THE EARLY SHORT FICTION OF EDITH WHARTON

By Edith Wharton

A Ten-Volume Collection

Volume One

Contents of Volume One

 Stories KERFOL......................... March 1916 MRS. MANSTEY'S VIEW............ July 1891 THE BOLTED DOOR................ March 1909 THE DILETTANTE................. December 1903 THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND..... August 1904

The following works not included in the present eBook:

 Verse THE PARTING DAY................ February 1880 AEROPAGUS...................... March 1880 A FAILURE...................... April 1880 PATIENCE....................... April 1880 WANTS.......................... May 1880 THE LAST GIUSTIANINI........... October 1889 EURYALUS....................... December 1889 HAPPINESS...................... December 1889

 Bibliography

 EDITH WHARTON BIBLIOGRAPHY: SHORT STORIES AND POEMS........ Judy Boss

KERFOL

As first published in Scribner's Magazine, March 1916

I

"You ought to buy it, " said my host; "it's just the place for asolitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while toown the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are deadbroke, and it's going for a song--you ought to buy it. "

It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my friendLanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my unsociableexterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity) that I tookhis hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was motoringover to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a cross-roadon a heath, and said: "First turn to the right and second to the left. Then straight ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any peasants, don't ask your way. They don't understand French, and they would pretendthey did and mix you up. I'll be back for you here by sunset--and don'tforget the tombs in the chapel. "

I followed Lanrivain's directions with the hesitation occasioned by theusual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the first turnto the right and second to the left, or the contrary. If I had met apeasant I should certainly have asked, and probably been sent astray;but I had the desert landscape to myself, and so stumbled on the rightturn and walked on across the heath till I came to an avenue. It was sounlike any other avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it mustbe THE avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a greatheight and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnelthrough which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most trees by name, but I haven't to this day been able to decide what those trees were. They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity of poplars, the ashencolour of olives under a rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me forhalf a mile or more without a break in their arch. If ever I saw anavenue that unmistakably led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol. My heart beat a little as I began to walk down it. 

Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a long wall. Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other greyavenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossedwith silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled withwild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had beenreplaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stoodfor a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, andletting the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: "If I waitlong enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs--" and Irather hoped he wouldn't turn up too soon. 

I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, itstruck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blindhouse looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me. Itmay have been the depth of the silence that made me so conscious of mygesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as the scraping of abrake, and I almost fancied I heard it fall when I tossed it ontothe grass. But there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, of littleness, of childish bravado, in sitting there puffing mycigarette-smoke into the face of such a past. 

I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol--I was new to Brittany, andLanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day before--butone couldn't as much as glance at that pile without feeling in it along accumulation of history. What kind of history I was not prepared toguess: perhaps only the sheer weight of many associated lives and deathswhich gives a kind of majesty to all old houses. But the aspect ofKerfol suggested something more--a perspective of stern and cruelmemories stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur ofdarkness. 

Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with thepresent. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and gables to thesky, it might have been its own funeral monument. "Tombs in the chapel?The whole place is a tomb!" I reflected. I hoped more and more that theguardian would not come. The details of the place, however striking, would seem trivial compared with its collective impressiveness; and Iwanted only to sit there and be penetrated by the weight of its silence. 

"It's the very place for you!" Lanrivain had said; and I was overcome bythe almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being thatKerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible that any one could NOTsee--?" I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant wasundefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginningto want to know more; not to SEE more--I was by now so sure it was nota question of seeing--but to feel more: feel all the place had tocommunicate. "But to get in one will have to rout out the keeper, " Ithought reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the bridge andtried the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked under the tunnel formedby the thickness of the chemin de ronde. At the farther end, a woodenbarricade had been laid across the entrance, and beyond it I saw a courtenclosed in noble architecture. The main building faced me; and I nowdiscovered that one half was a mere ruined front, with gaping windowsthrough which the wild growths of the moat and the trees of the parkwere visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust beauty. Oneend abutted on the round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel, and in an angle of the building stood a graceful well-head adornedwith mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upperwindow-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias. 

My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to myarchitectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a desireto explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court, wondering inwhich corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed open the barrierand went in. As I did so, a little dog barred my way. He was such aremarkably beautiful little dog that for a moment he made me forgetthe splendid place he was defending. I was not sure of his breed at thetime, but have since learned that it was Chinese, and that he was ofa rare variety called the "Sleeve-dog. " He was very small and goldenbrown, with large brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked ratherlike a large tawny chrysanthemum. I said to myself: "These little beastsalways snap and scream, and somebody will be out in a minute. "

The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing: therewas anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound, he came nonearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticedthat another dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up. "There'llbe a hubbub now, " I thought; for at the same moment a third dog, along-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined theothers. All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but not a soundcame from them. As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffledpaws, still watching me. "At a given point, they'll all charge at myankles: it's one of the dodges that dogs who live together put up onone, " I thought. I was not much alarmed, for they were neither largenor formidable. But they let me wander about the court as I pleased, following me at a little distance--always the same distance--and alwayskeeping their eyes on me. Presently I looked across at the ruinedfacade, and saw that in one of its window-frames another dog stood: alarge white pointer with one brown ear. He was an old grave dog, muchmore experienced than the others; and he seemed to be observing me witha deeper intentness. 

"I'll hear from HIM, " I said to myself; but he stood in the emptywindow-frame, against the trees of the park, and continued to watch mewithout moving. I looked back at him for a time, to see if the sensethat he was being watched would not rouse him. Half the width of thecourt lay between us, and we stared at each other silently across it. But he did not stir, and at last I turned away. Behind me I found therest of the pack, with a newcomer added: a small black greyhound withpale agate-coloured eyes. He was shivering a little, and his expressionwas more timid than that of the others. I noticed that he kept a littlebehind them. And still there was not a sound. 

I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me--waiting, asthey seemed to be waiting. At last I went up to the little golden-browndog and stooped to pat him. As I did so, I heard myself laugh. Thelittle dog did not start, or growl, or take his eyes from me--he simplyslipped back about a yard, and then paused and continued to look at me. "Oh, hang it!" I exclaimed aloud, and walked across the court toward thewell. 

As I advanced, the dogs separated and slid away into different cornersof the court. I examined the urns on the well, tried a locked door ortwo, and up and down the dumb facade; then I faced about toward thechapel. When I turned I perceived that all the dogs had disappearedexcept the old pointer, who still watched me from the emptywindow-frame. It was rather a relief to be rid of that cloud ofwitnesses; and I began to look about me for a way to the back of thehouse. "Perhaps there'll be somebody in the garden, " I thought. I founda way across the moat, scrambled over a wall smothered in brambles, andgot into the garden. A few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in theflower-beds, and the ancient house looked down on them indifferently. Its garden side was plainer and severer than the other: the longgranite front, with its few windows and steep roof, looked likea fortress-prison. I walked around the farther wing, went up somedisjointed steps, and entered the deep twilight of a narrow andincredibly old box-walk. The walk was just wide enough for one person toslip through, and its branches met overhead. It was like the ghost of abox-walk, its lustrous green all turning to the shadowy greyness of theavenues. I walked on and on, the branches hitting me in the face andspringing back with a dry rattle; and at length I came out on the grassytop of the chemin de ronde. I walked along it to the gate-tower, lookingdown into the court, which was just below me. Not a human being wasin sight; and neither were the dogs. I found a flight of steps in thethickness of the wall and went down them; and when I emerged again intothe court, there stood the circle of dogs, the golden-brown one a littleahead of the others, the black greyhound shivering in the rear. 

"Oh, hang it--you uncomfortable beasts, you!" I exclaimed, my voicestartling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood motionless, watching me. I knew by this time that they would not try to prevent my approachingthe house, and the knowledge left me free to examine them. I had afeeling that they must be horribly cowed to be so silent and inert. Yetthey did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth andthey were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as ifthey had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or lookedat them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed theirbusy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost humanlassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beatenanimals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax theminto a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their fixed andweary eyes the more preposterous the idea became. With the windows ofthat house looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing?The dogs knew better: THEY knew what the house would tolerate and whatit would not. I even fancied that they knew what was passing throughmy mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But even that feeling probablyreached them through a thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea thattheir distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. In thelast analysis, the impression they produced was that of having in commonone memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since wasworth either a growl or a wag. 

"I say, " I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb circle, "doyou know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look as if you'dseen a ghost--that's how you look! I wonder if there IS a ghost here, and nobody but you left for it to appear to?" The dogs continued to gazeat me without moving... 

It was dark when I saw Lanrivain's motor lamps at the cross-roads--and Iwasn't exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having escaped fromthe loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking loneliness--tothat degree--as much as I had imagined I should. My friend had broughthis solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and seated beside a fatand affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk of Kerfol... 

But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in thestudy, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the drawing-room. 

"Well--are you going to buy Kerfol?" she asked, tilting up her gay chinfrom her embroidery. 

"I haven't decided yet. The fact is, I couldn't get into the house, " Isaid, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to go back foranother look. 

"You couldn't get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to sell theplace, and the old guardian has orders--"

"Very likely. But the old guardian wasn't there. "

"What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter--?"

"There was nobody about. At least I saw no one. "

"How extraordinary! Literally nobody?"

"Nobody but a lot of dogs--a whole pack of them--who seemed to have theplace to themselves. "

Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and folded herhands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully. 

"A pack of dogs--you SAW them?"

"Saw them? I saw nothing else!"

"How many?" She dropped her voice a little. "I've always wondered--"

I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be familiarto her. "Have you never been to Kerfol?" I asked. 

"Oh, yes: often. But never on that day. "

"What day?"

"I'd quite forgotten--and so had Herve, I'm sure. If we'd remembered, wenever should have sent you today--but then, after all, one doesn't halfbelieve that sort of thing, does one?"

"What sort of thing?" I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to thelevel of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: "I KNEW there was something... "

Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring smile. "Didn't Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixedup in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some ofthem are rather unpleasant. "

"Yes--but those dogs?" I insisted. 

"Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants saythere's one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and thatday the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. Thewomen in Brittany drink dreadfully. " She stooped to match a silk; thenshe lifted her charming inquisitive Parisian face: "Did you REALLY see alot of dogs? There isn't one at Kerfol, " she said. 

II

Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the backof an upper shelf of his library. 

"Yes--here it is. What does it call itself? A History of the Assizesof the Duchy of Brittany. Quimper, 1702. The book was written about ahundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I believe the accountis transcribed pretty literally from the judicial records. Anyhow, it'squeer reading. And there's a Herve de Lanrivain mixed up in it--notexactly MY style, as you'll see. But then he's only a collateral. Here, take the book up to bed with you. I don't exactly remember the details;but after you've read it I'll bet anything you'll leave your lightburning all night!"

I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it waschiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. Theaccount of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol, was long and closely printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably analmost literal transcription of what took place in the court-room;and the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book wasdetestable... 

At first I thought of translating the old record literally. But itis full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story areforever straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangleit, and give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I havereverted to the text because no other words could have conveyed soexactly the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I addedanything of my own. 

III

It was in the year 16-- that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain ofKerfol, went to the pardon of Locronan to perform his religious duties. He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his sixty-second year, buthale and sturdy, a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So allhis neighbours attested. In appearance he seems to have been shortand broad, with a swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, ahanging nose and broad hands with black hairs on them. He had marriedyoung and lost his wife and son soon after, and since then had livedalone at Kerfol. Twice a year he went to Morlaix, where he had ahandsome house by the river, and spent a week or ten days there; andoccasionally he rode to Rennes on business. Witnesses were found todeclare that during these absences he led a life different from the onehe was known to lead at Kerfol, where he busied himself with his estate, attended mass daily, and found his only amusement in hunting the wildboar and water-fowl. But these rumours are not particularlyrelevant, and it is certain that among people of his own class in theneighbourhood he passed for a stern and even austere man, observant ofhis religious obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. There wasno talk of any familiarity with the women on his estate, though at thattime the nobility were very free with their peasants. Some people saidhe had never looked at a woman since his wife's death; but such thingsare hard to prove, and the evidence on this point was not worth much. 

Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the pardon atLocronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who had ridden overpillion behind her father to do her duty to the saint. Her name was Annede Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but much lessgreat and powerful than that of Yves de Cornault; and her father hadsquandered his fortune at cards, and lived almost like a peasant in hislittle granite manor on the moors... I have said I would add nothing ofmy own to this bald statement of a strange case; but I must interruptmyself here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gateof Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was alsodismounting there. I take my description from a rather rare thing: afaded drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough to be by a latepupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain's study, and is said tobe a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. It is unsigned and has no mark ofidentity but the initials A. B. , and the date 16--, the year after hermarriage. It represents a young woman with a small oval face, almostpointed, yet wide enough for a full mouth with a tender depression atthe corners. The nose is small, and the eyebrows are set rather high, far apart, and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinesepainting. The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, which onefeels to be fine and thick and fair, drawn off it and lying close likea cap. The eyes are neither large nor small, hazel probably, with a lookat once shy and steady. A pair of beautiful long hands are crossed belowthe lady's breast... 

The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when the Baroncame back from Locronan he jumped from his horse, ordered another to beinstantly saddled, called to a young page come with him, and rode awaythat same evening to the south. His steward followed the next morningwith coffers laden on a pair of pack mules. The following week Yves deCornault rode back to Kerfol, sent for his vassals and tenants, andtold them he was to be married at All Saints to Anne de Barrigan ofDouarnenez. And on All Saints' Day the marriage took place. 

As to the next few years, the evidence on both sides seems to show thatthey passed happily for the couple. No one was found to say that Yvesde Cornault had been unkind to his wife, and it was plain to all thathe was content with his bargain. Indeed, it was admitted by the chaplainand other witnesses for the prosecution that the young lady had asoftening influence on her husband, and that he became less exactingwith his tenants, less harsh to peasants and dependents, and lesssubject to the fits of gloomy silence which had darkened his widow-hood. As to his wife, the only grievance her champions could call up in herbehalf was that Kerfol was a lonely place, and that when her husband wasaway on business at Rennes or Morlaix--whither she was never taken--shewas not allowed so much as to walk in the park unaccompanied. But noone asserted that she was unhappy, though one servant-woman said shehad surprised her crying, and had heard her say that she was a womanaccursed to have no child, and nothing in life to call her own. Butthat was a natural enough feeling in a wife attached to her husband; andcertainly it must have been a great grief to Yves de Cornault thatshe gave him no son. Yet he never made her feel her childlessness as areproach--she herself admits this in her evidence--but seemed to try tomake her forget it by showering gifts and favours on her. Rich thoughhe was, he had never been open-handed; but nothing was too fine forhis wife, in the way of silks or gems or linen, or whatever else shefancied. Every wandering merchant was welcome at Kerfol, and when themaster was called away he never came back without bringing his wifea handsome present--something curious and particular--from Morlaix orRennes or Quimper. One of the waiting-women gave, in cross-examination, an interesting list of one year's gifts, which I copy. From Morlaix, acarved ivory junk, with Chinamen at the oars, that a strange sailor hadbrought back as a votive offering for Notre Dame de la Clarte, abovePloumanac'h; from Quimper, an embroidered gown, worked by the nuns ofthe Assumption; from Rennes, a silver rose that opened and showed anamber Virgin with a crown of garnets; from Morlaix, again, a lengthof Damascus velvet shot with gold, bought of a Jew from Syria; and forMichaelmas that same year, from Rennes, a necklet or bracelet of roundstones--emeralds and pearls and rubies--strung like beads on a goldwire. This was the present that pleased the lady best, the woman said. Later on, as it happened, it was produced at the trial, and appears tohave struck the Judges and the public as a curious and valuable jewel. 

The very same winter, the Baron absented himself again, this time as faras Bordeaux, and on his return he brought his wife something even odderand prettier than the bracelet. It was a winter evening when he rode upto Kerfol and, walking into the hall, found her sitting listlessly bythe fire, her chin on her hand, looking into the fire. He carried avelvet box in his hand and, setting it down on the hearth, lifted thelid and let out a little golden-brown dog. 

Anne de Cornault exclaimed with pleasure as the little creature boundedtoward her. "Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!" she cried as shepicked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked ather with eyes "like a Christian's. " After that she would never haveit out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been achild--as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to know. Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had beenbrought to him by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and thesailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolenit from a nobleman's wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do, since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen doomed tohellfire. Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for the dog, for theywere beginning to be in demand at the French court, and the sailor knewhe had got hold of a good thing; but Anne's pleasure was so great that, to see her laugh and play with the little animal, her husband woulddoubtless have given twice the sum. 

So far, all the evidence is at one, and the narrative plain sailing;but now the steering becomes difficult. I will try to keep as nearly aspossible to Anne's own statements; though toward the end, poor thing... 

Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown dog was broughtto Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter night, was found dead at thehead of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his wife's rooms toa door opening on the court. It was his wife who found him and gave thealarm, so distracted, poor wretch, with fear and horror--for his bloodwas all over her--that at first the roused household could not make outwhat she was saying, and thought she had gone suddenly mad. But there, sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay her husband, stone dead, andhead foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down to the stepsbelow him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the faceand throat, as if with a dull weapon; and one of his legs had a deeptear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his death. Buthow did he come there, and who had murdered him?

His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearinghis cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this wasimmediately questioned. In the first place, it was proved that from herroom she could not have heard the struggle on the stairs, owing to thethickness of the walls and the length of the intervening passage; thenit was evident that she had not been in bed and asleep, since she wasdressed when she roused the house, and her bed had not been slept in. Moreover, the door at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and the key inthe lock; and it was noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that thedress she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that therewere traces of small blood-stained hands low down on the staircasewalls, so that it was conjectured that she had really been at thepostern-door when her husband fell and, feeling her way up to him in thedarkness on her hands and knees, had been stained by his blood drippingdown on her. Of course it was argued on the other side that theblood-marks on her dress might have been caused by her kneeling down byher husband when she rushed out of her room; but there was the open doorbelow, and the fact that the fingermarks in the staircase all pointedupward. 

The accused held to her statement for the first two days, in spite ofits improbability; but on the third day word was brought to her thatHerve de Lanrivain, a young nobleman of the neighbourhood, had beenarrested for complicity in the crime. Two or three witnesses thereuponcame forward to say that it was known throughout the country thatLanrivain had formerly been on good terms with the lady of Cornault; butthat he had been absent from Brittany for over a year, and people hadceased to associate their names. The witnesses who made this statementwere not of a very reputable sort. One was an old herb-gatherersuspected of witch-craft, another a drunken clerk from a neighbouringparish, the third a half-witted shepherd who could be made to sayanything; and it was clear that the prosecution was not satisfiedwith its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof ofLanrivain's complicity than the statement of the herb-gatherer, whoswore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night ofthe murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days wasto put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on thethird day, when she was brought into court, she "appeared weak andwandering, " and after being encouraged to collect herself and speakthe truth, on her honour and the wounds of her Blessed Redeemer, sheconfessed that she had in fact gone down the stairs to speak with Hervede Lanrivain (who denied everything), and had been surprised there bythe sound of her husband's fall. That was better; and the prosecutionrubbed its hands with satisfaction. The satisfaction increased whenvarious dependents living at Kerfol were induced to say--with apparentsincerity--that during the year or two preceding his death their masterhad once more grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the fitsof brooding silence which his household had learned to dread before hissecond marriage. This seemed to show that things had not been going wellat Kerfol; though no one could be found to say that there had been anysigns of open disagreement between husband and wife. 

Anne de Cornault, when questioned as to her reason for going down atnight to open the door to Herve de Lanrivain, made an answer which musthave sent a smile around the court. She said it was because she waslonely and wanted to talk with the young man. Was this the only reason?she was asked; and replied: "Yes, by the Cross over your Lordships'heads. " "But why at midnight?" the court asked. "Because I could see himin no other way. " I can see the exchange of glances across the erminecollars under the Crucifix. 

Anne de Cornault, further questioned, said that her married life hadbeen extremely lonely: "desolate" was the word she used. It was truethat her husband seldom spoke harshly to her; but there were dayswhen he did not speak at all. It was true that he had never struck orthreatened her; but he kept her like a prisoner at Kerfol, and when herode away to Morlaix or Quimper or Rennes he set so close a watch onher that she could not pick a flower in the garden without having awaiting-woman at her heels. "I am no Queen, to need such honours, " sheonce said to him; and he had answered that a man who has a treasure doesnot leave the key in the lock when he goes out. "Then take me with you, "she urged; but to this he said that towns were pernicious places, andyoung wives better off at their own firesides. 

"But what did you want to say to Herve de Lanrivain?" the court asked;and she answered: "To ask him to take me away. "

"Ah--you confess that you went down to him with adulterous thoughts?"

"No. "

"Then why did you want him to take you away?"

"Because I was afraid for my life. "

"Of whom were you afraid?"

"Of my husband. "

"Why were you afraid of your husband?"

"Because he had strangled my little dog. "

Another smile must have passed around the court-room: in days when anynobleman had a right to hang his peasants--and most of them exercisedit--pinching a pet animal's wind-pipe was nothing to make a fuss about. 

At this point one of the Judges, who appears to have had a certainsympathy for the accused, suggested that she should be allowed toexplain herself in her own way; and she thereupon made the followingstatement. 

The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but her husband hadnot been unkind to her. If she had had a child she would not have beenunhappy; but the days were long, and it rained too much. 

It was true that her husband, whenever he went away and left her, brought her a handsome present on his return; but this did not make upfor the loneliness. At least nothing had, till he brought her the littlebrown dog from the East: after that she was much less unhappy. Herhusband seemed pleased that she was so fond of the dog; he gave herleave to put her jewelled bracelet around its neck, and to keep italways with her. 

One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the dog at her feet, ashis habit was. Her feet were bare and resting on his back. Suddenly shewas waked by her husband: he stood beside her, smiling not unkindly. 

"You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying in thechapel with her feet on a little dog, " he said. 

The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and answered:"Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, withmy dog at my feet. "

"Oho--we'll wait and see, " he said, laughing also, but with his blackbrows close together. "The dog is the emblem of fidelity. "

"And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?"

"When I'm in doubt I find out, " he answered. "I am an old man, " headded, "and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I swear youshall have your monument if you earn it. "

"And I swear to be faithful, " she returned, "if only for the sake ofhaving my little dog at my feet. "

Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and whilehe was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy, cameto spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the pardon of Ste. Barbe. Shewas a woman of great piety and consequence, and much respected by Yvesde Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbeno one could object, and even the chaplain declared himself in favour ofthe pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for the firsttime she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He had come once or twice toKerfol with his father, but she had never before exchanged a dozen wordswith him. They did not talk for more than five minutes now: it was underthe chestnuts, as the procession was coming out of the chapel. He said:"I pity you, " and she was surprised, for she had not supposed that anyone thought her an object of pity. He added: "Call for me when you needme, " and she smiled a little, but was glad afterward, and thought oftenof the meeting. 

