THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN AND OTHER STORIES

BY

EDITH WHARTON

NEW YORK

MCMVIII

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I _The Hermit and the Wild Woman_

II _The Last Asset_

III _In Trust_

IV _The Pretext_

V _The Verdict_

VI _The Pot-Boiler_

VII _The Best Man_

THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN

I

THE Hermit lived in a cave in the hollow of a hill. Below him was aglen, with a stream in a coppice of oaks and alders, and on the fartherside of the valley, half a day's journey distant, another hill, steepand bristling, which raised aloft a little walled town with Ghibellineswallow-tails notched against the sky. 

When the Hermit was a lad, and lived in the town, the crenellations ofthe walls had been square-topped, and a Guelf lord had flown hisstandard from the keep. Then one day a steel-coloured line ofmen-at-arms rode across the valley, wound up the hill and battered inthe gates. Stones and Greek fire rained from the ramparts, shieldsclashed in the streets, blade sprang at blade in passages andstairways, pikes and lances dripped above huddled flesh, and all thestill familiar place was a stew of dying bodies. The boy fled from itin horror. He had seen his father go forth and not come back, hismother drop dead from an arquebuse shot as she leaned from the platformof the tower, his little sister fall with a slit throat across thealtar steps of the chapel--and he ran, ran for his life, through theslippery streets, over warm twitching bodies, between legs of soldierscarousing, out of the gates, past burning farmsteads, trampledwheat-fields, orchards stripped and broken, till the still woodsreceived him and he fell face down on the unmutilated earth. 

He had no wish to go back. His longing was to live hidden from life. Upthe hillside he found a hollow in the rock, and built before it a porchof boughs bound together with withies. He fed on nuts and roots, and ontrout which he caught with his hands under the stones in the stream. Hehad always been a quiet boy, liking to sit at his mother's feet andwatch the flowers grow on her embroidery frame, while the chaplain readaloud the histories of the Desert Fathers from a great silver-claspedvolume. He would rather have been bred a clerk and scholar than aknight's son, and his happiest moments were when he served mass for thechaplain in the early morning, and felt his heart flutter up and uplike a lark, up and up till it was lost in infinite space andbrightness. Almost as happy were the hours when he sat beside theforeign painter who came over the mountains to paint the chapel, andunder whose brush celestial faces grew out of the rough wall as if hehad sown some magic seed which flowered while you watched it. With theappearing of every gold-rimmed face the boy felt he had won anotherfriend, a friend who would come and bend above him at night, keepingoff the ugly visions which haunted his pillow--visions of the gnawingmonsters about the church-porch, evil-faced bats and dragons, giantworms and winged bristling hogs, a devil's flock who crept down fromthe stone-work at night and hunted the souls of sinful children throughthe town. With the growth of the picture the bright mailed angelsthronged so close about the boy's bed that between their interwovenwings not a snout or a claw could force itself; and he would turn oversighing on his pillow, which felt as soft and warm as if it had beenlined with down from those sheltering pinions. 

All these thoughts came back to him now in his cave on the cliff-side. The stillness seemed to enclose him with wings, to fold him away fromlife and evil. He was never restless or discontented. He loved the longsilent empty days, each one as like the other as pearls in awell-matched string. Above all he liked to have time to save his soul. He had been greatly troubled about his soul since a band of Flagellantshad passed through the town, exhibiting their gaunt scourged bodies andexhorting the people to turn from soft raiment and delicate fare, frommarriage and money-getting and dancing and games, and think only howthey might escape the devil's talons and the great red blaze of hell. For days that red blaze hung on the edge of the boy's thoughts like thelight of a burning city across a plain. There seemed to be so manypitfalls to avoid--so many things were wicked which one might havesupposed to be harmless. How could a child of his age tell? He darednot for a moment think of anything else. And the scene of sack andslaughter from which he had fled gave shape and distinctness to thatblood-red vision. Hell was like that, only a million million timesworse. Now he knew how flesh looked when devils' pincers tore it, howthe shrieks of the damned sounded, and how roasting bodies smelled. Howcould a Christian spare one moment of his days and nights from the longlong struggle to keep safe from the wrath to come?

Gradually the horror faded, leaving only a tranquil pleasure in theminute performance of his religious duties. His mind was not naturallygiven to the contemplation of evil, and in the blessed solitude of hisnew life his thoughts dwelt more and more on the beauty of holiness. His desire was to be perfectly good, and to live in love and charitywith his fellow-men; and how could one do this without fleeing fromthem?

At first his life was difficult, for in the winter season he was put togreat straits to feed himself; and there were nights when the sky waslike an iron vault, and a hoarse wind rattled the oakwood in thevalley, and a great fear came on him that was worse than any cold. Butin time it became known to his townsfolk and to the peasants in theneighbouring valleys that he had withdrawn to the wilderness to lead agodly life; and after that his worst hardships were over, for piouspersons brought him gifts of oil and dried fruit, one good woman gavehim seeds from her garden, another spun for him a hodden gown, andothers would have brought him all manner of food and clothing, had henot refused to accept anything but for his bare needs. The good womanwho had given him the seeds showed him also how to build a littlegarden on the southern ledge of his cliff, and all one summer theHermit carried up soil from the streamside, and the next he carried upwater to keep his garden green. After that the fear of solitude quitepassed from him, for he was so busy all day long that at night he hadmuch ado to fight off the demon of sleep, which Saint Arsenius theAbbot has denounced as the chief foe of the solitary. His memory keptgood store of prayers and litanies, besides long passages from the Massand other offices, and he marked the hours of his day by different actsof devotion. On Sundays and feast days, when the wind was set his way, he could hear the church bells from his native town, and these helpedhim to follow the worship of the faithful, and to bear in mind theseasons of the liturgical year; and what with carrying up water fromthe river, digging in the garden, gathering fagots for his fire, observing his religious duties, and keeping his thoughts continuallyupon the salvation of his soul, the Hermit knew not a moment's idleness. 

At first, during his night vigils, he had felt a great fear of thestars, which seemed to set a cruel watch upon him, as though they spiedout the frailty of his heart and took the measure of his littleness. But one day a wandering clerk, to whom he chanced to give a night'sshelter, explained to him that, in the opinion of the most learneddoctors of theology, the stars were inhabited by the spirits of theblessed, and this thought brought great consolation to the Hermit. Evenon winter nights, when the eagle's wings clanged among the peaks, andhe heard the long howl of wolves about the sheep-cotes in the valley, he no longer felt any fear, but thought of those sounds as representingthe evil voices of the world, and hugged himself in the solitude of hiscave. Sometimes, to keep himself awake, he composed lauds in honour ofChrist and the saints, and they seemed to him so pleasant that hefeared to forget them, so after much debate with himself he decided toask a friendly priest from the valley, who sometimes visited him, towrite down the lauds; and the priest wrote them down on comelysheepskin, which the Hermit dried and prepared with his own hands. Whenthe Hermit saw them written down they appeared to him so beautiful thathe feared to commit the sin of vanity if he looked at them too often, so he hid them between two smooth stones in his cave, and vowed that hewould take them out only once in the year, at Easter, when our Lord hasrisen and it is meet that Christians should rejoice. And this vow hefaithfully kept; but, alas, when Easter drew near, he found he waslooking forward to the blessed festival less because of our Lord'srising than because he should then be able to read his pleasant laudswritten on fair sheepskin; and thereupon he took a vow that he wouldnot look upon the lauds till he lay dying. 

So the Hermit, for many years, lived to the glory of God and in greatpeace of mind. 

II

ONE day he resolved to set forth on a visit to the Saint of the Rock, who lived on the other side of the mountains. Travellers had broughtthe Hermit report of this solitary, how he lived in great holiness andausterity in a desert place among the hills, where snow lay all winter, and in summer the sun beat down cruelly. The Saint, it appeared, hadvowed that he would withdraw from the world to a spot where there wasneither shade nor water, lest he should be tempted to take his ease andthink less continually upon his Maker; but wherever he went he found aspreading tree or a gushing spring, till at last he climbed up to thebare heights where nothing grows, and where the only water comes fromthe melting of the snow in spring. Here he found a tall rock risingfrom the ground, and in it he scooped a hollow with his own hands, labouring for five years and wearing his fingers to the bone. Then heseated himself in the hollow, which faced the west, so that in winterhe should have small warmth of the sun and in summer be consumed by it;and there he had sat without moving for years beyond number. 

The Hermit was greatly drawn by the tale of such austerities, which inhis humility he did not dream of emulating, but desired, for his soul'sgood, to contemplate and praise; so one day he bound sandals to hisfeet, cut an alder staff from the stream, and set out to visit theSaint of the Rock. 

It was the pleasant spring season, when seeds are shooting and the budis on the tree. The Hermit was troubled at the thought of leaving hisplants without water, but he could not travel in winter by reason ofthe snows, and in summer he feared the garden would suffer even morefrom his absence. So he set out, praying that rain might fall while hewas away, and hoping to return again in five days. The peasantslabouring in the fields left their work to ask his blessing; and theywould even have followed him in great numbers had he not told them thathe was bound on a pilgrimage to the Saint of the Rock, and that itbehoved him to go alone, as one solitary seeking another. So theyrespected his wish, and he went on and entered the forest. In theforest he walked for two days and slept for two nights. He heard thewolves crying, and foxes rustling in the covert, and once, at twilight, a shaggy brown man peered at him through the leaves and galloped awaywith a soft padding of hoofs; but the Hermit feared neither wild beastsnor evil-doers, nor even the fauns and satyrs who linger in unhallowedforest depths where the Cross has not been raised; for he said: "If Idie, I die to the glory of God, and if I live it must be to the sameend. " Only he felt a secret pang at the thought that he might diewithout seeing his lauds again. But the third day, withoutmisadventure, he came out on another valley. 

Then he began to climb the mountain, first through brown woods of beechand oak, then through pine and broom, and then across red stony ledgeswhere only a pinched growth of lentisk and briar spread in patches overthe rock. By this time he thought to have reached his goal, but for twomore days he fared on through the same scene, with the sky close overhim and the green valleys of earth receding far below. Sometimes forhours he saw only the red glistering slopes tufted with thin bushes, and the hard blue heaven so close that it seemed his hand could touchit; then at a turn of the path the rocks rolled apart, the eye plungeddown a long pine-clad defile, and beyond it the forest flowed in mightyundulations to a plain shining with cities and another mountain-rangemany days' journey away. To some eyes this would have been a terriblespectacle, reminding the wayfarer of his remoteness from his kind, andof the perils which lurk in waste places and the weakness of managainst them; but the Hermit was so mated to solitude, and felt suchlove for all things created, that to him the bare rocks sang of theirMaker and the vast distance bore witness to His greatness. So Hisservant journeyed on unafraid. 

But one morning, after a long climb over steep and difficult slopes, the wayfarer halted suddenly at a bend of the way; for beyond thedefile at his feet there was no plain shining with cities, but a bareexpanse of shaken silver that reached away to the rim of the world; andthe Hermit knew it was the sea. Fear seized him then, for it wasterrible to see that great plain move like a heaving bosom, and, as helooked on it, the earth seemed also to heave beneath him. But presentlyhe remembered how Christ had walked the waves, and how even Saint Maryof Egypt, who was a great sinner, had crossed the waters of Jordandry-shod to receive the Sacrament from the Abbot Zosimus; and then theHermit's heart grew still, and he sang as he went down the mountain:"The sea shall praise Thee, O Lord. "

All day he kept seeing it and then losing it; but toward night he cameto a cleft of the hills, and lay down in a pine-wood to sleep. He hadnow been six days gone, and once and again he thought anxiously of hisherbs; but he said to himself: "What though my garden perish, if I seea holy man face to face and praise God in his company?" So he was neverlong cast down. 

Before daylight he was afoot under the stars; and leaving the woodwhere he had slept, began climbing the face of a tall cliff, where hehad to clutch the jutting ledges with his hands, and with every step hegained, a rock seemed thrust forth to hurl him back. So, footsore andbleeding, he reached a little stony plain as the sun dropped to thesea; and in the red light he saw a hollow rock, and the Saint sittingin the hollow. 

The Hermit fell on his knees, praising God; then he rose and ran acrossthe plain to the rock. As he drew near he saw that the Saint was a veryold man, clad in goatskin, with a long white beard. He sat motionless, his hands on his knees, and two red eye-sockets turned to the sunset. Near him was a young boy in skins who brushed the flies from his face;but they always came back, and settled on the rheum which ran from hiseyes. 

He did not appear to hear or see the approach of the Hermit, but satquite still till the boy said: "Father, here is a pilgrim. "

Then he lifted up his voice and asked angrily who was there and whatthe stranger sought. 

The Hermit answered: "Father, the report of your holy practices came tome a long way off, and being myself a solitary, though not worthy to benamed with you for godliness, it seemed fitting that I should cross themountains to visit you, that we might sit together and speak in praiseof solitude. "

The Saint replied: "You fool, how can two sit together and praisesolitude, since by so doing they put an end to the thing they pretendto honour?"

The Hermit, at that, was sorely abashed, for he had thought his speechout on the way, reciting it many times over; and now it appeared to himvainer than the crackling of thorns under a pot. 

Nevertheless he took heart and said: "True, Father; but may not twosinners sit together and praise Christ, who has taught them theblessings of solitude?"

But the other only answered: "If you had really learned the blessingsof solitude you would not squander them in idle wandering. " And, theHermit not knowing how to reply, he said again: "If two sinners meetthey can best praise Christ by going each his own way in silence. "

After that he shut his lips and continued motionless while the boybrushed the flies from his eye-sockets; but the Hermit's heart sank, and for the first time he felt all the weariness of the way he hadfared, and the great distance dividing him from home. 

He had meant to take counsel with the Saint concerning his lauds, andwhether he ought to destroy them; but now he had no heart to sayanother word, and turning away he began to descend the mountain. Presently he heard steps running behind him, and the boy came up andpressed a honey-comb in his hand. 

"You have come a long way and must be hungry, " he said; but before theHermit could thank him he had hastened back to his task. So the Hermitcrept down the mountain till he reached the wood where he had sleptbefore; and there he made his bed again, but he had no mind to eatbefore sleeping, for his heart hungered more than his body; and hissalt tears made the honey-comb bitter. 

III

ON the fourteenth day he came to the valley below his cliff, and sawthe walls of his native town against the sky. He was footsore and heavyof heart, for his long pilgrimage had brought him only weariness andhumiliation, and as no drop of rain had fallen he knew that his gardenmust have perished. So he climbed the cliff heavily and reached hiscave at the angelus. 

But there a great wonder awaited him. For though the scant earth of thehillside was parched and crumbling, his garden-soil reeked withmoisture, and his plants had shot up, fresh and glistening, to a heightthey had never before attained. More wonderful still, the tendrils ofthe gourd had been trained about his door, and kneeling down he sawthat the earth had been loosened between the rows of sproutingvegetables, and that every leaf sparkled with drops as though the rainhad but newly ceased. Then it appeared to the Hermit that he beheld amiracle, but doubting his own deserts he refused to believe himselfworthy of such grace, and went within doors to ponder on what hadbefallen him. And on his bed of rushes he saw a young woman sleeping, clad in an outlandish garment, with strange amulets about her neck. 

The sight was very terrifying to the Hermit, for he recalled how oftenthe demon, in tempting the Desert Fathers, had taken the form of awoman for their undoing; but he reflected that, since there was nothingpleasing to him in the sight of this female, who was brown as a nut andlean with wayfaring, he ran no great danger in looking at her. At firsthe took her for a wandering Egyptian, but as he looked he perceived, among the heathen charms, an Agnus Dei in her bosom; and this sosurprised him that he bent over and called on her to wake. 

She sprang up with a start, but seeing the Hermit's gown and staff, andhis face above her, lay quiet and said to him: "I have watered yourgarden daily in return for the beans and oil that I took from yourstore. "

"Who are you, and how do you come here?" asked the Hermit. 

She said: "I am a wild woman and live in the woods. "

And when he pressed her again to tell him why she had sought shelter inhis cave, she said that the land to the south, whence she came, wasfull of armed companies and bands of marauders, and that great licenseand bloodshed prevailed there; and this the Hermit knew to be true, forhe had heard of it on his homeward journey. The Wild Woman went on totell him that she had been hunted through the woods like an animal by aband of drunken men-at-arms, Lansknechts from the north by theirbarbarous dress and speech, and at length, starving and spent, had comeon his cave and hidden herself from her pursuers. "For, " she said, "Ifear neither wild beasts nor the woodland people, charcoal burners, Egyptians, wandering minstrels or chapmen; even the highway robbers donot touch me, because I am poor and brown; but these armed men flownwith blood and wine are more terrible than wolves and tigers. "

And the Hermit's heart melted, for he thought of his little sisterlying with her throat slit across the altar steps, and of the scenes ofblood and rapine from which he had fled away into the wilderness. So hesaid to the stranger that it was not meet he should house her in hiscave, but that he would send a messenger to the town across the valley, and beg a pious woman there to give her lodging and work in herhousehold. "For, " said he, "I perceive by the blessed image about yourneck that you are not a heathen wilding, but a child of Christ, thoughso far astray from Him in the desert. "

"Yes, " she said, "I am a Christian, and know as many prayers as you;but I will never set foot in city walls again, lest I be caught and putback into the convent. "

"What, " cried the Hermit with a start, "you are a runagate nun?" And hecrossed himself, and again thought of the demon. 

She smiled and said: "It is true I was once a cloistered woman, but Iwill never willingly be one again. Now drive me forth if you like; butI cannot go far, for I have a wounded foot, which I got in climbing thecliff with water for your garden. " And she pointed to a deep cut in herfoot. 

At that, for all his fear, the Hermit was moved to pity, and washed thecut and bound it up; and as he did so he bethought him that perhaps hisstrange visitor had been sent to him not for his soul's undoing but forher own salvation. And from that hour he earnestly yearned to save her. 

But it was not fitting that she should remain in his cave; so, havinggiven her water to drink and a handful of lentils, he raised her up andputting his staff in her hand guided her to a hollow not far off in theface of the cliff. And while he was doing this he heard the sunsetbells ring across the valley, and set about reciting the _AngelusDomini nuntiavit Mariae_; and she joined in very piously, with herhands folded, not missing a word. 

Nevertheless the thought of her wickedness weighed on him, and the nextday when he went to carry her food he asked her to tell him how it cameabout that she had fallen into such abominable sin. And this is thestory she told. 

IV

I WAS born (said she) in the north country, where the winters are longand cold, where snow sometimes falls in the valleys, and the highmountains for months are white with it. My father's castle is in a tallgreen wood, where the winds always rustle, and a cold river runs downfrom the ice-gorges. South of us was the wide plain, glowing with heat, but above us were stony passes where the eagle nests and the stormshowl; in winter great fires roared in our chimneys, and even in summerthere was always a cool air off the gorges. But when I was a child mymother went southward in the great Empress's train and I went with her. We travelled many days, across plains and mountains, and saw Rome, where the Pope lives in a golden palace, and many other cities, till wecame to the great Emperor's court. There for two years or more we livedin pomp and merriment, for it was a wonderful court, full of mimes, magicians, philosophers and poets; and the Empress's ladies spent theirdays in mirth and music, dressed in light silken garments, walking ingardens of roses, and bathing in a great cool marble tank, while theEmperor's eunuchs guarded the approach to the gardens. Oh, those bathsin the marble tank, my Father! I used to lie awake through the wholehot southern night, and think of that plunge at sunrise under the laststars. For we were in a burning country, and I pined for the tall greenwoods and the cold stream of my father's valley; and when I had cooledmy limbs in the tank I lay all day in the scant cypress shade anddreamed of my next bath. 

My mother pined for the coolness till she died; then the Empress put mein a convent and I was forgotten. The convent was on the side of a bareyellow hill, where bees made a hot buzzing in the thyme. Below was thesea, blazing with a million shafts of light; and overhead a blindingsky, which reflected the sun's glitter like a huge baldric of steel. Now the convent was built on the site of an old pleasure-house which aholy Princess had given to our Order; and a part of the house was leftstanding with its court and garden. The nuns had built all about thegarden; but they left the cypresses in the middle, and the long marbletank where the Princess and her ladies had bathed. The tank, however, as you may conceive, was no longer used as a bath; for the washing ofthe body is an indulgence forbidden to cloistered virgins; and ourAbbess, who was famed for her austerities, boasted that, like holySylvia the nun, she never touched water save to bathe her finger-tipsbefore receiving the Sacrament. With such an example before them, thenuns were obliged to conform to the same pious rule, and many, havingbeen bred in the convent from infancy, regarded all ablutions withhorror, and felt no temptation to cleanse the filth from their flesh;but I, who had bathed daily, had the freshness of clear water in myveins, and perished slowly for want of it, like your garden herbs in adrought. 

My cell did not look on the garden, but on the steep mule-path leadingup the cliff, where all day long the sun beat as if with flails offire, and I saw the sweating peasants toil up and down behind theirthirsty asses, and the beggars whining and scraping their sores in theheat. Oh, how I hated to look out through the bars on that burningworld! I used to turn away from it, sick with disgust, and lying on myhard bed, stare up by the hour at the ceiling of my cell. But fliescrawled in hundreds on the ceiling, and the hot noise they made wasworse than the glare. Sometimes, at an hour when I knew myselfunobserved, I tore off my stifling gown, and hung it over the gratedwindow, that I might no longer see the shaft of hot sunlight lyingacross my cell, and the dust dancing in it like fat in the fire. Butthe darkness choked me, and I struggled for breath as though I lay atthe bottom of a pit; so that at last I would spring up, and draggingdown the dress, fling myself on my knees before the Cross, and entreatour Lord to give me the gift of holiness, that I might escape theeverlasting fires of hell, of which this heat was like an awfulforetaste. For if I could not endure the scorching of a summer's day, with what constancy could I meet the thought of the flame that diethnot?

This longing to escape the heat of hell made me apply myself to adevouter way of living, and I reflected that if my bodily distress weresomewhat eased I should be able to throw myself with greater zeal intothe practice of vigils and austerities. And at length, having set forthto the Abbess that the sultry air of my cell induced in me a grievousheaviness of sleep, I prevailed on her to lodge me in that part of thebuilding which overlooked the garden. 

For a few days I was quite happy, for instead of the dustymountainside, and the sight of the sweating peasants and their asses, Ilooked out on dark cypresses and rows of budding vegetables. Butpresently I found I had not bettered myself. For with the approach ofmidsummer the garden, being all enclosed with buildings, grew asstifling as my cell. All the green things in it withered and dried off, leaving trenches of bare red earth, across which the cypresses caststrips of shade too narrow to cool the aching heads of the nuns whosought shelter there; and I began to think sorrowfully of my formercell, where now and then there came a sea-breeze, hot and languid, yetalive, and where at least I could look out upon the sea. But this wasnot the worst; for when the dog-days came I found that the sun, at acertain hour, cast on the ceiling of my cell the reflection of theripples on the garden-tank; and to say how I suffered from this sightis not within the power of speech. It was indeed agony to watch theclear water rippling and washing above my head, yet feel no solace ofit on my limbs: as though I had been a senseless brazen image lying atthe bottom of a well. But the image, if it felt no refreshment, wouldhave suffered no torture; whereas every inch of my skin throbbed withthirst, and every vein was a mouth of Dives praying for a drop ofwater. Oh, Father, how shall I tell you the grievous pains that Iendured? Sometimes I so feared the sight of the mocking ripplesoverhead that I hid my eyes from their approach, lying face down on myburning bed till I knew that they were gone; yet on cloudy days, whenthey did not come, the heat was even worse to bear. 

By day I hardly dared trust myself in the garden, for the nuns walkedthere, and one fiery noon they found me hanging so close above the tankthat they snatched me away, crying out that I had tried to destroymyself. The scandal of this reaching the Abbess, she sent for me toknow what demon had beset me; and when I wept and said, the longing tobathe my burning body, she broke into great anger and cried out: "Doyou not know that this is a sin well-nigh as great as the other, andcondemned by all the greatest saints? For a nun may be tempted to takeher life through excess of self-scrutiny and despair of her ownworthiness; but this desire to indulge the despicable body is one ofthe lusts of the flesh, to be classed with concupiscence and adultery. "And she ordered me to sleep every night for a month in my heavy gown, with a veil upon my face. 

Now, Father, I believe it was this penance that drove me to sin. For wewere in the dog-days, and it was more than flesh could bear. And on thethird night, after the portress had passed, and the lights were out, Irose and flung off my veil and gown, and knelt in my window fainting. There was no moon, but the sky was full of stars. At first the gardenwas all blackness; but as I looked I saw a faint twinkle between thecypress-trunks, and I knew it was the starlight on the tank. The water!The water! It was there close to me--only a few bolts and bars werebetween us. 

The portress was a heavy sleeper, and I knew where her keys hung, on anail just within the door of her cell. I stole thither, unlatched thedoor, seized the keys and crept barefoot down the corridor. The boltsof the cloister-door were stiff and heavy, and I dragged at them tillthe veins in my wrists were bursting. Then I turned the key and itcried out in the ward. I stood still, my whole body beating with fearlest the hinges too should have a voice--but no one stirred, and Ipushed open the door and slipped out. The garden was as airless as apit, but at least I could stretch my arms in it; and, oh, my Father, the sweetness of the stars! The stones in the path cut my feet as Iran, but I thought of the joy of bathing them in the tank, and thatmade the wounds sweet to me.... My Father, I have heard of thetemptations which in times past assailed the holy Solitaries of thedesert, flattering the reluctant flesh beyond resistance; but none, Ithink, could have surpassed in ecstasy that first touch of the water onmy limbs. To prolong the joy I let myself slip in slowly, resting myhands on the edge of the tank, and smiling to see my body, as I loweredit, break up the shining black surface and shatter the starbeams intosplinters. And the water, my Father, seemed to crave me as I craved it. Its ripples rose about me, first in furtive touches, then in a longembrace that clung and drew me down; till at length they lay likekisses on my lips. It was no frank comrade like the mountain pools ofmy childhood, but a secret playmate compassionating my pains andsoothing them with noiseless hands. From the first I thought of it asan accomplice--its whisper seemed to promise me secrecy if I wouldpromise it love. And I went back and back to it, my Father; all day Ilived in the thought of it; each night I stole to it with freshthirst.... 

But at length the old portress died, and a young lay-sister took herplace. She was a light sleeper, and keen-eared; and I knew the dangerof venturing to her cell. I knew the danger, but when darkness came Ifelt the water drawing me. The first night I fought on my bed and heldout; but the second I crept to her door. She made no motion when Ientered, but rose up secretly and stole after me; and the second nightshe warned the Abbess, and the two came on me as I stood by the tank. 

I was punished with terrible penances: fasting, scourging, imprisonment, and the privation of drinking water; for the Abbess stoodamazed at the obduracy of my sin, and was resolved to make me anexample to my fellows. For a month I endured the pains of hell; thenone night the Saracen pirates fell on our convent. On a sudden thedarkness was full of flames and blood; but while the other nuns ranhither and thither, clinging to the Abbess's feet or shrieking on thesteps of the altar, I slipped through an unwatched postern and made myway to the hills. The next day the Emperor's soldiery descended on thecarousing heathen, slew them and burned their vessels on the beach; theAbbess and nuns were rescued, the convent walls rebuilt, and peacerestored to the holy precincts. All this I heard from a shepherdess ofthe hills, who found me in my hiding, and brought me honeycomb andwater. In her simplicity she offered to lead me home to the convent;but while she slept I laid off my wimple and scapular, and stealing hercloak fled away lest she should betray me. And since then I havewandered alone over the face of the world, living in woods and desertplaces, often hungry, often cold and sometimes fearful; yet resigned toany hardship, and with a front for any peril, if only I may sleep underthe free heaven and wash the dust from my body in cool water. 

V

THE Hermit, as may be supposed, was much perturbed by this story, anddismayed that such sinfulness should cross his path. His first motionwas to drive the woman forth, for he knew the heinousness of thecraving for water, and how Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine and other holydoctors have taught that they who would purify the soul must not bedistraught by the vain cares of bodily cleanliness; yet, rememberingthe lust that drew him to his lauds, he dared not judge his sister'sfault too harshly. 

Moreover he was moved by the Wild Woman's story of the hardships shehad suffered, and the godless company she had been driven tokeep--Egyptians, jugglers, outlaws and even sorcerers, who are mastersof the pagan lore of the East, and still practice their dark ritesamong the simple folk of the hills. Yet she would not have him thinkwholly ill of this vagrant people, from whom she had often receivedfood and comfort; and her worst danger, as he learned with shame, hadcome from the _girovaghi_ or wandering monks, who are the scourge anddishonour of Christendom; carrying their ribald idleness from onemonastery to another, and leaving on their way a trail of thieving, revelry and worse. Once or twice the Wild Woman had nearly fallen intotheir hands; but had been saved by her own quick wit and skill inwoodcraft. Once, so she assured the Hermit, she had found refuge with afaun and his female, who fed and sheltered her in their cave, where sheslept on a bed of leaves with their shaggy nurslings; and in this caveshe had seen a stock or idol of wood, extremely seamed and ancient, before which the wood-creatures, when they thought she slept, laidgarlands and the wild bees' honey-comb. 

She told him also of a hill-village of weavers, where she lived manyweeks, and learned to ply their trade in return for her lodging; andwhere wayfaring men in the guise of cobblers, charcoal-burners orgoatherds came and taught strange doctrines at midnight in the poorhovels. What they taught she could not clearly tell, save that theybelieved each soul could commune directly with its Maker, without needof priest or intercessor; also she had heard from some of theirdisciples that there are two Gods, one of good and one of evil, andthat the God of evil has his throne in the Pope's palace in Rome. Butin spite of these dark teachings they were a mild and merciful folk, full of loving-kindness toward poor persons and wayfarers; so that herheart grieved for them when one day a Dominican monk appeared in thevillage with a company of soldiers, and some of the weavers were seizedand dragged to prison, while others, with their wives and babes, fledto the winter woods. She fled with them, fearing to be charged withtheir heresy, and for months they lay hid in desert places, the olderand weaker, who fell sick from want and exposure, being devoutlyministered to by their brethren, and dying in the sure faith of heaven. 

All this she related modestly and simply, not as one who joys in agodless life, but as having been drawn into it through misadventure;and she told the Hermit that when she heard the sound of church bellsshe never failed to say an Ave or a Pater; and that often, as she layin the midnight darkness of the forest, she had hushed her fears byreciting the versicles from the Evening Hour:

 Keep us, O Lord, as the apple of the eye, Protect us under the shadow of Thy wings. 

The wound in her foot healed slowly; and the Hermit, while it wasmending, repaired daily to her cave, reasoning with her in love andcharity, and exhorting her to return to the cloister. But this shepersistently refused to do; and fearing lest she attempt to fly beforeher foot was healed, and so expose herself to hunger and ill-usage, hepromised not to betray her presence, or to take any measures towardrestoring her to her Order. 

He began indeed to doubt whether she had any calling to the lifeenclosed; yet her gentleness and innocency of mind made him feel thatshe might be won back to holy living, if only her freedom were assured. So after many inward struggles (since his promise forbade his takingcounsel with any concerning her) he resolved to let her remain in thecave till some light should come to him. And one day, visiting herabout the hour of Nones (for it became his pious habit to say theevening office with her), he found her engaged with a little goatherd, who in a sudden seizure had fallen from a rock above her cave, and laysenseless and full of blood at her feet. And the Hermit saw with wonderhow skilfully she bound up his cuts and restored his senses, giving himto drink of a liquor she had distilled from the wild simples of themountain; whereat the boy opened his eyes and praised God, as onerestored by heaven. Now it was known that this lad was subject topossessions, and had more than once dropped lifeless while he heededhis flock; and the Hermit, knowing that only great saints or uncleannecromancers can loosen devils, feared that the Wild Woman hadexorcised the spirits by means of unholy spells. But she told him thatthe goatherd's sickness was caused only by the heat of the sun, andthat, such seizures being common in the hot countries whence she came, she had learned from a wise woman how to stay them by a decoction ofthe _carduus benedictus_, made in the third night of the waxing moon, but without the aid of magic. 

"But, " she continued, "you need not fear my bringing scandal on yourholy retreat, for by the arts of the same wise woman my own wound iswell-nigh healed, and tonight at sunset I set forth on my travels. "

The Hermit's heart grew heavy as she spoke, and it seemed to him thather own look was sorrowful. And suddenly his perplexities were liftedfrom him, and he saw what was God's purpose with the Wild Woman. 

"Why, " said he, "do you fly from this place, where you are safe frommolestation, and can look to the saving of your soul? Is it that yourfeet weary for the road, and your spirits are heavy for lack of worldlydiscourse?"

She replied that she had no wish to travel, and felt no repugnance tosolitude. "But, " said she, "I must go forth to beg my bread, since inthis wilderness there is none but yourself to feed me; and moreover, when it is known that I have healed the goatherd, curious folk andscandal-mongers may seek me out, and, learning whence I come, drag meback to the cloister. "

Then the Hermit answered her and said: "In the early days, when thefaith of Christ was first preached, there were holy women who fled tothe desert and lived there in solitude, to the glory of God and theedification of their sex. If you are minded to embrace so austere alife, contenting you with such sustenance as the wilderness yields, andwearing out your days in prayer and vigil, it may be that you shallmake amends for the great sin you have committed, and live and die inthe peace of the Lord Jesus. "

He spoke thus, knowing that if she left him and returned to herroaming, hunger and fear might drive her to fresh sin; whereas in alife of penance and reclusion her eyes might be opened to her iniquity, and her soul snatched back from ruin. 

He saw that his words moved her, and she seemed about to consent, andembrace a life of holiness; but suddenly she fell silent, and lookeddown on the valley at their feet. 

"A stream flows in the glen below us, " she said. "Do you forbid me tobathe in it in the heat of summer?"

"It is not I that forbid you, my daughter, but the laws of God, " saidthe Hermit; "yet see how miraculously heaven protects you--for in thehot season, when your lust is upon you, our stream runs dry, andtemptation will be removed from you. Moreover on these heights there isno excess of heat to madden the body, but always, before dawn and atthe angelus, a cool breeze which refreshes it like water. "

And after thinking long on this, and again receiving his promise not tobetray her, the Wild Woman agreed to embrace a life of reclusion; andthe Hermit fell on his knees, worshipping God and rejoicing to thinkthat, if he saved his sister from sin, his own term of probation wouldbe shortened. 

VI

THEREAFTER for two years the Hermit and the Wild Woman lived side byside, meeting together to pray on the great feast-days of the year, buton all other days dwelling apart, engaged in pious practices. 

At first the Hermit, knowing the weakness of woman, and her littleaptitude for the life apart, had feared that he might be disturbed bythe nearness of his penitent; but she faithfully held to his commands, abstaining from all sight of him save on the Days of Obligation; andwhen they met, so modest and devout was her demeanour that she raisedhis soul to fresh fervency. And gradually it grew sweet to him to thinkthat, near by though unseen, was one who performed the same tasks atthe same hours; so that, whether he tended his garden, or recited hischaplet, or rose under the stars to repeat the midnight office, he hada companion in all his labours and devotions. 

Meanwhile the report had spread abroad that a holy woman who cast outdevils had made her dwelling in the Hermit's cliff; and many sickpersons from the valley sought her out, and went away restored by her. These poor pilgrims brought her oil and flour, and with her own handsshe made a garden like the Hermit's, and planted it with corn andlentils; but she would never take a trout from the brook, or receivethe gift of a snared wild-fowl, for she said that in her vagrant lifethe wild creatures of the wood had befriended her, and as she had sleptin peace among them, so now she would never suffer them to be molested. 

In the third year came a plague, and death walked the cities, and manypoor peasants fled to the hills to escape it. These the Hermit and hispenitent faithfully tended, and so skilful were the Wild Woman'sministrations that the report of them reached the town across thevalley, and a deputation of burgesses came with rich offerings, andbesought her to descend and comfort their sick. The Hermit, seeing herdepart on so dangerous a mission, would have accompanied her, but shebade him remain and tend those who fled to the hills; and for many dayshis heart was consumed in prayer for her, and he feared lest everyfugitive should bring him word of her death. 

But at length she returned, wearied-out but whole, and covered with theblessings of the townsfolk; and thereafter her name for holiness spreadas wide as the Hermit's. 

Seeing how constant she remained in her chosen life, and what advanceshe had made in the way of perfection, the Hermit now felt that itbehoved him to exhort her again to return to the convent; and more thanonce he resolved to speak with her, but his heart hung back. At lengthhe bethought him that by failing in this duty he imperilled his ownsoul, and thereupon, on the next feast-day, when they met, he remindedher that in spite of her good works she still lived in sin andexcommunicate, and that, now she had once more tasted the sweets ofgodliness, it was her duty to confess her fault and give herself up toher superiors. 

