THE COST

By

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

 I A FATHER INVITES DISASTER II OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE III AND SCARBOROUGH IV A DUMONT TRIUMPH V FOUR FRIENDS VI "LIKE HIS FATHER" VII PAULINE AWAKENS VIII THE DECISION IX A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY X MRS. JOHN DUMONT XI YOUNG AMERICA XII AFTER EIGHT YEARS XIII "MY SISTER IN LAW, GLADYS" XIV STRAINING AT THE ANCHORS XV GRADUATED PEARLS XVI CHOICE AMONG EVILS XVII TWO AND THE BARRIER XVIII ON THE FARM XIX PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS XX A MAN IN HIS MIGHT XXI A COYOTE AT BAY XXII STORMS IN THE WEST XXIII A SEA SURPRISE XXIV DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT XXV THE FALLEN KING XXVI A DESPERATE RALLY XXVII THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT XXVIII AFTER THE LONG WINTER

THE COST

I. 

A FATHER INVITES DISASTER

Pauline Gardiner joined us on the day that we, the Second Reader class, moved from the basement to the top story of the old Central PublicSchool. Her mother brought her and, leaving, looked round at us, meeting for an instant each pair of curious eyes with friendly appeal. 

We knew well the enchanted house where she lived--stately, retreatedfar into large grounds in Jefferson Street; a high brick wall allround, and on top of the wall broken glass set in cement. Behind thatimpassable barrier which so teased our young audacity were flower-bedsand "shrub" bushes, whose blossoms were wonderfully sweet if held awhile in the closed hand; grape arbors and shade and fruit trees, haunted by bees; winding walks strewn fresh each spring with tan-barkthat has such a clean, strong odor, especially just after a rain, andthat is at once firm and soft beneath the feet. And in the midst stoodthe only apricot tree in Saint X. As few of us had tasted apricots, and as those few pronounced them better far than oranges or evenbananas, that tree was the climax of tantalization. 

The place had belonged to a childless old couple who hated children--ordid they bar them out and drive them away because the sight and soundof them quickened the ache of empty old age into a pain too keen tobear? The husband died, the widow went away to her old maid sister atMadison; and the Gardiners, coming from Cincinnati to live in the townwhere Colonel Gardiner was born and had spent his youth, bought theplace. On our way to and from school in the first weeks of that term, pausing as always to gaze in through the iron gates of the drive, wehad each day seen Pauline walking alone among the flowers. And shewould stop and smile at us; but she was apparently too shy to come tothe gates; and we, with the memory of the cross old couple awing us, dared not attempt to make friends with her. 

She was eight years old, tall for her age, slender but strong, naturally graceful. Her hazel eyes were always dancing mischievously. She liked boys' games better than girls'. In her second week sheinduced several of the more daring girls to go with her to the pondbelow town and there engage in a raft-race with the boys. And whenJohn Dumont, seeing that the girls' raft was about to win, thrust theone he was piloting into it and upset it, she was the only girl who didnot scream at the shock of the sudden tumble into the water or rise intears from the shallow, muddy bottom. 

She tried going barefooted; she was always getting bruised or cut inattempts--usually successful--at boys' recklessness; yet her voice wassweet and her manner toward others, gentle. She hid her face when MissStone whipped any one--more fearful far than the rise and fall of MissStone's ferule was the soaring and sinking of her broad, bristlingeyebrows. 

From the outset John Dumont took especial delight in teasing her--JohnDumont, the roughest boy in the school. He was seven years older thanshe, but was only in the Fourth Reader--a laggard in his studiesbecause his mind was incurious about books and the like, was absorbedin games, in playing soldier and robber, in swimming and sledding, inorchard-looting and fighting. He was impudent and domineering, a bullybut not a coward, good-natured when deferred to, the feared leader of aboisterous, imitative clique. Until Pauline came he had rarely noticeda girl--never except to play her some prank more or less cruel. 

After the adventure of the raft he watched Pauline afar off, revolvingplans for approaching her without impairing his barbaric dignity, forsubduing her without subduing himself to her. But he knew only one wayof making friends, the only kind of friends he had or couldconceive--loyal subjects, ruled through their weaknesses and fears. And as that way was to give the desired addition to his court a soundthrashing, he felt it must be modified somewhat to help him in hispresent conquest. He tied her hair to the back of her desk; hesnowballed her and his sister Gladys home from school. He raided herplayhouse and broke her dishes and--she giving desperate battle--fledwith only the parents of her doll family. With Gladys shrieking fortheir mother, he shook her out of a tree in their yard, and it sprainedher ankle so severely that she had to stay away from school for amonth. The net result of a year's arduous efforts was that she hadsingled him out for detestation--this when her conquest of him wascomplete because she had never told on him, had never in her worstencounters with him shown the white feather. 

But he had acted more wisely than he knew, for she had at least singledhim out from the crowd of boys. And there was a certain frankgood-nature about him, a fearlessness--and she could not help admiringhis strength and leadership. Presently she discovered his secret--thathis persecutions were not through hatred of her but through anger ather resistance, anger at his own weakness in being fascinated by her. This discovery came while she was shut in the house with her sprainedankle. As she sat at her corner bay-window she saw him hovering in theneighborhood, now in the alley at the side of the house, now hurryingpast, whistling loudly as if bent upon some gay and remote errand, nowskulking along as if he had stolen something, again seated on thecurbstone at the farthest crossing from which he could see her windowout of the corner of his eye. She understood--and forthwith forgavethe past. She was immensely flattered that this big, audaciouscreature, so arrogant with the boys, so contemptuous toward the girls, should be her captive. 

When she was in her first year at the High School and he in his last hewalked home with her every day; and they regarded themselves asengaged. Her once golden hair had darkened now to a beautiful brownwith red flashing from its waves; and her skin was a clear olive pallidbut healthy. And she had shot up into a tall, slender young woman; hermother yielded to her pleadings, let her put her hair into a long knotat the back of her neck and wear skirts ALMOST to the ground. 

When he came from Ann Arbor for his first Christmas holidays each foundthe other grown into a new person. She thought him a marvel of wisdomand worldly experience. He thought her a marvel of idealwomanhood--gay, lively; not a bit "narrow" in judging him, yet narrowto primness in her ideas of what she herself could do, and withalcharming physically. He would not have cared to explain how he came bythe capacity for such sophisticated judgment of a young woman. Theywere to be married as soon as he had his degree; and he was immediatelyto be admitted to partnership in his father's woolen mills--the largestin the state of Indiana. 

He had been home three weeks of the long vacation between his sophomoreand junior years. There appeared on the town's big and busy stream ofgossip, stories of his life at Ann Arbor--of drinking and gambling andwild "tears" in Detroit. And it was noted that the fast young men ofSaint X--so every one called Saint Christopher--were going a more rapidgait. Those turbulent fretters against the dam of dullness and sternrepression of even normal and harmless gaiety had long caused scandal. But never before had they been so daring, so defiant. 

One night after leaving Pauline he went to play poker in CharleyBraddock's rooms. Braddock, only son of the richest banker in Saint X, had furnished the loft of his father's stable as bachelor quarters andentertained his friends there without fear that the noise would breakthe sleep and rouse the suspicions of his father. That night, besidesBraddock and Dumont, there were Jim Cauldwell and his brother Will. Asthey played they drank; and Dumont, winning steadily, became offensivein his raillery. There was a quarrel, a fight; Will Cauldwell, accidently toppled down a steep stairway by Dumont, was picked up witha broken arm and leg. 

By noon the next day the town was boiling with this outbreak ofdeviltry in the leading young men, the sons and prospective successorsof the "bulwarks of religion and morality. " The Episcopalian andMethodist ministers preached against Dumont, that "importer of Satan'sways into our peaceful midst, " and against Charley Braddock with his"ante-room to Sheol"--the Reverend Sweetser had just learned thedistinction between Sheol and Hades. The Presbyterian preacherwrestled spiritually with Will Cauldwell and so wrought upon hisdepression that he gave out a solemn statement of confession, remorseand reform. In painting himself in dark colors he painted Jack Dumontjet black. 

Pauline had known that Dumont was "lively"--he was far too proud of hiswild oats wholly to conceal them from her. And she had all thetolerance and fascinated admiration of feminine youth for thefriskiness of masculine freedom. Thus, though she did not preciselyapprove what he and his friends had done, she took no such serious viewof it as did her parents and his. The most she could do with herfather was to persuade him to suspend sentence pending the conclusionof an investigation into Jack's doings at the University of Michiganand in Detroit. Colonel Gardiner was not so narrow or so severe asJack said or as Pauline thought. He loved his daughter; so he inquiredthoroughly. He knew that his daughter loved Dumont; so he judgedliberally. When he had done he ordered the engagement broken andforbade Dumont the house. 

"He is not wild merely; he is--worse than you can imagine, " said thecolonel to his wife, in concluding his account of his discoveries andof Dumont's evasive and reluctant admissions--an account so carefullyexpurgated that it completely misled her. "Tell Pauline as much as youcan--enough to convince her. "

This, when Mrs. Gardiner was not herself convinced. She regarded thecolonel as too high-minded to be a fit judge of human frailty; and hisover-caution in explanation had given her the feeling that he had astandard for a husband for their daughter which only another such rareman as himself could live up to. Further, she had always been extremelyreserved in mother-and-daughter talk with Pauline, and thus could notnow give her a clear idea of what little she had been able to gatherfrom Colonel Gardiner's half-truths. This typical enacting of afamiliar domestic comedy-tragedy had the usual result: the girl wasconfirmed in her original opinion and stand. 

"Jack's been a little too lively, " was her unexpressed conclusion fromher mother's dilution of her father's dilution of the ugly truth. "He's sorry and won't do it again, and--well, I'd hate a milksop. Father has forgotten that he was young himself once. "

Dumont's father and mother charged against Ann Arbor that which theymight have charged against their own alternations of tyranny andlicense, had they not been humanly lenient in self-excuse. "No morecollege!" said his father. 

"The place for you, young man, is my office, where I can keep an eye ortwo on you. "

"That suits me, " replied the son, indifferently--he made small pretenseof repentance at home. 

"I never wanted to go to college. "

"Yes, it was your mother's doing, " said old Dumont. "Now we'll try MYway of educating a boy. "

So Jack entered the service of his father's god-of-the-six-days, andimmediately showed astonishing talent and twelve-to-fourteen-hourassiduity. He did not try to talk with Pauline. He went nowhere butto business; he avoided the young men. 

"It's a bad idea to let your home town know too much about you, " hereflected, and he resolved that his future gambols out of bounds shouldbe in the security of distant and large cities--and they were. Sevenmonths after he went to work he amazed and delighted his father byinforming him that he had bought five hundred shares of stock in themills--he had made the money, fifty-odd thousand dollars, by aspeculation in wool. He was completely reestablished with his fatherand with all Saint X except Colonel Gardiner. 

"That young Jack Dumont's a wonder, " said everybody. "He'll make thebiggest kind of a fortune or the biggest kind of a smash before he getsthrough. "

He felt that he was fully entitled to the rights of the regenerate; hewent to Colonel Gardiner's law office boldly to claim them. 

At sight of him the colonel's face hardened into an expression as nearto hate as its habit of kindliness would concede. "Well, sir!" saidhe, sharply, eying the young man over the tops of his glasses. 

Dumont stiffened his strong, rather stocky figure and said, his face astudy of youthful frankness: "You know what I've come for, sir. Iwant you to give me a trial. "

"No!" Colonel Gardiner shut his lips firmly. 

"Good morning, sir!" And he was writing again. 

"You are very hard, " said Dumont, bitterly. 

"You are driving me to ruin. "

"How DARE you!" The old man rose and went up to him, eyes blazingscorn. "You deceive others, but not me with my daughter's welfare asmy first duty. It is an insult to her that you presume to lift youreyes to her. "

Dumont colored and haughtily raised his head. He met the colonel'sfiery gaze without flinching. 

"I was no worse than other young men--"

"It's a slander upon young men for you to say that they--that any ofthem with a spark of decency--would do as you have done, as you DO!Leave my office at once, sir!"

"I've not only repented--I've shown that I was ashamed of--of that, "said Dumont. "Yet you refuse me a chance!"

The colonel was shaking with anger. 

"You left here for New York last Thursday night, " he said. "Where andhow did you spend Saturday night and Sunday and Monday?"

Dumont's eyes shifted and sank. 

"It's false, " he muttered. "It's lies. "

"I expected this call from you, " continued Colonel Gardiner, "and Iprepared for it so that I could do what was right. I'd rather see mydaughter in her shroud than in a wedding-dress for you. "

Dumont left without speaking or looking up. 

"The old fox!" he said to himself. "Spying on me--what an idiot I wasnot to look out for that. The narrow old fool! He doesn't know what'man of the world' means. But I'll marry her in spite of him. I'lllet nobody cheat me out of what I want, what belongs to me. "

A few nights afterward he went to a dance at Braddock's, hunted outPauline and seated himself beside her. In a year he had not been sonear her, though they had seen each other every few days and he hadwritten her many letters which she had read, had treasured, but hadbeen held from answering by her sense of honor, unless her lookswhenever their eyes met could be called answers. 

"You mustn't, Jack, " she said, her breath coming fast, her eyesfever-bright. "Father has forbidden me--and it'll only make him theharder. "

"You, too, Polly? Well, then, I don't care what becomes of me. "

He looked so desperate that she was frightened. 

"It isn't that, Jack--you KNOW it isn't that. "

"I've been to see your father. And he told me he'd neverconsent--never! I don't deserve that--and I can't stand it to loseyou. No matter what I've done, God knows I love you, Polly. "

Pauline's face was pale. Her hands, in her lap, were gripping herlittle handkerchief. 

"You don't say that, too--you don't say 'never'?"

She raised her eyes to his and their look thrilled through and throughhim. "Yes, John, I say 'never'--I'll NEVER give you up. "

All the decent instincts in his nature showed in his handsome face, inwhich time had not as yet had the chance clearly to write character. "No wonder I love you--there never was anybody so brave and so true asyou. But you must help me. I must see you and talk to you--once in awhile, anyhow. "

Pauline flushed painfully. 

"Not till--they--let me--or I'm older, John. They've always trusted meand left me free. And I can't deceive them. "

He liked this--it was another proof that she was, through and through, the sort of woman who was worthy to be his wife. 

"Well--we'll wait, " he said. "And if they won't be fair to us, why, we'll have a right to do the best we can. " He gave her a tragic look. 

"I've set my heart on you, Polly, and I never can stand it not to getwhat I've set my heart on. If I lost you, I'd go straight to ruin. "

She might have been a great deal older and wiser and still not haveseen in this a confirmation of her father's judgment of her lover. Andher parents had unconsciously driven her into a mental state in which, if he had committed a crime, it would have seemed to her their faultrather than his. The next day she opened the subject with hermother--the subject that was never out of their minds. 

"I can't forget him, mother. I CAN'T give him up. " With the splendidconfidence of youth, "I can save him--he'll do anything for my sake. "With the touching ignorance of youth, "He's done nothing so verydreadful, I'm sure--I'd believe him against the whole world. "

And in the evening her mother approached her father. She was insympathy with Pauline, though her loyalty to her husband made hercareful not to show it. She had small confidence in a man's judgmentsof men on their woman-side, great confidence in the power of women tochange and uplift men. 

"Father, " said she, when they were alone on the side porch aftersupper, "have you noticed how hard Polly is taking IT?"

His eyes and the sudden deepening of the lines in his face answered her. 

"Don't you think maybe we've been a little--too--severe?"

"I've tried to think so, but--" He shook his head. "Maggie, he'shopeless, hopeless. "

"I don't know much about those things. " This was a mere form ofspeech. She thought she knew all there was to be known; and as she wasan intelligent woman who had lived a long time and had a normal humancuriosity she did know a great deal. But, after the fashion of many ofthe women of the older generation, she had left undisturbed hisdelusion that her goodness was the result not of intelligence but ofignorance. "But I can't help fearing it isn't right to condemn a youngman forever because he was led away as a boy. "

"I can't discuss it with you, Maggie--it's a degradation even to speakof him before a good woman. You must rely upon my judgment. Pollymust put him out of her head. "

"But what am I to tell her? You can't make a woman like our Paulineput a man out of her life when she loves him unless you give her areason that satisfies her. And if you don't give ME a reason thatsatisfies me how can I give HER a reason that will satisfy her?"

"I'll talk to her, " said the colonel, after a long pause. "Shemust--she shall give him up, mother. "

"I've tried to persuade her to go to visit Olivia, " continued Mrs. Gardiner. "But she won't. And she doesn't want me to ask Olivia here. "

"I'll ask Olivia before I speak to her. "

Mrs. Gardiner went up to her daughter's room--it had been herplay-room, then her study, and was now graduated into her sitting-room. She was dreaming over a book--Tennyson's poems. She looked up, eyesfull of hope. 

"He has some good reason, dear, " began her mother. 

"What is it?" demanded Pauline. 

"I can't tell you any more than I've told you already, " replied hermother, trying not to show her feelings in her face. 

"Why does he treat me--treat you--like two naughty little children?"said Pauline, impatiently tossing the book on the table. 

"Pauline!" Her mother's voice was sharp in reproof. "How can youplace any one before your father!"

Pauline was silent--she had dropped the veil over herself. "I--I--wheredid you place father--when--when--" Her eyes were laughing again. 

"You know he'd never oppose your happiness, Polly. " Mrs. Gardiner wassmoothing her daughter's turbulent red-brown hair. "You'll only have towait under a little more trying circumstances. And if he's right, thetruth will come out. And if he's mistaken and John's all you thinkhim, then that will come out. "

Pauline knew her father was not opposing her through tyranny or prideof opinion or sheer prejudice; but she felt that this was another caseof age's lack of sympathy with youth, felt it with all the intensity ofinfatuated seventeen made doubly determined by opposition andconcealment. The next evening he and she were walking together in thegarden. He suddenly put his arm round her and drew her close to himand kissed her. 

"You know I shouldn't if I didn't think it the only course--don't you, Pauline?" he said in a broken voice that went straight to her heart. 

"Yes, father. " Then, after a silence: "But--we--we've beensweethearts since we were children. And--I--father, I MUST stand byhim. "

"Won't you trust me, child? Won't you believe ME rather than him?"

Pauline's only answer was a sigh. They loved each the other; he adoredher, she reverenced him. But between them, thick and high, rose thebarrier of custom and training. Comradeship, confidence wereimpossible. 

II. 

OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE. 

With the first glance into Olivia's dark gray eyes Pauline ceased toresent her as an intruder. And soon she was feeling that some sort ofdawn was assailing her night. 

Olivia was the older by three years. She seemed--and for her years, was--serious and wise because, as the eldest of a large family, she waslieutenant-general to her mother. Further, she had always had her ownway--when it was the right way and did not conflict with justice to herbrothers and sisters. And often her parents let her have her own waywhen it was the wrong way, nor did they spoil the lesson by mitigatingdisagreeable consequences. 

"Do as you please, " her mother used to say, when doing as she pleasedwould involve less of mischief than of valuable experience, "andperhaps you'll learn to please to do sensibly. " Again, her fatherwould restrain her mother from interference--"Oh, let the girl alone. She's got to teach herself how to behave, and she can't begin a minutetoo young. " This training had produced a self-reliant andself-governing Olivia. 

She wondered at the change in Pauline--Pauline, the light-hearted, theeffervescent of laughter and life, now silent and almost somber. Itwas two weeks before she, not easily won to the confiding mood for allher frankness, let Olivia into her secret. Of course, it was at night;of course, they were in the same bed. And when Olivia had heard shecame nearer to the truth about Dumont than had Pauline's mother. But, while she felt sure there was a way to cure Pauline, she knew that waywas not the one which had been pursued. "They've only made herobstinate, " she thought, as she, lying with hands clasped behind herhead, watched Pauline, propped upon an elbow, staring with dreamfuldetermination into the moonlight. 

"It'll come out all right, " she said; her voice always suggested thatshe knew what she was talking about. "Your father'll give in sooner orlater--if YOU don't change. "

"But he's so bitter against Jack, " replied Pauline. "He won't listento his side--to our side--of it. "

"Anyhow, what's the use of anticipating trouble? You wouldn't getmarried yet. And if he's worthwhile he'll wait. "

Pauline had been even gentler than her own judgment in painting herlover for her cousin's inspection. So, she could not explain to herwhy there was necessity for haste, could not confess her convictionthat every month he lived away from her was a month of peril to him. 

"We want it settled, " she said evasively. 

"I haven't seen him around anywhere, " went on Olivia. "Is he here now?"

"He's in Chicago--in charge of his father's office there. He may stayall winter. "

"No, there's no hurry, " went on Olivia. "Besides, you ought to meetother men. It isn't a good idea for a girl to marry the man she's beenbrought up with before she's had a chance to get acquainted with othermen. " Olivia drew this maxim from experience--she had been engaged toa school-days lover when she went away to Battle Field to college; shebroke it off when, going home on vacation, she saw him again from thepoint of wider view. 

But Pauline scorned this theory; if Olivia had confessed the brokenengagement she would have thought her shallow and untrustworthy. Shewas confident, with inexperience's sublime incapacity for self-doubt, that in all the wide world there was only one man whom she could haveloved or could love. 

"Oh, I shan't change, " she said in a tone that warned her cousinagainst discussion. 

"At any rate, " replied Olivia, "a little experience would do you noharm. " She suddenly sat up in bed. "A splendid idea!" she exclaimed. "Why not come to Battle Field with me?"

"I'd like it, " said Pauline, always eager for self-improvement androused by Olivia's stories of her college experiences. "But father'dnever let me go to Battle Field College. "

"Battle Field UNIVERSITY, " corrected Olivia. "It has classical coursesand scientific courses and a preparatory school--and a militarydepartment for men and a music department for women. And it's going tohave lots and lots of real university schools--when it gets the money. And there's a healthy, middle-aged wagon-maker who's said to bethinking of leaving it a million or so--if he should ever die and ifthey should change its name to his. "

"But it's coeducation, isn't it? Father would never consent. It wasall mother could do to persuade him to let me go to public school. "

"But maybe he'd let you go with me, where he wouldn't let you go allalone. "

And so it turned out. Colonel Gardiner, anxious to get his daughteraway from Saint X and into new scenes where Dumont might grow dim, consented as soon as Olivia explained her plan. 

Instead of entering "senior prep", Pauline was able to make freshmanwith only three conditions. In the first week she was initiated intoOlivia's fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Kappa, joined the woman's literaryand debating society, and was fascinated and absorbed by crowding newevents, associations, occupations, thoughts. In spite of herself herold-time high spirits came flooding back. She caught herselfhumming--and checked herself reproachfully. She caught herselfsinging--and lowered it to humming. She caught herself whistling--anddecided that she might as well be cheerful while she waited for fate tobefriend her and Jack. And she found that she thought about him nonethe less steadfastly for thinking hopefully. 

Battle Field put no more restraint upon its young women than it putupon its young men--and it put no restraint upon the young men. Intheory and practice it was democratic, American, western--an outgrowthof that pioneer life in which the men and the women had fought andtoiled and enjoyed, side by side, in absolute equality, with absolutefreedom of association. It recognized that its students had beenbrought up in the free, simple, frank way, that all came from a regionwhere individualism was a religion, with self-reliance as the cardinalprinciple of faith and self-development as the goal. 

There were no dormitories at Battle Field then. Olivia and Paulinelived in one of the hundred or more boarding-houses--a big, square, white "frame, " kept by a Mrs. Trent, the widow of a "hero of two wars. "

Her hero had won her with his uniform when he returned from the MexicanWar. His conduct was so irregular and his income so uncertain that ithad been a relief to her when he departed for his second war. From ithe had brought home a broken constitution, a maimed body and confirmedhabits of shiftlessness and drunkenness. His country took hischaracter and his health and paid him in exchange a pension which justabout kept him in whisky and tobacco. So long as he was alive Mrs. Trent hated him as vigorously as her Christianity permitted. When hewas safely in his grave she canonized him; she put his picture and hissword, belt and epaulets in the conspicuous place in the parlor; sheused his record for gallantry to get herself social position and aplace of honor at public gatherings. 

Her house stood back from the highway in a grove of elms and walnuts. Its angularity was relieved by a porch with a flat roof that had arailing about it and served as a balcony for the second-story lodgers. There were broad halls through the middle of the house down-stairs andup. Olivia and Pauline had the three large rooms in the second storyon the south side. They used the front room as a study and Pauline'sbedroom was next to it. 

Late one afternoon she was seated at the study window watching acherry-red sun drop through the purple haze of the autumn. She becameconscious that some one was on the balcony before the window of thefront room across the hall. She leaned so that she could see withoutbeing seen. Sharp against the darkening sky was the profile of a youngman. Olivia joined her and followed her glance. The profile remainedfixed and the two girls watched it, fascinated. It certainly was apowerful outline, proud and stern, but with a mouth that was sweet inits kindliness and gentleness. 

"I wonder what he's thinking about, " said Olivia, in an undertone; hewas not fifteen feet from them. "I suppose, some scheme for conqueringthe world. "

Most of Battle Field's youth came from the farms of that westerncountry, the young men with bodies and brains that were strong butawkward. Almost all were working their way through--as were not a fewof the women. They felt that life was a large, serious businessimpatiently waiting for them to come and attend to it in a large, serious way better than it had ever been attended to before. Theystudied hard; they practised oratory and debating. Their talk was ofhistory and philosophy, religion and politics. They slept little; theythought--or tried to think--even more than they talked. 

At a glance this man was one of them, a fine type. 

"He's handsome, isn't he?" said Pauline. 

"But--" She did not finish; indeed it was not clear to her what therest of her protest was. He reminded her of Dumont--there was the samelook of superiority, of the "born to lead. " But his face seemed to, have some quality which Dumont's lacked--or was it only the idealizingeffect of the open sky and the evening light?

When the bell rang for supper he apparently did not hear it. The twogirls went down and had talked to the others a few minutes and all hadseated themselves before he entered. An inch or so above six feet, powerful in the chest and shoulders, he moved with a large grace untilhe became self-conscious or approached the, by comparison, frail piecesof furniture. He had penetrating, candid eyes that looked dark in thegaslight but were steel-blue. His face now wore the typicalwestern-American expression--shrewd, easy-going good humor. Mrs. Trent, intrenched in state behind a huge, silver-plated coffee-urn withivory-trimmed faucet, introduced him--Mr. Scarborough--to Olivia, toPauline, to Sadie McIntosh, to Pierson and Howe and Thiebaud(pronounced Cay-bo). Scarborough sat directly opposite Olivia. Butwhenever he lifted his eyes from his plate he looked at Pauline, whowas next to her. When she caught him he blushed and stirred in hischair so uneasily that it creaked and crackled; and his normaldifficulties with his large hands and the small knife and fork weredistressingly increased. 

Pauline was disappointed in him--his clothes were ill-fitting and gavehim the appearance of being in danger of bursting from them; his hairwas too long, suggesting a shaggy, tawny mane; though his hands werewell-shaped they had the recent scars of hard manual labor. Thus, whenOlivia spoke enthusiastically of him after supper, she made no reply. She would have been ashamed to acknowledge the reasons for her lack ofadmiration, even had she been conscious of them. 

But the next morning at breakfast she revised her opinion somewhat. Hetalked, and he had a remarkable voice--clear, musical, with a qualitywhich made it seem to penetrate through all the nerves instead ofthrough the auditory nerve only. Further, he talked straight toPauline, without embarrassment and with a quaint, satiric humor. Shewas forgetting for the moment his almost uncouth hair and dress when, in making a sweeping gesture, he upset a glass of water and sent aplate of hot bread flying from the waitress' hand. 

"He'd do well in the open air, " thought she, "but he's out of place ina house. "

Still, she found him interesting and original. And he persistentlysought her--his persistence was little short of heroism in view of thenever-wholly-concealed sufferings which the contrast between her graceand style and his lack of both caused him. 

"He looks like a king who had been kidnapped as a child and brought upin the wilds, " said Olivia. "I wonder who he is. "

"I'll ask him, " replied Pauline. And Olivia was slyly amused by hercousin's unconscious pride in her power with this large, untamed person. 

III. 

AND SCARBOROUGH. 

His name was Hampden Scarborough and he came from a farm about twentymiles east of Saint X. He was descended from men who had learned tohate kings in Holland in the sixteenth century, had learned to despisethem in England in the seventeenth century, had learned to laugh atthem in America in the eighteenth century, had learned to exaltthemselves into kings--the kings of the new democracy--in the free Westin the nineteenth century. 

When any one asked his father, Bladen Scarborough, who the familyancestors were, Bladen usually did not answer at all. It was his habitthus to treat a question he did not fancy, and, if the question wasrepeated, to supplement silence with a piercing look from under hisaggressive eyebrows. But sometimes he would answer it. Once, forexample, he looked coldly at the man who, with a covert sneer, hadasked it, said, "You're impudent, sir. You insinuate I'm not enough bymyself to command your consideration, " and struck him a staggering blowacross the mouth. Again--he was in a playful mood that day and thequestioner was a woman--he replied, "I'm descended from murderers, ma'am--murderers. "

And in a sense it was the truth. 

In 1568 the Scarboroughs were seated obscurely in an east county ofEngland. They were tenant farmers on the estates of the Earl ofAshford and had been strongly infected with "leveling" ideas by therefugees then fleeing to England to escape the fury of continentalprince and priest. John Scarborough was trudging along the highwaywith his sister Kate. On horseback came Aubrey Walton, youngest son ofthe Earl of Ashford. He admired the rosy, pretty face of KateScarborough. He dismounted and, without so much as a glance at herbrother, put his arm round her. John snatched her free. Young Walton, all amazement and wrath at the hind who did not appreciate the favor hewas condescending to bestow upon a humble maiden, ripped out an insultand drew his sword. John wrenched it from him and ran it through hisbody. 

That night, with four gold pieces in his pocket, John Scarborough leftEngland in a smuggler and was presently fighting Philip of Spain in thearmy of the Dutch people. 

In 1653 Zachariah Scarborough, great grandson of the preceding, was asoldier in Cromwell's army. On the night of April twentieth he was inan ale-house off Fleet Street with three brother officers. That dayCromwell had driven out Parliament and had dissolved the Council ofState. Three of the officers were of Cromwell's party; the fourth, Captain Zachariah Scarborough, was a "leveler"--a hater of kings, aDutch-bred pioneer of Dutch-bred democracy. The discussion beganhot--and they poured ale on it. 

"He's a tyrant!" shouted Zachariah Scarborough, bringing his huge fistdown on the table and upsetting a mug. "He has set up for king. Downwith all kings, say I! His head must come off!"

At this knives were drawn, and when Zachariah Scarborough staggeredinto the darkness of filthy Fleet Street with a cut down his cheek fromtemple to jaw-bone, his knife was dripping the life of a cousin ofIreton's. 

He fled to the Virginia plantations and drifted thence to NorthCarolina. 

His great-grandson, Gaston Scarborough, was one of Marion's men in hisboyhood--a fierce spirit made arrogant by isolated freedom, where everyman of character owned his land and could conceive of no superiorbetween him and Almighty God. One autumn day in 1794 Gaston was outshooting with his youngest brother, John, their father's favorite. Gaston's gun was caught by a creeper, was torn from him; and his hand, reaching for it, exploded the charge into his brother's neck. Hisbrother fell backward into the swamp and disappeared. 

Gaston plunged into the wilderness--to Tennessee, to Kentucky, toIndiana. 

"And it's my turn, " said Hampden Scarborough as he ended a briefrecital of the ancestral murders which Pauline had drawn from him--theywere out for a walk together. 

"Your turn?" she inquired. 

"Yes--I'm the great-grandson--the only one. It's always agreat-grandson. "

"You DO look dangerous, " said Pauline, and the smile and the glance shesent with the words might have been misunderstood by a young manentertaining the ideas which were then filling that young man's brain. 

Again, he told her how he had been sent to college--she was alwaysleading him to talk of himself, and her imagination more than suppliedthat which his unaffected modesty, sometimes deliberately, more oftenunconsciously, kept out of his stories. 

Ever since he could remember, his strongest passion had been for books, for reading. Before he was born the wilderness was subdued and thecruel toil of his parents' early life was mitigated by the growth oftowns, the spread of civilization. There was a chance for some leisure, for the higher gratification of the intense American passion foreducation. A small library had sprung up in one corner of the generalroom of the old farm-house--from the seeds of a Bible, an almanac, Milton's Paradise Lost, Baxter's Saint's Rest and a Government reporton cattle. But the art collection had stood still for years--afacsimile of the Declaration of Independence, another of theEmancipation Proclamation, pictures of Washington, Lincoln andNapoleon, the last held in that household second only to Washington inall history as a "leveler. "

The only daughter, Arabella, had been sent to boarding-school inCincinnati. She married a rich man, lived in the city and, under theinspiration of English novels and the tutelage of a woman friend whovisited in New York and often went abroad, was developing ideas offamily and class and rank. She talked feelingly of the "lower classes"and of the duty of the "upper class" toward them. Her "goings-on"created an acid prejudice against higher education in her father'smind. As she was unfolding to him a plan for sending Hampden toHarvard he interrupted with, "No MORE idiots in my family at myexpense, " and started out to feed the pigs. The best terms Hampden'smother could make were that he should not be disinherited and cast offif he went to Battle Field and paid his own way. 

He did not tell Pauline all of this, nor did he repeat to her theconversation between himself and his father a few days before he lefthome. 

"Is 'Bella going to pay your way through?" asked his father, looking athim severely--but he looked severely at every one except Hampden'sgentle-voiced mother. 

"No, sir. " The son's voice was clear. 

"Is your mother?"

"No, sir. "

"Have you got money put by?"

"Four hundred dollars. "

"Is that enough?"

"It'll give me time for a long look around. "

The old man drew a big, rusty pocketbook from the inside pocket of theold-fashioned, flowered-velvet waistcoat he wore even when he fed thepigs. He counted out upon his knee ten one-hundred-dollar bills. Heheld them toward his son. "That'll have to do you, " he said. "That'sall you'll get. "

"No, thank you, " replied Hampden. "I wish no favors from anybody. "

"You've earned it over and above your keep, " retorted his father. "Itbelongs to you. "

"If I need it I'll send for it, " said Hampden, that being the easiestway quickly to end the matter. 

But he did tell Pauline that he purposed to pay his own way throughcollege. 

"My father has a notion, " said he, "that the things one works for andearns are the only things worth having. And I think one can't begin toact on that notion too early. If one is trying to get an education, why not an all-round education, instead of only lessons out of books?"

From that moment Pauline ceased to regard dress or any other externalfeature as a factor in her estimate of Hampden Scarborough. 

"But your plan might make a man too late in getting a start--some men, at least, " she suggested. 

"A start--for what?" he asked. 

"For fame or fortune or success of any kind. "

Scarborough's eyes, fixed on the distance, had a curious look inthem--he was again exactly like that first view she had had of him. 

"But suppose one isn't after any of those things, " he said. "Suppose hethinks of life as simply an opportunity for self-development. Hestarts at it when he's born, and the more of it he does the more he hasto do. And--he can't possibly fail, and every moment is atriumph--and----" He came back from his excursion and smiledapologetically at her. 

But she was evidently interested. 

"Don't you think a man ought to have ambition?" she asked. She wasthinking of her lover and his audacious schemes for making himselfpowerful. 

"Oh--a man is what he is. Ambition means so many different things. "

"But shouldn't you like to be rich and famous and--all that?"

"It depends----" Scarborough felt that if he said what was in his mindit might sound like cant. So he changed the subject. "Just now myambition is to get off that zoology condition. "

IV. 

A DUMONT TRIUMPH. 

But in the first week of her second month Pauline's interest in hersurroundings vanished. She was corresponding with Jennie Atwater andJennie began to write of Dumont--he had returned to Saint X; CarolineSylvester, of Cleveland, was visiting his mother; it was all butcertain that Jack and Caroline would marry. "Her people want it, "Jennie went on--she pretended to believe that Jack and Pauline hadgiven each the other up--"and Jack's father is determined on it. They're together morning, noon and evening. She's really very swell, though _I_ don't think she's such a raving beauty. " Following thiscame the Saint X News-Bulletin with a broad hint that the engagementwas about to be announced. 

"It's ridiculously false, " said Pauline to herself; but she tossed forhours each night, trying to soothe the sick pain in her heart. Andwhile she scouted the possibility of losing him, she was for the firsttime entertaining it--a cloud in the great horizon of her faith in thefuture; a small cloud, but black and bold against the blue. And shehad no suspicion that he had returned from Chicago deliberately toraise that cloud. 

A few days later another letter from Jennie, full of gossip about Jackand Caroline, a News-Bulletin with a long article about Caroline, ending with an even broader hint of her approaching marriage--andDumont sent Pauline a note from the hotel in Villeneuve, five milesfrom Battle Field: "I must see you. Do not deny me. It meanseverything to both of us--what I want to say to you. " And he asked herto meet him in the little park in Battle Field on the bank of the riverwhere no one but the factory hands and their families ever went, andthey only in the evenings. The hour he fixed was ten the next morning, and she "cut" ancient history and was there. As he advanced to meether she thought she had never before appreciated how handsome he was, how distinguished-looking--perfectly her ideal of what a man should be, especially in that important, and at Battle Field neglected, matter, dress. 

She was without practice in indirection, but she successfully hid herjealousy and her fears, though his manner was making their taunts andthreats desperately real. He seemed depressed and gloomy; he would notlook at her; he shook hands with her almost coldly, though they had notseen each other for weeks, had not talked together for months. Shefelt faint, and her thoughts were like flocks of circling, croakingcrows. 

"Polly, " he began, when they were in the secluded corner of the park, "father wants me to get married. He's in a rage at your father fortreating me so harshly. He wants me to marry a girl who's visiting us. He's always at me about it, making all sorts of promises and threats. Her father's in the same business that we are, and----"

He glanced at her to note the effect of his words. She had drawn hertall figure to its full height, and her cheeks were flushed and hereyes curiously bright. He had stabbed straight and deep into the heartof her weakness, but also into the heart of her pride. 

The only effect of his thrust that was visible to him put him in apanic. "Don't--PLEASE don't look that way, Polly, " he went on hastily. "You don't see what I'm driving at yet. I didn't mean that I'd marryher, or think of it. There isn't anybody but you. There couldn't be, you know that. "

"Why did you tell me, then?" she asked haughtily. 

"Because--I had to begin somewhere. Polly, I'm going away, goingabroad. And I'm not to see you for--for I don't know how long--and--wemust be married!"

She looked at him in a daze. 

"We can cross on the ferry at half-past ten, " he went on. "You see thathouse--the white one?" He pointed to the other bank of the river wherea white cottage shrank among the trees not far from a little church. "Mr. Barker lives there--you must have heard of him. He's marriedscores and hundreds of couples from this side. And we can be back hereat half-past eleven--twelve at the latest. "

She shook her head expressed, not determination, only doubt. 

"I can't, Jack, " she said. "They----"

"Then you aren't certain you're ever going to marry me, " he interruptedbitterly. "You don't mean what you promised me. You care more for themthan you do for me. You don't really care for me at all. "

"You don't believe that, " she protested, her eyes and her mind on thelittle white cottage. "You couldn't--you know me too well. "

"Then there's no reason why we shouldn't get married. Don't we belongto each other now? Why should we refuse to stand up and say so?"

That seemed unanswerable--a perfect excuse for doing what she wished todo. For the little white cottage fascinated her--how she did long tobe sure of him! And she felt so free, so absolutely her own mistressin these new surroundings, where no one attempted to exercise authorityover another. 

"I must feel sure of you, Pauline. Sometimes everything seems to beagainst me, and I even doubt you. And--that's when the temptationspull hardest. If we were married it'd all be different. "

Yes, it would be different. And he would be securely hers, with hermind at rest instead of harassed as it would be if she let him go sofar away, free. And where was the harm in merely repeating before apreacher the promise that now bound them both? She looked at him and heat her. 

"You don't put any others before me, do you, dear?" he asked. 

"No, Jack--no one. I belong to you. "

"Come!" he pleaded, and they went down to the boat. She seemed toherself to be in a dream--in a trance. 

As she walked beside him along the country road on the other shore avoice was ringing in her ears: "Don't! Don't! Ask Olivia's advicefirst!" But she walked on, her will suspended, substituted for it hiswill and her jealousy and her fears of his yielding to the urgings ofhis father and the blandishments of "that Cleveland girl. " He saidlittle but kept close to her, watching her narrowly, touching hertenderly now and then. 

The Reverend Josiah Barker was waiting for them--an oily smirk on aface smooth save where a thin fringe of white whiskers dangled from hisjaw-bone, ear to ear; fat, damp hands rubbing in anticipation of thelarge fee that was to repay him for celebrating the marriage and forkeeping quiet about it afterward. At the proper place in the briefceremony Dumont, with a sly smile at Pauline which she faintlyreturned, produced the ring--he had bought it at Saint X a week beforeand so had started a rumor that he and Caroline Sylvester were to bemarried in haste. He held Pauline's hand firmly as he put the ring onher finger--he was significantly cool and calm for his age and for thecircumstances. She was trembling violently, was pale and wan. Thering burned into her flesh. 

"Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder, " ended Barker, with pompous solemnity. 

Dumont kissed her--her cheek was cold and at the touch of his lips sheshuddered. 

"Don't be afraid, " he said in a low voice that was perfectly steady. 

They went out and along the sunny road in silence. "Whom God hathjoined, " the voice was now dinning into her ears. And she was sayingto herself, "Has GOD joined us? If so, why do I feel as if I hadcommitted a crime?" She looked guiltily at him--she felt no thrill ofpride or love at the thought that he was her husband, she his wife. And into her mind poured all her father's condemnations of him, with avague menacing fear riding the crest of the flood. 

"You're sorry you've done it?" he said sullenly. 

She did not answer. 

"Well, it's done, " he went on, "and it can't be undone. And I've gotyou, Polly, in spite of them. They might have known better than to tryto keep me from getting what I wanted. I always did, and I alwaysshall!"

She looked at him startled, then hastily looked away. Even more thanhis words and his tone, she disliked his eyes--gloating, triumphant. But not until she was years more experienced did she study thatnever-forgotten expression, study it as a whole--words, tone, look. Then, and not until then, did she know that she had instinctivelyshrunk because he had laid bare his base and all but loveless motive inmarrying her. 

"And, " he added, "I'll force father to give me a big interest in thebusiness very soon. Then--we'll announce it. "

Announce IT? Announce WHAT? "Why, I'm a married woman, " she thought, and she stumbled and almost fell. The way danced before her eyes, allspotted with black. She was just able to walk aboard the boat and dropinto a seat. 

He sat beside her, took her hand and bent over it; as he kissed it atear fell on it. He looked at her and she saw that his eyes wereswimming. A sob surged into her throat, but she choked it back. "Jack!" she murmured, and hid her face in her handkerchief. 

When they looked each at the other both smiled--her foreboding hadretreated to the background. She began to turn the ring round andround upon her finger. 

"Mrs. John Dumont, " she said. "Doesn't it sound queer?" And she gazeddreamily away toward the ranges of hills between which the river dancedand sparkled as it journeyed westward. When she again became consciousof her immediate surroundings--other than Dumont--she saw a deck-handlooking at her with a friendly grin. 

Instantly she covered the ring with her hand and handkerchief. "But Imustn't wear it, " she said to Dumont. 

"No--not on your finger. " He laughed and drew from his pocket aslender gold chain. "But you might wear it on this, round your neck. It'll help to remind you that you don't belong to yourself any more, but to me. "

She took the chain--she was coloring in a most becoming way--and hid itand the ring in her bosom. Then she drew off a narrow hoop of goldwith a small setting and pushed it on his big little finger. 

"And THAT, sir, " she said, with a bewitching look, "may help you not toforget that YOU belong to me. "

She left the ferry in advance of him and faced Olivia just in time forthem to go down together to the half-past twelve o'clock dinner. 

V. 

FOUR FRIENDS. 

As Mrs. Trent's was the best board in Battle Field there were moreapplicants than she could make places for at her one table. In thesecond week of the term she put a small table in the alcove of thedining-room and gave it to her "star" boarders--Pierson, Olivia andPauline. They invited Scarborough to take the fourth place. Not onlydid Pierson sit opposite Olivia and Scarborough opposite Pauline threetimes a day in circumstances which make for intimacy, but also Oliviaand Pierson studied together in his sitting-room and Pauline andScarborough in her sitting-room for several hours three or four times aweek. Olivia and Pierson were sophomores. Pauline and Scarboroughwere freshmen; also, they happened to have the same three "senior prep"conditions to "work off"--Latin, zoology and mathematics. 

Such intimacies as these were the matter-of-course at Battle Field. They were usually brief and strenuous. A young man and a young womanwould be seen together constantly, would fall in love, would come toknow each the other thoroughly. Then, with the mind and character andlooks and moods of each fully revealed to the other, they would driftor fly in opposite directions, wholly disillusioned. Occasionally theyfound that they were really congenial, and either love remained or acordial friendship sprang up. The modes of thought, inconceivable toEuropeans or Europeanized Americans, made catastrophe all butimpossible. 

It was through the girls that Scarborough got his invitation to thealcove table. There he came to know Pierson and to like him. Oneevening he went into Pierson's rooms--the suite under Olivia andPauline's. He had never seen--but had dreamed of--such a luxuriousbachelor interior. Pierson's father had insisted that his son must goto the college where forty years before he had split wood and lightedfires and swept corridors to earn two years of higher education. Pierson's mother, defeated in her wish that her son should go East tocollege, had tried to mitigate the rigors of Battle Field's primitivesimplicity by herself fitting up his quarters. And she made them theshow-rooms of the college. 

