
me. It’s true I’m not quite myself
these days. I think the Willoughbys
must be getting on my nerves. Go home
and I’ll write you.”

“Oh, Jane, if you would only let
me——”

But Mrs. De Mille ruthlessly interrupted
him.

“Don’t be sentimental, Billie,” she
said, quickly; “and please remember
that I’ll not be proposed to every time
we meet. Ta! ta!” She gave him her
hand, withdrew it quickly and hastened
into the Larson cottage.

18
“Damn!” said Mr. Scott, under his
breath. Then he got out, bribed with
a shower of coin the Larson brood to
keep out of his path, and drove drearily
away.

Mrs. Larson was an angular, sallow-faced,
stoop-shouldered woman, who
had seen so much of the dark side of
life that she had reached the stage
where she couldn’t be persuaded there
was any other.

“He’s laid off again, miss,” she announced,
darkly, to Jane, who found
her scrubbing in the disordered kitchen.
Mrs. Larson never used anything but
the personal pronoun to designate her
spouse, so Jane knew instantly whom
she meant.

“Why, what’s the matter now?” she
asked, in dismay. “I thought he was
going to like his new work. Was he
discharged?”

“No, miss, he was not!” In spite of
her dejection, Mrs. Larson’s voice revealed
a note of pride. “But it was
inside work, and he ain’t used to inside
work, and he says as how he don’t suppose
at his age he ever will get used
to it.”

“But surely he could endure it for a
little while, until something else turned
up!” exclaimed Jane, who was finding
the Larsons a heavy responsibility.
“What in the world will you do now?”
A discussion of the problem of existence,
however, was beyond the ability
of Mrs. Larson, so she scrubbed for a
while in apathetic silence, while Jane
thought hard and anxiously.

“He’d like to be a shover,” finally volunteered
her hostess.

“A shover!” exclaimed Mrs. De
Mille, who was absolutely sure that the
leisurely Larson’s view of life was incompatible
with any form of employment
that called for shoving. His wife
nodded her head. “He always was a
master hand for going swift, and he
thought if he could get a place like Mr.
Johnson’s——”

“Oh!” said Jane, suddenly comprehending,
“I see. Does he know anything
about machinery or about driving
a car?”

Mrs. Larson shook her head despondently.
“Nothin’, miss. It’s just his
fondness for goin’ swift that made him
think of it.”

“It’s just like him to wish to ‘go
swift’ at somebody else’s expense,”
thought Jane, scornfully, but she felt a
delicacy about expressing her opinion
of Larson to his wife, so another sorrowful
pause ensued. It was broken
by a lusty yell from the new Larson
baby in the next room.

“Let me go to her,” said Jane, rising
quickly, and Mrs. Larson indifferently
acquiesced. Babies were no novelty to
her and she could not understand her
guest’s enthusiasm. Mrs. De Mille returned
to the kitchen with the baby in
her arms and seated herself near the
open window. The youngest scion of
the house of Larson was dressed in an
expensive but dirty robe, and Jane
looked at its mother reproachfully.

“You should not let her wear her
christening robe every day, Mrs. Larson,”
she protested.

“I know, miss,” answered Mrs. Larson,
apologetically, “but she don’t appear
to sleep comfortable in nothin’
else.” Jane sighed, but, she reasoned
humbly, it was not for her to preach
economy to the improvident Larsons.
The fact of the matter is that Mrs. De
Mille was feeling in an exceedingly
chastened mood these days, and even
Aunt Susan found little cause for complaint.
To-day as she sat “clucking”
softly to the Larson baby, which crowed
happily in response, she felt that even
her bedraggled and weary-looking hostess
had obtained from life something
more worth while than it had vouchsafed
her, and a wave of self-pity swept
over her.

“Goo-goo!” shrieked the baby, in an
ecstasy of delight, and, flinging up a
dimpled fist, it clutched determinedly
at the lace at Jane’s throat. The magnetic
touch of the tiny fingers proved
Mrs. De Mille’s undoing, and, to the
astonishment and disgust of the youngest
Larson, she burst into tears.

“Land sakes!” exclaimed Mrs. Larson,
dropping her scrubbing brush and
hastening to the side of her guest. “Did
it jab you in the eye?” She made an19
effort to take her offspring from Jane,
but the latter resisted.

“It—it isn’t the baby’s fault,” she
sobbed, feeling that she was acting in
a very ridiculous way, but unable to
control herself. “I was just wishing
I had a baby of my own.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Larson, understandingly,
and then her red and ugly
arms, which her sleeveless waist revealed,
were slipped about Jane, and
the two women mingled their tears exactly
as though no gulf of opportunity
and education yawned between them.

Larson had been pointed out to John
Ormsby as the only man in Rosemount
who was not above doing an errand,
provided he was well paid for it, and
Ormsby had started out in search of
him. He took a short cut to the Larson
cabin, approaching that humble
domicile by way of the rear, and while
he was still within half a block of the
premises he recognized the graceful
curve of Mrs. De Mille’s back through
the open window. With no consciousness
of eavesdropping, he strained his
ears to catch her words as he came
nearer, for invariably he found her gay
stream of nonsense stimulating. But
the look of anticipation changed to one
of profound surprise as the dwindling
distance between him and the cottage
made him spectator of the little scene
enacted in the Larsons’ untidy kitchen.

“By Jove!” he murmured, in his bewilderment.
The disgusted and temporarily
neglected Larson infant, who
was hanging over Jane’s shoulder while
that lady and its mother wept, caught
a glimpse of the man outside, and, perhaps,
recognized in his look of astonishment
a reflex of its own feelings.

“Ah, goo,” it called out, tearfully,
waving one hand feebly but sympathetically.

“By Jove!” muttered Mr. Ormsby
again, and then turned suddenly, and
made his way with surprising but quiet
dispatch down the path up which he
had come. The Larson baby, choosing
to regard his retreat in the light of a
desertion, raised a lusty howl, which
instantly brought Jane and his mother
to their senses.

Ormsby meanwhile had repaired to
the bungalow. From the drawer of the
table which he used for a desk he took
a bundle of closely written sheets and
began to thumb them over, pausing here
and there to read a passage. The more
he read, the more dissatisfied he looked,
and finally he rolled the papers up again
and thrust them contemptuously on the
table. Then he took out his pipe, filled
it and lighted it, and puffed away in
silence for a while. Presently he removed
it and looked once more at the
manuscript lying on the table.

“By Jove!” he ejaculated once more,
and then replaced his pipe and went on
smoking.

Half an hour later Mrs. Moore, the
venerable dame with whom he boarded,
found him still sitting before the table,
staring thoughtfully at the manuscript,
his pipe out. She gave him a telegram
and watched him inquisitively while he
read it. “I have to run up to New York
to-morrow,” he said, without looking
up. “Have an early breakfast, please.”

His landlady, who never spoke unless
it was absolutely necessary, nodded solemnly
and withdrew, and Ormsby took
out some paper and began to write a
note. When he had finished he read
it over and then deliberately tore it up.
Five other notes which he wrote shared
the same fate. Finally he indited a
brief one and addressed it to Mrs. De
Mille. It informed her tersely that he
had been called to town and would not
return for three days. Sealing it, he
went to the door of the bungalow, and,
after whistling vigorously for five minutes,
succeeded in attracting the attention
of a tow-headed youngster, who
was walking leisurely up the dust road.

“Take this up to Willoughby Hall at
once,” ordered Ormsby, sternly, slipping
a coin into the grimy paw.

“Yep,” answered the boy, cheerfully,
and obediently trotted off in the direction
of the architectural monstrosity on
the hill, Ormsby relentlessly following
him with his eyes until he was out
of sight. Alas! A grove of firs intervened
between the bungalow and the
house on the hill, and it was in this
grove that the tow-headed urchin20
dropped responsibility, thrust the note
and coin in his pocket and “skinned” a
tree for a nest. The coin was spent
that very night, but it was not until a
week later that, looking for a grasshopper
he had carefully stowed away in
his pocket, the recreant one came across
Ormsby’s note. The discovery was
timely, for he was in need just then of
a bit of paper to polish his agate bottle,
a new treasure.

CHAPTER IX.

It was raining; not spasmodically,
with a suggestion of lifting skies between
frenzied outbursts, but steadily,
drearily, insistently. Jane, sitting up in
bed, drew the down coverlet cozily
about her bare neck and half-clad arms,
while she despondently looked out
through the window at the dripping
landscape.

“Rain is bad enough in the city,” she
mused, “but it’s simply impossible in the
country. There, at least, you can get
away from it, but here it seems to be
all over.” There was a tap on the door.

“Come,” she called, and a maid entered
with an appetizing breakfast on a
tray. “Good-morning, Blanche,” said
Jane. “Tell me what you do on a rainy
day. You and Johnson won’t be able
to walk out this evening.”

“We sits in the kitchen, miss,” said
the little maid, primly, blushing to the
roots of her mouse-colored hair. “Cook
goes to bed early.”

“Very obliging of cook,” commented
Jane, as she sipped her coffee. “And
that reminds me, Blanche, I want to ask
you a question, and I want you to answer
me truthfully. Are you trifling
with Johnson?”

“Me, miss?” The maid’s face grew
redder than ever, but she tossed her
head. “I’m not triflin’. Mr. Johnson
keeps a-sayin’ as how he’s very fond o’
me, but I tells ’im he’s a city chap and
says the same to all th’ gurls.”

“You’re right, Blanche, all the Johnsons
are a bad lot,” said Jane, pessimistically.
“However”—for the little
maid’s face looked suddenly downcast—“I
believe Johnson is one of the best
of them, and that his intentions are serious.”
The maid beamed. “And I
would feel sorry to have you trifle with
him, because I feel responsible for him
while he’s down here. Avoid the reputation
of being a flirt, Blanche.” Jane
looked pensive. “It’s the hardest in the
world to live down.”

“Yes’m,” said the maid, politely. “Is
there anythink I can do for you?” She
adored Jane, and spent hours trying to
do her hair the way Mrs. De Mille did
hers.

“No, I think not. Have the Willoughbys
had breakfast?”

“Hours ago, miss,” answered
Blanche. Jane smiled. This breakfast
in bed represented one of her most
memorable victories over Aunt Susan,
and imparted a particularly delicious
flavor to her coffee and rolls.

“Well, take the tray; I’ll get up in
an hour or so,” said Jane, deliberately
composing herself for another nap.

She dreamed of the bungalow and of
Ormsby, and, when she finally dressed,
it was with the defeated feeling of one
who has striven hard to put certain
thoughts out of her head, but who finds
that they have taken possession even
of her dreams.

She saw Uncle Jacob and Aunt Susan
for the first time at the luncheon table.
The rain was still falling with what
Jane called disgusting pertinacity.

“Of course you’re not going out a
day like this,” said Mrs. Willoughby,
in the disapproving voice she seemed
to reserve for Jane and her husband.
By “out” she meant the bungalow. Until
Aunt Susan had spoken, Mrs. De
Mille had made up her mind that a visit
to the bungalow on such a day was out
of the question, and that Ormsby would
not expect her. Now, however, she
found herself saying, perversely: “Out!
Of course I’m going out. A woman
who works for a living cannot afford
to mind a little rain. I have an appointment
at the bungalow with Mr. Ormsby,
and I have to keep it.”

Aunt Susan sniffed. “The neighbors
are commenting——”

Jane held up a reproachful finger.21
“No gossip, aunt!” she said, rebukingly.
“Don’t you think that living in the
country has a tendency—just a slight
tendency—to make people too deeply
interested in their neighbors’ affairs?”
Jane looked excessively virtuous. “I’d
hate, Aunt Susan, to have you degenerate.
But one has to be so careful!”

Mrs. Willoughby deigned no response,
and finished the meal in stony
silence. Uncle Jacob, who found himself
unable to carry on a peaceful conversation
with Jane and his wife both
present, stealthily perused the columns
of a belated city paper he held on his
knee.

Immediately after her luncheon, Jane
went to her room and got together her
rainy-day things. When she sallied
forth presently, she wore a coquettish-looking
cap, a short, mannish coat and
a skirt that was short enough to reveal
not only a pair of the thinnest and most
absurdly small Louis Quinze shoes, but
a good bit of thin silk stocking as well.
Jane, as she tripped along, surveyed
her feet ruefully. “I know he’ll say
something sarcastic about my shoes,”
she mused, “and they are ridiculous for
a day like this, and I’ve no doubt they
do show I haven’t a scrap of common
sense—though I know women who
never wear anything but common-sense
shoes who haven’t any common sense to
boast of. It’s simply a question of
whether you’re athletic or not. Besides,
I can explain to him that I really
did try to wear a pair of Blanche’s, but
they slipped off when they were buttoned
up, and he’ll have to admit that
it’s much better for me to arrive at the
bungalow in my own shoes, even though
they’re more ridiculous, than in my
stocking feet—which would have been
the case had I worn Blanche’s. I’ll
tell——” Jane pulled herself up sharp
with a sudden, angry flush. “I don’t
know,” she said out loud, sharply, “why
you’re always trying to placate him,
Jane De Mille! Where’s your independence
gone to?” Then she fixed her
eyes firmly on the distant horizon and
her thoughts on a new summer gown
and marched independently on.

To find the bungalow locked was like
a blow to her, and when she faced about
to return home she felt suddenly very
cold, very wet, very miserable and very
forlorn. Then she recollected that he
had told her once that there was always
a key under the mat in case she
should come to the bungalow when he
wasn’t there, and, reluctant to return
to the dreariness of the Willoughby
house, she searched for this, and, finding
it, thrust it in the keyhole and
opened the door. There was no fire in
the fireplace, but there was material for
one beside it, and, kneeling down in
front of the cavernous opening, Jane
laboriously constructed one and held
out her hands gratefully to the warmth
when the flames darted forth. She surveyed
the room over her shoulder and
was chilled afresh by its deserted air.
“Can he have gone away without a
word?” she wondered, and paled at the
thought.

“It’s no use denying you’re in a very
bad way about this Ormsby, Jane De
Mille,” she reflected, pensively surveying
the dancing flames. “You’re rapidly
losing all your independence, and,
what’s worse, your self-respect. And
you haven’t the remotest reason for believing
that he cares a scrap for you.”

She rose presently, and, moving his
chair over to the fireplace, sat down in
it and held out first one and then the
other little high-heeled boot to dry. “If
he loved me,” she observed to herself,
“I really wouldn’t mind wearing thick
soles and low heels.”

Her shoes dry, she began to move
restlessly about the room. Now, it is
a curious fact that Jane had never expressed
and never felt any curiosity
about the book Ormsby was writing,
though she knew that she was furnishing
the material for the heroine. In
spite of herself, almost unconsciously,
indeed, at first, she had become so absorbed
in the writer that the book
became of secondary importance. Today,
however, his absence made everything
that was intimately associated
with him of interest to her, since they
served, in a way, as a substitute for
him. She picked up his pipe and held
it caressingly against her cheek, and22
then, with a guilty start, set it down
again. She dropped her head on an
open book he had evidently been reading,
and her eyes were dewy when she
raised it. She came upon, finally, the
bundle of papers he had tossed contemptuously
on the table the night before,
and recognized it as the manuscript
upon which he had been working.
She regarded it thoughtfully for a while
and then her face brightened.

“Why, how stupid of me!” she exclaimed,
aloud, and, going back to his
chair, she seated herself in it once more
and smoothed out the sheets.

“He can’t possibly object to my reading
it,” she reasoned, “since I’m in it,
and it’s soon to be public property.”
She stared at the title. “‘A Woman,’”
she read aloud—“that’s me, I suppose.
Why”—with an odd, breathless little
laugh—“it will be exactly like seeing
for the first time a portrait done of
yourself by some great painter—one of
those artists who pay more attention to
the soul than to the hair or the mouth
or the eyes. I’ll see myself as somebody
else sees me. It’s—it’s going to
be terribly exciting.”

Yet, in spite of the curiosity she professed,
Jane did not begin at once to
read. Instead, she dropped the manuscript
in her lap and stared for a while
into the fire, her chin propped on her
hand. Her thoughts ran on something
like this: “You’ve never had such an
awfully good time, Jane De Mille,
though you’ve put up what Billie would
call a pretty stiff bluff. You’ve never
had anybody to really and truly care for
you, unless it be Uncle Jacob, though
plenty of people have admired you for
what good looks you have or because
you didn’t bore them. But if you should
discover that somebody loved you for
yourself alone, thought you a little better,
perhaps, than you really are, you
know—why, it’s just possible——” A
catch in her breath put a stop to her
reflections, and she unrolled the manuscript
and began to read.

The fire was dying down, but, tenacious
of life as some very old man who
has prolonged his years through will
power alone, it shot forth unexpected
flames at infrequent intervals. These
lighted up Jane’s face, and such changes
did they reveal with each succeeding
appearance that they might have been
the withering years. The patter of the
rain on the roof, the rustle of the sheets
as they fell from her hand and fluttered
to the floor, the occasional sputter of
the fire—these for the next two hours
were the only sounds heard in the bungalow.
When the last page joined the
others that lay scattered about in disorder
on the floor, Mrs. De Mille stared
for a few seconds straight ahead of her,
and then, with a quivering sigh, buried
her head on the arm of the chair and
began to cry.

It lacked half an hour of dinner time,
and Jacob Willoughby sat alone in the
stuffy library. The owner of Willoughby
Hall was not what could be called
sentimental, but in the twilight hour,
and especially when the weather necessitated
an open fire, he was apt, if Susan
Willoughby was in a remote part of the
house, to let his thoughts stray back to
a time when she was not, so far as
Jacob Willoughby was concerned, and
when a slim young creature, addicted
to pink and blue muslins, but with
neither family nor prospects, was the
sun of his days, the moon and stars of
his nights. He had been sensible and
never regretted it—that is, hardly ever.
To-night, however, the dancing flames
that glorified the dull room reminded
him of the grace of his boyhood’s love,
and the dreary splash, splash, of the
rain outside, of the gray monotony of
the years that lay behind him and of
those other dull and purposeless years
that stretched out before him.

And when presently a pale Jane broke
in upon this reverie, Jacob was forced
to brush his hands across his eyes twice
to make sure it was Jane and not the
slim young creature to whom he had
brought the early crocuses in the springtime
of his youth. Neither knew exactly
how it happened, but Jane found
herself sobbing out her story on Uncle
Jacob’s broad bosom, and feeling
strangely comforted by the tender pressure
of his pudgy hand upon her shoulder.23
When she cried out that she could
not stand it to have that hateful book
come out, and to listen to the comments
upon it, it was Uncle Jacob who
suggested that a trip abroad might accomplish
wonders in the way of making
her forget both the man and the book.
Not that he believed it—he lied gallantly
there—but he had his reward in
seeing the face he loved brighten somewhat.

And when Jane stole away with a
check in her hand, leaving him to explain
to Aunt Susan her absence from
dinner and her early departure in the
morning, in spite of the ordeal that
lay before him, there was a warm glow
underneath the white vest, a glow which
even the approaching grenadier-like
tread of Aunt Susan could not dispel.

CHAPTER X.

It was the last Tuesday in November,
and Mrs. Hardenburgh was giving
the first of her usual series of at-homes.
An inveterate lion hunter was
this clever woman of sixty-odd summers,
whose hair was as thick and
golden as a débutante’s, and whose complexion
as pink and white. This afternoon
she was in a particularly complacent
mood, for she had arranged a
piquant double attraction for her guests.
When, however, by six o’clock, both attractions
had failed to materialize, the
faintest suggestion of a frown appeared
on her remarkably smooth brow.
Five minutes later the appearance of a
newcomer had dispelled it, and the
hostess was her humorous, smiling self.

The newcomer was Jane—Jane in a
gown every line of which spoke Paris,
in a dream of a hat that sat on her
proud little head like a coronet; Jane,
in short, in a perfect get-up and in
radiant health and spirits. Personally,
we’d prefer to set it down that she
looked pale, distrait; that “concealment,
like a worm i’ the bud,” etc.; but it
would not be true. Whatever the suffering
within—and there was a rather
deep, intent look about the eyes—Mrs.
De Mille presented an unconquered,
nay, a self-satisfied, front to this little
New York world, and was looking her
very best.

As she made her way slowly down
the long room to where her hostess
stood, it occurred to her that she was
causing something of a sensation. At
first she modestly ascribed it to the fact
that she had been away for six months,
and that this was her first public appearance
since her return. It dawned
upon her presently, however, that the
rooms were filled with strangers, principally,
and as the interest deepened
rather than lessened with her slow advance,
she was forced to acknowledge
to herself that something beside her
lengthened absence was responsible for
the attention she was receiving. The
more puzzled she grew, the more confidently
she carried herself, and when
a very young bud in a very high treble
agitatedly remarked to a blasé youth:
“She’s not a bit disappointing, is she?”
it expressed in words the verdict of the
rooms.

After greeting Mrs. Hardenburgh,
the first familiar face Jane encountered
was Mr. Scott’s.

“So you’ve gone and gotten yourself
engaged, faithless one?” she observed,
reproachfully, after they had
shaken hands.

“Oh, I say, Jane——” he began, in
exactly the same tone with which he
was wont, in the past, to preface one of
his numerous proposals.

Jane regarded him with mock horror.
“Billie, Billie, don’t tell me you
are going to propose!” she exclaimed,
disapprovingly. “One rather expects
proposals from the married men nowadays,
but from newly engaged ones,
fie! fie!”

Mr. Scott colored high. “You can’t
think how the sight of you makes my
heart beat,” he said, agitatedly.

“Nonsense!” retorted Jane, snubbingly.
“Point out your girl instantly.”

Pulling himself together with a palpable
effort, Mr. Scott indicated a
sparkling brunette, one of a group of
débutantes who were watching Jane
with intense interest.

24
“Why, she’s adorable!” exclaimed
Mrs. De Mille. “Present me.” And
Mr. Scott, looking suddenly very proud,
offered his arm.