She heard him meekly, but when he had spoken she was silent and hertears ran over; and looking at her he wept also, and said no more. Andthey prayed together, and returned each to his cave. 

It was not till late winter that the plague abated; and the spring andearly summer following were heavy with rains and great heat. When theHermit visited his penitent at the feast of Pentecost, she appeared tohim so weak and wasted that, when they had recited the _Veni, sanctespiritus_, and the proper psalms, he taxed her with too great rigour ofpenitential practices; but she replied that her weakness was not due toan excess of discipline, but that she had brought back from her laboursamong the sick a heaviness of body which the intemperance of the seasonno doubt increased. The evil rains continued, falling chiefly at night, while by day the land reeked with heat and vapours; so that lassitudefell on the Hermit also, and he could hardly drag himself down to thespring whence he drew his drinking-water. Thus he fell into the habitof going down to the glen before cockcrow, after he had recited Matins;for at that hour the rain commonly ceased, and a faint air wasstirring. Now because of the wet season the stream had not gone dry, and instead of replenishing his flagon slowly at the trickling spring, the Hermit went down to the waterside to fill it; and once, as hedescended the steep slope of the glen, he heard the covert rustle, andsaw the leaves stir as though something moved behind them. As he lookedsilence fell, and the leaves grew still; but his heart was shaken, forit seemed to him that what he had seen in the dusk had a humansemblance, such as the wood-people wear. And he was loth to think thatsuch unhallowed beings haunted the glen. 

A few days passed, and again, descending to the stream, he saw a figureflit by him through the covert; and this time a deeper fear enteredinto him; but he put away the thought, and prayed fervently for allsouls in temptation. And when he spoke with the Wild Woman again, onthe feast of the Seven Maccabees, which falls on the first day ofAugust, he was smitten with fear to see her wasted looks, and besoughther to cease from labouring and let him minister to her in herweakness. But she denied him gently, and replied that all she asked ofhim was to keep her steadfastly in his prayers. 

Before the feast of the Assumption the rains ceased, and the plague, which had begun to show itself, was stayed; but the ardency of the sungrew greater, and the Hermit's cliff was a fiery furnace. Never hadsuch heat been known in those regions; but the people did not murmur, for with the cessation of the rain their crops were saved and thepestilence banished; and these mercies they ascribed in great part tothe prayers and macerations of the two holy anchorets. Therefore on theeve of the Assumption they sent a messenger to the Hermit, saying thatat daylight on the morrow the townspeople and all the dwellers in thevalley would come forth, led by their Bishop, who bore the Pope'sblessing to the two solitaries, and who was mindful to celebrate theMass of the Assumption in the Hermit's cave in the cliffside. At theblessed word the Hermit was well-nigh distraught with joy, for he feltthis to be a sign from heaven that his prayers were heard, and that hehad won the Wild Woman's grace as well as his own. And all night heprayed that on the morrow she might confess her fault and receive theSacrament with him. 

Before dawn he recited the psalms of the proper nocturn; then he girdedon his gown and sandals, and went forth to meet the Bishop in thevalley. 

As he went downward daylight stood on the mountains, and he thought hehad never seen so fair a dawn. It filled the farthest heaven withbrightness, and penetrated even to the woody crevices of the glen, asthe grace of God had entered into the obscurest folds of his heart. Themorning airs were hushed, and he heard only the sound of his ownfootfall, and the murmur of the stream which, though diminished, stillpoured a swift current between the rocks; but as he reached the bottomof the glen a sound of chanting came to him, and he knew that thepilgrims were at hand. His heart leapt up and his feet hastenedforward; but at the streamside they were suddenly stayed, for in a poolwhere the water was still deep he saw the shining of a woman'sbody--and on a stone hard by lay the Wild Woman's gown and sandals. 

Fear and rage possessed the Hermit's heart, and he stood as one smittenspeechless, covering his eyes from the shame. But the song of theapproaching pilgrims swelled ever louder and nearer, and finding voicehe cried to the Wild Woman to come forth and hide herself from thepeople. 

She made no answer, but in the dusk he saw her limbs sway with theswaying of the water, and her eyes were turned to him as if in mockery. At the sight blind fury filled him, and clambering over the rocks tothe pool's edge he bent down and caught her by the shoulder. At thatmoment he could have strangled her with his hands, so abhorrent to himwas the touch of her flesh; but as he cried out on her, heaping herwith cruel names, he saw that her eyes returned his look withoutwavering; and suddenly it came to him that she was dead. Then throughall his anger and fear a great pang smote him; for here was his workundone, and one he had loved in Christ laid low in her sin, in spite ofall his labours. 

One moment pity possessed him; the next he bethought him how the peoplewould find him bending above the body of a naked woman, whom he hadheld up to them as holy, but whom they might now well take for thesecret instrument of his undoing; and beholding how at her touch allthe slow edifice of his holiness was demolished, and his soul in mortaljeopardy, he felt the earth reel round him and his sight grew red. 

Already the head of the procession had entered the glen, and thestillness shook with the great sound of the _Salve Regina_. When theHermit opened his eyes once more the air was quivering with throngedcandle-flames, which glittered on the gold thread of priestlyvestments, and on the blazing monstrance beneath its canopy; and closeabove him was bent the Bishop's face. 

The Hermit struggled to his knees. 

"My Father in God, " he cried, "behold, for my sins I have been visitedby a demon--" But as he spoke he perceived that those about him nolonger heeded him, and that the Bishop and all his clergy had fallen ontheir knees about the pool. Then the Hermit, following their gaze, sawthat the brown waters of the pool covered the Wild Woman's limbs aswith a garment, and that about her floating head a great light floated;and to the utmost edges of the throng a cry of praise went up, for manywere there whom the Wild Woman had healed and comforted, and who readGod's mercy in this wonder. But fresh fear fell on the Hermit, for hehad cursed a dying saint, and denounced her aloud to all the people;and this new anguish, coming so close upon the other, smote down hisweakened frame, so that his limbs failed him and he sank once more tothe ground. 

Again the earth reeled about him, and the bending faces grew remote;but as he forced his weak voice once more to proclaim his sins he feltthe blessed touch of absolution, and the holy oils of the last voyagelaid on his lips and eyes. Peace returned to him then, and with it agreat longing to look once more upon his lauds, as he had dreamed ofdoing at his last hour; but he was too far gone to make this longingknown, and so tried to banish it from his mind. Yet in his weakness thewish held him, and the tears ran down his face. 

Then, as he lay there, feeling the earth slip from under him, and theEverlasting Arms replace it, he heard a great peal of voices thatseemed to come down from the sky and mingle with the singing of thethrong; and the words of the chant were the words of his own lauds, solong hidden in the secret of his breast, and now rejoicing above himthrough the spheres. And his soul rose on the chant, and soared with itto the seat of mercy. 

THE LAST ASSET

I

"THE devil!" Paul Garnett exclaimed as he re-read his note; and the dryold gentleman who was at the moment his only neighbour in the quietrestaurant they both frequented, remarked with a smile: "You don't seemparticularly annoyed at meeting him. "

Garnett returned the smile. "I don't know why I apostrophized him, forhe's not in the least present--except inasmuch as he may prove to be atthe bottom of anything unexpected. "

The old gentleman who, like Garnett, was an American, and spoke in thethin rarefied voice which seems best fitted to emit sententious truths, twisted his lean neck toward the younger man and cackled out shrewdly:"Ah, it's generally a woman who is at the bottom of the unexpected. Not, " he added, leaning forward with deliberation to select atooth-pick, "that that precludes the devil's being there too. "

Garnett uttered the requisite laugh, and his neighbour, pushing backhis plate, called out with a perfectly unbending American intonation:"Gassong! L'addition, silver play. "

His repast, as usual, had been a simple one, and he left only thirtycentimes in the plate on which his account was presented; but thewaiter, to whom he was evidently a familiar presence, received thetribute with Latin affability, and hovered helpfully about the tablewhile the old gentleman cut and lighted his cigar. 

"Yes, " the latter proceeded, revolving the cigar meditatively betweenhis thin lips, "they're generally both in the same hole, like the owland the prairie-dog in the natural history books of my youth. I believeit was all a mistake about the owl and the prairie-dog, but it isn'tabout the unexpected. The fact is, the unexpected _is_ the devil--thesooner you find that out, the happier you'll be. " He leaned back, tilting his smooth bald head against the blotched mirror behind him, and rambling on with gentle garrulity while Garnett attacked his omelet. 

"Get your life down to routine--eliminate surprises. Arrange things sothat, when you get up in the morning, you'll know exactly what is goingto happen to you during the day--and the next day and the next. I don'tsay it's funny--it ain't. But it's better than being hit on the head bya brick-bat. That's why I always take my meals at this restaurant. Iknow just how much onion they put in things--if I went to the nextplace I shouldn't. And I always take the same streets to comehere--I've been doing it for ten years now. I know at which crossingsto look out--I know what I'm going to see in the shop-windows. It savesa lot of wear and tear to know what's coming. For a good many years Inever did know, from one minute to another, and now I like to thinkthat everything's cut-and-dried, and nothing unexpected can jump out atme like a tramp from a ditch. "

He paused calmly to knock the ashes from his cigar, and Garnett saidwith a smile: "Doesn't such a plan of life cut off nearly all thepossibilities?"

The old gentleman made a contemptuous motion. "Possibilities of what?Of being multifariously miserable? There are lots of ways of beingmiserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that isto stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not tobe happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time. "

"That was Schopenhauer's idea, I believe, " the young man said, pouringhis wine with the smile of youthful incredulity. 

"I guess he hadn't the monopoly, " responded his friend. "Lots of peoplehave found out the secret--the trouble is that so few live up to it. "

He rose from his seat, pushing the table forward, and standing passivewhile the waiter advanced with his shabby overcoat and umbrella. Thenhe nodded to Garnett, lifted his hat politely to the broad-bosomed ladybehind the desk, and passed out into the street. 

Garnett looked after him with a musing smile. The two had exchangedviews on life for two years without so much as knowing each other'snames. Garnett was a newspaper correspondent whose work kept him mainlyin London, but on his periodic visits to Paris he lodged in a dingyhotel of the Latin Quarter, the chief merit of which was its nearnessto the cheap and excellent restaurant where the two Americans had madeacquaintance. But Garnett's assiduity in frequenting the place arose, in the end, less from the excellence of the food than from theenjoyment of his old friend's conversation. Amid the flashysophistications of the Parisian life to which Garnett's tradeintroduced him, the American sage's conversation had the crisp andhomely flavor of a native dish--one of the domestic compounds for whichthe exiled palate is supposed to yearn. It was a mark of the old man'simpersonality that, in spite of the interest he inspired, Garnett hadnever got beyond idly wondering who he might be, where he lived, andwhat his occupations were. He was presumably a bachelor--a man offamily ties, however relaxed, though he might have been as often absentfrom home would not have been as regularly present in the sameplace--and there was about him a boundless desultoriness which renewedGarnett's conviction that there is no one on earth as idle as anAmerican who is not busy. From certain allusions it was plain that hehad lived many years in Paris, yet he had not taken the trouble toadapt his tongue to the local inflections, but spoke French with theaccent of one who has formed his conception of the language from aphrase-book. 

The city itself seemed to have made as little impression on him as itsspeech. He appeared to have no artistic or intellectual curiosities, toremain untouched by the complex appeal of Paris, while preserving, perhaps the more strikingly from his very detachment, that odd Americanastuteness which seems the fruit of innocence rather than ofexperience. His nationality revealed itself again in a mild interest inthe political problems of his adopted country, though they appeared topreoccupy him only as illustrating the boundless perversity of mankind. The exhibition of human folly never ceased to divert him, and thoughhis examples of it seemed mainly drawn from the columns of one exiguousdaily paper, he found there matter for endless variations on hisfavorite theme. If this monotony of topic did not weary the youngerman, it was because he fancied he could detect under it the tragicimplication of the fixed idea--of some great moral upheaval which hadflung his friend stripped and starving on the desert island of thelittle cafe where they met. He hardly knew wherein he read thisrevelation--whether in the resigned shabbiness of the sage's dress, theimpartial courtesy of his manner, or the shade of apprehension whichlurked, indescribably, in his guileless yet suspicious eye. There weremoments when Garnett could only define him by saying that he lookedlike a man who had seen a ghost. 

II

AN apparition almost as startling had come to Garnett himself in theshape of the mauve note received from his _concierge_ as he was leavingthe hotel for luncheon. 

Not that, on the face of it, a missive announcing Mrs. Sam Newell'sarrival at Ritz's, and her need of his presence there that afternoon atfive, carried any special mark of the portentous. It was not her beingat Ritz's that surprised him. The fact that she was chronically hardup, and had once or twice lately been so brutally confronted with theconsequences as to accept--indeed solicit--a loan of five pounds fromhim: this circumstance, as Garnett knew, would never be allowed toaffect the general tenor of her existence. If one came to Paris, wherecould one go but to Ritz's? Did he see her in some grubby hole acrossthe river? Or in a family _pension_ near the Place de l'Etoile? Therewas no affectation in her tendency to gravitate toward what wascostliest and most conspicuous. In doing so she obeyed one of theprofoundest instincts of her nature, and it was another instinct whichtaught her to gratify the first at any cost, even to that of dippinginto the pocket of an impecunious newspaper correspondent. It was apart of her strength--and of her charm too--that she did such thingsnaturally, openly, without any of the ugly grimaces of dissimulation orcompunction. 

Her recourse to Garnett had of course marked a specially low ebb in herfortunes. Save in moments of exceptional dearth she had richer sourcesof supply; and he was nearly sure that, by running over the "societycolumn" of the Paris _Herald_, he should find an explanation, notperhaps of her presence at Ritz's, but of her means of subsistencethere. What really perplexed him was not the financial but the socialaspect of the case. When Mrs. Newell had left London in July she hadtold him that, between Cowes and Scotland, she and Hermy were providedfor till the middle of October: after that, as she put it, they wouldhave to look about. Why, then, when she had in her hand the opportunityof living for three months at the expense of the British aristocracy, did she rush off to Paris at heaven knew whose expense in the beginningof September? She was not a woman to act incoherently; if she mademistakes they were not of that kind. Garnett felt sure she would neverwillingly relax her hold on her distinguished friends--was it possiblethat it was they who had somewhat violently let go of her?

As Garnett reviewed the situation he began to see that this possibilityhad for some time been latent in it. He had felt that something mighthappen at any moment--and was not this the something he had obscurelyforeseen? Mrs. Newell really moved too fast: her position was asperilous as that of an invading army without a base of supplies. Sheused up everything too quickly--friends, credit, influence, forbearance. It was so easy for her to acquire all these--what a pityshe had never learned to keep them! He himself, for instance--the mostinsignificant of her acquisitions--was beginning to feel like asqueezed sponge at the mere thought of her; and it was this sense ofexhaustion, of the inability to provide more, either materially ormorally, which had provoked his exclamation on opening her note. Fromthe first days of their acquaintance her prodigality had amazed him, but he had believed it to be surpassed by the infinity of herresources. If she exhausted old supplies she always found new ones toreplace them. When one set of people began to find her impossible, another was always beginning to find her indispensable. Yes--but therewere limits--there were only so many sets of people, at least in hersocial classification, and when she came to an end of them, what then?Was this flight to Paris a sign that she had come to an end--was shegoing to try Paris because London had failed her? The time of yearprecluded such a conjecture. Mrs. Newell's Paris was non-existent inSeptember. The town was a desert of gaping trippers--he could as soonthink of her seeking social restoration at Margate. 

For a moment it occurred to him that she might have to come over toreplenish her wardrobe; but he knew her dates too well to dwell long onthis hope. It was in April and December that she visited thedress-makers: before December, he had heard her explain, one gotnothing but "the American fashions. " Mrs. Newell's scorn of all thingsAmerican was somewhat illogically coupled with the determination to useher own Americanism to the utmost as a means of social advance. She hadfound out long ago that, on certain lines, it paid in London to beAmerican, and she had manufactured for herself a personalityindependent of geographical or social demarcations, and presenting thatremarkable blend of plantation dialect, Bowery slang and hyperbolicstatement, which is the British nobility's favorite idea of anunadulterated Americanism. Mrs. Newell, for all her talents, was notnaturally either humorous or hyperbolic, and there were times when itwould doubtless have been a relief to her to be as monumentally stolidas some of the persons whose dulness it was her fate to enliven. It wasperhaps the need of relaxing which had drawn her into her odd intimacywith Garnett, with whom she did not have to be either scrupulouslyEnglish or artificially American, since the impression she made on himwas of no more consequence than that which she produced on her footman. Garnett was perfectly aware that he owed his success to hisinsignificance, but the fact affected him only as adding one moreelement to his knowledge of Mrs. Newell's character. He was as ready tosacrifice his personal vanity in such a cause as he had been, at theoutset of their acquaintance, to sacrifice his professional pride tothe opportunity of knowing her. 

When he had accepted the position of "London correspondent" (with anoccasional side-glance at Paris) to the New York _Searchlight_, he hadnot understood that his work was to include the obligation of"interviewing"; indeed, had the possibility presented itself inadvance, he would have met it by unpacking his valise and returning tothe drudgery of his assistant-editorship in New York. But when, afterthree months in Europe, he received a letter from his chief, suggestingthat he should enliven the Sunday _Searchlight_ by a series of "Talkswith Smart Americans in London" (beginning, say, with Mrs. Sam Newell), the change of focus already enabled him to view the proposal withoutpassion. For his life on the edge of the great world-caldron of art, politics and pleasure--of that high-spiced brew which is nowhere elseso subtly and variously compounded--had bred in him an eager appetiteto taste of the heady mixture. He knew he should never have the fullspoon at his lips, but he recalled the peasant-girl in one ofBrowning's plays, who has once eaten polenta cut with a knife which hascarved an ortolan. Might not Mrs. Newell, who had so successfully cut away into the dense and succulent mass of English society, serve as theknife to season his polenta?

He had expected, as the result of the interview, to which she promptly, almost eagerly, assented, no more than the glimpse of brightly litvistas which a waiting messenger may catch through open doors; butinstead he had found himself drawn at once into the inner sanctuary, not of London society, but of Mrs. Newell's relation to it. She hadbeen candidly charmed by the idea of the interview: it struck him thatshe was conscious of the need of being freshened up. Her appearance wasbrilliantly fresh, with the inveterate freshness of the toilet-table;her paint was as impenetrable as armor. But her personality was alittle tarnished: she was in want of social renovation. She had beendoing and saying the same things for too long a time. London, Cowes, Homburg, Scotland, Monte Carlo--that had been the round since Hermy wasa baby. Hermy was her daughter, Miss Hermione Newell, who was called inpresently to be shown off to the interviewer and add a paragraph to thecelebration of her mother's charms. 

Miss Newell's appearance was so full of an unassisted freshness thatfor a moment Garnett made the mistake of fancying that she could fill aparagraph of her own. But he soon found that her vague personality wasmerely tributary to her parent's; that her youth and grace were, insome mysterious way, her mother's rather than her own. She smiledobediently on Garnett, but could contribute little beyond her smile andthe general sweetness of her presence, to the picture of Mrs. Newell'sexistence which it was the young man's business to draw. And presentlyhe found that she had left the room without his noticing it. 

He learned in time that this unnoticeableness was the most conspicuousthing about her. Burning at best with a mild light, she becameinvisible in the glare of her mother's personality. It was in fact onlyas a product of her environment that poor Hermione struck theimagination. With the smartest woman in London as her guide and exampleshe had never developed a taste for dress, and with opportunities forenlightenment from which Garnett's fancy recoiled she remained simple, unsuspicious and tender, with an inclination to good works andafternoon church, a taste for the society of dull girls, and a clingingfidelity to old governesses and retired nurse-maids. Mrs. Newell, whoseboast it was that she looked facts in the face, frankly owned that shehad not been able to make anything of Hermione. "If she has a role Ihaven't discovered it, " she confessed to Garnett. "I've triedeverything, but she doesn't fit in anywhere. "

Mrs. Newell spoke as if her daughter were a piece of furniture acquiredwithout due reflection, and for which no suitable place could be found. She got, of course, what she could out of Hermione, who wrote hernotes, ran her errands, saw tiresome people for her, and occupied anintermediate office between that of lady's maid and secretary; but suchsmall returns on her investment were not what Mrs. Newell had countedon. What was the use of producing and educating a handsome daughter ifshe did not, in some more positive way, contribute to her parent'sadvancement?

III

"IT'S about Hermy, " Mrs. Newell said, rising from the heap ofembroidered cushions which formed the background of her afternoonrepose. 

Her sitting-room at Ritz's was full of penetrating warmth andfragrance. Long-stemmed roses filled the vases on the chimney-piece, inwhich a fire sparkled with that effect of luxury which fires producewhen the weather is not cold enough to justify them. On thewriting-table, among notes and cards, and signed photographs ofcelebrities, Mrs. Newell's gold inkstand, her jewelled penholder, herheavily-monogrammed despatch-box, gave back from their expensivesurfaces the glint of the flame, which sought out and magnified theorient of the pearls among the lady's laces and found a mirror in thepinky polish of her finger-tips. It was just such a scene as a littleSeptember fire, lit for show and not for warmth, would delight to dwellon and pick out in all its opulent details; and even Garnett, inured toMrs. Newell's capacity for extracting manna from the desert, reflectedthat she must have found new fields to glean. 

"It's about Hermy, " she repeated, making room for him among thecushions. "I had to see you at once. We came over yesterday fromLondon. "

Garnett, seating himself, continued his leisurely survey of the room. In the glitter of Mrs. Newell's magnificence Hermione, as usual, fadedout of sight, and he hardly noticed her mother's allusion. 

"I have never seen you more resplendent, " he remarked. 

She received the tribute with complacency. "The rooms are not bad, arethey? We came over with the Woolsey Hubbards (you've heard of them, ofcourse?--they're from Detroit), and really they do things verydecently. Their motor-car met us at Boulogne, and the courier alwayswires ahead to have the rooms filled with flowers. This _salon, _ isreally a part of their suite. I simply couldn't have afforded itmyself. "

She delivered these facts in a high decisive voice, which had a noteakin to the clink of her many bracelets and the rattle of her ringedhands against the enamelled cigarette-case which she extended toGarnett after helping herself from its contents. 

"You are always meeting such charming people, " said Garnett with mildirony; and, reverting to her first remark, he bethought himself to add:"I hope Miss Hermione is not ill?"

"Ill? She was never ill in her life, " exclaimed Mrs. Newell, as thoughher daughter had been accused of an indelicacy. 

"It was only that you said you had come over on her account. "

"So I have. Hermione is to be married. "

Mrs. Newell brought out the words impressively, drawing back to observetheir effect on her visitor. It was such that he received them with along silent stare, which finally passed into a cry of wonder. "Married?For heaven's sake, to whom?"

Mrs. Newell continued to regard him with a smile so serene andvictorious that he saw she took his somewhat unseemly astonishment as amerited tribute to her genius. Presently she extended a glittering handand took a sheet of note paper from the blotter. 

"You can have that put in to-morrow's _Herald_, " she said. 

Garnett, receiving the paper, read in Hermione's own finished hand: "Amarriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between theComte Louis du Trayas, son of the Marquis du Trayas de la Baume, andMiss Hermione Newell, daughter of Samuel C. Newell Esqre. Of Elmira, N. Y. Comte Louis du Trayas belongs to one of the oldest and mostdistinguished families in France, and is equally well connected inEngland, being the nephew of Lord Saint Priscoe and a cousin of theCountess of Morningfield, whom he frequently visits at Adham andPortlow. "

The perusal of this document filled Garnett with such deepening wonderthat he could not, for the moment, even do justice to the strangenessof its being written out for publication in the bride's own hand. Hermione a bride! Hermione a future countess! Hermione on the brink ofa marriage which would give her not only a great "situation" in theParisian world but a footing in some of the best houses in England!Regardless of its unflattering implications, Garnett prolonged hisstare of mute amazement till Mrs. Newell somewhat sharplyexclaimed--"Well, didn't I always tell you that she would marry aFrenchman?"

Garnett, in spite of himself, smiled at this revised version of hishostess's frequent assertion that Hermione was too goody-goody to takein England, but that with her little dowdy air she might very well "gooff" in the Faubourg if only a _dot_ could be raked up for her--and therecollection flashed a new light on the versatility of Mrs. Newell'sgenius. 

"But how did you do it--?" was on the tip of his tongue; and he hadbarely time to give the query the more conventional turn of: "How didit happen?"

"Oh, we were up at Glaish with the Edmund Fitzarthurs. Lady Edmund is asort of cousin of the Morningfields', who have a shooting-lodge nearGlaish--a place called Portlow--and young Trayas was there with them. Lady Edmund, who is a dear, drove Hermy over to Portlow, and the thingwas done in no time. He simply fell over head and ears in love withher. You know Hermy is really very handsome in her peculiar way. Idon't think you have ever appreciated her, " Mrs. Newell summed up witha note of exquisite reproach. 

"I've appreciated her, I assure you; but one somehow didn't think ofher marrying--so soon. "

"Soon? She's three-and-twenty; but you've no imagination, " said Mrs. Newell; and Garnett inwardly admitted that he had not enough to soar tothe heights of her invention. For the marriage, of course, was aninvention of her own, a superlative stroke of business, in which he wassure the principal parties had all been passive agents, in whicheveryone, from the bankrupt and disreputable Fitzarthurs to the richand immaculate Morningfields, had by some mysterious sleight of handbeen made to fit into Mrs. Newell's designs. But it was not enough forGarnett to marvel at her work--he wanted to understand it, to take itapart, to find out how the trick had been done. It was true that Mrs. Newell had always said Hermy might go off in the Faubourg if she had a_dot_--but even Mrs. Newell's juggling could hardly conjure up a _dot:_such feats as she was able to perform in this line were usually made toserve her own urgent necessities. And besides, who was likely to takesufficient interest in Hermione to supply her with the means ofmarrying a French nobleman? The flowers ordered in advance by theWoolsey Hubbards' courier made Garnett wonder if that accomplishedfunctionary had also wired over to have Miss Newell's settlements drawnup. But of all the comments hovering on his lips the only one he coulddecently formulate was the remark that he supposed Mrs. Newell and herdaughter had come over to see the young man's family and make the finalarrangements. 

"Oh, they're made--everything is settled, " said Mrs. Newell, lookinghim squarely in the eye. "You're wondering, of course, about the_dot_--Frenchmen never go off their heads to the extent of forgetting_that;_ or at least their parents don't allow them to. "

Garnett murmured a vague assent, and she went on without the leastappearance of resenting his curiosity: "It all came about sofortunately. Only fancy, just the week they met I got a little legacyfrom an aunt in Elmira--a good soul I hadn't seen or heard of foryears. I suppose I ought to have put on mourning for her, by the way, but it would have eaten up a good bit of the legacy, and I reallyneeded it all for poor Hermy. Oh, it's not a fortune, youunderstand--but the young man is madly in love, and has always had hisown way, so after a lot of correspondence it's been arranged. They sawHermy this morning, and they're enchanted. "

"And the marriage takes place very soon?"

"Yes, in a few weeks, here. His mother is an invalid and couldn't havegone to England. Besides, the French don't travel. And as Hermy hasbecome a Catholic--"

"Already?"

Mrs. Newell stared. "It doesn't take long. And it suits Hermyexactly--she can go to church so much oftener. So I thought, " Mrs. Newell concluded with dignity, "that a wedding at Saint Philippe duRoule would be the most suitable thing at this season. "

"Dear me, " said Garnett, "I am left breathless--I can't catch up withyou. I suppose even the day is fixed, though Miss Hermione doesn'tmention it, " and he indicated the official announcement in his hand. 

Mrs. Newell laughed. "Hermy had to write that herself, poor dear, because my scrawl's too hideous--but I dictated it. No, the day isn'tfixed--that's why I sent for you. " There was a splendid directnessabout Mrs. Newell. It would never have occurred to her to pretend toGarnett that she had summoned him for the pleasure of his company. 

"You've sent for me--to fix the day?" he enquired humourously. 

"To remove the last obstacle to its being fixed. "

"I? What kind of an obstacle could I have the least effect on?"

Mrs. Newell met his banter with a look which quelled it. "I want you tofind her father. "

"Her father? Miss Hermione's--?"

"My husband, of course. I suppose you know he's living. "

Garnett blushed at his own clumsiness. "I--yes--that is, I really knewnothing--" he stammered, feeling that each word added to it. IfHermione was unnoticeable, Mr. Newell had always been invisible. Theyoung man had never so much as given him a thought, and it was awkwardto come on him so suddenly at a turn of the talk. 

"Well, he is--living here in Paris, " said Mrs. Newell, with a note ofasperity which seemed to imply that her friend might have taken thetrouble to post himself on this point. 

"In Paris? But in that case isn't it quite simple--?"

"To find him? I daresay it won't be difficult, though he is rathermysterious. But the point is that I can't go to him--and that if Iwrite to him he won't answer. "

"Ah, " said Garnett thoughtfully. 

"And so you've got to find him for me, and tell him. "

"Tell him what?"

"That he must come to the wedding--that we must show ourselves togetherat church and at the breakfast. "

She delivered the behest in her sharp imperative key, the tone of theborn commander. But for once Garnett ventured to question her orders. 

"And supposing he won't come?"

"He must if he cares for his daughter's happiness. She can't be marriedwithout him. "

"Can't be married?"

"The French are like that--especially the old families. I was given tounderstand at once that my husband must appear--if only to establishthe fact that we're not divorced. "

"Ah--you're _not_, then?" escaped from Garnett. 

"Mercy, no! Divorce is stupid. They don't like it in Europe. And inthis case it would have been the end of Hermy's marriage. They wouldn'tthink of letting their son marry the child of divorced parents. "

"How fortunate, then--"

"Yes; but I always think of such things beforehand. And of course I'vetold them that my husband will be present. "

"You think he will consent?"

"No; not at first; but you must make him. You must tell him how sweetHermione is--and you must see Louis, and be able to describe theirhappiness. You must dine here to-night--he is coming. We're all diningwith the Hubbards, and they expect you. They have given Hermy some verygood diamonds--though I should have preferred a cheque, as she'll behorribly poor. But I think Kate Hubbard means to do something about thetrousseau--Hermy is at Paquin's with her now. You've no idea howdelightful all our friends have been. --Ah, here is one of them now, "she broke off smiling, as the door opened to admit, without preliminaryannouncement, a gentleman so glossy and ancient, with such a fixedunnatural freshness of smile and eye, that he gave Garnett the effectof having been embalmed and then enamelled. It needed not theexotic-looking ribbon in the visitor's button-hole, nor Mrs. Newell'sintroduction of him as her friend Baron Schenkelderff, to assureGarnett of his connection with a race as ancient as his appearance. 

Baron Schenkelderff greeted his hostess with paternal playfulness, andthe young man with an ease which might have been acquired on the StockExchange and in the dressing-rooms of "leading ladies. " He spoke afaultless, colourless English, from which one felt he might pass withequal mastery to half a dozen other languages. He enquiredpatronizingly for the excellent Hubbards, asked his hostess if she didnot mean to give him a drop of tea and a cigarette, remarked that heneed not ask if Hermione was still closeted with the dress-maker, and, on the waiter's coming in answer to his ring, ordered the tea himself, and added a request for _fine champagne_. It was not the first timethat Garnett had seen such minor liberties taken in Mrs. Newell'sdrawing-room, but they had hitherto been taken by persons who had atleast the superiority of knowing what they were permitting themselves, whereas the young man felt almost sure that Baron Schenkelderff'smanner was the most distinguished he could achieve; and this deepenedthe disgust with which, as the minutes passed, he yielded to theconviction that the Baron was Mrs. Newell's aunt. 

IV

GARNETT had always foreseen that Mrs. Newell might some day ask him todo something he should greatly dislike. He had never gone so far as toconjecture what it might be, but had simply felt that if he allowed hisacquaintance with her to pass from spectatorship to participation hemust be prepared to find himself, at any moment, in a queer situation. 

The moment had come; and he was relieved to find that he could meet itby refusing her request. He had not always been sure that she wouldleave him this alternative. She had a way of involving people in hercomplications without their being aware of it, and Garnett had picturedhimself in holes so tight that there might not be room for a wriggle. Happily in this case he could still move freely. Nothing compelled himto act as an intermediary between Mrs. Newell and her husband, and itwas preposterous to suppose that, even in a life of such perpetualupheaval as hers, there were no roots which struck deeper than hercasual intimacy with himself. She had simply laid hands on him becausehe happened to be within reach, and he would put himself out of reachby leaving for London on the morrow. 

Having thus inwardly asserted his independence, he felt free to let hisfancy dwell on the strangeness of the situation. He had always supposedthat Mrs. Newell, in her flight through life, must have thrown a goodmany victims to the wolves, and had assumed that Mr. Newell had beenamong the number. That he had been dropped overboard at an early stagein the lady's career seemed probable from the fact that neither hiswife nor his daughter ever mentioned him. Mrs. Newell was incapable ofreticence, and if her husband had still been an active element in herlife he would certainly have figured in her conversation. Garnett, ifhe thought of the matter at all, had concluded that divorce must longsince have eliminated Mr. Newell; but he now saw how he had underratedhis friend's faculty for using up the waste material of life. She hadalways struck him as the most extravagant of women, yet it turned outthat by a miracle of thrift she had for years kept a superfluoushusband on the chance that he might some day be useful to her. The dayhad come, and Mr. Newell was to be called from his obscurity. Garnettwondered what had become of him in the interval, and in what shape hewould respond to the evocation. The fact that his wife feared he mightnot respond to it at all, seemed to show that his exile was voluntary, or had at least come to appear preferable to other alternatives; but ifthat were the case it was curious that he should not have taken legalmeans to free himself. He could hardly have had his wife's motives forwishing to maintain the vague tie between them; but conjecture lostitself in trying to picture what his point of view was likely to be, and Garnett, on his way to the Hubbards' dinner that evening, could nothelp regretting that circumstances denied him the opportunity ofmeeting so enigmatic a person. The young man's knowledge of Mrs. Newell's methods made him feel that her husband might be an interestingstudy. This, however, did not affect his resolve to keep clear of thebusiness. He entered the Hubbards' dining-room with the firm intentionof refusing to execute Mrs. Newell's commission, and if he changed hismind in the course of the evening it was not owing to that lady'spersuasions. 

Garnett's curiosity as to the Hubbards' share in Hermione's marriagewas appeased before he had been seated five minutes at their table. 

Mrs. Woolsey Hubbard was an expansive blonde, whose ample butdisciplined outline seemed the result of a well-matched strugglebetween her cook and her corset-maker. She talked a great deal of whatwas appropriate in dress and conduct, and seemed to regard Mrs. Newellas a final arbiter on both points. To do or to wear anythinginappropriate would have been extremely mortifying to Mrs. Hubbard, andshe was evidently resolved, at the price of eternal vigilance, to proveher familiarity with what she frequently referred to as "the rightthing. " Mr. Hubbard appeared to have no such preoccupations. Garnett, if called upon to describe him, would have done so by saying that hewas the American who always pays. The young man, in the course of hisforeign wanderings, had come across many fellow-citizens of Mr. Hubbard's type, in the most diverse company and surroundings; andwherever they were to be found, they always had their hands in theirpockets. Mr. Hubbard's standard of gentility was the extent of a man'scapacity to "foot the bill"; and as no one but an occasional compatriotcared to dispute the privilege with him, he seldom had reason to doubthis social superiority. 

Garnett, nevertheless, did not believe that this lavish pair were, asMrs. Newell would have phrased it, "putting up" Hermione's _dot_. Theywould go very far in diamonds, but they would hang back fromsecurities. Their readiness to pay was indefinably mingled with a dreadof being expected to, and their prodigalities would take flight at thefirst hint of coercion. Mrs. Newell, who had had a good deal ofexperience in managing this type of millionaire, could be trusted notto arouse their susceptibilities, and Garnett was therefore certainthat the chimerical legacy had been extracted from other pockets. Therewere none in view but those of Baron Schenkelderff, who, seated at Mrs. Hubbard's right, with a new order in his button-hole, and a fresh glazeupon his features, enchanted that lady by his careless references tocrowned heads and his condescending approval of the champagne. Garnettwas more than ever certain that it was the Baron who was paying; and itwas this conviction which made him suddenly feel that, at any cost, Hermione's marriage must take place. He had felt no special interest inthe marriage except as one more proof of Mrs. Newell's extraordinarycapacity; but now it appealed to him from the girl's own stand-point. For he saw, with a touch of compunction, that in the mephitic air ofher surroundings a love-story of surprising freshness had miraculouslyflowered. He had only to intercept the glances which the young coupleexchanged to find himself transported to the candid region of romance. It was evident that Hermione adored and was adored; that the loversbelieved in each other and in every one about them, and that even thelegacy of the defunct aunt had not been too great a strain on theirfaith in human nature. 