"Now let's see what can be done for you, " said Pierson, with thesuperiority of a whole year's experience where Scarborough was abeginner. "I'll put you in the Sigma Alpha fraternity for one thing. It's the best here. "

"I don't know anything about fraternities, " Scarborough said. "What arethey for?"

"Oh, everybody that is anybody belongs to a fraternity. There areabout a dozen of them here, and among them they get all the men withany claim to recognition. Just now, we lean rather toward taking inthe fellows who've been well brought up. "

"Does everybody belong to a fraternity?"

"Lord, no! Two-thirds don't belong. The fellows outside are called'barbs'--that is, barbarians; we on the inside are Greeks. Though, Imust say, very few of us are Athenians and most of us are the rankestMacedonians. But the worst Greeks are better than the best barbs. They're the rummest lot of scrubs you ever saw--stupid drudges who liveround in all sorts of holes and don't amount to anything. The brush ofthe backwoods. "

"Oh, yes--mm--I see. " Scarborough was looking uncomfortable. 

"The Sigma Alphas'll take you in next Saturday, " said Pierson. "They doas I say, between ourselves. "

"I'm ever so much obliged, but----" Scarborough was red and began tostammer. "You see--I--it----"

"What's the matter? Expense? Don't let that bother you. The cost'snothing at all, and the membership is absolutely necessary to yourposition. "

"Yes--a matter of expense. " Scarborough was in control of himself now. "But not precisely the kind of expense you mean. No--I can't join I'drather not explain. I'm ever so much obliged, but really I can't. "

"As you please. " Pierson was offended. "But I warn you, you've got tobelong to one or the other of these fraternities or you'll be cut offfrom everything. And you oughtn't to miss the chance to join the best. "

"I see I've offended you. " Scarborough spoke regretfully. "Pleasedon't think I'm not appreciating your kindness. But--I've made a sortof agreement with myself never to join anything that isn't organizedfor a general purpose and that won't admit anybody who has thatpurpose, too. "

Pierson thought on this for a moment. "Pardon me for saying so, butthat's nonsense. You can't afford to stand alone. It'll makeeverything harder for you--many things impossible. You've got to yieldto the prejudices of people in these matters. Why, even the barbs haveno use for each other and look up to us. When we have an election inthe Literary Society I can control more barb votes than any one else incollege. And the reason is--well, you can imagine. " (Mr. Pierson wasonly twenty years old when he made that speech. )

"It doesn't disturb me to think of myself as alone. " The strong linesin Scarborough's face were in evidence. "But it would disturb me if Iwere propped up and weren't sure I could stand alone. I'm afraid tolean on any one or anything--my prop might give way. And I don't wantany friends or any associates who value me for any other reason thanwhat I myself am. I purpose never to 'belong' to anything or anybody. "

Pierson laughed. "Do as you please, " he said. "I'd like to myself ifit wasn't such an awful lot of trouble!"

"Not in the end, " replied Scarborough. 

"Oh, bother the end. To-day's good enough for me. "

"You'd better not let Miss Shrewsbury hear you say that, " saidScarborough, his eyes mocking. 

Pierson grew serious at once. "Splendid girl, isn't she?" Shehappened to be the first he had known at all well who hadn't agreedwith him in everything he said, hadn't shown the greatest anxiety toplease him and hadn't practically thrown herself at his head. Hiscombination of riches, good looks, an easy-going disposition andcleverness had so agitated those who had interested him theretoforethat they had overreached themselves. Besides, his mother had beensubtly watchful. 

"Indeed, yes, " assented Scarborough, heartily but not withenthusiasm--he always thought of Olivia as Pauline's cousin. 

The four had arranged to go together to Indian Rock on the followingSunday. When the day came Olivia was not well; Pierson went to a pokergame at his fraternity house; Pauline and Scarborough walked alone. Asshe went through the woods beside him she was thinking so intenselythat she could not talk. But he was not disturbed by her silence--wasit not enough to be near her, alone with her, free to look at her, sograceful and beautiful, so tasteful in dress, in every outward way whathe thought a woman ought to be? Presently she roused herself and begana remark that was obviously mere politeness. 

He interrupted her. "Don't mind me. Go on with your thinking--unlessit's something you can say. "

She gave him a quizzical, baffling smile. "How it would startle you ifI did!" she said. "But--I shan't. And"--she frownedimpatiently--"there's no use in thinking about it. It's all in thefuture. "

"And one can't control the future. "

"Yes, indeed--one can, " she protested. 

"I wish you'd tell me how. Are you sure you don't mean you could soarrange matters that the future would control you? Anybody canSURRENDER to the future and give it hostages. But that's notcontrolling, is it?"

"Certainly it is--if you give the hostages in exchange for what youwant. " And she looked triumphant. 

"But how do you know what you'll want in the future? The most I cansay is that I know a few things I shan't want. "

"I shouldn't like to be of that disposition, " she said. 

"But I'm afraid you are, whether you like it or not. " Scarborough washalf-serious, half in jest. 

"Are you the same person you were a month ago?"

Pauline glanced away. "What do you mean?" she asked. 

"I mean in thought--in feeling. "

"Yes--and no, " she replied presently, when she had recovered from theshock of his chance knock at the very door of her secret. "My cominghere has made a sort of revolution in me already. I believe I've amore--more grown-up way of looking at things. And I've been gettinginto the habit of thinking--and--and acting--for myself. "

"That's a dangerous habit to form--in a hurry, " said Scarborough. "Oneoughtn't to try to swim a wide river just after he's had his firstlesson in swimming. "

Pauline, for no apparent reason, flushed crimson and gave him a nervouslook--it almost seemed a look of fright. 

"But, " he went on, "we were talking of the change in you. If you'vechanged so much in, thirty days, or, say, in sixty-seven days--you'vebeen here that long, I believe--think of your whole life. The broaderyour mind and your life become, the less certain you'll be what sort ofperson to-morrow will find you. It seems to me--I know that, formyself, I'm determined to keep the future clear. I'll never tie myselfto the past. "

"But there are some things one MUST anchor fast to. " Pauline waslooking as if Scarborough were trying to turn her adrift in an openboat on a lonely sea. "There are--friends. You wouldn't desert yourfriends, would you?"

"I couldn't help it if they insisted on deserting me. I'd keep them iftheir way was mine. If it wasn't--they'd give me up. "

"But if you were--were--married?"

Scarborough became intensely self-conscious. 

"Well--I don't know--that is----" He paused, went on: "I shouldn'tmarry until I was sure--her way and mine were the same. "

"The right sort of woman makes her husband's way hers, " said she. 

"Does she? I don't know much about women. But it has always seemed tome that the kind of woman I'd admire would be one who had her ownideals and ideas of life--and that--if--if she liked me, it would bebecause we suited each other. You wouldn't want to be--like thoseprincesses that are brought up without any beliefs of any sort so thatthey can accept the beliefs of the kingdom of the man they happen tomarry?"

Pauline laughed. "I couldn't, even if I wished, " she said. 

"I should say not!" he echoed, as if the idea in connection with suchan indelibly distinct young woman were preposterous. 

"But you have such a queer way of expressing yourself. At first Ithought you were talking of upsetting everything. "

"I? Mercy, no. I've no idea of upsetting anything. I'm only hoping Ican help straighten a few things that have been tumbled over or turnedupside down. "

Gradually, as they walked and talked, her own affairs--Dumont's andhers--retreated to the background and she gave Scarborough her wholeattention. Even in those days--he was then twenty-three--hispersonality usually dominated whomever he was with. It was not hissize or appearance of strength; it was not any compulsion of manner; itwas not even what he said or the way he said it. All of these--and hisvoice contributed; but the real secret of his power was that subtilemagnetic something which we try to fix--and fail--when we say "charm. "

He attracted Pauline chiefly because he had a way of noting the littlethings--matters of dress, the flowers, colors in the sky or thelandscape, the uncommon, especially the amusing, details ofpersonality--and of connecting these trifles in unexpected ways withthe large aspects of things. He saw the mystery of the universe in thecontour of a leaf; he saw the secret of a professor's character in theway he had built out his whiskers to hide an absolute lack of chin andto give the impression that a formidable chin was there. He told herstories of life on his father's farm that made her laugh, other storiesthat made her feel like crying. And--he brought out the best there wasin her. She was presently talking of the things about which she hadalways been reticent--the real thoughts of her mind, those she hadsuppressed because she had had no sympathetic listener, those shelooked forward to talking over with Dumont in that happy time when theywould be together and would renew the intimacy interrupted since theirHigh School days. 

When she burst in upon Olivia her eyes were sparkling and her cheeksglowing. "The air was glorious, " she said, "and Mr. Scarborough; is SOinteresting. "

And Olivia said to herself: "In spite of his tight clothes he may cureher of that worthless Dumont. "

VI. 

"LIKE HIS FATHER. "

Scarborough soon lifted himself high above the throng, and was markedby faculty and students as a man worth watching. The manner of thisachievement was one of those forecasts of the future with which youthbristles for those who take the trouble to watch it. 

Although Pierson was only a sophomore he was the political as well asthe social leader of his fraternity. Envy said that the Sigma Alphastruckled to his wealth; perhaps the exacter truth was that his wealthforced an earlier recognition of his real capacity. His position asleader made him manager of the Sigma Alpha combination of fraternitiesand barbs which for six years had dominated the Washington andJefferson Literary Society. The barbs had always voted humbly with thearistocratic Sigma Alphas; so Pierson's political leadership apparentlyhad no onerous duties attached to it--and he was not the man to makework for himself. 

As the annual election approached he heard rumors of barb disaffection, of threatened barb revolt. Vance, his barb lieutenant, reassured him. 

"Always a few kickers, " said Vance, "and they make a lot of noise. Butthey won't draw off twenty votes. " Pierson made himself easy--therewas no danger of one of those hard-fought contests which in past yearshad developed at Battle Field many of Indiana's adroit politicalleaders. 

On election night he felt important and powerful as he sat in the frontrow among the arrogant Sigma Alphas, at the head of his forces massedin the left side of the hall. He had insisted on Scarborough'soccupying a seat just behind him. He tilted back in his arm-chair andsaid, in an undertone: "You're voting with us?"

Scarborough shook his head. "Can't do it. I'm pledged to Adee. "

Pierson looked amused. "Who's he? And who's putting him up?"

"I'm nominating him, " replied Scarborough, "as the barb candidate. "

"Take my advice don't do it, old man, " said Pierson in a friendly, somewhat patronizing tone. 

"You'll only get our fellows down on you--them and all the fraternitymen. And--well, your candidate'll have a dozen votes or so, atmost--and there'll be a laugh. "

"Yes--I suppose there will be a laugh, " said Scarborough, his eyestwinkling. 

"Don't do it, " urged Pierson. "Be practical. "

"No--I leave that to your people. "

Just then nominations for president were called for and the candidatesof the two factions were proposed and seconded. "The nominations forpresident are----" began the chairman, but before he could utter theword "closed" Scarborough was on his feet--was saying, "Mr. Chairman!"

Pierson dropped his eyes and grew red with embarrassment for his friendwho was thus "rushing on to make a fool of himself. "

Scarborough's glance traveled slowly from row to row of expectant youngmen. 

"Mr. Chairman and fellow-members of the Washington and JeffersonSociety, " he said in a conversational tone. "I have the honor ofplacing in nomination Frank Adee, of Terre Haute. In addition to otherqualifications of which it would be superfluous for me to speak in thispresence, he represents the masses of the membership of this societywhich has been too long dominated by and for its classes. It is timeto compel the fraternities to take faction and caste and politicalwire-pulling away from this hall, and to keep them away. It is time torededicate our society to equality, to freedom of thought and speech, to the democratic ideas of the plain yet proud builders of this collegeof ours. "

Scarborough made no attempt at oratory, made not a single gesture. Itwas as though he were talking privately and earnestly with each onethere. He sat amid silence; when a few barbs nervously applauded, thefraternity men of both factions, recovering themselves, raised asuccession of ironical cheers. A shabby, frightened barb stoodawkwardly, and in a trembling, weak voice seconded the nomination. There was an outburst of barb applause--strong, defiant. Pierson wasanxiously studying the faces of his barbs. 

"By Jove, " he muttered, "Vance has been caught napping. I believeScarborough has put up a job on us. If I can't gain time we're beat. "And he sprang to his feet, his face white. In a voice which hestruggled in vain to keep to his wonted affected indifferent drawl, hesaid: "Mr. Chairman, I move you, sir, that we adjourn. " As he wasbending to sit his ready lieutenant seconded the motion. 

"Mr. Chairman!" It was an excited voice from the rear of the hall--thevoice of a tall, lank, sallow man of perhaps thirty-five. "Whatright, " he shouted shrilly, "has this Mr. Pierson to come here and makethat there motion? He ain't never seen here except on election nights. He----"

The chairman rapped sharply. 

"Motion to adjourn not debatable, " he said, and then mumbled rapidly:"The question's the motion to adjourn. All in favor say Aye--allopposed, No--the ayes seem to have it--the ayes have----"

"Mr. Chairman; I call for a count of the ayes and noes!" It wasScarborough, standing, completely self-possessed. His voice was notraised but it vibrated through that room, vibrated through those threehundred intensely excited young men. 

The chairman--Waller, a Zeta Rho, of the Sigma Alpha combination--knewthat Pierson was scowling a command to him to override the rules andadjourn the meeting; but he could not take his eyes from Scarborough's, dared not disobey Scarborough's imperious look. "A count of the ayesand noes is called for, " he said. "The secretary will call the roll. "

Pierson's motion was lost--one hundred and thirty-two to one hundredand seventy-nine. For the first time in his life he was beaten; and itwas an overwhelming, a public defeat that made his leadershipridiculous. His vanity was cut savagely; it was impossible for him tocontrol himself to stay and witness the inevitable rout. He loungeddown the wide aisle, his face masked in a supercilious smile, hisglance contemptuously upon the jubilant barbs. They were thick aboutthe doors, and as he passed among them he said, addressing no one inparticular: "A revolt of the Helots. " A barb raised a threateningfist; Pierson sneered, and the fist unclenched and dropped before hisfearless eyes. 

An hour later Scarborough, his ticket elected and the societyadjourned, reached Mrs. Trent's porch. In its darkness he saw theglowing end of a cigarette. "That you, Pierson?" he asked in the toneof one who knows what the answer will be. 

"Sit down for a few minutes, " came the reply, in a strained voice. 

He could not see even the outline of Pierson's face, but with thoseacute sensibilities which made life alternately a keen pleasure and apain to him, he felt that his friend was struggling for self-control. He waited in silence. 

At last Pierson began: "I owe you an apology. I've been thinking allsorts of things about you. I know they're unjust and--mean, which isworse. But, damn it, Scarborough, I HATE being beaten. And it doesn'tmake defeat any the easier because YOU did it. "

He paused; but Scarborough did not speak. 

"I'm going to be frank, " Pierson went on with an effort. "I know youhad a perfect right to do as you pleased, but--hang it all, oldman--you might have warned me. "

"But I didn't do as I pleased, " said Scarborough. "And as for tellingyou--" He paused before he interrupted himself with: "But first I wantto say that I don't like to give an account of myself to my friends. What does friendship mean if it forbids freedom? I didn't approve orcondemn you because you belonged to a fraternity, and because youheaded a clique that was destroying the Literary Society by making it aplace for petty fraternity politics instead of a place to developspeakers, writers and debaters. Yet now you're bringing me to accountbecause I didn't slavishly accept your ideas as my own. Do you thinkthat's a sound basis for a friendship, Pierson?"

When Scarborough began Pierson was full of a grievance which he thoughtreal and deep. He was proposing to forgive Scarborough, forgive himgenerously, but not without making him realize that it was an act ofgenerosity. As Scarborough talked he was first irritated, then, andsuddenly, convinced that he was himself in the wrong--in the wrongthroughout. 

"Don't say another word, Scarborough, " he replied, impulsively layinghis hand on the arm of his friend--how powerful it felt through thesleeve! "I've been spoiled by always having my own way and by peopleletting me rule them. You gave me my first lesson in defeat. And--Ineeded it badly. As for your not telling me, you'd have ruined yourscheme if you had. Besides, looking back, I see that you did warn me. I know now what you meant by always jumping on the fraternities and thecombinations. "

"Thank you, " said Scarborough, simply. "When I saw you leaving thesociety hall I feared I'd lost a friend. Instead, I've found what afriend I have. " Then after a brief silence he continued: "Thislittle incident up there to-night--this little revolution I took partin--has meant a good deal to me. It was the first chance I'd had tocarry out the ideas I've thought over and thought over down there onthe farm while I was working in the fields or lying in the hay, staringup at the sky. And I don't suppose in all the future I'll ever have agreater temptation to be false to myself than I had in the dread that'sbeen haunting me--the dread of losing your friendship--and thefriendship of--of--some others who might see it as I was afraid youwould. There may be lessons in this incident for you, Fred. But thegreatest lesson of all is the one you've taught me--NEVER to be afraidto go forward when the Finger points. "

Pierson and Olivia walked to chapel together the next morning, and hetold her the story of the defeat, putting himself in a worse light thanhe deserved. But Olivia, who never lost a chance to attack him for hisshortcomings, now, to his amazement, burst out against Scarborough. 

"It was contemptible, " she said hotly. "It was treachery! It was apiece of cold-blooded ambition. He'd sacrifice anything, any one, toambition. I shall never like him again. "

Pierson was puzzled--being in love with her, he had been deceived byher pretense that she had a poor opinion of him; and he did notappreciate that her sense of justice was now clouded by resentment forhis sake. At dinner, when the four were together, she attackedScarborough. Though she did not confess it, he forced her to see thatat least his motives were not those she had been attributing to him. When he and Pauline were alone--Olivia and Pierson had to hurry away toa lecture he said: "What do YOU think, Miss Gardiner? You--did you--doyou--agree with your cousin?

"I?" Pauline dropped her eyes. "Oh, I----"

She hesitated so long that he said: "Go on--tell me just what youthink. I'd rather know than suspect. "

"I think you did right. But--I don't see how you had the courage to doit. "

"That is, you think I did right--but the sort of right that's worsethan wrong. "

"No--no!" she protested, putting a good deal of feeling into her voicein the effort to reassure him. "I'd have been ashamed of you if youhadn't done it. And--oh, I despise weakness in a man most of all! AndI like to think that if everybody in college had denounced you, you'dhave gone straight on. And--you WOULD!"

Within a week after this they were calling each the other by theirfirst names. 

For the Christmas holidays she went with her mother from Battle Fielddirect to Chicago, to her father's sisters Mrs. Hayden--ColonelGardiner had been called south on business. When she came back she andScarborough took up their friendship where they had left it. They readthe same books, had similar tastes, disagreed sympathetically, agreedwith enthusiasm. She saw a great deal of several other men in herclass, enough not to make her preference for him significant to thecollege--or to herself. They went for moonlight straw-rides, onmoonlight and starlight skating and ice-boat parties, for long walksover the hills--all invariably with others, but they were oftenpractically alone. He rapidly dropped his rural manners andmannerisms--Fred Pierson's tailor in Indianapolis made the most radicalof the surface changes in him. 

Late in February his cousin, the superintendent of the farm, telegraphed him to come home. He found his mother ill--plainly dying. And his father--Bladen Scarborough's boast had been that he never tooka "dose of drugs" in his life, and for at least seventy of hisseventy-nine years he had been "on the jump" daily from long beforedawn until long after sundown. Now he was content to sit in hisarm-chair and, with no more vigorous protest than a frown and a growl, to swallow the despised drugs. 

Each day he made them carry him in his great chair into HER bedroom. And there he sat all day long, his shaggy brows down, his gaze rarelywandering from the little ridge her small body made in the high whitebed; and in his stern eyes there was a look of stoic anguish. Eachnight, as they were carrying him to his own room, they took him nearthe bed; and he leaned forward, and the voice that in all their yearshad never been anything but gentle for her said: "Good night, Sallie. "And the small form would move slightly, there would be a feeble turningof the head, a wan smile on the little old face, a soft "Good night, Bladen. "

It was on Hampden's ninth day at home that the old man said "Goodnight, Sallie, " and there was no answer--not even a stir. They did notoffer to carry him in the next morning; nor did he turn his face fromthe wall. She died that day; he three days later--he had refused foodand medicine; he had not shed a tear or made a sound. 

Thus the journey side by side for fifty-one years was a journey nolonger. They were asleep side by side on the hillside for ever. 

Hampden stayed at home only one day after the funeral. He came back toBattle Field apparently unchanged. He was not in black, for BladenScarborough abhorred mourning as he abhorred all outward symbols of thethings of the heart. But after a week he told Pauline about it; and ashe talked she sobbed, though his voice did not break nor his eyes dim. 

"He's like his father, " she thought. 

When Olivia believed that Dumont was safely forgotten she teasedher--"Your adoring and adored Scarborough. "

Pauline was amused by this. With his unfailing instinct, Scarboroughhad felt--and had never permitted himself to forget--that there wassome sort of wall round her for him. It was in perfect good faith thatshe answered Olivia: "You don't understand him. He's a queerman--sometimes I wonder myself that he doesn't get just a littlesentimental. I suppose I'd find him exasperating--if I weren'totherwise engaged. "

Olivia tried not to show irritation at this reference to Dumont. "Ithink you're mistaken about which of you is queer, " she said. "You arethe one--not he. "

"I?" Pauline laughed--she was thinking of her charm against any lovebut one man's, the wedding ring she always wore at her neck. "Why, ICOULDN'T fall in love with HIM. "

"The woman who gets him will do mighty well for herself--in every way, "said Olivia. 

"Indeed she will. But--I'd as soon think of falling in love with atree or a mountain. "

She liked her phrase; it seemed to her exactly to define her feelingfor Scarborough. She liked it so well that she repeated it to herselfreassuringly many times in the next few weeks. 

VII. 

PAULINE AWAKENS. 

In the last week of March came a succession of warm rains. The leavesburst from their impatient hiding just within the cracks in the graybark. And on Monday the unclouded sun was irradiating a pale greenworld from a pale blue sky. The four windows of Pauline and Olivia'ssitting-room were up; a warm, scented wind was blowing this way andthat the strays of Pauline's red-brown hair as she sat at the table, her eyes on a book, her thoughts on a letter--Dumont's first letter onlanding in America. A knock, and she frowned slightly. 

"Come!" she cried, her expression slowly veering toward welcome. 

The door swung back and in came Scarborough. Not the awkward youth oflast October, but still unable wholly to conceal how much at adisadvantage he felt before the woman he particularly wished to please. 

"Yes--I'm ten minutes early, " he said, apology in his tone for hisinstinct told him that he was interrupting, and he had too littlevanity to see that the interruption was agreeable. "But I thoughtyou'd be only reading a novel. "

For answer she held up the book which lay before her--a solemn volumein light brown calf. 

"Analytical geometry, " he said; "and on the first day of the finestspring the world ever saw!" He was at the window, looking outlongingly--sunshine, and soft air washed clean by the rains; thenew-born leaves and buds; the pioneer birds and flowers. "Let's go fora walk. We can do the Vergil to-night. "

"YOU--talking of neglecting WORK!" Her smile seemed to him to sparkleas much in the waves of her hair as in her even white teeth andgold-brown eyes. "So you're human, just like the rest of us. "

"Human!" He glanced at her and instantly glanced away. 

"Do leave that window, " she begged. "We must get the Vergil now. I'mreading an essay at the society to-night--they've fined me twice forneglecting it. But if you stand there reminding me of what's going onoutside I'll not be able to resist. "

"How this would look from Indian Rock!"

She flung open a Vergil text-book with a relentless shake of the head. "I've got the place. Book three, line two forty-five--

"'Una in praecelsa consedit rupe Celaeno----'"

"It doesn't matter what that hideous old Harpy howled at the piousAeneas, " he grumbled. "Let's go out and watch the Great God Pandedicate his brand-new temple. "

"Do sit there!" She pointed a slim white forefinger at the chair atthe opposite side of the table--the side nearer him. "I'll be generousand work the dictionary to-day. " And she opened a fat, black, dull-looking book beside the Vergil. 

"Where's the Johnnie?" he asked, reluctantly dropping into the chair. 

She laid Dryden's translation of the Aeneid on his side of the table. They always read the poetical version before they began to translatefor the class-room--Dryden was near enough to the original to give themits spirit, far enough to quiet their consciences. "Find the placeyourself, " said she. "I'm not going to do everything. "

He opened the Dryden and languidly turned the pages. "'At lengthrebuff'd, they leave their mangled----'" he began. 

"No--two or three lines farther down, " she interrupted. "That was inthe last lesson. "

He pushed back the rebellious lock that insisted on falling down themiddle of his forehead, plunged his elbows fiercely upon the table, puthis fists against his temples, and began again:

 "'High on a craggy cliff Celaeno sate And thus her dismal errand did relate--'

Have you got the place in the Latin?" he interrupted himself. 

Fortunately he did not look up, for she was watching the waving boughs. "Yes, " she replied, hastily returning to the book. "You do your partand I'll do mine. "

He read a few lines in an absent-minded sing-song, then interruptedhimself once more: "Did you ever smell anything like that breeze?"

"Never. 'Bellum etiam pro caede bovum'--go on--I'm listening--ortrying to. "

He read:

 "'But know that ere your promised walls you build, My curse shall severely be fulfilled. Fierce famine is your lot--for this misdeed, Reduced to grind the plates on which you feed. '"

He glanced at her. She was leaning on her elbow, obviously weavingday-dreams round those boughs as they trembled with the ecstasy ofspring. 

"You are happy to-day?" he said. 

"Yes--happier than I have been for a year. " She smiled mysteriously. "I've had good news. " She turned abruptly, looked him in the eyes withthat frank, clear expression--his favorite among his memory-pictures ofher had it. "There's one thing that worries me--it's never off my mindlonger than a few minutes. And when I'm blue, as I usually am on rainydays, it makes me--horribly uncomfortable. I've often almost askedyour advice about it. "

"If you'd be sorry afterward that you told me, " said he, "I hope youwon't. But if I can help you, you know how glad I'd be. "

"It's no use to tell Olivia, " Pauline went on. "She's bitterlyprejudiced. But ever since the first month I knew you, I felt that Icould trust you, that you were a real friend. And you're so fair injudging people and things. "

His eyes twinkled. 

"I'm afraid I'd tilt the scales--just a little--where you wereconcerned. "

"Oh, I want you to do that, " she answered with a smile. "Last fall Idid something--well, it was foolish, though I wouldn't admit that toany one else. I was carried away by an impulse. Not that I regret. Inthe only really important way, I wouldn't undo it if I could--I think. "Those last two words came absently, as if she were debating the matterwith herself. 

"If it's done and can't be undone, " he said cheerfully, "I don't seethat advice is needed. "

"But--you don't understand. " She seemed to be casting about for words. "As I said, it was last fall--here. In Saint X there was a man--and heand I--we'd cared for each other ever since we were children. And thenhe went away to college. He did several things father didn't like. You know how older people are--they don't make allowances. And thoughfather's the gentlest, best--at any rate, he turned against Jack, and--"

Scarborough abruptly went to the window and stood with his back to her. 

After a pause Pauline said, in a rush, "And he came here last fall andwe got married. "

There was a long silence. 

"It was DREADFUL, wasn't it?" she said in the tone of one who has justmade a shocking discovery. 

Scarborough did not answer. 

"I never realized till this minute, " she went on after a while. "Notthat I'm sorry or that I don't--don't CARE--just as I always did. Butsomehow, telling it out loud to some one else has made me see it in adifferent light. It didn't seem like treachery to them--to father andmother--then. It hasn't seemed like a--a marriage REALLYmarriage--until now. "

Another long silence. Then she burst out appealingly: "Oh, I don'tsee how I'm ever going to tell them!"

Scarborough came back to his chair and seated himself. His face wascuriously white. It was in an unnatural voice that he said: "How oldis he?"

"Twenty-five, " she replied, then instantly flared up, as if he hadattacked Dumont: "But it wasn't his fault--not in the least. I knewwhat I was doing--and I wanted to do it. You mustn't get a falseimpression of him, Hampden. You'd admire and respect him. You--anyone--would have done as he did in the same circumstances. " She blushedslightly. "You and he are ever so much alike--even in looks. It wasthat that made me tell you, that made me like you as I have--and trustyou. "

Scarborough winced. Presently he began: "Yet you regret----"

"No--no!" she protested--too vehemently. "I do NOT regret marryinghim. That was certain to be sooner or later. All I regret is that Idid something that seems underhanded. Perhaps I'm really only sorry Ididn't tell them as soon as I'd done it. "

She waited until she saw he was not going to speak. "And now, " shesaid, "I don't know HOW to tell them. " Again she waited, but he didnot speak, continued to look steadily out into the sky. "What do youthink?" she asked nervously. "But I can see without your saying. OnlyI--wish you'd SAY it. "

"No, I don't condemn you, " he said slowly. "I know you. YOU couldn'tpossibly do anything underhanded. If you'd been where you'd have hadto conceal it directly, face to face, from some one who had the rightto know--you'd never have done it. " He rested his arms on the tableand looked straight at her. "I feel I must tell you what I think. AndI feel, too, it wouldn't be fair and honest if I didn't let you see whyyou might not want to take my advice. "

She returned his gaze inquiringly. 

"I love you, " he went on calmly. "I've known it ever since I missedyou so at the Christmas holidays. I love you for what you are, and forwhat you're as certain to be as--as a rosebud is certain to be afull-blown rose. I love you as my father loved my mother. I shalllove you always. " His manner was calm, matter-of-fact; but there wasin his musical, magical voice a certain quality which set her nervesand her blood suddenly to vibrating. She felt as if she werestruggling in a great sea--the sea of his love for her--struggling toreach the safety of the shore. 

"Oh--I WISH you hadn't told me!" she exclaimed. 

"Suppose I hadn't; suppose you had taken my advice? No"--he shook hishead slowly--"I couldn't do that, Pauline--not even to win you. "

"I'm sorry I said anything to you about it. "

"You needn't be. You haven't harmed yourself. And maybe I can helpyou. "

"No--we won't talk of it, " she said--she was pressing her hand on herbosom where she could feel her wedding ring. "It wouldn't be right, now. I don't wish your advice. "

"But I must give it. I'm years and years older than you--many, manyyears more than the six between us. And----"

"I don't wish to hear. "

"For his sake, for your own sake, Pauline, tell them! And they'llsurely help you to wait till you're older before you doanything--irrevocable. "

"But I care for him, " she said--angrily, though it could not have beenwhat he was saying so gently that angered her. "You forget that I carefor him. It IS irrevocable now. And I'm glad it is!"

"You LIKE him. You don't LOVE him. And--he's not worthy of your love. I'm sure it isn't prejudice that makes me say it. If he were, he'dhave waited----"

She was on her feet, her eyes blazing. 

"I asked for advice, not a lecture. I DESPISE you! Attacking the manI love and behind his back! I wish to be alone. "

He rose but met her look without flinching. 

"You can send ME away, " he said gently, "but you can't send away mywords. And if they're true you'll feel them when you get over youranger. You'll do what you think right. But--be SURE, Pauline. BeSURE!" In his eyes there was a look--the secret altar with thenever-to-be-extinguished flame upon it. "Be SURE!, Pauline. Be SURE. "

Her anger fell; she sank, forlorn, into a chair. For both, the day hadshriveled and shadowed. And as he turned and left the room the warmthand joy died from air and sky and earth; both of them felt the latentchill--it seemed not a reminiscence of winter past but the icyforeboding of winter closing in. 

When Olivia came back that evening from shopping in Indianapolis shefound her cousin packing. 

"Is it something from home?" she asked, alarmed. 

Pauline did not look up as she answered:

"No--but I'm going home--to stay--going in the morning. I'vetelegraphed them. "

"To stay!"

"Yes--I was married to Jack--here--last fall. "

"You--married! To JOHN DUMONT--you, only seventeen--oh, Pauline--"And Olivia gave way to tears for the first time since she was a baby. 

Scarborough was neither at supper nor at breakfast--Pauline leftwithout seeing him again. 

VIII. 

THE DECISION. 

When the sign-board on a station platform said "5. 2 miles to St. X, "Pauline sank back in her chair in the parlor-car with blanched face. And almost immediately, so it seemed to her, Saint X came intoview--home! She fancied she could see the very house as she lookeddown on the mass of green in which the town was embowered. The trainslid into the station, slowed down--there were people waiting on theplatform--her father! He was glancing from window to window, trying tocatch a glimpse of her; and his expression of almost agonized eagernessmade her heartsick. She had been away from him for nearly sevenmonths--long enough to break the habit which makes it impossible formembers of a family to know how they really look to each other. Howgray and thin his beard seemed! What was the meaning of that gauntlook about his shoulders? What was the strange, terrifying shadow overhim? "Why, he's OLD!" The tears welled into her eyes--"He's glidingaway from me!" She remembered what she had to tell him and her kneesalmost refused to support her. 

He was at the step as she sprang down. She flew into his arms. He heldher away from him and scanned her face with anxious eyes. 

"Is my little girl ill?" he asked. "The telegram made me uneasy. "

"Oh, no!" she said with a reassuring hug. "Where's mother?"

"She--she's got a--a--surprise for you. We must hurry--she'll beimpatient, though she's seen you since I have. "

At the curbstone stood the familiar surrey, with Mordecai humped uponthe front seat. "I don't see how the colonel ever knowed you, " saidhe, as she shook hands with him. "I never seen the like for growin'. "

"But YOU look just the same, Mordecai--you and the surrey and thehorses. And how's Amanda?"

"Poorly, " replied Mordecai--his invariable answer to inquiries abouthis wife. She patterned after the old school, which held that for awoman to confess to good health was for her to confess to lack ofrefinement, if not of delicacy. 

"You think I've changed, father?" asked Pauline, when the horses werewhirling them home. She was so busily greeting the familiar streetsand houses and trees and faces that she hardly heard his reply. 

"'I never seen the like for growin', '" he quoted, his eyes shining withpride in her. He was a reticent man by nature as well as by training;he could not have SAID how beautiful, how wonderful he thought her, orhow intensely he loved her. The most he could do to express himself toher was, a little shyly, to pat her hand--and to LOOK it intoMordecai's back. 

She was about to snuggle up to him as a wave of delight at being homeagain swept over her; but her secret rushed from the background of hermind. "How could I have done it? How can I tell them?" Then, theserene and beautiful kindness of her father's face reassured her. 

Her mother was waiting in the open front door as the surrey came up thedrive--still the same dear old-young mother, with the same sweetdignity and gentleness. 

"Oh, mother, mother!" exclaimed Pauline, leaping from the carriage intoher arms. And as they closed about her she felt that sorrow and evilcould not touch her; felt just as when she, a little girl, fleeing fromsome frightful phantom of her own imagining, had rushed there forsafety. She choked, she sobbed, she led her mother to the big sofaopposite the stairway; and, sitting there, they held each the othertightly, Pauline kissing her, smoothing her hair, she caressing Paulineand crying softly. 

"We've got a surprise for you, Polly, " said she, when they were calmer. 

"I don't want anything but you and father, " replied Pauline. 

Her father turned away--and so she did not see the shadow deepen in hisface. Her mother shook her head, mischief in her eyes that were youngas a girl's--younger far than her daughter's at that moment. "Go intothe sitting-room and see, " she said. 

Pauline opened the sitting-room door. John Dumont caught her in hisarms. "Polly!" he exclaimed. "It's all right. They've come roundand--and--here I am!"

Pauline pushed him away from her and sank to the floor in a faint. 

When she came to herself she was lying on the divan in thesitting-room. Her mother was kneeling beside her, bathing her templeswith cold water; her father and her husband were standing, helplesslylooking at her. "Send him away, " she murmured, closing her eyes. 

Only her mother heard. She motioned to the two men to leave the room. When the door closed Pauline sat up. 

"He said it was all right, " she began feverishly. "What did he mean, mother?" She was hoping she was to be spared the worst part of herordeal. 

But her mother's reply dashed her hopes, made her settle back among thecushions and hide her face. "It IS all right, Polly. You're to haveyour own way, and it's your father's way. John has convinced him thathe really has changed. We knew--that is, I suspected why you werecoming, and we thought we'd give you a surprise--give you what yourheart was set on, before you had to ask for it. I'm so sorry, dear, that the shock was--"

Pauline lay perfectly still, her face hidden. After a pause: "I don'tfeel well enough to see him now. I want this day with you and father. To-morrow--to-morrow, we'll--to-day I want to be as I was when Iwas--just you and father, and the house and the garden. "

Her mother left her for a moment and, when she came back, said: "He'sgone. "

Pauline gave a quick sigh of relief. Soon she rose. "I'm going forfather, and we'll walk in the garden and forget there's anybody else inthe world but just us three. "

At half-past eight they had family prayers in the sitting-room; Paulinekneeling near her mother, her father kneeling beside his arm-chair andin a tremulous voice pouring out his gratitude to God for keeping themall "safe from the snares and temptations of the world, " for leadingthem thus far on the journey. 

"And, God, our Father, we pray Thee, have this daughter of ours, thishandmaiden of Thine, ever in Thy keeping. And these things we ask inthe name of Thy Son--Amen. " The serene quiet, the beloved old room, the evening scene familiar to her from her earliest childhood, herfather's reverent, earnest voice, halting and almost breaking afterevery word of the petition for her; her mother's soft echo of his"Amen"--Pauline's eyes were swimming as she rose from her knees. 

Her mother went with her to her bedroom, hovered about her as sheundressed, helped her now and then with fingers that trembled withhappiness, and, when she was in bed, put out the light and "tucked herin" and kissed her--as in the old days. "Good night--God bless mylittle daughter--my HAPPY little daughter. "

Pauline waited until she knew that they were sleeping. Then she put ona dressing-gown and went to the open window--how many springtimes hadshe sat there in the moonlight to watch, as now, the tulips and thehyacinths standing like fairies and bombarding the stars with the mostdelicious perfumes. 

She sat hour after hour, giving no outward sign of battle within. Inevery lull came Scarborough's "Be SURE, Pauline!" to start the tumultafresh. When the stars began to pale in the dawn she rose--she WASsure. Far from sure that she was doing the best for herself; but sure, sure without a doubt, that she was doing her duty to her parents. 

"I must not punish THEM for MY sin, " she said. 

Late the next morning she went to the farthest corner of the garden, tothe small summer-house where she had played with her dolls and herdishes, where she had worked with slate and spelling-book, where shehad read her favorite school-girl romances, where she had dreamed herown school-girl romance. She was waiting under the friendly old canopyof bark--the posts supporting it were bark-clad, too; up and around andbetween them clambered the morning-glories in whose gorgeous, velvet-soft trumpets the sun-jewels glittered. 

And presently he came down the path, his keen face and insolent eyestriumphant. He was too absorbed in his own emotion especially to notehers. Besides, she had always been receptive rather than demonstrativewith him. 

"We'll be married again, and do the gossips out of a sensation, " hesaid. Though she was not looking at him, his eyes shifted from herface as he added in a voice which at another time she might havethought strained: "Then, too, your father and mother and mine are sostrait-laced--it'd give 'em a terrible jar to find out. You're a gooddeal like them, Polly--only in a modern sort of way. "

Pauline flushed scarlet and compressed her lips. She said presently:"You're sure you wish it?"

"Wish what?"

"To marry me. Sometimes I've thought we're both too young, that wemight wait----"

He put his arm round her with an air of proud possession. "What'd bethe sense in that?" he demanded gaily. "Aren't you MINE?"

And again she flushed and lowered her eyes and compressed her lips. Then she astonished him by flinging her arms round his neck and kissinghim hysterically. "But I DO love you!" she exclaimed. "I do! I DO!"

IX. 

A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY. 

It was midday six weeks later, and Pauline and Dumont were landing atLiverpool, when Scarborough read in the college-news column of theBattle Field Banner that she had "married the only son of Henry Dumont, of Saint Christopher, one of the richest men in our state, and hasdeparted for an extended foreign tour. " Olivia--and Piersonnaturally--had known, but neither had had the courage to tell him. 

Scarborough was in Pierson's room. He lowered the paper from in frontof his face after a few minutes. 

"I see Pauline has married and gone abroad, " he said. 

"Yes, so I heard from Olivia, " replied Pierson, avoiding Scarborough'seyes. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" continued Scarborough, tranquil so far asPierson could judge. "I'd have liked to send her a note. "

Pierson was silent. 

"I thought it would cut him horribly, " he was thinking. "And he'staking it as if he had only a friendly interest. " Scarborough's facewas again behind the newspaper. When he had finished it he saunteredtoward the door. He paused there to glance idly at the titles of thetop row in the book-case. Pierson was watching him. "No--it's allright, " he concluded. Scarborough was too straight and calm just tohave received such a blow as that news would have been had HE cared forPauline. Pierson liked his look better than ever before--the tall, powerful figure; the fair hair growing above his wide and lofty brow, with the one defiant lock; and in his aquiline nose and blue-gray eyesand almost perfect mouth and chin the stamp of one who would moveforward irresistibly, moving others to his will. 

"How old are you, Scarborough?" he asked. 

"Twenty-three-nearly twenty-four. I ought to be ashamed to be only afreshman, oughtn't I?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm tired of itall. " And he strolled out. 

He avoided Pierson and Olivia and all his friends for several days, went much into the woods alone, took long walks at night. Olivia wouldhave it that he had been hard hit, and almost convinced Pierson. 

"He's the sort of person that suffers the most, " she said. "I've abrother like him--won't have sympathy, keeps a wound covered up so thatit can't heal. "

"But what shall I do for him?" asked Pierson. 

"Don't do anything--he'd hate you if you did. "

After a week or ten days he called on Pierson and, seating himself atthe table, began to shuffle a pack of cards. He looked tired. 

"I never saw cards until I was fifteen, " he said. 

"At home they thought them one of the devil's worst devices--we had areal devil in our house. "

"So did we, " said Pierson. 

"But not a rip-snorter like ours--they don't have him in cities, oreven in towns, any more. I've seen ours lots of times after the lightswere out--saw him long after I'd convinced myself in daylight that hedidn't exist. But I never saw him so close as the night of the day Ilearned to play casino. "

"Did you learn in the stable?" asked Pierson. 

"That's where I learned, and mother slipped up behind me--I didn't knowwhat was coming till I saw the look in the other boy's face. Then--"Pierson left the rest to imagination. 

"I learned in the hay-loft--my sister and my cousin Ed and I. One ofthe farm-hands taught us. The cards were so stained we could hardlysee the faces. That made them look the more devilish. And athunder-storm came up and the lightning struck a tree a few rods fromthe barn. "

"Horrible!" exclaimed Pierson. "I'll bet you fell to praying. "

"Not I. I'd just finished Tom Paine's Age of Reason--a preacher's sondown the pike stole it from a locked closet in his father's library andloaned it to me. But I'll admit the thunderbolt staggered me. I saidto them--pretty shakily, I guess: 'Come on, let's begin again. ' Butthe farm-hand said: 'I reckon I'll get on the safe side, ' and began topray--how he roared! And I laughed--how wicked and reckless and bravethat laugh did sound to me. 'Bella and Ed didn't know which to be moreafraid of--my ridicule or the lightning. They compromised--they didn'tpray and they didn't play. "

"And so you've never touched a card since. "

"We played again the next afternoon--let's have a game of poker. I'mbored to death today. "

This was Scarborough's first move toward the fast set of which Piersonwas leader. It was a small fast set--there were not many spoiled sonsat Battle Field. But its pace was rapid; for every member of it had aconstitution that was a huge reservoir of animal spirits and westernenergy. They "cribbed" their way through recitations andexaminations--as the faculty did not put the students on honor butwatched them, they reasoned that cribbing was not dishonorable providedone did barely enough of it to pull him through. They drank a greatdeal--usually whisky, which they disliked but poured down raw, becauseit was the "manly" drink and to take it undiluted was the "manly" way. They made brief excursions to Indianapolis and Chicago for the sort ofcarousals that appeal to the strong appetites and undiscriminatingtastes of robust and curious youth. 

Scarborough at once began to reap the reward of his advantages--anaturally bold spirit, an unnaturally reckless mood. In two weeks hewon three hundred dollars, half of it from Pierson. He went to Chicagoand in three nights' play increased this to twenty-nine hundred. Thenoise of the unprecedented achievement echoed through the college. Inits constellation of bad examples a new star had blazed out, a star ofthe first magnitude. 

Bladen Scarborough had used his surplus to improve and extend hisoriginal farm. But farms were now practically unsalable, and Hampdenand Arabella were glad to let their cousin Ed--Ed Warfield--stay on, rent free, because with him there they were certain that the placewould be well kept up. Hampden, poor in cash, had intended to spendthe summer as a book agent. Instead, he put by a thousand dollars ofhis winnings to insure next year's expenses and visited Pierson at hisfamily's cottage in the summer colony at Mackinac. He won at pokerthere and went on East, taking Pierson. He lost all he had with him, all Pierson could lend him, telegraphed to Battle Field for half histhousand dollars, won back all he had lost and two thousand besides. 