“I’ve read the book,” murmured the
little brunette, ecstatically, after Jane
had offered her felicitations. “It must
be beautiful to be written about like
that.”

Mrs. De Mille stared and then grew
pale. “The book!” she echoed. “I—I
don’t know what you mean!”

“Why, I thought——” began Mr.
Scott’s pretty fiancée, looking as though
she regretted her own impulsiveness.
But before she had a chance to explain,
a tall and extremely well-dressed young
matron bore down upon Jane and triumphantly
carried her off.

“How well you’re looking, Betty,”
observed Jane, surveying her friend
rather wistfully, when they were seated
in a quiet corner.

“That’s because I’m so happy,” answered
that lady, promptly. “Maurice
is such a dear! And now, Jane, tell
me, when is the engagement to be announced?”

Mrs. De Mille opened her eyes very
wide. “Engagement!” she cried. “I
don’t know what you’re talking about.
Whose engagement?”

“Why, yours and Mr. Ormsby’s,” retorted
her friend. “Every line of the
book shows he’s desperately in love with
you. Did you refuse him?”

Jane clutched Mrs. McClurg’s hand.
“Is that awful book out, and does everybody
think it’s me?” she demanded, in
a voice that trembled in spite of her effort
to control it.

Mrs. McClurg looked at her in astonishment.
“Awful book!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t know what you’re
talking about. Mr. Ormsby’s novel is
the success of the year, and the heroine
is an extremely flattering picture of you.
All your friends have recognized it, and
they all agree with me.”

Jane rose. “If my friends think I’m
the heartless and idiotic creature that
book pictures, then I have no friends,”
she said, coldly. “Good-by, Betty.”
She turned to go, but Mrs. McClurg
caught her hand.

“I don’t believe you’ve read the book,
Jane de Mille,” she said. “The heroine
is not heartless. She’s a perfectly
adorable creature, and everybody—all
the women envy you.”

“I haven’t seen the book,” admitted
Jane, “but I read the manuscript, and
my recollection is that the author placed
me a good deal lower than the angels, to
state it mildly. I never want to see
it.”

“I can’t understand; there must be
some mistake!” exclaimed Mrs. McClurg.
“Just wait here a minute.” She
glided out from behind the screen of
palms, and, after a brief absence, came
back to the nook with a small, quietly
bound little book in her hand. “Read
that!” she commanded, triumphantly,
opening it and pointing to the title-page.

Reluctantly Jane raised her eyes and
took in the brief contents. “The
Woman, by John Ormsby,” she read,
and then, underneath, a single line, “To
her who inspired it,” and underneath
that again this fragment of verse:

“Betty.” Jane lifted her head and
looked at her friend with sudden inspiration.

“Well,” retorted Mrs. McClurg, not
too enthusiastically, for it had just occurred
to her that Mrs. De Mille had
concealed a great deal.

“I want to sneak, and I want to take
this book with me,” explained the latter,
shamelessly. “I don’t believe I have
read it. Can you—will you cover my
retreat?”

Mrs. McClurg looked only half appeased
and dubious. “Mr. Ormsby is
coming here this afternoon,” she said,
severely. “I happen to know that Mrs.
Hardenburgh has been rejoicing at the
thought that you were to meet here in
her drawing room.”

“Neat little arrangement,” observed25
Jane, ironically. Then she became suddenly
frightened. “I must go at once,”
she said. “Oh, Betty, don’t you see
that I can’t see him here? Help me,
there’s a good girl, and come to me to-morrow—I
have the same apartment,
you know—and I’ll tell you everything.”

And Mrs. McClurg, who was by no
means hard-hearted, relented. When
the big doors finally closed upon Jane,
she gave a sigh of relief, but it ended
with a gasp, for she found herself face
to face with John Ormsby, who, immaculately
attired, was ascending the
brownstone steps.

“How d’ye do?” said Mrs. De Mille,
airily, extending her hand and hoping
fervently at the same time that the book
which she had tucked away underneath
her arm was invisible.

He took her hand, but did not respond
to her salutation, only gazed hungrily
into her face.

“Where in the world have you been
hiding yourself?” he demanded, finally,
when Jane, with an effort, had removed
her hand.

“Sounds as though I were a criminal,”
commented Jane. “Did you miss
any spoons at the bungalow?”

He did not answer, only continued to
stare at her, and so she went on, nervously:
“I’ve been in Paris chiefly.
Some people don’t like Paris in the
summer time, but I adore it. But you’re
Mrs. Hardenburgh’s lion. I mustn’t detain
you. Au revoir!” She started
down the steps, but he followed her determinedly.
“If you think I’m going to
lose sight of you after my long search,
you’re mistaken,” he said, quietly.

“Mrs. Hardenburgh will be furious,
and you will be very impolite, if you
don’t go in at once,” said Jane, tucking
the little book further out of sight.

“I loathe those things,” he answered,
disrespectfully. “I only consented to
come because I was told you might be
there. But if Paradise was just inside,
and——”

“Hades,” interrupted Jane, demurely.

“And you were outside, nothing
would induce me to go in.”

“The inference is so odious I refuse
to be flattered,” she said, “but you
never were good at making pretty
speeches. If you’re coming with me”—briskly—“you’ll
have to walk. I’m
economizing. Uncle Jacob is giving
me an allowance, and I’m living on it.”

“But you’re rich, or almost rich, in
your own right,” said Mr. Ormsby, as
they walked along. “The book promises
to be preposterously successful, and
half the royalties are yours, you know.”

Jane grew suddenly frigid. “I beg
that you will not refer to that wretched
affair,” she said, haughtily. “I have
not read your book, and I am not interested
in it.”

Mr. Ormsby’s face became very
downcast. “I was in hopes that you had
read it, and that it would explain——”

“There is really nothing to explain,”
interrupted Jane. “I acted on a reckless
impulse, and was bored for my
pains. I have no wish to read your
book, though”—civilly—“I’m glad for
your sake it promises to be a success.”

Mrs. De Mille’s fall followed fast on
the heels of her little exhibition of pride.
A boy hurrying by with a bundle jostled
her arm, and the book she had been endeavoring
to conceal fell to the pavement.
In stooping to recover it, Mr.
Ormsby recognized it, but he returned
it to her without comment, and Jane
perversely chose to feel affronted at
his silence.

“I met a friend at Mrs. Hardenburgh’s
who was quite enthusiastic
about the book, and to please her I consented
to take it home to read,” she exclaimed,
coldly.

“I would not bother myself about it,
if I were you; it’s a poor thing,” he returned,
just as coldly. They walked
for a square in silence, a silence that,
strange to relate, was not broken first
by Jane but by her companion.

“I have an explanation to make, and,
in spite of the risk I run of further offending
you, I must make it,” he said,
distantly. “When I wrote that first
absurd sketch I did not understand you.
I thought that you were as frivolous
and as heartless as you appeared on the
surface.”

“Indeed!” commented Jane, tilting
her chin scornfully.

26
“And then something happened——”
he paused.

“What was it?” she asked, eagerly,
and bit her lip in vexation at herself for
displaying curiosity.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” he
responded, coolly, “but it helped me to
an understanding of you. And then I
was called to New York, and I found
when I got back that you had been at
the bungalow—you left your handkerchief
there, you know—and that you
had read the sketch, for the papers were
scattered about the floor, and I realized
that——” he hesitated.

“You realized what?” said Jane, defiantly.

“That I loved you,” he concluded,
quietly.

The acknowledgment was so unexpected
that it disconcerted Mrs. De
Mille, and she had nothing to say.

“I suppose that bores you, too?” he
said, half ironically.

“This is where I live,” was her only
response. They had reached the entrance
to a smart uptown apartment
house, and Jane paused. Her tone was
not exactly a dismissal one, and, as she
faced him, Ormsby stared at her anxiously.

“Is there—can there be any hope for
me——” he began.

“While there’s life there’s hope, you
know,” retorted Jane, frivolously. “But
I was just about to suggest that if
you’re quite certain you don’t want to
go back to Mrs. Hardenburgh’s, I’ll
give you a cup of tea.”

Her tone was noncommittal, but as
she led the way to the elevator, she
looked back at him over her shoulder
and laughed softly, and a great joy
transfigured John Ormsby’s face.

TO A ROADSIDE CEDAR

27

The Deluge
A STORY of MODERN FINANCE
By
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

XXIII.

NEXT day Langdon’s
stocks wavered, going
up a little, going down
a little, closing at practically
the same figures
at which they had
opened. Then I sprang
my sensation—that
Langdon and his particular clique,
though they controlled the Textile
Trust, did not own so much as one-fiftieth
of its voting stock. True “captains
of industry” that they were, they
made their profits not out of dividends,
but out of side schemes which absorbed
about two-thirds of the earnings of the
Trust, and out of gambling in its bonds
and stocks. I said in conclusion:

The largest owner of the stock is Walter
G. Edmunds, of Chicago—an honest man.
Send your voting proxies to him, and he
can take the Textile Company away from
those now plundering it.

As the annual election of the Trust
was only six weeks away, Langdon and
his clique were in a panic. They rushed
into the market and bought frantically,
the public bidding against them. Langdon
himself went to Chicago to reason
with Edmunds—that is, to try to
find out at what figure he could be
bought. And so on, day after day, I
faithfully reporting to the public the
main occurrences behind the scenes.
The Langdon attempt to regain control
by purchases of stock failed. He and
his allies made what must have been to
them appalling sacrifices. But even at
the high prices they offered, comparatively
little of the stock appeared.

“I’ve caught them,” said I to Joe—the
first time, and the last, during that
campaign that I indulged in a boast.

“If Edmunds sticks to you,” replied
Joe.

But Edmunds did not. I do not
know at what price he sold himself.
Probably it was pitifully small; cupidity
usually snatches the instant the bait
tickles its nose. But I do know that my
faith in human nature got its severest
shock. “You are down this morning,”
said Thornley, when I looked in on him
at his bank. “I don’t think I ever before
saw you show that you were in
low spirits.”

“I’ve found out a man with whom I’d
have trusted my life,” said I. “Sometimes
I think all men are dishonest.
I’ve tried to be an optimist like you,
and have told myself that most men
must be honest or ninety-five per cent.
of the business couldn’t be done on
credit as it is.”

Thornley smiled, like an old man at
the enthusiasm of a youngster. “That
proves nothing as to honesty,” said he.
“It simply shows that men can be
counted on to do what it is to their
plain interest to do. The truth is—and
a fine truth, too—most men wish and try
to be honest. Give ’em a chance to resist
their own weaknesses. Don’t trust
them. Trust—that’s the making of false
friends and the filling of jails.”

“And palaces,” I added.

“And palaces,” assented he. “Every
vast fortune is a monument to the credulity
of men. Instead of getting after
these heavy-laden rascals, Matthew,
you’d better have turned your attention
to the public that has made rascals of
them by leaving its property unguarded.”

28
Fortunately, Edmunds had held out,
or, rather, Langdon had delayed approaching
him, long enough for me to
gain my main point. The uproar over
the Textile Trust had become so great
that the national Department of Commerce
dared not refuse an investigation;
and I straightway began to spread
out in my daily letters the facts of the
Trust’s enormous earnings and of the
shameful sources of those earnings.
Thanks to Langdon’s political pull, the
President appointed as investigator one
of those rascals who carefully build
themselves good reputations to enable
them to charge higher prices for dirty
work. But with my facts before the
people, whitewash was impossible.

I was expecting emissaries from
Langdon, for I knew he must now be
actually in straits. Even the Universal
Life didn’t dare lend him money, and
was trying to call in the millions it had
loaned him. But I was astounded when
my private door opened and Mrs. Langdon
ushered herself in.

“Don’t blame your boy, Mr. Blacklock,”
cried she, gayly, exasperatingly
confident that I was as delighted with
her as she was with herself. “I told him
you were expecting me and didn’t give
him a chance to stop me.”

I assumed she had come to give me
wholly undeserved thanks for revenging
her upon her recreant husband. I
tried to look civil and courteous, but I
felt that my face was darkening—her
very presence forced forward things I
had been keeping in the far background
of my mind. “How can I be of service
to you, madam?” said I.

“I bring you good news,” she replied—and
I noted that she no longer looked
haggard and wretched, that her beauty
was once more smiling with a certain
girlishness, like a young widow’s when
she finds her consolation. “Mowbray
and I have made it up,” she explained.

I simply listened, probably looking
as grim as I felt.

“I knew you would be interested,”
she went on. “Indeed, it means almost
as much to you as to me. It brings
peace to two families.”

Still I did not relax.

“And so,” she continued, a little uneasy,
“I came to you immediately.”

I continued to listen as if I were
waiting for her to finish and depart.

“If you want, I’ll go to Anita.” Natural
feminine tact would have saved her
from this rawness; but, convinced that
she was a “great lady” by the flattery
of servants and shopkeepers and sensational
newspapers and social climbers,
she had long since discarded tact as
worthy only of the lowly and of the aspiring
before they “arrive.”

“You are too kind,” said I. “Mrs.
Blacklock and I feel competent to take
care of our own affairs.”

“Please, Mr. Blacklock,” she said,
realizing that she had blundered, “don’t
take my directness the wrong way. Life
is too short for pose and pretense about
the few things that really matter. Why
shouldn’t we be frank with each other?”

“I trust you will excuse me,” said I,
moving toward the door—I had not
seated myself when she did. “I think
I have made it clear that we have nothing
to discuss.”

“You have the reputation of being
generous and too big for hatred. That
is why I have come to you,” said she,
her expression confirming my suspicion
of the real and only reason for her
visit. “Mowbray and I are completely
reconciled—completely, you understand.
And I want you to be generous, and
not keep on with this attack. I am involved
even more than he. He has used
up his fortune in defending mine. Now
you are simply trying to ruin me—not
him, but me. The President is a friend
of Mowbray’s, and he’ll call off this
horrid investigation, and everything’ll
be all right, if you’ll only stop.”

“Who sent you here?” I asked.

“I came of my own accord,” she protested.
Then, realizing from the sound
of her voice that she could not have
convinced me with a tone so unconvincing,
she hedged with: “It was my
own suggestion, really it was.”

“And your husband permitted you to
come to me?”

She flushed.

“And you have accepted his overtures29
when you knew he made them only
because he needed your money?”

She hung her head. “I love him,”
she said, simply. Then she looked
straight at me, and I somehow liked her
expression. “A woman has no false
pride when love is at stake,” she said.
“We leave that to you men.”

“Love!” I retorted, rather satirically,
I imagine. “How much had your own
imperiled fortune to do with your being
so forgiving?”

“Something,” she admitted. “You
must remember I have children. I must
think of their future. I don’t want
them to be poor. I want them to have
the station they were born to.” She
went to one of the windows overlooking
the street. “Look here!” she said.

I stood beside her. The window was
not far above the street level. Just below
us was a handsome victoria, coachman,
harness, horses, all most proper,
a footman rigid at the step. A crowd
had gathered round—in those stirring
days when I was the chief subject of
conversation wherever men were interested
in money—and where are they
not?—there was almost always a
crowd before my offices. In the carriage
sat two children, a boy and a girl,
hardly more than babies. They were
gorgeously overdressed, after the vulgar
fashion of aristocrats and apers
of aristocracy. They sat stiffly, like
little scions of royalty, with that expression
of complacent superiority
which one so often sees on the faces
of the little children of the very
rich—and some not so little, too. The
thronging loungers were gaping in true
New York “lower class” awe; the
children were literally swelling with delighted
vanity. If they had been pampered
pet dogs, one would have laughed.
As they were human beings, it filled me
with sadness and pity.

“For their sake, Mr. Blacklock,” she
pleaded, her mother love wholly hiding
from her the features of the spectacle
that most impressed me.

“Your husband has deceived you
about your fortune, Mrs. Langdon,” I
said, gently. “You can tell him what I
am about to say, or not, as you please.
But my advice is that you keep it to
yourself. Even if the present situation
develops, as seems probable, develops as
Mr. Langdon fears, you will not be left
without a fortune—a very large fortune,
most people would think. But Mr.
Langdon will have little or nothing—indeed,
I think he is practically dependent
on you now.”

“What I have is his,” she said.

“That is generous,” replied I, “but is
it prudent? You wish to keep him—securely.
Don’t tempt him by a generosity
he would only abuse.”

She thought it over. “The idea of
holding a man in that way is repellent
to me,” said she, obviously posing for
my benefit.

“If the man happens to be one that
can be held in no other way,” said I,
moving significantly toward the door,
“one must overcome one’s repugnance—or
be despoiled and abandoned.”

“Thank you,” she said, giving me her
hand. “Thank you—more than I can
say.” She had forgotten entirely that
she came to plead for her husband.
“And I hope that you will soon be as
happy as I am.”

I bowed, and when there was the
closed door between us, I laughed, not
at all pleasantly. “This New York!” I
said aloud. “This New York that dabbles
its slime of sordidness and snobbishness
on every flower in the garden
of human nature.” I took from my inside
pocket the picture of Anita I always
carried. “Are you like that?” I
demanded of it. And it seemed to answer:
“Yes, I am.” Did I tear the
picture up? No. I kissed it as if it
were the magnetic reality. “I don’t
care what you are,” I cried. “I want
you! I want you!”

“Fool!” you are saying. Precisely
what I called myself. And you? Is
it the one you ought to love that you
give your heart to? Is it the one that
understands you and sympathizes with
you? Or is it the one whose presence
gives you visions of paradise and whose
absence blots out the light?

I loved her. Yet I would have torn
out my life before I would have taken30
her on any terms that did not make her
wholly mine.

XXIV.

Now that Updegraff is dead, I am
free to tell of our relations.

My acquaintance with him was more
casual than with any other of “The
Seven.” From the outset of my career
I made it a rule never to deal with understrappers,
always to get in touch
with the man who had the final say.
Thus, as the years went by, I grew into
intimacy with the great men of finance
where many with better natural facilities
for knowing them remained in an
outer circle. But with Updegraff, interested
only in enterprises west of the
Mississippi and keeping Denver as his
legal residence and exploiting himself
as a Western man who hated Wall
Street, I had a mere bowing acquaintance.
This was not important, however,
as each knew the other well by reputation.
Our common intimacies made us
intimates for all practical purposes.

Our connection was established soon
after the development of my campaign
against the Textile Trust had shown
that I was after a big bag of the biggest
game. We happened to have the same
secret broker; and I suppose it was in
his crafty brain that the idea of bringing
us together was born. Be that as
it may, he by gradual stages intimated
to me that Updegraff would convey me
secrets of “The Seven” in exchange for
a guarantee that I would not attack his
interests. I do not know what his motive
in this treachery was—probably a
desire to curb the power of his associates
in industrial despotism. Each of
“The Seven” hated and feared and suspected
the other six with far more than
the ordinary and proverbial rich man’s
jealous dislike of other rich men. There
was not one of them that did not bear
the ever-smarting scars of vicious
wounds, front and back, received from
his fellows; there was not one that did
not cherish the hope of overthrowing
the rule of Seven and establishing the
rule of One. At any rate, I accepted
Updegraff’s proposition; thenceforth,
though he stopped speaking to me when
we happened to meet, as did all the
other big bandits and most of their
parasites and procurers, he kept me
informed of every act “The Seven”
resolved upon.

Thus I knew all about their “gentlemen’s
agreement” to support the stock
market, and that they had made Tavistock
their agent for resisting any and
all attempts to lower prices, and had
given him practically unlimited funds
to draw upon as he needed. I had
Tavistock sounded on every side, but
found no weak spot. There was no rascality
he would not perpetrate for whoever
employed him; but to his employer
he was as loyal as a woman to a bad
man. And for a time it looked as if
“The Seven” had checkmated me.
Those outsiders who had invested heavily
in the great enterprises through
which “The Seven” ruled were disposing
of their holdings—cautiously,
through fear of breaking the market.
Money would pile up in the banks—money
paid out by “The Seven” for
their bonds and stocks, of which the
people had become deeply suspicious.
Then these deposits would be withdrawn—and
I knew they were going
into real estate investments, because
news of a boom in real estate and in
building was coming in from everywhere.
But prices on the Stock Exchange
continued to advance.

“They are too strong for you,” said
Joe. “They will hold the market up
until the public loses faith in you. Then
they will sell out at boom prices, as the
people rush in to buy.”

I might have wavered had I not been
seeing Tavistock every day. He continued
to wear his devil-may-care air;
but I observed that he was aging swiftly—and
I knew what that meant.
Fighting all day to prevent breaks in the
crucial stocks; planning most of the
night how to prevent breaks the next
day; watching the reserve resources of
“The Seven” melt away. Those reserves
were vast; also, “The Seven”
controlled the United States Treasury,
and were using its resources as their
own; they were buying securities that31
would be almost worthless if they lost,
but if they won, would be rebought by
the public at the old swindling prices,
when “confidence” was restored. But
there was I, cannonading away from an
impregnable position; as fast as they
repaired breaches in their walls, my big
guns of publicity tore new breaches.
No wonder Tavistock had thinner hair
and wrinkles and the drawn look about
the eyes, nose and mouth.

With the battle thus raging doubtfully
all along the line, on the one side
“The Seven” and their armies of money
and mercenaries and impressed slaves,
on the other side the public, I in command,
you will say that my yearning for
distraction must have been gratified.
If the road from his cell were long
enough, the condemned man would be
fretting less about the gallows than
about the tight shoe that was making
him limp and wince at every step. Besides,
in human affairs it is the personal,
always the personal. I soon got used
to the crowds, to the big headlines in
the newspapers, to the routine of cannonade
and reply. But the old thorn,
pressing persistently—I could not get
used to that. In the midst of the adulation,
of the blares upon the trumpets
of fame that saluted my waking and
were wafted to me as I fell asleep at
night—in the midst of all the turmoil, I
was often in a great and brooding silence,
longing for her, now with the
imperious energy of passion, and now
with the sad ache of love. What was
she doing? What was she thinking?
Now that Langdon had again played
her false for the old price, with what
eyes was she looking into the future?