His first glance at the Comte Louis du Trayas showed Garnett that, bysome marvel of fitness, Hermione had happened upon a kindred nature. Ifthe young man's long mild features and short-sighted glance revealed nospecial force of character, they showed a benevolence and simplicity asincorruptible as her own, and declared that their possessor, whateverhis failings, would never imperil the illusions she had so miraculouslypreserved. The fact that the girl took her good fortune naturally, anddid not regard herself as suddenly snatched from the jaws of death, added poignancy to the situation; for if she missed this way of escape, and was thrown back on her former life, the day of discovery could notbe long deferred. It made Garnett shiver to think of her growing oldbetween her mother and Schenkelderff, or such successors of the Baron'sas might probably attend on Mrs. Newell's waning fortunes; for it wasclear to him that the Baron marked the first stage in his friend'sdecline. When Garnett took leave that evening he had promised Mrs. Newell that he would try to find her husband. 

V

IF Mr. Newell read in the papers the announcement of his daughter'smarriage it did not cause him to lift the veil of seclusion in whichhis wife represented him as shrouded. 

A round of the American banks in Paris failed to give Garnett hisaddress, and it was only in chance talk with one of the youngsecretaries of the Embassy that he was put on Mr. Newell's track. Thesecretary's father, it appeared, had known the Newells some twentyyears earlier. He had had business relations with Mr. Newell, who wasthen a man of property, with factories or something of the kind, thenarrator thought, somewhere in Western New York. There had been at thisperiod, for Mrs. Newell, a phase of large hospitality and showycarriages in Washington and at Narragansett. Then her husband had hadreverses, had lost heavily in Wall Street, and had finally driftedabroad and been lost to sight. The young man did not know at what pointin his financial decline Mr. Newell had parted company with his wifeand daughter; "though you may bet your hat, " he philosophicallyconcluded, "that the old girl hung on as long as there were anypickings. " He did not himself know Mr. Newell's address, but opinedthat it might be extracted from a certain official at the Consulate, ifGarnett could give a sufficiently good reason for the request; and herein fact Mrs. Newell's emissary learned that her husband was to be foundin an obscure street of the Luxembourg quarter. 

In order to be near the scene of action, Garnett went to breakfast athis usual haunt, determined to despatch his business as early in theday as politeness allowed. The head waiter welcomed him to a table nearthat of the transatlantic sage, who sat in his customary corner, hishead tilted back against the blistered mirror at an angle suggestingthat in a freer civilization his feet would have sought the same level. He greeted Garnett affably and the two exchanged their usualgeneralizations on life till the sage rose to go; whereupon it occurredto Garnett to accompany him. His friend took the offer in good part, merely remarking that he was going to the Luxembourg gardens, where itwas his invariable habit, on good days, to feed the sparrows with theremains of his breakfast roll; and Garnett replied that, as ithappened, his own business lay in the same direction. 

"Perhaps, by the way, " he added, "you can tell me how to find the ruePanonceaux where I must go presently. I thought I knew this quarterfairly well, but I have never heard of it. "

His companion came to a sudden halt on the narrow sidewalk, to theconfusion of the dense and desultory traffic which marks the oldstreets of the Latin quarter. He fixed his mild eye on Garnett and gavea twist to the cigar which lingered in the corner of his mouth. 

"The rue Panonceaux? It _is_ an out of the way hole, but I can tell youhow to find it, " he answered. 

He made no motion to do so, however, but continued to bend on the youngman the full force of his interrogative gaze; then he added abruptly:"Would you mind telling me your object in going there?"

Garnett looked at him with surprise: a question so unblushinglypersonal was strangely out of keeping with his friend's usual attitudeof detachment. Before he could reply, however, the other had quietlycontinued: "Do you happen to be in search of Samuel C. Newell?"

"Why, yes, I am, " said Garnett with a start of conjecture. 

His companion uttered a sigh. "I supposed so, " he said resignedly; "andin that case, " he added, "we may as well have the matter out in theLuxembourg. "

Garnett had halted before him with deepening astonishment. "But youdon't mean to tell me--?" he stammered. 

The little man made a motion of assent. "I am Samuel C. Newell, " hesaid drily; "and if you have no objection, I prefer not to breakthrough my habit of feeding the sparrows. We are five minutes late asit is. "

He quickened his pace without awaiting any reply from Garnett, whowalked beside him in unsubdued wonder till they reached the Luxembourggardens, where Mr. Newell, making for one of the less frequentedalleys, seated himself on a bench and drew the fragment of a roll fromhis pocket. His coming was evidently expected, for a shower of littledusky bodies at once descended on him, and the gravel fluttered withbattling wings and beaks as he distributed his dole with impartialgestures. 

It was not till the ground was white with crumbs, and the first frenzyof his pensioners appeased, that he turned to Garnett and said: "Ipresume, sir, that you come from my wife. "

Garnett coloured with embarrassment: the more simply the old man tookhis mission the more complicated it appeared to himself. 

"From your wife--and from Miss Newell, " he said at length. "You haveperhaps heard that she is to be married. "

"Oh, yes--I read the _Herald_ pretty faithfully, " said Miss Newell'sparent, shaking out another handful of crumbs. 

Garnett cleared his throat. "Then you have no doubt thought it naturalthat, under the circumstances, they should wish to communicate withyou. "

The sage continued to fix his attention on the sparrows. "My wife, " heremarked, "might have written to me. "

"Mrs. Newell was afraid she might not hear from you in reply. "

"In reply? Why should she? I suppose she merely wishes to announce themarriage. She knows I have no money left to buy wedding-presents, " saidMr. Newell astonishingly. 

Garnett felt his colour deepen: he had a vague sense of standing as therepresentative of something guilty and enormous, with which he hadrashly identified himself. 

"I don't think you understand, " he said. "Mrs. Newell and your daughterhave asked me to see you because they are anxious that you shouldconsent to appear at the wedding. "

Mr. Newell, at this, ceased to give his attention to the birds, andturned a compassionate gaze upon Garnett. 

"My dear sir--I don't know your name--" he remarked, "would you mindtelling me how long you have been acquainted with Mrs. Newell?" Andwithout waiting for an answer he added judicially: "If you wait longenough she will ask you to do some very disagreeable things for her. "

This echo of his own thoughts gave Garnett a sharp twinge ofdiscomfort, but he made shift to answer good-humouredly: "If you referto my present errand, I must tell you that I don't find it disagreeableto do anything which may be of service to Miss Hermione. "

Mr. Newell fumbled in his pocket, as though searching unavailingly foranother morsel of bread; then he said: "From her point of view I shallnot be the most important person at the ceremony. "

Garnett smiled. "That is hardly a reason--" he began; but he waschecked by the brevity of tone with which his companion replied: "I amnot aware that I am called upon to give you my reasons. "

"You are certainly not, " the young man rejoined, "except in so far asyou are willing to consider me as the messenger of your wife anddaughter. "

"Oh, I accept your credentials, " said the other with his dry smile;"what I don't recognize is their right to send a message. "

This reduced Garnett to silence, and after a moment's pause Mr. Newelldrew his watch from his pocket. 

"I am sorry to cut the conversation short, but my days are mapped outwith a certain regularity, and this is the hour for my nap. " He rose ashe spoke and held out his hand with a glint of melancholy humour in hissmall clear eyes. 

"You dismiss me, then? I am to take back a refusal?" the young manexclaimed. 

"My dear sir, those ladies have got on very well without me for anumber of years: I imagine they can put through this wedding without myhelp. "

"You are mistaken, then; if it were not for that I shouldn't haveundertaken this errand. "

Mr. Newell paused as he was turning away. "Not for what?" he enquired. 

"The fact that, as it happens, the wedding can't be put through withoutyour help. "

Mr. Newell's thin lips formed a noiseless whistle. "They've got to havemy consent, have they? Well, is he a good young man?"

"The bridegroom?" Garnett echoed in surprise. "I hear the best accountsof him--and Miss Newell is very much in love. "

Her parent met this with an odd smile. "Well, then, I give myconsent--it's all I've got left to give, " he added philosophically. 

Garnett hesitated. "But if you consent--if you approve--why do yourefuse your daughter's request?"

Mr. Newell looked at him a moment. "Ask Mrs. Newell!" he said. And asGarnett was again silent, he turned away with a slight gesture ofleave-taking. 

But in an instant the young man was at his side. "I will not ask yourreasons, sir, " he said, "but I will give you mine for being here. MissNewell cannot be married unless you are present at the ceremony. Theyoung man's parents know that she has a father living, and they givetheir consent only on condition that he appears at her marriage. Ibelieve it is customary in old French families--. "

"Old French families be damned!" said Mr. Newell with sudden vigour. "She had better marry an American. " And he made a more decided motionto free himself from Garnett's importunities. 

But his resistance only strengthened the young man's. The moreunpleasant the latter's task became, the more unwilling he grew to seehis efforts end in failure. During the three days which had beenconsumed in his quest it had become clear to him that the bridegroom'sparents, having been surprised into a reluctant consent, were but tooready to withdraw it on the plea of Mr. Newell's non-appearance. Mrs. Newell, on the last edge of tension, had confided to Garnett that theMorningfields were "being nasty"; and he could picture the wholepowerful clan, on both sides of the Channel, arrayed in a commonresolve to exclude poor Hermione from their ranks. The very inequalityof the contest stirred his blood, and made him vow that in this case atleast the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. Inhis talk with the young secretary he had obtained some glimpses ofBaron Schenkelderff's past which fortified this resolve. The Baron, atone time a familiar figure in a much-observed London set, had beenmixed up in an ugly money-lending business ending in suicide, which hadexcluded him from the society most accessible to his race. His alliancewith Mrs. Newell was doubtless a desperate attempt at rehabilitation, aforlorn hope on both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because itrepresented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from socialextinction. That Hermione's marriage was a mere stake in their game didnot in the least affect Garnett's view of its urgency. If on their partit was a sordid speculation, to her it had the freshness of the firstwooing. If it made of her a mere pawn in their hands, it would put her, so Garnett hoped, beyond farther risk of such base uses; and to achievethis had become a necessity to him. 

The sense that, if he lost sight of Mr. Newell, the latter might noteasily be found again, nerved Garnett to hold his ground in spite ofthe resistance he encountered; and he tried to put the full force ofhis plea into the tone with which he cried: "Ah, you don't know yourdaughter!"

VI

MRS. NEWELL, that afternoon, met him on the threshold of hersitting-room with a "Well?" of pent-up anxiety. 

In the room itself, Baron Schenkelderff sat with crossed legs and headthrown back, in an attitude which he did not see fit to alter at theyoung man's approach. 

Garnett hesitated; but it was not the summariness of the Baron'sgreeting which he resented. 

"You've found him?" Mrs. Newell exclaimed. 

"Yes; but--"

She followed his glance and answered it with a slight shrug. "I can'ttake you into my room, because there's a dress-maker there, and shewon't go because she is waiting to be paid. Schenkelderff, " sheexclaimed, "you're not wanted; please go and look out of the window. "

The Baron rose and, lighting a cigarette, laughingly retired to theembrasure. Mrs. Newell flung herself down and signed to Garnett to takea seat at her side. 

"Well--you've found him? You've talked with him?"

"Yes; I have talked with him--for an hour. "

She made an impatient movement. "That's too long! Does he refuse?"

"He doesn't consent. "

"Then you mean--?"

"He wants time to think it over. "

"Time? There _is_ no time--did you tell him so?"

"I told him so; but you must remember that he has plenty. He has takentwenty-four hours. "

Mrs. Newell groaned. "Oh, that's too much. When he thinks things overhe always refuses. "

"Well, he would have refused at once if I had not agreed to the delay. "

She rose nervously from her seat and pressed her hands to her forehead. "It's too hard, after all I've done! The trousseau is ordered--thinkhow disgraceful! You must have managed him badly; I'll go and see himmyself. "

The Baron, at this, turned abruptly from his study of the Place Vendome. 

"My dear creature, for heaven's sake don't spoil everything!" heexclaimed. 

Mrs. Newell coloured furiously. "What's the meaning of that brilliantspeech?"

"I was merely putting myself in the place of a man on whom you haveceased to smile. "

He picked up his hat and stick, nodded knowingly to Garnett, and walkedtoward the door with an air of creaking jauntiness. 

But on the threshold Mrs. Newell waylaid him. 

"Don't go--I must speak to you, " she said, following him into theantechamber; and Garnett remembered the dress-maker who was not to bedislodged from her bedroom. 

In a moment Mrs. Newell returned, with a small flat packet which shevainly sought to dissemble in an inaccessible pocket. 

"He makes everything too odious!" she exclaimed; but whether shereferred to her husband or the Baron it was left to Garnett to decide. 

She sat silent, nervously twisting her cigarette-case between herfingers, while her visitor rehearsed the details of his conversationwith Mr. Newell. He did not indeed tell her the arguments he had usedto shake her husband's resolve, since in his eloquent sketch ofHermione's situation there had perforce entered hints unflattering toher mother; but he gave the impression that his hearer had in the endbeen moved, and for that reason had consented to defer his refusal. 

"Ah, it's not that--it's to prolong our misery!" Mrs. Newell exclaimed;and after a moment she added drearily: "He has been waiting for such anopportunity for years. "

It seemed needless for Garnett to protract his visit, and he took leavewith the promise to report at once the result of his final talk withMr. Newell. But as he was passing through the ante-chamber a side-dooropened and Hermione stood before him. Her face was flushed and shakenout of its usual repose of line, and he saw at once that she had beenwaiting for him. 

"Mr. Garnett!" she said in a whisper. 

He paused, considering her with surprise: he had never supposed hercapable of such emotion as her voice and eyes revealed. 

"I want to speak to you; we are quite safe here. Mamma is with thedress-maker, " she explained, closing the door behind her, while Garnettlaid aside his hat and stick. 

"I am at your service, " he said. 

"You have seen my father? Mamma told me that you were to see himto-day, " the girl went on, standing close to him in order that shemight not have to raise her voice. 

"Yes; I have seen him, " Garnett replied with increasing wonder. Hermione had never before mentioned her father to him, and it was by aslight stretch of veracity that he had included her name in hermother's plea to Mr. Newell. He had supposed her to be eitherunconscious of the transaction, or else too much engrossed in her ownhappiness to give it a thought; and he had forgiven her the lastalternative in consideration of the abnormal character of her filialrelations. But now he saw that he must readjust his view of her. 

"You went to ask him to come to my wedding; I know about it, " Hermionecontinued. "Of course it is the custom--people will think it odd if hedoes not come. " She paused, and then asked: "Does he consent?"

"No; he has not yet consented. "

"Ah, I thought so when I saw Mamma just now!"

"But he hasn't quite refused--he has promised to think it over. "

"But he hated it--he hated the idea?"

Garnett hesitated. "It seemed to arouse painful associations. "

"Ah, it would--it would!" she exclaimed. 

He was astonished at the passion of her accent; astonished still moreat the tone with which she went on, laying her hand on his arm: "Mr. Garnett, he must not be asked--he has been asked too often to do thingsthat he hated!"

Garnett looked at the girl with a shock of awe. What abysses ofknowledge did her purity hide?

"But, my dear Miss Hermione--" he began. 

"I know what you are going to say, " she interrupted him. "It isnecessary that he should be present at the marriage or the du Trayaswill break it off. They don't want it very much, at any rate, " sheadded with a strange candour, "and they will not be sorry, perhaps--forof course Louis would have to obey them. "

"So I explained to your father, " Garnett assured her. 

"Yes--yes; I knew you would put it to him. But that makes nodifference, Mr. Garnett. He must not be forced to come unwillingly. "

"But if he sees the point--after all, no one can force him!"

"No; but if it is painful to him--if it reminds him too much ... Oh, Mr. Garnett, I was not a child when he left us.... I was old enough tosee ... To see how it must hurt him even now to be reminded. Peace wasall he asked for, and I want him to be left in peace!"

Garnett paused in deep embarrassment. "My dear child, there is no needto remind you that your own future--"

She had a gesture that recalled her mother. "My future must take careof itself; he must not be made to see us!" she said imperatively. Andas Garnett remained silent she went on: "I have always hoped he did nothate me, but he would hate me now if he were forced to see me. "

"Not if he could see you at this moment!" he exclaimed. 

She lifted her face with swimming eyes. 

"Well, go to him, then; tell him what I have said to you!"

Garnett continued to stand before her, deeply struck. "It might be thebest thing, " he reflected inwardly; but he did not give utterance tothe thought. He merely put out his hand, holding Hermione's in a longpressure. 

"I will do whatever you wish, " he replied. 

"You understand that I am in earnest?" she urged tenaciously. 

"I am quite sure of it. "

"Then I want you to repeat to him what I have said--I want him to beleft undisturbed. I don't want him ever to hear of us again!"

The next day, at the appointed hour, Garnett resorted to the Luxembourggardens, which Mr. Newell had named as a meeting-place in preference tohis own lodgings. It was clear that he did not wish to admit the youngman any further into his privacy than the occasion required, and theextreme shabbiness of his dress hinted that pride might be the cause ofhis reluctance. 

Garnett found him feeding the sparrows, but he desisted at the youngman's approach, and said at once: "You will not thank me for bringingyou all this distance. "

"If that means that you are going to send me away with a refusal, Ihave come to spare you the necessity, " Garnett answered. 

Mr. Newell turned on him a glance of undisguised wonder, in which anundertone of disappointment might almost have been detected. 

"Ah--they've got no use for me, after all?" he said ironically. 

Garnett, in reply, related without comment his conversation withHermione, and the message with which she had charged him. He rememberedher words exactly and repeated them without modification, heedless ofwhat they implied or revealed. 

Mr. Newell listened with an immovable face, occasionally casting acrumb to his flock. When Garnett ended he asked: "Does her mother knowof this?"

"Assuredly not!" cried Garnett with a movement of disgust. 

"You must pardon me; but Mrs. Newell is a very ingenious woman. " Mr. Newell shook out his remaining crumbs and turned thoughtfully towardGarnett. 

"You believe it's quite clear to Hermione that these people will use myrefusal as a pretext for backing out of the marriage?"

"Perfectly clear--she told me so herself. "

"Doesn't she consider the young man rather chicken-hearted?"

"No; he has already put up a big fight for her, and you know the Frenchlook at these things differently. He's only twenty-three and hismarrying against his parents' approval is in itself an act of heroism. "

"Yes; I believe they look at it that way, " Mr. Newell assented. He roseand picked up the half-smoked cigar which he had laid on the benchbeside him. 

"What do they wear at these French weddings, anyhow? A dress-suit, isn't it?" he asked. 

The question was such a surprise to Garnett that for the moment hecould only stammer out--"You consent then? I may go and tell her?"

"You may tell my girl--yes. " He gave a vague laugh and added: "One wayor another, my wife always gets what she wants. "

VII

MR. NEWELL'S consent brought with it no accompanying concessions. Inthe first flush of his success Garnett had pictured himself as bringingtogether the father and daughter, and hovering in an attitude ofbenediction over a family group in which Mrs. Newell did not verydistinctly figure. 

But Mr. Newell's conditions were inflexible. He would "see the thingthrough" for his daughter's sake; but he stipulated that in themeantime there should be no meetings or farther communications of anykind. He agreed to be ready when Garnett called for him, at theappointed hour on the wedding-day; but until then he begged to be leftalone. To this decision he adhered immovably, and when Garnett conveyedit to Hermione she accepted it with a deep look of understanding. Asfor Mrs. Newell she was too much engrossed in the nuptial preparationsto give her husband another thought. She had gained her point, she haddisarmed her foes, and in the first flush of success she had no time toremember by what means her victory had been won. Even Garnett'sservices received little recognition, unless he found them sufficientlycompensated by the new look in Hermione's eyes. 

The principal figures in Mrs. Newell's foreground were the WoolseyHubbards and Baron Schenkelderff. With these she was in hourlyconsultation, and Mrs. Hubbard went about aureoled with the importanceof her close connection with an "aristocratic marriage, " and dazzled bythe Baron's familiarity with the intricacies of the Almanach de Gotha. In his society and Mrs. Newell's, Mrs. Hubbard evidently felt that shehad penetrated to the sacred precincts where "the right thing"flourished in its native soil. As for Hermione, her look of happinesshad returned, but with an undertint of melancholy, visible perhaps onlyto Garnett, but to him always hauntingly present. Outwardly she sankback into her passive self, resigned to serve as the brilliantlay-figure on which Mrs. Newell hung the trophies of conquest. Preparations for the wedding were zealously pressed. Mrs. Newell knewthe danger of giving people time to think things over, and her fearsabout her husband being allayed, she began to [87] dread a new attemptat evasion on the part of the bridegroom's family. 

"The sooner it's over the sounder I shall sleep!" she declared toGarnett; and all the mitigations of art could not conceal the fact thatshe was desperately in need of that restorative. There were moments, indeed, when he was sorrier for her than for her husband or herdaughter; so black and unfathomable appeared the abyss into which shemust slip back if she lost her hold on this last spar of safety. 

But she did not lose her hold; his own experience, as well as herhusband's declaration, might have told him that she always got what shewanted. How much she had wanted this particular thing was shown by theway in which, on the last day, when all peril was over, she bloomed outin renovated splendour. It gave Garnett a shivering sense of theugliness of the alternative which had confronted her. 

The day came; the showy coupe provided by Mrs. Newell presented itselfpunctually at Garnett's door, and the young man entered it and drove tothe rue Panonceaus. It was a little melancholy back street, with leanold houses sweating rust and damp, and glimpses of pit-life gardens, black and sunless, between walls bristling with iron spikes. On thenarrow pavement a blind man pottered along led by a red-eyed poodle: alittle farther on a dishevelled woman sat grinding coffee on thethreshold of a _buvette_. The bridal carriage stopped before one of thedoorways, with a clatter of hoofs and harness which drew theneighbourhood to its windows, and Garnett started to mount theill-smelling stairs to the fourth floor, on which he learned from the_concierge_ that Mr. Newell lodged. But half-way up he met the latterdescending, and they turned and went down together. 

Hermione's parent wore his usual imperturbable look, and his eye seemedas full as ever of generalisations on human folly; but there wassomething oddly shrunken and submerged in his appearance, as though hehad grown smaller or his clothes larger. And on the last hypothesisGarnett paused--for it became evident to him that Mr. Newell had hiredhis dress-suit. 

Seated at the young man's side on the satin cushions, he remainedsilent while the carriage rolled smoothly and rapidly through thenet-work of streets leading to the Boulevard Saint-Germain; only oncehe remarked, glancing at the elaborate fittings of the coupe: "Is thisMrs. Newell's carriage?"

"I believe so--yes, " Garnett assented, with the guilty sense that indefining that lady's possessions it was impossible not to trespass onthose of her friends. 

Mr. Newell made no farther comment, but presently requested hiscompanion to rehearse to him once more the exact duties which were todevolve on him during the coming ceremony. Having mastered these heremained silent, fixing a dry speculative eye on the panorama of thebrilliant streets, till the carriage drew up at the entrance of SaintPhilippe du Roule. 

With the same air of composure he followed his guide through the mob ofspectators, and up the crimson velvet steps, at the head of which, butfor a word from Garnett, a formidable Suisse, glittering with cockedhat and mace, would have checked the advance of the small crumpledfigure so oddly out of keeping with the magnificence of the bridalparty. The French fashion prescribing that the family _cortege_ shallfollow the bride to the altar, the vestibule of the church was throngedwith the participatore in the coming procession; but if Mr. Newell feltany nervousness at his sudden projection into this unfamiliar group, nothing in his look or manner betrayed it. He stood beside Garnett tilla white-favoured carriage, dashing up to the church with a superlativeglitter of highly groomed horseflesh and silver-plated harness, deposited the snowy apparition of the bride, supported by her mother;then, as Hermione entered the vestibule, he went forward quietly tomeet her. 

The girl, wrapped in the haze of her bridal veil, and a littleconfused, perhaps, by the anticipation of the meeting, paused a moment, as if in doubt, before the small oddly-clad figure which blocked herpath--a horrible moment to Garnett, who felt a pang of misery at thissatire on the infallibility of the filial instinct. He longed to makesome sign, to break in some way the pause of uncertainty; but before hecould move he saw Mrs. Newell give her daughter a sharp push, he saw ablush of compunction flood Hermione's face, and the girl, throwing backher veil, bent her tall head and flung her arms about her father. 

Mr. Newell emerged unshaken from the embrace: it seemed to have noeffect beyond giving an odder twist to his tie. He stood beside hisdaughter till the church doors were thrown open; then, at a sign fromthe verger, he gave her his arm, and the strange couple, with the longtrain of fashion and finery behind them, started on their march to thealtar. 

Garnett had already slipped into the church and secured a post ofvantage which gave him a side-view over the assemblage. The buildingwas thronged--Mrs. Newell had attained her ambition and given Hermionea smart wedding. Garnett's eye travelled curiously from one group toanother--from the numerous representatives of the bridegroom's family, all stamped with the same air of somewhat dowdy distinction, the air ofhaving had their thinking done for them for so long that they could nolonger perform the act individually, and the heterogeneous company ofMrs. Newell's friends, who presented, on the opposite side of the nave, every variety of individual conviction in dress and conduct. Of the twogroups the latter was decidedly the more interesting to Garnett, whoobserved that it comprised not only such recent acquisitions as theWoolsey Hubbards and the Baron, but also sundry more important figureswhich of late had faded to the verse of Mrs. Newell's horizon. Hermione's marriage had drawn them back, bad once more made her mothera social entity, had in short already accomplished the object for whichit had been planned and executed. 

And as he looked about him Garnett saw that all the other actors in theshow faded into insignificance beside the dominant figure of Mrs. Newell, became mere marionettes pulled hither and thither by the hiddenwires of her intention. One and all they were there to serve her endsand accomplish her purpose: Schenkelderff and the Hubbards to pay forthe show, the bride and bridegroom to seal and symbolize her socialrehabilitation, Garnett himself as the humble instrument adjusting thedifferent parts of the complicated machinery, and her husband, finally, as the last stake in her game, the last asset on which she could drawto rebuild her fallen fortunes. At the thought Garnett was filled witha deep disgust for what the scene signified, and for his own share init. He had been her tool and dupe like the others; if he imagined thathe was serving Hermione, it was for her mother's ends that he hadworked. What right had he to sentimentalise a marriage founded on suchbase connivances, and how could he have imagined that in so doing hewas acting a disinterested part?

While these thoughts were passing through his mind the ceremony hadalready begun, and the principal personages in the drama were rangedbefore him in the row of crimson velvet chairs which fills theforeground of a Catholic marriage. Through the glow of lights and theperfumed haze about the altar, Garnett's eyes rested on the centralfigures of the group, and gradually the others disappeared from hisview and his mind. After all, neither Mrs. Newell's schemes nor his ownshare in them could ever unsanctify Hermione's marriage. It was onemore testimony to life's indefatigable renewals, to nature's secret ofdrawing fragrance from corruption; and as his eyes turned from thegirl's illuminated presence to the resigned and stoical figure sunk inthe adjoining chair, it occured to him that he had perhaps workedbetter than he knew in placing them, if only for a moment, side by side. 

IN TRUST

IN the good days, just after we all left college, Ned Halidon and Iused to listen, laughing and smoking, while Paul Ambrose set forth hisplans. 

They were immense, these plans, involving, as it sometimes seemed, theultimate aesthetic redemption of the whole human race; andprovisionally restoring the sense of beauty to those unhappy millionsof our fellow country-men who, as Ambrose movingly pointed out, nowlive and die in surroundings of unperceived and unmitigated ugliness. 

"I want to bring the poor starved wretches back to their lostinheritance, to the divine past they've thrown away--I want to make 'emhate ugliness so that they'll smash nearly everything in sight, " hewould passionately exclaim, stretching his arms across the shabbyblack-walnut writing-table and shaking his thin consumptive fist in thefact of all the accumulated ugliness in the world. 

"You might set the example by smashing that table, " I once suggestedwith youthful brutality; and Paul, pulling himself up, cast a surprisedglance at me, and then looked slowly about the parental library, inwhich we sat. 

His parents were dead, and he had inherited the house in SeventeenthStreet, where his grandfather Ambrose had lived in a setting of blackwalnut and pier glasses, giving Madeira dinners, and saying to hisguests, as they rejoined the ladies across a florid waste of Aubussoncarpet: "This, sir, is Dabney's first study for the Niagara--theGrecian Slave in the bay window was executed for me in Rome twentyyears ago by my old friend Ezra Stimpson--" by token of which he passedfor a Maecenas in the New York of the 'forties, ' and a poem had oncebeen published in the Keepsake or the Book of Beauty "On a picture inthe possession of Jonathan Ambrose, Esqre. "

Since then the house had remained unchanged. Paul's father, a frugalliver and hard-headed manipulator of investments, did not inherit oldJonathan's artistic sensibilities, and was content to live and die inthe unmodified black walnut and red rep of his predecessor. It was onlyin Paul that the grandfather's aesthetic faculty revived, and Mrs. Ambrose used often to say to her husband, as they watched the littlepale-browed boy poring over an old number of the _Art Journal:_ "Paulwill know how to appreciate your father's treasures. "

In recognition of these transmitted gifts Paul, on leaving Harvard, wassent to Paris with a tutor, and established in a studio in whichnothing was ever done. He could not paint, and recognized the factearly enough to save himself much wasted labor and his friends manypainful efforts in dissimulation. But he brought back a touchingenthusiasm for the forms of beauty which an old civilization hadrevealed to him and an apostolic ardour in the cause of theirdissemination. 

He had paused in his harangue to take in my ill-timed parenthesis, andthe color mounted slowly to his thin cheek-bones. 

"It _is_ an ugly room, " he owned, as though he had noticed the libraryfor the first time. 

The desk was carved at the angles with the heads of helmeted knightswith long black-walnut moustaches. The red cloth top was wornthread-bare, and patterned like a map with islands and peninsulas ofink; and in its centre throned a massive bronze inkstand representing aSyrian maiden slumbering by a well beneath a palm-tree. 

"The fact is, " I said, walking home that evening with Ned Halidon, "oldPaul will never do anything, for the simple reason that he's toostingy. "

Ned, who was an idealist, shook his handsome head. "It's not that, mydear fellow. He simply doesn't see things when they're too close tohim. I'm glad you woke him up to that desk. "

The next time I dined with Paul he said, when we entered the library, and I had gently rejected one of his cheap cigars in favour of asuperior article of my own: "Look here, I've been looking round for adecent writing-table. I don't care, as a rule, to turn out old things, especially when they've done good service, but I see now that this istoo monstrous--"

"For an apostle of beauty to write his evangel on, " I agreed, "it _is_a little inappropriate, except as an awful warning. "

Paul colored. "Well, but, my dear fellow, I'd no idea how much a tableof this kind costs. I find I can't get anything decent--the plainestmahogany--under a hundred and fifty. " He hung his head, and pretendednot to notice that I was taking out my own cigar. 

"Well, what's a hundred and fifty to you?" I rejoined. "You talk as ifyou had to live on a book-keeper's salary, with a large family tosupport. "

He smiled nervously and twirled the ring on his thin finger. "I know--Iknow--that's all very well. But for twenty tables that I _don't_ buy Ican send some fellow abroad and unseal his eyes. "

"Oh, hang it, do both!" I exclaimed impatiently; but the writing-tablewas never bought. The library remained as it was, and so did thecontention between Halidon and myself, as to whether this inconsistentacceptance of his surroundings was due, on our friend's part, to acongenital inability to put his hand in his pocket, or to a realunconsciousness of the ugliness that happened to fall inside his pointof vision. 

"But he owned that the table was ugly, " I agreed. 

"Yes, but not till you'd called his attention to the fact; and I'llwager he became unconscious of it again as soon as your back wasturned. "

"Not before he'd had time to look at a lot of others, and make up hismind that he couldn't afford to buy one. "

"That was just his excuse. He'd rather be thought mean than insensibleto ugliness. But the truth is that he doesn't mind the table and isused to it. He knows his way about the drawers. "

"But he could get another with the same number of drawers. "

"Too much trouble, " argued Halidon. 

"Too much money, " I persisted. 

"Oh, hang it, now, if he were mean would he have founded threetravelling scholarships and be planning this big Academy of Arts?"

"Well, he's mean to himself, at any rate. "

"Yes; and magnificently, royally generous to all the world besides!"Halidon exclaimed with one of his great flushes of enthusiasm. 

But if, on the whole, the last word remained with Halidon, andAmbrose's personal chariness seemed a trifling foible compared to hisaltruistic breadth of intention, yet neither of us could helpobserving, as time went on, that the habit of thrift was beginning toimpede the execution of his schemes of art-philanthropy. The threetravelling scholarships had been founded in the first blaze of hisardour, and before the personal management of his property had awakenedin him the sleeping instincts of parsimony. But as his capitalaccumulated, and problems of investment and considerations of interestbegan to encroach upon his visionary hours, we saw a gradual arrest inthe practical development of his plan. 

"For every thousand dollars he talks of spending on his work, I believehe knocks off a cigar, or buys one less newspaper, " Halidon grumbledaffectionately; "but after all, " he went on, with one of the quickrevivals of optimism that gave a perpetual freshness to his spirit, "after all, it makes one admire him all the more when one sees such anature condemned to be at war with the petty inherited instinct ofgreed. "

Still, I could see it was a disappointment to Halidon that the greatproject of the Academy of Arts should languish on paper long after allits details had been discussed and settled to the satisfaction of theprojector, and of the expert advisers he had called in council. 

"He's quite right to do nothing in a hurry--to take advice and compareideas and points of view--to collect and classify his material inadvance, " Halidon argued, in answer to a taunt of mine about Paul'sperpetually reiterated plea that he was still waiting for So-and-so'sreport; "but now that the plan's mature--and _such_ a plan! You'llgrant it's magnificent?--I should think he'd burn to see it carriedout, instead of pottering over it till his enthusiasm cools and thewhole business turns stale on his hands. "

That summer Ambrose went to Europe, and spent his holiday in a frugalwalking-tour through Brittany. When he came back he seemed refreshed byhis respite from business cares and from the interminable revision ofhis cherished scheme; while contact with the concrete manifestations ofbeauty had, as usual, renewed his flagging ardour. 

"By Jove, " he cried, "whenever I indulged my unworthy eyes in a longgaze at one of those big things--picture or church or statue--I keptsaying to myself: 'You lucky devil, you, to be able to provide such asight as that for eyes that can make some good use of it! Isn't itbetter to give fifty fellows a chance to paint or carve or build, thanto be able to daub canvas or punch clay in a corner all by yourself?'"

"Well, " I said, when he had worked off his first ebullition, "when isthe foundation stone to be laid?"

His excitement dropped. "The foundation stone--?"

"When are you going to touch the electric button that sets the thinggoing?"

Paul, with his hands in his sagging pockets, began to pace the libraryhearth-rug--I can see him now, setting his shabby red slippers betweenits ramified cabbages. 

"My dear fellow, there are one or two points to be consideredstill--one or two new suggestions I picked up over there--"

I sat silent, and he paused before me, flushing to the roots of histhin hair. "You think I've had time enough--that I ought to have putthe thing through before this? I suppose you're right; I can see thateven Ned Halidon thinks so; and he has always understood mydifficulties better than you have. "

This insinuation exasperated me. "Ned would have put it through yearsago!" I broke out. 

Paul pulled at his straggling moustache. "You mean he has moreexecutive capacity? More--no, it's not that; he's not afraid to spendmoney, and I am!" he suddenly exclaimed. 

He had never before alluded to this weakness to either of us, and I satabashed, suffering from his evident distress. But he remained plantedbefore me, his little legs wide apart, his eyes fixed on mine in anagony of voluntary self-exposure. 

"That's my trouble, and I know it. Big sums frighten me--I can't lookthem in the face. By George, I wish Ned had the carrying out of thisscheme--I wish he could spend my money for me!" His face was lit by thereflection of a passing thought. "Do you know, I shouldn't wonder if Idropped out of the running before either of you chaps, and in case I doI've half a mind to leave everything in trust to Halidon, and let himput the job through for me. "

"Much better have your own fun with it, " I retorted; but he shook hishead, saying with a sigh as he turned away: "It's _not_ fun tome--that's the worst of it. "

Halidon, to whom I could not help repeating our talk, was amused andtouched by his friend's thought. 

"Heaven knows what will become of the scheme, if Paul doesn't live tocarry it out. There are a lot of hungry Ambrose cousins who will makeone gulp of his money, and never give a dollar to the work. Jove, it_would_ be a fine thing to have the carrying out of such a plan--buthe'll do it yet, you'll see he'll do it yet!" cried Ned, his old faithin his friend flaming up again through the wet blanket of fact. 