When he reappeared at Battle Field in September he was dazzling tobehold. His clothes were many and had been imported for him by theChicago agent of a London tailor. His shirts and ties were in patternsand styles that startled Battle Field. He had taken on manners andpersonal habits befitting a "man of the world"--but he had not lostthat simplicity and directness which were as unchangeably a part of himas the outlines of his face or the force which forbade him to be idlefor a moment. He and Pierson--Pierson was pupil, now--took a suite ofrooms over a shop in the town and furnished them luxuriously. They hadbrought from New York to look after them and their belongings the firstEnglish manservant Battle Field had seen. 

Scarborough kept up his college work; he continued regularly to attendthe Literary Society and to be its most promising orator and debater;he committed no overt act--others might break the college rules, mightbe publicly intoxicated and noisy, but he was always master of himselfand of the situation. Some of the fanatical among the religiousstudents believed and said that he had sold himself to the devil. Hewould have been expelled summarily but for Pierson--Pierson's fatherwas one of the two large contributors to the support of the college, and it was expected that he would will it a generous endowment. Toentrap Scarborough was to entrap Pierson. To entrap Pierson-- Thefaculty strove to hear and see as little as possible of their doings. 

In the college Y. M. C. A. Prayers were offered for Scarborough--his namewas not spoken, but every one understood. A delegation of thereligious among his faithful fellow barbs called upon him to pray andto exhort. They came away more charmed than ever with their champion, and convinced that he was the victim of slander and envy. Not that hehad deliberately deceived them, for he hadn't; he was simply courteousand respectful of their sincerity. 

"The fraternities are in this somewhere, " the barbs decided. "They'retrying to destroy him by lying about him. " And they liked it thattheir leader was the brilliant, the talked-about, the sought-afterperson in the college. When he stood up to speak in the assembly hallor the Literary Society they always greeted him with several rounds ofapplause. 

To the chagrin of the faculty and the irritation of the fraternities ajury of alumni selected him to represent Battle Field at the oratoricalcontest among the colleges of the state. And he not only won there butalso at the interstate contest--a victory over the orators of thecolleges of seven western states in which public speaking was, and is, an essential part of higher education. His oratory lacked style, theythought at Battle Field. It was the same then, essentially, as it wasa few years later when the whole western country was discussing it. Heseemed to depend entirely upon the inherent carrying power of his ablyconstructed sentences--like so many arrows, some flying gracefully, others straight and swift, all reaching the mark at which they wereaimed. In those days, as afterward, he stood upon the platform almostmotionless; his voice was clear and sweet, never noisy, but subtlypenetrating and, when the sense demanded it, full of that mysteriousquality which makes the blood run more swiftly and the nerves tingle. "Merely a talker, not an orator, " declared the professor of elocution, and few of those who saw him every day appreciated his genius then. Itwas on the subject-matter of his oration, not on his "delivery, " thatthe judges decided for him--so they said and thought. 

In February of this resplendent sophomore year there came in his mail aletter postmarked Battle Field and addressed in printed handwriting. The envelope contained only a newspaper cutting--from the St. Christopher Republic:

At four o'clock yesterday afternoon a boy was born to Mr. And Mrs. JohnDumont. It is their first child, the first grandchild of the Dumontand Gardiner families. Mother and son are reported as doing well. 

Scarborough spent little time in the futile effort to guess what cowardenemy had sped this anonymous shaft on the chance of its hitting him. His only enemies that interested him were those within himself. Hedestroyed envelope and clipping, then said to Pierson: "I neglected tocelebrate an important event not long ago. " He paused to laugh--soqueerly that Pierson looked at him uneasily. "We must go to Chicago tocelebrate it. "

"Very good, " said Fred. "We'll get Chalmers to go with us to-morrow. "

"No-to-day--the four-o'clock train--we've got an hour and a half. Andwe'll have four clear days. "

"But there's the ball to-night and I'm down for several dances. "

"We'll dance them in Chicago. I've never been really free to dancebefore. " He poured out a huge drink. "I'm impatient for the ball tobegin. " He lifted his glass. "To our ancestors, " he said, "whorepressed themselves, denied themselves, who hoarded health andstrength and capacity for joy, and transmitted them in great oceans tous--to drown our sorrows in!"

He won six hundred dollars at faro in a club not far from theAuditorium, Pierson won two hundred at roulette, Chalmers lostseventy--they had about fourteen hundred dollars for their four days'"dance. " When they took the train for Battle Field they had spent allthey had with them--had flung it away for dinners, for drives, fortheaters, for suppers, for champagne. All the return journeyScarborough stared moodily out of the car window. And at every movementthat disturbed his clothing there rose to nauseate him, to fill himwith self-loathing, the odors of strong, sickening-sweet perfumes. 

The next day but one, as he was in the woods near Indian Rock, he sawOlivia coming toward him. They had hardly spoken for several months. He turned to avoid her but she came on after him. 

"I wish to talk with you a few minutes, Mr. Scarborough, " she saidcoldly, storm in her brave eyes. 

"At your service, " he answered with strained courtesy. And he walkedbeside her. 

"I happen to know, " she began, "that they're going to expel you andFred Pierson the next time you leave here without permission. "

"Indeed! You are very kind to warn me of my awful danger. " He lookeddown at her with a quizzical smile. 

"And I wish to say I think it's a disgrace that they didn't do it longago, " she went on, her anger rising to the bait of his expression. 

"Your opinions are always interesting, " he replied. "If you havenothing further I'll ask your permission to relieve you of----"

"No, " she interrupted. "I've not said what I wished to say. You'remaking it hard for me. I can't get accustomed to the change in yousince last year. There used to be a good side to you, a side one couldappeal to. And I want to talk about--Fred. You're RUINING him. "

"You flatter me. " He bowed mockingly. "But I doubt if HE'D feelflattered. "

"I've told him the same thing, but you're too strong for me. " Her voicetrembled; she steadied it with a frown. "I can't influence him anylonger. "

"Really, Miss Shrewsbury----"

"Please!" she said. "Fred and I were engaged. I broke it last night. I broke it because--you know why. "

Scarborough flushed crimson. 

"Oh, " he said. "I didn't know he was engaged. "

"I know you, Hampden Scarborough, " Olivia continued. "I've understoodwhy you've been degrading yourself. And I haven't blamed you--thoughI've wondered at your lack of manhood. "

"You are imposing on my courtesy, " he said haughtily. 

"I can't help it. You and I must talk this thing to the end. You'rerobbing me of the man I love. Worse than that, you're destroying him, dragging him down to a level at which HE may stay, while YOU are sureto rise again. You've got your living to make--I don't agree withthose who think you'll become a professional gambler. But he hisfather's rich and indulgent, and--God only knows how low he'll sink ifyou keep on pushing him. "

"You are excited, hysterical. You misjudge him, believe me, " saidScarborough, gently. 

"No--I know he's not depraved--yet. Do you think _I_ could care forhim if he were?"

"I hope so. That's when he'd need it most. "

Olivia grew red. "Well, perhaps I should. I'm a fool, like all women. But I ask you to let him alone, to give his better self a chance. "

"Why not ask him to let ME alone--to give MY better nature a chance?"

"You--laughing at me in these circumstances! You who pretended to be aman, pretended to love Pauline Gardiner----"

He started and his eyes blazed, as if she had cut him across the facewith a whip. Then he drew himself up with an expression of insolentfury. His lips, his sharp white teeth, were cruel. 

She bore his look without flinching. 

"Yes, " she went on, "you think you love her. Yet you act as if herlove were a degrading influence in your life, as if she were a badwoman instead of one who ought to inspire a man to do and be his best. How ashamed she'd be of you, of your love, if she could see you as youare now--the tempter of all the bad impulses in this college. "

He could not trust himself to reply. He was suffocating with rage andshame. He lifted his hat, walked rapidly away from her and went home. Pierson had never seen him in an ugly mood before. And he, too, was inan ugly mood--disgusted with his own conduct, angry at Scarborough, whom he held responsible for the unprecedented excesses of this lasttrip to Chicago and for their consequences. 

"What's happened?" he asked sourly. "What's the matter with YOU?"

"Your Olivia, " replied Scarborough, with a vicious sneer, "has beeninsulting me for your sins. She is a shrew! I don't wonder youdropped her. "

Pierson rose slowly and faced him. 

"You astonish me, " he said. "I shouldn't have believed you capable ofa speech which no gentleman could possibly utter. "

"YOU, sitting as a court of honor to decide what's becoming agentleman!" Scarborough looked amused contempt. "My dear Pierson, you're worse than offensive--you are ridiculous. "

"No man shall say such things to me especially a man who notoriouslylives by his wits. "

Scarborough caught him up as if he had been a child and pinned himagainst the wall. "Take that back, " he said, "or I'll kill you. " Histone was as colorless as his face. 

"Kill and be damned, " replied Pierson, cool and disdainful. "You're acoward. "

Scarborough's fingers closed on Pierson's throat. Then flashed intohis mind that warning which demands and gets a hearing in the wildesttempest of passion before an irrevocable act can be done. It came tohim in the form of a reminder of his laughing remark to Pauline when hetold her of the traditions of murder in his family. He releasedPierson and fled from the apartment. 

Half an hour later Pierson was reading a note from him:

"I've invited some friends this evening. I trust it will be convenientfor you to absent yourself. They'll be out by eleven, and then, if youreturn, we can decide which is to stay in the apartment and which toleave. "

Pierson went away to his fraternity house and at half-past eightScarborough, Chalmers, Jack Wilton and Brigham sat down to a game ofpoker. They had played about an hour, the cards steadily againstChalmers and Brigham--the cards were usually against Brigham. He was amere boy, with passionate aspirations to be considered a sport. He hadbeen going a rapid gait for a year. He had lost to Scarborough alone asmuch as he had expected to spend on the year's education. 

Toward ten o'clock there was a jack-pot with forty-three dollars in itand Brigham was betting wildly, his hands and his voice trembling, hislips shriveled. With a sudden gesture Chalmers caught the ends of thetable and jerked it back. There--in Brigham's lap--were two cards. 

"I thought so!" exclaimed Chalmers. "You dirty little cheat! I've beenwatching you. "

The boy looked piteously at Chalmers' sneering face, at the faces ofthe others. The tears rolled down his cheeks. "For God's sake, boys, "he moaned, "don't be hard on me. I was desperate. I've losteverything, and my father can't give me any more. He's a poor man, andhe and mother have been economizing and sacrificing to send me here. And when I saw I was ruined--God knows, I didn't think what I wasdoing. " He buried his face in his hands. "Don't be hard on me, " hesobbed. "Any one of you might have done the same if he was in my fix. "

"You sniveling cur, " said Chalmers, high and virtuous, "how dare yousay such a thing! You forget you're among gentlemen----"

"None of that, Chalmers, " interrupted Scarborough. "The boy's tellingthe truth. And nobody knows it better than YOU. " This with asignificant look into Chalmers' eyes. They shifted and he colored. 

"I agree with Scarborough, " said Wilton. "We oughtn't to have let theboy into our games. We must never mention what has happened here thisevening. "

"But we can't allow a card sharp to masquerade as a gentleman, "objected Chalmers. "I confess, Scarborough, I don't understand how youcan be so easy-going in a matter of honor. "

"You think I must have a fellow-feeling for dishonor, eh?" Scarboroughsmiled satirically. "I suppose because I was sympathetic enough withyou to overlook the fact that you were shy on your share of our Chicagotrip. "

"What do you mean?"

"The three hundred you borrowed of Pierson when you thought he was toofar gone to know what he was doing. My back was turned--but there wasthe mirror. "

Chalmers' sullen, red face confirmed Scarborough's charge. 

"No, " continued Scarborough, "we GENTLEMEN ought to be charitabletoward one another's DISCOVERED lapses. " He seated himself at his deskand wrote rapidly:

We, the undersigned, exonerate Edwin Brigham of cheating in the pokergame in Hampden Scarborough's rooms on Saturday evening, February 20, 18--. And we pledge ourselves never to speak of the matter either toeach other or to any one else. 

"I've signed first, " said Scarborough, rising and holding the pentoward Chalmers. "Now, you fellows sign. Chalmers!"

Chalmers signed, and then Wilton. 

"Take Chalmers away with you, " said Scarborough to Wilton in anundertone. "I've something to say to Brigham. "

When they were gone he again seated himself at his desk and, taking hischeck-book, wrote a check and tore it out. 

"Now, listen to me, Brig, " he said friendlily to Brigham, who seemed tobe in a stupor. "I've won about six hundred dollars from you, firstand last--more, rather than less. Will that amount put you in the wayof getting straight?"

"Yes, " said Brigham, dully. 

"Then here's a check for it. And here's the paper exonerating you. And--I guess you won't play again soon. "

The boy choked back his sobs. 

"I don't know how I ever came to do it, Scarborough. Oh, I'm a dog, adog! When I started to come here my mother took me up to her bedroomand opened the drawer of her bureau and took out a savings-bankbook--it had a credit of twelve hundred dollars. 'Do you see that?' shesaid. 'When you were born I began to put by as soon as I wasable--every cent I could from the butter and the eggs--to educate myboy. And now it's all coming true, ' she said, Scarborough, and wecried together. And----" Brigham burst into a storm of tears andsobs. "Oh, how could I do it!" he said. "How COULD I!"

"You've done wrong, " said Scarborough, shakily, "but I've done muchworse, Eddie. And it's over now, and everything'll be all right. "

"But I can't take your money, Scarborough. I must pay for what I'vedone. "

"You mean, make your mother pay. No, you must take it back, Brigham. I owe it to you--I owe it to your mother. This, is the butter and eggmoney that I--I stole from her. "

He put the papers into the boy's pocket. "You and I are going to befriends, " he went on. 

"Come round and see me to-morrow--no, I'll look you up. " He put outhis hand and held Brigham's hand in a courage-giving grasp. "And--Ihope I'll have the honor of meeting your mother some day. "

Brigham could only look his feelings. Soon after he left Pierson came. His anger had evaporated and his chief emotion was dread lestScarborough might still be angry. "I want to take back----" he beganeagerly, as soon as his head was inside the door. 

"I know you do, but you shan't, " replied Scarborough. "What you saidwas true, what Olivia said was true. I've been acting like ablackguard. "

"No, " said Pierson, "what I said was a disgraceful lie. Will you tryto forget it, Scarborough?"

"FORGET it?" Scarborough looked at his friend with brilliant eyes. "Never! So help me God, never! It's one of three things that haveoccurred to-day that I must never forget. "

"Then we can go on as before. You'll still be my friend?"

"Not STILL, Fred, but for the first time. "

He looked round the luxurious study with a laugh and a sigh. "It'll bea ghastly job, getting used to the sort of surroundings I can earn formyself. But I've got to grin and bear it. We'll stay on here togetherto the end of the term--my share's paid, and besides, I'm not going todo anything sensational. Next year--we'll see. "

While Pierson was having his final cigarette before going to bed helooked up from his book to see before him Scarborough, even moretremendous and handsome in his gaudy pajamas. 

"I wish to register a solemn vow, " said he, with mock solemnity thatdid not hide the seriousness beneath. "Hear me, ye immortal gods!Never again, never again, will I engage in any game with a friend wherethere is a stake. I don't wish to tempt. I don't wish to be tempted. "

"What nonsense!" said Pierson. "You're simply cutting yourself offfrom a lot of fun. "

"I have spoken, " said Scarborough, and he withdrew to his bedroom. When the door was closed and the light out he paused at the edge of thebed and said: "And never again, so long as he wishes to retain histitle to the name man, will Hampden Scarborough take from anybodyanything which he hasn't honestly earned. "

And when he was in bed he muttered: "I shall be alone, and I may staypoor and obscure, but I'll get back my self-respect--and keepit--Pauline!"

X. 

MRS. JOHN DUMONT. 

And Pauline?--She was now looking back upon the first year of hermarried life. 

She had been so brought up that at seventeen, within a few weeks ofeighteen, she had only the vaguest notion of the meaning of the stepshe was about to take in "really marrying" John Dumont. Also, it hadnever occurred to her as possible for a properly constituted woman notto love her husband. It was clearly her duty to marry Jack; therefore, the doubting thoughts and the ache at the heart which would not easewere merely more outcroppings of the same evil part of her nature thathad tempted her into deceiving her parents, and into entangling herselfand Scarborough. She knew that, if she were absolutely free, she wouldnot marry Jack. But she felt that she had bartered away her birthrightof freedom; and now, being herself, the daughter of HER father and HERmother, she would honorably keep her bargain, would love where sheought to love--at seventeen "I will" means "I shall. " And so--theywere "really married. "

But the days passed, and there was no sign of the miracle she hadconfidently expected. The magic of the marriage vow failed totransform her; Pauline Dumont was still Pauline Gardiner in mind and inheart. There was, however, a miracle, undreamed of, mysterious, overwhelming--John Dumont, the lover, became John Dumont, the husband. Beside this transformation, the revelation that the world she loved andlived in did not exist for him, or his world for her, seemed of slightimportance. She had not then experience enough to enable her to seethat transformation and revelation were as intimately related as a lockand its key. 

"It's all my fault, " she told herself. "It must be my fault. " AndDumont, unanalytic and self-absorbed, was amused whenever Pauline'sgentleness reminded him of his mother's half-believed warnings that hiswife had "a will of her own, and a mighty strong one. "

They were back at Saint X in August and lived at the Frobisher place inIndiana Street--almost as pretentious as the Dumont homestead and inbetter taste. Old Mrs. Dumont had gone to Chicago alone for thefurnishings for her own house; when she went for the furnishings forher son's house, she got Mrs. Gardiner to go along--and Pauline'smother gave another of her many charming illustrations of the valuabletruth that tact can always have its own way. Saint X was too keen-eyedand too interested in the new Mrs. Dumont to fail to note a change inher. It was satisfied with the surface explanation that Europe ingeneral and Paris in particular were responsible. And it did not notethat, while she had always been full of life and fond of company, shewas now feverish in her restlessness, incessantly seeking distraction, never alone when she could either go somewhere or induce some one tocome to her. 

"You MUST be careful, my dear, " said her mother-in-law, as soon as shelearned that she had a grandmotherly interest in her daughter-in-law'shealth. "You'll wear yourself out with all this running about. "

Pauline laughed carelessly, recklessly. 

"Oh, I'm disgustingly healthy. Nothing hurts me. Besides, if I werequiet, I think I should--EXPLODE!"

Late in September Dumont had to go to New York. He asked her to gowith him, assuming that she would decline, as she had visitors coming. But she was only too glad of the chance to give her increasingrestlessness wider range. They went to the Waldorf--Scarborough andPierson had been stopping there not a week before, making ready forthat sensational descent upon Battle Field which has already beenrecorded. The first evening Dumont took her to the play. The nextmorning he left her early for a busy day down-town--"and I may not beable to return for dinner. I warned you before we left Saint X, " hesaid, as he rose from breakfast in their sitting-room. 

"I understand, " she answered. "You needn't bother to send word even, if you don't wish. I'll be tired from shopping and shan't care to goout this evening, anyhow. "

In the afternoon she drove with Mrs. Fanshaw, wife of one of Jack'sbusiness acquaintances--they had dined at the Fanshaws' when theypaused in New York on the way home from Europe. Pauline was at thehotel again at five; while she and Mrs. Fanshaw were having teatogether in the palm garden a telegram was handed to her. She read it, then said to Mrs. Fanshaw: "I was going to ask you and your husband todine with us. Jack sends word he can't be here, but--why shouldn't youcome just the same?"

"No you must go with us, " Mrs. Fanshaw replied. "We've got a box atWeber and Fields', and two men asked, and we need another woman. I'dhave asked you before, but there wouldn't be room for any more men. "

Mrs. Fanshaw had to insist until she had proved that the invitation wassincere; then, Pauline accepted--a distraction was always agreeable, never so agreeable as when it offered itself unannounced. It wastoward the end of the dinner that Mrs. Fanshaw happened to say: "I seeyour husband's like all of them. I don't believe there ever was awoman an American man wouldn't desert for business. "

"Oh, I don't in the least mind, " replied Pauline. "I like him to showthat he feels free. Why, when we were in Paris on the return trip andhad been married only two months, he got tangled up in business andused to leave me for a day--for two days, once. "

At Pauline's right sat a carefully dressed young man whose name she hadnot caught--she learned afterward that he was Mowbray Langdon. He wasnow giving her a stare of amused mock-admiration. When he saw that hehad her attention, he said: "Really, Mrs. Dumont, I can't decide whichto admire most--YOUR trust or your husband's. "

Pauline laughed--it struck her as ridiculous that either she or Jackshould distrust the other. Indeed, she only hazily knew what distrustmeant, and hadn't any real belief that "such things" actually existed. 

Half an hour later the party was driving up to Weber and Fields'. Pauline, glancing across the thronged sidewalk and along the empty, brilliantly lighted passage leading into the theater, saw a striking, peculiar-looking woman standing at the box-office while her escortparleyed with the clerk within. "How much that man looks like Jack, "she said to herself--and then she saw that it was indeed Jack. Not theJack she thought she knew, but quite another person, the one he triedto hide from her--too carelessly, because he made the common mistake ofunderestimating the sagacity of simplicity. A glance at the woman, asecond glance at Dumont, his flushed, insolent face now turned fullfront--and she KNEW this unfamiliar and hitherto-only-hinted Jack. 

The omnibus was caught in a jam of cars and carriages; there wereseveral moments of confusion and excitement. When the Fanshaw partywas finally able to descend, she saw that Jack and his companion weregone--the danger of a scene was over for the moment. She lingered andmade the others linger, wishing to give him time to get to his seats. When they entered the theater it was dark and the curtain was up. Buther eyes, searching the few boxes visible from the rear aisle, foundthe woman, or, at least, enough of her for recognition--the huge blackhat with its vast pale blue feather. Pauline drew a long breath ofrelief when the Fanshaws' box proved to be almost directly beneath, thebox. 

If she had been a few years older, she would have given its propersignificance to the curious fact that this sudden revelation of thetruth about her husband did not start a tempest of anger or jealousy, but set her instantly to sacrificing at the shrine of the great godAppearances. It is notorious that of all the household gods he aloneerects his altar only upon the hearth where the ashes are cold. 

As she sat there through the two acts, she seemed to be watching thestage and taking part in the conversation of the Fanshaws and theirfriends; yet afterward she could not recall a single thing that hadoccurred, a single word that had been said. At the end of the last actshe again made them linger so that they were the last to emerge intothe passage. In the outside doorway, she saw the woman--just a glimpseof a pretty, empty, laughing face with a mouth made to utterimpertinences and eyes that invited them. 

Mrs. Fanshaw was speaking--"You're very tired, aren't you?"

"Very, " replied Pauline, with a struggle to smile. 

"What a child you look! It seems absurd that you are a married woman. Why, you haven't your full growth yet. " And on an impulse of intuitivesympathy Mrs. Fanshaw pressed her arm, and Pauline was suddenly filledwith gratitude, and liked her from that moment. 

Alone in her sitting-room at the hotel, she went up to the mirror overthe mantel, and, staring absently at herself, put her hands upmechanically to take out her hat-pins. "No, I'll keep my hat on, " shethought, without knowing why. And she sat, hat and wrap on, and lookedat a book. Half an hour, and she took off her hat and wrap, put themin a chair near where she was sitting. The watched hands of the clockcrawled wearily round to half-past one, to two, to half-past two, tothree--each half-hour an interminable stage. She wandered to thewindow and looked down into empty Fifth Avenue. When she felt that atleast an hour had passed, she turned to look at the clockagain--twenty-five minutes to four. Her eyes were heavy. 

"He is not coming, " she said aloud, and, leaving the lights on in thesitting-room, locked herself in the bedroom. 

At five o'clock she started up and seized the dressing-gown on thechair near the head of the bed. She listened--heard him muttering inthe sitting-room. She knew now that a crash of some kind had rousedher. Several minutes of profound silence, then through the door came asteady, heavy snore. 

The dressing-gown dropped from her hand. She slid from the bed, slowlycrossed the room, softly opened the door, looked into the sitting-room. A table and a chair lay upset in the middle of the floor. He was on asofa, sprawling, disheveled, snoring. 

Slowly she advanced toward him--she was barefooted, and the whitenightgown clinging to her slender figure and the long braid down herback made her look as young as her soul--the soul that gazed from herfixed, fascinated eyes, the soul of a girl of eighteen, full as muchchild as woman still. She sat down before him in a low chair, herelbows on her knees, her chin supported by her hands, her eyes neverleaving his swollen, dark red, brutish face--a cigar stump, muchchewed, lay upon his cheek near his open mouth. He was as absurd andas repulsive as a gorged pig asleep in a wallow. 

The dawn burst into broad day, but she sat on motionless until theclock struck the half-hour after six. Then she returned to the bedroomand locked herself in again. 

Toward noon she dressed and went into the sitting-room. He was goneand it had been put to rights. When he came, at twenty minutes to one, she was standing at the window, but she did not turn. 

"Did you get my note?" he asked, in a carefully careless tone. He wenton to answer himself: "No, there it is on the floor just where I putit, under the bedroom door. No matter--it was only to say I had to goout but would be back to lunch. Sorry I was kept so late last night. Glad you didn't wait up for me--but you might have left the bedroomdoor open--it'd have been perfectly safe. " He laughed good-naturedly. "As it was, I was so kind-hearted that I didn't disturb you, but slepton the sofa. "

As he advanced toward her with the obvious intention of kissing her, she slowly turned and faced him. Their eyes met and he stoppedshort--her look was like the eternal ice that guards the pole. 

"I saw you at the theater last night, " she said evenly. "And thismorning, I sat and watched you as you lay on the sofa over there. "

He was taken completely off his guard. With a gasp that was a kind ofgroan he dropped into a chair, the surface of his mind strewn with thewreckage of the lying excuses he had got ready. 

"Please don't try to explain, " she went on in the same even tone. "Iunderstand now about--about Paris and--everything. I know that--fatherwas right. "

He gave her a terrified glance--no tears, no trace of excitement, onlycalmness and all the strength he knew was in her nature and, inaddition, a strength he had not dreamed was there. 

"What do you intend to do?" he asked after a long silence. 

She did not answer immediately. When she did, she was not looking athim. 

"When I married you--across the river from Battle Field, " she said, "Icommitted a crime against my father and mother. This is--mypunishment--the beginning of it. And now--there'll bethe--the--baby--" A pause, then: "I must bear the consequences--if Ican. But I shall not be your wife--never--never again. If you wish meto stay on that condition, I'll try. If not--"

"You MUST stay, Pauline, " he interrupted. "I don't care what terms youmake, you must stay. It's no use for me to try to defend myself whenyou're in this mood. You wouldn't listen. But you're right about notgoing. If you did, it'd break your father's and mother's hearts. Iadmit I did drink too much last night, and made a fool of myself. Butif you were more experienced, you'd--"

He thought he had worked his courage up to the point where he couldmeet her eyes. He tried it. Her look froze his flow of words. "IKNOW that you were false from the beginning, " she said. 

"The man I thought you were never existed--and I know it. We won'tspeak of this--ever--after now. Surely you can't wish me to stay?"And into her voice surged all her longing to go, all her hope that hewould reject the only terms on which self-respect would let her stay. 

"Wish you to stay?" he repeated. And he faced her, looking at her, hischest heaving under the tempest of hate and passion that was raging inhim--hate because she was defying and dictating to him, passion becauseshe was so beautiful as she stood there, like a delicate, finehot-house rose poised on a long, graceful stem. "No wonder I LOVEyou!" he exclaimed between his clenched teeth. 

A bright spot burned in each of her cheeks and her look made him reddenand lower his eyes. 

"Now that I understand these last five months, " she said, "that fromyou is an insult. "

His veins and muscles swelled with the fury he dared not show; for hesaw and felt how dangerous her mood was. 

"I'll agree to whatever you like, Pauline, " he said humbly. "Only, wemustn't have a flare-up and a scandal. I'll never speak to you againabout--about anything you don't want to hear. "

She went into her bedroom. When, after half an hour, she reappeared, she was ready to go down to lunch. In the elevator he stole a glanceat her--there was no color in her face, not even in her lips. His ragehad subsided; he was ashamed of himself--before her. But he felttriumphant too. 

"I thought she'd go, sure, in spite of her fear of hurting her fatherand mother, " he said to himself. "A mighty close squeak. I wasstepping round in a powder magazine, with every word a lit match. "

In January she sank into a profound lassitude. Nothing interested her, everything wearied her. As the time drew near, her mother came to staywith her; and day after day the two women sat silent, Mrs. Gardinerknitting, Pauline motionless, hands idle in her lap, mind vacant. Ifshe had any emotion, it was a hope that she would die and take herchild with her. 

"That would settle everything, settle it right, " she reflected, withyouth's morbid fondness for finalities. 

When it was all over and she came out from under the opiate, she layfor a while, open-eyed but unseeing, too inert to grope for the lostthread of memory. She felt a stirring in the bed beside her, themovement of some living thing. She looked and there, squeezed into theedge of the pillow was a miniature head of a little old man--wrinkled, copperish. Yet the face was fat--ludicrously fat. A painfully homelyface with tears running from the closed eyes, with an open mouth thatdriveled and drooled. 

"What is it?" she thought, looking with faint curiosity. "And why isit here?"

Two small fists now rose aimlessly in the air above the face andflapped about; and a very tempest of noise issued from the saggingmouth. 

"A baby, " she reflected. Then memory came--"MY baby!"

She put her finger in the way of the wandering fists. First one ofthem, then the other, awkwardly unclosed and as awkwardly closed uponit. She smiled. The grip tightened and tightened and tightened untilshe wondered how hands so small and new could cling so close and hard. Then that electric clasp suddenly tightened about her heart. She burstinto tears and drew the child against her breast. The pulse of itscurrent of life was beating against her own--and she felt it. Shesobbed, laughed softly, sobbed again. 

Her mother was bending anxiously over her. 

"What's the matter, dearest?" she asked. "What do you wish?"

"Nothing!" Pauline was smiling through her tears. "Oh, mother, I am SOhappy!" she murmured. 

And her happiness lasted with not a break, with hardly a pause, allthat spring and all that summer--or, so long as her baby's helplessnessabsorbed the whole of her time and thought. 

XI. 

YOUNG AMERICA. 

When Pierson, laggard as usual, returned to Battle Field a week afterthe end of the long vacation, he found Scarborough just establishinghimself. He had taken two small and severely plain rooms in a quaintold frame cottage, one story high, but perched importantly upon a bankat the intersection of two much-traveled streets. 

"What luck?" asked Pierson, lounging in on him. 

"A hundred days' campaign; a thousand dollars net, " replied the bookagent. "And I'm hard as oak from tramping those roads, and I'velearned--you ought to have been along, Pierson. I know people as Inever could have come to know them by any other means--what they think, what they want, how they can be reached. "

There was still much of the boy in Pierson's face. But Scarboroughlooked the man, developed, ready. 

Pierson wandered into the bedroom to complete his survey. "I seeyou're going to live by the clock, " he called out presently. He hadfound, pasted to the wall, Scarborough's schedule of the daily divisionof his time; just above it, upon a shelf, was a new alarm clock, thebell so big that it overhung like a canopy. "You don't mean you'regoing to get up at four?"

"Every morning--all winter, " replied Scarborough, without stopping hisunpacking. "You see, I'm going to finish this year--take the two yearsin one. Then I've registered in a law office--Judge Holcombe's. Andthere's my speaking--I must practise that every day. "

Pierson came back to the sitting-room and collapsed into a chair. "Isee you allow yourself five hours for sleep, " he said. "It's too much, old man. You're self-indulgent. "

"That's a mistake, " replied Scarborough. "Since making out the scheduleI've decided to cut sleep down to four hours and a half. "

"That's more like it!"

"We all sleep too much, " he continued. "And as I shan't smoke, ordrink, or worry, I'll need even less than the average man. I'm goingto do nothing but work. A man doesn't need much rest from mere work. "

"What! No play?"

"Play all the time. I've simply changed my playthings. "

Pierson seated himself at the table and stared gloomily at his friend. 

"Look here, old man. For heaven's sake, don't let Olivia find outabout this program. "

But Olivia did hear of it, and Pierson was compelled to leave hisluxury in the main street and to take the two remaining available roomsat Scarborough's place. His bed was against the wall of Scarborough'sbedroom--the wall where the alarm clock was. At four o'clock on hisfirst morning he started from a profound sleep. 

"My bed must be moved into my sitting-room to-day, " he said to himselfas soon as the clamor of Scarborough's gong died away and he couldcollect his thoughts. But at four o'clock the next morning the gongpenetrated the two walls as if they had not been there. "I see myfinish, " he groaned, sitting up and tearing at his hair. 

He tried to sleep again, but the joint pressure of Olivia'smemory-mirrored gray eyes and of disordered nerves from the rackinggong forced him to make an effort to bestir himself. Groaning andmuttering, he rose and in the starlight looked from his window. Scarborough was going up the deserted street on his way to the woodsfor his morning exercise. His head was thrown back and his chestextended, and his long legs were covering four feet at a stride. "Youold devil!" said Pierson, his tone suggesting admiration and affectionrather than anger. "But I'll outwit you. "

By a subterfuge in which a sympathetic doctor was the main factor, hehad himself permanently excused from chapel. Then he said toScarborough: "You get up too late, old man. My grandfather used tosay that only a drone lies abed after two in the morning, wasting thebest part of the day. You ought to turn in, say, at half-past nine andrise in time to get your hardest work out of the way before the collegeday begins. "

"That sounds reasonable, " replied Scarborough, after a moment'sconsideration. "I'll try it. "

And so it came to pass that Pierson went to bed at the sound ofScarborough's two-o'clock rising gong and pieced out his sleep with anoccasional nap in recitations and lectures and for an hour or two latein the afternoon. He was able once more to play poker as late as heliked, and often had time for reading before the gong sounded. AndScarborough was equally delighted with the new plan. "I gain at leastone hour a day, perhaps two, " he said. "Your grandfather was a wiseman. "

Toward spring, Mills, western manager of the publishing house for whichScarborough had sold Peaks of Progress through Michigan, came to BattleField to see him. 

"You were far and away the best man we had out last year, " said he. "You're a born book agent. "

"Thank you, " said Scarborough, sincerely. He appreciated that a mancan pay no higher compliment than to say that another is master of hisown trade. 

"We got about fifty orders from people who thought it over after you'dtried to land them and failed--that shows the impression you made. Andyou sold as many books as our best agent in our best field. "

"I'll never go as agent again, " said Scarborough. "The experience wasinvaluable--but sufficient. "

"We don't want you to go as agent. Our proposition is for much easierand more dignified work. "

At the word dignified, Scarborough could not restrain a smile. "I'vepractically made my plans for the summer, " he said. 

"I think we've got something worth your while, Mr. Scarborough. Ouridea is for you to select about a hundred of the young fellows who'reworking their way through here, and train them in your methods ofapproaching people. Then you'll take them to Wisconsin and Minnesotaand send them out, each man to a district you select for him. In thatway you'll help a hundred young men to earn a year at college andyou'll make a good sum for yourself--two or three times what you madelast summer. "

Scarborough had intended to get admitted to the bar in June, to spendthe summer at an apprenticeship in a law office and to set up forhimself in the fall. But this plan was most attractive--it would givehim a new kind of experience and would put him in funds for the waitfor clients. The next day he signed an advantageous contract--hisexpenses for the summer and a guaranty of not less than three thousanddollars clear. 

He selected a hundred young men and twelve young women, the mostintelligent of the five hundred self-supporting students at BattleField. Pierson, having promised to behave himself, was permitted toattend the first lesson. The scholars at the Scarborough, School forBook Agents filled his quarters and overflowed in swarms without thewindows and the door. The weather was still cool; but all must hear, and the rooms would hold barely half the brigade. 

"I assume that you've read the book, " began Scarborough. He wasstanding at the table with the paraphernalia of a book agent spreadupon it. "But you must read it again and again, until you know what'son every page, until you have by heart the passages I'll point out toyou. " He looked at Drexel--a freshman of twenty-two, with earnest, sleepless eyes and a lofty forehead; in the past winter he had becomeacquainted with hunger and with that cold which creeps into the room, crawls through the thin covers and closes in, icy as death, about theheart. "What do you think of the book, Drexel?"

The young man--he is high in the national administrationto-day--flushed and looked uneasy. 

"Speak frankly. I want your candid opinion. "

"Well, I must say, Mr. Scarborough, I think it's pretty bad. "

"Thank you, " said Scarborough; and he glanced round. "Does anybodydisagree with Mr. Drexel?"

There was not a murmur. Pierson covered his face to hide his smile atthis "jolt" for his friend. In the group round one of the windows alaugh started and spread everywhere except to seven of the twelve youngwomen and to those near Scarborough--THEY looked frightened. 

"I expected Mr. Drexel's answer, " began Scarborough. "Before you cansell Peaks of Progress each of you must be convinced that it's a bookhe himself would buy. And I see you've not even read it. You've atmost glanced at it with unfriendly eyes. This book is not literature, gentlemen. It is a storehouse of facts. It is an educational work sosimply written and so brilliantly illustrated that the very childrenwill hang over its pages with delight. If you attend to your trainingin our coming three months of preliminary work you'll find during thesummer that the book's power to attract the children is its strongestpoint. I made nearly half my sales last summer by turning from theparents to the children and stirring their interest. "

Pierson was now no more inclined to smile than were the pupils. 

"When I started out, " continued Scarborough, "I, too, had just glancedat the book and had learned a few facts from the prospectus. And Ifailed to sell, except to an occasional fool whom I was able tooverpower. Every one instinctively felt the estimate I myself placedupon my goods. But as I went on the book gradually forced itself uponme. And, long before the summer was over, I felt that I was anambassador of education to those eager people. And I'm proud that Isold as many books as I did. Each book, I know, is a radiating centerof pleasure, of thought, of aspiration to higher things. No, ladiesand gentlemen, you must first learn that these eight hundred pagescrowded with facts of history, these six hundred illustrations takenfrom the best sources and flooding the text with light, togetherconstitute a work that should be in all humble households. "

Scarborough had his audience with him now. 

"Never sneer, " he said in conclusion. "Sneering will accomplishnothing. Learn your business. Put yourself, your BEST self, into it. And then you may hope to succeed at it. "

He divided his pupils into six classes of about twenty each anddismissed them, asking the first class to come at three the nextafternoon. The young men and young women went thoughtfully away; theywere revolving their initial lesson in the cardinal principle ofsuccess--enthusiasm. When the two friends were alone Pierson said:"Do you know, I'm beginning to get a glimpse of you. And I see thereisn't anything beyond your reach. You'll get whatever you want. "

Scarborough's reply was a sudden look of dejection, an impatient shrug. Then he straightened himself, lifted his head with a lion-like tossthat shook back the obstinate lock of hair from his forehead. He laidhis hand on his friend's shoulder. "Yes, " he said, "because I'mdetermined to want whatever I get. Good fortune and bad--everythingshall be grist for THIS mill. "

Pierson attended next day's class and afterward went to Olivia with anaccount of it. 

"You ought to have seen him put those fellows through, one at a time. I tell you, he'll teach them more in the next three months than they'lllearn of the whole faculty. And this summer he'll get every man andwoman of them enough to pay their way through college next year. "

"What did he do to-day?" asked Olivia. Of the many qualities she lovedin Pierson, the one she loved most was his unbounded, unselfishadmiration for his friend. 

"He took each man separately, the others watching and listening. Firsthe'd play the part of book agent with his pupil as a reluctantcustomer. Then he'd reverse, and the pupil as agent would try to sellhim the book, he pretending to be an ignorant, obstinate, ill-natured, close-fisted farmer or farmer's wife. It was a liberal education inthe art of persuasion. If his pupils had his brains and hispersonality, Peaks of Progress would be on the center-table in half thefarm parlors of Wisconsin and Minnesota by September. "

"IF they had his personality, and IF they had his brains, " said Olivia. 

"Well, as it is, he'll make the dumbest ass in the lot bray to somepurpose. "

In September, when Scarborough closed his headquarters at Milwaukee andset out for Indianapolis, he found that the average earnings of hisagents were two hundred and seventy-five dollars, and that he himselfhad made forty-three hundred. Mills came and offered him a place inthe publishing house at ten thousand a year and a commission. Heinstantly rejected it. He had already arranged to spend a year withone of the best law firms in Indianapolis before opening an office inSaint X, the largest town in the congressional district in which hisfarm lay. 

"But there's no hurry about deciding, " said Mills. "Remember we'llmake you rich in a few years. "

"My road happens not to lie in that direction, " replied Scarborough, carelessly. "I've no desire to be rich. It's too easy, if one willconsent to give money-making his exclusive attention. "

Mills looked amused--had he not known Scarborough's ability, he wouldhave felt derisive. 

"Money's power, " said he. "And there are only two ambitions for awide-awake man--money and power. "

"Money can't buy the kind of power I'd care for, " answered Scarborough. "If I were to seek power, it'd be the power that comes through abilityto persuade. "

"Money talks, " said Mills, laughing. 

"Money bellows, " retorted Scarborough, "and bribes and browbeats, bullyand coward that it is. But it never persuades. "

"I'll admit it's a coward. "

"And I hope I can always frighten enough of it into my service tosatisfy my needs. But I'm not spending my life in its service--no, thank you!"

XII. 

AFTER EIGHT YEARS. 

While Scarborough was serving his clerkship at Indianapolis, Dumont wasengaging in ever larger and more daring speculations with New York ashis base. Thus it came about that when Scarborough established himselfat Saint X, Dumont and Pauline were living in New York, in a big housein East Sixty-first Street. 

And Pauline had welcomed the change. In Saint X she was constantly onguard, always afraid her father and mother would see below that smilingsurface of her domestic life which made them happy. In New York shewas free from the crushing sense of peril and restraint, as theirdelusions about her were secure. There, after she and he found theirliving basis of "let alone, " they got on smoothly, rarely meetingexcept in the presence of servants or guests, never inquiring eitherinto the other's life, carrying on all negotiations about money andother household matters through their secretaries. He thought her coldby nature--therefore absolutely to be trusted. And what other man withthe pomp and circumstance of a great and growing fortune to maintainhad so admirable an instrument? "An ideal wife, " he often said tohimself. And he was not the man to speculate as to what was going onin her head. He had no interest in what others thought; how they werefilling the places he had assigned them--that was his only concern. 

In one of those days of pause which come now and then in the busiestlives she chanced upon his letters from Europe in her winter at BattleField. She took one of them from its envelope and began toread--carelessly, with a languid curiosity to measure thus exactly thechange in herself. But soon she was absorbed, her mind groping throughletter after letter for the clue to a mystery. The Dumont she now knewstood out so plainly in those letters that she could not understand howshe, inexperienced and infatuated though she then was, had failed tosee the perfect full-length portrait. How had she read romance andhigh-mindedness and intellect into the personality so frankly flauntingitself in all its narrow sordidness, in all its poverty of real thoughtand real feeling?

And there was Hampden Scarborough to contrast him with. With thisthought the truth suddenly stared at her, made her drop the letter andvisibly shrink. It was just because Scarborough was there that she hadbeen tricked. The slight surface resemblance between the two men, hardly more than the "favor" found in all men of the family of strongand tenacious will, had led her on to deck the absent Dumont with themanhood of the present Scarborough. She had read Scarborough intoDumont's letters. Yes, and--the answers she addressed and mailed toDumont had really been written to Scarborough. 

She tossed the letters back into the box from which they had reappearedafter four long years. She seated herself on the white bear-skinbefore the open fire; and with hands clasped round her knees she rockedherself slowly to and fro like one trying to ease an intolerable pain. 

Until custom dulled the edge of that pain, the days and the nights werethe cruelest in her apprenticeship up to that time. 

When her boy, Gardiner, was five years old, she got her father andmother to keep him at Saint X with them. 

"New York's no place, I think, to bring up and educate a boy in theright way, " she explained. And it was the truth, though not the wholetruth. The concealed part was that she would have made an open breakwith her husband had there been no other way of safeguarding theirall-seeing, all-noting boy from his example. 

Before Gardiner went to live with his grandparents she stayed in theEast, making six or eight brief visits "home" each year. When he wentshe resolved to divide her year between her pleasure as a mother andher obligation to her son's father, to her parents' son-in-law--herdevotions at the shrine of Appearances. 

It was in the fall of the year she was twenty-five--eight years and ahalf after she left Battle Field--that Hampden Scarborough reappearedupon the surface of her life. 

On a September afternoon in that year Olivia, descending from the trainat Saint X, was almost as much embarrassed as pleased by her changedyoung cousin rushing at her with great energy--"Dear, dear Olivia! Andhardly any different--how's the baby? No--not Fred, but Fred Junior, Imean. In some ways you positively look younger. You know, you were SOserious at college!"

"But you--I don't quite understand how any one can be so changed, yet--recognizable. I guess it's the plumage. You're in a newedition--an edition deluxe. "

Pauline's dressmakers were bringing out the full value of her heightand slender, graceful strength. Her eyes, full of the same oldfrankness and courage, now had experience in them, too. She was wearingher hair so that it fell from her brow in two sweeping curvesreflecting the light in sparkles and flashes. Her manner was stillsimple and genuine--the simplicity and genuineness of knowledge now, not of innocence. Extremes meet--but they remain extremes. Her"plumage" was a fashionable dress of pale blue cloth, a big beplumedhat to match, a chiffon parasol like an azure cloud, at her throat asapphire pendant, about her neck and swinging far below her waist achain of sapphires. 

"And the plumage just suits her, " thought Olivia. For it seemed to herthat her cousin had more than ever the quality she most admired--thequality of individuality, of distinction. Even in her way of lookingclean and fresh she was different, as if those prime feminineessentials were in her not matters of frequent reacquirement butinherent and inalienable, like her brilliance of eyes and smoothness ofskin. 