Alva, settled in a West Side apartment
not far from the ancestral white
elephant, telephoned, asking me to come.
I went, because she could and would
give me news of Anita. But as I entered
her little drawing room, I said:
“It was curiosity that brought me. I
wished to see how you were installed.”

“Isn’t it nice and small?” cried she.
“Billy and I haven’t the slightest difficulty
in finding each other—as people
so often have in the big houses.” And
it was Billy this and Billy that, and what
Billy said and thought and felt—and
before they were married, she had called
him William, and had declared “Billy”
to be the most offensive combination of
letters that ever fell from human lips.

“I needn’t ask if you are happy,” said
I, presently, with a dismal failure at
looking cheerful. “I can’t stay but a
moment,” I added, and if I had obeyed
my feelings, I’d have risen up and taken
myself and my pain away from surroundings
as hateful to me as a summer
sunrise in a death chamber.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, in some confusion.
“Then excuse me.” And she
hastened from the room.

I thought she had gone to order,
or perhaps to bring, the tea. The long
minutes dragged away until ten had
passed. Hearing a rustling in the hall,
I rose, intending to take leave the instant
she appeared. The rustling
stopped just outside. I waited a few
seconds, cried, “Well, I’m off. Next
time I want to be alone, I’ll know where
to come,” and advanced to the door. It
was not Alva hesitating there; it was
Anita.

“I beg your pardon,” said I, coldly.

If there had been room to pass I
should have gone. What devil possessed
me? Certainly in all our relations
I had found her direct and frank;
if anything, too frank. Doubtless it
was the influence of my associations
downtown, where for so many months I
had been dealing with the “short-card”
crowd of high finance, who would not
play the game straight even where that
was the easy way to win. My long,
steady stretch in that stealthy and sinuous
company had put me in the state
of mind in which it is impossible to
credit any human being with a motive
that is decent or an action that is not
a dead-fall. Thus the obvious change
in her made no impression on me. Her
haughtiness, her coldness, were gone,
and with them had gone all that had
been least like her natural self, most
like the repellent conventional pattern
to which her mother and her associates
had molded her. But I was saying to
myself: “A trap! Langdon has gone
back to his wife. She turns to me.32”
And I loved her and hated her. “Never,”
thought I, “has she shown so poor
an opinion of me as now.”

“My uncle told me day before yesterday
that it was not he, but you,” she
said, lifting her eyes to mine. It is inconceivable
to me now that I could have
misread their honest story; yet I did.

“I had no idea your uncle’s notion of
honor was also eccentric,” said I, with
a satirical smile that made the blood
rush to her face.

“That is unjust to him,” she replied,
earnestly. “He says he made you no
promise of secrecy. And he confessed
to me only because he wished to convince
me that he had good reason for
his high opinion of you.”

“Really!” said I, ironically. “And no
doubt he found you open wide to conviction—now.”
This a subtlety to let
her know that I understood why she
was seeking me.

“No,” she answered, lowering her
eyes. “I knew—better than he.”

For an instant this, spoken in a voice
I had long given up hope of ever hearing
from her, staggered my cynical
conviction. Then I said, mockingly:
“Doubtless your opinion of me has been
improving steadily ever since you heard
that Mrs. Langdon has recovered her
husband.”

She winced as if I had struck her.
“Oh!” she murmured. If she had been
the ordinary woman, who in every crisis
with man instinctively resorts to weakness’
strongest weakness, tears, I might
have a very different story to tell. But
she fought back the tears in which her
eyes were swimming and gathered herself
together. “That is brutal,” she said,
with not a touch of haughtiness, but not
humbly, either. “But I deserve it.”

“There was a time,” I went on, swept
in a swift current of cold rage—“there
was a time when I would have taken
you on almost any terms. A man never
makes a complete fool of himself about
a woman but once in his life, they say.
I have done my time—and it is over.”

She sighed wearily. “Langdon came
to see me soon after I left your house
and went to my uncle,” she said. “I
will tell you what happened.”

“I do not wish to hear,” replied I.
“I have been waiting impatiently ever
since you left for news of your plans.”

She grew white, and my heart smote
me. She came into the room and seated
herself. “Won’t you stop, please, for a
moment longer?” she said. “I hope
that, at least, we can part without bitterness.
I understand now that everything
is over between us. A woman’s vanity
makes her belief that a man cares for
her die hard. I am convinced now—I
assure you I am. I shall trouble you
no more about the past. But I have the
right to ask you to hear me when I say
that Langdon came, and that I myself
sent him away; sent him back to his
wife.”

“Touching self-sacrifice,” said I,
ironically.

“No,” she replied. “I cannot claim
any credit. I sent him away only because
you and Alva had taught me how
to judge him better. I do not despise
him as do you; I know too well what
has made him what he is. But I had to
send him away.”

My comment was an incredulous look
and shrug. “I must be going,” I said.

“You do not believe me?” she asked.

“In my place, would you believe?”
replied I. “You say I have taught you.
Well, you have taught me, too—for instance,
that your years and years on
your knees in the musty temple of conventionality
before false gods have
made you—fit only for the Langdon
sort of thing. You have forgotten how
to stand erect, and your eyes cannot
bear the light.”

“I am sorry,” she said, slowly, hesitatingly,
“that your faith in me has died
just when I might, perhaps, have justified
it. Ours has been a pitiful series
of misunderstandings.”

“A trap! A trap!” I was warning
myself. “You’ve been a fool long
enough, Blacklock.” And aloud I said:
“Well, Anita, the series is ended now.
There’s no longer any occasion for our
lying or posing to each other. Any
arrangements your uncle’s lawyers
suggest will be made.”

I was bowing, to leave without shaking
hands with her. But she would not33
have it so. “Let us be friends, at least,”
she said, stretching out her long, slender
arm and offering me her hand.

What a devil possessed me that day!
With every atom of me longing for her,
I yet was able to take her hand and say,
with a smile that was, I doubt not, as
mocking as my tone: “By all means, let
us be friends. And I trust you will not
think me discourteous if I say that I
shall feel safer in our friendship when
we are both on neutral ground.”

As I was turning away, her look, my
own heart, made me turn again. I
caught her by the shoulders. I gazed
into her eyes. “If I could only trust
you, could only believe you!” I cried.

“You cared for me when I wasn’t
worth it,” she said. “Now that I am
more like what you once imagined me,
you do not care.”

Up between us rose Langdon’s face—cynical,
mocking, contemptuous. “Your
heart is his! You told me so! Don’t
lie to me!” I exclaimed. And before
she could reply I was gone.

Out from under the spell of her presence,
back among the tricksters and assassins,
the traps and ambushes of Wall
Street, I believed again; believed firmly
the promptings of the devil that possessed
me. “She would have given you
a brief fool’s paradise,” said that devil.
“Then what a hideous awakening!”
And I cursed the day when New York’s
insidious snobbishness had tempted my
vanity into starting me on that degrading
chase after “respectability.”

“If she does not move to free herself
soon,” said I, to myself, “I will put my
own lawyer to work. My right eye offends
me. I will pluck it out.”

XXV.

“The Seven” made their fatal move
on treacherous Updegraff’s treacherous
advice, I suspect. But they would not
have adopted his suggestion had it not
been so exactly congenial to their own
temper of arrogance and tyranny and
contempt for the people who meekly,
year after year, presented themselves
for the shearing with fatuous bleats of
enthusiasm.

“The Seven,” of course, controlled,
directly or indirectly, all but a few of
the newspapers with which I had advertising
contracts. They also controlled
the main sources through which
the press was supplied with news—and
often and well they had used this control,
and surprisingly cautious had they
been not so to abuse it that the editors
and the public would become suspicious.
When my war was at its height, when I
was beginning to congratulate myself
that the huge magazines of “The
Seven” were empty almost to the point
at which they must sue for peace on
my own terms, all in four days forty-three
of my sixty-seven newspapers—and
they the most important—notified
me that they would no longer carry out
their contracts to publish my daily letter.
They gave as their reason, not
the real one, fear of “The Seven,” but
fear that I would involve them in ruinous
libel suits. I who had legal proof
for every statement I made; I who was
always careful to understate! Next,
one press association after another
ceased to send out my letter as news,
though they had been doing so regularly
for months. The public had grown
tired of the “sensation,” they said.

I countered with a telegram to one or
more newspapers in every city and large
town in the United States:

“The Seven” are trying to cut the wires between
the truth and the public. If you wish
my daily letter, telegraph me direct and I
will send it at my expense.

The response should have warned
“The Seven.” But it did not. Under
their orders the telegraph companies refused
to transmit the letter. I got an
injunction. It was obeyed in typical,
corrupt corporation fashion—they sent
my matter, but so garbled that it was
unintelligible. I appealed to the courts.
In vain.

To me it was clear as sun in cloudless
noonday sky that there could be
but one result of this insolent and despotic
denial of my rights and the rights
of the people, this public confession of
the truth of my charges. I waited for
the cataclysm.

Thursday—Friday—Saturday. Apparently34
all was tranquil; apparently the
people accepted the Wall Street theory
that I was an “exploded sensation.”
“The Seven” began to preen themselves;
the strain upon them to maintain
prices, if no less than for three
months past, was not notably greater;
the crisis would pass, I and my exposures
would be forgotten, the routine
of reaping the harvests and leaving only
the gleanings for the sowers would
soon be placidly resumed.

Sunday. Roebuck, taken ill as he
was passing the basket in the church of
which he was the shining light, died at
midnight—a beautiful, peaceful death,
they say, with his daughter reading the
Bible aloud, and his lips moving in
prayer. Some hold that, had he lived,
the tranquillity would have continued;
but this is the view of those who can
not realize that the tide of affairs is no
more controlled by the “great men”
than is the river led down to the sea by
its surface flotsam, by which we measure
the speed and direction of its current.
Under that terrific tension, which
to the shallow seemed a calm, something
had to give way. If the dam had
not yielded where Roebuck stood guard,
it must have yielded somewhere else, or
might have gone all in one grand crash.

Monday. You know the story of the
artist and his statue of Grief—how he
molded the features a hundred times,
always failing, always getting an anti-climax,
until at last, in despair, he gave
up the impossible and finished the statue
with a veil over the face. I have tried
again and again to assemble words that
would give some not too inadequate impression
of that tremendous week in
which, with a succession of explosions,
each like the crack of doom, the financial
structure that housed eighty millions
of people burst, collapsed, was engulfed.
I cannot. I must leave it to
your memory or your imagination.

For years the financial leaders, crazed
by the excess of power which the people
had in ignorance and over-confidence
and slovenly good-nature permitted
them to acquire, had been tearing
out the honest foundations on which
alone so vast a structure can hope to
rest solid and secure. They had been
substituting rotten beams painted to
look like stone and iron. The crash
had to come; the sooner the better—when
a thing is wrong, each day’s delay
compounds the cost of righting it.
So, with all the horrors of Wild Week
in mind, all its physical and mental suffering,
all the ruin and rioting and
bloodshed, I still can insist that I am
justly proud of my share in bringing it
about. The blame and the shame are
wholly upon those who made Wild
Week necessary and inevitable.

In catastrophes the cry is, “Each for
himself!” But in a cataclysm the obvious
wise selfishness is generosity, and
the cry is, “Stand together, for, singly,
we perish.” This was a cataclysm. No
one could save himself, except the few
who, taking my often urged advice and
following my example, had entered the
ark of ready money. Farmer and artisan
and professional man and laborer
owed merchant; merchant owed banker;
banker owed depositor. No one
could pay because no one could get
what was due him or could realize upon
his property. The endless chain of
credit that binds together the whole of
modern society had snapped in a thousand
places. It must be repaired, instantly
and securely. But how—and
by whom?

I issued a clear statement of the situation;
I showed in minute detail how
the people, standing together under the
leadership of the honest men of property,
could easily force the big bandits
to consent to an honest, just, rock-founded,
iron-built reconstruction. My
statement appeared in all the morning
papers throughout the land. Turn back
to it; read it. You will say that I was
right. Well——

Toward two o’clock Inspector Crawford
came into my private office, escorted
by Joe. I saw in Joe’s seamed,
green-gray face that some new danger
had arisen. “You’ve got to get out of
this,” said he. “The mob in front of
our place fills the three streets. It’s
made up of crowds turned away from
the suspended banks.”

I remembered the sullen faces and35
the hisses as I entered the office that
morning earlier than usual. My windows
were closed to keep out the street
noises; but now that my mind was up
from the work in which I had been absorbed,
I could hear the sounds of many
voices, even through the thick plate
glass.

“We’ve got two hundred policemen
here,” said the inspector. “Five hundred
more are on the way. But—really,
Mr. Blacklock, unless we can get you
away, there’ll be serious trouble. Those
damn’ newspapers. Every one of them
denounced you this morning, and the
people are in a fury against you.”

I went toward the door.

“Hold on, Matt,” cried Joe, springing
at me and seizing me. “Where are you
going?”

“To tell them what I think of them,”
replied I, sweeping him aside. For my
blood was up, and I was enraged against
the poor cowardly fools.

“For God’s sake, don’t show yourself,”
he begged. “If you don’t care for
your own life, think of the rest of us.
We’ve fixed a route through buildings
and under streets up to Broadway.
Your electric is waiting for you there.”

“It won’t do,” I said. “I’ll face ’em—it’s
the only way.”

I went to the window, and was about
to throw up one of the sunblinds for a
look at them; Crawford stopped me.
“They’ll stone the building and then
storm it,” said he. “You must go at
once, by the route we’ve arranged.”

“Even if you tell them I’m gone, they
won’t believe it,” replied I.

“We can look out for that,” said Joe,
eager to save me and caring nothing
about consequences to himself. But I
had unsettled the inspector.

“Send for my electric to come down
here,” said I. “I’ll go out alone and get
in it and drive away.”

“That’ll never do!” cried Joe.

But the inspector said: “You’re right,
Mr. Blacklock. It’s a bare chance. You
may take ’em by surprise. Again, some
fellow may yell and throw a stone,
and——” He did not need to finish.

Joe looked wildly at me. “You
mustn’t do it, Matt!” he exclaimed.
“You’ll precipitate a riot, Crawford, if
you permit this.”

But the inspector was telephoning for
my electric. Then he went into the adjoining
room, where he commanded a
view of the entrance. Silence between
Joe and me until he returned. “The
electric is coming down the street,” said
he.

I rose. “Good,” said I. “I’m ready.”

“Wait until the other police get here,”
advised Crawford.

“If the mob is in the temper you describe,”
said I, “the less that’s done to
irritate it, the better. I must go out as
if I hadn’t a suspicion of danger.”

The inspector eyed me with an expression
that was highly flattering to
my vanity.

“I’ll go with you,” said Joe, starting
up from his stupor.

“No,” I replied. “You and the other
fellows can take the underground
route, if it’s necessary.”

“It won’t be necessary,” put in the
inspector. “As soon as I’m rid of you
and have my additional force, I’ll clear
the streets.” He went to the door.
“Wait, Mr. Blacklock, until I’ve had
time to get out to my men.”

Perhaps ten seconds after he disappeared,
I, without further words, put
on my hat, lit a cigar, shook Joe’s wet,
trembling hand, left in it my private
keys and the memorandum of the combination
of my private vault. Then I
sallied forth.

I had always had a ravenous appetite
for excitement, and I had been in many
a tight place; but for the first time in
my life I had a sense of equilibrium between
my internal energy and the outside
situation. As I stepped from my
street door and glanced about me, I had
no feeling of danger. The whole situation
seemed so simple. There stood
the electric, just across the narrow
stretch of sidewalk; there were the two
hundred police, under Crawford’s orders,
scattered everywhere through the
crowd, and good-naturedly jostling and
pushing to create distraction. Without
haste, I got into my machine. I calmly
met the gaze of those thousands, quiet36
as so many barrels of gunpowder before
the explosion. The chauffeur turned
the machine.

“Go slow,” I called to him. “You
might hurt somebody.”

But he had his orders from the inspector.
He suddenly darted ahead at
full speed. The mob scattered in every
direction, and we were in Broadway,
bound up town full-tilt, before I or the
mob realized what he was about.

I called to him to slow down. He
paid not the slightest attention. I
leaned from the window and looked up
at him. It was not my chauffeur; it
was a man who had the unmistakable
but indescribable marks of the plainclothes
policeman. “Where are you going?”
I shouted.

“You’ll find out when we arrive,” he
shouted back, grinning.

I settled myself and waited—what
else was there to do? Soon I guessed
we were headed for the pier off which
my yacht was anchored. As we dashed
on to it, I saw that it was filled with
police, both in uniform and in plain
clothes. I descended. A detective sergeant
stepped up to me. “We are here
to help you to your yacht,” he explained.
“You wouldn’t be safe anywhere
in New York—no more would
the place that harbored you.”

He had both common sense and force
on his side. I got into the launch. Four
detective sergeants accompanied me,
and went aboard with me. “Go ahead,”
said one of them to my captain. He
looked at me for orders. “We are in
the hands of our guests,” said I. “Let
them have their way.”

We steamed down the bay and out to
sea.

* * * * *

From Maine to Texas the cry rose
and swelled: “Blacklock is responsible!
What does it matter whether he lied or
told the truth? See the results of his
crusade! He ought to be pilloried! He
ought to be killed! He is the enemy of
the human race. He has almost plunged
the whole civilized world into bankruptcy
and civil war.” And they turned
eagerly to the very autocrats who had
been oppressing and robbing them.
“You have the genius for finance and
industry. Save us!”

If you did not know, you could guess
how those patriots with the “genius for
finance and industry” responded. When
they had done, when their program was
in effect, Langdon, Melville and Updegraff
were the three richest men in the
country, and as powerful as Octavius,
Anthony and Lepidus after Philippi.
They had saddled upon the reorganized
finance and industry of the nation heavier
taxes than ever, and a vaster and
more expensive and more luxurious
army of their parasites. The people had
risen for financial and industrial freedom;
they had paid its fearful price;
then, in senseless panic and terror, they
flung it away. I have read that one of
the inscriptions on Apollo’s temple at
Delphi was, “Man, the fool of the
farce.” Truly, the gods must have
created us for their amusement; and
when Olympus palls, they ring up the
curtain on some such screaming comedy
as was that. It

“Makes the fancy chuckle, while the heart doth ache.”

XXVI.

My enemies caused it to be widely
believed that Wild Week was my deliberate
contrivance for the sole purpose
of enriching myself. Thus they
got me a reputation for almost superhuman
daring, for Satanic astuteness
at cold-blooded calculation. I do not
deserve the admiration and respect
which my success-worshiping fellow-countrymen
lay at my feet. True, I did
greatly enrich myself; but not until the
Monday after Wild Week.

Not until I had pondered on men and
events with the assistance of the newspapers
my detective protectors and jailers
permitted to be brought aboard—not
until the last hope of turning Wild
Week to the immediate public advantage
had sputtered out like a lost man’s
last match, did I think of benefiting
myself, of seizing the opportunity to
strengthen myself for the future. On37
Monday morning I said to Sergeant
Mulholland: “I want to go ashore and
send some telegrams.”

The sergeant is one of the detective
bureau’s “dress-suit men.” He is by
nature phlegmatic and cynical. His experience
has put over that a veneer of
weary politeness. We had become great
friends during our enforced inseparable
companionship. For Joe, who looked
on me somewhat as a mother looks on
a brilliant but erratic son, had, as I
soon discovered, elaborated a wonderful
program for me. It included a watch
on me day and night, lest, through rage
or despondency, I should try to do violence
to myself. A fine character, that
Joe! But, to return, Mulholland answered
my request for shore leave with
a soothing smile. “Can’t do it, Mr.
Blacklock,” he said. “Our orders are
positive. But when we put in at New
London and send ashore for further
instructions, and for the papers, you
can send your telegrams.”

“As you please,” said I. And I gave
him a cipher telegram to Joe—an order
to invest my store of cash, which
meant practically my whole fortune, in
the gilt-edged securities that were to be
had for cash at a small fraction of their
actual value.

This on the Monday after Wild
Week, please note. I would have helped
the people to deliver themselves from
the bondage of the bandits. They would
not have it. I would even have sacrificed
my all in trying to save them in
spite of themselves. But what is one
sane man against a stampeded multitude
of maniacs? For confirmation of
my disinterestedness, I point to all those
weeks and months during which I
waged costly warfare on “The Seven,”
who would gladly have given me more
than I now have, could I have been
bribed to desist. But when I was compelled
to admit that I had overestimated
my fellow-men, that the people wear
the yoke because they have not yet become
intelligent and competent enough
to be free, then and not till then did I
abandon the hopeless struggle.

And I did not go over to the bandits;
I simply resumed my own neglected
personal affairs and made Wild Week
at least a personal triumph.

There is nothing of the spectacular
in my make-up. I have no belief in the
value of martyrs and martyrdom.
Causes are not won—and in my humble
opinion never have been won—in the
graveyards. Alive and afoot and armed,
and true to my cause, I am the dreaded
menace to systematic and respectable
robbery. What possible good could
have come of mobs killing me and the
bandits dividing my estate?

But why should I seek to justify myself?
I care not a rap for the opinion
of my fellow-men. They sought my life
when they should have been hailing me
as a deliverer; now they look up to me
because they falsely believe me guilty
of what I regard as an infamy.

My guards expected to be recalled on
Tuesday. But Melville heard what
Crawford had done about me, and
straightway used his influence to have
me detained until the new grip of the
old gang was secure. Saturday afternoon
we put in at Newport for the daily
communication with the shore. When
the launch returned, Mulholland
brought the papers to me, lounging aft
in a mass of cushions under the awning.
“We are going ashore,” said he. “The
order has come.”

I had a sudden sense of loneliness.
“I’ll take you down to New York,” said
I. “I must put my guests off where
I took them up.”