II

PAUL AMBROSE did not die and leave his fortune to Halidon, but thefollowing summer he did something far more unexpected. He went abroadagain, and came back married. Now our busy fancy had never seen Paulmarried. Even Ned recognized the vague unlikelihood of such ametamorphosis. 

"He'd stick at the parson's fee--not to mention the best man'sscarf-pin. And I should hate, " Ned added sentimentally, "to see 'thetouch of a woman's hand' desecrate the sublime ugliness of theancestral home. Think of such a house made 'cozy'!"

But when the news came he would own neither to surprise nor todisappointment. 

"Goodbye, poor Academy!" I exclaimed, tossing over the bridegroom'seight-page rhapsody to Halidon, who had received its duplicate by thesame post. 

"Now, why the deuce do you say that?" he growled. "I never saw such abeast as you are for imputing mean motives. "

To defend myself from this accusation I put out my hand and recoveredPaul's letter. 

"Here: listen to this. 'Studying art in Paris when I met her--"thevision and the faculty divine, but lacking the accomplishment, " etc.... A little ethereal profile, like one of Piero della Francesca's angels... Not rich, thank heaven, _but not afraid of money_, and alreadyenamored of my project for fertilizing my sterile millions... '"

"Well, why the deuce--?" Ned began again, as though I had convictedmyself out of my friend's mouth; and I could only grumble obscurely:"It's all too pat. "

He brushed aside my misgivings. "Thank heaven, she can't paint, anyhow. And now that I think of it, Paul's just the kind of chap who oughtto have a dozen children. "

"Ah, then indeed: goodbye, poor Academy!" I croaked. 

The lady was lovely, of that there could be no doubt; and if Paul nowfor a time forgot the Academy, his doing so was but a vindication ofhis sex. Halidon had only a glimpse of the returning couple before hewas himself snatched up in one of the chariots of adventure that seemedperpetually waiting at his door. This time he was going to the far Eastin the train of a "special mission, " and his head was humming with newhopes and ardors; but he had time for a last word with me about Ambrose. 

"You'll see--you'll see!" he summed up hopefully as we parted; and whatI was to see was, of course, the crowning pinnacle of the Academylifting itself against the horizon of the immediate future. 

It was in the nature of things that I should, meanwhile, see less thanformerly of the projector of that unrealized structure. Paul had apersonal dread of society, but he wished to show his wife to the world, and I was not often a spectator on these occasions. Paul indeed, goodfellow, tried to maintain the pretense of an unbroken intercourse, andto this end I was asked to dine now and then; but when I went I foundguests of a new type, who, after dinner, talked of sport and stocks, while their host blinked at them silently through the smoke of hischeap cigars. 

The first innovation that struck me was a sudden improvement in thequality of the cigars. Was this Daisy's doing? (Mrs. Ambrose wasDaisy. ) It was hard to tell--she produced her results so noiselessly. With her fair bent head and vague smile, she seemed to watch life flowby without, as yet, trusting anything of her own to its current. Butshe was watching, at any rate, and anything might come of that. Suchmodifications as she produced were as yet almost imperceptible to anybut the trained observer. I saw that Paul wished her to be welldressed, but also that he suffered her to drive in a hired brougham, and to have her door opened by the raw-boned Celt who had bumped downthe dishes on his bachelor table. The drawing-room curtains wererenewed, but this change served only to accentuate the enormities ofthe carpet, and perhaps discouraged Mrs. Ambrose from fartherexperiments. At any rate, the desecrating touch that Halidon hadaffected to dread made no other inroads on the serried ugliness of theAmbrose interior. 

In the early summer, when Ned returned, the Ambroses had flown toEurope again--and the Academy was still on paper. 

"Well, what do you make of her?" the traveller asked, as we sat overour first dinner together. 

"Too many things--and they don't hang together. Perhaps she's still inthe chrysalis stage. "

"Has Paul chucked the scheme altogether?"

"No. He sent for me and we had a talk about it just before he sailed. "

"And what impression did you get?"

"That he had waited to send for me _till_ just before he sailed. "

"Oh, there you go again!" I offered no denial, and after a pause heasked: "Did _she_ ever talk to you about it?"

"Yes. Once or twice--in snatches. "

"Well--?"

"She thinks it all _too_ beautiful. She would like to see beauty putwithin the reach of everyone. "

"And the practical side--?"

"She says she doesn't understand business. "

Halidon rose with a shrug. "Very likely you frightened her with yourugly sardonic grin. "

"It's not my fault if my smile doesn't add to the sum-total of beauty. "

"Well, " he said, ignoring me, "next winter we shall see. "

But the next winter did not bring Ambrose back. A brief line, writtenin November from the Italian lakes, told me that he had "a rottencough, " and that the doctors were packing him off to Egypt. Would I seethe architects for him, and explain to the trustees? (The Academyalready had trustees, and all the rest of its official hierarchy. ) Andwould they all excuse his not writing more than a word? He was reallytoo groggy--but a little warm weather would set him up again, and hewould certainly come home in the spring. 

He came home in the spring--in the hold of the ship, with his widowseveral decks above. The funeral services were attended by all theofficers of the Academy, and by two of the young fellows who had wonthe travelling scholarships, and who shed tears of genuine grief whentheir benefactor was committed to the grave. 

After that there was a pause of suspense--and then the newspapersannounced that the late Paul Ambrose had left his entire estate to hiswidow. The board of the Academy dissolved like a summer cloud, and thesecretary lighted his pipe for a year with the official paper of thestill-born institution. 

After a decent lapse of time I called at the house in SeventeenthStreet, and found a man attaching a real-estate agent's sign to thewindow and a van-load of luggage backing away from the door. Thecare-taker told me that Mrs. Ambrose was sailing the next morning. Notlong afterward I saw the library table with the helmeted knightsstanding before an auctioneer's door in University Place; and I lookedwith a pang at the familiar ink-stains, in which I had so often tracedthe geography of Paul's visionary world. 

Halidon, who had picked up another job in the Orient, wrote me anelegiac letter on Paul's death, ending with--"And what about theAcademy?" and for all answer I sent him a newspaper clipping recordingthe terms of the will, and another announcing the sale of the house andMrs. Ambrose's departure for Europe. 

Though Ned and I corresponded with tolerable regularity I received nodirect answer to this communication till about eighteen months later, when he surprised me by a letter dated from Florence. It began: "Thoughshe tells me you have never understood her--" and when I had reachedthat point I laid it down and stared out of my office window at thechimney-pots and the dirty snow on the roof. 

"Ned Halidon and Paul's wife!" I murmured; and, incongruously enough, my next thought was: "I wish I'd bought the library table that day. "

The letter went on with waxing eloquence: "I could not stand the moneyif it were not that, to her as well as to me, it represents the sacredopportunity of at last giving speech to his inarticulateness ... "

"Oh, damn it, they're too glib!" I muttered, dashing the letter down;then, controlling my unreasoning resentment, I read on. "You remember, old man, those words of his that you repeated to me three or four yearsago: 'I've half a mind to leave my money in trust to Ned'? Well, it_has_ come to me in trust--as if in mysterious fulfillment of histhought; and, oh, dear chap--" I dashed the letter down again, andplunged into my work. 

III

"WON'T you own yourself a beast, dear boy?" Halidon asked me gently, one afternoon of the following spring. 

I had escaped for a six weeks' holiday, and was lying outstretchedbeside him in a willow chair on the terrace of their villa aboveFlorence. 

My eyes turned from the happy vale at our feet to the illuminated facebeside me. A little way off, at the other end of the terrace, Mrs. Halidon was bending over a pot of carnations on the balustrade. 

"Oh, cheerfully, " I assented. 

"You see, " he continued, glowing, "living here costs us next tonothing, and it was quite _her_ idea, our founding that fourthscholarship in memory of Paul. "

I had already heard of the fourth scholarship, but I may have betrayedmy surprise at the plural pronoun, for the blood rose under Ned'ssensitive skin, and he said with an embarrassed laugh: "Ah, she socompletely makes me forget that it's not mine too. "

"Well, the great thing is that you both think of it chiefly as his. "

"Oh, chiefly--altogether. I should be no more than a wretched parasiteif I didn't live first of all for that!"

Mrs. Halidon had turned and was advancing toward us with the slow stepof leisurely enjoyment. The bud of her beauty had at last unfolded: hervague enigmatical gaze had given way to the clear look of the womanwhose hand is on the clue of life. 

"_She's_ not living for anything but her own happiness, " I mused, "andwhy in heaven's name should she? But Ned--"

"My wife, " Halidon continued, his eyes following mine, "my wife feelsit too, even more strongly. You know a woman's sensitiveness. She's--there's nothing she wouldn't do for his memory--because--inother ways.... You understand, " he added, lowering his tone as she drewnearer, "that as soon as the child is born we mean to go home for good, and take up his work--Paul's work. "

Mrs. Halidon recovered slowly after the birth of her child: the returnto America was deferred for six months, and then again for a wholeyear. I heard of the Halidons as established first at Biarritz, then inRome. The second summer Ned wrote me a line from St. Moritz. He saidthe place agreed so well with his wife--who was still delicate--thatthey were "thinking of building a house there: a mere cleft in therocks, to hide our happiness in when it becomes too exuberant"--and therest of the letter, very properly, was filled with a rhapsody upon hislittle daughter. He spoke of her as Paula. 

The following year the Halidons reappeared in New York, and I heardwith surprise that they had taken the Brereton house for the winter. 

"Well, why not?" I argued with myself. "After all, the money is hers:as far as I know the will didn't even hint at a restriction. Why shouldI expect a pretty woman with two children" (for now there was an heir)"to spend her fortune on a visionary scheme that its originator hadn'tthe heart to carry out?"

"Yes, " cried the devil's advocate--"but Ned?"

My first impression of Halidon was that he had thickened--thickened allthrough. He was heavier, physically, with the ruddiness of good livingrather than of hard training; he spoke more deliberately, and had lessfrequent bursts of subversive enthusiasm. Well, he was a father, ahouseholder--yes, and a capitalist now. It was fitting that his mannershould show a sense of these responsibilities. As for Mrs. Halidon, itwas evident that the only responsibilities she was conscious of werethose of the handsome woman and the accomplished hostess. She washandsomer than ever, with her two babies at her knee--perfect mother asshe was perfect wife. Poor Paul! I wonder if he ever dreamed what aflower was hidden in the folded bud?

Not long after their arrival, I dined alone with the Halidons, andlingered on to smoke with Ned while his wife went alone to the opera. He seemed dull and out of sorts, and complained of a twinge of gout. 

"Fact is, I don't get enough exercise--I must look about for a horse. "

He had gone afoot for a good many years, and kept his clear skin andquick eye on that homely regimen--but I had to remind myself that, after all, we were both older; and also that the Halidons had champagneevery evening. 

"How do you like these cigars? They're some I've just got out fromLondon, but I'm not quite satisfied with them myself, " he grumbled, pushing toward me the silver box and its attendant taper. 

I leaned to the flame, and our eyes met as I lit my cigar. Ned flushedand laughed uneasily. "Poor Paul! Were you thinking of those execrableweeds of his?--I wonder how I knew you were? Probably because I havebeen wanting to talk to you of our plan--I sent Daisy off alone so thatwe might have a quiet evening. Not that she isn't interested, only thetechnical details bore her. "

I hesitated. "Are there many technical details left to settle?"

Halidon pushed his armchair back from the fire-light, and twirled hiscigar between his fingers. "I didn't suppose there were till I began tolook into things a little more closely. You know I never had much of ahead for business, and it was chiefly with you that Paul used to goover the figures. "

"The figures--?"

"There it is, you see. " He paused. "Have you any idea how much thisthing is going to cost?"

"Approximately, yes. "

"And have you any idea how much we--how much Daisy's fortune amountsto?"

"None whatever, " I hastened to assert. 

He looked relieved. "Well, we simply can't do it--and live. "

"Live?"

"Paul didn't _live_, " he said impatiently. "I can't ask a woman withtwo children to think of--hang it, she's under no actual obligation--"He rose and began to walk the floor. Presently he paused and halted infront of me, defensively, as Paul had once done years before. "It's notthat I've lost the sense of _my_ obligation--it grows keener with thegrowth of my happiness; but my position's a delicate one--"

"Ah, my dear fellow--"

"You _do_ see it? I knew you would. " (Yes, he was duller!) "That's thepoint. I can't strip my wife and children to carry out a plan--a planso nebulous that even its inventor.... The long and short of it is thatthe whole scheme must be re-studied, reorganized. Paul lived in a worldof dreams. "

I rose and tossed my cigar into the fire. "There were some things henever dreamed of, " I said. 

Halidon rose too, facing me uneasily. "You mean--?"

"That _you_ would taunt him with not having spent that money. "

He pulled himself up with darkening brows; then the muscles of hisforehead relaxed, a flush suffused it, and he held out his hand inboyish penitence. 

"I stand a good deal from you, " he said. 

He kept up his idea of going over the Academy question--threshing itout once for all, as he expressed it; but my suggestion that we shouldprovisionally resuscitate the extinct board did not meet with hisapproval. 

"Not till the whole business is settled. I shouldn't have theface--Wait till I can go to them and say: 'We're laying thefoundation-stone on such a day. '"

We had one or two conferences, and Ned speedily lost himself in a mazeof figures. His nimble fancy was recalcitrant to mental discipline, andhe excused his inattention with the plea that he had no head forbusiness. 

"All I know is that it's a colossal undertaking, and that short ofliving on bread and water--" and then we turned anew to the hardproblem of retrenchment. 

At the close of the second conference we fixed a date for a third, whenNed's business adviser was to be called in; but before the day came, Ilearned casually that the Halidons had gone south. Some weeks later Nedwrote me from Florida, apologizing for his remissness. They had rushedoff suddenly--his wife had a cough, he explained. 

When they returned in the spring, I heard that they had bought theBrereton house, for what seemed to my inexperienced ears a very largesum. But Ned, whom I met one day at the club, explained to meconvincingly that it was really the most economical thing they coulddo. "You don't understand about such things, dear boy, living in yourDiogenes tub; but wait till there's a Mrs. Diogenes. I can assure youit's a lot cheaper than building, which is what Daisy would havepreferred, and of course, " he added, his color rising as our eyes met, "of course, once the Academy's going, I shall have to make myhead-quarters here; and I suppose even you won't grudge me a roof overmy head. "

The Brereton roof was a vast one, with a marble balustrade about it;and I could quite understand, without Ned's halting explanation, that"under the circumstances" it would be necessary to defer what he called"our work--" "Of course, after we've rallied from this amputation, weshall grow fresh supplies--I mean my wife's investments will, " helaughingly corrected, "and then we'll have no big outlays ahead andshall know exactly where we stand. After all, my dear fellow, charitybegins at home!"

IV

THE Halidons floated off to Europe for the summer. In due course theirreturn was announced in the social chronicle, and walking up FifthAvenue one afternoon I saw the back of the Brereton house sheathed inscaffolding, and realized that they were adding a wing. 

I did not look up Halidon, nor did I hear from him till the middle ofthe winter. Once or twice, meanwhile, I had seen him in the back of hiswife's opera box; but Mrs. Halidon had grown so resplendent that shereduced her handsome husband to a supernumerary. In January the papersbegan to talk of the Halidon ball; and in due course I received a cardfor it. I was not a frequenter of balls, and had no intention of goingto this one; but when the day came some obscure impulse moved me to setaside my rule, and toward midnight I presented myself at Ned'silluminated portals. 

I shall never forget his look when I accosted him on the threshold ofthe big new ballroom. With celibate egoism I had rather fancied hewould be gratified by my departure from custom; but one glance showedme my mistake. He smiled warmly, indeed, and threw into his hand-claspan artificial energy of welcome--"You of all people--my dear fellow!Have you seen Daisy?"--but the look behind the smile made me feel coldin the crowded room. 

Nor was Mrs. Halidon's greeting calculated to restore my circulation. "Have you come to spy on us?" her frosty smile seemed to say; and Icrept home early, wondering if she had not found me out. 

It was the following week that Halidon turned up one day in my office. He looked pale and thinner, and for the first time I noticed a dash ofgray in his hair. I was startled at the change in him, but I reflectedthat it was nearly a year since we had looked at each other bydaylight, and that my shaving-glass had doubtless a similar tale totell. 

He fidgeted about the office, told me a funny story about his littleboy, and then dropped into a chair. 

"Look here, " he said, "I want to go into business. "

"Business?" I stared. 

"Well, why not? I suppose men have gone to work, even at my age, andnot made a complete failure of it. The fact is, I want to make somemoney. " He paused, and added: "I've heard of an opportunity to pick upfor next to nothing a site for the Academy, and if I could lay my handson a little cash--"

"Do you want to speculate?" I interposed. 

"Heaven forbid! But don't you see that, if I had a fixed job--so much aquarter--I could borrow the money and pay it off gradually?"

I meditated upon this astounding proposition. "Do you really think it'swise to buy a site before--"

"Before what?"

"Well--seeing ahead a little?"

His face fell for a moment, but he rejoined cheerfully: "It's anexceptional chance, and after all, I _shall_ see ahead if I can getregular work. I can put by a little every month, and by and bye, whenour living expenses diminish, my wife means to come forward--her ideawould be to give the building--"

He broke off and drummed on the table, waiting nervously for me tospeak. He did not say on what grounds he still counted on a diminutionof his household expenses, and I had not the cruelty to press thispoint; but I murmured, after a moment: "I think you're right--I shouldtry to buy the land. "

We discussed his potentialities for work, which were obviously still anunknown quantity, and the conference ended in my sending him to a firmof real-estate brokers who were looking out for a partner with a littlemoney to invest. Halidon had a few thousands of his own, which hedecided to embark in the venture; and thereafter, for the remainingmonths of the winter, he appeared punctually at a desk in the brokers'office, and sketched plans of the Academy on the back of their businesspaper. The site for the future building had meanwhile been bought, andI rather deplored the publicity which Ned gave to the fact; but, afterall, since this publicity served to commit him more deeply, to pledgehim conspicuously to the completion of his task, it was perhaps a wiseinstinct of self-coercion that had prompted him. 

It was a dull winter in realty, and toward spring, when the marketbegan to revive, one of the Halidon children showed symptoms of adelicate throat, and the fashionable doctor who humoured the familyailments counselled--nay, commanded--a prompt flight to theMediterranean. 

"He says a New York spring would be simply criminal--and as for thoseghastly southern places, my wife won't hear of them; so we're off. ButI shall be back in July, and I mean to stick to the office all summer. "

He was true to his word, and reappeared just as all his friends weredeserting town. For two torrid months he sat at his desk, drawing freshplans of the Academy, and waiting for the wind-fall of a "big deal";but in September he broke down from the effect of the unwontedconfinement, and his indignant wife swept him off to the mountains. 

"Why Ned should work when we have the money--I wish he would sell thatwretched piece of land!" And sell it he did one day: I chanced on arecord of the transaction in the realty column of the morning paper. Heafterward explained the sale to me at length. Owing to some spasmodiceffort at municipal improvement, there had been an unforeseen rise inthe adjoining property, and it would have been foolish--yes, I agreedthat it would have been foolish. He had made $10, 000 on the sale, andthat would go toward paying off what he had borrowed for the originalpurchase. Meanwhile he could be looking about for another site. 

Later in the winter he told me it was a bad time to look. His positionin the real-estate business enabled him to follow the trend of themarket, and that trend was obstinately upward. But of course therewould be a reaction--and he was keeping his eyes open. 

As the resuscitated Academy scheme once more fell into abeyance, I sawHalidon less and less frequently; and we had not met for severalmonths, when one day of June, my morning paper startled me with theannouncement that the President had appointed Edward Halidon of NewYork to be Civil Commissioner of our newly acquired Eastern possession, the Manana Islands. "The unhealthy climate of the islands, and thedefective sanitation of the towns, make it necessary that vigorousmeasures should be taken to protect the health of the American citizensestablished there, and it is believed that Mr. Halidon's largeexperience of Eastern life and well-known energy of character--" I readthe paragraph twice; then I dropped the paper, and projected myselfthrough the subway to Halidon's office. But he was not there; he hadnot been there for a month. One of the clerks believed he was inWashington. 

"It's true, then!" I said to myself. "But Mrs. Halidon in theMananas--?"

A day or two later Ned appeared in my office. He looked better thanwhen we had last met, and there was a determined line about his lips. 

"My wife? Heaven forbid! You don't suppose I should think of takingher? But the job is a tremendously interesting one, and it's the kindof work I believe I can do--the only kind, " he added, smiling ratherruefully. 

"But my dear Ned--"

He faced me with a look of quiet resolution. "I think I've been throughall the _buts_. It's an infernal climate, of course, but then I am usedto the East--I know what precautions to take. And it would be a bigthing to clean up that Augean stable. "

"But consider your wife and children--"

He met this with deliberation. "I _have_ considered my children--that'sthe point. I don't want them to be able to say, when they look back:'He was content to go on living on that money--'"

"My dear Ned--"

"That's the one thing they _shan't_ say of me, " he pressed onvehemently. "I've tried other ways--but I'm no good at business. I seenow that I shall never make money enough to carry out the schememyself; but at least I can clear out, and not go on being _his_pensioner--seeing his dreams turned into horses and carpets andclothes--"

He broke off, and leaning on my desk hid his face in his hands. When helooked up again his flush of wrath had subsided. 

"Just understand me--it's not _her_ fault. Don't fancy I'm trying foran instant to shift the blame. A woman with children simply obeys theinstinct of her sex; she puts them first--and I wouldn't have itotherwise. As far as she's concerned there were no conditionsattached--there's no reason why she should make any sacrifice. " Hepaused, and added painfully: "The trouble is, I can't make her see thatI am differently situated. "

"But, Ned, the climate--what are you going to gain by chucking yourselfaway?"

He lifted his brows. "That's a queer argument from _you_. And, besides, I'm up to the tricks of all those ague-holes. And I've _got_ to live, you see: I've got something to put through. " He saw my look of enquiry, and added with a shy, poignant laugh--how I hear it still!--: "I don'tmean only the job in hand, though that's enough in itself; but Paul'swork--you understand. --It won't come in _my_ day, of course--I've gotto accept that--but my boy's a splendid chap" (the boy was three), "andI tell you what it is, old man, I believe when he grows up _he'll putit through_. "

Halidon went to the Mananas, and for two years the journals brought meincidental reports of the work he was accomplishing. He certainly hadfound a job to his hand: official words of commendation rang throughthe country, and there were lengthy newspaper leaders on the efficiencywith which our representative was prosecuting his task in that lostcorner of our colonies. Then one day a brief paragraph announced hisdeath--"one of the last victims of the pestilence he had sosuccessfully combated. "

That evening, at my club, I heard men talking of him. One said: "What'sthe use of a fellow wasting himself on a lot of savages?" and anotherwiseacre opined: "Oh, he went off because there was friction at home. Afellow like that, who knew the East, would have got through all rightif he'd taken the proper precautions. I saw him before he left, and Inever saw a man look less as if he wanted to live. "

I turned on the last speaker, and my voice made him drop his lightedcigar on his complacent knuckles. 

"I never knew a man, " I exclaimed, "who had better reasons for wantingto live!"

A handsome youth mused: "Yes, his wife is very beautiful--but itdoesn't follow--"

And then some one nudged him, for they knew I was Halidon's friend. 

THE PRETEXT

I

MRS. RANSOM, when the front door had closed on her visitor, passed witha spring from the drawing-room to the narrow hall, and thence up thenarrow stairs to her bedroom. 

Though slender, and still light of foot, she did not always move soquickly: hitherto, in her life, there had not been much to hurry for, save the recurring domestic tasks that compel haste without fosteringelasticity; but some impetus of youth revived, communicated to her byher talk with Guy Dawnish, now found expression in her girlish flightupstairs, her girlish impatience to bolt herself into her room with herthrobs and her blushes. 

Her blushes? Was she really blushing?

She approached the cramped eagle-topped mirror above her plain primdressing-table: just such a meagre concession to the weakness of theflesh as every old-fashioned house in Wentworth counted among itsrelics. The face reflected in this unflattering surface--for even themirrors of Wentworth erred on the side of depreciation--did not seem, at first sight, a suitable theatre for the display of the tendereremotions, and its owner blushed more deeply as the fact was forced uponher. 

Her fair hair had grown too thin--it no longer quite hid the blue veinsin her candid forehead--a forehead that one seemed to see turned towardprofessorial desks, in large bare halls where a snowy winter light felluncompromisingly on rows of "thoughtful women. " Her mouth was thin, too, and a little strained; her lips were too pale; and there werelines in the corners of her eyes. It was a face which had grownmiddle-aged while it waited for the joys of youth. 

Well--but if she could still blush? Instinctively she drew back alittle, so that her scrutiny became less microscopic, and the prettylingering pink threw a veil over her pallor, the hollows in hertemples, the faint wrinkles of inexperience about her lips and eyes. How a little colour helped! It made her eyes so deep and shining. Shesaw now why bad women rouged.... Her redness deepened at the thought. 

But suddenly she noticed for the first time that the collar of herdress was cut too low. It showed the shrunken lines of the throat. Sherummaged feverishly in a tidy scentless drawer, and snatching out a bitof black velvet, bound it about her neck. Yes--that was better. It gaveher the relief she needed. Relief--contrast--that was it! She had neverhad any, either in her appearance or in her setting. She was as flat asthe pattern of the wall-paper--and so was her life. And all the peopleabout her had the same look. Wentworth was the kind of place wherehusbands and wives gradually grew to resemble each other--one or two ofher friends, she remembered, had told her lately that she and Ransomwere beginning to look alike.... 

But why had she always, so tamely, allowed her aspect to conform to hersituation? Perhaps a gayer exterior would have provoked a brighterfate. Even now--she turned back to the glass, loosened the tightstrands of hair above her brow, ran the fine end of the comb under themwith a rapid frizzing motion, and then disposed them, more lightly andamply, above her eager face. Yes--it was really better; it made adifference. She smiled at herself with a timid coquetry, and her lipsseemed rosier as she smiled. Then she laid down the comb and the smilefaded. It made a difference, certainly--but was it right to try to makeone's hair look thicker and wavier than it really was? Between that androuging the ethical line seemed almost impalpable, and the spectre ofher rigid New England ancestry rose reprovingly before her. She wassure that none of her grandmothers had ever simulated a curl orencouraged a blush. A blush, indeed! What had any of them ever had toblush for in all their frozen lives? And what, in Heaven's name, hadshe? She sat down in the stiff mahogany rocking-chair beside herwork-table and tried to collect herself. From childhood she had beentaught to "collect herself"--but never before had her small sensationsand aspirations been so widely scattered, diffused over so vague anduncharted an expanse. Hitherto they had lain in neatly sorted andeasily accessible bundles on the high shelves of a perfectly orderedmoral consciousness. And now--now that for the first time they _needed_collecting--now that the little winged and scattered bits of self weredancing madly down the vagrant winds of fancy, she knew no spell tocall them to the fold again. The best way, no doubt--if only herbewilderment permitted--was to go back to the beginning--the beginning, at least, of to-day's visit--to recapitulate, word for word and lookfor look.... 

She clasped her hands on the arms of the chair, checked its swayingwith a firm thrust of her foot, and fixed her eyes upon the inwardvision.... 

To begin with, what had made to-day's visit so different from theothers? It became suddenly vivid to her that there had been many, almost daily, others, since Guy Dawnish's coming to Wentworth. Even theprevious winter--the winter of his arrival from England--his visits hadbeen numerous enough to make Wentworth aware that--very naturally--Mrs. Ransom was "looking after" the stray young Englishman committed to herhusband's care by an eminent Q. C. Whom the Ransoms had known on one oftheir brief London visits, and with whom Ransom had since maintainedprofessional relations. All this was in the natural order of things, assanctioned by the social code of Wentworth. Every one was kind to GuyDawnish--some rather importunately so, as Margaret Ransom had smiled toobserve--but it was recognized as fitting that she should be kindest, since he was in a sense her property, since his people in England, byprofusely acknowledging her kindness, had given it the domesticsanction without which, to Wentworth, any social relation between thesexes remained unhallowed and to be viewed askance. Yes! And even thissecond winter, when the visits had become so much more frequent, soadmitted a part of the day's routine, there had not been, from any one, a hint of surprise or of conjecture.... 

Mrs. Ransom smiled with a faint bitterness. She was protected by herage, no doubt--her age and her past, and the image her mirror gave backto her.... 

Her door-handle turned suddenly, and the bolt's resistance was met byan impatient knock. 

"Margaret!"

She started up, her brightness fading, and unbolted the door to admither husband. 

"Why are you locked in? Why, you're not dressed yet!" he exclaimed. 

It was possible for Ransom to reach his dressing-room by a slightcircuit through the passage; but it was characteristic of therelentless domesticity of their relation that he chose, as a matter ofcourse, the directer way through his wife's bedroom. She had neverbefore been disturbed by this practice, which she accepted asinevitable, but had merely adapted her own habits to it, delaying herhasty toilet till he was safely in his room, or completing it beforeshe heard his step on the stair; since a scrupulous traditional pruderyhad miraculously survived this massacre of all the privacies. 

"Oh, I shan't dress this evening--I shall just have some tea in thelibrary after you've gone, " she answered absently. "Your things arelaid out, " she added, rousing herself. 

He looked surprised. "The dinner's at seven. I suppose the speecheswill begin at nine. I thought you were coming to hear them. "

She wavered. "I don't know. I think not. Mrs. Sperry's ill, and I've noone else to go with. "

He glanced at his watch. "Why not get hold of Dawnish? Wasn't he herejust now? Why didn't you ask him?"

She turned toward her dressing-table, and straightened the comb andbrush with a nervous hand. Her husband had given her, that morning, twotickets for the ladies' gallery in Hamblin Hall, where the great publicdinner of the evening was to take place--a banquet offered by thefaculty of Wentworth to visitors of academic eminence--and she hadmeant to ask Dawnish to go with her: it had seemed the most naturalthing to do, till the end of his visit came, and then, after all, shehad not spoken.... 

"It's too late now, " she murmured, bending over her pin cushion. 

"Too late? Not if you telephone him. "

Her husband came toward her, and she turned quickly to face him, lesthe should suspect her of trying to avoid his eye. To what duplicity wasshe already committed!

Ransom laid a friendly hand on her arm: "Come along, Margaret. You knowI speak for the bar. " She was aware, in his voice, of a little note ofsurprise at his having to remind her of this. 

"Oh, yes. I meant to go, of course--"

"Well, then--" He opened his dressing-room door, and caught a glimpseof the retreating house-maid's skirt. "Here's Maria now. Maria! Call upMr. Dawnish--at Mrs. Creswell's, you know. Tell him Mrs. Ransom wantshim to go with her to hear the speeches this evening--the _speeches_, you understand?--and he's to call for her at a quarter before nine. "

Margaret heard the Irish "Yessir" on the stairs, and stood motionless, while her husband added loudly: "And bring me some towels when you comeup. " Then he turned back into his wife's room. 

"Why, it would be a thousand pities for Guy to miss this. He's sointerested in the way we do things over here--and I don't know thathe's ever heard me speak in public. " Again the slight note of fatuity!Was it possible that Ransom was a fatuous man?

He paused in front of her, his short-sighted unobservant glanceconcentrating itself unexpectedly on her face. 

"You're not going like that, are you?" he asked, with glaringeye-glasses. 

"Like what?" she faltered, lifting a conscious hand to the velvet ather throat. 

"With your hair in such a fearful mess. Have you been shampooing it?You look like the Brant girl at the end of a tennis-match. "

The Brant girl was their horror--the horror of all right-thinkingWentworth; a laced, whale-boned, frizzle-headed, high-heeled daughterof iniquity, who came--from New York, of course--on long, disturbing, tumultuous visits to a Wentworth aunt, working havoc among thefreshmen, and leaving, when she departed, an angry wake of criticismthat ruffled the social waters for weeks. _She_, too, had tried herhand at Guy--with ludicrous unsuccess. And now, to be compared toher--to be accused of looking "New Yorky!" Ah, there are times whenhusbands are obtuse; and Ransom, as he stood there, thick and yetjuiceless, in his dry legal middle age, with his wiry dust-colouredbeard, and his perpetual _pince-nez_, seemed to his wife a suddenembodiment of this traditional attribute. Not that she had ever fanciedherself, poor soul, a "_femme incomprise_. " She had, on the contrary, prided herself on being understood by her husband, almost as much as onher own complete comprehension of him. Wentworth laid a good deal ofstress on "motives"; and Margaret Ransom and her husband had dwelt in acomplete community of motive. It had been the proudest day of her lifewhen, without consulting her, he had refused an offer of partnership inan eminent New York firm because he preferred the distinction ofpractising in Wentworth, of being known as the legal representative ofthe University. Wentworth, in fact, had always been the bond betweenthe two; they were united in their veneration for that estimable seatof learning, and in their modest yet vivid consciousness of possessingits tone. The Wentworth "tone" is unmistakable: it permeates every partof the social economy, from the _coiffure_ of the ladies to thepreparation of the food. It has its sumptuary laws as well as itscurriculum of learning. It sits in judgment not only on its owntownsmen but on the rest of the world--enlightening, criticising, ostracizing a heedless universe--and non-conformity to Wentworthstandards involves obliteration from Wentworth's consciousness. 

In a world without traditions, without reverence, without stability, such little expiring centres of prejudice and precedent make anirresistible appeal to those instincts for which a democracy hasneglected to provide. Wentworth, with its "tone, " its backwardreferences, its inflexible aversions and condemnations, its hard moraloutline preserved intact against a whirling background of experiment, had been all the poetry and history of Margaret Ransom's life. Yes, what she had really esteemed in her husband was the fact of his beingso intense an embodiment of Wentworth; so long and closely identified, for instance, with its legal affairs, that he was almost a part of itsuniversity existence, that of course, at a college banquet, he wouldinevitably speak for the bar!

It was wonderful of how much consequence all this had seemed tillnow.... 

II

WHEN, punctually at ten minutes to seven, her husband had emerged fromthe house, Margaret Ransom remained seated in her bedroom, addressingherself anew to the difficult process of self-collection. As an aid tothis endeavour, she bent forward and looked out of the window, following Ransom's figure as it receded down the elm-shaded street. Hemoved almost alone between the prim flowerless grass-plots, the whiteporches, the protrusion of irrelevant shingled gables, which stampedthe empty street as part of an American college town. She had alwaysbeen proud of living in Hill Street, where the university peoplecongregated, proud to associate her husband's retreating back, as hewalked daily to his office, with backs literary and pedagogic, backs ofwhich it was whispered, for the edification of duly-impressed visitors:"Wait till that old boy turns--that's so-and-so. "

This had been her world, a world destitute of personal experience, butfilled with a rich sense of privilege and distinction, of being not asthose millions were who, denied the inestimable advantage of living atWentworth, pursued elsewhere careers foredoomed to futility by thatvery fact. 

And now--!

She rose and turned to her work-table where she had dropped, onentering, the handful of photographs that Guy Dawnish had left withher. While he sat so close, pointing out and explaining, she had hardlytaken in the details; but now, on the full tones of his low youngvoice, they came back with redoubled distinctness. This was GuiseAbbey, his uncle's place in Wiltshire, where, under his grandfather'srule, Guy's own boyhood had been spent: a long gabled Jacobean facade, many-chimneyed, ivy-draped, overhung (she felt sure) by the boughs of avenerable rookery. And in this other picture--the walled garden atGuise--that was his uncle, Lord Askern, a hale gouty-looking figure, planted robustly on the terrace, a gun on his shoulder and a couple ofsetters at his feet. And here was the river below the park, with Guy"punting" a girl in a flapping hat--how Margaret hated the flap thathid the girl's face! And here was the tennis-court, with Guy among ajolly cross-legged group of youths in flannels, and pretty girls aboutthe tea-table under the big lime: in the centre the curate handingbread and butter, and in the middle distance a footman approaching withmore cups. 

Margaret raised this picture closer to her eyes, puzzling, in thediminished light, over the face of the girl nearest to GuyDawnish--bent above him in profile, while he laughingly lifted hishead. No hat hid this profile, which stood out clearly against thefoliage behind it. 

"And who is that handsome girl?" Margaret had said, detaining thephotograph as he pushed it aside, and struck by the fact that, of thewhole group, he had left only this member unnamed. 

"Oh, only Gwendolen Matcher--I've always known her--. Look at this: thealmshouses at Guise. Aren't they jolly?"

And then--without her having had the courage to ask if the girl in thepunt were also Gwendolen Matcher--they passed on to photographs of hisrooms at Oxford, of a cousin's studio in London--one of Lord Askern'sgrandsons was "artistic"--of the rose-hung cottage in Wales to which, on the old Earl's death, his daughter-in-law, Guy's mother, had retired. 