She confessed to having seen him three times afterward: not more. Howor where she would not say--one had the impression that she feared toimplicate some one. Their meetings had been rare and brief; and at thelast he had told her that he was starting the next day for a foreigncountry, on a mission which was not without peril and might keep him formany months absent. He asked her for a remembrance, and she had noneto give him but the collar about the little dog's neck. She was sorryafterward that she had given it, but he was so unhappy at going that shehad not had the courage to refuse. 

Her husband was away at the time. When he returned a few days laterhe picked up the little dog to pet it, and noticed that its collar wasmissing. His wife told him that the dog had lost it in the undergrowthof the park, and that she and her maids had hunted a whole day for it. It was true, she explained to the court, that she had made the maidssearch for the necklet--they all believed the dog had lost it in thepark... 

Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in hisusual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which. He talkeda good deal, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes; but nowand then he stopped and looked hard at her; and when she went to bed shefound her little dog strangled on her pillow. The little thing wasdead, but still warm; she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned tohorror when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting twiceround its throat the necklet she had given to Lanrivain. 

The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the garden, and hid thenecklet in her breast. She said nothing to her husband, then or later, and he said nothing to her; but that day he had a peasant hanged forstealing a faggot in the park, and the next day he nearly beat to deatha young horse he was breaking. 

Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long nights, one byone; and she heard nothing of Herve de Lanrivain. It might be thather husband had killed him; or merely that he had been robbed of thenecklet. Day after day by the hearth among the spinning maids, nightafter night alone on her bed, she wondered and trembled. Sometimes attable her husband looked across at her and smiled; and then she feltsure that Lanrivain was dead. She dared not try to get news of him, forshe was sure her husband would find out if she did: she had an ideathat he could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a notedseer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to thecastle for a night's shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne heldback. The winter was long and black and rainy. One day, in Yvesde Cornault's absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol with a troop ofperforming dogs. Anne bought the smallest and cleverest, a white dogwith a feathery coat and one blue and one brown eye. It seemed to havebeen ill-treated by the gypsies, and clung to her plaintively when shetook it from them. That evening her husband came back, and when she wentto bed she found the dog strangled on her pillow. 

After that she said to herself that she would never have another dog;but one bitter cold evening a poor lean greyhound was found whining atthe castle-gate, and she took him in and forbade the maids to speak ofhim to her husband. She hid him in a room that no one went to, smuggledfood to him from her own plate, made him a warm bed to lie on and pettedhim like a child. 

Yves de Cornault came home, and the next day she found the greyhoundstrangled on her pillow. She wept in secret, but said nothing, andresolved that even if she met a dog dying of hunger she would neverbring him into the castle; but one day she found a young sheep-dog, abrindled puppy with good blue eyes, lying with a broken leg in the snowof the park. Yves de Cornault was at Rennes, and she brought the dogin, warmed and fed it, tied up its leg and hid it in the castle tillher husband's return. The day before, she gave it to a peasant womanwho lived a long way off, and paid her handsomely to care for it and saynothing; but that night she heard a whining and scratching at her door, and when she opened it the lame puppy, drenched and shivering, jumped upon her with little sobbing barks. She hid him in her bed, and the nextmorning was about to have him taken back to the peasant woman when sheheard her husband ride into the court. She shut the dog in a chest andwent down to receive him. An hour or two later, when she returned to herroom, the puppy lay strangled on her pillow... 

After that she dared not make a pet of any other dog; and her lonelinessbecame almost unendurable. Sometimes, when she crossed the court ofthe castle, and thought no one was looking, she stopped to pat the oldpointer at the gate. But one day as she was caressing him her husbandcame out of the chapel; and the next day the old dog was gone... 

This curious narrative was not told in one sitting of the court, orreceived without impatience and incredulous comment. It was plain thatthe Judges were surprised by its puerility, and that it did not help theaccused in the eyes of the public. It was an odd tale, certainly; butwhat did it prove? That Yves de Cornault disliked dogs, and that hiswife, to gratify her own fancy, persistently ignored this dislike. As for pleading this trivial disagreement as an excuse for herrelations--whatever their nature--with her supposed accomplice, theargument was so absurd that her own lawyer manifestly regretted havinglet her make use of it, and tried several times to cut short her story. But she went on to the end, with a kind of hypnotized insistence, asthough the scenes she evoked were so real to her that she had forgottenwhere she was and imagined herself to be re-living them. 

At length the Judge who had previously shown a certain kindness to hersaid (leaning forward a little, one may suppose, from his row of dozingcolleagues): "Then you would have us believe that you murdered yourhusband because he would not let you keep a pet dog?"

"I did not murder my husband. "

"Who did, then? Herve de Lanrivain?"

"No. "

"Who then? Can you tell us?"

"Yes, I can tell you. The dogs--" At that point she was carried out ofthe court in a swoon. 

 . . . . . . . . 

It was evident that her lawyer tried to get her to abandon this lineof defense. Possibly her explanation, whatever it was, had seemedconvincing when she poured it out to him in the heat of their firstprivate colloquy; but now that it was exposed to the cold daylight ofjudicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town, he was thoroughly ashamedof it, and would have sacrificed her without a scruple to save hisprofessional reputation. But the obstinate Judge--who perhaps, afterall, was more inquisitive than kindly--evidently wanted to hearthe story out, and she was ordered, the next day, to continue herdeposition. 

She said that after the disappearance of the old watch-dog nothingparticular happened for a month or two. Her husband was much as usual:she did not remember any special incident. But one evening a pedlarwoman came to the castle and was selling trinkets to the maids. She hadno heart for trinkets, but she stood looking on while the women madetheir choice. And then, she did not know how, but the pedlar coaxed herinto buying for herself an odd pear-shaped pomander with a strong scentin it--she had once seen something of the kind on a gypsy woman. She hadno desire for the pomander, and did not know why she had bought it. Thepedlar said that whoever wore it had the power to read the future;but she did not really believe that, or care much either. However, shebought the thing and took it up to her room, where she sat turning itabout in her hand. Then the strange scent attracted her and she began towonder what kind of spice was in the box. She opened it and found a greybean rolled in a strip of paper; and on the paper she saw a sign sheknew, and a message from Herve de Lanrivain, saying that he was at homeagain and would be at the door in the court that night after the moonhad set... 

She burned the paper and then sat down to think. It was nightfall, andher husband was at home... She had no way of warning Lanrivain, andthere was nothing to do but to wait... 

At this point I fancy the drowsy courtroom beginning to wake up. Evento the oldest hand on the bench there must have been a certain aestheticrelish in picturing the feelings of a woman on receiving such a messageat night-fall from a man living twenty miles away, to whom she had nomeans of sending a warning... 

She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the first result of hercogitation she appears to have made the mistake of being, that evening, too kind to her husband. She could not ply him with wine, according tothe traditional expedient, for though he drank heavily at times he hada strong head; and when he drank beyond its strength it was becausehe chose to, and not because a woman coaxed him. Not his wife, at anyrate--she was an old story by now. As I read the case, I fancy there wasno feeling for her left in him but the hatred occasioned by his supposeddishonour. 

At any rate, she tried to call up her old graces; but early in theevening he complained of pains and fever, and left the hall to go up tohis room. His servant carried him a cup of hot wine, and brought backword that he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened at his door, she heard hisloud regular breathing. She thought it might be a feint, and stayed along time barefooted in the cold passage, her ear to the crack; but thebreathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of aman in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood inthe window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The skywas misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was pitchblack. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past herhusband's door--where she stopped again to listen to his breathing--tothe top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and assured herselfthat no one was following her; then she began to go down the stairs inthe darkness. They were so steep and winding that she had to go veryslowly, for fear of stumbling. Her one thought was to get the doorunbolted, tell Lanrivain to make his escape, and hasten back to herroom. She had tried the bolt earlier in the evening, and managed to puta little grease on it; but nevertheless, when she drew it, it gave asqueak... Not loud, but it made her heart stop; and the next minute, overhead, she heard a noise... 

"What noise?" the prosecution interposed. 

"My husband's voice calling out my name and cursing me. "

"What did you hear after that?"

"A terrible scream and a fall. "

"Where was Herve de Lanrivain at this time?"

"He was standing outside in the court. I just made him out in thedarkness. I told him for God's sake to go, and then I pushed the doorshut. "

"What did you do next?"

"I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened. "

"What did you hear?"

"I heard dogs snarling and panting. " (Visible discouragement of thebench, boredom of the public, and exasperation of the lawyer for thedefense. Dogs again--! But the inquisitive Judge insisted. )

"What dogs?"

She bent her head and spoke so low that she had to be told to repeat heranswer: "I don't know. "

"How do you mean--you don't know?"

"I don't know what dogs... "

The Judge again intervened: "Try to tell us exactly what happened. Howlong did you remain at the foot of the stairs?"

"Only a few minutes. "

"And what was going on meanwhile overhead?"

"The dogs kept on snarling and panting. Once or twice he cried out. Ithink he moaned once. Then he was quiet. "

"Then what happened?"

"Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is thrownto them--gulping and lapping. "

(There was a groan of disgust and repulsion through the court, andanother attempted intervention by the distracted lawyer. But theinquisitive Judge was still inquisitive. )

"And all the while you did not go up?"

"Yes--I went up then--to drive them off. "

"The dogs?"

"Yes. "

"Well--?"

"When I got there it was quite dark. I found my husband's flint andsteel and struck a spark. I saw him lying there. He was dead. "

"And the dogs?"

"The dogs were gone. "

"Gone--where to?"

"I don't know. There was no way out--and there were no dogs at Kerfol. "

She straightened herself to her full height, threw her arms above herhead, and fell down on the stone floor with a long scream. There was amoment of confusion in the court-room. Some one on the bench was heardto say: "This is clearly a case for the ecclesiastical authorities"--andthe prisoner's lawyer doubtless jumped at the suggestion. 

After this, the trial loses itself in a maze of cross-questioning andsquabbling. Every witness who was called corroborated Anne de Cornault'sstatement that there were no dogs at Kerfol: had been none for severalmonths. The master of the house had taken a dislike to dogs, there wasno denying it. But, on the other hand, at the inquest, there had beenlong and bitter discussion as to the nature of the dead man's wounds. One of the surgeons called in had spoken of marks that looked likebites. The suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the opposinglawyers hurled tomes of necromancy at each other. 

At last Anne de Cornault was brought back into court--at the instance ofthe same Judge--and asked if she knew where the dogs she spoke of couldhave come from. On the body of her Redeemer she swore that she did not. Then the Judge put his final question: "If the dogs you think you heardhad been known to you, do you think you would have recognized them bytheir barking?"

"Yes. "

"Did you recognize them?"

"Yes. "

"What dogs do you take them to have been?"

"My dead dogs, " she said in a whisper... She was taken out of court, not to reappear there again. There was some kind of ecclesiasticalinvestigation, and the end of the business was that the Judges disagreedwith each other, and with the ecclesiastical committee, and that Anne deCornault was finally handed over to the keeping of her husband's family, who shut her up in the keep of Kerfol, where she is said to have diedmany years later, a harmless madwoman. 

So ends her story. As for that of Herve de Lanrivain, I had only toapply to his collateral descendant for its subsequent details. Theevidence against the young man being insufficient, and his familyinfluence in the duchy considerable, he was set free, and left soonafterward for Paris. He was probably in no mood for a worldly life, andhe appears to have come almost immediately under the influence of thefamous M. Arnauld d'Andilly and the gentlemen of Port Royal. A year ortwo later he was received into their Order, and without achieving anyparticular distinction he followed its good and evil fortunes till hisdeath some twenty years later. Lanrivain showed me a portrait of him bya pupil of Philippe de Champaigne: sad eyes, an impulsive mouth and anarrow brow. Poor Herve de Lanrivain: it was a grey ending. Yet asI looked at his stiff and sallow effigy, in the dark dress of theJansenists, I almost found myself envying his fate. After all, in thecourse of his life two great things had happened to him: he had lovedromantically, and he must have talked with Pascal... 

The End

MRS. MANSTEY'S VIEW

As first published in Scribner's Magazine, July, 1891

The view from Mrs. Manstey's window was not a striking one, but to herat least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey occupied theback room on the third floor of a New York boarding-house, in a streetwhere the ash-barrels lingered late on the sidewalk and the gaps in thepavement would have staggered a Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of aclerk in a large wholesale house, and his death had left her alone, forher only daughter had married in California, and could not afford thelong journey to New York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps, mighthave joined her daughter in the West, but they had now been so manyyears apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each other'ssociety, and their intercourse had long been limited to the exchange ofa few perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growingstiff with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter'scompanionship, Mrs. Manstey's increasing infirmity, which caused her todread the three flights of stairs between her room and the street, wouldhave given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey; andwithout perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long since acceptedas a matter of course her solitary life in New York. 

She was, indeed, not quite lonely, for a few friends still toiled up nowand then to her room; but their visits grew rare as the years went by. Mrs. Manstey had never been a sociable woman, and during her husband'slifetime his companionship had been all-sufficient to her. For manyyears she had cherished a desire to live in the country, to have ahen-house and a garden; but this longing had faded with age, leavingonly in the breast of the uncommunicative old woman a vague tendernessfor plants and animals. It was, perhaps, this tenderness which made hercling so fervently to her view from her window, a view in which themost optimistic eye would at first have failed to discover anythingadmirable. 

Mrs. Manstey, from her coign of vantage (a slightly projectingbow-window where she nursed an ivy and a succession of unwholesome-lookingbulbs), looked out first upon the yard of her own dwelling, of which, however, she could get but a restricted glimpse. Still, her gaze took inthe topmost boughs of the ailanthus below her window, and she knew howearly each year the clump of dicentra strung its bending stalk withhearts of pink. 

But of greater interest were the yards beyond. Being for the most partattached to boarding-houses they were in a state of chronic untidinessand fluttering, on certain days of the week, with miscellaneous garmentsand frayed table-cloths. In spite of this Mrs. Manstey found much toadmire in the long vista which she commanded. Some of the yards were, indeed, but stony wastes, with grass in the cracks of the pavement andno shade in spring save that afforded by the intermittent leafage of theclothes-lines. These yards Mrs. Manstey disapproved of, but the others, the green ones, she loved. She had grown used to their disorder; thebroken barrels, the empty bottles and paths unswept no longer annoyedher; hers was the happy faculty of dwelling on the pleasanter side ofthe prospect before her. 

In the very next enclosure did not a magnolia open its hard whiteflowers against the watery blue of April? And was there not, a littleway down the line, a fence foamed over every May be lilac waves ofwistaria? Farther still, a horse-chestnut lifted its candelabra of buffand pink blossoms above broad fans of foliage; while in the oppositeyard June was sweet with the breath of a neglected syringa, whichpersisted in growing in spite of the countless obstacles opposed to itswelfare. 

But if nature occupied the front rank in Mrs. Manstey's view, there wasmuch of a more personal character to interest her in the aspect of thehouses and their inmates. She deeply disapproved of the mustard-coloredcurtains which had lately been hung in the doctor's window opposite; butshe glowed with pleasure when the house farther down had its old brickswashed with a coat of paint. The occupants of the houses did not oftenshow themselves at the back windows, but the servants were always insight. Noisy slatterns, Mrs. Manstey pronounced the greater number;she knew their ways and hated them. But to the quiet cook in the newlypainted house, whose mistress bullied her, and who secretly fed thestray cats at nightfall, Mrs. Manstey's warmest sympathies were given. On one occasion her feelings were racked by the neglect of a housemaid, who for two days forgot to feed the parrot committed to her care. On thethird day, Mrs. Manstey, in spite of her gouty hand, had just penned aletter, beginning: "Madam, it is now three days since your parrot hasbeen fed, " when the forgetful maid appeared at the window with a cup ofseed in her hand. 

But in Mrs. Manstey's more meditative moods it was the narrowingperspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved, attwilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in thefluid yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories of a tripto Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her mind's eye to a palephantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and dreamy skies. Perhaps atheart Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at all events she was sensible of manychanges of color unnoticed by the average eye, and dear to her as thegreen of early spring was the black lattice of branches against a coldsulphur sky at the close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunnythaws of March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, likeink-spots spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, betterstill, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced theclear-cut tracery of winter. She even watched with a certain interestthe trail of smoke from a far-off factory chimney, and missed a detailin the landscape when the factory was closed and the smoke disappeared. 

Mrs. Manstey, in the long hours which she spent at her window, was notidle. She read a little, and knitted numberless stockings; but the viewsurrounded and shaped her life as the sea does a lonely island. When herrare callers came it was difficult for her to detach herself from thecontemplation of the opposite window-washing, or the scrutiny of certaingreen points in a neighboring flower-bed which might, or might not, turninto hyacinths, while she feigned an interest in her visitor's anecdotesabout some unknown grandchild. Mrs. Manstey's real friends were thedenizens of the yards, the hyacinths, the magnolia, the green parrot, the maid who fed the cats, the doctor who studied late behind hismustard-colored curtains; and the confidant of her tenderer musings wasthe church-spire floating in the sunset. 

One April day, as she sat in her usual place, with knitting cast asideand eyes fixed on the blue sky mottled with round clouds, a knock at thedoor announced the entrance of her landlady. Mrs. Manstey did notcare for her landlady, but she submitted to her visits with ladylikeresignation. To-day, however, it seemed harder than usual to turn fromthe blue sky and the blossoming magnolia to Mrs. Sampson's unsuggestiveface, and Mrs. Manstey was conscious of a distinct effort as she did so. 

"The magnolia is out earlier than usual this year, Mrs. Sampson, " sheremarked, yielding to a rare impulse, for she seldom alluded to theabsorbing interest of her life. In the first place it was a topic notlikely to appeal to her visitors and, besides, she lacked the power ofexpression and could not have given utterance to her feelings had shewished to. 

"The what, Mrs. Manstey?" inquired the landlady, glancing about the roomas if to find there the explanation of Mrs. Manstey's statement. 

"The magnolia in the next yard--in Mrs. Black's yard, " Mrs. Mansteyrepeated. 

"Is it, indeed? I didn't know there was a magnolia there, " said Mrs. Sampson, carelessly. Mrs. Manstey looked at her; she did not know thatthere was a magnolia in the next yard!

"By the way, " Mrs. Sampson continued, "speaking of Mrs. Black reminds methat the work on the extension is to begin next week. "

"The what?" it was Mrs. Manstey's turn to ask. 

"The extension, " said Mrs. Sampson, nodding her head in the direction ofthe ignored magnolia. "You knew, of course, that Mrs. Black was going tobuild an extension to her house? Yes, ma'am. I hear it is to run rightback to the end of the yard. How she can afford to build an extension inthese hard times I don't see; but she always was crazy about building. She used to keep a boarding-house in Seventeenth Street, and she nearlyruined herself then by sticking out bow-windows and what not; I shouldhave thought that would have cured her of building, but I guess it's adisease, like drink. Anyhow, the work is to begin on Monday. "

Mrs. Manstey had grown pale. She always spoke slowly, so the landladydid not heed the long pause which followed. At last Mrs. Manstey said:"Do you know how high the extension will be?"

"That's the most absurd part of it. The extension is to be built rightup to the roof of the main building; now, did you ever?"

Mrs. Manstey paused again. "Won't it be a great annoyance to you, Mrs. Sampson?" she asked. 

"I should say it would. But there's no help for it; if people have gota mind to build extensions there's no law to prevent 'em, that I'm awareof. " Mrs. Manstey, knowing this, was silent. "There is no help for it, "Mrs. Sampson repeated, "but if I AM a church member, I wouldn't be sosorry if it ruined Eliza Black. Well, good-day, Mrs. Manstey; I'm gladto find you so comfortable. "

So comfortable--so comfortable! Left to herself the old woman turnedonce more to the window. How lovely the view was that day! The blue skywith its round clouds shed a brightness over everything; the ailanthushad put on a tinge of yellow-green, the hyacinths were budding, the magnolia flowers looked more than ever like rosettes carved inalabaster. Soon the wistaria would bloom, then the horse-chestnut; butnot for her. Between her eyes and them a barrier of brick and mortarwould swiftly rise; presently even the spire would disappear, and allher radiant world be blotted out. Mrs. Manstey sent away untouched thedinner-tray brought to her that evening. She lingered in the windowuntil the windy sunset died in bat-colored dusk; then, going to bed, shelay sleepless all night. 

Early the next day she was up and at the window. It was raining, buteven through the slanting gray gauze the scene had its charm--and thenthe rain was so good for the trees. She had noticed the day before thatthe ailanthus was growing dusty. 

"Of course I might move, " said Mrs. Manstey aloud, and turning from thewindow she looked about her room. She might move, of course; so mightshe be flayed alive; but she was not likely to survive either operation. The room, though far less important to her happiness than the view, wasas much a part of her existence. She had lived in it seventeen years. She knew every stain on the wall-paper, every rent in the carpet; thelight fell in a certain way on her engravings, her books had grownshabby on their shelves, her bulbs and ivy were used to their windowand knew which way to lean to the sun. "We are all too old to move, " shesaid. 

That afternoon it cleared. Wet and radiant the blue reappearedthrough torn rags of cloud; the ailanthus sparkled; the earth in theflower-borders looked rich and warm. It was Thursday, and on Monday thebuilding of the extension was to begin. 

On Sunday afternoon a card was brought to Mrs. Black, as she was engagedin gathering up the fragments of the boarders' dinner in the basement. The card, black-edged, bore Mrs. Manstey's name. 

"One of Mrs. Sampson's boarders; wants to move, I suppose. Well, I cangive her a room next year in the extension. Dinah, " said Mrs. Black, "tell the lady I'll be upstairs in a minute. "

Mrs. Black found Mrs. Manstey standing in the long parlor garnished withstatuettes and antimacassars; in that house she could not sit down. 

Stooping hurriedly to open the register, which let out a cloud of dust, Mrs. Black advanced on her visitor. 

"I'm happy to meet you, Mrs. Manstey; take a seat, please, " the landladyremarked in her prosperous voice, the voice of a woman who can afford tobuild extensions. There was no help for it; Mrs. Manstey sat down. 

"Is there anything I can do for you, ma'am?" Mrs. Black continued. "Myhouse is full at present, but I am going to build an extension, and--"

"It is about the extension that I wish to speak, " said Mrs. Manstey, suddenly. "I am a poor woman, Mrs. Black, and I have never been ahappy one. I shall have to talk about myself first to--to make youunderstand. "

Mrs. Black, astonished but imperturbable, bowed at this parenthesis. 