Olivia felt a slight tugging at the bag she was carrying. Shelooked--an English groom in spotless summer livery was touching his hatin respectful appeal to her to let go. "Give Albert your checks, too, "said Pauline, putting her arm around her cousin's waist to escort herdown the platform. At the entrance, with a group of station loungersgaping at it, was a phaeton-victoria lined with some cream-coloredstuff like silk, the horses and liveried coachman rigid. "She's givingSaint X a good deal to talk about, " thought Olivia. 

"Home, please, by the long road, " said Pauline to the groom, and hesprang to the box beside the coachman, and they were instantly in rapidmotion. "That'll let us have twenty minutes more together, " she wenton to Olivia. "There are several people stopping at the house. "

The way led through Munroe Avenue, the main street of Saint X. Oliviawas astonished at the changes--the town of nine years before spread andremade into an energetic city of twenty-five thousand. 

"Fred told me I'd hardly recognize it, " said she, "but I didn't expectthis. It's another proof how far-sighted Hampden Scarborough is. Everybody advised him against coming here, but he would come. And thetown has grown, and at the same time he's had a clear field to make abig reputation as a lawyer in a few years, not to speak of the powerhe's got in politics. "

"But wouldn't he have won no matter where he was?" suggested Pauline. 

"Sooner or later--but not so soon, " replied Olivia. 

"No--a tree doesn't have to grow so tall among a lot of bushes beforeit's noticed as it does in a forest. "

"And you've never seen him since Battle Field?" As Olivia put thisquestion she watched her cousin narrowly without seeming to do so. 

"But, " replied Pauline--and Olivia thought that both her face and hertone were a shade off the easy and the natural--"since he came I'vebeen living in New York and haven't stayed here longer than a few daysuntil this summer. And he's been in Europe since April. No, " she wenton, "I've not seen a soul from Battle Field. It's been like apainting, finished and hanging on the wall one looks toward oftenest, and influencing one's life every day. "

They talked on of Battle Field, of the boys and girls they hadknown--how Thiebaud was dead and Mollie Crittenden had married the manwho was governor of California; what Howe was not doing, the novelsChamberlayne was writing; the big women's college in Kansas that GraceWharton was vice-president of. Then of Pierson--in the state senateand in a fair way to get to Congress the next year. Then Scarboroughagain--how he had distanced all the others; how he might have thelargest practice in the state if he would take the sort of clients mostlawyers courted assiduously; how strong he was in politics in spite ofthe opposition of the professionals--strong because he had a genius fororganization and also had the ear and the confidence of the people andthe enthusiastic personal devotion of the young men throughout thestate. Olivia, more of a politician than Fred even, knew the wholestory; and Pauline listened appreciatively. Few indeed are the homes instrenuously political Indiana where politics is not the chief subjectof conversation, and Pauline had known about parties and campaigns asearly as she had known about dolls and dresses. 

"But you must have heard most of this, " said Olivia, "from people herein Saint X. "

"Some of it--from father and mother, " Pauline answered. "They're theonly people I've seen really to talk to on my little visits. They knowhim very well indeed. I think mother admires him almost as much as youdo. Here's our place, " she added, the warmth fading from her face asfrom a spring landscape when the shadow of the dusk begins to creepover it. 

They were in the grounds of the Eyrie--the elder Dumont was justcompleting it when he died early in the previous spring. His widowwent abroad to live with her daughter and her sister in Paris; so herson and his wife had taken it. It was a great rambling stone housethat hung upon and in a lofty bluff. From its windows and verandas andbalconies could be seen the panorama of Saint Christopher. To the leftlay the town, its ugly part--its factories and railway yards--hidden bythe jut of a hill. Beneath and beyond to the right, the shining riverwound among fields brown where the harvests had been gathered, greenand white where myriads of graceful tassels waved above acres on acresof Indian corn. And the broad leaves sent up through the murmur of theriver a rhythmic rustling like a sigh of content. Once in a while apassing steamboat made the sonorous cry of its whistle and themelodious beat of its paddles echo from hill to hill. Between thehouse and the hilltop, highway lay several hundred acres of lawn andgarden and wood. 

The rooms of the Eyrie and its well-screened verandas were in a cooltwilight, though the September sun was hot. 

"They're all out, or asleep, " said Pauline, as she and Olivia enteredthe wide reception hall. "Let's have tea on the east veranda. Itsview isn't so good, but we'll be cooler. You'd like to go to your roomfirst?"

Olivia said she was comfortable as she was and needed the tea. So theywent on through the splendidly-furnished drawing-room and were goingthrough the library when Olivia paused before a portrait--"Yourhusband, isn't it?"

"Yes, " replied Pauline, standing behind her cousin. "We each had onedone in Paris. "

"What a masterful face!" said Olivia. "I've never seen a betterforehead. " And she thought, "He's of the same type as Scarborough, except--what is it I dislike inhis expression?"

"Do you notice a resemblance to any one you know?" asked Pauline. 

"Ye-e-s, " replied Olivia, coloring. "I think----"

"Scarborough, isn't it?"

"Yes, " admitted Olivia. 

After a pause Pauline said ambiguously: "The resemblance is strongerthere than in life. "

Olivia glanced at her and was made vaguely uneasy by the look she wasdirecting at the face of the portrait. But though Pauline must haveseen that she was observed, she did not change expression. They wentout upon the east veranda and Olivia stood at the railing. She hardlynoted the view in the press of thoughts roused by the hints of what wasbehind the richly embroidered curtain of her cousin's life. 

All along the bluff, some exposed, some half hid by dense foliage, werethe pretentious houses of the thirty or forty families who had grownrich through the industries developed within the past ten years. Twoforeign-looking servants in foreign-looking house-liveries werebringing a table on which was an enormous silver tray with atea-service of antique silver and artistic china. As Olivia turned toseat herself a young man and a woman of perhaps forty, obviously fromthe East, came through the doors at the far end of the long porch. Both were in white, carefully dressed and groomed; both suggested amode of life whose leisure had never been interrupted. 

"Who are coming?" asked Olivia. She wished she had gone to her roombefore tea. These people made her feel dowdy and mussy. 

Pauline glanced round, smiled and nodded, turned back to her cousin. 

"Mrs. Herron and Mr. Langdon. She's the wife of a New York lawyer, andshe takes Mr. Langdon everywhere with her to amuse her, and he goes toamuse himself. He's a socialist, or something like that. He thinks upand says things to shock conservative, conventional people. He's richand never has worked--couldn't if he would, probably. But he denouncesleisure classes and large fortunes and advocates manual labor every dayfor everybody. He's clever in a queer, cynical way. "

A Mrs. Fanshaw, also of New York, came from the library in a tea-gownof chiffon and real lace. All were made acquainted and Pauline pouredthe tea. As Olivia felt shy and was hungry, she ate the littlesandwiches and looked and listened and thought--looked and thoughtrather than listened. These were certainly well-bred people, yet shedid not like them. 

"They're in earnest about trifles, " she said to herself, "and trifleabout earnest things. " Yet it irritated her to feel that, though theywould care not at all for her low opinion of them, she did care a greatdeal because they would fail to appreciate her. 

"They ought to be jailed, " Langdon was drawling with considerableemphasis. 

"Who, Mr. Langdon?" inquired Mrs. Fanshaw--she had been as abstractedas Olivia. "You've been filling the jails rapidly to-day, and hangingnot a few. "

Mrs. Herron laughed. "He says your husband and Mrs. Dumont's and mineshould be locked up as conspirators. "

"Precisely, " said Langdon, tranquilly. "They'll sign a few papers, andwhen they're done, what'll have happened? Not one more sheep'll beraised. Not one more pound of wool will be shorn. Not one morelaborer'll be employed. Not a single improvement in any process ofmanufacture. But, on the other hand, the farmer'll have to sell hiswool cheaper, the consumer'll have to pay a bigger price for blanketsand all kinds of clothes, for carpets--for everything wool goes into. And these few men will have trebled their fortunes and at least trebledtheir incomes. Does anybody deny that such a performance is a crime?Why, in comparison, a burglar is honorable and courageous. HE risksliberty and life. "

"Dreadful! Dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Fanshaw, in mock horror. "Youmust go at once, Mowbray, and lead the police in a raid on Jack'soffice. "

"Thanks--it's more comfortable here. " Langdon took a piece of acurious-looking kind of hot bread. "Extraordinary good stuff this is, "he interjected; then went on: "And I've done my duty when I've statedthe facts. Also, I'm taking a little stock in the new trust. But Idon't pose as a 'captain of industry' or 'promoter of civilization. ' Iadmit I'm a robber. My point is the rotten hypocrisy of my fellowbandits--no, pickpockets, by gad!"

Olivia looked at him with disapproving interest. It was the first timeshe had been present at a game of battledore and shuttlecock with whatshe regarded as fundamental morals. Langdon noted her expression andsaid to Pauline in a tone of contrition that did not conceal hisamusement: "I've shocked your cousin, Mrs. Dumont. "

"I hope so, " replied Pauline. "I'm sure we all ought to beshocked--and should be, if it weren't you who are trying to do theshocking. She'll soon get used to you. "

"Then it was a jest?" said Olivia to Langdon. 

"A jest?" He looked serious. "Not at all, my dear Mrs. Pierson. Everyword I said was true, and worse. They----"

"Stop your nonsense, Mowbray, " interrupted Mrs. Herron, who appreciatedthat Olivia was an "outsider. " "Certainly he was jesting, Mrs. Pierson. Mr. Langdon pretends to have eccentric ideas--one of them isthat everybody with brains should be put under the feet of thenumskulls; another is that anybody who has anything should be locked upand his property given to those who have nothing. "

"Splendid!" exclaimed Langdon. And he took out a gold cigarette caseand lighted a large, expensive-looking cigarette with a match from agold safe. "Go on, dear lady! Herron should get you to write ourprospectus when we're ready to unload on the public. The dear public!How it does yearn for a share in any piratical enterprise that fliesthe snowy flag of respectability. " He rose. "Who'll play Englishbilliards?"

"All right, " said Mrs. Herron, rising. 

"And I, too, " said Mrs. Fanshaw. 

"Give me one of your cigarettes, Mowbray, " said Mrs. Herron. "I left mycase in my room. "

Pauline, answering Olivia's expression, said as soon as the three haddisappeared:

"Why not? Is it any worse for a woman than for a man?"

"I don't know why not, " replied Olivia. "There must be another reasonthan because I don't do it, and didn't think ladies did. But that'sthe only reason I can give just now. "

"What do you think of Langdon?" asked Pauline. 

"I guess my sense of humor's defective. I don't like the sort of jesthe seems to excel in. "

"I fancy it wasn't altogether a jest, " said Pauline. "I don't inquireinto those matters any more. I used to, but--the more I saw, the worseit was. Tricks and traps and squeezes and--oh, business is all vulgarand low. It's necessary, I suppose, but it's repulsive to me. " Shepaused, then added carelessly, yet with a certain deliberateness, "Inever meddle with Mr. Dumont, nor he with me. "

Olivia wished to protest against Pauline's view of business. But--howcould she without seeming to attack, indeed, without attacking, hercousin's husband?

Dumont brought Fanshaw up in his automobile, Herron remaining at theoffices for half an hour to give the newspapers a carefully consideredaccount of the much-discussed "merger" of the manufacturers oflow-grade woolens. Herron had objected to any statement. "It's ourprivate business, " he said. "Let them howl. The fewer facts theyhave, the sooner they'll stop howling. " But Dumont held firm forpublicity. "There's no such thing as a private business nowadays, " hereplied. "Besides, don't we want the public to take part of our stock?What's the use of acting shady--you've avoided the legal obstacles, haven't you? Let's tell the public frankly all we want it to know, andit'll think it knows all there is to know. "

The whole party met in the drawing-room at a quarter-past eight, Langdon the last to come down--Olivia was uncertain whether or not shewas unjust to him when she suspected design in his late entrance, thehandsomest and the best-dressed man of the company. 

He looked cynically at Dumont. "Well, fellow pirate: how go our plansfor a merry winter for the poor?"

"Ass!" muttered Herron to Olivia, who happened to, be nearest him. "Hefancies impudence is wit. He's devoid of moral sense or even ofdecency. He's a traitor to his class and shouldn't be tolerated in it. "

Dumont was laughingly answering Langdon in his own vein. 

"Splendidly, " he replied, "thanks to our worthy chaplain, Herron, whosecures us the blessing and protection of the law. "

"That gives me an appetite!" exclaimed Langdon. "I feared somethingmight miscarry in these last hours of our months of plotting. Heavenbe praised, the people won't have so much to waste hereafter. I'mproud to be in one of the many noble bands that are struggling to savethem from themselves. "

But Dumont had turned away from him; so he dropped into Mrs. Herron'sdiscussion with Mrs. Fanshaw on their proposed trip to theMediterranean. Dinner was announced and he was put between Mrs. Herronand Olivia, with Dumont on her right. It was a round table andOlivia's eyes lingered upon its details--the embroidered cloth withreal lace in the center, the graceful antique silver candlesticks, thetall vases filled with enormous roses--everything exquisitely simpleand tasteful. 

Langdon talked with her until Mrs. Herron, impatient at his neglect, caught his eye and compelled his attention. Dumont, seeing that Oliviawas free, drew her into his conversation with Mrs. Fanshaw; and thenMrs. Fanshaw began to talk with Mr. Herron, who was eating furiouslybecause he had just overheard Langdon say: "That was a great day forpirates when they thought of taking aboard the lawyers as chaplains. "

All the men were in high spirits; Dumont was boyish in his exuberance. When he left home that morning he was four times a millionaire; now hewas at least twelve times a millionaire, through the magic of the"merger. " True, eight of the twelve millions were on paper; but it waspaper that would certainly pay dividends, paper that would presentlysell at or near its face value. And this success had come when he wasonly thirty-four. His mind was already projecting greater triumphs inthis modern necromancy by which millionaires evoke and materializemillions from the empty air--apparently. He was bubbling over withhappiness--in the victory won, in victories to be won. 

Olivia tried him on several subjects, but the conversation dragged. OfPauline he would not talk; of Europe, he was interested only in thecomfort of hotels and railway trains, in the comparative merits of thecooking and the wines in London and Paris. But his face--alert, shrewd, aggressive--and his mode of expression made her feel that hewas uninteresting because he was thinking of something which he did notcare to expose to her and could not take his mind from. And this wasthe truth. It was not until she adventured upon his business that hebecame talkative. And soon she had him telling her about his"combine"--frankly, boastfully, his face more and more flushed, for ashe talked he drank. 

"But, " he said presently, "this little matter to-day is only a fairbeginning. It seemed big until it was about accomplished. Then I sawit was only a suggestion for a scheme that'd be really worth, while. "And he went on to unfold one of those projects of to-day's commerce andfinance that were regarded as fantastic, delirious a few years ago. Hewould reach out and out for hundreds of millions of capital; with hiswoolens "combine" as a basis he would build an enormous corporation tocontrol the sheep industry of the world--to buy millions of acres ofsheep-ranges; to raise scores of millions of sheep; to acquire and toconstruct hundreds of plants for utilizing every part of the rawproduct of the ranges; to sell wherever the human race had or couldhave a market. 

Olivia was ambitious herself, usually was delighted by ambition inothers. But his exhibit of imagination and energy repelled her, evenwhile it fascinated. Partly through youth, more through that contemptfor concealment which characterizes the courageous type of large man, he showed himself to her just as he was. And she saw him not as anambition but as an appetite, or rather a bundle of appetites. 

"He has no ideals, " she thought. "He's like a man who wants foodmerely for itself, not for the strength and the intellect it will buildup. And he likes or dislikes human beings only as one likes ordislikes different things to eat. "

"It'll take you years and years, " she said to him, because she must saysomething. 

"Not at all. " He waved his hand--Olivia thought it looked as much likea claw as like a hand. "It's a sky-scraper, but we build sky-scrapersovernight. Time and space used to be the big elements. WE practicallydisregard them. " He followed this with a self-satisfied laugh and anemptying of his champagne glass at a gulp. 

The women were rising to withdraw. After half an hour Langdon andHerron joined them. Dumont and Fanshaw did not come until eleveno'clock. Then Dumont was so abrupt and surly that every one wasgrateful to Mrs. Fanshaw for taking him away to the west veranda. Atmidnight all went to their rooms, Pauline going with Olivia, "to makesure you haven't been neglected. "

She lingered until after one, and when they kissed each the other goodnight, she said: "It's done me a world of good to see you, 'Livia--more even than I hoped. I knew you'd be sympathetic with mewhere you understood. Now, I feel that you're sympathetic where youdon't understand, too. And it's there that one really needs sympathy. "

"That's what friendship means--and--love, " said Olivia. 

XIII. 

"MY SISTER-IN-LAW, GLADYS. "

The following afternoon Dumont took the Herrons, the Fanshaws andLangdon back to New York in his private car, and for three days Oliviaand Pauline had the Eyrie to themselves. Olivia was about to write toScarborough, asking him to call, when she saw in the News-Bulletin thathe had gone to Denver to speak. A week after she left, Dumontreturned, bringing his sister Gladys, just arrived from Europe, andLangdon. He stayed four days, took Langdon away with him and leftGladys. 

Thus it came about that Scarborough, riding into Colonel Gardiner'sgrounds one hot afternoon in mid September, saw a phaeton-victoria withtwo women in it coming toward him on its way out. He drew his horseaside to make room. He was conscious that there were two women; he sawonly one--she who was all in white except the scarlet poppies againstthe brim of her big white hat. 

As he bowed the carriage stopped and Pauline said cordially: "Why, howd'ye do?"

He drew his horse close to the carriage and they shook hands. Sheintroduced the other woman--"My sister-in-law, Gladys Dumont"--thenwent on: "We've been lunching and spending the afternoon with fatherand mother. They told us you returned this morning. "

"I supposed you were in the East, " said Scarborough--the first words hehad spoken. 

"Oh--I'm living here now--Gladys and I. Father says you never goanywhere, but I hope you'll make an exception for us. "

"Thank you--I'll be glad to call. "

"Why not dine with us--day after to-morrow night?"

"I'd like that--certainly, I'll come. "

"We dine at half-past eight--at least we're supposed to. "

Scarborough lifted his hat. 

The carriage drove on. 

"Why, he's not a bit as I expected, " Gladys began at once. "He's muchyounger. ISN'T he handsome! That's the way a MAN ought to look. He'snot married?"

"No, " replied Pauline. 

"Why did you look so queer when you first caught sight of him?"

"Did I?" Pauline replied tranquilly. "Probably it was because he verysuddenly and vividly brought Battle Field back to me--that was thehappiest time of my life. But I was too young or too foolish, or both, to know it till long afterward. At seventeen one takes happiness forgranted. "

"Did he look then as he does now?"

"No--and yes, " said Pauline. "He was just from the farm and dressedbadly and was awkward at times. But--really he was the same person. Iguess it was the little change in him that startled me. " And shebecame absorbed in her thoughts. 

"I hope you'll send him in to dinner with me, " said Gladys, presently. 

"What did you say?" asked Pauline, absently. 

"I was talking of Mr. Scarborough. I asked if you wouldn't send him into dinner with me--unless you want to discuss old times with him. "

"Yes--certainly--if you wish. "

And Pauline gave Scarborough to Gladys and did her duty as hostess bytaking in the dullest man in the party--Newnham. While Newnham dronedand prosed, she watched Gladys lay herself out to please thedistinguished Mr. Scarborough, successful as a lawyer, famous as anorator, deferred to because of his influence with the rank and file ofhis party in the middle West. 

Gladys had blue-black hair which she wore pulled out into a sort ofhalo about her small, delicate face. There were points of light in herdark irises, giving them the look of black quartz in the sunshine. Shewas not tall, but her figure was perfect, and she had her dressesfitted immediately to it. Her appeal was frankly to the senses, theedge taken from its audacity by its artistic effectiveness and by heringenuous, almost innocent, expression. 

Seeing Pauline looking at her, she tilted her head to a graceful angleand sent a radiant glance between two blossom-laden branches of thegreen and white bush that towered and spread in the center of thetable. "Mr. Scarborough says, " she called out, "character isn't adevelopment, it's a disclosure. He thinks one is born a certain kindof person and that one's life simply either gives it a chance to showor fails to give it a chance. He says the boy isn't father to the man, but the miniature of the man. What do you think, Pauline?"

"I haven't thought of it, " replied Pauline. "But I'm certain it'strue. I used to dispute Mr. Scarborough's ideas sometimes, but Ilearned better. "

As she realized the implications of her careless remark, their eyes metsquarely for the first time since Battle Field. Both hastily glancedaway, and neither looked at the other again. When the men came up tothe drawing-room to join the women, Gladys adroitly intercepted him. When he went to Pauline to take leave, their manner each toward theother was formal, strained and even distant. 

Dumont came again just after the November election. It had been anunexpected victory for the party which Scarborough advocated, andeverywhere the talk was that he had been the chief factor--his skill indefining issues, his eloquence in presenting them, the publicconfidence in his party through the dominance of a man so obviouslyfree from self-seeking or political trickery of any kind. Dumont, towhom control in both party machines and in the state government was abusiness necessity, told his political agent, Merriweather, that theyhad "let Scarborough go about far enough, " unless he could be broughtinto their camp. 

"I can't make out what he's looking for, " said Merriweather. "Onething's certain--he'll do US no good. There's no way we can get ourhooks in him. He don't give a damn for money. And as for power--hecan get more of that by fighting us than by falling in line. We ain'texactly popular. "

This seemed to Dumont rank ingratitude. Had he not just divided amillion dollars among charities and educational institutions in thedistricts where opposition to his "merger" was strongest?

"Well, we'll see, " he said. "If he isn't careful we'll have to killhim off in convention and make the committees stop his mouth. "

"The trouble is he's been building up a following of his own--the sortof following that can't be honeyfugled, " replied Merriweather. "Thecommittees are afraid of him. " Merriweather always took the gloomy viewof everything, because he thus discounted his failures in advance anddoubled the effect of his successes. 

"I'll see--I'll see, " said Dumont, impatiently. And he thought he wasbeginning to "see" when Gladys expanded to him upon the subject ofScarborough--his good looks, his wit, his "distinction. "

Scarborough came to dinner a few evenings later and Dumont wasparticularly cordial to him; and Gladys made the most of theopportunity which Pauline again gave her. That night, when the othershad left or had gone to bed, Gladys followed her brother into thesmoke-room adjoining the library. They sat in silence drinking a"night-cap. " In the dreaminess of her eyes, in the absent smiledrifting round the corners of her full red lips, Gladys showed that herthoughts were pleasant and sentimental. 

"What do you think of Scarborough?" her brother asked suddenly. 

She started but did not flush--in her long European experience she hadgained control of that signal of surprise. "How do you mean?" sheasked. She rarely answered a question immediately, no matter howsimple it was, but usually put another question in reply. Thus sheinsured herself time to think if time should be necessary. 

"I mean, do you like him?"

"Why, certainly. But I've seen him only a few times. "

"He's an uncommon man, " continued her brother. "He'd make a mightysatisfactory husband for an ambitious woman, especially one with themoney to push him fast. "

Gladys slowly lifted and slowly lowered her smooth, slender shoulders. 

"That sort of thing doesn't interest a woman in a man, unless she'smarried to him and has got over thinking more about him than aboutherself. "

"It ought to, " replied her brother. "A clever woman can always sloshround in sentimental slop with her head above it and cool. If I were agirl I'd make a dead set for that chap. "

"If you were a girl, " said Gladys, "you'd do nothing of the sort. You'd compel him to make a dead set for you. " And as she put down herglass she gave his hair an affectionate pull--which was her way ofthanking him for saying what she most wished to hear on the subject shemost wished to hear about. 

XIV. 

STRAINING AT THE ANCHORS. 

Gladys was now twenty-four and was even more anxious to marry than isthe average unmarried person. She had been eleven years a wanderer;she was tired of it. She had no home; and she wanted a home. 

Her aunt--her mother's widowed sister--had taken her abroad when shewas thirteen. John was able to defy or to deceive their mother. Butshe could and did enforce upon Gladys the rigid rules which herfanatical nature had evolved--a minute and crushing tyranny. ThereforeGladys preferred any place to her home. For ten years she had beenroaming western Europe, nominally watched by her lazy, selfish, andphysically and mentally near-sighted aunt. Actually her only guardianhad been her own precocious, curiously prudent, curiously recklessself. She had been free to do as she pleased; and she had pleased to dovery free indeed. She had learned all that her intense and catholiccuriosity craved to know, had learned it of masters of her ownselecting--the men and women who would naturally attract a lively youngperson, eager to rejoice in an escape from slavery. Her eyes hadpeered far into the human heart, farthest into the corrupted humanheart; yet, with her innocence she had not lost her honesty or herpreference for the things she had been brought up to think clean. 

But she had at last wearied of a novelty which lay only in changes ofscene and of names, without any important change in characters or plot. She began to be bored with the game of baffling the hopes inspired byher beauty and encouraged by her seeming simplicity. And when hermother came--as she said to Pauline, "The only bearable view of motheris a distant view. I had forgot there were such people left onearth--I had thought they'd all gone to their own kind of heaven. " Soshe fled to America, to her brother and his wife. 

Dumont stayed eight days at the Eyrie on that trip, then went back tohis congenial life in New York--to his business and his dissipation. He tempered his indulgence in both nowadays with some exercise--hisstomach, his heart, his nerves and his doctor had together given him abad fright. The evening before he left he saw Pauline and Gladyssitting apart and joined them. 

"Why not invite Scarborough to spend a week up here?" he asked, justglancing at his wife. He never ventured to look at her when there wasany danger of their eyes meeting. 

Her lips tightened and the color swiftly left her cheeks and swiftlyreturned. 

"Wouldn't you like it, Gladys?" he went on. 

"Oh, DO ask him, Pauline, " said Gladys, with enthusiasm. Like herbrother, she always went straight to the point--she was in the habit ofdeciding for herself, of thinking what she did was above criticism, andof not especially caring if it was criticised. "Please do!"

Pauline waited long--it seemed to her long enough for time to wrinkleher heart--before answering: "We'll need another man. I'll ask him--ifyou wish. "

Gladys pressed her hand gratefully--she was fond of Pauline, andPauline was liking her again as she had when they were children andplaymates and partners in the woes of John Dumont's raids upon theirgames. Just then Langdon's sister, Mrs. Barrow, called Gladys to theother end of the drawing-room. Dumont's glance followed her. 

"I think it'd be a good match, " he said reflectively. 

Pauline's heart missed a beat and a suffocating choke contracted herthroat. 

"What?" she succeeded in saying. 

"Gladys and Scarborough, " replied Dumont. "She ought to marry--she'sgot no place to go. And it'd be good business for her--and for him, too, for that matter, if she could land him. Don't you think she'sattractive to men?"

"Very, " said Pauline, lifelessly. 

"Don't you think it would be a good match?" he went on. 

"Very, " she said, looking round wildly, as her breath came more andmore quickly. 

Langdon strolled up. 

"Am I interrupting a family council?" he asked. 

"Oh, no, " Dumont replied, rising. "Take my chair. " And he was gone. 

"This room is too warm, " said Pauline. "No, don't open the window. Excuse me a moment. " She went into the hall, threw a golf cape roundher shoulders and stepped out on the veranda, closing the door-windowbehind her. It was a moonless, winter night--stars thronging theblue-black sky; the steady lamp of a planet set in the southern horizon. 

When she had been walking there for a quarter of an hour thedoor-window opened and Langdon looked out. "Oh--there you are!" hesaid. 

"Won't you join me?" Her tone assured him that he would not beintruding. He got a hat and overcoat and they walked up and downtogether. 

"Those stars irritate me, " he said after a while. "They make meappreciate that this world's a tiny grain of sand adrift in infinity, and that I'm----there's nothing little enough to express the human atomwhere the earth's only a grain. And then they go on to taunt me withhow short-lived I am and how it'll soon be all over for me--for ever. A futile little insect, buzzing about, waiting to be crushed under theheel of the Great Executioner. "

"Sometimes I feel that, " answered Pauline. "But again--often, as achild--and since, when everything has looked dark and ugly for me, I'vegone where I could see them. And they seemed to draw all the fever andthe fear out of me, and to put there instead a sort of--not happiness, not even content, but--courage. "

They were near the rail now, she gazing into the southern sky, hestudying her face. It seemed to him that he had not seen any one sobeautiful. She was all in black with a diamond star glittering in herhair high above her forehead. She looked like a splendid plume droppedfrom the starry wing of night. 

"The stars make you feel that way, " he said, in the light tone thatdisguises a compliment as a bit of raillery, "because you're of theirfamily. And I feel as I do because I'm a blood-relation of theearthworms. "

Her face changed. "Oh, but so am I!" she exclaimed, with a passion hehad never seen or suspected in her before. She drew a long breath, closed her eyes and opened them very wide. 

"You don't know, you can't imagine, how I long to LIVE! And KNOW what'to live' means. "

"Then why don't you?" he asked--he liked to catch people in theirconfidential moods and to peer into the hidden places in their hearts, not impudently but with a sort of scientific curiosity. 

"Because I'm a daughter--that's anchor number one. Because I'm amother--that's anchor number two. Because I'm a wife--that's anchornumber three. And anchor number four--because I'm under the spell ofinherited instincts that rule me though I don't in the least believe inthem. Tied, hands and feet!"

"Inherited instinct. " He shook his head sadly. "That's the skeletonat life's banquet. It takes away my appetite. "

She laughed without mirth, then sighed with some self-mockery. "Itfrightens ME away from the table. "

XV. 

GRADUATED PEARLS. 

But Scarborough declined her invitation. However, he did come todinner ten days later; and Gladys, who had no lack of confidence in herpower to charm when and whom she chose, was elated by his friendlinessthen and when she met him at other houses. 

"He's not a bit sentimental, " she told Pauline, whose silence whenevershe tried to discuss him did not discourage her. "But if he ever doescare for a woman he'll care in the same tremendous way that he sweepsthings before him in his career. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, " said Pauline. 

She had now lingered at Saint X two months beyond the time sheoriginally set. She told herself she had reached the limit ofendurance, that she must fly from the spectacle of Gladys' growingintimacy with Scarborough; she told Gladys it was impossible for herlonger to neglect the new house in Fifth Avenue. With an effort sheadded: "You'd rather stay on here, wouldn't you?"

"I detest New York, " replied Gladys. "And I've never enjoyed myself inmy whole life as I'm enjoying it here. "

So she went East alone, went direct to Dawn Hill, their country placeat Manhasset, Long Island, which Dumont never visited. She invitedLeonora Fanshaw down to stand between her thoughts and herself. Onlythe society of a human being, one who was light-hearted and amusing, could tide her back to any sort of peace in the old life--her books andher dogs, her horseback and her drawing and her gardening. A life sofull of events, so empty of event. It left her hardly time for propersleep, yet it had not a single one of those vivid threads of intenseand continuous interest--and one of them is enough to make bright thedullest pattern that issues from the Loom. 

In her "splendor" her nearest approach to an intimacy had been withLeonora. 

She had no illusions about the company she was keeping in the East. Toher these "friends" seemed in no proper sense either her friends or oneanother's. Drawn together from all parts of America, indeed of theworld, by the magnetism of millions, they had known one another not atall or only slightly in the period of life when thorough friendshipsare made; even where they had been associates as children, theassociation had rarely been of the kind that creates friendship'sdemocratic intimacy. They had no common traditions, no realclass-feeling, no common enthusiasms--unless the passion for keepingrich, for getting richer, for enjoying and displaying riches, could becalled enthusiasm. They were mere intimate acquaintances, making smallpretense of friendship, having small conception of it or desire for itbeyond that surface politeness which enables people whose selfishinterests lie in the same direction to get on comfortably together. 

She divided them into two classes. There were those who, like herself, kept up great establishments and entertained lavishly and engaged inthe courteous but fierce rivalry of fashionable ostentation. Thenthere were those who hung about the courts of the rich, invited becausethey filled in the large backgrounds and contributed conversation orideas for new amusements, accepting because they loved the atmosphereof luxury which they could not afford to create for themselves. 

Leonora was undeniably in the latter class. But she was associated inPauline's mind with the period before her splendor. She had beenfriendly when Dumont was unknown beyond Saint X. The others soughther--well, for the same reasons of desire for distraction and dread ofboredom which made her welcome them. But Leonora, she more than halfbelieved, liked her to a certain extent for herself--"likes me betterthan I like her. " And at times she was self-reproachful for being thusexceeded in self-giving. Leonora, for example, told her her mostintimate secrets, some of them far from creditable to her. Paulinetold nothing in return. She sometimes longed for a confidant, or, rather, for some person who would understand without being told, someone like Olivia; but her imagination refused to picture Leonora as thatkind of friend. Even more pronounced than her frankness, and she wasfrank to her own hurt, was her biting cynicism--it was undeniablyamusing; it did not exactly inspire distrust, but it put Paulinevaguely on guard. Also, she was candidly mercenary, and, in somemoods, rapaciously envious. "But no worse, " thought Pauline, "than somany of the others here, once one gets below their surface. Besides, it's in a good-natured, good-hearted way. "

She wished Fanshaw were as rich as Leonora longed for him to be. Shewas glad Dumont seemed to be putting him in the way of making afortune. He was distasteful to her, because she saw that he was anill-tempered sycophant under a pretense of manliness thick enough toshield him from the unobservant eyes of a world of men and women greedyof flattery and busy each with himself or herself. But for Leonora'ssake she invited him. And Leonora was appreciative, was witty, nevermonotonous or commonplace, most helpful in getting up entertainments, and good to look at--always beautifully dressed and as fresh as if justfrom a bath; sparkling green eyes, usually with good-humored mockery inthem; hard, smooth, glistening shoulders and arms; lips a crimson line, at once cold and sensuous. 

On a Friday in December Pauline came up from Dawn Hill and, after twohours at the new house, went to the jeweler's to buy a wedding presentfor Aurora Galloway. As she was passing the counter where thesuperintendent had his office, his assistant said: "Beg pardon, Mrs. Dumont. The necklace came in this morning. Would you like to look atit?"

She paused, not clearly hearing him. He took a box from the safebehind him and lifted from it a magnificent necklace of graduatedpearls with a huge solitaire diamond clasp. "It's one of the finest weever got together, " he went on. "But you can see for yourself. " Hewas flushing in the excitement of his eagerness to ingratiate himselfwith such a distinguished customer. 

"Beautiful!" said Pauline, taking the necklace as he held it out toher. "May I ask whom it's for?"

The clerk looked puzzled, then frightened, as the implications of herobvious ignorance dawned upon him. 

"Oh--I--I----" He almost snatched it from her, dropped it into thebox, put on the lid. And he stood with mouth ajar and forehead beaded. 

"Please give it to me again, " said Pauline, coldly. "I had notfinished looking at it. "

His uneasy eyes spied the superintendent approaching. He grew scarlet, then white, and in an agony of terror blurted out: "Here comes thesuperintendent. I beg you, Mrs. Dumont, don't tell him I showed it toyou. I've made some sort of a mistake. You'll ruin me if you speak ofit to any one. I never thought it might be intended as a surprise toyou. Indeed, I wasn't supposed to know anything about it. Maybe I wasmistaken----"

His look and voice were so pitiful that Pauline replied reassuringly:"I understand--I'll say nothing. Please show me those, " and shepointed to a tray of unset rubies in the show-case. 

And when the superintendent, bowing obsequiously, came up himself totake charge of this important customer, she was deep in the rubieswhich the assistant was showing her with hands that shook and fingersthat blundered. 

She did not permit her feelings to appear until she was in her carriageagain and secure from observation. The clerk's theory she could notentertain for an instant, contradicted as it was by the facts of eightyears. She knew she had surprised Dumont. She had learned nothing new;but it forced her to stare straight into the face of that which she hadbeen ignoring, that which she must continue to ignore if she was tomeet the ever heavier and crueler exactions of the debt she hadincurred when she betrayed her father and mother and herself. At atime when her mind was filled with bitter contrasts between what wasand what might have been, it brought bluntly to her the precise kind oflife she was leading, the precise kind of surroundings she wastolerating. 

"Whom can he be giving such a gift?" she wondered. And she had animpulse to confide in Leonora to the extent of encouraging her to hintwho it was. "She would certainly know. No doubt everybody knows, except me. "

She called for her, as she had promised, and took her to lunch atSherry's. But the impulse to confide died as Leonora talked--of money, of ways of spending money; of people who had money, and those whohadn't money; of people who were spending too much money, of those whoweren't spending enough money; of what she would do if she had money, of what many did to get money. Money, money, money--it was all of theweb and most of the woof of her talk. Now it ran boldly on the surfaceof the pattern; now it was half hid under something about art or booksor plays or schemes for patronizing the poor and undermining theirself-respect--but it was always there. 

For the first time Leonora jarred upon her fiercely--unendurably. Shelistened until the sound grew indistinct, became mingled with thechatter of that money-flaunting throng. And presently the chatterseemed to her to be a maddening repetition of one word, money--thecentral idea in all the thought and all the action of these people. "Imust get away, " she thought, "or I shall cry out. " And she leftabruptly, alleging that she must hurry to catch her train. 

Money-mad! her thoughts ran on. The only test of honor--money, andability and willingness to spend it. They must have money or they'renobodies. And if they have money, who cares where it came from? Noone asks where the men get it--why should any one ask where the womenget it?

XVI. 

CHOICE AMONG EVILS. 

A few days afterward--it was a Wednesday--Pauline came up to town earlyin the afternoon, as she had an appointment with the dressmaker and wasgoing to the opera in the evening. At the dressmaker's, while shewaited for a fitter to return from the workroom, she glanced at anewspaper spread upon the table so that its entire front page was inview. It was filled with an account of how the Woolens Monopoly had, in that bitter winter, advanced prices twenty to thirty-five per cent. All along the line. From the center of the page stared a picture ofJohn Dumont--its expression peculiarly arrogant and sinister. 

She read the head-lines only, then turned from the table. But on thedrive up-town she stopped the carriage at the Savoy and sent thefootman to the news-stand to get the paper. She read the articlethrough--parts of it several times. 

She had Langdon and Honoria Longview at dinner that night; by indirectquestioning she drew him on to confirm the article, to describe how theWoolens Monopoly was "giving the country an old-fashioned winter. " Onthe way to the opera she was ashamed of her ermine wrap enfolding herfrom the slightest sense of the icy air. She did not hear the singers, was hardly conscious of her surroundings. As they left theMetropolitan she threw back her wrap and sat with her neck bared to theintense cold. 

"I say, don't do that!" protested Langdon. 

She reluctantly drew the fur about her. But when she had dropped himand then Honoria and was driving on up the avenue alone, she bared hershoulders and arms again--"like a silly child, " she said. But it gaveher a certain satisfaction, for she felt like one who has a secretstore of food in time of famine and feasts upon it. And she satunprotected. 

"Is Mr. Dumont in?" she asked the butler as he closed the door of theirpalace behind her. 

"I think he is, ma'am. "

"Please tell him I'd like to see him--in the library. "

She had to wait only three or four minutes before he came--in smokingjacket and slippers. It was long since she had looked at him socarefully as she did then; and she noted how much grosser he was, thepuffs under his eyes, the lines of cruelty that were coming outstrongly with autocratic power and the custom of receiving meekobedience. And her heart sank. "Useless, " she said to herself. "Utterly useless!" And the incident of the necklace and its remindersof all she had suffered from him and through him came trooping into hermind; and it seemed to her that she could not speak, could not evenremain in the room with him. 

He dropped into a chair before the open fire. "Horribly cold, isn'tit?"

She moved uneasily. He slowly lighted a cigar and began to smoke it, his attitude one of waiting. 

"I've been thinking, " she began at last--she was looking reflectivelyinto the fire--"about your great talent for business and finance. Youformed your big combination, and because you understand everythingabout wool you employ more men, you pay higher wages, and you make thegoods better than ever, and at less cost. "

"Between a third and a half cheaper, " he said. "We employ thirtythousand more men, and since we settled the last strike"--a grim smilethat would have meant a great deal to her had she known the history ofthat strike and how hard he had fought before he gave in--"we've paidthirty per cent. Higher wages. Yet the profits are--well, you canimagine. "

"And you've made millions for yourself and for those in with you. "

"I haven't developed my ideas for nothing. "

She paused again. It was several minutes before she went on:

"When a doctor or a man of science or a philosopher makes a discoverythat'll be a benefit to the world"--she looked at him suddenly, earnest, appealing--"he gives it freely. And he gets honor and fame. Why shouldn't you do that, John?" She had forgotten herself in hersubject. 

He smiled into the fire--hardly a day passed that he did not havepresented to him some scheme for relieving him of the burden of hisriches; here was another, and from such an unexpected quarter!

"You could be rich, too. We spend twenty, fifty times as much as wecan possibly enjoy; and you have more than we could possibly spend. Why shouldn't a man with financial genius be like men with other kindsof genius? Why should he be the only one to stay down on the levelwith dull, money-grubbing, sordid kinds of people? Why shouldn't hehave ideals?"

He made no reply. Indeed, so earnest was she that she did not give himtime, but immediately went on:

"Just think, John! Instead of giving out in these charities andphilanthropies--I never did believe in them--they're bound to be moreor less degrading to the people that take, and when it's so hard tohelp a friend with money without harming him, how much harder it mustbe to help strangers. Instead of those things, why not be reallygreat? Just think, John, how the world would honor you and how youwould feel, if you used your genius to make the necessaries cheap forall these fellow-beings of ours who have such a hard time getting on. That would be real superiority--and our life now is so vain, so empty. It's brutal, John. "

"What do you propose?" he asked, curious as always when a new idea waspresented to him. And this was certainly new--apparently, philanthropywithout expense. 

"You are master. You can do as you please. Why not put your greatcombine on such a basis that it would bring an honest, just return toyou and the others, and would pay the highest possible wages, and wouldgive the people the benefit of what your genius for manufacturing andfor finance has made possible? I think we who are so comfortable andnever have to think of the necessaries of life forget how much a fewcents here and there mean to most people. And the things you controlmean all the difference between warmth and cold, between life anddeath, John!"

As she talked he settled back into his chair, and his face hardenedinto its unyielding expression. A preposterous project! Just like agood, sentimental woman. Not philanthropy without expense, butphilanthropy at the expense both, of his fortune and of his position asa master. To use his brain and his life for those ungrateful peoplewho derided his benefactions as either contributions to "the consciencefund" or as indirect attempts at public bribery! He could not concealhis impatience--though he did not venture to put it into words. 

"If we--if you and I, John, " she hurried on, leaning toward him in herearnestness, "had something like that to live for, it might come to bevery different with us--and--I'm thinking of Gardiner most of all. This'll ruin him some day. No one, NO ONE, can lead this kind of lifewithout being dragged down, without becoming selfish and sordid andcruel. "

"You don't understand, " he said curtly, without looking at her. "Inever heard of such--such sentimentalism. "

She winced and was silent, sat watching his bold, strong profile. Presently she said in a changed, strange, strained voice: "What Iasked to see you for was--John, won't you put the prices--at leastwhere they were at the beginning of this dreadful winter?"

"Oh--I see!" he exclaimed. "You've been listening to the lies aboutme. "

"READING, " she said, her eyes flashing at the insult in the accusationthat she had let people attack him to her. 

"Well, reading then, " he went on, wondering what he had said thatangered her. And he made an elaborate explanation--about "thenecessity of meeting fixed charges" which he himself had fixed, about"fair share of prosperity, " "everything more expensive, " "the countrybetter able to pay, " "every one doing as we are, " and so on. 

She listened closely; she had not come ignorant of the subject, and shepenetrated his sophistries. When he saw her expression, saw he hadfailed to convince her, into, his eyes came the look she understoodwell--the look that told her she would only infuriate him and bruiseherself by flinging herself against the iron of his resolve. 

"You must let me attend to my own business, " he ended, his tonegood-natured, his eyes hard. 

She sat staring into the fire for several minutes--from her eyes lookeda will as strong as his. Then she rose and, her voice lower thanbefore but vibrating, said: "All round us--here in New York--all overthis country--away off in Europe--I can see them--I can feelthem--SUFFERING! As you yourself said, it's HORRIBLY cold!" She drewherself up and faced him, a light in her eyes before which he visiblyshrank. "Yes, it's YOUR business. But it shan't be mine or MY boy's!"

And she left the room. In the morning she returned to Dawn Hill andarranged her affairs so that she would be free to go. Not since thespring day, nearly nine years before, when she began that Vergil lessonwhich ended in a lesson in the pitilessness of consequences that wasnot yet finished, had her heart been so light, so hopeful. In vain shereminded herself that the doing of this larger duty, so imperative, nevertheless endangered her father and mother. "They will be proudthat I'm doing it, " she assured herself. 

"For Gardiner's sake, as well as for mine, they'll be glad I separatedhim and myself from this debased life. They will--they MUST, since itis right!" And already she felt the easing of the bonds that had neverfailed to cut deeper into the living flesh whenever she had ventured tohope that she was at last growing used to them. 

"Free!" she said to herself exultantly. She dared to exult, but shedid not dare to express to herself the hopes, the wild, incrediblehopes, which the very thought of freedom set to quivering deep down inher, as the first warmth makes the life toss in its slumber in theplanted seed. 