Every one of the photographs opened a window on the life Margaret hadbeen trying to picture since she had known him--a life so rich, soromantic, so packed--in the mere casual vocabulary of daily life--withhistoric reference and poetic allusion, that she felt almost oppressedby this distant whiff of its air. The very words he used fascinated andbewildered her. He seemed to have been born into all sorts ofconnections, political, historical, official, that made the Ransomsituation at Wentworth as featureless as the top shelf of a darkcloset. Some one in the family had "asked for the ChilternHundreds"--one uncle was an Elder Brother of the Trinity House--someone else was the Master of a College--some one was in command atDevonport--the Army, the Navy, the House of Commons, the House ofLords, the most venerable seats of learning, were all woven into thedense background of this young man's light unconscious talk. For theunconsciousness was unmistakable. Margaret was not without experienceof the transatlantic visitor who sounds loud names and evokesreverberating connections. The poetry of Guy Dawnish's situation lay inthe fact that it was so completely a part of early associations andaccepted facts. Life was like that in England--in Wentworth of course(where he had been sent, through his uncle's influence, for two years'training in the neighbouring electrical works at Smedden)--inWentworth, though "immensely jolly, " it was different. The fact that hewas qualifying to be an electrical engineer--with the hope of asecretaryship at the London end of the great Smedden Company--that, atbest, he was returning home to a life of industrial "grind, " this fact, though avowedly a bore, did not disconnect him from that brilliantpinnacled past, that many-faceted life in which the brightest episodesof the whole body of English fiction seemed collectively reflected. Ofcourse he would have to work--younger sons' sons almost always hadto--but his uncle Askern (like Wentworth) was "immensely jolly, " andGuise always open to him, and his other uncle, the Master, a capitalold boy too--and in town he could always put up with his clever aunt, Lady Caroline Duckett, who had made a "beastly marriage" and washorribly poor, but who knew everybody jolly and amusing, and had alwaysbeen particularly kind to him. 

It was not--and Margaret had not, even in her own thoughts, to defendherself from the imputation--it was not what Wentworth would havecalled the "material side" of her friend's situation that captivatedher. She was austerely proof against such appeals: her enthusiasms wereall of the imaginative order. What subjugated her was the unexampledprodigality with which he poured for her the same draught of traditionof which Wentworth held out its little teacupful. He besieged her witha million Wentworths in one--saying, as it were: "All these are minefor the asking--and I choose you instead!"

For this, she told herself somewhat dizzily, was what it came to--thesumming-up toward which her conscientious efforts at self-collectionhad been gradually pushing her: with all this in reach, Guy Dawnish wasleaving Wentworth reluctantly. 

"I _was_ a bit lonely here at first--but _now!_" And again: "It will bejolly, of course, to see them all again--but there are some things onedoesn't easily give up.... "

If he had known only Wentworth, it would have been wonderful enoughthat he should have chosen her out of all Wentworth--but to have knownthat other life, and to set her in the balance against it--poorMargaret Ransom, in whom, at the moment, nothing seemed of weight buther years! Ah, it might well produce, in nerves and brain, and poorunpractised pulses, a flushed tumult of sensation, the rush of a greatwave of life, under which memory struggled in vain to reassert itself, to particularize again just what his last words--the very last--hadbeen.... 

When consciousness emerged, quivering, from this retrospective assault, it pushed Margaret Ransom--feeling herself a mere leaf in theblast--toward the writing-table from which her innocent and voluminouscorrespondence habitually flowed. She had a letter to write now--muchshorter but more difficult than any she had ever been called on toindite. 

"Dear Mr. Dawnish, " she began, "since telephoning you just now I havedecided not--"

Maria's voice, at the door, announced that tea was in the library: "AndI s'pose it's the brown silk you'll wear to the speaking?"

In the usual order of the Ransom existence, its mistress's toilet wasperformed unassisted; and the mere enquiry--at once friendly anddeferential--projected, for Margaret, a strong light on the importanceof the occasion. That she should answer: "But I am not going, " when thegoing was so manifestly part of a household solemnity about which thethoughts below stairs fluttered in proud participation; that in face ofsuch participation she should utter a word implying indifference orhesitation--nay, revealing herself the transposed, uprooted thing shehad been on the verge of becoming; to do this was--well! infinitelyharder than to perform the alternative act of tearing up the sheet ofnote-paper under her reluctant pen. 

Yes, she said, she would wear the brown silk.... 

III

ALL the heat and glare from the long illuminated table, about which thefumes of many courses still hung in a savoury fog, seemed to surge upto the ladies' gallery, and concentrate themselves in the burningcheeks of a slender figure withdrawn behind the projection of a pillar. 

It never occurred to Margaret Ransom that she was sitting in the shade. She supposed that the full light of the chandeliers was beating on herface--and there were moments when it seemed as though all the headsabout the great horse-shoe below, bald, shaggy, sleek, close-thatched, or thinly latticed, were equipped with an additional pair of eyes, setat an angle which enabled them to rake her face as relentlessly as theelectric burners. 

In the lull after a speech, the gallery was fluttering with the rustleof programmes consulted, and Mrs. Sheff (the Brant girl's aunt) leanedforward to say enthusiastically: "And now we're to hear Mr. Ransom!"

A louder buzz rose from the table, and the heads (without relaxingtheir upward vigilance) seemed to merge, and flow together, like anattentive flood, toward the upper end of the horse-shoe, where all thethreads of Margaret Ransom's consciousness were suddenly drawn intowhat seemed a small speck, no more--a black speck that rose, hung inair, dissolved into gyrating gestures, became distended, enormous, preponderant--became her husband "speaking. "

"It's the heat--" Margaret gasped, pressing her handkerchief to herwhitening lips, and finding just strength enough left to push backfarther into the shadow. 

She felt a touch on her arm. "It _is_ horrible--shall we go?" a voicesuggested; and, "Yes, yes, let us go, " she whispered, feeling, with agreat throb of relief, _that_ to be the only possible, the onlyconceivable, solution. To sit and listen to her husband _now_--howcould she ever have thought she could survive it? Luckily, under thelingering hubbub from below, his opening words were inaudible, and shehad only to run the gauntlet of sympathetic feminine glances, shotafter her between waving fans and programmes, as, guided by GuyDawnish, she managed to reach the door. It was really so hot that evenMrs. Sheff was not much surprised--till long afterward.... 

The winding staircase was empty, half dark and blessedly silent. In acommittee room below Dawnish found the inevitable water jug, and filleda glass for her, while she leaned back, confronted only by a frowningcollege President in an emblazoned frame. The academic frown descendedon her like an anathema when she rose and followed her companion out ofthe building. 

Hamblin Hall stands at the end of the long green "Campus" with itssextuple line of elms--the boast and the singularity of Wentworth. Apale spring moon, rising above the dome of the University library atthe opposite end of the elm-walk, diffused a pearly mildness in thesky, melted to thin haze the shadows of the trees, and turned to goldenyellow the lights of the college windows. Against this soft suffusionof light the Library cupola assumed a Bramantesque grace, the whitesteeple of the congregational church became a campanile topped by awinged spirit, and the scant porticoes of the older halls thecolonnades of classic temples. 

"This is better--" Dawnish said, as they passed down the steps andunder the shadow of the elms. 

They moved on a little way in silence before he began again: "You'retoo tired to walk. Let us sit down a few minutes. "

Her feet, in truth, were leaden, and not far off a group of parkbenches, encircling the pedestal of a patriot in bronze, invited themto rest. But Dawnish was guiding her toward a lateral path which bent, through shrubberies, toward a strip of turf between two of thebuildings. 

"It will be cooler by the river, " he said, moving on without waitingfor a possible protest. None came: it seemed easier, for the moment, tolet herself be led without any conventional feint of resistance. Andbesides, there was nothing wrong about _this_--the wrong would havebeen in sitting up there in the glare, pretending to listen to herhusband, a dutiful wife among her kind.... 

The path descended, as both knew, to the chosen, the inimitable spot ofWentworth: that fugitive curve of the river, where, before hurrying onto glut the brutal industries of South Wentworth and Smedden, itsimulated for a few hundred yards the leisurely pace of an ancientuniversity stream, with willows on its banks and a stretch of turfextending from the grounds of Hamblin Hall to the boat houses at thefarther bend. Here too were benches, beneath the willows, and so closeto the river that the voice of its gliding softened and filled out thereverberating silence between Margaret and her companion, and made herfeel that she knew why he had brought her there. 

"Do you feel better?" he asked gently as he sat down beside her. 

"Oh, yes. I only needed a little air. "

"I'm so glad you did. Of course the speeches were tremendouslyinteresting--but I prefer this. What a good night!"

"Yes. "

There was a pause, which now, after all, the soothing accompaniment ofthe river seemed hardly sufficient to fill. 

"I wonder what time it is. I ought to be going home, " Margaret began atlength. 

"Oh, it's not late. They'll be at it for hours in there--yet. "

She made a faint inarticulate sound. She wanted to say: "No--Robert'sspeech was to be the last--" but she could not bring herself topronounce Ransom's name, and at the moment no other way of refuting hercompanion's statement occurred to her. 

The young man leaned back luxuriously, reassured by her silence. 

"You see it's my last chance--and I want to make the most of it. "

"Your last chance?" How stupid of her to repeat his words on thatcooing note of interrogation! It was just such a lead as the Brant girlmight have given him. 

"To be with you--like this. I haven't had so many. And there's lessthan a week left. "

She attempted to laugh. "Perhaps it will sound longer if you call itfive days. "

The flatness of that, again! And she knew there were people who calledher intelligent. Fortunately he did not seem to notice it; but herlaugh continued to sound in her own ears--the coquettish chirp ofmiddle age! She decided that if he spoke again--if he _saidanything_--she would make no farther effort at evasion: she would takeit directly, seriously, frankly--she would not be doubly disloyal. 

"Besides, " he continued, throwing his arm along the back of the bench, and turning toward her so that his face was like a dusky bas-reliefwith a silver rim--"besides, there's something I've been wanting totell you. "

The sound of the river seemed to cease altogether: the whole worldbecame silent. 

Margaret had trusted her inspiration farther than it appeared likely tocarry her. Again she could think of nothing happier than to repeat, onthe same witless note of interrogation: "To tell me?"

"You only. "

The constraint, the difficulty, seemed to be on his side now: shedivined it by the renewed shifting of his attitude--he was capable, usually, of such fine intervals of immobility--and by a confusion inhis utterance that set her own voice throbbing in her throat. 

"You've been so perfect to me, " he began again. "It's not my fault ifyou've made me feel that you would understand everything--makeallowances for everything--see just how a man may have held out, andfought against a thing--as long as he had the strength.... This may bemy only chance; and I can't go away without telling you. "

He had turned from her now, and was staring at the river, so that hisprofile was projected against the moonlight in all its beautiful youngdejection. 

There was a slight pause, as though he waited for her to speak; thenshe leaned forward and laid her hand on his. 

"If I have really been--if I have done for you even the least part ofwhat you say ... What you imagine ... Will you do for me, now, just onething in return?"

He sat motionless, as if fearing to frighten away the shy touch on hishand, and she left it there, conscious of her gesture only as part ofthe high ritual of their farewell. 

"What do you want me to do?" he asked in a low tone. 

"_Not_ to tell me!" she breathed on a deep note of entreaty. 

"_Not_ to tell you--?"

"Anything--_anything_--just to leave our ... Our friendship ... As ithas been--as--as a painter, if a friend asked him, might leave apicture--not quite finished, perhaps ... But all the more exquisite.... "

She felt the hand under hers slip away, recover itself, and seek herown, which had flashed out of reach in the same instant--felt the startthat swept him round on her as if he had been caught and turned aboutby the shoulders. 

"You--_you_--?" he stammered, in a strange voice full of fear andtenderness; but she held fast, so centred in her inexorable resolvethat she was hardly conscious of the effect her words might beproducing. 

"Don't you see, " she hurried on, "don't you _feel_ how much safer itis--yes, I'm willing to put it so!--how much safer to leave everythingundisturbed ... Just as ... As it has grown of itself ... Withouttrying to say: 'It's this or that'... ? It's what we each choose to callit to ourselves, after all, isn't it? Don't let us try to find a namethat ... That we should both agree upon ... We probably shouldn'tsucceed. " She laughed abruptly. "And ghosts vanish when one namesthem!" she ended with a break in her voice. 

When she ceased her heart was beating so violently that there was arush in her ears like the noise of the river after rain, and she didnot immediately make out what he was answering. But as she recoveredher lucidity she said to herself that, whatever he was saying, she mustnot hear it; and she began to speak again, half playfully, halfappealingly, with an eloquence of entreaty, an ingenuity in argument, of which she had never dreamed herself capable. And then, suddenly, strangling hands seemed to reach up from her heart to her throat, andshe had to stop. 

Her companion remained motionless. He had not tried to regain her hand, and his eyes were away from her, on the river. But his nearness hadbecome something formidable and exquisite--something she had neverbefore imagined. A flush of guilt swept over her--vague reminiscencesof French novels and of opera plots. This was what such women felt, then ... This was "shame. " ... Phrases of the newspaper and the pulpitdanced before her.... She dared not speak, and his silence began tofrighten her. Had ever a heart beat so wildly before in Wentworth?

He turned at last, and taking her two hands, quite simply, kissed themone after the other. 

"I shall never forget--" he said in a confused voice, unlike his own. 

A return of strength enabled her to rise, and even to let her eyes meethis for a moment. 

"Thank you, " she said, simply also. 

She turned away from the bench, regaining the path that led back to thecollege buildings, and he walked beside her in silence. When theyreached the elm walk it was dotted with dispersing groups. The"speaking" was over, and Hamblin Hall had poured its audience out intothe moonlight. Margaret felt a rush of relief, followed by a recedingwave of regret. She had the distinct sensation that her hour--her onehour--was over. 

One of the groups just ahead broke up as they approached, and projectedRansom's solid bulk against the moonlight. 

"My husband, " she said, hastening forward; and she never afterwardforgot the look of his back--heavy, round-shouldered, yet a littlepompous--in a badly fitting overcoat that stood out at the neck and hidhis collar. She had never before noticed how he dressed. 

IV

THEY met again, inevitably, before Dawnish left; but the thing shefeared did not happen--he did not try to see her alone. 

It even became clear to her, in looking back, that he had deliberatelyavoided doing so; and this seemed merely an added proof of his"understanding, " of that deep undefinable communion that set them alonein an empty world, as if on a peak above the clouds. 

The five days passed in a flash; and when the last one came, it broughtto Margaret Ransom an hour of weakness, of profound disorganization, when old barriers fell, old convictions faded--when to be alone withhim for a moment became, after all, the one craving of her heart. Sheknew he was coming that afternoon to say "good-by"--and she knew alsothat Ransom was to be away at South Wentworth. She waited alone in herpale little drawing-room, with its scant kakemonos, its one or twochilly reproductions from the antique, its slippery Chippendale chairs. At length the bell rang, and her world became a rosy blur--throughwhich she presently discerned the austere form of Mrs. Sperry, wife ofthe Professor of palaeontology, who had come to talk over with her thenext winter's programme for the Higher Thought Club. They debated thequestion for an hour, and when Mrs. Sperry departed Margaret had aconfused impression that the course was to deal with the influence ofthe First Crusade on the development of European architecture--but thesentient part of her knew only that Dawnish had not come. 

He "bobbed in, " as he would have put it, after dinner--having, itappeared, run across Ransom early in the day, and learned that thelatter would be absent till evening. Margaret was in the study with herhusband when the door opened and Dawnish stood there. Ransom--who hadnot had time to dress--was seated at his desk, a pile of shabby lawbooks at his elbow, the light from a hanging lamp falling on hisgrayish stubble of hair, his sallow forehead and spectacled eyes. Dawnish, towering higher than usual against the shadows of the room, and refined by his unusual pallor, hung a moment on the threshold, thencame in, explaining himself profusely--laughing, accepting a cigar, letting Ransom push an arm-chair forward--a Dawnish she had never seen, ill at ease, ejaculatory, yet somehow more mature, more obscurely incommand of himself. 

Margaret drew back, seating herself in the shade, in such a way thatshe saw her husband's head first, and beyond it their visitor's, relieved against the dusk of the book shelves. Her heart was still--shefelt no throbbing in her throat or temples: all her life seemedconcentrated in the hand that lay on her knee, the hand he would touchwhen they said good-by. 

Afterward her heart rang all the changes, and there was a mood in whichshe reproached herself for cowardice--for having deliberately missedher one moment with him, the moment in which she might have sounded thedepths of life, for joy or anguish. But that mood was fleeting andinfrequent. In quieter hours she blushed for it--she even trembled tothink that he might have guessed such a regret in her. It seemed toconvict her of a lack of fineness that he should have had, in his youthand his power, a tenderer, surer sense of the peril of a rashtouch--should have handled the case so much more delicately. 

At first her days were fire and the nights long solemn vigils. Herthoughts were no longer vulgarized and defaced by any notion of"guilt, " of mental disloyalty. She was ashamed now of her shame. Whathad happened was as much outside the sphere of her marriage as sometransaction in a star. It had simply given her a secret life ofincommunicable joys, as if all the wasted springs of her youth had beenstored in some hidden pool, and she could return there now to bathe inthem. 

After that there came a phase of loneliness, through which the lifeabout her loomed phantasmal and remote. She thought the dead must feelthus, repeating the vain gestures of the living beside some Stygianshore. She wondered if any other woman had lived to whom _nothing hadever happened?_ And then his first letter came.... 

It was a charming letter--a perfect letter. The little touch ofawkwardness and constraint under its boyish spontaneity told her morethan whole pages of eloquence. He spoke of their friendship--of theirgood days together.... Ransom, chancing to come in while she read, noticed the foreign stamps; and she was able to hand him the letter, saying gaily: "There's a message for you, " and knowing all the whilethat _her_ message was safe in her heart. 

On the days when the letters came the outlines of things grewindistinct, and she could never afterward remember what she had done orhow the business of life had been carried on. It was always a surprisewhen she found dinner on the table as usual, and Ransom seated oppositeto her, running over the evening paper. 

But though Dawnish continued to write, with all the English loyalty tothe outward observances of friendship, his communications came only atintervals of several weeks, and between them she had time to repossessherself, to regain some sort of normal contact with life. And thecustomary, the recurring, gradually reclaimed her, the net of habittightened again--her daily life became real, and her one momentaryescape from it an exquisite illusion. Not that she ceased to believe inthe miracle that had befallen her: she still treasured the reality ofher one moment beside the river. What reason was there for doubting it?She could hear the ring of truth in young Dawnish's voice: "It's not myfault if you've made me feel that you would understand everything.... "No! she believed in her miracle, and the belief sweetened and illuminedher life; but she came to see that what was for her the transformationof her whole being might well have been, for her companion, a merepassing explosion of gratitude, of boyish good-fellowship touched withthe pang of leave-taking. She even reached the point of telling herselfthat it was "better so": this view of the episode so defended it fromthe alternating extremes of self-reproach and derision, so enshrined itin a pale immortality to which she could make her secret pilgrimageswithout reproach. 

For a long time she had not been able to pass by the bench under thewillows--she even avoided the elm walk till autumn had stripped itsbranches. But every day, now, she noted a step toward recovery; and atlast a day came when, walking along the river, she said to herself, asshe approached the bench: "I used not to be able to pass here withoutthinking of him; _and now I am not thinking of him at all!_"

This seemed such convincing proof of her recovery that she began, asspring returned, to permit herself, now and then, a quiet session onthe bench--a dedicated hour from which she went back fortified to hertask. 

She had not heard from her friend for six weeks or more--the intervalsbetween his letters were growing longer. But that was "best" too, andshe was not anxious, for she knew he had obtained the post he had beenpreparing for, and that his active life in London had begun. Thethought reminded her, one mild March day, that in leaving the house shehad thrust in her reticule a letter from a Wentworth friend who wasabroad on a holiday. The envelope bore the London post mark, a factshowing that the lady's face was turned toward home. Margaret seatedherself on her bench, and drawing out the letter began to read it. 

The London described was that of shops and museums--as remote aspossible from the setting of Guy Dawnish's existence. But suddenlyMargaret's eye fell on his name, and the page began to tremble in herhands. 

"I heard such a funny thing yesterday about your friend Mr. Dawnish. Wewent to a tea at Professor Bunce's (I do wish you knew theBunces--their atmosphere is so _uplifting_), and there I met that MissBruce-Pringle who came out last year to take a course in histology atthe Annex. Of course she asked about you and Mr. Ransom, and then shetold me she had just seen Mr. Dawnish's aunt--the clever one he wasalways talking about, Lady Caroline something--and that they were allin a dreadful state about him. I wonder if you knew he was engaged whenhe went to America? He never mentioned it to _us_. She said it was nota positive engagement, but an understanding with a girl he has alwaysbeen devoted to, who lives near their place in Wiltshire; and bothfamilies expected the marriage to take place as soon as he got back. Itseems the girl is an heiress (you know _how low_ the English ideals arecompared with ours), and Miss Bruce-Pringle said his relations wereperfectly delighted at his 'being provided for, ' as she called it. Well, when he got back he asked the girl to release him; and she andher family were furious, and so were his people; but he holds out, andwon't marry her, and won't give a reason, except that he has 'formed anunfortunate attachment. ' Did you ever hear anything so peculiar? Hisaunt, who is quite wild about it, says it must have happened atWentworth, because he didn't go anywhere else in America. Do yousuppose it _could_ have been the Brant girl? But why 'unfortunate' wheneverybody knows she would have jumped at him?"

Margaret folded the letter and looked out across the river. It was notthe same river, but a mystic current shot with moonlight. The barewillows wove a leafy veil above her head, and beside her she felt thenearness of youth and tempestuous tenderness. It had all happened justhere, on this very seat by the river--it had come to her, and passedher by, and she had not held out a hand to detain it.... 

Well! Was it not, by that very abstention, made more deeply andineffaceably hers? She could argue thus while she had thought theepisode, on his side, a mere transient effect of propinquity; but nowthat she knew it had altered the whole course of his life, now that ittook on substance and reality, asserted a separate existence outside ofher own troubled consciousness--now it seemed almost cowardly to havemissed her share in it. 

She walked home in a dream. Now and then, when she passed anacquaintance, she wondered if the pain and glory were written on herface. But Mrs. Sperry, who stopped her at the corner of Maverick Streetto say a word about the next meeting of the Higher Thought Club, seemedto remark no change in her. 

When she reached home Ransom had not yet returned from the office, andshe went straight to the library to tidy his writing-table. It was partof her daily duty to bring order out of the chaos of his papers, and oflate she had fastened on such small recurring tasks as some one fallingover a precipice might snatch at the weak bushes in its clefts. 

When she had sorted the letters she took up some pamphlets andnewspapers, glancing over them to see if they were to be kept. Amongthe papers was a page torn from a London _Times_ of the previous month. Her eye ran down its columns and suddenly a paragraph flamed out. 

"We are requested to state that the marriage arranged between Mr. GuyDawnish, son of the late Colonel the Hon. Roderick Dawnish, of Malby, Wilts, and Gwendolen, daughter of Samuel Matcher, Esq. Of ArminghamTowers, Wilts, will not take place. "

Margaret dropped the paper and sat down, hiding her face against thestained baize of the desk. She remembered the photograph of thetennis-court at Guise--she remembered the handsome girl at whom GuyDawnish looked up, laughing. A gust of tears shook her, loosening thedry surface of conventional feeling, welling up from unsuspecteddepths. She was sorry--very sorry, yet so glad--so ineffably, impenitently glad. 

V

THERE came a reaction in which she decided to write to him. She evensketched out a letter of sisterly, almost motherly, remonstrance, inwhich she reminded him that he "still had all his life before him. " Butshe reflected that so, after all, had she; and that seemed to weakenthe argument. 

In the end she decided not to send the letter. He had never spoken toher of his engagement to Gwendolen Matcher, and his letters hadcontained no allusion to any sentimental disturbance in his life. Shehad only his few broken words, that night by the river, on which tobuild her theory of the case. But illuminated by the phrase "anunfortunate attachment" the theory towered up, distinct and immovable, like some high landmark by which travellers shape their course. She hadbeen loved--extraordinarily loved. But he had chosen that she shouldknow of it by his silence rather than by his speech. He had understoodthat only on those terms could their transcendant communioncontinue--that he must lose her to keep her. To break that silencewould be like spilling a cup of water in a waste of sand. There wouldbe nothing left for her thirst. 

Her life, thenceforward, was bathed in a tranquil beauty. The daysflowed by like a river beneath the moon--each ripple caught thebrightness and passed it on. She began to take a renewed interest inher familiar round of duties. The tasks which had once seemedcolourless and irksome had now a kind of sacrificial sweetness, asymbolic meaning into which she alone was initiated. She had beenrestless--had longed to travel; now she felt that she should neveragain care to leave Wentworth. But if her desire to wander had ceased, she travelled in spirit, performing invisible pilgrimages in thefootsteps of her friend. She regretted that her one short visit toEngland had taken her so little out of London--that her acquaintancewith the landscape had been formed chiefly through the windows of arailway carriage. She threw herself into the architectural studies ofthe Higher Thought Club, and distinguished herself, at the springmeetings, by her fluency, her competence, her inexhaustible curiosityon the subject of the growth of English Gothic. She ransacked theshelves of the college library, she borrowed photographs of thecathedrals, she pored over the folio pages of "The Seats of Noblemenand Gentlemen. " She was like some banished princess who learns that shehas inherited a domain in her own country, who knows that she willnever see it, yet feels, wherever she walks, its soil beneath her feet. 

May was half over, and the Higher Thought Club was to hold its lastmeeting, previous to the college festivities which, in early June, agreeably disorganized the social routine of Wentworth. The meeting wasto take place in Margaret Ransom's drawing-room, and on the day beforeshe sat upstairs preparing for her dual duties as hostess andorator--for she had been invited to read the final paper of the course. In order to sum up with precision her conclusions on the subject ofEnglish Gothic she had been rereading an analysis of the structuralfeatures of the principal English cathedrals; and she was murmuringover to herself the phrase: "The longitudinal arches of Lincoln have anapproximately elliptical form, " when there came a knock on the door, and Maria's voice announced: "There's a lady down in the parlour. "

Margaret's soul dropped from the heights of the shadowy vaulting to thedead level of an afternoon call at Wentworth. 

"A lady? Did she give no name?"

Maria became confused. "She only said she was a lady--" and in reply toher mistress's look of mild surprise: "Well, ma'am, she told me sothree or four times over. "

Margaret laid her book down, leaving it open at the description ofLincoln, and slowly descended the stairs. As she did so, she repeatedto herself: "The longitudinal arches are elliptical. "

On the threshold below, she had the odd impression that her bare andinanimate drawing-room was brimming with life and noise--an impressionproduced, as she presently perceived, by the resolute forward dash--itwas almost a pounce--of the one small figure restlessly measuring itslength. 

The dash checked itself within a yard of Margaret, and the lady--astranger--held back long enough to stamp on her hostess a sharpimpression of sallowness, leanness, keenness, before she said, in avoice that might have been addressing an unruly committee meeting: "Iam Lady Caroline Duckett--a fact I found it impossible to make clear tothe young woman who let me in. "

A warm wave rushed up from Margaret's heart to her throat and forehead. She held out both hands impulsively. "Oh, I'm so glad--I'd no idea--"

Her voice sank under her visitor's impartial scrutiny. 

"I don't wonder, " said the latter drily. "I suppose she didn't mention, either, that my object in calling here was to see Mrs. Ransom?"

"Oh, yes--won't you sit down?" Margaret pushed a chair forward. Sheseated herself at a little distance, brain and heart humming with aconfused interchange of signals. This dark sharp woman was hisaunt--the "clever aunt" who had had such a hard life, but had alwaysmanaged to keep her head above water. Margaret remembered that Guy hadspoken of her kindness--perhaps she would seem kinder when they hadtalked together a little. Meanwhile the first impression she producedwas of an amplitude out of all proportion to her somewhat scantexterior. With her small flat figure, her shabby heterogeneous dress, she was as dowdy as any Professor's wife at Wentworth; but herdowdiness (Margaret borrowed a literary analogy to define it), herdowdiness was somehow "of the centre. " Like the insignificant emissaryof a great power, she was to be judged rather by her passports than herperson. 

While Margaret was receiving these impressions, Lady Caroline, withquick bird-like twists of her head, was gathering others from the palevoid spaces of the drawing-room. Her eyes, divided by a sharp nose likea bill, seemed to be set far enough apart to see at separate angles;but suddenly she bent both of them on Margaret. 

"This _is_ Mrs. Ransom's house?" she asked, with an emphasis on theverb that gave a distinct hint of unfulfilled expectations. 

Margaret assented. 

"Because your American houses, especially in the provincial towns, alllook so remarkably alike, that I thought I might have been mistaken;and as my time is extremely limited--in fact I'm sailing on Wednesday--"

She paused long enough to let Margaret say: "I had no idea you were inthis country. "

Lady Caroline made no attempt to take this up. "And so much of it, " shecarried on her sentence, "has been wasted in talking to people I reallyhadn't the slightest desire to see, that you must excuse me if I gostraight to the point. "

Margaret felt a sudden tension of the heart. "Of course, " she saidwhile a voice within her cried: "He is dead--he has left me a message. "

There was another pause; then Lady Caroline went on, with increasingasperity: "So that--in short--if I _could_ see Mrs. Ransom at once--"

Margaret looked up in surprise. "I am Mrs. Ransom, " she said. 

The other stared a moment, with much the same look of cautiousincredulity that had marked her inspection of the drawing-room. Thenlight came to her. 

"Oh, I beg your pardon. I should have said that I wished to see Mrs. _Robert_ Ransom, not Mrs. Ransom. But I understood that in the Statesyou don't make those distinctions. " She paused a moment, and then wenton, before Margaret could answer: "Perhaps, after all, it's as wellthat I should see you instead, since you're evidently one of thehousehold--your son and his wife live with you, I suppose? Yes, on thewhole, then, it's better--I shall be able to talk so much morefrankly. " She spoke as if, as a rule, circumstances prevented hergiving rein to this propensity. "And frankness, of course, is the onlyway out of this--this extremely tiresome complication. You know, Isuppose, that my nephew thinks he's in love with your daughter-in-law?"

Margaret made a slight movement, but her visitor pressed on withoutheeding it. "Oh, don't fancy, please, that I'm pretending to take ahigh moral ground--though his mother does, poor dear! I can perfectlyimagine that in a place like this--I've just been driving about it fortwo hours--a young man of Guy's age would _have_ to provide himselfwith some sort of distraction, and he's not the kind to go in foranything objectionable. Oh, we quite allow for that--we should allowfor the whole affair, if it hadn't so preposterously ended in histhrowing over the girl he was engaged to, and upsetting an arrangementthat affected a number of people besides himself. I understand that inthe States it's different--the young people have only themselves toconsider. In England--in our class, I mean--a great deal may depend ona young man's making a good match; and in Guy's case I may say that hismother and sisters (I won't include myself, though I might) have beensimply stranded--thrown overboard--by his freak. You can understand howserious it is when I tell you that it's that and nothing else that hasbrought me all the way to America. And my first idea was to go straightto your daughter-in-law, since her influence is the only thing we cancount on now, and put it to her fairly, as I'm putting it to you. But, on the whole, I dare say it's better to see you first--you might giveme an idea of the line to take with her. I'm prepared to throw myselfon her mercy!"

Margaret rose from her chair, outwardly rigid in proportion to herinward tremor. 

"You don't understand--" she began. 

Lady Caroline brushed the interruption aside. "Oh, but Ido--completely! I cast no reflection on your daughter-in-law. Guy hasmade it quite clear to us that his attachment is--has, in short, notbeen rewarded. But don't you see that that's the worst part of it?There'd be much more hope of his recovering if Mrs. Robert Ransomhad--had--"

Margaret's voice broke from her in a cry. "I am Mrs. Robert Ransom, "she said. 

If Lady Caroline Duckett had hitherto given her hostess the impressionof a person not easily silenced, this fact added sensibly to the effectproduced by the intense stillness which now fell on her. 

She sat quite motionless, her large bangled hands clasped about themeagre fur boa she had unwound from her neck on entering, her rustyblack veil pushed up to the edge of a "fringe" of doubtfulauthenticity, her thin lips parted on a gasp that seemed to sharpenitself on the edges of her teeth. So overwhelming and helpless was hersilence that Margaret began to feel a motion of pity beneath herindignation--a desire at least to facilitate the excuses which mustterminate their disastrous colloquy. But when Lady Caroline found voiceshe did not use it to excuse herself. 

"You _can't_ be, " she said, quite simply. 

"Can't be?" Margaret stammered, with a flushing cheek. 

"I mean, it's some mistake. Are there _two_ Mrs. Robert Ransoms in thesame town? Your family arrangements are so extremely puzzling. " She hada farther rush of enlightenment. "Oh, I _see!_ I ought of course tohave asked for Mrs. Robert Ransom 'Junior'!"

The idea sent her to her feet with a haste which showed her impatienceto make up for lost time. 

"There is no other Mrs. Robert Ransom at Wentworth, " said Margaret. 

"No other--no 'Junior'? Are you _sure?_" Lady Caroline fell back intoher seat again. "Then I simply don't see, " she murmured helplessly. 

Margaret's blush had fixed itself on her throbbing forehead. Sheremained standing, while her strange visitor continued to gaze at herwith a perturbation in which the consciousness of indiscretion hadevidently as yet no part. 

"I simply don't see, " she repeated. 

Suddenly she sprang up, and advancing to Margaret laid an inspired handon her arm. "But, my dear woman, you can help us out all the same; youcan help us to find out _who it is_--and you will, won't you? Because, as it's not you, you can't in the least mind what I've been saying--"

Margaret, freeing her arm from her visitor's hold, drew back a step;but Lady Caroline instantly rejoined her. 

"Of course, I can see that if it _had_ been, you might have beenannoyed: I dare say I put the case stupidly--but I'm so bewildered bythis new development--by his using you all this time as a pretext--thatI really don't know where to turn for light on the mystery--"

She had Margaret in her imperious grasp again, but the latter brokefrom her with a more resolute gesture. 

"I'm afraid I have no light to give you, " she began; but once more LadyCaroline caught her up. 

"Oh, but do please understand me! I condemn Guy most strongly for usingyour name--when we all know you'd been so amazingly kind to him! Ihaven't a word to say in his defence--but of course the important thingnow is: _who is the woman, since you're not?_"

The question rang out loudly, as if all the pale puritan corners of theroom flung it back with a shudder at the speaker. In the silence thatensued Margaret felt the blood ebbing back to her heart; then she said, in a distinct and level voice: "I know nothing of the history of Mr. Dawnish. "

Lady Caroline gave a stare and a gasp. Her distracted hand groped forher boa and she began to wind it mechanically about her long neck. 

"It would really be an enormous help to us--and to poor GwendolenMatcher, " she persisted pleadingly. "And you'd be doing Guy himself agood turn. "

Margaret remained silent and motionless while her visitor drew on oneof the worn gloves she had pulled off to adjust her veil. Lady Carolinegave the veil a final twitch. 

"I've come a tremendously long way, " she said, "and, since it isn'tyou, I can't think why you won't help me.... "

When the door had closed on her visitor Margaret Ransom went slowly upthe stairs to her room. As she dragged her feet from one step toanother, she remembered how she had sprung up the same steep flightafter that visit of Guy Dawnish's when she had looked in the glass andseen on her face the blush of youth. 

When she reached her room she bolted the door as she had done that day, and again looked at herself in the narrow mirror above herdressing-table. It was just a year since then--the elms were buddingagain, the willows hanging their green veil above the bench by theriver. But there was no trace of youth left in her face--she saw it nowas others had doubtless always seen it. If it seemed as it did to LadyCaroline Duckett, what look must it have worn to the fresh gaze ofyoung Guy Dawnish?

A pretext--she had been a pretext. He had used her name to screen someone else--or perhaps merely to escape from a situation of which he wasweary. She did not care to conjecture what his motive hadbeen--everything connected with him had grown so remote and alien. Shefelt no anger--only an unspeakable sadness, a sadness which she knewwould never be appeased. 

She looked at herself long and steadily; she wished to clear her eyesof all illusions. Then she turned away and took her usual seat besideher work-table. From where she sat she could look down the emptyelm-shaded street, up which, at this hour every day, she was sure tosee her husband's figure advancing. She would see it presently--shewould see it for many years to come. She had a sudden aching sense ofthe length of the years that stretched before her. Strange that one whowas not young should still, in all likelihood, have so long to live!