"I never had what I wanted, " Mrs. Manstey continued. "It was always onedisappointment after another. For years I wanted to live in the country. I dreamed and dreamed about it; but we never could manage it. There wasno sunny window in our house, and so all my plants died. My daughtermarried years ago and went away--besides, she never cared for the samethings. Then my husband died and I was left alone. That was seventeenyears ago. I went to live at Mrs. Sampson's, and I have been there eversince. I have grown a little infirm, as you see, and I don't getout often; only on fine days, if I am feeling very well. So you canunderstand my sitting a great deal in my window--the back window on thethird floor--"

"Well, Mrs. Manstey, " said Mrs. Black, liberally, "I could give you aback room, I dare say; one of the new rooms in the ex--"

"But I don't want to move; I can't move, " said Mrs. Manstey, almost witha scream. "And I came to tell you that if you build that extension Ishall have no view from my window--no view! Do you understand?"

Mrs. Black thought herself face to face with a lunatic, and she hadalways heard that lunatics must be humored. 

"Dear me, dear me, " she remarked, pushing her chair back a little way, "that is too bad, isn't it? Why, I never thought of that. To be sure, the extension WILL interfere with your view, Mrs. Manstey. "

"You do understand?" Mrs. Manstey gasped. 

"Of course I do. And I'm real sorry about it, too. But there, don't youworry, Mrs. Manstey. I guess we can fix that all right. "

Mrs. Manstey rose from her seat, and Mrs. Black slipped toward the door. 

"What do you mean by fixing it? Do you mean that I can induce you tochange your mind about the extension? Oh, Mrs. Black, listen to me. Ihave two thousand dollars in the bank and I could manage, I know I couldmanage, to give you a thousand if--" Mrs. Manstey paused; the tears wererolling down her cheeks. 

"There, there, Mrs. Manstey, don't you worry, " repeated Mrs. Black, soothingly. "I am sure we can settle it. I am sorry that I can't stayand talk about it any longer, but this is such a busy time of day, withsupper to get--"

Her hand was on the door-knob, but with sudden vigor Mrs. Manstey seizedher wrist. 

"You are not giving me a definite answer. Do you mean to say that youaccept my proposition?"

"Why, I'll think it over, Mrs. Manstey, certainly I will. I wouldn'tannoy you for the world--"

"But the work is to begin to-morrow, I am told, " Mrs. Manstey persisted. 

Mrs. Black hesitated. "It shan't begin, I promise you that; I'll sendword to the builder this very night. " Mrs. Manstey tightened her hold. 

"You are not deceiving me, are you?" she said. 

"No--no, " stammered Mrs. Black. "How can you think such a thing of me, Mrs. Manstey?"

Slowly Mrs. Manstey's clutch relaxed, and she passed through the opendoor. "One thousand dollars, " she repeated, pausing in the hall; thenshe let herself out of the house and hobbled down the steps, supportingherself on the cast-iron railing. 

"My goodness, " exclaimed Mrs. Black, shutting and bolting the hall-door, "I never knew the old woman was crazy! And she looks so quiet andladylike, too. "

Mrs. Manstey slept well that night, but early the next morning she wasawakened by a sound of hammering. She got to her window with whathaste she might and, looking out saw that Mrs. Black's yard was full ofworkmen. Some were carrying loads of brick from the kitchen to the yard, others beginning to demolish the old-fashioned wooden balcony whichadorned each story of Mrs. Black's house. Mrs. Manstey saw that she hadbeen deceived. At first she thought of confiding her trouble to Mrs. Sampson, but a settled discouragement soon took possession of her andshe went back to bed, not caring to see what was going on. 

Toward afternoon, however, feeling that she must know the worst, sherose and dressed herself. It was a laborious task, for her hands werestiffer than usual, and the hooks and buttons seemed to evade her. 

When she seated herself in the window, she saw that the workmenhad removed the upper part of the balcony, and that the bricks hadmultiplied since morning. One of the men, a coarse fellow with a bloatedface, picked a magnolia blossom and, after smelling it, threw it to theground; the next man, carrying a load of bricks, trod on the flower inpassing. 

"Look out, Jim, " called one of the men to another who was smoking apipe, "if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper you'llhave the old tinder-box burning down before you know it. " And Mrs. Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were several barrels ofpaper and rubbish under the wooden balcony. 

At length the work ceased and twilight fell. The sunset was perfect anda roseate light, transfiguring the distant spire, lingered late in thewest. When it grew dark Mrs. Manstey drew down the shades and proceeded, in her usual methodical manner, to light her lamp. She always filledand lit it with her own hands, keeping a kettle of kerosene on azinc-covered shelf in a closet. As the lamp-light filled the room itassumed its usual peaceful aspect. The books and pictures and plantsseemed, like their mistress, to settle themselves down for another quietevening, and Mrs. Manstey, as was her wont, drew up her armchair to thetable and began to knit. 

That night she could not sleep. The weather had changed and a wild windwas abroad, blotting the stars with close-driven clouds. Mrs. Mansteyrose once or twice and looked out of the window; but of the view nothingwas discernible save a tardy light or two in the opposite windows. Theselights at last went out, and Mrs. Manstey, who had watched for theirextinction, began to dress herself. She was in evident haste, for shemerely flung a thin dressing-gown over her night-dress and wrapped herhead in a scarf; then she opened her closet and cautiously took out thekettle of kerosene. Having slipped a bundle of wooden matches into herpocket she proceeded, with increasing precautions, to unlock her door, and a few moments later she was feeling her way down the dark staircase, led by a glimmer of gas from the lower hall. At length she reached thebottom of the stairs and began the more difficult descent into the utterdarkness of the basement. Here, however, she could move more freely, as there was less danger of being overheard; and without much delay shecontrived to unlock the iron door leading into the yard. A gust ofcold wind smote her as she stepped out and groped shiveringly under theclothes-lines. 

That morning at three o'clock an alarm of fire brought the engines toMrs. Black's door, and also brought Mrs. Sampson's startled boarders totheir windows. The wooden balcony at the back of Mrs. Black's house wasablaze, and among those who watched the progress of the flames was Mrs. Manstey, leaning in her thin dressing-gown from the open window. 

The fire, however, was soon put out, and the frightened occupants of thehouse, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn to find thatlittle mischief had been done beyond the cracking of window panes andsmoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief sufferer by the fire was Mrs. Manstey, who was found in the morning gasping with pneumonia, a notunnatural result, as everyone remarked, of her having hung out of anopen window at her age in a dressing-gown. It was easy to see that shewas very ill, but no one had guessed how grave the doctor's verdictwould be, and the faces gathered that evening about Mrs. Sampson's tablewere awestruck and disturbed. Not that any of the boarders knew Mrs. Manstey well; she "kept to herself, " as they said, and seemed to fancyherself too good for them; but then it is always disagreeable to haveanyone dying in the house and, as one lady observed to another: "Itmight just as well have been you or me, my dear. "

But it was only Mrs. Manstey; and she was dying, as she had lived, lonely if not alone. The doctor had sent a trained nurse, and Mrs. Sampson, with muffled step, came in from time to time; but both, to Mrs. Manstey, seemed remote and unsubstantial as the figures in a dream. Allday she said nothing; but when she was asked for her daughter's addressshe shook her head. At times the nurse noticed that she seemed to belistening attentively for some sound which did not come; then again shedozed. 

The next morning at daylight she was very low. The nurse called Mrs. Sampson and as the two bent over the old woman they saw her lips move. 

"Lift me up--out of bed, " she whispered. 

They raised her in their arms, and with her stiff hand she pointed tothe window. 

"Oh, the window--she wants to sit in the window. She used to sit thereall day, " Mrs. Sampson explained. "It can do her no harm, I suppose?"

"Nothing matters now, " said the nurse. 

They carried Mrs. Manstey to the window and placed her in her chair. Thedawn was abroad, a jubilant spring dawn; the spire had already caughta golden ray, though the magnolia and horse-chestnut still slumbered inshadow. In Mrs. Black's yard all was quiet. The charred timbers of thebalcony lay where they had fallen. It was evident that since the firethe builders had not returned to their work. The magnolia had unfolded afew more sculptural flowers; the view was undisturbed. 

It was hard for Mrs. Manstey to breathe; each moment it grew moredifficult. She tried to make them open the window, but they would notunderstand. If she could have tasted the air, sweet with the penetratingailanthus savor, it would have eased her; but the view at least wasthere--the spire was golden now, the heavens had warmed from pearl toblue, day was alight from east to west, even the magnolia had caught thesun. 

Mrs. Manstey's head fell back and smiling she died. 

That day the building of the extension was resumed. 

The End

THE BOLTED DOOR

As first published in Scribner's Magazine, March 1909

I

Hubert Granice, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit library, paused to compare his watch with the clock on the chimney-piece. 

Three minutes to eight. 

In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal firm ofAscham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the door-bell ofthe flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham was so punctual--thesuspense was beginning to make his host nervous. And the sound of thedoor-bell would be the beginning of the end--after that there'd be nogoing back, by God--no going back!

Granice resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the end of the roomopposite the door he caught his reflection in the Florentine mirrorabove the fine old walnut credence he had picked up at Dijon--sawhimself spare, quick-moving, carefully brushed and dressed, butfurrowed, gray about the temples, with a stoop which he corrected bya spasmodic straightening of the shoulders whenever a glass confrontedhim: a tired middle-aged man, baffled, beaten, worn out. 

As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the dooropened and he turned with a thrill of relief to greet his guest. But itwas only the man-servant who entered, advancing silently over the mossysurface of the old Turkey rug. 

"Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he's unexpectedly detained and can'tbe here till eight-thirty. "

Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance. It was becoming harder andharder for him to control these reflexes. He turned on his heel, tossingto the servant over his shoulder: "Very good. Put off dinner. "

Down his spine he felt the man's injured stare. Mr. Granice had alwaysbeen so mild-spoken to his people--no doubt the odd change in his mannerhad already been noticed and discussed below stairs. And very likelythey suspected the cause. He stood drumming on the writing-table till heheard the servant go out; then he threw himself into a chair, proppinghis elbows on the table and resting his chin on his locked hands. 

Another half hour alone with it!

He wondered irritably what could have detained his guest. Someprofessional matter, no doubt--the punctilious lawyer would have allowednothing less to interfere with a dinner engagement, more especiallysince Granice, in his note, had said: "I shall want a little businesschat afterward. "

But what professional matter could have come up at that unprofessionalhour? Perhaps some other soul in misery had called on the lawyer; and, after all, Granice's note had given no hint of his own need! No doubtAscham thought he merely wanted to make another change in his will. Since he had come into his little property, ten years earlier, Granicehad been perpetually tinkering with his will. 

Suddenly another thought pulled him up, sending a flush to his sallowtemples. He remembered a word he had tossed to the lawyer some six weeksearlier, at the Century Club. "Yes--my play's as good as taken. I shallbe calling on you soon to go over the contract. Those theatrical chapsare so slippery--I won't trust anybody but you to tie the knot for me!"That, of course, was what Ascham would think he was wanted for. Granice, at the idea, broke into an audible laugh--a queer stage-laugh, likethe cackle of a baffled villain in a melodrama. The absurdity, theunnaturalness of the sound abashed him, and he compressed his lipsangrily. Would he take to soliloquy next?

He lowered his arms and pulled open the upper drawer of thewriting-table. In the right-hand corner lay a thick manuscript, boundin paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a letter had beenslipped. Next to the manuscript was a small revolver. Granice stared amoment at these oddly associated objects; then he took the letter fromunder the string and slowly began to open it. He had known he should doso from the moment his hand touched the drawer. Whenever his eye fell onthat letter some relentless force compelled him to re-read it. 

It was dated about four weeks back, under the letter-head of "TheDiversity Theatre. "

"MY DEAR MR. GRANICE:

"I have given the matter my best consideration for the last month, and it's no use--the play won't do. I have talked it over with MissMelrose--and you know there isn't a gamer artist on our stage--and Iregret to tell you she feels just as I do about it. It isn't the poetrythat scares her--or me either. We both want to do all we can to helpalong the poetic drama--we believe the public's ready for it, and we'rewilling to take a big financial risk in order to be the first to givethem what they want. BUT WE DON'T BELIEVE THEY COULD BE MADE TOWANT THIS. The fact is, there isn't enough drama in your play to theallowance of poetry--the thing drags all through. You've got a big idea, but it's not out of swaddling clothes. 

"If this was your first play I'd say: TRY AGAIN. But it has been justthe same with all the others you've shown me. And you remember theresult of 'The Lee Shore, ' where you carried all the expenses ofproduction yourself, and we couldn't fill the theatre for a week. Yet'The Lee Shore' was a modern problem play--much easier to swing thanblank verse. It isn't as if you hadn't tried all kinds--"

Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the envelope. Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every phrase in it byheart, when for a month past he had seen it, night after night, standout in letters of flame against the darkness of his sleepless lids?

"IT HAS BEEN JUST THE SAME WITH ALL THE OTHERS YOU'VE SHOWN ME. "

That was the way they dismissed ten years of passionate unremittingwork!

"YOU REMEMBER THE RESULT OF 'THE LEE SHORE. '"

Good God--as if he were likely to forget it! He re-lived it all now in adrowning flash: the persistent rejection of the play, his sudden resolveto put it on at his own cost, to spend ten thousand dollars of hisinheritance on testing his chance of success--the fever of preparation, the dry-mouthed agony of the "first night, " the flat fall, the stupidpress, his secret rush to Europe to escape the condolence of hisfriends!

"IT ISN'T AS IF YOU HADN'T TRIED ALL KINDS. "

No--he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the lightcurtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeois-realistic and thelyrical-romantic--finally deciding that he would no longer "prostitutehis talent" to win popularity, but would impose on the public his owntheory of art in the form of five acts of blank verse. Yes, he hadoffered them everything--and always with the same result. 

Ten years of it--ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure. Theten years from forty to fifty--the best ten years of his life! And ifone counted the years before, the silent years of dreams, assimilation, preparation--then call it half a man's life-time: half a man's life-timethrown away!

And what was he to do with the remaining half? Well, he had settledthat, thank God! He turned and glanced anxiously at the clock. Tenminutes past eight--only ten minutes had been consumed in that stormyrush through his whole past! And he must wait another twenty minutes forAscham. It was one of the worst symptoms of his case that, in proportionas he had grown to shrink from human company, he dreaded more and moreto be alone.... But why the devil was he waiting for Ascham? Why didn'the cut the knot himself? Since he was so unutterably sick of the wholebusiness, why did he have to call in an outsider to rid him of thisnightmare of living?

He opened the drawer again and laid his hand on the revolver. It was asmall slim ivory toy--just the instrument for a tired sufferer to givehimself a "hypodermic" with. Granice raised it slowly in one hand, whilewith the other he felt under the thin hair at the back of his head, between the ear and the nape. He knew just where to place the muzzle: hehad once got a young surgeon to show him. And as he found the spot, andlifted the revolver to it, the inevitable phenomenon occurred. The handthat held the weapon began to shake, the tremor communicated itselfto his arm, his heart gave a wild leap which sent up a wave of deadlynausea to his throat, he smelt the powder, he sickened at the crash ofthe bullet through his skull, and a sweat of fear broke out over hisforehead and ran down his quivering face... 

He laid away the revolver with an oath and, pulling out acologne-scented handkerchief, passed it tremulously over his brow andtemples. It was no use--he knew he could never do it in that way. Hisattempts at self-destruction were as futile as his snatches at fame! Hecouldn't make himself a real life, and he couldn't get rid of the lifehe had. And that was why he had sent for Ascham to help him... 

The lawyer, over the Camembert and Burgundy, began to excuse himself forhis delay. 

"I didn't like to say anything while your man was about--but the factis, I was sent for on a rather unusual matter--"

"Oh, it's all right, " said Granice cheerfully. He was beginning tofeel the usual reaction that food and company produced. It was not anyrecovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a deeper withdrawalinto himself. It was easier to go on automatically with the socialgestures than to uncover to any human eye the abyss within him. 

"My dear fellow, it's sacrilege to keep a dinner waiting--especiallythe production of an artist like yours. " Mr. Ascham sipped his Burgundyluxuriously. "But the fact is, Mrs. Ashgrove sent for me. "

Granice raised his head with a quick movement of surprise. For a momenthe was shaken out of his self-absorption. 

"MRS. ASHGROVE?"

Ascham smiled. "I thought you'd be interested; I know your passion forcauses celebres. And this promises to be one. Of course it's out of ourline entirely--we never touch criminal cases. But she wanted to consultme as a friend. Ashgrove was a distant connection of my wife's. And, byJove, it IS a queer case!" The servant re-entered, and Ascham snappedhis lips shut. 

Would the gentlemen have their coffee in the dining-room?

"No--serve it in the library, " said Granice, rising. He led the way backto the curtained confidential room. He was really curious to hear whatAscham had to tell him. 

While the coffee and cigars were being served he fidgeted about thelibrary, glancing at his letters--the usual meaningless notes andbills--and picking up the evening paper. As he unfolded it a headlinecaught his eye. 

 "ROSE MELROSE WANTS TO PLAY POETRY. "THINKS SHE HAS FOUND HER POET. "

He read on with a thumping heart--found the name of a young author hehad barely heard of, saw the title of a play, a "poetic drama, " dancebefore his eyes, and dropped the paper, sick, disgusted. It wastrue, then--she WAS "game"--it was not the manner but the matter shemistrusted!

Granice turned to the servant, who seemed to be purposely lingering. "Ishan't need you this evening, Flint. I'll lock up myself. "

He fancied the man's acquiescence implied surprise. What was going on, Flint seemed to wonder, that Mr. Granice should want him out of theway? Probably he would find a pretext for coming back to see. Granicesuddenly felt himself enveloped in a network of espionage. 

As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned forwardto take a light from Ascham's cigar. 

"Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove, " he said, seeming to himself to speakstiffly, as if his lips were cracked. 

"Mrs. Ashgrove? Well, there's not much to TELL. "

"And you couldn't if there were?" Granice smiled. 

"Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about herchoice of counsel. There was nothing especially confidential in ourtalk. "

"And what's your impression, now you've seen her?"

"My impression is, very distinctly, THAT NOTHING WILL EVER BE KNOWN. "

"Ah--?" Granice murmured, puffing at his cigar. 

"I'm more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew hisbusiness, and will consequently never be found out. That's a capitalcigar you've given me. "

"You like it? I get them over from Cuba. " Granice examined his ownreflectively. "Then you believe in the theory that the clever criminalsnever ARE caught?"

"Of course I do. Look about you--look back for the last dozenyears--none of the big murder problems are ever solved. " The lawyerruminated behind his blue cloud. "Why, take the instance in your ownfamily: I'd forgotten I had an illustration at hand! Take old JosephLenman's murder--do you suppose that will ever be explained?"

As the words dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly aboutthe library, and every object in it stared back at him with a staleunescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It wasas dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his throatslowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: "I could explainthe Lenman murder myself. "

Ascham's eye kindled: he shared Granice's interest in criminal cases. 

"By Jove! You've had a theory all this time? It's odd you nevermentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are certain features in theLenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea may be ahelp. "

Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table drawer inwhich the revolver and the manuscript lay side by side. What if he wereto try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he looked at the notesand bills on the table, and the horror of taking up again the lifelessroutine of life--of performing the same automatic gestures anotherday--displaced his fleeting vision. 

"I haven't a theory. I KNOW who murdered Joseph Lenman. "

Ascham settled himself comfortably in his chair, prepared for enjoyment. 

"You KNOW? Well, who did?" he laughed. 

"I did, " said Granice, rising. 

He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at him. Thenhe broke into another laugh. 

"Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit his money, I suppose? Better and better! Go on, my boy! Unbosom yourself! Tell meall about it! Confession is good for the soul. "

Granice waited till the lawyer had shaken the last peal of laughter fromhis throat; then he repeated doggedly: "I murdered him. "

The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and this time Aschamdid not laugh. 

"Granice!"

"I murdered him--to get his money, as you say. "

There was another pause, and Granice, with a vague underlying sense ofamusement, saw his guest's look change from pleasantry to apprehension. 

"What's the joke, my dear fellow? I fail to see. "

"It's not a joke. It's the truth. I murdered him. " He had spokenpainfully at first, as if there were a knot in his throat; but each timehe repeated the words he found they were easier to say. 

Ascham laid down his extinct cigar. 

"What's the matter? Aren't you well? What on earth are you driving at?"

"I'm perfectly well. But I murdered my cousin, Joseph Lenman, and I wantit known that I murdered him. "

"YOU WANT IT KNOWN?"

"Yes. That's why I sent for you. I'm sick of living, and when I try tokill myself I funk it. " He spoke quite naturally now, as if the knot inhis throat had been untied. 

"Good Lord--good Lord, " the lawyer gasped. 

"But I suppose, " Granice continued, "there's no doubt this would bemurder in the first degree? I'm sure of the chair if I own up?"

Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: "Sit down, Granice. Let's talk. "

II

Granice told his story simply, connectedly. 

He began by a quick survey of his early years--the years of drudgery andprivation. His father, a charming man who could never say "no, " had sosignally failed to say it on certain essential occasions that when hedied he left an illegitimate family and a mortgaged estate. His lawfulkin found themselves hanging over a gulf of debt, and young Granice, tosupport his mother and sister, had to leave Harvard and bury himself ateighteen in a broker's office. He loathed his work, and he was alwayspoor, always worried and in ill-health. A few years later his motherdied, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on hishands. His own health gave out, and he had to go away for six months, and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack forbusiness, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries ofcommerce. He wanted to travel and write--those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without makingany more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessedhim. He tried writing, but he always came home from the office so tiredthat his brain could not work. For half the year he did not reach hisdim up-town flat till after dark, and could only "brush up" for dinner, and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe, while his sister dronedthrough the evening paper. Sometimes he spent an evening at the theatre;or he dined out, or, more rarely, strayed off with an acquaintance ortwo in quest of what is known as "pleasure. " And in summer, when heand Kate went to the sea-side for a month, he dozed through the days inutter weariness. Once he fell in love with a charming girl--but what hadhe to offer her, in God's name? She seemed to like him, and in commondecency he had to drop out of the running. Apparently no onereplaced him, for she never married, but grew stoutish, grayish, philanthropic--yet how sweet she had been when he had first kissed her!One more wasted life, he reflected... 

But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have sold hissoul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN HIM--he couldnot remember when it had not been his deepest-seated instinct. As theyears passed it became a morbid, a relentless obsession--yet with everyyear the material conditions were more and more against it. He felthimself growing middle-aged, and he watched the reflection of theprocess in his sister's wasted face. At eighteen she had beenpretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial, insignificant--she had missed her chance of life. And she had noresources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitivefunctions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It exasperated himto think of it--and to reflect that even now a little travel, alittle health, a little money, might transform her, make her young anddesirable... The chief fruit of his experience was that there is no suchfixed state as age or youth--there is only health as against sickness, wealth as against poverty; and age or youth as the outcome of the lotone draws. 