On Friday she came up to New York late in the afternoon, and in theevening went to the opera--for a last look round. As the lights werelowering for the rise of the curtain on the second act, Leonora and herhusband entered the box. She had forgotten inviting them. She gaveLeonora the chair in front and took the one behind--Millicent Rowland, whom she herself brought, had the other front seat. As her chair wasmidway between the two, she was seeing across Leonora's shoulders. Presently Dumont came in and took the chair behind Leonora's and leanedforward, his chin almost touching the slope of her neck as he talked toher in an undertone, she greatly amused or pretending to be. 

The light from the stage fell across Leonora's bosom, fell upon amagnificent string of graduated pearls clasped with a huge solitairebeyond question the string the jeweler's clerk had blunderingly shownher. And there was Dumont's heavy, coarse profile outlined againstLeonora's cheek and throat, her cynical, sensuous profile showing justbeyond. 

Open sprang a hundred doors of memory; into Pauline's mind wasdischarged avalanche after avalanche of dreadful thoughts. "No! No!"she protested. "How infamous to think such things of my best friend!"But she tried in vain to thrust suspicions, accusations, proofs, backinto the closets. Instead, she sank under the flood of them--sick andcertain. 

When the lights went up she said: "I'm feeling badly all at once. I'mafraid I'll have to take you home, Milly. "

"Are you ill, dear?" asked Leonora. 

"Oh, no--just faint, " she replied, in a voice which she succeeded inmaking fairly natural. 

"Please don't move. Stay on--you really must. "

The other man--Shenstone--helped her and Millicent with their wraps andaccompanied them to their carriage. When she had set Millicent downshe drew a long breath of relief. For the first time in seven yearsher course lay straight before her. "I must be free!" she said. "Imust be ENTIRELY free--free before the whole world--I and my boy. "

The next morning, in the midst of her preparations to take theten-o'clock limited for the West, her maid brought a note to her--acopy of a National Woolens Company circular to the trade, setting forththat "owing to a gratifying easing in the prices for raw wool, theCompany are able to announce and take great pleasure in announcing aten per cent. Reduction. " On the margin Dumont had scrawled "To go outto-morrow and to be followed in ten days by fifteen per cent. More. Couldn't resist your appeal. " Thus by the sheer luck that had so oftensupplemented his skill and mitigated his mistakes, he had yielded toher plea just in time to confuse the issue between her and him. 

She read the circular and the scrawl with a sinking heart. "Nevertheless, I shall go!" she tried to protest. "True, he won't sendout this circular if I do. But what does it matter, one infamy more orless in him? Besides, he will accomplish his purpose in some other wayof which I shall not know. " But this was only the beginning of thebattle. Punishment on punishment for an act which seemed right at thetime had made her morbid, distrustful of herself. And she could notconquer the dread lest her longing to be free was blinding her, wasluring her on to fresh calamities, involving all whom she cared for, all who cared for her. Whichever way she looked she could see only achoice between wrongs. To stay under the same roof with him or at DawnHill--self-respect put that out of the question. To free herself--howcould she, when it meant sacrificing her parents and also the thousandsshivering under the extortions of his monopoly?

In the end she chose the course that seemed to combine the least evilwith the most good. She would go to the Eyrie, and the world and herfather and mother would think she was absenting herself from herhusband to attend to the bringing up of her boy. She would see evenless of Scarborough than she saw when she was last at Saint X. 

That afternoon she wrote to Dumont:

Since we had our talk I have found out about Leonora. It is impossiblefor me to stay here. I shall go West to-morrow. But I shall not go tomy father's; because of your circular I shall go to the Eyrie, instead--at least for the present. 

 PAULINE DUMONT. 

Two weeks after she was again settled at the Eyrie, Langdon appeared inSaint X, alleging business at the National Woolens' factories there. He accepted her invitation to stay with her, and devoted himself toGladys, who took up her flirtation with him precisely where she haddropped it when they bade each the other a mock-mournful good-by fivemonths before. They were so realistic that Pauline came to thesatisfying conclusion that her sister-in-law was either in earnest withLangdon or not in earnest with anybody. If she had not been avoidingScarborough, she would probably have seen Gladys' real game--to useLangdon as a stalking horse for him. 

"No doubt Scarborough, like all men, imagines he's above jealousy, "Gladys had said to herself, casting her keen eyes over the situation. "But there never was a man who didn't race better with a pace-makerthan on an empty track. "

Toward the end of Langdon's first week Pauline's suspicions as to oneof the objects of his winter trip West were confirmed by his sayingquite casually: "Dumont's dropped Fanshaw, and Leonora's talking ofthe stage. In fact, she's gone abroad to study. "

When he was leaving, after nearly three weeks, he asked her when shewas coming back East. 

"Never--I hope, " she said, her fingers playing with the close-croppedcurls of her boy standing beside her. 

"I fancied so--I fancied so, " replied Langdon, his eyes showing that heunderstood her and that he knew she understood for whom he had asked. 

"You are going to stay on--at the Eyrie?"

"I think so, unless something--disquieting--occurs. I've not made upmy mind. Fate plays such queer tricks that I've stopped guessing atto-morrow. "

"What was it Miss Dumont's friend, Scarborough, quoted from Spinoza atAtwater's the other night? 'If a stone, on its way from the slingthrough the air, could speak, it would say, "How free I am!'" Is thatthe way you feel?"

There came into Pauline's eyes a look of pain so intense that heglanced away. 

"We choose a path blindfold, " she said, her tone as light as her lookwas dark, "and we must go where it goes--there's no other everafterward. "

"But if it leads down?"

"All the PATHS lead up, " she replied with a sad smile. "It's theprecipices that lead down. "

Gladys joined them and Langdon said to her:

"Well, good-by, Miss Dumont--don't get married till you see me. " Hepatted the boy on the shoulder. "Good-by, Gardiner--remember, we menmust always be brave, and gentle with the ladies. Good-by, Mrs. Dumont--keep away from the precipices. And if you should want to comeback to us you'll have no trouble in finding us. We're a lot of slowold rotters, and we'll be just where you left us--yawning, and shyingat new people and at all new ideas except about clothes, and gossipingabout each other. " And he was in the auto and off for the station. 

XVII

TWO AND THE BARRIER. 

Scarborough often rode with Gladys and Pauline, sometimes with Gladysalone. One afternoon in August he came expecting to go out with both. But Gladys was not well that day. She had examined her pale face anddeeply circled eyes in her glass; she had counseled with her maid--adiscreetly and soothingly frank French woman. Too late to telephonehim, she had overruled her longing to see him and had decided that atwhat she hoped was his "critical stage" it would be wiser not to showherself to him thus even in her most becoming tea-gown, which compelledthe eyes of the beholder to a fascinating game of hide and seek withher neck and arms and the lines of her figure. 

"And Mrs. Dumont?" inquired Scarborough of the servant who broughtGladys' message and note. 

"She's out walking, sir. "

Scarborough rode away, taking the long drive through the grounds of theEyrie, as it would save him a mile of dusty and not well-shadedhighway. A few hundred yards and he was passing the sloping meadowsthat lay golden bronze in the sun, beyond the narrow fringe of woodskirting and shielding the drive. The grass and clover had been cut. Part of it was spread where it had fallen, part had been raked intolittle hillocks ready for the wagons. At the edge of one of thesehillocks far down the slope he saw the tail of a pale blue skirt, awhite parasol cast upon the stubble beside it. He reined in his horse, hesitated, dismounted, tied his bridle round a sapling. He strodeacross the field toward the hillock that had betrayed its secret to him. 

"Do I interrupt?" he called when he was still far enough away not to betaking her by surprise. 

There was no answer. He paused, debating whether to call again or toturn back. 

But soon she was rising--the lower part of her tall narrow figure hidby the hillock, the upper part revealing to him the strong stamp ofthat vivid individuality of hers which separated her at once from nomatter what company. She had on a big garden hat, trimmed just alittle with summer flowers, a blouse of some soft white material, witheven softer lace on the shoulders and in the long, loose sleeves. Shegave a friendly nod and glance in his direction, and said: "Oh, no--not at all. I'm glad to have help in enjoying this. "

She was looking out toward the mists of the horizon hills. The heat ofthe day had passed; the woods, the hillocks of hay were casting longshadows on the pale-bronze fields. A breeze had sprung up and waslifting from the dried and drying grass and clover a keen, sweet, intoxicating perfume--like the odor which classic zephyrs used to shakefrom the flowing hair of woodland nymphs. 

He stood beside her without speaking, looking intently at her. It wasthe first time he had been alone with her since the afternoon at BattleField when she confessed her marriage and he his love. 

"Bandit was lame, " she said when it seemed necessary to say something. 

She rode a thoroughbred, Bandit, who would let no one else mount him;whenever she got a new saddle she herself had to help put it on, soalert was he for schemes to entrap him to some other's service. Heobeyed her in the haughty, nervous way characteristic ofthoroughbreds--obeyed because he felt that she was without fear, andbecause she had the firm but gentle hand that does not fret a horse yetdoes not let him think for an instant that he is or can be free. Then, too, he had his share of the universal, fundamental vanity we shouldprobably find swelling the oyster did we but know how to interpret it;and he must have appreciated what an altogether harmonious spectacle itwas when he swept along with his mistress upon his back as light andfree as a Valkyr. 

"I was sorry to miss the ride, " Pauline went on after another pause--toher, riding was the keenest of the many physical delights that are forthose who have vigorous and courageous bodies and sensitive nerves. Whenever it was possible she fought out her battles with herself onhorseback, usually finding herself able there to drown mental distressin the surge of physical exultation. 

As he still did not speak she looked at him--and could not look away. She had not seen that expression since their final hour together atBattle Field, though in these few last months she had been rememberingit so exactly, had been wondering, doubting whether she could not bringit to his face again, had been forbidding herself to long to see it. And there it was, unchanged like all the inflexible purposes that madehis character and his career. And back to her came, as it had comemany and many a time in those years, the story he had told her of hisfather and mother, of his father's love for his mother--how it hadenfolded her from the harshness and peril of pioneer life, had enfoldedher in age no less than in youth, had gone down into and through theValley of the Shadow with her, had not left her even at the gates ofDeath, but had taken him on with her into the Beyond. And Paulinetrembled, an enormous joy thrilling through and through her. 

"Don't!" she said uncertainly. "Don't look at me like that, PLEASE!"

"You were crying, " he said abruptly. He stood before her, obviouslyone who had conquered the respect of the world in fair, open battle, and has the courage that is for those only who have tested theirstrength and know it will not fail them. And the sight of him, thelook of him, filled her not with the mere belief, but with the absoluteconviction that no malign power in all the world or in the mysteryround the world could come past him to her to harass or harm her. Thedoubts, the sense of desolation that had so agitated her a few minutesbefore now seemed trivial, weak, unworthy. 

She lowered her eyes--she had thought he would not observe the slighttraces of the tears she had carefully wiped away. She clasped herhands meekly and looked--and felt--like a guilty child. The coldness, the haughtiness were gone from her face. 

"Yes, " she said shyly. "Yes--I--I--" She lifted her eyes--her tearshad made them as soft and luminous as the eyes of a child just awakefrom a long, untroubled sleep. "But--you must not ask me. It'snothing that can be helped. Besides, it seems nothing--now. " Sheforced a faint smile. "If you knew what a comfort it is to cry you'dtry it. "

"I have, " he replied. Then after a pause he added: "Once. " Somethingin his tone--she did not venture to look at him again--made her catchher breath. She instantly and instinctively knew when that "once" was. "I don't care to try it again, thank you, " he went on. "But it made meable to understand what sort of comfort you were getting. For--YOUdon't cry easily. "

The katydids were clamoring drowsily in the tops of the sycamores. From out of sight beyond the orchard came the monotonous, musical whirof a reaper. A quail whistled his pert, hopeful, careless "Bob White!"from the rail fence edging the wheat field. A bumblebee grumbled amonga cluster of swaying clover blossoms which the mower had spared. Andthe breeze tossed up and rolled over the meadow, over the senses of theyoung man and the young woman, great billows of that perfume which isthe combined essence of all nature's love philters. 

Pauline sank on the hay, and Scarborough stretched himself on theground at her feet. "For a long time it's been getting darker anddarker for me, " she began, in the tone of one who is talking of somepast sorrow which casts a retreating shadow over present joy to make itthe brighter by contrast. "To-day--this afternoon it seemed as if thelight were just about to go out--for good and all. And I came here. Ifound myself lying on the ground--on the bosom of this old cruel--kindmother of ours. And--" She did not finish--he would know the rest. Besides, what did it matter--now?

He said: "If only there were some way in which I could help. "

"It isn't the people who appear at the crises of one's life, like thehero on the stage, that really help. I'm afraid the crises, the realcrises of real life, must always be met alone. "

"Alone, " he said in an undertone. The sky was blue now--cloudlessblue; but in that word alone he could hear the rumble of storms belowthe horizon, storms past, storms to come. 

"The real helpers, " she went on, "are those who strengthen us day byday, hour by hour. And when no physical presence would do any good, when no outside aid is possible--they--it's like finding a wall atone's back when one's in dread of being surrounded. I suppose youdon't realize how much it means to--to how many people--to watch a manwho goes straight and strong on his way--without blustering, withouttrampling anybody, without taking any mean advantage. You don't mindmy saying these things?"

She felt the look which she did not venture to face as he answered: "Ineeded to hear them to-day. For it seemed to me that I, too, had gotto the limit of my strength. "

"But you hadn't. " She said this confidently. 

"No--I suppose not. I've thought so before; but somehow I've alwaysmanaged to gather myself together. This time it was the work of yearsapparently undone--hopelessly undone. They"--she understood that"they" meant the leaders of the two corrupt rings whose rule of thestate his power with the people menaced--"they have bought away some ofmy best men--bought them with those 'favors' that are so much moredisreputable than money because they're respectable. Then they came tome"--he laughed unpleasantly--"and took me up into a high mountain andshowed me all the kingdoms of the earth, as it were. I could begovernor, senator, they said, could probably have the nomination forpresident even, --not if I would fall down and worship them, but if Iwould let them alone. I could accomplish nearly all that I've workedso long to accomplish if I would only concede a few things to them. Icould be almost free. ALMOST--that is, not free at all. "

She said: "And they knew you no better than that!"

"Now, " he continued, "it looks as if I'll have to build all over again. "

"I think not, " she replied. "If they weren't still afraid of youthey'd never have come to you. But what does it matter? YOU don'tfight for victory, you fight for the fight's sake. And so"--she lookedat him proudly--"you can't lose. "

"Thank you. Thank you, " he said in a low voice. 

She sighed. "How I envy you! You LIVE. I can simply be alive. Sometimes I feel as if I were sitting in a railway station waiting tobegin my journey--waiting for a train that's late--nobody knows howlate. Simply alive--that's all. "

"That's a great deal, " he said. He was looking round at the sky, atthe horizon, at the fields far and near, at her. "A great deal, " herepeated. 

"You feel that, too?" She smiled. "I suppose I should live on throughanything and everything, because, away down under the surface, whereeven the worst storms can't reach, there's always a sort of tremendousjoy--the sense of being alive--just alive. " She drew a long breath. "Often when I've been--anything but happy--a little while ago, forinstance--I suddenly have a feeling of ecstasy. I say to myself: Yes, I'm unhappy, but--I'm ALIVE!"

He made a sudden impulsive movement toward her, then restrainedhimself, pressed his lips together and fell back on his elbow. 

"I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself, ' she added. 

"You mustn't say that. " He was sitting up, was speaking with all hisenergy. "All that you were telling me a while ago to encourage meapplies to you, too--and more--more. You DO live. You ARE what youlong to be. That ideal you're always trying to grasp--don't you knowwhy you can't grasp it, Pauline? Because it's your own self, your ownimage reflected as in a mirror. "

He broke off abruptly, acutely conscious that he was leaning far overthe barrier between them. There was a distant shout, from vigorous, boyish lungs. Gardiner, mad with the joy of healthy seven, camerunning and jumping across the field to land with a leap astride thehillock, scattering wisps of hay over his mother and Scarborough. Pauline turned without getting up, caught her boy by the arms and withmock violence shook and thrust him deep down into the damaged hillock. She seemed to be making an outlet for some happiness too great to becontained. He laughed and shouted and struggled, pushed and pulledher. Her hat fell off, her hair loosened and the sun showered gold ofmany shades upon it. She released him and stood up, straightening andsmoothing her hair and breathing quickly, the color high in her cheeks. 

Scarborough was already standing, watching her with an expression ofgreat cheerfulness. 

"Good-by, " he now said. "The caravan"--his tone was half-jesting, half-serious--"has been spending the heat and dust of the day on theoasis. It makes night journeys only. It must push on. "

"Night journeys only, " repeated Pauline. "That sounds gloomy. "

"But there are the stars--and the moon. "

She laughed. "And other oases ahead. Good-by--and thank you!"

The boy, close to his mother and facing Scarborough, was looking fromher to him and back again--curiously, it almost seemed suspiciously. Both noticed it; both flushed slightly. Scarborough shook hands withher, bowed to the little boy with a formality and constraint that mighthave seemed ludicrous to an onlooker. He went toward his horse;Gardiner and his mother took the course at right angles across thefield in the direction in which the towers of the Eyrie could be seenabove the tree-tops. Suddenly the boy said, as if it were theconclusion of a long internal argument: "I like Mr. Scarborough. "

"Why not?" asked his mother, amused. 

"I--I don't know, " replied the boy. "Anyhow, I like him. I wish he'dcome and stay with us and Aunt Gladys. "

Gladys! The reminder made her uncomfortable, made her feel that sheought to be remorseful. But she hastened on to defend herself. Whatreason had she to believe that Gladys cared for him, except as shealways cared for difficult conquest? Hadn't Gladys again and againgone out of her way to explain that she wasn't in love with him?Hadn't she said, only two days before: "I don't believe I could fall inlove with any man. Certainly I couldn't unless he had made it veryclear to me that he was in love with me. "

Pauline had latterly been suspecting that these elaborations ofsuperfluous protestation were Gladys' efforts to curtain herself. Nowshe dwelt upon them with eager pleasure, and assured and reassuredherself that she had been supersensitive and that Gladys had reallybeen frank and truthful with her. 

XVIII. 

ON THE FARM. 

On his way down the bluffs to town Scarborough felt as calm andpeaceful as that tranquil evening. He had a sense of the end of a longstrain of which he had until then been unconscious. "NOW I can go awayand rest, " he said to himself. And at sundown he set out for his farm. 

He arrived at ten o'clock, by moonlight, amid a baying of dogs soenergetic that it roused every living thing in the barnyard to protestin a peevish chorus of clucking and grunting and quacking and squealing. 

"What on airth!" exclaimed Mrs. Gabbard, his farmer's wife, standing atthe back door, in calico skirt and big shawl. When she saw who it was, her irritated voice changed to welcome. "Why, howdy, Mr. Scarborough!I thought it was old John Lovel among the chickens or at the granary. I might 'a' knowed he wouldn't come in the full of the moon and noclouds. "

"Go straight back to bed, Mrs. Gabbard, and don't mind me, " saidScarborough. "I looked after my horse and don't want anything to eat. Where's Eph?"

"Can't you hear?" asked Mrs. Gabbard, dryly. And in the pause a lustysnore penetrated. "When anything out of the way happens, I get up andnose around to see whether it's worth while to wake him. "

Scarborough laughed. "I've come for a few days--to get some exercise, "he said. "But don't wake me with the others to-morrow morning. I'maway behind on sleep and dead tired. "

He went to bed--the rooms up-stairs in front were reserved for him andwere always ready. His brain was apparently as busy and as determinednot to rest as on the worst of his many bad nights during the past fourmonths. But the thoughts were vastly different; and soon thosemillions of monotonous murmurings from brook and field and forest weresoothing his senses. He slept soundly, with that complete relaxing ofevery nerve and muscle which does not come until the mind wholly yieldsup its despotic control and itself plunges into slumber unfathomable. 

The change of the air with dawn slowly wakened him. It was only alittle after five, but he felt refreshed. He got himself into farmworking clothes and went down to the summer dining-room--a shed againstthe back of the house with three of its walls latticed. In theadjoining kitchen Mrs. Gabbard and her daughters, Sally and Bertha, were washing the breakfast dishes--Gabbard and his two sons and thethree "hands" had just started for the meadows with the hay wagons. 

"Good morning, " said Scarborough, looking in on the three women. 

They stopped work and smiled at him, and the girls dried their handsand shook hands with him--all with an absolute absence of embarrassmentthat, to one familiar with the awkward shyness of country people, wouldhave told almost the whole story of Scarborough's character. "I'll getyou some breakfast in the dining-room, " said Mrs. Gabbard. 

"No--just a little--on the corner of the table out here, " repliedScarborough. 

Mrs. Gabbard and Sally bustled about while he stood in the doorway ofthe shed, looking out into the yard and watching the hens make theircareful early morning tour of the inclosure to glean whatever might bethere before scattering for the day's excursions and depredations. Hehad not long to wait and he did not linger over what was served. 

"You've et in a manner nothing, " complained Mrs. Gabbard. 

"I haven't earned an appetite yet, " he replied. "Just wait till thisevening. "

As soon as he was out of view he gave a great shout and started to run. "What folly to bother with, a foolish, trouble-breeding thinkingapparatus in a world like this!" he thought, as the tremendous currentsof vitality surged through him. And he vaulted a six-rail fence andran on. Down the hollow drenched with dew, across the brook which wasreally wide enough to be called a creek, up the steep slope of theopposite hill at a slower pace, and he was at the edge of the meadows. The sun was clear of the horizon now, and the two wagons, piled highwith hay and "poled down" to keep the loads steady, were about to moveoff to the barn. 

"Bring back a fork for me, Bill!" he called to the driver of the nearerwagon--Bill was standing on the lofty top of his load, which projectedforward and rear so far that, forward, the horses were half canopied. Against Bill's return he borrowed Gabbard's fork and helped completethe other wagon, the sweat streaming from his face as his broadshoulders swung down with the empty fork and up with a great mat of hay. 

They worked alternately in the fields and at the barns until half-pasteleven. Then they went into the shade at the edge of the meadow andhad their dinner. 

"My old woman, " said Gabbard, "says that two set-down meals a day inharvest time's as many as she'll stand for. So we have dinner out herein good weather, and to the barn when it rains. "

The talk was of weather prospects, of probable tonnage to the acre, ofthe outlook for the corn, of the health and family expectations of themares and the cows and the pigs. It died away gradually as one manafter another stretched out upon his back with a bunch of hay for anodorous pillow and his broad-brimmed straw hat for a light-shade. Scarborough was the fourth man to yield; as he dozed off his hat washiding that smile of boundless content which comes only to him whostretches his well body upon grass or soft stubble and feels the vigorof the earth steal up and through him. "Why don't I do this oftener?"Scarborough was saying to himself. "I must--and I shall, now that mymind's more at ease. "

A long afternoon of the toil that tires and vexes not, and at sundownhe was glad to ride home on top of the last wagon instead of walking ashe had intended. The supper-table was ready--was spread in thedining-shed. They washed their hands and sunburnt arms and sousedtheir heads in cold water from the well, and sat, Scarborough at oneend, Gabbard at the other, the strapping sons and the "hands" downeither side. The whole meal was before them--huge platters of friedchicken, great dishes full of beans and corn and potatoes; plates piledhigh with hot corn bread, other plates of "salt-rising"; Mrs. Gabbard'smiraculous apple pies, and honey for which the plundered flowers mightstill be mourning. Yesterday it would have seemed to Scarboroughdinner enough for a regiment. To-day--he thought he could probably eatit all, and wished that he might try. To drink, there were coffee andcider and two kinds of milk. He tried the buttermilk and kept on withit. 

"You must 'a' had a busy summer, " said Gabbard. "This is the firsttime you've been with us. "

"Yes, " Scarborough replied. "I did hope to get here for the threshing, but I couldn't. "

The threshing set them all off--it had been a record year; thirty-eightbushels to the acre on the average, twenty-seven on the hillsides whichGabbard had hesitated whether to "put in" or not. An hour after supperScarborough could no longer hold his eyes open. "Wake me with theothers, " he said to Mrs. Gabbard, who was making up the "salt-rising"yeast for the morrow's baking. "I'll have breakfast when they do. "

"I reckon you've earned it, " said Mrs. Gabbard. "Eph says you laid itover 'em all to-day. "

"Well, I guess I at least earned my supper, " replied Scarborough. "AndI guess I ate it. "

"You didn't do so bad, considerin', " Mrs. Gabbard admitted. "Nothin'like livin' in town to take appetite away. "

"That isn't all it takes away, " said Scarborough, going on to his ownpart of the house without explaining his remark. When his head touchedthe pillow his brain instantly stopped the machinery. He needed nocroonings or dronings from the fields to soothe him. "Not an idea inmy head all day, " he said to himself with drowsy delight. 

Four days of this, and on the fifth came the outside world in the formof Burdick, chairman of the county committee of his party in the countyin which his farm lay. They sat on the fence under the big maple, outof earshot of the others. 

"Larkin's come out for John Frankfort for the nomination for governor, "said Burdick. 

Scarborough smiled. "Even Larkin couldn't get it for Frankfort--he'stoo notorious. "

"He don't want to get it for him, " replied Burdick. "His real man'sJudge Graney. "

Scarborough stopped fanning himself with his wide-brimmed straw. JudgeGraney was the most adroit and dangerous of John Dumont's tools. Hehad given invaluable aid from the bench at several of the NationalWoolens Company's most critical moments. Yet he had retained andincreased his popularity and his reputation by deciding against hissecret master with a brave show of virtue when he knew the highercourts must reverse him. For several years Scarborough had beenlooking forward to the inevitable open conflict between the forces ofhonesty in his party and the forces of the machine as ruled by thehalf-dozen big corporations who also ruled the machine of theopposition party. He had known that the contest must come, and that hemust take part in it; and he had been getting ready. But he had notwished to give battle until he was strong enough to give a battlewhich, even if he lost it, would not strengthen the hold of thecorruptionists. 

After he rejected Larkin's dazzling offers, conditioned upon hisaloofness rather than frank subservience, he had thought the wholesituation over, and, as he hinted to Pauline, had realized howapparently hopeless a fight against the machine would be just then, with the people prosperous and therefore quiescent. And he had decidedto stand aside for the time. He now saw that reluctance to attackDumont had been at least a factor in this decision; and he also sawthat he could not delay, as he had hoped. There was no escape--eitherhe must let his work of years be undermined and destroyed or he mustgive battle with all his strength and skill. He remembered whatPauline had said: "You can't lose!"

"No, one can't lose in this sort of fight, " he thought. "Either WE winor there'll be no victory. " He sprang from the fence to the ground. "Let's go to the house, " he said to Burdick. 

"What you going to do?" asked Burdick, as they walked toward the gate, where his horse and buggy were hitched. 

"Fight, of course, " said Scarborough. "Fight Larkin and his gang inthe open. I'll get ex-Governor Bowen to let us use his name andcanvass the state for him. "

Burdick shook his head sadly. 

"It ain't politics, " he said. "You'll split the party; then theparty'll turn and split you. " And later, as they were separating, Scarborough to drive to Saint X, Burdick to go back to Marshaltown, hesaid: "I'll help all I can in a quiet way. But--I hope you've got yourcyclone cellar dug. "

Scarborough laughed. "I haven't been digging a cyclone cellar. I'vebeen trying to manufacture a cyclone. "

There were thirty-three clear days before the meeting of theconvention. He wasted not an hour of them on the manufacturing towns;he went to the country--to the farmers and the villagers, the men wholived each man in his own house, on his own soil from which he earnedhis own living. Up and down and across the state he went, speaking, organizing, planning, inspiring--he and the coterie of young men wholooked up to him as their leader and followed him in this desperateassault as courageously as if victory were assured. 

Not long before the convention he paused at ex-Judge Bowen's countryplace and spent two hours with him in his great, quiet, cool library. 

"Isn't it inspiring, " Scarborough said, "to see so many young men inarms for a principle?"

The old man slowly shook his magnificent white head and smiled at theyoung man. "Principles without leaders go begging, " he replied. "Menrally to the standard only when the right voice calls. The right voiceat the right time. " He laid his hand on Scarborough's shoulder withaffection and pride. "If the moment should come for you to think ofit, do not forget that the leader is the principle, and that in thisfight the leader is not I--but you. "

XIX. 

PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS. 

Larkin decided that the state convention should be held at Saint Xbecause his machine was most perfect there. The National WoolensCompany, the Consolidated Pipe and Wire Company and the Indiana Oil andGas Corporation--the three principal political corporations in thestate--had their main plants there and were in complete politicalcontrol. While Larkin had no fear of the Scarborough movement, regarding it as a sentimental outburst in the rank and file of theparty that would die away when its fomenter had been "read out of theparty" at the convention by the regular organization, still he had beenin the game too long to take unnecessary chances. He felt that itwould be wise to have the delegates assemble where all the surroundingswould be favorable and where his ablest and confidential men could dotheir work in peace and quiet. 

The convention was to, meet on the last Thursday in September. On thepreceding Monday morning, Culver--Dumont's small, thin, stealthyprivate secretary--arrived at Saint X and, after making an appointmentwith Merriweather for half-past twelve, went out to the Eyrie to gothrough a lot of accumulated domestic business with Mrs. Dumont. Whenshe in a most formal and unencouraging manner invited him to stopthere, he eagerly accepted. "Thank you so much, " he said effusively. "To be perfectly frank, I've been tempted to invite myself. I havesome valuables with me that I don't feel at all easy about. If Ishould be robbed, it would be a very serious matter. Would it beasking too much of you to ask you to put a package in your jewel safe?"

"I'll be glad to do it for you, " replied Pauline. "There's plenty ofroom--the safe's almost empty and it's ridiculously large. "

"My package isn't small, " said Culver. "And on my mind it weighstons. " He reached into his large bag--at sight of it Pauline hadwondered why he had brought such a bag up from the hotel when hispapers for her inspection were so few. He lifted out an oblong, bulkypackage. 

"If you'll just touch that button, " said she, "James will come and showyou how to get to the safe. "

Culver hesitated nervously. Finally he said: "I'm making a nuisanceof myself, Mrs. Dumont, but would you mind going to the safe with me?I'd much rather none of the servants knew about this. "

Pauline smiled and bade him follow her. They went to her privatesitting-room and she showed him the safe, in a small closet built intothe lower part of the book-case. "You have the combination?" askedCulver, as he put the package away. 

"I see that you don't lock this door often. "

"How fortunate you spoke of it!" said she. 

"The combination is on a bit of paper in one of the little drawers. "

Culver found it in the first drawer he opened, and handed it to herwithout looking at it. 

"You mustn't let me know it, " said he. "I'll just fix the time lock sothat it won't interfere. " And when he had done so, he closed the safe. As he left, he said, "I shall only bother you to let me sleep in thehouse. I'll be very busy all day each day I'm here. " When she thoughthe had gone he returned to add: "Perhaps I'd better explain to you thatthere's forty-five thousand dollars in cash in the package. That's whyI was so anxious for no one to know. "

"I'll say nothing about it, " Pauline assured him. 

Larkin came down from Indianapolis the next day and registered at thePalace Hotel. As soon as he could escape from the politicians andnewspaper correspondents in the hotel office, he went by a deviousroute to a room on the floor below his own and, knocking, was admittedto Culver and Merriweather. He nodded to Dumont's political agent, then said to Culver: "You've got the dough?"

"Yes, " Culver answered, in his best imitation of the tone of the man oflarge affairs. "In twenties, fifties and hundreds. "

"I hope, mighty few hundreds, " said Larkin. "The boys are kind o' shyabout changing hundred-dollar bills. It seems to attract attention tothem. " He had large, dreamy, almost sentimental, brown eyes thatabsurdly misrepresented his character, or, at least, his dominantcharacteristics. His long, slightly bent nose and sharp chin and thin, tight mouth were more truthful. 

"How do things look, Joe?" asked Merriweather. 

"Yes, Mr. Dumont asked me to telegraph him after I'd talked with you, "said Culver. "Has Scarborough made much headway?"

"I must say, he's raised a darn sight more hell than I thought hewould, " Larkin answered. 

"The people seem to be in a nasty mood about corruption. Darn theirfool souls, as if they wouldn't be in the rottenest kind of a fix, withno property and no jobs, if we didn't keep the ignorant vote undercontrol and head off such firebrands as this fellow Scarborough. "

"Got any figgers?" demanded Merriweather, who had listened to thistirade with an expression suggesting cynicism. He thought, and he knewJoe Larkin thought, politics a mere game of chance--you won or youdidn't win; and principles and oratory and likes and dislikes andresentments were so much "hot air. " If the "oil can" had been withScarborough, Merriweather would have served him as cheerfully and asloyally as--well, as would Joe Larkin in those circumstances. 

Larkin wrenched a big bunch of letters and papers from the saggedinside pocket of his slouchy sack coat; after some fumbling andsorting, he paused upon the back of a dirty envelope. 

"Here's how the convention stands, to a man, " he said. "Sure, twohundred and sixty-seven-by 'sure' I mean the fellows we own outright. Safe, two hundred and forty-five-by 'safe' I mean those that'll standby the organization, thick and thin. Insurgents, two hundred andninety-five--those are the chaps that've gone clean crazy withScarborough. Doubtful, three hundred and eighty-six-some of 'em can bebought; most of 'em are waiting to see which way the cat jumps, so asto jump with her. "

"Then we've got five hundred and twelve, and it takes five hundred andninety-seven to elect, " said Merriweather, the instant the last wordwas out of Larkin's mouth. Merriweather was a mite of a man, couldhardly have weighed more than a hundred pounds, had a bulging forehead, was bald and gray at the temples, eyes brown as walnut juice and quickand keen as a rat-terrier's. His expression was the gambler's--calm, watchful, indifferent, pallid, as from years of nights under thegas-light in close, hot rooms, with the cards sliding from the faro boxhour after hour. 

"Eighty-five short--that's right, " assented Larkin. Then, with a lookat Culver: "And some of 'em'll come mighty high. "

"Where are you going to do business with them?" inquired Merriweather. "Here?"

"Right here in this room, where I've done it many's the time before, "replied Larkin. "To-morrow night Conkey Sedgwick and my boy Tom'llbegin steerin' 'em in one at a time about eight o'clock. "

"Then I'll turn the money over to you at seven to-morrow night, " saidCulver. "I've got it in a safe place. "

"Not one of the banks, I hope, " said Merriweather. 

"We noted your suggestions on that point, and on all the others, "Culver answered with gracious condescension. "That's why I broughtcash in small denominations and didn't go near anybody with it. "

Larkin rose. "I've got to get to work. See you here to-morrow nightat seven, Mr. Culver--seven sharp. I guess it'll be Judge Graney onthe third ballot. On the first ballot the organization'll vote solidfor Graney, and my fellows'll vote for John Frankfort. On the secondballot half my Frankfort crowd'll switch over to Graney. On the thirdI'll put the rest of 'em over, and that'll be enough to elect--probablythe Scarborough crowd'll see it's no use and let us make it unanimous. The losers are always hot for harmony. "

"That sounds well, " said Merriweather--his was a voice that left hishearers doubtful whether he meant what his words said or the reverse. 

Culver looked with secret admiration from one man to the other, andcontinued to think of them and to admire, after they had gone. He feltimportant, sitting in and by proxy directing the councils of thesepowerful men, these holders and manipulators of the secret stringswhereto were attached puppet peoples and puppet politicians. Sevenyears behind the scenes with Dumont's most private affairs had givenhim a thoroughgoing contempt for the mass of mankind. Did he not sitbeside the master, at the innermost wheels, deep at the very heart ofthe intricate mechanism? Did not that position make him a sort ofmaster, at any rate far superior to the princeliest puppet?

At five the next afternoon--the afternoon of the day before theconvention--he was at the Eyrie, and sent a servant to say to Mrs. Dumont that he would like to see her. She came down to him in thelibrary. 

"I'm only troubling you for a moment, " he said. 

"I'll relieve you of my package. "

"Very well, " said Pauline. "I haven't thought of it since day beforeyesterday. I'll bring it down to you. "

She left him in the library and went up the stairs--she had beenreading everything that was published about the coming convention, andthe evident surprise of all the politicians at the strength Scarboroughwas mustering for ex-Governor Bowen had put her in high good humor. She cautioned herself that he could not carry the convention; but hisshowing was a moral victory--and what a superb personal triumph! Witheverything against him--money and the machine and the skilful confusingof the issues by his crafty opponents--he had rallied about him almostall that was really intelligent in his party; and he had demonstratedthat he had on his side a mass of the voters large out of allproportion to the number of delegates he had wrested away from themachine--nearly three hundred, when everybody had supposed the machinewould retain all but a handful. 

Money! Her lips curled scornfully--out here, in her own home, amongthese simple people, the brutal power of money was master just as inNew York, among a people crazed by the passion for luxury and display. 

She was kneeling before the safe, was working the combination, paper inhand. The knob clicked as the rings fell into place; she turned thebolt and swung the door open. She reached into the safe. Suddenly shedrew her hand back and sat up on the floor, looking at the package. "Why, it's for use in the convention!" she exclaimed. 

She did not move for several minutes; when she did, it was to examinethe time lock, to reset it, to close the door and bolt it and throw thelock off the combination. Then she rose and slowly descended to thelibrary. As she reappeared, empty-handed, Culver started violently andscrutinized her face. Its expression put him in a panic. "Mrs. Dumont!" he exclaimed wildly. 

"Has it been stolen?"

She shook her head. "No, " she said. "It's there. "

Trembling from weakness in the reaction, he leaned against the table, wiping his sweating brow with sweating hands. 

"But, " she went on, "it must stay there. "

He looked open-mouthed at her. 

"You have brought the money out here for use in the convention, " shewent on with perfect calmness. "You have tried to make me a partner inthat vile business. And--I refuse to play the part assigned me. Ishall keep the money until the convention is over. "

He looked round like a terror-stricken drowning man, about to sink forthe last time. 

"I'm ruined! I'm ruined!" he almost screamed. 

"No, " she said, still calm. "You will not be ruined, though youdeserve to be. But I understand why you have become callous to thecommonplace decencies of life, and I shall see to it that no harm comesto you. "

"Mr. Dumont will--DESTROY me! You don't realize, Mrs. Dumont. Vastproperty interests are at stake on the result of thisconvention--that's our cause. And you are imperiling it!"

"Imperiling a cause that needs lies and bribes to save it?" she saidironically. "Please calm yourself, Mr. Culver. You certainly can't beblamed for putting your money in a safe place. I take theresponsibility for the rest. And when you tell Mr. Dumont exactly whathappened, you will not be blamed or injured in any way. "

"I shall telegraph him at once, " he warned her. 

"Certainly, " said Pauline. "He might blame you severely for failing todo that. "

He paused in his pacing up and down the room. He flung his arms towardher, his eyes blazing. 

"I WILL have it!" he exclaimed. "Do you hear me, I WILL! I'll bringmen from down-town and have the safe blown open. The money is notyours--it is----"

She advanced to the bell. 

"Another word, Mr. Culver, and I'll have the servants show you thedoor. Yours is a strange courage--to dare to speak thus to me whenyour head should be hanging in shame for trying to make such base useof me and my courtesy and friendliness. "

His arms dropped, and he lowered his head. 

"I beg your pardon, " he said humbly. "I'm not myself. I think I'mgoing insane. PITY me!"

Pauline looked at him sadly. "I wish I had the right to. But--ISYMPATHIZE, and I'm sorry--so sorry--to have to do this. " A pause, then--"Good afternoon, Mr. Culver. " And she moved toward the door. Atthe threshold she turned. "I must say one thing further--THECONVENTION MUST NOT BE PUT OFF. If it is adjourned to-morrow withoutmaking nominations, I shall understand that you are getting the moneyelsewhere. And--I shall be compelled to put such facts as I know inthe possession of--of those you came to injure. " And she was gone. 

Culver went to Merriweather's office and sent out for him and Larkin. When they arrived he shut the doors and told them what hadhappened--and in his manner there was not left a trace of the NewYorker and ambassador condescending to westerners and underlings. Larkin cursed; Merriweather gave no outward sign. PresentlyMerriweather said: "Larkin, you must adjourn the convention overto-morrow. Culver can go to Chicago and get back with the money byto-morrow night. "

"No use, " groaned Culver. And he told them the last part of his talkwith Mrs. Dumont. 

"She thought of that!" said Merriweather, and he looked the impartialadmiration of the connoisseur of cleverness. 

"But she'd never carry out her threat--never in the world!" persistedLarkin. 

"If you had seen her when she said it, and if you'd known her as longas I have, you wouldn't say that, " replied Culver. "We must try to getthe money here, right away--at the banks. "

"All shut, " said Merriweather "I wonder how much cash there is at theWoolens and the Oil and Steel offices? We must get together as much aswe can--quietly. " And he rapidly outlined a program that put all threeat work within fifteen minutes. They met again at seven. Culver hadtwenty-six hundred dollars, Larkin thirty-one hundred, Merriweather, who had kept for himself the most difficult task, had only twelvehundred. 

"Sixty-nine hundred, " said Merriweather, eying the heap, of paper inpackages and silver in bags. 

"Better than nothing, " suggested Culver, with a pitiful attempt to behopeful. 

Merriweather shrugged his shoulders. "Let's get some supper, " he saidto Culver. Then to Larkin: "Well, Joe, you'll have to try promises. Will you keep this cash or shall I?"

"You might as well keep it, " replied Larkin, with a string of oaths. "It'd be ruination to pay one without paying all. Perhaps you can usesome of it between ballots to-morrow. " Then, sharply to Culver:"You've telegraphed Mr. Dumont?"

"Of course, " said Culver. "And it took some time as I had to put thewhole story into cipher. "

As Culver and Merriweather were seated, with the dinner before themwhich Culver did not touch, and which Merriweather ate placidly, Culverasked him whether there was "any hope at all. "

"There's always hope, " replied Merriweather. "Promises, especiallyfrom Joe Larkin, will go a long way, though they don't rouse the whitehot enthusiasm that cold cash in the pocket does. We'll pull throughall right. " He ate for a while in silence. Then: "This Mrs. Dumontmust be an uncommon woman. " A few more mouthfuls and with his small, icy, mirthless laugh, he added: "I've got one something like her athome. I keep her there. "

Culver decided to spend the night at the hotel. He hung round thehotel office until two in the morning, expecting and dreading Dumont'sreply to his telegram. But nothing came either for him or forMerriweather. "Queer we don't get word of some sort, isn't it?" saidhe to Merriweather the next morning, as the latter was leaving for theconvention. 

Merriweather made no reply beyond a smile so faint that Culver barelysaw it. 

"She was right, after all, " thought Culver, less despondent. "I'll getthe money just before I leave and take it back. And I'll not open thissubject with Dumont. Maybe he'll never speak of it to me. "

And Dumont never did. 

XX. 

A MAN IN HIS MIGHT. 

Olivia came to attend the convention as Fred was a delegate from MarionCounty. Pauline and Gladys accepted her invitation and shared herbox--the convention was held in the Saint X Grand Opera House, thesecond largest auditorium in the state. Pauline, in the most retiredcorner, could not see the Marion County delegation into whichScarborough went by substitution. But she had had a glimpse of him asshe came in--he was sitting beside Fred Pierson and was gazing straightahead, as if lost in thought. He looked tired and worn, but not castdown. 

"You should have been here, Polly, when Scarborough came in, " saidOlivia, who was just in front of her. "They almost tore the roof off. He's got the audience with him, even if the delegates aren't. A goodmany of the delegates applauded, too, " she added--but in asignificantly depressed tone. 

"Why isn't he a candidate, Mrs. Pierson?" asked Gladys. 

"They wanted him to be, of course, " replied Olivia, "and I think it wasa mistake that he didn't consent. But he wouldn't hear of it. He saidit simply wouldn't do for him to make the fight to carry the conventionfor himself. He said that, even if he were nominated, the other sidewould use it against him. "

"That seems reasonable, " said Gladys. 

"But it isn't, " replied Olivia. "He may not know it but he can leadmen where they wouldn't go for his merely sending them. "

"I suppose it was his modesty, " suggested Gladys. 

"Modesty's a good deal of a vice, especially in a leader, " repliedOlivia. 

There was an hour of dullness--routine business, reports of committees, wearisome speeches. But, like every one of those five thousand people, Pauline was in a fever of anticipation. For, while it was generallyassumed that Scarborough and his friends had no chance and while Larkinwas apparently carrying everything through according to program, stillit was impossible to conceive of such a man as Scarborough acceptingdefeat on test votes tamely taken. He would surely challenge. Larkinwatched him uneasily, wondering at what point in the proceedings thegage would be flung down. Even Merriweather could not keep still, butflitted about, his nervousness of body contrasting strangely with hiscalmness of face; himself the most unquiet man in the hall, he diffusedquiet wherever he paused. 

At last came the call for nominations. When the secretary of theconvention read Cass from the roll of counties, a Larkin henchman roseand spoke floridly for twenty minutes on the virtues of John Frankfort, put up as the Larkin "draw-fire, " the pretended candidate whoseprearranged defeat was to be used on the stump as proof that BossLarkin and his gang had been downed. At the call of Hancock County, another--a secret--Larkin henchman rose to eulogize "that stanch foe ofcorporate corruption and aggression, Hancock County's favorite son, thepeople's judge, Judge Edward Howel Graney!" Then the roll-callproceeded amid steadily rising excitement which abruptly died intosilence as the clerk shouted, with impressive emphasis, "Wayne!" Thatwas the home county of the Scarborough candidate. A Wayne delegaterose and in a single sentence put ex-Governor Bowen in nomination. There was a faint ripple of applause which was instantly checked. Asilence of several seconds and--

"Mr. Chairman, and gentle--"

It was the voice Pauline knew so well. She could not see him, but thatvoice seemed to make him visible to her. She caught her breath and herheart beat wildly. He got no further into seconding Bowen's nominationthan the middle of the fourth word. There may have been ears offendedby the thunder-clap which burst in that theater, but those ears werenot Pauline's, were not in Olivia Pierson's box. And then cametumbling and roaring, huge waves of adulation, with his name shouted invoices hoarse and voices shrill like hissing foam on the triumphantcrests of billows. And Pauline felt as if she were lifted from herbodily self, were tossing in a delirium of ecstasy on a sea of sheerdelight. 