Nothing was changed in the setting of her life, perhaps nothing wouldever change in it. She would certainly live and die in Wentworth. Andmeanwhile the days would go on as usual, bringing the usualobligations. As the word flitted through her brain she remembered thatshe had still to put the finishing touches to the paper she was to readthe next afternoon at the meeting of the Higher Thought Club. 

The book she had been reading lay face downward beside her, where shehad left it an hour ago. She took it up, and slowly and painfully, likea child laboriously spelling out the syllables, she went on with therest of the sentence:

--"and they spring from a level not much above that of the springing ofthe transverse and diagonal ribs, which are so arranged as to give aconvex curve to the surface of the vaulting conoid. "

THE VERDICT

I HAD always thought Jack Gisburn rather a cheap genius--though a goodfellow enough--so it was no great surprise to me to hear that, in theheight of his glory, he had dropped his painting, married a rich widow, and established himself in a villa on the Riviera. (Though I ratherthought it would have been Rome or Florence. )

"The height of his glory"--that was what the women called it. I canhear Mrs. Gideon Thwing--his last Chicago sitter--deploring hisunaccountable abdication. "Of course it's going to send the value of mypicture 'way up; but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham--the loss toArrt is all I think of. " The word, on Mrs. Thwing's lips, multipliedits _rs_ as though they were reflected in an endless vista of mirrors. And it was not only the Mrs. Thwings who mourned. Had not the exquisiteHermia Croft, at the last Grafton Gallery show, stopped me beforeGisburn's "Moon-dancers" to say, with tears in her eyes: "We shall notlook upon its like again"?

Well!--even through the prism of Hermia's tears I felt able to face thefact with equanimity. Poor Jack Gisburn! The women had made him--it wasfitting that they should mourn him. Among his own sex fewer regretswere heard, and in his own trade hardly a murmur. Professionaljealousy? Perhaps. If it were, the honour of the craft was vindicatedby little Claude Nutley, who, in all good faith, brought out in theBurlington a very handsome "obituary" on Jack--one of those showyarticles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won'tsay by whom) compared to Gisburn's painting. And so--his resolve beingapparently irrevocable--the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs. Thwing had predicted, the price of "Gisburns" went up. 

It was not till three years later that, in the course of a few weeks'idling on the Riviera, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why Gisburnhad given up his painting. On reflection, it really was a temptingproblem. To accuse his wife would have been too easy--his fair sittershad been denied the solace of saying that Mrs. Gisburn had "dragged himdown. " For Mrs. Gisburn--as such--had not existed till nearly a yearafter Jack's resolve had been taken. It might be that he had marriedher--since he liked his ease--because he didn't want to go on painting;but it would have been hard to prove that he had given up his paintingbecause he had married her. 

Of course, if she had not dragged him down, she had equally, as MissCroft contended, failed to "lift him up"--she had not led him back tothe easel. To put the brush into his hand again--what a vocation for awife! But Mrs. Gisburn appeared to have disdained it--and I felt itmight be interesting to find out why. 

The desultory life of the Riviera lends itself to such purely academicspeculations; and having, on my way to Monte Carlo, caught a glimpse ofJack's balustraded terraces between the pines, I had myself bornethither the next day. 

I found the couple at tea beneath their palm-trees; and Mrs. Gisburn'swelcome was so genial that, in the ensuing weeks, I claimed itfrequently. It was not that my hostess was "interesting": on that pointI could have given Miss Croft the fullest reassurance. It was justbecause she was _not_ interesting--if I may be pardoned the bull--thatI found her so. For Jack, all his life, had been surrounded byinteresting women: they had fostered his art, it had been reared in thehot-house of their adulation. And it was therefore instructive to notewhat effect the "deadening atmosphere of mediocrity" (I quote MissCroft) was having on him. 

I have mentioned that Mrs. Gisburn was rich; and it was immediatelyperceptible that her husband was extracting from this circumstance adelicate but substantial satisfaction. It is, as a rule, the people whoscorn money who get most out of it; and Jack's elegant disdain of hiswife's big balance enabled him, with an appearance of perfectgood-breeding, to transmute it into objects of art and luxury. To thelatter, I must add, he remained relatively indifferent; but he wasbuying Renaissance bronzes and eighteenth-century pictures with adiscrimination that bespoke the amplest resources. 

"Money's only excuse is to put beauty into circulation, " was one of theaxioms he laid down across the Sevres and silver of an exquisitelyappointed luncheon-table, when, on a later day, I had again run overfrom Monte Carlo; and Mrs. Gisburn, beaming on him, added for myenlightenment: "Jack is so morbidly sensitive to every form of beauty. "

Poor Jack! It had always been his fate to have women say such things ofhim: the fact should be set down in extenuation. What struck me now wasthat, for the first time, he resented the tone. I had seen him, sooften, basking under similar tributes--was it the conjugal note thatrobbed them of their savour? No--for, oddly enough, it became apparentthat he was fond of Mrs. Gisburn--fond enough not to see her absurdity. It was his own absurdity he seemed to be wincing under--his ownattitude as an object for garlands and incense. 

"My dear, since I've chucked painting people don't say that stuff aboutme--they say it about Victor Grindle, " was his only protest, as he rosefrom the table and strolled out onto the sunlit terrace. 

I glanced after him, struck by his last word. Victor Grindle was, infact, becoming the man of the moment--as Jack himself, one might putit, had been the man of the hour. The younger artist was said to haveformed himself at my friend's feet, and I wondered if a tinge ofjealousy underlay the latter's mysterious abdication. But no--for itwas not till after that event that the _rose Dubarry_ drawing-rooms hadbegun to display their "Grindles. "

I turned to Mrs. Gisburn, who had lingered to give a lump of sugar toher spaniel in the dining-room. 

"Why _has_ he chucked painting?" I asked abruptly. 

She raised her eyebrows with a hint of good-humoured surprise. 

"Oh, he doesn't _have_ to now, you know; and I want him to enjoyhimself, " she said quite simply. 

I looked about the spacious white-panelled room, with its_famille-verte_ vases repeating the tones of the pale damask curtains, and its eighteenth-century pastels in delicate faded frames. 

"Has he chucked his pictures too? I haven't seen a single one in thehouse. "

A slight shade of constraint crossed Mrs. Gisburn's open countenance. "It's his ridiculous modesty, you know. He says they're not fit to haveabout; he's sent them all away except one--my portrait--and that I haveto keep upstairs. "

His ridiculous modesty--Jack's modesty about his pictures? My curiositywas growing like the bean-stalk. I said persuasively to my hostess: "Imust really see your portrait, you know. "

She glanced out almost timorously at the terrace where her husband, lounging in a hooded chair, had lit a cigar and drawn the Russiandeerhound's head between his knees. 

"Well, come while he's not looking, " she said, with a laugh that triedto hide her nervousness; and I followed her between the marble Emperorsof the hall, and up the wide stairs with terra-cotta nymphs poisedamong flowers at each landing. 

In the dimmest corner of her boudoir, amid a profusion of delicate anddistinguished objects, hung one of the familiar oval canvases, in theinevitable garlanded frame. The mere outline of the frame called up allGisburn's past!

Mrs. Gisburn drew back the window-curtains, moved aside a _jardiniere_full of pink azaleas, pushed an arm-chair away, and said: "If you standhere you can just manage to see it. I had it over the mantel-piece, buthe wouldn't let it stay. "

Yes--I could just manage to see it--the first portrait of Jack's I hadever had to strain my eyes over! Usually they had the place ofhonour--say the central panel in a pale yellow or _rose Dubarry_drawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it took the lightthrough curtains of old Venetian point. The more modest place becamethe picture better; yet, as my eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, all the characteristic qualities came out--all the hesitationsdisguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which, withsuch consummate skill, he managed to divert attention from the realbusiness of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail. Mrs. Gisburn, presenting a neutral surface to work on--forming, as it were, so inevitably the background of her own picture--had lent herself in anunusual degree to the display of this false virtuosity. The picture wasone of Jack's "strongest, " as his admirers would have put it--itrepresented, on his part, a swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins, a balancing, straddling and straining, that reminded one of thecircus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met, in short, atevery point the demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" becauseshe was tired of being painted "sweetly"--and yet not to lose an atomof the sweetness. 

"It's the last he painted, you know, " Mrs. Gisburn said with pardonablepride. "The last but one, " she corrected herself--"but the otherdoesn't count, because he destroyed it. "

"Destroyed it?" I was about to follow up this clue when I heard afootstep and saw Jack himself on the threshold. 

As he stood there, his hands in the pockets of his velveteen coat, thethin brown waves of hair pushed back from his white forehead, his leansunburnt cheeks furrowed by a smile that lifted the tips of aself-confident moustache, I felt to what a degree he had the samequality as his pictures--the quality of looking cleverer than he was. 

His wife glanced at him deprecatingly, but his eyes travelled past herto the portrait. 

"Mr. Rickham wanted to see it, " she began, as if excusing herself. Heshrugged his shoulders, still smiling. 

"Oh, Rickham found me out long ago, " he said lightly; then, passing hisarm through mine: "Come and see the rest of the house. "

He showed it to me with a kind of naive suburban pride: the bath-rooms, the speaking-tubes, the dress-closets, the trouser-presses--all thecomplex simplifications of the millionaire's domestic economy. Andwhenever my wonder paid the expected tribute he said, throwing out hischest a little: "Yes, I really don't see how people manage to livewithout that. "

Well--it was just the end one might have foreseen for him. Only he was, through it all and in spite of it all--as he had been through, and inspite of, his pictures--so handsome, so charming, so disarming, thatone longed to cry out: "Be dissatisfied with your leisure!" as once onehad longed to say: "Be dissatisfied with your work!"

But, with the cry on my lips, my diagnosis suffered an unexpected check. 

"This is my own lair, " he said, leading me into a dark plain room atthe end of the florid vista. It was square and brown and leathery: no"effects"; no bric-a-brac, none of the air of posing for reproductionin a picture weekly--above all, no least sign of ever having been usedas a studio. 

The fact brought home to me the absolute finality of Jack's break withhis old life. 

"Don't you ever dabble with paint any more?" I asked, still lookingabout for a trace of such activity. 

"Never, " he said briefly. 

"Or water-colour--or etching?"

His confident eyes grew dim, and his cheeks paled a little under theirhandsome sunburn. 

"Never think of it, my dear fellow--any more than if I'd never toucheda brush. "

And his tone told me in a flash that he never thought of anything else. 

I moved away, instinctively embarrassed by my unexpected discovery; andas I turned, my eye fell on a small picture above the mantel-piece--theonly object breaking the plain oak panelling of the room. 

"Oh, by Jove!" I said. 

It was a sketch of a donkey--an old tired donkey, standing in the rainunder a wall. 

"By Jove--a Stroud!" I cried. 

He was silent; but I felt him close behind me, breathing a littlequickly. 

"What a wonder! Made with a dozen lines--but on everlastingfoundations. You lucky chap, where did you get it?"

He answered slowly: "Mrs. Stroud gave it to me. "

"Ah--I didn't know you even knew the Strouds. He was such an inflexiblehermit. "

"I didn't--till after.... She sent for me to paint him when he wasdead. "

"When he was dead? You?"

I must have let a little too much amazement escape through my surprise, for he answered with a deprecating laugh: "Yes--she's an awfulsimpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have him done bya fashionable painter--ah, poor Stroud! She thought it the surest wayof proclaiming his greatness--of forcing it on a purblind public. Andat the moment I was _the_ fashionable painter. "

"Ah, poor Stroud--as you say. Was _that_ his history?"

"That was his history. She believed in him, gloried in him--or thoughtshe did. But she couldn't bear not to have all the drawing-rooms withher. She couldn't bear the fact that, on varnishing days, one couldalways get near enough to see his pictures. Poor woman! She's just afragment groping for other fragments. Stroud is the only whole I everknew. "

"You ever knew? But you just said--"

Gisburn had a curious smile in his eyes. 

"Oh, I knew him, and he knew me--only it happened after he was dead. "

I dropped my voice instinctively. "When she sent for you?"

"Yes--quite insensible to the irony. She wanted him vindicated--and byme!"

He laughed again, and threw back his head to look up at the sketch ofthe donkey. "There were days when I couldn't look at thatthing--couldn't face it. But I forced myself to put it here; and nowit's cured me--cured me. That's the reason why I don't dabble any more, my dear Rickham; or rather Stroud himself is the reason. "

For the first time my idle curiosity about my companion turned into aserious desire to understand him better. 

"I wish you'd tell me how it happened, " I said. 

He stood looking up at the sketch, and twirling between his fingers acigarette he had forgotten to light. Suddenly he turned toward me. 

"I'd rather like to tell you--because I've always suspected you ofloathing my work. "

I made a deprecating gesture, which he negatived with a good-humouredshrug. 

"Oh, I didn't care a straw when I believed in myself--and now it's anadded tie between us!"

He laughed slightly, without bitterness, and pushed one of the deeparm-chairs forward. "There: make yourself comfortable--and here are thecigars you like. "

He placed them at my elbow and continued to wander up and down theroom, stopping now and then beneath the picture. 

"How it happened? I can tell you in five minutes--and it didn't takemuch longer to happen.... I can remember now how surprised and pleasedI was when I got Mrs. Stroud's note. Of course, deep down, I had always_felt_ there was no one like him--only I had gone with the stream, echoed the usual platitudes about him, till I half got to think he wasa failure, one of the kind that are left behind. By Jove, and he _was_left behind--because he had come to stay! The rest of us had to letourselves be swept along or go under, but he was high above thecurrent--on everlasting foundations, as you say. 

"Well, I went off to the house in my most egregious mood--rather moved, Lord forgive me, at the pathos of poor Stroud's career of failure beingcrowned by the glory of my painting him! Of course I meant to do thepicture for nothing--I told Mrs. Stroud so when she began to stammersomething about her poverty. I remember getting off a prodigious phraseabout the honour being _mine_--oh, I was princely, my dear Rickham! Iwas posing to myself like one of my own sitters. 

"Then I was taken up and left alone with him. I had sent all my trapsin advance, and I had only to set up the easel and get to work. He hadbeen dead only twenty-four hours, and he died suddenly, of heartdisease, so that there had been no preliminary work of destruction--hisface was clear and untouched. I had met him once or twice, yearsbefore, and thought him insignificant and dingy. Now I saw that he wassuperb. 

"I was glad at first, with a merely aesthetic satisfaction: glad tohave my hand on such a 'subject. ' Then his strange life-likeness beganto affect me queerly--as I blocked the head in I felt as if he werewatching me do it. The sensation was followed by the thought: if he_were_ watching me, what would he say to my way of working? My strokesbegan to go a little wild--I felt nervous and uncertain. 

"Once, when I looked up, I seemed to see a smile behind his closegrayish beard--as if he had the secret, and were amusing himself byholding it back from me. That exasperated me still more. The secret?Why, I had a secret worth twenty of his! I dashed at the canvasfuriously, and tried some of my bravura tricks. But they failed me, they crumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits--I couldn'tdistract his attention; he just kept his eyes on the hard passagesbetween. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or covered up withsome lying paint. And how he saw through my lies!

"I looked up again, and caught sight of that sketch of the donkeyhanging on the wall near his bed. His wife told me afterward it was thelast thing he had done--just a note taken with a shaking hand, when hewas down in Devonshire recovering from a previous heart attack. Just anote! But it tells his whole history. There are years of patientscornful persistence in every line. A man who had swum with the currentcould never have learned that mighty up-stream stroke.... 

"I turned back to my work, and went on groping and muddling; then Ilooked at the donkey again. I saw that, when Stroud laid in the firststroke, he knew just what the end would be. He had possessed hissubject, absorbed it, recreated it. When had I done that with any of mythings? They hadn't been born of me--I had just adopted them.... 

"Hang it, Rickham, with that face watching me I couldn't do anotherstroke. The plain truth was, I didn't know where to put it--_I hadnever known_. Only, with my sitters and my public, a showy splash ofcolour covered up the fact--I just threw paint into their faces.... Well, paint was the one medium those dead eyes could see through--seestraight to the tottering foundations underneath. Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the timenot what one wants to but what one can? Well--that was the way Ipainted; and as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my'technique' collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, youunderstand, poor Stroud--he just lay there quietly watching, and on hislips, through the gray beard, I seemed to hear the question: 'Are yousure you know where you're coming out?'

"If I could have painted that face, with that question on it, I shouldhave done a great thing. The next greatest thing was to see that Icouldn't--and that grace was given me. But, oh, at that minute, Rickham, was there anything on earth I wouldn't have given to haveStroud alive before me, and to hear him say: 'It's not too late--I'llshow you how'?

"It _was_ too late--it would have been, even if he'd been alive. Ipacked up my traps, and went down and told Mrs. Stroud. Of course Ididn't tell her _that_--it would have been Greek to her. I simply saidI couldn't paint him, that I was too moved. She rather liked theidea--she's so romantic! It was that that made her give me the donkey. But she was terribly upset at not getting the portrait--she did so wanthim 'done' by some one showy! At first I was afraid she wouldn't let meoff--and at my wits' end I suggested Grindle. Yes, it was I who startedGrindle: I told Mrs. Stroud he was the 'coming' man, and she toldsomebody else, and so it got to be true.... And he painted Stroudwithout wincing; and she hung the picture among her husband'sthings.... "

He flung himself down in the arm-chair near mine, laid back his head, and clasping his arms beneath it, looked up at the picture above thechimney-piece. 

"I like to fancy that Stroud himself would have given it to me, if he'dbeen able to say what he thought that day. "

And, in answer to a question I put half-mechanically--"Begin again?" heflashed out. "When the one thing that brings me anywhere near him isthat I knew enough to leave off?"

He stood up and laid his hand on my shoulder with a laugh. "Only theirony of it is that I _am_ still painting--since Grindle's doing it forme! The Strouds stand alone, and happen once--but there's noexterminating our kind of art. "

THE POT-BOILER

I

The studio faced north, looking out over a dismal reach of roofs andchimneys, and rusty fire-escapes hung with heterogeneous garments. Acrust of dirty snow covered the level surfaces, and a December sky withmore snow in it lowered over them. 

The room was bare and gaunt, with blotched walls and a stained unevenfloor. On a divan lay a pile of "properties"--limp draperies, anAlgerian scarf, a moth-eaten fan of peacock feathers. The janitor hadforgotten to fill the coal-scuttle over-night, and the cast-iron stoveprojected its cold flanks into the room like a black iceberg. NedStanwell, who had just added his hat and great-coat to themiscellaneous heap on the divan, turned from the empty stove with ashiver. 

"By Jove, this is a little too much like the last act of _Boheme_, " hesaid, slipping into his coat again after a vain glance at thecoal-scuttle. Much solitude, and a lively habit of mind, had bred inhim the habit of audible soliloquy, and having flung a shout for thejanitor down the seven flights dividing the studio from the basement, he turned back, picking up the thread of his monologue. "Exactly like_Boheme_, really--that crack in the wall is much more like astage-crack than a real one--just the sort of crack Mungold would paintif he were doing a Humble Interior. "

Mungold, the fashionable portrait-painter of the hour, was thefavourite object of the younger men's irony. 

"It only needs Kate Arran to be borne in dying, " Stanwell continuedwith a laugh. "Much more likely to be poor little Caspar, though, " heconcluded. 

His neighbour across the landing--the little sculptor, Caspar Arran, humorously called "Gasper" on account of his bronchial asthma--hadlately been joined by a sister, Kate Arran, a strapping girl, freshfrom the country, who had installed herself in the little room off herbrother's studio, keeping house for him with a chafing-dish and acoffee-machine, to the mirth and envy of the other young men in thebuilding. 

Poor little Gasper had been very bad all the autumn, and it wassurmised that his sister's presence, which he spoke of growlingly, as atroublesome necessity devolved on him by the inopportune death of anaunt, was really an indication of his failing ability to take care ofhimself. Kate Arran took his complaints with unfailing good-humour, darned his socks, brushed his clothes, fed him with steaming broths andfoaming milk-punches, and listened with reverential assent to hisinterminable disquisitions on art. Every one in the house was sorry forlittle Gasper, and the other fellows liked him all the more because itwas so impossible to like his sculpture; but his talk was a bore, andwhen his colleagues ran in to see him they were apt to keep a hand onthe door-knob and to plead a pressing engagement. At least they hadbeen till Kate came; but now they began to show a disposition to enterand sit down. Caspar, who was no fool, perceived the change, andperhaps detected its cause; at any rate, he showed no specialgratification at the increased cordiality of his friends, and Kate, whofollowed him in everything, took this as a sign that guests were to bediscouraged. 

There was one exception, however: Ned Stanwell, who was deplorablygood-natured, had always lent a patient ear to Caspar, and he nowreaped his reward by being taken into Kate's favour. Before she hadbeen a month in the building they were on confidential terms as toCaspar's health, and lately Stanwell had penetrated farther, even tothe inmost recesses of her anxiety about her brother's career. Casparhad recently had a bad blow in the refusal of his _magnum opus_--a vastallegorical group--by the Commissioners of the Minneapolis Exhibition. He took the rejection with Promethean irony, proclaimed it as theclinching proof of his ability, and abounded in reasons why, even in anage of such crass artistic ignorance, a refusal so egregious must reactto the advantage of its object. But his sister's indignation, if asglowing, was a shade less hopeful. Of course Caspar was going tosucceed--she knew it was only a question of time--but she paled at theword and turned imploring eyes on Stanwell. _Was there time enough?_ Itwas the one element in the combination that she could not count on; andStanwell, reddening under her look of interrogation, and cursing hisown glaring robustness, would affirm that of course, of course, ofcourse, by everything that was holy there was time enough--with themental reservation that there wouldn't be, even if poor Caspar lived tobe a hundred. 

"Vos that you yelling for the shanitor, Mr. Sdanwell?" inquired anaffable voice through the doorway; and Stanwell, turning with a laugh, confronted the squat figure of a middle-aged man in an expensive furcoat, who looked as if his face secreted the oil which he used on hishair. 

"Hullo, Shepson--I should say I was yelling. Did you ever feel such anatmosphere? That fool has forgotten to light the stove. Come in, butfor heaven's sake don't take off your coat. "

Mr. Shepson glanced about the studio with a look which seemed to saythat, where so much else was lacking, the absence of a fire hardlyadded to the general sense of destitution. 

"Vell, you ain't as vell fixed as Mr. Mungold--ever been to his studio, Mr. Sdanwell? De most ex_quis_ite blush hangings, and a gas-fire, choost as natural--"

"Oh, hang it, Shepson, do you call _that_ a studio? It's like amanicure's parlour--or a beauty-doctor's. By George, " broke offStanwell, "and that's just what he is!"

"A peauty-doctor?"

"Yes--oh, well, you wouldn't see, " murmured Stanwell, mentally storinghis epigram for more appreciative ears. "But you didn't come just tomake me envious of Mungold's studio, did you?" And he pushed forward achair for his visitor. 

The latter, however, declined it with an affable motion. "Of goursenot, of gourse not--but Mr. Mungold is a sensible man. He makes a lotof money, you know. "

"Is that what you came to tell me?" said Stanwell, still humorously. 

"My gootness, no--I was downstairs looking at Holbrook's sdained class, and I shoost thought I'd sdep up a minute and take a beep at your vork. "

"Much obliged, I'm sure--especially as I assume that you don't want anyof it. " Try as he would, Stanwell could not keep a note of eagernessfrom his voice. Mr. Shepson caught the note, and eyed him shrewdlythrough gold-rimmed glasses. 

"Vell, vell, vell--I'm not prepared to commit myself. Shoost let metake a look round, vill you?"

"With the greatest pleasure--and I'll give another shout for the coal. "

Stanwell went out on the landing, and Mr. Shepson, left to himself, began a meditative progress about the room. On an easel facing theimprovised dais stood a canvas on which a young woman's head had beenblocked in. It was just in that happy state of semi-evocation when apicture seems to detach itself from the grossness of its medium andlive a wondrous moment in the actual; and the quality of the head inquestion--a vigorous dusky youthfulness, a kind of virgin majesty--lentitself to this illusion of vitality. Stanwell, who had re-entered thestudio, could not help drawing a sharp breath as he saw thepicture-dealer pausing with tilted head before this portrait: itseemed, at one moment, so impossible that he should not be struck withit, at the next so incredible that he should be. 

Shepson cocked his parrot-eye at the canvas with a desultory "Vat'sdat?" which sent a twinge through the young man. 

"That? Oh--a sketch of a young lady, " stammered Stanwell, flushing atthe imbecility of his reply. "It's Miss Arran, you know, " he added, "the sister of my neighbour here, the sculptor. "

"Sgulpture? There's no market for modern sgulpture except tombstones, "said Shepson disparagingly, passing on as if he included the sister'sportrait in his condemnation of her brother's trade. 

Stanwell smiled, but more at himself than Shepson. How could he everhave supposed that the gross fool would see anything in his sketch ofKate Arran? He stood aside, straining after detachment, while thedealer continued his round of exploration, waddling up to the canvaseson the walls, prodding with his stick at those stacked in corners, prying and peering sideways like a great bird rummaging for seed. Heseemed to find little nutriment in the course of his search, for thesounds he emitted expressed a weary distaste for misdirected effort, and he completed his round without having thought it worth while todraw a single canvas from its obscurity. 

As his visits always had the same result, Stanwell was reduced towondering why he had come again; but Shepson was not the man to indulgein vague roamings through the field of art, and it was safe to concludethat his purpose would in due course reveal itself. His tour broughthim at length face to face with the painter, where he paused, claspinghis plump gloved hands behind his back, and shaking an admonitory head. 

"Gleffer--very gleffer, of course--I suppose you'll let me know whenyou want to sell anything?"

"Let you know?" gasped Stanwell, to whom the room grew so glowingly hotthat he thought for a moment the janitor must have made up the fire. 

Shepson gave a dry laugh. "Vell, it doesn't sdrike me that you want tonow--doing this kind of thing, you know!" And he swept a comprehensivehand about the studio. 

"Ah, " said Stanwell, who could not keep a note of flatness out of hislaugh. 

"See here, Mr. Sdanwell, vot do you do it for? If you do it foryourself and the other fellows, vell and good--only don't ask me round. I sell pictures, I don't theorize about them. Ven you vant to sell, gome to me with what my gustomers vant. You can do it--you're smartenough. You can do most anything. Vere's dat bortrait of Gladys Glydedat you showed at the Fake Club last autumn? Dat little thing in deRomney sdyle? Dat vas a little shem, now, " exclaimed Mr. Shepson, whosepronunciation became increasingly Semitic in moments of excitement. 

Stanwell stared. Called upon a few months previously to contribute toan exhibition of skits on well-known artists, he had used thephotograph of a favourite music-hall "star" as the basis of a picturein the pseudo-historical style affected by the popularportrait-painters of the day. 

"That thing?" he said contemptuously. "How on earth did you happen tosee it?"

"I see everything, " returned the dealer with an oracular smile. "Ifyou've got it here let me look at it, please. "

It cost Stanwell a few minutes' search to unearth his skit--a cleverblending of dash and sentimentality, in just the right proportion tocreate the impression of a powerful brush subdued to mildness by thecharms of the sitter. Stanwell had thrown it off in a burst ofimitative frenzy, beginning for the mere joy of the satire, butgradually fascinated by the problem of producing the requisite minglingof attributes. He was surprised now to see how well he had caught thenote, and Shepson's face reflected his approval. 

"By George! Dat's something like, " the dealer ejaculated. 

"Like what? Like Mungold?" Stanwell laughed. 

"Like business! Like a big order for a bortrait, Mr. Sdanwell--dat'swhat it's like!" cried Shepson, swinging round on him. 

Stanwell's stare widened. "An order for me?"

"Vy not? Accidents _vill_ happen, " said Shepson jocosely. "De fact is, Mrs. Archer Millington wants to be bainted--you know her sdyle? Well, she prides herself on her likeness to little Gladys. And so ven she sawdat bicture of yours at de Fake Show she made a note of your name, andde udder day she sent for me and she says: 'Mr. Shepson, I'm tired ofMungold--all my friends are done by Mungold. I vant to break away andbe orishinal--I vant to be done by the bainter that did Gladys Glyde. "

Shepson waited to observe the result of this overwhelming announcement, and Stanwell, after a momentary halt of surprise, brought outlaughingly: "But this _is_ a Mungold. Is this what she calls beingoriginal?"

"Shoost exactly, " said Shepson, with unexpected acuteness. "That's vatdey all want--something different from what all deir friends have got, but shoost like it all de same. Dat's de public all over! Mrs. Millington don't want a Mungold, because everybody's got a Mungold, butshe wants a picture that's in the same sdyle, because dat's _de_ sdyle, and she's afraid of any oder!"

Stanwell was listening with real enjoyment. "Ah, you know your public, "he murmured. 

"Vell, you do, too, or you couldn't have painted dat, " the dealerretorted. "And I don't say dey're wrong--mind dat. I like a brettypicture myself. And I understand the way dey feel. Dey're villing tolet Sargent take liberties vid them, because it's like being punched inde ribs by a King; but if anybody else baints them, they vant to lookas sweet as an obituary. " He turned earnestly to Stanwell. "The thingis to attract their notice. Vonce you got it they von't gif you dime tosleep. And dat's why I'm here to-day--you've attracted Mrs. Millington's notice, and vonce you're hung in dat new ball-room--dat'svere she vants you, in a big gold panel--vonce you're dere, vy, you'llbe like the Pianola--no home gompleat without you. And I ain't going tocharge you any commission on the first job!"

He stood before the painter, exuding a mixture of deference andpatronage in which either element might predominate as eventsdeveloped; but Stanwell could see in the incident only the stuff for agood story. 

"My dear Shepson, " he said, "what are you talking about? This is nopicture of mine. Why don't you ask me to do you a Corot at once? I hearthere's a great demand for them still in the West. Or an ArthurSchracker--I can do Schracker as well as Mungold, " he added, turningaround a small canvas at which a paint-pot seemed to have been hurledwith violence from a considerable distance. 

Shepson ignored the allusion to Corot, but screwed his eyes at thepicture. "Ah, Schracker--vell, the Schracker sdyle would take firstrate if you were a foreigner--but, for goodness sake, don't try it onMrs. Millington!"

Stanwell pushed the two skits aside. "Oh, you can trust me, " he criedhumorously. "The pearls and the eyes very large--the extremities verysmall. Isn't that about the size of it?"

"Dat's it--dat's it. And the cheque as big as you vant to make it! Mrs. Millington vants the picture finished in time for her first barty inthe new ball-room, and if you rush the job she won't sdickle at anextra thousand. Vill you come along with me now and arrange for yourfirst sitting?"

He stood before the young man, urgent, paternal, and so imbued with theimportance of his mission that his face stretched to a ludicrous lengthof dismay when Stanwell, administering a good-humoured push to hisshoulder, cried gaily: "My dear fellow, it will make my price risestill higher when the lady hears I'm too busy to take any orders atpresent--and that I'm actually obliged to turn you out now because I'mexpecting a sitter!"

It was part of Shepson's business to have a quick ear for the note offinality, and he offered no resistance to Stanwell's friendlyimpulsion; but on the threshold he paused to murmur, with a regretfulglance at the denuded studio: "You could haf done it, Mr. Sdanwell--youcould haf done it!"

II

KATE ARRAN was Stanwell's sitter; but the janitor had hardly filled thestove when she came in to say that she could not sit. Caspar had had abad night: he was depressed and feverish, and in spite of his protestsshe had resolved to fetch the doctor. Care sat on her usually tranquilfeatures, and Stanwell, as he offered to go for the doctor, wished hecould have caught in his picture the wide gloom of her brow. There wasalways a kind of Biblical breadth in the expression of her emotions, and today she suggested a text from Isaiah. 

"But you're not busy?" she hesitated; in the full voice which seemedtuned to a solemn rhetoric. 

"I meant to be--with you. But since that's off I'm quite unemployed. "

She smiled interrogatively. "I thought perhaps you had an order. I metMr. Shepson rubbing his hands on the landing. "

"Was he rubbing his hands? Well, it was not over me. He says that fromthe style of my pictures he doesn't suppose I want to sell. "

She looked at him superbly. "Well, do you?"

He embraced his bleak walls in a circular gesture. "Judge for yourself!"

"Ah, but it's splendidly furnished!"

"With rejected pictures, you mean?"

"With ideals!" she exclaimed in a tone caught from her brother, andwhich would have been irritating to Stanwell if it had not been moving. 

He gave a slight shrug and took up his hat; but she interposed to saythat if it didn't make any difference she would prefer to have him goand sit with poor Caspar, while she ran for the doctor and did somehousehold errands by the way. Stanwell divined in her request the needfor a brief respite from Caspar, and though he shivered at the thoughtof her facing the cold in the scant jacket which had been her only wearsince he had known her, he let her go without a protest, and betookhimself to Arran's studio. 

He found the little sculptor dressed and roaming fretfully about themelancholy room in which he and his plastic off-spring lodged together. In one corner, where Kate's chair and work-table stood, a scrupulousorder prevailed; but the rest of the apartment had the drearyuntidiness, the damp grey look, which the worker in clay usuallycreates about him. In the centre of this desert stood the shroudedimage of Caspar's disappointment: the colossal rejected group as towhich his friends could seldom remember whether it represented Jovehurling a Titan from Olympus or Science Subjugating Religion. Casparwas the sworn foe of religion, which he appeared to regard asindirectly connected with his inability to sell his statues. 

The sculptor was too ill to work, and Stanwell's appearance loosed thepent-up springs of his talk. 

"Hullo! What are you doing here? I thought Kate had gone over to sit toyou. She wanted a little fresh air? I should say enough of it came inthrough these windows. How like a woman, when she's agreed to do acertain thing, to make up her mind at once that she's got to doanother! They don't call it caprice--it's always duty: that's thehumour of it. I'll be bound Kate alleged a pressing engagement. Sorryshe should waste your time so, my dear fellow. Here am I with plenty ofit to burn--look at my hand shake; I can't do a thing! Well, luckilynobody wants me to--posterity may suffer, but the present generationisn't worrying. The present generation wants to be carved insugar-candy, or painted in maple syrup. It doesn't want to be told thetruth about itself or about anything in the universe. The prophets havealways lived in a garret, my dear fellow--only the ravens don't alwaysfind out their address! Speaking of ravens, though, Kate told me shesaw old Shepson coming out of your place--I say, old man, you're notmeditating an apostasy? You're not doing the kind of thing that Shepsonwould look at?"

Stanwell laughed. "Oh, he looked at them--but only to confirm hisreasons for rejecting them. "

"Ha! ha! That's right--he wanted to refresh his memory with theirbadness. But how on earth did he happen to have any doubts on thesubject? I should as soon have thought of his coming in here!"

Stanwell winced at the analogy, but replied in Caspar's key: "Oh, he'snot as sure of any of us as he is of you!"

The sculptor received this tribute with a joyous expletive. "By God, no, he's sure of me, as you say! He and his tribe know that I'll starvein my tracks sooner than make a concession--a single concession. Afellow came after me once to do an angel on a tombstone--an angelleaning against a broken column, and looking as if it was waiting forthe elevator and wondering why in hell it didn't come. He said hewanted me to show that the deceased was pining to get to heaven. As shewas his wife I didn't dispute the proposition, but when I asked himwhat he understood by _heaven_ he grabbed his hat and walked out of thestudio. _He_ didn't wait for the elevator. "

Stanwell listened with a practised smile. The story of the man who hadcome to order the angel was so familiar to Arran's friends that itsonly interest consisted in waiting to see what variation he would giveto the retort which had put the mourner to flight. It was generallysupposed that this visit represented the sculptor's nearest approach toan order, and one of his fellow-craftsmen had been heard to remark thatif Caspar _had_ made the tombstone, the lady under it would have triedharder than ever to get to heaven. To Stanwell's present mood, however, there was something more than usually irritating in the gratuitousassumption that Arran had only to derogate from his altitude to have apress of purchasers at his door. 

"Well--what did you gain by kicking your widower out?" he objected. "Why can't a man do two kinds of work--one to please himself and theother to boil the pot?"

Caspar stopped in his jerky walk--the stride of a tall man attemptedwith short legs (it sometimes appeared to Stanwell to symbolize hisartistic endeavour). 

"Why can't a man--why can't he? You ask me that, Stanwell?" he blazedout. 

"Yes; and what's more, I'll answer you: it isn't everybody who canadapt his art as he wants to!"

Caspar stood before him, gasping with incredulous scorn. "Adapt hisart? As he wants to? Unhappy wretch, what lingo are you talking? If youmean that it isn't every honest man who can be a renegade--"

"That's just what I do mean: he can't unless he's clever enough to seethe other side. "

The deep groan with which Caspar met this casuistry was cut short by aknock at the studio door, which thereupon opened to admit a smalldapperly-dressed man with a silky moustache and mildly-bulging eyes. 