At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to leanagainst the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not moved fromhis seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated attention. 

"Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near oldLenman--my mother's cousin, as you know. Some of the family alwaysmounted guard over him--generally a niece or so. But that year they wereall scattered, and one of the nieces offered to lend us her cottage ifwe'd relieve her of duty for two months. It was a nuisance for me, ofcourse, for Wrenfield is two hours from town; but my mother, who was aslave to family observances, had always been good to the old man, so itwas natural we should be called on--and there was the saving of rent andthe good air for Kate. So we went. 

"You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an amoeba orsome primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's microscope. He waslarge, undifferentiated, inert--since I could remember him he haddone nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate melons--that was his hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-doormelons--his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield--hisbig kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking battalions ofgreen-houses. And in nearly all of them melons were grown--early melonsand late, French, English, domestic--dwarf melons and monsters: everyshape, colour and variety. They were petted and nursed like children--astaff of trained attendants waited on them. I'm not sure they didn'thave a doctor to take their temperature--at any rate the place was fullof thermometers. And they didn't sprawl on the ground like ordinarymelons; they were trained against the glass like nectarines, and eachmelon hung in a net which sustained its weight and left it free on allsides to the sun and air... 

"It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one ofhis own melons--the pale-fleshed English kind. His life, apatheticand motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable warm ventilatedatmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries. The cardinal rule ofhis existence was not to let himself be 'worried. '... I remember hisadvising me to try it myself, one day when I spoke to him about Kate'sbad health, and her need of a change. 'I never let myself worry, ' hesaid complacently. 'It's the worst thing for the liver--and you look tome as if you had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You'll makeyourself happier and others too. ' And all he had to do was to write acheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!

"The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us already. The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate's--and one couldpicture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him. 

"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity. Iflattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he wastaken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he wasdriven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded ofa hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And theresemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn't eat as much asa mouthful of his melons--had lived for years on buttermilk and toast. 'But, after all, it's my only hobby--why shouldn't I indulge it?' hesaid sentimentally. As if I'd ever been able to indulge any of mine! Onthe keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like gods... 

"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to dragherself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the afternoonwith cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September afternoon--a day tolie under a Roman stone-pine, with one's eyes on the sky, and let thecosmic harmonies rush through one. Perhaps the vision was suggestedby the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph's hideous black walnutlibrary, I passed one of the under-gardeners, a handsome full-throatedItalian, who dashed out in such a hurry that he nearly knocked me down. I remember thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I had often seenabout the melon-houses, did not bow to me, or even seem to see me. 

"Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows, hisfat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number of theChurchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon--thefattest melon I'd ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured the ecstasyof contemplation from which I must have roused him, and congratulatedmyself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made up my mind to askhim a favour. Then I noticed that his face, instead of looking as calmas an egg-shell, was distorted and whimpering--and without stopping togreet me he pointed passionately to the melon. 

"'Look at it, look at it--did you ever see such a beauty? Suchfirmness--roundness--such delicious smoothness to the touch?' It wasas if he had said 'she' instead of 'it, ' and when he put out his senilehand and touched the melon I positively had to look the other way. 

"Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener, who hadbeen specially recommended for the melon-houses--though it was againstmy cousin's principles to employ a Papist--had been assigned to the careof the monster: for it had revealed itself, early in its existence, asdestined to become a monster, to surpass its plumpest, pulpiestsisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be photographed andcelebrated in every gardening paper in the land. The Italian had donewell--seemed to have a sense of responsibility. And that very morninghe had been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next day atthe county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its blondevirginity. But in picking it, what had the damned scoundrelly Jesuitdone but drop it--drop it crash on the sharp spout of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash in its firm pale rotundity, and washenceforth but a bruised, ruined, fallen melon?

"The old man's rage was fearful in its impotence--he shook, splutteredand strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up and had sackedhim on the spot, without wages or character--had threatened to have himarrested if he was ever caught prowling about Wrenfield. 'By God, andI'll do it--I'll write to Washington--I'll have the pauper scoundreldeported! I'll show him what money can do!' As likely as not there wassome murderous Black-hand business under it--it would be found that thefellow was a member of a 'gang. ' Those Italians would murder you for aquarter. He meant to have the police look into it... And then he grewfrightened at his own excitement. 'But I must calm myself, ' he said. Hetook his temperature, rang for his drops, and turned to the Churchman. He had been reading an article on Nestorianism when the melon wasbrought in. He asked me to go on with it, and I read to him for anhour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about thefallen melon. 

"All the while one phrase of the old man's buzzed in my brain like thefly about the melon. 'I'LL SHOW HIM WHAT MONEY CAN DO!' Good heaven!If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power ofgiving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I triedto tell him something about my situation and Kate's--spoke of myill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to makemyself a name--I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. 'I can guaranteeto repay you, sir--I've a half-written play as security... '

"I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as smooth asan egg-shell again--his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like sentinelsover a slippery rampart. 

"'A half-written play--a play of YOURS as security?' He looked at mealmost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity. 'Doyou understand anything of business?' he enquired mildly. I laughed andanswered: 'No, not much. '

"He leaned back with closed lids. 'All this excitement has been too muchfor me, ' he said. 'If you'll excuse me, I'll prepare for my nap. ' And Istumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian. "

Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to the trayset out with decanters and soda-water. He poured himself a tall glass ofsoda-water, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham's dead cigar. 

"Better light another, " he suggested. 

The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He toldof his mounting obsession--how the murderous impulse had waked in him onthe instant of his cousin's refusal, and he had muttered to himself:"By God, if you won't, I'll make you. " He spoke more tranquilly as thenarrative proceeded, as though his rage had died down once the resolveto act on it was taken. He applied his whole mind to the question of howthe old man was to be "disposed of. " Suddenly he remembered the outcry:"Those Italians will murder you for a quarter!" But no definite projectpresented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration. 

Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the incident ofthe melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept them informed ofthe old man's condition. One day, about three weeks later, Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a report from Wrenfield. TheItalian had been there again--had somehow slipped into the house, made his way up to the library, and "used threatening language. " Thehouse-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing"something awful. " The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off;and the police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood. 

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had "nerves, " and lost histaste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a colleague, andthe consultation amused and excited the old man--he became once morean important figure. The medical men reassured the family--toocompletely!--and to the patient they recommended a more varied diet:advised him to take whatever "tempted him. " And so one day, tremulously, prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought upwith ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and ahovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead... 

"But you remember the circumstances, " Granice went on; "how suspicionturned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the police had givenhim he had been seen hanging about the house since 'the scene. ' It wassaid that he had tender relations with the kitchen-maid, and the restseemed easy to explain. But when they looked round to ask him for theexplanation he was gone--gone clean out of sight. He had been 'warned'to leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no oneever laid eyes on him again. "

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer's, andhe sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the familiarroom. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and each strangeinsistent object seemed craning forward from its place to hear him. 

"It was I who put the stuff in the melon, " he said. "And I don't wantyou to think I'm sorry for it. This isn't 'remorse, ' understand. I'mglad the old skin-flint is dead--I'm glad the others have their money. But mine's no use to me any more. My sister married miserably, and died. And I've never had what I wanted. "

Ascham continued to stare; then he said: "What on earth was your object, then?"

"Why, to GET what I wanted--what I fancied was in reach! I wantedchange, rest, LIFE, for both of us--wanted, above all, for myself, thechance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came home totie myself up to my work. And I've slaved at it steadily for ten yearswithout reward--without the most distant hope of success! Nobody willlook at my stuff. And now I'm fifty, and I'm beaten, and I know it. "His chin dropped forward on his breast. "I want to chuck the wholebusiness, " he ended. 

III

It was after midnight when Ascham left. 

His hand on Granice's shoulder, as he turned to go--"District Attorneybe hanged; see a doctor, see a doctor!" he had cried; and so, with anexaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and departed. 

Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to him thatAscham would not believe his story. For three hours he had explained, elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over every detail--but withoutonce breaking down the iron incredulity of the lawyer's eye. 

At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced--but that, as Granice nowperceived, was simply to get him to expose himself, to entrap him intocontradictions. And when the attempt failed, when Granice triumphantlymet and refuted each disconcerting question, the lawyer dropped the masksuddenly, and said with a good-humoured laugh: "By Jove, Granice you'llwrite a successful play yet. The way you've worked this all out is amarvel. "

Granice swung about furiously--that last sneer about the play inflamedhim. Was all the world in a conspiracy to deride his failure?

"I did it, I did it, " he muttered sullenly, his rage spending itselfagainst the impenetrable surface of the other's mockery; and Aschamanswered with a smile: "Ever read any of those books on hallucination?I've got a fairly good medico-legal library. I could send you one or twoif you like... "

Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his writing-table. He understood that Ascham thought him off his head. 

"Good God--what if they all think me crazy?"

The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat--he sat there andshook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as he beganto rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw again howincontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any criminal lawyer wouldbelieve him. 

"That's the trouble--Ascham's not a criminal lawyer. And then he's afriend. What a fool I was to talk to a friend! Even if he did believeme, he'd never let me see it--his instinct would be to cover the wholething up... But in that case--if he DID believe me--he might think ita kindness to get me shut up in an asylum... " Granice began to trembleagain. "Good heaven! If he should bring in an expert--one of thosedamned alienists! Ascham and Pettilow can do anything--their word alwaysgoes. If Ascham drops a hint that I'd better be shut up, I'll be in astrait-jacket by to-morrow! And he'd do it from the kindest motives--bequite right to do it if he thinks I'm a murderer!"

The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his burstingtemples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped that Ascham hadnot believed his story. 

"But he did--he did! I can see it now--I noticed what a queer eye hecocked at me. Good God, what shall I do--what shall I do?"

He started up and looked at the clock. Half-past one. What if Aschamshould think the case urgent, rout out an alienist, and come back withhim? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden gesture brushed themorning paper from the table. Mechanically he stooped to pick it up, andthe movement started a new train of association. 

He sat down again, and reached for the telephone book in the rack by hischair. 

"Give me three-o-ten... Yes. "

The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He wouldact--act at once. It was only by thus planning ahead, committing himselfto some unavoidable line of conduct, that he could pull himself throughthe meaningless days. Each time he reached a fresh decision it was likecoming out of a foggy weltering sea into a calm harbour with lights. Oneof the queerest phases of his long agony was the intense relief producedby these momentary lulls. 

"That the office of the Investigator? Yes? Give me Mr. Denver, please... Hallo, Denver... Yes, Hubert Granice.... Just caught you? Going straighthome? Can I come and see you... Yes, now... Have a talk? It's ratherurgent... Yes, might give you some first-rate 'copy. '... All right!" Hehung up the receiver with a laugh. It had been a happy thought to callup the editor of the Investigator--Robert Denver was the very man heneeded... 

Granice put out the lights in the library--it was odd how the automaticgestures persisted!--went into the hall, put on his hat and overcoat, and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a sleepy elevator boyblinked at him and then dropped his head on his folded arms. Granicepassed out into the street. At the corner of Fifth Avenue he hailed acrawling cab, and called out an up-town address. The long thoroughfarestretched before him, dim and deserted, like an ancient avenue of tombs. But from Denver's house a friendly beam fell on the pavement; and asGranice sprang from his cab the editor's electric turned the corner. 

The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latch-key, ushered Granice into the brightly-lit hall. 

"Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten to-morrow morning... Butthis is my liveliest hour... You know my habits of old. "

Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years--watched his risethrough all the stages of journalism to the Olympian pinnacle of theInvestigator's editorial office. In the thick-set man with grizzlinghair there were few traces left of the hungry-eyed young reporter who, on his way home in the small hours, used to "bob in" on Granice, whilethe latter sat grinding at his plays. Denver had to pass Granice's flaton the way to his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in thewindow, and Granice's shadow against the blind, to go in, smoke a pipe, and discuss the universe. 

"Well--this is like old times--a good old habit reversed. " The editorsmote his visitor genially on the shoulder. "Reminds me of the nightswhen I used to rout you out... How's the play, by the way? There IS aplay, I suppose? It's as safe to ask you that as to say to some men:'How's the baby?'"

Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and heavyhe had grown. It was evident, even to Granice's tortured nerves, thatthe words had not been uttered in malice--and the fact gave him a newmeasure of his insignificance. Denver did not even know that he had beena failure! The fact hurt more than Ascham's irony. 

"Come in--come in. " The editor led the way into a small cheerful room, where there were cigars and decanters. He pushed an arm-chair toward hisvisitor, and dropped into another with a comfortable groan. 

"Now, then--help yourself. And let's hear all about it. "

He beamed at Granice over his pipe-bowl, and the latter, lighting hiscigar, said to himself: "Success makes men comfortable, but it makesthem stupid. "

Then he turned, and began: "Denver, I want to tell you--"

The clock ticked rhythmically on the mantel-piece. The little room wasgradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and through themthe editor's face came and went like the moon through a moving sky. Oncethe hour struck--then the rhythmical ticking began again. The atmospheregrew denser and heavier, and beads of perspiration began to roll fromGranice's forehead. 

"Do you mind if I open the window?"

"No. It IS stuffy in here. Wait--I'll do it myself. " Denver pusheddown the upper sash, and returned to his chair. "Well--go on, " he said, filling another pipe. His composure exasperated Granice. 

"There's no use in my going on if you don't believe me. "

The editor remained unmoved. "Who says I don't believe you? And how canI tell till you've finished?"

Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. "It was simple enough, asyou'll see. From the day the old man said to me, 'Those Italians wouldmurder you for a quarter, ' I dropped everything and just worked atmy scheme. It struck me at once that I must find a way of getting toWrenfield and back in a night--and that led to the idea of a motor. Amotor--that never occurred to you? You wonder where I got the money, Isuppose. Well, I had a thousand or so put by, and I nosed around till Ifound what I wanted--a second-hand racer. I knew how to drive a car, and I tried the thing and found it was all right. Times were bad, and Ibought it for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in one of thoseno-questions-asked garages where they keep motors that are not forfamily use. I had a lively cousin who had put me up to that dodge, and Ilooked about till I found a queer hole where they took in my car like ababy in a foundling asylum... Then I practiced running to Wrenfield andback in a night. I knew the way pretty well, for I'd done it often withthe same lively cousin--and in the small hours, too. The distance isover ninety miles, and on the third trial I did it under two hours. Butmy arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next morning... 

"Well, then came the report about the Italian's threats, and I saw Imust act at once... I meant to break into the old man's room, shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I could manage it. Then we heard that he was ill--that there'd been a consultation. Perhapsthe fates were going to do it for me! Good Lord, if that could onlybe!... "

Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not seem tohave cooled the room. 

"Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came upfrom my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that he was to trya bit of melon. The house-keeper had just telephoned her--all Wrenfieldwas in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the melon, one ofthe little French ones that are hardly bigger than a large tomato--andthe patient was to eat it at his breakfast the next morning. 

"In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I knewthe ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be brought in overnight and put in the pantry ice-box. If there were only one melon in theice-box I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted. Melonsdidn't lie around loose in that house--every one was known, numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the servants wouldeat them, and he took a hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure of my melon... And poisoning was much safer thanshooting. It would have been the devil and all to get into the old man'sbedroom without his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to breakinto the pantry without much trouble. 

"It was a cloudy night, too--everything served me. I dined quietly, andsat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual headaches, and went tobed early. As soon as she was gone I slipped out. I had got together asort of disguise--red beard and queer-looking ulster. I shoved theminto a bag, and went round to the garage. There was no one there but ahalf-drunken machinist whom I'd never seen before. That served me, too. They were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn't evenbother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easy-goingplace... 

"Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon as I wasout of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to strike a sharppace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second and got into the beardand ulster. Then away again--it was just eleven-thirty when I got toWrenfield. 

"I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and slippedthrough the kitchen-garden. The melon-houses winked at me through thedark--I remember thinking that they knew what I wanted to know.... Bythe stable a dog came out growling--but he nosed me out, jumped on me, and went back... The house was as dark as the grave. I knew everybodywent to bed by ten. But there might be a prowling servant--thekitchen-maid might have come down to let in her Italian. I had torisk that, of course. I crept around by the back door and hid in theshrubbery. Then I listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossedover to the house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had alittle electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it with my cap Igroped my way to the ice-box, opened it--and there was the little Frenchmelon... Only one. 

"I stopped to listen--I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my bottle ofstuff and my syringe, and gave each section of the melon a hypodermic. It was all done inside of three minutes--at ten minutes to twelve I wasback in the car. I got out of the lane as quietly as I could, struck aback road that skirted the village, and let the car out as soon as I wasbeyond the last houses. I only stopped once on the way in, to drop thebeard and ulster into a pond. I had a big stone ready to weight themwith and they went down plump, like a dead body--and at two o'clock Iwas back at my desk. "

Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at hislistener; but Denver's face remained inscrutable. 

At length he said: "Why did you want to tell me this?"

The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he hadexplained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his motivehad not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weightwith Denver. Both were successful men, and success does not understandthe subtle agony of failure. Granice cast about for another reason. 

"Why, I--the thing haunts me... Remorse, I suppose you'd call it... "

Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe. 

"Remorse? Bosh!" he said energetically. 

Granice's heart sank. "You don't believe in--REMORSE?"

"Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your talking ofremorse proves to me that you're not the man to have planned and putthrough such a job. "

Granice groaned. "Well--I lied to you about remorse. I've never feltany. "

Denver's lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled pipe. "Whatwas your motive, then? You must have had one. "

"I'll tell you--" And Granice began again to rehearse the story of hisfailure, of his loathing for life. "Don't say you don't believe me thistime... That this isn't a real reason!" he stammered out piteously as heended. 

Denver meditated. "No, I won't say that. I've seen too many queerthings. There's always a reason for wanting to get out of life--thewonder is that we find so many for staying in!" Granice's heart grewlight. "Then you DO believe me?" he faltered. 

"Believe that you're sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven't thenerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes--that's easy enough, too. But allthat doesn't make you a murderer--though I don't say it proves you couldnever have been one. "

"I HAVE been one, Denver--I swear to you. "

"Perhaps. " He meditated. "Just tell me one or two things. "

"Oh, go ahead. You won't stump me!" Granice heard himself say with alaugh. 

"Well--how did you make all those trial trips without exciting yoursister's curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at that time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn't the change in your wayssurprise her?"

"No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several visits inthe country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and was only in townfor a night or two before--before I did the job. "

"And that night she went to bed early with a headache?"

"Yes--blinding. She didn't know anything when she had that kind. And herroom was at the back of the flat. "

Denver again meditated. "And when you got back--she didn't hear you? Yougot in without her knowing it?"

"Yes. I went straight to my work--took it up at the word where I'd leftoff--WHY, DENVER, DON'T YOU REMEMBER?" Granice suddenly, passionatelyinterjected. 

"Remember--?"

"Yes; how you found me--when you looked in that morning, between two andthree... Your usual hour... ?"

"Yes, " the editor nodded. 

Granice gave a short laugh. "In my old coat--with my pipe: looked as ifI'd been working all night, didn't I? Well, I hadn't been in my chairten minutes!"

Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. "I didn't knowwhether YOU remembered that. "

"What?"

"My coming in that particular night--or morning. "

Granice swung round in his chair. "Why, man alive! That's why I'm herenow. Because it was you who spoke for me at the inquest, when theylooked round to see what all the old man's heirs had been doing thatnight--you who testified to having dropped in and found me at my deskas usual.... I thought THAT would appeal to your journalistic sense ifnothing else would!"

Denver smiled. "Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptibleenough--and the idea's picturesque, I grant you: asking the man whoproved your alibi to establish your guilt. "

"That's it--that's it!" Granice's laugh had a ring of triumph. 

"Well, but how about the other chap's testimony--I mean that youngdoctor: what was his name? Ned Ranney. Don't you remember my testifyingthat I'd met him at the elevated station, and told him I was on my wayto smoke a pipe with you, and his saying: 'All right; you'll find himin. I passed the house two hours ago, and saw his shadow against theblind, as usual. ' And the lady with the toothache in the flat across theway: she corroborated his statement, you remember. "

"Yes; I remember. "

"Well, then?"

"Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin with oldcoats and a cushion--something to cast a shadow on the blind. Allyou fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small hours--Icounted on that, and knew you'd take any vague outline as mine. "

"Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw theshadow move--you remember she said she saw you sink forward, as if you'dfallen asleep. "

"Yes; and she was right. It DID move. I suppose some extra-heavy draymust have jolted by the flimsy building--at any rate, something gave mymannikin a jar, and when I came back he had sunk forward, half over thetable. "

There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a throbbingheart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at any rate, did notsneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a deeper insight thanthe law into the fantastic possibilities of life, prepared one better toallow for the incalculableness of human impulses. 

"Well?" Granice faltered out. 

Denver stood up with a shrug. "Look here, man--what's wrong with you?Make a clean breast of it! Nerves gone to smash? I'd like to take youto see a chap I know--an ex-prize-fighter--who's a wonder at pullingfellows in your state out of their hole--"

"Oh, oh--" Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men eyed eachother. "You don't believe me, then?"

"This yarn--how can I? There wasn't a flaw in your alibi. "

"But haven't I filled it full of them now?"

Denver shook his head. "I might think so if I hadn't happened to knowthat you WANTED to. There's the hitch, don't you see?"

Granice groaned. "No, I didn't. You mean my wanting to be foundguilty--?"

"Of course! If somebody else had accused you, the story might have beenworth looking into. As it is, a child could have invented it. It doesn'tdo much credit to your ingenuity. "

Granice turned sullenly toward the door. What was the use of arguing?But on the threshold a sudden impulse drew him back. "Look here, Denver--I daresay you're right. But will you do just one thing to proveit? Put my statement in the Investigator, just as I've made it. Ridiculeit as much as you like. Only give the other fellows a chance at it--menwho don't know anything about me. Set them talking and looking about. Idon't care a damn whether YOU believe me--what I want is to convince theGrand Jury! I oughtn't to have come to a man who knows me--your cursedincredulity is infectious. I don't put my case well, because I know inadvance it's discredited, and I almost end by not believing it myself. That's why I can't convince YOU. It's a vicious circle. " He laid ahand on Denver's arm. "Send a stenographer, and put my statement in thepaper. "

But Denver did not warm to the idea. "My dear fellow, you seem to forgetthat all the evidence was pretty thoroughly sifted at the time, everypossible clue followed up. The public would have been ready enough thento believe that you murdered old Lenman--you or anybody else. All theywanted was a murderer--the most improbable would have served. But youralibi was too confoundedly complete. And nothing you've told me hasshaken it. " Denver laid his cool hand over the other's burning fingers. "Look here, old fellow, go home and work up a better case--then come inand submit it to the Investigator. "

IV

The perspiration was rolling off Granice's forehead. Every few minuteshe had to draw out his handkerchief and wipe the moisture from hishaggard face. 