As we steamed slowly westward I
read the papers. The country was rapidly
readjusting itself, was returning
to the conditions before the upheaval.
The “financiers”—the same old gang,
except for a few of the weaker brethren
ruined and a few strong outsiders who
had slipped in during the confusion—were
employing all the old, familiar devices
for deceiving and robbing the people.
The upset milking-stool was
righted, and the milker was seated again
and busy, the good old cow standing
without so much as shake of horn or
switch of tail. “Mulholland,” said I,
“what do you think of this business of
living?”

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Blacklock,” said38
he. “I used to fuss and fret a good
deal about it. But I don’t any more.
I’ve got a house up in the Bronx,
and a bit of land round it. And there’s
Mrs. Mulholland and four little Mulhollands
and me—that’s my country and
my party and my religion. The rest is
off my beat, and I don’t give a damn for
it. I don’t care which fakir gets to be
President, or which swindler gets to be
rich. Everything works out somehow,
and the best any man can do is to mind
his own business.”

“Mulholland—Mrs. Mulholland—four
little Mulhollands,” said I reflectively.
“That’s about as much as one
man could attend to properly. And—you
are ‘on the level,’ aren’t you?”

“Some say honesty’s the best policy,”
replied he. “Some say it isn’t. I don’t
know, and I don’t care, whether it is
or it isn’t. It’s my policy. And we six
seem to have got along on it so far.”

I sent my “guests” ashore the next
morning. “No, I’ll stay aboard,” said
I to Mulholland, as he stood aside for
me to precede him down the gangway
to the launch. I went into the watch
pocket of my trousers and drew out the
folded two one-thousand-dollar bills I
always carried—it was a habit formed
in my youthful, gambling days. I
handed him one of the bills. He hesitated.

“For the four little Mulhollands,” I
urged.

He put it in his pocket. I watched
him and his men depart with a heavy
heart. I felt alone, horribly alone, without
a tie or an interest. Some of the
morning papers spoke respectfully of
me as one of the strong men who had
ridden the flood and had been landed by
it on the heights of wealth and power.
Admiration and envy lurked even in
sneers at my “unscrupulous plotting.”
Since I had wealth, plenty of wealth, I
did not need character. Of what use
was character in such a world except
as a commodity to exchange for wealth?

“Any orders, sir?” interrupted my
captain.

I looked round that vast and vivid
scene of sea and land activities. I
looked along the city’s titanic sky-line—the
mighty fortresses of trade and
commerce piercing the heavens and
flinging to the wind their black banners
of defiance. I felt that I was under
the walls of hell itself.

“To get away from this,” replied I
to the waiting captain. “Go back down
the Sound—to Dawn Hill.”

Yes, I would go to the peaceful,
soothing country, to my dogs and
houses and those faithful servants
bound to me by our common love for
the same animals. “Men to cross
swords with, to amuse oneself with,”
I mused. “But dogs and horses to live
with.” I pictured myself at the kennels—the
joyful uproar the instant instinct
warned the dogs of my coming; how
they would leap and bark and tremble
in a very ecstasy of delight as I stood
among them; how jealous all the others
would be as I selected one to caress.

“Send her ahead as fast as she’ll go,”
I called to the captain.

As the Albatross steamed into the
little harbor, I saw Mowbray Langdon’s
Indolence at anchor. I glanced
toward Steuben Point—where his cousins,
the Vivians, live—and thought I
recognized his launch at their pier. We
saluted the Indolence; the Indolence saluted
us. My launch was piped away
and took me ashore. I strolled along
the path that wound round the base
of the hill toward the kennels. At
the crossing of the path down from the
house, I paused and lingered on the
glimpse of one of the corner towers of
the great showy palace. I was muttering
something—I listened to myself. It
was: “Mulholland, Mrs. Mulholland
and the four little Mulhollands.” And
I felt like laughing aloud, such a joke
was it that I should be envying a policeman
his potato patch and his fat wife
and his four brats, and that he should be
in a position to pity me.

You may be imagining that, through
all, Anita had been dominating my mind.
That is the way it is in the romances;
but not in life. No doubt there are men
who brood upon the impossible, and
moon and maunder away their lives
over the grave of a dead love; no doubt
there are people who will say that, because39
I did not shoot Langdon or her
or myself, or fly to a desert, or pose in
the crowded places of the world as the
last scene of a tragedy, I therefore cared
little about her. I offer them this suggestion:
A man strong enough to give
a love worth a woman’s while is strong
enough to live on without her when he
finds he may not live with her.

As I stood there that summer day,
looking toward the crest of the hill, at
the mocking mausoleum of my dead
dream, I realized what the incessant
battle of the Street had meant to me.
“There is peace for me only in the
storm,” said I. “But, thank God, there
is peace for me somewhere.”

Through the foliage I had glimpses
of some one coming slowly down the
zigzag path. Presently, at one of the
turnings half-way up the hill, appeared
Mowbray Langdon. “What is he doing
here?” thought I, scarcely able to believe
my eyes. “Here of all places!”
And then I forgot the strangeness of
his being at Dawn Hill in the strangeness
of his expression. For it was apparent,
even at the distance which separated
us, that he was suffering from
some great and recent blow. He looked
old and haggard; he walked like a man
who neither knows nor cares where he
is going.

He had not seen me, and my impulse
was to avoid him by continuing on toward
the kennels. I had no especial
feeling against him; I had not lost
Anita because she cared for him or he
for her, but because she did not care for
me. Simply that to meet would be
awkward, disagreeable for us both. At
the slight noise of my movement to go
on, he halted, glanced round eagerly, as
if he hoped the sound had been made by
some one he wished to see. His glance
fell on me. He stopped short, was for
an instant disconcerted; then his face
lighted up with devilish joy. “You!”
he cried. “Just the man!” And he descended
more rapidly.

At first I could make nothing of this
remark. But as he drew nearer and
nearer, and his ugly mood became more
and more apparent, I felt that he was
looking forward to provoking me into
giving him a distraction from whatever
was tormenting him. I waited. A few
minutes and we were face to face, I
outwardly calm, but my anger slowly
lighting up as he deliberately applied
to it the torch of his insolent eyes. He
was wearing his old familiar air of cynical
assurance. Evidently, with his recovered
fortune, he had recovered his
conviction of his great superiority to
the rest of the human race—the child
had climbed back on the chair that
made it tall and had forgotten its tumble.
And I was wondering again that
I, so short a time before, had been
crude enough to be fascinated and
fooled by those tawdry posings and
pretenses. For the man, as I now saw
him, was obviously shallow and vain, a
slave to those poor “man-of-the-world”
passions—ostentation, and cynicism,
and skill at vices old as mankind and
tedious as a treadmill, the commonplace
routine of the idle and foolish and purposeless.
A clever, handsome fellow,
but the more pitiful that he was by
nature above the uses to which he
prostituted himself.

He fought hard to keep his eyes
steadily on mine; but they would waver
and shift. Not, however, before I had
found deep down in them the beginnings
of fear. “You see, you were mistaken,”
said I. “You have nothing to
say to me—or I to you.”

He knew I had looked straight to the
bottom of his real self, had seen the
coward that is in every man who has
been bred to appearances only. Up
rose his vanity, the coward’s substitute
for courage. “You think I am afraid
of you?” he sneered, bluffing and blustering
like the school bully.

“I don’t in the least care whether you
are or not,” replied I. “What are you
doing here, anyhow?”

It was as if I had thrown off the
cover of a furnace. “I came to get the
woman I love,” he cried. “You stole
her from me. You tricked me. But,
by God, Blacklock, I’ll never pause until
I get her back and punish you.” He
was brave enough now, drunk with the
fumes from his brave words. “All my
life,” he raged arrogantly on, “I’ve had40
whatever I wanted. I’ve let nothing
interfere—nothing and nobody. I’ve
been too forbearing with you—first because
I knew she could never care for
you, and then because I rather admired
your pluck and impudence. I like to see
fellows kick their way up among us
from the common people.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. No
doubt the fiend that rose within me, as
from the dead, looked at him from my
eyes. He has great physical strength,
but he winced under that weight and
grip, and across his face flitted the
terror which must come to any man at
first sense of being in the angry clutch
of one stronger than he. I slowly released
him—I had tested and realized
my physical superiority; to use it would
be cheap and cowardly. “You can’t
provoke me to descend to your level,”
said I, with the easy philosophy of him
who clearly has the better of the argument.

He was shaking from head to foot,
not with terror, but with impotent rage.
How much we owe to accident! The
mere accident of my physical superiority
had put him at hopeless disadvantage;
had made him feel inferior to me
as no victory of mental or moral superiority
could possibly have done. And I
myself felt a greater contempt for him
than the discovery of his treachery and
his shallowness had together inspired.

“I shan’t indulge in flapdoodle,” I
went on. “I’ll be frank. A year ago,
if any man had faced me with a claim
upon a woman who was married to me,
I’d probably have dealt with him as
your vanity and what you call ‘honor’
would force you to try to deal with a
similar situation. But I live to learn,
and I’m, fortunately, not afraid to follow
a new light. There is the vanity
of so-called honor; there is also the demand
of justice—of fair play. As I
have told her, so I now tell you—she is
free to go. But I shall say one thing
to you that I did not say to her. If you
do not deal fairly with her, I shall see
to it that there are ten thorns to every
rose in that bed of roses on which you
lie. You are contemptible in many ways—perhaps
that’s why women like you.
But there must be some good in you, or
possibilities of good, or you could not
have won and kept her love.”

He was staring at me with a dazed
expression. I rather expected him to
show some of that amused contempt
with which men of his sort always receive
a new idea that is beyond the
range of their narrow, conventional
minds. For I did not expect him to understand
why I was not only willing,
but even eager, to relinquish a woman
whom I could hold only by asserting a
property right in her. And I do not
think he did understand me, though his
manner changed to a sort of grudging
respect. He was, I believe, about to
make some impulsive, generous speech,
when we heard the quick strokes of
iron-shod hoofs on the path from the
kennels and the stables—is there any
sound more arresting? Past us at a gallop
swept a horse, on his back—Anita.
She was not in riding-habit; the wind
fluttered the sleeves of her blouse, blew
her uncovered hair this way and that
about her beautiful face. She sped on
toward the landing, though I fancied
she had seen us.

Anita at Dawn Hill; Langdon, in a
furious temper, descending from the
house toward the landing; Anita presently
riding like mad—“to overtake
him,” thought I. And I read confirmation
in his triumphant eyes. In another
mood, I suppose my fury would have
been beyond my power to restrain it.
Just then—the day grew dark for me,
and I wanted to hide away somewhere.
Heartsick, I was ashamed for her, hated
myself for having blundered into surprising
her.

She reappeared at the turn round
which she had vanished. I now noted
that she was riding without saddle or
bridle, with only a halter round the
horse’s neck—then she did see us,
had stopped and come back as soon as
she could. She dropped from the horse,
looked swiftly at me, at him, at me
again, with intense anxiety. “I saw
your yacht in the harbor only a moment
ago,” she said to me. She was almost
panting. “I feared you might meet
him. So I came.”

41
“As you see, he is quite—intact,” said
I. “I must ask that you and he leave
the place at once.” And I went rapidly
along the path toward the kennels.

An exclamation from Langdon forced
me to turn in spite of myself. He was
half kneeling, was holding her in his
arms. At that sight, the savage in me
shook himself free. I dashed toward
them with I knew not what curses
bursting from me. Langdon, intent
upon her, did not realize until I sent
him reeling backward to the earth and
snatched her up. Her white face, her
closed eyes, her limp form made my
fury instantly collapse. In my confusion
I thought she was dead. I laid her
gently on the grass and supported her
head, so small, so gloriously crowned,
the face so still and sweet and white,
like the stainless entrance to a stainless
shrine. How that horrible fear changed
my whole way of looking at her, at him,
at her and him, at everything!

Her eyelids were quivering—her eyes
were opening—her bosom was rising
and falling slowly as she drew long, uncertain
breaths. She shuddered, sat up,
started up. “Go! go!” she cried. “Bring
him back! Bring him back! Bring
him——”

There she recognized me. “Oh!” she
said, and gave a great sigh of relief.
She leaned against a tree and looked at
Langdon. “You are still here? Then
tell him.”

Langdon gazed sullenly at the
ground. “I can’t,” he answered. “I
don’t believe it. Besides—he has given
you to me. Let us go. Let me take you
to the Vivians’.” He threw out his arms
in a wild, passionate gesture; he was
utterly unlike himself. His emotion
burst through and shattered pose and
cynicism and hard crust of selfishness
like the exploding powder bursting the
shell. “I can’t give you up, Anita!” he
exclaimed desperately. “I can’t! I
can’t!”

But her gaze was all this time steadily
on me, as if she feared I would go,
should she look away. “I will tell you
myself,” she said rapidly, to me. “We—uncle
Howard and I—read in the papers
how they had all turned against
you, and he brought me over here. He
has been telegraphing for you. This
morning he went to town to search for
you. About an hour ago Langdon
came. I refused to see him, as I have
ever since the time I told you about at
Alva’s. He persisted, until at last I had
the servant request him to leave the
house.”

“But now there’s no longer any reason
for your staying, Anita,” he
pleaded. “He has said you are free.
Why stay when you would really no
more be here than if you were to go,
leaving one of your empty dresses?”

She had not for an instant taken her
gaze from me; and so strange were her
eyes, so compelling, that I seemed unable
to move or speak. But now she
released me to blaze upon him—and
never shall I forget any detail of her
face or voice as she said to him: “That
is false, Mowbray Langdon. I told you
the truth when I told you I loved him!”

So violent was her emotion that she
had to pause for self-control. And I?
I was overwhelmed, dazed, stunned.
When she went on, she was looking at
neither of us. “Yes, I loved him almost
from the first—from the day he
came to the box at the races. I was
ashamed, poor creature that my parents
had made me! I was ashamed of it.
And I tried to hate him, and thought I
did. And when he showed me that he
no longer cared, my pride goaded me
into the folly of trying to listen to you.
But I loved him more than ever. And
as you and he stand here, I am ashamed
again—ashamed that I was ever so
blind and ignorant and prejudiced as to
compare him with”—she looked at
Langdon—“with you. Do you believe
me now—now that I humble myself
before him in your presence?”

I should have had no heart at all if I
had not felt pity for him. His face was
gray, and on it were those signs of age
that strong emotion brings to the surface
after forty. “You could have
convinced me in no other way,” he replied,
after a silence, and in a voice I
should not have recognized.

Silence again. Presently he raised his
head, and with something of his old42
cynicism bowed to her. “You have
avenged much and many,” said he. “I
have often had a presentiment that my
day of wrath would come.” He lifted
his hat, bowed to me without looking at
me, and, drawing the tatters of his pose
still further over his wounds, moved
away toward the landing.

I, still in a stupor, watched him until
he had disappeared. When I turned to
her, she dropped her eyes. “Uncle
Howard will be back this afternoon,”
said she. “If I may, I’ll stay at the
house until he comes to take me.”

A weary, half-suppressed sigh escaped
from her. I knew how she must
be reading my silence, but I was still
unable to speak. She went to the horse,
browsing near by; she stroked his muzzle.
Lingeringly she twined her fingers
in his mane, as if about to spring to his
back! That reminded me of a thousand
and one changes in her—little changes,
each a trifle in itself, yet, taken all together,
making a complete transformation.

“Let me help you,” I managed to say.
And I bent, and made a step of my
hand.

She touched her fingers to my shoulder,
set her narrow, graceful foot upon
my palm. But she did not rise. I
glanced up; she was gazing wistfully
down at me. “Women have to learn by
experience just as do men,” said she
forlornly. “Yet men will not tolerate
it.”

I suppose I must suddenly have
looked what I was unable to put into
words—for her eyes grew very wide,
and with a cry that was a sigh and a
sob and a laugh and a caress all in one,
she slid into my arms and her face was
burning against mine.

“Do you remember the night at the
theater,” she murmured, “when your
lips almost touched my neck?—I loved
you then—Black Matt!—Black Matt!”

And I found voice; and the horse
wandered away.

* * * * *

What more?

How Langdon eased his pain and
soothed his vanity? Whenever an old
Babylonian nobleman had a misfortune,
he used to order all his slaves to be
lashed, that their shrieks and moans
might join his in appeasing the god who
was punishing him. Langdon went
back to Wall Street, and for months
he made all within his power suffer;
in his fury he smashed fortunes, lowered
wages, raised prices, reveled in
the blasts of a storm of impotent curses.
But you do not care to hear about that.

As for myself, what could I tell that
you do not know or guess? Now that
all men, even the rich, even the parasites
of the bandits, groan under their tyranny
and their taxes, is it strange that
the resentment against me has disappeared,
that my warnings are remembered,
that I am popular? I might forecast
what I purpose to do when the time
is ripe. But I am not given to prophecy.
I will only say that I think I shall, in
due season, go into action again—profiting
by my experience in the futility
of trying to hasten evolution by
revolution. Meanwhile——

As I write, I can look up from the
paper, and out upon the lawn, at a woman—what
a woman!—teaching a baby
to walk. And, assisting her, there is a
boy, himself not yet an expert at walking.
I doubt if you’d have to glance
twice at that boy to know he is my son.
Well—I have borrowed a leaf from
Mulholland’s philosophy. I commend
it to you.

THE END.

43

Conversations With Egeria
Woman’s Trump Card?
By MRS. WILSON WOODROW

THE senator and Egeria
sat in the rich man’s
tent—a marble palace
by the sea—and the little
nook in the supper
room upon which they
had fastened their
desire was at last untenanted.
Now they slipped into the
recently vacated chairs with a smile of
content into each other’s eyes across the
board.

“A moment ago,” said the senator,
unfolding his napkin, “we gazed at
those who slowly sipped their coffee
and wished that our belief still held its
lost Paradise—Hell—that we might
mentally consign them thither. A moment
since we were the people, hungry,
clamorous, watching them ‘spill the
bread and spoil the wine.’ In the
twinkling of an eye our attitude
changed. We now look with indifferent
scorn upon the waiting mob, and
advise them if they have no bread to eat
cake. What a range of experience it
gives us! We are one with the labor
agitator elevated to the presidency of a
trust. We are the men in the saddle—after
us, the deluge!”

“We are the conquerors, at any rate,”
observed Egeria. “Ours is this delicate
pâté, this soft, smooth wine. Vive le
rich man! May he entertain oftener!
It is unsurpassed.”

“Save by Nature,” returned the senator.
“You have failed to notice that
she too entertains to-night. What a
fête! The sea dashing the froth of its
‘night and its might’ against the wall,
that arch of honeysuckle, sweeter than
a bank of violets, and yonder pale siren,
the moon! Fair to-night, I drink to
you!”

“After all,” mused Egeria, “the high
gods bestowed on Nature a woman’s
privilege—the last word. Art may declaim,
Science explain, Religion dogmatize;
but Nature has the last word.”

“And the last word, the one word, the
eternal word, is ‘beauty,’” he amended.

Egeria shrugged her shoulders. “A
matter of surfaces. The mask nature
wears to hide her hideous processes of
decay. As the lovely heroine of a recent
novel says, ‘the beauty that rules
the world is lodged in the epidermis.’”

“A superficial and essentially feminine
point of view,” commented the senator.
“Beauty”—with a wave of the
hand—“is a matter of the soul. The
skin-deep variety is not worth considering.”

“But most women would pay the
price of a pound of radium for that infinitesimal
depth,” she returned, flippantly.

“Your sex is hardly a judge of what
constitutes feminine beauty.” There
was condescension in the senator’s tone.
“Here, I can prove the point for you.
Grant me your indulgence and I will
tell you a little story.” The senator
rather fancied himself as a raconteur.

“There was once a woman who was
regarded by all the men of her acquaintance
as ugly, stupid and tiresome,
and by all the women who knew her as
beautiful, brilliant, fascinating and altogether
delightful. Their different
points of view led to so much discussion
and bickering that they finally decided
to submit the matter to a referee, a wise
old fellow, who, after a very thorough44
acquaintance with the world and its
works, had elected to spend the remainder
of his days in seclusion.

“The philosopher kindly consented to
decide the matter, and consequently
gave the lady in question due study.
Ultimately he announced his decision.

“‘Both sides are right,’ he said. ‘She
is the ugliest, stupidest, most aggressive
creature on earth; but masculine indifference
and dislike have thrown such a
halo about her that all women see her
as beautiful and charming.’”

During the recital of this tale, a flush
had risen on Egeria’s cheek, and she
tapped her foot with growing impatience
upon the floor. Barely had he
finished when she cried, explosively:

“I hate men! Your fable proves
nothing but the ineffable conceit of your
sex!”

The senator pursued his advantage.
“I saw a similar remark in a book I was
reading the other day”—pleasantly.
“‘I hate men,’ said one woman to another;
‘I wish they were all at the bottom
of the sea.’

“‘Then,’ replied the woman to whom
she spoke, ‘we would all be purchasing
diving bells.’

“But”—hastily, as Egeria half rose—“you
really don’t consider women
judges of what constitutes feminine
beauty?”

“The only judges. We are not
dazzled, hypnotized, by a mere matter
of exquisite coloring, the fugitive glance
of too expressive eyes. We are able to
bring a calm, unbiased scrutiny to bear
upon it, to fully analyze it. We do not
confuse beauty with charm.”

“Are the two, then, distinct?” he pondered.

“Are they distinct?” repeated Egeria,
scornfully. “Are they distinct? Some
one—a man, of course—has said that if
Cleopatra had been without a front
tooth the whole history of the world
would have been changed; and Heine,
you remember, when asked about Madame
de Staël, remarked that, had
Helen looked so, Troy would not have
known a siege. Absurd! The sirens of
this world who have swayed men’s
hearts and imaginations have never
been dependent on their front teeth or
their back hair. If Cleopatra had lost
a whole row, Antony and every other
man who knew her would have insisted
that women in the full possession of
their molars were repulsive.”

“Ah!” cried the senator, triumphantly,
“your words justify me. Beauty is
some subtle essence of the soul, as I
said.”