And now he was on the platform, borne there above the shoulders of ahundred men. He was standing pale and straight and mighty. Hestretched out his hand, so large and strong, and somehow as honest ashis eyes; the tempest stilled. He was speaking--what did he say? Shehardly heard, though she knew that it was of and for right andjustice--what else could that voice utter or the brain behind thoseproud features think? With her, and with all there, far more than hiswords it was his voice, like music, like magic, rising and falling inthrilling inflections as it wove its spell of gold and fire. Wheneverhe paused there would be an instant of applause--a huge, hoarsethunder, the call of that mysterious and awful and splendid soul of themass--an instant full of that one great, deep, throbbing note, thensilence to hear him again. 

Scarborough had measured his task--to lift that convention from theslough of sordidness to which the wiles and bribes of Dumont and hisclique had lured it; to set it in the highroad of what he believed withall his intensity to be the high-road of right. Usually he spoke withfeeling strongly repressed; but he knew that if he was to win that dayagainst such odds he must take those delegates by surprise and bystorm, must win in a suddenly descended whirlwind of passion that wouldengulf calculation and craft, sordidness and cynicism. He made fewgestures; he did not move from the position he had first taken. Hestaked all upon his voice; into it he poured all his energy, all hisfire, all his white-hot passion for right and justice, all his scorn ofthe base and the low. 

"Head above heart, when head is right, " he had often said. "But whenhead is wrong, then heart above head. " And he reached for hearts thatday. 

Five minutes, and delegates and spectators were his captives. Fifteenminutes, and he was riding a storm such as comes only when thefountains of the human deeps are broken up. Thirty minutes and he wasriding it as its master, was guiding it where he willed. 

In vain Larkin sought to rally delegates round the shamed but steadfastnucleus of the bribed and the bossed. In vain his orator moved anadjournment until "calmness and reason shall be restored. " The answermade him shrink and sink into his seat. For it was an awful, deafeningroll of the war-drums of that exalted passion which Scarborough hadroused. 

The call of counties began. The third on the list--Bartholomew--wasthe first to say what the people longed to hear. A giant farmer, fieryand freckled, rose and in a voice like a blast from a bass hornbellowed: "Bartholomew casts her solid vote for Hampden Scarborough!"

Pauline had thought she heard that multitude speak before. But she nowknew she had heard hardly more than its awakening whisper. For, withthe pronouncing of that name, the tempest really burst. She sprang toher feet, obeying the imperious inward command which made every one inthat audience and most of the delegates leap up. And for ten longminutes, for six hundred cyclonic seconds, the people poured out theirpassionate adoration. At first Scarborough flung out his arms, and allcould see that he was shouting some sort of protest. But they wouldnot hear him now. He had told them WHAT to do. He must let them sayHOW to do it. 

Pauline looked out at those flaming thousands with the maddest emotionsstreaming like lightning from their faces. But she looked withoutfear. They--she--all were beside themselves; but it was no frenzy forblood or for the sordid things. It was the divine madness of thesoldier of the right, battling for THE CAUSE, in utter forgetfulness ofself and selfishness. "Beautiful! Beautiful!" she murmured, everynerve tingling. "I never knew before how beautiful human beings are!"

Finally the roll-call could proceed. Long before it was ended thenecessary votes had been cast for Scarborough, and Larkin rose to movethat the nomination be made unanimous--Larkin, beaten down in the open, was not the man to die there; he hastened to cover where he couldresume the fight in the manner most to his liking. Again Scarboroughwas borne to the platform; again she saw him standing there--straightand mighty, but deathly pale, and sad--well he might be bowed by theresponsibility of that mandate, given by the god-in-man, but to beexecuted by and through plain men. A few broken, hesitating words, andhe went into the wings and left the theater, applause sweeping andswirling after him like a tidal wave. 

Pauline, coming out into the open, looked round her, dazed. Why, itwas the same work-a-day world as before, with its actions socommonplace and selfish, with only its impulses fine and high. If thesemoments of exaltation could but last, could but become the fixed orderand routine of life! If high ideal and courage ruled, instead of lowcalculation and fear! She sighed, then her eyes shone. 

"At least I have seen!" she thought. "At least I have lived one ofthose moments when the dreams come true. And 'human being' has a newmeaning for me. "

Two men, just behind her in the crowd, were talking of Scarborough. "Ademagogue!" sneered one. 

"A demi-god, " retorted the other. And Pauline turned suddenly and gavehim a look that astonished and dazzled him. 

XXI. 

A COYOTE AT BAY. 

Six weeks later, on the morning after the general election, Dumontawoke bubbling over with good humor--as always, when the world wentwell with him and so set the strong, red currents of his body toflowing in unobstructed channels. 

He had not gone to bed the previous night until he had definite newsfrom Indiana, Illinois and New York, the three states in which hisindustrial-political stakes were heaviest. They had gone as he wished, as he and his friends had spent large sums of money to assist them togo. And now a glance at the morning papers confirmed his midnightbulletins. Indiana, where he had made the strongest efforts becausethe control of its statute book was vital to him, had gone his waybarely but, apparently, securely; Scarborough was beaten for governorby twenty-five hundred. Presently he had Culver in to begin the day'sbusiness. The first paper Culver handed him was a cipher telegramannouncing the closing of an agreement which made the National WoolensCompany absolute in the Northwest; the second item in Culver's budgetwas also a cipher telegram--from Merriweather. It had been filed atfour o'clock--several hours later than the newspaper despatches. Itsaid that Scarborough's friends conceded his defeat, that theLegislature was safely Dumont's way in both houses. Culver alwayssorted out to present first the agreeable part of the morning's budget;never had he been more successful. 

At the office Dumont found another cipher telegram from Merriweather:"Later returns show Scarborough elected by a narrow majority. But hewill be powerless as Legislature and all other state offices are withus. "

Dumont crushed the telegram in his hand. "Powerless--hell!" hemuttered. "Does he think I'm a fool?" He had spent three hundredthousand dollars to "protect" his monopoly in its home; for it wasunder Indiana laws, as interpreted by Dumont's agents in public office, that the main or holding corporation of his group was organized. Andhe knew that, in spite of his judges and his attorney-general and hislegislative lobby and his resourceful lawyers and his subsidizednewspapers, a governor of Scarborough's courage and sagacity couldharass him, could force his tools in public office to activity againsthim, might drive him from the state. Heretofore he had felt, and hadbeen, secure in the might of his millions. But now-- He had a feelingof dread, close kin to fear, as he measured this peril, this man strongwith a strength against which money and intrigue were as futile as bowand arrow against rifle. 

He opened the door into the room where his twenty personal clerks wereat work. They glanced at his face, winced, bent to their tasks. Theyknew that expression: it meant "J. D. Will take the hide off every onewho goes near him to-day. "

"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him, " he snapped, lifting the head ofthe nearest clerk with a glance like an electric shock. 

The clerk rose, tiptoed away to the office of the first vice-presidentof the Woolens Trust. He came tiptoeing back to say in a faint, deprecating voice: "Mr. Giddings isn't down yet, sir. "

Dumont rolled out a volley of violent language about Giddings. In histantrums he had no more regard for the dignity of his chieflieutenants, themselves rich men and middle-aged or old, than he hadfor his office boys. To the Ineffable Grand Turk what noteworthydistinction is there between vizier and sandal-strapper?

"Send him in--quick, --you, as soon as he comes, " he shouted inconclusion. If he had not paid generously, if his lieutenants had notbeen coining huge dividends out of his brains and commercial audacity, if his magnetic, confidence-inspiring personality had not created inthe minds of all about him visions of golden rivers widening intogolden oceans, he would have been deserted and execrated. As it was, his service was eagerly sought; and his servants endured its mental andmoral hardships as the prospector endures the physical cruelties of themountain fastnesses. 

He was closing his private door when the door-boy from the outermost ofthat maze of handsome offices came up to him with a card. 

"Not here, " he growled, and shut himself in. 

Half an hour later the sounds of an angry tumult in the clerks' roommade him fling his door open. "What the--" he began, his heavy facepurple, then stopped amazed. 

The outside doorkeeper, the watchman and several clerks were engaged ina struggle with Fanshaw. His hat was off, his hair wild, his necktie, shirt and coat awry. 

"There you are now--I knew you were in, " he shouted, as he caught sightof Dumont. "Call these curs off, Jack!"

"Let him alone, " snarled Dumont. 

Fanshaw was released. He advanced into Dumont's office, straighteninghis clothing and panting with exertion, excitement and anger. Dumontclosed the door. "Well, " he said surlily. "What d' you want?"

"I'll have to go to the wall at half-past ten if you don't help meout, " said Fanshaw. "The Montana election went against my crowd--I'min the copper deal. There's a slump, but the stock's dead sure to goup within a week. "

"In trouble again?" sneered Dumont. "It's been only three months sinceI pulled you through. "

"You didn't lose anything by it, did you?" retorted Fanshaw--he hadrecovered himself and was eying Dumont with the cool, steady, significant stare of one rascal at another whom he thinks he has in hispower. 

Before that look Dumont flushed an angrier red. "I won't do it again!"and he brought his fist down with a bang. 

"All I want is five hundred thousand to carry my copper for a week atthe outside. If I get it I'll clear a million. If I don't"--Fanshawshrugged his shoulders--"I'll be cleaned out. " He looked with narrowed, shifting eyes at Dumont. "My wife has all she's got in this, " he wenton, "even her jewels. "

Dumont's look shot straight into Fanshaw's. 

"Not a cent!" he said with vicious emphasis. "Not a red!"

Fanshaw paled and pinched in his lips. "I'm a desperate man. I'mruined. Leonora--"

Dumont shook his head, the veins swelling in his forehead and neck. The last strand of his self-restraint snapped. "Leave her out of this!She has no claim on me NOW--and YOU never had. "

Fanshaw stared at him, then sprang to his feet, all in a blaze. "Youscoundrel!" he shouted, shaking his fist under Dumont's nose. 

"If you don't clear out instantly I'll have you thrown out, " saidDumont. He was cool and watchful now. 

Fanshaw folded his arms and looked down at him with the dignified furyof the betrayed and outraged. "So!" he exclaimed. "I see it all!"

Dumont pressed an electric button, then leaned back in his revolvingchair and surveyed Fanshaw tranquilly. "Not a cent!" he repeated, acruel smile in his eyes and round his mouth. The boy came and Dumontsaid to him: "Send the watchman. "

Fanshaw drew himself up. "I shall punish you, " he said. "Your wealthwill not save you. " And he stalked past the gaping office boy. 

He stood in front of the Edison Building, looking aimlessly up and downthe street as he pulled his long, narrow, brown-gray mustache. Gloomwas in his face and hate in his heart--not hate for Dumont alone buthate for all who were what he longed to be, all rich and "successful"men. And the towering steel and stone palaces of prosperity sneereddown on him with crushing mockery. 

"Damn them all!" he muttered. "The cold-hearted thieves!"

From his entry into that district he had played a gambling game, hadplayed it dishonestly in a small way. Again and again he hadsneakingly violated Wall Street's code of morality--that curious codewith its quaint, unexpected incorporations of parts of the decalogueand its quainter, though not so unexpected, infringements thereof andamendments thereto. Now by "pull, " now by trickery, he had evadedpunishment. But apparently at last he was to be brought to bar, branded and banished. 

"Damn them all!" he repeated. "They're a pack of wolves. They've gotme down and they're going to eat me. "

He blamed Dumont and he blamed his wife for his plight--and there wassome justice in both accusations. Twenty years before, he had comedown to "the Street" a frank-looking boy, of an old and distinguishedNew York family that had become too aristocratic for business and hadtherefore lost its hold upon its once great fortune. He was neither agood boy nor a bad. But he was weak, and had the extravagant tastes andcynical morals to which he had been bred; and his intelligent brain wasof the kind that goes with weakness--shrewd and sly, preferring toslink along the byways of craft even when the highway of courage liesstraight and easy. But he had physical bravery and the self-confidencethat is based upon an assured social position in a community wheresocial position is worshiped; so, he passed for manly and proud when hewas in reality neither. Family vanity he had; personal pride he hadnot. 

In many environments his weakness would have remained hidden even fromhimself, and he would have lived and died in the odor and complacenceof respectability. But not in the strain and stress of Wall Street. There he had naturally developed not into a lion, not even into a wolf, but into a coyote. 

Wall Street found him out in ten years--about one year after it beganto take note of him and his skulking ways and his habit of prowling inthe wake of the pack. Only his adroit use of his family connectionsand social position saved him from being trampled to death by thewolves and eaten by his brother coyotes. Thereafter he livedprecariously, but on the whole sumptuously, upon carcasses of one kindand another. He participated in "strike" suits against bigcorporations--he would set on a pack of coyotes to dog the lions and toraise discordant howls that inopportunely centered public attentionupon leonine, lawless doings; the lions would pay him well to call offthe pack. He assisted sometimes wolves and sometimes coyotes inflotations of worthless, or almost worthless, stocks and bonds fromgold and mahogany offices and upon a sea of glittering prospectuses. He had a hand in all manner of small, shady transactions of lawful, oralmost lawful, swindling that were tolerated by lions and wolves, because at bottom there is a feeling of fellowship among creatures ofprey as against creatures preyed upon. 

There were days when he came home haggard and blue in the lips to tellLeonora that he must fly. There were days when he returned from thechase, or rather from the skulk, elated, youthful, his pockets full ofmoney and his imagination afire with hopes of substantial wealth. Buthis course was steadily downward, his methods steadily farther andfarther from the line of the law. Dumont came just in time to save him, came to build him up from the most shunned of coyotes into a deceptiveimitation of a wolf with aspirations toward the lion class. 

Leonora knew that he was small, but she thought all men small--she hadsupreme contempt for her own sex; and it seemed to her that men must beeven less worthy of respect since they were under the influence ofwomen and lavished time and money on them. Thus she was deceived intocherishing the hope that her husband, small and timid though he was, would expand into a multi-millionaire and would help her to possess thesplendors she now enjoyed at the expense of her associates whom shedespised. She was always thinking how far more impressive than theirsplendor her magnificence would be, if their money were added to herbrains and beauty. 

Dumont had helped Fanshaw as much as he could. He immediately detectedthe coyote. He knew it was impossible to make a lion or even a wolfout of one who was both small and crooked. He used him only in minormatters, chiefly in doing queer, dark things on the market withNational Woolens, things he indirectly ordered done but refused to knowthe details of beyond the one important detail--the record of checksfor the profits in his bank account. For such matters Fanshaw did aswell as another. But as Dumont became less of a wolf and more of alion, less of a speculator and more of a financier, he had less andless work of the kind Fanshaw could do. 

But Leonora, unaware of her husband's worthlessness and desperate inher calamities, sneered and jeered and lashed him on--to ruin. Thecoyote could put on the airs of a lion so long as the lion was hisfriend and protector; when he kept on in kingly ways after the lion hadcast him off, he speedily came to grief. 

As he stood looking helplessly up and down Broad Street he was debatingwhat move to make. There were about even measures of truth andfalsehood in his statement to Dumont--he did need two hundred thousanddollars; and he must have it before a quarter past two that day or gointo a bankruptcy from which he could not hope to save a shred ofreputation or to secrete more than fifty thousand dollars. 

"To the New York Life Building, " he finally said to the driver as hegot into his hansom. Then to himself: "I'll have a go at old Herron. "

He knew that Dumont and Herron had quarreled, and that Herron had soldout of the National Woolens Company. But he did not know that Herronwas a man with a fixed idea, hatred of Dumont, and a fixed purpose, todamage him at every opportunity that offered or could be created, toruin him if possible. 

When the National Woolens Company was expanded into the hugeconglomerate it now was--a hundred millions common, a hundred millionspreferred, and twenty millions of bonds--Herron had devised anddirected the intricate and highly perilous course among the rocks oflaw and public opinion in many states and in the nation. It was asplendid exhibition of legal piloting, and he was bitterly dissatisfiedwith the modest reward of ten millions of the preferred stock whichDumont apportioned to him. He felt that that would have been about hisjust share in the new concern merely in exchange for his stock in theold. When he found Dumont obdurate, and grew frank and spoke suchwords as "dishonor" and "dishonesty" and got into the first syllable of"swindling, " Dumont cut him off with--

"If you don't like it, get out! I can hire that sort of work for halfwhat I've paid you. You're swollen with vanity. We ought to have ayoung man in your position, anyhow. "

Herron might have swallowed the insult to his pride as a lawyer. Butthe insult to his pride in his youth! He was fifty-seven and in dressand in expression was stoutly insisting that he was still a young manwhom hard work had made prematurely gray and somewhat wrinkled. Dumont's insinuation that he was old and stale set a great fire of hateblazing; he, of course, told himself and others that his wrath wasstirred solely because his sense of justice had been outraged by the"swindling. "

Fanshaw entered Herron's office wearing the jaunty air of arrogantprosperity, never so important as when prosperity has fled. ButHerron's shrewd, experienced eyes penetrated the sham. He had intendedto be cold. Scenting a "hard-luck yarn" and a "touch" he lowered histemperature to the point at which conversation is ice-beset andconfidences are frozen tight. 

Fanshaw's nerve deserted him. "Herron, " he said, dropping hisprosperous pose, "I want to get a divorce and I want to punish Dumont. "

Herron's narrow, cold face lighted up. He knew what everybody in theirset knew of Fanshaw's domestic affairs, but like everybody else he hadpretended not to know. He changed his expression to one of shock andindignation. 

"You astound me!" he exclaimed. "It is incredible!"

"He told me himself not an hour ago, " said Fanshaw. "I went to him asa friend to ask him to help me out of a hole. And--" He rose andtheatrically paced the floor. 

Herron prided himself upon his acute conscience and his nice sense ofhonor. He felt that here was a chance to wreak vengeance uponDumont--or rather, as he put it to himself, to bring Dumont to anaccounting for his depravity. Just as Dumont maintained with himself acharacter of honesty by ignoring all the dubious acts which his agentswere forced to do in carrying out his orders, so Herron kept peace witha far more sensitive conscience by never permitting it to look in uponhis mind or out through his eyes. 

"Frightful! Frightful!" he exclaimed, after a long pause in which hisimmured and blindfold conscience decided that he could afford tosupport Fanshaw. "I knew he was a rascal in business--but THIS!"

There was genuine emotion in his voice and in his mind. He was strictto puritanic primness in his ideals of feminine morality; nor had hebeen relaxed by having a handsome wife, looking scarce a day overthirty behind her veil or in artificial light, and fond of gatheringabout her young men who treated him as if he were old and "didn'tcount. "

"You are certain, Fanshaw?"

"I tell you, he hinted it himself, " replied Fanshaw. "And instantly myeyes were opened to scores of damning confirmations. " He struck hisforehead with his open hand. "How blind I've been!" he exclaimed. 

Herron shook his head sympathetically and hastened on to business. 

"WE can't handle your case, " he said. "But Best and Sharpless, on thefloor above, are reliable. And I'll be glad to help you with advice. I feel that this is the beginning of Dumont's end. I knew suchinsolent wickedness could not have a long course. "

Fanshaw drew Herron on to tell the story of his wrongs--the"swindling. " Before it was ended Fanshaw saw that he had found a manwho hated Dumont malignantly and was thirsting for vengeance. Thisencouraged him to unfold his financial difficulties. Herron listenedsympathetically, asked ingeniously illuminating questions, and in theend agreed to tide him over. He had assured himself that Fanshaw hadsimply undertaken too large an enterprise; the advance would be wellsecured; he would make the loan in such a way that he would get a sureprofit, and would also bind Fanshaw firmly to him without bindinghimself to Fanshaw. Besides--"It wouldn't do for him to go to the walljust now. "

Arm in arm they went up to Best and Sharpless' to take the first stepsin the suit. Together they went down-town to relieve Fanshaw of thepressure of the too heavy burden of copper stocks; then up to theirclub where he assisted Fanshaw in composing the breaking-off letter toLeonora. 

XXII. 

STORMS IN THE WEST. 

While the Fanshaw-Herron storm was slowly gathering in Dumont's easternhorizon, two others equally black were lifting in the west. 

In the two months between Scarborough's election and his inauguration, the great monopolies thriving under the protection of the state'scorrupted statute-book and corrupted officials followed the lead oftheir leader, Dumont's National Woolens Company, in making sweeping butstealthy changes in their prices, wages, methods and even in theirlegal status. They hoped thus to enable their Legislature plausibly toresist Scarborough's demand for a revision of the laws--why revise whenthe cry of monopoly had been shown to be a false issue raised by ademagogue to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to aggrandizehimself? And, when Scarborough had been thoroughly "exposed, " businesscould be resumed gradually. 

But Scarborough had the better brain, and had character as well. Heeasily upset their program and pressed their Legislature so hard thatit was kept in line only by pouring out money like water. This becamea public scandal which made him stronger than ever and also made itseem difficult or impossible for the monopolies to get a corruptibleLegislature at the next election. At last the people had in theirservice a lawyer equal in ability to the best the monopolies could buy, and one who understood human nature and political machinery to boot. 

Dumont began to respect Scarborough profoundly--not for his character, which made him impregnable with the people, but for his intellect, which showed him how to convince the people of his character and tokeep them convinced. When Merriweather came on "to take his beating"from his employer he said among other things deprecatory:"Scarborough's a dreamer. His head's among the clouds. " Dumontretorted: "Yes, but his feet are on the ground--too damned firmly tosuit me. " And after a moment's thought, he added: "What a shame forsuch a brain to go to waste! Why, he could make millions. "

He felt that Gladys was probably his best remaining card. She had beenin Indianapolis visiting the whole of February, Scarborough's secondmonth as governor, and had gone on to her brother in New York with aglowing report of her progress with Scarborough's sister Arabella, nowa widow and at her own invitation living with him in Indianapolis torelieve him of the social duties of his office. She was a dozen yearsmore the Arabella who had roused her father's wrath by her plans foreducating her brother "like a gentleman"; and Olivia and Fred wereirritated and even alarmed by her anything but helpfulpeculiarities--though Scarborough seemed cheerful and indifferentenough about them. 

It was a temperamental impossibility for Dumont to believe thatScarborough could really be sincere in a course which was obviouslyunprofitable. Therefore he attached even more importance to Arabella'scordiality than did Gladys herself. And, when the Legislature adjournedand Scarborough returned to Saint X for a brief stay, Dumont sentGladys post-haste back to the Eyrie--that is, she instantly and eagerlyacted upon his hint. 

A few evenings after her return, she and Pauline were on the southveranda alone in the starlight. She was in low spirits and presentlybegan to rail against her lot. 

"Don't be absurd, " said Pauline. "You've no right to complain. Youhave everything--and you're--free!"

That word "free" was often on Pauline's lips in those days. And a closeobserver might have been struck by the tone in which she uttered it. Not the careless tone of those who have never had or have never lostfreedom, but the lingering, longing tone of those who have had it, andhave learned to value it through long years without it. 

"Yes--everything!" replied Gladys, bitterly. "Everything except theone thing I want. "

Pauline did not help her, but she was at the stage of suppressedfeeling where desire to confide is stronger than pride. 

"The one thing I want, " she repeated. "Pauline, I used to think I'dnever care much for any man, except to like it for him to like me. Menhave always been a sort of amusement--and the oftener the man changed, the better the fun. I've known for several years that I simply mustmarry, but I've refused to face it. It seemed to me I was fated towander the earth, homeless, begging from door to door for leave to comein and rest a while. "

"You know perfectly well, Gladys, that this is your home. "

"Of course--in a sense. It's as much my home as another woman's housecould be. But"--with a little sob--"I've seen my mate and I want tobegin my nest. "

They were side by side on a wide, wicker sofa. Pauline made animpulsive move to put her arm round Gladys, then drew away and claspedher hands tightly in her lap. 

Gladys was crying, sobbing, brokenly apologizing for it--"I'm a littleidiot--but I can't help it--I haven't any pride left--a woman neverdoes have, really, when she's in love--oh, Pauline, do you think hecares at all for me?" And after a pause she went on, too absorbed inherself to observe Pauline or to wonder at her silence: "Sometimes Ithink he does. Again I fear that--that he doesn't. And lately--whydoesn't he come here any more?"

"You know how busy he is, " said Pauline, in a voice so strained thatGladys ought to have noticed it. 

"But it isn't that--I'm sure it isn't. No, it has something to do withme. It means either that he doesn't care for me or that--that he doescare and is fighting against it. Oh, I don't know what to think. "Then, after a pause: "How I hate being a woman! If I were a man Icould find out the truth--settle it one way or the other. But I mustsit dumb and wait, and wait, and wait! You don't know how I love him, "she said brokenly, burying her face in the ends of the soft white shawlthat was flung about her bare shoulders. "I can't help it--he's thebest--he makes all the others look and talk like cheap imitations. He's the best, and a woman can't help wanting the best. "

Pauline rose and leaned against the railing--she could evade the truthno longer. Gladys was in love with Scarborough, was at last caught inher own toils, would go on entangling herself deeper and deeper, abandoning herself more and more to a hopeless love, unless--

"What would you do, Pauline?" pleaded Gladys. "There must be somereason why he doesn't speak. It isn't fair to me--it isn't fair! Icould stand anything--even giving him up--better than this uncertainty. It's--it's breaking my heart--I who thought I didn't have a heart. "

"No, it isn't fair, " said Pauline, to herself rather than to Gladys. 

"I suppose you don't sympathize with me, " Gladys went on. "I know youdon't like him. I've noticed how strained and distant you are towardeach other. And you seem to avoid each other. And he'll never talk ofyou to me. Did you have some sort of misunderstanding at college?"

"Yes, " said Pauline, slowly. "A--a misunderstanding. "

"And you both remember it, after all these years?"

"Yes, " said Pauline. 

"How relentless you are, " said Gladys, "and how tenacious!" But she wastoo intent upon her own affairs to pursue a subject which seemed tolead away from them. Presently she rose. 

"I'll be ashamed of having confessed when I see you in daylight. But Idon't care. I shan't be sorry. I feel a little better. After all, whyshould I be ashamed of any one knowing I care for him?" And shesighed, laughed, went into the house, whistling softly--sad, depressed, but hopeful, feeling deep down that she surely must win where she hadnever known what it was to lose. 

Pauline looked after her. "No, it isn't fair, " she repeated. Shestayed on the veranda, walking slowly to and fro not to make up hermind, for she had done that while Gladys was confessing, but to decidehow she could best accomplish what she saw she must now no longerdelay. It was not until two hours later that she went up to bed. 

When Gladys came down at nine the next morning Pauline had just goneout--"I think, Miss Gladys, she told the coachman to drive to herfather's, " said the butler. 

Gladys set out alone. Instead of keeping to the paths and the woodsalong the edge of the bluff she descended to the valley and the riverroad. She walked rapidly, her face glowing, her eyes sparkling--shewas quick to respond to impressions through the senses, and to-day shefelt so well physically that it reacted upon her mind and forced herspirits up. At the turn beyond Deer Creek bridge she met Scarboroughsuddenly. He, too, was afoot and alone, and his greeting wasinterpreted to her hopes by her spirits. 

"May I turn and walk with you?" he asked. 

"I'm finding myself disagreeable company today. "

"You did look dull, " she said, as they set out together, "dull as alove-sick German. But I supposed it was your executive pose. "

"I was thinking that I'll be old before I know it. " His old-young facewas shadowed for an instant. "Old--that's an unpleasant thought, isn'tit?"

"Unpleasant for a man, " said Gladys, with a laugh, light as youth'sdread of age. "For a woman, ghastly! Old and alone--either one'sdreadful enough. But--the two together! I often think of them. Don'tlaugh at me--really I do. Don't you?"

"If you keep to that, our walk'll be a dismal failure. It's a road Inever take--if I can help it. "

"You don't look as though you were ever gloomy. " Gladys glanced up athim admiringly. "I should have said you were one person the bluedevils wouldn't dare attack. "

"Yes, but they do. And sometimes they throw me. "

"And trample you?"

"And trample me, " he answered absently. 

"That's because you're alone too much, " she said with a look of tactfulsympathy. 

"Precisely, " he replied. "But how am I to prevent that?"

"Marry, of course, " she retorted, smiling gaily up at him, letting herheart just peep from her eyes. 

"Thank you! And it sounds so easy! May I ask why you've refused totake your own medicine--you who say you are so often blue?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I've always suspected the men who askedme. They were--" She did not finish what she feared might be anunwise, repelling remark in the circumstances. 

"They were after your money, " he finished for her. 

She nodded. "They were Europeans, " she explained. "Europeans wantmoney when they marry. "

"That's another of the curses of riches, " he said judicially. "And ifyou marry a rich man over here, you may be pretty sure he'll marry youfor your money. I've observed that rich men attach an exaggeratedimportance to money, always. "

"I'd prefer to marry a poor man, " she hastened to answer, her heartbeating faster--certainly his warning against rich suitors must havebeen designed to help his own cause with her. 

"Yes, that might be better, " he agreed. "But you would have to becareful after you were married or he might fancy you were using yourmoney to tyrannize over him. I've noticed that the poor husbands ofrich women are supersensitive--often for cause. "

"Oh, I'd give it all to him. He could do what he pleased with it. I'dnot care so long as we were happy. "

Scarborough liked the spirit of this, liked her look as she said it. 

"That's very generous--very like you, " he replied warmly. "But I don'tthink it would be at all wise. You'd be in a dangerous position. Youmight spoil him--great wealth is a great danger, and when it's suddenlyacquired, and so easily-- No, you'd better put your wealth aside andonly use so much of it as will make your income equal to his--if youcan stand living economically. "

"I could stand anything with or from any one I cared for. " Gladys waseager for the conversation to turn from the general to the particular. She went on, forcing her voice to hide her interest: "And you, whydon't you cure your blues?"

"Oh, I shall, " he replied carelessly. "But not with your medicine. Every one to his own prescription. "

"And what's yours for yourself?" said Gladys, feeling tired and nervousfrom the strain of this delayed happiness. 

"Mine?" He laughed. "My dreams. "

"You are a strange combination, aren't you? In one way you're so verypractical--with your politics and all that. And in another way--Isuspect you of being sentimental--almost romantic. "

"You've plucked out the heart of my mystery. My real name is nonQuixote de Saint X. "

"And has your Dulcinea red hands and a flat nose and freckles like thelady of Toboso?" Gladys' hands were white, her nose notably fine, herskin transparently clear. 

"Being Don Quixote, I don't know it if she has. "

"And you prefer to worship afar, and to send her news of your triumphsinstead of going to her yourself?"

"I dare not go. " He was looking away, far away. "There are wickedenchanters. I'm powerless. She alone can break their spells. "

They walked in silence, her heart beating so loudly that she thought hemust be hearing it, must be hearing what it was saying. Yes--she mustbreak the spells. But how--but how? What must she say to make himsee? Did he expect her to ask him to marry her? She had heard thatrich women often were forced to make this concession to the pride ofthe men they wished to marry. On the other hand, was there ever a manless likely than Scarborough to let any obstacle stand between him andwhat he wanted?

The first huge drops of a summer rain pattered in big, round stains, brown upon the white of the road. He glanced up--a cloud was rollingfrom beyond the cliffs, was swiftly curtaining the blue. 

"Come, " he commanded, and they darted into the underbrush, he guidingher by her arm. A short dash among the trees and bushes and they wereat the base of the bluff, were shielded by a shelf of rock. 

"It'll be over soon, " he assured her. "But you must stand close oryou'll be drenched. "

A clap of thunder deafened them as a flame and a force enswathed thesycamore tree a few yards away, blowing off its bark, scattering itsbranches, making it all in an instant a blackened and blasted wreck. Gladys gave a low scream of terror, fell against him, hid her face inhis shoulder. She was trembling violently. He put his arm roundher--if he had not supported her she would have fallen. She leanedagainst him, clinging to him, so that he felt the beat of her heart, the swell and fall of her bosom, felt the rush of her young bloodthrough her veins, felt the thrill from her smooth, delicate, oliveskin. And he, too, was trembling--shaken in all his nerves. 

"Don't be afraid, " he said--in his voice he unconsciously betrayed theimpulse that was fighting for possession of him. 

She drew herself closer to him with a long, tremulous sigh. 

"I'm a coward, " she murmured. "I'm shaking so that I can't stand. "She tried to draw herself away--or did she only make pretense to himand to herself that she was trying?--then relaxed again into his arms. 

The thunder cracked and crashed; the lightnings leaped in streaks andin sheets; the waters gushed from the torn clouds and obscured thelight like a heavy veil. She looked up at him in the dimness--she, too, was drunk with the delirium of the storms raging without andwithin them. His brain swam giddily. The points of gold in her darkeyes were drawing him like so many powerful magnets. Their lips metand he caught her up in his arms. And for a moment all the fire of hisintensely masculine nature, so long repressed, raged over her lips, hereyes, her hair, her cheeks, her chin. 

A moment she lay, happy as a petrel, beaten by a tempest; a moment herthirsty heart drank in the ecstasy of the lightnings through her lipsand skin and hair. 

She opened her eyes to find out why there was a sudden calm. She sawhim staring with set, white face through the rain-veil. His arms stillheld her, but where they had been like the clasp of life itself, theywere now dead as the arms of a statue. A feeling of cold chilled herskin, trickled icily in and in. She released herself--he did notoppose her. 

"It seems to me I'll never be able to look you--or myself--in the faceagain, " he said at last. 

"I didn't know it was in me to--to take advantage of a woman'shelplessness. "

"I wanted you to do what you did, " she said simply. 

He shook his head. "You are generous, " he answered. "But I deservenothing but your contempt. "

"I wanted you to do it, " she repeated. She was under the spell of herlove and of his touch. She was clutching to save what she could, wasdesperately hoping it might not be so little as she feared. "I hadthe--the same impulse that you had. " She looked at him timidly, with apleading smile. "And please don't say you're sorry you did it, even ifyou feel so. You'll think me very bold--I know it isn't proper foryoung women to make such admissions. But--don't reproachyourself--please!"

If she could have looked into his mind as he stood there, crushed anddegraded in his own eyes, she would have been a little consoled--for, in defiance of his self-scorn and self-hate, his nerves were tinglingwith the memory of that delirium, and his brain was throbbing with thesurge of impulses long dormant, now imperious. But she was not evenlooking toward him--for, through her sense of shame, of wounded pride, her love was clamoring to her to cry out: "Take me in your arms again!I care not on what terms, only take me and hold me and kiss me. "

The rain presently ceased as abruptly as it had begun and they returnedunder the dripping leaves to the highroad. She glanced anxiously athim as they walked toward the town, but he did not speak. She saw thatif the silence was to be broken, she must break it. 

"What can I say to convince you?" she asked, as if not he but she werethe offender. 

He did not answer. 

"Won't you look at me, please?"

He looked, the color mounting in his cheeks, his eyes unsteady. 

"Now, tell me you'll not make me suffer because you fancy you'vewronged me. Isn't it ungallant of you to act this way after I'vehumiliated myself to confess I didn't mind?"

"Thank you, " he said humbly, and looked away. 

"You won't have it that I was in the least responsible?" She wasteasing him now--he was plainly unaware of the meaning of her yielding. "He's so modest, " she thought, and went on: "You won't permit me toflatter myself I was a temptation too strong even for your iron heart, Don Quixote?"

He flushed scarlet, and the suspicion, the realization of the truth sether eyes to flashing. 

"It's before another woman he's abasing himself, " she thought, "notbefore me. He isn't even thinking of me. " When she spoke her tone wascold and sneering: "I hope she will forgive you. She certainly wouldif she could know what a paladin you are. "

He winced, but did not answer. At the road up the bluffs she pausedand there was an embarrassed silence. Then he poured out abruptsentences:

"It was doubly base. I betrayed your friendly trust, I was false toher. Don't misunderstand--she's nothing to me. She's nothing to me, yet everything. I began really to live when I began to love her. And--every one must have a--a pole-star. And she's mine--the star Isail by, and always must. And--" He halted altogether, then blunderedon: "I shall not forgive myself. But you--be merciful--forgiveme--forget it!"

"I shall do neither, " she replied curtly, jealousy and vanity stampingdown the generous impulse that rose in response to his appeal. And shewent up her road. A few yards and she paused, hoping to hear himcoming after her. A few yards more and she sat down on a big boulderby the wayside. Until now all the wishes of her life had been more orless material, had been wishes which her wealth or the position herwealth gave had enabled her instantly to gratify. She buried her facein her arms and sobbed and rocked herself to and fro, in a cyclone ofanger, and jealousy, and shame, and love, and despair. 

"I hate him!" she exclaimed between clenched teeth. "I hate him, but--if he came and wanted me, oh, how I would LOVE him!"

Meanwhile Pauline was at her father's. 

"He isn't down yet, " said her mother. "You know, he doesn't finishdressing nowadays until he has read the papers and his mail. Then hewalks in the garden. "

"I'll go there, " said Pauline. "Won't you bring him when he's ready?"

She never entered the garden that the ghosts of her childhood--how far, far it seemed!--did not join her, brushing against her, or rustling intree and bush and leafy trellis. She paused at the end of the longarbor and sat on the rustic bench there. A few feet away was the bedof lilies-of-the-valley. Every spring of her childhood she used to runfrom the house on the first warm morning and hurry to it; and if herglance raised her hopes she would kneel upon the young grass and lowerher head until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and thesoil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open thisway and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor--the odor oflife. And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see, down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shootingslender shaft. And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew thatthe shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, wouldunfold, would blossom, would bloom, would fling from tremulous bells aperfumed proclamation of the arrival of spring. 

As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that through the black earth ofher life she could see and feel the backward heralds of herspring--"after the long winter, " she said to herself. 

She glanced up--her father coming toward her. He was alone, washolding a folded letter uncertainly in his hand. He looked at her, hiseyes full of pity and grief. "Pauline, " he began, "has everythingbeen--been well--of late between you and--your husband?"

She started. "No, father, " she replied. Then, looking at him withclear directness: "I've not been showing you and mother the truthabout John and me--not for a long time. "

She saw that her answer relieved him. He hesitated, held out theletter. 

"The best way is for you to read it, " he said. It was a letter to himfrom Fanshaw. He was writing, he explained, because the discharge of apainful duty to himself would compel him "to give pain to your daughterwhom I esteem highly, " and he thought it only right "to prepare her andher family for what was coming, in order that they might be ready totake the action that would suggest itself. " And he went on to relatehis domestic troubles and his impending suit. 

"Poor Leonora!" murmured Pauline, as she finished and sat thinking ofall that Fanshaw's letter involved. 

"Is it true, Polly?" asked her father. 

She gave a great sigh of relief. How easy this letter had made allthat she had been dreading! "Yes--it's true, " she replied. "I've knownabout--about it ever since the time I came back from the East anddidn't return. "

The habitual pallor of her father's face changed to gray. 

"I left him, father. " She lifted her head, impatient of herstammering. A bright flush was in her face as she went on rapidly:"And I came to-day to tell you the whole story--to be truthful andhonest again. I'm sick of deception and evasion. I can't stand it anylonger--I mustn't. I--you don't know how I've shrunk from woundingmother and you. But I've no choice now. Father, I must be free--free!"

"And you shall be, " replied her father. "He shall not wreck your lifeand Gardiner's. "

Pauline stared at him. "Father!" she exclaimed. 

He put his arm round her and drew her gently to him. 

"I know the idea is repellent, " he said, as if he were trying topersuade a child. "But it's right, Pauline. There are cases in whichnot to divorce would be a sin. I hope my daughter sees that this isone. "

"I don't understand, " she said confusedly. "I thought you and motherbelieved divorce was dreadful--no matter what might happen. "

"We did, Pauline. But we--that is, I--had never had it brought home. A hint of this story was published just after you came last year. Ithought it false, but it set me to thinking. 'If your daughter'shusband had turned out to be as you once thought him, would it be rightfor her to live on with him? To live a lie, to pretend to keep hervows to love and honor him? Would it be right to condemn Gardiner tobe poisoned by such a father?' And at last I saw the truth, and yourmother agreed with me. We had been too narrow. We had been layingdown our own notions as God's great justice. "

Pauline drew away from her father so that she could look at him. And atlast she saw into his heart. "If I had only known, " she said, and satnumb and stunned. 

"When you were coming home from college, " her father went on, "yourmother and I talked over what we should do. John had just confessedyour secret marriage--"

"You knew that!"

"Yes, and we understood, Polly. You were so young--so headstrong--andyou couldn't appreciate our reasons. "

Pauline's brain was reeling. 

"Your mother and I talked it over before you got home and thought itbest to leave you entirely free to choose. But when we saw youovercome by joy--"

"Don't!" she interrupted, her voice a cry of pain. "I can't bear it!Don't!" Years of false self-sacrifice, of deceiving her parents andher child, of self-suppression and self-degradation, and this finalcruelty to Gladys--all, all in vain, all a heaping of folly upon folly, of wrong upon wrong. 

She rushed toward the house. She must fly somewhere--anywhere--toescape the thoughts that were picking with sharp beaks at her achingheart. Half-way up the walk she turned and fled to a refuge she wouldnot have thought of half an hour before to her father's arms. 

"Oh, father, " she cried. "If I had only known you!"

Gladys, returning from her walk, went directly to Pauline'ssitting-room. 

"I'm off for New York and Europe to-morrow morning, " she beganabruptly, her voice hard, her expression bitter and reckless. 

"Where can she have heard about Leonora?" thought Pauline. She said ina strained voice: "I had hoped you would stay here to look after thehouse. "

"To look after the house? What do you mean?" asked Gladys. But she wastoo full of herself to be interested in the answer, and went on: "Iwant you to forget what I said to you. I've got over all that. I'vecome to my senses. "

Pauline began a nervous turning of her rings. 

Gladys gave a short, grim laugh. "I detest him, " she went on. "We'revery changeable, we women, aren't we? I went out of this house twohours ago loving him--to distraction. I came back hating him. And allthat has happened in between is that I met him and he kissed me a fewtimes and stabbed my pride a few times. "

Pauline stopped turning her rings--she rose slowly, mechanically, looked straight at Gladys. 

"That is not true, " she said calmly. 

Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't know the cold and haughtyGovernor Scarborough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel theplaces on my face where it scorched. Can't you see them?"

Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How like John Dumont's sister!"she thought. And she shut herself in her room and stayed there, pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone. 

XXIII. 

A SEA SURPRISE. 

On the third day from New York, Gladys was so far recovered fromseasickness that she dragged herself to the deck. The water was fairlysmooth, but a sticky, foggy rain was falling. A deck-steward put hersteamer-chair in a sheltered corner. Her maid and a stewardess swathedher in capes and rugs; she closed her eyes and said: "Now leave me, please, and don't come near me till I send for you. "

She slept an hour. When she awoke she felt better. Some one had drawna chair beside hers and was seated there--a man, for she caught thefaint odor of a pipe, though the wind was the other way. She turnedher head. It was Langdon, whom she had not seen since she went below afew hours after Sandy Hook disappeared. Indeed, she had almostforgotten that he was on board and that her brother had asked him tolook after her. He was staring at her in an absent-minded way, hiswonted expression of satire and lazy good-humor fainter than usual. In fact, his face was almost serious. 

"That pipe, " she grumbled. "Please do put it away. "

He tossed it into the sea. "Beg pardon, " he said. "It was stupid ofme. I was absorbed in--in my book. "

"What's the name of it?"

He turned it to glance at the cover, but she went on: "No--don't tellme. I've no desire to know. I asked merely to confirm my suspicion. "

"You're right, " he said. "I wasn't reading. I was looking at you. "

"That was impertinent. A man should not look at a woman when shedoesn't intend him to look. "

"Then I'd never look at all. I'm interested only in things not meantfor my eyes. I might even read letters not addressed to me if I didn'tknow how dull letters are. No intelligent person ever says anything ina letter nowadays. They use the telegraph for ordinary correspondence, and telepathy for the other kind. But it was interesting--looking atyou as you lay asleep. "

"Was my mouth open?"

"A little. "

"Am I yellow?"

"Very. "

"Eyes red? Hair in strings? Lips blue?"

"All that, " he said, "and skin somewhat mottled. But I was not so muchinterested in your beauty as I was in trying to determine whether youwere well enough to stand two shocks. "

"I need them, " replied Gladys. 

"One is rather unpleasant, the other--the reverse, in fact a happiness. "

"The unpleasant first, please. "

"Certainly, " he replied. "Always the medicine first, then the candy. "And he leaned back and closed his eyes and seemed to be settlinghimself for indefinite silence. 

"Go on, " she said impatiently. "What's the medicine? A death?"

"I said unpleasant, didn't I? When an enemy dies it's all joy. When afriend passes over to eternal bliss, why, being good Christians, we arenot so faithless and selfish as to let the momentary separationdistress us. "

"But what is it? You're trying to gain time by all this beating aboutthe bush. You ought to know me well enough to know you can speakstraight out. "

"Fanshaw's suing his wife for divorce--and he names Jack. "

"Is that your news?" said Gladys, languidly. Suddenly she flung asidethe robes and sat up. 