For an hour and a half he had been talking steadily, putting his caseto the District Attorney. Luckily he had a speaking acquaintance withAllonby, and had obtained, without much difficulty, a private audienceon the very day after his talk with Robert Denver. In the intervalbetween he had hurried home, got out of his evening clothes, and goneforth again at once into the dreary dawn. His fear of Ascham and thealienist made it impossible for him to remain in his rooms. And itseemed to him that the only way of averting that hideous peril was byestablishing, in some sane impartial mind, the proof of his guilt. Evenif he had not been so incurably sick of life, the electric chair seemednow the only alternative to the strait-jacket. 

As he paused to wipe his forehead he saw the District Attorney glance athis watch. The gesture was significant, and Granice lifted an appealinghand. "I don't expect you to believe me now--but can't you put me underarrest, and have the thing looked into?"

Allonby smiled faintly under his heavy grayish moustache. He had a ruddyface, full and jovial, in which his keen professional eyes seemed tokeep watch over impulses not strictly professional. 

"Well, I don't know that we need lock you up just yet. But of course I'mbound to look into your statement--"

Granice rose with an exquisite sense of relief. Surely Allonby wouldn'thave said that if he hadn't believed him!

"That's all right. Then I needn't detain you. I can be found at any timeat my apartment. " He gave the address. 

The District Attorney smiled again, more openly. "What do you say toleaving it for an hour or two this evening? I'm giving a little supperat Rector's--quiet, little affair, you understand: just Miss Melrose--Ithink you know her--and a friend or two; and if you'll join us... "

Granice stumbled out of the office without knowing what reply he hadmade. 

He waited for four days--four days of concentrated horror. During thefirst twenty-four hours the fear of Ascham's alienist dogged him; and asthat subsided, it was replaced by the exasperating sense that his avowalhad made no impression on the District Attorney. Evidently, if he hadbeen going to look into the case, Allonby would have been heard frombefore now.... And that mocking invitation to supper showed clearlyenough how little the story had impressed him!

Granice was overcome by the futility of any farther attempt to inculpatehimself. He was chained to life--a "prisoner of consciousness. " Wherewas it he had read the phrase? Well, he was learning what it meant. Inthe glaring night-hours, when his brain seemed ablaze, he was visitedby a sense of his fixed identity, of his irreducible, inexpugnableSELFNESS, keener, more insidious, more unescapable, than any sensationhe had ever known. He had not guessed that the mind was capable of suchintricacies of self-realization, of penetrating so deep into its owndark windings. Often he woke from his brief snatches of sleep with thefeeling that something material was clinging to him, was on his handsand face, and in his throat--and as his brain cleared he understood thatit was the sense of his own loathed personality that stuck to him likesome thick viscous substance. 

Then, in the first morning hours, he would rise and look out ofhis window at the awakening activities of the street--at thestreet-cleaners, the ash-cart drivers, and the other dingy workersflitting hurriedly by through the sallow winter light. Oh, to be one ofthem--any of them--to take his chance in any of their skins! They werethe toilers--the men whose lot was pitied--the victims wept over andranted about by altruists and economists; and how gladly he would havetaken up the load of any one of them, if only he might have shaken offhis own! But, no--the iron circle of consciousness held them too: eachone was hand-cuffed to his own hideous ego. Why wish to be any one manrather than another? The only absolute good was not to be... And Flint, coming in to draw his bath, would ask if he preferred his eggs scrambledor poached that morning?

On the fifth day he wrote a long urgent letter to Allonby; and for thesucceeding two days he had the occupation of waiting for an answer. Hehardly stirred from his rooms, in his fear of missing the letter by amoment; but would the District Attorney write, or send a representative:a policeman, a "secret agent, " or some other mysterious emissary of thelaw?

On the third morning Flint, stepping softly--as if, confound it! hismaster were ill--entered the library where Granice sat behind an unreadnewspaper, and proferred a card on a tray. 

Granice read the name--J. B. Hewson--and underneath, in pencil, "Fromthe District Attorney's office. " He started up with a thumping heart, and signed an assent to the servant. 

Mr. Hewson was a slight sallow nondescript man of about fifty--the kindof man of whom one is sure to see a specimen in any crowd. "Just thetype of the successful detective, " Granice reflected as he shook handswith his visitor. 

And it was in that character that Mr. Hewson briefly introduced himself. He had been sent by the District Attorney to have "a quiet talk" withMr. Granice--to ask him to repeat the statement he had made about theLenman murder. 

His manner was so quiet, so reasonable and receptive, that Granice'sself-confidence returned. Here was a sensible man--a man who knewhis business--it would be easy enough to make HIM see through thatridiculous alibi! Granice offered Mr. Hewson a cigar, and lighting onehimself--to prove his coolness--began again to tell his story. 

He was conscious, as he proceeded, of telling it better than everbefore. Practice helped, no doubt; and his listener's detached, impartial attitude helped still more. He could see that Hewson, atleast, had not decided in advance to disbelieve him, and the sense ofbeing trusted made him more lucid and more consecutive. Yes, this timehis words would certainly carry conviction... 

V

Despairingly, Granice gazed up and down the shabby street. Beside himstood a young man with bright prominent eyes, a smooth but not toosmoothly-shaven face, and an Irish smile. The young man's nimble glancefollowed Granice's. 

"Sure of the number, are you?" he asked briskly. 

"Oh, yes--it was 104. "

"Well, then, the new building has swallowed it up--that's certain. "

He tilted his head back and surveyed the half-finished front of a brickand limestone flat-house that reared its flimsy elegance above a row oftottering tenements and stables. 

"Dead sure?" he repeated. 

"Yes, " said Granice, discouraged. "And even if I hadn't been, I know thegarage was just opposite Leffler's over there. " He pointed across thestreet to a tumble-down stable with a blotched sign on which the words"Livery and Boarding" were still faintly discernible. 

The young man dashed across to the opposite pavement. "Well, that'ssomething--may get a clue there. Leffler's--same name there, anyhow. Youremember that name?"

"Yes--distinctly. "

Granice had felt a return of confidence since he had enlisted theinterest of the Explorer's "smartest" reporter. If there were momentswhen he hardly believed his own story, there were others when itseemed impossible that every one should not believe it; and young PeterMcCarren, peering, listening, questioning, jotting down notes, inspiredhim with an exquisite sense of security. McCarren had fastened on thecase at once, "like a leech, " as he phrased it--jumped at it, thrilledto it, and settled down to "draw the last drop of fact from it, andhad not let go till he had. " No one else had treated Granice in thatway--even Allonby's detective had not taken a single note. And thougha week had elapsed since the visit of that authorized official, nothing had been heard from the District Attorney's office: Allonby hadapparently dropped the matter again. But McCarren wasn't going to dropit--not he! He positively hung on Granice's footsteps. They had spentthe greater part of the previous day together, and now they were offagain, running down clues. 

But at Leffler's they got none, after all. Leffler's was no longera stable. It was condemned to demolition, and in the respite betweensentence and execution it had become a vague place of storage, ahospital for broken-down carriages and carts, presided over by ablear-eyed old woman who knew nothing of Flood's garage acrossthe way--did not even remember what had stood there before the newflat-house began to rise. 

"Well--we may run Leffler down somewhere; I've seen harder jobs done, "said McCarren, cheerfully noting down the name. 

As they walked back toward Sixth Avenue he added, in a less sanguinetone: "I'd undertake now to put the thing through if you could only putme on the track of that cyanide. "

Granice's heart sank. Yes--there was the weak spot; he had felt it fromthe first! But he still hoped to convince McCarren that his case wasstrong enough without it; and he urged the reporter to come back to hisrooms and sum up the facts with him again. 

"Sorry, Mr. Granice, but I'm due at the office now. Besides, it'd beno use till I get some fresh stuff to work on. Suppose I call you uptomorrow or next day?"

He plunged into a trolley and left Granice gazing desolately after him. 

Two days later he reappeared at the apartment, a shade less jaunty indemeanor. 

"Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you, as thebard says. Can't get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler either. And you sayyou bought the motor through Flood, and sold it through him, too?"

"Yes, " said Granice wearily. 

"Who bought it, do you know?"

Granice wrinkled his brows. "Why, Flood--yes, Flood himself. I sold itback to him three months later. "

"Flood? The devil! And I've ransacked the town for Flood. That kind ofbusiness disappears as if the earth had swallowed it. "

Granice, discouraged, kept silence. 

"That brings us back to the poison, " McCarren continued, his note-bookout. "Just go over that again, will you?"

And Granice went over it again. It had all been so simple at thetime--and he had been so clever in covering up his traces! As soon as hedecided on poison he looked about for an acquaintance who manufacturedchemicals; and there was Jim Dawes, a Harvard classmate, in the dyeingbusiness--just the man. But at the last moment it occurred to him thatsuspicion might turn toward so obvious an opportunity, and he decidedon a more tortuous course. Another friend, Carrick Venn, a student ofmedicine whom irremediable ill-health had kept from the practice ofhis profession, amused his leisure with experiments in physics, for theexercise of which he had set up a simple laboratory. Granice had thehabit of dropping in to smoke a cigar with him on Sunday afternoons, andthe friends generally sat in Venn's work-shop, at the back of the oldfamily house in Stuyvesant Square. Off this work-shop was the cupboardof supplies, with its row of deadly bottles. Carrick Venn was anoriginal, a man of restless curious tastes, and his place, on a Sunday, was often full of visitors: a cheerful crowd of journalists, scribblers, painters, experimenters in divers forms of expression. Coming and goingamong so many, it was easy enough to pass unperceived; and one afternoonGranice, arriving before Venn had returned home, found himself alone inthe work-shop, and quickly slipping into the cupboard, transferred thedrug to his pocket. 

But that had happened ten years ago; and Venn, poor fellow, was longsince dead of his dragging ailment. His old father was dead, too, thehouse in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a boarding-house, andthe shifting life of New York had passed its rapid sponge over everytrace of their obscure little history. Even the optimistic McCarrenseemed to acknowledge the hopelessness of seeking for proof in thatdirection. 

"And there's the third door slammed in our faces. " He shut hisnote-book, and throwing back his head, rested his bright inquisitiveeyes on Granice's furrowed face. 

"Look here, Mr. Granice--you see the weak spot, don't you?"

The other made a despairing motion. "I see so many!"

"Yes: but the one that weakens all the others. Why the deuce do you wantthis thing known? Why do you want to put your head into the noose?"

Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of hisquick light irreverent mind. No one so full of a cheerful animal lifewould believe in the craving for death as a sufficient motive; andGranice racked his brain for one more convincing. But suddenly he sawthe reporter's face soften, and melt to a naive sentimentalism. 

"Mr. Granice--has the memory of it always haunted you?"

Granice stared a moment, and then leapt at the opening. "That's it--thememory of it... Always... "

McCarren nodded vehemently. "Dogged your steps, eh? Wouldn't let yousleep? The time came when you HAD to make a clean breast of it?"

"I had to. Can't you understand?"

The reporter struck his fist on the table. "God, sir! I don't supposethere's a human being with a drop of warm blood in him that can'tpicture the deadly horrors of remorse--"

The Celtic imagination was aflame, and Granice mutely thanked him forthe word. What neither Ascham nor Denver would accept as a conceivablemotive the Irish reporter seized on as the most adequate; and, as hesaid, once one could find a convincing motive, the difficulties of thecase became so many incentives to effort. 

"Remorse--REMORSE, " he repeated, rolling the word under his tongue withan accent that was a clue to the psychology of the popular drama; andGranice, perversely, said to himself: "If I could only have struck thatnote I should have been running in six theatres at once. "

He saw that from that moment McCarren's professional zeal would befanned by emotional curiosity; and he profited by the fact to proposethat they should dine together, and go on afterward to some music-hallor theatre. It was becoming necessary to Granice to feel himself anobject of pre-occupation, to find himself in another mind. He took akind of gray penumbral pleasure in riveting McCarren's attention on hiscase; and to feign the grimaces of moral anguish became a passionatelyengrossing game. He had not entered a theatre for months; but he sat outthe meaningless performance in rigid tolerance, sustained by the senseof the reporter's observation. 

Between the acts, McCarren amused him with anecdotes about the audience:he knew every one by sight, and could lift the curtain from everyphysiognomy. Granice listened indulgently. He had lost all interest inhis kind, but he knew that he was himself the real centre of McCarren'sattention, and that every word the latter spoke had an indirect bearingon his own problem. 

"See that fellow over there--the little dried-up man in the third row, pulling his moustache? HIS memoirs would be worth publishing, " McCarrensaid suddenly in the last entr'acte. 

Granice, following his glance, recognized the detective from Allonby'soffice. For a moment he had the thrilling sense that he was beingshadowed. 

"Caesar, if HE could talk--!" McCarren continued. "Know who he is, ofcourse? Dr. John B. Stell, the biggest alienist in the country--"

Granice, with a start, bent again between the heads in front of him. "THAT man--the fourth from the aisle? You're mistaken. That's not Dr. Stell. "

McCarren laughed. "Well, I guess I've been in court enough to know Stellwhen I see him. He testifies in nearly all the big cases where theyplead insanity. "

A cold shiver ran down Granice's spine, but he repeated obstinately:"That's not Dr. Stell. "

"Not Stell? Why, man, I KNOW him. Look--here he comes. If it isn'tStell, he won't speak to me. "

The little dried-up man was moving slowly up the aisle. As he nearedMcCarren he made a slight gesture of recognition. 

"How'do, Doctor Stell? Pretty slim show, ain't it?" the reportercheerfully flung out at him. And Mr. J. B. Hewson, with a nod ofamicable assent, passed on. 

Granice sat benumbed. He knew he had not been mistaken--the man whohad just passed was the same man whom Allonby had sent to see him:a physician disguised as a detective. Allonby, then, had thought himinsane, like the others--had regarded his confession as the maunderingof a maniac. The discovery froze Granice with horror--he seemed to seethe mad-house gaping for him. 

"Isn't there a man a good deal like him--a detective named J. B. Hewson?"

But he knew in advance what McCarren's answer would be. "Hewson? J. B. Hewson? Never heard of him. But that was J. B. Stell fast enough--Iguess he can be trusted to know himself, and you saw he answered to hisname. "

VI

Some days passed before Granice could obtain a word with the DistrictAttorney: he began to think that Allonby avoided him. 

But when they were face to face Allonby's jovial countenance showedno sign of embarrassment. He waved his visitor to a chair, and leanedacross his desk with the encouraging smile of a consulting physician. 

Granice broke out at once: "That detective you sent me the other day--"

Allonby raised a deprecating hand. 

"--I know: it was Stell the alienist. Why did you do that, Allonby?"

The other's face did not lose its composure. "Because I looked up yourstory first--and there's nothing in it. "

"Nothing in it?" Granice furiously interposed. 

"Absolutely nothing. If there is, why the deuce don't you bring meproofs? I know you've been talking to Peter Ascham, and to Denver, andto that little ferret McCarren of the Explorer. Have any of them beenable to make out a case for you? No. Well, what am I to do?"

Granice's lips began to tremble. "Why did you play me that trick?"

"About Stell? I had to, my dear fellow: it's part of my business. StellIS a detective, if you come to that--every doctor is. "

The trembling of Granice's lips increased, communicating itself in along quiver to his facial muscles. He forced a laugh through his drythroat. "Well--and what did he detect?"

"In you? Oh, he thinks it's overwork--overwork and too much smoking. Ifyou look in on him some day at his office he'll show you the record ofhundreds of cases like yours, and advise you what treatment to follow. It's one of the commonest forms of hallucination. Have a cigar, all thesame. "

"But, Allonby, I killed that man!"

The District Attorney's large hand, outstretched on his desk, had analmost imperceptible gesture, and a moment later, as if an answer to thecall of an electric bell, a clerk looked in from the outer office. 

"Sorry, my dear fellow--lot of people waiting. Drop in on Stell somemorning, " Allonby said, shaking hands. 

McCarren had to own himself beaten: there was absolutely no flaw in thealibi. And since his duty to his journal obviously forbade his wastingtime on insoluble mysteries, he ceased to frequent Granice, who droppedback into a deeper isolation. For a day or two after his visit toAllonby he continued to live in dread of Dr. Stell. Why might notAllonby have deceived him as to the alienist's diagnosis? What if hewere really being shadowed, not by a police agent but by a mad-doctor?To have the truth out, he suddenly determined to call on Dr. Stell. 

The physician received him kindly, and reverted without embarrassmentto the conditions of their previous meeting. "We have to do thatoccasionally, Mr. Granice; it's one of our methods. And you had givenAllonby a fright. "

Granice was silent. He would have liked to reaffirm his guilt, toproduce the fresh arguments which had occurred to him since his lasttalk with the physician; but he feared his eagerness might be takenfor a symptom of derangement, and he affected to smile away Dr. Stell'sallusion. 

"You think, then, it's a case of brain-fag--nothing more?"

"Nothing more. And I should advise you to knock off tobacco. You smoke agood deal, don't you?"

He developed his treatment, recommending massage, gymnastics, travel, orany form of diversion that did not--that in short--

Granice interrupted him impatiently. "Oh, I loathe all that--and I'msick of travelling. "

"H'm. Then some larger interest--politics, reform, philanthropy?Something to take you out of yourself. "

"Yes. I understand, " said Granice wearily. 

"Above all, don't lose heart. I see hundreds of cases like yours, " thedoctor added cheerfully from the threshold. 

On the doorstep Granice stood still and laughed. Hundreds of cases likehis--the case of a man who had committed a murder, who confessed hisguilt, and whom no one would believe! Why, there had never been a caselike it in the world. What a good figure Stell would have made in aplay: the great alienist who couldn't read a man's mind any better thanthat!

Granice saw huge comic opportunities in the type. 

But as he walked away, his fears dispelled, the sense of listlessnessreturned on him. For the first time since his avowal to Peter Aschamhe found himself without an occupation, and understood that he had beencarried through the past weeks only by the necessity of constant action. Now his life had once more become a stagnant backwater, and as he stoodon the street corner watching the tides of traffic sweep by, he askedhimself despairingly how much longer he could endure to float about inthe sluggish circle of his consciousness. 

The thought of self-destruction recurred to him; but again his fleshrecoiled. He yearned for death from other hands, but he could never takeit from his own. And, aside from his insuperable physical reluctance, another motive restrained him. He was possessed by the dogged desireto establish the truth of his story. He refused to be swept aside asan irresponsible dreamer--even if he had to kill himself in the end, he would not do so before proving to society that he had deserved deathfrom it. 

He began to write long letters to the papers; but after the first hadbeen published and commented on, public curiosity was quelled by abrief statement from the District Attorney's office, and the rest of hiscommunications remained unprinted. Ascham came to see him, and beggedhim to travel. Robert Denver dropped in, and tried to joke him out ofhis delusion; till Granice, mistrustful of their motives, began to dreadthe reappearance of Dr. Stell, and set a guard on his lips. But thewords he kept back engendered others and still others in his brain. His inner self became a humming factory of arguments, and he spent longhours reciting and writing down elaborate statements of his crime, which he constantly retouched and developed. Then gradually his activitylanguished under the lack of an audience, the sense of being buriedbeneath deepening drifts of indifference. In a passion of resentment heswore that he would prove himself a murderer, even if he had to commitanother crime to do it; and for a sleepless night or two the thoughtflamed red on his darkness. But daylight dispelled it. The determiningimpulse was lacking and he hated too promiscuously to choose hisvictim... So he was thrown back on the unavailing struggle to imposethe truth of his story. As fast as one channel closed on him he tried topierce another through the sliding sands of incredulity. But every issueseemed blocked, and the whole human race leagued together to cheat oneman of the right to die. 

Thus viewed, the situation became so monstrous that he lost his lastshred of self-restraint in contemplating it. What if he were reallythe victim of some mocking experiment, the centre of a ring ofholiday-makers jeering at a poor creature in its blind dashes againstthe solid walls of consciousness? But, no--men were not so uniformlycruel: there were flaws in the close surface of their indifference, cracks of weakness and pity here and there... 

Granice began to think that his mistake lay in having appealed topersons more or less familiar with his past, and to whom the visibleconformities of his life seemed a final disproof of its one fiercesecret deviation. The general tendency was to take for the whole of lifethe slit seen between the blinders of habit: and in his walk down thatnarrow vista Granice cut a correct enough figure. To a vision free tofollow his whole orbit his story would be more intelligible: it wouldbe easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trainedintelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea shot upin him with the tropic luxuriance of each new seed of thought, and hebegan to walk the streets, and to frequent out-of-the-way chop-housesand bars in his search for the impartial stranger to whom he shoulddisclose himself. 

At first every face looked encouragement; but at the crucial moment healways held back. So much was at stake, and it was so essential thathis first choice should be decisive. He dreaded stupidity, timidity, intolerance. The imaginative eye, the furrowed brow, were what hesought. He must reveal himself only to a heart versed in the tortuousmotions of the human will; and he began to hate the dull benevolenceof the average face. Once or twice, obscurely, allusively, he made abeginning--once sitting down at a man's side in a basement chop-house, another day approaching a lounger on an east-side wharf. But in bothcases the premonition of failure checked him on the brink of avowal. Hisdread of being taken for a man in the clutch of a fixed idea gave him anunnatural keenness in reading the expression of his interlocutors, andhe had provided himself in advance with a series of verbal alternatives, trap-doors of evasion from the first dart of ridicule or suspicion. 

He passed the greater part of the day in the streets, coming home atirregular hours, dreading the silence and orderliness of his apartment, and the critical scrutiny of Flint. His real life was spent in aworld so remote from this familiar setting that he sometimes had themysterious sense of a living metempsychosis, a furtive passage from oneidentity to another--yet the other as unescapably himself!

One humiliation he was spared: the desire to live never revived inhim. Not for a moment was he tempted to a shabby pact with existingconditions. He wanted to die, wanted it with the fixed unwavering desirewhich alone attains its end. And still the end eluded him! It would notalways, of course--he had full faith in the dark star of his destiny. And he could prove it best by repeating his story, persistently andindefatigably, pouring it into indifferent ears, hammering it into dullbrains, till at last it kindled a spark, and some one of the carelessmillions paused, listened, believed... 