A faint, malicious sparkle brightened
Egeria’s eyes. “Really, now, would you
call the sirens of this world soulful
creatures? They were and are psychologists,
intuitive diviners of a man’s
moods, capable of meeting him on
every side of his nature; but——”

“Do you mean,” interrupted the senator,
his eyes reflecting the sparkle of
hers, “that their dominion over us is
through an intellectual comprehension
of our moods?”

“Good heavens, no!” disclaimed
Egeria, in shocked tones. “Who said
anything about the intellectual faculties
of woman? I hear enough of them at
my club. What I am trying to get at
is that beauty without charm has always
received a very frigid appreciation.
Men prate of it, adore it, yawn,
and—leave it. Of the two, they infinitely
prefer charm without beauty.
Now, senator, what is it you really admire
in women?”

“I will tell you if you tell me first
what women really admire in men?”

“Ah!” cried Egeria, with complacency,
“there we have the advantage of
you. We show twice the solid, substantial
reasons for the faith that is in
us that you do. Woman admires in
man masculinity, virility; then brains,
ability, distinction. She may loudly
profess her devotion to ‘the carpet
knight so trim.’ ‘Such a dear, thoughtful
fellow, so sweet and sympathetic!’
But her secret preference is profoundly
for the one who is ‘in stern fight a warrior
grim, in camp a leader sage.’ She
has not altered since the Stone Age, not
in the least degree. When she was
dragged by the hair from her accustomed
cave to make a happy home in a
new one, do you fancy she gave a
thought to the recent companion of her45
joys and sorrows who was lying somewhere
with his head stove in? Not she.
Her pity was swallowed up in admiration
for the victor, who, lightly ignoring
the marks of her teeth and nails, haled
her along to his den. It is to the strong
men of this earth that the heart of
woman goes out.

“Printed articles on the home,” she
went on, with light derision, “are always
urging husbands to show the same
tender attention and loving courtesies to
their wives after marriage as before. In
reality, nothing would so bore a woman.
Man is an idealist; woman is intensely
practical. She would infinitely prefer
to have him out winning the bread and
butter and jam than sitting at her feet,
penning sonnets to her eyebrow. After
an experience of the before-wedded,
tender courtesies, she would exclaim:
‘John, please don’t be such a fool. I
am so sick of this lovey-dovey business,
that I would really enjoy a good beating.’

“You see, she knows instinctively that
‘man’s love is of his life, a thing apart,’
and that, if he prefers showing her
lover-like attentions to ranging the
court, camp, church, the vessel and the
mart, she has a freak on her hands.
But how I run on; and you haven’t told
me yet what it is that men admire in
women?”

“Beauty,” still insisted the senator,
enthusiastically. “Goodness, truth, constancy,
amiability!”

Egeria looked at him with reproach.
“Do you really mean it?”—earnestly.

“Of course I do”—surprised at her
tone.

“I dare say any man to whom I put
the question would answer in the same
way.” Her eyebrows expressed resignation.
“Stay, I will phrase it differently;
why do you think you love a particular
woman?”

The senator could not resist the opportunity.
“Because she is you!”—gallantly.

“Stop trifling.” Egeria was becoming
petulant. “This is a serious matter.
Now, answer properly; why do you
think you love a particular woman?”

“Because”—emphatically—“I imagine
her, rightly or wrongly, to be the
possessor of those qualities I have enumerated.”

Egeria sighed. “And you still stick
to it?”

“Of course I do,” he responded, with
assurance.

She shook her head. “Nonsense!
Men are less exacting than you think—and
more. They ask neither beauty
nor grace nor unselfishness of woman;
they demand but one thing—you must
charm me. For me you must possess
that indefinable quality we call magnetism.
Emerson puts it all in a nutshell,
voices the essentially masculine point of
view:”

“But,” combated the senator, “you
must admit that Solomon had ample opportunity
to make a study of your sex,
and he reserved all his praise for the
good woman, averring that her price
was above rubies.”

Egeria’s smile was faintly cynical.
“That was in his capacity as philosopher.
As mere man, he gave the rubies
and an immortal song to a Shulamite
girl who looked at him with youth in
her smile and laughter in her eyes.”

“A tribute to beauty,” contested the
senator.

“Not at all. Because she fascinated
him.”

“And the secret of fascination is
beauty,” he triumphed.

She refused to admit it. “The secret
of fascination lies with the woman who
can convince a man that under no circumstances
could she possibly bore
him.”

The senator was still argumentative.
“I continue to maintain that beauty is
some subtle essence of the soul.”

“But the last word, the one word, the
eternal word,” quoted Egeria, rising, “is
that beauty is——”

“What?” he questioned, eagerly.

“In the eye of the beholder.”

46

Mis-Mated Americans
By Julien Gordon
(Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger)

MR. Henry James is
inclined to pity American
women, because
their men—husbands
and lovers—are not
up to their level of
fastidious refinement.

We are inclined to
ask Mr. James to what American
women he alludes.

Living in a center which makes history,
among men of monumental
achievement, of vast intellectual resource,
and of comprehensive judgment,
I confess that when I first encountered
some of these men they
seemed to me so lacking in the charms
of the drawing room that I asked myself:
“How can their women stand
them?” When, however, I had made the
acquaintance of some of these women,
or ladies, the query in my soul became:
“How can they stand their women?”

Mating and reproduction are largely
animal processes, requiring little play
of the imagination. If they did, race
suicide would never have been heard
of. The heroine of “The Garden of
Allah” pins a pale Christ over her bed
on her wedding night. It has been a
late fashion for English and French
writers—Verlaine, Mallock, Oscar
Wilde, and even that rare genius Robert
Hichens—to intermingle religion and
spirituality with the sexual instinct.
The fact remains that nothing can be
more sane or simple, and it only touches
fanatical frenzy in minds which border
hysteria and decadence.

We believe that the average American,
being absolutely sane, finds his
mate. He is even persuaded, when she
has invested in a diamond brooch and a
brocaded front, that she has become a
woman of rare elegance, belonging to
that type which energetic newspaper reporters
depict as a “leader.” The illusion
is no doubt calming. Social ambition
is salient among politicians and
ambassadors, and a good American
who expects Paradise desires his wife
and daughters to be “all right.” He is
quickly and conveniently persuaded
that they are. The enormous egotism
of the man of success is large enough
to cover, with its gilded wing, family
ramifications in its spasms of self-laudation.

It has become a habit to speak of
American women as superior to all
others, and in Europe the legend is beginning
to hold. But in what does this
superiority consist? Push, aplomb,
finery, what? We cannot concede that
it lies in exceptional accomplishments,
or in any rare degree of scholarship.
American women are not often accomplished,
are not frequently even linguists;
being usually satisfied with one
foreign tongue, and that a very wretched
French. We have few amateur musicians;
and women artists of the force
of Janet Scudder or Mrs. Leslie Cotton
can be counted on the fingers of one
hand. Our literary women are not ornamental,
and are skillfully excluded
from drawing rooms. Our feminine
poets are usually dishevelled. If we
throw out a dozen women in each of
our large Eastern cities who have had
the advantage of birth, breeding, position
and wealth, the rank and file are
like the rank and file of any other nation—a
little brighter, perhaps; keener,47
more alert, better groomed, but harder—and
often less fascinating. Our
women lack the high vitality and repose
of the English—weak nerves make
for fidgetiness—the subtle seduction of
the Austrian, the soft sweetness of the
Italian. French women are deteriorating,
their present social upheavals being
responsible for this change.

Nevertheless, American girls have
married well in Europe; principally for
their ducats, sometimes for their
beauty, only very occasionally for love.

The Latins love readily, particularly
when they scent income. The English,
more sincere, play their game openly.
They demand “dots” at the altar, and—get
them. However, as I have said,
social ambition is a trait of our new
life. It is a wholesome trait and has
its use. Only by contact with a high
civilization can a new people become
civilized. Intermarriage is the easiest
method.

We are told that American women
who have married foreigners adore
their exotic existence and could not be
persuaded to return. Is it their husbands
whom they adore? Are all their
ménages exceptionally happy? What
they do like is the graceful ease of an
existence which appeals to fancy and a
career which women over here do not
attain. For, in fact, American women
are overshadowed by their men. La
femme politique is almost, if not quite,
unknown in America, as is la femme
artiste or la femme littéraire. There
are no literary women in the United
States who wield any social power
whatsoever. In America talent is
rather a social handicap to a girl or
woman, and an escape into a wider field
is tolerated only by our extremely conservative
society when balanced by
some peculiar prestige of early environment
or personal allurement. We have
no drawing rooms here like that of
Madeleine Lemaire, in Paris, or like
that of a certain cosmopolitan, Corinne
of Venice, now, alas! closed forever.
In the salons of the artist French
woman one encounters English women
of rank, the “little duchesses,” the big
ambassadresses, men of note in every
calling, diplomats, statesmen, scientists
and writers.

Our great men have usually married,
in their youth, their first love, and, be
it said to their credit, have remained, if
not always true to this village ideal, at
least outwardly loyal. They are not
ashamed of past virtue. Their wives,
thrown suddenly into a world of which
they know nothing, should surely be
excused some solecisms. Occupied in
the cares of rearing children, of providing
for large families on small rations,
they have hardly had the leisure
to cultivate their minds and manners.
We will not allude to grammar and
intonation. It would be too much to
ask!

These women do not demand that a
man appeal to the imagination. They
have none. The lover is at once sunk
into the father. In fact, they address
their husbands as “father” or “papa”—sometimes,
indeed, as “pa” pronounced
paw in moments of caressing emphasis.
What would these women do with a
handsome, dashing troubadour, who
warbled ditties in feathered cap and
doublet? They do not want a tenor
about the house, they want their bills
paid. “Pa” sees to that. She is eminently
practical. Her husband talks
little to her of his ambitions, schemes
or success, but he signs the check. That
check is the epitome of his brain’s travail.
If in his arid life he sometimes
longs for a higher companionship, and
is drawn into the net of some cleverer
siren, his wife remains ignorant of the
fact. She is entirely trusting—a convenient
quality and one which men
superlatively admire.

No, Mr. James, Americans on the
whole are well matched. Look beyond
the few dainty women of fashion who
have personally petted you—women accustomed
to the homage of men of the
world, and who have danced at the
courts of kings. To these we are willing
to add a handful of brilliant young
students who obtain degrees from Vassar,
Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr,
are an ornament to the Normal and
Barnard College, and distance male
competitors at Cornell University.

48
May one of these be President some
day! We quote the wish of a gallant
member of the Cabinet. We hope that
they have low voices, speak admirable
English, and feel sure they never smoke
cigarettes and never say “Damn!”

The camp, however, is very wide.
The tents are spread, innumerable, over
the hills and valleys of our fair country.
Lift their flapping curtains, Mr. James.
Peep in and you will find content—enough.

AFTERMATH

49

The Golden Apple
BY AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE

THE orchard was on a
hill, the farmhouse lay
at the foot. There
was a long field, in
spring a palace of
cowslips, between the
orchard and the house.

This September
dawn Pomona came through it and
left a dark track of green along the
dew-bepearled grass. Little swaths of
mist hung over the cowslip field, but up
in the orchard the air was already clear.
It was sweet with the scent of the ripe
fruit, and the tart, clean autumn pungency
left by the light frost.

Pomona shifted the empty basket
that she had borne on her head to the
ground, and began to fill it with rosy-cheeked
apples. Some she shook from
the laden boughs, some she picked up
from the sward where they had fallen
from the tree; but she chose only the
best and ripest.

A shaft of sunlight broke over the
purple hills. It shone on her ruddy
hair and on her smooth cheek. She
straightened herself to look out across
the valley at the eastern sky; all sights
of nature were beautiful to her and gave
her a joy that, yet, she had never
learned to put into words, hardly into
thoughts. Now, as she stood gazing,
some one came along the road that
skirted the orchard, and, catching sight
of her, halted and became lost in contemplation
of her, even as she of the
sunrise pageant.

As evidently as Pomona, in her
homespun skirt and bodice, belonged to
the farmhouse, so did he to the great
castle near by. The gentleman had
made as careful a toilet for his early
walk as if he had been bound for St.
James. His riding coat was of delicate
hue, and laces fluttered at his wrists
and throat. His black lovelocks hung
carefully combed on either shoulder from
under his beplumed hat. A rapier
swung at his side, and, as he stood, he
flicked at it with the glove in his bare
hand. He had a long, pale face and
long eyes with drooping lids and
haughty eyebrows; a small upturned
mustache gave a tilt of mockery to the
grave lips. He looked very young, and
yet so sedate and self-possessed and
scornful that he might have known the
emptiness of the world a hundred years.

Pomona turned with a start, feeling
herself watched. She gazed for a moment
in surprise, and a deep blush rose
in her cheeks; then, still staring, she
made a slow country courtesy. Off
went the befeathered hat; the gentleman
returned her salutation by a profound
bow. Then he leaped the little
ditch into the orchard and threaded his
way through the trees toward her. She
watched him come; her great eyes were
like the eyes of a deer, as shy, as innocent.

“Good-morrow, sir,” said she with
another courtesy, and then corrected
herself quickly—“good-morrow, my
lord.” For, if he came from the castle,
he was surely a lord.

“Good-morrow, madam,” returned
he, pleasantly. His glance appraised
her with open admiration.

What a glorious creature! What
proportions; what amber and red on
those smooth cheeks, what ruddy radiance
in that sun-illumined hair! What
a column of a throat, and how white the
skin where the coarse kerchief parted
above the laced bodice! What lines of
bust and hip, of arm and wrist; generous
but perfect! A goddess! He
glanced at the strong, sunburned
hands; they were ringless. Unowned,
then, as yet, this superb nymph.

50
His long eyes moved at their pleasure;
and she stood waiting in repose,
though the color came and went richly
on her cheek. Then he bowed again,
the hat clasped to his bosom.

“Thank you,” said he, and replaced
his beaver with a turn of the wrist that
set all the gray and white plumes rippling
round the crown.

“Sir?” she queried, startled, and on
her second thought—“my lord?”

At this he broke into a smile. When
he smiled, his haughty face gained a
rare sweetness.

“Thank you for rising thus early, and
coming into the orchard, and standing
in the sun rays, and being, my maid,
so beautiful. I little thought to find so
fair a vision. ’Twill be a sweet one to
carry forth with me—if it be the last on
earth.”

Her wits were never quick to work.
She went her country way, as a rule, as
straight and sweetly and unthinkingly
as the lilies grow.

To question why a noble visitor at
the castle—and a visitor it must be,
since his countenance was unfamiliar—should
walk forth at the dawn and
speak as if this morning saunter were
to death, never entered her head.

She stammered: “Oh, sir!” to his
compliment, and paused, her lip quivering
over the inarticulate sense of her
own awkwardness.

“Have you been gathering apples?”
quoth he, still smiling on her.

“Ay, sir,” she said; “to make preserve
withal;” and faltered yet again,
“my lord.”

“Ay,” approved he. “It has a fair
sound in your mouth. Would I were
your lord! What is your name?”

She told him “Pomona.” Whereat he
laughed, and repeated it as if he liked
the sound. Then he looked at the east,
and behold, the sun had risen, a full
ball of crimson in a swimming sea of
rose. The light glimmered upon his
pale cheek, and on the fine laces of his
shirt, redly, as if with stains of new
blood.

“I must hence,” he said, and his voice
had a stern, far-away sound. “Farewell,
Pomona; wilt thou not wish me well?”

“My lord?”

“Wilt thou not?”

“Oh, indeed, my lord, I do.” And
she was moved, on a sudden, she knew
not why, and the tears gathered like a
mist in her eyes. “With all my heart,”
she said.

He made her a final bow, bending till
his curls fell over his face.

“I thank you.”

She watched him walk away from her
in and out the apple trees with his careless
stride, and leap the little ditch
again; and so on down the road.

And when he was lost to her sight,
she still stood looking at the point
where the way dipped and vanished and
she had seen the last flutter of the gray
feathers.

After a while she drew a long sigh
and passed her hands over her eyes, as
if she were awakening from a dream.
Then she began mechanically to fill
her basket once more. All the ruddiness
faded from the sky. The sun
swam up into the blue, and a white
brilliance laid hold of the dewy valley.
Delicate gossamer threads floated high
above the apple trees, against the vault
of ever-deeper blue. Somewhere from
the hidden folds of the land a church
bell began to chime. Then all at once
Pomona dropped her basket, and while
the apples rolled, yellow, green and
red, in all directions, she set off running
in the direction the gentleman
had taken.

Why she ran, she knew not, but
something drove her with a mighty urgency.
Her heart beat thickly, and her
breath came short, though, as a rule,
there was no maid in the countryside
that could run as she did. When she
came to the foot of the hill she paused,
and there, by the bramble brake, where
the firwood began, she saw, lying on the
lip of the baby stream, a gauntleted gray
glove. She turned into the wood.

The pine needles were soft under her
feet. The pine stems grew like the pillars
of a church aisle, and the air was
sweeter with their fragrance than any
incense that was ever burned.

And after, but a little way, where the
forest aisle widened into a glade, she51
came on the grand riding coat tossed
in a heap; across it was flung an empty
scabbard. And beyond, outstretched at
the foot of a tree—— Pomona stopped
short. Now she knew why she had had
to run so fast!

He lay as if asleep, his head pillowed
upon a branching root; but it was no
slumber that held him. His features,
whiter than ivory, were strangely sharpened
and aged, blue shadows were
about nostrils and mouth, the parted lips
under the mocking mustache were set
in a terrible gravity; they were purple,
like dead red roses. Between the long,
half-open lids the eyeballs shone silver.
It was not now God’s lovely sunrise
that stained the white cambric of his
shirt. From where it had escaped from
his relaxed hand a long, keen-bladed
sword gleamed among the pine needles.

Pomona knelt down. She parted the
ruffled shirt with a steady hand; his
heart still beat, but below it was a
wound that might well cause death.
She sat back on her heels and thought.
She could not leave him to call for
help, for he might die alone; neither
could she sit useless beside him and
watch him go. She took her resolution
quickly. She rose, then bending,
she braced herself and gathered him
into her arms as if he had been a child.
He was no taller than she, and slight
and lean of build. She was used to
burdens. But she had not thought to
find him so heavy. She staggered and
shifted him for an easier grip; and then,
as his pallid head lay loose and languid
against her shoulder, the half-open eyelids
fluttered, the upturned eyes rolled
and fixed themselves. He looked at
her; dark, dark as eternity was his gaze.
She bent her head, his lips were moving.

“Pomona!”

It was the merest breath, but she
knew it was her name. Nearer she bent
to him; a flicker as of a smile came
upon those purple-tinted lips.

“Kiss me, Pomona!”

She kissed him, and thought she drew
from his cold mouth the last sigh. But
now she was strong. She could have
gone to the end of the earth with this
burden in her arms.

His black hair, dank and all uncurled,
fell over her bare arm. With the movement
his wound opened afresh, and as
she pressed him against her she felt his
blood soak through her bodice to the
skin. Then her soul yearned over him
with an indescribable, inarticulate passion
of desire; to help him, to heal him!
If she could have given her blood to
him she would have given it with the
joy with which a mother gives life to the
babe at her breast.

Pomona was mistress of herself and
of her farm, and lived alone with her
servants. Though she was a firm ruler,
these latter considered her soft on certain
points. They had known her, before
this, carry home a calf that had
staked itself, a mongrel cur half-drowned.
But a murdered gentleman,
that was beyond everything!

“Heavens ha’ mercy, mistress,” cried
Sue, rising to the occasion, while the
others gaped, and clapped their hands,
and whispered together. “Shall I fetch
old Mall to help you lay him out?”

“Fool,” panted Pomona, “bring me
the Nantes brandy!”

Earl Blantyre woke from a succession
of dreams, in which he had had
most varied and curious experiences;
known strange horrors and strange
sweetnesses, flown to more aërial heights
than any bird, and sunk to deeper depths
than the sea could hold; fought unending
combats and lain in peace in tender
arms.

He woke. His eyelids were heavy.
His hand had grown so weighty that
it was as much as he could do to lift it.
And yet, as he held it up, he hardly
knew it for his own; ’twas a skeleton
thing. There was a sound in his ears
which, dimly he recognized, had woven
into most of his dreams these days, a
whirring, soothing sound, like the ceaseless
beating of moth’s wings. As he
breathed deeply and with delicious ease,
there was fragrance of herbs in his nostrils.
A tag of poetry floated into his
mind—

He turned his head and went to sleep
again and dreamed not at all.

52
Pomona lighted the lamp, and, shading
it with her hand, came, with soft
tread, into the guest chamber. He was
still asleep. She set down the light,
mended the fire with another log, peeped
into the pan of broth simmering on the
hob, and then sat to her spinning wheel
once more. Suddenly the wool snapped;
she started, to find that he was holding
back the curtain with a finger and
thumb, and had turned his head on the
pillow to watch her; his eyes gleamed
in the firelight. She rose and came to
him quickly.

“So you were spinning,” he said.
His voice was very weak, but how different
from those tones of dreadful
clearness, of hoarse muttering, with
which she had been so sadly familiar.

Pomona knelt beside him and put her
hand on his forehead, on his wrist.

“Thank God!” she said.

“By all means,” he answered, peering
at her amusedly. “Natheless, why?”

“Nay, you must not speak,” she bade
him, and rose to pour the soup into a
bowl.

He watched her while she stirred and
tasted and added salt. He was smiling.
When she lifted him, pillows and all,
propped against her strong arm, and
held the bowl to his lips at a compelling
angle, he laughed outright. It was
rather a feeble thing in the way of
laughs, but to Pomona it was as wonderful
and beautiful an achievement as
a child’s first word in the mother’s ear.

“Drink,” she said, firmly, while her
heart throbbed in joy.

“Now you must sleep,” she added, as
she settled him with extraordinary art.
But sleep was far away from those curious
wandering eyes.

“Bring the light closer and come to
the bed again.”