"Ah, Mungold, " exclaimed Stanwell, to cover the gloomy silence withwhich Arran received the new-comer; whereat the latter, with the air ofa man who does not easily believe himself unwelcome, bestowed asympathetic pressure on the sculptor's hand. 

"My dear chap, I've just met Miss Arran, and she told me you were laidup with a bad cold, so I thought I'd pop in and cheer you up a little. "

He looked about him with a smile evidently intended as the first act inhis beneficent programme. 

Mr. Mungold, freshly soaped and scented, with a neat glaze of gentilityextending from his varnished boot-tips to his glossy hat, looked likethe "flattered" portrait of a common man--just such an idealizedpresentment as his own brush might have produced. As a rule, however, he devoted himself to the portrayal of the other sex, painting ladiesin syrup, as Arran said, with marsh-mallow children leaning againsttheir knees. He was as quick as a dressmaker at catching new ideas, andthe style of his pictures changed as rapidly as that of thefashion-plates. One year all his sitters were done on oval canvases, with gauzy draperies and a background of clouds; the next they wereseated under an immemorial elm, caressing enormous dogs obviouslyconstructed out of door-mats. Whatever their occupation they alwayslooked straight out of the canvas, giving the impression that theireyes were fixed on an invisible camera. This gave rise to the rumourthat Mungold "did" his portraits from photographs; it was even saidthat he had invented a way of transferring an enlarged photograph tothe canvas, so that all that remained was to fill in the colours. If heheard of this charge he took it calmly, but probably it had not reachedthe high spheres in which he moved, and in which he was esteemed forpainting pearls better, and making unsuggestive children look lovelier, than any of his fellow-craftsmen. Mr. Mungold, in fact, deemed it apart of his professional duty to study his sitters in their home-life;and as this life was chiefly led in the homes of others, he was toobusy dining out and going to the opera to mingle much with hiscolleagues. But as no one is wholly consistent, Mr. Mungold had latelybelied his ambitions by falling in love with Kate Arran; and with thatgentle persistency which made him so wonderful in managing obstreperousinfantile sitters, he had contrived to establish a precarious footingin her brother's studio. 

Part of his success was due to the fact that he could not easily thinkhimself the object of a rebuff. If it seemed to hit him he regarded itas deflected from its aim, and brushed it aside with a discreetgesture. A touch of comedy was lent to the situation by the fact that, till Kate Arran's coming, Mungold had always served as her brother'sAwful Example. It was a mark of Arran's lack of humour that hepersisted in regarding the little man as a conscious apostate, insteadof perceiving that he painted as he could, in a world which reallylooked to him like a vast confectioner's window. Stanwell had neverquite divined how Mungold had won over the sister, to whom herbrother's prejudices were a religion; but he suspected the painter ofhaving united a deep belief in Caspar's gifts with the occasional offerof opportune delicacies--the port-wine or game which Kate had no othermeans of procuring for her patient. 

Stanwell, persuaded that Mungold would stick to his post till MissArran's return, felt himself freed from his promise to the latter andleft the incongruous pair to themselves. There had been a time when itamused him to see Caspar submerge the painter in a torrent of turbideloquence, and to watch poor Mungold sputtering under the rush ofdenunciation, yet emitting little bland phrases of assent, like agentleman drowning correctly, in gloves and eye-glasses. But Stanwellwas beginning to find less food for gaiety than for envy in thecontemplation of his colleague. After all, Mungold held his ground, hedid not go under. Spite of his manifest absurdity he had succeeded inpropitiating the sister, in making himself tolerated by the brother;and the fact that his success was due to the ability to purchaseport-wine and game was not in this case a mitigating circumstance. Stanwell knew that the Arrans really preferred him to Mungold, but theknowledge only sharpened his envy of the latter, whose friendship couldcommand visible tokens of expression, while poor Stanwell's remainedgloomily inarticulate. As he returned to his over-populated studio andsurveyed anew the pictures of which Shepson had not offered to relievehim, he found himself wishing, not for Mungold's lack of scruples, forhe believed him to be the most scrupulous of men, but for that happymean of talent which so completely satisfied the artistic requirementsof the inartistic. Mungold was not to be despised as an apostate--hewas to be congratulated as a man whose aptitudes were exactly in linewith the taste of the persons he liked to dine with. 

At this point in his meditations, Stanwell's eye fell on the portraitof Miss Gladys Glyde. It was really, as Shepson said, as good as aMungold; yet it could never be made to serve the same purpose, becauseit was the work of a man who knew it was bad art. That at least wouldhave been Caspar Arran's contention--poor Caspar, who produced as badart in the service of the loftiest convictions! The distinction beganto look like mere casuistry to Stanwell. He had never been very proudof his own adaptability. It had seemed to him to indicate the lack ofan individual stand-point, and he had tried to counteract it by thecultivation of an aggressively personal style. But the cursed knack wasin his fingers--he was always at the mercy of some other man'ssensations, and there were moments when he blushed to remember that hisgrandfather had spent a laborious life-time in Rome, copying the OldMasters for a generation which lacked the facile resource of thecamera. Now, however, it struck him that the ancestral versatilitymight be a useful inheritance. In art, after all, the greatest of themdid what they could; and if a man could do several things instead ofone, why should he not profit by the multiplicity of his gifts? If onehad two talents why not serve two masters?

III

STANWELL, while seeing Caspar through the attack which had been thecause of his sister's arrival, had struck up a friendship with theyoung doctor who climbed the patient's seven flights with unremittingfidelity. The two, since then, had continued to exchange confidencesregarding the sculptor's health, and Stanwell, anxious to waylay thedoctor after his visit, left the studio door ajar, and went out when heheard a sound of leave-taking across the landing. But it appeared thatthe doctor had just come, and that it was Mungold who was making hisadieux. 

The latter at once assumed that Stanwell had been on the alert for him, and met the supposed advance by affably inviting himself into thestudio. 

"May I come and take a look around, my dear fellow? I have been meaningto drop in for an age--" Mungold always spoke with a girlish emphasisand effusiveness--"but I have been so busy getting up Mrs. Van Orley'stableaux--English eighteenth century portraits, you know--that really, what with that and my sittings, I've hardly had time to think. And thenyou know you owe me about a dozen visits! But you're a savage--youdon't pay visits. You stay here and _piocher_--which is wiser, as theresults prove. Ah, you're very strong--immensely strong!" He paused inthe middle of the studio, glancing about a little apprehensively, asthough he thought the stored energy of the pictures might result in anexplosion. "Very original--very striking--ah, Miss Arran! A powerfulhead; but--excuse the suggestion--isn't there just the least littlelack of sweetness? You don't think she has the sweet type? Perhapsnot--but could she be so lovely if she were not intensely feminine?Just at present, though, she is not looking her best--she is horriblytired. I am afraid there is very little money left--and poor dearCaspar is so impossible: he won't hear of a loan. Otherwise I should bemost happy--. But I came just now to propose a piece of work--in factto give him an order. Mrs. Archer Millington has built a new ball-room, as I daresay you may have seen in the papers, and she has been kindenough to ask me for some hints--oh, merely as a friend: I don'tpresume to do more than advise. But her decorator wants to do somethingwith Cupids--something light and playful, you understand. And so Iventured to say that I knew a very clever sculptor--well, I _do_believe Caspar has talent--latent talent, you know--and at any rate ajob of that sort would be a big lift for him. At least I thought hewould regard it so; but you should have heard him when I showed him thedecorator's sketch. He asked me what the Cupids were to be donein--lard? And if I thought he had had his training at a confectioner's?And I don't know what more besides--but he worked himself up to such adegree that he brought on a frightful fit of coughing, and Miss Arran, I'm afraid, was rather annoyed with me when she came in, though I'msure an order from Mrs. Archer Millington is not a thing that wouldannoy most people!"

Mr. Mungold paused, breathless with the rehearsal of his wrongs, andStanwell said with a smile: "You know poor Caspar is terribly stiff onthe purity of the artist's aim. "

"The artist's aim?" Mr. Mungold stared. "What is the artist's aim butto please--isn't that the purpose of all true art? But his theories areso extravagant. I really don't know what I shall say to Mrs. Millington--she is not used to being refused. I suppose I had betterput it on the ground of ill-health. " The artist glanced at his handsomerepeater. "Dear me, I promised to be at Mrs. Van Orley's before twelveo'clock. We are to settle about the curtain before luncheon. My dearfellow, it has been a privilege to see your work. By the way, you havenever done any modelling, I suppose? You're so extraordinarilyversatile--I didn't know whether you might care to undertake the Cupidsyourself. "

Stanwell had to wait a long time for the doctor; and when the lattercame out he looked grave. Worse? No, he couldn't say that Caspar wasworse--but then he wasn't any better. There was nothing mortal thematter, but the question was how long he could hold out. It was thekind of case where there is no use in drugs--he had just scribbled aprescription to quiet Miss Arran. 

"It's the cold, I suppose, " Stanwell groaned. "He ought to be shippedoff to Florida. "

The doctor made a negative gesture. "Florida be hanged! What he wantsis to sell his group. That would set him up quicker than sitting on theequator. "

"Sell his group?" Stanwell echoed. "But he's so indifferent torecognition--he believes in himself so thoroughly. I thought at firsthe would be hard hit when the Exhibition Committee refused it, but heseems to regard that as another proof of its superiority. "

His visitor turned on him the penetrating eye of the confessor. "Indifferent to recognition? He's eating his heart out for it. Can'tyou see that all that talk is just so much whistling to keep hiscourage up? The name of his disease is failure--and I can't write theprescription that will cure that complaint. But if somebody would comealong and take a fancy to those two naked parties who are breaking eachother's heads, we'd have Mr. Caspar putting on a pound a day. "

The truth of this diagnosis became suddenly vivid to Stanwell. How dullof him not to have seen before that it was not cold or privation whichwas killing Caspar--not anxiety for his sister's future, nor the acheof watching her daily struggle--but simply the cankering thought thathe might die before he had made himself known! It was his vanity thatwas starving to death, and all Mungold's hampers could not appease thathunger. Stanwell was not shocked by the discovery--he was only the moresorry for the little man, who was, after all, denied that solace ofself-sufficiency which his talk so noisily proclaimed. His lot seemedhard enough when Stanwell had pictured him as buoyed up by the scorn ofpublic opinion--it became tragic if he was denied that support. Theartist wondered if Kate had guessed her brother's secret, or if shewere still the dupe of his stoicism. Stanwell was sure that thesculptor would take no one into his confidence, and least of all hissister, whose faith in his artistic independence was the chief prop ofthat tottering pose. Kate's penetration was not great, and Stanwellrecalled the incredulous smile with which she had heard him defend poorMungold's "sincerity" against Caspar's assaults; but she had theinsight of the heart, and where her brother's happiness was concernedshe might have seen deeper than any of them. It was this lastconsideration which took the strongest hold on Stanwell--he feltCaspar's sufferings chiefly through the thought of his sister'spossible disillusionment. 

IV

WITHIN three months two events had set the studio building talking. Stanwell had painted a full-length portrait of Mrs. Archer Millington, and Caspar Arran had received an order to execute his group in marble. 

The name of the sculptor's patron had not been divulged. The order camethrough Shepson, who explained that an American customer living abroad, having seen a photograph of the group in one of the papers, had at oncecabled home to secure it. He intended to bestow it on a public buildingin America, and not wishing to advertise his munificence, had preferredthat even the sculptor should remain ignorant of his name. The groupbought by an enlightened compatriot for the adornment of a civicbuilding in his native land! There could hardly be a more completevindication of unappreciated genius, and Caspar made the most of theargument. He was not exultant, he was sublimely magnanimous. He hadalways said that he could afford to await the Verdict of Posterity, andhis unknown patron's act clearly shadowed forth that impressivedecision. Happily it also found expression in a cheque which it wouldhave taken more philosophy to await. The group was paid for in advance, and Kate's joy in her brother's recognition was deliciously mingledwith the thrill of ordering him some new clothes, and coaxing him outto dine succulently at a neighbouring restaurant. Caspar flourishedinsufferably on this regime: he began to strike the attitude of therecognized Great Master, who gives advice and encouragement to thestruggling neophyte. He held himself up as an example of the reward ofdisinterestedness, of the triumph of the artist who clings obstinatelyto his convictions. 

"A man must believe in his star--look at Napoleon! It's the doggedtrust in one's convictions that tells--it always ends by forcing thepublic into line. Only be sure you make no concessions--don't give into any of their humbug! An artist who listens to the critics isruined--they never have any use for the poor devils who do what theytell them to. Run after fame and she'll keep you running, but stay inyour own corner and do your own work, and by George, sir, she'll comecrawling up to you and ask to have her likeness done!"

These exhortations were chiefly directed to Stanwell, partly becausethe inmates of the other studios were apt to elude them, partly alsobecause the rumours concerning Stanwell's portrait of Mrs. Millingtonhad begun to disquiet the sculptor. At first he had taken acondescending interest in the fact of his friend's receiving an order, and had admonished him not to lose the chance of "showing up" hissitter and her environment. It was a splendid opportunity for a fellowwith a "message" to be introduced into the tents of the Philistine, andStanwell was charged to drive a long sharp nail into the enemy's skull. But presently Arran began to suspect that the portrait was not ascomminatory as he could have wished. Mungold, the most kindly ofrivals, let drop a word of injudicious praise: the picture, he said, promised to be delightfully "in keeping" with the decorations of theball-room, and the lady's gown harmonized exquisitely with thewindow-curtains. Stanwell, called to account by his monitor, remindedthe latter that he himself had been selected by Mungold to do theCupids for Mrs. Millington's ball-room, and that the friendly artist'spraise could, therefore, not be taken as positive evidence ofincapacity. 

"Ah, but I didn't do them--I kicked him out!" Caspar rejoined; andStanwell could only plead that, even in the cause of art, one couldhardly kick a lady. 

"Ah, that's the worst of it. If the women get at you you're lost. You're young, you're impressionable, you won't mind my saying thatyou're not built for a stoic, and hang it, they'll coddle you, they'llenervate you, they'll sentimentalize you, they'll make a Mungold ofyou!"

"Ah, poor Mungold, " Stanwell laughed. "If he lived the life of ananchorite he couldn't help painting pictures that would please Mrs. Millington. "

"Whereas you could, " Kate interjected, raising her head from theironing-board where, Sphinx-like, magnificent, she swung a splendid armabove her brother's shirts. 

"Oh, well, perhaps I shan't please her; perhaps I shall elevate hertaste. "

Caspar directed a groan to his sister. "That's what they all think atfirst--Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. But inside the Dark Towerthere's the Venusberg. Oh, I don't mean that you'll be taken withtruffles and plush footmen, like Mungold. But praise, my poorNed--praise is a deadly drug! It's the absinthe of the artist--andthey'll stupefy you with it. You'll wallow in the mire of success. "

Stanwell raised a protesting hand. "Really, for one order, you're alittle lurid!"

"One? Haven't you already had a dozen others?"

"Only one other, so far--and I'm not sure I shall do that. "

"Not sure--wavering already! That's the way the mischief begins. If thewomen get a fad for you they'll work you like a galley-slave. You'llhave to do your round of 'copy' every morning. What becomes ofinspiration then? How are you going to loaf and invite the soul? Don'tbarter your birthright for a mess of pottage! Oh, I understand thetemptation--I know the taste of money and success. But look at me, Stanwell. You know how long I had to wait for recognition. Well, nowit's come to me I don't mean to let it knock me off my feet. I don'tmean to let myself be overworked; I have already made it known that Iwill not be bullied into taking more orders than I can do full justiceto. And my sister is with me, God bless her; Kate would rather go onironing my shirts in a garret than see me prostitute my art!"

Kate's glance radiantly confirmed this declaration of independence, andStanwell, with his evasive laugh, asked her if, meanwhile, she shouldobject to his investing a part of his ill-gotten gains in theatretickets for the party that evening. 

It appeared that Stanwell had also been paid in advance, and well paid;for he began to permit himself various mild distractions, in which hegenerally contrived to have the Arrans share. It seemed perfectlynatural to Kate that Caspar's friends should spend their money for hisrecreation, and by one of the most touching sophistries of her sex shethus reconciled herself to the anomaly of taking a little pleasure onher own account. Mungold was less often in the way, for she had neverbeen able to forgive him for proposing that Caspar should do Mrs. Millington's Cupids; and for a few radiant weeks Stanwell had theundisputed enjoyment of her pride in her brother's achievement. 

Stanwell had "rushed through" Mrs. Millington's portrait in time forthe opening of her new ball-room; and it was perhaps in return for thisfavour that she consented to let the picture be exhibited at a bigPortrait Show which was held in April for the benefit of a fashionablecharity. 

In Mrs. Millington's ball-room the picture had been seen and approvedonly by the distinguished few who had access to that social sanctuary;but on the walls of the exhibition it became a centre of comment anddiscussion. One of the immediate results of this publicity was a visitfrom Shepson, with two or three orders in his pocket, as he put it. Hesurveyed the studio with fresh disgust, asked Stanwell why he did notmove, and was impressed rather than downcast on learning that thepainter had not decided whether he would take any more orders thatspring. 

"You might haf a studio at Newport, " he suggested. "It would be rathernew to do your sitters out of doors, with the sea behind them--showingthey had a blace on the gliffs!"

The picture produced a different and less flattering effect on thecritics. They gave it, indeed, more space than they had ever beforeaccorded to the artist's efforts, but their estimate seemed to confirmCaspar Arran's forebodings, and Stanwell had perhaps never despisedthem so little as when he read their comments on his work. On thewhole, however, neither praise nor blame disquieted him greatly. He wasengrossed in the contemplation of Kate Arran's happiness, and baskingin the refracted warmth it shed about her. The doctor'sprognostications had come true. Caspar was putting on a pound a week, and had plunged into a fresh "creation" more symbolic and encumberingthan the monument of which he had been so opportunely relieved. Ifthere was any cloud on Stanwell's enjoyment of life, it was caused bythe discovery that success had quadrupled Caspar's artistic energies. Meanwhile it was delightful to see Kate's joy in her brother'srecovered capacity for work, and to listen to the axioms which, forStanwell's guidance, she deduced from the example of Caspar's heroicpursuit of the ideal. There was nothing repellent in Kate's borroweddidacticism, and if it sometimes bored Stanwell to hear her quote herbrother, he was sure it would never bore him to be quoted by herhimself; and there were moments when he felt he had nearly achievedthat distinction. 

Caspar was not addicted to the visiting of art exhibitions. He tooklittle interest in any productions save his own, and was moreoverdisposed to believe that good pictures, like clever criminals, are aptto go unhung. Stanwell therefore thought it unlikely that his portraitof Mrs. Millington would be seen by Kate, who was not given toindependent explorations in the field of art; but one day, on enteringthe exhibition--which he had hitherto rather nervously shunned--he sawthe Arrans at the end of the gallery in which the portrait hung. Theywere not looking at it, they were moving away from it, and toStanwell's quickened perceptions their attitude seemed almost that offlight. For a moment he thought of flying too; then a desperate resolvenerved him to meet them, and stemming the crowd, he made a circuitwhich brought him face to face with their retreat. 

The room in which they met was momentarily empty, and there was nothingto intervene between the shock of their inter-changed glances. Casparwas flushed and bristling: his little body quivered like a machine fromwhich the steam has just been turned off. Kate lifted a strickenglance. Stanwell read in it the reflexion of her brother's tirade, butshe held out her hand in silence. 

For a moment Caspar was silent too; then, with a terrible smile: "Mydear fellow, I congratulate you; Mungold will have to look to hislaurels, " he said. 

The shot delivered, he stalked away with his seven-league stride, andKate moved tragically through the room in his wake. 

V

SHEPSON took up his hat with a despairing gesture. 

"Vell, I gif you up--I gif you up!" he said. 

"Don't--yet, " protested Stanwell from the divan. 

It was winter again, and though the janitor had not forgotten the fire, the studio gave no other evidence of its master's increasingprosperity. If Stanwell spent his money it was not upon himself. 

He leaned back against the wall, his hands in his pockets, a cigarettebetween his lips, while Shepson paced the dirty floor or haltedimpatiently before an untouched canvas on the easel. 

"I tell you vat it is, Mr. Sdanwell, I can't make you out!" helamented. "Last vinter you got a sdart that vould have kept most mengoing for years. After making dat hit vith Mrs. Millington's pictureyou could have bainted half the town. And here you are sitting on yourdivan and saying you can't make up your mind to take another order. Vell, I can only say that if you take much longer to make it up, you'llfind some other chap has cut in and got your job. Mrs. Van Orley hasbeen waiting since last August, and she dells me you haven't evenanswered her letter. "

"How could I? I didn't know if I wanted to paint her. "

"My goodness! Don't you know if you vant three thousand tollars?"

Stanwell surveyed his cigarette. "No, I'm not sure I do, " he said. 

Shepson flung out his hands. "Ask more den--but do it quick!" heexclaimed. 

Left to himself, Stanwell stood in silent contemplation of the canvason which the dealer had riveted his reproachful gaze. It had beendestined to reflect the opulent image of Mrs. Alpheus Van Orley, butsome secret reluctance of Stanwell's had stayed the execution of thetask. He had painted two of Mrs. Millington's friends in the spring, had been much praised and liberally paid for his work, and then, declining several recent orders to be executed at Newport, hadsurprised his friends by remaining quietly in town. It was not tillAugust that he hired a little cottage on the New Jersey coast andinvited the Arrans to visit him. They accepted the invitation, and thethree had spent together six weeks of seashore idleness, during whichStanwell's modest rafters shook with Caspar's denunciations of hishost's venality, and the brightness of Kate's gratitude was tempered bya tinge of reproach. But her grief over Stanwell's apostasy could notefface the fact that he had offered her brother the means of escapefrom town, and Stanwell himself was consoled by the reflection that butfor Mrs. Millington's portrait he could not have performed even thistrifling service for his friends. 

When the Arrans left him in September he went to pay a few visits inthe country, and on his return, a month later, to the studio buildinghe found that things had not gone well with Caspar. The little sculptorhad caught cold, and the labour and expense of converting his giganticoffspring into marble seemed to hang heavily upon him. He and Kate wereliving in a damp company of amorphous clay monsters, unfinishedwitnesses to the creative frenzy which had seized him after the sale ofhis group; and the doctor had urged that his patient should be removedto warmer and drier lodgings. But to uproot Caspar was impossible, andhis sister could only feed the stove, and swaddle him in mufflers andfelt slippers. 

Stanwell found that during his absence Mungold had reappeared, freshand rosy from a summer in Europe, and as prodigal as ever of the onlyform of attention which Kate could be counted on not to resent. Thegame and champagne reappeared with him, and he seemed as ready asStanwell to lend a patient ear to Caspar's homilies. But Stanwell couldsee that, even now, Kate had not forgiven him for the Cupids. Stanwellhimself had spent the early winter months in idleness. The sight of histools filled him with a strange repugnance, and he absented himself asmuch as possible from the studio. But Shepson's visit roused him to thefact that he must decide on some definite course of action. If hewished to follow up his success of the previous spring he must refuseno more orders: he must not let Mrs. Van Orley slip away from him. Heknew there were competitors enough ready to profit by his hesitations, and since his success was the result of a whim, a whim might undo it. With a sudden gesture of decision he caught up his hat and left thestudio. 

On the landing he met Kate Arran. She too was going out, drawn forth bythe sudden radiance of the January afternoon. She met him with a smilewhich seemed the answer to his uncertainties, and he asked abruptly ifshe had time to take a walk with him. 

Yes; for once she had time, for Mr. Mungold was sitting with Caspar, and had promised to remain till she came in. It mattered little toStanwell that Mungold was with Caspar as long as he himself was withKate; and he instantly soared to the suggestion that they shouldprolong the painter's vigil by taking the "elevated" to the Park. Inthis too his companion acquiesced after a moment of surprise: sheseemed in a consenting mood, and Stanwell augured well from the fact. 

The Park was clothed in the double glitter of snow and sunshine. Theyroamed the hard white alleys to a continuous tinkle of sleigh-bells, and Kate brightened with the exhilaration of the scene. It was notoften that she permitted herself such an escape from routine, and inthis new environment, which seemed to detach her from her dailysetting, Stanwell had his first complete vision of her. To the girlalso their unwonted isolation seemed to create a sense of fullercommunion, for she began presently, as they reached the leaflesssolitude of the Ramble, to speak with sudden freedom of her brother. Itappeared that the orders against which Caspar had so heroically steeledhimself were slow in coming: he had received no commission since thesale of his group, and he was beginning to suffer from a reaction ofdiscouragement. Oh, it was not the craving for popularity--Stanwellknew how far above that he stood. But it had been exquisite, yes, exquisite to him to find himself believed in, understood. He hadfancied that the purchase of the group was the dawn of a tardyrecognition--and now the darkness of indifference had set in again, noone spoke of him, no one wrote of him, no one cared. 

"If he were in good health it would not matter--he would throw off suchweakness, he would live only for the joy of his work; but he is losingground, his strength is failing, and he is so afraid there will not betime enough left--time enough for full recognition, " she explained. 

The quiver in her voice silenced Stanwell: he was afraid of echoing itwith his own. At length he said: "Oh, more orders will come. Success isa gradual growth. "

"Yes, _real_ success, " she said, with a solemn note in which hecaught--and forgave--a reflection on his own facile triumphs. 

"But when the orders do come, " she continued, "will he have strength tocarry them out? Last winter the doctor thought he only needed work toset him up; now he talks of rest instead! He says we ought to go to awarm climate--but how can Caspar leave the group?"

"Oh, hang the group--let him chuck the order!" cried Stanwell. 

She looked at him tragically. "The money is spent, " she said. 

He coloured to the roots of his hair. "But ill-health--ill-healthexcuses everything. If he goes away now he will come back good fortwice the amount of work in the spring. A sculptor is not expected todeliver a statue on a given day, like a package of groceries! You mustdo as the doctor says--you must make him chuck everything and go. "

They had reached a windless nook above the lake, and, pausing in thestress of their talk, she let herself sink on a bench beside the path. The movement encouraged him, and he seated himself at her side. 

"You must take him away at once, " he repeated urgently. "He must bemade comfortable--you must both be free from worry. And I want you tolet me manage it for you--"

He broke off, silenced by her rising blush, her protesting murmur. 

"Oh, stop, please; let me explain. I'm not talking of lending youmoney; I'm talking of giving you--myself. The offer may be just asunacceptable, but it's of a kind to which it's customary to accord it ahearing. I should have made it a year ago--the first day I saw you, Ibelieve!--but that, then, it wasn't in my power to make things easierfor you. But now, you know, I've had a little luck. Since I paintedMrs. Millington things have changed. I believe I can get as many ordersas I choose--there are two or three people waiting now. What's the useof it all, if it doesn't bring me a little happiness? And the onlyhappiness I know is the kind that you can give me. "

He paused, suddenly losing the courage to look at her, so that herpained murmur was framed for him in a glittering vision of the frozenlake. He turned with a start and met the refusal in her eyes. 

"No--really no?" he repeated. 

She shook her head silently. 

"I could have helped you--I could have helped you!" he sighed. 

She flushed distressfully, but kept her eyes on his. 

"It's just that--don't you see?" she reproached him. 

"Just that--the fact that I could be of use to you?"

"The fact that, as you say, things have changed since you painted Mrs. Millington. I haven't seen the later portraits, but they tell me--"

"Oh, they're just as bad!" Stanwell jeered. 

"You've sold your talent, and you know it: that's the dreadful part. You did it deliberately, " she cried with passion. 

"Oh, deliberately, " he interjected. 

"And you're not ashamed--you talk of going on. "

"I'm not ashamed; I talk of going on. "

She received this with a long shuddering sigh, and turned her eyes awayfrom him. 

"Oh, why--why--why?" she lamented. 

It was on the tip of Stanwell's tongue to answer, "That I might say toyou what I am just saying now--" but he replied instead: "A man maypaint bad pictures and be a decent fellow. Look at Mungold, after all!"

The adjuration had an unexpected effect. Kate's colour faded suddenly, and she sat motionless, with a stricken face. 

"There's a difference--" she began at length abruptly; "the differenceyou've always insisted on. Mr. Mungold paints as well as he can. He hasno idea that his pictures are--less good than they might be. "

"Well--?"

"So he can't be accused of doing what he does for money--of sacrificinganything better. " She turned on him with troubled eyes. "It was you whomade me understand that, when Caspar used to make fun of him. "

Stanwell smiled. "I'm glad you still think me a better painter thanMungold. But isn't it hard that for that very reason I should starve ina hole? If I painted badly enough you'd see no objection to my livingat the Waldorf!"

"Ah, don't joke about it, " she murmured. "Don't triumph in it. "

"I see no reason to at present, " said Stanwell drily. "But I won'tpretend to be ashamed when I'm not. I think there are occasions when aman is justified in doing what I've done. "

She looked at him solemnly. "What occasions?"

"Why, when he wants money, hang it!"

She drew a deep breath. "Money--money? Has Caspar's example beennothing to you, then?"

"It hasn't proved to me that I must starve while Mungold lives ontruffles!"

Again her face changed and she stirred uneasily, and then rose to herfeet. 

"There is no occasion which can justify an artist's sacrificing hisconvictions!" she exclaimed. 

Stanwell rose too, facing her with a mounting urgency which sent aflush to his cheek. 

"Can't you conceive such an occasion in my case? The wish, I mean, tomake things easier for Caspar--to help you in any way you might let me?"

Her face reflected his blush, and she stood gazing at him with awounded wonder. 

"Caspar and I--you imagine we could live on money earned in _that_ way?"

Stanwell made an impatient gesture. "You've got to live onsomething--or he has, even if you don't include yourself!"

Her blush deepened miserably, but she held her head high. 

"That's just it--that's what I came here to say to you. " She stood amoment gazing away from him at the lake. 

He looked at her in surprise. "You came here to say something to me?"

"Yes. That we've got to live on something, Caspar and I, as you say;and since an artist cannot sacrifice his convictions, the sacrificemust--I mean--I wanted you to know that I have promised to marry Mr. Mungold. "

"Mungold!" Stanwell cried with a sharp note of irony; but her whitelook checked it on his lips. 

"I know all you are going to say, " she murmured, with a kind ofnobleness which moved him even through his sense of its grotesqueness. "But you must see the distinction, because you first made it clear tome. I can take money earned in good faith--I can let Caspar live on it. I can marry Mr. Mungold; because, though his pictures are bad, he doesnot prostitute his art. "

She began to move away from him slowly, and he followed her in silencealong the frozen path. 

When Stanwell re-entered his studio the dusk had fallen. He lit hislamp and rummaged out some writing-materials. Having found them, hewrote to Shepson to say that he could not paint Mrs. Van Orley, and didnot care to accept any more orders for the present. He sealed andstamped the letter and flung it over the banisters for the janitor topost; then he dragged out his unfinished head of Kate Arran, replacedit on the easel, and sat down before it with a grim smile. 

THE BEST MAN

I

DUSK had fallen, and the circle of light shed by the lamp of GovernorMornway's writing-table just rescued from the surrounding dimness hisown imposing bulk, thrown back in a deep chair in the lounging attitudehabitual to him at that hour. 

When the Governor of Midsylvania rested he rested completely. Fiveminutes earlier he had been bowed over his office desk, an Atlas withthe State on his shoulders; now, his working hours over, he had the airof a man who has spent his day in desultory pleasure, and means to endit in the enjoyment of a good dinner. This freedom from care threw intorelief the hovering fidgetiness of his sister, Mrs. Nimick, who, justoutside the circle of lamplight, haunted the warm gloom of the hearth, from which the wood fire now and then sent up an exploring flash intoher face. 

Mrs. Nimick's presence did not usually minister to repose; but theGovernor's serenity was too deep to be easily disturbed, and he feltthe calmness of a man who knows there is a mosquito in the room, buthas drawn the netting close about his head. This calmness reflecteditself in the accent with which he said, throwing himself back to smileup at his sister: "You know I am not going to make any appointments fora week. "

It was the day after the great reform victory which had put JohnMornway for the second time at the head of his State, a triumphcompared with which even the mighty battle of his first election sankinto insignificance, and he leaned back with the sense of unassailableplacidity which follows upon successful effort. 

Mrs. Nimick murmured an apology. "I didn't understand--I saw in thismorning's papers that the Attorney-General was reappointed. "

"Oh, Fleetwood--his reappointment was involved in the campaign. He'sone of the principles I represent!"

Mrs. Nimick smiled a little tartly. "It seems odd to some people tothink of Mr. Fleetwood in connection with principles. "

The Governor's smile had no answering acerbity; the mention of hisAttorney-General's name had set his blood humming with the thrill ofthe fight, and he wondered how it was that Fleetwood had not alreadybeen in to clasp hands with him over their triumph. 

"No, " he said, good-humoredly, "two years ago Fleetwood's name didn'tstand for principles of any sort; but I believed in him, and look whathe's done for me! I thought he was too big a man not to see in timethat statesmanship is a finer thing than practical politics, and nowthat I've given him a chance to make the discovery, he's on the way tobecoming just such a statesman as the country needs. "

"Oh, it's a great deal easier and pleasanter to believe in people, "replied Mrs. Nimick, in a tone full of occult allusion, "and, ofcourse, we all knew that Mr. Fleetwood would have a hearing before anyone else. "

The Governor took this imperturbably. "Well, at any rate, he isn'tgoing to fill all the offices in the State; there will probably be oneor two to spare after he has helped himself, and when the time comesI'll think over your man. I'll consider him. "

Mrs. Nimick brightened. "It would make _such_ a difference to Jack--itmight mean anything to the poor boy to have Mr. Ashford appointed!"

The Governor held up a warning hand. 

"Oh, I know, one mustn't say that, or at least you mustn't listen. You're so dreadfully afraid of nepotism. But I'm not asking foranything for Jack--I have never asked for a crust for any of us, thankHeaven! No one can point to _me_--" Mrs. Nimick checked herselfsuddenly and continued in a more impersonal tone: "But there's no harm, surely, in my saying a word for Mr. Ashford, when I know that he'sactually under consideration, and I don't see why the fact that Jack isin his office should prevent my speaking. "

"On the contrary, " said the Governor, "it implies, on your part, apersonal knowledge of Mr. Ashford's qualifications which may be ofgreat help to me in reaching a decision. "

Mrs. Nimick never quite knew how to meet him when he took that tone, and the flickering fire made her face for a moment the picture ofuncertainty; then at all hazards she launched out: "Well, I have Ella'spromise, at any rate. "

The Governor sat upright. "Ella's promise?"

"To back me up. She thoroughly approves of him!"

The Governor smiled. "You talk as if Ella had a political _salon_ anddistributed _lettres de cachet_! I'm glad she approves of Ashford; butif you think my wife makes my appointments for me--" He broke off witha laugh at the superfluity of such a protest. 

Mrs. Nimick reddened. "One never knows how you will take the simplestthing. What harm is there in my saying that Ella approves of Mr. Ashford? I thought you liked her to take an interest in your work. "

"I like it immensely. But I shouldn't care to have it take that form. "

"What form?"

"That of promising to use her influence to get people appointed. Butyou always talk of politics in the vocabulary of European courts. ThankHeaven, Ella has less imagination. She has her sympathies, of course, but she doesn't think they can affect the distribution of offices. "

Mrs. Nimick gathered up her furs with an air at once crestfallen andresentful. "I'm sorry--I always seem to say the wrong thing. I'm sure Icame with the best intentions--it's natural that your sister shouldwant to be with you at such a happy moment. "

"Of course it is, my dear, " exclaimed the Governor genially, as he roseto grasp the hands with which she was nervously adjusting her wraps. 

Mrs. Nimick, who lived a little way out of town, and whose visits toher brother were apparently achieved at the cost of immense effort andmysterious complications, had come to congratulate him on his victory, and to sound him regarding the nomination to a coveted post of thelawyer in whose firm her eldest son was a clerk. In the urgency of thelatter errand she had rather lost sight of the former, but her facesoftened as the Governor, keeping both her hands in his, said in thevoice which always seemed to put the most generous interpretation onher motives: "I was sure you would be one of the first to give me yourblessing. "

"Oh, your success--no one feels it more than I do!" sighed Mrs. Nimick, always at home in the emotional key. "I keep in the background. I makeno noise, I claim no credit, but whatever happens, no one shall everprevent my rejoicing in my brother's success!"

Mrs. Nimick's felicitations were always couched in the conditional, with a side-glance at dark contingencies, and the Governor, smiling atthe familiar construction, returned cheerfully: "I don't see why anyone should want to deprive you of that privilege. "

"They couldn't--they couldn't--" Mrs. Nimick heroically affirmed. 