It was a mild March day, and he had been loitering on the west-sidedocks, looking at faces. He was becoming an expert in physiognomies: hiseagerness no longer made rash darts and awkward recoils. He knew now theface he needed, as clearly as if it had come to him in a vision; andnot till he found it would he speak. As he walked eastward through theshabby reeking streets he had a premonition that he should find it thatmorning. Perhaps it was the promise of spring in the air--certainly hefelt calmer than for many days... 

He turned into Washington Square, struck across it obliquely, and walkedup University Place. Its heterogeneous passers always allured him--theywere less hurried than in Broadway, less enclosed and classified than inFifth Avenue. He walked slowly, watching for his face. 

At Union Square he felt a sudden relapse into discouragement, like avotary who has watched too long for a sign from the altar. Perhaps, after all, he should never find his face... The air was languid, andhe felt tired. He walked between the bald grass-plots and the twistedtrees, making for an empty seat. Presently he passed a bench on which agirl sat alone, and something as definite as the twitch of a cord madehim stop before her. He had never dreamed of telling his story to agirl, had hardly looked at the women's faces as they passed. His casewas man's work: how could a woman help him? But this girl's face wasextraordinary--quiet and wide as a clear evening sky. It suggested ahundred images of space, distance, mystery, like ships he had seen, asa boy, quietly berthed by a familiar wharf, but with the breath of farseas and strange harbours in their shrouds... Certainly this girl wouldunderstand. He went up to her quietly, lifting his hat, observing theforms--wishing her to see at once that he was "a gentleman. "

"I am a stranger to you, " he began, sitting down beside her, "but yourface is so extremely intelligent that I feel... I feel it is the faceI've waited for... Looked for everywhere; and I want to tell you--"

The girl's eyes widened: she rose to her feet. She was escaping him!

In his dismay he ran a few steps after her, and caught her roughly bythe arm. 

"Here--wait--listen! Oh, don't scream, you fool!" he shouted out. 

He felt a hand on his own arm; turned and confronted a policeman. Instantly he understood that he was being arrested, and something hardwithin him was loosened and ran to tears. 

"Ah, you know--you KNOW I'm guilty!"

He was conscious that a crowd was forming, and that the girl'sfrightened face had disappeared. But what did he care about her face? Itwas the policeman who had really understood him. He turned and followed, the crowd at his heels... 

VII

In the charming place in which he found himself there were so manysympathetic faces that he felt more than ever convinced of the certaintyof making himself heard. 

It was a bad blow, at first, to find that he had not been arrestedfor murder; but Ascham, who had come to him at once, explained that heneeded rest, and the time to "review" his statements; it appeared thatreiteration had made them a little confused and contradictory. Tothis end he had willingly acquiesced in his removal to a large quietestablishment, with an open space and trees about it, where he hadfound a number of intelligent companions, some, like himself, engagedin preparing or reviewing statements of their cases, and others ready tolend an interested ear to his own recital. 

For a time he was content to let himself go on the tranquil current ofthis existence; but although his auditors gave him for the most partan encouraging attention, which, in some, went the length of reallybrilliant and helpful suggestion, he gradually felt a recurrence of hisold doubts. Either his hearers were not sincere, or else they hadless power to aid him than they boasted. His interminable conferencesresulted in nothing, and as the benefit of the long rest made itselffelt, it produced an increased mental lucidity which rendered inactionmore and more unbearable. At length he discovered that on certain daysvisitors from the outer world were admitted to his retreat; and he wroteout long and logically constructed relations of his crime, and furtivelyslipped them into the hands of these messengers of hope. 

This occupation gave him a fresh lease of patience, and he now livedonly to watch for the visitors' days, and scan the faces that swept byhim like stars seen and lost in the rifts of a hurrying sky. 

Mostly, these faces were strange and less intelligent than those of hiscompanions. But they represented his last means of access to the world, a kind of subterranean channel on which he could set his "statements"afloat, like paper boats which the mysterious current might sweep outinto the open seas of life. 

One day, however, his attention was arrested by a familiar contour, a pair of bright prominent eyes, and a chin insufficiently shaved. Hesprang up and stood in the path of Peter McCarren. 

The journalist looked at him doubtfully, then held out his hand with astartled deprecating, "WHY--?"

"You didn't know me? I'm so changed?" Granice faltered, feeling therebound of the other's wonder. 

"Why, no; but you're looking quieter--smoothed out, " McCarren smiled. 

"Yes: that's what I'm here for--to rest. And I've taken the opportunityto write out a clearer statement--"

Granice's hand shook so that he could hardly draw the folded paper fromhis pocket. As he did so he noticed that the reporter was accompanied bya tall man with grave compassionate eyes. It came to Granice in a wildthrill of conviction that this was the face he had waited for... 

"Perhaps your friend--he IS your friend?--would glance over it--or Icould put the case in a few words if you have time?" Granice's voiceshook like his hand. If this chance escaped him he felt that his lasthope was gone. McCarren and the stranger looked at each other, and theformer glanced at his watch. 

"I'm sorry we can't stay and talk it over now, Mr. Granice; but myfriend has an engagement, and we're rather pressed--"

Granice continued to proffer the paper. "I'm sorry--I think I could haveexplained. But you'll take this, at any rate?"

The stranger looked at him gently. "Certainly--I'll take it. " He had hishand out. "Good-bye. "

"Good-bye, " Granice echoed. 

He stood watching the two men move away from him through the long lighthall; and as he watched them a tear ran down his face. But as soon asthey were out of sight he turned and walked hastily toward his room, beginning to hope again, already planning a new statement. 

Outside the building the two men stood still, and the journalist'scompanion looked up curiously at the long monotonous rows of barredwindows. 

"So that was Granice?"

"Yes--that was Granice, poor devil, " said McCarren. 

"Strange case! I suppose there's never been one just like it? He's stillabsolutely convinced that he committed that murder?"

"Absolutely. Yes. "

The stranger reflected. "And there was no conceivable ground for theidea? No one could make out how it started? A quiet conventional sort offellow like that--where do you suppose he got such a delusion? Did youever get the least clue to it?"

McCarren stood still, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked up incontemplation of the barred windows. Then he turned his bright hard gazeon his companion. 

"That was the queer part of it. I've never spoken of it--but I DID get aclue. "

"By Jove! That's interesting. What was it?"

McCarren formed his red lips into a whistle. "Why--that it wasn't adelusion. "

He produced his effect--the other turned on him with a pallid stare. 

"He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the merestaccident, when I'd pretty nearly chucked the whole job. "

"He murdered him--murdered his cousin?"

"Sure as you live. Only don't split on me. It's about the queerestbusiness I ever ran into... DO ABOUT IT? Why, what was I to do? Icouldn't hang the poor devil, could I? Lord, but I was glad when theycollared him, and had him stowed away safe in there!"

The tall man listened with a grave face, grasping Granice's statement inhis hand. 

"Here--take this; it makes me sick, " he said abruptly, thrusting thepaper at the reporter; and the two men turned and walked in silence tothe gates. 

The End

THE DILETTANTE

As first published in Harper's Monthly, December 1903

It was on an impulse hardly needing the arguments he found himselfadvancing in its favor, that Thursdale, on his way to the club, turnedas usual into Mrs. Vervain's street. 

The "as usual" was his own qualification of the act; a convenient wayof bridging the interval--in days and other sequences--that laybetween this visit and the last. It was characteristic of him that heinstinctively excluded his call two days earlier, with Ruth Gaynor, fromthe list of his visits to Mrs. Vervain: the special conditions attendingit had made it no more like a visit to Mrs. Vervain than an engraveddinner invitation is like a personal letter. Yet it was to talk overhis call with Miss Gaynor that he was now returning to the scene of thatepisode; and it was because Mrs. Vervain could be trusted to handle thetalking over as skilfully as the interview itself that, at her corner, he had felt the dilettante's irresistible craving to take a last look ata work of art that was passing out of his possession. 

On the whole, he knew no one better fitted to deal with the unexpectedthan Mrs. Vervain. She excelled in the rare art of taking things forgranted, and Thursdale felt a pardonable pride in the thought that sheowed her excellence to his training. Early in his career Thursdale hadmade the mistake, at the outset of his acquaintance with a lady, oftelling her that he loved her and exacting the same avowal in return. The latter part of that episode had been like the long walk back from apicnic, when one has to carry all the crockery one has finished using:it was the last time Thursdale ever allowed himself to be encumberedwith the debris of a feast. He thus incidentally learned that theprivilege of loving her is one of the least favors that a charming womancan accord; and in seeking to avoid the pitfalls of sentiment he haddeveloped a science of evasion in which the woman of the moment becamea mere implement of the game. He owed a great deal of delicate enjoymentto the cultivation of this art. The perils from which it had been hisrefuge became naively harmless: was it possible that he who now took hiseasy way along the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw heightsof emotion? Youth is a high-colored season; but he had the satisfactionof feeling that he had entered earlier than most into that chiar'oscuroof sensation where every half-tone has its value. 

As a promoter of this pleasure no one he had known was comparableto Mrs. Vervain. He had taught a good many women not to betray theirfeelings, but he had never before had such fine material to work in. Shehad been surprisingly crude when he first knew her; capable of makingthe most awkward inferences, of plunging through thin ice, of recklesslyundressing her emotions; but she had acquired, under the disciplineof his reticences and evasions, a skill almost equal to his own, andperhaps more remarkable in that it involved keeping time with any tunehe played and reading at sight some uncommonly difficult passages. 

It had taken Thursdale seven years to form this fine talent; but theresult justified the effort. At the crucial moment she had beenperfect: her way of greeting Miss Gaynor had made him regret that he hadannounced his engagement by letter. It was an evasion that confessed adifficulty; a deviation implying an obstacle, where, by common consent, it was agreed to see none; it betrayed, in short, a lack of confidencein the completeness of his method. It had been his pride never to puthimself in a position which had to be quitted, as it were, by the backdoor; but here, as he perceived, the main portals would have openedfor him of their own accord. All this, and much more, he read in thefinished naturalness with which Mrs. Vervain had met Miss Gaynor. Hehad never seen a better piece of work: there was no over-eagerness, no suspicious warmth, above all (and this gave her art the grace of anatural quality) there were none of those damnable implications wherebya woman, in welcoming her friend's betrothed, may keep him on pinsand needles while she laps the lady in complacency. So masterly aperformance, indeed, hardly needed the offset of Miss Gaynor's door-stepwords--"To be so kind to me, how she must have liked you!"--though hecaught himself wishing it lay within the bounds of fitness to transmitthem, as a final tribute, to the one woman he knew who was unfailinglycertain to enjoy a good thing. It was perhaps the one drawback tohis new situation that it might develop good things which it would beimpossible to hand on to Margaret Vervain. 

The fact that he had made the mistake of underrating his friend'spowers, the consciousness that his writing must have betrayed hisdistrust of her efficiency, seemed an added reason for turning down herstreet instead of going on to the club. He would show her that he knewhow to value her; he would ask her to achieve with him a feat infinitelyrarer and more delicate than the one he had appeared to avoid. Incidentally, he would also dispose of the interval of time beforedinner: ever since he had seen Miss Gaynor off, an hour earlier, on herreturn journey to Buffalo, he had been wondering how he should put inthe rest of the afternoon. It was absurd, how he missed the girl.... Yes, that was it; the desire to talk about her was, after all, at thebottom of his impulse to call on Mrs. Vervain! It was absurd, if youlike--but it was delightfully rejuvenating. He could recall the timewhen he had been afraid of being obvious: now he felt that this returnto the primitive emotions might be as restorative as a holiday inthe Canadian woods. And it was precisely by the girl's candor, herdirectness, her lack of complications, that he was taken. The sense thatshe might say something rash at any moment was positively exhilarating:if she had thrown her arms about him at the station he would not havegiven a thought to his crumpled dignity. It surprised Thursdale to findwhat freshness of heart he brought to the adventure; and though hissense of irony prevented his ascribing his intactness to any consciouspurpose, he could but rejoice in the fact that his sentimental economieshad left him such a large surplus to draw upon. 

Mrs. Vervain was at home--as usual. When one visits the cemetery oneexpects to find the angel on the tombstone, and it struck Thursdale asanother proof of his friend's good taste that she had been in no unduehaste to change her habits. The whole house appeared to count on hiscoming; the footman took his hat and overcoat as naturally as thoughthere had been no lapse in his visits; and the drawing-room at onceenveloped him in that atmosphere of tacit intelligence which Mrs. Vervain imparted to her very furniture. 

It was a surprise that, in this general harmony of circumstances, Mrs. Vervain should herself sound the first false note. 

"You?" she exclaimed; and the book she held slipped from her hand. 

It was crude, certainly; unless it were a touch of the finest art. Thedifficulty of classifying it disturbed Thursdale's balance. 

"Why not?" he said, restoring the book. "Isn't it my hour?" And as shemade no answer, he added gently, "Unless it's some one else's?"

She laid the book aside and sank back into her chair. "Mine, merely, "she said. 

"I hope that doesn't mean that you're unwilling to share it?"

"With you? By no means. You're welcome to my last crust. "

He looked at her reproachfully. "Do you call this the last?"

She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. "It's a way ofgiving it more flavor!"

He returned the smile. "A visit to you doesn't need such condiments. "

She took this with just the right measure of retrospective amusement. 

"Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special taste, " sheconfessed. 

Her smile was so confident, so reassuring, that it lulled him into theimprudence of saying, "Why should you want it to be different from whatwas always so perfectly right?"

She hesitated. "Doesn't the fact that it's the last constitute adifference?"

"The last--my last visit to you?"

"Oh, metaphorically, I mean--there's a break in the continuity. "

Decidedly, she was pressing too hard: unlearning his arts already!

"I don't recognize it, " he said. "Unless you make me--" he added, with anote that slightly stirred her attitude of languid attention. 

She turned to him with grave eyes. "You recognize no differencewhatever?"

"None--except an added link in the chain. "

"An added link?"

"In having one more thing to like you for--your letting Miss Gaynorsee why I had already so many. " He flattered himself that this turn hadtaken the least hint of fatuity from the phrase. 

Mrs. Vervain sank into her former easy pose. "Was it that you came for?"she asked, almost gaily. 

"If it is necessary to have a reason--that was one. "

"To talk to me about Miss Gaynor?"

"To tell you how she talks about you. "

"That will be very interesting--especially if you have seen her sinceher second visit to me. "

"Her second visit?" Thursdale pushed his chair back with a start andmoved to another. "She came to see you again?"

"This morning, yes--by appointment. "

He continued to look at her blankly. "You sent for her?"

"I didn't have to--she wrote and asked me last night. But no doubt youhave seen her since. "

Thursdale sat silent. He was trying to separate his words from histhoughts, but they still clung together inextricably. "I saw her offjust now at the station. "

"And she didn't tell you that she had been here again?"

"There was hardly time, I suppose--there were people about--" hefloundered. 

"Ah, she'll write, then. "

He regained his composure. "Of course she'll write: very often, I hope. You know I'm absurdly in love, " he cried audaciously. 

She tilted her head back, looking up at him as he leaned against thechimney-piece. He had leaned there so often that the attitude touched apulse which set up a throbbing in her throat. "Oh, my poor Thursdale!"she murmured. 

"I suppose it's rather ridiculous, " he owned; and as she remainedsilent, he added, with a sudden break--"Or have you another reason forpitying me?"

Her answer was another question. "Have you been back to your rooms sinceyou left her?"

"Since I left her at the station? I came straight here. "

"Ah, yes--you COULD: there was no reason--" Her words passed into asilent musing. 

Thursdale moved nervously nearer. "You said you had something to tellme?"

"Perhaps I had better let her do so. There may be a letter at yourrooms. "

"A letter? What do you mean? A letter from HER? What has happened?"

His paleness shook her, and she raised a hand of reassurance. "Nothinghas happened--perhaps that is just the worst of it. You always HATED, you know, " she added incoherently, "to have things happen: you neverwould let them. "

"And now--?"

"Well, that was what she came here for: I supposed you had guessed. Toknow if anything had happened. "

"Had happened?" He gazed at her slowly. "Between you and me?" he saidwith a rush of light. 

The words were so much cruder than any that had ever passed between themthat the color rose to her face; but she held his startled gaze. 

"You know girls are not quite as unsophisticated as they used to be. Areyou surprised that such an idea should occur to her?"

His own color answered hers: it was the only reply that came to him. 

Mrs. Vervain went on, smoothly: "I supposed it might have struck youthat there were times when we presented that appearance. "

He made an impatient gesture. "A man's past is his own!"

"Perhaps--it certainly never belongs to the woman who has shared it. Butone learns such truths only by experience; and Miss Gaynor is naturallyinexperienced. "

"Of course--but--supposing her act a natural one--" he flounderedlamentably among his innuendoes--"I still don't see--how there wasanything--"

"Anything to take hold of? There wasn't--"

"Well, then--?" escaped him, in crude satisfaction; but as she did notcomplete the sentence he went on with a faltering laugh: "She can hardlyobject to the existence of a mere friendship between us!"

"But she does, " said Mrs. Vervain. 

Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no trace ofjealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still hear the candidring of the girl's praise of Mrs. Vervain. If she were such an abyss ofinsincerity as to dissemble distrust under such frankness, she must atleast be more subtle than to bring her doubts to her rival for solution. The situation seemed one through which one could no longer move in apenumbra, and he let in a burst of light with the direct query: "Won'tyou explain what you mean?"

Mrs. Vervain sat silent, not provokingly, as though to prolong hisdistress, but as if, in the attenuated phraseology he had taught her, itwas difficult to find words robust enough to meet his challenge. It wasthe first time he had ever asked her to explain anything; and she hadlived so long in dread of offering elucidations which were not wanted, that she seemed unable to produce one on the spot. 

At last she said slowly: "She came to find out if you were really free. "

Thursdale colored again. "Free?" he stammered, with a sense of physicaldisgust at contact with such crassness. 

"Yes--if I had quite done with you. " She smiled in recovered security. "It seems she likes clear outlines; she has a passion for definitions. "

"Yes--well?" he said, wincing at the echo of his own subtlety. 

"Well--and when I told her that you had never belonged to me, she wantedme to define MY status--to know exactly where I had stood all along. "

Thursdale sat gazing at her intently; his hand was not yet on the clue. "And even when you had told her that--"

"Even when I had told her that I had HAD no status--that I hadnever stood anywhere, in any sense she meant, " said Mrs. Vervain, slowly--"even then she wasn't satisfied, it seems. "

He uttered an uneasy exclamation. "She didn't believe you, you mean?"

"I mean that she DID believe me: too thoroughly. "

"Well, then--in God's name, what did she want?"

"Something more--those were the words she used. "

"Something more? Between--between you and me? Is it a conundrum?" Helaughed awkwardly. 

"Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer forbidden tocontemplate the relation of the sexes. "

"So it seems!" he commented. "But since, in this case, there wasn'tany--" he broke off, catching the dawn of a revelation in her gaze. 

"That's just it. The unpardonable offence has been--in our notoffending. "

He flung himself down despairingly. "I give it up!--What did you tellher?" he burst out with sudden crudeness. 

"The exact truth. If I had only known, " she broke off with a beseechingtenderness, "won't you believe that I would still have lied for you?"

"Lied for me? Why on earth should you have lied for either of us?"

"To save you--to hide you from her to the last! As I've hidden you frommyself all these years!" She stood up with a sudden tragic import inher movement. "You believe me capable of that, don't you? If I had onlyguessed--but I have never known a girl like her; she had the truth outof me with a spring. "

"The truth that you and I had never--"

"Had never--never in all these years! Oh, she knew why--she measured usboth in a flash. She didn't suspect me of having haggled with you--herwords pelted me like hail. 'He just took what he wanted--sifted andsorted you to suit his taste. Burnt out the gold and left a heap ofcinders. And you let him--you let yourself be cut in bits'--she mixedher metaphors a little--'be cut in bits, and used or discarded, whileall the while every drop of blood in you belonged to him! But he'sShylock--and you have bled to death of the pound of flesh he has cut outof you. ' But she despises me the most, you know--far the most--" Mrs. Vervain ended. 

The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room: theyseemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon intimacy, the kindof intimacy on which at any moment, a visitor might intrude withoutperceptibly lowering the atmosphere. It was as though a grandopera-singer had strained the acoustics of a private music-room. 

Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was between them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils ofreticence and ambiguity had fallen. 

His first words were characteristic. "She DOES despise me, then?" heexclaimed. 

"She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near theheart. "

He was excessively pale. "Please tell me exactly what she said of me. "

"She did not speak much of you: she is proud. But I gather that whileshe understands love or indifference, her eyes have never been opened tothe many intermediate shades of feeling. At any rate, she expressed anunwillingness to be taken with reservations--she thinks you would haveloved her better if you had loved some one else first. The point of viewis original--she insists on a man with a past!"

"Oh, a past--if she's serious--I could rake up a past!" he said with alaugh. 

"So I suggested: but she has her eyes on his particular portion of it. She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know what you haddone to me; and before I could guess her drift I blundered into tellingher. "

Thursdale drew a difficult breath. "I never supposed--your revenge iscomplete, " he said slowly. 

He heard a little gasp in her throat. "My revenge? When I sent for youto warn you--to save you from being surprised as I was surprised?"

"You're very good--but it's rather late to talk of saving me. " He heldout his hand in the mechanical gesture of leave-taking. 

"How you must care!--for I never saw you so dull, " was her answer. "Don't you see that it's not too late for me to help you?" And ashe continued to stare, she brought out sublimely: "Take the rest--inimagination! Let it at least be of that much use to you. Tell her I liedto her--she's too ready to believe it! And so, after all, in a sense, Isha'n't have been wasted. "

His stare hung on her, widening to a kind of wonder. She gave the lookback brightly, unblushingly, as though the expedient were too simple toneed oblique approaches. It was extraordinary how a few words had sweptthem from an atmosphere of the most complex dissimulations to thiscontact of naked souls. 

It was not in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; butsomething in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light. He wentup to his friend and took her hand. 

"You would do it--you would do it!"

She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook. 

"Good-by, " he said, kissing it. 

"Good-by? You are going--?"

"To get my letter. "

"Your letter? The letter won't matter, if you will only do what I ask. "

He returned her gaze. "I might, I suppose, without being out ofcharacter. Only, don't you see that if your plan helped me it could onlyharm her?"

"Harm HER?"

"To sacrifice you wouldn't make me different. I shall go on being whatI have always been--sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do you want mypunishment to fall on HER?"

She looked at him long and deeply. "Ah, if I had to choose betweenyou--!"

"You would let her take her chance? But I can't, you see. I must take mypunishment alone. "

She drew her hand away, sighing. "Oh, there will be no punishment foreither of you. "

"For either of us? There will be the reading of her letter for me. "

She shook her head with a slight laugh. "There will be no letter. "

Thursdale faced about from the threshold with fresh life in his look. "No letter? You don't mean--"

"I mean that she's been with you since I saw her--she's seen you andheard your voice. If there IS a letter, she has recalled it--from thefirst station, by telegraph. "

He turned back to the door, forcing an answer to her smile. "But in themean while I shall have read it, " he said. 