His voice had gained strength from
Pomona’s fine broth, and it rang in command.
Without another word she
obeyed him. As she sat down on the
little oaken stool, where he could see
her, the light fell on her face, and from
behind her the fire shot ruddily in her
crown of hair.

“I remember you now,” said he, lifting
himself on his elbow. “You stood
in the sunrise gathering apples for preserve;
you are the nymph of the orchard.”

He fell back, with a sigh of satisfaction.
“And your name is Pomona,”
said he.

The girl, her capable, work-marked
hands lying folded on her knee, sat in
absolute stillness; but her heart was
beating stormily under the folds of her
kerchief.

The sick man’s beard had grown close
and fine round chin and cheeks during
these long dreams of his. His hair lay
in a mass on one shoulder; it had been
carefully tied back with a riband, and
in all that black setting the pallor of his
countenance seemed deathlike. Yet she
knew that he was saved. He lay a
while, gazing at the beflowered ceiling
of the great four-post bed, and by and
by his voice came sighing.

“And after that, what hap befell me?
Help me to remember.”

“I found you in the wood,” said she,
slowly. “You were lying wounded.”

He interrupted her with a sharp cry.

“Enough! I mind me now. Was I
alone?”

“Quite alone, my lord.”

“And my sword?”

There was a current of evil eagerness
running through the feeble voice.

“Your sword, my lord?”

“Pshaw! was it clean, child? Bore
it no sign upon the blade?”

“There was blood on it,” said Pomona,
gravely, “to a third of the
length.”

The duelist gave a sigh.

“That is well,” said he, and fell once
more into silence, striving to knit present
and past in his mind.

After a while he shifted himself on
his pillows so that he again looked on
her.

Then his eyes wandered round the
dark paneling, on the polished surface
of which the firelight gleamed like rosy
flowers. He touched the coarse sheet,
the patchwork quilt, then lifted the
sleeve of the homespun shirt that covered
his thin arm, and gazed inquiringly
from it to the quiet woman.

53
“How do I come here? Where am
I?” queried he, imperiously.

“I brought you; you are in my house,”
she answered him.

“You brought me?”

“Ay, my lord.”

“You found me wounded,” he puzzled,
drawing his haughty brows together,
“and you brought me here to
your house? How?”

“I carried you,” said Pomona.

“You carried me!”

The statement was so amazing and
Lord Blantyre’s wits were still so weakened
that he turned giddy and was fain
to close his eyes and allow the old
vagueness to cradle him again for a few
minutes.

Pomona prayed that he might be
sleeping, but as she was stealthily rising
from his bedside he opened his eyes
and held her with them.

“You carried me, you brought me to
your own house? Why?”

“I wanted to nurse you,” said poor
Pomona.

She knew no artifice whereby she
could answer, yet conceal the truth.
But it was as if her heart were being
torn from her bit by bit.

His eyes, hard and curious, softened;
so did the imperious voice.

“How did you keep them out?”

“Keep them out?”

She was beautiful, but she was dull.

“My kinsfolk, from the castle.”

Pomona stood like a child caught in
grave fault.

“They do not know,” she answered,
at last.

It was his turn to ejaculate in amazement.
“Not know!”

“I did not want them,” said she, then,
doggedly. “I did not want any fine ladies
about, nor physicians with their lancets.
When my father was cut with the
scythe, they sent a leech from the castle,
who blooded him, and he died. I did
not want you to die.”

She spoke the last words almost in a
whisper, then she waited breathlessly.
There came a low sound from the pillows.
His laugh that had been music
to her a minute ago now stabbed her
to the heart. She turned, the blood
flashing into her cheeks; yet his face
grew quickly grave; he spoke, his voice
was kind.

“Stay. I want to understand. You
carried me, all by yourself, from the
wood; is it so?”

“Ay.”

“And no one knows where I am, or
that you found me?”

“No. I went down to the wood
again and brought back your coat and
your sword and scabbard and your
gloves. I forbade my people to speak.
None of the great folk know you are
here.”

“And you nursed me?”

“Ay.”

“Was I long ill?”

“Fourteen days.”

“I have been near death, have I not?”

“You have, indeed.”

“And you nursed me!” he repeated
again. “How did you learn such
science?”

“My lord, I have loved and cared for
the dumb things all my life. There was
the calf that was staked——” She
stopped; that laugh was torture.

“Go on, Pomona!”

“I bathed your wound in cold water
over and over till the bleeding stopped,
and then, when the fever came, I knew
what brew of herbs would help you.
One night I thought that you would
die——”

“Go on, Pomona!”

“You could not breathe, no matter
how high I laid you on the pillows——”

“Ay! Why dost thou halt again?
What didst thou then?”

“I held you in my arms,” she said.
“You seemed to get your breath better
that way, and then you slept at
last.”

“While you held me?” he proceeded.
“How long did you hold me in your
arms, Pomona?”

“My lord,” she said, “the whole
night.”

Upon this he kept silence quite a
long time, and she sat down on her
stool again and waited. She had nursed
him and saved him, and now he would
soon be well; she ought surely to rejoice,
but, she knew not why, her heart54
was like lead. Presently he called her;
he would be lifted, shifted, his pillows
were hot, his bedclothes pressed on him.
As she bent over him, the fretful expression
suddenly was smoothed from
his features.

“I remember now,” he said, with a
singular gleam in his eyes. “I remember,
Pomona; you kissed me.”

My Lord Blantyre began now to have
more consecutive recollections of that
time of dreams; and when the night
came he felt mightily injured, mightily
affronted, to find that the shadow of the
watcher in the rushlight against the
wall belonged to a bent and aged figure,
was a grotesque profile, instead of the
mild gray angel that had soothed him
hitherto. So deep seemed the injury, so
cruel the neglect, that the ill-used patient
could not find it in him to consent
to sleep, but tossed till his bed grew unbearable,
pettishly refused to drink from
Mall’s withered hand, was quite positive
that the pain in his side was very
bad again, and that his angry heart beats
were due to fever.

It drew toward midnight. Again
Mall brought the cooling drink and offered
it patiently. Like an old owl she
stood and blinked. Her toothless jaws
worked.

He made an angry gesture of refusal;
the cup was dashed from her
hand and fell clattering on the boards.
She cried out in dismay, and he in
fury.

“Out of my sight, you Hecate!”

Then suddenly Pomona stood beside
them. So soft her tread that neither
had heard her come.

“Lord, be good to us! The poor
gentleman’s mad again,” whimpered
Mall, as she went down on her knees
to mop.

Pomona was in a white wrapper, well
starched; the wide sleeves spread out
like wings. Her hair hung in one loose
plait to her knees.

“You look like a monstrous, beautiful
great angel,” cried he. Her hand was
on his pulse. He was as pleased and
soothed as a naughty infant when it is
lifted from its cradle and nursed.

She stood, and seemed encircled by
the fragrance of the sacrificed cup, lavender
and thyme and other sweet and
wholesome herbs.

She thought he wandered, yet his
pulse was steadying down under her
finger into a very reasonable pace for
a convalescent. She looked down at
him with puzzled eyes.

“What is it, my lord?”

“Prithee,” said he, “though you live
so quiet here, my maid, and keep your
secrets so well, you would have known,
would you not, had there been a death
at the castle?”

“Surely, my lord,” she said, and bent
closer to comfort him. “Nay, it must
be that you have the fever again, I
fear. Nay, all is well with your kinsfolk.
Mall, haste thee with another
cup of the drink. Is the wound painful,
my good lord, and how goes it with
the breathing?”

As he bent he caught her great plait
in both his hands and held it so that she
could not straighten herself.

“It would go vastly better,” cried he,
“I should breathe with infinite more
ease, my sweet nurse, and forget that I
had ever had a gaping hole to burn the
side of me, could you but tell me that
there had been even a trifle of sickness
at the house beyond. Come, my sword
was red, you know! It was not red
for nothing! Was not Master Leech
sent for in haste to draw more blood?
The excellent physician, thou mindest,
who helped thy worthy father so pleasantly
from this world.”

She would have drawn from him in
soft sorrow and shame, for she understood
now, but that his weak fingers
plucked her back. Truly there seemed
to be a devil in his eyes. Yet she was
too tender of him not to humor him, as
the mother her spoiled child.

“Hast heard, Mall, of aught amiss at
the castle?” quoth she, turning her head
to address the old woman at the fire.

“There was a gentleman out hunting
with the Lady Julia o’ Thursday,” answered
the crone, “as carried his arm
in a sling, I heard tell; though he rode
with the best of them.”

“Faugh!”

55
Lord Blantyre loosed Pomona’s tress
and lay back sullenly. He drank the
cup when she held it to his lips, in the
same sullen silence; but when she shook
his pillows and smoothed his sheet and
cooed to him in the dear voice of his
dream: “Now, sleep,” he murmured,
complainingly: “Not if you leave me!”

Pomona’s heart gave a great leap, and
a rose flush grew on her face, lovelier
than ever sunrise or fireglow had called
there.

“I will not leave you, my lord,” she
replied. Her voice filled the whole
room with deep harmony.

He woke in the gray dawn, and there
sat Pomona, her eyes dreaming, her
hands clasped, her face a little stern in
its serene, patient weariness. He cried
to her sharply, because of the sharpness
with which his heart smote him:

“Hast sat thus the whole night long?”

“Surely!” said she.

“Well, to bed with you, then,” he
bade her, impatiently. “Nay, I want
nought. Send one of your wenches to
my bell, some Sue or Pattie, so it be a
young one. And you—to bed, to bed!”

But she would not leave him till she
had tested how it stood with him, according
to her simple skill. As her hand
rested on his brow, “Why Pomona?”
queried he.

“My lord?”

“Pomona. ’Tis a marvelous fine
name, and marvelous fitting to a nymph
of the orchard. Pomona!”

“Indeed,” she answered him, in her
grave way, “Sue or Pattie would better
become me. But my mother was
book-learned, sir, and town-bred, and
had her fancies. She sat much in the
orchard the spring that I was born.”

“Ay,” he mused. “So thy mother
was book-learned and fanciful!” Then
briskly he asked her: “Wouldst thou
not like to know my name, Pomona?
Unless, indeed, you know it already?”

She shook her head.

“Why, what a woman are you! In
spite of apples, no daughter of Eve at
all?”

She still shook her head, and, smiling
faintly, “To me it could make no difference,”
she said.

“Well, now you shall know,” he said,
“and take it to your maiden dreams. I
am Rupert, Earl of Blantyre.”

“What,” she cried, quickly, “the——”
she broke off and hesitated. “The
great Earl of Blantyre,” she pursued,
then, dropping her eyes: “The king’s
friend!”

His laugh rang out somewhat harsh.

“What, so solitary a nymph, so country
hidden, and yet so learned of the
gossip of the great world?”

“People talk,” she murmured, crimsoning
as in the deepest shame.

“And you know what they call me?
No! Not the Great Earl, hypocrite, the
Wicked Earl! You knew it?”

She bent her head.

He laughed again. “Why, now, what
a nightmare for you! Here he lies,
and, oh! Pomona, you have prolonged
his infamous career!”

The Wicked Earl was an angelic patient
for two days. On the third he
was promoted to the oak settle, wrapped
in a garment of the late farmer’s, of
which he made much kindly mirth. It
was a golden day of joy in the lonely
farmhouse.

On the fourth morning, however, he
wakened to a mood of seriousness, not
to say ill-temper. His first words were
to request writing paper and a quill,
ink and the great seal that hung on his
watch chain.

Pomona stood by while he wrote;
helped him with paper and wax. She
saw into how deep a frown his brows
were contracted, and her heart seemed
altogether to fail her. She expected
the end; it was coming swiftly, and not
as she expected it.

“May I trespass on your kindness so
far as to send a horseman with this letter
to the castle?” said he, very formally.

She took it from him with her country
courtesy.

“You will be leaving us, my lord?”

He glanced at her through his drooping
lids.

“Can I trespass forever on your hospitality?”

56
She went forth with the letter quickly,
without another word.

It was but little after noon when there
came a great clatter into the simple
farmyard that was wont to echo to no
louder sounds than the lumbering progress
of the teamsters and their wagon,
or the patient steps of Pomona’s dairy
cows. A great coach with four
horses and running footmen had drawn
up before the farm porch. A man in
dark livery, with a sleek, secret face,
slipped down from the rumble, reached
for a valise and disappeared round the
house. The coach door opened, and
the Lady Julia Majendie descended, followed
by no less a person than my Lord
Majendie himself, who was seldom
known to leave his library, much less to
accompany his daughter out driving.
His presence marked a great occasion.
And with them was a very fine lady, a
stranger to any of the farm, a little lady
with dark hair in ringlets and high
plumes to a great hat, and a dress that
shone with as many pale colors as a
pigeon’s breast. She sniffed, and “Oh!”
cried she in very high, loud tones, pressing
a vinaigrette to her nose, “can my
poor brother be in such a place, and yet
alive?”

“Hush, madam,” said Lord Majendie,
somewhat testily, for Pomona stood in
the door. “I am sure we owe nought but
gratitude to this young woman.”

He was a gaunt, snuffy, untidy old
man, in a dilapidated wig, but his eyes
were shrewd and kindly behind the
large, gold-rimmed spectacles. He
peered at Pomona, pale and beautiful.

Lady Julia had evidently inherited
her father’s short sight, for she, too,
was staring through an eyeglass. She
carried it on a gold chain, and when she
lifted it to one eye her small fair face
took an air of indescribable impertinence.

She interrupted father and friend,
coming to the front with a scarcely perceptible
movement of pointed elbows:

“Bring us instantly to Lord Blantyre.”

“This way an it please you,” said
Pomona.

She led them in, and there in the
great kitchen, well within the glow from
the deep hearth, propped on patchwork
cushions, wrapped in blue homespun, lay
the invalid.

The ladies were picking their steps
across the flags with a great parade of
lifting silken skirts; the worthy old
scholar, Lord Majendie, was following,
with an expression of benign, childlike
interest, but all three seemed struck by
the same amazement, almost amounting
to consternation. Lord Blantyre lifted
his pallid, black-bearded countenance
and looked at them with a gaze of uncompromising
ill-humor.

“Good Lord, brother!” exclaimed the
little lady with the ringlets, at last. She
made a faint lurch against Lady Julia.

“If your sisterly feelings are too
much for you, and you are contemplating
a swoon, pray be kind enough to
accomplish it elsewhere, Alethea,” said
Lord Blantyre.

“Oh, my excellent young friend! Oh,
my dear lord! Tut! tut! tut! I should
hardly have known you,” ejaculated the
old man. “You must tell us how this
has come about; we must get you home.
Tush! you must not speak. I see you
are yet but weakly. My good young
woman, this has been a terrible business—nay,
I have no doubt he does your
nursing infinite credit, but why not have
let us know? Tut! tut!”

Before Pomona could speak, and, indeed,
as she had no excuse to offer, the
words were slow in coming, her patient
intervened, curtly.

“I would not permit her to tell you,”
quoth he.

She glanced at him, startled; his eyes
were averted.

“Oh, my lord, this is cruel hearing for
us,” minced Julia.

She might have spoken to the wall for
all the effect her smile and ogle produced
on him. She turned her glass
upon Pomona, and ran it up and down
her till the poor girl felt herself so
coarse, so common, so ugly, that she
could have wished herself dead.

“Pray, Lord Majendie,” said Blantyre,
“is Colonel Craven yet with you?”

Lady Alethea tossed her head, flushed57
and shot a look, half defiance, half fear,
at her brother.

He propped himself up on his elbow,
turned and surveyed her with a sneering
smile.

“How pale and wasted art thou, my
fair Alethea! Hast been nursing the
wounded hero, and pining with his
pangs? Or is’t, perchance, all fond
fraternal anguish concerning my unworthy
self? Oh, see you, I know what
an uproar you made about me all over
the countryside, what a hue and cry for
the lost brother.”

“A plague on it, Julia,” said Lord
Majendie, scratching his wig perplexedly
and addressing his daughter in a
loud whisper, “what ails the fellow?
Does he wander, think you?”

But Lady Alethea seemed to find a
meaning in the sick man’s words, for
she tossed her head once more, and answered
sharply:

“No, brother, I made no hue and cry
for you, for ’tis not the first time it
has been your pleasure to play truant
and leave your loving friends all without
news. How was I to know that you
were more sorely hurt than Colonel
Craven? He left you, he told us, standing
by a tree, laughing at his pierced
arm. You are not wont to come out
of these affairs so ill.”

That they were of the same blood
could not be doubted, for it was the
very same sneer that sat on both their
mouths.

“And pray, since we must bandy
words,” she went on, gaining yet more
boldness, “why did you thus keep me
willfully in suspense?”

“Because,” said he, sweetly, “I was
too ill for thy nursing, my Alethea.”

“I presume,” said she, “you had a
nurse to your fancy?”

Her black eyes rolled flashing on
Pomona. The earl made no reply.

“Let me assure your lordship,” put
in his would-be host here, quickly, “that
Colonel Craven is gone.”

”’Tis well, then,” replied Blantyre,
ceremoniously, “and I will, with your
permission, this very night avail myself
of your offer of hospitality for a
few days, but you will, I fear, have to
send a litter for me. To sit in a coach
is yet beyond me.”

And while the good-natured nobleman
instantly promised compliance,
Lord Blantyre, waving away further
discourse with a gesture, went on wearily:

“Let me beg of you not to remain
or keep these ladies in surroundings so
little suited to their gentility. And the
sooner, my good lord, you can dispatch
that litter, the sooner shall you have the
joy of my company. Farewell, Julia,
for but a brief space. I trust that you
and Colonel Craven enjoyed the chase
the other day. We shall meet soon
again, sister; pray you bear up against
our present parting.”

Both the ladies swept him such very
fine courtesies that the homely kitchen
seemed full of the rustle of silk. Lady
Julia Majendie had a little fixed smile
on her lips.

The farm servants were all watching
at the windows to see the great ladies
get into their coach, to see it wheel
about with the four horses clattering
and curvetting. Pomona and Lord
Blantyre were alone. She stood, her
back against the wall, her head held
high, not in pride, for Pomona knew no
pride, but with the natural carriage of
her perfect strength and balance. Her
eyes looked forth, grieving yet untearful,
her mouth was set into lines of patient
endurance. He regarded her
darkly.

“I go this evening, Pomona.”

“Ay, my lord.”

The tall wooden clock ticked off a
heavy minute.

“Is my man here?” asked Lord Blantyre.
“Bid him come to me, then, to
help me to my room.”

His lordship’s toilet was a lengthy
proceeding, for neither his strength nor
his temper was equal to the strain. But
it was at length accomplished, and, perfumed,
shaven, clothed once again in
fine linen and silk damask, wrapped in
a great furred cloak, Lord Blantyre sat
in the wooden armchair and drank the
cordial that Pomona had prepared him.

He was panting with his exertions,
his heart was fluttering, but Pomona’s58
recipes were cunning; in a little while
he felt his pulses calm down and a glow
of power return to him, and with the
help of his cane and his servant he was
able to advance toward the door.

“The young woman is outside, waiting
to take leave of your lordship,” volunteered
the sleek Craik.

His master halted, and fixed him with
an arrogant eye.

“The young woman of the farm,” explained
the valet, glibly, “and, knowing
your lordship likes me to see to these
details, I have brought a purse of gold—twenty
pieces, my lord.”

He stretched out his hand and
chinked the silken bag as he spoke.

“For whom is that?” asked Lord
Blantyre.

The man stared.

“For the young woman, my lord.”

Lord Blantyre steadied himself with
the hand that gripped the speaker’s arm;
then, lifting the cane with the other,
struck the fellow across the knuckles
so sharply that with a howl he let the
purse fall.

“Pick it up,” said the Wicked Earl.
“Put it into your pocket, and remember,
for the future, that the servant who
presumes to know his master’s business
least understands his own.”

The litter was brought to the door of
his chamber, and they carried him out
through the kitchen to the porch; and
there, where Pomona stood waiting, he
bade them halt and set it down. She
leaned toward him to look on him, she
told herself, for the last time. Her
heart contracted to see him so wan and
exhausted.

“Good-by, Pomona,” said he, gazing
up into her sorrowful eyes, distended
in the evening dimness. He had seen a
deer look at him thus, in the dusk, out
of a thicket.

“Good-by, my lord,” said she.

“Ah, Pomona,” said he, “I made a
sweeter journey the day I came here!”

And without another word to her he
signed to the men, and they buckled to
their task again.

Her heart shuddered as she watched
the slow procession pass into the shadows.
They might have been bearing a
coffin. With the instinct of her inarticulate
grief, she went to seek the last
memory of him in his room. By the
light of a flaring tallow candle, she
found Lord Blantyre’s man repacking
his master’s valise. He looked offensively
at her as she entered.

“Young woman,” said he, shaking his
head, “you have taken a very great liberty.”

Then, picking up the coarse white
shift and surveying it with an air of intense
disgust, ”’Tis a wonder,” quoth
he, “his lordship didn’t die of this.”

“I fear, my fair Julia, that fondly as
I should love it, I shall never call you
sister.”

Julia turned at the fleer and flung a
glance of acute anger at her friend.

“If you had not been yourself so determined
to have the nursing of Colonel
Craven’s wound, my dearest Alethea,”
responded she, sweetly, “the
friendly desire of your heart might be
in a better way of accomplishment.
And, oh!”—she fanned herself and tittered—“I
pity you, my poor Alethea, I
do, indeed, when I think of those wasted
attentions.”

Lady Alethea had her feelings less
under control than her cool-blooded
friend. Her dark cheek empurpled,
her full lips trembled.

“My woman tells me,” proceeded
Julia, “that the creature Craik, your
brother’s man, hath no doubt of my
lord Blantyre’s infatuation. ‘Pomona!’
he will call in his sleep. Pomona! ’Tis
the wench’s name. I wish you joy of
your sister-in-law, indeed.”

Lady Alethea wheeled upon her with
an eye of fire.

“Need my brother wed the woman
because he calls upon her name?” she
mocked.