"What's Pauline going to do? Can she--" Gladys paused. 

"Yes, she can--if she wishes to. "

"But--will she? Will she?" demanded Gladys. 

"Jack doesn't know what she'll do, " replied Langdon. "He's keepingquiet--the only sane course when that kind of storm breaks. He hadhoped you'd be there to smooth her down, but he says when he opened thesubject of your going back to Saint X you cut him off. "

"Does she know?"

"Somebody must have told her the day you left. Don't you remember, shewas taken ill suddenly?"

"Oh!" Gladys vividly recalled Pauline's strange look and manner. Shecould see her sister-in-law--the long, lithe form, the small, gracefulhead, with its thick, soft, waving hair, the oval face, the skin asfine as the petals at the heart of a rose, the arched brows andgolden-brown eyes; that look, that air, as of buoyant life locked inthe spell of an icy trance, mysterious, fascinating, sometimes somelancholy. 

"I almost hope she'll do it, Mowbray, " she said. "Jack doesn't deserveher. He's not a bit her sort. She ought to have married--"

"Some one who had her sort of ideals--some one like that big, handsomechap--the one you admired so frantically--Governor Scarborough. He waschock full of ideals. And he's making the sort of career she couldsympathize with. "

"Scarborough!" exclaimed Gladys, with some success at self-concealment. "I detest him! I detest 'careers'!"

"Good, " said Langdon, his face serious, his eyes amused. "That opensthe way for my other shock. "

"Oh, the good news. What is it?"

"That I'd like it if you'd marry me. "

Gladys glanced into his still amused eyes, then with a shrug sank backamong her wraps. "A poor joke, " she said. 

"I should say that marriage was a stale joke rather than a poor one. Will you try it--with me? You might do worse. "

"How did you have the courage to speak when I'm looking such a wreck?"she asked with mock gravity. 

"But you ain't--you're looking better now. That first shock braced youup. Besides, this isn't romance. It's no high flight with all thelonger drop and all the harder jolt at the landing. It's a plain, practical proposition. "

Gladys slowly sat up and studied him curiously. 

"Do you really mean it?" she asked. Each was leaning on an elbow, gazing gravely into the other's face. 

"I'd never joke on such a dangerous subject as marriage. I'm far tootimid for that. What do you say, Gladys?"

She had never seen him look serious before, and she was thinking thatthe expression became him. 

"He knows how to make himself attractive to a woman when he cares to, "she said to herself. 

"I'd like a man that has lightness of mind. Serious people bore one soafter a while. " By "serious people" she meant one serious person whomshe had admired particularly for his seriousness. But she was inanother mood now, another atmosphere--the atmosphere she had breathedsince she was thirteen, except in the brief period when her infatuationfor Scarborough had swept her away from her world. 

"No!" She shook her head with decision--and felt decided. But to hispractised ear there was in her voice a hint that she might hear himfurther on the subject. 

They lay back in their chairs, he watching the ragged, dirty, scurryingclouds, she watching him. After a while he said: "Where are you goingwhen we reach the other side?"

"To join mother and auntie. "

"And how long will you stay with them?"

"Not more than a week, I should say, " she answered with a grimace. 

"And then--where?"

She did not reply for some time. Studying her face, he saw anexpression of lonesomeness gather and strengthen and deepen until shelooked so forlorn that he felt as if he must take her in his arms. When she spoke it was to say dubiously: "Back to New York--to keephouse for my brother--perhaps. "

"And when his wife frees herself and he marries again--where will yougo?"

Gladys lifted a fold of her cape and drew it about her as if she werecold. But he noted that it hid her face from him. 

"You want--you need--a home? So do I, " he went on tranquilly. "You aretired of wandering? So am I. You are bored with parade andparade--people? So am I. You wish freedom, not bondage, when youmarry? I refuse to be bound, and I don't wish to bind any one. Wehave the same friends, the same tastes, have had pretty much the sameexperiences. You don't want to be married for your money. I'm notlikely to be suspected of doing that sort of thing. "

"Some one has said that rich men marry more often for money than poormen, " interrupted Gladys. And then she colored as she recalled who hadsaid it. 

Langdon noted her color as he noted every point in any game he wasplaying; he shrewdly guessed its origin. "When Scarborough told youthat, " he replied calmly, "he told you a great truth. But pleaseremember, I merely said I shouldn't be SUSPECTED of marrying you formoney. I didn't say I wasn't guilty. "

"Is your list of reasons complete?"

"Two more the clinchers. You are disappointed in love--so am I. Youneed consolation--so do I. When one can't have the best one takes thebest one can get, if one is sensible. It has been known to turn outnot so badly. "

They once more lay back watching the clouds. An hour passed withouteither's speaking. The deck-steward brought them tea and biscuitswhich he declined and she accepted. She tried the big, hard, tastelessdisk between her strong white teeth, then said with a sly smile: "Youpried into my secret a few minutes ago. I'm going to pry into yours. Who was she?"

"As the lady would have none of me, there's no harm in confessing, "replied Langdon, carelessly. "She was--and is--and--" he looked ather--"ever shall be, world without end--Gladys Dumont. "

Gladys gasped and glanced at him with swift suspicion that he wasjesting. He returned her glance in a calm, matter-of-fact way. Sheleaned back in her chair and they watched the slippery rail slide upand down against the background of chilly, rainy sea and sky. 

"Are you asleep?" he asked after a long silence. 

"No, " she replied. "I was thinking. "

"Of my--proposition?"

"Yes. "

"Doesn't it grow on you?"

"Yes. "

He shifted himself to a sitting position with much deliberateness. Heput his hand in among her rugs and wraps until it touched hers. "Itmay turn out better than you anticipate, " he said, a little sentimentin his eyes and smile, a little raillery in his voice. 

"I doubt if it will, " she answered, without looking at him directly. "For--I--anticipate a great deal. "

XXIV. 

DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT. 

Fanshaw versus Fanshaw was heard privately by a referee; and beforeMrs. Fanshaw's lawyers had a chance to ask that the referee's report besealed from publicity, the judge of his own motion ordered it. At thepolitical club to which he belonged, he had received an intimation fromthe local "boss" that if Dumont's name were anywhere printed inconnection with the case he would be held responsible. Thus it came topass that on the morning of the filing of the decree the newspaperswere grumbling over their inability to give the eagerly-awaited detailsof the great scandal. And Herron was Catonizing against "judicialcorruption. "

But Dumont was overswift in congratulating himself on his escape and inpreening himself on his power. 

For several days the popular newspapers were alone in denouncing thejudge for favoritism and in pointing out that the judiciary were"becoming subservient to the rich and the powerful in theirrearrangements of their domestic relations--a long first step towardcomplete subservience. " Herron happened to have among his intimatesthe editor of an eminently respectable newspaper that prides itselfupon never publishing private scandals. He impressed his friend withhis own strong views as to the gravity of this growing discriminationbetween masses and classes; and the organ of independent conservatismwas presently lifting up its solemn voice in a stentorian jeremiad. 

Without this reinforcement the "yellows" might have shrieked in vain. It was assumed that baffled sensationalism was by far a stronger motivewith them than justice, and the public was amused rather than arousedby their protests. But now soberer dailies and weeklies took up thecase and the discussion spread to other cities, to the whole country. By his audacity, by his arrogant frankness he had latterly treatedpublic opinion with scantiest courtesy--by his purchase of campaigncommittees, and legislatures, and courts, Dumont had made himself inthe public mind an embodiment of the "mighty and menacing plutocracy"of which the campaign orators talked so much. And the various phasesof the scandal gave the press a multitude of texts for satirical, orpessimistic, or fiery discourses upon the public and private rottennessof "plutocrats. "

But Dumont's name was never directly mentioned. Every one knew who wasmeant; no newspaper dared to couple him in plain language with thescandal. The nearest approach to it was where one New York newspaperpublished, without comment, in the center of a long news article on thecase, two photographs of Dumont side by side--one taken when he firstcame to New York, clear-cut, handsome, courageous, apparently a type ofprogressive young manhood; the other, taken within the year, gross, lowering, tyrannical, obviously a type of indulged, self-indulgentdespot. 

Herron had forced Fanshaw to abandon the idea of suing Dumont for amoney consolation. He had been deeply impressed by his wife's warningsagainst Fanshaw--"a lump of soot, and sure to smutch you if you go nearhim. " He was reluctant to have Fanshaw give up the part of the planwhich insured the public damnation of Dumont, but there was no otherprudent course. He assured himself that he knew Fanshaw to be anupright man; but he did not go to so perilous a length inself-deception as to fancy he could convince cynical and incredulousNew York. It was too eager to find excuses for successful and admiredmen like Dumont, too ready to laugh at and despise underdogs likeFanshaw. Herron never admitted it to himself, but in fact it was hewho put it into Fanshaw's resourceless mind to compass the revenge ofpublicity in another way. 

Fanshaw was denouncing the judge for sealing the divorce testimony, andthe newspapers for being so timid about libel laws and contempt ofcourt. 

"If a newspaper should publish the testimony, " said Herron, "JudgeGlassford would never dare bring the editor before him for contempt. His record's too bad. I happen to know he was in the News-Recordoffice no longer ago than last month, begging for the suppression of anarticle that might have caused his impeachment, if published. Sothere's one paper that wouldn't be afraid of him. "

"Then why does it shield the scoundrel?"

"Perhaps, " replied Herron, his hand on the door of his officelaw-library, "it hasn't been able to get hold of a copy of thetestimony. " And having thus dropped the seed on good soil, he left. 

Fanshaw waited several weeks, waited until certain other plans of hisand Herron's were perfected. Then he suddenly deluged the sinkingflames of the divorce discussion with a huge outpouring of oil. Indirectly and with great secrecy he sent a complete copy of thetestimony to the newspaper Herron had mentioned, the most sensational, and one of the most widely circulated in New York. 

The next morning Dumont had to ring three times for his secretary. When Culver finally appeared he had in his trembling right hand a copyof the News-Record. His face suggested that he was its owner, publisher and responsible editor, and that he expected then and thereto be tortured to death for the two illustrated pages of the "GreatFanshaw-Dumont Divorce! All the Testimony! Shocking Revelations!"

"I thought it necessary for you to know this without delay, sir, " hesaid in a shaky voice, as he held out the newspaper to his master. 

Dumont grew sickly yellow with the first glance at those head-lines. He had long been used to seeing extensive and highly unflatteringaccounts of himself and his doings in print; but theretofore every openattack had been on some public matter where a newspaper "pounding"might be attributed to politics or stock-jobbery. Here--it was averbatim official report, and of a private scandal, more dangerous tohis financial standing than the fiercest assault upon his honesty as afinancier; for it tore away the foundation of reputation--privatecharacter. A faithful transcript throughout, it portrayed him as a bagof slimy gold and gilded slime. He hated his own face staring out athim from a three-column cut in the center of the first page--its heavyjaw, its cynical mouth, its impudent eyes. "Do I look like THAT?" hethought. He was like one who, walking along the streets, catches sightof his own image in a show-window mirror and before he recognizes it, sees himself as others see him. He flushed to his temples at thecontrast with the smaller cut beside it--the face of Pauline, high andfine icily beautiful as always in her New York days when her featureswere in repose. 

Culver shifted from one weak leg to the other, and the movementreminded Dumont of his existence. "That's all. Clear out!" heexclaimed, and fell back into his big chair and closed his eyes. Hethought he at last understood publicity. 

But he was mistaken. 

He finished dressing and choked down a little breakfast. As headvanced toward the front door the servant there coughed uneasily andsaid: "Beg pardon, sir, but I fear you won't be able to get out. "

"What's the matter?" he demanded, his brows contracting and his lipsbeginning to slide back in a snarl--it promised to be a sad morning forhuman curs of all kinds who did not scurry out of the lion's way. 

"The crowd, sir, " said the servant. And he drew aside the curtainacross the glass in one of the inside pair of great double doors of thepalace entrance. "It's quite safe to look, sir. They can't seethrough the outside doors as far as this. "

Dumont peered through the bronze fretwork. A closely packed mass ofpeople was choking the sidewalk and street--his brougham was like anisland in a troubled lake. He saw several policemen--they were tryingto move the crowd on, but not trying sincerely. He saw three hugecameras, their operators under the black cloths, their lenses pointedat the door--waiting for him to appear. For the first time in his lifehe completely lost his nerve. Not only publicity, the paper--alifeless sheet of print; but also publicity, the public--with livingeyes to peer and living voices to jeer. He looked helplessly, appealingly at the "cur" he had itched to kick the moment before. 

"What the devil shall I do?" he asked in a voice without a trace ofcourage. 

"I don't know, sir, " replied the servant. "The basement door wouldn'thelp very much, would it?"

The basement door was in front also. "Idiot! Is there no way out atthe rear?" he asked. 

"Only over the fences, sir, " said the servant, perfectlymatter-of-fact. Having no imagination, his mind made no picture of thegreat captain of industry scrambling over back fences like a stray catflying from a brick. 

Dumont turned back and into his first-floor sitting-room. He unlockedhis stand of brandy bottles, poured out an enormous drink and gulped itdown. His stomach reeled, then his head. He went to the window andlooked out--there must have been five hundred people in the street, andvehicles were making their way slowly and with difficulty, driversgaping at the house and joking with the crowd; newsboys, bent sidewiseto balance their huge bundles of papers, were darting in and out, andeven through the thick plate glass he could hear: "All aboutMillionaire Dumont's disgrace!"

He went through to a rear window. No, there was a continuous wall, ahigh brick wall. A servant came and told him he was wanted at thetelephone. It was Giddings, who said in a voice that was striving invain to be calm against the pressure of some intense excitement: "Youare coming down to-day, Mr. Dumont?"

"Why?" asked Dumont, snapping the word out as short and savage as thecrack of a lash. 

"There are disquieting rumors of a raid on us. "

"Who's to do the raiding?"

"They say it's Patterson and Fanning-Smith and Cassell and Herron. It's a raid for control. "

Dumont snorted scornfully. "Don't fret. We're all right. I'll bedown soon. " And he hung up the receiver, muttering: "The ass! I mustkick him out! He's an old woman the instant I turn my back. "

He had intended not to go down, but to shut himself in with the brandybottle until nightfall. This news made his presence in the Streetimperative. "They couldn't have sprung at me at a worse time, " hemuttered. "But I can take care of 'em!"

He returned to the library, took another drink, larger than the first. His blood began to pound through his veins and to rush along under thesurface of his skin like a sheet of fire. Waves of fury surged intohis brain, making him dizzy, confusing his sight--he could scarcelyrefrain from grinding his teeth. He descended to the basement, hisstep unsteady. 

"A ladder, " he ordered in a thick voice. 

He led the way to the rear wall. A dozen men-servants swarming about, tried to assist him. He ordered them aside and began to climb. As theupper part of his body rose above the wall-line he heard a triumphantshout, many voices crying: "There he is! There he is!"

The lot round the corner from his place was not built upon; and there, in the side street, was a rapidly swelling crowd, the camera-bearershastily putting their instruments in position, the black clothsfluttering like palls or pirate flags. With a roaring howl he releasedhis hold upon the ladder and shook both fists, his swollen face blazingbetween them. He tottered, fell backward, crashed upon the stoneflooring of the area. His head struck with a crack that made thewomen-servants scream. The men lifted him and carried him into thehouse. He was not stunned; he tried to stand. But he staggered backinto the arms of his valet and his butler. 

"Brandy!" he gasped. 

He took a third drink--and became unconscious. When the doctor arrivedhe was raving in a high fever. For years he had drunk to excess--buttheretofore only when HE chose, never when his appetite chose, neverwhen his affairs needed a clear brain. Now appetite, long lying inwait for him, had found him helpless in the clutches of rage and fear, and had stolen away his mind. 

The news was telephoned to the office at half-past eleven o'clock. "Itdoesn't matter, " said Giddings. "He'd only make things worse if hewere to come now. "

Giddings was apparently right. From a tower of strength, supportingalone, yet with ease, National Woolens, and the vast structure basedupon it, Dumont had crumbled into an obstruction and a weakness. Thereis an abysmal difference between everybody knowing a thing privatelyand everybody knowing precisely the same thing publicly. In thatnewspaper exposure there was no fact of importance that was not knownto the entire Street, to his chief supporters in his great syndicate ofranches, railroads, factories, steamship lines and selling agencies. But the tremendous blare of publicity acted like Joshua's horns atJericho. The solid walls of his public reputation tottered, toppled, fell flat. 

There had been a tight money-market for two weeks. Though there hadbeen uneasiness as to all the small and many of the large"industrials, " belief in National Woolens and in the stability of JohnDumont had remained strong. But of all the cowards that stand sentinelfor capital, the most craven is Confidence. At the deafening crash ofthe fall of Dumont's private character, Confidence girded its loins andtightened its vocal cords to be in readiness for a shrieking flight. 

Dumont ruled, through a parent and central corporation, the NationalWoolens Company, which held a majority of the stock in each of theseventeen corporations constituting the trust. His control was in partthrough ownership of Woolens stock but chiefly through proxies sent himby thousands of small stock-holders because they had confidence in hisabilities. To wrest control from him it was necessary for the raidersboth to make him "unload" his own holdings of stock and to impair hisreputation so that his supporters would desert him or stand aloof. 

On the previous day National Woolens closed at eighty-two for thepreferred and thirty-nine for the common. In the first hour of the dayof the raid Giddings and the other members of Dumont's supporting groupof financiers were able to keep it fairly steady at about five pointsbelow the closing price of the previous day, by buying all that wasoffered--the early offerings were large, but not overwhelming. Thesupporters of other industrials saw that the assault on Woolens was amenace to their stocks--if a strong industrial weakened, the weakerones would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened market thatwould surely result. They showed a disposition to rally to the supportof the Dumont stocks. 

At eleven o'clock Giddings began to hope that the raid was a failure, if indeed it had been a real raid. At eleven-twenty Herron played histrump card. 

The National Industrial Bank is the huge barometer to which bothspeculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom thatbank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold ofthe altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour ofstress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heelthat is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for heretics asfor rotten spots in collateral. He was peculiarly savage in his hatredof all matrimonial deviations. He was a brother of Fanshaw's mother;and she and Herron had been working upon him. But so long as Dumont'sshare in the scandal was not publicly attributed he remainedobdurate--he never permitted his up-town creed or code to interferewith his down-town doings unless it became necessary--that is, unlessit could be done without money loss. For up-town or down-town, to makemoney was always and in all circumstances the highest morality, to losemoney the profoundest immorality. 

At twenty minutes past eleven Melville and the president of the otherbanks of his chain called loans to Dumont and the Dumont supportinggroup to the amount of three millions and a quarter. Ten minutes laterother banks and trust companies whose loans to Dumont and his allieseither were on call or contained provisions permitting a demand forincreased collateral, followed Melville's example and aimed and spedtheir knives for Dumont's vitals. 

Giddings found himself face to face with unexpected and peremptorydemands for eleven millions in cash and thirteen millions in additionalcollateral securities. If he did not meet these demands forthwith thebanks and trust companies, to protect themselves, would throw upon themarket at whatever price they could get the thirty-odd millions ofWoolens stocks which they held as collateral for the loans. 

"What does this mean, Eaversole?" he exclaimed, with white, wrinkledlips, heavy circles suddenly appearing under his eyes. "Is Melvilletrying to ruin everything?"

"No, " answered Eaversole, third vice-president of the company. "He'ssupporting the market, all except us. He says Dumont must be drivenout of the Street. He says his presence here is a pollution and asource of constant danger. "

The National Woolens supporting group was alone; it could get no helpfrom any quarter, as every possible ally was frightened into his ownbreastworks for the defense of his own interests. Dumont, the brain andthe will of the group, had made no false moves in business, had beenbold only where his matchless judgment showed him a clear way; but hehad not foreseen the instantaneous annihilation of his chief asset--hisreputation. 

Giddings sustained the unequal battle superbly. He was cool, andwatchful, and effective. It is doubtful if Dumont himself could havedone so well, handicapped as he would have been on that day by theFanshaw scandal. Giddings cajoled and threatened, retreated slowlyhere, advanced intrepidly there. On the one side, he held backwavering banks and trust companies, persuading some that all was well, warning others that if they pressed him they would lose all. On theother side, he faced his powerful foes and made them quake as they sawtheir battalions of millions roll upon his unbroken line of battle onlyto break and disappear. At noon National Woolens preferred was atfifty-eight, the common at twenty-nine. Giddings was beginning to hope. 

At three minutes past noon the tickers clicked out: "It is reportedthat John Dumont is dying. "

As that last word jerked letter by letter from under the printing wheelthe floor of the Stock Exchange became the rapids of a human Niagara. By messenger, by telegraph, by telephone, holders of National Woolensand other industrials, in the financial district, in all parts of thecountry, across the sea, poured in their selling orders upon thefrenzied brokers. And all these forces of hysteria and panic, projected into that narrow, roofed-in space, made of it a chaos ofcontending demons. All stocks were caught in the upheaval; Melville'splans to limit the explosion were blown skyward, feeble as straws in acyclone. Amid shrieks and howls and frantic tossings of arms and madrushes and maniac contortions of faces, National Woolens and all theDumont stocks bent, broke, went smashing down, down, down, every onestruggling to unload. 

Dumont's fortune was the stateliest of the many galleons that daydriven on the rocks and wrecked. Dumont's crew was for the most partengulfed. Giddings and a few selected friends reached the shorehalf-drowned and humbly applied at the wreckers' camp; they werehospitably received and were made as comfortable as their exhaustedcondition permitted. 

John Dumont was at the mercy of Hubert Herron in his own company. If helived he would be president only until the next annual meeting--lessthan two months away; and the Herron crowd had won over enough of hisboard of directors to make him meanwhile powerless where he had beenautocrat. 

XXV. 

THE FALLEN KING. 

Toward noon the next day Dumont emerged from the stupor into whichDoctor Sackett's opiate had plunged him. At once his mind began togrope about for the broken clues of his business. His valet appeared. 

"The morning papers, " said Dumont. 

"Yes, sir, " replied the valet, and disappeared. 

After a few seconds Culver came and halted just within the doorway. "I'm sorry, sir, but Doctor Sackett left strict orders that you were tobe quiet. Your life depends on it. "

Dumont scowled and his lower lip projected--the crowning touch in hismost imperious expression. "The papers, all of 'em, --quick!" hecommanded. 

Culver took a last look at the blue-white face and bloodshot eyes togive him courage to stand firm. "The doctor'll be here in a fewminutes, " he said, bowed and went out. 

Choking with impotent rage, Dumont rang for his valet and forced him tohelp him dress. He was so weak when he finished that only his willkept him from fainting. He took a stiff drink of the brandy--the odorwas sickening to him and he could hardly force it down. But once down, it strengthened him. 

"No, nothing to eat, " he said thickly, and with slow but fairly steadystep left his room and descended to the library. Culver was there--satagape at sight of his master. "But you--you must not--" he began. 

Dumont gave him an ugly grin. "But I will!" he said, and again drankbrandy. He turned and went out and toward the front door, Culverfollowing with stammering protests which he heeded not at all. On thesidewalk he hailed a passing hansom. "To the Edison Building, " he saidand drove off, Culver, bareheaded at the curb, looking dazedly afterhim. Before he reached Fifty-ninth Street he was half-sitting, half-reclining in the corner of the seat, his eyes closed and hissenses sinking into a stupor from the fumes of the powerful doses ofbrandy. As the hansom drove down the avenue many recognized him, wondered and pitied as they noted his color, his collapsed body, headfallen on one side, mouth open and lips greenish gray. As the hansomslowly crossed the tracks at Twenty-third Street the heavy jolt rousedhim. 

"The newspapers, " he muttered, and hurled up through the trap in theroof an order to the driver to stop. He leaned over the doors andbought half a dozen newspapers of the woman at the Flat-iron stand. Asthe hansom moved on he glanced at the head-lines--they were big andstaring, but his blurred eyes could not read them. He fell asleepagain, his hands clasped loosely about the huge proclamations ofyesterday's battle and his rout. 

The hansom was caught in a jam at Chambers Street. The clamor ofshouting, swearing drivers roused him. The breeze from the open sea, blowing straight up Broadway into his face, braced him like the tonicthat it is. He straightened himself, recovered his train of thought, stared at one of the newspapers and tried to grasp the meaning of itshead-lines. But they made only a vague impression on him. 

"It's all lies, " he muttered. "Lies! How could those fellows smashME!" And he flung the newspapers out of the hansom into the faces oftwo boys seated upon the tail of a truck. 

"You're drunk early, " yelled one of the boys. 

"That's no one-day jag, " shouted the other. "It's a hang-over. "

He made a wild, threatening gesture and, as his hansom drove on, muttered and mumbled to himself, vague profanity aimed at nothing andat everything. At the Edison Building he got out. 

"Wait!" he said to the driver. He did not see the impudent smirk onthe face of the elevator boy nor the hesitating, sheepish salutation ofthe door-man, uncertain how to greet the fallen king. He went straightto his office, unlocked his desk and, just in time to save himself fromfainting, seized and half-emptied a flask of brandy he kept in adrawer. It had been there--but untouched ever since he came to NewYork and took those offices; he never drank in business hours. 

His head was aching horribly and at every throb of his pulse a paintore through him. He rang for his messenger. 

"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him--you!" he said, his teeth clenchedand his eyes blazing--he looked insane. 

Giddings came. His conscience was clear--he had never liked Dumont, owed him nothing, yet had stood by him until further fidelity wouldhave ruined himself, would not have saved Dumont, or prevented theHerron-Cassell raiders from getting control. Now that he could affordto look at his revenge-books he was deeply resenting the insults andindignities heaped upon him in the past five years. But he was unableto gloat, was moved to pity, at sight of the physical and mental wreckin that chair which he had always seen occupied by the most robust ofdespots. 

"Well, " said Dumont in a dull, far-away voice, without looking at him. "What's happened?"

Giddings cast about for a smooth beginning but could find none. "Theydid us up--that's all, " he said funereally. 

Dumont lifted himself into a momentary semblance of his old look andmanner. "You lie, damn you!" he shouted, his mouth raw and ragged as ahungry tiger's. 

Giddings began to cringe, remembered the changed conditions, bounded tohis feet. 

"I'll tolerate such language from no man!" he exclaimed. "I wish yougood morning, sir!" And he was on his way to the door. 

"Come back!" commanded Dumont. And Giddings, the habit of implicitobedience to that voice still strong upon him, hesitated and halfturned. 

Dumont was more impressed with the truth of the cataclysm by Giddings'revolt than by the newspaper head-lines or by Giddings' words. Andfrom somewhere in the depths of his reserve-self he summoned the lastof his coolness and self-control. "Beg pardon, Giddings, " said he. "You see I'm not well. "

Giddings returned--he had taken orders all his life, he had submittedto this master slavishly; the concession of an apology mollified himand flattered him in spite of himself. 

"Oh, don't mention it, " he said, seating himself again. "As I wassaying, the raid was a success. I did the best I could. Some calledour loans and some demanded more collateral. And while I was fightingfront and rear and both sides, bang came that lie about your condition. The market broke. All I could do was sell, sell, sell, to try to meetor protect our loans. "

Giddings heard a sound that made him glance at Dumont. His head hadfallen forward and he was snoring. Giddings looked long and pityingly. 

"A sure enough dead one, " he muttered, unconsciously using the slang ofthe Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing thedoor behind him. 

After half an hour Dumont roused himself--out of a stupor into ahalf-delirious dream. 

"Must get cash, " he mumbled, "and look after the time loans. " He liftedhis head and pushed back his hair from his hot forehead. "I'll stampon those curs yet!"

He took another drink--his hands were so unsteady that he had to useboth of them in lifting it to his lips. He put the flask in his pocketinstead of returning it to the drawer. No one spoke to him, allpretended not to see him as he passed through the offices on his way tothe elevator. With glassy unseeing eyes he fumbled at the dash-boardand side of the hansom; with a groan like a rheumatic old man's helifted his heavy body up into the seat, dropped back and fell asleep. A crowd of clerks and messengers, newsboys and peddlers gathered andgaped, awed as they looked at the man who had been for five years oneof the heroes of the Street, and thought of his dazzling catastrophe. 

"What's the matter?" inquired a new-comer, apparently a tourist, edginghis way into the outskirts of the crowd. 

"That's Dumont, the head of the Woolens Trust, " the curb-broker headdressed replied in a low tone. "He was raided yesterday--woke up inthe morning worth a hundred millions, went to bed worth--perhaps five, maybe nothing at all. "

At this exaggeration of the height and depth of the disaster, awe andsympathy became intense in that cluster of faces. A hundred millionsto nothing at all, or at most a beggarly five millions--what a dizzyprecipice! Great indeed must be he who could fall so far. The driverpeered through the trap, wondering why his distinguished fare enduredthis vulgar scrutiny. He saw that Dumont was asleep, thrust down ahand and shook him. "Where to, sir?" he asked, as Dumont straightenedhimself. 

"To the National Industrial Bank, you fool, " snapped Dumont. "How manytimes must I tell you?"

"Thank you, sir, " said the driver--without sarcasm, thinkingsteadfastly of his pay--and drove swiftly away. 

Theretofore, whenever he had gone to the National Industrial Bank hehad been received as one king is received by another. Either eager andobsequious high officers of King Melville had escorted him directly tothe presence, or King Melville, because he had a caller who could notbe summarily dismissed, had come out apologetically to conduct KingDumont to another audience chamber. That day the third assistantcashier greeted him with politeness carefully graded to the due of aman merely moderately rich and not a factor in the game of high finance. 

"Be seated, Mr. Dumont, " he said, pointing to a chair just inside therailing--a seat not unworthy of a man of rank in the plutocratichierarchy, but a man of far from high rank. "I'll see whether Mr. Melville's disengaged. "

Dumont dropped into the chair and his heavy head was almost immediatelyresting upon his shirt-bosom. The third assistant cashier returned, roused him somewhat impatiently. "Mr. Melville's engaged, " said he. "But Mr. Cowles will see you. " Mr. Cowles was the third vice-president. 

Dumont rose. The blood flushed into his face and his body shook fromhead to foot. "Tell Melville to go to hell, " he jerked out, the hazeclearing for a moment from his piercing, wicked eyes. And he stalkedthrough the gateway in the railing. He turned. "Tell him I'll tearhim down and grind him into the gutter within six months. "

In the hansom again, he reflected or tried to reflect. But the loftybuildings seemed to cast a black shadow on his mind, and the roar andrush of the tremendous tide of traffic through that deep canon set histhoughts to whirling like drink-maddened bacchanals dancing round apunch-bowl. "That woman!" he exclaimed suddenly. "What asses theymake of us men! And all these vultures--I'm not carrion yet. But THEYsoon will be!" And he laughed and his thoughts began their crazy spinagain. 

A newsboy came, waving an extra in at the open doors of the hansom. "Dumont's downfall!" he yelled in his shrill, childish voice. "Allabout the big smash!"

Dumont snatched a paper and flung a copper at the boy. 

"Gimme a tip on Woolens, Mr. Dumont, " said the boy, with an impudentgrin, balancing himself for flight. "How's Mrs. Fanshaw?"

The newspapers had made his face as familiar as the details of hisprivate life. He shrank and quivered. He pushed up the trap. "Home!"he said, forgetting that the hansom and driver were not his own. 

"All right, Mr. Dumont!" replied the driver. Dumont shrank again andsat cowering in the corner--the very calling him by his name, now asynonym for failure, disgrace, ridicule and contempt, seemed a subtileinsult. 

With roaring brain and twitching, dizzy eyes he read at the newspaper'saccount of his overthrow. And gradually there formed in his mind acoherent notion of how it had come to pass, of its extent; of why hefound himself lying in the depths, the victim of humiliations sofrightful that they penetrated even to him, stupefied and crazed withdrink and fever though he was. His courage, his self-command wereburnt up by the brandy. His body had at last revolted, was having itsterrible revenge upon the mind that had so long misused it in everykind of indulgence. 

"I'm done for--done for, " he repeated audibly again and again, at eachrepetition looking round mentally for a fact or a hope that would denythis assertion--but he cast about in vain. "Yes, I'm done for. " Andflinging away the newspaper he settled back and ceased to try to thinkof his affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his blueeyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks, spread out upon his lips, tasted salt in his half-open mouth. 

The hansom stopped before his brick and marble palace. The butlerhurried out and helped him alight--not yet thirty-seven, he felt as ifhe were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby, " he said and groped his wayinto the house and to the elevator and mechanically ran himself up tohis floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He waved him away. "Get out! And don't disturb me till I ring. "

"The doctor--" began Mallow. 

"Do as I tell you!"

When he was alone he poured out brandy and gulped it down a drink thatmight have eaten the lining straight out of a stomach less powerfulthan his. He went from door to door, locking them all. Then he seatedhimself in a lounging-chair before the long mirror. He stared towardthe image of himself but was so dim-eyed that he could see nothing butspinning black disks. "Life's not such a good game even when a man'swinning, " he said aloud. "A rotten bad game when he's losing. "

His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused himself. "Wife gone--"The tears flooded his eyes--tears of pity for himself, an injured andabandoned husband. "Wife gone, " he repeated. "Friends gone--" Helaughed sardonically. "No, never had friends, thank God, or Ishouldn't have lasted this long. No such thing as friends--a man getswhat he can pay for. Grip gone--luck gone! What's the use?"

He dozed off, presently to start into acute, shuddering consciousness. At the far end of the room, stirring, slowly oozing from under thedivan was a--a Thing! He could not define its shape, but he knew thatit was vast, that it was scaly, with many short fat legs tipped withclaws; that its color was green, that its purpose was hideous, gleamingin craft from large, square, green-yellow eyes. He wiped the stickysweat from his brow. "It's only the brandy, " he said loudly, and theThing faded, vanished. He drew a deep breath of relief. 

He went to a case of drawers and stood before it, supporting himself bythe handles of the second drawer. "Yes, " he reflected, "the revolver'sin that drawer. " He released the handles and staggered back to hischair. "I'm crazy, " he muttered, "crazy as a loon. I ought to ringfor the doctor. "

In a moment he was up again, but instead of going toward the bell hewent to the drawers and opened the second one. In a compartment lay apearl-handled, self-cocking revolver. He put his hand on it, shivered, drew his hand away--the steel and the pearl were cold. He closed thedrawer with a quick push, opened it again slowly, took up the revolver, staggered over to his desk and laid it there. His face was chalk-whitein spots and his eyes were stiff in their sockets. He rested hisaching, burning, reeling head on his hands and stared at the revolver. 

"But, " he said aloud, as if contemptuously dismissing a suggestion, "why should I shoot myself? I can smash 'em all--to powder--grind 'eminto the dirt. "

He took up the revolver. "What'd be the use of smashing 'em?" he saidwearily. He felt tired and sick, horribly sick. 

He laid it down. "I'd better be careful, " he thought. "I'm not in myright mind. I might--"

He took it in his hand and went to the mirror and put the muzzleagainst his temple. He laughed crazily. "A little pressure on thattrigger and--bang! I'd be in kingdom come and shouldn't give a damnfor anybody. " He caught sight of his eyes in the mirror and hastilydropped his arm to his side. "No, I'd never shoot myself in thetemple. The heart'd be better. Just here"--and he pressed the muzzleinto the soft material of his coat--"if I touched the trigger--"

And his finger did touch the trigger. Pains shot through his chestlike cracks radiating in glass when a stone strikes it. He looked athis face--white, with wild eyes, with lips blue and ajar, the sweatstreaming from his forehead. 

"What have I done?" he shrieked, mad with the dread of death. "I mustcall for help. " He turned toward the door, plunged forward, fellunconscious, the revolver flung half-way across the room. 

When he came to his senses he was in his bed--comfortable, weak, lazy. With a slight effort he caught the thread of events. He turned hiseyes and saw a nurse, seated at the head of his bed, reading. "Am Igoing to die?" he asked--his voice was thin and came in faint gusts. 

"Certainly not, " replied the nurse, putting down her book and standingover him, her face showing genuine reassurance and cheerfulness. 

"You'll be well very soon. But you must lie quiet and not talk. "

"Was it a bad wound?"

"The fever was the worst. The bullet glanced round just under thesurface. "

"It was an accident, " he said, after a moment's thought. "I supposeeverybody is saying I tried to kill myself. "

"'Everybody' doesn't know anything about it. Almost nobody knows. Even the servants don't know. Your secretary sent them away, broke inand found you. "

He closed his eyes and slept. 

When he awoke again he felt that a long time had passed, that he wasmuch better, that he was hungry. "Nurse!" he called. 

The woman at the head of the bed rose and laid a cool hand upon hisforehead. "How good that feels, " he mumbled gratefully. "What nicehands you have, nurse, " and he lifted his glance to her face. Hestared wonderingly, confusedly. "I thought I was awake and almostwell, " he murmured. "And instead, I'm out of my head. "

"Can I do anything for you?" It certainly was HER voice. 

"Is it you, Pauline?" he asked, as if he feared a negative answer. 

"Yes--John. "

A long silence, then he said: "Why did you come?"

"The doctor wrote me that--wrote me the truth. "

"But haven't you heard? Haven't you seen the papers? Don't they sayI'm ruined?"

"Yes, John. "

He lay silent for several minutes. Then he asked hesitatingly:"And--when--do you--go back--West?"

"I have come to stay, " she replied. Neither in her voice nor in herface was there a hint of what those five words meant to her. 

He closed his eyes again. Presently a tear slid from under each lidand stood in the deep, wasted hollows of his eye-sockets. 

XXVI. 

A DESPERATE RALLY. 

When he awoke again he felt that he should get well rapidly. He wasweak, but it seemed the weakness of hunger rather than of illness. Hishead was clear, his nerves tranquil; his mind was as hungry for actionas his body was for food. 

"As soon as I've had something to eat, " he said to himself, "I'll bebetter than for years. I needed this. " And straightway he began totake hold of the outside world. 

"Are you there, Pauline?" he asked, after perhaps half an hour duringwhich his mind had swiftly swept the whole surface of his affairs. 

The nurse rose from the lounge across the foot of the bed. "Your wifewas worn out, Mr. Dumont, " she began. "She has--"

"What day is it?" he interrupted. 

"Thursday. "

"Of the month, I mean. "

"The seventeenth, " she answered, smiling in anticipation of hisastonishment. 

But he said without change of expression, "Then I've been ill three weeks and three days. Tell Mr. Culver I wishto see him at once. "

"But the doctor--"

"Damn the doctor, " replied Dumont, good-naturedly. "Don't irritate meby opposing. I shan't talk with Culver a minute by the clock. What Isay will put my mind at rest. Then I'll eat something and sleep for aday at least. "

The nurse hesitated, but his eyes fairly forced her out of the room tofetch Culver. "Now remember, Mr. Dumont--less than a minute, " shesaid. "I'll come back in just sixty seconds. "

"Come in forty, " he replied. When she had closed the door he said toCulver: "What are the quotations on Woolens?"

"Preferred twenty-eight; Common seven, " answered Culver. "They've beenabout steady for two weeks. "

"Good. And what's Great Lakes and Gulf?"

Culver showed his surprise. "I'll have to consult the paper, " he said. "You never asked me for that quotation before. I'd no idea you'd wantit. " He went to the next room and immediately returned. "G. L. And G. One hundred and two. "

Dumont smiled with a satisfied expression. 

"Now--go down-town--what time is it?"

"Eight o'clock. "

"Morning?"

"Yes, sir, morning. "

"Go down-town at once and set expert accountants--get Evarts andSchuman--set them at work on my personal accounts with the WoolensCompany. Tell everybody I'm expected to die, and know it, and amgetting facts for making my will. And stay down-town yourself allday--find out everything you can about National Woolens and thatraiding crowd and about Great Lakes and Gulf. The better you succeed inthis mission the better it'll be for you. Thank you, by the way, forkeeping my accident quiet. Find out how the Fanning-Smiths arecarrying National Woolens. Find out--"

The door opened and the plain, clean figure of the nurse appeared. "The minute's up, " she said. 

"One second more, please. Close the door. " When she had obeyed hewent on: "See Tavistock--you know you must be careful not to let anyone at his office know that you're connected with me. See him--askhim--no, telephone Tavistock to come at once--and you find out all youcan independently--especially about the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakesand Gulf. "

"Very well, " said Culver. 

"A great deal depends on your success, " continued Dumont--"a great dealfor me, a great deal--a VERY great deal for you. "

His look met Culver's and each seemed satisfied with what he saw. ThenCulver went, saying to himself: "What makes him think theFanning-Smiths were mixed up in the raid? And what on earth has G. L. And G. Got to do with it? Gad, he's a WONDER!" The longer Culverlived in intimacy with Dumont the greater became to him the mystery ofhis combination of bigness and littleness, audacity and caution, deviland man. "It gets me, " he often reflected, "how a man can plot to robmillions of people in one hour and in the next plan endowments forhospitals and colleges; despise public opinion one minute and the nextbe courting it like an actor. But that's the way with all these bigfellows. And I'll know how to do it when I get to be one of 'em. "

As the nurse reentered Dumont's bedroom he called out, lively as a boy:"SOMETHING to eat! ANYthing to eat! EVERYthing to eat!"

The nurse at first flatly refused to admit Tavistock. But at half-pastnine he entered, tall, lean, lithe, sharp of face, shrewd of eye, rakish of mustache; by Dumont's direction he closed and locked thedoor. "Why!" he exclaimed, "you don't look much of a sick man. You'rethin, but your color's not bad and your eyes are clear. And down-townthey have you dying. "

Dumont laughed. Tavistock instantly recognized in laugh and lookDumont's battle expression. "Dying--yes. Dying to get at 'em. Tavistock, we'll kick those fellows out of Wall Street before themiddle of next week. How much Great Lakes is there floating on themarket?"

Tavistock looked puzzled. He had expected to talk National Woolens, and this man did not even speak of it, seemed absorbed in a stock inwhich Tavistock did not know he had any interest whatever. "G. L. AndG. ?" he said. "Not much--perhaps thirty thousand shares. It's beenquiet for a long time. It's an investment stock, you know. "

Dumont smiled peculiarly. "I want a list of the stock-holders--notall, only those holding more than a thousand shares. "

"There aren't many big holders. Most of the stock's in small lots inthe middle West. "

"So much the better. "

"I'm pretty sure I can get you a fairly accurate list. "

Tavistock, Dumont's very private and personal broker, had many curiousways of reaching into the carefully guarded books and other businesssecrets of brokers and of the enterprises listed on the New York StockExchange. He and Dumont had long worked together in the speculativeparts of Dumont's schemes. Dumont was the chief source of his rapidlygrowing fortune, though no one except Culver, not even Mrs. Tavistock, knew that they had business relations. Dumont moved through Tavistocksecretly, and Tavistock in turn moved through other agents secretly. But for such precautions as these the great men of Wall Street would beplaying with all the cards exposed for the very lambs to cock theirears at. 

"I want it immediately, " said Dumont. "Only the larger holders, youunderstand. "

"Haste always costs. I'll have to get hold of a man who can get holdof some one high up in the Great Lakes dividend department. "

"Pay what you must--ten--twenty thousand--more if necessary. But get itto-night!"

"I'll try. "

"Then you'll get it. "

He slept, with a break of fifteen minutes, until ten the next morning. Then Tavistock appeared with the list. "It was nearly midnight beforemy man could strike a bargain, so I didn't telephone you. The dividendclerk made a memory list. I had him verify it this morning as early ashe could get at the books. He says at least a third of the road isheld in small lots abroad. He's been in charge of the books for twentyyears, and he says there have been more changes in the last two monthsthan in all that time. He thinks somebody has sold a big block of thestock on the quiet. "

Dumont smiled significantly. "I think I understand that, " he said. Heglanced at the list. "It's even shorter than I thought. "

"You notice, one-third of the stock's tied up in the Wentworth estate, "said Tavistock. 

"Yes. And here's the name of Bowen's dividend clerk. Bowen istraveling in the far East. Probably he's left no orders about hisGreat Lakes--why should he when it's supposed to be as sound and steadyas Government bonds? That means another fifty thousand shares out ofthe way for our purposes. Which of these names stand for theFanning-Smiths?"

"I only recognize Scannell--James Fanning-Smith's private secretary. But there must be others, as he's down for only twenty-one thousandshares. "

"Then he's the only one, " said Dumont, "for the Fanning-Smiths haveonly twenty-one thousand shares at the present time. I know thatpositively. "

"What!" Tavistock showed that he was astounded. "I knew JamesFanning-Smith was an ass, but I never suspected him of such folly asthat. So they are the ones that have been selling?"

"Yes--not only selling what they owned but also-- However, no matter. It's safe to say there are less than a hundred and fifty thousandshares for us to take care of. I want you to get me--rightaway--options for fifteen days on as many of these remaining big lotsas possible. Make the best terms you can--anything up to one hundredand twenty-five--and offer five or even ten dollars a share forfeit forthe option. Make bigger offers--fifteen--where it's necessary. Setyour people to work at once. They've got the rest of to-day, all dayto-morrow, all day Sunday. But I'd rather the whole thing were closedup by Saturday night. I'll be satisfied when you've got me control ofa hundred thousand shares--that'll be the outside of safety. "

"Yes, you're reasonably sure to win, if you can carry that and lookafter offerings of fifty thousand in the market. The options on thehundred thousand shares oughtn't to cost you much more than a million. The fifty thousand you'll have to buy in the market may cost you six orseven millions. " Tavistock recited these figures carelessly. Inreality he was watching Dumont shrewdly, for he had believed that theNational Woolens raid had ruined him, had certainly put him out of thelarge Wall Street moves. 