The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful emptinessof the room. 

The End

THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND

As first published in Atlantic Monthly, August 1904

I

"Above all, " the letter ended, "don't leave Siena without seeing DoctorLombard's Leonardo. Lombard is a queer old Englishman, a mystic or amadman (if the two are not synonymous), and a devout student of theItalian Renaissance. He has lived for years in Italy, exploring itsremotest corners, and has lately picked up an undoubted Leonardo, whichcame to light in a farmhouse near Bergamo. It is believed to be one ofthe missing pictures mentioned by Vasari, and is at any rate, accordingto the most competent authorities, a genuine and almost untouchedexample of the best period. 

"Lombard is a queer stick, and jealous of showing his treasures; but westruck up a friendship when I was working on the Sodomas in Siena threeyears ago, and if you will give him the enclosed line you may get a peepat the Leonardo. Probably not more than a peep, though, for I hear herefuses to have it reproduced. I want badly to use it in my monograph onthe Windsor drawings, so please see what you can do for me, and if youcan't persuade him to let you take a photograph or make a sketch, atleast jot down a detailed description of the picture and get from himall the facts you can. I hear that the French and Italian governmentshave offered him a large advance on his purchase, but that he refusesto sell at any price, though he certainly can't afford such luxuries; infact, I don't see where he got enough money to buy the picture. He livesin the Via Papa Giulio. "

Wyant sat at the table d'hote of his hotel, re-reading his friend'sletter over a late luncheon. He had been five days in Siena withouthaving found time to call on Doctor Lombard; not from any indifferenceto the opportunity presented, but because it was his first visit tothe strange red city and he was still under the spell of its moreconspicuous wonders--the brick palaces flinging out their wrought-irontorch-holders with a gesture of arrogant suzerainty; the greatcouncil-chamber emblazoned with civic allegories; the pageant of PopeJulius on the Library walls; the Sodomas smiling balefully through thedusk of mouldering chapels--and it was only when his first hunger wasappeased that he remembered that one course in the banquet was stilluntasted. 

He put the letter in his pocket and turned to leave the room, with anod to its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man with lustrouseyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of the table, perusingthe Fanfulla di Domenica. This gentleman, his daily vis-a-vis, returnedthe nod with a Latin eloquence of gesture, and Wyant passed on tothe ante-chamber, where he paused to light a cigarette. He was justrestoring the case to his pocket when he heard a hurried step behindhim, and the lustrous-eyed young man advanced through the glass doors ofthe dining-room. 

"Pardon me, sir, " he said in measured English, and with an intonation ofexquisite politeness; "you have let this letter fall. "

Wyant, recognizing his friend's note of introduction to Doctor Lombard, took it with a word of thanks, and was about to turn away when heperceived that the eyes of his fellow diner remained fixed on him with agaze of melancholy interrogation. 

"Again pardon me, " the young man at length ventured, "but are you bychance the friend of the illustrious Doctor Lombard?"

"No, " returned Wyant, with the instinctive Anglo-Saxon distrust offoreign advances. Then, fearing to appear rude, he said with a guardedpoliteness: "Perhaps, by the way, you can tell me the number of hishouse. I see it is not given here. "

The young man brightened perceptibly. "The number of the house isthirteen; but any one can indicate it to you--it is well known in Siena. It is called, " he continued after a moment, "the House of the DeadHand. "

Wyant stared. "What a queer name!" he said. 

"The name comes from an antique hand of marble which for many hundredyears has been above the door. "

Wyant was turning away with a gesture of thanks, when the other added:"If you would have the kindness to ring twice. "

"To ring twice?"

"At the doctor's. " The young man smiled. "It is the custom. "

It was a dazzling March afternoon, with a shower of sun from themid-blue, and a marshalling of slaty clouds behind the umber-coloredhills. For nearly an hour Wyant loitered on the Lizza, watching theshadows race across the naked landscape and the thunder blacken in thewest; then he decided to set out for the House of the Dead Hand. Themap in his guidebook showed him that the Via Papa Giulio was one of thestreets which radiate from the Piazza, and thither he bent his course, pausing at every other step to fill his eye with some fresh image ofweather-beaten beauty. The clouds had rolled upward, obscuring thesunshine and hanging like a funereal baldachin above the projectingcornices of Doctor Lombard's street, and Wyant walked for some distancein the shade of the beetling palace fronts before his eye fell ona doorway surmounted by a sallow marble hand. He stood for a momentstaring up at the strange emblem. The hand was a woman's--a deaddrooping hand, which hung there convulsed and helpless, as though it hadbeen thrust forth in denunciation of some evil mystery within the house, and had sunk struggling into death. 

A girl who was drawing water from the well in the court said that theEnglish doctor lived on the first floor, and Wyant, passing througha glazed door, mounted the damp degrees of a vaulted stairway with aplaster AEsculapius mouldering in a niche on the landing. Facing theAEsculapius was another door, and as Wyant put his hand on the bell-ropehe remembered his unknown friend's injunction, and rang twice. 

His ring was answered by a peasant woman with a low forehead and smallclose-set eyes, who, after a prolonged scrutiny of himself, his card, and his letter of introduction, left him standing in a high, coldante-chamber floored with brick. He heard her wooden pattens click downan interminable corridor, and after some delay she returned and told himto follow her. 

They passed through a long saloon, bare as the ante-chamber, but loftilyvaulted, and frescoed with a seventeenth-century Triumph of Scipio orAlexander--martial figures following Wyant with the filmed melancholygaze of shades in limbo. At the end of this apartment he was admittedto a smaller room, with the same atmosphere of mortal cold, but showingmore obvious signs of occupancy. The walls were covered with tapestrywhich had faded to the gray-brown tints of decaying vegetation, so thatthe young man felt as though he were entering a sunless autumn wood. Against these hangings stood a few tall cabinets on heavy gilt feet, andat a table in the window three persons were seated: an elderly ladywho was warming her hands over a brazier, a girl bent above a strip ofneedle-work, and an old man. 

As the latter advanced toward Wyant, the young man was conscious ofstaring with unseemly intentness at his small round-backed figure, dressed with shabby disorder and surmounted by a wonderful head, lean, vulpine, eagle-beaked as that of some art-loving despot of theRenaissance: a head combining the venerable hair and large prominenteyes of the humanist with the greedy profile of the adventurer. Wyant, in musing on the Italian portrait-medals of the fifteenth century, hadoften fancied that only in that period of fierce individualism couldtypes so paradoxical have been produced; yet the subtle craftsmen whocommitted them to the bronze had never drawn a face more strangelystamped with contradictory passions than that of Doctor Lombard. 

"I am glad to see you, " he said to Wyant, extending a hand which seemeda mere framework held together by knotted veins. "We lead a quiet lifehere and receive few visitors, but any friend of Professor Clyde's iswelcome. " Then, with a gesture which included the two women, he addeddryly: "My wife and daughter often talk of Professor Clyde. "

"Oh yes--he used to make me such nice toast; they don't understand toastin Italy, " said Mrs. Lombard in a high plaintive voice. 

It would have been difficult, from Doctor Lombard's manner andappearance to guess his nationality; but his wife was so inconscientlyand ineradicably English that even the silhouette of her cap seemed aprotest against Continental laxities. She was a stout fair woman, withpale cheeks netted with red lines. A brooch with a miniature portraitsustained a bogwood watch-chain upon her bosom, and at her elbow lay aheap of knitting and an old copy of The Queen. 

The young girl, who had remained standing, was a slim replica of hermother, with an apple-cheeked face and opaque blue eyes. Her small headwas prodigally laden with braids of dull fair hair, and she might havehad a kind of transient prettiness but for the sullen droop of her roundmouth. It was hard to say whether her expression implied ill-temper orapathy; but Wyant was struck by the contrast between the fierce vitalityof the doctor's age and the inanimateness of his daughter's youth. 

Seating himself in the chair which his host advanced, the young mantried to open the conversation by addressing to Mrs. Lombard some randomremark on the beauties of Siena. The lady murmured a resigned assent, and Doctor Lombard interposed with a smile: "My dear sir, my wifeconsiders Siena a most salubrious spot, and is favorably impressed bythe cheapness of the marketing; but she deplores the total absence ofmuffins and cannel coal, and cannot resign herself to the Italian methodof dusting furniture. "

"But they don't, you know--they don't dust it!" Mrs. Lombard protested, without showing any resentment of her husband's manner. 

"Precisely--they don't dust it. Since we have lived in Siena we have notonce seen the cobwebs removed from the battlements of the Mangia. Canyou conceive of such housekeeping? My wife has never yet dared to writeit home to her aunts at Bonchurch. "

Mrs. Lombard accepted in silence this remarkable statement of herviews, and her husband, with a malicious smile at Wyant's embarrassment, planted himself suddenly before the young man. 

"And now, " said he, "do you want to see my Leonardo?"

"DO I?" cried Wyant, on his feet in a flash. 

The doctor chuckled. "Ah, " he said, with a kind of crooningdeliberation, "that's the way they all behave--that's what they all comefor. " He turned to his daughter with another variation of mockery in hissmile. "Don't fancy it's for your beaux yeux, my dear; or for the maturecharms of Mrs. Lombard, " he added, glaring suddenly at his wife, who hadtaken up her knitting and was softly murmuring over the number of herstitches. 

Neither lady appeared to notice his pleasantries, and he continued, addressing himself to Wyant: "They all come--they all come; but many arecalled and few are chosen. " His voice sank to solemnity. "While I live, "he said, "no unworthy eye shall desecrate that picture. But I willnot do my friend Clyde the injustice to suppose that he would send anunworthy representative. He tells me he wishes a description of thepicture for his book; and you shall describe it to him--if you can. "

Wyant hesitated, not knowing whether it was a propitious moment to putin his appeal for a photograph. 

"Well, sir, " he said, "you know Clyde wants me to take away all I can ofit. "

Doctor Lombard eyed him sardonically. "You're welcome to take away allyou can carry, " he replied; adding, as he turned to his daughter: "Thatis, if he has your permission, Sybilla. "

The girl rose without a word, and laying aside her work, took a key froma secret drawer in one of the cabinets, while the doctor continued inthe same note of grim jocularity: "For you must know that the picture isnot mine--it is my daughter's. "

He followed with evident amusement the surprised glance which Wyantturned on the young girl's impassive figure. 

"Sybilla, " he pursued, "is a votary of the arts; she has inherited herfond father's passion for the unattainable. Luckily, however, she alsorecently inherited a tidy legacy from her grandmother; and having seenthe Leonardo, on which its discoverer had placed a price far beyondmy reach, she took a step which deserves to go down to history: sheinvested her whole inheritance in the purchase of the picture, thusenabling me to spend my closing years in communion with one of theworld's masterpieces. My dear sir, could Antigone do more?"

The object of this strange eulogy had meanwhile drawn aside one of thetapestry hangings, and fitted her key into a concealed door. 

"Come, " said Doctor Lombard, "let us go before the light fails us. "

Wyant glanced at Mrs. Lombard, who continued to knit impassively. 

"No, no, " said his host, "my wife will not come with us. You mightnot suspect it from her conversation, but my wife has no feeling forart--Italian art, that is; for no one is fonder of our early Victorianschool. "

"Frith's Railway Station, you know, " said Mrs. Lombard, smiling. "I likean animated picture. "

Miss Lombard, who had unlocked the door, held back the tapestry to lether father and Wyant pass out; then she followed them down a narrowstone passage with another door at its end. This door was iron-barred, and Wyant noticed that it had a complicated patent lock. The girl fittedanother key into the lock, and Doctor Lombard led the way into a smallroom. The dark panelling of this apartment was irradiated by streams ofyellow light slanting through the disbanded thunder clouds, and inthe central brightness hung a picture concealed by a curtain of fadedvelvet. 

"A little too bright, Sybilla, " said Doctor Lombard. His face had grownsolemn, and his mouth twitched nervously as his daughter drew a linendrapery across the upper part of the window. 

"That will do--that will do. " He turned impressively to Wyant. "Do yousee the pomegranate bud in this rug? Place yourself there--keep yourleft foot on it, please. And now, Sybilla, draw the cord. "

Miss Lombard advanced and placed her hand on a cord hidden behind thevelvet curtain. 

"Ah, " said the doctor, "one moment: I should like you, while looking atthe picture, to have in mind a few lines of verse. Sybilla--"

Without the slightest change of countenance, and with a promptness whichproved her to be prepared for the request, Miss Lombard began to recite, in a full round voice like her mother's, St. Bernard's invocation to theVirgin, in the thirty-third canto of the Paradise. 

"Thank you, my dear, " said her father, drawing a deep breath as sheended. "That unapproachable combination of vowel sounds prepares onebetter than anything I know for the contemplation of the picture. "

As he spoke the folds of velvet slowly parted, and the Leonardo appearedin its frame of tarnished gold:

From the nature of Miss Lombard's recitation Wyant had expected a sacredsubject, and his surprise was therefore great as the composition wasgradually revealed by the widening division of the curtain. 

In the background a steel-colored river wound through a pale calcareouslandscape; while to the left, on a lonely peak, a crucified Christhung livid against indigo clouds. The central figure of the foreground, however, was that of a woman seated in an antique chair of marble withbas-reliefs of dancing maenads. Her feet rested on a meadow sprinkledwith minute wild-flowers, and her attitude of smiling majesty recalledthat of Dosso Dossi's Circe. She wore a red robe, flowing in closelyfluted lines from under a fancifully embroidered cloak. Above her highforehead the crinkled golden hair flowed sideways beneath a veil; onehand drooped on the arm of her chair; the other held up an invertedhuman skull, into which a young Dionysus, smooth, brown and sidelong asthe St. John of the Louvre, poured a stream of wine from a high-poisedflagon. At the lady's feet lay the symbols of art and luxury: a fluteand a roll of music, a platter heaped with grapes and roses, the torsoof a Greek statuette, and a bowl overflowing with coins and jewels;behind her, on the chalky hilltop, hung the crucified Christ. A scrollin a corner of the foreground bore the legend: Lux Mundi. 

Wyant, emerging from the first plunge of wonder, turned inquiringlytoward his companions. Neither had moved. Miss Lombard stood with herhand on the cord, her lids lowered, her mouth drooping; the doctor, hisstrange Thoth-like profile turned toward his guest, was still lost inrapt contemplation of his treasure. 

Wyant addressed the young girl. 

"You are fortunate, " he said, "to be the possessor of anything soperfect. "

"It is considered very beautiful, " she said coldly. 

"Beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!" the doctor burst out. "Ah, the poor, worn out, over-worked word! There are no adjectives in the language fresh enoughto describe such pristine brilliancy; all their brightness has been wornoff by misuse. Think of the things that have been called beautiful, andthen look at THAT!"

"It is worthy of a new vocabulary, " Wyant agreed. 

"Yes, " Doctor Lombard continued, "my daughter is indeed fortunate. She has chosen what Catholics call the higher life--the counsel ofperfection. What other private person enjoys the same opportunity ofunderstanding the master? Who else lives under the same roof with anuntouched masterpiece of Leonardo's? Think of the happiness of beingalways under the influence of such a creation; of living INTO it; ofpartaking of it in daily and hourly communion! This room is a chapel;the sight of that picture is a sacrament. What an atmosphere for a younglife to unfold itself in! My daughter is singularly blessed. Sybilla, point out some of the details to Mr. Wyant; I see that he willappreciate them. "

The girl turned her dense blue eyes toward Wyant; then, glancing awayfrom him, she pointed to the canvas. 

"Notice the modeling of the left hand, " she began in a monotonous voice;"it recalls the hand of the Mona Lisa. The head of the naked genius willremind you of that of the St. John of the Louvre, but it is more purelypagan and is turned a little less to the right. The embroidery on thecloak is symbolic: you will see that the roots of this plant haveburst through the vase. This recalls the famous definition of Hamlet'scharacter in Wilhelm Meister. Here are the mystic rose, the flame, andthe serpent, emblem of eternity. Some of the other symbols we have notyet been able to decipher. "

Wyant watched her curiously; she seemed to be reciting a lesson. 

"And the picture itself?" he said. "How do you explain that? LuxMundi--what a curious device to connect with such a subject! What can itmean?"

Miss Lombard dropped her eyes: the answer was evidently not included inher lesson. 

"What, indeed?" the doctor interposed. "What does life mean? As onemay define it in a hundred different ways, so one may find a hundreddifferent meanings in this picture. Its symbolism is as many-faceted asa well-cut diamond. Who, for instance, is that divine lady? Is it shewho is the true Lux Mundi--the light reflected from jewels and youngeyes, from polished marble and clear waters and statues of bronze? Or isthat the Light of the World, extinguished on yonder stormy hill, and isthis lady the Pride of Life, feasting blindly on the wine of iniquity, with her back turned to the light which has shone for her in vain?Something of both these meanings may be traced in the picture; but tome it symbolizes rather the central truth of existence: that all thatis raised in incorruption is sown in corruption; art, beauty, love, religion; that all our wine is drunk out of skulls, and poured for us bythe mysterious genius of a remote and cruel past. "

The doctor's face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten itselfand become taller. 

"Ah, " he cried, growing more dithyrambic, "how lightly you ask whatit means! How confidently you expect an answer! Yet here am I who havegiven my life to the study of the Renaissance; who have violated itstomb, laid open its dead body, and traced the course of every muscle, bone, and artery; who have sucked its very soul from the pages of poetsand humanists; who have wept and believed with Joachim of Flora, smiledand doubted with AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini; who have patiently followedto its source the least inspiration of the masters, and groped inneolithic caverns and Babylonian ruins for the first unfolding tendrilsof the arabesques of Mantegna and Crivelli; and I tell you that Istand abashed and ignorant before the mystery of this picture. It meansnothing--it means all things. It may represent the period which saw itscreation; it may represent all ages past and to come. There are volumesof meaning in the tiniest emblem on the lady's cloak; the blossoms ofits border are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and tradition. Don'task what it means, young man, but bow your head in thankfulness forhaving seen it!"

Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm. 

"Don't excite yourself, father, " she said in the detached tone of aprofessional nurse. 

He answered with a despairing gesture. "Ah, it's easy for you to talk. You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old man, and everymoment counts!"

"It's bad for you, " she repeated with gentle obstinacy. 

The doctor's sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He dropped intoa seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his daughter drew thecurtain across the picture. 

Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was slippingfrom him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde's wish for a photograph. Henow understood the meaning of the laugh with which Doctor Lombard hadgiven him leave to carry away all the details he could remember. Thepicture was so dazzling, so unexpected, so crossed with elusive andcontradictory suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placedsuddenly before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense ofconfused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a workwould be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of the master'sthought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy. 

The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. Hisdaughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to theroom in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no longer there, and he could think of no excuse for lingering. 

He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in themiddle of the room as though awaiting farther orders. 

"It is very good of you, " he said, "to allow one even a glimpse of sucha treasure. "

She looked at him with her odd directness. "You will come again?"she said quickly; and turning to her father she added: "You know whatProfessor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give him any account of thepicture without seeing it again. "

Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person in atrance. 

"Eh?" he said, rousing himself with an effort. 

"I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he is totell Professor Clyde about it, " Miss Lombard repeated with extraordinaryprecision of tone. 

Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were beingdivined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no way connected. 

"Well, well, " the doctor muttered, "I don't say no--I don't say no. Iknow what Clyde wants--I don't refuse to help him. " He turned to Wyant. "You may come again--you may make notes, " he added with a sudden effort. "Jot down what occurs to you. I'm willing to concede that. "

Wyant again caught the girl's eye, but its emphatic message perplexedhim. 

"You're very good, " he said tentatively, "but the fact is the picture isso mysterious--so full of complicated detail--that I'm afraid no notes Icould make would serve Clyde's purpose as well as--as a photograph, say. If you would allow me--"

Miss Lombard's brow darkened, and her father raised his head furiously. 

"A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not ten peoplehave been allowed to set foot in that room! A PHOTOGRAPH?"

Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to retreat. 

"I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to havingany reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped you might letme take a photograph for his personal use--not to be reproduced in hisbook, but simply to give him something to work by. I should take thephotograph myself, and the negative would of course be yours. If youwished it, only one impression would be struck off, and that one Clydecould return to you when he had done with it. "

Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. "When he had done with it?Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand to hand, defiled byevery ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by the blundering praise ofevery art-scribbler in Europe! Bah! I'd as soon give you the pictureitself: why don't you ask for that?"

"Well, sir, " said Wyant calmly, "if you will trust me with it, I'llengage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no eye butClyde's see it while it is out of your keeping. "

The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he burstinto a laugh. 

"Upon my soul!" he said with sardonic good humor. 

It was Miss Lombard's turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His last wordsand her father's unexpected reply had evidently carried her beyond herdepth. 

"Well, sir, am I to take the picture?" Wyant smilingly pursued. 

"No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either; mindthat, --nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla, " he cried with suddenpassion, "swear to me that the picture shall never be reproduced! Nophotograph, no sketch--now or afterward. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, father, " said the girl quietly. 

"The vandals, " he muttered, "the desecrators of beauty; if I thought itwould ever get into their hands I'd burn it first, by God!" He turnedto Wyant, speaking more quietly. "I said you might come back--I neverretract what I say. But you must give me your word that no one but Clydeshall see the notes you make. "

Wyant was growing warm. 

"If you won't trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me not toshow my notes!" he exclaimed. 

The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile. 

"Humph!" he said; "would they be of much use to anybody?"

Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his impatience. 

"To Clyde, I hope, at any rate, " he answered, holding out his hand. Thedoctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and Wyant added: "Whenshall I come, sir?"

"To-morrow--to-morrow morning, " cried Miss Lombard, speaking suddenly. 

She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders. 

"The picture is hers, " he said to Wyant. 

In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had admittedhim. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to unbar the door. Asthe bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his arm. 

"You have a letter?" she said in a low tone. 

"A letter?" He stared. "What letter?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass. 

II

As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up atits scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically abovethe entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into thepassiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about DoctorLombard's house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and herfather? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did notlook like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; andthere had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture. 

The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellowlight, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of SanDomenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma'sSt. Catherine. 

The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had togrope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of thesunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, andthe warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed toglow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by theaccidental collaboration of light and color. 

Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the groundat his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet of note-paper, folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter, and bearing thesuperscription:--

To the Count Ottaviano Celsi. 

Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come from? He wasdistinctly conscious of having seen it fall through the air, closeto his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of the chapel; then heturned and looked about the church. There was only one figure in it, that of a man who knelt near the high altar. 

Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard's maid-servant. Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been unconsciouslycarrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was Count OttavianoCelsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as that nobleman'sambulant letter-box?

Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to explorehis pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some clue to themystery; but they held nothing which he had not himself put there, andhe was reduced to wondering how the letter, supposing some unknown handto have bestowed it on him, had happened to fall out while he stoodmotionless before the picture. 

At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the aisle, andturning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the table d'hote. 

The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand. 

"I do not intrude?" he inquired suavely. 

Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel, glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller. 

"I see, " he remarked with a smile, "that you know the hour at which oursaint should be visited. "

Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous. 

The stranger stood beamingly before the picture. 

"What grace! What poetry!" he murmured, apostrophizing the St. Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel as hespoke. 

Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent. 

"But it is cold here--mortally cold; you do not find it so?" Theintruder put on his hat. "It is permitted at this hour--when the churchis empty. And you, my dear sir--do you not feel the dampness? You arean artist, are you not? And to artists it is permitted to cover the headwhen they are engaged in the study of the paintings. "

He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant's hat. 

"Permit me--cover yourself!" he said a moment later, holding out the hatwith an ingratiating gesture. 

A light flashed on Wyant. 

"Perhaps, " he said, looking straight at the young man, "you will tell meyour name. My own is Wyant. "

The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a coronetedcard, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was engraved:--

 Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi. 

"I am much obliged to you, " said Wyant; "and I may as well tell you thatthe letter which you apparently expected to find in the lining of my hatis not there, but in my pocket. "

He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very pale. 

"And now, " Wyant continued, "you will perhaps be good enough to tell mewhat all this means. "

There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by thisrequest. His lips moved, but he achieved only an ineffectual smile. 

"I suppose you know, " Wyant went on, his anger rising at the sight ofthe other's discomfiture, "that you have taken an unwarrantable liberty. I don't yet understand what part I have been made to play, but it'sevident that you have made use of me to serve some purpose of your own, and I propose to know the reason why. "

Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture. 

"Sir, " he pleaded, "you permit me to speak?"

"I expect you to, " cried Wyant. "But not here, " he added, hearing theclank of the verger's keys. "It is growing dark, and we shall be turnedout in a few minutes. "

He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out intothe deserted square. 

"Now, " said Wyant, pausing on the steps. 

The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession, began tospeak in a high key, with an accompaniment of conciliatory gesture. 

"My dear sir--my dear Mr. Wyant--you find me in an abominableposition--that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I havetaken advantage of you--yes! I have counted on your amiability, yourchivalry--too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I do? It was tooblige a lady"--he laid a hand on his heart--"a lady whom I would dieto serve!" He went on with increasing volubility, his deliberate Englishswept away by a torrent of Italian, through which Wyant, with somedifficulty, struggled to a comprehension of the case. 

Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to Siena somemonths previously, on business connected with his mother's property; thepaternal estate being near Orvieto, of which ancient city his fatherwas syndic. Soon after his arrival in Siena the young Count had met theincomparable daughter of Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply in love withher, had prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in marriage. DoctorLombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question of settlementsarose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was possessed of a smallproperty in her own right, had a short time before invested thewhole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo Leonardo. Thereupon CountOttaviano's parents had politely suggested that she should sell thepicture and thus recover her independence; and this proposal being metby a curt refusal from Doctor Lombard, they had withdrawn their consentto their son's marriage. The young lady's attitude had hitherto been oneof passive submission; she was horribly afraid of her father, and wouldnever venture openly to oppose him; but she had made known to Ottavianoher intention of not giving him up, of waiting patiently till eventsshould take a more favorable turn. She seemed hardly aware, the Countsaid with a sigh, that the means of escape lay in her own hands; thatshe was of age, and had a right to sell the picture, and to marrywithout asking her father's consent. Meanwhile her suitor spared nopains to keep himself before her, to remind her that he, too, waswaiting and would never give her up. 

Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuadeSybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or tocorrespond; they were thus driven to clandestine communication, and hadseveral times, the Count ingenuously avowed, made use of the doctor'svisitors as a means of exchanging letters. 

"And you told the visitors to ring twice?" Wyant interposed. 

The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could Mr. Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was enamored! Theyoung lady had done him the supreme honor of avowing her attachment, ofpledging her unalterable fidelity; should he suffer his devotion to beoutdone? But his purpose in writing to her, he admitted, was not merelyto reiterate his fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power toinduce her to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; everydetail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry outhis instructions he would answer for the result. His idea was that sheshould secretly retire to a convent of which his aunt was the MotherSuperior, and from that stronghold should transact the sale of theLeonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who was willing to pay a large sum;a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered, considerably in excess of the younglady's original inheritance; once the picture sold, it could, ifnecessary, be removed by force from Doctor Lombard's house, and hisdaughter, being safely in the convent, would be spared the painfulscenes incidental to the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard werevindictive enough to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only tomake a sommation respectueuse, and at the end of the prescribed delay nopower on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count Ottaviano. 

Wyant's anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance. It wasabsurd to be angry with a young man who confided his secrets to thefirst stranger he met in the streets, and placed his hand on his heartwhenever he mentioned the name of his betrothed. The easiest way out ofthe business was to take it as a joke. Wyant had played the wall to thisnew Pyramus and Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the parthe had unwittingly performed. 

He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano. 

"I won't deprive you any longer, " he said, "of the pleasure of readingyour letter. "

"Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa Lombard, you will take a message from me--the letter she expected thisafternoon?"

"The letter she expected?" Wyant paused. "No, thank you. I thoughtyou understood that where I come from we don't do that kind ofthing--knowingly. "

"But, sir, to serve a young lady!"

"I'm sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true"--the Count'sexpressive hands resented the doubt--"but remember that if I am underobligations to any one in this matter, it is to her father, who hasadmitted me to his house and has allowed me to see his picture. "

"HIS picture? Hers!"

"Well, the house is his, at all events. "

"Unhappily--since to her it is a dungeon!"

"Why doesn't she leave it, then?" exclaimed Wyant impatiently. 

The Count clasped his hands. "Ah, how you say that--with what force, with what virility! If you would but say it to HER in that tone--you, her countryman! She has no one to advise her; the mother is an idiot;the father is terrible; she is in his power; it is my belief that hewould kill her if she resisted him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her lifewhile she remains in that house!"

"Oh, come, " said Wyant lightly, "they seem to understand each other wellenough. But in any case, you must see that I can't interfere--atleast you would if you were an Englishman, " he added with an escape ofcontempt. 

III

Wyant's affiliations in Siena being restricted to an acquaintance withhis land-lady, he was forced to apply to her for the verification ofCount Ottaviano's story. 

The young nobleman had, it appeared, given a perfectly correct accountof his situation. His father, Count Celsi-Mongirone, was a man ofdistinguished family and some wealth. He was syndic of Orvieto, andlived either in that town or on his neighboring estate of Mongirone. Hiswife owned a large property near Siena, and Count Ottaviano, who was thesecond son, came there from time to time to look into its management. The eldest son was in the army, the youngest in the Church; and an auntof Count Ottaviano's was Mother Superior of the Visitandine convent inSiena. At one time it had been said that Count Ottaviano, who was a mostamiable and accomplished young man, was to marry the daughter of thestrange Englishman, Doctor Lombard, but difficulties having arisen as tothe adjustment of the young lady's dower, Count Celsi-Mongirone had veryproperly broken off the match. It was sad for the young man, however, who was said to be deeply in love, and to find frequent excuses forcoming to Siena to inspect his mother's estate. 

Viewed in the light of Count Ottaviano's personality the story had atinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant mounted the stairsof the House of the Dead Hand, the situation insensibly assumed anotheraspect. It was impossible to take Doctor Lombard lightly; and there wasa suggestion of fatality in the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Whocould tell amid what tragic records of domestic tyranny and flutteringbroken purposes the little drama of Miss Lombard's fate was being playedout? Might not the accumulated influences of such a house modify thelives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of a suburban villawith sanitary plumbing and a telephone?

One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful problems;and that was Mrs. Lombard, who, at Wyant's entrance, raised a placidlywrinkled brow from her knitting. The morning was mild, and her chair hadbeen wheeled into a bar of sunshine near the window, so that she made acheerful spot of prose in the poetic gloom of her surroundings. 

"What a nice morning!" she said; "it must be delightful weather atBonchurch. "

Her dull blue glance wandered across the narrow street with itsthreatening house fronts, and fluttered back baffled, like a bird withclipped wings. It was evident, poor lady, that she had never seen beyondthe opposite houses. 

Wyant was not sorry to find her alone. Seeing that she was surprisedat his reappearance he said at once: "I have come back to study MissLombard's picture. "

"Oh, the picture--" Mrs. Lombard's face expressed a gentledisappointment, which might have been boredom in a person of acutersensibilities. "It's an original Leonardo, you know, " she saidmechanically. 

"And Miss Lombard is very proud of it, I suppose? She seems to haveinherited her father's love for art. "

Mrs. Lombard counted her stitches, and he went on: "It's unusual in soyoung a girl. Such tastes generally develop later. "

Mrs. Lombard looked up eagerly. "That's what I say! I was quitedifferent at her age, you know. I liked dancing, and doing a pretty bitof fancy-work. Not that I couldn't sketch, too; I had a master down fromLondon. My aunts have some of my crayons hung up in their drawing-roomnow--I did a view of Kenilworth which was thought pleasing. But I likeda picnic, too, or a pretty walk through the woods with young people ofmy own age. I say it's more natural, Mr. Wyant; one may have a feelingfor art, and do crayons that are worth framing, and yet not give upeverything else. I was taught that there were other things. "

Wyant, half-ashamed of provoking these innocent confidences, could notresist another question. "And Miss Lombard cares for nothing else?"

Her mother looked troubled. 

"Sybilla is so clever--she says I don't understand. You know howself-confident young people are! My husband never said that ofme, now--he knows I had an excellent education. My aunts were veryparticular; I was brought up to have opinions, and my husband has alwaysrespected them. He says himself that he wouldn't for the world misshearing my opinion on any subject; you may have noticed that he oftenrefers to my tastes. He has always respected my preference for livingin England; he likes to hear me give my reasons for it. He is so muchinterested in my ideas that he often says he knows just what I am goingto say before I speak. But Sybilla does not care for what I think--"

At this point Doctor Lombard entered. He glanced sharply at Wyant. "Theservant is a fool; she didn't tell me you were here. " His eye turned tohis wife. "Well, my dear, what have you been telling Mr. Wyant? Aboutthe aunts at Bonchurch, I'll be bound!"

Mrs. Lombard looked triumphantly at Wyant, and her husband rubbed hishooked fingers, with a smile. 

"Mrs. Lombard's aunts are very superior women. They subscribe to thecirculating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly Packet fromthe curate's wife across the way. They have the rector to tea twice ayear, and keep a page-boy, and are visited by two baronets' wives. Theydevoted themselves to the education of their orphan niece, and I thinkI may say without boasting that Mrs. Lombard's conversation shows markedtraces of the advantages she enjoyed. "

Mrs. Lombard colored with pleasure. 

"I was telling Mr. Wyant that my aunts were very particular. "

"Quite so, my dear; and did you mention that they never sleep inanything but linen, and that Miss Sophia puts away the furs and blanketsevery spring with her own hands? Both those facts are interesting to thestudent of human nature. " Doctor Lombard glanced at his watch. "But weare missing an incomparable moment; the light is perfect at this hour. "

Wyant rose, and the doctor led him through the tapestried door and downthe passageway. 

The light was, in fact, perfect, and the picture shone with an innerradiancy, as though a lamp burned behind the soft screen of the lady'sflesh. Every detail of the foreground detached itself with jewel-likeprecision. Wyant noticed a dozen accessories which had escaped him onthe previous day. 

He drew out his note-book, and the doctor, who had dropped his sardonicgrin for a look of devout contemplation, pushed a chair forward, andseated himself on a carved settle against the wall. 

"Now, then, " he said, "tell Clyde what you can; but the letter killeth. "

He sank down, his hands hanging on the arm of the settle like the clawsof a dead bird, his eyes fixed on Wyant's notebook with the obviousintention of detecting any attempt at a surreptitious sketch. 

Wyant, nettled at this surveillance, and disturbed by the speculationswhich Doctor Lombard's strange household excited, sat motionless for afew minutes, staring first at the picture and then at the blank pagesof the note-book. The thought that Doctor Lombard was enjoying hisdiscomfiture at length roused him, and he began to write. 

He was interrupted by a knock on the iron door. Doctor Lombard rose tounlock it, and his daughter entered. 

She bowed hurriedly to Wyant, without looking at him. 

"Father, had you forgotten that the man from Monte Amiato was to comeback this morning with an answer about the bas-relief? He is here now;he says he can't wait. "

"The devil!" cried her father impatiently. "Didn't you tell him--"

"Yes; but he says he can't come back. If you want to see him you mustcome now. "

"Then you think there's a chance?--"

She nodded. 

He turned and looked at Wyant, who was writing assiduously. 

"You will stay here, Sybilla; I shall be back in a moment. "

He hurried out, locking the door behind him. 

Wyant had looked up, wondering if Miss Lombard would show any surpriseat being locked in with him; but it was his turn to be surprised, forhardly had they heard the key withdrawn when she moved close to him, hersmall face pale and tumultuous. 

"I arranged it--I must speak to you, " she gasped. "He'll be back in fiveminutes. "

Her courage seemed to fail, and she looked at him helplessly. 

Wyant had a sense of stepping among explosives. He glanced about himat the dusky vaulted room, at the haunting smile of the strange pictureoverhead, and at the pink-and-white girl whispering of conspiracies in avoice meant to exchange platitudes with a curate. 

"How can I help you?" he said with a rush of compassion. 

"Oh, if you would! I never have a chance to speak to any one; it's sodifficult--he watches me--he'll be back immediately. "

"Try to tell me what I can do. "

"I don't dare; I feel as if he were behind me. " She turned away, fixingher eyes on the picture. A sound startled her. "There he comes, andI haven't spoken! It was my only chance; but it bewilders me so to behurried. "

"I don't hear any one, " said Wyant, listening. "Try to tell me. "

"How can I make you understand? It would take so long to explain. " Shedrew a deep breath, and then with a plunge--"Will you come here againthis afternoon--at about five?" she whispered. 

"Come here again?"

"Yes--you can ask to see the picture, --make some excuse. He will comewith you, of course; I will open the door for you--and--and lock youboth in"--she gasped. 

"Lock us in?"

"You see? You understand? It's the only way for me to leave thehouse--if I am ever to do it"--She drew another difficult breath. "The key will be returned--by a safe person--in half an hour, --perhapssooner--"

She trembled so much that she was obliged to lean against the settle forsupport. 

"Wyant looked at her steadily; he was very sorry for her. 

"I can't, Miss Lombard, " he said at length. 

"You can't?"

"I'm sorry; I must seem cruel; but consider--"

He was stopped by the futility of the word: as well ask a hunted rabbitto pause in its dash for a hole!

Wyant took her hand; it was cold and nerveless. 

"I will serve you in any way I can; but you must see that this way isimpossible. Can't I talk to you again? Perhaps--"

"Oh, " she cried, starting up, "there he comes!"

Doctor Lombard's step sounded in the passage. 

Wyant held her fast. "Tell me one thing: he won't let you sell thepicture?"

"No--hush!"

"Make no pledges for the future, then; promise me that. "

"The future?"

"In case he should die: your father is an old man. You haven'tpromised?"

She shook her head. 

"Don't, then; remember that. "

She made no answer, and the key turned in the lock. 

As he passed out of the house, its scowling cornice and facade ofravaged brick looked down on him with the startlingness of a strangeface, seen momentarily in a crowd, and impressing itself on the brain aspart of an inevitable future. Above the doorway, the marble hand reachedout like the cry of an imprisoned anguish. 

Wyant turned away impatiently. 

"Rubbish!" he said to himself. "SHE isn't walled in; she can get out ifshe wants to. "

IV

Wyant had any number of plans for coming to Miss Lombard's aid: he waselaborating the twentieth when, on the same afternoon, he stepped intothe express train for Florence. By the time the train reached Certaldohe was convinced that, in thus hastening his departure, he had followedthe only reasonable course; at Empoli, he began to reflect that thepriest and the Levite had probably justified themselves in much the samemanner. 

A month later, after his return to England, he was unexpectedly relievedfrom these alternatives of extenuation and approval. A paragraph inthe morning paper announced the sudden death of Doctor Lombard, thedistinguished English dilettante who had long resided in Siena. Wyant'sjustification was complete. Our blindest impulses become evidence ofperspicacity when they fall in with the course of events. 

Wyant could now comfortably speculate on the particular complicationsfrom which his foresight had probably saved him. The climax wasunexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink of a step which, whatever its issue, would have burdened her with retrospectivecompunction, had been set free before her suitor's ardor could have hadtime to cool, and was now doubtless planning a life of domestic felicityon the proceeds of the Leonardo. One thing, however, struck Wyant asodd--he saw no mention of the sale of the picture. He had scanned thepapers for an immediate announcement of its transfer to one of thegreat museums; but presently concluding that Miss Lombard, out offilial piety, had wished to avoid an appearance of unseemly haste in thedisposal of her treasure, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Otheraffairs happened to engage him; the months slipped by, and gradually thelady and the picture dwelt less vividly in his mind. 

It was not till five or six years later, when chance took him again toSiena, that the recollection started from some inner fold of memory. Hefound himself, as it happened, at the head of Doctor Lombard's street, and glancing down that grim thoroughfare, caught an oblique glimpseof the doctor's house front, with the Dead Hand projecting above itsthreshold. The sight revived his interest, and that evening, over anadmirable frittata, he questioned his landlady about Miss Lombard'smarriage. 

"The daughter of the English doctor? But she has never married, signore. "

"Never married? What, then, became of Count Ottaviano?"

"For a long time he waited; but last year he married a noble lady of theMaremma. "

"But what happened--why was the marriage broken?"

The landlady enacted a pantomime of baffled interrogation. 

"And Miss Lombard still lives in her father's house?"

"Yes, signore; she is still there. "

"And the Leonardo--"

"The Leonardo, also, is still there. "

The next day, as Wyant entered the House of the Dead Hand, he rememberedCount Ottaviano's injunction to ring twice, and smiled mournfully tothink that so much subtlety had been vain. But what could have preventedthe marriage? If Doctor Lombard's death had been long delayed, timemight have acted as a dissolvent, or the young lady's resolve havefailed; but it seemed impossible that the white heat of ardor in whichWyant had left the lovers should have cooled in a few short weeks. 

As he ascended the vaulted stairway the atmosphere of the place seemeda reply to his conjectures. The same numbing air fell on him, likean emanation from some persistent will-power, a something fierce andimminent which might reduce to impotence every impulse within its range. Wyant could almost fancy a hand on his shoulder, guiding him upward withthe ironical intent of confronting him with the evidence of its work. 

A strange servant opened the door, and he was presently introduced tothe tapestried room, where, from their usual seats in the window, Mrs. Lombard and her daughter advanced to welcome him with faint ejaculationsof surprise. 

Both had grown oddly old, but in a dry, smooth way, as fruits mightshrivel on a shelf instead of ripening on the tree. Mrs. Lombard wasstill knitting, and pausing now and then to warm her swollen hands abovethe brazier; and Miss Lombard, in rising, had laid aside a strip ofneedle-work which might have been the same on which Wyant had first seenher engaged. 

Their visitor inquired discreetly how they had fared in the interval, and learned that they had thought of returning to England, but hadsomehow never done so. 

"I am sorry not to see my aunts again, " Mrs. Lombard said resignedly;"but Sybilla thinks it best that we should not go this year. "

"Next year, perhaps, " murmured Miss Lombard, in a voice which seemed tosuggest that they had a great waste of time to fill. 

She had returned to her seat, and sat bending over her work. Her hairenveloped her head in the same thick braids, but the rose color of hercheeks had turned to blotches of dull red, like some pigment which hasdarkened in drying. 

"And Professor Clyde--is he well?" Mrs. Lombard asked affably;continuing, as her daughter raised a startled eye: "Surely, Sybilla, Mr. Wyant was the gentleman who was sent by Professor Clyde to see theLeonardo?"

Miss Lombard was silent, but Wyant hastened to assure the elder lady ofhis friend's well-being. 

"Ah--perhaps, then, he will come back some day to Siena, " she said, sighing. Wyant declared that it was more than likely; and there ensueda pause, which he presently broke by saying to Miss Lombard: "And youstill have the picture?"

She raised her eyes and looked at him. "Should you like to see it?" sheasked. 

On his assenting, she rose, and extracting the same key from the samesecret drawer, unlocked the door beneath the tapestry. They walked downthe passage in silence, and she stood aside with a grave gesture, makingWyant pass before her into the room. Then she crossed over and drew thecurtain back from the picture. 

The light of the early afternoon poured full on it: its surface appearedto ripple and heave with a fluid splendor. The colors had lost none oftheir warmth, the outlines none of their pure precision; it seemed toWyant like some magical flower which had burst suddenly from the mouldof darkness and oblivion. 

He turned to Miss Lombard with a movement of comprehension. 

"Ah, I understand--you couldn't part with it, after all!" he cried. 

"No--I couldn't part with it, " she answered. 

"It's too beautiful, --too beautiful, "--he assented. 

"Too beautiful?" She turned on him with a curious stare. "I have neverthought it beautiful, you know. "

He gave back the stare. "You have never--"

She shook her head. "It's not that. I hate it; I've always hated it. Buthe wouldn't let me--he will never let me now. "

Wyant was startled by her use of the present tense. Her look surprisedhim, too: there was a strange fixity of resentment in her innocuous eye. Was it possible that she was laboring under some delusion? Or did thepronoun not refer to her father?

"You mean that Doctor Lombard did not wish you to part with thepicture?"

"No--he prevented me; he will always prevent me. "

There was another pause. "You promised him, then, before his death--"

"No; I promised nothing. He died too suddenly to make me. " Her voicesank to a whisper. "I was free--perfectly free--or I thought I was tillI tried. "

"Till you tried?"

"To disobey him--to sell the picture. Then I found it was impossible. Itried again and again; but he was always in the room with me. "

She glanced over her shoulder as though she had heard a step; and toWyant, too, for a moment, the room seemed full of a third presence. 

"And you can't"--he faltered, unconsciously dropping his voice to thepitch of hers. 

She shook her head, gazing at him mystically. "I can't lock him out;I can never lock him out now. I told you I should never have anotherchance. "

Wyant felt the chill of her words like a cold breath in his hair. 

"Oh"--he groaned; but she cut him off with a grave gesture. 

"It is too late, " she said; "but you ought to have helped me that day. "