“If I know my lord your brother, he
might well wed her even because he
need not,” smiled the other. “Now you
are warned. ’Tis none of my concern,
I thank my Providence! You will be
saved a dairymaid at least.”

Alethea’s wavering color, her flurried
breath, bore witness to discomposure.

“My Lord Blantyre,” pursued Lady59
Julia Majendie, relentlessly, “has ever
taken pleasure in astonishing the
world.”

Lady Alethea clinched her hands.

“Your father rules here; let him
transport the slut!”

“Nay,” said Julia. She placed her
hand upon the heaving shoulder, and
looked at her friend with a singular
light in her pale yet brilliant eyes. “Do
you think to break a man of a fancy by
such measures? ’Twould be as good
as forging the ring. Nay, my sweet, I
can better help thee; ay, and give thee
an hour’s sport besides.”

And, as Alethea raised questioning
eyes, Julia Majendie shook her silver-fair
ringlets and laughed again.

“Leave it to me,” quoth she.

“Will Mistress Pomona favor the
Lady Julia Majendie with her company
at the castle?”

This was the message carried to the
farmhouse by a mounted servant. He
had a pillion behind him on the stout
palfrey, and his orders were, he said,
to bring Mistress Pomona back with
him.

Pomona came running out, with the
harvest sunshine on her copper hair;
her cheek was drained of blood.

“Is my lord ill again?” she queried,
breathlessly.

The man shook his head; either he
was dull or well drilled.

Pomona mounted behind him without
a second’s more delay, just as she was,
bareheaded, her apron stained with apple
juice, and her sleeves rolled up
above her elbows. She had no thought
for herself, and only spoke to bid the
servant hurry.

For a fortnight she had heard no
word of her patient. In her simple heart
she could conceive no other reason for
being summoned now than because he
needed her nursing.

But when she reached the castle and
was passed with mocking ceremony
from servant to servant, the anxious
questions died on her lips; and when
she was ushered, at length, into a vast
bedchamber, hung with green silk, gold
fringed, and was greeted by Lady Julia,
all in green herself, like a mermaid,
smiling sweetly at her from between
her pale ringlets, she was so bewildered
that she forgot even to courtesy. She
never heeded how the tire-woman, who
had last received her, tittered as she
closed the door.

“A fair morning to you, mistress,”
said Lady Julia. “I am sensible of your
kindness in coming to my hasty invitation.”

“Madam,” faltered Pomona, and remembered
her révérence; “I am ever at
your service, honorable madam. I hope
my lord is not sick again.”

“My father?” mocked the mermaid,
running her white hand through her
curls. But Pomona neither understood
nor practiced the wiles of women.

“I meant my Lord Blantyre,” said
she.

“Oh, the lord earl, your patient; nay,
it goes better with him. Oh, he has been
sadly, sadly. We have had a sore and
anxious time; such a wound as his,
neglected——” she shook her ringlets.

Pomona’s lip suddenly trembled, she
caught it between her teeth to steady it.

“Ah,” said Julia, interrupting herself
and turning on her chair, “here comes
the Lady Alethea.”

Alethea entered, mincing on high-heeled
shoes, her cherry lips pursed, her
dark eyes dancing, as if a pair of mischievous
sprites had taken lodging
there. She gazed at Pomona, so large,
so work-stained, so incongruous a figure
in the bright, luxurious room. Her
nostrils dilated. She looked as wicked
as a kid.

“My brother,” said she, addressing
her friend, though she kept staring at
Pomona, “has heard of this wench’s
arrival. He would speak with her.”

“I will go with you, even now,” said
Pomona.

Both the ladies shrieked; so did the
maid who had followed Lady Alethea
into the room.

“My good creature! In that attire?”

“My brother, so fastidious, so suffering!”

“And she,” cried the tire-woman, taking
up the note, “still with the stench60
of the saucepan about her! Positively,
madam, the room reeks.”

If Pomona carried any savors beyond
those of lavender and the herbs she
loved, it was of good sweet apples and
fragrant burnt sugar. But she stood in
her humiliation, and felt herself more
unfit for all the high company than the
beasts of her farmyard.

“You must not take it unkindly,
child,” said Lady Julia, with her cruel
little laugh and her soft voice, “but my
Lord Blantyre, you see, hath ever a
great distaste of all that is homely and
uncomely. He hath suffered extraordinarily
in that respect of late. We
must humor him.”

Truly Pomona was punished. She
marveled now at herself, remembering
what her presumption had been.

“I will go home, madam, if you permit
me.”

Again the ladies cried out. To thwart
the invalid—’twas impossible. Was the
girl mad? Nay, she would do as they
bid? ’Twas well, then. Lady Julia, so
kind was she, would help to clothe her
in some better apparel and make her
fit to present herself. The while the
Lady Alethea would return to her post
of assiduous nurse, and inform his lordship
of Pomona’s speedy attendance.

Pomona gave herself into their hands.

Lord Blantyre lay on a couch in the
sunshine. A fountain played merrily
to his right; to his left his sister sat demurely
at embroidery. In spite of her
ladyship’s melancholy account, the patient
seemed to have gained marvelously
in strength. But he was in no better
humor with the world than on the last
day of his stay at the farm.

He tossed and fretted among his rich
cushions.

“She tarries,” he said, irritably, for
the twentieth time. “You are all in
league to plague me. Why did you tell
me she was coming?”

“My good brother,” answered the
fair embroideress, tilting her head to
fling him the family sneer, “I pray you
curb your impatience, for yonder comes
your siren.”

Here was Julia, indeed, undulating toward
them, and, after her, Pomona!

Lord Blantyre sat up suddenly and
stared. Then he fell back on his cushions
and shot a look at Alethea, before
which she quailed.

Stumbling in high heels that tripped
her at every step, she who had been
wont to move free as a goddess; scarce
able to breathe in the laced bodice that
pressed her form out of all its natural
shapeliness, and left so much of her
throat bare that the white skin was all
crimson in shame down to the borrowed
kerchief; her artless, bewildered face
raddled with white and red, her noble
head scarcely recognizable through the
bunching curls that sat so strangely
each side of it—what Pomona was this?

“Here is your kind nurse,” fluted
Lady Julia. “She had a fancy to bedizen
herself for your eyes. I thought
’twould please you, my lord, if I humored
the creature.”

“Everyone is to be humored here,”
thought poor Pomona, vaguely.

“Come to his lordship, child,” bade
Julia, her tones tripped up with laughter.

Pomona tottered yet a pace or two,
and then halted. Taller even than the
tall Lady Julia, the lines of her generous
womanhood took up the silken
skirt to absurd brevity, exposing the
awkward-twisting feet. Nymph no
longer was she, but a huge painted
puppet. Only the eyes were unchanged,
Pomona’s roe-deer eyes, grieving and
wondering, shifting from side to side
in dumb pleading. Truly this was an
excellent jest of Lady Julia Majendie’s!

It was strange that Lady Alethea,
bending closer and closer over her work,
should have no laughter left after that
single glance from her brother’s eyes;
and that Lord Blantyre himself should
show such lack of humorous appreciation.
There was a heavy silence. Pomona
tried to draw a breath to relieve
her bursting anguish, but in vain—she
was held as in a vise. Her heart fluttered;
she felt as if she must die.

“Pomona,” said Lord Blantyre, suddenly,
“come closer.”

He reached and caught up his sister’s
scissors from her knee, and, leaning forward,
snipped the laces that strained61
across the fine scarlet satin of Pomona’s
cruel bodice.

“Now breathe,” ordered he.

And while the other two were staring,
unable to credit their eyes, Pomona’s
prison fell apart, and over her
heaving bosom her thick white shift
took its own noble folds.

Then the woman in her awoke and
revolted. She flung from her feet the
high-heeled shoes, and with frenzied
hands tearing down her mockery of a
headdress, she ran to the fountain and
began to dash the paint off her face.
The tears streamed down her cheeks as
she laved them.

“Sweet and gentle ladies,” said the
Wicked Earl—his tones cut the air like
a fine blade—“I thank you for a most
excellent demonstration of the superiority
of high breeding. May I beg you
both to retire upon your triumph, and
leave me to deal with this poor, inferior
wretch, since you have now most certainly
convinced me she can never aspire
to such gentility as yours?”

Alethea rose, and, scattering her silks
on one side, her embroidery on the other,
walked straight away down the terrace,
without casting a look behind her.
Julia ran after her with skipping step,
caught her under the arm, and the
laughter of her malice rang out long
after she had herself disappeared.

“Pomona,” said Lord Blantyre.

Often he had called to her, in feverish
complaint, or anger, or pettishly,
like a child, but never in such a tone as
this. She came to him, as she had always
come; and then she stood in shame
before him, her long hair streaming, the
tears rolling down her cheeks, her
hands folded at her throat, her shapely
feet gripping the ground in Julia Majendie’s
green silk stockings. Slowly
his gaze enveloped her. All at once he
smiled, and then, meeting her grieving
eyes, he grew grave again, and suddenly
his haughty face was broken up
by tenderness. He caught one dripping
twist of hair, and pulled her toward him,
after his gentle-cruel fashion. She fell
on her knees beside him and hid her
face in his cushions.

“Kiss me, Pomona,” said he.

“Oh, my lord,” she sobbed, “spare
me; I am only a poor girl.”

Many a time she had dreamed, since
the morning in the orchard, that she
was carrying that bleeding body, her
lips on the dying roses of his lips, but
never, in her humility, had she, even in
her sleep, thought of herself as in his
arms. This was no dream, and yet so
he clasped her.

He bent his dark head over her radiant
hair, his voice dropped words
sweeter than honey, more healing than
balm, into her heart, that was still so
bruised that it could scarce beat to joy.

“When I first beheld you in the
orchard, I was sorry that I might have
to die, Pomona, because you were in
life. You carried me in your arms and
kept my soul from passing, by the touch
of your lips. When the fever burned me
you brought me coolness—you lifted
me and gave me breath. All night you
held me. Patient, strong Pomona! You
bore with all my humors. You came
to me in the night from your sleep, all
in white, like an angel, your bare feet
on the boards. Oh, my gentle nurse,
my humble love, my mate, my wife!”

She raised her head to gaze at him.
Yet she took the wonder like a child,
not disclaiming, not questioning.

“Oh!” she said, with a deep, soft
sigh.

He fondly pushed the tangled hair
from her brow.

“And shall a man make shift with
sham and hollow artifice when he can
possess truth itself? They put paint on
your cheeks, my Pomona, and tricked
you out in gauds, and behold, I saw
how great was the true woman beside
the painted doll!”

He kissed her lips, and then he cried:

“Oh, golden apple, how is the taste
of thee sweet and pure!”

And, after a silence, he said to her,
faintly, for he was still weak for such
rapture:

“Lift me, my love, and let me lie
a while against your woman’s heart, for
never have I drawn such sweet breath
as in your arms.”

62

The Master of the Dido
BY ELIZABETH DUER

A CERTAIN great corporation
was digging
up New York and setting
microbes loose in
quarters too aristocratic
to suffer inconvenience
with patience,
and so there were a
general boarding up of front doors
and windows, a rush to Europe or to
watering places; and my elders, who
were just recovering from the grip, decided
that Southstrand in the month of
May was preferable to pneumonia in
town. Therefore I—Kate Russell—was
sent on ahead to open my mother’s
cottage at that gay little resort, in spite
of my uncle Barton Hay’s warnings
against such an unchaperoned proceeding,
and mamma’s distrust of my housekeeping
powers. She was not strong
enough to undertake it herself, but to
intrust the sacred rites of cleaning and
unpacking to the supervision of a girl
of twenty seemed to her abnormal;
while uncle Barton felt that no unmarried
woman should be given such liberty.

My uncle had condescended to live
with us since my father’s death, and,
while he was too set in his ways to do
anything for anybody, we were much
attached to him, and let him bully us,
as most women do the one man in the
house.

“Julia,” he said, addressing my
mother, “you are surely not going to
send Kate off alone to that jumping-off
place, Southstrand! If some young
fellow elopes with her, you’ll have yourself
to thank.”

“This is the twentieth century, Barton,”
said mamma, laughing; “young
women do not elope nowadays. They
may defy parents and divorce husbands,
but they don’t elope.”

“Don’t they?” snorted uncle Barton.
“I say they do! When I was at Nassau
this winter, a young Englishman, without
two cents to jingle on a tombstone,
eloped with old Stanbury Steel’s daughter.
They borrowed his friend Lord
Battleford’s steam yacht—you must remember
about Battleford—started
round the world a poor lieutenant on
some English man-of-war, and came
back to find half a dozen relations dead,
and a title and fortune waiting for him.
Well, as I was saying, they got him to
lend them his yacht, touched at Miami
to get married, and were off before old
Steel could catch ’em. Mark my
words, Julia, girls are not to be
trusted.”

This last remark switched them back
to the starting point, and they finally
agreed to let me go.

The swallow that does not make summer
came to us disguised as one warm
day, and mamma dispatched me on my
mission, although before I could pack
and get off the weather had turned
chilly, with a wind from the east.

I was allowed a bodyguard of two
servants—the most incompetent in the
house, and therefore the most easily
spared: old Murphy, a preserved supernumerary,
who, having been my
father’s valet, was kept on through sentiment,
and Bridget, the housemaid,
also elderly and very irritable.

We reached our little, airy, seaside
home at sundown—only there wasn’t
any sun—and found the fires, lighted
by the women who had been cleaning,
most agreeable after a chilly drive from63
the station. The wind was howling
and rattling through the cracks of the
window frames, and actually made its
way between the boards of the floor.
There was nothing to oppose its fury;
it could sweep up uninterruptedly from
the Antilles or across from Europe, and
that night it seemed to come from both
directions at once, and make whirling
eddies on our south piazza.

Murphy served me a nice little repast
on a tray, so that I did not have to leave
the library fire, and I amused myself
with my novel till half-past nine, and
then rang the bell.

“I am going to bed, Murphy,” I
said. “You may lock up.”

“Me and Bridget’s going ourselves,
ma’am,” he answered.

“See that all the shutters are securely
fastened,” I added. “The cleaners
left some of them open, but they
should be closed such a night as this.”

“Make yourself easy, Miss Kate,”
he said, patronizingly. “Me and
Bridget knows the ways of them
weemen.”

And so, drowsy with the narcotic of
sea air, my household went to bed.

As I undressed, I heard the first
splash of rain. It didn’t come pattering
like a shower, but in a wild dash
against the side of the house, as if the
wind had caught the crests of all the
waves and was hurling them landward.

A line of a hymn I used to repeat to
mamma in my childish days came back
to me as I laid my head on the pillow:

Truly they would need guarding that
night, I reflected; but as sentiment rarely
interferes with inclination, my sympathy
for the tempest-tossed sailors did
not prevent my going to sleep promptly
and remaining in that state of oblivion
for hours.

About three o’clock—possibly a little
earlier—I waked up with a beating
heart; some unusual noise had disturbed
me, and I raised myself on my
elbow to listen. It came again—my
shutter, banging like a sledge hammer.
If anyone thinks it is pleasant to get out
of a warm bed to wrestle with a recalcitrant
shutter in the teeth of an Atlantic
gale, they don’t know the south
shore of Long Island—that is all! I
waited for a moment, selfishly hoping
Bridget might hear and come to my
aid, but Bridget was no such goose—and
I got up to help myself.

As is often the case on the coast, the
rain was fitful; sometimes it came in
torrents, and then for half an hour it
would cease. Just now the wind was
the only aggressor, and as I stood shivering
and looking out through my shutterless
window toward the sea, up
through the blackness ran a tiny trail
of fire that burst into a star and fell.

Amazement was my first sensation,
and then terror! A ship was drifting
on the bar and signaling for help, and
perhaps I was the only living soul who
had seen it! I knew the life-saving
crew were close at hand—their station
stood across the road opposite to our
cottage—but with the exception of the
two men on duty, making their dreary
patrol of the beach, they were probably
asleep in their beds, and those two
might be several miles to the east or
the west, at the end of their beat, while
the helpless creatures on the bar sent
their flashing prayer for aid.

Hastily lighting my reading lamp, I
set it in my window; that much of comfort
should be theirs—they should know
that one landlubber was up and stirring
in their behalf. Next I ran to Bridget’s
room and shook her till she waked. Her
irritation yielded to the excitement of
the moment, and she undertook to get
Murphy up and to join me as soon as
possible.

I had come up to Southstrand well
provided with warm, rough clothing,
and I dressed as rapidly and suitably
as I could to go out in the storm.
Bridget, in spite of a sharp tongue, had
the kind-heartedness of her nation, and
needed no second bidding to make up
the kitchen fire and unpack the blankets.

“Sure they’ll need something to warm
their drownded bodies if they come
ashore,” she declared. “So have the64
whisky handy, Miss Kate, for belike
they’ll want it.”

I had pushed my curly mane into a
tam, and buttoned a waterproof coat
over my short skirts, and I now opened
the back door and went out before
Bridget realized what I meant to do.
She came roaring after me, horrified at
my venturing alone into the night, but
I was beyond recall, halfway over to
the life-saving station.

Trust our coast crews for good service.
Except for one solitary Triton in
his sou’wester, every man of the crew
was already on the beach, and this one
was only making the place snug before
rushing after them. He started when
I addressed him, for I came upon him
softly.

“So you knew about the vessel!” I
exclaimed, standing in the doorway of
the great barn of a place where the
apparatus for rescue is kept—the boat
and the life car and mortar, the breeches
buoy and the life belts—most of which
was now on the beach.

The man looked at me with ill-disguised
impatience.

“I want to shut that door, lady,” he
said.

Evidently I had to make my choice
between being squeezed flat or getting
out of the way.

In a moment he emerged through a
smaller door, and began striding toward
the beach, and I, nothing daunted
by his surliness, ran beside him. We
passed through a cleft between the sand
dunes and over the heavy sands of the
upper beach, and as we ran my indifference
to the storm seemed to win me
a reluctant esteem, for he condescended
to answer some of my questions.

He said they judged the vessel to be
a small one, that she would probably
drift over the bar with the tide that
had just turned to come in, and would
go to pieces near shore; that they
would try to launch the lifeboat, but
he didn’t believe they would succeed
in such a surf, and he guessed they
would have to shoot a line over her and
use the breeches.

I could only hear about half his
words, for they were carried away by
the wind, which tore across the beach
so laden with loose sand that it lashed
our faces like a whip. I thanked him
for his information, and asked his
name, and then I told him mine, and
tried to prove the sincerity of my wish
to help.

“I am Miss Russell, and this is my
house,” I said, pointing to the lighted
windows of the cottage a few hundred
feet away. “You may call on me for
blankets or bedding, or refreshment
of any kind—good luck to you, Mr.
Herrick. I shall stand here and watch.”

“We’ll do all we can,” he said, shaking
his head, “but the chances to save
them folks out there looks pretty poor
to me.”

Here he left me, and directed his
steps toward the swinging lanterns that
marked the spot where his companions
were busy. They had run their large
surf boat to the edge of the waves, and
were making strenuous efforts to launch
it, but in the darkness and in such a
sea it was little short of madness.
Every time there was a momentary lull,
the men, with their hands grasping the
gunwales, rushed waist-deep into the
water, but before they could scramble
into the boat, a great roller would
drive it and them back on the beach,
and they were beginning to lose heart.

Half an hour had passed since the
stranded vessel had signaled, and I began
to fear that all was over, when
close—quite close—a blue light burned,
and we saw her plainly only a few hundred
yards from the shore. I was
standing as near the tide line as I dared,
and in my excitement was frequently
caught by the invading waves and wet
to my knees—but what do such things
matter in the presence of a tragedy?

While I looked I became conscious
that the figures of the life-saving crew
were dimly visible, and far across the
sea a gray light crept into the sky; the
day was breaking, and one element of
terror was gone.

Our men abandoned the idea of using
their boat, and they drew it out of reach
of the waves, and dragged their mortar
into position. By this time it was light
enough for us to see the vessel, and a65
sorry sight she was. She was pointing
up the coast, her bowsprit gone and
her forward mast broken about halfway
down; she listed terribly to leeward,
and every third or fourth wave
washed entirely over her deck. Her
crew were in the rigging of the mainmast;
we thought we could make out
six. She was a little craft to have ventured
upon a voyage, for no pleasure
boat would be off Southstrand at that
season of the spring unless returning
from southern or European waters, and
there was something in her appearance
that pronounced her a yacht even to my
inexperienced eyes.

Bang went the mortar! But in the
uncertain light the aim must have
missed, for I saw the men hauling back
the line and coiling it with lightning
speed. My heart beat to suffocation;
I felt as if it were tied to the end of
that slender cord, and was now being
dragged through the fury of the sea.

Once more they sighted and fired,
and as they stood grouped, watching
the effect, I ventured to join them. My
friend Herrick had a glass, and was reporting
his observations. Out of the
rigging a man swung down to the deck—the
line had evidently crossed the
ship! Now came a moment of intense
excitement—would he get it before a
monster wave washed it away, or would
both he and the life line be swept off
before the eyes of his comrades in the
rigging? Whatever happened, he had
written himself a hero in one woman’s
heart.

“He’s got it!” I heard Herrick shout,
and in confirmation we could see him
climbing back on the mast, while another
man seemed to be aiding him in
making the line fast. We could distinguish
even distant objects now; the
day was coming on apace.

At that moment a mountainous wave
struck the yacht, making her careen so
violently that the mast seemed to touch
the sea, and when she righted herself
the lowest man was gone!

Without knowing it, I must have
sobbed aloud, for Herrick laid a rough
hand on my shoulder.

“This ain’t no place for women,” he
said, though not unkindly. “You had
better go home, Miss Russell.”

“I’ll not go home,” I answered, angrily,
and then I, in my turn, grasped
his arm.

“What is that in that wave?” I almost
screamed, and he answered, with
an oath I dare not set down:

“It’s a man!”