"Well, I'm in the saddle for another two years at any rate, so you hadbetter put in all the rejoicing you can. "

"Whatever happens--whatever happens!" cried Mrs. Nimick, melting on hisbosom. 

"The only thing likely to happen at present is that you will miss yourtrain if I let you go on saying nice things to me much longer. "

Mrs. Nimick at this dried her eyes, renewed her clutch on herdraperies, and stood glancing sentimentally about the room while herbrother rang for the carriage. 

"I take away a lovely picture of you, " she murmured. "It's wonderfulwhat you've made of this hideous house. "

"Ah, not I, but Ella--there she _does_ reign undisputed, " heacknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an airof permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its inmates, inmarked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the usual executiveapartment. 

"Oh, she's wonderful, quite wonderful. I see she has got those importeddamask curtains she was looking at the other day at Fielding's. When Iam asked how she does it all, I always say it's beyond me!" Mrs. Nimickmurmured. 

"It's an art like another, " smiled the Governor. "Ella has been used toliving in tents and she has the knack of giving them a wonderful lookof permanence. "

"She certainly makes the most extraordinary bargains--all the knack inthe world won't take the place of such curtains and carpets. "

"Are they good? I'm glad to hear it. But all the good curtains andcarpets won't make a house comfortable to live in. There's where theknack comes in, you see. "

He recalled with a shudder the lean Congressional years--the yearsbefore his marriage--when Mrs. Nimick had lived with him in Washington, and the daily struggle in the House had been combined with domesticconflicts almost equally recurrent. The offer of a foreign mission, though disconnecting him from active politics, had the advantage offreeing him from his sister's tutelage, and in Europe, where heremained for two years, he had met the lady who was to become his wife. Mrs. Renfield was the widow of one of the diplomatists who languish inperpetual first secretary-ship at our various embassies. Her life hadgiven her ease without triviality, and a sense of the importance ofpolitics seldom found in ladies of her nationality. She regarded apublic life as the noblest and most engrossing of careers, and combinedwith great social versatility an equal gift for reading blue-books andstudying debates. So sincere was the latter taste that she passedwithout regret from the amenities of a European life well stocked withpicturesque intimacies to the rawness of the Midsylvanian capital. Shehelped Mornway in his fight for the Governorship as a man likes to behelped by a woman--by her tact, her good looks, her memory for faces, her knack of saying the right thing to the right person, and hercapacity for obscure hard work in the background of his publicactivity. But, above all, she helped him by making his private lifesmooth and harmonious. For a man careless of personal ease, Mornway wassingularly alive to the domestic amenities. Attentive service, well-ordered dinners, brightly burning fires, and a scent of flowers inthe house--these material details, which had come to seem the extensionof his wife's personality, the inevitable result of her nearness, wereas agreeable to him after five years of marriage as in the firstsurprise of his introduction to them. Mrs. Nimick had kept housejerkily and vociferously; Ella performed the same task silently andimperceptibly, and the results were all in favor of the latter method. Though neither the Governor nor his wife had large means, thehousehold, under Mrs. Mornway's guidance, took on an air of soberluxury as agreeable to her husband as it was exasperating to hersister-in-law. The domestic machinery ran without a jar. There were noupheavals, no debts, no squalid cookless hiatuses between intervals ofshowy hospitality; the household moved along on lines of quiet eleganceand comfort, behind which only the eye of the housekeeping sex couldhave detected a gradually increasing scale of expense. 

Such an eye was now projected on the Governor's surroundings, and itsexplorations were summed up in the tone in which Mrs. Nimick repeatedfrom the threshold: "I always say I don't see how she does it!"

The tone did not escape the Governor, but it disturbed him no more thanthe buzz of a baffled insect. Poor Grace! It was not his fault if herhusband was given to chimerical investments, if her sons were"unsatisfactory, " and her cooks would not stay with her; but it wasnatural that these facts should throw into irritating contrast the easeand harmony of his own domestic life. It made him all the sorrier forhis sister to know that her envy did not penetrate to the essence ofhis happiness, but lingered on those external signs of well-being whichcounted for so little in the sum total of his advantages. Poor Mrs. Nimick's life seemed doubly thin and mean when one remembered that, beneath its shabby surface, there were no compensating riches of thespirit. 

II

IT was the custodian of his own hidden treasure who at this momentbroke in upon his musings. Mrs. Mornway, fresh from her afternoon walk, entered the room with that air of ease and lightness which seemed todiffuse a social warmth about her; fine, slender, pliant, so polishedand modeled by an intelligent experience of life that youth seemedclumsy in her presence. She looked down at her husband and shook herhead. 

"You promised to keep the afternoon to yourself, and I hear Grace hasbeen here. "

"Poor Grace--she didn't stay long, and I should have been a brute notto see her. "

He leaned back, filling his gaze to the brim with her charming image, which obliterated at a stroke the fretful ghost of Mrs. Nimick. 

"She came to congratulate you, I suppose?"

"Yes, and to ask me to do something for Ashford. "

"Ah--on account of Jack. What does she want for him?"

The Governor laughed. "She said you were in her confidence--that youwere backing her up. She seemed to think your support would ensure hersuccess. "

Mrs. Mornway smiled; her smile, always full of delicate implications, seemed to caress her husband while it gently mocked his sister. 

"Poor Grace! I suppose you undeceived her. "

"As to your influence? I told her it was paramount where it ought tobe. "

"And where is that?"

"In the choice of carpets and curtains. It seems ours are almost toogood. "

"Thanks for the compliment! Too good for what?"

"Our station in life, I suppose. At least they seemed to bother Grace. "

"Poor Grace! I've always bothered her. " She paused, removing her glovesreflectively and laying her long fine hands on his shoulders as shestood behind him. "Then you don't believe in Ashford?" Feeling hisslight start, she drew away her hands and raised them to detach herveil. 

"What makes you think I don't believe in Ashford?" he asked. 

"I asked out of curiosity. I wondered whether you had decided anything. "

"No, and I don't mean to for a week. I'm dead beat, and I want to bringa fresh mind to the question. There is hardly one appointment I'm sureof except, of course, Fleetwood's. "

She turned away from him, smoothing her hair in the mirror above themantelpiece. "You're sure of that?" she asked after a moment. 

"Of George Fleetwood? And poor Grace thinks you are deep in mycounsels! I am as sure of re-appointing Fleetwood as I am that I havejust been re-elected myself. I've never made any secret of the factthat if they wanted me back they must have him, too. "

"You are tremendously generous!" she murmured. 

"Generous? What a strange word to use! Fleetwood is my trump card--theone man I can count on to carry out my ideas through thick and thin. "

She mused on this, smiling a little. "That's why I call yougenerous--when I remember how you disliked him two years ago!"

"What of that? I was prejudiced against him, I own; or rather, I had ajust distrust of a man with such a past. But how splendidly he's wipedit out! What a record he has written on the new leaf he promised toturn over if I gave him the chance! Do you know, " the Governorinterrupted himself with a pleasantly reminiscent laugh, "I was ratherannoyed with Grace when she hinted that you had promised to back upAshford--I told her you didn't aspire to distribute patronage. But shemight have reminded me--if she'd known--that it _was_ you who persuadedme to give Fleetwood that chance. "

Mrs. Mornway turned with a slight heightening of color. "Grace--howcould she possibly have known?"

"She couldn't, of course, unless she'd read my weakness in my face. Butwhy do you look so startled at my little joke?"

"It's only that I so dislike Grace's ineradicable idea that I am awire-puller. Why should she imagine I would help her about Ashford?"

"Oh, Grace has always been a mild and ineffectual conspirator, and shethinks every other woman is built on the same plan. But you _did_ getFleetwood's job for him, you know, " he repeated with laughinginsistence. 

"I had more faith than you in human nature, that's all. " She paused amoment, and then added: "Personally, you know, I have always ratherdisliked him. "

"Oh, I never doubted your disinterestedness. But you are not going toturn against your candidate, are you?"

She hesitated. "I am not sure; circumstances alter cases. When you madeFleetwood Attorney-General two years ago he was the inevitable man forthe place. "

"Well--is there a better one now?"

"I don't say there is--it's not my business to look for him, at anyrate. What I mean is that at that time Fleetwood was worth riskinganything for--now I don't know that he is. "

"But, even if he were not, what do I risk for him now? I don't see yourpoint. Since he didn't cost me my re-election, what can he possiblycost me now I'm in?"

"He's immensely unpopular. He will cost you a great deal of popularity, and you have never pretended to despise that. "

"No, nor ever sacrificed anything essential to it. Are you reallyasking me to offer up Fleetwood to it now?"

"I don't ask you to do anything--except to consider if he _is_essential. You said you were over-tired and wanted to bring a freshmind to bear on the other appointments. Why not delay this one too?"

Mornway turned in his chair and looked at her searchingly. "This meanssomething, Ella. What have you heard?"

"Just what you have, probably, but with more attentive ears. The veryrecord you are so proud of has made George Fleetwood innumerableenemies in the last two years. The Lead Trust people are determined toruin him, and if his reappointment is attacked you will not be spared. "

"Attacked? In the papers, you mean?"

She paused. "You know the 'Spy' has always threatened a campaign. Andhe has a past, as you say. "

"Which was public property long before I first appointed him. Nothingcould be gained by raking up his old political history. Everybody knowshe didn't come to me with clean hands, but to hurt him now the 'Spy'would have to fasten a new scandal on him, and that would not be easy. "

"It would be easy to invent one!"

"Unproved accusations don't count much against a man of such provedcapacity. The best answer is his record of the last two years. That iswhat the public looks at. "

"The public looks wherever the press points. And besides, you have yourown future to consider. It would be a pity to sacrifice such a careeras yours for the sake of backing up even as useful a man as GeorgeFleetwood. " She paused, as if checked by his gathering frown, but wenton with fresh decision: "Oh, I'm not speaking of personal ambition; I'mthinking of the good you can do. Will Fleetwood's reappointment securethe greatest good of the greatest number, if his unpopularity reacts onyou to the extent of hindering your career?"

The Governor's brow cleared and he rose with a smile. "My dear, yourreasoning is admirable, but we must leave my career to take care ofitself. Whatever I may be to-morrow, I am Governor of Midsylvaniato-day, and my business as Governor is to appoint as Attorney-Generalthe best man I can find for the place--and that man is GeorgeFleetwood, unless you have a better one to propose. " She met this withperfect good-humor. "No, I have told you already that that is not mybusiness. But I _have_ a candidate of my own for another office, soGrace was not quite wrong, after all. "

"Well, who is your candidate, and for what office? I only hope youdon't want to change cooks!"

"Oh, I do that without your authority, and you never even know it hasbeen done. " She hesitated, and then said with a bright directness: "Iwant you to do something for poor Gregg. "

"Gregg? Rufus Gregg?" He stared. "What an extraordinary request! Whatcan I do for a man I've had to kick out for dishonesty?"

"Not much, perhaps; I know it's difficult. But, after all, it was yourkicking him out that ruined him. "

"It was his dishonesty that ruined him. He was getting a good salary asmy stenographer, and if he hadn't sold those letters to the 'Spy' hewould have been getting it still. "

She wavered. "After all, nothing was proved--he always denied it. "

"Good heavens, Ella! Have you ever doubted his guilt?"

"No--no; I don't mean that. But, of course, his wife and childrenbelieve in him, and think you were cruel, and he has been out of workso long that they are starving. "

"Send them some money, then; I wonder you thought it necessary to ask. "

"I shouldn't have thought it so, but money is not what I want. Mrs. Gregg is proud, and it is hard to help her in that way. Couldn't yougive him work of some kind--just a little post in a corner?"

"My dear child, the little posts in the corner are just the ones wherehonesty is essential. A footpad doesn't wait under a street-lamp!Besides, how can I recommend a man whom I have dismissed for theft? Iwon't say a word to hinder his getting a place, but on my conscience Ican't give him one. "

She paused and turned toward the door silently, though without any showof resentment; but on the threshold she lingered long enough to say:"Yet you gave Fleetwood his chance!"

"Fleetwood? You class Fleetwood with Gregg? The best man in the Statewith a little beggarly thieving nonentity? It's evident enough you'renew at wire-pulling, or you would show more skill at it!"

She met this with a laugh. "I'm not likely to have much practice if myfirst attempt is such a failure. Well, I will see if Mrs. Gregg willlet me help her a little--I suppose there is nothing else to be done. "

"Nothing that we can do. If Gregg wants a place he had better get oneon the staff of the 'Spy. ' He served them better than he did me. "

III

THE Governor stared at the card with a frown. Half an hour had elapsedsince his wife had gone upstairs to dress for the big dinner from whichofficial duties excused him, and he was still lingering over the firebefore preparing for his own solitary meal. He expected no one thatevening but his old friend Hadley Shackwell, with whom it was hislong-established habit to talk over his defeats and victories in thefirst lull after the conflict; and Shackwell was not likely to turn uptill nine o'clock. The unwonted stillness of the room, and theknowledge that he had a quiet evening before him, filled the Governorwith a luxurious sense of repose. The world seemed to him a good placeto be in, and his complacency was shadowed only by the fear that he hadperhaps been a trifle over-harsh in refusing his wife's plea for thestenographer. There seemed, therefore, a certain fitness in theappearance of the man's card, and the Governor with a sigh gave ordersthat Gregg should be shown in. 

Gregg was still the soft-stepping scoundrel who invited the toe ofhonesty, and Mornway, as he entered, was conscious of a sharp revulsionof feeling. But it was impossible to evade the interview, and he satsilent while the man stated his case. 

Mrs. Mornway had represented the stenographer as being in desperatestraits, and ready to accept any job that could be found, but thoughhis appearance might have seemed to corroborate her account, heevidently took a less hopeless view of his case, and the Governor foundwith surprise that he had fixed his eye on a clerkship in one of theGovernment offices, a post which had been half promised him before theincident of the letters. His plea was that the Governor's charge, though unproved, had so injured his reputation that he could only hopeto clear himself by getting some sort of small job under theAdministration. After that, it would be easy for him to obtain anyemployment he wanted. 

He met Mornway's refusal with civility, but remarked after a moment: "Ihadn't expected this, Governor. Mrs. Mornway led me to think thatsomething might be arranged. "

The Governor's tone was brief. "Mrs. Mornway is sorry for your wife andchildren, and for their sake would be glad to find work for you, butshe could not have led you to think that there was any chance of yourgetting a clerkship. "

"Well, that's just it; she said she thought she could manage it. "

"You have misinterpreted my wife's interest in your family. Mrs. Mornway has nothing to do with the distribution of Government offices. "The Governor broke off, annoyed to find himself asseverating for thesecond time so obvious a fact. 

There was a moment's silence; then Gregg said, still in a perfectlyequable tone: "You've always been hard on me, Governor, but I don'tbear malice. You accused me of selling those letters to the 'Spy'--"

The Governor made an impatient gesture. 

"You couldn't prove your case, " Gregg went on imperturbably, "but youwere right in one respect. I _was_ on confidential terms with the'Spy. '" He paused and glanced at Mornway, whose face remainedimmovable. "I'm on the same terms with them still, and I'm ready to letyou have the benefit of it if you'll give _me_ the chance to retrievemy good name. "

In spite of his irritation the Governor could not repress a smile. 

"In other words, you will do a dirty trick for me if I undertake toconvince people that you are the soul of honor. "

Gregg smiled also. 

"There are always two ways of putting a thing. Why not call it a plaincase of give and take? I want something and can pay for it. "

"Not in any coin I have a use for, " said Mornway, pushing back hischair. 

Gregg hesitated; then he said: "Perhaps you don't mean to reappointFleetwood. " The Governor was silent, and he continued: "If you do, don't kick me out a second time. I'm not threatening you--I'm speakingas a friend. Mrs. Mornway has been kind to my wife, and I'd like tohelp her. "

The Governor rose, gripping his chair-back sternly. "You will be kindenough to leave my wife's name out of the discussion. I supposed youknew me well enough to know that I don't buy newspaper secrets at anyprice, least of all at that of the public money!"

Gregg, who had risen also, stood a few feet off, looking at himinscrutably. 

"Is that final, Governor?"

"Quite final. "

"Well, good evening, then. "

IV

SHACKWELL and the Governor sat over the evening embers. It was afterten o'clock, and the servant had carried away the coffee and liqueurs, leaving the two men to their cigars. Mornway had once more lapsed intohis arm-chair, and sat with out-stretched feet, gazing comfortably athis friend. 

Shackwell was a small dry man of fifty, with a face as sallow andfreckled as a winter pear, a limp mustache, and shrewd, melancholy eyes. 

"I am glad you have given yourself a day's rest, " he said, looking atthe Governor. 

"Well, I don't know that I needed it. There's such exhilaration invictory that I never felt fresher. "

"Ah, but the fight's just beginning. "

"I know--but I'm ready for it. You mean the campaign against Fleetwood. I understand there is to be a big row. Well, he and I are used to rows. "

Shackwell paused, surveying his cigar. "You knew the 'Spy' meant tolead the attack?"

"Yes. I was offered a glimpse of the documents this afternoon. "

Shackwell started up. "You didn't refuse?"

Mornway related the incident of Gregg's visit. "I could hardly buy myinformation at that price, " he said, "and, besides, it is reallyFleetwood's business this time. I suppose he has heard the report, butit doesn't seem to bother him. I rather thought he would have looked into-day to talk things over, but I haven't seen him. "

Shackwell continued to twist his cigar through his sallow fingerswithout remembering to light it. "You're determined to reappointFleetwood?" he asked at length. 

The Governor caught him up. "You're the fourth person who has asked methat to-day! You haven't lost faith in him, have you, Hadley?"

"Not an atom!" said the other with emphasis. 

"Well, then, what are you all thinking of, to suppose I can befrightened by a little newspaper talk? Besides, if Fleetwood is notafraid, why should I be?"

"Because you'll be involved in it with him. "

The Governor laughed. "What have they got against me now?"

Shackwell, standing up, confronted his friend solemnly. "This--thatFleetwood bought his appointment two years ago. "

"Ah--bought it of me? Why didn't it come out at the time?"

"Because it wasn't known then. It has only been found out lately. "

"Known--found out? This is magnificent! What was my price, and what didI do with the money?"

Shackwell glanced about the room, and his eyes returned to Mornway'sface. 

"Look here, John, Fleetwood is not the only man in the world. "

"The only man?"

"The only Attorney-General. The 'Spy' has the Lead Trust behind it andmeans to put up a savage fight. Mud sticks, and--"

"Hadley, is this a conspiracy? You're saying to me just what Ella saidthis afternoon. "

At the mention of Mrs. Mornway's name a silence fell between the twomen and the Governor moved uneasily in his chair. 

"You are not advising me to chuck Fleetwood because the 'Spy' is goingto accuse me of having sold him his first appointment?" he said atlength. 

Shackwell drew a deep breath. "You say yourself that Mrs. Mornway gaveyou the same advice this afternoon. "

"Well, what of that? Do you imagine that my wife distrib--" TheGovernor broke off with an exasperated laugh. 

Shackwell, leaning against the mantelpiece, looked down into theembers. "I didn't say the 'Spy' meant to accuse _you_ of having soldthe office. "

Mornway stood up slowly, his eyes on his friend's averted face. Theashes dropped from his cigar, scattering a white trail across thecarpet which had excited Mrs. Nimick's envy. 

"The office is in my gift. If I didn't sell it, who did?" he demanded. 

Shackwell laid a hand on his arm. "For heaven's sake, John--"

"Who did, who did?" the Governor violently repeated. 

The two men faced each other in the closely curtained silence of thedim luxurious room. Shackwell's eyes again wandered, as if summoningthe walls to reply. Then he said, "I have positive information that the'Spy' will say nothing if you don't appoint Fleetwood. "

"And what will it say if I do appoint him?"

"That he bought his first appointment from your wife. "

The Governor stood silent, immovable, while the blood crept slowly fromhis strong neck to his lowering brows. Once he laughed, then he set hislips and continued to gaze into the fire. After a while he looked athis cigar and shook the freshly formed cone of ashes carefully upon thehearth. He had just turned again to Shackwell when the door opened andthe butler announced: "Mr. Fleetwood. "

The room swam about Shackwell, and when he recovered himself, Mornway, with outstretched hand, was advancing quietly to meet his guest. 

Fleetwood was a smaller man than the Governor. He was erect andcompact, with a face full of dry energy, which seemed to press forwardwith the spring of his prominent features, as though it were the weaponwith which he cleared his way through the world. He was in eveningdress, scrupulously appointed, but pale and nervous. Of the two men, itwas Mornway who was the more composed. 

"I thought I should have seen you before this, " he said. 

Fleetwood returned his grasp and shook hands with Shackwell. 

"I knew you needed to be let alone. I didn't mean to come to-night, butI wanted to say a word to you. "

At this, Shackwell, who had fallen into the background, made a motionof leave-taking, but the Governor arrested it. 

"We haven't any secrets from Hadley, have we, Fleetwood?"

"Certainly not. I am glad to have him stay. I have simply come to saythat I have been thinking over my future arrangements, and that I findit will not be possible for me to continue in office. "

There was a long pause, during which Shackwell kept his eyes onMornway. The Governor had turned pale, but when he spoke his voice wasfull and firm. 

"This is sudden, " he said. 

Fleetwood stood leaning against a high chair-back, fretting its carvedornaments with restless fingers. "It is sudden--yes. I--there are avariety of reasons. "

"Is one of them the fact that you are afraid of what the 'Spy' is goingto say?"

The Attorney-General flushed deeply and moved away a few steps. "I'msick of mud-throwing, " he muttered. 

"George Fleetwood!" Mornway exclaimed. He had advanced toward hisfriend, and the two stood confronting each other, already oblivious ofShackwell's presence. 

"It's not only that, of course. I've been frightfully hard-worked. Myhealth has given way--"

"Since yesterday?"

Fleetwood forced a smile. "My dear fellow, what a slave-driver you are!Hasn't a man the right to take a rest?"

"Not a soldier on the eve of battle. You have never failed me before. "

"I don't want to fail you now. But it isn't the eve of battle--you'rein, and that's the main thing. "

"The main thing at present is that you promised to stay in with me, andthat I must have your real reason for breaking your word. "

Fleetwood made a deprecatory movement. "My dear Governor, if you onlyknew it, I'm doing you a service in backing out. "

"A service--why?"

"Because I'm hated--because the Lead Trust wants my blood, and willhave yours too if you appoint me. "

"Ah, that's the real reason, then--you're afraid of the 'Spy'?"

"Afraid--?"

The Governor continued to speak with dry deliberation. "Evidently, then, you know what they mean to say. "

Fleetwood laughed. "One needn't do that to be sure it will beabominable!"

"Who cares how abominable it is if it isn't true?"

Fleetwood shrugged his shoulders and was silent. Shackwell, from adistant seat, uttered a faint protesting sound, but no one heeded him. The Governor stood squarely before Fleetwood, his hands in his pockets. "It _is_ true, then?" he demanded. 

"What is true?"

"What the 'Spy' means to say--that you bought my wife's influence toget your first appointment. "

In the silence Shackwell started suddenly to his feet. A sound ofcarriage-wheels had disturbed the quiet street. They paused and thenrolled up the semicircle to the door of the Executive Mansion. 

"John!" Shackwell warned him. 

The Governor turned impatiently; there was the sound of a servant'ssteps in the hall, followed by the opening and closing of the outerdoor. 

"Your wife--Mrs. Mornway!" Shackwell cried. 

Another step, accompanied by a soft rustle of skirts, was advancingtoward the library. 

"My wife? Let her come!" said the Governor. 

V

She stood before them in her bright evening dress, with an arrestedbrilliancy of aspect like the sparkle of a fountain suddenly caught inice. Her look moved rapidly from one to the other; then she cameforward, while Shackwell slipped behind her to close the door. 

"What has happened?" she said. 

Shackwell began to speak, but the Governor interposed calmly:

"Fleetwood has come to tell me that he does not wish to remain inoffice. "

"Ah!" she murmured. 

There was another silence. Fleetwood broke it by saying: "It is gettinglate. If you want to see me to-morrow--"

The Governor looked from his face to Ella's. "Yes; go now, " he said. 

Shackwell moved in Fleetwood's wake to the door. Mrs. Mornway stoodwith her head high, smiling slightly. She shook hands with each of themen in turn; then she moved toward the sofa and laid aside her shiningcloak. All her gestures were calm and noble, but as she raised her handto unclasp the cloak her husband uttered a sudden exclamation. 

"Where did you get that bracelet? I don't remember it. "

"This?" She looked at him with astonishment. "It belonged to my mother. I don't often wear it. "

"Ah--I shall suspect everything now, " he groaned. 

He turned away and flung himself with bowed head in the chair behindhis writing-table. He wanted to collect himself, to question her, toget to the bottom of the hideous abyss over which his imagination hung. But what was the use? What did the facts matter? He had only to put hismemories together--they led him straight to the truth. Every incidentof the day seemed to point a leering finger in the same direction, fromMrs. Nimick's allusion to the imported damask curtains to Gregg'sconfident appeal for rehabilitation. 

"If you imagine that my wife distributes patronage--" he heard himselfrepeating inanely, and the walls seemed to reverberate with thelaughter which his sister and Gregg had suppressed. He heard Ella risefrom the sofa and lifted his head sharply. 

"Sit still!" he commanded. She sank back without speaking, and he hidhis face again. The past months, the past years, were dancing awitches' dance about him. He remembered a hundred significantthings.... _Oh, God_, he cried to himself, _if only she does not lieabout it!_ Suddenly he recalled having pitied Mrs. Nimick because shecould not penetrate to the essence of his happiness. Those were thevery words he had used! He heard himself laugh aloud. The clockstruck--it went on striking interminably. At length he heard his wiferise again and say with sudden authority: "John, you must speak. "

Authority--she spoke to him with authority! He laughed again, andthrough his laugh he heard the senseless rattle of the words, "If youimagine that my wife distributes patronage ... "

He looked up haggardly and saw her standing before him. If only shewould not lie about it! He said: "You see what has happened. "

"I suppose some one has told you about the 'Spy. '"

"Who told you? Gregg?" he interposed. 

"Yes, " she said quietly. 

"That was why you wanted--?"

"Why I wanted you to help him? Yes. "

"Oh, God! ... He wouldn't take money?"

"No, he wouldn't take money. "

He sat silent, looking at her, noting with a morbid minuteness theexquisite finish of her dress, that finish which seemed so much a partof herself that it had never before struck him as a merely purchasableaccessory. He knew so little what a woman's dresses cost! For a momenthe lost himself in vague calculations; finally, he said: "What did youdo it for?"

"Do what?"

"Take money from Fleetwood. "

She paused a moment and then said: "If you will let me explain--"

And then he saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able todisprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had aphysical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet andsaid: "He was your lover?"

"Oh, no, no, _no!_" she cried with conviction. He hardly knew whetherthe shadow lifted or deepened; the fact that he instantly believed herseemed only to increase his bewilderment. Presently he found that shewas still speaking, and he began to listen to her, catching a phrasenow and then through the deafening clamor of his thoughts. 

It amounted to this--that just after her husband's first election, whenFleetwood's claims for the Attorney-Generalship were being vainlypressed by a group of his political backers, Mrs. Mornway had chancedto sit next to him once or twice at dinner. One day, on the strength ofthese meetings, he had called and asked her frankly if she would nothelp him with her husband. He had made a clean breast of his past, buthad said that, under a man like Mornway, he felt he could wipe out hispolitical sins and purify himself while he served the party. She knewthe party needed his brains, and she believed in him--she was sure hewould keep his word. She would have spoken in his favor in anycase--she would have used all her influence to overcome her husband'sprejudice--and it was by a mere accident that, in the course of one oftheir talks, he happened to give her a "tip" (his past connections werestill useful for such purposes), a "tip" which, in the first invadingpressure of debt after Mornway's election, she had not had the courageto refuse. Fleetwood had made some money for her--yes, about thirtythousand dollars. She had repaid what he had lent her, and there hadbeen no further transactions of the kind between them. But it appearedthat Gregg, before his dismissal, had got hold of an old check-bookwhich gave a hint of the story, and had pieced the rest together withthe help of a clerk in Fleetwood's office. The "Spy" was in possessionof the facts, but did not mean to use them if Fleetwood was notreappointed, the Lead Trust having no personal grudge against Mornway. 

Her story ended there, and she sat silent while he continued to look ather. So much had perished in the wreck of his faith that he did notattach much value to what remained. It scarcely mattered that hebelieved her when the truth was so sordid. There had been, after all, nothing to envy him for but what Mrs. Nimick had seen; the core of hislife was as mean and miserable as his sister's.... 

His wife rose at length, pale but still calm. She had a kind ofexternal dignity which she wore like one of her rich dresses. It seemedas little a part of her now as the finery of which his gazecontemptuously reckoned the cost. 

"John--" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. 

He looked up wearily. "You had better go to bed, " he interjected. 

"Don't look at me in that way. I am prepared for your being angry withme--I made a dreadful mistake and must bear my punishment: anypunishment you choose to inflict. But you must think of yourselffirst--you must spare yourself. Why should you be so horribly unhappy?Don't you see that since Mr. Fleetwood has behaved so well we are quitesafe? And I swear to you I have paid back every penny of the money. "

VI

THREE days later Shackwell was summoned by telephone to the Governor'soffice in the Capitol. There had been, in the interval, nocommunication between the two men, and the papers had been silent ornon-committal. 

In the lobby Shackwell met Fleetwood leaving the building. For a momentthe Attorney-General seemed about to speak; then he nodded and passedon, leaving to Shackwell the impression of a face more than ever thrustforward like a weapon. 

The Governor sat behind his desk in the clear autumn sunlight. Incontrast to Fleetwood he seemed relaxed and unwieldy, and the face heturned to his friend had a gray look of convalescence. Shackwellwondered, with a start of apprehension, if he and Fleetwood had beentogether. 

He relieved himself of his overcoat without speaking, and when heturned again toward Mornway he was surprised to find the latterwatching him with a smile. 

"It's good to see you, Hadley, " the Governor said. 

"I waited to be sent for; I knew you'd let me know when you wanted me, "Shackwell replied. 

"I didn't send for you on purpose. If I had, I might have asked youradvice, and I didn't want to ask anybody's advice but my own. " TheGovernor spoke steadily, but in a voice a trifle too well disciplinedto be natural. "I've had a three days' conference with myself, " hecontinued, "and now that everything is settled I want you to do me afavor. "

"Yes?" Shackwell assented. The private issues of the affair were stillwrapped in mystery to him, but he had never had a moment's doubt as toits public solution, and he had no difficulty in conjecturing thenature of the service he was to render. His heart ached for Mornway, but he was glad the inevitable step was to be taken without furtherdelay. 

"Everything is settled, " the Governor repeated, "and I want you tonotify the press that I have decided to reappoint Fleetwood. "

Shackwell bounded from his seat. "Good heavens!" he ejaculated. 

"To reappoint Fleetwood, " the Governor repeated, "because at thepresent juncture of affairs he is the only man for the place. The workwe began together is not finished, and I can't finish it without him. Remember the vistas opened by the Lead Trust investigation--he knowswhere they lead and no one else does. We must put that inquiry through, no matter what it costs us, and that is why I have sent for you to takethis letter to the 'Spy. '"

Shackwell's hand drew back from the proffered envelope. 

"You say you don't want my advice, but you can't expect me to go onsuch an errand with my eyes shut. What on earth are you driving at? Ofcourse Fleetwood will persist in refusing. "

Mornway smiled. "He did persist--for three hours. But when he left herejust now he had given me his word to accept. "

Shackwell groaned. "Then I am dealing with two madmen instead of one. "

The Governor laughed. "My poor Hadley, you're worse than I expected. Ithought you would understand me. "

"Understand you? How can I, in heaven's name, when I don't understandthe situation?

"The situation--the situation?" Mornway repeated slowly. "Whose? His ormine? I don't either--I haven't had time to think of them. "

"What on earth have you been thinking of then?"

The Governor rose, with a gesture toward the window, through which, below the slope of the Capitol grounds, the roofs and steeples of thecity spread their smoky mass to the mild air. 

"Of all that is left, " he said. "Of everything except Fleetwood andmyself. "

"Ah--" Shackwell murmured. 

Mornway turned back and sank into his seat. "Don't you see that was allI had to turn to? The State--the country--it's big enough, in allconscience, to fill a good deal of a void! My own walls had grown toocramped for me, so I just stepped outside. You have no idea how itsimplified matters at once. All I had to do was to say to myself: 'Goahead, and do the best you can for the country. ' The personal issuesimply didn't exist. "

"Yes--and then?"

"Then I turned over for three days this question of theAttorney-Generalship. I couldn't see that it was changed--how should_my_ feelings have affected it? Fleetwood hasn't betrayed the State. There isn't a scar on his public record--he is still the best man forthe place. My business is to appoint the best man I can find, and Ican't find any one as good as Fleetwood. "

"But--but--your wife?" Shackwell stammered. 

The Governor looked up with surprise. Shackwell could almost have swornthat he had indeed forgotten the private issue. 

"My wife is ready to face the consequences, " he said. 

Shackwell returned to his former attitude of incredulity. 

"But Fleetwood? Fleetwood has no right to sacrifice--"

"To sacrifice my wife to the State? Oh, let us beware of big words. Fleetwood was inclined to use them at first, but I managed to restorehis sense of proportion. I showed him that our private lives are only afew feet square anyhow, and that really, to breathe freely, one mustget out of them into the open. " He paused and broke out with suddenviolence, "My God, Hadley, didn't you see that Fleetwood had to obeyme?"

"Yes--I see that, " said Shackwell, with reviving obstinacy. "But ifyou've reached such a height and pulled him up to your side it seems tome that from that standpoint you ought to get an even clearer view ofthe madness of your position. You say you have decided to sacrificeyour own feelings and your wife's--though I'm not so sure of your rightto dispose of _her_ voice in the matter; but what if you sacrifice theparty and the State as well, in this transcendental attempt todistinguish between private and public honor? You'll have to answerthat before you can get me to carry this letter. "

The Governor did not blanch under the attack. 

"I think the letter will answer you, " he said calmly. 

"The letter?"

"Yes. It's something more than a notification of Fleetwood'sreappointment. " Mornway paused and looked steadily at his friend. "You're afraid of an investigation--an impeachment? Well, the letteranticipates that. "

"How, in heaven's name?"

"By a plain statement of the facts. My wife has told me that she didborrow of Fleetwood. He speculated for her and made a considerable sum, out of which she repaid his loan. The 'Spy's' accusation is true. If itcan be proved that my wife induced me to appoint Fleetwood, it may beargued that she sold him the appointment. But it can't be proved, andthe 'Spy' won't waste its breath in trying to, because my statementwill take the sting out of its innuendoes. I propose to anticipate itsattack by setting forth the facts in its columns, and asking the publicto decide between us. On one side is the private fact that my wife, without my knowledge, borrowed money from Fleetwood just before Iappointed him to an important post; on the other side is his publicrecord and mine. I want people to see both sides and judge betweenthem, not in the red glare of a newspaper denunciation, but in theplain daylight of common-sense. Charges against the private morality ofa public man are usually made in such a blare of headlines and cloud ofmud-throwing that the voice he lifts up in his defence can not makeitself heard. In this case I want the public to hear what I have to saybefore the yelping begins. My letter will take the wind out of the'Spy's' sails, and if the verdict goes against me, the case will havebeen decided on its own merits, and not at the dictation of the writersof scare heads. Even if I don't gain my end, it will be a good thing, for once, for the public to consider dispassionately how far a privatecalamity should be allowed to affect a career of public usefulness, andthe next man who goes through what I am undergoing may have cause tothank me if no one else does. "

Shackwell sat silent for a moment, with the ring of the last words inhis ears. 

Suddenly he rose and held out his hand. "Give me the letter, " he said. 

The Governor caught him up with a kindling eye. "It's all right, then?You see, and you'll take it?"

Shackwell met his glance with one of melancholy interrogation. "I thinkI see a magnificent suicide, but it's the kind of way I shouldn't minddying myself. "

He pulled himself silently into his coat and put the letter into one ofits pockets, but as he was turning to the door the Governor calledafter him cheerfully: "By the way, Hadley, aren't you and Mrs. Shackwell giving a big dinner to-morrow?"

Shackwell paused with a start. "I believe we are--why?"

"Because, if there is room for two more, my wife and I would like to beinvited. "

Shackwell nodded his assent and turned away without answering. As hecame out of the lobby into the clear sunset radiance he saw a victoriadrive up the long sweep to the Capitol and pause before the centralportion. He descended the steps, and Mrs. Mornway leaned from her fursto greet him. 

"I have called for my husband, " she said, smiling. "He promised to getaway in time for a little turn in the Park before dinner. "