"In that small drawer, to the left, in the desk there, " said Dumont, pointing. "Bring me the Inter-State National check-book, and pen andink. "

When he had the book he wrote eight checks, the first for fiftythousand, the next five for one hundred thousand each, the last two fortwo hundred and fifty thousand each. "The first check, " he said, "youmay use whenever you like. The others, except the last two, will begood after two o'clock to-day. The last two can be used any time aftereleven to-morrow. And--don't forget! I'm supposed to be hopelesslyill--but then, no one must know you've seen me or know anything aboutme. Spread it as a rumor. "

Tavistock went away convinced, enthusiastic. There was that in Dumontwhich inspired men to their strongest, most intelligent efforts. Hewas harsh, he was tyrannical, treacherous even--in a large way, oftencynically ungrateful. But he knew how to lead, knew how to make menforget all but the passion for victory, and follow him loyally. Tavistock had seen his financial brain solve too many "unsolvable"problems not to have confidence in it. 

"I might have known!" he reflected. "Why, those fellows apparentlyonly scotched him. They got the Woolens Company away from him. Helets it go without a murmur when he sees he's beaten, and he turns hismind to grabbing a big railway as if Woolens had never existed. "

Just after his elevated train passed Chatham Square on the waydown-town Tavistock suddenly slapped his leg with noisy energy andexclaimed half-aloud, "By Jove, of course!" to the amusement of thosenear him in the car. He went on to himself: "Why didn't I see itbefore? Because it's so beautifully simple, like all the things thebig 'uns do. He's a wonder. So THAT'S what he's up to? Gad, what abreeze there'll be next week!"

At eleven o'clock Doctor Sackett came into Dumont's bedroom, in armsagainst his patient. 

"You're acting like a lunatic. No business, I say--not for a week. Absolute quiet, Mr. Dumont, or I'll not answer for the consequences. "

"I see you want to drive me back into the fever, " replied Dumont. "ButI'm bent on getting well. I need the medicine I've had this morning, and Culver's bringing me another dose. If I'm not better when heleaves, I agree to try your prescription of fret and fume. "

"You are risking your life. "

Dumont smiled. "Possibly. But I'm risking it for what's more thanlife to me, my dear Sackett. "

"You'll excite yourself. You'll----"

"On the contrary, I shall calm myself. I'm never so calm and cheerfulas when I'm fighting, unless it's when I'm getting ready to fight. There's something inside me--I don't know what--but it won't let merest till it has pushed me into action. That's my nature. If any oneasks how I am, say you've no hope of my recovery. "

"I shall tell only the truth in that case, " said Sackett, but withresignation--he was beginning to believe that for his extraordinarypatient extraordinary remedies might be best. 

Dumont listened to Culver's report without interrupting him once. Culver's position had theretofore been most disadvantageous to himself. He had been too near to Dumont, had been merged in Dumont's bigpersonality. Whatever he did well seemed to Dumont merely the directreflection of his own abilities; whatever he did ill seemed far morestupid than a similar blunder made by a less intimate subordinate--whatexcuse for Culver's going wrong with the guiding hand of the Great Manalways upon him?

In this, his first important independent assignment, he had at last anopportunity to show his master what he could do, to show that he hadnot learned the Dumont methods parrot-fashion, but intelligently, thathe was no mere reflecting asteroid to the Dumont sun, but aself-luminous, if lesser and dependent, star. 

Dumont was in a peculiarly appreciative mood. 

"Why, the fellow's got brains--GOOD brains, " was his inward commentagain and again as Culver unfolded the information he hadcollected--clear, accurate, non-essentials discarded, essentials givenin detail, hidden points brought to the surface. 

It was proof positive of Dumont's profound indifference to money thathe listened without any emotion either of anger or of regret to thefirst part of Culver's tale, the survey of the wreck--what had beenforty millions now reduced to a dubious six. Dumont had neither timenor strength for emotion; he was using all his mentality in gaging whathe had for the work in hand--just how long and how efficient was thebroken sword with which he must face his enemies in a struggle thatmeant utter ruin to him if he failed. For he felt that if he shouldfail he would never again be able to gather himself together to renewthe combat; either he would die outright or he would abandon himself tothe appetite which had just shown itself dangerously near to being thestrongest of the several passions ruling him. 

When Culver passed to the Herron coterie and the Fanning-Smiths andGreat Lakes and Gulf, Dumont was still motionless--he was nowestimating the strength and the weaknesses of the enemy, andmiscalculation would be fatal. At the end of three-quarters of an hourCulver stopped the steady, swift flow of his report--"That's all theimportant facts. There's a lot more but it would be largelyrepetition. "

Dumont looked at him with an expression that made him proud. "Thanks, Culver. At the next annual meeting we'll elect you to Giddings' place. Please go back down-town and--" He rapidly indicated half a dozenpoints which Culver had failed to see and investigate--the bestsubordinate has not the master's eye; if he had, he would not be asubordinate. 

Dumont waved his hand in dismissal and settled himself to sleep. WhenCulver began to stammer thanks for the promised promotion, he frowned. 

"Don't bother me with that sort of stuff. The job's yours becauseyou've earned it. It'll be yours as long as you can hold it down--oruntil you earn a better one. And you'll be loyal as Giddings was--justas long as it's to your interest and not a second longer. Otherwiseyou'd be a fool, and I'd not have you about me. Be off!"

He slept an hour and a half, then Pauline brought him a cup of beefextract--"A very small cup, " he grumbled good-humoredly. "And a veryweak, watery mess in it. "

As he lay propped in his bed drinking it--slowly to make it last thelonger--Pauline sat looking at him. His hands had been fat and puffy;she was filled with pity as she watched the almost scrawny hand holdingthe cup to his lips; there were hollows between the tendons, and thewrist was gaunt. Her gaze wandered to his face and rested there, insympathy and tenderness. The ravages of the fever had beenfrightful--hollows where the swollen, sensual cheeks had been; the neckcaved in behind and under the jaw-bones; loose skin hanging in wattles, deeply-set eyes, a pinched look about the nostrils and the corners ofthe mouth. He was homely, ugly even; except the noble curve of headand profile, not a trace of his former good looks--but at least thatswinish, fleshy, fleshly expression was gone. 

A physical wreck, battered, torn, dismantled by the storm and fire ofdisease! It was hard for her to keep back her tears. 

Their eyes met and his instantly shifted. The rest of the world sawthe man of force bent upon the possessions which mean fame and honorregardless of how they are got. He knew that he could deceive theworld, that so long as he was rich and powerful it would refuse to lethim undeceive it, though he might strive to show it what he was. Buthe knew that SHE saw him as he really was--knew him as only a husbandand a wife can know each the other. And he respected her for thequalities which gave her a right to despise him, and which had forcedher to exercise that right. He felt himself the superior of the restof his fellow-beings, but her inferior; did she not successfully defyhim; could she not, without a word, by simply resting her calm gazeupon him, make him shift and slink?

He felt that he must change the subject--not of their conversation, forthey were not talking, but of their--her--thoughts. He did not knowprecisely what she was thinking of him, but he was certain that it wasnot anything favorable how could it be? In fact, fight though she didagainst the thought, into her mind as she looked, pitying yetshrinking, came his likeness to a wolf--starved and sick and gaunt, byweakness tamed into surface restraint, but in vicious teeth, in savagelips, in jaw made to crush for love of crushing, a wicked wolf, impatient to resume the life of the beast of prey. 

By a mischance unavoidable in a mind filled as was his he began to tellof his revenge--of the exhibition of power he purposed to give, suddenand terrible. He talked of his enemies as a cat might of a mouse itwas teasing in the impassable circle of its paws. She felt that theydeserved the thunderbolt he said he was about to hurl into them, butshe could not help feeling pity for them. If what he said of hisresources and power were true, how feeble, how helpless theywere--pygmies fatuously disporting themselves in the palm of a giant'shand, unconscious of where they were, of the cruel eyes laughing atthem, of the iron muscles that would presently contract that handand--she shuddered; his voice came to her in a confused murmur. 

"If he does not stop I shall loathe him AGAIN!" she said to herself. Then to him: "Perhaps you'd like to see Langdon--he's in thedrawing-room with Gladys. "

"I sent for him two hours ago. Yes, tell him to come up at once. "

As she took the cup he detained her hand. She beat down the impulse tosnatch it away, let it lie passive. He pressed his lips upon it. 

"I haven't thanked you for coming back, " he said in a low voice, holding to her hand nervously. 

"But you know it wasn't because I'm not grateful, don't you? I canhardly believe yet that it isn't a dream. I'd have said there wasn't ahuman being on earth who'd have done it--except your mother. No, noteven you, only your mother. "

At this tribute to her mother, unexpected, sincere, tears dimmedPauline's eyes and a sob choked up into her throat. 

"It was your mother in you that made you come, " he went on. "But youcame--and I'll not forget it. You said you had come to stay--is thatso, Pauline?"

She bent her head in assent. 

"When I'm well and on top again--but there's nothing in words. All I'llsay is, you're giving me a chance, and I'll make the best of it. I'velearned my lesson. "

He slowly released her hand. She stood there a moment, withoutspeaking, without any definite thought. Then she left to send Langdon. 

"Yes, " Dumont reflected, "it was her duty. It's a woman's duty to beforgiving and gentle and loving and pure--they're made differently frommen. It was unnatural, her ever going away at all. But she's a goodwoman, and she shall get what she deserves hereafter. When I settlethis bill for my foolishness I'll not start another. "

Duty--that word summed up his whole conception of the right attitude ofa good woman toward a man. A woman who acted from love might changeher mind; but duty was safe, was always there when a man came back fromwanderings which were mere amiable, natural weaknesses in the male. Love might adorn a honeymoon or an escapade; duty was the properadornment of a home. 

"I've just been viewing the wreck with Culver, " he said, as Langdonentered, dressed in the extreme of the latest London fashion. 

"Much damage?"

"What didn't go in the storm was carried off by Giddings when heabandoned the ship. But the hull's there and--oh, I'll get her off andfix her up all right. "

"Always knew Giddings was a rascal. He oozes piety and respectability. That's the worst kind you have down-town. When a man carries so muchcharacter in his face--it's like a woman who carries so much color inher cheeks that you know it couldn't have come from the inside. "

"You're wrong about Giddings. He's honest enough. Any other man wouldhave done the same in his place. He stayed until there was no hope ofsaving the ship. "

"All lost but his honor--Wall Street honor, eh?"

"Precisely. "

After a pause Langdon said: "I'd no idea you held much of your ownstock. I thought you controlled through other people's proxies andmade your profits by forcing the stock up or down and getting on theother side of the market. "

"But, you see, I believe in Woolens, " replied Dumont. "And I believein it still, Langdon!" His eyes had in them the look of the fanatic. 

"That concern is breath and blood and life to me, and wife and childrenand parents and brothers and sisters. I've put my whole self into it. I conceived it. I brought it into the world. I nursed it and broughtit up. I made it big and strong and great. It's mine, by heaven!MINE! And no man shall take it from me!"

He was sitting up, his face flushed, his eyes blazing. "Gad--he doeslook a wild beast!" said Langdon to himself. He would have said aloud, had Dumont been well: "I'm precious glad I ain't the creature thosefangs are reaching for!" He was about to caution him against excitinghimself when Dumont sank back with a cynical smile at his own outburst. 

"But to get down to business, " he went on. "I've eleven millions ofthe stock left--about a hundred and twenty thousand shares. Gladys hasfifty thousand shares--how much have you got?"

"Less than ten thousand. And I'd have had none at all if my mindhadn't been full of other things as I was sailing. I forgot to tell mybroker to sell. "

Dumont was reflecting. Presently he said: "Those curs not only tookmost of my stock and forced the sale of most of my other securities;they've put me in such a light that outside stockholders wouldn't sendme their proxies now. To get back control I must smash them, and Imust also acquire pretty nearly half the shares, and hold them till I'mfirm in the saddle again. "

"You'd better devote yourself for the present to escaping the grave. Why bother about business? You've got enough--too much, as it is. Take a holiday--go away and amuse yourself. "

Dumont smiled. "That's what I'm going to do, what I'm doing--amusingmyself. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't live, if I didn't feel that I wason my way back to power. Now--in the present market I couldn't borrowon my Woolens stock. I've two requests to make of you. "

"Anything that's possible. "

"The first is, I want you to lend me four millions, or, rather, negotiate the loan for me, as if it were for yourself. I've got aboutthat amount in Governments, in several good railways and in theproperty here. The place at Saint X is Pauline's, but the things I canput up would bring four millions and a half at least at forced sale. So, you'll be well secured. I'm asking you to do it instead of doingit myself because, if I'm to win out, the Herron crowd must think I'mdone for and nearly dead. "

Langdon was silent several minutes. At last he said: "What's yourplan?"

Dumont looked irritated--he did not like to be questioned, to take anyone into his confidence. But he restrained his temper and said: "I'mgoing to make a counter-raid. I know where to strike. "

"Are you sure?"

Dumont frowned. "Don't disturb yourself, " he said coldly. "I canarrange the loan in another way. "

"I'm asking you only for your own sake, Jack, " Langdon hastilyinterposed. "Of course you can have the money, and I don't want yoursecurity. "

"Then I'll not borrow through you. " Dumont never would accept a favorfrom any one. He regarded favors as profitable investments but ruinousdebts. 

"Oh--very well--I'll take the security, " said Langdon. "When do youwant the money?"

"It must be covered into my account at the Inter-StateNational--remember, NOT the National Industrial, but the Inter-StateNational. A million must be deposited to-day--the rest by ten o'clockto-morrow at the latest. "

"I'll attend to it. What's your other request?"

"Woolens'll take another big drop on Monday and at least two hundredand fifty thousand shares'll be thrown on the market at perhaps anaverage price of eighteen--less rather than more. I want you quietlyto organize a syndicate to buy what's offered. They must agree to sellit to me for, say, two points advance on what they pay for it. I'llput up--in your name--a million dollars in cash and forfeit it if Idon't take the stock off their hands. As Woolens is worth easilydouble what it now stands at, they can't lose. Of course the wholething must be kept secret. "

Langdon deliberated this proposal. Finally he said: "I thinkbrother-in-law Barrow and his partner and I can manage it. "

"You can assure them they'll make from six hundred thousand to amillion on a less than thirty days' investment of four millions and ahalf, with no risk whatever. "

"Just about that, " assented Langdon--he had been carefully brought upby his father to take care of a fortune and was cleverer at figuresthan he pretended. 

"Do your buying through Tavistock, " continued Dumont. "Give him ordersto take on Monday all offerings of National Woolens, preferred andcommon, at eighteen or less. He'll understand what to do. "

"But I may be unable to get up the syndicate on such short notice. "

"You must, " said Dumont. "And you will. You can get a move onyourself when you try--I found that out when I was organizing myoriginal combine. One thing more--very important. Learn for me allyou can--without being suspected--about the Fanning-Smiths and GreatLakes. "

He made Langdon go over the matters he was to attend to, point bypoint, before he would let him leave. He was asleep when the nurse, sent in by Langdon on his way out, reached his bed--the sound andpeaceful sleep of a veteran campaigner whose nerves are trained to takeadvantage of every lull. 

At ten the next morning he sent the nurse out of his room. "And closethe doors, " he said, "and don't come until I ring. " He began to usethe branch telephone at his bedside, calling up Langdon, and thenTavistock, to assure himself that all was going well. Next he calledup in succession five of the great individual money-lenders of WallStreet, pledged them to secrecy and made arrangements for them to callupon him at his house at different hours that day and Sunday. Anothermight have intrusted the making of these arrangements to Culver orLangdon, but Dumont never let any one man know enough of his plan ofbattle to get an idea of the whole. 

"Now for the ammunition, " he muttered, when the last appointment wasmade. And he rang for Culver. 

Culver brought him writing materials. "Take this order, " he said, ashe wrote, "to the Central Park Safety Deposit vaults and bring me frommy compartment the big tin box with my initials in white--remember, INWHITE--on the end of it. "

Three-quarters of an hour later Culver returned, half-carrying, half-dragging the box. Dumont's eyes lighted up at sight of it. "Ah!"he said, in a sigh of satisfaction and relief. "Put it under the headof the bed here. Thanks. That's all. "

The nurse came as Culver left, but he sent her away. He supportedhimself to the door, locked it. He took his keys from the night-stand, drew out the box and opened it. On the mass of stocks and bonds lay anenvelope containing two lists--one, of the securities in the box thatwere the property of Gladys Dumont; the other, of the securities therethat were the property of Laura Dumont, their mother. 

His hands shook as he unfolded these lists, and a creaking in the wallsor flooring made him start and glance round with the look of asurprised thief. But this weakness was momentary. He was soonabsorbed in mentally arranging the securities to the best advantage fordistribution among the money-lenders as collateral for the cash hepurposed to stake in his game. 

Such thought as he gave to the moral quality of what he was doing withhis sister's and his mother's property without asking their consent wasaltogether favorable to himself. His was a well-trained, "practical"conscience. It often anticipated his drafts upon it for moral supportin acts that might at first blush seem criminal, or for soothingapologies for acts which were undeniably "not QUITE right. " Thisparticular act, conscience assured him, was of the highestmorality--under his own code. For the code enacted by ordinary humanbeings to guide their foolish little selves he had no more respect thana lion would have for a moral code enacted by and for sheep. The sheepmight assert that their code was for lions also; but why should thatmove the lions to anything but amusement? He had made his owncode--not by special revelation from the Almighty, as did some of hisfellow practitioners of high finance, but by especial command of hisimperial "destiny. " And it was a strict code--it had earned him hisunblemished reputation for inflexible commercial honesty and commercialtruthfulness. The foundation principle was his absolute right to thegreat property he had created. This being granted, how could there beimmorality in any act whatsoever that might be necessary to hold orregain his kingdom? As well debate the morality of a mother in"commandeering" bread or even a life to save her baby from death. 

His kingdom! His by discovery, his by adroit appropriation, his byintelligent development, his by the right of mental might--HIS! Stakehis sister's and his mother's possessions for it? Their lives, ifnecessary!

Than John Dumont, president of the Woolens Monopoly, there was nofirmer believer in the gospel of divine right--the divine right of thisnew race of kings, the puissant lords of trade. 

When he had finished his preparations for the money-lenders he unlockedthe door and sank into bed exhausted. Hardly had he settled himselfwhen, without knocking, Gladys entered, Pauline just behind her. Hisface blanched and from his dry throat came a hoarse, strange cry--itcertainly sounded like fright. "You startled me--that was all, " hehastened to explain, as much to himself as to them. For, a somethinginside him had echoed the wondering inquiry in the two women's faces--asomething that persisted in reverencing the moral code which his newcode had superseded. 

XXVII. 

THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT. 

At eleven o'clock on Monday morning James, head of the Fanning-Smithfamily, president of Fanning-Smith and Company, and chairman of theGreat Lakes and Gulf railway--to note his chief titles to eminenceup-town and down--was seated in his grandfather's office, in hisgrandfather's chair, at his grandfather's desk. Above his head hunghis grandfather's portrait; and he was a slightly modernizedreproduction of it. As he was thus in every outward essential hisgrandfather over again, he and his family and the social and businessworld assumed that he was the reincarnation of the crafty old fox whofirst saw the light of day through the chinks in a farm-hand's cottagein Maine and last saw it as it sifted through the real-lace curtains ofhis gorgeous bedroom in his great Madison Avenue mansion. But in factJames was only physically and titularly the representative of hisgrandfather. Actually he was typical of the present generation ofFanning-Smiths--a self-intoxicated, stupid and pretentious generation;a polo-playing and racing and hunting, a yachting and palace-dwellingand money-scattering generation; a business-despising andbusiness-neglecting, an old-world aristocracy-imitating generation. Hemoved pompously through his two worlds, fashion and business, deceivinghimself completely, every one else except his wife more or less, hernot at all--but that was the one secret she kept. 

James was the husband of Herron's daughter by his first wife, andHerron had induced him to finance the syndicate that had raided andcaptured National Woolens. 

James was bred to conservatism. His timidity was of that wholesomestrength which so often saves chuckle-heads from the legitimateconsequences of their vanity and folly. But the spectacle of hugefortunes, risen overnight before the wands of financial magicians whoseabilities he despised when he compared them with his own, was too muchfor timidity. He had been born with a large vanity, and it had beenstuffed from his babyhood by all around him until it was become asabnormal as the liver of a Strasburg goose--and as supersensitive. Itsuffered acutely as these Jacks went climbing up their bean-stalkwealth to heights of magnificence from which the establishments andequipages of the Fanning-Smiths must seem poor to shabbiness. Hesneered at them as "vulgar new-comers"; he professed abhorrence oftheir ostentation. But he--and Gertrude, his wife--envied them, talkedof them constantly, longed to imitate, to surpass them. 

In the fullness of time his temptation came. He shivered, shrank, leaped headlong--his wife pushing. 

About ten days before the raid on National Woolens there had drifted into Dumont through one of his many subterranean sources of information arumor that the Fanning-Smiths had stealthily reduced their holdings ofGreat Lakes to twenty-one thousand shares and that the property was notso good as it had once been. He never permitted any Wall Streetdevelopment to pass unexplained--he thought it simple prudence for aman with the care of a great financial and commercial enterprise tolook into every dark corner of the Street and see what was hatchingthere. Accordingly, he sent an inquiry back along his secret avenue. Soon he learned that Great Lakes was sound, but the Fanning-Smiths hadgone rotten; that they were gambling in the stock of the road theycontrolled and were supposed in large part to own; that they weresecretly selling its stock "short"--that is, were betting it would godown--when there was nothing in the condition of the property tojustify a fall. He reflected on this situation and reached theseconclusions: "James Fanning-Smith purposes to pass the autumndividend, which will cause the stock to drop. Then he will take hisprofits from the shares he has sold short and will buy back control atthe low price. He is a fool and a knave. Only an imbecile would thustrifle with an established property. A chance for some one to make afortune and win a railroad by smashing the Fanning-Smiths. " Havingrecorded in his indelible memory these facts and conclusions as toJames Fanning-Smith's plunge from business into gambling, Dumontreturned to his own exacting affairs. 

He had himself begun the race for multi-millions as a gambler and hadonly recently become ALMOST altogether a business man. But he thoughtthere was a radical difference between his case and Fanning-Smith's. To use courageous gambling as means to a foothold in business--heregarded that as wise audacity. To use a firm-established foothold inbusiness as a means to gambling--he regarded that as the acme ofreckless folly. Besides, when he marked the cards or loaded the dicefor a great Wall Street game of "high finance, " he did it with skilland intelligence; and Fanning-Smith had neither. 

When the banking-house of Fanning-Smith and Company undertook tofinance the raid on National Woolens it was already deep in the GreatLakes gamble. James was new to Wall Street's green table; and he likedthe sensations and felt that his swindle on other gamblers and thepublic--he did not call it by that homely name, though he knew otherswould if they found him out--was moving smoothly. Still very, verydeep down his self-confidence was underlaid with quicksand. But Herronwas adroit and convincing to the degree attainable only by those whodeceive themselves before trying to deceive others; and James' cupidityand conceit were enormous. He ended by persuading himself that hishouse, directed and protected by his invincible self, could carry withease the burden of both loads. Indeed, the Great Lakes gamble nowseemed to him a negligible trifle in the comparison--what were itsprofits of a few hundred thousands beside the millions that wouldsurely be his when the great Woolens Monopoly, bought in for a smallfraction of its value, should be controlled by a group of which hewould be the dominant personality?

He ventured; he won. He was now secure--was not Dumont dispossessed, despoiled, dying?

At eleven o'clock on that Monday morning he was seated upon hisembossed leather throne, under his grandfather's portrait, immersed inan atmosphere of self-adoration. At intervals he straightened himself, distended his chest, elevated his chin and glanced round with an air ofhaughty dignity, though there was none to witness and to be impressed. In Wall Street there is a fatuity which, always epidemic among thesmall fry, infects wise and foolish, great and small, whenever aparetic dream of an enormous haul at a single cast of the net happensto come true. This paretic fatuity now had possession of James; inimagination he was crowning and draping himself with multi-millions, power and fame. At intervals he had been calling up on the telephoneat his elbow Zabriskie, the firm's representative on 'Change, and hadbeen spurring him on to larger and more frequent "sales" of Great Lakes. 

His telephone bell rang. He took down the receiver--"Yes, it's Mr. Fanning-Smith--oh--Mr. Fanshaw----" He listened, in his face for thefirst few seconds all the pitying amusement a small, vain man can putinto an expression of superiority. "Thank you, Mr. Fanshaw, " he said. "But really, it's impossible. WE are perfectly secure. No one wouldventure to disturb US. " And he pursed his lips and swelled his fatcheeks in the look for which his father was noted. But, afterlistening a few seconds longer, his eyes had in them the beginnings oftimidity. 

He turned his head so that he could see the ticker-tape as it reeledoff. His heavy cheeks slowly relaxed. "Yes, yes, " he said hurriedly. 

"I'll just speak to our Mr. Zabriskie. Good-by. " And he rang off andhad his telephone connected with the telephone Zabriskie was using atthe Stock Exchange. All the while his eyes were on the ticker-tape. Suddenly he saw upon it where it was bending from under the turningwheel a figure that made him drop the receiver and seize it in both histrembling hands. "Great heavens!" he gasped. "Fanshaw may be right. Great Lakes one hundred and twelve--and only a moment ago it was onehundred and three. "

His visions of wealth and power and fame were whisking off in a gale ofterror. A new quotation was coming from under the wheel--Great Lakesone hundred and fifteen. In his eyes stared the awful thought that wasraging in his brain--"This may mean----" And his vanity instantlythrust out Herron and Gertrude and pointed at them as the criminals whowould be responsible if--he did not dare formulate the possibilities ofthat bounding price. 

The telephone boy at the other end, going in search of Zabriskie, leftthe receiver off the hook and the door of the booth open. IntoFanning-Smith's ear came the tumult from the floor of theExchange--shrieks and yells riding a roar like the breakers of aninfernal sea. And on the ticker-tape James was reading the story ofthe cause, was reading how his Great Lakes venture was caught in thosebreakers, was rushing upon the rocks amid the despairing wails of itscrew, the triumphant jeers of the wreckers on shore. Great Lakes onehundred and eighteen--tick--tick--tick--Great Lakes one hundred andtwenty-three--tick--tick--tick--Great Lakes one hundred andthirty--tick--tick--tick--Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-five--

"It can't be true!" he moaned. "It CAN'T be true! If it is I'mruined--all of us ruined!"

The roar in the receiver lessened--some one had entered the booth atthe other end and had closed the door. "Well!" he heard in a sharp, impatient voice--Zabriskie's. 

"What is it, Ned--what's the matter? Why didn't you tell me?"Fanning-Smith's voice was like the shrill shriek of a coward in aperilous storm. It was in itself complete explanation of Zabriskie'sneglect to call upon him for orders. 

"Don't ask me. Somebody's rocketing Great Lakes--taking all offerings. Don't keep me here. I'm having a hard enough time, watching this crazymarket and sending our orders by the roundabout way. Got anything tosuggest?"

Tick--tick--tick--Commander-in-chief Fanning-Smith watched the crawlingtape in fascinated horror--Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-eight. It had spelled out for him another letter of that hideous word, Ruin. All the moisture of his body seemed to be on the outside; inside, hewas dry and hot as a desert. If the price went no higher, if it didnot come down, nearly all he had in the world would be needed to settlehis "short" contracts. For he would have to deliver at one hundred andseven, more than two hundred thousand shares which he had contracted tosell; and to get them for delivery he would have to pay one hundred andthirty-eight dollars a share. A net loss of more than six millions!

"You must get that price down--you must! You MUST!" quavered James. 

"Hell!" exclaimed Zabriskie--he was the youngest member of the firm, ason of James' oldest sister. "Tell me how, and I'll do it. "

"You're there--you know what to do, " pleaded James. "And I order youto get that price down!"

"Don't keep me here, talking rot. I've been fighting--and I'm going tokeep on. "

James shivered. Fighting! There was no fight in him--all his life hehad got everything without fighting. "Do your best, " he said. "I'mvery ill to-day. I'm--"

"Good-by--" Zabriskie had hung up the receiver. 

James sat staring at the tape like a paralytic staring at death. Theminutes lengthened into an hour--into two hours. No one disturbedhim--when the battle is on who thinks of the "honorary commander"? Atone o'clock he shook himself, brushed his hand over hiseyes--quotations of Woolens were reeling off the tape, alternating withquotations of Great Lakes. 

"Zabriskie is selling our Woolens, " he thought. Then, with a blindingflash the truth struck through his brain. He gave a loud cry between asob and a shriek and, flinging his arms at full length upon his desk, buried his face between them and burst into tears. 

"Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" And his shoulders, his whole body, shooklike a child in a paroxysm. 

A long, long ring at the telephone. Fanning-Smith, irritated by theinsistent jingling so close to his ear, lifted himself andanswered--the tears were guttering his swollen face; his lips andeyelids were twitching. 

"Well?" he said feebly. 

"We've got 'em on the run, " came the reply in Zabriskie's voice, jubilant now. 

"Who?"

"Don't know who--whoever was trying to squeeze us. I had to throw oversome Woolens--but I'll pick it up again--maybe to-day. "

Fanning-Smith could hear the roar of the Exchange--wilder, fiercer thanthree hours before, but music to him now. He looked sheepishly at theportrait of his grandfather. When its eyes met his he flushed andshifted his gaze guiltily. "Must have been something I ate forbreakfast, " he muttered to the portrait and to himself in apologeticexplanation of his breakdown. 

In a distant part of the field all this time was posted thecommander-in-chief of the army of attack. Like all wise commanders inall well-conducted battles, he was far removed from the blinding smoke, from the distracting confusion. He had placed himself where he couldhear, see, instantly direct, without being disturbed by triflingreverse or success, by unimportant rumors to vast proportions blown. 

To play his game for dominion or destruction John Dumont had hadhimself arrayed in a wine-colored, wadded silk dressing-gown over hiswhite silk pajamas and had stretched himself on a divan in hissitting-room in his palace. A telephone and a stock-ticker within easyreach were his field-glasses and his aides--the stock-ticker would showhim second by second the precise posture of the battle; the telephonewould enable him to direct it to the minutest manoeuver. 

The telephone led to the ear of his chief of staff, Tavistock, who wasat his desk in his privatest office in the Mills Building, about himtelephones straight to the ears of the division commanders. None ofthese knew who was his commander; indeed, none knew that there was tobe a battle or, after the battle was on, that they were part of one ofits two contending armies. They would blindly obey orders, ignorantwho was aiming the guns they fired and at whom those guns were aimed. Such conditions would have been fatal to the barbaric struggles forsupremacy which ambition has waged through all the past; they are idealconditions for these modern conflicts of the market which more and moreabsorb the ambitions of men. Instead of shot and shell and regimentsof "cannon food, " there are battalions of capital, the papercertificates of the stored-up toil or trickery of men; instead ofmangled bodies and dead, there are minds in the torment of financialperil or numb with the despair of financial ruin. But the stakes arethe same old stakes--power and glory and wealth for a few, thousands onthousands dragged or cozened into the battle in whose victory theyshare scantily, if at all, although they bear its heaviest losses onboth sides. 

It was half-past eight o'clock when Dumont put the receiver to his earand greeted Tavistock in a strong, cheerful voice. "Never felt betterin my life, " was his answer to Tavistock's inquiry as to his health. "Even old Sackett admits I'm in condition. But he says I must have noirritations--so, be careful to carry out orders. "

He felt as well as he said. His body seemed the better for its restand purification, for its long freedom from his occasional but terrificassaults upon it, for having got rid of the superfluous flesh which hadbeen swelling and weighting it. 

He made Tavistock repeat all the orders he had given him, to assurehimself he had not been misunderstood. As he listened to the rehearsalof his own shrewd plans his eyes sparkled. "I'll bag the last----ofthem, " he muttered, and his lips twisted into a smile at which Culverwinced. 

When the ticker clicked the first quotation of Great Lakes Dumont said:"Now, clear out, Culver! And shut the door after you, and let no oneinterrupt me until I call. " He wished to have no restraint upon histhoughts, no eyes to watch his face, no ears to hear what the fortuneof the battle might wring from him. 

As the ticker pushed out the news of the early declines and recoveriesin Great Lakes, Tavistock leading the Fanning-Smith crowd on to makeheavier and heavier plunges, Dumont could see in imagination thebattle-field--the floor of the Stock Exchange--as plainly as if he werethere. 

The battle began with a languid cannonade between the two seeminglyopposed parts of Dumont's army. Under cover of this he captured mostof the available actual shares of Great Lakes--valuable aids towardmaking his position, his "corner, " impregnable. But before he hadaccomplished his full purpose Zabriskie, nominal lieutenant-commander, actual commander of the Fanning-Smith forces, advanced to give battle. Instead of becoming suspicious at the steadiness of the price under hisattacks upon it, Zabriskie was lured on to sell more of those GreatLakes shares which he did not have. And he beamed from his maskedposition as he thought of the batteries he was holding in reserve forhis grand movement to batter down the price of the stock late in theday, and capture these backers of the property that was supposed to beunder the protection of the high and honorable Fanning-Smiths. 

He was still thinking along this line, as he stood aloof and apparentlydisinterested, when Dumont began to close in upon him. Zabriskie, astonished by this sudden tremendous fire, was alarmed when under itsprotection the price advanced. He assaulted in force with largeselling orders; but the price pushed on and the fierce cannonade oflarger and larger buying orders kept up. When Great Lakes had mountedin a dozen bounds from one hundred and seven to one hundred andthirty-nine, he for the first time realized that he was facing not anunorganized speculating public but a compact army, directed by a singlemind to a single purpose. "A lunatic--a lot of lunatics, " he said, having not the faintest suspicion of the reason for the creation ofthese conditions of frenzy. Still, if this rise continued or was notreversed the Fanning-Smiths would be ruined--by whom? "Some of thoseChicago bluffers, " he finally decided. "I must throw a scare into Ithem. "

He could have withdrawn from the battle then with a pitiful remnant ofthe Fanning-Smiths and their associates--that is, he thought he could, for he did not dream of the existence of the "corner. " But he chosethe opposite course. He flung off his disguise and boldly attacked thestock with selling orders openly in the name of the Fanning-Smiths. 

"When they see us apparently unloading our own ancestral property Ithink they'll take to their heels, " he said. But his face was pale ashe awaited the effect of his assault. 

The price staggered, trembled. The clamor of the battle alarmed thosein the galleries of the Stock Exchange--Zabriskie's brokers selling, the brokers of the mysterious speculator buying, the speculating publicthrough its brokers joining in on either side; men shrieking into eachother's faces as they danced round and round the Great Lakes pillar. The price went down, went up, went down, down, down--Zabriskie hadhurled selling orders for nearly fifty thousand shares at it and Dumonthad commanded his guns to cease firing. He did not dare take any moreofferings; he had reached the end of the ammunition he had planned toexpend at that particular stage of the battle. 

The alarm spread and, although Zabriskie ceased selling, the pricecontinued to fall under the assaults of the speculating public, mad toget rid of that which its own best friends were so eagerly and sofrankly throwing over. Down, down, down to one hundred and twenty, toone hundred and ten, to one hundred and five----

Zabriskie telephoned victory to his nominal commander, lifting him, weak and trembling, from the depths into which he had fallen, to an atleast upright position upon his embossed leather throne. ThenZabriskie began stealthily to cover his appallingly long line of"shorts" by making purchases at the lowest obtainable prices--onehundred and four--one hundred and three--one hundred andone--ninety-nine--one hundred and six!

The price rebounded so rapidly and so high that Zabriskie was forced tostop his retreat. Dumont, noting the celerity with which the enemywere escaping under cover of the demoralization, had decided no longerto delay the move for which he had saved himself. He had suddenlyexploded under the falling price mine after mine of buying orders thatblew it skyward. Zabriskie's retreat was cut off. 

But before he had time to reason out this savage renewal of the assaultby that mysterious foe whom he thought he had routed, he saw a new andmore dreadful peril. Brackett, his firm's secret broker, rushed to himand, to make himself heard through the hurly-burly, shouted into hisear:

"Look what's doing in Woolens!"

Dumont had ordered a general assault upon his enemies, front, rear andboth flanks. His forces were now attacking not only through GreatLakes but also through Woolens. Two apparently opposing sets of hisbrokers were trading in Woolens, were hammering the price down, down, apoint, an eighth, a half, a quarter, at a time. The sweat burst outall over Zabriskie's body and his eyes rolled wildly. He was caughtamong four fires:

To continue to sell Great Lakes in face of its rising price--that wasruin. To cease to sell it and so let its price go up to where he couldnot buy when settlement time came--that was ruin. To sell Woolens, tohelp batter down its price, to shrink the value of his enormousinvestment in it--ruin again. To buy Woolens in order to hold up itsprice, to do it when he would need all obtainable cash to extricate himfrom the Great Lakes entanglement--ruin, certain ruin. 

His judgment was gone; his brute instinct of fighting was dominant; hebegan to strike out wildly, his blows falling either nowhere or uponhimself. 

At the Woolens post he was buying in the effort to sustain its price, buying stock that might be worthless when he got it--and that he mightnot be able to pay for. At the Great Lakes post he was selling in theeffort to force the price down, selling more and more of a stock he didnot have and---- At last the thought flashed into his befuddled brain:"There may be a corner in Great Lakes. What if there were no stock tobe had?"

He struck his hands against the sides of his head. "Trapped!" hegroaned, then bellowed in Brackett's ear. "Sell Woolens--do the bestyou can to keep the price up, but sell at any price! We must havemoney--all we can get! And tell Farley"--Farley was Brackett'spartner--"to buy Great Lakes--buy all he can get--at any price. Somebody's trying to corner us!"

He felt--with an instinct he could not question--that there was indeeda corner in Great Lakes, that he and his house and their associateswere caught. Caught with promises to deliver thousands upon thousandsof shares of Great Lakes, when Great Lakes could be had only of themysterious cornerer, and at whatever price he might choose to ask!

"If we've got to go down, " he said to himself, "I'll see that it's atremendous smash anyhow, and that we ain't alone in it. " For he had inhim the stuff that makes a man lead a forlorn hope with a certain joyin the very hopelessness of it. 

The scene on the day of Dumont's downfall was a calm in comparison withthe scene which Dumont, sitting alone among the piled-up coils ofticker-tape, was reconstructing from its, to him, vividsecond-by-second sketchings. 

The mysterious force which had produced a succession of earthquakesmoved horribly on, still in mystery impenetrable, to produce acataclysm. In the midst of the chaos two vast whirlpools formed--onewhere Great Lakes sucked down men and fortunes, the other where Woolensdrew some down to destruction, flung others up to wealth. Then Rumor, released by Tavistock when Dumont saw that the crisis had arrived, ranhot foot through the Exchange, screaming into the ears of the brokers, shrieking through the telephones, howling over the telegraph wires, "Acorner! A corner! Great Lakes is cornered!" Thousands besides theFanning-Smith coterie had been gambling in Great Lakes, had sold sharesthey did not have. And now all knew that to get them they must go tothe unknown, but doubtless merciless, master-gambler--unless they couldsave themselves by instantly buying elsewhere before the steel jaws ofthe corner closed and clinched. 

Reason fled, and self-control. The veneer of civilization was tornaway to the last shred; and men, turned brute again, gave themselves upto the elemental passions of the brute. 

In the quiet, beautiful room in upper Fifth Avenue was Dumont in hiswine-colored wadded silk dressing-gown and white silk pajamas. Thefloor near his lounge was littered with the snake-like coils ofticker-tape. They rose almost to his knees as he sat and throughtelephone and ticker drank in the massacre of his making, gluttedhimself with the joy of the vengeance he was taking--on his enemies, onhis false or feeble friends, on the fickle public that had trampled andspat upon him. His wet hair was hanging in strings upon his forehead. His face was flushed and his green-gray eyes gleamed like a mad dog's. At intervals a jeer or a grunt of gratified appetite ripped from hismouth or nose. Like a great lean spider he lay hid in the center ofthat vast net of electric wires, watching his prey writhe helpless. Pauline, made uneasy by his long isolation, opened his door andlooked--glanced, rather. As she closed it, in haste to shut from viewthat spectacle of a hungry monster at its banquet of living flesh, Culver saw her face. Such an expression an angel might have, did itchance to glance down from the battlements of heaven and, before itcould turn away, catch a glimpse of some orgy in hell. 

But Dumont did not hear the door open and close. He was at the climaxof his feast. 

Upon his two maelstroms, sucking in the wreckage from a dozen otherexplosions as well as from those he had directly caused, he could seeas well as if he were among the fascinated, horrified spectators in thegalleries of the Exchange, the mangled flotsam whirling and descendingand ascending. The entire stock list, the entire speculating public ofthe country was involved. And expression of the emotions everywherewas by telegraph and telephone concentrated in the one hall, upon thefaces and bodies of those few hundred brokers. All the passions whichlove of wealth and dread of want breed in the human animal were therefinding vent--all degrees and shades and modes of greed, of hate, offear, of despair. It was like a shipwreck where the whole fleet isflung upon the reefs, and the sailors, drunk and insane, struggle withdeath each in his own awful way. It was like the rout where frenziedvictors ride after and among frenzied vanquished to shoot and stab andsaber. 

And while this battle, precipitated by the passions of a few "captainsof industry, " raged in Wall Street and filled the nation with theclamor of ruined or triumphant gamblers, ten-score thousand toilers inthe two great enterprises directly involved toiled tranquillyon--herding sheep and shearing them, weaving cloths and dyeing them, driving engines, handling freight, conducting trains, usefully busy, adding to the sum of human happiness, subtracting from the sum of humanmisery. 

At three o'clock Dumont sank back among his cushions and pillows. Hischild, his other self, his Woolens Monopoly, was again his own; hisenemies were under his heel, as much so as those heaps and coils ofticker-tape he had been churning in his excitement. "I'm dead tired, "he muttered, his face ghastly, his body relaxed in utter exhaustion. 

He closed his eyes. "I must sleep--I've earned it. To-morrow"--a smileflitted round his mouth--"I'll hang their hides where every coyote andvulture can see. "

Toward four o'clock in came Doctor Sackett and Culver. The room wasflooded with light--the infinite light of the late-spring afternoonreflected on the white enamel and white brocade of walls and furniture. On the floor in the heaps and coils of ticker-tape lay Dumont. 

In his struggles the tape had wound round and round his legs, his arms, his neck. It lay in a curling, coiling mat, like a serpent's head, upon his throat, where his hands clutched the collar of his pajamas. 

Sackett knelt beside him, listening at his chest, feeling for his pulsein vain. And Culver stood by, staring stupidly at the now worthlessinstrument of his ambition for wealth and power. 

XXVIII. 

AFTER THE LONG WINTER. 

Within two hours Langdon, in full control, had arranged with Tavistockto make the imperiled victory secure. Thus, not until the next day butone did it come out that the cataclysm had been caused by a man ruinedand broken and with his back against death's door to hold it shut; thatDumont himself had turned the triumphing host of his enemies into aflying mob, in its panic flinging away its own possessions as well asits booty. 

Perhaps the truth never would have been known, perhaps Langdon wouldhave bribed Tavistock to silence and would have posed as the conqueringgenius, had he found out a day earlier how Dumont had put himself infunds. As it was, this discovery did not come too late for him toseize the opportunity that was his through Dumont's secret methods, Pauline's indifference to wealth and his own unchecked authority. Hehas got many an hour of--strictly private--mental gymnastics out of themoral problem he saw, in his keeping for himself and Gladys the spoilshe gathered up. He is inclined to think he was intelligent rather thanright; but, knowing his weakness for self-criticism, he never gives apositive verdict against himself. That, however, is unimportant, as heis not the man to permit conscience to influence conduct in gravematters. 

He feels that, in any case, he did not despoil Pauline or Gardiner. For, after he had told her what Dumont did--and to protect himself hehastened to tell it--she said: "Whatever there may be, it's all forGardiner. I waive my own rights, if I have any. But you must give meyour word of honor that you won't let anything tainted pass to him. "Langdon, judging with the delicacy of a man of honor put on honor, wasable to find little such wealth. 

He gives himself most of the credit for Gardiner's turning out sowell--"Inherited riches are a hopeless handicap, " he often says toGladys when they are talking over the future of their children. 

Pauline--

The first six months of her new life, of her resumed life, she spent inEurope with her father and mother and Gardiner. Late in the fall theywere back at Saint X, at the old house in Jefferson Street. In thefollowing June came Scarborough. She was in the garden, was waitingfor him, was tying up a tall rose, whose splendid, haughty head hadbent under the night's rain. 

He was quite near her when she heard his step and turned. He stood, looked at her--the look she had seen that last afternoon at BattleField. He came slowly up and took both her hands. 

"After all the waiting and longing and hoping, " he said, "at last--you!I can't put it into words--except to say--just--Pauline!"

She drew a long breath; her gaze met his. And in her eyes he saw aflame that had never shone clearly there before--the fire of her ownreal self, free and proud. "Once you told me about your father andmother--how he cared--cared always. "

"I remember, " he answered. 

"Well--I--I, " said Pauline, "I care as SHE must have cared when shegave him herself--and YOU. "