Most of the life-saving men were
busy paying out the heavy line that was
to support the breeches buoy to and
from the sinking ship, but one young
fellow heard Herrick’s shout, and followed
him to the edge of the waves.
They were already in their cork belts,
and Herrick now fastened a rope round
his waist and gave the coil to his companion
as he waited for the incoming
surge. The two stood like a pair of
leashed greyhounds prepared to spring.

On came the roller—not a wall of
water, like many that had preceded it,
but low, swift and sweeping, with a
nasty side twist—and in its foam, sometimes
tossed high, sometimes hidden in
the spray, came its human burden.

Herrick ran forward to meet the
wave, and plunged under as it broke,
while we on shore watched with throbbing
hearts his game with death. It
seemed an even chance whether he
would snatch his prey from the sea,
or be trampled himself in its cruel
pounding. The agony of the moment
made it seem interminable, and I think
I must have lost consciousness, for I
found myself on the sands with my
head against the lifeboat, and, a hundred
feet away, Herrick and the man
he had saved were stretched side by
side.

I never saw anything as humanly
perfect as that sailor. He was a young
man—decidedly under thirty—with the
regularity of feature we usually consider
Greek, and a look of repose
beautiful to behold. Dignity, tenderness
and a soft languor all mingled
in the expression of his face.

I could not believe that he was dead,
such a little time had elapsed since he
had been swept from the vessel, and I
knelt beside him and began to rub his
cold hands between my own.

66
The hands were good—too good for
a seafaring man, and with feminine precipitance
I jumped to the conclusion
that this beautiful, fair-haired Viking
was the owner of the yacht, and no
sooner had this idea entered my mind
than romance was busy weaving a web
round my heart. The lower part of
his face was bronzed by exposure, but
the forehead was white as a child’s,
and above it the short hair grew low,
and ruffled itself in little rings as the
water dripped from it. I knew if ever
the eyes met mine they would be blue,
and I gazed as if the force of my will
could compel them to disclose their secret
to me. Perhaps it did—for suddenly
the lids trembled, then opened,
and a pair of blue-gray eyes looked
sternly in my face. The expression was
defiant, as if the spirit had been braced
to meet danger, but in a second the
hard look vanished, and the eyes seemed
to smile before they slowly shut, as if
the effort had cost all remaining vitality.

Herrick’s companion was just starting
to run for help when that redoubtable
person sat up and then staggered
to his feet. He had only had the wind
knocked out of him, and was his own
sturdy self in a few minutes, with a
wealth of invectives that broke rudely
upon my exalted mood. He called to
his companion to get to work if he
didn’t want the man to die on their
hands, and added, crossly:

“We can’t do anything here with a
woman lookin’ on. Just carry him over
to the station, and we’ll cut these wet
clothes off him and give him a show at
the fire, and I guess he’ll pull round all
right.”

They hoisted him over the shoulder
of the younger man, and bore him off,
leaving me humiliated by my disabilities
for usefulness. I stood rooted to
the spot where I had knelt beside the
sailor, a flood of pity and admiration
filling my heart, and a passionate wondering
whether life or death were to be
the portion of the man whose beauty
and courage had so moved me. Herrick’s
rough kindness seemed to me
sacrilege.

In the meantime the breeches buoy
had made one trip and landed its first
passenger, a monkey-like old sailor
with gold earrings and black whiskers
surrounding his flat face. He spat the
salt water from his mouth, and with
as little concern as if he were furling
a sail he lent a hand to the coast crew
in their work of rescue.

I approached the group to repeat
the offer I had already made to Herrick
of fire and refreshment at my cottage,
and overheard the old fellow’s
replies to certain questions our men
put to him concerning the yacht and
the man who had been washed overboard.

“That was our captain,” he said.
“I’ve sailed with worse—durned sight
worse! Got him, did you? Name is
Holford—yacht Dido—coming from
Nassau by way of Bermuda—here she
comes!”

This last was in reference to the
breeches, which was freighted for the
second time.

The wind was going down as the
day advanced, and the waves seemed
less vicious. To my shame, I found my
interest in the rescue of my fellow
creatures had dwindled since the Viking
had been borne off, and I became
keenly aware of my bodily discomfort.
I was wet to the skin and exhausted to
the last degree, and hardly had the
strength to drag myself home. Before
going to my room, however, I dispatched
Murphy over to the station
with blankets and hot coffee, together
with a bottle of whisky, and I charged
Bridget to let me know his report of
Captain Holford.

It was a long time before she brought
me any news, and then it was interspersed
with characteristic scoldings.

“Why didn’t I come before? Glory
be to goodness, this day and this night,
child. How can I be everywhere at
once? People running in for hot
drinks, and half-drowned creatures
sopping the kitchen with sea water;
it’s half dead I am! The captain of the
ship? Well, Murphy says he’s alive,
but he guesses he’s hurt internal, and
the doctor’s been and taken him over67
to that little house across the field,
where he can be more quiet and have
a room to himself. You drink this hot
tea, Miss Kate, and get into your bed,
if you don’t want to be sick after this
night’s work.”

She set down the tea and walked off,
disapprobation expressed in every line
of her retreating figure. When she
reached the stairs I heard her mutter:

“Young ladies running out with the
men in the middle of the night. ’Tain’t
my idea of manners, and I guess it
won’t be Mrs. Russell’s either, when
I tell her what Miss Kate’s been up
to.”

If I had been a boy I should have
said something forcible to Bridget.

A severe cold kept me in my room
for two days, and made me humble
enough to swallow Bridget’s nostrums
as well as her reproaches, for the
dread that she might send for my mother
and put an end to future free action
on my part held me enslaved.

The gale blew itself out, and nature
remembered that the month was May.
May at Southstrand meant buttercups
as large as daisies, and, in the woods,
clustering masses of pink azaleas. The
beach grass on the dunes waved silver
in the south wind, the fields and meadows
intensified their spring freshness
by a cunning shading of velvet greens,
and the blue of the sky melted into the
sea.

During the hours of my imprisonment
I had thought but one thought,
seen but one vision—the face of my
sailor captain as he lay on the beach,
and I asked myself how I dared to thus
idealize a stranger. Not for a second
did I doubt his place in life. Class prejudice
was mine to an overmastering
extent, but I told myself that such
beauty of body could only be the home
of what I was pleased to call the soul
of a gentleman. For narrowness of
vision commend me to that which has
only seen life through plate-glass windows
and lace curtains. Thanks to a
new influence, mine broadened and
matured with the ripening summer.

The morning of the third day I ventured
out, and naturally directed my
steps to the life-saving station to ask
news of the yacht’s crew. Herrick was
just outside with his bicycle, prepared
to skim off to the village to spend his
leisure hours with his family, but he
courteously waited to greet me and
answer my questions.

The rescued men had been sent to
New York. The captain had attended
to that, for, while he was unable to be
moved just yet owing to injuries he had
received, he was able to give his orders
and see that they were carried out.

“Doesn’t he mourn the wreck of his
yacht?” I asked, and Herrick answered:

“Lor’, miss! ’Tain’t nothin’ to him;
he’s only the sailing master. The Dido’s
owned by a rich man, who is off on his
wedding trip, and sent the yacht home
from Nassau with this young fellow.”

Only the sailing master! My lips
kept whispering it, and my brain would
not take it in. It meant that I—Katherine
Russell, the fastidious daughter
of tradition, of all exclusiveness—had
fallen in love with a sailing master, and,
what was far worse, I had fallen in
love unsolicited. What would my
mother say—and uncle Barton? Uncle
Barton, who was always rolling that
magic word, “gentleman,” under his
tongue, and despising others. Of course
they need never know, but my secret
hurt me.

Desperate diseases require desperate
remedies, and as I walked along the
lanes in a passion of rage at my own
weakness, I determined to see this man
and let him destroy his own image in
my heart. I was in love with a creature
of my own creation—I knew
neither his mind nor his speech—perhaps
his first words would dispel the
illusion and set me free.

Across the field was the little house
that harbored him, open doored and
cheerful in the sunshine, and I boldly
turned my face thither. As I approached,
the farmer’s wife came out
of her henhouse with her apron full of
fresh eggs, and I affected to wish to
buy some for my housekeeping, and
strolled with her to the porch.

68
“I’ll put them in a basket for you,
Miss Russell,” she said, pausing. “I
am sorry I cannot ask you inside to
wait, but my parlor is let to the captain
of that wrecked vessel, and he’s still too
sick to leave his bed.”

As she spoke a towering figure filled
the doorway and a deep voice said:

“Oh, no, he isn’t, Mrs. Price, for
here he is, and hungry enough to beg
for one of those eggs for a second
breakfast.”

He was dressed in a blue flannel
shirt, such as the village shops furnished,
a pair of dark trousers, also
village made, and a coat which must
have been lent to him by the farmer:
and he wore them with an air that was
regal.

Now that I was face to face with
my folly, I recovered my senses, and,
while I felt puzzled by the contradictions
he presented, I was brave enough
to take advantage of opportunity.

“You must allow me to congratulate
you upon your rescue and that of your
crew, Mr. Holford,” I said. “You had
a narrow escape.”

“The congratulations are due to the
gallantry of your coast guards,” he answered,
with enthusiasm.

“I am sorry about the yacht,” I continued;
“she is still holding together,
for one mast thrusts itself out of the
water at low tide and looks so pathetic.”

“A monument to bad seamanship,”
he said, impatiently. “It is the last
boat I shall ever attempt to sail.”

“But isn’t sailing your occupation?”
I asked, aghast at his easy way of laying
down his livelihood. “There must
be plenty of gentlemen needing sailing
masters, even if this one especial yacht
has gone to the bottom.”

He stared at me blankly, and then a
quizzical look came into his eyes, as he
answered:

“Few gentlemen care to employ an
unsuccessful sailing master; indeed, I
am not sure but that my license will be
revoked. No, no, the ocean has thrown
me upon the land, and I mean to take
the hint.”

“It seems hard to begin life all over
again,” I said, sympathetically.

He impressed me as a man gently
nurtured, who had adopted a profession
for which he was not originally intended.

“You mustn’t waste too much compassion
on me,” he replied. “I have
no one dependent upon me, and, besides,
I am not at the end of my resources.
I possess a few acres of farm
land. There is nothing to prevent my
turning myself into a son of the soil.”

At this juncture Mrs. Price came
back with the eggs, and I turned to go,
feeling the conversation was becoming
almost too personal.

“Good-by,” I said. “I am glad you
are better. Is there anything I can
do for you?”

He came painfully after me down
the path; the muscles of his back had
been hurt and he moved stiffly.

“Two things if you will,” he said,
with rather a saucy smile: “tell me
where I have seen you before, and lend
me some books.”

This was getting on a little too fast.
If he had been my social equal, if we
had possessed friends in common, he
could not have been more assured in his
manner.

“I have never spoken to you before
in my life,” I said, coldly. “I will send
you some books, Mr. Holford.”

Again the merriment flashed into his
eyes, and he stood in my path.

“You would prefer me with manners
cold as my hands were the other day
when you chafed them for me on the
beach. You see, I remember—and I
prefer you with a red Tam o’ Shanter
on your curly locks. Oh, don’t be
vexed!” he added, with entreaty in his
voice. “I do not mean to be impertinent,
but I have been haunted by a
vision, and the impression is intensified
by reality.” He drew aside to let
me pass, and I hurried down the path,
more in love with this impudent, outrageous
stranger than before.

I sent Murphy with the books; a
choice collection of direct narratives—Conan
Doyle, Clark Russell stories, that
I considered suited to a taste more
practical than scholarly—but as an69
afterthought I added a novel I had just
read, a psychological problem as to
one’s right to dispose of life in the
manner to give the richest fulfillment
to present desires at the expense of
future wreck or death.

I was thoroughly disingenuous with
myself, for my only object in sending
that book was to mark its effect, to welcome
its discussion, and yet I pretended
I never wished to see Mr. Holford
again.

Perhaps it was not altogether my
fault that we met every day, and sometimes
twice a day, in that week allotted
to his recovery. If I strolled up the
beach when my house duties were over,
I was sure to be waylaid by Mr. Holford
on my return, and he leaned so
heavily on his cane, and entreated me
so earnestly to sit down for a moment
and rest, that common humanity made
me accede to his request.

I had a shrewd suspicion that
Bridget was always dogging my footsteps,
and once or twice I surprised a
flitting figure disappearing round the
piazza when Captain Holford walked
home with me, but as she never ventured
to remonstrate openly, I did not
suppose she would presume to write
about me to mamma.

This went on for six glorious days,
and we talked of everything on earth,
and even exchanged views of the trans-celestial,
and the rest of the time we
talked of ourselves, and again of ourselves.
He drew from me my thoughts
and hopes, the monotonous story of a
sheltered girl’s life, and the shrinking
and longing—so oddly mixed—with
which she viewed the impending future;
and in return he talked much of his
feelings, but little of his past, though
vaguely I guessed that a great financial
change had come to him not very long
ago, and I understood how painful explanations
might be, and admired his
uncomplaining courage.

At our last meeting, for he was going
away the next day, we discussed
that burning question of what an enlightened
conscience owes to others—to
prejudice and class distinction as
against its larger usefulness and happiness.

We were seated near the top of a
sand dune with the Atlantic murmuring
at our feet, and behind us the merry
little village settling down to rest after
the labors of the day. Mr. Holford
had been talking of youth, its sensuous
keenness to pain or pleasure, and saying
that worldly prudence meant sacrificing
life at its flood of physical development
to the dreary protection of its decay.

“We must go hungry,” he concluded,
disdainfully, “while we have the teeth
to eat, in order that our mumbling old
age may be regaled with banquets it is
past enjoying.”

His reasoning seemed to me fallacious.

“If youth is restrained,” I said, “it
is only in the cause of self-respect.
What civilized being wishes to be a
burden to others?”

“Civilization means hardened selfishness,”
he said. “It conjugates all its
tenses with to have, seldom with to be.”

I asked myself whether this bitterness
was a protest against the social
barrier between us, and I said, reproachfully:

“I don’t like you in this mood. You
are hard.”

“The sordid side of life has been
thrust upon me,” he said, sadly. “I
have known poverty and riches, and I
have suffered almost as much from one
as the other, till I hate such influences.
Why, even you—a girl of twenty—would
deny your best impulses if you
fell in love with a man below you in
position. Look into my eyes and tell
me if I have guessed the truth?”

I looked into his eyes and saw something
that made the color mount to my
cheeks and set my heart thumping.

“A girl doesn’t own her own life,
Mr. Holford,” I managed to answer.
“She only owns a little part of herself
called her heart, and that seems of
small consequence to her elders.”

“Her elders!” he repeated, scornfully.
“There spoke the conventional girl.
We will not talk in quibbles any longer.
I love you. I am an honorable man,
and therefore worthy of the woman I70
love. I can support you in decent comfort.
Will you marry me?”

He held out that handsome brown
hand to me, and I put mine in it.

“I will love you,” I said, “because I
cannot help myself, but I will not marry
you without my mother’s consent, because
it would make me miserable. You
have loved me in spite of my classbound
education, now win me openly
and honorably or go your way.”

I sprang to my feet, meaning to leave
him, but he caught my frock like a
naughty child, and held me while he
scrambled painfully to his feet.

“God bless you, Kate,” he said, “you
are right, as usual. As long as you love
me for my very self, it makes little
difference that your mother may probably
accept me for a different reason.
Tell me once more that you love the
poor sailing master of the Dido—that
if left to yourself, you would share his
fortunes, no matter how humble—and
then I will tell you the truth.”

And I told him; indeed, it was sweet
to make the confession, with no one to
share it but the crickets in the beach
grass, and a belated bird calling to
her mate, and when I had satisfied his
craving to be loved, I claimed his
promise.

“Now what have you to tell me?” I
demanded, for he had stung my woman’s
curiosity.

“Only that Holford is no longer my
name,” he said, smiling; “at least only
a part of it. Several years ago, by a
strange turn of fortune, I——”

He stopped abruptly, for mamma
appeared on the top of the sand hill
and fluttered down upon us like an
avenging angel.

“Kate!” she exclaimed. “What are
you doing here? And who is this person
with whom you are on such intimate
terms that he holds your hands
while he talks to you? My daughter
seems unable to answer me,” she continued,
turning to my lover; “perhaps
you will favor me with some account
of yourself?”

“With pleasure,” he said, his eyes
dancing wickedly. “Miss Russell could
not tell you my name because she
doesn’t know it herself. I am——”

And here he was again interrupted
by uncle Barton sliding down the sand
hill and landing heavily.

“Great Scott!” he grumbled, “I’ve a
ton of sand in each shoe! I hope I did
not hurt you, sir—why, can it be?
What the devil are you doing here,
Battleford? Do you know my sister,
Mrs. Russell? This is Lord Battleford,
Julia, whom I met at Nassau.”

At this point his wits revealed to him
that Lord Battleford was the castaway
sailor whose attentions to me had
alarmed Bridget into writing to my
mother for help, and he turned upon
the young gentleman with rancor.

“You don’t seem to need any introduction
to my niece, Lord Battleford,”
he said, loftily, while his face flushed
with turkey-cock rage, “and I beg to
inform you that I think it a deuced
ungentlemanlike thing on your part to
compromise a girl with clandestine
meetings and flirtations in the absence
of her family, and I tell you plainly the
whole thing has got to stop.”

“Not so fast, if you please, Mr.
Hay,” said my sailor, laughing. “I have
won a wife who likes me for what I
am irrespective of what I have, and I
hope you and Mrs. Russell are not going
to spoil our romance by refusing
your consent. Speak up, Kate,” he
said, turning to me; “tell these discreet
people that I am something better than
a title—a man you have learned to
love.”

And so I had to make a second confession
of the state of my heart, and
mamma succumbed in two minutes to
Battleford’s charms—or those of his
title—but I heard Uncle Barton still
scolding as he helped her up the sand
dune.

“Oh, yes, he’ll make a she-earl of
Kate—countess, I mean—but he’ll take
her away from us, and I fancy you will
yet regret the day you trusted her out
of your sight, when the ocean lies between
us and our little girl.”

But she didn’t! For in giving me to
Battleford she not only had me often
with her, but gained the dearest of sons.

71

Mrs. Evremond
By
Mrs. John Van Vorst
& Marie Van Vorst

WHEN Mrs. Evremond
found herself
actually in her carriage
it seemed to her that it
would never go fast enough, although
Heaven knows she was indifferent
to the speed of her vehicles as a
rule, there being no reason why she
should hasten—no place she especially
cared to arrive at, no excitement or
element of it in her quiet life. But this
afternoon she was conscious of every
rotation of the wheels.

When the Arc de Triomphe had been
passed and in and out among automobiles
and tramways her little yellow-wheeled
brougham crossed the Etoile
and began the descent, suddenly, with
the inconsequence marking a woman’s
emotions as clearly as it stamps her reasonings,
Mrs. Evremond decided the
coachman was driving at a ridiculous
rate. After all, she hoped never to
reach the Place de la Concorde—never
to traverse the Pont Royal and leave for
the Latin Quarter and the other side of
the river—the insouciant world of the
Bois and American Paris. She had no
desire to find the obscure street in which
her husband had his studio—which
street was, however, the direction she
had given her footman, and it was toward
No. 15 bis, Passage du Maine,
that with such useless speed she was being
driven.

They reached and passed the Elysée
Palace Hotel. Mrs. Evremond blew
through the tube at her side, the brougham
drew up to the curb, stopped and
she got out.

“You may go home. I shall not
need you again to-day,” she directed,
and, turning to the avenue, she began
to walk down the Champs Elysées. She
might at least be mistress of her own
gait; walk with short, feverish little
steps or retard her pace to keep harmony
with her alternate rapid or halting
reflections, for her mind, as
she walked, went back over
the past six months of her
married life with a persistence,
a clearness, that denoted how important
were the details, how ineffaceable
were the marks her experiences
had made upon her, how intensely she
felt what she had lived, how seriously
she had taken life, how absorbed she
was in the man to whom she had attached
herself—how desperately she
loved her husband. The vividness with
which she thought of him had the precision
of a fresh image. The impulsive
rush of herself toward the harbor her
conception of him made proved, by its
very force and freshness, that thinking
of him like this was a new thing. She
had lived with him, existed by his side,
for six years, and had never thought
about him, around him, as she did to-day.

She gasped. “Perhaps if I had
thought about him a little more and
loved him a little less, this might not
have happened!”

The happening, so distressing to her,
which had caused her, at an unusual
hour, to ring for her carriage, dress and
fly from the house on an expedition she
knew to be close to ill-breeding in its
likeness to melodrama and its distinct
opposition to codes of expedient, had
been finding a letter—the world-worn
story that comes to each woman with a
new pang.

As Mrs. Evremond reached the Rond
Point, she asked herself: “What am I
really going to do? What do I expect
to see and find, and how shall I
act when I find it?”

Women constantly commit the platitude—if
such an expression can be
used—of thinking they are acting on
certain occasions contrary to their characters,
out of gear with their codes.
Mrs. Evremond was not an impulsive72
temperament. Unaccustomed to crises
or events that called for the quick decision
of more brilliant and self-sufficient
minds, she had found herself face
to face with a problem, and was acting
with a precipitation that made her dizzy,
and a promptitude that suggested she
had been brought into contact with just
such difficulties many times before.

The well-bred gentlewoman had
seized, without second thought, the letter
lying open at her feet, read it,
gasped over it, paled over it, hated and
disbelieved it—crushed it in her hand,
and, with the now crumpled sheet between
glove and palm, she was on her
way to verify its purport; to make sure
of the fact which women, if they would
but know it, are many times happier
in ignoring; to prove to herself what?
That her husband was unfaithful to
her; that she must either “cease to love
him”—by the operation of one of those
unbalancing coups de foudre which, we
are told, turn honey to gall and love to
hate in the human breast at one revolution—or
that with the discovery she
must also acknowledge, no matter what
he did, she would love him still, and
would, therefore, curse an enlightenment
which should only give her a useless
bitter grief to suffer for the rest
of her life.